The Last Dance (10 page)

“What did he say?”

“Am I getting involved in something here?” Hopwell asked.

“We're trying to locate this man,” Meyer said.

“I don't see how I can help you do that.”

“We understand you know where he is.”

“No, I don't.”

“Danny said you know this man's name …”

“Yes, I do.”

“… and where he's staying.”

“Well, I know where he was on Saturday night. I don't know if he's there now. I haven't seen him since last Saturday night.”

“What's his name?” Carella asked.

“John Bridges was what he told me.”

“Where was he staying? Where'd you go that night?”

“The President Hotel. Downtown. On Jefferson.”

“What'd he look like? Describe him.”

“A tall man, six two or three, with curly black hair and pale, blue-green eyes. Wide shoulders, narrow waist, a lovely grin,” Hopwell said, and grinned a lovely grin himself.

“White or black?”

“A very light-skinned Jamaican,” Hopwell said. “With that charming lilt they have, you know? In their speech?”

“He was white,” Mrs. Kipp said. “About forty-five, I would say, with dark hair and blue eyes. Big. A big man.”

“How big?” Brown asked.

“Very big. About your size,” she said, appraising him.

Brown was six feet, two inches tall and weighed in at a buck
ninety-five. Some people thought he looked like a cargo ship. For sure, he was not a ballet dancer.

“Any scars, tattoos, other identifying marks?” he asked.

“None that I noticed.”

“You said you only saw him the first time he was here. How do you know it was the same man the next two times?”

“His voice. I recognized his voice. He had a very distinctive voice. Whenever he got agitated, the voice just
boomed
out of him.”

“Was he agitated the next two times as well?”

“Oh dear yes.”

“Shouting again?”

“Yes.”

“About what?”

“Well, the same thing again, it seemed to me. He kept yelling that Mr. Hale was a goddamn fool, or words to that effect. Told him he was offering real money here, and there'd be more to come down the line …”

“More money to come?”

“Yes. Down the line.”

“More money later on?”

“Yes. Year after year, he said.”

“What was it he wanted?” Brown asked.

“I have no idea.”

“But you got the impression …”

“Yes.”

“… that Mr. Hale had something this man wanted.”

“Oh yes. Very definitely.”

“That this man had come to see Mr. Hale three times in a row …”

“Well, not in a row. He came once at the beginning of September, again around the fifteenth, and the third time about a week later.”

“To make an offer for whatever it was Mr. Hale had.”

“Yes.”

“Three times.”

“Yes. Was my impression from what I heard.”

“And Mr. Hale kept refusing to give him whatever this was.”

“Told the man to stop bothering him.”

“How did the man react to this?”

“He threatened Mr. Hale.”

“When was this?”

“The last time he was here.”

“Which was when? Can you give us some idea of the date?”

“I know it was a holiday.”

Brown was already looking at his calendar.

“Not Labor Day,” he said.

“No, no, much later.”

“Only other holiday in September was Yom Kippur.”

“Then that's when it was,” Mrs. Kipp said.

“September twentieth.”

“That's the last time he came here.”

The room went silent. Again, as Mrs. Kipp had promised, they could hear all the noises of the building, unseen, secret, almost furtive. In the silence, they became aware again of the baneful stink from the pot boiling on the kitchen stove.

“And you say he threatened Mr. Hale?” Brown asked.

“Told him he'd be sorry, yes. Said they'd get what they wanted one way or another.”

“‘They'? Was that the word he used? ‘
They'?”

“Pardon?”

“
‘They'd'
get what they wanted?”

“Yes. I'm pretty sure he said ‘they.'”

“What was it he wanted?” Brown said again.

“Well, I'm sure I don't know,” Mrs. Kipp said, and got up to go stir her pot again.

“Danny told me this man was boasting about having received five grand,” Carella said.

“Oh, I think he was making all that up,” Hopwell said.

“Making what up?”

“The five thousand dollars.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To impress me.”

“Told you somebody had given him five thousand dollars …”

“Well, yes, but he was making it up.”

“Five thousand dollars to kill somebody.”

“No, he didn't say that.”

“What did he say?”

“I hardly remember. We were drinking a lot.”

“Did he tell you there was an old man …”

“Yes.”

“Who had something somebody else wanted …”

“Well, yes, but that was all make-believe.”

“The old man was make-believe?”

“Oh, I think so.”

“Someone wanting him dead was make-believe?”

“John had an active imagination.”

“Someone willing to pay five thousand dollars to kill this old man and make it look like an accident …”

“I didn't believe a word of it.”

“But it's what he told you, isn't it?”

“Yes, to impress me.”

“I see. To impress you. Did he give you a strip of roofers when you left the hotel?”

“As a matter of fact, he did. But roofers aren't a controlled substance.”

“Mr. Hopwell, if I told you that an old man was drugged with Rohypnol and later hanged to make it look like a suicide, would you still believe John Bridges was trying to impress you when he told you he'd been paid five thousand …”

“He didn't say exactly that. You're putting words in my mouth.”

What'd
he
put in your mouth? Ollie wondered.

“What
did
he say, exactly?” Meyer asked.

“He was telling a story. He was saying
suppose
a person had been offered a certain amount of money …”

“Five thousand dollars.”

“Yes, he mentioned that sum. But it was all supposition. He was making up a story.”

“A story about someone who was offered five grand to kill someone …”

“He never used that word. He never said the word ‘kill.' I'd have been out of there in a minute. He was just bragging. To impress me.”

“What word
did
he use?”

“I don't know, but it wasn't the word ‘kill,' he never said anything about killing anyone. Listen, who remembers
what
he said? We were drinking a lot.”

“And smoking a lot of pot, too, is that right?”

“Well, a little.”

“Which is a controlled substance.”

“Haven't you ever smoked pot, Detective?”

“Did he mention any names?” Meyer asked.

“No.”

“Didn't say
which
old man he'd been hired to …”

“It was just a story.”

“Didn't say
who
had hired him to kill this old man?”

“A good story, that was all.”

“Didn't say
who
had given him the five grand he later used as his stake in the poker game …”

“He was just a terrific storyteller,” Hopwell said.

“You didn't think you should call the police after you heard this terrific story, huh?” Carella said.

“No, I didn't.”

“Don't you read the papers, Mr. Hopwell?”

“Only for items about the reverend.”

“How about television? Don't you watch television?”

“Again, only to …”

“So when John Bridges told you he'd been paid five thousand dollars to kill an old man and make it look like …”

“He never used the word ‘kill.' I told you that.”

“
Whatever
word or words he used, you never made a connection between what he was saying and a man named Andrew Hale, who'd been all over television that week?”

“Never. I
still
don't make any connection. I don't know anything about this old man you say was killed. Look, I told you John's name, I told you where he was staying. If he did something wrong, you'll have to take that up with him.”

“What else can you tell us about him?”

“He had a scar down the left-hand side of his face.”

“What kind of scar?”

“It looked like a knife scar.”

“You're just remembering a
knife
scar?” Ollie said. “Guy has a fuckin knife scar on his
face,
and it's the last thing you mention about him?”

“I try not to notice deformities or infirmities,” Hopwell said.

“Do you remember any
other
deformities or infirmities?”

“No.”

“How about identifying marks or tattoos? Like a mole, for example, or a birth …”

“Well, yes, a tattoo,” Hopwell said, and hesitated. “A blue star on the head of his penis.”

There was no one named John Bridges registered at the President Hotel. Nor had there been anyone registered under that name on the night of November sixth. When they gave the manager the description Hopwell had given them, he said he couldn't recall anyone
who'd looked or sounded Jamaican, but this was a big hotel with thousands of guests weekly, and it was possible there'd been any number of Jamaicans registered on the night in question.

They checked the register for anyone from Houston, Texas. There'd been a guest from Fort Worth who'd checked in on the fourth and out the next night, and another from Austin, who was here with his wife and two kids; they did not bother him. Their computer showed no outstanding warrants for anyone named John Bridges. Neither was anyone listed under that name in the Houston telephone directory.

Carella called Houston Central and talked to a man who identified himself as Detective Jack Walman. He told Carella he'd been a cop for almost twelve years now and knew most of the people doing mischief in this town, but he'd never run acrosst one had a knife scar down the left-hand side of his face and a blue star tattooed on his pecker.

“That does beat all,” he said. “What's the star stand for? The lone star state?”

“Could be,” Carella said.

“What I'll do,” he said, “I'll run it through the computer. But that's a unusual combination, ain't it, and I'd sure remember something peculiar like that if I'd ever seen it. Unless, what coulda happened, he mighta got the knife scar
before
he got the tattoo. Lots of these guys get jailhouse tattoos, you know. In which case, there wouldn't be
both
of them on the computer, you follow? We get plenty knife scars down here. Is your man Chicano?”

“No. A Jamaican named John Bridges.”

“Well, we got something like two thousand Jamaicans here, too, so who knows? What'd he do, this dude?”

“Maybe killed two people.”

“Bad, huh?”

“Bad, yes.”

“Musta hurt, don't you think?” Walman said. “Gettin tattooed that way?”

He called back an hour later to say he'd searched the system—city
and
state—for any felon named John Bridges and had come up blank. As he'd mentioned earlier, there were plenty facial scars in the state of Texas, and if Carella wanted him to fax printouts on each and every felon who had one, he'd be happy to oblige. But none of the facial scars came joined to tattooed dongs. One of the old-timers here at the station, though, remembered a guy one time had a little American flag tattooed on
his
wiener, if that was any help, it waved in the breeze whenever he got an erection. But he thought the guy was doing time at Angola, over Louisiana way. Aside from that, Walman was sorry he couldn't be of greater assistance. Carella asked him to please fax the facial-scar printouts, and thanked him for his time.

They were right back where they'd been on the morning of October twenty-ninth, when they'd first caught the squeal.

THERE WERE
three airports servicing the metropolitan area. The largest of them, out on Sands Spit, flew three direct flights and six connecting flights to Houston on most weekdays. The airport closest to the city flew nine direct flights and eleven connecting flights. Across the river, in the adjoining state, direct flights went out virtually every hour, starting at 6:20
A.M.
Twenty-one non-stop and connecting flights left from that airport alone. Altogether, a total of fifty flights flew to Houston almost every day of the week. It was a big busy city, that Houston, Texas.

Starting early Wednesday morning, the tenth day of November, twelve detectives began surveillance of the check-in counters at Continental, Delta, US Airways, American, Northwest, and United Airlines, looking for a Jamaican with a knife scar who might be headed for either Houston-Intercontinental or Houston-Hobby on a direct flight, or on any one of the flights connecting through Charlotte, Dallas/Fort Worth, New Orleans, Detroit, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, or Philadelphia. None of
the men boarding any of the flights even remotely fit the description Harpo Hopwell had given them.

There were still a lot more flights going out that day.

“Who's in charge here?” the assistant medical examiner wanted to know.

Ollie merely gave him a look: he was the only person here with a gold and blue-enameled detective's shield pinned to his jacket lapel, so who the hell did the man
think
was in charge? The only other cops at the scene were a pair of blues, both of them standing around looking bewildered, their thumbs up their asses. Did the man think
uniforms
were now handling homicide investigations?