“There some problem with your guy in Salt Lake?” he asked. “That what got you in this mood? Didn’t you get the checks this week?”
“The checks are in and the transaction is complete,” she answered formally. Gail ran a hand through her wiry gray hair and frowned. “But we have to talk about the finances. You see, Arthur, it’s not going to be the way we decided originally. I’ve made some changes.”
“You made changes, huh? I don’t remember you asking me about that. What might those changes be?”
She looked at him for a moment and then reached over to the end table and grabbed a rumpled brown paper bag. After studying it, she tossed it to him. Kovacs caught it and looked inside. There were rolls of twenties and fifties, but it didn’t look like it amounted to any two hundred fifty thousand dollars’ worth.
“This looks a little light, Gail. How much did you get for the clocks? The final grand total, I mean.”
“To be honest, something just under five hundred twenty thousand.”
“So I should be looking at what in here? Maybe two hundred sixty. Is that what I’m looking at, Gail?”
“No, it is not. There is exactly one hundred and twenty-five thousand in there. And that’s the change I referred to.” She sat back as if to indicate that was the end of the discussion.
“You got any more bags around here for me, or is this your idea of being clever?” He shifted impatiently in his seat.
“Don’t act like a child. That is a lot of money.”
Kovacs put his drink down on the floor between his legs and set the money bag next to it. Then he got up and took a step toward Gail.
“Enough of the crap, you old cow. I put up with a lot from you these past few months, but I did it for half of what those clocks were worth. That was our agreement. I had to deal with a ton of shit down there in Denver to keep people away from this money and keep your saggy ass safe. I did things that you don’t need to know about but I kept my word. And, as ugly as it got down there, it was nowhere near as bad as what I had to do up here. Sex with you, hell, it was like doing it with a pile of old newspapers.”
“I’ll just bet you know what that’s like, too,” she shot back. “Look who’s complaining about sex, will you? I deserve a medal for getting a rise out of that alcoholic roll of blubber you call a body.”
His eyes widened in rage, and he drew his hand back a few inches like he was going to hit her.
“That’s just great,” she screamed. “Go ahead and hit me. Is that how you prove you’re a man? I can’t believe I ever saw anything in you. Your little act about caring for me was so obviously false. Such a lie. And all that garbage about keeping our affair a secret. Like it was our own little world we were building here. You were ashamed of me, is all.”
She was crying by the time she finished.
“You got that right!”
“Now that I’ve got the money”—she looked up—“I don’t need your ‘protection’ anymore. So I’m cutting your commission in half to compensate me for all the humiliation you’ve caused. Men have never been much more than trouble in my life. First that useless husband of mine, and then those two sons. Philip, poor child of God, will need to be in a home for the rest of his life. And the other one was nothing more than some kind of homo drug dealer.
“But at least his money will pay for Philip’s care. Poor Philip, he’s so lost. God knows, he’s so bad off. This is my chance to make sure he’ll be taken care of, and I am certainly not about to give that money up to some broken-down booze hound. You can stand there and yell all you want to, but that money’s in a trust for Philip, and there’s no way on earth you’ll touch a penny of it. Just take what’s in the bag, guzzle your drink, and then leave. And if you ever come back on my property, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing and assault. Don’t think I can’t do it, either. I’ve lived up here all my life and I’ve got plenty of clout with the local law.”
Kovacs took a step back, stunned by what she said. Trust funds, no more money. He couldn’t believe it.
“You gotta be shittin’ me. That money’s around here somewhere and you better produce roughly a hundred thirty-five thousand, right now, or you’ll regret it. Believe me. I ain’t screwing around here.”
“You ‘ain’t screwing around here.’ What utter intelligence,” Gail said as she rose from the couch to face him. “You’re so coarse, Arthur. So dumb, too. Do I have to use puppets or something to get through to you? There is no more money. It’s gone. It’s in a fund in Laramie. That’s where Philip is. You can’t get at it, I can’t get at it. Now, take this money and leave. You’re not making out so poorly. I’m sure it’ll keep you in bourbon and pornography for the few miserable years you have left.”
Rage gnawed at Kovacs’ innards like a starving rat. He felt wildly nauseous, and the burn in his chest seemed as though he was having a heart attack. He shot both hands out and caught Gail squarely on her shoulders. The push knocked her backward hard into the couch, and the momentum of that caused her to almost bounce back to her feet.
“You bitch,” he hissed. “You spent my money on that retarded kid. Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with?”
There was genuine terror in Gail’s eyes when he drew his forty-four from its shoulder holster under his sport coat. Before she could say another word, the detective balled up the heavy gun in his fist and drove it into her face. He did it three more times, smashing the left side of her head and face. As she lay there, Kovacs thought for sure she was dead. Not that he cared.
Slowly, he wiped the bloody gun on the couch next to Gail. Then he went into the bathroom and cleaned it off better. When he was finished he scrubbed his hands. Back in the living room, he grabbed the bag with the money. Gail moaned and turned slightly on the couch, but the policeman barely noticed. Instead, he went to the kitchen and put the bag on top of Cooper’s briefcase on the table. He took a long pull straight from the bourbon bottle and decided to go through the entire house. That bitch had to have part of the money around here somewhere, he reasoned. Kovacs wasn’t leaving until he found it. Then he would make sure the old lady never told the local law what happened.
TWENTY-EIGHT
“So, Streeter, how is it that a stallion like you never got married?” Story asked as they drove up State Highway 211 toward Gail Shelton’s house.
He smiled. “Stallion? Never been married? If only you knew. You’re looking at one of the most frequently married men in Colorado. I’ve made the trip down the aisle on numerous occasions, with a couple of near misses.”
“Really?” She glanced at him for a second. “How many trips are we talking about?”
“More than I care to admit.”
“Why not tell me?”
“We’ll be at the farmhouse in less than fifteen minutes and it would take a lot longer than that to run down my matrimonial history. We’d need a cross-country trip.” Then, after a short pause, “Okay, I’ve been married four times and I’ve been engaged twice, make that three more times.”
“Very impressive. You could practically have your own segment on Oprah with that kind of numbers. I trust they weren’t all as cheap as that blonde working for Tom Cooper you were so interested in. Honestly, what do men see in something like that, Streeter?”
He shrugged. “She had a lot of appeal, Story. I think there was more there than you realize. And that’s the second time you’ve acted jealous of her. I’m going to start thinking you’re interested in me if you’re not careful.”
“Eat your heart out, big boy.” She was quiet for about a mile and then, “One question. How come you couldn’t make it work with any of those women? It certainly couldn’t have been the woman’s fault every time.”
“You’re right about that. It wasn’t always their fault. I’m not sure if there was one reason they all failed. Let’s just say that I’m not particularly good at long-term projects. I’m better at starting the fire than at keeping it going. That and my selection process tends to be f
lawed.”
“Does that bother you? I mean, wouldn’t you like to go the distance with a woman eventually?”
“I don’t give it too much thought anymore.” After a pause, he added, “Yeah, it would be nice to make it work.” He studied her profile. “Now I have one question for you. Why do you always have to run things and have everything your way?”
“Technically, that’s two questions.”
“I’m not particularly good at math, either. Look, I don’t want to pick a fight, but at times you take being headstrong to a new level. Why?”
Story seemed to be genuinely considering his words. “I have a friend who’s a psychologist and she thinks that being aggressive is my way of keeping people off balance and at a distance. She thinks I’m afraid that, if I give up even a little bit of control, then I feel like I won’t have any control at all. She said that, deep underneath, I’m not very secure.”
Streeter continued to study her face as she spoke. Sometimes, he noticed, when she wasn’t giving orders, she had a soft vulnerability that gave him an excited little twitch in the pit of his stomach.
“What do you think about that?” he asked.
“It’s more probable than I care to admit. I’ve always been like that. When I was little, I used to order everyone around so much that my dad would call me ‘sir.’ Just to tease me. He told me a while ago that he still doesn’t like when I do that. Parents.” She shrugged. “How do you get along with your parents?”
He didn’t say anything at first. “They’ve both been dead for years. My mother died when I was a senior in high school. Cancer. My father died a couple of years later. Cancer, too, although he had other health problems. He was a heavy drinker. Very heavy. I never knew either of them when I was an adult.”
“Look, here’s the ancestral home of Douglas Shelton,” Story said. “We’re here. Time to meet the dragon lady.”
Gail’s house stood off to the right, about one hundred yards ahead, quietly drooping in the sunset.
“I take it Doug wasn’t much for home improvements.”
“He didn’t do a thing up here since he moved out after high school.”
As they pulled into the drive, they noticed a tan Ford station wagon, circa late 1970s, with Colorado plates, nestled up near the side of the building. There was also a new white pickup truck with Wyoming plates off to the left, away from the house. They pulled up behind the Ford and parked.
“Looks like she’s got company,” Streeter said as he pulled his thirty-eight out of the glove compartment. “I’ll just take this in with us in case it’s someone who doesn’t like me.”
“Do you think it could be Kovacs?”
“That would be a coincidence and you know I don’t believe in coincidences. Probably just a friend or something like that. But I lugged this thing all the way up from Denver. I might as well take it another twenty feet.”
Kovacs was digging through Gail’s bedroom closet when he heard the back doorbell ring. The bedroom was the last room he had to check. It was becoming clear that Gail had meant it when she said there was no money around. At first, he thought of just ignoring the doorbell, but then he figured, if it was one of Gail’s loopy farmer friends, they would know the old lady was home, and be suspicious if no one answered.
As he walked through the living room, he noticed that Gail had shifted on the couch. Still, she seemed to be asleep. Walking through the kitchen, he gave his forty-four Magnum a quick pat in its shoulder holster. He moved quietly to the back door. Through the thin lace curtains he could see at least one figure standing out in the near darkness of the enclosed sun porch. Then he saw another, larger figure next to the first.
The detective put one hand inside his jacket on his gun as he pressed the light switch. When the yellowish overhead light hit Streeter and Story, Kovacs didn’t immediately recognize them. But as he opened the back door, he remembered who they were and pulled out his gun.
It was at about that moment that Streeter made out the detective as well. He automatically reached around to the small of his back, where he had jammed his pistol under his shirt, between his skin and his pants.
Kovacs pushed open the heavy metal screen door and stepped quickly out and down the one step onto the porch. His gun was drawn and aimed at Story, who was the closer of the two visitors. By now, Streeter had his gun out, and he focused the barrel squarely at the cop’s profile. Both men were close enough to their targets—five feet away at the most—that they couldn’t miss.
Story let out a crisp scream when she saw the gun aimed at her. She spoke first. “Put that damned thing down,” she yelled at the man coming out of the house. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, “Shoot him, Streeter. Do something.”
“You shoot me, I shoot her,” Kovacs said without taking his eyes off of Story.
“Just take it easy, Kovacs. Put the gun down. Don’t even think of shooting. Put it down or you’re dead.”
“If I’m dead, so is she. I swear it.”
The three of them stood under the dingy light in utter silence for a moment. Kovacs was directly in front of the screen door, holding his gun at about shoulder level, with both hands. Story was in front of the door as well but about six feet from it, and Streeter stood off to the right side, a few feet away. He was in the same firing stance as the detective. The porch had an organic smell to it, part old apples and part litter box. There didn’t seem to be enough air for all three of them.
“Looks like we got us your basic Mexican standoff out here,” Kovacs said with a fair amount of crude irony. His voice had that trained cop control in it. “There’s got to be some way we can work this out without two people getting killed.”
“What the hell are you doing here?” Streeter asked. “Where’s the woman who lives in this house?”
“You mean Gail? Oh, she’s taking a nap. I think it’ll be a long one, too. So what the fuck are you doing here?”
“We’re here to pick up something that belongs to her,” Streeter nodded to Story, although Kovacs wasn’t watching him.
“If you’re looking for them old clocks, I’m afraid you’re too late. They’re all gone. Sold. Every one of them.”
Story, who until now had remained pale and quiet, suddenly stiffened.
“You sold my clocks?” she demanded. “You can’t do that. That was my inheritance. Shoot him, Streeter.”
“Relax, sweetie.” Kovacs smiled at her outburst. “You’re quite a little firecracker, aren’t you? The old lady sold them, I didn’t.”
“How’d you get into all this?” Streeter asked. He could feel his shoulders tiring from holding the big gun with both hands.
“None of your business.” Kovacs thought he heard a faint rustle from the kitchen behind him and he shifted his eyes quickly. He wanted to turn around, but he knew if he did that he would lose his bead on Story, and Streeter could shoot him. “The real problem for you is, how are you going to get out of all this?”
The question hung in the thick night air for a just a few seconds. No one actually heard anything before the back door exploded open. But when it did, the door’s heavy, sharp edge hit Kovacs squarely in the middle of the back of his head. It pushed him forward, toward Story a couple of steps, and stunned him. Disoriented, he looked back at the door and saw Gail Shelton stalking out of it. The caked blood on the side of her head made her look like a zombie, but she was moving fast and spitting anger. One of the black cast-iron skillets from the kitchen wall was in her hands, and she was lifting it over her head and off to one side. Kovacs looked down at his gun in confusion, and before he could completely reorient himself Gail let out a scream.
“You rotten slime,” she hollered as she brought the enormous skillet across the front of her, driving the edge of it deeply into the perplexed cop’s cheek and crushing the bone. “You lousy son of a bitch.”
Immediately after that, the stunned and by now badly bleeding detective felt Story’s fist land on the left side of his head. She had
walked around to that side, between him and Streeter, when Gail came flying out the door. Story let out a curse as she swung and landed another punch in almost the identical spot.
Because Story was in his line of fire, Streeter couldn’t shoot. From somewhere in his fog, Kovacs knew that he was in trouble. Again, he looked down at the huge gun he was holding with his right hand at about waist level. He brought it up a few inches and when the barrel was aimed in Gail’s general direction he pulled the trigger. Fortunately for her, she was just lifting the skillet across her chest for another swipe at the man in front of her. The gun went off like a rocket and a shrill flash of sparks exploded on the skillet as the bullet ricocheted off of it and out into the night air.
Gail’s eyes narrowed in further rage at the effrontery of the shot and she lowered the skillet to waist level. She and Kovacs stared at each other for just an instant, and then the farm woman, with both hands firmly on the handle, brought the utensil up and out squarely at him. It struck the forty-four just as the detective was about to squeeze the trigger again. The momentum of the skillet forced the gun upward and eventually back, till the barrel was quickly moving toward Kovacs’ chin. Sadly for him, that was when he fired off another round. The gun was still moving up and back when the flash of the bullet hit Kovacs just below his lower lip. The simmering lead kept flying upward, through his brain and out the top of his head, taking a surprisingly large chunk of his balding scalp with it.
He fell into a fast heap at the feet of both Gail and Story. Streeter had moved forward by now, and he kept his gun on Kovacs even though half his head was blown away. Streeter then kicked the forty-four away from the body. Story instinctively backed off a step or two, but Gail held her ground.
“That man never gave me credit for nothing,” Gail said as she stared at the body. “He tried to kill me in there. He always underestimated me.”
“He’ll never make that mistake again.” Streeter looked up at her on the porch step. “Neither will we.”
Low End of Nowhere Page 21
