by R. J. Jagger
He should feel good. The little coward who murdered Sudden Dance was now taking a long, hard dirt nap, killed in the same exact way that he dished it out. Alley London, the poor thing, had her revenge too. Plus the witness, Jackie Fountain, now had nothing to worry about. Still, no smile came to Wilde’s face. He was satisfied and wouldn’t change an ounce of anything but there was no smile on his face, either on the surface or underneath it.
He sucked the last drag out of a butt and flicked it out the window.
The smoke was magic in his lungs.
Back in Denver he swung by his house for a shower and clothes that weren’t ripped to shreds. His body ached in a hundred places but his face was basically intact except for a couple of cuts and a punch of purple under his right eye.
Alabama showed up exactly where and when she was supposed to, namely the D&F Tower at four.
Shopping bags dangled from both hands.
She handed half to Wilde, studied his face and said, “Tell me the other guy looks worse.”
He nodded.
“It’s over.”
“Who was it? That boxer guy?”
“Yes.”
“Did you kill him?”
“No, he killed himself when he killed Sudden Dance. But I helped him die.”
“Are you going to tell Fingers?”
“No, screw Fingers.”
“So does this mean you still have the money?”
“Yes.”
“What are we going to do with it?”
“We?”
She ran a finger down his sleeve. “You’re going to like what I bought.”
“Why, what is it?”
“You’ll see. It’s skimpy.”
At the office something happened that Wilde didn’t expect.
The lock was broken.
The door was ajar.
Inside, the place was trashed to hell and back.
16
Day Five
August 7, 1952
Wednesday Afternoon
Wilde tossed the shoebox of money on the desk, surveyed the mess and said, “Nicholas Dent.”
Alabama considered it.
“You think so?”
Wilde set a book of matches on fire and lit a smoke.
“He was looking for the money,” he said. “There are only two people in this stupid cow town who know about it. One is Dent and the other is Fingers, and I’m not even sure about Fingers to tell you the truth. And Fingers, as crazy as he is, isn’t crazy enough to do this, especially in broad daylight.”
“True but Dent isn’t either.”
Wilde blew smoke.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t the boxer. He was with me the whole time.”
“Maybe they weren’t after the money.”
Wilde shook his head.
“That’s all I have worth taking.”
“That’s not true. You have me.”
He tapped ashes out the window and said, “’Bama, you need to take your foot off the gas for five seconds.”
“Why? Are you afraid of the speed?”
“No, I’m afraid of the crash.”
“Come on, Bryson,” she said. “You’ve seen me naked. You know what you’re missing. You know you can’t hold out forever.”
He slumped in a chair. Every muscle in his body ached.
Alabama came behind him and rubbed his shoulders.
“Feel better?”
The answer was, “Yes.”
He said, “No.”
“Lean forward.”
He hesitated; then he complied.
Her touch was whiskey.
Her perfume was sex.
The closeness of her body was life itself.
“Maybe it wasn’t Dent,” he said. “Maybe there’s a fourth person in the mix. Maybe the boxer had an accomplice.”
“Yeah, but that waitress from the Down Towner—”
“—Jackie Fountain—”
“—Right, her, she only saw one man.”
Wilde relaxed his body.
“That feels good,” he said. Thirty seconds later he stiffened, got up and grabbed the Fedora. “Come on, we need to take a ride.”
“To where?”
“To where we’re going.”
“And where is it that we’re going?”
“To the place we’re headed to.”
She punched his arm.
“You know what your problem is Wilde? You never stop being you.”
They wound through the rush-hour congestion and headed south where the butterflies and magpies and bees and rattlesnakes were. The plan wasn’t complicated; it was to get the dead boxer’s car somewhere other than where it was. Right now, as it sat, it was a 3,000-pound exclamation point to the effect that someone left it and never came back—so, look around and maybe you’ll find him.
Wilde didn’t want the body found, at least not while Fingers was still a trigger itching to be pulled.
In hindsight it was stupid to dump the body in the well; it was justice, yes, but it was dumber-than-dung justice.
The miles clicked off.
When they got to the scene, the boxer’s car was exactly as it was before at the side of the road.
The keys were still in the ignition.
“We got lucky,” he said.
He must have had an expression on his face because Alabama said, “You’re thinking,”
He kicked the dirt.
“I’m wondering if I should get the boxer out of the well and move him to someplace I don’t have a connection with.”
Alabama wasn’t enthused.
“Let him be,” she said. “No one will find him for twenty years and when they do they won’t know who he is, or care.” Wilde chewed on it. “Plus, do we really want to be pulling a body to the road and then driving around with it? Not to mention, where are we going to dump it once we do have it?”
Wilde exhaled.
“All right, we’ll let the dog lie. You take his car and follow me.”
“Where we going? Further south?”
A hawk circled above on strong silent wings, looking for a tasty little fur-ball or an equally yummy snake.
“We’ll bring it back to the city and park it down at the end of Market,” he said.
“Are you serious?”
He nodded.
“That way it won’t be associated with this road or the country. We’ll leave the keys in the ignition. Someone will steal it within two hours.”
That was the plan and that’s what they did.
There were no complications.
There were no witnesses, at least none that they saw.
Twilight was pulling a blanket over the city.
Darkness was coming.
“Now what?” Alabama said.
Wilde assessed his body. It was screaming for relief.
“Now we sleep,” he said.
“Together?”
17
Day Six
August 8, 1952
Thursday Morning
For everyone who was crazy enough to walk into the joint, Honest Joe had a smile as big as his gut, and didn’t skimp on either when Wilde pushed through the doors and headed across the lobby Thursday morning. “I’ll be damned,” the man said. “The Wildman himself, in the flesh.”
Wilde surveyed the interior as he lit a smoke.
Three vehicles were inside, spit-shined to perfection. Lots more were out front between the building and the Colfax asphalt, all with prices written in soap on the windshields. In front of it all was large wooden sign:
Honest Joe’s Used Cars
Buy Here, Pay Here
“You got some nice rides here, Joe.”
“Always,” Joe said. “You looking to make a deal? I’ll treat you good, Wildman; you know that. We’ll get you out of that little foreign coffin you drive around in and into something with some meat on it.”
“What I’m interested in is an old blue piece of crap, one that you already sold. It’s bee
n swinging by my house and my office. It’s got a temporary tag in the back. The driver looks like a boxer. He wears a suit and has a fancy gold watch.”
“He’s following you around?”
“Like my own shadow.”
Joe darted his eyes and lowered his voice.
“The damnedest thing happened this morning,” he said. “I was buying a newspaper and a ten came out of my wallet and blew away. You haven’t seen it by any chance, have you?”
Wilde pulled a ten out of his wallet and dangled it in his fingers.
“It didn’t look like this, did it?”
Joe studied it and said, “Yeah, I think that’s it.”
Wilde handed it to him.
“We were talking about blue crap,” he said.
“Right, right,” Joe said. “I don’t know much about the guy. He came in two days ago and bought Big Blue for cash. You want to see the paperwork?”
“You bet.”
There wasn’t much, basically a bill of sale and temporary registration for one Richard Hunter; no address, no phone number.
“Richard Hunter?” Wilde said.
“He went by Dick.”
“So, Dick Hunter.”
“Right.”
“Doesn’t that name sound just a bit strange to you?”
Joe chewed on it and then smiled. “Are you the dick he’s hunting or do you think it’s the other kind?”
“I don’t think it’s the other kind. Where was he from?”
Joe scrunched his face.
“He didn’t say and I didn’t ask. All he said was that he just got into town and needed wheels.”
“He just got into town?”
“Right.”
“And this was two days ago, on Tuesday?”
Joe checked the paperwork and tapped a finger. “There it is right there, August 6th. Today’s the 8th.”
Wilde swallowed.
If that was true then the man wasn’t in town last Saturday night when Sudden Dance was murdered. That meant that Wilde killed the wrong man at the well. The idea sent bark and snarl into his gray matter.
He shook it off to worry about it later and lit a cigarette.
“Did he say where he was staying?”
“No but he asked me where a decent hotel was.”
“What’d you tell him?”
Joe frowned.
“Did I mention that when that ten blew away a five went with it?”
At the office Wilde found something he liked very, very much, namely Alabama sitting behind the desk with her legs propped up, surrounded by sea of neatness. Everything was back in its place.
He tossed the Fedora.
It hit the edge of the window and dropped to the floor.
“Did you find anything missing?”
“Good morning to you, too.”
“Thanks for straightening up. It feels normal in here again.”
“You’re welcome. Only one thing was missing that I noticed, the gun from the bottom drawer.”
Wilde lit a cigarette.
The gun, his spare, was marginal even on its best day. Whoever took it didn’t come here for it. He spotted it and said, Why not?
“Good riddance,” he said.
“You carved your name in the handle,” Alabama said.
Wilde blew smoke.
That was true.
“I’m getting a picture of someone shot and your gun tossed on his body,” she added.
“Let them try.”
He pulled the paper out of his wallet—the paper he found in the blue piece of crap, the one with the phone number written on it—and handed it to Alabama. “I found this in the boxer’s ashtray. Do me a favor and call it and see who answers. When they do just pretend you dialed wrong.”
He paced next to the windows as Alabama dialed.
The phone rang.
Who am I talking to?
Angel? Angel who?
Angel, I was looking for Peter. Is he in?
Really? Is this the beauty salon?
Oh, it’s a law firm. I’m sorry—
She hung up.
“It’s a law firm?” Wilde said.
“Apparently so.”
“What the hell would the boxer be doing with the number of a law firm?” He blew smoke. “Go through the phone book and match the number. I want to know what firm it is.”
She did.
Her face wrinkled.
“You’re not going to believe it,” she said. “It’s that firm where Alley London worked, the one in the Daniels & Fisher Tower—Banders & Rock.”
Alley London was the dead body from the well.
Wilde paced.
“This doesn’t make any sense. It’s getting more confusing instead of better.”
“Yeah, so just let it go.”
Wilde flicked the butt out the window and grabbed the Fedora.
“Come on,” he said. “We’re going to pay a visit to the boxer’s hotel.”
“What for?”
“To find out who the hell he is.”
18
Day Six
August 8, 1952
Thursday Morning
The Mountain View Motel, recommended to the boxer by the honest man, Joe, sat on the Colfax drag next to a tire shop and across from a hotdog joint shaped like a giant hotdog. Wilde didn’t want to be associated with the boxer any more than necessary so Alabama went in alone and got the man’s room number under the pretext she was supposed to meet him an hour ago.
The man had Room 108, on the first floor at the corner. Wilde entered from the back through the one and only window, checked to be sure the door was locked and then found something of interest, namely a suitcase under the bed.
He swung it up and unzipped it.
Under the clothes were three things of interest.
One was a sawed-off shotgun.
One was a six-shooter.
The other was large manila envelope stuffed with bills. Wilde dumped the contents out on the bed. It was all money, a lot of money, except for one other thing, namely a white business card. It was for a lawyer by the name of Lester Trench in El Paso, Texas.
El Paso.
That was a long, long ways away, in fact all the way down to the Rio Grande. Take a short swim when you get there and you’re in Mexico.
Wilde stuffed the card in his wallet, put everything back exactly as he found it—including the money—and then got the hell out of there.
Halfway out the window he came back in.
The money, there was no good to leave it here.
The boxer wouldn’t be back for it.
Wilde’s best guess was that the man had been hired to kill him. The money was some or all of his payment. If that was the case, then Wilde had earned it.
He retrieved the envelope and then got the hell out of there, this time for good.
At the MG Alabama handed him a hotdog and said, “Compliments of Bob.”
“Who’s Bob?”
“The guy from the joint across the street, the manager.”
“He’s feeding me? For free?”
“No, he’s feeding me but I saved it for you.”
“Why’s he feeding you?”
“Apparently he likes my legs. You could learn from him, Wilde.”
He took a bite.
It wasn’t half bad.
Alabama tapped him on the shoulder.
“Guess who drove by while you were inside watching TV,” she said.
Wilde chewed and swallowed.
“Who?”
“Your little buddy, Nicholas Dent.”
Wilde paused in mid-bite.
“Are you sure it was him?”
“It was him all right. He stared right at me. So did his little office girl, whatever her name is. I got to hand it to him. He’s really taking care of his cutie-waitress client, making sure you don’t kill her and all that.”
Wilde wasn’t amused.
He handed her the envelope.
“Don
’t let that blow away.”
Then he cranked over the engine and squealed out.
19
Day Six
August 8, 1952
Thursday Morning
Back at the office Wilde paced next to the windows with a smoke in one hand and coffee in the other, keeping one eye on the street and the other on Alabama counting the money. The total was going to be big but he didn’t find himself giving a rat’s ugly end.
What he cared more about was staying alive; and keeping Alabama that way too, for that matter.
The boxer was a hitman and Wilde was the target.
That was clear.
That was a given.
Why was Wilde a target? That was the question. The obvious answer was because he killed Sudden Dance, at least in someone’s mind. Although it fit, it almost fit too well.
“$2,152,” Alabama said. “Keep this up and in a month or two we’ll be able to buy the whole city.”
“I don’t want the whole city.” He blew smoke. “That’s a lot of money just to kill me, especially if it was only half up front. Someone really wants me dead. Who?”
Alabama cocked her head.
“It’s obviously related to Sudden Dance.”
“Is it?”
“Sure, what else could it be?”
“I don’t know, but maybe something.”
“You’re not serious.”
He shrugged.
“It could have something to do with one of my cases.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know.”
Alabama chewed on it.
“It doesn’t fit,” she said. “Have you been messing around with a married woman?”
“You know I don’t do that.”
“Well then, we’re back to Sudden Dance. Someone doesn’t like the fact that you killed her.” She smiled. “At least we’re getting rich in the process.”
“We?”
She nodded.
“I’m cutting you in, honey, don’t worry. You’re starting to be one of my favorite guys.”
Wilde flicked the butt out the window.
“In hindsight I should have taken the money in the boxer’s wallet.”
“How much was there?”
“Enough.”
“Enough to make it worthwhile to go back?”
Wilde wrinkled his forehead and shook his head.
“I don’t want Blondie connected with that area, not even an ounce worth.”
