Moving Targets

by William J. Reynolds

  Kirby didn’t treat me to any sort of histrionics. I wouldn’t have minded a tearful confession or a vituperative denial or even a maniacal laugh and the sneering revelation that Kate was trapped in his secret laboratory, where in exactly three minutes a pre-set timer would release a deadly copperhead to come chomp her on the ankle, heh-heh-heh. But Kirby would have none of it. He swallowed, with difficulty, I thought, and again dragged his sleeve across his brow, but said nothing.

  “The way I figure it,” I said, “Jack Castelar was running a little dry-cleaning service—for cash customers only. What sort of percentage do they take around these parts, Frank? Probably a lot more reasonable than down around Miami, I’d guess; fewer risks here. But there are risks, and the greater the money, the greater the danger. Especially for the banker. I imagine that Castelar wanted to up the percentage, and this made you unhappy. I imagine that you thought having his daughter on your side, in a manner of speaking, might make Castelar more receptive to your point of view. I imagine that something went wrong, Castelar got dead, and you had to begin negotiations all over again with the new administration. Luckily you still had an ace up your sleeve: Kate.”

  “That’s crazy,” Kirby said. Finally.

  “I agree, Frank, but don’t be so hard on yourself; who among us couldn’t benefit from thirty minutes’ couch time now and then? Besides, in some respects, it’s pure genius. You knew that Jennings would be everyone’s number-one choice to burn for both crimes. You arranged with Christina to queer any possible alibi—hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if you were her secret admirer—but then she got nervous, or greedy, or both, and you decided, what the heck, what’s another item on Jennings’s tab? That puts you in the free-and-clear on a brace of murders and one kidnaping, boy, and still leaves you in the catbird seat vis-à-vis the West Omaha State Bank and Trust.”

  I pulled back the hammer on my gun.

  “But it puts you in shit with me.”

  I had had ninety-nine and forty-four one-hundredths percent of Kirby’s attention; now I got the other fifty-six one-hundredths. He tensed and fairly quivered, like a pointer in the field zeroing in on a fallen bird, and his thick hands had an unbreakable grip on the sheet covering his legs.

  “Now wait—” he sputtered in a high whine.

  I leveled the guns at him, feeling distinctly silly—what did I think I was doing; holding up the noon stage? Kirby, however, didn’t see the humor in it, so I tried to mask any amusement I might have felt when I said: “I’m not interested. In any part of it. The drugs, the money, the cops, the Mob—I just plain don’t care. I want to know only one thing: Where’s the girl? Where’s Kate? That’s it. You tell me, we go get her, and it’s farewell, my lovely; I’m out of your hair. You don’t tell me”—I raised the guns fractionally, B-movie style—“and I put a dozen rounds into you.”

  He opened his mouth but nothing came out of it. Sweat glistened on his forehead and upper lip. The top edge of the sheet was stretched taut between his white fists.

  I said, “Now it’s time for you to talk, Frank,” and punctuated the sentence with the twin guns.

  Kirby coughed a little, dryly, and said chokingly, “You’re wrong—you’re all wrong—I didn’t—I didn’t kill anyone—”

  “That’s the wrong answer.” I growled it. Yes, that’s right, I’m tough; stronger than dirt. “You looked awfully cherubic there when you were asleep, but I still didn’t take you for an innocent babe-in-arms. I know you’re up to your bushy little eyebrows in the business, so what say we just cut straight to the benediction, okay? I want to know where the girl is and I don’t feel like waiting. Think fast, and talk fast—like your life depends on it. ’Cause it does.”

  A sort of a burbling whine came from his throat and a droplet of moisture blazed a trail down his right temple. “I—” he said, and I raised my eyebrows encouragingly. “I—okay, okay, you’re right about the business, you’re right about me, you’re right about Castelar.” It was like shaking a tree full of ripe fruit; the words couldn’t tumble out of him fast enough, now that he was over his initial bashfulness. They trampled over each other in their mad rush to get out, and they and Kirby’s face both wore a certain hysterical shading, but that didn’t trouble me. Whatever it took.

  “But the rest of it,” he babbled, “you’ve got that all wrong, I swear it.” His clenched fists trembled and the bedclothes waved like flags on Veterans Day. “I never killed Castelar. Things were going great, really great, they were working good for me and they were working good for him and we’d’ve been crazy to want to fuck it up. Really. I mean, I was upset when I heard he’d been killed, I was scared, ’cause I was sure that it was them fucking dagos that did it, you know, and that I was gonna be next.” Foam flecked his bottom lip; he licked at it, quickly, and swallowed hard. “And you’re right, I was at the bank talking to Castelar, the other Castelar, the brother, about keeping the arrangement going, but he didn’t know anything about it and that made him nervous and I was afraid he was gonna do something stupid so I was nervous and then you came around asking questions.” He took a breath. “And then I was scared you’d find out about me and Castelar if you kept snooping around. So that’s why I told Castelar to get rid of you and that’s why I sent the guys after you but I called them off after you came in today and I was gonna leave you alone I swear to God. I’ve got enough problems already, especially if Castelar chickens out on me, I don’t need a murder rap too, so I was gonna lay off you and I told Jennings he was on his own and I’m gonna turn the business over to the wops and just mind my own business really and I swear I didn’t even know Castelar had a kid and I didn’t know she’d disappeared and I swear—I swear—I don’t know where she is or anything you gotta believe me.”

  I looked at him sourly. “That’s real convincing and everything, what with all the swearing and what-not—”

  “It’s the truth.” His voice broke on the last word. “You gotta believe me—” His eyes bulged with the effort, the strain of willing me to believe.

  Goddamn! Had I overplayed it, underplayed it, botched the parlay? Had I failed to scare the man as deeply as he acted, to psych him out so thoroughly that he’d think I would actually kill him in cold blood? Or had I fucked up more royally, had I gotten it all, everything, completely, hopelessly, criminally bass-ackward?

  “You gotta—” Kirby implored, straining forward, trembling violently, so violently as to appear to be in the throes of a seizure.

  In my own way, in my own mind, I was just as desperate, just as panicky. If Kirby was culpable, and was an Academy Award contender, then what had my juvenile grandstanding cost? Now that he knew what I suspected, what would become of Kate? But if his fear was genuine—what then? Had I been taken in by Jennings and played for a sucker; had I been too quick to think the man wouldn’t come forward only to lie?

  Sweet Jesus, what was I doing here—what was I doing, period—what would I do next?

  “You gotta—” Kirby repeated, and this time his voice quit on him before the second word was complete. His head dropped and his shoulders shook and suddenly the air in the room turned oaty, mealy, and Kirby looked up at me in his anguish, tears dampening his red and blotchy countenance; then he closed his eyes tightly and turned his face against the wooden headboard, which shook in time with the heaving of his shoulders.

  I looked down at the sheet still gripped tightly between his hands and watched the spot of moisture over his lap rapidly grow in circumference.

  “Christ …” I said dully through thick, numb lips as the iron in my fists suddenly grew too heavy to support. Nobody was that good an actor, I told myself. I felt ill, physically ill.

  What did I do next? God in heaven, what did I do next?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  I went home. It seemed like the only thing to do.

  I parked halfway up the block from my place, locked up, and trudged down the uncleared sidewalk past quiet, darkened houses. A few cars slid up and down the Radia
l, which my building faces, but otherwise the night was still in both senses of the word. Even the snow had quit, except for the occasional renegade flake parachuting to earth. A peaceful winter’s night out here in the heartland. I felt none of that peace, however; just a dull, weary, wearying ache.

  I paused in the cone of light that descended from the floodlamp on the north side of the building. The lamp illuminated the adjacent six-car lot, ostensibly for security. The lot currently held a seventh car, straddling the walk that I knew was hidden beneath the snow. The car was Kennerly’s. He stepped out of it.

  Half a dozen clever greetings jumped to mind, but I voiced none of them. Too much trouble. I stood at the corner of the building and waited as Kennerly, using his car and the one next to it as handrails, eased toward me.

  “Well?” he wondered, a trifle breathlessly, when he reached me.

  “You don’t see her on my arm, do you?” I moved past him, toward the open stairs at the front of the building. He followed.

  “What happened? Did something go wrong?”

  “Not something. Someone. Me.” Our footsteps echoed dully on the icy stairs.

  “I don’t understand …”

  I unlocked the front door and shouldered it open. “It’s all very simple,” I said, switching on a light and tearing off my coat. “I blew it. I fucked up. I went in and made my big fat grandstand play, only I was in the wrong stadium, or playing the wrong game, or up against a better opponent—I don’t know.”

  I wadded the parka and slammed it into the armchair. Kennerly closed the door with a sigh, removed his own coat, and draped it over mine.

  He joined me in the kitchenette, where I had pulled the jug of cheap bourbon from the short cupboards over the stove. I hoisted the bottle by its glass handle. “Drink?”

  Kennerly for some reason looked at the square dark face of his gold watch. “Is it too early, for a drink, or too late? Ah, what the hell.”

  I took two tumblers from the draining rack next to the sink and dragged a tray of cubes from the freezer. “I should warn you, this is not the kind of stuff you’re used to. It’s aged forty-five seconds. The distillery doesn’t dare put its name on the label. And it goes down fighting. But you get six bottles this size for about a buck-fifty, so …” I twisted the plastic tray, dropped ice into the glasses, and poured the liquor. The novelists always say splashed instead of poured, but this was definitely not a splashed; more of a dumped, in fact.

  I handed Kennerly a glass, swirled the cubes in mine, and raised it. “Here’s to heroics.”

  Kennerly tested his and made a face. “Are you going to fill me in, or are we just going to stand around and get drunk?”

  “We can sit, if you like.” I returned to the living room and threw myself on the couch, resting my feet against the edge of the coffee table. “And I don’t plan to get drunk. For one thing, I’ve got to get back to work in about”—I checked the time; it was just past three-thirty—“three hours, I suppose. For another, it wouldn’t solve anything. And, most significant, swallow more than two or three of the house specials here, and it’s terminal hangover.” I took another slug, snared a cube with it, sucked on the ice, and watched Kennerly, propped against the wall where the kitchen met the living room, watching me.

  I spit the cube back into the glass. “Okay. I went and did what I said I was going to.” I had thought it might be a good idea to have someone know what kind of fool stunt I planned to pull, in case I didn’t bring it off, and had decided that Kennerly deserved to have his sleep disturbed. After all, who’d gotten me into this? So when I stopped to look up Kirby’s address after my audience with Walt Jennings, I called Kennerly and filled him in. He wasn’t happy with my little scheme. He wanted to do things the right way, by the book—cops, judges, warrants, like that. I didn’t want to wait. I had it figured out, had all the answers, had the master plan. The book was written for lesser mortals, not the likes of me, and what good would a search warrant do if Kirby had Kate stashed away someplace that no one knew about? It would only let him know that we were on to him, and give him time to make other arrangements. No, no cops. Just me: the solitary warrior, unfettered by such encumbrances as the Constitution, police procedure, and rules of evidence; the lightning raider, in and out like quicksilver—with the girl, if it worked.

  “It didn’t work. Either I put the formula together wrong, or the theater lost a true artist when Kirby decided on the vending-machine dodge.”

  “Hell,” Kennerly said bitterly, risking another mouthful of the cheap booze. He made less of a face this time. “Where does that leave us?”

  “Give you a hint: We’re up it without a paddle. If the fault is with my powers of ratiocination, if Kirby is as innocent as he acted, then we’re no worse off than before, though certainly no better. If I was right, and Kirby simply outbluffed me … then we’re well and truly screwed.” I quickly sketched the picture for Kennerly, beginning with my meeting with Jennings and ending with Kirby’s earnest, and damp, protestations of innocence.

  “Perhaps it was Jennings who outbluffed you,” Kennerly said quietly into his glass when I had finished.

  “I don’t think so. If the cops had grabbed him and he insisted he had been framed, I wouldn’t believe it for a second. Neither would you; neither would the cops; neither would anybody. What else would he say? But the fact that he risked his neck to come above ground and tell me he was innocent makes me inclined to believe it. Because why should he bother? What I think hardly matters to him. I can’t see what he could hope to gain.”

  “Time to escape, while everyone’s barking down the wrong trail, that is, Kirby’s trail.”

  “It wasn’t Jennings who pointed me toward Kirby; that was my own bright idea. Jennings wasn’t pushing any particular suspect. He was as much in the dark as I was. Am.”

  “I still say you should have called the police immediately. Which reminds me, I forgot to tell you earlier that Banner called my office, since she had been unable to locate you, and left word that the sheriff had followed up on ‘the other place.’ Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.” I had almost forgotten about the abandoned house Castelar owned. It was just as well; if I had remembered, I’d’ve been clinging to the hope that Kate was hiding there. This way it was not devastating, just disappointing; and not even all that disappointing, in the context of that night’s overwhelming disappointments.

  “Well, Banner’s not going to be too happy when she finds out you and Jennings had a face-to-face and you didn’t report it. I know, Jennings was armed, and he arranged a fifteen-minute lead for himself. You told me. But he might still have been in the area, even after fifteen minutes, and if you’d called OPD right away—”

  “They’d’ve found nothing. Jennings is no genius, but he’s shrewd. He’s kept out of their hands this long, and I doubt he’d’ve come out into the open without a well-planned escape route lined up. Besides, I was—I am—more interested in Kate than Jennings.”

  “Well, I can’t damn you for that, I guess.” He took another sip. “You know, this stuff isn’t too bad once it gets good and cold.” I said nothing. “Well, if not Jennings and not Kirby, then who?”

  “Damned if I know.” I rubbed my eyes with my free hand. They were tired, dry and itchy, as they had been for days, and now the skin around them and the lids themselves were sore, chafed by my constant rubbing. I forced my hand away and scratched at my scraggly beard, watching particles of dry skin float down to my sweater. I brushed them away. “What do you think of Charles Castelar?”

  “I don’t, very often. Why?”

  “I don’t like him much. I don’t trust him. I now know that his sudden cooperativeness yesterday was only at Kirby’s insistence.” I had told Kennerly about Castelar’s abrupt about-face at the bank the day before. “What we saw last night, then, was the real Castelar again. And he’s in an awful hurry to sweep me under the rug—and you too, for that matter. I got the definite impress
ion he was pretty teed off because Emily ignored his advice to sack us.”

  “I did, too, but I still say you’ve got him wrong. I don’t like him any better than you do, but I think I know him, or understand him, better. And he doesn’t want to have anything to do with that bank. Trust me.”

  “You know what they say: When a lawyer says trust me, he means fuck you. Anyway, it might not be that he wants the bank. Maybe he needs money. I know that he recently sold off a fair amount of his shares in the bank because he needed cash. It seemed strange to me that he couldn’t’ve arranged it through his brother in some other fashion; Vince tells me his uncle’s a bit of a high roller, and that Jack mightn’t’ve been in too large a hurry to loan him money if Charlie had just overindulged himself. Also, we know that Charlie was out late last night, while Christina was being killed.”

  “Lots of people were out last night while Christina was being killed,” Kennerly countered. “We don’t even know that he knew Christina, much less slept with her and killed her. What about Kate; why would he have kidnaped his own niece? And if it was money he wanted, why kill Jack after he cashed out his stock? If he’d’ve done it before, he’d now have more of a voice in the bank, and he probably could convince Emily to advance him the cash he wanted.”

  “Maybe he had some sort of beef with his brother,” I persisted. “Maybe Kate found out what he’d done and he’s keeping her under wraps until he figures out his next move. I don’t know. All I know is that ol’ Uncle Charlie’s behaved peculiarly right down the line, and I don’t think it’d hurt anything for me to check him out a little.”

  “You may be right,” Kennerly said dubiously. “However—you don’t need to bother.”