The bartender grinned. “Hell, white’s okay. Just don’t bleed on my floor.” He returned to the bar.
Ralph nursed the rest of his gin. He wanted to finish it and order another, but wanted a clear head more. He wished his revolver weren’t in police lockup. More than that he wished that the next time a hooker found a priest dead in her bed she’d call anybody but him. He watched the cockroach Richard had exiled drag its bashed body back across the table and pull itself laboriously up the side of Ralph’s glass. Its wings were broken and two of its legs weren’t working. Ralph let it get to the rim, then snapped it away with a forefinger and swatted it with his hat when it landed on top of the seat opposite, flattening it. He wasn’t quite so far gone he had started to feel any kinship with bugs.
“Poteet.”
He knocked over the glass, but caught it before any of its contents could spill out. He hadn’t noticed when Carpenter came in from the street and lowered himself into the other seat. He looked gaunter than ever in the same black overcoat buttoned to the neck; not unlike the roach lying in squashed state just behind his head. His ears stuck out slightly and his skin had a yellowish cast. Ralph noticed that his hands were torn and bleeding.
“You ain’t chewed up so bad.” Ralph, seeking nonchalance, picked up his drink and swirled it. A drop flew into his good eye and burned there.
“Pit bulls are overrated. A grown man in good condition can overpower almost any number of them if he keeps his head. Your friend did not, but he’ll be okay. I stayed with him until the ambulance came.”
Ralph rubbed his eye. “I didn’t know you mechanics cared.”
“Mechanic?”
“Let’s cut the crap. How’d you find me?”
“I called all the cab companies and offered a reward to the driver who remembered picking up a fare near Lake Shore Drive at about the time you left the mansion. You shouldn’t have had him drop you off right in front of the place you were staying.”
“I didn’t feel like doing a whole hell of a lot of walking in just one shoe. What’d you do, call every apartment in the building?”
“Fortunately, you answered on my third try.”
Carpenter’s deep tones chilled Ralph; they were like clods of earth striking the lid of a coffin. He drank some gin. “Where’s the grand?”
The gaunt man drew a long envelope from inside his coat, lifted the flap, and showed Ralph the thick sheaf of bills inside. When Ralph reached for it he pulled it back. Ralph subsided into his seat.
“You want to talk, talk,” he said. “Can I get you a drink? I bet it’s cold in Alaska this time of year.”
“I imagine it is. But why should I care?”
“Have it your way, Alvin. Okay if I call you Alvin?”
“Who’s Alvin?”
Everything about the man made Ralph’s balls wither. He fortified himself with another sip, put on his crooked grin. “I said no more crap. I know all about you, Alvin. You’re a file clerk for the Justice Department, and you’re supposed to be in Anchorage. But then a shooter’s gotta be somewhere, and he can’t put down ‘hit man’ on his income tax form.”
“Peter is my Christian name. I’ve never known anyone named Alvin. And I don’t work for the Justice Department.”
“CIA, then. What’s it matter to a hitter who pays his bills or what name’s on the check?”
“I don’t work for the CIA. I’m not connected with the federal government at all.”
“Freelance?”
Carpenter reached inside his coat again. “Richard!” shouted Ralph, and ducked under the table.
Life was peaceful there. He saw that the linoleum was torn and that forty-seven people who chewed gum had used the underside of the table for a parking space.
“Poteet?”
Carpenter’s features upside down were no less unnerving. Ralph had no place to go from there. Cautiously, he crawled out into the open. Andy, in his booth, was finishing his Pepto-Bismol over an article about Mary Tyler Moore. Richard was reading the Free Press classifieds behind the bar. There wasn’t a weapon in sight. Ralph took his seat.
“What was that about?” Carpenter asked.
“I thought you was going for that piece of yours.”
“You mean this?” Carpenter took the automatic out of his pocket.
This time, Ralph stayed under the table until the gaunt man joined him. Squatting, he handed him the gun. Ralph turned it over. It was blue plastic, a water pistol.
“What was you going to do, shove it up my nose and try to drown me?”
“I don’t like guns. As a matter of fact, they frighten me. I only used it before because you’re a hard man to pin down.”
“You’re scared of guns?”
“Terrified.”
“You ought to look for another line of work.”
“I’m not a hit man.”
“What the hell are you?”
“If you’ll sit still a minute I’ll show you.” Again he reached inside his coat. This time he withdrew a brown leather folder and opened it under Ralph’s nose. It contained an impressive-looking card identifying Peter Paul Carpenter as a correspondent for the Washington Post.
Chapter 26
“Where’s Alvin?” Ralph asked after a moment.
“In Alaska, I suppose.” Carpenter put away the folder. “Who gave you that information?”
“A fucking computer.”
Richard came over and squatted on his haunches to look at the pair of men under the table. “What can I get you gents? Gin? Scotch? Mop ’n’ Glo?”
Ralph and Carpenter crawled out and took their seats. “Hit me again,” Ralph said. To Carpenter: “You?”
“I don’t drink.”
“You ain’t no reporter!”
“Hold it down.” Carpenter ordered a Coke. When Richard left: “Are we talking or not? If not, I can use the thousand.”
“Who shot the bishop?” Ralph asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Who strangled Vinnie?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
“Who burned Lyla Dane?”
“I was going—”
Ralph raised the water pistol. “What do you know?”
“I was going to ask you the same thing.”
Their drinks came. Ralph waited until Richard was back behind the bar. “I got to know some things first. I figure I earned it.”
“Shoot.”
“Don’t tempt me.” He put down the water pistol. “I called a phone number I found in the rectory at St. Balthazar. Willard Newton answered. Know who he is?”
“The U.S. attorney general.”
“You’re the first one who got that right.”
“I should hope so. He’s the man the Post is investigating.”
“Investigating for what?”
“I’ll need to hear a lot more from you before I give that up.”
“When he found out I was calling from Detroit he said, ‘Carpenter, I told you never to call me here.’ Which Carpenter’s that, Alvin or Paul?”
“Peter.”
“Who’s Peter?”
“I’m Peter.”
“I thought you was Paul.”
“Paul’s my middle name.”
“I never had one.”
“Isaac,” Carpenter said.
“What?”
“Ralph Isaac Poteet. I looked you up. Why are you ashamed of it?”
“It ain’t the name, it’s the initials.” Ralph drank. “You was working for Willard Newton, not Bishop Steelcase.”
“I’m working for the Washington Post. I’m investigating Willard Newton.”
“Investigating for what?”
“What’s Lyla Dane to you?” Carpenter asked.
“Neighbor. She called me to get Monsignor Breame out of her bed.”
“But not before you took pictures.”
“That was my idea. Hookers got no imagination. You picked up the body for Bishop Steelcas
e, only you ain’t working for him.”
“Right. I’m a reporter.”
“What kind?”
“Investigative.”
“Investigating for what?”
“We did that twice.” Carpenter tapped the edge of his glass with the envelope full of bills. “Where are the pictures?”
“You didn’t buy no pictures. That money’s to talk.”
He flipped the envelope into the center of the table. When Ralph reached for it, Carpenter set his glass on top of it. Ralph sat back again.
“Let’s see what we got,” he said. “You ain’t working for Willard Newton, but he thinks you are. You wasn’t working for the bishop, but he thought you was. That’s why you picked up the body. But you didn’t rig Lyla Dane’s apartment to blow up in her face.”
“Right so far.”
“Who drugged me when I was at the bishop’s, you or Steelcase?”
“I did. At his orders.”
“You went through my pockets and dumped me at Mt. Elliott Cemetery?”
“Yes.”
“You went to toss my apartment, found Vinnie already doing that, and squiffed him?”
“No. That was somebody else.”
“Who?”
“Maybe I should keep this money,” Carpenter said. “I’ve done more for it than you have. Did you really take pictures, or was that a bluff to blackmail the bishop?”
“I took ’em. I ain’t handing ’em over for any lousy grand.”
“Do what you like with them. They’re only of peripheral interest.”
“Okay, I’ll just take my envelope and be on my way.” Ralph held out a hand.
“What’s your hurry?”
“I like to drink and I don’t jog. I figure I got twenty years to live if I don’t get shot first and I sure ain’t fixing to spend them here smelling Richard’s fucking dog.”
“So that’s what that is. I thought the wind was blowing up from Washington.”
“Junior, you sure don’t say much for somebody that’s paying to talk.”
“I’m paying to ask questions, not answer them.” Carpenter sipped his Coke and gazed in Andy’s direction. “Does he look like a government man to you?”
“The vice president, a little. Around the ass.”
“They’re always reading.”
“What’s Absolution?”
Carpenter stared at him. “Where’d you hear about Absolution?”
Ralph felt his grin returning. He sat back and belched juniper.
“Okay. I’m satisfied you’ve something to trade.” The reporter shifted in his seat. “You remember Abscam.”
“That thing where all them Democrats got caught with their hands up some camel jockey’s burnoose.”
“Close enough. In that one, FBI agents posing as Arab nationals induced a number of congressmen to accept bribes for voting their way on trade issues. The transactions were videotaped and used as evidence in court.”
“I got to get me one of them cameras,” Ralph mused.
“Absolution is the code name for a similar Justice Department operation that went sour.”
“What’d they do, run out of sheets?”
“This one was more elaborate, with different targets. The scam involved dressing field agents in clerical robes and placing them in confessionals in Catholic parishes believed to include high-ranking figures in organized crime. The plan was to finesse them into incriminating themselves with the use of hidden surveillance equipment.”
“You made that up.”
“We’re pretty sure Willard Newton did. It was his pet scheme.”
“It wouldn’t hold up in court.”
“That’s why it was abandoned a year ago. Also it was a disaster from a public relations viewpoint, mixing church and state and all. Not to mention the fact that a large percentage of the newer breed of crime bigwigs is Protestant.”
“Royal fuck-up.”
“A democratic one, actually. With a small d.”
“So what’s the beef now?”
“There’s no such thing as a bureaucratic secret. We had an informant whose conscience got the better of him finally. He contacted our Detroit bureau and they relayed the information to Washington.”
“Steelcase?”
“Hardly. We figure he was the one who panicked and called Newton when he got wind of the investigation. I don’t think I’ll tell you the name of our informant just yet.”
Ralph chewed on his swizzle in place of a matchstick. “What’d Newton do?”
“Something he shouldn’t have.”
“Huh.”
“The election’s next month. If Willard Newton is linked with a bonehead illegal operation that cost the taxpayers millions, he stands to do more than lose his job. He’ll take down the present administration and his entire party with him. So he hired a killer to eliminate the informant.”
“You.”
“That’s what he thinks. Government has nothing on the Post, Poteet; we’ve got deep-cover men in some impressive places. Our man in the Justice Department diverted Newton’s requisition to us. I got the job of posing as the killer. I’d rather not say why.”
“It ain’t necessary,” Ralph said.
Carpenter was solemn. “Willard Newton violated the First Amendment rights of every confessor who went into one of those booths looking to unburden his soul to someone he thought was a priest. The pilgrims didn’t come here for that. Speaking less Constitutionally, I had barely begun my investigation when someone murdered Monsignor Breame.”
Ralph had been about to signal Richard for another round. He lowered his hand.
“Breame was our informant,” Carpenter said. “You didn’t really think he died humping some cheap prostitute, did you?”
Ralph said, “A guy’d have to be pretty low to think a thing like that.”
Chapter 27
Richard brought over Ralph’s third gin. “Last call, gentlemans. I got to close up and take Coleman out for a crap.”
“He won’t be able to,” Ralph said. “He used up all his gas in here.”
Carpenter said, “Nothing for me, thanks.”
Richard regarded him. “You feeling okay, mister?”
“I’m fine. Why?”
“Ralph says you got AIDS.”
“I didn’t neither. You never listen. I said he looked like he had it.”
“I have an overactive metabolism.” Carpenter waited until they were alone again. “Monsignor Breame had a heart condition, hardly unusual in a man with his weight problem. An overdose of digitalis would have brought on a very convincing coronary.”
“You saying Lyla offed him?” Ralph was incredulous.
“She certainly had opportunity.”
“How come the frame? They could of slipped him the mickey in the rectory or anyplace else. Why raise a stink?” Behind the bar, Coleman chose that unfortunate moment to raise one of his own.
“Our religion editor did some digging. The Vatican was developing an interest in the Detroit archdiocese. Maybe Breame made more than one telephone call. In any case, killing the monsignor and fixing things to look like he died in the saddle would be one way of forestalling a papal investigation. They might even aid in the cover-up.”
“There’s no way Lyla done it. She called me to get him out of her bed.”
“Probably she lost her nerve. That kind of situation brings down a lot of heat on a working girl. So when you called the bishop and told him about Breame, he had no choice but to behave as expected and arrange for the body to be spirited away. It would also explain why an attempt was made on her life the same morning.”
“I thought the blast was for me.”
“No, whoever wrote the scenario would have known the prostitute they had cast lived alone. What happened to her was her payment for upsetting the applecart.”
“Jesus, that’s a relief.”
“Why? You’re the next logical target.”
“Yeah, but I got pictures.”
> Carpenter smiled. The expression transformed his cadaverous features like a bubble in a bottle of formaldehyde. “You’re forgetting that they want the apparent circumstances of Monsignor Breame’s death to come out.”
“Oh, yeah.” Ralph’s pleasant buzz began to recede. “So who’s the killer?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Hey, I thought it was you.”
“He’s good, whoever he is. Assuming we’re dealing with only one, which let’s hope, his methods range from induced heart attack to arson to strangling to shooting. You don’t see too many general practitioners at that level.”
“That’s good to know. I wouldn’t want to be squiffed by no amateur. Ain’t you got files?”
Carpenter nodded. “Impressive ones, too. If he’s a corrupt public official as well as a hit man, he’s in there.”
“You’re saying you got nothing?”
“If we had anything, do you think I’d be here?”
Ralph drank. He was beginning to lose his faith in the restorative properties of inexpensive alcohol. “What do we do?”
“What do you mean we, paleface?”
“Hey, you need me.”
“For what? You obviously know less than I do. But that’s the risk I took when I proposed this meeting. Here.” He picked up the envelope full of bills and flipped it at Ralph. “If I were you I’d invest in an airline ticket. Say hello to Alvin when you get to Anchorage.” He started to rise. Ralph caught his sleeve.
“Okay, you got the pictures.”
Carpenter sat back. “Where are they?”
“With a friend.”
“That would be Neal English.” The formaldehyde formed another bubble. “I said I looked you up.”
“What makes you think it ain’t some other friend?”
“You have no other friends. Even Neal English is stretching the term. How soon can you get them?”
“As soon as I get back from his place.”
“Fine. I’ll hold this until then.” Carpenter snatched the envelope out of his hand. Ralph made a noise as if his liver had been extracted.
“What do I get when you got the pictures? I already earned the grand by showing up here.”
“We can arrange protection.”
“What, some cheesy bodyguard?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of using our influence with the local police to hold you as a material witness.”
Peeper Page 15
