Denton - 01 - Dead Folks' Blues (10 page)

I took a step back; she was on the ground, jaws dripping.

“Speak. Speak to me, Shadow.” She brought up a gnarling growl that erupted into a bark.

“Good girl!” I squeezed the chicken into a ball, flipped it into the air. It was gone before it hit the top of the curve.

“Where’s daddy, Shadow?” I said. Why do dogs and babies make people talk so damn goofy? “Where’s daddy, baby?”

The sun was really baking now, the bare ground cracked beneath my feet. I looked over toward the trailer, and even with the rust stains and dull, weathered paint, the reflection hurt my eyes. I walked toward the pale green hulk with Shadow flopping happily along at my side. At one end of the trailer, an overworked window unit struggled to pull the humidity out of the air. I knocked once and opened the door.

Lonnie stood inside, back to me, bent over slightly, staring at something on the table. He whipped his head around, shushed me, then motioned me in.

“And for God’s sake, don’t slam the door,” he whispered.

Lonnie’s office and sometimes apartment was a clutter of papers, used automobile parts, scattered books, grease, tobacco stains, empty beer bottles. Lonnie was the smartest repo man I’d ever met, but he had strange tastes.

“What’s going on?” I asked, real low.

“Shhh,” he hissed. “Experiment.”

Lonnie was barefoot, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. In his outstretched hand, he held a few straws plucked from an old broom. He moved slowly toward the massive wooden table that normally served as his desk, but which had been swept clean for the drama du jour.

I strained in the low light to see what that was. Behind us,
from the other room, the air-conditioner chugged away like an old steam locomotive. He padded slowly forward, reached out toward the middle of the table, then turned his head around and blindly moved a little closer. I bent down, looking around him, just as the straws touched a tiny pile of what looked like dirty table salt on the wood.

There was a terrific boom and a flash of white, followed by an acrid stink that made Mrs. Lee’s Szechuan chicken smell as benign as Cream of Wheat. I jumped back, slamming against the door. I was blinded for a second, then dived on the floor with a yelp.

“Jesus H. Christ!” Lonnie yelled from the floor next to me. I looked over at his arm to see if I needed to start calling him Stumpy. “It works!”

His arm was intact, which was more than I could say for my ears. The smoke was dissipating. I stood up. A scorched circle on the wooden table outlined a gouge maybe an inch or so deep and a foot around.

“You jerk!” I yelled. “Why didn’t you warn me?”

“Damn, man,” he panted, standing up. “I didn’t know it would be that powerful. I mean, the book—”

“Damn it, Lonnie” I moaned. “Which one this time?
The Anarchist’s Cookbook?
”

He looked from the table to me, electric delight on his face. “No, man. I just got a copy of
The Poor Man’s James Bond.
”

I looked around the room. On the moth-eaten couch, a paperback about the size of a telephone directory lay open. I picked it up.

“ANTI?” I asked, reading the page.

“Ammonium Nitrogen Tri-Iodide. Stuff’s a pistol, man. In fact, it’s more a fulminate than an explosive. Easiest junk in the world to make.”

I scanned the article. “You trying to get yourself killed?” This was not the first time I’d walked into Lonnie’s Playhouse just in time to almost get my head blown off. The last time, he was making ersatz napalm out of gasoline and Styrofoam cups.

“No, man, this is great! All you do is soak iodine crystals in pure ammonia, then press the goop through a coffee filter. What’s left is ANTI. As long as it’s wet, it’s harmless. But when it dries, it’s the nastiest stuff you’ve ever seen.”

“Yeah, great,” I said, dropping the book on the couch. “One of these days I’m going to have to come in here and scrape your ass off the walls with a spatula.”

Lonnie grabbed a greasy rag and wiped his hands. My ears still rang from his little demonstration, and my nostrils were filled with what I now recognized as the stench of ammonia with a faint burning tinge added. Sort of like being at the landfill the day they burn the Pampers.

Lonnie reached into a dented, thirty-year-old Kelvinator and pulled out a beer. “You going down to Shelby ville with me?”

“Ain’t got the time this time, bro.”

“I picked up the early edition of the
Banner
. Saw your name. You sure you don’t want to get out of town for a while?” Lonnie popped the top and passed it over to me. I held out a hand to decline. He shrugged, lifted the can to his lips.

“Not this time. I mostly came by for information.”

“Information?”

“Yeah. About the murder.”

“You got any sense, you’ll go to Shelby ville with me. Pick up that Trans Am. Drive back with the T-tops off. Have yourself a good time. Forget that murder shit. You look like death warmed over now. Don’t make it permanent.”

“Fine talk from a guy who sets off bombs in his office.”

Lonnie lifted the can to his lips and downed the rest of it in one gulp. He tossed the can behind him, into the hallway leading back to the bedroom, then let loose with a long, deep belch.

“Okay, what you want?”

“That doctor who was murdered. He worked at the University Med Center, was on the medical school faculty. His wife said he was a real compulsive gambler. Owed his soul to a bookie.”

“So?”

“So who’d it be? Who controls the action out 21st Avenue, Division, the West End Area?”

Lonnie tightened his lips and furrowed his brow. That meant he knew but was wrestling over whether or not to tell me.

“You not careful, you gonna get in over your head. You know that?”

“I’ll watch myself.”

“Okay, it’s your funeral. You know where Division splits off Broadway?”

“Yeah, there at the triangle.”

“Right, so you go down Division to where the restaurants are. That vegetarian hippie place on the left, you know where it is?”

“Those are the Seventh-Day Adventists, Lonnie. Not vegetarian hippies.”

“Whatever. There’s a little market there. You know, convenience market. Beer, bread, milk, cigarettes. Guy owns it, his name is Hayes. Bubba Hayes. He’s about three-hundred pounds, tattoos, Brylcreem, used to be a preacher. Guess he got to backsliding. Anyway, he’s got the action for the whole area.”

“So if Fletcher was betting, that’s who he’d be making book with?”

“If it wasn’t Bubba, Bubba’d know who it was. He runs the whole area. Got a bodyguard, ex-pro football player. Used to play for the Falcons. Name’s Mr. Kennedy.”

“Okay,” I said. “Mr. Kennedy. I’ll keep an eye out for him. All I want to do is talk to the dude. See if what Rachel was telling me was right.”

Lonnie got off the stool he’d climbed onto, came over to me, and poked me in the shoulder.

“You watch your ass,” he said. “You’re a good driver. I’d hate to have to replace you.”

“Don’t go dramatic on me, Lonnie. This is real life, not TV. I ain’t Jim Rockford, and this ain’t
Columbo
. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, picking up
The Poor Man’s James
Bond
and flipping through the pages, “you be careful all the same. I hear tell Bubba Hayes is a real Mustache Pete, a forreal freaking gangster.”

The Reverend Bubba Hayes, or Mustache Pete, or whoever the hell he was, was going to have to wait awhile. I needed to check the answering machine in my office, then get over to see Rachel as quickly as possible. Down Gallatin Road, a car pulling out of the Taco Bell got rammed by some old guy smoking a green cigar in a rusted blue Cadillac Coupe de Ville. That took twenty minutes to get past, and then there was a procession coming out of the funeral home. By the time I’d gone a dozen blocks from Lonnie’s, I was dripping wet and the Ford was overheating.

For ten minutes, I drove around inside the three-story parking garage on Seventh Avenue, the one where my monthly rent gives me the right to look for a spot. Finally, on the top level, I found one subcompact slot left. I wedged the Escort into the tiny space and crawled out between the two cars. I made my way, sweaty and dizzy from exhaust fumes, down the concrete slab ramp to the street.

Cars were lined up bumper to bumper in all four directions at the intersection of Seventh Avenue and Church Street. Horns blared, sweat poured, engines belched steam in the summer heat. Southern Fried Gridlock.

I tiptoed between two cars out into the middle of the street, then jackrabbited onto the sidewalk just as two blue-haired little old ladies in a Chrysler New Yorker scraped a
NO PARKING—TOW IN ZONE
sign trying to get around the jam. I caught a glimpse of the driver’s face as the car went by: thick glasses, too much rouge, false teeth bared like a dog in combat.

I walked into my dusty, rundown building, past the watch
repairman’s office, and climbed the stairs to my office one shuffle at a time. By the time I got to the top floor, I was ready for another trip to the emergency room. Down the hall, I could hear Slim and Ray arguing over whether the second line in the chorus ought to be “Hey, baby I’m coming back home!” or “Hey, darlin’, you’re on your own.…” I decided to forego dropping in for my usual chat.

I silently opened my office door and quickly slid inside. With a little luck, no one would bother me for a while. I was feeling pretty antisocial, what with a lousy night’s sleep, a bum ankle, and an aching set of butterfly closures on the crown of my head.

The red light on the answering machine was firing away like popcorn in a hot-air popper. I loosened my tie even further and opened the top two buttons on my shirt. If I pulled my necktie down any lower, I was going to trip over it. I settled back in the chair as the answering machine began reciting.

Message number one was from my old newspaper: “Hey, listen, friend. I know we’re probably the last people on earth you want to talk to, but we could sure use an interview with you on the Fletcher killing.” The voice was Ed Gibson’s, the city editor. Ed had been sorry to let me go; had, in fact, always been decent to me. He was told to fire me. They made him do it. He’s got three kids, was only doing his job. I understood.

Screw him.

The second message was from Channel 4, the third from Channel 2, the fourth from Channel 2, the fifth from Channel 2, the sixth from Channel 5, which finally got through when Channel 2 gave up.

Three more messages from the media types, then Rachel’s voice: “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day, and you’re phone’s either busy or I get this blasted machine. Please call me.”

I opened my notebook and flipped through the
F
s. I punched her number in, then waited through two rings.

“Hello?”

“Yes, Rachel Fletcher, please.”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Fletcher’s unavailable right now.”

I could hear the voice fade as the hand on the other end of the line headed toward a hangup.

“Wait!” I yelled. “Could you tell her it’s Harry Denton. I’m returning her call.”

Too late. A loud click, then a dial tone. Wonder who that was? Sounded like an older woman. Probably figured I was another reporter. My mail was still in a pile on the floor where the postman had stuffed it through the mail slot. I’d picked up the stack: my liability insurance bill, phone bill, and six pieces of junk mail. Whoopee …

Nothing to do but deal with it. For some reason or other, I was hesitant to go to Rachel’s house. Maybe it’s because I failed her. Maybe Walter was right; she was available now. Was I sleazy enough to go after a grieving widow? Or maybe she wasn’t grieving at all. I didn’t want to think about that alternative.

The prospect of climbing back to the top of the Mount Everest of parking garages was no erotic fantasy either. But it was nearing late afternoon, and the rule around here is that rush hour starts right after lunch, and the longer you wait, the worse the traffic’s going to be.

I threw my coat over one shoulder and walked back out into the heat. At the intersection, the play was still the same, only the actors had changed. I slithered between the bumpers and the blaring horns and made my way over to the parking garage. The Ford had been there barely long enough to cool down. And now we were going out into the mother of all traffic jams.

It wasn’t that bad, actually. Thirty minutes later, I made the turn off Hillsboro road onto Golf Club Lane. This part of town was my old hangout, back when I was married and had a job making steady money. That seemed like a hundred years ago, and I realized that one of the reasons I’d been putting off seeing Rachel was that I simply no longer felt comfortable on this side of the tracks.

The houses lining Golf Club Lane aren’t mansions, but
try telling that to the Laotian families on the other side of the river who live fifteen to a two-bedroom duplex that doesn’t meet codes. I slowed, watching the numbers on the houses, until I got to a huge black mailbox with the Fletcher’s address in proper chrome figures.

Holy Hannah, doctors do well, don’t they? A long black driveway stretched maybe two hundred feet up a well-coiffed lawn to a three-story brick house with a chimney at each end. A screened-in front porch on the left side of the house was bigger than my whole apartment. Wrought-iron yard furniture off to the left sat in the middle of a tiny, well-kept English garden. Something the Newport crowd would appreciate.