Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

Chuck wouldn’t look at him. “I don’t believe in that holy stuff.”

Matt kept quiet.

“I got to wondering, that’s all.”

“Wondering what?”

Chuck’s eyes—Matt noticed that they were a pale hazel in a pale, freckled-by-nature face—finally met his.

“I got to wondering why I wasn’t you. So I went in and saw the altar.”

He tore his gaze away to Woody. “Did he get it? Did Woody’s years of favors and confidential informants pay off? He get his payoff over at the church?”

“No. The cops got it. And the FBI. And they’re coming to get him pretty soon.”

“ Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho, old man!” Chuck eyed Matt again after taunting Woody. “Bet that feels good to you.”

“Yes, it does.”

“You’re supposed to be super-holy and forgiving.”

“Well, I’m not. But… you, you could be smart and on the move and read all about it in the newspapers. You could vanish and I could call Metro Police to pick up Woody, in one piece mostly, and, presto, you could be a vanished mystery man.”

“You came here. From there. The money was at the church, under the altar?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“This piece of scum had me follow you. After we, um, met, you could say. I was curious too.”

“I led you to Our Lady of Guadalupe.”

“Led me there, but I stayed to go in.”

“Why?”

“Used to. Once. Go to church. Back when they made you go.”

“You saw the altar. You had to get up close. You had to care about something you can’t see, or steal, or hate, or beat.”

“My dad.” Chuck flexed his abused left arm. “This tattoo. Man fighting snake. Here’s the real snake in front of us. All along.”

“The constellation Ophiuchus.”

“Huh. No. Not that crazy mouthful in the sky. This is. This guy. Ole Woody Wetherly, retired cop. My dad did mention Lucky Stars, like the nudie bar, if that’s the stars you’re referring to. This second tat I got is Quetzalcóatl. The plumed serpent the ancient Indians worshiped. My dad liked that image too. But this was his favorite.” He traced the faint tattoo of a mighty serpent entwined with a mighty muscled man on the other arm. “My dad lived by that ink.”

Matt looked at the jackhammer still balanced on its bit, ready to bite into Woody’s feet and ankles, legs, flesh and bone, and spew blood on them all.

“Chuck. You’ve already got your revenge, from the evidence of Woody’s pissed pants. He’s old. He’s done. I can speed dial the cops and FBI to come get this guy and that damning weapon ten minutes after you and your scabrous junker are gone.”

“What’s scabrous? Nothing good, I bet. Hey, that’s a seventy-seven Chrysler. It’s got a lot of fond memories and a lot of buried glory and mileage on that six-figure odometer.”

“Haven’t we all?” Matt said.

“You’d let me go? Just like that.”

“Hey, I’d give you credit, but it’s best to skip that. We all saw what greed and cunning did for the Binions, father and son.” Matt nodded at Woody. “I now see your dad was harsh at my house because he’d been kicked out of his—what’d you say, clan?—that this crooked cop put together and ran like a mob while playing the harmless old gent. So, Woody will get nothing but the justice your father would have wanted, and you ’ll get a free run on that amazing odometer.”

Chuck’s smoldering look lifted upwards and became cagey. “I heard that Jag motor coming, vibrating these rotten floor posts.”

Matt nodded. “Not the best surveillance vehicle, even I know that.”

“You didn’t waste any time racing over to save this sorry piece of naugahyde.”

“Nope. Needed to nail a master criminal.”

“Say I swap you out the junker for the Jag,” Chuck proposed.

Matt sighed. “Just go far, far away, change the license plates, trash the VIN number, and get yourself a better grade of jacket on the way. As far as I’m concerned, you weren’t here.”

Chuck hesitated, gazing longingly at the jackhammer.

“Here. You’ll match the car better.” Matt shrugged out of his Fontana suit jacket, and paused when Chuck’s weight on the jackhammer pressed down to produce a spray of concrete gravel. Matt turned his face away from the blow-back. Wetherly wriggled and whimpered.

Holding both hands up, Matt hooked the jacket on one forefinger and dangled it in view of Chuck Effinger.

Without a word, Chuck cut the air supply from the compressor and lowered the top of the jackhammer to the floor. Matt pitched the jacket to him, and it was over.

“Hey.” Chuck paused three steps up the basement stairs, as his forefinger massaged his sorry soul patch. “Have a nice wedding for real, step-bro.”

“Thanks. I will.”

Chuck’s work boots banged up the rickety stairs, then stomped through the house above. He let the front door bang on the way out.

Wetherly mouthed something through the greasy rag.

“Yes, you’re right, Mr. Wetherly. I don’t look like the type to torture you with a jackhammer.” Matt used another dirty rag to wipe the jackhammer free of prints. “I’m glad he’s gone. This is an old model and I don’t think he used the proper safety precautions. Of course, Chuck is a ‘known associate’, I think they call it in law enforcement circles. His prints would be expected around your place, as anyone at the Lucky Stars could testify, not that they’d be that believable.

“How I got here is this. I’ll say that I suddenly realized that some information you had given me was important. Say how I was referred to you for my radio show by a local homicide lieutenant. Yup, that’s true. That’s your despised, relocated LAPD woman cop. Anyway, the cops knew I was interviewing you about cold cases. So I realized something was relevant and rushed to confront you, only to interrupt some of your other big bad buddies intent on nabbing the hidden stash from your henchmen when they came back. I had to grab the jackhammer out of one’s hands, my own prints blurring whatever was left of his fingerprints.”

Matt folded his hands around the handles. “I didn’t know who they were and I didn’t want to disturb ‘the crime scene’, being an amateur. So I just phoned the police and asked them to please take you off my hands. Who are they going to believe, me or you?

“No, don’t say anything. I need no thanks for saving you from a fate worse than death.

“Hammer toes.”

23

Who’s Who of Crooks

“And your other jacket?” Molina asked Matt on Friday morning, her eyes dark blue slits of suspicion. “The one you grabbed from a Fontana brother at the mock wedding rehearsal. It’s gone…how?”

He and Temple were holding hands while sitting on the two smart new chairs in the new police headquarters building. Temple was not about to let him “dash off” again before the evening wedding.

But the jacket. Temple was so glad to have Matt back and safe from that crazy house and under official grilling she’d only noticed his jacket was missing now.

Molina didn’t miss anything, blast her.

Seeking to provide a distraction, an old public relations ploy, Temple took an aggrieved tone. “Oh, Matt, it was your first Ermenegildo sports coat, a groomsman gift from the Fontana bothers. It’s gone?”

“That’s what the lieutenant is asking,” Matt said. “I was in such a hurry, I tossed it into the Jag’s backseat.”

Enter Molina, on topic. “Which you left unlocked at the front curb of a house in a dangerous part of town. Might as well stake out a diamond-studded Cartier leopard on Cannery Row,” she snarled.

Molina didn’t exactly snarl, but Temple thought she came uncharitably close. And here her fiancé sat minus an expensive car and blazer. Whom did the law protect now?