Briarpatch (12 page)
After he finally got rid of Cindy McCabe, Dill drove downtown, parked the rented Ford in the basement garage, and at 3:46 P.M. walked into the nicely cooled Hawkins Hotel. The temperature outside, according to the First National Bank sign, was 104 degrees Fahrenheit. There was no wind. Dill could not remember when there had been no wind.
The elderly woman, whom he took to be a permanent resident, was seated in her usual chair in the lobby working on an intricate piece of needlepoint. She looked up as Dill approached, but this time she didn't frown or glare. Nor did she smile. She merely stared. Dill smiled and nodded. She nodded back and said, “Tornado weather.”
Dill said, “You could be right,” and continued on until he came to the reception desk, where he paused to see if there were any messages in his box. There was one on a slip of pink paper. He asked the clerk for it. The clerk, the same one who had checked Dill in, looked at his watch first, took the slip from the box, and leaned across the counter, his manner suddenly confidential or conspiratorial. Or both, Dill thought.
“Captain Colder,” the clerk said, barely moving his lips.
Dill liked melodrama, especially in the afternoon. “Where?”
“The Slush Pit.”
“How long?”
The clerk shrugged his thin shoulders. “Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.”
“And?”
“He's looking for you.”
“There a back way out?”
“You can goâ” The clerk stopped. The tips of his ears grew pink. “Aw hell, Mr. Dill, you're kidding me.”
“Not really,” Dill said, turned, and headed for the Slush Pit. As he walked he read the message slip. It asked him to “please call Mr. Dolan, Washington, D.C., before 6 P.M. EDT.” Dill looked at his watch again. It wouldn't be six in Washington for another hour. But there was really no hurry. Timothy Dolan never left the subcommittee office before seven anyhow, not even on Friday nights.
The Slush Pit, living up to its name, was as oil-black as always. It took Dill's eyes several moments to adjust. He finally located Captain Gene Colder at a table near the north wall. Colder sat with his back to the wall, a glass of beer in front of him. The beer looked untouched. Dill suspected Colder of not really being much of a drinker despite the two Scotches he had put away up in Dill's room the previous afternoon. Dill thought those two drinks might well have used up Colder's ration for the week.
Dill crossed to the table. Colder looked up at him and nodded. It was not a friendly nod. Neither was it unfriendly. It was the cool nod one stranger might give another, reserving all judgment until the second stranger does something strange.
“Sit down,” Colder said.
Dill nodded back his own stranger-type nod, pulled out a chair, and sat down.
“Drink?”
Dill didn't really want anything. But he said, “Sure, I'll have a beer. A draft.”
Colder raised his hand. The cocktail waitress hurried over. Lately, Dill told himself, you've been drinking with people who command instantaneous service.
“He wants a beer, Lucille,” Colder said to the waitress.
“You okay, Captain?” she asked.
“I'm fine.”
Lucille went away. Colder took out a package of Salems and offered Dill a cigarette. Dill shook his head. “I quit.”
“If I keep on smoking these things, so will I.” Colder lit the cigarette with a throwaway lighter and leaned forward, his elbows on the table. “I thought we could have a talk without the chief breathing down our necks.”
“Okay.”
“Felicity,” Colder said. “I'd like to talk about her.”
“All right.”
“It may not show, Dill, but I'm almost falling apart.”
Dill nodded in what he hoped was a sympathetic way. It apparently wasn't, because Colder stared at him as if expecting something more.
“So am I,” Dill said. “Falling apart. Almost.”
That was better, Dill saw. Not much, but some. Colder looked away and said, “I'm married to a bitch.”
“It happens.”
“She's the daughter of an ex-deputy chief back home. In Kansas City.” He ground the scarcely smoked cigarette out. “And that's why I married herâbecause she was a deputy chief's daughter.” He went on carefully grinding out the cigarette. “I made a mistake.”
“I make them all the time,” Dill said because he saw that Colder
expected him to say something. The waitress came over, put the glass of beer down in front of Dill, and went away. Dill took an experimental swallow. Colder still hadn't touched his.
expected him to say something. The waitress came over, put the glass of beer down in front of Dill, and went away. Dill took an experimental swallow. Colder still hadn't touched his.
“I'm thirty-six years old and if I play it right, I can be chief by the time I'm forty. Maybe even before. And I don't mean chief of detectives like Strucker. I mean chief of policeâthe
queso grande
.”
queso grande
.”
“But,” Dill said.
“What d'you mean, but?”
“That's why you're telling me all this, because there's a but.”
Colder stared at Dill. It's his Grand Inquisitor's stare, Dill decided, the one that says: Confess. Reveal. Disclose. Spill.
“Just what kind of but do you think it is?” Colder said.
Dill shrugged. “I won't even try to guess because you're going to tell me.” In fact, he thought, you're dying to tell me. The Inquisitor becomes the Inquisitee, although I suspect that whatever the revelations are, Captain, they will leave you blameless.
“My wife,” Colder began, “well, my wife was giving me a rotten time long before I ever met Felicity. In fact, I moved out on her.”
“Before you met Felicity.”
“Well, right after anyway.”
“I see.”
“I don't want you to get the idea that Felicity broke up any happy home.”
“I'm sure she wouldn't've.”
“My wife and I don't have any kids. So the only hassle I had when I moved out was with her.”
“She's here?”
“Right. She's here.”
“How old is she?”
“A little older'n I am. Thirty-eight.”
“Almost too late for kids anyway.”
“I don't think she really ever wanted any,” Colder said and
took a glum sip of the beer that Dill thought must be flat by now. Colder didn't seem to think so.
took a glum sip of the beer that Dill thought must be flat by now. Colder didn't seem to think so.
“So what happened then?” Dill said. “I mean after she found out about Felicity?”
“You've already heard, haven't you?”
“Heard what?”
“That my wife threatened to kill Felicity.”
“No, I didn't hear that.”
“You will.”
“Did she?”
“Threaten to? Sure.”
“No,” Dill said. “That's not what I mean.”
“You mean did she kill Felicity?”
“Yes.”
“No,” Colder said. “She didn't.”
“How'd your wife threaten her?”
“She'd call her up and yell at her. She'd call her up at home and say, âIf you don't keep away from my husband, I'll kill you.' She'd call her up at work, too. If Gertrudeâthat's her nameâcouldn't reach Felicity, she'd leave a message with whoever answered. Messages like âThis is Captain Colder's wife. Tell Detective Dill I'll kill her if she doesn't leave him alone.' That went on for a couple of weeks.”
“Then what?”
Colder lit another one of his menthol cigarettes. He inhaled and made a face at what he tasted. Or at what he was about to say. “In this state, two doctors can commit. The department has two of them sort of on standbyâguys that could have a little trouble with the state medical board, if we wanted to do something about it. We keep them on tap.” He paused. “Isn't that awful?”
Dill nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It is.”
“So I tucked her away for a month.”
“Gertrude.”
“Yeah. Gertrude.”
“When was this?”
Colder ran time through his head. “A year ago in September.”
“So she's been outâwhat? Ten or eleven months?”
“Right.”
“And?”
“She's calmed down. They've got her on Valium. She's even seeing some guy she met in that place. I checked him out. He's an on-again, off-again juicer and they were drying him out when she met him. He's got a trust fund, which is what every juicer ought to have, so he doesn't have to worry about money. It brings him in a couple of thousand a month and sometimes he sells a little real estate. But what he does mostly is hang around Gertrude. He brings her flowers and takes her to the pictures and the plays, whenever one of them gets here, and she likes that kind of thing. He's older. In his early fifties, and I imagine he's fucking her, but not too often, and that'd sure be all right with her, too.”
“She's agreed to the divorce then?” Dill said.
“Oh, yeah. She finally agreed to that after she got out.”
“Where was she?”
“Millrun Farm. Ever hear of it?”
Dill nodded. “It used to be old Doc Lasker's place when he was the resident abortionist here. They'd come from all over back thenâfrom New York, L.A., Memphis, Chicago. It used to be a pretty nice place, but that was years ago.”
“It still is,” Colder said. “Lasker died, you know.”
Dill shook his head. “I didn't.”
“He was old and his business had gone to hell anyway when they legalized abortion, so he sold it to a couple of young shrinks and they've made a go of it. God knows they charge enough.”
Dill finished the last of his beer. “I wonder why Felicity never told me she was going to be married.”
Colder shook his head as though bewildered. Dill didn't believe the gesture. Bewilderment had no more room in Colder's makeup than did humility. And whatever you are, Captain, you are not humble.
“She said she wrote you about it,” Colder said.
“She didn't.”
“Maybe it was because of Gertrude and everything.”
“Maybe.” Dill decided he wanted another beer. He looked toward the bar, caught the eye of Lucille, the waitress, and made a circular motion over the table with his forefinger pointing down. Lucille nodded her understanding. Dill turned back to Colder and smiled his most pleasant smile.
“Let me ask you something,” Dill said, his smile now almost ablaze with warmth, understanding, and compassion.
Colder apparently didn't believe the smile for a moment. He took his elbows off the table and leaned back in his chair. It was a defensive position. When he replied his voice had resumed its utter-stranger tone. “Ask me what?”
“Where did Felicity live?” Dill carefully kept his smile alight.
“Thirty-second and Texas,” Colder said without hesitation.
The smile went out and Dill shook his head regretfully. “I guess I didn't phrase it right.”
“You asked where she lived. I told you. Thirty-second and Texas.”
“That's where she camped out,” Dill said. “I was there this afternoon. I poked around. Nobody lived there. Nobody. Somebody kept some clothes there. Somebody had a cup of coffee there once in a while. Now and then, somebody even slept there. But nobody lived there. At least, nobody named Felicity Dill. So what
I'm asking, I guess, is where did Felicity really live? Your place? Is that where she spattered the stove with her rémoulade sauce, and read nine books at once and left most of them open on the floor, and smoked her two packs of Luckies a day, and weighed herself at least twice, and kept her kitchen stocked with enough food to last two months even if she knew she'd throw a lot of it out? That was my sister, Captain. That's how she lived. She wasn't obsessively neat. She didn't hang mail-order Impressionist prints on her wall. Give Felicity five minutes in a room, any room, and she made it look like she'd lived there forever. She was a nester, Captain, and she built her nests with thingsâodd things, funny things, even dumb things like the fire hydrant she bought when she was fifteen, welded the cut-down washtub on top of, and turned it into the frontyard birdbath.” Dill took a deep breath, held it for a long moment, then let it out and asked in a quiet, reasonable voice, “So where did she live, Captain?”
I'm asking, I guess, is where did Felicity really live? Your place? Is that where she spattered the stove with her rémoulade sauce, and read nine books at once and left most of them open on the floor, and smoked her two packs of Luckies a day, and weighed herself at least twice, and kept her kitchen stocked with enough food to last two months even if she knew she'd throw a lot of it out? That was my sister, Captain. That's how she lived. She wasn't obsessively neat. She didn't hang mail-order Impressionist prints on her wall. Give Felicity five minutes in a room, any room, and she made it look like she'd lived there forever. She was a nester, Captain, and she built her nests with thingsâodd things, funny things, even dumb things like the fire hydrant she bought when she was fifteen, welded the cut-down washtub on top of, and turned it into the frontyard birdbath.” Dill took a deep breath, held it for a long moment, then let it out and asked in a quiet, reasonable voice, “So where did she live, Captain?”
Lucille the waitress arrived with two beers and served them. She started to say something to Colder, but changed her mind when she saw his expression, and hurried away. Colder, still staring at Dill, put his left hand in his pants pocket, picked up his beer with his right hand, and drank several swallows.
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