A Desperate Place for Dying

by Scott William Carter

  Gage nodded, turning to the leather couch in the center of the room. Then another idea occurred to him. If he'd just found out somebody important to him had died a horrible death, where would he go? He already knew the answer to that question because it had already happened to him—back in New York when Janet was killed.

  "Say," he said, turning back to her, "do you have a bar in the hotel?"

  The clerk seemed relieved at the question. "Yes, sir," she said perkily. "It's called the—"

  "Is it open?"

  "No, sir. Not this early. Spencer's, our restaurant, is open but—"

  "Rats. Wait, when say it's not open, do you mean nobody can sit in there or just that there's nobody to serve you?"

  She blinked a few times. He was afraid she'd blown a circuit.

  "Oh, well, it's open like that, sir. I mean, if you just wanted to visit, we have people who sometimes—"

  "Where is it?"

  She pointed him down the hall. He told her he'd be back to talk to the manager if he didn't find Sparrow. The lounge was just around the corner, a funky corner room with high windows and tan carpet patterned with concentric circles. The lights were off, but there was plenty of daylight. The clerk was right. It was closed. He didn't see anyone there, and was turning to head back to the front desk, maybe to try the restaurant, maybe to wait for the manager, when he spotted Sparrow sitting in the corner. He had his head slumped on the table, and was so still that Gage's eyes and swept right past him the first time without really seeing him.

  Even seated, and with the man's head turned toward the wall, there was no doubt it was Loren Sparrow—the advantage, from Gage's point of view at least, of the man being something of a celebrity. He certainly dressed the part, his dapper white suit molding to his slender frame like he'd been born wearing it. His baby blue scarf matched the color of the trim on his white shoes. Gage wondered if he'd graduated from the same school of fashion as the author, Tom Wolfe.

  A half-drank bottle of red wine sat on the table. His hand still clutched the empty wine glass. As he neared, Gage saw that Sparrow's scalp—there wasn't much that remained of his silver hair, all of it combed straight back—was a bright shade of pink.

  Gage settled into the empty chair, leaning his cane against the wall. Sparrow was snoring loudly, his face crushed against the glass table top. There were no windows near them, but Gage could hear a train rumbling over its tracks a few blocks away.

  "Grief is a bitch," Gage said.

  Sparrow stirred. Something akin to a moan escaped the man's lips. Slowly, as if his head was being lifted by a string, he ratcheted up his gaze. His eyes were bloodshot. There was something about the shape of his face that made Gage think of a kangaroo—the leanness of it, the big, wide-set eyes, the rectangular nose like a snout, the small mouth. Gage wondered if the distinguished author wouldn't mind combing his silver hair in the shape of ears. That would really complete the picture.

  "Sorry?" Sparrow mumbled.

  "I take it you already got the news?" Gage said.

  Sparrow swallowed. He blinked a few times, recalibrating, resetting, getting his wits about him. The sweet scent of wine finally reached Gage's nose.

  "Do I know you?" Sparrow asked.

  "Nope."

  "Then I'm afraid—I'm afraid I don't—"

  "I'm a friend of Angela Wellman's. I'm the one she came to see last night. The name is Garrison Gage."

  At the mention of Angela's name, Sparrow flinched. It took him a few more seconds to swim through the fog of wine, to process all the information packaged in Gage's reply. There was the clink of dishes behind closed doors down the hall.

  "Oh," Sparrow said. "I thought she was seeing an aunt. Are you related?"

  "Just an old friend."

  "Oh. I thought—"

  "No, she just came to see me. The Barnacle Bluffs Motel is about a block from my house."

  Gage could see that Sparrow was struggling with this turn of events. Friend? What did that mean? Was he a lover? And why had Angela lied to him? Gage almost felt sorry for him. Ordinarily, it might have been fun to let Sparrow grapple with his confusion, wait to see how he dealt with it, but Gage did not want to add more weight to the man's misery.

  "She came to me for help," Gage explained. "She was worried about you—about the people who have been threatening you. I guess she should have been worrying more about herself."

  A shadow passed across Sparrow's face, a flash of anger or something else, Gage couldn't say. But there was something there.

  "Who are you?"

  "I told you, my name is—"

  "Garrison Gage, yes. Are you a cop?"

  "No. But I sometimes pretend to be one for my own amusement."

  "What?"

  "Sorry. I'm a private investigator. Well, I was. In a former life."

  "I'm afraid I'm a bit confused."

  "Well, that makes two of us. But for you, the state is probably temporary. I live with it as a permanent condition."

  Sparrow stared. The alcohol-induced grogginess was now gone, swept away like smoke on the breeze. He glanced at his wine glass, seemed to realize he was still holding it, and grabbed it by the stem and positioned to his right, concentrating on it as if he was moving a test tube rather than a drink. When he looked at Gage again, he clasped his hands and smiled a bit primly. For a man who had been drop-dead drunk a few seconds earlier, he certainly recovered nicely.

  "Mister Gage—" he began.

  "Oh, please, call me Garrison."

  "Yes, Garrison. I've just found out that a woman who meant the world to me, both professionally and personally, was brutally murdered. Furthermore, I have every reason to believe she was killed for no other reason than because of this fact—because she meant so much to me. It was done as a warning. You can imagine I feel a bit guilty about this. I really am in no mood for games. If you have some specific reason why you have driven all this way to find me, please tell me now. Surely it wasn't just to make me feel even worse about what has happened, because, let me assure you, sir, that would not be possible."

  His tone grew more terse and clipped with each passing sentence, until at the end the words were as sharp as razor blades. Gage waited a few seconds, until his own impulse to spar passed. Getting into a pissing match wouldn't accomplish anything.

  "I'm here for only one reason," Gage said. "I want to find who killed her. I owe her that much."

  "Well, then, we're in agreement. So do I. Don't you think we should leave that to the police, though?"

  "No," Gage said.

  "No?"

  "No. Not in my experience."

  "Ah. You're saying you don't have confidence that both Oregon's finest, as well as the FBI, as I take it they will soon be involved, can accomplish this feat without your assistance?"

  "That's about right."

  "I see. Confident fellow, aren't you?"

  "Let's just say I've had my share of disappointments when it comes to relying on others."

  "Oh. Well, that's too bad. Can't say I disagree, though; I have some experience with disappointment myself. It's the problem that goes hand in hand with the idealist with high expectations, I'm afraid."

  "I'm not an idealist," Gage said. "I'm just an asshole."

  Sparrow's expression wasn't quite a smile, more the cousin of a smirk, but it did soften the mood a bit. "There's that humor again," he said. "I'm guessing it's a bit of a defense mechanism for you. Something terrible happens to a woman we both care about. I reach for a bottle of wine. You reach for a joke. Is that it?"

  "I'll reach for a bottle sometimes, too. Where were you last night?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "Specifically between about 11 p.m. and three in the morning."

  "Wait a minute. Are you saying I'm a suspect?"

  The sharp tone was back. So much for mirth. Gage almost hated to see it go, but Sparrow was right: This was no time for fun and games.

  "Everybody's a suspect," Gage said. "Me included."


  Sparrow frowned. "I really resent—"

  "Let's just skip past all the righteous indignation, okay? The quicker I can rule you out, the quicker I can move on to other possibilities."

  Sparrow stared, smoldering quietly in his anger. Down the hall, a vacuum cleaner whirred briefly, then fell silent.

  "You're quite direct, aren't you?" he said.

  "It's a gift."

  "All right, then. If we must. We'll play this parlor game of alibis and motivations. But mine we'll be easy to verify. I was in Portland, sharing cocktails with the event organizers until almost one in the morning. A Mister Frank Perry would verify this. After that, I was in the limo, riding down to Eugene until nearly three—the driver can confirm it. Excalibur Transportation Services. Feel free to call them. Will that suffice, or should I fill out some sort of report?"

  "It suffices. Can I ask you some more questions?"

  Sparrow gestured impatiently for him to continue, a twirl of his hand.

  "I assume," Gage said, "you believe that she was targeted by the God's Wrath cult?"

  "Of course. Isn't it obvious? I am, perhaps, the most visible proponent of both atheism and evolution in the public sphere. They've been pressuring me to renounce my views for some time. It would be quite a feather in their cap, to have converted me to their cause. Instead, their efforts have only strengthened my resolve. We must not fear ignorance in all its guises, Garrison. To take even one step in that direction begins an inevitable death march into darkness and despair."

  Gage nodded. "Nicely said. It has a real poetry about it."

  "Sarcasm?"

  "Not at all. You're a man of firm beliefs. I respect that."

  Sparrow's rather thin eyebrows raised. "And you're not?"

  "About some things. Others . . ." Gage shrugged. "Angela said that they'd started trying to blackmail you. Can you tell me about that?"

  As Gage had hoped, the question caught Sparrow off guard. Gage watched him carefully, studying his reaction. First, there was shock—it seemed genuine. That was followed by betrayal. It was all in the eyes, lasting no more than a second or two, but there was plenty of meaning there for Gage to decipher. Angela had discovered this information and hadn't come to him? Gage could see him struggling with his anger. He leaned forward, speaking in a harsh whisper.

  "She told you this?" Sparrow asked.

  "Is it true?"

  "What did she say, exactly?"

  "She overheard you talking to them on the phone. I'm trying to figure out why, if they were blackmailing you, you didn't go to the police. They might have been able to do something with that information. Angela might be alive now if you had."

  Gage expected more righteous indignation, a real show of it, but there wasn't much more than a flash of it across Sparrow's face. It crumbled just as quickly, like old yesterday's newspaper in a roaring fire, leaving only ashes. He gazed at his hands.

  "You might be right," he said despairingly.

  "What was going on?"

  "Will you keep it confidence?"

  "I won't promise anything."

  Sparrow looked up sharply. "I want the same thing you want—to find her killers and bring them to justice!"

  "Giving them money is a funny way of going about it."

  "It wasn't—it wasn't like that!"

  "If you don't want me to go to the police, then you better tell me exactly what it was like right now."

  Sparrow glared. It was a calculated risk. Gage could have simply asked for Sparrow's help instead of threatening him, but a polite approach really wasn't Gage's style. The risk was that Sparrow would quickly retreat into a shell of self-preservation, perhaps hide behind armies of lawyers and publicists, and then Gage would have lost any chance of extracting any useful information. But that would also imply that Loren Sparrow had something to hide.

  "All right," Sparrow said, with a sigh. "I suppose I just have to trust you. I resent the word blackmail, because it implies I was trying to hide something illicit. The truth is, I just wasn't quite ready to be a martyr. It was an act of weakness that I despise in myself."

  "I'm not following," Gage said.

  "I did give them money," Sparrow said. "They threatened to kill me if I didn't. They said it was obvious I could not be saved. That was their word. Saved. They said they would make an example out of me if I didn't give them a hundred thousand dollars. I gave it to them—put it in a backpack and left it behind a specific tree in Boston Common. I hoped that would make them go away. Of course, I should have known better. It only made them want more."

  "Did you meet them in person?"

  "Heavens no. If I had any useful information at all, I would have gone to the police. There were a few letters with no return address, all postmarked in Boston. Some emails—from Rom118@gmail.com. And of course phone calls from a pay phone. I saw those when they showed up on my bill."

  "How did you know they were calling from a pay phone?"

  "I actually hired a private investigator back in Boston to dig into some of this for me. I hoped if I found out more about them, we could then bring in the authorities. We even checked for fingerprints on the letters, but they were quite careful—must have used gloves. You have to understand, Garrison. I see the disapproval in your eyes. I have quite a reputation. Imagine seeing that look on the faces of millions of fans when they found out about my moment of weakness. Everything I had worked for—it would be lost."

  "And yet, Angela's dead," Gage said.

  "Believe me, if I had believed for a second that that they would target her, I would have gone to the police at the first opportunity."

  "Who was the P.I.?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "The private investigator you used in Boston," Gage said.

  "What difference does it make?"

  Gage shrugged. "Maybe I know him. I used to live back east."

  "His name—his name was John Ettel, I believe. He was very good. A bit of a drinker, but good."

  "I take it you haven't told the cops any of this yet?"

  Sparrow shook his head. "No. My own vanity again. But, if you think it's best, I will. Whatever slings and arrows I must suffer, so be it. It's nothing compared to what Angela has suffered. And who knows who they will target next? Obviously they still think they can 'save me,' as it were."

  "Have they contacted you since she died?"

  "No. It's been a couple of days since their last email."

  They stared at each other in silence. A Hispanic woman in a uniform popped her head into the room, saw them, and ducked out again. Gage heard the phone ring twice at the front desk before someone answered it

  "Well?" Sparrow pressed.

  "The best thing to do would be contact the FBI," Gage agreed.

  Sparrow grimaced. "I was afraid you'd say that."

  "They might be able to do something with the pay phone or the email address. You say there were no fingerprints on the letters, but they have technology that might help them spot things your guy missed. All kinds of clues that could lead them in the right direction. A lot of people have died, and they're likely to kill others. This is a lot bigger than Angela."

  "I see. Well. So much for my work. My reputation will be in tatters."

  "I think you're exaggerating," Gage said.

  "Really? What will the public think when I could have gone to the police but didn't? Will they think that I talk tough, but then readily tried to pay them when I thought my own life was at stake?"

  "They'll think you're a human being," Gage said. "It's not such a bad thing, really. People even think it about me once in a while."

  Sparrow drummed his fingers on the tablecloth. "What if I hired you?"

  "Excuse me?"

  "You said you're a private investigator. I'll pay your fee."

  "So now you're trying to buy me off too?"

  "No! I just thought, if I paid you, we might keep some of these details between us until we have more to give the police."

  "First of all, I said I wa
s a private investigator. And even if I was still doing it, I wouldn't take your money."

  "I see. You're that wealthy, then?"

  "Nope. Just got a nice chunk of insurance money when my wife was murdered."

  It was as if Gage had set off a bomb. Sparrow's reaction—a flinch, followed by a shocked expression complete with gaping mouth and raised eyebrows fit for a mime—was so over the top it was comical. Gage regretted saying it immediately. He didn't know why he did. He never talked about Janet. He especially never talked about how the life insurance money set him up comfortably for the rest of his days. She may have taken the policy out on herself, but it still made him feel unseemly to mention it. As if he benefited from her death. As if money could ever be a benefit when you lost someone you loved that much.

  "I'm—I'm sorry to hear that," Sparrow said.

  "I was too," Gage said.

  "I wasn't—I wasn't aware—"

  "Why would you be?"

  Sparrow appeared at a loss for words. He glanced around the table, as if groping for somewhere to focus his attention. While he waited, Gage pondered the situation. There was one thing he hadn't considered: what Angela would have wanted. Not going to the police now would most likely put him in hot water later, especially if inaction on his part lead to someone's death, but there was no doubt that Angela cared deeply about Loren Sparrow and his ideological war. It wasn't a war that meant anything to Gage, but that wasn't the point.

  And when did he ever play nice with the police, anyway?

  "All right, I'll do it," Gage said.

  Sparrow blinked in surprise. "You'll work for me?"

  "No. I work only for myself. But as long as you cooperate fully, I won't go to the Feds. I'll see what I can dig up on my own." When Sparrow started to reply, Gage raised a finger. "For the time being, anyway."

  "I see," Sparrow said. "Very well, then. If you need money—"

  "I don't."

  "I know what you said, I just want you to know that I'm more than happy to—"

  "What part of 'I only work for myself' don't you understand?" Gage said.

  Sparrow swallowed and gazed at the tablecloth. Gage wondered what the man was thinking. He wondered if whatever he was thinking could possibly be as vivid and as terrible as seeing Angela's bloody body splayed out on the bed. How many bottles of wine would it take to drown out that image? There wasn't enough wine in the world, which was why Gage wasn't even going to bother trying. He knew that image would be with him for the rest of his life.