Cat's-Paw, Inc.

by L. L. Thrasher

  “Are you Catholic?” I asked.

  “No. Why? Oh, you want me to confess. Well, I’m not confessing, not to a priest and not to a lawyer and not to the police. I’m going away and I’m never coming back here again.”

  “All the states extradite murder suspects, Allison. You’ll be running for the rest of your life. You’ll never be able to tell anyone the truth. What are you going to do when you fall in love and want to get married? What if you have children? You’ll be lying to everyone you care about for the rest of your life. You’ll never be able to tell anyone who you are.”

  “Who am I? I’m nobody. I’m a dead man’s daughter. If you take me back to Mackie I will not say one single word to anyone. Not one word. They’ll think I’m crazy and they’ll think I killed him and they’ll lock me up somewhere. But maybe he won’t kill me then. I’ve been locked up all my life anyway so it doesn’t really matter. And no one would care.”

  “You’re being ridiculous. And I would care.”

  “Then why won’t you help me? All I need is some money, not much, just enough to get away from here, out of Oregon. I read a book about a woman who was hiding from someone. She got a birth certificate for someone about her age who died when she was a baby and she used it to get a Social Security card and then she had a new identity. I could do that. And I can get a job. I’m smart and everyone thinks I’m older than I am. I’ll pay you back, honest.”

  “Goddammit, it isn’t the money. I have plenty of money. I could mortgage my house and the land it’s sitting on for enough to support you for the rest of your life. But I’m not doing it. I’m not giving you one goddamn penny to run on.”

  “I hate you.” She didn’t scream the words, she said them in a hard cold voice that was worse than an angry scream. She got up from the table and got into her bed, taking Mr. Smith with her. Within five minutes, she was sound asleep.

  I picked up her necklace and stuck it in my pocket. Then I called Jason Finney. He had already talked to the cops and he wasn’t happy. I finally interrupted his tirade.

  “You’re right,” I said. “All they have is a story told by a street kid. That and the fact that people who want to talk to me have a way of dying. I’ve watched two girls get shot already and I don’t care to make a habit of it. There’s a limit to how much time the cops are going to spend following me around and when they stop, that’s it. I’m out of it. If no one contacts me soon, the only way Jessica is going to be found is in the course of the homicide investigations and I can’t get involved in them. Even if I wanted to risk losing my license or going to jail, it would be pointless. I don’t have the resources. And if you think the cops are going to let me have access to their records, you’ve been watching too much television.”

  There was a lot more I wanted to say but he hung up on me. I slammed the receiver down then picked it up again and called Hank Johnston.

  “She hasn’t called again,” he said, sounding worried.

  “How did she sound when you talked to her?”

  “She sounded okay, not scared or anything, if that’s what you mean. She sounded… she didn’t really sound like herself. I mean, it was Jessica okay, but she sounded like when she was reading those plays to me, like she was being someone else, you know what I mean?”

  I knew what he meant. She sounded like someone was listening to her, like someone was forcing her to make the calls, like someone was holding a gun to her head. I had the feeling that little Jessica Finney was one hell of an actress.

  Carrie called, apparently just to be sure she still had a brother. When I told her I hadn’t forgotten about bringing her a present she made some noncommittal response, sounding very guilty.

  “You been out to the house?” I asked.

  “Yes, I watered the plants and got rid of some of the stuff in the kitchen.”

  “And snooped around until you found your birthday present. Well, figure out where you want me to put it.”

  “I wasn’t snooping. I was looking for the watering can.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I love it. We’ll put it on that little hill near the big tree.”

  We talked a while longer then I sat on the bed beside Allison and shook her awake. She didn’t want to wake up. She was angry and confused and said her stomach hurt but I made her get up anyway.

  “Tell me what happened at the hotel again.”

  “Why? I don’t want to.”

  I insisted and she resisted but I got my way after reminding her the cops were only a phone call away. She told me the story again quickly, leaving out details, but it was the same story and not so pat as to sound like something she memorized.

  I interrupted her with questions, trying to trip her up, but she answered them all easily. She ended with the shooting. “Daddy opened the door and it was the man again and he pulled a gun and shot Daddy.”

  “From where?”

  “From the door. He didn’t come into the room.”

  “I mean the gun. You said he pulled a gun. From where?”

  Her face became very still, almost blank. She looked past me toward the window and licked her lips. “From… from his pocket. What difference does it make?”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “A suit.” And then because she was only seventeen and she wasn’t very good at what she was doing, she turned to look at the closet where my jackets were hanging. Some of them had pockets you could put a gun in. She looked back at me and blushed.

  The jury was in and the verdict was guilty but I wasn’t going to let her sentence herself to life imprisonment, so I set about making her like me again. It wasn’t hard. Women are putty in my hands. It helps if they’re dead set on getting their hands on some money. Allison wasn’t ready to abandon her plan to have me finance her escape. As long as there was a chance that I would change my mind—or leave my wallet where she could get it—it was in her best interests to like me.

  As she snuggled against me on the bed, smiling, her dark eyes soft and warm, I wondered how much of it was an act. Then I wondered why it mattered.

  When I left at six o’clock, I took her necklace with me. Her watch and earrings wouldn’t bring enough at a pawn shop to get her very far and there was nothing of mine in the room that she could sell easily.

  I had a dinner date with Virginia but she didn’t feel like going out so we whiled away the time in bed. I left in time to get something to eat before I showed up at the appointed place to pick up my tail. As soon as I spotted Bert and Ernie, I started walking.

  It was a clear summer night but there were clouds on the horizon and I was pretty sure there was a big dark thundercloud right over my head. This wasn’t going to work. No one was going to contact me. No one was going to be discovered tailing me. Bert and Ernie would go on to some other assignment and I would go back to Mackie and Jessica Finney would die, if she hadn’t already, at the hands of a fat man who raped young girls for profit.

  What we needed was a big stroke of luck.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Luck is blinder than love or justice.

  Shortly after eleven o’clock I was walking down a street in Old Town when a couple lurched out of a bar halfway down the block. The man was my size and was all duded up in his best urban cowboy duds. His hand was under the sweater of the woman beside him. In a loud, obviously phony southern drawl, he said, “Y’all jest come with ol’ Tex, sugah, and ah’ll give you the ride of yo’ life on mah great big ol’ holly.”

  Holly? I’d never heard it called that before.

  The weaving twosome made it to the curb where a motorcycle was parked. A great big ol’ Harley. The man threw his leg over the bike and the big engine roared. The woman climbed on behind him, flipping her skirt up and giving me a flash of white bikini panties. I hardly noticed. With a drunken rebel yell, the cowboy headed the bike into traffic. I didn’t wait to see if he kept it upright. I went into the open store beside me.

  “I need to use your phone,” I told the greasy
man behind the counter.

  He shifted a wad of tobacco around in his mouth. “Pay phone’s down on the next block.”

  “This is police business.”

  “You got a badge?” he asked sarcastically.

  “I got a gun,” I said and moved my jacket aside to show him.

  He slammed a phone down on the counter in front of me and backed off several feet. I looked around while the line rang. I was in a dingy shop specializing in obscene T-shirts. My genial host was spitting tobacco juice into a Tab can held close to his lips. He was wearing some of the store’s merchandise. The front of his white T-shirt had a pink fluorescent design that was similar to a Rorschach inkblot. Looked at one way, it was a pleasingly symmetrical abstract design. Looked at another way, it was a stylized drawing of the female genitalia.

  Bundy answered the phone.

  “It’s me. Listen, you remember the acting school I told you about, run by a woman named Virginia Marley?”

  “Yeah, she said the Finney girl was hanging around last week.”

  “Right. Virginia took quite an interest in me that day, even walked me to my car and got a good look at it. And I’ve seen her since. She’s asked a lot of questions, how I go about looking for a runaway, what part of town I was checking, that kind of thing. I thought she was just being polite, taking an interest in my work. I think she’s involved in this.”

  “Sounds a little short on probable cause. You got a clincher?”

  “Kimberly said Peggy was from the South. Say Virginia Marley with a southern accent.”

  Bundy drawled, “Vuhginia Mahley” and added “Holy fucking shit!”

  “Yeah, Peggy said Marley and Kimberly heard Molly and thought it was a first name. And how about an acting and modeling school as a front to recruit girls for dirty movies? Jesus Christ, am I stupid. And she would have admitted seeing Jessica in case someone else in the neighborhood told me she’d been hanging around. Bundy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I was at Virginia’s apartment the night I got the message to meet Brandy. I’ve been with her just about every day, in fact. She could have set up the tail. And she knows I’m working with the cops now.”

  “Jesus. Is there anything you didn’t tell her? Didn’t you think it was a little coincidental that some woman who’d seen Jessica couldn’t wait to hop into the sack with you?”

  “No.”

  After a pause, he said, “I guess not. You know her number?”

  I gave him the numbers for Virginia’s apartment and the school and he put me on hold. A T-shirt on the rack beside me asked the burning philosophical question, “If we aren’t supposed to eat pussy, why does it look like a taco?”

  “Who buys this crap?” I asked the greasy man.

  “Lotta assholes in the world,” he said. I stared pointedly at his chest, mentally making a solemn vow to burn my “BIGGER IS TOO BETTER” T-shirt. It had been given to me by my mother, who was oblivious to any sexual connotations that could be read into the shirt’s message. At least I thought she was.

  Bundy came back on the line. “No answer either place. I’ll get on it. You want to come in?”

  “No, I might as well stick it out tonight in case you can’t locate her.”

  “Okay. Watch your back. I don’t like the feel of this.”

  “Bert and Ernie are watching my back, aren’t they?”

  “They’re good but they aren’t faster than a speeding bullet. Be careful. I’m getting sick and tired of writing up homicide reports.”

  I left the shop without thanking the man in the dirty T-shirt and headed down the street, my step buoyant, my heart light. The cops would pick up Virginia and she’d tell them where Jessica was and it would be over.

  It was all up to Bundy now. I was out of it.

  I was wrong, of course.

  Chapter Thirty

  I was walking down a dark street near the stadium when I heard my name being called. I stopped and waited for Nikki to catch up with me. He ran gracefully in spite of the fact that his silver shoes had stiletto heels. The gown swirling about him tonight was gauzy silver. When he reached me, he clung breathlessly to my arm and said, “God, you walk too fast. I have a message for you.”

  “What message?”

  “A man, I never saw him before. He said you should go sit in your car and someone will come talk to you.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Blond, about twenty, short but really built. Muscle-y. A real jock, you know. He was wearing white jeans and a blue windbreaker. White tennies, I think.” Nikki giggled. “I wasn’t looking at his feet.”

  “Where was he?”

  Nikki gestured down the street. “About three blocks.” His face puckered with worry. “Zachariah, he knew I know you and he told me where to find you.”

  “Okay, don’t worry. You run along. In fact, it might be a good idea for you to get off the street for a while. Can you do that?”

  He nodded. “I have some friends waiting for me. I’ll tell them I have to go home and I’ll call for the car.”

  He headed back the way he had come, turning once to blow a kiss. I waited until his small silver shape disappeared into a crowd of Saturday night loiterers then I headed quickly to my car. I passed Ernie on the way but I barely glanced at him Any of the authentic-looking teenagers holding up the wall with him might have been watching me. I had the feeling half of Portland had me under surveillance.

  The Nova was at the curb on a dimly lit street. I sat behind the wheel, feeling just like the sitting duck I was. I had my gun in my hand but it wasn’t going to do a whole lot of good if someone drove by and blew my head off with a shotgun.

  In a doorway half a block behind me was a heap of rags I was pretty sure was Bert. I couldn’t see Ernie anywhere now. I had both windows down and was listening hard for footsteps while I tried to see into passing cars.

  Five minutes later, a dark blue Buick passed slowly beside me. I couldn’t see the driver.

  But I could see Nikki clearly.

  His face was pressed against the rear passenger window.

  Tears were ruining his makeup.

  Someone’s hand held a gun against his neck.

  I started the Nova and forced my way into traffic three cars behind the Buick. I looked over my shoulder. An incredibly spry drunk was pounding down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. A slim figure joined him. Their car was at the end of the next block. They’d broadcast a description of the Nova in a hurry but they wouldn’t have noticed the other car.

  The Buick made a right at the corner. I did the same just in time to see it hang a left at the next intersection. A series of confusing turns took us away from town and through a deserted industrial area and then, much sooner than I had thought possible, we were out of Portland and traveling down a dark road. For once, I had managed to lose a tail. Bert and Ernie were long gone.

  Thirty minutes later, paranoia began to set in. I was behind the wrong car. I was following a carload of tourists who were fulfilling a lifelong dream of seeing rural Oregon by night.. I had lost Nikki. And Jessica, if she was out there somewhere. I slowed the Nova to a crawl. The Buick slowed, too, keeping the same distance between us. I was behind the right car.

  The paranoia deepened. I was being led into an ambush. Somewhere up the road an army of bad guys was waiting for me. With machine guns. Grenades. Mortars. Maybe a nuclear bomb or two. I told myself to stop being stupid and came up with a more realistic, if equally scary, idea. They were going to drive around until I ran out of gas then they’d double back and kill me. Or maybe they’d just go off and leave me to wander around Oregon for days, looking for civilization.

  I began to watch the fuel gauge compulsively. I hadn’t gassed up since Hood River and the needle was wavering ominously just above empty. Maybe three gallons. Twenty miles to a gallon was optimistic but easy to compute. Another sixty miles and it would all be over. I thought longingly of all those gas stations in Portland and cursed myself
for not filling the tank.

  I also cursed myself for not having a car phone. Or at least a CB. I had committed the Buick’s license plate to memory but it was a sure bet that the plates were stolen—if not the whole car—and the number would lead the cops to nothing but a dead end. We passed dark houses set back from the road but if I stopped, the Buick would get lost in a hurry. My only choice was to follow them, which was what they wanted. I was making no effort to be inconspicuous. I was back there and they knew I was back there and that’s the way they wanted it.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if I had been following them through familiar territory, but I was lost. The Buick’s driver knew every back road in the state. We passed tiny towns with unfamiliar names where the sidewalks were already rolled up and we drove through miles of farmland and miles of forest. An hour after we left Portland the only thing I would have sworn to was that we were east of the Pacific Ocean.

  We were on dark winding roads with trees thick on either side. For several miles the only signs of life I saw were dead possums. The night was black and silent. The darkness on either side of the road became tangible, claustrophobic. I seemed to be driving through a luminous, ever-lengthening tunnel formed by the Nova’s headlights.

  Being unable to place myself within a geographic frame of reference gave me an eerie feeling of vague dread. I didn’t like being a stranger in a strange land. I longed for some point of reference—a signpost with a familiar name, a distant mountain range, the pounding of surf against rock. I’d have settled for a glimpse of the moon through the clouds although I knew I was kidding myself if I thought I could figure out where I was by the position of the moon.