Accidental Deaths (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Laurence Gough

  Newt slammed down the phone, stared bitterly out at the million-dollar view and saw to his consternation and surprise that a small black dot was hurtling towards him from the other side of the picture window. The dot was moving at a high rate of speed and it was coming straight at him, unwavering in its course. Newt’s heart pounded in his chest so hard it seemed as if it was trying to flee his doomed body. Some rotten bastard had launched a missile at him! God, but it was quick. He jerked to his feet. Cigarette ash spilled across his rosewood desk. Then time ran out. The missile crashed into his window, and the sheet of pale green bulletproof plate glass vibrated crazily. But it didn’t shatter, and there was no explosion.

  A dud?

  Newt went over to the window. A large brown bird lay on the gravel in the shadow of the house. It definitely wasn’t a seagull and probably wasn’t a robin. Other than that, who could say? Newt was a major player in the drug and film rackets, not an amateur ornithologist.

  He got down on his hands and knees for a better look. The bird’s wings were tucked up tight against its body and its head lolled to one side. Its tiny, glossy black eyes didn’t seem to be looking at anything. Maybe the creature was stunned. Its beak was open and a thin black tongue hung out. Newt had never seen a bird’s tongue before. It wasn’t very sexy. He tapped his pinky ring against the glass. No reaction. The bird looked dead and probably was, but how could you tell for sure?

  Newt went back to the desk and used the intercom to locate Rikki, his numero uno houseboy.

  “Hey, Rikki, I’m in the den. Yeah, the small room where I keep my Bible collection. Rikki, there’s a bird flew into the window, crashed into the window. Yeah, it is a crazy world, isn’t it. Look, I want you to go and get it and bring it inside the house. See if you can do anything for it, okay?”

  Newt noticed the spill of ash on his desk, made a face and wiped the polished surface clean with the palm of his hand, briskly rubbing his hands together. Rikki was having a major problem with the concept of Newt being concerned about a bird when he had never before in his life shown the slightest compassion for any living thing.

  “Pajaro?” said Rikki.

  Newt said, “Yeah, right, you got it. Pajaro. With the wings and feathers, the whole outfit. It’s right outside the window. Yeah. La ventana.”

  “Esta muerto?”

  Dead. Now there was a word Newt knew very well. He said, “Check it out, Rikki. Esta el pajaro muerto? That’s the question I want answered.”

  Rikki said, “You tellin’ me you wan’ me find out is our featha’ compadre wasted?”

  “Yeah, yeah!”

  “Okay, sure’ting. I do eet.” Rikki made a high, keening noise. “Nueve uno uno! The ambulance ees on its fokin’ way!” Newt hung up. Rikki had slipped into L.A. via the underside of the border and the slums of Mexico City. He was a cute kid but not too quick between the ears. A few books missing outta his library, you might say. The kid was superfast with his hands, though. An artist with a knife. Artista tie hoja. During his job interview Rikki had bragged he could slice a steak off a heifer, do it so sweet and clean the cow wouldn’t even say moo. Newt had laughed at the bullshit, and hired him. A couple of months later he was in a club downtown and got in a tussle with a guy in the washroom, a real loud argument over who was next in line to use the toilet. Rikki was lounging out in the hall. He heard the racket and came in and stepped between Newt and the two-hundred-fifty pound meatball and told the meatball to wait his turn, said, “You the world’s biggest asshole, no contest. But that don’t mean you can jump the line.” The meatball ignored him, stared right over his head, held his killer look on Newt.

  Rikki had said, “You ain’ listen to me. Thas a bad choice. Use’em or lose’em, what they say.”

  The meatball was still trying to figure out what the hell Rikki was talking about when the Mexican reached up and sliced off his left ear, stuck it in the meatball’s jacket pocket like a limp pink hankie.

  Newt had been pretty drunk when the skirmish went down. So drunk in fact that he assumed it had been a mirage or whatever. The next day, however, he read all about it in the L.A. Times. A quick-thinking bartender had slipped the ear into a martini glass full of shaved ice, wrapped a towel around the guy’s head and called a cab. The cabby refused to accept the fare because he thought the guy was an Arab. Eventually the cops showed up and gave the meatball a ride to emergency, where a doctor with nothing better to do sewed the ear back on.

  A happy ending. Oh well, these things happened.

  Newt dialled the hotel in Vancouver again and got the same response. He looked up and there was Rikki in front of the window, smiling at him through the glass. Rikki’d thrown a white lab coat over his cream suit, and was wearing a false nose and glasses. He went over to the bird and picked it up in both hands, very gently.

  Newt leaned back in his chair. A movie. The picture window was like a big screen and it was like watching a movie, a movie that had been made just for him.

  Rikki held the bird’s breast up against his ear. His face was very serious. He looked at Newt and solemnly shook his head.

  Newt wished he had some popcorn.

  Rikki tried to revive the bird with little one-finger slaps to its feathered cheeks. When that didn’t work he applied mouth-to-beak respiration. No joy. Desperate, he pulled a nine-volt battery out of his pocket and mimed giving the victim shock treatment, making the bird twitch and jerk spasmodically in the palm of his hand as he applied the current. Newt laughed so hard he fell off his chair. By the time he’d finished wiping the tears from his eyes, Rikki and the dead pajaro were long gone.

  That evening, Newt had a lady friend over for dinner. They went out on the deck afterwards, for a glass of wine and so Newt could enjoy his cigar without stinking up his date’s

  fancy silk dress, and spoiling the mood, queering his romance.

  Rikki drifted by, on his appointed rounds. He was wearing his night clothes; a matte black shirt and baggy black cotton pants, no shoes. He was standing less than five feet away, but Newt would never have noticed him if he hadn’t smiled.

  In his soft voice, Rikki asked Newt did he enjoy his dinner.

  “Real good,” said Newt tersely. It was well known that he didn’t much appreciate the help socializing when he had a broad on the premises.

  Rikki apparently didn’t notice that Newt’s close-set eyes were glowing red as his cigar. He said, “I am glad to hear the food was good, Senor.” He grinned again, teeth flashing white. “How do they say it — the patient died, but the operation was a success.”

  Newt said, “How’s that?” He leaned over the sundeck railing, peered down into the darkness.

  Rikki said, “El pajaro, Señor!” and drifted off into the darkness, flapping his arms like wings.

  Newt broke open another bottle of champagne and told the story to his date, a girl named Annette who worked in the stockroom at a Toys’R’Us over in Glendale. Annette didn’t think the story was very funny at all. When she’d finished being sick to her stomach all over the deck she washed her mouth out with at least a hundred dollars’ worth of Newt’s Dom Perignon and then told him in no uncertain terms she wanted a ride home right this minute or she was going to call the SPCA.

  Newt let Rikki take care of it. Serve him right. He watched the Caddy’s tail lights dwindle down the road and then got a fresh bottle and made his way down through the dunes to the beach.

  There was no moon, and all was blackness except for the thin line of the surf; a frothy smear of white that growled and snarled and worried at the beach like a long, strung-out pack of rabid dogs. Newt listened to the music and nipped at the bubbly. The dogs fell back and regrouped, attacked again.

  His daddy’s sodden ashes were out there, somewhere. Endlessly drifting on the currents. Newt never would’ve believed it, but there were times — mostly when his blood alcohol reading was into double digits — when he almost missed the old bastard.

  He grabbed a fresh bottle and kicked
off his shoes and walked down the pathway of sun-bleached planks, past the dunes and long gritty slope of the beach and into the cold black water. When he was deep enough to start thinking about sharks, he held the bottle of champagne high above his head with both hands and shook hard and then pulled the cork. A long jet of foam shot out of the bottle and curved down through the blackness and merged with the surf.

  Newt said, “Here’s looking at you, Daddy.” He tilted his head back and put the neck of the bottle to his lips, drank deeply and belched.

  The dogs howled along miles of beach. The silvery air was thick with salt. Newt finished the champagne and threw the bottle at those unruly hounds — as sincere a gesture of defiance as he was ever likely to risk.

  Trudging back across the dunes towards the house, he thought about Annette and what she had said, the truth of it. That only a seriously demented person would pluck and gut and pan-fry and serve with mixed vegetables and wild rice some poor bird that had flown into his picture window.

  What was the matter with him? She was only eighteen or nineteen years old and her date with him was probably the first time she ever got out of Glendale, but she was right. He should've buried that poor bird, not eaten it, even though it melted in his mouth.

  She’d told him in her silky-sweet heartbreaker voice that she hoped he never darkened the doors of Toys’R’Us again, ever, and Newt couldn’t say he blamed her.

  He was going crazy. He needed a break, a chance to get away and clear his mind.

  In the kitchen, the dishes had been cleared and the pots were soaking in the sink. Newt checked the garbage but there was no sign of the bird’s remains. Probably they were being used in some kind of weird Aztec ritual. The houseboys were always stealing candles, taking them out to the toolshed, running around chanting. He had no idea what they were up to. As long as they were happy; that was the main thing.

  Newt used the wall phone by the microwave to try the hotel again. Still no Frank. On impulse, he dialled the cellular in the Caddy.

  No answer from Rikki, either. Newt’s mind skittered from one unrelated thought to the next.

  Maybe Frank wasn’t answering his phone because he’d screwed up real bad, and didn’t want Newt to find out about it.

  Goddamn that Rikki. The guy was only about five feet tall but he had that smooth skin and those big brown eyes and teeth like pearls. Newt knew exactly what he was up to. In a fit of pique, he decided to drag his little Mex Lothario along to Vancouver — assuming, of course, that loverboy ever made it back from Glendale.

  It was July, but chances were still pretty good that when they got to Vancouver it’d be raining like a bitch.

  With luck, maybe Mr. Stud would catch pneumonia, and die.

  13

  Willows helped Elaine Minotti with her coat, pulled back a chair.

  Mrs. Minotti sat down.

  Parker said, “Can I get you something to drink, a cup of coffee, tea … ”

  Mrs. Minotti smiled a quick, nervous smile. “I’m fine, thank you.”

  Willows said, “If you need anything, just give us a shout.”

  Mrs. Minotti gave him a startled look.

  “Call us,” Parker explained. “If you see anybody you recognize, or have any questions, call us.”

  “Yes, I will do that.”

  There were three mug books, each of them about twice the size of an encyclopedia. Parker put one in front of Mrs. Minotti and opened it to the first page. The police photographs were in colour, about three inches square. There were six ranks of four per page. Each book held about one hundred pages.

  Parker smiled and said, “After a little while your eyes are going to get tired. All the pictures will start to blur into one another. It won’t take long, believe me. When it happens, take a break. You can get up and walk around if you want to. Do you smoke?”

  “Sometimes. Not too much.”

  “This is a public building. Smoking isn’t allowed. And I have to ask you, please don’t leave the squadroom without letting me or Jack know about it. Do you have any questions?”

  “No, I understand.”

  Mrs. Minotti was sitting at Parker’s desk. Willows borrowed Eddy Orwell’s phone and dialled Walt Fisher, in ballistics. Fisher picked up on the third ring. His voice was slow, clogged.

  Willows said, “Got a cold, Walt?”

  Fisher laughed. “Tunafish sandwich, Jack. You detective-type guys who live on adrenalin and fresh blood tend to forget that the rest of us mortals march to a different diet.”

  Willows was no fan, but the word tunafish had made him salivate. He glanced at his watch. It was quarter past one. No wonder he was hungry. He said, “What have you got for me on the Cherry Ngo thing?”

  “Not much, Jack.” Willows could almost hear Fisher shrug. “We’ve got a make on the calibre. Forty-five ACP. It was a very well-behaved bullet. Expanded exactly according to design.”

  “What kind of shape’s it in?”

  Fisher’d been fed that line before, and he jumped on it with both feet. “Not bad, considering everything it’s been through.”

  “You’re a funny guy, Walt. Have you got enough to make a comparison?”

  “No problem. Why? You and the pin-up girl recover the weapon?”

  “Pin-up girl? Parker’s gonna love that one, Walt.”

  “Jack, no, please … ”

  Inspector Homer Bradley marched briskly through the squadroom. He caught Willows’ eye and pointed at him and Parker, then towards his office.

  Willows said, “Enjoy the tuna, Walt,” and hung up and followed Parker into Bradley’s tiny cubicle.

  “Shut the door, Jack.” Bradley indicated the two plain

  wooden chairs lined up against the wall opposite his battered cherrywood desk. “Take a load off your feet. Make yourself comfy.”

  Willows said, “We’ve got a possible witness on the Cherry Ngo thing.”

  “No flies on you.”

  Parker said, “Her name’s Elaine Minotti. She and her husband run a greengrocer’s a couple of blocks from where the shooting took place.”

  “The sweet potato, right?”

  “No flies on you, either, Inspector.”

  “She sold the spud to the dude?”

  Parker said, “He bought the tuber on the long-term instalment plan.” Bradley’s eyebrows came together. “Five-finger discount,” Parker explained.

  “Your witness, that’s the lady presently sitting at your desk working her way through the mug books?”

  Willows nodded. “Yeah, that’s her.”

  “Cute.”

  Parker said, “She’s married, Inspector.”

  Bradley flushed. “It was an innocent observation, Claire. I wasn’t going to pounce on the poor woman, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  Willows, stepping into the breach, said, “If she doesn’t come up with anything, we’re going to try an artist’s sketch.”

  “Probably not a bad idea,” said Bradley gruffly. He leaned forward in his chair. The worn burgundy leather creaked like an old man’s bones. He flipped open the lid of the carved cedar box his wife had given him so many years ago. The box had been carved by a Haida Indian, and his wife had given it to him on the courthouse steps only a few minutes after their twenty-three-year marriage was officially declared null and void. She’d always been on his back about his smoking. The cigar box was her way of saying she didn’t care anymore, about his health or anything else.

  Bradley selected a cigar, held it up to his ear and rolled it between his index finger and thumb. It made a pleasant crackling sound. Autumnal. A drift of fallen leaves scurried through his brain. He used his gold-plated clippers on the cigar and fished a wooden kitchen match out of his vest pocket. Parker eyed him warily.

  Bradley said, “That new guy, Stoller. He’s pretty good with a pencil, isn’t he?”

  Willows nodded.

  “I’d always meant to ask Bailey to draw me, but I never got around to it. Don’t get me wrong. I
didn’t want to pose for him. I wanted Bailey to sketch me from memory, or even better, get a cop to describe me to him without saying who I was. It’d be nice to have something like that, frame it and have it on the wall to look at when I retire.”

  Bradley leaned back in his chair. He stuck the cigar in his mouth at a jaunty angle and looked out his tiny window at a fluffy white cloud, the first cloud he’d seen in days. “But now it’s too late. Bailey’s gone.”

  There was an awkward silence. Parker said, “Orwell told me he won a lottery.”

  “Yeah? I heard he came into some money. An uncle died; somebody back East.”

  Willows said, “Why don’t you ask Stoller to draw you?”

  “Don’t know him well enough. Crazy idea, anyhow. If the chief heard about it … ”

  “He’d want one, too,” said Willows.

  “Maybe. How’d Joey take it when you told him his big brother bought the farm?”

  “Bad.”

  “Sure, why not. Who’s next?”

  “Mrs. Minotti identifies the guy who pinched her sweet potato. We pick him up and he confesses, pleads guilty and goes down for life.”

  “Sounds promising. Got a backup plan, just in case that one doesn’t work?”

  Willows said, “Emily Chan’s family, friends. Maybe one of them can point us in the right direction.”

  “What about the restaurant — the people who own it. Talk to them yet?”

  “We don’t even know who they are. The building’s owned by a numbered company. If we can find out who’s behind the numbers, who the owner is, we should be able to get some names out of him.”

  Bradley twirled the wooden match in his fingers as if it was a miniature baton. “Okay, I guess that’s it for now. Stay in touch. If anything develops … ”

  “You’ll be the first to know, Inspector.”

  Mrs. Minotti was still industriously working her way through the first mug book. Parker rested a hand lightly on her shoulder. “Jack and I are going out for a late lunch. Would you like to join us?”