If I Should Die Before I Die (30 page)

He seemed to find that funny.

“I saw what you did to her the last time you had a party, Hal,” I said.

“Did you now? Well, let me give you a tip, amigo.” His voice dropped. “Between us, she likes that stuff. The rough stuff. It turns her on. You ought to try it.”

I didn't say anything.

“Most of them do,” he said. “I bet it turns Nora on too, doesn't it?”

Oh Jesus, I thought. I glanced at the Counselor. Head down, listening, the brows hanging heavy over his eyes.

“Is Dr. Saroff next on your list, Hal?” I said.

“What list?”

“Your ‘In Memoriam' list?”

“My what?”

“I think you heard what I said.”

“Is that some kind of accusation, amigo? Hey, are you taping this conversation? I heard the click at the beginning, I know you're taping it. Well, why don't you bring your tape and we'll go downtown together with it, what do you think?”

I paused. The Counselor had his hand over his own mouthpiece and was motioning me to cover mine.

“Smart crazy,” he said in a low voice. “Tell him you have to talk to him. Get him to come here.”

I took my hand away.

Halloran was laughing again.

“Did you know Margie was trying to fix me up with her?” he said.

I didn't answer right away. Then:

“I think we ought to talk, Hal.”

“Talk? Well, like that's what we're doing, isn't it? Aren't we talking?”

“I mean face to face.”

“You mean
mano a mano?
That's great! Like who gets to choose the weapons?”

“No weapons,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “Just talk.”

“Just talk,” he repeated. “When do you want to make it?”

“Today,” I said. “Why don't you come in to the office this afternoon? There'll be nobody else around. Just the two of us.”

“No, man. That's not happening. You come out here, we'll have a party.”

I hesitated. The Couselor was shaking his head in disapproval.

“What's the matter?” Halloran said. “Don't you like parties?”

“Okay,” I said. “How long'll it take me?”

“That depends on whether you're flying or crawling, amigo.”

“Driving,” I said, feeling the urge—not a new one—to twist his neck and gritting it back.

The Counselor was gesturing at me. I tried to ignore it.

“Well, two and a half,” Halloran said. “I do it in less; it'll take you more. Say, three o'clock if you get started soon. Who're you bringing? Let me guess. It won't be the cops, I guess. How about some broads? Nora? No, I guess not Nora. Too bad, I can't wait to meet Nora. Hey, what about Bobby? You know Bobby Derr, don't you? We haven't seen him in a long time. If you brought Bobby, we'd make it a real old-fashioned reunion.”

“I'll try to bring Bobby,” I told him. “Now give me the address.”

This set him to laughing again.

“The
ad
-dress?” he shouted into the phone. “Like what kind of lame investigator are you, amigo?
You
find out the
ad
-dress!”

I did, as it happened, find out the
ad
-dress. That is, I got Ms. Shapiro to, by calling back the maid at Powell's mother's. In between, though, after I hung up on Halloran, I had a knockdown drag-out with the Counselor.

He didn't want me to go, plain and simple. He thought Halloran was too dangerous, even if I took Derr along.

“What's the alternative?” I said. “Anyway, I want this one for myself. For a lot of reasons.”

“That's exactly what I'm worried about,” he said.

“But what's the alternative? That we sit on our hands?”

“No,” he said. “That we go back to the police with what you've got now.”

“With what?” I said. “Maybe I've got enough for them to pull Powell in, but that's all. And meanwhile Halloran's out there, laughing at us. For Christ's sake, you heard what he said about Nora! He's taunting us with Nora!”

Needless to say, I don't often talk to the Counselor that way. He took it. Then he thought about it for a long minute, head down.

“All right, Phil,” he said, looking up at me, running his hand through his hair. “This is what's going to happen. Nora's due back right after lunch. We should be at the house at five, five-thirty. No later. I'll give you till six. If I haven't heard from you by then, you'll have company.”

I didn't ask him who. I was already on my way.

But he called me back.

“Do you still keep the gun in your car?” he asked. He knew perfectly well I did, with permit, in a locked glove compartment. Also, that I'd never used the damn thing beyond target practice.

I told him I had it.

Then he called me back again.

“What about Derr?” he said. “I don't want you going alone.”

In fact I'd forgotten about Bobby.

“I'll take care of it,” I said from his doorway. “I won't go without him.”

“All right. But for God's sake, Phil, watch what you're doing and don't take chances.”

On my way to grab my coat downstairs, I told Roger LeClerc to tell Bobby to meet me at my garage, but that if he wasn't there by twelve forty-five to forget it.

At 12:40 I had the Fiero out and idling on the street next to the garage. Then I spotted Bobby getting out of a taxi at the corner.

I honked at him, and he ran down the block and got in.

“You were right, babe,” he said, breathless. “We just struck gold.”

CHAPTER

16

He was right about one thing: it took us longer. Blame it on the Long Island Expressway, that graveyard of first gears and nerves. Blame it on whoever it was that had declared Thanksgiving a five-day weekend that year. Or so it seemed. Everybody out of the city and onto the highways. After a while we zigged over to the Northern State, then zagged back to the expressway. Stop and go; hurry up and wait. Finally, with the sun behind us and the shadows already stretching out, we got to the end of a long line of cars waiting for the Shelter Island ferry.

I piloted the Fiero around the line and pushed it in close to the front. Horns honked in outrage, and one guy in a business suit got out of his car, shouting. We brandished fists at each other, and he thought better of it. Still, we waited. The ferry ride takes all of a few minutes, once you get there. You can practically jump across. But all there is between the mainland and the island is this dinky ferry, and you wait.

We drove at last into the town of Shelter Island, a quaint-looking hamlet with lots of Victorian gingerbread and tall bare trees. Nobody had heard of the road we were looking for until we stopped in front of an old geezer who was sitting on some porch steps in a ragged sheepskin, watching the passing parade.

“Keep going,” the geezer said, pointing, “till you can't go no further. Then you're there.”

We kept going. Glimpses of water on one side. The trees taller, the houses bigger, the piles of dead leaves immense. Then we ran out of road.

A dead-end street to the left. At the end of the dead end, a sweep of lawn, a couple of acres' worth anyway, down to a half-timbered, Tudor-style mansion that looked more like a school than somebody's home. Beyond the mansion, the water. I thought it was the sound. Later I found out it's called Gardiner's Bay. Big house, big bay. To the right of the house, a smaller but still imposing Tudor structure with a dock running out behind it.

Not bad to be rich.

“This has got to be it,” Bobby Derr said.

“If it isn't,” I answered, “we're in trouble.”

We drove in and parked in front of the arched doorway. No other cars, and no answer when we rang the front bell. I couldn't hear the bell inside. I rang again and banged the knocker, a big curved wrought-iron job, for good measure. Nothing.

“Shit,” I said, wondering if Halloran was playing games with us.

As if in answer, a voice called out from a distance. We looked in its direction. Off to our right, maybe fifty yards away, a girl was waving to us from the doorway to the boathouse.

“Yo, you guys,” she called. “Over here. There's nobody there.”

We walked that way, down a graveled extension of the driveway. I noticed an old VW van parked just beyond the boathouse. No Alfa. The girl, when we got closer, looked not much more than sixteen, and she was all sweater. Straight blonde hair that came halfway down her back, denim shorts, bare feet, but mostly the oversized white sweater. Pretty. She looked like somebody's kid sister. She ought to be cold, I thought, even in the sweater.

“Hi! I'm Lucinda, what did you bring us?” Then, turning back inside and shouting: “Hey, Boog? They're here!”

We went inside. Some boathouse. The downstairs had been converted into one enormous glossy pine living area, complete with kitchen and bar and a whole wall of window giving out over the water. The upstairs was loggia or loft style, narrow staircase leading up with, from the glimpses I got of it, a lot of mattress on the bare floors. The decor? Well, you could call it party-time, or Carter McCloy Modern, take your choice. The mess reminded me of the apartment in the Eighties, so did the posters pushpinned to the pine.

Or Booger Powell Modern.

Powell was standing at the far end near the window, a beer can in his fist. He too was barefooted and in shorts, and with a gray sweatshirt that looked like he'd been wearing it a whole lot. He'd been nicknamed, I assumed, after the ballplayer, and in fact he resembled the one-time Orioles star, though in a slightly smaller version. The same tow hair, broad shoulders, tapering waist. Big hands. He had a ruddy, beefy face, our Powell did, and a blond stubble and small blue eyes, and I remembered him from that night in the Rosebud men's room, when McCloy had thrown up and Powell had taken a shot at me. Our Powell had a chirpy sort of voice, higher pitched than you'd expect. He also didn't look so hot: red in the eyes and a little wobbly on the pins.

“Help yourselves to a brew,” he said by way of welcome, gesturing in the general direction of an oversized freezer-refrigerator combo.

“Aren't you going to introduce us?” the girl called Lucinda said, draping herself on him.

“This is Bobby,” he said. “This is Revere. Now get lost.”

Lucinda didn't seem to like the idea of getting lost. She turned to me, asked if I was sure I hadn't brought any coke. I said I was sure. Then Powell picked her up with one arm, deposited her halfway up one of the staircases to the loft and, patting her on the ass, told her to get lost again.

“Sit down,” he said to us, waving to a large round table near the window. “You're early. The party won't start for a while, but have a brew anyway.” With that, he finished off the can he held, belched, squeezed and tossed the can, took another from the refrigerator and popped it. He made as if to toss cans to us, but we turned him down. He shrugged, then sprawled in a chair with his back to the window and drank, and we sat across from him.

“Well, how you doing, Bobby?” Powell said. “Long time no see.”

“Not bad,” Bobby said.

“Wish I could say the same. My mouth feels like the bottom of a birdcage. Life's a bitch, no kidding.”

“And then you die,” Bobby finished for him. “Party last night too?”

“You got it,” Powell said with a groan.

I wondered how many others there were above our heads, where Lucinda had disappeared. I wondered too how long I'd be able to listen to their small talk.

“Where's Halloran?” I asked Powell.

“I don't know. He'll be back.”

“When?”

He shrugged, a heavy gesture.

“Beats me,” he said. “I only got up a little while ago. He said you'd show up, asked me to make you feel at home. He'll be back for the party. So make yourselves at home, will you? Pour yourselves a brew.”

“I don't want a brew,” I said.

I measured him. I think he saw it, because his eyes went small, wary, and then he looked at Bobby Derr, then at neither of us, and took a long pull on his beer. Something about him pissed me off. Maybe everything about him pissed me off. His style, or lack of. The way he looked, talked. Maybe it was that I was tired of the way they jerked the world around, and not only Halloran and McCloy but their kind, the golden boy set who can afford to get up in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon with hangovers and sit there complaining to you about it. With, in their case, a little murder now and then, when life became too much of a bitch.

Maybe I'd driven too far.

Maybe it was time to play the one hunch I had.

It didn't hurt any, I admit, knowing that Bobby had nailed Powell to the wall that morning.

Party time.

“How many did you kill yourself, Booger?” I said matter-of-factly.

“What? What did you say?” he chirped at me.

“Just what it sounded like. How many did you yourself kill?”

“Hey, wait a minute. That's not very funny.”

“It's not supposed to be,” I said. “Let's start with the ‘In Memoriam' case. Suzi Lee. That one was you, wasn't it?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Bobby Derr staring at me in surprise. This wasn't how we'd agreed to play it. But we'd expected Halloran, not Powell.

“You've gotta be out of your skull!” Powell said. “I think Suzi Lee was great!”

“I know you did,” I said calmly. “You even taped her shows.”

“That wasn't me. That was Mc—”

“I know, I know,” I went on. “McCloy taped her, right? And McCloy's dead. So what difference does it make?”

“Well …?” he said.

I measured him again. I thought he was scared a little, but not enough. Taken aback more than scared. And wide-awake. And beginning to wish, probably, that he wasn't there alone with us.

“We've got you dead to rights on Suzi Lee, Booger,” I went on.