“Hey!” I yelled, to see what would happen.
The guy jumped off a low back porch and ran—so, yep, creep.
I took off after him, eight yards behind when he darted around the far corner of the house, headed for the street, camera on a strap banging against his hip, and found a fence with a locked gate in his path. He was hiking himself over when I caught his belt and hauled him back, threw him against a garbage can, hard. He bounced off the can, spun, and landed on the ground half buried in a shrub. The garbage can fell over, dumped orange peels, coffee grounds, soiled paper towels, and other crud onto a concrete walkway.
“Hey, don’t . . . don’t do nothin’ you’ll regret, man,” said the creep, holding his hands out defensively.
“So far so good,” I replied. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Celebrity News.”
Celebrity News? The only thing that came to mind was a sleazy tabloid that wouldn’t make decent toilet paper. Which didn’t make a bit of sense—but being a gumshoe, I thought it might be a clue. To what, I didn’t know. Things were still fishy.
“What’s your name?” I asked, glowering at him as if I owned the place. He rolled out of the shrub and hiked himself backward until he was sitting on the ground against the side of the house. If he worked for the News, he might be leaving an oil slick on the siding. I would have to check that later.
“Bill,” he said. His camera was on the ground. He picked it up and held it protectively in his lap.
“Bill who?”
“Hogan. Bill Hogan. I’m an investigative reporter.”
“A reporter?”
“Yeah.” He glowered at me. “Investigative.”
“For Celebrity News? The tabloid.”
“News magazine. Yeah.”
“Tabloid. Means you’re a Gutter Press investigator.”
“If you say.”
I let that sink in for a few. Son of a bitch was going to give us genuine investigators a bad name.
“Wallet,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Your wallet. Let’s see it.”
“Got a warrant?”
“Trust me, dimwit. My warrant leaves scar tissue, so you don’t want to see it.” I kicked his foot and put enough steel in my voice to make a lug wrench.
The steel thing worked because he dug in his jeans and tossed his wallet to me. I pulled out a driver’s license. Vincent Ignacio. And half a dozen business cards for Celebrity News, also in the name of Vince Ignacio. Fucking things actually said Investigative Reporter. I kept one of the cards.
“Looks like you stole Vince’s wallet, Bill. Maybe I should get the police over here, get you into some of those polymer flexi-cuffs, see if the News likes you enough to make your bail.”
“Shit,” he said, leaning back, giving up. “Okay, so I’m Vince Ignacio. So what?”
“There isn’t any ‘what,’ Vinny. There’s only truth, justice, and the American Way. I didn’t think the News had reporters. I thought they just made shit up, like with a dartboard.”
Maybe my voice had gone a bit soft because he smiled, sort of, and said, “They do, mostly. Space alien stuff, Loch Ness, Yetis seen dragging a moose down Main Street in a remote town in Maine. Sometimes we go after a real story, get it on the front page to get some credibility.”
“And you think there’s a real story here, at my place?”
“Shanna Hayes? Hell yeah. You kidding?”
Shanna Hayes. Didn’t ring any bells with me, but now was not the time to hesitate and give this scrawny little weasel a toehold. But that last comment made me wonder.
“What about her?” I asked, giving the weasel a toehold big enough to launch him onto the roof of the house.
He gave me a long look, digging in with his eyes, evaluating, detecting ignorance, the investigative creep. “You don’t know? How well do you know Shanna, anyway? Like you once saw her across a parking lot and almost said hi?”
So, he wasn’t stupid. Time to roust the sonofabitch. I grabbed the front of his shirt and lifted him off the ground. He was maybe twenty-six years old and a spindly little shitbird, five-six, a hundred forty pounds in wet clothes. His hair was stringy, over his ears, nose big and pointy, lips thin, eyes close together, and he had acne scars on his cheeks. I didn’t like the guy. Danya said he looked creepy, and I didn’t disagree.
“Shanna and I are engaged, asshole,” I said, putting my nose two inches from his. “That’s how well I know her.”
He laughed. “Yeah, right. Means you don’t know nothin’ about her. Anyway, she’s so far outta your league, dude—”
When someone ten inches shorter and seventy pounds lighter laughs in your face, you know you’ve stepped in it. How deep, you don’t know, but once you’ve got a bluff going you’ve got to keep at it or die, so I slammed him up against the side of the house hard enough to make his teeth click and his eyes snap open.
“You saying she’s dumb, man, marrying me?” I snarled. “That what you’re saying?”
Sensing that death might be closer than he’d thought, he said, “No no no, hey—”
I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep this going. I had the feeling I’d already blown it, so I popped the SD card out of his camera and put it in a pocket. “Mind if I keep this? Shanna’s into photography. Might see something she likes, get it framed.” I didn’t wait for an answer. I hauled him around the back of the house to the driveway and out to the street. I wanted to know more about this Shanna he was after, and why he was after her, but anything I asked would only make things worse.
“Hit the road,” I said in Mike Hammer’s voice. In fact, I didn’t know what Hammer sounded like—which would be Biff Elliot in I, The Jury, then Ralph Meeker in Kiss Me Deadly—so I winged it. It must’ve worked, because Ignacio hustled across the street and into a red Chevy Cruze. I caught the license plate as he took off. It was a rental, which figured. His business card was from Chicago, home of tabloid journalism and tabloid politics. I watched as he sped down the street and turned right at the first opportunity.
Which left me with only one of two possibilities. I could get the hell out of there and go have a beer even though it wasn’t yet noon, or I could stick around and apply recently acquired detection skills to the place before calling Danya—very likely the aforementioned Shanna Hayes who was “so far outta my league, dude” that it was cause for unbridled laughter.
So, of course, I chose the course most likely to get me back into the national spotlight.
I’ve only got a few real knacks, but that’s one of them.
First a quick tour of the backyard, which was dry grass, crumbling brickwork around a long-defunct garden, and the garage, which was emitting a funky smell, like moldering grass clippings. The yard was enclosed by a six-foot fence of warped planks, gray and splintery from years of exposure to sun and rain. An ancient dilapidated doghouse was up against the back fence, no dog. And that was about it. Not much going on back there.
Then to the house. As Danya had thought, the back door was unlocked. More than unlocked—Ignacio’s exit had left it wide open. Which meant I could enter without breaking.
I stuck my head inside. “Shanna?” I called out loudly. “Anyone home?” My reward was a deep, dead silence—which gave me my second chill of the morning. With my luck, I would go in and find Shanna, all right, strangled or bludgeoned, and Vince on his way out of town, having ditched a stolen rental car, grinning because his real name was Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, something like that. At least I hadn’t touched the doorknob and left prints.
With my gun out, very likely leaving a trail of hair and fibers, I eased into the house, into a kitchen with windows facing the backyard. Nothing was obviously out of place, no blood or appliances on the floor, so I figured there hadn’t been a fight in there. Still calling for Shanna, I crept down a hallway toward the living room and the front door. Halfway down, it branched to the right, toward two bedrooms and a bath at the far end. I took a quick look in t
he living room, empty, a glance out at the street, nothing moving out there, then went back to the bedrooms. The one on the left was smaller and full of girls’ things. The one on the right was the master bedroom with a walk-in closet, also full of girls’ things. The room had a king-size four-poster bed with a royal blue comforter and matching pillow covers.
“Who the hell are you?”
I whirled. The girl was wearing exercise clothes—red nylon shorts and a seriously overloaded gray halter top, bare midriff, a belly button ring that was half-inch gold handcuffs studded with diamonds or cubic zirconia or maybe even moissanite—hard to tell which from ten feet away. She was a vision; tanned, lean, tall, strawberry blond, covered with a light glaze of sweat, and she had a kitchen knife in one hand with a gleaming eight-inch blade.
Perfect.
CHAPTER THREE
SHE KEPT THE knife on me, so to speak. At least it was pointed at my chest. “Are you, uh, Mortimer?” she asked, wary, eyes narrow, mouth tight, still a little out of breath. I figured she’d just returned from a run—one of my myriad deductive skills bubbling up. It also explained why no car had pulled into the driveway at the west side of the house, which I might’ve heard.
Her question also told me I was expected, which meant there was a good chance she wouldn’t charge across the room and skewer me before I could answer. “Almost,” I said.
She lifted the knife another inch. Evidently no one had told her not to bring a knife to a gunfight. My revolver was still in my hand, hanging at my side.
“Almost? What the fuck does that mean?” She backed away a step.
“Language, kiddo. And the name is Mort, not Mortimer.”
That slowed her down, got her brain going again.
“Mr. Angel?”
Man, these people were hard to train. Mister? Well, I guess I was to this girl, twenty years old, give or take, and gorgeous. The word “buxom,” if applied to her, would have been a world-class understatement. “Mister,” however, put me out there at arm’s length and in a different generation—farther away than I wanted to be—no disrespect to Holiday. But the thought blew through my head that this PI thing—beautiful girls cascading around like confetti at a New Year’s party—was still right on track. Sixteen years with the IRS, a thousand field audits, and I’d never seen a girl like this.
I stuck my gun back in its holster. “That’s me. Or I. Not sure about the grammar, kiddo, so you’ll have to make allowances.”
She smiled, sort of, still a bit uncertain. “Danya said she talked to you last night.”
“Yes, she did.”
“Mind telling me where and when that was?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “That sounds like a test.”
“You got it.” She still hadn’t put the knife down.
“Good for you. Can’t be too careful these days, what with a world full of terrorists and politicians. I saw Danya in the Green Room at the Golden Goose. About eleven fifteen last night.”
Her smile illuminated the room. She put the knife on top of a dresser near the door, came over, and shook my hand—a good firm shake, about like she’d shake the hand of an insurance agent right after signing up for term life. “Hi. I’m Shanna.”
“Hayes.”
A flicker of distrust again. Her smile dimmed slightly. “How do you know? Danya wouldn’t’ve said.”
“Vince Ignacio told me.”
“Who?”
“Guy called Vince. Probably calls himself Vinny. I chased him out of here eight or ten minutes ago. Him and his camera.”
“I don’t know any Vince or Vinny.”
“Short rat-faced guy with bad hair? In his mid- to late-twenties. A reporter for Celebrity News. He was in the house, snooping around. Just coming out the back door when I showed up.”
She sagged. “Sonofabitch, goddamnit, fuck.”
That pretty much covered all of life’s most useful words. Maybe she’d done a stint in the Navy.
“Where’s Danya?” she asked.
“Dunno.”
“Seriously? She was here when I left. She didn’t say she was going anywhere.”
“Where’s your phone? You two don’t keep in touch?”
“Right here. What’s left of it.” She got an iPhone off the dresser top, or half of an iPhone, shedding pieces. “Yesterday I dropped it in a Raley’s parking lot and some guy ran over it with a pickup truck.”
“That’ll do it.” I looked around the room, trying not to stare at her top because the phrase “dirty old man” was circulating up there in the rafters. Thing is, a jog bra can only hold so much, and hers was about maxed out.
“I called Danya at ten like she asked,” I said. “Got no answer. Twice. I left a message. Then she called back, said there was a creep looking in the windows here, so she went out the back and got lost. Didn’t say why, or why she didn’t call 911 to get the police out here to save the day—”
“Well, fuck.” For a moment, Shanna stared at the floor. “I guess this was bound to happen, or could’ve happened. Maybe I should’ve, I don’t know, done something . . .”
She’d lost me. “What was bound to happen?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. She held out a hand. “Can I borrow your phone? I’ve got to talk to her.”
I handed it to her. She dialed, listened for a moment, gave it back to me, shook her head. “Voice mail.”
“She do that a lot?”
“Not if she knows it’s me. She might not answer if she didn’t recognize the number, which I guess she wouldn’t.”
“Now what? Know where she’d go?”
Again, she didn’t answer. She plucked at her halter top, which had a damp V in the cleavage and dark spots beneath her armpits. “I ran down to the gym, that’s three miles, worked out, then ran back. Mind if I get out of this? I need a shower like crazy.”
“Do I look retarded?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits. “I didn’t mean to put it that way or imply anything, Mr. Angel. Go wait in the living room or something while I get cleaned up. How’s that?”
Mr. Angel? Shit. “Exactly what I was thinking.”
“I’m sure. Good-bye.” She shooed me out.
I went into the living room with stupid thoughts circling in my head. Shanna Hayes had a figure that would stop traffic. Bouncing along the sidewalks between here and whatever gym she belonged to, which is what she would do—bouncing, that is—I thought RPD would classify her as an attractive nuisance and put an end to it to keep the number of fender benders under control. Ignacio had told me I wasn’t in her league, and from his perspective that was about right. She was six feet tall, with short spiky blond hair accented with a fluorescent pink streak on the left side, slender and leggy, terrific skin, beautiful, with the kind of figure that ends up on the covers of magazines and makes millions of high school girls feel perfectly and permanently inadequate.
I peered out the windows again. Still nothing was going on out there in the street. I wasn’t sure why I thought there might be, but Ignacio’s presence had me worried. I had the feeling things weren’t as they seemed around here.
Which is when my phone rang.
I checked the number, then said, “Hola, Danya. So nice of you to check in.”
“You just phoned,” she said tersely. “What do you want?”
“Do you want a complete list or just the top two items?”
“Don’t be funny. What do you want?”
“For starters, how about telling me where the hell you are. We had a date.”
“I’m . . . around. Where’re you?”
“Your place. I chased the Celebrity News creep away.”
Silence. Then: “Celebrity News?”
“Uh-huh. I take it you weren’t expecting publicity or a photo op with a nationally distributed tabloid.”
“Oh, my God. I, uh . . . is anyone else there?”
My gumshoe training kicked in. “Like who, kiddo?”
“Well, anyone.”
“
Maybe blond? About six feet tall? Figure not too awful?”
“Oh geez. Let me talk to her.”
“She’s in the shower. I got chased into the other room. And I don’t know if she’s still got that knife with her.”
“Knife . . . ?”
“Bit of a long story. Thing is, right now I’m not welcome in the shower—uh, the bathroom. And my health insurance doesn’t cover avoidable knife wounds.”
“Tell her you’re coming in anyway. Or something. Tell her it’s me. I’ve got to talk to her. Give her your phone, like right now!”
Lot of excitement there, not that I needed to be told twice to pop into the bathroom to give Shanna the phone. Of course, to avoid a reverse Psycho scene in which the girl in the shower with a knife attacks the guy in the bathroom—not an easy thing to explain, if it came to that—this would require some finesse. But, no problem. Having tracked down mom-and-pop tax dodgers for the IRS for sixteen years, I was all about finesse.
I went down the hallway and stood outside the bathroom door, which was open six or eight inches, not a bad sign.
“Hey!” I yelled. “I’m comin’ in, that all right?”
“No! Stay the hell out!”
“Danya’s on the phone. Says she wants to talk to you.”
“Gimme it!”
Good enough. I pushed the door open. Shanna had the shower door open, one well-muscled sudsy leg already out the door, a loofa in one hand, the other hand trying to grab the phone, and damn if the shower wasn’t one of those clear glass jobs, none of that pebbled stuff that leaves you uncertain about what’s behind it. Her handcuff-motif belly button ring glittered nicely in the light. The rest of her was simply panoramic.
“Don’t get my phone wet,” I said.
She grabbed it. “Get out.”
Brusque kid. And wet. But the seamless tan from head to toe looked good on her, and the hot-pink toenail polish.
I got out, taking with me a sight that would stick with me for a good long time. You wake up in the morning thinking you have an idea what the day will bring, but you don’t. Ever.
Gumshoe on the Loose Page 3