Night Kills

by Ed Gorman

  Brolan nodded. "My partner. Foster."

  "Then the envelopes make sense."

  "What envelopes?" Brolan said.

  First Wagner told him about the videotape showing various men in the same hotel room at different times with different women (including Emma), and then he told him about the envelopes Emma had received each month from Foster. Just as he was finishing his explanation, Denise said, "Look, Frank." Brolan switched his attention to the screen. A reporter in a trench coat stood screen left with a microphone, while in the background there was a night shot of Brolan's house. Red emergency lights flashed blood-red in the gloom. Bundled-up neighbours stood watching fascinated as a large, boxy ambulance backed up to the side door.

  The reporter said: "… At which time, about an hour ago, police were notified by an anonymous caller that a body could be found in the freezer downstairs. Police, who've been in the house, have now confirmed that this is indeed the case. Repeating: A body has been recovered from a chest-type freezer in the basement of a suburban Minneapolis home. Police also confirm that the body is that of a young woman. So far there has been no identification."

  "I'm dead," Brolan said. "He's set it up perfectly."

  Wagner snapped off the TV set. "Why would Foster do this to you?"

  "I'm not sure exactly, but I think I know somebody who might be able to tell me." He took the hot chocolate Denise carried over to him. "Charles Lane. Somehow he ties in to all this." Brolan felt his stomach knot, felt acid sear his stomach lining and oesophagus. His mind kept returning to the screen-the reporter grim, the emergency lights flashing off the otherwise unremarkable white house. There was no way the police would believe his story of merely storing the body in the basement until he could find out who had killed her…

  Wagner said, "If I say something, will you promise not to get mad? I'm just trying to help."

  Denise stood next to Wagner's wheelchair, her arm hanging loosely around his shoulder.

  "I'll be happy to listen," Brolan said, trying to keep his eyes from the TV screen.

  "How about calling that detective and telling him the truth?" Wagner said.

  "An hour ago that might have worked," Brolan said. "But now that they've found the body-" He sighed, dropped his head into his hands. Then, abruptly, angry at Foster for having set him up so elaborately, he raised his head and said, "I'm going to see Charles Lane."

  Wagner nodded to the TV. "The police will be looking for you now."

  "I know." Brolan stood up. "But right now I don't have any choice but to risk it."

  Wagner said, "Somehow you've got to get Foster to confess."

  "Maybe I could just write a confession for him, and he'd sign it?" Brolan was immediately sorry for the undue sarcasm of his tone. "Sorry, Greg."

  "If we could just figure out some way to smoke him out." Brolan smiled bitterly. "Well, if you come up with any brainstorms, let me know." He glanced around the duplex. The place looked comfortable. He'd planned to stay here a while, relax, figure out what to do next. The live TV report changed all that, of course.

  Denise said, "Maybe I've got a brainstorm."

  "What's that?" Wagner said.

  "What if I call Foster and tell him I'm the girl he tried to kill Wednesday night, and that I want him to bring me some money tonight, or I go to the police?"

  Brolan shook his head. "If you saw what he did to Emma, you wouldn't want to get anywhere near him. You're lucky to be alive as it is." He nodded to Wagner. "I don't want to have to worry about her," Brolan said. "Just make sure she doesn't do anything stupid. All right?"

  Wagner patted Denise's hand on his shoulder. "She'll be fine." Brolan said, "I appreciate your trying to help me, Denise." She sounded young and defensive and hurt. "I was just trying to-"

  Brolan leaned over and kissed her on the forehead and gave her a hug. "I know what you were trying to do, Denise. And I appreciate it, I really do. But I'm going to have to handle things this way. All right?"

  She sighed and returned his hug. "Good luck, Frank." Then he was gone, back into the cold, dark night.

  32

  THE MOTEL DIDN'T HAVE MUCH STYLE, but its three sections stood angled against the night, offering, at the very least, comfort from the screaming wind and the biting snow. Snow was starting to pile up on the slanting red roofs and in the parking lot. Already several cars looked as if they would be buried till a snowplough came and started earnest work. People bent their heads into the whipping wind and ran from their cars to their respective sections and rooms.

  Brolan stood in the blast of snow, finishing his cigarette and staring in the motel's front-office window. He was freezing, but somehow the cold only made him all the more resolute about dealing with Charles Lane and then with his partner, Stu Foster. He flipped his cigarette into the wind, which promptly slammed it, tossing and turning, against the rear end of a canary-yellow Buick with a JESUS LIVES! sticker on its bumper.

  In the office Brolan went up to the counter. A man in a blue cardigan and a blue button-down shirt and a red-and-blue holiday bow tie stood watching him. The man was white-haired and wore rimless glasses. He was probably sixty. He was applying chapstick to his somewhat prim mouth. There was something obscene about this to Brolan, as if it were a dirty secret the man should not be so willing to share with others.

  "Hi," Brolan said.

  The man nodded, continued what he was doing.

  "I'm looking for Charles Lane."

  "Do you have an appointment?"

  "Afraid not. But I'd still like to see him."

  The man did Brolan the favour of putting his chapstick away. "Then, I'm afraid you can't see him. He's very strict about appointments." The man raised serious blue eyes to a clock on the wall behind Brolan. "Especially after horn's."

  Though Brolan wasn't experienced at this sort of thing, he slid a ten-dollar bill from his pocket and laid it on the desk. "I'd appreciate any help you could give me."

  The man smiled. "You must be a bad-movie fan."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  The man nodded to the ten-dollar bill on the counter. "Bad movies. Somebody's always trying to bribe somebody else."

  "You don't want it?"

  "I'd rather have my job than ten dollars, my friend."

  Feeling foolish, Brolan picked up the ten. "You sure?"

  "Positive."

  Brolan said, "You're an asshole, you know that?"

  "I've been called a lot worse than that. Asshole is almost a compliment."

  And with that the man turned his attention to a small portable TV set on a desk behind him. On the screen Pat Buchanan and Michael Kinsley were calling each other names on Crossfire.

  Shaking his head, sliding the ten back in his pocket, Brolan slunk back to the parking lot.

  He stood in the blast of wind and snow wondering what to do next The desk clerk had given the impression that Charles Lane was definitely somewhere inside. Therefore, instead of standing out there feeling sorry for himself, Brolan should be inside, combing the halls and looking for the guy.

  That wasn't too hard to figure out.

  So, he went inside and started combing the halls and looking for the guy.

  Brolan hated motels. Walking the narrow hallways, no windows in sight anywhere, always gave him the claustrophobic feeling of being in a submarine. At least the carpeting was new and the corridor paint recent, so the place didn't look grungy on top of everything else.

  He moved toward the centre of the place, where the three buildings merged, assuming that there he'd find the places where guests congregated. He was right. The first thing he found was the swimming pool. Two small kids swam quickly and smoothly up and down the water lanes, spitting silver water at each other as they moved and laughing about their ingenuity. A sour woman in a lime-green one-piece swimsuit that revealed too much hip and too much cellulite watched the kids with a kind of smouldering, nun-like authority. The next place he found was the workout room, taken up by two wonderful-looking young w
omen in leotards who were being shown the weight machine by a curly-headed guy who couldn't have been half as neat as he obviously held himself to be. Brolan leaned in and said, "Excuse me, I'm looking for Charles Lane."

  The curly-headed guy shot Brolan an irritated expression, turned slightly from the ladies, and said, "What?" He happened to glance at his formidable biceps as he said this.

  "I said, I'm looking for Charles Lane."

  The muscle boy looked at the girls and winked and said, "Good for you."

  Then he went back to demonstrating the equipment. Brolan's next stop was the aerobics room. There were maybe twenty women working out. Some of them looked pretty tasty.

  The instructor was a very serious-looking redhead in a mauve leotard and a lot of sweat. Parts of the mauve looked almost black. Brolan went on down the hall. Halfway along he saw a man who wore a blue blazer and a white shirt and a red regimental-striped tie and grey slacks and black loafers with big tassles and a lot of TV-minister hair spray. He had a little dealie on his breast pocket that read 'Manager'.

  "May I help you, sir?"

  He sounded as hearty as a Jaycee trying out a new pitch. He was big, maybe six two, and chunky, and there was a certain operatic quality to his manner.

  "I'm looking for Charles Lane."

  The manager frowned only slightly. "I probably should refer you to the front desk."

  "You mean, you don't know where he is?"

  And then the manager gave Charles Lane away. Just the way he glanced down the hall to an office marked Private. Maybe in time Brolan would have figured this out for himself, but the manager had done him the favour of confirming the obvious suspicion.

  "I think he's gone home, sir." He made a big deal of thinking hard for a moment-sort of like an eighth-grader in a play about Einstein contemplating nuclear energy-and then said, "Yes, now that I think about it, I'm sure I saw him pulling out of the lot about twenty minutes ago."

  "Darn," Brolan said. "I'll just have to try again tomorrow."

  "Is there a name you'd like to leave, sir?"

  "No. I'll just try him again tomorrow."

  "Well, see you, then."

  "Thanks," Brolan said, waving goodbye.

  He went back down the corridor, glimpsing the babes in aerobics, sneering at muscle boy, who was still demonstrating the weights to the two helpless damsels, and then sucking up the odours of chlorine as he passed the swimming pool.

  The manager was not around. The door marked Private stood unguarded.

  Brolan put his hand on the doorknob. He was surprised to find it unlocked.

  He turned the knob and pushed inside.

  The office was spacious, done in earth tones with mahogany wainscoting and mahogany furnishings. A long row of filing cabinets stood on one wall; a smaller desk with a phone and adding machine was pushed against the other. The overall effect was of a serious rather than simply decorative place.

  One other thing: The office was empty.

  This confused Brolan. The way the manager had looked nervously at the door, Brolan had expected to find Charles Lane in there.

  A few seconds later a noise came from inside the closet door at the rear of the office. At first Brolan thought it might be a furnace kicking on. But then the faint but unmistakable noise came again. Inside the closet something was swaying against the wall.

  Brolan walked across the office to the back. He leaned carefully to the door and listened.

  He heard somebody saying, "Go, babe. Give it to her, babe."

  What the hell was going on here?

  Brolan pulled the door open and found out for himself.

  Inside the small closet a videotape camera had been set up flush against a piece of one-way glass. On the other side of the glass, an old man was humping a frail young girl who was probably not much older than twelve.

  Brolan recognized the man immediately. Say hello to Harold McAlester, the client with the bald head given to leather jumpsuits, the man Brolan had seen earlier that morning in the office with Foster. The motel room was a mess of whiskey bottles and food trays.

  The man operating the camera-the man urging McAlester on-turned, abruptly aware of Brolan's presence, and it was just then that Brolan hit him hard enough on the side of the face to draw blood from his nose. The man slammed against the wall, and the camera fell in a noisy heap as the man started to stumble.

  If McAlester, on the other side of the glass, heard anything, he didn't let it deter him.

  He turned the little girl over on her stomach so he could back-door her. Even in a glimpse a naked McAlester was an obscene sight, white chest hair and sagging little titties. The little girl looked virginal as an eight-year-old on First Communion Sunday. Brolan wanted to go in there and kick in McAlester's face.

  But right then Charles Decker Lane was closer, so Brolan proceeded to kick in his face.

  33

  IT TOOK FOSTER AN HOUR to find Greg Wagner's place. Not that it was hidden or anything, just that the roads were getting that bad.

  He parked across the street and sat there for a time thinking about winter, how it howled, how it raged, how it made almost anything going on seem insignificant. You could lose yourself in winter and its furies, and that's just what he did for a time. Shut off the engine. Listened to the trees above creaking with ice. Listened to wind rattle shutters. Watched a city snowplough moving down the street like a giant yellow electric monster. Thought of his mother and father. His father, especially. Sometimes he imagined himself reaching out across die black gorge separating life from death. Touching his father's hand. Comforting his father. As his father had comforted him. Somewhere his mother was still alive. He hadn't talked to her in fifteen years and didn't plan to; he had not even gone to her when that heart condition showed up, and she pleaded with him to come to Rochester and see her there in the hospital. No fucking way, bitch. Why don't you count on your football player now? The man who'd been such a cutie and such a celebrity and such a hunk was now a lard-ass alcoholic who spent his time talking about what pussies the new generation of ballplayers were. Yeah. Hope you're enjoying yourself, Mom. Nobody deserves it more than you.

  Then he didn't think of anything at all. Just sat there with the wind rocking the car and cold air seeping in through the doors, and the windows fogging up a ghostly grey.

  Finally it was time. Go across the street and push the gun in the door and demand that the cripple tell him where the tape was.

  On the seat was the.38 he sometimes took out to the gun club when he wanted to relax and zone out. There was something about the feel of a weapon clutched in your hand-you could easily imagine that the targets were really people. Starting with Mother. Dear, fucking Mother. Blam, blam, blam, Ma. Blam, blam, blam.

  Five minutes later he stood on the doorstep, hunched over because the wind was like a thousand tiny razors cutting his face and neck. The way the wind whined, he wondered if they could even hear his knock. Faintly he could hear a TV set going. He knocked again, let his eyes rest on Emma's part of the duplex. In a peculiar way he'd liked Emma. She was like a kitten. So gentle, even when you were pushing her around. He knew she hadn't liked him, not ever. She was one of those women who'd sensed instinctively who he really was and what he was really about. So, he'd been forced to pay her very well indeed for his various favours over the past couple years. Because otherwise she wouldn't have worked with him.

  The door was opened by the young girl he'd tried to kill Wednesday night. "Yes?" she said, making it sound as if he were trying to sell them unwanted Boy Scout cookies or something. She didn't recognize him. He saw that instantly. No recognition whatsoever.

  "My car," he said. "It stalled across the street. I wondered if I could come in and use your phone so I could call a service station."

  "Oh, sure," she said. She smiled then. It was a very healthy, clean-cut smile. She was very good at hiding the fact that she was a little whore. "We'll even give you some hot cocoa."

  "Gee, I really apprec
iate this," he said, standing back so she could push the front storm door open and let him come inside.

  He took two steps across the threshold, glancing over at the man in the wheelchair; then he jerked the.38 from his overcoat pocket and put it dead against the girl's temple.

  "You're Foster," the man in the wheelchair said. "You're the killer."

  Foster saw recognition in the girl's eyes.

  "Do I look a little different from Wednesday night, Denise?" he asked, smiling.

  Before she got a chance to respond, he cracked her hard across the mouth, knocking her backward to the couch.

  He pointed the gun at the man. "I want the tape, pally. I don't want any lies, any excuses, any stalling. Either I get the tape right now, or I kill her. Do we understand each other?"

  Wagner said, "I don't have the tape anymore."

  Foster leaned down and grabbed the girl by the hair and jerked her to her feet. She cried out from the pain and tried to kick out at him. He just yanked on her hair all the harder.

  Finally he yanked the girl close to him-so close he could smell the sudden sweat on her body and feel the slight clamminess on her skin-and put the gun once more to her head.

  "You know how it's going to be, pally?" Foster said. He nodded to the east wall where framed photographs of long-dead movie stars were neatly and reverently arranged. "You're going to lose two ways. Because her brains are going to spray all over that wall and spoil your nice fancy photographs. Now, no more bullshit. I want the tape."

  "It's in my room."

  "Get it and bring it to me."

  Wagner glanced anxiously at the girl. "Don't pull her hair anymore."

  Foster smiled. "Kind of sweet on her, huh?" He laughed, thinking of his father. "Bet she's safe with you, isn't she? All these other guys sniffing around her little teenage pussy, but not you, Wagner. Not you. You couldn't do anything if you wanted to." He gave the girl's hair a final twist and then shoved her back on the couch. Her knee struck the coffee table as she fell forward. Once again she cried out. He waved the gun at Wagner. "Now, go get the tape."