Of Mice and Murderers

by John Stockmyer

  Accepting the card, tucking it in his shirt pocket, Z came around the desk.

  They shook hands.

  "Remember," Addison cautioned. "The guys on top are calling the shots on this. Let your contact know a deal can be cut to get the painting back." The detective looked disgusted. "And don't ever let anybody tell you crime doesn't pay. It all depends on the crime."

  "Always been that way."

  "Always will be." Said with a "not if I can help it" look.

  So ended the meeting with the city's finest.

  A black man who was a credit to his race.

  Or maybe not. Maybe most blacks were as smart and as law-abiding as most whites. It sure didn't look that way on TV, but then, that was TV.

  The additional bit of news was that it was possible the fake Monet had been painted North-of-the-River.

  Interesting.

  At the very least, another reason to look forward to Johnny Dosso's call.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 10

  The waves had finally settled on the waterbed. Good. Though sex was ten times better (as some wise man said) than whatever came in second, making love took too much out of Z these days for him to want to do it on a queasy stomach. Was it the Midwestern in him, or was he right to believe that sex and surfing didn't mix?

  It was cuddling time, something he did because Susan liked it; something he hadn't done with Paula. (Though he'd learned to cuddle, correcting all his mistakes would leave little time left to enjoy being perfect.)

  Susan lay curled on her side under the sheet, Z folded around her.

  She'd looked great at dinner, dressed as she was, in slinky black to match her hair, her blue eyes flashing. They'd eaten in the ultra modern, almost cubist dining room at her apartment in the Bircane complex off North Oak. Had dinner on her black metal table; no way to settle back on the spine crunching rods of her steel backed chairs. Blue seat pads so thin you'd feel more comfortable on concrete.

  Susan's whole apartment was made of metal. Iron, aluminum, and brass -- painted shiny shades of blue.

  Didn't look a thing like Susan.

  Even the fireplace dividing the kitchen from the dining room was a low blue cube. (Z still thought of this as her new apartment, even though she'd had it more than a year.)

  He'd liked her old apartment on Highland better, all soft and curvy.

  In apartments, Susan had gone overboard trying to put the bad old days behind her.

  She'd made a special casserole for him, her way of apologizing for giving him so little of her time. To accept her apology, he'd eaten a second helping of ... whatever it was.

  It wasn't food that was the way to a man's heart, anyway, but the short hall from the dining room to the bedroom.

  They were still naked beneath the sheet and sheened with a light sweat, dulled down with the desperate pleasure/pain of doing it one more time than either of them wanted.

  Still enveloped in the rich smell of too much sex, all that Z wanted now was sleep.

  Why was it women thought that falling asleep after lovemaking was the ultimate insult instead of the highest compliment? (At least his bum knee helped to keep him awake after sex. Funny, how he could do the damndest things to the knee during the act itself and never feel a hint of pain.)

  From experience, Z knew that Susan -- younger and stronger -- would soon be jumping out of bed, refreshed, invigorated, ready to go out on the town. (That old business about women "giving" and men "taking" had to be a women's libber fantasy.)

  It was a miracle how he and Susan had come to meet (over the phone, of course.) Susan had been frantic. Her ex, she said, was a crazy man -- which was the reason she'd divorced him. Except the nutcase wouldn't leave her alone. Even a restraining order against him wasn't working, Bill (the husband) lurking outside her apartment -- but never when anyone else could see him.

  He'd begun to threaten her life.

  Naturally, the police could do nothing -- until the psycho killed her.

  So she'd hired Z as a bodyguard, Z looking up Susan's ex to find Bill Aston to be a sneaky little bastard. (Five feet five -- to Susan's five feet ten -- giving him a complex, was what Z thought.)

  The way things usually went when Big Bob Zapolska warned somebody off, that they stayed warned off. ... But not Bill. The man was, as Susan said, crazy. Not "certifiable, locked up forever" crazy; more like "cold-blooded murder" crazy.

  Next, Z had tried staking out Susan's apartment to catch the bastard violating his restraining order, but saw only shadows, husband-shadows said Z's gut.

  Meanwhile, animals kept dropping dead at Susan's door, a mouse with a trap-broken neck, a bird with its head blown off, a poisoned rat.

  Neighbor kids playing pranks, said the cops.

  Z knew better.

  So he'd decided to bring things to a head. First, he'd arranged a stakeout; Ted Newbold outside in an unmarked car; another cop in an empty apartment across the hall from Susan's place. The plan, to make it appear to the husband -- who was always watching -- that Susan had fallen in love with Z.

  On the set-up night, Susan and Z, acting all lovey-dovey, had gone out to dinner in Susan's car, returning just after dark to stop outside the apartment building's entrance for passionate kisses -- this play-acting designed to flush out the jealous husband.

  It didn't.

  So they'd gone inside to kiss some more, making sure they were framed in a lighted window.

  What Z hadn't expected was that, seeing them outside, crazy Bill had circled the house to find an open window at the back. That he was inside, waiting for them, the sick bastard jumping out of nowhere with a gun.

  No talk.

  No bluster.

  Just taking dead aim at Susan's head.

  It was then than Z had lost it!

  It could have been he'd seen so much of Susan he was already half in love with her. Or the effect of all those kisses. Or that he prided himself on giving clients full value for their money. Whatever it was, he'd jerked Susan to the side and thrown himself at the husband, the husband firing just as Z crashed into the little maniac.

  The rest had been explained to him in the hospital; how the cop across the hall had heard the shot, followed by the crash; had come busting in to find Z and the husband on the floor, blood all over -- Z's blood, unfortunately; how the hubby had managed to get off a shaky round at the boy in blue.

  Now you could shoot a P.I. North-of-the-River and receive police praise. You could pop a woman and not make the police too mad. But if you tried to kill a cop, one way or the other, you ended up dead, in this instance, the psycho ending up one way and the other. (Were four shots to the chest and one to the head what you would call "overkill"?)

  When taking care of their own, policemen had their little ways.

  Big as "Big" Bob Zapolska was, it was still hard for him to believe he'd been taken down by a single slug, and from a crummy little snub-nosed twenty-two. (Z's surgeon had explained to him later that, at point-blank range, even an underpowered hunk of lead could do a lot of damage, in Z's case, had blown a lung.)

  Z didn't remember the trip to the hospital or having surgery to get the bullet out, a groggy Bob-Z waking in time to half-hear the surgeon explain what a miracle worker the doctor had been to have saved Z's life.

  The doc had explained later how lucky Z had been that the bullet hadn't hit his heart or clipped an artery.

  All this coming with a graphic description of the all-night fight waged to keep Z from bleeding to death because, for some reason, his blood didn't want to clot.

  Buoyed by this happy talk, it had only taken a month to get out of the hospital and another two months to gain enough strength to pick a flower, time for Susan Halliwell (she'd taken back her maiden name) to fall in love with him.

  Susan had come to see him every day at the hospital; drove him around in her car after he'd gotten out; arranged interesting places for them to go when he was on his feet again, like the Nelson. At first, because she was
grateful to him. He knew that. But then, it had been more.

  Two years ago. And in all that time, they'd never lived together. (After the disaster of her marriage, Susan wanted to maintain her independence. Anyway, Z's work was too unstable for him to have a live-in girlfriend, to say nothing of another wife.) They'd decided to "settle" for being more in love than ninety percent of the married people in the world. .......

  "That was great!" said a low, sexy voice beside him, the sound popping bubbles in Z's mind. He'd almost committed the unpardonable sin of slipping into sleep!

  Susan had a low, sensual voice; Z, a strangled whisper -- even when fully awake.

  For a moment, her fingers reached back to trail along his enclosing flank as he pulled her tighter.

  Then, struggling loose, Susan bounced out of bed like a thirteen-year-old gymnast on a trampoline; was up and swishing off to the bathroom on those fashion-model legs. Miles of shapely shank on the bottom; a delicate, but strong-mouthed, face on top; separated by a damned good figure. Stacked. Endowed. Built like a brick shithouse. Words that modern Susan wouldn't like.

  A little tall for most guys, but just right for Big Bob Z.

  It was all he could do to keep from calling her back to bed; at the same time, all he could do to keep from throwing up. As usual after these Susan-bouts, he felt like the man in the magic act, the one who'd been sawed in half.

  Humming. Susan was humming in the bathroom. What was it that was always said about the sex drives of men and women? Men reached their peak at sixteen; went down hill after that. Women reached seventh heaven at thirty; stayed there for another twenty years.

  A frightening thought!

  Susan had a year to go before she climaxed (so to speak,) and another twenty years of top performance.

  It was time he made a will.

  "Z?" Susan, from the bathroom. The water had stopped running.

  "What?"

  "I hate to do this to you, but I've got to ask you to leave."

  "Leave?"

  Showered, Susan rippled from the bathroom, combing her disheveled black hair with the slender fingers of one hand, a gauzy white negligee molded to her where it counted, swinging loose from there to graze the fuzzy bedroom rug.

  "I've got to study."

  "Tonight?" He wasn't hearing right, was still half asleep.

  "There's so much to learn and so little time to do it."

  Sitting at her dressing table, Susan pulled open a little drawer on her vanity, looking for, then finding, her mother-of-pearl comb.

  God, Z loved to watch her -- doing anything. She was all unconscious grace and curves and muscled softness. He couldn't believe his luck to have a girl like that.

  Three strokes of the comb to whip her windblown style into its tousled best, and she was up and at the bureau.

  Swirling off the peignoir, floating it to a chair beside the dresser, she opened the top drawer to take out a t-shirt and jeans, piling them on top the bureau. Opening another dresser drawer, she picked up a pair of panties, turning to high-step into them -- slowly -- like a long-legged wading bird walking in the shallows.

  Taking the rest of the clothing to the chest of drawers, she pulled on her Harvard t-shirt, fluffing her hair into its loose tangle once again.

  Picking up the Levi's, she sat to the side of the vanity's seat. Bending, blue jeans in hand, she drew up a delicious knee to her loose breasts, then slipped her left leg into one side of the tight old pair of hip huggers. Did the same with the other gorgeously long leg.

  Standing, she stretched the pants up. Buttoned. Zipped.

  She meant it. She wasn't coming back to bed.

  Turning her back on him, Susan moved around the bench again; sat down at the vanity to touch up her makeup while glancing at Z's reflection in the dressing table mirror.

  Groaning, Z sat up ... in pieces ... the wiggle of the waterbed doing its quicksand best to suck him back.

  At last managing to get his feet over the side and on the floor, he sat on the edge of the rocking bed to wait for the swells (and his head) to settle.

  "Did you know the Aztecs sacrificed thousands of human captives every year to their sun god?"

  "What?" First his sight, now his hearing had deserted him.

  "Their belief was that the sun needed strength to keep coming up every day, strength it got from the shedding of human blood. They cut out their victims' hearts with a flint knife. Tried to get the heart out and hold it overhead while it was still beating." This she said while dusting on a little powder.

  "Oh."

  "And they didn't spare themselves, either. To bleed for their god, they would drill holes in their tongues and run homemade barbed wire through the holes."

  Crazy talk like that wasn't helping the hole where Z's stomach used to be.

  "Those are the kind of fascinating details we always hear in Dr. Rogers' class. You know, American History ... the class I'm taking." Z hoped Susan would interpret his groan as agreement. "But there's so much of it. And everybody else in the class knows more than I do. I'm sweating to get down every word, and the young kids just sit there, as cool as can be. Of course, just out of high school, they still remember a lot of American history. It's just a review for them. But I can't recall a thing from high school. Not a thing. And the first big test is coming up. Which is why I've got to study all the time. You understand, don't you, Z?"

  Susan paused in the act of applying blush-of-color lipstick to look at his reflection in the mirror.

  If he hadn't understood before, he was beginning to. His girl had turned into this wild woman who loved learning about people who cut out hearts, more than she liked cuddling after sex. She still looked the same -- tawny, beautiful. A peach, soft to the bone.

  On the other hand, though he couldn't tell much from her expression in the semi-dark dressing table mirror, there were times at dinner when she'd looked almost as ... hunted ... as she had when he'd first met her. The only reason he could think of for these changes was that going to school was making her upset.

  "Don't worry," he said, first having to pause to suck in enough breath to make a voice. "Those Indians all died off."

  "Of course," she said, wrinkling her nose at herself in the glass, picking up the lipstick again. "But don't you think their ideas about the sun are fascinating? In their day, their capital -- where Mexico City is today -- had twice the population of London. They were so well-organized, and still had these barbaric religious ideas."

  Though it wasn't the time to say it, barbaric religious ideas weren't peculiar to the Aztecs. A trial was coming up for a religious nut who'd shot a bunch of people in a barn in order to make it easier for him to find a lost, sacred sword, a sword that would signal the end of the world, the lunatic to be king of whoever survived the earth's destruction. And that guy got his religious ideas in Kansas City.

  "You sure that going to school is what you want?"

  "It's exactly what I want," Susan said -- quickly -- defensively -- a lightning strike of frown lines crossing her forehead. "It's opening up my mind. Dr. Rogers is brilliant."

  "Oh."

  Finished with her touch of makeup, Susan floated up, then flowed across the floor on her small bare feet to sit beside him on the bed, her long legs temptingly close. If only the bed (that she'd started bobbing again) would settle, Z thought his stomach might, too.

  Thank God he and Susan traded apartments to make love. Next time they'd do it at his place.

  "I know that going to school has made it hard for you, Z. Hard for me, too." She touched his shoulder with cool fingers. "It's just something I've got to do. The job's not enough anymore. I need to find out about... me. I need to think new thoughts ... to see more of the world. I don't know why, exactly. Maybe it has something to do with turning thirty next year." She took a deep breath. "All I know is that going to Maple Woods is the most exciting thing I've done in a long time."

  "Oh."

  "And don't give me that pathetic little 'Oh' of yours.
" Her hand left his shoulder. "You know what I mean. I love you, Z, like I always have. But this is something different. This is more ... mental. With us, it's partly mental ... sure. We love each other. But the truth is you never talk to me about anything important."

  Z had always thought Susan talked enough for the both of them. If he couldn't remember what she said sometimes, it was because he was so busy looking at her he forgot to listen. Susan was one gorgeous piece -- no doubt of that, an adorable, man-sized sex kitten. (She would like being called that, either.)

  "For instance," she said, rushing on as she sometimes did, "you never tell me about your work."

  "Nothing interesting to tell."

  "I don't believe that. It's just that you're not a talker. But you could be if you tried. So ... tell me something about what you're doing right now." She took his big hand in her small ones; squeezed encouragement.

  He didn't know what she wanted from him; had never known what any woman wanted -- either before or after making love.

  "I just got some money back for a guy who'd been cheated."

  "And how did you do that?

  "Talked to the guy who did the cheating." Silence followed. Though Susan wanted ... more ... he didn't know what else to tell her.

  "You know how you described saving my life?

  "What? ... How?"

  "I heard you tell that fascist cop friend of yours -- when he came to see you in the hospital -- that all you did was fall on Bill after he shot you."

  "So?"

  "What is it with you?" She was pleading more than criticizing. "Is it that you're so modest you can't admit to being brave or is it you don't give a damn about anything?" She stopped holding his hand. A bad sign.

  Thinking about Susan's questions, Z remembered the high school football player who played for Raytown, a back, just like him. Piled up a lot of yards his senior year like Z had. Except the other guy seemed to get articles written about him in the local papers, even special write-ups in the Saturday "Times" after Friday night games. The kid was good, alright, but as conceited as they came. The rumor was he cut out those press reports; had all his clippings in his billfold so he could whip them out to read to people.