by S. J. Rozan
The ice in her voice thawed a little, probably in spite of herself. “What do you mean, trouble?” she asked cautiously. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine, but things are getting rough. I need someone to stay with the client.”
“A baby-sitter?”
“Bodyguard.”
Her voice almost smiled. “The client’s right there with you, huh?”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “When would I start? Right away?”
“Yes.”
She was silent. An image focused itself in my mind, Lydia in her back-room Chinatown office, cloudy light drifting in the pebbled glass window. Maybe she was looking at one of the pictures on her wall as she thought; maybe the one I’d given her for Christmas, a shadowy, somber photograph of a city street at night, the buildings dark, the people gone.
“I know you’re pissed off,” I said. “We can talk about it when you get here. I need you, Lydia.”
More silence; then, briskly, “I’ll have to organize my mother, and I’ll have to rent a car. I could leave by two. For how long?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do I get there?”
I gave her directions.
“How long will it take me?”
“About four hours, the way you drive.”
“How about the way you drive?”
“Two and a half.”
“I’ll see you at four-thirty.”
“Lydia—”
“This isn’t just a ploy to get me up there where it’s rustic and isolated and romantic?”
The unexpectedness of that question stopped me, made me laugh. “If I thought that would work I’d have tried it long ago.”
“You’ve tried everything else.”
“Nice of you to notice.”
“See you later.”
“Lydia?”
“Umm?”
“It’s been rough. It could get rougher.”
“Promises, promises,” she said in her sweetest tone, and hung up.
Eve brought the mugs to the counter by the phone, filled them.
“Do you want something to eat?”
“No, thanks. I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten since dinner last night.”
“I’ll get something later.” I drank my coffee slowly, savoring it.
“She wasn’t frightened?” Eve asked. “When you told her it was dangerous?”
“No,” I said. “She liked it.”
We leaned on opposite sides of the kitchen counter, finishing the coffee. She looked at me over her mug, said nothing, hid her thoughts.
I took my rig from where I’d dropped it on the cedar chest, slung it over my shoulder. I was loading up my pockets with what she’d taken out of them when the phone rang.
“Hello?” she said into the receiver; then, “Yes, in fact, he is. Are you all right?”
I stopped what I was doing, listened.
“All right,” she said, half smiling. “I should have known better than to ask. Hold on.” She held the receiver out to me. “It’s Tony. He’s looking for you.”
I grabbed it. “Tony? Something wrong?”
“How the hell do I know?” Tony’s voice growled out of the phone. “I’m just the messenger boy. You okay?”
“Yeah. Shouldn’t I be?”
“You sound lousy.”
“Thanks. What’s up?”
“Your buddy Sanderson called here lookin’ for you. He got kinda steamed when I said you wasn’t here drinkin’ at ten in the mornin’.”
“He has no sense of humor. Did he say what he wanted?”
“No. Place was empty anyhow, so I closed up an’ went over to your place, but you wasn’t there, either. So I figured I’d check around. Nothin’ else to do. Hope I didn’t interrupt nothin’.”
“You didn’t. Thanks, Tony. Anything else new?”
“Not a goddamn thing.”
“How’re you holding up?”
“Great,” he grunted. “Just goddamn great.”
“Tony,” I said, “You don’t know where Frank Grice lives in Cobleskill, do you?”
“How the hell would I know that?”
“Didn’t think so. Listen, I’ll see you tonight, okay?”
“Yeah, whatever. What do I tell Sanderson if he calls again?”
“Tell him I’ll call him when I have something to say.”
“You gonna tell me what that means?”
“No.”
“Ah, to hell with it, an’ you too. An’ Sanderson.”
“And the horse he rode in on. See you later.”
“Yeah,” he said, and hung up.
“What was that about?” Eve asked.
“I’m not sure.” I stuffed my cigarettes into my shirt pocket, my wallet into my jacket.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“I have some things to do. You’ll be okay for a while; I don’t expect anyone will come back so soon.”
“I won’t be here long, in any case. Harvey’s coming to pick me up in half an hour.”
I must have looked blank.
“We’re going to Albany to look at farm equipment.”
“Oh, milking machines. I remember. You’ll be with him all afternoon?”
“Yes.”
“That’s even better.” I zipped my jacket. “Meet us at Antonelli’s tonight.”
“Us?”
“Lydia and me.”
“Oh,” she said. “Yes, all right.” She looked into her coffee; then her crystal eyes met mine with an unexpected swiftness. “Bill?” she said in an unsteady voice. “Who could be doing this to me? Why?”
“I don’t know.” They were very empty words, but they were what I had. “Maybe,” I said, “maybe they’re not doing it to you. Maybe you’re just in the way. But I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“The way you did last night, when you were in the way.”
“I’m paid for it.”
“It’s not what I’m paying you for.”
“Well, now I’m going to go do what you’re paying me for.”
I went down the driveway, walking slowly, not stiff anymore but bone-tired. The arched limbs of the chestnuts took me as far as the road, and after that it was spruce and maple and oak, white birch and thin, leggy stands of wild roses, waiting. They lined both sides of 10 as far as the bend, a half mile west, where I’d left my car.
14
THERE WAS NOTHING wrong with the car, but I’d never said there was. I pulled onto the road and drove, not fast, not slowly, maybe a little beyond what the road was used to but not beyond what it could easily handle.
I’d lied to Eve. I was starving. But there were some calls I wanted to make and I didn’t want to make them from her place, or from Antonelli’s. Some things were starting to come together for me, but others weren’t, yet, and if there were going to be any surprises I didn’t want anyone to be surprised but me.
I had the cell phone with me, but the static, the fading in and out, the disruptions caused by these hills were more than I could face right now. The 7-Eleven down 30 had a pay phone, and it also had food, if you weren’t picky. I got turkey and tomato, and a pint of Newman’s Own Lemonade to go with it, though I had doubts about that stuff. I’d never seen Paul Newman drinking it.
I sat in my car and ate, Uchida’s Mozart in the disc player again. I hadn’t touched the piano in two days now and I could feel the rust in my fingers.
The sandwich was finished before Mozart was, but I waited. Then I took the roll of quarters from the well, ripped it open, flipped the first one. It was tails. I flipped it again. Heads. That was better. I pocketed the quarters and headed for the phone.
The first number I tried was the one Otis had dialed from the green house, and the second was the number of the green house itself, and they both just rang. Either Grice wasn’t home or he was too busy to answer the phone. Well, that’s what I got for flipping coins. I dialed the state troopers, asked for MacGregor.
/> “What the hell do you want?” he greeted me.
“Warmth and fellow feeling. I must have the wrong number.”
“By a mile.”
“Where do I find Frank Grice?”
“You don’t find Frank Grice. If I want Frank Grice, I find Frank Grice. Do I want him?”
“I have no idea. Did you test those guns?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“Smith, I told you, stay the hell out of my case.”
I eased a cigarette from my shirt pocket. “No, you didn’t. You told me not to withhold evidence and not to get in your way.”
His voice was impatient. “How do they do this in the big city? They write you a Dear John letter? This is a police investigation and you’re included out.”
“Actually, it’s not. What I want Grice for is something different.” So far, I added silently.
“Yeah? What?”
“Tell me about the guns.”
“The guns were a washout. Your turn.”
My turn. “Mark Sanderson asked me to find his daughter. I think Frank Grice knows where she is.” Close enough, I thought, and all true.
Silence. I had an image of MacGregor rubbing tired eyes. Then, “I hear she’s with Jimmy Antonelli.”
“You listen to the wrong little birds.”
“That so? What tree do you recommend?”
“The Creekside Tavern.”
“Some swell dive.”
“Grice owns it. Ginny’s been hanging out there lately.”
“How do you know this?”
“Jimmy’s friends could tell you.”
“They haven’t yet. Of course that crowd wouldn’t tell me it was raining if I was standing there getting soaked.”
“So where do I find him?”
“Forget it, Smith. Do yourself a favor. Go home, light a fire, have a drink. Let me play policeman.”
“Mac—”
“Or do yourself an even bigger favor. Go back to the city.”
“Brinkman hinted he’d rather I didn’t do that.”
“I’ll tell him he changed his mind.”
“Mac, what the hell’s going on?” I moved the phone to my right ear, rolled my left shoulder to ease the ache.
“Nothing’s going on, except I’ve got a rent-a-cop on the phone too dumb to know good advice when he hears it.”
“I want to find Ginny Sanderson.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“How? When? The kid’s been missing for three days.”
“Depends how you define missing.”
“She hasn’t been home. Her father doesn’t know where she is and he’s worried. He’s a shit, but he’s her father and he’s worried. How’s that?”
“You know that kid, Smith? You know her father?”
“A little,” I offered, ambiguously.
“Well, the kid takes after her mother and her father still hasn’t caught on.”
“Caught on to what?”
“Christ, where’ve you been? Lena Sanderson ran around, almost from the day they were married. Everyone knew it but Sanderson. He was the only one surprised when she left him.”
“And Ginny’s like her mother?”
“We’ve hauled her in three times since she was thirteen.”
“For what?”
“Knowing the wrong people. And this is a kid doesn’t live in the county, Smith. She’s away at school making trouble there most of the time.”
“Not now.”
“No, not now.”
“What happens when you arrest her?”
“We don’t. We learned. We call Sanderson and he comes and gets her and reams us out for holding his angel in a nasty place like this. Never mind she’s been batting her blue eyes and practically climbing into the uniforms’ laps.”
“So how come you didn’t tell me about her when I described the girl I was looking for?”
“Ginny? That’s who that girl was—Ginny Sanderson?”
“Sounds like her.”
“Smith—”
“Mac,” I interrupted, “did Brinkman tell you he found a nine-millimeter pistol in a Chevy truck that rolled into the gorge last night?”
“Yeah. Yeah, he told me. How the hell do you know?”
“He told me, too. Have you tested it yet?”
“No, I haven’t tested it yet. And when I test it, you’ll be the last to know.”
“Whose was the truck?”
A hesitation; then, in a tired voice, “Jimmy Antonelli’s.”
I drew a last drag on my cigarette, dropped it, ground it out. “I guess I knew that.”
“I guess you did. What else do you know?”
“Not a goddamn thing. Where do I find Frank Grice?”
“Christ, Smith! What the hell’s the matter with you? I see you anywhere near Frank Grice, I’ll pull you in and stuff you in a hole. Is that clear enough, or you want me to say it some other way?”
“No,” I said. “No, I get it.”
“Smith,” MacGregor said, “this Ginny Sanderson thing isn’t the case you came up here to work, is it? You said you came up Sunday night. That kid’s only been gone since Monday.”
“It’s part of it.”
“Smith, you’d better—”
I stopped him before he painted us both into a corner. “I told you, Mac, it’s not a police matter. I’ll call you later, see about that gun. ’Bye.”
I hung up, leaned against the scratched glass wall of the phone booth. I spun another quarter in the air, thought about what MacGregor had said.
I’d given him Ginny Sanderson at the Creekside Tavern for free. Underage drinking could close the Creekside down, and the threat of closing down might buy MacGregor something that might help break the Gould case. That, in turn, should have bought me something, but it hadn’t.
Cops had a lot of ways of telling you things they wanted you to know.
MacGregor wanted me to know something was going on. Maybe he was getting pressure from above on the Gould murder; maybe it was something else. But what he wanted me to know was that I couldn’t count on his help. If I got myself into trouble, even with him, I’d have to get myself out.
I stuck the quarter in the phone and called Mark Sanderson.
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, after I’d gotten past the receptionists and the secretary with the beautiful voice.
“Mr. Sanderson, has your daughter ever mentioned a man named Frank Grice?”
He stopped cold, as though he’d lost his place in the script. “No,” he finally said. “She doesn’t know him. How would she know him?”
“But you do?”
“I’ve heard of him. Some of the people I do business with have had trouble with him.”
“Bullshit,” I said. “Grice first came here because you brought him here. What happened, Sanderson, he get out of hand?”
His voice exploded out of the phone. “Goddammit, who the hell do you think you are? The sheriff tells me he found Jimmy Antonelli’s truck this morning, in the ravine. If anything happened to Ginny—”
“There was no one in the truck when it went off the road, Mr. Sanderson.”
“So where the hell are they?”
“Wherever Jimmy is, your daughter’s not with him.”
The phone hissed his words the way a pot lid hisses steam. “Damn it, Smith, you’re trying to protect that kid, and it’s obvious and stupid. I’m getting impatient.”
“I can’t help that.”
“Yes, you can. You can tell me where he is, and where my daughter is, or I promise you you’ll be one sorry bastard.”
I hung up without telling him I’d been a sorry bastard most of my life.
I had lots of quarters. I called Alice Brown to tell her the troopers would be watching over her.
“Me? You’re—oh,” she said. “Oh, I understand.”
“I thought you would. Have you been okay?”
“Yes. But the sheriff was here, and rig
ht after him one of those men you told me about. The one with the cast on his wrist.”
“Otis. They wanted to know where Jimmy was?”
“Yes. I told them both the same thing—about Jimmy cheating on me and how I threw him out. And I said if anyone found him they shouldn’t bother to tell me because I couldn’t care less.”
“Good. When was this?”
“This morning, about eleven. I called you at Antonelli’s but no one answered.”
“Did they believe you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Will you be okay there?”
“I’m all right. What should I do?”
“Keep on doing what you’re doing. As far as you’re concerned it’s a normal day, because you don’t know where Jimmy is anyway. I’ll check back with you.”
I was about to hang up when she asked a sudden question: “Will it be all right?” Her voice through the phone was shaky and brave.
For a moment I couldn’t answer. Then I said, “I want it to be. Alice, I’ll do what I can.”
“I know,” said Alice. “Thank you.”
I depressed the silver cradle, kept the receiver to my ear. I dropped in another quarter, tried the green house again, and the number Otis had dialed from it, but they both rang into emptiness.
I crossed the parking lot back into the 7-Eleven, bought another pack of Kents, a lemon, and a box of teabags. As a last-minute thought I grabbed a bottle of aspirin. Back in the car I washed three pills down with the last of the lemonade, turned the car and the music on, and headed down the road.
15
A LOUD BUZZING cut like a chainsaw through my dream. Bare winter trees, dark sky, cold. A stream, two ways to cross it: one a bridge, ugly and new; the other shadowy, undefined. People in the shadows, people I thought I knew but couldn’t see. Movement in the darkness. And then the buzzing, and I was awake, disoriented in the twilit room.
I groped for the clock, hit the button. The buzzing stopped. I lifted the clock and focused on it: four o’clock. Christ, what a stupid time to get up. No, but it was afternoon, not morning; and Lydia was coming. Right, at four-thirty. Get out of bed, Smith, take a shower, make yourself bearable.
Groggy and stiff, I stumbled to the bathroom. I’d been asleep for an hour, since I’d gotten back from the Creekside Tavern. I stood under the hot water, tried to make the steam clear my brain.
