Backstab

by Elaine Viets

  “Coming up,” he said.

  Success! My lips were set for golden grease.

  When I got inside, it was waiting for me, its greasy gold calling to me across the room. It was a wrong number. Marlene was carrying a fried egg to my booth. “I told the cook you never ate toasted cheese,” she said. “He must have heard wrong. And sure enough, that gentleman over there had asked for one. I told the cook you probably wanted a fried egg instead of a scrambled one.” I saw the man bite into my toasted cheese. There was no escaping an Uncle Bob’s egg.

  “Aren’t you worried about cholesterol?” asked Marlene, as she plopped the plate on the place mat.

  “Nope. I’m not going to live that long. Especially not if people try to run me down. Someone tried to kill me, Marlene. We know it’s not the Aryan Avenger. It’s not Todd, Maria’s manager. His alibi checked out. I have nowhere to go and nobody to suspect. I watch my rearview mirror constantly to see if anyone is following me. I don’t get out in any parking lot unless at least two people are around. I can’t go on like this. But I have no leads. The only thing I can say is that the trouble started after we had that talk here at Uncle Bob’s, and Babe listened in. My guess is it had to do with that conversation Babe overheard. He repeated it to the killer, and that’s who tried to run me down on your lot.”

  “I can’t see that we said anything to drive someone to murder, but let’s try to remember what we said. I’m not real busy right now.”

  We went back over the Babe conversation again. “First, I trashed Babe’s writing and then said maybe he had a boy friend,” said Marlene. “I guess that was pretty nasty.”

  “Nah, everybody says that,” I said. “I talked about his phone sex act.”

  “Then Babe would want to kill you,” Marlene said.

  “Nope,” I said. “Babe wasn’t the driver. He’s too tall. And Babe would never wear a black-and-red ski mask with a beige coat.”

  “Then I talked about your editors coming into Uncle Bob’s,” Marlene said.

  “At great length. And it was very informative. I didn’t know Hadley was a cheap tipper,” I said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Yes, you did. You said my editor was a cheap tipper.”

  “I didn’t mean Hadley, the managing editor. I mean that little squirt you work for—what’s his name?”

  “Charlie?”

  “Yeah. Him. Sat in my station. This was a couple of weeks ago. Took up a booth on a Saturday night for two hours, drank coffee and left me a lousy fifty cents. I could have made ten dollars in tips during the time he camped out there. I should have charged him rent.”

  “Charlie never struck me as a coffee drinker,” I said.

  “He’s not,” Marlene said. “He was waiting for someone. A little blonde I saw Hadley with later. The classy one who looks like Princess Di with a better nose. Never did figure out what she saw in Charlie, but then I couldn’t figure out why Di married Charles. The man looks like a blind date.”

  Princess Di? Suddenly, I could hear alarm bells going off. Was her Princess Di my Maria Callous? “Listen,” I said, “could this pretty little blonde have been a boy instead of a girl?”

  “I doubt it,” said Marlene. “We get some trans-vestites in here, and I’m pretty good at figuring them out. Even when they’re small-boned and have nice hands and feet, they don’t hold themselves like women.”

  I’d better let Marlene finish her story, before she got another rush of customers. “Anyway, Charlie and the blonde were fighting, but they shut up every time I came over with more coffee. All I could hear was that Charlie wanted her to come to his house because his wife was out of town, and she wouldn’t.”

  “You heard quite a bit.”

  “Well, yeah. I wanted to hear more. But Hadley came in with a blowzy brunette wearing black flats, black lipstick, and some sort of sleazy flowered housedress.”

  “That’s the poetry editor.”

  “Charlie introduced the classy blonde to Hadley. The next time Hadley came in here, he was with Charlie’s blonde. I don’t think that romance lasted too long.”

  “They never do.”

  “After that, I saw Hadley with a frizzy-haired blonde who had to be fifty if she’s a day. She smokes tiny cigars and says ‘Fuck’ every third word.”

  “Sounds like the etiquette editor.” I bit into the yellow of the egg, and it gushed out onto my suit. I just got it back from the cleaners.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said.

  “Jeez, I can’t take you anywhere. Let me clean it up,” said Marlene. She stuck a napkin in my water glass and began dabbing at the spot.

  “So unless Babe wants to run me down for saying he has sex with a telephone, the only other thing we talked about was Charlie’s latest squeeze. And I can’t see where that’s a big deal. It’s generally known he cheats on his wife.”

  “She’s prettier than most of the women I see him with,” Marlene said. “But he wouldn’t keep that a secret. I’m surprised he didn’t hang on to her longer. Would he pass on his girl friend to his boss to advance his career?”

  “You bet. The man was famous for organizing summer float trips in the Ozarks. Charlie got the rental canoes, the beer, and the ‘sleeping bags’—the naive young women who were eager to sleep with newspapermen in the hope it would advance their careers. Needless to say, only male staffers went on Charlie’s trips.”

  “Did Hadley go with them?”

  “Oh, yes. Then he’d write a column about how he felt closer to nature.”

  “He felt closer to something,” Marlene said.

  “Charlie would brag that he tried out Hadley’s girl friend first. He wouldn’t kill to keep it quiet. The blonde has to be the key. I’m just not sure how. I don’t even know who she is, but your Princess Di is beginning to sound a lot like my female impersonator, Maria Callous.”

  “I never saw her in here before—or since,” said Marlene.

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Early February.”

  “About the time that Maria Callous disappeared. But that doesn’t prove anything. Hadley and Charlie change girl friends as often as you change socks.”

  Besides, it didn’t seem likely that Charlie would make the same mistake twice and date another Blow Job Betty. And if he did, he certainly wouldn’t pass that mistake on to his boss, Hadley. But maybe he was so eager to score with his career he didn’t keep Maria around long enough to find out what she was. Or maybe he found out a little too late, then had to kill her before Hadley discovered his mistake. But I didn’t have a shred of proof. And that would be too devious even for Charlie. Wouldn’t it? I had to ask better questions than that.

  “I can’t see what my Princess Di has to do with your murders,” Marlene was saying. “But then, I didn’t think Ralph and Burt were murdered until you told me, and even then I didn’t quite believe you. The next thing I know someone’s trying to run you down in the parking lot—and we still don’t know why.”

  “All I’ve got are a lot of questions,” I said. “I need some answers.” I took the final bite of my fried egg. The last of the yolk that didn’t wind up on my suit dribbled down my chin. Marlene laughed. “Just don’t come away with egg on your face,” she said.

  It was time for me to leave. After I paid, Marlene and Tom the Cook walked me to my car. I saw them standing at the kitchen door as I drove off.

  I thought I should start at the beginning, with Burt. He was the first death. I called Burt’s wife, Dolores, and asked if I could stop by her home in South St. Louis for a talk.

  Maybe it was my imagination, or maybe it was March, but the brick flat looked forlorn now that Burt was dead. The brown awning over the front door had sagged after a heavy snowfall, and no one had fixed it. Dolores’s flower beds were muddy and clogged with dead leaves. Inside was worse. Most of the furniture was gone. The pictures, dishes, and knickknacks were packed away in boxes, and I saw how scuffed and scarred the walls were. The only thing that st
ayed the same was the bank calendar. Saturday was circled and marked “MOVING DAY!!!”

  Dolores was leaving the old neighborhood. She’d lost weight since Burt’s death, but she didn’t look good thin. Nature meant her to be fat and jolly, and she wasn’t either right now. But she tackled widowhood as briskly and capably as she handled the cooking at Burt’s Bar. She sat me down at her kitchen table, poured us both some coffee, and told me her plans. “I’ve put the bar up for sale,” she said. “I’m renting the flat and moving to Sunset Hills in South County.”

  “That’s where South Siders go when they get rich,” I said, and smiled. But my mild joke didn’t register.

  “Burt left me well fixed,” she said seriously. “He heard enough stock tips behind the bar. After a while, he became good at investments. I can’t stay here at the flat anymore. Every time I look around, I see Burt. I see him sitting in his big old chair in the living room. I see him at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. I see him in the hot tub.” I looked at her, remembering what Burt said about the good times they’d had in that tub. She must have read my mind. She blushed.

  “The new house in Sunset Hills is nice,” she said, but she didn’t sound enthusiastic. “It’s bigger than this place. I want enough bedrooms for my grandbabies, so they can stay overnight when they visit. I’m getting new furniture, too. I had the Salvation Army haul off the old living room suite. When they took it away, I felt like I was burying Burt all over again. But if I’m going to make it without him, I have to get away from our old life.”

  Now the briskness was gone. Dolores seemed soft and sad and vulnerable. She and Burt had built a good life together, and someone destroyed it with a few thrusts of a knife. She missed Burt terribly.

  “Dolores, what do you remember about the day Burt died? Was anything different? Do you know who was in the bar when Burt was closing for lunch?”

  She shook her head. “It was just another day,” she said. “We had a good lunch business, but most of our customers are gone by one o’clock. They have to get back to work. At one thirty, I saw a couple of tables were still occupied, but they were just businesspeople having a last cup of coffee. I didn’t get a good look at any of them. There wasn’t anything special to notice. I’d cleaned up my kitchen and my wagon was draggin’. I wanted a nap. Burt said he’d close up and I should go on home. I slipped out the back door. That’s the last time I saw him. I didn’t even say good-bye. I should have stayed. If I had, maybe he’d be alive. But I wanted a nap. Now it’s all I do.” She began to cry. I felt like a creep asking more questions that would hurt her, but I had to know.

  “Do you think he was murdered for the money in the register?”

  “Why else would anyone murder Burt?” she said, snuffling and blowing her nose. “He had no enemies. He was a harmless old man. I loved him all my life, but he wasn’t important in the great scheme of things. He wasn’t what Babe called a mover and shaker. He poured drinks for the movers and shakers.

  “We were both grateful for what you wrote. Before your Best Saloon in St. Louis contest, Burt was just a bartender in an old city saloon, and some of the kids were kind of embarrassed by him because they’d gone to college and everything. Then you did those stories about Burt and everyone came to his bar. The Mayor himself drank there, and an alderman who wasn’t even running for office in this ward, and Hadley Harris and a bunch of other newspaper people.”

  That got my attention. “Who else from the Gazette?”

  “I can’t remember his name, but he said he was an important editor there. He said he’d discovered you.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Short. Beer gut. Bald spot he covered up by combing his hair sideways. What was his name? Gary? Terry?”

  It had to be that little rat, Charlie. Only he would have the nerve to take credit for my column while he tried to kill it. “I think his name is Charlie,” I said mildly.

  “I think you’re right. That name sounds right, anyway,” said Dolores.

  “When was Charlie in the bar?”

  “A night or two before Burt was killed, I think. He’d been in a few times recently, once with a real classy-looking blonde. Was that his wife?”

  “No. His wife looks like a homely sparrow. That happens when you live with a crumb like Charlie.”

  “You don’t like him, do you?” Dolores said.

  I shook my head.

  “Me, either. He tries to make himself bigger than he is, and I’m not talking about his height.” She patted my arm. “I’m glad you think enough of my husband to look into his death, but I doubt that you will find out anything more than the police did. Be careful, Francesca. Don’t let the small things trip you up.”

  “I haven’t tripped over Charlie yet,” I said, and we both laughed. “Dolores, I want to find out who killed Burt, but I think there’s more to his death. I also lost a good friend, Ralph, the same week. I believe he was murdered. I think the same person killed Ralph and Burt, but I don’t know why yet. Ralph is the person who first introduced me to Burt’s Bar.”

  “I don’t think I know him,” she said. “But I kept mostly in the kitchen during the busy times.”

  “You’d know him if you saw him,” I said, and brought out a picture of Ralph and me at a holiday party. She put on a pair of glasses.

  “Oh, sure. I’ve seen him. Used to come in covered with dust and paint when he was rehabbing in the area. Nice young man. If he was really dirty, he would get carry-out, which was very considerate. Where was Ralph the day he died?”

  “Working at that house on Utah.”

  “Did anybody see him, or notice if he had someone with him? Maybe that’s a place to start, honey. Stay with your facts instead of your feelings.”

  “You’re right, Dolores,” I said, and gave her a good-bye hug.

  She was right, too. Lyle and I had looked at Ralph’s homemade appointment schedule when we picked up his truck. He was supposed to meet Ed at the Utah house. Who was Ed? Maybe Ralph’s mother, Billie, would know. I called her and asked if I could see her again. Billie said she had a doctor’s appointment and couldn’t see me until later that afternoon.

  I killed time by making a guest appearance at the City Gazette office. Naturally, the first person I ran into in the newsroom was Charlie. He was standing by the elevator. I noticed he was wearing a beige all-weather coat. Just like the person who tried to run me down. Just like thousands of men and women in St. Louis. He pulled out a pearl-and-silver pocket knife and began cleaning under his nails. Ugh. What a disgusting habit. I’d seen him do this at low-level staff meetings. I took it as a gesture of contempt. I never saw him give himself a manicure around Hadley. It made me angry. So did his next statement.

  “I see you added two charter members to your Get a Life Club,” Charlie said.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I said.

  I knew exactly what he meant. I loved the offbeat people I wrote about. Charlie made fun of them, calling them the Get a Life Club. “Those two drunks who got married, Elvis and Edna, was it?” he said. I hated the way he sneered at them.

  “They weren’t drunk at their wedding. You should be careful about making slanderous remarks. I’ve never seen the bride take a drink,” I said, truthfully. I’d seen the groom chug a few, but that was another story.

  “Well, I found your column about the wedding a hoot, although I don’t think that’s what you intended,” he said.

  “I guess you would find something funny about two people who promise to love, honor, and be faithful to each other.”

  Ah! A direct hit. His face turned red. Even his ears were scarlet. Naturally, Charlie hit back. He went corporate. “That conversation you had concerning the management team in Uncle Bob’s got back to us. Hadley was very upset that you were discussing company business with the little people.”

  “I don’t know any leprechauns, Charlie,” I said.

  “That conversation you had with a…a waitperson.”

  “I
t’s okay, Charlie, it’s not politically incorrect to call a woman a waitress. And I wasn’t discussing company business. I was discussing your affairs—which are growing more and more public. Even the little people are noticing you hang around with women who aren’t your wife. But if you and Babe hadn’t gone running into Hadley’s office, I doubt that he’d know what I said to the waitress.”

  “You shouldn’t have said anything. You’re not a team player,” he said. Charlie thought that was an insult.

  “You’re right, boss. I’m not a team player. Not your team, anyway. I’ll stick with the little people—instead of giants like you.” I patted him on his head. Charlie hated that, because I towered over him by almost a foot. A bell dinged, but it wasn’t the end of the round. The elevator arrived to take Charlie away.

  I figured he’d find some way to get me later, but it was worth it. We’d done more than trade insults. I’d proved one important point: Babe had reported everything to the CG. Charlie knew about the conversation I’d had with Marlene. He knew we knew about the pretty Princess Di blonde he’d been dating. But I didn’t know why he cared.

  I knew “Princess Di” was the nickname Marlene gave the woman who came into Uncle Bob’s with Charlie. Because she was small and blond and looked like the real princess.

  Burt had said Charlie was in the bar with a classy blonde. Dolores, Burt’s wife, had seen them, too, and wanted to know if she was Charlie’s wife.

  Ralph had thought there was a connection between Maria and the mutilated man dressed in women’s clothing in the Dumpster. The police called the victim a prostitute. Maria did some light hooking and had one arrest. Maria had breasts like a woman but genitals like a man. Until her killer stabbed them seventy-eight times. With a pocket knife. Like the one Charlie carried.

  Maria had dropped out of the Gender Bender Pageant. Except she didn’t drop out. She’d been murdered and dropped in a vacant lot.