Another clink fell into place in Sam’s mind. "Thank you. You’ve been very helpful, but tell me something else."
"Anything I can," the instructor said quickly.
"Do any of your students or any of the black belts use a garrote?"
"Oh no, the garrote isn’t something we teach, karate doesn't have anything to do with it. I don’t know anyone who’s ever mentioned having one."
"Okay, thanks."
"Will any of this help nail the guy?” the young man asked.
"If he’s a Vietnam veteran, it will. It surely will."
Sam put down the phone thoughtfully. He knew his hunch was paying off. It sounded right. It made sense.
As much sense as any clue did on this type of case. At least they could check it out.
He dialed the precinct and waited patiently while being put through to Garbo Kranz, official head of the investigation on the case. "I’ve got something," Sam said.
"I hope to hell you do. This place is crazy. We’re chasing our asses." Kranz sounded beyond frustrated. He sounded like a man gritting his teeth.
"Start checking out the returned Vietnam veterans in Houston.”
There was a long silence. "You gotta be kidding. You’re talking thousands of names. That’s many man hours, Sam.”
"Listen Garbo, the Cong used garrotes. The killer might have taken one. It’s not a weapon you can purchase very easily at a pawn shop, you know. Start with the branches of service that had special training of some kind--Green Berets, Navy Seals, the Special Reconnaissance. Look up local servicemen with mental records or guys given Section Eights. It’s the only lead you have, Garbo."
"Jesus, the paperwork involved--”
“Do you want to stop him?” Sam snapped.
"What kind of question is that, Sam?" Garbo was offended and put that into his question.
"If you want him, you’ll start checking the records. Today.”
"Yeah, I know you’re right and it is the only lead, but this whole damn city’s overflowing with veterans." The younger cop was tired just thinking about all the paperwork involved.
"Then you best get started. Unless you want murder number four in your lap and the mayor down your throat.” Sam was getting impatient with Garbo.
“God…”
"Ask for His help too. You may need it. Keep me posted, and if you need an extra man for legwork I’m free.”
Sam hung up and sat looking at the telephone. Garbo knew it was a long shot. A garrote could be made with piano or guitar wire and two wooden handles. A kid could make one, an idiot could make one. It did not have to come from Nam. It was only a long shot. But that is what they were usually reduced to following, because that is all they had.
To the mental list of a muscular, young, strong, careful killer, Sam added Vietnam. It was not enough, but it was better than nothing.
Chapter 17
JACK DESHANE sat in a gold brocade chair across from Eileen. He was dressed in dark blue slacks and a sweater, but Eileen only wore a thin lacy lilac gown that came to her ankles. Jack squirmed a little in the chair and fought the impulse to move to the sofa near her. He sloshed the Scotch around in his glass and watched the ice cubes swirl. He was almost sober. Hung over and beginning another bender, but so far he was not mindlessly drunk.
"I’m going to stop drinking," he announced, and realized he was speaking louder than he had meant to. He licked his lips and looked away from Eileen.
"I thought you would, Jack. Just as soon as you..." She let the sentence trail off to keep from reminding him of Willie. But it did not matter. He had never stopped thinking of Willie.
"I mean it, though. I’m stopping. Yesterday I almost had a wreck because I drove under the influence. What a joke that is, a cop who almost got busted for D.W.I. I can’t keep doing things like that."
"Come sit beside me Jack." Eileen patted the cushion beside her hopefully.
He shook his head. "Not yet. In a little while, Eileen. I just want to talk.”
She settled back comfortably and crossed her legs, her eyes staying on Jack’s face. When he put the unfinished drink down on the table beside him, she relaxed even more. "Do you like this apartment?" she asked.
Jack stared through the wall of windows into the sparkling city night beyond. “It’s too rich for me,” he said softly. "I’m used to worn carpets and big kitchens where too many owners have painted the cabinets too many times."
"This is too modern? Too high up?"
"Too rich," he repeated, but no hint of reproof was in the observation.
"You wouldn’t like to stay here with me for a while, shut out all that down there?" She gestured with one hand to the city sprawled below them.
"Are you making an offer?"
“I think we could call it that. " Eileen smiled.
“What about your clientele? Wouldn’t they miss you?"
"They know other women to go to. I don’t live by a schedule. I live the way it pleases me most." She saw his attention had strayed once again to the city nightlights.
"Jack? I want you to stay. I want to help.”
He turned to gaze at her. "Thanks for the offer, but..." His voice faltered.
"It’s too rich, right?”
“You know what I want, Eileen. I want you, living with you, marrying you if you’d let me, but my dreams could never include this lavish apartment or a bird’s nest view of Houston. It’s a little more down to earth. A little more common. I’ve never seen myself as a kept man.” His sad smile revealed more than his words. "What would the department say?"
"You’re incredibly old-fashioned, Jack, an incurable romantic. I used to be a romantic too," Eileen said softly.
"What changed you?"
Eileen looked down at the cushion beside her. "I won’t lie and say it was the school of hard knocks. It wasn’t. In high school I became one of Jean Barret’s top models for two years. I had a respectable portfolio. If I’d gone to the Ford Agency in New York or tried for L.A., I might have been another Cheryl Tiegs." She laughed suddenly at her immodesty and crossed her legs.
"Why didn’t you?" Jack realized that Eileen had always shied away from talking about her past. He wished he were a bit more sober.
"My roots here were too deep, I guess. I’ve asked myself why I didn’t try for it. All it would have taken was a plane ticket to either coast, my credits and pictures tucked under my arm. Maybe there’s something too stubbornly Texas about me. I couldn’t leave home. Then I realized that if I didn’t leave, modeling was a dead-end career for me. Once you turn down too many offers, they stop calling, and you can’t stagnate. You either move onward and upward or you quit."
"What about…?" Jack wished he could take back the words as soon as he said them.
"Prostitution? How did I get into it? It was a natural. I could still trade off what nature had given to me, my looks. It was convenient. Can you understand that, Jack? I wouldn’t have to leave Houston and make my way in the fierce competitive atmosphere of the modeling worlds of New York or Los Angeles. Maybe part of it was fear that I’d fail, that I wouldn’t be the best, the most desired. Staying here, doing what I do now, I knew I’d be in demand. Oh there’s competition, but not as much as you might think. Most of the really beautiful, talented women take those offers and wind up as models or handing out their expensive favors in Washington or Paris. My competition in Houston is...negligible."
Without thinking, Jack picked up the glass of Scotch and sipped it. Then he realized what he was doing and put it down again.
"When I was twenty," Eileen continued carefully, "an older man came to me. He had a lot of money and a reputation to uphold. He was kind and generous. He paid for things and he didn’t ask for much in return. I didn’t love him, but I cared for him, I really did. When he...he died, he sent someone else to take his place. And from there..." She shrugged.
"This is hard for you to tell me isn’t it?"
"Telling you makes it sound like a gutless thing to do an
d that’s not the way it was. In most ways it was what I wanted. Security, privacy, a peaceful existence...even respect."
"You’ve never been in love with anyone? You’ve never wanted a family, children?" On the word children Jack winced, and Eileen saw the scar on his cheek twitch and begin to redden.
"I haven’t thought much about a family," she replied honestly. "And you’re right, I’ve never been in love. I don’t know if now--after all this time--I would know what love is."
Jack moved from the chair to her side on the sofa. He put an arm around her shoulder and drew her near.
Love. Children. Family. Did anyone know what it all meant until it was lost? Maybe Eileen was right not to take chances on being hurt.
Jack felt a vast, limitless space opening up deep inside. He felt himself falling into it, floundering through the black, cold space, and he clasped Eileen tightly, desperately.
She stroked the hair at his temples and kissed him.
He lifted her from the sofa, and carried her into the bedroom. He set her on the soft mattress and slipped the shimmering lilac gown from her flawless shoulders. His hands slid down her arms pulling the slip straps, then he cupped her breasts. His kisses followed her pulsing throat down to the center of her breasts, then he took both hardened nipples into his mouth in turn, alternately kissing them, drawing them out against his tongue.
Eileen moaned, her head thrown back, her eyes closed. Jack nudged the gown over her hips and she lifted herself to let it slide free. She lay back on the lavender satin comforter, her long auburn hair spread around her small porcelain face.
She lay still, her breath shallow as he undressed. He stared down at her loveliness, the shadow at the hollow of her throat, the rising mounds of her breasts, the clean sculptured line of her body that dipped and rolled over her abdomen, the dark tangle of hair between her thighs.
He gently lowered himself to the bed and pressed her legs apart. He moved against her, felt her thighs giving, opening for him, felt her hands circling to his hips, gripping him closer, deeper. She cried out as he lunged and he knew only a driving wildness that was drowning out all his grief. Nothing existed beyond her warmth, her acceptance, her flesh arching against his flesh in tempestuous rhythm. He took her hips in his hands, braced himself against the bed, drew her up to him. Her legs entwined around his back, and together they erased memory and sorrow, release over-riding everything else.
Finally they lay spent. Jack opened his eyes and licked her delicate ear. He heard the tiny whispers of her breathing rushing past, telling him without words that it was all right now, he was not alone in the world.
He looked down at her. The hair around her face was damp, and she gazed back with misty green eyes. He rested his head on her shoulder and felt her fingers stroking his face.
"I can’t stay here. God, I wish I could," Jack said sadly.
"You’ll come back. You’ll stay tonight and you’ll come back."
"One day you’ll go with me. You’ll want to stay with me."
Eileen smiled at the thought. "And develop a fondness for big kitchens with painted cabinets?"
"Maybe." Jack sounded hopeful.
"Maybe you’re right. I never argue with old-fashioned men." Eileen squeezed Jack tightly. They rolled toward each other and kissed.
"You can have a dishwasher. That’s as modern as I’ll go,” he declared, smiling at her.
"I’ll feel deprived."
"You’ll get used to it, and I’ll make up for it in other ways."
She laughed and tickled him in the ribs. "That’s a tempting offer, kind sir. I’ll think about it." Eileen kissed him softly on the lips. "I surely will give it some thought."
Chapter 18
SIDNEY RUBENS reached for the unlit stub of a cheap cigar lying in the ashtray. If the cigar was cheap, the ashtray was cheaper. It was a golden tin he had swiped from McDonald’s. It was so small it hardly held all the ashes from one cigar. Which was all right with Rubens because when the tray overflowed it gave him something to do: he had to cross the room to dump the tray. That was all the exercise the overweight Rubens usually got.
Blue smoke unfurled from the cigar. Rubens rolled the smoke around the inside of his mouth and contemplated reaching for the bottle of bourbon in the bottom drawer of his desk.
"Vulgar habits," he remarked aloud, eying the cigar and the desk drawer.
He knew people talked behind his back. His cigars were vulgar, his taste questionable, his drinking sometimes made his social position shaky, but bless God, he was a good psychiatrist when he wanted to be and the V.A. hospital needed him desperately. They needed all the shrinks they could get since Vietnam.
Rubens opened a manila folder that lay in front of him on the scarred desk. Nick Ringer, the tab read.
Saklow, resident medical doctor, would not prescribe any more tranquilizers for Ringer unless he was willing to see a shrink. Sid squinted, adjusted his gold-framed glasses, and read the note from Saklow.
"Nervous disorder unrelated to physical problem. Insomnia. Faulty memory. Tacoma diagnosed patient as sociopathic; released to brother’s care after seven months rest and chemotherapy."
The cigar smoke hung over the desk. Rubens adjusted his glasses and glanced over the medical report.
Healthy specimen. One hundred ninety-five pounds, six foot one, no previous illnesses or operations.
Lucky kid, Rubens thought. At least he didn’t come back in a body bag.
Rubens sighed and closed the folder. Ringer was due in five minutes. Plenty of time for a drink, but since this was Ringer’s first visit, he would abstain.
At exactly eleven o’clock the door opened, and Miss Boyd, his young black secretary, ushered Nick Ringer into the office. The girl fluttered her long feathery lashes, helpfully pulled out the vinyl chair for Nick, waved her polished nails at Sid, and left without a word.
"She’s not bad," Nick commented, lounging back in the chair with an air of confidence and control.
Sidney Rubens nodded around the stub of his smoldering cigar and squirted one eye against the stinging smoke. It was his habit to speak as little as possible. He sized up the man opposite him. No nervousness there, he concluded. Nick was calm and unruffled. Sleeplessness? Where were the fatigued eyes, the tired slumping shoulders?
Nick Ringer looked young to him, but then lately anyone under forty looked young. The young man projected largeness, or was it strength? A pall of stale smoke hung over Nick, but to his credit, he did not cough or make a face at the cigar’s stink. Perhaps, Rubens thought, it did not bother him. On the other hand, perhaps he was very good at camouflaging his emotions. An interesting puzzle.
"So what do I have to do to get the nerve pills?" Nick asked, sitting perfectly poised.
"Saklow doesn’t think you need them," Sid Rubens said casually.
"Saklow is an asshole."
Rubens permitted himself a smile and was surprised when the patient did not return it. A waiting game, was it? Rubens deliberately tapped ash onto his unpressed brown sports jacket and let it roll to the floor. The ashtray was full and Nick was watching. Neither man blinked an eyelash.
"Your brother. He brought you home from the V.A. in Tacoma?"
"Yes, Daley brought me home," Nick answered in a well-modulated voice. "I’m okay now if that’s what you’re asking. Just have trouble getting to sleep, no big deal. I have a shit job and life’s not roses. So what else is new?"
"You work for a local alarm insta1ler?"
"Yes."
"Your brother?"
"What about my brother?" Nick still held Ruben’s gaze.
Still no anxiety. A strange bird, Rubens thought. But aren’t they all?
"What about my brother?" Nick repeated.
"Where does he work?"
"Hey, why don’t you call him in and ask him? Then you could give him Valium and he could give them to me and everything would be dandy."
Rubens waited, sucking his cigar, squinting one brown eye. Nick
relented under the stare.
"So what do you want? He goes to the university. He fixes up old junk furniture and turns a buck on it. Satisfied?"
Rubens closed the eye and opened the other. He thought casually, I’m satisfied I’m scratching your glossy surface.
"You’ve always been together? Childhood, Nam, and here?" he asked.
"Yeah, always together. Even in Nam.”
"But Daley--is that his name?--Daley didn’t crack, did he?"
For the first time the patient’s veneer seemed to split.
"How do you feel about that." Rubens prodded.
"Cracking up? I don’t think it was a picnic. I thought I could handle the fight over there in that glory hole and I couldn’t. It was a surprise." Nick seemed fascinated by something on the floor.
"Special recon--that’s tough business," Rubens ventured, tapping more ashes onto himself.
"We were a good unit. We just got busted up there at the last and it was a bitch." Nick eyed the psychiatrist suspiciously. "You know about the Cong I killed?"
Rubens nodded and looked wise although he did not know anything about it. Not all the records from the V.A. hospital in Tacoma had arrived.
"Fucking gooks." Nick was getting angry.
"It was a lousy war." Best to offer him something, Rubens thought. He must tread carefu1ly. They were getting somewhere close to what kept the man awake nights.
"It’s a lousy life," Nick said softly. "I don’t know why I used that garrote."
"Sure, you know why." Go cautiously. Garrote? Where would he get hold of...
"They had it--the garrote. It could have been me or Daley instead of the fucking gooks."
"You killed them. That’s war."
"The medics didn’t see it that way. They go for strangling and gut shots and napalm--napalm, man!--but not..." Nick stopped.
“But not what?" Rubens said softly, sympathetically.
Nick suddenly laughed. "Beheading."
Sidney Rubens froze.
"They didn’t go for the fact I took off their fucking heads." Nick continued to laugh.
Rubens let the smoke trail out in a slow stream that rolled across the desktop.
WIREMAN Page 13
