Z was playing both defense and offense in the last game of the season -- like he always did. On defense, it was his job to stop the Raytown hotshot. In those days, you didn't call what Z was doing being a Monster or Rover back, but that's what he was. And he'd done such a good job of stopping Mr. Wonderful that, when Raytown's quarterback could, the QB was running his plays away from Big Bob Z.
On offense, it was Z who added up the yards that night, making him the target of Raytown defenders. As a kind of compliment, they began working him over when they could get away with it, hit him high and low, hit late. Tried to twist off something when they got him at the bottom of a pile. And by the fourth quarter, they'd done a pretty good job on his left knee.
Late in the game, it was Northtown up by six, Raytown at mid-field with the ball. With two minutes left, Raytown was driving, their whiz kid taking bites out of the tired Northtown line. It had come down to a guessing game, the kid trying to run away from Z, Z trying to guess which way the kid would cut so Z could cover him.
Third and short, running desperately, Z had thrown himself into a hole just as the kid came barreling through from the other side. A noisy clash of pads and they both went down, Z feeling his knee go crunch.
And that was all she wrote for both of them in that game. The Raytown back was out cold; had to be dragged off on a stretcher. Z, with one arm over a trainer's shoulder, was hopped to the sideline, his knee dangling, useless.
Northtown had won the game, making Z a crutches hero and a former football player. As for the other kid, he recovered. Got a full ride athletic scholarship to K.U. After college, played five years with the Bears.
Z had learned two things from his experience with the Raytown back. First, not to be an asshole about your accomplishments. And second, that being an asshole doesn't handicap a football player as much as a bum knee.
"This is just like you, Z," Susan was saying in her resigned voice, Susan getting up quickly, the bed quivering like a freezing dog. "You clam up. You never talk to me." She paraded across the room to mount her vanity chair, backwards, facing him by spreading her long legs impossibly wide so she could straddle the short bench's back. Oh ... God .....!
As for Susan, she just sat there, looking angry. Kitten-with-a-whip.
"OK." All he could do was try. "Here's what I did yesterday. Had a talk with a K.C. cop who thought I might know something about the Monet theft."
"Now that's interesting. Do you know something about that?" Susan looked like a kid who'd just found out there was a Santa.
"No." ....
"That's ... it?"
"Yep."
"Nothing else?"
"The cop was black. You don't see too many of them North-of-the-River."
"African-American."
"What?"
"It's not right to call them black any more. The proper term is African-American."
"You hear that in college, did you?"
"Yes. Dr. Rogers gave a lecture on Africa -- to set up what we'll learn about the slave trade."
Z remembered how his parents hadn't liked being referred to as Polish-Americans, particularly, since both had been born in this country. They wanted to be just plain old Americans, like everyone else.
But maybe just being Americans wasn't good enough for blacks. Hell. Maybe most blacks were crazy; so mixed up they didn't know what they wanted to be called. He remembered how his parents had trouble remembering to call them anything but niggers. (Though he noticed that a black comic like Richard Pryor could say "nigger" and that seemed to be OK.) Then it was polite to call them colored. Then Negroes. Then it was black, though they weren't any more black than most white people were white. Now African-Americans, as if they were ashamed to be just plain Americans like everybody else. Maybe it took going to college to figure all this out.
Now would be a good time to tell Susan he was glad she was doing what she wanted -- going to college. Maybe Calder was right, that if Susan was happy with school she'd be happy with Z. It was just that he couldn't say he was glad, when he wasn't.
"Any other cases going?" Susan asked hopefully.
"Not really. Got hired to look into the shooting of a janitor."
"I know about that." Susan brightened; smiled her generous-mouth smile; folded her hands on top the bench back. One thing Susan didn't have was perfect teeth. Another thing he liked about her.
"Dr. Rogers said something about having a friend at Bateman who told him about the janitor. There was also something in the 'Dispatch' about it."
"What kind of lecture was that?"
"What do you mean?"
"How did a janitor's death fit in with the Aztec or ... African-Americans?"
"Not in lecture," Susan explained. "We always get a short break in the middle of lecture. It was on a break -- in the hall."
"How old is the professor?"
"Dr. Rogers? I'd say about my age." Susan frowned and bit her lip. "And that doesn't make me feel any better either. Here's a man with a Ph.D. who can't be more than a year or two older than me, and look what he's done with his life already? You don't know how far behind I feel when I'm talking to him."
Wait until you're my age, Z thought, and see how far behind you feel. He could have said that, except his never-failing instinct told him that wasn't the kind of conversation Susan had in mind.
"And that's why I've got to study tonight." Susan with her palms up, asking him to understand. "I've got to make a good grade in this class, Z. I've just got to!"
In his car driving home, his body stitching itself together, Z tried to make sense out of it all. Susan still loved him -- but maybe more for his body than his mind, not that he was too mad about that. It was only women libbers who bitched about how they wanted to be loved for their minds, not their bodies. Real women liked to be attractive to their lovers, liked to dress up for them, wear perfume. As for men, most men were like him, he thought, so much in love with women and so mystified by them that the poor, pussy whips were glad to take whatever they could get.
He wondered what this Dr. Rogers looked like. Wondered if the prof was married -- not that a little thing like wedding vows mattered anymore.
Reflecting on the evening, he was sure Susan hadn't been faking it in bed, helping to cancel his fear that he'd lost Susan somewhere along the line. At the same time, he could be losing her. Education changed a person. He'd had personal experience with that.
In all fairness -- fairness about all he had to offer any more -- he couldn't blame the loss of Paula on her education. She was always something of a bitch. What kind of woman, after all, would hook up with a no-prospects man like Bob Zapolska?
What counted now was what he should do about Susan.
For a mad moment, Z thought of talking to Calder about this -- only to realize he'd already done that, Calder saying he could go to college himself.
What? And show himself to be as stupid as Susan suspected that he was.
There had to be another option. But what?
What did women like? (Besides sex, that if he couldn't provide in quantity anymore, he could still supply in quality.) Nothing else that he knew of except, maybe, money ....
Since he now had a little money, perhaps the thing to do was to buy Susan something nice.
What he needed to please Susan in the long run, though, was big money; no way to get that short of working for Johnny Dosso.
Z also had to consider that Susan had been lying to him when she said she'd been turning off her phone so she could get to sleep after her night class. For as Susan had walked him to the door tonight, he'd seen her flick the off switch on her phone. And she wasn't going to bed. She was going to study. Meaning, he hadn't been able to get her on the phone all those times, not because she'd turned the phone off to get to sleep like she'd said, but because she'd been turning it off to study.
It was only a little lie that, looked at positively, was meant to spare his feelings.
Viewed on the dark side, though, it meant Susan
would rather study in the evening than talk to him.
As a way of holding onto Susan, maybe he should consider a money job for Johnny Dosso -- just every now and then.
* * * * *
Chapter 11
Laid up with ice packs for the first three days of the week, reading a lot to pass the time, Z found the knee to be in pretty good shape by Friday morning. (Susan was always worth it, though.)
Today, he'd wrap up the Victor case by phoning Ted Newbold. And if, as Z expected, the call came to nothing, he'd ring up Professor Calder, admit defeat, and suggest a hundred dollars as payment. In a gray area like agreeing to take the Victor case without checking into it, a lowered fee would be best for Professor Calder, and also for Z's self-respect.
But first, came the Zapolska breakfast sandwich and the paper.
Settling down with Coke, peanut butter and jelly sandwich, paper, and fire, he found nothing that held his interest until he got to the C section.
Then, what a shock!
In a million plus metropolis like Kansas City, you never expected someone you knew personally to make the paper, and certainly not in an important way. But there it was, a short account of the accidental death of Beth Ogden!
In the C section, for God's sake, was Z's first thought! If a tragedy like that had occurred South of the river in wealthy Johnson County, the lady's death would have been front page news!
Scanning the article, his mind still numbed to the fact of Ms. Ogden's death, he found himself ambushed by conflicting emotions: a selfish relief that the lady had already paid him; a flash of guilt to find he was, in part, responsible for the woman's death.
Not really.
Still, if he'd been thinking about every possibility -- no matter how remote -- he could have done something to prevent what happened.
Shock turning to sadness, he re-read the article, this time more carefully.
Summarized, the paper said Beth Ogden had locked herself out of her house on Wednesday night. Unable to get back in, not having her car keys with her, she'd died of exposure.
What had killed the lady had been a combination of what Z had done for her and what he hadn't. Barring the windows had kept her from breaking a pane to re-enter her house; leaving the old-style, spring activated door locks to be the last thing to be changed, had gotten her trapped outside. (Turning the inside doorknob unlocked a deadbolt-guarded door. The door staying unlocked until you keyed the lock-bolt back into its keeper. But shut a door with an old-time lock and the lock-tongue would "sprung back" to lock the door again.
What had happened, the paper theorized, was that the lady had gone outdoors late Wednesday night, the wind slamming the door behind her, the door's spring lock latching so she couldn't get back in. (Since the article said Beth Ogden had called a friend at 9:30 Wednesday night, Beth had to have died after that. Before midnight, the coroner thought, though a frozen corpse made it difficult to fix an accurate time of death.)
The more Z thought about Ms. Ogden freezing to death outside her home -- neighbors too far away for her to reach, no car key -- most people (but not the Ogden woman) keeping a spare key in a magnetic box, "sticking" the magnet under the car's fender, or behind a bumper, or back of a steel frame -- the worse he felt.
On top of that, he felt guilty because he'd taken the lady's money before finishing the job. Results guaranteed.
Sorting through his emotions, quieting down, Z figured the least he owed the lady was to find out as much as possible about what had happened.
Determined to learn more about the tragedy, he sat down on the protesting couch, reached for the phone, dialed, and got transferred through.
"Detective Ted Newbold, speaking."
"Z."
"What's up?" A question lacking sincerity.
"Nothing about the painting. I did talk to the K.C. detective and you're completely out of that."
"Good"! That was what sincere sounded like.
"This is about the lady who got locked out and froze to death. I installed her security. What happened?"
"That's what happened."
"What?"
"She got locked out and froze to death."
"Why did she go out?"
"Hell, I don't know. Why do people do a lot of stupid things?"
"Anything else"?
"It's not my case. Esser was assigned to that." In addition to Captain Scherer, Dennis Esser was the kind of cop you could learn to hate on short acquaintance.
"And ...?"
"And, nothing." Silence. "OK, Z. You get off on the gory details? Is that it?" Silence. "Alright, then. I had a look at Esser's report." Ted loved to be "in the know"; almost as much as he loved "sharing" his knowledge -- provided he could blame someone else for "making him" tell all. "When the woman didn't show at her job on Thursday morning and didn't call, they sent someone to see about her. Found her body outside a window. Her hands were all scratched up and bruised from beating on her front door, trying to get back in. She also had time to get a stick. Used it to reach through the iron work to break out a window. But too little heat came out to keep her alive." A pause. "Let's see," Ted said good-naturedly "What else would a sick person like you want to know?" Ted had been busting to tell someone the "juicy" details, his love of gossip a weakness that made Ted a good source. Handled right, Ted had never been able to keep his mouth shut. "She was in a flimsy nightie, ready to go to bed, when she got locked out. Answering Z's question about why she didn't have her house or car keys with her. Any more questions?"
"What about the lady's cat?"
"Cat? What cat?"
"She had a cat. Anybody find it in the house?"
"Not that I know of." Silence. "Listen. Let me give you a piece of sound advice. You keep away from this. It wasn't news to me that you'd been doing security for the woman. You want to know why? It was in the Esser report. Which, because of a rumor around the station that you were mixed up in this, was why I looked at the report in the first place." Ted's excuse to himself for snooping. "While giving the lady's house a once-over, Esser noticed the security was newly installed. Asking around at the lady's workplace, he came up with you as having done the job, the person giving him your name suggesting you might have done the woman in."
Z had a good idea who that unnamed accuser might have been: that frigid butch in Ms. Ogden's office. Ingrid Nielsen. "As you can imagine," Ted crowed, "that little piece of good news got around the station mighty fast. Reached Captain Scherer's ear in about ten seconds. He's been smiling ever since." The fact that someone had tried to rat-out Big Bob Zapolska had put Ted in high good humor, Ted not taking the charge seriously because even his captain -- shit-for-brains Scherer -- hadn't bought it. "As you'll recall," Ted burbled, now at his witty best, "Captain Scherer knows you. Which accounts for why he don't ... doesn't ... like you. Knowing you like he does from past experience, he has it figured you'll stick your nose into this. The rumor is that he ordered Esser, who don't like you much either, to make sure you don't mess with the crime scene."
"Just wanted to be sure the death was accidental."
"It was."
"No footprints that shouldn't have been there?"
"If there had been, the captain would have been delighted if they'd led to you! Footprints? You crazy? The ground's frozen so hard you couldn't leave prints with a Sherman tank!"
Z had been thinking about inside the house: dust prints on the waxed, kitchen floor; marks in the living room rug.
If clues like that hadn't been looked for, it was too late now. They'd been erased by Esser's fat cop feet.
"You're right."
"Damned right, I'm right! You stay the hell away from there!"
"Nobody will catch me there. You've got my word."
"That's at least a little relief."
"And thanks, Ted."
"Sure." Click.
You never knew when a cop like Scherer would tap his own man's phone. If so, Z could only hope the snoop didn't give much thought to Z's promise
not to get caught near the lady's house.
First putting the dead receiver back on its cradle, Z tried to rub the tension from his shoulders and neck. Failing to do any good, dug out his pocket-bottle of pills; ate a few aspirin.
Tommie Victor! Z had Ted on the phone and hadn't ask about the Tommie Victor case. Showing how upset Z really was.
The emotion of the morning exhausting him, he leaned back on the divan.
But couldn't help thinking about Beth Ogden's cat. Z used to have a cat when he was a kid. And when that cat didn't want to show himself, Pretty Kitty had hiding places where no one could find him. Cats were sneaky-clever.
Thinking about what he'd heard from Ted, the way Z saw the Ogden accident was that Beth was ready to go to bed when she'd heard a noise outside. Coming downstairs, she'd opened the door to take a peek -- and that was the part that was most troubling, trying to imagine that timid lady opening the door for any reason. ..... Ogden opening the door, Z saw the cat bolting outside. No way Beth Ogden would ever leave her house at night. No way, unless it was to chase after that damned cat. An indoors cat, she'd said; couldn't survive outside.
The wind could then have slammed the door shut behind her, the old spring lock clicking in. Lightly clothed as she'd been, she'd frozen to death in short order, not even a barn nearby where she could get out of the wind. Cover herself with straw. Dressed for bed, she wouldn't have had her house key with her. No car key on her either, so she couldn't start her car for either warmth or transportation.
That was one way it could have happened. Another, was that Ms. Ogden had left the house ... for unknown reasons.
Imagining that shaky lady unlocking her door after dark -- was difficult.
On the other hand, Z liked the "escaped" cat supposition. How the lady loved that cat!
As he saw it, if the cat got out, his obligation to the Ogden woman was over. If something ... unexplained ... had happened, and the cat was still in the house, the least he could do for the lady was keep her "Missy" from starving. An odd way to provide Results Guaranteed, but the best he could do.
Of Mice and Murderers Page 12
