Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved

by Collins, Max Allan

  “Linked?”

  He shook his head. “Not in that way, Michael—these are deaths that have benefited the Muertas...but don’t lead back to them.”

  “Oh. Like Richard Addwatter’s wife hearing voices and killing her philandering husband? When the Muertas are Addwatter Accounting clients?”

  Chic’s chin came up. “Rafe’s working that? The Addwatter killing?”

  I nodded. “And so am I. And I can buy the theory that somebody manipulated this poor woman into—”

  “Michael.” He was buttoning his shirt now. “Listen to yourself—you’re buying into a theory and you don’t have a shred of evidence. Investigate, then build your damn premise.”

  I watched him as he continued dressing. Finally I asked, “Why do you call me ‘Michael’ only in the bedroom?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Professional respect, I suppose.”

  “Why? We don’t work together. What’s with the ‘Ms. Tree’ this, ‘Ms. Tree’ that?”

  He frowned in confusion. “I thought you preferred ‘Ms.’ to—”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said, “and you know it.”

  He was seated on the edge of the chair pulling on his socks now. His face was a study in awkward embarrassment, a rarity for this graceful, self-confident man. “I guess I just don’t wanna...I don’t know....You think Rafe knows?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. He made an excuse to leave us alone tonight, didn’t he?...It has been a year.”

  He was dressed now, and came back over to the bed and sat on its edge, swiveled my way. “I just....How will it look? Your husband’s old partner, his best friend, his best man...shacked up with—”

  My eyes widened. “Shacked up? Is that what we’re doing? That would suggest you ever spent the night here.”

  “Michael....”

  “Look, I don’t give a rat’s ass about what people say. You were there for me, when I really, really needed you.”

  I leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. A little kiss but warm. Wet.

  “Yeah,” he said breathlessly, “and how many people would say I was just a goddamned vulture, waiting there to swoop in and take advantage of my partner’s wife’s, you know, vulnerability.”

  I laughed a little. “Vulnerability? Are you kidding? Who is it that knows me and thinks I’m vulnerable, anyway? What fool are we talking about?”

  He smiled shyly. His smile only got shy in the bedroom, by the way.

  “And as for what people think?” I said. “Screw them. Screw people. Screw what they say.”

  I leaned forward and nibbled at his ear.

  “For that matter,” I whispered, “screw me.”

  His laugh was barely audible. “Hey, my name may be Steele, but I ain’t made of it.”

  I slipped my hand down until it got to its destination.

  “Based on the evidence,” I said, “speaking strictly police science? I’m building a theory otherwise....”

  FIVE

  The doctor was writing on his pad now, quickly—but I could feel his eyes on me.

  “Good,” Dr. Cassel said. “This is healthy—your urge to come forward, into the light, with your relationship.”

  “After Chic left, I got to thinking....”

  “About accepting responsibility...and consequences.”

  “No, that wasn’t what I was thinking about.”

  “Oh?”

  “I was mulling this crazy idea of Rafe’s...an Event Planner...Death Planner...some caterer of murder. Far-fetched as it sounded, it got me thinking, really thinking.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  I drew in a deep breath and let it out slow.

  “About an ‘event,’ ” I said, “in my own life...that might have been planned....”

  The motel near the airport seemed retro at a glance, with its ’50s deco neon sign and squared, one-story U of rooms making a courtyard around a swimming pool covered for the winter. But really it was just old.

  This was December, cold, but not yet snowy. Judging by the cars in the lot on this late evening, the motel was at about fifty percent capacity.

  The kind of honeymoons that happened here were usually not attached to actual weddings and seldom required spending the night.

  And yet that was where my new husband Mike Tree had arranged for us to spend the first night of our marriage. He explained it by saying he wanted to be near the airport, as if his apartment—our apartment, now—on the North Side was a world away from O’Hare.

  Not that I was questioning this decision, still a little high on wedding reception champagne, as Mike pulled his red Jaguar into the lot, the pricey vehicle adorned with soap-scrawled just married wishes (he’d stopped to remove the shoes and tin cans from the tail).

  He was stone sober where I was giggly, but even without the bubbly I’d have had an awkward time of it, climbing from the sports car in my wedding gown. Mike helped me out, then got two small bags from a trunk heavily loaded with suitcases. We were headed for a week in Nassau, leaving at five AM.

  I carried my bag and he carried his, arm in arm as we made our way to the motel room door, where he set his bag down and removed the bag from my hand and set it down, too, then gave me a look that consisted of his mouth hiking at left and an eyebrow arching at right.

  “What?” I asked.

  He held his arms out, palms up.

  “You gotta be kidding me,” I said, and laughed.

  “So I’m a traditional slob,” he said. “Sue me. Come on....”

  Laughing some more, I consented to this nonsense, cooperating as he lifted me up into his arms.

  What followed was worthy of a silent comedy as he held me like a load of laundry while trying to maneuver with the key in his right hand, getting the door unlocked despite his satin-wrapped cargo.

  Finally we made it inside, into a motel room that had surely seen its share of happy couples, if rarely married ones; but we had to be among the happiest, laughing our asses off as he carted me over and dumped me unceremoniously on the bed. Should have busted the damn thing, but at a motel like this, one thing that was likely to be kept in top-notch working order was the bedsprings.

  The door was still open, sending a slant of reddish neon light into the room; Mike was cast in that devilish shade as he went out to get the bags from just outside the threshold he’d so recently carried me over.

  Then he closed himself and his wife—me—inside the wonderfully drab little room.

  He gestured with an open hand to the furnishings that would have made any Sears showroom circa 1980 proud, including a matador print above the bed, the sword in the red-vested hombre’s grasp having a less than subtle phallic tinge.

  “Do I know how to treat a woman,” he said, “or do I know how to treat a woman?”

  He looked a little like a maitre d’ or maybe a classed-up bouncer at the kind of restaurant where gangsters went to die face-down in their pasta.

  “What is this place?” I asked. “Where you stake out cheating spouses?”

  “What this place is...” Mike was undoing his tuxedo pants. “...is close to the airport.”

  “You said that before.”

  He was stepping out of the pants now. “Five am’s gonna come early.”

  “Sure will. Right after four fifty-nine am.”

  He kicked off his shiny shoes. “Who’s wearing the pants in this marriage anyway?”

  “Not you!”

  And he was looking pretty silly, in his boxer shorts and tuxedo jacket, the tie loose like a bad lounge singer doing Sinatra or Darin.

  He said, “Tomorrow night, we’ll be in our honeymoon suite in Nassau. And I guarantee you it will be twice as nice as this.”

  I shook my head, laughing harder at that than it deserved; with me, if champagne’s involved, I’m an easy audience.

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  I got up off the bed—the spread was blue and nubby, perfect for a teenage girl’s room in 1972—but doing so wasn’t
easy, because of the tight-fitting wedding dress.

  “Help me out of this,” I asked, turning my back on my husband.

  “Uh,” he said, right behind me, “what do you women do with these things, once you’re done with them?”

  I glanced over my shoulder at him. “If you mean, what do ‘we women’ do with old wedding dresses, well, we put ‘em in a trunk and don’t take ‘em out till the next wedding comes along.”

  “Really.”

  “Really.”

  “Well, you’re never wearing that thing again.”

  And I saw him grinning but not in time to stop him as he ripped the dress at the shoulders.

  I wheeled, both shoulders bare, and stood looking at him, astounded and indignant and, goddamnit, amused.

  “No you didn’t,” I said.

  His head tipped to one side. “I’m pretty sure I did.”

  He took me in his arms, firmly but not quite roughly, and kissed me.

  I kissed him back, the lovable brute, and was still in his embrace when he dropped with me to the bed as if we were one, and I squealed and fought, but not much, as he fumbled and yanked and tore and finally worked what was left of the dress up over my legs and the old-fashioned garter belt that held up the sheer white nylons, exposing white panties.

  If Norman Bates had been watching through the matador’s eyes, we’d have been a sight, I’m sure—Mike in his shorts and half a tux, me in the disarrayed remains of my wedding gown; but we were having too much fun to give a damn about how we looked, kissing each other feverishly in between laughter that was turning increasingly lustful.

  Then he was climbing on top of me, and what happened next is as obvious as it is none of your business.

  A single lamp was on in the dreary little room, on Mike’s nightstand.

  He was in black pajama bottoms now, sitting up in bed, on top of the sheets and covers and the nubby blue spread. He was smoking a cigarette, reading one of half a dozen Nassau brochures that were spread over his tummy.

  I was in the black top of the same pajamas, wearing the white panties that were the sole survivor of my wedding outfit, and was almost asleep, curled up next to the big lug.

  “Turn that out,” I said sleepily but not grumpily.

  “I’m planning our itinerary.”

  “Plan it tomorrow....Please don’t smoke. Bad for you, baby....”

  He stabbed his cigarette out in a glass tray that hadn’t been on that nightstand more than twenty-five years. The bedsprings told me he was getting out of bed before I noticed him doing it.

  I looked over at him with half-lidded eyes.

  He glanced back. “Thirsty,” he explained.

  “ ’Cause you smoke! Duh.”

  “That’s why I love you.”

  “What is?”

  “You worry about me.”

  And he leaned over to give me a peck on the cheek.

  Then I put a pillow over my head, to block out the light, as he went out.

  About thirty seconds later, I removed the pillow, sat up, and reached over and shut off the nightstand lamp. The room was dark now, mostly, some of that red neon-tinged light slanting in from the door, which Mike had left ajar.

  But I was happy. The light was no longer on my face, and I was quite confident he’d leave the lamp off when he returned, out of deference to his bride. I was just drifting off when the gunshot exploded the silence.

  I sat upright, and another shot blammed.

  Then I was off the bed but not out the door, de-touring to Mike’s bag, even as another gunshot split the night, and goddamn it, another.

  Mike’s .45 automatic was in my hand as I quickly pushed out through that already-ajar door.

  I saw the horrible tableau at once.

  To the left of our room, down a couple of doors, Mike was sprawled on his back on the pavement near a Pepsi machine, his bare chest puckered with entry wounds and blood pooling beneath him, glistening with neon reflection.

  Hovering over him was an unshaven, long-greasy-haired, wild-eyed lowlife in a leather biker jacket and frayed jeans and with a big, honking revolver in his hand.

  I thought I recognized him—Hazen, Something Hazen...a punk Mike put away a long time ago, for killing a stripper with a wrench or some damn thing.

  He hadn’t noticed me yet, too busy leaning over Mike’s body, ranting, “Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch! I said I’d shoot your ass and I did it! Son of a bitch!”

  “Mike!”

  Hazen turned and saw me running at him, a wide-eyed apparition in a black pajama top with a gun, ready to blast his evil ass to Kingdom Come.

  And he started to flee, shooting back at me as he did, tossing off two quick rounds.

  I didn’t bother ducking. He was firing wildly, the shots landing on either side of me, one kissing concrete, another thunking into a parked car. I ran and I aimed and I shot, the .45 report twice as loud in the night as his revolver.

  But I didn’t hit him, either, and he ducked behind a car, one of half a dozen parked along this row of motel rooms.

  I wasn’t quite running now, more striding, and it was cold out but colder within: frozen with shock and rage, I was moving in a straight line toward the son of a bitch....

  Then Hazen popped out to take a shot at me, but he didn’t get it off, because I shot first—damn!—narrowly missing him.

  I was almost on top of him now, and he went scrambling out from behind his car to the next one down, and again tried to pop up and shoot at me.

  My shot nicked his ear and he howled and ducked down behind a parked car.

  Two cars between me and him.

  Fuck it.

  I got up on top of the nearest parked car and my bare feet made burps in the metal as I stalked across the hood of one, then hopped to the next, and when Hazen popped up from behind the next car down, he had me looking down at him and I was smiling something too terrible to really be called a smile as I sighted the .45 at his ugly head.

  His revolver swung up, but it was way too late.

  The .45 split the night and Hazen’s skull and he flopped back, leaving a cloud of blood mist.

  I gazed down at the dead piece of shit, flung onto the sidewalk, his eyes wide open and looking back up at me, but not really.

  Somehow I climbed down off the car. When the pavement was under my feet, I started to run, to run back to my husband, sweeping past various motel rooms, people in underwear or pajamas in doorways, peeking out cautiously, but I barely saw them.

  I was busy screaming: “911! 911! Now! Now!”

  Then I was kneeling at Mike’s side, bending to him, holding him in my arms and soothing him and cradling him, unaware of the blood I was getting all over myself, praying he could hear me, knowing he could not.

  He was dead. My husband was dead. No question. No getting around it.

  “Bad for you, baby,” I said to him softly. “Bad for you.”

  Time passed. How much I couldn’t say, but all sorts of vehicles were angled into the motel lot now—two police cars, flashers painting the night blue and red; and an unmarked police car had its flasher pulsing, too.

  Over in the middle of things, an ambulance was being loaded up by a pair of EMTs, a white guy and a black guy, putting Mike’s sheet-covered body on its gurney.

  Chic Steele took off his trenchcoat and slung it gently around my shoulders, over the blood-spattered pajama top. Rafe Valer was there as well, not standing with Chic and me, rather over by Hazen’s corpse. But Rafe’s eyes were on Mike as the EMTs loaded the body up and in.

  Somewhere a crime scene photographer was taking flash pics of the dead killer, strobing the night, making it seem even more unreal to me than it already did. I was staring into nothing when the EMTs started removing another gurney from the back of the ambulance, and I came alive.

  I don’t remember going over there, leaving a startled Chic behind, but suddenly I was in the black EMT’s face.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded.


  He swallowed and blinked. “Uh...we’re...the other...”

  I pointed at him; more than pointed, I thumped his chest. “No. You won’t take my husband and his murderer away on the same trip. You come back and pick up the garbage.”

  The white EMT, who looked bored as hell, came over and leaned in closer than was wise. “Lady, no disrespect, we’re just following procedure. Two gurneys, one trip.”

  I took the prick by the front of his uniform and slammed him down onto the gurney—both the gurney and the EMT made surprised squeals.

  No longer bored, the EMT, on his back on the thing, looked up at me, startled and scared shitless. But I didn’t pay any attention to him. I was nose to nose with his partner again.

  “Now,” I said, “you got a full load.”

  The other EMT scrambled off the gurney and he and his partner hauled the empty stretcher up and in, and the white one climbed up in back as the black guy shut him in, and headed around front.

  Then Rafe was on one side of me and Chic on the other, and they were guiding me from the parking lot to the sidewalk. Dazed as I was, I knew they were concerned about me, and were shaken themselves by their friend’s killing.

  The ambulance rolled out just as another Jag pulled in, a white one that had Dan Green behind the wheel with a good-looking, slightly disarrayed young blonde woman, both still dressed for the wedding.

  Rafe was back over by the dead perp and Dan rushed over to him, getting filled in, the young woman staying in the car.

  “Wondered who Dan would wind up with,” I said, amused in some detached way.

  Chic asked, gently, “Michael, are you...are you up to a few questions?”

  “Plenty of contenders at the reception....What?”

  His eyes were tight but his voice stayed gentle. “Do you know who it is you killed?”

  “Son of a bitch who killed Mike.”

  “Yes, but—”

  I frowned. “Hazen is his name. Isn’t it?”

  “Yes. Randall Hazen. So you know who he is? Was?”

  “Got drunk...beat up a stripper, didn’t he? Killed her in a parking lot...with a wrench? Or was it a piece of pipe?”

  Rafe had heard this, approaching. Suddenly I was bookended by the two plainclothes cops.