The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “Like whatever turns you on,” she replied. She gave me a little wave of her hand and left the studio.

  “Wow,” said Mary Ellen. “What were you two talking about?”

  I cleared my throat. “Benny, we’d better get on the road.”

  I’d made a reservation at a motel out on Aurora Avenue, north of the downtown area. Benny followed along and went up with me while I hung some things in the closet. He whistled when he saw the revolver and pistol I’d packed.

  “You really use those things?”

  “When it’s necessary. Other people have them too, you know.”

  “Yeah. I found that out.”

  I considered leaving the handguns locked in the suitcase in the motel room. I didn’t want to be packing them around inside Benny’s place, in case I got into any horseplay with his two boys. I decided to take along the .38 revolver and leave it locked in the rental car’s glove compartment.

  Benny lived out farther north of the motel, in a pleasant neighborhood of split-level homes on gently rolling terrain with enough pine trees and foliage around to give you a sense of privacy and rural spaciousness. Benny had phoned home again from the motel to let Dolly know he had a dinner guest in tow. From his end of the conversation you could tell his wife didn’t mind having a dinner guest, but she tried to find out who it was. Benny wouldn’t tell her and hung up chuckling to himself.

  Benny parked in his driveway and I left the rental car on the street out front. I followed him into a dim living room. Stairs to the left led to an upper hallway with the sound of a television set coming down it. Women’s voices came from through the dining room to our right from a kitchen beyond. I trailed Benny through the dining area and nearly bumped into his back when he stopped abruptly.

  “Oh boy,” he said in a troubled tone.

  There was a woman standing with her back to us in the kitchen doorway talking to a voice I recognized as Dolly’s. The woman in the doorway was wearing a soft gray sheath that emphasized her neat, slender figure. I couldn’t make out the color of her hair in the backlighting from the kitchen, but there was something familiar about her stance in the doorway. I was trying to remember when she turned in response to what Benny had said.

  Her jaw dropped and so did mine. It was Lorna, my ex-wife. The last time I’d seen her was a dozen years earlier, on the morning of the day she had left San Francisco on the arm of a trumpet player with the Stan Kenton band. The last time I’d spoken to her had been later that same day, when she’d phoned me at the Chronicle to tell me she’d decided we’d outgrown each other and had wished me a happy life. Now, standing in the doorway to Benny’s kitchen, a puzzled Dolly Bartlett appeared behind her and said what the rest of us were thinking.

  “Oh my God!”

  THREE

  There followed one of the most confusing evenings of my life.

  Dolly pushed past Lorna into the room and turned on the overhead light. She turned and gave me a hug and a kiss. Benny was right—she’d put on a little weight, but she carried it well and she looked matronly and motherly and just fine.

  “You idiot!” she told Benny. “Why didn’t you tell me you were bringing him home? Or that he was in town, even?”

  Benny threw up his hands. “How’d I know she’d be here?”

  Lorna and I were still too surprised to say anything. Dolly took both Lorna and me by the hand. “Look, you two, this is really inexcusable. If this is awkward or embarrassing, we can forget about dinner and just make some other arrangements.” She turned to Benny. “I asked Lorna to stay for dinner before you told me you were bringing anybody home, you knucklehead.”

  “Hells bells, I thought it’d be a pleasant surprise,” Benny complained.

  “No,” Lorna said finally, a blush rising from her long neck. “It’s perfectly all right, with me, at least. I have to get over the shock of it is all. I’m not—I mean, it won’t bother me to sit down at the dinner table with Peter if it won’t bother him. But I don’t know. We haven’t spoken since, since I left San Francisco. Pete?”

  She looked at me in a way that told me she remembered the circumstances of that day just as clearly as I did. She was embarrassed. I felt she had every right to be. But I spoke what I felt.

  “No, that’s okay with me. It’s been a long time. I’ve gotten over all that.”

  “If you haven’t,” Benny said brightly, “you can always go back to Zither.”

  “Uncle Pete!” cried a boy’s voice behind me.

  It was Timmy. He bounded into the room and tried to bring me down with a tackle. I ruffled his head, and now the younger boy I’d known as Fred, who now was Al, joined us as well.

  “What’s all the racket in here?” he asked. “Hi, Pete.”

  “Uncle Pete to you, buster,” said Benny.

  “Who’s Zither?” Lorna asked.

  “Just somebody he met at the office,” Benny told her, rubbing his hands together. “Well, everybody, what the hell you say we all have a drink and make ourselves comfortable?”

  “Sounds like a good idea to me,” Lorna told him.

  “I could use one,” I added. “A martini, maybe, if you have a large glass. With ice.”

  “I think we could all use one,” said Dolly, raising her eyes to the ceiling.

  “Hot dog,” said Al. “I’ll have a lemon twist with mine, please.”

  “You’ll have a soda pop and consider yourself lucky,” Dolly told him.

  I looked away from Lorna long enough to grapple with the boys some. Although he was two years older, Timmy was only a couple of inches taller than his brother. He was thin and wore glasses, like his dad. He had a serious look about him even now. Al was a little chunkier, and when he wasn’t doing anything else, the younger boy stood around with his hands on his hips. He looked as if he should have had a cigar in his mouth and a derby hat on his head. Benny had been right. The boy definitely was an Al.

  When Benny went into the kitchen to fix drinks, the boys went back to their room to watch television and Lorna and Dolly and I went into the living room. Dolly turned on lamps, and then the three of us stood around awkwardly until Benny returned with the martinis. He passed out glasses the size of coffee mugs, filled with ice and gin. We all clinked glass and had a toasting sip. Just before I took a seat on the sofa, Lorna raised a tentative hand and touched my cheek.

  “You’ve aged,” she said quietly. “I didn’t remember your face being so craggy.”

  “Haggard,” I told her. “I’ve been through some haggard times. Sure, I’ve aged. But it doesn’t look as if you have, even a bit.”

  She blushed again and turned to sit in an easy chair. I looked at her closely. She really hadn’t aged, not noticeably. She had the same slender figure and unlined skin. Her light auburn hair fell just shy of her shoulders, shaped on the sides to show off that long patrician neck and unusual face. There was no single remarkable feature about it, but her nose and mouth and chin all just seemed perfectly proportioned for her. It was a face men spent a lot of time studying.

  When Lorna noticed that I was staring at her, she lowered her eyes and sipped at her martini. I felt a sigh coming on and tried to keep it subdued. She looked just about the same as she had on that miserable, black Sunday when she’d left town with the horn player. I thought I’d put that all behind me years ago, but seeing her there across from me in the sheath that flattered her figure, her face flushed, as pretty and as desirable as I’d ever remembered her, it all came flooding back. Maybe I hadn’t still been in love with her the day she left, but it had been a terrible experience nonetheless.

  I remembered saying to myself over and over at the time, a trumpet player, for God’s sake. A lousy goddamn traveling trumpet player. The fact that he had a respected position in a big-name orchestra didn’t matter at all. It could have been the angel Gabriel and I’d have felt the same way. It led to my quitting my job at the Chronicle. I found an apartment in Sausalito and spent a time wallowing in self-pity. But I’d put that
behind me long ago, I told myself now.

  “Bragg, you’re staring,” Benny chided me.

  I shifted my eyes away from Lorna and realized I hadn’t heard any of the conversation that had been going on around me. I knew Lorna hadn’t been saying anything. I’d been watching those lips along with the rest of her. She’d hardly glanced at me since we sat down. Benny and his wife must have been trying to carry on a conversation by themselves. I noticed my martini was drained. So was Lorna’s.

  “Benny, Dolly, I apologize,” I told them. “This is just a surprise I wasn’t ready for.” I glanced across the room. “Lorna, how have you been?”

  “Oh, fine, just fine, Peter,” she said, blinking and looking at me with a brief smile. “And you? Are you still with the Chronicle?”

  “God, no. I quit the paper a long time ago.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said sincerely. “You were a good newspaperman.”

  “Let’s hope he’s as good at what he does now,” said Benny, circling the room with a tray and carrying empty glasses back to the kitchen.

  “What’s that?” Lorna asked.

  “I do investigative work,” I told her.

  “He’s a private eye,” said Dolly with a wink.

  “Oh golly,” said Lorna. “Are you serious?”

  “Serious as all get-out when I’m working,” I told her. “What about yourself? You still with the horn player?”

  The blush started up from her throat again. “No, that didn’t last hardly any time at all. I—I live alone these days. I’m partner in a restaurant and catering business downtown.”

  “Restaurant?” I shook my head. “Sounds unusual for you, somehow.”

  “Oh, I don’t do the cooking, silly. I’ve been back to school since we knew each other. I’m into the business end of things. There’s a lot more to a restaurant and catering business than just putting food on the table. But it’s all pretty boring. It pays well, but it’s boring.”

  “How long have you been back in Seattle?”

  Lorna looked across at Dolly. “Five years? Six?”

  “About that,” Dolly agreed.

  Benny was back, handing out fresh drinks.

  “You never mentioned her,” I told him.

  “Didn’t figure it was anything you’d be interested in,” he replied. “I mean, ahem, I know things were a little rocky there for you for a while…”

  He mercifully dropped it, but Lorna’s head snapped up, all interest. “Rocky? When was that?” she asked.

  “It’s nothing,” I told her, giving Benny a look. “He’s just rattling on over things he doesn’t know anything about.”

  We made it through dinner in a yaw and jerk sort of fashion, the conversation taking odd circles and turns, but you had to expect that under the circumstances. Dolly might recall something the four of us had done together when we all were still living in Seattle, and that might prompt Lorna to relate it to something that happened to an ex-husband post-Bragg, which would cause an awkward pause in the conversation that I might try to varnish over with an amusing incident that occurred when I was a bartender in Sausalito, or maybe something out of my present tradecraft.

  We were back in the living room having coffee when Benny’s troubles and the reason I was back in town came up. We’d waited until the boys were back in their room. Benny promised to tell them about his woes in the morning. Benny then told Lorna about things, and during the retelling Dolly stared at the carpet, opening and closing one hand. Benny’s account was straightforward enough, more somber than the version he’d given me. Lorna listened intently. I closed my eyes, listening for something he might have left out in the earlier version. I didn’t find anything.

  “But what will you do about it?” Lorna asked. “Peter?”

  I opened my eyes.

  “I put you to sleep, for Christ’s sake?” asked Benny.

  “No, I was just trying to concentrate on what you were saying, trying to find something new.” I turned back to Lorna and opened my mouth to answer her, but words didn’t come right then. She was sitting with her back slightly arched, her coffee cup and saucer held in both hands in front of her. The hem of her straight, unbelted dress was hiked slightly above her knees. She was wearing light tinted hosiery, but it didn’t conceal the quality of her knees. Lorna would see to that. She had about the finest-looking knees of any woman I’d ever known. But then she’d had about the finest-looking legs, from thigh to toe. I made myself speak.

  “What I’ll do is beat up on Benny until he tells me something he doesn’t even know he knows. That’ll give me an idea to pursue and eventually will lead to whoever it is who thinks it’s important to get Benny out of the way.”

  “What could I know I haven’t already told you?”

  “Somewhere in your files or your head or somewhere there’s probably a story you’ve done, something or somebody you’ve written about in the past. And it might not have meant much then, but maybe it’s taken on a new dimension and poses some sort of threat to somebody now. That’s probably where the answer is.”

  “But I don’t write that sort of stuff.”

  “You don’t understand, Benny. Things and people change. What might have appeared innocent at one time can take on a whole different perspective at another time, depending on other circumstances.”

  “That makes sense,” said Dolly, taking a sip of her coffee.

  “Am I that dumb?” Benny complained. “It still doesn’t make sense to me. Does it to you, Lorna?”

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “Not on the face of it maybe, but Peter always did have a way of seeing things a little differently from the rest of us. That’s why he always was so good at what he did.”

  She had her head cocked slightly to one side. She was putting some of the same moves on me that she’d used, consciously or not, in the days leading up to the one on which I’d asked her to marry me. A lifetime ago. With a conscious effort, probably not lost on anybody in the room, I turned back to Benny.

  “For instance, you said something in your office about visiting the prison over at Walla Walla. What was that all about?”

  “When I zinged out the metal detector, right. That was to interview an old con named—Horgan? Hogan? Something like that. Well, he wasn’t an old con, really. He’d been serving his first prison term ever, but he had a pretty heavy background in what is loosely referred to as organized crime. The old Seattle Magazine, since folded, shudder, wanted me to do a piece on his return to society, et cetera. I actually made him sound like a rather lovable old scalawag. Surely he wouldn’t wish me any harm.”

  “Things change. Do you have a copy of the story you did down at the office?”

  “I should have.”

  “I’d like to look at it tomorrow. But first I’d like to meet you at Woodland Park on your way downtown. I want you to show me where the shooting occurred.”

  “I could gladly go the rest of my days without returning to that particular site.”

  “I’ll have my hardware with me.”

  Lorna had been sipping her coffee. She lowered the cup. “Hardware? What hardware?”

  “His gats,” Benny told her. “One of ’em’s a big ugly sucker. Looks like it could stop an elephant.”

  “It’s a .45-caliber automatic pistol,” I told them, “which really is a misnomer since its operation is only semiautomatic and it couldn’t stop an elephant, probably, but it’ll stop most men I can think of.”

  Lorna put the cup and saucer on a little table beside her and leaned forward slightly. It hiked up the sheath a little farther above her knees. “You really carry a gun, Peter?”

  “I really do. Other people carry them. Some of them try to use theirs on me or on people I’m out there to protect. A person does what has to be done.”

  “Have you been shot at?”

  “I sure have.”

  “Have you shot other people?”

  “A fair number of them.”

  She seemed to gr
ow conscious of the skirt. Her eyes never left mine, but she lifted herself just enough to tug down her hemline. “It sounds like a pretty dangerous way for a man to make a living,” she said with a little smile.

  “It keeps a guy on his toes.”

  “Do you really run into that many rough people?” Dolly asked.

  “No, not really. But the ones you do run into can be pretty bad actors.”

  Benny cleared his throat. “The .45’s back at his motel. But he’s carrying a smaller gat out in the glove compartment of his car. A revolver.”

  “Oh God, really?” asked Lorna. “Could I see it?”

  “Not in this house,” said Dolly, glancing up the stairs.

  “Dolly’s right,” I told them. “That’s why it’s out in the car.”

  It was a little after nine o’clock when Dolly began to stifle yawns. “I’ve put in a long day,” she announced, “and now I’m going to chase you people out of here. Why don’t you give your ex a ride home, Bragg. Save Benny a trip.”

  “Sure, if it’s all right with Lorna.”

  “Of course it is,” she told me, while I thought about the trumpet player.

  I made plans to meet Benny the next morning and we said good night. When we were sitting out front warming the car engine, Lorna asked to see the revolver. I opened the glove compartment, broke open the cylinder, and showed it to her. She didn’t want to touch it, but just stared at it a moment, then lifted her eyes.

  “It seems to fit,” she told me.

  “Fit what?”

  “How your face has changed. The look about your eyes.”

  I put away the gun and backed around into Benny’s driveway. “Don’t you have a car?”

  “I do,” Lorna told me, “but I helped stage a wedding party out near Kenmore this afternoon. Instead of going back to town in the company wagon, Dolly and I met to do some shopping.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Actually, not far from where I guess somebody shot at Benny. I have a condo on the west side of Phinney Ridge.”

  I started in that direction. Without the presence of Dolly and Benny, our conversation tended to lag. There was both too much and not enough for us to talk about by ourselves. I should have left well enough alone probably, but that isn’t my style. I was driving south along Greenwood Avenue, starting up the north end of the ridge just past 85th Street, which in my youth had been the old city limits.