Dark Blonde (19 page)

I went into the bar off the dining room and found a bottle of cognac. I brought it with a glass and helped her down a couple of slugs. She pushed up in the chair and looked around. I wiped our prints off the bottle and glass.

I used the telephone in the corner to call the operator, who connected me with the police in a heartbeat. “There’s been a shooting at 4200 Austin. A man’s dead. Send officers by right away.” I hung up, and wiped off the phone.

Julia was dead weight, but by the time we hit the cold night air she revived enough to use one leg. We hobbled across the street and I stuffed her into the back seat of my Buick and listened to her grinding snore all the way to the Gateswood estate, worrying about how deep I now was in the cesspool of after-the-fact-accessorizing.

The Gateswood house was dark when I drove into the port-cochere. I had to bang on the door and ring the bell for five minutes before a light flicked on and a puffy-faced congressman in his bathrobe answered. Miss Mathews had her own apartment on the North Side, and didn’t often stay at the Gateswood Estate unless there was need. When I told Henry I’d found Julia and needed help to carry her in the house, he almost ran to the car.

I made sure her coat was buttoned. “She’s in bad shape,” I said rolling her out of the seat and lifting her. “She’s been drugged.”

“Good lord. Let me take her feet.”

I held her under the arms and kept her head from lolling back. We moved her into the house and put her on a long sectional. She was pale, her pulse weak. Henry went into Dee’s office, phoned the family doctor, who lived nearby.

“Louis Marxton will be here in a few minutes. He was up late and I caught him just as he was going to bed. He’s seen Julia before and prescribed medications for her.” He felt Julia’s forehead with the back of his hand. “She’s cold. Where did you find her?”

“Kermit Brockway’s living room.”

“Brockway? What on earth?”

I took out the .32 and held it out. “This look familiar? She had it in her hand when I found her. It had been fired recently and three cartridges missing from the magazine.”

“No, I’ve never seen it and as far as I know Julia doesn’t carry a gun. She’s deathly afraid of the things. I can’t imagine why she’d go to Kermit Brockway’s house.”

“Well you don’t see it now. I didn’t show it to you. If you say so I’ll deny it. Most likely Julia was abducted after she left my place and taken to Brockway’s. Do you keep a gun around the place?”

“A Luger, but it hasn’t been fired for years. War souvenir. I keep it in my den. When you found her, did she say anything?”

There was nothing to be gained by letting him in on her mumbling about Brockway forcing her to commit oral sex. “Nothing helpful. She was pretty high.”

“Was Julia there alone?”

“Brockway was there too, with a hole in his head. Someone else came and left earlier, although I don’t know who. I was staking the place. I hadn’t realized Julia might be there. After several hours, a man in sweats entered, a slim tall figure. Whoever it was drove the same white Pontiac that Whipple’s hirelings shanghaied me in, so there’s a connection to Whipple, but it wasn’t his giant thugs or Whipple himself. He hasn’t cut a silhouette that lean since he was in short pants. The mystery man entered the house and ran out five minutes later. That’s when I smelled a rat and went in through the back. Brockway had just been plugged and Julia was holding the weapon, but didn’t know where she was.”

“Good lord! She’s acted strange lately, but Julia would never kill. Whoever entered the house must have shot Brockway and put the gun in her hand.” He turned those calm blue eyes on me; he was searching for sanity in a situation where there was none.

“That’s the way I see it, unless there was someone else in the house the whole time. I didn’t have time to search the place. It’s a big barn of a joint.”

“I suppose we have to call the police. Is there any way we might keep Julia’s name out of this?”

“No police — at least not now. If there’s any flak I can try to keep her out of it. I’m already out on a high wire for removing Julia and what is most likely the murder weapon. If I’m discovered it’s my license, not that I care much. After this mess, a nice little chicken farm in Oregon sounds good. I called the police anonymously right before we left and said there’d been a killing and gave them the address. I can’t be sure they won’t lift Julia’s prints, though. I made sure we didn’t leave any new ones.”

“Are you going to dispose of the gun?”

“I will, but first wanted to make sure it wasn’t your property. I’ll handle the cops and I promise to keep Julia out of it if I can. And not just because it’s embarrassing to you and her, but because I agree with you, Julia isn’t a killer.”

Even as I said the words, fingers of doubt wiggled in my brain. There wasn’t any proof that the mystery figure had pulled the trigger and I wasn’t certain someone else hadn’t been hiding in the Brockway house. I didn’t want to think of Julia as a killer, but then drop-dead gorgeous babes have trigger fingers, too.

Henry looked old and helpless. He perched next to Julia rubbing her hands and wrists and face until the doctor rang the bell, then he sprang up and let him in. The doctor nodded my way and went right to work on Julia. He unbuttoned her coat and didn’t seem startled by what he found under it. At his age he’d seen enough naked bodies and found them no more exciting than a bowl of cold mush with a pulse. Henry blanched. The doctor examined each arm and peered into her pupils with a light. He took her blood pressure. She didn’t make a peep the whole time.

Doctor Marxton was angular, sinewy and erect, pushing seventy. He squinted through the eyes of a man who’d see every sort of pain and malfunction of life. He stood, his eyes still fixed on Julia and said in a calm voice: “What has she taken in the last twelve hours?”

“I found her, doc. I’m afraid I’m not much help there. She’s been missing and I assume held against her will. There were traces of heroin and marijuana in the room, but nothing else I could see. She had a little cognac, too.”

The old man’s head came up quickly. “And just who are you?” He looked to Henry for an explanation.

“Michael Angel, an investigator I hired to find Julia.”

The doc eyed me again with something approaching wary respect. “Well, son, you’ve done your job, now I need to do mine. Henry, show me to your telephone. I’m calling an ambulance to get her up to Presbyterian. Her blood pressure is dangerously low, and just to be safe I need to run some tests and watch her overnight. Her vitals and appearance are consistent with an overdose of heroin, which is nothing to mess with. She ever taken this before?”

“Never,” he said unflinchingly.

“Then some animal shot her up with it. There’s a puncture mark on her left arm. Now, why don’t one of you fetch a bathrobe for the young woman. I’d hate to see the nurses fight over this mink.”

Julia groaned and fluttered her eyes a bit. Henry leaned over and told her she would be all right after a rest.

The ambulance came ten minutes later. Henry wasn’t up to answering any of the questions that kept popping into my head.

There are times when a bald-faced lie looks more like the truth than anything. It was nearly 2 a.m., but I headed back to the Brockway house with the .32 in my pocket. The place was lit up good now, with a spotlight shining down the driveway from the big garage, and all the windows in the place glowing. A black & white and Burk’s unmarked Ford sat in the driveway. I parked in the same spot around the corner I’d been before. I took out the .32 and wiped it clean again, then wrapped it in a handkerchief and held it as I walked up the Brockway drive next to the long laurel hedge that divided the property. When I was twenty feet from the front door, I walked through some shadows and flipped the .32 into the laurel hedge.

Crime photographers were making a full set of the front room, and a forensic type poked around with rubber gloves next to the body. Burk stood in the middle of the room, looking like he’d lost something. When he saw me come in he made a face like he’d just bitten into a rancid banana. He scraped the inside of his mouth with his tongue as if he were trying to get rid of the taste.

“Stop right there, cowboy. This is a crime scene, if you didn’t already know.”

“I knew it before you did, copper. Thought you might need some help here. If I can call my partner first.”

Burk shrugged. To him, the idea of me helping was an impossibility as great as his promotion to mayor. When I woke Rick and told him I’d found Brockway murdered and I was at the house with Burk, he wanted to come over but I told him I’d call him in the morning after things got hashed out. I hung up and watched Burk examine the body like he was going to mount it over his fireplace.

“I suppose you were the one who called this in? How is it so many bodies seem to follow you around, Angelo? You getting a kickback from the boys at the morgue?”

The other cops and forensic types had turned to check me out when I came in but now returned to poking around.

“Nope. I bought an interest in a donut stand and was hoping you and your boys might buy more if I followed you around. Yeah, I called it in. I suppose you want a statement?” I looked over at Brockway, who was now a grayish-green color in the light and much stiffer.

Burk motioned to the table and we took a seat. “First lay it out for me nice and slow. We can get a statement later. Seeing as how all the theaters are closed and what’s on TV isn’t worth watching at this time of day, you don’t have anything urgent to do, right?”

I told Burk about staking out the house, that it was part of my work for the Gateswoods to look into Gail Gorovoy’s murder, that I was working on a theory that Whipple and Brockway were behind it. I fed him the story about being hauled to the house as a reason to return and find out who was using the place. The bruises on my neck were good reasons. I pointed out the window to my car and described the dark slim figure who came and left. I hadn’t heard a shot but it was possible I might have so I told him I did hear shots then saw the figure peel away down the street in a light colored Pontiac, probably the same one registered to Whipple. I said I chased the car but lost it on the expressway, then came back, found Brockway and called it in.

“Nice tale, but you’re leaving out some pretty big chunks,” Burk said.

“Such as?”

“Such as why you didn’t hang around after calling us, or tell us who you were.”

“Dead bodies make me nervous. My tummy gets all fluttery and I just had to get some air. There’s been a bug going around and — ”

“Nix that crap! You knew this mystery man who ran out, more than likely. You get the license number?”

“We got it before. Anthony checked it as Whipple’s. But I repeat myself, and I didn’t say a man. I couldn’t tell. It might have been a thin little guy or a woman. But tall. From that distance at night it was hard to tell, given the hooded sweatshirt and all. The Pontiac, I think it was the same one that shadowed me when we left Gorovoy’s place over a week ago. The same rig that Whipple’s thugs taxied me here in three days ago.”

“You think? You didn’t see the plates?”

”No. But how many light colored Pontiacs could there be in Chicago?” I showed him my teeth, and he didn’t seem overly impressed by them. Funny because he reminded me of a bored dentist with bad breath I used to know.

“You’ll need to account for every minute of your time here. Don’t dumb down on me.”

“Okay, sure. You can fry me under hot lights for 24 hours, but I’m telling you how it was.”

“You ever meet Brockway in all your little private cop play-acting?”

“My clients have never complained. But, yeah. I went to his office a couple weeks back. First time I’d met the sleaze. His firm has rotten taste in defendants, but good taste in the dames they hire.”

“Why don’t you knock off the cheap sarcastic stuff. It gives me heartburn this time of day. We’ll do hardball if you keep that shit up.”

“Sorry. My line of work naturally involves a dollop or two of sarcasm with every meal or murder scene. I imagine a man like Brockway might have a lot of enemies. I hear he pushed Whipple to drop out of the race. Some hint of kiddy porn pictures with Whipple as the star might have convinced him.”

“I suppose you were the one convincing?”

“Let’s say I can’t claim all the credit. The people have been served, so I’m sure a good cop would feel vindicated. I’m sure you know what it means to good cops when bad politicians orchestrate bad cops. Let’s just say that Jake Whipple was a bad Toscanini.”

“Cut the crap — about the murder weapon? Small caliber, hollow nose. The boys pried slugs out of the floor behind the chair, and another one in the chair. .32 or less. I don’t suppose you tripped over any small caliber arms around the room?”

I held open my coat enough to show the butt of my rod. “Colt semi .45. Tried and true for our men in arms since the Great War. A lifesaver from my days in Korea. Can knock a large man down. Want to sniff?”

“Not if it’s been under your armpit. I know how seldom you private types bathe.”

“Must be all the police training we had.”

Burk stood and watched the body hauled out on a gurney. The lab boys still dusted for prints. “Okay, now tell it again, and don’t forget to account for every minute of your time. If you don’t shovel more crap on my boots, I’ll let you come down later today and make a formal statement with the captain sitting in. Gerard too. He likes his big nose in big profile cases. For starters, who you think shot Brockway?”

“Little men have big noses and small dicks,” I said. “I’ll cooperate fully. But I don’t have a clue who plugged the barrister. Not a clue, but I’d go looking for the driver of that Pontiac if I were you. Whipple might know who has access to it.”

I told the same account again and even though Burk interrupted with some hard questions, I stayed on course and kept Julia out of it. Burk took notes this time through and didn’t like the story I gave him but had little to use against it.