Till the Butchers Cut Him Down

by Marcia Muller

  “Yes. I want to hear your version of it.”

  “Why? It’s over and done with.”

  “I still want to hear your story.”

  “What’re you going to do? Go to Koll, get the case reopened? And why’re you nosing around in it, anyway? I thought you were done working for T.J.”

  “I’m no more done working for him than you are. As for Koll, she’s not going to open what she regards as a political can of worms. So it’s all right to tell me about it.”

  He hesitated a while more. Fished out a cigarette and cupped his hands to light it. “Okay,” he finally said. “You know Bodine was a troublemaker. He’d used some damned dirty tactics and was impossible to negotiate with. Word came down—get rid of him. I’m a good little soldier; I obeyed orders.”

  “Whose orders?”

  “Russ Zola’s. They don’t call him the executioner for nothing.”

  “Why’d you decide on a drug frame?”

  “First thing that occurred to Noah and me. Noah used to be a drug lawyer; they’ve got the same mentality and connections as dealers. Me … well, you know about that.”

  “So Romanchek was in on it, too.”

  “He was the one who fixed it with the prosecutor’s office and the defense attorney.”

  “And T.J.?”

  Josh shrugged.

  “Did he know?”

  “Sometimes people know things without really knowing them.”

  The old lack of accountability again.

  “I’ve watched the way T.J. operates,” Josh added. “He’ll kick a problem around with someone—Noah, Carole, Russ. It’s a problem with a solution that’s pretty obvious and pretty unsavory, only T.J. acts like he can’t see it. Next thing you know, the person he’s been talking to is taking action, only they don’t tell T.J. what they’re up to because they’ve convinced themselves that if he knew he’d stop them.” Josh’s lips twisted cynically. “Me, I never fooled myself. I knew I had T.J.’s full approval for all my dirty dealing.”

  “There was a lot of it?”

  “Enough.” Josh got up and moved to the railing. Ground out his cigarette and kicked it over the edge.

  “Why’d you go along with it?”

  “Why not? I flew T.J. around, did whatever he told me. In exchange, he paid me well, bought great aircraft. That was all I cared about.”

  “Past tense?”

  “Maybe. Things’re different now.”

  “How?”

  “We all change.”

  “Have you changed because of Anna’s death?”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me, surprised. Then he scowled and looked away. “I don’t want to talk about Anna.”

  “Josh—”

  “No. You better go now.”

  His back was stiff, resistant; I’d get nothing more from him today. “We’ll talk another time, then. Before I leave, do you mind if I make some phone calls?”

  “Be T.J.’s guest.”

  * * *

  For privacy’s sake I used an extension I’d noticed in the kitchen to call my house. Mick answered. I asked him if he’d found out anything on his trip up to Mendocino County, and he said he’d located a man who’d spotted Suits hitchhiking south on the coast highway early Friday morning. Then he started to tell me about Sid Blessing’s service record, but I cut him short and had him dig up and read to me a list of phone numbers Suits had given me last August. There was only one home number on it, that of Nate Evans, the architect who had pulled out of the Hunters Point project. I copied it down.

  Mick said, “I think you ought to know about this Blessing business.”

  “We’ll discuss that when I get home.”

  “But, Shar, I went—”

  “I can’t talk about that now.” I hung up before I wasted valuable time laying into him for harassing Enid Blessing.

  At first Nate Evans was reluctant to interrupt his Sunday for me. I told him my business was urgent and I’d be glad to meet with him at any time. He hesitated, consulted with someone in the background, then agreed to see me at eight-thirty that evening and gave me directions to his Woodside home down on the Peninsula.

  Next I called Lost Hope and spoke with Chuck Westerkamp. The remains they’d exhumed from the wash, he told me, had been positively identified from Ed Bodine’s dental charts. Walker and Deck still hadn’t been apprehended.

  I said, “You know, I’ve been thinking about your problem with getting hold of Walker’s phone records.”

  “Yes?”

  “When I was watching from outside her house before she went to see Leon Wednesday night, she was talking on a cordless that looked a lot like mine. Now, on mine there’s a redial button; the phone stores the last number called, and when you hit that button, it automatically dials it again.”

  “And?”

  “It would be interesting to know the last person she talked to before she and Leon took off.”

  “Would be.” Westerkamp hesitated. “Small towns like this, it’s customary to leave a spare house key with a neighbor. I happen to know that Brenda is very close to our postmistress, who lives across the street. Maybe I’ll have a talk with her. You going to be home later on?”

  “Until around seven-thirty.”

  “I’ll call you if anything interesting turns up.”

  * * *

  When I walked into my living room, my calico cat, Alice, was sitting on the back of the chair near W. C. Fields’s perch, left paw reaching toward the silk parrot’s tail. “Not you, too!” I yelled.

  Allie leaped down, ran halfway across the room, then turned and mowled indignantly.

  “That parrot is not for you!”

  She mowled again and galloped toward the food bowl.

  “And don’t talk back to me!”

  Then I dropped my weekend bag on the floor, ashamed that I was taking out my anger with Mick on the cat.

  The true object of my anger chose that instant to emerge from the hallway leading to the bathroom, his hair wet and slicked back, his face scrubbed and rosy. He saw my glower and stopped.

  “At last we meet again,” I said.

  Mick crossed the kitchen and came into the living room, arms folded defensively.

  I asked, “Just where the hell did you go last night after you woke up Enid Blessing’s little girl and almost got yourself shot?”

  “… That gun was loaded?”

  “Damned right it was.” I took the keys to the rental car from my pocket and tossed them to him. “I want you to deliver that Geo that’s parked out front to the airport. And don’t have an accident; I’m the only one who’s supposed to be driving it. After that, you get your ass back here and start packing.”

  “Shar—”

  “Mick, you’re very bright and talented, but you’ve displayed incredibly bad judgment. I can’t afford to keep you around any more. I can’t afford another incident like the one with Enid Blessing.”

  “How did you find out—”

  “From her. You not only put yourself in jeopardy, but you endangered the agency. What if she’d filed a complaint? Did that ever occur to you?”

  He bit his lip, looked down at the floor. Mumbled something.

  “What?”

  “I said, I was only trying to help.”

  “I know that. But the kind of help I needed from you was in the office, on the phone, or at the computer.” I thought about mentioning that I didn’t appreciate having the agency’s money spent for such items as a Wisdom subscription, but decided enough was enough.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  He sounded so crestfallen that I almost weakened. Almost. “Apology accepted,” I told him. “And now I’ve got an appointment down on the Peninsula. You get dressed and return the Geo.”

  He nodded and started toward the guest room, then stopped and turned. “Shar?”

  “Yes?”

  He started to say something, shook his head.

  “What, Mick?”

  “Nothing,
really. I just wanted to tell you—I changed the oil in the MG this afternoon, and the gas tank’s full.”

  Nineteen

  The affluent, horsey community of Woodside has managed to remain countrified in spite of the urbanization of most other Peninsula towns. It helps that property values are prohibitively high, that many of its humans and animals are pedigreed, that much of it is far off the beaten track. Mountain roads wind high into heavily forested hills, and smaller lanes branch off them into the shadow of redwoods and eucalyptus. The houses are often acres apart and range from ostentatious statements of their owners’ financial condition to personal expressions of resident artists. Nate Evans’s home fell somewhere in between.

  Set high above the narrow pavement, it was three stories of gray wood and glass; tall arched windows spilled light onto the branches of surrounding oak trees. A long wooden stairway negotiated the hill from the road to the front door. Evans had cautioned me that there was no driveway; the garage was set into the hill at street level. I should be careful not to park on the curve, he said, as teenage drivers tended to use the road as a racecourse. I left the MG a fair distance away near the mailbox of another house built into the opposite downhill slope, then walked up and climbed the stairway.

  After I reached the front door and rang the bell, I turned and took in the view: dark hills rolling away to the west, where their tops were draped in coastal fog; small lights winking here and there among the trees. The air was chill, laden with the heavy scent of redwood; nothing moved to disturb the silence. Not a good place, I thought, for a person unaccustomed to solitude.

  Behind me the door opened. The woman who looked out was young, blond, clad in a leather jacket and jeans. She said, “Himself’s in the living room, go right in,” and hurried past me, jingling car keys and leaving a trail of exotic perfume.

  I stepped into a tiled foyer and shut the door. The living room—yards of white carpet with redwood-paneled walls and jungle-patterned furnishings—lay two steps down. A man rose from a sectional couch in front of a stone fireplace and came toward me.

  He said, “If you haven’t already made the mistake, never have children.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Teenagers are a pain in the ass. My daughter just caught me in a weak moment, borrowed the keys to my Porsche, and ran out of here on some errand that I wish I could believe was innocent. Ms. McCone?”

  “Yes. Mr. Evans?”

  My host nodded and motioned toward the short section of the couch. As I sat down I studied him. Tall, athletic, gray-haired with a youthful face, he was a casting director’s image of an architect who would live in such a house and have a pretty daughter who would wheedle away the keys to the Porsche.

  “You have a lovely home,” I said. “Did you design it?”

  He shook his head. “My area of specialization is strictly industrial. I wouldn’t know how to go about designing a house like this, but fortunately a talented friend of mine does. May I offer you something. Coffee? A drink?”

  “Nothing, thanks. I understand from T. J. Gordon that you’re one of the best marine-facility architects in the country.”

  “He overrates me. Considerably.” But he smiled, pleased.

  “It’s natural, then, that he was very upset when you pulled out of his Hunters Point project.”

  Evans frowned, sitting on the other section of the couch and taking a cigarette from a pack in his shirt pocket. “He didn’t send you to ask me to reconsider? No, he wouldn’t need a private investigator for that.”

  “No. Mr. Gordon hired me back in August to investigate what appeared to be a pattern of harassment.”

  Nate Evans rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, then picked up a lighter from the end table. “You mind if I smoke?”

  I shook my head.

  He lighted the cigarette, then said, “Could you be more specific about this harassment?”

  I explained, stressing the part about him and two other people pulling out of the project on the same day.

  When I finished, Evans put out his cigarette, looking thoughtful. “You know, I’ve been uncomfortable about pulling out of that deal ever since Gordon’s wife was killed. I should have been up-front with him about my reasons. Maybe … Well, that’s neither here nor there now.”

  “Exactly what were your reasons?”

  He hunched forward, elbows on knees, eyes clouded. “I began to have doubts about the project when a letter came to my office. In essence, it said that the Golden Gate Lines turnaround was going badly; Gordon was overextended, underfinanced, and had personal problems. That gave me pause, but the writer didn’t identify himself, and I don’t like to react to rumor, so I tossed it out and didn’t mention it to T.J. Next there was a phone call from a friend, a venture capitalist whom I respect.”

  I named the investor who had also pulled out of the project.

  Evans nodded. “He’d been hearing similar things at his club. He asked if I knew anything. We agreed to ignore the rumors, but we kept hearing them. People were saying GGL was shakier than ever. I ran into Dick Farley, manager of the Jack London Terminal; he said Gordon was acting strangely. I’d noticed it, too. I had another project in the works, so I backed off.”

  “It strikes me as highly coincidental that you, the venture capitalist, and the terminal manager at the Port of Stockton whom Gordon hoped to hire all backed out on the same day.”

  “I won’t lie to you: we’d talked, and I suppose the old domino effect was in operation.”

  “And not one of you confronted Gordon about the rumors.”

  “By the time we began accepting them as fact, T.J. was acting very strangely. He was paranoid, flew off the handle at the slightest provocation, was often verbally abusive. In short, not a man you’d care to confront. Perhaps if we’d known about the attempts on his life, we’d have acted differently. But as it was, he’d become so strange that when his wife was killed in that explosion, I thought … Jesus.” He shook his head.

  “You thought he’d had her killed.”

  “A lot of people did. Still do.”

  “Do you recall anything about the note you received or the rumors you heard that might indicate who was behind them?”

  He thought. “Only that it had to be someone who was very knowledgeable about GGL. At least at first; after a while the rumors took on their own momentum.”

  “Let me ask you this: if Gordon somehow gets it together and revives the Hunters Point project, would you consider working on it?”

  “Well, I’ve taken on another long-term project, but … yes, I’d at least consider it.”

  “May I tell T.J. that?”

  “Of course. By the way, how’s he doing?”

  “Better.” And maybe he was. He’d left his self-imposed exile at Moonshine Cottage, set off on a course of action. But was that course of action wholly rational? I’d know when I caught up with him.

  If I caught up with him …

  * * *

  The night seemed colder and darker as I walked down the stairway from Nate Evans’s house. The coastal fog had crept farther in and lay low in the folds of the hills now; a pocket of it surrounded the home on the far side of the road, muting its lights. Up above, an engine droned, and then a small car sped around the sharp curve; its brake lights flashed as it fishtailed into the switchback. Evans hadn’t been exaggerating when he said kids used the road as a racecourse.

  I stuffed my hands deep in my jacket pockets and walked along the pavement toward the MG. Another car’s engine boomed to life above, and I automatically moved over to the road’s edge. Headlights flared behind me. I glanced back.

  The lights seemed to be coming straight toward me.

  Momentarily I froze, waiting for the driver to correct his course. The lights kept coming, faster now. Fear surged through me as I realized he intended to run me down.

  Blindly I leaped sideways off the road, twisting my body, my arms out for balance. I felt a rush of air; gravel sp
urted up and peppered my back. Pain seared my left calf as the car’s bumper grazed it. I pitched forward, fell hard, and slid down the incline on a scratchy blanket of pine needles.

  I pushed myself to my feet, gritting my teeth against the pain. There was a shriek of tires, a clash of gears. Then the headlight beams splashed over the branches of the trees above me.

  Coming back.

  I ducked, fumbled my way into a clump of pyracantha bushes. Their spines tore at my clothing, scratched my face. I batted at them, burrowed deeper—heart pounding, mouth dry.

  On the road above, the car stopped.

  I eased forward, saw a paved driveway on the other side of the bushes. Parted the branches so I could peer up its length.

  The car idled at its top—light-colored, low-slung, the make unidentifiable at this distance. After a moment it moved on, but slowly and only for a few yards. Then its engine shut off, its headlights went out.

  Coming after me on foot—and not to ask if I was okay.

  He’d find me all too easily here.

  I broke from the bushes and ran down the driveway, ignoring the pain in my calf. Toward the muted lights of the house where there were people, a phone. …

  As I ran, I scanned the ground for something to use as a weapon. Nothing. Just a line of pyracanthas and, beyond them, fog and darkness. Why, I thought, was my gun always locked away at home when I needed it! I had a carry permit; I should get over my aversion to keeping the .38 with me—

  From high above came the sound of pursuing footsteps.

  I ran through a parking area in front of a garage, around the garage, over a decked walkway to the front door. The lights I’d seen were exterior fixtures; the house’s interior was dark.

  I pushed the bell anyway, pounded on the door. No response.

  The footsteps slapped behind me, in the parking area now. Whirling, I saw a stairway leading to a big deck at the side of the house. I plunged down the steps two at a time, grasping the railing for balance.

  The deck was huge, illuminated by photoelectric security spots. Beyond it, a pool area was as bright as noonday. I veered off the stairs, slid down a brushy slope to one of the deck’s support beams, then ducked under its planking. There was only about four feet of clearance there; I hunched low, worked my way back into the darkness.