Buyer beware an-1

by John Lutz

  None of us said anything. The kitchen was right off the living room; I could see a corner of the green refrigerator. As we walked toward the doorway, a peculiar odor, as of something putrescent, struck me, and my legs began to tremble. The kitchen doorway seemed farther away.

  There was no one in the kitchen. One of the chrome-legged chairs was on its side near the stove. On the table a horde of gnats swarmed about the rotting remains of a carryout chicken dinner in a red and white cardboard bucket.

  The wood on the inside of the door had splintered away from the bullet holes. The two bullets fired through the door had lodged in the wall above the sink; the shot fired through the window had left a bullet somewhere inside a cupboard containing a jumble of aluminum pots and pans. Silent Sergeant Avery pointed a square-tipped finger at something lying on the white porcelain surface of the ledge of the sink. It was a woman's ring, a ruby surrounded by a circle of diamonds in a gold setting. A jeweler's appraisal wasn't needed to see that its value reached the thousands.

  "Keeh-rist!" Dockard said with appropriate respect for wealth. He bent closely over the ring but didn't touch it.

  5

  We drove toward the Layton police headquarters. I sat in the front seat of the plain tan sedan, next to the driver, Avery. Dockard sat in back, directly behind me; he was silent, but I could almost hear his brain whirring. Dale Carlon drove ahead of us in his sleek Mercedes, as if forging the way.

  The headquarters building was a low, beige-brick structure with several tall antennas jutting from its flat roof. It was set on a wide green lawn, neatly landscaped with low-lying shrubbery, and I could see several parked patrol cars on a blacktopped lot behind the building. Avery held the door open for us and we entered, walked past a grandmotherly receptionist-switchboard operator and down a sterile-tiled hall to an unmarked door. A scrub-faced, somber patrolman went in with Carlon and Dockard. Avery stayed behind, held open the unmarked door for me with polite instructions to wait inside.

  Alone in the tiny room, I sat in a straight-backed wooden chair by a small varnished table and slipped an antacid tablet into my mouth. I chewed the tablet frantically, realized I was getting carried away and took a few deep breaths to relax.

  I looked around. The room was practically unfurnished-bare floor, single dirty window with broken Venetian blinds, only the one small wooden table with three matching chairs and a dented and sloppily repainted file cabinet set against one pale green wall. I didn't like the room.

  An hour passed. I knew they were making me wait on purpose, trying to wear down my nerve. They couldn't know there wasn't much need for that. An automobile horn sounded in the distance, and there were muffled voices as several people passed nearby; but all that was visible outside the streaked glass of the single window were the leafy branches of a large tree. The little room smelled of perspiration and fear, and some of it was mine.

  Finally Dockard entered the room with Avery at his elbow. Both men appeared tired.

  "Sorry to keep you waiting," Dockard lied.

  "That's all right," I lied back. "I had fun looking out the window."

  He nodded in admiration at the brave front and sat down across from me in one of the straight-backed chairs. Avery remained standing, a stoic figure.

  "I'd like your complete story on tape, if you have no objections," Dockard said.

  "Am I being officially held for questioning in the girl's disappearance?"

  Dockard raised his eyebrows. "Of course not. We thought we had your cooperation. Aren't we in the same business?"

  "The same," I said. I knew how it would be if I failed to cooperate, with the missing girl's father owning the town and the police department. Not that I minded cooperating in a straight game, but this was hardly that.

  Dockard smiled and rested his hands on the varnished tabletop in a passive gesture, and Avery walked to the dented file cabinet and took a recorder from the top drawer. I had the notion to request a lawyer, but wasn't that the request of a guilty man? And if Carlon owned the law, no doubt he owned the lawyers.

  Avery set the recorder, a flat Japanese model, on the table in front of me, and Dockard switched it on, then sat back in his chair expectantly, as if he'd just done something wonderful. I cleared my throat and began to talk.

  It took me close to half an hour to explain to the recorder how I'd reached my present predicament, starting with the arrival of Gordon Clark at my house trailer and ending with the arrival of the police at 355 Star Lane. Every so often Dockard would interrupt me with questions that didn't seem very pertinent, but even so, I could almost hear the clang of my cell door.

  An elderly secretary came in with three large ceramic mugs of coffee on a tray, set the tray on the table next to the humming Japanese recorder and left. Dockard slid one of the mugs across the table to me and turned off the recorder. He spooned sugar and powdered cream into his steaming cup and held up the containers in an offering gesture to me. I declined and took a sip of the strong black coffee, almost hot enough to peel the skin from my lips.

  "Does this story jell with the facts?" Dockard asked me confidentially.

  "I wouldn't have been so cooperative if it didn't."

  He pursed his lips at that. We both knew I'd had no choice.

  Avery shifted his weight to his heels and crossed his arms. I'd almost forgotten he was there.

  "I'm telling you this because I feel duty bound," Dockard said, "while you still have a chance to change your story. I don't know if you're exactly aware of who Dale Carlon is, but he's the last man for miles around who you'd choose to cross."

  "I don't choose to cross anybody," I said. "All I was trying to do was my job, returning Melissa Clark to her father."

  "Maybe she belongs with her mother."

  "… Who happens to be Dale Carlon's daughter."

  There was a narrowing of his brown eyes without change of facial expression. "It's not like anybody owns this department, Nudger."

  It's not like it, I thought, it is it.

  Dockard waited patiently for me to answer, then gave up.

  "You mind waiting around while this is transcribed?" he asked finally, slipping the cassette from the recorder.

  "Not at all."

  He stood and thanked me; then he and Avery walked from the room, leaving half open the door to the hall. As a snub? A dare? I leaned back and sipped coffee that was cool enough now for human consumption.

  It was easier to pass the time now that I could hear part of what was going on outside the room-the clatter of a teletype from across the hall, its rhythm broken by the occasional thumping of an electric typewriter; the voices of two men passing the time, talking shop, now and then getting into the subject of the eastern division pennant race. Neither of them knew much baseball.

  "Here's something on Branly," one of them suddenly said, interrupting the other's sermon on the virtues of a good defensive shortstop. "According to neighbors, he and his wife and kid lived at the Star Lane address for a little over a month."

  "Is the wife the Carlon bitch?"

  "So the neighbors say."

  "Think they were really married?"

  "Who gives a damn anymore?"

  "Marion of the Saint Louis Cardinals was the best ever."

  Wagner of Pittsburgh, I thought, sitting back in my chair, and he could hit… So Branly, whoever he may be, is the other man. I remembered now that Mick, of the saggy T-shirt, had mentioned something about seeing Melissa with her mother and father. This Branly complicated things.

  I sat quietly, straining for more information, but all I got was baseball misinformation. Who wanted a shortstop who couldn't hit?

  What was left of my coffee was cold when Dockard came back into the room as if he'd only stepped out a minute ago. I was surprised to see Gordon Clark behind the detective.

  Clark stepped into the room and gave me a quick, humorless smile. "Mr. Nudger." He looked bedraggled, and there was slack flesh beneath his reddened eyes. His brown suit was rumpled, an
d his dark beard was slightly flattened on one side, as he he'd slept on it. I guessed he'd been airborne for the past several hours.

  "This him, Mr. Clark?" Dockard asked.

  "He's the man I hired,"

  "Things took an unexpected turn," I said. "I'm sorry."

  "I should have come down here with you as you suggested," Clark said.

  "That wouldn't have changed anything."

  "Nudger's right about that, Mr. Clark," Dockard said. He floated a hand to Clark's shoulder to lead him from the room.

  "I'm at the Clover Inn, on Main Drive," I said to Clark.

  He nodded as he left the room. Dockard stayed behind.

  "He verified your story," Dockard said.

  "Then if you don't mind, I've done enough cooperating for the day."

  Dockard grinned, opened the door. "Come into my office, Nudger."

  It was more than a simple invitation. I got up wearily and followed him down the hall to let him hold open another door for me.

  Dockard's office was large, or at least it seemed so to me after my confinement in the tiny interrogation room. There was a nice walnut desk, pictures on the walls and a soft vinyl chair for me to sit in. The chair was best of all.

  "Tired?" Dockard asked, sitting behind his desk and lighting a cigarette.

  I didn't think it was a question that deserved an answer.

  "Things have gotten even muckier than you think," Dockard said.

  I wasn't surprised to hear him say that. The whole affair had taken on a certain inevitable feel, evoking in me the same foreboding that must brush the senses of someone gradually approaching the vortex of a whirlpool.

  "Joan Clark and her daughter were living with a man named David Branly," Dockard said, attempting to blow a smoke ring and creating something closer to a mushroom. "Know anything about him?"

  "Only that he's lived with Joan and Melissa Clark on Star Lane for a little over a month. I overheard that here earlier." I wondered if I'd been meant to overhear, so Dockard could observe my reaction from some hidden vantage point on the other side of one of the tiny room's walls. "Wasn't I meant to eavesdrop?"

  Dockard neither confirmed nor denied. "He's dead," he said.

  I considered that a hell of a way to change the subject. My stomach dropped a few notches. "You mean Branly?"

  Dockard nodded, lifting a hand to brush back his Hitlerian lock of hair. "Mr. Branly was found dead yesterday in a car parked behind a Laundromat on Surf Avenue."

  "And not of natural causes?"

  "A twelve-gauge shotgun sawed down to less than eighteen inches was fastened with electrician's tape to the steering wheel column of his car, down low near the floor, where he wouldn't see it. It was aimed up the column, straight through the center of the steering wheel, and a wire ran from the trigger to a lever attached to the accelerator pedal. When Branly stepped down on the pedal to start the car…" Dockard spread his hands, palms down.

  In spite of myself I imagined what Branly must have felt-the shock, perhaps the instantaneous knowledge and horror at the blast of flame and noise at his feet.

  "He was struck in the stomach and groin," Dockard went on. "Killed instantly."

  "Mixed up with an organization, maybe?"

  Dockard shrugged. "If it was a gangland killing, this is the first time I've heard of this method being used. Generally these things follow a pattern, and generally they don't happen in Layton." Dockard drew open his flat center drawer, reached in and tossed several glossy photographs on the desk before me.

  I tried to swallow my squeamishness, forced myself to pick up the photos and look.

  They were Branly's death photos, but they were surprisingly undisturbing to my stomach. The pictures showed a fairly young man from the waist up who appeared to be sleeping and experiencing a bad dream. There were several front shots and two with the head turned for a profile angle. It was a classically handsome profile. Branly was still wearing a plain sport coat and loose-knotted tie, and the only indication of violence was some splatters of blood marring the pattern of the coat. I tried not to think of how the area of the body below the bottom edges of the photographs must look.

  "I've never seen him before," I said, laying the photographs back on the desk.

  "Neighbors of the Star Lane house have. When they saw those photographs, they identified him immediately as that nice young Mr. Branly. And they identified Joan Clark as Mrs. Branly. Said they were a pleasant young couple, not outgoing, though. Said they moved in just over a month ago and led a quiet life."

  "What prompted you to ask the Star Lane neighbors about Branly?"

  "The car he was found dead in had out-of-state registration-under Joan Clark."

  I sighed, rested my palms on my knees and felt their warm moisture through the material of my pants. "Lieutenant Dockard, if I could help in any way, I would. What I am is a man trying to make a living, and I don't mind telling you I'm into something here I don't want to be into. I never heard of David Branly until today, and I don't like being involved in the investigation of his murder. All I know about any of it is what I've already told you."

  Dockard ground out his cigarette stub in a glass ashtray, slowly and carefully, as if it were something alive and he savored the killing of it. The last hazy wisp of smoke had drifted up from the ashtray and dissipated before he looked at me again.

  "I believe you, Nudger," he said, "but I don't disallow the fact that I might be wrong. We don't railroad people here in Layton, but you've got to understand that this is an unusual case, an important case to everyone involved." He stood to signify that it was at last time for me to leave.

  "Because Carlon is a big man?"

  "We both know that's why," Dockard admitted, "and we both know that's the reason certain rules and procedures might be stepped over, or on, in this investigation. If we don't come up with something within a reasonable length of time, there'll be repercussions, so everyone connected with the case wants results."

  "What I want is to be out of it."

  "Maybe you can be, Nudger. Your car's parked in the lot out back."

  I stood up stiffly, almost reluctantly, from the soft vinyl chair, crossed the thick carpet to the door.

  Walking from Dockard's office was pure pleasure, equaled only by the pleasure of walking from the building.

  My humble motel cabin beckoned like home.

  6

  I steered the green compact into the Clover Inn's gravel parking lot, listening to the tiny stones pinging off the insides of the fenders. Afternoon shadows were lengthening, and I saw that the parking space in front of cabin 5 was in shade.

  After I parked and switched off the ignition, the little car's engine turned over a few times on its own, as if overheated. I felt overheated myself. Today brought me closer than I wanted to get to becoming involved in a murder case. The problem with homicides was that there was always someone else involved who was a murderer. All my frayed nerves needed was the knowledge that someone might be stalking me-with my death in mind. I didn't kid myself. I knew it was better to be a dead hero than a live coward. It was just that I didn't have the stomach for it. I lived on.

  I struggled out of the car and stretched, realizing abruptly that I was hungry. After a cool shower to make me alive again, I'd eat at the Clover Grill, then phone for reservations on the first flight I could board out of Orlando.

  When I entered the cabin, I found Dale Carlon sitting on the bed.

  "Afternoon, Mr. Nudger."

  I closed the door behind me, wishing I hadn't bothered to come back for my luggage. Carlon was smiling at me-a new side of him. It was an even, handsome, definitely PR smile.

  "How did you get in here?" I asked.

  "It happens that indirectly I own part of this motel, Mr. Nudger." The smile turned genuine. "You'll find that few doors are locked to me here in Layton."

  I was momentarily angry with myself for feeling uncomfortable, awed by his authority. "That brings us around to why you're here," I
said.

  "I thought you'd like to know you've accomplished your objective. Melissa is returning home with her father on the earliest direct flight. Gordon and I decided it would be better this way until things are settled."

  "Maybe I can be on the same flight," I said. I considered offering him a drink, then decided my brand would probably fall below his standards. To hell with it.

  "I hope not, Mr. Nudger. I want to hire you."

  That took me aback, but it explained why he'd been waiting for me. "As you said, I've already accomplished my objective." I wondered if he was letting Gordon Clark take Melissa because he wanted to or because he knew he'd have to eventually anyway. Or would he have, here in Layton?

  The handsome smile grew more confident. "I'm sure I can change your mind."

  I knew what he was getting around to. "Why do you want to hire me, Mr. Carlon?"

  "To find my daughter."

  I walked to the small writing desk, half leaned, half sat on it. "Your daughter is mixed up in murder, Mr, Carlon. I don't want to be. I don't extend my investigative activities that far, but I can give you the names of some top investigators who'd be interested."

  "I'd like you to make an exception in my case."

  "I'm afraid of murder, Mr. Carlon."

  "Would fifty thousand dollars for your services make you less afraid?"

  I sat down all the way on the small writing desk and looked at him. He was serious-more than that, sure of himself.

  "Not less afraid," I said, "only wealthier. Why would you be willing to pay me that much when you can hire better investigators for a small fraction of the cost?"

  With thumb and index finger he smoothed a crease in the leg of his elegant suit. "I have much to lose by unfavorable public exposure of any kind, Mr. Nudger. You're already into the case by accident, as it were, and you've seen some of the dirty linen that I don't wish made public. Since you've seen some, I prefer that you, rather than another unnecessary party, see whatever else must be seen. That way I have only you to trust and not you and someone else. And as your client you owe me at least a modicum of confidentiality. The fifty thousand dollars is for your secrecy as well as your services,"