by Jim Pascoe
I looked down and saw my wallet, still open, resting on my chest. After a quick check, I discovered the small amount of cash I carried hadn’t been touched, but the registration card for my car was missing.
I checked the holster under my arm. My .38-caliber Smith & Wesson Model 637 still rested there. I didn’t even think to draw it; after all, I’d been spoiling for a good fight since last night’s washout.
After a while, I managed to stand. I hobbled over to inspect my hat, still stuck firmly between the big wrench and the wall. Despite the fact that it was brand new, I felt like I’d lost an old friend. I sighed and walked out into the sun. I wondered what time it was. I checked my watch only to find it broken.
I got to my car and flopped down on the seat. It felt good to be in a familiar place. I opened the glove box, broke out a fresh tin of cigars, and slid one into my mouth.
No matter how bad I felt, smoking always made me feel better.
I had no idea how long I’d been lying in the motor pool, and now Doyle had a good head start on me. I needed to get to his place fast. I was thinking about calling Rhoda Chang and having her find me an address, when I realized my answer was right here in the park.
I limped over to where Gus kept his vigil next to a little wooden booth. To his credit, he didn’t say a word about my appearance, which was a small victory of sorts. I knew I wasn’t pretty; I didn’t need to be told. I asked him if he could get ahold of Bobby Regardie for me.
He jumped on a two-way radio. Moments later, Bobby’s chipper voice crackled across the line. Gus slapped the radio into my open hand.
I gave Bobby my twenty, asking him to come and meet me. I told him to hurry, then handed the radio back to Gus and sat down on the curb.
A little while later Bobby pulled up in an animal park golf cart. When he saw my condition, he went pale.
“Holy cow, Ben! Someone sure beat you to a pulp!”
“Yeah, your pal Kirby.”
“You mean the Kirby who works here?”
“That’s right.”
“Hold on there, Ben.” He lifted both of his hands, palms outward, and waved them frantically. “Now, I want you to know that he’s no pal of mine. No sir. No pal of mine would do something like this to another pal of mine.” Suddenly, a puzzled expression clouded his eyes. “Why’d he do this, anyway?”
“Because I figured out that he’s the one who stole your Georgia.”
Bobby sat paralyzed for a moment, then stammered, “What? . . . but . . . I mean . . . we have to get him!”
“I know, and we will. But to do that I need to know where he lives.”
“Where he lives? Well, heck, Ben! That’s easy!” His voice was rich with triumphant glee. “We can get that from admin!”
I managed to stand up. “You go get it. I’ll wait in my car.”
“Righty-right, Ben! You can count on me!”
He sped off to get Doyle’s address; I waited in the Galaxie’s soothing comfort. Me, my smoke, and my pain.
This ordeal had left me numb, but that was wearing off. Now my anger was taking over. And that meant me thinking about taking down Kirby Doyle. This time I wouldn’t forget about my gun.
Bobby returned and climbed into my passenger seat. It took him three tries before he could spit out Doyle’s address slow enough for me to understand it: 1546 Ruskin in Testacy City. I knew the street. It was in a south side neighborhood not known for its upstanding citizens.
I turned the key in the ignition. Instead of the expected gentle roar, I heard a hideous grinding sound.
I tried again. More grinding.
I didn’t know anything about fixing cars. Neither did Bobby. I popped the hood anyway, peering inside the engine compartment. Bobby pointed out a few loose wires, cut clean.
I slammed the hood shut. Kirby sure didn’t leave anything to chance. I had to catch up with him before he blew town.
“Don’t worry, Ben. We can take my van.”
A beeline across the parking lot brought us to Bobby’s white Econoline van. It had seen better days. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that it was a couple miles shy of being scrapped. But we were running out of options, so I climbed in and strapped my seat belt around me, hoping we’d get all the way to Testacy City in one piece.
As Bobby nursed his van onto the highway, I eased back in the bucket seat and nursed my anger. The way this hulking mass moved, it was going to be a long time before we got to the city, and I didn’t want to lose my edge before I found Doyle.
It seemed an eternity before we arrived. The entire way Bobby chattered at me, but I couldn’t tell you a word he said. Being sore and badly in need of a good stiff drink, I didn’t really pay attention.
I navigated Bobby through the city to the ramshackle duplex on Ruskin. 1546, the left half of the building, looked to be boarded up tight. A Mustang, its trunk wide open, was stationed in front of the closed garage door.
The Mustang’s trunk was empty; the garage door, locked. I made a quick circuit of the house, peering in through the dirty windows for some sign of life. I didn’t see a thing, so I headed for the front door and eyed up the lock. Bobby came running up to me.
“Ben, what are you doing?”
“What’s it look like? I’m going inside.”
“Well . . . don’t you need a warrant or something?”
“I’m a detective, Bobby. Not a cop.”
“But . . . ummmm . . . then it’s breaking in, isn’t it? You just can’t break into places, Ben!”
I pulled a slim leather case from the breast pocket of my coat. “I’m not breaking in, Bobby.” I flipped open the leather case and selected a pick. “I’m sneaking in.”
“But . . .”
“Look. This guy took your snake. Do you want her back or not?”
“Of course I do, but—”
“Then let me do the job you hired me to do. If it makes you uncomfortable, go wait in your van.”
“Okay, Ben, I’m sorry.” Finally, he caved. “How about if I just wait out here, like a lookout?”
I nodded and got back to work. A few minutes later I stood inside the home of Kirby Doyle.
It didn’t take me long to investigate the small one-bedroom. As I would have guessed, cleanliness wasn’t one of Doyle’s virtues. A locker-room smell hung in the air. Filthy clothes piled up everywhere, and a mound of dirty dishes sat in the sink. I don’t think he’d ever cleaned his bathroom.
There was no sign of man or snake, but plenty of insects crawled through the house.
Based on the layout, I figured out the door just off the tiny kitchen led to the garage, the only part of the house I hadn’t yet searched. I tried the door. Locked.
I took a step back and kicked, right where the latch held the door shut. The crack of splintering wood rewarded me. I kicked again, and this time the door flew open. I dropped to one knee and pointed my gun inside. What I saw made me shout out, “Jesus!”
Heavy footfalls sounded behind me.
“What is it, Ben?”
I pointed inside with my pistol. Bobby peered in. Now it was his turn to shout, “Oh my God!”
He pushed past me into the garage. I didn’t want to go in there, but I sure as hell didn’t want Regardie’s hurricane hysterics causing any more damage.
I went after him.
The narrow garage looked a lot like the motor pool at the animal park. Short benches jammed with tools lined three sides. More tools hung from the walls.
Unlike the motor pool, though, Doyle kept a half-dozen snake cages—complete with captive reptiles—along the far wall.
Numerous white rats scurried all over the garage. Most of them had splotches of blood on their fur.
The wire cage I assumed the rats had been kept in had toppled off a workbench and landed on the ground. Next to that, an enormous canvas bag covered part of the floor. It looked red and wet, having soaked up a good bit of the pool of blood it was swimming in.
Also in that pool lay Kirby Doyle’
s body. A snake, one that could only be Georgia, stretched out on the floor right next to him.
Mentally, I knew that Georgia was a big snake, but I still wasn’t prepared for seeing her in the flesh. Easily twice the size of Kirby, she took up almost as much floor space as a small car. Yeah, she was one big snake.
And she had swallowed Kirby Doyle’s left arm up to the elbow.
Bobby stood over the body, his eyes darting all over the garage.
Doyle was flat on his back with his legs, bent at the knees, curled under him at an awkward angle. A clean, deep slice in the flesh of his neck, right through the jugular, still gurgled a little blood. I almost pitied him.
“What the hell happened?” I wondered aloud.
“I told you Georgia gets cranky when she’s hungry,” Bobby answered. “She might be big, but she’s fast. I’ll bet he was trying to move her, and she wasn’t happy about it. So she snapped at him. Pythons have some pretty sharp fangs, don’tcha know.”
“Good aim too, from the look of things. Then she decided to eat him?”
“She didn’t mean to hurt him, Ben. She didn’t want to be moved, and she was hungry.” His voice took on a whining that made me wince.
“If she was hungry, why didn’t she go for the rats?”
“They’re fast; hard to catch. Kirby’s arm, though, it’s bigger and just laying there—”
“It was probably twitching at least a little,” I guessed.
“Even better. It was a bigger, easier target. There isn’t an animal in the world that would pass up an opportunity like that, Ben.”
“All right. I guess it makes sense. I’d better call the cops. Stay here, and don’t touch anything.”
I went back into the house and found the phone. The police told me someone would be along shortly. Standard routine.
I returned to the garage to give Bobby the update. I found him about to cut off Doyle’s left arm with a hacksaw.
“Bobby!” I shouted. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t want her to eat too much, Ben. She’s not used to this much food!” His eyes pleaded at me.
“Put down the saw, Regardie. Christ, the last thing we need is for you to get taken in on suspicion of murder.”
“But I didn’t kill him, Ben.”
“I know that, but the cops don’t.”
“But—”
“Just put the damn saw down.” I slipped my arm around him and walked him over to the nearest bench. He reluctantly dropped the saw.
“Thanks, Bobby. Let’s go wait outside.”
As we left the garage, he looked back over his shoulder and whispered, “It’ll be all right, Georgia. Just hold on, girl.”
We sat in front of the house in silence.
I smoked.
Bobby chewed his fingernails.
* * *
We got to our feet when a squad car pulled up, followed closely by a plain brown Dodge.
Two officers got out of the black-and-white and went inside the house. Two detectives climbed out of the other car and headed over to me and Bobby.
One of the detectives, dressed in a cheap brown suit, I recognized as Mark Weisnecki. I’d dealt with him a few times before, and I didn’t trust him.
Weisnecki’s partner sported a deep-blue suit combined with a pink shirt and a floral-print tie. He even had a deep-blue porkpie hat and floral pocket square to complete the ensemble.
Although I’d never seen him before, I knew who he was: Duke Wellington, the new cop in town. He stormed right over to me.
“Who the hell called this in?” He pointed at me like he was pointing a gun. “Did you call this in?”
“Yeah, I’m Ben Drake.” I held out my hand. He ignored it.
Weisnecki pointed at Bobby. “Why don’t you come with me,” he drawled.
“Where are we going?” Bobby asked with a quivering voice.
“Got a few questions for ya,” Weisnecki said.
Bobby looked at me, uncertain what to do. I don’t think he’d ever been on the receiving end of this sort of thing before. Me, I was an old pro.
“It’s okay, Bobby, just tell him what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”
Bobby nodded. Weisnecki led him to a spot just out of earshot and started in with the third degree. Poor Bobby.
That meant I got to go a few rounds with Duke Wellington. For a long moment he just glowered at me. I had to hand it to him, he had a steely gaze. He rumbled a question at me.
“So you’re a dick, huh? A private dick?”
“Yeah, I’m a detective. I work for the Always Reddy Detective Agency.”
He snorted through his wide nostrils. “I’d watch your step if I was you. This is my city now, and I won’t put up with your mischief.” He nodded his massive head, more for his benefit than mine. “That’s right, it’s Duke Wellington’s city, and you’d better watch your step.”
“So you’re this new detective I’ve been hearing so much about.”
“Look, I ain’t here to make idle chatter, Drake. That’s not my game. I’m here to solve a murder. I come to this here town, and what do I find but people stabbin’, shootin’, stranglin’ everybody else. I say to myself, Duke Wellington, this city’s got trouble comin’ out of the wazoo—that’s w-a-z-double-o. Wazoo.” He cracked his knuckles. “So why don’t you tell me what happened here.”
I could see what kind of guy I was dealing with, so I gave him the facts, just as they happened. I didn’t think Bobby had it in him to lie, so I even threw in the bit about the hacksaw. Then we switched dance partners and Weisnecki asked me all the same questions, all over again.
Our stories must have matched to their satisfaction. In the end, they obviously didn’t find enough evidence to call Doyle’s death a murder. The final nail in the coffin arrived along with Testacy City Medical Examiner Rebecca Hortzbach.
Rebecca and I were good friends. She’d helped me with more cases than anybody, even my fellow ops. I wasn’t used to seeing her in the field; I mostly ran into her at the county morgue. But every so often she would pull a roving coroner shift just to get out of the basement.
She looked at the scene and pretty much confirmed Bobby’s account of Doyle’s death verbatim.
Naturally, this didn’t make Duke Wellington too happy. He surprised me by consenting to let Rebecca cut off Doyle’s arm so we could load Georgia into Bobby’s van.
Duke Wellington had the last word before we drove off; he told us to keep ourselves available, just in case he had any more questions.
Bobby dropped me at my apartment, then turned his jalopy for home, giant snake and all.
My apartment was cool and comforting. I poured myself a glass of Old Grand-Dad and collapsed into my easy chair.
I’d send a mechanic down to get my car tomorrow. I certainly didn’t feel like making the drive again tonight. Besides, it had been a busy few days. Tomorrow I’d rather work out of the office and catch up on my paperwork than drive all over the desert trying to get my car fixed.
Although it looked like I’d be late again. After all, I had to buy a new hat.
Case Four
Midnight Train to Nowhere
“Hey, Drake, my man . . . seen the paper yet?”
Mike Manetti had a way of taking the most common question and making it sound like the lead-in to a bad joke, a habit that never failed to annoy me. Besides, he always picked the worst time to be buddy-buddy.
“No, Mike,” I sighed as I slapped shut a manila folder and tossed it into my out tray. This particular Wednesday morning, Manetti found me trying to catch up on a few old cases before my boss called me into his office to assign me another. Usually I looked for any reason I could find to avoid paperwork, but one of the few things I liked less than filling out old case files was listening to Manetti’s attempts at small talk.
I leaned back in my chair and looked up at him. “I just got in.”
“Yeah, me too.”
I breathed out my exasperation.
“I’m trying to do some work here.”
He screwed up his face at me, trying to get his mind around the concept. I drained the last few drops from my coffee cup and didn’t wait for him to finish. “I suppose you’re going to tell me—”
“Wait’ll I tell you this, Drake. It’s Trout Mathers. That’s big news, huh?”
That name. Trout Mathers had done a fine job of keeping quiet since our last run-in. I spent a fair share of time wondering when we’d cross paths again.
“Mike, I don’t have all day. If you’re going to tell me something, you’ve got to let it spill.”
“Aw, man, I’m getting to it.” He leaned back with boyish indignation and stuffed his hands into his faded jeans.
Before I could get in another jibe at him, I heard: “You better make it quick, son, ’cause Ben Drake’s a detective with not a lot of time for dilly-dallying.”
This voice belonged to the agency’s patriarchal detective, Harper “Pappy” Meriwether.
“Pappy! I didn’t hear you come in.”
Pappy smiled at Manetti’s comment. He knew that at seventy he could still sneak silently into a room, even with his trusty cane. The fact that a fire engine could sneak up on Manetti didn’t seem to lessen this victory in Pappy’s eyes.
“Yes, I came in all right. Heard you talking the talk about Trout Mathers.”
Every detective in the group knew Mathers, a notorious gangster, the sly type with a penchant for banks and broads, the type who always managed to keep from getting nabbed. They also knew that not long ago he’d slipped away from me.
I’d had enough of the small talk.
“So did they finally catch him with the goods?”
“Catch him with the goods?” Pappy’s top lip curled up as he glanced back at me. “You could say that,” he chuckled softly. “Yeah, I guess you could say that all right.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Drake!” Mike Manetti’s eyes grew large as he tilted his head back and finally spat out, “He’s dead!”
Pappy picked up the story and ran it home. “Not just any ol’ kind of dead, Ben. The kind of dead we call murder. They found him, face beaten raw and strangled with his tie, in the Purple Knights Motel.”