Frenzy (22 page)

He looked back on the mob the way it had been when he had been elevated along with Ciprioni to the level of the top enforcer for the national organization. These so-called mob leaders had been the lowest rungs of the ladder back then. This Rikla and this Measure were nothing. He remembered

Measure, who he figured had to be seventy-four now if he was a day. Nothing but some muscle who'd had his eyes on die twat industry. His big deal was he came to the family twenty-five years back and they'd brought him in as a bodyguard. Then later they gave him a heavy sports book for his initial livelihood. But he was nothing but a glorified button man.

He'd been given some massage parlors, outcall houses, a couple of the sex shops, and an X-house — the porn thing. He'd brought William "Blue" Kriegal in from Detroit to help him put it all together. A couple of ancient faggots. He'd whack them out in the most painful ways he could invent — and this fucking Rikla was the original town pervert. All garbage. He'd make them suffer the way Tiff had.

He found the Brewer address that evening. Clayton. Medium swank. Semishabby but huge home that stunk of old money. A woman in the yard watering something. He pulled on past the house and down the block, up a back alley. Dogs barking everyfuckingwhere as he slowly cruised the alley, parking behind the Brewer home. He got out purposefully and walked up to the back-door steps and knocked on the door. In about twenty seconds a man answered the door, not opening it but saying "Yes?" through the screen.

"Hi," Spain said with a big smile. "Man, I'm sorry to trouble you folks but I need to get at a phone for just one second. I'm Ron Ryan with KMOX, and I've got to call in a traffic accident." He gestured down toward the nearest main thoroughfare. "It's a local call, but I'm not in the unit and they need to get some cops and an ambulance out there." His face taking on a serious, worried, responsible mask now, the heavy-lidded eyes open as wide as he could get them.

"All right," the older man says with an irritated sigh that he didn't try to conceal, "if you won't be long."

"Oh," Spain says, "that's so good of you folks. I sure do appreciate it."

The man points at the phone and Spain nods and picks up the receiver and begins dialing. The older man may or may not be Brewer. The house is nicely furnished but not opulent. Could be a judge's home. "Hello? This is Ryan. Could I have the newsroom please? Thanks." He covers the phone like there's someone on the other end. "You're not Judge Brewer, are you?" Friendly smile. The man nods and smiles slightly. "I THOUGHT I recognized you." And he lays the phone down as the .25 comes out of his pocket. "You be a good boy now, and Mrs. Brewer won't be bothered. You don't want her hurt, do you?"

The judge shakes his head.

"I just want you to come with me to talk with some people. If you cause a commotion I'll just whack you out and come back here and waste Mrs. B. You don't want that. So don't give me trouble. The vehicle is in the alley out back. When you walk straight out the back, if your wife sees you just smile and tell her you'll be back in a couple of minutes. If she asks you where you're going, just say you'll explain to her when you come back, you want to see something this man has. Just mumble something vague and get in. Don't stop or say anything suspicious to her. understand?"

"Yes."

"Move." Spain motions with the gun. "Don't do anything dumb." He notices all the paintings. "Tell her somebody has a watercolor for sale or something. Be convincing unless you want to get shot."

They get in the car, which Spain starts, and when he sees no one is watching them he tells the judge to put his head down. As he starts to bend down Spain clips him lightly with the gun and the man crumples forward as they drive off. They are still driving as the man makes a groaning noise and Spain tells him, "Stay down. Just keep your mouth shut."

"If I'm harmed I want to warn you of the severe —"

Spain kicks him in the teeth and he begins crying. "Shut the fuck up," he hisses.

Soon they pull up in front of a huge cornfield. Spain turns off onto a gravel road, then turns again into a path made by a tractor where mud ruts have solidified to the consistency of cement. The narrow path is between the outer row of stalks and a thick and massive hedgerow beside the road. They stop.

"Get out." The man obeys. He is a pleasant-looking man in his late fifties to mid-sixties. One of those faces you can't peg. Deeply creased face. Portly, but only fat in the belly. So probably went to fat late in life. Dark tan. A golfer or a yardwork fanatic. Expensive diamond ring. Gold watch. Good shoes. He sees all this in the half-second or so it takes to register an opinion. Sizing up people is part of the worker's trade.

"Stand there," Spain says. Getting out. They walk in between two of the huge rows. The corn is as high as an elephant's eye, or something. Spain pulls out a small awl. Awl or nothing at awl, he thinks. This is what he likes.

"Listen to me with the greatest concentration. If you lie to me. If you whine. If you claim you didn't take any money. I will hurt you. I only want to know this. How much were you paid to reverse the Candy Dudzik conviction and who paid you?"

"I don't have a clue as to what you . . . AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-HHHHHHH," he screams into the row of corn that towers over them. "Ohhhhhhhh. Please. I didn't take any money. Honestly. Please don't hurt —" 

"SHUTTUP, YOU FUCK!"

"OOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, JESuS, DON'T," he cries again.

"How much? And take your time — we have hours."

"Two thousand dollars."

"Who gave you the money?"

"A lawyer." He's whimpering like a little child.

"WHAT lawyer, asshole?"

"Rozitsky."

Spain stabs down into the man's shoulder, down through shirt, skin, tendons, dignity.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-HHHHHHH!"

"You've got a point," Spain tells him, in a good mood as he thrusts the needle-pointed awl into the man's ear. "YOU PIECE OF
TRASH!
He thrusts the awl in again and again. When there is no sound or movement he pulls the man by his ankles, pulling the body out of the corn and toward the trunk of the vehicle. "You fat shit," he mutters.

The judge is deceptively heavy. His face is dotted like a cartoon of someone with measles.

A bird soars over them, diving down between the rows of corn, making a noise that sounds to Spain like "Kill-deer, kill-deer."

"Fucking right," Frank Spain says aloud. Still in a very good mood as the trunk opens. "Here come de judge," he says.

Eichord's second day in town he met a vision. A vision that squeezed his heart with both hands until he begged for mercy. A vision that knocked on his forehead with a small, finely boned hand and whispered, "Anybody home in there?" A vision of the most eye-ball-popping, totally captivating beauty and prodigious sex appeal he'd seen in, oh, several days at least.

The problem is Eichord was at the point that many single, busy men sometimes reach in midlife,- they begin to suffer from the old and feared exotic disorder Lack-a-nookie, and so you must understand that a vision squeezed his heart with both hands until he begged for mercy once, maybe twice a day. But this vision was different. This was one Gang Busters of a lady named Rita Haubrich.

He hadn't scheduled himself to talk to anybody for a couple of days. The plan had been to start wading through the mountain of paperwork but he just couldn't get into it. The smallest thing, finding the drawer where such and such a folder was kept, presented a major challenge to his disoriented mind that morning. The strangeness of the city had bothered him since he hit town, and he decided to bite right into that first, so he went to talk to the two people who'd been hurt in the Laclede Landing gunplay. The two civilians.

The survivors, so to speak, were a couple of innocent passersby walking in opposite directions, a man and woman. The man on the outside of the sidewalk, a carpet salesman named Sorga, had taken a .38 slug in his left wrist, the impact flying him into the Haubrich woman, whom fate had placed next to him. She had taken a severe injury to her neck when she was smashed up against a stone wall. Neither had claimed to have seen much, but one never knew. He'd hike over the told trail again.

He intended to catch Sorga, then go by the towing business that was Paul Rikla's semilegit front, on his way back from University City, where the carpet guy was recuperating at home. On the map at least it was more or less on his way to Forest Park. He'd have to talk with Measure and Rikla sooner or later, although the odds of him getting anything were not worth considering. The morning was a disaster.

He spent the whole morning spinning his wheels. Mr. Sorga was a grumpy, reticent, ill-humored character who spent forty-five minutes jerking Eichord's chain about one thing or another, mostly the fact that you couldn't go about your business anymore because the police were too busy writing traffic tickets to blah blah and on and on. After this had gone on awhile he started wishing Sorga was one of those taciturn types with a natural disinclination to gab with strangers. In his case he was only reluctant to give Eichord any useful information about the shooting. He hadn't seen anything, anyone, anytime. It all happened too fast. And so on.

It looked like six streets over and down the block on a little gas-station map, but Rikla's Towing Service was a world of traffic away and Eichord nearly got accordioned in his borrowed wheels between a plateless truck and a tail-gating maniac. St. Louis traffic was ridiculous. It looked like the San Diego Freeway at ten-thirty in the morning. The slowest traffic seemed to be the middle lane, with the faster vehicles passing on both sides. He made it to the Rikla operation and was told Rikla was out. Where? Don't know. Any idea when he'd be back? Nope. He left a "special agent" card with his temporary phone number and extension inked in, asked Mr. Rikla to give him a call. Wonderful.

It was amazing when you'd lived in a town so many years back and you thought you'd forgotten all the names. But you get out there trying to find your way around in the drive-time kamikaze traffic and the names and locales start flooding back over your memory. The older you are, the more cities you've lived in, the more it all blends together into a kind of Great American Vista of Gravois and Grady and Natural Bridge and Northwest Parkway and Kings Highway and Turtle Creek. He was beginning to get some of it back now, the memories of Florissant and . . . DAMN! Look where you're going, you idiot. He hadn't seen traffic like this since he left Orange County.

The day was already half over and he hadn't had lunch yet. He hated everything about this case. The people at headquarters were cold and suspicious, he didn't think he liked St. Louis anymore, the traffic was abominable, he was getting a killer headache, it looked like it might rain, he hadn't a notion what he was doing here, and to paraphrase the late Mr. Lewis, "This was as good as he was going to feel the rest of the day."

It wasn't the times he'd got into the dark, salty-smelling bars to chat with the guys over a Strohs or Oly Light that tested him. He could easily sip one or two cold ones and catch just enough of the buzz to enjoy himself and not feel like he was deprived of all the fun in life, go home, have a nice cup of instant or a cup of tea, and call it a night. He did it all the time-had for years. There was no demon there at all. Or so he always hoped.

Long ago he'd made himself drink a beer against his better judgment. Like a normal person. He had business in bars. The Job took him where booze was. He had to handle it. There was never a problem. A couple, even three beers led him nowhere. The John maybe. That was it.

It was the hard stuff that beckoned with that middle finger. Times like now, when he was bouncing around in same strange burg and not able to find his kiester with both hands, a nice headache coming to get him, dreading going into work every morning, going out and accomplishing nothing, coming in and accomplishing less, feeling around on the outsides of a seamless, complex case, no input, no information network, nothing but his cop sense and luck to work for him, times like now — he could taste it a little.

The fear of it kept him from falling off. He could never get used to the ease with which it could sneak up on him. Eleven-forty A.M. and driving into Forest Park. How easy it would be right now to hang a left there, pull up beside that little ma-and-pa tavern, and be raising a triple before you could say, Katie, bar the door. He was always that close to going over the edge, so when he sensed it creeping up on him he'd block it out. Fear works, he thought. At least so far.

Later, when he thought about it, he could never remember much about the first time they met again. The whole day receded into a nice blur. He'd gone into the Acquisitions Office with temples pounding and a fairly colossal-looking receptionist smiled a hello and raised her eye brows and he'd asked for Rita Haubrich and did the lady happen to have any aspirin?

And she said, when he told her his name, "Don't you I'm-Jack-Eichord me." With that look and smile and tone people get when they want you to know you should recognize them.

"My goodness," he said, looking again. "Is it Rita Paul? From a million years ago?"

"You remembered." She smiled a sunny smile. "And it's Rita Paul Haubrich now, and that's a hundred years ago, please. Let's not make it any worse than it is. You look just the same." He was starting to tell her how great SHE looked, but she said, "And I've got some Tylenols right here if that will do? Let's see ..." She began to rummage and he spoke while he looked at her.