Oasis of Night

by J. S. Cook

  “So you’re telling me that this Halim fellow, this African—”

  “Egyptian.”

  “Right, this Egyptian fellow was killed in a car accident, only he wasn’t.” There was a pause, and I could hear his pencil scratching away at the other end. “When was the accident and where?” I told him. “Any other casualties? No? Okay.” His chair creaked, and I knew he was settling back in it, probably lighting a cigarette. “I’ll have a look through what we got and let you know, but I can tell you, Jack, I don’t remember any accident here on Duckworth Street, not recently anyway. If somebody was killed, I’m sure we’d know about it.”

  “One more thing, Dan—if you’re not too busy?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Jonah Octavian—he’s been in the city awhile, hasn’t he? For a few years now?” I wondered if he knew who Octavian was.

  “Oh, him.” He chuckled. “Octavian’s so full of sh—look, Jack, don’t believe too much of anything Octavian says. He showed up here about six months ago, from Athens. He says he’s some kind of contractor, but he’s never built much of anything that I can see. As far as I know, Octavian’s real good at flapping his gums, making everybody think he’s some kind of big deal.”

  Octavian had lied about Fayre Construction, saying Fayre had repeatedly outbid his company for the Fort Pepperrell project. He had even supplied evidence that Julie was involved with Ken Cartwright’s murder somehow. If Julie and Octavian were in bed together—metaphorically or otherwise—why was he undercutting her?

  Maybe sabotaging her—or at least, appearing to sabotage her—was a good ploy if his intentions were to deflect suspicion. He and Julie acted like they hated each other’s guts, and maybe that was Octavian’s way of playing it, to keep the heat off. It wasn’t real original, but I’d seen it work before.

  I thanked Dan and hung up. I knew the newspaperman couldn’t promise me anything, but he’d never led me wrong before, and if he said there hadn’t been any such accident, I believed him.

  I called the Heartache and Chris picked up. It sounded pretty busy there, judging by the noises in the background. He seemed glad to hear from me, but he had nothing much to tell me. “Picco was in here the other day, asking for you. I told him you’d had a little accident, and he said he might come up to see you.”

  “Constable Picco?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s the other thing, he’s Sergeant Picco now.”

  “A promotion?”

  “Yeah, can you beat that? I guess Ricketts was pretty impressed with him.” He lowered his voice. “I got another piece of information that might interest you, Jack. Jonah Octavian’s left town. Yeah, sold his business, the whole shot, and lit out for parts unknown.” I wondered if Julie had gone with him, but I kept my mouth shut—and then Chris answered even that question for me. “Julie’s coming over later today. We figured we might go have lunch in the park if it’s not too busy. Anita and Janice said they can cover, but I wanted to check it out with you.”

  Everything in me wanted to warn him, but I knew that was something I’d have to do in person. I couldn’t figure out why Julie had stayed in town after our little episode. She had to know her scheme with Octavian was running on borrowed time, that it was only a matter of days until I was released from the hospital and then I’d be coming after her. She’d killed Cartwright and she had tried to kill me, and in this country, murder was still a hanging offence. What kind of inducement or twisted loyalty tied her to Octavian to the degree that she’d risk her own neck? She’d planned to go to Greece with him—but Greece was occupied by the Nazis, and nobody in their right mind intended to go there, unless they had a damn good reason. Julie knew I’d found her out—that was the reason for the quinine in my drink—and she had likely surmised that I’d told Chris what I knew. Whether I actually had or not was immaterial. The possibility that Chris knew the truth about her was enough to make him a threat. More than likely she was sticking around on Octavian’s orders, to take care of Chris and me.

  “I think I’d feel better if you stayed put.” I knew he’d resent me for cutting in on him and Julie like this, but I was doing him a favor. “Dave’s got to stay in the kitchen, and I’m not sure Janice and Anita could handle themselves if something serious broke out.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll make it up to you, Chris, I promise.”

  “Yeah, sure, Jack. It’s no big deal.” We spent a couple minutes making small talk, but I could tell he was in a hurry to get off the phone. Yeah, he’d be sore at me for a while, but I’d rather have him angry than dead.

  I got Sergeant Ricketts on the first try, and he seemed glad to hear from me. “I never got the chance to thank you properly, Stoyles, for helping out young Picco.”

  “Never mind that. If you really want to thank me, you can buy me a cup of coffee at the Heartache sometime. Chris tells me Picco got himself promoted?”

  “Don’t spread this around, Stoyles, but I figured it was the least I could do. The lad’s proved himself time and again, and what we were paying him was poor enough to begin with. God knows none of us are rolling in it, but he’s got the full charge of his sister, and you know, she’s a bit simple in the head.” He coughed and changed the subject. “Something tells me this isn’t a social call. What’s on your mind?”

  “The guy who knifed Johnny Mahoney—what was his name?”

  “Yorgus Panodopolous.” There was pride in Ricketts’s voice. “Only took me three bloody weeks to learn to pronounce it. What are you worrying about him, for? Bull Parsons took care of him, or don’t you remember?”

  “How long have the Germans been in Greece? Do you remember?”

  “What? Germans? Are you feeling all right?” He huffed out a breath. “Of course you’re not feeling all right, but you know what I mean. April—they went in there in April, only the Bulgarians and the Italians were already—Lord Jesus, Stoyles, what are you asking me for? It was in all the papers.”

  “Stamos, huh? That’s a Greek name.”

  “My mother was Greek.”

  Sam Halim wasn’t dead. Every instinct I had said it wasn’t true, that there was something more here, something bigger than I figured on, something really important. “Ricketts, did you ever catch up with Bull Parsons?”

  “No. Why?”

  “It’s just a hunch I have, but I need to talk to Parsons. Any idea where I might find him?”

  “Going to drag your hospital bed behind you?”

  I ignored him. “Where does he usually drink?”

  Ricketts grunted. “On the waterfront, but sometimes you can find him in Lottie’s Pub. Good luck—you bloody idiot.”

  LOTTIE’S PUB was one of those places that, if you have any sense at all, you keep away from. It was located in a row of squat brick buildings on the extreme eastern end of Water Street, not far from Steele’s Fine China and Silver. There was nothing like fine china or silver inside of Lottie’s, which was as dark, dank, and filthy as spilled beer and a lifetime’s worth of cigarette smoke could make it.

  Lottie herself was somewhere between forty and older than dirt, a sloppy dame with huge, sagging breasts and a potbelly. Her dyed red hair was piled up on top of her head and secured with whatever might be handy—pencils, cocktail straws, bobby pins if you were lucky—and her hands were like the claws of some dead, rotting animal. Everybody said Lottie was crazy, that she had a real bad temper, that she once beat a woman’s head in with a flatiron, but I’d seen her kind before: a cheap floozy with the personality of battery acid and a face to match.

  “What are you doing in here, Stoyles?” Lottie was standing behind the bar, separating dirty glasses from dirtier ones. “Get going before I calls the cops on ye.”

  “I’ll go when I’m good and ready. You seen Bull Parsons in here lately?”

  She lit a cigarette and stuck it in the gap made by a missing tooth. “Who wants to frigging know?”

  “I do.” I took out a twenty and laid it on the bar, careful to keep my h
and on it. “I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Will ye?” She sneered at the money. “I’ve seen twenty dollars before.”

  “Sure you have, but not for a long time. How much can a dame like you pull in these days? Five bucks, but only if he’s drunk and legally blind?”

  “You get out of here!”

  She grabbed for the hammer she kept under the bar and made a swing at me, but I stepped back out of her reach. “Twenty dollars, Lottie, and I know you can use it. Hell, you spend that much on smokes. Where is he?”

  She didn’t need to answer. A huge, shaggy form disengaged itself from a table near the back and shuffled toward the bar: Billy “Bull” Parsons. “What the Jesus do you want?”

  “Some information.” I held the twenty up in front of him. “There somewhere we can talk?”

  He jerked his head toward the back of the room. “Come on, then.”

  We walked past shadowy men sitting in the dark, and half-drunk locals; Patsy Mullins, the prostitute, sat crouched against a wall, slurping up whiskey and whispering to herself. I knew enough to keep well out of her reach. I’d heard stories of her temper and how she’d once clobbered a big, strong cop in the foyer of the General Hospital—hit him so hard he went down like a torpedoed battleship and didn’t wake up for a week.

  “What’s on your mind?” Parsons levered his bulk into a chair and peered at me out of hooded eyes. I decided to get straight to the point.

  “Did you kill a Greek merchant seaman named Yorgus Panodopolous? He’s the one who knifed your friend Johnny Mahoney, isn’t he?”

  “Did I kill him?” He laughed, but it wasn’t a nice sound. “Why would I tell you?”

  “No reason, but I’m figuring you didn’t. Or if you did, you’d have to be the dumbest palooka this side of the dirt to stick around here after bumping some guy off. So—did you kill him? Maybe to get him back for knifing Johnny Mahoney?”

  “I don’t know nothing about it.” He sucked back some beer and made a face. “Me and Johnny were down on the waterfront one night, following some fellows what came off a boat. They always got money. Johnny said we should stick ’em up and take their money, and we did. Three or four of ’em came after us, but we got away. Then Johnny got killed that day. I don’t know who did it.”

  “Was it you?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Do you have any idea? About anything?”

  Either he was too drunk to understand the implied slight, or too stupid. “No.”

  He made a grab for the twenty, but I held it out of his reach. “One more question. Who let you out of the lockup the night Phonse Picco went missing?”

  “Nobody let me out. I let meself out. The key was right there, in the door.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “In the door.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you remember who put the key in the door?”

  “Some cop—big fellow with a red face. Ricketts, his name is.”

  “Ricketts.”

  It was conceivable that Ricketts had, in an extraordinarily busy moment or a lapse of memory, left the key in the cell door—conceivable, but not very likely.

  I suddenly wished Sam Halim were here.

  I GUESS I was still feeling the effects of the quinine, because by the time I got back to the Heartache Cafe, I was weak and sweaty. I barely made it in the door before I collapsed into a chair, my heart going like a trip hammer. Luckily the place was nearly empty, except for a dock worker sitting by the wall, reading the newspaper, and a slick corner boy with oiled hair, sipping a Coke and chewing on a toothpick.

  Chris saw me and came hurrying over. “Jack! What the hell are you doing? I called the hospital and they said you took off.” He crouched down and mopped my face with the towel he habitually carried over his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be out of bed.”

  “I’ll be okay.” I smiled to reassure him I wasn’t going to drop dead on the spot. “How about a cold glass of water?”

  “Sure, Jack, anything.”

  I stood. “Bring it back to my office, huh?”

  “Aw, Jack, why don’t you go upstairs and lie down? You look like you were run down by a truck.” He suddenly couldn’t look at me. “Whatever you took, it’s probably… what I mean is—”

  I interrupted him. “Chris, I didn’t try to kill myself.”

  “What?” He blinked. “But Mr. Halim said—”

  “I think you maybe misunderstood.” Perhaps now wasn’t the time to tell him the whole truth, but it would have to be soon. Chris was in as much danger from Julie as I was. It wasn’t right to keep him in the dark. “Chris, I was poisoned.”

  “Poisoned.”

  “Come on back to my office.” I ushered him in ahead of me and closed the door. It felt good to sink into my own chair, behind my own desk, in my own place. “Chris, this is gonna be hard for you to hear, but I figure I gotta tell you sometime.” He was still standing by the door, so I told him to sit. He sank onto the couch and gazed at me expectantly. I struck a match and lit myself a cigarette. “Julie Fayre poisoned me with an overdose of quinine.”

  His face smoothed out, becoming strangely expressionless. “Julie did it.”

  “Yes. Chris, she’s not who you think she is. Julie Fayre is in it up to her pretty little neck with Jonah Octavian—they’re business partners and probably lovers—and that means you can’t trust her. She came after me, and you can be damn sure she’ll come after you.”

  His fists clenched. “Jack….”

  “Chris, listen to me! Julie’s tying up loose ends, and then she’s going to meet Octavian in Greece. He’s already gone. That’s why he sold his—”

  He was over the desk, fists clenched in the front of my shirt. I had never seen him so angry. His face was flushed and sweating, veins throbbing in his forehead. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! You hate Julie! You’ve always hated Julie—you’re jealous of her! You think I don’t know—”

  I slapped him just hard enough to make him fall back.

  He stared at me, then raised a hand to his mouth. “Okay.” His voice was shaky. “Okay, Jack, if that’s the way you want it.”

  “Chris, listen to me!”

  “Why should I listen to you, huh?” He tore off his apron and tossed it onto the couch. “I ain’t gonna listen to you anymore. Nothing you say makes sense to me, Jack.” He yanked the door open.

  “Where are you going?” I came out from behind the desk and grabbed his arm.

  “None of your business where I’m going.”

  “Chris, you can’t be out wandering around. Julie’s looking for you. If you get in her way, she’ll put a bullet in you!”

  He yanked his arm away. “I’m going! Don’t try to stop me, Jack. I’m going.”

  IT WAS harder to find Alphonsus Picco now that he had been promoted, but I managed to track him down, thanks to his sister, Norma, and a helpful dispatcher at Constabulary headquarters. Picco was in charge of the west end of Water Street, an area populated by large department stores—Ayres and Sons, the Bowring Brothers—and inhabited by a strange mix of shoppers, petty thieves, servicemen, and the ubiquitous “corner boys” in their shabby coats and flat tweed caps.

  Picco supervised a division of ten other policemen, and I found him on the corner of Water Street and Ayres Cove, looking westward and writing something in his notebook. His uniform was new, and his buttons had been polished to within an inch of their lives. His boots shone with an unnatural brightness, and the crease in his trousers could have sliced paper. He greeted me with his customary enmity. “Stoyles, what do you want?”

  “I need your help, Sergeant. Oh, by the way, congratulations on the promotion.”

  “Mm.” His gray eyes flickered over me, his gaze dismissive, but I wasn’t bothered. It’s hard to really hate a man when you’ve had his cock in your mouth. “Someone stole your spoons?” He jotted something in the notebook. “Let me guess. The printer misspelled your name on the menus.” />
  I yanked the notebook out of his hands. “My name isn’t on the menu, Sergeant, and if you don’t mind, I’d like you to pay attention.”

  He crossed his arms on his chest. “What?”

  “I need you to find somebody.” I explained, as quickly as I could, about Julie and her deal with Octavian. I told him what my suspicions were and why he needed to act quickly, before she skipped town.

  “Why didn’t you ask Ricketts?” There was suspicion in his eyes. “You and him are chums, aren’t you?”

  I grinned. “Not like you and me.” I couldn’t tell him that I no longer trusted Ricketts, or that I suspected Ricketts was on Octavian’s payroll. If Bull Parsons hadn’t walked out of the lockup that night, I would have never suspected Ricketts—the idea would have never entered my mind—but the evidence against him was mounting. Sure, Parsons could have lied to me, and maybe he would have, if he had any reason. But my gut insisted Parsons was telling the truth.

  “All right.” To his credit, Picco didn’t hesitate or even blink. I walked with him to a public phone and waited while he called up the dispatcher. “There you are, Mr. Stoyles.” He grabbed his notebook back and tucked it into the breast pocket of his tunic. “Is there anything else?”

  “I think that’s it.” I put out my hand, not quite touching him. “Thank you.”

  “Right.” He nodded curtly and turned to go.

  “Hey, Picco?”

  “Yes?”

  “You look damn sexy in that uniform.” It was a bit too flip, so I amended it. “What I mean is, the promotion looks good on you.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Good day, Mr. Stoyles.”

  When I got back to the Heartache, Chris was gone, but Dave Chan said there was a message for me from Dan O’Hagan at the Telegram. I called O’Hagan’s direct number and got him right away.

  “Jack, listen—you won’t believe this.” He cleared his throat. “That accident you asked about? Never happened. There was no accident anywhere near downtown—hasn’t been for a while now, which is pretty bloody surprising, considering the way they drive around here.”