Standing up slowly, I placed the bottle down on the step I had been sitting on and walked away. When I reached the exit door, I told her I was sorry and that I wouldn’t be back, but I wasn’t sure she heard it.
When the elevator door opened in the lobby, I saw Ray standing there. He held up his hands in a defensive gesture.
“Don’t hit me,” he said. “Don’t hit me.”
I smiled. “Who knew Ray Parker had a sense of humor?” I said. “What are you doing here?”
“Meeting with Harry Lewis,” he said.
“You two got a room?” I said.
“Don’t judge, Jimmy,” he said. “We might just turn out to be very happy together.”
“Again with the humor,” I said. “What gives?”
“Good day in court,” he said.
I nodded.
“Any progress on finding Mrs. Lewis?”
I nodded again. “She’s home.”
His eyebrows shot up and he gave me a small nod.
“Impressive,” he said. “You must have had a hell of a teacher. Where was she?”
“Sanatorium on Eleventh Street,” I said. “Run by a quack named Rainer.”
“Good work. As far as meeting with Harry,” he said, “he thinks Frank Howell is playing dirty and may even be using his wife to do it.”
“Lauren?”
“Don’t jump to any conclusions,” he said. “Wouldn’t be the first time a husband was wrong about his wife.”
I thought about what he had said and how Lauren had been acting.
“Whatta you think?” he asked.
“That Harry doesn’t know his wife,” I said. “She might cheat on him, but she’d never betray him.”
“You headed home?” he asked.
I nodded.
“I’ll swing by after I talk with Lewis,” he said. “Let’s see if we can’t find a handle on this thing.”
Chapter 20
When I got out of my car in front of the Cove Hotel and started toward my room, Pete and Butch stepped out of the shadows of a large shrub and walked toward me.
“Arms up,” Butch said. “Well, arm.”
I did as he said.
He walked up to me cautiously and patted me down, hitting me hard with his large hands.
“Where is it?” Butch asked.
“Where’s what?”
It had stopped raining, but the air was still heavy with moisture, and the raindrop-covered surfaces all around us glistened in the lamplights.
Pete said, “Where have you been, Jimmy?”
“Where’s what?” I asked.
“The piece you used,” Butch said.
“For what?”
“Where you been, Jimmy?” Pete asked again.
“Around,” I said. “Why?”
“It’s awfully late,” he said.
“It is,” I said. “What are you boys doing up?”
“About to take you down, smart guy,” Butch said.
“For what?”
“Come on, Jimmy,” Pete said. “You gotta level with us. Why’re you acting like this?”
“’Cause I don’t trust your new partner,” I said. “I haven’t done anything, but he won’t believe that. He’s gonna keep on until he nails me for something and he doesn’t care what or if I even did it.”
“Nobody’s looking to—”
“Why’d you kill him?” Butch asked.
“See?” I said to Pete, then turning to Butch, “Who?”
“Don’t give me that,” he said. “You know good and goddam well who.”
I assumed he was talking about Mountain, but I wasn’t about to say it. I wondered how they had tied me to his death so quickly. The night nurse? Did they have Clip? Would they go after Lauren?
“Pete,” I said. “You gotta help me out here. At least tell me who I’m being framed for killing.”
“Let’s take a ride,” he said.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked.
“No,” Butch said.
“Come on, Jimmy,” Pete said. “It’s me. Don’t make us your enemies. You know I’ll help you out no matter what you’ve done.”
He actually thought I might have done it, too.
“I think you mean if I’ve done anything,” I said.
“If you took him out,” he said, “you did us a favor, and we’ll look out for you. Just don’t play us for saps. That’s all I’m saying.”
The little gray gunsel the big guy had called Cab had been killed like the others. He had been beaten to death. He was sitting at the base of an oak tree in an empty lot just a few blocks from Rainer’s sanatorium, his upper body slumped forward. His hat was missing and his wet hair hung down in front. The closest house was half a mile away.
“You think I did this?” I asked.
“You’ll do just fine for it,” Butch said.
“And you thought I was being paranoid,” I said to Pete.
“He didn’t mean it, Jimmy,” he said. “Just tell us you didn’t do it. Tell us where you were.”
As Butch stared at the body, he rubbed his boxer’s nose with his index finger.
The ground was soft and damp, wet blades of grass and bits of sand clinging to our shoes. Raindrops falling from oak leaves hit the earth with a dull thud and the nearby street with a wet slap.
“Why don’t you two tell me a few things first,” I said. “How did I get the drop on him? He’s obviously a guy who carries a gun.”
“Maybe you had a gun of your own,” Butch said.
“Okay, so I’ve got a gun,” I said. “I get the drop on him, take his gun, then—what?”
They had both reacted to something I said, their faces twitching before quickly recovering.
Pete reached down and pulled open Cab’s soggy coat to reveal the butt of his gun still snugly in his shoulder holster.
“You just said that part about taking his gun ’cause you knew his gun was still holstered under his coat,” Butch said.
I laughed and shook my head. “Hear that Pete? Things change that much since I left the force? It’s not find who did it, but find someone you can pin it on.”
“It ain’t like that, Jimmy,” Pete said. “I ain’t gonna let anybody set you up for something you didn’t do. Go ahead with what you were saying.”
“So I’ve got a gun on him and his is in his coat,” I said. “And since I can’t hold a gun on him with one arm and hit him with another, he’s kind enough to let me put my gun up, then begin to beat him to death with my left hand—all the while not fighting back or taking out his gun to convince me to stop hitting him.”
Pete looked at Butch.
“How’d you know he had a gun?”
“His kind always do,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
Butch pulled out a pack of Fleetwoods, tapped one out, put it in his mouth, and returned the pack to his coat pocket. He then tried to light it with a match, cupping his hands around the flickering flame. It took him a while, but he stuck with it and finally got it lit.
“The other thing that would bother me, this were my case,” I said, “is why.”
“Why what?” Butch asked.
“Why this guy?” I said. “What’s my motive?”
“I’m sure it has something to do with a case you’re working,” Butch said.
“Butch,” Pete said. “Come on. He’s right. He didn’t do this.”
“If he didn’t, he knows who did,” he said.
I thought about Clip. Why didn’t he just shoot him? I had never known him to beat a man to death when he had a perfectly good gun in his hand.
“Come on, Jimmy, I’ll give you a ride home.”
I turned to see Ray walking up behind us.
“He ain’t goin’ anywhere,” Butch said. “We’re just getting started.”
“Hey Ray,” Pete said.
“Pete,” Ray said.
Everyone respected Ray. Even the cops.
“Who the hell you think you are?” Bu
tch asked.
Well, the smart cops. Ray was not just another PI, but a legend—both as a cop and as a Pinkerton.
“Ask your boss,” Ray said. “He and the DA will be here any minute.”
“Sorry, Ray,” Pete said. “He’s new.”
“Yeah?” Ray said. “What’s your excuse?”
Ray turned and started walking away, and I followed.
Butch came up behind Ray. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he said.
Ray kept walking.
“You hungry?” he said to me.
“I’m talking to you, asshole,” Butch said, but Ray kept walking as if he weren’t.
Butch made a few more comments before finally shoving Ray in the back with both his big hands. Ray didn’t go forward far, which let me know he had been expecting it. He spun around and hit the big cop with a right hook that landed squarely on his left cheek, jerking his head around. He then snapped out a couple of hard left jabs and finished with a straight overhand right that put the large man on the ground. He turned as if nothing had happened and we continued walking toward his car.
Chapter 21
“Thanks,” I said.
Ray didn’t say anything.
“Butch’s gonna retaliate,” I said. “And he’s not the kind that’ll come at you from the front.”
He nodded. “I’ll try not to live in constant fear.”
I smiled.
We rode along in silence for a few moments. The rain had moved out, but the world was still wet, a million tiny raindrops refracting Ray’s headlights in the darkness.
“How’d you know where to find me?” I asked.
“Got a call from a friend of ours at the station,” he said.
“Thanks for coming.”
“Don’t mention it, partner,” he said.
That hurt. I hadn’t been acting like a partner to him.
“Would you mind taking Eleventh Street?” I asked. “There’s something I want to see.”
“Sure,” he said.
He cut over on one of the side streets, which enabled me to see both the front and the back of Rainer’s sanatorium. It was dark and quiet. No disturbance. No cops. No nothing. Maybe they weren’t going to call the police. Maybe they didn’t want them involved any more than we did. If so, Rainer was far more crooked and Lauren in far more danger than I realized.
“You gonna tell me what’s going on?” Ray asked.
I did. Most of it, anyway. I had been feeling guilty for keeping so much from him and he deserved to know—especially when his partner’s picture was spending time on the front page of the paper under headlines that included the words “questioned in connection with a homicide investigation.”
“How can I help?” he asked.
No rebuke. No reprimand. No Lauren lecture. Just the offer of assistance.
“I’m not sure,” I said.
“What’s your next move?”
“I’m not sure,” I said again.
“Any idea who’s behind the murders?”
I shook my head, though it was too dark for him to see it. “None,” I said. “I was thinking maybe Rainer’s men when I thought they were looking for Lauren, but he already had her—and that wouldn’t explain who killed Cab.”
“You don’t think Clipper killed Cab?”
“You could swing by Shine Town and we could ask him.”
Located in the easternmost section of St. Andrews and originally known as East End, Shine Town was the Negro community named after a big moonshiner named Shine who moved in after the mill closed and made and sold rum. Before him, back when it was East End, a man named Thompson ran a saw mill. Lumber from the head of East Bay was floated down to the head of Massalina Bayou, and the mill workers lived in homes built by the mill owner known as the quarters.
Clip lived in a small shack with a bunch of other Negroes. I didn’t think all of them were part of his family, but I wasn’t sure.
I banged on the sagging wooden door and waited. When it opened, I was staring down the serious end of a double-barrel shotgun, the only thing beside it I could see was the whites of one wide eye.
“Name’s Jimmy Riley,” I said. “I’m a friend of Clip’s. He in?”
“Put your popgun down, Pookie,” Clip said from somewhere in the small dark structure. “Cracker owes me money. Don’t shoot him ’fore I collect.”
The shotgun was lowered and I took a few steps back into the muddy front yard. When I looked back at Ray who was sitting in the car, he shook his head. In a moment, a shirtless Clipper Jones joined me.
“Good way to git your ass shot,” he said. “Be a shame to lose that other arm.”
“If you had a phone, I’d call first,” I said.
“If you paid me better, I’d have a phone.”
“That’s why I’m here,” I said. “We’re gonna give you a bonus for what you did to the little gray man.”
He looked confused.
I waited.
“You mean what I’ll do to him when I find him?” he asked.
“I thought you had.”
He shook his head.
“Somebody did.”
“Who?” he said. “Who the cracker that took money out my pocket and how much I git, I take him out?”
“So if it wasn’t Clipper or Rainer’s goons,” Ray said, “who was it?”
We were back in his car nearing downtown.
“No idea.”
“You don’t think the girl could have—
“No,” I said. “No way.”
“Okay, partner,” he said. “I just thought somebody should ask.”
“What about her husband?”
“Harry?”
“Or someone he hired.”
“He hired me.”
“And you have no idea what Mrs. Lewis is hiding?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No,” I said, “but it probably involves a man her husband doesn’t know about.”
He pulled up in front of the Cove Hotel and parked at the curb but didn’t kill his engine.
“You gonna be okay?” he asked.
I nodded, which in the streetlamp he could see.
“What’d Lewis say?” I asked.
“That Howell is bent,” he said, “and we’d be far better off with him as mayor. Can’t just hire us. Has to make political speeches first. Wants us to find out what Howell is up to, if he’s using someone close to Harry.”
“You tell him it wasn’t his wife?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Didn’t come up.”
“You take the job?”
He nodded. “Told him I’d work it in when I wasn’t in court, helping you, working other cases, or running our agency.”
“And what’ll you do on the weekends?” I asked. “Wipe out the Japs and Germans?”
Chapter 22
When I walked into the office the next morning, July frowned at me, and I wondered if she already knew about last night.
“I’m doing the best I can,” I said.
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“Why are you frowning at me?”
She handed me a small slip of paper. “Lauren Lewis called,” she said, her frown deepening.
A small flock of butterflies fluttered around my stomach, and I was unable to suppress a certain twitching of my lips.
I had always thought that if I could have her just one more time, I could get her out of my system. If I could have her and be the one to leave … I couldn’t have her now, but if she wanted me and I could reject her, then maybe I could be free of her.
“I thought you were going to stay away from her?”
“I am,” I said.
“Then why is she calling you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. What’d she say?”
I looked at the small slip of paper, resisting the urge to rub my finger over her name.
“I’m not sure I can remember,” she said with a wry smile. “In fact, I may have forgotten to write he
r number down.”
She snatched the paper from my grasp and looked at it.
“I sure did,” she said. “How could I be so stupid? Well, I am just a part-time secretary. It’s not like anyone around here trusts me enough to do something important.”
At first I thought it was just because she wanted to spend more time with Ray, but I had increasingly become convinced that July really wanted to be a detective.
She then wadded up the paper into a little ball and tossed it into the small trash can behind her.
“Rations,” I said. “The war. Ring any bells? I don’t think you’re supposed to be wasting paper.”
“You’re just sore you don’t have the number.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I said, heading toward my office. “It’s not like I could still remember it or find it in the directory.”
In my office, I snatched up the receiver, punched in the number, and sat down.
After two impossibly long rings, a man’s voice answered.
I hesitated a minute, then said in my most professional tone, “Lauren Lewis, please.”
“Who?”
“Lauren Lewis.”
“Wrong number.”
I repeated the number I had dialed.
“Right number,” he said. “Wrong person.”
“How long have you had this number?”
“About six months. Any other personal information I can give you, pal?”
“Sorry,” I said and hung up.
Everything changes, I thought. Everything has changed.
I walked around my desk and collapsed into my chair.
When Ray walked in a few minutes later, he sat down in one of the client chairs across from me without saying a word.
We sat that way for a long time, and there was far more solace in it than had we been talking.
Our building was as quiet as a library, which is what Ray said my office resembled more than anything else. Glancing around the room at all the used books, I thought he just might be right. Even July, who usually had the small radio on her desk playing as she worked, was silent.
Out on Harrison, the morning traffic moved slowly and quietly. The little shops lining it were doing a steady business, but at a leisurely pace, as if the only people shopping, the retired and the rich, had nothing to do in the world but browse and buy.
“Still no word about the big guy Clipper shot at Rainer’s,” Ray said. “Cops don’t know anything about it.”
Michael Lister - Soldier 01 - The Big Goodbye Page 8
