Gumshoe, page 7
“We are in the eye of the storm,” I said. “You and I.”
Dallas stared at the television, numb. I picked up the remote. “Want me to turn it off?”
“It’s okay.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No.” She took a deep breath. “That wouldn’t make it go away. Let’s see what we’re up against.”
So we watched. All twelve rollicking minutes of it. I don’t know about Dallas, but it passed over me like a dream, watching it unfold, seeing the two of us as the world would see us and judge us. By the time it was over, we’d used up 80 percent of our allotted fifteen minutes of Warhol’s infamous fame in one short evening, and I had the feeling we were going to get a whole lot more than our fair share by the time all was said and done.
Wendell Sjorgen’s stabbing death in an alley behind a Wells Avenue bar twenty years ago was once again a hot topic. Jonnie’s dad had received forty-six knife wounds, all in the torso, and his wallet was found on his body, containing over three hundred dollars. No suspects had ever been picked up, no motive put forth, no murder weapon found.
I turned it off when a bit came on about the latest gang shooting on Neil Road. News that wasn’t news. Half the crime in Reno could be ended by cordoning off Neil Road one night and plowing it under, then waking up to a bright new day.
Dallas said, “How did he…it…get in there?”
I knew what she meant. Jonnie’s head. And I knew she wasn’t up to par yet because the “how” was obvious. Only the who, when, where and why were unknown. She probably hadn’t given it a lot of thought, but I didn’t blame her for that. You don’t dwell on the details of a day like the one we’d just been through.
“Jonnie had a set of keys to your car, didn’t he?” I said.
“Oh. Yes.”
“Now someone else does, Dal.”
Which meant if she kept the car she’d have to have the locks changed, but knowing Dallas she’d get rid of it and buy another. What’s a measly hundred ten thou, minus a $70,000 trade-in—maybe more since the car was now world famous. A thought I kept to myself.
“A key to your house, too?” I added, because that might not have occurred to her. I made it a question. I didn’t know if Jonnie had had access to her place—which she’d kept and used only infrequently—but it seemed likely.
She nodded yes.
And that was that. No more talk of heads or bodies or trunks. Dallas told me she’d got another letter from Nicole, who was off in the French Pyrenees with Edward Kiehl, same boyfriend as last year, so this one was looking serious. At twenty, Nikki was doing what she wanted now with no interference from mom and pop, which both pleased me and scared the hell out of me. She was a bright girl but a bit on the giddy, innocent, overly trusting side, and the world was full of human vampires and other hellish critters, like Bundy and Dahmer and others to be named later.
I took a cool shower, scrubbed off the day, and at midnight Dallas turned on the TV to a late-night movie—Father Goose, with Cary Grant and Leslie Caron.
She turned the sound low as I crawled into the other bed—the suite came with two king-size beds. I lay awake for a while amid the soothing burble and flicker of the television as the day unreeled: K unconscious in my bed, Dale and Gregory, Skulstad’s bean counters and his voluptuous secretary, Rachel Cabrera. And Jonnie in the trunk of Dallas’s car, hair mussed in his usual boyish way—but, now that the day had slowed to this contemplative crawl, I saw the deep slash mark on his left cheek an inch below his eye, and a thin ring of dried blood encircling his scalp above his forehead, barely visible through his dark Mediterranean curls.
* * *
I awoke from a tangled knot of dreams when Dallas slid into bed beside me. It was one of those razor-edged moments you play by ear. I made no assumptions, didn’t reach for her. I just lay there and, like a good gumshoe, awaited clues.
First, I discovered she wasn’t wearing a thing. But Dallas has always slept in the nude, summer, winter, and every season in between, so that was less a clue than an ordinary, garden-variety fact. Not an unpleasant one, however.
Second, she snuggled up to me. But I more or less anticipated that as well. It’s hard to give comfort across the acreage of a king-size bed, and I figured that comfort was what she was after, nothing else.
Third, she said, “Hold me, Mort.”
When a woman says she wants to be held, you have a whole slew of ways to make either a fool or a swine of yourself. She probably does want to be held, but a naked woman, unless she’s an idiot, has to know that her presence can have a certain predictable effect on a man’s physiology—unless that man is possessed of iron control, and few women want to be found resistible enough to witness that iron control. But then, some do. A few say what they mean, and then mean it, which can be very confusing. You could go crazy sifting through it all, trying to puzzle it out, especially right there on the spot, in real time. She’d said, “Hold me, Mort.” So, what else?…I held her. And I liked holding her. I always have. Given the quagmire of motive and counter-motive that fills our lives, you can only do what you do, be who you are, play as few games as possible—so I pulled her into my arms and held her and felt her tears on my chest. They landed hot, then turned cool on my skin.
After maybe ten minutes she said, in a whispery voice, “We were going to be married. Next May. We weren’t going to say anything until the first of the year.”
“I’m…sorry, Dal.” Okay, not.
“But—I was scared, too.” She stirred against me, and I looked into her eyes. They were dark, made even larger than usual by the dim city light that filtered into the room.
“Of what?” I asked.
“Him.”
“Jonnie? How come? He ever hit you?” A sudden protective urge rose up in me even though he was dead.
“No, nothing like that. It was…I don’t know, maybe scared is too strong a word. I just felt there was a part of him I didn’t know. That he wouldn’t let me know.”
“Everyone has parts no one else’ll ever know.”
“Maybe.”
She didn’t sound convinced. She didn’t follow up with more, either, so I didn’t press her. Whatever it was, it had been between her and Jonnie. And it was over and done with now, so what did it matter? Which shows how little I knew.
I started to nod off again.
Dallas thumbed the waistband of my Jockeys. “Are these necessary, Mort?”
“Probably not.”
“Then why are you wearing them?”
“That could take a while to explain.”
“It’s that damned chivalry thing, isn’t it?”
“I’d throw a cloak across a puddle for you,” I said, and I meant it, but if I were ever caught wearing a cloak I’d throw it in front of her just to get rid of it, which is another matter entirely.
“Well, don’t, okay?”
So, hell, I took the Jockeys off. Because Dallas was not resistible, and I was still in love.
* * *
When she came, she muffled her cry by pressing her mouth tightly against mine. I felt her climax right down to my toes.
Same old Dallas.
But even then I knew I didn’t have her back. She wasn’t mine again. Nor was I a mere convenience to her, a throwaway. It was more complicated than that, reaching back in time, but I didn’t want to destroy it by picking it apart, separating the good from the bad, even if it wasn’t going to last beyond the dawn.
Sometimes love isn’t all there is. Sometimes it isn’t enough.
* * *
I hadn’t made love to Dallas in over three years. I hadn’t made love to anyone for ten months, in fact. Working for the IRS is like having visible body lice when it comes to meeting women. They find out what you do, think it over for two seconds, three if they’re drunk, and that’s the end of it. I felt a nice glow that morning. I was probably smiling too much, foolishly no doubt, but Dallas was too much a lady to mention it although her mouth was twitching.
“I want to hire you, Mort,” she said over breakfast. For her, that was half a grapefruit for $3.75 and two slices of toast for $2.80. I was working my way through a double stack of blueberry pancakes, a side of scrambled, an English muffin with strawberry jam, and orange juice, for which I would’ve had to get a weekend job at a 7-Eleven if I were picking up the tab.
“I was that good, huh?” I asked.
She gave me the look she’d given me the other day. I told her I was sorry.
“No, don’t apologize. You can’t help it.”
“Hire me how?”
“As a private investigator.”
“Yeah?”
“You are an investigator now, aren’t you?”
And a damn fine one, I thought. In all this great nation, in all the world, in fact, I was the one who’d found Jonnie Sjorgen. “What do you want me to do, Dal?”
“Find out who killed Jonnie.”
I shook my head. “It’s an active case. Real active, in case you hadn’t noticed. I’d be bumping into RPD detectives all day long. And probably FBI. My no-fault insurance would skyrocket, kiddo. I’d have to sell the screaming Toyota.”
“I’m serious, Mort.”
“So’m I.”
She pushed her lower lip into a pout. “With your vast experience as a PI, I can see why you’d be reluctant.”
“Christ, Dal—”
“Okay, fine. If you don’t want the job—”
“I don’t want the job.”
“—I’ll hire someone who does.”
“C’mon, Dallas. Let the police do what they do.”
“I thought you worked for Gregory.”
“Gregory Westergaard Rudd. Maybe. I’m not sure. I haven’t checked with him since yesterday.”
“I would think he’d have some say about what cases you do or don’t take, since it’s his business.”
I relaxed a notch. This wasn’t Greg’s kind of deal. He wouldn’t touch this gremlin with rubber gloves, wearing a hazmat suit. Which gave me my next brilliant idea. I phoned him.
Dale answered with, “Carson & Rudd Investigative Services. Dale Larkin speaking.”
Stiff, very stiff. She sounded recorded. “It’s Mort. Greg in yet?”
“Uh, yes. Hold on.” Sound came through Dale’s palm for a few seconds, then Greg came on the line. “Uncle Mortimer…”
He made it that far, then ran out of steam. I figured he’d caught our act on TV, Dallas’s and mine. Who in this hemisphere hadn’t?
“Yeah,” I said. “How’s business, kid?”
“Mr. Skulstad phoned—”
Hell. Three little bean counters had also caught our act. I was busted. “What’d he want?”
“He let us go.” Greg sounded wounded. “He wants his retainer back. Dale’s cutting a check for him right now. For God’s sake, Uncle Mortimer, you were on every TV station in Reno—”
“Exposure like that costs a bundle. You oughta do a whale of a business now that Carson & Rudd is on the map. Not sure about the name, though. Angel & Rudd might be more—”
“Your cover’s been blown—”
“Call Skulstad back, tell him I’ll fix it. How much was the retainer?”
“Five…five hundred. Didn’t you hear what I said? We’ve been fired, terminated.”
“I told you, I’ll handle it.”
“How?”
“Call him, Gregory.”
Something in my voice got through. Or maybe he remembered I’d once changed his diapers and was afraid I might remind him of that fact. “Okay,” he said.
“Good news,” I told him. “I’ve got us a job offer.” I glanced over at Dallas. She smiled back at me.
“Oh?”
“Hot stuff. Dallas wants us—your firm, that is—to try to find out who killed Jonnie.”
Dead air. I tried not to smile. The effort made my face feel waxen. I could see him there, staring at the phone in disbelief.
“Well…yeah,” my idiot nephew said. “Okay.”
“What!”
“I’ve been thinking about tackling new things. Bigger projects. This might be, you know, a kind of breakthrough, interesting.”
Oh, you simple, simple twit. Interesting? “You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“No. I mean, why shouldn’t we—?”
“I hope you’ve got an airbag glued to your chest, kid.” I didn’t look at Dallas. Her smug look would’ve killed me.
“What do you mean?”
“If you’re gonna play bumper cars with the media and the police and tabloid slime and the FBI and maybe Interpol, you’ve gotta wear an airbag. It’s a state law. Look it up.”
“Well…is Dallas there?”
“Yeah.” He hadn’t asked where “there” was, so how good a private dick could he be?
“Could you put her on, please?” he asked.
I handed her the phone. Dallas said, “Hello,” and, “That’s right, Gregory,” and, after a half minute or so, not looking at me, “Two thousand’s fine.”
I closed my eyes. Gregory Rudd, a card-carrying wet blanket for every occasion, was on the case, and I was a monkey’s uncle.
* * *
On my way over to Skulstad Meats I could still see that look of satisfaction on Dallas’s face. She didn’t rub it in, but in the next hour or so I was, in effect, going to be working for her.
But, first things first.
I walked in and smiled at Rachel Cabrera. She was looking very good, very healthy. As leggy as ever. Her legs might’ve even grown half an inch overnight.
“Oh…Mr. Angel,” she said, startled. I could tell by the look on her face that she’d caught my recent stunning success on TV.
“Call me Mort,” I said. “How about that dinner? Think it over, huh? Zozo’s?”
Without waiting for a reply, I marched back to the bullpen where Skulstad kept the sharpies who kept his books. Unless you’re a gang member, fear isn’t normally a gratifying thing to see in people’s eyes, but I’d seen it with the IRS which has definite ganglike qualities, and I was counting on it now.
Nor was I disappointed. All the media insinuation had made it seem possible, even likely, that I was capable of murder most foul. And at six-four, two hundred thirty pounds after a big meal, who, here, was going to stop me if I suddenly ran amok?
I perched on the edge of Betty Pope’s desk since she was head of accounting. I swung a leg. If one wants to intimidate, a little disrespect goes a long way. No one knows where it’ll stop.
I had their undivided attention without saying a word. Jonnie and I had probably been the subject of much conversation over coffee and doughnuts that morning. They’d all narrowly escaped with their lives the other day, and here I was again, like an enduring Egyptian curse.
“Someone here isn’t playin’ by the rules,” I said.
Tomblike silence.
“Someone—or maybe more than one—knows exactly what I’m talking about.”
Betty, Phil, and Iris stared at me with huge eyes, Betty eyeing a pair of scissors, Phil blinking a mile a minute, Iris ready to pass out or run. I leaned a few inches closer to the lot of them. Invading space is a useful intimidation technique—IRS manual, Eighth Edition, page 915.
“Whoever that someone is, or someones,” I said ominously, “I want it to stop, now.”
No one said a word.
“So let’s call the game even. Whoever knows what I’m talking about, I want you to give ten thousand dollars to Mr. Skulstad. Put it in an envelope, deliver it to him anonymously. Today is Tuesday. Do it by, say, quitting time Thursday, or I’ll be back.” Hell, the line worked for Schwarzenegger. I figured it’d work for me.
“If that doesn’t happen,” I added, smiling significantly, “heads will roll.”
I gave each of them a final look and walked out. That last line might’ve been over the top given yesterday’s events, but I couldn’t resist, so I guess Dallas is right about me.
I poked my head into Skulstad’s office. “I’ll phone later in the week, maybe Friday.” He looked up and stared. I ducked back out, then wrote my phone number on a fluorescent lavender Post-it on Rachel’s desk and stuck it to her monitor screen.
“In case you get hungry,” I said.
She gawked at me, open-mouthed. I strolled out, got back in my portable Japanese hibachi, and drove over to my place on Ralston Street.
The forty dollars was gone. “Thanks. K,” her latest note read. Fresh fruit was in a bowl on the kitchen counter, milk and bread in the fridge, a new tube of toothpaste in the bathroom and a brand-new hot-pink toothbrush upright in the holder. K, of course, was gone.
Sonofabitch.
I grabbed an apple, left another twenty dollars and a reminder for her to do the windows, then went back to the Grand Sierra.
By now the dame was into me for sixty bucks. Spade would’ve called her a dame, so that’s what I did. First chance I got I was gonna call her kiddo, right to her pretty face.
* * *
I walked into the room at 10:15. Dallas had the crossword done and was dressed, ready to go. Dazzling, even in the wilted outfit she’d worn the other day. She was going to stay at least one more night there, maybe more, but she wanted to get clothes and a few other things from her place—Jonnie’s house, that is. I pointed out the obvious risks, and the fact that she could bop on over to Macy’s and have a ball shopping for new things, one of her favorite pastimes, but she didn’t want to do that. The media trolls might have abandoned Jonnie’s place. She had clothes in drawers there, washed and folded. And she wanted me to tag along, just in case.
“That mean I’m on the payroll now?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t know how it works.”
