Cowboy looked at me over Cannon’s bowed head. He shrugged.
I went into the living room and found Tony Cordington’s phone number in the mess left over from our search for Bert Cannon. She was home.
“Bert needs help,” I said. “Are you still interested enough to give it to him?”
“What kind of help?”
“We had to jolt him pretty good, Tony. He’s off the mercenary kick now. Maybe you can keep him off it, maybe not. It’ll be up to you two.”
“What about the police?” she said. “After you left. I got to thinking about it, and I thought—”
“I was wrong. Bert didn’t kill Max Krandorff.”
Chapter 37
“Tony showed up about thirty minutes later,” I said to Hilda’s open bathroom door, “and took Cannon home with her. She might make it work. I have no idea what the odds are. Fifty-fifty, maybe.”
Hilda stuck her head around the door frame. She dried her hair with a big yellow towel that flapped around her face and muffled her voice. “Thupper man.”
“‘The poor man?’ Hey, this is the guy who threw a firebomb at you.”
“I know, but …” She stopped drying and stood with the towel draped around her neck, her black curls tangled, her skin pink and fresh from the shower.
“Perhaps you’d care to step over here,” I said, “to, ah, facilitate further discussion.”
“Relax, big fella. All in good time.” She moved out of my sight line from the bed. Her hair dryer began to whir. She called out out over the noise, “Seriously, did you have to torture him like that?”
“You make it sound like rubber hoses and cattle prods to the gonads. We only psyched him out. He’d have gotten the same treatment being processed into any slammer.”
“Taking away his clothes? Treating him like a thing instead of a person?”
“Well, I didn’t have time to mess around, so maybe he did get a slightly concentrated dose. Still, it was only basic technique. Take away a man’s pants, it loosens his tongue. Same with pretending he’s a side of beef. As soon as he knows you have control over him, he’ll roll over and try to please you.”
Hilda’s head again, with halfway-dry hair. “Is that the reaction they call the Stockholm syndrome?”
“A close cousin. Mostly it’s just a way you get people to give you what you want.”
Hilda disappeared again. “It’s not very nice, whatever you call it.”
“It’s not very nice to agree to kill people or throw firebombs, either. Maybe we broke him of those unsociable habits. By the way, Hil, I’ve always considered damp hair to be very sexy. Don’t go to a lot of trouble in there.”
“Relax, it’s worth waiting for. You’re absolutely certain he didn’t kill that man Max at the grocery store.”
“Yeah. Cannon’s a wannabee, in the first place. Oh, maybe he could kill someone if he concentrated real hard, but I doubt it. The thing is, though, I heard him when he banged on the door that night. I was sitting on the floor next to Max’s body at the time.”
“Maybe that wasn’t him.”
“Had to be him,” I said. “He wouldn’t know that someone else had come to the door, for one thing, and for another, he mentioned the Closed sign I taped to the glass. He’s clean.”
The hair dryer stopped. “Are you going to tell your police friends about him?” Soft clinks and rustles drifted out the bathroom door.
“I’m still working on that one. I should let Ed Durkee know, but this is a bad time for Bert to be hassled by the cops.”
“How considerate of you,” Hilda said. “It was all right for you and Cowboy to hassle him, but the police shouldn’t?”
“Yes, because we got there first. Cannon thought he was rough and tough, a hotshot mercenary soldier, but he melted down to jelly in less than a day. Now he’s pliable. Tony Cordington might turn him around, help him get his life straightened out. But if he was leaned on again too soon, he might crack completely. Or turn paranoid and resentful. Or worse.”
“Perhaps,” Hilda called.
I said, “But you have a say in it, too, Hil. That firebomb was assault, no matter how you slice it.”
“He sounds harmless now. Forget it.”
“Okay.” I got up and went to the bedroom door, opened it and closed it, twice, hard.
“What was that?” Hilda called.
“Me,” I said. “Just slamming it in the door to calm myself down a little bit. This waiting is tough on a guy.”
“Ho-ho,” she said. A wisp of filmy white material flickered out of the bathroom doorway and immediately withdrew. “You don’t know how lucky you are, bucko. This little number is going to curl your toes.”
“Am I likely to roar and bellow and paw the carpet like a lust-ravaged beast?”
“Almost certainly,” she said. “It’s a good thing Cowboy and Mimi went home.”
“This sounds promising,” I said. “When? When?”
“Soon, soon. Trust me, you’re going to love this.”
She was right.
Chapter 38
Monday mornings are bad enough under normal conditions. Start of the work week and all that. But most weeks, at least you have an idea what you’re trying to accomplish. Finalize the Frobisher contract, paint the Jones house, make more widgets, sell another thousand hamburgers, whatever.
It’s harder to face a Monday morning when you don’t know where you’re going, what you’re doing, or what to try next. Not that it matters much, because nothing seems to work.
I went to the office, mostly from force of habit. I picked up a sack of doughnuts on the way and shared them with Beth Woodland in her office on the other side of the big plate glass window. Beth was fine; there was nothing new or strange going on around the building, except for a noon party at the P.R. Guy’s office that had ended with the P.R. guy—I can never remember his name—being locked out in the hall in his underwear. “Maybe that’s what they mean by public relations,” Beth said. “And I got your mail. Here.”
By ten o’clock, I had reduced the mail to its component parts; bills (eight), circulars and other junk (six), and check (one, small, possibly rubber).
At ten-ten, I took Ed Durkee’s portable phone back to him. He looked at it glumly. “The Cannon guy wasn’t the one, huh?”
“I’m powerless against such relentless interrogation. Cannon was the one, but there’s more to it than I thought. Listen to this and tell me what I missed. Please tell me what I missed.”
I recited The Life and Times of Bert Cannon, a tragedy in three acts. When I finished, Ed dry-scrubbed his face and said, “Aw, hell, I think you’re right, Rafferty.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“I’m gonna pretend I never heard of Cannon,” Ed sad. “Why screw him up any more?”
“Do me another favor, Ed. Tell me the Houston cops have found Dresden. Tell me he’s confessed to everything from original sin to sabotaging the Titanic.”
Ed shrugged. “Sorry.”
After a while, I said, “Well, the loose end is annoying, but it’s your problem, I guess. I just wanted to find out who threw the firebomb and stop him from doing it again. I guess I did that much.”
“Sounds like it,” Ed said.
“You guys can work on the murder part of it,” I said. “You have the manpower for it. Gotta find Dresden first, anyway.”
“Probably,” Ed said. “Don’t worry about it. Once Kevin Noonebury finishes farting around with the case, I’ll see what I can do.”
“Ole Kev still flailing away with the bright burning sword of righteousness, is he?”
“Is he ever. Slowing down a little, though. They’re starting to pull some of his people away, into other operations. I hear he had to drop some of his surveillance targets. But Kevin’s a long way from finished. His MacTuff bandwagon still has all its wheels.”
We sat there quietly for a few minutes; then I said, “He’ll screw it up if we let him, won’t he?”
Ed nodded. �
�I think so.”
“You gonna let him do that, Ed?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
I went for a drive that afternoon, around and around the parking lots at D-FW airport, in search of a particular light-green Dodge Dynasty. It was Carl Dresden’s car, Ed said, and as far as he knew, it had not been seen since Dresden left for Houston. Ergo, ipso, facto, and what the hell, the Dodge might be parked at the airport. And it might be loaded with no end of juicy clues.
Of course it might not be parked at the airport, but even that would tell us something. Either way, checking D-FW for the Dynasty was a job that needed doing.
Idling up and down the lanes in airport parking lots is hard on the butt and the back. The body temperature, too. That Monday wasn’t as hot as the day I’d first met Dresden, but it was hot enough. This time I was ready for it, with a cooler of ice and six-pack of beer. Be prepared. And to think the same preparations had gotten me kicked out of Boy Scouts all those years ago
I found the Dynasty. It took from twelve-thirty until four thirty-seven; it took all the beer and most of the ice; it sunburned the hell out of my left arm, but I found that sucker.
And I got it open, too, with the pistol key gadget I’d borrowed from Don Sweetham, a finance guy who occasionally gets me to repo cars for him.
This did not mean my luck had changed. Because after I’d found the Dynasty, and after I’d opened it up but before I’d searched it, one other thing happened.
I got arrested.
Chapter 39
“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Noonebury hissed. “You destroyed my surveillance team’s cover.”
We were back in Noonebury’s conference room, at the same blond table. Outside the glass door, Ernie the DEA man strutted around and gloated. In here, Kevin was flanked by the two cops who’d nailed me. They’d been hiding in a Toyota van parked nose to nose with the Dynasty. When they’d boiled out of the van, they surprised the hell out of me. It was a good bust.
When I told them that, Noonebury had become very tight round the eyes. So I told them again.
“In possession of burglary tools, too,” Noonebury said. “You may lose your PI license over this.”
“Burglary tools, my butt. I was doing a repo. So I got the wrong car, maybe. So what?” I smiled at him. “Do you find yourself becoming forgetful as you get older, too?”
Kevin had his lips pressed too tightly to show me his perfect teeth. “You are not amusing,” he said. “You are pathetic. You’ve been caught in the act of felony auto theft—as a minimum—and all you can do is make wisecracks.”
“Kevin, old buddy, let’s think about the good points and the bad points of busting me.” One of the young stakeout cops suddenly perked up and looked so damned crimebuster, it was a shame to break his bubble.
I said, “Relax, kid. I’m not going to offer him a bribe. I’m talking about the political considerations.”
Kevin squared his shoulders and said haughtily, “I do not deal in political considerations.”
“Uh-huh,” I said, and put my feet on his pretty table.
The eager cop stood up, ready to slap my feet away, but Noonebury said, “Um, wait a minute, Jenkinson. Let’s, er …” They all went to stand by the door and buzz at each other. Noonebury patted their shoulders and nodded paternally and eventually the stakeout cops went outside. Noonebury returned to the table and sat down. I noticed for the first time he had faint bags under his eyes.
“You gotta get more sleep, Kevin. Baggy eyes look terrible on the tube.”
“What political considerations?” he said. “Don’t waste my time.”
“If you try to roust me with a bullshit felony-auto-theft rap, I’ll go public with the whole Dresden fiasco.”
“That won’t do you any good, Rafferty,” Kevin said. He stood up. “Really, that is—”
“I found the guy who Dresden hired to whack his partner. Your two-bit task force couldn’t find him, but I did. You want the chief to read all about it over his morning cornflakes?”
“Give me whatever you have,” Noonebury said. “You are required to cooperate with a police investigation.” He was frowning now, no longer the steadfast police administrator. But not political. Oh, no.
“There are conditions,” I said. “First, I won’t tell you who the man is, because, the way it turned out, he didn’t do it. Second, in addition to forgetting this, er, misunderstanding, you keep your people off my back when I go to Dresden’s office tomorrow. Third, get Ed Durkee up here. I want to talk to him first.”
Noonebury’s cheeks turned pink, and his right hand quivered. By his standards the man was gripped by uncontrollable fury. “Never! You cannot demand—”
“Okay. Lock me up. A month from now, look around and see who got hurt the most.”
Noonebury sputtered and spat, then he went away to talk to a handful of his people. I smiled and waved to them. Thirty minutes later, Ed Durkee ambled into the conference room. He closed the door behind him and lowered himself into a chair like a brown balloon deflating. “I hear you found the Dodge,” he said. “And ruined Kevin’s day.”
I told him what I’d said to Noonebury so far and what I proposed to say.
“Should work,” Ed said. “Leave out Cannon’s name if you want.” Ed shrugged. He looked bored.
I said, “It means changing the story I told him before. Slightly.”
“Don’t worry about it. Kevin’s pretty sure you were in the store a lot longer than you’d said, anyway.”
“Is he likely to renege and try to bust me anyway?”
Ed grinned. “Kevin won’t renege. He’d look sneaky and untrustworthy if he did. He couldn’t stand that.”
And that’s the way it went down. Noonebury listened carefully, frowned a lot—mostly at me but part of the time at Ed—and finally, when I had finished, he got up and walked toward the conference room door.
“Kevin,” Ed said, “considering all this, how about dropping this one back into my basket? It’s obvious this isn’t a crack case.”
Kevin Noonebury stood facing the glass panel, looking out at his evening-shift minions. They had pulled in another street kid. This kid was older and meaner looking than the first one but he didn’t seem to be answering Frigerio’s questions, either.
Noonebury sucked in a lungful of air and let it out noisily. It was a strange gesture for him. “No, Ed,” he said. “This is a drug case. You’ll see that in the end.” He opened the door and walked out.
“Hey, wait,” I yelled at his back. “What about the Dodge? Let’s toss the Dodge.”
Noonebury kept going across the big room and entered a small office on the far side.
Ed looked at me with his sleepy face. “Forget it. On the way up here I found out they tossed the Dodge three days ago, when they found it.”
“And?”
“And there was nothing useful in it,” Ed said. “Not a single goddamned thing. Ain’t that a bitch?”
“How many sandwiches for you?” Hilda said.
“Three, if there’s enough ham. Thanks.”
I’d come to Hilda’s house at eight-thirty, annoyed at having wasted the entire day messing around with Dresden’s car and Noonebury’s ego. Hilda had already eaten, but she offered to fix me a snack while I drank a beer, read the paper, and calmed down.
Reading the paper didn’t calm me down any.
“You ought to see this book review, Hil,” I said. “It’s enough to make you sick. This Englishman named, uh, Robert Lawrence, wrote a book about the Falkland Islands war. He was, let me see, a Scots Guard lieutenant, whatever that is. Platoon commander, it says. Anyway, Lawrence was wounded and not expected to live, but he did, and he got a medal and he wrote this book.”
Hilda sliced ham and said, “Okay. So?”
“So this silly-ass book reviewer doesn’t bother to review the book; he just takes potshots at Lawrence and Maggie Thatcher and the military in general. He is, quote, trou
bled by the adolescent glorification of brutal conflict, end quote. According to him war is barbaric and subhuman. Probably carcinogenic, too.”
“A lot of people don’t like fighting, Rafferty.”
“That’s not the point. Lawrence was a soldier. He had a job to do. He did it. Where does this numbnuts reviewer get off bad-mouthing him for that?”
Hilda piled ham slices and cheese onto bread. “You are testy tonight, aren’t you?”
“This guy doesn’t understand,” I said. “This wimp’s never risked anything. His biggest worry is that he won’t get a good stool at the sushi bar.”
“Now you sound like one of those magazine ads you told me about. Rafferty-bo, the mercenary wannabee.”
“Hil, I understand how those guys feel. Some of them are turkeys, sure, but some of them have been there. They know what it’s like to put your butt on the line for something, to feel alive and sharp on top of a bad situation. They want to feel like that again.”
Hilda slashed through the sandwiches and dumped them onto a plate. “Men!”
“Damn right. Not like this wimp.”
Chapter 40
Tuesday morning I went to the Mini-Maxi Food Barn office. Sharon Palmerston, the woman I’d phoned a week ago, was alone at the reins of the bustling corporate headquarters.
Well, maybe bustling wasn’t quite the word.
There were three desks in a single office, and what looked to be a small storage-coffee-junk room in the back.
All three desks were untidy, in a comfortable, getting-the-work-done sort of way. Two of the desk chairs were empty, Sharon Palmerston sat in the third.
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