Briarpatch (26 page)

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Authors: Ross Thomas

Tags: #Mystery, #Thriller

BOOK: Briarpatch
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“Quite nicely, Jake; thank you.”
“Well, that's fine. We're gonna eat in about thirty minutes so lemme know if there's something you all need.”
“There is one thing,” Singe said.
“What's that, darlin'?”
“If I stand on my head and eat a bug, will somebody give me a tour of your house?”
Spivey cocked his head and smiled down at her. “You grow up rich or poor, Anna Maude?”
“Sort of poor.”
“Then I'll give you Jake Spivey's personally escorted poor folks, lawdy-lookit-that tour of the Ace Dawson mansion.”
Singe rose quickly to her feet. “No kidding?”
“No kiddin'.” He turned to Dill. “By the way, Pick, that fella you wanted to see. I think he's waiting for you in the library.”
“Thanks.”
Spivey turned back to Singe. “Let's go, sugar.”
 
 
Chief of Detectives Strucker didn't smile or even nod this time when Dill, dressed again in shirt and slacks, came into the library. Strucker was seated in front of Spivey's large desk and Dill, for a moment, thought of sitting behind it, but immediately discarded the idea as silly. Strucker was also wearing casual clothes—an expensive dark-blue sport shirt, ice-cream slacks, and a pair of new-looking Top-siders with thick-ribbed white socks. Dill thought Strucker wore the outfit like a new and uncomfortable uniform.
As soon as Dill sat down in the other chair in front of the desk, Strucker said, “Your sister was on the take.”
Dill said nothing. The silence grew. They stared at each other and the older man's gaze somehow managed to be both impassive and unforgiving. It was the gaze of someone who had long ago determined the real difference between right and wrong—and who should get the blame. It was a gaze without pity. It was the law's gaze. Finally, Dill said, “How much?”
Strucker looked up at the ceiling as if trying to do a difficult sum in his head. He also fished a cigar from his shirt pocket. “In eighteen months,” he said, and lit the cigar with a wooden match. “Give or take a week.” He made sure the cigar was going well. “We figure ninety-six thousand two hundred and eighty-three dollars passed through her hands.” He waved the match out and
dropped it into an ashtray on Spivey's desk. “About one-two-five-o a week or a little less if you wanta average it out.” He paused to reexamine the cigar's burning tip. “We also know where some of it went: on the duplex; on the insurance policy she took out; the rent for that other place she had—the garage apartment—but there's still about fifty thousand missing.” He puffed on the cigar. “The fifty grand's kind of interesting.”
Dill nodded. “It's just about what she'd've needed for the balloon payment.”
“Just about.”
“Why'd you feed all that crap about her to the Tribune and then make damn sure they ran it?”
Strucker shrugged. “Publicity is often the most useful tool in any investigation. You know that, Dill.”
“Old Fred Laffter told me he wrote a harmless cutesy feature about Felicity some time back. They say you killed it. Why?”
Again, Strucker shrugged. “We thought it was premature, that's all. That it might've done her more harm than good.”
“Whose pad was she on?”
“We don't know.”
“Why was she killed?”
“We don't know that either, and before you ask me who killed her, or what she was doing to earn her one-two-five-o a week, I've got to remind you this is an ongoing homicide investigation and there's not much more I can tell you than I've told you already.”
“Tell me how Clay Corcoran's death is tied in with my sister's.”
“It isn't.”
“Bullshit.”
“Bullshit,” Strucker said thoughtfully, much as if he had just stumbled across a new and interesting synonym. “Well, here's some more of it: Corcoran was killed with a twenty-five-caliber softnosed slug at a range of approximately twelve yards. I'm surprised
the hole in his throat wasn't bigger than it was. I'm even more surprised that whoever shot him hit him. He must've been the best fucking shooter in the world if, in fact, he was aiming at Corcoran.”
“Who else would he be aiming at?”
“Well, there's you and there's Miss Singe.”
“Nobody was shooting at me.”
“What about Miss Singe?”
“Her either.”
Strucker drew in some more cigar smoke, tasted it for a moment, blew it up in the air, and said, “I made some phone calls to Washington. Not many. Two or three at the most. It seems you're kind of well known up there, at least by some folks. From what I understand you're nosing around after some renegade spooks—and every last one of them a real honest-to-God hard case. Maybe one of them figured you were getting too close, dressed himself up in an out-of-state-cop uniform (that sounds like a spook, doesn't it?), took a shot at you, missed, and hit poor old Clay Corcoran instead.” He gave his big shoulders a strange almost Mediterranean shrug. “Could've happened that way.”
“No,” Dill said, “it couldn't've.” He paused then, partly because of Strucker's evasions, and partly because he didn't really want to say what he was going to say next. “I understand,” Dill said, “that you'd like to be mayor.”
Strucker waved his cigar deprecatingly. “Just talk.”
“But if the talk turns into something else, Jake Spivey's going to be awfully useful to you, right?”
“Well, yes, sir, his help would be much appreciated, if he sees fit to give it.”
Dill leaned forward, as if to examine Strucker more closely. “I can jerk the chain on Jake,” he said. “I can send him down the pipes where he won't be of any use to anyone.”
Strucker again sucked on his cigar, took it out of his mouth, looked at it, and said, “Your oldest friend.”
“My oldest friend.” Dill leaned back in his chair. His voice turned cold and distant and nearly uninflected. “She was my sister. The only family I had. I knew her better than I've ever known anyone in my life. She wasn't bent. She wasn't on anyone's pad. I know that. And I'm pretty sure you know it. I also think you know what happened to Felicity and why. I need to know what you know. So either you tell me or I flush my old friend and your political future right down the drain.”
Strucker nodded almost sympathetically. “Must be kinda hard, choosing between a live friend and dead kin.”
“Not all that hard.”
“For you, maybe not.” He drew in some more smoke, blew it out, and again examined his cigar thoughtfully. “How long can I have—a week?”
“Three days,” Dill said.
“A week'd be better.”
“I would say okay, but three days is all I've got.”
Strucker rose, stretched a little, and sighed his heavy sigh. “Three days then.” He stared down at Dill almost curiously. “You really would, wouldn't you—dump your old friend?”
“Yes,” Dill said, “I really would.”
Strucker nodded again as though reconfirming some expected, but nevertheless unpleasant, news, turned, and walked out of the room. Dill watched him go. When the sliding door closed, Dill got up and went behind Spivey's desk. He ran his hand beneath the well of the desk and eventually found the switch. He went down on his hands and knees to examine it. The switch was turned to “on.” Dill left it that way, pulled out the top right-hand drawer of the desk, then the middle drawer, and finally the deep bottom one. The Japanese tape recorder was in the bottom drawer, turning
slowly. It obviously had been installed by an expert. Dill closed the drawer gently and rose.
He looked around the room and then said in a firm loud clear voice, “I wasn't kidding him, Jake. I really would.”
The party at Jake Spivey's began breaking up when the sun went down, and it was a little after 9 P.M. when Dill and Anna Maude Singe arrived at the yellow brick duplex on the corner of Thirty-second and Texas Avenue. Lights were on in the ground-floor apartment. The rented Ford's radio said the temperature had fallen to 93 degrees, but Dill thought it was still much hotter than that.
“Well, he's home,” Singe said, looking at the lights in Harold Snow's apartment.
“Keep her in the living room if he and I go in the kitchen,” Dill said. “If she goes in the kitchen, you go with her and make sure she stays there for at least two or three minutes.”
“Okay.”
They got out of the car and moved up the walk to the door with the blistered brown molding. Dill rang the bell. Seconds later, the door was opened by Harold Snow, who wore a T-shirt, tennis shorts, and a cross look. Before Snow could say anything, Dill said in a too-loud voice, “We've come about the rent, Harold.”
There was a brief puzzled look that lasted for less than a second until the coyote eyes signaled their understanding. Snow turned
his head to make sure his voice would carry back into the living room. “Yeah. Right. The rent.”
Snow led them through the small foyer and into the living room, where Cindy McCabe was applying pink polish to her toenails and watching a television program that featured elderly British actors. Dill introduced the two women and Cindy McCabe said, “Hi.”
“Turn that shit off,” Snow said. “They're here about the rent.”
McCabe recapped the nail-polish bottle, rose, and in an effort to protect her freshly painted toes, walked awkwardly on her heels over to the large television set and switched it off. “What's with the rent?” she said.
“God, it's hot outside,” Dill said, hoping he wouldn't have to add: It sure makes you thirsty.
He didn't. The cleverness again flitted across Harold Snow's face and he said, “You want a beer or something?”
Dill smiled. “A beer would be great.”
“Get us four beers, will you, doll?” Snow said to Cindy McCabe. Before she could reply, Anna Maude Singe said, “Let me help, Cindy.” McCabe nodded indifferently and started toward the kitchen, still walking awkwardly on her heels. Singe went with her.
“Where's my thousand bucks?” Snow said in a low hurried voice.
“Did you put it in, Harold?”
“I put it in, just like you said—in the living room. Where's my money?”
Dill took the ten folded hundred-dollar bills from his pants pocket and handed them to Snow, who counted them quickly. “Jesus,” he said, “couldn't you even've found an envelope?” He counted the bills a second time and then stuffed them down into the right pocket of his tennis shorts.
“You're sure it works, Harold?” Dill said.
“It works. I checked it. Voice-activated, just like before. Funny thing is, though, I found something else.”
“What?”
“What comes extra.”
Dill shook his head wearily. “The rent, Harold. You don't have to pay this month's rent.”
“What about next month?”
Dill scowled. “Remember your knee, Harold.”
The warning made Snow take a quick step back. It was almost a skip. “But I don't have to pay this month's rent, right?”
“Right.”
“Well, what I found was that somebody else'd wired the place. The living room, I mean. Looked like maybe a cop job.”
“What d'you mean, cop job?”
“I mean a pro did it. Not as slick as me, but he still knew what he was doing. So I left it in place, but what I did was, I squirted some piss into the mike. It'll still pick up sound, but it'll take a week to get the distortion out. If they can't, all they'll have is funny noise.” He frowned. “You don't look too surprised.”
Dill assumed that Clyde Brattle had ordered the wiring of the place where the meeting with Senator Ramirez would take place, and nothing Brattle might do would ever surprise Dill. He smiled at Snow and said, “Harold, just to show how much I appreciate your efforts, you don't have to pay next month's rent either.”
Instead of looking pleased, Snow again frowned. He has to work the angle, Dill thought. He has to give it another twist. “Don't tell Cindy,” Snow said. “I mean, we'll tell her about not having to pay this month's rent, but not about next month's. Okay?”
“Fine.”
“Well, I guess we might as well sit down,” Snow said and waved Dill to the cream-colored chair where Cindy McCabe had sat
painting her toenails. After Dill sat down, Snow sat on the couch opposite. The couch wore a slipcover patterned with monarch butterflies. Snow leaned forward, his elbows on his bare knees, his expression and tone confidential. “All this has got something to do with your sister, right?”
“Wrong,” Dill said.
Snow's expression went from confidential to skeptical. But before he could outline his doubts, Cindy McCabe came back, carrying a tray with four open cans of beer. Anna Maude Singe followed with two glasses in each hand.
“I brought glasses, if anybody wants one,” she said.
Nobody did. McCabe served the beer and sat next to Harold Snow on the couch. Singe sat in the room's only other easy chair. Cindy McCabe looked at Snow. “What about the rent?” she said.
“We don't have to pay this month's.”
“No shit. How come?”
She asked the question of Dill, but Harold Snow answered. “He wants us to sort of look after the place until he decides what to do with it. Even show it maybe, you know, to people who might wanta buy it.” He looked at Dill. “Right?”
“Right.”
“Hey, that's okay,” Cindy McCabe said and smiled.
“But we gotta pay next month's,” Harold Snow said.
“Well, sure, but one month free's nothing to sneeze at.” Something else occurred to her. “You thank him?”
“Of course I thanked him.”
“Well, sometimes you forget.”
The doorbell rang and Harold Snow said what everyone says when the doorbell rings after the sun goes down. He said, “Who the hell can that be?”
“Bill collectors maybe,” Cindy McCabe said and tittered.
Snow rose, holding his beer, crossed the living room, and disappeared into the small foyer. They could hear him opening the front door. They could also hear him say, “Yeah, what is it?”
Then they heard the first shotgun blast. Then the second one. After that, it was absolutely quiet until Cindy McCabe began to scream. She didn't get up off the couch. She simply sat there, slowly crushing her beer can with both hands, and screamed again and again. The beer spilled out of the can and onto her bare legs. Anna Maude Singe rose quickly, hurried over to McCabe, and slapped her across the face. The screaming stopped. Singe knelt by McCabe, pried away the crushed beer can, and held the now sobbing woman in her arms.
Dill was up. He moved slowly to the foyer. I don't want to look at him, he thought. I don't want to see how he looks. He swallowed when he saw Harold Snow and then took four very deep breaths. Snow lay on his back in the foyer. The beer can was still in his left hand. The right side of his face was gone, although the left eye remained, still open. But it no longer looked clever. Much of Snow's upper chest was a red wet depression. The blood, bone and flesh had splattered the walls and the mirror that hung on the farthest one. Dill knelt by the body and tried to remember which pocket Snow had put the thousand dollars in. He decided it was the left one. But after he put his hand into it, he discovered he was wrong, tried the right pocket, and found the money. He put it into his own pocket and rose, realizing he had not breathed once since kneeling by Harold Snow. You didn't want to smell him, he thought. You didn't want to smell the corruption and the blood. You didn't want to smell the death.
Dill went back into the living room. Cindy McCabe, still sobbing, lifted her head from Anna Maude Singe's shoulder. “Is … is he …”
“He's dead, Cindy,” Dill said.
“Oh shit, oh God, oh shit,” she wailed, dropped her head back down on Singe's shoulder, and started sobbing again.
Dill looked around the room and spotted Cindy McCabe's purse on top of the television set. He walked over, opened the purse, took the ten hundred-dollar bills from his pocket, made sure there was no blood on them, and tucked them down into the purse. Then Dill went to the phone and called the police.
 
 
First to arrive were two young uniformed officers in a green-and-white squad car. They arrived with siren blaring and bar lights flashing. Neither was much over twenty-five. One of them had a large handsome nose. The other had an out-sized chin. They told Dill their names, which he promptly forgot, and thought of them as the Chin and the Nose. The Chin took one glance at Harold Snow's body and then looked quickly away—as if for a place to vomit. The Nose stared at the body with fascination. He finally looked up at Dill.
“Sawed-off, huh?”
“Sounded like it,” Dill said.
“Gotta be,” the Nose said and turned to his partner, who now seemed extremely interested in the small crowd of neighbors who had gathered outside at a safe, respectful distance. “Go talk to 'em,” the Nose told his partner. “Get their names. See if they heard or saw anything—and check around in back, too.”
“What for?”
“Maybe the whoever with the sawed-off's still back there.”
“The whoever's long gone.”
“Check anyhow.”
After the Chin headed for the neighbors, the Nose looked at
Dill. They were still standing in the foyer. “Who're you?” the policeman asked.
“Ben Dill.”
“Bendill?”
“Benjamin Dill.”
“Right,” the Nose said and wrote it down. “Who's he?”
“Harold Snow.”
After he wrote that down, the young policeman indicated the living room. “Who's in there making all the noise?”
“His girl friend and my lawyer.”
“Your lawyer?” That made the Nose suspicious momentarily, but he passed over it and turned his attention back to the body of Harold Snow. It still seemed to fascinate him. “What'd he do—the deceased?”
Dill shook his head. It was a small commiserative gesture. “He answered the doorbell after dark, I guess.”
 
 
The real questioning didn't begin until the homicide squad arrived, headed by Detective Sergeant Meek and Detective First Grade Lowe. After Dill identified himself, Meek looked at him quizzically. “Felicity's brother?”
Dill nodded. “You knew her?”
Meek stared thoughtfully down at the floor before answering. Then he looked up at Dill and said, “Yeah, I knew her pretty good. She was—well, Felicity was okay.”
It was Meek who took over the interrogation and Detective Lowe who handled the technical side. Meek was a tall, almost skinny man in his late thirties. Lowe was not much more than thirty-one or thirty-two, of a bit more than medium height and weight, and if he had one distinguishing characteristic, it was his
completely bored expression—except for his eyes. His gray-blue eyes seemed interested in everything.
The medical examiner had come and gone, the photographer had finished, and they were about to cart away the body of Harold Snow when Homicide Captain Gene Colder came into the living room dressed in a navy-blue jogging outfit and Nike running shoes and carrying a pint of ice cream that he said was fudge ripple. He handed the sack to Detective Lowe and told him to put it in the freezer. The Chin volunteered to do it and Detective Lowe looked grateful.
Cindy McCabe had at last stopped sobbing. She sat on the couch with her hands in her lap and her knees primly together. She spoke only when spoken to. Her voice was low and almost indistinct. Once again, for the benefit of Captain Colder, she told her story. Dill then repeated his, and Anna Maude Singe hers. Colder looked questioningly at Sergeant Meek, who by then had already heard the same stories three times. The Sergeant gave the Captain a small nod.
Colder looked thoughtfully at Dill. “Let's you and me go in the kitchen.”
“Officially?” Dill said.
“What d'you mean, officially?”
“If it's official,” Dill said, “she goes with me.” He nodded at Anna Maude Singe.
“You want your lawyer along, bring her along,” Colder said and started toward the kitchen. Dill and Singe followed. They stood and watched Colder open the freezer, remove his pint of ice cream, find a spoon, sit down at the kitchen table, twist the top off the pint, and begin eating the fudge ripple, offering them only the explanation “I didn't have any dinner.”

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