Nobody Bats a Thousand (18 page)

“Since
it’s
Thursday night, I’d say it’s a safe bet they are over at the tavern, the
Tally Ho
, for the twenty-five cent tacos. The two little shits are usually running low on their allowances by this time of the week.”

“Twenty-five cent tacos?”

“Yeah.”
H
e pulled his bike off its kickstand. “It’s a good promotion, plus there seems to be a lot less stray cats around the neighborhood.”

“Hey, thanks for the information. And I know you’re closed for the day, but I’ll be around real soon to
pick up some of that incense.”

“Great.” H
e pushed his Harley into his shop. “But excuse me if I don’
t hold my breath until you show.” H
e shut the door and clicked the deadbolt.

“The nerve of that guy,” MJ said to Bill, who had come close enough to hear the last part of the conversation. “I’ve spent a lot of money in his store. Why, I was probably one of his first customers. Wait
until

”

“Hey,
Queenie
, how about we jump ship on your current obsession and get back to your previous one. Tally Ho anyone?” Bill pointed to the tavern fifty yards down and across the street.

“I was just in there last week. God, I wonder if my clock was sitting just across the
street?
”

“Doubt it, the time frame doesn’t work out that way,” Bill said as he pulled open the heavy door of the bar and waited for MJ to enter.

She remembered having some type of trouble during her last visit. She couldn’t remember being thrown out but was still very relieved to see a female behind the bar, since, though she wouldn’t have been able to identify the bartender she might have pissed off, she was certain that he had been a
he
.

The place was full, mostly an older crowd so the pair of young identical twins seated at a table against the wall stood out, but the matching set of humans would probably have stood out almost anywhere. Both had their hair
moussed
into short spikes with the tips highlighted. They wore outfits that were identical except for the colors. One had a long orange wool scarf wrapped around his neck and draped over his right shoulder, the other a blue one draped over his left. Both wore silk winter jackets, designer jeans, and designer shoes with two-inch heels. Each had a paper plate in front of them filled with twenty-five cent tacos, which they were going after like they hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“I bet that’s them.”

“Good guess,” Bill said dryly. “Now let me do the talking. You just be quiet and follow along.”

They
approached the table and stood over the boys. “You wouldn’t be the Bringham twins would you?” Bill interrupted the carnage.

“Who’s asking?”

“I’m Cisco Grimes, a business associate of your father’s. I was wondering if we could talk to you about a particular item we just saw through the window of your store.  It’s an old plastic clock in a pyramid or obelisk shape. I’d be willing to go as high as twenty dollars to take it off your hands.”

“Are you kidding? The thing is priced at eighty-five,” said either Edgar or K.C.

“And that’s firm. It’s not exactly in working order right now but we have good information that it was once owned by Janis Joplin. You can see it right behind her on the cover of one of her albums, which is where it gets its value,” said the other of the pair.  “But we won’t be open until two
o’clock
tomorrow.”

“What are you talking about? That’s
my

” Mary Jean was interrupted by Bill’s large figure suddenly shifting to block her from the twins.

“Okay, kids, I can see I’m dealing with a couple of shrewd characters,
but I can tell where you got your shrewdness
,
knowing your father.”

K.C. and Edgar smirked and nodded to each other.

“I’ll tell you what,” Bill continued, “let’s just cut to the chase. You’ve got something I want. I know it’s not worth it but I’m leaving for Europe tomorrow morning, so I’m prepared to offer you two hundred dollars cash for it right now. But that’s not tomorrow, that’s now, tonight. The offer’s no good once I walk out the door.

Edgar and K.C. looked at each other.

“Two hundred dollars just to take a walk across the street.
That will buy a lot of tacos, guys.”

The twins locked eyes and within a few seconds began to nod in unison.

“I’ll go unlock the store,” said either K.C. or Edgar.

“Not without me,” said the other.

Mary Jean and Bill were about to follow the twins across the street when MJ grabbed Bill by the sleeve to stop him.

“I don’t have two hundred dollars.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

“Oh no.
”
Mary Jean grabbed him again just as he started to take a step.  “You’re not going to use that funny money.”

“Too traceable in this small of a town.
But I did give it a brief thought.”

“That’s why you gave the fake name, isn’t it?”

“Boy, you are turning into a little detective aren’t you? Look, I’ll cover the two hundred with real money. It’s worth it to me just to get this pursuit over with, okay?”

Either K.C. or Edgar pushed several numbers on a keypad mounted on the wall near the
door;
the other unlocked and opened th
e door. Just after that
the confusion began to brew and the chaos began to grow. The clock was nowhere to be found. One of the twins agreed with Mary Jean about the spot where the clock had been sitting fifteen minutes before. But the other swore they were wrong and a frantic search of the small cluttered store was begun by the three while Bill causally strolled around and into a small back room looking for broken windows, popped locks or any other sign of forced entry. He found none.

“That’s it!” screamed one twin. “We’ve been ripped off. Now we’re out forty bucks.”

“We talked her down from a hundred,” the other twin said proudly.

“Her?” Mary Jean asked. “Was she a short woman with a red hat?
Sort of filthy, riding a bicycle?”

“That’s her.”

“If somebody broke in here, why isn’t there any sign of it?” Bill interrupted.  “And why didn’t your alarm go off?”

“I told you a fake alarm
was
a stupid idea,” one twin said to the other before he turned to Bill. “We just mounted fake keypads near the doors.”

“Still, I don’t see any sign of forced entry.” Bill looked up at a video camera mounted in a corner near the ceiling. “I suppose that doesn’t work either.”

“No, it works.”

“They all work. The owner of the building has them in for insurance purposes.”

“There’s one facing the front door, one facing th
e backdoor, one in that corner---”

“Well, get the tapes,” Bill interrupted again.

“Oh, yeah, I guess that’s what we should do.”

“Let’s look at whatever you got for the backdoor first,” Bill took charge to move things along.

The four of them stood in front of a small monitor looking at a speeded-up version of the last half-hour.

“Look, there’
s some
one looking in the window.
” MJ pointed at the screen.

“Uh-huh, slow it down to normal speed,” said Bill. “And now it looks like he’s laughing at your alarm system, and now he’s turning the handle and walking through the door.”

The twins jerked to look at each other. “YOU FORGOT TO LOCK THE DOOR!” they screamed in fierce harmony.

They continued to argue as Bill focused in on the small screen watching the intruder first leave the screen only to quickly return holding the fugitive clock as he left through the backdoor, locking it behind him.

“Well, that’s that,” Bill said, prodding MJ towards the front door. “You kids should be more careful about locking up. I suppose you should call the police, but I don’t know what good it would do you.
But if
you do, don’t talk to or show that tape to just anybody.
Two kids with your family’s juice in this community should get top-notch treatment,” Bill said, backing out of the store. “Make sure you talk directly to at least a lieutenant. A shift commander would be even better,” he said and the twins nodded in unison.

“What was that all about?” MJ asked as Bill pulled the Buick away from the curb.

“I learned two things from watching that tape. The first is that guy went in there solely for the
purpose of snatching your clock.” H
e paused and stared at Mary Jean.

“Okay, okay,
he probably saw one of my posters, I’m sorry, okay?”

“And the second thing
is

”

“What was I supposed to do?”

“And the second thing is
I know who the guy is.”

“I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing, I …what? You know him?  So you know where to find him?”

“I don’t have his address. I mean the little weasel’s not on my Christmas list if that’s what you are asking. That’s the reason I gave Beavis and Butthead that little song-and-dance back there. If they do go to the police, their attitude should
piss off the cops enough to
slow down the process enough for us to get a head start looking for a little scumbag junkie named Henry.”

“So what now?”

“Now?
Now just sit back and watch a trained detective do his job.”

Hancock Blvd. was the widest street in Ashland. Its six lanes dissected the town from the old downtown to the suburbs and the
giant shopping centers which had spawned
miles to the north.

Bill picked a two-mile stretch of Hancock to cruise the Buick in a long oval through the shroud of streetlights, U-turning at the same two intersections, his head moving like on a swivel, Beethoven keeping them company as they drove up and down the street.

Mary Jean stayed quiet and listened to the music. She still held out hope of success though she felt they were wasting time, running in place.

On their fourth trip north, Bill pointed to a woman slowly walking on the sidewalk. “There, you see that little strawberry blonde? That means the guy we are looking for is
nearby
.”

“Why?”

“Well, he’s her
boyfriend,
or pimp if you prefer.”

“That girl’s a hooker?”

“She’s not just out for a stroll on a chilly night.”

Bill pulled off Hancock, drove through a Burger King parking lot, went down an alley for a block or two,
and then
came
out into the parking lot of a
business closed for the night.

He stopped the Buick, put it in park and killed the lights but left the engine running. “Hey Jimmy, come here,” he called out after he had powered down the window.  Mary Jean saw, from the shadows of the building, a silhouette suddenly come to life and begin to move in their direction, the silhouette taking a long drag on a cigarette, which he tossed down as he came up to the car. Jimmy, close but still in darkness, looked tired and shaky. His hair was long and dirty.

“What you need, boss?”
Jimmy said, making sure to stand a few feet away from Bill’s window. 

“I’m looking for Henry the Weasel.”

“What for?”

“What difference does it make?” Bill opened his wallet and pulled out one of his two remaining phony bills, which he held up for Jimmy to see. “It’s worth a C-note to me if you can send me in the right direction. Like maybe letting me know where he stays.”

Jimmy looked in at MJ then at Bill. “So what are you trying to pull?  Is she a cop?”

“Does she look like a cop? Do I work with cops? And even if she were, what difference would it make, dummy? You’ve given up people to the cops for less than a
hundred bucks plenty of times.
Now, do you know something or don’t you?”

Jimmy, looking around the parking lot, nodded his head. “Yeah, I might know something.”

“Like what?”

“Like where he’s crashing.”

“Okay.”

“No, you first, let me hold the hundred.”

Bill carefully tore the bill in half and handed a piece to Jimmy. “Talk to me.”

“He’s staying at the London motel. I saw him two nights ago, and he told me he had his rent paid up until the end of the week.”

Bill turned his lights on and began to set the car in gear. “I’ll check your story out and get back to you.”

“Hey, who are you fucking with motherfucker? Give me the other half.”

“Now Jimmy, I know you don’t want any trouble, especially when I’ve got Detective Russo here with me. Now, right now you’re hanging on to half of a C-note that you didn’t hav
e two minutes ago. I don’t know
,
s
ome banks might even honor it as damaged. But I’m going to take a short drive to check out your story. If you’re not lying I’ll be back to make things right.”