Nice Girl Does Noir -- Vol. 2 (Intro by J.A.Konrath)

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  It was after midnight when I got back to my room. I lay down on the bed, and the next thing I knew some bird was chirping outside the window, and it was four in the frigging morning. I took a quick shower and left. I wasn’t looking forward to the drive home.

  Once I was on Ninety-four, I pulled into a truck stop for breakfast. Not only was I wiped, but I was starving. That’s probably where he picked me up. I was wolfing down three eggs over easy with toast and bacon. A bunch of farmers in plaid shirts, jeans, scuffed boots were there. Plus one creep in a yellow slicker, even though the sun was blistering hot. There was a map of the state on the wall with one of those “you are here” pins stuck to it. Christ. I knew where I was. And where I was going. But I didn’t think it meant trouble.

  Thirty minutes later I was back on I-94, the oldies station blasting. My head was bobbing to Del Shannon’s “Runaway” like one of those sappy little dogs you see in the back of cars when I caught him. At first I thought it was just some jerk riding my tail. A kid coming down from a wild night. Or a trucker in a car instead of eighteen-wheeler. I switched lanes and slowed down, thinking the asshole would blow by me. But he didn’t. He switched lanes, too, and slowed down.

  He was in a blue Buick. Who drives a Buick any more? I was in a gray Camry I’d ripped off last week. Had to be nearly six years old, but it still drove like a champ. I checked the rear view mirror. A man. Older, from what I could tell. Maybe fifty. Shades covering his eyes. Looked like he was wearing a sports coat. I frowned. It was close to ninety degrees already.

  I floored it. The Camry hesitated for a second, like the transmission was about to go AWOL. But then it gathered itself together and surged ahead. The lane dividers flashed past so fast the stripes ran together into one straight line. Kind of like the blades on a prop plane. Speaking of flying, I realized I was clocking almost a hundred. I checked the rear view. The creep was still on my ass.

  I gripped the wheel. Who knew I was here? I thought about the last job I’d pulled. It’d been riskier than usual. I’d taken all the normal precautions. Stole some plates. Wore a disguise. Made sure to use a throw down. But I didn’t figure the mark would have his kid with him. I don’t do kids. I had to wait until he dropped the kid off. Which meant tailing him all afternoon. First to some fancy toy store in the mall whose name I couldn’t even pronounce. Then to a bookstore. And then the Dairy Queen.

  Too much time is a danger in my line of work. Things change. People take notice. Someone could have picked me up. He did have two bodyguards, but for all I knew, there could have been another—a guy who was supposed to watch the watchers.

  I slowed and checked the rear view again. Still there. I fished out my cell phone and punched in a number. “Hey.”

  “Hey, babe. What’s happening?” His voice was as smooth and mellow as always.

  “You get the package for the last job?”

  “Just came today. And very sweet it is. You do fine work.”

  “Yeah, well, you hear about anything strange going down?”

  “What do you mean?” A trace of caution crept into his voice.

  “Some guy’s riding my ass.” I explained what was going on.

  “There’s nothing on the street. In fact, I got another job for you. It’s all lined up. You know, the jerk’s probably just a redneck having some grins. You see that a lot in the country.”

  “I don’t think so, Johnny.”

  There was a beat of silence. “Well, if makes you feel better, why don’t you take the long way home?” That was code to hole up for a few days. “I’ll be waiting for you whenever you show up. We need to spend time together.”

  I smiled as I disconnected. Johnny D was my boss. And my man. It didn’t matter he was twenty years older than me. Or that he’d been one of Pop’s buddies. His partner, as a matter of fact. Johnny D taught me a lot about my job. And after Pop died, he taught me other things. A shiver of pleasure ran up my spine.

  I took another look in the rear view. The Buick was still there, but it was holding steady fifty yards back. Maybe Johnny D was right. Maybe this was just some joker getting his rocks off by scaring me. Like I said, I didn’t get much sleep last night. I could be a little paranoid. I decided to hang tight for a few more minutes.

  I thought back to my visit with the old lady. There was a lot of history between us. Pop used to do jobs for her. When he wasn’t using a gun he was using a hammer, and for a long time he was the caretaker at her place. A huge estate overlooking Lake Michigan, it was in the kind of neighborhood no one pays much attention to. Mostly because the rich families who live there make sure of it. Private roads. Private beaches. Private clubs. There’s a shitload of Detroit money up there, Pop used to say. And the old lady’s place is sitting pretty, right in the middle of it.

  Once I asked my father how he met her. He said he knew her husband first, and had promised Grayson—what kind of a name is Grayson?—that he’d look after the old lady if anything happened. And, wouldn’t you know it, Grayson up and died one night. Helped along by the 38 slug that blew his brains over the desk and against the wall. But that was a long time ago, when I was still a little girl. After that we started to visit the old lady a couple of weeks in the summer. To make sure she was okay, Pop said.

  At first my mother came too, and we stayed in the guest cottage. My mom, my dad, and me. Mom tried to pretend I was one of those girls. She even bought me this fancy white dress with lace all over it. Except I got a big fat blueberry stain on the front the first time I wore it. I never put it on again.

  I always wondered if that’s why she took off. It was only a few days later. Pop and I had been fixing a pipe in the old lady’s kitchen, and we went back to clean up for supper. Mom wasn’t there, but there was a note on the table. Pop read the note, then crumpled up the paper and pitched it into the trash. He didn’t read it to me, and I was too scared to ask. I thought she left because the stain wouldn’t come out of the dress. When I was older, though, I figured she just couldn’t hack it. Pop once told me she liked living on the old lady’s estate. Said it made her feel respectable. But I guess when you can’t have what you want all the time, you want it even more. And when there’s no chance in hell of getting it, you just give up.

  Which is why I try not to want anything.

  I checked the rear view again. The asshole was still there, but now he was closing. Christ. I didn’t think a Buick had that much in it. Who was this creep? Who sent him? Johnny D said everything was quiet back in Detroit. Unless one of the mark’s bodyguards had one of those bugs you stick to a car to track someone. I’d been thinking of getting something like that myself. Make my job a whole lot easier. Damn. I should have looked under the Camry at the truck stop.

  But what if it wasn’t the guy or his men? The only other person besides Johnny D who knew where I’d been was the old lady.

  Think, Tare. What happened yesterday?

  After the preliminaries, she started to talk about my father. She had this strange way of describing his work, using plain words but weird inflections, kind of like a drama queen, to get her point across. Either she didn’t want to admit what he did, or she wasn’t sure if I knew. Which made me realize she didn’t know what I did, either. Then again, how could she? I hadn’t seen her since I was fifteen, well before I started following in Pop’s footsteps.

  I decided two could play her game, and when she asked what I was up to, I kept it vague. “A little of this, a little of that,” I said, shrugging my shoulders.

  “Do you have any thoughts of going back to school, Teresa dear?”

  “It’s a little late for that.”

  “You’re only thirty. It’s never too late for an education,” she smiled.

  I shrugged again. “I never was much good in school.”

  “I see.” She stirred her tea with this tiny little spoon, then set it down on her saucer.

  We were circling each other like two wary cats. I guess she realized it too, because, all of a sudden, she came
out with it. Did I know the kind of work Pop did?

  “I think so.” I answered cagily. “He worked for you.”

  She pressed her lips together. Did I ever hear from my mother?

  “Nope.” I shook my head.

  Now, I looked in the rear view mirror. The tail was only thirty yards back. Much too close. I hunched my shoulders and squinted through the windshield. I was cruising over eighty, and there weren’t any other cars on the road. No rest stops, either. But Pop taught me not to panic. “All you need is a plan, TJ. You got a plan, nine times out of ten, you can get out of a tight spot.”

  I tried to focus. Trees and billboards zipped by. A green sign said I was forty miles from Kalamazoo. It could have been forty million for all the good it’d do me. But then, on the side of the road, an orange sign flashed. Detour Ahead. A smaller sign underneath said that Route 131 was closed for repairs.

  I was still in the left lane; I twisted around. Nothing on either side except the Buick. The detour was only half a mile ahead. I kept my foot on the gas. Pop used to say never advertise your plans. I tightened my seat belt. A quarter mile. I sucked in a breath. A few hundred yards. I veered sharply to the right and tore up the exit ramp. I threw myself off balance, but I managed to hold onto the Camry. I glanced at the speedometer. I was clocking in at 82.

  As I charged up to the stop sign, I heard the screech of brakes. He’d overshot the exit! The plan had worked—I’d bought myself some time. I looked both ways down the road. On the left was a gas station and quick mart, then the entrance back to Ninety-Four. On the right, nothing but farmland.

  I turned right and nudged the Camry up to sixty. I sped by fields of chest-high corn that alternated with hayfields that had rolls of the stuff curled up like pinwheels. A farmhouse with a barn on the side. In between the fields were woods with lots of trees. Ahead of me on the left was a farmer riding a tractor. He stared at me as I passed. For him, it was just another day with nothing but work to do.

  I opened the glove compartment and slid out my Sig. The nine has always been my favorite. Hardly any recoil. I slammed in the clip, then set the gun on the passenger seat.

  I felt him before I saw him. A chill on the back of my neck. When I looked in the rear view, I tensed. He was only a speck in the distance, but he’d be closing fast. I passed a few dirt paths that bisected the road on the edge of the fields. They probably led back to homes or barns or storage sheds. Plenty of cover back there. Getting to it was the problem. Everything was out in the open. Too risky.

  I kept driving. The Buick was gaining. My hands grew slick with sweat. Ahead of me were more woods. They ended at the side of a cornfield, but continued around the back. At the far edge of the field was a dirt road. As I got closer, I could see it led back into the woods.

  I slowed and swerved onto the dirt path. Trails of dust blew up behind me. Damn! I might as well send up smoke signals. But I had no choice. I kept going. The path was studded with rocks, and the Camry lurched unevenly. I heard a squeal from the chassis. I couldn’t think about it now. The woods were just ahead. A few more seconds. I let myself glance back at the road. The Buick was making the turn.

  When I pulled into the woods, the Camry was swallowed up by trees and underbrush. No way was I going any farther. I braked and switched off the ignition. I opened the car door, grabbed the Sig, and launched myself into the brush. I thrashed through bushes, ignoring the branches and brambles that scratched my skin. The thicket was so dense I couldn’t see much in any direction. I squatted on the ground and pointed the Sig back toward the road.

  A minute later the Buick drove up. I heard the engine idling. I pulled back the slide on the Sig. He knew I was hiding. He wouldn’t get out of the car without reason. Still, the longer he waited, the edgier he’d get. Another lesson from Pop. Be patient and let him come to me.

  I was ready. It was silent. Even the bees stopped buzzing. My calves started to cramp. All that crap about women crouching in the fields to give birth and then getting up to work was bullshit. No way could you stay in this position for long. I swatted away the gnats and tried to work out why the old lady sent him. I thought back to her questions. She’d been fishing—she wanted to know how much I knew.

  What she didn’t know is that I was fishing too. See, when Pop died last year, he left me a letter. Written in a scrawl with all those spelling mistakes, it said he wanted to clear the record. Seems as if after her husband died, one of her neighbors put some heat on her to sell her land. She asked my father for help, and two month later, the neighbor dropped dead of a heart attack. Instead of the neighbor buying her out, she was the one who bought. A few years after that, when the neighbor on the other side tried the same thing, he died in a car accident. The old lady ended up with a compound that stretched over a mile of lakefront property.

  But I knew all that before I went to see her. In fact, that’s why I went. Pop’s death had been real sudden. One night he was fine, and the next morning, he keeled over. The doctors said it was a heart attack. He was almost seventy, he liked booze and cigars, and he ate all the wrong things. But there are chemicals that can simulate heart attacks, and any professional knows how to use them. So when Pop said he had visited the old lady before he died, well, let’s just say coincidence isn’t a word in my vocabulary.

  But now I realized she must have figured out I knew. Don’t know how. I thought I’d been careful not to spill anything. Unless Pop told her I knew before he died. Which meant the guy following me was hers. She had the connections—hell, Pop probably gave ‘em to her. “Use him for back-up,” I could hear him saying, “if I’m not around to help you out.”

  A car door squeaked. I tore myself back to the present. With one hand I grasped the end of a branch and carefully pulled it back. I caught a glimpse of the Buick. The driver’s door was open, but there was no sign of the goon. I kept perfectly still. Just one opening. That’s all I needed.

  Suddenly he stepped in front of the car door, his gun drawn. He started toward the bushes. Christ. Had he spotted me? My heart went ballistic, and it was tough to breathe. Then he stopped, uncertain, maybe, which way to go. It was only a brief moment, but it was enough. I raised the Sig, aimed, and squeezed the trigger.

  I waited until I knew he wasn’t going anywhere, then scrambled to my feet. I rolled him and found a few hundred in his billfold. I stuffed them in my jeans. I didn’t expect to find any ID, and I didn’t. The road looked deserted, but I dragged his body back into the woods. When I got back to Camry, I stripped the plates and wiped all the surfaces. Then, just for the hell of it, I checked under the car. No bug. I got all my stuff out of the back then inched the car as far into the brush as I could. With luck they wouldn’t find it for a few weeks. Hell, maybe the whole season.

  The door to the Buick was still open, and the keys were in ignition. I slid into the front with the Sig beside me. I backed out onto the road, running through the checklist Pop taught me. Everything was accounted for. Even the farmer I passed on the way had left.

  It wasn’t hard to take care of the old lady. She was still in her bathrobe, her clothes laid out on the bed. She didn’t scream or struggle when I broke in—it was almost like she was expecting me. I didn’t say anything, and I was quiet when I used the pillow. I didn’t want one of the maids barging in. I wore gloves, and made sure there were no marks. With luck they’d think she had a heart attack. But even if they didn’t, the only thing the cops would have was a description of a blue Buick, not a Camry. Afterwards, I slipped out the door and for second time that day, headed back to Ninety-four. I ditched the Buick just outside Detroit and hitched the rest of the way.

  I lay low for a few days in case there was any heat. I didn’t even call Johnny D. I saw something in the paper about the old lady’s death—they said it was a heart attack—but there was nothing about a Camry or a body in the woods near a cornfield. After four days I was running out of clothes and money, so I decided to go home. I staked out the place until two in morning be
fore I went in. Nothing suspicious.

  I didn’t check my messages till the next morning. There were three: two from Johnny D and the third a thin nasally voice I didn’t recognize. Said he was Kenneth McCarthy, the old lady’s lawyer. I grabbed some clothes, stuffed them in a gym bag, then pried up the floorboard next to the bathroom. I threw my entire stash into the bag, grabbed the keys to my Honda, and bolted.

  It took an hour of driving around to realize I probably panicked for nothing. If someone out there had made me, the call would have been from the cops, not a lawyer. And theirs would have been in person. This had to be something else. I drove to a diner for some food. Behind the register were these crummy little paperweights with tiny dogs and cats and butterflies suspended inside a glass ball. The butterfly had some silver stuff on its wings, and it sparkled in the light. I could hardly take my eyes off it.

  After I ate, I called the man from a pay phone.

  “Teresa Nichols?” The nasally voice asked after I’d waited about a year on hold.

  “You got her.”

  “Yes, well..” McCarthy cleared his throat but when he spoke again, his voice was still nasally. Almost whiny. “It seems as if you’ve been named the sole beneficiary of my client’s will.”

  “What?”

  “My client has left everything to you. The estate. The bank accounts. The investments. Even her jewelry. Over ten million dollars in assets.”

  “Are you fuck—I mean are you out of your mind?”

  He cleared his throat again. “There’s a letter for you from her. It’s marked confidential. If you’d like to come down to our offices, I can give it to you personally.”

  Yeah, right. I wasn’t born yesterday. “Why don’t you read it to me?”

  “As I said, it’s marked confidential.”

  “You got my permission.”

  “You won’t mind putting that in writing?”

  “What the—sure—whatever.”