“Stalker,” she’d said in her increasingly urgent phone calls. At every concert in every city, always seated in the same section, wearing colorful western gear, almost like he wanted her to notice him, wanted to stand out in the crowd. Always too damn close.
Ron, Dee’s longtime lead guitar, and some of the other guys in the band had braced the man one night. He hadn’t seemed fazed, hadn’t backed off an inch. Showed up at the next performance bold as brass—and now he, or somebody, was sending wilted flowers, sending nasty letters. She’d FedExed a sample, of a semilyrical nature:
Our lives are linked with chains of steel,
Chains of steel, my Lady Blue.
Saw a chainsaw in a hardware store.
Thought of you, babe. Thought of you.
Block print in a Neanderthal hand. Cheap ballpoint ink. Unsigned. Hardly Dee’s favorite fan mail. And no proof that the “stalker” had sent it.
Dee was set for three shows in Portland due to a venue screw-up. She’d been scheduled to play one date in a major arena; her manager had discovered the booking error after the tickets went SRO. Not wanting to disappoint the legions who’d finally made her a star, she’d rented a smaller hall. Intimate. Close to the audience. Close to the stalker. She was scared.
Bodyguard, I’d advised.
You, she’d insisted. We’d discussed terms, including Miss Gibson. Then the tickets came. For the planes and all three shows.
Great seats.
“I thought it didn’t snow in Portland,” I muttered as the chauffeur and I struggled through gusts of icy wind layered with flakes as soft and wet as soapsuds.
“First blizzard since ’89,” he grumbled. “Just for you.”
“You drive in snow much?” I asked.
“Nope,” he said, brushing ineffectually at the windshield with a gloved hand.
In the terminal I’d noticed folks standing around, eyes glued to picture windows, staring with wide-eyed wonder at a paltry six inches Bostonians would have shrugged off with a laugh. I felt a jolt of pity for these two-season folk—rainy and dry—wished I had a shovel to offer the driver instead of a handgun.
I blinked bleary eyes, figured that since the flight had landed after one in the morning, it was now past 4:00 A.M. Boston time. The little sleep I’d enjoyed on the Denver leg had been more than countered by the Baileys binge. I could barely stand upright in the slashing wind.
I was grateful when the chauffeur opened the passenger-side back door, understanding when he didn’t wait politely to close the door behind me. I heard the lid of the trunk open, felt a brief stab of regret. Separated from my luggage again.
I drive a cab part-time when I can’t make enough PI money to crack my monthly nut. My eye went automatically to the front visor. No photo, no license. Not to worry, I told myself. It’s not a cab; it’s a limo. No regulations, most cities.
I halted, one foot poised on the shag carpet. The front door locks were shaped like tiny letter T’s. The rear locks were straight, smooth, and short, like the filed-off jobs in the backseats of patrol cars.
I engineered a quick reverse, backing into a pile of slush that soaked through my thin boots. “Have a scraper in the trunk?” I asked as casually as I could manage, trying to come up beside the chauffeur.
He gave way. “Jeez, I dunno. You wanna look?”
The leather soles of my boots slipped on the slick stuff coating the pavement. I had to concentrate on my footing. No excuse, just the truth. When the “chauffeur” tackled me high, midback, he had no trouble flipping me head over heels. I barely had the presence of mind to tuck my head to my chin. If I hadn’t, I might have snapped my neck as the huge trunk lid came slamming down.
Thank God and the Ford Motor Company for the depth of Lincoln Town Car trunks. Ditto for the plush carpeting. My head thunked against my soft-sided duffel.
Dammit. Yes, I was jetlagged, half drunk, in a strange city at a beastly hour, but Dee had described her “stalker”: heavyset, big as a small refrigerator, built on the same square lines as my “chauffeur.” I cursed and cursed again. Uniforms’ll get you every time; you trust a guy in livery, a guy parading your name on a signboard.
The engine revved far too quickly for my assailant to have cleared the windows properly. As we fishtailed into motion I tested the limits of my confinement, reaching out with my right arm, then my left, pushing the trunk lid with both arms, then both feet, in case the latch had failed to catch. No such luck.
Seven plus two, I thought. Seven plus two.
I drive an old Toyota, but as a car freak in good standing, I pore over Consumer Reports New Car Yearbooks at newsstands or libraries, anyplace I don’t have to fork over cash. Seven plus two is the way CR indicates a huge trunk, one with room for seven pullman cases and two weekenders. I spent a while pondering the word “pullman,” which reeked of ancient railroad lore, and rubbing my head. Cubic feet, as in amount of available air, would have been a better measurement considering my predicament. Dual exhausts on a new Town Car. I hoped they were working well, discharging their fumes behind the car, not underneath it.
Lying on my back, I approximated the position of a helpless turtle. My duffel bag, probably less than “weekender” size, was next to my head. My knees grazed the top of the trunk. The darkness was total, absolute. We careened around a corner and I found myself unwillingly shifted to an even less comfortable angle.
Did the Lincoln Town Car possess a trunk pass-through to the backseat? I didn’t think so. Most of those are found in cars with less trunk capacity. I tried a crab-crawl deeper into the trunk, felt around for some doodad that might lead to the passenger compartment. Lots of effort; no result. Except sweat.
It was going to have to be the duffel bag, maneuvering it, opening it, locating the 40 in its silica-lined case, finding a magazine, loading it. Not shooting off a round by mistake. I imagined one ricocheting through the trunk till it found a soft, cozy home in my body. Imagined igniting the gas tank. Even if the slug miraculously missed me and any flammable fluids, I’d wind up stone-deaf from the enclosed explosion.
We turned a corner too fast. I tried to anchor myself, but I slid to the right, away from my bag.
The “stalker” had an ally in Dee’s camp. Deeply embedded there. Dee’s no loudmouth, no idle gossiper. She doesn’t share her plans with roadies or groupies. Would she have told anyone I was arriving? Left a note by the telephone? Had someone overheard her call a travel agent? Had she relegated the duty to some gofer who’d been suborned by the stalker?
Who’d want to stop Dee? Scare Dee off the circuit?
She’d never harbored a female backup vocalist, didn’t tour with a regular opening act. Nobody in her entourage would cherish delusions of replacing Dee Willis.
Her recording company might hire a goon to get her offstage and into the studio. Dee doesn’t cut many albums; she likes the rush of live performance. Says she’s the leader of a road band and proud of it. Her last two CDs went platinum practically overnight. More studio recordings might make a mint for some MCA/America exec.
Would an entertainment giant hire a thug to frighten one of their stars? Not much I’d put past those L.A. suits.
I wriggled closer to my suitcase.
First step: simple. Unlock the duffel. Keys in my back pocket; I’m not a handbag toter. For the first time since high school I found myself wishing I were less than six feet one. I rolled onto my side, slid an arm behind me, and inched the key out. Might sound easy. Try it in the dark, in a trunk, in a lurching, skidding vehicle.
My fingers found the lock, unbuckled and unzipped the bag from memory and touch, located the gun case. I placed it between my shaky knees. Then it was a race against time, my fingers steadily more numb, more unwieldy as they grew icy. It was not a job for gloved hands.
I couldn’t find a magazine. Something sharp jabbed my hand.
What? A nail scissor protruding from my plastic makeup sack? Blood welled from the cut and I made sure to smear some on the carpet. Evidence. Just in case. A snakelike garment grabbed my wrist. Panty hose. There. My hand closed on a rectangle of metal. The box of shells was at the bottom of the case.
Which way to face when he opened the trunk? Should I try for a full rotation, a rollover to get my elbows on the floor? The car stopped. Red light? Traffic jam? I heard a door open, slam. What if he was stopping for backup? What if he abandoned the car? “Woman frozen in freak Portland blizzard.” Maybe he’d come back in a week, dump my body in a river.
I clicked the magazine home.
I forced myself to breathe. In and out. Slowly, regularly. I couldn’t hear footsteps.
The trunk opened so fast I only caught a glimpse of a hand holding an upraised crowbar before the flashlight blinded me. The beam gave me a target to sight on. My neck ached from holding my head upright. I kept my teeth from chattering as I yelled, “Hold it there. Drop the iron.”
Never pull your piece unless you intend to shoot. Never shoot unless you mean to kill. That’s what they taught me at the police academy. I’d have shot the chauffeur without a qualm, just for being a lousy goddamn driver, but I wanted answers.
If he’d flicked off the light and made a sudden move, he might have gotten me. My finger tightened against the trigger. If the light died I’d fire.
It didn’t. It wavered and I heard a soft thud, like a tire iron landing in snow.
“Hey,” he said, his voice a good two notes higher than before. “Relax. Take it easy. I look mean, but I’m not.”
“I don’t look mean, but I am,” I said menacingly, wondering how the hell I was going to get out of the trunk without at least wounding the jerk, giving him something to hold his attention while I clambered over the rear bumper.
“You got the safety catch on?” he asked nervously.
“Guess,” I said. “Take five steps back and lie down in the snow.”
“Lie down?”
“Faceup. Make me a snow angel, and I mean a good one.”
“A snow angel?” he echoed.
“It’s like doing jumping jacks lying down,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve got a gun and you don’t, moron.”
“Name’s Clay,” he muttered.
“Well, Clay. I want to hear you flap those arms and legs. I want to hear your hands clap over your head, okay? Real loud and regular. If I even suspect you’re going for the tire iron, not to mention anything else, you’re going to be missing a kneecap.”
I didn’t move till I heard a snort, followed by the scuffing of snow, and rhythmic clapping. Then I stretched my legs over the edge of the trunk, and lifted myself to a semi-sitting position using a combo of abdominals and my left arm.
“Okay, angel,” I said once I’d struggled to my feet. My legs felt tingly and achy. My left arm burned. I wanted to sit in the snow and cry. Lie down. Make my own angel.
“What?” he said.
“Are we going to chat or shoot?”
“Can I get up?”
“Why? You want to die like a man?”
“It’s colder than a witch’s tit down here. If we’re gonna talk this thing out, let’s get in the car and turn on the heater.”
“I have a better idea,” I said, reaching behind me and lifting my bag out of the trunk.
“What?”
“Keep flapping those arms. I am now going to take ten steps away from the car. Don’t worry. That won’t put me out of firing range. Then you will stand when I tell you to, and you will march over to the car, and get in the trunk.”
“In the trunk?”
“We’re trading places.”
“Then what?”
His voice hailed from somewhere south. No wonder he didn’t know how to make a snow angel. His accent reminded me of someone else’s; its cadence was familiar, but not the same. His voice was higher pitched.
“I didn’t get a chance to ask ‘then what?’ when you shoved me in,” I said reasonably. “Now, did I?”
He glared. No reply.
“I’m taking my ten steps,” I said. “You can get up now.”
He followed orders.
“Who hired you to freak Dee Willis?” I asked.
No response.
“Come on,” I urged. “You think I couldn’t shoot you dead and walk, buddy? Think it over. I’m a legit private eye on a legit case. My gun’s legal. There’s evidence—my blood and sweat and hair—in the damn trunk. Your fingerprints on the tire iron. There’s self-defense written all over this baby.”
Nothing.
“So who hired you?”
I was freezing my ass for nothing. I don’t know, in the movies, somebody’s got a gun, they ask questions, and people tell them what they want to know. In real life, I get perps too stupid to plan beyond their next meal.
I blew out a steamy breath, said, “Okay. Let’s do it the hard way. Empty your pockets. Drop everything straight down in the snow. I want to see the car keys drop. I want to see your wallet drop. I expect you have a knife, and I would like to see that hit the ground, too.”
“Shit.” His drawl split the word into two syllables. “I ain’t got a knife.”
I sighted to the left of his foot, pressed the trigger gently, hit closer than I’d intended. The ground jumped four inches from his toe.
“Knife,” I said.
“Jesus, lady,” he said. “It’s in my boot.”
“Well, sit your fat butt on the ground and take your boots off. Easy, now. Rest your weight on your right hand. Like that. Take your boots off with your left. One at a time. Slow and easy. Lay the blade on the ground. Take your socks off, too, while you’re at it.”
“I could get frostbit.”
“You could get dead,” I said pleasantly. “Okay. Now stand up and walk to the car. Hands over your head, please. Take one step toward me, make a move for the knife or the tire iron, and you’re meat, understand? My hands are getting too cold to go for anything but gut shots. And, trust me, I will empty the magazine. I’ve got seven left. And they’re not twenty-twos.”
I felt better as soon as I’d slammed the trunk. I grabbed the keys from the snow and locked the damn thing just to make sure.
I slung my bag into the backseat, then gathered up the “chauffeur’s” belongings, boots, smelly socks, and all.
In the driver’s seat, I turned on the engine and let blessed heat flow over my shaking hands and chilled feet. I set the safety on the 40 and stuck it in the glove compartment.
I searched for a map. Nothing in the dash. Nothing in any of the fancy seat pockets. As dawn brightened the sky, I settled down for a thorough exam of the man’s wallet.
Cash: one hundred and eighty-seven bucks. A crumpled note giving my name—spelled wrong—airline—spelled right—and arrival time. I stuck it in my pocket, went on to examine a mine of contradictory ID. He had a California driver’s license in the name of Claude Fillmer. A Discover card for one Clyde Fulton. Several business cards for Clyde, one introducing him as a claims rep for State Farm Insurance, another asserting his connection to California Security, Incorporated. He’d made himself vice-president. I wondered why he hadn’t gone for the top job.
A motel key. Room 138.
A video-rental card for Claude.
A Burger King receipt. I was getting nowhere; I should have made him strip.
Mooney, my former boss at the Boston PD, once told me that ex-cons tend to keep more than knives in their boots. I could practically hear his voice. I hoped I wasn’t starting to hallucinate.
Inside the left boot, I felt the raised outline of a cardboard rectangle. I upended the sucker, shook it hard, but the card was stuck to the insole. It felt too thick and stiff
for a manufacturer’s label. I used Clay’s (or Claude’s or Clyde’s) knife to pry it out, taking grim satisfaction in the gouges I hacked in the leather.
I found the kind of ID card that comes with cheap wallets. Clayton Fuller had filled out parts of it in a barely legible scrawl. If anything happened to Clayton, anything necessitating the removal and examination of his boots, he thought Mrs. Caroline Fuller of Hazlehurst, Mississippi, was most likely to care.
Hazlehurst, Mississippi. The name swam before my eyes.
Memphis means Elvis.
Detroit is Aretha.
Liverpool equals Lennon and McCartney.
Hazlehurst, Mississippi, is the birthplace of the legendary Robert Johnson, a man who recorded forty-one tunes in a tragically short twenty-nine-year life span and left his imprint on country blues forever. King of the Delta Blues, they called him. Any blues musician worth his salt would boast of sharing a hometown with Robert Johnson, even a player born years after Johnson’s mysterious death in 1938.
One had.
I needed to rock the car to get us moving. I may have done it more vigorously than necessary out of consideration for my passenger in the trunk.
I had no idea where we were. I drove, searching for a convenience store, a phone booth, a police station. The Lincoln had half a tank of gas.
I pulled into the parking lot of a little mom-and-pop store near a crossroads, taking care to remove the keys and lock all the doors. Wouldn’t do to have my possibly stolen car possibly stolen again. Mom-and-pop sported a Pacific Bell logo on their door. The clerk shook his head sadly as he informed me that I was in the town of Gresham, Oregon. Women drivers, his glance said, hardly ever knew where the hell they were. I was glad I’d left my gun in the glove compartment.
I requested a phone book and ten dollars’ worth of change. I learned that all of Mississippi shares one area code: 601.
Clayton’s mama was home, practically housebound, she said, what with the “artheritis” actin’ up like it done, and just full of chitchat about her son and his best boyhood pals. What a memory.
The Big Book of Female Detectives Page 164