Deadly Beloved hcc-38

by Max Allan Collins

  “Great. She’s smart and has solid police credentials. But, Ms. Tree, she’s no Roger.”

  “What I want you to do,” I said, getting up, “is hit your computer, see how many of these murders and accidents can be directly, or even indirectly, linked to Muerta Enterprises.”

  Exasperated, Dan rose as well, saying, “Ms. Tree, Roger’s forgotten more about the Muertas than anybody else on this planet ever knew, us included, and—”

  “I’ll talk to him.”

  Dan seemed about to press on with his argument when my words finally registered and he smiled in pleasant surprise.

  I gave him a schoolmarm’s pointing finger. “Get right on top of how many unfortunate ‘events’ benefited the Muertas...capeesh?”

  “Capeesh!”

  Chipper, Dan headed past me.

  “That’s what I like about bein’ a 21st Century P.I.,” he was saying. “Ten years ago, shoe leather. Today—Google.”

  “Refresh my memory, Ms. Tree,” the psychiatrist said. “This Roger—that’s Roger Freemont, your husband’s other partner?”

  “That’s right,” I said. “He was Mike’s partner on the PD for a while, and one of the original partners in the Tree Agency.”

  “And he’s the one who...”

  “Who left the business when I took over. Yes.”

  The pen scratched on paper. “I see.”

  “Roger was Mike’s sarge back in Desert Storm days.”

  “Yes. I recall.”

  I glanced over at him. “...It hit the fan that very first Monday, after Mike’s murder....”

  That was my first time seated behind Mike’s desk.

  In retrospect, I wondered if that hadn’t added fuel to the fire. The day outside the window at my back was overcast, and Roger’s mood was surly.

  He and Dan were seated in the clients’ chairs opposite. Bald, bespectacled Roger was in a black suit with a white shirt and a dark blue tie; he might have been a funeral director. Dan was in shades of tan from sportcoat to shirt-and-tie to shoes, as if he wanted to blend into the woodwork in this overtly masculine office.

  Roger was saying, “All due respect, Mrs. Tree—”

  “I prefer ‘Ms.,’ ” I said.

  His eyes widened. “You choose some silly feminist, what? Affectation? Over honoring your husband?”

  “No. I like the pun. Ms. Tree—mystery. Get it?”

  “Cute,” Roger said, with a tiny sneer. “Almost as cute as your way of mourning. Body isn’t even cold and you’re already in Mike’s chair.”

  “Well, the chair’s still warm.” My stare was pointed. “Roger, what is your problem? Besides your not liking me, and me being a dickless dick, that is.”

  He shook his head. “Not a matter of liking. And I couldn’t care less what you pack between your legs. Point is, I’m a full partner in this business—one third Mike, one third Dan, one third you....”

  But Dan surprised me and popped out of the woodwork to say, “Your math sucks, Roge. Ms. Tree here is also a full partner—twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five, twenty-five. Which with the old boss dead and his wife inheriting? Adds up to fifty percent new boss.”

  I wasn’t sure I was reading Dan right. I got his eyes and asked, “Any problem with how that totals up?”

  Dan shifted in his chair and sat forward. He wasn’t quite smiling. “No. You’re smart and attractive—you’ll put a great face on this business, grieving widow stepping in for her murdered husband.”

  Roger, astounded, stared at the younger detective. “Is that all it is to you, Danny? Business?”

  Dan shrugged. “You’re the one talking partners and percentages, Roge.”

  I said, “Dan’s correct, Roger—I do hold fifty percent of this agency. You want me to buy you out, I’ll make the arrangements.”

  His face stone, Roger said, “Do it then.”

  I leaned forward and tried to take anything adversarial out of my tone and my expression. “Roger, I’m not asking you to leave.”

  He grunted and his sneer was full-blown now. “And I’m not asking your goddamn permission. I’m senior partner here.”

  Dan was giving Roger an offended sideways look. “We all started the same day, Roge.”

  Roger, clearly disappointed in his young partner, leaned toward him and said, “Age and experience matter, Danny boy. Ought to, anyway.” Then his gaze swung to me. “If you vacate that chair, and turn it over to me...Miz Tree...then, well, no hard feelings.”

  Coolly, I said, “The name on the door is Michael Tree.”

  He snorted a laugh. “Real cute.”

  He rose.

  And said, “I got no desire to work for a glorified meter maid....” He paused on the way out to say, “You’ll hear from my attorney.”

  He slammed the door.

  Dan gave me a half-smile as he said, “Well, Roger can be kind of a prick sometimes.”

  “Didn’t notice,” I said.

  Then Dan’s expression turned serious as he said, “Still, that’s a bad loss, Ms. Tree. A lot of experience and knowledge just walked out that door. He’s a better a detective than either of us.”

  “Point’s moot,” I said. “He doesn’t work here anymore.”

  “Something about that little scene nagged at me, Doc.”

  “How so?”

  “True, I’d never really gotten along all that great with Roger, but this...this seemed over the top.”

  “In what way?”

  “It just seemed...calculated. Even staged. I mean, looking back on it, the whole...’I’m not working for a woman’ chauvinist pig routine...I just couldn’t buy it.”

  “Is that why, on the Addwatter matter, you gave in to Mr. Green, and said you would at least talk to Mr. Freemont about this particular case?”

  “Yes. For a whole year, it had been bothering me, and I felt I should’ve confronted Freemont about these feelings a long time ago. Going to see him was overdue.”

  The Axminster Building on Van Buren was a survivor, many of its era having been long since demolished.

  The floor I walked down—past offices of wood-framed pebbled glass, my heels echoing like gunshots off black-and-white speckled marble—reminded me of everything from childhood visits to dentists and doctors to adult calls on insurance agencies and travel bureaus. Only one out of perhaps four offices was filled here on the seventh floor, so the building was in its death throes, the wrecker ball’s shadow looming.

  The frosted glass said:

  SUITE 714

  FREEMONT INVESTIGATIONS ROGER FREEMONT, PRES. APPOINTMENT ONLY

  I wasn’t down in his book, but what the hell—he probably wouldn’t have agreed to see me, anyway. I went on in.

  Roger Freemont, in rolled-up shirtsleeves and loosened tie, looked up from paperwork to glare at me from behind his dark-rimmed glasses. “What part of ‘appointment only’ don’t you understand?”

  Ah, a year passes with Roger and yet it’s as if no time at all has gone by....

  I shut the door. “Thought you might make an exception, and see me without an appointment. For old times’ sake.”

  “Would it kill you to knock? This isn’t much, but it is my office.”

  He was right—it wasn’t much. This was a single room, not terribly big, no reception area—hell, no receptionist—just broad-shouldered Roger at a big battered wooden desk, wooden file cabinets lined up St. Valentine’s Day Massacre-style on the opposite wall, and several hardback client chairs under a high ceiling that was home to a shut-off ceiling fan and peeling paint.

  The only sign that this was not a P.I.’s office in a 1940s film noir was the laptop computer on the scarred desk.

  “Actually, I do apologize for bursting in on you,” I said, meaning it, moving toward one of the two client chairs opposite him. “I expected an outer office...a receptionist....”

  “It’s a one-man agency, Mrs. Tree,” he said crisply. “Just the essentials.”

  I stood next to one of the chairs,
but didn’t seat myself. I tried out a smile. “Shouldn’t the essentials include a shapely secretary and a bottle of whiskey in the bottom desk drawer?...And it’s ‘Ms.’ Tree, remember.”

  “I remember,” he said, his eyes cold and unblinking. He had the look of a high school science teacher who coached football on the side. “What do you want? I’m a busy guy.”

  “Mind if I sit?” I said, and sat. “Thanks.”

  “Always a pleasure,” he said dryly.

  I crossed my legs, supported my purse in my lap, gloves still on—didn’t want him to think I was settling in for the afternoon. But only the literal gloves stayed on. “You know, Roger, you’ve always been kind of a prick.”

  He pursed his lips and he wasn’t throwing a kiss. “You can’t imagine how hearing you say that devastates me.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and smiled again. “But not as big a prick as this....Not the raging asshole who quit me right when I needed him most.”

  That hit home.

  A corner of his mouth twitched and, behind the lenses, the eyes finally blinked, and blinked some more. Suddenly he was ill at ease.

  Good.

  “Look,” he began, “I, uh, I really am busy. What the hell do you want, anyway?”

  I leaned forward. “How much do I need to fill you in? Has Rafe ever shared his theory about this so-called Event Planner with you?”

  Roger shrugged. “What if he has.”

  “You do know that Dan and I are working the Addwatter case.”

  “Sure. It’s been all over the media.” Another shrug. “Looks pretty open and shut. Whacko wife snuffs hubby and his hobby.”

  “Right,” I said, nodding. “That’s how it looks. But Dan and I think what happened with Marcy Addwatter is one of those ‘events.’ ”

  He drew in a breath. Let it out.

  Then he admitted, “Has all the earmarks.”

  “So does a certain other case.”

  “What certain other case?”

  “Mike’s murder.”

  He tasted his tongue. “Is, uh, that what Rafe says?”

  I shifted, re-crossing my legs. “Rafe says the cops aren’t interested in solved cases. And he’s been good enough to hand eight files over to me. And to Dan. You remember Dan.”

  “I remember Dan.”

  “He could use your help. I could use your help.... Are you getting this, Roger? We could use your help.”

  Roger, increasingly ill at ease, began, “I don’t—”

  I held up a traffic-cop palm. “I’ve had plenty of time to think, in the year since Mike was killed. And one thing that’s occurred to me? Maybe you and Mike left the PD at the same time for more reasons than just wanting to enter the world of small business.”

  Roger’s mouth twitched something that was neither smile nor frown as he returned his attention to his paperwork. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, lady.”

  “What were you and Mike working on...mister? That you couldn’t work on from inside the department?”

  He looked up, dropped the paperwork onto his desk with a sigh. He seemed about to speak, then stopped to think a moment. And sighed again, and loosened his collar with a forefinger.

  I said, “What are you, Roger Freemont or Rodney Dangerfield? Spit it out.”

  His expression was pained. “Look...Ms. Tree. I promised Mike I’d...that I wouldn’t....” Then that expression changed, melted into something I’d never seen on that normally sour puss: he seemed torn up.

  “What, Roger?”

  “I promised him, Ms. Tree. I promised Mike.”

  I sat forward. “That you wouldn’t endanger me? Well, Mike’s dead, Roger—and I’m the Michael Tree you owe your allegiance to now!”

  Roger began to speak, and a coughing sound came out, or seemed to come out of him; only it wasn’t a human cough, rather a mechanical one, following by the sharp sound of breaking glass.

  And I looked down, startled as hell, as a slowed-up slug bounced off my left breast.

  I straightened to see the frozen, open-mouthed Roger—a thick trail of blood oozing from an exit wound near his heart, spreading on his white shirt—try once again to speak, and fail.

  Then he flopped unconscious onto his paperwork, breathing slow, loud, ragged.

  Already on my feet, I got back behind his desk and ripped away the blinds to reveal the spider-webbed bullet hole in the window, a fire escape yawning beyond.

  I touched Roger’s shoulder and said, “Hang in, Roge,” then shoved open the window and, getting the nine millimeter out of my purse, climbed out onto the iron grillwork.

  On the metal landing, gun in one hand, cell phone in the other, I looked down as I told the 911 dispatcher, “Shooting at Axminster Building on Van Buren, Suite 714....” Then looked up and saw a skinny, dark-haired male figure in a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans and white running shoes scrambling up the fire escape, a silenced automatic in one latex-gloved hand.

  “Freemont Investigations,” I told the dispatcher. “Sucking chest wound—I don’t know, just fucking hurry!”

  I slipped the cell in my trenchcoat pocket and aimed the nine mil skyward, but the guy had hopped up and onto the roof, out of sight.

  But not out of mind—up I went, like Sheena of the Jungle on a goddamned tree, flying up six stories of fire escape, and then I was climbing onto the rooftop only to see Roger’s assassin, dark hair standing up in the wind and wiggling, as he ran hard and fast...

  ...and then leapt onto the adjacent rooftop.

  I took pursuit, but the bastard had a real lead on me. And when I got to the edge of the rooftop, where he’d leapt from, I stopped abruptly, looking down at my shoes—short-heeled pumps, but heels nonetheless.

  “Shit,” I said, and kicked them off.

  Then I backed up, breathed deep, and made a run for it.

  I leapt for the next building, trenchcoat flapping, and landed on my nyloned feet, gracelessly but on them, and when I looked up to take my bearings, there the assassin was, still on the run, but glaring back at me now, aiming the silenced automatic in my direction.

  I dove out of the way as several whispering bullets chewed up roofing tar around me, and I hit hard but not knocking the breath out of me.

  And I was still down when I looked up to see all the way across the rooftop where the dark-haired assassin in running shoes was in the process of backing up, preparing to jump to another building.

  “Fuck it,” I muttered.

  And aimed the nine mil and fired.

  The report was a thundercrack—even an El rumbling by couldn’t blot it out.

  The bullet hit the jumper in the back, in mid-flight, and he dropped from sight, between buildings, his scream following him all the way down.

  I sighed.

  Got to my feet, slowly, shaking my head the same way.

  “Probably won’t have much to say for himself,” I said to nobody.

  As the shriek of an approaching ambulance belatedly echoed the falling man’s scream, I only hoped his target, Roger Freemont, would be luckier.

  TEN

  The last time I’d visited Cook County Memorial it had been to stop by the morgue to view a couple of corpses.

  As pale as the unconscious Roger Freemont looked in his hospital bed, hooked up to an IV, a nearby heart monitor blipping, this trip didn’t feel all that different.

  He hadn’t told me, before the bullet interrupted, but I knew. I knew that, after Mike’s death, Roger had exaggerated his already gruff exterior to honor his late friend’s wishes and pursue a sub rosa investigation, while keeping the little lady in the dark.

  I leaned in at his bedside and told the impassive face, oddly vulnerable without the dark-rimmed glasses, “You have to pull through, Roger—the guy who did this to you didn’t. And you know me—I do have questions....”

  This was a room for two, but the bed next to Roger’s was empty, the dividing curtain drawn back. Patients came and went quickly on the Intensive C
are floor.

  I exited Roger’s room and, in the corridor right outside, found Rafe Valer and Chic Steele milling, both looking as anxious as expectant fathers, although this was the other end of that spectrum.

  With Rafe’s black trenchcoat, Chic’s tan one and my dark blue, we looked like a detective convention. Maybe we were due a meeting at that.

  Rafe’s eyes flew to mine as he asked, “Talk to Roger’s doctor yet, Michael?”

  I nodded. “Touch and go.”

  Face clenched like a fist, Chic said, “Tell me Roge isn’t in a coma.”

  “He’s not.”

  Both men were visibly relieved, but their heads were hanging.

  I went on: “He’s sleeping, sedated. Hasn’t said anything. But he will. He will.”

  Rafe offered up a humorless smirk. “For a dead guy, the hitter you popped told us a lot.”

  “Oh?”

  Chic picked up the thread: “Guy had definite ties to the old Muerta mob.”

  I felt a spike of excitement. “Is this the link we’ve been looking for, finally?”

  Chic shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe?”

  Chic held up a “take it easy” palm. “Ties to the Muerta family he definitely had, yes...but going back a lot of years—nothing connecting him to them since, hell, since Mike and me took Dominic Muerta out of the picture, and this new generation stepped in. Still...” His eyes went to Rafe. “...I may owe you an apology.”

  “Yeah?” Rafe said.

  “Maybe there is something to your ‘Event Planner’ notion.”

  I said to both of them, “If so, then where does Dominique Muerta fit in? Like father, like daughter?”

  Chic frowned. “You need to stay away from her, Ms. Tree.”

  I summoned the most withering smile I had in me, and I have a few. I said to the man I’d been sleeping with for months now, “Call me Michael.”

  But Rafe surprised me. He was shaking his head, saying, “Chic’s right—if the daughter really is as legitimate as she looks, with that company’s high-powered attorneys? You’ll put everything at risk.”

  “Define everything.”

  “Okay. How about the Tree Agency?”

  “And if Muerta’s darling daughter is not legit?”