Deadly Beloved hcc-38

by Max Allan Collins

  I cocked my head, regarding him like a housewife checking a milk carton’s expiration date. “Mike may have known, or suspected you were dirty, your long friendship making him look the other way. Or maybe he just didn’t believe it was possible...or perhaps he was keeping you close, where you’re supposed to keep your enemies, particularly the ones pretending to be friends.”

  His eyes and nostrils flared. “Michael, this is insane! I was best man at your wedding!”

  “And about the only person in the world besides Mike Tree who knew we’d be staying at that shabby little motel, that first, and last, night of our honeymoon....”

  “Is that your big evidence?”

  The nine millimeter in my fist slipped out from under the sheet to point at him openly.

  “No, just my favorite.” My hand was steady as it gripped the weapon. “Roger Freemont’s been gathering dirt all through the past year—despite your best efforts, he’s alive and well...and all of his work is in Lt. Valer’s hands, right now.”

  Any defense, any pretense, fell from his features, like a flimsy garment slipping off a hanger. But there was nothing cold in that face—he seemed sad and troubled, but not defiant or angry.

  He just said, “No...no bluff?”

  “No bluff.”

  Despite the gun, he edged closer, more intimate. “I do love you, Michael. I loved you before—”

  I shoved the snout of the nine mil into the hollow of his throat and gave him my most horrible smile.

  And I have a few.

  “Some day,” I said, “I hope to get the smell of you off of me. It’ll take a hell of a bath, won’t it? Bloodbath, maybe.”

  His lower lip quivered and his eyes were going all girly and moist.

  “Do it,” he said, voice trembling. “Do it, then. Mike would.”

  I backed the gun’s snout off, just a little. An inch maybe, so that it was no longer kissing his flesh.

  “Kill you?” I said, and I smiled as if I still loved him. “After all we’ve meant to each other?...Why, I’m not going to kill you, Chic. I’m going to see you humiliated and disgraced. I’m going to watch you scramble and wheedle and deal, and then I’m going to watch you go to the pokey, anyway—where so many of your old friends are waiting to settle scores.”

  Chic made a kind of half-dive for that chair so near the bed, where his .38 hung in its shoulder holster, and I helped him out, kicking his ass out of my bed and onto the floor where he lay in a naked pile and, when he finally looked up at me, I was looming over him in the black pajamas, pointing both guns down at him, mine and his.

  “You are a bitch,” he spat.

  “You made me yours,” I agreed. “Now you get to be somebody else’s....Stand up.”

  He did. Stood there in all his well-tanned, dick-dangling glory, with his hands up and his chin down.

  “Put your clothes on, Chic,” I said. “You never were one to stay the night.”

  THIRTEEN

  The light seeping around the drawn curtains in Dr. Cassel’s office was strictly the electric illumination of Chicago after dark. And only the green-shaded lamp, making a soft glow on the nearby desk, provided any light at all.

  “What a week you’ve had,” the doctor said, his notebook in his lap. He checked his watch. “We’ve gone way over....”

  I sat up. Swung around. Put my feet on the floor. “Sorry.”

  He rose, smiling, tossing the notebook over on his desk. “I got caught up in it myself....No harm, no foul. You were my last patient, anyway.”

  I got my purse from the floor near the recliner and went over to the coat rack and slipped my trenchcoat on.

  “My receptionist is gone for the day,” the doctor said, “but I can write you in myself.”

  “Fine,” I said, and went over and took the client chair opposite the psychiatrist, who was checking his appointment book—paper, not electronic. Very Old School, the doc.

  “I have a cancellation on Wednesday,” he said. “I think we should start working on all of this new material as soon as possible.”

  “I’ll be available.”

  He wrote that down in the appointment book, shut it and slipped it away in a desk drawer. Then he looked across the desk at me, folding his hands prayerfully.

  “Such a shock,” he said. His expression was grave. “A terrible blow. What this Captain Steele did to you, unimaginable. A trusted friend, a lover...betraying you so.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Sucks.”

  He studied me for a few moments, sighed, and shook his head somberly. “Ms. Tree, really, this...flippancy of yours. We’re going to have to really dig. You can’t simply shrug off such traumatic events.”

  I shrugged. “Nature of my business, Doc, digging into traumatic events. Think of Marcy Addwatter and what I had to unearth there—of course, that’s a little bit different.”

  “How so?”

  I gestured with an open palm. “Someone used the traumatic events in her life to know just what buttons to push....”

  “True,” he said, nodding, tenting his fingers now. “Actually, it’s surprising that this policeman, your Captain Steele, would have the sophistication to be your so-called Event Coordinator.”

  “That’s ‘Planner,’ at least as Rafe’s dubbed it, and, well, you’re right. Would be surprising—only Chic Steele wasn’t the Event Planner.”

  “But you said...?”

  “Chic was responsible for a lot of what went down... only, you’re typically insightful in describing him as not being terribly sophisticated.” I shifted in the chair, which was unpadded. “Chic tapped a mobbed-up hitter to follow me, and try to take out Roger Freemont...not exactly a deft play. And when that flopped, he sent a recent street-gang grad to play nurse with a hypo full of mercy killing, minus the mercy. Not what you’d call subtle.”

  “I see.” Dr. Cassel leaned back in his chair, rocking gently. “But perhaps this only reflects the hastiness of those two events, the lack of time available for proper planning.”

  I sat forward and gave him a smile that was equal parts friendliness and respect. “Doc, could I ask you something? Something off the clock?”

  He flipped a hand. “Certainly.”

  “I came to you because my husband used to.”

  “Correct.”

  “I always wondered if that was really, exactly... ethical. I mean, can a husband and a wife go to the same shrink?”

  Dr. Cassel mulled that a few moments, then said, “Generally, only when it’s for marital counseling... but with your husband deceased, well, that changes everything.”

  “Doesn’t it though.” I cocked my head. “Why did Mike come to you in the first place?”

  His smile became uneasy. “Now answering that would be unethical....”

  “Even with a deceased client?” I shook my head. “Mike was just about the most down-to-earth, uncomplicated, un-traumatized guy I ever met.”

  He raised both eyebrows. “I will say this, Ms. Tree: your husband took a number of lives in the line of duty. That can be difficult to cope with. And, as you know, I am on the approved list of psychiatrists for police officers, and seeing someone on that list is required of any officer involved in a fatal shooting on the job. As was your husband—on more than one occasion.”

  But I had to shake my head at that. “Doc, Mike wasn’t shy about taking down a bad guy. Department regs could have sent him to you. But he kept coming to you long after he was off the PD. Why would he do that?”

  He waved that off. “I can only suggest that Mike was more troubled by the lives he’d taken than he might have admitted to the woman he loved. Perhaps male ego issues were involved. And there’s always the possibility that he found our sessions useful.”

  “I’ll give you that,” I allowed. “But what if he kept coming to you for a completely different reason?”

  “What reason would that be?”

  “Oh, I don’t know...what if you were a suspect?”

  He reared back, blinkin
g as if at a bright light. “Now that is absurd. A suspect in, of...what?”

  I let the superficially friendly manner drop away, and allowed a cold edge to creep in.

  “Funny thing is,” I said, “you steered me to the answer yourself.”

  He was openly uneasy now. “I have no idea what—”

  “Your patented Old School dream analysis approach—I was thinking about that dream—”

  I lounged there on no towel, basking in a sun that seemed to turn the world white and yellow and orange, though the sensation was of warmth, not heat. The green of trees was a backdrop, more perceived than seen, the blue-green of the lake glinting with sun sparkle.

  I felt a sense of repose encouraged by the lapping of the waves and the laughter and splashing of a young couple, happy honeymooners, cavorting in the water. I watched them for a while, but they were indistinct in the shimmer of sunlight.

  To the left of me, a digging sound drew my eyes to a boy around ten, in a yellow swimsuit with orange-red seahorses dancing on it, who was working with a shovel, gaining more raw material for the elaborate sand castle he was constructing, turrets and towers and even a carved-out moat.

  The sound of splashing drew my attention back to the happy couple coming up out of the water, hand in hand, stumbling onto the sand to fall onto beach towels, dripping, laughing, kissing.

  I smiled a little and gave them privacy they hadn’t requested by casting my eyes back out on the gentle rolling water with its diamond-like glimmer.

  Then, as if a switch had been thrown, the world turned shades of blue and gray, and a wind began to blow, kicking up choppy waves. My hair started to whip and a sudden, troubling chill enveloped me, encasing me in goose pimples. I looked around for my own towel, but there wasn’t one, and I wound up hugging my legs to myself, a shivering oversized fetus.

  But when I glanced over at the boy building that sprawling castle, he didn’t seem to notice the wind and cold; even his sand-color hair remained unruffled, though the blue of fast-moving clouds shadowed him.

  “And today, when this session began,” I said, “you ignored the very element that started me thinking—the innocent boy...building the sand castle...Dr. Cassel.”

  His smile was dismissive. “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Maybe. If so, we’ve talked a lot of nonsense in our sessions, examining my dreams.”

  Cassel said nothing.

  “One small question, Doc. Psychologists can’t prescribe medicine—they have referral arrangements with psychiatrists, their medical equivalent.”

  Irritably, he allowed, “That’s of course true.”

  “That’s not the question—this is: were you Marcy Addwatter’s psychologist’s referral doctor?”

  He frowned, clearly displeased. “That, I’m afraid, does cross the confidentiality line. But even if I were, I can assure you, pharmacy records will show—”

  “That you have an accomplice in the pharmacy.”

  His face went stony. Eyes, too.

  “Something that records have shown already,” I said, “thanks to some work a young investigator of mine, Bea Vang, dug up. Seems as part of the generous pro bono work you’ve done over recent years, you once counseled a troubled young woman from the South Side named Holly Jackson. Prostitute. Poor kid was HIV Positive, but AIDS didn’t kill her—my client, Marcy Addwatter, did, in a shabby little motel room.”

  He slowly shook his head. “I don’t recall the name. As you say, I do considerable pro bono work, and a lot of sad souls pass my way. I do what I can.”

  “I’m sure. Here’s a fun fact that almost slipped through the cracks—the motel where Richard Addwatter was killed? Along with Holly Jackson? It’s the same one where my husband was killed, on our honeymoon night. Different room, though. Still—small world. I should have picked up on that, but I never bothered to check out the Addwatter crime scene; score another one for Bea....Wonder what an in-depth talk with the manager there will bring?”

  In the dim office—only the green-shaded lamp on his desk providing any illumination at all—the doctor’s face was a solemn, carved mask.

  “You won’t get anywhere with this, Ms. Tree,” he said.

  I shrugged, stood, purse slung over the shoulder of my trenchcoat. “You may be right. A psychiatrist using his position of trust to vandalize his patient’s mental inventory, to prescribe improper medication designed to aggravate and manipulate that patient’s mental condition—you were the one planning these events, Doc. And when we dig back through all of the files of the Planner’s victims, you will be right there, won’t you, Doc? Their trusted psychiatrist.”

  Dr. Cassel remained seated, looking up at me with a tiny, nasty smile and cold hard dark eyes. “And do you imagine, Ms. Tree, that any of that will be easy to prove?”

  “Possibly not,” I admitted. “You are the master manipulator—probably protecting yourself with layer after layer, although the Holly Jackson and no-tell motel links are there, all right. Still, even connecting you to the Muertas may prove difficult.”

  His manner brusque, business-like, Dr. Cassel said, “I think you should go. Your time is long since up.”

  “But, hey,” I said cheerfully, “I’m gonna give it my best shot—making sure your future is one of police inquiries, civil suits, malpractice hearings, newspaper exposés....Oh, and, uh, cancel my next appointment, would you?”

  “With pleasure.”

  I turned away and headed toward the door.

  And I could hear the desk drawer opening—was he reaching for his appointment book, to record that cancellation? I thought not.

  When I whirled, gun from coat pocket already in hand, I could see the little automatic in his fingers coming up from the drawer.

  But the dark eye of the nine millimeter already had him stared down.

  His expression was stunned, his jaw damn near scraping the desktop.

  “See how much you’ve taught me, Doc?...Pushed your buttons pretty good.”

  Panicking, he tried to raise the automatic, but he didn’t have near the time, and I fired once, the nine mil’s report thundering in the small office, rattling furniture and windows, and he looked at me for a moment, seemingly with three dark eyes—the entry wound in his forehead was perfectly spaced between his two orbs below—though I don’t really think he saw me in those frozen moments before he flopped, dead, onto the desk.

  “Actually,” I said to the corpse, “that was my best shot.”

  I slipped the gun into my purse—I don’t like the lumpy look it gives to the slimming lines of the dark trenchcoat—and got out my cell. I speed-dialed Rafe Valer.

  “I’m in Cassel’s office,” I said.

  “Is he...are you...was it...?”

  “Self-defense? You bet your ass.”

  *

  Lt. Valer saw to it that my time at the scene was limited, and within two hours I was driving in fast-moving traffic in my late husband’s Jag, heading to the hospital to sit with Roger, and make him feel better with my report.

  Dan would be there, too, and afterward we’d head to Gino’s for deep dish. Some good guys may need their heads shrunk after killing a bad guy, but me, I like to get my stomach filled.

  My God, Chicago was beautiful at night, all that high-rise geometry and electricity unleashed, and the lake wasn’t half bad, either....

  Somebody said, “Pretty good for a girl.”

  I glanced over in the rider’s seat and Mike was grinning at me. Sharp as hell in a black leather jacket and black t-shirt and black jeans. Alive and well and giving me a proud, loving smile.

  “So I did all right?”

  “All right?” Mike shivered. “Lady, sometimes you scare me....”

  I laughed.

  And I’m sure any other driver gliding by, who saw me, all alone in my Jaguar, laughing my ass off, would have taken me for crazy.

  ABOUT “MS. TREE”

  An Afterword

  by Max Allan Collins

  This
is the first prose novel about female private detective Michael Tree, but numerous graphic novels precede it, all written by me and drawn by Ms. Tree’s co-creator, cartoonist Terry Beatty.

  The “Ms. Tree” feature began in 1980 when the independent comics scene was just getting started, and one of its pioneers, editor/publisher Dean Mullaney, approached me about doing a serialized tough detective story for Eclipse, a new magazine he was putting together.

  The buzz in comics fandom about that magazine was considerable, because Dean was bringing in some of the hottest talent in comic books to try to do something that could hold its head up alongside (and possibly above) anything the big boys, Marvel and DC Comics, were doing.

  I was surprised to be asked to participate, frankly, because I had never written comic books. But I’d been writing the “Dick Tracy” syndicated comic strip since late 1977; and my take on that classic crime strip had attracted attention. I’d attempted to return the venerable strip to its hardboiled roots, with as much gunplay as I could get away with, and reviving classic Chester Gould villains in the context of contemporary themes—human cloning, video piracy, computer viruses.

  Mullaney was part of the generation of comics fans-turned-professionals who revered “Tracy,” and I got a lot of positive reaction from this group—eventually I even got to do Batman for a year, because of the high regard in which some comics pros held my work on “Tracy.”

  Also, Dean had seen a little strip I was then doing with cartoonist Terry Beatty, called “The Mike Mist Minute Mist-eries,” part of a weekly page of comics Terry and I self-syndicated for a year or so to smalltown papers and advertising “shoppers.” This was a great idea that made us not much money at all, but one of our clients, The Chicago Reader, had picked up our “Comics Page” just to run “Mike Mist,” taking advantage of my “Tracy” connection, the strip being a Chicago institution.

  Anyway, seeing and liking “Mike Mist” primed Dean for allowing me to use Terry—who also had zero comic book credits—as the artist in a magazine otherwise filled with stars and even superstars.

  On his initial phone call, Dean asked me if I had any ideas for a new private detective character. Immediately I pitched “Ms. Tree,” because I’d been thinking for a long time about doing a switch on Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer and his secretary Velda.