Wrong Place, Wrong Time

by W. Glenn Duncan

But, for the moment, that was the only thing I had to work on. I picked up the phone again.

  I spent all afternoon with that hard phone in my ear. It was a waste of time. I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to put my lights out, or anyone who’d heard that somebody else wanted to put my lights out, or anyone who’d even heard a rumor that somebody wanted … etcetera, etcetera.

  Again, all the good guys said that and all the bad guys agreed with them. A couple of the bad guys—and one state cop—offered to punch me out, and Freddo Lombard had a unique suggestion about me hang-gliding down an elevator shaft. He was still miffed because I’d rained on his freight-theft parade.

  But Freddo’s all mouth, everybody knows that.

  The point was, by the time I dragged myself out of the office, butt-weary and ear-sore, I was reasonably sure there was no organized effort to get me.

  Which did not do one damned thing to help me work out what the hell was going on.

  Chapter 33

  “Why don’t you marry her?” Thorney said.

  It was my night to motel-sit with Thorney. We’d eaten Chinese food I’d brought, and watched the evening news. Now we were sitting around talking, like recruits sit around the barracks, shining shoes and talking about women. Wonderful. Thursday Night Dead.

  I’d just explained to him about Hilda and me, about how we had different houses, but we lived at both of them. From time to time. Sort of. Depending.

  “I don’t know,” Thorney said wistfully. “I don’t understand how people think now. Used to be if a man and a woman were in love, they got married and raised kids. Simple. What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, marry her, dammit! Hilda’s a fine lady. You should make an honest woman out of her.”

  “Thorney, it just doesn’t work like that anymore. You know that.”

  “Oh, I know it,” he said. “I know it.”

  I’d brought a bottle of Scotch, too, and we were each having a small sip now and again. The Scotch, on top of the uncertainty, and the boredom, was getting to Thorney a little.

  “Nothing’s the same today.” He waved his glass and slopped some onto his pants. “I wish I’d bet somebody fifty years ago there’d be hom’sexuals marching in parades, women working and men home cooking, single women raising kids and some of them only kids themselves. I could have gotten damn fine odds on a bet like that.” He screwed up his seamed, square face and looked puzzled. “Lot of changes.”

  “Were you ever married, Thorney?”

  He poured himself another inch of Scotch and waved the bottle at me. I shook my head. “Never got married,” Thorney said. “Came close a couple of times, though. Maybe I should have.”

  “Oh?”

  His eyes lit up as he said, “Lucinda Bayless. Lucy. She had blond hair and big blue eyes; she looked a little like that Doris Day, except she didn’t have freckles.” He smiled. “But then I went to Mexico. And that was no place for a woman, not during the revolution. Later on we still might have, but I joined the merchant marine, and … See, girls couldn’t wait around in those days. They worried about being called old maids.” Thorney sipped his Scotch. “We were loading teak in Rangoon the day Lucy married a fellow from Tulsa. Railroad man. He treated her all right, I guess.” He took big bite of his Scotch this time. “Lucy died ten years ago last August. Still a pretty woman, even then.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nothing for you to be sorry about,” he grumped. “You asked; I told you. Don’t make a goddamn meal out of it.” He looked around the room and curled his lip. After three days in those two rooms I didn’t blame him. “I’m tired,” he said. “G’night.”

  “Night.”

  He trudged off into his room and went to bed. Five minutes later he was snoring. There was a nasty-sounding rasp and a gulp at the end of each inhalation. He hadn’t seemed as spritely as usual, either. Maybe I should get a doctor in tomorrow unless he was better.

  I got a book out of my bag—I was rereading The Caine Mutiny—and opened it. After I read the same page four times, I gave up and watched TV with the sound turned down low.

  The next thing I realized, the room curtains were leaking sunlight and Cowboy was knocking on the door. My clothes felt like I’d worn them for a week, my neck hurt from falling asleep sitting up, and my mouth tasted like the entire Russian army had marched through it. Wearing sweatsocks.

  Chapter 34

  Thorney was still in bed as Cowboy and Mimi settled in and I, still barely awake, settled out.

  I went home and let the shower pound on my head for twenty minutes. That helped my stiff neck some, and breakfast did its bit, too. I’d worked my way up from crummy to so-so by the time I phoned Hilda’s house.

  Missed her. Sharp slide back toward crummy.

  With impeccable timing I set off for the office in the dying gasp of morning rush hour. It was a long trip downtown with a carbon-monoxide headache as a bonus. And when I walked from the parked Mustang, it hissed again. What next?

  I trudged into my office and told myself to get busy, to flash into action, to accomplish something today. Myself gave me a funny look and said oh, sure.

  In her office next door, Beth Woodland looked up and arched her eyebrows in question.

  “Nothing new,” I mouthed, and grabbed for my telephone. That was an easy move, almost instinctive. In my racket most moves start with, or involve, the telephone.

  Then I noticed my finger was frozen over the buttons. It was pointing but not pushing. The finger seemed to belong to someone else.

  And I realized with a sudden sick lump in my chest that I had no idea who to call next. Or what to do next. Or where to go next. I was stuck. Stopped deader’n a wedge, Cowboy would say. This was not a pleasant feeling.

  I found myself still poised over the phone, and I forced whoever’s finger that was to do something. It tapped out Hilda’s office number.

  “Babe, I’m having a little problem here.”

  “It sounds like it,” she said. “Talk to me, big fella.”

  “I’ve run out of places to look for the bad guys, Hil. I owe money to every snitch in town and I still don’t know anything. I’m hurting.”

  Her voice was slow and thoughtful. “Perhaps it can’t be pushed like that. Rafferty. Could you simply wait and see what happens? After all, Thorney is safe, isn’t he?”

  “Safe enough, but he’s getting moody, and I don’t think he’s very healthy. You should have heard him breathing last night.”

  “I’m sure he has a doctor you could call.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not just Thorney. I’m getting buggy, babe. I am definitely not in what you might call ‘wait’ mode. I am more in your basic, ‘beat the shit out of somebody’ mode.”

  “I see,” Hilda said. “Well, what can I do to help you?” She was already doing it, of course. We both knew that.

  “You wouldn’t have anybody over there I could thump on, would you?”

  “Darn!” she said. “If only you’d called ten minutes earlier.”

  “Them’s the breaks, I guess.” I listened to her breathe for a few minutes, then said. “Thanks Hil.”

  “I love you, Rafferty.”

  “Bye, babe.”

  “Bye. Be careful?”

  “You got it.”

  We hung up, and I left the office, not good yet, but better. Definitely better.

  Outside, I stood on the sidewalk for a while and glared at passing cars and people. I halfway wished someone would come along and shoot at me. At least then I’d have something to do.

  No one did. That’s the way it is some days; nothing seems to go right.

  Finally, feeling strangely weary, I retrieved the Mustang and drove across town to Harry Hines Boulevard and the hideout motel. On the way I wondered how to explain to Thorney that because my brain had gone out on strike, he couldn’t go home yet. And I didn’t know when he could. And I didn’t know when I would know when he could. I didn’t like me very much for t
hat.

  Gradually, I noticed the Mustang was hissing again. Big deal. What’s one lousy snake when you’re up to your ass in alligators?

  As usual I parked in a strip center lot two blocks away, walked to the motel, and started up the driveway. Which brought to mind an old complaint. Ever notice how many motels don’t have people-type sidewalks? Whoever designs those things must think humans are incapable of motion when severed from their rolling stock.

  Hilda calls such careful societal analysis “pettifogging,” but I figure someone has to think about these things; it might as well be me.

  There was an out-of-state Dodge wagon in front of the motel lobby door with the rear gate up and a family putting three or four small overnight cases in the back. They hadn’t carried those little bags to the parking lot; maybe the motel designers were right.

  I was fifty feet from the lobby door, passing a flower bed of bushes—would that make it a bush bed?—when tires squealed out on the street. One of the kids in the Dodge-loading party chirped something high and piping, then a car engine strained loud and tight and a bright green MGB with the top down squirted out of the passing traffic and raced up the motel drive.

  There was a wicked speed bump on that driveway; I’d almost tripped on the damned thing a couple of times. The MGB hit it full-tilt. The low green car lurch-hopped twice and landed awkwardly, slowed to half speed. Well, that was the idea of speed bumps, after all.

  There were graunches and grindings and engine roars, then the MGB suddenly darted forward and, just as suddenly, locked all four tires in a raucous slide to a nose-low stop.

  Toby Wells rose out of the MGB, all six feet plus of him. He seemed even bigger as he stood up on the seat and aimed a familiar Remington twelve-gauge shotgun at me.

  Chapter 35

  By the time Wells pulled the trigger, I was down on the ground. Almost down, anyway, and it didn’t take long to finish the job. The shotgun pellets went over me and made a soft, tinny rattle-splat against the brick building. It seemed odd to be able to hear that small sound, what with the shotgun going off and the Dodge kids screaming in the background.

  There were other noises, too, like the hard rasp of my own breath and the scrape of my clothes against bushes and bricks as I dove into the garden plot and scrambled along the base of the wall.

  The shotgun boomed again; several leaves and one small, bright red flower dropped in front of me. Brick dust drifted into my face.

  Crawling along, I banged my knuckles hard against a rock, and discovered I had the .45 in my right hand. I couldn’t remember pulling it out of the back of my belt, and I wondered how I’d done that while moving on all fours, without falling on my face.

  As I reached the end of the planted area, the mother and children from the Dodge ran, bent over, into the motel. The father was sitting beside the big wagon, with his back to the rear wheel. His head was lowered; his chin nearly touched his chest. Hit, maybe.

  The shotgun went off a third time and took out a window somewhere. I squirmed behind a low, decorative concrete pot and peeked around the side of it.

  Wells was visible from the belt buckle up over the hood of the Dodge. He was apparently still standing in or on his little car. I fired at him twice, but I was in an awkward position and trembling after the high-speed crawl. I might as well have thrown the gun at him.

  Wells flinched, though, and he ducked out of sight. While he was down, I scuttled out of the bushes and duck-walked to shelter behind the Dodge’s front wheel. I looked under the car, saw the MGB’s wheels, but no feet or legs. Then I heard muttered words from the back of the station wagon.

  No! I thought Wells was behind me. I nearly broke something getting turned around and bringing the Colt to bear.

  It wasn’t Wells. It was the Dodge father. He was praying. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” he said rapidly, over and over. “Our Father, who art in heaven, our Father, who art in heaven.”

  I poked the .45 around the front of the Dodge and pulled the trigger, not aiming because I wasn’t brave enough to stick my head out, just shooting to keep Wells’s head down, too.

  There was a moment or two where nothing happened, then a window shattered way up above us. A bedside table drifted down lazily, landed on one corner, and collapsed like a foldup toy. Chunks of glass clattered down around the wreckage.

  Cowboy leaned out of the missing window in Thorney’s room. He held his riot shotgun in both hands. There was no expression on his face as he fired and worked the slide, fired and worked the slide, chug-chugging rounds down at the MGB. He might have been in a factory, stamping out tin cans or plastic fire engines. It was long range for a short-barreled shotgun and almost straight down. Chug, chug. It sounded great.

  Wells bellowed in outrage. I sneaked a look. He was sitting down in the car again, pushing at the gear lever jerkily. I snapped a shot at him; part of the dashboard suddenly distorted. Wells popped the clutch; my next shot punched into the trunk behind him.

  The MGB spun in a tight circle and bounced over the speed bump. As it lurched, Cowboy fired again; Wells’s left hand on the steering wheel became red and ill-defined.

  Wells screamed again, in pain that time, the sound barely noticeable over the other shouts and the traffic noise and the after-ring of the shooting. The little car kept moving, accelerating into traffic, and out of sight.

  And it was over.

  I stood there for a moment, tingling, buzzing with the combat juices. I noticed my hands and knees were filthy, and I’d lost a big chunk of flesh when I banged my knuckles. I put the .45 away and spit-washed my hands.

  Mother Dodge and the kids came out and surrounded Dad. He hugged his family and they all cried. I watched them and knew I should feel terrible about their innocent involvement. At least part of that was my fault. And I did feel bad, a little, but only a little. Mostly I felt alive now, and energetic; eager to get out and bust this thing wide open now that I knew what I was working with.

  Then I tried to feel guilty about feeling so good, but I couldn’t work up much of a guilt trip about that, either.

  I’d have to think about it later; it was time to go, while people still ran around, shouted, and talked themselves into the conflicting stories that would keep the cops busy for days.

  I walked around the outside of the motel to the rear service door we’d selected earlier. In the background the sirens were beginning. The closest one was still a long way off.

  The loose boards in the motel back fence came away easily. I stacked them neatly at the base of the fence. Then I leaned against the building and waited.

  Forty feet away another service door opened. A Vietnamese man in a white T-shirt and apron came out, carrying two full plastic garbage cans. He looked at the gap in the fence, dumped the garbage into a nearby dumpster, and looked at the fence again. Then he looked at me. He didn’t stop moving, though, and he went back inside without saying anything.

  The door beside me banged open. They came out. Mimi first, with her Uzi barely disguised by the bath towel she had draped over it. She scanned the immediate area and nodded at me.

  Cowboy was six seconds behind her with two bags in his left hand, another draped over his shoulder, and Thorney’s upper arm clutched firmly in his right hand. He was moving Thorney about twice as fast as Thorney wanted to go. The old man was pale and shaken. We squeezed through the fence, then I took one of the bags and Thorney’s other arm. We picked up the pace quite a bit.

  Ten minutes later we were a dozen blocks away, headed south.

  “Goddamn!” Cowboy said. “I hate these hurry-up bug-outs. Now I got to make me two more of them door whatzits.” He looked at me and a grin slowly spread over his leathery face. “It was kinda fun while it lasted, though, hey?”

  Cowboy, Thorney and I waited in a hamburger joint while Mimi caught a cab back to where their pickup was parked. We drank coffee and drifted in and out of, mostly out of, conversation. Thorney, especially, didn’t want to talk. He drank his coffe
e and chewed his lip a lot. And sighed several times.

  When Mimi pulled in and honked, we went out and shifted their gear and guns into the pickup.

  Cowboy shrugged. “Just call. I’ll come a’runnin’.”

  Mimi held her cheek up for me to kiss, but she went to Thorney and squeezed the old man’s waist for a long time. He patted her awkwardly, his immense hand seeming absurd on her small back.

  “Bye now, Thorney,” Mimi said, backing away and looking up at him. “You take care now.”

  Cowboy and Mimi drove off; Thorney and I got into the Mustang. He said, “Uh, Rafferty, about our talk last night. When I told you to marry Hilda.”

  I picked at the cracked vinyl on the dash.

  “Seeing you down there, dodging that shotgun, I figured it out,” he said. “You don’t want to make that fine woman bury you someday.”

  “If you say so, Thorney. Let’s go home.”

  Five minutes later he said, “You’re wrong, you know. Married or not it’d be just the same for Hilda.”

  “If you say so.”

  Chapter 36

  “Now it’s just a hunt, babe. And I’m good at that. He’s out there; I find him; it’s over. Simple.”

  Hilda said, “He tried to kill you, Rafferty. There’s nothing simple about that.”

  It was six o’clock. Out front the showrooms of Gardner’s Antiques were dark. Hilda and I sat in her office, side by side on a gigantic monstrosity of a horsehide sofa. We were sipping white wine—Hilda’s office drinking is more upmarket than mine—and I was still mentally reorganizing the structure of the case.

  “Well, okay, not simple simple,” I said, “but simpler than it was.” I drank more wine. “Are you sure you don’t have a beer around here anywhere?”

  “Chardonnay or mineral water, sport. Take your pick.”

  “If people were supposed to drink this stuff, it would come in six-packs, Hil, believe me. But,” I said, moving the wine-glass out of her sudden reach, “I’ll drink it anyway. Now, as I was saying—”