By the Balls

by Jim Pascoe

  “The drunk tank.”

  Wellington pulled the gun he’d found in the bread box out of his pocket and held it by the trigger guard in front of Wells’s nose. “This yours?”

  Wells took a step back, hands open and up in front of him. “No sir. I haven’t owned a gun since . . . before my last stretch.”

  Knicke laughed, and said, “You gonna believe that line, man? That’s so old . . .”

  Duke Wellington looked over at his partner and knew they were thinking the same thing. Weisnecki grimaced, like he’d just swallowed something bad, and nodded. Wellington nodded back. Yeah, they were thinking the same thing all right. What a mess.

  Weisnecki kicked one of the legs of the chair Knicke sat on. “Stand up and turn around,” he said, pulling out a pair of handcuffs.

  “You too, Wells. Let’s see those hands,” Wellington said, putting a big hand on the gambler’s shoulder.

  “What the hell’s going on here? I got rights, you know,” Knicke said as Weisnecki clicked the cuffs shut. The little thug yelped and tried to squirm out of the cop’s grip.

  “We know all about your rights, but it’s like this,” Weisnecki said, tightening the cuffs around Knicke’s chubby little wrists. “Things are getting a little sticky here, so we’re gonna continue this downtown.”

  “Downtown? Give me a break, man, I’m just tryin’ to keep my nose clean,” Wells said.

  “If you’re keeping clean you ain’t got a thing to worry about, Wells. Not a thing,” Duke Wellington said, giving Wells a gentle shove as they headed out of the kitchen, then out the front door of the house.

  Once they got to the station, it only took a quick conversation with the desk sergeant to verify that Wells had spent the previous night and a good chunk of that morning in a cell with a few other hard drinkers. He didn’t get out until after ten, too late for him to have gotten halfway across Testacy City to throw a few pills into Bones.

  “No way Wells could’ve done this, no way at all. We gotta cut him loose,” Duke Wellington said as he and Weisnecki walked down the dirty hallway that led to the interrogation rooms.

  “What do you think of Knicke?” Weisnecki asked.

  “What do I think of guy with the first name of Charles but prefers to go by Chip?” He flipped through the thin manila folder he held in his big hands. “Somethin’ sure ain’t right with that, that’s what I think.”

  Weisnecki laughed. “Nervous little guy, ain’t he?”

  “Nervous as they come,” Duke Wellington said, stopping outside the door to the interrogation room where Knicke was being held. “Tell you what, let me run this thing. I got an idea.”

  “Okay.”

  Duke Wellington opened the door and stepped inside. An anxious Chip Knicke sat hunched over the metal table with his hands in his lap. Sweat dotted his balding head, and he fidgeted as the two cops walked in, closing the door behind them.

  Weisnecki leaned back against the wall and watched as Duke Wellington offered Knicke a cup of coffee. Knicke said yes, so Weisnecki stepped out and walked back down the hall to the coin-operated machine in the lobby. When he got back to the room, Knicke was sucking down a cigarette—one of Weisnecki’s Luckys. By the end of the smoke, Knicke had relaxed a little, and that’s when Duke Wellington got to work. He moved slowly, slipping into the role of Knicke’s buddy, prodding him about what kind of living he made off collections, how he liked working for Bones, and what he’d done that day before they caught up with him at Wells’s place. He even slipped Makoff’s and Nolan’s names into the mix at one point, and that got Knicke’s full, wide-eyed attention.

  Wellington kept hammering Knicke with the same questions, phrasing them slightly differently each time he asked, then stopping Knicke when he contradicted himself to let the guy dig himself in deeper. The hard thing about lying is that you have to remember to separate what really happened from what you’re making up and then store them in different parts of your brain where they can’t get all mixed up. Knicke couldn’t do that very well.

  It took a long time, but after a few cups of coffee, and a lot of cigarettes, Duke Wellington just stopped talking.

  After an awkward moment, Knicke started looking all around the room. “What’s going on? Are you letting me go now?”

  “Are we lettin’ you go? Mark, check out this funny guy. No, we’re not lettin’ you go. Not now that we know you did it.”

  “You . . . you know I did it?”

  “A few months ago, you start skimmin’ off the top of the take, nothin’ bigger than five notes, like you don’t think the big man’s gonna know.”

  Knicke averted his eyes.

  “But then, before you can make your nut, Bones tumbles to your skim, and BAM, it’s showtime. Ain’t that right?”

  Knicke kept his mouth shut.

  “How ’bout this then: where’s the gun?”

  “You already got the gun,” Knicke snapped.

  Duke Wellington leaned back in his chair. “Not your gun, bozo. You know we got that. I’m talkin’ ’bout the gun that Bones pulled on you.”

  Weisnecki coughed. He didn’t like interrogation; he really wasn’t any good at it, and he knew it. But he did know a good interview when he saw one, and Duke Wellington ran one fine interview.

  Knicke dropped his head, his whole body went slack, like all his muscles just stopped working, and he said, “Okay, okay. I killed him, okay? I didn’t want to . . . but . . . but I had no choice. I was real careful with covering my tracks, but yeah, he figured it out. Damned if I know how. Hell, I was gonna pay him back too, but he just got mad and started coming after me.”

  “Coming after you with a gun,” Wellington said with a smile. “Man, I can read you like the Bible. So you shot him.”

  “Well, yeah . . . he’s waving his piece around and yelling like he did. But he’s big, moves slow, you know. So I pulled out my heater and . . .” Knicke made a gun with his hand and pointed at his own reflection in the mirror on the wall. He dropped his thumb and said, “Blammo.”

  “Where’s this gun that Bones used?” Weisnecki asked.

  “I took it when I left and dumped it.”

  “That’s a damn shame. We find that gun, you might get by with self-defense,” Wellington said.

  “Some vacant lot on Fifth—right by where the tracks come through.”

  “Why frame Wells?” Weisnecki asked.

  “I don’t know. I just never liked him ’cause he’s a loser, I guess.”

  “Well that, Chip my man, is a feeling you got to get used to.”

  * * *

  After they had Knicke tucked into a holding cell, Duke Wellington and Mark Weisnecki walked out into the cool night air and stopped on the front steps of the station house. Wellington took off his hat and stared up at the night sky, marveling at all the stars. He didn’t remember ever seeing stars like that in Atlanta. Weisnecki, tweed coat folded over a forearm, chased away the darkness for a moment when he lit a cigarette with his butane lighter.

  Wellington slipped his hat back on his head. “You think Knicke’s hooked up with Makoff and Nolan somehow, don’t you?”

  “I know it.”

  “You know? As in you know for a fact?”

  “Nope. I just know,” Weisnecki said.

  His partner laughed. “Intuition, huh? We gonna do anything about it?”

  “Nope. Ain’t worth it. Not right now, anyway.”

  Wellington shook his head and walked down the steps. He’d figure this town out sooner or later, and then he’d show everyone some real law enforcement. At the bottom of the steps, he turned back toward Weisnecki. “This a typical day in this town?”

  Weisnecki shrugged. “Sometimes they’re better. Usually they’re a lot worse.” He shook his pack of Luckys and offered one to his partner.

  “Don’t smoke.”

  Weisnecki chuckled for a moment. “Workin’ this town? You will. You drink though, don’t you?”

  “Drink? Hell yes, I drink.�
�

  “Then why don’t we grab a beer and talk, partner-to-partner? And I’ll introduce you around to some of the guys.”

  Duke Wellington smiled, despite himself. “Best offer I’ve had all day. Lead the way.”

  “Forget that, pal,” Weisnecki said. “You’re driving.”

  Case One

  The Silent Ventriloquist

  “Oh, Ben Drake, come in, come in,” she said, taking my hand in both of hers, holding it up like she was going to kiss it. Thankfully, she didn’t.

  She led me into a modest one-bedroom apartment. A sheen of middle-class splendor covered the room. Cheap gold accents on picture frames, lamps, and fixtures made the room glow, an earnest attempt at looking rich. The place seemed more like a display than a living room, and something gave it a distinctly unwelcome feel.

  My foot caught the edge of an upturned imitation Oriental rug. The short, showy hostess spun around on her toes. Her hand flicked long, dark, curly locks over her shoulder. She looked around, waiting for something, as if she were the one new to the room.

  I stared straight at her. “Mrs. Summers, as I said on the phone—”

  “Please. No need for formalities. It’s Misty Summers, darling.”

  “Right.” A chill hit my brainpan at the thought of being her darling. “Look, I thought we covered your concerns on the phone.”

  Misty tilted her head, and the way she held her arms to her hips made her chest thrust forward. Her height (I guessed her at not much over five feet) made the gestures even more pronounced.

  “Don’t you want to check out the crime scene?” she asked.

  “I would if there actually were a crime scene. As it stands, I don’t know what the crime is.”

  “Why, don’t be silly, Ben Drake! The Sensational Stan Summers has gone missing!” She threw an upturned hand to her forehead, feigning the beginning of a faint. “Oh, it’s all too much.”

  I stood in silence, rolling my eyes and trying not to sigh too loudly. I had come over here mostly because I had time to kill, and I wanted to put an end to the nonstop “missing persons” calls that had been coming to the office from this broad for the past two days.

  “Can’t you dust for clues?” she suggested. “Or ask me questions that might lead to the safe return of my husband? Please, Ben Drake, do something for me!”

  “Okay,” I said begrudgingly. “Let me ask you a few questions. When was the last time you saw Stan?”

  “Stan Summers, my husband, who normally performed his act at a small community theater—it’s a fabulous act, darling, simply fabulous. Have you seen it?”

  “No. You mentioned earlier he is a ventriloquist, right?”

  “Yes, yes. A ventriloquist.” She clasped her hands to her chest. “Oh, I like the way that sounds, that word: ventriloquist. That’s the sound of good-quality family entertainment.”

  The inhabitants of Testacy City liked their entertainment in the form of dice, cards, ponies, liquor, and loose women. Rarely did entertainment involve a man with a talking mannequin.

  “He makes people laugh, Stan does.” She smiled as she floated her eyes to the ceiling. “I have to ask you, isn’t that what people really want?”

  People wanted to forget about hardship and misfortune; about unfulfilled dreams and missed opportunities; about the crime, murder, and mayhem that so often filled the streets of Testacy City. Sure, they wanted to laugh.

  I nodded in agreement.

  “Stan and I moved here a couple of years ago.” Misty stepped away from me and started aimlessly rearranging the knickknacks that littered her territory. “We wanted to be stars. I mean . . . we still want to be stars.”

  More and more people like these two were showing up here, hoping the glitz and glamour of ’50s-era Las Vegas could be recaptured in this sister city a hundred miles to the north. But Testacy City wasn’t ready for glitz. It wasn’t ready for glamour. It certainly wasn’t ready for a ventriloquist.

  “Ah, you were telling me about the last time you saw your husband . . .”

  “Yes . . . yes, I was. The last time I saw my darling Stan in the flesh was Monday night.”

  “What time would you say?”

  “I think about nine . . . yes, nine p.m.—right before he left to do his . . . dreadful act.”

  “I thought you said his act was fabulous.”

  “Oh, it is, it is.” She pooh-poohed the air with a tiny paw. “But he has another act, a simply terrible, dreadful act.”

  “What sort of dreadful act?”

  “I honestly don’t know. I’m even a little nervous just talking about it. But I know it has something to do with the occult.”

  “And what makes you think—”

  “Stan lost his father when he was a young boy, and over the years he’s tried a lot of different things to contact him: séances, Ouija boards, and all sorts of other weird ceremonies. He’s just obsessed with the supernatural.”

  “And you think this obsession of his has something to do with his disappearance?”

  “I most certainly do!”

  “How so?”

  “I have no idea, I just know. He hasn’t called or even sent a note, and that’s totally unlike him.”

  Her little round face pleaded with me.

  “Oh, Ben Drake, I didn’t want him to do the show, but I agreed, hoping that if I let him, he’d finally come to his senses and abandon all that silliness.”

  Her chest heaved as tears welled up in her eyes and ran down her cheeks, leaving streaks like scars in her heavy makeup.

  “But deep down I knew he’d never stop,” she whimpered. “He’s just too superstitious.”

  I was going to have to sit. Something about this room made me feel uneasy. I only realized then that it wasn’t the décor. It wasn’t the clutter of useless objects; it was that there was nowhere to sit. No chairs, no sofa, no hospitable love seat. Not even a cold, impersonal bench.

  An odd-shaped steamer trunk looked like as good a place as any to land my posterior. I made my way over to it to give my legs a break.

  “So where did he go to do this show?” I asked.

  I was half-seated when Misty cried out: “Oh please, don’t! Don’t sit there!” She rushed over with her arms extended, offering me help back up. I didn’t need any.

  “I’m sorry, Misty. I just assumed it would be strong enough for my weight.”

  “No, no, it’s just . . . it’s just, this is where Stan keeps his assistant.”

  “His assistant? You mean—”

  She cut me off again; she was a regular pro at that. “Yes, Ben Drake, that’s right. I mean his little person.”

  I couldn’t hold back the laughter on that one, so I tried to cover it with a quick follow-up: “Where was this other show that Stan put on?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t want to know anything about it.”

  This was getting me no closer to tasting the bacon. I suspected there might be some meat in the trunk. “Can I take a look in here?”

  “Why, of course you can. I’d be more than happy to open it up for you.”

  She put her hand on my shoulder, a token gesture to give herself a little space. I took the hint and took a few steps back. For the moment or so she was preoccupied with the trunk, I looked around the apartment.

  Throw pillows of gaudy embroidered colors rested on the floor. Apparently this was the part of the clutter you were supposed to use for sitting. Between these seats, all kinds of tables held even more junk. My eye caught an old-fashioned metal lighter neatly arranged atop a battered book on one of the many tables.

  “Well, here he is!”

  Her voice broke my visual concentration. Perhaps because I wasn’t paying attention to her, the line threw me for a second.

  “Here who is?”

  “Ta-da! The one . . . the only . . . the amazing assistant to the Sensational Stan Summers . . . Dandy Don!”

  The trunk lid sprang open; I leaned over to peek in. Marble eyes stared back at
me, along with a perpetual wooden smile, painted brown freckles, and molded blond hair, all dressed up in a tiny black suit, white shirt, and snappy red bow tie. This Don was dandy all right.

  “Well, Ben Drake, darling, aren’t you going to say something?”

  “That’s one nice dummy.”

  An annoying stream of laughter trickled from her painted mouth. Misty Summers was no spring chicken, but the more time I spent around her, the younger she seemed. I could picture her, over time, turning into a puppet herself.

  “You may know a lot about detective work, Ben Drake, but you know very little about ventriloquism. This is called a vent figure.”

  “Right. I’ll be sure to remember that.”

  “Dandy Don is Stan’s favorite vent figure. He has this fabulous act worked up. I’ll be honest; I did help him with it, only the littlest bit, I mean. Stan asks the kids in the audience—it’s a kids act, did I mention that? Family entertainment, that’s what pays the bills these days—Stan asks them jokes and then Dandy Don interrupts him with the punch line! There was this one time, it seems like just the other day, even though it had to be one, maybe two years . . .”

  Misty was in her own world now, rattling off stories that were so candy-coated they gave me a bellyache. My eyes snapped back to the old-style lighter. Something about it got my senses buzzing, and I’d learned early in this business to trust my senses.

  “. . . the kids laughed and laughed. I kept telling Stan, ‘They’re laughing at your act, not at you, darling Stan.’ But you know how performers are, right, Ben Drake?”

  “Yeah, sure.” I paused for a moment so she didn’t think I was ignoring her as much as I actually was. “What exactly do you do for a living, Misty?”

  “I’m a voice actress. Why, Ben Drake, don’t tell me you don’t recognize my voice.”

  “Misty, yours is a voice I wouldn’t be quick to forget.” I tipped my hat to her. It was the nicest backhanded compliment I could think of.

  “Well, I guess after all it was a children’s program.” She stood up straight and said proudly, “I was the star of Karl Kiwi’s Outback Hour. I performed the voice of Wanda Wombat. Would you like to hear a little bit, darling?”