Hot Shots (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Laurence Gough

  Today, for the first time in his working life, he wasn’t wearing his contacts. The effect was little short of catastrophic. The lively, sparkling blue of a summer sky had faded overnight to the washed-out color of a pair of raggedy old jeans. It was as if Goldstein had changed his name to Dorian Gray. Overnight, his eyes had lost their lustre, their lust for life.

  Willows, leaning against the desk in Goldstein’s dusty, lidless glass box of an office down at the far end of the crime lab, got straight to the point. “Lose your contacts, Jerry?”

  The worn crochet cushion shifted beneath Goldstein’s buttocks; his captain’s chair squeaked in dismay. He critically scrutinized his cuticles, drummed his knuckles on the steel surface of his desk. Finally he said, “I decided not to wear them anymore.”

  “Why not?” said Parker.

  “Too dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” said Willows. “I remember reading about a guy who was attacked by a contact lens.”

  “You know how many times a day the average person blinks?” said Goldstein. “Thousands. And every time you blink, your contact lenses shift across the surface of your eyes. Know how far the average lens travels during the course of a single day?”

  Willows and Parker exchanged a look. Willows could tell by the way Parker’s eyes were squinched up that she was trying not to laugh. “A long way, I bet,” Willows said.

  “The length of a football field,” replied Goldstein promptly. “More than a hundred yards. Constantly moving back and forth, back and forth. Think about it. What do we get when two surfaces rub against each other?”

  By way of example, he pressed his palms together and made a brisk scrubbing motion, his watchband gleaming in the overhead fluorescents.

  “Heat?” said Parker.

  Goldstein smiled. Parker blushed.

  “Friction, Claire. And when you’ve got something as hard as plastic pressing up against something as soft as the tissue of a human eye ... You wear contacts, don’t you?”

  “No,” said Parker.

  “Your eyes are naturally that dark?”

  Parker nodded. Goldstein stared at her as if he couldn’t quite make up his mind whether to believe her or not. He’d replaced his contacts with a pair of heavy, black-plastic framed glasses with lenses thick as a TV screen, that looked about twenty years old. He took the glasses off and polished them with a Kleenex. There were red marks on the bridge of his nose, little pressure indentations on his cheekbones in front of his ears. Behind him, the brain of a famous mass-murderer floated benignly in a jar of cloudy liquid. Parker remembered reading somewhere that the brains of all creatures, including humans, had the same caloric rating — about 150 calories per ounce. Why would she bother to remember such a useless piece of information, instead of, say, her postal code? “The shooting down at the foot of Granville Street,” she said. “What have you got for us?”

  Goldstein replaced his glasses, got them aligned to his satisfaction on the bridge of his nose. He leaned forward in his chair, consulted a pad of lined yellow paper.

  “I assume the situation is static, that we’re still looking for a corpse?”

  “High and low,” said Willows.

  “There was only one blood type in the Pontiac,” said Goldstein. “O positive. The brain tissue was human, and the bone fragments probably came from a human skull.” He paused. “I can’t be certain about that last point. A guy named Waters, physical anthropologist out at UBC, has agreed to take a look. He’s one of the best in his field. Said he’d know if the bones were human by the day after tomorrow. If it is, you’re looking at murder. No one could survive that kind of wound.”

  “We’d assumed from the start that it was something a little more serious than a nosebleed,” said Willows.

  Goldstein nodded. “There was quite a bit of hair in the car, some of it attached to flesh. The victim was Caucasian, definitely a male.”

  “Can you give us an approximate age?” said Parker.

  “Not with what we’ve got. If I had more bones, the rest of the skull or part of the spinal cord, I might be able to do something.”

  “Prints?”

  “Nothing. That car was wiped cleaner than a ...” He trailed off, glanced at Parker, looked quickly away.

  “What else?” said Willows.

  “From my point of view, Jack, the first thing you should do is find the body. The body would definitely be an asset. Judging from the crime scene, I’d say the shooting was done at point-blank range. It turns out the body’s in good shape, I’d expect to find evidence of smoke particles, lubricants, grime from the barrel.”

  Goldstein turned a page in his notebook, squinted, adjusted his glasses. “Now you’re gonna ask me about the spent twenty-five and forty-five calibre shells you found, aren’t you?”

  “What about them?” said Willows.

  “Like we figured, the guns were automatics, a Star and a Colt. But other than that, nothing.”

  “No prints on the shell casings?”

  “They were clean.”

  “Not even a partial? Were they wiped clean?”

  “I’d say so, yeah.”

  Goldstein removed his glasses, peered worriedly at the lenses.

  “Problem?” said Parker.

  “Last time I wore these was in pre-med. They’re scratched all to hell, and I can’t pick up my new ones until tomorrow afternoon.” He put the glasses back on. “You found a witness, I heard.”

  Willows cocked an eyebrow.

  “The bag lady,” said Goldstein. “The woman living in the Cutlass.”

  “She was deaf, Jerry, and half-blind. She saw no evil.”

  “Not that she’d admit to.”

  “You know something I don’t?”

  “From what I heard, you could’ve pushed her a little harder, that’s all. Maybe dragged her down to detox, let her spend a couple of nights in the tank.” Goldstein smiled. “Put a hook on her mobile home. Squeeze her a little, see what comes out.”

  “I’ve tried squeezing people like her,” said Willows. “What comes out are tears, Jerry.”

  “Hey, it’s your case.”

  “That’s right,” said Parker. She gave Goldstein a look: worm in apple.

  “Just trying to help, that’s all. I mean, you don’t have a victim or a suspect. But you seem to think you can toss me a hank of hair and a piece of bone, stand back and wait for another miracle on Main Street. Well, let me tell you something, I’m a forensic scientist, not the goddamn Wizard of Oz.”

  “Thanks for your help,” said Willows.

  Goldstein slammed the door behind them. The glass panels shivered, but held.

  “What was that all about?” said Parker.

  “His wife’s pregnant,” said Willows. “She had an amnio. It looks like twins.”

  “Really?”

  “They were going to go to Europe this summer. Trip of a lifetime. They’ve been saving for years.”

  “And now it’s off?”

  Willows nodded.

  “The poor guy,” said Parker.

  Willows gave her a puzzled look.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I thought you’d be all over him for not anticipating the thrill of fatherhood.”

  “What is he, about thirty-five?”

  “Thirty-nine.”

  “By the time the kids are old enough to travel, he’ll be in his mid-forties. Probably by then they won’t be able to afford the trip in the first place, but even if they do manage to go, it won’t be the romantic holiday they wanted. He’ll spend the whole trip listening to the twins tell him what a rotten time they’re having.”

  “You sound as if you’ve given it a lot of thought.”

  “When my parents took my sister and I to Europe,” said Parker, “I was so bored I thought I was going to die.”

  Willows checked his watch. “Want some lunch?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “All the better. It won’t cost as much to feed you.”

/>   They walked up Main to Keefer, turned right and went past one of the BC Tel booths that had been made to look like somebody’s idea of a miniature Chinese pagoda. “The Green Dragon all right?” said Willows.

  “It’ll do.”

  They strolled side by side down the sloping sidewalk, past clothing and jewelry stores, several restaurants. A row of barbecued ducks hung in the window of a butcher’s shop, their slick brown bodies kept at a temperature the city’s health inspectors periodically insisted was certain to result in food poisoning. So far, after more than a century of good eating, no one had complained.

  Willows pushed the restaurant’s glass door open, held it for Parker. A waiter wearing baggy pants and a white shirt led them to a booth. Willows sat facing the door. The waiter dropped menus on the table and started to wander off. Willows called him back.

  “Chicken Chop Suey, for two. Diet Cokes. A bowl of steamed rice.”

  “You want chopsticks?”

  “Please.”

  “Tell me again,” said Parker. “What is it about this place that you like?”

  “The ambiance.”

  Parker glanced around. The walls were painted a dull, scabrous green. The linoleum was so badly worn she couldn’t even tell what color it was. Although it was late August, last year’s Christmas decorations still hung from the bile-yellow ceiling.

  The waiter returned with the chopsticks and cans of Coke, a couple of red and white striped straws.

  “Could I have a glass, please?” said Parker. She turned to Willows. “You want a glass, Jack?”

  Willows grunted. Had there been two killers? Or had the .25 belonged to the man who’d been shot? If the gun had been fired in self-defense, maybe it was the guy with the .45 who’d been hit. Willows popped the tab on his Coke, sipped thoughtfully. Goldstein was right. He needed a body. Until he had a body, he had nothing.

  13

  “Tell me what happened, Randy.”

  “I already told Frank. Didn’t he tell you?”

  Gary said, “How’d you get those cuts on the back of your head?”

  “Shaving.”

  “What kind of razor you use?”

  “I dunno. Those ones you use two or three times, throw ’em away.”

  Gary nodded, waited for more.

  “Bright orange,” said Randall. “In a four-pack, wrapped in plastic. You can get ’em anywhere ... the corner store ...” He searched his mind for the right word, found it at last. “Disposable.”

  “You’re bleeding. Did you know you were bleeding, Randy?”

  “Sometimes I cut myself. It happens. But it don’t bother me, I got a high pain threshold, half the time I don’t even know it happened.”

  “What is it you got stuck on there, toilet paper?”

  “Kleenex,” said Randall. He sounded hurt, as if Gary had insulted him.

  “When’d you last do that to yourself?”

  “Do what?”

  “Shave.”

  “This morning, about ten.”

  “And you’re still leaking blood? What’s the problem, can’t stop picking at the scabs?”

  Gary stared at Randall DesMoines for a moment, and then sighed and looked away, into the orange and red depths of the gas flames dancing in the fireplace. Was hell really like the inside of a great big furnace, all hot and scorchy? Maybe he should tell Frank to stick Randall’s bald head in there, burn a little sense into him.

  “Frank?”

  “Yeah, Gary?”

  “Forget it.” Gary sipped at his Molson Lite. Beside him on the couch, Samantha was busy peeling an orange. Gary watched her split the rind and then use her thumbnail to bulldoze the white gunk that clung to the inside skin.

  “Frank?”

  “Yeah, Gary?”

  “What’s that white gunk called, that she’s digging at with her fingernails?”

  “Beats me,” said Frank.

  Gary watched her segment the orange. Take a big bite. Juice, sticky and cold, squirted out of her mouth and across Gary’s arm.

  “Hey, baby, I already had a shower.”

  Samantha leaned over, took his arm and held it up to her mouth, licked him clean. Gary liked, really and truly liked, the feel of her tongue, febrile and wet, as it glided smoothly across his skin, flattening the coarse black hair on his wrist. He smirked at Frank but Frank was studying the ceiling.

  Gary turned his attention to Randall, small-time drug dealer and part-time pimp, full-time halfwit. “You’re right, Randy. You told Frank and he told me. But now I want to hear it from your own sweet lips. Then, if I feel like it, I can tell Frank. And we’ll all have had a turn. See my point?”

  “Sure thing, Mr Silk.” Randall cleared his throat, sipped at his gin and tonic.

  Gary could see he was a little confused, needed a cue. “You got a call from the nightclerk at the hotel,” Gary said. “Then what happened?”

  “I went over there and up to a room and met this guy who said he wanted three women. For research. Told me he was a writer, doing a thing on dope addicts. I asked him what he really had in mind. Said he had some smack he wanted to sell, there was a sample stashed down the hall in the ...”

  “Wait a minute, hold it. Why the broads?”

  “It’s hard to figure,” said Randall. “I think his idea was that most hookers are junkies, so it was a way of making a connection.”

  “Fucking idiot. What happened next?”

  “Told me he had a stash hidden down the hall, in the john. About half an ounce. I sent my woman after it, Moira. You ever met her?”

  Gary shook his head, no. And he probably didn’t want to, come to think of it.

  “While she was gone, the guy started getting antsy. After a couple minutes he decided to take a walk.”

  “And you tried to stop him. So he shot you.”

  “In the leg, Mr Silk. Twice.” Randall touched his bandaged knee.

  “You’re a tough cookie, Randall.” Gary shook his head in apparent admiration. Frank had told him about the wounds. Randy’d caught the first bullet, a .22, in the fatty part of the thigh. Through and through, nice and clean. The second round had grazed his knee; he’d lost some skin but that was about it. Gary wasn’t too impressed. He’d never been shot himself, but he didn’t imagine it hurt all that much. Frank, on the other hand, had been hit on two separate occasions, the first time in the small of the back, second time in the chest. Both rounds had been big-bore stuff — a cop’s .38 wadcutter and the one in the chest a .357 Magnum fired by some clown Frank had never seen before or since, who’d taken down a poker game on the one night out of a thousand Frank had been a winner. Gary had noticed the wounds in the hot tub. Puckered white flesh, shiny and hard with scar tissue. The .38 had been the bad one, collapsed a lung. Frank hadn’t wanted to talk about it but Gary had drawn him out. Gary stared at Randall DesMoines, who’d spend the rest of his life bragging about what a hard-ass he was. Slimy little creep. Probably his idea of a good restaurant was some place where you could find lots of gum stuck under the table.

  “After you got shot,” said Gary, “then what?”

  “The guy went out the window, climbed down the fire escape. My boys went after him. I gave the room a quick toss and got the hell out of there.”

  “You didn’t think it was a good idea to stick around, see if he might come back?”

  “Like I told you, I’d been shot. Was bleeding all over the goddamn place.”

  “Still are,” said Gary. He gave Frank a wink.

  Randall took a hit from his gin and tonic and snuck a quick look at Gary’s girlfriend, the cute blonde with the tight sweater and loose mouth. Her name was Samantha but Gary called her Sam. Why would Gary change her name so it made her sound like a boy? Weird. “Even a small-bore handgun makes a hell of a racket, Mr Silk. I figured somebody must’ve called the cops.”

  “Okay, you left the hotel. Then what?”

  “I went back to my place.”

  “Where’s that, Randall?” />
  “China Creek. I got an apartment there, a condo. Two bedroom and den, top floor. Nobody walking around on my head. Quiet.”

  “Cable TV, too, I bet.”

  Randall nodded, hesitant.

  Frank chuckled softly.

  “So you went home and watched an old Bogart movie, is that it?”

  “No, I watched Moira do the dope.”

  “Shoot up the free sample from the Vance.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You weren’t worried it might turn out to be baking powder, icing sugar or whatever. Lye, maybe?”

  “Moira gave it a taste. Said it tasted good.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet it did.” Sam had broken a wedge of orange in half and was rubbing it across Gary’s arm, the back of his hand, his fingers. Her tongue flicked at him, slurp slurp. He moved away from her. His gold chains clinked softly. He said, “Gimme ten minutes, go take a shower.”

  “Okay,” said Samantha.

  Gary watched her walk out of the room and then turned back to the idiot. “So Moira shot up, yes?”

  “Right,” said Randall. “She was dead inside of, like maybe five minutes. I found her in the bathroom, sitting on the toilet. It’s a narrow space in there, between the toilet and the tub. She’s leaning against the wall, eyes wide open, staring up at the goddamn light fixture.”

  “Died of an overdose, you’re telling me?”

  “A hot shot. The junk hadn’t been stepped on, was pure as Ivory Snow.” Randall glanced at Gary. “She had a big smile on her face, I’m pretty sure she died happy.”

  “That must be a relief.”

  “We were together a long time, me’n Moira. I’m gonna miss her.”

  “The guy who popped you, what happened to him?”

  “We lost him down by the waterfront.”

  “He had a car?”

  “No, he was on foot.”

  “But your guys had a car, didn’t they?” Gary smiled. “Big shot like you, Randall, I hope you didn’t tell them to take the fucking bus.”

  “There was four of them, Mr Silk. Three on foot and one in my Lincoln. The guy was jumping fences, running in and out of buildings. It’s warehouses and all that shit down there. Dark.”