Trouble in Rooster Paradise

by T. W. Emory

  She stood up and said, “Wait here a moment.” She left the office for two or three minutes. When she returned she handed me a slip of paper with a Lake Union address written on it.

  “You’ll call it in to the police, won’t you? You aren’t planning to go after him by yourself, are you?” she asked as she arranged her face into a pretty little grimace of concern.

  It might have been her facial expression that did it. Or, maybe it was libido-interruptus. Whatever it was, I suddenly felt a need to act heroic. Plus, I didn’t relish calling Milland again, and I wasn’t about to pawn off that task on Britt. So I announced, “I’m going to go get him myself.”

  “Gunnar, is that wise?” she asked, furrowing her brow.

  That made me even more determined. At that point, I wasn’t about to waver or hesitate even if I’d wanted to.

  Gunnar the Virile had committed himself.

  Britt grabbed a coat and walked me down to my car.

  Before I climbed in the Chevy, Britt gave me a lingering pat on the hand and a long parting kiss. “Call me later,” she said, “and please be careful.”

  I said that I would. I made a mid-block U-turn and headed the Chevy in the direction of Lake Union.

  I drove away feeling every bit like a Chinese puzzle: my feelings were inscrutable and contradictory. I was the strutting rooster leaving the henhouse. I was the lurking satyr, the despoiler of wood nymphs. I was confident, self-satisfied. I was sad and felt a tad criminal. I was male.

  Wending my way by the lake I tooled along Fairview Avenue in search of the address Britt gave me.

  Then, as now, Seattle had perfect spots to live if you were a free spirit or a beachcomber at heart. Hundreds of houseboats clustered along the shores of Seattle’s bays and lakes—little communities with wooden walkways for streets. At the time some of these dwellings were actually homelike and cozy. Others were little better than floating ramshackle cabins. The east-shore houseboat that Guy de Carter was staying on was somewhere in between.

  It shared a long wooden landing with several floating residences—some on one side, some on the other. De Carter’s was the last one on the right, fronting the lake. I parked in back of a maroon Ford convertible that was snuggled alongside a late model Packard. Both cars were locked, but I made a visual search of their interiors. Nothing of interest.

  I wandered down a winding footpath that steered me onto the landing. The rain had stopped. Across the lake stood the Aurora Bridge and a clustering of assorted craft cutting through water that looked murky because of the overcast. I spit a well-chewed clove in the water as I ambled along the landing.

  None of de Carter’s neighbors seemed to be at home. His place looked shut up and impenetrable—a castle waiting to be stormed. My storming experience was in the hedgerows of Normandy, with its feelings of an enemy menace only a few feet away, out of sight, waiting to pounce.

  Bordering all four sides of his houseboat was a narrow catwalk that was skirted by a lattice fence about three feet high. The little gate fought me as I tried to open it, only to creak when I finally did.

  I pulled my gun from its holster and kept it just inside my coat. I rapped on the door of what seemed like a buoyant tomb. Nobody answered.

  I tried the door. It swung open with no resistance.

  Sun from the windows showed me a nice place with a loutish ambiance. A coffee table made from cinderblocks and a smooth plank supported a stack of Holiday and Esquire magazines anchored in place with an overstuffed ashtray. Empty beer bottles and unwashed cups and plates rested in the corners and nooks generally reserved for photos and curios. The true masculine touch was the assortment of clothes not quite ripe enough for washing left hanging on the backs and arms of chairs, masquerading as slipcovers and covering up cigarette burns.

  To my right was a bar that divided off the small kitchen from the living room. The kitchen clock said 2:20. Off the kitchen was a little hallway that led to a bedroom and bathroom. Those doors were closed. I figured if de Carter was at home he was either taking a quiet nap or a serene crap.

  The stillness of the house bothered me. It was eerily quiet. The silence brought back inklings of the hedgerow terrors. I remained just inside the door with my gun leading the way.

  Outside a nearby motorboat idled and made a rattletrap noise. I froze like a Bon Marché mannequin. The engine strained and chugged for a minute or so. The clamor grew louder as the boat came closer. The tumult short-circuited the usual bristly feeling I get when someone is behind me. It explained why I was such an oblivious target.

  I felt the breeze of the first blow to my head. A nightstick smacking a melon. It stunned me and I began losing my balance. My vision was fuzzy and the room started to heave like waves churned up by an angry whale. Adrenaline induced a kind of supernatural alertness when the second blow hit. Then there was nothing but a black void, a sudden gust and a grand plunging ….

  Mrs. Berger shoveled cookies in my mouth and told me to chew thoroughly. She wore a skimpy burlesque outfit and shivered. Guy de Carter held her fans in one hand and a camera in the other. He laughed and snapped shots of me being fed.

  I chewed and chewed until the scene shifted and shells exploded around me. Mike hugged the ground and told me to do the same. The drumming of my heart serenaded the knot in my gut. The shelling stopped and Mike and I did an elbow and knee crawl over to what looked like a current of water. A machine gun crackled and small-arms fire erupted as we approached the stream. The air became filled with the shrill noise of flying lead as automatic fire moved through the ranks of soldiers around us like a tornado. A man was mowed down to my left. Ahead of me the storm reached a kid who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He gave me a questioning hurt look before he dropped to his knees in the water and slowly keeled over. Mike was transmogrified into Walter Pangborn. Walter and I jumped into the stream for safety. We couldn’t get deep enough. Artillery bombardment began again whipping up the water around us. I barely heard Walter scream, “They’ve got us zeroed in!”

  I jerked awake. I was lying on my stomach. I raised my head and stared blurrily at a V for victory sign. It was a big one. I felt queasy.

  My right hand was cradling something heavy. My fingers told my brain it was a gun. I managed to get up on my knees. It was my gun. I laid it on the floor.

  A colossal ache began at the back of my head and flowed through my body down to my toes. A blackjack hangover. But it was a good sign. It meant I wasn’t dead.

  I almost lost my balance. I eased back, shifting haunches down on calves. I waited to see if the sick feeling would subside a bit. It didn’t.

  Eventually I lifted a resistant hand behind my head. Remarkably, my fedora was still in place. I felt for damage and touched a wet mushy spot. I brought my hand back and squinted at a mixture of hair strands and bloodied pomade.

  I made feeble attempts to rub mutinous thoughts together to form conclusions. I wiped my hand with my handkerchief and repositioned my fedora. My watch said 2:50. I’d been out about half an hour. My hand leaped inside my raincoat. The envelope with the photos was gone.

  Across the room the large V for victory sign started to take on freakish significance. It was the bottoms of a pair of shoes worn by the feet of someone lying on his back.

  Drawing from a previously unknown energy reserve, I stood up. The shoes were Koolies, though not the pair from the day before. The same wearer though. It was Guy de Carter. He looked like he was saying something. His eyes had that unblinking apathy of a battle-savvy dogface. It went well with his chest and its ugly red blotch. I had a feeling my gun had made that blotch.

  Scratch one drugstore cowboy.

  My head tingled as if pricked by a thousand pins, but I was beginning to focus a little better. The bedroom door was wide open. I looked inside. I knew the room. It was the bedroom in the blackmail photos. As I entered I could tell that the pictures had been taken from the right side of the bed. In that direction was a closet. A little probing revealed
a small space hidden by a false front where a stool sat in front of a peephole. The perfect perch for a candid cameraman. The marks had probably been brought here at night—too drunk or too rutted to later recall the location, or maybe just too afraid to try.

  A siren wailed and whined in the distance.

  It all began to make a sick sort of sense. Realization acted like a restorative, shoving aside the fog enfolding my mind, leading to alarm and a mild panic. Dead men tell no tales. De Carter knew a lot more of the tale than I did. Without the photos I didn’t have much of a tale to tell. Not one I could prove anyway. I was to be the fall guy for Guy’s murder.

  The siren got closer.

  I grabbed a dishtowel that sat on the kitchen bar. I wiped my gun thoroughly and placed it on the bar with the towel. Then I eased myself down to the floor and resumed the position I was in when I’d come to.

  I closed my eyes and waited.

  Chapter 14

  “No prints on the gun,” said Milland’s partner from the houseboat landing.

  Hanson’s voice barely carried to where Milland and I leaned against the front of my Chevy. The medical examiner had given me a makeshift compress for the back of my head. I held it in place and did a fair imitation of dazed and miserable.

  Milland gave Hanson a two-finger wave as he said to me, “I can’t believe you didn’t get the license plate of that Packard.”

  “Why would I? I thought I had him.”

  “What I can’t figure,” he said, giving me a sly smile, “is why the killer didn’t put the gun in your hand. You know, make it a thoroughgoing frame-job.”

  I shrugged. “Oversight?”

  He pulled on his cigarette. After he exhaled he said, “Uh-huh. Hell of an oversight. A real stupid one. Except I’m thinking this killer ain’t that stupid.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  The uniformed cops who’d answered the call didn’t know me. I’d struggled to regain consciousness for their benefit and mumbled “Call Detective Milland” before I passed out again. I miraculously revived when I heard a few insolent words from Milland’s mouth.

  “So you’ve got no idea who whacked Smilin’ Jack over there?”

  “Like I said, find the owner of that Packard and you’ve got your man.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you one of your bright boy guesses that didn’t pan out. Nobody on that customer list owns a Packard.”

  I said it didn’t surprise me.

  I told him about the photos. I said I’d found them in the houseboat before my lights went out. It was an enhanced version of the truth. I figured de Carter would have taken the photos home if he’d found them. All I’d done was save him the trouble.

  “I’ll wager the men in those photos were patrons of Fasciné Expressions. I recognized a couple of Seattle’s upper crust.” I gave him the names Walter had mentioned. “Even money you’ll find both of them on that repeat customer list. All the more reason to try and keep that end of things under wraps.”

  “Uh-huh,” Milland said, not hiding his irritation. “Your client would just love that too, I bet.”

  “You’d win that bet.”

  “And maybe we’ll get lucky and find a neat and tidy payment ledger or a list of shakedown victims inside that floating dump. Is that what you think?”

  I didn’t respond. My guess was that the killer would have tossed the place if he’d thought de Carter had that kind of evidence. De Carter’s killer had likely been using him as liaison between himself and the blackmail victims. If he wanted more payments, he’d be forced now to start making direct contact for himself. It might be one way to catch him, if one of the victims could be made to cooperate. But I kept this to myself. I decided to let Milland figure that much out for himself. Besides, I was already poking away at his patience with a pretty sharp stick.

  When he’d arrived, Milland had made opening salvos laced with several acerbic “You shoulda come in like I told you,” and a series of “I oughta run your ass in, just on principle.” I’d remained mute during the onslaught and only nodded at fit intervals. I learned that his informants had come up empty and that Meredith’s estimated time of death was between 11:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.

  “Frank, I’m convinced finding the owner of that Packard is the key. It wouldn’t hurt to expand that registration search. Check on anyone connected with Fasciné Expressions and de Carter’s ad agency.”

  He looked at me like I was a bug. But I knew I was a bug he’d listen to. I also knew he’d cut me loose after he finished questioning me. I knew Frank Milland from before the war, but I didn’t meet his kid brother until he was sent to us as a replacement. Milland’s brother and I had trudged through slush and muck together. We’d eaten the same inadequate chow together. We’d fought krauts side by side. I’d been there when Mike Milland bought it. I was the living link to Mike’s final moments, and like it or not, Frank had a soft spot in his heart for me.

  I tried not to take advantage of that soft spot.

  Not too much, anyway.

  Okay. Whenever I could.

  “It’s time for my break. Care if I take a load off with you, hon?” Verna asked.

  I told her I didn’t mind at all.

  The supper crowd hadn’t yet hit Holger’s Café when Verna brought me my chicken fried steak, french fries, and coffee. Her vacant stare told me she’d either had a grueling day of hash-slinging or something was weighing on her mind.

  Verna headed over to where Holger was jawing with old Hjalmer Petersen at the counter. I watched in casual fascination as the fabric of her uniform stretched to bisect the fitness of her impressive bottom. She said something to her boss and pointed back my way, then poured herself a cup of coffee before returning to plant herself across from me in the booth.

  “I’m thinkin’ to call it quits,” she announced solemnly.

  “You’re leaving Holger’s?”

  “Nah, not here. Quits with Hank.”

  “I take it your date didn’t go well last night.”

  She laughed. “It didn’t go at all. The big lug was a no show.” She lifted her cup to puckered lips and blew. “I think he’s taken up with that tramp I caught him with.”

  I told her I was sorry to hear it.

  “Good riddance, I say,” she said with a small shrug. Her eyes told me that the news about Hank was just her way of laying groundwork, as it hit me that when I’d ordered only the top button of her blouse had been unfastened and her red lips had looked faded. Now lipstick was refreshed and the second button undone, which invited a wee glimpse of brassiere tatting and cleavage. I pushed my back deeper into the red vinyl of the booth and nibbled on one of my fries. Verna’s vacant stare had been replaced with a speculative one.

  “I’ve always really liked you, Gunnar.” She sipped her coffee and I saw the smooth vigor of her cream-colored neck work as she drank.

  There was only a handful of people in Holger’s, but Verna and I might as well have been alone given, the absolute noiselessness at our booth. As each second passed the quiet intensified. We gradually sensed our mutual understanding and I realized just how powerful my physical attraction was for this gorgeous virago—despite my Dutch headache.

  Gunnar the Insatiable.

  “I’ve always liked you too, Verna.” It wasn’t original, but for the moment it allowed my throbbing head and dulled mind to come to terms with what exactly she was after.

  She put her cup down and leaned her head forward, which gave me a sightseer’s view of her Grand Canyon. I quickly looked up to dreamy brown eyes and a pert smile that told me she approved of my sightseeing.

  Glossy red lips moved unhurriedly as she said, “You talk real nice, but mainly you’re a good listener. You make a girl feel … well … worth something.” She took another sip of coffee before adding, “I was thinkin’ how we really oughta get to know each other better. Better than we do now, I mean.”

  Her luscious mouth closed and she waited for me to take the next step.

&
nbsp; I suspected what she had in mind. Either she wanted to strike back at Hank through me, or she just needed help to cut the umbilical cord once and for all. Believe you me, I was sorely tempted to help her do the cutting, but I could think of several good reasons not to. The trick was explaining things delicately. When you pass on a sumptuous three-course dinner, then you’d best word things just right if the cook knows you’re suffering from hunger pangs.

  I wasn’t about to tell her I thought she was still in love with Hank. Too explosive a topic. And it wouldn’t do to tell her my rule against getting involved with married women. She’d have dismissed it as a minor technicality. And there was no sense in telling her that I didn’t want to risk ruining our friendship if things didn’t work out between us. She’d have seen it as the lame dodge it would have been. So I decided to tell her a truth that would allow her to leave the field with dignity and make it so I’d still be welcome at Holger’s.

  Sounding as plaintive as I could, I said, “If this had only happened last week …. You see, Verna, I’ve met this girl, and well … things are really going good between us.” I gave her a grimace that turned into a weak smile and added, “You understand, don’t you?”

  There was always the chance she’d still be hurt and angry, despite my tact. Instead, the smile never left her pretty face. Her eyes became a little blank as she laughed and said, “Well, Gunnar, you’re sure not givin’ this girl much to write about in her diary tonight. I was hopin’ for at least two paragraphs.”

  We made small talk awhile and then she stood up with graceful ease and snatched tablet and pencil from her apron pocket. She scratched something on a corner of a page, tore it off and handed it to me.

  “My new telephone number. You know, in case things go bust with your new girl.”

  She picked up her empty cup and went back on duty. Somehow she’d managed to refasten that second button when I wasn’t looking.