Denton - 03 - Way Past Dead (26 page)

Outside, I settled into the Mazda and managed to get it cranked up. The traffic on Music Row was backed up so far I couldn’t get out of the parking lot, so I turned and went down the driveway and into the alley, figuring I’d exit out onto a side street. Behind Mac Ford’s building, like a lot of buildings on the Row, there was a private
parking lot carved out of what had once been somebody’s backyard. Signs warned strangers not to park and threatened towing to Siberia. Other signs marked off slots by name. The center parking space, the one closest to the back entrance of the building, had a sign that read
RESERVED: MAC FORD
.

A silver Rolls-Royce was parked in the slot. I don’t know much about Rolls-Royces, only that they cost a hell of a lot and are real nice to look at. I don’t know what year or model this one was, but I recognized the insignia.

On the back of the Rolls was a mounted vanity plate:
TRUSNO1
. It took me a second to figure it out.

Trust no one
.

My office building seemed especially dusty and seedy in the bright morning light, although damn little sunshine managed to filter in. Down the hall on the first floor, a door opened and a fat, balding man with thick glasses and khaki pants pulled up to his sternum looked out into the hallway. From under his right armpit, a shoulder holster with a Smith & Wesson .38 dangled loosely.

“Hi, Mr. Porter,” I said as I passed.

“Hello,” he said, ducking back into his office and closing the door. Mr. Porter was a gem dealer, had been in the building since the late Forties, and had seen life evolve from Ozzie and Harriet days until the time when he had to carry a pistol inside his own office. I’d seen him maybe three times since I’d rented my office. He never seemed to have any customers, never seemed to leave the place. I wondered if he lived there.

I trotted up the stairs to the second floor and turned the corner toward my office, then stopped. I reversed direction and went down to the end of the hallway and rapped on Slim and Ray’s office door.

There was no answer, no sound from inside, so I went back to my office. Occupancy in the building had
dropped off lately, with our two offices the only ones rented on the second floor. Maybe I should move, I thought. This old building wasn’t exactly the most prestigious address in the city. On the other hand, it was one of the most affordable.

I unlocked my door and went in. The red light on my answering machine was blinking away. I pulled my coat off and hit the playback button, then grabbed a pencil to write down numbers.

Six messages; what a pain.

Lonnie was number one. “Just checking in,” he said, followed by a message from Marsha saying she’d tried to reach me at home last night and was I okay? Ray was number three, asking me to call him at home. Number four was a hang-up. Five was Mrs. Hawkins saying she hadn’t seen me home in a couple of days and was I okay?

Blast, I thought, I could use a message from Phil Anderson about my check from the insurance company, not to mention a new client every now and then.

Message number six began with silence and I thought it was another hang-up, then an old familiar voice came on.

“Nice place you stayed at last night, you son of a bitch. Trying to hide from me? That it? Well, you keep right on trying, bubba, ’cause there ain’t nowhere you gonna hide from me. You got that? Nowhere.”

I felt myself turning cold from the inside out, and like a kneecapped figure skater training for the Olympics, I found myself asking the age-old question.

Why me?

I began working my way down the list, first with an answering-machine message to Mrs. Hawkins to reassure her I was still around. I resisted the urge to think she was only keeping track of a tenant. She was a genuinely sweet old lady who seemed to consider me more of an adopted son than a paying customer. Then I tried Lonnie’s number, with no luck there, either, and left a quick message telling him I’d drop by that night on my way home if he was around.

I tried once again to get Phil Anderson on the phone at the insurance company, but this time even the secretary got a little smart with me.

“I’m sorry, he’s not available,” she said as soon as I identified myself. I felt her unspoken
at least not to you
.

“When will he be available?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, just the slightest little teaspoon of
screw you
in her voice.

“Would you mind checking?”

“I can’t disturb him. He’s in conference. If you’d like to leave a message …”

Yeah, I thought, I’d like to leave him a message. How about:
Fuck you, Phil. Strong letter to follow
.

“If you’d just tell him I called,” I said.

“I’ll give him the message.” Click.

I growled out loud, then dialed Ray’s number at home. It rang four times and an answering machine came on. Impatient and tired of having the phone glued
to my ear, I started to hang up, then decided to at least leave a courtesy message.

“Ray,” I said after the tone, “it’s me, Harry. Just returning your—”

“Harry!” he burst in, yelling so loud it hurt my ears. “Don’t hang up!”

“Screening our calls, are we?” I said.

“Have to. It’s these damn reporters. They’re still calling two or three an hour. Damn pain in the ass.”

I decided not to remind him that I used to be one of those pain-in-the-ass reporters. “No problem. What’s up?”

“Well, we think we might have found Slim a lawyer. You know a Herman Reid?”

I quickly ran through my mental database of lawyers. “Yeah, saw him in court once. Top-notch fellow.”

“I talked to him this morning. He’ll take the case, but he wants ten grand up front.”

I whistled. “Justice ain’t cheap, is it? Can you raise that kind of money.”

“I cleaned out my savings account and maxxed out the cash advances off my credit cards. I’m close. Few hundred more ought to do it.”

I marveled at the lengths Ray was willing to go to help out his partner. “He’s lucky to have you,” I said. “I wish I had the cash to help you out, Ray. But I’m kind of strapped.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re doing more to help this way. Slim’s innocent and we’ve got work to do,” Ray said. “Have you had any luck?”

“Not much,” I answered. “I’ve been snooping around, just seeing where it leads. I need to get in touch with a couple of guys, if you’ve got addresses and phone numbers.”

“Let me get my black book,” he said, his voice fading as he pulled the phone away from his ear. I heard a rustling in the background, then: “Okay, shoot.”

“That other singer in the roundtable Sunday night, Dwight Parmenter.”

“The current boyfriend …”

“You got it.”

“He lives in an old house with a couple of other guys down off Music Row.” I copied down the address and phone number as Ray read it off.

“The other guy, that fellow Rebecca fired a couple weeks ago. Pinkleton, Mike Pinkleton.”

“Oh, Jesus, Harry, be careful. That guy’s rough as a corncob. Last I heard, he was living in a motel up on Dickerson Pike. You know where the Sam’s Club is near I-65?”

“Yeah, great part of town.”

“Okay, it’s down Dickerson Pike from there, toward town. On the right, the big motel with the neon American flag out front. I think it’s called the College Inn or something like that.”

“Like one of those motels down on Murfreesboro Road? You know, the ones where the rooms rent by the week?”

“Exactly,” he said. “Hookers, transients, outlaws on the run. Human garbage.”

“C’mon, Ray, human garbage has feelings, too.”

He snorted. “Wait’ll you see some of Pinkleton’s feelings.”

“I got to run. You going to be in the office today?”

“Later this afternoon. I’m trying to scrape together the last of the lawyer money, then I’m going to go see Slim. You hear they impounded his bank accounts?”

“How can they do that?”

“The courts can do anything.”

“How’s Slim going to pay his bills, keep his house note up?”

“I don’t know,” Ray said, the weight in his voice heavy, stifling. “He may lose it all. Maybe Herman Reid can get the court to unfreeze the assets before it’s too late.”

“We’ve got a little time,” I said. “It takes, what, three months to foreclose on a house?”

“Something like that.”

“If I’m going to use the time we’ve got, I got to get moving, pal. Hang in there.”

I may hate guns, but I’m not exactly defenseless. If I’m going to hang around an outlaw strip searching for somebody who might just be a murderer, then I was going to use whatever I had to take care of myself.

I took the stun gun out of my pocket and fired it off a couple more times. Inside the right-hand bottom drawer of my desk, the deep, double-sized one, there was a pair of handcuffs, a pocket-sized can of Mace, and a fiberglass nightstick with a little extra weight in the end. I folded the handcuffs together and stuck them in my back hip pocket. They were cold and hard against my butt, but comforting in a strange sort of way. I slipped the Mace into my left pants pocket. Carrying a nightstick openly wasn’t the coolest idea in the world, so I tucked it up under my coat as I left.

Heavily loaded and armed, I crossed Seventh Avenue and retrieved the car. I tucked the nightstick down between the console and the driver’s seat, where I could yank it up in a flash. Then it was through the downtown traffic, past the construction on Second Avenue, up First Avenue, and across the river.

East Nashville slipped on like an old, comfortable sweater as I left the downtown congestion behind me. I headed out Main Street, past the empty grass lot that had once been the sprawling Genesco factory, then around the curve onto Gallatin Road. I left the main drag shortly after and made my way through the side streets to my apartment.

I needed a change of clothes, and if I was going to be out in the field for a while, I figured I’d better ditch the coat and tie. I transferred all my pocket clutter into the jeans, then pulled out the olive-drab field jacket I’d
bought at Friedman’s Army Surplus when I was on stakeout in Louisville. The stun gun and the Mace can went into the field jacket’s large side pockets.

Outside, Mrs. Hawkins was bent over a flower bed on the other side of her new garage with a trowel in one hand and a huge clump of dirt in the other. I started calling to her as I went down the stairs so as not to scare her to death, and managed to get her attention as I hit the driveway.

“Harry,” she called. “Where have you been?”

I stooped down next to her in the flower bed. “I left you a message. Didn’t you get it?”

“Oh, that darned machine. I forgot to check it. Pesky contraptions, telephones.”

I smiled at her. “They ought to be outlawed.”

“Looks like you’ve been busy.”

“Very. As a matter of fact, I’ve got to be off now.”

“I’m glad things have improved,” she said. “Sometimes I feel guilty taking rent from you when you’re short of money.”

If she only knew.

“Don’t be concerned about that,” I said. “I’m delighted to pay you rent every month.” I stood up, hoping my nose hadn’t grown to Pinocchio-like dimensions.

“I’ll probably be home late again tonight. Don’t you worry, okay?”

“All right, I won’t,” she said, turning back to her flowers.

I headed for the Mazda, which was parked about halfway down the driveway.

“By the way,” she called. “Did you see that strange man this morning?”

I turned. “What strange man?”

“Well,” she said absentmindedly, “I guess you wouldn’t have. You weren’t here.”

“What strange man?”

“This morning. I slept late, until nearly seven. When
I woke up and went into the kitchen to start my tea, there was a man walking down the driveway. He had a pickup truck out front.”

“What did he look like?” I asked, trying to keep my face somewhere in the same universe as casual.

“I didn’t get a good look. By the time I got my glasses on, he was in the truck. He sat there for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do, so I got dressed and walked outside to get the paper. As soon as I stepped outside, he gunned the motor and took off. Made a lot of smoke.”

“Did you see what kind of pickup it was?”

“An old one was all I could tell. Faded gray, rust spots on the side. A Ford, maybe.”

I stepped back over and squatted down next to her. “I’m sure it was nothing,” I said, feeling guilty for having lied to her twice in one conversation. “But just to be safe, you be sure and lock up well tonight.”

She smiled at me slyly. “Harry, this is the city. I lock up well every night. And there’s a loaded shotgun in the closet.”

I smiled back. “Good girl.”

I walked down the driveway to the Mazda, feeling about as low as a vagrant on Belle Meade Boulevard. Sometime back, a case of mine had inadvertently—and indirectly—placed Mrs. Hawkins at risk. There was simply no way I was going to put her in that spot again. Something would have to be done.

If the bastard wanted to stalk me, let him. I can handle that. But if he starts scaring my sweet little old landlady, something’s going to have to be done.