“But that didn’t happen, Hil, and it won’t. How are you this morning?”
“All right, I think. It was only a dream. I know that.” Firm voice, chin up, eyes front. “I can handle it.”
“Way to go, babe. I’ll find the guy, and while I’m doing that, you’ll be okay with Mimi.”
“She is good at this sort of thing, isn’t she?” Hilda sounded thoughtful, not worried.
“Oh, yeah. I’m a little better; so is Cowboy. Mostly that’s because of our size. We’re stronger; we can hit harder and use larger weapons than Mimi. But she’s very good. I’d trust her to cover my back anytime.”
“Quite a recommendation.”
I looked at her. “If Mimi wasn’t that good, I couldn’t leave you with her, Hil.”
She blinked rapidly. “Damn. You did it again. I think you’re talking about some dumb macho thing, then it turns out to be sentimental.”
I said, “Roses are red, violets are blue, I’d beat up a mugger, to show I love you.”
Hilda rolled her eyes. “Hallmark, eat your heart out,” she said.
“I got a million of ’em.”
“Spare me, please,” she said, and swung her legs out of bed. “Go put a danish in the oven, will you? I’m starving!”
See what I mean about early morning food?
Before Cowboy and I left Hilda’s house, I phoned Ed Durkee at the cop shop and told him what had happened.
“Is she all right?” he said.
“Couple of blisters. Bad dreams. Overall, though, she’s doing pretty well.”
Ed grunted. “What can I do? Assuming Noonebury doesn’t get my badge lifted in the next twenty minutes, of course.”
“Is it that bad, Ed?”
“No, not really. Hell, I might even be making a little progress. We’ll see. Again, what can I do?”
“Saturday, after we split up at the park, a White Ford Tempo tailed me. He wasn’t at the park; I’m pretty sure he picked me up afterward. I didn’t bother to get the plate number, because I figured it was only one of Noonebury’s drones. But now I wonder if it might have been Dresden’s hired hitter.”
“Hmm. Well, I know the Scotsmen have more cars than you can count. And they’re paying expenses for some guys to use their own wheels. Street people can spot the unmarked departmental units faster than I can. So—look, I’ll get started now. You come on in here. Depending on what I find out, we’ll go give Kevin a hard time, or see what Motor Registration has to say.” He paused, then said, “Do you need a backup? Because I could maybe find a squad for a day—”
“Thanks, Ed. It’s okay. Cowboy and Mimi are—”
“Oh shit. Don’t tell me things like that, Rafferty!” He hung up.
Hilda and I changed each other’s bandages. Her feet didn’t look too bad. My hand looked terrible, but the blisters hadn’t broken. And it didn’t hurt too much.
Cowboy loaded his sports bag and a canvas duffel bag heavy with weapons into my Mustang. We checked Hilda’s neighborhood for three blocks in each direction. There was no one sitting and watching the house, so we headed south.
For the next thirty minutes, we crisscrossed our path, stopped on one-way streets, and doubled back half a dozen times. For our finale Cowboy stood on a street corner to see who, if anyone, followed me around the block. Twice.
No one did. Nada. We had come away from Hilda’s without leaving a trail. Which was good, in one way, but bad in another. It would have been so much easier if he’d been there.
“We could have plucked him off our tail like a duck eating June bugs,” Cowboy said.
“Life’s a bitch,” I said, “and then you come up with corn pone expressions like that.”
Cowboy squirmed down in his seat and propped one knee against the dash. “Let’s stop driving, boss-man,” he said. “If this dude is gonna phone to set up a meet, we’re purely making life hard for that old boy.”
“Soon. First let’s go see what Ed Durkee came up with.”
Cowboy humphed. “If it’s all the same to you. I’ll wait in the car.”
“Good idea. That way no one will try to steal it.”
Cowboy looked out at the Mustang’s faded hood and ran his hand over my duct-tape-patched upholstery. “I don’t think you need to worry too much about that,” he said.
Chapter 19
Ed Durkee came out of his office as I approached it. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see Noonebury.”
“What’ve you got, Ed? Was the Tempo one of his?”
“I doubt it. Let’s go pull his chain anyway.”
Up in the rarefied mists of MacTuff land, they were questioning a thin black kid. The kid wore designer jeans, a gold watch, and top-of-the-line Reeboks. He kept his chin down and his eyes on the Reeboks. He answered every question with a shrug or a “nunh.” He was twelve years old; thirteen, tops.
The cop asking the questions was slender, too, with a small dark mustache and sad eyes. His ID said his name was Frigerio. He didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t get any answers. He kept plugging along anyway, asking trick questions like “What’s your name?” and “Where do you live?”
Frigerio looked like one of those people who never sweat. Maybe that was in the job description for MacTuff appointments.
Kevin Noonebury stood behind Frigerio. Noonebury was shirtsleeved but immaculate. He had one hand on his hip. He used the other hand to tap a manicured forefinger against his pursed lips.
Noonebury saw Ed and me. He shifted the busy forefinger to a brief give-me-a-minute gesture.
Frigerio asked the kid, “Where did you get the car?”
The kid shrugged and said “nunh” again.
Someone stepped over and showed Noonebury a sheet of paper. He looked at it, handed it back, and watched Frigerio again. After five more minutes Noonebury turned away and walked to an empty corner of the large room. Ed and I followed him.
Noonebury said softly, “This is the sort of thing I’m up against every day, Ed. An hour ago, a Cadillac had a fender bender with a taxi. It was practically out front; only five or six blocks down Commerce. The Cadillac is brand new—something like seven hundred miles on it. That boy was driving it. He jumped out to run, tripped and fell flat on his face in front of an officer on foot patrol.”
Noonebury glanced over his shoulder. Frigerio still placidly pitched questions, still sweatlessly struck out.
“See the boy’s clothes and accessories?” Noonebury said. “He had almost eight hundred dollars in cash and a dozen crack packs in his pockets. The Cadillac is not on the hot sheet; my guess is it’s his. And I suspect we’ll find out he paid cash for it. Look at him. He’s what, fourteen? Perhaps not even that old. Any minute now he’ll remember to tell us his age. When he does, I’ll have to ship him over to Youth. He’ll get a reprimand, perhaps counseling, and then he’ll go straight back to the crack dealer he works for. The current system doesn’t work, Ed. The system says minors can’t go to jail because they’ll be exposed to criminals. So, on the streets, the drug dealers recruit children like that boy over there.”
Noonebury gritted his perfect teeth and waggled a pointing finger. It was the closest I’d seen him come to passion. “Last week we found a runner who is ten, Ed. Ten years old, and he had more cash in his pocket than his father makes in a year.”
Noonebury turned his hand palm up. He was selling now. “Ed, I want to get the people who use these children. If I have to spend hours in meetings soothing nervous deputy chiefs, it diminishes my effectiveness. Surely you can see that.”
Ed sighed. “It diminishes my effectiveness when I can’t work a murder case because you’re hogging the file and evidence, Kevin. What about that white Tempo?”
Noonebury didn’t like that, but he took it. Very interesting. Ed had definitely picked up some clout.
Noonebury seemed to force a pleasant expression onto his face. “One of my men has a red Tempo, but we’re not using a white one. Of course, without the license number, it’s
difficult to …” He spread his hands and smiled. “In any case, I assure you there is no current surveillance on Rafferty.”
“That slight stress on the word current brings a question leaping to my fertile mind,” I said.
Noonebury ignored me. He said to Ed, “I’m disturbed that you think I would put a tail on you and your sergeant, ah, Ricco. Very disturbed.”
“Sure,” Ed said. “Let’s get together someday and talk about it.”
“You could do lunch,” I said. “Or take a meeting.”
“Let’s go, Rafferty.”
As we passed Frigerio’s desk, the kid suddenly lifted his head and blurted, “Thirteen! I is thirteen years old, and I doan gotta talk to no honky cops!”
“Well, shit,” said Frigerio.
When we got back to Ed’s office, there was a portable cellular phone on his desk blotter. It was ringing. Well, it was beeping, or chirping; whatever you want to call that noise.
Ed picked up the handset, listened for a moment, then said, “Yeah. Okay, great. Thanks.”
He hung up and handed me the portable phone. It was about the size of a telephone book and shaped a little like a briefcase, with the handset clipped onto the top. It was heavier than it looked.
“Here,” he said. “You can’t just sit around and wait for the hitter to call. You’ll probably have to go find him. I’ve had a transfer patch put on your home phone. Any calls to it will be automatically switched to this thing.”
“You’re going out on a limb, Ed. I appreciate it.”
He looked around his office and shrugged his rumpled shoulders. “Yeah, well, I guess I do owe a few favors now, but … Listen, Rafferty, if the hitter calls to set up the meet, I want to know. If you find him first, I want to know. And if you see or hear from Carl Dresden, I want to know that, too. You’re getting a lot of slack because Kevin is busting my balls, but this is still my murder case.”
I grimaced. “Ed, I can’t have four hundred cops breathing down my neck, playing elaborate ambush games. I’m sorry, but—”
“What did I just say about Kevin? If I could get any help from real cops, would I use you?” He slapped futilely at the air between us. “Call me, goddamn it. We’ll work it out.”
Ed went to a file cabinet and grabbed an inch-high stack of computer printouts. “Take this, too.” He dropped it on my side of his cluttered desk. “That’s every white, beige, cream, and light yellow Tempo in North Texas. Damned if I know what good it will do you. Too many cars for you to track down alone and I can’t get the manpower, so …” He looked embarrassed.
“That’s great, Ed,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes all this high-tech crap is actually useful. Good luck.”
I gathered up my goodies and lugged them down to the parking lot. Cowboy sat on my front fender. In the next space, a tall redhead with long legs locked the door of a green Caprice.
“Hey,” I said to Cowboy, “wait till you see this gadget.”
Because sometimes things happen with perfect timing, the portable phone rang just as I plunked it down on the hood of the Mustang. Cowboy’s eyebrows went up. The redhead turned around, a half smile on her face.
I said to Cowboy, “Ah, that will be Luther in Geneva about the takeover,” and unclipped the phone handset. He nodded solemnly. The redhead slowly put her keys in her purse and watched me. Her head was cocked a little; she had nice eyes.
“This is Rafferty,” I said to the phone.
It was Mrs Jorgenson, my landlady. My last rent check had bounced.
Cowboy nearly hurt himself when he slipped off the fender, he was laughing so hard.
Chapter 20
As we pulled out of the parking lot, Cowboy said, “I reckon we ought to get the money ready first. That way, if the hitter wants a meet real quick-like, we’re all set to go.”
“Fat chance of me giving that sucker fifteen thousand bucks.”
“’Course not,” Cowboy said patiently, “but it makes sense to take the money along. These setups never work out the way they should; you know that. Could be you’ll need to show the cash early on, before we get to thumping on this old boy and any buddies he brings along. Don’t sweat it, boss-man, we ain’t gonna give away your money.”
“You’ve got that right,” I said. “I don’t have the money. I turned it over to Ed Durkee.”
Cowboy looked at me bleakly. Finally he took a deep breath and shook his head a little. “Gonna get you a hat before I let you stand out in the sun again.”
We went to my office first. Maybe the hitter—it was annoying to know so little about him, not even a partial name—maybe the hitter thought I had stashed the money there. Maybe he’d already tried to steal it. Maybe.
And then again, maybe not. Beth Woodland said she hadn’t noticed anyone hanging around. “What’s the problem?”
“No problem. He’s supposed to, uh, collect some money from me. I thought I might have missed him.”
Beth frowned. “Since when are you looking for a bill collector instead of the other way around?”
Across the hall the aluminum-cookware sales manager had a different attitude. “Me, I figure it like this,” he said. “Any bastard who can get money out of me, he’s the best. So what I want to do is hire him and send him out after the deadbeats who owe me.” He smiled around his cigar. “It ain’t happened yet, though.”
In my office, Cowboy sat slumped in my chair, his feet on my desk and his big hat pulled down over his eyes.
“You asleep?” I said.
“Can’t stand to look at the mess,” he said. “Now what?”
“Let’s check the street again, in case he’s watching the building. Then my house, for the same reason. After that I guess we punt.”
Cowboy grunted. “Tell the kicker to suit up,” he said. “Sure as hell, we gonna need him.”
It was late afternoon as we approached my house on Palm Lane. It’s a short street with only one way in or out. Cowboy and I circled in, checking surrounding blocks, turning left at every street corner.
“Mockingbird to Delmar to Ravendale to Matilda to Palm,” I said. “Sounds like a double play sequence where they drop the ball a lot.”
Cowboy grunted. “You really think we’re gonna find this old boy sitting on your doorstep?”
“No. But I’d sure feel stupid if we pulled into the driveway, he hopped my fence and got away in his car parked on the next street.”
“There is that,” Cowboy said.
There were no Ford Tempos parked anywhere near Palm Lane, though, and no one pretended to wait for a bus or deliver a pizza or search for “Bill Brown’s house.” There was an elderly man I recognized walking a poodle, a departing UPS truck, and three women jogging.
As I stopped the Mustang in my driveway, I said, “And you don’t think those were grenades in the last jogger’s hip pockets?”
“Naw, that was all her. Probably why she jogs in the first place.”
The house was empty and apparently untouched since Hilda and I had left in the dark hours of that morning.
“Damn,” Cowboy said when he saw the bedroom and bath. “I knowed you wasn’t much for housekeeping, but …”
He examined the champagne bottle and charred fuse while I lugged dripping sheets to the washing machine. We mopped up the bathroom with towels, and threw those into the machine with the sheets. Cowboy got two beers from my refrigerator and handed me one. He pointed out the laundry window with his bottle. “Intruder out there.”
The orange cat sat motionless in the middle of the backyard, staring at the back door. It looked like a mottled terracotta statue.
I took a bowl of milk out to the cat. It sat calmly enough until I got within ten feet or so, then it backed off and waited for me put the bowl down. Then I backed off, and the cat padded to the bowl and began to lap at the milk. Every few seconds it looked up at me.
“Later, Cat,” I said, “Too much work to do.”
Going into the house, I
hoped Cowboy hadn’t heard me talking to Cat. Not Cat, dammit, a cat. Don’t want to get carried away over the mangy thing.
Cowboy and I mulled over the problem with another beer. It seemed Carl Dresden was the key. He was our only link to the hitter. Noonebury was after Dresden, too, of course, and it was unlikely we could find him first, but still … Besides, even getting close might give us a lead. And, damn it, you don’t get hits if you never swing at the ball.
It was just after five when I phoned the Mini-Maxi Food Barn office number. It rang seven times; I thought they’d closed for for the day; then a woman answered.
“Mini-Maxi, how may I help you?” She sounded out of breath.
“Hi, there, sugarplum,” I said. “Lemme talk to Carl, will ya?”
“Mr Dresden’s not here, sir.”
“Well, he damn well should be! We got a big problem with this order of Idaho po— tell you what, sweetie-babe, when do you expect old Carl anyway? And what’d you say your name was, dumpling?”
Across the room, Cowboy rolled his eyes.
“This is Sharon, sir. Mr Dresden is out of town. I don’t know when he’ll be back.” She’d caught her breath; now she sounded irritated.
“Out of town where, Sharon? I’m not kidding, we need to get this—”
“Houston, sir! He’s supposed to be at a Holiday Inn in Houston. They say he’s there but he’s not there; I can’t reach him, and Mr Krandorff has been—” She caught herself abruptly. I was wrong about her being irritated; she was frustrated and nervous. When she spoke again, her voice was cooly formal. “I’m very sorry, sir, but I cannot help you. Please try again later in the week.”
“Well, okay, Sharon baby, if you say so. Hey, is old Carl still living out there on Ashgrove?” The phone book on my lap listed a Dresden, Carl, but phone books aren’t as good as they used to be. Too many unlisted numbers.
Cannon's Mouth_A Rafferty P.I. Mystery Page 8
