Wall of Glass

by Walter Satterthwait

  “It’s time for the pool. I’ll see you on Monday.”

  As it turned out, I saw her before Monday. The next day, Saturday, there was an article in the morning paper about the man who’d come to the office. It gave his name, Frank Biddle, and said that he was a former rodeo star. It had a nice picture of Frank, beaming and holding up a big bronze trophy. He wasn’t wearing his cowboy hat; maybe he’d lost it riding the bull. The article said that his body had been found late on Friday night, with four bullet holes in it and two bullets.

  TWO

  “THEY MEANT four entry and two exit wounds,” said Hector Ramirez. “Two of the slugs stayed inside. All thirty-eight’s, and probably from the same gun. According to the preliminary autopsy report, one lodged in his spine and the other rattled around in his rib cage before it tore his heart apart. We dug up the other two slugs from the far side of the arroyo.”

  We were sitting, Hector and I, in his cubicle at the Santa Fe police station. I’d called him earlier, after speaking to Rita, and he’d asked me down to make a statement. I’d made it, taped it into Hector’s cassette recorder, and in a day or two, after one of the secretaries had transcribed it, I’d come back to sign it.

  A sergeant in the Violent Crimes Unit, Hector was short and beefy. The beefiness was deceptive; he ran five miles a day and he could bench press two hundred and fifty pounds, which is fifty more than I weigh and a hundred more than I’d care to think about moving, even with a fork lift. His eyes were dark and half-hooded, giving him the bored sleepy air of someone who’s seen it all, twice. He had thick black hair and a thick black mustache that dropped over the corners of his mouth and made him look a bit like the Frito Bandito. Which was something, however, that I’d never had occasion to bring to his attention. Today he was wearing a pale blue pinstriped shirt with a white collar. The collar was open, the knot of his navy blue tie was pulled down to the third shirt button, and his cuffs were rolled back.

  I said, “So he was shot there. At the arroyo.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Blood all over.” He laced his fingers together behind his neck and leaned back in the chair, away from the desk, so that his head was nearly brushing against the pale green wall. “His car was parked up on the road. That’s why Johnson, the officer driving the unit, stopped to check it out. This was in the middle of the storm, and he thought a motorist might be stranded.”

  “Any tracks? Footprints? Another car?”

  “Not in the snow. And the ground underneath is hard-packed soil.”

  “So he was killed before the snow started last night. Before eleven o’clock.” It had begun then, just a few soft fat flakes spiraling down in the darkness. In fifteen minutes it had become so dense, whipped and whirled by the wind, that you couldn’t see twenty feet ahead of you. Johnson had been lucky to spot the car at all.

  “Yeah,” Hector said. “Except for the blood, the ground beneath him was dry. From body temperature, the M.E. thinks he was only lying there a couple of hours. Figure the time of death at around ten o’clock.”

  “So someone shoots Biddle at ten, then drives away. Or walks away.”

  “Drives, we figure. The keys to Biddle’s car were in the ignition. If the guy didn’t have his own car, he could’ve taken Biddle’s. And the arroyo is maybe two miles from town. Long walk when a blizzard’s due.”

  “No one saw anything? Heard anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “It was Friday night, a lot of traffic. No one passed by?”

  “Not any who told us about it.”

  “You have any suspects?”

  He smiled. “Besides you, you mean?”

  “The world lost a great humorist when you became a cop, Hector.”

  His elbows winged slightly outward as he shrugged his thick shoulders. “Far as we know, you were the last one to see him alive.”

  “Next to last,” I said.

  He nodded. “Why’d he pick you?”

  “Biddle? He didn’t. He just walked into the first P.I.’s office he came to.”

  “Only a coincidence that it was yours.”

  “Yep.”

  “You still have that thirty-eight?”

  “Why? You want to borrow it?”

  “You still have it?”

  “I still have it. I don’t carry it.”

  Hector nodded again, his square face expressionless. “Biddle didn’t mention any names?”

  “Nope. I said so in the statement.”

  “And he said jewelry.”

  “A piece of jewelry, yeah.”

  “He didn’t mention any particular piece?”

  “I told you, Hector, no. You’re sure asking a lot of questions.”

  “Hey,” he said, and shrugged elaborately. “I’m a cop. Wanna see my handcuffs?”

  “I don’t think so. Have you tied Biddle to a particular piece of jewelry?”

  “They’re real nice. They’re chrome.”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe just a peak.”

  He grinned and slipped his hands away from the back of his neck, put them along the arms of his chair. “Could be. You know Derek Leighton?”

  “Of him. Money. He builds things.”

  “Biddle used to work for him. Gardener. Handyman. Leighton fired him last year, beginning of October. Biddle went down to Amarillo for a couple of months. A week or so after he leaves, someone breaks into the Leightons’ house, ransacks the wife’s bedroom. Takes off with some money, a gun, and a diamond necklace. The necklace was insured for a hundred thousand dollars.”

  “But Biddle was in Amarillo.”

  “Biddle had a friend. Stacey Killebrew.”

  I frowned. “I thought Stacey was off making license plates.”

  “He only did eighteen months. They let him out early last year. Good behavior.”

  “Must’ve changed some.”

  “He got rehabilitated, they tell me.”

  “That’s a real tribute to the system, Hector. You should be proud.”

  “Oh yeah,” he said. “Pleased as punch.”

  “Was he alibied for the time of the burglary?”

  “Playing poker, he said. Three of his friends corroborated. But for ten bucks apiece, those three would alibi John Wilkes Booth. For another ten, they’d hold his horse while he took in the show.”

  “Why did Burglary like Biddle for the snatch?”

  “Nolan was handling the case. He found out that Biddle had been running a number with Leighton’s wife. Turns out she’s one of those women who like rough trade. Nolan figured that Leighton realized what was happening and dumped Biddle, and that Biddle decided to get even by setting up the snatch with Killebrew.”

  “But Nolan wasn’t able to nail Biddle. Or Killebrew.”

  “No.”

  “Is Killebrew alibied for last night?”

  He nodded. “Another poker game.”

  “Same people?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How much money was taken from the Leightons?”

  “Couple hundred. Pin money for them.”

  “And the gun. It belonged to the wife?”

  “Yeah. A thirty-eight. Police Special.”

  “Pretty heavy armament for a housewife.”

  Ramirez shrugged again. “Women’s lib. Some of these housewives got bazookas now, I hear. Tanks, even.”

  “The gun never showed?”

  He shook his head. “And neither did the necklace.” His eyes narrowed. “You know why I’m giving you all this?”

  “Sure. You’re angling for an invitation to the prom.”

  “Besides that.”

  “Why?”

  “So you’ve got everything we’ve got, and you don’t start snooping on your own, maybe try to pick up a finder’s fee on that necklace. This is a homicide now, Josh, not just a burglary. You’ve always been straight with me, and I respect that. I want your word you’ll stay out of this.”

  “I’m a little overwhelmed, Hector.”

  “Do I
have it?”

  “Sure.”

  He nodded and sat back in his chair.

  “Am I excused now?” I said.

  “Yeah. How’s Rita doing?”

  I felt the small private stab that always came whenever anyone mentioned her name.

  “The same.”

  He nodded. “Give her my love. Tell her we miss her.”

  OUTSIDE THE police station the air was bitter and the sunlight that glared off the bright white snow was blinding. The snow blanketed the ground four inches deep and lay like lacework in the trees. It might have been pretty if I’d been looking at it from behind a double-glazed picture window with a fire roaring and popping beside me, instead of standing in it while it slowly seeped into my boots.

  But everyone seemed to be enjoying it just fine. To my left, two young boys were hurling snowballs and shrieks at each other. To my right, two young girls, giggling, were pushing a much larger snowball across the station’s patch of lawn. The base, presumably, for a snowman. Maybe this division of labor said something profound about an inherent difference between the sexes.

  Then again, maybe it just said that children, at least, could still take pleasure from what would probably be the last snowfall of the season.

  Their pleasure, unfortunately, would soon be gone, along with its source. By midday the thin mountain air would finally begin to warm up and the snow would begin to melt. Already it had turned to a slurry in the street. As I watched, a Chevy Blazer drove by, tires spraying gray fans of it off to the side as the car splashed toward the Plaza.

  I crossed the street, stepping around the water and over the drifts and ridges of blackening slush. I tramped into the public library, stomped most of the snow off onto the welcome mat, and called Rita on the pay phone while the rest of the stuff dribbled down my boots and puddled out along the tile floor. I told her what, in general, had gone on with Hector. She asked me to stop by her house later in the day, and I said I would and offered to cook dinner. Ginger beef. She said that would be splendid, and that she’d provide the wine.

  WHEN I ARRIVED, at six, there was one set of tire tracks in the snow atop Rita’s driveway. Which meant that Maria had driven into town or that someone else had come visiting. This is what we detectives call a deduction.

  The gravel beneath the snow had turned to muck, and I had to put the Subaru into four-wheel to get up to the house. I saw that Maria’s car, a Volkswagen Beetle, was gone. Score one for the deductive process.

  Hefting my grocery bag, I wrestled my way out of the wagon and proceeded, with more caution than grace, down the flagstones. The snow that had melted earlier in the day was freezing over again as the sun went down, and the walkway was slick as glass. I thumbed the doorbell.

  After a moment, Rita opened the door. Smiling, she rolled back the wheelchair to let me in.

  “Hi,” I said, wiping my feet on the mat. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Starving,” she said. She was wearing a black skirt and a black silk blouse, a strand of pearls around her neck.

  “Good.” I passed through the foyer and crossed the living room, Rita following behind, the motor of her chair giving off a soft electric whirr.

  In the kitchen I set the groceries down on the island in the center of the room, the brown grocery bag crackling as I did, a homey and vaguely comforting sound.

  I began hauling out the food. “Snowpeas,” I said. “Green peppers. Ginger root. Chicken stock á la Campbell. And look at this.” I unwrapped the butcher paper. “Is this a handsome piece of beef or what?”

  “Lovely.” She smiled. “But are you sure it’ll be enough? After all, there are two of us.”

  “Don’t get sarcastic with the chef. It’s only a pound and a half. And I had to take out a bank loan to get it.” I turned back to the bag, rummaged inside. “Where’s the cornstarch?”

  “I’ve got cornstarch,” she said. “You left it here when you made the hot and sour soup.”

  “Well, now you’ve got some more. A body can never have too much cornstarch.”

  “I’ve got rice, too,” she said as I set the box of Uncle Ben’s on the countertop.

  “A body can never have too much rice. Where’s the knife?”

  “Same place it always is.”

  “Ah.”

  I turned and plucked a paring knife from the rack on the wall, set it down on the counter.

  “You have your choice of wines,” Rita said. “There’s a Zinfandel and a retsina.”

  I opened a cupboard door, lifted out a colander. “Retsina is the Greek stuff that tastes like turpentine?” I dumped the snowpeas into the colander and turned on the faucet.

  “This is a different brand than that last bottle you had. Better. I thought it would go well with ginger beef.”

  Rinsing off the peas, I said, “Then retsina it is.”

  “Do you want some now?”

  “Sure. Where is it?”

  “I’ll get it,” she said. Naturally. Rita never needed any help.

  She rolled to the refrigerator, opened the door, and leaned forward to take out the bottle of straw-colored wine. She put the bottle on the countertop, swiveled the chair around and rolled it to the cabinet, searched through the middle drawer and plucked out a corkscrew. I busied myself shaking water from the snowpeas.

  The wineglasses were in the cabinet below the island’s counter. Rita took out two glasses, set them beside the wine bottle, then lifted the bottle and went at it with the corkscrew. It was a standard restaurant model, the kind with a lever that folds so the thing can fit neatly into a waiter’s vest, and on my best days, at the peak of my strength, it can reduce me to a babbling idiot. Turning aside, I got the butcher block chopping board down off the wall and began to slice snowpeas into two-inch-long sections with meticulous attention, as though I were the sous chef at the Peking Hilton.

  I heard a dull pop behind me as the cork left the bottle, then the gurgle and splash of pouring wine. I didn’t turn around. No big deal. Millions of people were opening wine bottles all over the country, right this very minute. And maybe a few of them were even doing it in wheelchairs.

  “I got a phone call today,” she said. “From Allan Romero.”

  I turned to her, taking the glass of wine she held out. “Thanks. And who might that be?”

  “Head of the claims department for Atco Insurance.”

  “About the necklace?” I sipped the wine. It tasted like turpentine. “Atco was the insurer?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s a quick worker.”

  “He read about Biddle in the paper and called Nolan, in Burglary, this afternoon. Nolan told him about your statement to Hector. Do you like the wine?”

  “It’s great. So what did Allan Romero have on his mind?” I set down the glass and went back to the snow-peas. I was fairly certain I already knew what Allan Romero had had on his mind.

  “He was curious whether you knew anything more than you told Hector.”

  “Hector was curious about the same thing. You think my puckish charm is beginning to fade?” The snowpeas were done, all sliced into neat sections cut on the bias. I opened a cabinet door, located the stack of plates, slipped one off the top.

  Rita said, “And he’s willing to offer a finder’s fee for the necklace’s return.”

  “I gave Hector my word, Rita.” I dumped the cut snowpeas onto the plate and picked up the green pepper. “And a man’s gotta stand by his word. Code of the West.”

  “You were born in Scarsdale.”

  “West Scarsdale.” I rinsed the green pepper off under the faucet.

  “You gave him your word that you wouldn’t go out looking for the necklace on your own. You didn’t say anything about accepting, or not accepting, a valid offer volunteered to you by the insurance company.”

  I sliced off the top of the green pepper with the paring knife. “Are you sure you haven’t spent any time with the Jesuits?”

  “If Hector said it was all right, would y
ou be willing to work on the case?”

  I turned to her. “Suddenly I have this feeling that I’m about to be sandbagged. You already talked to Hector, right?”

  She smiled. “About half an hour before you got here.”

  I sipped at the wine again. It tasted better this time. Maybe I was developing a taste for turpentine. “And he said?”

  “He said he’d be delighted for you to do so.”

  “In exactly those words?”

  Another smile. “I’m giving you the gist of it.”

  “Be a different gist if I’d been the one to talk to him.”

  She nodded. “Which is why I did.”

  “What’s Romero willing to pay?”

  “We left it open. You’ve got an appointment with him tomorrow, at two. You can negotiate then.”

  “On Sunday? Claims people don’t work on Sunday.”

  “Romero does.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to like this guy.”

  “I called Paul and had him put together a contract.” Paul Gallegos was our attorney. “You can pick it up before you see Romero.”

  “You’ve had a busy day.”

  She smiled. “Idle hands are the devil’s tools.”

  “And a stitch in time saves nine.”

  “Romero will offer five percent of appraised value. You can ask for fifteen and a per diem. He won’t go for the per diem, but I’m pretty sure he’ll settle for ten.”

  “Uh-huh.” I could feel my lips moving into a frown.

  Still smiling, Rita narrowed her eyes. “Is it possible that you’re just a little bit miffed?”

  “Miffed? No, not me. Vexed, maybe, but not miffed.”

  “We don’t have to take the case. I told Romero that acceptance was contingent upon the approval of my associate.”

  “Very nicely put.”

  “You are miffed.”

  “I thought we were going to talk together before we committed ourselves to any particular case.”

  “We are talking together.”

  “Seems like you’ve already got the thing wrapped up.”

  “I tried calling you, Joshua. I couldn’t reach you.”

  I’d been at the pool all afternoon. “Right,” I said. The word sounded stupid and pouty, even to me, so I turned around and began slicing at the green pepper. It didn’t seem, under the circumstances, an entirely appropriate sort of behavior, but nothing else did either.