Dead Bang

by Robert Bailey

  Women had not been my long suit all day. I hoped things would improve, so I stopped and picked up a dozen roses for Wendy. I wrote on the card, “When the roses are gone … Ovid. Ode to Love.”

  • • •

  It’s pretty hard to tell if my office has been ransacked. The basic rule of thumb is, if the crap is on the floor, the joint’s been tossed. If the crap’s still on the desk, well, a tidy desk reflects a vacant mind. Marg leaves my messages on the chair.

  Making it to Mark Behler’s show meant squaring away my business in seven minutes. Marg had sown doubt into that prospect with a telephone message from Virginia Hampton at Pacific Casualty marked, “URGENT!”

  Mark “Bullshit” Behler or Virginia “Payday” Hampton? I pecked Virginia’s number on the speed dialer. She picked up the line. “Ginny,” I said, “Art at P.A. Ladin Investigative Associates. I’ve got a note marked ‘urgent’ here.”

  “Glad you called. You’ll never guess who I saw at a bachelorette party last night.”

  “Busy last night. I’d rather have been at the party.”

  “James Hooper.”

  “The hod carrier with a bad back?”

  “Male exotic dancer,” said Ginny, “and he’s still drawing full disability.”

  “He must know he’s toasted now.”

  “We’ve never been in the same room, until yesterday.” I could hear Ginny shuffling papers on her desk. “I had to check the picture on his company ID to make sure.”

  “If we set up an appearance for him, and he aggravates his injury, we’re on the hook twice,” I said.

  “Better than that,” said Ginny, “he left a card. He’s appearing in the lounge at the Airport Bowl in Holland.”

  “He push his walker around the stage while he dances?”

  “Hard hat and a leather apron,” said Ginny. “No walker. I need some video to rebut the orthopod who testified at his last hearing.”

  “I can do that job,” I said. And that’s when the devil whispered in my ear.

  “We have a three-day opening,” said Ginny. “I called, and they’re shutting the show down until after the Tulip Festival.”

  “Tucking dollar bills into wooden shoes lacks a certain cachet,” I said. “Three days is kind of tight. You don’t mind if I sublet this one, do you?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ginny. “Who did you have in mind?”

  “Silk City,” I said. “My wife’s outfit. She can use my wireless chip-cam setup. Runs off a recorder in the van. You’re in and out, and nobody’s the wiser.”

  “She always does good work,” said Ginny. “You think she can set this job up on such short notice?”

  “Seems like a natural,” I said. “She and her ladies would have way more fun than me.”

  “It’s just, you know, cheaper for us if I call her direct and the job’s not a referral.”

  The devil made me say, “Wendy is a little cranky around the house when she gets a job because I’m busy.”

  “Not a word,” said Ginny. “You’ll still let her use the video setup?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I hate sleeping on the sofa. The dog hogs all the room.”

  “If she can’t do it?”

  “If she passes on the job, I’m your guy. One way or the other, you’ve got the job covered.”

  “It’s kind of late,” said Ginny.

  “Wendy’s in,” I said. “I just talked to her.”

  Ginny hung up, and I could tell she wasn’t happy about having to make a second call—definitely time to take her and her secretary out to lunch. Something swank.

  Marg had run the license plates. The one on the van came back to a Dodge pickup truck, a tag they had no doubt stolen. The plate on the Navigator belonged to the vehicle—Mayada Jidah, Marshal Street, Southfield, Michigan. I oiled the Colt Gold Cup and strapped it on before I left.

  • • •

  Officer Styles had run my name for wants and warrants and had come up blank. With luck, Archer Flynt was on his way to Hamtramck and Van Huis would be looking for a donut in the morning, instead of me. Chet Harkness, Mark Behler’s producer, had been looking for me long enough to develop a serious case of the ass.

  “Dammit, Hardin,” he said, “It’s three minutes to five. We’ve been teasing this spot all afternoon, and I was on my way to pull it.”

  “You said I wasn’t on until the end of the show.”

  Chet showed me a writing tablet’s worth of lines etched in his forehead. “I told you to be here a half hour before air time.”

  “I still have a business to run,” I said.

  “Great, go run your business.”

  I turned and started walking.

  “Fine,” Chet called after me. “Let Mark tell it his way, and you can spend the next week wading through news hounds just to get to your car.”

  “You said this wasn’t about Peggy Shatner,” I said over my shoulder without stopping.

  “If you’re there,” said Chet. “If you’re not, Mark can chum for sharks.”

  I stopped and turned around. “I have a couple of pet sharks that might rise for the bait.”

  “See,” said Chet, jabbing his index finger at me. “That’s it! You got an answer.” He snapped his fingers. “Right on the tip of your tongue.” Guile splashed across his face. “C’mon, Art. Four minutes. What do ya say?”

  “No makeup.”

  “No problem,” said Chet. He whisked me into a room commanded by a grandmotherly black woman wearing a red nylon smock embroidered with the name “Rita.”

  Rita thrust a coat hanger at me and said, “Gimme that coat, sugah.” Chet showed Rita his wristwatch and tapped the crystal with his index finger. “Don’t you give me that, Chester Harkness. You get folks in this chair on time, you ain’t gonna be in a hurry.”

  I slid my coat off.

  Rita latched large eyes on the Colt and said, “Day-yam, sugah.”

  “I’m a detective,” I said.

  “Well, Detective,” said Rita, “you sit down right here in Miss Rita’s chair.” She patted the seat of a chrome and black vinyl barber chair.

  I eased into the chair and asked, “What’s going on here, Chet?”

  “Fans on the set,” said Chet. “We just need to spray your hair in place.”

  Rita snapped a drape over me and spun the chair toward the mirror. “That the way you want your hair on TV?”

  I ran my pocket comb around my head. “I guess that’s fine.”

  “A little shiny here,” said Rita. She dabbed the back of my head with powder and loosed a cloud of hair spray.

  “Chet, you’re a lying sack of shit,” I said, shaking my head and waving my hands to clear the air.

  “You sittin’ there wearing that big gun, acting like a big baby,” said Rita. She banged the powder puff across my forehead.

  Chet patted the makeup lady on the shoulder. “He’s got a moustache. We can do without the lip paint.”

  “I don’t know,” said Rita, squinting her eyes and moving her head back and forth to examine my face.

  “Work with me, here,” said Chet. He pulled the drape off. “There’s no time, anyway.” I shrugged into my coat while Chet led me out.

  Someone had painted the “green room” beige. Mix-and-match end tables guarded a battered sofa. An oval rope throw rug covered the center of the speckled tile floor.

  “I made the coffee this morning, and the donuts are a week old. Help yourself,” said Chet. “I’ll come and get you.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  “What?” Chet, already at the door, turned and showed me a pensive face.

  “I have a question.”

  “What? I have to go,” he said, holding the doorjamb with one foot already in the hall.

  “You heard the tape that Mark Behler made at the restaurant.”

  “I had to deliver it to the police,” said Chet.

  “What did the Shatner woman say to Mark at the end of the tape?”

  Chet looked at
the floor and studied the tile. After a moment, he looked up and said, “I never listened to the tape.” He left.

  One sip of the coffee revealed that it would jump-start a frozen mastodon out of the permafrost. I circled the donuts once but decided they were best left undisturbed. Just about the time I found a hazmat-safe place to abandon the coffee, Chet started bitching in the hallway. “Okay, Hardin. C’mon, c’mon, you’re on.”

  I found the Eurasian woman, Lily, without her name tag and already on the set. We had chairs facing Mark Behler, who occupied a tall stool behind a podium, which held his notes. He sported enough makeup to be a clown on a kiddie show.

  Darkness shrouded anything not under the klieg lights. From the gloom, a male voice announced, “On the air in fifteen seconds. Watch for the red light, and don’t look into the camera.”

  “We need another chair,” said Mark.

  Chet’s voice answered. “I told you, Archer Flynt called.”

  “Yeah?” asked Behler, panic in his voice.

  “Yeah!” said Chet. “He’s not going to be here.”

  13

  MARK BEHLER LATCHED onto the red light like a hungry infant after a swollen nipple. “Thirty-two years ago John Vincenti, a Detroit-based labor organizer, took a short taxicab ride to meet with friends at the Rooster Tail restaurant on the Detroit River. He was never seen again. Today, we’re here with Lily Vincenti, his daughter, and Arthur Hardin, a private investigator who may have concealed the key to this thirty-two-year-old mystery.”

  It’s not that I didn’t have a plan. I did. I formulated one on the spot. The plan centered around squeezing Mark Behler’s neck until his tongue popped out and then shaking him back and forth until it slapped him silly.

  Lily turned to me, anger twitching her face, and asked, “Did you kill my father?”

  Chet Harkness marched onto the set carrying a telephone and announced, “Breaking news, Mark.”

  I said, “Miss Vincenti, I am sorry for your loss. I gave the local authorities all the information I had thirty-two years ago. That’s what I told the state police this afternoon. That’s the reason they refused to participate in this tabloid sideshow.”

  Mark, careening off his stool to see around Chet, shook his pointed finger at me and said, “Isn’t it true—”

  Chet moved to block Mark’s face and held the telephone handset out to him. He said, “Breaking! News!”

  Mark took the telephone, staring at it like he’d been handed a snake. Chet held his fist to his cheek, arched his eyebrows, and nodded. Mark put the handset to his face and read from the teleprompter. “Commander K?”

  “Hello, cowboy infidels.” I recognized the voice. “I am Commander K, your friendly neighborhood terrorist.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?” asked Mark.

  “Too late to circle the wagons. We’re here-errr!”

  I definitely recognized the voice.

  “You told my producer there was a bomb.”

  “We know who you are! We know what you did! Cast aside your six-shooters and lever rifles. Submit to the will of Allah!”

  An explosion shook the building. The lights fluttered but stayed on. Mark gasped, “Oh, my God!”

  Commander K said, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet, peace be upon him.”

  “What have you done?” asked Mark.

  “Not to worry,” said Commander K. “Just a small device in a mailbox. Not like American bombs dropped from airplanes, which are, after all, just a good lesson for us.”

  “We’re national!” said a voice from behind the cameras.

  Mark straightened his back and squared his shoulders. “I am Mark Behler. We’re on the telephone with Commander K, a self-proclaimed terrorist.” Mark’s voice went stern and picked up timbre. “An explosion outside our building has rocked this studio. Commander K, why have you called The Mark Behler Show in Grand Rapids, Michigan?”

  “I have a message for the cowboy crusader president of the United States,” he said, mocking Mark’s tone and delivery.

  “Please tell us that message,” said Mark.

  “Tariq Aziz must have his ZZ Top CDs replaced.”

  “You’re not serious,” said Mark.

  “I am most serious,” said Commander K. “An American bomb flew in through the window of Tariq’s office. His ZZ Top collection was destroyed.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “Well, there was also a very nice John Tesh CD, but Tariq only had that because he forgot to send the card back.”

  “You just set off a bomb on the street!”

  “I am a terrorist!”

  “You set off a bomb over rock ‘n’ roll CDs?”

  “Okay, okay! You have me there,” said Commander K. “They were Kenny G CDs, but I promised not to tell.”

  “This entire nation, the American people, are listening to you. Right now! Don’t you have anything to add?”

  “Yes! Being a martyr means never having to say you’re sorry.” An explosion shuddered through the building and snuffed out the lights.

  • • •

  Dark doesn’t cover it. We had no light. Eyes open, eyes closed—same shade of velvet black. I felt dust settle on my head and hands while I took a quick inventory of body parts. No one spoke. I found my pocket lighter and fired it up.

  The flickering light revealed a roomful of folks, motionless in their chairs like scattered chess pieces and sharing a veil of fine gray dust. I spoke. “Anyone hurt?”

  People started to move. I heard Chet Harkness’s voice. “Stay in your seats until the emergency lights come on.”

  Mark Behler blinked his eyes and shook his head. Lily wiped her face with her hands, smearing gray dust with her makeup. When she took her hands away, her face looked like a lava lamp with blinking eyes. I snapped off my lighter and waited.

  Prayers here and profanity there began in scattered murmurs that grew louder until the clang of the building’s fire alarm drowned them all out. I stood up and thumbed my pocket lighter. Lily sat rubbing her face with the sleeve of her jacket.

  “C’mon, Lily,” I said. “Time to go.” I grabbed the sleeve of her jacket to urge her to her feet, but she jerked away.

  “Something in my eyes,” she said, panic in her voice.

  “Stand up and hold on to my jacket.”

  “I don’t trust you,” said Lily.

  “Great,” I said. “Tell me about it when we get outside.”

  Lily grabbed my jacket, and we started toward the door. In the room, the pale light of my pocket lighter revealed dust-shrouded zombies shuffling about with their hands thrust out. Metal folding chairs tripped them up here and there. My pocket lighter felt like it was reaching critical mass.

  I snatched open the studio door, and light flooded the room from the battery lights in the hallway. Leonard, the security guard, marched up the hall carrying an electric torch on a large square battery. I held the door until Leonard took charge.

  “There’s no smoke or fire on this floor!” he yelled into the room.

  “Walk slowly toward the light and then follow the exit signs out of the building.”

  In the lobby, pungent smoke hung in the air. The front doors and windows lay in glittering shards on the tile floor. Pulsing tan fire hoses slithered over the glass and out of sight up stairwells and down hallways. I picked up Lily and trundled her toward a firefighter.

  “What are you doing?” asked Lily.

  “Almost there,” I told her.

  She started to struggle.

  “Stop!” I said. “There’s glass all over the floor.”

  The firefighter waved me toward the door and pulled down his air mask. “How many people in there?”

  “A dozen or so in the studio,” I said. “Leonard, the security guard, is back there with a light leading them out.”

  The firefighter repeated the information into his radio, and I asked him, “Why’s everything so dim?”

  He gave me a wry smile. �
�You need to wipe the dust off your glasses.”

  At the door, I walked into a flurry of flashbulbs. Newsies yelled, “What’s your name?”

  “How bad is she hurt?”

  “Was the bomb inside?” Red and blue strobe lights decorated as much of the world as I could see. A firefighter took Lily off my hands.

  “She has something in her eyes,” I said. I took my glasses off. The lenses had a coat of gray ash, like a velvet Christmas ornament. My sports coat and jeans had become a dust-gray suit.

  I batted dust clouds loose with my hands until I felt a hand on my shoulder. Someone said, “Across the street and through the parking lot—give your name to the officer with the clipboard.”

  Mist hung in the air. The street glistened and reflected a dancing yellow light show. I could feel heat on my back and turned to look at the building. Flames from the roof licked the dark sky, dodging the steady streams of water shot by firefighters perched atop ladders. I hustled across the street and dodged through the cars in the parking lot toward a voice that commanded, “Over here! Over here!”

  “Art Hardin,” I told a female police officer. I didn’t recognize her—name tag read “Sullivan.” She wanted my address and phone number.

  “Are you injured?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I need to clean up.”

  “You leave any property in the building?” asked Officer Sullivan.

  “No.”

  “Why are you armed?”

  “I’m a detective.”

  “City?” she asked, tilting her head and squinting her eyes.

  “Private.” I reached for my wallet. “You want to see?”

  She shook her head. “Name’s familiar. You were in the TV studio for Mark Behler’s show. I saw the ads before I came to work. You should clear the area. Someone will call.” She looked past me and said, “Name?”

  I’d parked underground in the city lot. That seemed like a plus. The gridlocked traffic around the city lot constituted a definite minus. I heard Chet Harkness announce himself to Officer Sullivan and stopped in my tracks.

  “Chet,” I growled, and turned to shake a finger at him.

  He finished with the officer, turned, and showed me his open palms, the only part of him not covered with dust. “Mark didn’t say a word about Peggy Shatner.”