I found a crumpled straw western hat and a tarnished pair of mirrored sunglasses mixed in with the other backseat junk. Close enough. I put them on and walked around to the coffee shop. The sunglasses were scratched and smeared, hard to see through.
The coffee shop was about half-full. Two or three people sat empty-faced over coffee cups, but most of the customers were deep in their Sunday papers. Cannon sat on a stool at a long counter along the right-hand wall. He held his paper in his left hand and mechanically sipped coffee with his right. Ten feet behind his left shoulder Cowboy sat alone at a table for two.
There was an empty space at the counter two stools this side of Cannon, where a large man in an electric-blue leisure suit would be between me and Bert. I took that stool, nodded when the waitress held up a coffee cup and watched her slop a third of it into the saucer before she plunked it down in front of me. Sunday brunch at the Hilton this was not.
I wanted to let Cannon settle in for a few minutes, but the guy in the leisure suit started the clock early when he abruptly backed off his stool and walked away. Good-bye, screen. I got up then and stepped closer to Cannon. I felt Cowboy moving in from the other side. I dropped money onto the counter in front of Cannon. He jumped, startled, and I grabbed his right arm above the elbow where you can clamp down hard and make the whole arm go numb.
Cowboy had Bert’s left arm by then, and we lifted him off his stool, moved him along, always a half-step off-balance, and waltzed him right on out of there. A few heads came up out of newspapers and watched us, but no one said or did anything,
We were outside on the sidewalk, still bustling him along, before Bert seemed to realize what was happening. He started to complain then, but its not easy to take control of a situation when your arms don’t work and two large men are treating you like a piece of furniture.
At the Mustang, we patted him down. He was clean, so we shoved him into the trunk and drove away. I looked in the rearview mirror. There didn’t seem to be anyone writing down my license plate number or rushing to get the cops.
Picking up Bert Cannon was anticlimactic, to tell you the truth. I felt cheated. Not so cheated that I wanted to throw him back and try again, but a little bit cheated.
Chapter 35
“Fuck you guys,” Cannon said. “I got nothing to say. You got me. Okay, I accept that. You took me by surprise, that’s all. Doesn’t mean you’re tougher than I am. No goddamned way. I’ll show you jerk-offs who’s the tough one around here. You’ll see. In the Corps, we learned how to hang tough. You think I’m gonna tell you anything, why … Hey, I’ll tell you this much. You’re shit out of luck. S.O.L. Believe it. Go on, try me. You’ll see. I got nothing to say. Not me. Nothing.”
All that started after he’d realized we weren’t cops and my house wasn’t the local police station. He’d been repeating himself for five minutes now, and showed no signs of slowing down as he stood in the middle of my living room.
Cowboy and I stood back away from him, covering the room exits without making it obvious. Cannon didn’t bolt, didn’t even walk around. He just stood there and bitched. Boring.
Cowboy sat down on the couch; I leaned against a chair. I half turned away from Cannon and said to Cowboy, “So what do you think of the Cowboys’ chances this year?”
“I reckon the key to it is fan support,” he said solemnly. “If the town don’t really get out there and back the team, you can’t expect ’em to win.”
Cannon spluttered to a halt when he realized we weren’t listening to him. He folded his arms and scowled. The silence made a delightful contrast.
“Take off your clothes,” I said to Cannon over my shoulder and to Cowboy, “Have you seen Harry’s new Grand Prix? Fantastic. Now that’s what I call—”
“Blow it out your ass,” Cannon said.
I looked at Cowboy. He shrugged.
“Strip,” I said to Cannon. “Yeah, the upholstery is this plush-looking—”
“What are you guys, a couple of queers or something? Forget it! I will not—”
“The hard way,” I said to Cowboy.
“Looks like it,” he said.
As we moved toward Cannon, he dropped into a fight stance and threw a long, looping swing at me. His arm was still a trifle numb, probably. In any case, it was easy to pick his right hand out of the air and gentle him down with a come-along hold. While I held his wrist bent down—as long as he didn’t struggle, it wouldn’t hurt him—Cowboy started unbuttoning and unsnapping his clothes.
“Tell you the truth,” Cowboy said, “I kind of like the new Fords myself.”
“Naw. Ford hasn’t made a car worth having since the Mustang.”
To get Cannon’s shirt off, we switched. Cowboy bent Cannon left wrist for a change while I finished undressing him. Cannon bitched some in the beginning, but by the time he was down to his shorts—and about to lose those—he shut up.
“Ford makes good pickups,” Cowboy said.
“Well, I dunno about that, but I’ll tell you what. Ford paint doesn’t last as long as GM’s, everybody knows that.”
I threw the last of Cannon’s clothes into a corner. Cowboy looked at Cannon like he was a side of beef and sniffed. “Phew,” he said, “Shower.”
Cannon bleated. “Hey, c’mon! You saying I smell? I don’t—”
He was right; he didn’t. But being clean had nothing to do it.
“You’re wrong about Ford paint. My cousin had him a LTD that—”
We trundled Cannon into the bathroom, turned on the water, and set the temperature. He tried to pull away, so I squeezed down harder on his upper arm. He winced but stopped pulling. I eased off the pressure but kept holding his arm. He let me steer him into the tub and under the shower head. He stood there like an animal in the rain, head bowed, his hair plastered down over his forehead. He trembled slightly. I noticed the wound Tony had mentioned. No wonder he couldn’t get into the armed forces. That foot was a mess.
“A fluke,” I said to Cowboy. “You can’t beat GM cars for keeping a shine.”
I handed Cannon a bar of soap. He didn’t take it at first, so I pulled his arm out straight and began to wash it. While I scrubbed, I looked back at Cowboy and continued to slander Ford paint.
Cowboy shook his head and kept saying, “Naw, naw, you’re wrong …”
Tentatively, Cannon reached his free hand around, palm up. I put the soap into it. He began to wash himself.
I stepped back, dried my hands, and said, “Actually, you might be right about Ford pickups. I seem to recall an old …”
Cowboy and I stood around beside the open shower, rambling on about this and that until Cannon finished washing himself and put the soap in the dish.
“I’m telling you, that brother-in-law of mine—” I pointed at Cannon’s left knee. He got the soap out of the dish and washed his knee again. “—is gonna keep my lawn mower forever, it looks like. That son of a …”
When he’d finished washing again, Cannon took the towel the first time Cowboy handed it to him. He dried himself quickly, then awkwardly folded the towel and hung it over the shower curtain rod. He started to step out of the tub, but Cowboy threw a hard glance at him, and he froze. We let him stand there for a few minutes, then led him out of the bathroom. He came quietly enough. I began to think it was going to work.
After that we locked Bert Cannon in a closet, ate breakfast and took turns napping.
Six hours later, when I let Cannon out, he was ready to talk.
Chapter 36
“I didn’t kill him,” Cannon said. He sat awkwardly on a hard wooden chair in my kitchen, still naked, his legs crossed at the knee and his hands cupped over his crotch. “I swear to you, I didn’t kill the old guy.” It was the fourth time he’d denied killing Max Krandorff. Maybe it was true. And maybe not.
“You were hired to kill him,” I said.
“Yes. Yes, that’s right,” he said, his head bobbing up and down. “But I didn’t.”
Cowboy, stand
ing behind him, said, “Again. From the beginning.”
Cannon nodded again. “All right. I’d been trying to get set up as a mercenary, but you have to have the right contacts and—” He stopped, then started again. “No one wanted me. That’s the real truth of it. I’d never been a merc; I was only a marine for a few weeks before that bast— anyway, no one wanted me as a merc.”
That was an improvement over his earlier, self-serving explanations. It would be interesting to see if anything else changed this time around.
“I’d almost forgotten that old ad, like I told you before. Then Tony called me at the store one day and said a man had—”
“When was that?” I said.
“Sorry. Okay, that was, uh, two and a half weeks ago. On a Thursday. Two weeks ago last Thursday.”
“Go ahead.”
“Tony said a man had called about the old Eagle ad. I don’t know where he saw it. Well, in the magazine, sure, but where he found one that old, I don’t know. Anyway, the guy left a number, Tony gave it to me, and I called him back.”
I’d asked him about that phone number three times already. It was Dresden’s home number. I let him go on with his story.
“He said his name was Carl, but he wouldn’t tell me his last name,” Cannon said. “He didn’t come right out and say so, not at first, but he made it pretty clear that he wanted me to kill a guy named Max who worked in a grocery store—one of those late-night places. It looks like a barn.”
I thought: Great security, Carl. Don’t tell him your last name, but leave your home phone number. And a message. And then ask a strange voice on the phone to kill your partner. You dummy.
Cannon looked worried. “You have to understand this: I never intended to actually do it. But this Carl person offered me fifteen thousand dollars, and I thought … You see, for a long time I had this dream about buying a few hundred acres in east Texas. In the Piney Woods, maybe, or down in the Big Thicket. With that fifteen thousand and a little I’ve got saved, I’d have a down payment. What I wanted to do, see, was start a school where mercs—”
“You’re kidding yourself again. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
He blinked and slowly said, “I’m beginning to.” He rubbed his nose, then quickly dropped his hand back into his lap. “Well, I figured I could fool this guy Carl. He was uptight about the whole thing; that was pretty obvious. So I could pretend to kill this guy Max. What I’d really do, though, was take Max away, someplace where it would take him a couple of days to get back to Dallas. By then I’d have collected the money from Carl and”—Cannon shrugged—“what could he do about it? Go to the cops and say he was cheated because I hadn’t murdered somebody for him?”
“When did you meet Carl the first time?”
Cannon shook his head. “I keep telling you, I didn’t meet him. Not ever. See, we were supposed to meet downtown once. That was the Tuesday after he called. I told him where and what time but he never showed up. I waited for a whole hour, too. I don’t know what happened to him—”
I did; Dresden went to the wrong place and met me instead.
“—but it seemed like someone else was trying to horn in, because when I called him that night, he didn’t make much sense. He acted like I should have known things he’d never told me, and, well, it was weird.”
I bet it was, with Carl and Bert talking at cross-purposes, confusing each other every time they opened their mouths. You could sell the film rights to a conversation like that: The Two Stooges Meet Ma Bell.
Cannon said, “And he kept saying things like, ‘Remember, it’s changed. Tomorrow night, not Thursday.’ But he had never said anything about Thursday in the first place. He said he’d meet me afterward and pay me. And he said Wednesday, not Thursday, again. Why Thursday? I didn’t know anything about Thursday. It was a little freaky.”
“Don’t you fret about that,” Cowboy said softly. “It don’t matter which day you iced him.”
“But I didn’t ice him! God, you guys, you gotta believe that. I went to the barn place Wednesday night, I admit that. I was there, okay? But it was closed. I couldn’t get in.”
He looked and acted nervous. “See, I had it all worked out. I was going to pretend to be drunk, right? Stagger some, talk funny, fake the old guy out. Then I’d grab him and lock him in the back room or the chiller or whatever had a door. Because if this Carl was going to meet me there, I couldn’t take Max away like I’d planned at first. But I could lock him up, right? Maybe tie him up. I’d do whatever seemed like the best idea at the time. And then I’d tell Carl not to go into the store because of all the blood, or because he’d leave fingerprints or something. I figured I could snow him one way or another.”
How’s that for a professional, precisely organized modus operandi? Funny thing is, it might have worked.
“But I couldn’t get in!” Cannon wailed. “Honest to God, I didn’t kill the old guy!”
“How do you know he was old?”
“How many times do I have to tell you?” Cannon sounded desperate. “That Carl, on the phone, when he was acting weird, he told me. About sixty, he said. Kinda short, and bald.”
“That’s not much of a description.”
Cannon slumped. “You don’t bel— Max was supposed to be the only person in the store. How could I go wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Where did you go wrong? Did he try to fight? Bert, we understand about these things. You didn’t mean to hurt him when you went in. Okay. We understand that. But maybe he struggled. He might have screamed; maybe he hit you, I don’t know. Whatever it was, you got excited and things went further than you’d planned. Hey, it happens.”
“But it didn’t happen! Honest to God. The doors were locked, and I couldn’t get in. There was a sign. Cleaning, it said. I kicked the door and yelled for the old guy, but he never came to the door!”
“Let’s skip that for now,” I said. “What happened next?”
“I didn’t know what to do, except leave. I drove around for a while, killing time, thinking I should go back soon, because he’d be finished cleaning. But I was pretty shook up by then. I stopped at this place I know and had a couple of quick drinks. Then I went back to the grocery store.”
“And?”
“I parked a block away and walked. Sneaked, really, because I didn’t know what was going on and … well, okay, I was scared.”
He stopped; Cowboy and I out-waited him.
“There were two cars in the parking lot,” Cannon said. “And two men. One guy handed the other one a briefcase. After the first one left, the second one looked into the case; then he left, too. I figured that briefcase was full of money.”
“Go over the part where you made your brilliant deductions,” I said. “I get a big kick out of that part. Tell me again.”
Cannon looked wary as he said, “Well, the first guy had to be Carl; that made sense because he had the money to start with. And then I realized why the door was locked; the old guy wasn’t cleaning; he really had been killed. And the second guy—that was you, but I didn’t know it was you at the time—the second guy had, uh, well, you say you didn’t kill him, either, but I thought you had. At the time I thought that. I know better now because you told me, but then, not knowing, I thought you’d done it.”
Cannon looked at me to see if he should protest my innocence a few more times, then seemed to decide it wasn’t necessary. “When you left, I saw your license number. I was pretty mad because you had my money.”
“This time around, I have to ask,” I said. “If you didn’t kill Max, what made you think you deserved the money?”
“Well, I didn’t deserve it, I guess. But I had never intended to kill him, not even in the beginning, and I was always going to take the money. So what was the difference?”
How do you argue with logic like that? “Go on,” I said.
“Maybe I didn’t work it all out quite that fast, I’m not sure now. I was going to go into the store, I remember tha
t, to see about Max. If he was really dead, I mean. I didn’t, though, because right after you left, a car full of cops came. Plainclothes cops, but it was pretty obvious what they were. I hid in an alley across the street and watched for a while. When an ambulance came, that’s when I put it all together, I guess. I knew for sure Max was dead then. And you had my money.”
“How did you find me?”
“Well, I had your license number, remember. And there’s this guy, in the bar I told you about? He’s got a buddy who’s a cop, so he can find out things like that. It cost me twenty bucks.”
I wondered who got the twenty, and if the cop was a rookie trying too hard to impress a civilian, or an old-timer who’d missed out on a promotion he thought he deserved. The rookie wouldn’t even know about the twenty; the old-timer would have gotten at least fifteen of it. Whoever it was, they were playing Russian roulette with Internal Affairs.
“Anyway,” Cannon said, “with what he found out for me, I knew where you were. I called you a couple of times, but well, talking to you was even goofier than talking to that guy Carl. No offense, but …”
“Don’t stroke me, Bert. Just tell your story.”
If it is possible for a naked, psyched-out, kidnap-and-interrogation victim to appear even more uncomfortable, Cannon did. He squirmed and avoided my eye and bounced his foot and finally said cautiously, “Look, I’m really sorry about the Molotov cocktail. But it was safe; it couldn’t explode or anything like that. I would never throw a real one, one with gasoline in it. You got to believe that. I only wanted to scare you, to get you to hand over the money.” He squirmed some more and folded his arms. Then he realized that his crotch was exposed. He tried to fold his arms in such a way that he could still keep his hands in his lap, but that didn’t work.
I said, “Every time you called, I offered to give you back the money. Why wouldn’t you meet me?”
Cannon’s face screwed up. He looked ready to cry. “I don’t know. Part of the time I thought you were too eager, and it would be a trap. And part of the time I couldn’t think of a safe place to meet. And even when I decided on a place and I really wanted to go there, I … it was … I was so goddamned scared!” He dropped his chin onto his chest. “So I decided to forget the whole thing. Then you guys … in the coffee shop, you grabbed me and …” Cannon’s shoulders jerked spasmodically; tears began to drip on his lowered hands.
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