Wrong Place, Wrong Time

by W. Glenn Duncan

  “No bet.” I’d once carried a shotgun around for a week in a box exactly like that.

  “They was setting up shop when I first got here,” Cowboy said. “That was eight-thirty or thereabouts.” He chuckled softly. “Come out here to see ole Judge ’bout that little chore he wanted done. But them two heroes there, they said as how Judge wasn’t seeing nobody this morning.”

  The guards stared at us across the empty suburban street. Cowboy kept his voice low. “I watched for a little bit—there’s a couple more of ’em inside—then I found me a phone booth. Old Judge, he didn’t want to talk to me on the phone, either. That’s when I called you.”

  “These guys are pretty good, you know,” I said. “Amateurs would have already come over here and tried to shoo us away.”

  Cowboy nodded. “Yep. The curb’s their perimeter, I’d say, and they ain’t gonna be suckered outside of it. Ex-military, both of them, prob’ly.” He slowly swiveled to face me. “’Course that don’t mean we couldn’t get past ’em.”

  “I know that. But we’d have to kill at least one of them to do it. That seems a bit drastic.”

  Cowboy shrugged.

  “Time spent on reconnaissance is never wasted,” I said. “Let’s check out the back.”

  We drove around two corners, then counted houses from the corner until we found the one that backed onto Gortner’s lot. I rummaged around in my wallet, found my Dallas Water Board Inspector business card, and tucked it into my shirt pocket.

  I walked down the driveway toward the garage behind the house. No one challenged me. Two side windows were open, the back door could not be seen by any of the neighboring houses, and the garage was empty. And wide open. Burglars get all the breaks.

  The backyard was large and well kept. There was a timber fence on the rear property line with a low mass of white-flowering bushes on this side and Judge Gortner’s backyard on the other.

  The ground rose very slightly from the fence to Gortner’s patio. I could see the back door where Cayman, Dave, and I had entered. Six feet from the door, another rent-a-cop stood at parade rest, alert for the approach of marauding Visigoths. His shotgun lay on a wrought-iron table; there was no need for gimmicks like a florist’s box in the privacy of the backyard.

  Welcome to Fort Gortner. Now I knew how the Indians felt when the Seventh Cavalry wouldn’t come out and fight.

  As I went around to the front of the house, a maroon Buick station wagon pulled into the driveway. A woman in her late forties looked at me strangely as I walked past her car.

  I waved to her, smiled, and shouted, “Water grumbles main inspect sog bog none okay now thanks—and have a nice day.” I kept moving down the block; Cowboy picked me up around the corner.

  “I’ve been thinkin’ on it,” Cowboy said. “I believe we could get in there without hurtin’ no one.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  We drove down Gortner’s street again on the way out of the area. A van with HOME SECURITY ALARM SYSTEMS painted on the side was parked at the driveway entrance. A red-haired man stood beside the van and argued with one of the guards while the other guard talked on his belt radio.

  “Well, now, I was gonna say we could steal us a limo, but if they gonna be that picky, we’d best forgit the whole thing,” Cowboy said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I wouldn’t know what to do while we were in there. Not for the seventeen whole seconds it would take until the entire Dallas Police Department landed on our heads.”

  “Yup, there is that little problem.”

  “Got an idea,” I said. “Find a phone booth.”

  We went to three phone booths, in fact, before finding one with a phone book. Luckily, Gortner is not a popular name in Dallas. There were only two listings: Gortner, L. V. , and Gortner, Thomas R. I wondered what L. V. stood for. Lyndon Victor? Leon Vauxhall? Leslie Vladimir? Maybe that was why he called himself Judge.

  The address for Gortner, Thomas K, was near Thorney’s house. We pulled up in front of it five minutes later.

  It was a nice house, newer than Judge’s place, and flashier, but the guards were the same—uniforms, florist’s boxes, and grim stares.

  “Wal, now,” Cowboy said, “how ’bout that? Somebody’s got ’em a big cookie cutter says Security Guard on it, and they jest stamp out however many they need.”

  “Hell with this,” I said. “You’d better get back to keeping an eye on Thorney. The private army could mean Gortner’s ready to go to war.”

  “It could do,” Cowboy said.

  “But it might only mean that we scared him last night, and he’s realized how vulnerable he is.”

  “Yeah, it could mean that, too,” Cowboy said.

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to venture an opinion?”

  “Naw. You’re the one does all that intellectual shit. When you work it out, lemme know who you want alive and who you want dead, okay?”

  Chapter 31

  Hilda said, “Dear, don’t you understand how much you and Cowboy frighten normal people?”

  “Now, there’s a vote of confidence,” I said. We were sitting on the couch in Hilda’s living room. Most of the lights were off; a jazz record wailed gently in the background. We were holding hands and talking mostly, with occasional short breaks to neck and fool around a little. Just a couple of wild and crazy kids.

  “No, seriously,” she said. “Think about it from this man Gortner’s viewpoint. You and Cowboy went storming into his house—no doubt with guns drawn—tied up his staff, imprisoned his wife, and gave him the third degree in his own study. That is what happened, isn’t it?”

  “Well, sort of …” The inside of her left arm, three inches above the elbow, was amazingly soft and warm.

  Hilda said, “After that, any normal person who could afford them would hire guards. I imagine it was terrifying for him. For all of them.”

  “It didn’t bother Dave the boxer. He fell asleep.”

  “Well, he’s a thug, too, isn’t he?” Hilda said. She lightly dragged her fingernails down my forearm. “Which reminds me. If this Gortner man is a big Mafia Chieftain or something, shouldn’t he have enough muscle men already? Why would he have to hire guards from an ordinary security company?”

  “Yeah, I wondered about that, too.”

  Hilda said, “So there.”

  “The trouble is, babe, I can see Gortner doing almost the same thing if he was behind the mall shooting, once he’d realized Thorney had some firepower on his side, too.”

  “I still don’t think so. Besides, you don’t think anyone would shoot at Thorney because their grandson might get into a little trouble, do you? I don’t.”

  “I know,” I said. “It doesn’t make sense. But it also doesn’t make sense for this super slick political fixer to have a heavy like Dave working—”

  “Which you said he explained,” Hilda said.

  “Well, he sort of explained that. The thing is, Hil, the whole Gortner clan is hunkering down. Father and son are both behind secure perimeters. Gortner won’t even talk to me on the phone.”

  “Hah,” Hilda said. “Under the same circumstances, neither would I.”

  “The son, Tom, has taken an immediate, indefinite leave of absence from that fancy committee or board or whatever it is.”

  “Says who?” Hilda stopped scratching my forearm and started on my leg. Nice.

  “Claude Cannerly, my political snitch. And Jerry, the grandson with the slingshot, didn’t go to school today. Because—get this—he’s transferring to some upmarket military academy out East.”

  “How in the world can you find out things like that?”

  “I lie to people. You see, it didn’t seem logical they would turn the house into a fort, then send the kid out to school. So this afternoon, I called and told the kid’s mother I was the assistant principal and was Jerry sick or what? She said her husband had already phoned the school, why didn’t I talk to my own staff, and she would advise where to send Jerry�
�s transcripts when they had, quote, ‘finalized their decision.’ She probably gets that kind of watermelon talk from her husband and father-in-law.”

  “She told you all that on the phone?”

  “Sure. It’s crazy what people will tell you if you act dumb and let them lord it over you. Telephones are wonderful things.” I moved my leg a little, so she could scratch it more easily.

  “And you’re sure Thorney is all right? This must be very hard on him, getting shot at, then being cooped up in a motel with Cowboy and Mimi.”

  “He’s okay for now,” I said, “but he’s too stubborn to put up with it for very long.”

  “Try to spend some time with him, dear. He likes you.”

  “I like him,” I said. “I’m doing the overnight shift tomorrow, so Cowboy and Mimi can have a break. Mostly, though, babe, I need to be on the street, finding the shooter, so Thorney can go home.”

  “I know, big guy.” After a long, soft while, she said, “Did the shooting frighten him. ”

  “Thorney? No way. He’s tough as an old boot.”

  “Yes,” she said, and snuggled closer. “So what happens now?”

  “I think now I reread my copy of So You Want to Be a Private Detective and look for ideas.”

  “No, silly, that’s tomorrow. I mean, what happens right now?”

  “Oh. Go home and hit the sack, I guess. I’m pretty tired.”

  “On the other hand,” Hilda said, “you could rip off my clothes, push me down on the floor, and have your lustful way with me.”

  “Oh, well,” I said, “I could probably stay awake that long, if you really—oomph!”

  Chapter 32

  The next morning, Thursday, I went straight to the cop shop and found Jefferys, the lieutenant running the mall shooting investigation.

  Jefferys had assembled all the paperwork into a workable stack by then. It was a big stack. “But that means nothing,” he said. “A guy spends all day shoveling out a stable, he ends up with a big stack, too.”

  There were interview reports from the eyewitnesses; fat lot of good they were. Eyewitnesses are notoriously inaccurate most of the time, but this batch was ridiculous.

  And there were interview reports from the shop owners and workers and from those of us who had contributed only by falling down and staying alive. Those reports made an impressive pile, but when you boiled them down, they were no more useful than the eyewits.

  There was very little physical evidence. Three cartridge casings and three slugs. Which was a start, Jefferys claimed.

  “Ballistics says if I find the rifle, they can identify it by matching the ejector and firing-pin marks. But until then? Without the rifle? Hah!”

  The getaway car had been found, huzzah, huzzah, and it was definitely the one that people had seen parked, idling, by the mall entrance. Absolutely, positively, by God. Bless his bureaucratic persistence, Jefferys had impounded the car and showed it to every eyewitness on his list.

  “It’s an ’85 Honda Accord, ugh? Blue, kind of a sky blue,” Jefferys explained wearily, “but did any of them, even one, say Honda in the first place? They did not. Did anybody say sky blue? They did not. And when I showed them the car, what did they say, every single goddamned one of them?”

  I said, “What they said was, ‘That’s the car, officer. Just like I told you.’”

  Jefferys squinted at me. “Were you ever a cop?”

  “Long time ago. Nothing’s changed. I suppose next you’re going to tell me there weren’t any useful prints on the car.”

  “Consider yourself told.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah.” He rubbed his chin and said, “My kid’s got this T-shirt. It says LIFE’S A BITCH, AND THEN YOU DIE. I get a case like this, I feel like the guy who painted that T-shirt.”

  “Whoops, there’s more,” I said.

  “There’s more,” Jefferys said.

  And life truly is a bitch sometimes; the Accord had been stolen from the mall parking lot.

  “You wouldn’t believe it,” Jefferys said. “Dumb bitch left her car keys in the ignition ‘because’”—he put on a gratingly high falsetto—“‘I was only gone for a teensy-weensy little minute, officer.’”

  “This is the same mall we’re talking about.”

  Jefferys nodded rapidly. “Same mall, same parking lot. Okay, the Accord was parked down the other end, a hundred yards away, maybe, but even so …”

  “Where did he dump it?”

  “Right back where he took it! Almost, anyway. I’m telling you, this guy had balls like …” He made the sort of cupping gesture more often used to describe Dolly Parton’s chest. “He must carry ’em around in a wheelbarrow.” He shook his head and sighed. “Best I can figure, he lifted the Accord, drove it to the other end of the mall, went in, shot up the place, came out, drove back to where he’d started, parked the Accord, and walked away.”

  I said, “Or got into his own car.”

  “Well, sure, he got into his own car. ‘Walked away,’ that’s a figure of speech. Nobody walks into or out of a shopping center. Not carrying a rifle, anyway. His car was probably parked close to where he left the Accord. That would have made it easier to transfer the rifle.”

  “Well, then, did anyone see—”

  “Don’t start!” Jefferys held up both palms. “I’m a pretty good cop, okay? So I thought about that, too. And I talked to a guy in the center management office who knows this kinda shit, and I asked him how many parking spaces there are in that lot. And he told me a big number. A big, big number. I wrote it down somewhere. Then he told me what their fancy computer says is how many different cars go in and out of any one parking space in a typical day. And that’s also a pretty big number. I wrote it down, too. Now, if I understand all I know about probability theory, you multiply the big, big number by the pretty big number and then you have one chance out of that number of finding the right car. And, I promise you, Rafferty, that number is enormous. Ee—goddamn—normous.” He looked at me brightly. “You want to know how many cars that is?”

  “No, I don’t want to know how many cars that is.”

  “I didn’t think you would.”

  Next, I went to my office. Beth Woodland came over immediately. She was worried about Thorney, but she was very brave and very levelheaded about the whole screwy mess.

  “I won’t ask questions,” she said solemnly. “Just promise me one thing. Promise me you won’t let anything happen to Thorney.”

  “I promise, Beth.”

  She nodded twice and tried for a smile, which didn’t come off. As she left my office, her back was stiff and her head was up and she walked in a very straight line, taking small, careful steps.

  I picked up the phone and went to work.

  Two hours later, I had struck out at proving Judge Gortner was the kind of guy who hired shooters. Apparently he was no more than he seemed to be: a slick political fixer who must have been shocked by how easily Cowboy and I had barged in on him. That’s what the good guys told me; the bad guys never heard of him, which was the same song, different singer. I realized I was swearing a lot. Worse yet, I was repeating myself.

  Around noon, I checked the office beer supply, then phoned a place in the next block that delivers sandwiches. Their food wasn’t all that good, but not having to go after it was worth something. On a day like that, it was worth quite a bit.

  Lunch came. Feet on the desk, beer, pastrami on rye, much thinking but no fresh ideas. Lunch went. I swore some more. It still didn’t help.

  I wadded up the sandwich papers and made a perfect foul shot into the wastebasket. As if to signal the score change, the phone rang.

  It was Ricco. “Rafferty, you wanna know this stuff about the Hermosa broad’s new boyfriend or not?”

  It was the wrong case, but what the hell. “Make it good, Ricco. I need a win today.”

  “Tough. We got nothing on John Barcola. I even did a little scraping around, more than I said I would because—”
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  “Because you’re so committed to truth, justice and the American way.”

  “Tell you the truth, I was bored. Anyway, he’s a welder, I found out. Works the night shift at a pipe plant just across the river. Steady job, good credit rating, what can I say?”

  That’s the kind of day it was. Everybody was coming up as understudy to Mr Clean. What can you say?

  By the middle of the afternoon, I had come around to thinking that what Hilda said—and what I had been wondering deep down since last Tuesday morning—might be right.

  Maybe I was the target, not Thorney.

  It made sense in a way. In the course of doing business I occasionally did things that angered the kind of people who had other people killed.

  But it didn’t make sense in another way. If someone was trying to whack me, why did they try on the only occasion I was out in the open with Thorney? Why then and at no other time?

  Unlike Jefferys, I didn’t know zip about probability theory but my hardware-store-giveaway calculator worked out that there were three hundred thirty-six hours in two weeks. More button punching told me the hour I’d spent in public with Thorney was less than one third of one percent of that time.

  And that’s when somebody tried to hit me?

  Come on!

  Suppose it was Wells, the fake bounty hunter?

  Okay, suppose that. One: Why would he bother? I was only the stupid hick who let him get away after he killed Luis Ortega. He was clear and clean. There was no reason for him to want to take me out.

  Two: Back to the one third of one percent argument. If it had nothing to do with Thorney—and Wells sure as hell had nothing to do with Thorney—why would he shoot at me when I was briefly with Thorney and at no other time?

  Three: Even if I was wrong, if it was Wells, he would prove it by trying again. Until then Thorney had to stay tucked away.

  It wasn’t Wells. No way.

  It probably wasn’t anyone after me.

  But.