Spiked

by Mark Arsenault

  The trap door flopped open behind the giant neon E. Gordon Phife had left his warm house in the middle of the night to help his friend in trouble, just as he had promised. He had dressed in jeans, a leather jacket, and his black racing gloves. The light from the giant E stained his face red.

  Phife frowned at Eddie. “I’m speechless,” he said. “Either that or I should be screaming at you. What pile of shit have you been digging in? You’re up for indictment tomorrow?” He looked at Eddie, apparently waiting for an answer, and then clucked in disgust and threw up his hands. “I was right the first time. I’m speechless.” He dug around at the base of the E and came up with a beer.

  Eddie hadn’t expected Phife to berate him so aggressively. “Mr. Diamond, there’s a bullet hole in your jacket,” he said, quoting from a movie.

  “Now?”

  “You’re the quote master. What’s the quote?”

  Phife looked to the heavens. “Can you believe this guy?” he said to nobody.

  “It’s a modern-era film.”

  “Who gives a shit, Ed? You’re in big trouble, and I could be too for just meeting with you.”

  Eddie rolled his eyes. “C’mon, Gordon—a blip in the career of Peter Falk.”

  Phife sighed, exasperated. “Don’t you even appreciate I’m putting myself at risk?”

  “Mid-seventies.”

  “I can’t think right now.”

  “Two-star film, maybe two and a half.”

  Phife gave an exaggerated shrug. “Congratulations,” he said, incredulous. “You finally stumped me. Now let’s get to work finding this woman.”

  “Don’t you want to know the film?”

  “Fine!” he shouted. “What’s the film?”

  “Murder by Death.”

  Phife blinked a few times. He twisted the cap off his beer and flicked it across the roof. He sipped from the bottle. Suddenly aloof, he said, “You can’t really care about movies with what you’re facing right now, Ed. I sure can’t.” There was no place for him to sit, so he stuck one hand in his jacket pocket, and slouched against an imaginary wall. He looked out over the city, and said, “We really need to get to business. Tell me about this Cambodian woman. And how do you expect to find her?”

  Eddie was in no hurry. He noticed a star moving across the sky, and watched it for a minute. A jet? Perhaps a satellite, now beaming Eddie’s ass on this metal dish to newspapers around the world. He swung his feet out of the dish and sat upright. “You will never guess what crazy thing I did today.”

  “I’m sure you’re going to tell me.”

  “I stormed into Templeton’s office—”

  He perked up. “You barged in?”

  “Well, I knocked first, but I would’ve barged if he hadn’t invited me. You wanna hear this or not? So I walked in at his invitation, sat down and accused the publisher, right to his face, of having Danny whacked.”

  “What!” The news spun Phife around like a weathervane. “You’re insane. I can’t believe he didn’t fire you on the spot.”

  “He did. But I had already quit—at least in my mind I had. Small matter when you’re a murder suspect, wouldn’t you say?”

  Phife smacked his lips a few times. “I suppose,” he said. “So you’ve left The Empire. That’s probably good, considering everything that’s happened. Assuming you get this thing with the cops cleared up, you’ll land someplace better.” He drank three long slugs. “None of that matters now, not one damn bit. What’s important is finding this woman. Tell me what you know about her.”

  “I was wrong of course—about Templeton,” Eddie said. “He didn’t kill Danny. He was right, he didn’t have to. He wanted to shut Nowlin up. To do that, all he needed was proof Danny was having an affair. That’s the blackmailer’s trump card.”

  “I swear that we’re having two different conversations,” Phife said, annoyed. He finished his beer and heaved the bottle off the roof. It spun end over end ten stories down and exploded to dust. “Forget Danny.” He spit the name like a mouthful of gasoline. “He pissed off some drug dealer and got his head bashed in. He never should’ve fooled around with that element, and he paid the price. You’ve got real problems because of him. Now, how can we find this woman?”

  Eddie leaned back in the dish and hunted for the satellite in the sky. There it was, pretending to be a star. There was no turning back now. He eyed Gordon Phife. “Must have been frustrating for you,” he said, “when Chanthay stopped answering your calls.”

  Phife’s mouth twitched. “What are you saying? Is that her name?”

  “Cut the bullshit, Gordon, you were involved with them—with Danny and Chanthay and her brother. Why not just admit it?”

  Phife squinted at Eddie. His lip curled. “Where do you get off accusing me?” he said in a hard voice. “You’re the one with the murder weapon in his house.”

  Eddie put his hands under his head and studied the stars. The white pinprick he had been following was the only one in motion. He wondered if it was a spy satellite. It could be watching him, too. He winked at it.

  “I made an ass of myself accusing Templeton,” Eddie said. “Hey, it wasn’t the first time—I had already accused somebody else of attacking Danny, but that’s a long and ugly tale and I don’t want to get into that right now. Templeton let me see Danny’s secret story. You know the one.” Eddie held up his hands as if the story was in them. “And once I read it, I knew you were involved.”

  Phife cleared his throat. “You can’t be serious,” he croaked. “I came here as your friend.”

  “The story was beautifully written, Gordon,” he said, cutting across Phife’s confusion. “It sang like the Ode to Joy. We both know Danny couldn’t write like that—not without help from the best editor in the business.”

  Phife pressed his lips tightly together.

  “Nothing to say?” Eddie said.

  “I offered to help because I thought you were innocent, but now you’re freaking me out,” Phife said. “I’m outta here. You’re on your own.”

  Phife took one step and stopped.

  Chanthay was leaning against the giant E, arms folded over her chest. She had dressed in all black, except for a long white scarf wrapped once around her neck.

  Phife’s mouth slowly dropped open.

  Eddie said, “I invited our mutual friend. Care to say something now, Gordon?”

  A breeze lifted wisps of Chanthay’s hair. The Empire E made a loud pop and stuttered like a strobe for a few seconds, before recovering its steady red glow. Eddie’s pulse quickened at the sight of Chanthay awash in ruby light, scattered stars above the horizon behind her.

  Phife squinted hard at Chanthay. He rubbed the back of his neck, frowned and then giggled. Then he froze, lips parted, like he was about to say something, but couldn’t remember what.

  Chanthay held a finger to her lips, signaling Phife to stay quiet. She walked purposefully to Eddie, grabbed his jacket and dragged him out of the dish.

  “Hey!” Eddie yelled. “What the…?” He tripped over a leg she had angled in front of him, and her weight on his back drove him to the roof. He landed face-down with an oof!

  Before he could move, she reached inside his jacket and ripped out the wire connecting the recorder and its batteries. “He was taping you,” she said, flipping the wire to Phife’s feet.

  Phife looked around the roof. He huffed like a marathoner on Heartbreak Hill.

  “It’s just us,” Chanthay said. “I made sure.” A gun appeared in her hand. She pointed it straight down, but there was no mistaking the threat in her tone. “I want answers.” She glanced at Eddie. “From both of you.”

  Phife stomped on the wire and ground it into the pebble roof. “I should have known you were up to something, Ed.”

  Eddie wiped grit off his lips. He looked up at Chanthay, “He’s the one you should be throwing in the dirt.”

  “That’s not true,” Phife growled through clenc
hed teeth. He looked at Chanthay and his harshness softened. He held out his hands. “Where have you been?” He sounded mournful.

  “She’s been with me,” Eddie said, hauling himself up.

  Phife’s face wrinkled. “You’re a liar,” he said. “And a killer.” He told Chanthay, “You have to understand, the police found the murder weapon in his house.” He jabbed a finger at Eddie. “He killed Danny. He’s the one you want. He’s a murderer, just like his brother.”

  “How long did she keep you on a string?” Eddie asked him.

  Phife answered with a glare.

  “Not that I blame you for thinking her interest in you was genuine—it’s what she wanted you to think.”

  Chanthay looked at Eddie, expressionless.

  Eddie raised an eyebrow to Phife. “Can’t hear me all of a sudden? I’m asking how long before you learned of her affair with Nowlin?”

  “You shut up,” Phife said. His eyes were big.

  “Must have hurt to discover that whatever she did with you was merely to keep you loyal.”

  “You don’t know her,” Phife said, his wet eyes turning to Chanthay. “He doesn’t know anything.”

  “You told me yourself that people will do crazy things for love,” Eddie said. “Killing a rival is pretty crazy. But Danny had Jesse. You thought it wasn’t fair that he had Chanthay, too.”

  Phife shook his head at her. “No,” he sputtered. “We were all working together, for one cause—like you said.”

  Eddie went in harder. “Danny had the right idea bringing you into the faction. Your whole existence is the movies—all fantasy and larger-than-life drama. It’s like you’ve been training all your life for an international murder and revenge plot.”

  Phife’s face was slick with sweat, gleaming in the red light. “He knows about Sok!”

  She nodded. “I did not tell him. He deduced it somehow.”

  “He’s dangerous to us,” Phife insisted. He set his jaw, and told Chanthay in a steely voice, “We could avenge Danny together, right here.” He cleared his throat. “Then we can go! Let’s get the hell out of here, travel the world together. Hunt the criminals together.” He closed his lips tightly and shook his head with grave determination. “You opened the world to me. I can’t come sulking back to this miserable building every day, cleaning up the shit other people write, day after day, with no glory, not even a fucking pat on the head.”

  Eddie tried to swallow the dryness in his throat. “You’re almost right about me,” he said, his voice a half-octave higher than normal. “What I know is dangerous. Friends of mine told me about a middle-class guy buying his first hit of heroin and a needle in the Acre not long ago. I thought they were describing Danny. Now I know they were talking about you.”

  “He’s all wrong,” Phife said to Chanthay.

  Eddie wagged a finger at him. “My sources say you got ripped off,” he scolded. “Street dealers are like ticket scalpers, they expect you to negotiate. You called Nowlin on Friday night and lured him to the old house. You gave him a couple whacks, and then shot dope in his leg to make him look like a victim of the streets.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Phife begged Chanthay. “He’s twisting everything around. He’s been acting all crazy, chasing after Jesse, bitching about Danny getting job interviews that he couldn’t get, breaking into Danny’s house.” He pointed at Eddie. “His fingerprints were on the weapon! It had Danny’s blood on it.”

  Her gun swung from one man to the other.

  Eddie said, “The Worthen Canal was the logical place to dump the body—you’d know that from working in the news.”

  “He knows that he’s about to be indicted for murder,” Phife told her. His eyes flickered to the edge of the roof. “He’s humiliated by the accusation, tortured by guilt. It would look like suicide if he…fell. Then we can get out of here—no loose ends, nobody left who ever saw us together.”

  “The frame-up was absofuckinlutely brilliant,” Eddie said. He laughed. “Hell, even I started to wonder if I had done it.” He sat again on the edge of the satellite dish. What the hell? he thought. Get comfortable! He reclined and put his feet up.

  Eddie explained to Chanthay. “Gordon needed a Plan B, in case you or the cops ever started to suspect he had done Danny’s murder—”

  “He’s lying!”

  “—But it wasn’t enough to just plant the murder weapon in my house, not without fingerprints. A good lawyer could get me off—I had no motive.”

  Chanthay nodded. “Go on.”

  “So Gordon brought me up here in the middle of the night with some lie about our boss, Frank Keyes, making a crack about Danny’s death.”

  Phife growled, “Tell her you’re lying.” He put his hands out like claws and stumbled at Eddie.

  “Let him finish,” Chanthay ordered. She swung the gun toward Phife. He recoiled from it.

  Eddie sat up and flashed Phife an ironic smile. “And then Gordon insisted I swing his golf club, to put my fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

  Chanthay glared at Phife. He seemed to shrink.

  “Gordon knows he and I play the identical brand of club,” Eddie said. “And in the light of this ridiculous Empire E, there was no way I could see the blood stains. I took one swing that night, but one was enough. Wasn’t that a one-iron, Gord?”

  Phife wiped his nose on his sleeve. He looked feverish and shocked. He seethed, panting hard and growling as he exhaled.

  “The one problem was my front door,” Eddie continued, staring at Phife yet speaking to Chanthay. “He must have been shocked to find it locked when he went to switch clubs. In my carefree days of, oh, a couple weeks ago, I was famous for never locking it. Gordon had no choice but to break it down. Then he had to trash the place to cover for the busted lock. The only spot he didn’t wreck was my closet. He took my one-iron and left the murder weapon in my golf bag, like a bomb that he controlled. If he ever felt any heat, one anonymous tip to the cops and I would be cooked.”

  A truck rumbled far below. Eddie squirmed on the dish. The cold had seeped from the metal to his skin.

  Chanthay turned to Phife and shredded him with her eyes. “You killed him,” she said. “He was important to me.”

  Phife took one step backward and lowered himself to his knees. He put his hands up. “I invited Danny to talk, that’s all,” he whispered.

  Her fingers flexed around the gun. She said, “We all swore an oath to each other.”

  “All I wanted to do was talk,” Phife insisted. His face tightened for a moment and he looked like he was about to sob, but then he shook it off. “Danny shouldn’t have been doing what he was doing, behind Jesse’s back, behind my back. I had to tell him that.”

  “You must have followed Danny and me to his apartment,” she said.

  “You got so distant,” Phife said. He trembled, his eyes flooded. Were they tears of sorrow? Or of fright? “Danny was distracting you—from the mission, from why we were all together.” He pressed his hands over his eyes and seemed to be wrestling with himself on the inside. “All Danny ever did was take from me. I made him as a reporter, and he never shared an ounce of credit. He had to have it all. He was the worst kind of glutton.”

  Chanthay closed her eyes for a moment, breathed deep and then said softly, “Why did you do it, Gordie? I need to know why.”

  “Danny wouldn’t listen,” he told her, breathlessly. “He wouldn’t promise to leave you alone.” He squeezed his eyes shut and tears streamed out. When he opened his eyes, Eddie felt a stab of pity for him. Phife stammered and said, “I had to get rid of Danny, for us.” He collapsed on the roof and wept.

  Eddie looked up to the stars, then turned to Chanthay. “Did you get it?”

  She reached up her sweater, pulled out a microcassette recorder and tossed it to Eddie. He caught it and shut it off. “You better put your gun away,” he said. “I’m calling Detective Orr.”

  “No,” Chanthay
said. “You’re not.”

  She leveled the gun to Eddie’s face. He looked down the barrel, into the peephole to infinity.

  ***

  “Put your hands on your head,” she ordered.

  Eddie stared at her and did as she said. He bit his lip, furious with himself. “I trusted you,” he said.

  She glanced to Phife, who was curled on the roof, and then asked Eddie, “Which pocket?”

  “Find it yourself.”

  Chanthay pressed the gun to his temple and patted his jacket pockets. He said nothing more, because he knew nothing he said to her would matter. She reached into his jacket and took the police call button, which looked like a TV remote control with one big button. She hurled it off the roof.

  Eddie fought to keep calm. He put his hands down and listened for the call button to smash. “I’m going to have to pay for that,” he said.

  “Bill me.”

  Phife was a quivering mass, his face buried in his jacket. Chanthay pointed her gun at him. “He murdered Danny.”

  Eddie saw revenge smoldering in her eye and fought off a shiver. He eased off the satellite dish. “Whoa—this is not what we planned.”

  She did not look at Eddie. “You have the tape,” she said. “You’re cleared. Go away and leave us alone.”

  “You can’t shoot him in cold blood,” Eddie said.

  “That’s the first time you’ve been wrong all night.”

  Dive for the gun? Or try to talk her out of it? Neither option seemed like it would stop her. Eddie chose to talk. He stepped toward her; the gun swung around at him. He said, “Let the cops take him.”

  She said nothing.

  “He’ll never hurt anybody again, I promise you,” Eddie said.

  The muscles in her face tensed. “It’s not about that.”