Dark Blonde (9 page)

“So, I’ll work unlicensed. You ain’t gonna shoot me here.”

“Brave ugly stick, aren’t you, Stutt? I don’t need to plug you, unless you put up a fight and force me to it. Why don’t you?” I put more weight on my knee. “No fight in you, Stutt?”

He’d lost all desire to talk. His breathing was heavy like a grating tugboat engine.

“But you seem to be slightly incapacitated.” I took his wrist and bent it back until he cried a little yelp like an injured pup. “Get the idea? A broken right wrist would make shooting that nice little air-weight pretty awkward. Or maybe you’d like a scar like mine?”

“All right, all right, goddam. Let up. I’ll spill. She danced with a lot of thugs but hung mostly with Whipple’s boys, bodyguards. Nixon for one. Cheap hood. Drugs, numbers, prostitution. Brockway told me to stay mum. You didn’t get it from me. Now can I go?”

“Sure. But you’re looking a bit wan, palsy. You need a nap. No one will bother you in here. I like to repay my debts.” I stuffed my card in the guy’s hip pocket with his wallet. “Here’s payment in full for your little surprise at the Gorovoy bungalow. Mike Angel pays his debts in full.”

I laid the butt of my .45 on the mug’s skull hard enough to put him in the clouds for an hour, smack behind his ear. I laid him to bed on some discarded damp toilet seat covers, his beak next to the toilet. I backed out of the stall and pulled the door to. I went to the urinals and stood there relieving myself and feeling much better. Dad hadn’t bothered to warn me about Stutt. It was like he knew I could handle things well enough.

I’d paid my debt. It’s a wonderful feeling, paying your debts in full. It makes the world all shiny and new.

I washed my hands and dried them using one of those horrid new air driers, a lot like watching paint dry. Not all technological advances mean progress.

It was after ten. Rick was waiting at the corner of the concourse entrance lugging the stuffed Bears bag, newspaper, and overcoat folded on his arm. He looked like a basketball coach returning from a tournament where every contest had gone double overtime, his team losing the final game.

As we rounded the corner into the main concourse, we had to circle a mob surging out of concourse “A.” Flashbulbs popped, men hollered “over here” and “can you give us a picture?” and other nutty things all mixed together. Somewhere in all that mess deodorants had to be failing. If you want to sweat someone, just turn rabid reporters loose at them.

The throng parted and four clotheshorses trotted abreast through the chaos, headed toward the escalators.

Julia was arm in arm with Miss Mathews and her husband, Henry Gateswood in the middle. The guy on Henry’s left looked like an attorney: tall, ramrod, silver temples. Miss Mathews clutched Julia’s arm like she was going to be swept out to sea and devoured by the five journalistic “W” questions. Henry wore a dark toupee and was a tad shorter than Julia, about five eight. He wore a silk three-piece with a blue striped tie and matching hankie out the pocket. Shoes black, high-gloss. She was wrong with him, at least some of her sides were wrong with him.

Henry had dominating features not unlike an Indian chief, with ears a bit too large for his head, like old men get. By the time Henry hit 70, he’d be able to wrap his noggin up like a taco with those. He beamed and showed a wide gap between his front two teeth. He was enjoying the scandal. Who can figure politicians?

The four of them were jostled along by the mob. Every now and then Miss Mathews was forced to hop a little to keep up. I caught Julia’s eye. Her mouth formed a somewhat ironic smile suggesting she was enjoying herself. Miss Mathews flipped me a round motion with one gloved hand. I winked. She tried to wink back. She liked trying, even though she didn’t know what muscles to use. Someone might have to teach her to keep one eye fully open.

The political contingent and mob of reporters and well-wishers surged down a wide flight of stairs to the private limo service doors. Rick nudged me and we moved out of the concourse into the parking facility.

 
When we got to the car I filled Rick in on Harry Stutt and the information he’d coughed up about Kermit Brockway.

“Brockway? Kermit Brockway? Damn, Mike, don’t you know who he is?”

“Can’t say that I do. Should I?”

“The big shot mouthpiece for the Teamsters. Tried to extricate that bastard Beck a couple years back. On Whipple’s campaign payroll now.”

Rick removed the briefcase and snapped the lock with his pocketknife. Inside were some office files and a black address book. “Looks like a list of political contributors to the Whipple campaign, files of campaign memos to staffers, results of polls, political strategy,” he said, digging to the bottom of the case to make sure nothing was overlooked. “Nothing here of much note. These tactics wouldn’t be anything worth killing over, even if our clients might love to get this. Votes still have to come in one at a time. Unless a few of these donations are from reluctant contributors or those who wouldn’t want the amounts revealed. And, one or two of these are pretty rich amounts.”

“Like some of the racketeers who squeezed out of the police corruption bust? Buying influence?”

“I don’t see any names of that bunch that I recognize. The three ex-boyfriends of Gail’s you gave me aren’t here. These are mainly leaders of other unions, democrat hacks and a few editors.
Tribune
, for one. But I’ll have to follow up on each name, just to make sure.”

“Research is your meat, remember? Get a hold of our buddy Kup at the
Sun-Times
. They came out early for Gateswood. He can tell you what color boxers each one of those guys wears, how many keep girlfriends in cozy apartments, and which ones cheat on their tax returns. Don’t forget to check on the groundskeeper and Gail’s Vegas job, too.”

“Yeah, I’ve made a list. Frankly, I’d expected more of a smoking gun here. Something of clear evidence for blackmail. Revenge for blackmail would hardly explain the gruesome nature of the killing, though.”

“Betrayal might. You remember that case you and Dad worked on in the Bronx in ’52? The guy butchered up his girlfriend and stored her away in cold storage lockers with elk steaks from his Canadian hunting trips? Found out she’d been sleeping with his brother when he was looking for bull elks? Betrayal. Tipped the guy over the edge. They never did find all the pieces.”

“I recall that emphatically my boy. Miss Gorovoy may have ratted out Christy French, but he reputedly met a fiery demise. There isn’t one hood left in the Great Lakes region who would have done anything but cheer her the way French leaned on diminutive guys over the years; even the larger boys found his high-profile methods risky. When he tried to plant dirt on the police chief, the executive thugs had enough. That’s the word I get from Burk, who viewed it all from the proximity of City Hall.”

“Frenchy have any family in the rackets? Anyone loyal? Someone who might carry out revenge on Gail?”

“An older brother as I recall, still serving life at Joliet for a double homicide bank heist. Gail wasn’t the only state’s exhibit. Four or five spitballs testified against him. The defense might have lit them up as not credible, given their records, but Gail’s testimony was unshakeable. She provided some needed documentation as well. A titillating tittle-tattle.”

“Those grad classes sure ruined your vocabulary. Didn’t Frenchie jump bail the day before Gail squealed? Wound up in a basement of a burned out house in Waukegan, the earmarks of an old-time mob firebomb job”

“Well, there would have been identification by dentals. I will remonstrate with Burk for verification, but yes, only his dentist recognized him after that mini-conflagration.”

“It’s best we check and make sure Christy’s pushing daisies. Any other boys that might still be around from his reign of fun.”

I swung back up the Gateswood’s drive. The house and guesthouse were dark. One dim light shone on the walk separating them near Rick’s Ghia. I pulled up behind it and fed my lips a smoke. “So — keeping score,” I said, bringing the glowing lighter to my face, “we’ve got a mouthpiece for Gateswood’s opponent paying an out of town shamus to shadow Gateswood’s sister in law, who had something worth tearing a house apart for, something that lost Gail her head over, maybe something obvious to the right person in those files or that address book. But the ideal man with the ideal motive for the killing, the CF those tattooed initials fit, died in a fire months before. So that leaves blackmail as the motive?”

“Blackmailers often meet a violent demise in the cauldron of their own iniquity. It’s said to make killers out of ordinary men.”

“And beasts out of ordinary killers. The guy who beheaded Gail has to be a beast. Cauldron of their own iniquity? Stop — you’re giving me hives.”

The night crept by like a queue of tired mules on a muddy Georgia road. I said goodnight to Rick and planned on heading straight home for a late dinner and an early bed. My head still pounded behind my eyes. Rick took the address book and left the files for me to check over. When I reached for my keys I stopped. The air, still and close. It would rain, and rain pretty hard. Thick black clouds hung heavy over the gables of the house, jutting like sentries. I leaned back and waited for the first drops to fall. When they came they splattered on the Buick’s hood and melted into a downpour.

Julia’s eyes danced in my brain. I had an itch to see her again. Asking about the briefcase and its contents would be a good reason just to watch those eyes again. Whenever I thought of Julia my scar itched too, and I didn’t think that was Dad’s warning. For a dame like Julia I might even consider plastic surgery. My conscience once told me that I’d be scarred deeper than my face if I pushed Molly aside for a skirt like Julia. Why must there always be more than one voice prodding me? Wasn’t Dad’s enough?

The rain stopped as quick as it had started. I drove slowly back to the Gateswood estate. What was in those files and listings dangerous and of enough value to whack Gail’s head off? Had one of Christy French’s few friends waited two long years for revenge? And what about the Antigone angle? What did it really mean? Would Henry know? Questions bounced around my brain until I pulled up in front of the house. I assumed the Gateswoods had gone straight from the airport to some political function because it didn’t look like anyone was home.

Being a private detective is like having a license to be a cop without having a supervisor to tell you when to back off or a pension at risk. You can bend the rules and even stomp all over them as long as you’re quick enough and daring enough to set things right, get out of the way or hand the bad guys to the suit dicks on a silver platter. If you save them work they shrug and leave you be; if you cost them headaches or paperwork they leave marks about your psyche or body. Thank you’s are rare and not worth much at the supermarket anyway. If you cost the shields more work, even though you’re hot on the solution to their most pressing case, you’re a depraved pedophile after their twelve-year-old daughter; you’re a punching bag they can use for a workout.

Most times I do my job, keep my nose clean and let the cops think all the brilliant ideas are theirs. Glory’s not my thing, though I confess the rush of hunting down bad guys is its own reward. Clodhopper, stumbling Angel, always broke, always in the way, always with the wise cracks, eking out a few bucks — it took some work pulling it off but it was the way I wanted Chicago’s finest to think of me — too dumb to be good. That way, I could be my own supervisor, find the limits or break them as needed. Only thing was, acting stupid takes a lot more brains than being stupid.

I waited there for two hours and headed home. Something about the case didn’t feel right, but I was tired of chewing it over. Maybe my head had turned my senses to mush. Things didn’t seem right when I pulled my Buick in the driveway. The place was hardly bigger than a phone booth. I liked it that way. Less to mess, less to worry about. And how much roof does one dick need over him anyway? But something was off.

The porch light shining. I never leave the porch light on.

I killed the lights and motor and fingered the cold handle of my .45. I wanted chow, a stiff drink and sleep. I didn’t need intruders. If someone was ransacking my house, I wouldn’t be polite about it. It had taken me weeks to get it into the sort of mess I was comfortable with.

 
“Dad? Is there anything you need to tell me?”

I didn’t usually talk to dead men out loud, but felt Dad might answer just then.

Sorry. I’ve used my quota of words this month.

It was clear, and it was Dad. Yes, I’m nuts.

“Just tell me — is it safe to go in?”

I sat there for a full five minutes, waiting for an answer than never came. Then I realized if it wasn’t safe he’d warn me; and if he truly had used up his “quota” — whatever that was — he could reassure me by not saying anything. Goofy.

Through the front door my nose caught the stale residue of Rick’s cigars with something added — a faint aroma of vanilla. I slid off my coat and hat and slung them at the davenport. I stood there in the dark, listening, the drawn .45 my calling card. A dim flicker under my bedroom door, fainter than my bedroom lights would be.

Peering around in the darkness, my eyes adjusted enough to tell no one lurked in the kitchenette or living room to give me another love pat with a dense hard object. I moved to the bedroom door, twisted the knob and pushed it open.

She wore a glittering pair of gold chain earrings with pearls wrapped inside a twisting cage. They were classy earrings, and probably put her back three or four hundred bucks, if the pearls were real. She was real; that’s all she wore.

She had a handsome body, as slender as a young girl’s, with long thighs, tiny feet and firm round breasts unmindful of gravity. In the flickering candlelight her skin matched the translucent shimmer of the pearls in her earrings. I looked her over as I would Goya’s nude, a piece of artful grace, not really a naked girl in my bed, and just another side of Miss Mathews I’d wondered about. Mainly those legs. Above mid calf they got thicker in a hurry but stayed quite shapely. Not at all bird legs, like I’d suspected. I could almost feel them wrapped around me.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world, for Dee Mathews to be naked in my bed, with inviting eyes and a smiling pair of red lips that promised an escape from the week’s pain, a break from a confusing case. But just because it felt natural didn’t mean it wasn’t also irritating. A fleeting regret that the female in my bed wasn’t Julia, then it ran away when Dee shifted to one elbow and blew me a kiss. I hesitated. No warning voice was ever relevant for times like this. It was one challenge I’d have to meet, either headlong or reluctantly. It was like tripping over a wallet full of cash when you’re dead broke and you turn it in but hate yourself for being so damned honest.

“I don’t mind you dropping in, Miss Mathews. I don’t even mind you letting yourself in. I rarely lock the door, and sometimes I even wander about dressed as you are, except I don’t wear earrings. I have nothing worth stealing, nothing to worry about. I’ve entertained a good number of ladies, some want one thing, some the other. What do you want, Miss Mathews, besides the obvious?”

To me she’d always be Miss Mathews, Julia’s assistant, an undeveloped larva next to a magnificent rare butterfly. But she did own an earthy touch with that intriguing fog whistle voice. And those wondrous legs. With Miss Mathews, I was like a boy fascinated with shiny-backed beetles. Would I scoop her up in my specimen jar?

“I want a private dick. Privately,” she said, with just the right amount of heat. It was a rehearsed line, not bad, and it usually would have brought one back from me. I sat on the foot of the bed studying the way the light played on the gossamer hairs that ran from her navel to her quiet little bush. “I want to show you I’m not the mousy little assistant you think I am.” Quiet little bush. Waiting. Dark.

“Uh huh. If you say so. From this angle definitely not mousy. I might have taken you for mousy at first, but you’ve handled yourself pretty good Miss Mathews. You have your moments. You’re having one now.”

She let out a silvery little laugh, a triumphant, leisurely laugh.

She liked my eyes on her.

She rested, but with a slight rhythm aimed to please. Heat seemed to pour out of her eyes. Her nipples, hard little rubies; her breathing, rapid.

One knee rose from the bed revealing the nice curve of her calf. She opened her legs slightly, teasing, swaying. Vanilla spice mingled with desire. “Call me Dee, as in your Dee-light. Would you like to make love to me?”

Stupid question. My dick was already screaming for me to shut up and climb on. But I held back. Julia would undoubtedly find out. Maybe little Dee would even brag to her. Would that push Julia away or bring her closer out of curiosity to confirm Dee’s review?

“I suppose a lot of men would. Just about any private detective I know would. You’re built for speed, aren’t you? Slender, great pair of legs. They’d wrap around a man nicely. I don’t mind staring at them, or this soft line of hair that runs down from your navel like a velvet Nile — to here.”

I softly placed my finger into that quiet triangle. “But you’re the assistant to my client, Julia Gateswood. And I never make love to clients. It would be like rolling in the hay with Julia by proxy, don’t you think?”

“She won’t know,” she whispered, making the suggestion seem naughtier. “If you don’t tell her, then I surely won’t. Anyway, she gets any man she wishes. I’m not that way. I pick and choose.”

“Does Henry know she gets free samples when it suits her?”

“It’s a modern arrangement, didn’t you know?” Her eyes seemed happy to tattle. “Why the good congressman has even slept with Julia’s late sister. Didn’t she tell you?”

So here was Dee, tattling on Henry, all the while promising not to tattle on me.

“Why no, I haven’t been alone with her that long, I suppose. Too many skeletons, too little time. I must be the only man in Illinois who didn’t sleep with Gail. I can understand why Julia might not want to broadcast the situation.”

“Fuck Julia,” she threw out, leering. “No, on second thought, don’t. Fuck me instead. I’m better. I need it more. You wont regret me.”

The hard funny little way her mouth said the F-word gave her face a strange aspect. I slid up next to her and her arms found their way around my neck. She lunged at my mouth like a brown trout at a bluebottle fly at dusk, her lips eager, parted. Why did I think of fishing at a time like that? Maybe because I was being reeled in with only a 2-pound test line, and I wasn’t even breaking water.

Her kiss wasn’t at all like the kiss at the door. Her tongue was a writhing finger swimming past my teeth in a search of heat. When she found it I felt a flame up my thighs, and had to pull away. “You won’t mind then if I check out your other side? It’s what I like best.”

Her eyes twinkled devilishly and she let out a gleeful shriek, her mouth stuck open, tongue happy and pink. I slid my hand over her hips and flipped her over toward me. She was light and lithe and delicious, with a pear-shaped ass that took about six hard slaps before the game was up and she started to bawl.

She sprang off the far side of the bed with wounded eyes, clutching a little black dress in front of her, body coiled like she feared a bullwhip. Words stuck in her throat. I laughed. My head was killing me. My dick was angry as hell. I knew what my dick wanted but I needed a drink even more.

“Now get dressed and get the hell out of here. Find a nice young man your own age and have some nice kids and a nice house behind a nice lawn. I’m sure you’re a nice little lay but I don’t feel like teaching you everything.”

She didn’t stop to wipe off her streaming mascara or put on her shoes. I turned and went to the kitchen and poured myself a double, threw it down and poured another. As her car patched out across the street I made a fist and used it to put another hole in the cabinet door next to the sink. A sweet little package, Miss Dee Mathews, all fluff and efficiency. But somewhat more than nice lovely legs, dammit.

“Angel, you’re a stupid fool,” I said, going to the door and kicking it shut. “But you’re okay in my book.” Both internal voices had given up.

After the liquor spread into me, I put my head on the pillow and inhaled fragments of faint desire and vanilla. Darkness closed in. A stage opened in my mind, shimmering in rosy spotlights where a dozen naked ballet dancers named Dee jumped about until heavy curtains came down and a full sized Julia walked out in a black nightgown and sat on a plush chair and stared with those enormous liquid slate-blue eyes.