Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice

by Ron Goulart

  “She said she’d be available from noon on should you care to pay a call.”

  Easy turned to the final message. “Ned Mowatt. Wants to see me right away. Urgent, with three exclamation points.”

  “He called a few minutes ago,” said Nan. “Sounding very anxious and agitated.”

  “Maybe he and his wife do know where Joanna has gotten to. I’ll head for there now.”

  Hagopian held up the briefcase. “Want to take this stuff along with you?”

  “What did you come up with?”

  “Some background clippings on the Darlington & Sons accounting firm. They have done lots of work for outfits quite close to the San Ignacio local government, construction people, contractors and so on,” said Hagopian, rattling the briefcase. “I also packed you some material on Mayor Zibelli and his cronies. Oh, and one muckraking article on Sam Troxa, better known as Sam the Barber.”

  “He used to be a barber?” asked Nan.

  “He used to cut people’s throats,” said Hagopian. “There’s a strong possibility your goons are employed by Troxa. He’s a syndicate man. There have been rumors he’s tied in with most of the construction work in San Ignacio. That’s on top of gambling, loan sharking, prostitution and narcotics.”

  “I’ve heard of Troxa,” said Easy.

  “It looks like Troxa’s heard of you,” pointed out Hagopian. Down-turning lines formed on his wide forehead. “Maybe you ought to severely restrict the number of visits you make to San Ignacio.”

  Easy lifted the briefcase from the dark writer’s hand. “I’ll take this along to San Ignacio with, me.” He tapped the forlorn Hagopian on the shoulder and went back out to his car.

  XIII

  JEANNIE MOWATT BENT TOWARD her husband. “Would Mr. Easy like a cup of coffee?”

  “Ask him,” Ned Mowatt was a moderate-sized blonde man of thirty. He was sitting on a long low flowered sofa, surrounded by cats.

  “No, thanks.” Easy leaned on the arm of a chair that matched the sofa. “Let’s get to what you wanted to talk to me about.”

  Still not looking at Easy, Jeannie asked, “Maybe Mr. Easy would like a cup of tea instead?” She was wearing a short tweed skirt today and a sedate white blouse.

  “Shut up for a while, Jeannie,” suggested her husband. He reached up, took her cigarette from her fingers and began smoking it himself.

  “I thought you were giving it up.” Jeannie walked slowly across the room, stopping with her back to the drawn drapes.

  “So I’m nervous this morning,” said Mowatt. Three of their cats were sprawled and slumbering on the bright sofa.

  “Do you know where Joan is?” Easy asked the nervous Mowatt.

  “Would Mr. Easy mind if I turned on the hi-fi? It helps soothe my nerves sometimes.” The husky blonde looked in Easy’s direction but focused on the even row of small pictures which ran up the wall behind him. Each picture showed a famous nineteenth century steam engine.

  “Do whatever you want, Jeannie, but shut up,” said her husband. “I’ve decided I better talk to you, Easy.”

  Easy nodded, not replying.

  Jeannie passed close in front of him. She knelt at a hi-fi system built into white wall cabinets. “Does Mr. Easy like jazz?”

  “Honest to Christ, Jeannie, what is all this Mr. Easy crap?”

  Easy said, “I don’t think your wife took too kindly to me on my last visit.”

  “This is Miles Davis,” announced Jeannie as she slapped a record on the turntable.

  “Turn it down,” said Mowatt above the initial blast of the music. He left the sofa, which caused the cats to stir and complain. Reseating himself on a cobbler’s bench closer to Easy, he went on. “I’m right in assuming the same people killed Phil’s sister. I mean, the same people who did it to him?”

  “Yeah,” answered Easy, “I’d say so.”

  “He’s afraid they’re going to come and get him,” said Jeannie. She took a new cigarette from the canister on the round coffee table. “He couldn’t stand that, being beaten up.”

  “Why don’t you go away somewhere and shut up,” said her husband. “It’s Joan I’m worried about.”

  “You had your chance with her,” said the husky blonde as she lit the cigarette.

  “Honest to Christ, Jeannie, I don’t expect you to be at all sentimental, I know you too well for that, but you can at least shut up for a while. You slept with Phil, after all.”

  “Only so you could have a turn with dear Joan. I don’t need extra playmates.”

  “That’s great,” laughed Mowatt. “You’ve balled every guy within a radius of a mile, down to and including that kid with acne who mows the Hodgins’ lawn, and you try to tell me …”

  “Where’s Joan?” asked Easy.

  His eyes still narrowed and aimed at his wife, Mowatt said, “Excuse us, Easy. I didn’t bring you over to … look, they may try to kill Joan, too? Is that a possibility?”

  “If they haven’t already.”

  Mowatt puffed rapidly at his borrowed cigarette. “That’s what I’m really afraid of, Easy. I was going to coast on this, leave it alone, until I heard the radio this morning. Until I heard about Phil’s sister.”

  “It takes two or three murders to get Neddy’s moral sense going,” said his wife.

  “You were the one who didn’t want me to talk to him. I wanted to call him last night. It would be better if he finds Joan than some …”

  Easy asked, “Can you tell me where she is?”

  “Yes,” answered Mowatt. “She’s in Mexico.”

  “Olé,” said Jeannie under her breath.

  “Where in Mexico?”

  Mowatt sighed out blue smoke. “I’m not exactly sure.”

  “He wishes he did,” said his wife. She wandered over to the flowered sofa and dropped down amidst the dozing cats. “He’d be there now, holding her lovely white hand, giving her aid and comfort.”

  “This is what happened,” Mowatt went on. “Joan called me last Saturday morning around 4 A.M. She’d been out with someone else that night, not with Phil. You know how she was I guess. Anyway, she’d decided to go back to Phil’s place and spend the rest of the night there.”

  “She found him dead?”

  “Yeah, right. There was nobody else around, according to Joan. I’m not absolutely sure of all the details, but I think she had a pretty good idea why he’d been killed. She was really afraid they’d try for her as well. She wanted to get far away for a while, right then. To Mexico.”

  “Tell him the whole thing, Neddy.” Jeannie stroked the dreaming white Timothy. “Nice pussy.”

  “Well, you can figure it, Easy. Joan, because of one thing and another, has always been sort of fond of me. When she found Phil dead, she naturally turned to me.”

  “Neddy was number two, but he tried harder.”

  “Honest to Christ, Jeannie, will you shut the fuck up!” shouted her husband. “Well, Easy, Joan wanted me to take her away someplace, help her hide out. I told her that was impossible. I have my job and …”

  “Your loving wife,” added Jeannie.

  “Do you know,” Easy asked Mowatt, “where in Mexico she wanted to go?”

  “No, but I’m sure Mexico was where she went.”

  “You turned her down. Who did she try next?”

  “I have a pretty good notion,” said Mowatt. “Which is another reason I contacted you, Easy. See, Joan was friendly with some of the people over at Gladys Waugh’s. You know about Gladys?”

  “Some.”

  “The morning Joan called, she became angry with me. She told me if I changed my mind about helping her she’d be at Gladys’ mansion. She told me if I didn’t get there in a reasonable time she had somebody else who’d help her.”

  “You know who that was?”

  “No, some guy who hangs around there,” said Mowatt. “Gladys knows, though. I called her last night, I’ve been worried about this all. I told her you were looking for Joan.”

  E
asy stood. “Gladys Waugh wants to talk to me. I’m going there now.”

  “Good,” said Mowatt. “Good.” He hesitated, puffing at the cigarette. “Do you think we’re in danger ourselves, Easy?”

  “Not as much as Joan is.” Easy walked into the hall. “Say good-bye to your wife for me.”

  XIV

  BLACK SMOKE DRIFTED UP from the black chimney and scrawled across the hot clear noon sky. The witch’s three-story mansion was set among blighted and dying oak trees. It was a thin many-spired Victorian and had been painted a flat black. The lacey gingerbread and the now-cockeyed weathervanes were trimmed in a glittery gold, as were the dangling shutters. Some of the lower windows were leaded stained glass, others weren’t there at all and had been replaced with the side of a Gallo wine carton, a cigarette-burned pink baby blanket, a disemboweled copy of Look and, at the window nearest the wide black door, part of the tin sign from a place named Orlando’s Depot Club.

  Mystic symbols, mostly Egyptian, had been dabbed on the reachable front façade of the decaying old house. The white paint was soluble and the last rains had blurred everything.

  The front yard of Gladys Waugh’s home was guarded by a shoulder-high stone wall. Someone had tried to paint that black too, but had given up ten feet to the right and four feet to the left of the sprung-iron gates.

  Easy pushed the gate and walked onto a rutted driveway. A truck with huge tires had driven in here and out recently, leaving great tread-pattern channels through the dark mud. On each side of the muddy drive were small fields of high grass and weeds. A gutted Volkswagen, spotted with homemade daisies, lay in the weeds near the gate. A slim, deeply tan young girl was sitting sideways in the car’s carcass with her long bare legs hanging free. She was smoking a homemade cigarette, looking straight up at the noon sky through the missing sunroof.

  Nearer the crusty black mansion sprawled another auto. This was a 66 Mustang up on blocks. A long tall Negro, shirtless, was whacking at the engine with a silver wrench.

  Four rundown seagulls, even worse off than the ones which sometimes flew over Jill’s Bel Air home, flapped and awked down to dance on the ornate wooden trim over the porch.

  “What?” The black man twisted himself out from under the Mustang hood.

  “Good afternoon.” Easy continued moving toward the front steps of the mansion.

  “What do you want, Jim?”

  “Gladys Waugh wants to see me. I’m John Easy.”

  “Naw.” The black man shook his head, jabbing the wrench at the air.

  Easy’s foot hit the lowest wood step of the porch.

  “Naw, she doesn’t have any desire in the world to see you, Jim.” The black man dropped a hand on Easy’s shoulder. “Hey, I’m sorry. I went and got a big glob of grease on your handsome coat.”

  “That’s okay,” said Easy, stepping up free of his grip. “The last guys I tangled with walked on my coat and then shredded it up. A glob of grease is nothing.”

  “How about a boot in the ass, Jim?”

  Easy turned. Without saying anything further he hit the Negro twice just below the sternum.

  “Oof.” The black man went bicycling backwards and ended up on one knee down in the weeds. “That’s a son-of-a-bitch thing to do, Jim.” He chopped the wrench once sideways in the air as he rose up off the ground.

  “Ram, stop it now,” cautioned someone from the big house.

  Ram watched Easy for a second, shrugged, and returned to the Mustang. He hit the engine hard again.

  “Three hundred years of slavery have made Ram belligerent,” said the vast woman in the doorway.

  “You should give him some time off.” Easy climbed the rest of the steps to shake hands with the great fat woman waiting there.

  “I’m Gladys Waugh,” she said. She was milk-colored, weighing three hundred pounds. Her dress was a loose floor-length mother hubbard as black as her house. Around her thick neck hung a silver chain with a pendant of the Egyptian symbol known as the Eye of Osiris. She rubbed at the silver emblem, which was sunk in the gully between her two enormous unrestrained breasts. “You are John Easy?”

  “Yep. You have something to sell me?”

  Gladys Waugh smiled and for a moment her tiny red mouth disappeared into the milky fat of her huge cheeks. “Do you know, I have expected you for over a month, Mr. Easy. Certain signs, certain very significant signs, told me you would make this pilgrimage to my coven. I don’t suppose you know how to read the entrails of chickens.”

  “I read mostly non-fiction.” Easy stepped into the mansion’s hallway as the enormous witch backed to let him enter.

  Gladys Waugh sucked her little mouth away out of sight again, snorting. “The entrails even predicted you would be a wise-ass.”

  In the parlor to the right of the dismal hallway a pretty Chinese girl wearing only a pair of panties with Tuesday embroidered all over them was fooling with a guitar which had three strings too few. A black candle was stuck atop a plaster skull resting on the sooty mantelpiece.

  “Go and meditate somewheres else, Elizabeth,” ordered the witch. “I don’t feel like schlumping all the way up to my eyrie to commune with Mr. Easy.”

  The girl thumped her narrow buttocks once on the bare unpolished wood floor, in mild anger, before she hopped up and carried the guitar away. “Holy Moloch,” she muttered going away.

  “I sense you seek information from me, Mr. Easy.” The enormous woman dropped herself on a square hard tan couch beneath the clouded bow window.

  When the after-shocks had ceased Easy said, “I bet you learned that from the entrails of a telephone.”

  “One of my lesser disciples has indeed communicated with me,” admitted Gladys Waugh. She forced a giant puffy hand down her front and extracted a box of Tiparillo cigars. Lighting up with a match from a pewter cup on the off-kilter coffee table, she said, “You’re looking for Joanna Feyer, also known as Joan St. John.”

  “You know where she is,” said Easy.

  Puffing out smoke, the witch said, “Ever since I was a slip of a girl I’ve had exceptional powers, Mr. Easy. By long dedicated years of studying the black arts I have amplified those powers.”

  Easy stepped over a Coke bottle holding a half-dozen bedraggled peacock feathers and sat on an orange crate across the room from the witch. “It’s important that I find Joanna soon.”

  “Viewing the puny events of man from cosmic heights eliminates much of the urgency we tend to feel, Mr. Easy.” She shifted her weight and the couch thwanged. “How much is it worth to you to locate this particular girl?”

  Easy said, “Fifty bucks.”

  Gladys Waugh laughed. Smoke popped out of her wide nostrils in tiny puffs. Her little mouth disappeared while she rocked on her seat. “Joanna is an exceptionally lovely young woman, Mr. Easy. Surely, surely she is worth more than fifty dollars.”

  “The cops can maybe get the information out of you for nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” replied the enormous witch. “It would be religious persecution if they tried to roust me.” Her mouth emerged to suck the end of the thin little cigar. “By Belphegor, Mr. Easy, I must have at least one hundred.”

  “Seventy-five.”

  Gladys Waugh’s gigantic head jiggled negatively from left to right. “One hundred.”

  Easy fingered five $20 bills out of his wallet. “Okay, where is she?”

  Beckoning the money, the witch answered, “Mexico.”

  “So I’ve heard. Where in Mexico?”

  “Let’s have the cash in front.”

  Easy dealt the bills into her wide puffy palm, Gladys Waugh’s fingers closed, hiding the cash completely. “Joanna took off from here Saturday afternoon with a young kid, an artist so he says. Joanna’s been playing around with him since she started attending an occasional black mass here.” She laughed, snorting out smoke. “Great Baal has no objection to a little grab-ass during his services.”

  “What’s the guy’s name and where did he and Joanna head?�
��

  “His name is Santos,” said the witch. “Gerry Santos. I have the impression Joanna has a few hundred bucks and that was enough to convince Santos they could shack up down Mexico way for a while.”

  “Where?”

  “Santos has a buddy who rents a place down there. They figured to stay there awhile before getting a little adobe love nest of their own.”

  “Where?”

  “In a little town called Choza,” said Gladys Waugh. “Know where that is?”

  “I can look it up.”

  “I’ll save you the trouble. I was doing some painting in Mexico before I got plugged into the black arts. Choza’s something like ten miles inland from Guaymas, in from the Gulf of California. You can cross at Mexicali and get over on Route 15. You should be able to drive it in less than a day. You’ve probably got a nice tough sports car and can do it in less.”

  “It’s the toughest Volkswagen money can buy.”

  “How in the name of Belial can you fit that frame of yours in a VW?”

  “You have to hunker some.”

  “Great Baal, it doesn’t look like I’m going to go touring with you. We’d capsize the little bugger,” said Gladys. “This friend of Santos’ is named Gabe Hickey. His place is on the Calle Descenso.”

  Nodding, Easy said, “Did Joanna tell you why she was running?”

  “No, but I didn’t have to consult my mandragore root to know,” replied the enormous witch. “When somebody got rid of the guy she was bedding down with Joanna made the logical assumption San Ignacio was no longer a safe vicinity for her.”

  “Is she afraid of getting killed herself?”

  “She’s just plain flat-out afraid,” said Gladys Waugh.

  Easy made his way to the doorless doorway. “Has anyone else asked you where Joanna went?”

  “Net Mowatt.”

  “Besides him.”

  “No one,” she assured him.

  “It might be better for Joanna if you didn’t tell anyone else about Mexico.”

  “Another hundred will assure that.”

  “The other guys who’re looking for her probably want to kill her.”