Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) (8 page)

“That's pretty close.”

He said, “I have my moments. Maybe I'm getting soft in my old age, but I'm inclined to let you off the hook here, mostly because Luster should have known better than to try a foolish stunt like this.” He looked at the body on the bed. “What the hell was he thinking?”

“I was wondering the same thing,” I said. “He didn't seem confident of a good outcome from the police. And he
did ask me to bring Beckett to him first, assuming I ever found him.”

Wince sucked around on that one some, looking me in the face.

“Way the boy downstairs tells it, too,” he said. “He says he doesn't know for what, though. Claims Luster never told him.”

“You believe him?”

“You asking private detective questions again?”

“Nope.”

“Good. You're learning. Consider your knuckles rapped. Head on back into the policeman's reunion.”

“There is a cop or two down there.”

“A lot of them, this is their first red ball. I didn't know better, I'd think some of them are actually happy about it.”

“Everybody likes to feel useful.”

“I guess, but their usefulness is a pain in my ass. I'm tripping over three shades of uniform down there, and that's before the press and the local pols even show their faces. I don't even want to think about scene contamination.”

I said, “Then I won't mention that your ambulance parked right where an intruder might have left footprints in all this new mud.”

He smiled, a little sadly, and rubbed a leathery hand at his pelt of gray hair. “I said I don't want to think about it. Go on down now.”

I started for the door. Then I turned and said, “One last thing. I think Beckett and Mays might have been working on a story about the meth trade at the Knight Hawk.”

Wince looked at me, but his face was noncommittal. You get more out of Sheetrock. He said, “Lot of that in the mines these days. Sad business.”

“Yeah, but this might have been something bigger. Knight Hawk's tanks of anhydrous ammonia have been under assault lately. The company's posted armed guards and everything. If you've ever seen those tanks, you know how much ingredient they're holding.”

Wince tried to maintain his neutral expression, but his right eyebrow flicked softly, and I knew I'd told him something he didn't know. Money in the bank, I hoped, if I ever needed it.

“Anyway,” I said, waving my hand and heading back downstairs. He followed after a while, but didn't hang around for more chat. The cops gathered around the stairs, and the ME and his team went up again and came back shortly with Luster's covered body. I waited for them to go out, then went to look for Jonathan but didn't see him anywhere, and his car was gone from the drive. I tried his cell but it went to voicemail, and I clicked off without saying anything. He'd talk when he was able to, I guessed. I walked past the funeral procession and down the hill to my bike. My phone rang. It wasn't Jonathan's number, but I answered it anyway. I shouldn't have. That phone was leading to nothing but woe, and if I'd had any sense I'd have tied it to a brick and thrown it in the lake.

Temple. Of course. “I need to see you right away.”

“Mrs. Beckett—Temple—I'm just as sorry as I can be for your loss. Really I am. But that's a bad idea,” I said. “Actually, it's a terrible one. The police have asked me to steer clear, and from here on that's what I mean to do.”

That failed to make an impression. “Listen to me,” she said, her voice dropping. “The people who killed my father and may have killed my husband—they know about you.”

“Mrs. Beckett . . .”

“Slim, goddamn it. Listen to me. They don't care who you are or what your story is. They don't care that you aren't a private investigator. They don't care what you told the police, and they don't care that you're steering clear. Trust me. You've got a daughter, don't you?”

I froze for a minute. I said, “I've got a daughter.”

She said, “Then they've got a target.”

S
usan opened the door. She was in street clothes again. I don't know why I expected some kind of uniform, but I admit to a degree of disappointment. This time, she had no wordplay for me. She nodded at me and I at her and then she stepped aside silently and I headed into the big sitting room where Temple was waiting, her face in her hands. I stood there until she looked up at me. She'd been crying, but now her face was composed and angry. Her hair was loose on her shoulders, and her blouse was torn a little at the right sleeve and the skin was torn, too, and bleeding. The way the light was, for the first time I saw that the black stone on her finger was a slice of coal, cut into a disk and stamped with an elegant cursive “L.” There might not have been any pictures of the old man in the room, but he was there with us nevertheless, along with the evidence of Temple's grief. There was a mess in the corner, broken glass and an overturned tray and what I guessed were the remains of breakfast. A few of the curtains were torn down.

Temple looked torn down, too. She said, “It wasn't supposed to turn out like this.”

“I can't think of anything that is.”

“Do you want a drink?”

“I sure don't.”

She slapped the tops of her legs twice and stood suddenly and walked to a mini bar I hadn't noticed before. It was roughly the size of a small yacht, so I'm not sure how I missed it. She took down two heavy crystal glasses and a bottle of something
brown and filled them, neat. She drank one of them and refilled it. She picked up both glasses and walked over and set one in front of me and returned to her seat with the other.

“You don't have to drink it,” she said. “But at least now I'm not drinking alone.”

“Maybe you could have one with Susan instead.”

“Susan doesn't drink.”

I sighed and pushed the glass a little farther away. I didn't want to get too close to it. “Mrs. Beckett, where is your husband?”

“Temple,” she said, “I want to be called Temple. And I honestly don't know.”

“Dammit, if you're playing some kind of game . . .”

She said again, “I honestly don't know.” She sat there a moment, quite still, taking in her new reality. It had closed up around her all of a sudden, like a steel trap. Life had a way of doing that. You can plan for it, plan against it, hoard your shekels, stockpile bullets or bombs or quivers of arrow. And then life happens, and you blunder right into it like a dope. Temple shuddered and drained her second drink and said, “You . . . You saw him?”

I'd seen him. She nodded her head in jerks.

“You think I should be crying, don't you?” she said.

“I don't think anything,” I said. “People mourn in their own way.”

“That's just something to say.”

“Sure.”

She said, “My relationship with my father wasn't good. I guess you noticed.”

“I don't know.”

She thought I was just being polite and she didn't like it.
She frowned at me but pressed on. “I don't think he thought much of me. I'm pretty sure he didn't. And I know I often didn't think much of him. He was more or less a stranger to me when I was a girl, and after my mom died . . .” She looked up at me and shrugged and left it at that. She said, “Your father was something once, wasn't he?”

“I guess he was.”

“Did you get along with him?”

“You have to know a person first to find that out, and I never did.”

“He was distant?”

“He was a sonofabitch.”

She didn't have anything else to ask about my father. Just as well. She turned her eyes to look at the door. “The police left just before I called you. They're going to post a patrol around the house, day and night. Cops with guns. They think I'm in danger.”

“You might be,” I said. “Maybe it'd be best if you went somewhere else. Stayed with family or friends for a while.”

“They seemed to think so, too,” she said. “But I'm not going. Besides, there isn't anybody.”

“What about Jonathan?”

“You're kidding, right?”

“A hotel then?”

“You're kidding, ri—”

“Or maybe just get out of town.”

“I'm not going.”

That was that. I wanted to argue with her about the wisdom of sticking around, but I'll be honest, I was weary and in no mood for arguing. Trouble does that to you, I was finding.

“And you say you've had no word from Guy?”

“None.”

“But you know what he was working on before he disappeared. You knew before and didn't say anything,” I said. “I wish you had.”

“I know.”

“You told me that he and Mays were working on a piece about the meth trade?”

“I think so.”

I threw up my hands. “Temple . . .”

“Dammit, I
think
so. I don't know for sure. Guy and I . . . Guy and I didn't talk much about his work. I'll be honest with you . . .”

“Never too late to try something new.”

She ignored me.

“I'll be honest with you. Guy wasn't actually living here when he disappeared.”

“He wasn't living here?”

“Not actually.”

“Not actually?”

“No.”

I thought about it. I said, “With Mays?”

“How did you know?”

“Just a guess. He doesn't have any family, and if it were another woman I doubt you'd be mentioning it now at all.”

“Probably not.”

I said, “Their story, the meth story. Who were they looking at?”

“First, I need you to understand something. The pension. Your pension. My father was killed before he could secure it. That kind of thing takes time, and he didn't have the time.”

I just stood there looking at her. I knew what was coming. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. It was like blundering onto the tracks and turning around and realizing the train was bearing down on you, too late.

I said, “But you do.”

She stepped to me and pressed her hands on me and said, “But I do. And I will, Slim. You've got to believe me. I do and I can and I will. I own the Knight Hawk now. And there's only one thing I want.”

“Let me guess.”

“Find who did this.”

“You know,” I said, “funny thing is, I was on my way to your father's to resign.”

“I don't blame you. But you won't quit now. You don't strike me as the type who likes getting jerked around.”

I said, “Oh, I don't know.” But damned if she wasn't right. I was involved and that's all there was to it. I thought for the hundredth time of Round-Face and his promises of violence. I thought for the millionth time of that pension. If there were going to be dead bodies, the least that could happen is I could get that damn pension. I said, “Before I can press forward—assuming I can—you'll have to tell me who your husband and Mays were looking at.”

“A lot of people, at least at first, but one name kept coming up. Jump. Jump something. Something like that.”

“Jump Down?”

She said, “That's it. You know him?”

“Yeah, I know him. Everybody knows him. And once again I'm changing my mind about this mess. Jump Down, he's a vampire. Actually, he's worse than a vampire because he's real. Mrs. Beckett . . .”

“Temple.”

“Temple, I'm not sure what you want from me. Even if I did know, I'm not sure there's anything I could do to help you. Fact is, I'm pretty sure there's not. I can tell you this, though. If your husband and Mays were looking to tangle with Jump Down and his crew, you really are in danger. Those people are killers. They're the kind of killers that other killers are afraid of. You should tell the police everything you know and let them handle it, because now that I know what's going on here I am taking my family and running for the hills.”

I got up and turned to go.

“Wait, Slim,” she said. “It's worse than that.”

I shook my head.

She lifted one of her eyebrows. She said, “No?”

“No. Because nothing's worse than that.”

“It is. It's worse,” she insisted. “Do you know a man named Roy Galligan?”

“I know of him. His name's coming up a lot these days.”

“He's . . . he was my father's greatest business rival.”

“I know all that,” I said. “He owns the derelict mine up the hill there above your house.”

“And the working mine across the gap from it.”

“The King Coal,” I said. I knew it. My pal Jeep Mabry worked there.

Temple looked at me with a grim mouth and said, “Galligan's involved.”

“Involved? What do you mean? Involved in what?”

She said, “Slim, Roy Galligan has got his hand in the meth trade at the Knight Hawk. He's in it up to his scrawny neck. That's what Guy and Dwayne were working on—the connection between Jump Down and Galligan. I think my
father found out what was going on and confronted Galligan, and Galligan had him murdered.”

L
ike the late Matthew Luster, Roy Galligan was an Illinois native and a true son of Little Egypt. It makes a man proud, having homegrown villains like that. His grandfather founded the first coking plant in Stotler County, and his father was such a big shot that he turned down pleas from both political parties to run for governor. On his twenty-first birthday, Roy's daddy had given him his first coal mine, a Union County scratchback, and he'd been in mining ever since.

Sometime in the early sixties, at the height of his industry, Galligan managed to cobble together a six-outfit string; it was too small to compete with the big conglomerates but more than enough to keep himself on the map. In '78, he made a bundle selling out to Amax, OBC, and Zeigler. He kept the King Coal and one or two of the smaller shops where he could mine coal and be left alone to run things his way without anyone paying him much mind. It was a hobby, I guess, or more likely it was just in his blood.

Those were good days for Galligan, but lately the pendulum of his happy fortune had swung the other way. Mounting operational costs and environmental laws, which guys like Roy hated more than they hated labor unions, were slowly bleeding him out of the business. The King Coal wasn't the last small outfit in Little Egypt, but in the past twenty years or so its breed had become increasingly rare. Pretty soon they'd be extinct, and then the mining would be done by remote control, by faraway people who wouldn't give two shits how they left the land, people who knew how to use the federal courts to their best advantage. Even with the sorts of restrictions most outfits
had to work under, a federal suit could be tied up until all the complainants were in the cold, hard ground, and their problems passed on to a younger, less refractory generation, one that'd been taught to live with disappointment.

So he was something of a wounded animal, and if he really was involved in this business, I thought, I'd have to run a lot farther than the hills until I felt safe.

I
t was just past noon when I left Temple's house. I'll tell you, I was hoping never to see it again. Or her. I knew it wouldn't be that easy, but that's where my head was at. The morning's events had shaken me to my socks. Actually, it had turned my socks back into raw wool and the raw wool back into a sheep, and the sheep had bitten me on the ass.

It wasn't raining for a change, but now it was cold. A front had bullied its way in from the north, and a wintry change had overtaken the weather. I zipped up my jacket and changed to the heavier gloves I keep in the saddlebag just in case. Cold on a motorcycle is something you don't want to mess with. Even moderately cool air will slice right through you, and in wintertime hypothermia sets in so fast you'll still be wondering what the fuss is all about when they're cutting off your fingers and putting them in a jar of formaldehyde. Still, I needed some time and space to think, so I rode east to Wolf Creek Road and then south around the edge of the swollen lake until I found old Hampton Cemetery.

It's a quiet place, very small, and surrounded on all sides by red oaks and a few crooked silver maples. I got off the bike and walked through their shadows and fallen leaves until I found a familiar grave and sat down near it, not knowing what to think.

I don't think I'd ever been so confused or out of sorts. I didn't know where to turn or where to run or even whether running was an option. That was a lot of not knowing, I'll grant you. At least one thing was sure, though—guys like me didn't go up against people like Roy Galligan, and when we tried, we usually found ourselves buried in earthen dams or filling out a bag of dog food in some backwoods general store. It wasn't a happy thought, but it was the one that stuck with me.

After a while, I said good-bye, apologized for not visiting enough, and got back on the bike and rode away. I was up the road a few miles when I pulled over again and took out my cell. I called Jeep Mabry first. That was a terrible call to have to make, but it was maybe more pleasant than the one I made next, to Peggy. Then I rode into Herrin and pulled in at Hungry's on Main. I went inside and sat at the counter with some coffee. After a while, Peggy came in.

She sat next to me and ordered a coffee for herself. I asked for a refill. Neither of us spoke while we waited. After a long while the waitress came back carrying the dirty carafe, explaining that she'd had to put on a fresh pot. After she left, Peggy looked at me.

“Well?”

“Coffee sucks.”

“Now's really not a time to be funny.”

“Sorry.”

She sighed. “So let's have it.”

We had it.

When I was finished, she said, “Jesus fried eggs.”

“That's one way to say it.”

“They killed Matt Luster.”

“Someone did.”

“Well, that'll lead tonight's news.”