Wall of Glass (10 page)

“Mexico. We were going to buy a ranch down there and settle down for good. Frank was good at that, at ranching. He knew all about it, the animals, everything.”

“What was his score going to be, Carla?”

She shook her head, her lips pursed. “He never tole me.”

“When did he start talking about it?”

“Always,” she said. She looked away, remembering. Her voice softer, she said, “Ever since I knew him. He was always talkin' about it.”

“How long was that, Carla?”

In the same soft faraway voice, still not looking at me, she said, “Two years. We been together—” she corrected herself, “—we
were
together for two years, almost. Two years in June. We met in June.”

This wasn't helping me. I had probably learned all I could from the girl.

It wasn't helping her, either. I saw that her mascara was making dark slick trails down her cheeks. Sitting there, immobile, silently crying, she suddenly looked somehow smaller, and even younger, like a child badly made up for a costume party.

I asked one more question. “Carla,” I said, “do you have any idea who killed him?”

Silently she lowered her head, silently shook it.

I stood up. “All right, Carla, thank you. If you think of anything else, give me a call.” I put my card, and a twenty dollar bill, on the coffee table. And then, as I had at the Leightons', I saw myself out.

SEVEN

“W
HY ON EARTH
didn't you call me?”

“Rita,” I said into the phone, “I didn't—”

“Someone shoots at you, smashes your window out, and it never occurs to you to let me know?”

“It occurred to me, but I didn't see that there was a whole lot you could do about it. There wasn't a whole lot I could do about it.”

“So I have to wait until I read about it in the newspaper.”

“I'm calling you now,” I pointed out.

“Thanks, Joshua. Thank you very much. Now do you think you could see your way to explaining what happened?”

“I can
tell
you what happened, but I'm not so sure that I can explain it.”

“Joshua, don't play word games with me.”

“Ah, Rita, those are the only kind you'll let me play.”

“Stop smirking.”

“How do you know I'm smirking?”

“You have a very loud smirk. Where are you, at the office?”

“Yeah. I'm waiting for the Leightons' son to show up.”

“All right. In the meantime, tell me what happened.”

I told her. About the conversation with Mrs. Leighton, parts of which I edited slightly, about the smashing of the window and the discussion last night with Hector. Told her I'd fixed the window and talked with Carla Chavez, Biddle's girlfriend.

“So you and Mrs. Leighton were just sitting there, innocently, and someone took a shot at you.”

“Actually, we weren't sitting at the time. We were standing.”

“Innocently.”

“Absolutely.” I told her what Hector had suggested, that perhaps the shot had been a warning of some kind.

“Maybe,” she said, “but even if that's true, you and Hector are both making an assumption.”

“Which assumption?”

“That the warning was meant for you.”

I frowned. “You think it was meant for Mrs. Leighton?”

“I don't think anything yet. I don't know enough.”

“That doesn't make any sense, Rita. It was a thirty-eight slug that came through the window, so it's probably safe to assume that whoever fired it was the same person who killed Biddle. What would he have been warning Mrs. Leighton about?”

“What would he've been warning you about?”

“Beats me, Rita. You're the brains of this operation. I'm just the muscle.”

“Sometimes I can almost believe that. By the way, are you carrying your gun?”

“No.”

“I think you should, Joshua.”

“It spoils the drape of my jacket.”

“Get a new jacket. What did Carla Chavez have to say?”

I related the conversation.

Rita said, “Do you believe her, about the drugs?”

“I believe that
she
believes Biddle wasn't involved in drugs. But she also believes that Biddle wasn't involved with other women. And we know from Felice Leighton that he was involved, at least temporarily, with her.”

“Felice, is it?”

“Aha,” I said. “Do I detect a note of jealousy?”

She laughed. “No. Sorry. But I have a hard time picturing you with someone like her. You'll have to buy yourself a pair of handcuffs.”

“Hector has some nice ones, he tells me. Maybe he'll let me borrow them.”

“If you're planning on a long-term affair, it might be better to invest in a pair of your own.”

“We'll see how it goes. Maybe she carries some with her, just in case.”

“Before you begin this courtship, do you plan to do anything else to find the necklace?”

“I talked to Peter Ricard yesterday, and he tells me that Leighton was in a bind for money last fall, around the time the necklace was stolen. He needed thirty or forty thousand to make payment on a note, and somehow he managed to come up with it. I thought one of us could give Aaron a call, at the bank, and see if he can find out where Leighton got the money.”

“If it's insurance money, the claim might've been fraudulent.”

“Yeah.”

“I know Allan Romero. Atco wouldn't have paid out the money if there were any question of fraud.”

“I'd still like to know if it was the insurance money that saved his ass.”

“All right. I'll call Aaron. What else did you have in mind?”

“Like I said, I'm talking to Kevin Leighton this afternoon. Tonight I'll drive out to the Lone Star and talk to the bartender there. I know him. Maybe he can tell me something about the people Biddle hung around with.”

“I wonder why Biddle and Killebrew had a falling out.”

“Well, sooner or later I'm going to have to talk to Killebrew. I'll ask him that very thing.”

“From everything I've heard about Killebrew, he sounds a dangerous man.”

“You forget, it séems, that you're talking to a guy who can bend steel in his bare hands.”

“Steel doesn't try to bend you back. I know you're terribly strong, Joshua, and terribly competent, but I suggest you be careful with this one.”

“Right, Rita. I'll talk to him on the telephone. Long distance.”

“And wear the gun when you do.”

“Right.”

A
T FOUR O'CLOCK
, half an hour late, Kevin Leighton sauntered through the door, hands in his pockets, and walked across the room with a wrangler strut that immediately reminded me, as perhaps it reminded him, of Frank Biddle. “You Croft?” he asked, his head canted slightly back.

He was medium tall, five foot eight or nine, slender. He was wearing a gray plaid flannel shirt, faded jeans, and that bland insolent mask with which some teenagers confront a potentially hostile adult world. His hair was fine and wavy, so blond it was nearly white, and he was good-looking in an almost delicate way. A well-defined and sensitive mouth, a narrow pointed nose, and pale blue eyes with a wariness to them that didn't quite match the arrogance of expression.

Nodding, I stood up behind the desk and held out my hand. “Kevin Leighton?”

Reluctantly he slipped his hand from his pocket and took mine, shook it.

“Have a seat,” I told him.

He sat down in the client's chair in a manner so like Biddle's it was uncanny. Legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles of his cowboy boots, fingers interlaced atop his chest.

“Did your mother tell you,” I asked him, “what I wanted to see you about?”

He nodded. “Yeah, right,” he said, his voice flat. “The necklace that got ripped off.”

I nodded. “You think Frank Biddle stole it?”

“Nah,” he said. His face twisted with scorn. It's an emotion that comes easily to someone who hasn't lived for very long. “Frank wasn't even in town.”

“The police think that Frank planned the thing with a man named Killebrew. You know him?”

He shrugged. “Seen him around once or twice.”

“With Frank?”

“Yeah,” he said. He raised his eyebrows. “That doesn't prove anything.”

“I'm not trying to prove anything, Kevin. I'm just trying to find the necklace.”

He nodded, mouth compressed, looking wearily up to the ceiling to demonstrate how fascinating he found all this.

I said, “You were the last person to leave the house the night the necklace was stolen.”

“Yeah.” He shrugged again. “What're you, gonna arrest me?”

“I understand that you forgot to turn on the alarm.”

He snorted slightly. “That's what they tell me.”

“And what's that mean?”

He winced with impatience. “I was drunk, man. Ripped. I had some friends over and we partied. I don't remember what I did. They say I didn't turn it on; I didn't turn it on.”

“Were you doing coke that night?”

He looked at me, puzzled, as though he'd never, never ever, heard of the stuff. “Doing what?”

“Kevin, if you were in kindergarten instead of high school, I might buy the innocence number.”

“Hey, man, we partied. We had drinks, seven and sevens, some screwdrivers. That was it.”

“Why am I suddenly having a hard time believing that?”

“Don't know, man, and I don't care. None of this was my idea, my coming here.”

“I thought you might want to help me find your mother's necklace.”

“Right, yeah,” he said, and studied the ceiling some more.

I asked him, “Did you see anything that night, when you left? An unfamiliar car parked near the house?”

Another wince. “I did all this with the cops last year. Ask
them
.”

“They're not here. You are.”

He sighed a long elaborate sigh. “Right,” he nodded. “Okay.” In a monotone, staring at the ceiling again, he chanted, “No I didn't see any cars, no I didn't see any strangers around the house, no I don't have any idea who stole the stupid necklace, and no, I don't give a shit.” He looked down at me. “Can I go now?”

“Kevin,” I said, “I know you're not going to believe this, but you are really beginning to piss me off.”

“Well, that's just too bad, isn't it?”

I stood up and came around the desk.

“You touch me,” he said, sitting up straight, fingers clutching at the arm of the chair as he tucked his feet beneath it, “and my father'll sue you for everything you've got.”

“Uh-huh.” I sat down on the edge of the desk, put my hands against its top. “Kevin, do you have any idea what a thirty-eight caliber slug can do to the human body?”

He sneered. It wasn't a completely successful sneer, but then I outweighed him by about fifty pounds. “What're you, gonna shoot me now?”

“I'm talking about your friend Frank. Your dead friend Frank. Someone pumped four slugs into him. Let me tell you a little something about that, Kevin. A thirty-eight slug travels at around a thousand feet per second. I don't know how good you are at math, probably not very, but that works out to a little more than seven hundred miles an hour. I want you to think about that, Kevin, think about this little piece of lead, doesn't weigh more than a quarter of an ounce, but it's traveling faster than a seven forty-seven. Now what it does when it smashes into you, it shatters bone into splinters and dust and it ruptures blood vessels; the shock just explodes them, and it piles up flesh ahead of it, muscle and ligaments and fat, and rams it all out through a hole in your back the size of a coffee cup.”

His face had gone pale. He cleared his throat, discovered his bravado along with his voice. “So what's the point?”

“In Frank's case, two of the slugs stayed inside him. One of them smashed a couple of ribs and turned his heart into Alpo.”

He leaned forward, hands on the arm of the chair. “Why are you
telling
me this?”

“Because we're talking about a human being here, Kevin, maybe not much of one, but a human being that someone put four bullets in, and your mother tells me, goddammit, that you
liked
him.”

His face clenched with fury. “I did
like
him!”

“Then forget this James Dean shit and
talk
to me. Whoever shot him is still out there, Kevin. He's still got the gun and he's probably still got the necklace.”

His anger and his hurt were still carrying him. “I don't
know
anything about the necklace.”

“Then tell me about Frank. Did he ever get coke for you?”

“What difference does it make now?” His voice was beginning to fray.

I leaned toward him. “So he did.”

“All right,
shit
, yes. So
what
?” But this last bright flare of defiance, the words spat at me, consumed whatever was left. Suddenly he lowered his head, cupping his hand around his forehead so I couldn't see his eyes. His shoulders moved slowly up, slowly down, in a long, deep, ragged sigh.