“My name’s Nebraska.” I leaned close to the window so as not to let the whole block in on our business. “I’m a private detective, hired by your father to make sure you’re okay.”
“You don’t look like a private detective,” she said uninterestedly.
“I know; the Acme Institute of Private Detection forgot to mail me that lesson, so I thought I’d try to get by looking like what I look like.” I dragged out my wallet and flattened the laminated photostat (fabled in story and song) against her window. She didn’t so much as glance at it. “That’s the usual reaction,” I said, and folded it away.
She said, “Look, I don’t have to go with you. I don’t even have to talk to you. So leave me alone. I don’t want to have to call a real cop.”
“The young can be so unfeeling, but I’ll try to hide the hurt. No, you don’t have to do anything. Hell, no. You’re an adult. They tell me.” She looked up. I said, “I figure we’re about even now. Want to quit sparring? Save a little for your mother?” She moved the toggle on the armrest and up went the window. I managed to get my nose out of the way just in time.
“Listen,” I said loudly. “Your mother got upset and called your father. Your father called his lawyer. The lawyer called me. No one wants to make you do anything, but everyone wants to make sure you’re okay. If you don’t want to go home, fine. But you can’t sit out here in a car for the rest of your days. Let me get you situated someplace safe until your father gets back and can talk to you.”
The window buzzed down an inch. Kate made a face at me. “Someplace like your place?”
It was the beard, all right.
“Thanks for the offer,” I said charmingly, “but I’ll pass. The wife and I are pretty liberal, but that sort of stuff’s never gone over real big around our place. She just can’t sell me on the idea.”
That almost produced a smile. And it did produce a little half-sigh of resignation, after which she unlocked the passenger door. I made a point of going around the front of the car—I had a similar situation once where a guy peeled out when I went around the back—and slid in. “Thanks,” I said sincerely. “I was shivering so hard I was afraid something was going to shake loose.”
A real smile this time, if a trifle sad. Yes, she was a pretty kid. If you’re still a kid at twenty-three. She looked like a kid to me, that’s for sure, although if her boyfriend was ten or twelve years older—well, hell, that was about my age. I didn’t want to take her out or anything, but if I did I didn’t think I’d feel like I’d be robbing the cradle. Much.
It didn’t bear thinking about. So I said, “Well, what do you say, want to get out of here? I’ll take you home—your home—I’ll put you in a hotel, we can go to the movies, whatever you want. Besides”—I cocked my head toward the house on our right—“it doesn’t look like he’s home anyway.”
“No, he’s not,” Kate said, and her voice trembled a bit. “But someone is.”
I looked at the dingy, sagging little house. It was the same color as the sky, which made it hard to see, but it looked empty, even deserted to me. I saw no movement behind the thin, faded curtains on the front windows.
“She wouldn’t answer the door, but I know she’s in there.” Kate sighed heavily. “Now I know why he never had me over, or let me meet him here. He always said the neighborhood was bad, so we should meet somewhere else.” I looked at her. She was looking at the house. I looked back at it, just to make sure it hadn’t burst into flames under her stare. “I don’t know what’s worse,” she said quietly, in eerie contrast to the violent look in her eyes, “having him think I was so stupid and naive that I wouldn’t ever figure out why he never brought me home … or being that stupid and naive. It’s what I deserve, I guess.” She snuffled wetly and I steeled myself for the great flood, but it never came. Had enough of that, I guess. She yanked a handful of white tissues from a plastic caddy straddling the hump, blew her nose with the demureness of a bull elephant, and stuffed the wad into a litter bag dangling under the dash. “Well, screw them,” she said bitterly, wiping her eyes with more Kleenexes. Then, suddenly: “I don’t suppose you’d like to buy me lunch. I haven’t eaten all day and I’m starving.”
I mentally shook my head and ran to catch up with her. Wondering if I ever had that kind of resilience at her age, I patted her hand in what I hoped was an avuncular fashion. “Courtesy of the client,” I said. “Just follow me.”
We formed a little convoy back up the expressway, picked up I-80 where it veers off from 480, and followed it west to the Seventy-second Street exit. There was still almost no traffic. People with more sense than yours truly try to stay indoors on cold, gray days like this, when the Midwestern sky closes in until you almost think you could stretch up and touch it, when the wind seeks out the smallest crack to whistle through and prod you with its icy fingers, when the very atmosphere seems alive with possibilities—and all of them are gloomy. A granulated snow snicked against the windshield, which did little to brighten up my day.
Kate followed me up Seventy-second to Grover and into the parking lot of a Perkins there. We could have eaten in any of a dozen places along the way, but I chose the pancake house because it was right next door to a Ramada that I hoped to get her settled into. There are better hotels in town, and worse, but if nothing else this one had easy access to the freeway. It also had a painfully trendy bar and satellite TV and little sparkly things imbedded in the ceilings.
I checked my watch while we waited for the hostess to seat us. Just past two-thirty. I figured out my hourly rate and decided that if I’d had more cases like this one, I’d’ve never dreamed of giving up the business. Easy money indeed.
The lunch crowd, if this miserable day had produced one, was long gone, so we got our table and our orders quickly. Kate tackled a club sandwich with chips, a side of fries, and a brownie à la mode. Me? Just coffee. Kate commented on it, and I said, “I once calculated that a full day at the typewriter consumes roughly point zero-zero-zero-zero-three calories, which, as middle age creeps up on me, becomes something to think about.”
She wiped mayonnaise from a corner of her mouth. “Typewriter? I thought you guys spent your time tracking down crooks, seducing rich women—”
“—and cracking tough cases—tough cases, incidentally, always being ‘cracked,’ never merely ‘solved’—by speeding around in low-slung sports cars? ’Fraid not. If this job was half as glamorous as its reputation has it, it’d be the growth field of the eighties. Believe me, it ain’t. So I’m only a sort of part-time sleuth these days.” I told her about The Book. The subject had become easier for me to discuss since the manuscript had been accepted. Writing a book’s no big deal—who isn’t?—but having one slated for publication makes people take notice, makes women cry and strong men faint, and, let’s be honest, I got a kick out of it. Only problem was, people would inevitably ask if I was at work on another one, and that was an uncomfortable subject. Partly because I don’t like discussing works in progress—less time talking and more time doing, that’s my motto—and partly because I wasn’t. Hard at work, that is. Not really. Despite my motto, despite what I told everyone. Including me.
Kate asked, of course. I trotted out the works-in-progress excuse, then deftly turned the conversation back to her. “So what do you think, kid—what are you going to do with the rest of the day?”
The waitress came and cleared away the debris. Kate ordered a cup of tea. When the woman was gone she said, “God, I don’t know. I’ve never felt so stupid in my whole life. My big speech about going to live with Walt and then, guess what, he’s already filled that position. God.”
Our waitress returned with tea for Kate and a significant look for me. No telling what she thought about this dirty old man buying brownies for the sweet young thing in the fuzzy pink sweater and gray wool skirt. Oh, I had a rough idea. But I was feeling too much like a kid on a date to worry about it.
Kate surrounded the heavy ceramic mug with both hands. They were sm
all and delicate and trim, like the rest of her. “I suppose the only thing to do is to go to a hotel. I could use the sleep, for one thing. I had kind of a rough night.” I didn’t know whether she was referring to her morning with her mother or her evening with Jennings, but in any case she gave me a sly look and her small pink tongue briefly touched her lower lip.
To take my mind off it, I said, “No point going home and trying to patch it up with your mother?”
“Well, let’s see: By now”—she consulted the small gold watch on her left wrist—“Mommie Dearest should be about two-thirds looped. She eats those pills of hers like they were M&Ms. So I don’t think so. Even if she were straight, I don’t think it’d be worth it. We just keep going around and around, and we never get anywhere. The real problem is she’s jealous.” Kate smiled gently and shook her head. “I should have moved out years ago. I should have gone to a college out of town. Dad talked me out of it, and I guess I really didn’t want to leave much, either, but …” She drained her mug. “Well, it’s not too late. I’ll wait for Dad to come home, and then I’ll talk to him about my getting an apartment. It won’t solve my mom’s problem, but at least we won’t have to go through this every day.”
I looked at the check and left a tip on the table. “Of course, if you’re through with Walt Jennings …” I had wondered about Kate and Jennings. If he was half as despicable as Kennerly had made him out to be, and as Kate’s parents seemed to feel, then what was the attraction for her? I’d seen similar pairings over the years, and I never understood them, either—the fascination some women have with rough men, losers, even criminals. And that some men have with pretty unsavory women. Like the song says, love is strange. That ain’t the half of it.
Kate unwadded her jacket from a corner of the booth. “That doesn’t make any difference. Sure, they don’t like Walt, but I could be going with a priest and my mother would still object to it.” She breathed a laugh. “Well, yeah, I guess she’d object to a priest. Make that an Eagle Scout, or a Nobel Prize winner. She’d find something wrong with him. Not Dad—well, Dad, he doesn’t usually think much of my guys, either … but it’s different. He always thinks I can do better.” She smiled lopsidedly. “And he’s usually right. Mom, she’s jealous is all, and there’s nothing I can do about that. I like guys and they like me. Sure, I manage to fall for some real winners, but I’m old enough to make my mistakes; I’m old enough to decide who I want to be with and whether I want to sleep with them—and how I want to sleep with them.”
I felt the waitress giving me the evil eye from her station. I ignored her and directed Kate to the front counter, where I paid the bill. “Coincidentally enough,” I said, “there seems to be a hotel right here.” Kate laughed and helped me with my coat. “Let’s get you situated, and then I’ll let Kennerly know where you’re at so he can tell your father.”
There being no objection to the plan, we left the restaurant. The wind was even stronger now, colder, and the sky was dark and malevolent. The gritty snowfall had quit, but white boomerangs of it were collected in this or that corner on top of the old gray stuff. We climbed over a wall of hard snow that separated the restaurant’s parking lot from the hotel’s. Kate nearly slipped on the uneven surface and grabbed my hand. She kept it until we entered the hotel.
I got her checked in okay and arranged to have the bill sent to Kennerly. The elevators stood under circular awnings on the other end of the wide, carpeted lobby. We stopped before them.
If this were a Ross Macdonald novel, if I were Lew Archer, Kate would at this point invite me upstairs with her. If this were a Mickey Spillane novel and I were Mike Hammer, it would not have taken even this long. This being neither, Kate simply went up on tiptoes and kissed my cheek. “Thanks, Nebraska,” she said when she finished. “Thanks for lunch. Thanks for everything.”
When the closing elevator doors cut her from my view, I left the building and drove home. I needed the headlights before I got there. The afternoon seemed more claustrophobic, more ominous than ever. I tried to shake the feeling. I shouldn’t have. Within twelve hours Jack Castelar would be murdered, Kate would have disappeared again, and the police would have begun a manhunt for Walt Jennings.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Why Jennings?”
We had joined Kim Banner, who eyed Kennerly impatiently as he took a lungful of refrigerated air and coughed it into his glove before answering. “For good reason,” he finally pronounced. “Jennings frequently and publicly threatened Jack’s life.” He swallowed another breath and let it escape whitely into the atmosphere. “About three years ago, Jennings bought a small farm not too far from here, financed through Jack’s bank. A nice little place, as I understand it. Well, I don’t know much about farms—nothing, in fact—but I would be willing to guess that they’re extremely tough to operate from a bar stool.”
Apparently so. In short order Jennings ran the farm into the ground—so to speak—and, inevitably, was foreclosed. I made one of those wild from-the-gut guesses: “And Jennings blamed Castelar for his troubles.”
Kennerly made a sour face. “Guys like Jennings—they never have anyone to blame but themselves, but they’ll never face up to it. Yes, he blamed Jack. The actual foreclosure and sale—eighteen months ago, whenever it was—was handled by the feds, but Jack held a few of Jennings’s notes. That made him a convenient scapegoat, and Jennings never missed an opportunity to tell anyone who’d listen that someday he was going to get even with him.”
I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday?”
Again he looked at Banner. She remained silent, her mouth downturned. “Yesterday it wasn’t important,” Kennerly said. “Today it’s all-important.”
“You see,” Banner inserted, “it’s possible—in fact, it’s likely—that the girl is with Jennings, wherever he may be. What we don’t know is what her involvement—”
“If any.”
“—thank you, Counselor—if any, is. Assuming Jennings is our man, did he kidnap Kate, either before or after killing her father? Or did she go with him willingly, before or after the fact? Was she aware of what he had done? Was she in on it?”
“Absolutely not,” Kennerly said—hotly, by his standards. I’m one hundred percent certain that Kate is an unwilling participant, a victim, a hostage. If indeed she’s a participant at all. After all, she’s run away before; perhaps she has again, and her disappearance is merely an unhappy coincidence …”
“Perhaps,” said Banner slowly, in a tone of voice that indicated she was thinking the same thing I was, that the possibility belonged under the heading Wishful Thinking. Still, neither of us was willing to accept the challenge in Kennerly’s eyes as they shot back and forth between us.
I said, “Okay, say Jennings did kill Castelar, and say that he did snatch Kate. The question is—why?”
“Why which?”
“Either. Both. Take the first first. Why did Jennings wait so long before killing Castelar? If I were going to kill somebody I’d do it right now, when I was good and mad. Not a year or two later.”
“Unless you let it fester, fumed about it, drank over it, got hotter and hotter about it until finally you had to do something or bust,” Banner said. “Which it looks like Jennings did. About six months ago the sheriff’s department out here arrested him for lobbing rocks at the bank’s sign. And since he moved into Omaha, I don’t know how many times we’ve picked him up on drunk-and-disorderlies. His folder’s full of them. And almost all of the officers’ reports indicate he made repeated and explicit threats against Castelar.”
“There’s a big jump between throwing rocks at a sign and putting a bullet through somebody’s brain. But even if he finally worked up to it, why did he grab Kate?—I’m assuming he kidnaped her, because I was with her yesterday, when she decided the, uh, relationship had come to an end, and she was quite definite on the subject.”
“Well, there you have it, then. Maybe he tried to persuade her to come along, and when she woul
dn’t, he took her. Why? Unrequited love, spite, perverseness—or to use as a bargaining chip. I don’t know. Tell you what. When we nail him, I’ll let you ask that question yourself.”
“You must be pretty sure he’s your boy.”
“I am,” she said solidly. “Oh, there are one or two other names on the list—bankers make enemies like picnics make ants—but Jennings is right up at the very top.”
“All of which is academic,” Kennerly interposed before I could take my next shot. He faced me. “Let’s let the police worry about Jennings.” He made it more than a suggestion. “I told you, I’m not hiring you to look for Jennings. Your job is to find Kate.”
“That’s a very fine distinction, under the circumstances.”
“That’s what I say,” Banner told him. “Why not back off and give us room to do our job before you go pulling in PIs? Even if Jennings is using the girl as an insurance policy, she’s in bad trouble the minute he decides she’s become a liability instead of an asset. This could be a kidnaping; we don’t know. It could turn into a hostage situation. In any case, it’s something best left to people who know what they’re doing. No offense.”
“None taken,” I said. “I think you’re right.” I turned to Kennerly, who had put a patient-but-skeptical look on his face. “It’s going to take the resources of the law-enforcement network to track down a guy with a five-or six-hour head start. Assuming he had the good sense to split as quickly as possible after the event, Jennings could be three, four hundred miles away by now. In any direction. I’m pretty wonderful, but even I can’t cover a four-hundred-mile radius by myself. There’s only so much of me to go around.”
Moving Targets Page 3