The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy

by Jeremiah Healy

  He stared hard at me. "Canadian," he said.

  "Ah, of course, no accent for you to fake. Anyway, you get back to the States, but you realize then, or maybe you realized beforehand, that you'd be short one important item without which you'd be doomed to menial, unpleasant jobs and frequent relocation."

  He swallowed hard.

  "You also had a loose end dangling. A potentially dangerous one. The absence of the item and the potential of the loose end would make it tough to enjoy your profits much."

  I gave him my best smile. "The item was a social security card. The loose end was Belker. My guess is that you decided to kill both birds with one stone."

  My passenger laughed. It startled me. The noise was like a little creature chirping, then stopping to listen. "You know," he said, almost nostalgically, "it was a stone I used. I mean, I could have bought a social security card, you know, but you never really know whose card you're buying. Then some computer or compulsive, low-level auditor spots some discrepancy and where are you? Nowhere, except the slammer or back on the run. No, Belker was perfect. I knew about him, you see. I checked his 201 file very carefully. Neither of us had any family. To know him was to dislike him, so no friends to worry about coming to look him, or me, up. Just in case, though, I went through everybody's 201 file who had anything to do with him. That left me with quite a choice, geographically. I decided I liked Boston the best." He frowned. "How did I miss you?"

  "I wasn't in Saigon then. I arrived a few months later."

  He smiled. "Well, even so, you would have been no danger. I changed my appearance, and good God, there must be dozens of Clay Belkers in this country anyway. If somebody did stumble on the name, I just wasn't that Clay Belker."

  "To avoid even that, why didn't you just change your name? From Clay Belker to something else, I mean?"

  "I looked into it, but it required a birth certificate. I was older than Belker and, well, applying for a driver's license or broker's license is one thing, going before a judge is another. Besides, like I said, there didn't seem to be much risk."

  My passenger was doing an excellent job of lulling me. He came across as a reasonable, thoughtful man. A sweetheart of a guy who had tortured and mutilated a good friend.

  "You used a stone?"

  He blinked.

  "You used a stone, you said."

  "Oh, yes. To kill Belker. I arranged for him to meet me in San Francisco when he got rotated back to the States. I told him that I wanted to wait till he was discharged, so that he could take off without leaving any tracks that would be followed. He was discharged on a Thursday. He had all his gear in a duffel bag and met me in Golden Gate Park. We drove out to a place called Muir Woods. Heard of it?"

  "No."

  "It's a stand, actually I guess nearly a whole valley, of redwoods only about an hour's drive from San Francisco. Someone, not Muir, saved the valley from being developed. Nobody ever does anything there except maintain the trails. We hiked about half a mile off one. I hit him with a stone. A few times. Then I used a folding entrenching tool to bury him. The ground was pretty soft. It didn't take long."

  "Then?"

  "I came to Boston, sent the army a change of address so I could do my income taxes correctly as Clay Belker, and lived happily, conservatively, ever since."

  "Until last week."

  His face clouded. "Yes," he said. "The fool. How can one contemplate that a moron from the army would go through telephone books looking for . . . Oh, it's simply too ridiculous."

  "He tried to call you, thought it was the wrong guy, but—"

  "Oh, I handled it badly. My receptionist was out getting coffee. I took the call, and I realized who it was but feigned ignorance. He told me later that he recognized my voice. That was arrogant of him. I think instead that he just could not believe that he was wrong and came to the of fice to see me. Apparently he spotted me getting into my car and followed me to my home. He knocked on my door." He gestured with the gun. "Can you imagine that? He actually knocked at my door and came in. I told him I would have to gather the money. We arranged the drop-off for the next day. A warehouse area"—he swung his head around slowly—"not unlike this one. He was very nervous. And not too smart, after all." He sneered at me.

  "How did you take him?" I asked.

  "I rigged a bundle with a gas trigger. Not unlike the substance Ricker said he used on you. In any case, the baboon opened the bundle at the drop-off. He keeled over, and I waited till he revived and then interrogated him."

  "Were you acquainted with Jacquie's father, too?"

  "Jacquie?"

  "Ricker's wife." —

  "No. Outside of 'Nam I barely knew him. Ricker, I mean. Or Mayhew. They were just people in the network. Ricker told me on the telephone that you recognized him from a photo . . . oh, of course; That's how you recognized me, too. From the photo in the file."

  "No," I said, shaking my head. "I recognized you from the photo in Al's package."

  "Package?" He looked pained. "What package?"

  "After Al spotted you, he sent me a package. Photos of you. From Weston Hills. With a little chronology of how he found you by flipping through the telephone book."

  "You're lying," he said evenly. "You're definitely lying. He never had time for that."

  "Sure he did. He wrapped it up for me. Fourth-class mail. It didn't arrive until after I left for his funeral. In Pittsburgh."

  "You're lying. He never mentioned anything about a camera or a package to me." Again the sneer. "And believe me, he would have, he told me everything else. After what I did to him, he begged me to let him

  tell me."

  I took a chance. "If you were so good at interrogation, how come he never mentioned me?"

  Crowley caught himself and lied. "He did."

  I shook my head. "No, the first time you heard about me was when you decoyed the hotel clerk and saw the message in Al's box. Just after you tossed his room."

  "How did you—"

  "No," I interrupted, "Al never mentioned me to you. I was his insurance policy. I was the one who would see to it you paid the debt if he couldn't make you."

  Crowley ground his teeth a bit. "Where is the package?"

  "No," I said. "First we open your bundle. Then we open mine. Just like at Christmas."

  "Where's the goddamned package?"

  "You first," I said.

  Crowley lowered his weapon till it was pointing at my crotch. "Where's the package?"

  "I'm afraid you're going to have to play it my way. If you shoot me, I lift my foot and the sanitation men draw some overtime. If you open your package first, at least you're still in the game."

  Crowley smiled suddenly, in a superior manner.

  "You said that his package arrived after you left for Pittsburgh?"

  I sighed. "That's right. At my post office box. It and three bills are the only other paperwork I've got left after my apartment was leveled."

  Crowley dropped the smile and looked a little queasy.

  "By the way," I said, "did you arrange that?"

  "What?" he said, lost in thought.

  "I said, did you plant the bomb at my place?"

  "No, no. That would have been stupid, an unnecessary risk. I had no reason to believe Sachs had told you anything. He never mentioned you. I found your message at his hotel, and then I held my breath for about three days, poised to run. I . . . well . . . I assumed that Ricker had taken care of you. When I then read in the paper about your apartment building and the corpse that was supposed to be you, it all seemed so . . ."

  "Fortunate."

  "Yes." He snapped back to the present. "Now where is——"

  "Short memory, my friend. You first.”

  He gritted his teeth and worked his jaw and started twice to talk. His left hand, shaking badly, levered the attaché case up and between us in the suicide seat, latches and handle toward me.

  "Go ahead," he said. "Open it."

  I thought back to Al's alleged mi
stake at the drop-off. "You open it."

  Crowley smiled. "You are either much more clever or far more stupid than I thought." He seemed to relax. "My judgment is for clever. If you had begun to open it then either you were too stupid to recall how your friend failed, or could ignore it because you knew that switch under your foot was a dummy, attached to no bomb." He reached forward and turned the case over, back to facing him. He was no longer the nervous killer but again the cool, methodical businessman. He fingered two catches, and the lid popped up, the case relieved of the pressure of being stuffed to bursting.

  "If you had done that," he said, wiggling his finger at the latches, "you'd be dead now."

  I winked at him and pointed to my left foot, "So would you."

  He winked back.

  I tipped the case's lid back against the hinges and toward me. It was full of rubber-banded stacks of old bills, tens and twenties showing.

  "Rough estimate?" I asked.

  "Sixty-five thousand." Then, more wistfully, "All I've got in the world."

  I grinned. "More likely one-third maybe of all the old, passable cash you've got in the world."

  He laughed, a real laugh. "You're good, Cuddy. Maybe good enough."

  "Bet on it."

  "Oh, I am, I am." He sank back into the door behind him more, easing what must have been a stiff back. "I'm betting that you're even clever enough to realize I have no reason to kill you. Even if you turn to the police. You see, after tonight, Clay Belker just drops off the earth, through another trap door. I take off, so I don't care who you go to with your information. You, and the widow and the kid, get sixty-five thousand dollars. I get a twenty-four-hour headstart.

  I'm not a vindictive man, really. Belker, the real Belker, and your friend, were genuine threats to me. You're no threat, not after this time tomorrow. Gentleman's agreement." He smiled ruefully. "Sorry, poor taste, in view of Sachs', ah, derivation. I meant agreement as in officers and gentlemen."

  "Let's say I'm clever enough to get out of here alive, with the money. Why should I wait for twenty-four hours?"

  "Because, and I really believe this, after talking with you—you intend that money for Sachs' widow and kid. Based on what Sachs told me about his motives, they really need it. No, if you blew the whistle on me, it would be tough for you to wash that money and get it to them. Tough enough for you that I think you'll keep your end of the deal."

  "And if you're wrong?"

  Crowley shrugged. "If I'm wrong, I'l1 find out about it. And the first thing I do, perhaps the last thing too, but the first thing I do is get to Pittsburgh and kill Martha and the boy."

  He threw me with that one, and my face must have shown it.

  He laughed his good laugh again. "Oh, come on now. You thought of everything else. Don't feel badly. Your revenge has to be financial, that's all. Just strictly financial." He dropped his voice to a low, authoritative tone. "Let that be enough."

  "It's a deal," I said. "The package is in the glove compartment. "

  His eyes narrowed. "What package?"

  "Al's package. The one he sent me."

  "What the fuck are you talking about? I searched his room and his car. Sachs had no camera. He couldn't have sent you any package."

  "Okay, he didn't. Step out of the car and dive off to the right. I'll drive the hell out of here and you'll have your twenty-four hours."

  Crowley stared at the glove compartment.

  "He couldn't have. He wasn't that smart."

  I thought of the broken pinkie and 13 Rue Madeleine. "Oh, he was that smart. He was scared shitless of you, and I can see why. But he was that smart. Now take the package and go, or don't and go. Either way."

  “Open it," he said in the authoritative voice.

  "Open what?" I said.

  "The glove compartment! The goddamned glove compartment! Open it!"

  I shrugged and leaned over. He put the barrel of the Walther in my right ear. He smelled acrid, worried. He was breathing shallowly. He started to say, "If anything, if anything at all—"

  I popped open the box, Crowley tensing as the lid bounced a few times. He relaxed, and I straightened back up.

  "When I felt the barrel of that Walther, I nearly got a cramp in my left foot."

  His breathing edged toward normal. He glanced into the box.

  "The envelope," I said.

  He frowned at me, then peered down into the box and reached with his left hand.

  I relaxed my left foot and sensed the switch come up. The car quaked as Crowley caught the full blast of the 12-gauge squarely in the face. His Walther went off, the slug whacking me in the fleshy part of my right upper arm, wrecking some tricep.

  I yelled once in pain. My arm burned like hell, but there was no more noise or sensation except for the urinating sound of Crowley's blood as it drummed onto the vinyl upholstery. I looked over at him and tried not to think of how Marco must have felt as he watched the Coopers' house burn.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  -•-

  I GOT OUT OF THE CAR AND LISTENED. NO VOICES, NO sirens, nothing. The Walther bullet had torn up some of the driver's seat behind me. I ignored the upholstery and packed some snow up under my sleeve as best I could to retard the bleeding. I reached back into the car and pulled Crowley's case toward me. With some effort, I latched it back down. Then I sprang the hood of the Pontiac and, with a lot more effort from one and a half arms, tried to free the backward-facing shotgun from its braces in the engine compartment. I finally yanked it clear, parallel to the course the pellets had taken as they traveled through the barrel, past the hole and cloth in the engine side of the glove compartment, and into Crowley's face and chest.

  I set the shotgun down and opened the passenger's door. With my left hand, I grasped Crowley's coat at the neck and dragged him out of the car onto the snow. I examined his face and mouth for as long as I needed to. The features were a pulpy mess, the teeth too shattered for a dental chart comparison. I stripped him of all other ID, taking the cash from his wallet and using a pen-knife on his clothes labels. When I was finished, I left him on the ground.

  I closed down the hood of the Pontiac and carried the shotgun to the back of the car. I opened the trunk and fished out the blanket for the shotgun. Then I tossed Crowley's handgun and wallet in the trunk. For the tenth time I thought of tossing Crowley's body into the trunk, too. After all, Eddie was going to crush the car; the corpse could be crushed just as easily. The problem was that I had already involved Eddie more deeply than I cared to, and I was not about to make him that active an accessory.

  I walked back to the driver's door and retrieved the attaché case. I brought it back and opened it at the trunk. I divided the cash stacks into four piles of roughly equal weight. I then put the piles inside the book mailers and sealed them. They were addressed to J. T. Davis' box at the Newton Post Office.

  I closed down the trunk of the Pontiac and walked out from behind the building, cradling the wrapped shotgun in my bad arm and carrying the mailers under my good arm. I stood in the shadow of the side of the building and listened. It was only 5 P.M. , but the street was cathedral quiet. I carried my bundles down to the rental car. I opened the front door and tossed the mailers in on the floor of the passenger's side. I unwrapped and laid the shotgun gently on top, spreading the blanket over everything. I locked the door and returned up the driveway and around to the Pontiac. My arm was beginning to throb. I'd been wounded more seriously in the past, and I was pretty sure I wasn't losing enough blood to cause shock.

  I started the Pontiac and moved it back and forth a few times to ball up whatever tire tracks might be in the snow. Then I drove down the driveway and over to Eddie Shuba's place. Very light traffic. I pulled into his driveway and opened the gate lock with the key he had given me. I drove the Pontiac around behind some compressed wrecks and in front of some likely candidates. As I got out, I patted the steering wheel twice. I'm not sure I believe in animism, but the car had come through like an old, loyal farm
dog. Fearing powder burns from the Walther and blood stains from Crowley, I stripped off Arnie's old jacket and tossed it into the trunk. As I trudged back toward Eddie's gate, I looked behind me. No way anybody would spot the car from the street. I stopped at Eddie's shack and slipped the keys to the car and the gate through the slit in the lockbox on the shack wall. I edged through the gate, squeezing home the clasp of the lock from the outside.

  I looked around as casually as I could manage. I saw no one. I started hiking the half mile or so back to the auto shop and the rental. I stumbled two or three times, but I made it.

  I unlocked and turned the key in the rental. It coughed and grumbled twice, but it started on the third try. I mouthed a silent thank you and drove off slowly, stopping at four different mailboxes over a seven-mile, patternless stretch, dropping one book-mailer in each. Then I drove back to the auto body street.

  I got out of the car, carrying the shotgun. I walked behind the auto shop, ejected the first, spent shell, and fired twice more, one into the snow near Crowley's body, a second up at the concrete and wood wall. Then I braced myself, tore up the area of my wound a bit and dropped down, rolling around in the snow. I staggered, part for show and part for real, back to the rental. I drove, as erratically as possible, into the center of the town where I carefully selected a parked municipal vehicle, plowing into same at about twenty miles per hour. At impact, I struck my forehead on the steering wheel a bit more forcefully than the laws of physics required and slumped sideways into the suicide seat. I heard some yelling and footsteps. I tried to nap while I awaited the arrival of the police and ambulance.

  * * *

  I gave the impression of fading in and out for as many hours as I thought I could get away with it. It was probably 4 A.M. when I finally decided to awaken and a bleary-eyed cop named Wasser was called by the nurse to my side.

  While I had no mirror, I was willing to bet I looked better than Wasser. He wore a patched and taped Baxter State parka whose red-plaid lining clashed with the purple dot matrix plaid of his double knit sports jacket. He had battled a shaver at some point in the last thirty-six hours, but the skirmish hadn't reached the right side of his chin. He carried the remains of a vile-smelling sub sandwich in off-white butcher paper in his left hand and a pad and pencil in his right. He was overweight, probably thirty-two though he looked nearer fifty. I was willing to bet this was his first shooting. He pulled out a filthy card that looked as though it had figured prominently in the making of his sandwich. He began to read from the card.