The Man Who Cancelled Himself (29 page)

She was silent again. “I haven’t the slightest idea who the father is, Hoagy.”

“I wasn’t asking,” I growled.

“I only know Merilee’s spirits are terribly, terribly low. No one visits. No one rings up. I—I’m worried about her. A woman needs her strength at a time like this.”

I could hear Katrina stirring around in the kitchen. “Look, Pam, I can’t talk right now, okay?”

She gasped, horrified. “You’ve a
woman
there, haven’t you? A bleached blonde—with a monstrous pair of cow udders on her.”

I found myself glancing out the window. “Are you perched on the roof across the way with a pair of binoculars?”

“I am not,” Pam replied witheringly. “I simply know men—too bloody well.” And with that she hung up. I think she was disappointed with me.

Katrina was putting down canned mackerel for Lulu. “You didn’t have any other pet food,” she squeaked. “I thought she
might
eat this stuff.”

“She’ll do fine,” I said, watching her wolf it down. The smell of it made me light-headed, but I held my ground.

“The poor thing was whimpering,” Katrina explained.

“That’s one of the things she’s best at.”

“I really should go,” she said. “Lyle misses me.”

“I understand Leo misses you, too.”

“Why, what have you heard about the two of us?” she asked casually.

“That she cared about you.”

“We were friends,” Katrina stated. “If she thought we were anything more than that, she got the wrong idea.”

“Sure you didn’t help her?”

“Positive,” she replied coldly. “If I had my way I’d shit-can her. She’s such a negative presence. But Lyle won’t allow it. They work too well together.”

“So I hear.”

She came over to me and reached for the belt of my dressing down and held it in the palm of her hand. She stood very close to me, her nipples grazing against my chest, her eyes fastened on my mouth. I think. “You’re going to hear a lot of negative buzz about me,” she said softly. “Don’t believe it. Ninety percent is envy. Because of how I look. And because I have Lyle. You have to understand how much everybody there resents me.”

“Bobby doesn’t,” I pointed out. “In fact, he’s crazy about you.”

“How sweet,” she said, her eyes flickering with surprise. Or that may have been her computer filing away the data for future use. “It’s like I told you when we met, Hoagy. I always get what I want.”

“That must be nice.”

A faint smile crossed her lips. “Oh, it is. It’s very nice.”

“You’ll have to tell me how you do it sometime.”

“I show better than I tell,” she said, leaning in closer. Now her nipples were climbing inside my dressing gown. “I’m beginning to think you and I have a future.”

“And what about Lyle?”

“Maybe all we have is a past.”

“You change your verb tenses awfully fast,” I observed.

“Some things I do fast. Other things I do real slooow … ” Just in case I was missing her point she ran her tongue seductively over her lower lip. “You can help him, you know,” she whispered.

“Can I?”

“Well, the word’s out that you’re definitely
in
with Miss Priss,” she pointed out.

“Am I?”

“You can help him,” she repeated, a bit more desperately.

“And if I can’t?”

She didn’t bother to answer that one. Didn’t need to. It was obvious. She was looking to hold onto what she had, with or without Lyle. Ready to change sides. Ready to change men. Ready for anything. Or at least ready to let me think she was.

“I felt something happen that first day, Hoagy,” she squeaked, tugging gently at my belt. I wished she’d stop doing that. “The second you and Lulu rang the doorbell.”

“I was the one who rang it. She just stood there doing nothing.” Like she stood there now, stuffing her face on cat food.

“I felt someone important walking into my life,” Katrina confessed. “Someone who could see right inside my soul.”

“You’re mistaken there. My vision isn’t nearly what it used to be. In fact, my ophthalmologist is talking bifocals.”

“Don’t tease me.” She pouted. “I’m laying myself wide open. I’m out there.”

“I’m out there, too, Katrina.” Not that I knew what the hell that meant. I only knew it was what she wanted to hear. And that she might eventually prove useful to me. Strictly in a professional sense, you understand.

She let out a little squeal of pleasure and threw her arms around me. “I’m so glad we had this talk, Hoagy,” she exclaimed, hugging me tightly. “I feel so much better about us now.” She planted a warm, wet kiss on my neck. Then she zipped her zoomers safely and snugly back inside her jacket and left me there, wondering.

There was so much to wonder about. Had Katrina doctored the chili? Bombed the set? Stolen Uncle Chubby’s sweater? She did have a key to the wardrobe cupboard. What about the Deuce Theater? Had she set Lyle up? Why would she do that? Why would she do any of it? What possible reason could she have for wanting to destroy
Uncle Chubby?
It made zero sense. Besides, Lyle had said the two of them were together when the bombs went off. He could vouch for her. … He could not, however, vouch for Fiona. No one could vouch for Fiona, and she hadn’t eaten the chili either. Was she responsible for all of this? Was this her getting even with Lyle? I wondered. Just as I wondered about Naomi, who hadn’t touched the chili and who was screwing Lyle. How did she figure in? And what about Chad Roe? He’d lied to me about what he was doing when the bombs went off. Either he’d lied or Amber Walloon had. Of course, they’d both gotten sick from the chili …

I stood there, wondering. Not for long, though. My buzzer sounded again, and this time is was Very, in his shorts and hiking boots, extremely out of breath. Sweat streamed down his face and neck. “Evening, dude,” he panted. “Dig, wasn’t that Katrina Tingle I just saw wiggling on down the street?”

“It was.”

He nodded. “Thought I recognized her from this morning. She don’t exactly blend into a crowd.”

“Especially with her jacket off.”

“I’m down to that. You poking her behind Hudnut’s back?”

“Not exactly.”

He peered at me suspiciously. “Meaning you’re not poking her? Or you are but he’s hip to it?”

“None of the above.”

He mopped his face with a bandanna. “Whew, gotta cop me a squat.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“Street hiked up here from Soho—a solid hour at warp speed.” He settled carefully into the easy chair, wincing. “Damned hernia. Son-of-a-bitch surgeon cut me open like a fish. I could tell you stories about—”

“Now wouldn’t be a good time, Lieutenant. Get you a beer?”

“I could handle that.”

I opened him a Bass, and after a moment’s deliberation, one for myself. We drank, Very nodding to his own rock ’n’ roll beat. Lulu stuck her head on his bare knee. He patted her. “That surgical mask Hudnut wears. What’s up with that?”

“He’s risk averse.” I took a seat on the sofa. “Or so he claims.”

“Yo, he picked the wrong city to live in.”

“Yo, he picked the wrong universe to live in.”

“Got the lab results on the chili,” he informed me, gulping down his beer.

“That was fast.”

“Rushed it through.”

“And?”

“And you was right, dude. There was a foreign substance in it, category nontoxic. Ever hear of ipecac?”

“Syrup of ipecac? Sure. Parents keep it around in case their midget human life forms swallow something they shouldn’t.”

“That’s the stuff. Guaranteed to induce projectile vomiting in fifteen to twenty minutes.”

It was my turn to wince. “Projectile and vomiting are two words I don’t need to hear together in the same sentence for a few weeks, Lieutenant. If you don’t mind.”

“Sorry, dude.” He drained his beer. “Mind if I suck down another one? Worked up a major thirst.”

“Help yourself.”

“Mind getting it for me? Hard for me to get up once I’m down. See, he slashed right through my lower abdominal muscles and—”

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it.” I fetched it for him, though I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention that to anyone. “So that’s what was in the chili? Syrup of ipecac?”

“No.”

I frowned. “But you just said—”

“Stay with me—Syrup of ipecac would never work. Too strong a flavor. Shit tastes like—”

“No need to go into details.”

“Plus the adult dosage is two tablespoons. To knock out fifty-plus people you’d have to dump something like two quarts of it into the chili. No way you wouldn’t notice it. What this was, dude, was fluid extract of ipecac, which ain’t exactly lavender honey either, but it’s fourteen times stronger than the syrup. Couple of ounces in the pot and—coo-coo-ka-choo—you’re all taking a guided tour on the Chunk City Express. The chili, being highly spiced, disguised the taste.”

“Can you buy fluid extract over the counter?” I asked.

He shook his head. “According to the lab, you can’t buy it anywhere. ‘Should no longer be found in any pharmacy,’ was how they put it.” He peered at me suspiciously again. “What’s going down, dude? First the blockbusters, now this. What’s happening over at that place?”

I shrugged. “Just the usual fun and games that occur when you put a group of highly creative, sensitive psychotics together in a pressure-packed environment.”

He stared at me, jaw muscles tensing. “Not what I had in mind, dude.”

“What did you have in mind, Lieutenant?”

He took a gulp of his beer. “Look, maybe we better clear the air in here.”

“I can open a window,” I offered. “Katrina’s perfume was—”

“That’s not what I meant,” he snapped impatiently. “Last time around, you free-lanced on me. Held out on me.
Boned
me.”

“And you forgave me.”

“No, I didn’t,” he stated firmly. “I chalked it up until next time. Well, guess what? It’s next time. And we’re playing it different. A free-flowing exchange of ideas and information. For starters—”

“Are you going to deputize me?”

He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “No, I’m not going to deputize you.”

“How about Lulu?”

She snuffled excitedly. She’s always wanted to carry a badge.

Very glowered at me. “No offense, Hoagy, but I talk better when you don’t.”

“Sorry, Lieutenant. What did you have in mind?”

“Crime prevention,” he replied. “It’s like this: I could sit back and wait until this gets hotter.”

“Hotter how?”

“Hotter like maybe next time it’s a toxic substance in the chili. Or there are a whole bunch of people on the set when it gets bombed. Then everybody will say, hey, how come this crazy fuck was walking around? How come the police didn’t see this coming? I don’t want that shit to happen, Hoagy. Okay? This is me trying to nip it in the bud. I’m being straight with you. I’m asking you to help me. And you can help me. By telling me what you know.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll still respect you in the morning,” he replied calmly. “But if this shit does get hotter, and somebody maybe turns up dead, then you’ll know you had a chance to stop it from happening, and you didn’t. And that’ll be on your conscience, if you got one, until the day you die.”

“Get you a putty knife, Lieutenant?”

“Huh?”

“Laying it on a tad thick, aren’t you?”

He started to say something, but he stopped himself. Drained his beer and handed me the bottle, wincing. Quietly, between his teeth, he said, “Yo, somebody isn’t joking here, dude. You know it and I know it. So stop dancing with me and get me another beer and three Advil and tell me what the fuck’s going down, will ya?”

I got him his beer and his Advil. “How tight are you with the Public Morals Division?”

“Vice? About as tight as I care to be. Why?”

“Know somebody over there?”

“Why?” he repeated.

I told him why. I told him about how Lyle believed he’d been a target that day at the Deuce. That it was no routine sweep. That the press got there too soon. That someone had tipped them off. “Can you find out what went down that day, Lieutenant? What the vice squad was doing there?”

“I can ask. Only, why wasn’t this pursued at the time?”

“According to Lyle, there was a desire on everyone’s part to put it behind them.”

“And now there isn’t?”

“It would certainly appear that way.”

I filled him in on the rest. The bombing and the chili he already knew about. He didn’t know about the sweater being stolen. Or about the network trying to ease Lyle out of his own show. I told him about The Boys, who wanted to take over, and Bobby, whom Lyle loved to torment, and Annabelle, whose boyfriend Lyle had slagged. I told him about Lyle’s ex-lovers, Amber and Marjorie, and about Naomi, his new one. I told him about Leo, who may or may not have been Katrina’s ex, but who certainly hated her like one. I gave him a few leads—things he could check out that I couldn’t. I gave him plenty. Not everything. But plenty. He listened intently, jaw working his gum.

“Satisfied?” I said, when I was done.

“Not supersatisfied,” he replied. “But it’s a start.” He got to his feet, slowly, and stood there a moment, biceps rippling, knee quaking. “Listen, you really don’t know?”

“Don’t know what, Lieutenant?”

“Who the father is. Not that I mean to get up in your business …”

“You’re up in it, all right.”

“Want me to find out for you? I can ask around. Discreetly, of course.”

“Why would you want to do that?”

He shrugged. “Because we have a relationship, that’s why. You help me, I help you.”

I tugged at my ear. “I appreciate the offer, lieutenant. But it so happens I’d rather not know who the father is.”

He raised his chin at me, eyes flashing. “Ignorance is bliss, huh?”

“Ignorance is hell. But knowledge is worse.”

He considered this a moment, nodding, before he said, “Afraid of what you’ll find out about yourself, aren’t you, dude?”

“Whatever do you mean, Lieutenant?”

“I mean you’re afraid if you know who the cocksucker is you’ll want to grab him around the throat with your bare hands and squeeze the life out of him. I mean you’re afraid you’re just like all the rest of us—capable of losing it.”

“I’ve already lost it.”