by P. N. Elrod
“Fine, you can tell me all about it later. I’ve got to get back to my job.” She bestowed a quick peck on my cheek, then seemed to tow Gordy out. No mean feat considering his size. He raised one hand to indicate he was in a situation beyond his control, and away they went.
A plainclothes cop noted down their departure. He was obvious enough that he might as well have worn a uniform. He made more notes as others filed by. He already had my name. I had a mind to ask after Lieutenant Blair, but a tall, thin mourner in dark glasses and hat tilted low pushed his way through the press, in a hurry to get out. There was no mistaking that angular jaw, hollow cheeks, and consumptive-looking frame.
I shot after him, a dog chasing a fresh bone. He was moving fast on those long legs, heading for his car. I caught up with him just as he started to get in.
Booth Nevis halted in mid-motion and stared at me over the car door. I assumed it was a stare; he kept the glasses on. “What are you doing here?” he wanted to know.
“Paying my respects, same as you.”
He nodded once. “Well, all right, then.”
“We need to talk.”
“Not now.”
“We need to talk about Shivvey’s next move.”
He tilted his head slightly, considering. There was no telling how much he knew about what was going on, but he must have had some clue since he didn’t ask for clarification. “Get in.”
I got in. “Let’s go to Lady Crymsyn. I heard your place was—”
“Yeah, I heard, too.”
He took the specs off for the drive, replacing them once he’d parked in front of my club. I unlocked and ushered him in, this time accepting without annoyance that the bar light would be on.
In the wee hours last night I’d returned and cleaned everything. The odd stain originally confined to one tile had flooded to the grout with my additional contribution. No amount of scrubbing would remove it, but at least all other trace of my blood was gone. Only the soapy smell of the cleaner I’d used remained. The broken shelves I’d wrapped in newspaper and packed into the back-alley trash cans, well out of sight and speculation. The work sheet on Malone’s clipboard had a note instructing him to buy replacements. I gave no explanation on the fate of the originals.
“You believe in ghosts?” I asked Nevis.
“Huh?”
“Forget it. This way.”
“Just a minute. Show me.”
“Show you what?”
“Where she was.”
Not knowing what to say to that, I kept shut. No spook’s hand flicked the light toggles; I did it myself and made a follow-me gesture, taking Nevis through to the main room. He’d not been in the place that I knew of since I signed the lease, but was apparently in no frame of mind to admire the new scenery. He trudged along like a man going to the scaffold.
We went down to the basement. The cement mixer had apparently not arrived today; most of the floor toward the back was in the same rough state as when the men had been tearing down the brick dividers. I led him to the nook, which was quite gone. Scars in old cement and mortar showed where the false wall had been built up, but all else had been swept clean.
“Where?” he asked.
I pointed, glad the cops had taken away the eyebolt that had anchored Lena’s bonds.
Nevis put his hands in his pockets and brooded awhile in the harsh glare of the unshielded bulbs. He then gave the rest of the shadows a look-see, walking over to the yet unfilled-in trench at the foot of the far wall before turning heel.
“Okay, that’s enough.” There was no expression on what I could see of his face. The sunglasses hid what was important.
We went up to my office.
The window blinds were taken down, leaving yawning black holes punched into the stark white walls. I’d have to get some pictures or something in to ease the monotony. Leon’s crew—according to the report he’d left on the clipboard next to Malone’s report—was still waiting for a portable cement mixer. Among other chores, they’d occupied their time today by painting my office, and the air was hardly breathable. Even if I didn’t need it, Nevis was addicted to the stuff, so I opened things wide to let out the fumes. Besides, the dark background turned the glass panes into mirrors, with myself quite absent from their view. No need to complicate things.
The street below hosted only an occasional passing car. I expected Gordy to be coming by after he’d dropped off Bobbi, which wouldn’t take long.
“What about Shivvey?” asked Nevis, settling into the spare chair. He didn’t look like the cautious man on guard he’d been the last time I’d seen him. His bony shoulders drooped, his hands hung loose over the chair arms. His posture was not so much tired as don’t-give-a-damn exhaustion.
“When did the cops get done with you?”
He took his time answering. “Couple hours ago. And they’re not done with me yet. They were all over that place.”
“I saw them. They’d have been there anyway.” Headlights turned onto the road half a block down. A green Ford. It parked in a dark patch between the streetlights. Right in front of a hydrant. Because of the distance I only just discerned the driver’s general outline but no details. Couldn’t tell if he had company in the back or not. I stepped away from the window and told Nevis. “Think it’s Shivvey?”
He gave a resigned snort. “Not his car. That’s a cop keeping tabs on me. Why don’t they just hang out neon signs?”
“Same reason why they ran you into a door. They want you off-balance so you spill for them.”
One corner of his mouth curled, and he ruefully took off the glasses, folding them into the breast pocket of his coat. He had a spectacular shiner framing his left eye, not unlike Malone’s.
“I spilled,” he said, “but we had a problem. I wasn’t giving them what they wanted to hear.”
“As in confessing to Lena Ashley’s murder?”
He nodded, flapping one long hand dismissively. “I’m here to talk about Shivvey.”
“You heard from him today?”
“No, and I should have. Rita told me about the funeral and said she hadn’t seen him since last night. Shivvey’s up to something. I can see that now, or he’d have been by to spring me yesterday. I don’t know how far he’ll go, though. Maybe he wants a bigger piece of pie, maybe he wants the whole bakery. Until I learn different, I’ll figure he’s going for the bakery.”
Wise of him.
“What’s your angle in this?” he asked.
“Your boy did some unnecessary pushing around of me last night, which I did not appreciate. Thinks I’ve got eyes for Rita—which I don’t. I’d like the chance to straighten him out on a few facts.”
Nevis snorted again, amusement this time. “Hard to tell where he is with her. Some guys who chase her he doesn’t care about, like Upshaw; others he gets his nose out of joint. You must be one of the lucky ones.”
“So I gathered. Where would he be hiding himself?”
“He’s got a hotel room someplace.”
“A friend of mine checked on that today. Came up empty.” The phone had been ringing just as I’d wakened. Gordy had sounded disappointed about his lack of progress. I was just glad to learn Rita was still safe. Two of the men sitting by her at the service were on the Nightcrawler payroll. “You know any other place Shivvey might run to if he didn’t want to be found?”
“If I did, he wouldn’t be there.”
“Come on, you gotta know some bolt-hole he’d creep into.”
Nevis grimaced, rubbing his good eye, which was very bloodshot. “Listen, I’ve been getting shit like this from goddamned cops for longer than I can remember. I’ve had no sleep since the night before last and no food except for about fifty cups of coffee they gave me to-keep me jumping. Why the hell should I start answering your questions?”
I decided to risk giving him another migraine. “Nevis . . .” I focused on him carefully, taking things slow. In the next minute I got to know the lines and planes of his face in rare d
etail and watched them gradually ease and soften as all thought, all worry seeped from his conscious mind. That was reassuring. I didn’t care to have another incident with him collapsing on me.
“Tell me everything you know about Lena Ashley,” I said.
“She’s dead,” he murmured in a lost, hollow voice.
“Yes. I want to know why you walled her up.”
“Wha . . . no.”
“Talk to me, Nevis. Why did you kill her?”
Tension crept back into his body, starting with his shoulders bunching up, then his head bowing. “No.”
“You have to tell me. You’ll feel better once you do. Why did you kill her?”
Violent shake of his head. “No!”
Jeez, he was jolting himself out of it. I was either losing my touch or his headache was going to reappear to screw things up again. “All right, take it easy, Nevis.”
But he didn’t take it easy and surged awkwardly up from his chair, lurching a few uneven steps across the office. His eyes were unfocused; if he wanted to hit something, he couldn’t see it. I waited, then sniffed the paint-laden air for any whiff of illness coming from him. Just ordinary sweat this time, but tinged with the acid bite of anger.
I said his name a few times. His breathing slowed as I gave him soothing, calming words, but his expression remained tense even after he resumed his seat. I frowned and thought glum thoughts, the kind that come to me when I have to admit I’d tripped up somewhere.
“Okay, Nevis, you’re not going to get upset anymore. Just answer me straight. Did you know about Lena skimming money from the bets she placed for you?”
The answer took its own sweet time coming, but he finally shrugged. “Yes, but I could afford it.”
“Weren’t you angry with her for stealing from you?”
“At first. But it didn’t mean anything. I could afford it.”
I felt a keen sympathy with the cops. This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “Did you kill Lena?”
“No ! I want . . . want . . .” He was fighting me again, his anger giving him strength. If I pressed too hard, he’d be useless. Even if it wasn’t what I wanted, I had what I needed and told him to relax, then waited until he woke from his hypnotic haze. He gradually wilted like a balloon losing air, until he leaned forward, putting his head in his hands. From the sounds he was making—long shuddering sighs—it was from raw grief, not physical pain. It hurt to watch him, so I stared out the window. The green Ford was still there. The driver had gotten out. He had his back against the curbside face of the car, and sent a plume of cigarette smoke into the still night air. Just filling the time until Nevis emerged.
“I didn’t want this,” he stated. That hollow note was back in his voice. He looked hollow, gouged from the inside out with a dull chisel. “I was hoping she’d just taken the cash and run away, that when it got spent, she’d come back. I didn’t want her dead. My God, dead like that.”
“What happened the last time you saw her?”
“Nothing. It was just another night at the club. She’d done her usual run to the bookies and brought in the cash winnings, same as always. We had a drink, and she went to sit out front while I did the counting. She kept back a twenty, and I pretended not to notice. Same as always.”
“You sure you didn’t mind her stealing?”
“In a five-grand bet, who cares if I’m short a couple bucks? I sure as hell didn’t. I spend more than that in tips.”
“Who else knew she was stealing?”
“No one.”
Which isolated him as a man with a motive. But unless he was hiding a spectacular force of will or cockeyed insanity, he’d given me the truth about his innocence.
“Who’d she see that last night? Who spoke to her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Same people as always. Rita was there.” “What about Tony Upshaw?”
“Yeah.”
“And Shivvey?”
“Him, too. I’d just hired him on a week earlier.”
“You knew he was after Lena for himself?”
“Didn’t matter. She was with me, and he never went near her. He started going sweet on Rita about then.”
A practical man, Mr. Coker. Never mooch on the boss’s territory. If he’d had an inkling of Lena’s skimming game, that would give him a reason to get rough with her. I found it easier to believe in Coker’s greed as a motive than her rejecting his advances. Except that he couldn’t have known about the money cache until after her disappearance, when Rita showed him the records book. I didn’t see how any of them could have lied to me, so I’d very obviously tripped up. Or maybe missed a step.
The only other man even remotely involved was Tony Upshaw, and if five years ago as a wet-eared kid he’d had the balls to wall a young woman up alive, I was a monkey’s uncle and then some. He’d be the type to boast about it. I’d talk to him, just to be thorough. There was a slim chance he’d known about the skimming, in which case things would almost make sense again. I wanted sense, even if it meant adding bananas to my limited diet.
And if Tony was also innocent, then me and the cops were clean out of luck. Lena could have been the victim of some sadist none of us knew about. Unthinkable but not impossible. If so, then we’d never find him.
“I want the man who killed her,” said Nevis. He’d fully woken out of his trance, was thinking again for himself. “I’m going to take him apart.”
The way he spoke gave me to understand that he would be literal with his intent and do it with his bare hands. I hitched a hip on my desk corner.
“You’ve got no idea who it might have been?”
“I’ve got no ideas left. I need sleep.”
“Go get some, then, but watch your back.”
“From Shivvey? Of course.”
“I mean it, Nevis. You see the papers today?”
“What about them?”
An afternoon edition was on my table under a stack of the day’s mail. I fished it out. The story about the barbershop shoot-out had made it above the fold. The names of the victims were being withheld by the cops pending further investigation.
Nevis had a green cast to his already-present pallor. “What is this?”
“You can expect more heat from the law. Since you were in custody, they can’t pin this on you, but those four were all bouncers at the Ace.”
“You saying Shivvey did this?”
“I’m pretty certain of it. He wanted to cover his tracks.”
“Y-you fill me in. What the hell is going on?”
He got a highly edited version of events. “So Shivvey and his boys left me for dead. He didn’t want witnesses blabbing, that’s why I figure he scragged them. Gris is gone, too, probably.”
He shook his head. “No, this is going too far and too fast. I can see Shivvey trying to take over the Ace, but this?”
“Well, you know him better than me. What’s he capable of?”
Nevis closed his sagging jaw. Something new in his weary eyes: fear. He wasn’t used to it. “No, none of this happened like you’re saying. You don’t look like he got anywhere near rough. What kind of bull are you trying to feed me?”
I fixed on his gaze again. “It’s no bull, Nevis, you can believe me. Think things over. But watch your back while you do. Don’t go anywhere he might know about.”
Release.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “God, I gotta get out of here.”
On that we were in agreement. If he was sickening for another headache, I didn’t want him around. Gordy would be along soon, and I’d prefer not to risk more hypnosis on Nevis. “Okay, come on.”
He levered up, walking stiff and slow as I herded him out. We were in the hall when I heard something, a couple of somethings, making loud, sharp clunks behind me in the office. I started to turn, but hesitated, then a leftover instinct from my army days made me give Nevis a violent push forward and throw myself down next to him. He squawked a ripe protest at the treatment, but the two near-simult
aneous bangs close behind us utterly drowned him out.
14
THE heavy burst of air pressure shock rather than the cracking noise of the explosions made my ears buzz like a bad radio. I shook my head against the static. It didn’t help.
“What the hell was that?” Nevis wanted to know. He started to rise, but I shoved him down again.
“Crawl,” I ordered, pointing at the stairs.
He seemed inclined to argue, but one look at my face changed his mind. He scrambled along, all knees and elbows, with me holding in place listening for further clunks. The hall was littered with glass exploded out from the transom. Slivers cascaded from my clothes when I stood, slamming home an ugly déjà vu feeling from last night.
I cautiously angled an eye around the door frame, alert to duck at the least sign of movement.
Smoke and the sharp stink of cordite. There was less damage than I’d expected, but it was bad enough: two blackened pits surrounded by uneven star-shaped scorch patterns smoldering in the floor. The walls and ceiling were pierced in a hundred places by shrapnel. As with the transom, the window glass was gone, blown out to the street below. My table was oddly untouched except for some holes and being knocked a foot out of place; only the papers were scattered. Nevis’s chair, however, had been converted in an instant to kindling. Splinters were everywhere, one of the legs freakishly embedded next to the doorjamb. I cringed at the thought of those flying shards spearing through my body, the wood as deadly to me as the grenades would have been to Nevis. We’d escaped by scant seconds.
“My God,” said Nevis. From the hall he stared past me.
Deciding to risk it, I crossed the room to look out the windows. He followed. The street was still empty—it would have to be clear of witnesses—except for a lone man walking swiftly toward the green Ford.
“That son of a bitch!” Nevis snapped, recognizing him. He shot out the door for the stairs. Too angry to think about the height, I went transparent and shot out the window, dropping swiftly to hit the sidewalk running.
The man glanced back at the sound, froze only a moment, then ran full tilt toward his one hope of escape. I snagged him just as he reached for the door handle. He yelped and struggled, getting in a couple of solid slugs, which didn’t affect me. He tried to pull the gun I knew he carried. I slapped him once on the side of his head, which took all the vinegar out of him.
