Riders on the Storm

by Ed Gorman

  “The guy you had Byrnes put in the hospital. Byrnes figured out he was following you but he didn’t figure out that Niven already had some photos of you. Niven sent these to me because he was scared.”

  “Byrnes should’ve killed that bastard.” Anders.

  “You may get your wish. Niven’s in bad shape.”

  “Wait a minute,” Valerie said. She’d been standing close to Anders but now she backed away as if she’d discovered he was toxic. Which he was, of course. “You had that pig Teddy Byrnes put somebody in the hospital?”

  “Oh, for shit’s sake, Valerie, don’t get into one of your sanctimonious moods as usual. I did what I needed to. He was following me around. And now I learn he got photos of us. He would’ve blackmailed us.”

  “He wouldn’t have blackmailed either one of you. He’s a decent guy.” Me.

  “How many times have I told you that I don’t want you hanging around Teddy Byrnes? He’s a psychopath. When he looks at me I get terrified.”

  “It’s all in your head.”

  “Will you say that after he rapes and kills me some night when you’re not around? And give me that damned gun.”

  He sighed like a diva, then handed it over.

  “You too, dipshit. Bring it here.”

  She was proving my suspicion that she was a one-woman liberation movement.

  I walked over and handed it to her. She went to my car and opened the door and dropped them on the front seat.

  “What the hell’re you doing?” Anders snapped.

  “I’m riding back with him.”

  “What the hell’re you talking about?”

  “You may’ve had Byrnes kill a man.”

  “He isn’t dead. He’s just hurt.”

  “My God, listen to yourself, Lon. ‘He’s not dead. He’s just hurt.’ And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Maybe you had him kill Steve, too.” The idea that she might have been sleeping with the man who would go on to murder her husband—hiring it or doing it himself—broke her. She put both of her hands over her face and began weeping.

  I reached out to touch her arm but Anders snarled at me.

  “Don’t you ever touch that woman. She’s going to be my wife.”

  Her weeping became cackling. “Did you hear him?” she said to me, her mascara running slivers of black down her cheeks. “He thinks I’m going to marry him after all this?”

  Then came my marching orders, albeit teary ones. “C’mon. I want you to hide me someplace where this pig can’t ever find me.”

  “I don’t believe this!” Anders was walking around in circles, throwing his hands up to the sky. “He parks in front of us and damn near kills us and you’re going off with him? And he has my gun! He has my gun! This is insane! Insane!”

  He was still yelling at the innocent sky when she seated herself regally in my very unregal car, the handguns in her lap.

  “I can’t believe I had an affair with him. I’m not stupid, am I?”

  “No, you’re hardly stupid.”

  “And I’m not a whore, am I?”

  “No, I don’t think you’re a whore.”

  “Then what am I?”

  “You’re a woman who made a mistake is all.”

  “I slept with the man who may have murdered my husband. That’s one hell of a big mistake.”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess I’d have to agree with you there.”

  Three minutes later:

  “Are you going to turn him in?”

  “I can’t prove he hired Byrnes to beat up Niven.”

  “I heard him admit it. And so did you.”

  “I don’t know if it’s enough.”

  “And he also may have killed Steve.”

  “That one he didn’t admit to.”

  “I think he did it.”

  “I think so, too. But there’s something I need to check out before I can be sure.” Then, “No offense, but Steve could be a jerk. Beating up Will and all.”

  “I hate to say that with him gone and everything.”

  “But he could be a jerk.”

  “Yes; I guess I’d have to go along with that. But only sometimes. Sometimes he was the most loving man I ever knew. But then he started cheating on me—and it took its toll. It’s almost as if he’d forgotten how to woo me and love me. He must’ve been thinking of his girlfriend all the time. And it broke my heart.”

  “But even though he was a jerk sometimes he was sort of a Boy Scout at the same time. John Wayne and all that stuff.”

  “I never told him how stupid I thought the war was. But he was an Eagle Scout when he was in high school. And at the top of his ROTC class in college. So this war—he was all my country right or wrong. What Cullen did infuriated him.” Then, “Where are you going to hide me?”

  “I have some friends I was thinking about. They’d be happy to make you comfortable and keep you safe.”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  But as we rolled closer to town …

  “Do you mind if I ask where your friends live?”

  “Over on Fourteenth Street and B Avenue.”

  “On the southwest side, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Hmm” being her last word for at least two minutes….

  “I really hate imposing on people.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “And on that side of town the houses are pretty small.”

  “That’s very thoughtful of you.”

  “Why thank you. I was thinking maybe it would be easier to take a suite at the Royale.”

  “Register under a false name.”

  “I didn’t even think of that. Perfect.” Then, “Could I hire you to stand guard?”

  “I’m not sure what that means.”

  “You know, like a bodyguard.”

  “I don’t think you need a bodyguard.”

  “He could always bring in Teddy Byrnes.”

  She was quite a female. So lost in herself she could insult you without even knowing it. But I admired her for mourning her husband. There I’d been wrong about her. And so I might be wrong about her fear of Anders. He really had looked insane back there at the bottom of his driveway.

  “I know a couple of cops who’d sit in your room and keep you safe when they’re off-duty. You’d have to pay them of course.”

  “But they’re police officers. Why would I have to pay them?”

  “Off-duty, I said.”

  “Well how much would it be?”

  “Say five bucks an hour.”

  “That could turn into a lot of money.”

  “That’s what supermarkets pay them to direct traffic on weekends.”

  “When you have money people are always trying to take advantage of you.”

  “Those bastards,” I said. “Those dirty bastards.”

  I guess my humor wasn’t to her taste. She didn’t laugh.

  17

  THEY WOULDN’T LET ME TALK TO WILL, SO SINCE GORDON NIVEN was in the same hospital I visited him.

  He looked like most of the cartoons I’ve seen depicting some badly injured person in the hospital. Bandaged enough to make a passing reference to Boris Karloff as “The Mummy.”

  “Remember now,” the nurse said as she left, “he can’t talk. The doctor put him in a coma.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat next to him. I had a brief fantasy of taking a machete and dividing Byrnes into five slices.

  The room was a single and even for a single a small one. Someone had placed a black rosary on his bandaged white hand. He was so gauze-wrapped it was hard to see any breaks or bruises. He slept. He was a mummy.

  “I’m going to get that bastard for doing this to you.”

  I looked around the room. Painting of Jesus on the west wall. For once he wasn’t pretty. Niven’s travel bag sat under the elevated TV set. He mumbled something and I instantly snapped my head around. Was he waking up?

  I sat very still and listened. More mumb
ling but I had no idea if he was trying to say something or these were just noises inspired by things going on in his mind. I sat there for maybe ten minutes, then I decided to check out his travel bag.

  Socks, underwear, shaving supplies, two folded golf shirts yellow and green, two small photo albums of Niven and a woman who was presumably his wife and their kids and grandkids, a paperback edition of The High Window by Chandler (I smiled when I remembered the discussion we’d had about Chandler), and then—the surprise—the same kind of back-pocket notebooks I used. Four of them lay on top of a tape recorder not much larger than the paperback.

  I lifted the notebooks out and started reading them.

  Like most of us in the business he datelined everything. 8/11/71. And then writing that was largely in code. Since the words were meant only for him, he didn’t care if anybody else could read them. Hell, he didn’t want anybody else to read them.

  One day he had trailed Anders for nine hours. There was one sentence that made me wonder if Anders was cheating on Valerie. He’d gone into a new “Singles Only” apartment house and stayed for three hours.

  That same night he followed Anders back to his business. Anders was inside about forty-five minutes and then he appeared in the parking lot with Donovan. “Anders shoved him; Donovan swung on him.” But he couldn’t pick up what the two men were arguing about.

  Then I found a page that was a backgrounder on Anders.

  Interview at local airport: Anders flies his plane frequently. Colgan Air Services.

  Keeps a woman in Cedar Rapids condo.

  In default on child support wives one and two.

  Has resisted all attempts to buy into his operation or to buy him out.

  “I hope you find those notebooks more useful than I did. He’s never let me look through them.”

  I turned to find a woman of about sixty who was svelte and knowing but with charitable blue eyes and a hint of a smile. The gray chignon, the elegant cut of the gray dress were a perfect match for the slight air of superiority that celebrated the fact that she was still a stunner at her age.

  I set the notebooks down. “I apologize. I’m nosy by profession. I’m a private investigator, too. My name’s Sam McCain.”

  “I should have introduced myself.” She stepped smartly to me and took my hand. “I’m Gordon’s wife. Are you a friend of his?”

  “I just met him. But I’ve been hearing about him for years.”

  “Well, take some advice from me. Don’t ever try to figure him out. I’ve been married to him for thirty-three years and I never could find out what he’s all about. Our children say the same thing. You can never tell what he’s going to do next. I don’t think he even knows what he’s going to do next.” Another glance at him. The voice wan now. “There’s a good chance he won’t make it.” Then, “I drove down as soon as the hospital called me. I could barely concentrate on my driving. I didn’t want him to die before I could at least kiss him one more time.” Then, “He should’ve quit six or seven years ago. I begged him.” Then, “Do you know who did this to him?”

  “I think I do.”

  “Can you prove it?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “Is that person still in town?”

  “Yes. He’s a psychopath. But I just promised Gordon that I was going to get the man who did this to him. One way or another.”

  “You sound sure of yourself.”

  “I am.”

  “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “Do I look afraid?”

  “Well,” she said, “since you brought up the subject, you actually do.”

  I laughed. “You’re a very perceptive woman.”

  Colgan Air Services was set right on the edge of the city limits. It was standard for the kind of business you usually saw attached to larger airports. Here you could rent aircraft, take flight instruction, fuel up, use a hangar, tie down your craft, or even take a nap in a small room Billy Colgan made available.

  Billy was a short and short-fused Irisher who had enough hair on his arms to make an ape envious. I’d never seen him in long-sleeved shirts. Maybe all that hair needed to be aired out.

  You walked past a row of tied-down small craft to reach a round yellow metal building that housed the office as well as one of two hangars. Billy’s wife Mara was one of the fastest typists I’ve ever seen. She was plain until she smiled. Then she was striking. She paused in her assault on her typewriter keys to see me and smile. Like Billy and all his employees she wore a tan short-sleeved shirt with Colgan Air above the breast pocket.

  “Hi, Sam. Billy’ll be glad to see you. He wants his chance to win back that forty dollars he lost last time you and Thibodeau and Father Brogan played poker. But I guess Brogan won even more than you did.”

  “He cheated.”

  She had a cheerful, bawdy laugh. “Right, Sam. A priest who cheats at poker.”

  “He does.”

  I’d been trying to convince our revolving group of players that Father Brogan was a cheater since he’d joined us a year ago. They refused to believe it but it was true.

  “That’s the kind of talk that’ll send you to hell for sure.”

  “I’ve already booked passage.”

  She was still smiling. “A priest who cheats at poker,” she said as she raised Billy on the intercom.

  Billy came around his desk as if he was going to grab me and throw me to the ground. He was best known to the boys of Catholic school as the all-time arm-wrestling champion. This had started in third grade when he’d beaten a fifth-grader. You didn’t want to be around him when he was drunk because the fun would stop at some point while he insisted that every male in the room arm-wrestle him. Arm-wrestling is interesting for about one minute and four seconds.

  “Great t’see ya, Sam. Siddown.”

  The flying he’d picked up in high school. It had been called Parker Air then. Billy had convinced old man Parker to let him work here and in between moving planes around, scrubbing toilets, and watching Parker give flying lessons—sometimes to comely young women—he got the fever. No college for him. He got his pilot’s license and started flying cargo out of St. Paul and then when old man Parker decided to retire, Billy managed to get enough of a bank loan to make a serious down payment on the place. Old man Parker had let him pay off the rest from profits.

  After we were seated, Billy said, “Poor Will, huh?”

  “He didn’t do it.”

  Genuine surprise played on his broad face. “You might be the only one who thinks so.”

  “There’re some others.”

  “I’m getting the sense that this isn’t a social visit.”

  “Afraid it isn’t, Billy. I want to know a few things about Lon Anders.”

  “You think Anders had something to do with this?”

  “I can’t say yes and I can’t say no at this point. That’s why I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Before you start, Sam, Anders is a good customer.”

  “I just want to ask a couple of simple questions.”

  He shrugged. “As long as I don’t think I’m violating a confidence.”

  “Fair enough. How often does he fly?”

  “About average for my business. Two, three times a month.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “Half and half or so. He loves taking his ladies up and scaring the shit out of them. Getting into dives and pretending he’s stalled. Things like that.”

  “He ever get in trouble showing off like that?”

  “No. But I’ve warned him plenty of times. He’s a good pilot but not a great one. One of these days he’s going to be clowning around like that and not be able to get control back.”

  “Ever see him take up Valerie Donovan?”

  “Bad question.”

  “Cathy Vance?”

  “Another bad question.”

  “How about where he goes?”

  “He’s got a thing about Denver. Shacks up there a lot.”

&
nbsp; “Ever leave the country?”

  “You sure ask a lot of bad questions.”

  “So he does leave the country.”

  “You said that, I didn’t. And you’re only guessing.”

  “I’m trying to save Will here, Billy.”

  Now he waited me out. “Will’s our friend, Billy.”

  “Not mine.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “He’s never been especially friendly to me, Sam. And I’m talking way, way back. I think it was because of my old man.”

  Billy’s old man, along with two other of his Navy buddies from the big war, had stuck up a bank. Even in the Hills that had marked the family as outsiders.

  “He ever say anything directly?”

  “He didn’t have to, Sam. I’m not exactly an idiot, man. I can tell.”

  “So you won’t help him even though he’s innocent.”

  “You have to be careful about people saying they’re innocent, Sam. Just before he started doing time my old man told me he was innocent, too. No offense, but I gotta get back to work here.”

  I joked a little with Mara on my way out. I should’ve gone straight to the parking area but I veered right and went to the stand-alone hangar.

  Marv Serbosek was working on a newer model vintage Piper Cub. He stood on a three-step ladder. An ear-numbing version of Proud Mary with Ike and Tina Turner was keeping him entertained. The noise bounced off the metal walls.

  I had to yell twice to catch his attention.

  Marv had been in a beard-growing contest at the county fair last summer. He had yet to unburden himself of the gray-flecked reddish thing that reached the upper pockets of his overalls.

  “Hey, McCain. How’s it goin’?”

  “I was wondering if you could help me with something.”

  “Sure. If I can.” His mother and my mother had been longtime members of the local Catholic church. It was the only connection Marv and I had but I hoped it was enough.

  “You know Lon Anders, right?”

  “Mr. Anders? Sure. What about him?”

  “He ever fly out of the country?”

  “Oh, yeah. Two, three times a year he goes to Mexico. Guess a friend of his has a house down there. Why?”

  “Well, I was talking to Billy and he didn’t want to give me any information about Anders.”