The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (25 page)

Cockeysville. Cockeysville, Maryland. A name that
stays with you. Arnie had sent a Christmas card from there every year
since we graduated. With any luck, he still lived there, commuting to
Johns Hopkins where he taught philosophy publicly and railed against
the military-industrial establishment privately. As I drove toward
the town, my mind kept switching around what I knew. From the photo
in the file, I was pretty certain which case Al had stumbled on. The
problem was, I couldn't see quite how. From his eavesdropping in the
cellar, J.T. knew about the list, but if Jacquie had told me the
truth, he wou1dn't find it. Still, he'd be able to reconstruct it,
and the photo with the younger Ricker in it should tip him off. Al,
however, hadn't had access to the files, so he must have found the
bad guy some other way. Since I didn't have, or particularly care to
have, access to J.T. and the army's computers anymore, I figured
probably there was only one way for me to find Al's killer. The same
way Al had.

Whatever that was.

I hit Cockeysville and pulled up to three phone
booths before I found one that had a book. I had the book open,
shivering in my blanket, before I realized that I didn't have a dime
anyway. The address would do. Arnie, or Arnold. Neumeier. The Ds, the
Ls, Na, Ne . . .

There was something there, something fuzzy, vibrating
in there with the headache and being muffled by it. My hands were
shaking, and I was too tired to make sense of it.

I found Arnie's address. I got back in the car and
crisscrossed streets till I hit his. I knocked on his door just as
dawn was breaking. After he got over the shock of my being there and
my appearance, what little I could tell him confirmed his view of the
armed services. He led me in his car to an all-night supermarket
eight miles south, where we parked the government car. Then we drove
back to his house. Arnie fed me and loaned me fifty dollars and some
winter clothes. He dropped me off at a bus station over the Delaware
line and said "for chrissake" to stay in touch from now on.

I took a Trailways Scenic Cruiser to Providence,
sleeping most of the way. I changed to the train and got off an hour
and five minutes later at South Station in Boston. The cabbie told me
it was 4:15 P.M. I thought about playing possum somewhere, but I
needed more money and wanted a licensed weapon. I was willing to
chance that J .T. or an allied paramilitary force had staked out my
apartment.

They needn't have bothered.

The cabbie pulled to at stop and swiveled around with
a shrug. "Hey, Mac. You sure you wanted Number Fifty-eight?"

I nodded, more at the blackened rubble than at him.
My whole building was gone. As in blown up and burned down.

I had him drive me to Cambridge. I got off in Harvard
Square, bought a "late stocks" edition Globe and had two
screwdrivers in the Casablanca, an after-work and academic hang-out
for the post-mixer set. I opened the paper. My building, or rather
its destruction, made page one.

The explosion occurred at 10:00 A.M. On the nose. No
doubt of it, because the antiques dealer across the street was just
setting a mantel clock when the blast shattered his front windows.
The resultant tire raged for nearly two hours. The manager of the
drycleaner on the street level was badly shaken. All the residential
tenants save one were accounted for, miraculously out of the building
during working hours. One body, badly burned, was found that seemed
to match the missing tenant's description. Police were "withholding
any names until a positive identification could be made and relatives
contacted." Due to the suspicious nature of the fire, the arson
squad and other authorities were investigating. There was a
photograph accompanying the story. In the corner of the picture was a
hulking black man I'd bet was Murphy.

The anonymous tenant was, of course, me. The question
then became, who was the guy everybody thought was me?

I had two candidates.

One was Marco. He'd gotten the Coopers. He'd try to
get me. MO in the ballpark with explosion and fire. Marco just got
careless with his implements.

Second choice was old Curl. Maybe doubled back, half
in the tank, to rip me off. Maybe thought of something else he should
have done. Marco has visited in the meantime, however, and bad timing
cashiers old Curl.

I wasn't too broken up about either candidate.
Whoever it was, however, I wanted to stay dead awhile. If Marco was
dead, I still had to deal with Al's killer. If Curl was dead, Marco
was alive, and I couldn't see any percentage in advising the elder
D'Amico brother that he'd shot the wrong duck. To stay dead, however,
would require some immediate action.
 

TWENTY
-•-

IT WAS.T EASY GETTING THROUGH TO  A RANKING
POLICE officer when you refuse to give your name. I ascended the
scale, slightly disguising my voice for Detective Cross when she
picked up. If confidential informants help solve only a few crimes,
it may be because they spend most of their lives on hold.

"Murphy here. Who is this?"

"Lieutenant, when I tell you my name, I don't
want it repeated by you on your end of the line, understand?"

"Shit. Mr. Lazarus, I presume."

I almost laughed. "That's pretty good,
Lieutenant, but at the moment my sense of humor isn't what it might
be."

"Christ, I can't see why. If I was you, I'd be
jumping for joy about now."

"Listen, Lieutenant, let me connect a few dots
for you and then ask you a favor, O.K.?"

"I'm listening."

"Since I'm not dead, the unidentified man is
probably Marco D'Amico or an army sergeant from D.C. named Curly
Mayhew. M-A-Y-H-E-W, I think. I'm not sure that Curly is his real
name, but it might be."

"Go on."

"I figure somebody rigged my place to blow like
the Coopers. Either Marco or someone else."

I heard some background conversation at his end.
Murphy lowered his voice a notch. "I got a call from an ADA
named Meagher who said you had Marco pegged for the Cooper killings.
Where does the someone else come in?"

"I'm not sure. That's the favor part."

"Let's hear it."

"I need to stay dead a couple of days. That
probably means that the lab report on the body has to be delayed
awhile. Maybe lost in somebody's in-box, but you'd know better on
that."

"Uh-unh, no way. I got Meagher on my ass on this
one. She's been calling me every two hours since the office got word
on the blast."

"I can let her in, too. No problem. She'll stop
pressing you."

Murphy was silent.

"Murphy?"

"Yeah."

"Can you help me out?"

A shorter pause. "I don't like it. A body should
be identified. Family and all."

"I don't like it either. But I'm not aware that
Mayhew has any family, and if it's Marco, well, his parents at worst
think they have a son for a few more days."

"I still don't like it."

"I don't like a lot of things, Lieutenant. I
don't like my apartment getting blown up, or my neighbors left
homeless, or my best friend from the army getting killed, or—"

"Awright, awright. But I got a job to do. And a
job to keep, get me?"

"I got you. But I still need a couple of days."

Murphy grunted. "O.K. Two days. Then I've got to
follow through. "

"I really appreciate it, Lieutenant."

"Yeah. Listen, I want to hear from you. Use this
number."

I wrote down the seven digits.

He continued. "I want to hear from you tomorrow
morning and tomorrow night. Got it?"

"Yes. Thanks."

"Bye-bye."

"Oh, Lieutenant, one more thing."

"Yeah?"

"Can you lend me a few hundred bucks?"

Murphy laughed, a good deep roar. "Shit, man,
with your present credit prospects, I wouldn't lend you a dime unless
you were a cat!"

"As in nine lives?"

"You got it."

"Nice talkin' with you."

I dialed the DA's office asking for Nancy Meagher.
Telling her secretary I was Lieutenant Murphy, I was put right
through.

"Lieutenant?"

"Sort of."

“
What?"

"You see I was a lieutenant before I made
captain, but I'm retired now, or discharged if you want to be."

"Oh my God," she said, followed by a cough
and a little choking sound. "Is it . . ."

"It's me, Nancy. Safe and more or less sound."

"Oh, God, just a minute .... "

I could hear her smiling and blowing her nose.
"John?"

"Listen, I'm sorry for joking like that. I
didn't—”

"Oh," she said with one terminal sniffle.
"That's all right. I'm . . . fine, now. What happened, who—"

I repeated for her my suspicions about Marco and for
Curly.

"How does the army lit into all this?"

"I can't tell you now."

"What can you tell me?"

"That I was pleased to hear you were ragging
Murphy about me."

A short laugh. "Besides that?"

"Not much. Nancy, I'm sorry to have to ask this,
but I need some money."

"Sure. Your bank'll think you're dead, so you
can't cash a check."

"Right. Assuming I still had a checkbook."

"How much?"

I cleared my throat. "Seven or eight hundred
dollars."

She cleared hers. "What do you want that kind of
money for?"

"I'm going to have to buy some information."

"You going to buy anything else?" she asked
cautiously.

"Nancy, I believe that whoever blew up my
building is still around. As long as he thinks he killed me, I'll be
pretty safe. As soon as he realizes he didn't, I'm going to need
protection. I've got a firearms card, remember? I won't be breaking
any laws buying a gun."

As she considered it, I realized that I should have
said I was issued a firearms card, since my wallet was probably
ashes, either burned by Curl or with him.

"O.K.," she relented. "Just don't let
this get out. I'd hate to have people know I was a shy for a private
eye."

"Ogden Nash would be proud of you."

"Where are you staying?"

Her question made me realize that I couldn't be quite
over the effects of Ricker and Jacquie. I had less than carfare left
in my pocket, and nowhere to sleep.

"I'm going to try the Pine Street Inn," I
said, a genuine charity that housed and fed homeless, often derelict,
men.

"Forget it," she said. "In cold
weather it's full by three P.M. You can stay at my place. Where are
you now, I'll pick you up."

"Nancy, you don't—"

"No arguments. Where are you?"

I told her I'd be in the doorway of Elsie's, a Mt.
Aubum Street restaurant and the most famous of the Harvard College
hamburger hang-outs.

"I'l1 drive by in thirty minutes. Red Honda
Civic."

"I remember."

"See you then."

"Nancy?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks."

* * *

When I got into her car, she smiled, her eyes no
redder than a winter's evening should have made them. I felt the glow
again as she squeezed my left forearm, then returned her right hand
to the stickshift and kept it there.

"Put your seatbelt on," she said.

We got onto Memorial Drive, toward Boston. .

"You look pretty shabby," she said.

"Borrowed clothes."

She moved her head in concurrence.

We drove on in silence, halted at the Stop & Shop
traffic light.

"What do you like for breakfast?" she
asked, glancing at the supermarket.

"Oh," I said, "whatever you have in
the house will be fine."

The light changed. We eased forward with the
surrounding traffic.

"What happened to the wise-ass PI who nearly
gave me heart failure today?"

"He got nervous."

"About what?"

"About being a houseguest."

She laughed, then caught herself. "I'm sorry,
John. It's just that . . . well, your place has been blown up, three
or four people killed around you, and—" She shook her head.
"Staying with me shakes you up."

I squirmed a little under the seatbelt. "I'm an
odd one, all right."

"Pity there aren't more like you."

She negotiated the corkscrew ramps up and over the
Longfellow Bridge, then down behind North Station. We drove along
Commercial Street to Atlan tic Avenue via the nameless byway under
the Southeast Expressway. The Honda crossed over the Commonwealth
Pier access road and then onto Summer Street toward South Boston.