Hire a Hangman

by Collin Wilcox

  “It was my mother. Wasn’t it? She told you.”

  “No,” he answered, “it wasn’t your mother. That much I’ll tell you. That much, but no more.”

  “Fiona?” It was a hard, bitter demand. “That drunk?”

  Watching her, he made no response. The long, hostile moment held.

  “Shit.” She shook her tawny mane sharply, then strode to the chair. This time the flash of her legs revealed more. He recognized the display for its true meaning: a statement of contempt, not enticement. Bred-in-the-bone contempt. Paula’s way.

  If she was on drugs, then she’d come back from the downer. Paula’s high.

  “You know John Hanchett?” Hastings asked. “Right?”

  “Is he the one?”

  “Listen, Paula—forget it. I’m not going to tell you who told me. Period. Have you got that?”

  No reply. No quarter. Just the eyes, boring in.

  “Do you know John Hanchett?”

  As if she were making an effort to control herself, she drew a long, harsh breath. Then: “Everyone’s entitled to a mistake. John was a mistake, put it that way.”

  “Are you lovers, you and John?”

  “We’re back to my sex life, are we?”

  “We’re back to murder.” He decided to gamble, therefore to lie: “We’ve got information that John Hanchett might’ve brought the two guns that killed both Brice Hanchett and Teresa Bell. So if I were you, Paula, I’d stop and think. I’d think very carefully. Because if we connect John to the murder weapons, and if you’re connected to John, then that connects both of you to murder.” He watched her for a moment before he said, “Have you got that?”

  She made no reply. But her eyes were losing focus. His words were sinking in. Slowly sinking in. Signifying a shift of emphasis that would allow the question of her connection with John to simmer.

  Signifying that he should soften his manner as he said, “Last night”—he took out his notebook—“you say you were on the town. Which means that—”

  “I was on the town. And I wasn’t keeping track of—”

  “Which means,” he continued, “that you were with people. So if you’ll just give me a few names, so I can—”

  “So you can what?” She demanded.

  “So I can verify that—”

  “Forget it.”

  He looked up from the notebook. “I’m investigating a homicide, Paula. A capital crime. And you’re giving me a hard time. That’s called obstruction of justice. And that’s a felony. Now—” He let a beat pass. “Now I’m going to ask the question again. And if you duck it again, then I’m going to haul your beautifully shaped ass downtown. I’ll book you. Then I’ll turn you over to a matron. She’ll take you to a holding cell, where you’ll spend the night. Maybe you can find a lawyer who’ll get you released tomorrow morning, when a judge is available. I expect you probably can. But I can guarantee, Paula—I can absolutely guarantee you—that your ass is never going to feel quite the same to you again, after a night in a holding cell with maybe a dozen hookers and druggies.” He let her think about it. Then: “A lot of those hookers, you know, swing either way. They swing with men for the money—and women for the kicks.”

  “You’re bluffing.”

  “Try me.”

  For a long, decisive moment their eyes locked. She muttered a single heartfelt obscenity, then capitulated. The four names she gave him were all men.

  After verifying the spellings, Hastings thanked her, returned his notebook to his pocket, and rose.

  “I don’t want you to leave town, Paula. Not unless you check with me.” He stepped close, dropped his card in her lap, then walked to the door and let himself out. As he walked the half-block to his car, he committed firmly to memory the single essential question the interrogation had developed: Why hadn’t Paula Gregg asked about the connection between Teresa Bell and Brice Hanchett?

  Was the obvious answer the right one? Had she already known the connection?

  11:30 PM

  Carefully closing the bedroom door, Hastings put his holstered revolver and shield case and handcuffs in the top dresser drawer, put his billfold, keys, paper, and small change on “his” end of the big double dresser. He draped his robe over “his” chair, verified that the window was open about six inches at the top, the way Ann liked it, and closed the lower sash—the way he liked it. Then, noiselessly, he moved to his side of the bed, drew back the covers, and slipped into bed. Careful not to wake her, he settled himself, sighed, pushed at his pillow, sighed again. Now he turned on his left side, to face her. She was turned toward him. Her dark blond hair, shoulder-length, fell softly on the pillow, a halo of gold. Some of the hair fell across her face. Delicately he lifted the fine-spun strand, moved it away from her face.

  Should he awaken her?

  Would she like to talk?

  When he’d left, she and Billy had still been at the dinner table, still arguing about the running shoes that “all the guys, every single one,” were wearing. When Hastings had clipped on his gun and pocketed his shield case and checked his pager and announced that he had to go out for an hour or two, and kissed Ann on top of the head as she sat at the table, her look had been skeptical. Did he really have to leave? Couldn’t he stay, and lend her moral support?

  Last night it had been the ex-husband, Victor Haywood, and his constant threats of harassment. Compounded, last night, by Victor Haywood’s beloved Porsche, with its broken door.

  Last night, Ann’s ex-husband.

  Tonight it had been Billy, twelve years old, feeling his way. Tomorrow it could be Dan, sixteen. Billy was the extrovert, the activist, the squeaky wheel that got the grease. Dan was the quiet one. Billy inflicted pain on others; Dan, brooding, punished himself.

  Yet they were good, sound, generous kids who loved their mother. Neither of them lied, neither of them cheated. And neither played Hastings off against Ann. Billy and Dan fought fair. In appreciation, he’d done what surrogate fathers were supposed to do: He’d taken them to ball games and put up a basketball hoop in the driveway. He’d also taken them to the police range and, despite Ann’s misgivings, taught them to shoot.

  Yawning, Hastings turned, lay on his back, let his eyes close.

  Fighting fair …

  Was that the essence of family life? If you fought fair, you might survive. Was that what marriage meant?

  Had they ever fought, he and Carolyn? Screamed at each other? Laid hands on each other? No. In more than five years of marriage, they’d almost never shouted. They’d once cared enough to produce two children. But they’d never cared enough to fight. Carolyn was too cool to fight, too calculating, too busy playing the socialite about to have her picture taken. And he’d been too—too—

  Was there a word for it?

  What was the word for him?

  He was in his forties, and he still hadn’t discovered the word. There were images—snapshots in the album of his memories—but no single, definitive word. There was an image of his boyhood home: a cookie-cutter stucco row house, like the Bells’ house. There was his father, the small-time real-estate broker, a big, talkative, vain man who always wore ties and drove big cars he couldn’t afford. There was his mother, a thin, discouraged woman with wounded eyes who’d had to go to work at Sears, selling better dresses, after his father had left.

  There were other images: The first day of tryouts for freshman football in high school. Later, there were the newspaper clippings when he’d made all-city, then all-state, in his senior year. But by that time his father was dead. So, with only his mother to read them, the clippings had lost much of their meaning.

  Then there was the letter from Stanford, his scholarship acceptance: four full years, as long as he remained eligible for football.

  It had all started, really, with the letter from Stanford. That night, lying in bed, the fantasies had begun. Most of the fantasies began with football—and ended with football. The Stanford frosh team, a first-stringer from the start. Se
cond-string varsity in his sophomore year, first-string in his junior year. As college graduation came close, the scouts from the pros would begin to call. Finally the deal: a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus, a fortune, he’d thought, in his twenties. Of course, his mother would witness the contract. It would be signed in her living room, her proudest hour.

  There’d been other fantasies: the girls in their tight jeans and twitching skirts, hair bobbing as they walked across the sunny Stanford campus, books cradled beneath their swelling breasts. Girls from places far from the Sunset District of San Francisco, girls whose fathers were wealthy enough to send them to Stanford. Girls who were meant to ride in convertibles and swim in private pools, girls who kissed in the shadows of fraternity-house parties, girls whose bodies promised ecstasy.

  But there were two classes of students at Stanford: the rich students and the scholarship students.

  So he’d watched them pair off, the girls and the boys who dressed with the same particular casual flair, who spent their vacations in the same large, comfortable homes, and who talked about the same movies and books and plays. While he played football on Saturday afternoons and practiced football every day during the week and memorized plays and collected his clippings and tried desperately to stay eligible for football, the girls with their golden smiles and the boys with their gift of privileged nonchalance had driven away in their convertibles, trailing laughter.

  When the scouts had finally called, the offer had been twelve thousand, not a hundred thousand. Included in the same envelope with the contract had been a one-way ticket to Detroit and a form letter from the Lions’ chief trainer. One paragraph contained two blanks, each with handwritten numbers. The first number had been his authorized weight when he reported to training camp. The second number had been the fine for arriving overweight.

  Once a year, at the start of the season, Carolyn’s father gave a party for the Lions. Charles Ralston manufactured automobile radiators. Many times a millionaire, Ralston’s passion was the Lions. Ralston acquired players new to the Lions like some men collected stamps, or coins. The rookies were Ralston’s only hobby.

  At the first party of the season, it had been Ralston who introduced them:

  “Frank, this is my daughter Carolyn. She likes tennis more than football. Maybe you can help me change her mind.”

  From the first, that very first moment, that very first hour—from their very first night together—Carolyn had set the pace. Blond, beautiful, willful, supremely self-confident, she’d acquired him as effortlessly as she’d acquired her first car, or her first lover.

  At the wedding, Carolyn had hardly spoken to his mother. When Claudia was born, and his mother had offered to come to Detroit, Carolyn had laughed. When his mother had died, Carolyn had been three months pregnant with Darrell, and had decided not to attend the funeral.

  At the start of his third season with the Lions, still a second-string back, he’d been clipped on a draw play. The Rams had received a fifteen-yard penalty; he’d been carried off the field on a stretcher. When he’d seen his leg, bent the wrong way at the knee, he’d known his playing days were over.

  His father-in-law had given him a corner office and a secretary. The title was Public Relations V. P.; the job was entertaining important visitors. Which translated into drinking and partying and talking football and women and golf. Endlessly drinking. Endlessly partying.

  Two years later, one cold, bleak afternoon in February, he’d gone to his office window and looked out over the Detroit River, frozen solid. His customary early-morning hangover had lingered, souring his stomach. As he stood in front of the window, his hands braced wide apart on the windowsill, he’d felt some essential essence began to drain away, leaving an emptiness at his center. In that moment he’d known that, somehow, he’d lost his way. It was a moment he knew he’d never forget—and he never had. Time had sharpened that moment, not softened it.

  And so he’d finally faced it: yes, he had a drinking problem. And, yes, in the depths of Carolyn’s cool gray eyes, he could see a change beginning.

  A few months later, on a sunny Sunday morning while he was nursing a hangover and Carolyn was off playing country-club tennis in a foursome with the man she would later marry, her lawyer had served the divorce papers.

  The next morning he’d found the lock changed on his office door.

  The next week, on another sunny day, he’d left Detroit. There were four large suitcases and a large box: the sum total of a lifetime. As he helped his father-in-law’s driver stow the box that contained his football trophies, he’d felt a lump rise in his throat. When he’d looked up and seen Claudia, so tiny, looking down at him from her bedroom window, her expression grave, he’d choked back a sob. When he’d waved to her, she’d turned away.

  It was another moment that time had seared into his memory: the little girl in a fluffy white sweater, turning away from the window.

  11:40 PM

  How long had he been lying here, staring up at the ceiling? How long had he been listening to the sounds of the night, an airplane rumbling across the sky, traffic muttering on the street beneath his window?

  Somewhere a siren was wailing.

  Had Teresa Bell heard the sound of sirens as she’d walked down Hyde Street?

  Over the banshee wail of her own demons, could she have heard the siren sounds?

  Had he heard sirens when he’d driven down Judah Street away from Moraga, following the plan he’d so carefully prepared? Had his own banshees been wailing, blocking out the sound?

  Judah … Judas …

  No, there was no connection; the doggerel lines didn’t scan. There was no treachery, no betrayal. There was only expediency, only necessity. Kill or be killed.

  No fault, therefore no guilt.

  But when would the images begin to fade? Teresa Bell, her eyes so wide and querulous, her mouth pursed so primly as she saw the gun—how soon would that picture fade? And the blossom of blood on the breast of the dowdy housedress she wore, itself printed with blossoms of flowers—when would that image fade?

  The answer, he knew, was never.

  The images, he knew, would surely sharpen as the minutes and the hours and the days and the years passed.

  When had it started?

  Suddenly it was important that he remember. As scientists searched for the Big Bang, the beginning of everything, he must fix in his mind the time and the place. He must isolate the first sentence, then the first word.

  Or had it been only a look?

  If love affairs could begin with only a look, then so could murder.

  But they hadn’t been looking at each other, when it had happened. They’d been in a North Beach coffee house, both of them drinking espresso. She’d been sugaring her espresso, staring down into her cup as she stirred the coffee. She’d spoken very softly, with great precision:

  “There’s the money. Without him, there’d be the money.”

  Then, very deliberately, she’d placed the small espresso spoon in her saucer. She’d raised her eyes to meet his.

  Just as deliberately, he’d met her gaze. In that moment of silence—and the moment that followed—they’d made the pact, taken the final step.

  Then, as if the decision had left them drained, they hadn’t spoken, had hardly looked at each other as they gravely finished their espresso and collected their things and left the coffee house. In silence, they’d walked to his car, which he’d parked illegally.

  When he’d seen the ticket tucked under the windshield wiper, he’d experienced the first small stab of fear. The ticket placed him in this particular place, at this particular time—the time and the place where they’d agreed that, yes, they wanted Brice Hanchett dead.

  Friday, September 14

  9:15 AM

  “IT’S OCCURRING TO ME that maybe we’re letting our imaginations run away with us in this Hanchett thing.” As Friedman spoke, he began unwrapping a cigar, his first of the day.

  Riffling through the pa
per in his In basket, the stack that never quite disappeared, Hastings decided not to comment. When Friedman had gotten the cigar lit to his satisfaction, and sailed the smoking match into Hastings’s wastebasket, and blown a series of smoke rings on a quartering angle across Hastings’s desk, he would elaborate.

  “We talk about revenge and insanity,” Friedman intoned, “and jealousy in high places, all that fancy stuff. But we haven’t paid much attention to greed. And greed, after all, is behind most murders. Or, at least, most premeditated murders.”

  “Has the DA requested the probate court to supply a digest of the will?”

  Friedman nodded, blew another series of smoke rings. “But, as of yesterday, the will hadn’t been submitted for probate.”

  “Can’t you get the name of his lawyer?”

  “I’ve got it, and I called him. But he hasn’t called back.”

  “When’d you call him?”

  “The day after the murder. Tuesday.”

  “Well, this is only Friday.”

  “True. I’ll call him later today.” Friedman sighed, yawned, flicked his cigar ash into Hastings’s wastebasket. Then: “What about you?”

  “I’m going to see a man about his beard.”

  “Jason Pfiefer.”

  “Right. Jason Pfiefer.”

  10:40 AM

  Hastings shifted in the chair, glanced at his watch, tried unsuccessfully to catch the nurse’s eye as she stood at the reception desk studying a computer monitor. In the past fifteen minutes she’d seemed to tantalize him, sending her cool, practiced glance within inches of his own. It was, Hastings realized, an expertise that receptionists and maître d’s and department-store clerks must either cultivate or else change jobs. But the realization did nothing to ease his impatience.

  “Dr. Pfiefer says to tell you he’s got five minutes at about ten-thirty,” the nurse had said, elaborately loading the statement with weary condescension. Clearly, to her, Hastings was nothing more than a common nuisance. Only the gold badge had saved him from an instant brush-off.

  Across the vast lobby of the Barrington Medical Center, a marvel of modern architecture, Canelli and Dolores Chavez sat in adjoining chairs. Plainly irritated, Dolores was flipping through the pages of a woman’s magazine. From a distance of thirty-five feet, Hastings could hear the magazine pages crack as Dolores’s quick-moving fingers snapped them open. Beside her, Canelli shrugged sheepishly as he met Hastings’s gaze. Did Canelli realize that the bold, sexy, willful Chicano with the close-cut back hair and the flashing black eyes and the small, exciting body was systematically pussy-whipping him? To what purpose? Would she use her body to make a fool of a cop—any cop? Or was she drawn to Canelli? Did the big, amiable, cheerfully innocent detective have something she needed—or wanted—or thought she could use? For as long as squad-room memory went back, Canelli had been engaged to Gracie, the X-ray technician who was Canelli’s mirror image. Gracie, too, was overweight and amiable and anxious to please. Both Canelli and Gracie, in their late twenties or early thirties, still lived at home. They—