A Killer’s Kiss

41

There wasn’t much time to change Hanratty’s mind.

The trip from my apartment to the Roundhouse, even in the middle of the day, was not a long one, and in the middle of the night, if you caught the lights right, it could be positively swift. Once we hit the Roundhouse, I’d be sent straightaway to processing, and then to arraignment court, and then to jail until a bail was set that I could pay, which, considering the charge of murder and the state of my bank account, seemed unlikely. My future freedom would then depend on Sims, who, with the money scent now in his nostril, was as dependable as a rabid dog. So I had to somehow alter Hanratty’s destination before we hit the Roundhouse. But it wasn’t just to keep my butt out of jail.

Like a demented chess player, unmindful of the consequences, I had set the pieces in motion. At some point, probably on the road out of town, the paths of Sims and Trocek and Clarence Swift would intersect and the bullets would fly. Just the thought of it brought a little pitter-patter to my heart. But it wasn’t long after I sent Gregor to chase Clarence, and Sims to meet up with them, that I realized that when the bullets flew, Julia would be caught in the middle, and her predicament would be my responsibility. I had to do something about it, and I had to do it fast.

But I was now in the backseat of a cop car, with my hands cuffed behind my back and without an easy way out. And it didn’t help that the man in the driver’s seat had an emotional temperament and a skull both of which could only be described as igneous. Still, I had one card to play that might crack even his stone demeanor.

“Your partner is a crook,” I said to Detective Hanratty as he drove me east, toward police headquarters.

Sims had dashed off in his own car to chase after Julia, and so I was alone with Hanratty. He actually wasn’t playing it as hard I thought he would. He had let me bandage my chest, clean the blood from my ear, put on a new shirt and tie just like the old shirt and tie, let me grab my suit jacket before we left. He had cuffed me, sure – rules are rules – but he didn’t tell me to shut the hell up when I called his partner a crook, like I had expected. All he did was clench his jaw and set his features, just as he had when Sims had sent him from my apartment, which was a promising start.

“Sims isn’t trying to solve Wren Denniston’s murder,” I continued. “Instead he’s running after the one point seven million in cash that the good doctor embezzled from the Gregor Trocek who was in my apartment. That’s why Sims stuck you with the task of taking me to the Roundhouse, so he could chase the money.”

Hanratty gave me a quick and ugly glance in the rearview mirror as he kept driving. We were headed north now, toward Race Street, where we would turn east again. The Roundhouse was only a few minutes away.

“I know who killed the doctor. It was a drug-addicted Byron wannabe by the name of Terry Tipton, who is an old boyfriend of Julia’s. The story is sad and sordid and Shakespearean in the literal sense, but he admitted it to me and to someone else and on tape.”

Hanratty cocked his granite face without saying anything.

“Ah, so you are listening. Good. No, I don’t have the tape. Julia Denniston has the tape, and she’ll do anything she can to protect this Tipton. But Sims doesn’t care about the tape, or this Terry Tipton, or anything other than the money.”

Hanratty’s jaw clenched the way it seemed to clench whenever I mentioned his partner. But he still was headed to the Roundhouse and my appointment in arraignment court.

“‘What about the gun?’ you might ask. It was planted in my apartment by Mrs. Denniston just before you showed up. She tried to convince me not to give you the tape. I tried to convince her to give up her old boyfriend. As always, neither of us convinced the other of anything. She took the tape and left the gun. Where’d you find it anyway?”

He glanced at me again.

“Let me guess,” I said. “In the desk drawer.”

His eyes blinked.

“That’s her place. She likes to hide things there. And it’s funny, isn’t it, how you missed the gun the first time you searched my apartment? But your slimy partner isn’t the only one chasing after the money. Gregor Trocek is after it, too. Nice guys, the two of them. It would be quite the show if ever they meet again. And it should happen soon, since I set the two of them on a collision course.”

The car swerved. We were on Race Street now, racing through Chinatown and toward the Roundhouse, and the car swerved, hard left, before straightening again to the bray of horns.

“I sent Gregor Trocek after Clarence Swift, who was Wren’s partner in the embezzlement. I sent Sims after Mrs. Denniston, who is the object of Clarence Swift’s affection and who will, this very evening, I believe, meet with him on her way out of town. I expect it will end in extreme violence well away from here before it’s over. Which, except for Mrs. Denniston’s presence in the middle of it all, suits me just fine, because I think I know where the money is, and we can beat them both to it. And once the money is tucked safely away with the U.S. Trustee, we can deal with this whole situation like gentlemen.”

“You want to take me to the money?” said Hanratty, shock in his voice.

“Yes, I do.”

“You don’t want to keep it for yourself?”

“If I thought I could get away with it, sure. But I can’t. There are too many people looking for it, too many willing to perpetrate anything to get their hands on it. Gregor Trocek thinks I’m hoping he ends up with it, because I negotiated a piece of what he recovers, but I know he’d kill me before I got a cent. And Sims thinks I want him to find it, because he promised he’ll keep me out of jail, but I trust him like I’d trust a ferret in my pants.”

“And what about me?”

“Sims says you’re a fool who’s too honest to deal with. McDeiss says I can trust that you’re after the right thing. Both pretty good recommendations in my book. So let’s you and me, Detective, go get the money and then solve the murder and then save Mrs. Denniston while we bag a couple of crooks.”

“Are you crapping in my hat?”

“Would I get away with it if I did?”

“No.”

“There you go.”

We were stopped at a red light at Eighth and Race. To our right, filthy with grime, was the ugly, circular skin of the Roundhouse. Straight ahead and to our left was the entrance to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, the blue paint of the bridge gaily striped with light.

“You could take a right here, send me to arraignment court, and let everything play out for better or for worse without you. Or you could get into the left-hand lane and follow the signs for the Ben Franklin.”

“New Jersey.”

“That’s the place.”

“I think you’re full of it.”

“But you’re not sure,” I said. “You don’t like me much, do you?”

He glanced at me again in the rearview mirror. “Every time I see your face, I want to smash my fist into it, over and over, until the blood bubbles.”

“I tend to have that effect on people.”

Hanratty didn’t respond, he just stared forward, letting his jaw work as if he were cracking walnuts between his teeth.

The light turned green.

The car stayed still for a moment and then started forward, eased left, slid into the lane of traffic headed over the Delaware River and into New Jersey, where a cat, gray and fluffy, waited for us.

The cat sat in the window well of a little Cape Cod in Haddonfield, New Jersey. The house was white and freshly painted, the lawn cared for, the perennials beneath the dogwood neatly weeded. As I rubbed my wrists while we made our way up the walk, from behind the brightly lighted window the cat hissed. It remembered me. Of course it did, it was a cat. And maybe it had the same reaction as Hanratty every time it saw my face.

Then the cat reached out a foreleg and gently tapped the window with the pads on the underside of its paw, leaving a streak of red.