“You're coming in? After the other night? Who do you think you are, Audie Murphy?”
“Never mind; I don't have time. Just make that call and tell Brian I need that picture a.s.a.p. We'll pay for the courier. Uh huh.”
Before I could hang up, she shouted, “Wait!”
“What? What?”
“Your car is still on Market Street. Do you want me to come get you?”
“In your car? Get out of here.”
“It served you well yesterday.”
“Yes. And I already thanked you sincerely. But the next time I'm in a container that small there'll be handles on the sides and you'll be fruitlessly searching for six guys willing to carry it. I'll get a cab.” I looked down at the list again and, moving to hang up, complained out loud, “Damn it. I should have paid attention.”
I heard Lisa's shout just as I was about to cradle the phone. Exasperated, I brought the receiver back up. “Are you still talking to me? What?”
“To what?”
“To what, what?”
“Geez, Blake! You just swore. Then you said you should have paid attention. You should have paid attention to what?”
“I should have paid attention to the bloody scene of eternal romance you were yakking about this morning.”
“That was yesterday morning, Rip Van Winkle.”
“Whatever,” I told her. “While we're in the category of Famous Literary Characters I Have Been, Art Fleming, I hate to break it to you but, when you were doing your Dr. Watson yesterday, you read the murder scene wrong.”
“I did?” she asked, sounding deflated.
“Don't get down on yourself,” I told her, “at least you gave it a shot. I'm the dummy. I didn't read it at all. Rocio Riaz didn't struggle romantically, dragging herself through a pool of her own blood, to declare her love for Reggie. She was trying to leave a message. She was telling me who killed them.”
*
The rest of the morning and well into the afternoon I was tied up with the nonsense of merely getting back on my feet – before I could chase the one clue that Rocio Riaz, that anybody up to that point, had been able to supply. I cabbed it to my office, argued with Lisa over whether or not (we both agreed not, but so what?) I should have been on my feet, and took a gander at the photo of Eddie Love that Brian had sent over from the precinct. It was a beaut; one of our old mugs, with two side-by-side portrait and profile images with a Chicago PD custody number on a placard in front of him. He looked half-naked without his usually-present weather-worn black Stetson (I think I mentioned he was some kind of cowboy) which had been forcibly removed for his booking and, I assumed, incarceration. (Do they let you wear a cowboy hat in prison?) Otherwise, though I really had tried to forget that creep long ago, Love looked every bit the hungry demon I remembered. I couldn't help but stare. A county-issued button-down shirt covered the hellish tattoos I knew decorated his upper body, but his long brown hair, hanging to his chest and the middle of his back, and manicured Jesus beard and mustache were on display. He looked like your standard hippie trouble-maker until you got to his eyes. His piercing blue-gray eyes always sent a shiver through me (and did again then in spite of myself).
Picture in hand, I intended to cab it to AC's (I think I mentioned my photographer friend before too) where I would have a negative and a handful of copy prints made. But Lisa threw a fit. I'd made the mistake of comparing her to Dr. Watson on the phone and the result now was she was certain she could help. She insisted she make the photo run while I rest in my office. She knew what I wanted, she spoke the same English I did, and she knew where AC lived, on what grounds could I argue? Lisa turned the phones off when she left. I behaved myself while she was gone. I didn't turn them back on, or open the fridge (or any of the bottles in the mini bar). How's that for control? I got a few more winks of well-needed sleep and, when she returned, I got immediately back into the ballgame.
I left Lisa behind and cabbed it over to see Large. I questioned him in detail about the prison report he'd secured and got all he had and knew about Eddie Love, the evil cowboy, that human nightmare from my past that I was very much afraid had again raised his 10-gallon hat (on his one pint head) and was peering over the eight ball at me.
*
This case was a ball-buster; I don't have to tell you that. I don't remember a time I was ever so deep into something while at the same time being so physically – and more importantly, mentally – out of it. I was down and out, struggling for my skin, and not a little afraid for my sanity. With that in mind, here I'll digress for a moment. Understand, I wasn't there and I don't know all, or even most of what happened for certain. I don't even know these events should be told at this juncture in the story. But it needs to be mentioned somewhere and this seems as good a place as any.
Like I said, I left Lisa behind in the office. But she wasn't just Lisa Solomon, my secretary, the efficient and loyal dogsbody and sometime annoyance that had (just between you and me, and I'll deny I said it) gotten me into this deep do-do. She was also my friend. She was horribly worried over what was happening to me and had a gnawing feeling she had to do something to help. Worse, she wanted to be a detective and, I had no idea then, she'd already taken another step in that direction.
I told you she'd made the run for me to AC and secured the prints of Love's mug. At the same time, without my knowledge, I learned much later, she'd had print work of her own done. Had I known, I would have killed her. But I didn't. When I took off to do my thing with my photos, she tended to her office duties, answered calls, transferred old paper reports onto new computer files, and ran the office until she couldn't stand it any longer. Then she closed up shop and, with her own packet of photos, did her own thing. She climbed into her lightning-yellow roller skate and pulled from our lot into traffic on the world's longest continuous street, Chicago's Western Avenue, headed in the opposite direction from the one I'd gone. From that point on, to tell it the way Lisa finally told me, when she wasn't in the office slumming as my secretary, she was doing what she could to help solve this mystery and to earn her stripes as a detective.
Her first stop? She never did tell me. My best guess would be the Thai restaurant one block over.
Chapter Twenty
I cabbed it back to Market Street to get my car. The Jag was, unbelievably, where I left it over thirty-six hours before, with all of its tires, windows, and engine parts in place. How would Boston say it, Feelin' Satisfied! It did have a parking ticket on the windshield but those wad up effortlessly and fit through any storm sewer grid. I took two long strides and proved it. I climbed behind the wheel (too quickly) and had to pause for a breath. I decided that I'd better accept the fact I was crippled, at least temporarily, and adjust my movements accordingly if I hoped to remain up-right long enough to get out from under this case. The Riaz house, wrapped in yellow police tape, stared down at me, cursing me for not knowing more than I knew sooner than I knew it.
I fired up the Jag and hit the streets feeling like death warmed over but well aware I had no time to lose. If I was completely off the track, I was burning fuel for nothing. If I was right, someone out there was homiciding his way through the membership of the Temple of Majesty, dragging me through the blood behind like a prospector pulling a stubborn mule, but never letting me catch up.
I cruised for a long time with purpose but without luck. Then, finally, I spotted what I'd been looking for, my adopted wayward waif, Connie, at the far end of a gas station parking lot near the intersection of Cicero and Division. She was doing what she had to do to get by, which boiled my blood. She was talking to some scumbag that was haggling to get the price down, which made that boiling blood want to shoot out of my eyes. It wasn't bad enough those girls sold their bodies and their souls, they were supposed to do so at a discount. I cut across traffic, partially blocked the drive near the air hose (it probably didn't work anyway), and jumped out, calling, “Hey, school girl.”
The would-be john took exception to the i
nterruption and told me to fuck off. He found the pussy, he said, and he was going to tap it. That was his first mistake. I tapped him instead, right across the bridge of his nose. Somehow he stayed on his feet, which was both admirable and his second mistake. I issued an immediate correction and he laid down on the blacktop where he belonged.
“Blake,” Connie screamed. She looked terrible and I'm not exaggerating. Her eyes were dark pools, she was twitching as if she were being given electric shocks, and she was getting mad on top of it. “Who do you think you are, Edward G. Robinson?”
I ignored her, bent down, and slapped the john's cheeks until he came to. Then I helped him back to his feet, threatened him politely, and set him adrift. Thoroughly adjusted in attitude, he followed his red and swelling nose down the street.
“What are you doing?” she demanded.
What was I doing? I didn't really know and wasn't in the mood to think about it. “Get over here,” I told her. I grabbed Connie and jerked her toward my car. “Get in.” She did though, shaking as she was, she had trouble with the door handle.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
Her arms and legs were still fidgeting but her lips were a tight line. “I'm fine. You have no right to interfere with my life.”
“Right. Okay. But I need your help.”
She studied something on the carpet that wasn't there and nodded.
“Take a look.” I showed her Eddie Love's mug shot. “Do you know this scumbag?”
She looked like a leaf in a wind storm and had a time holding the picture still enough to focus on it. For the first time I realized just had badly she was hurting.
“No,” she said with surprising certainty. “He's got crazy eyes. I'd have remembered him.”
I gave her a copy; wrapped her twitching fingers around it. “Do me a favor, huh? Check and see if any of the girls have done business with this mook.”
“Is he bad?” Connie asked.
“He's definitely bad. Stay clear of him. Do you hear me; stay away from this guy. But, if he's around, I need to know about it.”
She nodded her understanding while all but swallowing her knuckles.
“Jesus, Connie, how long since you had a hit.”
She shrugged and mumbled, “Too long. Obviously.”
“Have you been eating?”
“I get along.”
I gave her a twenty. “Don't shoot or smoke it. Buy food. I know you're hurting but you need to eat. Promise… and don't lie.”
“Okay. I will. I promise,” she lied.
I hated myself for knowing it. “About that guy in the picture,” I told her. “He's got a western drawl when he talks and might be wearing a cowboy hat, vest, boots, or any of the above.”
“In Chicago?”
I shrugged. “It's a big world.”
“Don't I know it,” she said with a twitch.
“Let me know. And be careful.”
She pecked me on the cheek and said, “Love ya” absently. I didn't take offense; the poor thing was running on automatic. She jumped out of the car and vanished around a sign at the corner. Eighty-six cents for a gallon of Regular, eighty-nine for Unleaded, smokes forty-five cents a pack; robbery. The world was going to hell.
*
I hit the bars, the bowling alleys, the strip clubs, every one I came to, down every street I drove, showing off Love's ugly puss and asking questions about a tattooed cowboy. I did that, without any luck, until I couldn't move anymore. Then I dragged myself into my apartment with my head pounding, my body aching and, thanks to my comic book heroics in front of Connie, my hand throbbing as if it had been whacked by a cartoon hammer. I belonged in a museum (or maybe an asylum). I worked my coat off, threw it down, and opened a bottle of booze. It was green, the bottle, so it must have been gin. I poured some and drank. Yeah, gin. The phone rang. “Blake.”
“I've been calling and calling.” It was Lisa. The late afternoon had slipped into early evening. She'd closed the office (I knew), and ceased her extracurricular snooping (I didn't know) for the night and was calling, I assumed, from her apartment. She was smacking her lips and talking through food. For some reason it sounded like lasagna though, to think of it now, that made no sense. What did lasagna sound like? “There was no answer.”
“What are you eating?”
“Lasagna.” I didn't take a bow; who'd have cared. She was still talking. “Where have you been?”
“Next question.”
“How come what I'm eating is your business but where you've been is not my business?”
“Because you called me while you were eating and you're doing it in my ear.”
“Okay. Never mind,” she said. “Did you have any luck?”
“Do I have any luck?”
“That answers that one,” she said. “Sorry.” Then she brightened. “I was just going to up-date you if you cared what happened today.”
I waited for what seemed a significant while. “Well?”
“I was waiting for you to say whether or not you cared.”
I wasted a sigh then asked, “What happened today?”
“Not much.”
“Lisa, you could drive a man to drink.”
“You're not drinking while you're taking those pain killers are you?”
“I know better than that,” I said. I moved the receiver away as I quietly sipped my gin. Lovely juniper heaven. Bringing it back, I told the phone, “I'm hanging up now.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“I didn't tell you what happened today.”
“Oh, fer Christ's sake…”
“Mrs. Banks stopped by. She said Willie would be getting out tomorrow and would come for his car. I told her he'd better because you'd already taken it over to their place twice and that nobody had been around. I made sure she knew you were ticked.”
“Good.”
“Then she tried to pay her bill with a check. I told her you'd kill her and dance on her grave.”
“Good.”
“Some rich old bag, who's missing a painting, called to check on your fees. I told her you charge on a sliding scale, but that I didn't think she'd be coming down the slide.”
“Good.”
“Then some chickie-babe named, 'Fidel' called. She didn't leave a number.”
“Fidel? Like in Castro?”
“Not Fuh-del,” she said. “F-eye-del. Like Fido the dog, plus an L.”
“Fidel. Okay.”
“Who's she,” Lisa asked.
“I haven't the foggiest,” I lied. “Anything else?”
She hesitated. “No.” She hesitated again. “It was a quiet day… at the office.”
Something was biting her. I considered asking her what, but decided against it. She'd tell when and if it bit hard enough. “Okay,” I said. “That all?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I'm not doing anything, if you just feel like talking.”
“About anything in particular?”
“No,” she said. “Just if you feel like talking.”
“I'm hanging up now.”
“You know, it wouldn't kill you to just once say, Good bye.”
“Uh huh.” I hung up. I couldn't help it; the moment was simply too irresistible. I took a sip of my gin and the phone rang again. “Blake.”
“Blake!” she repeated.
Speak of the devil. I could hear the traffic and knew she was on a pay phone near the street. “Let me guess,” I said. “Fidel?”
“Pretty cool, isn't it!” she said. She was fighting to be herself, the self at least that she'd always shown me, but she was struggling. She sounded awful, really shaky, and it didn't take a genius to realize that she was still hurting for a fix. The up-side was maybe, maybe, she used the money I'd given her to actually eat something. She was going on. “Fidel was a mythical sea nymph. I found it in that library book I had. What do you think?”
“I think it's better than Charisma. But I'm still calling you Connie.”
&
nbsp; “Yeah,” she said, sounding distracted. “Hey, listen, I found someone who knows that guy in the picture.”
“Eddie Love? That didn't take long.”
“No. I showed him to Peaches and she went ape shit.”
“Peaches? What's with you guys and the names?”
“What do you want, Blake? If we were writers we wouldn't be doing what we're doing.”
“I can't argue with that. Okay. Where do I find Peaches and how will I know her?” She told me, her voice shaking all the while. “Thanks, Connie. Stay safe. Do you hear me?”
The line was dead and she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-one
I could not believe my luck (there was that nasty word again), in a town of three million people, latching on that quickly to somebody that had seen Eddie Love and would admit it. Despite the battle with her horrible addiction, and the fact that anyone unfortunate enough to meet Love knew what it meant to be scared, Connie had come through. She'd found a working girl, Peaches, no less, that had spent a recent evening with the mad cowboy and lived to tell the tale. Now I needed her to tell me. What I didn't envision was the chore it would be finding Peaches.
I guess I never thought about it, and certainly didn't realize, between pounding the pavement on their own and hitching rides with pimps, friends, and johns, how many miles those ladies could put behind them in one night. I spent the whole evening searching, putting those same miles behind me, through relentless traffic from the near north to the south side and back again, with two dozen stops and twice as many short interviews along the way, using a full tank of gas and then some without finding anyone who had seen her. I finally spotted her myself not a stone's throw from where I'd started looking. She was hovering all by her lonesome at what Connie had mentioned was one of her haunts; a bus stop kiosk on the far east end of North Avenue just south of the Lincoln Park Zoo. In the late 1800's, at the same time gumshoes were making their appearance, the zoo got it's first bear cub. He became adept, so legend says, at escaping his cage and roaming the park. (Wouldn't that bruin your night?) Okay, I'm no comedian but with the night getting on and the street light an amber nimbus casting long shadows on the bus shack I couldn't help but hope the zoo had solved their security problem. Peaches, to hear Connie tell it, and getting back to the story at hand, liked this spot because it was near the kids' petting farm (cows, pigs, goats, and ponies). It was no surprise to me. A lot of hookers are street-hardened creatures with lost little girls inside. I pulled up nearby. Her eyes locked onto the Jag. I climbed out and stepped to the sidewalk, calling out, “Mmmm. Look at those peaches.”
Corpses Say the Darndest Things: A Nod Blake Mystery Page 15
