Send Out The Clowns (Frank River Series)

by Harry Hoge

  He glanced out the window at the open spaces along the road, marveling as he often did, about how, in Houston, one could be mired in gridlock traffic one moment and in open country the next.

  "It's a picnic," Frank said, waving to the open spaces on the left. "I'm taking you on a picnic."

  Pauley gritted her teeth and sent him a very familiar look of frustration. "Tell me," she said.

  "No. It's a secret. A very special place. You'll have to wait until we get there."

  They drove north and encountered heavy traffic. Frank crossed FM 1960 and continued on Cutten Road. The buildup in traffic soon abated and he turned on what appeared to be a country lane, lined with stately oak and towering pine trees. At the end of a curving gravel drive was an elegant one-floor building in Grecian-Mediterranean styling that resembled a private estate or country club. No neon sign, merely the name, Phaeton's Bunker, in burnished copper letters of discreet size along the ridgeline. Young men in suits, and fashionably dressed young women waited on the porch in front of the building. There were no vehicles in sight.

  "I've never heard of this place," Pauley commented. "It's beautiful."

  "They don't advertise. You have to know about it or you wouldn't come."

  "How did you hear about it?"

  "The bartender was involved in a fire bombing case several years ago. I met him here a couple times. The in crowd calls it The Bunker.'"

  One of the well dressed valets met them at the front steps, handed Frank a number and disappeared in the sports car. Frank took Pauley's elbow and escorted her through the front door where an attractive woman met them. Frank hesitated, looking toward the bar, waiting to see if Chris Trevor recognized him, and if so, how he would have them seated. Chris employed a special system pre-arranged with the greeter. He pushed buttons at the bar that flashed colored lights on the lectern near the front door.

  First timers or those who came infrequently were the only people seated in the front room. Rooms on either side of the main room and bar area were designated by color: the Red Room on the left and the Green Room on the right. Frank knew the setup, but if he hadn't, he wouldn't have noticed any signal being given or received. The greeter smiled immediately and said, "Follow me."

  She passed through the main room and into the Red Room, leading Frank and Pauley to a framed booth along the far wall. It and two other tables had lights on. All the others were cast in shadow. The decor was ornate Mediterranean, and classical music wafted in a low volume from hidden speakers in the top of the booth. The menus were already in place with goblets of water looking cold and inviting.

  "Frank," Pauley gasped in a panicked whisper. "There are no prices on this menu."

  Frank smiled. "If you have to ask, we should go on down Cutten Road. There's a County Line Barbeque around the bend."

  "We can't afford this place, Cisco."

  "Sure we can. Just this once."

  Before Pauley could continue to argue against such a lavish outing, Chris Trevor appeared by their table. Trevor had a full russet beard, precisely trimmed, and well styled blonde hair. Pauley guessed his age at forty-something and considered him an attractive man.

  "Detective Rivers," Chris remarked. "What a pleasant surprise. I hope I'm not under suspicion of murder again."

  "No, I wanted you to meet my friend Paulette Heyer. Pauley, this is Chris Trevor, a wizard behind the bar and a man with excellent taste in women." He turned to Chris. "How's Hildegarth?"

  "I'm pleased to meet you, Ms. Heyer. Frank mentioned he had a girlfriend, but I never expected he could attract such a beautiful lady."

  "Well, Mr. Trevor, I'm pleased to meet you and flattered by your compliment." They both smiled and shook hands. Chris turned to Frank.

  "Hildy will be by later this evening. She usually comes in after the dinner rush and drives me home. I'm expecting a slow night, even though it's Sunday. There's too much going on in town to capture the interest of our regular customers." He glanced at Paulette, noticing that her attention had returned to the menu. He merely smiled at her reaction to the list of entrees and the lack of prices. Such 'shock' was common to first timers. "Tell you what," he said. "That menu can be disquieting until you get used to it. Let me choose your dinner for you, and later, after Hildy arrives, the four of us can have some brandy and talk over old times."

  "That would be wonderful," Pauley said. She looked at Frank. "Unless you had something special in mind."

  "No, I've never had dinner here, only drinks. I'd like it if Chris did the honors."

  "Good," Chris turned to Frank. "If I remember correctly, you like scotch rocks with lemon, and if I had to guess, Ms. Heyer would prefer wine, perhaps a gentle blush, say a Gamay Rose?"

  Pauley nodded, hoping she didn't appear so much the rube as she felt. Chris flashed a warm smile that helped her relax, and left to retrieve the drinks.

  "Chris is a regular guy," Frank explained. "He was a geologic engineer before the oil companies went down. He has the remarkable ability to relate to people from any level of society, but his basic personality is solidly Middle America."

  Chris didn't deliver the drinks personally. A tall slender waiter dressed in black tie and a white shirt, black pants and a cut-away vest brought them.

  "Hi, my name is Gary, and I'll be taking care of you this evening." He pointed to an ivory button on the inside wall of the booth. "If you need anything at all, push that button and I'll be here immediately."

  Frank and Pauley nodded.

  "If you want, I'll put your order in now. It takes a good thirty minutes to prepare." Frank and Pauley nodded again. Gary smiled and left.

  "I feel so pampered," Pauley smiled. "I don't know whether I should think of myself as a princess, or a serf having a last meal before facing the gallows."

  "You should always think of yourself as a princess, Pauley. You need to get used to such lavishness. When your new ventures get off the ground, you'll be having dinner parties at places like this on a regular basis."

  She reached forward and took his hand. "Do I detect a ring of gloom in your voice?"

  "I'd be lying if I said that your new enterprises didn't scare me. I have a feeling our lives are going to undergo major change."

  Pauley swirled her wine, staring at the motion in the glass. "Change is the only certainty in life," she said softly. Frank didn't respond.

  Frank settled back against the leather padding of his seat, savoring the lingering taste of beef and spices, and drifting in a peaceful buzz created from the scotch before dinner and the smooth delicate wine during. Pauley appeared to be in a similar state of euphoria. Gary, the waiter, completed his attentive services by delivering a snifter of cognac to Frank and a mug of Irish coffee to Pauley. Before either could sample their after-dinner drinks, Chris and Hildegarth joined them at the table. Frank had met Hildy before and knew her background. As Hildy introduced herself to Pauley, Frank marveled at the woman's charisma and her ability to hide the fact that she had spent the majority of her adult life serving her country as an agent of Interpol. Pauley was mesmerized immediately.

  Hildy looked at Frank, although she was directing her comments to Pauley. "You shouldn't let this one get away, Ms. Heyer. He's a prize."

  "Please, call me Pauley. I'm amazed that Frank has kept you and Chris a secret from me." She too, stared at Frank. Frank could feel Chris's eyes watching him. He didn't enjoy being the center of attention and chose to make Pauley his focus,

  "My devoted mother taught me to always hold back pleasant surprises to bring out in moments of conflict. I'm hoping I can convince you not to abandon me when you're rich and famous."

  Hildy elbowed Chris and commented, "I think we've been drawn into a lover's tryst and are unsuspecting pawns."

  "Please," Frank answered. "It's the wine talking. Pauley's on the threshold of opportunity and I'm showing my lack of confidence."

  "Paulette," Chris added, "You and I need to remember that our friends here are both cops and experts in readin
g innuendo in other people's thoughts."

  Pauley allowed her surprise to show, and gaped at Hildy. "You're a policewoman?"

  Hildy laughed. "Not any more, but I was an international spy for years, darling." She used a broad accent to emphasize that she considered her previous life as a joke. "When I met Chris, I decided to come in from the cold and become a groupie bar fly."

  During the next few minutes, Frank, Chris and Hildegarth filled Pauley in on their past relationship. They all treated it in a light vein, bringing the conversation to a level of enjoyment that had Pauley relaxed and laughing, until Frank looked startled and indicated he'd received a phone call.

  "I'm on standby, and had the phone on vibrate." He looked at the phone. It was Gerry. She wouldn't disturb him unless it was important. "I need to take this," he explained. He stood and walked away from the table.

  "Rivers."

  "We've got another one," Gerry reported.

  "Where?"

  "Like before, it's in a parking garage, but this time it's on Congress near Fannin."

  Frank looked toward the table. He caught Pauley looking at him, only a brief glance before returning her gaze to Hildegarth. Chris had been right. Cops did read innuendo in other people's reactions. Now was a bad time to interrupt his evening with Pauley, but he had a job to do.

  "It'll take me the better part of an hour to take care of things here and get there."

  "No problem, this one isn't going anywhere."

  Frank closed the phone and fought back his anger. He didn't know who he was most angry with; himself for not staying on the case and preventing a second victim, or the killer for interrupting a pleasant evening and probably sealing his fate at losing Pauley.

  Chapter 10

  Gerry closed her phone and glanced toward the lab techs as they swept the area. This had been a self-imposed test for her to evaluate her aptitude as a homicide detective. She gave herself a passing grade. During her initial view of the murder scene, her heart had been ice; no nausea, no panic or sentimentality, no emotion at all - ice. Maybe she had put too much emphasis on this event. She had witnessed violence before and had no illusions about mankind's ability to heap burning coals on the heads of their fellows. She'd witnessed such behavior since birth; which, no doubt, explained what brought her to this moment.

  Her sociology professors and textbooks made much to-do about ethnicity and crime, categorizing Black on Black, Black on White and the like, while analyzing the problem and suggesting solutions. She had welcomed her assignment to the vice squad, throwing herself into the work with enthusiasm, in the belief that proper law enforcement would make a difference, that her dedication and training would reduce the inequities of the victims. The reality on the street had been an acid test.

  She concluded that with few exceptions, motivation for inhumanity came more from opportunity than sophisticated sociological concerns. Perpetrators and victims came from all ethnic backgrounds and every economic class. She'd seen pushers and pimps steal pride and dignity from others; embezzlers and blackmailers ruin lives for the sake of money, or simply raw power, and regardless of dedicated law enforcement, hordes of such predators emerged faster than they could be prosecuted. Ethnicity wasn't the common denominator. Arrogance was, and the justification owed more to greed and lack of self worth than any other cause. Roger Harrington had summed it up in much simpler terms. She remembered him saying, "All the psycho-babble aside, what it boils down to is, there's a lot more horses' asses than there are horses."

  She remembered reading somewhere that human beings only needed three things to be successful in life, to love, to be loved and to have a feeling of self worth. She had been loved. Her mother and grandmother had loved her as intensely as possible, and in so doing, had instilled her with a feeling of self worth. She had yet to find romantic love. Maybe it would come with Roger Harrington. He was attentive and she admired him, but what barriers existed for them from the fact they were both cops? More precisely, what barriers had she constructed to block her from finding a partner who could live up to her expectations?

  She wondered if the corpse lying in the outline of chalk had been loved. Gerry had definite opinions about the victim's sense of self. She shuddered. "What a hell of a way to check out," she whispered to herself and to Laurie Lowe. She glanced at the moon, a shining rock at first quarter. It reminded Gerry of a coin being pushed through a slot, half exposed, half concealed -someone dropping a dime. She wished someone would drop a dime on the bastard that had the arrogance to steal a person's most precious possession, life. Rage began to thaw her blood. She had come to homicide precisely because she wanted to oppose these ultimate robbers, murderers who had the audacity to end another's essence. Particularly a monster that stripped a person from dignity even in death, dressing the body as a clown and posing it to send some macabre message.

  Al Shuman interrupted Gerry's thoughts.

  "We're finished here, Detective Gardner. Did you call Frank?"

  Gerry glanced at her wristwatch. "Yeah, He should be here in about fifteen minutes."

  "Do you want to wait? I'd like to get the body to the morgue soon."

  "Give me one more minute, and if Frank isn't here by the time I'm finished, go ahead and transport."

  Shuman nodded.

  Gerry walked over and knelt by the body. Full rigor was in force, indicating the time of death at twelve to eighteen hours earlier. The right arm was extended, palm upward as though the body had been reaching for help at the end, indicating that the killer had watched, and posed the arm in mockery of the victim's plight. A brightly colored ball was grasped in the hand, a companion to other balls and equipment common to jugglers stuffed in a gym bag beside the body.

  Gerry heard the thrum of Frank's car, the opening and closing of the door as she continued to study the victim. The sound of his shoes on the pavement as he walked toward her, and the sense of his presence by her side didn't break her concentration. Only when he spoke did she allow her rising rage to be squelched.

  "Ah, crap," he mumbled. "It's the out-of-towner from last night."

  "Laurie Lowe," Gerry replied.

  "She got the hook for certain."

  "We've got to get this bastard, Frank."

  "We will."

  "I'm going to enjoy bringing him down." She looked up at her partner. "I hope it's street justice and not a day in court."

  She watched Frank hold her look, interpret her anger.

  He said nothing, merely closed his eyes and nodded, before holding out his hand to help her up.

  Gerry watched as the EMT eased her aside and began preparations to transport Laurie's remains to the morgue. She jammed her hands into the pocket of her jacket and strolled to the patrol car with her head bowed. Frank followed, his fists closed tight and his jaw clenched.

  "Follow me," he told her when they reached the cars. "We need some time to adjust our thoughts."

  Gerry followed Frank to the Katy Freeway. When they were out of the main traffic flow, she allowed her thoughts to drift back to her reaction to her first official homicide, knowing that regardless of her experience as a cop, she would never lose the image of the girl from Albuquerque, New Mexico, posed in death in the ridiculous clown costume and make up, staring blindly up at her with her hand raised in a symbol of helplessness. Helplessness, the ultimate indignity. Any misery could be endured as long as there was hope. Had Laurie ever been loved?

  She remembered herself as a young girl, living with her grandmother. So many occasions, her mother was absent from her memories because she was out trying to earn enough money to keep food on the table and clothing on everyone's back. Menial tasks such as cleaning offices or running a scullery in a low-budget restaurant. It had never been steady employment, but they always had enough to scrape by. That was before grandmother Laverne grew weak and bowed with age. Gerry always thought about those earlier times, shunning her teenage years when life were more difficult, or at least so it seemed. She followed her grandmot
her around because Laverne always made her feel comfortable, talking as she took care of the house. "Gotta keep this place lookin' like a home and not a pig sty. Might not have much, but a body can take pride in what they do have." Laverne owned three dresses, two looked so much the same that Gerry had to look carefully to tell which was which— faded cotton prints, which she alternated, washing one while she wore the other. During cold weather, Laverne wore threadbare, baggy corduroy pants under the prints and had a heavy wool sweater for the few occasions when she went outside. The third dress was a shiny material, black with a bold, red rose design. This was Laverne's "Sunday best," and Gerry couldn't remember her ever wearing it except at her funeral.

  During those times, when her mother Lilly came home it meant the smell of hot chocolate and popcorn. Lilly cleaned the restrooms at a movie theater on Richmond Avenue and would bring home a big box of popcorn. It was a long way from Richmond to the fourth ward and the delicacy would be stone cold. Gerry would pour it into a bowl and warm it in the oven while Laverne heated the instant cocoa on the burner. They would all three chatter like magpies as they waited for the temperature to be to their liking - girls all, anticipating a party. Yes, Gerry thought, she had been loved.

  Frank turned South on the 610 loop, heading for the Galleria. Gerry decided that if she hadn't known who was driving the little car ahead of her, she would pull the culprit over and issue a traffic ticket - speeding and reckless driving. As she kept Frank in view, she was certain many of the motorists thought the police car was in hot pursuit and probably wondering why there were no flashing lights and siren.