Stone Shadow dje-3

by Rex Miller

  “What, do I look like a fuckin’ telephone directory?"

  “You look like somebody swallowed four basketballs, but how's about lookin’ it up anyway, big boy?"

  “You got it, sahib, hang on to yourself.” A short pause and he heard fat Dana grab the phone again, “Kay, you got somethin’ to write with—a pencil or like that?"

  “Yep."

  “Okay get the lead out and write this down. Oz Barnes, Area Code eight-one-eight...” And he gave him the number, asked him if he'd drunk the Rio Grande or the Trinity or whatever caca river dry yet, and they exchanged a few insults and Eichord dialed again.

  “Yeah."

  “Ozzie?"

  “Hey."

  “Jack. Eichord.” “Oh, Jack. Nice surprise. Where are you?” He told him. “What can I do for ya?"

  “Oz, this is kinda up your alley. Real far-out stuff.” He told him a little about the Grave-digger case. “I wondered if you had run across any weird stuff that might relate."

  “In what way?"

  “Oh, any of that goofy R-and-D shit the intelligence community is ranking out. Mind-control crap. LSD in the oatmeal. Any of that stuff?"

  And for the next twelve minutes the Wiz of Ozzie took him through the whole nine yards of mushrooms and mind-blowers, peyote and pain generators, lasers and leutenizers, tone-harmonic phone numbers, and Mach 4 Finjets, helium-neon beams and stun batons and poison ring and the whole barren wasteland of horrors those CBW dickheads, were cooking up. Dick Calkins in his worst fucking nightmare never envisioned the dark truth of twentieth-century reality. High-tech hell.

  And having learned nothing he thanked the Bionic One profusely and glanced at the doodle he'd made on autopilot while his mind freely associated:

  1. A gun firing

  2. A gluepond

  3. 000, the Os interlinked.

  And beside them, nothing. Not an image had been retained.

  So by late afternoon Eichord was planted down the block from the Collier house in a different unmarked vehicle when Noel pulled into her driveway in the Rolls. In the seat beside him was a cooler full of ice and about three-quarters of a quart of black Jack Daniel's. If he was going to have to sit out here like an idiot he was going to do so with a modicum of the creature comforts.

  He had the car radio and the scanner and two-way all on, and he sat there sipping from a coffeecup full of good cheer, listening to a surreal mix of dispatcher crosstalk and that ass-kissing save-the-last-dance-for-me music his favorite station played. It was kind of freaky sitting there in the gathering shadows, thinking about the case and about sexy Noel, listening to coppers respond to calls dispatched to the strains of “Stardust” and “Moonglow."

  They had the confrontation about six-thirty, when a strange car pulled up behind Noel's and Eichord saw Joseph Hackabee get out and approach the house. He seemed to be expected and he was inside immediately, with Jack close behind and breathing hard.

  “Yes?” She was startled to see him there when she opened to his insistent cop knock.

  “You okay, Miss Collier?"

  “Of course I'm okay. What in God's name?"

  “May I come in?” he said, all but jamming a shoe in the door, feeling so suave and in control, and she didn't say yes or no but she stepped back, luckily, as he blundered through the door, tripping and going on his face but for the steadying arm of Noel's new protector, who said to him in a deep voice, “That was very deft,” as he saved him from falling, which only served to make it worse.

  “Make yourself at home,” she told him icily as he barged past her. He could feel the booze warming him, pretty far along at that point.

  “Mr. Hackabee,” Jack said somewhat expansively, “what's going on?"

  The man had his arm in back of Noel proprietarily. “I don't think there's much point in offering you a drink, mmm?"

  “I think he's already had a few,” she said, frowning. “Isn't that right, Mr.—uh, I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name."

  “Eichord, MIZZ Collier,” he said to the room. It looked like a fucking, art museum. “Just checking to see how you're keeping.

  “Uh huh.” She glared at him with eyes like dagger points.

  Even whacked to the gills and falling-down drunk he could still admire her for what she was. The most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, in his life. The white dress was sufficiently décolleté that he looked up from it, back into the daggers, and she said, “I think you'd better leave. And if you bother us again,” she started talking about some kind of restraining-order deal.

  He was fogged up so badly he couldn't think. The booze and his slick moves had left him paralyzed. He'd been unprepared and unprofessional. He could not remember a time before, even at the worst of his drinking problem when he'd had no idea what to do in the execution of his job. He just stood there looking at this untouchable, inaccessible object of his unrequited admiration and then at Hackabee, rich and elegant and unruffled and suave, standing in his own potent swirl of bourbon fumes trying to defog enough to know what to do next.

  “Anything else? We're late for dinner."

  “Guess not,” he mumbled, and forced himself to walk steadily as he shame facedly made his way out of the door and down the steps, negotiating his way carefully back to the car. He got in and turned all the radios off and just sat there, shivering a little for no particular reason. In a few minutes he saw them go out and get in Hackabee's rented car and he scrunched down a little hoping he wouldn't be seen.

  But Hackabee began backing up until the cars were even and Noel had rolled down her passenger-side window and was saying something to him, a hostile look on her beautiful face. He rolled his window down.

  “What?"

  “I said we're going to the Mansion. It's on Turtle Creek. I don't advise you try to follow in your condition. You might want to radio for another surveillance car to pick us up when we leave there, but I don't suggest you do that. If I catch them watching I'll have you all surgically removed tomorrow and I promise you you won't like it."

  “Hey, Eichord,” Joe Hackabee said, laughing openly and shaking his head as if he couldn't believe this idiotic drunk. “Spooky. REAL spooky.” And they drove off on that note, devoted defense counsel and grieving brother of the accused.

  Somehow Jack made it back to the motel but he could not remember anything except a telephone conversation between the time he left the Collier house and the time he woke up, throat raw, stinking like a broken booze bottle, head pounding, shaking, disoriented, and for some reason frightened. No dog in sight. No wonder—he'd forgotten to set either food or water out. The dog was a survivor and he probably recognized a basket case when he saw one.

  The worst of it was the fear and paranoia that seized him from the second he woke up. He shrugged it off, hoping against hope that he'd hallucinated the embarrassment at Noel Collier's house and that he hadn't really (sigh) phoned Donna Scannapieco in the middle of the night, drunk as a judge, totally wiped, calling up to ask for a date. No fucking mercy.

  He went in and looked at the bleary-eyed mess staring back at him from the mirror and muttered an appropriate response to the looking glass. It summed up the tortuous, winding anfractuosity of his own neural pathway this morning. It summed up the entire Grave-digger case. It summed up the whole Dallas experience. An aphorism worthy of the world-class phrase-makers. Orwellian. Aristotelian.

  “Shit, fuck. Piss on a duck,” he said.

  Dallas

  The day began bad and progressively worsened. The waves of trouble came in the wake of a couple of bitter, threatening, and abrasive calls from one of the senior partners at Jones-Seleska, and from Ms. Collier in person, one to Michaels, one to Michaels’ superior, one threatening to bring some serious pressures from the hierarchy above, one in which a lot of words like “alcoholism,” “injunction,” “harassment” (mispronounced as usual), and “court order” were thrown back and forth like flattened Ping-Pong balls, crazed and erratic, impossible to return, the overall effect
on Eichord a jangling, disconcerting one.

  In the course of talking with Wally he finally put it all together. He was so smashed when he left Noel's house he'd forgotten to pull the Highland Park guys off her, and they were slowly rolling by eyeballing the residence late last night when Collier saw them out in front. Needless to say, there was no more surveillance.

  Jack sensed that his booze problem had grown to a greater proportion than he was able to subjectively appreciate. But that's the thing about alcoholism, it's so easy to crawl inside the bottle and hide. And even with the bottle rolling off the table and breaking, you can stay in there and peer through the jagged edges of your life, looking out through the conchoidal spider tracks in the breakage—hiding from the critical world inside your shattered amber womb of glass.

  It had been an uncomfortable moment, especially for Michaels, who clearly was an Eichord fan, when Wally had to mention the dread word “alcoholism” in his summary of the complaints from Noel's law firm. It made him vulnerable to attack that was all but indefensible, made it more difficult for him to function as an investigator, and made Wally Michaels look like a dumb so-and-so for bringing him in on the case to begin with. His way of handling it was to get out of the cop shop as soon as he could and find a nice, salty, dark tavern.

  This time of the day the bartenders seldom screwed around with you. Little ma-and-pa tavern. They're not fucking over the booze usually—not your first one this early in the day. Save that shit for the lunch bunch. You go in like Eichord did and you get a nod and a howdy and if you don't respond to the “how y'all doin'?” with anything more than a nod and a “Daniel's rocks,” pause, money coming out on the counter, well hell's bells the ice is already meltin’ before you can get that motha up to your lips and over the gums.

  The glow never disappoints. Never. Shit. THAT's what I like about the South. That Tennessee sippin’ delight ALWAYS hits. Pow. The fire never fails to light. Yes. YES GODDAMMIT YES. “Do it again.” All he could do not to smack his lips. The cozy amber womb. The dark morning bar with the salty boozer's smell thicker than the shafts of sunlight. Three solitary drinkers and a sleepy bartender who hadn't been open for an hour or two maybe tops—polishing, emptying, getting it ready for the lunch-hour crowd. Blue-collar drinkers. No conversation. You get a serious damn drinker in there this time of the day. Comin’ in for “triple vodka rocks,” black Jack, straight Scotch drinkers, guys wantin’ a double I. W. Harper with a beer back. People in there to get blitzed and feel it NOW. You got one thing this time of the day, you got bar rags.

  Midway through his second one Jack got his shit pulled together to the extent his professional nature managed to swim to the surface for a minute and he recalled a piece of paper floating to the floor, and a phone rang and nudged an overlooked clue in his mind, and because Jack Eichord was one hellacious cop drunk sober or in between, he sees the words “WHO SAYS?” and it comes back in a flood of memory that washes through the booze-befuddled brain wrinkles. He remembers asking Ukie how come he hadn't talked to his brother that day as he saw in his mind's eye the monitor screen and the twins saying nothing. Staring at each other through the thick layers of glass and HOW COME you didn't speak to each other? and WHO SAYS WE DIDN'T? coming back and then the fist hits him in the heart. IN THE HEART and the recognition and pain and fear make him wince as he thinks his first solid thought about the perpetrator. Before there were suspicions but the bourbon and the rest of it contrived to keep it all liquid. No longer.

  He knows now. Not all the whys and the wherefores. It is a horror so mysterious and so deep and so convoluted he may never be able to sort it all out. Not what the reporters call “deep background.” He'll just pray that he's right and that he can bring it all to a stop before there is more killing. And inside his head in a deathly whisper he speaks. He says, I haven't a shred of a hard clue. Not a fragment of worthwhile evidence that would hold up in any court. But I know now who and what you are. And you are MINE. And you're gonna fall. I promise. And—yes. What if.

  And he picks up the phone and sets a plan in motion. Slo mo. Slooooooooow motion. Working carefully. Circumspectly. Walking softly. Carrying a BIG mother-fucker of a stick.

  You are one of a kind. I don't know what made you this way but you are coming to a stop. This devious scheme! You have so much going for you, and why the hell you'd throw all that away for the fleeting, dangerous, hell-bound moments—the kill moments. Why? I can't imagine. Why put so much in jeopardy to hurt innocent, random human beings who'd done nothing to hurt you? Who offered you not one iota of personal gain by their deaths? WHY, you evil piece of human shit?

  The thing was exploding. Even through the juice he could feel it coming down on him. Soon. Tomorrow. Tonight. This crazy mother was going to blow like a powder keg and, Noel, darlin', you don't want to be anywhere around when it does. You're treading in shark water, beautiful, and this piece of work doesn't feed he fucking CONSUMES. And now Eichord KNOWS—and it fills his blood with ice.

  Even at this stage, far from the resolution of the case or so it appeared, the Grave-digger on the loose or in custody or perhaps BOTH ... he would leave nothing to chance.

  Experts were reached out for through the tentacles of the task force. A guy who had a strange specialty: he hid things. Camouflage. He'd written books on how to find dope stashes. He'd helped secrete entire families away from the KGB, inside hollow walls and rooms within rooms. Hidden people from the Vopos at Checkpoint Charlie. They called him the Magician, because he could walk into a room and literally disappear. He was just one of the special team Jack had on the way to Dallas.

  He would plan and scheme and lay his traps. But the truth was that Eichord had faith in only one crime-stopper. The big dark-haired flatfoot with the large shoulders and the broken nose. The one with all the scars. The one who looked “like a cop,” people told him. He looked at people a certain way. Wore his suits a little too long. That's the guy Eichord relied on when it came right down to it.

  And the guy he trusted most didn't carry a Mach 4 Finjet blowgun-and-stun-wand, He didn't use porto-pak pain-field generators. He put his pain machine in a little holster. It was a steel thing patented by a couple of dudes named Smith and Wesson. It had a cylinder that revolved when you pulled the trigger and it made a very loud noise. Six times it did that. And if the projectiles found their mark you had yourself one hell of a little hand-held, portable, bite-your-lip-get-up-and-dance mother of a pain generator.

  Because inside this soggy mesomorph was a soul. And a mind. Booze-battered, but still thinking. And the thoughts it thought were of another era and of another sensibility.

  Jack belonged to soft hats in big, round Bond boxes and All Star Bond Rallies to aid the Sixth War Loan. He belonged to “Blue Tango” and Bix, Bud and Bird and Babe and “Begin the Beguine.” The Black Commando, the Black Widow, and Bob Steele and Bob Feller and Bowery Blitzkrieg and guys named Buck and Buzz and Brick Bradford, and boxtops to Battle Creek, and bad guys who made some fucking SENSE. The kind of warped, demoniacal monstrosity who could go and waste a hundred random lives was a thing out of the fucking comic books.

  Eichord fished out more change. The plastic was beginning to hurt his ear. He gritted his teeth and dialed.

  “Jones-Seleska, one moment please.” Buzzing of killer bees.

  “Thank you,” after a pause. “May I help you please?"

  “Noel Collier, please."

  “One moment, please."

  “Mizz Collier's office, Anna Stevenson, may I help you?"

  “Noel Collier, please, this is urgent police business."

  “Right. Okay. Just one moment please.” She didn't ask who it was. A few seconds and he heard Noel's voice on the line.

  “This is Noel Collier."

  “Don't hang up yet. I know you're angry and you have every right to be. Just give me thirty seconds.” He paused, waiting for her to say, “Fuck you, eat shit and die, your job is hanging by a thread, I'm putting a contract on your life,”
or more likely the cold electronic click that signaled a dead phone line. Nothing. Not even a deep sigh.

  “I won't keep you or even to try to apologize. I know that you see me as somebody who got out of line and that's true enough. In that spirit,” he lied, “I guarantee that I will NEVER bother you again ... NEVER surveil Joe Hackabee in any manner ... never tail, monitor, or in any way, shape, or form, bother either of you—"

  She interrupted him. “Mr. Eichord, I'm afraid you have a serious problem and I'm sorry that—"

  “No, I do,” he interjected quickly before he could get pissed and blow it. “No question. I'm not only aware of it I've resolved to take care of it and something IS being done about it and I mean NOW. I only want one thing and I'll leave you be. Very simple. I'm a cop first and last—okay?"

  “So?"

  “All I ask is to keep you, to keep my bosses, to keep us all smilin’ and laughin’ and scratchin'—I stay away from both of you—all I ask is IF you ever feel you're in danger in any way, I hope you will forget about my behavior and incompetence and not let it influence you against calling us for some help. Fair enough?"

  “Fair enough,” she said, totally unconvinced, “and now I do have your assurance that—"

  “AbsoLUTELY you have that assurance. You'll never hear from me or see me—guaranteed."

  She said, “All right,” and the connection was severed. And he had accomplished what he wanted to do. Eichord wasn't too good to kiss some ass when necessary. And when it looked as good as hers did ... But it went against his grain all the same.

  He would like to have been able to tell the truth to this cold lady and watch her face while he told her. See what her reaction would be. But he'd forgo that luxury. Still, he'd just about had it with the telephones. One more call and he'd have to get away from the telephone before he barfed into the hunk of plastic. He had managed to embarrass himself so badly at every turn on this damn case.

  He wanted to go back and lose himself at the bar, but he forced his fingers to move toward the coin slot of the pay phone and he inserted money and dialed.