Trace (Trace 1)

by Warren Murphy

“Both rear ones. I think it was vandals.”

  “From that blood on your lip, it looks like you caught them.”

  Trace reached up his hand to the side of his mouth and his fingers came away sticky. He decided impulsively that he did not want to involve the police in any of this yet, so he said, “I rapped myself on the trunk lid.” He wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.

  “What are you doing here anyway?” she asked.

  “I was visiting.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I guess we can let it go at that.”

  “Is there an all-night garage around here?”

  “No. There’s no all-night anything in this town. Well, hardly any all-night anything. Best I can do, I’ll give you a lift somewhere. You can call somebody in the morning.”

  “I appreciate it,” Trace said.

  He turned around to replace the spare tire in the trunk, and as he did, in the glare of the squad car’s headlights he saw a small piece of paper on the ground near his flattened right rear tire. He picked up the paper and jammed it into his pocket, and he noticed that the valve cap had been taken off the tire. The tire had not been punctured; someone had just opened the valve to let the air out.

  He locked the spare tire in the trunk, then put his car keys on the floor under the front seat and locked all the car doors, first making sure the driver’s front vent window was unlocked and an arm could reach through it to the door lock.

  “I left the keys under the seat for whoever comes,” he said.

  Police Officer Wilcox drove carefully, her eyes on the road, and Trace had a chance to admire her profile, classic and sharp. She looked to be in her early thirties, perhaps fifteen years younger than her husband.

  “You think vandals got your tires?” she said.

  “I think so. The valve caps were off. I think somebody just let the air out. I’m staying at the golf-course hotel.”

  She nodded. “There were a dozen cars in the lot. Why’d they pick on you?”

  “Maybe my ex-wife sent them to harass me. She’s capable of it.”

  “You’re divorced, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s it like being divorced?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You know. Is it hard to get back to a normal life?”

  “Marriage wasn’t ever normal for me,” Trace said. “I like to come and go when I feel like it. I’m surprised to see you out in the car at night. I thought you were a house mouse.”

  “A house mouse?” she said. “What’s that?”

  “A woman cop who’s on desk duty all the time. At least, that’s what my father used to call them.”

  “Oh. Somebody turned up sick and I decided I could use the overtime. I do it a lot.”

  “Your husband like your being out?” Trace asked.

  “He does his thing. I do mine. Damn, this hot weather makes you thirsty.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Reach under the seat,” she said. “There’s two cans of beer there. Get them out.”

  “Your command is my command,” he said.

  “Don’t say things you don’t mean. That could get you into trouble.”

  Trace popped the tops of the beers and handed her one. She tilted it to her lips and drank a long swallow, then placed the can on the flat dashboard of the car.

  “You got many friends in town?” she asked.

  “The Mitchell Careys. Their family,” Trace said.

  “They don’t live out this way.”

  “That was another friend,” Trace said.

  “I’ll need the name for my report.”

  “You going to report this?”

  “Vandalism to a private car? Think I ought to,” she said. She was driving now with just her left hand on the wheel. Her right hand rested on the seat between them and then casually touched his leg.

  Trace did not move and she said, “Nobody’s waiting for you at your hotel, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Good.” She made a sharp left turn and sped off down a narrow dark road.

  Trace reached into his pocket and turned on his tape recorder. “What do you have in mind for me?” he asked.

  “Can’t you guess?” she said as she turned off into an unpaved lane off the highway and killed the car’s engine.

  “I haven’t done this since I was a kid,” he said.

  “I have. Don’t worry. I’ll refresh your memory.”

  “I guess it won’t do any good to tell you I’m almost forty years old?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Okay, Officer. I’m at your mercy,” he said.

  She began to unbuckle his belt. “I think you can call me Lauren now,” she said.

  They were almost back to the golf course when she said, “Well, I’ll say this for you. Making it with you is interesting.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “All you want to do is talk about Meadow Vista. Then when I touch you, you complain your stomach is sore. Lots of fun.”

  “What about me?” he said. “You think it’s fun with that police radio squawking every ten seconds and me expecting to get caught in a crossfire any minute? I tried my best.”

  “Actually you did very well.”

  Trace said, “I don’t think you ought to report what happened to my car.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you do, you’ll have to report this rape.”

  “There’s no rape without a complaint,” she said.

  “I’m not complaining,” he said.

  “Neither am I.”

  It was almost three o’clock when she let him off in front of the country club’s main building. “If you’re around for a while, I hope I see you again,” she said.

  She smiled at him, and as she drove away, Trace mumbled, “Not if I see you first.”

  Dexter was not at his usual spot behind the desk and Trace wondered why he should be surprised. The man had to sleep some time. He leaned over the counter but saw no messages in his box.

  Upstairs in his room, he hung his jacket on the back of a door. Then he remembered the piece of paper he had found near his car and fished it from his pocket.

  It was crumpled and Trace suspected that someone might have used it to unscrew the valve caps on his tires, in a totally unnecessary effort to avoid leaving fingerprints.

  He unfolded the sheet of pink paper. It was the top of a billhead and printed on it clearly was: MEADOW VISTA SANATORIUM, Harmon Hills, N.J.,” but the paper had been torn and there was no name or invoice number on the sheet. Nor was there any marking on the back of the paper.

  He undressed, took another shower, and wondered what all this scrubbing was doing to his body’s natural oils. If he started to wrinkle, he was going to think about sex-by-mail.

  He was surprised to get a dial tone on his room telephone and he made a credit-card call to Bob Swenson at his London hotel.

  The voice was crisp, sharply clear even over three thousand miles of distance as it snapped “Hello” into the phone.

  “Bob, this is Trace.”

  Trace knew immediately that Swenson was drinking because he lapsed into his hearty ho-ho-ho voice that sounded like a cross between W. C. Fields and a drunken Mr. Magoo.

  “Hello, my boy. What brings your voice here at this vile hour?”

  “You been to bed yet?” Trace asked.

  “I don’t remember. I love these conventions,” Swenson said.

  “I know. You love to travel. You always did.”

  “Someone’s been spilling personal secrets,” Swenson said.

  “Listen, Bob, I’m in Harmon Hills checking on the Carey family.”

  The bluff heartiness of the voice vanished and Swenson was crisp as he said, “I talked to Walter Marks about it. Amanda is an old friend of mine.”

  “Did she tell you she was worried about her husband’s safety at that sanatorium? Think. I need to know.”

  �
��She told me something about somebody changing their insurance beneficiary.”

  “Yeah, but was she worried? Did she really sound worried?”

  There was a pause before Swenson said, “Maybe not really worried. But she did mention it and I thought it was worth looking into.”

  “Do you think that maybe she was just mouthing somebody else’s words?”

  “Possibly. She’s a nice woman. Maybe. She wasn’t hysterical or anything, if that’s what you mean. What’s going on there?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think there was anything fake about that guy who changed his insurance beneficiary.”

  “Good. That ends it, doesn’t it?” Swenson said.

  “Not quite. I was at the hospital and Mr. Carey said that somebody was trying to kill him.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. He might just have been delirious, and I don’t think he knew what he was saying. He’s in a coma most of the time. So I would have discounted it, except some goons turned my ribs into a marimba band tonight, so I don’t know.”

  “What are you going to do?” Swenson asked.

  “Hang around until I find out some more.”

  “How is Amanda? Have you seen her?”

  “Yeah. I think she’s taking that daughter’s death pretty hard. She’s not really functioning,” Trace said.

  “Trace, I like the Careys. Don’t let anything happen to them.”

  “I’ll try not to. Listen, from now on, if you’ve got things for me to do, will you talk to me directly? Marks didn’t even tell me the Careys had lost a daughter.”

  “His feelings will be hurt if I don’t talk to him,” Swenson said.

  “Then talk to both of us. But me directly.”

  “Okay,” Swenson said.

  “When you were at the funeral, did you meet that girl who’s staying with Mrs. Carey?” Trace asked.

  “Yes. What’s her name?”

  “Muffy.”

  “Yes, I met her.”

  “What’d you think of her?”

  “I think she had too much hair, as I remember,” Swenson said.

  “Okay,” Trace said. “I ought to let you go. These calls are expensive.”

  “Nonsense. I just saw a commercial. Calling overseas to chat with friends is one of the real bargains left in the world.”

  “No,” Trace said. “The only bargain left in the world is coffee filters.”

  “Coffee filters?”

  “Yeah. You ever try to finish up a box of coffee filters? They last longer than most marriages.”

  “Trace, what time is it there?”

  “I don’t know, three-thirty or so.”

  “Have a drink and go to sleep.”

  “I’m cutting down on my drinking,” Trace said.

  “You’re fired.”

  “Well, maybe I could force just one down.”

  “Good night,” Swenson said.

  Trace sat on the bed and rewound a few inches of tape on the recorder, then pressed the play button.

  He heard his voice. “I’m six-three and I don’t fit in these cars. I stopped fitting in these cars when I was sixteen.”

  He heard Lauren Wilcox’s voice. “You’re fitting just fine. Oh, yes. There. There.”

  And his own voice. “I aim to please.”

  And her voice. “Your aim is very pleasing.”

  He turned the machine off, sighed, and got up to get a fresh tape from his jacket pocket.

  18

  Trace’s Log:

  Tape Recording Number Four, Devlin Tracy in the Land of Nod, at, oh, God, four o’clock on Thursday morning.

  So maybe I fall in love, right, and two hours later I’m unfaithful. So, okay, it was a nymphomaniac cop and how do you reject a woman with a gun but why do these things always happen to me? If human beings someday hear these words, remember, I was more to be pitied than censured.

  Hold it all. I said falling in love. I don’t know if I believe in that, in love at first sight. Lust at first sight, I know about. Even like at first sight. But love? No. Therefore, machine, I can tell you now with absolute surety that I am not now in love, nor have I ever been in love, with Jeannie Callahan. Well, I don’t think so anyway.

  In the Master File are two more tapes of my meetings with Jeannie Callahan and I don’t think I’m ever going to let Chico listen to these tapes. And I am not going to think about the Lawyer Callahan versus Michiko Mangini, part-time hooker and roommate who is out someplace cheating on me. It is really more than I care to deal with right now.

  Jeannie is a much nicer lady than you would suspect about somebody whose office help is a computer and a typist with a temper. She’s ready to defend Matteson in the Plesser case, and if nothing else comes of this, I’d better remember to tell Groucho to have our lawyers contact her, since sooner or later they’re all going to be working together anyway.

  She says that she will peel Nicholas Yule’s skin if she ever gets the Plesser lawyer in court, but she was willing to try to make a two-thousand-dollar settlement with him. He turned her down. How could anyone turn that woman down for anything? And what kind of a lawyer doesn’t need money?

  My stomach hurts and my ribs are no prizes either. I don’t like getting hit. Fortunately, it hurts only when I breathe.

  Lawyer Callahan doesn’t like Muffy ’cause Muffy came to pester her about Mr. Carey and making wills and such. She was probably right in not telling Muffy that she was also representing Matteson in the case.

  So she’s the Careys’ lawyer too, and they’re more than clients, they’re lifelong friends. So you know she’s not involved in any scheme to hurt old man Carey. Right?

  Right.

  Why do I trust this woman when it’s an article of faith with me that I don’t trust lawyers? Is my personal opinion getting in the way of my professional judgment? Probably, and why not? My personal opinion’s as good as anything else I’ve got in this case. If it is a case.

  Jeannie is making a deal now to sell Carey’s business. I better check that out ’cause I’m not even sure what Carey’s business is.

  And then I had dinner with her. Chico, if I’m dead and you’re listening to this, the woman cooked a magnificent roast beef for me. What did you ever cook for me besides my goose? And my faith in womankind?

  Jeannie is sure nothing is happening to Mr. Carey at Meadow Vista. What’d she say, though? He’s been fighting with his partner for forty years? Wilber Winfield is the partner and he goes on my list to talk to tomorrow, if my stomach lets me live until tomorrow.

  Muffy talked about having Mr. Carey declared incompetent. Let’s see. If she gets that done, then Mrs. Carey is in charge of everything and Muffy is in charge of Mrs. Carey. It all makes sense to me.

  Maybe.

  I just don’t like that frizz-haired blonde. Maybe it’s ’cause she slides so easily from calling Mrs. Carey “Nana” to her face and “Amanda” when she’s out of the room. We’ll see.

  And then there’s a lot of stuff on the tape of a highly confidential, personal nature and maybe I’ll erase it.

  Unfortunately, there is no record on the tape of me getting the shit kicked out of me in the parking lot. Why let the air out of my tires? Why beat on my belly? Why drop a Meadow Vista billhead near the car? That’s too stupid for words.

  At least I clocked one of the bastards. If I see somebody with a light-bulb nose walking the streets, I may have found my man.

  Keep on the lookout for a dark-green car with a sporty back. I don’t know cars. When I was young I knew every car. Now I don’t know any of them. Maybe this was a Camaro. Or maybe a Firebird. Sure, and maybe it was a 1922 Hispano-Suiza and Juan Fangio was driving it. What do I know?

  And then I got a ride home from Police Officer Wilcox and I pumped her mightily. About Meadow Vista, that is, and she didn’t know anything bad.

  It’s funny. When Chico used to tell me the truth, the whole truth, I used to launder these tapes and lie a lot. And now that she’s sta
rted lying to me, it seems like I can tell the truth on the tapes and not have to lie anymore. Maybe this is a good thing.

  And Bob Swenson says that he didn’t like Muffy and she could have put Mrs. Carey up to talking to him about Meadow Vista and worrying about her husband. Why such a big deal? Muffy admitted it to me when we met the first time.

  If there something wrong with Jeannie? Why hasn’t she ever been married? Unless she’s too smart to get married, in which case she’s obviously too smart to have anything to do with me. This is a quandary.

  Why did Mitchell Carey tell me somebody was trying to kill him?

  I should have told Jeannie about that. Probably I didn’t because I find it hard to trust people who put mayonnaise on roast beef, even if they are heavy drinkers like Jeannie. I’ll think about it all some more tomorrow.

  And so to bed.

  My stomach still hurts.

  19

  Squawk, squawk.

  It was a flock of geese. No. No, definitely not geese. Moose. A herd of moose.

  No, not moose. It was telephones. A bank of telephones. Ringing, squawk, squawk, near his head.

  Trace picked up the telephone and struggled to open his eyes. His stomach still hurt.

  “Hello.”

  “Hello, Devvie,” a woman’s voice said.

  “Cora, how many times do I have to tell you to stop pestering me this way?”

  “I haven’t talked to you in six months.”

  “That’s what I mean. I can’t turn around without you being on the phone. What do you want?”

  “Since you’re in New Jersey, come and see your children.”

  “I saw them last night.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “Yes, I did. When they jumped me in that parking lot. I’m ashamed to see how you’ve raised them, Cora.”

  “Stop it, you damn fool. You haven’t seen your children in three years now. They’re your children too, you know.”

  “They’re pretty old now, aren’t they? Pretty big,” Trace said shrewdly.

  “Yes. You’d hardly recognize them.”

  “I didn’t recognize them in the parking lot. But I guess What’s-his-name was the big one who kept punching me in the stomach. I hope the girl likes her broken nose.”