Fire Lake

by Jonathan Valin

  “He’s got to take care of himself now, Karen,” I said, pulling her to me. “You can’t do it anymore. And I won’t.”

  She rested her head against my shoulder. “Then what are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” I glanced at my watch. “It’s a quarter to one. I’d like to pay Cal a visit and find out if he really does have the crack, but to be honest, I don’t know if I’ve got the strength.”

  She smiled at me. “Even tough guys have to sleep.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that, either,” I said nervously. “Where the hell did Lonnie get two thousand dollars? Can you tell me that? And who the hell killed Jenkins?”

  “LeRoi could have been lying,” Karen said.

  “So could Sonny,” I said, feeling lost. “I don’t know. I thought I had this fucking thing figured out.”

  “We’ll figure it out, Harry,” Karen said bravely. “Tomorrow.”

  ******

  I didn’t realize how truly worn-out I was until I lay down on the bed beside Karen. I took a look at her lush body and wanted like hell to make love to her—to make up for the scene with Sonny. Karen knew that was what I wanted, but she also knew I was too dead tired to do anything but sleep.

  “It’s all right, tough guy,” she said, hugging me tight. “Just get some rest.”

  I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, cold sunlight was filtering through the bedroom window. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand—it was eight-thirty—and tried to sit up. The stiffness was still there, in my back and my shoulder. But the pain wasn’t as bad as it had been the day before, and that cheered me.

  I glanced at Karen’s side of the bed. She wasn’t there.

  For just a second, I felt panicky—the way I’d felt waking from the dream in the hotel room. Then I heard her moving around in the living room, and my heartbeat slowed down.

  “Are you up?” I called out.

  “I’m making coffee,” she called back.

  I pulled myself out of the bed and stared out the window, squinting against the sunlight. It was a high blue winter morning without a cloud in the sky. It would have been a beautiful day, if it weren’t for Lonnie. He’d spoiled too many days for me and Karen. The terror was going to end, I told myself. Today.

  I picked up the phone on the nightstand and called George DeVries at the D.A.’s office.

  He answered in a sleepy voice. “You’re up mighty early, aren’t you, Harry?”

  “It’s dues time, George.”

  “I haven’t seen the yard yet,” he said.

  “Don’t fuck with me, George. I’m in no mood to be fucked with by a cop.”

  “Yeah, I heard you had a little trouble with one of our finest.”

  “It’s a continuing story.”

  “Glen’s a vicious bastard, all right,” George said merrily. “I kind of like him.”

  “You would,” I said with disgust.

  “About that problem you have?” George said. “I guess you already know that the motel murder was drug-related. You do know that, don’t you, Harry?”

  “Quit the clowning, George.”

  He laughed snidely. “Aside from you, Glen’s only got one suspect. A guy named Jackowski. Some biker at the motel said Jenkins ripped Jackowski off for a shitload of crack. Apparently, Jackowski came back for his goods. You know what happened.” George paused for a moment. “This Jackowski’s a friend of yours, isn’t he, Harry,” he said in a vaguely calculating voice.

  “Who told you that?”

  “Somebody told Glen that—that you and Lonnie were good buddies.”

  “Who told Glen?” I said.

  “An informer that Jordan uses. A junkie named Norvelle Thomas.”

  “Great,” I said to myself. Another betrayal. It was getting to be monotonous.

  “And Jordan believes him?” I said to George.

  “Harry, if John Wayne Gacy told Fred that you were dirty, he’d believe him. He wants you, buddy. In the worst way.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” I said angrily.

  “This guy Thomas told Glen that your pal Lonnie was copping crack for a friend of his. And that that friend had fronted him the money to cop.”

  “And I’m supposed to be the friend?” I said disgustedly.

  “That’s the way Glen is reading it.”

  It all made a kind of hideous sense. In fact, it was virtually the same story that LeRoi had heard from Lonnie. For all I knew, that was where Norvelle had heard it too. From my good buddy, Lonnie. I’d fronted him two thousand dollars to buy me some crack. It was neat, all right. And without Lonnie around to explain the lie or the wishful thinking or whatever the hell he’d call it, it would be damn hard for me to prove differently.

  “All right, George,” I said wearily. “Thanks.”

  “Harry,” he said, dropping the sarcasm. “I’d be careful this time. Really careful. Glen’ll be tailing you pretty closely, and he’s good at his work. When he wants someone as bad as he wants you, he doesn’t fuck around.”

  “Neither do I,” I said, and hung up on him.

  I stared angrily at the phone. I felt like pulling it out of the wall. Instead, I cursed—at the top of my lungs.

  Karen came running in from the living room. “Are you all right?”

  I gave her a dirty look. “Hell, yes, I’m all right. What do I have to worry about?”

  She sat down on the corner of the bed. “Tell me about it,” she said.

  She looked deracinated in the stream of white sunlight that was flooding the room. I closed the curtains and the color came back to her cheeks.

  “Norvelle told Jordan the same story that Lonnie told LeRoi,” I said, turning back to her. “That I was Lonnie’s partner. That he was buying the dope for me. That I’d fronted him the two grand.”

  Karen dropped her head. “Christ, Lonnie must have told Norvelle, then, too.

  “Maybe, Lonnie was copping for somebody else,” Karen said, her head still bent to her chest. “And was trying to cover up his real connection.”

  “By using to me to do it?” I said disgustedly. “What a guy!”

  Karen looked up at me suddenly, with a spark in her eyes. “He did go to that theater on Wednesday. What if he didn’t just go to see Norvelle? What if he went to see Leanne, too? I mean, he had to get that two thousand from somebody.”

  I shrugged. “She’d have the money all right. But why the hell would she want to buy twelve thousand dollars’ worth of crack? And why all the comedy at the motel? If Lonnie was copping for Leanne, why didn’t he just deliver at the theater? Or at her fucking farm?”

  “I don’t know about the motel business. But you’d be surprised who deals dope in the suburbs. I told you about that pharmacist in St. Louis, who used to send us to New York to cop smack. Christ, he was the most respectable guy you’d ever want to meet. Had a chain of drugstores around the city, a mansion in Forest Park, a social-climbing wife and four spoiled kids. It’s just not that unusual, Harry, for your neighbors to be dealing coke—even your rich, respectable neighbors.”

  I gave Karen a dubious look. “Are you sure you’re not letting your feelings cloud your judgment?”

  “Meaning?” she said sharply.

  “Meaning that you don’t like Leanne Silverstein.”

  Karen gave me an angry look. “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Sy Levy,” I said. “He could have used the money from a score a lot more than the Silversteins could. And he might have been able to scrape together a down payment on the drugs.”

  “Sy would never do that,” Karen said flatly.

  “Why?” I snapped. “Because you like him, and you don’t like Leanne?”

  “Fuck you,” Karen said bitterly.

  I stared at her for a moment. “I’m sorry. I’m just pissed at Lonnie.”

  “I’m sorry too.” She looked up at me apologetically. “I can’t believe that Sy could have changed that much.”

  “Everything else has.
”

  She nodded grudgingly. “So you think we should pay Sy another visit?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet. I think we should talk to Norvelle first. Don’t forget that he was working for Leanne and that he was a friend of Sy’s. If either one of them did give Lonnie the money to cop, Norvelle could easily have heard about the deal, and then told Cal and Jenkins about it. Regardless of who fronted Lonnie the two thousand, I still think it was Jenkins, Cal, and Norvelle who ripped Lonnie off. I just don’t know how they got him out to that motel. Or who ended up murdering Jenkins. Or why.”

  Karen laughed. “So we’re going back to Cross Lane?”

  “That’s our first stop.”

  “What about Cal?” she said with a nervous look.

  “He and Norvelle live in the same house, Karen. We’ve got to confront him sometime.”

  “Maybe he won’t be home,” Karen said, as if she were saying a prayer.

  37

  KAREN AND I walked down to the parking lot. There was a gray Ford sitting on the corner of Burnett—it was the first thing I noticed when we stepped out of the shadows of the Delores. I nodded disgustedly in the direction of the Ford. Karen shaded her eyes against the brilliant winter sun and sighted toward the corner.

  “It’s him again,” she said, dropping her hand and turning to me with a fallen look. “It’s Jordan.”

  “The son of a bitch,” I said angrily. “He’s not even bothering to conceal himself anymore.”

  “Is he going to stay behind us all day?”

  “If it suits him,” I said. “And there’s nothing we can do about it. I just don’t drive well enough to shake him. Plus there’s snow on the street.”

  “But we’re on our way to see Norvelle,” Karen said, aghast. “A junkie.”

  “What the hell difference does that make? He already thinks I’m a drug dealer.”

  I walked quickly down the stairs and over to the Pinto, got in behind the wheel, and started the car. The engine turned over like a low-speed drill, sputtered a few times, then backfired and began to chug. Karen got in the passenger seat, slapping her arms against the cold.

  “You know I’m with you, don’t you, Harry?” she said suddenly, giving me a sweet, shivery look. “To the end.”

  I smiled at her with pleasure. “I do know that, Karen,” I said. “But I’m glad to hear it anyway.”

  I put the Pinto in reverse and guided it out on the street. As I headed up Burnett the gray Ford pulled out behind me—its tail pipes steaming in the cold. I could see Jordan in the rearview mirror. He waved at me with his middle finger.

  I turned left on Taft and left again on Highland. The sun was very bright on the snow-banked sidewalks and on the salt-whitened street. I had to flip down the visor to cut the glare.

  We turned east on McMillan, with Jordan still behind us. When we got within a block of Cross Lane, Jordan dropped back, pulling over in front of a bar—his engine still idling.

  “He stopped following us!” Karen said excitedly, as if that were a triumph.

  “He knows where we’re going,” I told her. “Norvelle is his snitch.”

  Her face fell. “Oh,” she said with disappointment.

  Cross Lane hadn’t been salted by the city trucks. There had been so little traffic on the street that the snow looked as if it had just fallen, plumped up like meringue from one curb to the other. I inched down to Cal’s house—the car grinding and sliding through the drifts.

  “It’s going to be hell getting out of here again,” I said to Karen. “That’s probably why Jordan stayed out on McMillan.”

  She pointed to a dark spot on the right, where a car had been parked overnight. “Pull in there.”

  I parked in the spot, with my rear wheels on what little pavement was showing through the ice.

  We both got out into the brilliant sun and, hands over our eyes, stared across the street at Cal’s turreted frame house. Two pairs of bootprints led away from the porch, down the walk to the street. They circled a spot where a car had been parked. Apparently, Cal and his friend didn’t have much patience with the snow, because the area behind the car was deeply scarred with tread marks and gravel thrown up by spinning tires.

  “Looks like someone was in a hurry to leave,” I said to Karen.

  “Maybe there’s no one left at home,” she said hopefully.

  “We’ll check anyway.”

  We crossed the street and walked up the sidewalk, past the bootprints in the snow. The prints hadn’t frozen yet, which meant they were damn fresh—within the hour.

  We stepped up on the porch, stomping our feet on the slats to shake the patchy snow off our pants legs. Karen glanced through the muslin drapes in the front window and said, “Looks empty.”

  I knocked on the door. When nobody answered, I took a credit card out of my wallet and slipped it between the door lock and the jamb.

  Karen laughed nervously. “I thought only junkies knew how to do that.”

  “We detectives have our secrets.” I fiddled with the lock until the door sprung open. “Voilà!”

  I waved my hand through the doorway, and Karen walked into the hall. I followed her in, closing the door behind me. A loud plucking noise, like the sound of water dripping was coming from the living room. We both glanced through the archway.

  Someone had left a record spinning on the turntable, and the needle was sticking in the last groove and being amplified through the speakers.

  “Jesus,” Karen said, “they did leave in a hurry.”

  I walked into the living room and lifted the tone arm off the record. There was something different about the room, but it took me a moment to realize what it was. The clothes that had been piled in the corners were gone. Just a couple of pairs of girl’s underpants and a man’s T-shirt remained on the floor, along with the lingering smell of dirt and sweat.

  “Maybe they went off to do the laundry?” Karen said from the archway.

  “Maybe,” I said dubiously as I walked back into the hall. “Let’s look upstairs.”

  Karen stared up the stairwell with foreboding. “Oh, Harry,” she said faintly. “What if they come back?”

  “I don’t think they are coming back, Karen,” I said, starting up the stairs. She fell in behind me.

  The stairwell made one turn to the left, before ending in a short hall with three rooms running off it. There was a door at the head of the stairs on the left, one at the end of the hall, and one halfway down the hall to the right, which must have led to the turreted room. As I neared the top step I began to smell something—a charred chemical smell that I couldn’t place.

  “Someone’s been cooking up,” Karen said immediately.

  I glanced back at her. “Smack?”

  She nodded. “I ought to know.”

  I glanced at the door at the top of the stairs. The smell seemed to be coming from inside that room.

  I pulled the pistol from my pocket and unlocked it with my thumb.

  “Harry,” Karen whispered, “be careful.”

  I walked up to the door at the top of the landing, put my hand on the knob, and turned it. As the door opened the chemical smell became much stronger, mixed with another powerful smell—one that I had no trouble identifying.

  I turned immediately back to Karen, who was standing at the head of the stairs. “Go down to the hall,” I said, giving her a grim look.

  “What?” She stared at me with confusion.

  I nodded toward the door. “Someone’s dead in there.”

  She threw her hand to her mouth, and her face went white. “Oh, my God...Lonnie!”

  Before I knew it, she’d pushed past me, running up to the door and throwing it wide open. She let out a shriek, then covered her face with both hands and began to cry, leaning heavily against the doorjamb and rocking back and forth as she wept.

  I went inside the room.

  It was a bathroom. A skinny, naked black man was lying on the tile floor—his head propped against the pedestal o
f the toilet, his arms akimbo, his knees bent, as if he’d tried to get up and failed. His brown skin had turned a violent purple. His face was bloated-looking—his cheeks puffed out, as if he’d taken a breath and died before he could exhale. There was urine and feces on the floor, where he evacuated as he’d died. There was also a good deal of drug paraphernalia scattered on the floor. A fit. A glassine bag half filled with brown powder. A Bunsen burner. A charred ice-cream scoop that he’d cooked up in. The rubber hose he’d used to tie off with was still draped loosely around his left arm. I could see tracks all over him—on every bend and joint of his arms and legs, as if he’d been pieced together by a sewing machine. There were even needle marks on the carotid arteries of his neck.

  It looked as if someone had made a halfhearted attempt to revive him. The bathtub was filled with water. And a couple of trays of ice cubes, melted now, were lying by his body, along with several damp, rolled-up towels.

  I turned to Karen, who was still sobbing. “That’s Norvelle Thomas, isn’t it?”

  She nodded heavily, without looking back into the room.

  I glanced again at his body. “The poor son of a bitch.”

  “Take me out of here, Harry,” Karen said suddenly, in a shrill voice. “Please, take me out of here. I can’t stand it. I can’t stand it!”

  I pulled her to me, guiding her away from the bathroom and down the stairs. I took her into the living room and sat her down on the dusty couch. I seated myself beside her, holding her close until her sobbing began to die down.

  “I never thought I’d see that again,” she said, dropping her hands from her face. She shook her head violently, as if she were trying to shake the sight of Norvelle out of her memory.

  I took a handkerchief out of my pocket and wiped off her face—gently, as if she were my child.

  Karen bit down hard on her lower lip, her eyes still brimming with tears.

  “That used to happen in shooting galleries,” she said, trying to control her voice, “I saw it happen twice. The other junkies...they didn’t care. They were bummed out because it spoiled their high. Maybe somebody would call the life squad. Maybe not. I was always afraid that Lonnie or I would end up that way. It was my worst fear.”