Cold In The Grave_A Kilroy Mystery

by Stephen Mertz

  A two-story drop.

  I hadn't taken a fall like that since my stunt days, when I was always the guy rolling off the edge of the cliff with mattresses waiting below! I fell like a stone, but when I hit the ground it was with the loose-jointed roll that goes against instinctual but is a stuntman's stock in trade and key to survival. The impact was still jarring enough it. I tumbled and rolled down a sloping grassy patch of lawn that dropped away from the base of the building.

  When I came out of the brief roll, I propped myself to one knee and tried to shake the fuzziness from between my ears. I looked around to get my bearings. Tried to stand. Fell flat on my face. Tried again. This time I got up and stayed up.

  The backyard Rolling Green Manor was all clear. The tenants were around front, loitering close to where they thought they'd get a good look at Leon Somerset's body being carted out to the ambulance. Only short seconds had elapsed since my attack on Joe and the creep from the DA's office. If I was lucky, any sounded alert had not yet traveled downstairs. I bee-lined across the backyard, across the next backyard, and out to the parking area where I'd left my car.

  The cops standing out in the sunshine, over by the cruisers and ambulance, were not yet aware of what was happening.

  I strode to the Lancia, piled in behind the steering wheel, fit my key into the ignition and cranked her over. The engine coughed once, twice, under the hood – and died. I tried it again. She kicked over again, kicked over twice, and sputtered.

  Nothing.

  The damn thing wouldn't start!

  I threw a look back over my shoulder, out through the car's back window. The cop who'd been stationed at the front of the apartment building was now charging down the sidewalk toward the men by the parking lot. He held his pistol and he was shouting something. I gave the ignition key another twist. The edge of the key bit into my fingers. The engine chugged, then died for a third time. I was flooding it. I could smell the gasoline. My attention zeroed in on the rear-view mirror. I pumped the accelerator pedal to clear the lines.

  Joe appeared, barreling down the walkway on the first cop's heels with Dickensheets bringing up the rear, stumbling along looking groggy and a little confused. They all clustered around the ambulance and squad cars and Joe tracked his handgun once again, sighting down an extended arm in my direction. Other cops were dashing up behind him from the building. One of them reached into a cruiser and pulled out a pump shotgun.

  “Kilroy, stop!”

  That was Joe.

  I gave the ignition key another twist, goosed the gas, and this time she caught. The Lancia's horsepower whinnied to life under the hood. Joe opened fire. His first round went wild, and I found myself hoping it was on purpose. Then the Lancia's front end lifted, and its tires squealed, and it catapulted me forward.

  That's when Joe must have given the signal. They all began firing back there, a volley of faint, distant pops in the wide-open outdoors that sounded like so many paper bags being stomped beneath children's feet. The Lancia's rear window spider-webbed around a small, sudden hole. Two more rounds pinged into the chassis, but I was zooming and in another handful of seconds I was beyond effective range for their weapons. I wheeled on down the driveway, heading away from the complex on screaming rubber at ever-increasing speed, tires screaming onto Alameda in a controlled skid as sirens started up behind me.

  Another look over my shoulder and I saw cops piling into their vehicles, the sirens already wailing on high. Police cruisers began fishtailing around into a full speed caravan coming after me in hot pursuit.

  9

  The squalling caravan of squad cars was closing in from about a half-mile behind me and gaining fast.

  I sailed the Lancia into the Alameda-Wadsworth intersection. The Villa Italia shopping mall, aseptic looking as ever, sprawled before me on the southeast corner of the intersection; acres and acres of brick and glass big name stores that always manage to remain antiseptically new no matter what their age.

  The lights at the intersection were against me, but there are some chances you have to take, and this was one of them. There was a gap in traffic flow on Wadsworth. I mentally crossed my fingers for good luck and kept the gas pedal floored, reaching the far side of Wadsworth in the blink of an eye, and only two drivers sounded their horns at me. I pulled a skidding right turn into the shopping center's parking lot. The current of southbound traffic on Wadsworth closed the gap after I had passed through it. My pursuers would be temporarily blocked off until the sirens cleared the way, or the stoplights changed.

  I did not kid myself that I was safe. I rocketed the Lancia down one of the parking lanes, watching for a space. I gave myself maybe thirty or forty seconds in which to disappear, but Villa Italia is a rat race to behold on Saturday mornings and today was no exception. Thousands of people must have been milling around inside the mall; the parking lot was nearly filled. There wasn't a vacant parking slot in sight.

  The hell with a parking space.

  I braked to halt in a No Parking zone in front of a chain drugstore. I left the car and hurried inside the store via its parking lot entrance.

  Once I was inside the store, I immediately shifted gears again, this time to a casual but purposeful stroll that lost me amid the steady shifting sea of browsing shoppers. I set a straight course for the store's front entrance that fed into the crowded, bustling mall itself. I took a right turn when I was out of the drugstore and kept walking, hands in my pockets like any bored but resigned guy passing the time while his wife does her shopping and the kids look at toys.

  Five minutes later I emerged from the crowded atmosphere of ersatz Italian décor, back into the sunshine. I stood at the western end of the mall, at the side exit of a budget department store, an exit that was not much used. At least, not now.

  I was the only person in sight.

  All the commotion – police-wise that is – would at this moment be centered around my Lancia and the drugstore on the far side of the mall. The cops would be running around, making a hurried search, asking lots of questions and not coming up with a thing they could use. Joe would already have reinforcements on the way, and then things could get hairy, but right now I still held the upper hand in this game. I knew where I was, and they didn't.

  I crossed several yards of blacktop to the movie theater at the northwest corner of the mall parking lot. I was trading one security blanket for another, the camouflage of the mob of shoppers for the dark interior of a movie house. I entered the theater, purchased my ticket and strode across a lobby that matched the shopping mall; aseptic, angular, too much glass, characterless. But they did have a pay phone. I dropped some change into the slot and dialed Teddy Bostwick

  Teddy is a stringer for the News and he's not averse to doing a bit of legwork for me on occasion, utilizing his journalistic credentials for people he trusts if we’re willing to pay for his time. He answered on the ninth ring.

  “Bostwick.”

  “Kilroy, Teddy. I need a big favor.”

  “Well, I can always use a big story.”

  “You'll get one. I need a lift and I need to borrow your car.”

  “How big a story? Uh, I know we're friends, Kilroy, but I need my wheels to --”

  “Big enough a story to make you kick yourself for the rest of your life if you don't help me out and get on it,” I said. “I could think of other people to call, Teddy. Yes or no?”

  He was too much newsman to let more than a heartbeat go by.

  “Where are you?” he asked.

  I told him, and then told him to make it fast as he could and to watch out for cops. Then I went in to pass some time staring at a movie that I don't remember, trying to think.

  I wondered what the hell was going on. Somerset was dead. Okay. Was Robert his murderer, as the police thought? And where was Robert? It all tied in with the typed extortion note found by Robert on Cheryl Kaplin's dresser. It seemed obvious to me that Cheryl had typed the note herself, especially since she'd told Gia-Sandy tha
t she was “doing something definite” to get herself out of the hole she was in. That note, or the one like it that Cheryl must have typed after Robert made off with the first one, started the killing, of that much I was sure. But I still had no idea whatsoever as to who Cheryl had intended to blackmail. Knowing that would solve a big part of the puzzle.

  The intended victim could have been Somerset, of course, and that would make the whole thing very simple. Leon Somerset kills Cheryl to keep from paying her blackmail demand and then Robert Pierpont kills Somerset in revenge for Cheryl’s death. Except it was also possible that Somerset was only a middleman. Had he been paid off by someone else to kill Cheryl and make it look like a traffic accident?

  Another thing. Could a local Mafioso named Salvatore Fallaci, owner of The Tattle Tail, be involved? It was hard to ignore that possibility if hitmen and murder for hire was in the mix. The Denver Mob franchise was considered a provincial cousin to the big timers back east, but Sal Fallaci's drug pipeline up from Mexico and his other concessions were reported to tally in the multi-million-dollar range. And here we had street punks in that Fallaci organization, namely Sparky Boines and Limp Gallagher, up to their ears in a relatively rinky-dink ten grand blackmail hustle.

  Where was the tie-up? Was Fallaci Cheryl's intended blackmail victim? If so, he was without a doubt the type who would retaliate instead of pay. Cheryl should've known that. Maybe Cheryl did know it. Maybe, maybe, maybe. What was the thread connecting it all together? Was there such a thread?

  And lastly, on top of everything else, what had become of Limp Gallagher?

  I'd messed him up plenty last night in that alley during the Gia Passionne kidnap attempt, yet Joe hadn't mentioned Gallagher like he would have if Gallagher had been present behind The Tattle Tail when the cops had arrived last night. Limp had remained consciousness from the clout I'd given him and made tracks before the police got there, leaving my Magnum behind, next to Sparky's corpse, knowing exactly how deep in trouble that would put me.

  Wherever he was, Limp would be hungry for more vengeance than just putting me in bad with the cops. I would have to start looking back over my shoulder from here on out for more than just the police. The fact that I had come out on top from two confrontations already with Gallagher didn't mean a thing except that next time the homicidal Neanderthal would come at me from behind, from the shadows, without warning.

  So, there were two primary questions that had to be answered: If someone paid Leon Somerset to kill Cheryl Kaplin, who was it? And who killed Leon Somerset? That appeared to be an open-and-shut case against my client but, as I'd told Joe Gallegos, too many things didn't fit, and I had a hunch that Joe felt the same way. The only problem there was that I couldn't be sure and in any event, officially, Joe had no choice but to have that APB put out on me.

  A real convoluted mess and I found myself reassessing what I hoped to accomplish with the entire Denver metro police force looking for me. It seemed on the one hand that I was going far, far above and beyond the call of duty to Robert Pierpont. But I couldn't shake the feeling that Robert was a victim here even if he hadn't been one of the three dead bodies that had turned up in those last twelve hours. Cheryl died because of an extortion scheme. But the clean-cut young man from Lincoln, Nebraska had been drawn unknowingly into all of this by the simple act of falling in love with the wrong woman. Now he, too, was on the run from the cops. He'd been sucked into the wide-open big city underbelly of motives, killers, and madness that was so out of his league.Robert needed my help, and I would give it to him because you help victims whenever you can. And of course, he had retained me to do what I could to help him, and that hardly seemed possible with me sitting locked away in a police interrogation room, with the probability of being held until I supplied answers I didn't have.

  I wondered how it would end. How many more would die? I had a gut feeling that some important players in this drama hadn't even appeared onstage yet.

  And I reminded myself again that, with all the other problems I had, Limp Gallagher was still at the top of my list. Next time the big jerk came for me, and I knew there would be a next time, only time and place and luck would determine which of us would survive and who would wind up as dead like Leon Somerset, Cheryl Kaplin, and Sparky Boines.

  10

  Teddy Bostwick curbed his blue VW bug in front of the theater lobby. I left the building and climbed into the passenger side as fast as I could without overtly rushing.

  “Hit it,” I said.

  There were plenty of police cars but no cops in sight. Their action was still concentrated inside the mall. We exited the parking lot discreetly by a back turnoff and drove north on Wadsworth. We rode in silence for a while. When we reached the Sixth Avenue overpass, Teddy turned right, heading us back into Denver via the freeway. The brown pollution cloud was in place over the city skyline, hovering low around the downtown skyscrapers.

  Teddy is an underweight, studious looking guy with thinning brown hair and the pasty complexion of someone who spends too much time indoors.

  “What's with the spy stuff?” was his first question. “There are plenty of respectable bars in this town where two gentlemen can get a drink and talk business, even gentlemen like us.”

  “But not business like this,” I told him. “We've got to have an understanding on this one, Teddy. It's newsworthy as hell but you've got to promise me you'll sit on it until it breaks.”

  “Sit on what until it breaks?” he cracked. “I don't weigh all that much.”

  Teddy thought he had a funny sense of humor, and sometimes he did, but not this time.

  I said, “I've got a client running around loose and I've got to help him. Nobody else will. The police think he killed a man.”

  “Did he?”

  “That's a good question. I'll ask him when I see him. But I do need your assurance on this. I'll pay you the standing rate on what you dig up for me and I'll see that you get the inside line on this when it breaks, but you've got to button up on it until it does, which should be sometime very soon, maybe even tonight. You've never broken your word to me before.”

  “No easy trick for a newspaperman,” he interrupted.

  “- - and I'll trust you now if you'll give me your word.” I finished.

  “You've got my word, Kilroy. What've you got and what do you want?”

  So, I told him. I brought him up to date with a succinct briefing on who and what, ending with me on the run.

  “They’ll turn this into a political football,” said Teddy after hearing my tale of woe, “with you as the football. There's an election coming up next week, don’t forget. Dickensheets' boss is fighting hard to keep his job. Busting up a sensational murder conspiracy would make good last-minute copy for a DA trying to remind the voters how efficient he is.”

  “I've got to ID some people,” I said. I reached into my jacket pocket and came out with the snapshots I'd been carrying around that Gia/Sandy had given me last night from her scrapbook. I handed them to Teddy. “Take a look. Can you tag any of them?”

  We were at a stoplight. He examined the photographs.

  He said, “Where do we start? Do you know any of them?”

  I reached over and tapped the snapshot of Cheryl Kaplin and her good-looking male companion together in front of a fountain in a park.

  “This is Cheryl, the girl who started it all. I don't know the others, but it would help if I did.”

  The light changed. Teddy drove while he studied the man in the park with Cheryl. He raised his eyebrows in a funny expression.

  “Looks like you are in the big leagues on this one, guy.” He tapped an index finger at the man in the picture with Cheryl. “Meet Paul Richmond. He happens to be the candidate challenging our incumbent DA in next week's election.”

  I snapped up the picture and studied it more closely. I knew that the face had seemed familiar the first time I'd seen it, but it was out of context, a half-blurred snapshot, and so much else had been happening. A
nd I don't much follow politics. But Teddy was right. Paul Richmond was the man with Cheryl in both snapshots!

  All the pictures I had ever seen of the candidate for District Attorney, sophisticated studio campaign shots, came back to me in a montage-like rush: Paul Richmond, dashing young star of local politics. The bright new hope. Or so his PR agency would have the electorate believe.

  I indicated the other snapshot, the one of Richmond and Cheryl sharing a sofa at a party or social function with another couple, with Richmond chuckling at what the other man had said, or maybe agreeing with the man.

  “Alright, how about this guy with Cheryl and Paul?” I said. “The mean looking older dude.”

  Teddy gazed longer at the second shot, and then shook his head.

  “Sorry, I don't make that one at all, or the girl with him. That's one menacing character. Maybe he's a friend of Richmond's, or a political backer. Maybe he's someone Richmond just ran into at wherever that picture was taken.”

  “That wouldn't be Lloyd Carlyle, could it?”

  “The politico behind Richmond? Could be,” said Teddy. “Don't think I've ever seen a picture of Carlyle. He likes his privacy.”

  “He's supposed to be the last of the old political bosses,” I recalled. “The most powerful man in his state party or so I've read. A king maker. The guy behind the scenes. Lloyd Carlyle is the one giving Richmond his cues.”

  “Last I heard, a heart attack slowed Carlyle down about a year-and-a-half ago,” said Teddy. “He's gone into semi-retirement. His wife is more in the news than he is these days. I covered the opening of that new planetarium she helped dedicate at DU last week. Pioneer stock, very high society. The old girl's never had her picture taken when she wasn't wearing a string of pearls.”

  I nudged the memory grooves in my brain, trying to come up with anything that might fit.

  “I remember something about the Carlyle’ daughter. Could that be father and daughter sharing the sofa with Richmond and Cheryl?”