Feelers

by Wiprud, Brian M

  “Dexter’s not going to make it.” Ruez shook his head.

  “Bad shape.” Pool made a clicking sound in his teeth, an expression of regret.

  “This’ll be murder for sure.” Ruez sighed.

  “Think a girl was involved? You know, thump and bump . . .”

  “Angry husband or boyfriend comes in, smashed his face in with the phone?”

  “Whoever it was didn’t pull punches.” Pool looked at the shattered phone, which had been poured into an evidence bag and was sitting by the door. “Funny that Dexter was at the Upscale murder scene just last night, and now here dead.”

  “Funny?”

  “You know.” Pool looked at his partner. “Not ha-ha funny. A coincidence.”

  “Or not.”

  “Think Dexter was following something on the Upscale murder, got close to the murderer?”

  “Low percentage. It’s a thump and bump. Had to do with sex.” Ruez smiled faintly. “Did we find Dexter’s cell phone yet?”

  Pool said no with a frown.

  “Not in his car?”

  Pool said no with another frown. “We called the paper, they’re checking his office.”

  Ruez sighed. “Let’s go look at the security tapes. But we need that phone.”

  Pool headed for the door. “Possible the killer took it?”

  “Why would the husband take it?”

  “Maybe his number was on it. Voice mail, you know, like that.”

  “Hmm. Let’s have the paper give us the cell provider, download the incoming and outgoing calls, messages.”

  They started down the hotel corridor for the manager’s office, the plastic on their shoes going scrench scrench scrench.

  “Ooo.” Pool winced. “Hear about Rat Man?”

  “Guy they found eaten by rats?”

  “Whew!” Pool waved a hand in front of his wrinkled nose as if there were a stench. “Glad we didn’t get called in on that.”

  If Ruez and Pool had taken the phone research a step further, they would have had the provider triangulate the signal and locate Danny and stop all this carnage and destruction right then and there.

  But they did not.

  Idiots.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SIX

  FANNY AND I LEFT THE apartment about nine. She was running late. I was carrying the busted lamp down to the trash.

  “Cara mia, you must tiptoe down the last flight of stairs,” I whispered.

  “Morty, I have to get to work, come on.”

  “My sweet, we do not want the landlord to come from his lair.”

  “His what?”

  “His lair. Like a monster from a cave under the stairs.”

  “Morty, can’t you talk like everybody else? It’s not always cute.”

  I threw up my hands as she tromped down the last flight of stairs. I could picture the monster toad in his gloomy grotto, his leviathan ogre wife parked in the corner surrounded by abused Entenmann’s boxes and torn Cheetos bags. He hears feet coming down the steps, and the monster toad wonders: Who is this? Can I make this person miserable? And so he pries his bulk from the sofa and goes to the door.

  Like clockwork. As soon as Fanny hit the ground floor, my landlord emerged.

  “Who are you?”

  Fanny shrieked, startled, and the monster toad looked up at me.

  “Whatsimmatter with her?”

  “You scared me,” Fanny scolded.

  “Morty, you know we live down here. Tell her not to stomp on the stairs.”

  “Yes, of course. Sorry.”

  “I wasn’t stomping,” Fanny protested. “I don’t stomp.”

  “Morty, is this the girl from . . . Jersey? The one from last night when you came creeping in?”

  You see what I mean? He emerged to make my life miserable. Though to be brutally honest, I do not think he had any idea that what he was saying was making me miserable.

  Monsters are horrible by nature.

  Fanny was staring holes through me as I tiptoed the last few steps to the landing.

  “You’re not from New Jersey, are you?” I asked Fanny.

  “What girl from Jersey?” When a woman puts her hands on her hips while talking to you, there is often going to be trouble. “You were creeping?”

  “Oh, then this is the other girl,” my landlord added. He was talking to me like Fanny was not even there. I just blinked at him, looked at Fanny, and laughed. Hey, when things like this happen, you can either laugh or cry. Take your pick.

  “This is Fanny.” I said this like an introduction . . . and tried to ignore the growing suspicion and awkwardness.

  My landlord just glanced at her as if she were a photograph.

  “Well, make sure Fanny doesn’t stomp down the stairs, OK?”

  “Sure.” I smiled at him reassuringly and guided Fanny out the front door.

  As soon as we reached the stoop she ground to a halt. “What girl from Jersey?”

  I groaned. “Fanny, he is insane. That is why I wanted you to walk softly down the stairs, so he would not come out of his apartment.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “But I did, my sweet.”

  “No, you said something about your landlord being a liar.”

  “Lair. I meant his apartment.”

  “You could have just said so. What about this girl from Jersey?”

  “There is no girl from New Jersey.”

  “Then why—”

  “I told him that. It was to make him stop bothering me. I had the . . . money bag in my hand and he came out and—”

  “What, like a shopping bag? What the hell are you talking about, Morty?”

  “Look, querida, please, we can discuss this as I drive you to work, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  So I managed to shovel my way out of the pile of shit my landlord dumped on me—and I did it by telling her the truth. It was too fantastic not to be true. Though I felt like an idiot telling her I transported the money in a cheesy plaid suitcase, and said it was in a duffel bag to simplify the story. Although I think she was beginning to think I was an idiot anyway for telling my landlord that I was taking my shirts to New Jersey. What could I say: It seemed like the thing to do at the time, yes? Anyway, Fanny was still vaguely suspicious and cool when I dropped her off at Tangles.

  I had a couple hours before I had to meet Dexter at the Vanderhoosen house. Where to? The library—I wanted to check my e-mail, see if the real estate people had sent me the photograph of the Martinez three-tiered fountain.

  I parked at a meter on the parkway, shoved some quarters in, and headed for the library entrance.

  I checked my e-mail: no message from the people with the fountain. I looked over the pictures again. It sure looked like the place. I could almost transport myself there, feel the salty warm breeze, taste the air tinged with the smoke of burning palm litter, hear the birds and the hum of hummingbirds flitting through the bougainvillea, see the stark shadows tracking along the stucco where lizards sunned. It was like I had been there in a former life. Perhaps I had.

  I checked out some other listings and the La Paz site, mainly just daydreaming. I checked the time and realized I had better log off and go meet Dexter.

  Exiting the library, I had the image of the fountain in my mind. Steps away from the library entrance, I received a tremendous shove from behind—I tripped and fell, rolling to my side on the cement sidewalk.

  My attacker? Pete the Prick, standing over me with a two-by-four at the ready.

  “I want that money! I know you fixed that bid with Mary! The tight ones are rightfully mine!”

  I told you, Father, about how he had nice teeth, but that he rarely used them to smile. He was not smiling, but the teeth were literally snapping at the air with every syllable, spittle flying.

  My arms were held out to protect myself. If he started in with the two-by-four, I would take a serious licking.

  Think, Morty, think.

  I obeyed Mart
inez’s First Rule of Combat: Don’t.

  “Pete, you are right! The money? The tight ones? They are yours. But if you hit me, if you hurt me, I will not be able to take you to the ten thousand, right?”

  I could tell: He really wanted to hurt me, and in a bad, bad way.

  “Balkan Boys are busted up, why shouldn’t you be?” He was frothing mad, to be sure.

  Here is this insane man brandishing a two-by-four threatening to seriously harm me on a public street. Citizens are passing by, giving us a wide berth. There is even a security guard in the library watching from behind the glass doors. Is anybody calling the cops? I know New York has a reputation for being a cold place, but despite my predicament, this is not true. If you ask directions, New Yorkers will stop and give them to you in great detail, with other natives dropping in on the conversation to give their version of the directions. But when it comes to physical altercations, not many of us will intercede. Cowardice? Not as such. I think it has more to do with survival of the fittest. If you are weak, it is your fault. That is not to say that a New Yorker would not protect a child from an adult, or a woman from a man, but not a woman from a woman, and not a man from a man. The good news is that after you are beat up, lying there bleeding, a New Yorker will call the EMS and do a nominal job of making sure you do not die. A small consolation, I know, but a consolation nonetheless.

  “I am different from the Balkan Boys because I have something you want, Pete!”

  “Ten thou? Is that all?”

  See how clever I was? When you bring up money, like sex, it will distract most people.

  “I swear, Pete, that is what I got. Those little lying brown bastards exaggerated! You must have had that happen! Yes?”

  His eyes began to wobble in their sockets as his rage succumbed to a morsel of thought. I figured I had better keep working on him.

  “I’ll give you the ten thousand and then we can have peace, yes?”

  “No, no, no peace, ever.” His rage boiled anew. “You give me the money and I still hate your guts, spic.”

  “Pete! I cannot give it to you from down here, can I? You have to let me up so I can get it, yes?”

  He took a swing at me with the bat, and I pulled my hands away just before he smashed my hands into skin bags of shattered bone. Well, I knew this was going to be a predatory day, did I not?

  “I could smash you into a pulp, throw you in the car, and twist your cock with vise grips until you told me where to drive to find it, how’s that?”

  “Pete! Pete! Listen to me!” He had really given this some thought, yes? “If you did that, what would keep me from going to the police afterward? I mean, unless you aimed to kill me, and if you did, you would surely get caught with all these witnesses and sent to jail for the rest of your life and never see the money. Yes? Yes?”

  His eyes got all wobbly again as his brain tried to process what I was saying.

  “Get up.” He still had his weapon ready, so I was cautious.

  My eyes stayed on him as I slowly rose to my feet, hands out, palms down in a calming gesture like one might use on an escaped gorilla. Easy, big fellah.

  “Your car or mine?” I asked, if nothing else to try to keep his mind off hitting me.

  His eyes wobbled and then he said: “Your spic-mobile, what else? Try anything cute and I’ll ram this board into your cock so hard your eyes will fall out.”

  I never before would have suspected Pete was capable of such colorful descriptions. This was his second reference to maiming Pizarro, and I had to wonder if Pete the Prick got that name for a reason other than his personality.

  As I walked ahead of Pete toward my car, I was busy thinking. I could not really take him to the money or he would see that there was a lot more than ten thousand and want it all. I was not about to give him all the money, though I might have parted with ten grand to get this asshole off my back. A small price to pay when you look at the larger picture.

  No, I could not take him to the storage locker. I glanced at my watch. I was supposed to meet Dexter.

  Can you see where this was going?

  Who better than Dexter to defuse this situation? I could say the money was still in the house and, with Dexter there, get a little room so I could run for it or something if necessary.

  At that moment, though, Dexter Lewis was in intensive care at East Brooklyn Hospital. The ice pick narrowly missed his heart, puncturing his left lung, and he was able to climb from the tub after he heard Danny leave. That is when he heard someone else come into the room—Charlie. Though he heard this person gasp upon seeing him on the floor, Charlie left without helping him. Dexter was blinded by having the phone pounded into his face but managed to crawl out of the bathroom. That is when he was discovered by the Luna Motel staff and was rushed to the hospital.

  So Dexter would not be meeting me at the house on Vanderhoosen Drive.

  Danny would.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  DECKED OUT IN HIS NEW outfit, ball cap pulled low over his Donna Karan sunglasses, Danny had decided to wait inside his uncle’s house on Vanderhoosen Drive. Inasmuch as Dexter had said that there were people looking for him, Danny figured that it would be better to be seen as little as possible. Especially loitering around his uncle’s house. The doorjamb was already broken, so he had no trouble getting in.

  So when I drove my rusty white Camaro up to the curb, and beheld the shabby two-story brick house, I expected to see Dexter waiting for me out front. I did not even see Danny. My heart sank. This would make escape more difficult. A lot more difficult. And if I gave Pete any clue that I was bullshitting, he would likely make good on his promise to mangle Pizarro.

  I might have to enact Martinez’s Second Rule of Combat: Go for the balls and run.

  “Here?” Pete shouted.

  “Yes. I found the money here but moved it to a different location in the house.”

  “Why would you do something so fucking stupid as that?”

  “Because it is the last place anybody would think to look. The place where I found it.”

  “You’re a fucking spic idiot. Come on, get out.”

  So we got out and walked up to the stoop, Pete keeping his distance and making the Martinez Second Rule of Combat difficult to enact. I knew the key to the front door was in a magnetic container under the mailbox—but Pete didn’t know that.

  “We have one problem,” I sighed. “I do not have the key. I gave it back to Mary. And we cannot get it from her now.”

  “Bust it in, faggot.” He prodded me in the back with the two-by-four. Even if I gave him the money, even if it were there, he would go to town on me with that two-by-four, I was certain.

  “I will try. But people may see and call the police if we break in the front door. Perhaps we should break in the back door, a door with glass panes that would be easy to break. Yes?” This may seem like I had a plan, but I did not. Just stalling, looking for an opportunity to escape.

  “Yes, asshole.”

  So we went through the side yard, which was a narrow driveway of maybe ten or twelve feet between houses. I could not help but notice someone move in front of the window in the house next door, which was odd, because that house also was empty. It was the one Frog had cleaned a few weeks back. Could Dexter have gone to the wrong house? And gone inside?

  We reached the rear entrance to the kitchen, and I opened the flimsy wooden screen door. “Could you hold this screen door open while I try to force my way in?”

  Pete merely snorted, took a step closer, and held the screen door.

  Let me tell you, it is very difficult to enact my Second Rule of Combat on someone standing behind me. Turning quickly would give him enough time to react.

  The door was locked. I slipped off one of my tennis shoes and smashed a glass pane in the door. Carefully, I removed any remaining shards that might cut me, reached in, and unlocked the door. Pete watched me closely, so much so that I did not think that trying to slip a shard of glas
s into my pocket—perhaps useful as a knife—was wise unless I wanted to be castrated with a two-by-four. I turned the knob and the door swung open.

  Exactly as I had left it. Cupboards all bare, greasy stains on the wall surrounding where the stove had been, striped rectangle of dust on the wall where the refrigerator had been.

  “Where is it?” Pete jabbed me with the two-by-four.

  “Upstairs. The attic.” It was either that or the basement, and I would rather flee running down stairs than up. At least if I fell in my haste I would not fall back toward Pete. I say this all calmly enough now, but I will be brutally honest: I was shitting bricks, my back soaked with sweat, my heart doing jumping jacks in my chest. At the same time, I was coiled like a spring, ready to do what I had to save my skin. I was sure Cortés felt like this when the Aztecs were after him at Tlaxcala.

  I led the way up the steps, and that two-by-four jabbed me a couple times along the way. A little reminder of what was in store for me.

  I went to the hall closet and pointed at the ceiling.

  “A hatch?” Pete looked up with disgust at the square wood panel that led to the attic.

  “Yes, a hatch. Do you want to . . .”

  “What am If An idiot? You go up. And if you don’t come down with ten thousand bucks, doctors will be pulling splinters from your balls. Got it?”

  A reply to the third threat on Pizarro seemed unnecessary.

  “I need something to stand on to get up there, and all the furnishings are gone.”

  “You’re stalling, spic. The money isn’t up there, is it?” He started waving the two-by-four, winding up for the beating.

  “Well, if you beat the shit out of me with that before I go up into the attic, how will you ever know? For Christ’s sake, Pete, would I lead you up here and corner myself in the closet or the attic if the money was not here? Try thinking with your head for a change.” Perhaps it was bold of me to push back like that, but it worked. Pete stepped back. He was still fuming, but he was also looking around for something I could stand on to reach the hatch.