No Immunity (7 page)

She wouldn’t of course. “Never count on anyone” was a rule she’d mastered early. And with this case she wouldn’t have trusted Mother Teresa. As soon as she got to the airport, she’d call the health department herself.

B
RAD
T
CHERNAK STOOD ON
the second-story landing outside Grady Hummacher’s door. His first search. Every time Kiernan came bursting into the duplex at home, high from penetrating some guy’s space, Tchernak felt like he’d been sidelined in a play-off game. Kiernan liked searches, but she loved breaking and entering. She was his quarterback, she kept reminding him, and he was just waiting till she was thrown out of the game. Or carried off. And when she told him in indecent detail how she’d stood stock-still in the dark beside the door listening to voices outside, footsteps on the stairs, herself ready to bolt out the door if the intruder didn’t spot her first, he remembered the time both safeties split the line and smacked his quarterback into the AstroTurf so hard, the guy was out cold for an eternity. He hated her being out there alone. With her it was a toss-up which were more of a threat—cops or crooks. Cops had some standards, but the woman had such an attitude and big mouth that she’d taunted them into locking her up more than once. “No taunting, no speeding, no defenestration!”—how many times had he told her that? Simple little aphorism that even the smallest detective could remember.

For all the good that did. Sometimes he wondered if all it did was goad her into hitting ninety miles an hour so she could get home quicker to thumb her nose at him.

One night, over a pitcher of margaritas, she had described the seductive allure of penetration. She’d detailed the foreplay, feeling the lock as she slipped in the celluloid strip …And now Grady Hummacher’s apartment stood in front of him, needing no foreplay at all, ready to open up like a flasher’s raincoat and expose Grady’s secrets.

Right, just what I need:
ROOKIE DETECTIVE PICKED UP WET-DREAMING ON PORCH
.
But Tchernak couldn’t restrain a grin as he grabbed the key Reston Adcock had given him and stuck it in the lock.

Grady Hummacher’s place—four rooms over a double garage and storage area—was the smallest unit in this upscale suite for the upscale single moving in or out of the nation’s fastest-growing city.

Tchernak’s first reaction to the living room was that it didn’t seem like Grady’s place. Of course it wasn’t, any more than it was Tom’s place, or Dick’s or Harry’s, or whoever else had sprawled on the off-white leather couch or eaten cereal on the pale oak table. The rumpled newspapers on the floor, now that was more Grady’s style. And the kitchen cabinet doors, none of them closed. That took some doing even for Grady. In the dorm twenty-one-year-old Grady had been a man of experience to the seventeen-year-old freshmen. Or a man of experiences. Before the first term was out, Grady had led his freshmen charges in a guerrilla war against Tasman Hall across the quad. He’d turned them on to underage bars, willing women, and a crazy car track with an amateur’s night. To the frosh he’d been a god, to the administration a disaster. His room reflected his life.

Tchernak moved to the middle of the room and eyed the 360 degrees of beige. The place must cost a bundle, but that just showed that the furnishings of transience come in all economic levels. It would have been depressing to someone without Grady’s skill in overlooking what he didn’t want to see. In the dorm he’d ignored mail, shirts, slacks that needed a trip to the laundry room, and half-empty food wrappers that drove the guys next to him crazy, and finally the ants. Mere bland wouldn’t have fazed Grady Hummacher. He would be in and out too fast to care. His mind would be on skiing, rock climbing, women, and getting back to where the action was.

That’s what he knew about Grady Hummacher. He had assured Adcock that his insight into Grady would make up for being a babe-in-the-woods private eye. Well, that bit of knowledge was not going to make this no-thought apartment tell him Grady’s secrets. You check the bedroom, the bathroom, the phone pad, the computer, Kiernan had once said when he’d asked about starting a search. See if you can tell when the subject was last here.

He moved quickly into the bedroom, the thick tan carpet nearly trampolining him. It had been over ten years since he’d seen Grady for more than a quick drink when he ran into him at McCarran Airport last month, but if the guy had changed, nothing of it manifested in this room. Grady was in his mid thirties now, but the room screamed “teenager.” The bed was a whirl of sheets and blankets. It looked as if it had been made—this type of place had to have maid service—but Grady had managed to rumple and crunch the covers as much as a guy could without actually getting beneath them. Had he napped on top, stirred up the covers as he unloaded his gear, or had a lady on call as he deplaned?

Tchernak grinned. Grady was good, but he doubted he was that good. No, more likely Adcock’s fear was right. Grady had picked up some bug in Panama and he’d grabbed a catnap before heading out to—wherever.

The dresser drawers were closed. Tchernak grinned as he pulled one open and confirmed his suspicion. Nothing in them. Closet: empty.

On the floor on the far side of the bed he found a backpack/suitcase half disemboweled. He could “see” Grady hunting for something on the bottom, yanking a yellow polo shirt half out, leaving it hanging like a pineapple leaf as his hand dove in again. Tchernak nodded at the garment bag, unopened on a chair, the LAS tag for McCarran Airport still on the handle. Dated Friday, eight days ago.

Eight days, a long time to put off unpacking, even for Grady.

Tchernak moved into the bathroom. Towels were in a wad on the floor. So Grady’d come from the airport, taken a shower. His shaving kit was open, but his toothbrush wasn’t visible. If he had used it, it would still be on the sink. Tchernak smiled again, recalling a guy on Grady’s hall saying that Grady’s gear—suitcases, shaving kit—were like archeological digs. You didn’t need carbon dating for any one of Grady’s belongings, you just needed to see how far down it was. The toothbrush was not part of most recent civilization.

But if he’d tossed around on the bed, dragged himself up, and taken a shower, he’d have brushed his teeth. Even Grady. And the maid would have straightened the bed. So—Logical Conclusion Number One—Grady was here since the maid was. Even if she came only once a week, that meant Grady had left here Monday night at the earliest.

Left with what? Did the guy have another set of suit-cases standing ready for a second trip? Tchernak picked up the duffel, emptied it onto the floor, and grunted in irritation. Nothing he couldn’t have guessed. Clothes so wadded and dirty, they stank. Now he recalled the smell of Grady Hummacher’s college room. He dug around the inside of the bag, feeling for a pocket that might hold Grady’s passport. Tchernak couldn’t imagine Grady walking across the street without a passport, still …But there were no pockets, nothing left in the duffel but a folded newspaper. A Spanish newspaper. The Ciudad de Panama Something or Other. Damn, now he knew why he should have taken a foreign language in school. There was some reason Grady saved this paper. Tchernak stared at it as if force of will would translate the words. City of Panama. Panama City. Something something. November 12. November twelfth. Twelfth? Today was the fifteenth. Grady got home Friday, November seventh. What was he doing with Wednesday the twelfth’s newspaper from Panama City? Was there some Las Vegas outlet?

“Leave no trace,” Kiernan had said. The hell to that. Tchernak yanked out the bed-table drawers, the dresser drawers, the desk drawers. Empty, empty, empty. Dammit, the guy had to have left some hint of himself here. Tchernak moved to the kitchen and attacked the drawers. It was in the living room by the computer he found the repository of scraps of paper, sales slips with the business name too pale to read, note from the landlord about re-roofing, and—
voilà
—a receipt from a Panama City hotel dated November twelfth.

Suddenly the air seemed close, stale. Whatever Grady was up to with this trip to Panama between his official U.S. return Friday the seventh and whenever he got back the last time, it left him too rushed or preoccupied to open any windows here. Nevadans, trained on the desert heat of summer, might leave their windows closed in November, but Grady was an outdoor guy. Tchernak nodded to himself, recalling Grady on a flight to Phoenix one June (Grady’d gotten a deal on the flight and the use of a guy’s grandmother’s condo for five of them). Even back then before Grady got hooked on the wilds, he spent the whole flight griping about the canned aircraft air. And when he’d gotten to the condo in the middle of the desert, he’d shoved those windows open wide, let in the 100-plus-degree air, and laughed when the guy’s grandmother screamed so loud long-distance she didn’t need a phone.

Grady must have been in one big hurry to race past the closed windows here. Big hurry or big fog. Whichever, he’d moved out fast.

Out where? Tchernak checked the bedside table. No pad. Adcock said Grady had no messages at the service but the ones Adcock had left him himself.

Now what? If Kiernan were here, she’d check the computer. Adcock had given him Grady’s business card with phone, fax, password, and e-mail address. He checked the computer. God, he loved this. He was doing it, checking out the apartment, grazing through Grady’s files, all of it better than she’d do herself! He was doing it, all right, but he wasn’t coming up with much. No personal files. He checked the icons on the toolbar, clicked on Grady’s provider, and typed his password. The man had no e-mail. Shit, Grady probably never hit the Power button at all. The computer must be one of those “business conveniences” these types of places advertised.

But as long as he was on-line, why not get Persis, the woman-wonder at BakDat, started on the background check. Another thing Smug Woman who thought she could do without help was going to miss. Let her try and get Persis to drop everything. Picturing Kiernan glaring at the empty screen, grabbing the phone to chew out Persis, slamming down the phone and calling for him, he typed a request for background on Grady. The image of his frustrated former employer was still in his mind as he poised to push Send. “Trust no one” was Kiernan’s aphorism. She wouldn’t overlook Adcock, not as righteous as she had been about the guy. She’d see what Persis could turn up on Adcock Explorations. And airline flights from Panama City to Las Vegas, November twelfth. He typed and sent.

He checked the desk for notes. No notes. Not even a Grady-style mess there.

Damn, there had to be more. He didn’t have anything! Kiernan would never let herself come away empty. He’d been through the whole place. What else would she do? “Think like he does,” she would say. Well, that was one thing he should be able to do.

Tchernak sat on Grady’s desk chair staring at the blank computer. He couldn’t imagine Grady leashed to an indoor machine like this. Grady, always up for anything. Even last month, when he’d smacked into him at the airport here, he himself changing planes and Grady on his way back to Panama, Grady had seemed to have so many irons on the fire he couldn’t get close enough to keep warm. Grady was so unchanged, it had taken Tchernak a while to realize that more than a decade had passed since their college year together. He was happy to see the guy, but mostly, he realized, he was relieved. He’d never have let himself think of a broken neck, a crushed back, un-working limbs when he was still in football. Then he was as untouchable as the guys who swore God was rooting for the team, and as a corollary protecting them. But when his disks ruptured, he understood that life was fragile and that no higher power was taking time off from running the universe to worry about his back. Then, when he thought of Grady Hummacher, who had already flipped his car, totaled a hog, and was talking skydiving, he pictured crutches, cervical collar, and back brace.

There had been time for only one drink in the sports bar that afternoon. The place had been mobbed, the semicircular bar two-deep in sports fans frantic to see the last possible play before racing for their gate. Carry-on luggage was crammed between their feet, duffel bags poked out behind them, roll-aboards, held loosely by handles, fanned out at oblique angles. Grady had sat at the tiny table near the wall, pushing the plastic menu board around the ashtray. What had he said about his job? Tchernak squinted his eyes shut trying to bring up the film. Grady sitting there, grinning, his pale eyes suddenly framed by a myriad of tiny wrinkles and for the first time his years in the sun and wind betraying his age. Grady put down his beer, hands cupped around the glass, and leaned in toward him. “Bet you figured I’d be walking with a cane now, huh?”

Was Grady reading his mind? He’d shrugged away the question. “What happened? When you left school, you were all hot about skydiving.”

“Broke my ankle on the first dive and had a few weeks hobbling around to think. So, I took advice, my parents’, my doctor’s, the minister’s, my girlfriend-of-the-moment’s—it was all the same.”

“You were more careful?”

“Hell no. I went back to school. I’m a geologist now. Hunting oil down in Darien Gap.”

“Where the Pan-American Highway ends?”

“Ends going south. Begins again on the other side of the rain forest,” he’d said. And somehow he’d gotten onto complaining about his latest girlfriend ragging him about tearing up the rain forest. “Former girlfriend.” Grady grinned then shrugged it off. “She doesn’t get it yet. It’s going to take a couple more of those miserable ‘we have to talks’ before it gets through to her.”

What was her name? Lesley? No. Linda? Lucille? No.

Damn. Grady’d said her name, but it was gone now. He couldn’t remember it because, because … because he was thinking there was something odd about what Grady was saying. He remembered now, the staccato bursts of noise from the television kept breaking Grady’s train of thought. Grady’d jerked toward it every time the announcer got excited or the crowd cheered. “You a Broncos fan?” Tchernak had asked.

“Nah. I’m gone too much to keep up with sports or much of anything here.”