The Complete Bragg Thriller Box Set

by Jack Lynch

  “It’s like sleeping in a loft,” she told me. “Always wanted a sleeping loft.”

  She was wearing a straight black skirt. Like the sheath that she’d been wearing the night before, it showed off her slim waist to good advantage. She also wore a white cotton blouse with long sleeves and a high collar with a thin black string tie around it. She looked like a fresh-faced college girl. Her hair this night was wrapped atop her head in casual-looking swirls, but it was kept firmly in place with clips and other whatnots.

  “If we do go out to dinner, people will think you’re my daughter.”

  “Let them think what they like. What can I get you to drink?”

  “I’d better stay away from the martinis tonight. Maybe a gin and tonic if you have it.”

  “I have it,” she said with a wink. “The phone’s on the stand at the end of the sofa.”

  She’d gotten over the fluster I thought I’d heard earlier. Maybe she practiced yoga or something. She went briskly to the kitchen while I crossed to the phone. It was a little before six o’clock, about the time the man I was going to call would be sitting down with his wife and any of the grown children who might be there to have a glass of sherry before dinner. It was a good time to call him. Make it seem more like a social call. Although the man I was going to call and I had cooperated on matters of mutual interest in days gone by, I didn’t care for anybody to get the idea we did business together, in the generally accepted meaning of the word. I looked up his number in the pocket address book I carried and used my credit card to place the call. A male voice answered.

  “My name is Peter Bragg,” I told him. “I’m a private investigator. Mr. Drocco and I have met in the past. I am phoning from out of town. If it wouldn’t be an inconvenience, I would like to speak with him.”

  The man said he would tell Mr. Drocco. Lorna was looking over at me with a questioning expression. I gave her back the wink with a little smile. She brought over the gin and tonic for me and what looked like a martini on the rocks for herself. She sat in a nearby chair as Drocco came on the line.

  “Mr. Peter Bragg, so nice to hear from you. How are you?”

  “Pretty fair, Mr. Drocco. How about yourself and your lovely wife?”

  “Both of us are excellent. She asked me to give you her regards.”

  “Please thank her for me, and give her my love in return.”

  “I will do that. My man told me you were calling from out of town.”

  “That’s right. I’m up in Seattle for a few days, trying to help an old friend who seems to be having some problems. He’s a writer named Benny Bartlett. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.”

  “No, it is not a name that I know.”

  “Well, he’s been threatened by somebody. Was told over the phone to leave town. A couple of near-miss death attempts have been made on his life.”

  “Near-miss?”

  “It would seem that way. As if somebody checked their swing at the last minute. Then just this afternoon it appears somebody tried to abduct his two young boys. And as near as I can find, there’s no good reason behind it all. He doesn’t write stories of a very sensational nature. He has a lot of friends and no known enemies. I’m trying to get to the bottom of it all for him.”

  “And from me you would like some sort of contact to query?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Drocco. A specific person, as a matter of fact. Benny interviewed a man named Julius Hogan some while back, just before Mr. Hogan was released from Walla Walla, the state prison up here. Benny said the two of them hit it off pretty well. I read the piece on Mr. Hogan that Benny wrote. It was warm and funny. I thought Mr. Hogan might be willing to discuss my friend’s problems with me. Do you know him, sir?”

  “Of course I know Bomber.” He chuckled briefly. “We are a relatively small circle out here, Peter. When would you like to see him?”

  “The sooner the better, under the circumstances. This evening, if possible. If not, tomorrow maybe.”

  Drocco said he’d phone Bomber and get right back to me. I hung up and had a sip of the gin and tonic.

  “Drocco?” asked Lorna. “He sounds a little like an Italian hood.”

  “He’s Sicilian,” I told her. “At least that’s what his antecedents were. And yes, I’ve been told he’s Mafia, but you wouldn’t call him a hood, or at least I wouldn’t.”

  “You, Peter? Working with the Mafia? Old straight-arrow Peter Bragg?”

  “No, it’s not like that. I don’t work with them. In fact I’ve gone up against some of those people on a couple of occasions. People from back East and the Midwest. But sometimes Drocco and I exchange bits of information or small favors, like the one I just asked of him. An introduction.”

  Lorna’s look was dubious. “Sounds to me you’re walking a pretty thin line there.”

  “Thin, but clearly delineated,” I told her, having some more of the drink. “It’s all in the way you express yourself. Like in the conversation we just had. I didn’t hold back anything. And from Benny’s standpoint, it was an affirmative development.”

  “How so?”

  “Chances are Drocco’s colleagues aren’t at the root of Benny’s problems. If they were, Drocco probably would know about it. That’s why I mentioned Benny’s name up front. If the mob was connected to whatever is going on, Drocco would have said something like, ‘It is a name I have heard others speak.’ Something like that. That would have told me that if I didn’t want to get into the gritty, tit-for-tat relationship I try to avoid…”

  “Doing business with the mob, you mean.”

  “Okay, doing business with the mob. If I didn’t want it to come to that, I would have said I was sorry to have bothered him and wished him a happy Halloween or something and hung up. But he gave me a green light, and he’ll ask Hogan to talk to me.”

  Lorna took a sip of the martini and leaned back, her face taking on an expression I remembered from the past. It was a faintly amused look, the sort she’d give you when she thought you were full of hot air.

  “How did you and this Drocco person come up with all this subterfuge? Just sit down together one afternoon like a couple of kids in the clubhouse to work out your signals?”

  “No, it just sort of developed. I guess I have a feel for that sort of thing.”

  Lorna snorted.

  “You’re mocking me,” I told her with a straight face. “You used to get on my nerves in a lot of ways, Lorna, but you never used to mock me.”

  She covered her eyes with one hand and laughed quietly. “I’m sorry,” she told me, “but I think it’s hilarious, this cautious, unsoiled relationship you have with a bunch of goons and killers.”

  “A lot of them have put that pretty much behind them,” I told her. “They put their money into other things and play it pretty straight.”

  “Sure they do,” she told me. “How did this whacky situation come about in the first place? Did you just look up Mafia in the Yellow Pages?”

  “No, it just developed out of a job I had. His youngest daughter, a girl named Maria, was a pretty wild youngster when she was growing up. She’d gotten into some minor scrapes in the past, then one night found herself in a situation that could have sent her to prison. She wasn’t really involved that much, it just looked that way.”

  “Involved in what?”

  “A double homicide. She knew some people who knew some people, and unknowingly was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Witnesses later identified her, and the cops were able to build a pretty good case that she had motive and opportunity. I was hired by the family of her boyfriend, a kid with too much money to spend who had the same streak of wildness in him that Maria had. So for a period of time, my interests were the same as Drocco’s. He had his own people working on the same thing, of course, but I was a little faster. I managed to show the boy and Maria just happened to be shacked up together at the same motel where the killings occurred at the same time they occurred. And just before she was released to her family, I had
the opportunity to give Maria my lecture for wayward youth. It basically involves trying to scare the bejesus out of them to the extent they somewhat modify their future behavior. And apparently that, along with the time she had to spend in jail on suspicion of murder, did in fact tone down her act in the days that followed. Drocco appreciated that. He invited me to an afternoon lawn party one time to tell me so. We’ve been…acquaintances, I guess you could call it, ever since.”

  “God,” Lorna drawled. “There he goes, my ex. Confidant to kings and crooks.”

  “Mock, mock, mock…”

  She went to the kitchen and fixed fresh drinks. She’d just resumed her seat when the phone rang. I reached for it, then hesitated. “Maybe you’d better answer.”

  “Oh, go ahead.”

  “But it might be a boyfriend.”

  She waved a hand in dismissal, but then got up and answered it.

  “Yes, he is,” she said in a sultry tone she’d developed since the old days. “I’ll ask him to put on his trousers and come to the phone.”

  “Thanks, Lorna,” I said quietly with my hand over the receiver. “That really adds class to things.”

  She smirked, and I said hello.

  “I have just spoken with Julius,” Drocco told me. “He will be happy to meet with you, but it would not be convenient for him to see you this evening. He will see you tomorrow afternoon. After one o’clock, he said.” He gave me Hogan’s phone number and said I should phone Bomber in the morning to get directions to his home.

  “Mr. Drocco, I appreciate this. Thank you very much.”

  “You are quite welcome. I hope you are able to solve your friend’s problems. Uh, Peter?”

  “Yes?”

  “Who was that woman who answered the telephone just now?”

  “Who answered the phone?” I repeated, looking over at Lorna. “It’s a dame who’s caused me a lot of grief over the years. Maybe I should have talked to you about putting a contract out on her a long time ago.”

  Lorna sat up with a stricken look, one hand to her throat.

  “You are making a joke,” said Drocco in all seriousness.

  “Yeah, I am. Actually, she’s my ex-wife. We split up before you and I met. She’s living here in Seattle now. She’s a friend of my friend.”

  Drocco chortled. “Of course. Well, have a good evening, my friend.” He was still chuckling when he hung up.

  “You bastard!” Lorna cried when I put down the phone. “That was a ghastly thing to say.”

  “Back at ’cha,” I told her.

  She swallowed the rest of her drink and got to her feet. Her long legs switched and her round rump rolled as she crossed to the kitchen and poured gin into her glass. “I don’t think I should go out with you now whether you’re free or not,” she told me.

  I got to my feet with a shrug. She came back from the kitchen with a little pout on her face. She put down her drink beside the telephone and took hold of the lapels of my jacket.

  “I don’t mean that,” she said. “But that was a terrible thing you said to that man. What if you’d had a heart attack right then and died before you were able to tell him it was a bad joke. He might have sent somebody after me.”

  “No worry. He wouldn’t hurt a pretty thing like you.”

  A slight blush rose from her throat again. She had always liked men to flatter her. “Well, what about this evening,” she said. “Are you free now?”

  “I’m free.”

  “Then let’s finish our drinks and go into town. I want you to see my restaurant.”

  Scandia Farms was on Pine Street, just off Fifth Avenue. We parked in a basement garage and took an elevator up to the restaurant level. The place had a well-scrubbed, Scandinavian flavor to it, with gleaming blue and white walls, bright lighting, white tile floors and pretty waitresses in milkmaid costumes. She took me through the place, introducing me to people as her ex-husband, the private detective from San Francisco. I asked her not to do that.

  “Why not? You’re getting a free dinner out of it. And you have a lot to make up for with the contract remark to Mr. Drocco. The least you can do is let me flaunt you a little.”

  When we settled down to eat, she ordered salmon and I had some sort of chicken dish. She showed a take-charge side to her when dealing with the help, but on a couple of instances when our conversation touched on things of a more personal nature, she would revert to the awkward girl she’d been the day before, hesitant in speech and manner.

  She did something else as well. Our original waitress was a tall, dark-eyed brunette whose gaze and smile would linger over me whenever she came to the table. Partway through the meal, Lorna excused herself and went over to say something to the hostess who had seated us. From that moment on we had a different waitress, one who devoted full-time attention to Lorna.

  “What did you do, fire the first one?” I asked her.

  “Who?” Lorna asked. All innocence.

  “The brunette waitress who had eyes for me.”

  “No, I didn’t fire her. I just asked that somebody else wait on us. I didn’t bring you in here to flirt with other women.”

  “I wasn’t flirting.”

  “But you wanted to.”

  “What if I did?”

  “Oh, stop it. Forget you’re my ex-husband and try to pretend you’re my date.”

  “Okay.” I put one hand under the table and squeezed her knee. She gave a little jump and moved her legs.

  “Oh, stop it. You’re acting like some teenage geek.”

  I had to laugh, but right then her face took on a troubled expression at something she saw in back of me.

  “Damn it,” she breathed, but then assumed a dazzling smile.

  A couple of men stopped by the table to say hello. One of them was a tall, small-headed, balding man with thick lips. A pair of rimless glasses had slid a little ways down his nose. He was wearing a knockout of a green and white plaid sports jacket. The other was a short, compact man with a lazy smile dressed sanely in a dark suit.

  “Lorna, my dear,” said the tall, older gent. “I thought you’d left for the day.”

  “I came back to show off the place to an old friend from San Francisco. Peter, this is Gene Olson. He’s senior partner in our firm.”

  I stood up and shook hands. The man had a friendly grip and he sounded affable enough, but it was a shame that with his looks he didn’t at least have somebody to pick out his clothes for him.

  “I’m happy to meet you, sir,” said Olson. “And I’d like you to meet Brad Thackery. He’s with the Seahawks organization. They’re looking for somebody to cater the big post-season party. Victory party, we’re hoping this year, and I’ve been giving him the old Scandia Farms pitch.”

  I shook hands with the younger man. He met my eyes just long enough to be polite, before turning his attention to Lorna.

  “And it’s nice to see you again, Miss Bragg,” said Thackery.

  I looked at Lorna and blinked.

  “It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Thackery. All I can add to what Gene has told you is I think it would be a thrill to accommodate your team and friends.”

  I raised an eyebrow, but I seemed to be the only one there who thought that an odd turn of phrase to use regarding a small herd of hardy jocks.

  “As I told Gene, you’re one of the front-runners,” Thackery told her.

  They chatted a little more, Thackery staring at Lorna with his little smile, Olson beaming, Lorna’s eyes darting between the Seahawks man and her partner.

  When the two men made their farewell and left us, I sat back down and looked across at my ex-wife. She lowered her eyes and fiddled with the napkin in her lap. A moment later she looked up to catch the eye of our waitress and point at her coffee cup. I waited until the woman had brought our coffee, poured and left again before I cleared my throat. When I did that, Lorna dropped the spoon she’d had in her hand.

  “That guy from the Seahawks, Thackery. I thought I heard him call you Miss
Bragg.”

  “That’s right,” she said quietly, still avoiding my eyes.

  “You told me you’d had two husbands since me.”

  She nodded, then looked up with a fleeting smile. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind. I just don’t get it.”

  She made a little shrug. Maybe it was my imagination, but she seemed to have wilted some since the men had visited our table. She looked a little defensive and vulnerable. It’s the sort of look that can bring out the baser instincts in a man. At least in this man. Time, I told myself, to keep my wits about me and my hands at home, although I noted that Lorna had launched one of her own toward my side of the table.

  “I took your name again after my last marriage,” she told me. “Of all the men—I mean, of all the names I’ve had, I liked yours best of all.”

  “Why didn’t you revert to your maiden name?”

  She looked up at me then. “Lorna Wilks? You’ve got to be kidding. No, Lorna Bragg sounds just fine to me, thank you.”

  She’d turned her head partly to one side and withdrew her hand from no-man’s-land. And then she began to cry.

  SEVEN

  We didn’t spend much more time at Scandia Farms. Lorna couldn’t compose herself and we left soon after she’d started weeping. We went down to the car and I asked her if there was anyplace she wanted to go. She shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Peter. I’m afraid the evening is ruined for me, through no fault of your own. Please take me home.”

  So I took her home. I walked her to the building’s front door and waited while she unlocked and opened it. I hung back, expecting her to want to work through whatever misery she had on her own, but she reached out and tugged my sleeve.