Suddenly he slammed out three clanking descending chords and screamed, “Well, I see you standin’ out there in the cold and
the rai-yain. . . . Come on in my house! YES! Come on in my house! You done gittin’ soakin’ wet. . . . Come on in my house!” And suddenly he zipped into: “I been dying! Yes! Yes, I been dying and I got the blues! I say YES! I can't never be alo-owo-oo-wo-oo-wooooone.” The scream went soaring off into space, a shocking scream of despair. This wasn't a person singing the blues. This was someone afflicted with awful, terminal blues.
The night frog turned to Joe, his yellow eyes gleaming over his shoulder. The piano chords slammed and the blues arpeggios whirled. His lips were huge and peeled back in a painful grimace. His chin was extended by a long and narrow stiff beard. “Am I right!” he screamed. “Oh God, let it be over.” Then he humped up, his beard wagging, his eyes flashing, every part of his body arcing, and his fingers flew at the keyboard while he screamed: “Yoo, del, oh- oh-oh-oh-ver!” The voice oscillated. “Let it be!” He hit a peak. “Yodellay he over!” Then, as everybody else shouted with him, “Whoo, hoo, hoo, over. Judas priest, I got over,” he finished with a descending murmur, the blues chords rattling down in his left hand as disconsolately as the final breath of a dying man.
This was immediately succeeded by the most incredible stream of piano chords that Joe had ever heard, accompanying a running right hand that crackled up the keyboard, the fingers flying, dinging like a fusillade of bullets. Art Tatum came to mind. A splintering, cascading, and thundering piano SLAM!
And on the other side of this crescendo . . . the spider monkey walking the beat away. Oh, my, the good walking bass.
Joe stared at this freak, spellbound. He had never seen anyone like him. Obviously some kind of maniac, a warped and misshapen monster, but oh, how he could play. He had righted the stool and now he was sitting, just comping, riding along with his hands walking the keyboard quietly, coming down, his body slumped, his head down, trying to relax.
Joe went up to the stand, stumbling past the people, the wine buzzing in his head. He looked down at the player. He knew this man! He knew him. But he didn't know from where. The player peeped up at him, over his spangled shoulder, his wide froglike mouth smirking.
“Is it you?” Joe said.
“Man,” the player rasped back, “is it you!"
And then the Tongans arrived. Somebody said something, or it may have been that the night frog looked over Joe's shoulder. Whatever, Joe turned and saw them coming, saw the guns.
Joe drew his pistols from either pocket and shot the first one in the face and strolled easily toward the others, shooting with both hands, shooting right and left. The other people screamed and tumbled, running and hiding and crawling under the tables. There were four with guns. They all went down in the blaze from Joe's hands. He walked straight on out of the bar, the music and the thunder of the guns still ringing in his head, and turned back toward the glow of the downtown lights.
Fifteen minutes later, chilled, he rode up in the elevator. Cateyo was standing in the room when he entered. “Oh, oh Joe, where have you been?” she cried. “I couldn't find you. I was so worried. The desk said they didn't see you leave. I . . . “
Joe undressed without a reply and got into bed. She stared at him. He looked so weird, so crazy. She was afraid to say anything about the fire, about what Janice had told her. He beckoned and she undressed and crawled in with him. “I'm tired,” Joe said. “You get on top.”
“I got some stuff, Joe,” she said. “It'll help. It'll make it easier.”
He nodded, smiling as she worked the lubricant over his steadily hardening cock. When he seemed ready, she straddled him and lowered her wet cunt to his slippery cock. She gasped as she slid down the pole, into his arms.
2
A Good Time
The precinct wag had clipped a few lines out of a magazine, taped them to a piece of paper, and taped that to the door of Mulheisen's so-called office, in the Ninth Precinct. It said: “Of this I am certain, that we are not here for a good time.” Under this the anonymous jokester had written in awkward pencil, “L. Witgenstien, a.k.a. Mullhiesen.”
Mulheisen had crossed out the names with his precise Tombo razor-point pen and corrected the philosopher's name: “L. Wittgenstein.” He had also added the line: “Well, not all the time, anyway,” and signed it “F. Mulheisen.”
Detective Lieutenant Jimmy Marshall stared at this signature. He was alone in the tiny office, the door open, the note gleaming. He had never seen that “F.” before. He was sure of it. What could it mean?
At this very moment Mulheisen was lying between the legs of a ditch rider, in a cramped trailer house in Montana that was rocking not only from his considerable, impassioned exertions but also from the wind buffeting the building. This ditch rider was named Sally McIntyre. She was lean and rugged, an outdoor person for sure, but there was ample softness about her.
It was a very cold day with a bleak, dirty sun that struggled through the ragged clouds blowing off the mountains. A fluctuating blanket of airborne snow swirled across the valley floor and hissed about the aluminum box. The house was warm, though, too warm. It was heated by a black iron woodstove that kept the temperature well above seventy degrees. The exertions of the lovers had them both in a lather. Neither of them were used to this, not that they were inexperienced. It was just that for a forty-year-old man who had been sexually inactive of late, and a single woman in her midthirties who was raising a couple of children by herself . . . well, they just weren't used to sex. They were certainly wallowing in it now, though. Indeed, Mulheisen was dimly thinking—to the extent that he could think at all in this moment of sexual oblivion—that he couldn't recall it ever being quite this good.
As for the ditch rider, she wasn't thinking, in the usual sense. She was intensely conscious. She could feel this man deep inside her, his arms along her sides, his thighs against hers, his warm breath on her face, his lips on her forehead . . . and then began a stunning sequence of orgasm, wave after wave of it sweeping up her body, her belly quaking and her legs trembling weakly. She moaned softly and prayed that it would continue. It felt like a tactile version of the northern lights, sheets of energy and ecstasy rippling and crackling across her body.
“Don't stop,” she whispered hoarsely. But Mulheisen had no notion of stopping. He had still not reached his own orgasm.
And that's when she heard the sound. She didn't place it at first, even though she registered it with alarm. Then it popped into her consciousness: it was the distant sound of the school bus grinding up the long, low rise. On that school bus would be her two children, Jason and Jennifer. From the sound of it, she knew the bus would arrive in approximately one minute. It would pull up past her driveway to turn around on the road that went to the two ranches that lay above her little five acres. The driver was an old crank who wore a filthy, battered cowboy hat. He wouldn't let the children off until he had turned around and was aiming back down the hill. Five kids got off here, three of them belonging to a ranch almost a mile further up. Even in this bitter wind they would have to struggle on up the hill, one of them only seven years old. Sally's two kids would run whooping to the house. All of this would take about two minutes at the most, unless the driver detained them all for another minute of scolding for not staying seated, for writing dirty words on the frosted windows, for fighting and tossing Christmas candy at each other and at him.
Sally wanted Mulheisen to finish and be damn quick about it. She reached down and grabbed his buttocks and began to slam her groin upward while rhythmically contracting every muscle in her vagina. “Oh, come on, come on,” she demanded.
Mulheisen, oblivious to the approaching bus, was surprised but thrilled. He responded willingly, furiously. In a remarkably short time, seconds it seemed to him, he could feel the cream rising to the top. It was an excruciating and thrilling progress, but an inexorable one: before he knew it the moment arrived, almost simultaneou
sly with the school bus, which he heard for the first time. He groaned loudly and at the same instant was stunned when Sally McIntyre's strong arms flung him aside. He crashed to the floor next to her bed, his cock still spurting and looked up in shock as she leapt about the tiny bedroom, literally dripping his semen down her thighs, frantically tugging on jeans and a sweatshirt without bothering with panties or bra.
She shrieked at him, “For Christ's sake, get the hell up and get some clothes on! The kids are home!”
Then she was gone, slamming the door behind her. Mulheisen stumbled to his feet and hastily dressed. He heard her go outside. A moment later he cautiously peeked out the door. Through a large window in the front of the narrow trailer he could see Sally, her great frizzy mass of red hair billowing in the wind, her tin coat flapping unbuttoned, as she ran up the path in Sorel boots (no socks, he was sure) and greeted her children with hugs. By the time the three of them returned to the house, Mulheisen was calmly seated at the kitchen table, his pale thinning hair only slightly disheveled, his necktie in his pocket. He smiled weakly at the children and said, “Hello.”
The boy, already as tall as his mother, had her red hair and a lot of freckles. His face was ruddy from the cold. He held out his hand suspiciously and looked around the trailer—wondering who else was there? Checking for telltale signs of lust? The girl was also red haired, with beautiful pale skin that looked even paler with the bright red spots on her cheeks. She was very pretty, about eleven years old.
“You're a cop?” the boy said skeptically. He wore a down ski jacket and jeans. “You don't look like a cop.”
“I'm not from here,” Mulheisen said. He was disconcerted by this bold kid, who seemed to know more than he should. How much did this kid suspect about him and his mother? “I was just asking your mother a few questions,” he said lamely, “about the people who were involved in that fire the other night.”
“Ma found a dead man up there last fall,” the little girl, Jennifer, proclaimed.
“Yes, well, she's been very helpful.” Mulheisen stood up. “Now I guess I better be going.” He stuck out his hand and Sally took it. Hers was cold and dry, very strong. She smiled at him and pressed his hand.
“Don't run off,” Sally said. “Kids, take off your coats and sit down. We'll have some soup, then we'll go for the tree.” This distracted them. She ladled hot stew with large chunks of potatoes, turnips, carrots, onions, parsnips, and beef out of a crockpot and sawed off thick slices of home-baked bread for them. Mulheisen stood about. When the kids were eating, Sally walked Mulheisen out to the car he had borrowed from the Butte-Silver Bow sheriff.
The wind was bitter and it was getting dark already. She did not hug him, although she longed to, but she stood very close, letting him shelter her from the stinging snow that swirled around them. “You don't have to go,” she said. “Why don't you come along and get the Christmas tree? It's just a couple miles up to the woods.” She gestured up toward the green trees that blanketed the low mountain a few miles away, the peak obscured by low clouds and blowing snow. “I'll cook us a good dinner and we'll decorate the tree and later, when the kids get to bed . . . “ She didn't finish.
Mulheisen was truly tempted. But then he felt a measure of fear. He didn't know anything about kids. It didn't sound like his kind of party. He was more used to women he'd met in a bar, or at work; women who lived in apartments, wore sexy, non-indestructible clothes and careful makeup, had no children, weren't scrambling for an existence on a bleak Montana hillside. Women who didn't heave him out of bed like a bale of hay when the rural school bus approached. This woman was outside his experience. She had powerful needs. She needed a lot. Could he give it to her?
Sally sensed this. She suppressed her anger and her pride; she wouldn't beg any man to stay. But there was something about this man, something very different from the ones she had known, including the father of Jason and Jennifer. “The beef stew is real good,” she said, “but I could make chicken ‘n’ dumplings, if you'd rather. I've got some fresh side pork.”
Mulheisen had a fleeting vision of the bedroom, the tumbled bedclothes, the heat and passion of this woman. The bedroom was so small and the walls so thin. It was only a trailer house, but it was neat and clean, except for the plethora of books wedged into every cranny and stacked on all available horizontal space, including the floor in odd places. And the pictures taped to the walls: pictures of animals from magazines, the blue planet from space, postcards of van Gogh, Winslow Homer, Mary Cassatt, alongside crayon drawings by the kids—a cow looking out the window of a pickup truck. He glanced at the trailer and saw the heads of the children, bent over their steaming bowls. He remembered the suspicious look of the boy.
“No,” he said, “I've got to get back.” Her face fell and he felt bad. He leaned forward, taking her by the upper arms and kissing her cold lips briefly. “But I'll call.”
“Promise?”
He promised.
Johnny Antoni, the county prosecutor, was still in his office. He was an old friend of Mulheisen's, although they had only recently become reacquainted after many years. They had spent months together in an air force technical school in Illinois, more than twenty years earlier. They were exactly the same age, practically the same birthday, having arrived in Texas a few days after each had turned eighteen. Antoni was taller and more handsome and looked five years or more younger. He was a prosperous man and a successful politician who would soon be running for state attorney general. He had silvery iron hair that was stylishly cut, wore pin-stripe suits tailored in a Western style, with elegant cowboy boots made of exotic leathers. He was athletic and tanned, a hunter and fly fisher, married to a pretty woman and the father of two strapping athletic teenagers, as well as a late addition who was only three.
Also in Antoni's office was Jacky Lee, a hulking sheriff's deputy who seemed to be an Indian, though evidently not a Montana Indian: his large face resembled one of those stone Toltec head sculptures one saw in National Geographic magazines, discovered in the jungles of the Yucatán.
They were discussing the case that had brought them all together here in Butte, seventeen hundred miles from Detroit. It centered on Helen Sedlacek. Now Antoni was explaining to Mulheisen why he was going to release Helen from the county jail.
“Okay,” said Antoni briskly, “this guy, Mario Soper, had slugs in him from two different guns. We've got the guns—the ditch rider found one and Jacky the other, in the hot springs where the body was. The trouble is these guns have too many fingerprints, including Soper's, the ditch rider's, Jacky's, plus a couple on the .38 from Humann, but no definitive ones from Helen Sedlacek. I'm surprised you didn't get your mitts on them, Mul. You see my point. The .38 is registered to Joseph Humann—he purchased it last year in a Butte gun shop. The other, a .32, is reported stolen in New Jersey—probably belonged to Soper. We have no eyewitness, no other evidence at all. Also, the slugs recovered from Mr. Humann, who Jacky found out on the highway, near death, are from the .32. Therefore, Humann and Soper had an encounter. Soper is dead, Humann is not, though he probably should have been. We don't have an accurate time of death for Soper, but it looks like he died at roughly the same time that Humann's body was found on the highway—probably the same day, anyway. So, did Humann kill Soper and toss him into an irrigation ditch on his own property and then get shot himself, forty-some miles away, with a gun bearing Soper's prints, and then get left by the side of the interstate? That'd be a hell of a trick, but it could be done.”
“Maybe Soper shot Joe,” Mulheisen suggested, “out on the highway, then went on to Joe's house looking for Helen and she got the drop on him.”
Antoni rolled his eyes, but he conceded, “Sure, sure, why not? Obviously, other unknown persons are involved. Your scenario is as good as anyone's, Mul, but we don't have the slightest evidence that Helen Sedlacek shot anybody.”
Antoni paused and swiveled his chair behind the big desk. He pulled a typewriter platform out of the desk
and put his elegant Western boots up on it, leaning back in the upholstered leather chair and puffing on a cigar. “So where in all this is Ms. Sedlacek? Mul? Jacky?”
“How about the gun I recovered from Helen?” Mulheisen asked. “The Dan Wesson—a .357, I believe.”
“That gun was also the legitimate possession of Joseph Humann, who purchased it earlier this year in Missoula. It'd been fired recently, but not at Soper. Or, at least, neither Soper nor Humann had any bullets from it in them. And now Humann has disappeared.”
The deputy spoke up. “Miss Yoder's supervisor at the hospital, Janice Work, received a call from her this afternoon. Nurse Work is confident it was from Miss Yoder. She said she was calling to say she was all right, that she and Humann were in Coeur d Alene, that they were going to get married. We checked it out with the Coeur dAlene police: there was no one of those names or descriptions at the hotel where she said she was staying and nobody has applied for a marriage license at the town hall. For the time being we're still treating it as a kidnap. The FBI has been notified.”
“I don't see how we can call it kidnapping,” Antoni said, irritably. “Who kidnapped who? Whom. As far as I know, Humann was in no shape to kidnap anyone. A man is kidnapped by his nurse? Or did he just run off with his nurse? But, what the hell . . . we don't have them and if this nurse or Humann surfaces we can forget that line. But let's get back to Helen. Mul?”
“Our forensic people in Detroit have found traces of blood and human tissue on the sawed-off shotgun I discovered in Joseph Humann's cabin. They've matched it with blood and tissue from Carmine Busoni. Also on the gun are Helen Sedlacek's fingerprints, as well as those of Joseph Humann. We think Humann is a known mob associate who goes by the name of Joe Service. This is pretty heavy evidence, Johnny. The trouble is, the Wayne County prosecutor is not willing to seek an indictment against Helen Sedlacek based on this evidence. But we would like to extradite her on another charge, or rather a different process: protective custody.”
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