The Nebraska Quotient (A Nebraska Mystery Book 1)

by William J. Reynolds

  She came back into the living room and stood looking out the windows over my head. “With who? Who knows about it? Me? I already know the truth. You? You’ll think whatever you want to think anyhow, I know that much about you. The Mafia? Who cares about them? No, I’m for just forgetting about it. I can’t bring Eddie back, I can’t undo what’s been done. I can only keep going.” She looked away from the treetops standing perfectly motionless in the stillness beyond the windows. She looked down at me. “What about you, Nebraska, you gonna screw me up?”

  I sampled a little more whiskey and set down the glass. “If you mean am I going to run to the nearest pay phone and call the cops, no. There’s still a client confidentiality operating here, I think. I don’t necessarily approve of your position. But I’ll abide by it.”

  She smiled gently. “Thanks. I knew I could count on you.”

  “Yeah, I’m a pretty wonderful sort of guy.” I stood up. “Well, I’d better be toddling off now. I’m sure you’ve got things to do, that you don’t need company at a time like this.”

  “Don’t I owe you some money?”

  It was a hell of a thing to worry about now, but completely in character. “Actually, I probably owe you some. I was only on the job a day, and your retainer’ll likely more than cover my mileage, too. I’ll work it out and let you know.”

  “Do. In the meantime, as long as you’re still working for me—” The halter was gone in one fluid motion. Instinctively, almost involuntarily, I cupped her breasts, pressed my mouth against hers. I was sure hell with the women all of a sudden. She pushed me back onto the couch.

  I woke when she rose. We were in her bed, which we’d moved to in the course of things. She tried to slip quietly from the mattress but the springs gave her away, so I watched her move naked from the bed to the door, admiring the play of lithe muscles under her smooth, perfect, taut skin. She was short but well-proportioned, with the illusion of legginess. As she reached the door I said, “Going somewhere?”

  She jumped. “Don’t you ever do that to me again.” She half-turned toward me. “Yes, I’m going somewhere. To work. I have to pay my private-eye bills.”

  Leering, I said, “We could probably work out an easy-payment plan, my dear …” She stuck her tongue out at me and headed for the bathroom.

  A minute later the shower roared. I rose and pulled on my pants and was in the kitchen drinking her cold coffee when she emerged, her hair wrapped in a towel, naked but for droplets of water that dotted her skin where she’d carelessly dried herself. I poured her a cup and asked where she worked. She gave me the name of a trendy bar in the Old Market. “It’s a terrific job, too,” she said, making a face at the coffee and dumping it into the sink. “They’ll probably make me assistant manager this fall.” She consulted the clock on the stove. “Unless they fire me for being late today, thanks to you. Can I be there by four? Gotta make the attitude-adjustment hour.”

  It was a quarter past three. “If you go like that.” I licked a water drop from her hip.

  “Animal,” she said lightly. She moved toward the bedroom. I followed.

  “You know, under the circumstances they’d probably understand if you called in and took the day off.”

  She shook her head and the towel started to unravel. She let it. “I’d rather keep busy. It’s better for me. Here I’d brood; there I’m doing something, and something I like. The only problem is the place stinks. I mean really stinks, when it gets hot and muggy like this.” I could believe it. The Old Market is just that—the old city market, disused for many years until someone with bucks developed it into all sorts of stylish shops and restaurants and expensive lofts, hang-outs for artistes and collegiates, latter-day hippies and the gay community. It’s all beautiful brick and wood—which over the years soaked up and stored every imaginable odor of fish, fowl, vegetable and human being, which it redistributes whenever the mercury climbs and there’s no breeze to help cart it away.

  I watched her dress in a blitzkrieg of flying clothes. Panty hose. Bra. Striped sailorish top. Dark blue skirt slit halfway up the leg. Rainbow sandals with high heels. Matching rainbow belt. She painted her mouth with a kind of pencil, not a lipstick, applied a little color to her eyelids and ran a brush through her hair. Ten minutes and she looked like a million. I said as much.

  “Thank you, sir, flattery will get you somewhere. If you’d like to know where, just come by when I get off work. Play your cards right and I might even let you run a cool bath for me.”

  “Okay, you talked me into it. What time do you get off?”

  She smiled wickedly. “About half an hour after you show up, I bet.” I rolled my eyes and she pretended to get serious. “The bar closes at one; I’m usually home within half an hour, forty-five minutes.”

  “You’ll be back by two, then?”

  “Perfect.”

  She finished her preparations, I threw on the rest of my clothes and we left the house together. I sat in my car and with a mixture of sadness and affection watched her drive off. She was beautiful, and she had touched in me something I thought was gone, but she had no true emotions, at least not of the giving variety. She was thus flawed, and that was saddening. It was like meeting a beautiful woman with no mind, or a sailor’s vocabulary. A grave disappointment.

  But, hell, I was no Prince Valiant either.

  And I sat there and thought. Loose ends, too many loose ends. For the second time in as many days, the case was just about ended. Not closed, nothing so satisfying as that; it just seemed to peter out on its own. There was nothing left to do, really, no places left to go. The end, just about. And good riddance. Time to head home and stare at the typewriter. Write. Forget about gangsters and porn merchants and politicians and murderers. Except those on paper. I claimed to be a writer. You don’t get there by crashing around after bad guys. Write. Only a couple little errands to perform and it was back to The Book, back to where I could make things work out as I liked, draw events to satisfactory and logical and complete conclusions.

  I started the car and drove.

  I drove downtown, to the old Professional Building (I know, I know; who’d want an amateur building?) where Mallory’s campaign headquarters was located. Only a half-baked notion carried me there. For one thing, it seemed the only base I hadn’t touched in the screwy game. For another, I still wondered about the events that had brought Eddie Bell and Al Manzetti to their fatal meeting. If I were Bell and I somehow had the photographs of Adrian Mallory, I would go first to Senator Mallory, to Mallory’s people, and demand extortion money. And if I were Mallory or his senior staffers, I would pay the money.

  So where did Manzetti come in?

  The thought crossed my mind that, since Bell was double-crossing Manzetti, perhaps he double-crossed Mallory as well. Perhaps the plan had been to sell some of the negatives to Mallory, some to Manzetti, and hang onto the rest—those Copel ended up with—for a rainy day.

  In any event, I thought Mallory should know what was going on around him, take steps, whatever they may be, to protect himself and his daughter and his political life. It was important to my sentimental as well as political sensibilities. Mallory stood for, had always stood for, a lot of unpopular things, like civil rights and the ERA and educational opportunity and the war on poverty. All the stuff that was passé in the 1980s. Besides, I had been on hand in those ground-floor days when the star began its rise, haltingly, falteringly. I like to think I—or the know-it-all college freshman I was in those days—helped put it there. I hated the thought of it falling, particularly if it fell tarnished. Sentiment is a powerful motivator. It kept me and Jen from taking that final, irrevocable step toward marital dissolution, even if the union was over. It kept Adrian from taking any risks about her predicament, even though they might have saved her. And it propelled me now, even if there was no longer any case.

  I put the car in a clammy city ramp and hoofed t
he two steaming blocks to the Professional Building. Citizens for Mallory was on the ninth floor, in a good-sized space that I think used to belong to a dentist I went to when I was a kid. Most of the room was now given over to a large, bright, noisy bullpen of eight or ten desks. Narrow tables lined the walls; Ma Bell’s boys were there, installing phone banks. The place was in relatively good order. When the campaign really got rolling in a couple weeks, though, that would change drastically.

  It was a far cry from the olden times. Then we worked out of Mallory’s basement—eventually filling it, his garage and a fair percentage of his house. We would’ve killed for a shoestring budget; ours was more along the lines of dental floss. I was responsible for drafting speeches, writing releases, campaign literature and the like. The drafts I wrote on the backs of left-over handouts a high-school teacher volunteer salvaged. I conned a local priest into donating his parish’s mimeograph in an effort to send a “foine” Irish boy to Congress. All of the paid workers—of which there were very few—worked for free for a few weeks in order to help meet the bills. Even so, it looked like we were dead in the water five weeks before the general election. The money had just about run out, our chief opposition, the incumbent, was practically printing his handbills on the backs of $10 notes, and it looked like Mallory would have to throw in the towel for want of cool currency. At the last minute an anonymous benefactor stepped in, just like in a Frank Capra movie, and gave us an inoculation of cash that kept us on our feet until November, when, against all odds, Mallory squeaked in.

  Now Mallory was the incumbent, somewhat ironically, campaigning hard against a young, unseasoned opponent who was as determined to win now as Mallory had been then. Except that neither Mallory nor his hopeful usurper would be hurting for money this time around.

  A sweet young thing for whom the description “perky” had been expressly invented bounded over like she had springs in her penny loafers. “Hi!” she chirruped. “Can I help you?”

  No witty comeback sprang to mind, so I played it straight. “My name’s Nebraska. I used to work for Dan a lot of years ago, and I was wondering if he’s around this afternoon.”

  “I haven’t seen him today,” she said. “He’s very busy.” Didn’t she think I knew that? “Were you a volunteer?”

  “Staff,” I said, probably a little testily. “Do you expect him?”

  She tossed her head jerkily to one side and looked serious. “Well, I really don’t know. His schedule gets so messed up sometimes.”

  “Yes, it’s a heck of a life, isn’t it?” I fully expected him to be on hand; the actual for-the-money campaigning wouldn’t get going until Labor Day; this was the time for strategy meetings with the senior staff. “Look, could I at least leave a message? One that it’s very important he get?”

  Perky tossed her head to the other shoulder as she said, “Well.” That’s as far as she got before a short, fat middle-aged man with a leonine mane of yellow hair and a malodorous air of self-importance butted in. “Are you the electrician? Please say you’re the electrician.”

  “I’m the electrician.” Always give the public what it demands.

  “Thank God. What are you wasting time here, for, hum? The problem is back here. Follow me.” He waddled toward some enclosed offices at the back of the work area. I shrugged for Perky’s benefit and trudged along after the fat man. He took me back to one of the four private offices and flung open the door dramatically, gesticulating with flabby arms and sausage fingers, like a high-school declamation contestant. “Look! Just look! How can I work under these conditions?”

  It was a legitimate question. The room’s central lighting was provided by an overhead fluorescent fixture, one of those two-tube egg crates, standard office issue. For some reason—bad tubes, faulty wiring—the thing wouldn’t stay illuminated, no matter how hard it tried. It was a little like working under a flashing neon sign.

  “Well, what’s the matter with it?” he demanded.

  “I think it’s broken.”

  The fat man’s lips parted in a little tch as he gaped at me. His cheeks were so full that his mouth was thrust forward in a permanent pucker, which he now worked in and out a couple times before sputtering, “Well, of course it is! What sort of an idiotic statement is that? What sort of electrician are you?” The significance of the latter question seemed to sink in. “Wait a minute—where are your tools? Your, your work clothes?” Then he drew himself up to his full five foot five and proclaimed, “You’re no electrician!”

  “You’re telling me. If I were, I’d fix your damn light; it’s giving me a headache.”

  “Then what in tarnation are you doing here?”

  I liked that word, tarnation. I’d have to work it into The Book. “You invited me back, remember?”

  “But—that was because you told me you were an electrician.”

  “And you asked for that, too.” I surveyed the office. Standard steel desk, bookcases crammed with policy titles and looseleaf binders, window with a swell view of the roof of the public library.

  His piggy eyes narrowed. “I see,” he said levelly. “Very funny. Now what say you get the hell out of here before I call the police, hum?”

  I ignored it. “Are you Mr. Schell?”

  He raised himself a little on the balls of his feet, which brought him to a towering five five and a half. “I am Doctor Schell, yes.”

  Naturally. It fit his type. I’ve never thought too much of people who insist on the doctor prefix unless they’re bona fide medical doctors. Come to think of it, I don’t like M.D.s insisting on the title either. The designation is a sign of respect, and respect is earned, not automatically conferred upon the completion of so many years of formal schooling. Certainly, it’s not something that is insisted upon in any event. But Schell was of that type.

  Schell added forcefully, or at least more shrilly, “Do I know you? Who are you anyway? How do you know me?”

  “My name’s Nebraska. I’m a writer. But I used to be a private investigator. That’s how I know these things.” That, plus the fact that I’d read the nameplate on the desk and decided only frank schell would be so passionately interested in getting the lights in the office fixed. But you don’t give away all your trade secrets.

  “A private eye, hum?” Schell said smarmily. “What are you nosing around here for?”

  I tried imitating Gunnelli’s silencing stare. I don’t think I was too good at it, but I made Fatty blink first. “In the first place, I don’t ‘nose’ around like a pig after truffles. In the second place, if I were nosing around here I wouldn’t tell you about it.”

  Schell tried to reclaim some dignity. “Well, I am the senator’s chief of staff.”

  “Terrific, then you should know where he is and when he’ll be coming back.”

  “Well, you must understand, the senator’s a very busy man—”

  “I understand that. I’m one of the guys who helped him become a senator in the first place. And I know for a fact that when campaigns are gearing up, candidates have been known to frequent their campaign headquarters.”

  Right on cue, a commotion, a kind of electric buzz, erupted in the bullpen. I stuck my head out the door. It was Mallory, all right, accompanied by a handful of aides, surrounded by a coterie of salivating young campaign volunteers. You’d’ve thought he was Mick Jagger.

  But I could understand the excitement; there was an energy that enveloped him, the aura that seems to surround all people who’ve dealt with power for any length of time. Real power, that is. Midlevel office politicians, wife-beaters, bureaucrats don’t have it. Schell didn’t have it, Manzetti didn’t. But Gunnelli did, as did Mallory.

  And for the female workers—most of whom, to these aging eyes, seemed awfully young—there was the fact that Dan was still a fine-looking man. I had always thought he looked a little like Vic Morrow: tough and sensitive in equal measures. His hair, n
ow slate gray, was receding into a widow’s peak, from which he swept it up and back dramatically. He was about my height and powerfully built, his back was a tabletop dressed in a summer suit, his neck a thick mass of sinews, like telephone cables in a thin plastic sheath. A little extra insulation about the middle, perhaps, but still a good-looking fellow. I guessed at his age—fifty-two, fifty-three.

  Schell bellied his way past me, puffing across the work area on his stocky little legs, very much caught up in his own importance. Mallory saw him coming, raised his head from a handful of pages he had been given and made ready to say something to the fat man. But instead he saw me in the doorway, let out a whoop and rushed back, past Schell, who watched with pursed lips.

  Mallory grabbed me in a bear hug and lifted me off the floor a half-inch, pounded me on the back and arms, called me a son of a gun and—but you get the idea. “God, I haven’t seen you in a bear’s age,” he said fervently. “You heard I was in trouble this time so you came down to help me out, right? Boy, how long’s it been, huh? Ten years anyway, I’d say.”

  “Something like that. Look, Dan, I know you’re real busy, but do you have a couple minutes to spare? It’s important.”

  “You bet I do. Come into my office.” He steered me toward the door next to Schell’s. That worthy, meanwhile, was steaming back toward us. “Senator, we really don’t have time—”

  “Yes we do,” Mallory said sternly. “Have you two met?”

  “Yeah, we collided a couple minutes ago,” I said.

  “Great,” Mallory said, pushing me into the office. “You come in, too, Frank, help me get this guy on the payroll again.”

  We closed ourselves into an office that was a similar, though larger, version of Schell’s. More space, fewer books and papers, bigger desk. Office silliness: he who spends the least amount of time at the desk and in the office gets the best and biggest of each. I said to Mallory, “Dan, this is really sort of personal—”