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

But he didn’t look that bad.

His right arm was obviously broken. He was bleeding through a busted nose and ripped-up lips. And his left foot had somehow lost its shoe. But no human hamburger.

“Take over. I’ll call for an ambulance.” O’Brien started running back to his car.

“Stay back.”

The crowd was small for now. Maybe fifteen people from cars and the DQ. In a few minutes it would look like a movie opening.

Comments:

“Is he dead?”

“He looks dead.”

“Hell, he isn’t dead.”

“Oh, yeah, what’re you, a doctor now?”

I knelt next to him. His eyes flickered open a few times, but despite the moans, I wasn’t sure he was conscious.

I checked his wrist pulse and his neck pulse.

“How’s his pulse, mister?”

Might as well answer. “Pretty good. Better than I would’ve thought, in fact.”

O’Brien, breathless, sweaty, was back. “Ambulance on the way.” He haunched down next to me. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re sitting at the Dairy Queen talking to him and you don’t know?”

I didn’t want to discuss it with eavesdroppers around.

A siren worked its way from the hospital five blocks away, that sad scary sound. The nuns always had us say a prayer for the person in need whenever we heard a siren. Probably not all that bad an idea.

Two more uniformed cops.

“Let’s go back to our cars,” I said to O’Brien. I wasn’t going to tell him much, just enough to explain why I didn’t know the injured man’s name.

By the time we got back to the DQ, he seemed to be satisfied that this was all the result of some guy following me around in the white Valiant for reasons I didn’t understand.

He said, when we came into the stark, bug-swarmed fluorescent light of the DQ, “Think I’ll have a cone. You want one?”

“Nah. Got an appointment I need to keep.”

“Guess I won’t give you a ticket, after all.”

“Appreciate it.”

And then I was gone.

T
HE HANNITY HOUSE WAS
one of the new ranch styles that sat in scornful superiority above all the little Levittown-like boxes in the valley below.

The boxes had been built back in ’49 and ’50 when the American Dream everybody had fought for in the war seemed to be coming true.

But in a decade, the boxes had begun to show the perils of houses built so hastily and so ineptly. The pastel exteriors that had shone like dewy flowers in morning light had faded. Windows had dislodged from cheap frames and sliding tracks. And the yards the developers had promised never quite came to look like yards, just thin stretches of grass on dirt.

But moon shadow was merciful. As my ragtop climbed the winding hill leading to the imposing homes at the top, I was able to remember how much I’d always wanted to live in one of those boxes when I was in my early teens. We’d moved from the Knolls, where the poorest of working families lived, to the glamour of a housing development. I could still remember a kid telling me that many of the homes there had actual extension telephones. That’s right, more than one phone in the house so you could talk to your friends—and hopefully that someday girlfriend—in the privacy of your own room. For some stupid reason the extension phone had struck me as an invention much superior to that of the airplane or medical advances.

I’d never dreamed big enough to think that I’d someday live up on the hill above the boxes. The boxes, with a real laundry room for Mom, a basement shop for all of Dad’s tools, and a sunny room for my often sad little sister—who could want more than a housing development house?

A yellow Lincoln was parked in the driveway of the Hannity house. From inside, fairly loud, came Sinatra singing Jerome Kern—as much as I loved rock, I was beginning to learn my American popular composers—and tinny martini laughter.

I pulled up, killed the lights, and then watched as the double garage door ground its way upward, revealing two cars parked inside, one a black Lincoln and one a 1962 buff-blue Chevrolet.

My ragtop sat directly behind the Chevrolet. Nick Hannity was just about to climb into the Chevrolet when he turned and saw my car.

In the grainy garage light, almost in silhouette, he looked bigger than ever. Football hero, tormentor of Lucy Williams and David Leeds, and now insolent swaggerer making his way to my car.

No way was I going to let him trap me inside. I opened the door and got out.

As he approached, he said, “You’re trespassing, asshole.”

“Wrong-o, Hannity. I’m a licensed investigator and I’m investigating. Legally.”

“Yeah? Well, then I’m gonna illegally throw your ass off of my property.”

When I was growing up, even though I was small, I always figured for some balmy reason that I was just naturally stronger and tougher than kids younger than me. And most of them seemed to go along with it. I wasn’t a bully, but in the way of the playground and the backyard, I usually got younger kids to do what I told them to.

Then one sixth-grade autumn day when I was walking home with my friend Carl Sears, generally known as a puncher, some stupid kid in fifth grade started mouthing off behind us. His prey seemed to be Carl. I wondered if the stupid kid knew who Carl was.

Couple more blocks, Carl just sort of laughing at it. And then Carl turning without warning and hooking a right hand into the kid’s face with enough force to knock the stupid kid back a good three or four feet.

An easy, clean victory for Carl.

Except it wasn’t. Because the kid picked himself up and proceeded to beat the holy hell out of Carl, thus ending my personal myth of age mattering in a fight.

Now here was Hannity, a college senior probably four years younger, just about ready to take me apart. Age didn’t matter, my badge didn’t matter, whatever status I had as an associate of Judge Whitney’s didn’t matter.

He was closing in on me and he had every right to think—to know—that I was afraid of him.

He was tough, but he wasn’t subtle. He spent too much time bringing his left hand up. In those seconds I was able to plant the tip of my shoe right in his crotch.

I had the extreme pleasure of watching him fall to the ground, clutch his crotch, and cry out in pain.

“You son of a bitch,” he said. “I’m gonna tell my dad.”

But Dad was already running toward us. He obviously had a keen paternal ear. He’d heard his son’s cry.

As soon as he saw his son on the ground, he let out a yelp that combined fear and rage in equal parts.

But as he leaned down to help his son to his feet, Hannity started the painful climb on his own. “I don’t need any help.”

“What’s going on here, Nick?” Bill Hannity said.

“Ask that asshole over there.”

He looked over at me. He was a beefier version of his beefy son, a financial consultant in Cedar Rapids who tended to dress in California casual as often as possible: sport shirt, custom-fit slacks, and a tan collected from visits to three or four sunny climes a year.

He was also much smoother than his son. “Are you beating up children now, McCain?”

There were two warring groups at the town’s lone country club. One was run by the judge, the other by him.

“Yeah, I usually kick the shit out of ten-year-olds a couple times a week.”

Now that Junior was on his feet, Bill said, “Are you all right, Nick?”

“He really hurt me, Dad.”

Back to me: “What the hell do you think you’re doing, McCain?”

I shrugged: “It was either that or let him take me apart. He started coming at me. I didn’t have a lot of choices.”

“He’s just a college kid.”

“Yeah, and he’s got forty pounds on me and is one of the biggest bullies in town. As you might have guessed, since he’s been in court four or five times on assault charges.”

Nick, even though he was still wincing from time to time, started toward me. But my words had cooled Bill off at least temporarily.

“What are you doing on my property?”

“Investigating. I’m licensed, you’ll remember.”

“Damned Esme.” He shook his sleek gray head. “Investigating what, may I ask?”

“Trying to find out if your son was involved in the murders of the two men last night.”

“That colored boy? My God, McCain, what the hell would my son have to do with that?”

“He has a history of harassing Leeds.”

“You’re a liar. And besides, I was with my girlfriend Nancy Adams last night.” Nick started at me again. Bill put a formidable restraining arm across his son’s chest.

“Be quiet, Nick. What’re you talking about, McCain?”

I told him what Lucy had told me, about how his son and Rob Anderson had treated Leeds on several occasions.

“He’s lying, Dad.”

“There’s a witness,” I said.

“Nick wouldn’t do anything like that. He’s got a temper but—”

“Tell that to Lucy Williams. She knows better.”

“That bitch,” Nick said.

Bill Hannity’s expression changed. He seemed to consider the possibility, for the first time, that maybe something was going on here.

“Go in the house, Nick.”

“Dad, this little jerk kicked me in the crotch.”

“In the house, Nick. Now.”

His quiet authority impressed me. He’d handled himself pretty well, considering that he’d found his son writhing on the driveway.

Nick gave me the big bad glare and muttered all the usual curses just loudly enough that I could hear them. But then he turned and hobbled his way back to the house. I hadn’t meant to kick him that hard but I probably wasn’t going to cry myself to sleep about it.

Bill Hannity took a cigarette from the pack of Camels in his blue sport shirt, flamed it with a golden shaft of expensive lighter, and said, “Is he really in trouble?”

“Right now it’s hard to say.”

He made a face. “That damned temper of his. I suppose I was just as bad when I was his age. But you didn’t have to kick him that hard.”

“He didn’t have to charge me, either.”

He took a drag off his cigarette and blew the smoke up toward the clean nuggets of stars. This was the air of privilege up here, the warmth and safety of the lights in the wide windows of the ranch house, the expensive cars on the drive, and again the swagger of rich-people laughter fluttering up into the sky like sleek golden birds.

“I’ll talk to him. Do I need a lawyer yet?”

“See what Nick says first.”

He arced his cigarette into the air with all the finesse of a street-corner punk. A meteor shower erupted when cigarette met lawn.

He put his hand to his head and sighed. “A white girl who comes from a good family going out with a colored boy. It had to be trouble. It had to be.”

He didn’t shake my hand but he chucked me on the arm and said, “Thanks for being honest with me, McCain.”

Then he went back inside with his own class of people.

T
HERE’S A SMALL CAFE
half a block from the courthouse that, at night anyway, resembles the cafe made famous by Edward Hopper. You rarely see more than two people at the counter and I don’t recall ever seeing anybody occupy any of the four booths. The man in the white T-shirt and apron behind the counter speaks a language nobody’s ever quite been able to identify. And the faded posters on the walls advertise obscure singers from the ’30s who appeared at a dance hall closed down in the late ’40s.

I go there sometimes when I can’t sleep and I can’t even tell you why. The old songs on the jukebox, the silent people sipping coffee at the counter, the counterman talking angrily on the phone in that strange language—it’s our own little corner of the Twilight Zone.

Tonight, though, I got a surprise. Not only were there at least six people at the counter, there was also somebody occupying one of the booths. And that was the second surprise. The occupant was none other than the new district attorney, Jane Sykes.

She wore a white silk blouse and a navy blue suit. With her golden hair swept back into a chignon and a cigarette burning in the ashtray, she had a certain chic that didn’t get in the way of her melancholy aura.

And there was yet another surprise. When I got to her booth, carrying the cup of coffee I’d bought, I saw the title of the book she was reading:
The Stranger
by Albert Camus.

“Miss Sykes.”

An expression of irritation drew her chic face tight. She’d been engrossed in the book.

“Yes?” Then: “Oh.” Then a long and silken hand angled up toward me. I took it and we shook. “You’re Sam McCain.”

“Yes.”

“Please. Sit down.”

“Looks as if I’ve dragged you away from your reading.”

“You did.” The smile was a beam that brought peace and wisdom to the entire universe. “But sit down and we’ll talk lawyer stuff.”

“You always work this late?” I said as I sat down.

“My first eight years were in the Cook County office. You’ve heard of Chicago? Seven days of twelve hours a day sometimes. This is nice so far. Only a couple of those twelve-hour days.” She raised her cup as if in a toast. “Plus the coffee’s better here.”

“You actually like this place?”

“You know who Edward Hopper is?”

I laughed. “That’s who I think of every time I walk in here.”

“I don’t know much about art but I had a husband who did. And there was a traveling Hopper show at the Art Institute for a month. I went every day. It was like a religious experience.”

“Same way here.”

“He explained something to me—about myself.” She smiled that smile again. “The trouble is I can’t articulate it, what he explained to me. Not even to myself.”

I must have looked transfixed. I sure felt that way.

“Want me to read your mind, Sam?”

“My mind?”

“Yes, I’m pretty sure you have one.” She tapped a long, red-tipped finger against her perfect forehead. “Want me to read it?”

“Uh, sure.”

“You’re thinking how could anybody with the name Sykes know anything about Edward Hopper.”

“Hey, c’mon.” But I knew I was flushing. Of course I’d had that thought two or three times since sitting down here. “Why would I think anything like that?”

“Because my family has its share of dim bulbs, as I’ll admit. Not to mention criminals. But they’re not stupid, they’re just uneducated. And they’re uneducated because they’re too lazy to learn. They look at ‘book learning,’ as they call it, as effete and dull. The women as well as the men, unfortunately.” She stubbed out a Viceroy and tamped another one from her pack. “So let’s be clear about this. I’m well aware of my family’s faults. That’s why my dad fled to Chicago as soon as he could. He wanted to be educated. But the big war got in his way and he got wounded in such a way that he has these terrible memory lapses. But he made sure that I did everything he couldn’t do.”