Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

by Marcia Muller

  No one there. Just the metal drum surrounded by trash and illuminated by a dim spotlight. The rickety picnic table slumped in shadow.

  Spitz might have changed his mind, I thought, but more likely he was biding his time, checking things out, just as I was. I decided to wait under the trestle a few minutes more. The gun I’d borrowed from Amos was in the side pocket of my shoulder bag; now I transferred it to the waistband of my jeans. Anna’s cape concealed it, gave me plenty of room to maneuver if necessary.

  Men’s voices on the beach now. I pulled back, listened. Two of them, coming this way. Talking loud, slurring their words. Then a clank as a tossed can hit and bounced off the trash drum. The men kept walking past the trestle and south along the shoreline.

  I relaxed some, then heard more voices, this time on River Street. Tensed all over again, hoping whoever it was wouldn’t come under the trestle. A car door slammed, and an engine started up. Going away.

  After that the night became very quiet. It was black and damp under the trestle. Cold, too. The Monongahela lay wide and still, the moon’s path scarcely rippling. I stared at it, in danger of becoming hypnotized. And heard a suppressed cough coming from the grove of willows.

  Jim Spitz, checking out the park from the shelter of the trees.

  Spitz waited. I waited. Finally I decided it was a standoff and stepped out onto the beach. Stood close to the trestle, hand resting on the gun’s grip.

  After half a minute a man came out of the grove: medium height, clad in a navy pea jacket and jeans. I couldn’t make out his features, only the paleness of his face, the darkness of his hair. He stopped, looking toward me, then went over to the picnic table and sat down.

  I went over there, too. Stood on the table’s far side, as I had earlier with Whitey. In the moonlight I saw a face that had been handsome before age and hard experience set in. Now the eyes were pouched, the once-chiseled nose skewed by a break that hadn’t healed right. Discontented parentheses surrounded Spitz’s mouth, and in its set I caught a touch of uncertainty. I took my hand off the gun; I had nothing to fear from this loser.

  Spitz studied me in return, began to cough, then asked, “So where’s Gordon’s five hundred?” The question was supposed to sound tough, but it came out a whine.

  “Two hundred now,” I told him, “three later.”

  “When, later?”

  “After we talk.”

  “About what?”

  “How you set up Ed Bodine.”

  “… I thought you said you were working for Gordon.”

  “I am.”

  “Then you ought to know all about it.”

  “I wasn’t working for Gordon when that went down, and he’s not talking about it. He’s not talking about much these days. You heard what happened to his wife?”

  Spitz nodded.

  I took one of my cards out, slid it across the table toward him. “Gordon hired me to find somebody who was harassing him, but before I could, the explosion happened. I think it was set by the same person, and I also think the whole thing started here in Monora, with the Bodine bust. I want to know everything about it—who approached you, who figured in the arrangements.”

  He held the card up, squinted at it. Fingered the lettering as if he were reading Braille. I watched, waiting for him to make up his mind. Far away a car backfired, and then a dog began barking.

  After a while Spitz asked, “You going to make trouble for me?”

  “No. As far as I’m concerned, the Bodine bust is history. You give me the information, I’ll pay you and leave you alone from then on.”

  “But how do I know you won’t take what I tell you to the cops, the D.A.?”

  “This is how.” I took out two hundred dollars and set it in the middle of the table. “This taints any evidence I could pass along to them.”

  Spitz looked at the money for a moment; then his hand snaked forward and grasped it. As he stuffed it into the pocket of his pea jacket, he was seized by a spasm of coughing. He got it under control, took out a handkerchief and spat into it. “I got TB,” he said. “You believe that? Nobody gets TB any more.”

  “I’ve heard there’s been a rise in the incidence of it.”

  “Yeah, well, leave it to me to be on the cutting edge of a trend.” His lips twisted bitterly. “I got this fuckin’ disease, I got no wife any more, I got two little boys to raise. Kids, they need things. Otherwise I wouldn’t touch your goddamn money.”

  I doubted that, but I merely said, “Why don’t you tell me about the Bodine bust?”

  “Yeah, okay. First person who talked to me about it was this gofer on Gordon’s staff, I forget his name now. He said word had come down to take care of Bodine, and did I want to earn some extra money? I didn’t mind; Ed’d screwed me over more times than I could count.”

  “Who bought the drugs? You?”

  “Nah, I wasn’t into this dodge then. I just steered them towards Ray Wilmer. The guy who delivered the blow to me was Gordon’s pilot, that Josh Haddon. I snagged Bodine’s jacket while he was on shift and had my wife sew the bags into the lining. Then I made the call to Bodine and set up the meet. It was easy to sell Ed on the idea I was on to some confidential management plans. He knew they were going to get him; it was just a matter of time. What he didn’t figure was that they’d use a union brother to do it.”

  “Who planted the coke in Bodine’s apartment and tipped off the cops?”

  “Haddon or the gofer, I suppose. Haddon was the one I let know about when the meet was coming down.”

  “And for this they paid you …?”

  “Not nearly enough.” His mouth tightened, and he looked away.

  “Weren’t you concerned that the prosecutor’s office might not grant you immunity?”

  “No. They told me the fix was already in.”

  “Did you have contact with anyone in Gordon’s organization besides the gofer and Haddon?”

  “Well, Russ Zola’s name came up a couple of times, but I never talked to him. The way I figure it, word came down from Gordon to Zola, then to Haddon, who sent the gofer to make the first contact.”

  It was, I thought, a perfect example of limiting accountability, a concept that had been developed to a science under the last few political administrations. Corporate specialists like Suits had now perfected it to an art. God knew to what new heights the rest of us would take it in the future.

  “Okay, Mr. Spitz,” I said, “you steered them to Ray Wilmer. Do you know who made the buy?”

  “Haddon, I think. He was pretty damn streetwise—already knew about Wilmer, knew he kept regular business hours here in the park.”

  “And who paid you off afterward?”

  “Haddon.”

  “What were the conditions of the payoff?”

  “The what?”

  “Did they tell you not to talk about the frame to anyone? Did they tell you to leave town?”

  “Both.” Spitz began to look anxious. What if this was a test of how well he continued to comply with the first condition?

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Spitz.” I reached into my bag for the remaining three hundred dollars, held the bills up for him to see.

  Spitz’s greedy eyes focused on them. “That all you want to know?”

  “Almost. Did Gordon’s name ever come up in connection with the frame?”

  “Not really.”

  “What about Noah Romanchek, his lawyer?”

  “No, although I figured he was the one fixed it with the D.A.”

  “But basically it was just Haddon, the gofer, and a few mentions of Zola?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  He shook his head, eyes still on the money.

  I set it on the table, watched as he grabbed it and tucked it away without bothering to count it. He stood up, hesitated, then started around the table toward me, a swagger in his step now that he’d collected.

  “Something else I can do for you, lady?” he asked.
“I got pills, crystal, blow. Or maybe you want something more interesting?”

  Suddenly my emotions boiled over: rage at Suits and his cohorts, disgust at the greed and corruption that had ended Anna’s life, had almost ended mine. I took it out on this pathetic loser, brought the gun between us before he could come any closer. My finger played with its trigger; I had to force myself to ease off.

  Spitz’s eyes widened. He made a strangling sound, took a step backwards.

  I breathed in deeply, calming myself. Said, “Get the hell out of here.”

  Spitz turned and ran for the shelter of the willows.

  * * *

  “Why not stay over?” Amos Ritter said. “It’s late, you’ll never get a direct flight to San Francisco. I’ve got plenty of room—”

  “No, it’s better I leave tonight. Thanks for the loan of the gun. Thanks for everything.” I hugged him and started down the steps of his Gothic horror.

  “Come back sometime,” he called. “Any time.” Then added, “I wish you’d reconsider.”

  I shook my head, waved, and ran toward my rental car. Amos’s suggestion made sense, but I couldn’t take him up on it. I was afraid that if I paused to rest I’d interrupt the momentum that had begun as my plane streaked toward the rising sun yesterday morning. I needed that momentum more than ever now, needed it to combat the heavy weight of the knowledge I’d gleaned here.

  River Park, Monora, Pennsylvania: scene of a drug buy.

  Keystone Steel, Monora, Pennsylvania: scene of a drug frame.

  The buy and the frame were, I feared, the proverbial tip of the iceberg. God only knew what further crimes and corruption I’d uncover before I was through delving into Suits’s life and organization. I could see a conflict brewing ahead, between my loyalty to my old friend Suits and my loyalty to my old friend the truth. And deep down I knew that when I resolved it, my client might take a fall from which I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—save him.

  This was one of those days when I hated my work. I wished I’d never heard of Ed Bodine, never seen his unmarked grave in the Nevada desert. I wished I’d never seen Monora and River Park. I wished I’d never seen the ruins of Keystone Steel and Moonshine House.

  Most of all, I wished that Suitcase Gordon had never walked back into my life.

  Touchstone

  October 3

  The pay phone’s slot swallowed my credit card, and I punched out eleven digits. Thousands of miles and two time zones away, the bell rang in an empty ranch house. I didn’t expect Hy to answer, but this slight link would help me get through what promised to be a long, lonely night. I slouched lower in the booth, counting rings, picturing the dark house and the stark, moon-shot landscape surrounding it.

  And Hy’s sleepy voice said, “Hello?”

  “You’re there!”

  “Uh, yeah. Where’re you?” He was alert now; he had that ability to come awake quickly and fully.

  “Dallas–Fort Worth Airport.”

  “Good God, why?”

  “Because the only flight west that I could get from Pittsburgh was here. Now I can either hippety-hop all over, to Denver to Salt Lake to L.A. to San Francisco, or wait for the first direct flight at eight-forty in the morning.”

  “So you went to Pennsylvania, too. Thought you would. But what about flights to Reno? If you can get there, I could pick you up in the Citabria.”

  “I checked on Reno and Las Vegas. Won’t work. How come you’re back home so soon?”

  “My business in San Diego turned out to be more profitable than I expected, so I canceled out on the East Coast. Was your trip profitable also?”

  “Uh-huh.” There was an edge to my voice now; his failure to elaborate on what he’d done in San Diego annoyed me.

  Hy ignored it. “What’d you find out?”

  “Plenty.”

  He waited. When I didn’t go on, he asked, “So what’d you do with my Land Rover?”

  “It’s in long-term parking at McCarran Field.”

  “Good place for it.”

  “Look, I’ll return it as soon—”

  “No problem, McCone. I got a buddy owes me a favor; we can fly down there and he’ll drive it back. So what’s up?”

  Because he’d resolved the problem of the Land Rover, I relented and filled him in on the details of the past few days, concluding, “I really need to get to San Francisco and locate Suits before he does himself or somebody else serious damage.”

  “What makes you think he’s there?”

  “Facts, plus a dash of instinct. He may not be in the city itself, but I’ll bet he’s somewhere in northern California.”

  Hy was silent, thinking it over. “When does the Denver flight leave?”

  I glanced over at the gate. “It’s about to board right now.”

  “So what’re you waiting for?”

  My lips curved in a slow smile. “I’ll call you from Salt Lake if I get lonesome.”

  Part Four

  Northern California

  October

  Seventeen

  “Shar? God, what’re you doing up this early on a Sunday?”

  “I could ask the same of you.” Rae had a hard time rising on a work morning, let alone a weekend; it was only eight-twenty, but over the phone her voice sounded curiously alert.

  “I’ve been up all night,” she said.

  “Working?”

  “No.”

  “You finally meet somebody?”

  “Well, sort of. I’ve been having the most incredible … um, sensual experience.”

  “Who is he?”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain. Listen, why are you calling?”

  “I’m trying to locate Mick. I just got into SFO, and he has my car, so I want him to pick me up. I called both my house and my office, but I got the machines. Have you seen him?”

  “… Not since around eight last night. He came in while I was fooling with your computer—I’m thinking of getting one like it and knew you wouldn’t mind if I tried it out—and took off again.”

  “He say where he was going?”

  “No, we only talked for a minute. I told him I was on line to Wisdom and thanked him for letting me know about it. He said something … let me think. Yeah, he pulled a fax out of your machine and said he’d just received some information that he wouldn’t have gotten so fast if it hadn’t been for a contact he’d made through the bulletin boards. Then he took off in a hurry.”

  “What’s this about bulletin boards and … Wisdom, is it?”

  “Wisdom’s a computer network. You remember a few weeks ago when I gave up on the bar-and-club circuit and started hanging around the Technomat?”

  “The … oh, right.” The singles scene hadn’t worked out for Rae; she’d met what she described as two total nerds, innumerable alcoholics, a guy who was into handcuffs, and an attorney who was well known to clerks in the lingerie departments of various downtown stores. Next her friend Vanessa had told her about a place to do her laundry in Noe Valley that was hooked into a citywide computer network; while you waited for your clothes to wash and dry, you could drink coffee and communicate with other similarly occupied people in other laundries via computer terminals that were set into little café tables. No romance had developed from that, either, but for a while there Rae had the cleanest clothes in town.

  “So,” I said, “Wisdom’s another of these networks?”

  “Nationwide. You yourself subscribe to it.”

  “I do?”

  “Well, I guess Mick does.”

  And I knew on whose nickel.

  “Anyway,” she went on, “there’re various bulletin boards where you can post messages, and people reply to them, and eventually you get a dialogue going. I met two guys through the Frank Conversations board, and I’ve got this thing going with them.”

  In spite of my concern with what Mick was up to, I couldn’t help but ask, “Separately or together?”

  “Uh, together.”

  My God, wh
at would she get into next?

  “It’s not anything sleazy like phone sex, Shar!”

  “Did I suggest that?”

  “You didn’t have to; I know how your mind works. But it’s really … like all the barriers to total communication are removed. You mesh intellectually, and then you just …”

  “Yes?”

  “I can’t explain.”

  “Come on, Rae, remove the barriers to total communication and tell me.” Needling her was often irresistible.

  “I knew you wouldn’t understand. Why did I ever mention it in the first place?”

  “Okay, we’ll drop the subject—for now.” I got back to business. “Will you do me a favor?”

  “Sure.” She sounded relieved.

  “Thanks. Go to my office and see if the fax Mick got is still there.”

  She set the receiver down, and I heard her footsteps patter away. In her absence I tried to conjure up an image of what incredibly sensual experience one could have with two men via computer terminal. Nothing materialized. Well, I wasn’t going to worry about it; Rae was a big girl, and it was time I started treating her as an equal—even if she did manage to get herself into the damnedest situations.

  There was a rustle of paper and Rae said, “Looks like the right one—at least the date matches. It’s something to do with a military service record.”

  “Sidney Blessing’s?”

  “Uh … right.” She read me the details. Sid Blessing had been an explosives technician in the army.

  When she finished, I said, “I need another favor. Will you see if Mick has a file on Blessing?”

  “Will you promise not to nag me to tell you more about the guys I met through Wisdom?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  “Okay.” She went away, came back. “Got it.”