by Ralph Dennis
“You’ll get the rest of the instructions there.”
“It’s your ballgame.”
“And come alone and no iron.”
He hung up.
Hump left at six-thirty. It would be a long wait in bad weather. I wanted him in position at least an hour before I arrived at the Omni and I wanted him out of the house before the tail showed up. That was the way we figured it. Because they’d insisted I not leave the house with the money until eight, we realized that I’d probably be followed. I guessed that it would be a loose tail that would “show” any friends of mine who tagged along.
Before Hump left, I loaned him a scarf and fixed him a thermos of coffee. As a last kindly thought, I dug out an old plastic flask and filled it with Stock, the Italian vermouth, out of a part of a bottle I had from last winter.
I was ready to leave a few minutes before eight. I’d spent some time considering the .38 P.P. that I keep packed away in a shoebox in my closet. No, if I had to stand a frisk, I didn’t want to give them any ideas or a weapon to use on me. I settled for the slapjack. I rolled up the sleeve on my left arm and taped the slapjack to the inside of my forearm with adhesive tape. It was uncomfortable, the cuff button wouldn’t reach and when I had my coat on, I felt like I’d stuffed a broomstick up my sleeve. So much for sneaky ideas. If I had to use it, if I had to reach up there and tear the tape away, a lot of hair and roots would come with it.
At exactly eight, I picked up the battered old gym bag and walked out of the house.
About twenty minutes later, I was on Techwood heading toward the Omni. From a distance I could see that it was dark. No show, no game this night. Techwood was almost deserted. Until the rest of the area was developed, there wasn’t not much reason to use that stretch of the Drive. No headlights came toward me and only a faint dim light that might have been a car’s lights were behind me.
I pulled up to the curb in front of the Omni and waited.
Seconds later, headlights raked the back window, lighting me up and the inside of the car. A late model black Ford ran up behind me and swerved and passed me at the last second. I waited for it to swing into my headlights. There was one long blast from the Ford’s horn, just before it edged into the beam of my lights. No chance of getting the tag numbers. The license plate was smeared, probably with mud.
I hadn’t been told to follow the car or respond to any signal from a car horn, so I waited. About half a minute later, I heard footsteps out on the walk coming from the direction of the Omni. When the footsteps died, I heard a tapping on the window next to the curb. I slid over and rolled down the window.
It was a black kid. I put his age at twelve or thirteen. The whites of his eyes were wide and ghostly against his black skin. His breath hissed out at me, frosting the top of the rolled-down window.
“You ‘sposed to go down those steps there. The steps that goes down to the underground garage.”
“Who are you?” I reached out and grabbed for his shoulder. He backed away.
“You ‘sposed to,” he said again. He whirled and ran toward the Omni, toward the darkness there. He was moving fast. The best day I ever had, I couldn’t have caught him.
Now I regretted I hadn’t brought the iron. They’d fooled me. It wasn’t the way I’d figured it. I’d thought I’d be met at the Omni, frisked, and driven somewhere else where the exchange would take place. Whoever it was, that craphead, he was a couple of steps ahead of me.
I reached up my left sleeve and tore the tape free. I shook the slapjack out and dropped it into my right topcoat pocket. The gym bag in my left hand, I got out of the car and walked toward the Omni.
The stairwell was the real bottleneck of the Omni design. There was plenty of parking space below and there were a number of entrances that led into the garage. No trouble there. But then you had to climb those stairs to go under Techwood and come up near the sports complex. The stairwell was only about three people wide and it was hell in there just before a game or just after.
I stopped at the mouth of the stairs. It was dark down below. No light showed. Either the Omni management saved on the lights when there wasn’t an event scheduled or somebody had taken the trouble to knock them out.
“Hardman?” It was the voice I’d heard before.
“It’s me.”
“Alone?”
“You heard the one horn signal.” It was a guess.
“Smartass.” A single pencil point of light switched on. It was below me, about where I thought the landing was. From the thin beam I decided that the light probably came from a flashlight that had its lens covered except for a spot in the center about the size of a fingertip. The narrow beam wagged up the stairs toward me.
“Down here, Hardman.”
“Show me the ledger.” Hand deep in my topcoat pocket, I gripped the slapjack handle.
Leather soles shifted beyond the light at a distance. Not the shoes of the man with the light. Sand and grit grinding as he moved. The pencil head of light swung away from me. The man with the flashlight was turning. Perhaps to reach for the ledger. I was right. The ledger was there, the black leatherette cover shining in the light.
At least two men down there.
“Bring the money down, Hardman.”
“No.”
“You got the money?”
“I’ve got it.”
“Bring it down.”
“Not a fucking chance.”
The impatience was there, crackling between us. “Where do you want it, Hardman? In the leg or the gut?”
“Put the ledger on the steps halfway up to me.”
“And you’ll do what?”
“I’ll throw the money down to you.”
“Do it.” It was another man, not the mushmouth one. The sound of someone using an unnatural voice, forced and raspy.
The light moved forward. The man placed the ledger on the steps and played the light across it. “The money, Hardman.”
“Here.” I tossed the bag at him. I threw it as hard as I could, wanting to get it past him. The light beam whirled away from the step where the ledger was.
“Bastard.”
“Watch that light.” Alarm, panic, in the same strained and forced voice.
He switched the light off. I leaned forward, grabbed the handrail and went down the steps on my tiptoes. Below me they’d found the bag. I heard it unzip. Not much time. I reached down. If I’d charted it right in my mind the ledger would be there. Fingers running along the front edge of the step. A few more inches and I had it. I grabbed the ledger and backed away. Before I reached the mouth of the stairwell the light went on, jammed down into the gym bag. A count of two or three and I could feel the top of the handrail. Just then the light jerked away from the bag and raked along the wall until it wagged up the steps.
“It’s all there,” I said. Turning, my feet braced, I sailed the ledger across the courtyard in a kind of fluttering discus shot.
The light reached the toes of my shoes and then tilted once more. He was searching for the ledger. “Where is it?”
“You got the money. I got the ledger. That was the deal.”
“Next time, Hardman.”
“How about right now?”
“Next time.”
The light tracing their way down the stairwell, around an elbow and out of sight. The footsteps going away. Down to the underground parking. A heavy step and a light one. A big man and a small one, maybe.
I wasn’t about to follow them. I went looking for the ledger. I found it spread out, the sheets fluttering in the wind. I was putting it under my arm when I heard running. Someone heading for me. I took out the slapjack and waited.
“Jim?” It was Hump.
“Here.”
“You all right?”
“I got the ledger. Where’re you parked?”
“On Forsyth,” he said. “I walked over.”
“What you been doing?”
“Chasing some kid.” I could hear the shuddering breath as he tried to back
it down to normal.
I laughed, the tension of the last few minutes gone in one big hoot. “Lost a step, huh?”
“That kid, he does a nine-one hundred.”
We turned and walked to my car. Techwood Drive, as far as I could see in both directions, seemed swept clean by the icy wind.
“You look at it?”
Hump and I were seated on the white sofa. The Man stood at the bar, the ledger open in front of him.
“I looked,” I said. “It didn’t make any sense to me.”
“That’s the idea.” He slammed the ledger shut and brought a new bottle of Hines over and tipped a bit into each of our glasses. “It worked out pretty well.”
I took a sip from the snifter and rolled it around on my tongue. I eyed him hard over the rim. “You look in the back of the ledger?”
“No.”
“Look,” I said. It was bad news and it wasn’t my business to be the bad news messenger. I’d hoped he’d find it himself.
He placed the Hines bottle on the bar and flipped the ledger open. It opened to where the paperclip was. He unclipped the sheet and unfolded it. I didn’t need to look it over. I’d already had the sick feeling that went with it. The sheet was a xerox copy of pages 19 and 20 of the ledger.
“Goddam it.” He hammered his clenched fist on the bar top.
“It’s not over yet,” I said. “That was the first payment.”
“No more payments,” he shouted. “Not another fucking dime.”
“How’re you going to work it?”
“I’m going to hire you two.”
Hump shook his head. “I don’t like working for you.”
“The thing tonight,” I said, “I did it so I could get close to whoever killed Ronny.”
“And for the thousand dollars,” The Man said.
That was too simple. “If you sent me for a newspaper it would cost you a hundred.”
“Ten thousand. Half of it right now and the other half when I’m sure there are no more copies of this thing floating around out there.”
I just looked at him.
He turned to Hump. “You can use some cash, can’t you? Now—”
Hump reached up and picked at his nose. “The fat man knows his own mind.”
“You never do anything right,” I said to The Man. “You’ve got it ass-backwards.”
“How?”
“What you really want to hire me to do is find out who killed Ronny. Right?”
The Man chewed his lip.
I stood up and waved a hand at Hump. He tossed back the rest of the cognac and whistled to himself as the heat bounced off his stomach. I waited until Hump was standing. “You’d better get another fifty thou together. They’ll be back in a week or so.”
“Okay, your way, Hardman. But my question is: what do I get out of it?”
It didn’t take but two fingers to tick it off for him. “I want to find out who killed Ronny. That’s one. If I run into the xerox copies they go to you. That’s two.”
“If it’s the only way?”
“It’s the only way.”
Before we left The Man’s apartment, we split the five thousand right down the middle. The Man watched us with sleepy eyes. Behind the sleep, the anger was real and rank and bitter as the center of a Carter’s Little Liver pill.
CHAPTER THREE
The power saws were ripping and whining when I got out of bed the next morning. The cleanup was underway after the ice storm. I’d have slept longer but with the noise, I felt I’d awaken right in the middle of one of those old WWII movies where the Seabees had to build a complete airstrip in less than 24 hours.
It was early. I tried Art Maloney at his house and found him about three steps away from his bed. As long as I’d known him, and especially since he’d moved to Homicide, he liked working nights. Maybe for a good practicing Catholic, it’s a form of birth control.
His tongue sounded thick, swollen, perhaps from too many cigarettes and too much coffee during the long night. “What’s wrong, Jim? You got some trouble? I told you to stop hanging around schoolyards until you had that zipper fixed.”
“I didn’t call you for your jokes,” I said. I waited a beat. “That is a joke, isn’t it?”
“All right, Jim. What is it?”
“The Kent killing at the Starlight Estates, you working on it?”
“Along with about ten other killings.”
“I thought I’d take you out to supper.”
“A fancy place?”
“You pick it, Art.”
“I haven’t had anything but hamburger since the last time you bought me a steak. Maybe I’m in the wrong business. You working now, Hardman?”
“Steak then.”
“And you’re going to pick my mind?”
“If I can find it.”
“I’ll dust it off for you.” He hesitated and shifted gears. “You knew him pretty well, didn’t you? Kent or Ronny or whatever name he went by?”
“And liked him,” I said.
We set up a meeting at Swain’s Steak House. Later in the day I called and made a reservation for three.
The Starlight Estates is one of those “rip up the earth and tear down the trees” developments. A godawful waste: they knocked down a forest of fifty-year-old trees, cleared it and rolled it as flat as a table top, and then they put up rows and rows of apartments and condominiums. That done, they scooped out a hole and called it a lake. Finally they spent a small fortune planting truckloads of year-old trees. In about fifty years it might be a place where somebody might want to live.
Hump stayed in the car. I walked across a stubbly grass lawn to the resident manager’s apartment. In the pocket of my jacket I had one of the last of the business cards that said I was an agent for Nationwide Insurance. It was finger-marked and one corner drooped like a hound’s ear. Either I’d have to order some more or I’d have to think up another con. The last time I used it the old lady held the card at a distance, afraid, I guess, that she might catch some germs that were hidden around the raised lettering.
The man who answered the bell was about sixty, thin and spare and very much aware of his position. One look at him and I had to fight back a laugh. He wore a dark suit, a regimental tie and bedroom slippers. He wasn’t wearing socks and I could see the puffy blue veins on his ankles.
I said good morning and handed him the card. He narrowed his eyes and peered at it. He shook his head sadly and got his glasses from the breast pocket of his suit coat. After he read the card, he handed it back to me. “I already have enough.”
“It’s not that. I’m here about Mr. Kent.”
“John?”
“That’s right.” I was watching his face. He couldn’t decide which way to go. His face was sad but there was also a trace of distaste there too. In the end, I think he told himself to smooth it away and let me guess.
“John was insured with you?”
“For years,” I said.
He waved me into the apartment. It was neat, almost old-maidish. I didn’t see any sign of a woman’s touch. It was likely there wasn’t one. I sat down on the sofa and reached for a cigarette before I saw the look on his face. He didn’t approve and I dropped the pack back in my pocket.
“You’ll still pay off … after the way John died?”
“Not if we can help it,” I said.
He understood that. It was what most people believed about insurance companies anyway. Good touch there, Hardman. One gold star.
“His niece the beneficiary?”
I didn’t know how to play that one. Might as well trip and fall on my nose. “Niece? I didn’t know he had one.”
“I thought so.” He was smug, pleased with himself. His nose wrinkled, the way it does when you smell something bad but you don’t want to admit you know what it is.
“His brother’s the beneficiary. I don’t know anything about a niece.” Sometimes with these old ones you have to prime the pump more than once.
“Tha
t’s what he said.”
“What?”
“That she was his niece. And it was terrible, an old man like him carrying on with a girl who was thirty or forty years younger than he was.”
Odd thing about upright people. The pictures they get in their heads are just as dirty as the ones in ours. And more often than not, they get the details in sharper focus. I grinned at him, the half leer that is the secret handshake of the traveling salesman. “A pretty girl?”
“Pretty enough if you like that kind.”
“Blonde?”
“Naw. Dark hair, black as coal dust.”
“Built?”
“Not to my taste. If I was young, I’d have passed her up.”
“Culled her,” I said.
“That’s right.” The pump was running. He was warming up to it. “Kind of on the skinny side. Little teeny tits not much bigger than crabapples.”
“A tall girl?”
“You know John?”
“Like I said, for years.”
“She was about as tall as he was.”
That would make her five-five or six. “He tell you her name?”
“He did more than that. Had the brass of a billy-goat. He introduced us.”
“Remember her name?”
I guess I’d pushed too hard. He looked at me shrewdly. “You sure you’re from that insurance company?”
“Nationwide,” I said.
“You’re asking a lot of strange questions.”
“I have to. What if something happens to the brother before the estate is settled? If there’s another relative I might need to know who she is.”
“It won’t be her,” he said.
I got out a pad and uncapped my pen. I wanted it to look official.
“He called her Reggie. He said it was short for Regina.”
“Last name?” I let him watch while I wrote down NIECE? REGINA (REGGIE).
“Don’t remember it, but it wasn’t Kent.”
I added a big question mark and closed the pad. “She visit him often?”
“Weekends mainly. Now, that’s what made me think …”
“How long did John live here?”
“The last year or so. Since the Estates opened.”
“She visit him the whole year?”
