by Mike Resnick
“Forgive a tactless question,” I said, “but why are your people against it? I would think you’d be grateful that he’s doing your job for you and keeping your puppet in power.”
He shot me a look of extreme distaste. “I assume you want to know why we oppose this scheme for other than the obvious humanitarian concerns,” he said coldly. “Let me put it very simply, Mr. Paxton: since we knew we would be blamed for Mr. Cotter’s operation should news of it ever reach the public, we ordered our military not to report the crash or do anything to draw attention to it. Still, if you could find out about it, so could others. And no matter how strongly we denied the charges, we would never convince any Third World nation that Cotter was not merely a front man carrying out American policy.”
“I see,” I said.
“I hope you do.”
“So what happens now?” I said. “Do you just pull his fat out of the fire and slap his hand?”
“No. This isn’t the first time Cotter has caused us a massive headache. This time he has to be dealt with more firmly—but it has to be done covertly.” He paused. “Now that you understand the situation, I assume you will be willing to cooperate fully with us?”
“Certainly,” I said. “Once I extract my pound of flesh, that is.”
“May I remind you that I can incarcerate you indefinitely?”
“Remind away,” I said.
“I should also point out that we will of course be inspecting any mail you may have sent to Officer Simmons, Officer Pratt, Officer Vallero, Hubert Lantz, Maurice Nettles, and William Striker.”
“Be my guest,” I said with a smile.
He stared long and hard at me. “I have a feeling you’re not bluffing,” he said at last.
“If I were you, I’d trust my feelings on this one,” I said.
“What do you want?”
“First,” I said, “I want the hit taken off me. I don’t care if you tell Cotter’s people that I’m CIA, FBI, or whatever—but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in hiding once you lower the boom on him.”
He looked relieved. “That goes without saying, Mr. Paxton.”
“Not for me, it doesn’t,” I assured him. “Second, I want to know what you do to Cotter. He’s been directly or indirectly responsible for five deaths that I know about, and probably a lot more that I haven’t heard of. If I find out that you let him get off with a fifty dollar fine and a slap on the hand, I’m blowing the whistle.”
“Are you trying to blackmail us, Mr. Paxton?” he asked harshly.
“Absolutely,” I told him.
“We plan to deal with Cotter within the next week. It won’t seem like we have done so to the public at large, but you will know.”
“And his victims?”
“They’ll be listed officially as accidents. This entire affair must remain free from scrutiny.”
“All right,” I said. “I need one more thing.”
“What is that?”
“To quote Humphrey Bogart, I need a fall guy. If I’m ever going to get paid by Maury Nettles, I’m going to have to cook up some cock-and-bull story about what happened to his dog. I’m going to need a villain before he’ll believe me.”
“Did you have one in mind?”
“He’ll never buy Cotter. I’ll take any member of the organization.” I thought it over for a minute. “There’s a blond gunman in Monterrey named Carl—an American—who’d fill the bill perfectly.”
“I know the man. He’s due to be taken into custody tomorrow,” said Baker. “I’m sure we can get him to confess to stealing and killing the dog if we agree to drop a couple of more serious charges against him.”
I stared at him. “You like this wheeling and dealing, don’t you?” I said at last.
“It’s my job,” he replied with a cold little smile. “Have you any further conditions, Mr. Paxton?”
“No.”
“Fine. I agree to the three you have named.” He looked at his wristwatch. “My men should be through searching your apartment by now, so I think our business is concluded.”
“They won’t find anything,” I told him. “But if you don’t keep your end of the bargain”—I pulled the letter out of my pocket and tossed it on his desk—“there are going to be ten thousand copies of this floating around.”
He was still studying it as I walked out.
19.
I called Nettles that afternoon and told him that I now had proof positive that Baroness was dead. He wasn’t surprised. I told him that she had been smuggled into Mexico where they planned to keep her for ransom, but she picked up some bug and succumbed to it.
He asked if I had nailed the guy responsible. I told him that I had, and that he’d be standing trial for theft, which carried a far greater penalty than animal abuse, in the next couple of weeks. I promised to give him the trial date and location as soon as I had them.
He thanked me for my work on the case, told me he’d recommend me to any friend of his who was ever in need of a detective, and said he’d be mailing me a check for five thousand dollars. I told him that it was too much, and managed to let him browbeat me into accepting it without putting up too much of a fight. At least I’d be able to pay off the phone company, and maybe even take out a display ad in the next year’s Yellow Pages.
Then I called Pratt and told him that I thought the case would shortly come to a successful conclusion. He replied that he wasn’t even allowed to discuss it, and that he didn’t want to know any details (I could picture him crossing his fingers as he said it), but that he had enjoyed making my acquaintance and would love to get together and reminisce about old times when this thing blew over. I made a mental note to get in touch with him a few months up the road, as soon as I could be reasonably sure that we were no longer under constant observation, and let him know exactly what had happened.
Then I walked out to a pay booth and called Joan collect, since I was sure my phone still had a tap on it. I told her she’d be receiving a letter from me in a couple of days, and to put it right into a safety deposit box without reading it. If I was still alive in a year, she could destroy it.
She agreed, and told me that a friend of hers had just had an emergency appendectomy and that she was substituting for her at a dog show in Dayton the next weekend.
I volunteered to meet her there, and she gave me the location of the show site and the times that she would be judging.
Then there was the little matter of Hubert Lantz. He’d refused to send a check for my expenses, so I called him up, told him that what happened to Baroness wasn’t limited only to dogs, and was gratified to see his newest kennel girl deposit a money order in my mailbox about an hour later.
That left Jim Simmons.
I showed up at his office at dinnertime with two box seats for the Reds-Astros night game, picked up his bar tab afterward, and drove him home while we swore eternal fealty to each other. His wife was a little miffed when I had to scrape him off the floor of the car, but at least I still had a friend at Police Headquarters.
Nettles’s check arrived two days later, and was good as gold. I paid off all my bills and still had a few hundred bucks left over, so I splurged on a new suit and went off to Dayton to meet Joan.
I’d like to say it was fascinating to watch her judge seventy-three Weimeraners and forty-six Irish Setters, but since they all looked alike to me, my primary reaction was one of boredom. It was nothing but a stylized beauty contest—and beauty contests among dogs just don’t stir the same emotions in my breast as, say, Cher fighting it out neck-and-neck (or whatever) with Michelle Pfeiffer.
I took Joan back to Cincinnati, bought her dinner at La Maisonette, tried not to faint when I saw the tab, and drove her over to my apartment. I had cleaned it up as best I could, but I could tell by the look on her face as she walked in the door that it lacked a little something. Maybe it was the forty-year-old refrigerator, or the bare lightbulb in the bathroom.
We talked a bit, and went to bed t
ogether, but I could tell when I drove her to the airport the next morning that I wouldn’t be seeing her again except by accident. All that crap about being in danger hadn’t disqualified me as a potential husband, but the symbols of my affluence had knocked me right out of the box.
On the way home I turned on the radio, hoping to find out how the Reds had done the night before. What I got was a news bulletin stating that noted Cincinnati financier Wilson Cotter and his younger brother James had come to a tragic end when their chauffeured limousine had skidded out of control and crashed against a brick wall on the way home from an art auction. The Chagall he had purchased was miraculously undamaged.
I stopped at a drug store, bought a post card, addressed it to Joan, and told her to destroy the letter.
When I finally arrived at my apartment I found a plump, rosy-cheeked, middle-aged woman sitting on my front steps, holding a little ball of white fluff on her lap.
“Mr. Paxton?” she said as I approached her.
“Yes.”
“Hi. I’m Beverly Danzig.”
“The name sounds familiar,” I replied, trying to remember where I’d heard it.
“I’m your star witness,” she said proudly. “I’m the woman who saw Alice Dent at the airport.”
“I’m afraid the case is closed,” I said. “We found Baroness a few days ago. She was dead.”
“I’m very sorry to hear that,” she replied. “However, I do have something to cheer you up.”
She held out the little ball of white fluff at me.
It growled.
“What is it?” I said.
“Your Westie puppy. Don’t you remember?”
“I remember saying I didn’t want to buy a puppy,” I told her.
“He’s a gift,” she said, thrusting him into my arms. “And since you’re a detective, I’ve named him Marlowe. I was sure you’d appreciate it.”
I was still protesting as she jumped into her station wagon and drove off.
So I was stuck with a dog, at least until I could find some sucker even more gullible than myself to take it off my hands.
I looked down at him and decided he was sort of cute at that. He was a compact little dog, almost small enough to fit in my glove compartment. At the moment he was sniffing the ground furiously, tail wagging, stubby little legs carrying him in sharp concentric circles. Well, I decided, after the way everyone had been knocking me around on this case, maybe I ought to have a blindly loving animal to come home to at nights, one that would love me right or wrong, worship the ground I walked on, and give me an emotional boost after a hard day of getting my head kicked in. I decided that Marlowe and I would enter into a trial marriage.
Five seconds later he walked over and lifted his leg on me.
“Welcome to the club,” I said.
Even Butterflies Can Sting
If Marlowe could have laughed, he’d have been rolling on the floor, holding his sides and gasping for breath.
Marlowe’s my dog. I don’t like him much. He doesn’t like me at all. But we’re all each other’s got, so I feed him and he hangs around.
Right at the moment, he was staring intently at me as I was struggling with the black tie. He’d been watching me for the better part of half an hour, as I cursed my way through the suspenders, cummerbund, and the cufflinks. He cocked his head to one side and grinned—yeah, I know, dogs can’t grin . . . but no one ever told that to Marlowe—as if to say that everything that went before was merely amusing, but my struggle with the tie was hilarious.
It wasn’t that I was a stranger to tuxedos. I’d worn one to my junior prom in high school, and that had only been twenty-seven years ago. Well, maybe twenty-eight. I could have sworn that first one was a lot easier to get into.
Maybe it’s just that I was out of practice. I only owned two neckties, and I never untied them. I just slipped them over my head and slid the knots up, like you do on a noose. The only cufflinks I’d seen in the past decade were the fakes that Benny Fourth Street gave me as collateral for a twenty-dollar loan right before he took off for Gulfstream Park.
I looked at the face in the mirror. It glared back accusingly at me, as if to ask why I was inflicting all this suffering and humiliation on it.
The answer was easy: money.
I can still remember receiving the call from Bill Striker. He and I had been cops at the same time, and we had become private eyes at the same time. And there all resemblance ceased. The Striker Agency was the biggest in Cincinnati. Their clients all knew how to tie black ties, except for the really rich ones, who just knew how to hit home runs or throw touchdown passes or sing rock songs. My clients—on those occasions I had any clients—paid me with phony cufflinks.
Striker had heard I’d needed money (so what else was new?), and he thought he’d throw a little work my way. I was just a bit leery, since the last time he’d tossed me a bone it had teeth and damned near bit my ass off in a Mexican slum. But his information about my finances was dead on, so I figured I would at least listen to his proposition.
It seems that one of his clients was Carla Bigelow, the uncrowned queen of the Cincinnati Opera Society. The organization was having its annual formal dinner, and she was planning on wearing her diamond earrings, which were worth a cool half million an ear, and she wanted a bodyguard. But no one ever gets as rich as Carla by tipping the chauffeur or remembering the maid’s birthday, and she told Striker that since she was leaving the matching necklace at home, and it was worth another two million, she would only pay a third of his agency’s usual fee.
He spent an hour trying to explain that what she wore didn’t influence the service she would get, and when she refused to budge, he knew it was time to farm the job out to someone who needed the work—and the aggravation—more than he did.
Enter Eli Paxton, cut-rate protector of opera ladies’ diamonds.
At least, I would be, if I ever figured out the intricacies of the damned tie.
I finally managed to wrestle it into a respectable bow. I checked my watch—6:30. Her limo would be pulling up in about five minutes. I decided to go downstairs and wait for it.
It was easy to spot. Whiter than a bridal gown and longer than a dinosaur. I opened the back door and bent my head down, preparing to climb in.
“The hired help sits in front,” said a wiry silver-haired woman in a brocaded satin pantsuit. She was smoking a cigarette in an exquisite jeweled holder. I didn’t even have to check her ears to know it was Clara Bigelow; the manner said it all.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. “I’ll be happy to.”
“And if you ever work for me again,” she added as I closed the door, “learn how to tie a necktie.”
If I ever work for you again, I’ll know that an ice-skating rink has opened in hell, I thought, but I smiled and assured her I would.
Her driver, a heavyset black guy in a uniform that made him look like a refugee from a halftime marching band, shot me a sympathetic look. He didn’t say a word, though. I didn’t blame him.
We drove in perfect silence to Nicole’s Restaurant. I’d walked past Nicole’s a few times, and once in a while I wondered exactly what it was that made its lunches cost a hundred bucks apiece while its dinners ran into real money. Now I’d finally get a chance to find out.
The limo pulled up to the front door. I scrambled out, intent on making a good impression by opening the door for the old girl, but a pair of uniformed doormen, dressed like two of the Three Musketeers, beat me to it. She emerged, shot me a contemptuous glare, and walked into the restaurant. I fell into step behind her and got my first good look at the earrings. I decided it was no wonder that she’d left the necklace behind; if its diamonds were anything like the earrings, she’d have to add ten pounds of muscle before she was strong enough to wear them all at the same time.
Suddenly she stopped and turned to me.
“You!” she said imperiously.
I looked around, hoping she was speaking to someone else. No such l
uck.
“What’s your name?” she demanded.
“Eli,” I said. “Eli Paxton.”
“Of the Boston Paxtons?”
“If I am, they’ve never told me.”
She shook her head. “No, you couldn’t be. No touch of elegance at all. And that name! No one is called Eli.”
“I am.”
“Nonsense,” she shot back. “You are Elias, and that is what I shall call you.”
Just make sure you pay me $250.00 and take care of my tux rental and you can call me Jack the Ripper if it makes you happy.
“Then Elias is what I’ll answer to, Miss Bigelow.”
“I am not a Miss.”
“Mrs. Bigelow,” I corrected myself.
“Ms. Bigelow.”
“Whatever you say,” I replied pleasantly.
“On second thought, I think you had better call me Clara,” she said after a moment’s consideration.
“Isn’t that a bit familiar?” I said. “After all, I’m just the hired help.”
“I’d rather have them think you’re my gigolo than my bodyguard,” she answered. “Why alert them to the fact that I’m wearing the real earrings?”
It made sense. It also reminded me that when you’re as rich as Clara Bigelow, you probably have fakes of all your jewelry. Although fake is a little misleading; I know something about jewelry, and her fakes were probably worth more than most women’s real McCoys.
We were ushered into a large private dining room, with an elaborate bar set up at one end.
“Keep your eyes opened, Elias,” she said harshly. “I’m not paying you to enjoy yourself.”
“We’re on the same page, Clara,” I said. I haven’t enjoyed myself since this damned evening began.
“Good. Now, what are you going to have for dinner?”
“I hadn’t given it much thought,” I said. “Maybe a hamburger . . .”
She looked like I’d just suggested setting fire to the Opera Palace.