by Kirk Dougal
I would not lose any sleep over killing the bastard, either. But first I had to survive the hangover.
I braced myself outside the office door, my hand hovering over the knob. Gretchen sat on the other side and I could only imagine the hell she would give me for not showing up at her apartment last night. I never visited Voice, either, and that fact bothered me more than I wanted to admit. Somehow he had turned into a surrogate little brother, someone for me to watch over.
The door squeaked as I entered but, to my ears, the hinge screamed. I also missed the door with my hand and it closed hard against the jamb, the glass rattling in the frame. I turned my head to the side and shuddered with the sound.
“Jesus, Ricky.” When I opened my eyes again, I noticed Gretchen shaking her head, lips pursed in disapproval. “I fell asleep in my chair waiting on you last night. For this.” She waved her hand at me. “I’m not sitting around on some beach waiting for you. I’m tired of being played the fool.”
Every word echoed in my head. “Do we have any coffee?”
“Coffee? I suppose you want me to make you some breakfast, too!”
My stomach gurgled at the thought of food. “No, just some coffee.” I walked into my office and a minute later she followed with a mug in her hand. I took the cup and smiled my thanks before taking a sip. The liquid scalded my tongue but I did not care as long as the pain did not center in my forehead.
Gretchen turned, her heels click-clicking across the floor as she walked but I stopped her.
“Where’s the answer to my telegram to the home office?”
She glared at me from the doorway. “We haven’t got one yet.”
I tilted my head to the side. The timeframe was odd. Strick had always answered my telegrams to the home office immediately. “Okay. I’ve got another one for you to send.”
I pulled a pad across my desk and grabbed a pencil. I wrote the first word but stopped when I realized I could not read it. I glanced up at Gretchen.
“I’m going to kill you myself,” she said, stomping toward my desk. “You won’t need to keep trying on your own.” She spun the pad around and snatched the pencil from my hand. When she leaned over to write her blouse pulled away from her body and gave me a view. When she noticed where I stared, she threw a look that made me sit back in my chair.
“Send this to the home office,” I said after I swallowed. “Riley Gardener is mob boss named Rose. Stop. Believe he is Raven. Stop. Will kill Gardener and find IP tag for you. Stop. Still waiting on answer to last telegram. Stop.” She finished writing and stood up. “Please send that as soon as possible.” She turned away. “Thank you, Gretchen.” She left the room without speaking.
Nearly an hour went by. I passed the time by leaning back in my chair, the fedora pulled down over my eyes. With no noise and no light, the stabbing pains in my head receded to a bearable throb.
The phone rang and I sucked in a quick breath. “Yeah.”
“There’s a woman on the line for you,” Gretchen said. “A Mrs. Borget.”
“I’ll take it.”
The quiet broke again after a few seconds and I picked up the phone partway through the first ring. “This is Dowland.”
“Well, aren’t you the cheery one this morning.”
“I’m not exactly as fresh as a daisy, that’s for sure.” I fished in my jacket for a cigarette. “What can I do for you, Evelyn?”
She paused and a few seconds drifted by before I realized I used her first name. I pulled the receiver away from my ear in case I had kicked her bees nest, too.
“I wanted to thank you for last night,” she said, her voice calm and quiet. “So do the Worthingtons. Ramsford called you a pip. That’s pretty high praise from him. He also said if you ever needed anything, all you had to do was ask. Millicent told me to give you a big kiss from her. I might just do that.”
My head hurt a little less at the thought of Evelyn’s lips on mine.
“I just tried to get you out of the way.” Something about the statement banged around the back of my head.
“You did more than that,” Evelyn said. “You put yourself in harm’s way for me and my friends.” She paused. “I will not forget that.”
“At least I had my talk with Big C.” I chuckled after I spoke and immediately cringed from the pain. But something else continued to traipse around the back of my thoughts, something not quite real that faded away every time I tried to grab it.
“Next time maybe we can go some place a little quieter.” Evelyn’s laugh sounded inviting and free. “I will talk to you later, Rick.”
I hung up the telephone and stared at the receiver for a few seconds, my thoughts on the woman on the other end. I leaned back in my chair.
Gretchen watched me from the doorway.
“I knew there was a reason you were playing me,” she said, her lips drawn back over her teeth like a snarling animal.
“Don’t be a bunny,” I said. “She’s helping me with the case.”
“You’re grinning like the cat with the canary,” she spit back. “That means she is more than the case. I would’ve made you happy, Rick. And you tossed me out over some chippy.”
I stood up so fast the chair slid back into the wall and fell over on its side. The hangover was forgotten. Gretchen stood straighter as I crossed the room, my hands white-knuckled balls hanging from my suit.
“Close your head.” The words came out soft but ragged and on the verge of turning into a roar.
We stared at each other, our bodies only inches apart, chests heaving with emotion. Gretchen blinked first, her mouth dropping open for a gasp and tears forming in the corners of her eyes. In that moment, we were over. She had made her final play, righteous anger, and she realized she had come up snake eyes. Busted. There had never been love there for me but the lust had evaporated, just a whisper. The desire had been replaced by the worst emotion of all: pity.
“Make sure you get that telegram sent to the home office,” I said. I jerked the fedora down on my forehead and walked around her toward the outer door.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To check on Voice.” I never looked back.
*****
I sat on the bench in front of Gretchen’s apartment building and smoked a couple of Luckys. My head cleared with each puff, the pain dropping to a reminder to take it easy on the bottle. Thoughts of the argument still roiled my stomach, however. At the end of the first cigarette, I realized I felt worse about the conversation with Gretchen than I had when my wife walked out on me in the real world after she delivered a fifteen-minute, obscenity-laced tirade that caused the neighbors to call the police. The memory of that night led to my second smoke.
By the time I flicked the butt into the street, I had my mind back to where I could think about the cases. There was no reason to continue on with Voice, now that I had seen Gardener and knew what I had to do to stop his killing spree. But the kid was a part of me. I bonded closer to him in a few days than I had to Jim in three years of solving homicides together. I shrugged the suit down on my shoulders, ignoring what that might mean.
I stepped out of the elevator on Voice’s floor and turned down the hall. On the third step I stopped. The corridor lay before me like a dark path through a canyon. Only a couple of the lights glowed, casting the rest of the area in shadow. I eased my way forward, the grip of the .45 resting in my hand.
Halfway down the hall, a shadow moved toward me. Hunched over at the shoulders and staggering close to the wall, I wondered if the person was hopped-up on dope.
“Do you suppose Emma is still waiting on the beach for you?” the shadow asked when only a step away.
“What?” My eyes never left the dark figure, trying to catch a glimpse of the man’s face.
“I figured a shamus like you would have all the answers,” came the quick reply.
I felt, more than heard, the apartment door open behind me. I turned partway before the black jack crashed into the back of my
head. The gun slipped from my hand and I followed it to the floor, landing with a thud. A kick to the ribs emptied my lungs and another flipped me on my side. The shadow leaned down and two punches snapped my head back. Warm liquid ran down my face and I tasted the copper in my blood. A third kick to my body and the dark closed in around me, collapsing in the sides of my vision. The shoe dove toward my head.
The last thing I saw before I passed out was the man in the black suit and hat standing down the hall beside one of the few working lights.
Chapter 33
Crisp sheets beneath my hands. The smell of antiseptic. The low mumble of voices in the distance. I cracked open an eye and bright lights kept my sight to visions of white. This was exactly what I feared: I was back in the nursing home outside the game.
“Dammit.” My jaw ached and my lips were thick and stiff.
“There’s no call for that, Mr. Dowland. Swearing a blue streak won’t help you heal any faster.” A figure walked out of the light, blocking the lamp behind her and giving my eyes relief before I closed them again.
“Is Agent Strick or Agent Talbot here? I need to talk to them as soon as possible. I need to tell them what I know about Gardener.”
“There’s no one here by those names,” the woman said. “The only copper that’s been around was Detective Hanlon.”
This time I forced both eyes open, the left one not working quite right. They finally focused on the woman and I noticed the starched white uniform and funny little hat perched in the middle of her set hair. She was a nurse, but unless she was on her way to a costume party, she appeared to have stepped straight out of Life Magazine, circa 1940.
I was still in The City. “I thought I was dead.”
The nurse laughed. “I’ve heard a lot of lines in my time, Mr. Dowland. So don’t be pulling that ‘you look like an angel’ sauce. It’s been used before.” She lay her hand on my wrist and checked my pulse. “But you can try again when you’re feeling better.” She walked to the door before turning. “I’ll call the detective. He wanted to know the minute you woke up.”
*****
I must have dozed off because the next time I opened my eyes, Dutch was the one standing beside my bed.
“I’ve known some guys who pushed it to the edge but you take the cake, RJ.” Dutch took the time to light a cigarette and offer it to me. “That’s as good a Broderick as I’ve seen done to a fella in a while,” he continued. “How’d it happen?”
I blew smoke out the side of my mouth. “They had the bulge on me from the drop. All the lights were out in the hall and one of them dry-gulched me from behind.” I took another puff. “How long have I been in the hospital?”
“You’ve been a guest at the Sacred Lady of the Bleeders for three days.”
I stretched my arms which sent a lightning bolt through my ribs. “Did you find me?”
Dutch pulled a chair closer and sat down. “Nope. A uniform found you tossed into an alley a few blocks from your office.” He leaned forward. “You wanna tell me what’s going on now?”
I weighed the options in my mind. I tried to convince myself the programmers gave me a loyal friend in the game, someone to trust, but it was closer to the truth to say Dutch reminded me of my partner, Jim. I needed to come at least partly clean.
“The home office has got me working a string of murders.”
Dutch let loose with a low, monotone whistle. “That’s something… Hey! You mean like that Roberts guy you asked me about?”
“He’s one of them.”
“Well, there’s sixty-one more of them,” he said.
“Sixty-one?” My head started spinning so I settled into the pillow and decided to stare at the ceiling for a while.
“Yeah. You asked me to look around for murders that had been committed where the victim was found without their watch. There are sixty-two on the books over the past couple of years.”
Sixty-two murders where the killer searched for the IP tag? The nausea swept over me again at the thought. Even if only half the killings were by Raven, Strick had a lot more on his plate than he had found so far.
“Do you know who it is?”
“Hmmm?” Dutch’s question brought me out of my thoughts. “Oh, yeah. The killer is Rose.”
“Are you sure, RJ?” He leaned back and pulled out a cigarette for himself. “This smells more like Big C.”
I tried to nod but settled for turning my head to glance at my friend. “I wasn’t at first. I thought it might be Big C or that mystery third boss but I figured out the night before they jumped me it was Rose.” I took a deep breath. “I was at The Eagle Club when all the shooting started.”
“I should’ve known,” Dutch said with a shake of his head. “What’d you try to do, take him down by yourself?”
“No, I was there with the dame from the deli and I had just finished bumping gums with Big C. I pushed him to see if he would give something away but no luck. I no more than made it back to our seats and the lead started flying.”
“I thought you said it wasn’t Big C.”
I shook my head. “The shot didn’t come from Big C or his men; it came from Rose’s booth. As soon as I got Evelyn out of the way…” My voice trailed off as a piece of the puzzle slid into place. Evelyn had leaned over to wave thank you to the Worthingtons just as the bullet ripped through the back of her chair. More shots plugged the table once I tipped it over for her to hide behind, something I’d been too busy to put together at the time. The first shot had not been random.
The bullet had been intended for Evelyn.
And the shot came from her friend, Rose.
“You want me to call the doc? You just went all pale.” Dutch stood beside me again.
“No, I’m jake,” I said with a shake of my head. “I was just thinking about that night at The Eagle. Anyways, the bullets were flying pretty good but once I got my friend out of the way, I took off after the shooter. I chased him out the back door and through the alley. When I made it to the street, there stood Rose with two of his goons.”
Dutch sat back down and stared at me for a few seconds. “The Rose angle makes some sense,” he finally said. “You remember I told you before I had something to tell you about Wheeler? Right before he went missing, he asked me for some dope on a couple of old cases. Some of the information came from the informant, Joe-Joe.”
“Let me guess,” I said.
Dutch nodded. “Yep, they was about Rose. Or at least, someone working for Rose. A man in a black suit and fedora.”
Another piece fell into its proper slot. Wheeler had also been onto Rose/Raven and he had ended up dead. But then, why was I still alive?
Dutch grabbed his coat off the back of his chair. “You look all wrung out so I’m gonna hit the bricks.” He reached into his pocket. “Seeing who you are playing with these days, I’d better give this back.” He pulled out my .45 and slid it under the pillow.
“Thanks, Dutch, for everything.”
“I’m just adding it to the dinner tally.” He smiled and turned for the door.
“One more thing,” I said and he turned with his hand on the knob. “The Hull kid is working for me.”
“The one who ripped off Big C?”
“Never a rip off,” I lied. “He and his partner saw something they weren’t supposed to and that’s why they’re after him. Big C thought the tale sounded better with the kid’s background. I brought him in when I wasn’t sure if Big C was the killer. I thought you’d better know in case I had to send him to you with something.”
“You let strange company drink out of your bottle, RJ.” Dutch left the room.
I waited until his steps faded down the hall before I pulled the covers back. I gritted my teeth against the bolts of pain in my ribs but already the agony felt calmer than when I first woke up. At least the Brunos had not broken anything. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and eased down to my feet. A quick shot of lightning and the dull ache settled in again.
I fo
und a robe in the closet and threw it around my shoulders to cover up the draft on the backside of my hospital gown. When I opened the door, the nearly deserted hallway held only a couple of nurses talking at their station. I waited until they moved away before I walked out.
The telephone sat on the edge of the desk beside a pile of charts. I twirled the zero around and waited for the operator.
“Ashford Hotel on Raymont.” I kept a close eye for the nurses but they were still not in sight when the front desk answered.
“Ashford Hotel, how may I help you?”
“Mrs. Borget’s room, please.” Two rings later she answered.
“This is Mrs. Borget.”
“Evelyn, it’s Rick.”
“Rick! I’ve been worried sick since I heard you were in the hospital. I came down but they would not let me see you. Are you well?”
“I’ll be fine. Listen, Evelyn, you’re in danger.”
She laughed. “When I hang around with you, I’d say a certain amount of danger is involved. Maybe that’s what makes you so interesting. You have saved my life twice now and I’ll need to find a way to make that up to you.”
The innuendo hung between us for a second before I remembered the reason I called. “No, Evelyn, you’re in real danger. The first shot was aimed at you.”
“Now, Rick…”
“No,” I interrupted. “The first shot hit the back of your chair after you moved suddenly. You were the target.” I took a deep breath, not knowing where the next thought would lead. “Rose was behind the shooting. He tried to kill you. Just like he killed Roberts.”
Static popped and hissed as the silence lengthened.
“I don’t believe you,” Evelyn said, her voice soft. “You’re not feeling well.” The line went dead.
Chapter 34
I squinted as I stepped out of the hack and sunshine hit my face.