Fools Rush In (The Sam McCain Mysteries Book 7) (11 page)

We both smiled at that one.

“He can be a real asshole sometimes.”

“I find that hard to believe, Ray. Seemed like a real nice fella to me.”

He moved a few feet closer for a better look at me. “No offense, but you sound kinda crazy.”

And I suppose I was. In a business like mine, whether I’m investigating for myself or the judge, you meet people who do their best to belittle you any way they can. I used to be able to deal with it. But as I got older I got tired of insults, innuendos, jibes. And when I got tired enough, I’d push back. These were almost always verbal battles.

But being punched out and dragged across a parking lot for the entertainment of a bunch of bikers—that was a special kind of debasement.

What I should’ve done was find a phone and call out the gendarmes to arrest him. And that had been my first impulse. But then I remembered that not only had I been humiliated, I hadn’t even done my job, which was to ask him about being spotted at the murder scene the other night.

Ray said, “Some of them’re afraid he’ll get sent back to prison.”

“Aw, that’d be too bad now, wouldn’t it?”

“They said to tell you he was only havin’ some fun was all.”

“A growing boy needs to have some fun, doesn’t he?” And right then I knew that I did sound crazy. That in my voice you could hear rage and tears that I couldn’t control. “I’ll tell you what, Ray. You go back in there and tell him to come out here by himself and we’ll talk.”

“You mean you might not get him sent up again?”

“We’ll see how it goes. Now you go back in there and tell him.”

He was still studying my face. He was still sensing how near being unhinged I was.

“Well, I’ll go tell him.”

“By himself, remember. And nobody else is to come out until I open the door. You got that?”

“I’m sorry this happened, Mr. McCain. I truly am.”

He stared at me a little more and then started working his pained way back to the tavern.

I flipped the trunk open, got what I needed, and when he went inside, positioned myself next to the door.

I knew I wouldn’t have much time. There was a back door, and a few of them would undoubtedly sneak out to back him up.

Like the good thug he was, he let some time go by. Get me nervous, uncertain, so he’d have the advantage when he strode through the door.

But I was neither nervous nor uncertain. I was crazy pissed is what I was.

And so when he was less than four feet from the door closing behind him, I moved.

He’d been looking straight ahead for me. By the time he decided to look to his left, I was bringing the tire iron down on the side of his head.

He did a cartoon take. He staggered backwards but for a second there he looked as if he was going to shrug it off, the way those professional wrestlers do after the opponent hits them with a chair.

He even gave me a little professional wrestler grin. But then blood bloomed on the spot where I’d hit him and his eyes got hazy and he collapsed. Just hit the ground in a pile of unwashed flesh, tattoos, and now free-flowing blood.

I just had time to drag him over to my ragtop before three of his buddies came running along the side of the building.

But they were too late. I had my .45 jammed into his face. He was still unconscious, sitting on the ground with his back to my passenger door.

“You boys go back inside. This is between us. If you stay inside for fifteen minutes, I won’t file any charges. I won’t even mention it to his parole officer. But if I see anybody before the fifteen minutes is up, I’ll have the cops out here and they’ll bust every one of you. Now get back inside.”

They had to sneer and threaten and make a show of it. But they knew they didn’t have any choice. One of them, the one most likely to have studied under Gandhi, flipped me the bird just before he disappeared into the stench inside.

It hadn’t taken much to calm me down. I’d hit him hard enough to draw blood and the sight of that blood was enough to pacify me.

As he came back to Planet Earth, I said, “Now I want you to tell me what you were doing out at Neville’s the other night.”

“Go to hell.”

Then I learned that I wasn’t quite as pacified as I’d thought. This time I pistol-slapped him right across the face and broke his nose. I hadn’t intended to, but fortune of war and all that.

He started crying. Not from the pain, I was pretty sure. But from the humiliation. He would have to go back inside and explain to them how somebody who weighed less than his left arm had knocked him out and then busted his nose.

“You’re gonna pay for this, McCain. You mother—”

And then I grabbed his hair and gave it a twist and raised him an inch or two from the ground. “Why were you out at Neville’s the other night?”

“I wasn’t! I wasn’t there!”

Screeching his words now. A good sign.

I gave his greasy hair another twist and then slammed his head against the door.

And then he collapsed. Emotionally. I let go of his hair. His head slumped. The blood was running faster and thicker from his head. He was snuffling up air through his busted nose. Crying and choking sometimes.

“You tell me the truth, I won’t press charges against you. And I mean the truth right now.”

“You bastard,” he said through the phlegm and blood.

“That’s not a good start. You want to try again?”

I was just about to step on his hand—sadism is a lot more fun than it sounds—when he said, The pictures.”

“The what?”

“The pictures. The photographs.”

“What photographs?”

“That we paid Neville to take of Phelps.”

“Phelps the cop?”

“Yeah.”

His nose was getting bloodier. I dug in my back pocket and pulled out my handkerchief. Tossed it on his lap. “Christmas came early.”

I gave him a few minutes to do what he could with the handkerchief. “This really hurts, man.”

I wondered how many innocents had said that to him over the years after he pounded on them.

“What about Phelps?”

“He busted Charlie Eagle for grass.”

“Yeah, I heard about that. So what? He was just doing his job.”

“Bullshit, he was doing his job, man. He caught two of us smoking grass one night sittin’ on our bikes downtown and you know what he did? Took our grass and smoked it himself. Never charged us.”

He tried to shake his head but misery cragged his face instantly. “We knew Phelps was seein’ this Mexican chick over by the rail yards. Her old man is a switchman, works nights. We had Neville take some pictures of Phelps goin’ in the door at her place. We were gonna use them against Phelps, see if he’d tell the DA that maybe he made a mistake, you know, with Charlie Eagle.”

I was amazed at his ignorance. “The trial’s already been scheduled. If Phelps backed out now, the DA would know that somebody got to him.”

He angled his head up. Between the blood and the bruises he was one sorry biker.

“So that’s why I was at Neville’s, but him and that colored boy were dead when I got there.”

“You find the pictures?”

“Too scared, man. Somebody sees me there, they’ll nail me for them bein’ dead for sure.” He snorted. “I knew somebody’d get to Neville someday.”

“Why?”

“Why? He took pictures of people all the time. Secret shit, I mean. He’d hang out in different spots at night and see things and hear things and then he’d start following somebody, see if the rumors was true. And if they was, he’d start takin’ pictures.”

Good old Neville. I’d congratulated myself on him staying out of trouble, thinking that he’d learned his lesson just the way young men do every night on TV. Crime Doesn’t Pay and all that. Maybe burglary or car theft or armed robbery didn’t pay because you could get caught so easily.

But blackmail was a more subtle crime, one infinitely more difficult to prove—because the blackmail-ee had a vested interest in protecting the blackmailer.

“And that’s the truth, man. Everything I just said. Now, was you telling the truth, McCain? About not tellin’ my parole officer?”

“Far as I’m concerned, we’re even up.”

“I got the worst of it.”

“Good.” I didn’t smile. “Now get your ass up. I want to get out of here.”

“Good thing you work for the judge, McCain. Otherwise I’d get up right now and beat your ass bloody.”

“Jeez, man, and here I thought we were friends.”

I stopped by my office to see if any money had come in. My body was a universe of pain, large and small. While I was going through the mail, Dink called.

He said, “It wasn’t as much fun as I figured it would be.”

“Well, I’m sorry you didn’t get to commit a felony, Dink.”

“I got to work early just like you told me so I could get one of the maids to let me in his room, see—”

That had been my plan. Get Dink into James Neville’s room and see what he could find.

“But you know what?”

“What?”

“I didn’t even have to find a maid to con into it.”

“No?”

“Rosemary—the one with the lazy eye?—she was in there when I got there.”

“Good old Rosemary. So what did you find?”

“He’s got a lot of dirty magazines.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And a lot of socks. He must have twenty pairs.”

“Good for him.”

“I know the kind of thing you wanted me to find. And I only found one thing. It’s this brochure.”

“Brochure?”

“Yeah. It’s pretty chintzy-lookin’. It’s for a photography studio. The Neville Brothers Studio, it says.”

It had been well worth the trip. “Dink, that’s great.”

“I wanted to steal it—you know, I wanted to get a
little
something out of it. But then I remembered you said only go in when a maid lets you in and don’t take nothin’ out of it.”

“I appreciate it, Dink.”

“The wife thinks I’m goin’ to prison.”

“I’ll do my best for you, Dink. I just wish we didn’t have to go up against the same judge.”

He paused. “Listen, anytime you want me to sneak in someplace for you, just give me a call. I don’t think you appreciate the full range of my talents yet, McCain.”

Lord God Almighty.

“I’m sure I don’t, Dink. I’m sure I don’t.”

T
HANKS TO THE NEW
procedures that Jane Sykes had forced Cliffie to follow, the entire area around Neville’s cabin was now set off as a crime scene. Nobody was allowed past the sawhorses that formed a square around the area.

The day was closing as I got out of my ragtop. The birdsong and the long shadows and the purpling clouds were as lonesome as a Hank Williams song. I brought along the outsized flashlight I’d bought a year ago at Western Auto.

I started inside the cabin. The darkroom looked even worse than it had the night of the murders, everything busted up in a frantic search. And now I knew for what.

The whole idea of blackmail had a big-city feel to it. Every other episode of
Perry Mason
used it as a device and every once in a while the
Chicago Trib
would run a crime story that involved it, though it was usually described as extortion.

I worked till near dark. I pretty much knew I wouldn’t find anything. Richie Neville had been a smart young man. The sort of crime he was committing meant that he had to be careful where he hid the photographs he used. And that meant that he probably didn’t leave them in his cabin. But it had to be checked.

Weariness from being dragged all over the parking lot had begun to sneak up on me. I needed a drink and a shower, and then a meal.

I was just leaving the cabin when I saw a stack of business envelopes on an overstuffed chair, one of the few pieces not to be knocked over. My first thought was that one of the police officers had probably gone through the envelopes. But then I remembered Cliffie was in charge. I sat down with my flashlight and went to work and came away with one interesting fact. I extricated a monthly statement from one of the six bank envelopes and got back to my ragtop.

The meal turned out to be a fried egg sandwich, a glass of V8, and a slice of birthday cake I’d brought home about a week ago and kept in the refrigerator.

I kept wanting to give Jane Sykes a call. Officially, I had business to discuss with her. Unofficially, I just wanted to hear her laugh. I enjoyed sitting in my apartment with the cats all over me, watching an inane situation comedy and not thinking about Mary and would she ever change her mind and come back to me.

I was thinking about Jane Sykes and wondering if there was any kind of future there.

The shower had been nice—I had a lot more bruises than I’d realized from the dragging—but it hadn’t revived me. Sitting there in my boxers with the cats, I was starting to give in to sleep.

In fact, I was dozing when the phone rang.

Good news—possibly Mary or Jane calling.

Bad news—my dad had had another heart attack.

All these thoughts before I was truly awake. Automatic thoughts.

“Hello.”

“Did I wake you up?”

“No, uh-uh, I was just going over some work.”

“Gee, I hope I get you on the witness stand sometime. You’re a terrible liar. You’d be so easy to break.”

“Thank you for that and all the other compliments.”

“I heard a rumor you had kind of a rough time this afternoon.”

“That’s all it is, Jane. A rumor.”

“So you don’t want anything legal done about it?”

“Not so far. Let’s wait and see what happens.”

With my usual grace I quickly changed the subject.

“What’s the word from the hospital on James Neville?”

“No change. Still unconscious.” Then: “Are those cats in the background?”

“Yes, and cruelly mistreated cats. They haven’t been fed for upwards of twenty minutes.”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “My little kitten died when she was only six months old. I’m afraid to get another one. I don’t want to go through that heartbreak again. You should’ve seen her. Gray fur and these sweet little white paws.”

“For a DA, you really have a sentimental side.”

“Whatever you do, don’t tell anybody about it.” Then: “Well, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. ’Night, Sam.”