Red Herrings Can't Swim (Nod Blake Mysteries Book 2)

by Doug Lamoreux

  I climbed the stairs as noiselessly as I was able to my second-floor apartment. I reached the landing puffed with pride at having outsmarted the law. I unlocked the door, and was pocketing my latch key when – for no reason I could see – I was thunderstruck. That increasingly familiar searing pain tore through my neck. I lost my balance, dropped my shoes, and tumbled like a sack of rocks backwards down the stairs. So much for pride or a silent entrance. My head hit a step, my ankle hit the rail, my wrist hit the wall, over and over again all the way down. You get the picture. A week later, it seemed, I hit the hardwood floor at the bottom of the staircase.

  I'd felt every smack of the tumble but saw none of it. My mind and senses were busy. Following the waves of heat, pain, light, and darkness you're coming to expect as much as I, and for some ungodly reason of which I couldn't even guess, I found myself back in Sybil's train car at the circus. I don't mean merely that the vision had put me back in Sybil's place. I was back in her bulbous body as well. Both place and person were instantly recognizable by the distant calliope music, the long room, the lighted mirror, the crap furniture, me on my knees, my hand wet again with Sybil's spilled porridge, oh, and the knife. I shouldn't forget the keenly sharpened throwing knife again plunged into my back.

  In the time it took to set the scene for you, the shadowy phantom killer behind me had moved into the room and was upon me. Ignoring the knife he'd thrown for the moment, he grabbed me, no, he grabbed my pearl necklace and began choking me. The knife hurt make no mistake. But there's nothing on earth to match the outright terror of not being able to breathe. I, by which I mean poor dying Sybil, couldn't get a breath. I had quite a murderous metaphor building in my boiled brain. Amid my thunderstrike, the killer was strangling me so hard the necklace snapped under the pressure. The loosed pearls scattered like hail stones and I dropped to the linoleum like a tree felled by a storm.

  An instant later I yelled (how could I not?) as the killer pulled the knife from my back. It was not an altruistic move on his part; I knew, I'd already died through it once. He was about to play butcher and was rolling me onto my back to get the game started. It was then, as the murderer turned me, I saw it again. The same something tucked beneath Sybil's bed I'd seen before but could not recognize. I saw it, saw him, clearly now. Alfonso!

  In that instant, I had one answer at least. The midget was not the killer.

  But the little twerp had lied to me. He'd seen Sybil catch the knife in her back, as he'd said. But he hadn't hightailed it out of the room and away to find me. He'd stayed for the show. I knew because I was in it, in the starring role of doomed Sybil. There he was, less than five feet away, hiding under the bed. It didn't appear he could see me – or my murder. He had crammed himself in, probably in one hell of a hurry, with his head pointed in the opposite direction. Once there, he couldn't turn. The space proved too confining to move. Facts were facts and Alfonso's head was the biggest part of his body. From his hiding place, a few feet away, he couldn't look at the dying Sybil or see the murder. But he heard it – and he heard the murderer. No wonder he'd split; got while the getting was good.

  Alfonso was innocent. He was on the run, in fear for his life. But I had no more time or thoughts to devote to my miniature associate. I was still Sybil! The killer's knife was flashing again in the amber lamplight, into my chest and through my lung, into my groin again and again. Blood splashed pearls rolled past my eyes.

  I went blind. Colored lights flashed in my mind.

  I was burning with fever as the flare in the back of my neck worked its way around my face. My head felt ready to explode. My sight returned; but what I saw was not in my world. I was still in the midst of the thunderstrike but my perspective, my location, and my sensations had changed. I was flying or floating, I didn't know which or the difference between the two, above a room completely foreign yet somehow oddly familiar. I'd been there, or somewhere like it, before. But where?

  I saw movement in the room, turned in the air, and was able to make out the form and face of my buddy Alfonso. He stood gesticulating wildly like a lawyer pleading for his client. Then he dropped his arms in resignation and turned in defeat. I saw his danger, too late to help. Too late even to holler a warning. Not that it would have helped. Nobody in my visions had ever heard a word I'd said. But I wanted to help. A shadow crept up on Alfonso, raised an arm, and blasted him over the head with a green bottle. The bottle broke and shattered glass flew. The midget growled and went down.

  Then, in a loop, I saw it again. Alfonso on his feet, the bottle flying in a roundhouse arc, crashing down on his crown, Alfonso sprawled on the floor. And again. Alfonso up, bottle down, Alfonso down. Again. And again. I wanted off that bloody merry-go-round.

  Then, sisters and brothers, I was reminded why they warn you to 'Be careful what you wish for'. My vision switched again. I was in the same room but no longer hovering – and no longer seeing Alfonso. You guessed it. I had become Alfonso. My head, already sore from the ravages of my last case, injured again in a hospital stairwell, injured again by an unknown attacker in Sybil's dressing room, slammed seconds before in a fall down my own stairs, hadn't felt anything yet. I was Alfonso. And I'd just seen the little guy–

  Something smashed the top of my head. I didn't see it but I knew what it was. I fell in excruciating pain. Blood rained down my neck, down my face, into my eyes. I was the midget clown and, unless this was all a fantasy inspired by a bruised brain, a deftly swung bottle had crushed my skull.

  Maybe it was the head injury, perhaps it was merely my consciousness slipping away, all I know is everything went from horror to goofiness. Out of nowhere, as he had at the circus museum, suddenly Alfonso appeared standing over me. I expected him to tug on me as he had before. I expected him to shout, in his own colorful way, “Blake, wake up! Come out of it, fer Chris-sake!” But he didn't. This time something was different. Something was wrong. The midget's eyes were flat and dull. His skin was ashen gray and waxy as if he'd come through a couple of years' worth of cosmetic surgery. It was worse than that. The little guy looked as if he was…

  “Alfonso!” I screamed. “You were there. You were there when Sybil was killed. Why didn't you tell me? You were there. You saw… You heard the murderer! Why did you run? Why didn't you say something to me?”

  “Dames!” Alfonso shouted, in my face, so loudly and bitterly it scared me. “Fuck!”

  Sorry, sisters and brothers, but that time he dropped the F-bomb like an H-bomb. I'm just reporting. And, if the experiences gleaned from this chronic head thing were any indication, he'd said it from the other side of the barrier between life and death. I didn't know what it meant. I don't mind confessing I was terrified of what I thought it meant. As if to underline my terror, an alarming crimson eructation bubbled up from between the midget's lips and ran down his chin. Alfonso swore, spitting an arc of blood through the air. Then he vanished.

  It was then I realized I hadn't 'come to' at all. I was still in the middle of my vision. And I was the midget performer again. The pain in my head was intense. Which made sense as I'd received what had to have been a lethal blow. Everything went black. But the experience went on. I knew that because blood was again pouring from the top of my head, as if over a waterfall, down my neck and face and into my eyes. Seconds (or a month) later, I didn't know, I felt an incredible compression of my chest and stomach as if all the air had been suddenly and violently squeezed from me; as if my body had been crushed. It was surreal. Somewhere beyond my brain, I heard Alfonso scream again, “F—!”

  “Blake. Blake.” I heard my name being called. Over and over, in a muffled voice, as if the speaker stood behind a wall of cotton. “Blake. Blake!” I came to again – this time for real. It had to be real because no psychic vision, no matter how horrible, could be that horrible. Frank Wenders stood beside me, over me, breathing on me like a malevolent dragon and calling my name. “Blake. Blake!”

  “Yeah,” I groaned, trying to find my head. “Yes!”
r />   “Blake? Did you fall down the stairs?”

  Yet again, Homicide's fattest lieutenant had a firm grasp of the obvious. And don't think for an instant he'd asked out of concern for my welfare. He was merely curious. I grunted and fought to a sitting position.

  “You okay?”

  The question was loaded with contempt. He wanted something and was ordering me to be okay so he could get on with it. He hadn't found me to give himself more work by having me repaired. It made no difference. My head was splitting, but I wasn't dead so I kept it to myself. “Never better,” I muttered. “Where did you come from?”

  “I was drinking tea with your landlady.”

  Despite the pain, I took the time to gawk. I couldn't believe my ears but, sure enough, he looked sincere. More, we were on the ground floor of my apartment building, outside the landlady's door. The door was open and there, standing behind Wenders, was what's-her-name, my landlady. She wore her usual tattered bath robe, her usual curlers, and her usual puckered expression. She peered past him, taking me in, banged up on the floor on my keister. The questions – and a contempt rivaling Wenders' – lit up on her face like a neon 'Good Food' sign outside of a Skid Row greasy spoon. She looked to the top of the stairs, probably for whoever had thrown me down from the floor above, only to find the hall outside my door empty. I swear, she looked disappointed. I considered explaining the situation to her but to hell with it. She thought likewise as she vanished back inside her own apartment and closed her door without a word. Why Sherlock Holmes got kindly old Mrs. Hudson while I got her was another of those nasty unsolvable mysteries. The only thing I knew for certain was… Truman was right. If you want a friend in this life, get a dog.

  “Sorry to interrupt your tea,” I told Wenders. “What are you doing here? Stealing?”

  “Fat chance. I've seen your apartment. I've been in abandoned buildings with nicer furniture.”

  “So you're just lying in wait? What do you want?”

  “What do I want? I've been scourin' the city for you, wise guy. You've been avoiding me. You and that voracious secretary of yours. Speakin' of which, where is she? It can't come as a surprise to you I talked to George Clay. I squeezed the little creep and he babbled like a brook. You lied, Blake! Your secretary rented that boat, not you. Meanin' your secretary found that body, not you. Meanin' you're both in a lot of trouble. Now where's your secretary?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Why have you got that retard criminal watchin' your office? Where have you been? Why am I wastin' time and manpower posting men at your apartment and office? These are a sample of the questions currently making me itch. What I want, Blake, is, when you're done playin' on the stairs, to hear everything you know and everything you've learned about a certain murder I'm peering into. That talk of ours is now overdue. I got a bunch more questions you are damn well going to answer. That is what I want. Unless you got nothin' to talk about, in which case I'm going to pin these murders on you and call it a day.”

  I started to rise, realized what he'd said, and halted.

  “That's right, bright boy,” Wenders said. “I said 'murders' with an 's'.”

  Someone had told him about Sybil. I finished climbing shakily to my feet, took a needed breath, then climbed slightly less shakily to the upper landing. Wenders waddled closely behind, up and into my apartment. Me and my shadow.

  Chapter Eighteen

  “What the hell was that?” Wenders asked entering the apartment on my heels. Not having been home in a while, I passed in, leaving him to close the door and bark at my back. “How come you fell down the stairs?”

  I had no idea what was coming. I didn't know why he'd been searching for me with such zeal, why he was taking tea with what's-her-name, or what bad news he had for me. But I knew what we weren't going to discuss. My head condition and my journeys into the land of the dead were off limits and none of his business. I already had a world of trouble and a headache. I saw no need to add to either. “It's a new medication I'm on,” I lied. “I'm not supposed to operate heavy machinery or walk up stairs.”

  “A new medicine? With the allergies you're always whinin' about?”

  “Never mind my allergies. Why are you hounding me? Stake outs on my office and apartment? Ten phone calls? Threatening messages? You gave me forty-eight hours to snoop around. Before twenty-four have gone by you're harassing me. Why?”

  “Why do you think? Because I'm bein' harassed. The newspapers got wind of boat boy and started printin' colorful headlines. That made the Mayor unhappy. She chewed on the Commissioner. Now he's unhappy and chewin' on me. This ain't your first day in long pants, Blake. Crap slides downhill.”

  “Yeah. Crap slides downhill. But I just got started.”

  “Don't give me that! Don't bother with the lies; they're wasted. You been holdin' out on me. You found something. And kept it to yourself.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I said 'Don't' and I meant it! You're going to spill, Blake, now, everything you know about this case. And you're not going to leave out a thing.”

  “Let me make a phone call first.”

  “What the hell? Are you already in so deep you need a mouthpiece?”

  “I'm not calling a lawyer.”

  “You're not callin' anyone. Now spill.”

  “The drowned man was Michael Gronchi,” I said. “That's as far as I've gotten.”

  The lieutenant made a noise that might have come from any number of barnyard animals. “That's not news. We already know who he was. We got a kickback on boat boy's prints and identified him. As to your claim you got no further, as usual, you're lyin' through your teeth. We know Gronchi was a circus performer. We know you know it too. We know that, until he quit payin' taxes a couple of days ago, he was working for the little circus currently leaving lion poop all over Navy Pier. We know you know that too. You've been annoying all the circus workers. I don't care, I just mention it to show I haven't been sittin' on my duff. But you and I had a deal, Blake, and you've been holdin' out on me.”

  “What else could I possibly tell–”

  “How's the weather in Wisconsin this time of year?”

  I paused. First rule of detection, when you're too tired to think, tap dance. “Wisconsin?”

  “You are really pissin' me off,” Wenders growled. “Is your head that damaged? Are you so stupid that you actually think we're that stupid? Why do you think the Barrelton Sheriff let you go? Because he liked you? Because he believed in your innocence?”

  Wenders shook his head in disgust. Then he wagged his fat finger at me.

  “Sheriff Cobb called to check on you. When he did, they passed him to me. You were not only aware of Gronchi's identity and background, you were chasing that circus lead without informin' your old friend, Frank.” He jabbed his chest with his thumb so I'd get it he was the Frank he was talking about. “Now what sort of mood do you figure it put me in to learn you ran up there without tellin' me? That you connected yourself to another circus murder without tellin' me? The answer, Blake, is 'a bad mood'. You put me in a very bad mood. For that, I considered throwin' you to the wolves.” He held up a hand. “Before you crack wise, give the situation a moment and a brain cell, Blake, and relish as I did the supreme power I held over your worthless life. All I had to do was tell the Sheriff you were already wanted for murder down here. That you seemed to have it in for circus people. That maybe he should chuck you into a deep hole until your trial.”

  I nodded wearily. “But then sense took over.”

  “Yes, it did,” Wenders agreed. “I realized I want to be there when they give you that last injection and send that lethal juice racin' through your veins. Barrelton is out of our jurisdiction and you ain't worth the drive. So I told him you were too small a fish to bother cleanin' and to throw you back.”

  He waved off my attempt to thank him. “Don't even. Now you're home, I've got Gronchi to pin on you and I'm slobberin' all over my shirt to send you to Death
Row.”

  “Sorry,” I told him. “Didn't recognize it. I assumed that was your normal everyday slobber.”

  “Give me what you got, you prick,” Wenders yelled. “On the Pier. In Wisconsin. Give me everything you got on these circus murders.”

  “After I make a call.”

  “To who?”

  I'd forgotten how much my head hurt. Wenders' barking reminded me. I waved him back into the saddle. “Who else?” I asked in a quiet voice. “I'm calling the circus.” He squinted, trying to figure out who or what I was. “After I call, I'll tell you all I know, everything. Maybe you can make more of it than I've been able to.”

  Wenders grunted, unimpressed with the compliment, but grudgingly nodded his consent. I lifted the receiver and started dialing. He waddled around the island separating my living room from the kitchen headed, I was willing to bet, toward my booze.

  Waiting for someone on the other end of the line to answer, I had nothing to do but watch Wenders ham-hand the bottles on my counter top. “That's good scotch,” I told him. “You wouldn't know what to do with it.” I pointed past him. “There's a Mickey Bigmouth in the refrigerator. You can drink that. Or, better yet, you can go buy your own.”

  The lieutenant snorted at the suggestion and lumbered for the fridge.