The Hearse You Came in On (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries)

by Tim Cockey

  She was absolutely right. The glass was as steady as could be. She finished off her drink, then set the glass back onto the table.

  “The guy up on the walkway didn’t kill my husband,” Kate said. “He didn’t shoot Charley.” She whispered. “I did.”

  In a movement so swift I barely saw it, Kate snatched up her glass and aimed it at me like a pistol.

  “Pow.”

  CHAPTER 18

  God, what a sad mess. I don’t mean my apartment, I mean Kate Zabriskie and the numerous tangles that were doing their number on her. My apartment was a mess, though as usual I pinned the blame on Alcatraz, lovably clumsy Clydesdale that he is. I actually need a bigger place or a smaller dog. But I’m happy with both of what I’ve got, so I manage.

  After Kate’s shocker, she had asked me to leave. When I asked if she was going to be all right she had said “No. But I’ll be worse if you’re here trying to be nice to me. It’s a mess, Hitch. You don’t even know the half of it.”

  She had gone to a nice old rolltop desk and pulled a thick envelope from one of the drawers and handed it to me.

  “Is this the half of it?” I had asked.

  “I can’t talk about this anymore today. Tonight. Whatever. I’m exhausted. Read these. It’s mainly fiction, but you’ll get some idea of… well, just read it.”

  The envelope was filled with newspaper clippings. I spread them out on my bed and sat Buddha-style on a pillow as I went over them. They were all from the previous fall. I sorted them by date. I tried to keep in mind what Kate had told me: mainly fiction.

  TWO KILLED IN WAREHOUSE SHOOTING

  Police Trap Turns Deadly

  UNDERCOVER COP KILLED IN CROSSFIRE

  Police Investigating Possible Ambush

  POLICE WIFE SHOT HUSBAND’S KILLER

  Detective Took Out Husband’s Killer

  Seconds After Fatal Shot

  BITTER JUSTICE FOR WIDOW

  Commissioner Stuart Calls Officer Zabriskie

  a Hero; Funeral Set for Tomorrow

  HERO WIDOW BIDS FAREWELL TO HERO HUSBAND

  Huge Turnout for Det. Chas. Russell;

  Katherine Zabriskie Cleared in Killing

  of Husband’s Murderer

  A thin red line was ripping the horizon by the time I finished going over all of the clippings. The men of the purple dawn had already come by and rattled the neighborhood’s trash cans into their truck. The seagulls were awake, sending their laughter through the sky. All across Baltimore, razors and toasters were doing their thing.

  Kate told me that she had shot and killed her own husband. By mistake of course. Crossed wires and botched communications and who knows what else had landed Charley Russell on the wrong side of a police stakeout, and even more cruelly, his nearly new wife on the other side, pistol at the ready, steady as a mountain—per police training—squeezing off a single shot in the second before recognizing her target as her own beloved husband. She told me this much, and this much only: “I saw a man coming up with a gun and I shot him. He dropped immediately. A second later I took a bullet in the shoulder from the guy up on the walkway. Lou—he was the detective there with me—Lou nailed him. And that was the end of the truth.”

  The clippings included a standard police academy mug shot of Katherine Zabriskie, a remarkably bland photograph in my view, just another earnest smiling face under a slightly too-large police hat. There was a picture of her husband as well. He was a solidly handsome guy with a tidy little policeman’s mustache. Two kids in love. It was a heartbreaker.

  It finally dawned on me that I really needed to get some sleep. I flipped off the light, only to find that it had ceased doing any good about an hour ago. Day had dawned. I put a pillow over my head and suffocated myself to sleep.

  CHAPTER 19

  I had a funeral slotted for the morning. The Webster funeral. Though when I got to my office, the paperwork on my desk said it was the Weber funeral. It was a typo. God, I hoped the gravestone was right. There’s nothing you can do with a misspelled headstone that reads “Weber” except to keep it to the side and wait to see if anyone named Weber kicks and drops. Though it dawned on me that I could call up a guy I used to know named Weber and see if he had any interest. We used to be good friends, but we had a falling out some years back over something small and petty. I don’t suppose a phone call from me offering him a misspelled gravestone with his name on it would do much to thaw the ice between us.

  Moot point anyway. When I got to the cemetery the gravestone read “Webster,” not “Weber.” The funeral went off without a hitch. Or with just one, if you’re referring to me. I shook a half-dozen Webster hands and lent my hanky to the widow. As we were leaving the cemetery I saw one of the guests, a stocky balding guy with a thick Norse-looking beard, pull out a tobacco pipe from his coat pocket, load it and stoke it. After a few puffs he tapped his pipe against the coffin then put it back in his pocket. A little ashes-to-ashes thing. You’d be surprised how many people have their little personal rituals. This guy wandered back over to his wife, who poked him lovingly in the gut. They headed off to their car with their arms around each other.

  After I got back from the funeral I went out to the end of the pier that runs past the Screaming Oyster Saloon and gazed out over the harbor. I’ve been doing this ever since I was a kid. It’s not really much of a view, but for some reason it has always worked for me as the place to do my hard thinking. The busy world of commerce was well under way. Across the harbor, a long, low-riding barge pulled slowly away from the Bethlehem Steel plant, where turn-of-the-century chimney stacks were belching steam out into the sky. My mother used to try to convince me that this is where clouds were made. You see, Hitchcock? You see? There they are! Look. Brand-new! Just beyond the Beth Steel plant is the Domino sugar sign, a huge rectangle of steel and pink neon. And beyond that, the big spindly cargo cranes over at Sparrows Point. Somewhere back there, Kate Zabriskie had shot her husband.

  I had gone out to the pier in the hopes of sorting through the tangle of all the dead people who seemed to be piling up around Kate Zabriskie. The fictions chronicled in the newspaper clippings had actually revealed an awful lot, even as they obscured an awful lot. For one thing, Alan Stuart was a master manipulator, even by highly successful politician standards. The puppeteering he had apparently performed around the death of Kate’s detective husband was no lightweight tug of the string. He did no less then reassign the responsibility for the death of Charley Russell from one person to another. I’m not privy to all that would be required to hush up the tragedy of one cop accidentally shooting another cop, but I have to imagine that Alan Stuart worked his strings pretty deftly and pretty damned swiftly to pull it off. Aside from the issue of the coroner’s report, which certainly would have distinguished the type of bullet that brought down Detective Russell, there was the business of the other cops on the scene. Surely they knew what went down. Their stories all had to be made to square with the brand-new truth. How had Alan Stuart managed to get all of these puppets so perfectly lined up?

  A tugboat gave off three sharp blasts.

  No. I was asking the wrong question. “How” is a matter of logistics. Gargantuan logistics in this case, but apparently doable. The newspaper fiction proved that much.

  The real question was “Why?” Why would Alan Stuart clamber through these kinds of hoops? I made an invisible disk of the word “chivalry” and flung it out at the water. It sank immediately. No way. Kate Zabriskie was a beat cop. The commissioner of the city’s police force is not going to risk his entire career in order to buoy a beat cop, I don’t care how dishy her legs are.

  That’s when I left the pier and got into my car and drove straight down to police headquarters.

  Kate wasn’t in. But Detective John Kruk was. He saw me standing at the front desk and he motioned for me to step into his office.

  “Take a seat, Mr. Sewell.” I did. He got right to the point. “Mr. Sewell, would you mind telling me again where
you were last Saturday night?”

  “God, are we back to that?”

  “You’re answering my question with a question. I don’t like that.”

  “You don’t?” I couldn’t resist. The detective waited. His expression was telling me that he had all day to wait. I continued. “I just want to get this straight. I’m not considered a suspect in this murder, but you would like to hear my alibi anyway, is that it?”

  “I would.”

  “And if I don’t have one?”

  “You’re asking questions again.”

  I shook my fist melodramatically in the air. “Well I’m sorry, Detective. But I want some answers, damn it!”

  Way back in the prehistoric past of the clan of Kruk, a tiny smile was perhaps once cracked. If so, the perpetrator was immediately bludgeoned to death and the errant gene forever snuffed out.

  The detective leaned forward and laced his fingers together on top of his desk.

  “I’m going to be straight with you, Mr. Sewell. The murder of a hothead tennis pro is not the sort of crime that keeps me awake at night. I didn’t know him, and from the sound of things, I wouldn’t have liked him. It’s a little like your job. You don’t have to care one way or the other about the people you’re putting into the ground, do you. You just do it. It’s what you’re trained to do, it’s what you’re paid to do.”

  A fine little speech. But what the hell was he getting at?

  “I’m sure you know, I’m not even working this case anymore,” Kruk continued. “It’s been handed to Detective Zabriskie.”

  “She told me.”

  Kruk unlaced his fingers and sat back in his chair. “I saw the two of you at the fund-raiser the other night. That’s not real professional of her, seeing you socially. Suspect or not. Not while this case is still open. Detective Zabriskie knows that.”

  “Then shouldn’t you be having this little chat with Detective Zabriskie?”

  “I should and I will. But she hasn’t reported in for work today. You wouldn’t by any chance have any idea why, would you?”

  I pictured the pretty detective at home crying her eyes out into her pillow. Pow.

  “Nope.”

  “Well, I happened to see you out there in the office wandering around looking kind of lost, so I thought I’d call you in for a little chat.”

  “That was so kind of you,” I said, smiling broadly enough to show I didn’t mean it.

  He spread his hands beatifically. “I’m a public servant, Mr. Sewell.”

  “Look, Detective, am I at all out of line in asking you if my social life, or for that matter, Detective Zabriskie’s, is actually any of your business? I seem to be missing something here.”

  “You’re not missing anything, Mr. Sewell. You’re right. It’s not technically any of my business. It’s not my case and I’m not Detective Zabriskie’s baby-sitter.”

  “Nor mine.”

  “Or yours. That’s right. Why don’t you just put it down as my good deed for the day, okay?” He paused. No public servant crap this time. Kruk drilled me with his small eyes. “Things are going to be getting a little messy around here, Mr. Sewell. I’m only trying to keep the bit players out of the picture. For their own sake as well as mine. Now why don’t you show me you know how to take a hint.”

  I had a feeling that whatever “mess” he was referring to, he wasn’t going to share it with me. A hubbub sounded just then from the open area outside Kruk’s office. Kruk was looking past me to see what it was.

  “Can I go now?” I asked.

  He waved his hand in the air. “Go.”

  I got out of the chair and stepped to the door. The hubbub was coming from across the main room. It looked to me like some sort of reunion. A stocky guy in civilian clothes was surrounded by cops, who were slapping his back and punching his arm and all that other sort of camaraderie pummeling that goes on. The guy didn’t look exactly comfortable with it all either. He had a hard smile tacked on his face. He was a beefy man. Square head. Small black eyes. Black hair in tight curls, receding to the top of his broad forehead. He looked like Tony Bennett, but Tony Bennett on mean pills.

  It sounded like the cops were chanting “You! You! You!” But then I realized that they were chanting the guy’s name: “Lou! Lou! Lou!”

  Kruk stepped up next to me and watched the little scene with fairly undisguised distaste.

  “Who’s Mr. Popular?” I asked.

  “Lou Bowman,” Kruk said, almost as if to himself. “What the hell do you know. Lottery goddamn Lou.”

  “Lottery Lou? That wouldn’t by any chance be someone who hands out winning tickets, would it?” The way everyone was kissing up to the guy it certainly seemed like that was the case.

  Kruk grunted. “Fat chance. Bowman used to work here. He was a detective. He played the lottery every week. Never missed a week.”

  “So what happened? Did he hit the jackpot?”

  Kruk crossed his arms on his chest, one hand sliding up to cup his chin. His eyes narrowed as he watched the activity across the room.

  “Better. Go figure this. He never hits. Not even a four match. Then one day, a wealthy aunt dies. Leaves Lou the whole damn farm. Suddenly a cop’s salary is chump change.”

  “He quit?”

  Kruk was tugging on a nonexistent goatee. “Didn’t even give us time to kiss his lucky ass good-bye. Moved up to Maine.”

  “What’s in Maine?” I asked.

  Kruk let out a soft snort. “It’s not here.” He turned and went back into his office. Apparently Kruk wasn’t the backslapping type. I looked back over at the scene. Lottery Lou didn’t look like the type either. He looked like a bulldog that was being forced to stand there and be fussed over by a group of poodle lovers.

  As I turned to leave I caught sight of someone else who was also observing the little reunion. He was standing half hidden in the far doorway to my left, practically in the stairwell. He was unnoticed at first by the backslapping men across the room. I’m positive. Had they seen him, they would have reacted. Even at this distance, the cold anger in the man’s eyes was palpable. It was Police Commissioner Stuart. As I watched, though, I became aware that one of the men—Lou Bowman himself—had picked up on his former boss’s presence across the room. I saw the stocky ex-cop toss a very unloving glance of his own over toward the doorway. When I looked back, Stuart was gone. I caught just a glimpse of the shadow of his broad shoulders disappearing down the stairs.

  Before I left the station I wrote a short note to Kate on the back of a Wanted poster that I found floating near the top of a trash can. I guess they got the guy. Or stopped caring. I folded up the note and begged an envelope off the front desk cop and wrote on it: “Kate Zabriskie/Personal.”

  “Can you see that Detective Zabriskie gets this?” I asked the desk cop.

  He looked at the envelope. “It’s personal?”

  “So it says.”

  “I’ll see that she gets it.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Too late for that.”

  I left. I guess the note wasn’t really all that personal. It read: “Call me. H.”

  There was a note on my windshield when I got to my car. Gosh, everyone was passing notes today. Mine was from the City of Baltimore. They didn’t like where I had chosen to park my car. For eighty-five dollars, though, they’d be happy to forget all about it.

  I got into my car and tried to peel out. Chevy Nothings don’t peel out. I ran two red lights and took a left turn from the right lane. Might as well get my money’s worth.

  CHAPTER 20

  Gil Vance was insisting that I attend a rehearsal, so I did. My pith helmet and Teddy Roosevelt glasses were waiting for me, as was a wooden lectern that the prop mistress had dug up. Our gold-plated number at the funeral home had been deemed too ornate. Betty the prop mistress also handed me a large felt caterpillar.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “That’s your mus
tache.”

  “I’m supposed to wear this?”

  “Here’s your spirit gum,” Betty said, ignoring my objections. Prop mistresses have to do this. Three-quarters of their time is spent ignoring rude objections from thespian snobs.

  “I can’t wear this. I’ll look ridiculous,” I sputtered. Betty gave me her “get real” look. I was already holding a pith helmet and a pair of Teddy Roosevelt eyeglasses. Heaven forbid I suddenly look ridiculous adding one more prop to the mix. I held the thing to my lip. It smelled like dust and it itched like crazy.

  “Looks great,” Betty said, not even bothering to sound like she meant it. She moved off to disappoint someone else. I pinched a little spirit gum onto the scratchy felt thing and attached it to the crotch of a plaster knock-off of the Venus de Milo that was on a nearby shelf. It looked better on her, I’m sure.

  Gil had gotten a message from Chinese Sue that Julia wouldn’t be making the rehearsal, so there went my playmate for the evening. Gil said that he would read Julia’s lines. We were slotted to go over the soda fountain scene tonight. Michael Goldfarb and Gil Vance were going to sit at the sawhorse soda counter and make gaga eyes at each other while sipping from a large glass of fake malted milk. Libby Maslin had volunteered to stand in for the part of Emily, but Gil had nixed the idea. “You’re the boy’s mother. We can’t go mixing him up that way.” Oh, I see … not that way.

  As the rehearsal got under way, Betty the prop mistress resurfaced. She was holding what looked like a licorice black shoelace in her hand. It was another mustache, a black waxed number. Snidely Whiplash. I liked it.

  Gil wasn’t so sure. “It makes you look like a villain.”

  “Gil, I think the folksy nice-guy Stage Manager thing has been done to death. There’s a darkness to this play. Can’t we think something along the lines of … say, Cabaret? ‘Good evening madams and monsieurs. Willkommen to our town. Vatch your steps, pleeze.’ ”