Джо Горес - Cases

Where’d you meet the piano player? Lad gets around. Something quizzical moved in Dunc, was gone.

Imogene came slinking out of the casino. The man in the blue topcoat purred at her. “He in there?”

“I said he would be, didn’t I?” Her voice was polished steel, nothing at all like her simpering tones for Petie Sweetie.

“We only pay on delivery.”

“I only deliver on payment.”

A faint rustling, Dunc imagined an envelope changing hands.

“Our play isn’t in here. Get him out to his car and—”

“You gotta be crazy. Up in my bed, asleep.”

“Just tell him to wait for you. At his car.”

Mollified, she went away. The man in the blue topcoat disappeared into the men’s room like a prowling black cat.

Dunc slumped lower in his chair. So what if Collins was hit? He was already Mr. Nobody. Penny was dead, and Dunc...

He sat up, frowning. Just as Penny had said, he was different. Eight months ago he’d charged into Raffetto’s gleaming blade to try and save Artis’s life. But Penny was...

Collins and Imogene came out of the casino. His mohair overcoat made him look too wide to fit through doors.

“Go warm up the car so I won’t get a chill, Petie Sweetie,” she crooned in her pubescent voice. She stood on tiptoe to give him a quick Judas kiss. “I’ll be down in ten minutes.”

She went upstairs, long legs flashing. Collins crossed the lobby toward the main door as a herd of noisy bus customers crowded in, eager to feed the bandits during their twenty-minute rest stop. The killer prowled out of the men’s room after Collins.

“Aw, shit! ” muttered Dunc, and pulled his silly goddamn watch cap back down over his ears.

Out in the street, icy wind snatched the air from his lungs. Collins was already too far away to call to without alerting the man in the midnight-blue overcoat sauntering along behind. Dunc went padding after them on silent rubber soles.

A wind-danced streetlight cast confusing shadows as Pete Collins entered the parking lot where he’d left his long gleaming Cadillac. Whistling, he bent to unlock the door. A piece of the night leaped at him to drive a long-bladed glittering knife at the unprotected back of his prey. Knife. Glittering.

Glittering as Raffetto charged down the stairwell.

Dunc slammed his clasped hands, clublike, against the killer’s head, dropping him where he stood like the sheep in the Hunter’s Point slaughterhouse. His knife clattered away without having touched even the cloth of Mr. Nobody’s coat.

Collins spun around, shock on his face. He recovered quickly. “I know who he is — who the fuck are you?”

“The guy who just saved your life.” But Penny was still just as dead, Dunc was still just as responsible.

“How’d they... Imogene!”

He stormed past Dunc, face dark with rage. Dunc said, “She’s just spit on the sidewalk. Is she worth dying for?”

Collins whirled, staring at him almost stupidly. He looked down at the fallen warrior, he looked at his car keys, he looked at his Cadillac.

“That’s two I owe you. How do I square up? Money?”

And Dunc was thinking again like the private eye Drinker’s months of tutelage had made him. Raffetto’s blade had been a black Commando knife designed to never reflect light. But there had been another man in Vegas, slight, quick, muscular, who might have wielded a knife.

“A ride to South Lake Tahoe,” he said. He gestured down toward the killer slumbering at their feet. “What about him?”

“He wakes up or he freezes, he lives or he dies — who gives a shit?”

Dunc got into the Cadillac.

It was three the next afternoon before Drinker got back to the office. Sherry was at her desk. She started to her feet when his head appeared above the floor level. “Anything?”

“Not a trace.” He opened a clenched fist as i£ freeing a trapped starling. “Like that. Dressed himself and walked out.”

Sherry slowly sat down again. “Then why hasn’t he called? He could be lying in a ditch somewhere—”

“When did you become his mother, for Chrissake?”

She was suddenly embarrassed. “Yeah, God, listen to me.”

“Go on home and get some rest.” He had gone around her desk to massage her shoulders. “I’ll handle things here.”

“Thanks, Drinker. I feel like I haven’t slept in a week.”

She put on her coat, went up on tiptoe to kiss him on the mouth like a sleepy child, then went down the stairs with a wave of her hand. Jesus, more trouble. How did you tell a woman you needed to help run your office that you didn’t want her sexually anymore? But after having just spent two hours with April, he knew in his heart that he wouldn’t want Sherry, not ever again.

What was left of Grey Ghost Two was up on the hydraulic lift. The mechanic, a kid barely nineteen, gave a low whistle as he shone his flashlight at the sprung undercarriage of the car.

“Not just the brake line, the steering mechanism, too.”

They had known Penny would be with him, Dunc thought. Wouldn’t have known about the baby, but that wouldn’t have stopped them. Their baby. Dead. The child he hadn’t wanted had become almost as devastating a loss as Penny herself.

“Why wasn’t the tampering found?” he asked at last.

“Nobody looked,” said the kid. “What made you want to?”

“When I went to pick up the car on Monday morning, it had been moved. But I didn’t do anything. I just let it go.”

“They must have cut the line almost through, then taped it to hold until it got a real good pump. A lot of brake fluid must of spilled out on the floor. Funny you didn’t see it.”

“I wasn’t looking,” said Dunc, sorrowful to his very soul.

The kid was shining his light again, talking about the steering linkage. Dunc couldn’t stand to hear any more.

The car wasn’t turning, wasn’t slowing, Penny screamed...

“Sell it for salvage,” he said. “Keep the money.”

At the bus depot he bought a ticket for L.A. Dark as his thoughts were, a great weight had been lifted from him. Someone else had killed Penny, not him.

The bus came, Dunc found a window seat, leaned back and shut his eyes. He was pretty sure it had been Pepe, but Pepe wasn’t the only one who might have wanted to kill him. Rephaim, Seventh Priest of Mechizedek, thundering biblical curses at him. Hector, acolyte to Rephaim, trying to run him down. Probably in jail, both of them, but he had to eliminate them as suspects.

The bus from L.A. dropped him at Sepulveda and Mission Road. He walked from there. It felt strange to be back in San Fernando. Like returning to a nest he’d helped build and finding it full of fledglings. The seminary was completed; young men in black gowns moved between the buildings, plantings were in, the raw earth was covered with grass.

Dunc waited until the slightly stooped, silver-maned man in the mission’s gift shop had sold a tourist couple some holy medals and a rosary. Then he said, “Hello, Rephaim.”

The man whirled. Recognition dawned. Some erstwhile fire flashed in those eyes. “You!” Rephaim said in half-whisper.

“I didn’t turn you in.” Dunc stepped closer, suddenly needing this man’s absolution. “I didn’t turn anyone in. I was just trying... trying to...”

“To do good,” said Rephaim, so low Dunc could hardly hear him. “I too. I got probation, some kind soul gave me a job here because I am a man of God and because they felt guilty about...” A pause. “So I sell rosaries, here, where it all started...”

“And Hector?”

“No probation for Hector. My church is gone, my people are scattered, my acolyte is imprisoned...”