Willows and Parker Box Set

by Laurence Gough

  The air filled with mist. It began to rain. The streetlight above Phasia Palinkas retreated into a thick grey haze, slowly faded to black.

  Nichos was in the lobby of Phasia Palinkas’ apartment building when the fatal shot was fired. He was leaning against the steam radiator, idly running his fingers over the dusty leaves of an artificial rubber plant. As the blast of the sniper’s rifle echoed down the street, he hurried to the double glass doors, and outside, into the rain. A silver Mercedes 450SL turned off Commercial and raced past him down Eleventh, headed west.

  At the corner, Phasia Palinkas in her heavy black coat lay under the streetlight like a crumpled three-dimensional shadow. Nichos started slowly towards her, hesitated, broke into a trot. When he reached the body he skidded to a stop, fell to his knees. Her eyes stared through him. Rain streamed down her cheeks and into her open mouth, overflowed down her chin. A pool of blood seeped from beneath her, crawled slowly across the sidewalk towards him.

  Nichos stole a quarter from the sidewalk. He looked around and saw no one, and hurried towards the pay phone at the far end of the block.

  *

  The sniper abandoned the silver 450SL in the public parking lot across from the tennis courts near the Beach Avenue entrance to Stanley Park. It was more than half a mile to the highrise on Jervis, and he had not thought to bring an umbrella. Within seconds of leaving the car, his cheap wig was plastered to his skull and his face was a ruin. But the driving rain that had reduced his disguise to an absurdity had also emptied the streets of pedestrians. Even Denman Street was deserted, except for a quartet of late-night diners clustered in the doorway of the Three Greenhorns restaurant. The sniper averted his face as he hurried past them, but no one paid any attention to him; it was as if he didn’t exist.

  It took him a quarter of an hour to make the trip from the Mercedes to his building. He turned his key in the lock and let himself into the lobby, which was small and bare, devoid of furniture. He punched the UP button. The doors to both elevators slid open simultaneously. He stepped into the closest elevator and hit the button for the twelfth floor. It was the last thrill of the night, this bold and risky ascent. But the elevator rose smoothly and without interruption. He saw no one, and no one saw him.

  As he walked silently down the carpeted hallway towards his apartment, the sniper unbuttoned his mauve raincoat. The leather gun case hung straight down, suspended by a padded leather strap around his neck. He unlocked the door, went inside.

  There was a tiny closet in the short entrance hall leading to the living room. The sniper pushed aside the flimsy louvred door and hung up his raincoat. Then he unhooked the padded strap and carried the rifle over to the pine table. Kicking off his high-heeled shoes, he reached awkwardly behind him to unzip the dress. The thin material was sopping wet. It clung tenaciously to him as he pulled the dress down to his hips. He wriggled free and let it fall in an untidy heap to the floor. Then he pulled off the blonde wig and tossed it underhand into the sink.

  He was cold and he was wet, and he badly wanted a shower. But before he cleaned himself, he would clean the rifle.

  Naked, shivering, he sat down on the bright orange plastic chair and went to work.

  VI

  A WHISTLE BLEW shrilly — one long, sharp note. The roar and clatter of power tools and hydraulic machinery stopped instantly, with all the precision of a superbly rehearsed symphony.

  Bradley stood at his office window, looking down. He calculated that if the construction crew below him continued working at the same rate throughout the rest of the day, they would finish clearing the site by the end of the afternoon. That meant they could begin excavating first thing the following morning. Then, he knew, the level of noise would be truly horrendous. Sighing inwardly, he drank the rest of his lukewarm tea, put the Royal Albert gently down on the windowsill, and turned to face his two teams of detectives.

  Claire Parker sat on one of the straight-backed wooden chairs, her hands resting quietly in her lap. Willows had assumed his customary position, against the wall within arm’s reach of the door. Atkinson and Franklin were standing beside the cherry-wood desk. Atkinson’s small, professionally manicured hands moved graphically as he continued to describe the previous evening’s entanglements with Lynda, the skinny redhead from the cafeteria. Franklin had correctly guessed that his partner’s ostentatious parading of the feathers was aimed at Claire Parker. Embarrassed, he kept glancing over at her while at the same time carefully avoiding eye contact. Franklin was fifty-two years old and known far and wide as a happily married man, but he thought he knew how Atkinson felt. No one in his right mind would deny that Parker was an extremely attractive woman. And despite the inclement weather, it was spring, that time of year when the saps begin to glow.

  Bradley looked at his watch, a cheap Timex given to him by his twelve-year-old son, Christopher. It was two minutes past ten. Jerry Goldstein, who toiled in the bowels of the crime lab, over on Grant and Keefer, was late again. Bradley twisted the ruby ring on the little finger of his left hand. He was a punctual man and punctuality was a trait he admired in others. He snuck another look at the scuffed crystal of the watch. Three minutes past ten, and counting. Bradley went over to his desk and sat down. “What time you got?” he said to Dave Atkinson.

  Atkinson knew exactly what was on Bradley’s mind. “Five past,” he lied.

  Bradley opened his carved cedar humidor and helped himself to a cigar. He’d been smoking more heavily since the death of Alice Palm, and he didn’t like it one little bit. He was going to have to make an effort to cut back, and not just for the sake of his health. The cigars were costly as hell. Like most cops, he was on a budget.

  He struck a wooden kitchen match against the belly of his desk, let the flame settle, and lit up. A cloud of aromatic Cuban smoke billowed towards the ceiling, nine feet high and splattered here and there with dark, oddly shaped stains.

  The feeling of intense irritation caused by Goldstein’s tardiness refused to abate. Bradley glared at the Timex. It was what, about six minutes past ten, and he was already smoking his afternoon cigar — a cigar that had cost him a dollar fifty and wasn’t giving him a nickel’s worth of pleasure. Sitting bolt upright in his leather chair, he continued to stare menacingly at the watch, his eyes on the sweep second hand as it dragged slowly around the dial.

  At ten minutes past the hour, just as the construction whistle signalled an end to the morning coffee break, Jerry Goldstein finally waltzed into the office.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Goldstein to the room at large. “It was unavoidable. A lady down on the second floor had a seizure, and I had to help regurgitate her tongue.”

  “Life and death,” said Bradley. “I figured it had to be something like that.”

  Goldstein nodded, ignoring Bradley’s tone. Goldstein was wearing a lightweight cream-coloured three-piece suit, a chocolate brown Italian silk tie and an impossibly white silk shirt. His shoes were made of canvas the exact same shade of brown as his tie, and had thick soles and heels of translucent pink plastic. His socks, also of chocolate brown silk, sported a pattern of yellow sundials. He gave Parker a lazy smile.

  “You must be the new crime-buster.”

  “Claire Parker.”

  “Jerry Goldstein.” Goldstein smiled again, his eyes twinkling. Thanks to his tinted contact lenses, his eyes were almost as blue as Paul Newman’s. His teeth were large, as white as his impossibly white shirt. Jumbled together in cramped and disorderly rows, they gave him a charming, almost piratical air. With his flash clothes, the eyes, his full head of curly blond hair and cherubic complexion, Goldstein knew he looked good. He also knew it was no time to flirt, not with Bradley sitting there behind a cloud of smoke that might or might not be coming from his cigar.

  Without preamble, he began his lecture.

  “The earmuffs that were found on the sidewalk down the street from the pool hall were probably used by the shooter to protect himself from the sound of the shot. We
tracked down the manufacturer. The muffs are carried by three department store chains and dozens of independents. More than six thousand pairs have been sold in and around the city in the past two years.”

  “Maybe so,” said Atkinson. “But how many of them were pink?”

  “About half. They only come in two colours. Blue for boys, pink for girls.”

  “Naturally,” said Parker.

  “What’s the matter,” said Goldstein, “you don’t like pink?”

  “Only in sunsets. What about the spent cartridge that was found in the Mercedes?”

  “No doubt about it, it definitely came from the same weapon that was used on Alice Palm.”

  “Hold it,” said Franklin. “What Mercedes?”

  “A 450SL,” said Bradley. “The owner’s name is Douglas Phillips. He reported the vehicle stolen at 8:07 this morning.”

  “When was it recovered?”

  “At 7:12, almost an hour before the switchboard logged Phillip’s call. The car was left with the lights on and both doors wide open. A squad car came across it during a routine patrol. The cops took a look inside, saw the spent cartridge on the floor, and gave me a call.”

  “Anybody talk to Phillips yet?”

  “I did,” said Parker. “His wife’s a light sleeper. She says she was with him all night long.”

  “Has he got any other character witnesses, other than his wife?” said Atkinson.

  Parker nodded. “His doctor. Phillips has a long history of heart trouble.”

  “Well,” said Atkinson, “I can certainly relate to that.”

  “The man had a near-fatal stroke two years ago,” Parker continued. “A pacemaker was implanted, but even so, he has to be very careful. Any degree of stress or excitement would be extremely risky.”

  “The guy wears a pacemaker and he’s married?” Atkinson winked broadly at Franklin. “What do they call that, George, double indemnity?”

  “Other than the cartridge,” said Willows, “was there anything inside the car?”

  “It was in what you might call absolutely showroom condition,” said Goldstein. “Except for one small detail.”

  “And what was that?” said Bradley, who strongly resented Goldstein’s habit of doling out scraps and fragments of information as if he was doing volunteer work in a soup kitchen, expertly feeding his captive audience just enough to keep them balanced on the knife edge of starvation.

  “The ashtray,” said Goldstein, “was jammed with half-smoked cigarette butts.” He turned to Parker. “The guy’s wife, does she smoke?”

  “I didn’t ask. But I didn’t see any ashtrays in the house, and she didn’t smoke during the time I was there.”

  “And Phillips wouldn’t smoke because he’s got a bad heart,” said Franklin.

  “Besides,” said Goldstein, “he probably doesn’t wear lipstick.”

  “Lipstick?” said Bradley.

  “Yeah, right. Lipstick.” Goldstein unbuttoned his suit jacket and thrust his hands deep into his trouser pockets. “You got a witness says he saw a woman driving away from the Alice Palm murder, isn’t that right?”

  “Shelley Rice,” said Bradley.

  “Any sign of that car yet?”

  “No,” said Bradley shortly. He made a pass with his cigar over the wastebasket. “Any more tidbits for us, Jerry?”

  “Nope, you squeezed me dry.”

  “Well listen, you’ve been a wonderful guest, and I want you to come back real soon.”

  “Call me day or night,” said Goldstein, talking to Bradley but looking at Parker.

  Bradley made a tent of his fingers and played spider on a mirror until Goldstein had made his exit.

  “You catch those shoes?” said Atkinson. “See-through soles, real trendy.”

  Bradley laced his fingers together, making a double fist. “You check the sporting goods store across the street from where the Palinkas woman was shot?” he said to Franklin.

  Franklin nodded. He made a move for his notebook and then decided he didn’t need it. “The owner’s name is Morris Culver. He and his wife live in a little apartment at the back of the store. Dave and I went over there first thing this morning, caught them going out the door.”

  “On their way to church,” said Atkinson. “All dressed up in their Sunday best.”

  “To confess?”

  “Not to murder.”

  “Culver’s been in business a long time,” said Franklin, “close to thirty years. He’s stayed in the black by keeping his stock levels low, pushing whatever happens to be in season. Baseball, hockey, all that stuff. But most of his income the past ten years has been generated by the sale of firearms and reloading equipment.”

  Bradley’s head came up. “Tell me more, George.”

  “Culver’s wife keeps the company books. According to her records, they sold a special order of two hundred rounds of .460 Magnum bullets and brass three months ago, on January 4th, to a woman named Lilly Watts.”

  “They have an address?”

  “Apartment five-seventeen, the Manhattan. That’s a co-op on the corner of Robson and Thurlow. There’s some shops on the ground floor, a travel agency, bookstore, a restaurant.”

  “Binky’s,” said Atkinson. “Best clam chowder in town.”

  “Let’s wait until we solve the case,” said Bradley. “Then we can have lunch.”

  “We went down there and had a look around,” Franklin said. “No such apartment. No such tenant.”

  “Lilly also left a phone number at Culver’s. We gave her a ring and got a time-of-day message.” Atkinson grinned. “More than most crooks will give you.”

  “Was Culver able to come up with a description?” said Parker.

  “Afraid not,” said Franklin. “He’s half-blind without his glasses, and he hardly ever wears them because one of the little plastic nosepads fell off, and they pinch. But he does remember that Lilly Watts was a blonde, and that she was unusually tall.”

  “How tall is that?” said Willows.

  “Taller than Culver,” said Franklin. And then added, “Who was, I’d say, about five foot seven.”

  “The same height as Dave,” said Willows.

  “I’m five-ten,” said Atkinson, flushing angrily.

  “Shoes by Otis,” said Willows.

  Bradley pulled on his cigar but got no smoke. He struck a match against his thumbnail, fired up, and waved the match at Willows. “Jack, I want you and Parker to concentrate on Alice Palm. Dig into her background, and dig deep. We still don’t know where she was going when she was killed, and she’s been dead eight days now.”

  The match was still burning. Bradley remembered a scene in Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O’Toole extinguishing a match with his fingers and saying something about it being an easy trick to learn, all you had to do was not show the pain. He dropped the spent match in the wastebasket, and turned his attention to Atkinson.

  “Dave, you and George find out everything there is to know about Phasia Palinkas. If there’s any kind of connection between the two victims, I want to know about it.” Bradley blew a fat doughnut of smoke across the surface of his desk. He pointed at the doughnut with the stub of his cigar. “That’s exactly what we’ve got so far. Zilch. A big fat zero. It ain’t good enough.”

  Willows started to move towards the door, Bradley held up a restraining hand.

  “One more thing. I got a phone call from Chief Scott this morning. Early this morning. He’d been talking to Mayor Cooley, who strongly resents the fact that two of this fair city’s voters have been so spectacularly whacked. The headlines, as you may have noticed, have not been kind. His Honour wants the perp disenfranchised with all due haste, before he decides to try for three in a row. So let’s find the son of a bitch and put him down, okay?”

  As they left Bradley’s office, Willows touched Parker’s arm and said, “I’ve got to make a call. I’ll meet you in the parking lot in ten minutes.”

  Parker nodded, but Willows had already slipped pas
t her, left her behind.

  It had been three days since Willows’ last visit to the cancer ward of the Royal Columbian, and it was past time he gave the hospital a call. There was an enclosed payphone in the hallway next to the service elevator used to transport prisoners to the holding cells and drunk tank on the third floor. The booth was empty. Willows went inside and pushed the folding glass doors shut behind him. The automatic light came on and he saw that the telephone’s receiver had been ripped out of the body of the instrument. The receiver lay on the floor of the booth, next to a shredded copy of the yellow pages. Someone had got it wrong, and taken his fist for a walk. Willows stepped out of the booth. He heard the slow clanking of the service elevator ascending, and pushed the UP button. There was another payphone on the third floor, installed there for the convenience of those crooks and drunkards who wanted to call a bondsman or family, to make bail, or excuses.

  He heard the elevator slow down, stop. There was a pause, and then the doors jerked open. Willows walked into the elevator and found himself standing face to face with Shelley Rice.

  Rice was flanked by a couple of chunky six-footers from Narcotics, Ralph Kearns and Eddy Orwell. Rice’s eyes darkened as he recognized Willows. He shifted his weight, and the steel on his wrists glinted under the harsh light from the quartet of naked hundred-watt bulbs in the ceiling fixture.

  “I’d introduce you two guys to each other,” said Orwell, grinning, “but I believe you’ve already met.”

  “They busted you?” Willows said to Rice.

  Rice’s face contorted with rage. He lunged forward, his knee coming up hard and fast. Willows twisted sideways. The knee hit him in the thigh, right on the bone. He grunted with pain. An elbow caught him flush on the nose. The back of his head bounced off the sheet metal wall of the elevator. He staggered into Kearns, who went down. Willows fought to regain his balance. Orwell was cursing imaginatively, fumbling under his coat for a sap or his gun. Rice clasped his manacled hands together and raised them high over his head. The four lightbulbs exploded in a shower of glass. For a fraction of a second the filaments glowed like a handful of incandescent worms, then the elevator was plunged into absolute darkness.