Mr. McVittie’s flat was dark, but I knew better. I tried my key to the vestibule, but he’d installed a chain latch. I pounded and shouted. A light went on. He came and pulled the door in to the chain stop. His face was red; the little bastard had humped that whole truckload of shit piece by piece down a flight of stairs and out to the curb.
“Goddamn it!” I yelled. “Why did you do this? Where’s my rabbit!”
He held up a finger, went away, and came back carrying Todd by the nape. He slipped him out to me.
“Why did you do this! You’re not supposed to do this! It was a crime scene! The police might have to come back!”
“They said they was done!” he screamed through the crack.
“Why did you do this!”
“I have a right! You ruined my propitty!”
I stomped back to the curb and dumped out a cardboard carton of stuff and found some newspapers. Todd sat quietly in the grass while I did this. He was an amazingly calm rabbit. Hank Lyman’s cameraman came over, tape rolling.
“We’re not live now,” Hank assured me.
“Goddamn media parasites,” I muttered.
Hank giggled snottily. “That’s very ironic, Lillian. Miz big-time weekly reporter.”
“Fuck you,” I snarled.
I put a thick layer of newspapers into the bottom of the box and added Todd, then carried it to my car, set it in the passenger seat, and cranked down the windows an inch.
As I trudged back to my stuff a fat drop of rain hit my forehead. I looked up to see a black roiling sky underlit by the glow of the city. The wind started to whip. Another drop hit my ear. By the time I felt the third drop, Hank and his crew were hurrying to their truck.
The vultures reluctantly moved off, watching me over their shoulders. As the rain spattered down I rooted through the piles for important things: my box of checks, my passport, my mandolin, Todd’s water dish. My good loafers. A half-bottle of Dewar’s, bag of bunny chow, a couple of carrots. My books would have to wait. I stuffed my pockets and took an armload, including fresh jeans and a couple of blouses, back to the Caprice. Todd was scrabbling anxiously until he heard my voice.
“Hang on, Toddy. We’ll be all right.” As I walked back to my stuff, the sky opened up in earnest. Sheets of rain, torrents of thrumming rain all but obliterated the glow from the street light nearby.
I stood there alone in the night, straining my eyes toward the dark mass of my worldly goods, hearing more than seeing them getting ruined. A roll of thunder shook the air, then a blast of lightning revealed the sorry sodden lot of property my life had amounted to so far.
I turned and splashed back to the lacerated Caprice, soaked through and disgusted. To hell with the whole goddamned mess.
I felt a cold sense of purpose building in my heart. Thy will be done. Yeah. And I’m the one to do it.
30
The Caprice had a good defogger system; I fired it up and let it idle for a few minutes while I more or less scraped the water off myself. In addition to my Wayne State T-shirt, I was wearing blue jeans and my Chuck Taylors. All that cotton must’ve held a quart of rainwater.
I decided to find a cheap motel as a temporary base of operations. Todd could stay with me overnight, but I might have to give him to somebody for a while, maybe my animal-loving friend Billie, who’d offered to look after him if I ever went on vacation.
We took off to the north Woodward corridor. I hung over the steering wheel, brooding. The thunderstorm had swept over, and it felt like a new one was coming. I abandoned the idea of barging in on my enemies. For all I knew, they were all after me again, having seen me babbling on the tube. I peered into the rearview mirror: an array of rainy headlights. I turned east on Eleven Mile into Madison Heights, then cut down John R into Hazel Park. My clothes were drying out, and I felt a little warmer.
Around the racetrack in Hazel Park there are dozens of motels. I pulled into the first one on the right, the Acapulco. I requested a room around back, “where it’ll be quiet.” Then I asked the clerk for a couple of extra towels, which he grudgingly produced. I intended to make them into a little bed for Todd.
The amount of exotic glamour the Acapulco possessed was in inverse proportion to its name. I needn’t get into it. I cut up a carrot top for Todd and gave him some water. He seemed satisfied.
I stripped off my clothes and took a hot shower, then put on the clean things I’d grabbed. That was better. I was glad I had the Dewar’s. I set the bottle on the night-stand and went out to the car to rummage in the glove compartment.
Most times when you go looking for a forgotten pack of cigarettes you don’t find them, but this time I did. Half a pack of Camel Filters jammed sideways between a Mel Farr Ford ice scraper and my sunglasses case, which I’d misplaced months ago.
They tasted a little rough for being stale, but not bad. I smoked and sipped the whisky, sitting on the floor near Todd, my back against the bed. The whisky felt warm and good.
The thought of Bonnie and Mrs. Creighter going free after murdering Iris, trying to murder me, and maybe murdering Minerva LeBlanc wasn’t something I was going to be able to live with. I had to obtain justice or—I squinted and tried to hold back the thought, but there it was—die trying. More immediately, if I didn’t put a stop to the Creighters, they were going to put a stop to me.
One thing was clear: The Creighters weren’t going to pop into the police station and confess. And I also knew there would be, had to be, more evidence at the Snapdragon. Hadn’t Mrs. Creighter referred to “the place,” and hadn’t Bonnie said something about having to wait until closing?
Much as the idea made me sweat, I was going to have to check out the Snapdragon.
I got out my notebook and pen and wrote down everything that had happened so far, then read it over. Then I just fiddled around with the pen, scribbling stray thoughts. When I stopped thinking about the Creighters and the Snapdragon, my mind fell quiet for a while.
Then my hand wrote “Judy.” Everlasting hell. I am awful. Here I was, still half in shock from having a one-night stand butchered out from under me, and I start hankering for Old Faithful. How utterly abominable.
But I wanted her. I was sore in body and spirit. I wanted her, more than ever, to comfort me, help me, hold me. To pity this poor misbegotten fuck-up. Yeah, that’s what I was reduced to: craving pity.
I wanted Judy so much I could smell her, taste her. The more I tried not to think about her, the more vivid she grew in my mind, there in sort of a cloud before me in her soft green wrapper. The deeper grew, oh, you know, that place beneath your heart that opens and roils like Kilauea.
Todd had gotten settled into the towel nest I made for him. He hunkered alertly, sniffing the smoky air of the motel room with its overtaste of industrial-strength air sweetener. I got him back into the box; he looked at me with something approaching annoyance. I left the lights on, locked the door, and fired up the Caprice.
With Todd in his box on the seat beside me I took Ten Mile across town instead of the expressway; it was a less conspicuous route. The night felt menacing. Other cars pressed too close. I tried to watch every single car and face.
Judy’s car was in its regular parking space.
I stood in the doorway with Todd’s box under my arm. I rang but got no response. Rang again. Judy had insisted I keep my keys to the place, to the point of developing a hysterical rise in her voice when I tried to give them back a few months ago. I let myself into the building, padded down the corridors, then knocked softly.
“Hey, ’sme.” When my key touched the lock, the door opened. Someone else was on the other side, wearing Judy’s green wrapper.
“Hello,” said she.
I knew the voice, I knew the face: Sharon Wurtz, a hard-mouthed opportunist ever ready to hold the hand of a woman going through a breakup. That was her method. Some women move in on the fresh chicken—women recent to the community, oh, those dewy divorcees!—and some move in on the newly vulnerable lone
lyhearts. Not that they rent billboards proclaiming their specialty. You just realize it after you’ve been in the community a while, after watching people and getting to know how they handle themselves.
So Judy was probably in the bathroom, or worse to imagine, lying frozen under the sheets in the bedroom listening for my voice. I stood there like Peter Pan, the full force of the moment hitting me like a wrecking ball, so that for an instant blackness rose in front of my eyes. I fought it down. Sharon’s expression was sympathetic, which was worse than a mean smile.
If I’d stood there for an hour, I don’t know whether I’d have been able to formulate a sentence. She said hello again. Todd moved in his box, and her eyes tried to see over the top. I pivoted and walked away down the corridor.
31
So Judy’s arm finally got tired from carrying that torch. I stalked out to the car. Whoa-ho, that was right between the eyes. And I asked for it. How I ever asked for it. Mm.
Todd and I got back in the car. He was unconcerned. I was grateful for that. More and more I saw how animals could be great human substitutes. People who keep fucking up—my God, where would we be without pets? If I kept fucking up, probably the only person I’d have to talk to in the whole world would be Todd. But you know, in a sense I was relieved. There’s a certain tension inherent in spinning out a relationship like that. Moreover, I realized that deep down I’d been rooting for Judy all along.
I peeled out of the parking lot and headed back east on Ten Mile. I rolled down the windows and gulped the damp night air, which was warming up again after the rain, into the heavy hot stickiness typical of Detroit during a July heat wave.
My mind was overcrowded, my emotions overtaxed. Grief, guilt, shame, all those god-awful feelings coursed through me. It was useless to try to keep them straight. As I drove I didn’t even speak to Todd. I think he fell asleep. It’d been a long day for him.
My mind wandered. Maybe there’s not much difference between a hero and a fool. A fine dividing line perhaps, a narrow gray area between heroism and foolishness. What’s the difference? Luck? Just luck? Success versus failure, perhaps. Given identical situations, identical tests, even identical intentions, is the only difference between hero and fool the outcome?
It was about two in the morning. I stopped at a gas station pay phone and called Billie’s number in Ferndale. I always figured I’d use an animal kennel place to spare her the trouble of looking after Todd, but at two a.m. I didn’t have much choice.
She was home and had just gone to bed. She waitressed part-time at a couple of short-order places. Last I knew, she was housemother to three cats, a dog, and two tiny orphaned squirrels.
“Yeah,” Billie said, “come on the hell over. Fine. I just got a hedgehog. The squirrels grew up, they’re gone. I’ve got a pen we can use.” She left the question of why I needed to find a port for Todd at two in the morning in the ozone for the moment.
Next I called Beaumont Hospital and asked about Minerva. All they would do was acknowledge that she was there. Still alive, then.
Billie was in her late fifties and had a Lucy Ricardo hairdo and an independent spirit. She found a way to go on year after year waiting tables and taking the odd cook’s job, never wanting to do anything more shit-eating than that.
“Now, you might think waiting tables is about as shit-eating a job there is,” she remarked to me once over a meatloaf special, “but it’s got an ace in the hole other jobs don’t. And that’s quitting.”
“Tell me,” I said.
She obliged. “Quitting a waitressing job is the biggest power trip in the world. First of all, you always do it when it’s busy, because that’s when the pressure’s the worst and it’s really gotten to you. So you pick your moment.” She tucked a bright copper strand behind her ear.
“Of course, the manager or owner has got to be a sumbitch, or you wouldn’t do it, and you wouldn’t to it to a woman if you can help it. You gotta hang on until you’ve got a full section, then you throw down your apron and you deliver just one line, or two lines.”
She tossed her head. “I’ve had it. You want this job? You want this job? A boss is gonna know what’s coming the second you put down that tray and reach your hands behind your back. He’s gonna come right over and try and stop you. He’ll be mad at first, ooh! Then he’ll plead. Finally he’ll grovel. But you’ve got that apron off, you’re talking loud right in the middle of the place, and all of a sudden you’ve got your purse and you’re out the door, and they’re all sitting there looking at that apron on the floor. That’s power, kid.”
I asked how many jobs she’d left like that. “Only two. And I’ve been waitressing for thirty years. But—see—how can I put it? The thing is, you know you can always do it. That’s what keeps you going. Plus, I’ve coached a lot. There’s lots of young people who think waiting tables is lower than whale shit. It’s not. You don’t like how a guy talks to you, you give him the cold shoulder. He’s got no complaint against you, and he can’t think of a reason not to tip a little, but he doesn’t come back too quick. Mission accomplished. Some fancy bitch screeches you’re too slow? Same thing. Or you spill a glass of ice water in her lap. So sorry! You like a customer, you treat ’em right. They come back, and they tip OK. Yep, I’ll waitress till the day I die, if my legs last. And they’ll be lucky to have me.”
So that’s Billie on the half-shell. “Come in, Toots,” she said, opening the door on her sleepy menagerie. Lumps of fur lay draped around the living room, stirring a little. A shrouded birdcage loomed in a corner. I noticed what appeared to be a giant pine cone lolling on the floor.
“The hedgehog. That’s Doris. Don’t step on her.” A houseful of animals will always smell different than one without, but Billie was a fairly good housekeeper; I detected only a low-level muskiness. Todd made no protest when I put him in a large wire cage Billie dragged up from the basement. Not that he had a choice. He was a pretty dignified rabbit.
“So what’s the latest?” She said it casually, but her eyes searched my face. Evidently she hadn’t ingested any news today.
“I just need a place for Todd for a while. Maybe for a few days, I don’t know. Maybe only tonight. Maybe forever. Want a rabbit, lady?” I grinned, but I suppose I looked a little unhealthy.
“You’re not moving too good,” she observed.
“OK,” I said, “I’ll level with you as much as I can. I’m going to do something sort of dangerous after I leave here. I’ve gotten mixed up in something. In fact, I’m slightly homeless at the moment. I’ve got a motel room, but if something weird happens, I want to make sure Todd’s OK.”
“Can you be a little more specific?” She sat down and put her feet up on a hassock. Her calves were big and knotty, but her feet looked dainty in their pink scuffs. “There’s beer in the icebox. Want one?”
“No, thanks.” I told her about how I lost my job.
“Excellent,” she said. “That was excellent. They are pigs. Buttheads.”
“So I’m freelancing now, and this bears on what I’m up to tonight. I’m—I’m investigating something. By the way, the police are sort of clued in to what I’m doing. Not that I have their full approval,” I muttered. Under Billie’s bullshit-proof gaze my resolve wavered a little, but I gathered myself.
“If I don’t call you by morning, please get in touch with the Eagle police, Lieutenant Ciesla, and tell him I’m missing. OK?” I wrote his name on a scrap of paper and laid it on the coffee table.
“I don’t like this a bit, baby. I get the distinct impression you don’t know what you’re doing. What if I call up this Ciesla as soon as you leave?”
“And tell him what? Even if you get him on the phone at this hour, he won’t do anything. Take my word for it.” We sat a while in silence. “A woman’s got to do what she’s got to do,” I said.
“What is this, a miniseries?”
I waved goodbye to Todd and opened the door.
Billie jumped up. “Goddamn it. Well, you�
��re a big girl, girl. Just don’t leave me any permanent rabbits.”
“Right. See ya. And thanks, Billie.”
As soon as I got to the car, my hands started to shake. I realized my stomach was way too empty, so I drove over to the White Castle on Woodward and swung into the drive-through. My belly jumped with hunger. Three cheeseburgers, small fries, large Coke.
I pointed the Caprice north again to hit Coolidge and scarfed down the food. My stomach settled right away. My watch said two-thirty, so I took it easy behind the wheel, on my way to the Meijer Thrifty Acres in Troy. If you have any sense, you hate the Meijer’s experience, but I gotta admit it’s the best place to buy burglar tools in the middle of the night. For one, it’s open, and two, nobody really notices anybody else.
Meijer’s is practically a suburb unto itself, sprawling blandly out to the weedy edges of undeveloped land zoned commercial. On the way in I stopped at a pay phone to make a brief call.
I woke Kevin, the waiter, and cashed in a favor. He was all right. I said, “All you have to say is yes or no. The doors at the Snap are on alarm, right?”
“Yes. Shit.”
“Don’t worry. I could have found out myself if I’d wanted to stop in for a drink tonight. There’s a contact on the doorframe, right?”
“Right.”
“And it isn’t silent, right? A bell rings?”
“Right.”
“Anything else on the system that you know of? Office door?”
“No.”
“Motion detectors or anything?”
“No. God no. The rats’d be setting them off all night.” I could hear him beating his fingers on his forehead as he did when distressed.
“Do you know Bonnie’s code numbers, the numbers she punches into the keypad? Or Sandra’s?”
“Uh-unh.”
“OK. Thanks. You got a wrong number call tonight. You never talked to me. Thanks, Kevin.”
“Shit.”
I sauntered into the blinding white wash of light, found the hardware department and stood before the selection of pry bars. One with a thin-bladed hook seemed best. I picked up a small cold chisel and a hammer too.
The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 18