by Dan Willis
Alex looked at the mobster, unsure of whether he’d just made a joke. When he looked back up the sidewalk toward the club, however, he stopped short.
“What?” Connie asked, his hand twitching toward the bulge under his coat.
“The doorman,” Alex said, nodding to where the man in the expensive suit had stood. “He went inside.”
“Probably had to use the can,” Connie said with a shrug. “His stand-in will be out in a minute.”
Alex couldn’t argue with Connie’s logic, it made perfect sense, but something about the doorman’s disappearance bothered him.
Working with mobsters is making you jumpy.
Alex started forward again but no replacement doorman had appeared when they reached the entrance to The Eastern Star. Brassy swing music filtered out through the door and Alex only hesitated for a moment before he pulled it open. The room beyond was typical for a nightclub. A long bar of whitewashed wood ran the length of the left-hand wall where patrons sat on padded stools chatting and drinking. To the right was a raised platform where twenty or thirty tables were arranged for dining and in the center was a packed dance floor.
Since it was just after seven, the club was crowded and raucous with the noise of the band, the dancing, and the incessant buzz of conversations straining to be heard over the music.
“How do we find the bookie in all this?” Connie said, coming up beside Alex.
Alex didn’t bother yelling over the din, he just held up the compass, placing it on the flat of his hand. The needle pointed off slightly to the right and Alex nodded that way. He started forward, climbing up the three steps that led up to the dining platform.
Following the compass needle, he threaded his way through the sea of tables and diners with Connie in tow. As he neared the end of the platform, Alex could see that a row of booths lined the back wall of the building. They were beyond the bright lights that hung over the diners, and each booth had a single lamp on its table, no doubt for romantic atmosphere. Several of the booths were occupied, but Alex’s eye caught movement at the one at the far end. A man stood there, leaning down over someone who was seated. As Alex watched, the standing man turned and pointed right at him. In the dim light, Alex hadn’t recognized the bouncer from the front door, but now he could see him clearly. Below in the booth sat a lean, shrewd-looking man who took one look at Alex, then jumped up and ran.
11
The Fish
Of all the things Alex had expected to happen when he met Colton Pierce’s bookie, having the man take one look at him and run wasn’t even on the list. Alex just stood, stunned by the fleeing man. After all, Alex had never been to Washington before, and he didn’t recognize the man, so how would the bookie even know him?
“I got him,” Connie said, charging past the flat-footed Alex.
The bookie reached the corner where the back of the club met the sidewall and he shouldered his way through a service door into a dark hallway beyond. This finally shook Alex into action. He held up the compass and watched as the needle began to sweep back toward the center of the club. The bookie was still in the building and looking for a way out.
Alex turned and dashed back the way he had come. The front door to The Eastern Star was in the middle of the building, but if Alex could get outside before the bookie, he might be able to prevent the man from jumping in a cab and disappearing. The finding rune would still let Alex track him, but when the quarry knew he was being chased, it made it that much harder to run him down.
Checking the compass as he hit the street, Alex turned right and ran to the corner of the building. Rounding it, he saw a dark alleyway separating the nightclub from the next building down the block. As Alex ran, he could hear the sound of splintering wood and curses. He put on a burst of speed and rounded the corner into the alley just in time to collide with the fleeing bookie. He only came up to Alex’s chin, but he’d been looking back over his shoulder when Alex rounded the corner, and despite the differences in their size, the impact knocked Alex back. Losing his balance, Alex fell onto his backside, but he managed to grab the bookie’s suit coat, pulling the man down after him.
Alex wrapped his free arm around the bookie, holding him tight, but the little man still had plenty of fight in him. He balled up his fists and started slamming Alex in the kidney over and over. Alex tried to twist away from the blows, taking them on his back, but that loosened the hold he had on his assailant.
“Enough!” Connie growled, and suddenly the bookie was yanked free from Alex’s loosening grasp.
Above him, Connie held the bookie by the back of his jacket and without any seeming effort, slammed the man bodily into the back wall of the nightclub. Alex tried to get up, but the pain in his side was making that difficult. The bookie had got several solid hits in, and Alex’s side ached.
“Don’t you move,” Connie said, jamming a snub-nosed .38 up under the little man’s jaw. “You all right, Lockerby?”
“My pride’s a bit damaged,” Alex said, rolling onto his right side, then pushing himself up to one knee. He paused for a moment as the throbbing in his left side quieted down, then heaved himself to his feet. “But I’ll live.” He turned his eyes on the bookie. The man had the lean, hungry look of a predator with angular cheekbones, thick eyebrows and dark eyes. Alex was about to ask why the man had run, but the answer was plain to see. The bookie wasn’t looking at Alex at all, he was staring, wide-eyed, at Connie.
“Friend of yours?” Alex asked, nodding at the bookie.
Connie had been watching Alex, pinning the bookie against the wall with his arm and his gun. He’d lost his hat somewhere in the pursuit and there was an angry welt rising on his forehead that caught the light from the street as the mobster turned to his captive. He looked the bookie up and down for a moment, then his angry expression slid into a wolfish grin and he stepped back.
“Jimmy the Fish,” he said with a dark chuckle. “I heard you was dead.”
“H-hi-ya, Connie,” Jimmy said, pressing his back against the brick wall as if he might somehow melt through it and escape.
“Jimmy the Fish?” Alex asked. He’d heard a lot of underworld nicknames but ‘the Fish’ was a new one.
“I had the shingles when I first started in the rackets,” Jimmy said, taking his eyes off Connie for a brief moment. “The boys said my arms looked like I had fish scales.”
That actually made more sense than Alex expected.
“You ain’t here about Celia, are you?” Jimmy said, his eyes going a bit wild with fear. “I mean, that was years ago.”
“I bet the boss don’t think it was that long ago,” Connie said, a toothy grin splitting his unshaven face. He looked at Alex, tapping Jimmy with the barrel of his pistol. “You see, Jimmy here had a thing for this girl, Celia,” he explained.
“Oh, let me guess,” Alex said, catching on. “Celia Casetti?”
“Got it in one,” Connie laughed. “When the boss found out, he ordered the Fish here chopped into bait.”
“I met her in a nightclub,” the Fish pleaded. “She never told me who she was, I swear.”
Alex couldn’t suppress the grin that was spreading across his face. He only hoped Connie was savvy enough to follow his lead.
“You know what, Jimmy,” Alex said, thumping the bookie on the shoulder. “I think today is going to turn out to be your lucky day.”
“How do you figure?” the Fish asked.
“My name is Alex Lockerby, and I’m a private detective.”
The Fish looked confused, then angry.
“Hey,” he protested. “What is this?”
Connie jammed his pistol back into Jimmy’s neck.
“Shut up, you,” he growled. “Let the man talk.”
“Connie and I are looking for someone,” Alex continued. “Someone you know.”
Jimmy’s look of fear and confusion melted into one of calculation.
“And you want me to finger him?” he guessed. “What if I do?”
&n
bsp; “Then Constantine and I,” Alex nodded at Connie, “might be persuaded to forget we ever saw you.”
“Sure, sure,” the Fish said, starting to nod, then remembering the revolver just under his chin. “Who is it you’re looking for?”
“Colton Pierce.”
Alex expected Jimmy to react to the name, but he just looked confused.
“The professor?” he said.
“Colton Pierce,” Alex said, letting a tone of anger slip into his voice. “The man who owes you five hundred dollars.”
“What?” the Fish protested. “Pierce isn’t on my books.”
Alex pulled the receipt from his pocket and held it up in front of the bookie’s face.
“This is yours,” he said. “I know that because I used a finding rune and this paper, and it led me right to you.” Alex jabbed the man with his finger. “So don’t play dumb with me.”
“What happened?” Connie said. “You send some boys over to encourage him to pay his debts? Things get out of hand?”
Jimmy’s eyes had gotten wide, and a look of naked fear played across his face.
“I swear, Connie, Pierce doesn’t owe me anything,” he insisted.
“Then why did he have this bill from you?” Alex yelled, pressing the paper against the Fish’s chest. “It says he owes you five hundred, and that’s a lot for a college professor.”
“Besides,” Connie said, his voice dropping to almost a whisper. “He had a bodyguard with him, a friend of mine. Whoever grabbed Pierce beat my friend to death. So I’m going to give you one more chance, Jimmy. One chance to tell us where Colton is.” Connie reached up with his thumb and cocked the revolver. “And you’d better hope he’s alive.”
Alex watched Jimmy while Connie threatened him. The bookie looked like he was on the verge of losing control of his bladder. His face was a mask of terror, not at all the look of someone who still had a hole card to play.
“What’s it going to be, Jimmy,” he pressed. “You going to play ball, or are we going to find out just how much Lucky Tony loves his little girl?”
“I swear,” Jimmy sobbed. “That ain’t a bill. Colton has the devil’s own luck.” He pointed to the paper still clutched in Alex’s hand. “That’s a receipt. He won that money betting on the ponies at Arlington. I-I paid him a few days ago.”
Connie’s face twisted into a sneer.
“You expect us to believe that load of horse apples?” He turned to Alex. “Let me shoot him in the knees, that’ll loosen—”
Alex held up his hand and Connie’s mouth snapped shut so hard his teeth clacked. Taking a breath, Alex turned to the Fish.
“Jimmy,” he said, his voice smooth and cajoling. “It isn’t widely known, but Colton Pierce is Mr. Casetti’s nephew.”
Jimmy groaned and started shaking.
“Jesus,” he said, though Alex couldn’t tell if it was a curse or a prayer. “What is it with that family? I can’t get away from them.”
Alex put a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder.
“Focus, Jimmy,” he said. “You realize that if you have Colton stashed somewhere—”
“I don’t,” the Fish insisted. “I swear, I don’t!”
“If you have him,” Alex went on, a bit louder. “All you have to do is give him up, unharmed, and we walk away.”
“I don’t,” Jimmy sobbed. He was weeping openly now. “Look in my shirt pocket.”
Alex reached into the pocket and pulled out a pasteboard book similar to his own rune book. Flipping it open, he found flash paper pages inside, each covered with notes. Grinning, Alex turned the pages carefully. The idea of using flash paper for runes had come from bookies, who occasionally had to burn their books to prevent them falling into the hands of law enforcement.
“There’s a list of names in the front,” Jimmy went on. “Colton Pierce is in there, just look.”
Alex found the pages where names were written in a long column with numbers after them. Some of the numbers were underlined, while others had a cross above them.
“The numbers with the crosses are bets and the ones with a line under them are winnings,” Jimmy said. “Look next to Colton’s name, you’ll see. I owed him and I paid him.”
Alex ran his finger across the page to where the number five hundred had been written. It had been underlined and crossed out.
“You cross out the entries when the debt is settled?” he asked.
Jimmy nodded, tears streaming down his face.
Alex regarded him for a long moment, then he sighed.
“I believe you, Jimmy,” Alex said. “But I’m afraid I’m going to need some insurance.” He opened the man’s coat, replacing the pasteboard book and then pulling a gold pocketwatch from Jimmy’s inside coat pocket. “Where did you get this?”
“It…it was my father’s,” he blurted out. “My mom gave it to me after he died in the war.”
“Very well,” Alex said, dropping the watch into his own pocket. “I’m a runewright, which means that all I need to find you is something you have a strong connection to.”
Jimmy’s eyes went wide, and he looked down at the pocket where his watch had vanished. Alex snapped his fingers and the bookie’s eyes darted back up to him.
“If I find out that you lied to me, Jimmy—”
“I haven’t,” he blubbered. “I don’t have Colton. I didn’t send anyone after him, I swear.”
Alex reached up and grabbed the Fish’s ear, pulling his face close.
“If you lied there won’t be anywhere on earth you can hide from me. Understand?”
Jimmy’s eyes went wide again, and he nodded vigorously.
“Connie,” Alex said, stepping back. “You can let our friend go.”
“You sure about that?” the mobster asked. There was a note of disapproval in his voice that suggested he thought letting the Fish go was a bad idea.
“Don’t worry,” Alex assured him, patting the pocket where he’d put Jimmy’s father’s watch. “We’ll be able to find him if we need him.”
Connie grunted in a noncommittal way, then pulled his .38 away from the bookie’s throat. Jimmy immediately took a step away from his former colleague, moving toward the end of the alley.
“I’ll be seein’ you, Jimmy,” the mobster growled.
That was all it took. Jimmy the Fish turned and fled.
“You shouldn’t have let him go,” Connie said once the sounds of Jimmy’s running footsteps vanished into the noise of the street.
“He didn’t know anything,” Alex said with an irritated sigh. The bookie angle had seemed like a cinch, Colton gets in deep, and the bookie grabs him for ransom. Now Alex was out of leads.
“How can you be so sure?” Connie said, anger creeping into his voice. “If he does have Colton, he’s on his way to kill him right now.”
“No,” Alex said. “He was terrified you’d take him to your boss. If he had an ace, he’d have played it the moment he knew we were looking for Colton.”
“You’re playing awful loose with Colton’s life,” Connie said.
Alex gave the mobster a hard look.
“You telling me how to do my job again?”
Connie growled in a manner that reminded Alex of a junkyard dog. For a moment it looked like the beefy enforcer might take a poke at him.
“Okay, Mr. Hotshot Detective,” Connie said, taking through his teeth. “What now?” He jerked his thumb in the direction Jimmy had gone. “You said that was our only lead.”
“Our only good lead,” Alex corrected. “We still have the receipts and the coroner’s office.”
“You think we’ll find Colton in the morgue?”
“No, but that’s where the bodyguard is. If we can’t track Colton, maybe we can figure out where his bodyguard met his end.”
“Sal,” Connie said.
Alex gave him a questioning look.
“Colton’s bodyguard,” Connie explained. “His name was Salvador Gerano. He was a good guy, had a family and
kids.”
“Sorry,” Alex said, and meant it. “We’ll go over to the morgue in the morning and see if we can get a look at Sal’s body.”
“They aren’t just going to let us waltz into the morgue,” Connie said.
Alex knew he was right. Even in his home turf of New York, he was persona non-grata at the city morgue. He suspected he’d be even less welcome as an outsider in town.
Maybe Detective Norton can get me in to look at Helen Mitchell’s body. It was a long shot, but not impossible.
“You let me worry about that,” Alex said, not letting his uncertainty show in his voice.
“Alex,” Connie said, the hard edge in his voice gone. “If you find the sons of bitches that killed Sal…we ain’t just letting them go.”
Alex sighed and then nodded. He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of street justice, but he knew nothing he could do, short of bringing in Andrew or Sorsha, would stop Connie from taking revenge on whoever killed his friend. He was family, after all.
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “Once we find out where Colton is, they’re all yours.” Alex wrinkled his nose as a strong alkaline odor assaulted him. “Let’s get out of here. I think Jimmy pissed himself.”
Connie laughed at that as the two men stepped to the mouth of the alley.
“You know something, Lockerby,” he said. “You’re a pain in the ass…but you’re all right.”
It took Alex almost a full minute to get his key to fit into the lock of his hotel room door. It wasn’t particularly late, but he felt as if this had been the longest day of his life. When he finally got the key to turn, he pushed the door open and almost fell into the suite. The lights were off, but the curtains along the row of windows were still open, flooding the room with the glow from the lights outside.
Alex secured the door, then made his way to the adjacent bedroom. When he reached the door, his tired mind snapped into focus. He hadn’t been in the suite’s bedroom since that morning, and he’d definitely turned the light off. Now, however, a sliver of light was escaping from where the door wasn’t quite shut.
Holding perfectly still, Alex listened. If there was someone in his room, they weren’t making any noise. He turned and stole to the writing desk that held his kit and the urn containing the ashes of Colton’s mother. Opening the middle drawer of the desk, Alex pulled out his 1911. He’d brought it out of his vault right after he’d called Connie to come over.
