Big Shots and Bullet Holes

by B David Spicer

  “I don’t care.” I took a long look at the office, not focusing on any single object, rather just letting the generalities of the place sink in. A bottle of gin and a glass sat on the desk in front of Martingdale. I leaned close to both.

  Paolo grunted. “Looks like suicide. There’s a gun on the floor beside him.”

  “What caliber is it?”

  He knelt beside the chair. “Uh, .45, revolver. If you’re gonna kill yourself, that’s the thing to use. Bang, and then it’s ‘Hello Saint Peter.’”

  I leaned close to Martingdale’s face. “Paolo. I don’t think this guy plugged himself.”

  “Really, why not?”

  “The bullet hole’s right in the middle of his forehead.” I pulled out my gun and aimed it at the same spot on my own noggin. “See what I mean? How awkward is this?”

  He held out his hands placatingly. “Kissy, don’t do that. Put down the gun.”

  “Pay attention, copper.” I moved the barrel of my Colt to my temple. “See? This is how you shoot yourself in the head.”

  “Okay, Kissy. I got it.”

  I slipped my heater back into my pocket. “Then there’s the whiskey.”

  “Whiskey?” He examined the bottle more closely. “It’s not whiskey, it’s gin.”

  “It might be gin in the bottle, but it’s whiskey in the glass. Smell it.” I broke into a smile.

  He took a whiff. “Damn. You’re right. It’s almost empty, just a drop or two left.”

  “Also, what kind of suicide has a whole bottle of liquid courage on their desk, and doesn’t drink it all? That bottle is more than half full! If it were me, that bottle would be dead before I was.”

  Paolo shook his head and smiled at me. “What else, Sherlock?”

  “Do you see a note? Suicides leave notes, don’t they?”

  “Usually.” He glanced around the room. “Okay, you win. We have a murder here, not a suicide, though it’s clearly supposed to look like a suicide.”

  I placed the back of my fingers against Martingdale’s face. “He’s not completely cold.”

  “Rigor?”

  I grasped the corpse by the wrist, raised his hand a few inches and dropped it to the desk, which made Paolo clench his teeth again. “Nope.”

  “All right, so he’s probably only been dead an hour or two. I think we need to leave now. He’s not gonna tell us much more.” He yanked a handkerchief out of his pocket, wiped off the doorknob and pulled it closed behind us, then he did the same to the other door.

  “What about the lock?”

  He smiled, and with the handkerchief in hand, rattled the knob. “It locks automatically. I turned the lock it when I wiped your fingerprints off it.”

  “You’re a sweetheart, copper.”

  “Let’s get out of here before somebody sees us.” He put his hand on my back as he looked over his shoulder, gingerly guiding me toward the stairwell. We made it outside without being seen, and piled into my car. I fired up the engine and steamed away from the bloody ruin formerly known as John Martingdale.

  Paolo took out a notebook and began scribbling in it.

  I favored him with a glance. “Still think everything’s circumstantial?”

  “Well, we don’t have proof of any connection between any of the three shootings. That said, it is more than a little suspicious that the only two known associates of Colonel Greene have turned up dead within the last few days. I plan to have all four sets of bullets compared to one another.”

  “Four sets of bullets?”

  “Yeah, Shultz had been shot by two different guns of two different calibers.”

  I whistled. “Somebody really hated Shultz. I wonder why?”

  Paolo glanced over at me. “How do you even know his name was Shultz? We’ve not found out anything about his identity.”

  “Really? Well, I have a snapshot of Heloise Kendall that Mrs. Kendall gave me. When I was in the house in Mt. Washington, I found another photograph of Heloise with a young blond-haired man that I assumed to be Shultz. The guy on the floor and the guy in the picture looked alike.”

  He nodded. “May I see those photographs?”

  “Sure. I don’t have them with me though.”

  “Where are they?”

  “At my place.”

  “I’d really like to see them as soon as I can.” He suddenly pointed to a ratty little hotel. “Pull over here. They have a public telephone. I’m gonna call in Martingdale’s murder.” He grinned. “Don’t worry, I’ll do it anonymously.”

  As he strode inside, I lit a cigarette. The rain no longer pelted the world, but a light mist still fell. I took a deep smoky breath and battled the flighty butterflies below my ribs. I tried to drown them with a tug from the whiskey bottle, but they survived the onslaught. Putting the smoke down, I took a deep, if somewhat shaky, breath of pure night air, and let it leak out slowly. “Dammit.” I swallowed another mouthful of hooch. “Dammit.”

  After a few minutes he exited the hotel and slid into the seat beside me again. “They’re on their way. I feel better about the situation now.”

  “I’m so glad.” I started the car and we rumbled toward my building. “What do you hope to find in the photographs?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe something, maybe nothing.”

  I sucked the life out of my cigarette and flung it out the window. We rode in silence for several minutes. Finally, I looked over at him. “Which hospital did they take Norman to? I want to visit him tomorrow.”

  “Christ Hospital, I think.”

  I parked around the corner from Lou’s Diner and we crossed the street to my building. He looked up at the crumbling edifice, but kept any opinion he might have formed to himself. We climbed the stairs and I unlocked the door to my room. I flipped the switch and the dim overhead bulb grudgingly flashed to life. Paolo looked around the room and then at me.

  “Nice place.”

  “Stow the sarcasm.” I took off my jacket, lit a smoke and burrowed into my trunk.

  “No, really. It’s great.”

  “Shut up, copper.” I smirked as I handed him the two photos. “I hope you get something out of them.”

  He stood directly under the lightbulb and took his time looking at each of the two photos. Finally, he lowered them and peered at me. “The corpse you found in Mt. Washington wasn’t the same guy that’s in these photos.”

  “What? How do you know?”

  “The corpse had a scar, a big one on his right cheek that looked fairly old. The guy in this photo doesn’t have any facial scars.”

  “Let me see.” I studied the photo of Kendall and Shultz. “The corpse had a scar? Why don’t I remember a scar?”

  “That cheek was pressed into the floor.”

  “Yeah, but I rolled him. Rigor had set in and he was all stiff.”

  “Well, I don’t know why you didn’t see it unless it had flatted out before he got stiff. All I know is the dead guy had a scar, Shultz clearly doesn’t.”

  I sat on my bed. “So, Shultz is alive. Maybe that explains why Kendall hasn’t left town.”

  He sat next to me. “You’re really desperate to find that girl, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not desperate, not yet. But as deep as I am in this mess after only a few days, imagine how far she’s in it. She’s just a girl. I want to help her.”

  He leaned toward me and bumped me with his shoulder. “I think you want to save her.”

  “Didn’t I just say that?”

  “Nope.” He threw out a smile. “You help old ladies cross the street; you save them when they’re about to be hit by a truck.”

  I gave him a frown. “Thank you, Dr. Freud, for that insight.” His proximity hit my brain like a gallon of rye alcohol, and the world spun for a moment. I could smell his scent: citrus, aftershave, and hand soap.

  “Why is it so important for you to get her home?”

  “Why wouldn’t it be? He mother paid me to find her, so I’m damned well gonna find her.”
<
br />   “Her mother paid you off, though. Your client has ended your employment.”

  I stood up. I had to get some space between us. “Jesus, you sound just like Norman! Everything is about the money. Kissy only thinks about money. Why does everybody think I’m mercenary? Am I really so vile that it never enters your brain that I could be motivated by anything but money? That girl needs help, and nobody, not you, not the Feds, and not the US Army nor any of the ships at sea are trying to help her!” I jabbed my chest with a finger. “I’m gonna find her, Paolo. Me. And I don’t care if I get another red cent out of old lady Kendall!”

  He stood to face me with the bed between us. “Kissy, I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”

  I turned my back to him, sat on the bed and fired up another smoke. I poured him a double shot of silence, but he thwarted me by turning on my battered radio. Bing Crosby crooned out “Only Forever” in his dreamy baritone. Paolo came to my side of the bed and took my hands into his. He pulled me to my feet.

  “What are you doing?”

  He placed a finger on my lips. “Shhh.”

  He pulled me to him and started to sway. I closed my eyes and felt five years fall away to rot on the floor. My heart hammered furiously beneath my ribs and my breath abandoned me to my own devices. Still, Bing sang and we danced.

  I felt his hand on my back, moving in slow circles, something I hadn’t felt since ... since the night Mary died. My body jerked and I tore myself away from him. I fell across my bed and scrambled to the other side of it. I pressed my back against my closet door. My eyes closed and my breath hissed between my teeth.

  “Kissy? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Please leave. I’m suddenly exhausted.”

  He took a step toward me. “Did I do something wrong?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t know. I just can’t dance with you anymore.”

  He stared at the floor and shook his head slowly, sighing expressively. “It’s Mary again, isn’t it?”

  “Go home, Paolo.”

  He sighed out his exasperation. “Will there ever come a time when she won’t be standing between us?”

  “Just go home. Please.”

  “All right, if that’s what you really want.”

  “It is.”

  “I’ll meet you here in the morning. Say, eight?”

  I opened the door and stood next to it. “Fine. See you then.”

  He put on his hat and walked through the door. He took a step toward the stairs, then turned to face me. “I saved your life by not telling you who it was.”

  I stiffened. “You think so?”

  “I know so. You forget, I knew her too, and you and I both know she wouldn’t have wanted you to die trying to avenge her. She cared too much about you to have wanted that.”

  He had tears in his eyes, which put a lump in my throat that I couldn’t swallow.

  “You don’t have a monopoly on pain, Cassandra. I mourned her passing every bit as much as you did. If I could have died in her place I would have, if for no other reason than I knew what she meant to you.” He took a deep breath, and walked down the stairs.

  Chapter Seventeen

  I stood in the hall as Paolo descended the stairs, and then I turned to the window in the hall opposite them, saw him leave the building and flag down a cab. Just as the car pulled away, I watched him turn around in the seat to look back toward my building. I touched the cold windowpane with my fingers as the hack carried him away from me.

  As I paused there trying to rebuild the disassembled parts of myself, I caught sight of something, a tiny speck of glowing orange, like the cherry fire at the tip of a cigarette. Someone stood across the street under the shoe store’s awning, and that someone was looking up at me, or at least at my building. “Damned Feds.” Slamming my door felt like an appropriate thing to do, but that would earn me another tongue lashing from Mama Jose, and I needed that like I needed a hole drilled in my face.

  Paolo’s scent lingered in my room. When I closed my eyes, I found it easy to imagine he still stood there in front of me. Of course, when I reached my hand toward his body, I found only his absence. I undressed, sat on my bed and took the little shoebox out of my trunk. I opened it and sifted through the memories it held, most of which were photographs. I picked up the one of Paolo and me at Coney Island. Then the one of us on the Ferris wheel at the State Fair. I went through them slowly, remembering, smiling, weeping.

  That cardboard box held more pain for me than I can explain, and when I found the lock of Mary’s hair, I clutched it to my breast and rocked back and forth, a study in misery. She’d had the most beautiful blonde hair, golden as a sunrise in Heaven. All that remained of it, all that remained of her, could fit in my clenched fist. I squeezed that lock and wept for her until sleep stole my sorrow.

  The howling blast of a black-and-white’s warbler tore me out of slumberland. I sat up in the dark and listened to the sound drift away. My wristwatch claimed the sun would be rising soon, so I forced myself to stand up. Photographs littered the floor, so I had to pick them up and put them back in their shoebox. I pressed Mary’s hair to my lips for a moment, then put it in the box as well. I scrounged up my robe and covered my nakedness before opening my door. Before continuing to the shower, I took a peek through the window. Sure enough, my tail still stood under the shoe store’s striped awning. “Damned Feds.” I stomped toward the bathroom for my morning rituals, then returned to my room, dressed, and opened the shades. The sun had cleared the building across the street and stared me straight in the face. I turned my back on it and smoked cigarettes until Paolo knocked on the door.

  When I opened the door, he offered me a broad smile. “Good morning, Kissy.”

  I didn’t beat around the bush. “Someone is spying on me.”

  “What?”

  I spat smoke at him. “Are you deaf? I said someone is spying on me.”

  “Show me.”

  I took him to the window and pointed to the man under the awning, who spoke briefly to another man and walked away. The new fellow opened a newspaper and tried to look unobtrusive. I’d seen him before, at the auction. “Must be shift-change.”

  Paolo squinted at the man, then frowned. “I think I know that guy.”

  My eyebrows took flight. “He’s one of yours? A cop?”

  He shook his head. “No, FBI. I worked with him on a case back in ‘39.”

  “A damned Fed. I thought so.”

  “He’s not a bad guy, Kissy. He’s just doing his job.”

  “Fine. Go down there and tell him to leave me alone.” I murdered my used cigarette in the ashtray. “Tell him I don’t like being spied on.”

  “I’ve got a better idea.” He put on his ‘mischievous’ grin. “Follow me.”

  I snatched my jacket and plummeted down the stairs behind him. On the first floor, he turned away from the front door and careened down the hallway toward the rear of the building. I rarely saw anybody except Mama Jose use the back door, and he had to stop long enough to fumble open the locks. Mama Jose stuck her face out of her room.

  “Hey! What are you a-doin’ there!”

  I tossed her a crooked grin. “Police business, Mama.”

  “Police?” Confusion clouded her myopic eyes.

  Paolo finally got the door unlocked and we tumbled through it into the filthy alley beyond. He took off again, and surprised me by laughing like a loon. “This’ll be great, Cassy!”

  He flashed a smile so boyishly sincere that I didn’t even cuss him for using the wrong name. We went down a block, made a right turn, another block, another right turn, and both again so that we were creeping up behind Lou’s Diner on the corner. The shoe store stood next to that and, in front of the shoe store, the Fed who’d attached himself to me lingered.

  Paolo sketched out his plan, simple and direct, then stepped around the corner. I peeked around it to see the show. He put his hands in his pockets and assumed a slow stroll, seemingly not in a hurry at all. The Fed pr
etended to ignore him and stared the ink off his newspaper.

  “Tanner? Is that you?”

  The Fed’s head snapped up and his mouth hung open for a second. “Uh, yeah.”

  Paolo smiled and stuck out his hand. “I thought that was you. Don’t you remember me? We worked the Rutherford racketeering case a few years back.”

  A slow smile spread across Tanner’s face. “Oh okay, of course I remember you, Belvedere. How have you been?”

  “I’m doing well, yourself?” Paolo had maneuvered Tanner so that his back faced me and I crept up on cat-feet behind him, lighting a smoke as I went.

  Tanner folded his newspaper as he spoke. “Good, things are good.” He stuffed the paper in a jacket pocket. “I never really got to thank you for helping me out back then. I was pretty banged up and I just, well, there’s no excuse for being rude.”

  Paolo waved that away. “No problem. I was just gonna grab some breakfast, why don’t you join me? We can reminisce about the good old days and get caught up? What do ya say?” He clapped a friendly hand on Tanner’s shoulder.

  Tanner smiled but shook his head. “I wish I could, Belvedere, but I’m working right now.” He cleared his throat and shuffled his feet nervously.

  Paolo contorted his face into a mask of surprise, a little overdone but Tanner didn’t seem to notice. “Oh, really? What are you doing?”

  Before Tanner could answer, I spat a jet of tobacco smoke over his shoulder. “He’s spying on me.”

  Tanner spun around, his mouth falling open again. He stared at me for a few seconds, long enough to endure another blast of my cigarette, then looked to Paolo who just grinned like a jack-o-lantern. Tanner frowned and hissed out a long, exasperated sigh. “Dammit, Belvedere, you blew my cover!”

  Paolo laughed in his face. “Actually, I didn’t. Standing on the street all by yourself is maybe a bit conspicuous, especially when one of your men does it all night. Doesn’t the FBI have a car you could sit in? Kissy figured you out all on her own.”

  I pointed my snipe at his face. “What do you want?”

  Tanner turned to Paolo. “I could take you both in right now, you know that? For interfering with a federal investigation.”