Pay Here

by Charles Kelly

  It was only 8 a.m., but the locusts were already whirring in the drowsy heat and the detectives were racing decay. One of them, a bullet-headed former Oklahoman named Rathbun, had roused me early with a phone call. This murder, he knew, would interest me because of my fascination with Rhea and her associates. He didn’t expect me to do a story, though, and I didn’t intend to do one. This death was not significant. A regular police reporter would work the details by phone, and the account would wind up as a paragraph in “Crime and Courts.”

  The body had been propped, with a garrote of piano wire bound tightly into the neck, against the back of a Yaqui church in an empty square that could have been a thousand miles deep in rural Mexico. The dust in the air carried the tang of chile. A furtive mongrel ambled across the pitted parking lot. Broken glass lay amid whitewashed walls. In a sky hard as blue steel, clouds slipped toward the horizon like beggars escaping over distant mountains. I couldn’t make out the face of the corpse, only the black silk of the shirt and trousers and the Gucci slip-ons on the slack feet, but that was enough. It was Arnie Sweeney, a broken-down magician who had impressed Rhea with his supposed psychic abilities. She’d let him hang around her topless club, fetch and carry, do palm readings for the customers. He’d tape a reading, then sell his customer the tape. He hadn’t been very accurate, but he didn’t need to be. People’s lives follow obvious patterns—problems with parents, with money, with lovers. Feed them some generalities, tell them things will turn out gloriously, and they’ll think you are in touch with God.

  It helps if you have a voice with mesmerizing rhythms, but Arnie didn’t. He’d worked on smoothing it out, but unless he kept it under tight control it rattled like a rusty water pipe. He’d once done a reading on me, and I played the tape sometimes just to listen to him croak, blathering about the good fortune coming my way, the long journeys I’d take, the dangerous forces I needed to bear an eye for.

  I had the obvious thought as I checked out the crime technicians measuring him, Rathbun inspecting the damage done to his neck, and the detectives surveying the dusty parking lot to see how far his body had been dragged. I am not psychic, but I could have told him what to fear. When a powerful thug dies, the sub-thugs choose up sides and begin to weed each other out. Rhea’s death had triggered such a power struggle, I was sure. Exit Arnie, and probably others.

  It was a simple deduction, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. Still, my instinct was right in one way. Seeing Sweeney’s corpse stretched out on the concrete, getting colder even as the heat ratcheted up, I began to be seriously worried about Daly Marcus. Before, I’d thought it unlikely she would penetrate Rhea’s circle far enough to be in danger. I had expected she’d fumble around for a while, go to one of my media competitors to lay out her absurd case of a conspiracy against Rhea, be rebuffed and leave town. Now I believed she’d stumbled onto a killing field, and I needed to head her off. I estimated I had plenty of time to do so. Wrong again. I had no idea how fast she’d been moving.

  * * * *

  Arthur Morrison had told her where to find Bracknall. That was stupid, but he desperately wanted to pass the buck. Morrison had decided Daly would probably have to go away permanently, and he wanted to distance himself from that horrid prospect. Let her talk to Bracknall, let him handle the situation. Then the responsibility would be Bracknall’s, and Arthur Morrison could tiptoe away from criminal liability. Or so he thought. Morrison was a lawyer, though a corrupt one, and, like every lawyer, he believed life can be reduced to technicalities. Sadly, reality often undercuts this pleasantly distant view.

  * * * *

  Bracknall ran The Crew Shop, a topless bar off Seventh Street above Osborn. Rhea was the hidden owner, but he enjoyed the perks, sampling the battered girls who came to him, grinding them while the bruises on their faces healed, then pushing them out under the hot lights to sweat for the yard men and gas station attendants and legislators seeking sexual relaxation. Bracknall had a big gut and a hard jaw, but his eyes were intelligent, and he liked to wear Oxford button-down shirts and khaki slacks. Where that affectation came from, I don’t know. Perhaps he had seen a movie. If so, he’d seen the wrong movie, because his shoes were the same black clods worn by everyone who worked those establishments—big lumps of cheesy leather softened by the spilled beer and the vomit and piss that pooled in the overflowing lavatories. His voice was rough as anthracite.

  Morrison had told him Daly was coming, so he’d had time to warn the bouncer not to get the wrong idea and send her away because she was too old for a dancer. Be polite, Bracknall said. Bring her back to the office. And this the bouncer did, maneuvering her through a welter of tables where grimly serious men inspected flowing breasts, firm thighs, humid crotches bound by Spandex. In a dark hallway, the bouncer knocked at a door and sent Daly in. Her first impression was of cheap wood paneling, signed wall-photos, and a desk too big for the space. Bracknall was behind it. He waved her to sit down. She chose one of two cotton-velvet chairs in front of the desk. A large couch against the right wall exuded the animal smell of leather, which made Daly wrinkle her nose. She was trying to imagine Bracknall working for Rhea, but couldn’t. Arthur Morrison at least was a lawyer, lying and misdirecting only out of a sense of professional duty. Bracknall, on the other hand, stank of personal corruption.

  Bracknall would not have been happy with that characterization. He thought himself a sturdy businessman with Chamber-of-Commerce credentials. He probably planned to dispose of the matter at hand and get back to paying taxes, co-operating with building inspectors, contributing to the Salvation Army. But he was not one to jump too quickly. His plan would be to dominate the conversation and find out what he wanted, then he would decide.

  “You’re here about Rhea,” he said, and Daly nodded. “Pretty rough.” He sighed, but his eyes were brassy. “When you called from the bus station, I was straight with you. That’s the way I do things. I guess I could have made it easier, but you asked, so I told you. Straight.” He paused, sweeping his hand across his desk top as if laying out a winning poker hand. “I should have said something at the funeral, too, but you went off with Callan.”

  Daly was thrown off-stride. Bracknall had obviously been briefed by Morrison, who must have implied Daly was coming for an apology.

  “Well, you didn’t know me, of course,” she said. “It was quite natural for you—”

  “Sure,” said Bracknall. “No good way to throw that kind of punch. It’s going to hit you straight.”

  He kept saying “straight.” The usage irritated Daly. That was the problem: something here wasn’t straight at all. Everyone was trying to tell her things made sense, and they just didn’t.

  “Perhaps you can clear up something—?”

  “Sure.”

  Daly tapped her purse as if it were a talisman, something to keep her on the right track. She hoped she would put this correctly, that Mr. Bracknall would not misunderstand.

  “It’s just this. When you told me about how Rhea died, you said she was killed ‘just like that.’ You said she never knew what hit her.”

  His eyes were sharper.

  “Yeah?”

  “But Mr. Morrison said she lived at least a little. Long enough to arrange to give me money.”

  She lifted her hands and spread them. He didn’t answer for a moment. His eyebrows were down, and his eyes seemed to recede in his head. Daly felt uneasy. Hadn’t Mr. Morrison told him she would ask about this . . . discrepancy? Maybe Mr. Morrison had forgotten. Or maybe there was a scarier reason.

  “I wasn’t there,” Bracknall said slowly. “Morrison was in the car behind her. I just went by what he said. Maybe he got things a little mixed up.” He flicked at a cuticle. “Or maybe he was just smoothing it over. That’s Arthur, he does that. He could have been trying to make me feel better, saying she didn’t suffer. That’s something you tell people sometimes.”

  Daly hate
d herself for thinking it, but Mr. Bracknall didn’t seem so sensitive that anyone would look out for his feelings. But maybe he was struggling with this situation. Maybe he, too, was trying to make sense of what he had been told. Yes, that was it. She felt no . . . companionship . . . with this crude man, but they were in the same boat. Both had been misled.

  “Do you think Mr. Morrison lied to you?”

  Bracknall’s mouth sagged with genuine surprise.

  “Why would he do that?”

  “I’m beginning to think there’s something entirely wrong with what people are saying about how Rhea died.”

  Mr. Bracknall’s jaw got bonier.

  “Now, why do you think that?”

  “I think people had it in for Rhea,” she said quickly. “Mr. Callan is trying to ruin her reputation, saying she was some kind of criminal. Mr. Morrison is misrepresenting the way she died. Maybe they’re working together, for some reason I don’t know. I’m almost afraid she was murdered.”

  He kept his pose for a moment. Then he slid back into his chair. His eyes were still alert. He was watching her every movement, measuring her reactions.

  “I don’t know about that—” he said. “Who would murder her?”

  “Maybe Mr. Callan.”

  Bracknall showed his teeth, a sort of smile. This idea seemed to please Mr. Bracknall, and perhaps it would cause him to talk more freely. That was good, because she wanted to know as much as possible about Mr. Callan.

  “I don’t know if Callan would kill her,” Bracknall said. “It’s an interesting thought, though. Bad temper, and a tough bastard, always working out like he’s in military training. Maybe you’re right. He did seem plenty mad at her. He’s a weird one. Gets it in his head you’re some kind of bad person, then tries to blackmail you.”

  “Did he try to blackmail Rhea?”

  “He had the hots for her.”

  It took Daly a moment to absorb this.

  “You mean . . . he threatened to write something if she didn’t . . . have sex with him?”

  “That’s about it,” Bracknall said. “As for killing her—well, I don’t exactly see it, going by the way she died—but a guy gets horny and pissed, bad things happen.”

  “But . . . murder?” Daly had already forgotten that she had raised the subject. “Does Mr. Callan have a violent past?”

  “He’s from Ireland. I don’t know what kind of past he has. For all I know, he could be an advance man for the Irish Republican Army. He always carries an automatic pistol, a .45 caliber Colt, 1911 Model. It’s an old gun, and he doesn’t mind slinging it around. You tell me.”

  “He never showed me his gun.”

  Bracknall grinned salaciously. “I bet he intends to, at some point.”

  He checked himself, perhaps realizing he was relaxing too much.

  “You just met him, huh? At the funeral?”

  “Yes.”

  Bracknall clicked his lips.

  “Well, keep him at a distance. That thing with Rhea wasn’t the only thing with him. He got a Mexican woman in trouble a while back. An illegal. Said he was going to help her with her papers. Did her for a while, then reported her to the INS and had her shipped back to Sonora. He doesn’t let anybody get close to him. Could he have killed Rhea? I don’t know. But I know the type.”

  Daly felt sick, despite her already-formed low opinion of me. To get information, she was willing to float the idea that people were liars or killers, but she found it difficult to think badly of them. In her heart, she wanted to believe Arthur Morrison was simply misdirected, that Bracknall was doing the best he could, that I just needed some setting straight. She was an idealist. Evil had no substance for her, no staying power. That’s why she did not realize that now evil watched her, took her hand, spoke into her ear.

  She knew simply that she had a lot of thinking to do, and more backgrounding. The puzzle was falling into place. Brutish as Bracknall looked, certain things he said sounded right. She thanked him and went away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  I wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had simply let Daly Marcus run her course, if I had not interfered. After all, I was putting myself at risk by doing so. By going back to her, I was giving her the chance to question me. And I could not answer without admitting my guilt. I had committed myself to a course that only a journalist would choose. A journalist thinks he can manipulate lives without getting involved, ask questions without revealing himself. This works only up to a point.

  I didn’t find Daly all day, though I tried. She was gone from her motel, which I found out by squeezing a few words out the clerk, who was more interested in a soccer game being beamed to his TV set from Ecuador. He didn’t know when she was coming back, so I sat in my car for an hour watching her room with my air conditioner shivering and clanking in the blazing heat. I suppose I could have kicked in the door to try to figure some clues, but that would have brought the police, which I didn’t need, since I was trying to keep my distance.

  Instead, I cut north on Seventh Street, took the Papago Freeway, traced the highway system to the Superstition Freeway, swung east past Tempe and plunged across Mesa, which a local columnist had dubbed “the city of wide streets and narrow minds.” I dropped down into Chandler, once a farming community, now—with the exception of a few old-time downtown places like Joe’s Barbecue and the 1913-vintage San Marcos Hotel—a red-tile, high-tech haven for silicon mongers, chip-heads and circuit jockeys.

  Rhea’s Place was a pleasant variation from this. While it didn’t meet the high standards of one of my former colleagues in Belfast, who judged a saloon good only if you could smell the pisser from the front door, it was narrow and dark and musty. The customers inside were sweating varnish and batting at unseen creatures, and the bartender had a glazed look. Inbreeding had dented his temples, leaving precious little brain space. A glass hung in his hand, seemingly forgotten. I asked if a young woman fitting Daly’s description had been around. He licked his lips, heedless of a fly frolicking on his chin. The question seemed unbearably difficult. After a long time, he managed to shake his head. Completely worn out, I left.

  A scruffy place for a woman like Rhea. That had been my first impression when I’d met her there six months before. But hanging out watching her work the crowd had been a pleasure. A lovely woman in the midst of a hard crew, and someone with the charm to draw slumming politicians, musicians and athletes. It was Rhea’s particular skill to bring together the high and the low, the finer parts of society and the worst. At 32, she was young to wield so much power, and that, too, was part of the fascination.

  Why did she take to me, given the spread in our ages?The bad dark eyes, the scars on my arms and rib cage, the broken knuckles? No, it wasn’t my appearance. Perhaps it was my words, softened by the Irish rhythms that made my voice bounce and sway even after all the years. The accent that stirred and thickened when I told her of terrible doings I’d uncovered in my reporting—the children shackled in closets, the business partners sold out to hit men, the migrants turned out of their tax-burdened homes by clever lawyers. No, it wasn’t my words, either. It was my contacts, you see. I was a distant early-warning system. I knew the cops, the reporters, the prosecutors. If something bad was coming her way, I’d tell her and she’d be able to step aside. That was the idea.

  Of course, that’s not what I believed at first. No, I thought I’d fascinated her, that it was just my way with women. Beware pride, the self-inflicted blow. I’d had the same pride at the age of 22, shortly after I’d landed in America, and it had won me a woman and a disaster. I was illegal then, flying low under the immigration radar in Boston, so I couldn’t work for a newspaper. I’d found work as a waiter, as a garbage collector, as a taxi driver. And I’d freelanced articles about the gritty life to the Boston Guardian, an alternative weekly funded by trust-fund babies. Cathryn Ross was one of those babies—heir
to a trucking fortune—and the managing editor. Of course she found me dead romantic, Irish to the bone and a fine writer, and she fell for me or the cinematic equivalent, and we married, and I became a citizen. She liked to finger-paint, and when she did my face, I had a jaw like a flat iron and the eyes of Jesus weeping. Until later, when I had a hell-cultist’s eyes and teeth big as hatchets. And then no real face at all, just a blur of red and wavering black as the booze and pills drove her down. A year of that, and one day she went under and didn’t come up. It was raining that day, so I went to Arizona.

  Back across the Valley I drove, with the sun pressing hard through the windows of my Ford, headed for the last known residence of the recent corpse. I knew Sweeney’s apartment complex, for I’d taken him home once after a late session at Rhea’s club. The freeway system delivered me there, to this gimcrack stucco pile dragging down the side of a dry hill in north Phoenix. The police had come and gone, the college kid manning the office told me. He took a call just then, and I think he expected me to go away. But I went around the back, climbed three sets of stairs, ducked under the crime-scene tape and wedged open the door of No. 332, watched only by a Doberman panting by the cracked fountain in the courtyard three stories below.

  There was nothing inside but the detritus of a bachelor fraud’s life—slick clothes and undone laundry, a food supply running heavily to beer and cold cereal, skin magazines. A few micro-size audio tapes, one with a ballpoint-scrawled label: “Astrology Talk.” I slipped it into my recorder. Yes, that was Sweeney, babbling about rising signs and equinoxes and whatever. The recorder went back in my pocket, and I continued prowling. One bedroom, one bath, a kitchenette. The whole place smelled like a wet sponge, though there was no obvious reason for it. It’s hard to say what causes this smell—carpet humid from sweaty feet, water-soaked plaster, decaying drywall?