How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? (8 page)

“No shit?”

“None whatsoever.  And I agree with the cops—they’ll never find the killer.”

“How come?”

“Because he most likely drove up from LA or Nogales, did the job and left. How are they going to investigate? He’d have been long gone by the time Tim’s body was found.”

“Who found it?”

“Dumb Jerry Voach.” Jerry was mentally handicapped, and was the magazine’s gopher. “He says he saw Tim’s car outside the house, so he was sure he hadn’t gone anywhere. He looked in the window and saw him lying on the floor. Thought he was sick, so he dialed 911.”

“Did the cops suspect Jerry?”

“No. They took him in for questioning, but they let him go.”

“Who do you think wanted Tim dead?”

He laughed. “A lot of people. Probably the same number who’d like to see you dead. It goes with the territory when you publish the real news. The question is—of those who wanted Tim dead, which would have the wherewithal to have it done?”

“Okay, how about that, then? Talk to me, Spike. I’m still in shock about this. I’m not really thinking. Is there stuff I should see that I’m not seeing?”

“Well, there seems to be some disagreement regarding the most likely candidate. The kids at the
Republic
seem to think Governor Symington is the boy.”

“But you don’t?”

“I think the idea is ludicrous. Symington hires lawyers, not hit men. Besides, if he wanted to kill all the people who write bothersome things about him, he’d have to hire a platoon and get them to have at it full-time.”

I laughed, for the first time in hours. “True.”

“Personally, I think it has to be Fallowell.”

That was so obvious it hadn’t occurred to me. Tony Fallowell owned a chain of day-care centers for children. kids in his care were treated so badly that he could have been considered the Joe Arpaio of the kindergarten industry. Tim had run an article on him and he’d lost his license to operate in Maricopa County. But he’d gotten around that by declaring his wife to be the owner, and the centers stayed open. You might have expected him to clean up his business after that, but Tim was able to follow up with a series of articles detailing both awesome incompetence by Fallowell’s staff, and the kind of punishment of little kids that was supposed to have gone out along with top hats and tails.

The daily papers didn’t investigate, and neither did the local TV stations. I don’t know whether Fallowell bought them off or scared them off. I do know that he tried to buy Tim’s silence, and was told to fuck himself. Tim didn’t leave him alone after that—he reported new findings in just about every issue of the
Weekly
, and if there were no new findings that week then he summarized all that had happened so far. Fallowell tried threatening him, and found that to be as effective as his attempts at bribery.

“You think it’s him?” I said lamely.

“I’m certain it’s him.”

“But he’d been threatening Tim for months, and nothing happened.”

“Something’s happened now.”

“But why leave it so long? Why do it now instead of months ago?”

“Why do it months ago instead of now? Because he’s not a professional, Andy. He’s just a thug with money. So people normally do as he tells them. He’s used to getting his way. He’s not like Symington. Symington’s every bit as evil, in my opinion, but I don’t believe it would even occur to him to have a person murdered. Not because he’d have any moral compunction about it, but because it’s not what he does. He’s a politician, a professional. He doesn’t let his ego get involved. When you publicly call him a scumbag, he doesn’t react—because he
knows
he’s a scumbag. He expects to be reviled, and he doesn’t care. Fallowell, however, isn’t used to being stood up to, in public or in private. Tim’s articles weren’t really much of a threat to him—there are plenty of legal maneuvers that would allow him to stay in business—but he still threatened him. He didn’t like these things being said. He wanted Tim shut up.”

“Have you told the cops what you think?”

“I mentioned it to them. Whether they take it seriously is up to them. The police don’t like journalists telling them their business.”

I don’t know how seriously the cops took Spike’s theory. Janine didn’t take it seriously at all.

“So Spike’s a psychologist now,” she said when I told her.

“You think he’s wrong?”

“He may be absolutely right, for all I know—and for all he knows.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean it may be Fallowell who did it, just like Spike says. But there’s no reason to think so. Look at it—Spike’s come up with a whole story, motive, the lot. But he doesn’t know Symington, and he doesn’t know Fallowell. He’s making up psychological profiles and deciding who did what. But is he qualified to do that?”

I didn’t say anything.

“Look, I know he convinced you. But think about it. You really want to believe him, or believe something, just so it makes sense. You really respect Spike—I think he’s kind of your hero. But look at him—he’s just a sad old man. He’s kind of pathetic, and he knows it. I don’t even know if he really believes what he told you—maybe he just feels important if he can pretend he knows for sure who the killer is, and have somebody as smart as you take him seriously.”

I nodded. “Yeah. You’re making more sense than he did.”

She put her arms around me. “Nothing about murder makes sense, babe. Stop trying to understand it.”

We went out that evening. I didn’t want to, but Janine said she wasn’t going to let me sit home and brood. We went and saw a movie, then met up with some people at the Five and Diner. George and Ricky Retardo were there, and Laurie showed up later. We just hung out, ate and talked. I didn’t want to be anywhere but at home. There was a weird kind of full moon atmosphere that night, a constant air of threat, of something about to happen.

There were two young guys waiting to be seated. They kept yelling at people to hurry up and vacate their tables. When they finally got a table, they had to pass ours on the way to it. One of them ran a hand over my cropped head and said, “Hey, fuzzy.”

I just smiled. I was used to it. In spite of my size, I’ve always been a hostility magnet. I don’t have to do anything—just let me sit passively in a room full of people, and some asshole will pick on me.

“Tell me something,” I said to him. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

He gave me a look, but seemed to decide I was too weird to be worth picking on. He went and sat with his friend.

A few minutes later, Janine got up to go to the toilet. As she came back, one of the guys said something to her. She said something in reply. The guy stood up, and made to touch her.

It seemed unreal, like a cartoon. It was all over before I’d taken it in. Janine dodged his grip, picked up the glass of Coke on the guy’s table and smashed it over his head. Then she shoved the broken end of it into his face. Without pausing to look at what she’d done, she headed for the door. As she passed our table she said, “I’ll head round the block. Follow me and pick me up.”

There was hysteria in the restaurant. The guy’s face was spurting like a water-pistol, blood spraying out with each beat of his pulse. I stood up. “I think I’m out of here,” I told my companions. “If you’re going to wait for the cops to show, you don’t know who we are, okay?”

They decided not to linger. They followed me outside. No one tried to stop us from leaving. I don’t think the waitresses were sure who was with who, or what had really happened. I got in my car, started it, drove around the block until I saw Janine, the picture of innocence, strolling along the street.

“Take me home,” she said as she got in the car.

“What the fuck happened back there?”

“He was talking shit to me. I could tell he was doing it so he could get a fight with you. I wasn’t going to play his game. You’ve been through enough today. When he grabbed me, I knew you’d come over to help me, which is what he wanted. So I took care of it first.”

“You certainly did. Hell.” I drove a few blocks, expecting to see flashing lights appear in my rearview. It didn’t happen. Maybe we were clear. “Did you have to stick the glass in his face after you brained him with it? He’s probably blind.”

“I didn’t think. It was just a panic thing. Besides, since when were you a pacifist?”

“I’m not criticizing you, I just thought it was kind of extreme.
You’re
supposed to be the pacifist.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to take abuse from some cracker in a diner. Or let him abuse you.”

I laughed. “You criticize my classes, but maybe you should be teaching them.”

“I doubt that.”

“You acted tonight the way I teach my students to act.”

“I
re
acted. It was panic.”

I pulled the car into our complex and parked it. We got out. I looked at Janine. She seemed perfectly composed, if a little subdued. “Are you okay? I thought you’d be more shaken up.”

She nodded, then shook her head. “I think maybe I’m in shock. I can’t believe what I did.”

I put an arm around her and held her to me as I unlocked the door to our apartment.

“Are you okay about it?” she asked me.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re not bothered, are you? It didn’t put you off me, seeing me do that?”

“Shit, no. Of course I’m surprised, but it doesn’t bother me. Actually, I’m kind of impressed.”

“I’m not. I’m ashamed.”

“I don’t see what’s to be ashamed of.”

“That’s the thing we’re never going to agree on,” she said.

Inside the apartment, I lit a couple of candles. Janine sat on the couch. I filled a basin with warm water and lavender oil. She took off her shoes and socks. I set the basin on the floor in front of the couch, then took each of her feet and placed them in the water. I slipped my hands into the water and, softly, stroked her feet clean, stroked the rage and tension out of them.

A woman had done that for me after the first time I deliberately killed a person. As I massaged Janine’s feet I recalled the look on the kid’s face, his chest and throat exploding as I shot him again and again. When he finally lay at my feet, blood and piss running  out of him, I was almost overwhelmed by how little I felt. So this is what it’s like, I thought to myself.

I toweled her feet dry. Then we went to bed. “Do you think the cops’ll find me?” she asked.

“If they try hard enough, probably. But I don’t think they’ll bother. I don’t expect they’ll mount a citywide manhunt because some idiot got his face sliced. Don’t worry about it.” I turned off the light.

I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to sleep, but she dropped off in a matter of minutes. I lay with her and held her from behind. I listened to the clunking drone of the air-conditioning. It was eighty degrees outside. I thought about the things that would happen outside my locked door that night, things I would read about in the paper or watch on the next day’s news. Tim. Janine. Mara. A young man cut up in a diner. Finally I slept.

FOUR

Tim was cremated and then nothing happened. No announcement was made by the cops about the progress of the investigation. I shouldn’t have been surprised—those responsible for the deployment of police resources were probably glad to see Tim silenced. I’d half-expected the County Sheriff to show up at the funeral service to gloat.

I wanted to do an article on Tim’s death and the cops’ lack of interest, but there was no one I could do it for. The
Phoenix Weekly
wasn’t coming out anymore, and the
Arizona Republic
had its own guys working on it.

“You’re letting your heart rule your head,” Janine told me. “Spike says there’s no way the cops can find the killer. Is writing an article going to change that? Will it catch the killer and bring Tim back to life?”

“There might be no chance of catching the hit man. But they could investigate Fallowell and try to prove that he ordered it.”

“How? Do you think he kept a record of it? Maybe has a list of contract killers in his personnel files? Is there a temp agency for assassins?” Seeing my expression, she stopped. “I’m sorry, babe. I’m not trying to be mean to you. But somebody has to tell you. Let it go. There’s nothing you can do.”

Fallowell didn’t even deny it.

It took me a day or so to find out where his office was. None of the workers at his day care centers were prepared to tell me. I finally found that he had a suite in an office building in the business district downtown.

I drove there in the middle of the afternoon. I parked my car amongst the nice new ones and got out. The icy blast of the air-conditioning hit me as soon as I entered the building. I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and for a second I considered going back to my car to get my emergency sweater from the trunk.

Instead I got in the elevator and rode it to the fifth floor. I got out and walked around until I saw a plaque engraved ANTHONY FALLOWELL ENTERPRISES LTD. I went through the door into a reception area. There was a desk with a teenage girl sitting behind it. She gave me an uneasy look. I was probably the first guy without a suit she had seen all day.

“Hello. Can I help you?”

“Hope so. I’d like to talk to Tony Fallowell.”

“Is he expecting you?”

“No.”

“He might be busy.”

“I don’t care.”

She thinned her lips and looked at me as she picked up the phone. “There’s a gentleman here to see you,” she told her boss. “Sorry, what’s your name?” she asked me.

“Saunders.”

“Mr Saunders. And what’s it in connection with?”

I smiled at her. “A man he had murdered.”

Fallowell was in his fifties. He had the combination of bad teeth and bad haircut that serves as the badge that announces “LOWLIFE WITH MONEY.” He sat at his desk and didn’t speak as I walked into his office.

“Want to talk about murder?” I asked him.

“You obviously want to,” he said. “What’s your problem?”

“How come you don’t think I’m a crank? I told your receptionist you’d had somebody murdered. I thought you’d tell her to call the cops or security and have me thrown out. But you didn’t. You told her to send me on in. How come?”