“So, can you front me? Or any chance of moving this thing up?”
Derrick said, “Now you want me to move it up.”
“If I go away for thirty, how can I help you with this thing?”
Derrick looked out at Broadway, the parked cars lining both sides of the broad avenue. A white van turned past them onto Emerson, and Derrick stared it down. Then he figured that wasn’t very smart. He had to play this cool.
“I’m pushing that thing back,” he said. “Maybe indefinitely, I don’t know. I’m starting to think there’s a better way out here, you know? Things are changing. Don’t look it, but they are.”
“A better way?” said Milky.
“Twelve-fifty, huh?”
“In five days’ time.”
Derrick nodded. “But your ma there, she’s good?”
“She’s good, Derr, yeah. She’s good.”
“Good,” said Derrick. “That’s good.”
Yarrow stopped with the darts pulled out of the board. He turned. “What?” he said.
Derrick said, “I’m telling you.”
“This is based on what?”
“And I been going dizzy here trying to think back, all the things I told him. Trying to think, has he ever been inside this house without me around? You know — listening devices and such.”
Yarrow returned to him from the wall, Derrick pulling another Killian’s Red from the old Coleman cooler. Yarrow toed the chalk line on the basement floor and readied a dart. “You’re getting paranoid.”
“Think back on him. Think hard.”
Yarrow threw a nineteen. “You been smoking too much.”
“It explains things. Little things going wrong recently. Something’s in the air, abuzz. He’s all into me for this coming-up thing.”
“What does he know?”
“He knows. Not every particular. I don’t spread much around, that’s not my style. But he gets it. He come to you for money?”
“He did, yeah.”
“See? Wanted an advance against the take. First of all, I ain’t loaning money to nobody. I ever float a loan you know of?”
“Negative.”
“Ain’t gonna happen. So why’s he so pushy all of a sudden? Asking to move up the timetable? Getting into us for cash? That’s us showing intent.”
“He said it was Get Outta Jail money.”
“Maybe it’s not money he needs to get out.” Derrick’s finger went back and forth between them. “Maybe it’s us.”
Yarrow scowled. “I think he’s probably fine.”
“ ‘Probably fine.’ You’re not careful.”
“How am I not careful?”
“You’re too trusting.”
“Who do I trust?”
“Too many.”
“ ‘Too many.’ Who do you trust?”
“I don’t trust nobody. Except who I trust.”
“You trust me?”
“I don’t trust Milky.”
“You never liked that kid.”
“I liked his brother. Liked his brother a lot. His brother was the shit. Wish he had been my brother. You didn’t know Jimmy.”
“Not well.”
“Before you came back to town. The shit, he was. Until Oxy turned his head into a friggin’ butterfly cage. Never saw anyone in such a hurry to die.”
Yarrow launched his last two darts in quick succession, having lost his taste for the game. Fourteen and a triple-ring eight. “Milky, though. What’s he gonna do? He dimes us, how’s he gonna show his face around town again?”
“Witness relocation or some such. They’re forcing him into it, don’t you see? They pushed a deal across the table, and he took it because he’s a weak sister. Because he’s strung out like Silly Putty, and because of his ma. That’s why they picked him up on the possession charge. The fix was in on this from the start.”
“What fix?”
“Don’t you see? Busting him, breaking him down, using him to get to you and me.”
“Who told you this?”
“About him? I know.”
“Who told you exactly? I think I need to know.”
“This came from very close, and it was pure happenstance how I got it. I was lucky. I still got a guardian angel left somewhere.”
Yarrow collected the darts. “She’s your last one, that’s for sure.”
Derrick swigged his Killian’s and said, “I want to go over there right now and beat the shit out of him. Beat the truth.”
“That would not be wise.”
“This throws everything into question. How can we make a move, period? If everything we say…” He waited for Yarrow to return, then lowered his voice. “If everything we say and do is being taken down. The friggin’ Invisible Man could be in this room with us.”
“Then we said too much already. We got to know for sure. So how do we do that? Search him for a wire?”
“Forget that. They sew those things into the clothes now, they’re so small. Nothing would be taped to his chest. They hide that shit anywhere.”
“Even if you freeze him out, then what? He already knows what he knows. If you seriously have a question, you need to keep him close.”
“Friggin’ right. Like The Godfather.”
“The thing is what, eleven days off? That’s some time.”
“Don’t upset the cart. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Eyes on the prize, baby.”
“All right.” Derrick took the darts from Yarrow, readied one. “But if Milky turns out dirty, I swear to God, I’m gonna smoke him.”
It would have been cooler if he’d thrown a bull’s-eye then, instead of a lousy six.
Pendleton and Kyter stopped by O Street before lunch, double-parking outside. Two winding flights up the narrow staircase, Mrs. Milk answered the door holding her housecoat robe together with one wrinkled hand.
Pendleton badged her. “We need to see Eddie.”
Mrs. Milk smiled at the sight of them, shuffling backward to welcome them inside. “I don’t know where he is right now. Out working hard, I’m sure. You can leave a message for him with me. He’ll want to get right in touch with you as soon as he can.”
Pendleton smelled buttermilk, looking up and down the narrow hall. “Sure he will.”
Mrs. Milk’s eager smile was not the welcome they got from most mothers whose grown sons were in trouble with the police. “Can I get you two something to drink?”
Kyter said, “I don’t think so, Mrs. Milk.”
“Eddie is working very hard,” she said, stepping closer, speaking confidentially. “He wants to do well. To prove to you that he can.”
“Prove he can what?” said Pendleton, hiking up his pants. “Stay out of jail?”
“See,” she said, ignoring the comment, “I know he wasn’t supposed to tell me, but…”
They waited. “Tell you what, Mrs. Milk?”
“Well, that he’s working for you.”
Kyter looked at Pendleton. “Working for us?”
“Working with you. But please, don’t fault him. You know a mother has ways of finding things out. His secret’s safe with me.” She looked at a framed photograph hanging on the wall, a man with two young boys fishing off a pier. “He’s going to look so handsome in uniform.”
The detectives looked at each other.
“Okay, Mrs. Milk,” said Kyter. “Tell Eddie we came by. Tell him to do himself a favor and get in touch.”
“He will.” She touched the glass front of the frame as she spoke. “He has a lot to live up to now.”
The detectives were pissed off going downstairs, as though they had been the ones lied to.
“That little shit,” said Pendleton, out at their car. “That weasel.”
Kyter said, “I’m sick of this shit. Sick of getting the thumb from him. We come by here like a taxi service?”
“He’s working for us, huh? Working with us?”
“Imagine that day.”
Pendleton looked at h
im over the roof of the car. “I think now it’s time we teached him a lesson.”
The traffic stop went down in Andrew Square. They brought a marked cruiser with them, full rack lights, big show. Everybody out, hands on the roof.
Pendleton patted down Derrick Shanahan. “You don’t got any warrants there, Shanahan, do you?”
Kyter took Chippie Yarrow, kicking out one leg and bouncing him against the once-white Mazda. “How ’bout you, Yarrow? Any outstandings?”
Derrick said, “What is this?”
“Inspection sticker,” said Pendleton, tapping the corner of the windshield of the beat-up Mazda. “Twenty-nine bucks would have done it. Gotta keep up.”
Kyter said, “Downtown we’ll tell you all about how it works.”
Eddie Milk stood with his hands on the car roof, very quiet, very nervous.
“You,” said Pendleton. “Milky.”
Milky said nothing, eyes staying down.
Pendleton said, “Go ahead, take off. Get outta here.”
Milky blinked like there had been a mistake, relief coming into his eyes. Amazed at his good fortune, he started away before they could change their minds, glancing back over his shoulder as he walked fast into the crowd.
Derrick stared at the roof of the Mazda as if he was trying to remove the paint finish using only the heat from his eyes.
Yarrow looked at the detective facing him as handcuffs clasped around his wrists.
Yarrow went alone to Milky’s place. He wanted to get to him before Derrick did.
Milky’s mother answered the door, said she didn’t know where he was.
“Look, Mrs. Milk. Did two plain-clothes detectives come by here a couple of days ago?”
She clammed up then. She looked worried.
Yarrow said, “How long has Milky been gone?”
Kyter was standing at his desk, waiting for Pendleton when he came in. “He called, all pissy.”
Pendleton spilled down his mobile and his keys. “I expected that.”
“Says he’s gonna call us on it. Gonna write it up.”
“Bullshit. So we got a little creative. Who knew?”
“He wants a favor. Demands it.”
“What the hell now?”
“Not for him. For the mother, he says.”
“For her?” said Pendleton. “What’s that get us?”
“Gets us nothing. But he’s holding our feet to the flames here.”
“To do what?”
“Just show up. Make an appearance.”
“Walk in there?”
“Make like it’s out of respect. The woman’s all alone now. Widow, one son ODed. He says she needs something good to cling to.”
“What are we now, Santa Claus?”
“It’s a gesture. For my own conscience, too.”
“Christ.”
“Don’t hard-ass me. You know we dicked this up. We wanted to put Eddie Milk in his place. Put him on the outs with his little crew there. Well, it big-time backfired. If this is how we pay, if this is the sum total? Then we get off cheap.”
Pendleton said, “He was a weasel. Who got thrown under an Amtrak.”
“Fine,” said Kyter. “Put on your tie.”
In the back room of o’connor’s, the black-awninged funeral home on Broadway, men sat on padded folding chairs sipping whiskey and paying their respects. In the main parlor, Mrs. Milk sat in a brocaded chair wearing a black crepe dress and white Reeboks. The closed casket was peacocked with a ragged assortment of flowers, the largest wearing a white sash reading “SON.”
The conductor had seen an obstruction on the tracks. He hit the brakes and the body was dragged two hundred feet, sparks igniting its clothes. Between those burns and the wheel cuts, the coroner was at a loss. Milky’s death was ruled a suicide, like his father.
Pendleton and Kyter walked in close to eight. They stood in the receiving line, staring down a couple of punks while waiting their turn. Mrs. Milk recognized the two detectives and rose to her feet. They took her aside and spoke with her quietly. Kyter even held her hand.
In the back room, Derrick grabbed Yarrow’s jacket lapel. “You see that shit? Right there.”
Yarrow watched Kyter patting Mrs. Milk’s shoulder as she convulsed into a black hankie.
Derrick said, “I knew I was right to top him.”
Yarrow froze, the Dixie cup of whiskey in his hand. “What’d you say?”
Derrick stared hard. He wore a grin on his face like a look of sick determination, his breath smelling flammable. “End of the month is officially back on.”
Later, after the mourners had thinned out, Yarrow went up to the bier, kneeling before the walnut veneer of the no-frills casket. Mrs. Milk sat alone in her chair, humming a church hymn to soothe herself. She had her hero now, a martyr to look down over her from the wall in that third-floor walk-up on O Street. She would be consoled. Those two bumblers had done something right for a change.
I knew I was right to top him.
Admission of murder. It didn’t matter now whether or not the end-of-the-month deal went down.
Yarrow made like he was crossing himself, feeling the sweat-dampened front pleat of his shirt, the thin wire that was sewn in there. Under his breath he muttered something — a prayer for Milky, and for all the wayward sons of the town — that only the passive electronic ear could hear. “Never lie to your mother.” Then he stood, touched his fingertips to the coffin’s cool finish, and walked away.
The Girl Next-Door
by Edward D. Hoch
Copyright © 2007 by Edward D. Hoch
Although Edward D. Hoch is a winner of the lifetime achievement award of the Private Eye Writers of America, few are the Hoch stories that fit the P.I. category. This new story is one of those few: an entry in his Al Darlan series. Darlan’s case this time involves the dark side of celebrity in the music business. Coming next month, and Alexander Swift historical.
❖
In an era when small private detective agencies had all but disappeared from most medium-sized cities, our firm of Darlan & Trapper continued to show a profit, mainly because of Mike Trapper’s connections with some of the national tabloids. Mike had bought into a partnership with me some years back, rejecting his family’s plans that he attend law school. He was a good detective but young enough to be my son and I couldn’t help taking a fatherly interest in him.
He and Marla had been married several years, and had a couple of children. She was a lovely young woman but she was also the occasional source of friction between Mike and me. It was her prodding that persuaded him to start collecting dirt on visiting rock stars when they came to town, and sell it to the tabloids. To me it was no better than the grimy divorce work I’d abandoned early in my career.
“Why do you keep doing it, Mike?” I asked him one damp spring day when business was slow.
“It pays the rent, doesn’t it?”
I sighed and said, “Marla is pretty high-maintenance, isn’t she?” Almost at once I regretted I’d said it.
“Look, Al, you’ve got your life and I’ve got mine. You’re on your own. I have a family to support. I know you and Marla have never hit it off.”
“She’s a fine woman. I’m sorry I said that.”
Perhaps it was best that our conversation was interrupted at this point by the arrival of our neighbor, Stacy Cline. Stacy was just out of college, and attractive in a girl-next-door sort of way. Come to think of it, she was the girl next-door. She worked at Santillo’s, the small insurance office adjoining ours, which hadn’t done much business in the six months they’d been there. Stacy often came over to see us when things got too dull. “Hi, guys,” she greeted us. “How’s the private-eye business these days?”
“Slow as the insurance business these days,” Mike told her. “Want some coffee?”
“Sure.” I was never much of a coffee drinker but Mike was.
“I haven’t seen your boss around lately,” he said. “You running the place b
y yourself?”
She shrugged, accepting the coffee from him. “So long as he’s there on Fridays with my check, he can stay away as long as he wants.”
We’d seen Rich Santillo only two or three times, once when he came to the office after eight one night while I was working. He was a rough-looking man of around forty, with a brush cut that made him look like an ageing wrestler. I guessed that Stacy was just as happy she didn’t have to share the office with him every day.
“How does he do enough business to keep that place open?” I asked. “We never see any customers.”
“He has a few regulars. Sometimes he comes in nights to work.”
“I saw him one night.”
She sat in her favorite client’s chair. “You guys need a secretary.”
“We bring one in part time when we need to,” he told her. “You applying for a job?”
Stacy shook her head. “I’ve got one that pays a lot better than you guys could manage.” She glanced through the open door and put down her coffee. “Looks like I might have a customer. See you later.”
The teenage rock star Lily Lake was in town for three nights of concerts, trailed by rumors that Sly Morgan was on the scene too. It was the sort of rumor that set the tabloids hopping and brought in some extra cash for Mike Trapper. He left the office in midafternoon, planning to scout the hotels where Sly might be registered under an assumed name. Morgan was a B-list actor who’d hooked up with Lily to further his own career. He had that brooding look teenagers seemed to love, complete with blond hair and tattoos, and the tabloids couldn’t get enough of him and Lily, especially on those rare occasions when the paparazzi managed to catch them together.
I hadn’t planned on working late that night, but I’d just wound up a security job for a local college and I wanted to finish putting my report on the computer. It was just after eight o’clock when I heard the door to Santillo’s insurance office opening. He was back for another late-night visit. I paid little attention, tapping away at my keyboard. I might have heard voices but I couldn’t even be sure of that. Then suddenly there were two loud cracks, close together. I’d heard enough gunshots in my life to know what they were.
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007 Page 28