by Earl Emerson
“I haven’t the foggiest,” I said, truthfully.
Gayden speculated aloud. “A psychologist. She treats people off the street, I’ll bet. Who knows what sort of flakes she’s been involved with in the last six months?”
“Was she sexually assaulted?”
The room had cleared out except for two uniformed cops. Gayden paced as he replied.
“Can’t tell yet. Near as we can figure, somebody came to the door, forced it, argued with her for some time, then whacked her around. The guy upstairs said the yelling seemed to go on for a while. He thought for sure it was some sort of domestic dispute. Apparently she almost broke free once, because we found these outside.” Gayden dangled the plastic bag containing the shattered glasses. He shook his head, stared at the corpse and said, “Poor kid. She looked like a real nice one. Was she?”
I was wrapped up in my own thoughts. “Pardon?”
“Was she a nice one?”
“One of the nicest,” I said, recalling that she had been a bit of a dope.
“I just hope we nail this yo-yo,” said Gayden, staring at Helen Gunther’s awkward corpse.
“Did she have any papers?” I asked. “Some folders, notes?”
“We haven’t spotted anything.”
“There should be a folder around somewhere. As far as I know she was in the habit of taking it home with her.”
“Nothing here.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I just hope we nail this yo-yo.”
Kathy wasn’t in, but she had left a note for me on the kitchen table under a nutcracker:
Ward, honey,
Wally and I are shopping for a surprise for the Beav. Back around five.
June
She came in while I was fixing a snack, garbed in a long black coat and witch boots. Her eye shadow was dark and overdone and she wore a tall beryl-blue wool cap. Her hair was hidden, her face long and lean. Nobody in Tacoma would recognize her. She looked like a vamp from a D. W. Griffith flick.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’ve got a hot lead on Melissa. In Tacoma.”
“Can’t I eat first?”
“Not this time, kiddo.”
“Do I have to come along?”
“I thought you liked this detective business.”
“I’ve got exams at the end of the week.”
“Remember Ms. Gunther?”
“At the Hopewell? How could I forget? I’m going to call her up and apologize for what we did. I don’t care what you say.”
“You won’t reach her.”
Kathy’s violet eyes fixed on mine for two long beats.
“Why not?”
“Somebody killed her about two hours ago.”
Kathy plunked down into one of my kitchen chairs so hard it shrieked in protest. “Do you think it has anything to do with…”
“I think it has everything to do with…”
“That’s why you want me to go with you?”
“I don’t want you here alone.”
“Oh, geez,” said Kathy, tears of sympathy and grief beading up in her eyes. ‘Could we have..?”
“There was nothing anyone could have done. Who could predict a thing like that? Besides, there’s a remote possibility it doesn’t have anything to do with Melissa.”
“Very remote,” said Kathy. “Of course it has something to do with Melissa. First Melissa’s aunt, who was going to talk to you. And now Melissa’s counselor. How did you find out?”
“I saw her this morning. I told her I was coming back. When I went back, the joint was buzzing with cops.”
Even as I spoke, I thought about the bug under nw rear bumper. Someone from Taltro’s security staff might have followed me that morning, the same way Holder had followed me to Bellingham. Sure, they had tailed me. It was probably Julius Caesar Holder himself. But Holder hadn’t done anything in Bellingham. He had showed up after the body had been discovered. Had he killed Mary Dawn Crowell, it was highly unlikely he would have loitered around in the parking lot afterwards rubbernecking with the old folks.
Certainly Holder and the Taltro security people were implicated, but I doubted if they were running around killing people. On the other hand, Holder was just the sort of guy to freelance a bit, wander off on his own and stir up trouble. Whoever had committed the two murders was more dangerous than anyone I had tangled with in quite a while.
Kathy climbed into the truck while I went around to the back and removed the bug from under the bumper. Fetching a large, sturdy rat trap from the garage, I wired the bug onto the spring mechanism of the trap, then vaulted my neighbor’s fence, and scooted down onto the wet pavement under the rear of his Buick. Horace would never know what happened.
Whoever had set the bug would follow Horace, realize their mistake and try to recover the tracking device when he parked. They were going to get a quick, hard lesson in retrieving things when they slid their fingers into the trigger of the rat trap. It took five minutes to tape it up and activate it satisfactorily. My jacket and trousers were wet when I jumped into the truck. I switched on the heater to dry them out.
“Whatever were you doing, Thomas?”
“Just a prank.”
“It didn’t look like a prank. That trapll break somebody’s fingers.”
“Think so?”
“If Horace ever finds out, he’ll go bananas.”
“Horace is already bananas. Besides, he won’t. That type of transmitter is expensive. Whoever set it will want it back. By the way, What’d you get the Beav?”
It took Kathy a few moments to figure out what I was talking about. “Oh, the Beav. Wally and I got him a Vivaldi album.”
Tacoma was as gray and smelly as I remembered it. The early winter darkness shrouded the city as we pulled onto Pacific Avenue, a main drag running along the underbelly of the burg. We bumbled through the rush-hour traffic until we found the approximate location Hank Waterman had described to me. We parked in a lot for two bucks.
An old theater had been renovated and converted into a savings-and-loan. Two doors away stood the entrance to a sleazy hotel, a pair of aging drunks in baggy plaid trousers panhandling outside.
A rheumy-eyed news vendor wearing fingerless work gloves confirmed that the savings-and-loan had once been a theater. We showed him the photo of Melissa, but he drew a blank. Across the street beside the hotel stood a plant store which looked as if it might have been a tavern at one time. The vendor confirmed that too. It had been called Joe’s. Now the section of street matched Waterman’s description to a tee.
We found the phone booth up the street. Some wino had relieved himself on the floor recently. The number was the one Smithers had obtained from the phone company for me. Melissa had telephoned her aunt from that booth last Tuesday night. I was as close to her as I had ever been. Kathy and I looked around the street as if we might spot Melissa after only a cursory search. Not a chance.
The hotel was called The Last Inn and it reeked. It was the sort of broken-down hovel pensioners and welfare drunks resided in, and transients died in so they could be discovered days later and their mattresses fumigated with a can of Lysol.
“Is this where you think she is?” Kathy asked.
“Waterman thinks he saw her coming out of this place a few years back. The phone she used last Tuesday night is right down the street. I can’t think of a better place to start looking.”
In the lobby, two obese Indian women were hunched on a pair of dingy davenports watching a flickery black-and-white Magnavox. Reruns of I Love Lucy that were almost as old as I was mesmerized the Indians.
A dried-up gentleman with along, sepia face leaned on the counter, perusing a Reader’s Digest.
“You ever see this woman?” I asked, pushing the photo of Melissa Crowell Nadisky under his nose.
He took his time turning away from the Reader’s Digest. It was a back issue from 1942. He scrutinized the tiny photo for a few moments, then gave me a bleary look.
“You
a copper?”
“Private,” I said.
“Gettin’ paid pretty good, are ya?
I slapped a five-dollar bill down and watched it disappear into his liver-spotted fist. “Sure, I seen somebody sorts looks like her. They call her the Blue Diamond.”
“You’re kidding.”
“That’s what they call her.”
“She been around long?”
“A week maybe.”
“Know where I can find her?”
He raised his eyes toward the ceiling. “Up there. 301. But she ain’t in.”
“Know where I can get hold of her? Right now?” He picked up the photo and examined it again. “‘Course, she don’t look exactly like this. The Diamond is all gussied up, you know. This looks like maybe her younger sister.”
“You sure it’s the same one?”
“Not really,” he said, clicking his dentures. “But it looks like her.”
Kathy had moved to the other side of the lounge, chunked a quarter into a newspaper vending machine and was scanning the front page.
“What’s she like?” I asked.
“Ain’t never had a date with her.” He was patronizing me now. He had the bone and I was the slobbering puppy.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
Slowly, he glanced up over the doorway at a clock that had a broken cover. “Bout two hours ago.”
“Here?”
“I ain’t left the place all day.”
“She live upstairs?”
He nodded toward the two Indian women on the sofas.
“They live here. The Blue Diamond just works here.”
“She hooking?”
“She don’t do no work, but she makes plenty of dough.”
“She hooks.”
He nodded.
“She have a boyfriend?”
“You might call him that.”
“Name?”
“Couldn’t tell you that. He’s a mean one. I could get my head knocked off talking ‘bout him.”
I sandpapered a ten-dollar bill across the counter. It disappeared into his wrinkled fist with the five. “Name’s Solomon. Least that’s What he calls himself. He’ll stick ya if you let him.”
“He carries a knife?
“Nobody’s gonna stick ya with a wad of gum, mister.” He had me on that.
“She come in every night?”
“Some nights. Some days.”
“Think she’ll be back tonight?”
“I ain’t no mind reader. She comes in when she’s a mind to, or when she’s got a John.”
“If I wanted to find her right now, where might I try?”
Rubbing his whiskered chin with his dirty fingers, he said, “Braverman’s, up the hill ‘bout two blocks.” We stood looking at each other for a moment, the impatient private eye and the old codger. Finally he said, “He’s short and he’s got snake eyes. Real mean. He kinda likes to see people hurt. His trick is he sticks without any warning. Once he gets his ire up he’ll stick ya anytime. In the back. In the brain. I seen him stick a woman in the cheek once.”
“Can you describe him a little better?”
“He’s a pimp.”
“Black or white?”
“Hard to tell. He’s kinda old for the game.” He picked up the Reader’s Digest and tried to find his place.
Kathy and I left by the back door so that I could reconnoiter all the exits. It was an old battle habit. Kathy, who had been skimming through the Tacoma News Tribune, said, “I found nothing in the paper about Ms. Gunther.” Breathing heavily as she skipped along trying to keep to my pace, Kathy said, “Where are we going?”
“We’re looking for a cut-rate pimp.”
“Melissa’s not…”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“She’s not!”
“I think she is.”
“Where?”
“Right up there.” I could see the cheap neon sign advertising Bra.verman’s from the mouth of the alley behind The Last Inn. Braverman’s was a small, windowless cocktail lounge.
A Pontiac with serious ring problems was double-parked in front of Braverman’s, puking smoke into the city evening. Kathy started into Braverman’s, but I grasped her arm and pulled her back.
“Wait here a minute,” I said.
“You know that guy in the car?”
“He lives in Ballard.”
So?
“Across the street from Melissa and Burton.”
Oh.
Sidney Iddins grinned idiotically as I walked around the car into the street next to the driver’s door. The grin looked more foxlike when I spotted the .357 magnum tucked snugly between his fat thighs. ?
Chapter Eighteen
IT WAS A DEBATE WHETHER TO HIGHTAIL IT OR TO COLDCOCK Sidney through the open window of the Pontiac before he could train the gun on me. I did neither, and to my surprise he left the gun where it wasbetween his legs.
“Hey, guy,” Sidney said, flashing a toothy grin, doing a Groucho with his eyebrows. “Who’s that cunt? Pretty nice.”
“She’s a woman cop,” I lied. “She’d just as soon castrate you as look at you.”
The grin melted off his face. “Well, she ain’t got no cause to be gunnin’ after me.”
“If she heard what you just called her she’d cut you off at the knees.”
“What? What’d I call her?”
“Never mind. What are you doing here?”
“Helga got a call from Blondy. Wants a ride home, I guess. She’s inside talking to somebody now. I brought Myrtle along for comfort.” He took two fingers and patted the .357 between his thighs.
“Is Melissa Nadisky inside?”
“Ain’t been in. Don’t know. She said on the phone she’d meet Helga here. I guess she figured good old Helgy could get her out of any fix.”
“How long has your wife been inside?”
He glanced at his watch. “‘Bout five minutes.”
Escorting Kathy through the front door into the dark lounge, I said, “Keep cool, Kathy. Stay by the door and pretend you’re not with me. Just in case.”
“Just in case what?”
“Let’s hope we don’t find out what.”
I spotted Helga Iddins strutting from the rear of the lounge, indignation reflected in her walk, but still conscious of the male eyes on her. She thought men looked at her because she was appealing. If she’d watched them carefully she would have seen that they were ogling her glandular endowments. In a raunchy way it was kind of sad.
She didn’t recognize me until I blocked her path. Halting, slamming her fists onto her hips, she searched my face.
“You? Well, you’ve almost found her. Shes sitting back there.” Helga gestured toward the rear of the cocktail lounge with a toss of her long brown hair. I couldn’t see Melissa or anyone who looked like a pimp, but there were booths around a corner.
“Your husband said she called you.”
“This afternoon. Shit. And I have to work tonight. I should be there right now. She calls me up, whines about being scared to leave without a friend along, then when I get here she won’t budge.”
“She give a reason?”
“Reason? Hell, she won’t even talk. Not a squeak.”
“Is he back there?”
“Yeah, but he left. How ‘bout that reward? Can I get it now?”
“You’ll find a number in last night’s paper. Call it.”
“Shit. She could have scrammed with me. I told her Sidney was outside with a gun. We could have gotten her home. Shit. Shit.” She stormed off toward the exit.
As I followed Helga’s backside, Kathy locked eyes with me across the smoky room and shot me a scathing look. For a split second I grinned wickedly.
I located Melissa in the last booth, her back to the wall, as if afraid to let anybody or anything sneak up behind her. She was slouched over a cup of coffee, fanning the lazy snakes of her own cigarette smoke out of her eyes with a
cheap mimeographed menu. She held her cigarette the way a new smoker does. I recalled no ashtrays at the Nadisky house. She had adopted the habit within the last ten days, along with some other habits. I had to wonder how it would feel to be sitting across the table from her haggling over prices and contemplating what she was going to do upstairs at The Last Inn.
“Melissa?”
Her pale blue eyes seemed to sink back into her brain. I sat down across from her in the booth, wishing my back wasn’t exposed to the open room. Somewhere nearby was a gentleman who liked to stick people.
In hushed tones, she said, “You must be looking for someone else. My name is Blue.”
“Sure it is,” I said, flopping the photograph I’d been carrying for three days onto the tabletop. She peered at it, pretending not to be startled.
“Blue,” I said. “Melissa Crowell Nadisky Blue. You’ve got a little girl who needs you badly.”
Melissa picked up a tarnished spoon and dunked it into her coffee cup, watching the swirls of steam rise off the surface of the liquid. She wore .a shiny black blouse unbuttoned far enough to see the tops of her thin, cream-colored breasts.
“I’m a detective, Melissa. An ex-cop. You don’t have to worry about escaping from whoever you’re with. I can get you away. Your friends hired me to find you.”
“Friends?” She glanced around the lounge. It smelled of popcorn and booze and stale cigarette smoke. It smelled like a stall in purgatory. Striving to look as bored as humanly possible, she said, “I don’t have any friends.”
“Kathy Birchfield is your friend. She hired me. She’s at the front door right now.”
The look of contained boredom vanished for a moment. “Kathy?”
“You going back with us?”
“God, no! Just go away. All of you go away. Before you get into trouble.”
“You called Helga and then when she got here you didn’t want to leave. Why?”
“She brought her…”
“Because she brought her husband along? I don’t blame you. He’s a bum.”
“You a cop?” Her voice was small and faded and almost as delicate as the alabaster skin of her face and neck. My indictment of Sidney Iddins had won her over. Except for the gaudy makeup, the blue eyeliner and the painted cheeks, she looked enough like Burton to be his sister. Somehow Kathy executed the whore makeup routine better.