Trouble in Rooster Paradise (26 page)

I wandered down a winding footpath that steered
me onto the landing. The rain had stopped. Across the lake stood
the Aurora Bridge and a clustering of assorted craft cutting
through water that looked murky because of the overcast. I spit a
well-chewed clove in the water as I ambled along the
landing.

None of de Carter’s neighbors seemed to be at
home. His place looked shut up and impenetrable—a castle waiting to
be stormed. My storming experience was in the hedgerows of
Normandy, with its feelings of an enemy menace only a few feet
away, out of sight, waiting to pounce.

Bordering all four sides of his houseboat was a
narrow catwalk that was skirted by a lattice fence about three feet
high. The little gate fought me as I tried to open it, only to
creak when I finally did.

I pulled my gun from its holster and kept it
just inside my coat. I rapped on the door of what seemed like a
buoyant tomb. Nobody answered.

I tried the door. It swung open with no
resistance.

Sun from the windows showed me a nice place
with a loutish ambiance. A coffee table made from cinderblocks and
a smooth plank supported a stack of
Holiday
and
Esquire
magazines anchored in place with an overstuffed
ashtray. Empty beer bottles and unwashed cups and plates rested in
the corners and nooks generally reserved for photos and curios. The
true masculine touch was the assortment of clothes not quite ripe
enough for washing left hanging on the backs and arms of chairs,
masquerading as slipcovers and covering up cigarette
burns.

To my right was a bar that divided off the
small kitchen from the living room. The kitchen clock said 2:20.
Off the kitchen was a little hallway that led to a bedroom and
bathroom. Those doors were closed. I figured if de Carter was at
home he was either taking a quiet nap or a serene crap.

The stillness of the house bothered me. It was
eerily quiet. The silence brought back inklings of the hedgerow
terrors. I remained just inside the door with my gun leading the
way.

Outside a nearby motorboat idled and made a
rattletrap noise. I froze like a Bon Marché mannequin. The engine
strained and chugged for a minute or so. The clamor grew louder as
the boat came closer. The tumult short-circuited the usual bristly
feeling I get when someone is behind me. It explained why I was
such an oblivious target.

I felt the breeze of the first blow to my head.
A nightstick smacking a melon. It stunned me and I began losing my
balance. My vision was fuzzy and the room started to heave like
waves churned up by an angry whale. Adrenaline induced a kind of
supernatural alertness when the second blow hit. Then there was
nothing but a black void, a sudden gust and a grand
plunging ….

Mrs. Berger shoveled cookies in my mouth and
told me to chew thoroughly. She wore a skimpy burlesque outfit and
shivered. Guy de Carter held her fans in one hand and a camera in
the other. He laughed and snapped shots of me being fed.

I chewed and chewed until the scene shifted and
shells exploded around me. Mike hugged the ground and told me to do
the same. The drumming of my heart serenaded the knot in my gut.
The shelling stopped and Mike and I did an elbow and knee crawl
over to what looked like a current of water. A machine gun crackled
and small-arms fire erupted as we approached the stream. The air
became filled with the shrill noise of flying lead as automatic
fire moved through the ranks of soldiers around us like a tornado.
A man was mowed down to my left. Ahead of me the storm reached a
kid who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He gave me a
questioning hurt look before he dropped to his knees in the water
and slowly keeled over. Mike was transmogrified into Walter
Pangborn. Walter and I jumped into the stream for safety. We
couldn’t get deep enough. Artillery bombardment began again
whipping up the water around us. I barely heard Walter scream,
“They’ve got us zeroed in!”

I jerked awake. I was lying on my stomach. I
raised my head and stared blurrily at a V for victory sign. It was
a big one. I felt queasy.

My right hand was cradling something heavy. My
fingers told my brain it was a gun. I managed to get up on my
knees. It was
my
gun. I laid it on the floor.

A colossal ache began at the back of my head
and flowed through my body down to my toes. A blackjack hangover.
But it was a good sign. It meant I wasn’t dead.

I almost lost my balance. I eased back,
shifting haunches down on calves. I waited to see if the sick
feeling would subside a bit. It didn’t.

Eventually I lifted a resistant hand behind my
head. Remarkably, my fedora was still in place. I felt for damage
and touched a wet mushy spot. I brought my hand back and squinted
at a mixture of hair strands and bloodied pomade.

I made feeble attempts to rub mutinous thoughts
together to form conclusions. I wiped my hand with my handkerchief
and repositioned my fedora. My watch said 2:50. I’d been out about
half an hour. My hand leaped inside my raincoat. The envelope with
the photos was gone.

Across the room the large V for victory sign
started to take on freakish significance. It was the bottoms of a
pair of shoes worn by the feet of someone lying on his
back.

Drawing from a previously unknown energy
reserve, I stood up. The shoes were Koolies, though not the pair
from the day before. The same wearer though. It was Guy de Carter.
He looked like he was saying something. His eyes had that
unblinking apathy of a battle-savvy dogface. It went well with his
chest and its ugly red blotch. I had a feeling my gun had made that
blotch.

Scratch one drugstore cowboy.

My head tingled as if pricked by a thousand
pins, but I was beginning to focus a little better. The bedroom
door was wide open. I looked inside. I knew the room. It was the
bedroom in the blackmail photos. As I entered I could tell that the
pictures had been taken from the right side of the bed. In that
direction was a closet. A little probing revealed a small space
hidden by a false front where a stool sat in front of a peephole.
The perfect perch for a candid cameraman. The marks had probably
been brought here at night—too drunk or too rutted to later recall
the location, or maybe just too afraid to try.

A siren wailed and whined in the
distance.

It all began to make a sick sort of sense.
Realization acted like a restorative, shoving aside the fog
enfolding my mind, leading to alarm and a mild panic. Dead men tell
no tales. De Carter knew a lot more of the tale than I did. Without
the photos I didn’t have much of a tale to tell. Not one I could
prove anyway. I was to be the fall guy for Guy’s murder.

The siren got closer.

I grabbed a dishtowel that sat on the kitchen
bar. I wiped my gun thoroughly and placed it on the bar with the
towel. Then I eased myself down to the floor and resumed the
position I was in when I’d come to.

I closed my eyes and waited.

“
N
o prints
on the gun,” said Milland’s partner from the houseboat
landing.

Hanson’s voice barely carried to where Milland
and I leaned against the front of my Chevy. The medical examiner
had given me a makeshift compress for the back of my head. I held
it in place and did a fair imitation of dazed and
miserable.

Milland gave Hanson a two-finger wave as he
said to me, “I can’t believe you didn’t get the license plate of
that Packard.”

“
Why would I? I thought I had
him.”

“
What I can’t figure,” he said,
giving me a sly smile, “is why the killer didn’t put the gun in
your hand. You know, make it a thoroughgoing frame-job.”

I shrugged. “Oversight?”

He pulled on his cigarette. After he exhaled he
said, “Uh-huh. Hell of an oversight. A real stupid one. Except I’m
thinking this killer ain’t that stupid.”

I didn’t say anything.

The uniformed cops who’d answered the call
didn’t know me. I’d struggled to regain consciousness for their
benefit and mumbled “Call Detective Milland” before I passed out
again. I miraculously revived when I heard a few insolent words
from Milland’s mouth.

“
So you’ve got no idea who whacked
Smilin’ Jack over there?”

“
Like I said, find the owner of that
Packard and you’ve got your man.”

“
Yeah? Well, I’ll tell you one of
your bright boy guesses that didn’t pan out. Nobody on that
customer list owns a Packard.”

I said it didn’t surprise me.

I told him about the photos. I said I’d found
them in the houseboat before my lights went out. It was an enhanced
version of the truth. I figured de Carter would have taken the
photos home if he’d found them. All I’d done was save him the
trouble.

“
I’ll wager the men in those photos
were patrons of Fasciné Expressions. I recognized a couple of
Seattle’s upper crust.” I gave him the names Walter had mentioned.
“Even money you’ll find both of them on that repeat customer list.
All the more reason to try and keep that end of things under
wraps.”

“
Uh-huh,” Milland said, not hiding
his irritation. “Your client would just love that too, I
bet.”

“
You’d win that bet.”

“
And maybe we’ll get lucky and find
a neat and tidy payment ledger or a list of shakedown victims
inside that floating dump. Is that what you think?”

I didn’t respond. My guess was that the killer
would have tossed the place if he’d thought de Carter had that kind
of evidence. De Carter’s killer had likely been using him as
liaison between himself and the blackmail victims. If he wanted
more payments, he’d be forced now to start making direct contact
for himself. It might be one way to catch him, if one of the
victims could be made to cooperate. But I kept this to myself. I
decided to let Milland figure that much out for himself. Besides, I
was already poking away at his patience with a pretty sharp
stick.

When he’d arrived, Milland had made opening
salvos laced with several acerbic “You
shoulda
come in like
I told you,” and a series of “I
oughta
run your ass in, just
on principle.” I’d remained mute during the onslaught and only
nodded at fit intervals. I learned that his informants had come up
empty and that Meredith’s estimated time of death was between 11:00
p.m. and 1:00 a.m.

“
Frank, I’m convinced finding the
owner of that Packard is the key. It wouldn’t hurt to expand that
registration search. Check on anyone connected with Fasciné
Expressions and de Carter’s ad agency.”

He looked at me like I was a bug. But I knew I
was a bug he’d listen to. I also knew he’d cut me loose after he
finished questioning me. I knew Frank Milland from before the war,
but I didn’t meet his kid brother until he was sent to us as a
replacement. Milland’s brother and I had trudged through slush and
muck together. We’d eaten the same inadequate chow together. We’d
fought krauts side by side. I’d been there when Mike Milland bought
it. I was the living link to Mike’s final moments, and like it or
not, Frank had a soft spot in his heart for me.

I tried not to take advantage of that soft
spot.

Not too much, anyway.

Okay. Whenever I could.

“
It’s time for my break. Care if I
take a load off with you, hon?” Verna asked.

I told her I didn’t mind at all.

The supper crowd hadn’t yet hit Holger’s Café
when Verna brought me my chicken fried steak, french fries, and
coffee. Her vacant stare told me she’d either had a grueling day of
hash-slinging or something was weighing on her mind.

Verna headed over to where Holger was jawing
with old Hjalmer Petersen at the counter. I watched in casual
fascination as the fabric of her uniform stretched to bisect the
fitness of her impressive bottom. She said something to her boss
and pointed back my way, then poured herself a cup of coffee before
returning to plant herself across from me in the booth.

“
I’m thinkin’ to call it quits,” she
announced solemnly.

“
You’re leaving
Holger’s?”

“
Nah, not here. Quits with
Hank.”

“
I take it your date didn’t go well
last night.”

She laughed. “It didn’t go at all. The big lug
was a no show.” She lifted her cup to puckered lips and blew. “I
think he’s taken up with that tramp I caught him with.”

I told her I was sorry to hear it.

“
Good riddance, I say,” she said
with a small shrug. Her eyes told me that the news about Hank was
just her way of laying groundwork, as it hit me that when I’d
ordered only the top button of her blouse had been unfastened and
her red lips had looked faded. Now lipstick was refreshed and the
second button undone, which invited a wee glimpse of brassiere
tatting and cleavage. I pushed my back deeper into the red vinyl of
the booth and nibbled on one of my fries. Verna’s vacant stare had
been replaced with a speculative one.

“
I’ve always really liked you,
Gunnar.” She sipped her coffee and I saw the smooth vigor of her
cream-colored neck work as she drank.