by R. J. Jagger
Dent blew smoke.
“My advice is to make a police report,” he said. “I’ll go with you. Before we go, I’ll make a call and get an absolute guarantee that your name won’t be put in the file or ever mentioned to anyone.”
The woman’s hands shook.
“I’ll think about it.”
“You do that,” Dent said. “In the meantime I’ll sniff around a little, on the house.”
“Are you serious?”
“Sure, why not?”
11
Day Five
August 7, 1952
Wednesday Morning
Wednesday morning Wilde had one thought and one thought only, namely to find out if the witness, Jackie Fountain, was alive or whether she was the body at the bottom of the well. To that effect, he headed to the Down Towner where the woman supposedly waitressed.
With Sudden Dance’s briefcase in hand, he made two passes by the windows but got no results.
He couldn’t see inside that good.
Just inside the door was a cigarette machine. He made sure he had correct change, entered, set the briefcase down and slipped coins in the slot, ostensibly paying no attention to anything else, just one more guy out of smokes and now getting them so he didn’t turn into a big green lizard or some such thing. The pack fell to the chute. He scooped it up, tapped a stick out and lit it with a match as his eyes took a quick sweep around the room.
Across the way a strawberry-haired waitress was pouring coffee at a booth.
Her back was to him.
When she headed for the counter her profile came into view. She was in her mid-twenties with a curvy body and an easy smile. Her lips were ruby-red. A cigarette dangled from them. Wilde recognized her from around town. She’d been at the club Saturday night with a couple of friends.
He opened the door to leave.
As he took one last look, something happened that he didn’t expect.
The woman was staring directly at him.
Her smile was gone.
Her eyes were serious.
Wilde’s grip tightened on the briefcase.
He took one last look.
Then he was gone.
At the office Alabama pulled no punches. “You do a lot of things that aren’t exactly brilliant,” she said, “but I’m going to put that one right up there at the top.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s going to think you’re stalking her.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“I barely looked at her.”
“That’s not the point,” she said. “The point is that she saw you kill someone Saturday night. She was in your headlights when you pulled out. Now here you are on Tuesday morning showing up where she works, pretending not to look at her when you really were. Just a weird coincidence? I think not—”
Wilde looked out the window.
“Some day I want to wake up and be one of those saps out there,” he said. “I just want to wander around aimlessly and not care about anything except getting wine in my gut.”
Alabama rolled her eyes.
“Look,” she said, “you know you didn’t kill anyone and you think that’s some kind of magical trump card that you can just pull out and wave up in the air whenever you want and then everything will be just fine. You better think again because I have news for you, truth is a second-class citizen.”
Wilde wrinkled his brow.
“Like being an Indian,” he said.
Alabama came over, put his arms around him and laid her head on his chest.
“You need to worry about Fingers,” she said. “Especially if Jackie Fountain tells him you were at her work this morning. Fingers shot a guy last year. Did you know that?”
The words rolled up a memory but it was faint.
“Remind me again.”
“He shot a guy while he was arresting him,” Alabama said. “He shot him cold dead, four times. He thought the guy was a killer. Later it turned out that the guy had an alibi. That didn’t help him much though after he was dead.”
Wilde tapped his fingers.
“I’m not worried about Fingers. I am, however, worried about Jackie Fountain. My guess is that she’s pretty safe during the day. It’s the night she has to worry about. Do me a favor and find out where she lives. We’ll be staking her out tonight.”
Alabama punched his arm.
“Do you even listen to anything I say?”
He put a surprised look on his face.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Have you been talking?”
Two hours later Johnnie Fingers opened the door and walked into the room with an attitude. He nodded at Alabama, focused hard on Wilde and said, “There’s a rumor going around that you were out taking a stroll this morning.”
Wilde tapped two cigarettes out of a pack and extended one to Fingers.
He knew what this was about.
It wouldn’t be pretty.
Fingers hesitated and then accepted.
Wilde set a book of matches on fire, lit them up and said, “I thought strolling was legal.”
“It is,” Fingers said. “It can be dangerous though. Sometimes people got out for a stroll and get blindsided by an ice truck. Squish, squash. Taking a stroll in the wrong place can be dangerous, even deadly.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“Is that why you’re here? To warn me about ice trucks?”
Fingers shook his head.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a photo and tossed it on the desk. It depicted a young woman in her mid-twenties, lying dead at the bottom of a well.
“Is that your Indian friend?”
“No. You can tell she’s not Indian.”
“True. Do you know her?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” Wilde said. “I’ve never seen her before.”
Fingers cast an eye on Alabama.
“What’s your name, pretty lady?”
“Alabama.”
“Do you work for this guy?”
She nodded.
“Did you know he was in the war?”
“Yes.”
“He was gunner in a B-17G Flying Fortress, which was a bomber that had four Wright supercharged Radial engines with a real distinctive growl. You could hear them two countries away. He sat back there in that little glass bubble at the bottom of the plane with his hands on the trigger of a 50-caliber machine gun.”
Wilde grunted.
“You’ve been doing homework.”
“No, it’s common knowledge. Me myself, I could never do anything like that. Flying scares the crap out of me even when people aren’t shooting at you. I wouldn’t be worried so much about a shot coming through the glass and taking me out. What I’d be worried about is a shot taking out the glass and then the sky sucking me out. Can you imagine falling from up there, still alive, with the ground coming up at you faster and faster?”
Wilde tapped ashes.
“You’re strapped in,” he said. “That would never happen.”
“Well, that’s good.” To Alabama he said, “What’d you do during the war?”
“What’s it matter?”
“I was just curious. You did something. I can tell. What was it? Did you sew uniforms or something?”
“No.”
Fingers put disagreement on his face. “Come on, you did something.”
“I was ten,” she said. “I spent my time worrying about my father.”
“He was in the war?”
She nodded.
“He got killed in the Philippines.”
Fingers frowned.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
Alabama’s eyes moistened. The sight sent bark and bite into Wilde’s brain and he trained it on Fingers.
“I think your visit here is done,” he said.
“Sure,” Fingers said. “The woman in the photo, by the way, we don’t know who she is yet, but we found her out in the country, not too far from wh
ere your car was,” Fingers said. “Pretty strange, huh?”
Wilde took a deep drag.
“What are you getting at?”
“Nothing,” Fingers said. “I just thought maybe you could help me. Do you have any idea why she’d be out there dead, not too far from where your car was?”
Wilde looked out the window and then at Fingers.
“When my car got a flat, whoever it was that took Sudden Dance had to get out of there somehow. Maybe this woman saw the car broken down and stopped to help. Maybe she ended up dead for her kindness.”
Fingers nodded.
“That’s the same theory I came up with. I’m really impressed that it rolled right off your tongue. For me, I had to mull it over for hours before it came out.”
Wilde walked to the door and opened it.
“Have a nice day,” he said.
Fingers cast an eye on the briefcase and said, “Nice briefcase.”
Then he was gone.
As soon as the man left Alabama said, “He was getting me to talk on purpose. He was trying to figure out if I was the person who called and ended up talking to him about the woman in the well. I’m sure he recognized my voice. Now he’s going to have you connected to that body.”
Wilde nodded.
“I know.”
“What I don’t get is why was he talking about you being in a bomber? Was that just to lead over to me and have a reason to ask what I did?”
Wilde blew smoke.
“I think he was giving me a warning,” Wilde said. “It’s his way of saying he’s holding off for the time being on taking me down, because we were both in the war.”
“You think?”
He nodded.
“It’s his way of saying he gave me a break.”
“But now it’s gone?”
“Right, now it’s gone.”
A good song came on the radio, Lawdy Miss Clawdy by Lloyd Price. Alabama turned it up and said, “The dead woman in the photo that Fingers showed us, I’ve seen her around somewhere.”
Wilde raised an eyebrow.
“Where?”
“I’m trying to think—”
Wilde waited.
Seconds passed, then more.
Alabama’s face brightened.
“Got it,” she said.
“Good, where?”
She threw a look his way. “First say, Alabama you’re so pretty.” Wilde scrunched his face and then complied. “Nice of you to notice,” Alabama said. “I’ve seen her down by the Daniels & Fisher Tower. She was all dressed up real fancy; not like a whore, more like someone important.”
“Someone important, huh?”
“Yeah. She looked expensive.”
Wilde set a book of matches on fire.
“Alabama, you’re so pretty,” he said.
She smiled.
“Nice of you to notice.”
“Trust me, I notice every second. Come on, we have work to do.”
12
Day Five
August 7, 1952
Wednesday Afternoon
Wilde’s veins were beginning to fill with more and more lightning. He’d always pictured the body from the well as belonging to someone who lived in the rural area. Now it turns out she was probably from Denver and that one simple fact turned everything on its head and shook it so hard that every ounce of spare change fell out of the pockets. If the woman wasn’t just an innocent driver who stopped at the MG after it broke down, then how did she end up out there?
Plus, she was expensive.
She was somebody.
More importantly, she had to be somehow connected to Sudden Dance. It was too much of a coincidence that both women ended up in the same dark deadly corner of the universe at the same time without there being some type of connection between them.
Maybe their only connection was that the same man killed both of them.
But then again, maybe it was something deeper and more complex, something with a plan or a history to it.
Wilde knew the Daniels & Fisher Tower well.
It was the highest building between the Mississippi and San Francisco, situated smack in the center of the matter on the city’s main downtown drag, 16th Street. At the top was a clock tower. Wilde had been up there on more than one occasion with a bottle of wine and a member of the softer persuasion. From there, the city lights stretched to infinity in all directions.
Right now Wilde and Alabama were at the foot of the building next to the revolving door.
Bodies went in, bodies came out.
In Wilde’s left hand was Sudden Dance’s briefcase, the bait, if anyone was interested enough to spot it.
He set it on the sidewalk, lit a smoke and tossed the match to the ground.
“The more I think about it, the more you shouldn’t be here,” he told Alabama. “This whole thing is getting too damned dicey.”
She wasn’t impressed.
“Be nice,” she said. “Remember, you’re going to need someone to bail you out of jail.”
He took a deep drag.
“Stay here, I’ll be right back.”
He disappeared into the revolving doors and headed across the lobby to a reception desk. Behind it a woman with a babushka-covered bun gave him a hard look. Wilde set the briefcase on the counter, smiled and said, “I’m in a bit of a predicament.”
The woman relaxed her face.
“Why? What’s wrong?”
Wilde tapped his fingers on the briefcase.
“I was supposed to deliver this briefcase to someone this morning outside on the sidewalk,” he said. “I got here late. Here’s the bad part. The woman works in this building but I forgot her name.”
“Did you write it down?”
“I did but it’s at home,” he said. “Here’s what she looks like. She dresses real nice, very expensive, if you know what I mean. She’s in her mid-twenties and pretty, with blond hair.”
The woman retreated in thought.
Then her face brightened.
“Are you talking about Alley London?”
Wilde nodded.
“Right. That’s her.”
“I haven’t seen here come in yet,” the woman said. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen her in a couple of days.”
“What floor is she on?”
“Eight.”
Wilde smiled his best smile and said, “You’re a peach.” Ten seconds later he was in the stairwell climbing up to eight with a beat in his chest.
The stairwell dumped him into a hallway that had a number of doors, the most interesting of which was the one on the prime side, where the offices had views of both the jags of the Rockies fifteen miles to the west and the bustle of 16th Street down below. That half of the floor, the sweet half, belonged to Banders & Rock, Attorneys-At-Law.
Wilde opened the door and immediately got dumped into a receptionist who, by the expression on her face, didn’t mind the way he looked, not at all.
He smiled and said, “I’m here to see Alley London.”
The woman frowned.
“She’s out this week. Can someone else in the office help you?”
Wilde shook his head.
“No, I can wait. When will she be back in?”
“Monday.”
“That’s fine. I’ll come back Monday.”
At street level Alabama had a somber expression. “Fingers is on our tail,” she said. “He’s been ducking in and out of sight ever since we got here. I’ve been busy trying to not stare directly at him. It hasn’t been easy. Right now he’s over there on the sidewalk behind that red pickup.”
Wilde set the briefcase on the sidewalk, lit a cigarette and purposely pointed his face in the non-Fingers direction.
“We need to lose him,” he said. “The woman from the well is someone named Alley London. We need to find out where she lives and get into her house and figure out why she ended up dead in a well and, more importantly, how she’s connected to Sudden Dance.”
“If at all—”
“Right, if at all. She’s a lawyer with Banders & Rock, by the way. They’re some fancy law firm up on the 8th floor. That’s why she looked expensive.”
“Unlike you and me who aren’t making any money. How’d you find that out all that without a picture of her?”
He blew smoke.
“I smiled,” he said.
“You know how to smile?”
“Yeah, I learned last week.” He took a drag and added, “The firm doesn’t know she’s dead yet.”
“That’s weird.”
He shrugged.
“She out this week so no one’s missing her when she doesn’t show up.”
“Out doing what?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I have half a mind to turn around and wave at Fingers.” The smoke was down to Wilde’s fingers. He took one last draw, flicked it into the street and said, “Let’s go.”
According to the phone book, the body from the well, Alley London, lived just south of downtown, a block off Broadway. Wilde zigzagged Blondie through the city until he was sure no one was on his tail and then made his way to the woman’s street, parking three doors down under an Elm.
“Stay here,” he said.
Alabama got out and said, “Apparently this is one of those days when I’m not listening very well.”
Wilde lit a smoke and gauged whether he would lose if he argued.
He would.
“Apparently not,” he said.
The house was a small bungalow awash in a sea of the same. It was locked tight with no clean way in. Wilde broke the back door glass with an elbow, setting off a violent and non-stop bark from a dog behind a fence.
It didn’t matter.
They were already in.
Wilde half-expected the placed to be trashed by someone looking for something.
