Caruso 01 - Boom Town (8 page)

Suddenly, the door opened and the two rent-a-cops plowed out onto the wooden boards. They trudged to within five feet of them and stopped, their stances wide and identical. They reminded Tony of a couple of marines blindly popping into parade rest at a family picnic.

The one who had clubbed Tony, Goatee, spoke first. “You made us look like idiots this morning in front of our boss.”

“Sorry about that,” Tony said. “But I’m afraid I didn’t help you out much in that area.”

Dawn giggled.

Goatee twisted his head and lowered his bushy brows at Tony.

“Let’s go inside,” Dawn said, pulling on Tony’s arm. “I’m getting cold.”

Now the other guy, Flattop, spoke up. “You go. We need to talk with him.”

She hesitated.

Tony nodded. “Go ahead.”

She got to the door and looked back at him, unsure.

“Do you work on Sunday?” Tony asked her.

She stared at him blankly, the door against her shoulder.

“Someone might need a session,” he said, nodding his head toward the two rent-a-cops.

She smiled and went inside. But she didn’t go far. Tony could see her watching from through the window.

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There was usually a few ways these things could go, Tony knew. A lot of verbal foreplay, followed by pushing. And then someone takes a swing. Since he already knew how these two moved, he didn’t plan on letting them hit him first.

The only advantage he had was that the two of them were high school football types; the offensive line variety. The kind that got all worked up but didn’t have the agility to throw a straight punch with any speed. They did have muscles though, and if a wild punch did find its mark, Tony could be in trouble.

Fortunately, while in the Navy and not seeing how many brain cells he could destroy, he spent some spare time while stationed in Japan working on a couple of the ancient physical art forms.

“You wanted to say something?” Tony reminded them.

“Stay away from Cascade Peaks,” Flattop said.

“Or?”

“He’s not going to take our advice,” Goatee said to his partner.

“I think he’ll need some persuasion.”

“Wow!” Tony said. “Three syllables. Impressive.”

With that, Flattop wound up for a right roundhouse punch. It was like he was moving in slow motion. Tony simply sidestepped to the left, parried his arm, let him slide by, and punched him in the kidney. He followed that up with a right roundhouse kick to his face. That phrase, “The bigger they are, the harder they fall,”

is true. Especially when the huge guy crashed into the wooden deck face first.

By now Goatee tried to tackle Tony, lunging at him with his arms spread outward. Tony caught the guy’s head in his right hand and hooked his left arm under his right, twisted around, letting his momentum carry him past Tony. He twirled flat onto his back on the hard boards. Then Tony drop kneed him in the gut and sent a palm into his jaw, knocking his head back into the floorboards. It didn’t knock him out, but he was dazed and confused. More than normal.

Tony left them there in pain, trying to figure out how one guy much smaller than either one of them could have done so much
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damage so quickly.

When Tony went back into the bar, Dawn had a smile on her face.

“We could go into business together,” she said. “You beat the crap out of them, and then give them my card.”

The two of them went to the bar, where Tony bought a beer for him and another glass of wine for Dawn.

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Dawn asked.

“While you were studying traditional Chinese therapeutic techniques, I was learning Chinese and Japanese martial art forms.”

“You learned well, grasshopper.”

By now Tony saw the two geniuses had recovered enough to help each other through the crowd toward the exit. Blood streaked from the nose of each.

Having been distracted from his original intent for coming to the bar, Tony glanced at the bartender. Business had settled down some. The jazz band started playing a mellow tune; a soprano sax player trying out his best Kenny G. Tony thought he might be sick.

“Do you know the bartender?” Tony asked Dawn.

“Yeah. He’s here every time I come in.”

“Was he working the night Dan and Barb took the Italian guy home?”

“I think so.”

Tony nodded for the bartender, and he came directly to him, cleaning the bar with a wet towel along the way.

He was a tall skinny guy, with scraggly brown hair to his shoulders. His most remarkable feature was a nose that flared out at the end like a pig’s snout. That wasn’t a compliment.

“What can I get ya?”

“Dawn tells me you were working the night Dan and Barb Humphrey were...died,” Tony said, leaving it at that.

The bartender thought for a moment. “Work damn near every night,” he said. “Wouldn’t surprise me.”

He had one of those squeaky voices, like someone had clamped
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his balls in a vise.

“I understand they left with an Italian guy,” Tony said.

He shrugged. “I don’t worry about who goes home with who around here. Don’t pay no attention.”

Funny. Tony hadn’t said anything about them taking the guy home.

“You knew Barb and Dan Humphrey,” Tony said. It wasn’t a question, because he already knew the answer.

“Yeah, I knew ‘em.”

A man plopped an empty mug onto the bar, and the bartender scooped it up and refilled it. Then he returned.

“About the guy they left with that night,” Tony said. “Is he local?”

“Don’t think so.” He was in deep thought now. “Drinks vodka gimlets. Two filberts.”

“That’s a helluva memory.”

“It’s my job.”

“I know about Barb and Dan coming in here and picking up play things. I don’t really care about anyone but the Italian they left with that night.”

The bartender scooped up some dirty glasses and plopped them into soapy water. Tony could see his eyes checking him out from the side.

“Sometime today,” Tony said.

He turned quickly and said, “What the hell you want from me?

I’m supposed to be a picture on the damn wall. People tell me shit they don’t tell their priest. I keep my mouth shut and remember what they drink. That’s it.”

“Dan and Barb are dead,” Tony said. “And there’s no such thing as bartender/client confidentiality.”

The bartender shook his head.

Dawn reached across the bar and grabbed the guy by the collar.

“Tell him what he wants to know, Bradley. Or he’ll beat the shit out of you like he did to those two assholes.”

He shifted his eyes from her to Tony, looking quite scared.

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Maybe even more frightened by her than Tony.

“He’s from Portland,” the guy said. With that, Dawn let him go.

“Keep going,” Tony said.

“He’s some hardware rep for a Portland lock company. He stays at the Riverfront every time he comes to town. Comes in here every night to see what he can score. More successful than most.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“That night.”

“You got a name?”

“Frank Peroni.”

“Like the beer,” Tony said.

“Exactly.”

Tony got the name of the lock company from the bartender, and then he and Dawn went out front. He was half expecting to find the two rent-a-cops waiting for him, but they were nowhere to be seen. Tony and Dawn stood out front by his truck.

“Remember what I said at my place earlier today?” Dawn said.

“If Melanie ever bores you.”

Unexpectedly, the entire truck shook, followed by a whining from the back end.

“What the hell was that?” Dawn asked.

“That’s Panzer.”

“A tank?”

“You’ll have to see him. He’s built like one.”

“I didn’t know you were a dog person, Tony.”

“I wasn’t. Remind me to tell you the story about how I got my hands on this beast.”

She pointed a finger at his chest and said, “I will.”

Tony thanked her for her help, got in, and drove off, the fading image of Dawn in his rearview mirror making him wonder if he was going in the right direction. After all, he had only been out with Melanie a few times. Not even close to point of no return, a place he had rarely allowed himself to reach.

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Tony had told Melanie he would be at her place in an hour.

It took him an hour and a half.

She lived on one of the buttes on the west side of town in a large three bedroom place she had acquired, compliments of a cheating-bastard ex-husband. Her words. He had been a prominent lawyer in town until his proclivity for young flesh, an apparent perk of a criminal ethics class he taught at the local community college, became public knowledge. Irony is a funny thing, but not to the feminist judge who caught the divorce case.

Melanie’s ex-husband moved back to California about a year ago, his tail firmly between his legs.

Melanie told Tony her house was worth about five hundred thousand in today’s market. It was too big for her and her two cats, but she kept the place more as a constant reminder of how not to live life, than for any other reason.

Tony parked the F250 in front of the third garage door, let Panzer out of the back, and then walked the stone path to the front door. A light snow was falling, sparkling in the spotlight that clicked on by his movement.

Panzer found a place among the junipers to relieve himself.

Melanie was waiting at the door for him, having changed into a pair of jogging shorts that resembled silk men’s boxers, and an aerobics top that left her flat belly open.

“I was beginning to wonder if you were coming,” she said.

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“That’s entirely up to you.” He turned and watched his dog run from tree to tree. “You sure it’s all right for Panzer to terrorize the neighborhood?”

“He’ll be fine. I’d let him in, but, as you know, my cats are de-clawed and never leave the house. They can’t really defend themselves against that monster of yours.”

“Panzer? He’s still a baby.”

“Yeah, well, I think my little girls would be one-bite snacks.”

Tony yelled for his dog. “Panzer!”

Seconds later the dog sat on the stoop next to him.

“
Schlafen heir
,” Tony said, pointing to the ground.

Melanie smiled and escorted Tony inside, closing and locking the door behind him.

“You sure he’ll be all right there?” she asked him. “It’s snow-ing.”

“He’ll be fine. Couple hours I’ll put him in the truck.”

“What were you telling him?”

“Oh, I told him to sleep there. He’s bi-lingual, but his first lan-guage is German.”

They went into the living room, which was a step down from the foyer. A fake gas fire was blazing, surrounded on both sides and all the way to the vaulted ceiling by smooth river stones. It looked like the same workmanship as that at Barb and Dan’s burned out house, without the recent charcoal coating. The overall affect of the room, which was ultimately important to Melanie, was that of a comfortable room. Brown leather chairs sat on hardwood floors. Large plants softened the boundaries.

Melanie had opened a bottle of California cabernet, and it sat on a marble top coffee table breathing.

She poured two glasses of wine and took a seat on the floor in front of the fire. Tony followed her down there, settling into the Navaho rug and leaning against large tan pillows that resembled the bloated belly of a chamois.

“That thing actually puts out some heat,” Tony said, feeling the air in front of the fireplace with his right hand.

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She took a sip of wine, glancing over the top of her glass at him. “Any e-mail?” she said.

He hesitated. Stalled longer by taking a long drink of wine.

“Listen. I don’t want to bullshit you. I wasn’t checking my e-mail. I had to go into the Riverfront Bar and ask a few questions.

I thought it was best that I left you out of it.”

“I guessed that,” she said, shifting her body closer to his. “You usually check your e-mail with your laptop from your phone in the truck.”

“A real Nancy Drew. Maybe I should take on a partner.”

She ran her free hand onto his thigh. “Wouldn’t that be a con-flict of interest.”

“I don’t have a problem with that.”

Her hand moved up onto his lap.

“Find out anything interesting at the bar?”

He was in one of those positions where he didn’t want to say anything offensive. “Not really,” he managed to say. “Had a little argument with those two rent-a-cops from Cascade Peaks.”

“Is that right?” She finished her wine and set the glass down.

She had his top button undone and was working on his zipper now.

“Yeah. I was out on the back deck, when they thought I should have some dental work done.”

She gave him a whole lot of freedom, taking his instrument of pleasure in one hand while she ripped his pants down his hips with the other. “You had other ideas,” she said, her breathing more determined. Not waiting for an answer, she took as much as she could in her mouth.

Tony lay back onto the pillow and finished his wine.

She came up for air. “What else happened?” She went down again.

“Talked with the bartender.”

She lifted her head up to him again. “Was it Bradley? He’s such a weasel.” Down she went again.

He waited for a while before answering, things getting a bit
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more intense. Seconds later, she got on top of him and did her best rodeo routine. Tony was the bull doing his best to keep up with her frenetic ride. He couldn’t help thinking about what Dawn Sanders had said about Melanie being a little sedate for him. She had gotten that wrong.