Ticket to Ride

by Ed Gorman

  “You bastard,” David Raines said.

  “This is getting so crazy. I don’t live like this. I just want to go home and see my folks is all.” Pauline’s voice had risen a few octaves and was splashed with tears of hysteria. It was also sloppy with liquor. Her slurring got worse by the minute.

  She wore a man’s blue dress shirt that reached to the hem of her blue shorts. She had a glass of whiskey in her hand, no doubt poured from the bottle of Old Granddad on top of the bureau.

  Raines got to his feet. The white golf shirt and tan slacks suggested a fun day on the links. But his eyes suggested the opposite. He couldn’t decide whether to be mad or scared.

  “Don’t answer any of his questions, Pauline.”

  “I wish you’d both get out of here. I wish Cliffie would leave me alone. I wish I could get on a bus and go home. I didn’t have nothing to do with any of this. Not one thing.” She said all this while waggling her drink at us. I was surprised it didn’t fly out of her hand, especially since her eyes had started closing every thirty seconds or so.

  Raines’ contempt was like an attacking animal. “You just screwed your brains out and got drunk and got fatter, isn’t that right, Pauline? You didn’t know about any of this. That’s why you were always sneaking around when Davenport and I were talking. You knew damned well what was going on. And you wanted to cash in on it. Roy would get the final payment and then he’d take you to Europe. That was the plan, right?”

  “Don’t tell me no more lies, David. You’re just trying to hurt my feelings since I don’t know where the letter is.” She was much drunker than I’d realized. She was slurring her words and putting a hand on the back of a chair for balance.

  He walked over to the bureau, picked up the other glass. As he poured himself a shot, he said, “He was going to dump you. Kill you if necessary. He had it all planned out.”

  “I don’t believe you.” Which sounded like “I don’ b’lief ya.”

  The contempt was back. “I could give a damn what you believe or don’t believe. Remember the night you wanted me to go to bed with you? You think I’d let a pig like you anywhere near me?”

  The alcohol seemed to protect her from the insult. She just took a deep drink from her glass and shrugged. But then she had her vengeance, as if that last drink had given her courage: “You want to know about the letter, McCain? I’ll tell you about the letter.”

  “Shut up!” He started toward her, but I grabbed a handful of shirt and yanked him back. Before he could swing on me, I had my gun out. Her threat and the appearance of my weapon made everything much more serious.

  I looked at her. I remembered the night she’d followed me in the yellow VW. She’d mentioned the letter but gave the impression she didn’t know what was in it. I also remembered feeling that she hadn’t told me everything. Now, with any luck, she’d tell me what she knew.

  First I had to deal with Raines.”Get over there and sit down, Raines. And shut up.”

  “Teach you to insult me, you pig,” Pauline said. “And for your information, I wasn’t trying to get you into bed. I was trying to get you to lay down before you puked all over the new carpeting the way you did that other night.”

  Such a lovely couple. “Tell me about the letter, Pauline. Now.”

  “I need a drink first.” She held up her glass. It was only about a quarter full. For most people that would have been fine. For an alcoholic, it was running dangerously low. She teetered her way to the bureau, clanked herself some more of the magic elixir, and then wobbled over and sat on the edge of the emerald-green armchair. She gaped at me and said, “What was I sayin’, McCain?”

  “The letter.”

  “You’re going to believe this bitch? She’s so drunk, she can’t even remember what she was talking about.”

  “Shut up, Raines. Now go ahead, Pauline.”

  “Did he just call me a bitch?”

  “No. You just misheard him. Now tell me about the letter.”

  “They were blackmailing him.”

  I’d done enough interrogations of drunken clients to know that you had to be patient. “First tell me who ‘they’ are.”

  “They?”

  “You said, ‘They were blackmailing him.’”

  “Hell, yes, they were.”

  “Tell me who ‘they’ are.”

  She jabbed her glass in the general direction of Raines. “Him and Roy.”

  “And who were they blackmailing?”

  “You’re s’posed to be a lawyer and smart’n all. Haven’t you figured it out by now?”

  “I think I have, but I need you to tell me.”

  “Lou; who else d’ya think? They was blackmailin’ Lou.”

  “She’s lying.”

  “Why were they blackmailing him, Pauline?”

  “Why d’ya think? ’Cause he paid to have that fire set.”

  “Karen Shanlon?”

  “Yeah, that crippled girl.”

  “Who did Lou pay to set it?”

  She was at the stage where she had to close one eye to focus. “Him. And Roy.”

  “You said Raines and Roy were blackmailing him. And they set the fire, too?”

  “She’s drunk. Everything she’s saying is a lie.”

  “They made him write this letter, see.” She jerked backward, almost going over. I covered the distance between us in two seconds, then eased her back into the chair. She instantly poured about half the bourbon down her throat. It would be lights out very soon. Maybe that’s what she was trying to do.

  “You said they made him write a letter. What kind of a letter?”

  She raised her head. Her eyes were gazing on a far distant world only she could see. She belched hard enough to snap her head back. Then she smiled with great grand ridiculous glory. She was working her way back to infancy.

  I needed to resolve one thing for sure. I leaned down and took the drink from her hand. It took her a while to realize it was gone. “Hey, where’s my drink?”

  “I’ll give it back to you after you answer two more questions.”

  “B’shish. It’s my drink.”

  My face was only inches from hers. She smelled pretty bad. She looked worse.

  “You said that Roy and Raines set the fire. Is that true?”

  “Huh?”

  I took her chin, tilted her face up to mine. “You said that Roy and Raines set the fire. Is that true?”

  “Aw, shuurre. They talked ’bout it out to our house.”

  “And you said they were blackmailing Lou. Is that also true?”

  “I wan’ my drink back.”

  “Just answer my question and I’ll give you your drink.”

  “Huh?”

  “You said that Roy and Raines were blackmailing Lou. Is that true?”

  “Yeah. They sure were. Now gimme my drink.”

  I gave her the drink back.

  “She has to prove all this,” Raines said. “You’ll have a lot of luck with her on the stand. Make sure she isn’t wearing a bra and that she’s drunk. You’ll win for sure.” Raines had collected himself. He was Raines again, no longer frantic. Smug and cold now and enjoying himself.

  I walked over to the phone. You didn’t need a switchboard here. I dialed. Marjorie Kincaid answered. “Morning, Marj. Is Bill Tomlin there, by any chance?”

  “I think so. Let me check. Hold on, Sam.”

  Tomlin was the uniformed cop I talked to at Lou Bennett’s estate the morning he was murdered. He wasn’t exactly up to FBI standards, but he wasn’t stupid and he was wary enough of Cliffie’s decisions to be honest.

  I heard him pick up and Marjorie click off. “Can you do me a favor, Bill?”

  “This is going to get me in trouble, isn’t it, McCain?”

  “Yeah, but I know you’ve been taking those courses every summer at the police academy about how to handle investigations.”

  “Oh, no. The chief’s moved his nephew up. He’s the new lead detective. You need to talk to him.”
>
  Cliffie’s nephew made Cliffie sound like Adlai Stevenson. Not an easy thing to do.

  I gave him the name of the hotel and the room number. “I just want you to come over here. I want to walk you through some things. That way, at least somebody in the police department’ll really know what’s going on. You can leave then, and I’ll call Cliffie and ask him to come over.”

  Raines started to get up from the couch. I’d set my gun on the small phone table. I picked it up again and this time aimed right at his head. He scowled and sat back down.

  “I dunno, McCain.”

  “Protect and serve.”

  He laughed without humor. “Protecting my butt and trying to serve my family something better than Spam. That’s what that means.”

  “That’s a good one. But I’d really appreciate you coming over here. You’re our only hope.”

  “Who’s ‘our’?”

  “Truth, justice, and the American way.”

  “Isn’t that from a comic book? I think it’s Superman.”

  “I always liked Batman better.”

  “Yeah, me, too. Batman and the Green Hornet.” He sighed. “I’ll need fifteen minutes to wrap something up here.”

  “I really appreciate this, Bill.”

  By the time I hung up, Pauline was unconscious, sprawled in the chair, her drink spilled, the glass on the floor. She snored like a buzz saw.

  “What a hog,” Raines said. “She’s disgusting. I could never figure out why Roy wanted her around.”

  “How much did Fire Chief DePaul get paid?”

  “I’m not answering any more of your stupid questions.”

  I hadn’t expected him to answer. I walked over to the window and looked out on the town. This high up, you could see the sides and backs of the oldest buildings, most of which bore faded business names and advertisements dating back to the 1880s and 1890s. You could see the embedded tracks of the first horse-pulled trolley. You could see the hitching posts in front of a few businesses and taverns. Time overwhelmed me sometimes, how one era appeared bright and fevered, only to dim with another new era suddenly there, bright and fevered, in this long, unending continuum. And the people walking the streets down there would be gone forever, along with their styles and songs and passions great and small, gone forever as if they never existed, even the graveyards in which they were buried disintegrating eventually. I was thinking of my dad and how he’d be gone soon and how I would ache to talk to him in the years ahead. And it would be worse for my mother. She was the one I really had to worry about.

  “It won’t do you any good to bring some hillbilly cop up here, McCain,” Raines said to my back. “As I said, I won’t be answering any questions.”

  I walked back to the center of the room. “That’s fine. You’re entitled to a lawyer. But I’ll tell Cliffie everything I know, and I hope he’ll take you to the station.”

  “He’d never go up against a Bennett.”

  “You’re not a Bennett. And Lou’s power died with him.”

  “What if I tell Cliffie that this hillbilly cop was up here first?”

  “I’d just tell him the truth. He wasn’t in when I called, so I asked for Bill.”

  “That’s a lie. You didn’t ask if Cliffie was in.”

  I smiled. “Well, as you said, can you prove it?”

  Five minutes later, Bill Tomlin was there. Raines gave him a smirk. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. Bill’s khaki uniform was a bit tight, admittedly, thanks to the weight he’d been putting on lately, but he was not stupid.

  “Raines here needs to be questioned. He’ll want a lawyer, but I wouldn’t let him go till Cliffie has gotten answers.”

  “Don’t call him Cliffie in front of me, okay, McCain? He was nice enough to give me a job and I’m not even a relative.”

  “I’m sorry, Tomlin. Pauline over there—”

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Drunk and passed out.”

  “This room smells like a bar. So anyway, why should the chief be interested in Raines?”

  “Don’t believe a word this asshole says,” Raines said from the couch.

  “Just let him finish. Then I’ll talk to you. So why should the chief be interested in him?”

  “If Pauline is telling the truth, Raines and Davenport set the fire that killed Karen Shanlon. You remember that one?”

  “Yeah. The wife knew her from church. She was a nice woman.”

  “I didn’t have anything to do with it, Sergeant. He’s lying, and so is that drunken whore over there.”

  “They apparently did it on orders from Lou Bennett. His son was still in love with Karen. Lou didn’t think she was good enough to wear the Bennett nametag. And he was afraid that someday Bryce would divorce his wife and marry Karen.”

  “The lady in that chair over there told you all this?”

  “Lady?” Raines laughed. “Are you blind, Tomlin? Look at her. She’s an old bag of a slut if I’ve ever seen one.”

  “And there’s a letter,” I said. “Somehow it ties into the blackmail scheme they were running on Bennett.”

  “But weren’t they all in it together? That doesn’t make much sense.”

  “You’re damned right it doesn’t, Sergeant! McCain doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “I don’t understand it yet either, Tomlin, but somehow they ended up with Bennett paying them extortion money. That’s why Raines needs to be held for questioning. There’s a lot to go into.”

  “There sure as hell is. So, who killed Bennett and Davenport?”

  “I’d like to say Raines. But I think all we can nail him with is murdering Karen Shanlon.”

  “And that leaves us with who, then?”

  “Somebody who plans to kill everybody who was involved in the fire. Somebody who cared about Karen enough to pay everybody back. I think Raines here is the next victim on the list.”

  “So that’s everybody?”

  “One more. DePaul.”

  “The fire chief?”

  “Lou paid him off. Or maybe he had something on him. DePaul wrote an assessment report claiming the fire was accidental. That means he falsified a legal document.”

  “The chief and DePaul are good friends.”

  “I didn’t say this would be easy, Tomlin. But I’m pretty sure you’re interested in the truth. So you’ll help me. You’ll keep this thing on track.”

  “I want to call my lawyer.”

  “As soon as we’re done here, Mr. Raines.”

  “Say everything you’ve just said is true, McCain. Or most of it, anyway. You have any idea who killed Bennett and Davenport?”

  “You can’t stop me from calling my lawyer.”

  “I have an idea, but it’s not solid enough to talk about yet.”

  There was more. By the time we finished, Raines had slung himself horizontally on the couch and had covered his eyes with the back of his hand. When you just laid out the facts cold and hard, the case sounded pretty damned convincing, especially if Pauline could be turned into a sober and articulate witness.

  “I’m sorry I had to drag you into this, Bill. If we stick to our story—”

  Bill Tomlin said, “Aw, hell. Let’s not try to fool the chief. I owe him my loyalty. I’ll call him now and bring him over.”

  “Well, I did ask for him, but he wasn’t in.”

  “That’s a lie. That’s a damned lie,” Raines said without moving the back of his hand from his face. He sounded wasted. He’d spent his anger. He was likely thinking about life in prison.

  Tomlin said, “You can call your lawyer now, Mr. Raines.”

  He pulled his hand back, tilted his head toward us and said, “Maybe I better call my wife first.” The glamour boy had run out of glamour.

  22

  LYNN SHANLON’S SMALL HOUSE BLAZED WHITE UNDER THE searing sun. When I pulled into the narrow drive, I saw Jimmy Adair, the next-door neighbor, just emerging from his own house with his big sloppy St. Bernard. He wave
d at me, then walked down his sloping front yard to the mailbox.

  I knocked on the front door twice and waited for a response that didn’t come. Against the faultless blue sky, a jet trail could be seen. I could hear the plane but not see it. I knocked for a third time, then decided to walk around back.

  When I reached the back yard, I detoured and went over to the side of the garage. I peeked into a small dusty window. Her Dodge station wagon sat inside.

  I went over to the back stoop, passing an outdoor grill as I did so. There was still a faint scent of burgers on the air. There were several blouses on the clothesline. I went over and touched two of them. Still damp. Given the heat, I knew they hadn’t been hanging here all that long.

  I knocked on the screen door at the back of the house. No reply. I opened the door and put my ear to the glass portion of the other door. A houseful of hums and clicks and snaps. The house robots doing their duties.

  There wasn’t any particular reason to be suspicious about her not being here. She might be visiting a neighbor, though she didn’t seem to be the neighborly type. She might also have gone for a walk, though at ninety-three degrees it struck me as unlikely. But a friend could have picked her up and taken her somewhere.

  I knocked again, waited a few minutes, then walked out front again. Jimmy Adair was down on the street with a fistful of mail, talking to an elderly bald man in scotch-plaid walking shorts and a lime-green golf shirt.

  I went over and leaned against my ragtop and smoked a cigarette. The smoke was just about finished by the time Adair and the old man separated. When Adair and his St. Bernard were halfway up the slope leading to his house, I wandered over and waited for him.

  “It’s a son of a bitch of a day,” he said, shaking his mail at me. “I wish I could handle it as well as Chauncey does.”

  Chauncey. I’d been trying to remember the dog’s name. Chauncey came over for a pat on his massive head. I gave him three. He looked up at me with those sweet dopey eyes. He was drooling as usual, but I probably had some habits he didn’t like, either.

  Adair wore a red-and-white-striped shirt and jeans. He still carried himself like the jock he’d been in high school, that sense of swagger. But there wasn’t any threat in him. He just clung, like many of us do, to the memories of better times. I wondered if he ever got jealous of the kids he coached at the high school, wanting the thrill and glory of being in there himself. I would have.