Hard Case Crime: Deadly Beloved (8 page)

Finally he said, “I figured you could add two plus two. I, you know...didn’t want to insult your intelligence.”

“Really. You
are
a friend.”

He sighed. “Michael...I told you about the Event Planner, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Almost a year after Mike’s murder, you told me.”

More silence.

Then his voice returned, the tone even, the words considered: “I figured...you needed time before you took that...journey. And, when that time came, you’d need to arrive at these conclusions yourself.”

My laugh was less than kind. “I already have a shrink for the touchy-feely crap. You’re supposed to supply me with inside facts. I’m the private eye, and you’re the goddamn police contact—remember?”

“And here I thought I was your friend.”

I said nothing.

“...Michael? Michael, are you there?”

“Yeah. Fine. You’re my friend. But answer me this, Rafe—what kind of friend sits on information like this for a goddamn fucking year?”

I could hear him swallow.

“The kind of friend,” he said finally, “who wanted more information before turning a lunatic like you loose on the world. Tell me you wouldn’t have gone off half-cocked...make that
fully
cocked...”

“I don’t even have a cock.”

“You don’t need one, lady, with that nine millimeter.” He turned up his volume. “Tell me you wouldn’t have been out there, a year ago, looking to take your revenge out on anybody who looked like half a suspect?”

“And I won’t now?”

“No. I don’t think you will. I think some time has passed and you can confront this coolly. Like the old Russian proverb says, ‘Revenge is a dish best served cold.’ ”

“I thought that was Klingon. Or is it Romulan?”

He laughed a little. “Look. I want Mike’s real killer, if he’s still out there, just as dead as you do. Of course, I’d prefer it to happen in some vaguely legal way...”

“Self-defense is legal.”

“Why am I not surprised to hear you say that?”

“Because you know me too well. And maybe you did do the right thing, waiting till you really thought you had something for me.”

“Thank you.”

“So. Knowing
you
too well, I’d say that after quietly working on this all year, you’ve probably got private, personal files on each of these ‘events.’ ”

Rafe let out a wry, weary laugh. “Really? Is that what you think?”

“Right. Neat, orderly files, just like your desk. And not computer files—nothing somebody could find and easily transfer. But hard copy, in a locked drawer. Possibly two copies, since some day I’d ask for them.”

A ten-second eternity passed.

Then: “...I’ll messenger ‘em right over.”

I smiled at the phone. “Thanks.”

“No problem. We here at Police Contact Inc. aim to please all our private sector clients.”

He hung up.

I pushed my chair back and stood and got around from behind the big desk to cross the room and join Dan Green, who was seated over on the dark-brown leather couch in the mini-conference area by the gas fireplace at the far end of the office.

This area consisted of two such couches and matching chairs arranged around a glass coffee table littered with magazines that included stories on either the late Mike Tree or the current Michael Tree.

Dan seemed very much at home, like Mike once had been behind what was now my desk. My young partner wore a dark brown sportcoat with an open-collar cream-color shirt and tan jeans, sharply casual, as usual. He’d gotten himself some coffee, and had a cup waiting there for me. He always took cream, but he knew to leave mine black.

He grinned up at me. “Kinda rattled ol’ Rafe’s cage there a little bit, boss, didn’t you?”

“Rafe gives as good as he gets,” I said, and settled myself into the nearby leather chair.

“Looking back,” Dan said, keeping his tone easy, “you think that just maybe we dropped the ball on our most important case?”

“Not sure I follow you.”

His eyebrows went up. “Mike’s murder?”

I took a sip of coffee. “...We may have. But, if this so-called Event Planner really exists, he...or she...is world class.”

Dan mulled that momentarily. “You know, if Mike’s murder was a planned ‘event,’ we’re going to need to look at every aspect of the
other
planned event, the one we were hired to look into—Richard Addwatter’s murder.”

“I agree. Where do we start?”

Dan sipped his coffee. “I’m thinking we need to look not only at Richard Addwatter’s life, but the other victim—that hooker, what was her name?”

“Holly Jackson. That’s the name the police came up with, anyway. Local girl. South Side.”

He hiked an eyebrow. “She was murdered, too, remember.”

“Just another unfortunate pawn of our Event Planner, probably.”

“Sure, but chess masters select their pawns carefully. We should look into it. Maybe it’s a chance to get Bea up off her pretty behind and...”

“Dan...”

He spread his hands. “I’m just saying, somebody needs to ask some questions about Miss Whozit. Bea’s the only other licensed investigator we’ve got right now. You can hire a temp to man, or woman or person or whatever, the phones.”

He was right.

“I’ll do that,” I said.

“Cool,” Dan said.

Then he took one last drink of coffee, and got to his feet, cutting this conference short.

“Well,” he said, “I know where to start the Addwatter end of things.”

I knew he did. “You have the condo key?”

He showed me the key, already in his hand, dangling it like a Christmas ornament and smiling like an evil elf. “Mr. Levine dropped it off personally, and paved the way with condo security.”

I had to smile. “As always, Bernie’s providing solid support.”

“That he is. The counselor says we can rip the fuckin’ place to shreds, if we feel like it.”

“And we may need to.”

He slipped the key in his pocket. “You want me to wait till I get back to report?”

“No. Call me from the scene.”

“You got it.

He flipped a wave and was gone.

“What happened at the Addwatter apartment,” I said, “proved crucial to the case.”

“I see.” He tapped the top of his pen on the pad. “You seem to value Dan Green....”

“I do. I understand why Mike took him on, despite his youth and relative inexperience.”

The doctor nodded. “What was it that happened at Addwatter’s apartment that was so crucial?”

“I wasn’t there, but Dan reported in detail.”

Dan Green, carrying a small slimline briefcase, entered the Addwatter condo, hitting the light and exposing a modern, upscale, spacious apartment—a sterile world of grays and light blues occasionally broken by abstract paintings, sharp explosions of color that seemed to evoke Marcy Addwatter’s mental illness.

Dan took in the place, scanning swiftly but carefully, then set his briefcase down on a small table just inside the door, where a glass bowl that might usually be home to fresh-cut flowers stood empty. He opened the briefcase, its contents various electronic tools, one of which—a hand-held bug detector with a meter—he removed.

Leaving the briefcase on the table, he moved deeper into the living room, past sleekly anonymous modern furnishings. He turned the living room lights off with a switch near an open door onto a bedroom, and went in, switching that light on.

This was another cold, sparsely decorated room with sterile modern furnishings and artwork that was jarringly abstract. On a nightstand was a small metallic neo-deco clock radio and a lamp. To Dan, the place looked like a movie set from a weird arty Euro movie and he would not have blamed anybody who went screwy in this cozy crib.

He slipped out of his sportcoat and tossed it on a chair, exposing his leather shoulder holster with .38 Police Special revolver. Then he began to check around the bedroom with his bug detector, starting with the tufted buttons on the bed’s ivory-color padded headboard.

He was typically thorough, trying walls, floors, and furniture surfaces, but his meter registered nothing but indifference at every stop.

He even climbed onto a chair to check the ceiling, and examined its light fixtures with both the meter and his eyes.

No luck.

The client’s attorney had given the go-ahead, so Dan began the only logical next step: taking the bedroom apart.

The mattress was soon off the bed, on the floor to one side, a pile of bedding on the other. His small sharp knife ripped at upholstery and, when he got nowhere, he returned to the mattress and ripped it up, too.

Next he removed each tufted headboard button, using the knife point to pry all of them apart. Fifteen minutes was devoted to this process, with the end result being a bunch of buttons with their coverings pried off and resting in a pile on the nightstand by the clock radio.

Before long he was seated on the edge of the bed—actually on its springs—in the middle of a bedroom that no longer lacked character, having been turned into a first-class fucking mess.

He got out his cell phone and used it.

“Ms. Tree? Me....Full proctology exam. Zip.”

“Keep looking.”

“I can try the living room, but if Mrs. Addwatter heard voices at night? They’d be coming from in here.”

“Nothing registers on your toys?”

“If somebody piped voices, wirelessly, to hidden speakers in the bedroom? My bug zapper would only pick ‘em up if they were still transmitting. Which they got no reason to, now.”

“There
have
to be speakers. Find them. Use the metal detector.”

“In a room with this much metal? Anyway, Ms. Tree, those speakers’d be smaller than a gnat’s nuts. I tore this place up—”

But Dan was interrupted by the sound of a door opening out in the other room.

“Gotta go,” he whispered.

And he flipped the cell phone closed and slipped it away.

Then, quickly, he moved to the bedroom light switch and shut it off.

Peeking around the edge of the bedroom doorway, Dan could see a male intruder in black, right down to black gloves and ski mask, moving carefully across the living room, which remained dark but for slices of light leaching in through curtained windows.

In one fluid motion, Dan stepped in and drew the revolver from its shoulder holster.

“Okay, Zorro,” he said. “Reach for the sky.”

Only the intruder had an object in one hand, small but not tiny, which he hurled at Dan like a baseball, hitting him in the shoulder, hard, sending the revolver flying.

Then the intruder was heading for the exit, fast.

Dan, recovering quick, dashed across the room and threw a flying tackle at the guy, taking him down.

The intruder twisted as he fell and swung a fist into the side of Dan’s face, dazing him, and Dan’s grip loosened involuntarily, enough so that the guy could scramble and squirm out of it.

Now the intruder was on his feet and Dan wasn’t, and as Dan started up, the toe of a boot caught him in the stomach, doubling him over in an explosion of pain.

The guy was heading toward the door, Dan incapacitated enough to pretty much guarantee him a getaway; but then the figure in black did something surprising: he paused, turned and moved quickly past Dan, who was busy trying not to puke from the kick in the gut.

Still, Dan managed to roll over and see where the guy was headed...

...toward the bedroom, it seemed.

Before getting there, though, the intruder bent to pick up whatever it was he’d tossed at Dan, just a momentary stop, but that was enough, because Dan came up behind the bastard and gave him a field-goal kick in the ass.

The guy went sprawling, hitting the wall, hard, and sliding down to land near the bedroom doorway.

Dan looked around for his revolver, quickly recovered it, then aimed its short but insistent snout down at the unconscious intruder.

But the bastard sprang to life, and came up to execute a swift, deft martial arts kick that clipped Dan’s hand and sent the revolver flying again.

The intruder swung his leg around again, in another skilled kick, only Dan kicked, too, nothing nearly so graceful, just a nice pointed shot that caught the guy in the balls.

This put the intruder down again, screaming this time.

“Be the pain, grasshopper,” Dan advised him, then knelt over his victim.

Within seconds Dan had used plastic-tie handcuffs (he never went anywhere without them, including on dates) to bind the guy’s hands behind him.

When Dan finally pulled the ski mask off, the moment of potential drama fizzled, because he didn’t recognize the guy, a young-looking but chiseled character who Dan immediately made as ex-military.

By this time the guy’s screams had dissolved into howls of pain. You could be a Marine or a Green Beret or a Navy Seal, it didn’t matter—a kick in the balls was the great leveler.

“Nice meeting you, too,” Dan said.

Then he got back on his cell phone. The intruder was only moaning now, but that still meant Dan had to work a little to get his voice up over it and be heard.

“Me again, Ms. Tree—got interrupted by a guy lookin’ for a ski lift.”

“You all right?”

“Fine. Took several highly skilled martial arts moves to bring this boy down.”

“Martial arts?”

“Yeah. First move, kick him in the ass. Second move, kick in the balls. Pretty much all you need to know in the ancient discipline I follow.”

“Anybody we know?”

Dan paced as he spoke, watching his captive but keeping a certain distance. “Not from my social circle. Of course, you draw from a wider range of assholes, Ms. Tree, than a clean-cut kid like me.”

“Want me to call Rafe?”

“Naw, I’ll do it. Funny thing, Masked Marauder had a chance to leave, but changed his mind and came back for something.”

“Back for what?”

Dan paced with purpose now, looking at the floor, seeking the object in question. “Something he brought with him, something small and solid, metal maybe. He threw whatever the hell it was at me, when I got the drop on him and...whoa.”

“Dan?”

Dan knelt over something that looked very familiar: a small shiny deco clock radio.