Red Herrings Can't Swim (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 2)

by Doug Lamoreux

  “Early? And the ticket booth sentry is going to let me in at that hour?”

  “Olive? He's no problem. Just tell him you're there to see me.”

  “His name is Olive?”

  “Skinny kid?” Alfonso asked. “Pimples?” I nodded. “Yeah, Olive. It's nothin' hinky. The kid eats olive and cream cheese sandwiches mornin', noon, and night. We call him Olive. I think the acne is olive oil oozing out of his pours.”

  “Still,” I said with a shake of the head. “Olive?”

  “Blake. It's the circus. Nobody's name is really their name. You'll be here in the mornin'?”

  I didn't like it but it didn't seem I had a choice. I nodded. “You'll be around early to give me a hand?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Alfonso said. “I said I'd help. That is, if you'll help me with my trouble?”

  “I said I would and I will. But my case comes first. If you don't want to help me–”

  “I just risked my neck for you!”

  “I appreciate it. It got us closer to where we need to be. But I'll still need your help tomorrow to identify my drowned man.”

  “If he's even here. You don't know that.”

  “If he's here,” I agreed. “If you don't want to help me, I'll go it alone and take my usual lumps. But that will take longer and that means Homicide will catch up. They'll end up sniffing around your little circus sooner rather than later. And they'll have no interest in your problem at all.”

  “You're a one-way prick, you know that?” Alfonso blew smoke in my face. Which was no small feat from his height. “Okay, I'll help you go through the geriatric line-up in the mornin'. Then you'll listen to my problem.”

  Chapter Six

  I left the circus with a lot on my mind, headed home, to chew it all over until the sun came up and I could actually accomplish something. As was my habit, I cruised past my office to assuage my natural paranoia. It's always fine and I always keep going. That night, of course, it wasn't fine.

  I killed my lights while I was still on the street, shifted the transmission into 'Neutral' and shut the engine off, turned hard and coasted quietly into my own parking lot. I pulled up short of my office. Yes, sisters and brothers, I'm goofy. But I wasn't being goofy. The place had been vandalized. The glass door to the vestibule was shattered; as was the window to my waiting room, Lisa's office, beyond.

  Speaking of Lisa… Her car was there, in the lot. I fought the urge to panic. But I'd been with her myself a few hours before and had told her specifically to call it a night. I took a deep breath to calm myself and to realize that, if she'd followed orders, Lisa was home safe in bed. Then it dawned, if my calm demeanor depended upon Lisa following orders, I had better panic. Why was her car there? I slipped into stealth mode and sneaked up on the place, but wasted no time doing it.

  I crouched and, without opening it, slipped through the shattered front door into the tiny entryway. In the dim light from the lot I saw a brick lying in the corner. It had done the damage. My brain started ticking off the names of those who might have wanted to hurl brick bats at me. After the first dozen, including two murderers, a blackmailer, and my mother, I gave it up as a lost cause and returned to the moment. Two long steps, taken as quietly as possible, got me across the glass covered floor to the waiting room door. From there I saw the room, the floor around Lisa's desk, and the desk itself, lay in the same condition as the vestibule, covered in broken glass and dotted with the tossed bricks that had done the shattering. Plenty of mess, but no Lisa. I wanted to call out but, again, thought better of it and fought the urge.

  The door to my office was ajar. That may not sound sinister, but it was. I always left my door wide open. Lisa always came behind me and closed it. We were creatures of habit and neither did anything halfway. So why was the door to my office ajar? The office beyond was dark. Dark didn't mean empty. I reconsidered the advantages of the stealthy approach and decided, as I was unarmed, there weren't any. I have a gun. I don't carry it. After having been shot, in an event that ended my copping days, I hate guns. Mine was in the office, locked in the safe. The only weapons on or in Lisa's desk were a stapler (probably empty), a letter opener (probably covered in frosting), and a plastic fork (probably covered in cake). Since my only defense was attitude, it seemed sensible to show some. Besides, I was sick of slinking around my own place like an alley cat. I wanted to know who was throwing bricks. I really wanted to know why my door was ajar. It made me mad and I used the anger. I ground the crunching glass into the carpet in a march across the waiting room and kicked the office door open.

  By the light spilling in through my broken window, I saw someone in my office, in my chair, behind my desk. The shadowy figure made no move, offensive or defensive, at my entrance. What it did was… belch. That told me it wasn't Goldilocks and, when it spoke, I knew it wasn't Papa Bear either. “You always sneak up on your own office, Blake? Why don't you try payin' the rent like everybody else?”

  I'd have recognized that voice in a nightmare. It had only been two days since I'd last heard it in a hospital stairwell. I snapped the light on and blinked until the horrible vision came into focus. There he was, trespassing and laying in wait like a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound spider, Lieutenant Frank Wenders of Chicago Homicide.

  You've met him before but, since nobody works to remember a nightmare, let me remind you of the details. Then you can decide, like I had to every time we met, whether to breathe the same air or just kill yourself and get it over with. Wenders was five-foot-nine on his feet and doing everything in his power to create a like measurement around his middle. He was wearing the only threadbare gray suit he owned. His gut bulged like a bale of wool with a cut string. He had a disposition like a tub of acid. His thinning hair, once-red, had gone gray. He had two mean and beady black eyes that drilled holes through you like you were cheap plywood. To be fair to the guy, I did make note of one surprising difference from the norm. His partner, junior detective Dave Mason, usually attached to his hind end by puckered lips, was absent. Then I recalled his appendicitis attack and realized Mason was likely still in the hospital; mystery solved. Wenders was slurping my booze and clinking my ice.

  “Did you find everything you needed?” I asked, pointing at the glass in his fat hand.

  “Very comfortable. You buy only the best.” He took another gulp. Then he pointed at the shattered window. “Your air conditioning is up a little high, but I couldn't find the switch.”

  “What happened here?” I demanded. “Where's Lisa?”

  “You're askin' me where your secretary is?”

  “Was she here when you broke in?”

  “Like usual, Blake, you got everything ass backwards. I ask the questions, see. You're just the taxpayer. We're going to put the death threat on your answerin' machine–”

  “There's a death threat on my answering machine?”

  “It's a beaut. But it can't be anything new for you. So we're going to put that, and your secretary, and your new decoratin' scheme, on the back burner for a minute. 'Cause we got somethin' else to talk about.” He pointed accusingly at me without spilling a drop. “You left the scene of a murder.”

  “Absolutely untrue.” I grabbed my bottle from the desk and returned it to my liquor cabinet. He'd had enough. “I have no knowledge of a murder. If one occurred, I haven't the slightest idea who might have been responsible. In the middle of a relaxing boat ride, I found a corpse bobbing in the water and, being a solid citizen and friend of man, I hauled it in and brought it to dry land. You're welcome.”

  “A relaxing boat ride? In the dark of night?”

  “Pooh,” I said, waving it away. “The sea. The stars. The romance.”

  “I couldn't care less about the romantic moments you spend alone. Especially in public places. I'm Homicide, not Vice.”

  I shrugged. “You don't know what you're missing.”

  “Yeah. So let me see if I got this. You rent a boat, row out under the stars to romance yourself, and are interrupted whe
n you find a body. So you bring it aboard, without riflin' its pockets, cause we all know you got no curiosity, and hurry back to shore because that's what good citizens do.” He shook his head. “That, boy, is one large and unbelievable mound of horseshit.”

  He looked for a reaction. I didn't offer one.

  “But to continue… When you got to shore, you changed your mind about bein' a good citizen. You climbed out of the boat and took off without reportin' the body to the police. That, between you and me, Blake, is what's known as a crime.” He scratched the air putting it in quotes. “When they wad up your detective's license and start shootin' hoops, I'll visit you in the joint with details on how many tries it took 'em to hit the trash can.”

  I offered a phony chuckle to prove he wasn't funny. “How can you be so wrong so often? The owner of the boat was waiting on the pier when I got there. George Clay? You talked to him? I showed him what I found. I told him all I knew. He immediately called you. Didn't he? There would have been no point to both of us running to phones and reporting it at the same time. I might add that I was under no obligation to guard either his boat or your body.”

  “You're a cop!” He stopped himself. A mixed look of horror and disgust crossed his fat face. It passed quickly, the usual red returned, and he went on. “I mean, you were a cop, when you had brains! You knew there'd be questions.”

  “Then ask them.”

  “Boat boy, who is he?”

  “I don't know the guy.”

  “He was dead in the water?”

  “He was dead every minute I didn't know him.”

  “You're a liar!”

  “Often. But not now. He was drowned when we met.”

  “No,” Wenders said. “He wasn't. The coroner gave him a quick look on the pier. You stabbed him in the back before you chucked him in the water.”

  That was news to me. I wondered how I'd missed it? I hadn't seen any blood. It was dark. I didn't give him a good look. He might have bled internally or bled out by the time I got there. Still I'd missed it and shouldn't have. I tried not to show my surprise.

  Wenders was pushing on. “Why'd you run?”

  “I didn't. I walked.”

  “Answer the question. Where did you walk to? And why? What did boat boy tell you or give you before he croaked?”

  “Not a thing. He wasn't alive to tell me or give me anything.” I feigned a look of shock and added, “Surely you're not suggesting he communicated with me after he died? That's absurd!”

  Wenders knew about my… condition. Without knowing about, that is. In a trapped moment of anger, I once blurted the whole thing out to him. He hadn't swallowed a bite. He'd likely put it down as more of my usual jackassery. In which case, he probably hadn't gotten the dig I'd made. If he did he showed no sign. He ignored the comment and charged blindly ahead with his 'by rote' questioning.

  “Where did you go when you left the harbor?”

  “Not germane.” I leaned in on him. “Sorry, Frank, for the big word. It means there's no connection between where I went and what you're investigating, so it's none of your business. That, Lieutenant, is all the help I can give you with your inquiry.”

  Though it seemed redundant, Wenders again called me a liar… colorfully. He offered to arrest me on several charges, from a misdemeanor 'Mishandling of a Corpse' to a selection of raps under the column 'Felony Murder'. “All I got is your worthless word you found the guy dead. And your empty claim you didn't make him that way yourself. Maybe you were choking somethin' besides your chicken in that boat?” He shook his fat head yet again. “I can just see your poor weepin' mom at your execution.”

  It was bad enough he'd accused me of murder and masturbation. Now Wenders was getting nasty. Images danced in my head of the Stateville doctor all set to push the plunger on me while my mother sat waiting, front row center, with a tub of buttery popcorn in her lap. It was almost too much.

  “All right,” I said. “I might have an idea. But I've got nothing to grab. I've got to find the handle.”

  “Give it to me,” the lieutenant demanded. “Let me find it.”

  “You couldn't find a pregnant elephant in a phone booth. I need a few days to see if it's anything,” I told him, “without your bad breath on my neck.”

  “You're in no position to bargain,” he growled. “I could book you as a material witness. I could stick you in a cell.”

  “What would be the point? If I'm not going to tell you, I'm not going to tell you anywhere!”

  Between us, sisters and brothers, I knew then I had him. Wenders knew I knew something. He also knew I wasn't ready to give it to him. I may or may not have mentioned, in the past, the outsized homicide detective was not averse to letting me solve a case for him; especially if he could get the credit. That being the case, I knew I had him.

  “You got two days, Blake.” He gulped the last of my stolen whiskey. He crushed the ice in his teeth. “Forty-eight hours. Then you unload everything you got on boat boy. And you better have somethin' or this murder is yours with all the parting gifts that come with it.”

  “Fine. Now, if you don't mind, Frank, get lost.” I looked the office over. “I need to clean this mess up before morning. If Lisa sees it, she'll have a–”

  “Your goofy secretary? She's already seen it.”

  “What?”

  “She was here when it happened. Whatever it was that happened.”

  “She was supposed to be home in bed!”

  Wenders shrugged his indifference. “Trouble is, Blake, your secretary is just like you. She can't mind her own business. So, instead of bein' home in bed like a decent citizen, she was here pryin' into other people's lives. One of them didn't like it enough to hit her in the head with a brick.”

  “She was hit? In the head? And you sit there like a tub of crap, the whole time knowing… Is she all right? How bad was she hurt? Where the hell is she?”

  “Egh,” Wenders said. It was a noise not a word. “She's aw-right. She's been to the hospital.”

  “Which hospital?” I demanded, headed for the door.

  “She ain't there no more,” Wenders shouted, stopping me. I turned back to find him ogling me with one raised brow. “Cripes, Blake, what kind of heartless ogre do you think I am?”

  “We'll save that.”

  “One of my men took her to the hospital. He waited; then took her home. She's there now unless the daffy broad made him stop for pizza, Chinese, and ice cream on the way. She was eatin' pretzels when I got here, Blake. Just woke up from bein' unconscious and there she was stuffin' her face with pretzels. I've never seen your secretary when she wasn't eatin'.”

  “I'm not laughing.”

  “Oh, dear me, the wise guy's not laughin'. Must not be funny then. 'Cause he only laughs at shit that's funny like the cops and murder.” Wenders grunted like a barnyard animal and struggled to his feet. “I told you, Lisa's aw-right. Also like you, Blake, she's got a concrete head. While we're on it, what's your broken building got to do with boat boy?”

  “Sorry, your alliteration confuses me.”

  “My what? What confuses you?”

  “Never mind,” I said with a sigh. I spread my hands indicating the office. “I don't have the first clue about this mess. Whether it's cause and effect or coincidence or neither, it's news to me. And, if it is related to the drowned man, I have forty-eight hours to find out, remember?”

  Wenders twisted his lips, begrudgingly nodded, and lumbered past me out of my office. The glass crunched beneath his size twelves all the way to the vestibule and out.

  Chapter Seven

  I listened to my messages and Wenders was right. There was a death threat. And it was a beaut. But I didn't know the speaker from the man in the moon. And, with real problems to think about, I reset the tape for new messages and put it out of mind.

  I picked up broken glass until sunrise. Then I threw cold water on my face, scraped my face and, finally, gave up on my face in the closet-sized bathroom in the corner
of Lisa's reception area. I wanted to check on Lisa; to see how badly she was injured and make sure Wenders was right when he guessed she would be okay. I usually keep a change of clothes in the office but nothing that day had been usual; I didn't have one. I didn't want to go all the way back to my apartment for one. But I didn't want to risk Mrs. Solomon's ire by showing up looking like a hobo either.

  Have I mentioned Lisa's mother doesn't like me?

  Anyway. Before I could head their way, or do anything else, I had to call the window repair people and get someone to babysit my vulnerable office until they arrived. The question was, who did I know with a life so empty that playing watchdog for me would seem like an adventure? Luckily, the question answered itself. I called Willie Banks.

  If you joined me on my last case, you already know Willie. (I've probably already apologized for bringing him into your life.) If this is the first time you're hearing his name, I apologize now for what you're about to experience. Willie Banks is a slug of a human being, a small criminal, a sometimes informant (though everything he says must be taken with a salt lick), a sometimes gopher, and an unending irritant. His mother is a neighbor and, to her credit, a bitter enemy of my mother. Anyone who agrees my mother is off her rocker can't be all bad. In light of that, I've done an odd investigative job or two for Mrs. Banks and, on occasion, take pity on her wastrel son by giving him grunt work for peanuts on the shiny side of the law. There's no question of reforming him; it won't happen. I just feel bad for his old lady.

  The last time out, Willie took a bullet in the left shoulder saving my life. The jerk. I'm never going to live that down. Still I needed a warm body to watch my unprotected office and it seemed a job even a crippled Willie could handle. Yes, it was like asking a mouse to keep an eye on your cheese. But, if necessary, I knew how to kill a mouse. Besides, don't think for a moment I trusted him. I didn't trust him any further than I could throw the pipsqueak. But I doubted his criminal friends would tag along. If they did, I doubted they'd cause me a problem. If they tried, I doubted they knew how to crack a safe. Willie, by himself, knew nothing at all.