Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) (9 page)

Trace went back out the small barn, opened the door, took a deep breath, then went inside and kicked the grass back over Collins’ body.

He relocked the door, then found the bloody baseball bat in tall grass behind the small outbuilding. It was a short, narrow bat, with a six-inch smear of lumpy, fleshy darkened bloodstain over the bat’s label. Bad batting form, he thought.

When he went back inside, he asked Chico, “Did you touch the bat?”

“No. I didn’t want to leave prints.”

“Good. What are you doing?”

“I don’t want to leave prints in here either,” she said. “I’m cleaning up.”

Trace looked around the kitchen and was convinced that the room had not been that clean since the first day the little house was built. Dishes were stacked neatly on the sink, the table and counters had been cleaned, and now Chico was sweeping the floor.

“I don’t remember your getting fingerprints on the floor,” he said.

“You can’t be too careful. I don’t want to be blamed for murder,” she said.

“Quit being dramatic, Chico. You’ve scrubbed every surface in the room. No self-respecting fingerprint would dare to show up here.”

“Don’t get smart. There’s a witness, you know,” she said.

“Who?”

“That looney we stopped for directions,” she said. “With our luck he’ll have his first lucid moment in forty years, and he’ll give the cops our description and our license plate. We’ll rot in jail until our skins turn the color of fish bellies.”

“It’ll all be your fault,” Trace said. “If you hadn’t insisted on your hourly feeding, we could have come and gone, and none the wiser. If the cops find us now, it’ll be because the kitchen’s too clean. They’ll take one look and know the Beige Peril was here with her killer dishrag.”

She brushed by him into the living room, cleaning cloth in hand. He took the occasion to make another drink, but because he knew she’d ask questions, he wiped the faucet and the Scotch bottle and he carried the glass wrapped inside a paper towel.

In the living room, she had straightened up the piles of papers and magazines and was wiping off the coffee table.

“Go wipe off the controls for that hot tub,” she said.

He did as ordered. When he came back inside, Chico was in the bedroom and called him in.

“Notice anything?” she said.

“Give me a clue.”

“Those dirty curtains,” she said.

“You’re not doing laundry and that’s all there is to it,” Trace said flatly.

“No. Come over here and take a whiff.”

“I’ve given up curtain sniffing. Bicycle seats are so much more rewarding,” Trace said.

He walked over and she guided his head toward the ruffle at the bottom of the curtain.

“Don’t you notice anything?” she said, gripping his neck with her tiny steel-hard fingers. “It’s a smell. Do you smell it?”

“No,” he said. “All the blood in my body has rushed to my head. I’m too busy trying to remain conscious to smell anything.”

“Anyone with a nose that wasn’t deadened by twenty years of vodka fumes could smell it,” she said.

“Smell what?”

“Evening in Byzantium, fool.” She pushed him aside and dropped to her knees near the window.

“What does Byzantium have to do with anything?” Trace said. “And why are you on your knees paying homage to Collins’ bedroom wall.”

“Evening in Byzantium is a perfume,” she said. “Patchouli, cinnamon, lemon grass, a hint of tuberose, and a metallic high note,” she said.

“That’s terrific, Chico. When you’re finished dealing blackjack, maybe you can hire out to the Canine Corps to sniff out explosives.”

“The nose doesn’t lie,” she said. “Here.” She pointed to the floor and Trace dropped down beside her. He followed her finger and saw a few slivers of glass embedded in the shabby worn carpeting

“Good,” he said. “You don’t think Collins was beaten to death with a perfume bottle, do you? What about the baseball bat?”

“You’re the big detective, not me,” she said. “You’re supposed to figure things out. All I know is that somebody smashed a bottle of expensive perfume against this wall.”

“The glass is gone, though,” Trace said.

“Would you leave glass on your bedroom floor? Well, you might, but most people wouldn’t. I saw some glass in the garbage bag in the kitchen.”

Trace shrugged. “It might have happened months ago.”

“No. It was recent. The fragrance would have vanished after a couple of weeks,” she said.

“If you say so,” Trace said. “Now if Chico Chan has finished looking for clues, I’d like to get out of here.”

“You still don’t want to call the police?”

“Now less than ever,” Trace said.

Back at the hotel on the fringes of the city’s Chinatown, Trace removed the tape recorder from under his shirt while Chico talked to her mother in the next room.

Trace took a shower to get the sticky tape residue off his side, and when he came out, Chico was sitting in a chair looking out the window.

“We’ve got a problem,” she said.

“What’s that?” he asked. He was wrapped in a towel and he took clean underwear from the dresser drawer.

“My mother. Mr. Nishimoto tried to put the make on her.”

“I think Emmie can handle herself,” Trace said.

“That’s just it. He made a lunge for her at the cocktail hour this afternoon and she threw her orange juice at him.”

“Not a bad maneuver,” Trace said, slipping into his Jockey shorts.

“But now she feels so bad about embarrassing him that she thinks she’s going to kill herself. She’s trying to figure out now how to do it.”

“The only difference between your mother and mine,” Trace said, “is that your mother threatens suicide four times a day. I thought you’d be used to it by now.”

“That’s not the only difference,” Chico said. “My mother’s nice.”

Trace nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “And she’s little. My mother looks like a piece of earthmoving equipment.”

“I think you should talk to my mother,” Chico said.

“About what?”

“Tell her what she did isn’t so bad.”

“Will it make you feel better?” Trace said.

“Me and her,” Chico said.

“Will you sleep with me then?”

“I’ll give it serious consideration,” Chico said.

“Serious consideration yes or serious consideration no?”

“Serious consideration maybe,” Chico said.

“I haven’t had any better offers today,” Trace said.

They found Chico’s mother sitting beneath a banana tree in the hotel lobby. She was scribbling into a notebook.

“Hi, Emmie,” Trace said. “What’s up?” He sat next to her on a small sofa. Chico sat on a chair facing them across the small cocktail table.

“Hello, You,” Emmie said. “I write poem.” She added cheerfully, “Death poem.”

“What for?” Trace asked.

“It is for leave behind.” She showed him the notebook page covered with Japanese characters. “But it is unworthy,” she said. The smile of her face turned upside down. “Mr. Nishimoto will feel shame to receive it and then I not able to kill myself again for second shaming.”

“One to a customer, that’s what they always say,” Trace said. He looked up to see Chico glaring at him.

“You see, You, I do terrible thing to Mr. Nishimoto. I shame him in front of whole convention. Such requires great death poem.”

Trace gently took the notebook from her and put it on the cocktail table, then held her hands in his.

“Maybe in Japan, Emmie, but not here. I happen to know for a fact that Mr. Nishimoto doesn’t rate a death poem, never mind a death.”

Mrs. Mangini’s eyes widened in surprise. “No? Why no, You?”

“Because I once tried the same thing with a woman that he tried with you.”

“You did?”

He nodded. “Right in the Araby Casino, it was. A Japanese woman too. Well, part Japanese anyway.”

“Did she shame you?” Chico’s mother asked, her eyebrows raised in question.

“She did more than shame me. She punched me with her pointy little fists.”

“And she did not commit suicide?”

“No,” Trace said solemnly. “She promised, though, that she would spend the rest of
her
life making
my
life miserable.”

“Shameless,” Mrs. Mangini said. “She should have taken own life.”

“No, not in America. That’s what I’m saying, Emmie. In America, you don’t do that anymore. Not for orange juice anyway. I mean, it wasn’t like you wasted a real drink.”

“Aha,” Chico’s mother said. “I begin to understand. Suicide not required for all beverages in this country.”

“Absolutely not. You’re a free woman, Emmie.”

She squeezed his hand. “I am happy, You,” she said. “But what of woman who shamed you? What of her?”

Chico interrupted before Trace could speak. “He got even, Mother. He has spent all the years since then shaming her.” She glared at Trace.

Mrs. Mangini shook her head. “You Americans are very complicated. Suicide seem much easier.”

“Not in America,” Trace said. “Trust me.”

“I trust you, You. I happy now. Come. We go to movie together in great happiness.”

Before Trace could decline, Chico accepted for both of them. “Trace loves Japanese movies. We’d love to come.”

“Why’d you say that?” Trace whispered as they walked to the room where the movie was being shown. “I hate Japanese movies. Everybody’s always barking at everybody else.”

“Part of my lifelong plan to make your life miserable,” Chico said sweetly.

The movie was already in progress. Dozens of men in kimonos, faces painted white, slashed at one another on the screen while the audience sat watching in appreciative silence.

“What’s the name of this?” Trace whispered.

“
The Eighteen Samurai
,” Chico said. “It’s the eleventh in a series that began with
The Seven Samurai
.”

“At least we didn’t have to see the first ten,” Trace said.

“Don’t worry. There are thirty-one more,” Chico said.

Trace fidgeted in his seat. The film had no subtitles, obviously because everyone in the place except Trace spoke Japanese.

“How do you tell the characters apart?” he asked. “They all look the same.”

“How do you tell Alec Guinness from Prince?” Chico snapped back at him.

“That’s easy. Prince wears leopard underwear. What I don’t understand is why is everybody so quiet.”

“You mean, besides you,” Chico said.

“Right. We’ve seen five characters get their heads lopped off and not so much as a whistle. You think they’d be glad or sad or something. Do you think everybody in here is asleep?”

“No,” Chico said. “The Japanese are educated not to show their emotions. Public displays of emotion are only for barbarians like you.”

“Oh.” Trace thought about it for a moment. “Like the emotionless way you’re always abusing me.”

Chico snorted.

“Well, I don’t believe it,” Trace said. “I think most of these people don’t know what’s going on here any more than I do. They’re just being polite, sitting here, biding their time until they can go to the bar and get a drink. That’s what I think.” He stood up.

“What are you doing?” Chico asked.

“I’m going to beat the rush to the bar.”

Two Finlandias later, the eighteen unidentifiable samurai had become no more than a horrible dream, but the memory of Thomas Collins’ maggot-ridden body was still too clear. He had been murdered, and his murderer was walking around free.

Trace didn’t want to get involved. This case had nothing to do with him, and in truth from everything he’d heard, he would not have liked Thomas Collins, scuzzbag, very much at all.

But getting away with killing went against his grain.

He called Mrs. Collins from a pay phone in the cocktail lounge.

“Have you found out anything yet?” she asked. Her voice sounded strained, as if she’d been waiting by the phone all day for some word on her husband.

Trace had called with the intention of telling her where—and in what condition—he had found her husband, but when he heard her voice, something pulled him up short.

“I’m still looking into things,” he said. “But I still think you should call the police and report your husband missing.”

“Oh, but I can’t…” Her voice trailed off miserably.

“It’s been a week. That’s long enough for anyone to get worried. He’s not going to be mad at you.” Trace thought of Thomas Collins lying in the barn with his skull crushed. “I’m sure he won’t be angry. And you did say you’d call the police.”

“Well, perhaps, if you really think I ought to.”

“That’s what I think,” Trace said.

“If I do, will you keep looking for him all the same?” she asked timidly.

Trace knew when he was beaten. “Yeah, I will,” he said. “No one’s heard anything from him? Not even your daughter?”

“No, I spoke to Tammy last night. She didn’t mention Thomas at all.”

“Thanks a lot, Mrs. Collins. Call the police.” Trace hung up before he got into any more losing negotiations.

Trace clicked the receiver, then called Michael Mabley’s office and repeated the same dismal no-progress report.

“That’s too bad,” Mabley said. There was a disappointed accusation in his voice that annoyed Trace. Even Mabley’s disembodied voice rubbed him the wrong way.

“That’s the way it goes sometimes,” Trace said. “I told Mrs. Collins to call the cops.”

“I guess that’s best. There was a story in the paper today that you might be interested in.”

“It wasn’t on the sports page, I guess,” said Trace. “I only read the sports pages.”

“No. It was in the business news. It said that Collins and Rose pulled out as sponsoring developers of a shopping mall near the Presidio.”

“What does that mean?” Trace asked. “I won’t understand business until they can condense it into box scores.”

“What it might very well mean is that Collins and Rose are in deep financial trouble. Newspapers never give you the details in cases like that, but that’s what it could mean. Collins and Rose overextended themselves and they’re capital-short.”

“You think it has something to do with Collins being missing?” Trace said.

“
You’re
the detective. But maybe Collins took the gas pipe or something.”

“Hope so,” Trace advised. “Then we won’t have to pay off on the insurance policy.” Maybe Mabley wasn’t such a creep at all, Trace thought. “Thanks for keeping your eyes open,” he said.

“Just trying to lend a hand to Gone Fishing’s best man,” Mabley said with a chuckle that made Trace dislike him all over again.