Rhythm & Clues

by Sue Ann Jaffarian

  Willie handed me both my keys and my mother’s, then glanced at the guy in the front and said, “How rude of me. Let me make the introductions. Odelia, this is Buzz, one of my employees—and Enrique’s cousin, by the way. Buzz, this is the infamous Odelia Grey.”

  “I’ve heard a lot about you,” Buzz told me, his eyes in the mirror flashing with amusement, clear even in the darkened vehicle. His voice, unlike his cousin’s, was free of any Hispanic accent.

  “From Enrique?” I asked.

  Buzz laughed. “From everyone. Enrique, Willie, Clark, even Enrique’s mother, my tía Esmerelda.” He laughed again. “Even your husband.”

  I had once saved Enrique’s life. As a reward, his mother, Esmerelda, had put me on her annual tamale gift list for life. Between her and my cleaning lady, Cruz, Greg and I never bought tamales. I had the pleasure of meeting Esmerelda once. She was a lovely woman, fiercely loyal to her family and to Willie. The fact that Buzz knew Clark didn’t surprise me, but Greg?

  “You know Greg?” I asked him.

  Willie answered the question instead. “Of course.” It was all he said, giving no further explanation of when or how many times they’d crossed paths. His words could imply many things, like it happened often or maybe just recently while Greg was in Arizona visiting Clark. But this visit wasn’t the first one Greg had made to Arizona without me. What in the hell were Clark and Greg doing when I wasn’t with them? My husband had some explaining to do when he got home.

  “So,” I said, changing the subject back to why we were all there in the first place, “what’s going on with Simon Tuttle?”

  “Nothing yet,” Willie told me. “His apartment is the one on the left, downstairs. You were right under his windows. He left on foot shortly before you got here, and it doesn’t look like anyone else is there. He could have just walked to the store or was meeting someone. He wasn’t carrying anything that we could see.” Willie paused, then added, “We were about to let ourselves inside when you showed up.”

  “So let’s get going,” I said as I reached for the door handle to get out of the SUV. “Before he gets back, just in case he did just go to the store.”

  “Not so fast,” Willie said, grabbing my shoulder and pulling me back. “You’re not going anywhere.” He pointed at the phone in my hand. “You have your house keys now, so just call Uber to come get you.” He fixed me with a steely eye. “We’ll wait.”

  “No,” I said with defiance. “I’m staying.”

  “No,” Willie volleyed back. “You’re not.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look, we can do this all day, Willie, or I can pretend to go home and just circle back.”

  “Or,” Willie countered, “I could have Buzz bind and gag you and leave you here while we check out the apartment.”

  I looked at him with wide eyes of disbelief. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Not only would I do it,” Willie said with a half-smile, “but Greg would probably buy me a bottle of good scotch if I did.”

  I stared into the eyes of the wanted felon and weighed my possibilities. Willie wasn’t the sort to make idle threats for fun, and he was right about Greg. He and Clark had sent Willie here to protect me, so they’d probably reward him for trussing me up like a turkey. Quickly, I weighed my options and found few.

  “What about Art?” I asked as a diversion. “We need to find out what happened to him. I can get you past the guard at Seaside and show you the way.”

  He thought about that. With a deep sigh, Willie gave in a tiny bit but not without a compromise. “If you promise to keep your ass here while Buzz and I handle this Tuttle guy, you can come with us to the old folks’ place.”

  While I considered the deal, Buzz perked up. “Boss,” he whispered to Willie. “He’s back.”

  All three of us turned our heads to watch a young guy come down the street and turn into the walkway we’d just vacated. He was skinny and had longish hair. His walk was a bit drag-ass as he carried a six-pack of either soda or beer in one hand and a grocery bag in the other. My money was on the beverages being of an alcoholic variety.

  “Is that him?” I asked. From across the street and with only weak streetlights to help, I couldn’t tell if the guy we were watching was Simon Tuttle or not, but next to me Willie nodded.

  “You stay here,” he ordered, and with another nod, this one in Buzz’s direction, they both quietly exited the SUV and started across the street toward the apartment building.

  I started fidgeting with impatience the moment they left. As I watched them slither between the two buildings, staying close to the walls, my desire to join them ramped up until I nearly levitated out of my seat with electricity. Or maybe it was caused from the buzz you get when you head into a second night without much sleep.

  They were both dressed in dark tee shirts and jeans, and as soon as they melted into the darkness, I quickly eased myself out of the passenger’s side of the SUV and stayed low, just in case one of them glanced this way. I was going to catch hell from Willie, but I didn’t care. I duck-walked along the curb, staying behind the SUV, then waddled toward the parked car ahead of ours, using it as further cover. Once out of sight, I stood and crossed the street, dodging a Mini Cooper that nearly clipped me because I wasn’t paying attention to traffic.

  Instead of the wider walkway, I took the one on the right-hand side of the house. It was very narrow, barely wide enough for me to pass through without my shoulders touching the buildings. It seemed to be a service walkway for the gas and electric meters for Tuttle’s apartment building and the one adjacent to it. As I started down it, I walked in a zigzag pattern to avoid making contact with the meters jutting out from both buildings. Lights were on in both buildings but, as with the other side, all the blinds were drawn.

  I was halfway down the side of the building when a figure surprised me at the far opening, running toward me at a high speed. In such a small space, we collided before I could even make a peep of protest, tumbling in a heap to the ground. I let out a small cry as the concrete bit into one arm.

  The guy scrambled to untangle himself from me, but before he could, someone pulled him off and rendered him unconscious. Another figure filled the walkway behind that one, and in the hazy light that leaked into the walkway from the upstairs windows I recognized Willie and Buzz. Buzz still had a hold on the guy who’d crashed into me. Willie squeezed past them and reached out a hand to help me up. With his other hand, he held a finger to his lips and glanced upward.

  “Did you hear something?” we heard a voice say from one of the windows above us from the other building. A blind pulled back and a woman’s face appeared briefly. Quickly, we squeezed ourselves flat against her building.

  “Probably just someone taking a shortcut back to the street,” a man’s voice answered. The blinds closed.

  Once I was on my feet, Willie said nothing but steered me down the walk toward the front, his grip a painful vice on my upper arm, testing my ability to remain quiet. He directed me to the open door of one of the downstairs apartments, most likely unit B, and dumped me on a modern sofa of black leather. He dashed out and returned with the unconscious guy between him and Buzz. They dropped him into an armchair next to the sofa. After one final look out the door, Willie shut it. It was quite late now, and there were no people around. The blinds on the large front window, the one with the spectacular view of the ocean, were already closed.

  Willie looked from me to the unconscious man, who was starting to come around, letting out small mews and moans, his head thrown back and mouth open. Normally good natured, I could see that I was pressing Willie’s patience and he wasn’t sure who to deal with first. Buzz stood next to the guy, ready to render him unconscious again should the need arise.

  “You promised to stay behind,” Willie growled in my direction, deciding to take me on first.

  “Not exactly,” I told him, but my
eyes were on the guy sprawled in the chair. “We hadn’t gotten to the promise part yet,” I reminded Willie. He growled again. In all my years of knowing Willie Proctor, he’d never gotten angry at me. Usually he handled tense situations with glib remarks and casualness. I studied him, wondering what had changed. He was married now but still on the run and operating from the underground. Even so, his enterprises were above board, or so Clark told us. Probably the one Clark worked for was, but I’m sure Willie still had other projects that weren’t so straight and narrow. He knew people—people who didn’t attend PTA meetings and squeeze tomatoes at the local grocery store. I needed to keep that in mind, kind of like I always had to remember that Elaine Powers, as nice as she seemed in person, had been a scary killer in reality. Willie wasn’t a killer, but he knew killers, and Elaine had been wary of him, which said a lot. Not for the first time I wondered how I’d managed to dip a toe into this shadowy part of life that went on well out of sight of those PTA meetings and squished tomatoes.

  “We are more than capable of handling Tuttle ourselves,” Willie pressed. “Don’t you think?”

  “Of course, but that’s not Simon Tuttle.” I cut my eyes from the guy to Buzz, then to Willie.

  “This is apartment B, and this is the right place,” Willie said with emphasis.

  “Maybe,” I said, “but that’s not Simon Tuttle. He’s about the right age, and the hair and build are about the same, but I’m sure that’s not him.”

  I reached into my bag and retrieved my phone. I had saved a photo of the current Acid Storm band to it. I thumbed my way to it, enlarged it, and presented the screen to Willie. He took the phone from me and studied the photo. Walking over to the chair, he showed the photo to Buzz. The guy’s head was now drooping, chin to chest. Buzz grabbed him by the hair and yanked his head back so they could get a better look. The guy who wasn’t Simon moaned and his eyes fluttered.

  “It could be him,” Buzz offered.

  “Yeah, on a bad day,” Willie snapped, “after being dragged behind a truck. Check him for ID.”

  While they did that, I got up and started inspecting the place. “Don’t touch anything,” Willie ordered. I nodded that I understood.

  The place had a weird vibe to it. Not the apartment itself, which was sparsely furnished and decorated with a young, hip masculine feel, but the atmosphere in the place. It was a one bedroom apartment with the living room in the front with a galley kitchen separated by a counter. At the counter were two leather bar stools. The kitchen sink held a few dirty dishes, but none looked gunky with slime or moldy food, letting me know they hadn’t been there long.

  Stepping past the kitchen, I passed through a dressing area with a sink and vanity and linen closet. A small door led to a bathroom that held the toilet and a decent size stall shower with a glass door. In the shower area was a high small frosted glass window. The shower was dry, so neither Tuttle or the guy out front had used it recently. Certainly not the guy out front judging from his odor, which was pretty rank. The vanity in the dressing area had a cut out beneath one half of it, the half not directly under the sink. It contained a small trash can that held nothing but a few tissues and an empty toilet paper roll. I knelt down and examined the floor in the cut out section, then got up and continued my exploration.

  Passing through the dressing area I came to an average size bedroom. On the walls in both the living area and bedroom were framed art posters and music memorabilia. The place wasn’t squeaky clean, but it wasn’t dirty beyond normal use. Simon Tuttle wasn’t a neat freak, but he did take care of his place. The guy out in the living room was unkempt and raggedy. Also, the front area smelled faintly of cigarette smoke; the back area did not. Tuttle didn’t appear to be a smoker, but the guy out front smelled like he was. I knew that the minute he plowed into me. Even without a photo for comparison, there was enough evidence to set off identity alarms.

  The closet was partially open. Using the toe of my foot, I pushed the sliding door back more to reveal that half of the closet had been cleared out, leaving behind discarded empty hangers and some holding miscellaneous clothing. At the bottom of the closet were some scattered shoes but nothing that looked like favorites. I opened the dresser drawers using my shirttail to cover my fingers and found them mostly empty.

  “Simon is long gone,” I announced when I came out of the back. I did a quick check of the kitchen floor before moving on to the living area. “And I’d say he left today. This place is clean except for this pile of dirty clothes in the living room.” I indicated a backpack in a corner of the room that spilled gray wrinkled clothing like an old lava flow. “I’ll bet this stuff belongs to this guy. A lot of Tuttle’s clothing and personal stuff has been cleared out, and probably in a hurry. And there’s no musical stuff left behind. A guy who works as a musician would have guitars and stuff, right? He’s a guitarist in the band.”

  Willie was examining a wallet. The guy in the chair had come to and was sitting nervously, watching Buzz and Willie, fear radiating from him like a space heater. I didn’t blame him. Buzz was now holding a gun, and it was pointed right at him.

  “You looking for Simon?” the guy ventured in a weak voice. “You know, the guy who lives here? I ain’t him.” He swallowed hard. “I don’t know where he is. You’ve got to believe me.” Fully conscious now, he fidgeted with rattled nerves. Close up he didn’t look one bit like Tuttle. His face was too narrow and his nose too long, with a bump halfway down his bridge. His hair was about the same and so was the short growth on his chin, but that was where the similarities ended.

  Willie glanced at the ID in the wallet he held, then at the guy in the chair. “So, Craig Buck of Council Bluffs, Iowa, what brings you to Newport Beach?”

  “Ever been to Iowa?” Buck answered with a half grin. He glanced at Buzz and his small effort at humor disappeared. “Hitched my way out here a couple of months ago hoping to find work. A new start. You know?”

  “He’s homeless,” I said to Willie. “Lots of them around the beach areas.”

  “I’m not homeless,” Buck protested. “It’s just a temporary hiccup in my relocation plans.”

  “How do you know Simon?” Willie asked him.

  “He sometimes lets me sleep on his half of the patio out front,” Buck said, “or at least he does when his bitch neighbor isn’t around. She calls the cops when she sees me, but she’s been gone for a few days. A vacation, I think.” He snorted. “Who needs a vacation when you live at the beach? The people upstairs pretty much leave me alone. I do odd jobs for folks around here for work, but it doesn’t pay enough to put a roof over my head.”

  “But how did you get inside if Simon’s gone?” I asked.

  “He told me to watch the place for him,” Buck answered, turning to look at me. “Said he would be out of town for a bit, and I could sleep on the couch.” He straightened up and squared his shoulders, trying to muster confidence and legitimacy. “Lots of break-ins around here.”

  Something about his story wasn’t adding up. If Simon Tuttle was worried about gangsters finding him, why would he encourage a house sitter, knowing the killers might come here looking for him? And then there was the matter of what I had discovered on the floor of the vanity.

  I held out my hand to Buck. “Let’s see the house key.”

  “What?” Buck asked. He fidgeted some more and glanced around, not making eye contact with anyone.

  “The house key,” I clarified. “If Simon had you housesitting, he would have given you a key.”

  Catching on to where I was heading, Willie leaned in close to Buck. “You heard the lady: where’s the house key?”

  “I…I…” he stammered. “I think it dropped out of my hand when I ran. It’s probably out on the patio along with the bag of stuff I bought.”

  “You’re a squatter, aren’t you?” I asked. “You saw Simon leave with his stuff and decided to break in and have a l
ittle vacation of your own.”

  “No. No,” he protested, raising one skinny arm to swear. “He invited me to stay.”

  I turned to Willie. “Simon Tuttle has a cat,” I explained. “There’s cat litter on the floor in the vanity area. That’s probably where he kept the litter box, which is gone. There’s also a placemat on the floor in the kitchen with some kibble scattered on it but no bowls. That’s where he would have fed the animal. If he were only going away for a few days and had a housesitter, he would have left the cat behind. Cats generally don’t like to travel. But just like Shankleman, he took his pet with him. Also, this guy smokes, and I don’t think Tuttle does. Most nonsmokers wouldn’t ask a smoker to housesit for them.”

  “Nice work, little mama,” Willie said to me before turning back to Buck. He said nothing to the man, just fixed him with a stare that could melt stone.

  “Okay. Okay.” Buck admitted in record time. “I saw the guy leaving with a couple of bags and his cat.” He glanced at me and rolled his eyes. “It didn’t look like he’d be coming back soon. I managed to jimmy the bedroom window open and crawled in that way.” He shrugged, his bony shoulders flexing up and down. “What’s the harm? I’d look after the place for him and get out of the heat and sun for a few days.”

  “Did you see any guys show up here looking for him?” Willie asked. “Before or after he left?”

  Buck shook his head. “Nothing, man. Simon left early this afternoon. I waited until it got dark before I broke in. I’ve only been here a little while.”

  Willie turned and paced a few steps back and forth. He stopped, gave the situation some thought, then looked at Buzz, giving him a sign. Buzz put away his gun and moved away from Buck. Willie tossed the wallet into Buck’s lap, then came over to me and took me by the arm, gently this time. “Let’s go.”

  “What about me?” Buck asked. “You’re not calling the cops, are you?”