“Yeah,” I cut in. “I can see it now. Like A Night at the Opera, right?”
Elliot stared at me. Greasy nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, yeah.”
“Where did you send Wheelock’s checks?” I said.
“Someplace in Connecticut.” Greasy replied.
“Get me the address.”
He kept nodding as he trotted off to a filing cabinet. In his hurry, he kept tossing files onto the floor. Then he found what he was looking for, sighed, and brought it back to me. The address was in Greenwich. I could still make it before dark if I left now.
I put my hand on Greasy’s arm. “You’ll see my ugly face again if I don’t find what I’m looking for.”
“Yes, sir,” Greasy said. “I’m always glad to help you any way I can.”
“I like the way you handle yourself,” I told him. “Just keep those young men on the phone and off the girls.”
CHAPTER XX
I felt like a regular commuter on I-95. First, Chisolm’s company, then his house, now Wheelock’s address. It was 5:45 PM and smack in the middle of the evening rush. At least the car wasn’t overheating, not yet anyway. There was plenty of time to ponder our fragile dependence on mechanical objects and the unchanging physical laws of the universe.
As I drove along and tried to stay out of the trajectory of those angry sixteen-wheelers, I weighed the likelihood of Alicia running around waving a gun and threatening her boyfriend’s privates. She wasn’t a violent person, but she was tough and she was capable of defending herself. She wasn’t a fragile blossom, like those old-fashioned women. Come to think of it, she could be a vixen when pushed too far. I remembered a day long ago, when we were first married. I said something, damned if I recall what it was, but it went deep into her soul and riled her beyond belief. She grabbed one of those carving knives from the kitchen stand and chased me around the apartment, her eyes flashing, half-laughing at her audacity as she threatened to raise my voice two octaves. When I finally got the knife away from her, she crumpled on the floor and we did it then, Alicia laughing hysterically as if she couldn’t believe she could have ever acted so irrationally.
The woman they described sure sounded like her. And I guess she was capable of that kind of rage. What the hell had happened to my girl since she left me to put her in such a state? What sort of pressure could make a well-brought-up woman turn into a banshee in a public place?
I pulled off 95 at exit 4 and made a wide swing beneath an underpass. Spray painted on the concrete wall were the words I WANT MY MTV! No incitement to violence, no cry for identity, no lovesick plaint. Just a teenager’s simple wish.
The sun had just scudded behind some clouds when I located the address. It was a shabby-looking house on a quiet cul-de-sac. The other houses on the street looked like Buckingham Palace by comparison. The smell of freshly-cut grass hung in the air, but the smell wasn’t coming from this house. The yard was overgrown with weeds. There was a sculpture of a Cupid that had once been painted pink, but the paint was flaking and patches of rust were showing through, like large scabs. The house was a Cape Cod with brown cedar shakes that had been worn away by a quarter century of rainstorms so you could see the insulation under the ragged edges of the shakes.
The front door was half-open, but the outer screen door was locked. I knocked a couple of times and called out and waited maybe three minutes before I heard a heavy tread coming down the stairs. She was a slow-moving hulk of a woman in her sixties and she peered at me through heavy-lidded eyes.
I held my badge up for her to see through the screen. She squinted at it for a long minute, but her vision was obviously less than perfect.
“I’m looking for Steven Wheelock,” I said.
Reluctantly she unlatched the screen door and shoved it outward. “He ain’t here,” she said with a look of sour displeasure. “He ain’t been here since last winter. Skipped out without paying the last two months rent. His room’s still empty. Ain’t been able to rent it since.” Her voice was gravelly and seemed to issue forth from her nose. Her features were puffy and her skin was too pink, almost flushed. “Lowlife son of a bitch, he was,” she muttered, more as a confirmation to herself.
“Let me see his room,” I said.
She half nodded and led me to a wooden staircase with a runner that looked as old and dirty as the hills. She led me up the stairs, each one creaking more than the one before and showed me to a room at the top of the landing. It was a pitiful room for a grown man. Worse than the one in the Van Gogh painting. The room was as dirty as the rest of the house. It had a sloping ceiling that made it feel even more cramped than it was. The one small window was coated with a film of grease that wouldn’t even allow the daylight to shine through. Poor suffering bastard.
I took a long look around and asked her, “Did he leave anything behind?”
She laughed. “Sure, he left his books and an empty bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey.”
“Let me see.”
She jerked her head toward the closet. I yanked open the door and looked in. On the floor were stacked four corrugated cartons, filled mostly with paperbacks. I slid them out into the middle of the room and put the boxes side by side. The motes of dust floated up and caught what little light entered the room. I reached out and flicked on a gooseneck lamp on a rickety wooden table next to the bed.
Well, if Wheelock was a lowlife son of a bitch, he was an intelligent one. The books were a good sampling of what a well-educated man might want to read. There were some works by the classical philosophers, standard histories of shining eras of Western civilization, and great fiction that stood the test of time. It was a collection that could have come from the circulation desk of a good liberal arts college. The only deviation was a significant number of books by Sacher-Masoch, de Sade, and their ilk, and some Victorian pornographers and earlier specimens like Fanny Hill. There was nothing else in the boxes. I put the books back in the boxes and shoved them back into the closet.
“He leave anything else?” I asked her.
She thought for a while before she answered. “Left a note, is all.”
“Do you still have it?”
She grunted, “Yeap.”
“Let me see it.”
She padded out of the room and back down the stairs. I was alone in the room-me and Wheelock’s ghost. The mattress was stripped bare and rolled up at the foot of the bed. That’s how thin it was.
“Why did you take her away from me, you bastard?” I said out loud.
The response came back silently. “Because you let me.”
The landlady’s steps sounded on the stairs and the landing like the soft strokes of a brush. She walked into the room and handed me the note. It was scrawled on a legal- size lined yellow sheet. The handwriting was jagged and uneven.
Dear Mrs. Lenkowsky,
I’m sorry I had to leave without paying the rent. As soon as I have the money, I’ll send it to you. For security,
I’m leaving you my books. I know you don’t think they’re worth two months rent, but to me they’re worth a lot more.
Again, my apologies.
Sincerely,
Steven Wheelock
I looked up at the old woman.
“He never sent the rent?”
She shook her head vigorously, like she wanted to shake his memory out of her head.
“Son of a bitch,” she repeated.
“What else can you tell me? Did he ever see anyone or talk to anyone that you knew of?”
She hesitated. She needed some incentive. I fished in my pocket, came up with a ten, and held it up for her to see. Her eyes followed the bill, savoring it.
“Some woman used to call him. Said she was his sister.”
“Did she give a name?”
“Nope.” She reached for the ten. I let her pull it out of my hand.
“Anything else you can think of that would help me find him?”
She was engaged in some heavy duty thinking now, the glint of g
reed flashing somewhere far back behind her eyes.
Finally she shrugged in resignation. “I don’t know where he is.”
“OK,” I said and gave her my card. “Call me if you have anything. There’s money in it for you.”
I’d engaged her interest. “Yes sir,” she said, her voice a notch higher. “You betcha.”
CHAPTER XXI
The ride back to the city was a breeze. It was Friday night and I was going against the traffic. Anybody who could rub two nickels together was headed out of town for the beach or the mountains. I didn’t feel like going back to an empty apartment so I called Rachel from the car, but all I got was her machine with a sexy message about how much fun the caller was missing. I told the machine to get back to me and left my home and cell phone number, hoping she’d return soon. There was nothing to eat in my fridge except a pack of frozen hot dogs and some cheese that was showing its age, so I pulled into the garage under my building, parked in my space and took a copy of Fortune along to read while I grabbed a bite. There was a coffee shop on the next block that was friendly, if nothing else. The place was half-empty when I walked in so I had my choice of seats. I slid onto a stool at the counter and winked at the waitress. She was Mediterranean-looking, late twenties, always looked tired and sweaty, but never begrudged a smile.
“Hiya, doll,” I said. “What’s good tonight?”
“Hello, Mister,” she smiled back and put her hand on my forearm. “Steak, mashed potatoes, green peas. Real good today.”
“You sold me. And a real cold beer.”
The beer came first. I slugged down a couple of gulps as I thumbed through the pages of Fortune, not really paying attention until I saw a small piece with a picture of Stallings. The story said his firm had been pressured to fire an unnamed analyst because of an overly-aggressive sell recommendation. It seems the analyst had jumped to some rash conclusions and had knocked down the stock price by some seven points. Stallings had stuck by his employee initially, but relented when threatened with a ruinous lawsuit.
Over-zealous employees. It brought to mind Talleyrand’s advice to his ministers. “Above all, not too much zeal.”
The steak was a major miscalculation. It was small, dark and hard, like an old whore’s heart. I consoled myself by ordering another brew and ate the mashed potatoes and peas instead. To fill the empty part of my stomach, I had apple pie a la mode and coffee. The apple pie was home-made and had little pits in it. I gave the girl a good tip and rolled up the magazine. The clock on the wall said it was five to eleven. I resigned myself to going up to an empty apartment, just like I’d done so many times before. The sad part was that everything would still be where it was when I’d left early in the morning.
The night was clear and quiet, and Forty-ninth street was completely deserted. It was quicker to cut through the garage, so I headed down the ramp. Jimmy, the attendant, wasn’t in his usual place in the little office with the cinderblock walls. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the shadow of somebody by my car. At first, I thought it was Jimmy. As I stepped closer to take a look, I could make out a guy kneeling next to the BMW with some kind of tool in his hand.
I followed my first instinct, which is usually not too smart.
“Get away from my car, you scumbag,” I yelled.
He stumbled back and fell down.
That was my mistake. I never saw the joker behind me. I sensed him rather than saw him. As I dropped and turned, his knife sliced into the top of my left shoulder. The shoulder pad of my jacket partly deflected the blow, but it still hurt like hell. I knew it was bad. My vision started going in and out of focus.
The garage was strangely silent, except for their grunts. They were both on me in a flash. It was a happy coincidence that I wasn’t carrying a gun today. All I had was a damn rolled-up magazine in my good hand. They both had knives. Wicked looking switchblades. I turned to look from one to the other. They both kept moving the knives from side to side.
Jesus, I hated knives.
I couldn’t move my left arm.
I could see the guy to my left and his blade. That was OK. It was the guy to my right that I was worried about. I made a half-turn and saw his knife come arcing down. He shouldn’t have done that. The magazine caught his wrist below the blade and checked the downward motion. I kneed him in the balls and, as he crumpled, I slammed the end of the magazine into his throat. It crushed his voice box. He made a kind of gurgling sound and fell to his knees. I pounded my heel into his face and saw him cough up blood and bile and half his supper.
The other guy hesitated. Then he lunged at me. The blade got past my right arm and took a slice out of my side. As he pulled back, I swung the magazine but it hit his elbow and flew out of my hand.
The first guy was on his back, grabbing at his throat and giving off hoarse grunts.
I was in a big hole now. One arm gone, the other side hurting like hell, and an asshole with a knife about to punch my ticket.
He took a step toward me. I took a step back. And tripped. Over a goddam speed bump. I went down, off balance, and jammed my bad shoulder into a fender. I believe I let out a good-sized yell. The pain was that bad.
The guy was right after me. He didn’t miss a beat. But he was a dunce because he swung the knife downward. My right hand caught his wrist and held it. My back was against the floor and my arm was rigid. The knife wasn’t going anywhere. He realized this and the first sign of panic showed in his eyes. He had me on the floor with a knife point at my chest and he was scared. He couldn’t push down, so he pulled to the side. That gave me the chance to roll away from him. He brought the blade down again but it missed me and scraped against the concrete.
I was up now and facing him. He came for me. I let him reach me, then half-twisted so he went past as I slammed the heel of my good hand into his face, ramming his septum up into his brain. He stood motionless for half a second and then went down like a sack of shit.
He was finished.
The other guy saw what happened and scrambled up the ramp out onto the street. It was going to be hard to catch up with him after all the blood I’d lost. I was starting to feel light-headed and it was tough to focus my eyes. I held my shoulder to try to stop the flow and ran after him. But he was twenty paces ahead of me and he turned the corner and was out of sight.
I went back to the garage and examined the guy on the floor. The pulse in his throat was almost gone. He’d be checking out before the medics could get here.
I went over to where the magazine was lying on the floor and picked it up. Hell, I knew Forbes was called the capitalist tool, but I never really thought of Fortune in quite the same way.
From where I stood, I could see into Jimmy’s little office. His feet were sticking out of the doorway and his head was under the desk. When I got closer, I saw the large blood stain on his chest.
It was getting hard for me to stand so I sat on the edge of the metal desk and dialed 911. Maybe they could still save Jimmy. He took better care of my car than anyone else I knew.
CHAPTER XXII
They kept me in the hospital less than twenty-four hours. I was given some blood and some stitches, and told how lucky I was. The cops were more of a pain in the ass. They kept me repeating statements, then more statements, and finally more statements. I felt like Uncle Remus telling all those Br’er Rabbit stories over and over. Finally these geniuses came to the conclusion that this was a foiled case of grand theft, auto. I didn’t agree with them. I couldn’t figure out why anyone would want to steal a ten-year-old BMW, except maybe a fan of automobile nostalgia. The dead guy was made as a small-time junkie, pusher and car thief. Gene Black came by with another cop to see how I was doing. He said Jimmy was going to pull through. Then he delivered his judgment on the dead guy.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish was how my mother used to put it,” he told me. His eyes were sad, maybe from remembering his sainted mother.
I got home in a taxi and checked my messages. Rachel h
ad returned my call and there was a message from Laura asking me to call her. Laura wasn’t home and I was too played out to banter with Rachel, so I grabbed a can of beer and climbed into the rack. I hadn’t even finished the beer before I was out.
***
When I woke, the clock said six-thirty, but I wasn’t sure if it was AM or PM. I didn’t really give a rat’s ass. All I wanted was a hot shower and a rare steak. The shower was hot, but I had to settle for a couple of franks instead.
While I ate, I turned on the TV. The local news was on, so I knew it was the evening. I was beginning to feel relatively close to an approximation of a human being again. The doc had put my left arm in a sling and the shoulder still throbbed. My right side gave me a twinge every time I moved the wrong way.
Laura called about eight and, when I filled her in on what happened, she said she was coming right over. She rang the bell a half hour later. When I opened the door, she was standing there like an angel of mercy with a pot of soup in her hands. She was wearing a short flowered cotton dress and she had a white crochet shawl draped over her shoulders.
She made me go back to bed while she put the soup in a bowl. At least she didn’t insist on feeding me. But she did sit on the edge of the bed watching me with troubled eyes as I wolfed it down. She didn’t say a word. It was some kind of home-made vegetable soup. I had always felt that home-made soup was somehow magical. I didn’t know anyone who actually made soup.
When I looked into those eyes, I understood how some men who needed mothering could be attracted to her. There was the kind of warmth of the eternal feminine.
A Murder Too Personal (ed rogan) Page 9