by David Bishop
I asked Charles if the two men were still close.
“The only thing the two had in common was riding motorcycles, so once Eddie tired of that, as he eventually did nearly everything, he sold his motorcycle and they quit palling around.”
“How long ago did Eddie sell his motorcycle?”
“Right after Ileana died. Cliff found the buyer.”
Charles also said that Cliff still arrived each day on his motorcycle and while on duty kept it in the Whittaker garage. Charles explained that Cliff had an apartment in town, in addition to a small sleeping room upstairs over the garage.
I thanked Charles and hung up. So, Eddie and Cliff had been pals, but no longer. I needed someone to poke around and see what could be learned about Cliff’s dad and the other four old soldiers the general had taken care of in the assisted living facility. I called Axel. There would be lots of hits about the general on the Internet: his life and philanthropic activities, so maybe something would come up on his providing the care for those soldiers. I also needed someone with at least solid bookkeeping skills to go through the records to see how many years and how much the general had spent to care for the five men. I wasn’t certain if doing that would mean anything, but I wanted to have the information in the event I chose to follow it.
All this was likely a dead end, but so far the game only had the general, Eddie, Karen, Charles, and Cliff. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was playing poker with an empty chair at the table, a chair for a player who had yet to join the game.
Chapter 13
Axel wanted me to join him and a young lady friend for dinner tomorrow night. He said their relationship was not romantic. They had met outside Mackie’s and he had invited her to join him for lunch. “She’s young enough to be my daughter,” he said, “my granddaughter even. For Christ’s sake.”
He asked me to go along for two reasons: so she and I could meet, and because he hadn’t yet gotten a driver’s license. I had gone through this kind of thing with my daughters when they first started dating so I suppose I had a feel for it. But Axel was in his sixties and from what he told me the young lady was still looking up at twenty. It would be weird, but he said it was no date. “I’m no pervert,” is how Axel put it.
Axel also said she had some skills I might make use of. Although, when he told me how he met Hildegard it left me somewhat unsure to which skills he had referred. Then he told me her father had been an accountant, and that she had worked with him summers and weekends for several years. Before she left home she had planned to become a CPA like her father.
“She can handle going through the records about the five old soldiers the general helped,” Axel said. “She can use the money, boss.”
I understood, but promised nothing.
Cars had changed enormously since Axel went to prison over thirty-five years ago, not to mention changes in the roads and the traffic lights. Yesterday he had begun driver training. His teacher was Buddha, one of the ex-cons who hung out in Mackie’s. The cars Axel drove before going inside featured split front windshields, bench seats, bigger steering wheels, and stick shifts to mention just a few of the differences. The roads in those days had fewer lanes and not many designated for turns. In prison he had gotten more than comfortable with computers, but he found nearly everything else on the outside new and a bit strange. So far I had only identified a few changes he found agreeable: big-flat-screen color television, and women’s shorter skirts along with the improved engineering of brassieres.
*
At nine I stopped for a quick meal in Hof’s Hut on Long Beach Blvd in the Bixby Knolls area. I took in the department’s homicide file on Ileana Corrigan and went over it again while I ate. There was nothing in the file about Cliff and Eddie being pals around the time of the murder. I hadn’t expected there would be, but I recalled the report mentioning guns at the Whittaker residence. The general had approved Fidge taking and testing any guns he wished. Fidge had taken a few possibles to determine if they had recently been fired. Ileana Corrigan had been shot twice, first in her throat and then a make-sure bullet in her head. The department ran tests, but none of the weapons had been fired recently enough, and in the opinion of their experts the bullet wounds had not come from shots fired by those guns. The shots that killed Ileana had been through-and-throughs from a powerful handgun. The evidence team had found no casings or bullets at the scene. Whoever had murdered Eddie’s fiancee had been calm and knew not to leave behind anything that ballistics might use.
After getting in my car, I called Charles’s cell phone to see if Cliff was still around. The chauffeur had left. Charles reminded me Cliff had a small place he kept in town to use sometimes. That he had gone there for the night and gave me that address. I started to head for his apartment on the off chance I might catch him there.
*
“Cliffy? Cliffy?”
Cliff Branch heard his name being spoken softly. It was after ten and he had just turned off his television. He knew the voice, but had not heard it spoken just that way in nearly a year.
“Hello,” he said after opening his door. “What brings you here?”
“I need someone to talk to and you’re the only one who really understands me.”
Karen Whittaker walked in wearing a loose extra large man’s tee shirt and red high heels. He could tell she wore no underwear and the way she moved without it could have been a commercial for a pediatrician. He wore only the jockey shorts he always slept in.
“I just don’t know what to make of this Matt Kile nosing into our family’s business. I’m not sure it’s good for Eddie.”
“Why not? The general believes Eddie didn’t kill Ileana. He’s hired Kile to prove that.”
“But what if Eddie did do it?”
“Well, from what you said a while back you’d get a much bigger slice of your dad’s dough.”
“I guess that’s true. If so, I’d be set up, that’s for sure. Then you and I could pick back up where we were years ago. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? I mean, I still see you watching me. Can I sit down, Cliff?” He nodded and headed toward the couch to move some clutter off it. “Oh, don’t bother. I’ll just sit here on the bed.”
“Do you think Eddie did kill her?”
“No. No, of course I don’t, Cliffy. We both know Eddie couldn’t do anything like that, that violent. Still, I wish he’d just beat the crap out of Kile and make him go away. But Eddie isn’t man enough to do that.”
“Heck. Why not let Kile try. If he proves Eddie did it, the general may just knock him out of his will and you’ll wake up in clover.”
“But,” Karen said, “if he proves Eddie didn’t do it, any chance I have of the general deciding to give me a bigger cut goes down the drain. It is only the general’s doubt, tiny as it may be, that Eddie is innocent that might cause the general to reconsider how he’ll split it up between Eddie and me. So, no, things would be better with the general having his doubts. I wish he had never hired Matt Kile.”
“I don’t know, Karen. I mean, I want whatever you want. You know?”
“What I want is for you to come over here. Lie down. It’s been too long, Cliffy.”
After Cliff sat on the bed, he felt Karen’s hand on his naked thigh. He looked over at her. She put her hand on his cheek and pushed him back until he was lying beside her. She kissed him on the lips, his neck, and then on his chest. From there she worked her way down until she took him into her mouth and controlled him.
Chapter 14
Last night I stopped short of going to Cliff Branch’s house to confront General Whittaker’s chauffeur. Instead, I had gone home and put in a couple of hours reading the proof of my next novel that my publisher had attached to his email two days ago.
Today would start with me in Cliff’s face. He could have been the male voice that had threatened Cory Jackson and Tommie Montoya eleven years ago as well as Robert and Melanie Yarbrough. None of them would recognize his voice. From what Charles said, he
had the skill with a rifle to have shot the Yarbrough’s little dog, Snookie. He had also been tight with Eddie in those days, introducing him to Ileana. I also figured that as the general’s chauffeur he had been an unofficial observer of the Whittaker family for more than a decade. And he had undoubtedly spent time ogling Karen. I understood this completely because I had known her only a few days and I had already spent time doing my own ogling. I had even earned my more-than-ogle merit badge. Maybe Cliff and I were also lodge brothers in that regard.
Charles came out the front door to meet me. I had called ahead to be sure Cliff was there.
“Good morning, Mr. Kile. The general is feeling poorly and won’t be using Cliff today. I saw him head down the stairs to the beach about ten minutes ago. He was in his trunks so he might have gone in for a swim. There’s hardly ever anyone in that stretch of the beach except coming down from our house.”
I wasn’t wearing a swimsuit, but I had dressed in a pair of casual slacks, a polo shirt and tennis shoes. They would be good on the wooden stairs; Charles had said there were one-hundred and eleven steps down to the beach.
There were landings about every ten-to-fifteen stairs. When I got near the bottom, a man I recognized to be the general’s chauffeur stepped up toward me. “I’m Cliff, you’re Matt Kile, right?”
I reached out to shake his hand and he hit me square in the jaw. I went down backwards onto the stairs behind me. He stood there waiting for me like an umpire waiting for Tommy Lasorda. His hands up, all Marquis of Queensberry like. I obliged him and stood. When I did, he took another swing at the other side of my jaw. It was my right to turn the other cheek, not his to do it for me. I blocked his blow and hit him in the stomach, then in his face, coming up under his chin. It was his turn to fall back. He did, stumbling down two steps before falling onto the sand.
“What’s your problem, Cliff? I wanna talk, not fight.” After I had my say, I stood back, waiting for him to get up. He didn’t keep me waiting long.
It was an old-fashioned fight. No weapons, just fists. It was the way men used to fight before every punk decided he needed a gun or at least a knife. We smiled, more like smirked, at each other as we moved slowly. His bare feet scarred the sand while my tennis shoes made strange imprints that filled with water, and then went dry.
“Why don’t you get lost, Kile?” He punctuated his question with a controlled left hook. I blocked it. Then he said, “Leave this family alone.”
I let my hands sag to my sides, and then brought my right up into his stomach. My left followed. He took the two blows to his gut well. I could feel its hardness.
“You’re all sweaty, Cliff. You been running on the beach?”
“Karen and me run a couple times a week.” He then dropped to one knee and hit me on my inside thigh. I staggered but stayed upright. He knew how to hurt somebody, but he had chosen not to hit the inside of my knee. He let me have a moment. I wasn’t sure whether he wanted to fight or talk. He kept doing both. “I want you to stay away from the Whittakers.”
It’s hard to say much when you’re getting slugged so I kept it short. “That’s the general’s decision.” I got up off my one knee and drove hard toward him. My head hit him flush and slid off the side of his chest. I wrapped my arms around his back and drove with my legs. We moved toward the surf and didn’t stop until I could see the darker, wetter sand below our feet. “I’ve got … questions,” I said, having to take a breath in the middle.
“Like what?” He grabbed me with his arms down under my chest, and groaned as he tried to lift and throw me off. He wasn’t able to lift me off but he cancelled my ability to drive him farther. Then he leveraged me sideways. I gave up my hold on his midsection and we went back to circling, our feet tearing the harder sand.
He hit me on the side of the forehead with a left cross, then a right to the nose, and two quick blows to my belly. Whomp. Whomp. He was good. He knew how to hit and how to do it in combinations.
I stepped back. “You’re a bit rusty? That combo should have put me down. Hey, let’s sit and talk.” He stood back, smiled and lowered his hands. When I relaxed, he lunged forward and hit me with the same combination leading first with the other hand.
I spat blood on the sand.
I left myself open a bit, inviting him to lead with his right. He did. I punched him in the armpit with my left, then brought that same fist up and around and hit him in the face. Then after faking a tired right cross, I used the flat edge of my open left hand to chop him hard in the throat. He was hurt. He was tough. He dropped to his knees. I dropped to mine and hit him two more times. Once with each fist, my left found his chin, my right caught him high on his opposite cheekbone. I figured he was about done in. I was wrong.
While we were still on our knees, he hit me in the stomach, again and then again. Then two times in the face. I could no longer keep count. It was all I could do to return as good as I took. His blows that landed weren’t hurting as much. I guessed mine had also turned feeble. We were both near the end of our endurance, no longer able to hold our hands up in any semblance of a defense. We were each taking blows and delivering them back, just two hard heads too ornery, too stupid, and too stubborn to do what we both longed to do-collapse onto the sand.
Then I heard voices. Cliff turned toward them. Over the crash of the surf, I couldn’t understand the words, but I saw the people yelling: Karen and Charles were hollering at us to stop fighting, that much was clear. We ignored their words and watched Karen running toward us. The uneven sand made her body do things that made us forget our fight.
“A draw, Mr. Kile?” Cliff extended his hand. I took it, stood and pulled up, helping him stand. Did that make me the winner? I won’t go there. We had fought to a draw. Cliff was a tough guy. It was a good old-fashioned fight, the kind that hurt like hell while feeling good on some level.
“Cliff,” Charles said, “the general will hear about this. The last time he bailed you out, he said no more fighting or you’re gone.”
“Whoa, Charles,” I said. “This wasn’t Cliff’s doing. We got talking about his time in the military, mine in the department. How we both missed getting in the ring with our buds. I asked him if we could go a couple rounds down here in the sand. He said he couldn’t. He had promised the general. I told him the general said the staff was to fully cooperate with me. I talked him into it and told him I’d take responsibility.”
Karen put her hand on my neck. The shoulder seam of my black polo shirt was torn. I looked at Cliff. It was obvious he didn’t like her fawning over me, but he stayed quiet. I put my hand out. “Thanks, Cliff. I appreciate you helping me. I’ll let the general know you were dead set against it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Kile. To tell you the truth, it was fun. You said you had some questions you wanted to ask me. I can be free in about an hour. Can you stick around?”
“Take the time you need,” Charles said, “whenever Mr. Kile wishes to talk with you.”
“An hour’s fine,” I said, “I’ll come out to the garage. Okay?” Cliff nodded and the four of us turned our backs to the surf. I’ve always hated elevators, they make me mushy inside, but as we approached the hundred and eleven stairs up to the Whittaker estate, for the first time ever I would have preferred an elevator.
Chapter 15
Back at the Whittaker house I ran my hands over my clothes and arms trying to knock off any remaining loose sand. Karen took me by the hand up the stairs into her room and then into her private bath where she handed me a towel and matching washcloth before stepping out and closing the door. I stripped down and took a shower, then got back into my sweaty clothes. I walked into her bedroom still running the towel over my head and finger combed my hair, still damp enough to take some form. Karen was lying across the bed sideways, facing me, wearing a white halter top that seemed even whiter against her tan.
“There’s a little caveman in all of you men, isn’t there? I mean you’re all alike, just with different faces so us girls can tel
l you apart.”
“At least Cliff was straightforward.” I draped the towel back over my shoulder. “Why’d you put him up to it?”
“Me?” she said, propping herself up onto her elbows, her biceps running firmly along the sides of her breasts.
“Did you learn how to manipulate men from your mother?”
Karen swung her legs around, got up, and walked over to me. Her eyes big, white and wet, like jawbreakers after they’ve been sucked a while. “How dare you?” She slapped my face.
I figured the slap was for the remark linking her to her mother, not my thought that her eyes made me think of sucked jawbreakers. The slap stung, but she hadn’t put all she could into it.
“I’m investigating a murder. I dare anything. Your cleavage might turn Cliff to mush, but it has no effect on me.”
Karen disrobed to the waist. I immediately noticed her tan covered her completely from the waist up. I actually prefer the light and dark contrast from a woman having developed her tan wearing a bikini. You understand this comment could never graduate to a complaint.
Her disrobing had called my bluff and I’m sure my face showed she held the winning hand. “So,” she said, “what makes you think I had anything to do with you and Cliffy doing your Neanderthal dance?”
“If the general wanted me gone, he’d tell me or have Charles do it. I haven’t met Eddie yet, but my guess is he’d try to order me off the case. As for Cliff, I don’t think he gives a shit one way or the other. Why did you manipulate him into that fight down there?”
Karen put the fingernail of her middle finger in her mouth, between her teeth and bit down easily. She lowered her head, her eyes angling toward where my gaze roosted. Then her look moved up, slowly, with a grin, like the screen vamps in the 50s.
