by Ed Gorman
"Oh, yeah, right, Mr. Dwyer."
"Go, Leonard. Go."
He went.
The call came in an hour later. Male voice. Probably middle-aged. "Jack Dwyer, please."
"Speaking."
"You're the one who's been around the restaurant, right?"
"Around the Avanti?"
"Right."
"That's me."
"I wondered if we could talk."
"Would you give me your name, sir?"
"Sure. Harry Evans."
"And you work where, Mr. Evans?"
"At the restaurant."
"At the Avanti?"
"Yessir."
"I see."
"I've got a break in half an hour. I could meet you at the Hardees near Jackson Park."
"You don't want to talk on the phone?"
"I'd rather not."
"Any particular reason for that?"
"I worked in Intelligence when I was in the Army. I know how easy it is to tap a phone."
"You're calling from the Avanti?"
"Right."
"And you think it might be tapped?"
"Possibly."
What the hell was going on here?
"It will take me forty-five minutes to get to Jackson Park, Mr. Evans."
"That's all right. I'll go ahead and have some dinner."
"You work at a fancy place like the Avanti and you eat at Hardees?"
He laughed. "It's like owning a candy store. Eventually, you get tired of chocolate."
"I guess that's a good point."
"Forty-five minutes, then."
Chapter 12
On its roof, Hardees had a large revolving tree all green and red and blue and yellow in the darkness. From unseen speakers Elvis Presley sang "Blue Christmas." In the doorway a disheveled Santa was saying goodbye to the last of the day's tots, in this case a cute little blond girl clutching a doll big enough to be her twin. Up at the cash register, the Muzak Christmas music fought a radio that talked of bloody terrorist deaths in the Middle East and in New Jersey the gunning down of a young cop by a drug pusher. At the counter, middle-class people in parkas and topcoats and leather bombardier jackets bought chicken cutlet sandwiches and pork tenderloins and fries and some kind of synthetic milk shakes served by quick-stepping, clean-cut teenagers in brown polyester uniforms and matching caps. In the booths beyond, little kids were packed into one side while on the facing side sat their parents, exhausted from an afternoon of shopping, mother or father too tired to fix dinner, and consequently ending up here. From what I could see, all the little kids thought it was a swell idea.
Harry Evans turned out to be a chunky man in a brown suede car coat and a Notre Dame sweatshirt. He had a grip that would have made a bodybuilder proud and a beard that probably needed shaving twice a day—sort of like Richard Nixon's—and a certain lively contempt in his dark eyes. The world had let Harry down in some profound way and he was not about to forget it. He appeared to be in his mid-forties. He did not seem unduly impressed with me and of course, having taken PhD courses in low self-esteem, I immediately assumed the fault was mine and not his.
He sat at a booth near the rear door. He saw me looking around and waved me over. "You must be Dwyer."
I sat down.
"You're not eating?"
I shrugged. "Just coffee."
He said, "I want you to guarantee me I'm not going to get involved."
"First of all, Mr. Evans, if you knew much about me you'd know that there's nothing I can guarantee anybody about anything. I'm just a guy, all right? And secondly, if you don't want to get involved, why are you talking to me?"
"What I mean is, I don't want my name used. Is that possible?"
"With the police?"
"Right."
"Any special reason for that?"
"I did time."
"I see."
"B and E."
"Where?"
"Fort Madison." He shrugged. "That's behind me now. But you know how cops are."
"I used to be a cop."
"That's your problem."
I looked around. I wanted to be one of the little kids, stomach filled with cheeseburger and french fries and head filled with images of the real Santa coming down my chimney Christmas Eve.
"What I was trying to say," I said, "was that not all cops hate ex-cons."
"Most do."
I sighed. "Okay. Most do but not all. How's that?"
"Fine."
It was like debating in the goddamn United Nations.
"So you wanted to talk."
"Tomkins didn't kill Coburn."
"No?"
"No."
"You know that for sure?"
"For sure."
"How's that possible?"
"Because you know how Earle's supposed to have been seen out at Coburn's car?"
"Right."
"It wasn't Earle."
"Who was it?"
"Mrs. Coburn."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I saw her lift Earle's blast jacket and hat. From a distance, the Coburn babe and Earle are about the same size and all."
"You have any special reason for telling me this?"
He smiled. "Yeah. Because I'm such a good citizen."
"I take it you don't like them."
"The people at the restaurant?"
"Right."
"I like the hired help fine. It's the owners and the customers I can't stand."
"So it's at least a possibility that you'd lie about them."
"It's a possibility, yeah. But I don't happen to be lying."
"You saw Coburn's wife, Deirdre."
"I saw Coburn's wife, Deirdre, take Earle's jacket and hat from a hook in one of the back hallways."
"And then what?"
"Huh?"
"Then what did she do with them?"
"Put them on and wore them out to her husband's car and killed him."
"You saw her do this?"
"No, but what the hell else do you think she did with them?"
"But you didn't see this?"
"You really are an asshole."
"I'm trying to help Earle."
"Yeah, it really sounds like it."
"You saw her take the jacket and hat but after that you don't know what happened."
"Well, not for sure but it's reasonable to assume—"
"We can't assume anything. The prosecuting attorney won't assume anything. He'll ask if you actually saw Deirdre Coburn wear the jacket and hat to the car and then kill her husband and we'd have to say no."
"He thought he was such hot stuff."
"Coburn?"
"Yeah. He always liked to play the big deal. You know, circulate among the customers and say hello. A lot of the women he was hitting on. One night he even managed to get one down in the basement. He was pretending to show her around the restaurant, you know? Anyway, he got her in the wine cellar and pumped her right on the spot. One of the busboys walked in on him and Coburn got so mad that later that night he slapped the busboy in front of everybody."
"This busboy didn't happen to be Earle Tomkins, did he?"
"Yeah."
"You're giving Earle a motive."
"I don't mean to."
"I know. But you are anyway," I said.
He shrugged.
"You don't like working for them?" I asked.
"Not especially."
"Then why you do it?"
"They pay me. I'm a working man. It's that simple."
"So who do you think killed him?" I said.
"Either she killed him or Tom Anton did. Him and Anton, they hated each other."
"If I need you to testify about the jacket and hat, you'll help me out?"
"You ever seen what a prosecutor does to an ex-con on the witness stand?" He sighed and looked down. "I'll consider it, I guess."
"You did a nice thing, calling me. Earle will appreciate it."
"He's a good kid."
I
finished my coffee and stood up. "I guess I may as well go ask Deirdre Coburn about what you just told me."
"I'd love to be there and see that bitch squirm."
However justified his anger might be, it was repellent to see. Hatred is something none of us wears very well. "Thanks again, Mr. Evans."
"I'm gonna get fired over this and you know what?"
"What?"
He flicked cigarette ashes into his empty coffee cup. "I don't give a shit. That's what."
When I reached my car in the parking lot, an apple-cheeked family was sliding on the ice and laughing. After Harry Evans's cold and lonely rage, the laughter was nice to hear.
Chapter 13
From the backseat I took the phone book and looked up Richard Coburn's address. It was about where I'd expected him to live, on one of those private lanes newly cut from red rock and timber and what used to be open forest land before developers bought it up ten years earlier.
On the way out I saw several groups of carolers. They looked pretty in the darkness and the snow. A few times I even turned off the radio and rolled down the window so I could hear them.
I drove out past the old-money houses all alight with Christmas ornaments, up into the timbered hills where narrow blacktop roads wound in circles past white stables and brick mansions set far back from the road.
The Coburn house was in a deep, timber-rugged valley, and surrounded by an even more rugged stone wall. I parked on a hill above, a quarter mile away, killing my lights, letting my eyes adjust to the moonlight. The house was a sprawling Tudor of wood and the same quarry stone as the fence around it. The adjoining three-stall garage was closed up tight. Smoke came in thin gray twists from the chimney; no lights shone anywhere in the house. Against the full moon a silhouette hawk flew, opening its wings in an updraft, soaring past the golden circle then becoming invisible against the dark gray firmament.
From the glove compartment I took the Zeiss binoculars. I tugged on my gloves.
Seen close up, the house was just as dark. Once I thought I saw light behind the surface of glass on the westernmost window but it proved to be moonlight refracted through wind-tossed pines. Another time, checking out the screened-in porch behind the house, I thought I saw a dark shape moving against the screen but after long consideration through the binoculars, I decided I was looking at some kind of tall object covered in a tarpaulin. When the wind shook the screen, the object seemed to move.
I spent ten minutes scoping everything out. I had no idea what I was looking for—probably nothing. I took boyish pleasure in using the binoculars. I so seldom got a chance. The car was warm and pleasant and I was thinking of a Cary Grant–Irene Dunne movie I was planning to see on cable later and life at the moment did not seem so bad for a former altar boy who had lost his way for a time. Then I spotted the car.
Clever devil that he was, the driver had pulled the small dark Honda off the road to the east of the Coburns' entrance, behind a copse of pines. You had to look long and hard to see it. I had but barely. All I really got a glimpse of was the tail end and the rusted bumper and the license plates. I had no idea where the driver was or what he was doing here. I decided to go and find out. I slipped my .38 Smith and Wesson from the holster I kept under the seat, put the binoculars back in the glove compartment, got out, locked the car, and set off.
The night air was cold, already pinching my nostrils. Moonlight lay silver across the blue snow, covering everything. Downhill headlights wound around the curving road headed in the opposite direction. The car's engine sounded lonely laboring in the night.
When I got to the Honda, I hefted the .38 tighter and went along a windbreak of pines adjacent to the car. I came out ten yards ahead of the Honda so I could approach from the front.
From the cover of some birch trees, I could see that the engine was shut off and the lights were off. For a time there was just the wind and the cold silty snow and the soft soughing of the pines in the moonlight. Nothing moved inside the car. I assumed that the driver had gone off somewhere and since the only house for at least a mile in any direction was Coburn's, it was logical to assume he'd gone to see Mrs. Coburn. But Mrs. Coburn didn't appear to be home. I went back along the windbreak of pines. When I came even with the Honda, I stopped, pushed through the sweetsmelling pines, and then rushed the car, putting my .38 right against the windshield in case somebody popped up inside. But as I could see immediately, he wasn't going to be popping up any time soon.
I got out my flashlight from my parka and shined it around inside.
He was probably mid-thirties, chunky, dressed in an inexpensive three-piece brown business suit. His yellow and brown patterned tie was a couple inches too wide to be fashionable any longer and the reddish hairpiece he wore looked as if it had been made from Astroturf. He had a pug nose and a wide solemn mouth and right now his eyes appeared to be brown though in daylight they could easily be green. He had a small birthmark on the jawline of his right cheek. He had been shot in the chest. Dark sticky blood covered him as if he'd spit it up in a messy accident.
The window on the passenger side of the small silver car was smashed and that made me curious. I walked around the Honda in deep snow and got my light on the silver spider-webbing of the smashed window. Blood was streaked down the door. I fixed the light on the rusted door handle. Blood was sticky there, too.
I put the light on the ground and followed the blood along the snow, trying to find where he'd first been shot. I followed the blood out to the road and down to the entrance of the Coburn estate. The blood ended in dirty snow there. Apparently, he had been standing by the mailbox when he was shot and had turned to run back to his car. At several points you could see where he'd fallen and then gotten up to keep running back to his car. Since there were no other footprints, I assumed the killer had not followed him. There was a good chance that the killer had believed the man was dead right there at the mailbox and had therefore fled.
Back at the Honda, I set the light to working inside the car. There wasn't much to see. On the backseat was a small stack of four-color brochures and next to that stack another one of larger versions of the same brochure. A brown double-knit sport coat inside its clear plastic laundry bag hung from a knob on the back window. From the rearview mirror dangled a St. Christopher's medal, which would make sense given the ruby Knights of Columbus ring he wore on his right hand. Nothing very helpful.
I took a break and went over and peed in the snow by the pines. Death, whether I admit it to myself or not, always scares me, and for a simple enough reason. Someday that will be me in the front seat of the Honda or slumped there in the armchair or drawing my last in the snug white hospital bed. As I peed, I listened to the wind in the pines, and smelled the tangy cones, and looked at the snow made blue by the night sky, and saw the brilliant stars. He was beyond all these pleasures now, the man in the car.
I decided to hell with it and opened the door from the driver's side.
He kept his car registration in a neat little deal on the other side of his visor. His name was Brian Ingram. I wrote down all the particulars and then reached into the backseat and grabbed a couple of the brochures which belonged to the Ardmore Chemical Company. With so many of them—maybe as many as fifty apiece—the brochures must belong to the company he worked for.
He stank pretty bad by now, so I was happy to close the door and stand in the clean cold air and look at the stars and wonder as always what the hell they meant and who put them there and why exactly. By the time I got done wondering I had to pee again, so I went back to the pines and did my dirty deed, and then I set off up the road, my work shoes loud against the gravel in the quiet night, and a dog somewhere complaining that I was disturbing his peace.
I got in my car and fired her up and got a good loud party station on the radio and then I drove at reasonable speed back to the city and found a phone booth and put in a call to 911 about where a body could be found in a certain Honda and hung up and went home.
&nbs
p; Chapter 14
I spent twenty minutes in the shower. First I shaved and then I got lathered up and then turned the water so hot it nearly hurt.
In the bedroom I took a laundry-starched white shirt from its package and added a blue regimental-striped tie to it. I took a blue blazer and gray slacks from the closet and added black socks and black loafers to those and then I was ready to go. It was not a night to be sitting home alone.
I was reaching for my topcoat when the phone rang. "Well, Dwyer, I'm being faithful. How about you?"
I laughed. Neither of us are exactly trusting people. While such suspicion embarrassed me, Donna never had any trouble expressing it.
"Just sitting here with two blondes," I said.
"Actually, that's just how I picture you. I suppose one is a stewardess and the other is a brain surgeon. For balance."
"Yes, and one thinks I'm very cute and the other thinks I'm very handsome."
"So have you been thinking about me?"
"About forty percent of the time. Have you been thinking about me?"
"About forty-two percent of the time."
"I guess you win."
"That's because I have a pure heart." Beat. "So have you really been faithful, Dwyer?"
"Uh-huh."
"Boy, that sounds definitive."
"I have been faithful. How's that?"
"Better."
"Are you enjoying the convention?"
"Parts of it are all right. But the kids kind of scare me."
"The kids?"
"The young ambitious ones. They have dead eyes. Like cokeheads. You know?"
"I know."
"At lunch the other day two of them pulled out this huge BMW brochure and started passing it around the table. It was disgusting."
"What did you do?"
"Went back to my room and read Graham Greene. He's so good."
"Yes, he is."
Beat. "I'll bet I miss you more than you miss me."
"Bet you don't."
Sigh. "I wish we were in my apartment and I was making dinner for us."
"Me, too."
"You think we'll ever get married?"
"I don't know. What do you think?"
"I thought we agreed to never answer a question with another question."