Bad News: A Zack Walker Mystery #4

by Linwood Barclay

  ‘I appreciate it,’ I said.

  Cherry worked his hands around the cheeseburger. ‘If this doesn’t make your heart stop, you’ll really enjoy it.’

  My heart was still beating when we left, but I was pretty sure I’d come down with a touch of lung cancer. My clothes reeked of cigarette smoke. When we came out into the night air, I sucked in as much of it as I could, feeling as though I’d just emerged from a house fire.

  ‘You need to hang out in more dives,’ Cherry said. ‘I thought newspaper reporters were a bunch of hard-drinking, heavy-smoking types.’

  ‘That’s kind of changed over the years,’ I said. ‘Now we all own minivans and have to leave work early to get our kids to soccer.’

  ‘Funny you should mention that,’ Cherry said.

  ‘What?’ I said.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Cherry turned into an industrial area on the out skirts of Canborough. He slowed as we passed a low-rise concrete-block building with bars on the windows. Surveillance cameras and spotlights were mounted in several spots just under the eaves. Half a dozen motorcycles, big ones with sweeping handlebars, were parked out front.

  ‘Clubhouse,’ Cherry said. ‘This is where the Comets hang out, conduct their business. Some of them even sleep here, pretty much live here.’

  ‘Wingstaff?’

  ‘No. He’s got a house in town. Doesn’t look like a bunker, but it’s still got plenty of surveillance equipment around it.’

  I felt a sense of unease sweep over me. ‘We’re going in here?’

  ‘Huh? No. This is just part of the tour. We’re meeting Bruce someplace else.’

  Cherry turned around in the gravel lot out front of the clubhouse and headed back into the city’s older residential district. We were driving through a neighborhood of traditional Victorian-type homes when we came upon a large park illuminated with floodlamps.

  We parked, and as we walked towards the park, we could hear the sounds of children’s voices, pounding feet, soft chatter. It was a kids’ soccer match, boys about ten years old, kicking the ball back and forth, working their way from one end of the field to the other. Standing along the sidelines, and sitting in a set of wooden bleachers, parents watched and cheered.

  ‘What are we doing here?’ I asked.

  Cherry ignored me, working his way through the parents. He glanced up the bleachers and started climbing them, a row of seats with each step. Sitting at the top, off to one side, was a large man in his forties, not fat but big, dressed in black jeans and a windbreaker. He was clean-shaven, with dark, neat hair and glasses. A bit Clark Kentish. This, I concluded, could not be the head of a biker gang. Maybe this guy was going to tell us where we could find Wingstaff.

  ‘Hey, Bruce,’ Cherry said.

  Okay, so I was wrong.

  Wingstaff kept his eyes on the field. ‘Mike, how’s it going?’

  ‘Who’s winning?’

  ‘Other side. We’re getting our ass kicked. Blake got a goal, though.’ His eyes caught something, and he was on his feet. ‘Hey!’ he shouted. ‘Come on!’ He sat back down. ‘It’s not hockey, for Christ’s sake. You can’t check a guy like that.’

  ‘This is the guy I told you about,’ Cherry said. Wingstaff sized me up in half a second and returned his eyes to the field.

  ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Thanks for seeing me.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Anything for Mike here.’ His voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘You’re looking for some woman?’

  ‘That’s right. I think, although I don’t know for sure, that she might have something to do with Gary Merker, maybe from a few years ago. Or Leonard Edgars.’

  ‘This lady you’re looking for got a name?’

  ‘Trixie Snelling.’

  Wingstaff was on his feet again. He coned his hands around his mouth and shouted: ‘Hey, ref! You wanna borrow my glasses?’ He sat back down. ‘Name don’t mean nothing to me.’

  ‘Maybe she wasn’t using that name at the time,’ Cherry offered.

  ‘Well, if you don’t know what name she might have been using, then I don’t know how I can help you. Hey, Blake’s got the ball. Come on, come on … Ah, fuck. He’s got to learn how to hang on to it. He’s falling all over himself.’

  ‘Show him the picture,’ Cherry prompted me.

  It was nighttime, but we were under the spotlights. I got out the picture from the Suburban and handed it to Bruce Wingstaff. He looked down, squinted, reached into his pocket for a pair of reading glasses and slid them on.

  ‘Nice looking,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know …’ He glanced up at the field, looked again at the picture. ‘You know who it could be?’

  I felt my pulse quicken. ‘Who?’

  ‘Well, maybe not, the hair color’s not right, but it looks a bit like maybe it could be Candace.’

  ‘Candace?’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, what was her last name … Shit. She got knocked up by Eldon Swain. Remember him?’ He was asking Cherry.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Car pushed in front of the train, with him in it?’

  ‘I remember.’

  ‘And I would like to state, once again, that we had nothing to do with that,’ Wingstaff said. ‘Given half a chance, we mighta, but we didn’t.’

  ‘Sure, Bruce,’ Cherry said. I was having some difficulty getting used to this, a bike gang leader and a cop having a casual chat, talking about old murders like they were reminiscing about somebody they’d known in high school.

  Wingstaff was on his feet again. ‘Go, Blake! Go! Go!’ I turned and looked at the field. A blond-haired boy was moving up the field, then tripped himself up on the ball, without any interference from an opposing player, and landed on his face.

  Wingstaff winced, made a face.

  ‘So you think this woman might be Candace,’ I said. ‘And that she had a child.’

  ‘Little girl, I think,’ Wingstaff said.

  ‘Whatever happened to them?’

  He looked up at the stars for a moment, as though the answer could be found in them. ‘After those three got shot, I don’t remember ever seeing her, or her kid, again. Kid couldn’t have been more than a year old at the time, anyway. But come to think of it, she did just seem to disappear. But then, so did a lot of the girls who worked at the Kickstart – they’d come and go – ’cept for those that came to work for me.’

  ‘She was a stripper? Or a prostitute?’ I asked.

  ‘Uh, I don’t think she did much hooking. Started out dancing, I think, but then she started working in the office. Had a head for figures.’ Wingstaff cocked his head at a funny angle, half smiled. ‘Fuck, now I remember.’

  Cherry and I glanced at each other, then studied Wingstaff.

  ‘After that little massacre, Pick arranged a meeting with me. We had to set it up, careful like, because we figured Pick thought we’d put the hit out on his guys. Found some neutral ground, which actually turned out to be a Starbucks on Elmer Street. Anyway, we had this sit-down, and I expressed my condolences, and I figured he’d be accusing me of offing his boys.’

  ‘But he didn’t,’ Cherry said.

  ‘Naw, which I thought was kind of interesting. Anyway, he as much as said that he was packing it in, taking Edgars with him. Said it wasn’t just the others getting offed. He was broke. Couldn’t make his bills, no money in the kitty. But he said to me, if I ever saw Candy, I was to let him know. Like, if she came to work for me, or I just saw her around. He said I owed him that, for letting me take over his share of the market. And that if I saw her, he’d see that I got a little reward on top of that.’

  ‘Really,’ I said.

  ‘I think he put the word out to the rest of my guys, and others that he knew, like regular customers at the Kickstart. Said no matter where he ended up, they could reach him through his mom, leave a message with her.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In town here. Getting kind of on, I suspect. Don’t see her out and about. Not what you’d call very
motherish.’

  ‘So did you ever see her? Candy?’

  Wingstaff shook his head. ‘Never did. Never really cared. Got my own problems to take care of.’

  ‘Why do you think he was wanting to find her so bad?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Didn’t ask, wasn’t my problem. But you know, you had the sense that maybe she was something of a liability.’

  ‘A liability?’ I said.

  ‘Someone who could tell people things,’ Wingstaff said. ‘Sometimes you don’t want people telling other people things.’ He gave Cherry a wink. ‘Ain’t that so, Mike?’

  ‘Certainly is, Bruce,’ Cherry said.

  A whistle blew. The soccer game was over.

  ‘That’s about all the time I have, gents,’ Wingstaff said.

  ‘You come out for your boy’s games a lot?’ I asked.

  ‘Never miss a one,’ he said. ‘You have to get the kids involved in things, you know, or they’ve got too much time on their hands, get themselves into trouble.’ He nodded and headed down towards the base of the bleachers.

  ‘You think he’s ever killed anybody?’ I said quietly to Cherry.

  ‘You mean this week?’ the detective replied.

  We worked our way down to the field, saw young Blake Wingstaff run over to see his father. His face was muddy from when he’d fallen on the ball.

  ‘We got killed,’ the boy said, his face awash with shame. His father, the biker boss, smiled and knelt down and gave his son a friendly rub on the head. You could almost feel him aching to hug the boy, but he didn’t want to embarrass him in front of his teammates.

  ‘You done good,’ he told him. ‘I saw that goal you made.’

  ‘I fell down,’ Blake said.

  ‘We all fall down,’ Wingstaff said. ‘Then we get up, and we keep on playing.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘I’d like to drop in on Gary Merker’s mother,’ I told Cherry as we walked back to his pickup.

  ‘She’s a treat and a half,’ Cherry said. ‘You might want to go in and talk to her alone. I don’t think she’s very fond of me.’

  I glanced over at Cherry as he hit his remote key and unlocked his truck. ‘And that would be why?’

  Cherry opened his door and waited till I had the passenger side open and was getting in before he said, ‘This would be, like, ten years ago, I guess. I had to arrest him once, at home. Hauled his ass out of the kitchen just as he was about to sit down to his momma’s lasagna. Stolen cars or something. Guy’s eating with one hand, picking his nose with the other. Anyway, he kicks up a fuss as I’m taking him through the living room, and I have to shove him up against the wall, and his forehead, it kind of makes a hole.’

  ‘In the drywall?’

  ‘Yeah. Not a huge one, you know, maybe like a good-sized yam. Like that. He was okay, though. Just the wall that looked like shit.’

  We drove about ten minutes and Cherry slowed in front of a small, one-story white house, the only one with an empty garbage can out front, like Mrs Merker never got around to bringing it in after trash pickup. The house, which looked to have been built sixty or more years ago, sagged in the middle. The streetlights were bright enough to reveal shingles that had curled, and rot had settled into the boards around the windows.

  ‘There a Mr Merker?’ I asked.

  ‘Naw. Run off when Gary was a little guy. Must have known what the little shit would grow up to be, figured get out while the getting was good. No father-son picnics for those two. See if she’s patched the wall. As you go in, it would be on the right side.’ He smiled, eager to know.

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘I’ll park a ways down the street,’ Cherry said. ‘You have fun now.’

  I got out of the car, and had only taken a step when my cell phone rang. I reached for it, flipped it open, and saw my home number displayed.

  ‘Hello?’ I said.

  ‘Hi, Dad.’ Angie. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Finding out some things. How’s it going there?’

  Angie didn’t speak for a moment. ‘Mom cries.’

  I swallowed. ‘Does she say anything?’

  ‘Nothing. Not to me or Paul. She goes into the bedroom, figures we can’t hear her, but I stood outside the door, and she was crying.’

  ‘Is she there? Can I talk to her?’

  ‘She went out. She said she had to go to the mall or something, but I think she’s probably just driving around. Which, actually, sort of sucks, because I wanted the car tonight. I think she’s scared, Dad.’

  ‘Scared?’

  ‘Yeah, like, about a whole bunch of things. I think she’s worried about you, about what you might be getting mixed up in, and she’s scared her job is falling apart, and I think she’s scared that you guys are headed for the dumper.’

  I felt a lump in my throat. ‘I don’t want that to happen.’

  ‘Yeah, well, like, neither do I. And I don’t think Paul’d be all that crazy about it either.’

  ‘How is Paul?’

  ‘He’s okay, I guess. That reminds me, somethin’ kind of weird. This woman came to the door, like, she could have been a football player or something. And there’s a car in the drive, there’s another one exactly like her behind the wheel, and this really ugly woman in the passenger seat.’

  Who the hell would that be? Not Mrs Gorkin and her daughters?

  ‘Anyway, the one that came to the door, she asks is Paul there, and I say no, because he wasn’t, right? And so she hands me this envelope, has a hundred bucks in it, and she says, “This is for work,” well, actually, she says, “Dis iz for verk.” She has this kind of accent, you know?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘She tells me to give it to Paul, that he should remember they did the right thing. These were the burger ladies, right?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I felt cold, standing outside Mrs Merker’s house. ‘She didn’t threaten you or anything, or say anything about Paul?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. Well, except, she said, tell Paul, he was wrong about the freezer. That the meat was okay.’

  I breathed some cool night air in through my nose. ‘Honey, if she ever shows up again, or there’s any trouble, call the police. Or Lawrence. His number’s in my book.’

  ‘Okay. When are you coming home?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m going to stay in Canborough overnight, then head on to the Groverton area in the morning. Maybe tomorrow night, I’ll be back.’

  ‘Okay. Be careful?’

  ‘I will, honey.’ I thought a moment, and said, ‘Tell your mother, when she comes home, that I love her.’

  ‘You tell her, Dad,’ Angie said. ‘Bye.’

  I closed the phone, slipped it back into my jacket, and collected my thoughts before completing my journey to Mrs Merker’s door.

  I knocked three times. Old flyers advertising sales long since past were littered about the shrubs. There was a dim light, probably from a television, visible through the front door blinds.

  I heard a bolt slide back, then the door opened six inches. A wizened old woman, slightly hunched over, peered through the opening over her smudged reading glasses. ‘Fuck you want?’ she asked.

  ‘Mrs Merker?’ I said.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘I don’t suppose Gary’s around, is he?’ I was pretty confident that he wasn’t, that this was a good way to break the ice with his mother, but suddenly I felt a wave of panic, that maybe he might actually be there. I didn’t feel I was quite ready to speak one-to-one with him yet.

  ‘He hasn’t fucking lived here in years,’ his mother said. ‘What you want him for?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, realizing that I was making this up as I went along, ‘I was hoping to get a message to him.’

  ‘A message? What fucking message?’

  ‘Could I come in just for a moment? I’m very sorry to bother you, to drop by unannounced this way.’ Like maybe, if I’d given her a call, she’d have had a chance to p
ut on a pot of tea for me. Maybe make some scones.

  She opened the door wider, and I realized I’d have had to give her a lot of notice if she’d wanted to pick up a bit before company arrived. The room could have been a newspaper-recycling depot. Yellowing papers and magazines were piled high on nearly every available surface, even on the plaid couch. There was a spot opened up, at the end, where Mrs Merker must have been sitting to watch the television, which was tuned in to an old episode of Fear Factor.

  ‘I love it when they eat fucking bugs!’ she cackled.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘Those are the best.’

  She had her back to me and was headed for what I guessed was the kitchen. ‘I’ll be back in a second. I was just going for a cracker when you knocked.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  As she disappeared into the kitchen I glanced at the right wall. About halfway along, there was a large, garish painting of a seaside, in a thick gold frame. It was the kind of art you saw sold out of vans at major metropolitan intersections. Tentatively, I took hold of the bottom corner and tipped the painting away from the wall, peered underneath, and saw the hole in the drywall.

  ‘You a friend of Gary?’ she said from the kitchen.

  ‘Well, not real close, but, you know,’ I said, letting the picture settle back against the wall.

  She reappeared with a red box of saltines, her blue-veined hand rooting through the cellophane to get hold of one. She took one out, bit off half of it. ‘I like crackers,’ she said. She chewed a few times, crumbs spilling out from the corner of her mouth. ‘These are pretty fucking stale.’ She tossed the other half in, chewed.

  ‘Have you heard from Gary lately?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, talked to him a few days ago,’ she said.

  ‘How’s he doing? He get back up this way much?’

  ‘Sometimes, yeah, the little fucker. He does a lot of important business, of course. He was in Chicago not long ago, he was telling me.’

  ‘Love Chicago,’ I said.

  ‘So what you say your name was?’ Mrs Merker asked, squinting in my general direction.

  ‘Zack,’ I said. ‘He probably never mentioned me.’