Thursday's Child

by Teri White

  The black man still had the build of the linebacker he’d once been, but now that tanklike shape was clothed in a three-piece suit and an air of cool authority. Instead of “Monster,” which had been his nickname in the NFL, he was now called Lieutenant. Except by his former partner.

  “This is what you do all day now, Wally?”

  Dixon’s feet, which had been propped on the desk, hit the floor. A sheepish look crossed his face until he saw who it was standing in the doorway. “Shit, they’re letting anybody into this place nowadays, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, even gimpy pensioners.” He sat down, noticing the half-eaten jelly doughnut in Dixon’s massive hand. “Don’t let me interrupt your breakfast.”

  “I certainly won’t.” Dixon took a big bite. He was the only man Gar knew who could eat a doughnut that was oozing grape jelly and not get even a drop on his expensive gray suit.

  Gar let him chew and swallow before asking, “You know anything about the murder of a hooker the other night?”

  Dixon drank coffee from a mug emblazoned with a drawing of a jolly-looking pig in a blue police uniform. “You talking about Marnie Dowd?”

  “That’s the one.” It was immediately interesting that the name of a woman who should have been just another dead whore came so quickly to Dixon’s mind. It wasn’t as if anybody really cared about a case like that.

  Dixon finished the doughnut in one last bite. “An unknown perp shot Ms. Dowd in an alley.”

  “That’s all you have?”

  “Yep.”

  Gar looked at him. “I’d like to know why a big-shot lieutenant even knows about one more dead hooker in an alley.”

  Dixon grinned. “Funny. I was just about to ask you why a hotshot locator-of-lost-kids cares anything about that same dead hooker.”

  Gar quickly debated with himself how much to reveal to Walter Dixon, who was probably the best friend he had in the world, but who was also still part of the bureaucracy. And while he knew that Wally didn’t always move in lockstep with the establishment, he also knew that Dixon was still enough of a company man to be a black in the position he was in.

  Gar finally smiled. “I don’t have any interest in Dowd herself at all. What I do have is a suspicion that a kid I’m looking for might have been a witness to the killing.”

  Dixon’s brows elevated. “Really?” He seemed interested in that.

  Gar finally noticed that one of the two files on Dixon’s desk was, in fact, labeled DOWD, MARNIE. “You really do seem especially interested in this whore’s killing,” he said, nodding toward the file.

  “Hey, it’s my job.”

  “I told you my motives,” Gar said.

  Dixon tapped the file. “Well, there is one pretty interesting thing about this case,” he admitted.

  “Yeah?” Gar moved his leg and it hit the cane, knocking it to the floor with a crash. “Shit,” he said mildly. He left the cane where it had fallen. “What’s interesting?”

  “The gun was found at the scene.”

  Gar tried not to show his impatience. Wally always went about things in his own way. Trying to rush him would only have the opposite effect. “Prints?” was all he said.

  “Oh, no, not one.” Dixon smiled again, showing that he knew exactly how aggravated Gar was becoming. “Okay.” He turned businesslike. “Over the last few years, there’s been a triggerman in town. Good at his job. Quick, clean, a real pro, who’s done some very big hits. And he always leaves a gun, wiped clean, at the scene. Bastard must buy his cheap firepower by the carton.”

  Gar had to admit that this was fairly interesting, even if he couldn’t see that it had much bearing on his search for Beau Epstein. “And?” he said.

  Dixon shrugged. “And I’m just a little curious why a man like that wasted his time and considerable talents on a two-dollar whore. It seems out of character.” Dixon had studied psychology in college and never forgot it. “Maybe now you ought to tell me just what it is you know about the Dowd killing,” he suggested.

  “According to what I heard on the street, a man was seen leaving the alley right after a shot was fired.”

  “Oh, yeah? We didn’t turn up any witnesses.”

  “I got lucky.”

  “Yeah?” Dixon said sourly. “What did this lucky witness tell you about the man?”

  “Not much. A regular sort of guy.”

  “Regular?” Dixon sighed. “What the fuck does that mean?”

  “Who knows? He was wearing a baseball cap,” Gar added helpfully.

  “Great. A regular guy in a baseball cap. That certainly narrows down the field.”

  “Sorry, but that’s all I got.”

  Dixon glared at him. “Would you like to tell me just where you learned all of this helpful stuff?”

  “From one of Mamie’s sisters in the business.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  Gar raised his hands helplessly. “Sorry.”

  “Sorry you don’t know, or sorry you won’t tell me?” Dixon asked.

  “Whatever.”

  The big black man wasn’t pleased. “When you start screwing around in open murder investigations, Mr. Private Eye, you begin to walk a very dangerous line.”

  “I know that.”

  Dixon was still glaring. “Who’s the kid you’re looking for?”

  “That’s not cop business,” Gar said. “The family wants it kept quiet.”

  Wally’s face was grim. “It’s not police business yet, you mean,” he said.

  Gar bent to pick up his cane. Straightening, he looked at Dixon. “Not yet,” he agreed.

  As he left Dixon’s office, there was a knot beginning to form in the pit of his stomach. And his leg was throbbing. He stopped at the drinking fountain in the hallway and swallowed one of the little pink pain pills.

  By the time he got home that night, after a day that gave him nothing more to go on, the knot was bigger and tighter. Mickey was already there, with dinner ready, and they ate a meal of cold salmon and salad out on the deck. She could see that he wasn’t in the mood for conversation, so it was a quiet meal. That was one of the things he loved most about Mickey. Nobody had ever really read his moods as well.

  Afterward, they both took the dog down to the beach and let him chase birds for a while. When he asked her about her day, Mickey began a steady flow of conversation. Glad now for the sound of her voice, Gar just listened, nodding at all the right moments, and watched Spock terrorize the gulls.

  Mickey stopped her commentary suddenly. “You’re really worried about the Epstein boy, aren’t you?”

  “I guess. Hell, I don’t know why it’s getting to me.” Spock tired of playing tag with the birds and brought a stick to his master. Gar threw it as far as he could and the dog went after it cheerfully. “I just have a very bad feeling about this case. I think it could go wrong at the end. I don’t think I want to be around for that.”

  “But you’re already involved.”

  He shrugged. “I could quit.”

  She looked surprised. “You’ve never done that before. Given up on a kid.”

  “There’s always a first time.” Besides, maybe it wasn’t the first time. Hadn’t he sort of given up on his own daughter?

  Mickey leaned against him. “How about you stop thinking about it for tonight? We could go back to the house and lose ourselves in some sweaty sex.”

  He bent forward and inhaled the clean scent of her hair. “That sounds pretty damned good to me,” he said.

  Spock tried to delay things by playing games, so finally Mickey picked him up and carried him all the way home.

  14

  1

  He was on his third cup of coffee the next morning when the newspaper story caught his eye. Why he even bothered to read the details surrounding the killing of some second-rate hood who’d gotten himself iced, Gar didn’t know. Murder was the kind of thing that happened every day to guys like that. Who cared?

  But once he’d read the short item and
seen the details—which said that the victim had been shot once in the head with a gun that was found, wiped clean of prints, next to the body—Gar’s interest level increased dramatically. It seemed like sort of a funny coincidence, given what Wally had told him. At the same time, he was honest enough to admit that his flutter of excitement over something so totally insignificant only proved the depths of his desperation.

  Shrugging that aside, he reached for the telephone.

  Wally Dixon wasn’t really interested in a killing that had happened so far out of his jurisdiction. Nevada, for Chrissake, he said testily, was a whole different state.

  Gar pointed out that there were some strong similarities between this killing and that of Marnie Dowd.

  Wally conceded that, but did not find it sufficiently interesting to spend either his time or departmental funds in checking further. And if that was all, he did have work to do. Thanks for calling.

  Gar hung up. He decided that while the time and money of the police department were limited, he had plenty of the former and Saul Epstein a whole lot of the latter. It probably wouldn’t do a damned bit of good to ask some questions in Vegas, of course. But it couldn’t hurt either.

  He left a note for Mickey, who was still in bed, and headed for the airport.

  The commuter flight put him into McCarran just before lunch. He caught a cab and went directly to police headquarters. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any friends in the department there. That meant he was shuffled around for some time before he was finally pointed toward the desk of Sergeant Luis Alverado, who was in charge of the Drago case.

  Alverado looked more like a high school history teacher than a homicide cop. He was thin, with graying hair, a suit that had to have come from Sears, and horn-rimmed glasses that had been repaired with a piece of masking tape. He straightened the glasses on his nose and gave Gar’s ID careful study. “Well, a big-city private eye. This is a real honor,” he said. The slightly mocking words were said in such a gentle tone that it wasn’t possible to take real offense. “I was about to get some lunch,” Alverado continued. “Do you mind?”

  Lunch, it turned out, meant sandwiches and drinks from a row of vending machines. They sat at a Formica table in an otherwise empty room, the walls of which were tastefully decorated with “Wanted” posters, and Alverado unwrapped his egg salad on rye. “So what brings you to us, Mr. Sinclair?”

  “The Drago hit,” Gar replied, peering with some suspicion at his own American cheese on white. “I’m interested in what you might be able to tell me about that.”

  “Ah, yes. Tony the Toad. Well, somebody shot him down in his own driveway.”

  “Actually, I know that much already. It was in the Times. One shot in the head. The weapon was a cheap handgun found by the body.”

  Alverado smiled. “So now you know as much as I do.” He opened a small carton of milk. “How come you want to know about Tony?”

  “Tony I don’t give a flying fuck about. But the MO of his death is just like that of a recent homicide back home.”

  “And?”

  “And I’m hoping that something you can tell me about this might help me find a runaway kid I’m looking for.”

  Alverado finished his sandwich and started work on a small package of Oreo cookies. “That sounds pretty thin to me.”

  Gar nodded glumly. “I know it’s thin. Very thin. Fucking anorexic. But when that’s all you got, run with it, right?”

  “I guess so. I hate to be the one to bring you down, but I would bet City Hall that this was a paid hit. Nothing to do with any runaway kid.”

  Gar carefully wrapped the second half of his sandwich in its cellophane and pushed it away. “Could I get a copy of the report on this?”

  “I guess so. Hell, it’s as thin as your theory.” Alverado glanced at him. “If anything comes of it, you’ll let me know, of course?”

  “Of course. And there is one more thing.”

  Alverado was finally finished with his meal. “There’s always one more thing.” He popped a Turns into his mouth. “What is it?”

  “Who in town could I talk to about the Drago hit?”

  “Besides me, you mean?”

  Gar smiled. “Uh, yeah. Somebody from the other side is what I had in mind.”

  Alverado chewed the Tums thoughtfully. “Frank Marcello,” he said finally. “He’s the one to talk to. If you really want to do that kind of stupid thing.”

  “Want? Oh, want has nothing to do with it. If it did, I’d be home with a cold beer right now. But that wouldn’t help me find the missing boy.”

  “And talking to Marcello will?”

  Gar shrugged. “Probably not. But it’s worth a try.”

  Alverado took a business card from his pocket and scribbled something on the back. “You might try here,” he said. “Give Frankie this card. He knows me.

  Gar took the card. “Thanks.”

  The cop grimaced. “I haven’t done you any favor, pal. Be careful with Marcello. You might be getting in over your head.”

  That was entirely possible, but Gar decided not to think about it at the moment.

  The country club crowd was lunching on the veranda. There wasn’t a cellophane-wrapped sandwich anywhere in sight. A tennis tournament was in progress below and the diners divided their attention between the match in progress, their radicchio, and muted but lively conversation.

  The hostess, a blond snow queen dressed in virginal white, didn’t bother to hide her disdain for Gar’s wrinkled linen jacket, lack of tie, and, he felt, his cane. After he told her who it was he wanted to see, she frowned prettily and consulted a complicated seating chart. “This way, please.”

  He trailed her through the maze of tables to one that had a very good view of the tennis court. One old man sat there, along with a couple of much younger women, and some efficient-looking yuppie gentlemen who were probably lawyers. They all seemed to be having a very good time. At the very next table were three sturdy representatives of the lower middle class. This trio was visibly not thrilled by either the cuisine or the tennis. Their suits didn’t fit right. They watched Gar’s approach with stone-cold eyes as their hands moved ever so slowly toward their jackets.

  Gar just shook his head gently at them and spoke to the old man. “Mr. Marcello? Could I have a few words with you, please?”

  Marcello looked up from his trout and frowned. “I’m having lunch,” he said. “And anyway, I don’t know you.”

  Gar held out the card that Alverado had given him.

  Marcello took it, saw the name, and sighed. He waved off his thugs and stood. “This way.” The old man led him into the adjacent bar, which was nearly empty. He ordered a shot of bourbon, but didn’t offer Gar anything. “So?” he said. “What’s so important that I have to interrupt my lunch?”

  “Alverado said I should talk to you about Tony Drago.”

  “I don’t know the man.”

  Gar leaned his weight against the sturdy oak bar, giving his leg a rest. “Whether you do or not doesn’t interest me at all. Whether you know anything about his recent demise doesn’t interest me either.”

  Marcello seemed to be paying more attention to his bourbon than to what Gar was saying. “So? What does interest you then?”

  Gar took out the Epstein photograph. “This boy. Forget Drago. Forget about who killed him. All I want to know is, have you ever seen this boy?”

  Marcello looked carefully at the picture. “One of life’s complications,” he murmured after a moment.

  “I beg your pardon?” Gar said.

  “Complications,” Marcello repeated. “I’m too old for the complications that belong to others.”

  Gar put the photo away. “I’m not trying to complicate things for you. I only want to find that boy before he gets hurt.” He eyed the old man. “His grandfather wants him back. I’m sure that you can understand that. Maybe you have grandchildren of your own?”

  Marcello hesitated, again studying the amber liquid in his gla
ss. “I may have seen that boy,” he said carefully. “But I cannot say where or with whom.”

  “Cannot or will not?”

  The face was bland, but the voice was icy. “However you prefer. I will not discuss this matter any further and it would be better for you not to ask me to. Understand?”

  Gar understood. Marcello was perfectly willing for him to walk away now, knowing what he knew, and to leave Vegas in an undamaged condition. To press him any more would only lead to severe complications for everybody. Including himself. “Thank you,” was all he said.

  Marcello took his drink with him as he turned around and walked back out to the veranda. Instead of sitting back down to his lunch, though, he stopped by the table with the three goons. He bent down and said something into the definitely unshell-like ear of the biggest, meanest-looking ape. The man nodded and jumped up like the trained gorilla he was. He hurried away.

  Interesting.

  Gar glanced at his watch. He had twenty minutes to make the next flight back to Los Angeles. He could make it, assuming that he didn’t run into any traffic cops en route. And also assuming that King Kong, who’d just left the veranda, wasn’t waiting in the parking lot to beat the shit out of him.

  2

  He was sitting in the dark living room when Mickey came home. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights, but just came and sat next to him. “Problems?” she said, toying with the hair that straggled over his collar.

  “Deep shit,” he replied. He took a long gulp of beer.

  “Is it still Beau Epstein?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s still Beau. Somehow that stupid boy has gotten himself mixed up with a couple of killings. And I don’t mean your basic street crime. I’m talking highly paid mob killing. A pro.”

  “That’s scary.”

  “It sure as hell is. I don’t have any idea what’s going on.”

  She patted his cheek. “You’ll figure it out. I have faith.”

  “I’m sitting here thinking that maybe I really should just step out of this. Turn it over to the cops.”

  “Are they looking for Beau, too?”

  “Not yet. But they could be.”

  Mickey leaned back and stared at him in the pale moonlight that was filtering into the room. “You’re serious about quitting?”