Castle Danger--Woman on Ice

by Anthony Neil Smith

  “Fuck you. Get out of my bar.” He reached beneath the bar and picked up a canoe paddle, cut in two. He slapped it on the bar, which sent the rest of the lollygaggers out the door.

  With one hand, I pushed my glass closer to him. With the other, I reached into my jacket pocket, pulled out the back-up flash drive, and set it beside the tumbler.

  “What’s that?”, he asked.

  “That’s everything. I know it all. I know everything Hannah knew. And if you don’t get Paula down here soon, all I’ve got to do is text one word to do exactly what Hannah was going to do. Front page news, y’all.”

  He was breathing hard, pulling his bottom lip between his teeth and staring unholy daggers at me.

  When none of his hardman antics made me back down, he dropped the paddle to the floor—

  Clack!

  —and reached into his ass-pocket, pulled out a phone, and started texting.

  “By the way, next time, you should order Canadian. Those are the ones you like most.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Mm hm.”

  I coughed, got to enjoy the last two shots a second time. Smacked my lips trying to scrape the taste out of my mouth. “Maybe I should quit drinking.”

  I waited longer than I expected, fifteen going on twenty going on an hour. Word must’ve spread, because hardly a soul came into the bar, and the few who did had a quiet word with the barkeeper before heading out again.

  I gulped down three pints of ice water, three doses of pain reliever, and ate six jumbo olives trying to put out the fire in my stomach and the seasickness in my head. I also texted Bingo to Marcia, an hour later than they had expected, hence the rapid-fire series of ever more angry and then worried texts. I gave her the address and kept waiting, still ignored by the remaining patrons, most waiting for a free show, I supposed. An evil eye now and then, but otherwise, silence.

  Then he finally came in. Titus. The same haircut, the same overcoat. He was alone. I didn’t like it.

  I shouted to him, “No, you stay the hell away from me.”

  He stopped. Hands out by his side, palms forward. “Jesus, you?”

  “Get Paula here, now. I’m not kidding. And you can stay the unholy fuck away from me.”

  He turned to the bar. “Just call the cops, Sheridan. They’re looking for him anyway. This is ridiculous.” He started to leave.

  Sheridan said, “This one knows it all. Has some flash drive.”

  “He doesn’t know when to stay the fuck out of other people’s business.”

  “She,” I said. “Get it right, you piece of shit.”

  Titus sighed. “Goddamn. She. You. Whatever you are, we’ve already got it covered. Go ahead and tell anyone you want about Hans Marquette. It’ll all sound like conspiracy theory bullshit, completely unprovable. I’m out of here.”

  No, no, no, I couldn’t let him walk away. I had to see Paula. She was the only one who could help fill in the blanks. I needed to shock him, in front of all these people — if he knew the bartender, he probably knew the others, too.

  And he knew more than me. Sheridan knew more than me. Everybody seemed to know at least something. They were just waiting for the right key to turn up and click open the lock.

  Conspiracy? I’ll give them conspiracy.

  “The Chief knows.”

  That stopped him.

  I kept on, “We had a heart-to-heart, me and the Chief. So I’ve already been warned that I know too much. Do you want to risk it?”

  Titus turned, started towards me, but stopped ten feet away. “That’s crazy.”

  “Is it?”

  “You’d be … gone … by now, if that was the case. Everyone else understands what’s at stake here, everyone except you, so no, you didn’t talk to the Chief. If you’d talked to him, you wouldn’t be standing here dressed up like … her.”

  Did I hear him right? Did Titus say “him,” as in “him” equals ‘Chief’? Not ‘her’?

  Don’t stumble.

  I said, “Maybe. But then again, there are a lot of doubting Thomases I need to see before ascending.”

  “No fucking way you’re talking to Paula. Get out of here. Go back to the woods.”

  “You don’t fancy girls like me the way your father does. But if I’d made a move on you as a man, do you think you would’ve taken me out back of the barn for my punishment regardless?”

  “Shut up.”

  I needed more time. I needed to figure out the connection. The Chief. My old Chief. Not Bosack, but Neudecker, the one who gave Joel his job. The one who was friends with Joel’s father. Retired. Up at his lake house to see the ice crack.

  “I didn’t let him know that I knew …” Stepping out on the ice myself right then. Not sure if it would hold. “I didn’t let him know that I knew he had killed her.”

  Titus shook his head. “Well, there you go. You never know when to stop.”

  He flipped his hair back and started towards me, but no, not again. Never again.

  I pulled Robin’s revolver from my coat pocket. My left hand had been wrapped around it the entire time he spoke. Now it was out, and it froze him in place.

  First thing that bubbled up in my memory, Rocky Horror: “You’re a hot dog, Titus, but you’d better not try to hurt me.”

  He looked confused. Maybe not as much of a film fan as he let on.

  Then the voice behind me, a thick sigh giving way to, “I think she’s shown us her cards, Titus. It’s a flush.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. “A royal flush.”

  How she’d sneaked past me, I couldn’t imagine. When the bar patrons scattered, had she been one of them?

  On the old stairs to the basement, delicately clasping a black steel handrail, stood Paula.

  She’d changed her hair, now a boy cut, as white as my wig but with dark streaks throughout. Her make-up, too, gave her a ghostly appearance, her lips tinged blue. Even better at looking like a dead chick than me.

  Paula looked past me, at the stragglers drinking by the bar, riveted to the standoff between Titus and me. She waved me over. “Let’s talk. Down here.”

  I waved my gun at Titus. “Not with him, though. Never again.”

  “He’s harmless.”

  Harmless. I remembered him watching after he’d led me to so much pain. He’d been smoking a cigarette, surprised but bemused with it, like he was watching someone practice parking in an empty lot and that someone still managed to smash into the only other car. Repeatedly.

  “He stays up here.”

  Paula stood silent for a moment, but then nodded past me. Titus said, “No.” But another nod sent him back to the bar, slapping his palm on it over and over.

  I followed Paula into the darkness.

  We stood at the bottom of the stairs, everything painted black. Whether we were in a hallway, a cavernous space, or a dungeon, I couldn’t tell you. She held onto the rail. I stood on the bottom step.

  “Look at you.” She reached up to my hair, twirled some in her fingers. “She was taller, older, but, yes, you pull it off nicely, dear.”

  “You used me.”

  “Of course I did. But admit it, you used me, too. Titus used me, you used me, I used you, used, used, used. It’s no use. We’re all used by someone at some point.”

  “Let’s cut the moral relativism. You didn’t seek me out on your own. Titus told you where to find me.”

  “Go on, if you’re going to do this.”

  “You wanted the evidence for yourselves.” Thought for a moment. Why? Always have to figure out the why. “Blackmail. The Marquettes?”

  She crossed her arms tight. “No. To keep us all — all — safe. The Marquettes are not our enemy. Might be hard to believe, but Andrew Marquette is still the only one we can rely on. Or could, if we could only talk to him. But as long as we don’t have some sort of proof for our accusation that we know who murdered Hannah, we’re trapped. Raske would never move a finger. He’s much too scared for his Club. But everyone is
after this goddamned information, so it has to be important, it just has to be the key. But without Andrew’s protection we can’t confront the one who did it. He has too much against us, against the Club.”

  “It’s not about money? Power?”

  “It’s about our everyday lives, sweetie. The biggest prize of all.”

  I lowered my eyes. She was way off. I’d had no idea. “I don’t see how any of the information on the flash drive could help you, if the Marquettes really aren’t your enemy. Because there’s nothing on it that could point into another direction than theirs.”

  “Maybe you just didn’t see it because you didn’t know what you were looking for. Why else would Hannah tell me to get it? But I needed help to find it, and Titus told me about some lovely little cop digging around. Asking questions about Hannah, oblivious to what we already knew.” She gave me a patronizing sigh. “It was clear that you weren’t on their side, and that you were the only chance for help I had. When the police started to rummage around her house, I knew for sure that there had to be something, and that I’m not the only one who knows.”

  “What’s their side, anyway? Who are they, if not the Marquettes? The Club? I spoke to Raske and he said—”

  “Stop right there.” She shook her head, couldn’t look me in the eyes. “No, Daniel was furious, of course. But he’d never harm her. Hannah argued with everyone. With Daniel, with her brother, with me. We all understood her troubles, but it was still important to prevent her from doing something stupid. Like go public and drag us all down with her. Titus and I supported her claim, just told her to be patient, while Daniel told her to enjoy her double life the best she could. But this new information she found out about her past, her family … it changed her. She never told me what it was. I had the feeling I was losing her. And at long last, she went to someone else for help, and had no idea … just no idea. She thought they were in love. She thought she could trust him.”

  Click.

  “The Chief. He knew, didn’t he?””

  A sad grin. Paula looked at the floor. “Sure he did, yes. Hannah and Chief Neudecker struck up a friendship. A relationship. Yes, the Chief was a member of the Club.”

  “Oh, man.”

  “No, woman. Hannah thought she knew exactly what she was doing, but I wasn’t so sure. She was worried that her family might take measures to keep her quiet, but she never told me what it was all about. To protect me, she said, just in case. But a Chief doesn’t need protection, right? A Chief is there to protect others. Or so she thought. She didn’t think her family would hurt her, not physically. But still, she was afraid.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Remember, these people learned from the most powerful political families in the country. The Rockefellers, the Carnegies, the Bushes … No second chances. Hannah needed a good insurance policy. And she thought the Chief would be just that. But obviously something went horribly wrong after she told him about her plans to come out. About this big secret she had revealed. Maybe he feared being outed as well? Must have done, because she saw him the night before she … before you found her. She was so optimistic, euphoric even.”

  “But she picked the worst policy possible.”

  Paula nodded and looked up again. Took a strand of my wig in her fingers and twirled it, her mind miles away.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be love. It was supposed to be a little bit of fun for him, some exotic experiment, but he’d fallen for her, and he had the power to keep this a secret for as long as it suited them, or him, I suppose. He helped Hannah buy that cottage, you know. It’s part of the same lodge as his own. The Chief didn’t care about fishing as much as he let on.”

  I thought about Joel’s story, what he’d told me on the drive down, about the Chief giving him a brutal dressing down on Skype, but still allowing him a free pass. “It was him. Had to be. And he doesn’t want anybody to mess around with this case.”

  And the BCA. How could the BCA be in on it? All of them. They didn’t give a shit about the politics, but they weren’t going to let a fellow policeman be scandalized … or blackmailed. Would they have killed for that? Or covered up a murder?

  “Okay, so Hannah was afraid to come out, but wanted it badly at the same time. She was angry and maybe rushed things, so you tried to calm her down, because there was the larger picture to consider, keeping Andrew on the high road, keeping the Club safe. Therefore, she sought help from the Chief and, like you feared, that got her killed. And like you feared, the Chief now needs the evidence to hide his own secret affair with Hannah. But what do you need it for?”

  Paula sagged, reaching for the handrail as if exhausted. “Don’t you see? The greater good. The Club.”

  I let that hang between us. A life for a Club? It sounded heartless, but no. Others had sacrificed Hannah, and there was nothing Paula could do about that, but she could still fight for the Club, for people like her, people like … us. “We can help you, Joel and I. We’ve got most of the evidence. You’ve got the rest, the things we did not see because we didn’t know what we had to look for. We can do this.”

  She shook her head. “Do what? Go to the police? They want the evidence! Go to the news? Then there would be zero chance to hold Andrew in his position. It would be a media circus.” She followed me up the stairs, one slow step at a time. “What do you do with what you know, darling? What can you do?”

  “Idiot.” A dark voice from above. I almost tripped on the next step, glancing up. Titus was standing in the open door, backlit and menacing, watching me with angry eyes. Then he took one step down.

  I was trapped. All the ‘witnesses’ at the bar would tell whatever story these two fed them. I turned to Paula for help, but she was looking away.

  “I’m sorry, Manny. There’s too much at stake.”

  I craned my neck back up towards the light. “I’m not a threat, Titus. I can help. You’ve just got to—”

  “The only way you can help us is to shut your fucking mouth already. Don’t you get it? Hannah walking around Minneapolis is not the answer! We can’t help you, you can’t help us. All we can do is keep you quiet.”

  The stairwell was tight, Robin’s revolver was back in my pocket, and both of them would be able to grab me before I could pull it out.

  And if they grabbed me, I could only imagine I would end up like Hannah — another transsexual popsicle …

  8

  I fired Robin’s revolver through my pocket. My hand burned — sparks and residue.

  Ric-

  o-

  chet!

  Panic! I didn’t want to …

  I didn’t mean to …

  It was an accident …

  It missed Paula, but she flinched and covered her head and went wobbly on her heels and down she went. Her head cracked against the wall

  “NO!” From Titus. I spun and shot again and that one

  Ric-

  o-

  cheted

  off the wall while he ducked and covered and it gave me just enough room to jump over him and head back up to the bar.

  Titus grabbed my ankle. I went down hard — knees and ribs.

  He shouted something, but my ears were ringing. The narrow stairwell seemed to be throbbing with echo. Fingernails cut through my fishnets, into my skin.

  Paula shouted up, barely audible over the waves of white noise. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just, hold her!”

  I freed my other foot from underneath and kicked him in the face until he let go and slid down the remaining stairs, colliding with Paula.

  I had never wanted to hurt her.

  But, Goddamn it, I was tired of people hurting me with impunity.

  I wasn’t sticking around to say I was sorry.

  Up the stairs and halfway through the bar to the front door, while the walls thrummed, Paula wailed, and Titus shouted himself raw. The patrons were on their feet, frozen. Sheridan was on the phone, high-pitched and strained. Cops? Ambulance? A gang of vigilantes? I didn’t listen,
couldn’t trust my hearing anyway. I hit the front door, the shock of the icy wind taking my breath away, but still I ran. Needed to put major distance between myself and that crime scene. Fuck it, that scene.

  I ran like a sharpshooter was after me, ran around a corner and BANG, ran out of road. Right there at the first crosswalk, a car blocking my path. A silver Charger, unmarked, but it screamed squad car. The driver’s window slid down. “Hey, you, come here!”

  “Nope, gotta run. Bye!”

  “Hey!”

  A cop with a buzz cut climbed out of the passenger side, headed to cut me off. But he hadn’t pulled his gun. Robin’s was still in my pocket, hot from the two shots, two holes in my brand-new leather coat. He corralled me without touching me, and I was too out of breath to keep running away. Too cold to process.

  He opened the back door of the Charger for me, but I stepped away. “Listen—”

  The parking lights went on, and a bigger, mustachioed cop stepped out. I didn’t know their names yet, but let’s make it simple — that right there was my first meeting with Engebretsen, the driver, and Haupt, the military man. A pair of detectives worth their weight in gold.

  Remember those guys? The two who would later take me in after I shot Joel? The ones who would question me until they realized Joel’s body had disappeared?

  But first things first.

  Engebretsen asked, “What happened in there? Jesus Christ! Are you okay?”

  I waved them off, still backing away. They didn’t come after, still didn’t pull their guns.

  I said, “It’s just a bad night. I made some shitty choices. I’ll be fine.”

  They turned to each other over the top of the Charger, that telepathic link cops had with longtime partners, the one that was just getting tuned in when Joel and I were suspended.

  “You were the one they came to meet?”

  Well … fuck. How did they know? How far behind was I?

  “Sorry? What? I’m really out of breath here.”

  “The guy, Titus Raske? And the ‘woman’” — believe me, he said it in quotes — “who calls herself Paula Livingston?”