Бретт Холлидей - Count Backwards to Zero

“Max Wilson?”

“Yeah, he’s fine. Tell him not to offer me any help unless I yell for it. And I’ve got a passport picture I want you to check out. This has got to start unraveling somewhere, and maybe that will do it. If you send somebody down to wait on the corner I’ll drop it off as I go by. Speed-photo it to Washington. The name that goes with it is Jerry Diamond, and he also carries a credit card in the name of Mason Smith. He’s connected with this in some way, but don’t ask me how.”

Shayne hadn’t been in Brownsville since the last outburst of mass looting. Most of the burned-out stores were still boarded up with plywood panels. A few that had reopened for business looked like fortresses.

Shayne found the building he had just discussed with Grady Ramsay. It had been left for the wreckers, but a quick glance as he drove past told Shayne that it might not be still standing when they arrived. The street lamp directly outside had been smashed. He watched the windows along the opposite side, but if Ramsay was still posted at one of them, he didn’t show himself.

There were several derelict cars along the curb, wheelless and gutted. Only one car on the block was still intact, a black Dodge sedan. Shayne’s headlights picked up the T9 at the start of the license number, and he saw the red glow of a cigarette inside.

He parked on a well-lighted main street, locked up carefully and returned on foot. There were few pedestrians. A hulking youth in his undershirt came out of a parked car and fell in behind Shayne.

“Man, got a light?” he called.

Shayne swung around, produced his powerful flashlight and switched it on. The beam struck the youth’s eyes and brought him to an abrupt standstill. He batted at the light, swore at Shayne, and faded out of sight.

Shayne entered the alley running between the lines of houses. It was littered with obstacles. He moved forward carefully, using the flashlight only when necessary.

There was a noisy party in one of the houses. All the rooms in that building were ablaze with light; loud, heavily accented dance music poured through the open windows. A man and a woman were embracing closely against a broken fence.

“Nice night for it,” Shayne observed, and went past.

The gate behind the building he wanted had been torn off, and most of the fence was down. It was a dog-run building, with two apartments on each of the two floors, separated by a central hall. Both main-floor doors were missing, and Shayne could look straight through to the street.

He entered quietly. A cat leaped past him with an angry squall and disappeared.

He covered his flashlight with one hand and snapped it on. In the dim glow he saw an accumulation of debris, cans, and broken plaster. He checked the rooms on each side, scaring a rat out of one. He picked his way to the stairs. Part of the banister was gone, and the bottom step had splintered through. Much of the plaster in the stairwell had fallen.

Hearing a sudden sound in a room behind him, he stopped and turned. That door hung by a single hinge, and creaked protestingly as he moved it aside and stepped in, shielding the light so it wouldn’t be seen from the street.

“If there’s anybody in here,” he said in an ordinary tone, “say something so we won’t surprise each other.”

There was no answer. He crossed the rubble-strewn door to an open doorway. As he uncovered his light a woman’s voice said thickly, “What do you want?”

He shone the light in her direction. She was middle-aged and shapeless, with stringy gray hair, lying on a bare mattress. She sat up, blinking crossly, and brought a hand up to tidy her hair.

“Taking a little nap. You could knock, you know, would it hurt you?”

Shayne swung the flashlight away. “How long have you been here, all evening?”

“Shh,” she said in disgust, dropping her hand. “Cops. You can’t get away from them.”

Shayne squatted beside the mattress and held out his cigarettes. “Smoke?”

She picked a cigarette out of the pack, crumbled it, and tucked the loose tobacco inside her cheek. “I’ve got a right to be here.”

“I’m not rousting you out. I’m looking for a couple of people who came in earlier. They left a car outside with the lights on and somebody drove it away.” He took a bill out of his wallet and passed it through the flashlight beam. “If you can tell me what happened to them, it’s worth five dollars.”

“I don’t live here,” the woman said vaguely. “My daughter’s entertaining, the bitch, and she put me out.” Shayne’s hand shot out and caught her forearm. She was wearing a man’s watch. He unfastened the strap and looked at it. Along with the usual information, it gave the day of the month and the year.

“That’s my husband’s,” she said. “He left it to me in his will.”

Shayne pointed the flashlight around the dirty mattress, and saw a discarded pint bottle of vodka and a pair of man’s shoes, placed neatly against the wall.

She had fallen back onto her elbows, her eyes little red points of light.

“All right, on your feet,” Shayne said harshly.

“I don’t take things don’t belong to me. I found them. They were here when I came in.”

“When was that?”

“After supper. I don’t know when.”

“Why not? You’re wearing a watch.”

She shook her head and said with scorn, “You white people. You think we don’t have watches. Only you.”

“Get up. If you don’t want to walk by yourself, you’re going to be dragged.”

“I been dragged before. I feel sick.”

Shayne changed tactics abruptly. “All right, let’s try something different. I’m a private detective. My client’s run out on me. That’s his vodka bottle, his watch, and his shoes. I don’t know why he came into this building, or who was with him. I need to find out.”

“Look around, I’m not stopping you.”

“He’s important. If anything bad happened to him it won’t be a small neighborhood stink, it’ll be a big story in every paper in the country. You’ll get the full treatment. I may be able to get you out of some of it if you can tell me anything that helps.”

“I didn’t kill him.”

“Is he dead?”

“Do I get to keep the watch?”

“You know better than that. I’ll buy it from you for ten bucks, and that’s more than a fence would give you. You can have the shoes.”

She sat up and said more alertly, “Twenty.”

“Ten’s my top price.” He took out another bill and added it to the one already in his hand. “Where were you when the car stopped?”

She patted the mattress. “Lying down. I’ve got a bad back and bad kidneys, but all my daughter cares about is her own pleasure.” She took the end of the folded bills and teased them out of Shayne’s hand. “You know how Jamaicans talk, he talked that way.”

“He’s English. What did he say?”

“Oh, about this country, how bad we do with the black people, and Americans claim they stand for justice. He was juiced, it sounded like. I thought one of the sisters brought him in for a little jazz, and maybe she was planning to roll him, you know, but I don’t believe in that kind of thing. I don’t believe in going out of my way either, so I played possum and kept my opinions to myself.”

“Did you hear the other person say anything?”

“It was only a mumble-jumble. They went upstairs and he kept going on and on about the race question. Then he sort of grunted and somebody fell down. I dodged back inside. When I see that kind of trouble coming toward me I want no part of it. I heard some footsteps, but whether they were coming or going I couldn’t tell you.”

“Did you go up to see what had happened?”