Willows and Parker Box Set

by Laurence Gough

  Willows found himself staring. He was looking at a pair of Shirley Temple clones created by a mad scientist in a late-night movie. The women stared back at him with knowing, half-bright eyes. If there was going to be a conversation, he’d have to start it. He took the morgue shot of Naomi Lister out of his shirt pocket, held it up so it was illuminated by the light from the liquor store window. “Do either of you know this girl?” he said.

  The women edged a little closer, curious. Willows saw they weren’t sisters after all, they were just dressed to look that way. Both of them were about the same age, though, early twenties. The woman on his right was plump, almost chubby. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick. Her companion had a small scar high up on her neck, just beneath the lobe of her ear. The roots of her hair were black. She rested a hand lightly on Willows’ arm.

  “What do you want her for? What’d she do?”

  “Nothing,” said Willows.

  “Yeah, right. That explains why you’re so interested in her.”

  “What’s the girl’s name?” said the plump woman. She was looking at Parker.

  “Naomi Lister.”

  The woman studied the passing traffic, and then said, “I’ve seen her around. Not lately, though. Two or three weeks ago, maybe a month. She in some kind of trouble, her parents looking for her?”

  Parker glanced at Willows. Willows nodded.

  “She’s in the morgue,” said Parker. “She’s dead.”

  The woman with black roots fumbled in her purse, pulled out a crumpled pack of Virginia Slims and lit up, blew a stream of smoke at the passing cars.

  “You from out of town?” said Willows.

  “What makes you ask?”

  “The cigarettes.”

  “Aren’t you clever. Keep it up, one of these days you might make detective.”

  “Seattle?”

  “Portland.”

  “What happened to Naomi?” said the plump woman with the chewed fingernails. She was deliberating changing the subject, but Willows didn’t mind. The only reason he was hassling the import from Portland was to give her a motive to cooperate.

  “Somebody killed her,” he said. He took another morgue shot out of his pocket, this one of the boy found stabbed to death in the back of the Econoline. The plump woman glanced at the picture and nodded. “His picture was in the papers, right?”

  “You know him?”

  “Not really.” She paused, and then said, “What’re you gonna do about my sister, kick her ass across the border, or what?”

  “That depends,” said Willows.

  The import with the blonde hair and the black roots flicked her cigarette into the gutter. “Talk to him, Shirley, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “I’ve seen them around,” the plump woman said to Parker.

  “What, both of them? Naomi and the boy?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. They were living together. Rumour was, they were going to get married.” She smiled crookedly. “Cute, huh. I mean, what were they, about ten years old?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Willows. “I thought the kid was gay.”

  “Why, just because he did a little business? Don’t be so naive, handsome. He was just looking to earn a dollar, that’s all.”

  “Beats pumping gas,” said the import.

  “What was his name?” said Parker.

  The plump woman shook her head. “No idea.”

  “You know anybody who knew him?” Parker persisted.

  “I don’t mix with the younger set. It’s too depressing. Ask some of the kids his own age, why don’t you.”

  “Good idea,” said Willows. He handed the woman his card. The card had his name printed on it, and beneath his name his office and home phone numbers. The home number had been inked out, and the number of his new apartment written beneath it. “If you hear anything, give me a call, okay?”

  “Sure thing,” said the woman from Portland, already turning away.

  “How come you don’t have a card?” said the plump woman to Parker.

  “He’s the card,” said Parker. “I’m the serious one.”

  The woman smiled, not getting it, but trying hard. Her front teeth were stained with lipstick. Parker thought about vampires. “Have a nice evening,” she said. The woman made as if to blow her a kiss, but lost her nerve. She hurried after her friend, her heels clicking on the pavement.

  “I think she kind of likes you,” said Willows.

  “Do you blame her?” said Parker. They stared at each other for a moment. Willows blinked first.

  At two o’clock in the morning they decided to take a break, and walked over to a nearby twenty-four hour restaurant to take a load off their aching feet and grab a bite to eat. Willows bought himself a large glass of two per cent milk and filled a second glass with water and chipped ice. Parker ordered a cheeseburger and a pot of tea. She scooped some cutlery out of the plastic self-serve bins, and they found a table near the window.

  The restaurant was air-conditioned. Willows could feel the sweat cooling on his back. Two o’clock in the morning, and it was still in the mid-seventies. He sipped at his milk, drank a little iced water. He wiped his forehead with a paper napkin, tossed the napkin on the table.

  Parker sipped at her tea. “Nobody seems to know these kids,” she said to Willows. “It’s as if they never existed, and it doesn’t make sense. Whoever heard of a juvenile hooker who didn’t mingle.”

  Willows nodded vaguely, not wanting to talk about it. His lungs were clogged with exhaust fumes. He felt tired and dirty. He needed a shower and a couple of inches of Cutty Sark, sleep. He drank a little more milk. “How was the croquet?” he said. “You have a good time?”

  “I didn’t go. Did you really think I would?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  Parker’s number was called over the P.A. System. She pushed away from the table and went to collect her food. Willows passed the time watching a kid in a sleeveless V-neck sweater and a polka-dot bow-tie amuse his date by walking a quarter across his knuckles. He yawned. What he needed was to lie down somewhere, stretch out and fall asleep, sleep without dreaming. Not at the apartment, though. Nothing depressed him more than unlocking his fireproof metal door and walking into all that silence, even the sound of his breathing absorbed by the empty space and wall-to-wall carpet.

  Parker came back to the table carrying a tray loaded down with a huge cheeseburger and a side of French fries, a second pot of tea and a spare plate. Indicating the empty plate, she said, “Have some fries.”

  “Thanks anyway, I think I’ll stick with the milk.”

  “When was the last time you had a decent meal?” said Parker. “Put some carbohydrates in your stomach, it’ll do you good.”

  “You sound exactly like my grandmother.”

  Parker smiled. She cut the cheeseburger in half and used the blade of her knife to shovel the burger and a handful of fries on to the empty plate, pushed the plate across the table. “Just don’t tell me I look like her.”

  Willows helped himself to a French fry. It was hot and crisp. Tasty. He took another one, nibbled.

  Parker gave the ketchup bottle a thump. “You’re losing weight,” she said. “You’ve got to start taking care of yourself.”

  “Okay,” said Willows. He bit into the burger and chewed with mock enthusiasm.

  They ate in silence, both of them concentrating on the food. When Parker’s plate was clean, she leant back in her seat and poured herself another cup of tea and said, “Did Eddy Orwell mention the tournament to you?”

  Willows chewed and swallowed. He had only brought the subject of the tournament up because he was making an effort to avoid discussing the investigation. He had a feeling that if they started talking about the case, pretty soon one of them would admit out loud that they weren’t getting anywhere, that they were wasting their time. “No,” he said in answer to Parker’s question, “Eddy didn’t say a thing. In fact, I haven’t even seen him for about a
week.”

  “Well, he talked to me about it,” said Parker. “When he wasn’t philosophizing about the plumbing in the Sears Tower, all he could talk about was his girlfriend, Judith Lundstrom. Have you ever met her?”

  “Once.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “Very blonde. Not the kind of girl you’d ask for directions to the library.”

  “At the tournament, Eddy asked her to marry him. She said she’d think about it. She told him he was the second man to propose to her within the week.”

  Willows ate another French fry. The last thing he wanted to talk about was marriage.

  “Last week, Judith gave a guy a parking ticket on Hornby Street, out in front of the Supreme Court. Friday, the guy shows up for another one. The meter’s expired, he’s waiting in the shrubbery for her to walk by and hang some paper on his windscreen. Told her he thought she was kind of cute, that he wanted to buy her lunch.”

  “Eddy was pretty upset, was he?”

  “What bothered Eddy was that the guy took the parking ticket and turned it into an elephant.”

  Willows had been chasing a fragment of fried onion around the perimeter of his plate. He put down his fork and said, “You just lost me, Claire.”

  “What I’m saying is that the guy took the parking ticket and folded it up so it looked like a baby elephant. And the one before that, the first ticket she gave him, he turned into a paper dragon.”

  “Origami,” said Willows.

  “That’s right, origami.” Parker was leaning across the table, staring at him, waiting expectantly.

  “I don’t get it,” said Willows. “What’s the point?”

  “The night I found the body in the van,” said Parker, “a car drove by, a black car, with wide rear lights and a little spoiler, a deep, throaty exhaust. After I talked to Eddy, I asked myself if it could have been a Trans Am. The answer was yes.”

  Willows had it now. Parker thought there might be a connection between the paper animals and all those unexplained folds and creases in the bloody hundred-dollar bill they’d found in the park. He frowned. It was a long shot, but what else did they have? Nothing.

  “Was this Eddy’s idea, or yours?”

  “Eddy’s,” said Parker. “He’s interested in the case because he was there when I found the body. And I think he’s on to something.”

  “Did Judith tell Eddy what the guy looked like?”

  “No, and Eddy didn’t ask.”

  “Why don’t we give her a call, and see if we can get a description.”

  Parker looked at her watch. It was twenty minutes to three.

  “Have you got her number?” said Willows.

  “Of course not.”

  “Call Eddy.”

  “No, I won’t. You do it.”

  Willows stood up and fished in his pockets for a quarter. There was a pay phone over by the door. While he listened to the steady, insistent ringing of Orwell’s telephone, he watched the kid with the bow-tie. The boy dropped his coin and had to bend under the table to retrieve it. Willows noted that he took the opportunity to peek up his date’s skirt. Feeling old and lonely, Willows looked out through the plate-glass window at the bright and empty streets.

  If he didn’t want to go back to his apartment tonight, where was he planning to stay? At Claire’s? He’d tried that once before. Afterwards, it hadn’t seemed like a very good idea.

  Chapter 30

  Walter the fence did his business out of a decrepit second-hand store on Lower Lonsdale. The building was two storeys of crumbling grey stucco, with a false front dating from the Twenties. Junior had said Walter lived upstairs, that the top floor had been converted into a three-bedroom apartment.

  Mannie checked the plate-glass windows and saw that they were wired. He loitered at the front door. It was fitted with a Grantham deadbolt. Carbon steel, six tumblers.

  He went around to the back.

  At the rear of the building there was another door, a featureless slab of wood with another Grantham and no doorknob. Mannie gave it a push, gentle but firm. The door was solid as a brick wall.

  There was only one window. It was rectangular, about a foot high and twice that wide. Mannie walked down the alley until he found a garbage can. He carried the can back to the building, turned it upside down and climbed on top of it. Now his shoulders were level with the sill. He rubbed a circle of oily grime from the glass and examined the window carefully. It, too, was wired with the silvery alarm tape.

  Not to worry.

  Mannie’s primary weapon was an eight-inch skinning knife with bone grips carved from the ribs of an anaconda. For insurance he carried a pair of throwing knives, one strapped to each ankle. He lifted his right leg and unsheathed the knife, steadied himself by gripping the window-sill with his free hand, and went to work.

  The putty was old and crumbly, easily pried away from the frame. In less than half an hour all that was holding the window in place were the points, half a dozen sharp little triangles of glazier’s metal that had originally been used to support the glass while it was being puttied. Mannie used the broad, double-edged tip of the knife to remove the points. When he was finished he tapped the sheet of glass and it fell towards him, into his waiting hands.

  There was about a foot of slack in the unshielded electrical lead that ran from the silvered tape to the circuit-box screwed to the inside wall. Mannie needed every available inch of it to turn the sheet of glass sideways, so that it jutted out at a right angle from the wall of the building. Balancing it on the sill, he pressed it up against the vertical framework and held it in place with two of the glazier’s points. Chunks of loose putty fell from the sill and drummed briefly on the upturned garbage can. Mannie held his breath, waiting.

  Silence.

  He pushed off against the garbage can, wriggled through the window on his belly, managed to turn over on his back and grab the frame, grunted as he hauled himself the rest of the way inside. He dropped to the floor, staggered but managed to keep his balance, crouched with his hand on the hilt of the skinning knife.

  Nothing.

  The room was in darkness except for the dim incidental light seeping in through the window. As Mannie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw that the room was small, about ten feet square, and that most of the floor space was filled with large wooden packing crates that had been ripped open and were vomiting excelsior and a jumble of shiny new outboard motors. He made his way past the crates to a door on the far side of the room. It was fitted with a Grantham lock identical to the one on the front door, but this time luck and the hinges were on Mannie’s side.

  It took him two minutes to find the crowbar that had been used to rip open the crates, five more to get the door out of his way.

  Once while he was working he heard an odd sound directly above him, a dry clicking like a long row of dominoes falling over. The sound wasn’t repeated, and after a thirty-second wait, he went back to work.

  Mannie opened the door and found himself behind a sales counter. A sawn-off baseball bat lay on a shelf beneath the open cash-register, empty except for a handful of coins. Mannie instinctively reached out, then let his hand drop. Wouldn’t be too smart, creeping around with a bunch of loose change rattling in his pocket.

  The bat might come in handy, though. He picked it up. The handle was sticky with electrician’s tape. He swung the bat through the darkness in a short, vicious arc.

  The stairs were off to his left. He climbed them inch by inch, keeping well to the side, leaning as much of his weight as possible on the bannister.

  There was another goddam door at the top of the stairs. Mannie tried the knob. The door swung open.

  So easy.

  As he shut the door behind him he became aware of a low rumbling, a growl that was almost subsonic. A shadow detached itself from the deeper shadows at the end of the corridor, moved swiftly towards him. He heard more dominoes toppling, identified the tap of claws on a wooden floor.

  “Nice
dog,” he whispered.

  The doberman bared its teeth. To Mannie it seemed as if its dark muscular gleaming body was nothing but a large engine designed specifically to propel the dog towards him and power the terrible machinery of its gaping jaws.

  He stepped back, crouching low. The creature accelerated, leapt towards him on a trajectory intended to bring its incisors in contact with his jugular.

  Mannie straightened and whacked the dog between the ears with the fat of his bat.

  The doberman’s fangs snapped together with the sound of crockery breaking. Mannie felt its fetid breath on his cheek, bore the weight of the animal as it slid down his chest.

  Straddling the brute he swung the bat twice more, then kneeled to rest the palm of his hand against the swell of the ribcage. There was no hint of movement but he struck the dog another blow anyway, for luck.

  There was one more door he had to get through. It was at the end of the corridor; a slab of grey-painted steel fitted with the inevitable Grantham and two alarm systems that Mannie could see, probably more that he couldn’t. A spyhole was set into the door at eye-level. He took a peek through it but it was like looking down a well. He stood there in the darkened hallway, staring at the dim motionless shape of the dead doberman.

  Thinking.

  “Arf! Arf!”

  No response.

  Mannie barked again, louder. He tried a growl and then scratched at the base of the door with his skinning knife, barked some more.

  The door opened, A man shaped like a blimp and covered with coarse black hair blinked down at Mannie, his pig eyes registering surprise, puzzlement. The man was naked except for a pair of Jockey shorts and the gun in his right fist.

  Mannie kicked him in the shorts and then used the bat on him. A field of blood-red exclamation marks blossomed on the ceiling. The man dropped to his knees and then fell backwards, legs tucked neatly beneath him.

  Mannie kicked the door shut and shot the bolt. There was a light in the next room. He went through an arched doorway and found himself in the kitchen.

  The light was coming from the refrigerator. Walter the fence was standing in front of the open door with a chicken leg in one hand and an unopened can of beer in the other. He was wearing a pale yellow nightshirt with vertical green stripes. His eyes dropped to the skinning knife. He held up the drumstick as if it had some magic power that would keep Mannie at bay.