Strip Search (19 page)

“All he told you was that he had something important about Sheldon and Williams. You think he was going to find out more?”

“My guess is it was about Sheldon and Williams—he didn’t say for sure. And I guess he asked one question too many.”

Axton sighed and started the car. He eased out into the busy traffic on Kalamath. “Have you come up with any ideas at all?”

“Nothing.” About his contacts and moves, Doc was as silent with Wager as he was with everyone else. Now he was as silent as the grave. “I’ve found out that Annette Sheldon was making a lot of money. I think it was a lot more than she made as a dancer, and I think it has something to do with dope. But none of my leads corroborate that.” He added, “Angela Williams apparently brought home only what she made as a dancer. Other than the way they were killed, there’s no tie at all between them that I can find. Can you make something of that?”

Axton grunted a negative sound. “But it keeps coming back to that, doesn’t it? That all three were killed the same way.”

“Well, the murderer didn’t make Doc look raped.”

The big man snorted. “Right. He was robbed instead. Or made to look that way.” He sighed again and swung the cruiser back toward the block where Doc’s body had been found. It was time to start knocking on all those apartment doors.

B
Y THE TIME
the shift ended, Wager was wincing when an apartment had neither bell nor knocker. He could buzz from the lobby and identify himself so they’d open the security door; but once in the building and going down the long halls a door at a time, he had to use his knuckles, and after four hours of it they were sore. All to no profit—so far no one in the surrounding apartment towers had seen or heard anything when Doc’s body was tossed on the trash heap. When they returned to Homicide, Max scribbled a note for the oncoming shift, telling them where he and Wager had quit canvassing. Stretching mightily so that his fingers brushed the ceiling of the office, he asked casually what Wager had planned for his Saturday evening.

“A night on the town.”

“Look, Gabe, what you’re doing … It’s tough enough when somebody goes under legitimately—when they have the proper backup and authorization. …”

“I know.”

“Yeah, well, just make sure you’re covered, okay? And I’m not talking about the bad guys. More than one career’s been flushed because somebody went out on a limb by himself.” He led the way to the elevator and pushed the button for the underground parking garage. “Have you thought about telling Doyle what you’re doing?”

He had, and decided against it. “I’m just drinking a few beers and talking to some people. On my own time.” And he didn’t want to take the chance that Doyle, with an administrator’s reflexive No, would tell him that the Homicide Division was a team, and that, by God, cases would be dealt with according to the operations manual or he—Detective Sergeant Wager—could get his butt out of his—Chief Bartholomew Doyle’s—Homicide section and into the Traffic Division.

The garage doors opened to the cool odor of stale automobile exhaust and a scattering of concrete pillars holding up the gloom between distant lights. The two men paused for a moment, groping for something that would not let the shift end on an argument.

“Munn thinks he spotted Pepe the Pistol again.”

“Where?”

“Over in the projects near his girlfriend’s house. The word is she’s knocked up and that’s why he’s still around.”

“His buddies are dead but chivalry’s not, is that it?”

“Just young love, I guess.” Max’s large shoe scraped the gritty concrete floor. “If you need help, Gabe, will you give me a call? Don’t try and do it all by yourself, okay?”

“Sure.”

“I mean it, partner.”

“Right—will do.”

He watched the big man thread his way between the silent cars, and a few moments later heard the slam of a door. Max was all right—Max was his partner. But he had a wife and kids to worry about. He was the kind of guy who had a lot more fear for them than he had for himself, and so sometimes he wouldn’t take chances that he thought might hurt them. Not the physical threats and dangers—those came with the job, and Max, like every other cop and most of their families, accepted those chances. It was the paperwork dangers that worried the big man, those ill-defined risks that lay outside the boundaries of authorization. But Wager liked to believe that if you let that happen, then pretty soon you might not act at all—you only reacted.

You hid behind what the team thought, and you let rules govern how you moved and where you headed. For Wager, that was no way to go after murderers.

He slept heavily until the alarm went off at nine and then took a long, steamy shower after a series of push-ups and squats and sit-ups that worked the stiffness out of muscles and put a feeling of alertness back in his mind. Sound mind, sound body—everything but a sound plan. He was still groping for a coherent pattern that would lead to a motive, but doing something was always better than doing nothing. “Do something, lieutenant!” He could still hear the terrified voice of an ashen corporal shrieking at their new platoon commander, a kid who, by the calendar, was Wager’s own age. They hunkered, drenched by the urine-smelling spray of a rice paddy, while the earth shuddered and the goggle-eyed corporal screamed, “Do something—even if it’s wrong—do something!” He did; he stood up and caught one right in the head—
thoonk!
That’s just how it sounded, like a stick hitting a ripe watermelon:
thoonk
.

But right or wrong, do something. And that led Wager back to the strip, his Trans Am surging and slowing with the heavy Saturday night traffic that crammed the four lanes. He passed LaBelle’s corner but she wasn’t there; half-a-dozen blocks down, he swung out of the stream of cars to look for a parking place along one of the crowded side streets. Across from a small neighborhood grocery store that lit up the corner of a large apartment building, he found a telephone hood with a machine that still worked. The Eveready Lounge was a block and a half away, and he dialed its number.

“Is Charley Plummer there?”

“I’ll ask.” A hand muffled the receiver and Wager could picture the bartender calling over the crowd. A cautious voice finally answered, “Yeah?”

“This is Gabe. I want to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“That’s right. Meet me on the corner of Colfax and Washington—south side. Ten minutes.”

“… All right.”

Wager saw the thin figure hunched like a half-closed hand before the Lizard noticed him. The man walked slowly, close to the storefronts, his glance restless but elusive with that kind of guarded awareness that prison taught. And which served on the street as well. When their eyes met across Washington Street, Wager tilted his head down the darker sidewalk leading away from the strip. Without a reply, Plummer turned that way.

He waited in the shadow of a tall hedge halfway down the block. “What have you got for me, Plummer?”

“Not much.” His lips scarcely moved and Wager had to lean close to hear the hoarse murmur. “I hung around Foxy Dick’s like you wanted me to. I asked about that one—Angela. I said I was just back in town and wanted to see her again. Hell, most of them don’t remember her name by now.” He hesitated. “That other place, the Cinnamon Club, that was a little different.”

“Different how?”

“I can’t put my finger on it. I asked about that one—where she was.”

“So?”

“So the bartender—what’s he, Vietnamese? Anyway, he calls the bouncer and says, ‘He’s asking about Shelly.’ It was like it was some big deal, you know?”

“Any threats?”

“No, nothing like that. But this big sumbitch, seven feet high and a face like a gumball, he comes over and says, ‘What for?’ ‘I been out of town,’ I says. ‘I want to say hello.’ ‘She ain’t here no more,’ he says. ‘She got shot.’ And then he stands there like I’m supposed to say something. Hell, what am I supposed to say? ‘Sorry to hear that,’ I says. ‘How’d it happen?’ ‘Why do you want to know,’ he says. ‘Hey, man, I’m just asking,’ I says. ‘Ask somewhere else,’ he says, and he looks at me like he don’t really believe what I’m telling him. Looks at me all the way out the goddamn door like he wants to remember me. I didn’t even get a chance to buy a drink.”

Wager weighed the Lizard’s story, turning it over. Then he showed the wizened man a sketch of Doc that the police artist had put together from the driver’s license and the corpse. “Did this guy show up while you were there?”

He bent to peer at the drawing. “I don’t think so. It’s darker in there than it is here, and I didn’t get to see many people. I mean, he sort of ran me out, you know?”

“He was killed last night. The last place we trace him to is the Cinnamon Club. He was asking about Shelly, too.”

The puffy eyes swiveled up. “Holy shit, Wager, what are you getting me into?”

It would be nice to be able to say “Nothing.” Like it would be nice to be able to say that Doc was still alive. “That’s why I’m telling you. Better stay away from there for a while.”

“Hell yes, I will! And more than a while, man. I told you before, I don’t like them places anyway.” He added, “And I’ll tell you something else—I’m not working for you no more!”

“Why’s that?”

“Clinton!” The whisper hissed. “He’s laughing at you fuckers—he helped beat that kid—Goddard—to death, and he knows you can’t lay a thing against him.”

“That’s because Jimmy King won’t name him. I figure he’s afraid to.”

“He’s too smart to. He gets out of the can, he’s still alive; he fingers Clinton, he’s dead.”

“Has Clinton said anything to you?”

“Not to me, no. But he’s making noises like he thinks somebody spilled on both him and King. He could think I’m one of them somebodies.”

“Has he asked anything about me?”

“About you? Goddamn, man, he better not even think I know your name! I don’t even want to know your name!”

“Somebody’s been asking around about me. I thought it was him.”

“What the hell’s he got to ask? He knows you’re a cop. And besides, Wager, he’s laughing at you. I hope to Christ he don’t know I’m finking for you—he won’t be laughing no more, and neither will I.”

“Just stay cool. King could have shot off his mouth to anybody and probably did. Clinton won’t do a thing—there’s still too much heat.”

“I hope to hell so. But for any more stooling, go find yourself another pigeon. My insurance premium’s getting too high, Wager.”

He remained in the shadows as Plummer, a small roll of new bills in his hip pocket, turned back toward the noisy lights of Colfax; his elbows angled out and his walk waddled slightly, like—Wager thought—a lizard.

The Cinnamon Club.

It wasn’t Rome, but all of a sudden most of the roads seemed to lead there. The trouble was, they were more like trails than roads, and twisted and dim ones at that. And none of them showed how Angela or Foxy Dick’s fit in. Or who was asking questions about him.

Wager, his mind going over the facts and guesses that the Lizard had stirred up, drove down Colfax to LaBelle’s roadside stand. Do something, lieutenant.

Even among the extra crowds and flurries of a Saturday night, Wager could make out the regulars on the strip as he slowly drove by. They formed a pattern of reference points like boulders under a frothy mountain stream. At first glance, the swirls and splashes of laughter and music seemed chaotic, but, when looked at long enough, the chaos revealed a pattern: that bulge in the flow of pedestrians was around Hey You Jones, the half-crazy beggar who every night stationed himself as close to the movie theater as the management would allow. That dimmer section, where pedestrians hurried their pace because there was nothing to lure them, was the wall around a fancy French restaurant; and that long-haired kid sitting on it and swinging his feet was the restaurant’s rent-a-cop, watching over the customers’ cars parked behind the partial safety of that wall. Across the street, a burst of loud, welcoming laughter, where one of the steerers for the Nude Review Disco greeted a pair of cowboys like they were descending gods. Up there, where the traffic of a major artery cut across the strip, a frizzy-haired blond in short-shorts and high, shiny boots posed on her corner. Periodically, like a figure in a cuckoo clock, her black pimp, Emery Reeves, AKA The Spook, emerged at the doorway of Pert’s Place to check on her. Wager didn’t know this girl’s name yet, but he would in time. Ahead, turning into the line of stop-and-go traffic, an unmarked police cruiser stood out as if it had flashers: Moffett and Nolan making one of their routine patrols, another part of the subsurface permanency.

Down past the shill for the Varieties, the half-naked Raymondo in his black jockstrap waved toward someone dealing something on a corner; and beyond that, back at her regular place now, stood LaBelle. Wager blinked his lights as he neared, and her dark face stilled. Then she shrugged. He paused at the curb and leaned across to open the door.

“You getting to be a regular, honey.” Her pink dress had a network of fresh wrinkles and she smelled of a bath of strong perfume. “Once around the block, piggy—it’s a busy night.”

“Saturday night crowd?” He eased back into traffic.

“That and payday, honey—down at Fort Carson. Most of the other girls gone down there this weekend.”

“What have you got for me, LaBelle?”

“I got what every man wants, honey.” She giggled slightly and he saw the large, black circles of her pupils.

“Are you on hard stuff again?”

“You go to hell.” The giggle changed abruptly to a sneer. “What I’m on—what I ain’t on—that’s my business. Not yours, not nobody’s. Mine!”

“Sure, LaBelle. All I want is some information. Do you remember what I wanted you to find out?”

“I remember. You think I’m a monkey-woman. Maybe I am, piggy, but I remember you.”

Wager wasn’t very good at dealing with drunks or people who were stoned. Even in uniform, he’d had his problems trying to mask the repugnance he felt for their lack of control and the ease with which they fell into self-pity. And he never quite erased the suspicion that most of them were not nearly as blanked out as they pretended to be. But he tried to stifle his reaction—LaBelle was touchy enough when she was sober; she was twice as volatile when high. And he needed any information she could give him. “Anything on Annette Sheldon?”