Mankiller (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  Carrying a plastic-wrapped sandwich in one hand and a Styrofoam container of coffee in the other, I was approaching my office from the vending machines at the end of the hallway when I heard my phone ring. Remembering that I’d left strict orders that no calls were to be put through unless they came from officers assigned to the Carlton case, I hastily gripped the sandwich in my teeth while I unlocked my office door on the phone’s third ring. One more ring, and I lifted the receiver.

  “It’s Culligan, Lieutenant. Are you busy?”

  Taking the sandwich from my mouth, I said, “It’s all right. What’ve you got?”

  “I have a woman named Carole on the line. She said she’s got something for us. But she says that she wants a piece of Behr’s reward now—up front.”

  I sighed, at the same time prying the lid off my coffee container. “Is this the first one we’ve got looking for the reward?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “What’s her story, anyhow?”

  “No story,” he answered laconically. “But I get the feeling that she really knows something. So I thought I’d see if I could get you. If you’d rather not talk to her—” He let it go indifferently unfinished. Typically, Culligan wasn’t pushing it any farther. He’d given me his opinion. The decision was up to me. He was doing his job, earning his inspector’s salary—no more.

  But, after almost twenty years in Homicide, Culligan’s opinion was worth considering.

  “All right.” I replaced the lid—in the process spilling coffee on the lab’s report of the S&W .357. “Put her on.”

  I heard a click as Culligan completed the connection, then silence. On the other end of the line, someone was breathing.

  “This is Lieutenant Hastings,” I said. “Who’m I talking to, please?”

  “This is Carole,” she said, speaking in a low, hoarse voice, obviously disguised. “And I’m not going to hang on much longer, either, while you’re pushing buttons down there, or whatever you’re doing.”

  “Sorry. What can I do for you?”

  “I think I know who killed that singer. Rebecca Carlton. If you want to hear about it, fine. Otherwise, forget it.”

  “I want to hear about it. How do you want to handle it?”

  “We gotta meet.”

  “All right. Where? When?”

  In the brief silence that followed, I heard music in the background, and the confused sounds of voices laughing and talking. She was probably talking from a pay phone in a bar.

  “I’ll meet you on the sidewalk in front of the Hilton. How’ll I know you?”

  “I’m six feet tall, and about two hundred pounds. I’m forty-four years old. Brown hair, brown eyes. I’ll be wearing a gray tweed sports jacket, an open-neck beige sport shirt and brown slacks.” I hesitated, looking around my office. The lab report had come in a large envelope, letterhead size. “I’ll be carrying a ten-by-twelve-inch brown envelope in my left hand. What about you?”

  “Never mind about me. I’ll be there at two-thirty. I’ll find you.”

  “That’s only ten minutes from now. I can’t get there so soon. Let’s say three o’clock.”

  “All right, three. Wait. Don’t hang up.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is the goddamn money. Behr says he’s paying when someone’s convicted. That’s bullshit.”

  “It’s his money, not mine.”

  “But it’s your problem. If you want the one that killed her, I can give him to you. But not for any goddamn twenty-five-thousand dollars’ worth of promises.”

  “You say you want more than promises. I’ve got the same problem. The conviction, we can talk about. But I’m not paying a cent unless I get something for it.”

  Another silence. I heard a woman laugh. A song from the forties was playing on the jukebox. Finally: “Then we haven’t got a deal,” Carole said. “Because, for sure, I want something up front. I’m taking a risk, just talking to you. And I want something for it.”

  “But not the whole twenty-five.”

  She didn’t reply.

  I let the silence continue for a moment before I said, “Listen, there’s no point in arguing about money over the phone. It’s not my money. I’ve got no control over it. Give me an extra half hour. I’ll talk to David Behr. I’ll see what I can do about something up front.”

  “What’d you say your name was, anyhow?”

  “Lieutenant Frank Hastings. I’m the co-lieutenant in charge of the homicide squad. You can trust me.”

  “Sure I can,” she said derisively.

  “Listen, Carole—I assume that you’ve got friends that’ve been busted once or twice. Am I right?”

  No response.

  “If you do know some people,” I said, “then you can ask them about me. Ask them if you can trust me. They’ll tell you.”

  Still no response. Now someone was swearing loudly in the background. Momentarily Carole muffled the phone, and I heard the indistinct sound of her shouting for silence. Then: “Are you the same lieutenant from Homicide that was on TV a little while ago, when someone killed that reporter named Murdock? The one from Washington?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re kind of good-looking. That one?”

  I smiled at the phone. “If you say so, Carole.”

  Another silence. Then, wearily reluctant, she said, “All right. At least we can talk. You’ll be alone. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And remember, tell David Behr no money, no name. For sure.”

  “I’ll see what he says. That’s all I can do.”

  At the other end, the line clicked dead.

  I called Culligan, ordering a three-man surveillance team under his command to follow Carole after our meeting. Then I put in an urgent call for David Behr.

  On the sidewalk in front of the Hilton, in the warm Saturday afternoon sunshine, the Powell Street Jazz Band was playing hot-lick Dixieland for a semicircle of smiling, foot-tapping, head-bobbing tourists. Across the street, two saffron-robed Hare Krishna novitiates were trying to trade ten-cent flowers for dollar bills. At the Powell Street corner, a drunk wearing a red Shriner’s fez was staggering after a cable car, shouting for the gripman to stop. On the cable car, the passengers were laughing and yelling, urging the drunk to run faster.

  As I shifted the brown paper envelope to my left hand, I glanced down toward Mason Street, where Culligan and Marsten were parked in a nondescript Datsun 510. Across the street, a detective recruited from General Works was sitting in the lobby of a small residential hotel, watching me over a copy of Playboy.

  A woman in her early thirties was walking toward me. She was dressed in a tightly belted wet-look brown vinyl jacket, black velour slacks and high-heeled red plastic boots, also wet-look. Her hair was a bleached orange-blonde piled on top of her head in lopsided, untidy coils. Her face was pale and thin, prematurely etched with deep, bitter lines around the mouth and eyes. Plastered over the pallor of her skin, iridescent green-black eye shadow, bright red lipstick and heavy pancake makeup all contrived to create an imperfect mask carelessly drawn to conceal the disillusionment so plain in her face. Despite the lipstick, her mouth was small, pursed and petulant. Centered in their iridescent shadowing, her street-wise eyes were as quick and furtive as a cat’s, constantly on the prowl.

  In the past five minutes, she’d already caught my eye twice, but had made no sign of recognition. Now, as she came abreast of me, she broke stride, muttering, “Are you Lieutenant Hastings?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll keep walking. There’s a Chinese restaurant around the corner. And a booth, in back.”

  I turned to watch the Powell Street Jazz Band, now playing “When the Saints Come Marching In.” I dropped a dollar in the open banjo case lying on the sidewalk, answered the clarinet-playing leader’s cheerful smile of thanks, and turned to follow the woman. As I passed Culligan, I nodded.

  Eleven

  SHE SLID A SLATTED bamboo c
urtain across the booth’s doorway and pushed a chair into position across the table from me. The table was covered in red Formica, worn thin along the edges and at the center.

  “Nobody’ll bother us,” Carole said. “It’s all set. I know them here.”

  “Good.” I nodded, but said nothing more. I’d decided to play a waiting game, letting her come to me. In my inside pocket, I had the game’s prize: a packet of fifty-dollar bills.

  It had taken me almost fifteen minutes—and some heavy-handed cajolery—to get through to David Behr. But as soon as I told him about Carole’s call, and about her demand for front money, he’d immediately seen the problem. A half hour later, a young man dressed in a three-piece pin-striped suit delivered the fifty-dollar bills to me in the Hilton’s main-floor men’s room.

  “What about the money?” She spoke in a low, tight voice.

  I glanced at the curtained-off doorway, then took the fifty-dollar bills from my pocket. The bills were secured by a thick rubber band. As if I were riffling a pack of cards, I thumbed the bills for her to see, then returned the packet to my pocket.

  “That’s a thousand dollars. You get four thousand more when we decide your information is good enough for us to get an arrest warrant, and another five thousand when we get an indictment. That’s ten thousand dollars. You get the other fifteen when the D.A. gets a conviction.”

  “It’s still nothing but a thousand dollars in cash and fourteen thousand in promises.” Coldly, defiantly, her eyes challenged mine. Whatever she’d done, wherever she’d been, she’d fought for what she’d gotten. She knew how the game was played.

  I stared at her until her eyes fell. Then, quietly, I said, “You mind if I ask you something, Carole?”

  She shrugged a loose, indifferent shoulder. “Go ahead. Ask. I’ve got the booth for an hour.”

  “Have you ever done anything like this before—ever turned anyone, for money?”

  “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I’ll get to that. Have you?”

  “Well—no.”

  “That’s what I thought. You know why?”

  “No.” Her red-painted lip curled. “Why?”

  “Because,” I answered, “you’re acting like an amateur.”

  Still with her lip curled, patronizing me, she said, “I guess I’m supposed to ask how you know. Is that it?”

  “If you’d ever turned anyone before,” I said, “or ever made any deals with the cops, you’d know that you’ve simply got to trust me to do what I say I’m going to do.” I tried to put a weary, patient note in my voice, playing the part of a teacher instructing a backward pupil.

  “You’d also know,” I continued, “that police work isn’t like you see it in the movies. We don’t do clues. We don’t sit around and try to put pieces of a puzzle together. We make deals. Trades. That’s what police work is all about. It’s the barter system, pure and simple. Mostly we trade freedom for evidence. We catch someone way down the ladder who’s dirty, and we offer him a deal if he’ll turn someone at the top. That’s the game—that’s what makes it all go around. Sometimes, instead of trading jail time for information, we trade goods—part of a heroin bust, for instance. Or, in very rare cases—like now—we trade money.

  “But the point is—” I paused for emphasis, hunching earnestly toward her across the table. “The point is that it all comes down to the simple proposition that you’ve got no choice but to trust the policeman who’s handling things. There’s just no other way it can work. And if you’ll just think about it a minute, you’ll see that I’m right.”

  Again I paused, letting the silence lengthen as she frowned down at the Formica table, making up her mind. I gave her a full minute before I said:

  “There’s one last thing you should think about—” As I said it, I took my shield case from my pocket, flipped it open and slid my badge across the table. “That’s a lieutenant’s badge,” I said, pointing to it. “And that badge means that you can trust me to do what I say I’m going to do. Because, for sure, you don’t get to be a police lieutenant without making, literally, thousands of deals. And, every time, you’ve got to do your damnedest to keep your word. It’s not always possible. I’d be lying to you if I said I never had to break my word. But I wouldn’t be a lieutenant—or even a detective—if I didn’t deliver, most of the time. It’s as simple as that.” I let a final beat pass before I said, “And that’s all I’ve got to say, Carole. Now it’s your turn. You can either tell me why we’re here—give me a name—or else you can walk away, no questions asked. It’s your choice.” As I sat back in my chair and folded my arms, I could feel the packet of fifty-dollar bills in my breast pocket.

  For a long moment, deciding, she studied me. Watching her, I calculated the odds less than even that she’d talk.

  I was wrong.

  “I live with a guy named Bruce Hoadley.” She spoke in a low, mumbling monotone, now with her eyes downcast. “We’ve been living together for about six months, I guess.”

  “What’s the address?” I took out my notebook and pen.

  “It’s on Eddy Street, right near Leavenworth.”

  “What’s the address, Carole?”

  “It’s—” She swallowed, then took the final plunge: “It’s 765 Eddy. Apartment 417. It’s the top floor.”

  “All right. Go ahead.”

  “Well, we—” She swallowed again, harder this time. “We’ve been having trouble lately. Which, if I’m honest with myself, is why I’m copping. I mean, he works for some massage parlors. And—you know—there’s always some action, if you’re looking for it. Which I knew, of course, all along. I mean, that’s how we got together.”

  “You worked for a massage parlor, you mean.”

  “Yeah. But I never—you know—did anything except just with the hands. I mean, I’m not like some of them. I mean—” She looked at me intently, anxious that I understand. “I mean, I never sold it, in my whole life. Not once.”

  In the Tenderloin, I knew, this final shred of morality was often defended so fiercely that, among the girls, an accusation of “selling it” could be a knife-fighting matter.

  So, solemnly, I nodded. “I believe you.”

  “Yeah. Well—” She jerked her hand, gesturing self-defensively. “Well, it’s true,” she said truculently.

  “I know.”

  “Well, anyhow—” She began to shake her head. “Anyhow, the point is that everything’s—you know—unraveling. I mean, it’s not that he’s just fooling around. That’s not it. Not really. It’s just that—Christ—lately, he’s changed. Like, instead of being cool about it, for instance, he talks about how he’s fooling around, to rub my nose in it. And he’s been drinking, too, lately. And then, about two weeks ago, he hit me. I mean, he didn’t just hit me once. He kept on, and on, and on. I swear to God, I thought he was going to kill me.

  “So, anyhow—” Now her voice had fallen desperately low. Her gestures were slack, signifying some final surrender to the inevitable. “So, anyhow, I decided—right then—that I was going to split. Except that I wasn’t going to walk away crying. I was going to take some hide with me. I mean, I been hit often enough in my life that, this time, something just snapped, you know?” As she spoke, her hard, street-wise eyes sought mine, searching for some essential sign of confirmation. And, again, I nodded solemnly in reply.

  “Everyone’s got a limit,” I said. “If you don’t have a limit—if you don’t draw a line, and stick to it—then you don’t have anything. You’re nothing.”

  And, hearing myself say it, I was surprised to realize that I meant what I was saying. In this improbable place, talking to this negligible person, I’d stumbled upon a good, serviceable definition of integrity.

  So, oddly pleased with myself, I smiled encouragement as she answered:

  “Yeah. Well, anyhow, something snapped, like I said. So I decided that I was going to watch for my chance, and really stick it to him. And it turned out that I didn’t hav
e long to wait. I mean, pretty soon I started to get the idea that what was really on his mind—why he knocked me around, and everything—was that he was in some kind of trouble. And it was—you know—really getting to him.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Money. See, he gambles. I mean, it’s the old story, down in the Tenderloin. Either you’re a junkie, or else you’re a gambler. So, either way, you’re going to end up with nothing. And in the meantime you’re going to make a lot of people suffer for your habit.”

  “He was in hock to someone. Is that it?”

  Wearily, she nodded. “That’s it. And the more he squirmed, the worse it got.”

  I knew what was coming. Over the years, I’d seen a hundred variations played on this same relentless theme. Which, ultimately, came down to the underworld’s version of Faust: you get in deep enough, you either sell your soul to square the debt, or else you die.

  And in the Tenderloin, you sell your soul by agreeing to kill someone on order. Trigger men aren’t born. They simply run out of time and money.

  “And you think that, to square his tab, he killed Rebecca Carlton.” As I spoke, I was watching her face intently, searching for a reaction.

  Once more, suddenly exhausted, she dumbly nodded.

  She believed it.

  Whether or not it was true, she believed that Bruce Hoadley had killed Rebecca Carlton.

  “Who’d he owe?”

  Quickly, she shook her head, involuntarily shying at the question. “That’s not part of the deal. I’m giving you Bruce. No one else.” As she said it, I saw fear flicker deep in her eyes. Whoever held Bruce Hoadley’s marker, Carole feared him.

  “All right. But where’s the proof?”

  She reached into a pocket and passed a ticket stub across the table. It was a ticket to last night’s concert.

  “You’ll have to have more than that,” I said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”

  For a moment she didn’t reply, but instead picked up the ticket and held it in her palm for a moment, staring at it. Her fingernails were painted a bright red, matching her lipstick. The fingernails were bitten to the quick.