Peeper (5 page)

His favorite bar was the Vinegaroon on Cass, but that was too far to walk in the drizzling rain that had just started, and anyway the place hadn't been the same since the owner defaulted on a loan payment and wound up hanging by his beer pulls. Florentino's was closest, but Ralph owed Tino money, and lately there had been too many potted ferns and well-dressed men hanging around the Macedonian Room to suit him. He stood deliberating in the rain for a moment with his Tyrolean tugged down, then said to hell with it and trotted across two streets and around a corner to Richard's, wedged between a Cambodian restaurant and an auto parts store that gave discounts to customers with spiked gloves. The furnace worked.

“Hey, Ralph. Same as always?” As usual Richard, the one-armed black bartender who pretended to own the place for a Sicilian named Sal the Hippo, shared the establishment with the Doberman and the guy in the back booth who never ordered anything but Pepto-Bismol and sat making marks in a twelve-year-old
TV Guide
from morning until closing.

“Double it.” Ralph climbed onto one of the cleaner stools. The Doberman, whose name was Coleman, raised its chin from its paws on a filthy rug behind the bar, studied Ralph, farted, and went back to sleep.

Ralph fanned away the stink as Richard set a shot of Four Roses and a glass of Budweiser in front of him. “That as dangerous as that mutt gets?”

“I got to stop feeding him cabbage.”

Ralph downed the shot and chased it with a slug of beer. “Hit me again.”

“I'm surprised you come down from last night. You really tied one on.” He refilled the shot glass.

“I was in here?”

“Don't you remember? You bought a Pepto-Bismol for Andy there.”

Ralph looked over his shoulder at the guy in the back booth, who was talking to himself now. “He the one I made the bet with?”

“What bet?”

He turned back. “Did I make a call from here?”

“I don't know how you could. Ma Bell took out the phone two years ago. Nobody ever used it.”

“I go out around midnight?”

“Man, it was past midnight when you come in.”

“Did I say where I was before?”

Richard shook his head.

“Shit.”

“Jesus, that must be scary. Losing a whole night.”

“Naw. I lost all of 1976.” He knocked back the drink and chased it. “Hit me.”

“You missed the Bicentennial?”

Ralph watched him pour. “How'd you lose the arm, anyway?”

“Streetcar. How'd you lose the eye?”

“I got a hard-on and looked down too quick.”

The telephone behind the bar rang. Ralph said, “I thought you said they took it out.”

“This one's mine.” Richard answered it. Putting a hand over the mouthpiece: “You here for a guy named O'Leary?”

Ralph took the receiver. “How'd you find me?”

“Your boss gave me a list.” The connection seemed to smell of smoke. “Can you swing by police headquarters? I got some more questions.”

“Like what?”

“Like who was sore enough at Lyla Dane to try to fry her. It's arson now. But you better come quick, or you could be talking to somebody else.”

“How come?”

“If she dies it's homicide. That's how come.”

Ralph said he'd be there and gave the receiver back to the bartender. “Shit.”

“Bad news?”

“I just remembered why I don't like coming here. Something bad always happens.”

Coleman the Doberman farted.

Richard waved at the fumes with the bar rag. “Tomorrow he goes on wintergreen.”

Chapter 6

“Who're you now, Boris Karloff?”

O'Leary grunted and waved Ralph into a chair. The arson investigator's desk, all four edges of which were scalloped with burn marks, supported a pair of fat dry-cell batteries the size of Thermos jugs, wired to what appeared to be an ordinary wall switch without a strike plate. The switch was screwed to two wooden uprights nailed to the pine board upon which the dry cells stood. It looked like a high school science project.

“I had the lab fix this up,” O'Leary said. “Saves a lot of explaining. This thing here is an arc switch. Know what that is?”

“Golly, gee, no, Mr. Wizard. What is it?”

“You're a card, Poteet. You don't see these much anymore. They've been replaced by more expensive units with less conductible materials for reasons of safety. This one's a duplicate of the one we found installed next to the door of Lyla Dane's apartment. The original burned, of course. But not enough to disguise what it is.”

“I'm starting to get it,” Ralph said, interested now.

“Really? You're smarter than you—well, than I thought. Anyway, we asked the landlord about it. He said the switches are identical throughout the building. We checked out the one in that empty apartment you and I were in this morning. It's a conventional safety switch, not an arc. He swears the last switch he replaced was in the furnace room, and he did
that
more than six months ago. It isn't an arc either. We checked.”

“You're saying somebody snuck in and switched switches.”

“You put things cute. But yeah. Then, just before our friend left, he or she turned on all the gas burners on the kitchen range and blew out the pilots. The lady's out for the evening, which is what she does to eat. By the time she gets home, the place is full of fumes. She opens the door, turns on the light—” He flipped the switch. A blue spark crackled between the points.

Ralph said, “Kaboom.”

“More like
foom
. Only she weighs less than a hundred pounds, so instead of blowing her to smithereens the blast throws her across the hall, which is what saved her life, for the time being. The report from Ann Arbor isn't good. She's in a coma with third-degree burns over forty percent of her body.” He lifted a smoldering cigarette butt from a charred groove on the edge of his desk and inhaled.

Ralph sat back quickly. In the smoke he thought he saw Carpenter's emaciated features.
Watch him while I go up and make sure we didn't forget anything
. “So what'd you pull me down here for? I call the electrician when a bulb needs changing.”

O'Leary said nothing for a moment. His big scorched-looking face with its squinched nose was as calm as a morgue slab. Finally he wiped his eyes.

“Yeah. I wanted to ask you face to face what kind of guy this landlord is.”

“Vinnie's a sleaze.”

“You don't like him?”

“I didn't say that. I had anything against sleazes I wouldn't have no friends at all.”

“You're friends?”

“I didn't say that either.”

O'Leary flipped his butt disgustedly into a plastic wastebasket by the desk. Leaning over, Ralph saw that it was half-filled with water. Somebody had been with him awhile. “Reason I'm asking, I didn't like the way he acted when we asked him if anybody had been in the apartment last night or this morning besides Lyla Dane.”

“What'd he say?”

“He said he didn't know, what'd he look like, some kind of weirdo peeping Tom?”

“Did you tell him?”

“He was lying. You get a sense for it in this work. Thing is, is he protecting himself or somebody else?”

“Vinnie wouldn't stick his fat neck out for Mother Teresa. You sweat him?”

“As far as possible without hauling him in. Reason I called you, everybody we talked to said you were living in the building when they moved in. I figured you'd know him better than any of them.”

“I pay my rent, he lets me go on living there. That's about it.”

“What about the two guys you were with this morning?”

Ralph reached for a Blue Diamond matchstick to cover the fact that he'd jumped. So O'Leary was that kind of cop. “Talk to Mrs. Gelatto, did you?”

“Should we?”

Dammit. He didn't know now if O'Leary had spoken to her or to the cop who had grilled him in Carpenter's car. “I had a little too much to drink last night,” he said. “Looks like I took a couple of guys back to my place for a nightcap when the bar closed. I seen them out around four.”

“Names?”

He shrugged. “You drink?”

“I've been known.”

“Everybody's your friend. You don't waste time with names.”

“What bar were you in?”

“Place called Richard's, for a little. I don't know about before and after.”

“Sounds like you got a problem.”

“I ain't an alcoholic.”

“I mean as to being able to account for your movements last night. Nobody knows what time Lyla Dane went out. You could have rigged the switch and the gas before or after going to this Richard's.”

“Could of. If I had a reason.”

“There are plenty of reasons when a hooker gets hurt. Maybe she was blackmailing you.” Ralph laughed. O'Leary looked sheepish. “Yeah, right. But if I were you, I'd find those friends.”

“What makes me your yellow dog?”

“For one thing, not telling me about them in the first place. Strangers in the building on the morning a tenant gets blown up are worth mentioning.”

“I didn't figure there was a connection. I still don't. What's another?”

“I don't like you.”

“I ain't crazy about you neither.”

“I can live with it.” O'Leary flipped the switch off and on and off again. “For the record, it was Mrs. Gelatto told us about the three of you on the stairs. In between stories about her late husband and the marvelous curative properties of pickles.”

“Maybe we should try them. Can I go now?”

“I got a Mass to go to anyway. Let us know if you have any plans to leave town. You know that song.”

Ralph stood. “What kind of Mass takes place in the middle of the week?”

“It's a memorial service. The pastor of my wife's church died sometime last night. They found him this morning in his bed in the rectory. You all right?”

Ralph coughed and spat splinters into the wastebasket. “Yeah. That's the second time today I swallowed one of the bastards. What'd you say your pastor's name was?”

“I didn't. But it was Breame, John Breame. He was a monsignor at St. Balthazar. Sure you're okay?”

“I may start smoking again.” He went out.

“New rule, Poteet,” said Lucille Lovechild. “No more two-and-a-half-hour lunches.”

Anita had shunted him straight into the office with one of her Cheshire grins. Ralph said, “I had to see a man about a fire.”

“Interesting you should use that word.”

“Man?”

“Fire. Get back to work.”

He stopped at Anita's desk. She was still reading
Working Woman
.

“Ain't that like a monk with a subscription to
Playboy?
”

“Why not?” she said. “I bet he gets lucky more often than you do.”

“Chuck Waverly around?”

“He went out a little while ago with his camera. Lucille gave you hell, huh? Tell me everything.” She closed the magazine and cupped her chin in her palm.

“Well, I hope he took the right film. Them forty-watt bulbs they put in motel rooms can barely light themselves.” He turned to go.

“Oh, this came for you by messenger.” She held up an envelope.

Ralph didn't take it. “Any windows?”

“No windows.”

“My wife's handwriting?”

“I wouldn't know it.”

“Jake Otero serves papers in a messenger's uniform. Was he a little round guy with a stupid face?”

“You're a little round guy with a stupid face.”

He took it. The envelope was heavy white stock, addressed in fine copperplate. “‘Mr. Ralph Poteet,'” he read aloud.

“A stranger, obviously.”

He opened it.

Dear Mr. Poteet:

If it is not inconvenient, your presence in my home this evening at six o'clock could prove to your advantage and mine.

Cordially,

Philip Steelcase

Bishop-in-Ordinary

A card with a Farmington Hills address engraved on it was clipped to the letter, along with a crisp one-hundred-dollar bill.

“IRS, I hope?” Anita inquired.

“Religious mail.” He refolded the bill inside the letter and stuck it in a pocket.

She opened her magazine. “They're way too late.”

Chapter 7

“Go away.”

“That's no way to talk to a partner,” Ralph said.

“Ex-partner. You got the boot and I did too. Now I'm giving it to you. Go away.”

Neal English was an independent insurance actuary with an office in the City National Bank Building overlooking Cadillac Square. He had a monolithic face, all planes and angles with fierce black eyebrows like Lincoln's, creating an effect he tried to soften with pink shirts and knobby knitted ties. It was just past five o'clock and he was standing behind his desk, scooping papers into a maroon leather attaché case with gold fittings.

“The boot didn't hurt you none,” Ralph said.

“Not a bit. It just cost me my wife and my kid and seven years' seniority at Great Lakes. I'd be running the place now.”

“Which one, the insurance company or the Albanian restaurant?”

“Go away, Ralph.”

“Hell, Neal, it was a sweet setup. Forge the old coot's signature and slip the policy into the files. Who knew the widow would turn yellow and spill the works? You know what an eighteen-year-old broad could do with half of fifty grand?”

“You could have told Arnie I didn't know anything about it. He damn near prosecuted.”

“Well, he didn't, so what's the beef?”

“I was out of work for a year. My wife divorced me and took my boy to Hawaii. I haven't seen either of them in eleven years.”

Ralph rested a ham on a corner of the desk. “Kids are expensive to raise, then they turn out crummy anyway. Wives too. Why buy a lake when you can dip your line for free?”