by Tracy Clark
I charged up to two hundred dollars an hour, depending on the complexity of the case, but I didn’t think asking around about Tim Ayers rose to the level of complex; besides Jung slung sandwiches for a living. How much could he afford to pay? I calculated the discount in my head. “Let’s round it off to an even hundred.” I was taking a bath on the deal.
He wrote out the check and handed it to me, beaming like a four-year-old buying cotton candy at the circus. “We’re going to catch a freaking murderer.”
“No we. Me. And that’s maybe,” I clarified emphatically. “Condition two. You stay out of my way.”
His face fell. “What? But . . .”
“Out of my way, or I drop this right now.”
He began to fidget in the chair, his eyes quickly scanning the office. I could almost see him trying to think up a way to circumvent my conditions.
“I want to hear you say the words, Jung.”
“Fine. Out of your way.”
I slid a piece of paper over to him and a pen, then reached into my drawer and pulled out a standard contract. Business was business.
“Good, now give me Stephen Ayers’s information and the names of anyone Tim might have had a beef with—friends, partners, all of it. Then read and sign the contract.”
“Stephen won’t see you. He’s way too important for that.” He looked the contract over. “And is this really necessary? It looks, like, official.”
I slid Jung’s New Age check into my top drawer. “Just write. Let me worry about getting to Ayers. And, yes, it’s necessary, and it is official. Read it. Sign it. Then go about your business. If I need you, I’ll call Bucky’s phone or buy a bag of rocks.”
Jung and I shook on the deal. We were now, for better or for worse, client and operative.
And I already regretted it.
Chapter 10
Even though it was just the first week in June and summer was officially weeks off, Chicago was in high gear, anticipating the calendar’s formal pronouncement. The Loop, the city’s very public face, was already dolled up for the spate of fests, concerts, tourists, construction, and traffic snarls to come. All of it was as much a part of a Chicago summer as the ivy on the walls at Wrigley, fried ice cream at the Taste, or the one-note saxophonist who played “Harlem Nocturne” on the Michigan Avenue Bridge for dull nickels. Welcome to the glittering Land of Oz.
I eased into DuSable Marina’s lot and pulled up to the yacht club, following the sign to the office around the side. It was one of those sunny, breezy, lazy days that compelled people to call in sick or dead at their jobs. However, it didn’t appear that a lot of boats were taking advantage of the calm waters. Most of the slips were full, and the parking lot hadn’t a single car in it.
Steady traffic whizzed by on Lake Shore Drive, and the pedestrian paths circling the marina were jammed with joggers, bikers, and striders, none of them giving a fig about Tim Ayers. I pushed open the office door, triggering a tiny bell above it, me burning through Jung’s hundred bucks. “Yeah, hold on. Be right there.” A man’s voice came from the back room. I waited at a counter cluttered by boating paraphernalia: pamphlets on water safety, info on slip fees, and big, thick rope that looked strong enough to wrangle in a T. rex. A small fan farther down blew a mean wedge of hot air around, fluttering the metal window blinds and spreading the smells of algae, seaweed, and diesel oil. I eased my sunglasses off, tucked them into a pocket, and kept my breathing light.
After a time, a tugboat of a man, with a scruffy gray beard, walked out of the back. He was dressed in rumpled jeans and a faded polo shirt, the name of the yacht club stitched across the right breast pocket. On top of his ball-shaped head sat a battered captain’s hat, and his tight, round stomach hung well over a wide leather belt that must have been working overtime to hold up its end of things. The man took one look at me, registered surprise, and then followed it up with a flicker of caution. I watched as he slipped a key out of his pants pocket and locked the door behind him before slipping the key back.
“I thought you tecs were done. What’s the problem now?”
He padded over to the counter, stood facing me. His sun-cracked skin looked like he’d been left out in the elements fifty years too long, the wrinkles as deep as river channels. I thought the hat was taking the nautical theme a bit too far, but maybe it came with the job, like blue shirts at the Apple Store. In a far corner, an old office phone sat on a desk piled high with newspapers, boating mags, and more thick rope tied in odd knots. After a full sweep, my eyes settled on a large glass container down the counter a ways. The sign on it read TIPS. I wondered what the man possibly did to warrant a gratuity.
I handed him my card and waited while he read it. He looked from it to me, then blinked, trying to work it through. Maybe he’d never encountered a working PI before, or was it that I was a female PI? Or perhaps he just didn’t get a lot of black chicks down here in the old marina office.
“I’d like to ask you a few questions,” I said, “about Tim Ayers.”
He flicked a look at the card again. “Huh, I wouldn’t have pegged you for a private peeper. You got cop written all over you. My Spidey senses must be off.” He held out his free hand for a shake. I took it.
“Quint Anderson. Cap, if you want to get familiar.” He pointed to the captain’s hat, then took a full, and very obvious, sweep of me. “Nope, you don’t look like a peeper at all.”
I met his eyes again when they made their way back up to my face. I’d already taken my sweep when he ambled over. Only fair.
“Tim Ayers,” I repeated.
“Heard you.”
Cap looked like he drank a lot. His nose was splotchy, bulbous, and spider veins crisscrossed flushed cheeks. I got a faint whiff of hard liquor, masked some by bath soap and aftershave. Watery dark eyes met mine and held. Sneaky. That’s how I’d describe the look. Like he was a banker of secrets, but dealt only in deposits, not withdrawals. That didn’t bode well for my getting anything useful, but I wasn’t about to let things go without at least giving it a shot.
His chin flicked upward; he cocked his big head. “You working for somebody, or just nosing around freelance?”
I smiled. “I’m not at liberty to say. What can you tell me about Ayers? Who’d he hang out with around here? Did he have any run-ins?”
Cap ran a beefy hand along his chin scruff, the bristling sound of it loudly audible on my side of the messy counter. His hands were deeply calloused and they looked like they’d been that way for half his life. “You don’t look like a peeper, but you sure talk like one. Trolling for dirt right under the cops’ noses, huh?”
I took a moment. “Trolling for dirt” kind of chafed, but I’d get nowhere antagonizing the man. “You knew Mr. Ayers. You know this place. You must know something the cops don’t.”
Cap rolled his eyes. “Mr. Ayers? Well, fa-la-la. All I know is Mr. High and Mighty Ayers was a real piece of work.”
I ignored the mocking tone. It was obvious there was no love lost between the two men. Jung had said as much; something to do with Tim’s partying causing a problem for his neighbors. Cap didn’t look too broken up over Tim’s passing. In fact, the contrary appeared to be true. He seemed almost giddy that Tim was gone and out of his hair. I’d never understand why some people could get turned on by violent death, and approach it in a party mood, as though it were a sideshow attraction they’d paid good money to see. Maybe it was just that they hadn’t seen enough of it, or seen it at its worst. I had. I’d seen more than enough.
“I heard he wasn’t very popular.”
Cap stared, nodded slightly. “Oh? Who’d you get that from?”
I didn’t answer.
“Right, you’re not at liberty to say. Got it.”
I studied him for a time, hoping to find a glimmer of feeling, but found nothing remotely like it. The eyes, the color of cold black coffee, stared back at me, without a single spark of empathy in them, as if we were discussing something trivial and not t
he tragic death of a young man.
“Ayers is dead,” I said. “I’d think you’d be interested in knowing how and why.”
“Know how. Cops say he got hammered and slipped clear off his own deck. Why?” He shrugged. “Makes no difference. Dead’s dead.”
“Were you here the night he died? Maybe you saw something odd, something that stands out?”
Cap watched me with keen interest, his eyes all but dancing. He was enjoying himself quite a lot. “Look, I told the cops all that already. Telling you, well, that’s something different.”
He rocked back on his heels, his grin mischievous, roguish. He then quietly moved down the counter to grab the tip jar and walk it back. He placed it between us, turning the jar so I could read the sign on it, nudging it closer to me. I didn’t have to be a genius to see how this was going to go.
“I could talk or not, up to you,” he said. He placed a proprietary hand on the jar and waited while I thought it over. Maybe he knew something, maybe he didn’t. I wouldn’t know unless he talked, and he wasn’t going to unless I fed the jar.
“Or you could decide to be a decent human being and answer my questions . . . in the interest of getting to the truth.”
Cap scoffed, his thin lips twisting into a distasteful sneer. He tapped the jar.
I sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” I slid my wallet out of my bag and tossed a twenty inside. Cap showed his appreciation for the forced donation with a little head nod, but his hand stayed where it was. I’d have to feed the jar again.
“Wasn’t here,” he said. “Like I told the cops, I locked up early. I didn’t hear about Ayers or his boat till the next morning when I found cops clomping all over the place. In fact, I hadn’t seen the guy in almost a week before he went over, which was fine by me.”
“Security cameras didn’t pick up anyone boarding Ayers’s boat because of the storm. Maybe they picked up something before the storm got going? A strange car in the lot? Someone unfamiliar walking near the slips? Or maybe the cameras weren’t working at all?”
“Don’t fiddle with the cameras. They’re run by an outside outfit. Tech, something. If the cameras petered out, that’s on them, not me. Besides, they wouldn’t have done any good. They’re pointed the opposite direction to cover the paths and the lot, hoping to cut down on property theft and the like. Folks who tie up here don’t want cameras pointed right at their top decks. A lot goes on out there they don’t want their wives or their husbands knowing about, if you get my drift.”
“There’s a lot of that going around?”
“Lady, there’s a lot of everything going around. Only this set doesn’t get rousted by the cops.”
“How’d you and Ayers get along?”
“Couldn’t stand him. I don’t like any of them out there, quiet as it’s kept. I hate how they prance around here on those prissy boats, making all kinds of demands. They love being catered to. Ayers? In his twenties and he’s lounging around on a seventy-footer, as sleek as anything.”
Seventy feet sounded big, though I had absolutely no frame of reference. Cap caught my confused look.
“I’d call that a ‘yacht,’” he said, disdain dripping from every word. “Half a mil, easy, and that’s before you put your personal stink on it with your customizing. They all do that. It’s ego, pure and simple. Anyway, I steer clear. I do what they pay me for and leave them to it.”
“Why didn’t Ayers fit in?” I asked. “This seems like it’d be his kind of crowd. Well-heeled.”
“‘Square peg, round hole’ situation. The old-schoolers out there like it slow and quiet. Ayers burned his candle like it had three ends instead of two.” He cocked a thumb behind him. “I got a stack of noise complaints over there halfway to the ceiling with his name on’em. Parties went on down there on the regular, grungy visitors popping in and out at all hours. Typical rich kid, always out for a good time.”
“He was ill,” I said. “Dying.” Cap’s face registered slight surprise, but little else. “You didn’t know?”
“No reason I would. Like I said, I steer clear. Explains a lot, though. Guess he was trying to cram it all in before he kicked it. That wouldn’t have mattered to these marshmallows, though. They want what they want and they wanted him gone by hook or by crook, and with what they pay to anchor up here, they figure that gives them the right to say what goes.”
“So why didn’t they kick him out?”
Cap sniffed. “Because his last name was Ayers, that’s why.”
I thought for a moment, looking for an angle. “Anyone want him gone so badly they’d do something besides gripe about it?”
Cap’s eyebrows flicked up. “That’s what you think happened? That one of those Cartier cream puffs offed him?” He let out a gurgled roar of a laugh as dry as leaves. It sounded like it started way down at the balls of his feet and bubbled up through a constricted esophagus caked by years of nicotine and whiskey gunk. The raspy report crawled under my skin and burrowed deep.
When he was done, he said, “Look, PI, believe me, nobody out there’s got the stones to kill a guy, even if it was Ayers.”
I eyed the Navy tats peeking out from under the sleeves of his shirt. He worked at a marina. He served on the water. “You could easily have taken his boat out.”
“Me?” The laughing started up again. I waited for him to stop, though patience wasn’t my strong suit. “You come right out and accuse me of tossing him over? You got some balls.” He shook his head. “Look, maybe you could’ve gotten me to go along with the crazy idea somebody killed him, if I didn’t know for a fact that Ayers was off his rocker. You trying to prove different, well, that’s just a waste of your time and somebody else’s money. End of story.”
“‘Off his rocker’?”
“And that’s from a reliable source.”
I had a good idea, but asked, anyway. “What reliable source?”
Cap shook his head, tapped the jar. “Typical peeper. You don’t want to give any information, but you sure want to get it.”
“Your source wouldn’t by any chance be his brother, Stephen, would it?”
Cap’s face fell. I’d guessed right. Then suddenly he brightened again. He’d obviously thought of a different angle. “All right, but you got no idea what he wanted, or what he said. Only I got that. So? What’s it gonna be?”
Another twenty left my reluctant hand.
Cap grinned. “He called himself doing a wellness check, and I got a real earful, let me tell you. Yakked his head off. Tells me Tim suffered from real bad depression and got into drugs big-time before he supposedly straightened himself out. Sounded like looking after him was a full-time job for the family, what with them bailing him out of one thing after the next. This Stephen says he even spent time in a mental institution. And, well, considering what he did to himself . . .”
“Why’d he stop in here? Why not go straight to Tim’s boat?”
Cap shrugged. “You’ll have to ask him. Never saw him before, or since. The family couldn’t even be bothered to talk to the cops when they found the body and boat drifting. They sent their lawyer. Guess that’s how those people handle things. This Stephen talked a blue streak, though, like I said. Left his card and asked me to call if I saw anything strange. Guess it looks like he nailed that on the head.”
This time, it was my turn to eye the jar, as I wondered how much Cap had gotten from Stephen Ayers in return for promising to make that call.
“I could show you the card,” Cap said, “but it’s gonna cost ya.” His eyes danced. He wanted another twenty. Fat chance. I had Jung. He knew Stephen and how to get in touch with him.
I smiled. “I don’t need to see it. Anyone else come in here asking about Tim, besides Stephen?”
Cap clamped his lips shut. So far there was forty dollars in the jar and a question hanging. Cap stood there, hand on the jar, mouth closed, waiting me out. I’d stiffed him on the last exchange. The set of his jaw told me he wasn’t about to let that happe
n again. The seconds ticked by. Only a wide streak of stubbornness kept me from dropping more money in the jar, and the money wasn’t even mine. I was spending Jung’s retainer, but still it galled me to give it up. My eyes narrowed. Cap didn’t look at all worried that I might not play along.
“Okay, let’s try this one,” I said. “You mentioned visitors?”
“One particularly interesting one,” Cap said. And that’s all he said.
I glowered, slowly peeled off another twenty, watching as his glacial expression warmed. He was a greedy old goat.
“A woman. I don’t remember the face, just the wiggle. Wore a suit and carried a briefcase, looking like business. Redhead. Real nice caboose.”
Cap’s eyes began to wander again from my face downward. I cleared my throat and they jumped back up again. “When was this?”
“The same day the brother stopped by, only a little later. She headed straight for his slip. I tracked her through the window, enjoyed the view.”
I blew out a breath. Universally hated, a resentful brother conducting a wellness check, a mysterious redhead with a nice wiggle, a history of depression and drug abuse—what was Jung trying to get me into? I checked my watch. There was still way too much time on Jung’s meter.
“Did you notice anyone strange hanging around Tim’s boat?”
Cap shook his head, smiled.
“How about Ayers’s paperwork. Do you still have it?” I wanted to see if Tim had named anyone else besides his family as emergency contacts, someone who might have had reason to kill him. “It should have his emergency contacts on it, a permanent address?” Cap shot me an empty stare. He was likely still on the redhead’s caboose.
“Yep.”
He didn’t move. I didn’t, either. Ditto the jar with Jung’s sixty in its belly. My eyes hardened. No smile. “I’d like to take a look at it.”
Cap stood his ground; my wallet stayed closed. If I had to stand here all day, I would. It was the principle of the thing. Nothing moved except the undulating fan down the counter and the flutter of the blinds. Cap blinked first. Frowning, he slowly pulled back the jar.