Snowjob (9 page)

I slammed the door and went back to the third guy who was moving away up the line of cars. “Hold it,” I said and he stood there while I scooped up my parka off the ground and put it on. “Right. Let’s find a phone.” I gave him a contemptuous shove toward the steps of the bar.

I was hoping he was demoralized. If he got noisy and a bunch of people thought I was picking on him, he would get away. I couldn’t handle a crowd, not without Sam. On top of that, I was walking a high wire. This guy was known here, I wasn’t. I had to keep the whole thing low-key until the cops arrived. Then I could relax a little, knowing that Huckmeyer had dug himself in a little deeper and I was closer to getting the attention of the mob.

Fortunately there was a phone booth right inside the door. I shoved him inside and reached past turn to pick up the phone and stick a quarter in the slot. I was up against him and could smell his after-shave, some cloying lime scent, guaranteed no doubt to cast some spell on women. I wrinkled my nose in disgust, just to make him fed smaller. Then I dialed the operator and asked for the police.

She put me through and I said. “My name’s Bennett. I’m at the front of Brewskis. Three guys just tried to mug me. Send an officer.”

The guy at the other then tried to get details but I said, “I’m holding one of them now. Just hurry,” and hung up.

I hooked the guy out of the booth and pushed him toward the door. “Outside, scumbag.” I don’t usually talk like a TV show but this was not the way I usually did business anyway. It was a play in which this guy had a different part from the one he’d expected.

“Listen, I can explain,” he said as he went ahead of me, spreading his hands like an Armenian rug dealer.

“Good. You’ll get your chance when the cops get here.”

There must have been a car on patrol close by. He was there in a couple of minutes, lights flashing, but mercifully no siren. He pulled up in front of me and when he got out I gave the big guy another push, just to indicate who was in charge. The cop took the hint. “You Bennett?” he asked me.

“Yeah. This guy and two of his buddies tried to mug me with this.” I held up the pistol by the butt, between my finger and thumb. The cop reached for it and I let it drop into his hand.

“Three guys and a gun and you stopped ’em?” He was young and shorter than a Canadian policeman would have been, only around five-seven, and chunky. He was chewing gum.

“My dog is police-trained. I’m a police chief from Canada. I deal with punks like this all the time.”

“Sheeit.” The cop stopped cheating for a couple of beats. “The detectives are on their way. You can talk to them.”

Suddenly my prisoner got vocal. He had an educated voice and articulated very clearly. “This is crap,” he snarled. “I don’t know what this guy’s been smoking. My friends and I were just coming in for a drink and he came at us with that dog of his. I figured he was holdin’ us up. The dog’s worse than a gun. I was scared. I’m a member of the pistol club and I had my gun with me. So I pulled it and the dog grabbed me. Then this guy laid into us. That’s what happened. Ask my buddies,”

Another pause on the cop’s chewing gum while he weighed the story. It made more sense to him than mine, I could see that.

He asked the man, “What’s your name, sir?”

“Jack Grant. I know you. I’ve seen you in our store.”

“The hardware store, right.” The cop nodded. I could see the local boys were going to have home ice advantage.

“Just because he sells nails doesn’t give him the right to try and shoot me,” I snapped. “He was trying to mug me. So were his buddies. Talk to them, but don’t let this slime-bag talk to them first. See what line of crap they come up with.”

Standard police practice, but this guy had probably never worked plainclothes, never investigated anything more complex than a rear-ender on Main Street. I hoped the detectives would hurry.

“I’ll do that, sir.” The cop took out his notebook, clenching the .22 pistol between his knees while he started writing. He had got as far as Grant’s name and address when the detectives arrived. I was glad that it was Hinton, not Cassidy. He had another guy with him, a stranger to me.

Hinton spoke first. “Reid? What happened here?”

“I was walking out to my car when this guy and two others tried to mug me. I whistled my dog and Grant here tried to shoot him but the dog got hold of his arm and I plowed into the three of them while they were looking at the dog.”

“Says he took out three guys,” the cop said. “Sounds kind of far out, y’ask me.”

“Mr. Bennett was in Vietnam with the Marines,” Hinton said. “He can handle himself.” Good. I had one friend at court.

“The other two guys are in my car, Detective. Could you talk to them before tins guy has a chance to give them some lies to tell?”

“Sure.” He turned to his partner. “You read Mr. Grant his rights and see if he wants to talk to us.”

The other guy nodded and pulled out a notebook. He was taking out the card with the Miranda rules on it as Hinton and I turned away. When we were out of earshot he said, “You won’t make this stick. This guy’s a wheel in town. His old man owns the hardware store. This kid runs it. The family’s active in the Rotary, the Masons. They’re connected.”

“He’s connected okay. The reason he started this thing was I put a burr under Huckmeyer’s saddle today. He saw me in the bar and phoned these people to come and beat some sense into me.”

“That’s hypothesis.” Hinton almost snapped it. “It’s personal. You made Grant look small inside, couple nights back. Carol at the bar told me about it. He was out to get even. Nobody’s going to believe he was trying to mug you. He could buy and sell you twice over.”

“Have a word with his buddies. You decide on the charge. Attempted assault will do, just so some mud slicks to Grant, and through him, to Huckmeyer.”

“What’s all this about Huckmeyer?” Hinton sounded angry now.

“He’s tied in to what happened to that woman and Doug. I’ll explain it all later. Right now these guys tried to attack me and I want to have them charged.”

Hinton shook his head. “I’ve got no idea what in hell you’re trying to do, but no matter what, we can’t have guys shooting in parking lots. I’ll do what I can.”

When we got to the car I opened the rear door and spoke to Sam. “Easy, boy.” Then I reached in and patted his head. The two guys in front didn’t stir. They looked as if they had been facing front like figureheads since I left them.

Hinton opened the passenger door and said to the nearest man, “Okay, out,” and to the driver, “Stay there. I’ll be back for you.”

The passenger got out. He looked scared, shrunken. Hinton asked him, “Name?”

“Fred Phillips.” He licked his lips. “Who are you?”

“Detective Hinton, Chambers PD. Why were you three trying to attack this man?”

He was scared but he’d been thinking hard. “We weren’t attacking him. We saw him comin’ and we thought we’d scare him a little so we walked toward him, side by side. Like he hurt Jack the other night in here. So then he set his dog on us an’ then he started beating on us.”

He stopped and looked at Hinton, like a small boy ratting to the teacher. Hinton snorted. “Sounds to me like this gentleman’s dog saved him from a hammering.”

I blessed him silently. Without him I’d be the one getting questioned. He said, “I want some ID.”

The guy brought out his wallet and Hinton asked him to take out the driver’s license. He did so and Hinton copied the information into his notebook. “Right,” he said, handing it back. “Go stand there.” He pointed to a spot down the row, out of earshot, and the man went, not speaking.

We got the other man out of the car and spoke to him. His name was Will Lord and he said he didn’t know what was happening. One minute he was walking between the cars and the next I’d charged him like a linebacker, knocked him flying.

“Ask him why all three of them were wearing ski masks, rolled down,” I suggested but Hinton didn’t. He used it to pour contempt on Lord. “Three tough guys in masks picking on one visitor. Well, you got what you had coming, Lord. Gimme some ID.”

He took down the man’s name and address and sent him to join his friend. The two of them stood together, hands in their pockets, scuffing their cold feet while Hinton talked to me. “You’re not going to get anywhere with this,” he said. “They’ll make it sound like three good old boys going for a beer and some mean visitor setting his dog on them.”

“What about the gun?”

“I’ll run a check, make sure it’s registered to him. But that’s all I can do. If it is, I can chew him out, but no charge will stick. In fact the chief would most likely overrule me if I tried to lay one. I told you, Grant’s got juice in town. That’s how he can get away with groping waitresses.”

“Well, thank you for what you’ve done,” I said. “There’s something big going down, right here in Chambers. The woman’s murder is part of it. So is the fact that Doug’s been framed.”

Hinton waved one hand, irritably. “You sound like Doug now.”

“You should know that a car full of heavies kidnapped his daughter last night. They sounded like New Yorkers—the one I talked to anyway.”

That got his attention. “Jesus,” he said, then looked around as if afraid a minister might have overheard him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“They didn’t harm Angela. Scared her some but let her go on condition I left town. It scared Melody pretty badly. She and the kids left town right away.”

“But you’re still here, still making waves.”

“Through the day. I’m not living in town. I kept my bargain.”

He puffed out a tight little syllable of laughter. “The letter of the law, not the spirit. Good for you.”

“They, whoever they are, want Doug inside for the murder of that girl. That means he didn’t do it, they did. I’ve got to prove that.”

Hinton was holding his notebook and he folded it carefully and slipped it back into his side pocket. “You said New York heavies. You sure of that?”

“I know the accent. And so does Melody. She’s from Brooklyn.” Hinton didn’t speak so I wait on. “This probably means mob, Pat, you know that.”

“Sure as hell sounds that way. What’s going down? Any ideas?”

“No. But Doug said he was working on something big and this all ties together.”

Hinton stood looking down at his toecaps, thinking. A couple of people from the bar came past us, heading for their car. He didn’t look up, even when they drove out by us. I waited. At last he said, “He wouldn’t tell you what it was?”

“No. He’s scared for his family. He told me that much, and I’ve seen he was right.”

Another pause. He was staring at me, sightlessly now. Then he said, “So what was all this about tonight?”

I had a quick debate with myself. He was on my side. I owed him something, but not the whole thing. “I heard that Huckmeyer twisted his ankle, the day the woman was killed. If he hadn’t, he would have escorted her to the bank with the cash, like he usually did.”

“So? That happens.” Hinton couldn’t understand.

“It doesn’t happen to national team skiers. They may lose a ski and break their necks but they don’t twist their ankles. I figure he set up Cindy Laver and Doug. He’s a part of what’s going on. I wanted to get him excited, see if I could shake anything out of him.”

Hinton said, “Let me get this straight. You think that Huckmeyer killed that girl?”

“Not himself, maybe, but he’s involved in the case Doug was working on. He’s part of something that stretches from here to New York and it stinks, every inch of the way.”

Hinton reached out and put one hand on my arm. “Reid, I know how you feel about Doug. But taking on the Huckmeyers in this town is farting against thunder. My advice, as Doug’s friend, is cool it.”

I said nothing and he took a slow step toward the two men, still with his hand on my arm. “Come on now, let’s finish this up.”

I walked behind him, leaving him to do his police business without interference. He ushered the two men toward the front door of the bar and they went, moving slowly, not speaking. He put them in the cage of the officer’s cruiser, then spoke to his partner and the uniformed man. After a few seconds he turned and waved to me and I joined him. “I’m taking Mr. Grant to the precinct. You know where it is. Follow us.”

“Right.” I went back to my car, collected Sam and pulled around to the front to follow him out. I saw him put Grant in the back of his car. Then the uniformed man got into his cruiser and we set off in convoy for police headquarters.

I left Sam in the car and went in the front way. The cops and the three men had been taken in the back door. A uniformed officer was alone at the desk and he looked up from the paper he was studying and asked me what I wanted. I told him I was waiting to speak to Detective Hinton when he was free and he told me to sit down for a while.

About five minutes later a tall, elegant man in his fifties came in. He was wearing a fedora and an overcoat with velvet on the collar and carrying a briefcase. Grant’s lawyer, I guessed. He rated a lot more interest than I had from the guy at the desk who got up at once and came to the counter. “Evenin’, Mr. Garfield. What can I do for you, sir?”

“Evening, Brad. I’m here to see my client, Mr. Grant.”