Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  "I want to know why you broke into Emma's duplex last night."

  Cummings's answer surprised him. "How the hell'd you know about that?"

  "The girl you knocked out told me about it."

  "I didn't mean to hit her so hard. She shouldn't have been looking through my car."

  Cummings finished his lap and swam to the ladder. Climbing out of the water, he shook his head and then sleeked back his hair. He grabbed a nubby white towel from a deck chair and started towelling himself off.

  "So, what the hell're you doing here, Brolan?"

  "I want to know why you were in Emma's duplex."

  Wet, eyes red from the chlorine, white hair turned a dirty grey from the water, Cummings said, "Why the hell do you think?" He tugged his blue trunks up.

  "I don't know. That's why I'm asking you."

  Cummings began to work his jaw muscles. He narrowed his eyes and glared at Brolan. "What's going on here? You know damn well what I was looking for in her duplex. The nice little package I pay 'rent' on every month."

  Brolan started to ask him what he was talking about, but just then the doorman came into the pool area. His voice echoed off the tall ceding and the lapping green water. "There's a call for you, Mr. Cummings."

  "Thank you," Cummings said, poking a little finger into an ear and cleaning out some water. To Brolan, he said, "I've got to say one thing, Brolan. I'm surprised you'd have anything to do with this."

  "With what?"

  Some of the anger died in Cummings's eyes. His gaze was one of curiosity, then surprise. "You really don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

  "No, I don't."

  Cummings's laugh bounced off the pool walls. "My God, Brolan, did you think it was because you two assholes are such great businessmen that you suddenly started picking off accounts?"

  "Cummings, I want you to tell me what you're talking about." Cummings patted his arrogant, handsome face with the nubby towel. "Go ask your partner, Brolan. Maybe it's time you started asking him about a lot of things."

  Before Brolan could say anything else, Cummings's wide white feet began slapping the wet tile floor. He was heading for a wall phone about ten yards away. He was obviously finished talking with Brolan, even if Brolan wasn't finished talking with him.

  But just before he reached the phone, Cummings turned around and said, "Tell the girl I'm sorry I hit her so hard."

  He walked over to the phone, jerked up the receiver, and began talking.

  Brolan stood there a long moment. What the hell had Cummings been talking about? What was he paying 'rent' on? And what did Stu Foster have to do with any of this?

  In the lobby, furious without quite knowing why, he went over to a bank of pay phones. They weren't enclosed, so he knew that he'd have to watch what he said. He called the office and asked for Foster. Still at lunch, was the answer. He hung up.

  As he walked to the parking lot, the cold finally dispelling the sharp, lingering scent of chlorine in his nostrils, his mind raced with possibilities of Stu's role in all this. But what would that be?

  And what had Cummings been looking for the night before, when he'd knocked out Denise?

  He got in his car and left the country club. As he made his way out, the man on the snowblower waved again.

  Brolan waved back and then gave his car as much power as it could handle on the icy road.

  29

  HALFWAY THROUGH HIS SEARCH, he found the photograph. It looked as if it had been taken sometime during the sixties, because the little girl standing next to a 1967 Ford was not only dressed up in a Sunday blue dress but was also proudly hugging a Partridge Family album to her chest. The girl was very young and, in the sunny day, squinted up at the camera, which only made her look even more vulnerable than she would have naturally. The girl was Emma.

  "Did you find something?" Denise called from the other room.

  He had to clear his throat. Looking at the photograph had touched him in a way he hadn't wanted to be touched. Not by Emma. Not anymore.

  "No," he said. "I'm still looking."

  Over lunch Denise and Greg had speculated about what the man who'd broken in the previous night might have been looking for. Ultimately-because they had decided that the man probably had not found what he'd come for-they'd come over to Emma's and started looking for something that probably wasn't very mysterious at all… but something that was no doubt vital to the killer.

  In a bureau drawer Greg had found the photograph, and he couldn't stop staring at it. In a way the photo put a curse on him. He had decided that he no longer loved Emma; that in her heart she'd seen him not as an individual or a man but as that abstraction known as a cripple. He had decided two days before to keep that in mind whenever he felt sentimental or sad about her. But staring at this photo… he wondered what she'd been like as a little girl. He wished he had a time machine and could go back to her on that sunny Sunday morning and talk to her. Help her, really.

  If Greg had raised Emma, she certainly would have turned out to be a very different woman. Not hating herself; not lacking even the barest self-confidence. (She genuinely believed she was ugly and stupid; Emma-ugly and stupid!) He would have seen that she took her studies seriously, that she dated only the right kind of boys, that she went on to college… And then, of course, (in this time machine fantasy) she would have fallen in love with him. He would have offered her a wonderfully normal girlhood, and she would have returned the favour by seeing that no one loved her as well as Greg Wagner himself. And it would not have been pity, and it would not have been gratitude; it would have been pure love, an admixture of both the romantic and the more mature sorts of love, and they would have been bound up in this forever.

  He had no idea that he was crying as he sat in the sachet-scented bedroom, slumped in one corner of his wheelchair.

  But behind him, gently, Denise said, "You all right, Greg?" And when he looked up at her, he felt very foolish, of course, and unmanly, tears silver on his cheeks. "I'm fine."

  She grinned. God, she did have a cute, impish grin. "Yeah, that's just how you sound, too. Fine."

  He had to laugh. He was sad, but she got him laughing, and he silently thanked her for it.

  She came over and stood next to him and looked at the photograph. "Is that Emma?"

  "Yes."

  "Boy, she was really pretty."

  "She sure was."

  "You'll always love her, won't you, Greg?"

  He smiled up at her. "Actually I'm trying to not to."

  "Really? How come?"

  "Because she didn't love me."

  "From what you said, I'll bet she did."

  "Well, not in the way I wanted to be loved anyway."

  "So, why should that stop you from loving her in the way you want to love her?"

  "Because it makes me feel weak and foolish."

  She leaned over and kissed him on the side of the head. "You know what it is?"

  "Huh?"

  "It's your pride. That's all." Then she tousled his hair. "You men. You're all alike." She snatched the photo from his hand and said, "Now, give this to me, and I'll go get it framed for you tomorrow. This is a great picture, and you should keep it someplace special in your duplex."

  She thumped him on the shoulder. "And forget about your pride, Greg. You've got enough problems without that hanging over your head."

  By then, of course, he was laughing and laughing hard. She was treating him just like a child… and somehow making him understand (without hurting his feelings) that he was behaving just like a child.

  From the back pocket of her jeans she pulled out a manila envelope and held it up. "What's Brolan's partner's name?"

  "Stu Foster. Why?"

  "Well, he sure sent Emma a lot of letters. Or not letters, exactly. Envelopes. And-oh, yeah-and this tape that was inside this box of candy."

  "What?" Wagner said. Already he was trying to reason through what Denise was telling him and imagining how interested Brolan would b
e in this piece of information. Why would Stu Foster send Emma envelopes? Why would Stu Foster even know Emma to begin with?

  "Here," Denise said, handing him the envelope. "There's a whole pile of these in a kitchen drawer. You want to go see them?"

  Wagner, sounding as if he'd just discovered gold, said, "Lead the way!"

  30

  HE WORE AN EARRING. Foster had never quite gotten used to that, a guy wearing an earring. Much as he hated to admit it, the earring threatened Foster in some way.

  But then, so did most everything else about Charles Decker Lane.

  Lane was a thirty-seven-year-old man who'd inherited a small chain of ten motels from his father. That was back in the seventies, just as the Motel 6's and the other low-priced lodgings were moving into the mid-western market. Lane, an MBA from Northwestern, had been of the mind that people would ultimately tire of the low-enders. The average businessman wanted more than a closet-sized toilet that smelled of disinfectant and two double beds that were practically bunk beds, the way they almost piled on top of each other. Or so had been Charles Decker Lane's thinking in the mid-seventies, right before Jimmy Carter and the recession and stagflation happened and made Charles Decker Lane eat every foolish goddamn word he'd said. In February of 1977 he'd had 1416 rooms under his control. By April of 1978 he had fewer than 200-three frigging motels left out of the ten he'd started with, and not a one of them within walking distance of an airport. Or did they even have airports in Terre Haute, Indiana, site of two of the motels?

  Which was when he discovered cocaine, first as a user, then as a distributor. Back when he got in, the thing was like a big Amway deal. There was even a certain amount of fun in it, not to mention just ducky profits. The chicks liked it especially. Even the country club bitches he met at his brother's would finally give in and fuck him if he offered enough cocaine. (His brother's wife thought that Charles Decker Lane would someday die of a state-injected terminal drug and told everybody this.) The white stuff made him lots of green stuff, but then things started changing, and for once in his young but unsuccessful life, Lane knew when to get out of something. The first thing he did was go to a chemical dependency clinic and get himself clean. Talk about a bitch. He hadn't cried this much since he'd found his first wife balling that nigger football player right in Charles Decker Lane's bed. (Lane had broken her nose, knowing that was the only satisfaction he was going to get, assuming that she was going to soak him in divorce court.) The second thing he did was tell everybody that he was clean and no longer dealing. He even went to a downtown dealer and turned over all his names and contacts free, gratis. (The guy was understandably suspicious that Lane here might be a narc.) Then he took all the lovely money he'd made dealing coke and put it in federally-insured CDs all over the Mid-west. He kept one motel for himself and used as his chief source of income the interest his ducky money was making for him.

  Six years before, Lane and Foster met at a party one wintry night, got along, and started talking about all the ad execs who used Lane's sumptuously decorated motel as a sort of whorehouse. Foster, who was then in the employ of Richard Cummings and Associates, didn't start thinking about this till he and Brolan got fed up with Cummings's temper tantrums and decided to go out on their own. There were many ways to go about getting clients-you could wine and dine them; you could marry into the right family; you could even actually show them a few good ads you'd done over the years-but what with all the competition, Foster started wondering if there wasn't maybe a more interesting way to get clients. What if you had a motel room, see, where ad execs had their little trysts… and what if somebody had the room bugged with microphones and a videotape camera… and what if you presented the execs you had on videotape with the choice of exposure (no pun intended) or turning their accounts over to you? Could there be any faster way to get yourself five big-name clients in a very short time? All you had to do was concentrate on which execs were (a) players, and (b) liked some sort of kicks they considered shameful. They'd be begging you to take their accounts once you showed them the tapes. Thus was born the Foster-Brolan agency.

  So, anyway, Charles Decker Lane's earring.

  Foster had always been curious why a guy who wore Brooks

  Brothers suits, a tie stick in every collar, cufflinks, and a hundred-dollar razor cut would wear an earring. Wasn't that a little like a bank CEO wearing a bone through his nose?

  That day, though, Foster tried to forget the earring. He sat with Lane in the motel's coffee shop, telling him about Brolan.

  "You mean he's figured it out?" Lane said.

  "I mean, he's trying to figure it out."

  "And you think he's coming out here?"

  "You can bet on it."

  "I just won't tell him anything."

  "You don't know Brolan. He's got one of those tempers."

  "Well, there's always Ernie."

  Ernie was the night bartender. He used to fight on one of the regular cards downtown. He had a smashed nose and wide, flat fists and a very bad temper.

  "You'll need him," Foster said.

  Lane shrugged. He had cornflower-blue eyes and blonde hair, and a tiny moustache that made him look like a dance-band leader in a thirties musical. "Right now I'm more concerned about Emma."

  "What about her?" Foster said. He had to be very, very careful.

  "I can't get hold of her. I've left about twenty messages on her phone machine, and she hasn't gotten back to me in three days." He shook his head. "Waybright is asking for her again.”

  Waybright was one of Foster's largest clients and a man who had a fairly serious crush on Emma. "You haven't seen her?"

  "No."

  "Or heard from her?"

  "No."

  "I wonder where she is."

  Immediately an image of Emma stuck inside Brolan's freezer came to Foster. As soon as he left Lane, he was going to call the police and tell them where they could find Emma.

  "She'll turn up," Foster said.

  He glanced around the coffee shop. The place was all got up us a forties diner. Art deco meets blue collar. The waitresses wore hair nets out of the Rosie the Riveter era and little buttons that read "Buy War Bonds." Lane often talked of wanting to produce dinner-theatre musicals there. He took his frustrations out on his coffee shop.

  "So, expect him anyway," Foster said. "Fair warning."

  "You sure are uptight. Relax, for Christ's sake, Foster. Everything's going to be fine."

  "Yeah, I suppose."

  "I'll call you as soon as Brolan leaves. Just to let you know that everything's okay. All right?"

  Foster stood up. As he did so, he bit at the nail on his forefinger. He hated it when he started biting his nails. It was such an unbecoming habit. "And let me know if you hear from Emma, too."

  Lane stared at him for a long time. "Sure, Foster. I'll call her again, see if I can scare her up." The way he was looking at him, Foster had the uncomfortable feeling that the man had become a mind reader.

  Maybe in Foster's mind he could read the image of Emma lying dead and rigid inside the freezer.

  "Talk to you in a while," Foster said, and left the coffee shop.

  In the lobby he watched as two very good-looking stewardesses checked in for the night. As people came in from the outside, they made loud noises stamping their feet on the big rubber mats over by the row of newspaper vending machines.

  Foster found a phone booth. He went inside and closed the door. Then, as an afterthought, he opened the door again and checked out the booths on either side of him.

  Back in his own booth again, the door closed, he deposited thirty-five cents, looked up the number of the downtown police department, and placed his call.

  When the receptionist answered, Foster asked for Homicide. "Anybody in particular?"

  "No, sir." Foster had a handkerchief over the receiver. An old trick, to be sure, but an effective one.

  "Then you can talk to me. I'm Sergeant Inspector Nordengren."

  "All
right" He paused.

  "What is it you'd like to tell me, sir?"

  "About a murder."

  "About a murder?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, what about a murder?"

  "There's a dead woman in the freezer."

  "I see. And where would this be?"

  Foster gave the man Brolan's address.

  "And would you know how she got there?" the detective asked.

  "I think so."

  "And how would that be?"

  "He put her there."

  "He?"

  "The man who lives there."

  "Ah. And would he possibly also be the man who murdered her?"

  "I don't want to say any more. I've said enough already."

  "But-"

  "I've been a good citizen. Now I just want to forget about it." And with that he hung up.

  He imagined Inspector Sergeant Nordengren was going to be quite busy the rest of that evening.

  31

  AROUND SIX O'CLOCK, just as dusk was becoming black night, and snow flurries began to increase, and the winds from the north-west cranked up several miles per hour, Brolan pulled up in front of Greg Wagner's duplex. He had spent two dollars in change trying to locate Stu Foster by phone, trying the office again, Foster's home, and several downtown bars where Foster liked to go. Nothing.

  Denise answered the door. She wore a bulky blue pullover sweater that he suspected belonged to Greg. The jeans he recognized from the previous night. She had her blonde hair tied in a ponytail with a red Christmas ribbon. She looked younger and even prettier than she had before.

  "You look like a guy who could use a straight shot of hot chocolate," Wagner said. Behind him the TV was rolling into the six o'clock news. It was the usual team of hair-sprayed and lacquered TV news people.

  "Yeah, I could," Brolan said, sitting down on the edge of the couch, pawing at his face with a big hand. He frowned at Wagner. "I figured out who killed Emma."

  "What?" Wagner, whose attention had been drifting to the news, snapped his head back in Brolan's direction.