Murder in the Wings (6 page)

"Uh-huh," I said.

"Yogurt's good for you." Even in the darkness her hair was very red and she was very pretty.

"Not your kind," I said.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What's in there."

"What's in there?"

"Now I know I've got you. Whenever you turn my statement into your question, you're doing some number. So what's in there?"

"I just put in a marshmallow."

"What else?"

"Nothing."

"Donna, c'mon."

"You c'mon, Dwyer. I offer you some yogurt and I get the third degree. God."

"So what else did you add besides the marshmallow?"

She sighed, turned around, and faced the TV. It was ghosty again. When we bought the thing the sales lady said that this ultracheapo model sometimes had reception problems in apartment houses due to all the steel in the building framework. We'd taken it as a sales pitch, but it wasn't one. If an ant so much as crawled across the floor the TV set started ghosting out.

"Is that John Hodiak or Betty Hutton?"

"Funny," she said, still pissed.

I leaned over and kissed her. "You really mad?"

"Yes."

"Honey, I've got to watch my waistline. You know that." It was true. Fat guys didn't get many acting jobs in commercials. "I mean, you can get away with eating what you like, but I can't."

She looked at me and sighed and then kissed me on the cheek. "You're right, Dwyer. I was being selfish. You know how some people hate to drink alone? I guess I hate to pig out alone."

"Right. So now will you tell me what you put in there?"

She held it up to the black-and-white glow of the TV set as if we could see into the yogurt with our X-ray vision.

"Well, the marshmallow like I said, and it really was tiny. Then some carob-covered raisins. But just a few."

"Right."

"And then about six Hershey's kisses I had lying around in the cupboard."

"How many is 'about' six."

"Boy, Dwyer, what an asshole."

"How many?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe a dozen, I guess."

"A dozen. God." Her metabolism was phenomenal. She ate pancakes for breakfast, Big Macs for lunch, and Red Lobster specials for dinner and never gained a pound. She worked out three times a week, but not as if she were training to take on the heavyweight champ. I envied her, especially when, as now, we were watching TV and she had a bed full of junk food boxes (exactly what is a "Whanger," anyway?) and was eating enough to feed all the starving orphans in Korea. All I got was my little glass of Pepsi Free.

She finished the yogurt, looking at me occasionally with a demonic gleam in her eyes.

"W
hat're you doing?" she said twenty minutes later.

"Just writing some things down on a clipboard."

"What things?"

"About the case."

"Wade's case? You going to let me see?"

"I guess."

She had one of those tiny lights that clip on to a book to read in bed. She hooked it on the clipboard and read.

"Wow," she said, "we've got some real leads here." I paid special notice to the "we."

"Nothing real strong, unfortunately."

"The ex-convict named Lockhart talks his way into Reeves's office, obviously looking for something. Keech tries to slap Reeves a few days ago. Evelyn could have known that Reeves was stepping out on her. Anne Stewart was up in Reeves's office tonight. You don't think they're real strong? You're nuts, Dwyer."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, I'm nuts."

"I don't have anything to do tomorrow—and you have the day off—so I'll prove it to you," she said.

"Great."

"I can tell you're looking forward to this."

She leaned over and kissed me. The kiss got a lot more serious than I thought it would, but it didn't go anyplace. For the next few minutes we went through our nighttime ritual. I always muttered a few prayers under my breath, and so did she, except she always muttered louder than I did. She must have known what I was doing, and I sure knew what she was doing, but we never once discussed it. Adults with any pretense of hipness should never admit that they pray.

I was asleep in three-and-a- half minutes.

T
he phone was on my side. I got it.

"Hello," I said.

There was traffic noise in the background. He was obviously calling from an outdoor phone.

"Wade, I know it's you."

Nothing.

"Wade, you really should turn yourself in. You really should."

I felt Donna press against my back. Muzzily, she said, "Let me talk to him, hon." I handed her the phone. "Stephen, listen, please. We love you very much and we're very afraid of what might happen if you don't turn yourself in. Stephen? Do you understand?"

She held the phone out so we could both hear anything he said. What he said was nothing, at least for a long time. Then, "I really fucked it up good this time, didn't I?"

No doubt about it. It was Stephen Wade. Then he hung up.

Five minutes later I was wide awake. Donna, next to me in the darkness, had started to cry softly. "We're going to find out who really killed him, Dwyer. The first goddamn thing tomorrow that's exactly what we're going to do."

She was serious, too.

T
he halfway house where the man named Lockhart was staying was located on the edge of the city's only acknowledged ghetto. Under the overcast sky the neighborhood looked even bleaker. Black teenagers who should have been in school lounged sullenly in front of a grocery store and watched us pass by.

The house we wanted was a three-story job with a new shingled roof, a captain's walk, three spires, and a front porch long enough for the Bears to use for a scrimmage. Sixty or seventy years ago this place had probably been some banker's version of Shangri-la. Though the temperature was only in the low fifties and a damp mist gave the sky a dusky feel, three men were sitting on the porch in rusty lawn chairs. They watched Donna approach with special, and understandable, interest. She had gone trendy today, heels and designer jeans and a baby-blue sweater that could make you weep.

There's an air about newly released cons. They're nervous, as if they're waiting for anything they do to get them hauled right back into the slam again. These guys were to be pitied. They wanted to look at Donna and they did look at Donna but then they looked away quickly, as if the law were going to show up and beat their brains in. In their view, I suppose, I was the law.

I nodded, trying to make the gesture broad and pleasant. Two of them nodded back. One of them snuck a peek at Donna again. He licked his dry lips, as if somebody had just put a big Thanksgiving dinner down in front of him.

"We'd like to see a man named Lockhart," I said.

The first man, in greasy green work clothes that smelled of car oil, smiled. He had bad teeth. "You ain't the only one. He's been gettin' a lot of calls the past couple days."

"You can't find him?"

Now the second man spoke. He was tall and tubercular. His Adam's apple looked like it weighed twenty-five pounds. His face didn't make sense. He had a sad little mouth and a jackal's eyes. "Oh, everybody knows where he's at."

The third man grinned. "He's up in the attic. The poor sumbitch." He had Elvis sideburns and greasy black hair. Blackheads gave his face an unfinished look, like a board with too many knots. "Anderson's gonna keep him there, too, you can bet your ass on that."

"Anderson the man around here?"

"You got that right, mister," the first one said.

"He inside?"

The third man guffawed. "He always inside, pal. Always. Try'n sneak out some time and you'll find if he's inside or not."

It was then, for the first time, that I realized that these guys were stoned. Between the first and second I saw a small brown prescription bottle. It probably contained cough syrup, which is a cheap high because it doesn't take much and it lasts a long time.

"All right if we go inside?" I asked.

"Hey, prince, you're askin' the wrong man."

I smiled. "Guess we'll have to go inside to find out if it's all right to go inside, huh?" But they were too stoned to see the irony.

We went inside. I almost had to pick their eyeballs off Donna's behind, like ticks after a picnic.

Once there had been a vestibule but it had been knocked out. Now most of the first floor was one big communal room with wobbly furniture from at least five different eras. There was a Motorola black-and-white that had been new about the time Uncle Miltie was laying claim to Tuesday nights, and a phonograph that had probably played a lot of Bing Crosby records. From the kitchen drifted the odors of institutional food: oversalted, oversweetened, anything to kill the taste. There was a residue of cigarette smoke that could have been cut with hedge clippers. It was a sad place, a place where men without women and without dreams passed days in front of the TV or under the thumb of a minimum-wage boss who hated them—men who feared the slammer but didn't really know where else to go. The majority, hapless, hopeless, would be back there within six months.

I took Donna's arm and led her over to a big board that looked like a flight schedule in a terminal. There was a long list of men's names, and next to each was written the place where he was employed. Next to these were two boxes, one that read "Time Out" and one that read "Time Back."

We were reading all this when a whiskey voice behind us said, "Help you folks?"

When he reached us, I saw that his voice complemented his body perfectly. He had slicked-back forties-style hair and a wide, flat Slavic face with black eyes that knew all sorts of truths that most of us would rather not know. He had a gold-capped tooth and he used Aqua Velva green and he put out a hand that could have crushed a whole six-pack of beer. He wore an old blue cardigan sweater that sloped to cover his considerable girth and gray OshKosh washable pants and a pair of leather house slippers that fit as tightly as shoes. He was every boss in every institution I'd ever known.

I introduced myself and Donna, and then he introduced himself as B. J. Anderson. "Mr. Anderson," I said, "we're looking for a man named Lockhart."

He smiled with his gold tooth. "Well, you've come to the right place, but unfortunately you've come at the wrong time. I'm afraid Mr. Lockhart has gone and got himself grounded."

"Do you mind if I ask what for?"

He kept on smiling. "Not if you don't mind if I ask why you're so interested in Mr. Lockhart."

I decided to tell him the truth. "He may know something about a murder."

The smile went back into mothballs. "Lockhart? Murder?"

I explained our association with Wade, and how Stan, the janitor at the theater, had said that Lockhart had come over to look through Reeves's office.

"So that's where he went," B. J. Anderson said. "Pardon?"

"The other night Lockhart went out past his curfew. When he got back he looked kinda shook up but he wouldn't tell me nothing. Not a goddamn thing. So I put him up in the attic." He raised his black eyes toward the upstairs. "That's where I keep 'em when they've been bad." The smile played on his lips. "This is the only halfway house in the state that hasn't had a man involved in a felony. And you know why? 'Cause I just put the bad apples upstairs and let them cool their heels a little bit."

Donna said, "We'd really like to talk to him if we could."

For the first time he seemed to recognize her. But he was past sex; he had his institution, and that was more fulfilling than any woman had ever been. "I'm not sure that'd be good idea, miss."

"It's very important."

He turned back to me. "You say you used to be a police officer?"

"Yes."

"You mind if I check that out."

"Not at all." I gave him Edelman's name and extension.

"Be right back."

"Spooky guy," she whispered when he was gone. "No wonder so many men go back to prison. They'd probably do anything to get away from him."

He came back maybe five minutes later and said, "Edelman damned you with faint praise."

"Meaning what?"

"Oh, he said you had been a detective all right, and a decent one, and that you were a trustworthy type, but he didn't seem all that happy that you were spending your time working on this Wade thing." He looked at us and tucked a sour little expression into the corner of his mouth. "Hell, I read all about that Wade character. Alcoholic personality, violent tendencies when he's juiced; hell, folks, our prisons are filled with people like that. Why should some TV star be any exception?"

Donna said, "We'd really like to see Lockhart, Mr. Anderson."

He sighed and pushed his hands deep into his OshKoshes. "If I tell you five minutes then I mean five minutes, you understand?"