by R. J. Jagger
Tuesday Afternoon
The lawyer, Crockett Bluetone, denied killing Charley-Anna Blackridge. He had a brief affair with her four months ago and took her to San Francisco for a long weekend out of sight of the wifey-poo. Shortly after that the fire went out for both of them. He hadn’t seen her in over three months. “We parted on amicable terms. That was it.”
River had a question.
“Is anyone after you for any reason?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
Yes.
He was.
Absolutely.
“Why?”
“Because sometimes people kill one person not to get to that person but to get at another person.”
The lawyer frowned.
“No one’s after me. If what happened to Charley-Anna was murder, it had nothing to do with me.”
River studied the man’s eyes, found no lies and headed for the door.
“See you around.”
The lawyer stood up.
“There’s a saying,” he said. “Discretion is the better part of valor.”
“Don’t worry about it. I could care less who you stick your dick in.”
River got home to find January in white shorts and a white tank top. She hadn’t come across any mysterious envelopes taped anywhere. No one called. If a hitman was lurking around, she hadn’t seen him.
She ran a finger down River’s chest.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
He frowned.
“It’s dangerous for you here.”
“Too bad.”
He studied the horizon. The mountains were a dark jagged band against the sky. The sky above was filled with light.
“Let’s take a walk,” he said.
“Where?”
“Down by the river. I want to see how good you can shoot a gun.”
“You’re so romantic.”
He nodded.
“The first rule of being romantic is to not be dead.”
Walking with his arm around January’s waist, River told her about an old friend named Charley-Anna who got dropped from a roof last weekend. That’s where River was this afternoon, checking the woman’s house and subsequently feeling out a hotshot lawyer named Crockett Bluetone.
“Do you think he did it?” January asked.
“I’m not sure. He admitted having an affair with her four months ago but says they split up amicably shortly after that.”
“You don’t believe him.”
No.
He didn’t.
“Why would he kill her?”
“It could be any number of reasons,” he said. “The obvious one is that she might have been blackmailing him. She might have threatened to tell the wife about the affair unless he paid her off. She might have even set that up from the beginning. Maybe that’s why she was keeping the airplane tickets—they were the proof. Or she might have found out some dirt on him during pillow talk time and was blackmailing him about that. There’s also the possibility that he was in trouble with some third party and they sent him a message by killing her. For all I know he was still seeing her. He says he wasn’t but who knows? She might have been precious to him and someone else knew it.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I need to chew on it.”
“You want me to seduce him? I can get him to talk.”
River laughed.
“No, no seducing.”
“Why not?”
River picked her up, flung her over his shoulder and slapped her ass.
“Because.”
64
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Evening
Tuesday evening Wilde headed outside under a darkening sky for a jog. The air was moist, just short of rain. To the west, charcoal clouds churned over the mountains and worked their wicked way towards Denver. A storm was coming, a mean storm. Blondie’s top was up but it wouldn’t hurt to make sure the window curtains were tight.
Alabama had left the office shortly after four and hadn’t come home yet.
As usual, Wilde ran too fast starting out and used up all his wind, which forced him into a more sustainable beat. His best distance was the quarter-mile. He’d never been fast enough out of the blocks to be competitive in the hundred or two-twenty. Nor could he keep up a full sprint for a half-mile.
The quarter-mile, however, was his.
He was fast enough out of the blocks and had the stamina to sprint the whole thing. His best time so far was 55.3, which wasn’t world-class by any means but respectable enough.
The streetlights kicked on.
Right now, the dark beauty London Marshall was holed up in Wilde’s office with the lights out and the door locked. After the jog, Wilde would go over to her house to check and make sure no little surprise visitors were waiting for her in the closet. Then he’d call and tell her the coast was clear.
She’d come home.
Wilde would spend the night on the couch.
With any luck, whoever was after the woman would make his move.
London.
London.
London.
She was a striking woman, every bit as striking as Secret.
Secret was the one for Wilde though.
She got there first.
Wilde needed to focus on her and not get distracted.
That was his problem, he always allowed himself to get distracted. “That’s why you’re still single,” Alabama told him at one point. “Women come too easy to you.”
“That’s not true.”
Those were the words that came out of his mouth, That’s not true.
Down deep, though, it was true.
Even now, focused on Secret, there was an uncontrollable corner of his brain that wondered what it would be like to unwrap London.
When he got home, Alabama still wasn’t there. Wilde took a long hot shower, dried his hair just enough to get the drip gone, and stepped out with the towel wrapped around his waist.
Alabama was upside down on the couch, with her back on the cushions and her legs up. Her hair hung over the edge and hung down towards the floor. She looked at Wilde with upside down eyes and said, “I found out some stuff.”
Wilde headed over.
“Like what?”
With a lightning reach, Alabama grabbed the towel, yanked it off and tossed it over the edge of the couch.
She laughed.
“Seven.”
“You need to stop doing that.”
“And counting.”
Wilde fetched the towel, rewrapped it and sat down next to her.
“So what did you find out?”
Alabama spread her knees ever so slightly. Wilde detected the movement in his peripheral vision but didn’t react.
“First,” Alabama said, “I went to Gina Sophia’s law firm and had a little talk with a bun-haired receptionist. I told her I was trying to track down a friend of mine who looked like Robert Mitchum. I told her he uses a lot of lawyers and asked her if he was using anyone there at Jackson & Reacher. She told me that no one like that had ever been there—she would have remembered, Robert Mitchum was her favorite actor. She would have seen him, too, because she was the only receptionist.”
Wilde grunted.
“All that shows is that Mitchum and the lawyer didn’t meet at work,” he said. “It doesn’t prove they didn’t know each other.”
Alabama smiled.
“I’m going for eight later, so be warned.”
Wilde guarded the towel with his hand.
“Not now,” Alabama said. “Later. Anyway, the other thing I did was talk to the desk clerk at Mitchum’s hotel. At first he didn’t want to say much so I had to show him my boobs. Then he opened up.”
“Tell me you’re kidding.”
She shrugged.
“No can do,” she said. “Anyway, according to him—his name’s Dick by the way, ironic, huh?—M
itchum did in fact return to the hotel with a woman. The person he described sounds like Gina Sophia. They were in the room together all night.”
“How does he know that?”
“Because they were drunk and loud and playing music and dancing,” Alabama said. “People in the adjoining rooms were complaining. Dick went up personally and knocked on the door four or five times to get them to knock it off.”
“Did he actually see Mitchum?”
Alabama nodded.
“Every time he went up, Mitchum opened the door. Every time, Mitchum apologized and said he’d knock it off, but he always started back up again. Finally, about four in the morning, Dick called the cops. A half-hour later, a cop showed up. Dick took him up to the room and the cop knocked on the door. Mitchum opened it, the cop told him to knock it off or else. That got his attention and things settled down.”
Wilde chewed on it.
“So he was there continuously until at least four,” he said.
“Four-thirty. That’s when the cop showed up, four-thirty. Oh, Dick had one more thing relevant to the issue, but he wanted to squeeze my boobs. I let him and here’s what he told me—”
“You let him?”
“God, Wilde, they’re just boobs. Calm down and listen. The cleaning crew started at five and a housekeeper named Maria went into Mitchum’s room by mistake. He was passed out in bed with a woman. They were both naked. Maria eased back out. Mitchum never knew she opened the door.”
“How did Dick know?”
“One of the other housekeepers ratted on Maria,” Alabama said. “Apparently they don’t get along.”
“Apparently not.”
Alabama exhaled.
“I have a theory,” she said. “Maybe there’s another guy who looks like Robert Mitchum. Maybe he’s the one who frequented that New York club.”
“So you’re saying there are two Robert Mitchums?”
“Three, actually, if you count the original.”
65
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Night
The noise turned out to be someone rolling a cleaning cart down the hall, singing mumbled words in a terrible, raspy voice.
Josephine, oh Josephine,
Get your big old lips off of me.
Josephine, oh Josephine,
Get your big old lips off of me.
It’s turning you on, baby,
But it’s making me want to go to sea.
The singing stopped at Bristol’s door, followed by a twist of the knob, a twist that found the bolt thrown from the inside. Waverly and Su-Moon didn’t blink or breathe. The singing started again, glass got swept up then the voice disappeared down the hall. The women waited until it was good and gone, then got the hell out of there.
Outside the storm was even meaner.
Traffic lights swung in the force of the weather.
Except for a few muddled headlights, all the sane people of the world had retreated.
Leaving on Su-Moon’s scooter wasn’t an option.
What to do?
Half a block up the street was a blue neon sign that said California Hotel. They ran for it through sloppy puddles and slippery concrete. It turned out to be a nice place with a crowded bar at the far end of the lobby. They paid more than they wanted but ended up with a nice room on the fifth floor. The concierge managed to wrangle up dry clothes—nothing fancy, just Ts and sweatpants—which he delivered personally with a smile.
“Just leave them in the room when you check out,” he said. “No charge.”
“Thanks. You’re a prince.”
They tipped him good.
Technically, the black book from Bristol’s desk was an address book. To its credit, it did have that type of information, namely names—female names, to be precise—together with addresses and phone numbers.
But there was more.
Much more.
There were dirty little notes about what Bristol had done to them and when.
Red dress spanking 4/22/51
Tied spread on bed 11/4/49
Staked out, Baker Beach, 7/11/52.
Hogtied 2 hours, 9/28/48
“The guy’s a dirty little freak,” Waverly said. “He has a dark side two miles long.”
Su-Moon nodded, then tapped a finger and said, “Look at this one.”
Waverly did.
Michelle
Rooftop blowjob, 3/19/48.
“Rooftop,” Su-Moon said. “There’s our connection, right there.”
“You think?”
She did.
She did indeed.
“I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that blowjob is code for dropped,” she said. “Notice that all the other women have last names and addresses and phone numbers. This one only says, Michelle. That’s because he didn’t want too much incriminating evidence in case this ever got in the wrong hands.” She tapped her finger again. “Even the name Michelle might be code. The date though is probably accurate. We need to find out if anyone got dropped on 3/19/48.”
They checked the envelope.
Inside was a passport and $10,000 cash.
“This was his ticket to ride in case he had to get out of Dodge fast,” Su-Moon said. “He’s not going to be happy about this being gone.”
66
Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Night
Almost all communications received by River from the man behind the assignments came in written form anonymously delivered in envelopes. River had spoken to the man only twice but it was enough, so when phone rang early in the evening, he recognized the caller as him. “The contract was terminated.”
The voice was deep and controlled.
It made River pull up an image equal to his own.
“I was all set to take her last night,” River said. “A friend of mine got in trouble—something serious. I had to attend to it. That’s why I was late.”
“I buy results, not efforts.”
“You got the result, it was just this morning instead of last night. It was a few hours late. I don’t see the problem.”
“Do you have the woman?”
“I do.”
“You shouldn’t have done that. When a contract is rescinded, you’re to step down. Not doing that interferes with your replacement.”
“I completed the contract before I got the message,” River said. “When I took the woman this morning, I didn’t know you’d rescinded the contract. I didn’t find that out until I got back home.”
Silence.
“Where is she?”
“I have her.”
“Where?”
“Someplace safe,” River said. “Everything’s on track. I can release her or kill her, whichever you want.”
A pause.
“Tell me where you have her.”
“I can’t,” River said. “That’s not the way we do it and you know it. Like you said, you buy a result, not an effort. The result is that I have her.” A beat then, “I don’t understand what anybody wants with her. She’s a nobody.”
“What you understand or don’t understand is not relevant.”
River exhaled.
“We need to meet, face to face.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s time. I’ll buy you a beer.”
A pause.
“You’re playing a dangerous game.”
The line went dead.
Suddenly a hand appeared on River’s shoulder—January’s hand. “Trouble?”
“He’s going to take me out.” He swung the woman around onto his lap. “You too if you’re in the line of fire.”
Clouds swarmed in from the Rockies and switched the Denver sky from twilight to night. The wind swept up and the streetlights kicked on. Distant lights that were only a pale glimmer ten minutes ago were now bold and dominant.
River grabbed his gun, then January’s hand and headed for the car.
The woman fell into step.
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“Where are we going?”
“Charley-Anna’s house.”
“Why? What’s there?”
“Not what, who.”
On the way over, large isolated splats of rain smashed on the windshield—just a few. Within thirty seconds the wipers were swinging at full force, bringing a watery mess of a world in and out of focus. January snuggled closer and rested her head on River’s shoulder.
“Let’s just go somewhere and disappear,” she said.
“That’s not an option.”
“Sure it is.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Why? Because you have all your money wrapped up in that so-called place of yours?”
“No.”
“What then?”
“Just because.”
“Come on, River,” she said. “Let’s go to California. I’ve never been there. I want to see the beach.”
River patted her leg.
“I’ll show it to you but first things first.”
“Promise?”
Good question.
The answer surprised him.
“Yeah, I promise. Put it in the bank.”
She kissed him on the cheek.
“It’s in.” She got serious and said, “Don’t end up dead on me.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
At Charley-Anna’s house, January waited in the car while River headed over alone. On the third knock, a young woman opened the door. River explained who he was—a friend of the victim’s—and got let in. The woman turned out to be someone named Alley Bender.
“I just found out about Charley-Anna earlier today,” River said. “I’m going to tell you something you probably don’t want to hear but here goes. I broke into the house this afternoon to see if I could find a connection to whoever it was who killed her.” He saw the expression on the woman’s face and added, “I only went into Charley-Anna’s room, not yours.”
The woman studied him.
“Do you want some wine?”
No, he didn’t.
The woman poured herself a glass, tilted towards River in salute and took a long sip.
