[Rafferty 01.0] Rafferty's Rules

by W. Glenn Duncan

  Southwestern Bell pipped another digit or twelve into its gross sales column during that three days. I phoned in ads to the Sherman Democrat, the Denison Herald, and the Daingerfield Bee. As an afterthought, in case the town of Conover was involved, I also used the Dalton County Telegraph, the Christian voice for God-fearing, law-abiding East Texans, published weekly, and distributed throughout the best little county in all Texas, yowza, yowza.

  The ads were simple. They said people who wanted to see an end to dirty, diseased, marauding motorcycle gangs should phone my Dallas number. Collect.

  I had a feeling about the Dalton County Telegraph, so I let out all the stops in that ad. I blamed bikers for everything from AIDS to nuclear proliferation. I begged folks to help me stop those slavering, heathen animals. It was pretty strong.

  After I phoned it in, I wondered if I had gone too far. Then I checked an old copy of the Telegraph in the big library downtown. On page three was an evangelical pitch more wild-eyed than mine. Bible Belt rural newspapers are like that, sometimes.

  I didn’t spend the whole three days playing Horace Greely, though. One day I drove up to Grayson County to talk to the deputies who had shooed the DeathStars away from Tanglewood Country Club.

  They tried to be helpful, but they weren’t. One laconic giant in tan twill stirred parking lot gravel with his boot, spat, and reckoned, “You seen one of them bikers, you seen ’em all.”

  I nodded and stirred some gravel myself. With sneakers on, I didn’t get the same effect.

  The Grayson County sheriff was a guy about my age. He was sympathetic and interested. His dispatcher checked the log for the night Vivian was taken, then the two days before and after. There were no other calls involving bikers.

  I didn’t want a long drive to another probable dead end so I phoned the Morris County sheriff’s office. A droll middle-aged voice told me the deputy who had found Vivian was named K. B. Mackley.

  “Old K.B. quit last month, but don’t worry about that, Mr Rafferty. He’s around. This time of day, he’ll be one of two places. Try the bowling alley first. If K.B.’s there, he’ll be the tall ugly one shooting off his big mouth. If he’s not there, try down the street at the cafe. He’ll be eating a big chicken-fried steak. And talking.” The voice paused, then added, “Course, wherever you catch K.B., he’ll be talking.”

  K. B. Mackley answered the phone at the bowling alley. “I tell you true, Rafferty, I never seen the like of that poor little gal when I pulled up next to her. Nothing but skin and bone, she was. And smell? Oh, she was some kind of ripe. Like them hippies we used to get around here way back when. Hey, you don’t see them hippies no more, do you? Where you suppose they went? Not that I miss ’em, mind you. Anyhow, you want to know about that Mollison gal. Well, sir, I had hell’s own time getting her into the cruiser. Oh, she didn’t light or nothing. She just said real meek like that somebody named Turk had told her to stay right there cause he’d come back for her. She believed that, Rafferty, she surely did. And, dammit, I nearly believed it too, until I jawed with her awhile. It’s hard to figure, but that poor little gal had been standing there all night and half the day! I got on the radio and the sherf said bring her in, so I done that. Later on, we found out who she was and called her people in Dallas. They come racing over here in a gy-normous Mercedes ’bout three blocks long. And that’s all I know about it, but I’ll tell you one thing for sure, Rafferty, one thing for sure. That little gal was messed up. Yessir, she was near-daid inside. In the head, you know, not beat up or nothing like that. I mean, she wasn’t in bad shape, physical-like. Except for being god-awful skinny and stinking, you understand. Now, it ain’t right that a purty little gal like that should get so messed up in the head and that’s the truth of it.”

  I thanked him and said, “Tell me, K.B., why’d you quit working for the sheriff?”

  “Aw, hell, Rafferty, it ain’t much of a life, driving a cruiser around the county all day and night. I like to talk to people. Peaceful talk, not ‘you drunk again, Leroy’ and ‘stick ’em up’ and stuff like that. I just plain and simple got bored with it. Here now, I got me a bowling alley full of folks to pass the time of day with and the cutest little part-time bookkeeper you ever did see. My back don’t hurt no more from those cruiser seats and—”

  “Well, K.B., it’s been great talking to you, bu—”

  “And there’s one more thing, Rafferty. I don’t tell most folks this, but seeing as how you’re sort of in my old line of work, you might understand. I ain’t had nobody puke in my car since I left the sheriff’s office and that’s the longest stretch I been smelling sweet air since nineteen and seventy-seven. And it’s gonna get longer, too!”

  “Live in hope, K.B. Live in hope.”

  During the quiet three days, I also spent a lot of time with Hilda. One night we went to a new Indonesian restaurant downtown. We had rijstaffel, which sounded like a sneeze but turned out to be eleven courses of Indonesian cooking. Only one of them was rice. The food was good, especially a dish called gado-gado: vegetables and potatoes covered with peanut sauce. Between courses, Hil and I drank wine and held hands and grinned at each other like soppy kids. It was a terrific meal.

  On the third day of that peaceful stretch, my ads ran in the out-of-town papers. I hung around the office all afternoon. I winked at Honeybutt and waited for the phone to ring. And I wondered if the ads were a waste of time. I finally decided, what the hell. If nothing else, they might start people talking and the word would filter back to the right place.

  As the afternoon wore on, I hoped the word was filtering, because the phone didn’t ring.

  I left the office at six to meet Hilda at my place. When I got home, she was already there. She had a drink in one hand, my phone in the other, and an odd, still look on her face.

  The caller was Lieutenant Ed Durkee, with a strong suggestion that I meet him at a certain all-night grocery store not far from Love Field. Immediately, if not sooner. And he told me why.

  That was when the quiet three days ended. Or, to be more precise, they had ended fifty-one minutes earlier, when someone used a shotgun to remove Joe Zifretti’s face.

  Chapter 13

  Killing clerks at small grocery stores was an old and well-established practice in Dallas. Everyone had a role to play and everyone knew their lines.

  When I arrived, Ed Durkee was already there. So were Ricco, a uniformed squad, an ambulance crew, and a mobile news unit from one of the teeny-bopper radio stations. The newsman and the ambulance crew lounged near the meat wagon, topping each other with gross-out stories. Ricco fussed with the lapels of his red-and-black plaid sports coat. The uniformed cops looked bored.

  Ed Durkee had one of my business cards. He flicked it with a blunt finger and gave me his basset hound look.

  “Is there a sudden cold breeze,” I said, “or do I suspect this wasn’t a typical stickup?”

  “It was a hit,” Ricco said. He smirked. “Blammo! Another biker eats gravel. Somewhere, Clint Eastwood’s laughing.”

  “Shut up, Ricco,” said Ed patiently. “Go pretend you’re a cop.”

  Ricco pulled a face and glided away in his funny walk.

  Ed flicked my card again. It looked abnormally small in his large hands. “Okay, Rafferty, why did Zifretti have this in his wallet?”

  “Wow, a clue,” I said. “Isn’t this exciting?”

  “Just wait, smart-ass. I’ll give you exciting. Zifretti’s inside. Most of his head is dripping off the ice cream machine. His pockets are inside out. The junk from his wallet is scattered all over the counter and this card was on top of the pile. So how’s that for exciting?”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “No shit, uh-oh! They didn’t take the cash from the register or thirty bucks from Zifretti’s wallet. Now, let’s drop the wisecracks and talk about this!” He waved the card. I hadn’t forgotten about it.

  “I gave him that card, Ed. Three, four days ago. Look, I’ll tell you about it—all of it—but first
, who did it?”

  Durkee shrugged. “Who knows? Some kid found the body when he went in for a loaf of bread or something. He ran home. Momma phoned it in.”

  “No wits, then?”

  “I just got here, dammit. A squad’s picking up the kid now. All I know so far is that an old lady waiting for a bus heard motorcycles in the alley at about the right time.”

  “Oh, shit. It’s going down. Ed, two minutes! Be right back.”

  I ran to the phone booth at the curb and dialed my home number. It rang a long time. When Hilda answered, I breathed again.

  “Hil, honey, listen carefully. Go home. Right now.”

  “I started supper. I—”

  “Drop everything and get out of there, Hil. Now.”

  “Rafferty, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I hope. Babe, this is important. I’ll explain when you call me from your place. Please go home right now.”

  “This isn’t a joke.” Statement, not a question.

  “No, Hil. No joke. I’m sorry.” I gave her the phone booth number and told her to call as soon as she got home.

  “Okay,” Hilda said flatly. She hung up.

  I hung up, too, and turned around to face the radio newsman. He was clean-shaven and blow-dried and blue-eyed and handsome as hell. He should have been on television.

  He probably thought that, too.

  “Uh, excuse me,” he said. “I need to use the phone.”

  “It’s not working.”

  “Come on, you were just talking on it! Don’t you know who I am? I’—”

  “I’m the tooth fairy,” I said. “Get lost.”

  “Now, look,” he said. His voice dropped four tones. Typical radio announcer. “That is a public phone and—”

  “It’s private for the next half an hour, Jack. Go away.”

  We stared at each other for a while, then he nodded to himself and walked away. Maybe he wasn’t used to an audience that looked back.

  It was after seven o’clock by then. The sun was low and orangy-red on the horizon. I held the phone booth door open with one hand and leaned on the sharp aluminum frame. I tried to picture Hilda picking up her purse, leaving the house, closing the front door, walking to her car, getting in, getting away.

  A squad car pulled into the lot. A fat black kid and a woman in a print housedress got out. Ed Durkee talked to the kid. The mother held her son’s hand and looked wary.

  Cars passing on West Mockingbird slowed down to gawk at the lights on the squad cars and ambulance, then squirted past. High tech buzzards.

  Six minutes. Hilda should have been well away from the house by then.

  It had become a little dimmer. It was still warm, but the heat came from the pavement and the buildings, not the sky. Gnats fluttered around the light in the phone booth ceiling. I swatted a mosquito on my left arm. It smeared.

  Eight minutes.

  The radio news voice sidled over to where Ed Durkee talked to the black boy. Ricco shooed the newsman away. He stalked to his gaudy station wagon and drove off. As he did, he made certain the tires squawled. He sure showed Ricco.

  A uniformed cop shot him the finger. The medium is truly the message.

  Eleven minutes. Hilda should have been almost home. If she had caught the lights right. Maybe she hadn’t.

  A new gray Oldsmobile pulled in and jerked to a halt. The tires yelped. The driver left the car door open when he got out. His face was as gray as his car, He talked to a patrolman, who talked to Ed, then took the man inside the store.

  Fourteen minutes. The phone rang.

  “I’m home now, big guy. What in the world is going on?”

  “Remember the Zifretti kid I told you about? Somebody wasted him out here by Love Field. It may have been bikers.”

  “Oh, boy,” she said in a small voice. “Why?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe because he talked about me. Or Vivian. Whatever. The point is, they must know I’m looking for them.”

  “Rafferty,” Hilda said, “why does this affect me? No, wait, that sounds terrible. I mean, I’m sorry the boy is—”

  “It’s okay, babe. I know what you mean. I want you out of my place because I don’t know what they’ll do next. Hell, they might not even think of looking up my address. And I read or heard somewhere that bikers have rules about keeping womenfolk away from the action. Though I don’t know if that applies to their opposition. I had to be sure, honey. I don’t want you mixed up in this.”

  “There’s a sweet thought in there somewhere,” she said. “Scary, but sweet.”

  “Gotta go, babe. See you when I can.”

  “Love you, Ugly. Though I wonder why at times.”

  “I think it’s my rugged good looks. The right profile gets you broads every time.”

  “Be careful. Promise?”

  “Guaranteed. Bye.”

  I hung up and wandered off to tell all.

  All the usual cop things happened. They interviewed everyone in sight, drew diagrams, took pictures; all that studious, detailed Sherlock Holmes stuff. A little after nine, they let the ambulance men put Joe Zifretti into a body bag, along with a few hundred flies.

  Then we tried to put it all together.

  “Okay,” said Ed, “we got an armed robbery. Maybe. And maybe not, because they left the cash. We know the shooter stood there. We know they searched the body afterward, so they wanted something and they didn’t panic. We think they were bikers. We think there was more than one. And we think they went out the back door.” Ed sighed. “Closest thing we got to an eyewitness is the kid. He says it was about 5:45 when he got here. And supposedly Zifretti was still twitching, which is why the kid puked all over the floor there.”

  Ricco helped himself to a bag of Fritos from a shelf. He crunched a mouthful and said around the crumbs, “On the other hand, Zifretti wasn't twitching when the owner got here, and he puked over there.”

  “So what?” said Ed. “For Christ’s sake, Ricco, close your mouth when you eat. Do you know how disgusting that looks?”

  “This woman who heard a bike,” I said. “Could that have been Zifretti coming to work?”

  “Naw,” said Ricco. “Zifretti’s shift started at four. Besides, the old broad is pretty certain she heard more than one bike. Could have been somebody taking a short cut, though.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Or maybe it was Evel Knievel practicing wheelies. Or Steve McQueen risen from the grave. Come on!”

  Ed scratched a rubbery jowl. “Knock it off, you two. Unless we turn anything new, we’ll figure whoever did it rode motorcycles.”

  “Damn right,” I said. “But why? Because Joe was talking up the Mollison snatch for me? Or just pure meanness? I understand Joe didn’t get along with the hard guys very well.”

  “Bad-mouthing the animals wouldn’t buy him a face full of buckshot,” Durkee said. “And besides, if his brother is into this motorcycle gang bullshit, that should have bought the kid a little protection. Most of the gangs go for that brotherhood macho crap.”

  “Bear with me, Ed, I’m in devil’s advocate mode,” I said. “Maybe we’re reading too much into this thing. I didn’t know Zifretti very well. He might have been screwing somebody’s wife or girlfriend. Or dealing coke. Or Christ knows what.”

  “We’ll find out about the woman angle,” said Ed.

  Ricco sneered. “Forget about the coke wet dreams, or anything else involving money. The last coke dealer I knew who moonlighted as a grocery store clerk was never.”

  “I feel bad about this,” I said. “I wouldn’t have asked him to tease the animals if I’d thought they’d play Shoot the Messenger.”

  “Naw,” Ricco said around a Frito. “That ain’t it. They wouldn’t blast him for that. Makes more sense they smoked him cause of something he was gonna tell you.”

  That was Ricco all over. He looked like a part-time pimp, but he had good instincts.

  “Now, that I like,” Ed said. “Rafferty?”

  “Possible. Lik
ely, even. Always assuming we’re not making too much out of a holdup by a freaked-out junkie.”

  Durkee arranged the wrinkles in his suit with a shrug. “If so, there’ll be another one. Or the scumbag will cop to this one when we bust him next year for spitting on the sidewalk or something.”

  “Or, we don’t fit anybody for it ever,” Ricco said, “for which I will give you good odds.”

  “Shut up, Ricco,” groaned Ed. “You depress me.”

  “Well, you two can play it however you want,” I said. “Me, I’m betting it was the same bikers who snatched Vivian Mollison. That’s my only option. If I think anything else, it leaves too many back doors open. Which means, I have work to do. Are we finished here?”

  “People of no official standing are finished here,” said Durkee. “That means you, Rafferty. And people of high rank and experience are also finished for the time being. That’s me. Sergeant Ricco, however, has paperwork to do. Right, Ricco?”

  The corners of Ed’s mouth came up to level. For him, that was uncontrollable mirth.

  Ricco looked like someone had spit on his pretty jacket.

  I wanted to go straight to Hilda’s. I wanted to spend the rest of the evening holding her hand, to comfort her, and be there if she needed me. That’s what I wanted to do.

  But I couldn’t do that. I was too worried about someone else who knew about—and hated—the big bad bikers.

  I let Fran Rosencrantz’s phone ring twenty times before I hung up.

  When I tried the Dew Drop Inn, a nasal voice answered. The voice admitted Fran was working, but refused to let me talk to her.

  “Who’d ya say this is?” Nasal Voice whined.

  “Harry,” I said. “I bought her a drink the other night. I think she likes me.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure. Well, Harry, tell you what, old buddy. She’s here. She looks lonely, Harry. Whyn’t ya come on over? Buy her a drink or two, she might go home with ya. After closing time, a course. How ’bout it, pal? Whadda ya got to lose?”