Life's Work

by Jonathan Valin

  Glassy-eyed, disheveled, and smelling of sleep, she made her way to the couch, sat down heavily on the cushions, and curled her legs up beneath her. She had put on one of my shirts over her panties, and she jerked the tail down over her bare knees as if she were straightening the hem of a skirt.

  “What time is it?” she said groggily, kneading her cheeks with her fists.

  “About five,” I said.

  “Five?” she repeated dully.

  I stared at her for a moment. Un-made up, her electrified hair standing at all angles, her right cheek wrinkled like a sheet from where she’d slept on it, she looked, even to me, like a visiting relative—a niece or a cousin.

  “Are you all right?” I said.

  She shook her head. “No. My head hurts.”

  “It’s the sedative they gave you.”

  She looked confused for a moment. Then it started to come back to her and her face went white. “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “I almost forgot.”

  “Best to forget,” I said.

  I went over to the couch and sat down beside her.

  “Oh, Harry,” she said, giving me a forlorn look. “What am I going to do?”

  “You can stay here with me,” I said, pulling her against me, “until you feel better.”

  “But how will I live?” she said helplessly. “I gotta work. I got things to do.”

  “I think you better lay off work for a few days. If you don’t want to stay with me, you could take a vacation. Visit your folks.”

  “In Corbin?” she said, making a tragic face. “I don’t want to go there. I want to go home.” She began to sob. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I just wanted to help, for chrissake.”

  I thought she was going to break down again, as she had the night before. But this time the tears stopped almost as quickly as they’d begun. Laurel rubbed her eyes fiercely and straightened up on the couch, shaking my hand from her shoulder, as if she could do with a little less comforting. “Cut it out,” she said to herself, like a coach in a locker room. “You’re not a child anymore. You can take care of yourself.”

  She looked around my shabby living room, seeing it for the first time. “Where are we?” she asked.

  “At my apartment.”

  Laurel sighed. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say. It looks just like my place—cruddy.”

  She stood up with a jerk, as if she were coming to attention. “I’ve got to take a shower and a shampoo. I must look like hell. Then I’ve got some decisions to make.”

  “The bathroom’s right through there,” I said, pointing down the hall.

  She glanced at me. “Is there any word about...”

  “Not yet,” I said.

  “I hope they get him soon,” she said fiercely. “I hope they get him and I hope they do to him what he did to her.”

  “They’ll get him,” I said. “There aren’t a whole lot of places where a man like that can hide.”

  ******

  I didn’t have any luck locating Candy Kane. Not that I thought that I would. It was an obvious stage name—just one more thing about the arrest report that made it suspect. I tried a few Newport strip joints after I phoned the Caesar, but nobody at the clubs was willing to talk over the phone. It occurred to me that Laurel would probably recognize the name, since she had danced in Newport. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask her. Each time she helped me out she unwittingly got herself more deeply involved in the case. Each time she put herself in more jeopardy. It wasn’t fair to use her like that—not without telling her about the risks she was facing. She didn’t know about Clayton. And while she knew that Kaplan was a drug dealer, she didn’t know that he might have been indicted by the grand jury.

  I decided to wait until I’d talked to Petrie before I asked Laurel for any more favors or did any more detecting. I still wasn’t sure I wanted to stay on the case, especially since there was no question that it was drug related and very dangerous. In fact, if I’d known the way things were going to fall out the day before, I would have quit on the spot. But the previous night had changed things. You can’t witness a crime like that and not be changed by it.

  At six sharp, Petrie knocked on my door. By then Laurel had showered and dressed and was lying on the bed, leafing through an old copy of Popular Photography. I’d told her that I was expecting company, and as soon as Petrie walked in she closed the bedroom door.

  Petrie walked over to the rolltop desk and sat down in the captain’s chair. He looked thoroughly worn out—eyes ringed with fatigue, his granite jaw peppered with a day’s growth of beard. He smelled through his suit of sweat, bone-weariness, and alcohol.

  “When’s the last time you slept?” I said.

  “Not since you got me up this morning.” He rolled his head back and the muscles in his neck bulged above his shirt collar. “It has not been a good day.”

  “Not for any of us,” I said.

  “I suppose you saw the afternoon paper?”

  “I saw it,” I said. “Is it true?”

  “Christ, no,” he said in an outraged voice. “I told you a couple of days ago that we had nothing on Parks. Hell, I didn’t have any proof that he had a drug problem until this guy Clayton told me about it early this morning. That’s precisely why we need your help. We want you to prove that we had nothing to do with helping that murderous moron out of whatever problems he was in.”

  “And how do you expect me to do that?”

  “By finding out what really happened to Bill, writing it up in a report, and submitting it to me. After that, I’ll take the appropriate legal action.”

  “You may have to sue Clayton. In case you didn’t know it, he was the one who told the newspapers that you helped fix Parks’s ticket.”

  “You’re kidding!” Petrie said in a shocked voice and his face turned an angry red. “Why that son-of-a-bitch!”

  “He’s a nasty son-of-a-bitch, Hugh,” I said. “Last night he warned me, in no uncertain terms, to stay out of the case. And from what I understand he does not make idle threats.”

  “I don’t make idle threats either,” Petrie said icily. “If you can prove what you just said, I will sue his fucking ass off. DEA or no DEA.”

  “What else did Clayton tell you this morning?” I asked.

  “He gave me the details of the case against Parks and he asked about the progress of your investigation.”

  “How did he know that I was on the case?” I said.

  Petrie looked perplexed. “You know, it never occurred to me to ask. I suppose someone told him. Or he observed you, He was supposedly keeping an eye on Parks, wasn’t he?”

  “Did he give you a reason for asking about me?”

  “Not really,” Petrie said. “I had the feeling that he wanted to find out how much we knew about Bill’s drug problems. I suppose he was worried that this plea-bargaining thing would find its way into the papers before the grand jury indictments came out. That’s a guess, understand. After what you just told me, I don’t know what the hell his motives are.”

  “Did Parks testify before the grand jury?”

  “I assume he did,” Petrie said.

  “Did Clayton tell you he did?” I said.

  “No. Not specifically. He wasn’t very specific about anything, actually. Except for the murder.”

  “What about the murder?”

  “I guess that didn’t make the afternoon paper, did it?” Petrie said, massaging his huge brow. “It was about the girl. C.W. O’Hara. Clayton said that she’d cooperated in the investigation. She’d helped entrap Parks. Bill apparently found out about it this week. And that’s why he killed her.”

  18

  I WAS so intrigued by what Petrie had said that I didn’t answer him when he went on to ask me whether I was willing to continue to work for the Cougars.

  “Are you sure Clayton said that C.W. played a part in turning Parks?” I said.

  Petrie nodded.

  “Did he give you a reason why she would do somet
hing like that?”

  Petrie shrugged. “Your guess would be as good as mine. Bill wasn’t the smartest man in the world, and it’s probable that the girl stood to gain by betraying him. Maybe she thought she was doing him a service—getting him off drugs.”

  It was an interesting theory, seeing that it fit so neatly with some of the things that Laurel had told me about C.W.’s attempts to reform her man. On the other hand, it was a terribly risky way to go about doing it. And I said as much to Petrie.

  “You don’t know football players, Stoner,” he answered superciliously. “Guys like Parks don’t have any idea who they are off the field unless someone tells them. They’re easy to dupe. Christ, I told you what Kaplan did to Bill. There’s no reason to think that the girl acted any differently. Or that she thought she was taking an unjustifiable risk. She was probably expert at manipulating him.”

  “I have a little trouble seeing Parks as her victim.”

  Petrie furrowed his brow. “Something pissed him off at her.”

  That much was indisputable, although it didn’t explain the way he had butchered her. It was the child and the mother he had tried to destroy. But then, according to Laurel, C.W. had used her pregnancy to manipulate Parks, too. Maybe he’d seen them as coequal, the drug arrest and the baby—two instances of a betrayal that C.W. O’Hara had visited on him. Just thinking about him like that, as capable of feeling betrayed, made him seem more complicated to me. More than the mindless caveman I’d imagined earlier in the day.

  “Well?” Petrie said. “Are you going to help us out or not?”

  I stared at his helmeted face and knew that he didn’t give a damn what I found or what I hazarded, as long as the team came out of it without a blemish. And I didn’t really care about cleansing the Cougars’ stables. It was the crime itself that interested me, the savage puzzlement of it. I thought it over, weighing my curiosity against the undeniable risks I would be taking. I’d been warned off by two very dangerous men, Clayton and Kaplan. Three, if I counted Bluerock. Only I counted Bluerock on my side. And then there was Laurel to consider. She would have to be guaranteed safety.

  “You’ll agree to use your money and influence to help me out?” I said to him.

  “Of course.”

  “And if there’s trouble?”

  “There’s always that possibility,” Petrie said with something like an appetite. “You’ll have to use your own judgment. Remember, I don’t want you to catch Bill. I don’t give a damn about Bill anymore. I just want this Clayton mess cleared up and our reputation restored. In case you forgot, we still have a season coming up, a campaign to wage.”

  “I may need some help.”

  “What did you have in mind?”

  “Bluerock,” I said. “It would be good to have him in my corner.”

  “That’s fine with me, if he’s willing.”

  “There’s got to be a payoff for him,” I said. “If he agrees to help, you’ve got to promise that you’ll give him another shot. Another year on the team, at top pay. That is, if he wants it.”

  Petrie’s face darkened angrily. “I don’t like to be blackmailed, Harry. I’ve told you that.”

  “It’s not blackmail, Hugh. It’s negotiation.”

  “Christ,” he said dismally. “Another goddamn agent.”

  ******

  Around seven thirty we reached an agreement. I didn’t even have to appear on the Trumpy show or talk to the papers. Petrie caved in like a sinkhole. Which was an indication of just how desperate he was to clean up the mess that Parks had left behind him. He promised to give Otto another year at top pay, although he didn’t promise he’d start him. I said that that was agreeable. We shook on it, and Petrie left.

  When she heard the front door shut, Laurel wandered in from the bedroom and sat down across from me on the couch.

  “Is it okay if I stay in here?” she said. “I feel kind of like hired help in the bedroom.”

  I grinned at her. “It’s okay.”

  I picked up the phone and called Otto.

  He didn’t sound his usual self when he answered the phone. He didn’t bellow or curse. But then I realized that he must have seen the day’s paper, that he knew what had happened at C.W.’s ranch house.

  I presented him with the proposition. He heard me out in silence, without any of the usual heckling or jeers, and without showing any enthusiasm either. Then I gave him the hard part. Not the risk of crossing Kaplan or Clayton—he already knew about the one, and I explained about the other, about Clayton’s reputation for corruption. It was his friend, Parks, who was the problem.

  “He’s a killer, Blue,” I said. “We can’t change that fact. And part of my job is going to involve proving his guilt.”

  Bluerock didn’t answer right away. When he did, he sounded melancholy. “You don’t know the whole story, sport,” he said. “None of us do. Whatever Bill did, he did because he was driven to it. I’d stake my life on that. What you don’t understand yet, Harry, was that Bill didn’t play football, he was the football. So show a little mercy, for chrissake, until you’ve seen the big picture.”

  I started to tell him about the picture I’d seen in C.W. O’Hara’s bedroom, but let it go.

  “Are you interested in joining my team?” I said.

  “I’m leaning that way,” he replied. “Let me sleep on it.”

  “You do understand that it could get rough, Blue,” I said.

  Otto laughed. “Football’s a contact sport.”

  “This isn’t football,” I said.

  “Sure it is, Harry,” he said. “It’s all football. Haven’t you figured that out, yet?”

  ******

  I told Bluerock I’d call him in the morning to get his reply to my proposition, then turned my attention to Laurel, who had been sitting patiently on the couch, listening to the phone conversation with a rapt and vaguely calculating air. I didn’t pull my punches with her either. I explained it all—about Clayton and his stun gun, about Kaplan and the grand jury. She already knew, firsthand, what Parks was capable of. I thought that hearing the truth might unnerve her, coming as it did so hard on the murder of her friend. While she paled visibly when I told her about smiling Phil Clayton, she heard the rest of it out with surprising cool.

  When I’d finished, she stared at me so curiously that I didn’t know what to make of her look.

  “So what is it you expect me to say?” she finally said. “You expect me to freak out again? Well, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to give you that satisfaction, Harry Stoner. I’ll tell you this, though. I think you’re fucked in the head. You, and your friend Bluerock too. You must be crazy to want to tangle with those guys.”

  “So I guess we can count you out,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that,” she said. “I don’t understand how you could do that, anyway. Heck, everybody and his brother knows I’ve been hanging around with you. Clay and Stacey and the crowd at the Waterhole. I’m screwed no matter how you look at it. I can’t go home and I can’t leave here. I guess I gotta go along for the ride.”

  “You could go to Corbin.”

  “That ain’t far enough,” she said.

  “Then maybe we could send you somewhere else. How’d you like to spend a month in Hawaii? All expenses paid, courtesy of the Cougars.”

  Her doll-like face, which had knotted up as if it were being squeezed in a vise, sprang back to its true proportions.

  “You could do that?” she said, with a touch of awe in her voice.

  I nodded.

  She wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know if I want to go that far—all alone.”

  “Then take someone with you. Take Stacey.”

  “She’s such a child,” Laurel said. But I could tell that the proposition pleased her. She spent a moment picnicking with the idea, then her face clouded over as if it had begun to rain on the sandwiches. “What’s the catch? What’s the trade-off?”

  A couple of years of whoring had given Laurel
a keen sense of commerce.

  “You answer a few more questions,” I said.

  She thought it over for a moment with her rapt, deliberative air. I thought she was going to accept the deal. But when she finally spoke, what she said was, “What else is in it for me?”

  I gawked at her, then started to laugh. “The Hawaiian vacation for two isn’t enough?”

  “Hawaii’s a long way off,” she said defensively. “I’m going to have to have some beach clothes to wear, and a little pocket change to live on. You know, I’d be giving up a lot, going away for a month. Do you know how much money I could make in a month at the Waterhole?”

  “How much?” I said.

  “A lot,” she said.

  “How much is a lot?”

  She pursed her lips, closed her eyes, and silently totted up the blackmail. “Two thousand dollars,” she said, and then corrected herself. “Two thousand two hundred fifty dollars. You owe me two hundred fifty dollars from last night—a hundred and fifty for telling you about Bill and C.W. in the first place,” she explained.

  I stared at her sweet face. The girl added a whole new meaning to the word venal.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll arrange it.”

  “Then ask away,” she said happily. “I’m all yours.”

  19

  I OPENED the desk drawer, got out my notebook and the manila envelope containing the arrest reports, and brought them over to the couch.

  “I want you to help me put together a picture of what led up to last night, what led up to the murder,” I explained to Laurel. “We know that Parks left camp on Monday. I thought at first that it was because of the situation at home. But it looks now as if he may also have been preparing to testify before the grand jury in a drug investigation.”

  “That’s news to me,” Laurel said flatly.

  It had been news to Bluerock too. But then, I supposed, it was not a situation that Parks or C.W. would have wanted to advertise—each for their own reasons.