I sat there with the terrible coffee and the miraculous food — so hot it had already burned my tongue and the roof of my mouth and I didn’t care, in fact it was blissful — waiting for Daniel Frank.
I’d walked over, since Krispy Kreme was only two blocks from my place, and the weather was as hot as the doughnuts. But on some certain days, the air has a kind of clarity that even pure water can’t achieve, even if that air is in the middle of a city on an old, old street. It’s renewing, that air. And I needed a little renewal.
Danny didn’t keep me waiting long. He strolled in, took a stool beside me, and ordered something for himself before he’d even acknowledged my presence.
“So,” he began as if he were continuing a conversation, “you got here early. Good. Now, as I see it, the real issue is why would Dalliance think you did this — even though it would seem like the issue is who did do it. That’s what I’ve been thinking. Am I right?”
“I would never have thought of it in exactly that way, but yes — I guess you are accurate in some respect.” I took a last bite.
“Did you sleep? You look tired.” He sipped his coffee.
“I slept on the sofa. It’s never a true night’s sleep that way. Sofa sleeping.”
“I’d say you need better food, too.” He took a quick glance at my sugar-glazed breakfast. “Otherwise you would have already answered my question about the real issue.”
“Why would Dally think that.”
“Right,” he said. “While that’s something that is disturbing you and keeping you from your rest, I’d have to say that it is also a clue.”
“A clue? To what?”
“To what’s in her head. Also to what’s surrounding this — the ominous note; to what’s the deal with her — excuse my language — husband.”
“Well” — I straightened a little on the stool — “you certainly have a strange vision this morning. Even strangely clear, maybe.”
“Isn’t that why you called me last night?”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t be clear about this at all, because it’s broken your connection — like with your muse … something like that. You need someone else to see for you — for just a little while. You need someone else to ask questions about Ms. Oglethorpe that you can’t or won’t ask yourself. Maybe you’re even afraid she might not give you the right answers. Not lie, exactly … just avoid.” He lifted one shoulder.
I stared at Daniel’s profile for a long time. I wondered, then, why I’d lost track of the guy for a while. It brought up all kinds of mud from the band days — and it made me take a square look at my life with Dally. As long as I had her, what did I need with any other friend?
But it had made me lose touch with my circle. It had made me a loner.
Dally and I used to have a circle of friends so close we wouldn’t go out of the house without calling each other to see who else was stepping out, and where we were all going. Where does that go?
He finally turned to look at me. “Stop staring. People will talk.”
“Yeah” — I smiled at that — “but Daniel, I love you.”
“Lay off.” He smiled back. “You’re spooking the straights.”
But no one in the place was paying the least attention to us. In a joint where drag queens and psycho killers with devil tattoos are the average customer, you really have to go the distance to make any kind of impression at all.
“Dan? This has all happened a little suddenly for me.”
“Yes” — he nodded — “you wouldn’t have called me otherwise. If things had moved at their normal pace, you would have had time to digest, to consider — you’d be perplexed, but you’d be fine. You’ve got a whammy on you.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “I do.”
“So,” he continued, “let’s examine the worst parts first. Dally had a husband that nobody knew about. Not even you. Which, could I say, I would not have taken even money on — your not knowing something about that particular person. Now, not only did she have one — but now he’s dead in her club. Okay, before we can even get used to that, Dally jumps to the bizarrely erroneous conclusion that you had something to do with it. And all this takes place at the speed of light.”
“Not to mention the second body.”
He almost dropped his coffee cup.
“What?” He twisted on his stool to face me squarely.
“Yeah,” I told him, looking down at the crumbs on my plate. “Before we could even get the cops there, somebody else got popped — at the front door.”
“Who? Do we know?”
“Poor old Jersey Jakes. Remember him?”
“He got dead? Another dead body got dropped off?”
“No” — I shook my head slowly — “this one was alive for a while, then somebody shot him.”
“At the front door?”
“Yes.”
“While you were staring down at the dead husband?” His voice was getting loud enough then to actually concern the ice-cool wait staff, so I looked him in the eye.
“Dan,” I said quietly, “don’t ask me too much about this right now, okay? There are a few things I can’t tell you because I promised I wouldn’t.”
He held my stare for another minute or two, then nodded. “Fair enough. But when I find out these things on my own, you can discuss them with me?”
That was Daniel Frank. I already knew where he was going with his thinking. He knew I was keeping a confidence, and that I wouldn’t break it. But he also knew that he could probably find out what it was. Because he knew he could find information about a single penny in a desert sandstorm if he wanted to. That was his gift: information.
“We’ll talk.” It was evasive. I knew we would talk about it eventually.
“What’s your next move, then?” He went back to his coffee.
“I’m going to speak with Huyne,” I told him, “strange as that may be. I want to find out some hard information about the letter, the body, the wrapping — that sort of thing.”
“Will he give?”
“No” — I shook my head, smiling — “but he may share.”
“Ah.” Danny understood. “You know, Flap? For a man who likes to think of himself as something of a mystic, that’s talking an awful lot like a detective.”
25. Detective Work
I shoved my plate and cup away, the ancient ceremonial indication that I would have no more, and tried my best not to be insulted by what Daniel Frank had just said to me.
“I’m merely going about my daily work,” I told him as I stood.
“Good.” That was all.
I wasn’t surprised that Dan and I had passed so few words between us. It had been the way we had communicated in the old days. Once you have a kind of understanding like that — at least with some guys — it never goes away. Years can zip by like birds snapping past your window, and you can take up right where you left off like no time at all had intervened. And I’d say thank God for that, when it happens.
“I’m off to the police.” I dropped a five on the counter.
He stared at my oversize tip. Then: “I’m off to see a man about a doggerel. Call me at two.”
That was something I’d forgotten about Danny. Sometimes he thought he was being clever, when he was just being strange. Still, wit is subjective, I guess. I didn’t even bother asking him to explain. I just took off out the door, back into the hot air.
From the doughnut place, it was a good five city blocks to the police station — if I walked it, maybe it would be enough time to get my thoughts together.
Which would have happened except for the fact that as I walked, all I could think about was what had gone wrong. Not sleeping can make a person see the world in a different light — or less light, really: more shadow. I considered the possibility that Mug had been the one to deliver the dead body of Dally’s Mister. Or that the second stiff, in the person of Jersey, had been his henchman. And that Mug had iced him too, to keep him cool. It wo
uld have made sense. Jakes was hardly the type to pop somebody, wrap him up, and deliver him all alone to Dally.
Or maybe it was just the heat.
What didn’t figure most of all was Dally’s wild leap. What do you call the opposite of a leap of faith? Leap of doubt? And how, I was left wondering, after everything — everything — could she possibly think what she did?
That’s when, about block three, Danny’s words started making more sense to me. What I had to get clues to, besides the facts about dropping corpses and parking-lot jazz, was something about Dally’s internal landscape. It was a place I would have bet everything on, only a few days earlier. But at that moment, it all looked like a new part of the forest — something I barely knew at all.
I needed, in short, to know how her mind had worked in those wee hours the night before. And for that, I needed to know why she’d never told me about her Mister. And for that, I needed to know about him. And for that, I needed a phone.
Once I thought that, my steps quickened. I saw clearly what my path was — or my two paths: one in the city, one in Dally’s mind.
So by the time I got to the station house, I was feeling ready for Detective Burnish Huyne.
I walked into the station house like I knew what I was about. Huyne saw me coming.
“Well, Mr. Tucker.” He wasn’t smiling. “Have a seat. This is good, your coming in like this. Saves me a few steps, you know.” He offered me the seat in front of his desk.
“Let’s see if I can guess.” I sat. “You found my prints on both stiffs, the letter in the one guy’s pocket, and all over the wrapping paper.”
“For starters,” he said.
“Okay, now you tell me the rest.” I wanted to see what he had.
“Fine.” He obviously didn’t mind sharing. “We also found evidence of a third pair of shoes by the body at the front door — that is besides yours and the deceased’s. Oh, and some shell casings that might be involved.”
“What does this mean to you?”
“If I look at it from your point of view, it could even mean that you’re off the hook. I mean to say that there was obviously someone else there besides you.” He scratched his face. “On the other hand, if I look at it objectively, which I ought to do considering the obligations of my chosen profession, I’d have to say that it could also mean that you maybe had what we call an accomplice. Because this other person was there last night, I’m pretty sure, and you didn’t share that information with me. Not a mention. So I have to wonder why you’d withhold such valuable and potentially self-serving information from me, unless it actually does you more harm than good for me to know.”
I smiled. “I see your problem: You’re a man who likes to look at something from all the angles.”
“That’s right.”
“Especially if it messes me up.” I didn’t mean that to come out as aggressively as it did.
“Flap” — his voice was much quieter — “if you knew me just a little bit better, you wouldn’t underestimate me like that.”
And for a second, I stared at the guy like we’d never met.
I was still trying to adjust to what could have been a new attitude when he started talking again in his old voice.
“At any rate,” he went on, not looking me in the eye, “I am going to assume you’ve already started your own investigation, for what that’s worth. If you know what’s what, you’ll keep me apprised.”
“Yes” — I smiled — “and I can start right this minute. Man number three in the parking lot with me and the dead body? That’s my client.” I took a small second to respect Mug’s foresight. “That’s why I didn’t mention him last night, you can understand.”
Huyne leaned back. “Oh. Your client. Like I care.” He nodded. “Unless he knows who killed these guys.”
“I didn’t say that.” I had no expression on my face whatsoever. It’s a good trick. “And by the way, do we have a cause of death for the gift-wrapped corpse?”
“Stabbed in the heart.”
“His clothes weren’t that messy.”
“Stabbed in the heart, bled to death, bled some more, cleaned up, changed, wrapped, and then delivered.” His eyes were barely slits.
“Well.” What more could I say?
“So I guess you’d better tell me about your client’s …”
“… I don’t know what he did or what he didn’t do,” I interrupted, “from any firsthand knowledge.” True. “I’ll have to start my investigation and see where it goes, just like you do.”
“Just like me?” He didn’t bother to cover the irony. “Aren’t you going home to cogitate or whatever you call it is — what you do?”
He was making fun of my ability, my talent — my way of putting two and two together in a quiet moment of contemplation. He thought it was something mysterious, like most people did. But the more I did it, the more I realized it was just another cold trick of the mind, and I felt cold enough as it was there in the police chair.
So I leaned forward. “My trick?” I got a good look locked right into his eyes. “Not today.”
26. Today
A whole lot of people will tell you that today is the only day there is. Live in the moment, they’ll say. The moment is all. I’ve tried. I really have. But I always worry a little too much about what’s going to happen next. And then there’s the problem of what if today stinks. Are you stuck in that? If misery is all there is, why would you want to be in that moment — when there are so many other pleasant moments at your disposal, in your mind’s eye, when memory whispers its pale joy.
So as I sat there across from Detective Burnish Huyne, I found my mind wandering to a day long since gone. Dally and I were staring down at a lake where turtles were swimming. The sun was pouring over us like spun honey, and the turtles were lazy and skimming the lake. She was wearing a skirt with a funny blue pattern all over it, and when we stood I happened to turn just the right way at the right moment and our lips had brushed. Like we’d been shot with a house current, we both snapped our heads back and stared.
That was a day way better than today, I was thinking.
“So what are you going to do?” Huyne’s voice was a nasty awakening.
“Well, I was going to try to be clever and trick you into telling me what you know about the note — and whatever other evidence you have, that sort of thing.”
“How were you going to do that?”
“By appearing to be disarmingly forthright.” I smiled at him. “Is it working?”
“Tucker.” He shook his head. “Can you tell me why I didn’t arrest you last night?”
“Yeah.” I leaned forward. “Nine times out of ten, the killer doesn’t call in to the cops. Now, I’m pretty smart, as we’ve just discussed, so I could be suckering you. But then you’re pretty smart too, so I think you’d see past that. Plus, you wouldn’t arrest me like that in front of Dally. She wouldn’t take it well. It would imply that she was lying because she’d tell you the stiff in the package was there before I arrived, and the one at the door was bopped while I was inside right next to her. So you couldn’t pop me, in short, without impugning her veracity …”
“… which I would never do,” he agreed. “So. Here’s what we’ve got: The note’s got your prints on it, fresh, and that’s it. That body remains officially unidentified, but we’ve already called Ms. Oglethorpe in for questioning, so that’s coming up. As to the body at the door, the second guy, that was none other than Jersey Jakes, as you told me last night.”
“Poor old Jersey.” I shook my head.
“You knew him, I’m guessing.” Huyne was staring.
“Yeah. He was a tropical.”
“Oh for God’s sake.” Huyne was clearly not in the mood for whimsy — or explanation of same.
“What do you make of all that, then?” I wanted to see what he’d tell me.
“I have opinions.” That was all he said.
“You think maybe this Jakes was the delivery boy for
the body, and that he was popped by an accomplice or a higher-up.” I realized after I’d said it that my sentence was more a bold indication of my own wishful thinking and little to do with what Huyne might have in mind.
“No” — he blinked — “I was going with the fact that Jakes had been watching the place and had seen the delivery, surprised the delivery boy, and got the wrong end of the deal.”
“Why would he have been watching the place?”
“Because” — Huyne was looking at me sideways — “he was in the employ of Ms. Oglethorpe to do just that.”
27. I Sleep While The City Burns
“What gives you that idea?” I tried to sound steady.
“She told me? When I called her this morning to come in?” He was asking me questions like that because he seemed to think that I was the densest person in the Southeast at that moment.
“Okay.” I was calm. “So you know about that.” Bluff: “Did she tell you the other thing?” Sometimes an outrageously vague lie like that can actually work.
“Yes, we know all about the other letters.” He sounded like he was tired of playing with me.
“So.” I know for a fact that my voice didn’t sound right, then, because Huyne looked up at me with actual concern.
“Flap?” He was searching my face. “You okay?”
“Tired.”
He looked back down. “It’s the hours you keep.” He got a piece of paper. “This is my warrant for you. All I have to do is sign and send, and you’ll be here with me permanent. I tell you this to explain how close you are to the edge, and to make sure you know not to mess with me on this thing, right?”
“The last thing I need from you,” I managed, smiling, “is information about how close to the edge I am at the moment.”
“Good.” He mistook my meaning. “So you go ahead and do your little investigation or whatever it is that you do, and you tell me everything I want to know, and by and by we’ll get the evil bad person that’s scaring our girl.”
Dead Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 5) Page 11
