A Bitch Called Hope

by Lily Gardner

  “Have you asked him where the money came from?”

  “Yeah, and you know what he says? He’s got a patron. A patron of the comic arts. I told him c’mon, pull the other one. He gets all pissy, says I don’t trust him. Which, frankly, I don’t.”

  Lennox waited while Alice chewed her lip. There was more that was troubling her. Lennox sat patiently, giving her time.

  “This is the crazy part,” Alice eventually said. She took a deep breath and let it out. “Three weeks ago? There was a bank robbery?”

  “Pacific First,” Lennox said.

  “I wondered, could he have gotten that desperate?”

  “Alice, you don’t just decide to rob a bank one day.”

  “I know, but what else could it be?”

  Lennox tried for the easy explanation. An explanation so that Alice would slap her forehead, say of course! Why didn’t I think of that?

  Folks? His mother shampooed dogs for a living. Drugs? Alice was dead sure he wasn’t dealing, and she would know. Girlfriends always do. Sugar daddy? God help her, Lennox didn’t want to go there.

  Alice was serious. She even had Gabe’s social security number, bank accounts, passwords, the guy at Dark Horse Gabe was working with.

  “This feels like an intervention.” Alice gripped the paper coffee cup until the sides started to cave in. “How much is your fee going to be?”

  “It’ll probably take me an hour. That’s a hundred.” Lennox stood up. “If it runs more I’ll call you.”

  Alice got to her feet, zipped up her jacket. “Thanks,” she said. “You’re all right.” Her look said Lennox had restored her faith in humanity.

  A hundred-dollar gig and the waitress thought she was good people. It was a start. Lennox went in the bathroom and turned on the shower. After five minutes the hot water began to clear her head.

  Why would a hard-working guy like Gabe hold down two jobs and then all of a sudden go off the rails and hold up a bank? Even hungover, Lennox knew that was a completely stupid premise. Ditto the patron. Patrons went out with the Medici. The Pike party was three weeks ago and Gabe had been a witness. This was blackmail. It had to be. Gabe saw something he wasn’t meant to see and didn’t put it together until he read in the paper that Bill was murdered.

  What could he have seen? Smoking? Bill having an attack? The murderer handing Bill an inhaler? If Gabe was blackmailing the murderer, it couldn’t be Delia. She was in jail.

  The poor kid had no idea he had a tiger by the tail. He was in the worst trouble of his life. If Lennox could get him to confide in her, she could save him. She couldn’t save Delia. It’s impossible to save someone whose head is a mile and a half up their ass. Save the young ‘uns.

  Lennox called Alice. Left a message telling her to call Lennox immediately.

  Somehow, she would convince Gabe to tell her what he’d seen. Even though she was off the case, she’d still deliver the murderer up to Kline? The cops? That would mean Tommy. She’d sort it out when she found the murderer.

  Fuck him and give him a dollar. It was a punch line to a joke she couldn’t remember, but it was exactly how she felt. About Kline, about Delia and her doctor, about Tommy. She wrapped herself in a terry robe and went to her computer. In less than an hour she’d scored a new surveillance job.

  Chapter 22

  Lennox parked the Bronco next to a boxwood hedge a hundred-fifty feet from the Pirate’s Cove. It was ten in the morning. A light rain pinged off her windshield as she played a slow game of Vegas solitaire and watched the back door.

  Anil Gargalis, the owner of the Pirate’s Cove, suspected one of his dishwashers of making off with the store. Inventory was down: food, bottle count, “even the damn bar towels were missing.” Gargalis wouldn’t install a surveillance camera. What with the exotic dancers, the patrons were camera shy.

  The Pirate’s Cove—You’ll Treasure Our Chests—was just another windowless strip club, only difference being this club was an architectural destination. Built in the twenties, the stucco building was sculpted in the shape of an eighteen-foot jug of hooch, and forever after known as the Sandy Jug. Over the years the Jug had been painted mud brown, lilac, orange-striped, pepto pink and brick red. It had been a diner, a soda fountain, a tire shop, an auto repair garage, a tavern, and now a pirate-themed strip joint.

  Lennox sipped lukewarm peppermint tea from her car cup and reshuffled the cards. She drew the red queen and placed it over the black king. Turn the next card. Four of clubs. Lennox’s cell phone rang.

  August Kline. She picked it up on the third ring.

  The low surf of freeway traffic crackled over the phone. “I want to apologize for the other day.”

  “You don’t have to sugarcoat it,” she said. “I get it.”

  More crackle on his line, his words were cutting out. Maybe she heard “never intended.”

  “I’ve moved on,” she said. A white Honda pulled into the narrow strip of asphalt behind the club. “And I’m working, so I can’t chat with you just now.”

  The sky grew darker and the rain turned to hail.

  Static on his end. “Please reconsider.”

  “Your cell’s cutting out. I’m running surveillance.”

  “You can’t.”

  Lennox thought she could hear panic thread through the bad reception. Had he finally realized she was right? In the last two days? A tiny glimmer of hope sparked. She tamped it down.

  “I can’t hear half of what you say,” she said. She watched a stringy man in jeans get out of the Honda and trot around the building, presumably to the front door. “I have to hang up.”

  “Wait a minute!”

  No question, he was panicked. He begged her to give him just a few minutes. She wondered how forty-eight hours could’ve made the man so desperate. She allowed herself a little more hope. Told him if he blew her cover—

  Kline interrupted. He said he wouldn’t dream of blowing her cover. More static— she missed the next bit. Something about Goose Hollow. Where was her stakeout?

  No one used the term “stakeout.” Not since Dirty Harry back in the seventies, around the same time they were born. “It’s a surveillance site,” she told him.

  “Where?” he said.

  “I’m watching the Sandy Jug. You know it?

  “On the east side?”

  Lennox could hear the dread in his voice. If he wanted this meeting, he’d have to cross the Willamette River to the east side of the city, which for some reason scared the bejesus out of west siders. This was going to be fun.

  “I’m in a white Bronco on NE 74th on the north side of Beech,” she said. “Don’t park anywhere near me, not even on the same block. And if you see anybody outside the Jug, walk right on past my truck.”

  He said he could manage that.

  She put away her cards, stuffed the trash in her utility bag. Five minutes later the dishwasher in question came out the back door of the Jug hauling two bags of trash. Frank Siller was fifty-four, pony-tailed, high-school educated, with no priors and shit for credit. A stained white apron wrapped around his skinny hips. He moved in a series of jerks that reminded her of someone. Lennox took his picture.

  She got another shot of him throwing the lid of the dumpster open and placing the bags inside. Placing being the operative word—a very careful tucking in of the trash.

  Siller closed the lid and reached into the pocket of his Harley Davidson tee shirt, retrieving a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. She had the feeling again that she’d seen him before.

  She slid down in her seat and watched him over the lip of the dashboard. Typically a lone smoker like old Siller there would be sunk so deep in his own internal dialogue you’d see his lips move. Not this guy. She’d bet and raise he was scouting the street. He finished his smoke and tossed it in a can by the door. Looked at his watch and loitered until his fifteen-minute break was up. He went back into the Jug.

  A hard rap on her window liked to give her a heart attack. August Kline’s id
ea of discreet. His scrubbed and worried face was eye level with hers on the passenger side of the truck. She reached over and unlocked the door. He looked over his shoulder and slid into the passenger seat.

  “How was I?” he said. He clutched his briefcase like he was transporting gold doubloons through a bad neighborhood. The East Side. His smell, a combination of dry cleaning fluid, verbena soap and shoe polish drifted to her side of the truck.

  She halted her hand so he wouldn’t talk to her. “Someone’s coming,” she said. “Get down.”

  A red Chevy Silverado pulled behind the Jug and parked. She knew that truck. She looked at it through her field glasses. License plate 125 DAW, the back-strain sonuvabitch whose buddy had T-boned her with his tow truck. Alan Lammers, disc bulge L5. And then she got why the dishwasher looked so familiar. It was Sillers who’d fucked up her truck and cracked two ribs.

  “Down!” she said and shoved Kline’s curly head below the sight line. He slumped in the passenger seat until his knees were flush with the glove box, his neck and head at an odd angle.

  “Lower,” she hissed.

  “Is this necessary?” Said in that prissy voice of his.

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she wrestled her utility bag out from under his feet and pulled out her camera. She watched Lammers through the distance lens. Pressed against the dashboard next to the attorney, she was aware how close her thigh was to his arm.

  But then Lammers strolled over to the dumpster. He waited for a car to pass out of viewing range before opening the dumpster lid.

  Snap.

  He hauled a garbage bag from the dumpster and carefully set it in the back of his truck.

  Snap.

  These guys were transporting stolen goods in the back of an open truck in broad daylight. They totally earned her nomination for this year’s stupid awards.

  And again with the second bag.

  Snap.

  “What’s going on?” Kline whispered. She could smell his sweat. And it was kind of nice knowing there was a living human being beneath all that soap and shoe polish.

  “Busted, but they don’t know it yet,” she said. “Stay down until I tell you.”

  Lammers got in his truck. But instead of pulling out on Sandy, he circled around the back way. In nothing flat he was cruising down Beech. She wiggled farther down and peeked through her side window. Lammers got about parallel with the Bronco and looked across. Made eye contact. It was clear: he sure as hell remembered her. Her report to the insurance company had cost him his union job.

  He let out a yowl so full of rage; she knew that short of shooting the guy she had two seconds to get the hell off Beech Street.

  “Buckle up,” she told Kline. She turned the key in the ignition and slammed the Bronco in reverse. Drove it like a hard wind the better part of a city block. In reverse. Laying on her horn to warn other vehicles she was coming through. She felt Kline struggling with his seatbelt. When she reached Seventy-third she shifted through the gears, Lammers three car lengths behind her. The traffic gods were with her. She cut straight across four lanes of Sandy Boulevard without getting broadsided and ducked into the neighborhood on the other side of the boulevard. She kept driving, winding her way through neighborhoods, her eyes peeled for the Silverado.

  “What is it you wanted to see me about that couldn’t wait?” Her voice was amped up on adrenaline.

  “I want to hire you back,” Kline sounding like he was trying to catch his breath.

  But then she caught sight of Lammers barreling towards her. She drove across someone’s front yard and turned on a side street. Kline’s well-scrubbed ear pressed against his window looking like he was pulling some major Gs for the quarter second she gave herself to check him.

  She swerved to miss a sedan trying to parallel park. After zigzagging through the neighborhoods for ten minutes, she’d lost sight of the Silverado. The tingle of adrenaline backed off a few notches. She picked up Fremont and checked her rearview mirror for the hundredth time. No sign anywhere of Lammers.

  Kline was holding his breath, his hands braced against the truck’s dash.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  He barely nodded, his body rigid.

  “Really,” she said. “We lost him.”

  He slowly relaxed one arm, then the other. He let out a chest of air and said, “It was like being in a movie.”

  She wondered what kind of movie Kline could be thinking of where the crooks are fat and stupid and forty-year-old trucks speed through the streets.

  “I don’t get it. You wanted more professionalism,” she said. “More experience. You wanted Calderbank.”

  “I don’t have time,” he said.

  Then it came to her in a big flash of ah-ha.

  “You went to Delia, didn’t you? You wanted to delay the trial and she told you to forget it.”

  “Judge Thomas has an opening in her docket for our trial in two weeks. The prosecution jumped on it. Delia Pike is delighted. She thinks she’ll get out of jail that much sooner.”

  She pulled into the parking lot of a coffee joint. “You don’t have a defense and you want me to take the fall for it.”

  “I’m not going to lose this case,” he said. For a scared guy he sounded determined. “If you’ll come back to work, I’ll double your salary and deal with Delia and her asshole fiancé.”

  Asshole now. Some of Kline’s professionalism had rubbed off.

  “I’ve got a witness,” she said. She couldn’t help but sound triumphant.

  “You’re kidding me. Who?”

  “Let me talk to him first,” she said.

  “You get me a ‘not guilty,’ I’ll sign a two-year contract for your services.”

  “Deal.” How could she say anything else?

  Chapter 23

  Not until she’d driven Kline back to his car and headed home did Lennox realize that she hadn’t felt this good since she got the job, since Kline started in about how she wasn’t a cop no more.

  Lennox called Alice while she was driving. Left another message stressing how important it was to see Gabe right away. Alice finally picked up. Said Gabe was at Dark Horse until late. How about tomorrow morning?

  It was four thirty when Lennox unlocked her front door. Let it be known she was whistling a happy tune. Dumped her raincoat on the sofa and headed straight to her office. First, she called Andy Gargalis and left a message telling him what she had on his dishwasher. Next, she talked to Dark Horse Comics. All they would say over the phone was that they were working on a project with Gabe. Then she pored over computer records. In the last month Gabe’s checking account had gone from zero to holy shit. All the big expenditures went out to Dark Horse. Then Lennox ran any and all credit checks made on Gabe in the last six months. No applications for credit, absolutely nothing put on time. No debts. This was all consistent with what Alice had told her.

  The doorbell rang.

  Dan Pike stood on her porch with the most hopeful grin that ever was hoped. She wondered what he wanted. Then she wondered how he knew where to find her. It wasn’t like she was in the book.

  “Are you going to let me in or not?” he said through the door.

  She opened it. Asked him how he knew where to find her. The obvious answer. Her mother had told his mother. “They think we should get to know each other better,” he said. Maybe Lennox was okay as girlfriend material, just not okay as an employee.

  “That would be swell,” she said. “After the investigation.”

  They moved further into the room. She didn’t offer him a seat, so they remained standing. It was awkward. “Have you had dinner yet?” he said.

  “I’m still working,” she said.

  “It’s almost seven thirty. You must be starved.” They were standing close enough that she could count his eyelashes. She could smell him, too. Soap and limes, the freshly laundered cotton smell of his shirt.

  She told him his mother’s trial was two weeks away, in case he’d forgotten.
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  “You want us to fast until it’s over?” he said. He kept the smile tamped down. His eyes were laughing at her, though, that same teasing thing used to make her blush when she was twelve years old.

  “I don’t get you and your brother. Don’t you want to catch the person who murdered your dad?”

  “Come out to dinner with me. Use all your special interrogation techniques. There’s no telling what I’ll confess to.” He was making fun, sure. He probably had a hard time thinking of her as a grown-up. That could work to her benefit.

  “Okay,” she said.

  Turned out Dan had made a reservation at Higgins. Just in case she agreed, he said, and put on a humble look. And sold it, of course he did. He was a guy that made his living manipulating other people’s money. That only works when you’re good at selling.

  Higgins. White tablecloths, strong drinks. Everything handcrafted, even the steak sauce. Try to get out of Higgins without dropping a hundred bucks. Dan didn’t try. He ordered a really nice red wine. And appetizers. The special. He talked about his business, how it failed when the market crashed. That’s the way it goes with high-risk investments, you win big or you lose big; there were plenty more investors willing to take a chance for bigger profit margins. He talked about how Mac was always like a big brother to his dad. He hinted that Scott had a violent side. Dan answered her questions just candidly enough to keep her drinking the red. And the after dinner brandy, Lennox building a hangover to replace her just-yesterday hangover. She hoped her poor liver didn’t explode. But Dan was smooth and twinkly. And jokey, the way Tommy was jokey, God help her.

  The whole evening seemed to carry the blessing of their mothers, through the dinner, all the way back to her front porch, into the living room. Lennox wondered what his sweat smelled like.

  “Kiss me,” Dan said. He leaned in closer still. “Kiss me now.”

  His lips were soft, but his body wasn’t. At that point she didn’t give two shits about professionalism. Her little voice said take him upstairs.