Wrong Place, Wrong Time

by W. Glenn Duncan

  “Quoth the loyal Rodney.”

  “No, no,” Gortner said. “I know that for a fact. I checked Dave out myself before I agreed to let him work here in my house.”

  “As what?”

  “Oh, well, he drives, runs errands, a little bit of everything, really. Rod drafted a job description that calls him a personal protective consultant, but that’s only Rod’s way of—”

  “Come on,” I said. “What Dave really does is make Cayman feel like a big man when he rides around in your Lincoln.”

  Gortner sighed. “I’m beginning to think you’re right. And I’m now finding out that Rod has, ah, manipulated Dave into aggressive acts that I do not condone.”

  “Why haven’t you fired this geek, Cayman, then?”

  Gortner looked grim. “There are, uh, other considerations to be weighed.”

  I laughed at him. From his expression, he didn’t like it much. “Did too many cute deals, did you? And now you can’t dump Cayman without making someone mad.”

  Gortner said, “I wish it was that simple.”

  “Hoo-boy,” Cowboy murmured from under his hat. “Now we gettin’ down to the nut-cuttin’.”

  “Cayman has something on you, then,” I said. “Something messy.”

  Gortner looked even grimmer. “I assure you, this has absolutely nothing to do with your Mr Thorneycroft.”

  “Okay, then, tell me what you did—if anything—about Jerry after I showed you the ball bearing last week.”

  Gortner had been avoiding my eye, but now he raised his head and faced me squarely. “I had my son and my grandson in this office that same evening. I showed Tom what you showed me.” Judge put the tip of his finger into the dent I’d pounded into his desktop. I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. “And we both made it quite clear to Jerry that such behavior would not be tolerated in the future.”

  “Will that stick?”

  “I’m sure it will. Down deep, my grandson is not a bad boy.”

  I’d have felt better if he’d said something like he’s a rotten little bastard, so we’ll keep him locked in the attic from now on.

  “Let’s hope you’re right about that,” I said. “My immediate problem, though, is this: If you didn’t send a shooter after Thorney, who did?”

  Gortner shook his head. “I assure you, I have no idea.”

  “Would your son feel protective enough about Jerry to have Thorney killed?”

  I was only fishing for an unguarded response; you don’t ask a man if his son is capable of murder and expect an objective answer. Strangely, though, Gortner seemed to consider the question seriously.

  “No,” he said finally. “I don’t believe Tom feels strongly enough about anything, even his own son, to consider that sort of action.” There was just a trace of wistfulness in his voice.

  So where do you go from there?

  I stood up. Despite appearing to be asleep, Cowboy beat me to my feet.

  “Your wife is locked in a bathroom upstairs,” I told Gortner. “It will frighten her less if you let her out.”

  Judge Gortner nodded and said, “Thank you.”

  We left. We were barely out the door, though, when Cowboy said, “Go ahead, boss-man. I’ll catch up.” He turned and went back into the office.

  Dave was still sprawled on the cool marble floor of the foyer. He was motionless and his eyes were closed. For a moment I was afraid he’d suffocated, after all.

  Then he woke up. “Hey,” he said, blinking.

  I cut him loose; he sat up and yawned. A faint sound drifted down the staircase. Dave looked up quickly. “Gortner is on the way,” I said. “He wants to go up for her.”

  Dave nodded and I left him there, sitting on the floor, rubbing his wrists and ankles.

  Outside, Rod Cayman was long awake. He’d squirmed out of the bushes and belly-wriggled thirty feet down the gravel driveway. When I freed his arms and legs and rolled him over, he had so much gravel in his pockets, he rattled.

  Cayman could not or would not stand up; he sat with his legs outstretched and trembled. I had to drag him off the driveway to make room for the Mustang.

  Which started on only the third try and chugged lustily until Cowboy appeared in the front door. He came striding across the deep porch, slapping his leg with the shotgun. Rod Cayman gave a tiny shriek and made a hurried hands-and-knees scramble back into the bushes.

  “Would you believe,” Cowboy said, jerking a thumb at the quivering bushes, “ole Judge is gonna pay me five thousand dollars—five thousand—just to run that wimp outta town? I got to git a certain photograph and legal document, too, but that ain’t no hill for a high-stepper.” He looked at me. “Which shows you how little ole Judge knows ’bout hiring people like us.”

  “I don’t think I wanted to know that,” I said. “I’m running out of leads.” I drove down to the curb and pulled out into the street.

  “Hell,” Cowboy said, “when he offered to pay that much, I said I’d break the wimp’s leg for free. He said no. Man’s got your problem, Rafferty. He’s just too sentimental.”

  “Couple of softies, that’s us,” I said.

  Cowboy squirmed down in his seat, cradled his riot gun, and dropped his big hat over his face. A moment later, he said, “Don’t know how you expect to ever amount to anything.”

  Chapter 28

  Cowboy and I took a sackful of hamburgers, fries, onion rings, and beer—Rafferty’s Cuisine à la Siege—back to the motel. By then it was well after eight o’clock. Thorney and Mimi were hungry and anxious to know what had happened.

  First, though, I phoned Hilda’s house. No answer. Damn. My answering service had no message from her, either. But Diego, my west Dallas snitch, had phoned twice. He’d call again. I told the service to tell Diego to name a time and place to meet. The girl on duty was new; she thought that sounded so exciting, “like Mike Hammer, you know.”

  Good grief.

  While I was on the phone, they had all gone into the second room and spread out the food. Thorney sat at the motel desk; Cowboy and Mimi were on the bed, eating off their laps. I settled onto the floor with a beer and two hamburgers.

  While we ate, I told Thorney and Mimi about our “heroic raid on Fort Gortner.” Trying to lighten it up didn’t help much. By the time I had finished, I was annoyed at how little we’d accomplished. That feeling, the detritus of greasy paper and cardboard boxes, and a rising tide of indigestion all seemed to fit together.

  I wished I was somewhere else, holding Hilda’s hand.

  Thorney started to speak, stopped abruptly, and burped. “’Scuse me! Ate too fast.” He thumped himself on the chest and winked at Mimi. “Didn’t know you were workin for such a crude old man, did you, little lady?”

  Mimi simpered at him; Thorney grinned like a fourteen-year-old. God!

  But, good, too. As long as Mimi had him calmed down and smiling he was less likely to get mulish and do something silly.

  But Thorney wasn’t all that calmed down and smiling. He said to me, “You’re saying you struck out, is that right?”

  “Sort of,” I said.

  “Sort of, my a—uh, foot!” A sidelong glance at Mimi; he really was a courtly old bastard. “You think that Gortner fella hired whoever shot up the mall today. So you went off tonight and scared hell out of people and tied them up and I don’t know what all. But you still don’t know for certain one way or the other. I call that striking out. What do you call it?”

  Cowboy whistled softly. “The man likes it with all the hide and hair still on, don’t he?”

  I said to Thorney, “All right, goddamn it, I call it striking out, too.”

  Thorney gave one of those old-man “damn right” nods and looked superior.

  I said to Cowboy, “Without resorting to Chisholm Trail analogies, tell me what you thought of Gortner. Was he shining us on?”

  Cowboy clucked his tongue thoughtfully. Finally he said, “I think he tole us the truth, mostly. And I don’t reckon he se
t up the shooter, which is what you’re really askin’. Howsomever, jest ’cause I think it, that don’t make it so.”

  “That’s about the way I read it, too,” I said. “Goddamn it.”

  “Now don’t get your dobber down, boss-man,” Cowboy said. “If this sort of thang was easy to work out, there wouldn’t be no need for folks like us.”

  “I can never remember,” I said. “Was it Camus who said that, or Billy Graham?”

  I tried Hilda’s house again. Still no answer. I tried the answering service. Nothing from Hilda, but Diego had called again. Meet me at eleven o ’clock where, nervous giggle, Large Tony got knifed in ’85.

  Diego liked his little games. But I knew where he meant, and I was armed well enough to go there tonight.

  Thorney complained. He wanted to go, too. Mimi distracted him with the announcement that her father still had his grandfather’s army-issue Krag-Jorgenson rifle from 1900 or whenever. Thorney took the bait; they drifted into a conversation about cavity magazines and high bullet weight/low muzzle velocity ballistics.

  I ducked out of the room and did a quick perimeter check of the motel grounds before walking two blocks to the parked Mustang. Then I left for my rendezvous with Diego. I told myself this diversion into the Ortega case was only temporary. First thing in the morning I’d be hot on the trail of the shopping-mall shooter.

  Sure I would. Just as soon as I figured out where to start.

  Diego’s rendezvous site had deteriorated since I’d last seen it. The derelict hotel was still there, inhabited now by a gang of black and brown street kids who resented having the Mustang parked across the street. Maybe it was a crack house; maybe they just felt territorial. They came out to chase me away.

  Not one of them could have been over fifteen, but at the same time they were ageless, like prowling carnivores in a dank and crumbling urban jungle. They had a frenzied nerviness that worried me.

  They bopped around the car, catcalling and inventing elaborate raps I could barely understand. Two of them ran over the car. Literally. Up onto the hood, over the roof, and down the trunk. Another pair were lined up, too, but I held the shotgun up and cocked it. They went back to circling and rapping.

  At ten to eleven, four more kids arrived, laughing and shouting. They carried jacks and mechanic’s tools. Cheers from the assembled multitude.

  They were going to strip the Mustang with me in it.

  As they surrounded the car again, I realized that, once the Mustang was disabled, they wouldn’t stop until they’d pulled me out. And then …

  When they heard the starter grinding, they howled and banged on the car. The engine started, I popped the clutch and got the hell out of there.

  The kids jeered. A brick crunched into the trunk lid. I wondered if any of them were shaking, too, and decided they weren’t. And that was the most unnerving part.

  I got home, bone weary and twitchy, at eleven-thirty. There was a note from Hilda on my pillow.

  * * *

  10:45 pm

  Hi, big guy!

  Dropped by to share a pot of my finest pea soup and my tender alabaster body. The soup was marvelous. (Yours is in the fridge. Blue Tupperware thingo, second shelf, on the left.)

  The bad news is, I have a bitch of a morning schedule. A terribly earnest porcelain maniac from Chicago arrives bright and early in the a.m. with an offer for the Devereaux collection. So, my missing loved one, I’m taking the body home now, still tender, still alabaster, still (sob) unshared.

  Love,

  Hilda

  P.S. Eat your heart out, Ugly.

  P.P.S. Please be careful doing whatever you’re doing.

  Aarrgh!!

  Chapter 29

  A telephone that rings at four a.m. rarely brings good news. The one beside my bed that dark and gloomy morning was no exception. I came out of a restless sleep thinking the caller might be Hilda.

  No such luck; it was Diego.

  “Hey, Rafferty, man, sorry ‘bout dat meet. Dey was a buncha wild animals dere, man. Dem freaks, dey scare me, man. I cut out.”

  I let the phone fall onto the pillow and twisted my head around to fit it. “I cut out too, Diego. It was either that or kill some of them.”

  “You shoulda, man. Dose wild kids, dey—”

  “Shut up, Diego. What do you want?”

  “Hey, man, be cool, okay? Choo wanna meet someplace? I foun’ out ’bout that Ortega cat.”

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “Hey … What ’bout my fifty, man?”

  “One: I’m not going back into that goddamned jungle tonight. Two: You don’t get paid until I hear what you have, anyway. Three: I’m good for it.”

  “I doan know, man …”

  “Four: Good-bye.” I fumbled for the phone and pushed down the disconnect button.

  Sometime later I woke up and realized I hadn’t put the phone back on the hook. So I did. Then it rang.

  “Whisper in my ear, Diego.”

  “Choo a hard man, Rafferty. Choo doan care nothin’ about poor Diego, out here on da street, tryin’ to—”

  “Repeating item four, good—”

  “Wait a minute, man! Okay. Ortega was strictly small-time. Thass why it took me so long. Man, nobody ever hearda this dude! But when choo got Diego el Zorro on de job, man, choo got de best!”

  “Are you stoned? What’s this Zorro business?”

  “Hey, man, dat’s my street name now. Diego el Zorro. Espanol, choo dig? Diego the fox. How ’bout dat?”

  “Diego, will you, for Christ’s sake—”

  “Okay! This morning, yesterday morning, I doan know, Tuesday, anyway, I foun’ dis man. He is a nephew of my father’s fren, Cristobal, and he used to hang aroun’ wit’ Luis Ortega on the street, gambling and like that.”

  I stretched and rubbed my face. Needed a shave. “Tell me about the ‘gambling and like that.’”

  There was a second’s pause; I could almost see Diego in a phone booth somewhere, shrugging eloquently. “What ’bout it? Dat’s the whole point, man. Ortega din’t bet hardly at all. Cristobal’s nephew say he used to brag about bettin’, but he lie, man, he lie like a rug. Oh, sure, Luis go to cockfights, but he only bet ten, twen’y dollars. Or fi’ dollars on a pool game. Rafferty, choo barkin’ up the wrong tree, man. Nobody gets shot over a fi’ dollar pool game.”

  “You’re really making my day, Diego. Look, could this guy be covering for Luis? Or for somebody Luis welshed on?”

  “De word on de street is, Cristobal’s nephew and Luis was pretty tight, man. I think it’s de truth.”

  “Shit,” I said. I hadn’t really expected the Ortega gambling angle to pan out, but even so …

  Diego whistled appreciatively and called out something in Spanish. They called back, faintly. There were street noises in the background, too. Then his voice boomed again. “Hey, Rafferty, my fren, you oughta see the gorgeous puta workin’ thees corner. She just did a t’ree minute car job, man. What a pro! T’ree minutes!”

  “Don’t stand too close. Some of those bugs can jump.”

  “Hey, I doan come ’round dere and insult your sister, do I?”

  Don’t ask me; he has a strange sense of humor sometimes. I said, “I’ll get your fifty to you,” and hung up.

  I set my alarm, then went back to sleep until the clock chirped in my ear. From Hilda’s note, I assumed she was meeting that six-thirty flight. Minus driving time and dressing time that meant …

  She answered on the second ring. Her voice was cautious. “Hello?”

  “Best pea soup in all Christendom, I’d say.”

  “Rafferty! How are you?” She sounded bright and hugely alive, even at that hour of the morning. Suddenly Wednesday became a day worth living through.

  I said, “Sorry about last night, babe. Yesterday was pretty screwed-up. I kept missing you on the telephone.” I sat up and jammed the pillow behind my back. “I didn’t think to phone here last night. What a dummy.”

  “That’
s all right,” she said. “I missed you, though.”

  “I missed you, too. Tonight. And I’ll tell you all about it.”

  “I don’t think I like the sound of ‘all about it,’” she said, “but tonight, yes.”

  “I’ll call you later. Hey, I know you’re meeting a plane, so—”

  Hilda said softly, “You’re going to think this is silly and feminine, but last night I missed simply having a meal with you almost as much as I missed the sex.”

  “Boy, if I ever said that, they’d kick me out of the Federated Thugs and Gumshoes Guild.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Sure. They’d probably burn my ceremonial blackjack, too, and put a notice in the newsletter: Rafferty’s a sissy.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said.

  I said, “You do have a point, though.”

  “Relax, big guy,” Hilda said. “Your secret is safe with me.”

  “But seriously, cookie, you are going to come across tonight, right?”

  She laughed and hung up.

  I slept well, after that, and didn’t get up until about nine.

  Midway through my second cup of coffee, Cowboy phoned. “Boss-man, how about you meet me across the street from Gortner’s house? Somethin’ going on out there I think you ought to see.”

  Chapter 30

  There were two guards in front of Judge Gortner’s house. They wore neat, pressed security-company uniforms. Each guard wore a police-style gun belt and carried a baton and personal radio. They looked fit and alert. Perhaps without realizing it, they stood in identical hand-on-hip postures as they stared across the street at Cowboy and me, leaning against his pickup. Not far from each guard, there was a long florist’s box leaning against a tree.

  Cowboy thumbed his hat an inch higher on his forehead. “Ten bucks says them boxes ain’t roses,” he said.