by Lewis Shiner
“How long have you known her?”
I turned my chair around and refilled my cup. “About six months, I guess. We’ve been going around together for the last couple of those. Is she in some sort of trouble?”
“I’d rather not say. How would you describe your...relationship with her?”
“Oh lay off him, will you?” Brady said. “Get to the point.” That was a switch. Dawson was supposed to be the one taking my side. I shrugged it off. I never would understand police, or their ideas of drama.
Dawson seemed subtly afraid of Brady, or perhaps jus~not willing to go through a showdown. “All right. When was the last time you saw her, Mr. Sloane?” His courtesy was stretching, and I was beginning to see the thinness of the veneer.
“Night before last, I guess, after she got home from work. Have you tried the hospital, by the way? She works at Brackenridge. “
“We tried it. Have you heard from her since? Any idea where she could be?”
I shook my head. “You don’t know Liz. She runs her own life. I don’t even try to keep up with it. I see her when she wants to see me. I wish I could be more help, but I really can’t.”
“Satisfied?” Brady asked him in an ugly voice. “He doesn’t know anything. Let’s roll.”
Dawson set down his unfinished coffee, and paused at the door. “We just want her for questioning at this point. But if she doesn’t turn up by five o’clock, a warrant goes out for her arrest. So if you see her, let us know.”
I went into the hall after him and saw the look that Brady gave him. It was full of suppressed anger and frustration. They walked to the elevators and Brady slapped the button a little harder than necessary.
I stood for a second, scratching my head. Maybe it was a coincidence that the hour of five o’clock had come up twice that morning, but detectives don’t believe in coincidence. I turned on my heel and marched right over to Pete’s office. His door was open and his secretary let me walk in.
“One question, Pete. Who was the arresting officer in the Preacher case?”
He twisted his eyebrows, then got a manila folder out of a stack. “A Sgt. Brady,” he said, and then, “was that the—”
I rapped a knuckle on his desk. “Thanks, Pete,” I said, and left him there.
So the cops want me to do their dirty work, I thought, sitting down at the phone. The hints had been plain enough. If I brought her in before five o’clock everything would be hunky-dory. If not, well, it would be my own fault. I resented being manipulated, and I didn’t want to get involved in something that was none of my business. It was eleven am, leaving only six hours until the police deadline. So I grumbled and made excuses to myself a while longer, and then I reached for the phone.
I called Liz’s house, less because I thought it would do any good than because I had to try it. If the police couldn’t find her it didn’t seem very likely that I could. Her roommate answered the phone.
“Hello, Cathy, this is Dan. Have the police been there?”
“Yes, Dan, just a little while ago. I’m sorry they bothered you. I didn’t realize they would...I mean, I’m sorry I gave them your name.” She sounded flustered and confused, just the way I would have expected her to after a run-in with the law. She was one of the world’s innocents, and sometimes she was just too blushing and vulnerable to be true. Even though she and Liz were the same age, she had none of Liz’s sensuality, only an awkward, childlike prettiness.
“Don’t worry about it. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”
“I was going to ask you that. I just thought she was at the hospital.”
“I don’t suppose she left a message for me or anything?”
“No, I...” There was a long pause and I waited it out. “I can’t think of anything to tell you.”
“What were you about to say?”
“Nothing.”
“Cathy, this is important. I’ve got to find her before the police do. What is it you were going to say?”
“Nothing, I told you. I don’t know anything.” The last was almost a sob, and the receiver clicked in my ear. I hung up, dissatisfied and irritable. I didn’t owe Liz anything. From a rational point of view I had no business even knowing her. I kept telling myself that as I put on my jacket to go look for her, a knot of worry in my stomach. She had kept me off balance so long that I suppose I was just off balance without her.
She was not my type, not my style. She lived too fast, and let nobody inside her defenses. But she’d come along at a bad time for me, and I’d been too weak to pass her by. She had a ripe body, with long legs and full breasts and swirls of slate colored hair. And if she was part of the lost generations of Austin, she was still a beautiful woman, and at the time that had been enough.
There was no good place to begin, so I drove home, hoping for a note or message of some sort. I left the windows rolled up, expecting rain at any minute. It never came.
I parked on the curb and checked the porch mailbox. It was empty, as usual. I unlocked the front door and went to the hall phone where I kept a pad and pencil, the place Liz would have been most likely to leave something.
I felt jumpy all of a sudden. Nothing was wrong that I could put my finger on, but I had the feeling that a noise had just stopped, or something had moved soundlessly in another room. I tiptoed into the kitchen and checked the back door. It was unlocked but closed, just as I’d left it. That should have satisfied me, but it didn’t. I crept back to my bedroom and opened a drawer of the dresser to see if anything had been disturbed.
A small shaving mirror sat in front of me, just at eye level. A motion in it caught my attention and I looked up to see the closet door behind me slowly swing open.
I whirled around, but pulled up short when I saw the gun in his hand.
He was short and thin, with long black hair and a drooping moustache. The gun he held was a long barrel .38, accurate and deadly. Unless he got too close I would have no chance to take it away from him.
“Put your hands away from your sides, Mr. Sloane, and back out into the hall, please.” His voice had a slight Mexican accent and he held the pistol with care and authority. I backed up slowly, keeping my eyes on the gun. There was a smooth place on the sight that looked as if he’d started to file it down and changed his mind.
“You know my name, so I don’t guess this is a stickup,” I said. “What do you want?”
“On into the living room, please, and sit in that armchair. Slowly.” I backed across the room, looking for an opening and not finding one. The kid knew his business and was not going to give me a chance. I sat down. “Put your arms on the chair and hold them still. That’s fine.”
He was by the door, and he had it open and was gone in the time it took me to realize what he was doing. I went to the window and watched him jog away down the block.
Going after him on foot would have been a waste of time. He was armed and I didn’t think he’d balk at shooting me if I forced him to. So I let him get around the corner then sprinted out to my car and threw it into gear. By the time I made the turn he had disappeared. There were a hundred places he could have gone—over fences, down alleys, into empty houses. Just for my own peace of mind I got out and checked the parked cars on the street. Then I went back home.
Things were starting to get interesting. The fact that someone had sent a gunman to my house meant the stakes were higher than I’d expected. A quick look around showed me that the place had been searched, but nothing taken.
It was a neat, professional job, and they probably hadn’t wanted me to know it had been done. There was no point in calling the police—I was willing to give even money that the kid had been working for them. And even if he hadn’t, there wasn’t much the police could do. Professional thugs meant a big operation, one the size of, say, the Preacher’s.
That thought bothered me. After a big bust word traveled fast, and things got very quiet for a while. If the Preacher had no operation any more, there was no reason one of his
gunmen should have been going through my house. Or the police either, for that matter.
I went back out to my car and drove to Liz’s duplex. The temperature was falling and the sky seemed even darker than before. I put my lights on and zipped the front of my jacket.
The house was empty, which saved my having to tell Cathy a complicated lie. I let myself in with a piece of plastic and went to work. It was time for answers and I was going to get them if I had to tear the place apart.
It took me an hour and a half. It was not lying around waiting for me, and she obviously didn’t want it to be stumbled over by accident. It was too well hidden to have been a plant. I went through the drawers, insides and undersides, tapped along shower curtain and closet rods, felt mattresses and shook boxes. I shifted furniture, and when I got to her stereo I noticed something wrong. The speaker cabinets weighed too much for the flimsy portable they had come off of, so I opened one up. Behind the cloth grille was a wad of Kleenex, and behind that was a big manila envelope. It was wedged into the enclosure behind the speaker and I didn’t want to disturb it. I coaxed the flap open with my pocket knife, enough to see inside. It was crammed full of little white packets of sleep and death. The other speaker held more of the same, but in pill form, packaged in small plastic vials.
I felt something change inside of me. I went through the room again, looking for an address book, old letters, a match folder, anything. The longer I looked, the stranger it got and the more disoriented I began to feel. There was nothing there, no trace of her past, of her friends, of her personality at all. She could have been no more than a cardboard cut-out, the merest shell of a human being.
It was twelve-thirty. I had a sense of time running out. At first I had wanted to help Liz, maybe even protect her. Now I wanted answers from her. I suppose I should have been more shocked at finding the heroin, but I’d almost expected that.
Being with Liz was like following a ticking bomb, and when I looked back it seemed like I’d been waiting for the explosion all along. I’d never pressed her, never used my professional skills to find out about her. Probably because of what I’d been afraid I’d find.
I locked up behind myself and sat in my car, feeling the conditioned response to start it up and get moving, whether I had a destination or not. The car waited with eager obedience, ready to substitute its horsepower for my thinking. It was desperation made me feel that way, but I wasn’t doing any good getting desperate all by myself, parked in a car.
Brackenridge hospital was just south of the campus, close to both the football stadium and Interstate 35. I parked in the lot and went in through the double front doors. There was the same sort of expectant smell inside that the weather had outside. I found the first floor nurses station and asked for Liz.
“She certainly seems popular today,” said the head nurse, a heavy, crinkly-eyed woman of about forty. “The police were here looking for her this morning.” She sounded as if she had mixed feelings about the whole situation.
“What do you suppose they wanted?” I asked her.
“Oh, I don’t know. But they worried me, coming around like that.” She was a professional mother, the very best kind of nurse. I envied Liz for having earned her protection.
“You couldn’t give them any help, then.”
“Not really—” she began, but a voice behind me interrupted her.
“She told them the same thing I’m going to tell you. Nobody’s seen her for a couple of days. So get lost.” The voice was harsh, with Texan overtones, and didn’t fit his small Indian body.
“A little touchy, aren’t we?” I asked.
“This is a hospital, mister, not a referral agency. We’ve got patients to take care of, and we don’t need a lot of people tromping around and getting in the way.”
“Maybe I should come back with a cast on,” I offered.
“Don’t tempt me.” The tag on his intern’s smock said his name was Dakhar something, but I missed the last name as he scowled and walked away. I didn’t like to be threatened by people half my size, but I didn’t see anything I could do about it. The nurse had gone back to filing her charts and didn’t look up again. Doctors ran the show, and nurses took what they could get. I didn’t particularly like that, either.
I walked up and down the halls restlessly. The big clocks hanging from the ceiling kept reminding me that it was after one. At five o’clock the dam was going to break. Police with warrants would find the goods in Liz’s apartment, and things would really start getting tough. For everybody.
I finally caught sight of Dakhar again, and tagged along behind him. I didn’t bother being subtle about it, and the set of his shoulders told me he was aware of me. He ducked into a small tiled room and I went in after him.
We were in a small kitchen with a sink, an icebox, and a coke machine. I closed the door behind me and put my weight against it.
“All right, what do you want?” he asked. Surliness and anger alternated behind his face.
“Answers,” I said. “What makes Liz such a hot topic? What is it you want quiet?”
He started cursing me, and I reached over to slap him. His right hand made a sudden blur and I drew back, but not quickly enough. There was a knife in his fist and a thin red line behind my knuckles.
It happened like it always does, suddenly, without warning. My defense mechanisms took over and all I could do was let it happen. I feinted with my eyes and snatched his wrist, hard. This time I was faster, and I felt the bones of his arm grind together in my grip. The knife clattered to the floor and I opened his lip with two quick slaps.
He had no tolerance for pain. He weakened instantly, but I had to force myself to ease off on his wrist. It was the legacy of my days in Viet Nam, and I was not proud of it. “Talk,” I said, as gently as I could.
“Prescriptions. I wrote her some prescriptions.” His throat sounded knotted up, and he was taking in a lot of air. “That’s all.”
“For what?”
“You know. Downers. Seconal, Valium, Quaaludes.”
“How much?”
“Just a few, not often.”
“Did she pay you to do it?”
“Christ no, man. Everybody does it. You think it’s a big deal?”
“If it’s no big deal, what are you so scared of?”
“The heat’s on.”
“How do you know the heat’s on? It wasn’t in the papers. The cops know better than to spread it around. So who tipped you off?”
His face told me he’d said too much, and that he was through talking. I was convinced he’d be dead before I’d get it out of him. It was late and I was wasting time.
I scooped the knife off the floor and dropped it down the sink. He could fish it out, but it would take him a couple of minutes. Then I let go of his wrist and closed the door on him.
The cut on my hand was starting to hurt. I tied a handkerchief over it and flexed the fingers, relieved that it was only a scratch, angry that I’d let it happen at all.
Somebody had been to my office before me. It was subtle, but I could sense the difference instantly. They were one step ahead of me, whoever they were, whatever they wanted. They had the organization to know when I’d left for the office in the morning, and when I’d gone back home. I felt the delicate touch of fear on my neck.
My thoughts spinning, I sat down at the desk. The phone rang and I stared at it for half a minute before the message got through to me. Then I jumped at it and snatched it off the hook.
“Sloane speaking.”
“Hello, Sloane.” I recognized the voice and my pulse picked up again.
“Go on,” I said.
“A couple hours after I left your place this morning,” the Chicano said, “somebody took a shot at me. Does that give you any ideas?”
“No. Should it?” I cradled the phone in my shoulder and reached for the office bottle. Splashing a little bourbon on my handkerchief, I dabbed at the cut wrist.
“Somebody’s hot because I spille
d the goods on his girlfriend. Are you reading me yet?”
“If you’re talking about me, you’re crazy. If you’re not, I’m lost.” I took a sip out of the bottle and felt better instantly.
“Sounds like you’re way behind the times. Maybe we should get together.”
“Let’s. We had so little time this morning.”
“There used to be a co-op dorm across from Harris Park. Big building, empty now. You know where that is?”
I said that I did.
“I’ll be there in forty-five minutes. Bring a hundred dollars in ten dollar bills.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
“Mexico’s not that close, either, if you follow me.”
“I think I’m beginning to,” I said.
“Forty-five minutes,” he said, and hung up.
I put the phone down and looked at my watch. It was getting to be a bad habit. I drove to my bank, cashing a check and sealing the money in the little envelope they gave me. Then I headed back north toward the campus, trying to put together what I had.
I had no doubts that Liz was involved. All that was left was the question of how deeply, and I wanted to believe it wasn’t very far. At the same time my pride was telling me that I’d been a sucker long enough, and I ought to leave her to the wolves. But only after I learned the whole truth.
I passed through the tree-lined streets north of the university. A long dry spell had left the city withered and yellow, and the threatening but impotent clouds overhead were no help. It was a burned out, jaded and pale world and I was a part of it. What hurt the most was that I belonged there. The faded people sat on their porches, long-haired, easygoing, used up.
I swung past the old dorm once at cruising speed, just to make sure there weren’t any machine guns hanging out the windows. It was built up the side of a low hill, with a good view of both sides and the park in front of it. I left my car out of sight on the edge of the park and took the long way around the house.
I came in from the back side, through a yard overgrown with weeds, wondering if I should have brought a gun after all, despite my dislike of them. The back of the house had only one window, a big single sheet of glass, but the sun was directly on it and I couldn’t see through the accumulated dust. I was trying to decide whether I should go straight in or circle back to the front when I heard the shot.