MICHAEL LISTER'S FIRST THREE SERIES NOVELS: POWER IN THE BLOOD, THE BIG GOODBYE, THUNDER BEACH

by Michael Lister

  “Kid named Freddy Moats,” he said. “Know him?”

  I looked up like I was thinking about it. After a moment, I shrugged. “Not sure,” I said. “Who is he?”

  “Nurse for some quack,” Pete said. “Got a place on Eleventh Street. Calls it a sanatorium. Even got a patient or two.”

  “That help your memory any?” Butch asked.

  I shook my head. “Still not sure. Met a guy named Freddy once, but I never caught his last name.”

  Butch smiled and nodded to himself as if he knew everything he needed to about me.

  “So how’d I kill this guy?” I said.

  “He was beaten to death,” Pete said.

  “By a one-armed assailant?”

  “You can do plenty with that one arm, soldier.”

  Butch added, “What I hear, you’d’a killed the guy in the lobby of the Sherman the other day if your partner hadn’t’a pulled you off him.”

  “You boys are serious,” I said. “I must look pretty good for it if you’re doing background on me.”

  “I’m a serious guy,” Butch said. “And thorough. You should remember that.”

  “I will,” I said. “I’d write it down, but I’m right-handed.”

  “It’s wanky, Jimmy,” Pete said. “But you know how things work.”

  “No, but I’m finding it out,” I said. “And quick.”

  “It’s not like that, Jimmy,” Pete said. “You gotta know I wouldn’t—”

  “What put you onto me in the first place? What’s the connection between me and ole Freddy?”

  “Got a witness,” Pete said. “Now, I don’t know how reliable she is, Jimmy, but she puts you with the victim last night not long before he was rubbed out.”

  “Witness got a name?”

  “Yeah,” Butch said, “her momma gave her one right after she was born. Just like mine. But you wanna remember the one mine gave me is Butch, not Dope.”

  Chapter 10

  Walking back down Harrison toward our office, I spotted Cliff Walton, Harry Lewis’s head of security, standing in front of the Ford place smoking a cigarette.

  Smokes weren’t rationed like sugar and gas and other things, but they were shipped overseas and given to soldiers. So they were tough to get. Still, most of the people I hung around had them. Must’ve been the company I was keeping.

  When I neared the Tennessee House, he crossed the street and approached me.

  “Riley, right?” he asked.

  I nodded.

  “I’m Walt,” he said. “I work for Mayor Lewis.”

  “Mayor Lewis?”

  “Will be soon,” he said.

  He withdrew a pack of Lucky Strikes from his coat pocket, shook one out, and offered it to me. I took it. He then pulled out a lighter and lit it for me.

  “Thanks.”

  We stood in silence for a moment, watching the traffic on Harrison creep by, the morning sun glinting off the chrome and glass.

  “Any idea where Mrs. Lewis is?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “She’s not at home or with her husband?”

  “Mr. Lewis doesn’t know where she is. She never came home last night.”

  My heart started racing and I could feel the panic inside begin. I took a deep breath and tried to slow my pulse and calm my center. I couldn’t let anything show.

  Last night when she told me to take her home I knew what she meant—back to town, not to her house. I wasn’t allowed near her house, not even when we were together. I hadn’t gotten her home last night, but I’d gotten her close. She’d dropped me off a block from her swanky domicile and I had walked back to the Cove. It was late. I was tired. It was a long walk. I thought I had done all I could to make sure she was safe. Guess I was wrong. Again.

  “I’m sure you can imagine how sensitive this situation is. With the election coming up, Mr. Lewis can’t afford any bad publicity.”

  I nodded.

  Just down from us, in front of the Ritz Theater, a group of men and women in various uniforms were preparing for another war-loan drive. The army-air force were setting up an amphibious craft, called a “duck” on display, while the Easter Star and employees from Gulf Power and Commercial Bank were erecting poster-covered booths. Above them, the marquee of the Ritz read: Your war bond may be his ticket home.

  “He’d like you to make a few discrete inquiries.”

  I looked at him. His neck looked too thick to say words like “discrete inquiries.”

  “Me?”

  He nodded. “Your partner’s gonna be tied up for a while with the Hathaway thing, ain’t he?”

  I nodded.

  “No one can know,” he said. “No one. This has to be on the QT. You’re not working for Mr. Lewis. You’re working for me. Communicate only with me. The race is too close. If Mr. Lewis’s opponent or political enemies get anything they can use against him, he could lose the election. All I want you to do is find her and let me know where she is.”

  He paused for a moment, but I didn’t say anything.

  “Is Mr. Lewis justified in the trust he places in you?”

  “I’ll find her,” I said.

  “And?”

  “No one will ever know I was even looking for her.”

  “What was that about?” Ray asked.

  I had taken only a few steps toward our office when he appeared beside me.

  “What are you—”

  “In recess,” he said. “Judge had to hear an emergency petition in another case.”

  I nodded.

  I knew I couldn’t keep it from him. I just didn’t know I’d be telling him so soon, but I really didn’t have a choice now, and I wasn’t going to lie to him.

  “Mrs. Lewis is missing,” I said.

  “Since when?”

  “She didn’t come home last night.”

  As we talked, we walked past the Tennessee House and the Ritz Theater to our building, then up the stairs to our office. July wasn’t at her desk and probably hadn’t made it in yet.

  “That’s not much time,” he said. “She could just be—”

  “Someone she was with last night was found dead this morning.”

  He was about to sit down behind his desk, but stopped. “Who?”

  “Kid named Freddy. May not be connected, but there it is. I’m gonna need a couple of days for this and maybe a little help from July.”

  He shook his head. “I’ll find her. I’ll take care of everything. You just—”

  “Ray,” I said. He stopped. I rarely used his name. “You can accept that I need to do this or you can accept my resignation.”

  For a long moment he didn’t say anything, his face showing nothing as he considered me.

  “That was kind of sudden,” he said.

  “I just wanted you to know how serious I am. I know you understand.”

  Before starting his own agency, before working for the Pinkertons, Ray was a tough Chicago cop, and though many years had gone by, a case from back then still haunted him.

  Continually abused by her ex-husband, who repeatedly strolled right through his restraining order, Dorothy Powell was a victim in need of a hero—a roll Ray was right for. Protecting her became an obsession for him. All but moving in with her and all but hospitalizing her ex, he lost his badge, his family, everything. But in the end, it was Dorothy Powell who suffered the greatest loss one of the few times Ray had not been around.

  “Too well,” he said.

  “It’s something I’ve got to do. Something I’m going to do one way or another.”

  He nodded.

  “You’ll be in court anyway,” I said, trying to repair any damage.

  “I always suspected she’s the reason you lost your right jab,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything.

  He nodded to himself. “Be careful, Jimmy. And next time don’t be so quick to offer your resignation. I might just feel like you’re trying to push me around and take it.”

  Chapter 11

&nb
sp; While July tracked down information on Freddy Moats and his boss, Dr. Payton Rainer, I drove out to Lynn Haven, across the nearly mile-long wooden bridge spanning North Bay, to Margie Lehane’s secluded clapboard house.

  Margie, Lauren’s childhood friend, liked her privacy, and she had plenty of it. Her house was at the end of a winding dirt road and was surrounded for miles on all sides by thick pine and hardwood forests.

  I hadn’t seen Margie since shortly before Lauren left me, and I wasn’t looking forward to the inevitable drama that waited for me inside, but if Lauren was hiding, this was where it would be. It wasn’t because Lauren and Margie were close. They weren’t, but they had history, they understood each other, and Margie wouldn’t ask any questions.

  I knocked on one of the glass panes of the large wooden door and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. She must have heard me pull up in the yard.

  She was wearing a blue silk housecoat, open to reveal much of the blue silk gown beneath it, which was sheer enough to reveal much of the body beneath it. Though it was only a little past eleven, she held a martini glass in her right hand.

  “I knew you’d come back,” she said. “I just didn’t realize it’d take you so long. Some people are just slow learners.”

  She wasn’t slurring her words yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

  “Look at that,” she said, nodding toward my right coat sleeve, the bottom of which was pinned to the shoulder. “It’s really gone.”

  “Most of it,” I said. “Can I come in?”

  She stepped aside and made an elaborate sweeping motion with her left hand.

  I stepped inside and removed my hat.

  “You did mean in the house?” she asked.

  I let that one pass. It was okay. There would be others.

  As we walked through the foyer and into the den, I looked around at the overly furnished rooms. Margie always had the latest and best and too much of it. Kroehler furniture, Nairn linoleum, Holmes Wilton carpets—I knew because she was always bragging about them. Like Lauren, Margie had married a man with money. Unlike Lauren, Margie had figured out a way to lose the man and keep the money.

  “You wanna drink?” she asked, nodding toward the bar in the corner of the room.

  As usual, Margie had the best stocked bar around—Gilbey’s and Dixie Belle gin, Seagram’s Five Crown, Cobbs Creek, Mount Vernon, Paul Jones, and on and on.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You want me to take your hat? Can’t really do anything as long as you’re using your one hand to hold your hat.”

  “Don’t plan on doing anything.”

  Her face contorted into a narrowed, creased mask of anger and displeasure. “You always was a bastard, Jimmy, you know that?”

  “You seen Lauren?” I asked.

  “That’s why you’re here?” she said. “Sniffin’ after her. Well, she ain’t here. And I don’t know where she is. And I wouldn’t tell you if I did.”

  “Mind if I look around?” I said, already moving toward the other rooms.

  “Yeah, I mind,” she said, but she didn’t follow me.

  I searched the house. Her kitchen had brand new Formica countertops, a huge new Philco refrigerator, and a Western stove, though I’d never known her to cook.

  Nearly every room had an abundance of items that were part of the ration, but I wasn’t surprised. Things like rations didn’t apply to people like Margie.

  It didn’t take me long to determine that Lauren wasn’t in the house. Still, I lingered in the bedroom, among the Virginia House Hard Rock Mountain maple furniture Margie was so proud of. Several times she let me and Lauren use her bed when we needed a private place to be together—especially on those long mornings when Harry had board meetings.

  Through the windows, I checked the backyard. Margie’s car was the only one in it.

  When I walked back into the livingroom, Margie had turned on her phonograph, removed her housecoat and gown, and was standing there completely naked except for the blue mules on her feet and the martini glass still in her hand.

  “I know what you’re really after, buster,” she said.

  I studied her body for a moment. It was something to see. “You’ve faired a lot better in the last year or so than I have.”

  “I don’t mind you only got one arm, Jimmy boy,” she said. “It’s not really your arms I got much use for.”

  I shook my head, swallowing hard against a wave of nausea and guilt.

  “You want me like before?” she said. “On the floor or bent over the davenport?”

  When we were together, Lauren always used to say all she wanted was for me to be happy. Anytime I’d express jealousy about Harry, she’d laugh and tell me I had nothing to worry about from Harry. They didn’t even sleep in the same room together anymore and hadn’t had sex in years. He was like her father, but no matter what she said, I just couldn’t stop obsessing. Finally, after she had had enough, and we could both feel our disintegration beginning, she said if it made me feel any better I could get a woman to sleep with when she wasn’t around. All she wanted was for me to be happy. I was so torn up inside that she could be fine with me being with another woman, so convinced she didn’t love me, not the way I loved her, that I took her at her word and fucked her friend. I did it to get her to react with the same jealousy and obsession I had, but she didn’t have much of a reaction at all. She didn’t leave me right away, and when she did, she said it had nothing to do with Margie, but how could it not?

  Margie had placed her drink on the end table and was now bending over nearly touching her toes in front of me.

  “Have you seen Lauren?” I asked. “It’s important.”

  “Have you ever seen Lauren do this?” she asked, and began to touch herself.

  “She’s in trouble. If you know where she is, you need to tell me.”

  “Maybe your arm wasn’t the only thing got blown off, soldier. That why Lauren left you?”

  I pulled out one of my new cards and dropped it on the coffee table. “I’ve got a new number. Use it if you hear from Lauren. She’s in danger. She needs help.”

  She picked up the card pushed it up inside herself.

  “Lauren’s not the only woman who needs a private dick now and again.”

  I shook my head, as much at myself as her, wondering how I could have been such a sap. “The drunker the floozy,” I said, “the blunter the patter.”

  Driving back into town, I thought about Lauren and wondered where she was and what she was up to. I should’ve forced her to show me what she bought from the kid, made her tell me what she was mixed up in and with who, and insisted I take her home, but as usual I had gone soft. I had been confused by her lies, intoxicated by her Paris perfume, and once again I was playing the sap for her.

  We had it good for a while. Real good. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t let go, why I couldn’t stop acting her fool.

  As I drove through Lynn Haven, I remembered riding back from Margie’s with Lauren after one of our mornings together. As usual, it had been so good that it scared me, and I was trying to pick a fight with her.

  “Why won’t you leave him?” I asked.

  “I can’t.”

  “You won’t. There’s a difference.”

  “I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone—ever will love anyone,” she said, “but I can’t leave Harry.”

  “Then you love him more.”

  “It’s not love,” she said. “It’s something else.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s stronger than what you have for me.”

  “It’s not. You know it’s not.”

  “You’re choosing him over me.”

  Even in the midst of acting like I was, saying the things I was, I’d tell myself to stop, attempt to gather some self-respect and regain some self-control, but I couldn’t, and I hated her for what I’d become.

  “Please don’t see it like that,” she said. “It’s not like that at all. I just owe him so much. I couldn’t do that t
o him.”

  I knew what she owed him. Her life.

  Shortly before his death, Coolidge Brown, Lauren’s father, Harry’s best friend and the vice president of Harry’s bank, had used his position of trust to provide reckless and unsecured loans for friends and embezzled a small fortune for himself. When Harry discovered what he was doing, he confronted him, demanding his resignation and threatening to squawk.

  Secretly consumed with envy, Coolidge invited Harry over to his home ostensibly to apologize and discuss restitution, but really to take Harry down with him and his family. At gunpoint, Coolidge set his house on fire, dousing his wife, his kids, and his boss with kerosine. Not only had Harry acted bravely and saved Lauren’s life, but he also covered her dad’s crimes with his own money, burying the scandal with him. He provided for Lauren through high school and even some college, eventually asking her to take the place of his deceased wife.

  “You’re not even like a wife to him,” I said. “He wouldn’t mind so much.”

  “The only thing he’s ever wanted in his whole life is to be in public office. If I left him what chance would he have? I can’t do that to him. Can’t deny him the one thing in all the world he wants.”

  “No?” I said. “Well, you sure don’t have any problem doing it to me.”

  Nearing Panama City now, I thought about how I had actually believed her. I thought she really did love me the way she said, thought she just honestly couldn’t bring herself to leave Harry. I thought all this right up until the moment she told me it was over.

  Chapter 12

  Dr. Payton Rainer had his office in a converted hotel on Eleventh Street near St. Andrews. Standing two stories, it had a courtyard in the back and was surrounded by a cement privacy wall on all sides.

  When I rang the bell next to the locked front gate, a large man in a gray suit came out to greet me.

  “Can I help you, sir?” he asked.

  “I’d like to see Dr. Rainer,” I said.

  “Do you have an appointment?”

  I shook my head.

  “Then, I’m sorry, sir, but that’s quite impossible.”