Till the Butchers Cut Him Down (28 page)

“Yesterday morning. I’d just gotten the girls off to play with the neighbors’ kids. That’s not easy these days; all they want
to do is hang around the house; I guess it makes them feel safe. And then this guy comes pushing in here, demanding to see
Sid, and all the time Sid’s dead. When that finally sank in, he started asking me a lot of questions, and when I wouldn’t
answer them, he twisted my arm.” Her hand moved over the bruises.

“What kinds of questions?” I asked.

“About what Sid was doing the week he died.”

“You answer them?”

“What choice did I have? I answered them, and then he went away. And that’s when I got out Sid’s old rifle and loaded it.”

“Has the man tried to contact you since?”

She shook her head.

“Well, I wouldn’t worry about him. He got what he wanted, and I doubt he’ll be back.”

“Who
is
he?”

“Someone who knew your husband in San Francisco.”

She tensed, drawing her lower lip in under her teeth.

“Ms. Tomchuck, can we talk?”

“About Sid? What’s the use? He’s dead and never coming back. And don’t call me Ms. Tomchuck. It’s Mrs. Blessing. Sid made
me use my maiden name for legal things because of his … activities.”

“What activities?”

Silence.

“Mrs. Blessing, don’t you want Sid’s killer arrested?”

“… Of course I do. I want to see him sitting in the gas chamber.”

“Then why not talk with me?”

“What good’ll it do? The police haven’t done anything.”

“I think I know some things that may help them.”

“Why do you want to? What’s in it for you?”

“Talking with you will help me with a related case.”

She hesitated, still massaging her forearm. “Look, it’s not that I don’t want … It’s just that I’m scared.”

“Of what? Of whom?”

She glanced over my shoulder, as if she was afraid someone was listening. I used the opportunity to suggest, “Why don’t we
talk inside?”

“… I guess it wouldn’t hurt. I’m alone; the kids’re at my sister’s.”

Inside, the house had the impersonal feel of a place that the occupants hadn’t yet made their own. It didn’t help that there
was scarcely any furniture. Enid Blessing started toward the living room, which contained only an entertainment center and
a scattering of big flowered pillows, then detoured to the adjacent dining area and motioned for me to sit at a white plastic
table that was better suited to a patio.

“Sid and I ordered new furniture,” she said as she sat down across from me. “When he died, I had to cancel, and I lost the
deposit. Couldn’t help it, though; I’ve got those two little girls and no job, so I need to save the money we … I’ve got left.”

“I understand you came into quite a bit of money last summer.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Who told you that?”

“Your friend who bought the contents of the Pacifica house mentioned it to one of your former neighbors.”

“Craig? He’s got a mouth on him! That’s nobody’s business but ours.”

“Where did the money come from?”

“… I don’t know.”

“Come on, Enid.”

“It’s God’s truth! Sid didn’t tell … Look, don’t you people sometimes pay for information?”

“Sometimes.”

“How much would you give me if I told you everything I know?”

“That depends on what you have to offer.”

“I’m supposed to tell you
before
we set a price?”

“I won’t know what the information’s worth until I hear what it is. Besides, is anybody else offering?”

She thought about that, drumming her fingertips on the tabletop. I noticed that the nails were bitten to the quick. “Okay,”
she finally said, “this probably isn’t worth all that much, anyway. But money’s money, and I’ve got my kids to think about.
Last July, the first week, Sid came home all excited. Brought a bottle of champagne for us and ice cream for Ariel and Ariadne.
He’d taken on an important job for somebody he met at Bay Vista, and he said we could go looking for a house. It had to be
away from the Bay Area, though.”

“Why?”

“I guess because of whatever he had to do for this job. We moved a lot because of his …” She looked down at her hands. “Sid
was into things, you know?”

“Things?”

“Scams and stuff. That’s why we sort of hid behind my maiden name, so people couldn’t check public records and catch up with
him.”

“I see. So you found this house …”

“My sister, who lives here, knew the people who were selling. I loved it right off; I’d always wanted a house of my own. We
got a fast escrow, and it closed early in August.”

“But you stayed in Pacifica until late that month. Why?”

“Sid needed to be at Bay Vista for a while, to do whatever it was he had to do. And anyway, the girls had day camp and stuff.
So I picked out the color schemes and drove out here a few times to paint and wallpaper, and we ordered the furniture and
… oh, God!” She leaned forward, pressing her palms against her eyes.

This was another of those days when I hated my work. I looked away, waited until she calmed herself, then asked, “Do you know
what Sid was doing during those last weeks at Bay Vista?”

“Uh …” She took her hands from her eyes, brushed away tears with her fingertips. “Well, he was gone a lot of nights, and he
never worked nights at the condo complex. Was gone once on his day off. The day we moved in here, he drove our van out with
the stuff we were keeping, offloaded it, then turned around and went right back to San Francisco, and was gone all night.
I was mad at him for leaving me alone with the unpacked boxes. Now I’d give anything …”

“I know.” I touched her hand. First she looked surprised at the gesture, then pathetically grateful. I asked, “You moved here
when?”

“The last Tuesday in August.”

And that night Suits was attacked in his condominium. “What happened after that?”

“Two days later Sid left here again, in the morning, and stayed away all night and most of the next day. I guess he didn’t
get back till ten or eleven.”

The night he’d stayed away was the one Suits, Anna, and I had spent together at Moonshine House—the night before the explosion.

“How did Sid seem when he got back?”

“Seem?”

I began to feel impatient with her. “Was he upset? Happy? What?”

“Well, more excited than anything else, I guess. He told me he’d taken care of the final thing he had to do to get us the
rest of our money.”

The final thing. Damned right it was final. He’d ended Anna Gordon’s life.

It was a moment before I could ask, “He gave you no idea at all about what this final thing was? Or of what the job was?”

She shook her head, ashamed. “Sid was real secretive about the … stuff he was into. He said it was safer if he kept me out
of it. I should’ve made him tell me; I know that now. But then … I knew that what he was doing was wrong, but I couldn’t’ve
stopped him. And knowing what it was and not being able to do anything about it … well, that would’ve been worse than not
knowing at all. You see what I mean?”

I’d never had the desire to shield myself from reality, no matter how bad it might be, but I could see a certain logic in
what she said. “I think so. Did Sid get the rest of the money?”

“Oh, yeah, he had it with him when he came back. Twenty-five thousand dollars, cash. It sounds like a lot, but it isn’t, really.
We … I’ve got an awfully big mortgage on this place.”

It also wasn’t a lot when you measured it against the worth of Anna’s life. “Okay,” I said, “what happened on the night your
husband died?”

Her gaze blurred with fresh tears, but she blinked them away. “He got a phone call. Around ten, I guess. He said it was the
person he’d done the job for, that there might be more money in it for us. A couple of hours later he went out to meet whoever
it was that called. And he just … never came home.” Her head flopped forward and she clutched the edge of the table with her
fingertips.

“And he never told you anything about the person, not even the smallest detail?”

She shook her head; a tear dropped to the tabletop.

I took one of my business checks from my wallet, filled it in for a generous amount, and laid it in front of her. She didn’t
even look at it. I touched her arm, got up, and let myself out of the house.

Enid Blessing, I thought, had deliberately blinded herself to what her husband was doing, and in a way that made her equally
culpable. Still, I sensed a vein of strength in her that might prove valuable, at least to her little girls.

It was warm outside, the autumn temperatures in California’s Central Valley being a far cry from those in southwestern Pennsylvania.
When I got to my rental car I took off Anna’s cape, which I’d worn all the way across the country since my extended thirty-some-hour
day had begun in Monora.

So the killer I’d traveled all those miles to find was dead and, anyway, nothing more than a hired technician. I’d suspected
as much, but behind him I’d already sensed the outline of a second person. The person who had ordered the explosion at Moonshine
House and suggested that there might be a way to take me out in the process.

I needed to fill in that outline before Suits compounded the tragedy.

Suits’s silver Corvette was no longer parked in its space in the Bay Vista garage. I went to the complex’s security office
and, to my surprise, found Sue Mahoney at her desk.

“How come you’re working on a sunny Sunday afternoon?” I asked.

Mahoney scowled. “My assistant’s wife picked today to have her damn baby. Ruined my plans to go sailing.”

“That’s tough,” I said insincerely.

“What d’you want, McCone?”

“What happened to T. J. Gordon’s car?”

“I guess he took it when he was here Friday.”

“He was here at Bay Vista?”

“Friday afternoon. Man sure has gone downhill since his wife got killed.”

“How so?”

“He looks like hell—shaggy hair, bloodshot eyes, stubbly chin. Must’ve been sleeping in the same clothes for weeks. Personality’s
the same, though—lousy.”

“The man’s wife died, Mahoney.”

“So?”

“Compassionate, aren’t you?”

“There’s nothing in my employment contract that says I have to be.”

I let that conversational thread go. “You talk with him?”

“Yeah. He wanted the current address of our former concierge, Sid Blessing. I don’t have it, but Payroll does, so I sent Gordon
to them. Blessing’s a nervy bastard; he walked off the job without giving advance notice in August, then had the gall to call
up Payroll and tell them where to send his final check.”

So that was how Suits had found Enid. “Blessing’s dead, Mahoney.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Who killed him?”

“How come you know somebody killed him? I didn’t say that.”

“It’s a joke, for Christ’s sake.”

“Hilarious.”

“You know, McCone, I’ve never liked you.”

I smiled. “There’s nothing in your employment contract that says you have to.”

* * *

Josh Haddon answered my knock at the door of Suits’s penthouse. The pilot had lost weight since I’d last seen him, and his
freckled face was more lined.

“You’re back from Monora,” he said.

“How’d you know I went there?”

“Noah Romanchek told me.” Josh stepped aside and motioned for me to come in. The bloodstains and scuff marks had been cleaned
from the foyer, and the card table and papers had been straightened, but the place had a desolate feel in spite of the sunlight
that slanted through the glass wall.

I asked, “Have you seen T.J.?”

He shook his head.

“He was here at the complex on Friday, spoke with Security, and took his car. He didn’t come up?”

“No, and I was around all day. Wonder why not?”

“He seems to have gone underground. Josh, why’re you still staying here?”

“Waiting on T.J., just like always. I’ve got no idea what he’s going to do, so I decided I’d better camp out for a while.”

I glanced around the room. With the exception of a couple of folding chairs on the balcony, Josh had added no furnishings.
It was as if he had tried on Suits’s lifestyle and decided it fit him. “Camping out is a good description,” I said.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me. I’ve never cared much for creature comforts. T.J. pays me this huge salary for being on call
twenty-four hours, and all I’ve done for years is bank it. Look, why don’t we sit outside?”

I followed him to the balcony and took one of the chairs, propping my feet on the lower crosspiece of the railing.

“So what’d you think of Monora?” Josh asked.

“It’s grim.”

“You find out anything interesting?”

“I talked to a lot of people—Chief Koll, a writer named Amos Ritter, Herb Pace. Jim Spitz.”

Josh grew very still. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, I thought.

“Of course you knew all those people,” I added.

“I didn’t really know Ritter, but I’ve heard of him. The others—well, sure.”

“And you knew Ed Bodine.”

“… Yeah. You see him, too? I thought he was in prison.”

“He escaped.”

“No kidding. When?”

“A year ago last July.”

“He didn’t go back to Monora, did he?”

“No, he didn’t go back to Monora.”

Josh didn’t say anything. I let the silence lengthen. Finally he sighed. “All right, you know about us setting Bodine up.”

“Yes. I want to hear your version of it.”

“Why? It’s over and done with.”

“I still want to hear your story.”

“What’re you going to do? Go to Koll, get the case reopened? And why’re you nosing around in it, anyway? I thought you were
done working for T.J.”

“I’m no more done working for him than you are. As for Koll, she’s not going to open what she regards as a political can of
worms. So it’s all right to tell me about it.”

He hesitated a while more. Fished out a cigarette and cupped his hands to light it. “Okay,” he finally said. “You know Bodine
was a troublemaker. He’d used some damned dirty tactics and was impossible to negotiate with. Word came down—get rid of him.
I’m a good little soldier; I obeyed orders.”