A Love to Kill For

by Conor Corderoy

  I poked a cigarette into my mouth but I didn’t light it. I put my hands deep in my pockets and strolled around, having a careful look. At first sight there was no sign that anybody other than Strickland had ever been in that room, except, of course, for the hole in his skull. But then I began to notice things. He was in a double bed, but he was pushed up against the wall, like he’d been making room for somebody else. Which meant somebody else had been occupying the rest of the bed. When I strolled over and looked at the pillow again, I saw there was a slight depression next to his head. I smiled in a way you might describe as ‘rueful’. At least he hadn’t been alone on his last night on Earth.

  I leaned closer and narrowed my eyes. Then I reached over and from under his shoulder, I pulled a long, blonde hair. Two got you twenty that on his last night on Earth he had been with the woman he loved. Some guys just get all the luck.

  I cleaned my prints from the drawer, the passport and the door handle, inside and out, then stepped onto the landing. I knocked on door A. Something told me if anybody knew anything about anything, it was the woman with dark eyes in apartment A. It was opened by a young woman who might have been Colombian. She had a baby on her hip who was diligently transferring the contents of his nose into his mouth. I tried not to look. Mom looked me over a couple of times and said, “Wha?” with a small shrug of her shoulders.

  My Spanish isn’t good but I know a language most people understand. I showed her a twenty and said, “You know Pete Strickland, the hombre from C?”

  She looked at the money a while and shifted the kid on her hip. She said to the bill, “Ye, I know hing.”

  “When did you see him last?”

  Her face went hard and her eyes flicked over me. Searching for those intangible but unmistakable signs that say you’re a cop. She didn’t find any and asked, “Jou police?”

  “Uh-uh. I’m a friend. Viejo amigo.”

  She let the twenty convince her and said, “I see hing Wednesday nigh’. He cung home early from work. Usually he cung home seex or seveng, but Wednesday he cung home at four. I no see hing since.”

  “Has he had any visitors?”

  She nodded. She leaned on the door frame. She was getting interested. “A woman come to see hing. On Wednesday.”

  “What time?”

  She shrugged. “Preddy late. Maybe twelve o’clock.”

  “What she look like?”

  Unexpectedly she laughed. “Too good for hing, tha’s for sure! She was preddy. She look like a film star. Loss of blonde hair, beaudiful body…” She swung her hips a couple of times to illustrate. “Beaudiful dress, expensive. Is kind of weird, you know? A woman like that comin’ to see a bum like Pete…at that time of night…” She eyed me, as if hoping I might be able to explain. I couldn’t.

  Instead I asked her, “How long did she stay? When did she leave?”

  She pulled a face, shrugged and hitched the kid on her hip. “I donno. I go to bed. Late. Maybe she din’ go.”

  “Anybody else come to see him after the woman?”

  She shook her head. “Uh-uh, nobody. I don’t think he’s here. I don’t hear nothin’ since Wednesday.”

  I nodded and handed her the twenty. “Thanks.”

  She took it with quick fingers and smiled. “You’re welcome…”

  I paused on the way down to light my cigarette and stepped out into the street, pocketing my Zippo. The two Rastas had been joined by a white guy who could have been anything between thirty and seventy, preserved in alcohol and stinking of stale sweat and tobacco. He looked up at me and did whatever grinning looks like when you do it with your gums instead of your teeth. He wheezed a laugh and I pulled out another Camel and tossed it to him. I said, “You know Strickland?”

  His face lit up, like something wonderful had happened. “Yeah!” He spoke like Noddy, with the East London accent of the Cockney. “I know Strickland. He lives up there…” He pointed where I had come from. “But he’s blown, man. Gorne. Vamoosed.”

  I lit the cigarette I’d given him and said, “How d’you figure that?”

  He maneuvered his bony ass so he was leaning against the wall and he could look up at me without straining his skinny neck. “He tow’d me, didn’ he. He tow’d me, ‘I’m out of here,’ he said…”

  One of the two Rastas began a slow laugh. “He won the lottery, man. He was talkin’ all the time. His boat had come in. He hit the jackpot, man. He got lucky…” And the skinny white guy added, “Now he’s gone.” Some kind of brilliant inspiration cleared his face and he opened his eyes real wide. “You got a bus? You want we should go look for him? He said he was goin’ to Mexico, man!’

  I shook my head. I knew he’d gone a lot farther than Mexico. “Not this time, pal. Thanks.”

  As I left, he called after me, “When I go to Mexico, I’ll tell him you was here, askin’ for him. The man in the suit…”

  I took my time driving across town, back to Kensington. It had stopped raining, but now it was hot and gray and muggy, like every summer these days. Sometimes it was like living in the tropics. I parked on the street and took the elevator to my apartment. I threw my hat on a chair and poured myself a generous Bushmills. I was beginning to get slowly mad. When I’d finished my drink, I poured a second and phoned Rupert. A voice I didn’t know answered. It sounded like Batman’s Alfred.

  “The Ferguson-Medicci residence…”

  I said, “This is Liam Murdoch. Get me Rupert.”

  There was the kind of chill that would make liquid hydrogen shiver. “Mr. Ferguson-Medicci is not here at present. When he returns, I shall inform him—”

  I was mad as hell by now and interrupted him, “Listen, pal. You tell Rupert that I found Strickland. You understand? Tell him to call me. Tell him he has a pile of trouble. Do you understand me?”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I hung up and went down to Noddy’s Diner to get what the Irish call langered.

  * * * *

  The next day was Sunday, so I didn’t get out of bed till after eleven. I had a hangover that a pot of strong black coffee turned into a mild headache. After a hot, cold, hot shower and a shave, I felt almost human. At noon the doorbell rang. It was a kid with a special delivery. I signed and flipped him a coin. Then I took the brown paper package inside. When I was sitting with a second pot of coffee, I tore open the package. Inside there was a large, padded envelope, and inside that was a brown paper parcel held together with an elastic band, and a letter from Catherine Howard.

  I poked my first Camel of the day in my mouth and lit it before reading. Through the slow-moving smoke, I could hear her cool, cut-glass voice.

  Dear Mr. Murdoch,

  I realize what you must think of me, and I can’t honestly say I blame you. All I can say in my defense is that, in retrospect, I regret having done what I did, and I hope that the enclosed fee will go some way toward making up for my having used you as I have.

  However, from our very brief encounter, I am able to tell that, in your own, rough way, you are a man of integrity and that a simple fee will by no means satisfy you. In this, if you will forgive my saying so, you remind me so much of my father, whom I have missed so bitterly these last few years. So, I feel that some explanation is in order.

  You will have realized by now that I lied about the photographs. However, I did not lie to you about everything. Most of what I told you was the truth. I had been working as a prostitute for high-class clients. I did work for a man who exploited me and forced me to do things I wish now I had not done, but there were no photographs.

  Mr. Murdoch, we learn from our enemies. They are our greatest teachers. As the months passed, I began to plot and plan my revenge. And over the last couple of years, I have been gathering information and evidence—evidence that could put these men away for the rest of their lives if it should fall into the right hands. I collected it and stored it in a safe place—the Left Luggage at Heathrow Airport. I should have handed it to the police, and I think my original intenti
on was probably to do so, but, in the end, I didn’t. When I was ready, I quietly disappeared and went into hiding. Then I sent those men a message telling them I wanted £150,000 in exchange for the information I held over them. In a fit of madness, Mr. Murdoch, I thought I could make them pay for all the suffering they had put me through. Naturally I could not make the exchange myself, so I went to you. I could have told you the truth from the start, but would you have gone along with it? Somehow, from the little I know of you, I doubt it.

  It will be poor consolation, Mr. Murdoch, but for what it’s worth, when I met you I regretted my decision, but by then it was too late. However, I have decided I cannot take the money. It is tainted with blood and suffering. Do with it as you will. I do not want it.

  I imagine that in your estimation I am probably some ‘crazy dame’, or, worse still, a ‘dumb broad’, but if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, I should like to make my apology in person, and say farewell. I will be catching the late train to Paris. Whence from there I cannot say. I am going somewhere where nobody can find me. But before that, I shall be dining at The King’s Hart, on Frith Street. I shall be there at seven-thirty p.m. if you would care to join me. Maybe I can make amends in some small way.

  Yours very sincerely,

  Catherine Howard

  A dumb broad Catherine Howard was not, but as a crazy dame she took some beating. I read the letter a couple of times then looked in the envelope. It held twenty thousand sterling, as promised. In a couple of days, this woman had given me over one hundred and seventy thousand pounds sterling—two hundred and eighty thousand dollars. I figured that was a crazy dame by most people’s standards. By any standards Catherine Howard was trouble, from her conk down to her shoes. I told myself that if I had any sense at all, I would take the money and run—forget Noddy had ever introduced me to this woman. But if the broad was dumb, I was dumber. And the thoughts of her making amends in some small way was too good to turn down.

  Besides, if I’d been a poet, I’d have been of the mad, bad and dangerous to know variety, and I had also figured something that might be more important than her mental state. I’d figured that, for this crazy dame, money was no object. That was a fact about a person that I have always found irresistible. It was part of that integrity in me that she found so attractive, like her dear father.

  And there were a couple of questions I still wanted to ask her, like, who was the guy in the back of the car on Randall’s Island? She’d said I’d be dealing with the Don. But who was the Don? Somebody who didn’t want to be seen but had wanted to be there at the exchange. And, more interesting still, who was taking pot shots at the Don from behind me?

  By six o’clock I was telling myself these were the real reasons I was dusting off my tuxedo and slapping on my best aftershave. But I didn’t believe me. No, not for a moment.

  The King’s Hart was strictly black tie. It was on Frith Street in the West End, and you entered through a discreet door under an awning, with a doorman in a top hat and tails who got paid to open the door for you and touch the brim of his hat as you went in. I parked my TVR on Bateman Street and loped through the drizzle, dodging the taxis and the puddles. The doorman stepped out with an umbrella to greet me and I stepped in, shaking the rain from my coat. The King’s Hart existed in some kind of fold in space that allowed it to be four times bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. I stood in a spacious, tiled lobby with the dining room on my left and a cocktail bar ahead of me. The dining room was dimly lit, but it was rich with the muted sparkles of crystal and highly polished wood. A lectern stood at the entrance with a large, red, leather-bound book on it, open at today’s reservations. From the cocktail bar, I could hear the clink of ice on expensive glass and Sinatra asking for two drinks, one for his baby and one for the road. I thought it was unlike him not to ask for one for himself, but before I could explore the idea, the maitre d’ strutted over to me on stiff legs with his hands clenched over his torso. I said, “I’m meeting a Miss Howard here. She has a reservation for two at half seven. Has she arrived yet?”

  He raised an eyebrow, muttered something that sounded like “Alors,” and banked left to intercept the lectern at the entrance to the dining room. He ran an over-manicured finger down the list, with his head cocked on one side, but he and I both knew by then that he wasn’t going to find a Miss Howard. He smiled, allowing something that was just to the left of compassion to seep from his eyes. “I am désolé, monsieur, we aff no Mis Oward booked in for tonaht.” He spread his hands and ducked into his shoulders. What could he do? He had exhausted all his French resources. I nodded. “I’ll have a drink in the bar and wait a while.”

  “Of course, monsieur is very welcome…” He waved me toward the bar, banked right on his little legs and plunged into the dining room, like a duck in search of rich algae.

  I chose a table where I could see the entrance and the lobby. I ordered a Martini dry and sat bobbing the olive, watching the door. After twenty minutes I ordered a second Martini to play with and started thinking that maybe I should go home. At ten minutes to eight a man emerged from the dining room. He was tall and slim the way a highly poisonous snake would be tall and slim. He had a long, narrow head like a dark brown zucchini and the kind of very black hair that women find sexy. He was wearing an evening suit that probably cost as much as my car. He strolled over to my table, taking a cigarette from his platinum cigarette case in a way that said he knew exactly how expensive he looked. He stopped by my table, looking down at me, and said, “Mr. Murdoch, isn’t it?”

  His English was faultless, but there was a hint of an accent that might have been Spanish. I told him I was Mr. Murdoch and he held out a very manicured hand while he looked me in the eye. “Serafino del Roble.”

  I shook his hand and he pointed at the leather armchair opposite mine while asking with his eyebrows if he could sit down. I told him with my eyebrows that he sure could. He lowered himself gracefully into the chair and studied my face while he took a slim gold lighter from his pocket then lit his cigarette. He said, “Maybe you’re wondering, Mr. Murdoch, how I come to know your name.”

  I shrugged. “I figured you saw my picture in the society pages.”

  The only indication that he had smiled was a slight creasing at the corners of his eyes. When he spoke, smoke drifted from his mouth and his nose in a way that seemed more appropriate to a laborer than this sophisticated lounge-lizard. “You are something of a law unto yourself. A wheeler dealer, trouble-shooter, fixer, occasional muscle for hire.”

  I was shaking my head and drawing breath to tell him he had made a mistake, but he slid smoothly on.

  “I should like to employ you. You will find I am a generous employer.”

  I studied the heavy, highly polished mahogany table in front of me, glanced at the sign behind del Roble’s head that said ‘No Smoking’ and let my eyes rest on his, as he squinted through his smoke at me. I was trying to remember the last time somebody had strolled up to me in a bar and said, “Oh, you’re Liam Murdoch, the celebrated ne’er-do-well. I’d like to employ your services.” I was pretty sure it had never happened before.

  I smiled. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I pick my business. It doesn’t pick me.”

  I saw his eyes narrow. I pulled my Camels from the pocket of my jacket, and as I poked one in my mouth and flipped my Zippo, I added, “And usually I do business during business hours, not in the cocktail bar of The King’s Hart.”

  He closed his eyes and smiled in a way you could describe as smooth. He spread his hands and said, “Forgive my manners. I was intending to call you tomorrow. However, as I happened to see you…” He shrugged and I knew by the way he did it that he was Spanish.

  I was curious enough to ask, “What’s it about?”

  He inhaled deeply and frowned at his cigarette, as though he was trying to work out what it was doing stuck between his fingers. “I think it will interest you. I am trying to recover some property.” He bit his fle
shy lower lip and danced his head slowly from side to side, weighing up his next words. “It is not mine exactly. It belongs to the Church.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Which church, Mr. del Roble?”

  He became serious and I watched his eyes flick around my face. He made a show of coming to a decision and said, “It belongs to the Catholic Church—the Opus Dei. It is a small thing.” He gave a small laugh to go with the small thing. “But it is quite priceless. The person who stole it from me—from La Obra—thought it would be easy to sell. It is not. It is very difficult to sell. And so I think it may be possible to reach an accommodation.”

  “You or the church or the Opus Dei—whichever it is, Mr. del Roble—want to buy back your own property?”

  He blinked like it was regrettable I’d put it in such vulgar terms. I sucked on my Camel and watched him through the haze. Finally, I said, “I might be willing to help you, but I have a couple of questions I’d like you to answer. First off, how did you know I was going to be here tonight?”

  He did the thing with creasing the corners of his eyes again. It was all a harmless wheeze. “Again, I have to apologize to you, Mr. Murdoch. It is quite simple. I had you followed.”

  I nodded. That was obvious. “Why?”

  “The answer is the same as the answer to your next question.”

  “What is my next question, Mr. del Roble?”

  “Why you? Why not a private detective or, better still, a major firm of attorneys? Am I wrong?”

  I shook my head. He wasn’t wrong, and I knew in that moment that this guy was very, very rarely wrong. His eyes creased with genuine amusement and he went on, “You see, Mr. Murdoch, you already have contact with the people involved in this theft.” He turned to the waiter and raised one of his manicured fingers. I noticed that his hands were strong and muscular, not the hands you would expect from the delicate manipulations involved in doing God’s work.

  When the waiter had delivered the drinks, del Roble leaned forward and sipped his very carefully. I watched him while I bobbed my olive. I said, “What is this thing you won’t mention?”