Dave Zeltserman: Fast Lane

“Don’t worry, Poppa. I’ll take care of it.”

“I know you will, son. I am awfully proud of you, boy.”

* * * * *

I woke up wondering about my dream, wondering what it meant. I decided it didn’t mean anything. It was only my subconscious pointing out something I’d overlooked. And it was a good thing it did, because there was no reason to take chances. Not after all I’d done.

* * * * *

That morning I boarded a flight to Oklahoma City. It took time to rent a car and do all the driving I needed to do, but what I came for took less than a half hour. I was back at the airport within three hours, and back home by dinnertime.

I woke up bright and early the next morning and headed to the Denver Bus Terminal. I found the locker that matched the key I got off Bert Debbles. Inside were newspaper clippings, a copy of a twenty-five-year-old warrant for my arrest and a handwritten letter from Debbles.

I was surprised at how well Debbles had done his homework. Most of the clippings were about my poppa’s death, but he also included one of my Denver Examiner columns. A couple of the clippings had a school photo taken of me when I was seventeen, looking all solemn and gloomy. Looking like someone who was going to be losing his poppa.

Debbles’ letter was scrawled in pencil and detailed his suspicions. I took all of it to the men’s room, set a match to it, and flushed the ashes down the toilet. After washing my hands, I headed back home.

Eddie Braggs was standing in front of my door scowling at the doorbell as he rang it. I parked my car across the street, and walking up behind him, clasped his shoulder.

“They let you out of your cage?” I asked with a grin.

Without turning his head, he peered at me from the corners of his eyes. “You wouldn’t answer your phone,” he complained. “We need to talk.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “What about?”

“Why don’t we go inside?”

“Sure,” I said. “Anything for an old buddy.”

I opened the door and followed him in. After sitting ourselves down his eyes compressed into narrow slits, sizing me up-weighing me on the Eddie Braggs’ scale of guilt. I leaned back in my chair and stretched lazily-the way anyone in my position would-a man without a worry in the world.

I said, “This is a first, having you weight-test my furniture. What’s the special occasion?”

“You knew a Margo Halloran?”

I nodded. “I heard about it on the radio. It’s a shame.”

“How well did you know her?”

“To be honest,” I said, “only in the biblical sense. She picked me up at a bar a few weeks ago and we ended up going off to Mexico together. What a disaster!” I whistled, shaking my head. “I don’t want to talk ill of the dead, but we didn’t have the relaxing trip I’d hoped for. I ended up having to ditch her.”

That took him by surprise. His head jerked up and his eyes opened to their normal shape. “I know,” he admitted, “her mother called the paper and gave us the story.”

“After what happened to her, I feel bad about ditching her.” I let my face fall into a somber frown. “But I just didn’t have any choice. I like a stiff drink as much as the next guy, but I guess she liked it more than the next guy and the guy after him. When we got to Mexico she started going through a bottle a day.”

“That’s why you ditched her?”

“No sir.” I shook my head. “I would’ve put up with that, but when she started bed hopping I had to leave.”

With a snort, Eddie’s scowl disappeared. “When her mother called and told us about how you stranded her daughter in Mexico it gave me a hunch you were involved with her murder.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. I don’t know, none of it makes any sense. What the hell was she doing in that room?”

I shrugged.

“And how the hell did you get those scratches?”

“You like them? Almost healed now. I got them working on a missing persons case, and that was before I left for Mexico-you can check over at the Denver airport if you want. The ticket agent recognized me and asked questions about them-I’m sure she’d remember.”

“Never mind.” He waved it away. “I can see they’re a few weeks old. This murder is bugging the hell out of me. There’s something awful damn funny about it. Johnny, I’ve been in this business over twenty-five years and I’ve never seen anything so vicious.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Your paper reported she was beaten pretty bad.”

“That’s not even the half of it. If we printed what really happened, no one would believe it. And if we printed pictures, half this city would be retching their stomachs out. Here, take a look at these.”

He took an envelope from his overcoat, slid from it a stack of photographs and handed them to me. As I looked at them my knees went weak. “Oh God,” I murmured.

“That’s right,” he said sourly. “Whoever did that enjoyed it. I want to get the bastard. I want to get him more than I ever wanted to do anything.”

“You thought I could’ve done this?”

“I don’t know what I thought. I guess I got a little concerned after hearing about your trip to Mexico. And”-he waggled a finger at me- “I don’t think you can blame me. What the hell was she doing in that room?”

One of the pictures was of her while she was still among the living. In it, she’s giving her easy relaxed smile. She’s standing with her shoulders thrown back, and with the sweater she was wearing, she looked like she was about to bust right out of it. It did something to me seeing that picture. Stirred something deep inside. “She was sure something,” I said. “Mind if I keep this one?”

He shrugged. “Okay, why not? She was quite a looker. Did you know she was once a Miss Rocky Mountains runner-up?”

“She never mentioned it.”

“Twelve years ago. With some luck she could’ve been Miss America.”

I couldn’t take my eyes off her picture-the one of her smiling, and knowing damn well what she was doing with her chest. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. “Do the police have anything?”

“Not a thing.”

“No one heard or saw anything?”

“In that neighborhood?” He shook his head grimly. “If anyone did, they’d reach for the nearest bottle and stay blissfully drunk until they forgot about it.”

“What about fingerprints?”

“Not a one,” he said. “Whoever did this wore cloth gardening gloves. They were found in a dumpster behind the building. We’re not going to find out anything from them.”

He shook his head and laughed sourly, his eyes glistening. “We’ll catch the son of a bitch, Johnny. We’ll catch him when we find out what Margo Halloran was doing in that room. Or maybe”-he frowned-”when we find out about the old man.”

“Do you know anything about him?”

“Not much. He moved into the room about a week ago. There was no identification on him. No one seems to remember talking to him. And he had no face left. Just be thankful I didn’t show you any pictures of his corpse.”

“Pretty bad?”

“That’s one way of putting it. Imagine taking a sledgehammer to a watermelon. His head was worse than that.”

“Could it have been a robbery-maybe some doped-up addict who went overboard?”

“Maybe,” he scowled. “But what the hell was Margo Halloran doing there? And what about the gloves? No, this is something else. The kicker is the coroner’s report. Her death was pegged between noon and two o’clock. The old man was killed between three and five. Whoever did this waited at least an hour for the old man after killing Margo Halloran. He made it look like a robbery, but it wasn’t any robbery. He wanted to kill them, either Margo Halloran or the old man. When we find out which, we’ll nail the bastard.”