by Roy Chaney
Hagen crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray. He picked up Ronnie’s two Delsey suitcases, set them on the couch, and went to work searching them one more time. This time he’d be thorough. If there was something here to find—a shipping receipt, a key to a storage locker or a safety-deposit box, a piece of paper with a name or a phone number on it—he’d find it this time. Hagen searched all the zippered compartments, pulled out all the clothing, checked the pockets of shirts and pants. He sliced open the lining of the suitcases, looking for something hidden underneath. He pulled out the can of shaving cream from the leather toiletries bag and inspected it carefully, looking for a way to unscrew the top or bottom. The can hid nothing—it was an entirely ordinary can of shaving cream. The handle of the razor didn’t unscrew to reveal a hidden compartment either. He tore out the inside soles of a pair of tennis shoes. He cut the stitching out of a brown leather belt and pulled the belt apart. Finally he gave up. There was nothing here. The suitcases were exactly what they appeared to be—two anonymous suitcases containing clothing and a toiletries bag.
Had whoever killed Gubbs taken the wooden hand? It was a reasonable conclusion. But if Gubbs had the hand all along, why didn’t he sell it to Winnie the Poof? Perhaps Gubbs didn’t have the hand, but someone thought he did—and that was why he was killed.
Hagen decided he could use another bourbon and soda. He called down to room service and ordered one, then sat back on the couch. Hands clasped behind his head. Staring at the ceiling. What would he have done? If he’d arrived in town with something valuable, something that he wanted to keep in a safe place, something that he knew certain people might want to take from him forcibly, how would he have proceeded? He might have done any number of things. But there was one obvious answer that presented itself. He would have gone to the one person he trusted in town—the Sniff—and left that item with him until Hagen needed it.
But Ronnie hadn’t been as close to the Sniff as Hagen was.
He’d been much closer to Harry Needles.
And that was where Ronnie had gone his first night in town—to Harry Needles’s place.
But if Ronnie had left something valuable with Harry Needles, why hadn’t Harry mentioned it to Hagen? Easy enough. If Harry Needles knew that it was valuable up front, he might want to keep it for himself and sell it. Ronnie was dead. Harry Needles had no obligation to turn it over to anyone else. After all, it was stolen property—presumably. And if no one else knew that Harry had it, Harry wasn’t taking a risk by keeping it.
Hagen wasn’t convinced that his reasoning was correct, but he had no other direction to go in. He’d go back to the Venus Lounge and have another talk with Harry Needles.
And while he was there maybe he could talk with Theresa Sanchez again.
He stepped into the bathroom, took off the holstered automatic, hung the rig on the hook behind the bathroom door, ran cold water into the sink. He cupped the cool water in his hands and pressed it against his face, ran it through his hair. The cool water helped to revive him. The second bourbon and soda would help even more.
When he heard the knock Hagen walked to the door, drying his face with a heavy bath towel.
It wasn’t room service.
Standing in the hallway were two men. One of them heavyset and middle-aged, wearing a blue blazer. The other one thinner and younger, with a beard and an olive green suit. Without a word the heavyset man stepped forward, tried to push his way into the room. Hagen threw a punch at him that clipped the man’s jaw and sent him stumbling backward. The second man rushed forward and pushed Hagen back into the room. Hagen slugged him. The man doubled over, both hands on his stomach, mouth open but no sound coming out. Behind him the heavyset man was pulling a nickel-plated revolver out from under his coat. He braced his legs. Raised the revolver. Pointed it at Hagen.
He said one word. “Police.”
Hagen slowly raised his hands.
The bearded man found his breath and straightened up. He walked up to Hagen and slugged him in the stomach in return. “See how you like it, asshole,” the man said as Hagen doubled over, gasping. Then for good measure, the man’s knee came up and hit Hagen in the forehead and Hagen fell backwards onto the floor.
They were detectives.
Las Vegas Metro.
The heavyset detective flashed his gold Metro badge while the bearded detective pulled Hagen’s arms behind his back, slapped cold steel handcuffs on his wrists, none too gently. What was he under arrest for, Hagen wanted to know. He wasn’t under arrest, the heavyset detective said, rubbing his jaw with his hand. The detectives only wanted to talk to him. Down at the station. The handcuffs were simply to keep his hands were they ought to be. But of course, if Hagen would feel more comfortable under arrest, the detectives would be happy to oblige. Assaulting a police officer might do for a start.
“You didn’t identify yourselves when I answered the door,” Hagen said.
“Didn’t we?” the bearded detective said. “That’s not what I remember. What do you remember, Bill?”
“I’m sure we did, Arnie.”
“I’m sure we did too.”
“You have any identification?” the heavyset detective said. His face was egg-shaped, like his body. His nose was wide and flat.
Hagen nodded at his coat, draped over the chair beside the bed. The heavyset detective removed the passport from the inside pocket, studied the photograph, then slid the passport into his own coat pocket.
“We’d like to talk to you about a friend of yours,” the heavyset detective said. “Jack Gubbs. You know him, don’t you?”
“I’ve met him.”
“That’s good,” the bearded detective said. “Isn’t that good, Bill?”
“That’s good,” the heavyset detective said.
“He’s no friend of mine,” Hagen said.
“We’ve heard that,” the bearded detective said.
“What kind of trouble is he in?”
The heavyset detective—“That’s what we want to talk about.”
“I want to talk to McGrath.”
“Who’s McGrath?”
“You know who he is.”
“You’ll have to settle for us.”
“He works out of the southwest station. Call him.”
“We’re going to the downtown station. We don’t need to call anybody.”
“Then I want a lawyer.”
The heavyset detective shrugged. “Sure. Call a lawyer. You call a lawyer, we’ll have to charge you with assaulting a police officer. You still want a lawyer?”
They left the hotel room, a detective on either side of Hagen, their arms locked under his. Hagen’s thoughts raced around sharp corners. Hagen had found Gubbs’s body two hours ago. Now he was being picked up for questioning by the police. That was fast work. Had someone seen him at the apartment house? Someone who knew who he was? Hagen wondered if his luck had gone cold. Stone-cold. Like Jack Gubbs.
At the downtown station the two detectives led Hagen into a small room with white walls and a single narrow window covered by venetian blinds. A table and four gray metal chairs sat in the center of the room. The sun shining through the half-open blinds cast long parallel shadows across the table.
The bearded detective removed the handcuffs, twisting them hard one way and then another as he did so, the metal edges of the cuffs digging into Hagen’s wrists. Then the bearded detective left the room and the heavyset detective motioned Hagen toward one of the metal folding chairs.
Hagen sat down. The detective remained standing as he examined Hagen’s passport. The meager strands of hair that the detective combed over the top of his shiny scalp looked solid and crusty, as though he dipped them in model airplane glue every morning to keep them in place.
“What do you do for a living, Mister Hagen?”
“Unemployed.”
“Unemployed what?”
“Unemployed nothing.”
“My name’s Coyne, by the way.”
“Who’s your partner?”
The bearded detective’s name was Mansfield and presently he returned, carrying a yellow legal-sized note pad, two ballpoint pens, and a police file. Both detectives took off their coats and rolled up their shirtsleeves before sitting down at the table. The heavyset detective carried his revolver in a worn leather shoulder holster. The bearded one carried an automatic in a side holster fitted into the waistband of his pants. Hagen’s Heckler & Koch was still hanging in his shoulder holster from the hook on the bathroom door of the hotel room. That was a lucky break for him. These two detectives would have been quite happy to confiscate his pistol if they’d found it on him.
Coyne handed Hagen’s passport to Mansfield. Mansfield looked the passport over closely, wrote something on the legal pad. Then Mansfield set the passport on the table and slid the police file across the table to Coyne. Coyne opened it, flipped through the pages.
“Ronald Hagen was your brother?” Coyne said, looking up from the file.
“That’s right.” The file in front of Coyne looked like the same investigation file that McGrath had shown Hagen after Ronnie’s funeral.
“Your brother is deceased?”
“Look, you two can save yourself a lot of time by calling McGrath. McGrath knows me. He showed me that file you’re reading two days ago.”
The two detectives weren’t interested in Hagen’s conversation with McGrath.
Coyne did most of the talking. Mansfield made notes on his yellow pad when he wasn’t giving Hagen a menacing stare. Mansfield’s beard was neatly trimmed but his short brown hair was pushed back off his forehead in every which direction. He looked too young to be a detective. Must’ve had a relative high up in the department, Hagen thought.
It was several minutes before they got around to the subject of Jack Gubbs.
Coyne said, “Have you seen Gubbs since you got into town?”
“I saw him the day before yesterday.”
“When?”
“In the evening. I went to his apartment.”
Mansfield looked up sharply from his note pad. “What time was that?”
“Maybe six o’clock.”
“Maybe?”
“I’m not sure.”
“You have a watch?”
“I have a watch. I don’t stare at it all day.”
Coyne said, “Why did you go see Gubbs?”
“He was a friend of my brother’s. My brother stayed with Gubbs for a couple of nights when he got into town last week.”
“Is that what Gubbs told you?”
“That’s what he told me.”
Mansfield tapped his ballpoint pen on the note pad. “Which two nights?”
“Monday and Tuesday.”
Coyne said, “What else did Gubbs tell you?”
“Not much. My brother rented his own place last Wednesday and moved out of Gubbs’s apartment. Gubbs didn’t see him much while he was staying at the apartment and he didn’t see my brother at all after he moved out.”
“Is that the only time you’ve seen Gubbs?”
“I saw him again last night, at a strip club called the Venus Lounge. I ran into him there while I was visiting a friend.”
“What kind of friends do you have at the Venus Lounge?”
“The usual kind.”
Mansfield said, “Answer the question.”
Coyne gave Hagen a patient smile. “There’s all kinds of friends.”
“An old family friend. Harry Needles. He owns the place.”
“Gubbs just happened to be there?”
“He showed up while I was there. He knows Harry Needles too.”
Mansfield said, “What time was that?”
Hagen told him. Mansfield jotted it down on the note pad.
Coyne said, “What did you and Gubbs talk about last night?”
“Nothing much. Shooting the breeze. Like I said, I just ran into him there.” Hagen wasn’t going to mention Winnie the Poof. And he wasn’t going to mention the wooden hand. It was a risk, not telling the detectives the whole truth, but if they were going to trap him in a lie they’d have to know the truth already. Hagen didn’t believe they knew the truth or much of it. No, these two were on a fishing expedition. Hagen decided to roll with this and trust his wits. He wasn’t under arrest. He hadn’t been read his rights.
Coyne said, “When did you see Gubbs next?”
“I haven’t seen him since.”
“Bullshit,” Mansfield said.
A puzzled look crossed Coyne’s face. “You saw him today, didn’t you, Mister Hagen? You saw him this morning.”
“I haven’t seen him today. What’s he done?”
Mansfield slammed his fist down on the table and shot up from his chair, his face turning red with anger. Coyne raised his hand for calm and Mansfield sat back down. Were these two detectives trying to work a good cop, bad cop routine? The thought made Hagen smile.
Coyne said in quiet voice, “Why don’t you tell us what you did this morning and this afternoon, up to the time we visited you at your hotel room.”
Hagen told the two detectives he’d taken a drive out to Hoover Dam to see the place where his brother was murdered. Then he drove back to town, bought something to eat, returned to the hotel. The lie about driving out to Hoover Dam was a safe lie. There was no one who could deny the truth of it except Winnie the Poof.
Unless Hagen had been followed that morning.
Coyne asked more questions and Mansfield wrote down Hagen’s answers on the pad of paper, sometimes pausing to underline certain passages, circle something, draw an arrow pointing back to something else, write a question mark in the margin. Mansfield kept throwing angry looks at Coyne, as though incensed at just about everything Hagen was telling them, but Coyne never raised his voice, never pushed too hard on Hagen’s story.
When Hagen finished giving him the details of his morning’s activities Coyne went back to the beginning, to the point where Hagen arrived in Las Vegas. Hagen told them the truth about his visits to McGrath and the Sniff, Marty Ray and Harry Needles and Gubbs, about meeting Theresa Sanchez and driving her home after work. It was only the details that he left out, details that these two detectives couldn’t possibly know—the Sniff telling him that Ronnie was looking for a fence, the rumor that Ronnie was involved in Jimmy Ray’s murder five years ago, the dead man’s hand. Hagen didn’t mention Suzanne Cosette and Dallas Martinez, or the Englishman and the German who’d followed him, might still be following him. Mansfield tried once or twice to trip Hagen up in his own story, but Mansfield didn’t have any luck.
After they had gone through the story twice, Coyne folded his arms across his chest and sat back in his chair. “Bodo, we’re not getting to the crucial point.”
“Tell me what the crucial point is. If I’ve got anything to say about it, I’ll let you know. I’m always happy to discuss crucial points with officers of the law.”
“You’re scared, Bodo,” Coyne said. “And if you’re not, you should be. We know that after you saw Gubbs at the Venus Lounge last night, you saw him again, early this morning, at his apartment. Which brings us to the crucial point—you shot Jack Gubbs. You killed him. Because you believe he murdered your brother.”
“Gubbs is dead?”
“You know he is.”
“I have no recollection of that crucial point.”
“It’s a fact, nonetheless.”
“If it’s a fact, it’s one I can’t help you with.”
Coyne’s expression was benevolent now. “Maybe you didn’t mean to shoot him. Maybe it was an accident. We understand that, Bodo. The law isn’t blind to that. But it’ll be better for you if you tell us now. Manslaughter will get you eight years, maybe less. Murder one—that’s a harder nut to crack.”
Hagen shook his head, smiled. “You two have had your fun. I think I’ll talk to McGrath now. Maybe he can make some sense out of this. You two aren’t making any sense.”
Mansfield slammed his pen down on the
table and stood up again, his eyes boring into Hagen’s.
“You’ve been lying to us from the start,” Mansfield said. He kicked his chair back, then stepped around the side of the table, speaking through clenched teeth and keeping his eyes on Hagen, coming up on Hagen like a growling junkyard dog. Mansfield was trying hard—too hard. Coyne sat back with a bemused expression on his face, watching his partner, then turning to look at Hagen, like a man waiting for a contest to begin. And that’s what this was, Hagen knew. A contest. A game.
Hagen sat there, waited.
Mansfield leaned down, one hand flat on the table, his face so close that Hagen could feel his hot breath. “Your shit is most definitely weak, Hagen. You’re twisting in the wind. You were at Gubbs’s place this morning. Start filling in the blanks.” Mansfield grabbed the front of Hagen’s shirt, pressed his fist hard into Hagen’s throat. “What do you want—manslaughter or murder one?”
Hagen’s answer wasn’t long in coming.
Hagen reached up, grabbed the young detective by the hair on the back of his head and slammed his face down onto the surface of the table. Then Hagen was out of his chair and on his feet. Before Mansfield could react Hagen pulled him away from the table and threw the detective against the wall. Mansfield hit the wall hard, stumbled to one side. A thin trail of blood ran out of one nostril and down into the young detective’s beard.
When Hagen turned around Coyne was standing. His legs braced, his police revolver pointed at Hagen.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Coyne said. “You really shouldn’t have done that.”
Mansfield spat and cursed while he slapped the handcuffs on Hagen’s wrists once again.
The two detectives dragged Hagen out of the interrogation room. They pushed him down a long white hallway, Mansfield pressing Hagen’s arms up behind his back so hard that the muscles in Hagen’s shoulders felt like they were stretched to the tearing point. They led Hagen to a small holding cell and threw him inside. While Coyne stood guard outside Mansfield punched Hagen in the face. The force of the blow sent Hagen reeling. He tried to stay on his feet but with his hands locked together behind him he lost his balance and fell to the floor. Mansfield gave him a solid kick to the small of the back before slamming the door of the holding cell closed behind him.
