“It’s about a guy who drives an LTD and makes a hell of a lot of money, who leaves his car unlocked and lives in an apartment you can open with a credit card, in an apartment building whose security is a joke.”
“There are two armed guards on duty twenty-four hours a day at Town Crest.”
That was the name of the high-rent apartment building I could see from Lucille’s window. Frank Tree was a tenant.
“Those guys aren’t guards,” I said. “They’re parking lot attendants. Anybody in a jacket and tie can walk in the lobby and go up the elevator and nobody says a word.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“The point is if I’d been hired to kill you, you’d be dead by now.”
“Hired to…”
“The only problem I can see in killing you is trying to pick from the dozens of ways to do it. I heard of sitting ducks, but this is ridiculous.”
Tree brought a hand up, and I touched the back of his neck with the silenced gun. But he was only scratching his head. A few flakes of dandruff floated onto his shoulders.
“I can offer you double,” Tree said. “Double whatever you’re being paid.”
“You don’t understand. No one’s paying me. Yet. I only said if I’d been hired to kill you.”
“What is this, some kind of extortion racket? Maybe you don’t know the kind of people I count as friends.”
“Mafia guys, you mean? They probably helped get you into this.”
“Into what?”
“You’re being watched. You’re being set up.”
“Watched? Set up for what?”
“What do you think?”
“Hey, I don’t have an enemy in the world.”
“Sure. Hitler probably felt the same way. Anyway, I’ve already established you’re going to be killed.”
“Established…?”
“You got two weeks, at the outside.”
“Two weeks…”
“I’ll be going now. Don’t turn around as I go.”
“But…”
“I’ll call you tomorrow, Frank. Sleep well.”
13
The stairwell was dark. An hour ago I’d been in the back seat of Tree’s car in the Barn parking lot. I was preoccupied, wondering how tomorrow would go. This crucial first meeting with Tree had gone well enough, but that was the easy part: scaring him. Tomorrow I had to reason with him, which was where it could get hard.
I was alone. She’d given me the key to her apartment and told me to go on ahead. She had her own car tonight, so why didn’t I take off a little early and get the frozen pizza in the oven and put the hot water on for Sanka, and go ahead and get started on the late show, if my eyes were up to the postage stamp screen of her portable. She’d be along soon.
The stairs creaked; the walls of the stairwell were peeling paint; the smell of disinfectant hung heavy. Light seeping out around the doors on either side of the little platform of a second-floor landing made me feel less alone, but the third-floor landing was long, more a hallway, though there were only two apartments up here, one of which was empty. Or anyway she’d told me it was empty. I noticed light along the bottom crack of the door and wondered if somebody had just moved in today or what.
And I had this prickly feeling, on the back of my neck, that made me wish I still had the silenced nine-millimeter on me, and I swung my arm back and gave the guy coming up behind me, from out of the shadows of the landing over to my right, an elbow in the face. Felt like I caught a cheek, flesh and then sharp bone, but it was dark and an elbow isn’t the most sensitive part of the body to be making such distinctions with, so who knows.
The important thing was I’d sensed the guy in time, and I was drawing back my right foot to kick his balls up inside him when that apartment door opened, flooding the landing with light, and somebody hit me with something.
14
I felt my face moving. Back and forth. Then I heard a clapping sound. Face moving, clapping sound, like I was clapping with my face, and I came out of it chuckling, laughing at how silly it was, clapping with your face, and opened my eyes and looked into bright light, and the guy stopped slapping me.
I never saw his face. I saw nothing but the light. A lamp I guess it was, with a hundred watt bulb or maybe something stronger. Anyway all I saw was light, and the guy, who was somewhere behind the light, right behind it, said, “What’s your name?”
“Jack Wilson.”
That was the name I was registered under at the Holiday Inn. The phony driver’s license in my wallet had it, too.
“What are you doing here?”
“Going blind.”
“You know, I can jam this. 38 up your ass and see how you like it.”
The light was blinding me, all right, but I didn’t have to see to know I didn’t want a. 38 jammed up my ass.
“I’ll ask again,” he said. “What are you doing in Des Moines?”
“Looking for work.”
“What kind?”
“Any kind. Salesman.”
“What are you doing hanging around the Barn?”
“Playing some cards. Banging the lady bartender.”
“It’s time you moved on.”
“Anything you say.”
And he put out the light.
He hit me with it.
15
My eyes peeled slowly open and she was right in on top of me, leaning over me, fingers plucking at my face, her oriental eyes narrowed like I was something interesting to look at.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Picking glass out of your face,” she said.
“Oh.”
“You’re not too badly cut. Lot of little nicks is about all, really. But we better get this glass out.”
“Be my guest.”
“Ouch!”
“What?”
“Little fucker nicked me.” She held a half-inch sliver of glass up by a thumb and forefinger for me to see. When I had, she dropped the sliver, sucked the forefinger a second.
I sat up on the couch. “How’d you get me back in your apartment?”
“I walked you over here.”
“You mean dragged me? I was unconscious, wasn’t I?”
“Not entirely. More like drunk.”
“I think somebody hit me with a lamp.”
“I think so, too. Anyway there’s a busted bulb all over the floor next door. All but the pieces of it I been picking out of your face, that is.”
“That’s where you found me?”
“The door was open, you were on the floor, against the wall, glass all over your face. I thought you were dead for a minute.”
“No such luck. Who’s your new neighbor? The guy that wrote Psycho?”
“Nobody lives next door. Not that I know of.”
“Help me off this couch. I want to go see for myself.”
She did.
The door was still ajar. I went in carefully, reaching a hand around to switch on the light before going in all the way.
And saw an apartment exactly like Lucille’s, with one exception: it was unfurnished.
Some shattered, bloody glass lay near one wall; so did the screw-in socket of the bulb with its claw of red-flecked glass shards sticking out.
“Let’s go back,” she said, a hand on my shoulder.
“Let’s.”
She locked the door and nightlatched it. A lot of doors in the Midwest don’t have nightlatches. I was glad hers did, though I had no reason to feel safer locked in here with her than I’d been next door with the guy who’d used my face to switch off the lights.
Did I say “guy”? No. There were two of them: the one who came up behind me; and the one who opened the door. Of course the one who opened the door could’ve been a woman.
“Listen, I think there’s some mercurochrome in the bathroom cabinet. You better let me dab some on.”
“Go ahead.”
She went and got the stuff, and I had a sip of the Sanka she’d fo
und time to make.
“This’ll hurt,” she said, and began daubing it on.
It did hurt. I felt a tear roll down my cheek and she made a concerned face and with her free hand brushed the tear away. Then she put little bandaids over each cut. Pressed them gently into place.
When she touched my face like that, it bothered me. When she looked at me concerned like that, it bothered me. The way she’d been in bed the other night bothered me, too. Responsive. Giving. Loving.
The bitch was a killer. More importantly, so was I. How could she seem so genuine? Why did she strike a chord in me, even when I knew she had to be faking?
This was only the second night I’d been with her.
I’d left her apartment Friday morning before she got back, and spent the afternoon watching her window from the parking lot below. I was at an angle she couldn’t easily spot, and I was sitting in a car she wouldn’t recognize as mine, a Ford I rented for the occasion. I didn’t need a particularly good vantage point. A good look wasn’t what I was after. I just wanted to see the glimmer of circular glass. I just wanted to see the binoculars at the window. And I saw them, all right.
And I saw Frank Tree drive down the curved lane of the Town Crest apartment building around four-thirty in the afternoon, and the reflecting binoculars disappeared in the window, and I pulled the Ford around the block to watch her come down from her apartment, out the door by the rundown storefront, get in her Corvette across the street at the curb, and take off.
I hadn’t been surprised. I’d spotted her watching Tree that first night at the Barn, and figured she wasn’t watching him because she had the hots for him, either, though he was handsome enough. I knew even then he was her target, but I needed more.
Friday night I got it. She was watching him even closer now, didn’t miss a move he made. What she was doing wouldn’t begin to show to the casual observer, but I’ve done that kind of watching myself, and had no trouble picking up on it. In fact I was watching her that way; I could risk it, since she knew I had the hots for her.
She had begged off that night, saying she had promised that girl friend of hers they’d get together for a drink at one of their apartments, after the Barn closed, and I’d be bored silly by all that girl talk anyway, so…
So I complied. It was fine with me. I was planning to beg off myself. I had other things to do.
Such as keep watching her. I still had that rental Ford, and followed her from the Barn to a place on University in Des Moines, not far from the Holiday Inn where I was staying. It was a dinner theater, a big brick two-story building with a block of parking lot and a billboard of a sign saying Candle Lite Playhouse, with the name of the current production (Born Yesterday) beneath. The parking lot was nearly empty; one of the handful of cars was Tree’s LTD. Soon Tree could be seen coming out of the theater in the company of a stacked little blonde in work clothes, who kissed his cheek and scurried back in the building, while Tree reluctantly headed for his LTD and drove to the Town Crest.
Today, in the morning, I repeated my parking lot vigil, but only long enough to determine those binoculars were still poised in her window; and then I drove back to the car rental people and let them have their Ford back.
“You want to tell me about it?” she said.
“About what?”
“About what. About what happened to you. About the fucking glass I picked out of your face.”
“Somebody hit me with a lamp. And before that they hit me with something else. Feel the top of my head if you don’t believe me.”
“That’s some goose egg you got there, pardner.”
“You’re telling me. Got any aspirin?”
“Yeah. But I also got better than that.”
And she sat in my lap and put her tongue in my mouth.
“They always tell you to take two,” I said.
“Sometimes three.”
And we necked for a while, and she said, “So tell me.”
“I came upstairs and it was dark on the landing and a guy jumped me. When I came to they shined light in my face and hit me with the lamp. They asked me some questions, too, I think.”
“They?”
“Two of ’em. I only heard one talk, though.”
“Any idea who they were?”
“No.”
“Any idea why they did it?”
“No.”
“Your wallet’s empty. Maybe that’s why.”
“Yeah. Could be. I been winning at the Barn.”
“How much?”
“Couple hundred a night, on the average.”
“Three nights. Six hundred bucks. Where’d you have it?”
“In the wallet.”
“All of it.”
“All of it.”
“You’re not the smartest guy I ever met.”
“Really? Name somebody smarter.”
“The retarded kid in the plumbing joint downstairs.”
“Name another.”
“You got me. Hey. Who are you, anyway, Jack?”
“Nobody. I used to be a salesman. I’m unemployed right now.”
“What did you used to sell?”
“Ladies underwear. The bottom fell out of the bra market.”
“Aren’t you good at anything but selling underwear?”
“Good at cards.”
“You aren’t trying to land a seat at the Barn, are you?”
“I don’t know. You think maybe I should hit that guy Tree for one?”
There wasn’t a flicker of anything in those almond eyes of hers. You think maybe I should hit that guy Tree… but not a flicker. Christ this bitch was good.
“I’ll put a word in for you. I’m new on the job, but I got some pull just the same.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Couldn’t’ve got that job if I didn’t. Got to have connections in this world, to get by.”
“No shit?”
“None. So what do you think? This thing tonight was just a glorified mugging or what?”
“Who knows. You wouldn’t happen to have any old boyfriends or anything, would you? Who might be crazy enough to follow you from wherever you came from and beat up your new boyfriends?”
“I hardly think so. It’s a long drive from Florida.”
Damn! She was telling me too much. The other night she’d told me the story about mob people killing her husband, and I knew, from reading her file, that the story was true. And her name, her goddamn real name, it was Lucille. I’d have felt a lot better if she’d lie to me more.
What was she doing, anyway, baiting me? She asks me what happened, how was it I happened to get the piss beat out of me just now, when she was probably there when I was getting that lamp busted across my face. She was playing me like a kazoo.
“Let’s fold the couch out,” she said.
“I’m too weak. You’ll have to do it.”
“Pull out the bed you mean? Or the rest, too?”
“Just the bed. On the other, if you want to start without me, go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
She laughed a little, like she meant it. I laughed, too. Like I meant it. The fuck of it is I did mean it. That’s what bothered me.
Then she turned the couch into a bed and we used it.
16
She said she didn’t snore, and she didn’t, but she was sleeping deep just the same, that fine, full chest of hers rising slow and steady and, well, it was with not a little reluctance that I crawled out of bed and got in my clothes and left her.
My GT was in the parking lot below her window. I had a spare sportsjacket stowed under some stuff behind the driver’s seat and I took the jacket and shook it and got some of the wrinkles out and put it on. From the glove compartment I took a pair of glasses and my silenced nine-millimeter. I put the glasses on and stuck the gun in my belt and glanced up at her window. Dark. Curtains still drawn, as best I could tell. The change of jacket and the glasses were for her benefit, should she wake up and get back to doing her stakeout number,
in which case she could conceivably see me going in or out of the Town Crest, and in that event the jacket and glasses and distance would hopefully keep her from recognizing me.
The jacket and a tie were all it took to get into the Town Crest, even at three in the morning. That and the twenty I handed the guard in the front lot, when I asked him to park the GT for me. I had him put it in the back lot, which was unlit and presented less of a chance of being spotted by somebody with binoculars across the way.
The modern exterior of the Town Crest was more than matched in its cold sterility by the interior, which looked to have been designed by a mortician who read science fiction. The walls were smooth and white, like eggshells pressed flat. Diffused light glowed down from the white tile ceiling, some of it swallowed up by the black carpet. The elevators were shiny metal that reflected like a compassionate mirror. I pushed the UP button and turned away from my soft-focus reflection while I waited.
Tree’s room was on the top floor, the twelfth, down a wide white hail to the right and at the end. I opened his door with a credit card and went in. No lights were on, but I was familiar with the place from my previous visit, in the afternoon, and walked quickly across the tufted shag carpet, though I nearly neglected to sidestep the glass-and-plastic coffee table by the half-circle couch on the edge of the spacious living room, just off of which was his bedroom, where I was headed.
His bed was making noise.
Glugg glugg glugg. Like a hundred midgets swallowing,
Then I remembered. It was a waterbed. Red satin sheets, brown leather padded frame. There’s nothing more pathetic than a middle-aged man who’s trying to be twenty.
He was alone in the thing. Or on it. I don’t think you can be “in” a waterbed. Personally I like to be in control of what I’m sleeping in. On.
He was sound asleep.
I put the nose of the silenced gun against his throat.
He woke up.
Sat up, and the bed rolled and rocked under him.
“Don’t turn on the lights,” I said.
“All right,” Tree said. Calmly. The sea beneath wasn’t calming yet, though.
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