by John Holt
“Try again,” I suggested. “You might have mis-dialed. I do it all the time.”
She wasn’t impressed, but tried once again nonetheless. Once again it rang, and rang, and rang. “There’s still no answer,” she said, slamming the handset down.
“So there’s no answer. That’s no need to panic, or think the worst is it?” I said, trying to sound positive. “He could just be out, or maybe he’s taking a shower.”
“There’s something wrong,” she insisted. “Can we go to his place?”
I shrugged and nodded. “Okay, if it’ll make you happy,” I replied. I had intended dealing with those photographs for Mrs. Walker, but it looked like my plans were being altered. “We’ll go a little later.”
That wasn’t good enough. “No, we must go now,” she insisted. “I’m telling you there’s something wrong. We must hurry.”
She was breathing hard and clearly getting quite stressed. I didn’t want another repeat of the previous night. “Okay, okay,” I said trying to placate her. “We’ll go.”
“Now,” she said emphatically.
“Now,” I agreed. “This very minute.”
I stood up, and grabbed my coat. I looked over at the envelope containing the photographs. I shook my head. They would just have to wait. Another day wouldn’t make much difference anyway.
“So where are we going?”
“He lives on Forest Drive, off of Sycamore,” she replied. “Do you know it?”
I didn’t know it, but it sounded just the thing to shake off the dust of the city. I could see it all, a woodland paradise, with tree lined avenues, flanked with manicured lawns and masses of flowers.
“You can give me directions,” I replied. “We’ll get there”
* * *
Chapter Five
Forest Drive
It was about four o’clock when we arrived on Forest Drive. It wasn’t quite the way I had imagined it to be. The only trees around were missing branches, and had ropes attached to them and were being used by the local children as swings.
“There it is,” she called out. I pulled up outside of an apartment block.
“He lives on the third floor,” she advised. “Apartment number thirty-four.” She got out of the car and started to walk towards the entrance door. She suddenly stopped and started to smile.”Well that’s a good sign,” she said pointing towards the corner. “That’s his car, so he must be in.”
She pointed towards a dark red Ford. I’m no expert on cars but this one looked to be about ten years old, and had clearly seen much better days. Nonetheless, I had to agree that it was a good sign. So that was his car. It was funny though, because I had somehow expected the guy to have something a little more, shall we say, up market, you know. Don’t ask me why. I made a note of the license plate. It was a New York plate, license number DBH-6614.
I’ve always been into car numbers, you know. Ever since I was a kid in short pants. I could never afford to collect things like stamps or coins. They cost money you see, and we were too poor for that. But car numbers, now that was a different story entirely. Car numbers were all around you, everywhere you went, and more importantly they were completely free.
* * *
We took the stairs up to the third floor, and made our way to the end of the hallway, to apartment number thirty-four. She knocked on the door, waited a few moments, then knocked again. There was no answer.
“He could be taking a shower,” I suggested helpfully.
She knocked again. Still there was no answer. She opened her handbag and took out her key and inserted it into the lock and turned. The door wasn’t locked. I pushed it open, and we went in.
“Hi, it’s me, Linda.” She called out, as she entered the hallway. “Joe, are you there.”
There was no answer. There wasn’t a sound. Not even the television or the radio. I pushed my way forward and headed towards the living room, Linda a pace or two behind me.
The room looked like a war zone. Every drawer, from every cabinet, was lying on the floor, the contents strewn all around. Crockery, and ornaments had been brushed from their shelving, and now lay smashed into hundreds of pieces. Photographs had been stripped from their frames and let drop to the floor, followed by the frames, the smashed glass shards adding to the debris. Upholstered chairs had been slashed, the foam padding ripped out. Doors had been ripped from cupboards. Nothing was un-touched.
It didn’t take much figuring to know that someone had been looking for something.
The front door suddenly opened, and three men walked in. I recognized the one at the front, Detective Frank Bates from the local Precinct. I had known Frank for seven or eight years, and he had passed several little jobs my way.
“Frank, what a pleasant surprise,” I said as he entered the room. What are you doing here?”
He looked at me, surprised, and started to smile. “Daniels, I could ask you the same question.”
“I asked first,” I said.
“Okay. So you did. Well it’s simple enough. We got a call, from one of the neighbors. A disturbance he said,” the Detective started to explain. “Voices shouting and doors slamming, and he heard two shots being fired.”
“Shots,” I repeated disbelievingly. “What shots?”
“Shots, what do you mean what shots,” said Bates. “The guy said he heard two shots. That’s all I know so far.”
“Which neighbor?” I asked
Bates shook his head. “No idea, he never gave a name, just that there was a disturbance, and he hung up.” He looked around the room. “Some disturbance I must say. You haven’t touched anything have you?”
“Not a thing, Frank, we just got here ourselves.”
“Okay now it’s your turn,” said the Detective.
I tell him everything I know. It’s not much. “The apartment belongs to a Joe Philips, and this young lady is his friend. She was worried about him,” I explained. “We got here just about five minutes ago, and that’s about it.”
The Detective looked at Linda, and simply nodded. “Clearly someone was looking for something. Any idea what it was?”
I agreed with him. It was pretty obvious after all. And no I had no idea what they were after. I looked at Linda, she simply shook her head.
“I’ll get the fingerprint boys on to it, but I don’t suppose that anything will turn up.”
Once again I agreed. It seemed like a reasonable assumption after all. “We also have a missing person,” I added. Clearly I had said something that got the adrenaline flowing.
“This Joe Philips you mean,” replied Bates. He looked at Linda. “You say that you were worried about him. Why?”
“He had an appointment last night, and he never showed up,” she replied.
“We rang an hour or so ago,” I explained. “And there was no answer, and he’s not here now.”
“And yet his car is down at the corner,” Linda added.
Bates looked at Linda, and gave a cursory nod. “Okay, let’s have some details. His name is Joe Philips you say?”
Linda nodded.
The Detective entered the name into his notebook. “Now can you give me a description? Let’s start with his height shall we?”
Linda hesitated. “I’m not really good at this sort of thing,” she said. “But about your height I’d guess, perhaps a little shorter.”
“Five feet seven or eight,” the Detective said, writing it down. “What about his weight?”
Linda shook her head once again. “I don’t know,” she replied. “A little like your friend over there.” She pointed.
“Detective Symonds?” said Bates, looking in the direction indicated. “About one sixty, is that right, Charlie?”
Detective Symonds nodded. It was about right.
“Okay now how about his hair?”
“Dark,” replied Linda. “Long and wavy.”
“What color are his eyes?”
She shook her head. “Bluish, I think”
“Age?�
�
“Thirty-five” she replied.
The Detective wrote everything down. “This isn’t bad. You know descriptions I usually get are generally much worse,” he said encouragingly. “Normally people have no idea about height, and weight, and they’re not too accurate when it comes to color of hair.”
“He’s right,” I confirmed. I looked at Linda. “They’re not too bright on age either. But you are doing very well.”
“Don’t suppose you know what he was wearing last?” Bates continued.
Linda walked into the bedroom. It was the same story there. Drawers had been cleared and their contents scattered on to the floor; clothes had been taken from the wardrobe, and just thrown down.
She looked at the clothes lying on the ground, and began sorting through them for a few moments. She shook her hair. “His green sports jacket seems to be missing.”
“Anything else?” the detective asked.
She shook her head. She had nothing more to add. “I don’t know I’m sorry.”
“I’m guessing that the two things are related,” I suggested. “This search here, and the missing man.”
The Detective smiled and nodded. “I appreciate that, Daniels, I really do. Brilliant deduction if I may say. I don’t know where I’d be without you.”
Okay so it was pretty obvious that there was a connection, I grant you. You didn’t need to be a great brain to work that one out. But there was one thing that was still unexplained, and was churning over and over in my mind. Why hadn’t he shown up the previous evening? The disturbance had happened just a little while ago, and his car was still downstairs. So it was only in the last twenty minutes or so that he had disappeared. So what happened last night? Where was he? Perhaps he had an appointment with another lady friend. I shook my head, it didn’t seem likely somehow. So what had happened?
“Now I’ve got work to do, so if you don’t mind,” Detective Bates continued. He pointed to the door.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I could take a hint. I knew when I wasn’t wanted. Besides I had some of my own work to do. So taking Linda by the arm I guided her out of the apartment, and down to the car.
* * *
Chapter Six
Candy Man
Okay, so I know exactly how I had got into this affair. The question now is where do I go from here? That room had been totally wrecked. Clearly someone was looking for something, but what, and why? Did they find it? And, more importantly, Joe Philips was missing. I was guessing he was dead, but I said nothing.
I was also guessing that Linda knew more about it than she was saying.
* * *
It was now very dark. I swung my legs off of the desk, and walked over to the light switch and flipped it on. Then I plugged in the electric heater. It didn’t give out much heat, but the red glow would, at least, look warm. I looked at my watch. It was eight minutes to ten. I had been sitting there for the best part of three hours, just thinking how this whole thing had started, but now I had work to do.
But where to start that was the question? What did I have to go on anyway? I had a name, and an address, and I had a missing person. Oh, and I had an apartment that looked like a bomb had hit it. It wasn’t much I had to admit. Okay, first things first. What were those visitors, whoever they were, looking for anyway? And did they find it?
I looked over at Linda, asleep on the sofa. Did she know more than she was saying I wondered? Or was I being unfair to her. I walked over toward the kitchen area. She must have heard me, and began to stir. “Are you okay?” I asked.
She looked up, and rubbed her eyes. “I’m alright I guess,” she replied. I wasn’t entirely convinced.
“Coffee?” I called back.
“That’ll be fine,” she answered, as she sat up. “Do you think they will find him?”
The question took me by surprise. Call it intuition if you like, or a hunch. Or just a feeling, but I was certain that Joe Philips was already dead. I hesitated for a moment. What should I say? More to the point, what could I say? “Of course there’ll find him,” I answered. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
I looked at her. Clearly she wasn’t convinced. I started to pour the coffee. “Those guys back there, at the apartment.”
She looked up at me. “What about them?” she asked.
“I was just wondering what they were looking for,” I said. “Just curious you know.”
“I know what it was,” she said. She stood up and walked over to my desk. I watched as she reached down, and opened the top drawer. “This is what they were looking for,” she said, holding up two large white packages. “I put them there last night while you were asleep.”
All thoughts of coffee suddenly disappeared when I saw the packages. I smiled. “It seems that we were both very busy last night, when we should have been asleep,” I said, as I made my way back to my desk. She simply smiled.
Now I’m no expert when it comes to narcotics, but I didn’t need to ask what the packages contained. “Where did they come from?” I asked. “And how did you get them?”
Linda looked at the packages and shook her head. “Joe gave them to me, a couple of days ago,” she started to explain. “He asked me to keep them hidden for a while. He said that he needed to do some checking.”
“Checking?” I repeated. “What kind of checking?”
She shook her head. “I’ve no idea,” she replied. “All I know is that he arranged to meet me, last night, and he planned on taking them back from me then.”
“And as we all know he didn’t show,” I replied, stating the obvious. “So your friend was into drugs, is that what you’re saying. He’s a Candy Man. That’s some friend to have, I don’t think.”
She looked puzzled. “Candy man,” she repeated. “I don’t understand.”
“A Candy man is a slang term for a drug dealer,” I explained. “A pusher, a peddler, whatever you call it, its low life. He makes his living in dark alleyways, in the back streets, preying on vulnerable people, especially young people.” I shook my head, and heaved a sigh. I hated all criminals, but the drug pusher was special. I hated him with a passion. Just don’t get me started.
She started to cry. “I never knew,” she said almost in a whisper. “I never knew.”
“Come on,” I said angrily. “Don’t give me that. You must have known.”
She shook her head. “I never knew,” she repeated. She looked up at me, the tears beginning to roll down her cheeks. “You must believe me.”
Was she genuine, or was that possibly the best piece of acting I had seen in a long time. I couldn’t decide whether she was being truthful or not. Was it possible, I wondered, to know someone, and yet not know them? Could this guy have been a drug pusher, and she hadn’t known anything about it?
It didn’t seem very likely, but I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Don’t ask me why, another of those mistakes maybe, who knows, only time will tell. But one thing was for sure, I needed to know a lot more about the guy. If he was a dealer, I needed to know who were his customers, and, more importantly, who was his supplier? And what was this testing that he had been talking about?
“Do you have a photograph of Joe?” I asked. “One I can keep?”
She nodded, and reached inside her handbag. “Here,” she said handing me a dog eared photograph. “That was taken about a year ago.”
I looked at the photograph for a while and then placed it inside my wallet. I wondered how helpful the photograph would be in finding him anyway, especially if he was already dead.
I needed to get back inside apartment number thirty-four. Maybe I’d find some answers there. On the other hand maybe there wouldn’t be anything left that could have been of any possible help. Maybe after those last visitors, anything of value could already have been taken. It was a gamble certainly, but it was a gamble that I considered worth taking.
It occurred to me that the last visitors had been looking for something specific, like those white
packages. They hadn’t been interested in the story of Joe’s life. They hadn’t been looking for the things that I had in mind, like a diary maybe, or perhaps any personal papers, like a list of names. Wishful thinking maybe, but certainly worth a try I thought.
I decided to telephone Detective Bates later that day. But first I needed to make sure that Linda was safe. She shook her head when I suggested taking her back to her own apartment. She was much too scared, and didn’t want to be left alone. I tried to tell her that she would be perfectly safe, and I was sure that nobody would be looking for her. She was having none of it. I couldn’t blame her really. She had had a bad time lately. So I suggested that she stayed at my place.
Yes ma, I hear you, but it’ll be okay, I promise.
* * *
Right so that was settled. First thing to be done was to collect my car. It had long overstayed its welcome overnight at the corner of Ashby, and Olivers Drive, and I could just imagine the penalty charge that would have mounted up. I idly wondered if I could count the cost as being tax deductible. I decided that it was worth a try.
* * *
After collecting the car we made our way down town to 2290 Lincoln. My apartment was on the second floor. I showed her around and told her to make herself at home. Then I prepared to go straight out again.
“I won’t be long,” I promised. “Keep the door locked, and don’t open it for anyone except me.” I took my cell-phone out of my pocket, and gave her the number. “If you need me, just call.”
She wasn’t entirely happy, but agreed. “Get something to eat, and watch tv or something,” I suggested, trying to make it sound like such a great idea. “Or there’s my record collection. Do you like blues?”
She shook her head. “Never mind,” I said. I looked at my watch. “It’s a quarter to eleven,” I said. “I’ll be back no later than four.”
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“Just a few people to see,” I replied. “There’s nothing for you to worry your pretty head about.”