Long Way Down (The Lt. Hastings Mysteries)

by Collin Wilcox

  “She didn’t kill him. She hated him. He hated her. But she wouldn’t kill him.” Now his voice was strangely disembodied. His moist eyes were blinking, glazed by shock and grief.

  “I wasn’t accusing her directly, Bruce. But we have—certain information that makes us think she might’ve had him killed.”

  “Her boyfriend, you mean. The black man.” His voice was still hushed.

  “Yes. That’s right.” I paused, then said, “You knew about your mother’s—friendship with Arnold Clark.”

  “Is that his name?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t respond. It wasn’t necessary.

  “Did you also know about your father’s—friendship with Diane Farley?”

  At the question, his body suddenly stiffened. “I didn’t know her name, either,” he whispered. “I didn’t know any of their names. I—I might’ve known, once. But I forgot. Sometimes I forget my parents’ name. I can’t stand the sound that their names make, inside myself. Or my own name, either. Sometimes I can’t stand the sound of my own name. I—” He choked, half sobbing.

  I had to finish the job. “Arnold Clark says that you ransacked his apartment a couple of months ago, Bruce. He says that you tore it up—ripped up his things, just out of spite. Is that true?”

  His mouth was working impotently; he couldn’t speak.

  “Nothing was taken,” I said quietly. “There won’t be any charges pressed. I guarantee that. It’s just that I have to know. I have to know whether Arnold Clark is lying to me, or whether he’s telling the truth.”

  “He’s lying.” Now the boy’s voice was totally uninflected—dead. He was drained.

  “What about Diane Farley, Bruce? Were you ever inside her apartment?”

  “No. Never.” He said it in the same dull, dead voice.

  “Did you leave your home Tuesday night? For any reason?” Now, finally, I turned to stare at him directly. I saw his mouth twist into a wry, exhausted smile. Tears streaked his cheeks.

  “No, Lieutenant. I didn’t leave the house Tuesday night. Not for any reason. No reason whatever, so help me God.”

  “You say that very”—I hesitated—“very fervently. I wasn’t asking you to swear to it. All I need is a simple answer.”

  He pushed himself away from the wall. The effort seemed enormous. “I’ll swear to it, Lieutenant. I’ll swear to anything. Just name it. I’ll swear to it.” And without a word, he turned toward the corner, walking with his slack, shambling shuffle. He was heading toward home. I decided to walk in the opposite direction.

  Eighteen

  I STRIPPED OFF MY shirt, then slipped the handcuffs and holster from my belt. I placed both the gun and the cuffs in my dresser drawer, together with the belt clip of ten extra cartridges and my shield case. I slipped off my trousers, then stepped to the full-length bedroom mirror and gazed for a long, critical moment at the small roll of loose flesh above the beltline of my shorts. In the past half year, had the roll increased? Were the pectoral muscles sagging, the thigh muscles softening? Half turning, I allowed my abdominal muscles to go loose. In profile, there was an undeniable belly bulge. My muscle tone was gone. But it was late, nine thirty. And in fact my weight was within ten pounds of my best proball years. I was only forty-three. I still had most of my hair. I could still …

  The phone rang.

  Was it news from a stakeout? Canelli, at the King house? Markham, at Arnold Clark’s? I strode quickly into the living room.

  “It’s Ann, Frank.”

  “Hi. I tried to call you.”

  “We just got home. We’ve been shopping. Both the boys lost their wool ski socks. Do you know how much ski socks cost?”

  “Yes. I used to buy them, too, remember?”

  “Do your children ski?”

  “Of course. It was part of their mother’s Junior League image. Indispensable. Skiing, and tennis lessons.”

  “We both have ex-spouses with social pretensions. I never thought about it. Do you think it’s significant?”

  “I hope not.”

  I could hear her giggle. “You have a certain talent for one-liners, Lieutenant. Deadpan one-liners. Do you know that?”

  “I’m glad you think so. Will you have dinner with me tomorrow night?”

  She hesitated. Then: “Can’t you get away for the weekend?”

  I sighed. “I’m not sure. This case—the film maker—isn’t going very well. I can’t ask my men to put in extra hours while I’m out of town for the weekend.”

  “Doesn’t Pete owe you some time?”

  “Not really. Anyhow, we don’t keep books. Besides, this case is mine. Pete has his own caseload.”

  “Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

  “Maybe. We’ve got a few things developing. It’s a matter of how they work out. Why don’t we plan on dinner and the evening? The whole evening. Let’s play it by ear. If I get a break with the case, we can just throw some things in a suitcase, and take off.”

  “The next time a policeman takes out after one of my children,” she said, “I’m not going to become emotionally involved. Do you think I’d’ve liked you better as a professional football player?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, in the first place, I wasn’t really a very successful football player.”

  “You probably lacked the killer instinct.”

  “You may be right. Anyhow, I’m glad I didn’t know you then. It was a very tense period in my life. Plus I was married.”

  “Did you ever have any affairs when you were married?”

  “Yes, toward the end. But they didn’t mean anything. By that time, I was a so-called P.R. man at my father-in-law’s factory. Which meant that, in addition to drinking with important clients and driving them to the airport, I was also expected to provide them with girls. Which meant that I—fouled up, once in a while. But by that time everything was ending—my marriage and everything else.”

  There was a silence. Then, in a small, chastened voice, she said, “You never told me any of that, darling. Not really.”

  “I know.” I paused, then said, “Sometimes things—come easier, over the phone.”

  “It must have been humiliating. I mean”—she hesitated—“having to provide girls. You must have felt …” She let it go unfinished.

  “Yes. That’s how I felt.”

  I heard her draw a deep, pensive breath. Then she said, “That’s a terrible time—the end of a marriage. It took me a long time to realize it. A long time after the marriage was over, I mean.”

  I didn’t reply, and a small silence began to lengthen. Suddenly there was no more to say—not over the phone. Ann felt it too, and we quickly said good night.

  I’d no sooner broken the connection than the phone rang again.

  “This is Canelli, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s doing?” I sat down in an easy chair, crossing my bare legs.

  “Well, I turned up something pretty interesting,” he said. “So I thought I should call you, like you told me.”

  I sighed softly. Canelli rambled, especially on the phone. Looking down at my legs, I saw goose flesh beginning.

  “I wasn’t disturbing anything, was I, Lieutenant? I mean, you said that I should—”

  “No. It’s fine, Canelli. What’ve you got?”

  “Well, about quarter to eight,” he said portentously, “Mrs. King got her car, and she went out. So I followed her. So what does she do, for God’s sake, but she drives out Sacramento Street—to the thirty-six-hundred block. And she parks the car and goes up to this old Victorian house that’s all dark, except for a couple of lights in the back of the house. So she starts beating on a door knocker, hard. She knocks for a minute, maybe, but nobody answers. So she tries the door, and when that doesn’t work, she acts like she’s real pissed off. So finally she opens up her purse and gets out a paper and writes on it. She slips the paper in the mail slot of the door, and she turns around and leaves—gets back in h
er car, and drives off, back home. So, naturally”—he paused for breath—“so naturally, I took down the address of the house, and I checked it out. And guess what, Lieutenant?”

  I sighed again, recrossing my legs. “I give up, Canelli. What?”

  “Well, the house belongs to Emile Zeda. You know—that guy with the Satan cult, or whatever they call it.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “Yeah. I mean, here she is, the night before her husband’s funeral and everything, knocking on Emile Zeda’s door.”

  “Did you follow her home?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did she go right home?”

  “She sure did. I mean, she didn’t have anything else on her mind, except going to Zeda’s place. I could tell by the way she was acting.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “I’m phoning from a bar. I mean, I didn’t know whether you wanted me to stake out Zeda’s place or anything. So I thought I’d better call you at home, like you told me.”

  I took a moment to consider, then said, “You may as well get some sleep, Canelli. We’ve got four men out on stakeout on this case already. I don’t want to authorize any more overtime. Not now, anyhow.”

  “Yeah, I see what you mean, Lieutenant. I don’t blame you.”

  “Why don’t you pick me up tomorrow morning about nine? We’ll stop by and see Emile Zeda on our way to the office.”

  “Roger. Good night, Lieutenant.”

  Nineteen

  “THERE IT IS.” CANELLI pointed. “That big old Victorian, there. That’s Zeda’s. Jeeze, it looks like a haunted house, or something. I bet it hasn’t been painted for fifty years. Except for the door.” He pointed. “I mean, that’s a red, red door.”

  “Blood-red, no doubt. Come on—let’s see what he says.”

  The front door opened on the third stroke of a huge dragon’s head brass knocker. We were greeted by a pale, slightly built young man with the eyes of a zealot and the voice of a sleepwalker.

  “Is Emile Zeda in?” I showed him the shield. “I’m Lieutenant Frank Hastings. This is Inspector Canelli.”

  “Yessir, he’s in.” The young man hesitated, plainly considering asking us to wait on the porch. When I stepped forward, he gave way.

  “What’s your name?” I asked, watching the youth struggle to swing the heavy door closed.

  “Hawley. Leonard Hawley.”

  “Do you work for Mr. Zeda?”

  “Yessir. I’ve worked for Zeda five and a half years.” His soft servant’s voice was touched with quiet satisfaction. Looking at him more closely, I realized that he was older than I’d first thought. Thirty, perhaps.

  “How many other employees does Zeda have?”

  “Just me. I’m the only one who’s always here. The others—come and go.”

  “Do you mean that you help him with his—Satan worshiping? Or just with the house?”

  “I help him with everything.” He said it as if he were pronouncing a benediction.

  “But mostly with his services, or whatever you call them.”

  “We call them revels.” He pushed back his shoulder-length hair with a quick flick of his wrist. The gesture’s nervous vitality contradicted Hawley’s soft voice and diffident manner. Studying the glittering intensity of his eyes, the formless softness of his mouth, and the limb-locked stiffness of his movements, I decided that Leonard Hawley was a creature of contrasts, rigidly suppressed. Dressed in a kind of rough peasant’s jerkin, shapeless trousers and open sandals, Hawley was perfectly suited to the vaulted Victorian gloom of the hallway.

  For a moment we stared at each other. Then impassively he turned away, murmuring that he would bring Zeda to us.

  I turned slowly, surveying the spacious foyer. To my left, a broad baroque staircase led majestically upward—only to stop at a blank wall. The staircase had been partitioned off at the first landing. To my right, a double archway was draped in heavy black velvet curtains. The archway opened on a large drawing room, doubtless reserved for Zeda’s “revels.” Only two other doors remained, one beneath the stairs, another leading to the rear of the house.

  “Hey, Lieutenant,” Canelli whispered. “Look at that.”

  Following the jerk of his pudgy chin, I saw a human skull displayed in a carved niche set into the hallway’s rich wooden paneling. Perched on the skull was a black raven. Beside the skull was a wax-incrusted candleholder.

  “Jeeze, I thought it was real,” Canelli breathed. “The bird, I mean.”

  “Shades of Edgar Allan Poe.”

  “Have you ever been here before?”

  “No.” I looked around. “Maybe I’ve been missing something.”

  “Yeah, me too. I think I’ll bring Gracie here some night. She’s very big on all that astrology and occult stuff and everything. She’d love all this crap.”

  I pointed to a carved wooden music rack which displayed a black-bordered placard announcing Friday night revels at eight o’clock. “Tonight’s your chance, Canelli.”

  “Hey. Yeah. Jeeze, maybe I will.”

  “You can put in for extra hours. Surveillance.”

  As he looked at me doubtfully, the small below-stairs door opened. The low doorway was filled with Emile Zeda.

  He wore a white toga gathered at the waist with a thick black cord. His waist was slim, his chest deep and powerful. His head was shaved, his thick mustache and beard were trimmed to a sharpened Satan-shape. His thick black eyebrows completed the demonic illusion, arching high over bright, wild eyes. An angry scar traversed his forehead, angling upward from eyebrow to skull-crown.

  Zeda was approximately six feet tall, weighed about two hundred, and was probably about forty years old. As he advanced on us, I noticed that he wore tennis shoes.

  “I was downstairs, jogging in place,” he said. “Thus the tennis shoes.” He looked from one of us to the other. “Which of you is Lieutenant Hastings?” His voice was a deep, theatrical bass. As he spoke, I caught the gleam of two gold teeth.

  Before I could reply, he raised a peremptory hand, palm forward. He fixed his sorcerer’s eyes on me. “You. You’re Lieutenant Hastings.” It was a showman’s statement, not a question. Without waiting for a reply, he turned toward the rear door. “We’ll talk in private, gentlemen.” He led the way down the back hallway to a small library lined floor to ceiling with books. Over his shoulder, Zeda ordered Canelli to close the library door. Zeda sat behind a huge, claw-footed table, imperiously gesturing us to twin chairs, which could have come from the hall of a medieval castle. As I sat down, I caught Canelli’s eye. His awed expression almost made me laugh.

  “Well, Lieutenant, what can I do for you? What is it this time? Another hand-wringing complaint from the ASPCA?” As he folded his arms across his barrel chest, I noticed that Zeda wore his fingernails almost an inch long.

  “No, Mr. Zeda. The ASPCA isn’t my beat. I’m with the Homicide Detail.”

  “Call me Zeda,” he said brusquely. “Just Zeda.” Plainly, he equated the single name with some special, extrahuman attribute.

  “All right.” I cleared my throat.

  Unfolding his arms, he began to drum his long, gleaming fingernails impatiently on the arm of his chair. Our roles, I realized, had become inexplicably reversed. He was acting the inquisitor’s part.

  I started again. “We’re investigating the death of Thomas King. You probably read about the case in the papers.”

  “I never read the papers. However, I know that he was killed. Tuesday night, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. Tuesday. How’d you learn about it?”

  “From Mrs. King. His wife. She’s a follower of mine.”

  “When did she tell you about the murder?”

  “She didn’t tell me about it, Lieutenant.” His voice was elaborately patient. “She wrote me about it.”

  I decided to pretend innocence. I wasn’t yet ready to reveal my knowledge of Mrs. King’s visit. “She wrote you about it?” I asked.

  “Ye
s, I have no phone. No radio. And no TV, of course.”

  “And you don’t read the newspapers.”

  He condescendingly nodded. “That’s correct. For my purposes, it’s best that I receive information and impressions directly, either by word of mouth or handwritten letter. I can’t afford to submit my mind to electronic debasement.”

  “When did Mrs. King write you?”

  “I received the note yesterday, along with several others. Yesterday evening, about ten o’clock. Very often, my followers drop notes to me during the day. I read them between ten and eleven at night. During the week, I select a few of these notes, on which I comment during our Friday night revels. Leonard collects the notes and puts them there.” He gestured to a shallow brass tray.

  “What’s the nature of these notes?”

  Zeda shrugged. “Experiences. Impressions. Thoughts. Anything, really. You’d be amazed, the things I get.”

  “You must have a lot of very devoted followers.”

  “Well”—he permitted himself a smile—“I don’t know whether ‘devoted’ is quite the right word.”

  “Sorry,” I answered dryly. “Fanatical, then.”

  “Much more apropos, Lieutenant.” He studied me for a long, sardonic moment, then said, “You should come to one of our revels, Lieutenant. For someone in your, ah, profession, I think it would be a valuable experience. Come tonight. I’ll see that there’s a place for you.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I will.”

  “Bring a friend.” Plainly, he meant a woman. Thinking of Zeda’s troubles with the vice squad, and imagining Ann beside me in his audience, I smiled faintly. Then casually I asked, “Do you still have Mrs. King’s note? The one she dropped off last night?”

  “No. Every morning, without fail, my followers’ notes are burned.”

  “Do you burn them?”

  “Leonard does.”

  “What did Mrs. King’s note say?”

  “Simply that her husband had been murdered. It was a simple reaching out—a desire to communicate her loss.”

  “Will Mrs. King be coming to your service tonight?”