by Mike Resnick
I drove around for a while, and wasn’t too surprised to discover that I had picked up the Lincoln on my tail again. I stopped a couple of times, once for coffee and once for cigarettes, just to see what he’d do. He always parked half a block away and waited for me to emerge before taking off again. Maybe Simmons was right and he didn’t mean me any harm, but before long I got so edgy watching him in my rearview mirror that I packed it in and went home for the night.
I watched the Reds blow a four-run lead, tie it up, and go into the thirteenth inning before they finally managed to scrape through with a very un-Reds-like win: a walk, a steal, a passed ball, and a sacrifice fly. It may not have been typical, but at least they were winning. That was more than I could say for myself. When Pratt didn’t call by midnight I phoned his office again, and got the same story: he hadn’t come back yet, and they’d give him my messages as soon as he walked through the door.
I felt completely frustrated. Jim Simmons didn’t want to see me. Wilson Cotter was unapproachable. James Cotter was unapproachable. I had nothing to say to Maurice Nettles until I got word about his dog. Mike Pratt was two days late calling me; given the nature of this case, I had no real reason to believe he was still alive. Even Juan Vallero wouldn’t have much interest in talking to me; I’d left him with a body, three missing cars, and two useless vials of perfectly legal vaccines.
Hell, the way I was feeling, if I could have found the Lincoln I’d have flagged down the driver and hitched a ride, just to have someone to talk to—but I checked the street and he was either taking a break or had gone home for the night.
Finally I thought of the one man who might be willing to listen to me, and made up my mind to visit him the first thing in the morning. Then I turned on the late movie, but fell asleep before I found out if the giant locusts could save the heroine from Peter Graves’s clutches.
16.
At 10:00 a.m. I walked into the Striker Agency. Vicki, still as pretty and efficient as ever, ushered me into a small, plush conference room that I had never seen before and told me to wait. Bill Striker walked in about ten minutes later, looking even tanner and more prosperous than usual.
“What in the world happened to you, Eli?” he asked, sitting down carefully so as not to wrinkle his twelve-hundred-dollar suit. “You look like you just carried a Bengals pennant into the Steelers’ dressing room.”
“Actually, it happened in Mexico, not Pittsburgh,” I said.
“Oh? You’re on a new case?”
“Not exactly.”
“I saw Hubert at a show this past weekend. He told me he had let you go.”
“Not before he got his money’s worth,” I said. “I’m working for Nettles now.”
“Maury?” said Striker. “Sweet guy. Off the record, I never understood why he put up with Hubert’s little fits of temperament.”
“You do,” I pointed out.
“Yeah—but I don’t own Baroness. Anyone could win with that dog. Have you found her yet?”
“She’s dead.”
“Have you broken the news to Maury yet?” he asked.
“Soon. I’ll have proof in another day or two.”
“Proof?” he said, cocking an eyebrow. “You look at her, and either she’s breathing or she’s not. It’s as simple as that.”
“Nothing about this case is as simple as that.”
He looked at my battered face for a long minute. “No, I guess it’s not.” He paused. “Who worked you over, and why?”
“A couple of guys down in Mexico,” I said. “They were trying to scare me off.”
“Off what?”
“That’s what I still don’t know. I’ve got to talk to someone about it, and I think you’re just about the only guy in the city who can help me.”
He pressed a hidden intercom button and told Vicki to hold all his calls for half an hour.
“You want something to drink?” he asked.
“It’s a little early in the day for me,” I said.
“Tell you what,” he suggested. “I just bought a new cappuccino machine for the office. It arrived yesterday afternoon, and we haven’t had a chance to try it out yet. Would you like a cup?”
“Without the Amaretto.”
“Oh, come on, Eli—it wouldn’t be cappuccino without a little something to kill the germs.”
“All right,” I said with a sigh. “You’ve sold me.”
“Good! I’m dying to see how it tastes.” He pressed the intercom button again and ordered us a pair of cappuccinos. Then he turned back to me. “All right, Eli. You’ve got twenty-eight minutes.”
I began at the beginning and told him about everything except Joan Linwood: the two attempts to kill me in Arizona, Binder’s death, Bora replacing Fuentes, the attempt to run me down with the Mercedes, the beating, the hospital, everything. The cappuccinos arrived when I was relating how Marcus had patched me up and sent me on my way back to Arizona. Striker listened intently to every word, and his face really came alive when I told him how I’d pieced together what happened to Baroness.
“Goddamnit, Eli, that was a first-rate piece of detection!” he said enthusiastically. “Absolutely first-rate! You’re as good as your press clippings. What did Pratt find?”
“I haven’t heard from him yet,” I said.
“Well, it’s a big area, and he’s got a lot of ground to cover. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“I’m very worried about it,” I said. “They may have gotten to him.”
“I doubt it,” said Striker. “Before he took off he had to tell the local cops what he was looking for—and once he did that, there’d be no sense trying to kill him. All that would do is convince the other cops that he was onto something.”
“I hope you’re right,” I said, “but I can’t just sit on my hands waiting for him to call.”
“Agreed,” he said. “What’s your next step?”
“I’ve been trying to put this case together from the ground up, but I’ve gone as far as I can until I hear from Pratt—so now I’ve got to work from the top down. That’s why I’ve come to you, Bill. You know just about every top exec in the city, so I’m hoping you can give me a little information on the man I’m after.”
“And who is that?”
“Ever hear of a guy named Wilson Cotter?”
“Oh, shit!” said Striker.
“You know him?”
“He’s one of my clients,” answered Striker. “I handle security for his house and his office. Hell, I even play squash with his brother Jim at my club!”
“Your pal Jim is also in this up to his eyebrows. They couldn’t pay for the cover-up without the comptroller knowing what was going on.” I paused. “I take it that we’ve got a little conflict of interest here?”
“Not in the normal sense,” said Striker. “All I supply is security. Anything I happen to know about his business dealings probably isn’t privileged information. But it’s an awfully gray area.”
“Then you won’t help me?”
“I’ve got to think about it, Eli. I don’t know what you want, and neither do you. If I help you in a way that wouldn’t be possible if I didn’t work for him, then I’ve sure as hell got a conflict of interest.”
“I’m not asking for a thousand-page financial dossier on Cotter,” I said. “I wouldn’t know how to read it if you gave it to me. I just need you to point out a weak spot where I can do a little digging. Just give me a direction to look in, Bill.”
“It’s not that simple, Eli,” he said apologetically.
“Four people are dead.”
“Look,” he replied uncomfortably. “Security is my specialty. A lot of my clients occasionally indulge in what I shall euphemistically term aggressive business practices. If word ever gets out that I helped send one of them to jail, I couldn’t get work between the Rockies and the Appalachians.”
“Bill, the police have been ordered off, ” I said. “If you don’t help me, that son of a bitch may get away with it.�
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“I told you: I’ll have to think about it,” said Striker. He looked at his diamond-studded watch. “I’ve got to get back to work, Eli.”
He put on his artificial smile, shook my hand as if we’d been doing nothing more than discussing the weather, and escorted me back to his reception room.
“Nice seeing you again, Eli,” he said cordially.
Before I could reply he had turned and disappeared into his suite of offices.
I was so goddamned hot when I left his building that I picked a tin can out of a trash container on the corner and hurled it at the Lincoln, which was following me very slowly in the curb lane. It bounced off the hood, leaving a nasty scratch, and rolled into the gutter. The Lincoln came to a stop, but the driver didn’t open the door.
I was still so mad I could hardly see straight.
I wasn’t too surprised that Cotter could call the cops off; I’d seen a lot of that in Chicago, and from people Cotter could buy and sell with his pin money. But I never thought he could make Bill Striker back away. Striker was everything I ever wanted to be: rich, successful, respected, and independent. But I didn’t buy his ethical conflict crap for a minute; he was scared shitless at the thought of taking on Cotter, or perhaps of losing a couple of other clients, and that implied that I’d be scared if I was in his shoes. I think I was madder at him for that than for his refusal to help. Even cynical forty-three-year-old paupers have their dreams, and it hurts to have them shattered.
There was only one more thing I could do to feel I was earning my money. The Universal offices were five blocks from Striker’s place, atop the Southern Terminal Building. I walked the distance, entered the building, crossed the lobby to a row of elevators, and took an express to their penthouse headquarters.
I knew there was no sense asking to see the old man, so I requested a meeting with James. The receptionist told me that he was out of town. So was Richard. So was anyone higher than the rank of janitor.
I considered making a scene, couldn’t see how that could help, and went back down to the main floor. The Lincoln must have been told not to park on the street, because it was passing the entrance very slowly as I walked out. I waited until it had to make a left at the corner, waved to the driver just before he was out of sight, and walked back to where I had parked the LeBaron.
I drove back to my apartment. I couldn’t see any sense going to the office, since I didn’t have any work to do except wait for Pratt’s call, and he had both my numbers; if one didn’t work, he’d try the other.
The Reds were playing an afternoon game, so I pulled a couple of beers out of the refrigerator and watched the Cardinals tee off on Cincinnati’s pitchers until it became too painful to watch. When the score reached eleven-to-three in the seventh inning, I’d had enough and turned to a soap.
It was the same one I’d been watching at Joan’s house a few days ago. Young Mary Blakely was still pregnant and still wondering which of eight reluctant suitors to marry, and it seemed like I hadn’t missed a single line of dialog in the intervening time.
I opened a few more beers, and drank myself into a mild stupor by nightfall. When Pratt hadn’t called by nine o’clock, I laid down on the couch in my living room and went to sleep for the night.
I awoke earlier than usual, feeling terribly stiff and sore. My ribs were especially tender, and suddenly I remembered that I was supposed to have had the stitches removed the day before. I called a local doctor who had patched me up once before, made an appointment for one in the afternoon, and spent the rest of the morning trying not to scratch.
The doctor had set up shop in the Clifton area, right by the University of Cincinnati, another spot that doesn’t have the straightest streets in the world. It took me ten minutes to find his office and another fifteen to park, and when I walked up to his receptionist I found out that he’d gotten tired of waiting for me and had gone out to lunch.
She rescheduled my appointment for three-thirty, so I got to read twenty-three out-of-date copies of U.S. News and World Report while I was waiting. My forearms and lip were okay, but two of the three gashes on my ribs were mildly infected and he gave me some stuff to rub on them and administered an antibiotic shot.
Then, feeling properly wretched, I went back home, thankful that I had at least missed the continuing saga of Young Mary Blakely for another day. I called Casa Grande again, and got the same answer: still no word from Pratt.
I sat around the house for another hour, then got restless and decided to go to a downtown theater that ran double features from the 1930s and changed them every twenty-four hours. I was hoping for Mask of Dimitrios, or at least All Through the Night. What I got for my two dollars was a Gene Kelly festival. I watched about an hour of Take Me Out to the Ballgame, then walked out before I found myself going into insulin shock. I went back to the apartment and turned on the TV, where I watched another ninety minutes of insanity, minus the singing and dancing.
It was getting near dinner time, and I was just about to pull out a frozen TV dinner and pop it into the oven when the phone rang.
“Mike!” I cried, picking up the receiver. “Where the hell have you been?”
“Relax, Eli,” said a familiar voice. “This is Bill Striker.”
“What can I do for you?” I said coldly.
“Nothing,” he said. “But maybe I can do something for you.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. The more I thought about your story the more it intrigued me—so last night, after I closed up the office, I made a few phone calls and did a little research.” He paused. “I want it understood that I did not use my position as Cotter’s security chief in any way.”
“Understood,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “Let me lay down a ground rule or two.”
“Shoot.”
“This is just a place to start looking, a spot where Universal is having some serious problems. I don’t guarantee anything.”
“Okay.”
“One thing more.”
“Yeah?”
“You didn’t hear it from me.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed. “What am I looking at?”
“Guatemala.”
“Guatemala?” I repeated. “What the hell are you talking about, Bill?”
“They’ve taken a huge licking down there this year.”
“So? Chrysler took a huge licking in Detroit a few years ago, and they didn’t go around killing people.”
“There’s more to it than that.”
“For instance?”
“Eli, I’m not going to lay it out for you on a silver platter. You needed to know where to look, and now I’ve told you. That’s got to be the extent of my involvement.”
“But—”
“Damn it, Eli—I work for the man!”
“I’m sorry, Bill,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”
“Just forget where you got it,” said Striker, and hung up the phone.
Guatemala?
I went down to the LeBaron and dug out my Rand McNally Road Atlas. It was just for the United States, Canada, and Mexico, and the only map where I could even find Guatemala was the Mexican one, where a portion of the country appeared in the lower right-hand corner. Evidently it bordered Mexico on the south.
I remembered that Bora was a Guatemalan, and wondered what the connection could be. I decided to drive to the local branch of the library, but when I got there I found out that they closed at six on week nights. I stopped by a bookstore, but the only thing they had was one of those books about touring Mexico and Central America on fifty dollars a day, which I didn’t think was going to provide me with any answers.
Finally I drove downtown and stopped by Jim Simmons’s office. He was there, balding and chubby as ever, sitting behind a huge stack of paperwork and an overflowing ashtray.
“Hello, Eli,” he said unenthusiastically.
“Hi, Jim,” I said. “Got a minute?”
“I’m pretty busy,” he said.
>
“It won’t take long.”
He shrugged and nodded toward a chair. “Well, you’re here. What can I do for you?”
“I’ve got something you might want to check into on the Cotter case.”
“Damn it, Eli! What did I tell you the other day?”
“I’m not asking for help, Jim,” I said. “I’m offering it.”
“Not interested.”
“But—”
“First of all, there isn’t any Cotter case,” he said. “And second, I’m off it.”
I smiled. “How can you be off it if it doesn’t exist?”
“Jesus, Eli, can’t you just leave it alone?”
“No.”
“Then it’s going to be Chicago all over again. You remember what happened there when you wouldn’t back off?”
“I remember,” I said tightly.
“Then prove to me you learned something, and back away from this thing.”
“I can’t.”
“Then at least leave me out of it!” he snapped. “I’ve helped you all I can. I pulled in your man in the Lincoln, and I checked on you every day while you were in Arizona, and I got you some numbers and addresses you had no business asking for. I’m off the goddamned case now, Eli. Just leave me alone!”
He buried his nose in his paperwork, and after staring at his bald spot for a minute I turned and walked out of the station, trying to remember what it had felt like in Chicago as one friend after another decided he had never heard of me.
It felt awfully goddamned close to the way things felt right now.
17.
I went straight home, feeling very isolated and very sorry for myself. There were no decent movies on the tube, so I watched reruns of a couple of jiggle shows from the Freddy Silverman era, dozed through the news, and woke up in time to hear Letterman reading another of his endless lists.