Contract Killer

by Richard Hoyt

  “Oh, boy!” I said. What Willis said was true. I wasn’t any different from Hartwig. Melinda had blinked those browns at me, all innocence, and I’d believed her every word. Almost.

  Richard Willis drove me back to my car, running two red lights on the way. Lucky he was a cop. He’d never have passed a breathalyzer test.

  21 – OMISSION

  The angry cop, Richard Willis, had really laid it on me, no doubt about that. Doug Egan, concerned that the Cowlitz Indians might get treaty rights to salmon entering the Columbia River, befriends a clerk who is drafting an opinion for District Judge Moby Rappaport in the matter of Cowlitz vs. The State of Washington. Egan is suspected of judicial tampering. The clerk, apparently courted by Melinda Prettybird, goes to bed with her and is beaten up for his troubles. The court sees sufficient reason for the police to place a listening device in Melinda’s apartment. Conclusion:

  Melinda Prettybird was no doubt herself under investigation for judicial tampering.

  Neither Willie Prettybird nor his sister Melinda told me that one of the men who had been beaten up was Rappaport’s clerk. He was not the second or third man beaten up; he was the first. Were two men, captives of their hormones and Melinda Prettybird’s brown eyes, casually thumped on to provide a cover for the first beating? Who beat up on the men? Rodney Prettybird? Willie? Had my darts partner looked me square in the face and lied to me? Was Willie trying to set himself up with some kind of alibi or cover by asking me to investigate his sister’s problems?

  Rappaport was missing, presumed by the police to be the butchered, frozen corpse being rationed out in Pioneer Place for the agitation of the city.

  Both the Prettybirds and Foxx Jensen had been trying to buy Jim Davis’s SalPaclnc fish cannery.

  Was my trip to SalPaclnc with Augustus Poorman some kind of nutty coincidence? I didn’t think so. Why me? Why hadn’t Willie said anything about the SalPaclnc bid? Something was going to happen as a result of my trip to the coast.

  I wondered if I’d wind up losing my taste for salmon. Just what the hell was going to happen to me next?

  It was time to confer with Janine Hallen again. Before anything else, I had to talk to her.

  I met Janine in Callahan’s, a loud, noisy bar and restaurant just north of the Kingdome, where you can have a conversation without pretending you’re in a library or an Englishman’s club.

  Janine chucked her first drink down faster than Richard Willis, which belied her shy appearance. “You want to tell me what you found, Mr. Denson?”

  I looked at her over the edge of my gin and sucked the juice out of the pickled cocktail onion. “I’ll tell you some of what I found. Maybe everything. It depends.”

  “On what?”

  “You lawyers can go into court and defend a woman you know to be a murderer or a man you know to be a rapist, and you justify it on the grounds that everybody needs a good defense. I don’t operate that way. I don’t work for people I know are crooks. There are investigators who will do that. I won’t. That includes the Prettybirds.”

  “I’m paid to win in court.”

  “Willie and Melinda Prettybird may not have flat-out lied to me, but if I’m to believe what everybody has told me, they sure as hell didn’t tell me everything they should have.”

  “Will you do yourself and Willie a favor by finding out the truth before you quit? You owe him that much, don’t you? He is your friend.”

  “If I find out he’s a liar or a felon, I quit.”

  “That’s all I ask,” she said. “Shall we order something to eat? I feel like something to eat — some scallops, maybe, or prime ribs. I’ll buy.”

  “I try not to be sexist when the lady’s paying,” I said.

  Janine grinned. She motioned for the waiter and told him we’d like a table for two.

  “That’ll be about a fifteen-minute wait,” the waiter said.

  “No rush,” she said. “Name’s Hallen.”

  While we drank another round and waited for our table, I told Janine Hallen what I had learned, including the inexplicable failure of Toba. She was quick. I’m not proud. I take help wherever I can get it. “So what do you think?” I asked.

  “I’m representing the Prettybirds’ Cowlitz fishing-rights lawsuit. If Willie and Melinda are involved in some kind of felony, that’s something entirely different. I’m like you; I don’t like clients lying to me or holding out on me.”

  “You’re curious about how all this fits, then?”

  “Sure. Only I don’t think that body has anything to do with the Prettybirds, even if it is Moby Rappaport. But if you want me to help you figure it out, I’m game.”

  I gave her my self-deprecating John Denson smile. “Ms. Hallen, I need all the help I can get. A free dinner. The use of your intelligence. I’ll take whatever I can get.”

  A woman on an intercom said, “Hallen, table for two.” I followed Janine Hallen into the dining room.

  She glanced at the menu, apparently made up her mind, and said, “The police have checked the underground, I take it.”

  “The entire labyrinth, all of it. Clear.”

  “And above ground?”

  “On both sides of all three intersecting streets. They found nothing. All the cops know is that the parts are frozen solid. The killer either has to have the body frozen right across the street from the park or he’s smuggling the parts in.”

  Janine Hallen ordered herself some salmon. I went for a large prime rib. “You knew I’d want to help, didn’t you?” she said.

  “Had an idea you would.”

  “So you drew a map of the area and named the streets.”

  “How’d you guess?” I spread a primitive map I’d drawn out on the table while Janine waved for more bread.

  “I don’t see any appliance stores,” she said. “There aren’t any. No freezers, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “What’s this?” She pointed to a cavernous space next to Juantar’s Doie Bar that had been converted into an indoor display area for recreational vehicles.

  “That’s Bohannon’s RV Rendezvous — campers, renovated buses. That kind of thing.”

  “Did Willis say anything about checking that out?”

  I looked at my makeshift map. I saw what she was getting at. “He said they checked everything out.”

  “Looking for freezers and lockers.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Janine considered the map. “I have an uncle who owns one of those fancy campers. It has a refrigerator that runs on propane. I bet some of them even have freezers …”

  “So you can have frozen pizza at Yellowstone,” I said.

  “I saw frozen Chicken Kiev at the store the other day. You buy it frozen, zingo, and serve it to your lover while mosquitos buzz outside in the Everglades. That’s real romance, Mr. Denson. Do you suppose they checked the RVs as well as the freezer in the office refrigerator?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt to check it out,” I said. “How would you like to go with me tomorrow to have a look at the RVs?”

  “Sure. That’d be fun.”

  “Right now, how about let’s go to a movie? It’s the least I can do after this dinner. I’ll even spring for popcorn.”

  Janine Hallen said yes. She’d like to see a movie. We went to one, a foreign production — a film, not a movie. Bearded, serious-looking men and intense young women murmured softly in the carpeted lobby before the movie started. Drinkers of white wine, I assumed. “Pauline Kael thought it was provocative,” a woman said. Her escort said, “John Simon thought it was pure crap.” The woman said, “John Simon hates women.” The discussion was ended. I suspected Janine and I were in for an awful movie.

  When we got seated, I put my hand in Janine’s lap; she wrapped herself around my arm, an affectionate lady. John Simon was right: the movie was pretentious and boring. The poor guy in the lobby was going to have to pretend otherwise if he expected to get far with his date.

  Janine Hallen and I l
eft halfway through the torture so we could go to my place to drink a little screw-top red and maybe fool around. I told her I had some raw vegetables in the refrigerator.

  “Hmmm!” she said. “Raw vegetables make me friendly. Got your two-shooter loaded?”

  That was the first time I ever suspected cauliflower of being an aphrodisiac, and it reinforced my conviction that it is a wonderful vegetable — especially if eaten raw.

  22 - AS SEEN ON TV

  The showroom of Buck Bohannon’s RV Rendezvous was the size of a basketball court and crowded with every kind of camper imaginable. There were Winnebagos, Apaches, Itascas, SportsKings, and a half-dozen other names I’d seen on the highway before. There were long ones and short ones, tall ones and squat ones. There were yellow ones and red ones, blue ones and green ones. Chromium-plated exhaust pipes, mudflaps, mirrors, gee-haws, and doo-dads seemed to stick out at every conceivable angle. There were CB radio antennas on most of the rigs and television disks on the fancier ones, so that intrepid RV travelers might camp among Wyoming antelope and not miss reruns of Little House on the Prairie.

  Janine Hallen and I were met at the door by none other than Buck Bohannon, impresario of the Rendezvous. I knew that because there was an enormous picture of Buck on the wall with wrestlers behind him. “As Seen on TV,” the poster said. “Biggest in Seattle!”

  Buck was a large, florid man with an enormous paunch, an oily pompadour maybe thirty years out of fashion, and sideburns that were a trifle too long. “Mornin’ folks,” he said. “Name’s Buck. You may have seen me on TV ads if you watch rasslin’.” He gestured to the poster with a wave of his hand.

  “I’ve heard a lot about your TV ads, Mr. Bohannon,” I said. “It’s a pleasure to meet you in person.” I could sense Janine watching me in wonderment.

  “You folks came to the right place. You and me both know a man can’t go on TV and make a lot of promises to people and not keep ‘em,” Buck said. “No sir. Folks expect the best when you advertise on TV. They got a right. When I say I’ll make you the best deal in the Pacific Northwest, by golly I’ll do just that. You got my word on it.” Buck Bohannon shook my hand solemnly. He shook my hand the way Augustus Poorman had earlier. Just like Poorman, he was a man of the West, a man of his word. “Ma’am,” he said to Janine, “we’ve got kitchens in some of these rigs you just wouldn’t believe.”

  “I bet that’s true,” Janine said.

  “Just what is it you folks’d be interested in?” Buck looked sincere.

  “Well, we’re not sure,” I said. “We’re both hard workers and have got a few bucks ahead. We want to get outdoors a little and air our pants out. You know how it is.”

  Bohannon laughed — a great, booming haw, haw, haw of laughter that showed crooked teeth browned from tobacco. He lit up a Winston and inhaled dramatically. “Yes, sir, I do know how that is, believe me. You want to enjoy the great outdoors but you don’t want to spend all your time fumbling around with tent poles in a rainstorm or digging sand out of your private parts — begging your pardon, ma’am. There’s more and more people feel just the same as you. I tell you what, we’ve got lists of all kinds of folks who go on caravans with these rigs: rock hounds, camera nuts, fly fishermen; heck, I can even get you in touch with swingers who caravan, if you’re of a mind.” He winked at me, went haw, haw, haw again, and took another drag on his Winston.

  “Swingers? Really?” Janine asked.

  Bohannon repressed a choke. He hadn’t paid much attention to Janine before, but now he regarded her with interest. “Yes, ma’am.” He ran his hand over his pompadour. “These are modern times. RV-ers are liberated same as everybody else.”

  “I’m interested in what you had to say about kitchens,” she said.

  “Kitchens?” Bohannon seemed confused. He hadn’t recovered from Janine’s interest in swinging caravaners. “Oh, sure. You want a good kitchen in an RV. You don’t want to be a prisoner to hookups, but you want all the comforts — a food processor, a juicer, a good stove. Gotta have a good microwave. Nothing worse than trying to cook a meal over one of them outdoor barbecues. They pick your pocket for green wood.”

  “Spend all your time eating burnt food,” I said.

  “Exactly,” Bohannon said. “That’s exactly it. If you’re a boy scout I suppose you don’t mind eating scorched weenies.”

  Janine said, “We want the best.”

  Bohannon examined the ash of his cigarette. “Ma’am, we ain’t got nothing but the best here at Bohannon’s. You seen it on TV. You got my word on it. I got RVs with the works — cuisine centers, we call ‘em. I tell you something, I got an outfit that’s got a patio that pulls out from the side. You can drive that rig right straight into skeeter country, British Columbia, if you want, or Alaska. Skeeters there got beaks like woodpeckers. Old John can sit out there and have himself a martini and watch the bugs being zapped in our special electronic screen. Skeeters come a-cruisin’ in on you at maybe eleven o’clock high, and vvvvvt! Snap! Crackle! Snip! Snap! Fun to watch ‘em burn. And you, ma’am.” Bohannon scoped the curve of Janine’s blue jeans. “You can get some Chun King chop suey outa the freezer and fix him something special. Nothing like a little gourmet food at trail’s end.” He pronounced it gor-met.

  “Yes, I think we’d want a freezer,” she said.

  “Afterward you can throw the plates and silverware in the dishwasher, and you and old John here can warm things up a little if you want.” The TV personality was getting a bit daring. Buck Bohannon rested his hand on his paunch, sucked in some Winston, and glanced at his reflection in a rearview mirror on the side of an RV. He liked what he saw and smiled just a little.

  “We’d like to see the ones with the freezers,” I said.

  Janine said, “We can stock up on TV dinners before we go.”

  “Sure, sure,” Bohannon said. “I like a good TV dinner myself. Don’t kid yourself, those people know how to make a meal. I tell you what I’ll do, folks, I’ll match any deal you can come up with in the Pacific Northwest. Any deal. Look, some outfits have these rigs sitting on a floor for months. When they sell one they have to make some real money in order to pay for overhead. I don’t work that way. Like I say on TV, I like to make folks happy. I make a couple of bucks, sure. I have to. But I work on volume. A man makes a couple of bucks each off a whole lot of RVs, why he can make an honest living and a whole lot of people happy at the same time.”

  “Just like you say on TV,” Janine said.

  “That’s right, ma’am. You can’t B.S. people on TV and get away with it. You can’t say it on TV if it ain’t so. Let me show you folks some outfits.” Bohannon strode forth. He hitched up his Levi’s by hooking his thumbs in his belt loops. He gave us a running pitch over his shoulder as he headed for an enormous Winnebago. “I’m going to show you a real special ‘Bago first; this one’s been customized by a shop here in Seattle. Special job. You can latch a boat on top if you want to do a little fishing. You can pop a trail bike on the back so as to get up in the woods. That’s in addition to a hitch for your Jeep, if you have one.”

  “John and I have a small helicopter,” Janine said. “We were wondering …”

  Buck lit another cigarette, thinking fast. “No problem, no problem. A helicopter? I can have mounts in place in twenty-four hours. No problem. Got me a guy here in Seattle who can do anything.”

  “That’s along with the fishing boat, the trail bike, and the Jeep?” she asked. “We like to zoom and roar.”

  Good thing we were walking behind Bohannon. Janine put a finger up to her lips, a signal for me not to laugh. She was having fun. I was thinking of asking him about the odds of taking along a two-person submarine, but thought better of it.

  Buck said, “No problem. Hell, my guy’s made ski racks, dune-buggy racks, hang-glider racks. No reason he can’t fix something up for a reasonable-sized helicopter. You got Buck Bohannon’s word on it.”

  Janine gave me a nudge. “Also, we are interested in, you k
now, the list you mentioned.” She looked shy. She cleared her throat.

  Buck perked up. “The swinging caravaners?” Janine looked at the floor.

  I said, “Well, yes, that and the rest of them. You know, rock hounds, whatever.”

  “No problem. No problem.” Bohannon walked with extra energy. He put a friendly hand on Janine’s shoulder when we got to the fabulous ‘Bago.

  The Winnebago was decked out with enough gear to compete with the U.S.S. Enterprise. Buck lost some of his energy when we looked at the kitchen. The propane freezer was missing. He took us to another RV. The freezer was missing from that one also. All told, four propane-operated freezers were missing from Buck’s RVs.

  “Well, I’ll be damned.” Buck scratched his head. “Shoplifters! Can you beat that?”

  “Can one man carry one of those by himself?” Janine asked.

  “Little lady, you could carry one around by yourself if you wanted. There’s not much to them other than plastic and insulation. These rigs is made out of them same stuff as the space shuttle. It was NASA technology that made these outfits possible. I bet you seen that on TV.”

  23 – AMANITA MUSCARIA

  Janine Hallen and I walked next door to have lunch at the Doie Bar and consider the question of the missing freezers from Buck Bohannon’s RV showroom. We each had a Doie Boig with Yellow Crud. That meant cheeseburger in Juantar’s lingo, but there was no explanation of that on the menu. Juantar liked to yell, “Boig with crud!” to his cook while his customers shook their heads in mock disgust.

  I told Juantar I wanted to speak to him alone with Janine Hallen. Juantar got a goofy look on his face when I introduced her. Whenever I got Juantar around polite company, he rose to the occasion.

  Juantar said, “I wouldn’t be seen around Denson if I were you. People will think you’re letting him pork you. Praise Jesus!” Juantar waggled his eyebrows.