Ticket to Ride (22 page)

“Later.”

“We need to talk now. You could be in a lot of danger.”

The man's whisper was violent. Instructions.

“I'm fine. I just want to go back to sleep. You woke me up.”

“You must talk in your sleep.”

“What?”

“I said you must talk in your sleep. I heard you talking in there just a minute ago.”

More whispered instructions.

“That was the TV. You need to come back later.” She had begun pleading now.

“All right. But we really need to talk.”

I walked away. I made my steps decisive. I was walking away, I was walking down the stairs, I was leaving the hotel.

I went back immediately and flattened myself against the west side of the door.

They started talking again, this time without the whispers. The male voice was familiar now. So was the word he used three times. “Letter.”

This went on for ten minutes. I heard somebody coming up the stairs. I eased on over to the room next to Pauline's and bent over as if I was letting myself in. The fat salesman with the two big leather bags was out of breath. The cigarette tucked into the left corner of his mouth didn't help his breathing. He just nodded as he started to pass me. He couldn't wave with his hands full, and speaking was a bitch with a smoke dangling from your lips.

He was apparently so eager to get into his room that he didn't check back on me. He got the door open, dragged the suitcases inside and vanished.

I took up my previous position.

A few minutes later, Pauline's door opened, and I moved. I shoved him so hard and so fast that he stumbled back three or four feet before his legs folded and he landed on the floor. I kicked the door shut behind me.

“You bastard,” David Raines said.

“This is getting so crazy. I don't live like this. I just want to go home and see my folks is all.” Pauline's voice had risen a few octaves and was splashed with tears of hysteria. It was also sloppy with liquor. Her slurring got worse by the minute.

She wore a man's blue dress shirt that reached to the hem of her blue shorts. She had a glass of whiskey in her hand, no doubt poured from the bottle of Old Granddad on top of the bureau.

Raines got to his feet. The white golf shirt and tan slacks suggested a fun day on the links. But his eyes suggested the opposite. He couldn't decide whether to be mad or scared.

“Don't answer any of his questions, Pauline.”

“I wish you'd both get out of here. I wish Cliffie would leave me alone. I wish I could get on a bus and go home. I didn't have nothing to do with any of this. Not one thing.” She said all this while waggling her drink at us. I was surprised it didn't fly out of her hand, especially since her eyes had started closing every thirty seconds or so.

Raines' contempt was like an attacking animal. “You just screwed your brains out and got drunk and got fatter, isn't that right, Pauline? You didn't know about any of this. That's why you were always sneaking around when Davenport and I were talking. You knew damned well what was going on. And you wanted to cash in on it. Roy would get the final payment and then he'd take you to Europe. That was the plan, right?”

“Don't tell me no more lies, David. You're just trying to hurt my feelings since I don't know where the letter is.” She was much drunker than I'd realized. She was slurring her words and putting a hand on the back of a chair for balance.

He walked over to the bureau, picked up the other glass. As he poured himself a shot, he said, “He was going to dump you. Kill you if necessary. He had it all planned out.”

“I don't believe you.” Which sounded like “I don' b'lief ya.”

The contempt was back. “I could give a damn what you believe or don't believe. Remember the night you wanted me to go to bed with you? You think I'd let a pig like you anywhere near me?”

The alcohol seemed to protect her from the insult. She just took a deep drink from her glass and shrugged. But then she had her vengeance, as if that last drink had given her courage: “You want to know about the letter, McCain? I'll tell you about the letter.”

“Shut up!” He started toward her, but I grabbed a handful of shirt and yanked him back. Before he could swing on me, I had my gun out. Her threat and the appearance of my weapon made everything much more serious.

I looked at her. I remembered the night she'd followed me in the yellow VW. She'd mentioned the letter but gave the impression she didn't know what was in it. I also remembered feeling that she hadn't told me everything. Now, with any luck, she'd tell me what she knew.

First I had to deal with Raines.”Get over there and sit down, Raines. And shut up.”

“Teach you to insult me, you pig,” Pauline said. “And for your information, I wasn't trying to get you into bed. I was trying to get you to lay down before you puked all over the new carpeting the way you did that other night.”

Such a lovely couple. “Tell me about the letter, Pauline. Now.”

“I need a drink first.” She held up her glass. It was only about a quarter full. For most people that would have been fine. For an alcoholic, it was running dangerously low. She teetered her way to the bureau, clanked herself some more of the magic elixir, and then wobbled over and sat on the edge of the emerald-green armchair. She gaped at me and said, “What was I sayin', McCain?”

“The letter.”

“You're going to believe this bitch? She's so drunk, she can't even remember what she was talking about.”

“Shut up, Raines. Now go ahead, Pauline.”

“Did he just call me a bitch?”

“No. You just misheard him. Now tell me about the letter.”

“They were blackmailing him.”

I'd done enough interrogations of drunken clients to know that you had to be patient. “First tell me who ‘they' are.”

“They?”

“You said, ‘They were blackmailing him.'”

“Hell, yes, they were.”

“Tell me who ‘they' are.”

She jabbed her glass in the general direction of Raines. “Him and Roy.”

“And who were they blackmailing?”

“You're s'posed to be a lawyer and smart'n all. Haven't you figured it out by now?”

“I think I have, but I need you to tell me.”

“Lou; who else d'ya think? They was blackmailin' Lou.”

“She's lying.”

“Why were they blackmailing him, Pauline?”

“Why d'ya think? 'Cause he paid to have that fire set.”

“Karen Shanlon?”

“Yeah, that crippled girl.”

“Who did Lou pay to set it?”

She was at the stage where she had to close one eye to focus. “Him. And Roy.”

“You said Raines and Roy were blackmailing him. And they set the fire, too?”

“She's drunk. Everything she's saying is a lie.”

“They made him write this letter, see.” She jerked backward, almost going over. I covered the distance between us in two seconds, then eased her back into the chair. She instantly poured about half the bourbon down her throat. It would be lights out very soon. Maybe that's what she was trying to do.

“You said they made him write a letter. What kind of a letter?”

She raised her head. Her eyes were gazing on a far distant world only she could see. She belched hard enough to snap her head back. Then she smiled with great grand ridiculous glory. She was working her way back to infancy.

I needed to resolve one thing for sure. I leaned down and took the drink from her hand. It took her a while to realize it was gone. “Hey, where's my drink?”

“I'll give it back to you after you answer two more questions.”

“B'shish. It's my drink.”

My face was only inches from hers. She smelled pretty bad. She looked worse.

“You said that Roy and Raines set the fire. Is that true?”

“Huh?”

I took her chin, tilted her face up to mine. “You said that Roy and Raines set the fire. Is that true?”

“Aw, shuurre. They talked 'bout it out to our house.”

“And you said they were blackmailing Lou. Is that also true?”

“I wan' my drink back.”

“Just answer my question and I'll give you your drink.”

“Huh?”

“You said that Roy and Raines were blackmailing Lou. Is that true?”

“Yeah. They sure were. Now gimme my drink.”

I gave her the drink back.

“She has to prove all this,” Raines said. “You'll have a lot of luck with her on the stand. Make sure she isn't wearing a bra and that she's drunk. You'll win for sure.” Raines had collected himself. He was Raines again, no longer frantic. Smug and cold now and enjoying himself.

I walked over to the phone. You didn't need a switchboard here. I dialed. Marjorie Kincaid answered. “Morning, Marj. Is Bill Tomlin there, by any chance?”

“I think so. Let me check. Hold on, Sam.”

Tomlin was the uniformed cop I talked to at Lou Bennett's estate the morning he was murdered. He wasn't exactly up to FBI standards, but he wasn't stupid and he was wary enough of Cliffie's decisions to be honest.

I heard him pick up and Marjorie click off. “Can you do me a favor, Bill?”

“This is going to get me in trouble, isn't it, McCain?”

“Yeah, but I know you've been taking those courses every summer at the police academy about how to handle investigations.”

“Oh, no. The chief's moved his nephew up. He's the new lead detective. You need to talk to him.”

Cliffie's nephew made Cliffie sound like Adlai Stevenson. Not an easy thing to do.

I gave him the name of the hotel and the room number. “I just want you to come over here. I want to walk you through some things. That way, at least somebody in the police department'll really know what's going on. You can leave then, and I'll call Cliffie and ask him to come over.”

Raines started to get up from the couch. I'd set my gun on the small phone table. I picked it up again and this time aimed right at his head. He scowled and sat back down.

“I dunno, McCain.”

“Protect and serve.”

He laughed without humor. “Protecting my butt and trying to serve my family something better than Spam. That's what that means.”

“That's a good one. But I'd really appreciate you coming over here. You're our only hope.”

“Who's ‘our'?”

“Truth, justice, and the American way.”

“Isn't that from a comic book? I think it's Superman.”

“I always liked Batman better.”

“Yeah, me, too. Batman and the Green Hornet.” He sighed. “I'll need fifteen minutes to wrap something up here.”

“I really appreciate this, Bill.”

By the time I hung up, Pauline was unconscious, sprawled in the chair, her drink spilled, the glass on the floor. She snored like a buzz saw.

“What a hog,” Raines said. “She's disgusting. I could never figure out why Roy wanted her around.”

“How much did Fire Chief DePaul get paid?”

“I'm not answering any more of your stupid questions.”

I hadn't expected him to answer. I walked over to the window and looked out on the town. This high up, you could see the sides and backs of the oldest buildings, most of which bore faded business names and advertisements dating back to the 1880s and 1890s. You could see the embedded tracks of the first horse-pulled trolley. You could see the hitching posts in front of a few businesses and taverns. Time overwhelmed me sometimes, how one era appeared bright and fevered, only to dim with another new era suddenly there, bright and fevered, in this long, unending continuum. And the people walking the streets down there would be gone forever, along with their styles and songs and passions great and small, gone forever as if they never existed, even the graveyards in which they were buried disintegrating eventually. I was thinking of my dad and how he'd be gone soon and how I would ache to talk to him in the years ahead. And it would be worse for my mother. She was the one I really had to worry about.

“It won't do you any good to bring some hillbilly cop up here, McCain,” Raines said to my back. “As I said, I won't be answering any questions.”

I walked back to the center of the room. “That's fine. You're entitled to a lawyer. But I'll tell Cliffie everything I know, and I hope he'll take you to the station.”

“He'd never go up against a Bennett.”

“You're not a Bennett. And Lou's power died with him.”

“What if I tell Cliffie that this hillbilly cop was up here first?”

“I'd just tell him the truth. He wasn't in when I called, so I asked for Bill.”

“That's a lie. You didn't ask if Cliffie was in.”

I smiled. “Well, as you said, can you prove it?”

Five minutes later, Bill Tomlin was there. Raines gave him a smirk. He looked at me and rolled his eyes. Bill's khaki uniform was a bit tight, admittedly, thanks to the weight he'd been putting on lately, but he was not stupid.

“Raines here needs to be questioned. He'll want a lawyer, but I wouldn't let him go till Cliffie has gotten answers.”

“Don't call him Cliffie in front of me, okay, McCain? He was nice enough to give me a job and I'm not even a relative.”

“I'm sorry, Tomlin. Pauline over there—”

“What's wrong with her?”

“Drunk and passed out.”

“This room smells like a bar. So anyway, why should the chief be interested in Raines?”

“Don't believe a word this asshole says,” Raines said from the couch.

“Just let him finish. Then I'll talk to you. So why should the chief be interested in him?”

“If Pauline is telling the truth, Raines and Davenport set the fire that killed Karen Shanlon. You remember that one?”

“Yeah. The wife knew her from church. She was a nice woman.”