by P. N. Elrod
“Again with the damn questions. Lay off for cryin’ out loud.”
“I have to ask them, Rita.”
“Why?”
“Because someone killed your friend.”
“What’s it to you?”
“It’s a mark against my club—”
“Ah, that’s crap and you know it. What’s the real reason?”
I could give her a song and dance, make up something that would serve, but she’d probably spot the lie.
The truth would not serve, either. For then I’d have to tell her about my own slow death. I had come back from that darkness; I had delivered bloody justice to my killers.
But poor Lena, alone and forgotten for so long in her own darkness; no such justice for her.
Until now. Maybe.
10
“HEY, Sport.” Rita tapped my arm with the back of her hand. “Come on, ante up.”
Because of my own murder, I was all too intimately aware of what Lena Ashley had gone through. The horror, the anger I felt on her behalf were understandable. But of all the people in the world, I was in a unique position to give her justice.
Rita tapped again. “Come on. What’s your payoff in this?”
“Nothing I can talk about.”
“Sure you can. Fork over.”
“Just think of me as being an advocate for the dead.” Pretentious as hell, but if Escott could call himself a private agent and get away with it, then I could pick a title for myself, too.
“A what?”
“Someone who speaks for people like Lena. Can do something for them. Find and give them the justice they deserve.”
She shot me a sideways glance. “You’re crazy.”
I drove sedately, seeing every detail of the passing streets and none of it registering. “Don’t you want somebody to nail the guy who killed Lena? Shouldn’t he get what’s coming to him?”
“Yeah, but some guys know how to duck out on what they got coming. Whoever did that to Lena would be one of them.”
“He can’t duck out on me.”
“Yeah? What makes you so special?”
I flashed her a quick grin and wink, because it was time to go to work on her, and this was the way to go about it. “You already know that one, sweetheart.”
She did, or thought she did, and gave a half smile in agreement, not catching on that my answer was no real answer. “You got a cigarette? I’m dying for a smoke.”
I carry a pack mostly for others to borrow from, and produced it and some matches. She took both from me and lighted up.
“Talk to me about Lena.”
“Oh, jeez. I told you—”
“None of it’ll come back on you. I promise.”
“Yeah, sure it won’t, Sport.”
“My name’s Jack.” I had the idea she’d forgotten it.
“Okay . . . Jack,” she said, grudgingly. “But I can’t talk to you about this.” She rolled her window down and blew smoke out onto the city.
“Because you’re afraid of Shivvey?”
“Him? He doesn’t—”
“The truth, Rita.”
Her knee-jerk bravado melted. “He doesn’t scare me, but I’d be stupid not to listen when he tells me something. An’ last night he told me to keep clear of you.”
“So why did you jump off the table at me like you did?”
“Seemed like it would get a laugh and show him up for taking off on me, and besides . . . you’re cute.”
“So are you.”
“But I didn’t think you’d be sweating me with questions all evening. I want another kind of—”
“All in good time, angel. I’ll make up for it with you.”
She grumbled something under her breath that sounded like “you’d better.”
“Tell me about Lena. Those last days. Never mind about what Shivvey said to do. He’s not going to come into this.”
“But he—”
“He’s nothing, and I won’t let him hurt you. You’re doing this for Lena’s sake.”
“But it ain’t gonna work. I already tried.”
“It will. You’ll have help this time. Real help.”
Dark narrow look from her as she puffed the cigarette down to nothing. Troubled. Puzzled. Not too many minutes ago she’d been ready to take anything I cared to give her and return it with interest, but this was a different kind of intimacy. She wasn’t used to dealing with it. I had to get through to her while there was even a hint of a crack in her armor.
“Wouldn’t it be nice not to be alone?” I murmured. I fought down an internal twinge for playing on that particular weakness. It was bald-faced manipulation, but until I could hypnotize her, it was my best way in. “You’ve been by yourself for a long time, haven’t you?”
“I got plenty of friends.”
“Not friends like Lena. She was a pretty good egg, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, I guess she was.”
“You know she was. Listen to me, Rita. I want you to think back about Lena. Remember how it was for her and for you, and having her to pal around with. I bet you two had a lot of fun, lots of parties, shopping, eating at the good places, laughing. Was it like that?”
“Yeah.” A very faint whisper. “Those were great times.”
“And then some bastard took the great times away from her, from you. Took away her life. All that life she could have had. Someone stole it from her, and they put her through a living hell while they did it.”
She made a pushing-away gesture and tossed the cigarette out the window, “I don’t wanna hear this.”
“You have to. That sadistic bastard walled her up alive and left her to die. It had to have taken days, Rita. Days.”
“Stop it. I don’t wanna hear.” Her hand went to the door handle. She wouldn’t use it, but she wanted escape.
“Days of poor Lena shut away in the dark, tied up like an animal, thirsty, hungry, scared out of her mind—”
“Shut up!”
“So thirsty, crying the whole time, her throat on fire, but she’s still screaming for help and hearing only silence.”
“No!”
“And maybe he’d come by and listen outside to hear how far gone she was. Call through the wall to her to make her say something. And she’s behind that cold wall in that awful smothering dark, wondering, hoping, praying he’ll change his mind. And she pleads with him, makes bargains, promises, anything that comes into her head if he’ll let her live. But he just walks away with a laugh. Then she starts screaming again in the blackness until she’s too weak to scream anymore—”
“Stop it!”
“Then one day she doesn’t make any noise at all, and he walks away for the last time, and he has a hell of a laugh about it, and he’s been laughing and walking free ever since.”
“You’re a shit! You shut the hell up!”
I let it go. Where all that stuff had come from I didn’t know, didn’t want to know, but it had the desired effect on her. She was weeping and fighting it, trying to pull herself clear and failing. I had a clean handkerchief but didn’t offer it. That would have distracted her from the misery and guilt I’d induced. All the dancing, boozing, and sex were meant to keep such ugly horrors and their attendant pain at bay. She needed to feel the full force of that crushing weight, of that coldness before she could finally open up.
“You think any of it is right?” I asked, speaking soft. “Is letting him get away something Lena would have wanted?”
“No.” Thick tears in that one tremulous word. She swiped hard at her eyes. Snuffled.
“I’m the only person who can give any justice to Lena. She’s overdue.”
“What’s so special about you? Let the cops—”
“No one’s gonna talk to the cops. You know that. But I can do things they can’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like talk to you and still keep you out of it.”
“But I don’t know anything. I thought and thought and asked all over for Len
a back then and got nothing. I don’t know—”
“You think you don’t, but you do.”
“Huh?”
Now I offered the handkerchief. She plucked it away quick as though I might take it back. I waited until she’d thoroughly blown her nose and sopped up the tear trails. Hands shaking, she lighted another cigarette, dragging in the smoke as though it were oxygen.
“What is it you think I know?” she asked.
“Plenty. You just need to hear the right questions to jog everything loose.”
“Questions.” Lots of contempt there.
“The ones to put you in the right frame of mind. All this time you’ve been thinking of Lena as just running off for who knows what reason. Maybe before you only suspected the possibility, wouldn’t admit it to yourself, but now you know for certain she was murdered. That makes everything different. You’re going to remember things. They didn’t matter before, but they’ll come to you, and when they do, they will mean something.”
She snorted but didn’t argue. I should have asked for directions again to keep up the pretense of not knowing her address, but didn’t want to interrupt as she thought it over. She was thinking pretty hard. We passed her building without her noticing. A block later she told me to turn around and where to park when we got there.
I had to help her out, keeping a firm grip on her arm. The ride and the talk had sobered her, but only a little. She was just starting on the long, unsteady slide down from the booze. She couldn’t slip too soon into the early stages of the coming hangover, or I wouldn’t get anything useful out of her. Chances were she’d have bottles of reinforcements in her flat. I’d have to give her enough to hold her on the edge, but not so much as to make her pass out.
She kept a latchkey on the molding above her door. It hardly seemed worth the trouble of locking up—anyone could have found it. She fumbled the key, then pushed in, flicking on lights. She mumbled “excuse me,” and hurried off to the back. I returned the key to its place and closed the door.
The flat was big but had a shut-in feel, the stale air hanging close with the scent of her perfume mixed with long-dead cigarettes. Though the rent must have been steep, the decor did not reflect it. Bland, pale walls, cheap, ordinary secondhand furniture, a thin layer of dust in the unused corners of the bare floor. No photos, paintings, or prints broke up the boxlike monotony. She couldn’t have spent much time here. Scattered bits of cast-off clothing added a little forlorn homeyness. One of the pieces trailing over a sofa arm was a man’s tie. I tried to recall if Coker had been wearing it last night, but couldn’t be sure. From the look of things it might have been left here weeks ago.
I heard a toilet flush and running water. She returned some minutes later, having dabbed powder on her nose and combed her frizzy blond hair down. The sharp scent of mint-flavored mouth gargle floated over to me, along with a fresh layer of perfume.
“I just,” she began. She shook her head and blinked, losing to the booze for a moment. “I just remembered that we came here for some other reason than to talk about Lena.”
Sadly, I was not too surprised by her apparent turnaround. She’d had a lot of unpleasant things to face, and after a moment’s consideration wanted no part of them. Her first defense would be a return to something familiar and comforting: booze or a man. Or both.
“Ten minutes,” I said. “Let’s give her ten minutes.”
“There ain’t ten minutes of anything I can tell you.”
“So we finish that much sooner. You got some stuff to grease the wheels?”
“I’m already greased, Sport.” She smiled and gave a slow body undulation to show she wasn’t referring to what she’d already imbibed. “Come find out for yourself.”
“In ten.”
With a resigned grimace, Rita pointed to a cabinet with bottles and glasses crowded on a shelf before a rank of dusty books. I did what I was supposed to do while she fired up another smoke. That done, she arranged herself on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and curling her long legs up. She leaned sideways, one arm over the sofa back. The pose made her neckline dip more than was publicly decent, but we weren’t in public now. I made myself look her strictly in the eye as I handed over a glass and did not sit down.
“Come on,” she said, patting the cushion.
“In ten.”
“Only nine left by now.”
I ignored that one. “Tell me about Booth Nevis and Lena. When I gave him the news about her last night, he took it pretty hard.”
“Oh, he would. They were tight as ticks.”
“Must have been more than that.”
“Yeah, he was sappy for her. Real love, maybe. She thought so.”
“Were there marriage plans?”
“She didn’t want any of that. Don’t know why. They might have been something if they had hitched up.”
“Did she work for him like you do?”
Her gaze slipped away from mine. “I guess so.”
“Just what is your job?”
“I help out a little is all. Dance at the club, cheer up the customers when they lose, that sort of thing.”
“And that pays enough to get a place like this?” Plain as it was, it was still quite a lot, especially for a girl with no discernible means of support who did not charge for entertaining.
“Yeah, it does. You got eight minutes left.”
She was counting too fast. I probably had until she finished her cigarette. “Booth and Lena. They ever fight? Run around on each other?”
“Hey, don’t you tell me you think Booth’s the one, he—”
I waved her down. “I only want a clear picture of how things were with them.”
She sipped her drink, her gaze flicking over me. She licked her lips, making sure I saw her tongue. I smiled and eased down next to her, turning to face close enough to really look her in the eye. My normal kind of forced hypnosis wouldn’t work through the booze, but it seemed worthwhile to try something more subtle.
“Booth and Lena,” I prompted after a moment’s concentration. I didn’t see much change in her expression, but there was something, a very tiny flicker of response.
“I said he was sappy for her.”
“How did he react to her disappearance?”
“He was pretty tore up. Didn’t know what to make of it. He was after me with questions for a long time, calling up at all hours wanting to know if she’d come back yet. He thought she threw him over for someone else. He turned over every rock he could find trying to get news of her. He kept it on the quiet, but he covered all the bases.”
“Why?”
“He’s a funny guy that way. He’s pretty tough but has a soft spot he doesn’t like his mugs to see, so he keeps it low. Maybe he should have made a stink, but he didn’t. Left that to me. I made a stink, but it didn’t do any good. Maybe if he’d made a stink, it would have made a difference, but he didn’t, so I—”
“Yeah, I get the idea. So he didn’t find anything?”
“Not nothin’. A couple months went by, and he just gives up. Knocked the stuffin’ outta him, but he hid that, too. Sometimes we’d talk about her. Y’know, looking back on it I think maybe that’s when he figured someone croaked her, only he didn’t tell me. You were right about this remembering stuff, Spor—Jack. A lotta this is coming back to me, an’ it looks different.”
I nodded. “You think he knew who might have done it?”
“Nah. He’d have told me because then he’d have scragged the bastard with his bare hands. He probably figured she was gone for good and just gave up. No percentage for him, y’know?”
But the news about Lena had been a bad shock to Nevis. It could have been guilt. But if not, then he’d harbored some small kernel of hope that she was alive and might return. I knew what that felt like. “So he was sappy for her. How’d she feel toward him?”
“She liked him better than the other mugs.”
“Who were they?”
“Just guys hanging around the
club. Nobody in particular.” She stubbed out the cigarette.
“What about Tony Upshaw?”
“He wasn’t there much back then, but he’d dance with her. He danced with all the girls if they wanted it. Mostly he was with that partner of his, Ruth. She didn’t have him on any leash, but he knew the butter for his bread came from her. She gave him that half interest in the dance studio, y’know. You wanna know how he earned it?”
“I’ve an idea how already.” I ran a light hand up the length of Rita’s arm, looking at her the whole time. She took a deeper breath than normal and gooseflesh budded on her skin. Very good. “Did Tony do more than dance with Lena?”
“He was too smart for that. They didn’t advertise it, but everyone knew she was pretty much Booth’s girl and to keep away. ’Cept Shivvey. He was always trying to get her attention.”
“But back then he was working for Booth’s rival. He wouldn’t be welcome at the Flying Ace.”
“Nah, but Shivvey would run into us at the bookies’ or the track, or he’d turn up at other clubs. Always flirting with her. He thought she was one juicy pippin an’ wanted to pluck her but good, but she didn’t see him the same way. Because he worked for Welsh, she thought he might try using her to get at Booth. We used to laugh about it.”
“You still laugh at him?”
“Why should I? It was Lena’s joke and old news. Welsh is dead, and Shivvey’s working for Booth and friends with me now. A good friend—when he’s not being a jerk,” she added, her voice sharpening briefly.
“You think Lena might have led Shivvey on a bit? Maybe as a way to help Booth? Then if Shivvey figured her out—”
“Ah, Shivvey wouldn’t do something like that to her. Too much trouble. He’d just pop her—right here”—Rita pointed a finger at her temple like a gun barrel—“and walk away. Then fix it so he wouldn’t get caught. But he’d have to have a damn good reason to do it. He really liked her.”
“But if he got fed up with her turning him down all the time, he might have been pissed enough to do something special about her. He might also have had some other reason to make her vanish. Maybe so he could go to work for Booth?”