Dark Blonde (26 page)
I rode home with Molly and hid inside my thoughts, which were pretty scrambled. Poor Julia, my beautiful delicate Julia was broken.
Molly knows whenever I grow silent that something’s bothering me. She also knows just how to bring me out of a dark place. She sensed how upset the visit had been for me.
When we neared Rick’s place, Molly pulled it to the curb next to a park and cut the engine. Children played on a merry-go-round and teeter-totters. Their melodious squeals were reminders of how fast life goes by, yet how timeless some things are, the hope of new generations forever moving onto life’s stage. Was Mike Angel ever a kid? At times it seems I was born into crime fighting, all those stories Dad told at the dinner table, the worries on Mom’s face, the headlines I clipped for my scrapbook. As a boy I had all the worries of city corruption already on my plate.
I rolled down the window and fed myself a Lucky. Molly shook her head when I offered her one. The first drag was smooth and toasty. I sat watching the smoke filter out the window and the frolicking children beyond. I was thinking things that felt uncomfortable.
Molly took my hand. “I’m sorry. You didn’t think she had a problem.”
“It’s pretty evident she does have. She thought you were her dead sister and I was Christy French, at least part of the time, and she had something romantic with him as well. Both her and Gail. Strange too — everything I thought was eccentricity, the wig, all the other little quirks…all of it, was . . ..”
“I wouldn’t put too much store in what she said today. It might be a temporary condition caused by stress. You said she was obsessed with the campaign. I wonder what tipped her over the edge?”
“She said she’d put Gail in the guesthouse, that she’d done it. Was she delusional? French threatened Duque with losing his head before he killed him, something more his style. You don’t suppose they were both involved in Gail’s murder? Julia as French’s accomplice?”
“She might just be feeling guilt over her sister’s death. You know, they were at war so long. They probably fought over the attention of men — Julia, the perfect woman, the beauty queen, Gail, the nympho. Girls grew up without a father. Textbook stuff. Rick might have some thoughts on that angle. But, I’m so sorry. I can see it pains you.”
I wasn’t going to confess my feelings for Julia to Molly. It was all too confusing. I could never sort it out enough. Maybe in time. It felt like a death of sorts. I finished the smoke and crushed the butt out in the ashtray. Molly’s eyes held a ton of tenderness.
I patted her on the shoulder. “Why don’t we head there? To Rick’s. Let’s see how the old boy’s doing.”
“Uh, oh,” Molly said. “I’m such a dope!”
“What is it?”
“I left my raincoat at the hospital. That was a brand new coat I got on sale at Marshalls! The only red one my size! But I know you don’t want to go back now. We can get it later.”
Molly and I stopped by Rick’s and told him about seeing Julia. Feeling in his arm had partially returned. He was cocooned in his recliner reading the
Sun-Times
. His arm was in a sling and his shoulder was wrapped like a mummy’s. The doctors didn’t think there’d be permanent nerve damage, at least, not any more than the arm had already suffered. His face brightened when he saw Molly. She brewed a pot of coffee and traipsed to the corner deli for some pastry. When she left Rick pushed the recliner upright and said,
“Well now. Henry didn’t lie about Julia. And be honest — you didn’t see this coming?”
“No. The act at Alfie’s I put to reluctance to be seen with a PI. And a bit of a drama queen persona, not out of line with that pageant crap.”
“You slept with her, I suppose. Was the sex unbalanced too?”
I laughed but unconvincingly. There was no fibbing to Rick. He saw me grow up and saw right through me. He saw the pain in my face from his question, one I didn’t want to answer.
“Sorry,” he said. “I understand how you might not be able to say no to a woman like that, and even how you might want to rescue her, care about her. But, Mike, listen to me. This investigative work requires a man to step outside his passions, to trust no one on a big case, even the client. At 32 you’re, well, you’re still a kid in some ways. Too trusting. Most PI’s are crusty old dicks in their fifties or more.”
I nodded. Of course what he was saying was true. He knew that I knew, but reminded me like a father because I needed reminding. No matter how good a man is at his trade, he needs to be reminded why he’s in it, and how best to succeed. It’s easy to lose sight of purpose.
“I didn’t want to believe Henry when he said Julia was unbalanced. She’d lost her sister, so I thought some of her weirdness was grief.”
“Great beauties can lose it, too.”
“There’s a short article in the
Times
about it this morning, but way back on page eight. It just says she’s being treated for exhaustion by the world renowned Bergman.”
While Rick read the article Molly waltzed in with a bag of goodies. Her smile always brightened any room and her shape always turned heads. Molly spread out the pastries on the coffee table and poured us more jo, then did cute things with her mouth eating a bearclaw. If Rick hadn’t been there I would have jumped on her and done my own cute things with her mouth.
“I’d say it was more than exhaustion,” Molly chimed. “The poor thing thought Mike was Christy French! I thought she was going to attack me. I had no clue who she thought I was. Mike says her murdered sister. Some sisterhood thing they must have had going.”
Rick put down the paper and dunked his donut. “If she thought you were French, how did she act toward you?”
“Like lovers. Jealous of Molly, who she accused of liking oral sex.” I turned to Molly with a big grin. “I wonder, how’d she know that?”
Molly beat me with a pillow so I had to hold my coffee out over the table. Rick laughed and then winced. Said it pained his shoulder, so we knocked off the Heckle and Jeckle routine.
Molly phoned the sanatorium to let them know she’d left her coat in the day room, that she’d come by when she could to claim it. They made her wait and then the doctor came on the line. Molly held the phone out to me.
“Bergman wants to talk to you for some reason. He sounds agitated.”
I took the receiver. Molly and Rick read my face like front-page headlines. When the doc was done I said thank you and that I’d do everything I could to help. I hung up.
“Molly, we have to leave. Julia’s run off from the sanatorium.”
“How on earth did she ever get out of that place?” Molly asked, bewildered.
“She wore your coat and a dark wig and conned her way past the gate guard. The same guard we saw going in was on break when we left. When we left the guard was a different man. The first guard came back and when Julia walked by and said hello, that she’d had a disagreement with me and wanted to walk, he thought it was you, that we were still there.”
“Where do you suppose she’s headed?”
“In her state of mind, she might head anywhere. Henry and Miss Mathews have been alerted if she shows up at the Gateswood estate. She’s never been to my office, but she could head to my house also.”
“She thinks you’re French, her dead sister’s lover, but also hers? This is nutty. You think they fought over French?”
“Possibly. Along with Duque there was sexual attraction that began in Omaha. No telling how messed up the girls were. Not really sisters, but raised by an abusive so-called aunt there. The girls came to Chicago when Julia turned eighteen.”
“I see. You think she knows where French hid out? Maybe in that South Side apartment?”
“She might, but not there. That was Duque’s infrequent pad. French would’ve gone first class. He has powerful friends, Wilson says the Outfit fronted his European plastic surgery trip. With those sorts of pals you can hide a long time. But he came back here for some reason, and I’m thinking it was to kill Gail or to hook up with Julia again.”
Molly slid over and was almost in my lap by the time I pulled into my driveway. I shut off the engine and Molly clung to my shoulder and looked up at me with those pure green eyes that looked bronze in dim light. “Yes, I suppose that sort of woman can be quite addictive, even to private investigators, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not really addictive,” I said. “Interesting maybe. Now, you’re addictive kiddo, sneakily so. Why don’t you settle in while I scoot around town and see if anyone’s seen Julia.”
Over the next three days with Dee Mathews’s help, I checked every possible spot Julia might have gone. Nothing. I even alerted Ira in Omaha that she was on the loose from a mental ward and to keep his eyes open. I called Alfie’s and got the ponytail kid on the phone. She remembered me but not the woman with me so well. I gave her Julia’s description and told her to call me right away if she saw her come in. I repeated that effort with a dozen other people I thought might spot her.
Henry had called Wilson’s office the day Julia vanished and Wilson put out an all-points. The sanatorium was searched several times, just to make sure she wasn’t lurking in some laundry closet. I spent a half-day knocking on doors in the area of the sanatorium trying to find anyone who’d seen her walk away. She could have grabbed a taxi or a bus or even hitchhiked. There was no trace.
Molly stayed the weekend and tried to get me to relax. Even though all the pieces to the Gorovoy killing finally fit together, Julia’s disappearance clouded the case. French had lawyered up with Brockway’s old partner, Gerald Wakeman and was making no statement. The one he had made at the Blue Goose was damaging enough. Wilson had received a tip that French would be killed in prison, so they put him in solitary at the Justice Center. It would be the murder case of the century in a town that had seen quite a few splashy ones over the past thirty years.
Monday came and went, still no clue about where Julia had gone. It was in the dead of the night, sometime around four, Tuesday morning, election day, when I was snapped out of a sound sleep by my phone ringing next to my face.
It was Dee Mathews, although at first I didn’t know who it was because I couldn’t make out anything she said through the hysteria. She’d stayed the night at the Gateswood estate, sleeping in a cot in the corner of her main floor office, as she often did when there was a lot of work to do and she didn’t want to drive home alone past midnight. Henry’s acceptance speech was in need of revision and they’d stayed up past one working on it.
After I calmed her down she jerked out that someone running up the stairs and a door slamming had awakened her. Then she heard a woman’s scream and rushed upstairs. Henry and Julia were involved in a loud argument. The door was locked. She’d called the police first but then thought of me and asked if I’d rush up. A loud crash came from Henry’s locked bedroom.
The streets were empty. I broke all speed records getting up to the Gateswood estate, where two patrol cars flashed their popcorn lights and an unmarked car pulled in right behind me. An ambulance sat off to one side. I sprang out and pushed past two street cops into the living room.
Dee was pacing the floor, talking to a plain-clothes dick who jotted on a tablet. She gripped her elbows and paced across the floor with her head down, face drawn, white. She looked up at me through tears. I held her and she let it go into my shoulder. The cop stood by dumbly and I told him who I was. He asked to see ID.
Two suits led Julia down the stairs and past us out to the squad cars. She was handcuffed and still dressed in hospital clothes with Molly’s raincoat, now bloodstained down the front. Her hair was matted and frumpy like she hadn’t combed it in days. Her eyes, dark hollows, fixed a thousand miles past the horizon. She didn’t look at me. Dee sobbed into my chest and made pitiful little noises in her throat.
“Henry,” she cried, “oh, poor Henry. He gave her so much. I can’t believe it.”
Then Wilson walked in and took charge of the scene. He patted me on the back and told me he was glad I’d come, then he walked me upstairs and we stepped gingerly into Henry’s bedroom.
A dresser was tipped over. Clothes scattered about the room. A broken lamp, chair tossed against the window, a real mess. It reminded me of Gail’s bungalow.
Henry’s eyes still held fright, fixed at one corner of the ceiling. He was spread diagonally across the bed wearing only pajama bottoms. Splattered blood dotted the bedspread and onto the wall and floor behind his head. Buried into his neck, the full width of a three-inch blade, a machete stuck out over his arm. There was a great deal of blood all around the room, as if Julia had smeared it with her hands, making patterns with her hands.
The clincher — lipsticked letters across Henry’s forehead: CREON. The king-father of Antigone and Ismene. Julia had aimed for a father figure when she married Henry. Greek tragedy, Chicago style.
Wilson walked around the room and then led me out.
“Election day,” he said, shaking his head. “Running unopposed, married to a beauty queen, wealthy — how the mighty have fallen.”
That was all he said until we stood next to my car.
“I could use a man of your talents for special projects,” he said, softening that granite face into a slightly more benevolent pose. He even started to smile, or maybe it was gastric displeasure at being out so early. I couldn’t tell. “You sure you wouldn’t like to get out of the private racket and join a team?”
I looked at him, a man who had another ten good years in him, yet even with a hundred good years and a hundred of me, there wouldn’t be enough time and energy to clean up all of Chicago’s crime filth. If I was Rip Van Winkle and came back in fifty years, there’d still be big-time hoods being busted on the nightly news. Big cities attract big crime, and Chicago did everything big. But, I didn’t ever want to see a bigger case than this one or be a bigger fool, though there was never any guarantee of that in my racket.
Henry Gateswood got more votes than Jake Whipple, even though neither of them could be US Senator from Illinois. The Governor appointed his brother-in-law as an interim office-holder until a special election could be held. Nothing like nepotism to raise the level of state politics. The
Sun-Times
and Kup had some fun with the appointment. Seems the appointed one kept regular hours at the pony tracks around Chicago. Honest government in Chicago would always be a long shot.
Me, I still figured French for Gail’s murder. In a small way I was keeping alive a vestige of the dark blonde I wanted Julia to be, the luscious woman of every man’s desire, looking up at me with those incredible eyes, the dash lights of her Mercedes playing gold flecks of desire.
But it was Gail’s old testimony to the grand jury that sealed French’s fate on the Summerdale scandal, and to top it off, he went up to the big house for involvement in several gangland hits. Frenchy had been a very busy boy, but his crime spree was over.
Things were pretty chaotic at our office for the next week. The publicity Wilson had arranged, saying how my investigation had broken the case, brought a wave of new clients, including a cute redhead widow who Rick helped out on an insurance fraud case. Things went along well for Molly and me, and we got back into our office routine with drinks at Sam’s on Friday nights and weekends playing house. Molly continued to leave a few more items of hers at my house with each stay, yet knew enough not to press me into a commitment.
My platinum blonde dreams stopped. Instead I started having them about a woman wearing a wig and reading Greek tragedy on a nude beach while shoveling sand over my naked body. The hot smooth sand would always arouse me and I’d wake up wondering what the dream meant besides being asleep. I was having the beach dream about two weeks after election day, when a knock came at my door. It was after six and time I got up anyway.
Molly was out of town again, this time at her brother’s place in Milwaukee, and I thought maybe she’d come back early and misplaced the spare key.
I threw on pajama bottoms and stumbled to the door.
Dee Mathews trotted in. She was dressed for traveling, in a linen suit with pink blouse ruffled at the neck. Her face looked a lot better than the last time I’d seen it. Confidence beamed through a smile framed in pearly pink lipstick.
“I wanted to thank you and say goodbye,” she said in her sexiest fog whistle voice, “you were there when things were awful, things were worst. I’m headed to Seattle, where I have a job waiting with the governor. I didn’t want to leave without seeing you once more.”
“I could put on some coffee if you have a minute.”
She walked to the living room and took a seat. “I never drink coffee,” she said. “I’m strictly a tea person, if you have any. One sugar.” I knew that.
She slid her raincoat off her shoulders, letting it fall behind her on the chair. She crossed her legs and rocked one foot out rapidly. I’d been here before.
I rummaged in the kitchen and found the Earl Grey. When I brought it to her she gave me a grin.
“I wish you luck in Seattle,” I said. “I hear it rains too much out there, but in the springtime, life is never better.”
“That’s true,” she said, pursing her lips over the teacup. Her eyes were steady with that same old curiosity. A woman like Dee is a bit of a mystery because a man doesn’t quite know why his libido perks up around her. She wasn’t particularly attractive, except for those legs. It was the voice that sticks in my memory though, that baritone raspy bedroom voice so unusual for a slight woman. Can you have sex with a voice? I was gratified that Molly wasn’t staying over.
Dee stood after downing half a cup of tea and hugged me like she was leaving. “Thank you for spanking me that time,” she said. “I was being a nasty little slut. Maybe I needed your firm hand right then.”
“That’s quite all right. I enjoyed spanking you.”
She put her hands on my chest and tugged a little fistfull of hair, just enough to sting. “Yes, I know you did. In fact, I know you like my legs. Thank you for that, too. Just tell me one thing?”
“What’s that?”
“You liked the rest of me also, wanted me, just a little, didn’t you?” Before I could stop her, her hand slipped into the opening in my pajama bottoms. Her hand was warm, a feather. She was still the nasty little slut that she apologized for being. So much for penitence. And Mike Angel was still the carnally leaning private investigator.
“Yes, of course I wanted you. Just a little.”
“Then you owe me a proper goodbye.”
She walked into the bedroom and undressed like she did it there every day of the week. She folded her clothes evenly and put them on a chair next to the bed. The morning glow through the purple curtains gave her skin a pearly cast.
I sat down on the foot of the bed looking up at the way the light played on the gossamer hairs that ran from her navel to her quiet little bush. She was a nasty little slut, but she was also a lot safer than a certain stunning dark blonde, and that was exactly what attracted me.
I was the one who deserved the spanking this time. The light in her eyes said she was ready to give me one.
THE END