Death On a No 8 Hook (A Willows and Parker Mystery) (16 page)

Willows helped himself to a French fry. It was hot and crisp. Tasty. He took another one, nibbled.

Parker gave the ketchup bottle a thump. “You’re losing weight,” she said. “You’ve got to start taking care of yourself.”

“Okay,” said Willows. He bit into the burger and chewed with mock enthusiasm.

They ate in silence, both of them concentrating on the food. When Parker’s plate was clean, she leant back in her seat and poured herself another cup of tea and said, “Did Eddy Orwell mention the tournament to you?”

Willows chewed and swallowed. He had only brought the subject of the tournament up because he was making an effort to avoid discussing the investigation. He had a feeling that if they started talking about the case, pretty soon one of them would admit out loud that they weren’t getting anywhere, that they were wasting their time. “No,” he said in answer to Parker’s question, “Eddy didn’t say a thing. In fact, I haven’t even seen him for about a week.”

“Well, he talked to me about it,” said Parker. “When he wasn’t philosophizing about the plumbing in the Sears Tower, all he could talk about was his girlfriend, Judith Lundstrom. Have you ever met her?”

“Once.”

“What’s she like?”

“Very blonde. Not the kind of girl you’d ask for directions to the library.”

“At the tournament, Eddy asked her to marry him. She said she’d think about it. She told him he was the second man to propose to her within the week.”

Willows ate another French fry. The last thing he wanted to talk about was marriage.

“Last week, Judith gave a guy a parking ticket on Hornby Street, out in front of the Supreme Court. Friday, the guy shows up for another one. The meter’s expired, he’s waiting in the shrubbery for her to walk by and hang some paper on his windscreen. Told her he thought she was kind of cute, that he wanted to buy her lunch.”

“Eddy was pretty upset, was he?”

“What bothered Eddy was that the guy took the parking ticket and turned it into an elephant.”

Willows had been chasing a fragment of fried onion around the perimeter of his plate. He put down his fork and said, “You just lost me, Claire.”

“What I’m saying is that the guy took the parking ticket and folded it up so it looked like a baby elephant. And the one before that, the first ticket she gave him, he turned into a paper dragon.”

“Origami,” said Willows.

“That’s right, origami.” Parker was leaning across the table, staring at him, waiting expectantly.

“I don’t get it,” said Willows. “What’s the point?”

“The night I found the body in the van,” said Parker, “a car drove by, a black car, with wide rear lights and a little spoiler, a deep, throaty exhaust. After I talked to Eddy, I asked myself if it could have been a Trans Am. The answer was yes.”

Willows had it now. Parker thought there might be a connection between the paper animals and all those unexplained folds and creases in the bloody hundred-dollar bill they’d found in the park. He frowned. It was a long shot, but what else did they have? Nothing.

“Was this Eddy’s idea, or yours?”

“Eddy’s,” said Parker. “He’s interested in the case because he was there when I found the body. And I think he’s on to something.”

“Did Judith tell Eddy what the guy looked like?”

“No, and Eddy didn’t ask.”

“Why don’t we give her a call, and see if we can get a description.”

Parker looked at her watch. It was twenty minutes to three.

“Have you got her number?” said Willows.

“Of course not.”

“Call Eddy.”

“No, I won’t. You do it.”

Willows stood up and fished in his pockets for a quarter. There was a pay phone over by the door. While he listened to the steady, insistent ringing of Orwell’s telephone, he watched the kid with the bow-tie. The boy dropped his coin and had to bend under the table to retrieve it. Willows noted that he took the opportunity to peek up his date’s skirt. Feeling old and lonely, Willows looked out through the plate-glass window at the bright and empty streets.

If he didn’t want to go back to his apartment tonight, where was he planning to stay? At Claire’s? He’d tried that once before. Afterwards, it hadn’t seemed like a very good idea.

Chapter 30

Walter the fence did his business out of a decrepit second-hand store on Lower Lonsdale. The building was two storeys of crumbling grey stucco, with a false front dating from the Twenties. Junior had said Walter lived upstairs, that the top floor had been converted into a three-bedroom apartment.

Mannie checked the plate-glass windows and saw that they were wired. He loitered at the front door. It was fitted with a Grantham deadbolt. Carbon steel, six tumblers.

He went around to the back.

At the rear of the building there was another door, a featureless slab of wood with another Grantham and no doorknob. Mannie gave it a push, gentle but firm. The door was solid as a brick wall.

There was only one window. It was rectangular, about a foot high and twice that wide. Mannie walked down the alley until he found a garbage can. He carried the can back to the building, turned it upside down and climbed on top of it. Now his shoulders were level with the sill. He rubbed a circle of oily grime from the glass and examined the window carefully. It, too, was wired with the silvery alarm tape.

Not to worry.

Mannie’s primary weapon was an eight-inch skinning knife with bone grips carved from the ribs of an anaconda. For insurance he carried a pair of throwing knives, one strapped to each ankle. He lifted his right leg and unsheathed the knife, steadied himself by gripping the window-sill with his free hand, and went to work.

The putty was old and crumbly, easily pried away from the frame. In less than half an hour all that was holding the window in place were the points, half a dozen sharp little triangles of glazier’s metal that had originally been used to support the glass while it was being puttied. Mannie used the broad, double-edged tip of the knife to remove the points. When he was finished he tapped the sheet of glass and it fell towards him, into his waiting hands.

There was about a foot of slack in the unshielded electrical lead that ran from the silvered tape to the circuit-box screwed to the inside wall. Mannie needed every available inch of it to turn the sheet of glass sideways, so that it jutted out at a right angle from the wall of the building. Balancing it on the sill, he pressed it up against the vertical framework and held it in place with two of the glazier’s points. Chunks of loose putty fell from the sill and drummed briefly on the upturned garbage can. Mannie held his breath, waiting.

Silence.

He pushed off against the garbage can, wriggled through the window on his belly, managed to turn over on his back and grab the frame, grunted as he hauled himself the rest of the way inside. He dropped to the floor, staggered but managed to keep his balance, crouched with his hand on the hilt of the skinning knife.

Nothing.

The room was in darkness except for the dim incidental light seeping in through the window. As Mannie’s eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw that the room was small, about ten feet square, and that most of the floor space was filled with large wooden packing crates that had been ripped open and were vomiting excelsior and a jumble of shiny new outboard motors. He made his way past the crates to a door on the far side of the room. It was fitted with a Grantham lock identical to the one on the front door, but this time luck and the hinges were on Mannie’s side.

It took him two minutes to find the crowbar that had been used to rip open the crates, five more to get the door out of his way.

Once while he was working he heard an odd sound directly above him, a dry clicking like a long row of dominoes falling over. The sound wasn’t repeated, and after a thirty-second wait, he went back to work.

Mannie opened the door and found himself behind a sales counter. A sawn-off baseball bat lay on a shelf beneath the open cash-register, empty except for a handful of coins. Mannie instinctively reached out, then let his hand drop. Wouldn’t be too smart, creeping around with a bunch of loose change rattling in his pocket.

The bat might come in handy, though. He picked it up. The handle was sticky with electrician’s tape. He swung the bat through the darkness in a short, vicious arc.

The stairs were off to his left. He climbed them inch by inch, keeping well to the side, leaning as much of his weight as possible on the bannister.

There was another goddam door at the top of the stairs. Mannie tried the knob. The door swung open.

So easy.

As he shut the door behind him he became aware of a low rumbling, a growl that was almost subsonic. A shadow detached itself from the deeper shadows at the end of the corridor, moved swiftly towards him. He heard more dominoes toppling, identified the tap of claws on a wooden floor.

“Nice dog,” he whispered.

The doberman bared its teeth. To Mannie it seemed as if its dark muscular gleaming body was nothing but a large engine designed specifically to propel the dog towards him and power the terrible machinery of its gaping jaws.

He stepped back, crouching low. The creature accelerated, leapt towards him on a trajectory intended to bring its incisors in contact with his jugular.

Mannie straightened and whacked the dog between the ears with the fat of his bat.

The doberman’s fangs snapped together with the sound of crockery breaking. Mannie felt its fetid breath on his cheek, bore the weight of the animal as it slid down his chest.

Straddling the brute he swung the bat twice more, then kneeled to rest the palm of his hand against the swell of the ribcage. There was no hint of movement but he struck the dog another blow anyway, for luck.

There was one more door he had to get through. It was at the end of the corridor; a slab of grey-painted steel fitted with the inevitable Grantham and two alarm systems that Mannie could see, probably more that he couldn’t. A spyhole was set into the door at eye-level. He took a peek through it but it was like looking down a well. He stood there in the darkened hallway, staring at the dim motionless shape of the dead doberman.

Thinking.

“
Arf
!
Arf
!”

No response.

Mannie barked again, louder. He tried a growl and then scratched at the base of the door with his skinning knife, barked some more.

The door opened, A man shaped like a blimp and covered with coarse black hair blinked down at Mannie, his pig eyes registering surprise, puzzlement. The man was naked except for a pair of Jockey shorts and the gun in his right fist.

Mannie kicked him in the shorts and then used the bat on him. A field of blood-red exclamation marks blossomed on the ceiling. The man dropped to his knees and then fell backwards, legs tucked neatly beneath him.

Mannie kicked the door shut and shot the bolt. There was a light in the next room. He went through an arched doorway and found himself in the kitchen.

The light was coming from the refrigerator. Walter the fence was standing in front of the open door with a chicken leg in one hand and an unopened can of beer in the other. He was wearing a pale yellow nightshirt with vertical green stripes. His eyes dropped to the skinning knife. He held up the drumstick as if it had some magic power that would keep Mannie at bay.

“What d’you want?” he said. He peered over Mannie’s shoulder and said, “Alvin!”

“Alvin’s taking a nap,” said Mannie. “Bowser’s taking a nap too.” He started to move in on Walter. “Now it’s your turn.”

“Fuck you,” said Walter. He threw the full can of beer at Mannie and Mannie swung late. The beer caught him high on the cheekbone. He dropped the bat but kept moving forward. Half-blinded by pain, he took an exploratory swipe with the knife and gouged a curving line of enamel out of the refrigerator door. The chicken leg bounced off his shoulder and then Walter smacked him on the side of the head with a five-pound bag of frozen peas. The bag burst, and Mannie went roller-skating. His feet flew out from under him. He landed on his ass on the linoleum.

Walter started throwing things. More frozen vegetables, an aluminium tray of ice cubes, cardboard cartons of milk, the rest of the chicken, a dozen eggs, yoghurt, a pound of coffee, more cans of beer, a slab of back bacon, half a lemon meringue pie that hit Mannie square in the face.

A head of lettuce followed, and then a plastic bag of tomatoes, a foot-long English cucumber, limp bundle of celery.

Scattering of radishes.

One wrinkled apple.

Walter swore. In the space of a few short seconds he’d clawed his way from the freezer all the way down to the crisper, and now he was out of ammunition.

Mannie scrambled to his feet. He wiped meringue from his face.

Walter lashed out with a bottle of white wine he’d yanked from a shelf set in the refrigerator door. The bottle struck Mannie on the elbow of his raised left arm; it was a classic defensive wound. Blood bubbled thickly out of a ragged tear in his flesh. He screamed with rage, and stabbed at Walter with the knife. Walter danced away, the yellow nightshirt billowing. He moved in again, slashing at Mannie’s eyes with the jagged neck of the bottle. Mannie retreated. Walter skittered sideways, circling to his left. Mannie suddenly understood that all Walter wanted was a way out, to scoot.

He let Walter get himself in line with the door, retreat shuffling through the mess on the floor. When Walter’s hopeful face was framed in the doorway, Mannie let him have it.

Walter saw Mannie’s arm come up, saw Mannie point dramatically at him as if accusing him of something. At the same instant he felt a blow to his throat, just above the collarbone. He tried to look down. His chin bumped against the stubby hilt of a knife. Blood, hot and viscous, filled his throat and trickled down into his lungs. Gagging, he dropped the broken bottle and fell on his side.

Mannie pushed the refrigerator door open a little more, so the widening beam of light fell across Walter’s body.

Walter raised his right arm. He brought his fist down hard, with all the strength that remained in him. A quart of milk exploded in a white froth.

Mannie stumbled through the apartment, turning on lights wherever he came across a switch. Eventually he found the bathroom. He turned on the cold water tap, washed the larger fragments of glass out of his arm and bound the cut with a clean washcloth and a pressure bandage from the medicine cabinet. Walter’s estate was further diminished to the tune of five aspirins and several little red pills Mannie ate hoping they might be speed. He’d never before had anybody throw a grocery store at him. It was an experience that took a great deal out of a man. He felt real run-down, in need of a boost.

He sat down on the rim of the bathtub, his head cocked to one side, waiting for the pills to do their stuff. Blood seeped through the pressure bandage. It ran down his arm and across the back of his hand, painted his fingers red and dripped slowly to the floor.

After a little while Mannie gave up on the idea of feeling any better. He staggered back through the apartment and out to the hall, grabbed the stiffening doberman by an ear and hauled it inside the apartment.

Kicked shut the door. Locked it.

His arm ached something fierce. Holding it close to his body, he crossed the living-room and sat down on the chesterfield to wait for the girl, Carly.

Minutes and hours slipped by. He dozed, came half-awake, drifted off again. A car stopped out on the street. Mannie heard a door slam shut. He looked out the window and saw a taxi idling at the curb. As he watched, the roof light came on and the taxi drove away.

He went over to the dead man in the shorts, knelt beside him, lifted his left arm and peered at his watch. It was a few minutes past four o’clock in the morning.

Mannie let the arm drop. He eased the skinning knife out of its sheath and went over to stand beside the door.

In a few minutes Carly would be all his. He told himself not to get excited, not to finish her off until she’d led him to Felix Newton’s partytime video cassette. He was looking forward to viewing the tape, punching it into his VCR and settling back with a cold brew and a bowlful of taco chips. If he liked what he saw maybe he’d make a copy. For insurance, just in case Felix took out his pocket calculator and decided it’d be a whole lot more cost-effective to wipe Mannie out than pay him the ten grand he was gonna owe him in about ten seconds.

Mannie heard Carly’s heels in the hallway. He tensed, getting set.

Nothing happened. He waited maybe a minute, maybe two. Then he lost patience and slipped the lock and yanked open the door.

When Carly had reached the top of the stairs she’d flipped on the hall light. Where the Doberman had died there was a swamp of blood and faeces. The smell was awful, bad enough to chase the flies away.

Mannie heard a noise downstairs. He went after her, taking the steps two and three at a time, crashing into the darkness with fear and murder in his heart.