Ed Gorman - Night Kills

From the back pocket of her jeans she pulled out a manila envelope and held it up. "What's Brolan's partner's name?"

"Stu Foster. Why?"

"Well, he sure sent Emma a lot of letters. Or not letters, exactly. Envelopes. And-oh, yeah-and this tape that was inside this box of candy."

"What?" Wagner said. Already he was trying to reason through what Denise was telling him and imagining how interested Brolan would be in this piece of information. Why would Stu Foster send Emma envelopes? Why would Stu Foster even know Emma to begin with?

"Here," Denise said, handing him the envelope. "There's a whole pile of these in a kitchen drawer. You want to go see them?"

Wagner, sounding as if he'd just discovered gold, said, "Lead the way!"

He wore an earring. Foster had never quite gotten used to that, a guy wearing an earring. Much as he hated to admit it, the earring threatened Foster in some way.

But then, so did most everything else about Charles Decker Lane.

Lane was a thirty-seven-year-old man who'd inherited a small chain of ten motels from his father. That was back in the seventies, just as the Motel 6's and the other low-priced lodgings were moving into the mid-western market. Lane, an MBA from Northwestern, had been of the mind that people would ultimately tire of the low-enders. The average businessman wanted more than a closet-sized toilet that smelled of disinfectant and two double beds that were practically bunk beds, the way they almost piled on top of each other. Or so had been Charles Decker Lane's thinking in the mid-seventies, right before Jimmy Carter and the recession and stagflation happened and made Charles Decker Lane eat every foolish goddamn word he'd said. In February of 1977 he'd had 1416 rooms under his control. By April of 1978 he had fewer than 200-three frigging motels left out of the ten he'd started with, and not a one of them within walking distance of an airport. Or did they even have airports in Terre Haute, Indiana, site of two of the motels?

Which was when he discovered cocaine, first as a user, then as a distributor. Back when he got in, the thing was like a big Amway deal. There was even a certain amount of fun in it, not to mention just ducky profits. The chicks liked it especially. Even the country club bitches he met at his brother's would finally give in and fuck him if he offered enough cocaine. (His brother's wife thought that Charles Decker Lane would someday die of a state-injected terminal drug and told everybody this.) The white stuff made him lots of green stuff, but then things started changing, and for once in his young but unsuccessful life, Lane knew when to get out of something. The first thing he did was go to a chemical dependency clinic and get himself clean. Talk about a bitch. He hadn't cried this much since he'd found his first wife balling that nigger football player right in Charles Decker Lane's bed. (Lane had broken her nose, knowing that was the only satisfaction he was going to get, assuming that she was going to soak him in divorce court.) The second thing he did was tell everybody that he was clean and no longer dealing. He even went to a downtown dealer and turned over all his names and contacts free, gratis. (The guy was understandably suspicious that Lane here might be a narc.) Then he took all the lovely money he'd made dealing coke and put it in federally-insured CDs all over the Mid-west. He kept one motel for himself and used as his chief source of income the interest his ducky money was making for him.

Six years before, Lane and Foster met at a party one wintry night, got along, and started talking about all the ad execs who used Lane's sumptuously decorated motel as a sort of whorehouse. Foster, who was then in the employ of Richard Cummings and Associates, didn't start thinking about this till he and Brolan got fed up with Cummings's temper tantrums and decided to go out on their own. There were many ways to go about getting clients-you could wine and dine them; you could marry into the right family; you could even actually show them a few good ads you'd done over the years-but what with all the competition, Foster started wondering if there wasn't maybe a more interesting way to get clients. What if you had a motel room, see, where ad execs had their little trysts… and what if somebody had the room bugged with microphones and a videotape camera… and what if you presented the execs you had on videotape with the choice of exposure (no pun intended) or turning their accounts over to you? Could there be any faster way to get yourself five big-name clients in a very short time? All you had to do was concentrate on which execs were (a) players, and (b) liked some sort of kicks they considered shameful. They'd be begging you to take their accounts once you showed them the tapes. Thus was born the Foster-Brolan agency.

So, anyway, Charles Decker Lane's earring.

Foster had always been curious why a guy who wore Brooks

Brothers suits, a tie stick in every collar, cufflinks, and a hundred-dollar razor cut would wear an earring. Wasn't that a little like a bank CEO wearing a bone through his nose?

That day, though, Foster tried to forget the earring. He sat with Lane in the motel's coffee shop, telling him about Brolan.

"You mean he's figured it out?" Lane said.

"I mean, he's trying to figure it out."

"And you think he's coming out here?"

"You can bet on it."

"I just won't tell him anything."

"You don't know Brolan. He's got one of those tempers."

"Well, there's always Ernie."

Ernie was the night bartender. He used to fight on one of the regular cards downtown. He had a smashed nose and wide, flat fists and a very bad temper.

"You'll need him," Foster said.

Lane shrugged. He had cornflower-blue eyes and blonde hair, and a tiny moustache that made him look like a dance-band leader in a thirties musical. "Right now I'm more concerned about Emma."

"What about her?" Foster said. He had to be very, very careful.

"I can't get hold of her. I've left about twenty messages on her phone machine, and she hasn't gotten back to me in three days." He shook his head. "Waybright is asking for her again.”

Waybright was one of Foster's largest clients and a man who had a fairly serious crush on Emma. "You haven't seen her?"

"No."

"Or heard from her?"

"No."

"I wonder where she is."

Immediately an image of Emma stuck inside Brolan's freezer came to Foster. As soon as he left Lane, he was going to call the police and tell them where they could find Emma.

"She'll turn up," Foster said.

He glanced around the coffee shop. The place was all got up us a forties diner. Art deco meets blue collar. The waitresses wore hair nets out of the Rosie the Riveter era and little buttons that read "Buy War Bonds." Lane often talked of wanting to produce dinner-theatre musicals there. He took his frustrations out on his coffee shop.

"So, expect him anyway," Foster said. "Fair warning."

"You sure are uptight. Relax, for Christ's sake, Foster. Everything's going to be fine."

"Yeah, I suppose."

"I'll call you as soon as Brolan leaves. Just to let you know that everything's okay. All right?"

Foster stood up. As he did so, he bit at the nail on his forefinger. He hated it when he started biting his nails. It was such an unbecoming habit. "And let me know if you hear from Emma, too."

Lane stared at him for a long time. "Sure, Foster. I'll call her again, see if I can scare her up." The way he was looking at him, Foster had the uncomfortable feeling that the man had become a mind reader.

Maybe in Foster's mind he could read the image of Emma lying dead and rigid inside the freezer.

"Talk to you in a while," Foster said, and left the coffee shop.

In the lobby he watched as two very good-looking stewardesses checked in for the night. As people came in from the outside, they made loud noises stamping their feet on the big rubber mats over by the row of newspaper vending machines.