Pay Here

by Charles Kelly

  “You see the pinpoint hemorrhages, those tiny scarlet dots?” Dr. V said, his pointer finger prodding Sweeney’s brain. “Little explosions of blood vessels, caused by the garrote squeezing the neck. A quick job. Somebody knew what he was doing.”

  I leaned closer to examine the phenomenon. “Or what she was doing?”

  His eyes above the green surgical mask were attentive.

  “A woman? Possibly, yes.” He tapped the groove in the neck, a clean cut running right around the throat and back under the ears. “But if so, an athletic woman. And ruthless. You see, the wire made just this one mark. There are no sawing marks, no subsidiary cuts, which there would be if there had been hesitation.”

  I stepped back. The smell of death, like meat that has begun to turn, was making things slightly difficult. Bright lights, hard metal, the pungency of guts on display—it was all a bit much even for me, despite the fact that I was experienced. But it was doing over Morrison worse than me, and that was the point. It’s one thing to say death, murder, killing, and to talk about how it might happen to you, but when you actually see someone parceling out another man’s insides, well, that brings things home. It’s the realization that you—bubbling, gurgling, farting you—could be turned into a pile of cardboard and styrofoam, not a person with spiritual aspects wafting through the vast landscapes of space and time. That’s what makes you turn away and gag—just as Morrison was doing now, as he bent his head, clutched his stomach and staggered from the room.

  I pointed at Sweeney.

  “Did he struggle?”

  Dr. V moved around the body, picked up one hand, then the other.

  “Not effectively. His fingers are free of cuts or bruises. I don’t think he even got his hands up to go for the garrote before his brain shut down. Someone he trusted, or who surprised him, came at him from behind. The wire comes out in a flash and, zip, the job is done! It’s a job worthy of a soldier. They used to do sentries that way, you know.” Dr. V leered. “But then, of course you would know. You’re Irish, and the Irish make poetry out of killing.”

  I ignored the truism. “You don’t see many garrotings, you said. Why kill him this way?”

  Dr. V had stepped to a nearby sink and was scrubbing his gloved hands. He placed them under a flowing faucet, and the dark blood smearing his hands turned pale pink and ran down the stream of water.

  “To keep him quiet, I suppose, if there were witnesses in the next room or around the corner. Or to tell everyone that a certain person had killed him this way, as a signature. Perhaps the killer was speaking to someone—other members of the inner circle.” He removed his gloves, washed his hands and began to dry them. “Or perhaps the killer was speaking to you, Michael. Yes, wouldn’t that be helpful?”

  He cast the towel aside, as if dismissing this theory.

  “But who would speak to you? You play only your own game, isn’t that so? No friends, not even the bottle. Who would speak to you?”

  I thought of someone who might, but I didn’t share the thought. It wasn’t my way to share. I started out to the anteroom to collect Morrison. Van Lubo’s voice stopped me.

  “Oh, the results,” he said.

  I turned. “And what results would those be?”

  “The ones for our latest slashed-up immigrant. You asked, remember?”

  I had, indeed. Dr. V had been monitoring these deaths, and the last one had turned up in the desert south of Chandler a week ago. A young man, early twenties, naked like the others.

  “Well?”

  “He was missing many vital organs,” said Dr. V. “Nothing remarkable, at least compared to the rest. But there was one thing.”

  “Yes?” I said.

  “We identified him. Mauricio Valdez.”

  “Nothing to me.”

  “Nor to most people, I suppose. Landscaper, day laborer, fry cook. Those were his honest occupations. But his latest employer was interesting. We took prints off his body and the police ran him. The computer came back with a burglary arrest a couple of days before he was found. When he was booked he said he worked at Rhea’s Place.”

  Well, well. “And he’d been bailed out?”

  “The same day.”

  “So, did a chupacabra rip him up?”

  I’d shared Daly’s theory with him, you see, and my variation of it.

  “There is no such thing as a chupacabra,” Dr. V said, “but many people think there is. Perhaps people who knew Mauricio Valdez.” He was pulling off his smock. “I’m sorry I didn’t reach you sooner. My secretary was supposed to leave a message for you, but she got busy. I tried to call you two days ago, but you weren’t answering your phone.”

  “I was occupied,” I said. “Attending a funeral.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Success in murder is often a matter of nerves. Up to this point, the conspiracy had held together well. There had been little publicity, and the police—so easily distracted—would soon finish their few “live” days on the Sweeney case and move on. All that was needed was to sit tight a bit longer, not to make any startling moves. The murder of Sweeney and the attempt to kill me had been calculated risks, and those actions, while they hadn’t worked as planned, also hadn’t turned the blowtorch of official heat on the plotters.

  Amateurs can do only so much in these matters, and Daly and I were amateurs. With no subpoena power, with no political power, without the official right to threaten arrest, indictment and prosecution, we were simply gnats buzzing around the blood. Our only chance was to raise the stakes so high that the coppers would have to take a hand, and the conspirators could avoid that simply by staying cool. Of course they all knew that. What they didn’t know was how close we were to ripping the top off the plot. In retrospect, we were not close at all—at least in terms of conclusive evidence—but our industry masked our failure. Because of that, the killers made a fatal move.

  In my erratic way, I’d set them up for the mistake, but I had a bit of luck with Daly. I knew Handsome Dan Robles well enough to foresee he’d be attracted to her, but I’m the world’s worst at calculating how that sort of relationship will go. As it turned out, I’d struck gold. Robles was taken with the woman, then with the mystery. Playing along might increase his background intelligence on his part of the world, so he had a perfect excuse for pursuing Daly or, rather, for pursuing what she knew. On their way back from the Hotel Escalera Grande, he said he was really off shift now and suggested a beer and a bit of talk. She readily agreed.

  The place he chose (because he was not really off shift) was Jorge’s Cantina—a white stucco saloon with a crumbling porch framed with saguaro skeletons well hidden from the passing world, far off the Interstate in a welter of dry washes and dirt roads, tucked around the corner of a rocky escarpment. Arizona has many of these places—old bars, old hotels, old diners—that seem to slink away into the desert for fear customers will find them. It’s hard to say how they survive, but they do. The beer is always cold there, the food always pleases the tongue and stomach, and the proprietor is always dirt poor and, usually, dying. Jorge Ramirez, for instance, served a machaca burro that was widely admired and was in the final stages of prostate cancer.

  At the table in the back that Robles selected, the bar seemed like a long cave with the hot white oblong of the open door at the other end, hanging there like a photo on a wall, framing rock and yucca, with Robles’ head and torso silhouetted against it. The darkness added intimacy to his discussion with Daly, and she felt it, too, as the first sip of the cold Corona bit into the dust in her mouth. Jorge—a rickety man who looked much like a cactus skeleton himself, shuffled back to the bar to give the glasses an unneeded wash or, perhaps, to tip a drop of oil onto the hammers of the Winchester 12-gauge double-barrel nested in the middle of the bar rags.

  Daly peered through the curtain of shadow at Robles’ face. She still sensed he would be a tough sell
in the police work department, though he’d taken her arm outside the bar to direct her in, a dated masculine tradition. Something was moving between them. She wanted assurance they were moving in the right direction.

  “I don’t like Dr. Aguilara,” she said, and primed herself to interpret his response.

  He placed his bottle carefully on the table.

  “I stay away from that,” he said. “Like and don’t like. I work with information.”

  She wasn’t encouraged.

  “But aren’t feelings information?”

  “The wrong kind, usually.”

  A man of few words. Frustrating.

  “Actually, I don’t like most of the people I deal with,” he said, and then surprised her by elaborating. “They aren’t good or nice or fun. They’re bad and less bad. The guy who got the gun rolls over on the guy who used it, so I do a deal with him. Sometimes I think the first guy is lying, but I don’t know for sure, so I use him anyway. And it doesn’t matter if I like him or not. Sometimes, you have to take down those you like and get help from those you don’t.”

  Oh, well. Perhaps she hadn’t laid the groundwork carefully enough.

  “You’re a complex personality, aren’t you?”

  Robles smiled then, picked up his beer, finished it off in one long pull, and put down the empty bottle.

  “What I’m saying is I’m not a complex personality. That’s my strong suit. You see what I mean?”

  Daly wasn’t sure how to deal with this. In her world, it was considered a compliment of the highest order to be told you were a complex personality. She reminded herself that this wasn’t her world. Now Robles was gesturing at Jorge for more beer, obviously enjoying the taste of the cold brew and the talk. Simple pleasures. Well, sure, but she was trying to solve a mystery. Jorge came and went, leaving just a new bottle for Robles, because she put a hand over the mouth of her own longneck.

  “So,” she said. “Do you like Aguilara?”

  Robles laughed and drank more beer. “Maybe,” he said. “He’s helping people. He’s a little slick, he plays Jesus too much, but some people do, to make up for what they don’t have.”

  The bottle was cool and moist on her lips and the alcohol was making her head hum. “Such as?”

  “Money.”

  “Oh, he’s got money,” Daly said. “At least some. Did you see his watch? It’s a Rolex. Rhea and I used to find them in rich people’s bedrooms in Chicago when we were cleaning houses.”

  He tapped his teeth with the bottle.

  “Did she ever steal one? Or anything else you knew of?”

  It was no good getting mad at him, after she’d made so much progress.

  “You think Rhea was bad, too, don’t you?” She played with her bottle, looking at it. “She had to do things to get by. We both did. And I don’t know if she took stuff. People accused her of it.”

  “Did you steal anything?”

  “No,” she said. “I wouldn’t.”

  “I didn’t think so,” he said, and she was suddenly glad.

  “People run to type,” he said, putting his elbows on the table. “I heard things about Rhea. Mostly things going on in Phoenix, not here, and I couldn’t grab her for activities out of my jurisdiction. So I’m not indicting her or anything, but I have to be realistic.”

  “You didn’t even bother to ask questions when she died.”

  “No reason. It wasn’t my jurisdiction. Not for an accident.”

  “But now it’s different, because you’ve got a complaining witness.”

  He slumped comfortably into the table. Despite his tough talk, she could tell he was enjoying the conversation. He was totally focused on her eyes, listening closely to her, his voice soft and controlled.

  “Who’s that? Who’s the witness?”

  “I am.”

  “You didn’t see anything.”

  She had him hooked, which was half the battle. “Call me a catalyst.”

  He kind of chuckled.

  “I don’t even know what a catalyst is. Sounds good, but I know it’s not somebody that testifies in court.”

  “A catalyst is something that makes things come together, that starts a reaction.”

  He knocked a knuckle on his beer bottle, like a man knocking at a door.

  “You want to start a reaction in me, but I’ve got nothing to react to. If I did something, the lawyers would say the evidence was bad because I started out wrong.”

  She realized that she’d been looking into his eyes while he talked. Brown eyes a lot softer than his cheekbones. At first she thought she was focusing just to follow his expression, but now it was more than that.

  “Don’t you want to react to me?”

  He laughed again. “For Christ sake,” he said.

  She leaned forward in the yeasty darkness that smelled of old varnish, and she could hear Jorge’s bar rag squeaking on the glass he was cleaning.

  “I’m telling you this is a suspicious accident,” she said. “That’s your excuse for investigating. Rhea had strange people around her, like that Dr. Aguilara. Maybe they were running illegals. Maybe they were doing things they didn’t want her talking about. So they all got together and cooked up that accident.”

  “A freeway’s a tough place for that kind of thing. People going by all the time, the timing would have to be perfect—”

  Daly put her hand around his hand on the beer bottle. She told me later she didn’t even realize she was doing it, and I believed her.

  “Not if you’ve got a whole group that’s in on it. And that’s what they were doing. They were convoying back from Tucson, like Dr. Aguilara said. The doctor drives, Arthur Morrison takes up the rear, the truck driver picks up the convoy at some point. Then they just have to wait for the right moment, when the freeway is clear from behind.”

  It was time for Robles to take another drink of beer, but he didn’t move the bottle, didn’t move his hand, or her hand.

  “Why from behind?”

  “Because as soon as they crash, they stop, and the traffic to the front speeds away. It gives them plenty of time.”

  “To do what?”

  “To finish Rhea off, if the crash didn’t do the job. They probably shot her with a silencer or something.”

  This was a little too much, she realized too late. Suddenly that police look was back in Robles’ eyes.

  “They bothered to set all this stuff up on a freeway, then they shot her with a silencer?”

  “I don’t know,” said Daly, removing her hand from his. “But they killed her, I know that.” She was half-turned away now, and it was hard to see his face, since he’d pulled back, too, and his face was framed against the glowing doorway, his brows and chin and mouth mostly shadows.

  “They killed her in your jurisdiction. You don’t want a murder to go unsolved right here in your own back yard.” Then she folded her arms and finished with the naive flourish that always won her so much ground. “I know I wouldn’t.”

  Robles’ laugh rumbled. He stuck a finger in the air in Jorge’s direction and flipped it, ordering two more Coronas, and this time she didn’t put her hand over her bottle, even though she wasn’t quite finished with her beer. And she felt glad again.

  “You’re some witness, all right,” he said. “Okay, we’ll find the truck driver, ask a few questions.” But then he added something that didn’t please her. “And we’ll do one more thing. We’ll call Callan.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  I was surprised when Arthur Morrison tried to kill me, but it made me keen for the chase, because I knew it would bring Bloggs X out of the shadows. Let me explain. The term “Bloggs” in some British prisons is a code name for a protected witness, a villain giving evidence to the coppers. Since there are a lot of them, they are known by numbers, Bloggs 1, Bloggs 2, etc. In the 1995 Ra
nge Rover murders in England, for instance, the informant was Bloggs 19. The odd goings-on in this case indicated a surprise witness was lurking around, someone who could run to the law, if pushed far enough.

  This was the person I called Bloggs X, and he or she was the reason I was jacking up Bracknall and Morrison. When the secret sharer came to the fore, the whole scheme would unravel. My plan would have worked, if it hadn’t been for the personal dynamics that led to so much violence.

  It all started with Morrison. Of course, he did not go after me directly. No punch in the neck in the parking lot, following by a flurry of kicks to the head, finished with a crushing blow from a handy rock. He didn’t have the muscles for that. He was soft from years of eating rich food purchased with crooked money, pasty from crawling around in late-night lounges, weak-hearted from sleepless nights assaulted by guilty reckonings. He needed a gun, and even then he would sweat as he popped the trigger. Where would he get the gun? Well, Morrison was equal to that task, at least. As soon as we’d settled ourselves again in my superheated car, Morrison made his play.

  “All right,” he said. He looked at his hands and drew a few breaths, as if trying to work up his courage. Rubbed at his neck and turned away. Turned back, a question in his eyes. Then he sighed deeply. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  It was either a performance or not, and I didn’t really care. I cranked the key and the engine caught, sending a gush of hot air from the air-conditioner vents. I cracked my window, waiting for the compressor to reach speed and turn the air cool. The heat bubbled inside my clothing like panic. Outside the car, Phoenix was sharp edges, blocky buildings against a sun-washed sky, palm trees nodding their heads in a breeze that would never reach the ground.