Night Game (9 page)

A small elderly woman wearing a flowered dress and a pale blue sweater was looking at the sky and fussing with an accordion-pleated plastic rain hat, just inside the door of the storefront
Sentinel
office. She was talking away as I approached, perhaps to me.

“Will you look at that? This is the worst spring I can remember.”

“I’m looking for Cal Jagger,” I said.

“It’s good for the gardens,” she said, still peering at the rain, tying on her hat with a bow under her chin. “But not for my rheumatism.”

“Cal Jagger?” I asked.

“He’s inside, dear,” she said, then turned and called gaily back into the room. “Company, Mr. Jagger! And I’ll be on my way, now.”

A man of about my age came out from behind the counter. He was tall and slightly stooped, with a strangely old-fashioned haircut, parted almost in the middle. It looked good with his rimless glasses, striped shirt, and bow tie. It was as if he had watched Gregory Peck playing the part of a small-town newspaper editor one too many times.

“Thank you, Estelle,” he said, patting her shoulder. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

The tiny lady beamed, and bustled out the door into the parking lot, pausing for a moment to tap on the glass in front of the gerbils in the pet shop next door. She caught me watching.

“They get lonely at night,” she said. The editor and I shared a smile.

“Kate Henry, I think,” he said.

“Guilty.”

“Come on in. We’re wrapped up for the week.”

He held up the countertop for me to pass into the main office area, where a couple of men and one woman were covering their computer terminals or cleaning off their desks. It was a cheerful, friendly place, with tourism posters and community notices tacked to the walls. We went through it into a small, messy office in the corner. Jagger cleared some papers off the second chair.

“How would a beer go about now?” he asked.

“It would go grand, thank you. I’ve just come from the funeral parlour.”

“That’ll give you a thirst every time. Just let me let the rest of the staff out, and then we can talk.”

I looked around the room while I waited. It was messy enough to be a journalist’s. There was an old upright typewriter on the desk, as well as a computer. A tall bookcase held reference books, style guides, and some of the better books about the craft.

There were various plaques on the walls, and framed photographs which told me something of the man: Cal Jagger with chubby wife and red-haired children, one of each, in a studio portrait; Cal Jagger with large fish; Cal Jagger with Gloves Gardiner, on the golf course; autographed photo of Jimmy Carter; autographed photo of Jimmy Buffett. There was a faded snapshot stuck into the frame of one of the Chamber of Commerce certificates of commendation.

I got up and looked at it. It was a piece of ancient history, a faded candid shot of a group of laughing young people in tie-dyed gear, sprawled under a palm tree on the beach. I tried to recognize a younger version of Jagger beyond the hair and love-beads.

“Beach Blanket Blowout, 1970,” a voice behind me said. I jumped. Jagger was grinning and holding out a cold can.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be nosy,” I said, taking the beer. “Is one of these wild and crazy young guys you?”

“Third from the left,” he said, laughing. “The one making the peace sign.”

“Amazing.”

“You’re wondering how that disreputable kid turned into this straight and respectable good burgher of Sunland, right?”

“Something like that,” I confessed. “It’s none of my business, of course. Besides, I’ve got some pretty embarrassing photographs of myself in that same era.”

“It was the standard story. I wanted to defy my conservative parents with their small-town attitudes. I ran all the way to Chicago to write the Great American Novel. Got a job on the
Tribune
to pay the rent. Settled down a bit. Discovered I liked a few middle-class comforts. Reconciled with my parents just before my dad died, and came home to run his newspaper. Met my high-school sweetheart on the street one day, married her six months later, and we have lived happily ever after.”

“And the Great American Novel?”

“Right up there,” he said, pointing to a cardboard box tied with string on the top shelf of the bookcase. “I take it down and look at it from time to time. The world may have to be denied the pleasure.”

“No regrets?”

“No. Not for any part of it.”

“What about the other people in the picture? Ever see any of them anymore?”

He came and stood beside me, gulped some beer, and pointed at the kid with his fingers making horns over his neighbours head.

“This one was killed in Vietnam,” he said. “The day before his tour was up. This one died of a drug overdose over in Miami. This one runs a liquor store in Saint Pete’s. Bobby is a real estate broker now; almost as respectable as I am. I’ve lost touch with Dwayne completely. Last I heard he was out in California, working in a bar band. And this one is still the same.”

He looked at me.

“Except for the fact that his daughter just got murdered. This is Hank Cartwright, Lucy’s father. She was born about when this was taken.”

“He was at the funeral parlour.”

“Sober?”

“I doubt it,” I said, then told him the story. He shook his head.

“Poor Hank. He’s a sad case. I hardly ever see him anymore, but I think about him sometimes. Do you ever wonder why it is that some of us came through the drugs and craziness and out the other side and others didn’t?”

“Yeah, I do sometimes. I’ve got friends like that in my past, too.”

“It haunts me. Take Hank. He was bright and talented, probably the most talented of the whole bunch of us. But he just pissed it all away. He crossed the line and never came back. It was a real waste.”

“What does he do now?”

“He gets by,” Jagger shrugged. “He still deals drugs on a minor level, I think. Grass. There’s a blues band he sings with sometimes. He drives cab when he can keep himself straight for long enough. He lives in a trailer in a friend’s backyard. His friends look out for him.”

“He was a writer once?”

“Still is, for all I know. He was a poet; a good one. A bit self-indulgent, now that I look back, but he was young. He was a wizard with words, though. Better than me, that’s for sure. He just never took it to another level.”

“So you were a friend of June’s too?”

“Yeah, we were like a family, about a dozen of us, before I left,” Jagger said, then went behind his desk and sat down, gesturing towards the other chair for me. “I still see her from time to time, at the restaurant. She was doing okay, too. Until this. I’d better go and see her later.”

“She looked like she could use some old friends,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ll go see her. Garden of Memories, right?”

I nodded.

“Well, enough about my misspent youth,” Jagger said. “How can I help you?”

“Just some background. I’m doing a weekend feature on Lucy. I guess you know that one of the Titans has been arrested.”

“Yes. Pretty convenient for Troy Barwell.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s handy having a stranger to charge. A foreign stranger, particularly. A
black
foreign stranger’s even better.”

“Barwell’s a racist?”

“You’ve met him. What do you think?”

“I’m from Canada. I thought he was pretty unpleasant, but I try to avoid stereotyping all Southerners as ignorant bigots.”

“Don’t bother. He’s a racist and a bully. I’ve known Troy Barwell for twenty years. He used to go out with my youngest sister when they were kids. Even then, he was a brute. We were all glad when she came to her senses and dumped him.”

“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go out with him.”

“He was a big wheel in high school. He was the star of the baseball team, he was good-looking, his daddy was rich. Quite a combination. He still has no trouble attracting women.”

I shrugged.

“The charm escaped me. Is he married?”

“Divorced. Twice. Rumour is he beat both of them up a bit.”

“Somehow, I’m not surprised.”

“But you’re not here to listen to gossip about our police force, right?”

“Right. I want to talk about Lucy. I don’t know how well you knew her.”

“Pretty well. She used to work for me, part-time.”

“When was that?”

“A few years ago, when she was still in high school,” Jagger said. “She was a bit scattered, but not a bad worker.”

“Tell me about her. You’re the first person I’ve talked to who had anything nice to say about her, outside of her family.”

“Well, she was bright, as I told you, despite that airhead act. She was starved for approval, for affection.”

“I could see that.”

“There was no such thing as too much praise for Lucy Cartwright. I always had to be really careful. At that point in her life she would burst into tears if she thought she had done something wrong.”

“She always seemed pretty thick-skinned to me.”

“That came later. I’m no psychiatrist, but I think that her father leaving had a lot to do with it.”

“When did her parents split up?”

“I guess she was about four when he went to jail the first time. That pretty much ended the marriage.”

“What did he go to jail for?”

“Drugs. He was dealing pretty heavily.”

“You said that was the first time. How many times have there been?”

“Hank’s always getting in trouble. A couple of short stretches for theft, the drugs that one time, and a bunch of petty stuff. Drunk driving, drunk and disorderly, busting up a bar when they wouldn’t serve him. Things like that.”

“Did they have any kind of continuing relationship?”

“I don’t think so,” Cal said. “June once told me he always broke promises to the kids. Missing birthdays and things like that. Lucy had given up on him by the time she was seven.”

“So your theory is that her promiscuity was based on losing her father’s love?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s too pat,” he admitted.

“No, there might be something in it. How promiscuous was she? I’ve just heard all the rumours about her with the ballplayers. Are they true?”

“Probably. She didn’t go around with any of the local boys in recent years. A lot of them tried. Her last local boyfriend was the kid she went steady with in high school. He was pretty cut up when she began to date the ballplayers. He tried to commit suicide when they broke up.”

“That’s terrible.”

“He was a bit unhinged to begin with. He’s been in and out of the state hospital ever since. Arnie was his name. Arnie Bonder.”

“What about her mother? How did she get by?”

“June? She’s done the best she could. I don’t think Hank ever gave her a penny of support, but she’s raised those two kids pretty well.”

“And the brother? Is Ringo his real name?”

“June was pretty nuts about the Beatles,” Cal laughed. “She originally wanted to call him Sergeant Pepper. Lucy was named after ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’.”

“Acid has a lot to answer for in this world. What does Ringo do?”

“He’s a mechanic. He works at the company where his stepfather works, Trucking for Jesus.”

“Trucking what?”

“Haven’t you seen their trucks around? They’re born-again truck drivers. That’s what Dirk does. He brought Ringo into the fold a few years ago. I’m not sure he’s completely settled down yet, if you want to know the truth. I think he accepted the Lord to get a job. But Dirk’s happy.”

“Trucking for Jesus?”

Cal laughed.

“They’ve got murals painted on the sides of their eighteen-wheelers. Jesus in the passenger seat, the co-pilot.”

“When did she remarry?”

“Five or six years ago, I guess.”

“Is she born-again, too?”

“I guess so, but she’s not obnoxious about it.”

“And she works in a bar?”

“Like I said, she’s not obnoxious about it. I think she went through it just to please Dirk, but she lives her life pretty much the way she wants to. He’s on the road a lot.”

“She fools around?”

“No. But she doesn’t sit at home praying, either.”

“I’m seeing her day after tomorrow. It’s interesting to know all this.”

“I think you’ll like her. She’s a smart, strong woman.”

“She seemed a bit deluded about her daughter, though.”

“I doubt if she really is. She’s not naive. But she always supported her, no matter what. She paid Lucy’s rent when Dirk kicked her out of the house.”

“Why did he do that?”

“He’s not a big one for racial mixing,” he said. “When Lucy started dating blacks, they got into a pretty big row about it. I thought June was going to move out, too, for a while, but she stayed.”

“I thought you said she was smart.”

“Dirk is basically a good man. He’s solid. And around here, his attitudes aren’t that unusual.”

“I’m beginning to figure that out,” I said. “Listen, I might as well be straight with you. I’m working on the assumption that Avila didn’t do it. How does that strike you?”

“Not too far-fetched,” he said.

“Did Lucy have any enemies that you know of? Anyone who could be capable of shooting her?”

He thought for a moment.

“Only about half a dozen,” he said.

I guess I showed how startled I was. Jagger laughed.

“I’m exaggerating a bit,” he said. “But there is a dark side that lurks behind Sunland’s tidy middle-class stucco façade, There is an under-class, even in paradise, and there are some pretty tough characters around.”

“How would Lucy be involved with them?”

“She grew up with them. She went to school with the kids who went on to become thugs and drug dealers and petty criminals. And that’s not all. There are some among the proper folk who are capable of being judge, jury, and executioner when it comes to someone who behaves the way Lucy did.”

“They’d shoot her for sleeping around?”

“Especially with blacks,” he said. “The father of that boy I told you about, who tried to commit suicide, is widely rumoured to be active in the Ku Klux Klan. Axel Bonder would like nothing better than to get rid of Lucy and frame Avila.”

“Wait a minute. How could he get hold of the gun? It was in Avila’s condo.”

“Last I heard, he manages the property.”

“Oh. That’s convenient. And what about his son?”

“I think he’s safely in the bin these days, but I’m not sure. There’s another suspect for you. Then we have the other ballplayers. One of them might have had a grudge. You’d know about that better than I would.”

“I don’t know anything about their private lives.”

“You could find out. Maybe one of them found her presence embarrassing.”

“You don’t murder because you’re embarrassed.”

“It’s a possibility. So’s Barwell, by the way. He took a run at Lucy this spring. She humiliated him pretty badly.”

“How so?”

“She got a bit drunked up at The El Rancho one night and told the wrong people that Barwell is rather spectacularly under-endowed.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Gave him a brand-new nickname, too. Dick Teensy.”

“This did not go over well, I assume,” I said.

“First person who called him it to his face got punched out. Now they just call him that when he’s not around.”

“I didn’t realize that Lucy had a cruel streak.”

“Not really,” Cal said. “It wasn’t exactly the kind of information that’s easy to keep quiet.”

“Hey, I can’t wait to pass it on myself,” I admitted.

“It is pretty funny,” Jagger said. We both laughed.

“This isn’t really getting us anywhere, though,” I said. “I wish I knew what my next step should be.”

“What do you mean?”

I decided to trust Jagger. I explained something of my history in matters of murder and what the players expected of me.

“I can’t convince them that I’m not some sort of super private eye.”

“But you are good at digging out stories,” Jagger said. ‘That’s the first step.”

“I know. But I’m just worried I’ll let them down.”

“Could you use some help? I have got a few skills of my own going rusty on this little rag.”

“Are you sure you can spare the time?”

“I haven’t got much on for the next few days, anyway. Let’s see how it goes.”

“Do you know this lawyer, Whitehead, who’s representing Dommy?”

“Better, still. I know the woman who works with him. She’ll be doing most of the preliminary work, anyway. We’ll get her on the team, too.”

“I think I saw her at the arraignment this morning,” I said. “A dark, kind of homely woman?”

“That’s Esther,” Cal said, picking up the phone. “I’ll call her right now.”

Half an hour later we were sitting in a back booth in a crowded, comfortable, beachfront bar with a cold pitcher of beer on the table between us.

“This is the place where June works,” Cal said. “I thought you’d like to see it. Before Esther gets here, let me tell you a bit about her.”

“Okay.”

“She’s about thirty. Grew up here, then went away to college, and graduated from Harvard law school. She is very, very bright and more than a little bitter. Growing up in Sunland Jewish and, as you said, homely, wasn’t the greatest for her. She never really fit in. I was surprised that she came back here to practise law. I always figured that she would end up in the north somewhere. But I think she wants to be near her parents. There also might be a bit of ‘in your face’ in her attitude. Success isn’t bad revenge, you know.”

“She works with Whitehead in Tampa?”

“Yes, that’s the other reason she came back. He’s the best there is around here. And God knows, there’s lots of work for a criminal attorney in these parts.”

“How do you know her?”

“She’s a friend of my wife, Beth. They were both on the board of a women’s shelter a few years back, and became very close. She’s like part of the family now. The kids love her.”

Before we had a chance to get any further, Esther Hirsch arrived. She was short and overweight, with dark curly hair slightly flecked with grey. She carried an oversized, bulging purse, and wore jeans and an old sweatshirt. Imprinted on the front was a comic-strip frame of a woman with one hand held to her brow, and a word bubble reading “Oh, my God! I forgot to have children!” She obviously had a sense of humour.

She also had a firm handshake and a warm smile. She greeted me, then gave Jagger a big smacking kiss.

“Ve haff to stop meeting zis way, my dahlink,” she said, in a deep, comic Slavic accent. “Your vife vill be getting suspicious.”

“Like I was telling you, Kate, Esther is an extremely formal and serious person.”

“I can tell,” I said.

“All right, what’s this all about?” she asked. “Do I get to order some food first?”

We called over the waitress, who wore hot pink Lycra knee-length pants and a cut-off purple tank top which proclaimed that she had “eaten it raw at Molly O’Toole’s.” We ordered a couple of dozen oysters, a giant order of peel-’n’-eat shrimp, and another pitcher of beer.

“How well do you know Avila?” Esther asked.

“A bit. He’s just a rookie. How’s he doing?”

“Not too great. He’s pretty scared. He seems like a nice kid, though.”

“I think he is. And I think he’s been framed. Are you going to be able to get bail?”

“Not a chance. A foreigner charged with first-degree murder isn’t considered a terrific risk to stick around.”

“It’s going to destroy him, being in jail,” I said. “Especially after the season starts and he’s completely alone.”

“We’ll have the crime solved by then,” Cal said. “No problem.”

“Which we did you have in mind?” Esther asked.

“That’s why we called you here,” Jagger said. “This is the founding meeting of the Jagger, Henry, and Hirsch Private Investigation Agency. Murders R Us. We’re going to find the real killer and clear Avila’s name.”

“Forgive your friend’s melodramatic exuberance,” I said. “Let me explain.”

I went over the whole story again.

“It occurred to Cal, and I agree, that you are well-placed to be of some assistance, if you are willing,” I finished.

She thought for a second.

“Why not?” she said.