The Fifth Script: The Lacey Lockington Series - Book One (6 page)

“Sure. What’s your pleasure—hemlock, arsenic, strychnine?”

Her smile was tight. “I’d really prefer whisky.”

Lockington said, “Then you haven’t tried Old Anchor Chain.” He put out his cigarette and left the couch to amble into the kitchen, his slippers sloshing against the cheap linoleum. He busied himself at the sinkboard, raising his voice to continue the discussion. “So a
Morning Sentinel
honcho grabs a telephone and says, ‘Hey, I want a Stella Starbright column that links Mother Teresa to an international terrorist group.’ He
gets
it?”

She jack-knifed forward in her chair to peer into the kitchen. “Of
course
, he gets it—he gets it or I start looking for a new job!”

Lockington returned to the living room bearing a dented, chipped black metal tray. On it were two cloudy glasses, a plastic bowl filled with ice cubes, a small pitcher of water, a nearly full quart bottle of Old Anchor Chain, and a butter knife. He didn’t know what they dumped into Old Anchor Chain, but he suspected that the distillery had a working relationship with a nitroglycerine refinery. He’d bought a case of the stuff at a clearance sale three years earlier, and eleven bottles remained. He parked the tray on his coffee table, seated himself, poured, added ice and water, and pushed a glass in Erika Elwood’s direction. He said, “I’m fresh out of swizzle sticks, but you could stir with the butter knife.”

She lifted her glass, murmuring, “Thank you—is a toast in order?”

Lockington said, “Why not? ‘To mine own executioner’ would seem appropriate.”

“‘
Surrogate
executioner’ would be closer to the truth.” She sipped at the drink, grimaced, shuddered, blinked, coughed, and gasped, “Oh, Jesus, Joseph, and Judas Iscariot!”

Lockington smiled a gratified smile, saying nothing.

After a struggle she regained her normal breathing pattern. “If I hadn’t churned out that garbage, another eager beaver
would
have—the
Sentinel
has a battalion of them, all geared to create controversy. That’s the
Sentinel’s
gimmick—be outrageous, buck the tide of popular opinion. It sells newspapers, and that’s Max’s bottom line.”

“Max?”

“Max Jarvis—
Sentinel
owner and policymaker. At one time or another that old shyster has taken a stand against everything from chocolate eclaires to motherhood. Last year I had to do a piece inferring that Joan of Arc was a switch hitter.”

“Was she?”

“Probably not, but that particular issue sold over a million! Good old Maxie—one of these days he’ll shit in his own hat—I hope.”

Lockington offered his guest a cigarette and she accepted, digging into her handbag to produce a tiny blue-enameled Colibri, holding a light for them. He said, “So, it’s ‘Erika,’ not ‘Stella’—right?”

She nodded, tilting her head, directing a slender gray plume of smoke at the ceiling. She had a striking profile—delicate, but there was strength along the jawline, Lockington thought. She said, “I leave Stella Starbright under my typewriter.”

“Is she Erika’s alter ego?”

“No connection, I assure you!” She took a nip of her drink. “My
God,
who
makes
this stuff—the
Apaches
?”

“I believe that the recipe dates back to Genghis Khan.”

“A distant relative?”

“No, I’m in the bloodline of Aristotle.”

“You don’t look Greek.”

“I’m not—Aristotle was an Irishman. You don’t fit my image of Stella Starbright—not at
all
.”

“I should be fat, fifty, splayfooted, and wear pop bottle spectacles?”

“Something like that.”

“The others may be fat by now—but they’re still a long way from fifty.”

“The others?”

“The other ‘Stella Starbrights’.”

“Hold it! Run that one through here again!”

“There’ve been three ‘Stellas’—I’m the third. The column’s nearly ten years old—I’ve written it for a little over two.”

“That’s interesting. And the two previous Stellas took the same slobbering route—give us anarchy or we perish?”

“Of course. That’s the
Sentinel’s
creed.”

“Uh-huh.” Lockington leaned back on the sofa, crossing his legs, studying the coal of his cigarette, enjoying the conversation. This was a strange woman—unprincipled, yet principled to a degree—interesting. Lockington wondered how she was in bed. If he’d been ten years younger, he’d have taken a run at her. He said, “With the
Sentinel
being what it is, and the Stella Starbright column being what
it
is, it’s a damned miracle that some crackpot conservative hasn’t blown the Sentinel Building off the map.”

“Oh, we’ve had threats at the
Sentinel
—several have been directed to me personally.”

“From whom?”

“A radically conservative organization that calls itself ‘LAON.’”

“LAON—which stands for what?”

“‘Law and Order Now,’ I’ve been given to understand—childish choice of names, isn’t it? No class.”

“Male or female caller?”

“No calls—typewritten postcards.”

“Chicago postmarks?”

“Chicago area, yes—various stations.”

“Addressed to your residence or to the
Sentinel
?”

“The
Sentinel
—I’ve moved from the lakefront to St. Charles recently. I receive quite a bit of mail at the
Sentinel
.”

“What do you do with these postcards?”

“I give them to management. They were to be turned over to the postal authorities.”

“What threats have been made?”

“Nothing specific, other than I’m to be eliminated.”

“That’s specific enough. When and why—does LAON get into that?”

“Soon—because I’m a menace to the human race, to the flag, ‘and to the Republic for which it stands’—on and on—the typical fanatic spiel.”

“Do these disturb you?”

“At first they did.”

“But not now?”

“Not really—there’ve been so many—I’ve become calloused to them, I guess.”

“What’s the frequency of contact?”

She thought about it. “Oh, I’d say twice monthly, on the average. There’s no predictable pattern.”

“For how long now?”

“A few months—it goes back to early spring, maybe late winter.”

“The most recent?”

“Let’s see—last Thursday or Friday, I believe. Why? Do you take this stuff seriously?”

“There’s one chance in ten that there’s substance to it, but—well, there’s still that one chance. How’s security at the
Sentinel
?”

“Excellent—armed personnel at every entrance—everybody’s carded.”

“Do you live alone?”

“Uh-huh—a small house just off the Fox River, north of St. Charles.”

“Rent or own?”

“Rent.”

“Do you have a gun?”

“Yes—it’s a Repentino-Morté something-or-other.”

“Repentino-Morté Black Mamba Mark III—excellent piece, probably the best. Do you have it in your purse?”

“Heavens,
no
—I’m
afraid
of the damned thing!”

“You’d better get over that and carry it. Some of these screwballs are for real.”

Erika Elwood stretched catlike in the overstuffed chair. She said, “May I compliment you, Mr. Lockington?”

“That’d be a switch. For what?”

“For a precise line of questioning—I’ve never been, uhh-h-h—
grilled
before. Is that the word—
grilled
?”

“That’s what the newspapers call it, the connotation indicating police brutality, of course.”

“Oh, my, we
do
have a chip on our shoulder,
don’t
we?”

“
Shouldn’t
we?”

She considered the question, shifting slightly in her chair, her silver chain sparkling on her well-turned ankle. “Yes—yes, indeed we should. At any rate, Mr. Lockington, you’ve learned more about me than I know about you, which isn’t fair. Might I ask you a question or two?”

“Concerning?”

“Concerning Julie—was that her name—Julie Masters?”

Lockington nodded. “Where do you get your information?”

“It was in our files—the
Sentinel
carried the story.”

“The
Sentinel would
.”

“She died of multiple knife wounds—in February, wasn’t it?”

“Look, Miss Elwood, I’d just as soon not discuss it.”

“You two were happy?”

“Very. Let’s drop it right there.”

“Just one more question—just
one
?”

“I’d have to hear the question.”

“Since Julie’s death, you’ve killed four times—prior to it, just twice, and you were untouched by controversy in any—”

Lockington broke in. “I’d be untouched today if it weren’t for the
Morning Sentinel
.”

“Granted. Mr. Lockington, you’re a reasonable man, fair-minded—you’d have thrown me out if you weren’t—but isn’t it just possible that you’ve seen in the people you’ve killed the man or men who murdered Julie Masters?”

Lockington throttled his temper, shrugging. It was a fair question—he’d thought about it before and he’d shrugged then. He said, “Look, how the hell can I answer that? Freud might—so, go see Freud.”

“Freud is dead—so are four minor-league criminals.”

“A minor-league criminal is a criminal working on becoming a major-league criminal.”

“You sound like a crusader.”

“No, I’m a cop—
you’re
the crusader!”

“In effect then, you don’t differentiate between an arsonist and an innocent shoplifter.”

“Shoplifters aren’t innocent—if they were innocent they wouldn’t be shoplifting.”

“You’d shoot one?”

“Circumstances dictate cases, Miss Elwood and, incidentally, that’s
two
questions.”

“No, that’s two parts of one three-part question.”

Lockington said, “I see.” He really didn’t.

Erika Elwood said, “It’s obvious that you
had
to kill Joe Solano—if you hadn’t killed
him,
he’d probably have killed
you
.”

“Well, would you believe that I received that very same impression?”

“And it’s just as obvious that Timothy Gozzen had to go—sooner or later, Gozzen would have killed a little girl.”

“Or a dozen.”

“But those Mexican kids on Barry Avenue last Sunday night—they had a couple of knives and you had a
gun
! That was a mismatch!”

Lockington grinned. “Oh, it was,
indeed
it was.”

“They could have been bluffing.”

“They
could
have been, but when you’re looking at a pair of switchblade knives on a dark street, you just don’t take that possibility under consideration. The Cook County morgue is stacked to the scuppers with switchblade victims!”

“
Now?
”

“
Any
damn time—check it out, and remind me to show you my old switchblade gashes.”

“Then you have no regrets for those Mexican boys?”

“None that I can think of.”

Erika Elwood got leisurely to her feet, tucking her big blue handbag under her arm, winking at him. “When you show me your old switchblade gashes maybe I’ll show you my butterfly tattoo.”

He got up to see her to the door. He ushered her ahead of him, liking her perfume—expensive stuff, whatever it was—vague. He said, “You see one butterfly tattoo, you’ve seen ’em all.”

“Not so! Mine’s
special
!”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why is that?”

“It’s perched on my appendectomy scar.”

“What’s perched on your hysterectomy scar—a vulture?”

“I don’t have a hysterectomy scar. Do you like butterflies?”

“Depends. What color?”

“Blue.”

“I was attacked by a blue butterfly once. It was a frightening experience.”

“You should have shot it.”

“I did.”

She threw back her head and laughed her musical laugh. He’d hoped that she’d do that. She turned to stand on tiptoes, stretching to kiss him on the cheek—just a lukewarm peck, but better than no peck at all. She whispered, “Oh, but you’re
precious
!” At close range her perfume was heady stuff, nearly buckling his knees. She went out and he wished she hadn’t.

He watched the silver Toyota Cressida pull away before he postponed the Pepper Valley baseball game.

There comes a time in the life of every mortal when he must take inventory of his life, reckoning his pluses and minuses, deducting his past from his future, providing that he
has
a future, and facing the results. That time had come around for Lacey Lockington on numerous occasions, and it’d just come around again. He sat at his Barry Avenue window, contemplating the ebony clouds that stalked the city, musing, nursing his tenacious case of snakebite, making his computations, and coming out no better than he’d come out at the conclusions of his earlier inventories—still a few digits short of zilch.

Then the rain struck, a hissing, snarling, gray wall of fury, a real tail-twister, even by Chicago standards. He listened to the storm for more than an hour, waiting for it to abate, then he turned on his radio. The bulletins were coming—Schiller Park’s viaducts were impassable, this development failing to impress Lockington because Schiller Park’s viaducts became impassable every time a dog pissed on an evergreen, but the situation was worsening, spreading like wildfire. Railroad underpasses were being closed on North Avenue, the already swollen Des Plaines River had topped its banks, submerging River Road under six inches of muddy water, the Chicago White Sox game had been postponed, Maywood Park had scratched its nightly harness-racing program, flash flood warnings were going up from Lawrence Avenue south to Roosevelt Road, from Harlem Avenue west to York, power failures were reported in numerous sections northwest of the Loop, that area having been converted into a fifty square mile quagmire, and Lockington’s earlier plans for monumental achievement fizzled and drowned in the muck of that sodden August afternoon. No great loss, Lockington thought, he hadn’t taken them seriously.

It was shortly before eight o’clock in the evening with the deluge continuing to hammer the city and Lockington approaching the dregs of a second bottle of Old Anchor Chain, when he threw in the towel, turning off the radio and killing the lights to stumble, crocked to the gunwales, into his bedroom where he flopped face-down on the rumpled bed, listening to rain claw at his windows. It was a horseshit world, he’d decided—it’d probably wash completely away before dawn, and Lockington just didn’t give a damn.