Slow Burn (25 page)

"Well,
then, my friend, you're not going to like this." "Why's that?"

I gave him the
news. "You're gonna have to stay lost." "You're shittin'
me."

" 'Fraid
not," I said. "You're the only one who knows it all. They can get the
rest of it piecemeal from the crew, but by then if 11 be too late. The only
thing that can't happen is the heat can't get you. If that happens, they know
what we know."

"Shit."

"You need
money?"

He shook his
head. "I need outta here, is what I need."

"A couple
of days, at most." I said. "You come out into polite society and
they're gonna have you in ten minutes."

I ran down what
Terry had told me about the cops rousting the square.

"Shit,"
George said again.

Behind me,
Piggy and Roscoe struggled to pull the wooden spit from the crispy critter
without burning themselves. I took the brown paper over and dropped it into the
fire pit, where it began to twist on the ashes and then burst into bright
yellow flame. One . . . two . . . three . . . tink . . .

The woman
stopped hammering and looked down at me.

"Ifs a
tough nut," she said.

George lifted
the bottle to his hps. "I'll drink to that."

“The hell you
say."

"We seem
to have fallen among thieves."

"Liars is
what we have fallen among," Sir Geoffrey said. "More like
fibbers."

"Let me
see that," he said. I walked over to the bed and handed him my notebook.
As he snatched the pad from my fingers, his nostrils twitched. Bright yellow
was the color du jour.

"You smell
of . . . what is that, Mr. Waterman?" He sniffed again. "Is that
mutton I smell?" "Long-tailed teriyaki." "I'm not familiar
'. . ." "It's sort of a mixed grill."

He didn't hear.
He was scowling at the list of times and places.

"All of
them," he said. "Every bloody one."

"They seem
to fall into three categories. Some just lied about the times. Others lied only
about where they went. And then there were the people who lied about
everything."

He pointed at
the pad in his hand. "Now, the senior Ms. Meyerson told the police that she
was working at the new restaurant all day, but your men say she was only at the
restaurant late in the afternoon."

"That's
right."

"She went
first to a television station . . ." "KING-TV."

"Why would
she be frequenting a television station?" I shrugged and said, "I'll
call a friend of mine and see what I can find out." Miles put his nose
back into the pad in his palm. "And then she went to these other
addresses." "Yes."

"And then
finally to the restaurant."

"But she
was truthful as far as her times were concerned."

"Correct."

"What
about the Meyerson boy?"

"We don't
know where he went," I said. "He separated from the pack while they
were'at the television station. Since the party still consisted of four people,
my men decided to let him go."

"He
arrived back at the hotel at twelve fifty-five. Is that correct?"

"Yes,"
I said.

"And then
he left again at one-twenty, not to return until four-fifteen."

"Yes. That
must have been confirmed by the surveillance tape, or else they would have
busted his story, too." "As they did with the Meyerson girl."
"Yes."

He studied the
list again.

"She told
the authorities that she'd taken a cab back to the hotel at about two-thirty
and gone straight to her room."

"Right,"
I said. "But it turned out that she'd been fraternizing with the
enemy."

Sir Geoffrey
shrugged. "It's not their fight. They are, after all, relative
contemporaries who spend most of their lives sequestered together in the same
hotels. I don't find it at all surprising that they've developed a few
ties."

"I don't
know whether you noticed, but her mother didn't share your sense of
inevitability."

"She was
rather put out, wasn't she?"

"I'm
guessing the girl finds herself on a real short leash for a real long
while."

"Has this
trip to the motion pictures been corroborated?"

"I'm
guessing it has. They never questioned whether Atherton and Tolliver went, just
whether the Meyerson girl went with them. I don't see how anyone could claim to
have gone out in public with Rickey Ray if it wasn't true. I mean, he's
..."

"Of course,"
Miles said.

"That
little group is probably the least likely of suspects. Tolliver has an
unforgettable face, and they've got corroboration from both sides of the
Meyerson-Del Fuego fence."

He agreed.
"And what of the remaining Del Fuego mob?"

"Let's
begin with Dixie and Bart," I suggested.

He made a face.
"If we must."

"Dixie and Bart claim to have spent the entire morning and early afternoon
sightseeing." "But your men say otherwise."

"I
have it
on good authority," I lied, "that she spent the entire day in the King
County Office Building, on either the fifth or the ninth floor. My man
couldn't be
sure which. At four-twenty, she met a cab in front of the building and
arrived
back at the hotel at four-thirty."

"Indeed?
And am I to presume that we once again have no idea as to what business she was
on?"

"Something
official. Something civil rather than criminal. That's all that goes on in that
building. I should have no trouble finding out what she was doing."

"Very
well. Carry on."

"Her
companion, Mr. Yonquist, left the King County building at two-ten and walked
back to the hotel. I have his arrival both from the man following him and from
my peopie in the lobby, so that one is extra solid. He claims to have gone to
his room to change and then to have gone down to the hotel weight room and
worked out."

Sir Geoffrey
cocked an eyebrow at me.

I shrugged.
"We'll have to assume that if the cops didn't brace him about it last
night, he must have shown up on the tape at the appropriate times."

"What of
Mr. Del Fuego himself?"

"Mr. Del
Fuego told the cops that he ran some errands and then went to his new place. He
wasn't altogether truthful."

"Why am I
not surprised?"

"He ran a
couple of errands, all right, but not to the produce wholesaler and the linen
supplier like he said." "Where was he really?" "It's all
down there. He made three stops." Miles perused the papers. "A
scenic-tour company?" "That's what it says. Look at the next
one." "Cold storage?"

"A
commercial meat locker. I know the place." He cast me a knowing glance and
shook his head. "Those two, he made before going to the restaurant."
"And afterward?" "Next on the list."

"Wagner's
Farm and Garden. What’s this?" "A feed store?"

"A feed
store and a commercial meat locker would seem to be mutually exclusive."

He was right.
There's something strange about feeding a dead cow.

I shrugged.
"My people say he went to the feed store last thing. Took a taxi all the
way to North City and back to the hotel."

Sir Geoffrey
sighed. "So then this Mr. Tolliver drove Mr. Del Fuego to his new
establishment and, after leaving Mr. Del Fuego, drove the paramour Miss
Atherton back to the hotel. Is that correct?"

"Yes. They
got here at about two twenty-five, bought a newspaper in the gift shop, found a
movie listing and went to the theater. Del Fuego arrived by taxi at
six-forty."

He listened
attentively as I told him about George's elevator ride with Rickey Ray and
Candace. After he went back to staring at the list, I anticipated his next
question. "Reese left me a message at two-ten. I found him dead at about
six-ten. They didn't say, but I'm guessing he'd been dead for at least a couple
of hours when I found him. So ... we have to figure the window for killing
Reese was somewhere between, say, two forty-five and five in the afternoon."

Miles allowed
his glasses to slip to the end of his nose as he looked from the paper to me
and back. "This is rubbish," he finally complained. "If these
times are correct, we can eliminate only Mr. Del Fuego from consideration as
the murderer."

"That's
the way I see it. Give or take a half hour, every one of them except Jack was
here sometime within the period when Reese was probably killed. Some of them,
like the moviegoers, were around at the beginning of the period; others were
around at the end. Like Dixie and Ms. Meyerson."

"Indeed,"
he said again. He took off his glasses and folded his hands over his middle.
"Then we are at an impasse," he declared.

"Not
quite."

"You have
a plan of action?"

"Yeah,"
I said. "And a few questions."

"Such
as?"

"First
off, I'm still a bit unclear as to who was threatened enough by Mason Reese to
want to kill him. In my experience, people either kill from passion—you know,
heat-of-the-moment kinds of things—or they kill for profit or maybe even
sometimes for revenge."

"Mr. Reese
was in a position to be troublesome to both camps."

"Troublesome,"
I repeated. "that’s right. that’s the perfect word for it. He could have
made himself troublesome, but you know . . . troublesome is what we have
lawyers for. We don't usually shoot people over being troublesome."
"What else?"

"Then
there's the question of exactly who it was that Mason Reese would have opened
the door for." "I'm not sure I follow."

"He made
me stand in the hall," I said. "I had every kind of ID known to man
and he talked to me through a crack in the door. I want to know who it was he
felt comfortable enough with to let in."

"Good
point."

"Put
yourself in his place, Sir Geoffrey. You're in town to cut yourself a deal with
either Meyerson or Del Fuego. You're paranoid as hell. Somebody knocks on your
door. Who do you let in?"

He closed his
eyes, pursed his lips and thought it over.

"A woman,
perhaps?" Sir Geoffrey suggested. "Or a child."

"The only
thing we have that remotely resembles a child is the Meyerson boy, and he's the
last person on the planet you'd let in your hotel room, believe me."

"Manifestly,"
he agreed. "A lout."

I stood by the
side of the bed in silence. I could hear Rowcliffe moving around in the outer
room. Finally, I said, "I'm going out this afternoon and retrace some of
their steps. Maybe if I can find out what they were really doing, all of this
will begin to make a bit more sense."

He made that
dismissive noise again. "I have my doubts."

With that, he
slipped his glasses back over his nose, which he then stuck into his book.
Still the Steven Jay Gould. I can take a hint.

He stopped me
halfway to the door, catching my gaze over the top of his glasses. "Mr.
Waterman, I regret having run you so seriously afoul of the authorities. Your
efforts to distance this sordid matter from the conference have been stellar.
For the moment, the unwanted notoriety has been confined to the principals, for
which I am grateful." He took a deep breath. "I am, however,
concerned that Mr. Del Fuego's Friday night debacle will seriously detract from
the quantity and quality of media attention given the conference." He
showed me a palm. "Who could have guessed that this matter would come to
such a speedy and . . . final conclusion? Senor Alomar and I wish to assure you
that we will continue to support you with the full weight of our respective
organizations. You shall not be abandoned."

I thanked him,
waved good-bye to Rowcliffe, who was busy brushing imaginary lint from a brown
suit, and let myself out.

Once again, my
room had been completely renovated since I'd left this morning. I headed right
for the shower, where I spent a full fifteen minutes separating myself from
spiderwebs and the smell of mutton.

I couldn't help
myself. It was fate. As I laced up my Reeboks in the sitting room, the digital
clock read ten after one. L-O-L-A time. I flipped on the tube and moved up to
Channel 8. The cardboard cutout of Jack and Bunky had been moved to the rear of
the set. Lola King sat on one stool and a swarthy little fellow with a cue-ball
head sat on the other. He wore black slacks and a red nylon jacket with some
sort of insignia on the front. Lola, as usual, looked concerned. The camera had
been moved to the side of the stage to include the audience in the wide-angle
shot.

"So what
you're saying, Mr. Tate, is that this particular bull has value above and
beyond ..." Lola struggled for a phrase.

"This bull
is a completely new standard for the breed. A quantum leap forward for the
husbandry of the Angus. We at the American Angus registry were fully prepared
to—" Click.