“All right,” I said, “let’s take it back to episode one. On the day Jack Castelar was killed, sometime between about four in the afternoon and the discovery of the body twelve or thirteen hours later, Kate disappeared. Thin air, not a trace, twinkling of an eye. Like that.” I watched Jennings closely as I spoke. He looked surprised—the frown erased itself and was replaced by a certain wide-eyedness—but he didn’t drop his jaw, jump to his feet, and yell “What??!!” or ham it up in any other way that might make you think he was pulling your leg. “The working assumption,” I added, “is that she disappeared with you. And that it wasn’t her idea.”
Jennings slumped against the back of the secretarial chair and his arms fell to his sides. The gun was now out of sight. Not, however, out of mind; you’d have to be out of your mind to forget a thing like that. Jennings stared emptily at the desktop for maybe thirty seconds, then inhaled deeply and breathed it out with an “Ah, fuck …”
“I know what you mean. I gather your story is that you didn’t snatch Kate, that in fact you didn’t even know she was missing until I told you about it.”
He looked at me without lifting his head. There was nothing in his eyes, nothing that was written in a language I could read, at any rate. “It isn’t my story,” he said behind another sigh. “It’s the truth. I didn’t do anything. They said you were spooking around, asking about me and some broad. I figured they meant Christina. And then when I heard on the tube this morning that she’d been killed and they were blaming me for that too, I decided maybe I should have a talk with you. The Fat Lady, she said you acted like maybe you weren’t dead sure I killed Castelar.” His mouth twitched mildly. “Which makes you about the only one in town, except me.”
I stroked the velvety whiskers on either side of my mouth with thumb and forefinger. “Right now I’m not dead sure that Wednesday follows Tuesday. If you’re as innocent as the Easter Bunny, why don’t you go to the cops? Why tell me?”
“The cops.” His shoulders jumped but the laugh was inaudible. “There’s a great idea. They’d listen to me real careful, write it all down, and then throw me in the can for like ever. I’m not stupid. I know how they figure it, how whoever killed Castelar figured it. I shot my big fat mouth off all over town, saying I was gonna get that son of a bitch someday. Big talk. I didn’t think no one was listening. But somebody was.” The mouth moved again, this time into a thin bitter line.
“Who?”
He gave me a pitying look. “How the fuck should I know? Someone else who hated the bloodsucking bastard but didn’t go running off about it like me.”
“All right, but what about Christina? Did you kill her?”
His eyes hardened. “No. But I could have. That dirty little gold-digging cunt sold me out. She could’ve alibied me, you know. But she didn’t.”
“You mean you were home that night sitting in front of the fire with a good book?”
“There ain’t no fireplace in that dump,” he said obtusely. “And I didn’t say I was home, I said Christina could’ve said I was. I went out at about nine because I was supposed to meet Kate in this bar way out on Maple where we always meet. I waited for about an hour and she didn’t show. I didn’t think anything of it because sometimes that happens, she can’t get away or something.”
“Didn’t you try calling her?”
He wagged his head. “Like I said, man, it happens. And I’m not real popular over there, you know, so I don’t even bother to call most of the time. It’s not like they’d give her a message if she don’t happen to answer the phone herself.”
“Then how do you communicate? Kate didn’t know about Christina until the day before yesterday, so she must never have called your place. Unless you’re luckier than you deser—”
“Kate found out about Christina? Fuck, man. I was hoping to get rid of Christina before she— Hey, cut it out, you know what I mean: get rid of her like break it off and kick her out.” He rubbed his left temple. “Shit, that’s the end of that. Too bad, too; that Kate is into some really wild stuff, man. Kinky. You know, sometimes she wants me to take this big bel—”
“Terrific. We’re getting off-track here. You were waiting for Kate …”
He nodded. “Yeah. So, anyhow, about eleven, eleven-thirty, I split and came down here. I had a few drinks, smoked a little grass, and then some of us came upstairs and shot some craps until, shit, I don’t know, four, five in the morning. I was pretty wasted by then, so I crashed here. ’Bout noon Edgar comes up and tells me Castelar’s dead and the cops think I done it. Edgar, he’s the bartender.”
I said I thought perhaps I had noticed him.
“Well, I couldn’t go home; I was afraid to call in case the cops could trace it. And then later on someone told me about what Christina told the cops, and I knew I was really fucked. So I stayed lost, figured I’d hang out until the weather got better, then split for Mexico.”
“Mexico? Not Canada?”
“Canada? You kidding? Snow’s for shit, man; I gotta get back someplace warm.”
“The South Dakota cops say they found your truck in a snowdrift up past Sioux City.”
Jennings smiled—rather, he smirked, and he finally looked like the Jennings in the newspaper picture. “Not my truck, man. This is something I thought of once, thought it’d come in real handy if I had to split town or something. First thing I did, I hid the truck real good, then I took the plates off it, then I went around, you know, parking lots and places until I found a truck like mine. All the guys who work at the packing houses and stuff, they all drive pickups, so it didn’t take too long.”
“And then you switched the plates.”
He half raised his arms in a shrug and I caught a brief glimpse of the gun in his right hand. “I figure a guy could buy a little time that way. Pretty smart, huh?”
“You’ve got the better mousetrap there, all right. But flash on this, Young Edison: If you were here with a bunch of other people shooting craps all night, then you’ve got what we in the trade call an alibi.”
He grunted. “I got shit. I don’t even know the names of half the guys. The other half are going to say they weren’t here, on account of the craps, on account of the dope, on account of the girls. Get it?”
“What about the Fat Lady?”
“Especially the Fat Lady. Besides, the cops are gonna believe her any better’n they’d believe me? With Christina’s bullshit about me coming home and hiding my gun and going out again? Be funny.”
“You know about that, huh? Well, why did your wife lie?”
He snorted. “Course I know. And she ain’t my wife. I mean, she wasn’t. Not even what’cha call common-law. She liked to pretend she was, is all. Crazy broad. But a great ass.” He shook his head gently, reminiscing. Sentimental fool. “Anyhow, I don’t know what she was up to. I figure maybe she found out who really killed the old guy, told him she’d screw up my alibi for the right price. Hell, she’d’ve sawed off her own head for the right price. And the guy, he probably figured out real fast that she was the type who’d be squeezing his balls for the rest of his life, so he finished her and made it look like it was me again.”
Close enough, I figured, though Christina had to have been in on it from the start in order for her to have had the murder weapon for us to find the very next morning. “Listen, was Christina seeing anybody on the side?”
“I think so, yeah. I’m not exactly sure, because I was spending a lot of time myself with Kate, but I’m pretty sure. Sometimes I’d come home real late and she’d have perfume on, or her face would be all done up, and it’s a long time since she did that kind of stuff for me. That was okay, though. Like I said, I’d been wanting to split from her for a while, but I was kind of afraid she was calling herself Christina Jennings and telling everyone she was my wife because she figured on some sort of palimony deal, you know, and I was thinking she couldn’t pull anything like that if she had another boyfriend. Why? You think that—holy shit, you think that Christina and h
er boyfriend killed Castelar?”
“Well, somebody sure did. That’s the one constant, the one inalterable fact that I have to cling to these days. And somebody killed Christina, too, probably the same somebody. You’re the number-one choice for that honor, as you well know. But there are still a lot of threads dangling.”
“Like what?”
“Well, like someone roughed up my car pretty badly yesterday afternoon; wasn’t you by any odd chance, was it?”
“Hey, I never even heard of you until last night.”
“Yeah, well, there’s one of the threads then. Another is why the Fat Lady sent me halfway across the Great Plains last night looking for you when she knew you were here. Another is why a joker named Kirby sent a small delegation to run me off the road. Another—”
“Oh, well, I can explain that. See, Kirby’s been hiding me—”
“You know Kirby?”
“No, he’s a total stranger helping me stay out of the can. Of course I know him. I kind of do odd jobs for him once in a while.” I was pretty sure he didn’t mean fixing squeaky doors and patching ceiling cracks. “The Fat Lady knew that Kirby was already nervous about you because you’d been over asking questions at the bank when he was there. So she gave you that bum steer so’s to give her time to call Kirby and ask him what they should do. That’s when Kirby sent the guys out again—they knew where you’d gone, so it was easy for them to pick up your trail—only this time they weren’t supposed to just tail you. They were supposed to lean on you.”
“They gave it a good shot,” I said charitably. “But what does the Fat Lady have to do with Kirby? And where do you come in?”
“God, where’ve you been living?” Jennings sighed. “Okay. Now, you know that Kirby’s the biggest independent in the area, right?”
When the question is phrased like that, I always agree.
“Okay, Kirby’s the Fat Lady’s supplier. Her and all the other kind of small-fry, the guys too little for the Eye-ties to piss around with.” He grinned malicously. “This Castelar thing’s got Kirby sweating bullets, man, and you didn’t help any. He’s got the cops ragging him on the left and the Mob lickin’ their chops on the right and sooner or later one or the other of ’em’s gonna gobble him up like a plate of eggs.”
I was only half listening; the greater portion of my mind was occupied with a game of fill-in-the-blanks, the blanks being those left after my meeting with Kirby that afternoon. Jennings’s information clarified matters enormously, and certainly made more sense than the cock-and-bull stories Kirby had tried to feed me. I’m not quite so naive as to have accepted even part of Kirby’s self-portrait as an honest businessman plagued by dishonest and underhanded competitors, but I figured he was just a small-time crooked coin-op vendor, not a pharmacist. And certainly not one of the size Jennings indicated. But it added up: Kirby’s jumpiness, his assumption that I was a cop and his mention of the court order protecting him from police harassment, and the fact that he seemed to have plenty of money even though his vending-machine business looked about as vital as roller disco. Yes, it computed nicely; what didn’t was the way Kirby kept turning up at odd points in the sequence of events. Coincidence? They happen. Kirby had every reason to be high-strung, especially since he was harboring a man wanted for questioning in connection with a murder investigation. (Don’t you just love that kind of talk?) Maybe that part of Kirby’s yarn had been on the level—he got spooked when I turned up at the bank when he was there, so he pinned the tail on me. An almost-innocent bystander. Maybe …
I said, “You’re staying with Kirby? What’d he tell his family, you’re the long-lost cousin he never knew he had from Yakima?”
Jennings pulled a face. “I’m not like in his guest room, man. He lined up someplace for me last night is all. Besides, he doesn’t have any family. His old lady kicked the bucket a few years ago and his kid’s in college someplace.”
“Well, he’s got his bully patrol to keep him warm.”
“I heard he had a pretty hot piece stashed away for himself someplace, but I don’t think that’s on anymore. Well, who gives a shit about the old fart anyway? He booted me out when you came on, man; some pal.” He gave a short, grim laugh. “I was thinking of feeding him to the cops, but I figured, what the fuck, right? Tomorrow the roads should be open, and I’m heading south while the cops are all looking for me north of here. So why make trouble? ’Sides, I may need Kirby to do me another favor someday. The Fat Lady, too.” He smirked. He had all the angles figured, boy; just ask him, he’d tell you. He was one tough cookie, he was one smart bird. The kind of bird they’ll occasionally find in the Muddy Mo come early spring, swimming under the last of the winter ice.
At the moment, however, I was more concerned about my closest relative: me. I had grown gradually uneasier about Jennings’s sharing his plans for the immediate future. It suggested that perhaps he felt I was not going to have much of one, and therefore it was safe to unburden himself upon me. My unease was not quelled any when he brought his gun back into sight and aimed it lazily at my chest, which tightened in response.
I waited. He waited. The room was hot but the sweat pooling in the middle of my back was cold, clammy. Fuzzy noises from the bar downstairs, noises that had served as background music to our discussion here, seemed to grow louder though no more distinct than before, and melded with the sound of blood thudding in my ears. The seconds clipped along, tripped over one another, piled up, turned into minutes. Or maybe just a minute; time flies when you’re having fun, and I wasn’t.
Finally I cracked under the strain, forced my eyes from the gun and into Jennings’s smarmy face, cleared my throat gently, and said, “So what’s the point? Why tell me all this? Why risk it?”
He considered it briefly. “Because I didn’t do it, man,” he finally said bluntly. “None of it. I didn’t kill Castelar, I didn’t kill Christina, and I didn’t do whatever’s been done to Kate. But I can’t prove it, and no one’s gonna believe me. Except maybe you, if the Fat Lady reads you right. And if there’s one guy keeping an open mind, well, maybe it’ll make a difference how things shake out, you know? Wouldn’t do Kate any harm either. She ain’t with me; she’s gotta be someplace. And, shit, maybe while the cops are all busy looking for me, you’ll nail the right son of a bitch, get your picture in the paper, huh? Anyhow”—he stood abruptly—“I don’t plan to stick around and find out. Wouldn’t do me any good if you found the bastard the day after they hung me.”
“Hanged,” I corrected absently. “Pictures are hung, people are hanged. And no one’s been hanged in this state since I don’t know when.”
“Yeah, well, then maybe they’re overdue for one.” He came around the desk and sidled toward the door, keeping the gun on me just the way he’d seen it done on TV. “Fifteen minutes,” he said when he had reached back and touched the doorknob with his left hand. “I’m gonna tell Edgar that you can walk out of here fifteen minutes after I leave. You try to leave sooner than that—well, Edgar won’t let you.”
I could well imagine.
The door opened. When it closed again, Jennings was gone.
I sat in the dark and concentrated on unclenching every muscle in my body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Kirby’s house was a nice but not stupendous brick number in a nice but not stupendous block only a couple of miles west of my own home sweet hovel. The neighborhood was of wide, lazily curving streets, of parkways decorated by big old maples that shaded the charming houses on hot summer afternoons, of tall and narrow two-stories with white siding or red brick or, sometimes, both.
It only went to show the difference a mile or three can make.
I drove slowly down the boulevard until I found the address I’d memorized out of a phone book. The number corresponded to a high-roofed house set well back from the pavement in the middle of the block. From what I could see, it, like the rest of the neighborhood, was dark. Gosh, and it was barely two o’clock. Bunch of short-hitters.<
br />
When I reached the end of the block I pulled a U-turn in the intersection, dousing my headlights as I did so, and coasted up against the curb on the opposite side, toward the end of the block but well away from the pale light of an old-fashioned globe-topped street lamp.
I killed the engine and waited, listening. I don’t know what I expect to hear when I do that, but I always listen for it nonetheless. As usual, I didn’t hear it. So I got out of the car and crossed the street.
I cut diagonally across the yard of the last house on the block and slipped between it and the house next to it. Kirby’s house was the fourth one from that end of the block—I had counted—and only one fenced yard lay between. One too many, my aching gut told me, but there were no alternatives. I waded through the shin-deep new snow that blanketed the scenery, hopped two sides of the chain-link with a minimum of swearing and scant appreciation for the absence of barbs along the top, and stumbled into Kirby’s back yard. Winded, I leaned against the rear wall of his attached garage and watched my breath swirl whitely and vanish into the blue-black atmosphere until my pulse returned to normal. Vapor condensed and froze on my scant beard and mustache. I pawed at it with a gloved hand, but fast decided that the only sure cure was to get indoors.
No trick, ordinarily. Most American houses are only slightly harder to get into without keys than with. If you don’t care how much noise you make, it’s even easier. But I cared. Not so much because I was afraid of disturbing Kirby’s beauty sleep as I was that he was jumpy enough to have invited one or both of his pals for a slumber party. And as everyone knows, you don’t sleep at a slumber party. That’s why I had been cute with the car’s headlights, why I had broken my neck coming in the back way, why I stayed close to the house and out of line with the windows as I carefully, quietly cased the joint.
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