“I can see that.”
“But I just can’t see this situation continuing indefinitely. Sooner or later, the hammer’s going to fall, unless you and I can reach some sort of understanding.”
“I would like nothing better than to understand you.” He looked at his watch. “What do you want, Mr. Ruzak?”
“The, um, reword. I mean, the reward. I believe—um, I think I have this right—I believe the offer was two million dollars.”
He laced his fingers together and studied me over them with an inscrutable expression.
“You have proof?” he finally asked softly.
“I have enough,” I replied.
“You are satisfied it would be sufficient for a court of law?”
“Sufficient enough to get the task force extremely interested. Enough for search warrants and subpoenas. Enough to make things uncomfortable for the parties involved.”
He nodded. “And what is this proof?”
“I have tapes. He took the originals, but I made copies.” I held my breath. If I were him, I thought I’d demand to hear the tapes. If he did, the jig was up.
“Tapes of what?”
“The witness to Lydia’s abduction identifying the getaway vehicle. The patsy set up to take the fall for the goose killing.”
“I see.”
“These tapes are in a location known only to me and to one other person. Nothing will be done with them and no one will know about them unless something should happen to me or to someone else.”
“To whom?”
“You know whom.”
“The other person?”
“Exactly.”
“And what if something should happen to both of you?”
“You’re getting confused, Mr. Marks.”
“I have been confused, practically since you walked in the door, Mr. Ruzak.”
“This other person with knowledge of the tapes is not connected to the person to whom nothing must happen. Neither you nor the person who killed your wife knows who this third person is. But they have instructions from me to turn the tapes over to the authorities if something should happen to me or to the second person.”
“The second person?”
“The person who was threatened by the first person.”
“I thought the second person was the person with the tapes.”
“No, that’s the third person. I just mentioned them first.”
“Would not that make them the first person?”
“Now I’m getting confused,” I said.
“I thought you were the first person.”
“No, the first person is the person who threatened the second person.”
“If the first person is the person who threatened the second person and the third person is the person who has the instructions, who are you?”
“I guess I would be the fourth person. You’d be the fifth. It really doesn’t matter how many persons there are, Mr. Marks.”
“I’m relieved. You were saying you want to collect the reward— not the public reward, but the private one, the gentlemen’s agreement between us?”
“There you go.” Now I was relieved. “You’ve got it.”
“I think it might be best if we backed up a bit,” he said. “I’m not entirely clear on some points.”
“Oh, I know you think you’ve got me over a barrel here, but even if I didn’t have the tapes, I probably have enough. A reporter’s been snooping around, and even if Gary disposes of the Ford, I’ve got Mike Carroll and the rental house and Gary paying him a thousand bucks to take the fall for the goslings. Plus, I know he was trying to drive home the point, but it was really a boneheaded move for Gary Paul to take me to the lake. The only way to keep a lid on this whole deal is my silence. Now, there are only two ways to ensure my silence. The ham-handed and dangerous approach of killing me—or killing the second person, or maybe she was the third person, I can’t remember—or buying my silence. I figured you, being the savvy investor, would realize it’s a much safer bet to give me the cash.”
“Of course,” he said. “The deputy. Gary Paul.”
“Yeah, the deputy Gary Paul, the first person.”
“You have proof he murdered my wife?”
“It’s more like evidence, and it’s circumstantial, like I said.”
“And you won’t take this proof or evidence to the task force?”
“You’ve got my word on that.”
He studied me over those thick fingers for a long time. Then he smiled.
“Will you take a check?”
“I’d prefer cash.”
“It will take a few days to arrange.”
“That’s fine.”
“And what about, as you put it, the evil?”
“Oh, you can’t get away from it,” I said. “Nobody will ever go to trial for the murder, though you can never tell. Maybe the task force will break the case on their own. I’ve got to live with that, but at least this way there’s a chance I’ll be alive to live with that. That’s where self-interest trumps moral character, Mr. Marks. I don’t want to die and I especially don’t want somebody close to me and completely innocent to die.”
He nodded. “The spilling of innocent blood calls for justice. That is the ultimate moral issue, Mr. Ruzak. I am at peace with that.”
He rose and offered me his hand. I took it, and his grip was very hard and he looked unblinking into my eyes. A chill went down my spine, as if I had walked over somebody’s grave.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I DROVE BACK TO THE OFFICE AND CALLED ROGER NEW-some, my landlord.
“Ruzak!” he shouted. “How’s the redecorating going?”
“That’s one of the things I wanted to talk to you about,” I said. “I’m closing up shop.”
“What?”
“I’m going out of business. Things didn’t work out and I need out of the lease.”
“Oh, Teddy, that’s too bad. It’s dog-eat-dog out there, ain’t it?”
“In a week or so, I can pay you back, as well as the balance on my lease.”
“That’s damn good to hear, Ted, because if you don’t, I’m gonna take you to court and sue your fat ass for breach of contract.”
Next, I called Felicia’s number, but there was no answer. I should have gone home or, better yet, booked a flight to Bermuda, because if Marks and Gary were going to make their move, it probably would be sooner rather than later. Instead, I stayed and cleaned out my desk. I called the paper and placed an ad for a going-out-of-business sale. I figured the computer and furniture were worth at least a couple grand, even at forced-sale prices. I calculated the cost of paying out both leases, for the office and for my apartment, and wondered where I should move and how much of the two million Felicia deserved for my bulling my way into her life and nearly getting her killed. At least half. Around three o’clock, I lugged all the potted plants down the stairs and loaded them into my car, because I didn’t plan to be back until the date of the sale and because, like I’ve said, it’s all precious; life matters because there never has been and may never be proof it exists anywhere else. I drove to my apartment, where I pretty much holed up for the rest of the week, except to go out once to shop for groceries.
I had trouble sleeping at night. I figured this had something to do with my circumstances, this waiting for the other shoe to drop, because Marks was a businessman who weighed risks every day, and what was the life of some mediocre amateur detective worth against the possibility of the death chamber? Probably falling asleep or trying to fall asleep with the television on contributed to my sleeplessness, but the silence in my apartment was deafening without its sound, and when I turned it off, I could feel the nothingness represented by that silence pressing in upon me, literally squeezing my head, and my heart would pound with such force that I was afraid a couple of times it would explode. I’d crawl out of bed and stand by the window and look down at the empty street below and think if I moved to some tropical locale with a mill
ion dollars, I could live like a king, especially if I chose one of those terribly poor islands like Jamaica. Not only would I be rich but also safe, even from a terrorist attack. What terrorist in his right mind would ever think about attacking Jamaica? When I thought about Jamaica, I thought of goats, for some reason, hundreds of goats wandering dusty streets, and brightly colored stucco buildings with raggedy-assed children wandering around begging you for money. That would be my downfall: I’d give all the money away by the second week and be just as poor as everybody else there. You have to have a hard heart to make money, real money, and a harder one to hang on to it. Bill Gates gives away millions every year, but he makes that much in about ten minutes.
So I was wide-awake when my phone rang at two o’clock in the morning, six days after my meeting with Kenneth Marks. I didn’t know who would be calling, but I had a pretty good idea what they were calling about.
“Mr. Ruzak?”
“Yes?”
“I am below the building, in the parking garage.”
“What building?”
“Your building, Mr. Ruzak. I have a delivery for you.”
“I guess it isn’t FedEx.”
“No, Mr. Ruzak. It is not FedEx.”
“Let me throw some clothes on and I’ll be right down.”
I was fully dressed, didn’t understand why I had lied, and was forced by my own lie to cool my heels an extra five minutes before heading down. Lying is the worst kind of buffoonery. The parking garage, like a lot of underground setups, was poorly lighted, having the lowest-wattage fluorescents you could buy, but I saw him right away, standing by a pillar about twenty feet from the elevators: a very big man wearing a jogging outfit and tennis shoes. On the ground beside him were two large paper grocery bags.
“I’m Teddy Ruzak,” I told him unnecessarily.
“It would be best if you did not know my name,” he said. He had a wide, flat face, a crooked nose, and large cauliflower ears like a boxer’s. His huge hands were gloved and I could detect the faintest hint of wood smoke clinging to him.
“Oh, I’m all for what’s best,” I said. “My struggle is figuring out what exactly that is.”
He picked up the paper bags and held them out. I wondered if they contained exactly a million apiece. It would fit with Marks’s personality, very symmetrical, very balanced. I hesitated before taking the money. I should have been relieved. After all, ol’ Crooked Nose could have put a bullet through my head just as easily as handing over two million dollars. Maybe I hesitated because another splinter had lodged itself into my brain at the phrase “confirmed your information.”
I thanked him, took the bags, and we awkwardly disengaged, because this really wasn’t the time or place for pleasantries—what do you say to a bagman? I walked quickly to the elevator without looking back and didn’t turn until I was inside and the doors were closing. When I turned, he was nowhere in sight. Upstairs, I immediately pushed the two sacks under my bed, but there was no hope of sleep now. Lying over them, I was as restless as the princess over the pea; I was like that narrator in Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” So I climbed out of bed and paced the apartment as I waited for dawn. I had that same funny feeling I’d had right before they found Lydia’s skull on the mountaintop. I was holding vigil. I kept telling myself I was safe now and Felicia was safe. Everybody was safe; it was over. I had started out a broke, unlicensed detective and now I was a millionaire. But the truth was, a crime had been committed, and I was about to find out I was up to my wide hips in it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
FELICIA CALLED A FEW HOURS LATER. SHE WAS CRYING. I’D never heard Felicia cry, and at first I didn’t know who it was. Like a lot of people’s, her crying voice was different from her regular voice.
“Have you seen this morning’s paper, Ruzak?”
“No. Why?”
“When does it stop? When will it stop, Ruzak?”
I told her I’d call her back, then jogged down to the Walgreens and bought a newspaper. I read the front-page story as I walked back to my apartment. I read it a second time before calling her back.
“Have you had breakfast?” I asked.
An hour later, she pulled into the space next to mine at the Krispy Kreme on Kingston Pike, and her left leg seemed to take forever getting out of the car, it was so long—not the car, her leg. She was wearing white shorts, a striped long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled to her elbows and the collar turned up. She had piled her blond hair on top of her head, which I’d heard women do when they have no time to fuss with their hair. Her makeup was perfect, though, and she didn’t look like somebody who had been wailing on the phone just an hour before. I cry for ten minutes, and for days my face looks like somebody’s used it for a football.
“This better be good, Ruzak,” she said. “You better have a good explanation for this.”
“Let’s go inside,” I said. “Look, the HOT sign is lighted.”
“What’s in the shopping bags?”
“I’ll show you inside.”
I ordered two coffees and four regular doughnuts. I followed her with the tray to a table in the far corner, away from the door and the glass facade, to which I positioned my back so I could watch the conveyor belts carrying their precious cargo.
“How’s Tommy?” I asked.
“He’s fine, and how have you been, Theodore? Cut the crap and tell me what’s going on.”
“Let me pose it as a hypothetical….”
“Hypothetical? You’re going to pose another hypothetical. Well, you want to know something, Ruzak? I have a hypothetical, too. Would you like to hear my hypothetical?”
She sipped her coffee, set down the cup, tore a doughnut in two, and took a bite. One of the delightful things about doughnuts is the way a fresh one will almost dissolve on your tongue. Krispy Kreme recommends microwaving the day-olds on high for eight seconds to simulate the fresh-from-the-hot-oil taste.
“There’s this old man, see,” Felicia said. “And one fine morning he’s taking his morning constitutional and this big black truck roars past him on—”
“It wasn’t a—”
“Shut up. Roars past him on the road, killing this gaggle of itty-bitty baby birdies, and he’s so shocked and outraged, he hires this overweight, underqualified PI to—”
“Investigative consultant.”
“Shut up. Who puts the old geezer under hypnosis so he remembers the tag number of the big black truck that flattened his precious ducks—”
“Goslings.”
“Shut up. Then this nice lady turns up dead in the mountains, a lady who happened to have disappeared at the same time the baby birdies bought the farm in the same neighborhood they happen to have bought it, and after the old fart remembers the tag number he’s fished out of a lake—”
“That’s one of the things I need to—”
“Shut up! And that left four people who knew the significance of HRT seven one nine: the shrink who hypnotized him, the overweight, underqualified PI, a deputy sheriff with the Knox County sheriff’s office, and . . . who else? Oh yeah, the overweight, underqualified PI’s girl Friday! Only now there aren’t four; there’re just three, right, Ruzak? Am I counting right? Because we lost another one last night, didn’t we?”
“You know,” I said, “when you put it that way, the bodies do seem to be piling up faster than in a Greek tragedy, where everybody seems to die in the end, except the gods, but of course they’re immortal and can’t die. Felicia, I think I see where your hypothetical is leading, and—”
“You’re about to tell me this is a fantastic coincidence, aren’t you? You are actually about to say we can’t draw any conclusions from the fact that Gary Paul was burned alive while he slept in his own bed, aren’t you?”
“The only thing I can really say about that is I don’t think the fire was an accident.”
She stared at me for a second. “Really?”
“Felicia, I should have told you this a couple of weeks a
go, but I know who HRT seven one nine is.” I told her the full story, from the setup with Mike Carroll in the Marks rental home—which happened to be the same house Gary Paul had died in the night before—to Gary’s visit to my apartment, the trip to the lake, and his threat to kill her if I ratted him out. She ate her second doughnut while she listened but let her coffee go cold.
“He threatened my life and you didn’t tell me?”
“I figured I didn’t have to. Not once I, um, fired you. And I was sure if I told you, you’d go straight to the cops. See, it put me in a delicate position, Felicia. If I told the cops, he’d kill you, or if I told you, you’d go to the cops and then he’d kill you, thinking I did tell. Then he’d kill me. Or he’d kill me first, then kill you out of spite. Or vice versa. Either way, we’d be dead. I couldn’t see any way out of it, so I—”
“Oh my God,” she whispered.
“Oh my God what?”
“Ruzak, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t what?”
“Jesus Christ, Teddy, you didn’t. ” The color drained from her face and for a second I was afraid she was going to be sick.
“What? Oh. No, of course I didn’t. I’m not …I could never bring myself to do something like that, Felicia. Even for you.”
“Oh.” She seemed strangely disappointed. “So who did?”
I watched the rows of doughnuts passing beyond the plate-glass window and their brown skin glistened with wet glaze while these two old ladies in paper hats supervised their progress.
“I think I know,” I said. “And I think I know why. But I’ve got to be careful about jumping to conclusions. I jumped to a very big, very bad conclusion a week ago, and now Gary is dead. His blood is on my hands, Felicia; and I know, I know, 0he’s a cold-blooded killer.”
The Highly Effective Detective Page 21
