Baby, It’s Murder

Chapter Ten

I returned to the bungalow almost by rote. I didn’t know where else to start. Around me, that quiet suburban world seemed already asleep with only a few lights on and just the muffled sounds of a TV across the way to break the night noise. I slid the heap in behind Velda’s Mustang as before, and headed inside. Entering into the living room, all looked normal, the expected little-old-lady habitat. But on the carpet to the right of the couch, where Velda had laid, were little brown-red spots, blood spatter from where my .45 had clouted her courtesy of that clean-cut college boy I’d trusted, Garrett Andrew Williams the Second.

Or had it been my .45?

Velda only glimpsed the weapon. So I checked the guest room where she and I had been camped out, went directly to the night stand where I’d been keeping the .45... and it was, indeed, gone.

The .45 that phony prick wielded had been mine, all right.

Did Second take it to keep me from it? Had he come back to the bungalow after I left, slipped inside while Velda and Mikki were busy packing, and taken a look around the guest room? And confiscated my .45 for his own purposes?

If he’d had no gun of his own with which to face Velda down, that made sense. Sort of. Could there be any other reason why he’d want my .45, that fabled weapon the New York tabloids had once made such a fuss about? Had Robin Hood’s bow and arrow found itself in the Sheriff of Nottingham’s hands?

I couldn’t make heads nor tails of it.

While I was in the guest room, I took the opportunity to get the box of .38 cartridges I’d stowed in my suitcase, a precaution reflective of that constant paranoia someone like me carries with him along with his firearms and bad attitude.

But I’d also brought along a box of .45 cartridges — smaller than a pack of cigarettes, with the familiar MATCH and eagle as the front logo and the side designation:

But the box was empty.

And it had been shy only of the eight rounds I’d kept loaded into my missing .45.

The similar box of .38 cartridges, however, was missing only the six rounds in my hip-holstered Police Special revolver. I stuffed the little box in my left-hand pants pocket.

My gun hadn’t been all Second wanted — he gathered the ammo, too. I could picture him dumping the box of bullets into his palm like pills from a medicine bottle, then shoving them into a pocket. Maybe to further disarm me? He might not know I’d been carrying a .38, despite the other ammo box.

But he should have. I may have been on a sort of vacation or sabbatical, but my adversaries might still be on the job, as this situation proved. So I’d be packing something.

Such is my paranoid thinking... and it’s served me well.

Though I’d given the place a cursory once-over before getting help for Velda and following that help to the hospital, I figured I better give Mikki’s bedroom an in-depth look. Maybe, thin as the possibility might be, there might be some small clue to indicate where she’d been taken. In my experience, I’d seen a matchbook lead to the electric chair and a notepad slip to a life sentence.

But before I could look at Mikki’s living space from a detective’s point of view, it suddenly hit me in an entirely different way.

From a father’s point of view.

This was a teenage girl’s bedroom with its pink walls and Beatles poster and blue nubby bedspread and the stand with portable record player perched. The fragrance of a young female wafted like pleasant smoke, soap and perfume and powder and clean sheets and I sat on the edge of her bed and maybe I wept for a while. You can’t prove I did. But maybe.

Then I got mad, mad at Velda for not sharing her secret sooner, almost two decades sooner, and I was pounding a fist on the bed and its mattress squeaked, taunting me, and finally any anger I felt about what Velda had denied me, had denied us, dissipated.

She had been right, after all.

When she came home to me after disappearing into that pit the Soviets call Russia, she’d found a drunk, a husk of what had been me, skinny, crazy... but hadn’t I been crazy before? After the war, I’d brought combat home with me and took down some very bad people, and I would have done it again. And again. Maybe I was sick in the head, but it was a sickness I had once cherished and now gave in to only occasionally, an addict who could control his addiction, and only used in moderation.

Was Mikki’s life in immediate danger? Danger of Second seeing her as a debit now, not an asset, and shooting her up with highgrade H and sending her to a happy land where the destination was that unhappiest of endings?

My gut said she was alive. For now at least. It might have been a father’s unrealistic fantasy, but I did not — and this may seem absurd to you — sense that she was dead out there. The exact opposite. Somehow I knew my daughter was breathing and I was determined to keep her that way.

And I knew where I would start.

Right now I was in a pastel sport coat and that wouldn’t do. My slacks were tan chinos and that was wrong also, for what I had in mind anyway. In the guest room, I divested myself of those clothes and got into a black polo and black jeans. My sneakers were black also, edged white, and I wasn’t exactly a ninja, but close enough for government work.

The .38 was again holstered on my hip, and the box of cartridges bulged in my left jeans pocket. A little tight if I had to get to them quickly, but nothing to do about that. I considered going to the Sidon Wal-Mart, where all sorts of firearms were sold, and buying a few weapons and more rounds of ammo. That meant at least one employee witness and the presence of security cameras. So the easier and less risky way to upgrade my weaponry would be to take out a few of the enemy and confiscate theirs.

Not that I was entirely sure of who that enemy was.

Yes, my thinking was at once clear and distorted. But I was new at being a father.

In the front room, somebody knocked on the door.

I went out there and the knocking continued. Insistent. The sheer drapes on the window near the door pulsed with red and blue light. I didn’t have to peek out to confirm what that was, but I looked anyway, and it was indeed a black-and-white vehicle with the words SIDON POLICE on the white door of the driver, a uniformed officer sitting behind the wheel.

“Mike! Open up!”

Pat.

What the hell was he doing in Sidon?

My hand went to the butt of the holstered .38 on my hip, but didn’t stay there long. What was I going to do? Shoot my best friend? Maybe wave the gun at him like he might take the notion seriously that he was in any danger from me?

“Let me in, buddy,” he said, his tone of voice easy. “Every cop on Long Island is looking for you. I’m your best option.”

I cracked the door, making sure he was alone out there on the stoop, and he was. I opened wider. As was his usual custom, he was in an unfashionable fedora and a brown suit and tie, though he had a generally rumpled look for somebody normally well put together. He had a brown paper bag at his side, like a sack lunch.

What the hell?

“Mind if I come in?” he asked. “We need to talk.”

We need to talk. Four of the worst words you could string together in the English language. At least for once it wasn’t coming from a female.

“Sure, Pat,” I said as genially as I could muster.

I opened the door for him, he stepped inside, pushed his hat back on his blond head, and took the place in as I shut the door behind us.

He asked, “Velda not around?”

“No. You’re a little off your beat, aren’t you, Pat?”

My cop pal gave me a look that pretended not to study me. “I got called here by the local PD. The NYPD, as a courtesy, brought me in by copter. God, I hate flying in those things.”

“A little unnerving,” I admitted. “Have a seat?”

His smile was brief and perfunctory. “All right.”

We went over to that same couch where the intervention with Mikki had taken place, and where I had rested Velda with her head raised a bit after Second knocked her out with my gun.

Speaking of which.

Before he sat, Pat got into the brown paper sack, which had on it the stenciled-in-black words:

He withdrew a plastic-bagged item from the paper bag, a most familiar one: a Colt M1911 single-action, recoil-operated, semi-automatic pistol chambered for .45 ACP cartridges.

Mine.

Not necessarily, of course. That could be another well-weathered example of this particular model firearm.

“Yours,” Pat said.

“Okay. How did you wind up with it?”

He leaned back. Crossed his arms. “The Sidon Homicide captain entrusted me with it, when he got me on the phone after his computer made an NYPD database match. Lotta hits, Mike. Michael Hammer’s Greatest Hits, you might say. It’s been fired recently, by the way.”

“Not by me, not since that alley we ran down together chasing those dope traffickers.”

His expression grew openly skeptical. “I thought you were at the shooting range not long ago. And that’s why, if you took a paraffin test, it would clear you.”

I grinned. “I sort of lied.”

His nod was slow and took a couple of trips. “You sort of lied. I’ve got a feeling that much is the truth, Mike. Look. I wasn’t flown here by copter so two old buddies could have a reunion.”

I leaned into where the back cushion met the armrest. I echoed his folded arms. “Why were you coptered in, Pat? Not that I’m not enjoying this reunion.”

“You asked me, in my capacity as the head of the Narcotics and Homicide joint task force, to check on Brian Ellis. I believe you made it clear you’d encountered the young man.”

“I told you that the last time we talked. He was Mikki’s ex. But I have reason to believe I was wrong about him.”

I had not told Pat about Mikki’s drug use and had no intention of ever doing so.

Now the gray-blue eyes tightened, as if to try to see me more clearly. “Wrong about him, huh? You were seen at an establishment called...” He dug a notebook out of his suitcoat pocket. Flipped to a page. “...Wallace McBeery’s. Funny name for a bar today, a yesterday reference like that, but there you are.”

“I was struck by it myself. Who remembers Wallace Beery, anyway? Hell of a Pancho Villa though. And before you ask, I was there this afternoon, talking to the Ellis kid.”

Those eyes stayed glued on me. “You were seen having an intense conversation. Arguing, perhaps.”

“Intense at first. It got... better.”

“Did it?”

“Yeah. Damn near friendly.”

“When was this?”

“Late afternoon. Maybe four o’clock or a little later. Why?”

His delivery was casual: “Because Brian Ellis was found shot in the alley behind McBeery’s.”

That hit like a punch.

I asked, “Dead?”

“Brink of. Gut-shot. He’s in a coma in the ICU. At Sidon Medical Center.”

Small world.

I raised a hand, palm out, as if I was being sworn in. “Not me, Pat. I may have some ideas about who, though.”

His voice took on an edge. “Maybe you’d like to share them with me, but first you should know the Sidon PD has its own ideas about the shooter.”

“Yeah?”

“Ellis was shot with your .45, Mike. That gun, that old friend of yours, right there.”

That’s why Second had grabbed it — not to use to clout Velda, though it had come in handy for that purpose, but to fix me for a frame.

Pat’s tone shifted into matter-of-fact: “Now you know why the Sidon boys had the NYPD copter me in. Because they figured I was the only cop who could handle you, buddy. The only cop you’d listen to. The friend you would listen to. And come along quietly.”

“Do I look like the come-along-quietly type, Pat?”

“Not really. But maybe if I ask nice.”

I pointed to the plastic-bagged firearm. “This wasn’t me, Pat. I didn’t drop the hammer on the Ellis kid. The Sidon cops don’t have anybody reporting me getting into it with him at that bar, do they? Or seeing me leaving with him?”

“No,” he admitted.

“I was wrong about Ellis. I judged him by how he looked and that same shit judgment had me thinking Second Williams was a short-haired pillar of youth.”

Time to ramp it up.

I asked Pat, “You wonder where Velda is?”

“I do.”

It might have been a marriage vow — he had loved her once, and probably still did.

So I told him about the scene I’d walked in on, pointing out the brown-red bloodstains on the carpet to his left, just behind him.

And how Velda was in the same hospital as Ellis right now.

“By the way,” I said, “if you have that .45 barrel checked for hair and blood residue, you’ll find proof of what he did to Velda when he snatched...” I almost said my daughter. “...Velda’s sister and went God knows where.”

His voice was very quiet and had a tremble in it now; he had craned his neck to see the blood-droplet stains and it summoned emotion. “Mike... I ran that check on Ellis that you asked. He came up clean. No arrests even for possession let alone dealing. But I checked the other boy Mikki was seeing, as just a routine matter. What I learned was that Second Williams is suspected of running a small army of dealers all over Long Island on various campuses of high schools and colleges.”

I frowned at him. “You might have told me.”

“I just learned this a few hours ago, but why would I tell you? So you could play guns and do your cowboy routine here on the Island? I’m working to shut down this syndicate peddling to high school and college kids, and find whoever’s above Second, and who’s above him. This needs to be a by-the-book operation, not some kill-crazy Mike Hammer spree.”

I let my irritation show. “You want to hand me over to the Sidon cops, who’ll stick me in a holding cell while Velda’s in a hospital room where this Second kid put her?”

“She’s in no danger now.”

“Are you sure? Velda witnessed Second kidnapping Mikki, and she knows why. You better put a police guard on her room, Pat — put yourself on it, why don’t you, and make yourself useful. Or would you rather be responsible for what happens to her?”

That cut him. “Don’t, Mike. Don’t play that card.”

“I’ll play whatever card I can lay my hands on. I’ll fucking cheat, Pat. You tell the Sidon boys they don’t have enough to hold me. Tell ’em you’ve informed me not to leave the area without first informing them, and that I agreed. And then give me till tomorrow to get Mikki back and give Second Williams the spanking he deserves.”

He was shaking his head. “You’re an officer of the court, Mike.”

“So what? So is any asshole in New York with a P.I. license.”

He sat forward. “Well, you rough Second up, you might be the asshole facing charges, with that punk’s case thrown out of court. Is that what you want?”

“I want Velda’s sister back, safe and sound.”

And anybody who’s behind this dead and gone.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the bagged weapon on the coffee table.

“Pat, how does it happen the Sidon cops got possession of that .45?”

He shrugged. “It was found in that same alley behind McBeery’s. Dropped in a garbage can, wiped clean.”

My laugh was a harsh thing. “Right. How long have I been carrying that particular rod?”

“You, uh... brought it home from the service.”

“How many times do you suppose I’ve changed barrels on that baby?”

“Half a dozen. More.”

“Right. Yet I have a sentimental attachment to it. I like the way it feels in my hand. That rod is part of me. An extension. The garbage is the last place I’d put it — particularly at a murder scene that was my goddamn handiwork. Are you kidding, Pat? This is a frame by an amateur, a punk kid named Garrett Andrew Williams the Second.”

Pat sat there thinking, his unblinking eyes looking past me.

“That little prick Second,” he said, so quietly it was barely audible, “could have killed Velda, whacking her like that.”

“Exactly,” I said. “And he might try for real next time.”

But Pat seemed on the fence.

“I really should report Mikki missing,” he said.

“It hasn’t been twenty-four hours, buddy. And that’s all I’m asking to find her and bring her home.”

Pat folded his arms and leaned back. So many times he’d warned me against taking the law in my own hands when I knew damn well he envied me for pursuing that impulse. I was the id and he was the ego. It had always been that way.

“I can’t give you your .45,” Pat said. “It’s evidence.”

“I’ll make do,” I said.