by Ed Gorman
‘Any special reason you were having dinner with him?’
Before I could answer, two of the cops working on the car came up to her. The three of them had one of those football-like huddles meant to exclude the ears of outlanders. Namely me.
When they were done she was all mine again. ‘So why were you having dinner with him?’
‘I’m just here for forty-eight hours. He was under the impression – the wrong impression – that I was here to suggest shaking up the staff.’
‘Meaning firing people?’
‘Right.’
‘Just why are you here?’
‘Every campaign needs to be assessed from time to time. Congressman Ward’s father was a close friend of my father’s. Tom Ward thought I might have a few ideas about improving things here. Streamlining them.’
‘He’s not going to win. Burkhart is.’
‘Is that a paid political announcement?’
She was very good at hiding how much she cared for me.
‘Ward and three of his staffers are inside being interviewed by two of my officers. I want them to interview you, too.’
‘I don’t know much. I didn’t meet the staff until a few hours ago.’
‘The back door is standing open. Don’t touch anything or speak to any of the officers. They’re busy. Just go straight inside. One of the officers in uniform will take you to where the interviews are being conducted. This place is going to be hell within another twenty minutes or so. We need you all to cooperate because we’re going to get state press here right away. And maybe even national press, too. And that’s going to make our job one hell of a lot harder.’
‘I understand.’
The downturn of her lips said she doubted it.
She was right about the uniformed officer waiting for me just inside the opened back door. He was young, tall, scrawny, and had an Adam’s apple the size of a baseball.
‘Follow me, please.’
The police were using the conference room for the interviews. Two offices down sat Lucy Cummings and Kathy Tomlin.
The officer escorted me inside the office and then pointed to the sole empty chair on the visitor’s side of the desk. Nobody said anything. I sat down next to Lucy.
‘He’s dead,’ Kathy said. Big tears loomed on the lower edges of her blue eyes. ‘At least he died in that Captain America jacket he loved so much. It sounds crazy, but it meant a lot to him.’ Then: ‘I wish I would have been more of a help to him.’
Enough of remorse. There would be time for that later. The big problem now was managing the press. ‘What the hell happened, anyway?’ All I knew was that he’d been found murdered in his car. This would be the most predictable kind of story – a mystery inside a political campaign. Was some sleazy secret being kept from the public? Was this poor young man killed because he knew too much? Burkhart would hire extra PR flacks to push this story twenty-four/seven.
Lucy hid her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook. I slid my arm around her.
Kathy said, ‘I’d be the same way Lucy is if I’d found him, Dev. She told me she heard two noises that she thought might be gunshots. She ran to the back door to look through the window. She saw Jim’s car back there. The door was open and she could see a foot dangling beneath it.’
Lucy took her hands from her face and with a great deal of sniffling and snuffling said, ‘I ran out there. It was stupid because whoever’d fired the gun might still be out there. But I knew something had happened to Jim. And that’s how I found him. He’d been shot in the side of the head. Poor Jimmy.’ The face went into the hands again. The shoulders shook once more.
Kathy finished the story. ‘She told me she saw the blood on the side of his head. Where the bullet had gone in. And then somehow she managed to call 911 on her cell phone. When I came in I heard her throwing up in the bathroom. I went in and she managed to tell me about Jim. By then the police were here.’
‘What about enemies?’ I said. ‘Did he ever mention somebody being after him or something?’
‘No,’ Kathy said. ‘Though we got a lot of threats on the phone and in the mail. Not so much here. But in Jeff’s congressional office across town – you know, where people can come to get help. They’ve had to close down twice because they found things that looked like they might be bombs. And one night somebody spray-painted ‘Nigger Lover’ on their front window. And ‘Death to Tyrants.’ You know, because of Obama. Things like that got to all of us. I got to the point where I’d park as close to the back door here as I could so at night I didn’t have to walk far to get in my car and go home. All these guns floating around and all these threats scared everybody. Campaigns always get rough but we’ve never seen anything like this. It affected everybody.’
‘The police will have to look into the possibility that he was robbed.’
‘Jim didn’t have any money to speak of,’ Kathy said.
‘These days you can get killed for fifty cents,’ I said. ‘Right now that’s a possibility we have to consider.’
‘So it could be just a coincidence?’ Lucy sniffled.
‘Possibly,’ I said. ‘It’s not out of the question. But what I’m worried about is how the press is going to handle this.’
Kathy nodded. ‘Burkhart’s already put out a lot of brochures playing up Jeff’s reputation as an ass bandit. He managed to dig up all these old photos of when Jeff was still single and dressing up in dinner jackets and going out with great-looking young women on his arm. Before he was married, Jeff used to date this beautiful black woman. Naturally that’s the biggest photo in all the brochures and handouts.’
‘Where did Jim live?’ I asked.
Kathy scribbled the address on a piece of paper and handed it to me. She also gave me directions.
‘But won’t the police be there now?’ Kathy said.
‘Not if I get there first.’
‘The police will want to talk to you.’
And they did. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, a slender man with red hair and a red mustache held up a hand to stop me. ‘I’m Detective Fincher. Did any of our people interview you upstairs?’
‘No. I was in kind of a hurry. There were two officers and they were busy interviewing other people so I just left.’
‘You could be in some trouble leaving like that. What’s your name?’
‘Dev Conrad.’
From the pocket of his gray tweed sport coat he took a small notebook. He flipped open the cover and then clicked the ballpoint pen so that it was ready for action. ‘And you work for Congressman Ward?’
‘I’m a consultant Congressman Ward hired. I just got here last night. My first full day with the campaign. I met Jim Waters briefly. We were supposed to get together later tonight for dinner.’
‘Any particular reason?’
We had to keep shifting positions to let law enforcement people in and out of the back door.
‘We’d gotten off to a bad start. Whenever campaigns bring in a new consultant the staff get nervous. Start thinking they might get fired. I’d be the same way. He said a few things and then apologized for them a little later. No big deal. I just thought it’d be a good thing to agree to meet him. Smooth things over. He seemed to want to talk.’
‘About what?’
‘I never found out.’
The alley was filling up with press-fighting uniformed officers bent on keeping them away from the car where Waters had been killed. Fincher glanced at the struggle and frowned. The press was not necessarily beloved where he worked.
‘So you wouldn’t have any idea why he was killed tonight?’
‘None. I really didn’t know him.’
He glanced at the surging reporters again. ‘They’d destroy the crime scene if you gave them half a chance.’ Then: ‘Where’re you headed now?’
I could’ve told him that he had no right to ask me that question but I was in a hurry. I wanted to check out Waters’ apartment before the police did. I wanted to take away anythin
g that might embarrass the campaign. Drugs, S&M gear, unexplained stacks of money. You just never knew what you’d find. And cops talk. Anything salacious they found would be on TV within hours of the police searching Waters’ place.
‘Believe it or not, I’m going back to my hotel room to get some sleep.’
‘We’ll want to ask you more questions, I’m sure. You got a card?’
I extracted one from my billfold and gave it to him. ‘I’m staying at the Royale.’
He didn’t even look at it, just tucked it between the pages of his notebook. ‘Somebody from the station will be contacting you.’
I nodded and started off in the direction of my rental. I had to restrain myself from breaking into a run. I needed to go through Waters’ apartment and I didn’t have much time.
The Carlton Arms had been new probably sometime in the early sixties. The tan color and texture of the brick facing dated back to that era. But neither time nor its residents had been kind to it. The asphalt parking lot had ridges where heat and cold had split it. A number of the windows on the west side had been smashed and were covered with cardboard and tape. Music ranging from rap to country-western boomed and screeched from various apartments.
I didn’t see any police vehicles, marked or not, so I pulled in and walked up to the glass door with SECTION B neatly painted above it. It wouldn’t be long before the officials arrived.
I knocked on the door marked Manager. Pierce Rollins. Except for Pierce Brosnan I’d never heard of a man with that first name.
The guy who opened the door was not my idea of a ‘Pierce.’ He was probably in his mid-twenties. He had a wicked devil-style beard and arms that had been covered with a tattoo artist’s fiercest supernatural creatures.
‘It’s a little late, buddy.’ Behind him was a somewhat overweight but attractive woman in a black chemise smoking a cigarette. I guess she hadn’t read the No Smoking sign that greeted folks when they came through the front door.
‘Jim Waters called me – he wants me to pick up something for him.’
He was suddenly interested enough to look at me seriously. The TV set went crazy with laughter. The woman laughed, too. ‘You’re missing this, babe.’
‘You’d be who?’
I showed him my identification. ‘I work with the campaign. I’m just here for a couple of days. We’re out at a rally on the edge of town. Jim wanted to call you but we’re in a valley out there and his cell won’t work.’
The woman laughed again and said, ‘C’mon, babe. You’d love this.’
‘Why bother me with this shit? He must’ve given you a key. He’s on the second floor in Apartment D. Handle it yourself.’
‘Just thought I’d touch base.’
‘Yeah. Touch base. Shit.’
The way he slammed the door, he must have awakened more than half his tenants.
The smells of various dinners collided just the way the disparate music had. Spaghetti, some kind of fish, burgers. The hall carpeting had cuts and holes in it. On the tan walls you could see where dirty words had almost been scrubbed out. I’d checked in with the manager in case he got a complaint that I was seen unlocking Jim Waters’ door. I didn’t have a key; I had the three burglar picks I’d kept from my days as an army investigator.
Captain America was going to kick my ass. That was the sense I had anyway as soon as I flipped on the living-room light of this one-bedroom apartment. The poster covered half the wall facing me. He looked very, very pissed and as you well know, nobody fucks with the Captain.
There were other posters, too. Two quite comely and mostly naked starlets whose names I didn’t know. Then a small gallery, on another wall, of terrifying comic book figures. Creatures that resembled humans but were in fact ghouls of some kind carrying axes, enormous knives, bludgeons, and severed heads. All of them dripped blood and all of them walked over bloody arms and legs and faces.
Real life hadn’t been kind to Jim and so he’d retreated into fantasy life here where he was not only safe but accepted. I heard echoes of Lucy Cummings crying and felt some of her sadness. He’d been aggrieved by so many things.
No idea what I was looking for, I tried to log on to his computer but it was password protected, and the small table he used for a desk in the corner held nothing more than a Brother printer and blank paper.
In his bedroom I found more posters plus five long cardboard boxes jammed tight with comic books. They’d been sorted and catalogued. The drawers of his dresser were sparsely filled with socks with holes and underwear that had outlived its shelf life. Under one small pile of undershirts I found three bullets for a .38. I wondered where the gun was. I went through the three-shelf bookcase next to his mussed bed. Robert Jordan and R.A. Salvatore and Star Wars tie-ins outnumbered all the other authors represented.
The closet was filled with clothes that must have dated back to his college days; maybe high school, some of them. He’d never been stylish.
Coats often held interesting items so I started on them. A cheap blue trench coat didn’t produce anything, nor did a Fighting Illini jacket or any of the other clothing.
‘I’ll bring the key back when I’m done, Pierce.’
Voice. Young. Female. Shouting down the steps.
A key rasped in the lock.
I was standing in the center of the room when the door opened and she appeared.
The style is called Goth. This young woman was in a fitted black dress with black tights, dyed black hair, and black lipstick. She was no more than twenty years old and hard as she tried she couldn’t disguise the fact that she was quite pretty in a somewhat waifish way.
‘Who the hell are you, mister?’
‘I could ask you the same thing.’
‘I’m Jimmy’s collaborator.’
‘On what?’
‘On none of your fucking business.’
I couldn’t help it. I smiled.
‘What’s so funny, smart ass?’
‘Nothing’s funny, believe me. You’re just so damn belligerent and for no reason. You’d better come in. We need to talk.’
‘You still haven’t told me who you are.’
‘My name’s Dev Conrad.’
She walked past me with great disdain. She pitched her purse on the couch then opened it up to rescue her cigarettes and lighter. After she sat down she said, ‘Where’s Jimmy?’
‘Jimmy’s dead. Somebody murdered him a couple of hours ago.’
She took at least half a minute to respond. There was no gasping, no sobbing, no clasping her hand to her breast. The only evidence that she’d been stunned by what I said was the tremor in the fingers that held the cigarette.
‘Oh, my God. So Rachel was right.’
‘What?’
Her grave blue eyes met mine. ‘Rachel McClure. She’s a friend of mine. She can see the future.’
‘I see.’
‘Don’t give me any of your ‘I see’ bullshit. If I tell you she can see the future, she can see the future, all right?’ Her voice had risen to just below a scream.
‘All right.’
‘And she was getting these vibes about Jimmy. She didn’t want to tell him because that would just freak him out. Jimmy is very sensitive.’
‘When’s the last time you saw Jimmy?’
‘Two nights ago. If it’s any of your business.’ She crossed her legs. Then uncrossed them. Then crossed them again. ‘What the hell are you staring at?’
‘You. I just want to make sure you’re all right.’
‘Oh, I see. Maybe you want to come over here and sit next to me. Maybe slide your arm around me. Maybe grab a cheap feel. Something like that?’
‘I like women a little older.’
‘What, eighty or ninety?’
‘That’s a nice range.’
She sort of flounced in place. Then threw her head back and stared at the ceiling. She had a classic neck. ‘He’s dead; Jimmy’s dead. Jimmy’s fucking dead. No way I can believe this.’ Her head snapped
back into its normal position and she glared at me. ‘You’re not making this up, are you?’
‘Why would I make it up?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I walk in here and find you doing God-knows-what to his apartment. How do I know you’re not some robber?’
‘Exactly what would I take from this place? His Captain America poster?’
‘You making fun of Jimmy, you bastard?’
‘No. I’m just pointing out that there isn’t anything in here that would have much resale value.’ Then: ‘How old are you?’
‘Not old enough to interest you. Thank God.’
‘C’mon. How old?’
‘Nineteen. Wanna see my license?’
‘Yeah.’
She flung her purse at me. I opened it and lifted her wallet free. The license read Jennifer Kelly Conners. Her Goth photo was ominous. She had to have worked hard to get it that way. Her age was listed as nineteen. I dropped wallet back into purse and sent purse sailing through the air to couch.
‘Jimmy keep any liquor here?’
‘You gonna drink his booze?’
‘I’m not. You are. So where is it?’
‘There’s beer in the fridge and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s black in the cupboard. I gave it to him for his birthday but he hasn’t ever opened it. He likes beer.’
I found the Jack and poured a shot into a Transformers glass that was a promotional item when the second film came out. I brought the glass to her then took the tattered armchair across from her.
‘You think this is going to make me tell you all his secrets?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, you’d have to do a hell of a lot better than this.’ To prove it she knocked it off in a single gulp.
‘I’m impressed.’
‘Screw you.’
‘So what were Jimmy’s secrets?’
She had a wild, somewhat deranged laugh. ‘God, you’re too much of a dork to be a robber.’
‘Thank you. By the way, why did you borrow Pierce’s key and come in here?’
‘Because I used to have a key of my own but I lost it in some club. Jimmy loved to come home and find me waiting for him. And anyway, who the hell are you?’
I explained why I was in town and that I was supposed to have met Jimmy tonight for dinner. Then I gussied up the reason for the dinner. ‘He said there was something he needed to tell me. Something he was worried about. My impression was that he was afraid about something.’