“Is there going to be a pop quiz on this?” Willie asked.
“We’ve fallen a long way,” he said, looking pointedly at Willie. “We need to remember how we started. Black iron and red, red blood. You need to remember. Your grandfather had the Flambeaux blood, the old pure strain.”
Willie knew when he was being insulted. “And my mother was a Pankowski,” he said, “which makes me half-frog, half-Polack, and all mongrel. Not that I give a shit. I mean, it’s terrific that my great-grandfather owned half the state, but the mines gave out around the turn of the century, the Depression took the rest, my father was a drunk, and I’m in collections, if that’s okay with you.” He was feeling pissed off and rash by then. “Did you have any particular reason for sending Steven to kidnap me, or was it just a yen to discuss the French and Indian War?”
Jonathan said, “Come. We’ll be more comfortable inside, the wind is cold.” The words were polite enough, but his tone had lost all faint trace of warmth. He led Willie inside, walking slowly, leaning heavily on the cane. “You must forgive me,” he said. “It’s the damp. It aggravates the arthritis, inflames my old war wounds.” He looked back at Willie. “You were unconscionably rude to hang up on me. Granted, we have our differences, but simple respect for my position—”
“I been having a lot of trouble with my phone lately,” Willie said. “Ever since they deregulated, service has turned to shit.” Jonathan led him into a small sitting room. There was a fire burning in the hearth; the heat felt good after a long day tramping through the cold and the rain. The furnishings were antique, or maybe just old; Willie wasn’t too clear on the difference.
Steven had preceded them. Two brandy snifters, half-full of amber liquid, sat on a low table. Steven squatted by the fire, his tall, lean body folded up like a jackknife. He looked up as they entered and stared at Willie a moment too long, as if he’d suddenly forgotten who he was or what he was doing there. Then his flat blue eyes went back to the fire, and he took no more notice of them or their conversation.
Willie looked around for the most comfortable chair and sat in it. The style reminded him of Randi Wade, but that just made him feel guilty. He picked up his cognac. Willie was couth enough to know that he was supposed to sip but cold and tired and pissed-off enough so that he didn’t care. He emptied it in one long swallow, put it down on the floor, and relaxed back into the chair as the heat spread through his chest.
Jonathan, obviously in some pain, lowered himself carefully onto the edge of the couch, his hands closed round the head of his walking stick. Willie found himself staring. Jonathan noticed. “A wolf’s head,” he said. He moved his hands aside to give Willie a clear view. The firelight reflected off the rich yellow metal. The beast was snarling, snapping.
Its eyes were red. “Garnets?” Willie guessed.
Jonathan smiled the way you might smile at a particularly doltish child. “Rubies,” he said, “set in 18-karat gold.” His hands, large and heavily veined, twisted by arthritis, closed round the stick again, hiding the wolf from sight.
“Stupid,” Willie said. “There’s guys in this city would kill you as soon as look at you for a stick like that.”
Jonathan’s smile was humorless. “I will not die on account of gold, William.” He glanced at the window. The moon was well above the horizon. “A good hunter’s moon,” he said. He looked back at Willie. “Last night you all but accused me of complicity in the death of the crippled girl.” His voice was dangerously soft. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“I can’t imagine,” Willie said. He felt light-headed. The brandy had rushed right to his mouth. “Maybe the fact that you can’t remember her name had something to do with it. Or maybe it was because you always hated Joanie, right from the moment you heard about her. My pathetic little mongrel bitch, I believe that was what you called her. Isn’t it funny the way that little turns of phrase stick in the mind? I don’t know, maybe it was just me, but somehow I got this impression that you didn’t exactly wish her well. I haven’t even mentioned Steven yet.”
“Please don’t,” Jonathan said icily. “You’ve said quite enough. Look at me, William. Tell me what you see.”
“You,” said Willie. He wasn’t in the mood for asshole games, but Jonathan Harmon did things at his own pace.
“An old man,” Jonathan corrected. “Perhaps not so old in years alone, but old nonetheless. The arthritis grows worse every year, and there are days when the pain is so bad I can scarcely move. My family is all gone but for Steven, and Steven, let us be frank, is not all that I might have hoped for in a son.” He spoke in firm, crisp tones, but Steven did not even look up from the flames. “I’m tired, William. It’s true, I did not approve of your crippled girl, or even particularly of you. We live in a time of corruption and degeneracy, when the old truths of blood and iron have been forgotten. Nonetheless, however much I may have loathed your Joan Sorenson and what she represented, I had no taste of her blood. All I want is to live out my last years in peace.”
Willie stood up. “Do me a favor and spare me the old sick man act. Yeah, I know all about your arthritis and your war wounds. I also know who you are and what you’re capable of. Okay, you didn’t kill Joanie. So who did? Him?” He jerked a thumb toward Steven.
“Steven was here with me.”
“Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t,” Willie said.
“Don’t flatter yourself, Flambeaux, you’re not important enough for me to lie to you. Even if your suspicion was correct, my son is not capable of such an act. Must I remind you that Steven is crippled as well, in his own way?”
Willie gave Steven a quick glance. “I remember once when I was just a kid, my father had to come see you, and he brought me along. I used to love to ride your little cable car. Him and you went inside to talk, but it was a nice day, so you let me play outside. I found Steven in the woods, playing with some poor sick mutt that had gotten past your fence. He was holding it down with his foot, and pulling off its legs, one by one, just ripping them out with his bare hands like a normal kid might pull petals off a flower. When I walked up behind him, he had two off and was working on the third. There was blood all over his face. He couldn’t have been more than eight.”
Jonathan Harmon sighed. “My son is … disturbed. We both know that, so there is no sense in my denying it. He is also dysfunctional, as you know full well. And whatever residual strength remains is controlled by his medication. He has not had a truly violent episode in years. Have you, Steven?”
Steven Harmon looked back at them. The silence went on too long as he stared, unblinking, at Willie. “No,” he finally said.
Jonathan nodded with satisfaction, as if something had been settled. “So you see, William, you do us a great injustice. What you took for a threat was only an offer of protection. I was going to suggest that you move to one of our guest rooms for a time. I’ve made the same suggestion to Zoe and Amy.”
Willie laughed. “I’ll bet. Do I have to fuck Steven too or is that just for the girls?”
Jonathan flushed, but kept his temper. His futile efforts to marry off Steven to one of the Anders sisters was a sore spot. “I regret to say they declined my offer. I hope you will not be so unwise. Blackstone has certain … protections … but I cannot vouch for your safety beyond these walls.”
“Safety?” Willie said. “From what?”
“I do not know, but I can tell you this—in the dark of night, there are things that hunt the hunters.”
“Things that hunt the hunters,” Willie repeated. “That’s good, has a nice beat, but can you dance to it?” He’d had enough. He started for the door. “Thanks but no thanks. I’ll take my chances behind my own walls.” Steven made no move to stop him.
Jonathan Harmon leaned more heavily on his cane. “I can tell you how she was really killed,” he said quietly.
Willie stopped and stared into the old man’s eyes. Then he sat back down.
It was on the south side in a neighborhood th
at made the flats look classy, on an elbow of land between the river and that old canal that ran past the pack. Algae and raw sewage choked the canal and gave off a smell that drifted for blocks. The houses were single-story clapboard affairs, hardly more than shacks. Randi hadn’t been down here since the pack had closed its doors. Every third house had a sign on the lawn, flapping forlornly in the wind, advertising a property for sale or for rent, and at least half of those were dark. Weeds grew waist-high around the weathered rural mailboxes, and they saw at least two burned-out lots.
Years had passed, and Randi didn’t remember the number, but it was the last house on the left, she knew, next to a Sinclair station on the corner. The cabbie cruised until they found it. The gas station was boarded up; even the pumps were gone, but the house stood there much as she recalled. It had a For Rent sign on the lawn, but she saw a light moving around inside. A flashlight, maybe? It was gone before she could be sure.
The cabbie offered to wait. “No,” she said. “I don’t know how long I’ll be.” After he was gone, she stood on the barren lawn for a long time, staring at the front door, before she finally went up the walk.
She’d decided not to knock, but the door opened as she was reaching for the knob. “Can I help you, miss?”
He loomed over her, a big man, thick-bodied but muscular. His face was unfamiliar, but he was no Helander. They’d been a short, wiry family, all with the same limp, dirty blond hair. This one had hair black as wrought iron, and shaggier than the department usually liked. Five o’clock shadow gave his jaw a distinct blue-black cast. His hands were large, with short blunt fingers. Everything about him said cop.
“I was looking for the people who used to live here.”
“The family moved away when the pack closed,” he told her. “Why don’t you come inside?” He opened the door wider. Randi saw bare floors, dust, and his partner, a beer-bellied black man standing by the door to the kitchen.
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“I insist,” he replied. He showed her a gold badge pinned to the inside of his cheap gray suit.
“Does that mean I’m under arrest?”
He looked taken aback. “No. Of course not. We’d just like to ask you a few questions.” He tried to sound friendlier. “I’m Rogoff.”
“Homicide,” she said.
His eyes narrowed. “How—?”
“You’re in charge of the Sorenson investigation,” she said. She’d been given his name at the cophouse that morning. “You must not have much of a case if you’ve got nothing better to do than hang around here waiting for Roy Helander to show.”
“We were just leaving. Thought maybe he’d get nostalgic, hole up at the old house, but there’s no sign of it.” He looked at her hard and frowned. “Mind telling me your name?”
“Why?” she asked. “Is this a bust or a come-on?”
He smiled. “I haven’t decided yet.”
“I’m Randi Wade.” She showed him her license.
“Private detective,” he said, his tone carefully neutral. He handed the license back to her. “You working?”
She nodded.
“Interesting. I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me the name of your client.”
“No.”
“I could haul you into court, make you tell the judge. You can get that license lifted, you know. Obstructing an ongoing police investigation, withholding evidence.”
“Professional privilege,” she said.
Rogoff shook his head. “PIs don’t have privilege. Not in this state.”
“This one does,” Randi said. “Attorney-client relationship. I’ve got a law degree too.” She smiled at him sweetly. “Leave my client out of it. I know a few interesting things about Roy Helander I might be willing to share.”
Rogoff digested that. “I’m listening.”
Randi shook her head. “Not here. You know the automat on Courier Square?” He nodded. “Eight o’clock,” she told him. “Come alone. Bring a copy of the coroner’s report on Sorenson.”
“Most girls want candy or flowers,” he said.
“The coroner’s report,” she repeated firmly. “They still keep the old case records downtown?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Basement of the courthouse.”
“Good. You can stop by and do a little remedial reading on the way. It was eighteen years ago. Some kids had been turning up missing. One of them was Roy’s little sister. There were others—Stanski, Jones, I forget all the names. A cop named Frank Wade was in charge of the investigation. A gold badge, like you. He died.”
“You saying there’s a connection?”
“You’re the cop. You decide.” She left him standing in the doorway and walked briskly down the block.
Steven didn’t bother to see him down to the foot of the bluffs. Willie rode the little funicular railway alone, morose and lost in thought. His joints ached like nobody’s business and his nose was running. Every time he got upset his body fell to pieces, and Jonathan Harmon had certainly upset him. That was probably better than killing him, which he’d half expected when he found Steven in his car, but still.…
He was driving home along 13th Street when he saw the bar’s neon sign on his right. Without thinking, he pulled over and parked. Maybe Harmon was right and maybe Harmon had his ass screwed on backwards, but in any case Willie still had to make a living. He locked up the Caddy and went inside.
It was a slow Tuesday night, and Squeaky’s was empty. It was a workingman’s tavern. Two pool tables, a shuffleboard machine in back, booths along one wall. Willie took a bar stool. The bartender was an old guy, hard and dry as a stick of wood. He looked mean. Willie considered ordering a banana daiquiri, just to see what the guy would say, but one look at that sour, twisted old face cured the impulse, and he asked for a boilermaker instead. “Ed working tonight?” he asked when the bartender brought the drinks.
“Only works weekends,” the man said, “but he comes in most nights, plays a little pool.”
“I’ll wait,” Willie said. The shot made his eyes water. He chased it down with a gulp of beer. He saw a pay phone back by the men’s room. When the bartender gave him his change, he walked back, put in a quarter, and dialed Randi. She wasn’t home; he got her damned machine. Willie hated phone machines. They’d made life a hell of a lot more difficult for collection agents, that was for sure. He waited for the tone, left Randi an obscene message, and hung up.
The men’s room had a condom dispenser mounted over the urinals. Willie read the instructions as he took a leak. The condoms were intended for prevention of disease only, of course, even though the one dispensed by the left-hand slot was a French tickler. Maybe he ought to install one of these at home, he thought. He zipped up, flushed, washed his hands.
When he walked back out into the taproom, two new customers stood over the pool table, chalking up cues. Willie looked at the bartender, who nodded. “One of you Ed Juddiker?” Willie asked.
Ed wasn’t the biggest—his buddy was as large and pale as Moby Dick—but he was big enough, with a real stupid-mean look on his face. “Yeah?”
“We need to talk about some money you owe.” Willie offered him one of his cards.
Ed looked at the hand, but made no effort to take the card. He laughed. “Get lost,” he said. He turned back to the pool table. Moby Dick racked up the balls and Ed broke.
That was all right, if that was the way he wanted to play it. Willie sat back on the bar stool and ordered another beer. He’d get his money one way or the other. Sooner or later Ed would have to leave, and then it would be his turn.
Willie still wasn’t answering his phone. Randi hung up the pay phone and frowned. He didn’t have an answering machine either, not Willie Flambeaux, that would be too sensible. She knew she shouldn’t worry. The hounds of hell don’t punch time clocks, as he’d told her more than once. He was probably out running down some deadbeat. She’d try again when she got home. If he still didn’t answer, then she’d start
to worry.
The automat was almost empty. Her heels made hollow clicks on the old linoleum as she walked back to her booth and sat down. Her coffee had gone cold. She looked idly out the window. The digital clock on the State National Bank said 8:13. Randi decided to give him ten more minutes.
The red vinyl of the booth was old and cracking, but she felt strangely comfortable here, sipping her cold coffee and staring off at the Iron Spire across the Square. The automat had been her favorite restaurant when she was a little girl. Every year on her birthday she would demand a movie at the Castle and dinner at the automat, and every year her father would laugh and oblige. She loved to put the nickels in the coin slots and make the windows pop open, and fill her father’s cup out of the old brass coffee machine with all its knobs and levers.
Sometimes you could see disembodied hands through the glass, sticking a sandwich or a piece of pie into one of the slots, like something from an old horror movie. You never saw any people working at the automat, just hands; the hands of people who hadn’t paid their bills, her father once told her, teasing. That gave her the shivers, but somehow made her annual visits even more delicious, in a creepy kind of way. The truth, when she learned it, was much less interesting. Of course, that was true of most everything in life.
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