She found a place for the stones, then went out into the little reception area to call Mr. Shigeta at home. He would want to know that a customer had died so that when the police came they would find nothing of interest except a dead customer. While she was dialing, two men came in.
Both were Americans. One, a large black man with a face that was all jutting bones, wore jeans, a sweatshirt, and a Pistons jacket. He towered over his companion, a white man with small features and sandy hair done up elaborately, wearing a shiny black suit with a pinched waist and jagged lapels. Their eyes continued to move around the room after the men had come to a stop a few feet from the counter.
“Sorry, we close,” Iiko said.
She was standing in front of the sign that said OPEN TILL MIDNIGHT.
“You’re back open,” said the sandy-haired man. “Long enough anyway to tell us where’s the fat bald guy that came in here about eleven.”
She shook her head, indicating that she didn’t understand. It was not entirely a lie. The sandy-haired man, who did almost all the talking, spoke very fast.
“Come on, girlie, we know he’s here. His car’s outside.”
“The stuff ain’t in it, neither,” said the black man.
“Shut up, Leon.”
“Not know,” said Iiko.
“Leon.”
The black man put a hand inside his jacket and brought out a big silver gun with a twelve inch barrel. He pointed it at her and thumbed back the hammer.
The sandy man said, “Leon’s killed three men and a woman, but he’s never to my knowledge done a slant. Where’s George?”
“Not know George,” she said.
“Keep it on her. If she jumps, take off her head.” The sandy man came around the counter.
Iiko stood still while the man ran his hands over her smock. She didn’t even move when they lingered at her small breasts and crotch. He took the fifty-two dollars and the knife from her pockets. He showed Leon the knife.
“That’s George’s shank, all right,” said the black man. “He carries it open when he has to walk more’n a block to his car. He’s almost as scared of muggers as he is of guns.”
The sandy man slapped Iiko’s face. She remained unmoving. She could feel the hot imprint of his palm on her cheek.
“One more time before we disturb the peace, Dragon Lady. Where’s George Myrtle?”
She turned and went through the door behind the counter. The two men followed.
In the massage room the sandy man felt behind Mr. Ten Fifty-Five’s ear, then said, “Deader’n Old Yeller.”
“I don’t see no marks,” Leon said.
“Of course not. Look at him. He as good as squiffed himself the day he topped two forty and started taking elevators instead of climbing the stairs. I bet he never said no to a second helping of mashed potatoes in his life. Check out his clothes.”
Leon returned the big gun to a holster under his left arm and quickly turned out all the pockets of the coat and trousers, then with a grunt held the coat upside-down and showed his companion the place where the lining had been pulled loose.
The sandy man looked at Iiko. She saw something in his pale eyes that she remembered from the day her brother was killed.
“This ain’t turning out the way I figured,” the sandy man said. “I was looking forward to watching Leon bat around that tub of guts until he told us what he done with them hot rocks. I sure don’t enjoy watching him do that to a woman. Especially not to a pretty little China doll like you. How’s about sparing me that and telling me what you did with the merch?”
“Not know merch,” she said truthfully.
Leon started toward her. The sandy man stopped him with a hand. He was still looking at Iiko.
“You got more of these rooms?” he asked.
After a moment she nodded and stepped in the direction of the curtain over the doorway. The black man’s bulk blocked that path.
“Search the rest of the place, Leon. I’ll take care of this.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
Leon went out. Iiko led the sandy man through the curtains and across the narrow hallway. This room was larger, although still small. A forest of bottles containing scented oils stood on a rack beside the massage table. The sandy man seized her arm and spun her around. They were close now, and the light in his eyes had changed. She could smell his aftershave, sticky and sharp.
“You’re sure a nice little piece for a slant. I bet old George had some times with you. Especially at the end.”
Iiko didn’t struggle.
The sandy man said, “I could use a little rub myself. You rub me, I rub you. What do you say? Then we’ll talk.”
After a moment she nodded. “Take off clothes.”
“You first.”
He let go of her and stepped back, his small hard fists dangling at his sides. He watched her unbutton and peel off the smock. Without hesitating, she undid her halter top and stepped out of her shorts. She wore no underthings. She knew her body was good, firm and well-proportioned for her small frame. She could see in his eyes he approved.
He took a long breath and let it out. Then he took off his shiny black coat. He hung his suit carefully on the wooden hanger on the wall peg, folded his shirt and put it on the seat of the chair. His ribs showed, but his pale, naked arms and legs were sinewy, the limbs of a runner.
He saw that she saw. “I work out. I ain’t going to do you no favor like George and clock out on the table.”
She said nothing. He stretched out on his stomach on the padded table. “No oil,” he said. “I don’t want to ruin my clothes. Just powder.”
She reached for the can of talcum. While her back was turned to him, she laid down the folding knife she had removed from the sandy man’s pocket while he was holding her, poking it behind a row of bottles.
She sprinkled the powder on his back, set down the can, and worked her hands along his spine and scapula. His muscles jumped and twitched beneath her palms, not at all like the loose, unresisting flesh of Mr. Ten Fifty-Five. She had the impression the sandy man was poised to leap off the table at the first sign of suspicious behavior. She heard glass breaking in another part of the building as Leon continued his search for the blue stones.
Iiko was a good masseuse. Unlike some of her fellow employees, who merely went through the motions until the big moment when they asked the customers to turn over, Iiko had been trained by a licensed massage therapist. She flattered herself that she still managed to give satisfaction even under the strictures of probation. Gradually she felt the sandy man’s body relax beneath her expert hands.
To maintain contact, she kept one palm on his lower spine while with the other she retrieved the knife from its hiding place on the rack of bottles, pried it open with her teeth, and with one swift underhand motion jammed the blade into his back as far as it would go and dragged it around his right kidney as if she were coring an apple. The sandy man made very little noise dying.
WHEN THE BODY had ceased to shudder, she dressed and left the room. The sound of a heavy piece of furniture scraping across a wooden floor told her that Leon was moving the desk in Mr. Shigeta’s office. The way to the front door and out led directly past that room; she did not want to take the chance of running into the black man as he came out. She let herself into the Mystic Arts Bookshop by way of the fire door in the wall that separated the two establishments.
The shop had been closed for hours. She groped her way through darkness to the front door but found that exit barred by a deadbolt lock that required a key. The same was true of the back door. An ornamental grid sealed the windows. For a moment Iiko stood still and waited for her thoughts to settle. It would not be long before Leon discovered the sandy man’s body, and then he would find the fire door. The lock was on the massage parlor side.
She switched on a light. Tall racks of musty-smelling books divided the room into narrow aisles. She removed a heavy dictionary from the reference section, c
arried it to the common wall, and set the book on the floor in front of the steel door. She repeated the procedure with another large book and then another. At the end of ten minutes she had erected a formidable barrier. Then she sat down to catch her breath and wait.
She did not wait long. She jumped when the thumb latch went down, stood and backed away instinctively when the door moved a fraction of an inch and stopped, impeded by the stacked books. She had already located the telephone on a cluttered counter near the front door of the bookshop; now she lifted the receiver, dialed 911, and, when the operator came on, laid the receiver on its side facing the fire door.
Just then Leon pushed the door hard. Two of the stacks fell, creating an avalanche. Encouraged, the black man gave a lunge. More books tumbled, but now the pile was wedged tightly between the door and the first rack. It would not budge further.
Iiko switched off the light. A bank of deep shadow appeared on the side of the fire door nearest the latch, and she slipped into it noiselessly. The black man had worked up a sweat searching the Mikado for the missing stones. She could smell the clean sharp sting of it where she crouched.
Nothing stirred in the bookshop. She heard the black man’s heavy breathing as he paused to gather his strength, heard the buzzing queries of the 911 operator coming through the earpiece of the telephone a dozen steps away.
With an explosive grunt, Leon threw all his weight against the door. The pile of books crumpled against the base of the rack. The rack teetered, tilted, hung at a twenty-degree angle for an impossible length of time; then it toppled. Books plummeted from its shelves. To the operator listening at police headquarters it must have sounded like an artillery barrage. Leon thrust his arm and shoulder through the widened opening. The big silver gun made the arm look ridiculously long. His entire body seemed to swell with the effort to squeeze past the edge of the door. He grunted again, and the noise turned into a howl of triumph as he stumbled into the bookshop.
But his eyes were not accustomed to the darkness, and he set his foot on a poorly balanced book that turned under his weight. He sprawled headlong across the pile.
The opening into the massage parlor was more than wide enough for Iiko. She darted through, and before Leon could get to his feet, she seized the door handle and yanked it shut behind her, flicking the lock button with her thumb.
In the next minute it didn’t matter that the 911 operator could hear the black man pounding the steel door with his fists. The air was shrill with sirens, red and blue strobes throbbed through the windows of the Mikado. Gravel pelted the side of the building as the police cruisers skidded around the corner into the parking lot of the Mystic Arts.
Iiko did not pay much attention to the bullhorn-distorted demands for surrender next door, or even the rattle of gunfire when Leon, exhausted and confused by the turn of events since he and the sandy man had entered the Mikado, burst a lock and plunged out into the searchlights with the big silver gun in his hand. She was busy with the narrow metal dustpan she used to clean out the brazier in the sauna, sifting through the smoldering bits of charcoal in the bottom. The stones were covered with soot and difficult to distinguish from the coals, but when she washed them in the sink they shone with the same icy blueness that had caught her eye in the massage room.
The glowing coals had burned away the green cloth bag as she’d known they would. She wrapped the stones carefully in a flannel facecloth, put the bundle in the side pocket of the cloth coat she drew on over her smock, and started toward the front door. Then she remembered the fifty-two dollars the sandy man had taken from her and put in the pocket of his shiny black suit.
The sandy man was as she’d left him, naked and dead, only paler than before. She thrust the money into her other side pocket and went out.
Waiting at the corner for the bus, Iiko thought she would take the stones to the pawnshop man who bought the jewelry and gold money clips she managed from time to time to take from the clothing of her customers. The pawnshop man knew many people and had always dealt with her honestly. She hoped the stones would sell for enough to settle some of Uncle Trinh’s doctors’ bills.
GREGORY FALLIS
LORD OF OBSTACLES
January 1997
GREGORY FALLIS is himself a former private investigator, and this, his first short story, became a finalist for the Shamus Award given by the Private Eye Writers of America. He is also the author of the nonfiction books Be Your Own Detective and Just the Facts, Ma’am: A Writer’s Guide to Investigators and Investigative Techniques, among others.
I don’t have much to do with Protestant ministers, or clergy of any sort if I can help it. I’m Irish and Catholic, as you can tell by my name—Kevin Sweeney. My wife, Mary Margaret, is also Irish and Catholic, and unlike me she takes both seriously, so I can’t always avoid contact with priests and nuns. Protestant ministers, though, are another matter altogether. They’re outside my usual circle.
Jails are part of my usual circle, and it was at the county jail that Joop Wheeler and I first met the Reverend Jason Hobart. A lot of priests and ministers visit jails and prisons during the holiday season. But Hobart wasn’t there bringing cheer and the gospel to the inmates. He wasn’t visiting at all. Hobart had been arrested for setting fire to his daughter’s garage.
The three of us were crowded into a small, stale, interview room—me, Hobart, and my partner, Joop. Hobart had been in jail over the weekend awaiting a bail hearing, and the time had worn at him. You could see he was normally a fastidious man, a man careful about his appearance, but a couple of nights in jail had played merry hell with his grooming. He was dirty and smelled of sweat and fear and worry.
It’s never a pleasant place to be holding a conversation, the jail, and it’s even worse during the Christmas season. The prisoners are more desperate, and the atmosphere is made more depressing by the unrelentingly cheerful Christmas music piped over the public address system. But Joop and I had to be there. We wanted to talk to Hobart before his bail hearing. Hobart had a good lawyer—Kirby Abbott—and he was certain to be released. A man newly released on bail has needs and interests that take priority over answering questions.
That’s why Joop and I were there—to get answers to questions. Kirby Abbott, like I said, is a good lawyer, but even the best lawyer is limited by what his client tells him. Hobart, for some reason, wasn’t being cooperative. He denied setting fire to his daughter’s garage, but he’d refused to tell Kirby where he was at the time of the fire. That’s why Kirby called us in. We’re private investigators.
We do a lot of criminal defense work, Joop and I, but we rarely get a client like Jason Hobart. Before he took the cloth—if that’s what Protestant ministers do—Hobart had been a successful local businessman; he owned several apartment buildings, two car dealerships, a local radio station, and probably a few other things. It made him an attractive client, for the lawyers and for us. We wouldn’t any of us have to worry about collecting our fee.
When Joop and I sat down with Hobart, he repeated the story he’d told Kirby. He was innocent, he said, but he wouldn’t say where he’d been when the fire started.
“It’s a grand thing to be able to say you’re innocent,” I said. “Not many can do that. But it’s not enough for the police, you know, and it won’t be enough for a jury if it goes to trial.”
Reverend Hobart nodded, but he didn’t seem concerned. He just seemed tired and sad. “A jury would do the right thing. The Lord will look out for me.”
I looked at Joop and nodded toward Hobart. Joop’s a Protestant—a Southern Baptist, of all things. Maybe he could talk some sense into the man.
“Juries are weird creatures,” Joop said. “I suspect a jury would want to know where you were when your daughter’s garage was torched. I’m sure a jury would want to know why your daughter, Sarah—your daughter her own self—told the police you were the one who chucked a Molotov cocktail through her garage window.”
Joop’s accent seemed to catch Hobart’s
attention for a moment. He’s from South Carolina, Joop, and he has one of those slow, soft, cultured Southern accents. It seems almost exotic up here on the Massachusetts coast.
Hobart slowly shook his head, and there was real pain in his eyes. “Sarah,” he said. “I don’t know. I just can’t believe she’d … Did she say she saw me setting fire to her garage? That she actually saw me?”
I shook my head. “No. What she told the police is that you’d been threatening to burn down the garage for some time.”
“Not the garage,” Hobart said. “Not the garage, but what was inside it.”
“The statue?” Joop asked.
“It’s not just a statue,” Hobart said. His eyes teared up. “It’s an image of a pagan god. You have to understand, the idea of my daughter, my only child … my Sarah, worshiping graven images. Especially now at this time of year. I just couldn’t allow …” He wiped his eyes and shook his head.
“Graven images?” Joop said. “I though it was an elephant.” He flipped quickly through the notes Kirby Abbott had copied for us. “Uh, yeah, right here. Wooden statue of an elephant. Doesn’t say a thing about any graven images.”
Hobart shook his head. “It had the head of an elephant, but the body of a man. A man with four arms. It was a pagan god.”
“Really?” Joop asked. “Here it just says elephant.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s wrong.”
“Elephant or elephant god, it doesn’t matter,” I said. “What matters is that the police believe you threw a Molotov cocktail through your daughter’s garage window, that you deliberately tried to destroy her statue and garage.”
“Tried?” Hobart said. “I thought … I was under the impression it had been destroyed.”
“Nope,” Joop said. “Just some minor damage is all. Singed around the edges.”
Hobart looked up. “Are you talking about the statue? Or the garage?”
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