“Outstanding,” Landon said. He stood and stretched, the ropy muscles along his neck kinking.
“Landon?”
“Yeah?”
“You gonna kill people?”
“Nah, brohman. I mean, I’m gonna get trained and get lethal, sure. But then I’m gonna get assigned stateside. Fix helicopters or something. Drink beer and lie on a cot. No shooting for me.”
“No shooting for you,” Dalton repeated, as their mother’s car pulled into the driveway. She jumped out, furious. The school had called, both of her boys playing hooky. Sherry Rev laid into Landon, giving him a lecture. He took it for a while, and then eased onto the Kawasaki, which, amazingly, started with the first kick. He tore out of the driveway without his helmet or even his boots, leaving Dalton alone with his mother. She held her purse against her forehead for a minute before grabbing the extra skin on his chest and yanking him into the house.
CHAPTER 6
A SNOUT’S WORTH OF TLC
Dalton was lying on a cot. A nurse was gently dressing the cut above his eye, wearing white nylons and a white cap with a red cross on the front. When she was done, she pressed his dressing firmly and stood to the side. There was a little swipe machine on her belt. She turned it on, swiped Dalton’s credit card, slipped it back into his sock, and handed him a receipt. A hundred even. Near the gurney was a tip jar. She looked at it meaningfully. Dalton sighed, pulled a few bills from his pocket, and tossed them in. The nurse nodded, giving him a little smile. Next to her was a vending machine. Instead of snacks, it was filled with gauze and tape and cough syrup and Band-Aids. The nurse took some bills from the tip jar, fed them into the machine, and pressed N-9. The machine whirred, a metal coil inside turned, and a prescription for antibacterial ointment fell into the slot. She pulled it out and handed it to Dalton.
“Hey, lady, can I get some treatment too?” asked a kid dressed in black. The nurse ignored him. He had long greasy hair, big leather boots dangling from the gurney’s edge.
Dalton half sat up, wincing, ready to fight. Or at least fight him off. “Who’re you with?”
The kid smiled. “Take it easy, chief. I’m Kokrock City. We’re a few levels down from Pinker Casket.”
“Good choice.” Dalton exhaled, lying back again. “Those Pinkertons are too nice for their own good.”
“They’re a bunch of knobs,” the kid said, toying with his bangs. “And their band blows. But what’re you gonna do, play football? At least Kokrock’s got some style.”
Dalton looked at the kid’s wound. There was blood trickling from a small round circle on his calf.
“What’s that all about?”
“Ah, nothing. Poked myself with a pencil.”
“A pencil, huh?”
The kid picked at his wound absentmindedly. “So who’re you with?”
“Independent.”
“Oh, shite,” Kokrock said, his default frown suddenly a wide-open O. “No wonder you got tuned up! Are you the dude from this morning? With the scooter?”
“I guess so.”
Kokrock whistled. “Word in the halls is you’re not going to make it to the end of the day. Word is you’re toast by sixth period.”
“Where did you get that?”
“Oh, man, I heard all about you.”
“So did we,” said two burly Snouts, slamming the already-open door against the frame. Detectives. One blond, whose visitor pass said ESTRADA, and one Hispanic, whose tag said HUTCH.
“Just in the oink of time,” Dalton said.
Kokrock City laughed.
“Take a sniff,” Hutch told him coolly, scratching neck stubble like he was in a procedural show where the cops examined microscopic evidence and spotted little clues that less attractive and less perceptive cops somehow missed.
“But my leg hasn’t even been dressed yet!”
“So shut up and bleed,” Hutch snapped, like he was in a drama where cops had angry wives and cross-dressing sons and a taste for cheap scotch that they took out on groveling informants. “But do it somewhere else.”
“Guess I got no cash anyway,” Kokrock muttered, but didn’t move, staring at the nurse, who was now turning the pages of a magazine.
Hutch squeezed his hands together, all armpit-stain and gym reps in a cheap polyester shirt. “Do I need to tell you again, or am I dragging you into the hallway by your shorthairs?”
Kokrock City got up, bumping knuckles with Dalton. “Be cool, brother,” he said, before limping through the door.
“You need to leave too, ma’am,” Estrada told the nurse. “Police business.”
The nurse held out her hand. Estrada stared at it. Hutch stared at it. Estrada finally pulled out his wallet and laid a wrinkly five in her palm. The nurse gave him two aspirin and left.
Hutch slid the deadbolt like he was in a show about dirty cops who took cash from the mob and used it as down payments on their dream fishing boat, until someone named Jimmy the Nose came and visited in the middle of the night.
“Just what kind of Dick you think you are, kid?”
“The kind that doesn’t taste like pork?”
Hutch turned his squat torso in one motion, giving Dalton a left cross to the chin. Things went dark. A company of cartoon pigs did a production of Swine Lake on his chest. Dalton woke up, staring at tongue depressors spilled on the floor. He counted them. Twelve. He counted them again. Eighteen.
“… did you have to hit him for?” Estrada was saying in his weary cop voice. “Now we’re going to have to file a 46-20, and if the kid’s hurt, we…”
Dalton sat up, massaging his back teeth with two fingers. “Don’t worry. No one’s filing charges.”
Hutch had Dalton’s pistol on his lap. “Some kids pack lunch, you know,” he said, then cracked it open. The barrel was empty. No bullets. No firing pin. Hutch aimed the gun at himself and pulled the trigger like he was in a show about cops who are too dumb to breathe, holding his finger over the tiny flame until it burned. “Ouch! Em eff!”
Estrada handed Dalton a towel and some ice. “My partner tends to get carried away.”
“Forget it,” Dalton said. His face hurt, but not too badly. He’d pretty much been waiting his whole career to be roughed up by the Snouts, and it had finally happened. He was determined to take it like a man. “So what’s the rumpus?”
“Listen, son, we know why you’re here.”
“So do I. You killed Wesley Payne.”
Hutch circled his ear with one finger, the universal symbol for I’m not creative enough to come up with a new way to suggest that someone’s crazy.
Estrada cleared his throat. “Bottom line, we, ah… we don’t need you stepping into the middle of an open investigation.”
Dalton dabbed his lip. “The investigation’s still open? I thought it was closed. Or are you talking about your investigation into the stolen hundred grand?”
Hutch glared. He straightened a paper clip and began cleaning under his fingernails like he was in a show about psychopath cops with a fetish for sad-eyed runaways trying to enroll in secretarial school and get their lives back on track.
“Anyway,” Estrada said. “Consider this an official warning. It’s time you leave things to the pros.”
Dalton considered agreeing the case was sewn up. Or that there was no case at all. For one thing, it was probably true. A kid wrapped himself in duct tape and went all INXS in the end zone? It could happen. Of course, it meant the kid had been truly twisted. It meant he needed help and none of the Fack Cult, from Inference down to the guidance counselors, did shite about it. You want some guidance? Here’s a tip: Shut your mouth and suffer alone. Besides, even Lex Cole got tired of being punched after a couple hundred pages.
THE PRIVATE DICK HANDBOOK, RULE #11
Keep pissing cops off. A pissed cop is a sloppy cop. A sloppy cop is a font of information.
“Sorry, Estrada. I never back off a case once I start it.”
Estrada shook his head wearily. “This thi
ng was a suicide, okay, son? There is no case.”
“Plain as a bell,” Hutch said. “Clear and simple.”
“The family’s suffered enough.”
“Cut and sealed. Pasted and dried.”
“And if that doesn’t sound good, we may have to call your parents.”
Dalton gulped, forcing himself into The Best Defense Is a Better Offense mode. “Fine. Answer me one question straight, and I’ll leave it alone.”
Estrada nodded.
“Were Wesley Payne’s arms free? Under all that duct tape? You bother to try and work out how he got himself up on that post?”
“That’s three questions,” Hutch said.
“We’re still looking into it,” Estrada said. “Doesn’t change anything.”
“Okay, then what about the suicide note? You guys really farcked that up, huh? I mean, I hear it’s missing.”
Hutch managed to push his way around Estrada far enough to swing a right hook, which half connected. Dalton wiped his mouth with his tie, as a kid with slicked-back hair popped into the room. He had a mean-looking camera with a huge black lens, the flash going off, bang, bang, bang. Hutch held his cheap sports coat up in front of his face. Estrada didn’t bother.
“We’ll see you soon,” Hutch warned.
Estrada pocketed Dalton’s gun, slamming the door behind him.
“Thanks, Slim,” Dalton said.
“Ronnie.” The kid shook out a smoke and lit it in one practiced motion. “Newport.”
“Ronnie. Right.”
Newport looked at his lens, wiped off some dirt that wasn’t there, took one more picture of Dalton, and slipped out of the room. A minute later, the nurse came back, fingering her credit card machine.
“You okay, hon? Need some more treatment?”
Dalton felt for his wallet, then looked at his watch. “What time do the buses leave?”
“Twenty minutes,” the nurse said, examining the new bruise blossoming on his cheek.
“I need to meet someone.”
“There’s plenty of time,” the nurse soothed, tearing open a new Band-Aid. “Relax, slugger, this one’s on the house.”
CHAPTER 7
BLOOD EUCLIDIAN
Dalton found his scooter lying on its side, dinged up pretty good, a scratch here and there, some paint chipped away. Just like its owner. He unlocked his helmet from the wheel as a piece of paper fell out, fluttering to the ground. It was an index card with large block handwriting.
LOOK AT LEE HARVIES. LOOK CLOSE. AND THEN LOOK CLOSER. YOU STAY ON THE ROOF LONG ENOUGH, YOU EVENTUALLY SEE EVERYTHING.
DUH.
There was no name, no signature. Dalton sniffed it. No smell. He had a fingerprint kit at home, but no database to check it against, so unless he’d written the note to himself, there wasn’t much point in dusting it. He grabbed the scooter’s bent handlebars and righted the frame, driving over to where the buses queued. Most of them were gone, and there was almost no one around. He circled the Dumpster, for a second swearing he saw the man in the blue pin-striped suit peering from behind bags of garbage, but when he blinked, the man was gone. Dalton chalked it up to the fringe benefits of two beatings in one day, and did another loop, almost running up the back bumper of a van parked in the alley. It was an old, rusted-out Econoline covered with bumper stickers and graffiti. He knew even before pulling up alongside it was going to have a name spray-painted across the doors. And he was right. In ugly pink letters, next to anarchy symbols, curse words, and the last names of famous serial killers, it said Whatever, Lesser, Joe Mama Besser. And below that, in even larger letters, Pinker Casket. Dalton looked around. There was no one in the alley.
How incredibly stupid would it be to break into Tarot’s van?
Dalton let his scooter idle, then gunned the engine. It made a loud blaat, coughed, and then blaated some more. No one looked around the corner. There were no sounds or sirens or yelling.
What if a Casket’s in there, waiting for me?
Dalton cupped his hands against the glare, peering in the driver’s side window. Empty.
What if I weren’t such a pussy and stopped asking questions and just did what I knew I was going to do all along?
He went around to the back of the van, loosened the bolts holding the license plate, and then slid the plate into the driver’s side door frame flat, shoving it into the gap between the window and the handle. In I Wiped Something Off My Cheek and It Was the Floor, Lex Cole had broken into a ’66 Bonneville filled with stolen Krugerrands the same way. Dalton doubted it would actually work, but when he yanked the plate, the indentations from the pressed letters caught the lock. Amazingly, the knob popped up. Dalton replaced the plate, then stood with his hands in his pockets, whistling. No sound, no movement.
Quit stalling.
Inside, the van smelled like a lemur cage. The floorboards were filled with trash, fast-food wrappers, CDs, and clumps of napkins. He pushed aside the pink bedsheet that separated the front seats from the back. The hold was essentially a dorm room. A mattress, musical equipment, and a little fridge. Jars of hair dye, leather socks, rubbing alcohol, Q-tips, empty plastic bottles of hand-labeled Rush, rolls of duct tape, and a toothbrush that looked like it had been used to scrub down a crime scene. There were books, mostly Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, and Aristotle. There were biographies of Scipio Africanus and Mussolini. Under the books was a long rectangular box. Dalton nudged the lid aside. Ax handles. Hickory. Maybe two dozen. Old-school armaments. Caskets were ready for action, but apparently not ready enough to piss off Lee Harvies. Dalton turned, knocking over a hot plate full of canned ravioli. It was still warm. Which meant Tarot had just been here, and was probably coming home soon. Which also meant the back of the van was the last place in the world, aside from Jeff Chuff’s jockstrap, that Dalton wanted to be. Especially holding what he was holding. The thing he’d just kicked with his foot. The thing he’d picked up, disbelievingly, and held in his hand. The thing that was unmistakable.
It couldn’t be anyone else’s.
Dalton fingered the strands of hair gently.
No.
It was sticky inside. Flaps hung down from beneath the hairline like pieces of scalp.
Please, no.
It was Cassiopeia Jones’s pink wig.
Cassiopeia. With Tarot.
Bam.
Dalton dropped the wig as he heard a voice. There was a banging on the door. Hey! He picked up a heavy frying pan, grease dribbling down his wrist as he held it aloft.
The back door cracked open.
Dalton swung the pan.
And then stopped. Just in time.
Inches from mashing a nose completely flat.
A very cute nose.
Macy was staring at him, hair adjusted and new makeup applied.
“What are you doing in there?”
“What are you doing out there?”
“You were supposed to meet me. You didn’t show, so I looked around. I saw your scooter.”
“How did you get the door open?”
She gave him a funny look. “It was unlocked.”
He tossed the frying pan on the mattress, next to the wig, then stepped into sunlight.
“Oh my Bob, are you okay?” she asked, examining the cuts and bruises on his face.
“Just business,” he said, pleased with her concern, and even more that it gave him a chance to act like he didn’t care. “You ready?”
“For what?”
Dalton picked up his helmet. There was no sign of Tarot, which meant, due to the immutable laws of bad movies and cowboy ballads, he would show up out of nowhere any second. Still, Dalton played it cool. He played it frozen. He was in full Deano at the Copa mode.
“You didn’t, by any chance, leave me a note on an index card, did you? Like, stuck in my helmet?”
Macy looked confused. “Note? Um…”
“Never mind. Get on, I’ll give you a ride.”
She laughed, straightening her skirt. Her
hair was fluffed up from the wind, the light freckles across her cheeks almost glowing. “There’s no way I’m getting on that thing.”
“Suit yourself.”
Dalton put it in gear and moved a few feet with a rubbery chirp.
“Hey!”
“What?”
“Okay, I get it. My options are limited. But seriously, where are we going?”
Dalton gazed off into the distance as if he were scanning the shale formations for hidden Apache. “Only one way to find out.”
Macy stuck out her tongue. Dalton didn’t react. Macy gave him the finger. Dalton didn’t react. Macy took a massive trigonometry book out of her backpack and slung all twenty pounds of it at his head, just missing. The thing crashed into the pavement, cover ripping off. It was a good throw. He was impressed.
“Can you translate that action into Euclidic, please?”
“All I know is it’s going to cost me.”
“What, the cover?”
“Yeah, the cover. Silverspoon has the textbook racket. It’s almost impossible to get your deposit back as it is.”
Dalton shoved the book into her pack, a scoliosis-inducing deadweight that had her practically listing starboard. “Consider it an object lesson in why studying is overrated. So are you coming or not?”
Macy swung her leg over the fender and put her arms around Dalton’s waist. He handed her his helmet, black, with the face of his hero, Voltaire, painted on the side.
“Who’s that?”
“Lead singer of Perv Idols.”
Macy cocked her head. “Funny, I could have sworn it was Voltaire. You know, the guy who wrote Candide and died two hundred years ago?”
“Just put it on,” Dalton said, unable to hide his grin.
“It’ll ruin my hair.”
“Hair shmair. We crash, that helmet could be the difference between Ivy League and community college. Even for a Euclidian with a great arm.”
“Hilarious,” she said, but plopped the visor down and tightened the chin strap. At the end of the alley, four figures in long black coats turned the corner, walking in slow motion like they’d just strutted out of the Moloko Milk Bar.
You Killed Wesley Payne Page 4