“Take a message.”
“Good advice, Jack, but I already took it. She won’t quit, she’s ruthless. I look up, the light’s flashing, I gotta answer it.”
“Where’s Eddy?”
“Halfway to Mexico, probably. The honeymoon’s over, that’s for sure. The roses died and the champagne went flat.” Spears glanced at Parker. “I don’t know what he did to her, but whatever it was, I bet he never does it again.”
“Any calls for me?”
“Just one. Young guy. Wouldn't leave his name, said he’d get back.” Spears smiled at Parker. “Nice outfit.”
“Thanks.”
“I was down at the bank at the weekend. Had to speak to the manager about a little problem with my account, a clerical error, nothing serious. Anyhow, the point is, I swear to God she was wearing the exact same suit you’re wearing now, Claire.”
“You think I loaned it to her, is that it?”
Spears caught the menace in Parker’s voice. “Hey, no, of course not.”
“Well, what are you saying, Farley? That she loaned it to me?”
Spears frowned. He didn’t understand what Parker was so upset about. Women. The phone rang. He snatched it up, punched a pulsing red button and said, “Detective Spears.” His face sagged. “Like I already told you, Mrs. Orwell, I’ll have him call you the minute he gets in.”
Willows, sitting at his desk, picked up a pencil and sketched the outline of a telephone, added a rotary dial, worked in a little shading to give the drawing dimension.
Parker’s desk butted up against Willows’. Both desks were metal with a dull grey enamelled finish. But since he had a lot more seniority than Parker, his desk faced the window, with its view across the lane to the brick walls of the remand centre. All Parker had was a view of Willows. Sometimes that wasn’t so bad. She pulled back her chair and sat down, glanced up to find him watching her. He said, “How did Cherry get your number?”
“Jealous?”
“If it makes you happy.”
Willows filled in the numbers on the telephone dial, nine through zero. A lifetime of possibilities.
Parker said, “I didn’t give it to him.”
“Somebody did. Either that, or he broke into your apartment.”
“No way. I would’ve noticed.”
“Maybe you better change your locks, Claire.”
“Forget it.”
One of the civilian clerks down at the far end of the major crimes section yelled a warning, and Willows turned in time to see Orwell vault the waist-high counter.
Farley Spears said, “Whyn’t you use the fucking door like everybody else, Eddy?”
“Forgot my keys.”
“Bullshit, your pants are so tight, you couldn’t get’em in your pocket.”
“What’re you doing looking at my pants, Farley? Think I’m kinda cute, is that it?”
“No, but somebody does.”
Orwell smiled. “Who’s that?”
“Your wife.”
The smile faded. “I told her a million times not to phone me at work. She calls again, tell her you haven’t seen me, okay?”
“You want protection, it’s gonna cost you.”
“What?” Orwell’s face turned the colour of a radish with varicose veins.
“Five bucks,” said Spears calmly. “Cash in advance, no cheques.”
Orwell turned to Parker. “I can’t believe this is happening to me. It’s like a nightmare, except worse.”
“You’re getting a bargain, Eddy.”
“Yeah?”
Parker smiled sweetly. “I wouldn’t do it for less than ten.”
Willows’ phone rang. He picked up, listened for a moment and then clamped his hand over the receiver and said, “Hey, Eddy.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Relax, it isn’t for you.”
Spears roared with laughter.
Willows pointed at Parker. “Your new boyfriend. Line three.”
Cherry Ngo arranged to meet Parker and Willows at a Vietnamese restaurant on Commercial, just off Hastings. The restaurant was called Pale Green Shoots. It wasn’t listed in the phone book. Willows had wondered out loud if Cherry was playing games with them. Parker said she didn’t think so. He could call it intuition, if he liked, but she expected Cherry to be there. Willows balled up his sketch of a telephone, bounced it off his desk and into his wastebasket.
Women’s intuition. He’d learned a long time ago not to mess with that one.
They arrived at the restaurant at quarter to ten. A sign on the door said that the restaurant was open from 4:00 p.m. until 2:00 a.m. Willows tried the door. It was locked.
Parker checked her watch. “Think Cherry expects us to hang around until they open?”
“And then buy him dinner and a couple of beers to wash it down, probably.” Willows peered inside. The transparent reflections of passing traffic obscured his vision. He pressed his hand up against the dusty glass. The restaurant was small — seven or eight tables, a couple of dozen chairs. Willows couldn’t find two chairs that matched.
The cash register drawer was open.
Behind the cash register there was a travel poster, thumb-tacked to the wall, of a water buffalo standing in a rice paddy.
To the left of the cash register a bead-curtained doorway led to a back room. Parallel lines of light lay upon the floor between alternating rows of red and blue and green.
There was a break in the traffic. Willows heard a snatch of music, thin and reedy.
“Let’s check the back.”
Parker nodded.
The two detectives walked briskly down to the end of the block, turned the corner and followed a crumbling sidewalk to the mouth of the alley. There was a bakery a few doors away from the restaurant and the air was heavy with the warm, sweet smell of fresh bread.
Willows clipped his badge to the breast pocket of his jacket. He drew his revolver and held the gun nestled in the palm of his hand so his extended trigger and second fingers concealed the weapon’s stubby two-inch barrel.
Parker drew her pistol.
The restaurant was located near the middle of the block, squeezed in between a drycleaners and a florist. There was a parking lot behind the building with unoccupied spaces for three vehicles.
The rear door was off the latch, open about a foot. Willows leaned against the wall, listened to the music and then the voice of a woman singing. He had no desire to get up and dance. A gust of wind made the door swing towards him a fraction of an inch. A hinge squeaked.
The music died.
Willows’s .38 was out in the open now. He braced himself and kicked hard. The door crashed against an inside wall and stayed put.
Parker covered Willows as he risked a quick glimpse inside, ducked back.
Willows yelled, “Cherry, you in there?”
The music started up again, the whine of stringed instruments leaking through the bead curtain.
Parker said, “We need a warrant?”
“No, I don’t think so. We’re supposed to meet him here. The door’s open … ”
Inside, there was an empty storage room on the left, a locked door on the right. The beads rattled as Willows pushed through. Cherry Ngo lay on his back on the floor behind the counter. His hands were folded against his skinny chest.
Parker felt the blood drain from her face. She began to tremble.
Willows grasped her arm. “Claire.”
“Yeah, what?”
“Call it in for me, will you?”
Parker took a deep breath, nodded, holstered her gun. On the way out, she saw that Willows had kicked the back door so hard that the doorknob had penetrated the lathe-and-plaster wall.
When the smell of the bakery hit her, she fell to her knees and was sick.
Willows knelt in the confined space beside the body. Cherry Ngo’s eyes were wide open. Willows braced himself against the counter, crouched over the body. Miniatures of the water buffalo filled Ngo’s eyes.
Willows drew back. A shiny brass .45-calibre casing lay on the floor beside Ngo’s feet, and there was a .45-calibre hole in the middle of his forehead.
Ngo’s open mouth and empty face were splattered with glistening wet chunks of a sticky, brownish orange pulp. There was a second gunshot wound in his right hand, which was scorched and stippled with powderburns. He had been holding something in that hand when he was shot. A piece of fruit?
No, a sweet potato.
Willows heard approaching footsteps. He glanced over his shoulder. Parker. He realized he was still gripping his gun, and put it away.
She said, “The coroner and crime scene unit’s on the way.” She pointed at the cassette player. “Mind if I turn that off?”
“Go ahead.”
Parker followed the electrical cord to the socket, pulled the plug.
The cassette stopped turning and the music died. Now they could hear the hum and throb of the traffic again, through the dusty plate glass windows.
Willows said, “What time did he phone?”
“Twenty-past eight. On the button, I’d just checked my watch. What’s that in his hand?”
“A sweet potato.”
“They used it for a silencer?”
“Yeah.”
“Made him hold it, and shot him.”
Willows didn’t say anything. The adrenalin rush had left him feeling a little weak in the knees. Suddenly, the world was full of possibilities. He felt like a man with a brand-new lover. He could hardly wait to start running his hands over the crime scene, gain intimate knowledge of every bloody nook and cranny.
Cherry Ngo’s body was still warm, the chunks of sweet potato splattered across his smooth young face so fresh that they were still wet and glistening.
A siren wailed up Commercial, closing rapidly in on them. Willows took another long, slow look at the poster of the water buffalo standing placidly in a rice paddy half a world away and more.
“Claire?”
“Yeah, what?”
“Maybe we better put a tap on your line.”
“Why’s that, Jack?”
“You weren’t sure it was Cherry who phoned. Maybe it was somebody else.”
“And what about round-the-clock police protection — you going to volunteer, Jack?” Parker was working hard to look sardonic and unconcerned, but Willows could see the fear lurking in her eyes.
The siren howled into the alley.
Now the crime scene had to be photographed, sketched, powdered and painted. Cherry’s corpse chauffeured to the morgue, where they’d gut him and saw off the top of his skull, subject him to indignities far worse than a bullet in the head.
All in aid of Jack’s pleasure, Jack’s pursuit. All for Jack, all for Jack.
8
All that stuff she’d showed him last night, the family album. How much of it was real? She was a very strange woman, and not just because she happened to be an albino, either. She was strange inside, as well as out. Maybe the one followed from the other. Why did she keep all those pictures; why had she showed them to him? He didn’t believe any of that stuff about circus freaks and motorcycle stunt men. But why would she make it all up, what was the purpose of it all?
Not that it made any difference. At five hundred a night, she was out of his league. He’d already gone at least a grand over budget. Newt was gonna have a class-three tantrum, for sure.
A shaft of reflected sunlight splashed across the street as the glass front door of Parker’s apartment block swung open. Frank slouched a little lower in the white leather bucket seat. Plan A had been a flop so he’d moved on to plan B, a first-thing-in-the-morning bump-and-run. The pie fork with the bent tine that he’d borrowed from the hotel to let the air out of Parker’s tire dug into his belly.
Parker stepped into the light. Yeah, nice -looking woman. Tall, slim.
Frank tossed the fork on the floor and turned the key. The Vette’s big V8 coughed and roared. Plenty of room in front of him. He checked the rear-view mirror, cranked the wheel, eased cautiously out of the parking slot, lining her up.
Parker began to walk away from him, in absolutely the wrong direction. Frank couldn’t believe his eyes. He leaned forward, peered through cigarette smoke and green-tinted glass and across the long sloping hood of the Corvette. What the hell was going on? Had she forgotten where she’d left her car?
Then he saw the Oldsmobile, bulgy fenders and a high, rounded back. Split windshield. The car dated from the forties but, despite its age, the black paint was waxed and shiny, the chrome gleamed.
The Olds pulled up against the curb. Parker slipped inside. The door thudded shut.
Frank lit a fresh cigarette as the car cruised past him, close enough to reach out and touch.
Sweating every inch of the way, he drove the red-hot look-at-me Corvette back to his underground hidy-hole and then walked down Robson to the hotel.
Lulu was waiting for him in his room, in exactly the same position she’d been in when he’d left. It was almost as if she existed only in the landscape of Frank’s imagination, had no life of her own, only took breath when he was there to witness the event.
She smiled at him as he shut the door. “How’d it go, Frank? Everything turn out okay?”
Frank said, “I let the air out of her tire and a guy came by and picked her up. Thought she was the liberated type. Guess I was wrong.”
“Work up an appetite?”
Frank shrugged, somewhat dispirited by the unexpected turn of events.
Lulu dialled room service. Scrambled eggs and croissants with English marmalade, a chrome pot of strong black coffee.
“Hawaiian and chocolate spice. My own blend. Like it?”
“Sure” said Frank. The croissants were crumbly as hell, getting all over the sheets.
After breakfast, they watched race cars on TSN and then, in a sporting mood, went down to the mini-mall in the lounge. Lulu picked out a black Speedo number so tiny Frank was able to crush it up and hide it in his fist. He said, “You crazy — I’m not going to wear that in public.”
“It expands. One size fits all.”
“Like hell,” said Frank, and paid thirty dollars plus tax for something he felt comfortable in: a boxer-type swimsuit, pale blue with dark green palm trees, that did the job without being too revealing.
The pool was up on the third floor, under a canopy of glass. It was deserted except for a guy doing laps with his girlfriend, who hauled her out of there the minute he got a look at Frank’s shoulder span, his washboard belly and narrow hips, the ropy veins and hard bulge of muscle on his arms and thighs, the puck and whorl of scar tissue left by the few large-calibre bullets that hadn’t bounced off him and, most of all, those bright uncaring killer’s eyes.
Lulu used an elastic band to tuck her hair into place. She was wearing a snazzy little two-piece number that exactly matched her skin tone, and made her look naked. When she dove into the bright blue water she left scarcely a ripple.
Frank lunged after her, creating a miniature tsunami that rolled the length of the pool and splashed over the lip, nipping at the heels of the retreating swimmers. He dove deep, stayed down until his lungs ached, then pushed off the tiled bottom and came up rolling his eyeballs and spewing quarts of chlorinated water. Lulu pinwheeled around him like a sprite in a Disney film. He started to go under again, kicked hard and lurched across the water, churning the surface into a froth. He made the lip of the pool and held on tight, gasping and spitting.
“Where’d you learn to swim, Frank, in a thimble?”
Frank caught his breath. He said, “It’s deeper than it looks.”
“No kidding. Jeez, with your talent, you could drown in a kitchen sink. I’m gonna do some laps. Go relax in the whirlpool, so I don’t have to worry about you, and I’ll be there in a few minutes, okay?”
Frank hauled himself out of the water and made his way down to the whirlpool at the far end of the glass-enclosed room. The whirlpool was more his speed. The water wa
s nice and warm, and only waist-deep. He lowered himself into a sitting position. It wasn’t much worse than a bathtub. He began to relax, enjoy the spectacle of his albino sweetheart gliding back and forth in her element. Probably during her circus days she did a high-dive act into a bucket of icewater. He’d have to ask.
A shadow darkened the water. Frank looked up. He said, “Hi there, Rog.”
“Brought you some towels.”
“So I see.”
“And a bottle of champagne. French. Cold.”
Frank nodded, didn’t say anything.
Lulu eased out of the pool, her movements smooth and silky. She padded across the tiles, kissed Rog on the cheek and stepped into the whirlpool.
Frank openly admired the curve of her hip, all that smooth white skin, the strength and grace of her lines. Lulu stared at Rog, maintained eye contact as she made herself nice and comfortable in Frank’s muscled lap, snuggled up against him like a child.
“Champagne, Daddy? How nice!”
Rog said, “A going away present.”
Frank said, “What makes you think I'm leaving?”
“Your reservation was only for two nights.”
“So?"
“Checkout’s at eleven. It’s half past. Your bags are at the front desk.”
Lulu smiled at Frank, her pale eyes full of light, a fireworks display of pure love.
Frank said, “Can we have our champagne now, please?”
“Sure.” Rog crouched, placed the tray on the tiles. He unwrapped the gold foil and popped the cork. Strong hands for a guy that old. He poured both glasses past the brim and handed one to his daughter and the other to Frank.
Frank raised his glass. He looked carefully into Lulu’s eyes. “Here’s to you and me.”
“Check.”
The glasses coming together made a sound like a tiny icicle breaking.
Frank drained his glass, placed it on the tray and reached out and grabbed Rog by his maroon tie, pulled him slowly but inexorably into the whirlpool.
Rog, windmilling on the edge, started yelling.
Frank yanked him into the water and turned him face down, held him steady.
Lulu waited for a reasonably long time and then said, “Frank? He’s my dad, sort of. Frank?”
Accidental Deaths (A Willows and Parker Mystery) Page 6
