To the Devil, My Regards

by Anthony Neil Smith

  “Just like a wife.” He spat, got to his feet. “Everybody’s got a hand in Robert Woolf’s pocket. My wife lives in the house while I stay in this crummy apartment.”

  I didn’t bother pointing out that it was still a lot nicer than my place.

  “Every time the bitch goes to the mall she comes home with a dozen pair of shoes.” Now he went to the bar, emptied what was left of the gin into a glass, didn’t bother with any ice. “Then my daughter. Said her mother and I were dysfunctional and that she was going to divorce us and I’d have to pay her way while she went to college. She even got some two-bit lawyer to draw up papers. That’s Robert Woolf, a bag of money with legs. Just come take what you want. Might as well kick him in the balls while you’re at it.” He took a long drink of the gin then exhaled raggedly.

  “I guess that steamed you good.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess it did.”

  “A guy might do something extreme to get out of a situation like that.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he knocked back the rest of the gin. “What are you getting at, DelPresto?”

  “What do you think I’m getting at?”

  He filled his glass again. I don’t think he was even looking at which bottle he grabbed. The apartment grew strangely quiet, only the traffic noise coming from outside. He drew in a big lung full of breath, and I knew I was in for a speech.

  “I guess I hate my wife, DelPresto, but I’d never divorce her. I won’t give her the satisfaction of taking half of everything I’ve built over a lifetime. I won’t have my name dragged through the mud. If I divorced Nania, I’d have to spill my guts in court, tell everyone in the world my wife was some sort of horny turbo-slut.”

  He dropped a few ice cubes into his drink this time. He opened a drawer in the stand and came out with a stir. The cubes rattled in the glass.

  “But Rachel, well . . .” He shook his head, rubbed his temples. “I loved my daughter, Mr. DelPresto. She was young. My only hope was that she’d come to understand I wasn’t her enemy, that I didn’t mean for her life to be like it was.”

  His face clouded. His jaw tensed. “She’s gone now, and you were a part of that.” His hand dipped into the drawer again and came out this time with a .38 revolver. He pointed it at me.

  I spread my hands in front of me. “Hold on, Mr. Woolf. Think about what you’re doing.”

  “Shut up.”

  I shut up.

  “There’s nothing good left in the world. It’s so obvious, and everything’s rotten and no matter what we try to do to make things right it just comes out sour. And there’re two kinds of people. There’s the kind of person who does anything to anybody to get what she wants, and there’s the other person that has to get shit on twenty-four hours a day to make that happen. I have no wife and I have no daughter. I’m just the guy that gets shit on, and I’ve had it.”

  He laughed, waved the gun at me. “I even called you. Remember?”

  I told him I didn’t.

  “You didn’t know it was me. I bought this great electronic gadget, made my voice all fuzzy. I was hoping you kill my wife.” He looked at the gun kind of funny like he was seeing it for the first time. “When you turned me down, I called Nania and confessed the whole thing. I wanted her to know how much I hated her. But I didn’t tell her that you turned me down. I wanted her to sweat a little.”

  Thanks, asshole.

  “Well, I suppose none of that matters now,” said Woolf. “Not after what I’m going to do.”

  “Take it easy.”

  “Don’t tell me to take it easy, you bastard. I’m going to end this shit right now. I’ll give your regards to the devil when I get to hell. I’ll tell him to keep an eye out for you.”

  He put the gun in his mouth.

  In movies, you always see people rushing forward at moments like this, people trying to grab the gun away, avert a tragedy. But I felt myself backing up, already wincing, expecting the jarring crack of the pistol, the splatter of blood. I threw my arms up, tried to turn my head so I wouldn’t see.

  Too late.

  The bullet tore through the back of his head, a pattern of splotchy blood dotting the wall behind him. He fell forward in a heap. The sound of the shot seemed to hang in the air. The room was thick with cordite and sulfur, the fresh copper smell of new blood.

  I stood, looked at him. His limbs contorted at impossible angles, his eyes open and accusing. Robert Woolf had felt cheated, I supposed. He’d put his life together using the all-American instruction manual, wife, a kid, a good business, golf on the weekends with his pals from the club. He’d done the whole thing by the numbers, and it still flopped. I guessed I’d have felt cheated too.

  I looked at the bottom of my glass, thought about more rum but decided against it. The phone was on the window ledge. I went to it, picked it up, began to dial. It was time to get Nelson in on this.

  I looked out the window, down to the street and dropped the phone.

  The SUV was trying to edge out into traffic. Nania was trying to take off on me, but the traffic was thick, backed up from the red light and she was stuck.

  I flew out of the apartment and jabbed the elevator button with my thumb. When it didn’t come in two seconds, I threw open the door to the stairwell and hurried down three steps at a time. I stumbled making the turn on the second floor and slid down half a flight on my back. I sprang back up, made it the rest of the way down and burst from the apartment building in time to see her pull into traffic.

  I darted into traffic too, dodged a Toyota as I ran after Nania hoping to catch her at the light. I heard the squeal of tires, felt the bumper smack into my hip. I went sprawling, hot asphalt leaping up to smack me in my face.

  Horns. People getting out of cars. Voices. You okay pal?

  I stood, limped, cringed at my bruised hip. People were trying to get me to talk, asking if I needed an ambulance. I ignored them, stood on the bumper of the car that had hit me and craned my neck.

  Nania and the SUV disappeared around the corner.

  ELEVEN

  Being the slick detective I was, I sat on the sidewalk for a few minutes and tried to figure out where Nania would go. Hell, I had watched her long enough under Pfieffer’s hire to know her secrets, and she knew that I knew. So, running through the options:

  1. Home? Of course not. Which is why it stayed number one on the list.

  2. Into the arms of one of her lovers? It was a thought, but my dick was still numb from the Hoover job she’d given me a few hours before. She had to be feeling just as “not in the mood” as me. So I hope.

  3. But she is a slut, remember.

  4. The police station to see Pfieffer? Not without a stun gun.

  5. But she is…

  6. I’ve got a glass of rum in Woolf’s apartment with my prints on it.

  Holy shit! I was up in a heartbeat and was on the stairs before I realized that I was in real pain. All over. Oh man. But I gritted my teeth and sang the first Madonna song that popped into my head.

  Which was, unfortunately, “Papa Don’t Preach”.

  And just like that, I was back in Woolf’s apartment. The phone was still on the ground where I left it. So was Woolf, but I didn’t want to look at that. He wasn’t dead enough yet. I got my glass and the bottle of rum, took them to the sink, and washed my prints off after downing the rest of the rum. It probably wasn’t the best choice in my current situation, but it made me all warm and peace and love for a minute.

  Nania didn’t want me to do this.

  That thought grabbed hold of a spot on my brain and kept pounding. She didn’t want me to come up here. I should have dragged her slutty ass up here. But I had wanted to play cool, keep my cards close to my vest and try fishing what I needed from Daddy before spilling my big theory. Hey, I’ve seen my share of those Poirot movies. The detective can’t spill his theory until everyone’s gathered together in the same room.

  The way people were dying around this case, the only ones left in t
hat room would be me, the killer, and some cops who don’t like me.

  I fumbled with the telephone, finally getting a dial tone too loud for my delicate senses, and dialed Nelson’s number.

  “Nelson.”

  “It’s Z. Z. DelPresto.”

  Silence.

  “Anyone there?”

  He spoke slowly, flicking out syllables like daggers. “Your name has come up quite a few times in the last few hours. The gentleman we’ve been questioning seems to think you’re Stalin’s more evil twin brother.”

  “So says the tabloids.”

  “Z. Z.—”

  “Look, I’ve got it all figured out. Actually, I had it figured out about an hour ago, but a funny thing happened on my way to the station.”

  “This about you killing Rachel?”

  “I didn’t kill Rachel. I know who did. I’ve got proof.”

  He hummed. Three long deep notes. Followed by more silence. People need to learn more phone etiquette.

  Finally, Nelson said, “Real proof?”

  “Pick me up in twenty minutes.” I told him where and hung up.

  I had twenty minutes to find that magic “proof” I told him about. But it was here, I was sure. That’s why Nania split. She knew it was here.

  Fingerprints be damned. I went through every drawer, both closets, the shoeboxes under the bed, the mail on the coffee table. And then I found it, right there in the legal papers Rachel had filed. All I got was a quick glance, but I was sure I could work through the solution as I read it to Nelson.

  But it didn’t seem quite enough. So, she was doing the childish thing, and I’m sure both parents saw through that. It was all for attention. I’m sure if she had lived, Rachel would’ve been on my doorstep in another few days, suitcase in hand, with those pouting lips asking for a place to stay. And my answer? The only one a reasonable male like myself could honorably give: Hell yes! Get inside and get naked. Let’s play Chutes and Ladders. We would have a few days of fun, and then she would call her daddy, “accidentally” let it slip that she was staying with me, and then she would have ringside seats to seeing her daddy kick her own private Humbert Humbert’s ass.

  That seemed like her. And that’s typical teenage girl histrionics. So, what was I missing?

  My head turned like it was on auto-pilot. It kept turning until my eyes focused on Woolf’s dead body. That pounding spot on my brain told me to check his pockets.

  I knelt beside him, careful to avoid the seeping blood as it spread throughout the spongy carpet. The .38 made a nasty little hole, but it wasn’t a skull cracker like some I had seen. His eyes, glassy and cold, still searched for understanding. I hope he found it in the afterlife, traveling down the river, answering questions posed by Egyptian gods along the way. His hands looked puffy. I tried to avoid touching his skin directly, but I slipped once and had to take hold of his neck. A little blood stained my palm. What I was looking for was in his wallet, folded behind his driver’s license. It was a receipt, and it spoke volumes to me with five simple words.

  You want to know my proof don’t you? You do? Just wait. Remember: everyone in the same room.

  *

  I made it outside in nineteen minutes flat, just in time to catch my breath and burp up some rum before Nelson pulled up in his Crown Vic. I got in and he pulled away. The radio was tuned to a local political call-in show, the volume so low I could only hear the anger and not the issues.

  “Proof, DelPresto. You said you had some proof. Now, am I your friend or your cabbie?”

  I flipped through the legal papers, trying to find what I had seen before. “Rachel was trying to divorce her parents.”

  He slowed the car and said. “I already don’t like where this is headed. I should let you out right here.”

  “There’s more. Wait. She had a lot of inside scoop. She knew about me soon enough, and I think part of her plan was to keep me from figuring out everything she knew. Rachel was aiming to be a very rich girl.”

  Nelson nodded. “That paper says all that?”

  “And more. And…” I whipped out the page I had found in Woolf’s wallet and handed it to Nelson.

  He said, “Why is there blood on it?”

  “Just read it.”

  He did. He hummed some more. It wasn’t so mournful this time. He handed it back to me and reached for the radio, clicked it off.

  “So, I’m a free man again?” I said.

  He licked his top lip like he had a bad taste in his mouth. “It can’t be as easy as you’re trying to make it out.”

  I stared out the passenger window, hand over my mouth, hoping to hell it was just that easy. I adjusted the vent so that the cool breeze from the air-conditioner blew into my face. It felt like frozen happiness.

  TWELVE

  Nelson drove. He was silent. I wasn’t. I spilled my guts, sang like a canary, detailing everything that had happened since I’d stumbled tired and dejected from the police station.

  I had to gloss over some things, fix up the story a little so he wouldn’t send my on the long vacation courtesy of the state pen. Killing the hit man was self-defense. Nose Ring’s watery demise was a clumsy accident. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was a version of the truth, and it felt good to get it off my chest.

  I felt myself tense as we entered Avalon Estates, the Woolfs’ neighborhood, but was relieved to see the SUV in the driveway. I’d guessed right. Nania had run home, probably to pack up her fur coats and handbags before she left town. This was it. The final scene I’d been building to. Time to spin the wheel, toss the dice, play my trump card. I’d used up all the clichés and I was stalling anyway.

  Nelson parked the car, looked at me. “It’s your show, Z. Z.. How do you want to play it?”

  I stuck the receipt in my pocket and opened the car door. “Wait here while I tie up the loose ends. Just wait, and I’ll bring you a killer.”

  I went to the house. The front door was unlocked, and I pushed it open gently. I didn’t want Nania hearing me or making a dash for it. I had a clear idea of how I wanted to confront her and where. I closed the door silently behind me and started up the stairs.

  As I neared her bedroom, I head the rustling. I stood in the doorway and watched her for a moment. She didn’t look so sure of herself now, hurrying from closet to suitcase, throwing in clothes, shoes, a makeup case. I tried to think of any way I could possibly feel sorry for her. A loveless marriage. An aging beauty in the shadow of a prettier younger daughter. No. Nothing worked. She was just a killer, and her time was up.

  “Nania.”

  She spun, mouth frozen open in a startled yelp that never made it out. We stared at each other a second. She was weighing her options. I knew she didn’t have any.

  “It’s all over, Nania. I’m on to you.” I had to approach this just right. I needed to get her talking.

  She raised an eyebrow, plastered that innocent look across her mug, the one she must have practiced in the mirror a thousand times. “What are you talking about?”

  “You left me on the road back at your husband’s apartment. I had to hitch a ride.”

  She frowned. “I’d had enough of waiting for you. I told you I didn’t want to go see Robert. I’m sure he told you a load of lies about me. Why should I wait around to hear about that?”

  “We had a very informative chat, all right,” I said. “Right before he blew his own brains out.”

  Her sharp intake of breath was a sign of surprise, not remorse. She looked past me, and I could tell her wheels were turning. She was absorbing the information, deciding how it affected her schemes.

  “I bet I know what you’re thinking,” I said

  “Oh really?”

  I nodded, shoved my hands in my pockets and paced around the room as I spoke. “Divorce was out of the question. He wouldn’t grant you one because it would be too embarrassing and real expensive. You couldn’t sue him for divorce because you didn’t have a leg to stand on. No judge in the world would award yo
u a penny.” I shrugged an apology at her. “Let’s face it. Wives with your kind of spotty track record don’t usually get a very good settlement.”

  “You certainly know how to build a girl’s self-esteem.”

  “Don’t interrupt.” It was my big wrap-up scene.

  “Sorry.”

  “So you’d thought you’d just let things ride,” I continued. “You were spending dear Robert’s money anyway. You had the house. You slept with anybody you wanted. Might as well leave well enough alone. But then . . .” I stuck a finger in the air for dramatic effect. “Rachel.”

  Nania sneered. She lit a cigarette, puffed smoke through clenched teeth. “I should have drowned the little brat when she was an infant.”

  “But you didn’t. She grew up beautiful and smart and a pain in your ass. Her suit for divorce would have taken a big chunk out of your spending budget. You couldn’t have that, could you?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said again. “The last I heard, you were the leading suspect in Rachel’s murder.”

  “I could make a lot of trouble for you, darling. I could go to the police and show them the papers I found in your husband’s apartment, the one’s illustrating the intricate details of Rachel’s divorce suit. That’s motive.”

  “You don’t have anything on me.”

  “Maybe I don’t want anything on you,” I said. “Maybe with your husband out of the way and Pfieffer in jail, there’s a position open for a smart shamus who likes soft women and expensive suits.”

  She turned cautious, not one hundred percent sure if she were hearing me right. She was a smart lady, crafty, probably on the lookout for some trick. But it was just too good of a thing I was offering, and I sensed half the tension leak out of her body.

  “You can’t collect any insurance on him,” I said, trying to sound sorry about it. “The suicide prevents that. But you’re the only heir now. You’ll get the house, the business, any stocks or bonds. Did he have a safety deposit box?” I moved close, put an arm around her waist and drew her close.