New, Improved Murder

by Ed Gorman

  We shook hands and I turned to leave. “Nice to meet you,” I said with a great deal of politeness to Phil Davies, a bald-headed, doughy-faced man.

  Not that I felt any desire to be polite. Phil Davies was the man in the photograph with Jane.

  Chapter 15

  The last time I’d done a stakeout was just after I’d started with the security company, when I did my one and only bit of husband-following.

  A prominent black surgeon was seeing a prominent white lady in the media. His wife was not happy. She engaged us to document what was going on. It was not the sort of work designed to enhance your self-image. After two nights I asked to be taken off the job. It wasn’t a big deal for my employer. He said all right.

  Tonight I parked my Datsun in the shadows of a nearby building, waiting for the sight of Davies.

  During my wait I went through anger, depression, and a real curiosity about him. How the hell had a slob like him ever coerced a beauty like Jane into bed? The answer had to be Elliot. Somehow he had convinced Jane to do it. For what reason I couldn’t imagine….

  Davies came out an hour later, got into a big gray Mercedes-Benz sedan, and drove off. I stayed a comfortable half block behind.

  The time was near midnight as we cruised into a shabby section of the city, not quite a ghetto, but working hard at it.

  There was no way Davies lived here.

  A few times, his driving getting a bit erratic, I wondered if he had suddenly become aware of me. But, no. I decided he was probably somewhat in the bag.

  He got a good, long, six-block run going, apparently bored with the sluggishness of his journey, wherever it was he was headed. I had to move to keep up with him.

  Five minutes later he pulled onto the driveway of a motel named the Palms. Red neon from the electric palm tree bloodied the macadam. The lights from the office made the front window look greasy and dirty.

  What the hell was a man like Davies doing here?

  He got out, his unsteadiness as he swung his foot free indicating that I’d been right, he was a tad potted.

  He waddled into the office in his cowboy sheepskin coat and pounded hard on the bell.

  The man who appeared was tall, skinny, and dressed in a sort of disco style, with a too-snappy white suit and an open white shirt. He did not look pleased to see Davies. The two of them went behind the counter and disappeared into a room on the right.

  I sat across the street and watched the cars go by, the noisy teenagers driving rock ‘n’ roll missiles, the older people in rusted and busted vehicles that could scarcely pass safety inspection. Inside a slob rich enough to drive a big Mercedes was doing God knew what with an aging parody of John Travolta.

  As I said, I sat and waited. There was nothing else I could do, much as I would have liked to.

  * * *

  He came out after another hour. He was moving even more unsteadily now. He cracked his head getting into his car, then drove off, jerking and uncertain.

  I let him go. I had a sense that the motel clerk could be helpful if I made him so.

  The Palms was a four-story job with rusted iron railings running along the exterior hallways on each floor. Salesmen for tightfisted companies would stay here, and working-class high-livers cheating on their spouses. Again, Davies’s visit made no sense.

  The office smelled of grease from an empty sack of hamburgers that sat on the desk.

  David Letterman was talking to a vivacious guest, deftly putting her down and making her like it, and my friend, the forty-five-year-old disco guy, was enjoying it.

  I hit the bell with the heel of my hand hard enough to startle both the clerk and myself.

  “Why don’t you hit it a little harder?” he said. “Maybe you’ll win a prize.”

  He came over in a cloud of Brut and hairspray, one of those gangly, vaguely criminal specimens who hang out in nightspots and occasionally get busted for small crimes. Once in a while booze or drugs or plain animal heat gets the better of them and then they commit a big crime, usually murder two, and spend several years getting hit on by cons.

  This specimen wore several rings, a toupee at least one size too small, and a chain around his neck that could get you through a snowstorm in winter. He stared at me with a mixture of contempt and fear. He must have sensed that I wouldn’t mind smashing his face in.

  “A fat man in cowboy clothes came in here about an hour ago,” I said. “I want to know why.”

  Nobody his age, which I put at close to fifty, should have giggled the way he did. The noise gave him a hillbilly aspect that collided with his disco getup. “You really think I’m going to answer you?” He shook his head with real pity, as if I’d just asked the ultimate dumb-shit question. I noticed he was already reaching for the wall phone behind him. It was unlikely he was going to call the police. I wondered just who his contact would be.

  “Don’t touch the phone.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me.”

  He was sensible enough to drop his hand.

  “What was he doing here?”

  “Who?”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Who? Phil Davies, you asshole.”

  He shrugged. “Just stopped by to have a brew.”

  “Right. You and he are undoubtedly good friends. You probably give him clothing tips and like that.” He glanced at his white suit as if I’d just insulted not only his mother but his wife and children as well.

  “You got something against my clothes?”

  “Yeah. A lot.”

  He glowered.

  “Davies. Why was he here?”

  He started to reach for the phone again.

  This time I grabbed him hard enough to give myself a small thrill. I pulled him even with the desk and threatened to jerk him over it.

  “Hey, shit, c’mon.” I could tell he was worried about his clothes.

  “Why was he here?”

  “Jesus, man. Let me go, all right?” He was scared and kept pawing for the phone.

  I decided to emphasize my point.

  I dropped him, then I went around behind the desk and took the phone off the wall. This was nothing that required strength or brains. It snapped right off its holder, the way Ma Bell intended. I threw it in the wastebasket.

  “Hey. God, man. Hey.” He was babbling. I had succeeded in astounding him. The sweat on his face was as bright as the rings on his fingers.

  “Hey, yourself, jerkoff. Now answer me.”

  He sighed. Touched a hand to his face. A trembling hand. “He gets laid.”

  “What?”

  “He comes here and gets laid.”

  “Who does he screw?”

  “Usually some chick named Jackie.”

  “Where do I find her?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Bullshit.” I said it sharply enough that his boozy eyes got nervous again.

  “Really,” he said.

  “She got a pimp?”

  “Uh-uh. She’s only part-time. I think she’s a model or something.”

  I looked around the office. At the girlie calendar. The black-and-white TV set. The couch that was sprung and filthy. I couldn’t imagine a model working out of here.

  “What kind of model?”

  “Over at the Triple XXX.”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed. “You call that ‘modeling,’ huh?”

  “Yeah, that’s what they say on the marquee, asshole. `Live models.’”

  “Right. Just like Cheryl Tiegs.”

  “Who?”

  “She’s a model. A real one.”

  “Oh, yeah? Nice tits?”

  I just shook my head. “Was Jackie here tonight?”

  He hesitated.

  I put some mean on my face.

  He sighed again. He was getting as tired of the game as I was. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess that was her.”

  “Where would she have gone?”

  The way his eyes flicked—for just a moment and to the left—answered my q
uestion.

  “What room did they use?”

  But he had gotten silent again. I reached over and started to grab him, but he backed up and held up a hand to stop me.

  “Two-two-three,” he said.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Yeah. It’s the room they always use.”

  “Give me the key.”

  “She’s got it. Knock. Just say Larry sent you.”

  “Clever material. ‘Larry sent me.’”

  “Fuck you.”

  And that was how I left him.

  From various rooms I could hear TVs and laughter, and from one the sound of lovemaking. With the wind swallowing it all up, everything sounded lonely and futile. The door to Room 223 was ajar. I prodded open the door with my toe, felt to my left, and clipped on the light.

  Larry hadn’t been kidding me. Jackie was there, all right, naked and striking a seductive pose across the rumpled bed.

  The only trouble was that, with a great deal of precision, in an act apparently long on skill and short on passion, her throat had been slashed. Blood was soaking the sheets around her and giving her poor, small breasts a curious kind of Indian war paint.

  Chapter 16

  After I closed the door I went back downstairs to the office. The clerk was just hanging up the phone when I got there.

  I went behind the desk, grabbed him, threw him onto a chair.

  Then I told him about the dead woman upstairs. As I spoke, I watched his face. He seemed honestly shocked, and then afraid.

  “Shit,” he said miserably, “shit. They’re gonna blame me.” You could hear the tears in his voice. “I’m goin’ back to the slammer for sure.”

  Usually I wouldn’t have had the stomach for it, as I don’t take any particular pleasure in the misery of others, but now I just leaned against the back of the desk and watched him.

  He lit a cigarette and jumped up and started pacing.

  He looked seedy and mean and vulnerable all at the same time.

  “You killed her, didn’t you?”

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, whirling on me. “No, I didn’t. I really didn’t.”

  “You’ve got a record, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, but for B and E. Nothing violent.”

  “You know how cops are. Suspicious of you no matter what you did time for.”

  He wiped sweat from his face. Lit another cigarette.

  “You need a buddy,” I said after a time.

  Now he was into the depressive side of his manic run. He stared out the front window at the cars that crept by.

  “You need some help, Larry,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said, dully. Jane had sounded that way the other day in the park.

  “But if I’m going to help you, I’ve got to know what was going on here.”

  “Yeah.”

  I went over and picked up his pack and put another cigarette in his mouth. I even lit it for him.

  “I don’t want to go back to prison,” he said. He sounded about eight years old, with the boogeyman loose in his midnight bedroom.

  “Then tell me the truth.”

  He shook his head. “I’m as scared to tell you the truth as I am to go back to the slammer. You saw what happened to that whore upstairs.”

  “Who did it? Phil Davies?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Why was she killed?”

  “Because she knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  He exhaled smoke. With red neon splashing his beard-stubbled face he looked like a prisoner already in hell.

  “Knew what, Larry?”

  “Knew what was happening.”

  “What was happening?”

  “She posed for pictures for some guy.”

  “What kind of pictures?”

  “You know. With bottles and fruit and stuff up her. That kind of stuff.”

  I thought of the photos of Jane and Phil Davies.

  “Any other kind of pictures?”

  “Whaddya mean?”

  But I had a feeling he knew exactly what I meant.

  “Any other kind of pictures—with men while another man was watching?”

  “Kinky stuff?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I suppose.”

  “You know a man named Stephen Elliot?”

  He said it quickly and badly. “No.”

  I smiled. “I thought we were going to be buddies, Larry.”

  “Honest. I never heard of no Stephen Elliot. Honest.”

  I decided to crack the whip again. “What do you think I should do about the dead woman upstairs, Larry?”

  “Shit, man, they really will blame me for it.”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t know what to do. Fuck.” He was talking to his tortured self.

  “I can help you.”

  “How?”

  “I know the cops pretty well. I used to be a cop myself.”

  He looked me over. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “You got good buds on the force?”

  “Good buds, Larry. Good buds.”

  “You really gonna help me?”

  “Yeah, if you help me.”

  His eyes began to look worried. “Like how?”

  “Like tell me who you were talking to when I came in just now.”

  He tried another bad lie. “I was ordering a pizza.”

  “With anchovies, huh?”

  “Yeah. With anchovies.”

  “Deep dish, I’ll bet. Those are the best kind.”

  “I love fucking deep dish, man. I love the shit.”

  I hit him so hard his head cracked back against the wall and his knees started to buckle. Then I brought my knee up and caught him squarely in the groin. I let him slide, screaming, to the floor. I sat down on the chair next to where David Letterman held court and watched Larry try to pull himself back together.

  He was in bad shape. He had been all his life. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done to him just now.

  I sighed. “Larry, be smart. For your own sake. Call the cops. Tell them everything you know. Everything.”

  He looked up at me. An eerie, bitter smile was on his face. “You know, I always thought I’d turn out better than my old man did.” He shook his head miserably. “I fucked everything up just the way he did.”

  Then he went back to holding his crotch and groaning.

  Outside I got in my car and headed for an address I’d found in the residential directory back in the office.

  Phil Davies probably didn’t like receiving guests at this time of night, but right now I didn’t care a whole hell of a lot about his feelings.

  Chapter 17

  Stone pillars sat on either side of a driveway wide enough to take a circus caravan. The estate was maybe six prime acres. In the foggy moonlight ahead I saw a rambling colonial home that easily put Davies in the upper 2-percent income bracket of the city. His Mercedes-Benz sat in the drive where it curved past the house. A four-stall garage gleamed white through the murk. Beyond the garage was a tennis court, tarpaulined for the winter.

  I parked, crunched over tiny pieces of gravel to the broad porch, ascended the steps, and used the brass knocker to rile the night.

  The harsh noise it made embarrassed me. Probably Davies had a wife, maybe even children still living at home, and this was going to be terrible for them.

  A woman wearing big pink Martian hair curlers and a flannel bathrobe opened the door. “Yes?”

  “Are you Mrs. Davies?”

  “I’m Myrna, the maid.”

  “I need to speak to Mr. Davies.”

  She peeked outside to his car. Then she peeked at me.

  “I’m afraid he’s asleep.”

  “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to wake him up.”

  I succeeded in making her angry. “If you’re not off this porch and out of this driveway in one minute, I will be calling the police.”

  The slap of slippers sounded on the
polished floor behind her.

  Davies, formidable in his robe and looking not a bit sleepy, appeared behind her.

  He seemed shocked when he saw me. “Aren’t you the fellow I met at Bryce’s tonight?”

  I nodded.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I need to speak to you.”

  “About what, for Christ’s sake?”

  “The Palms.”

  There is no other way to describe it—his face died. Human light left his eyes and his mouth went slack. He looked old and beaten.

  “We’ll be all right, Myrna,” he said in barely a whisper.

  “But—” She was still angry, even if he wasn’t.

  “Please,” he said.

  After another scowl in my direction she left.

  He led me inside and across the expanse of floor to a door on the right of the grand staircase.

  Inside was a den such as Ronald Colman might have had in an old MGM movie. There was a single twist. Instead of being filled with traditional culture—busts of composers, matched first editions of Henry James and Herman Melville—what he had here was a repository for artifacts of the American West. From the elk horns displayed on the far wall to the beautifully framed Frederic Remington paintings, this room was a tribute to pioneer days.

  He still wasn’t speaking. He went over to an impressive bar and poured great amounts of bourbon from a decanter into glasses. He brought me mine, then sat down in a throne-like leather chair. He indicated for me to sit too.

  Then he did something quite surprising. From the pocket of his robe, he brought out a revolver and aimed it directly at my face.

  “You have five minutes to explain why I shouldn’t kill you.” He waggled the gun. “And don’t think I couldn’t get away with it. In case my house doesn’t convince, let me say that I am a very powerful man in the city.”

  I said it simply. “The woman you were with tonight is dead. Somebody cut her throat.”

  The way he started, I could see that it shocked him. “Bullshit,” he snapped.

  “It’s a little late at night for me to come out here with made-up stories.”

  I had the impression the gun was going to fall from his hand. He sat there with his wide body looking tough and in charge, but suddenly all his strength seemed to leave him.