Blood Stone (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 2)

by Michael Allegretto

  “Who knows?” she said, trying to unbuckle my belt with her eyelashes. Then she turned her head to the sound of a car door in the street. “That’d be my old man home from work. Why’ncha come back tomorrow a little earlier and we can get comfortable inside and talk some more about Zack.”

  She winked broadly and walked a crooked line to the back door of her cozy home.

  Morrison Road begins its trek toward the foothills from within the city limits, where it intersects Alameda at a forty-five-degree angle. This area of the city has a small-town feel, with overwide asphalt lanes fronting one-story commercial buildings, including Meacham’s Garage. I parked the Olds in the lot between a pothole the size of a swimming pool and a tow truck plastered with American flag decals, and pushed through the smeared glass door.

  A bell jangled over my head.

  There was a battered wood counter, dusty at the corners and worn in the middle, supporting a pair of huge parts books, open like Bibles. Behind one end of the counter was a door with a sign overhead declaring “Employees Only.” The guy who came through the door was wiping his hands with a greasy red rag. He was about sixty, with short white hair and a face as droopy as a bloodhound’s. His name was stitched in white on his blue coveralls. Nolan.

  “Help you?”

  I gave him a card stating my profession, or maybe it was just a pastime. He smudged it with his thumb.

  “I’m looking for Zack Meacham. Is he around?”

  “Nope.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Couldn’t say.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “I don’t want no trouble,” he said. “Lou says we don’t know nothing about Zack.”

  “And Lou is who?”

  “The manager.”

  “I’ll talk to him, then.”

  “Lou’s pretty busy, plus being in a bad mood. We just dropped the tranny on an old Riviera and we can’t get the damn thing to work.”

  “It won’t take long.”

  “I don’t know,” Nolan said. He glanced sideways toward the door. He didn’t want to get Lou pissed off.

  “I’ll just be a minute,” I said and walked around the counter and through the door. Nolan didn’t try to stop me.

  The work area was lit with a mixture of blue-white fluorescence from above, and yellow sun filtered through fly-specked windows high up on the walls. There were three cars and five employees. One guy was changing the tires on a blue Chevy, two were hoisting the engine out of a Ford, and two others were arguing by a decade-and-half-old Buick Riviera.

  “Christ, Lou, I already tried that.” The guy was on his back on a wheeled skid, his legs under the Buick. Lou was standing over him, fists on hips. One fist was stuffed with an oversized crescent wrench.

  “Then try it again, goddammit, only this time do it right.”

  “But the bracket’s bent.”

  “It’s not bent, you dumb jackass, it’s made that way.”

  Lou was as broad and thick as an engine block, with shiny black hair greased back in a duck tail and sleeves rolled up over hefty pale arms. He spoke in a deep, hoarse voice. But not as deep as it should have been. When he turned around, he turned into a she.

  “Get over here, Nolan, and show—hey, employees only, pal,” said Lou, as in Louise.

  “My name is Jacob Lomax. I’d like to ask you a few questions about Zack Meacham.”

  “You got a car needs working on?”

  “No, I—”

  “Then beat it.”

  “When was the last time you saw your boss?”

  Lou walked toward me.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? Out.”

  Everyone in the garage stopped working to watch.

  “Where is Meacham staying these days? It’s important that I talk to him. A phone number would do.”

  Lou got right up close to me. She wasn’t a guy, but she was close—shorter than me but stockier, with muscles from the soles of her work boots right up to the fringes of her fine, thin little mustache.

  “Hit the road,” she said, and waved her crescent wrench to show me the way.

  “Tell me where your boss is and I’m history.”

  “You’re history now.”

  She tapped me on the chest with her wrench. It left grease on my shirt.

  “You got grease on my shirt,” I said.

  “There’s gonna be blood on it in about three seconds unless you get your faggot ass out of here.”

  I turned sideways but kept her in my peripheral vision.

  “Nolan, will you please tell me where your boss is? Lou here seems to be on the rag.”

  Nolan said, “Uh.”

  Lou swung her wrench.

  I ducked, and the wrench barely brushed my head, but it touched a bruise left over from Tuesday night and it hurt like hell. I grabbed Lou’s wrist, and she yanked away, strong as a bear from bench-pressing trannies and kicking the crap out of truck driven down at the local bar. She faced me in a crouch, waggling the wrench at her side. Her face was flushed but her lips were wax-white. She was between me and the door, or I might have just left. On the other hand, there were five guys watching and I had my male pride to think about. Lou swung the wrench at my face and I backed out of the way, feeling its faint breeze. When she swung again, I came in fast and hit her with a brisk left to the chops, knocking her spread-eagled into a pyramid of Pennzoil cans. She crashed with the cans to the floor.

  A couple of the guys rushed over to help her up. One of them said to me, “You gotta lot of goddamn nerve, hitting a woman like that.”

  “Let go,” Lou said, getting to her feet.

  She picked up her wrench and I thought we were going into round two, but instead she turned and went back to the Riviera.

  “Can we talk about Meacham now?” I asked Nolan.

  “Uh, sure, I guess.”

  We walked out to the front counter and I apologized for knocking over his oil cans.

  Nolan rubbed his chin. “Lou can be one mean sumbitch when Zack ain’t around.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I really don’t know. He took off a couple weeks ago. Said he was leaving town. Said he had something important to do. Hell, he said a lot of things.” Nolan shook his head.

  “What?”

  “Zack’s been acting goofy for months—hell, a year. The middle-age crazies or some damn thing. First he leaves his wife and kids, then he takes up with a topless dancer half his age. Then he starts talking about how he can finally even the score with some guy who’s back in town.”

  Charles Soames. “Do you know the guy?”

  “Zack wouldn’t say. He just kept mumbling to himself half the day, being real absentminded, like he couldn’t think of nothing else. And Art back there told me Zack told him he bought a gun because of this guy.” Nolan shook his head. “But if you ask me, Zack’s all talk. Hell, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “Maybe so, but I want to find him before he does anything stupid.”

  “How can you find him if he’s out of town?”

  “He may not be out of town. Who’s his girlfriend?”

  Nolan gave me her name and where I could find her, and then he gave me the phone number for Meacham’s ex-wife.

  “I sorta doubt she’ll be much help, though,” Nolan said. “And look here, if you do find Zack, you be kinda careful. Especially since maybe he really did buy a gun.”

  “I thought you said he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  “He wouldn’t. But Zack Meacham never did think much of cops. Private or otherwise.”

  8

  THAT EVENING, I PHONED Meacham’s ex-wife. She was not a happy woman. She did not want to chat with any of Zack’s buddies, nor did she know where Zack was, nor did she care.

  “He can roast in hell,” she said. “Him and his underage stripper girlfriend.”

  It was about ten when I got to Fancy Dan’s. It’s on Federal Boulevard and there’s nothing fancy about it. Nothing Dan, either—the
owner’s name is Freddy. The sign out front said “30 Gorgeous Women 30,” but inside all I found were dim lights and smoke and maybe eight women eight. There was a bar, a score of tables, and a semicircular runway with low stools for impresarios desiring a close-up view of the artiste, currently a busty, chunky blonde, naked expect for high-heeled slippers and a sequined G-string. She was more or less dancing to a slow rock tune.

  I sat at the bar and ordered a beer in a bottle from a young guy with long hair and a long face. When he brought my change I told him I was looking for Wendy Apple.

  “Why?”

  “She’s a friend of a friend.”

  “You a cop?”

  “Nope.”

  “You ever met her?”

  “Nope.”

  “She’s onstage,” he said.

  Wendy finished her routine of slow, rolling humps and bumps and hustled off the ramp and through a curtain. Five minutes later a young black woman had taken her place and Wendy was out on the floor hustling drinks. She’d put on a skater’s skirt and a bikini top. I left my beer at the bar and sat at an empty table in the area she was working. She walked over with an exaggerated wiggle.

  “Looks like you need a drink,” she said brightly.

  She was not quite pretty, but neither was she hard to look at—smooth complexion, clear blue eyes, and an easy, open smile. An Iowa farmgirl lost in the city, waiting to be found by Mr. Right. What’s a nice girl like you, and so on. Except I’d recently been staring at her bare butt.

  “I’ll have whatever you’re drinking,” I said, “if you’ll sit with me.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Am I that ugly?”

  She gave me a playful punch in the shoulder. “Heck no, I mean I have to keep working.”

  “How about on your break? What do you like, champagne?”

  “Yes! But how did you know?”

  “A wild guess. Okay? You can bring a bottle.”

  “Well … sure, why not,” she said and bounced away.

  She worked the floor for the next hour while I and the two dozen other slobs in there drank our drinks and watched the naked ladies dance. When she finally returned to my table, she brought a cheap green bottle and two glasses.

  “Sixty bucks,” she said, “and I’m on in fifteen minutes.”

  I gave her five twenties. “The rest is for you.”

  She folded her arms on the table—a safety net for her breasts, which threatened at any second to jump over the edge of her skimpy top. “Forty dollars for me? For what?” Her pale brows were bunched in a tiny frown. She really was a sweet kid.

  “For talking with me, that’s all.” I popped the plastic cork and we sipped our candy-flavored sparkling wine. Ah, the good life.

  “I’m looking for Zack Meacham,” I said.

  She put down her glass and gave me a troubled look.

  “Are you a policeman?”

  “Private investigator.” I gave her my card. “I’m just trying to find Zack.”

  “Did he … has he done something wrong?”

  “Not yet. But he’s making nasty threats to my client.”

  “Oh, Zack,” she scolded, as if he were sitting with us.

  “He’s apparently hiding out,” I said. “Do you know where?”

  She shook her head. “He’s been acting weird for weeks. I mean, I didn’t see him for almost two weeks and then a few nights ago he came to my apartment real late and made me promise not to—well jeez, I guess I blew it, huh?—not to tell anybody he’d been there. He wants everyone to think he’s out of town.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s too weird.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It’s just too weird,” she said, rolling her big blue eyes. “He said he was thinking about killing a man, and when he did it, his alibi would be he wasn’t in town. He’s got some friend in Kansas City or someplace who’ll swear Zack was with him.”

  “When is Zack planning to kill this man?”

  “Jeez, never, I’m sure. It’s just talk.”

  “It might be more than that, Wendy. Did he say when?”

  “No, he just said he was thinking about it.”

  “Why did he risk his alibi by going to your apartment?”

  “He said he missed me.”

  I knew what he missed.

  “I tried to get him to stay,” she said, “but he left early next morning. I was just so glad to see him, so glad he wasn’t hurt or anything.”

  She poured more champagne.

  “What do you mean, glad he wasn’t hurt?”

  “What? Oh. Glad, I guess, that he hadn’t run into my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, I mean. Vince and I broke up six months ago, and then I started dating Zack, only Vince doesn’t always think we’re broken up.”

  “You were afraid he might have done something to Zack?”

  “Sort of. I mean, they’re both pretty tough guys, but Vince is maybe in better shape, a few years younger, too, I guess. But not too young, though. I guess I like older men.” She looked at me and blushed. “Anyway, Vince told me a few months ago he was going to get rid of Zack so I’d come back to him. I knew he was just talking, just the way Zack is talking now, but even so, when Zack disappeared all of a sudden and I didn’t hear from him for a week or two, I started wondering if maybe Vince had done something. Then Zack showed up, and I knew everything was okay. I got to get back to work.”

  She stood and so did I.

  “Do you have a key to Zack’s house?”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to search the place and it’ll be easier to use a key.”

  “Easier than what?”

  “Kicking in the door.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “Or pick the lock, but the neighbors might holler. Look, Wendy, you want me to find Zack, don’t you? I mean before he does something he might regret.”

  “Yes, but breaking into his house …”

  I waited.

  “Well. Okay. I guess.”

  I followed her through the bar to the dressing room in back. There were mirrors and chairs and some clothes on hangers. Wendy was digging through her purse when another dancer pushed in through a heavy curtain. She was nude and her ebony skin glistened with sweat.

  “Stay away from that dude in the Hawaiian shirt, honey. He pinches like a goddamn lobster. Hey, good-lookin’.”

  Wendy gave me a key and I told her I’d return it.

  “’Fi was you, honey, I’d tell good-lookin’ to keep the damn key.”

  It was midnight when I parked down the block from Zack Meacham’s house. The neighborhood was quiet and dark. I took a flashlight from my glove box, walked down the street and up the walk, and let myself in with Wendy’s key.

  The air was close and musty and the house was dead still. After a few minutes I could make out shapes in the dark—mounded furniture, oval doorways. I pointed the flashlight at my feet, switched it on, and moved through the house.

  The walls in the front room were bare and the furniture was sparse and new and cheap and hadn’t been dusted or moved for months, maybe a year, maybe since Meacham had it delivered to this, his new vacant home.

  Off the front room was an empty room that could have been used as a den or a guest bedroom. Meacham hadn’t used it for anything.

  I went through the kitchen. Dirty cups and pots and silverware were piled on the counter and there was a heap of empty frozen dinner trays under the sink. The refrigerator held only two bottles of Coors, a half-empty jar of mustard, and a Baggie with some green-and-white stuff that used to be cheese. Next to the kitchen table was an RCA color TV on a metal stand. The table itself was bare except for a couple of ashtrays overflowing with butts and a handful of matchbooks. Their covers advertised Meacham’s Garage, King Soopers, Fancy Dan’s, and The Ace Cafe.

  In the bathroom there was a pile of dirty clothes in the corner, a disintegrated cigarette butt in the toilet bowl, and a ring around the bathtub you could stub your toe on
.

  The last room in the house was the bedroom.

  The bed was unmade. Socks and underwear hung out of dresser drawers. Lined up on the floor were cardboard boxes of clothes Meacham hadn’t bothered to unpack. One box had a framed picture of a man and woman and two little girls. I found more photos on the dresser. A strip from a vending machine—5 Pix for a Buck—the family man and Wendy mugging it up for the camera. I put the photo strip in my pocket and searched the closet. There were a bunch of shoes kicked into the corner and clothes on hangers. I went through the pockets of everything and found nothing except another book of matches from The Ace Cafe. I kept it.

  At the rear of the closet shelf was a weighty paper sack and inside was a box labeled “.38 Special Silvertip Hollow Point Super-X.” Half a dozen shells were missing from the box. I found a cash register slip at the bottom of the sack listing one Colt .38 revolver with a six-inch barrel and one box of fifty shells. The slip was dated four weeks ago.

  When I got out to the Olds, I rechecked the matchbook for the address of The Ace Cafe. It was in a sleazy district on the lower edge of downtown, exactly two blocks away from the office of the late private eye Lloyd Fontaine.

  9

  FRIDAY MORNING I SKIPPED my shower and shave, put on my downtown clothes—soiled black denim pants with ragged cuffs and a cracked leather belt; two pain of gray socks that used to be white; leather work boots with worn-down heels and broken laces; a moth-eaten T-shirt under a faded plaid flannel shirt; a frayed and colorless cardigan sweater, shiny with age and ripe with old sweat; and a crumpled old coat with one elbow ripped out and half the buttons missing—and went out for a walk.

  It was a blue-sky morning, with a hint of fall in the air. I walked west on Seventh Avenue to Broadway, then north to Sixteenth Street. The downtown shoppers and office types gave me a wide berth all the way to Larimer Square. So I smelled bad. So what? They were slaves and I was free and they knew it. I could sleep late, drink my breakfast, and hang out all day on the streets if I felt like it. They, on the other hand, had to wear certain clothes, be in certain places at certain times, and do what certain people told them to do. Slaves. Of course, they had credit cards and double garages and tickets to the play and I had twelve bucks.