Джо Горес - Cases

“But you are still the Seventh Priest of Melchizedek,” said Dunc in sudden fierceness. “No man can take that from you.”

“Yes,” said the old man, wonder in his voice, more light coming into his eyes. “Yes! And God works in mysterious ways.”

That evening a different L.A. bus dropped Dunc on Figueroa in Highland Park, pulled away in a swirl of diesel fumes. He walked through the gathering dusk. Together he and Penny had prowled every inch of these nighttime streets arm-in-arm, laughing, whispering, stopping for long giddy kisses...

And now he didn’t even know where she was buried. Dubuque, Iowa. What was that? Were there flowers on her grave? A headstone? He’d been her husband, but when he’d called her sister Betsy about the funeral, she had cursed him and hung up.

He paused in front of the little white two-story house. The lights were on, he could hear faint television. What would his reception be? More curses? He rang the bell. Aunt Goodie opened the door, stared for a moment, then cried, “Dunc!” and threw her arms wide to receive him.

“It was a beautiful service,” said Goodie. “And the cemetery is on a wooded knoll near Loras College, overlooking the Mississippi.” The three of them were at the kitchen table, iced tea untouched beside them. “We so wished you were there, Dunc.”

“Not her sister,” he said quietly.

“She even went after Goodie for letting Penny go out with you,” added Carl. “As if we could have stopped her.”

Goodie said defensively, “It was just too much for them, losing her that way. Penny was everybody’s favorite, a ray of sunshine. Her father was killed before she was born.”

“By convicts,” said Carl.

“Wait a minute,” said Dunc. “Her dad was killed in an accident and her mom raised the two girls on the union life-insurance money.”

Goodie waved him silent with a small dismissive hand.

“That’s just what we told the girls at the time. Penny’s daddy was a guard at Iowa State Prison, in charge of a flood-control work gang on the river.” Her voice was low. “The prisoners broke loose and killed him.”

“And mutilated his body,” said Carl.

Dunc felt all the blood drain from his face. He gripped the edges of the table fiercely. Of course that was years before Hent, but...

“The girls never knew any of that,” said Goodie almost briskly. “Betsy was bitter, she remembered her dad. She must have felt bad when we all made such a fuss over the new baby. Penny was born early, just a week after her daddy died. She was just a lovely, loving child who grew up into a loving woman. A woman who loved you, Dunc, with her whole soul.”

His emotions were churning, it was like he was helping murder Hent all over again, and here was retribution, so neat, so clean. Black anger welled up in him at the comic vindictiveness of it. The sport of the gods.

“Dunc?” Goodie was staring at him.

“I’m okay,” he said reassuringly. “It’s just so soon...”

Tomorrow, Las Vegas. Confirm what had happened that July fourth night that m some twisted way had led to Penny’s death. And then... Then, by God, do something about it. Henri had said the man was expected at the Flamingo midweek...

A week had gone by. Ten days. No word from Dunc. No body in a ditch. The routine of the office had resumed, with Drinker fighting to keep all the balls in the air at once. Just now it was April, striding up and down his living room, cigarette in hand, pouring out words half in rage, half in fear.

“Harry came to my room last night. He hasn’t done that in months. Months! And he wanted to sleep with me.”

“What else could you do but oblige him?” sneered Drinker.

“He is my husband, for Chrissake.” She glared at him. “Anyway, this morning we did it again...” Drinker was suddenly, perversely, almost dizzily excited by the fact that Harry had been inside her just scant hours earlier. “And then he said that after this trip on Saturday he is going to sell the boat, stay home, and get me to fall in love with him all over again.”

She had dropped into his easy chair, blowing smoke through her nostrils, legs planted apart so he could see up her skirt. His groin was almost instantly heavy with arousal. Following his gaze, she savagely slammed her knees tight together.

“No more for you, damn you, until you do it.”

“Do what?” he asked mildly.

“Kill him, goddamn you! Blow the son of a bitch to hell!” Her eyes were blazing. “For money — or for me.”

“For you, lady.” Drinker’s voice was thick, heavy. He was unbuckling his belt. “Take off your panties. Show it to me.”

She slid lower in the chair, smiling wickedly. “I’m not wearing am panties.” She opened her legs wide. “See?”

Dunc spread the Las Vegas Pioneer for July 5, 1953, open on the library reading table. The headline was three inches high:

Ned was there, and Carny Largo. And Artis. And... And yes, Gimpy Ernest, throat slit in the parking lot at the ballpark where the fights had been held. Ten feet from him, car keys in hand, Rafe Raffetto, dead from repeated stab wounds to the heart. A Commando knife still in its sheath between his shoulder blades, but with traces of blood on the blade.

It couldn’t have been Rafe on the darkened stairwell of Artis’s house. He’d been dead for half an hour by that time.

It had been Pepe. Pepe, front man for the mob, the Mafia, put into places like the Gladiator to play his piano and learn everything his bosses had to know for a takeover. Put on the Sunset Strip to oversee grabbing off the jailed Mickey Cohen’s vice empire. Put into the Roundup for the same purpose — Drinker had speculated that the mob would soon grab it off.

But wherever he went, here was Dunc showing up. What would he have thought? That Dunc was there to spook him, or to confirm a suspicion aroused there on Artis’s stairs? Because Pepe could never be sure Dunc hadn’t recognized him, or someday might.

Dunc returned the newspaper to the research desk, went up a floor to the rental typewriters, and wrote what he thought of as his first professional piece of writing. Call it a story, call it fiction because of some guesswork, but he would be paid for it. Not in money, not in revenge, but in justice. Or in blood. Roll the dice.

He even figured he knew who his dream killer had been.

He finished the last page, separated the originals from their two carbons, and started his cover letter:

“Dear Lucius Breen, I need another favor...”

That finished, he went out into the soft Las Vegas night.

An hour later Henri, pit boss at the Flamingo, jerked his head across the restaurant and said, low-voiced, “There he is, Mr. David in the lean and hungry flesh.”

Dunc looked, casually. A long-boned, rather elegant man in a blue blazer. Wavy hair above a high forehead, assessing eyes, a sensuous mouth.

Henri said, “The only time you can get near him is at seven in the morning when he’s doing his laps in the hotel’s outdoor pool. There’s nobody else around at that hour.”

“How do I get by hotel security?”

“I’ll find you a bellhop’s jacket. After that, kiddo, you’re on your own.” He turned on his wide grin. “Dunc who?”

In the office behind a carefully locked and bolted street door, Drinker put on thin rubber gloves. From the satchel he took a shoe box holding Craven’s four sticks of dynamite. They were bright red and looked exactly like dynamite in the movies.

Drinker used his plierslike crimper to carefully angle a small hole into the side of one dynamite stick. Into this he inserted an electrical blasting cap, a small metal cylinder with a pair of insulated wires sticking out of one end. They were the ends of an un insulated loop, called a noninsulated bridge wire, that was embedded in the cap’s flash charge. From this loop all good explosions flowed.