The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

Home > Other > The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set > Page 65
The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set Page 65

by Jack Lynch


  “And you never did plan to take me with you,” said Erica, still unbelieving.

  “Of course not, dear. You’re a wonderful romp in bed, but you’re hardly a girl any longer. I’ll have more money than I can spend once I’ve sold the set. I can find my own buyers, you know. I’ll have dozens of girls half your age, darling. It’s wretched, but true. Money can buy happiness, of the sort I want, at least. And I want to travel with new luggage. Not used.”

  Erica looked as if she’d been slapped. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at her eyes. “I see,” she said quietly. “Well. I may as well be going, then.”

  “Yes, a good night’s sleep will help enormously, dear, but wait a moment, we’ll all go.” Bryan turned toward me. “You too, Peter. And remember, I don’t want to hurt the girl. But I have killed twice.”

  We went out as a group, Brandi carrying the case, Bryan with one hand on her shoulder and his gun pointing at her head. Erica walked with her eyes downcast. I stumbled along as best I could and told the World operatives to stay in place a few moments longer. They saw Bryan and the girl and the gun, and they knew.

  “Don’t do anything,” I cautioned them. It seemed as if I’d been saying that all night. The four of us got on the elevator and started down.

  “Why did you shoot Catlin? To get his pieces?”

  “Good heavens, no. I had no idea where he might have put them. No, you were doing such a marvelous job of getting things rounded up for me I just didn’t want any further delays. When I heard Catlin was balking at splitting the proceeds, I drove out in an attempt to get him to go along. Believe I had him coming around, too, when—I don’t know. Something went wrong. Something I said suddenly made him suspicious. His rifle was out in the kitchen. We were speaking in the front room. He started to edge toward the kitchen, I suspected I’d tripped up somehow and…well, I just shot him. I had to. How could he have known I knew more than I was letting on?”

  “He and Harry had some sort of a conversation not long ago. He told me about it. There was something Harry told him. He couldn’t remember just what when I talked to him. Maybe it came back to him. Why did you go back later and clean up things?”

  “I didn’t want the police involved. Not at this stage. So I went out looking for his vehicle. I’d seen it earlier yesterday when I drove Erica out there.”

  “Of course,” I said. “You’d already met him. It was the only reason he would let you back into the house last night.” I turned to Erica. “I wish you’d told me Bryan drove you out to the beach yesterday. It might have saved a lot of this.”

  “I didn’t think you wanted to talk about Bryan,” she told me.

  “Then while I was looking for his truck you and Erica arrived. I waited, hoping you would leave without the body. When you did I went back and dragged it out. God, that was an awful chore. And I couldn’t very well go driving around the countryside with a corpse beside me so I drove his truck up to that same stretch of cliffs I’d popped Harry over. Goodbye, Mr. Catlin. Trudged back into town, picked up my own car and that was that.”

  When we got off the elevator Bryan spotted the lookout. “Send him up with the others,” he demanded.

  I told the World man to do as Bryan said. He got onto the elevator. We watched as the overhead indicator showed he was going up.

  “Erica found your piece to the set in Harry’s office at the Chronicle today, Bryan. Or at least that’s what she told me. Was that the one you got from the abo?”

  “Yes, and Erica did find it. I meant her to. She phoned me this morning in a state of excitement to tell me about Catlin’s death and how you’d found his pieces. That meant the set was complete now, except for my own piece. I suggested she go collect Harry’s things from work. And as soon as we hung up I just trotted around to Harry’s office and planted it down among his things.”

  He nudged Brandi. “Now, dear, if you’ll just step outside with me a moment to make sure nobody is lurking about…”

  I gripped my arm hard and stepped in front of them. “No, Bryan. Not that. I won’t let you take her out on the street with that loaded revolver.”

  Brandi flashed me an angry look.

  “Really, old man, I must make sure…”

  “I’ll go out with you, Bryan,” Erica told him.

  Bryan looked from the girl to Erica, then to me. He made a decision.

  “Oh, all right.”

  He took the bag from Brandi and shoved her aside. He motioned Erica ahead of him. “Sorry about this, old man,” he told me, and walked quickly after her.

  As they stepped out onto the walk he glanced quickly up and down the street, then slipped his hand with the revolver into his coat pocket and the two of them stepped out of sight.

  “Peter, we can’t let them!” cried Brandi.

  “Stay here! There are two more World men out there somewhere watching things. They’ll move in and pick him up before he gets too far.”

  I stopped talking when we heard the gunfire. Two shots. We started for the door just as Bryan staggered back into view. He stared in at us with an incredible expression, his little gun half in and half out of his pocket. Somebody fired three more shots from just out of our sight. One of them went through his cheek. He fell to the sidewalk.

  The two World men ran up just as Erica stepped back around the corner of the building and came into the lobby without a glance at Bryan. She was dry-eyed now, looking almost serene, with an ugly-looking automatic pistol hanging limply in her hand. She let it fall to the floor at my feet. It clattered on the marble.

  “Harry’s old breadbox gun, Peter. I told you about that.”

  “Yeah. I guess you never told Bryan you were carrying it.”

  “Of course not. I don’t tell everything to anybody.”

  “Was it to keep the chess set or because he used you, Erica?”

  “I’m not sure. A bit of both, I suppose. At any rate you’ll have to tell the police it was self-defense. He was armed. And you’d better get the set back upstairs before the police arrive. Wouldn’t do to have that all tied up in the legal process. When they arrive tell them I’m distraught, that I’ve gone into seclusion. Tell them I’ll be in Monday morning with my attorney to give them a statement. Goodnight, Peter.”

  She turned and left, ignoring the body outside.

  TWENTY-ONE

  We muddled through it somehow—police, dead body, my bleeding arm and all, though I wasn’t all that conscious of what was going on. I sent Brandi back upstairs with the chess set while the World men and I figured out what we’d tell the police. It wasn’t a great tale, but it was adequate, about Erica confronting Bryan Gilkerson and accusing him of murdering her husband for reasons unknown. No mention was made of the chess set or of the people up in my office, but I was able to tell them what we’d heard about Bryan killing Catlin and where they could find his body and van, and how they should check out his revolver with the slug they took out of Harry Shank and the one they might find in Catlin.

  The police had called for an ambulance when they saw I was bleeding and I blamed Bryan for that as well. He wouldn’t mind. He’d taken his big gamble and lost. He was dead by the time the cops got there. The ambulance that came for me was a regular city emergency vehicle and I liked that because they would take me to Mission Emergency, which has one of the best trauma units in the country. While they were loading me into it, the cops asked if I had any idea why Bryan Gilkerson had been going around killing people, and I told them I didn’t know, but that the last few times I’d seen him he’d been talking sort of strangely about demons being after him. I didn’t know if Bryan would like that yarn or not, but I didn’t worry much about it. I had my own troubles and just wanted to lie down and go to sleep somewhere.

  I got out of the hospital a couple of days later. Erica had telephoned me while I was still in there so I could tell her what we’d told the police. She left town a few days later, and I understand she’d had the bulk of her procee
ds from the sale of the chess set deposited in a bank in Switzerland. There was a lot of that done after the sale was completed.

  I didn’t get any $60,000 for my part in things. Not even close. Brandi sent me a draft for $10,000, exactly one percent of her share of the amount she and her father got. Battersea left town before I was out of the hospital and I never heard from him. I never heard from Erica again, either. The Duchess and Bowman, it turned out, had been going into hock for twenty years. When they got things paid off they didn’t have all that much left. They gave me a $2,000 partial payment and I told them to forget about the rest. They have me over for dinner from time to time.

  So I ended up with $12,000 plus the $2,000 retainer Erica had given me. It isn’t exactly the stuff dreams are made of any longer, but then it’s not all that bad for a week’s work, either. And as kind of a bonus Brandi swept back into town about six months later, a new person. She was all grown up now and had shed weight and was doing excellent work at some university up in British Columbia. She was hell-bent on being the best anthropologist ever. She couldn’t wait to go turn over rocks in African gorges, and I told her I bet she’d be a knockout of an anthropologist and she treated me to a great dinner and then I took her dancing up at the Fairmont Hotel and then…

  But no, I’m not going to say how we spent the rest of the evening, because just like Erica, I don’t tell everything to anybody.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JACK LYNCH modeled many aspects of Peter Bragg after himself. He graduated with a BA in journalism from the University of Washington and reported for several Seattle-area newspapers, and later for others in Iowa and Kansas. He ended up in San Francisco, where he briefly worked for a brokerage house and as a bartender in Sausalito, before joining the reporting staff of the San Francisco Chronicle. He left the newspaper after many years to write the eight Bragg novels, earning one Edgar and two Shamus nominations and a loyal following of future crime writers. He died in 2008 at age seventy-eight.

  WAKE UP AND DIE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1984, 2014 Jack Lynch

  Previously published as Sausalito

  ISBN: 1941298346

  ISBN-13: 9781941298343

  Published by Brash Books, LLC

  12120 State Line, #253

  Leawood, Kansas 66209

  www.brash-books.com

  BOOKS BY JACK LYNCH

  The Dead Never Forget

  Pieces of Death

  The Missing and the Dead

  Speak for the Dead

  Truth or Die

  Yesterday is Dead

  Die for Me

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  “That’s my daughter,” said Samuel P. Moss a little sadly, spreading the photographs out on his dining room table. He took the cold cigar from his mouth and turned to stare out the plate glass window. He lived in a white stucco row house in Stanford Heights, an upper-middle-class section of town not far from St. Francis Wood. From the window he could look out across San Francisco Bay, where tankers rode at anchor waiting to get into the Standard Oil pier up at Richmond. Beyond the Bay were the industrial flats of south Oakland. It wasn’t the world’s best view, but he seemed to like it better than what he saw in the photos.

  “I want you to find out who sent those things to me,” he said. “And why.”

  His daughter made me wish I was a few years younger. She was a saucy-looking black girl in her early twenties with a face that looked as if she was going to come chasing out of the photograph after you. She had proud breasts and a mean rump. You could tell all that because in some of the photos she wore only her panties, bra and a garter belt. In the others she was wearing just the garter belt. There was a man in the photos also. Tall, muscular and white. He wasn’t even wearing a garter belt.

  A note had accompanied the photos. It was typed on thick, white bond paper that had a faint scent I couldn’t place. The note read:

  What will Anderson say when he sees these?

  “Anderson is the name of her fiancé?”

  Moss turned back from the window. “That’s right. Duffy Anderson. He’s rich. His old man’s a big developer here in town, and in Los Angeles and some other places.” Moss gathered the photos together and slipped them back into their envelope, as if too much exposure might spread the word around the neighborhood. “Personally, I don’t care if the boy does see them. They’re probably for one of her modeling jobs.” He wasn’t looking at me when he said it.

  “What sort of modeling does she do?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. All kinds.”

  “What kind do you figure these would be for?”

  “Oh, you know—maybe one of those mail-order underwear places in Hollywood. I’ve seen their ads. Skimpy stuff for the bedroom.”

  I’d seen their ads too. They’d never looked anything like what had come in the mail to Samuel P. Moss.

  “I’d be more worried if the Andersons found out what I did for a living,” said Moss. “They think I’m in the import-export business.”

  In a way, he was. Money came in and went out according to the performance of race horses and football teams, among other things.

  “Supposing the pictures aren’t for one of her modeling jobs? Have you ever seen the man she’s with?”

  From the way he looked at me and then turned away again, I could tell he didn’t want to believe the photos weren’t for one of her modeling jobs. But the thought wasn’t a new one to him.

  “No, I don’t know the man. But then Melody and me don’t share all our secrets any longer.” He sat down, looking weary. He had a drawn face, as if he’d had some trouble sleeping nights. “I mean, we get along okay. We just aren’t that close anymore. Maybe if her mother was still alive…”

  “And the photos came yesterday?” I asked, turning over the manila envelope.

  “Yes. I thought about it overnight, then phoned Dave Baumer. He recommended you.”

  Baumer was an attorney I’d worked with. “What does your daughter have to say about it?”

  Moss shook his head and lit the cigar. “Haven’t told her about it. Don’t intend to. You’re not going to either.”

  Now it was my turn to sit down. “You mean I’m supposed to find out what’s behind it without asking her about the guy she’s showing such a swell time to?”

  “That’s right. It would mortify me to tell her about this.”

  “It wouldn’t mortify me.”

  “She’d think I was snooping into her life again. Don’t tell her.”

  I studied him a minute. This time he stared me back straight in the eye. He was serious.

  “Baumer said you were good at your work. You want the job or not?”

  “I’m not sure yet. When was the last time you snooped into your daughter’s life?”

  “That’s family business. Not a part of this.”

  I leaned back and shook my head. “If I do take the job, I hope the bookie bus
iness is pretty good these days.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “With the sort of hobbles you’re putting on me, I’m going to have to ask more questions of more people. And I’m apt to stick out in the circles she travels in.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Mr. Bragg. She doesn’t travel in my circles. She travels in yours. You oughtta be able to see that from the gentleman in the pictures with her, and the boy she plans to marry. He’s white too.”

  I took one of the photos part way out of the envelope again. “Is this a fairly recent photo? Does your daughter have the same hair style now?”

  “That’s how she looks.”

  “What can you tell me about the Andersons?”

  “You don’t suspect them, do you?”

  “At this point I suspect everybody but you and me.”

  It put a new thought into his head. “Well, like I said, the old man, Paul Anderson, is a big-deal developer. Shopping centers, things like that. I never met him myself, but my brother Arthur knows him. As for the boy…” Samuel P. rolled the cigar around in his mouth for a moment, then took it out and stared at the end of it. “Well, he’s okay, I guess. We’ve never had any heart-to-heart talks, if you know what I mean. I do have the feeling the boy might not have too much backbone, but then what the hell, I’m not the one marrying him. Melody will take care of that, in time. Then there’s a Mrs. Anderson, and I think Melody mentioned that the boy has a sister.”

  I made a couple of notes. “How is business? And I’m serious this time.”

  “Huh?”

  I indicated the phones and betting slips spread around the table. “How’s the book going? You getting along all right with everyone you deal with?”

 

‹ Prev