Newt had licked his cracked dry lips and said, “What pissed me off, I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law, but I’m pretty sure she was aiming at my popsicle.”
Epstein folded his hairy arms across his chest and gave Newt a cool look.
Newt grinned and said, “Be a major tragedy, wouldn’t it, getting your popsicle shot off.”
The Hippocratic Oath had lost most if not all of its impact since the invention of the BMW. And Epstein was as much a human being as anybody else. The look he gave his patient was equal parts malice and disgust. As far as he was concerned, the little creep could go into post-operative shock and roll over and die.
Newt saw the look in the surgeon’s eyes and knew what it meant. The pain was starting to get to him, but as Epstein headed for the door, Newt yelled, “Man, you’re such a tights ass, I bet every time you fart you break a wine glass.”
Finally, the toilet flushed and Rikki wandered out of the bathroom. Newt told him what was on his mind, that he wanted him to take another shot at getting some guns.
Rikki said, “Where I gonna go?”
“Frank.”
“Offa Frank?”
Newt chewed on a cuticle. “No, Rikki, what I mean is maybe Frank could help you get a gun. He’s a local guy, knows his way around.”
Rikki thought about it for a moment. Newt watched the wheels turning, flakes of rust falling out of Rikki’s ears. Rikki said, “Why don’t I just take Frank’s gun offa him? Save some money.”
Newt swallowed the tiny fragment of raw flesh he had chewed from his own body. He said, “You take Frank’s gun away from him, you’re gonna have to shoot him with it or he’s gonna take it back. No offence, but this ain’t the kind of fleabag hotsheet back-alley bordertown motel you usually hang out at. You blow somebody away, even Frank, people are likely to call the cops.”
“Screw da policia,” said Rikki. “I kill’em all!” But he was smiling as he spoke, in a jovial mood despite Newt’s excessively cautious nature. He loved spending his boss’s hard-earned cash, and there was nothing he’d rather buy than a pistola. But it was even better if you could get the piece for free, or at least keep the cost to an absolute minimum. And despite his kidding around, he knew how to find a gun — all he needed was a phone book and a taxi.
In the hardware department of a nearby store, Rikki peeled a couple of twenties off the thousand-dollar roll Newt had given him, and bought the biggest pair of boltcutters they had in stock.
The closest sporting goods store was ten minutes and a twelve-dollar taxi ride away. Rikki paid the driver with another of Newt’s sweaty twenties. The boltcutters were
wrapped in heavy brown paper. A bell suspended above the stores door tinkled cheerfully as he stepped inside. The guy down at the far end of the store by the cash register glanced up, smiled. There was a long rack of shotguns and rifles behind him, and a safe as big as three refrigerators that looked to be about a hundred years old that had to be where the handguns were kept. Rikki ambled the length of the store, the boltcutters, still wrapped in brown paper, dangling loosely at his side. The guy behind the counter was in his mid-forties, slim, with short black hair and a trim moustache. He was staring at Rikki s package, frowning. Probably figured there was a rifle or shotgun in there that needed to be repaired. Rikki swung the boltcutters around as if to place them on the counter and then accelerated and widened the arc, caught the man high on the temple and wiped the sudden look of surprise right off his face, brained him.
He jumped the counter, stripped the brown paper off the boltcutters and used them to cut through the heavy chain securing the rifles and shotguns. After a moment’s hesitation he chose a 12-gauge Remington pump. There were boxes of shells under the counter. Rikki smashed the glass, loaded the weapon with three rounds of double-ought, cranked one and laid the shotgun on the counter. The man on the floor groaned wearily and rolled over on his side. Rikki whacked him on the ear with the cutters, knelt down and frisked him. The guy’s name was Barry Chapman. He had thirty-four dollars in his wallet, and an American Express card. His key ring was in his back pocket.
Rikki started in on the safe, trying the biggest keys first, working his way around the ring.
The telephone screamed at him. He dropped the keys, scooped them up. Now he’d lost his place and would have to start over again.
The telephone rang fifteen times, each ring sounding to Rikki like somebody yanking a big zipper on his heart. The silence, when the ringing finally stopped, was even more terrifying.
The safe had two doors. Each door had its own lock, one at the top and the other at the bottom. It took him what seemed like a very long time to figure out that the doors opened simultaneously or not at all. Inside, there were three brand-new and totally illegal fully automatic Kalashnikov assault rifles, ammunition, and about sixty handguns of various calibres, most of them tucked away in factory cardboard boxes.
Rikki, squinting at the labels on the boxes, yelped with delight as he spotted the pair of .40-calibre Smith & Wesson stainless steel semi-autos. He ripped open the boxes, snatched at a 40-round box of 180-grain copper-jacketed Winchester hollow points, ejected the pistols magazines. Each gun held eleven cartridges plus one in the chamber. Loaded, the weight was close to four pounds. The Smith was the official handgun of the FBI; emphasis had been placed on accuracy and reliability, muzzle velocity and penetration and expansion. The hollow points did a fine job of blowing away blocks of gelatin; the FBI’s “tissue-simulation medium.” A clean hit’d put a bad guy on his ass, all right. But the really nice thing about the pistol — from Rikki’s point of view — was that it’d kill the good guys just as dead as the bad.
He stared down at Barry Chapman. What if the guy woke up, grabbed the phone? Rikki stepped over his body, ripped the telephone’s cord from the wall. Okay, fine. What if he woke up and went outside and started yelling and screaming -or grabbed a Kalashnikov? Rikki racked the slide. The safety was a two-way button mounted at the rear of the trigger guard. He used his index finger to push the safety off, moved a little bit further away from Chapman and aimed carefully, then remembered to take a quick look out of the window. The street was empty. He shot Chapman in the knee, the impact of the hit making the body twitch.
Rikki said, “There now, that didn’t hurt a bit, did it?” He eased the Smith’s hammer down and made sure the safety was on and then stuck the pistol in the waistband of his pants. The other gun and six boxes of ammunition went into a brown paper bag. He grabbed the shotgun and then decided to hell with it, the weapon was too big to fit into the paper bag, someone was sure to notice it.
Chapman wasn’t bleeding very much. Rikki wondered about that, but only for a moment. He had other things on his mind. Making his getaway. The hit and run. How to deal with Frank, sweet-talk the albino, with her skin so soft and white it looked like she bathed in moonbeams.
Busy, busy, busy.
The taxi ride back to Granville and Georgia cost him another thirteen bucks, plus a dollar tip. He sat down on a bench near the hotel and worked it out. His total costs for the caper were sixty-three dollars plus change. Subtract the thirty-four he’d lifted from Barry Chapman’s wallet and his net profit was one thousand dollars less twenty-nine. Except there was no way Newt would let him off that easy. Or maybe he would. Rikki sat there on the bench, the sun on his face and the paper bag heavy on his lap, the Smith’s stainless steel four-inch barrel digging into his crotch. What could he tell Newt he paid for the guns, what was the most he could hope to get away with?
Rikki watched the girls go by. Were they as pretty as California girls? He couldn’t make up his mind. He had a thing about blondes. In L.A., just about everybody was a blonde. Otherwise, what was the point? He found himself once again thinking about Lulu. He stood up, adjusted his pants and strode briskly towards the hotel.
Newt pulled back the slide and saw that there was a shiny fat round in the chamber. He carefully eased the slide back, took a bead on himself in the mirror
and then gave Rikki a quick sidelong glance and asked him how bad was the damage.
Rikki said, “Seven-fifty for the pair. Plus I buy’em in a bar, had to pay for a couple rounds of cerveza.”
Newt smiled and held out his left hand, the one that wasn’t holding a gun.
Rikki added, “Plus two hundred for the bullets — less than a buck apiece.” Smiling, he dipped into his pocket and dragged out a pair of twenties and a ten.
Newt snatched the money out of his hand. Rikki was stealing from him, no doubt about it. He’d have to do something about that, back in Laguna Beach.
Rikki said, “So, we’re all set. We got the shiny guns, fancy car, good looks.”
“I want it done tonight,” said Newt. “Or tomorrow morning, when she goes to work.”
Rikki amused himself juggling three of the big .40-calibre hollow points, tossing them up and snatching them out of the air. His hands hardly moved. He was pretty good, Newt had to admit.
Newt said, “I got tickets on a Delta flight leaves in the morning, we gotta be at the airport by ten o’clock.”
“All of us?” said Rikki.
“Just you and me, kid.”
Rikki grinned broadly. The way Newt had said it, the words sounded like they were a line out of a movie. “What about Frank, and the albino chick.”
“I thought you were gonna take care of that for me.”
Rikki nodded slowly. “Yeah, sure. No problem.”
Newt said, “That’s why you bought all those bullets, remember?”
“Seen’em around?”
Newt said, “They’ll show up, don’t worry.”
Rikki tossed the bullets on the bed. He said, “Watch this,” and tried his fast draw. He was pretty slow, but this was due mostly to his concern that the Smith’s front sight might rip his pants. He said, “I wish there was some place I could try this baby out, make sure it works.”
“You’ll get your chance soon enough.”
As had so often happened in his life, Newt was right for the wrong reasons. Usually the bottom line was more or less where he expected it to be, so his flaws of logic didn’t matter.
This time, unfortunately, it was going to matter a great deal.
25
Rick Conroy nodded hello to Farley Spears, pushed Orwell’s chair across the grey carpet until it bumped up against Willows’ desk. He spun the chair around and sat down, resting his forearms on the padded back. His hands dangled loosely. “Notice how I’m sitting?”
Willows said, “Yup.”
Conroy grinned. “That’s right, you got it. Cowboy style. Gary Cooper got his first big break by turning his chair around and sitting on it like this during his interview for The Winning of Barbara Worthy made way back in 1926. Of course, Gary actually was a cowboy, before he became a film star. In one of his early roles, he played the white knight in Alice in Wonderland.” On the other side of the squadroom, Farley Spears snorted disdainfully. Conroy looked at Spears and said, “That was way back in 1933. You’d have been too old to want to go and see it, I guess.”
Willows said, “What can I do for you, Rick?”
“Cooper was tall, dark and handsome. He had a slow and deliberate way of talking that made people want to hear what he had to say. I, on the other hand, am short, pale and sweaty. Also balding. And when I get nervous I talk too fast and sound like Pee-Wee Herman on amphetamines. Plus I bite my nails. So why did the brass pick me to do the stand-up comedy?”
“Because you’re so obviously unqualified for the job,” offered Spears.
Conroy said, “Be quiet, old man. Go back to your crossword puzzle and stop interrupting.” To Willows, he said, “I’m probably the ugliest guy on the force. Don’t laugh — it’s true. I look like Michael J. Pollard gone to seed.”
Willows didn’t quite catch that one. He let it show.
“Remember Bonnie and Clyde?” Pollard was pumping gas at some rundown station out in the weeds. They robbed the joint and he helped steal the money, went along for the ride. Big mistake.”
A shadow moved across the square of pebbled glass in the door of Inspector Bradley’s office.
Conroy said, “He in there?”
Willows nodded.
Behind the door, someone shouted incomprehensibly. A fist was slammed down on a desk — they’d all heard that sound often enough to recognize it.
“What’s going on?”
“Beats me,” said Willows. Bradley’s door had been shut when he’d arrived at the squadroom. No one had gone in or out.
Conroy shrugged. “So, Pollard. Remember him now?”
Willows nodded. “Yeah, sure. Face like a caved-in pumpkin. I don’t see the resemblance, Rick.”
“No?”
“You’re twice as ugly. No contest.”
Conroy smiled. Until recently, he’d been an ace vice cop. Now, thanks to the department’s policy of rotation, he was suddenly the community relations officer. Gone forever were those happy days of screaming with rage and fear, kicking in doors. The primary skill his new job required was an ability to knock softly and wait forever. So far, it hadn’t been an easy transition.
Willows said, “So what can I do for you, other than put you out of your misery?”
“The Joey Ngo case. Everybody wants the gory, lurid details. Was it murder or suicide? Did the kid bump Emily and his brother? Can we wrap all three deaths, or what? Gimme the straight goods, Jack. The public’s got a right to know.”
Willows smiled. “Parker’s at the autopsy. She’s due back with the preliminary report any time now. But we won’t have anything official until the coroner’s report comes in. That could easily be a month or more away. So I have no idea when we’ll wrap up the other murders. We know Emily and Cherry were both shot with the same gun. If it turns out to be the weapon we found on Joey — and it will — I’ll recommend we close all three files.”
Conroy said, “Yeah, but you haven’t got a match on the gun yet, and it probably won’t happen until tomorrow at the earliest. I talked to Goldstein about ten minutes ago. He’s got that triple went down in the Japantown warehouse this morning, plus the poor sap was beaten to death in the gunshop. You hear about that?”
Willows shook his head, no.
“Guy named Chapman, Barry Chapman. Was kneecapped with a handgun and then had his head beat in with a pair of boltcutters.” Rick mimed biting a chunk out of the back of Orwell’s chair. “Know what Goldstein told me when I asked him how he was coming along on your case?”
“What?”
“Wanted to know why I was in such a rush — pointed out that everybody involved is dead as a doornail, and likely to stay that way.”
There was another burst of yelling, sharp and ironic, from Bradley’s office.
Willows shrugged. “You know how it goes, Rick. The investigation is ongoing. New information when and as it becomes available.”
“You’re a natural, Jack. How’s this for a bright idea — why don’t you take my job?”
“I’d quit first.” Willows wasn’t kidding, and he let that show, too. He’d been a policeman almost twenty years, a homicide detective for as long as he cared to remember. He’d always been better at being a cop than playing the role of father or husband. He believed his devotion to the job had cost him his wife and family. There were times when the grief of his loss brought him to his knees. But there was nothing he could do. The job had him by the throat. He was incapable of change, and he knew it and accepted it.
But there were limits. He spent too much of his time behind a desk as it was. Being a cop meant hunting bad guys, tracking them down and putting them away. The day Bradley told him he was out of homicide was the day he handed in his badge.
Conroy was staring at him. “You all right, lack?”
“Yeah, sure.” The varnished door at the far end of the squadroom swung open. Orwell, and then Parker.
Conroy said, “I heard Eddy’s marriage is going down the tubes.”
“Judith’s a slow
learner,” Spears said from his desk. “But she’s making progress.”
Orwell, closing fast, pointed a stiff finger at Conroy and said, “What’re you doing in my chair?”
Conroy said, “Probably nobody told you, but there’s gonna be a major press conference in about ten minutes. The Japantown shootings. We’re expecting fifty or sixty people. Television, the papers, radio. The Chief told me to round up as many chairs as possible.”
“Bullshit.”
Conroy turned to Parker. “Got anything for the press?”
“Never” said Parker firmly.
Conroy stood, pushed Orwell’s chair across the carpet towards the squadroom door. A castor squeaked. He said, “I’ll get it back to you in a couple of hours, promise.”
“Yeah, sure. But what’m I supposed to sit on in the meantime?”
Conroy unlocked the squadroom door, shoved the chair through it and towards the elevator.
Orwell said, “Hey, wait a minute!” His glare carried the length of the squadroom. Conroy turned and waved as the elevator doors slid open. He pushed the chair inside and turned and yelled, “Gotcha, Eddy!”
Orwell bolted after him.
The elevator doors slid shut.
Willows said, “So how’d it go?”
Parker tossed the file on her desk, sat down. “I never want to see another autopsy as long as I live.”
“That sounds about the maximum time frame.”
Parker grinned. “The coroner’s convinced Joey died of a self-inflicted wound. He told me that even if Joey came back to life and grabbed him by the lapels and told him who did it, he’d still call it a suicide.”
Farley Spears said, “I remember a case where a guy with an inoperable brain tumour left a handwritten three-page note, went into a locked room and blew his brains out with a twenty-gauge shotgun. Five years later, his back-yard neighbour confessed that she’d killed him because he kept stealing her roses. The detective who’d handled the case — his name was Ted Nolan — didn’t believe a word she said. In fact, nobody believed her except the crown prosecutor and the judge. She got mandatory life. Nolan was so humiliated, he resigned and ran off to Saltspring Island to raise sheep. This happened about thirty years ago. My rookie season.” Spears smiled at Parker with yellow teeth and watery blue eyes. “Never take anything for granted. That’s the lesson that case taught me and I hope never to forget.”
Accidental Deaths (A Willows and Parker Mystery) Page 22