Rafferty's Rules: A Rafferty P.I. Mystery

by W. Glenn Duncan

  “Ho, ho,” Fran chortled. “Your oven will never be so clean again. She’s being sweet, Rafferty. One day, I’ll have a job selling antiques for her.”

  “We’ll see,” Hilda said. “Stranger things have happened.”

  “Stranger people have never happened,” I said. “Fran, you should see some of the neuters she—”

  “Come on!” said Hilda. “It’s not them, it’s you! I think you scare them.”

  “I’ll settle for that. Fran, let’s move you tomorrow. I promised to take you to the cops today.”

  I told her about Ed Durkee and said, “You might not have to testify for a long time, if at all. This is just a final detail for both of us. I’m out of it now. The cops can do a better job from here on. If nothing else, Dixon and Lockhart will get picked up after a traffic ticket in Utah.”

  “What happened to Virginia?”

  “Whatever.”

  “Do I have to talk to the police?”

  “Yep. I said you would and you owe me.”

  Hilda bristled. “That’s pretty bald, Rafferty!”

  “He’s right,” Fran said. She wiped her lips and folded her napkin. “I owe it to him. And it’s the right thing to do. So, sir, let’s go for it, before I lose my nerve.”

  Fran cleared the dishes away and went off to change.

  Women dress up for the damnedest things. Me, I planned to go the way I was. My jeans were nearly new and my polo shirt hadn’t shrunk yet. Much anyway.

  After Fran left the kitchen, Hilda and I sat at the table, holding hands and smiling at each other. When five minutes passed and we hadn’t said anything, Fran called from her bedroom, “Break it up, you two! That’s a clean tablecloth.”

  I introduced Fran to Durkee and Ricco. She surprised them both, I think. Perhaps they expected a gum-cracking punk rocker in oily leathers.

  Ed trotted out the lugubrious formality he saved for the clean-living half of the public. Ricco swarmed all over Fran, but didn’t quite bring it off. Usually, he acted like a pimp. This time, he behaved more like a burial plot salesman.

  I gave Ed the photos, and showed him which one was Turk and which one I thought was Smokey Joe. He carefully held his big thumbs over the naughty parts when he asked Fran to confirm my opinions. Then the pictures went into the file.

  “That’s why I can’t run my business like you real cops,” I said. “I can’t afford so many file cabinets.”

  I told Fran I had another stop to make and offered her cab fare.

  “No, thanks,” she said. “Depending on when I finish here, I might meet Hilda for lunch. Or I’ll window-shop until she’s ready to go home.” She reached for my hand and squeezed it. “I’m fine now. Go on.”

  “Okay.”

  I gave Ed and Ricco a Dutch uncle look. “No rubber hoses, you clowns. This is a friend of mine.”

  Ed looked pained. Ricco didn’t get it.

  When I went out the door, Fran was holding her head high and carefully explaining Holman, Zifretti, et al. She looked terrific; self-assured and content with herself.

  The DA had a big problem, I decided. He would never convince a jury Fran had once run with a motorcycle gang.

  On the way out to the Mollisons, I wondered if I could afford to retire the Mustang. I still owed Cowboy two day’s wages; there hadn’t been enough cash to pay him in full. Cowboy was an expense account item, though, as were motel bills, gas, wear and tear … Also, Mollison owed me another three thousand dollars for the biker in the Conover court fire. So call it an even four thousand.

  I could afford to replace the Mustang with another car. Not a new one, of course, but why would I want a new car? Old ones are so much easier to throw away.

  In that frame of mind, I wheeled into Mollison’s driveway, sauntered to the front door, and punched the button. I dug out my new pipe—a short-stemmed Falcon—and loaded it while I eyed the rusty Mustang and imagined its replacement.

  I had my head down, lighting the pipe, when the door opened. I turned, ready for one of Consuela’s thousand-watt smiles.

  It wasn’t Consuela, though. Or Marge or George or even Vivian.

  It was Smokey Joe Lockhart.

  With an M16 in his hands and an evil grin on his thick lips.

  I rushed him, and pushed the flaring gas lighter into his face. The M16’s flame arrestor gashed my arm as I shoved the muzzle aside and tried for a knee thrust to his groin.

  He howled, mostly from surprise and fright at the flames licking his beard, I thought. I did pretty well at first. Smokey Joe was my weight, near enough, and shorter. And he was backed into a wall, which held him up. I dropped the lighter, grabbed hair and ears in each hand, and made a very good attempt to pound the back of his head through the wall.

  It wasn’t quite good enough. A heavy object the size of Omaha slammed into the angle where my neck met my left shoulder. My left side stopped working. Omaha landed on my back next, and after that, the side of my neck again.

  Smokey Joe drifted away, or maybe I did. It didn’t seem important at the time.

  There were hoarse shouts in the background, and a woman screamed somewhere high and piercing and plaintive. There was a lot of scuffling but I didn’t pay much attention, because I was face down on the carpet, with my nose painfully splayed to one side. Nothing below my neck worked.

  I thought and thought, but no matter how hard I tried, couldn’t come up with a single rule to cover that situation.

  Chapter 30

  One of the disadvantages of being big is that, after losing a fight, there is so much of you to hurt.

  I'll be fair. Small people must have problems with fights, too. Presumably, they hurt more often.

  When I decided I wasn’t going to lose consciousness again, no matter how attractive that sounded, I opened my eyes. It was a room I hadn’t seen before, though apparently still in the Mollison house.

  I was seated—slumped, actually—on a sofa. There was another sofa on the opposite side of a glass-topped coffee table.

  Turk Dixon was seated on the other sofa.

  “Does this mean you don’t want to buy an encyclopedia?” I said.

  Turk didn’t say anything and neither did anyone else, although there were other people in the room. I knew they were there and I wanted to see them. I shook my head to clear my vision. That was a lousy idea.

  After a long woozy spell, I tried turning my head slowly and blinking. That worked better.

  The room was a study. Not a real study, in the precise meaning of the term. It was one of those studies where the interior decorator orders books by the color of the binding and the length of the shelf.

  The room was long and narrow. The sofa grouping was at one end, near the only door. The other end of the room housed a huge leather-topped desk with a judge’s chair behind it and bookshelves behind that. The wall I faced—the one behind Turk’s sofa—had a fireplace in the middle and bay windows on each side.

  The windows looked out over the Mollison front yard, the whole half acre of it. It was bright and sunny and inviting out there. A silver Mercedes silently oozed down the distant street.

  People. Who were those people again? Turk, of course. And Smokey Joe Lockhart, sitting on the sofa beside Turk. And Vivian of the blank look standing beside the sofa, naked and skinny and uncomplaining as Turk idly twined his fingers in her pubic hair.

  Something wet and cold dabbed at my arm. I jumped.

  “It’s all right,” Marge Mollison said. She wiped again at the gouge on my forearm. She stuck an adhesive bandage over the wound and pressed it down harder than was necessary.

  Marge wore a white summery dress. It was badly wrinkled. There were perspiration stains under her arms. And she was still steamed.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she said. “Do you have any idea what we’ve been going through for the last day and night, waiting for you to show up?”

  “Damned inconsiderate, Rafferty,” George Mollison’s voice boomed. “Whatever happened to cu
stomer service?”

  I finally found him, slouched in the chair behind the desk. He had a Scotch bottle in one hand and a full glass in the other.

  “Remember what you said, Rafferty? ‘I can’t quit,’ you said. ‘I’ll get them whether you want me to or not!’ Wasn’t that your high-sounding little speech?”

  George waved his bottle arm in an exaggerated gesture at Turk and Smokey Joe. “Well, there they are, Rafferty. Go get ’em!”

  I refocused on Marge. It hurt. “What happened?”

  “Consuela answered the door yesterday, during lunch. They barged in.”

  “Have they hurt any of you?”

  Marge shook her head in a tight, controlled movement. “None of us got shot, if that’s what you mean. That one,” she nodded toward Turk, “raped Vivian last night.”

  “Rape? You can’t rape Skinny Mama, lady. She loves it. Don’t you, baby?” He smirked at Vivian, then winked at me. “Taught her myself.”

  Turk was fortyish and well built for a biker. He was bare-chested under his denim vest. He wore black jeans and heavy leather boots with chains riveted onto them. He had olive skin and, with his shaved head and an upward tilt to his eyes, he looked vaguely Oriental. On his lap, he had an M16 with the fire selector on automatic.

  On the other end of the sofa, Smokey Joe had his M16 pointed at me. He seemed to want an excuse to use it.

  Smokey Joe was chubby and dirty and hairy. His clothes were similar to Turk’s, except he wore a dark green T-shirt under his vest and he had a broad flat-brimmed black hat with a snakeskin band. He also had an ugly blister on his cheek and his right eye watered continually. Every few moments, he wiped away the tears with the back of a hammy hand.

  “Okay, Turk,” I said. “What’s the play?”

  “Oh, that’s good,” he said. “‘What’s the play, Turk?’ Big man. The play, you asshole, is this. Ever since Skinny Mama’s folks hired you, we had nothing but trouble. Brothers been dying, man, and I take that serious. By rights, I should off you now, but I tell you what I’m gonna do. Since it ain’t personal, since you’re just a hired man, we won’t go to war over it.”

  When Smokey Joe didn’t have any objections to me remaining unpunished, I put Turk’s generous offer in the same category as ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.’

  Turk said, “Smoke and I, we’re gonna take off soon. Skinny Mama will come with us.” He glanced at Marge to see what reaction he got.

  Marge flinched, then stared at him coldly.

  Turk guffawed, then he turned to me. “The way I figure it, Skinny Mama’s folks know if you give us any more trouble, Mama ain’t getting another free ticket home.”

  He leered up at Vivian. “Right, Mama? Your folks fuck up, you’re dog meat, baby.”

  Vivian stood placidly and watched the wall. Turk slapped her flank the way you would slap a horse of which you were moderately fond.

  “So,” Turk said to me, “you’re out of a job, pal. Your employment contract has been severed.” He pronounced it see-vered. “You got that straight?”

  “Got it,” I said. I stood up. Smokey Joe’s M16 followed me. “My back is killing me. Got to loosen up.”

  “Hey, go ahead,” Turk said. “We’re all buddies here. Loosen up. Be cool.”

  I stretched and twisted and paced toward the desk end of the long room. I said, “All you want from me is my word I’ll lay off. Is that right?”

  “Well, almost all.”

  I nodded thoughtfully. “That’s no problem. No future in this gig, anyway.”

  “That’s my man!” Turk said. “So, okay, we got that part straightened out. There’s only one other small problem. That Zifretti bitch, the one you took away from us at the strip joint.”

  I reached the desk and turned. George looked up, then dove back into his Scotch glass.

  I stretched again, shook my legs, and walked back toward the sofas.

  “The Zifretti cunt,” Turk said. “She knows more than she should. And she’s got a big mouth. Now, you I understand. No pay, no play, right? But Tony’s old lady talks too much. That’s bad for everybody. She talked to her brother-in-law and look what happened to him.”

  I reached the sofas and passed behind the one where I had awakened.

  “So what about her?” I said as I got to the end of the room and turned to face Turk.

  “That’s the other part,” Turk said. “I want her. I want to know where she is right now.”

  “Oh, hell, Turk, I can do better than that. I’ll go get her for you.”

  Then I opened the door and stepped out of the room.

  Chapter 31

  No one expected me to simply walk out. As I closed the study door, there were murmured curses. A heavy piece of furniture thumped onto the floor.

  I surprised myself when I beat the bikers out of the house. I reached the Mustang and had the glove compartment open before either of them reached the front steps.

  I surprised Smokey Joe even more. When he skidded out the front door, I was waiting with the .45 in my fist. I shot him in the face. He fell head down on the steps and leaked onto the flagstone walk.

  Turk came out next. His brain was already catching up with his legs; he was backpedaling frantically when he appeared. He pulled back out of sight as I squeezed the trigger again.

  A cast iron carriage lamp by the front door exploded. Part of the metal frame landed on Smokey Joe’s back. It looked like a black hand with two thumbs.

  I grabbed the second clip for the .45 from the glove compartment and shoved it into my hip pocket. Then, as fast as my aching legs would let me, I ran along the front of the house looking for the study window.

  The sill was too high to let me see the whole room, but I recognized the wallpaper. I slapped the window glass. It shivered. I held the .45 in both hands and waited to see whose face would appear.

  Marge Mollison, with her mouth in an elongated O.

  I pantomimed throwing something through the glass and stepped aside. Twenty seconds later, a floor lamp with an ornate base sailed out the window and made a manhole-sized depression in the lawn.

  When glass stopped falling, I raked the .45 barrel over the jagged edges on the sill and yelled, “Come on! Get out of there!”

  Marge had to help George through. He sat on the sill, wavered, and fell heavily when she pushed him out. He tumbled onto his side. Marge stepped on the sill and jumped. The light material of her dress floated up around her waist as she dropped to the ground. She wore pretty sexy underwear for such an icy personality.

  “Where’s Vivian?” I asked.

  “He dragged Vivian out of the room,” Marge said. “I don’t know where they went.”

  “Consuela?”

  “They told her to make sandwiches, but that was quite a while ago.”

  I pointed at George, who was trying to stand up and doing a lousy job of it. “Get him out of here!”

  She prodded him down the front lawn toward the street; a slender white-uniformed nanny herding a surly youngster.

  I went back toward the front door, keeping close to the house and trying to remember the layout of the interior.

  I could have waited for the cops, of course. They’re pretty good at prying out armed suspects. The trouble was Turk had two hostages: a blonde zombie in whom I had a big stake and a gentle brown girl with a smile that shouldn’t be wasted.

  Besides, where does it say you can live forever?

  I went through the front door in a rolling rush and came up hard against the wall where I had fought with Smokey Joe. There was no blurt of automatic fire. I waited, sweating, and listened to the house.

  An air-conditioning duct purred somewhere. A wind chime tinkled on the back patio, barely audible through the glass doors. There was another sound, too, like a small wounded animal, but I couldn’t be sure from where it came.

  I put my head around the wall down low, at floor level. The living room furniture was hi-tech, too spindly to conceal anyone. Whe
n I crossed the room, the animal sound was louder.

  It took me several minutes to check a short hallway to the right off the living room. The first door was a walk-in linen closet. Empty. The second door was a guest bathroom. Empty.

  The third was the master bedroom. Almost empty. I nearly blew a calico cat into fur balls when it suddenly hopped onto the bed.

  The adjoining bathroom was empty. The cat was asleep when I went back through the bedroom.

  I retraced my steps down the short hall and crossed the living room. A whoop-whoop of distant sirens drifted in through the open front door.

  I went through a formal dining room quickly, then spent a long time beside the archway leading to the kitchen.

  The animal sound came from the kitchen proper. There was something behind the long serving counter. The sound was like a rabbit being squeezed every other second; a back-of-the-throat reflex laced with hysteria.

  There was only one way to do it. I took two short steps, belly-flopped onto the counter and stuck my head—and the .45—over the far edge.

  Consuela, alone and terrified, stared up into the gun. It must have looked like a sewer pipe to her.

  She sat on the floor, huddled into a corner with her round brown knees drawn up. She had her thumb knuckle jammed between her strong white teeth. A thin trail of blood dribbled down her chin and dripped onto the bodice of her uniform.

  I slid off the counter, tugged her upright, and took her into the living room. When I pointed her at the front door she took off in a fluid canter and didn’t look back.

  The sirens were louder now and there were more of them.

  The only unexplored territory was a long hallway that ran down the back of the house. There were bedrooms to the left, I thought, probably with a bathroom or two in between. To the right, glass doors alternated with white brick walls that had paintings hung on them.

  Near the head of the hallway, there was an oval antique table with a delicate china bowl on it. I slid the bowl down the hall as hard as I could. When it wobbled into a room at the far end, a burst of eight rounds shattered it and chewed up the gold carpet.