Acting Dead (Michael Quinn Thriller)

by John Moralee

  Malloy lived in a small apartment that was part of a retirement complex on the edge of the town. A nurse opened his door and let me in before going to see another resident. His living room smelled of cats, strong tobacco and that unique musty smell exclusive to old men and dead goats. Malloy’s 77th birthday had been last week and some remnants of his cake were wrapped in foil, waiting for unsuspecting visitors. He offered me some, but I politely declined. (The veins of green mould sort of put me off.) He shook my hand and asked me to take a seat. I had to move old newspapers off it first.

  “Coffee?” he asked.

  He began pouring it out without waiting for an answer.

  “Thanks.”

  “So you’re Harry Quinn’s boy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He went to Vietnam, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “We lost a lot of good people over there.”

  “Yes. It was tough.”

  “Was you in Vietnam?”

  “I was too young,” I said.

  “What? You’ll have to speak up.” He had a cream-coloured hearing aid, but I doubted he could hear through the tufts of white hair protruding from his ear.

  “I was too young,” I repeated.

  “You look old enough to me,” he said. “I can’t wait for the war to end. It ain’t fair our boys dying for them yellow-skinned niggers.”

  Great. He was going senile. And racist. He talked about the past and today as if they were barely indistinguishable. He thought the Vietnam War had not ended. He wasn’t too sure about Word War Two either. He definitely didn’t know we were in the 21st century. I tried to get him to answer my questions, but I had to listen to his stories first. His wife had died of cancer, he said, and since then he had lived alone with his cats. They were two white cats that purred for their own amusement in a corner of the living room. They looked bored. He told me about his kids, who were in New York and Chicago. He had seven – or was it eight? - grandchildren. When he started to repeat his story, I interrupted.

  “Mr Malloy, do you remember the car crash?”

  “What car crash?”

  I showed him the picture. “This one.”

  “Sure. Only last week, that. Billy Quinn and Hanna Devereaux. Killing on prom night. What do you make of that?”

  “What can you tell me about it?”

  “Maybe it was last week. Kind of fuzzy, remembering. I keep copies of my cases in my drawers. You want to look?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He had a chest of drawers in the bedroom. It was filled with police files dating back decades. His hands shook with a Parkinson’s tremor as he handled them. “There was a fire in the town hall in 1962 destroyed a bunch of files. I learned a lesson, I did. I kept copies of everything since. You can borrow what you like as long as I get them back. The damn young people don’t like me making a mess in my own damn place. That nurse … I don’t let her look at my things. My things are my things. They ain’t public property. Damn nurse treats me like a kid.”

  I located the original investigative report. I opened it and some loose photographs fluttered out. I picked them up, apologising, but not before the images burned into my brain. The pictures of the crash made me feel nauseous.

  “The crash report is all in there,” he said. So were the negatives, I discovered. “Don’t know what use it is, though. It was a drunk-driving accident. Two poor kids. Did I tell you that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Terrible that thing. The other thing.”

  “What thing?”

  “You know. The thing. Vietnam.”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  He fell into silence. I made my excuses and left him as he started ranting racist nonsense. His nurse went into the room with some pills, rolling her eyes.

  I took the negatives to a one-hour photographic shop on Wharf Street and asked for enlargements, the biggest they could do. The man was happy to oblige. I had lunch in a café, then went back to collect the pictures. The man looked troubled. I realised he’d seen the car crash pictures and now figured I was some kind of pervert like the characters in JG Ballard’s Crash, someone who was turned on by gore. He would probably call the police if I didn’t allay his fears. I inspected the pictures.

  “Good special effects,” I said.

  “Pardon?”

  “These are for a film I’m starring in. I’m Michael Quinn.”

  “Oh! Right! I – uh – understand. They’re fakes.”

  “Fooled you, huh?”

  “Sure did. Got me worried for a minute.”

  “Good. I’m playing a tough homicide cop in it. These are blow-ups I need on the walls. The director suggested I get used to them. Pretty grisly, aren’t they?”

  “Very.”

  “Typical of Stephen; he’s always so thorough.”

  “Stephen Spielberg?”

  I wished. I played with him. “You know him too?”

  “No, but wow! You really know him?”

  I shrugged.

  “What’s he like?”

  “He doesn’t like people talking about him, you understand?”

  “Yeah, guess so.”

  He looked crestfallen.

  “But he’s great.”

  I paid and signed a piece of paper to cheer him up. He looked astounded and in awe. Hollywood did something to people’s brains, I reckoned. Like detached their intelligence.

  I drove to Macy’s Mechanics. Macy was an old man who did any work my father needed on his car. He was a thin, craggy man with short, white hair combed over his bald spot. I explained to Macy about the photographs.

  “You want me to look at them?”

  “Uh-huh. Just tell me what you think caused the crash.”

  He looked at the photographs. He paused at a rear shot, like the one that had been sent to me.

  “Look at this,” he said.

  “Surely, a side angle would show more?”

  “Look.”

  The back of the car was important for some reason.

  I noticed it then.

  There was a broken taillight.

  That was it. A broken taillight.

  How could it have been broken in the crash?

  (It couldn’t. It couldn’t. IT COULDN’T.)

  The front had taken the impact.

  The cold realisation made the backs of my hands tingle with sweat.

  My brother’s death had not been his fault.

  Someone had rammed him from behind.

  Making him crash.

  It was murder.

  My brother was murdered, after all.

  That was why Ted Genero had died.

  He had been murdered because he knew what I now knew.

  “How can you be sure it wasn’t caused by the crash into the tree?”

  “It was smashed inwards,” Macy said. “You can see a dent here, too.”

  “Where?”

  He pointed. I’d missed it on the smaller photo. “What caused it?”

  “Easy: the fender of another vehicle. This car was bumped and pushed from behind.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. Say, this was your brother’s vehicle? And those dead folks are …?”

  I nodded.

  “This was deliberate,” Macy said. “You ought to tell the cops.”

  “Please don’t say anything about this. I’m still working out who did it. I don’t want them to get a warning.”

  “You get the bastard,” he said.

  “I will.”

  I exited his garage and walked to my MG. I looked up and down the street, suddenly afraid. This was information I could share with no one – not even my friends. Ted Genero had been killed for knowing it. Whoever had done it was smart. For all I knew, someone I knew was the killer.

  Until I knew who killed Billy, I would keep it a secret.

  Chapter 21

  I didn’t go far down the street before I heard the name Vernon. An old woman with blue-rinsed h
air said it with a snort of disgust, talking to one of her friends. They were looking at the traffic on Main Street. Vernon was weaving across the road, forcing the traffic into avoiding him. From this distance, he looked like the Bigfoot you see on that famous home movie sighting - a big, hairy monster lumbering through four lanes of traffic. I called out his name and he stopped in the middle of the street to look at me. He waved. There was a wild glee to his expression, something between madness and extreme drunkenness. He seemed oblivious to the danger – like a matador facing a charging bull, or in this case, several speeding trucks. He was acting stupid, but so were the drivers. Nobody had the sense to slow down. I think some actually wanted to hit him. I ran down the street until I was facing him. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Vernon shrugged. He lost his balance and, in an effort to stay on his feet, almost backed into a passing van. I could see his shirt fluttering in the slipstream - he was that close. His beard wrapped around his shoulder like a hairy snake until he raised his shoulder a jiggle to make it fall. The van driver yelled out of the window, shaking his fist. Vernon formed the peace symbol V and used it sarcastically. His fingernails were black with dirt. He would get killed if he stayed where he was, so I waited for a gap in the traffic and stepped off the sidewalk, holding up a hand at the vehicles coming my way. The vehicles braked just in time. Even so, I had to do a little hop sideways to avoid a collision of metal and flesh. Whatever the driver called me wasn’t in Webster’s. Vernon was stepping in and out of the traffic. I called out Vernon’s name over and over trying to keep his attention, but it was difficult. I grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the sidewalk where a crowd of bemused tourists was watching the joke. I think they wanted to see us die. I tried leading Vernon to safety, but he was resisting me, twisting and turning. He wanted to go back. I could smell the alcohol on him. He moved reluctantly, saying he didn’t need my help, saying he knew what he was doing. But I dragged him to the sidewalk and several people began applauding. Someone stuck a camcorder in my face – and I swatted it aside. Behind me, the traffic moved off immediately.

  “What did you do that for?” Vernon shouted.

  “Are you crazy? You almost got killed! What were you thinking?”

  “Bah! I was merely getting some attention, man. Dude has to die in this town for someone to notice him.” Vernon looked at the crowd of tourists; they were going back to their window-shopping now the action was over. Vernon snorted out of his mouth, some spittle landing on his beard. His eyes were shining with tears. “Nobody cares about Scott, Mikey. Nobody cares.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?”

  “You don’t want to get arrested for jaywalking or being drunk, do you?”

  Grumbling, he went with me. I wanted him somewhere I could talk to him. I pushed him into a café. We sat at a booth and I ordered strong coffee for both of us. He didn’t want to drink it, but I made him. Mine tasted like axle grease – but his was stronger. Each time the coffee went down his throat, he hissed and scowled. “This is without doubt the worst drink of coffee in my life,” he said. “This coffee was probably made by the CIA for interrogating people.”

  “Drink it. You need sobering up. How much have you had?”

  “Just the one,” he said.

  “One what?”

  “One bottle of cheap wine,” Vernon said, “and it tasted like vinegar.”

  “Great. It’s not even noon and you’re drunk.”

  “So what?”

  “You got into trouble yesterday.”

  “So?”

  “I’m concerned. You were never like this before. So what’s going on with you? Why are you drinking so much?” He was drinking like me.

  “I’m just trying to make that fascist Boone do something, Mikey. Scott’s missing, but the sheriff acts like it doesn’t matter? I went to see him this morning, but a deputy told me it was his day off. So I asked him what he was doing about Scott and he says he didn’t know much about it; it wasn’t his problem. Can you believe that? So, I needed a damn drink, man. In this lousy world, you’ve got to be mad to stay sober. I needed a damn drink because … damn … just because …” Vernon faded away, staring out of the windows. I sat with him until he’d sobered up enough to walk straight, then I drove him to his home. He would have to walk back to Cape Mistral to collect his own car.

  I went into his cabin, but the smell made me feel ill. There was so much filthy junk piled up in the darkness. I was sure there were things growing under the bed. He slumped on the bed. Vernon muttered apologies, wanting to make up for behaving stupidly. I explained that I had to leave. Vernon lay down on the dirty mattress and started snoring. It would have been easy to criticise him, but the truth was I had lived like this myself, the only difference being I had had more money. I wanted to leave now, but I couldn’t. I had to do something about the state of his home.

  Quickly, I opened the windows to let the flies out and some clean air in. It wasn’t easy – the windows didn’t want to budge. The windows scraped on their frames, caused by a build up of dust and wet fungi. As each opened after much force, I sucked in fresh air.

  From outside, I cleaned the panes with some water from a bucket of rainwater. Now the smell inside was considerably reduced. Some light was in the room, and I could see the mess. Philosophy books and beer cans were piled up with other junk, like a rusting space heater and dozens of album sleeves with no records in them. I didn’t have time to do a proper spring clean, but I cleared some junk and threw out anything too mouldy.

  It wasn’t the Hilton, I thought, but it was a start. I would come back another time with some proper cleaning equipment.

  Vernon slept through the whole thing. I wondered how he’d react when he woke up - would he like what I’d done or resent it? - but I didn’t want to disturb him. Seeing him asleep, I saw an old man, an old man who was dying. Since my return to Mistral, I could see a terrifying decline in his health. His eye sockets had deepened, darkened. There was less flesh to his face and neck. He was at least twenty pounds lighter. He needed those twenty pounds.

  He was wasting away.

  I just hoped that when Vernon woke up, he wouldn’t resume his hopeless protest by making any more mistakes, like killing his liver with more juice. The last thing he needed was a problem with the police.

  I left a hundred dollars on his table with a note telling him to buy some food. I also gave him the number of my father’s doctor - should he want an examination - which I would pay for.

  I really wanted him to get some professional help.

  As I closed the door, Vernon was sleeping, but it sounded as if he was deep into a nightmare.

  Chapter 22

  Chardez’s was a rooftop restaurant that overlooked the wharf on one side and bustling downtown on the opposite. Sarah and I chose a table facing the ocean where a pleasant breeze carried the midday heat away. She wore black sunglasses that hid most of her face. Her long hair was tied back in a ponytail, tucked under a black baseball cap that made her look a lot more severe than when she was relaxing. Her mouth was a tight line. Some tourists looked at her with fear – as if the Terminator had come in for lunch and target practice. They were lucky she had not brought her shotgun, I thought.

  “You look exhausted,” she said to me.

  “Long morning,” I said. I thought of the box in my MG and the people I’d seen. We ordered our meals and I considered telling her about Billy’s murder, but I dismissed it because she had enough to worry about. Besides which, I did not want to put her in any more danger. Investigating Billy’s murder was my problem alone. We waited for David Freeman. The lawyer arrived five minutes late. He offered profuse apologies. I could see Sarah’s contempt for his inexperience and lateness, but if he noticed, he didn’t show it. He looked surprised to see me there.

  “Hi,” he said. “Dr Beck, Mr Quinn?”

  “You can talk in front of Michael,” Sarah said. Under the table, she held my hand.
I liked the feeling. I squeezed hers back.

  Freeman relaxed. As he sat, he smoothed down his suit. “I am your lawyer, Dr Beck. Everything you say to me is completely confidential. How can I help?”

  She described the incident with the men.

  “Stalking and bugging …” He blanched. “We could have really used it. Why didn’t you tell me about the men watching you when I visited you the other day?”

  “I told Taylor. He said there was nothing he could do without proof. And now he’s missing.”

  “I see. I can appreciate why you would torture them, but I wish you hadn’t. We could have got them on some charges otherwise. You infringed their civil rights, do you realise?”

  “What about mine?” Sarah released my hand to use it to express her anger. “For weeks and weeks they’ve been prowling outside my house. If I’d called the police, the men would just have claimed they were bird watching. What could I have done?”

  Freeman didn’t say anything.

  “Besides,” I said, “they won’t dare say anything. They were just small fry obeying orders. Van Morgan sent them; Van Morgan’s responsible. Can’t we get him for this?”

  Freeman steepled his fingers, thinking. “Would the men have testified?”

  “No.”

  “That’s your answer. It’s not even illegal to own bugging equipment – only if you use it. If anything, you could be charged for unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, psychological torture … the list goes on.”

  “That’s stupid,” Sarah said. I agreed.

  “It’s the law, I’m afraid. I don’t like it any more than you do, believe me. What I suggest is that you protect yourself until the case goes to court. Then there’s nothing Van Morgan can do.”

  Sarah rolled her eyes.

  “About my case,” Sarah said. “Have you thoroughly reviewed it?”

  “I have, I have.”