Private Heat

by Robert E. Bailey

  “He said the lieutenant might want a written statement,” said Karen.

  “First of all,” I said, “you don’t make any more statements without an attorney present. Second, the lieutenant isn’t going to want a statement until he’s grilled Randy, and the more Randy tells him, the less he’s going to want to hear from us. That’s why Franklin was so adamant about you staying in my custody.”

  “Where’s Randy now?” asked Ron.

  “The sergeant said that he was going to take Randy to the YMCA—said Randy could walk over to the police department in the morning because the lieutenant would want to see him.”

  Ron made an ominous laugh.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I think he’s in for a rough ride. But if he starts talking, they’ll wish he’d shut up.”

  “Cops are natural-born confessors,” said Ron.

  “Not to worry,” I said. “I don’t think this little domestic tiff is a case that the police department will cry about to the prosecutor. They talked Karen out of pressing charges once already, and I’ll bet Randy isn’t the only worm in their domestic violence can. There’s a law against wife beaters carrying guns.”

  Ron nodded.

  “I told him we would talk in the morning,” said Karen. “Is he really in a lot of trouble?”

  “I think he was in a lot of trouble when he got out of bed this morning. Maybe they’ll just send him to the policeman’s dry-out farm.”

  “I’d like that,” said Karen. “I just want my husband back.”

  I fished out a stogie and started peeling off the cellophane. “They picked up Randy’s ski mask on the lawn of that house on Paris. I hope he’s not shedding.”

  “They pick up the drop gun?” said Ron.

  “Paulie picked it up and claimed that he’d dropped his backup,” I said.

  “Slick,” said Ron.

  Karen made a sly grin but asked, “Do you really have to light that thing?” She ran her window about halfway down.

  I put the cigar back in my pocket.

  In Michigan, every low spot is a lake. I live on one, just north and east of the city. We didn’t get there until two and some change in the morning. The gravel crunched on the circular drive, and the motion sensors activated the floodlights mounted on the corners of the house and the garage.

  Inside the house the lights were still on. Wendy stays up late to do her paperwork in solitude after the boys go to bed. She operates “Silk City Surveys” from the house. In the beginning she had fielded a few lady friends to conduct “shoppers” to test retail-store personnel and window times at fast-food restaurants. It allowed her the time that she wanted to have with the boys as they were growing up. Now that the boys were older, she had pressed into “internal surveys”—undercover industrial investigations of employee honesty and workplace substance abuse. Her operatives were now mostly law enforcement students and retired police officers.

  “Okay,” I said, “now it’s your turn to see that I don’t get roughed up. I got so involved that I didn’t call home.”

  “A likely story,” said Ron.

  “I’m going to hold Wendy’s coat while she works you over,” said Karen as she stepped out of the van.

  “Thanks,” I said. “You’ve been trying to get my ass kicked all night.”

  Karen turned back to the van. “I need my purse,” she said, “my pills are in it.”

  “What pills?”

  “The ones the doctor gave me so I could sleep,” she said.

  “I’ve already got it,” said Ron, as he rounded the front of the van. “Match my outfit?”

  “Very chic,” I said.

  Karen took her purse and we started for the door.

  The house is a bi-level with six steps up from the door to what they called a “great room” when they sold me the house. My front room, kitchen, living room, and dining room occupy one large open space. The kitchen and dining area are divided by a large island counter, attended by bar stools.

  Rusty, my big chocolate Labrador retriever, greeted us from the top of the stairs. His bright eyes glowed as he pranced his seventy pounds from left to right with a Frisbee in his mouth.

  Karen stopped dead. “Jesus, it’s a bear,” she said.

  “He’s a big lollipop,” I said. “Loves everybody. Only barks at critters.”

  Rusty put his head down and released his Frisbee so that it tumbled down the stairs to Karen’s feet. I bent over and picked it up. “It’s after two in the morning, dog. Go lie down.”

  Rusty’s face accused me of being a party pooper. He turned and slunk over to his chair, an old recliner that Wendy kept covered with a blanket.

  “It’s not like you were here to entertain him at a reasonable hour,” said Wendy as we started up the stairs. She was wearing shorts and a tank top. She had her light brown hair tied up in a knot on the top of her head and sat at the kitchen table on a wooden chair with her legs curled under her. The slider was open and an amiable breeze blew in off the lake. She was typing “dailies”—handwritten reports from her undercover operatives—on a battered portable typewriter she’d bought at an estate sale for a dollar.

  She stared down at the reports on the left side of the typewriter and swiftly fingered the keys. On the windward side of the machine she stacked finished reports, weighted down with my .45 cal Colt Gold Cup. The weapon was cocked and locked.

  Karen stalled in her steps and stared from the gun to Wendy and then back to the gun.

  “I didn’t expect you,” Wendy said. “I talked to Jennie, and she said you and Ron had an all-nighter.” She didn’t look up or pause from her work.

  “You give up on that .380?” I said.

  “Too windy,” she said, “besides, I had the .380 out to the range today and it’s still in the trunk of the car.”

  “We have a guest for the evening,” I said.

  Wendy turned her face to us.

  “Karen, this is my wife, Wendy,” I said.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Wendy. She put a little curl on the upper lip of her otherwise deadpan face.

  “Hi,” said Karen, with an urgent face. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “Down the hall, first door on the left,” Wendy answered and began to clatter the keys again.

  Ron bared his gritted teeth.

  I nodded. “Hungry?” I asked. “Steak and eggs?”

  “Just right,” said Ron.

  I fired up the restaurant-style grill in the island counter.

  “If you mess that up,” said Wendy, “you can clean it up.”

  “I was pretty sure about that,” I said.

  I pulled off my sport jacket and hung it in the hall closet. The bathroom door closed and Wendy looked up again.

  “What is that girl wearing?” she asked.

  “Shorts,” I said.

  Wendy made a disdainful face.

  I raised both my empty palms to shoulder height. “I just signed on to protect her life,” I said quietly, “not critique her attire.” The toilet flushed.

  “Yeah,” Wendy mouthed, barely audible, “you like it.”

  I smiled and shrugged. The bathroom door opened. Wendy shot me her “you-ain’t-getting-any” scowl and snapped her head back to study her work.

  I pulled off my shirt—still damp—and dropped it into a clothes basket that was mostly full and poised near the top of the stairs for a trip to the laundry room. Karen walked up the hall. I salted the grill, then pulled the tabs loose at the sides of my vest and deposited it on the top of the refrigerator. My T-shirt was mostly dry. I opened the refrigerator and extracted a package of steaks wrapped in brown paper.

  Karen watched as Ron shrugged out of the top of his coveralls and exposed his blue steel K-frame in its leather shoulder rig. He tied the sleeves around his waist and loosened his collar and tie. I flopped a couple of twelve-ounce T-bones on the heat. Karen parked herself on a stool next to Ron and eyed the meat. “Hungry?” I asked.

  “Starving,” she said.
r />   I made it a trio. “Fix you something, Hon?” I called over to Wendy.

  “No!” she said without looking up.

  Ron reached under his V-neck sweater and pulled the tabs loose on his vest. “Oh, yes,” he said, “that—is—better.”

  “You guys are just like Randy and his pals,” said Karen, “except they’d be cracking a twelve-pack instead of fixing breakfast.”

  “At my age, it takes too long to heal,” I said.

  Wendy ripped the paper out of the typewriter. “Art has cracked his last twelve-pack,” she said.

  Karen reached up under her sweatshirt and exposed her shorts. Wendy’s face did a silent “Oh my god, her cheeks are hanging out of her shorts” and then blamed me for it with a laser-hot stare. Karen pulled the tabs loose on her vest. Wendy shook her head. “If you’re going to stink the house up, I’m going to bed,” she said, and snapped the lid onto the portable. She stood up, stacked her papers, and set the typewriter on top of them.

  “I was hoping you’d help us keep an eye out.”

  “I’ll watch the corner of the house that you can see from the bedroom window,” she said and walked down the hall with the Colt dangling casually in her right hand.

  Whatever my face did caused Ron to close his eyes and shake his head.

  “You guys really haven’t got a clue, do you?” said Karen as she pulled her sweatshirt back down.

  Ron and I looked at each other and said, “No,” simultaneously. I took the telephone off the back counter and set it in front of Karen. “Call your insurance company and have them board up your place.” I plopped the yellow pages next to the phone. “They usually have an emergency number.”

  I turned the steaks and poured some oil, which I smoothed around the grill with my spatula.

  Karen pushed the book away. “I don’t have insurance. They canceled the policy because we missed the payments.”

  I retrieved a large package of frozen hash browns and dumped them onto the grill, then turned back to the refrigerator for a carton of eggs. “In the morning you can call your mortgage company and clue them in. They’ll have some kind of insurance to cover their interest. They can tell you who to call.”

  Karen closed her eyes and nodded.

  I broke the eggs onto the grill and wondered how it was that someone caught with most of half a million dollars managed to miss her insurance payments. “Call your bond agent and tell them what happened,” I said. “They’re not going to be happy, but if they know where you are, they aren’t going to panic.”

  “Uncle Martin posted my bond,” she said.

  “I suppose you can call your uncle in the morning. How do you want your eggs?” I asked and flipped the hash browns.

  She took them over hard and had her steak well done, with milk to wash it down. Ron and I ate our steaks on the pink side with the eggs over easy and coffee. Karen wanted A-1 sauce. I told her that if she didn’t eat the steak ruined, she wouldn’t need sauce. She lectured me about microbes while she finished her meal.

  “The guest room is at the bottom of the stairs,” I said. “The terry-cloth robe hanging on the back of the door is clean; yell up if you need towels.”

  She wandered down the stairs. I picked up the dishes, rinsed them, and put them in the dishwasher.

  “I had a morning surveillance planned for tomorrow out in Allegan,” said Ron.

  I looked up at the clock and said, “It’s a quarter to four. If you leave now, you might make it.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Ron. “It’s been pretty quiet.”

  I sprinkled some cleanser on the grill and took the cleaning stone to it. “My telephone is unlisted and in Wendy’s name. There are three other Art Hardins listed in the telephone book, and my plates and driver’s license are listed to a post office box. Anybody our pals could call to get my address won’t be available until tomorrow. Why don’t you give me a shout on the radio around four in the afternoon.”

  “That’ll work,” he said.

  “How are you going to stay awake?”

  “Service industry,” said Ron. “I’ll sleep on one of those days when I’m waiting for the telephone to ring.”

  “Pull over for a snooze if you start winking out.”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  I persuaded him to take the rest of the coffee in a thermos. “Nobody parks on the street out here. On your way out, cast an eye. And Ron …” I waited until we made eye contact. “Thanks.”

  Ron shrugged back into the top of his coveralls and left.

  I locked up and stood in the shower. My eyes stung as I washed the last of the pepper gas out of my hair. When I finally hit the sack, my whole body seemed to throb, and I wondered if I was getting too old for this crap. “Not yet,” I said aloud.

  “What’s that?” asked Wendy.

  “Nothing,” I said. Wendy rolled over and put her head on my shoulder— the last thing I knew until I heard the telephone ringing in the kitchen and my youngest son came slogging down the hall.

  “Hey, Pop, it’s for you,” Ben called out. “It’s Marg Ladin from your office. She says it’s important.”

  “I’m coming,” I said and groaned. I was alone in the bed and it was light out. I sat up and looked out the window. The lake was like glass. A heron strutted his morning patrol along the beach. I pulled on my jeans and barefooted it out to the telephone. Wendy and Karen were doing tea and toast at the picnic table on the deck overlooking the lake. The swans, Lester and Lucy, had just made a grand appearance around the point, spreading wakes to mark their progress.

  I looked up at the clock—a quarter to ten. “What’s up, Marg?” I asked.

  “Your scalp,” said Marg, “if you don’t know the whereabouts of Karen Smith.”

  “She’s right here. The cops came and shot up her house last night. She spent the night with us.”

  “Van Pelham just called, and he told me the U.S. Attorney’s Office says that she is in violation of her bail agreement. He says that if you know where his niece is, to call Neil Carter. He’s an assistant U.S. attorney.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I was going to call them anyway.”

  “You just had a couple of brown shoes here looking for you,” she said. “One left a card. ‘James Watson Cox.’”

  “His partner a rail-thin bald guy?” I asked.

  “That’s the one.”

  “Bart Shephart,” I said. “Major Case crew—couldn’t detect their ass with both hands. What did they want?”

  “They weren’t looking for their backsides,” said Marg. “They were looking for you and seemed pretty happy about it. They mentioned something about Randy Talon.”

  “Randy Talon is a penny-ante pain in the ass,” I said. “Look on the card and see if it says Internal Affairs.”

  “This card says Homicide,” said Marg. “Maybe you’d better turn on your radio. Randy Talon was found dead this morning.”

  “At the YMCA?”

  “No, I think they said Union Street S.E.”

  “Incredible! That’s his house. He was supposed to spend the night at the YMCA. What happened?”

  “There weren’t any details.”

  “Thanks for the call,” I said. “After I get done with Neil Carter, I’ll call Cox and Shephart.” I hung up the telephone. Wendy and Karen had found something to laugh about. I decided to let the bad news wait until I squared things with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

  I found the number in the front of the white pages. Carter was in a lather.

  “Look,” I said, “there was an intruder who came to kill somebody, maybe everybody. We escaped from the house and called the police. The police came and smashed in the doors, broke the windows, and set the house on fire with tear gas grenades. She couldn’t stay there. She’s right here. You can talk to her. I’ll bring her in this morning and we can work something out. Maybe her uncle’s house.”

  “I’m in charge of this, not you,” he said. After some silence he went on. “I’m well aware of
who you are, and that Martin Van Pelham hired you for security. In light of your previous federal service I won’t have you arrested for harboring a fugitive. That is if—and only if—Karen Smith is at your home when the marshals arrive, then we’ll overlook this matter. You’d do well to remember there’s been a change of administrations.”

  “Neil,” I said. “May I call you Neil?”

  “Certainly,” he said.

  “Neil, I have the greatest respect for the office you hold.”

  “And?”

  “And, I can hardly wait for you to have me arrested. Neil, why not come out with the marshals? Then you can arrest me the same way I’ll sue you—jointly, severally, and personally. Get out U.S. forty-two and read sub-section ‘C’ about malicious prosecution, false arrest, and terms like ‘under color of authority.’”

  “I’m an attorney,” said Carter, “a prosecuting attorney, and I think you’ll find that you are on thin ice, my friend.”

  “You can’t be my friend,” I said.

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because, as you say, there’s been a change and none of my friends are gradeless and godless political hacks from Yale.”

  He hung up. I looked at the handset and muttered, “Maybe I better pack a toothbrush.” I put the coffee on and went back to the bedroom for a shirt.

  By the time I had brushed my teeth and shaved, the coffee was done. I took a cup out onto the deck and sat with Wendy and Karen. Wendy sat barefoot in red shorts and a matching tank top under an unbuttoned pink dress shirt my mother had given me as a Christmas present. She’d rolled the sleeves up to three-quarter length. Karen had wrapped the white terry-cloth guest robe up to her neck and tied it at the waist—God knows what if anything she wore beneath.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you this,” I said.

  Karen gave me a basset hound face.

  “Randy was found dead at your house this morning.”

  Her mouth fell open and her eyes reddened. “Oh my God!” she said. “What happened?”

  “I don’t have any details. A couple of city detectives were at my office this morning. I’ll call them. I’m sure they’ll tell us what they can. They have to hold back certain things.”