Girl Can't Help It: A Thriller (Krista Larson Book 2)

by Max Allan Collins

  “How long you been out, Rory?”

  They walked along, the crowd parting before them like the Red Sea.

  “Two years, man. Even my MSR’s behind me.”

  Mandatory Supervised Release. No parole in Illinois.

  “Learned your lesson, then,” Keith said.

  “I learned not to trust the system! I shouldn’t even be talkin’ to you after that last bum bust!” He snorted indignantly. “Comin’ in my crib with a warrant for drugs! Just an excuse to find them items that somebody unknown to me stored in my shed.”

  Rory was an arsonist, among other things. He’d stolen three crates of gelatin dynamite packed in corrugated board cases from a building site. That had been what Keith had been looking for, and he’d been happy to put Rory in the back seat of a white blue-trimmed Dubuque PD squad car and let the Quad City bomb squad come up and handle the evidence.

  Keith firmed his hand on Rory’s shoulder. “Buy you a drink, buddy.”

  The yellow smile flashed again. “Wouldn’t say no.”

  Keith escorted Rory into the Gold Bar, a dive with a loud jukebox, great burgers, and cheap beer. Even with all the tourists in town, the clientele seemed strictly blue-collar local, and Rory wasn’t the only biker on the premises.

  They took a table by the front window and Keith bought Rory a can of Bud and himself a can of Pabst. Most of the beer here was served that way.

  The jukebox was playing “Born to Be Wild.” Keith was not a regular, but the few times he’d been in, that had been played at least once.

  “So, Rory,” Keith asked, “where you living these days?”

  “State Line.”

  “What, a pup tent on the state line?”

  “No! State Line Mobile Home Park up in Hazel Green.”

  That was a hamlet of twelve hundred or so, fifteen minutes away, in Wisconsin.

  Keith sipped Pabst. “So what brings you to the big city, Rory?”

  “Since when is Galena the big city!”

  “Since you moved into a trailer park in Hazel Green.”

  Rory shrugged. “Well, I used to follow the Pistons in the old days. Best rock band around this part of the world. Thought I, uh, better drop down here and round up some tickets.”

  “I get you. But they don’t play till tomorrow and you don’t need tickets. Free and open to the public. And that includes you, Rory.”

  Something unconvincing was in the yellow smile this time. “Is that right? Then I’ll make sure to come back down tomorrow. When is it?”

  “At eight, but the bands start playing at four. Food vendors open up, too. A beer tent. Should be a real good time, Rory. Come enjoy yourself.”

  “I might just do that, old buddy.”

  “Say. What happened to Vickie Ann?”

  “My wife? That Vickie Ann?”

  “That one.”

  Another shrug. He chugged some Bud, flipped a philosophical hand. “She dumped me. While I was inside. That shit ain’t right, is it, Keith?”

  “World’s a hard place. You heard I was back in Galena, huh? Who from?”

  “Oh, somebody. Anybody. But you’re retired, right?”

  “Actually, I’m attached to the force as a consulting detective.”

  “What does one of them do?”

  “Consult. Detect.”

  Rory nodded sagely. “Sounds about right. Is it true your little girl’s the chief of police?”

  “That’s a fact. How do you think an old fart like me got hired on?”

  “Ha! I was wondering. You used to live over here? You and the wife?”

  “That’s right.”

  “She’s gone, I hear.”

  “Yes.”

  “The cancer got her, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bastard Big C. I never did meet your better half, but I am sorry. It was hard enough gettin’ my ass dumped while I was inside. Can’t even guess what it must be like to outright lose a woman who stuck by you, thick and thin.”

  “It was hard. I appreciate the sentiment, Rory.”

  “Well, you was good to me, except that one time.”

  Which had sent the biker to Fort Madison prison.

  “Listen, Rory, I would just as soon we stay friendly like this.”

  “Oh, me, too, man!”

  Keith had a little more Pabst. “So, if you get any notions about doing anything that isn’t on the up-and-up, could you do it elsewhere?”

  “Hey, man. Straight and narrow. Fair and square. That’s me all over.”

  “Glad to hear it. You come down from Hazel Green and enjoy that concert tomorrow. I’ve been at their rehearsals, the Pistons. They sound really solid. You’ll dig it.”

  “I know I will!”

  Keith stared right into the biker’s eyes. “I just don’t want to have to put you away again, Rory. You’re a nice fella, when you aren’t burning things down or blowing them up.”

  Rory waved that off. “That’s all behind me, man. I just learned a few tricks in the service of my country, is all. About the only skill I got.”

  “You have a job?”

  “I do.”

  “Which is?”

  “Fire and water damage repair in East Dubuque.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  “Rory?”

  “Yeah, Keith?”

  “Just don’t go drumming up business.”

  Keith went over and paid at the bar and left his old friend there to think about the advice.

  TWENTY-ONE

  This would only be her third meeting with Rory Michaels, counting the handoff of the purse at the antiques mall on Commerce yesterday, when not a word was exchanged.

  Her third meeting, that is, since high school. She had been three grades behind the then rather handsome bad boy, who had always given her a lecherous look and sometimes a “hi, babe” in the GHS halls.

  At her locker, he would occasionally stop by, peeling off from a similar group of budding bikers, and ask her for a date. Always she would smile and say, “Maybe when I’m older.”

  Well, now she was older, wasn’t she? And finally she’d found a place for him in her life.

  The first meeting, after all those years, had seemed to him accidental, she was sure. But she knew of him. Knew of his ordnance history with the army, of his arrest for arson, and of the prison time he’d served until fairly recently. She’d spotted him going into the Gold Bar a week ago, where she’d heard he sometimes went. All decked out in biker togs.

  She’d been in her car, so she pulled over and waited, the thoughts moving so quickly in her mind she could barely keep up with them.

  He was in there a little over an hour.

  When he emerged, she pulled up alongside him and said, “Rory? Rory Michaels? Is that you?”

  He’d known her instantly. Which pleased her, reaffirming her belief that she’d kept her looks, or enough of them, anyway, to be recognizable to old friends and desirable to new men.

  Rory had leaned in at her window, like he was taking her order at a drive-in. She suggested they get a drink, and he’d hopped on his Harley and she followed him to an East Dubuque dive where no one would likely know her. A little risky, but not much. Anyway, they’d been in school together, her and Rory Michaels, however unlikely it might seem, seeing these two individuals together.

  They had talked about old times—even though they really hadn’t had any, since she was just, let’s face it, some jailbait the older boy (who had flunked twice) had a yen for. Then, several beers along the way, she started asking him about his “forbidden specialties,” as she put it, to make him feel special. He began talking arson. And she eased into certain needs he might fulfill.

  Not the needs he might have in mind, but needs he might be willing to fulfill for a price. Didn’t sound like his current job was paying anything much, and she had an eye-popping $20,000 cash for him, if he could deliver. And the vague promise of other rewards.

  There had be
en phone conversations, too, of course. She’d used a “burner” phone, as he instructed. But just that first public meeting, in an out-of-the-way dive, and two ships passing in the night (well, the afternoon) at that antiques mall yesterday.

  Twenty-five minutes, it took, on Highway 20 West, to get to the State Line Mobile Home Park. The address said Hazel Green, just over the Illinois state line into Wisconsin, but the trailer park wasn’t in that tiny hamlet, which was still on ahead a ways.

  Viewed at dusk, the twenty-five or so mobile homes, on the park’s paved streets, were America in microcosm, ranging from multisection structures with lap siding and a good number of peaked roofs, on down to more modest dwellings, like that of Rory Michaels.

  Pale green with brown trim, with four wooden steps up to a tiny landing at the front door, Rory’s trailer was off the irregular rectangle of the lanes connecting the other mobile homes, down a blacktop offshoot with no neighbors. Decidedly the shabbiest-looking trailer here, easily dating back more than half a century, the black sheep of this park was distinguished only by a very old dead car out front and an apparently working low-slung motorcycle.

  The latter, an ’80s-vintage Harley, had a yellow lock—how this might prevent theft, she had no idea, since anybody with a truck and a helper could lift it up and toss it in back. But she was not here to criticize.

  She was here for a kind of business meeting. She wore a black tracksuit with its hoodie up. Black running shoes, too. She had along a purse on a shoulder strap. She pulled her car in next to the motorcycle, got out, went up, and knocked.

  He answered immediately.

  “Come in, babe, come in,” he said, stepping to one side of the open door, his eyes glittering, his lips disturbingly moist in the thatch of white-gray beard, which matched the short ponytail and his thinning greased-back hair.

  Hard to believe this was the cute boy, the baddest bad boy in school, about whom she had once harbored such naughty fantasies. He was shockingly short, shorter than she was, and skinny in a gray, cartoony death’s head T-shirt and tattered jeans—the latter a fashion statement or simple poverty, who could say?

  Rory ushered her in with a gracious bow. He had not tidied up for her visit—the trailer’s interior, with its Salvation Army furnishings, scattered fast-food packaging, and piled magazines (Easyriders, Hustler), was about in the same shape the Dan Davies and Donna Jonsen apartments had been after her searches.

  The walls of the living room into which she entered bore such tasteless items as a cheap-framed velvet painting of Willie Nelson, a rusty metal sign of a biker silhouette circled by RIDE HARD—LIVE FREE, and a poster of Betty Boop in leathers on a bike with flames all around her. On the floor next to a recliner losing its stuffing (it faced a big flat-screen hanging crookedly) was a red, yellow, and green pistol-grip affair that she thought might be a bong. And, as if to confirm her opinion, the scent of marijuana hung like an unwashed curtain.

  She had the terrible feeling she had entrusted her future, her fate, to a drug-addled, slovenly creature who would be required to possess a steady hand and sharp mind to perform what she needed of him.

  A small kitchenette was to her right, and off the living room a hallway led to a bedroom whose rumpled sheets and blankets were visible from here. She could also see part of a poster of a Hooters Girl.

  With another ridiculous flourish of a hand, Rory indicated a purple couch whose white stuffing was blossoming here and there like oversize popped popcorn.

  “You just sit there, babe,” he said.

  “Babe”—just like high school. Only back then it hadn’t made her cringe. Not even inwardly.

  “I’ll bring your goodies over.” He headed toward the kitchenette, then paused, glanced back. “I gotta make two trips, here. Don’t touch anything till I clue you in.”

  She nodded.

  He wasn’t gone long, fetching the main item she’d come for from a cabinet as if it were a box of Rice Krispies. He carried over the black purse by its handle and set it before her, resting it on its bottom so that the stiff loop of the handle stayed erect.

  “The purse I provided,” she said, “did the trick?”

  “Per-feck-a-mundo.” He sat beside her, closer than she would have liked. “Just the right size, and the latch was a snap.” He giggled at his unintentional joke. An aging biker with a big unruly white beard shouldn’t giggle like that. It was unsettling. Also, not reassuring.

  She asked, “How dangerous is this?”

  “Not hardly at all. Hell, we could play catch with the damn thing.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good idea. I’ve always understood that this . . . material . . . was highly unstable. That the slightest bump or spark could cause it to detonate, spontaneously.”

  Her host only laughed at that. “You’re thinking about dynamite, babe. This ain’t that. It’s trinitrotoluene.” He grinned again, proud of himself, knowing such a big word. “To civilians, that’s TNT. It don’t spontaneously explode, and it’s a cinch to handle. You can melt it and pour it, just like butter. Hell, it’s even yellow like butter!”

  “So it’s safe then.”

  “As long as it’s not hooked up to a detonator. But in that case? When the wake-up call comes? Boom!”

  She jumped a little. Couldn’t help it, but hated herself for it. For a moment.

  “Force is considerable,” he was saying, serious now. “It’s nitro at heart, y’know.” He patted her tracksuit-covered thigh and she managed not to squirm or shudder. He said, “I’ll get the other one.”

  The biker got up and returned to the kitchenette and the same cabinet. Came back with a much smaller item, a black coin purse about seven inches by four. He lay that on the coffee table and returned to sitting closer to her than she liked.

  “Now, babe,” he said, and he put a supportive, and creepy, hand on her shoulder, “I simply have got to tell you . . . I don’t really think you need this. A trial run just ain’t needed here.”

  She shook her head. “No, I insist. I have to feel comfortable.”

  “Okay, I’m cool with that . . . as long you have somewhere out of the way to try it.” He tapped the coin purse gently. “’Cause this little baby will take out a good piece of real estate its own self. Nothing to compare to Big Bertha here . . .” He tapped the larger purse. “. . . but let’s just say I know from experience Baby Bertha herself has a bite that’s as bad as her bark.”

  “Hard to believe. Something that small.”

  He chuckled, licked his lips. “You remember that Dog ‘n’ Suds drive-in—used to be outside Dubuque, to the south?”

  “Yes. Didn’t they have a gas fire? Back in the late ’80s or early ’90s?”

  “Terrible tragedy, that place up in smoke. I used to love them Coney Dogs. But that whole damn stand went to junk food heaven, thanks to yours truly. And the likes of Baby, here.”

  “How much damage will her mother do?”

  He raised his palms in surrender. “Hey, I don’t wanna know what you got in mind for it. That’s good for me and that’s good for you. Like they say in the service, need to know basis, and I definitely do not need to know. All I do need is the general idea of how much you want to disappear. You said a two-story brick building, for example, when we first talked. And Bertha will do that and a little more.”

  “How does it work?”

  “Never mind the details, babe. All you gotta remember is, once you open that purse—once that latch is unlatched? You got three minutes to vamoose. That’s not a whole lot of time.”

  “Should be enough.”

  He pointed at the coin purse. “Baby Bertha is rigged the same way. Unlatch her, it starts the timer. Get yourself good and far away, honey girl. You sure you got a safe place picked out for a trial run?”

  She nodded. “A dead factory. I considered the woods—we have a lot of those around here, but . . .”

  “Smokey the Bear would disapprove, yeah. Forest fire a big-time possibility, in that case. I like
the way you think. I like a thoughtful gal.”

  “Thank you.”

  She got in her purse—the one she’d brought with her, the one that didn’t explode—and she got out the fat envelope of $15,000 in hundred-dollar bills. She had already given him $5,000, yesterday, tucking it in the purse she handed off to him, as promised.

  But their business was finished.

  “You know, babe,” he said, and put a hand on her thigh again, “I always had a thing for you. When you said hello to me, all these years later, and looked at me like I wasn’t some damn piece of trailer trash . . .”

  Who would do a thing like that?

  “. . . I thought, who says there’s no second chances in this life?”

  He and his disgusting beard came slowly toward her face. She stopped him, not rough about it, with a hand on his chest. “Don’t move so fast, you bad boy. I like it slow. Let’s get to know each other.”

  “I know you just fine . . .”

  She waved a forefinger. “I’m a girl who needs to get loosened up a little, first. Got anything to drink?”

  “Sure! Beer? Wine?”

  She stood. “Where do you keep it? I’ll make us something nice.”

  He pointed. “Second cabinet from the left.”

  In the kitchenette, taking her purse along, she had a look at her choices. “How does a Bloody Mary strike you?” she called to him. “You’ve got vodka. You have Mr & Mrs T for a mixer, I see.”

  “Yeah! Go for it.”

  She made the drinks in water glasses with cartoon characters on them (Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd), adding her own special touches to Rory’s glass. “Wish we had celery stalks to finish this off right,” she called.

  “I got green olives in the fridge!”

  “Okay, then. I’ll drop a few in.”

  She did that.

  After delivering a Bloody Mary to Rory, she did not join him on the purple sofa, rather standing opposite him, with the coffee table and the two purses between them. And the plump envelope of money.

  Rory lifted the glass to his lips. “Always had a thing for you, babe. Always.”