Cul-de-Sac

by David Martin

  Camel wondered if it was connected to the calls he made this afternoon about Cul-De-Sac … he also wondered how much Kempis knew and how much he was fishing. “Hey Jake.”

  “Yeah?”

  Camel positioned himself for a good look at Kempis’s face to see if the man was going to lie to him. “This have anything to do with the elephant?”

  “The what?”

  Satisfied Kempis’s confusion was genuine, Camel told him, “Never mind.”

  “Did you say elephant?”

  “Nothing, forget it.”

  Kempis scratched under his chin with the backs of his fingernails. “I want that appointment to the academy … if you’re working on something that’s going to lead to arrests, maybe you could—”

  But Camel was already saying no. “I take pictures of women checking into motel rooms at noon, I talk with guys who owe five hundred bucks on an old Buick … nothing anybody’s going to get excited over.”

  “Yeah.” Kempis still thought Camel was hiding something. “I hear anything else I’ll let you know.”

  “Appreciate it.”

  After the security guard left, Camel returned to the dark corner just as a large form stepped off the elevator, shoulders leading, a big Styrofoam cup in each mitt … Eddie bringing the coffee. He walked about twenty paces from the elevator, stopped, listened, then just stood there … figuring Camel should’ve spotted him by now and made himself known.

  But Camel kept to the shadows. Eddie walked up the ramp to the top level, wandered around there awhile, walked back down to the third level where Camel was supposed to be.

  “All right asshole,” Eddie finally said in a conversational tone.

  Camel stepped out.

  Eddie came over and handed him a coffee. “Ha, ha.”

  Camel smiled that peculiar grimace of his.

  “Okay, you going to tell me now … how’d you know Mary and me were having dinner over at Mike and Kathy’s tonight?”

  Camel explained about calling Michael to get information on Cul-De-Sac … he also told Eddie about the homicide that occurred there seven years ago, the trouble Annie ran into when she showed up at the place last night to surprise her husband for their third wedding anniversary. After he got done talking Camel thumbed off the plastic lid on the Styrofoam cup, spilling hot coffee on his fingers and cursing softly under his breath.

  “See this little cutout,” Eddie said, indicating the plastic lid he had left on his cup. “You break it loose, drink through the lid and that way what just happened won’t happen.”

  Camel told Eddie he knew about the little cutout but refused on principle to suck coffee through plastic slits.

  “I suppose a man’s got to take a stand somewhere,” Eddie said.

  “You need to work on this weenie wagger’s pattern.”

  “He’ll hit before seven, he’ll pick on a short woman, five-two or so, it’ll happen here on 3 or maybe up on 4, that’s a pattern, not a guarantee … pattern means tendency.”

  “I have a tendency to get paid for this kind of work.”

  “Consider it your civic duty.”

  “Jake Kempis was here—”

  “Yeah he came into The Ground Floor asking where you were.”

  “Wants us to give him a call if we catch this flasher.”

  “You could do that but first you could put the fear of God in the little pervert. Give him that look you got, you know the look I mean. Tell him, ‘Never again.’ A man sees that dead-eyed look of yours he knows the only way to stop Teddy Camel, cut off your head and bury it in a separate hole.”

  “Am I blushing?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.” Neffering drank some coffee, remembering things. “Without ever raising your voice you could get angrier than any man I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m not like that anymore.”

  “To put the fear of God in this pervert you could fake it.”

  Camel didn’t tell him that the kind of rage he used to carry around, you can’t fake it. He had to sip carefully at the coffee, it was too hot. “I wish I still smoked.”

  “I’m putting in a smoking section over in that far corner where no one sits anyway, separating it with etched-glass partitions, commercial-grade exhaust system. It’ll be real nice.”

  Camel kept trying to drink the coffee.

  “Not very many of my customers smoke but those who do aren’t allowed to smoke at their desks, they feel like lepers standing outside … this way they’ll come in my place and buy stuff, have a nice place to smoke.”

  “Happy as cancerous little clams.”

  Eddie sucked at his coffee. “That woman, Annie … I thought she made you happy but now I see she didn’t exactly put you in a good mood.”

  “I’m in a great mood … freezing my ass off ’cause some guy can’t keep his dick holstered.”

  “When she first came up behind you, the way she was standing there, beaming and grinning, waiting for you to turn around and see who it was … I thought she might be your daughter.”

  Camel gave him a lingering look.

  “She’s young,” Eddie said defensively.

  “Eddie, you want to know something, ask … stop nibbling around the edges.”

  “You two were an item once upon a time?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I figured you weren’t going to tell me.”

  “She’s somebody I knew a long time ago, now she’s married and’s having trouble with her husband like I told you.” Camel checked his watch. “You go to dinner, I’m giving this another twenty minutes.”

  “Yeah.” Then Eddie remembered. “I came out here to tell you how I’m impressed, suddenly you’re such a popular guy.”

  Camel waited for the explanation.

  “Not only does a pretty young lady show up today looking for you, not only does Jake Kempis come in wanting to know where you are, a few minutes ago I get a call from some guy used to work Investigations Unit with the state police, retired now. He asks after you, asks what kind of cases you handle. I say oh you know the usual stuff, divorces, skip tracing, nothing very exciting … why you asking. He said no big reason, Camel’s name came up in conversation and he was just curious what become of you.”

  “Who’s the guy?”

  “Gerald McCleany. I didn’t know him very well, this wasn’t like a call from an old buddy … more like a call from out of the blue. Curious huh?”

  “Curiouser and curiouser.” Camel told him about unofficial inquiries being made through the security firm Kempis worked for. “Only thing I can figure is someone’s upset over those calls I made this afternoon about that homicide at Cul-De-Sac … but if it’s a closed case with the killer in prison who should care?”

  “Somebody.”

  Camel nodded agreement. “And I bet Annie’s husband is right in the middle of it. You got a lot of friends still carrying shields, maybe you could ask around, find out if something about that case is hanging fire.”

  Eddie’s reply was interrupted by a woman shouting on the parking level above where they were standing … both men dropping their coffees and taking off at a run, except Camel didn’t drop his cup far enough away and since it didn’t have a lid, coffee splashed all over his pants.

  “You take the ramp!” Eddie called. “I’ll cover the stairs, he won’t use the elevator!”

  Camel ran up the ramp full speed not realizing how long it’d been since he ran anywhere full speed much less uphill … by the time he got to the top level he was sucking oxygen through an open mouth.

  A woman, five feet maybe, was trying to pull away from a guy only a few inches taller, he was actually wearing a London Fog raincoat, amazing someone still cared enough to bother with classic attire … he had one hand holding tight to the woman’s cloth coat, his other hand down at his crotch.

  Taking the concrete steps two at a time had winded Eddie too, he was doing a slow stiff lope toward the action looking exactly like what he was, sixty
years old and overweight, Camel closing in none too fast from the other direction. The pervert heard them coming and released the woman as he desperately tried to put his dick away, the woman taking that opportunity to haul off and bash him from behind with her purse.

  Eddie wheezed out, “Freeze!” The pervert ran right for him and Camel who came together thinking they were both going to grab the guy at the same time but he dashed between them leaving Eddie and Camel grabbing air … except the pervert ran for the railing that kept cars from falling off and crashing four floors down and by the time he realized his mistake Eddie and Camel had regrouped enough to sort of trap the flasher against the railing.

  Sort of because the little guy was quick and the two bigger men weren’t. Eddie’s walrus mustache drooped with sweat, Camel was still mouth-breathing.

  The pervert had short thinning hair and a ferret’s nervous brown eyes over a big honker and a small rodentlike mouth, he looked a little like that nasty lawyer Roy Cohn and you could tell by the way his eyes darted back and forth that any moment now he was going to head-fake one way, dash the other way, and end up once again squirting between the two men.

  To forestall that, Eddie told Camel, “Draw down on him.”

  Camel reached under his jacket and touched the grip of the .357 magnum revolver he carried … but like some people believe in God was how Camel believed in the old rule about never leveling a weapon at someone you’re not fully prepared to kill and he had no intention of killing this flasher so when Camel’s hand came out from his jacket the only pistol showing was the one he formed with his finger and thumb.

  “Hands up,” Camel said quietly.

  The pervert gave a disbelieving look first at Camel’s finger-thumb gun, then up at Camel’s eyes, then back down at the finger-thumb gun … then he executed the head-fake Camel and Eddie both knew was coming but were nonetheless too slow to counteract … the pervert slanting to the right and taking off at a dead run.

  “Stop or I’ll shoot,” Camel said in the same quiet voice as he went into a shooter’s crouch, raised his finger-thumb pistol, and took careful aim. “Pow.”

  Eddie stood there like he was watching a magic show.

  Camel straightened up. “I missed.”

  “You’re not taking this all that serious, are you?”

  Camel put the finger-thumb back under his coat.

  “Not only are you suddenly popular, suddenly you’re a comedian?”

  He squinted a smile.

  Watching the last of the pervert run down the ramp, Eddie wiped perspiration from his mustache and said, “I never much cared for little guys.”

  “They live longer.”

  “They do?”

  “You ever see a ninety-year-old guy six-four?” Camel asked.

  “None comes to mind.”

  “I read about it, the taller you are, the shorter you live.”

  “That weenie wagger’s going to outlive both of us.” Eddie looked at Camel. “Especially if you keep using your fingers to shoot at him.”

  They’d forgotten about the woman who’d been assaulted, the only one of them who’d done any damage to the pervert … she was standing off by her car watching all of this and finally asked them warily, “Are you police officers?”

  Eddie said they were, he was about to add that there’d been a lot of budget cutbacks, that’s why they had to shoot at fleeing suspects with fingers, but the woman spoke first in a voice that turned out to be a lot louder than necessary, “He was uncircumcised!”

  Camel looked at Eddie. “Better make a note of that, Sergeant.”

  Eddie started patting his pockets, the woman already hurrying to her car. When she drove past them, Camel and Eddie offered at-your-service-ma’am salutes which she didn’t acknowledge.

  They stood there until her car was gone from sight though you could still hear it screeching corners. Eddie looked down at Camel’s coffee-stained trousers and told him, “If you’d left the lid on like I said, that wouldn’t have happened.”

  After a moment’s pause Camel laughed harder and louder than he had in a very long time.

  15

  It was hot in Cul-De-Sac, fat black flies buzzing around like August not April. Growler had taken his shirt off and being bare to waist showed how well muscled he had become in prison … his skin pale as if never touched by the sun, very little body hair, a scattering of pimples across his upper back, on his left shoulder a tattoo of a cartoon character, the Tasmanian Devil, and on his right bicep a heart with a crack in it and tears leaking out. He walked around the room scratching at his upper arms like he had a rash, he would repeatedly smooth back his black hair with both hands then obsessively wipe at his mouth and nose as if he thought they were still powdered white. He stopped in front of a kneeling Paul Milton. “St. Paul the one they crucified upside down?”

  “No,” Milton said, “that was St. Peter.”

  “What?”

  Milton didn’t repeat it or try to look up, he didn’t want to see Satan’s eyes staring at him or see those big teeth either.

  “What did you say?” Growler demanded.

  “St. Peter.”

  He heard it that time, Growler laughing and then hugging himself like he was suddenly cold in spite of the room’s stifling heat. He returned to pacing and scratching at his arms … he was seriously wired as if the cocaine had been a live electric cord shoved up his nose into his brain. He stopped long enough to kick Annie’s husband in the ass.

  An easy target because Paul was buck naked on his knees, forehead forced to the floor, wrists pulled back and tied to his ankles, bare ass up … a contortion of supplication and humiliation and aching vulnerability.

  “I know you got that goddamn elephant,” Growler said. “You double-crossed me just like everybody else, didn’t you, St. Paul … didn’t you?”

  “St. Paul was betrayed by a coppersmith.”

  “What?” With Milton’s face shoved to the floor, Growler had a hard time understanding him.

  “St. Paul from the Bible, he was betrayed by a coppersmith.”

  “Did you say coppersmith?” Growler leaned down to listen.

  “Yes.”

  “I got backstabbed by my best friend who’s a sculptor, who works in metal … how’s that for a coincidence?”

  “St. Paul was beheaded.”

  “No way!” Growler was surprised, genuinely delighted by this information.

  “His head bounced three times.”

  “Get out of here!”

  “And a fountain appeared at each of those three spots.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Yes you will.”

  Growler straightened up.

  “I didn’t take your elephant,” Milton told him. “I was with you when we opened the shaft.”

  “Yeah and you were snooping around three weeks before I got here … you think I didn’t notice how you’d been tearing into things, lifting floorboards and—Did you find any photographs?”

  Paul said something Growler didn’t understand.

  “Listen to me asshole … hey.” He nudged Paul with his boot and spoke in a more conciliatory voice. “If you found those pictures I might let you keep the elephant.”

  Paul began reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

  Growler kicked him in the ass again. “You lied to me about having a wife … everybody lying to me, lying about me, lies, lies, lies.” And kicked him again.

  Paul grunted, that last kick really hurt. “I didn’t lie about Annie, I just didn’t mention her.”

  “What?”

  He didn’t bother repeating the distinction.

  “You found the elephant, called your wife up here, gave it to her, that’s why she ran out last night … taking the elephant with her.”

  “No.”

  Growler came around by Paul’s bowed head. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You were planning to meet her someplace, have a good laugh how you pulled one o
ver on Old Scratch.”

  “Satan.”

  “Where’s your wife!” He began rubbing his face again, felt close to tears … so frustrating, so goddamn infuriating, that beetle in his brain, everyone betraying him. “After I find Kenny Norton and Elizabeth, your wife’s next on the list. I’ll bugger her little ass until—”

  “Get thee behind me Satan.”

  Growler heard that and it made him laugh. “Good idea,” he said walking behind Milton and straddling his legs.

  Paul was praying hard.

  “Give you a taste of what Old Scratch has in store for Mrs. Milton.”

  Paul’s prayers were interrupted by the sound of a belt being undone.

  16

  Annie put down the shopping bags—new clothes, some food, a bottle of red wine—and let herself into Teddy’s place with the key he’d given her. She looked around the room where he lived and considered opening drawers and flipping through his mail and checking under the sink for the cleaning products he used … she’d been fascinated with this man for twenty-five years. But Annie did none of those things, she knew he would immediately sense she’d been snooping and she couldn’t bear his disapproval.

  Except for the dismal reality of living in one room his quarters were as she expected … neat and clean, as unadorned as a barracks. Only two framed photographs on the wall, Annie assumed they were of Teddy’s daughter and grandson. Disappointed with how little this room revealed, Annie opened the connecting door to Teddy’s office … and stopped short.

  “Oh,” the man said. “Didn’t know anyone was home.” He was standing behind Camel’s desk and had an unlit cigar in his mouth.

  “Teddy’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Sure.” He was about sixty, average height, big belly, broad red face, thinning gray hair showing around the edges of his golf cap. He wore lime-green pants, a short-sleeved pink shirt, white shoes … and as Annie watched, he gripped an imaginary golf club and took a few practice swings. He seemed harmless, a pear-shaped man with thick arms and a fat ass.

  “Are you a friend of Teddy’s?” she asked.