The Shake

by Mel Nicolai

  I approached the house through a wooded area that separated Richardson’s property from his up-river neighbor. The garage door was open and a car—probably his girlfriend’s—was parked inside. Richardson’s Jaguar was parked out in front of the garage, and there was a Hummer parked next to the Jag. Most likely, the Hummer came with bodyguards, and the choice of vehicle suggested a concern with image that may have taken precedence over professional competence. Or maybe not.

  The first thing I needed to do was find out how many there were. I worked my way around to the front of the house. The living room was unlit, but the kitchen light was on, illuminating the large living-dining-kitchen area. A long, high counter separated the kitchen from the larger part of the room. There was a guy sitting on a stool at the counter, reading a paperback. He was big, probably six two or three, a little overweight, but he looked like he spent a lot of time at the gym pumping iron. He was also wearing a shoulder holster.

  I made a complete circuit of the house. There was one other hired hand sitting in a deck chair on the unlit back porch. This guy was smaller, slender, and alert. His head leaned back against the chair cushion, so his face was tilted slightly upward, but his eyes were open. His hands were clasped loosely in his lap and his feet were planted flat on the deck. He looked like he took his job seriously, and I suspected he might be the more capable of the two.

  I moved further back into the surrounding woods. The small fanny pack I was wearing held an extra long-sleeved, black t-shirt like the one I had on, some heavy-duty plastic cable ties, and a woven-leather blackjack. I took out the blackjack and looped my left hand through the strap, then moved a little closer to the house, but still well back in the shadows. I wanted to take both guards out of the picture at the same time, so I had to wait for them to get closer together.

  I watched the guy in the deck chair for about forty-five minutes. He only moved once, when a large rat came up from the river, crossed the yard and disappeared under the house. The guy’s eyes followed the rat’s progress, his head turning slowly as the animal meandered across the yard. Humans aren’t usually very good at waiting. If they have to do it quietly, especially if it’s dark, they’ll usually fall asleep within a few minutes. This guy was still alert.

  A little over an hour had passed when the big guy stepped out to the porch. There was an unlit cigarette in his mouth, which he lit after sitting in one of the deck chairs. The smaller guy had his back at a forty-five degree angle to the wall of the house. The big guy sat to his right with his back facing west toward the river. I wanted to approach from behind the smaller guy, so I moved around to that side of the yard.

  As a general rule, I didn’t kill except for food. That’s why I’d brought the blackjack. I was waiting for the big guy to turn his head to the east, so he wouldn’t see me approach. When he finally turned, I came out of the woods along the back wall of the house, up onto the deck, and gave the smaller guy a tap with the blackjack. He went limp in his chair. I stepped behind the big guy and paused, a little surprised he hadn’t heard anything. When he turned back and saw his partner slumped in his chair, he chuckled. It was probably the first time he’d ever caught him sleeping on the job. The big guy took a slow, meditative drag on his cigarette, as if enjoying his partner’s lapse of professionalism.

  “Frank,” the big guy said, conversationally. Then again, “Frank,” a little louder. He leaned forward, reaching out to shake his partner’s knee. I could have watched more, but I was there for other reasons, so I clocked him on the back of the head and he rolled forward onto the deck. I took out two of the cable ties and bound their feet, then dragged them both off the porch and into the woods, out of view from the house. I tossed their guns and searched them. The big guy didn’t have any other weapons, but Frank had a small tactical knife sheathed on his belt. I put it in my fanny pack, then turned them onto their stomachs and bound their hands behind their backs. As a final precaution, I positioned them back to back and looped another cable tie through the two already on their wrists. If they woke up before I was finished inside the house, this would make it harder for them to move around.

  Once inside the house, I made my way to the open door of the master bedroom. From the doorway, the bed was on the left, centered against the wall, with nightstands on both sides. The room must have been about four hundred square feet. It made the over-sized bed look smaller than it really was. Richardson was asleep on the near side of the bed, his girlfriend on the far side, with about three feet of empty space between them. Ron’s dog was sleeping at the foot of the bed. I stepped into the room, moving to the left of the doorway, and made a little clicking noise with my tongue. The dog raised its head, looked at me for a second or two, then very slowly got up and walked the perimeter of the room, keeping the maximum possible distance between itself and me, until it came to the doorway. I could hear it picking up speed as it ran down the hall.

  Richardson had failed to make his first monthly deposit, and now there was a penalty to be paid. It wasn’t fair to make the woman pay for Richardson’s bad judgment, but, as so often happens, expediency ruled the day. Or in this case, the night.

  I went around to the woman’s side of the bed. The room was warm. The blankets were pushed down to her waist. She was laying on her right side, her back to me, the left side of her bare neck offering itself. She groaned quietly when I bit into her, tensing for just a second before her body relaxed again. When she was dead, I wiped my face with the sheet and went around to Richardson’s side of the bed. Richardson was lying on his back with his mouth open, snoring like an asthmatic. There was a large crystal bowl full of m&m’s on the nightstand. I scooped up a few, then sat in an armchair against the adjacent wall. I tossed one of the m&m’s in a gentle arc. It landed with a faint tap on Richardson’s forehead. He twitched, but didn’t wake up. The next one landed in his open mouth. It must have gone deep into his throat because he choked and bolted up to a sitting position, hacking. The m&m shot out of his mouth onto the bed.

  “Fuck god!” Richardson half whispered, feeling around on the sheets for whatever had been in his mouth. Then abruptly giving up the search, he flopped back down on his back.

  The next one hit Richardson on the cheek. This time he was awake. He flipped onto his right side, brushing the pillow frantically, as if something alive and unwelcome and been on his face. When he saw me sitting in the chair, an explosive hiss came out of his mouth as he pushed himself backward and up onto his right elbow. He must have backed into his girlfriend’s body, because he glanced quickly behind him.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “You aren’t disturbing her.”

  “You!”

  I smiled, got up and switched on the lamp on the nightstand, then sat back down.

  “How the fuck did you get in here?” Richardson hissed.

  “Your guards left the back door open.”

  That got Richardson thinking. His eyes darted over to the nightstand, then back to me.

  “What’s in the drawer?” I asked, glancing toward the nightstand.

  Richardson was trying to add it up. How fast could he open the drawer and get the gun? Would I be fast enough to stop him?

  “Don’t be an idiot, Ron.” I got up casually and opened the nightstand drawer. There was a chrome-plated .357 Magnum in a leather holster next to a box of condoms. I didn’t generally get any pleasure out of being callous, but my intention was to create a certain impression on Richardson. That is, I wanted to scare the shit out of him. I sat the condoms on top of the nightstand. “You can fuck her now without these, Ron.”

  Richardson rolled over and looked at his girlfriend. He must have stared at her body for a full minute before looking back at me. I had sat down again, the .357 resting on my knee.

  “You killed her, you motherfucker!”

  “The way I see it, you killed her, Ron. When you failed to make the bank deposit.”

  “I’m not giving you all that money.”

  “If you’re serious abou
t that, if you really aren’t going to pay me, then you should repeat what you just said, and I’ll kill you now and spare us both any additional inconvenience.”

  I waited for him to think it over. I noticed his eyes moving now and then to the door.

  “Your boys are taking a little nap in the woods,” I said. “If you’re still alive when I leave, you’ll probably want to go out and cut them loose. They can help you get rid of her body.”

  “I loved her, you fucking asshole!”

  “She was trophy snatch, Ron, like all the others, and you know it. You’ll replace her in a week.”

  “Goddamnit! You can’t do this to me! You just killed a woman. I’ll make sure you burn for it.”

  “Don’t get sidetracked. What about the bank deposit?”

  “You’re really going to kill me if I don’t give you the money?”

  “I am. I already told you that. This is your last chance. You didn’t take me seriously the first time, and it cost your girlfriend her life.”

  Richardson turned his head and looked at her body lying inert beside him. He moved several inches away from her, as if her death had immediately reduced her to something distasteful, something he did not want to touch.

  “Are you getting the message, Ron?”

  Richardson was like a little kid who’d spent a long time convincing himself he could fly. Then someone came along and pushed him out of his tree, and of course he hit the ground like the sack of shit he really was.

  “I’ll pay you, goddamnit!”

  “It’s Wednesday. Well, Thursday morning, to be precise. I’ll give you until midnight tonight to make the deposit. Are we agreed on that?”

  Richardson nodded his head in the affirmative.

  “Now then,” I said, satisfied that the money issue was settled, “what about Dean Arnaud?”

  The expression on Richardson’s face told me everything I needed to know. “You didn’t do your homework, did you, Ron?”

  “What the hell, man! I told you I didn’t have anything to do with that.”

  “I have reason to think you know something about it.”

  “Yeah?” he said, forcing disdain into his voice, like a man unsure of how convincing his lies are. “What reason would that be?”

  Finding Richardson’s photo in Francine’s closet didn’t necessarily mean he had anything to do with the murder, but I wasn’t going to give him the benefit of the doubt. One way or another, everything a man like Richardson said was a lie. “We’ve come a long way tonight, Ron. I think we’ve really started to understand each other.”

  “Jesus Christ! I’m telling you the truth. I didn’t have anything to do with killing that cop.”

  I picked up the .357 and opened the cylinder. It was fully loaded. I removed one round and examined it, as if evaluating its suitability to the task at hand, then replaced it and closed the cylinder. I raised the gun and pointed it at Richardson’s head. He winced.

  “But you know something about it, don’t you?”

  “Look, I admit I’m in the drug business. So what? So are the fucking pharmaceutical companies. Anyway, the asshole wasn’t killed over dope. Not as far as I know, anyway. He was snooping around, asking questions about some missing girl. Somebody didn’t like it, so they got rid of him.”

  “What’s the connection to you?”

  “There isn’t any fucking connection. Arnaud bought dope sometimes from one of my people. That’s all.”

  “Arnaud was dirty?”

  “It wasn’t a fucking secret. You want my guess, that’s why his murder was never solved. The guy was an embarrassment. The cops didn’t want the bad press.”

  “Did he buy the dope for himself?” I asked.

  “Some, maybe. But I think he sold most of it. Small time shit. Convention goers, people like that, out-of-towners.”

  “So what makes you think he wasn’t killed over dope?”

  “I don’t know, it’s possible, I guess. But it doesn’t make sense. He was too small-time.”

  Richardson was the one not making sense. People were killed every day for a lot less than Dean Arnaud was carrying. “There’s more you’re not telling me, Ron.”

  Richardson tried to look offended.

  “What I’m curious about is why you seem to know quite a bit about Arnaud, but you say didn’t have anything to do with his murder.”

  “Arnaud bought some coke from my guy, a couple grand worth, the same day he got popped.”

  “And you know this because?”

  “My guy got nervous when he heard about Arnaud trading the dope for a bullet in the head.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I didn’t do anything. I told my guy to shut the fuck up and forget about it. As long as the police didn’t know who killed Arnaud, there wasn’t any problem.”

  I smiled at Richardson. He didn’t smile back. He seemed to be waiting for the obvious.

  “What’s your guy’s name?” I asked.

  “Goddamnit, I don’t need this shit stirred up.”

  I didn’t say anything, just waited, tapping my index finger lightly on the barrel of the 357.

  “Danny Weiss,” Richardson said, after about half a minute. “He lives over in West Sac. His address is in the fucking phone book.”

  I knew there was more Richardson wasn’t telling me, but it was time to go.

  “About your girlfriend,” I said, aiming the gun at her corpse. “You’ll want to dispose of the body so it won’t be found.”

  “Maybe I should just call the police when you go.”

  “Believe me, Ron, you don’t want the coroner to do an autopsy. If they determine the cause of death, they’ll crucify you.”

  Richardson looked again at his girlfriend’s body, as if he were trying to calculate just how much trouble she could cause him.

  I took the bullets out of the gun and tossed them across the room, then dropped the gun on the floor and kicked it under the bed. I got up and walked to the door, pausing before going out. “You should go check on your bodyguards.”

  “Fuck them! They deserve to spend the night out there.”

  “I’m not sure what the big guy is worth, aside from the fact that he’s big and mean-looking. Frank is probably worth whatever you’re paying him.”

  “Yeah? Why’d he let you in here, then?”

  The question didn’t even merit a response.

  •

  I called Karla and instructed her to pick me up in the parking lot where she’d dropped me off. Something was nagging at me on the walk back; a feeling that had become all too familiar in recent years. A sense that my actions were somehow out of balance. I didn’t quite understand the feeling, but, as usual, I knew what caused it. I had used his girlfriend as a convenient tool for coercing money out of Richardson. This bothered me in a way that was very difficult to understand. It was not a matter of immorality or injustice. I was a vampire, a predator that required human blood to survive. I was not at odds with that. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help feeling that I had somehow failed to properly discriminate. I had made a decision in a situation that offered the possibility of greater balance, and I had not made the right choice. I had exploited an opportunity for blood without weighing the options. I had taken something for granted that I shouldn’t have. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

  I could hear something Euro-synthish on the car stereo when Karla pulled into the parking lot. She turned it down as I got in.

  “How’d it go?” she asked.

  “Could you turn that down a little more?”

  “Don’t like Miss Kitten?” Karla asked.

  “Miss Kitten?” I repeated, enjoying the name. “I have to confess, I haven’t been following her work.”

  “She really tickles me. I think she used to be a stripper before she broke into the music scene.”

  “I see,” I said, having no reason to think the move from strip club to recording studio wasn’t a natural one. “The lyrics are amusing.”

&n
bsp; “So, how’d it go?”

  “It went all right, I think.”

  “I guess you wanted to surprise him? Or her?” she asked, tentatively.

  “Him,” I said, and waited, not expecting that to satisfy her curiosity.

  “That’s why you had me drop you off on in the parking lot, right? You wanted to surprise him?”

  “If one of us was going to be surprised, I preferred it to be him.”

  “Was he?” she asked, after a short pause.

  “I believe so, yes. How was your evening?

  “Not too exciting. I went home after I dropped you off.”

  “You sounded like you were asleep when I called.”

  “You could tell?” she asked, sounding slightly disappointed.

  “Your voice was a little lower than normal.”

  The streets were empty. Downtown Sacramento had an air of bleak desolation at night. City planners, people whose greed was only matched by their lack of vision, had tried various schemes over the years to “revitalize” the core. They generally got a lot richer in the process, while everything else got poorer. They had added a performing arts center and a convention center, but after about eight p.m., the surrounding streets remained distinctly uninviting.

  “Is this city creepy at night, or what?” Karla said, having similar thoughts.

  “I may have some errands for you in the next few days,” I said, “I’ll either call or email.”

  She dropped me off at the footbridge. It was still early, time for a leisurely stroll home. I wondered if Richardson was right about Arnaud not being killed over drugs. But why would he be killed over the missing girl? I decided that was a question I would ask Danny Weiss.

  Chapter 8

  My current residence was a gift from Mio: a two-story house on American River Drive, about a mile from the university. I occupied the four upstairs rooms: study, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, with a private entrance at the back of the house. The ground floor was occupied by Keiichi Sato, a Japanese gentleman employed by Mio to live in the house, take care of the grounds, and maintain a discreet indifference to me. Sato performed his duties impeccably. He and I rarely saw one another, and when we did, we just as rarely spoke. On those occasions when our paths crossed, more often than not we would acknowledge one another’s presence with nothing more than a slight nod of the head.