Baby, It’s Murder

Chapter Twelve

Night provided a searchlight of a moon aided by enough stars to turn the blacktop I was heading down into a glowing pathway. Driving alone at night is the kind of solitary endeavor that creates a state almost other-worldly. If there isn’t much traffic, encountering the occasional car or especially truck can somehow be a shock to the system.

Still, you could really drive on a night like this. Just drive, going nowhere in particular. Who was it who said that? Mr. Toad in Wind in the Willows, wasn’t it? No willows in sight but plenty of wind stirred by the heap, with greenery at left, little dwellings at right dotting a dark brown beach and facing a deep blue, shimmering navy surface sporting a vertical band of reflected moonlight. It would be restful under other circumstances.

Not these.

Only half an hour ago, more or less, I had left the scene of carnage at the mansion to follow the directions provided by the newly minted widow Williams. I slowed, pulled over, and parked the heap just off the blacktop, with a wooded area on my left and one small cottage after another at my right stretching endlessly to the horizon. But the cottage I’d be visiting, Second’s stepmother had assured me, would be quiet and secluded.

I stayed within the various birch, oak, and pine trees bordering the curving crushed-rock lane, embracing the dark, approaching with the dead butler’s Sig Sauer from the Williams meeting, having left my untraceable .38 to add to the forensics confusion. Twigs and leaves and brush underfoot, and branches blocking my path, meant taking my time, to prevent announcing my arrival. So some stealth was required, however much urgency flowed within me knowing my daughter — my daughter! — was in peril.

Such a silly word, peril. Old-fashioned. Even quaint. And yet in this case so very apropos. I continued trooping slowly through the nighttime jungle, part of me on Long Island with its Atlantic, part of me on Guadalcanal in the Pacific. The night might be cool, but those were sweat droplets on my face.

Not a good time for a malaria flare-up, Mike, I told myself. And you with no quinine pills to pop.

Then, there it was — the Williams cottage, perched on a modest rise, which would no doubt provide a nice high view of the beach and the bay without any ticky-tacky cottages in the way. Nestled there among all this greenery, bathing in ivory nighttime, the boxy structure wore gray rustic siding and a matching shingle roof. Nothing much distinctive about it...

...except the gleaming gold Corvette pulled in at the foot of the wooden stairs up to the front door of this modestly elevated retreat.

Oddly, the place was a rough-hewn echo of the Sterling bungalow back in Sidon. As I moved in closer, I stayed within the surrounding trees and brush, stopping toward the rear of the cottage, where the foliage trailed off in a sandy slope toward the blacktop and the brown beach and the deep blue of the bay.

Second, of course, knew nothing of what had gone down at the Williams homestead, or at least that much seemed likely. My take was the junior Williams had shot Brian Ellis in the McBeery’s alley and dumped my .45 in a trash can there, setting in motion what Second surely thought would be an inevitable process ending with the local cops tossing my ass in the clink.

The boy’s father had shown no indication of worry about running into me either, and had gone on with his drug-racketeer confab as planned. My guess was it’d been the father behind the machinations designed to get me out of the game — that he’d advised his son to shoot Ellis and credit me for it. Second had been sent, or perhaps had decided himself, to spirit Mikki to this cottage to hold as a bargaining chip, should I somehow wriggle out of the frame-up.

Sometimes having Captain Pat Chambers of Homicide for a best friend comes in handy.

A modest deck ran around the house, lengthened only on the bay side to accommodate some wooden picnic-style furniture. What I had in mind would be no picnic at all. I went up the handful of steps onto this back deck, my pistol at the ready, boardwalk-type planking groaning slightly underfoot. Then I took a cautious tour around the house, looking in windows.

At the front of the house was a living room, modern furnishings and pine paneling, a cozy mini-hunting-lodge effect. And on the living room couch, Second, wearing a fresh floral shirt and white jeans and sky-blue trainers, stretched lazily out, smoking a joint, a half-empty dime bag of grass on the floor nearby. So clean-cut with his short blond hair and lithely muscular frame, though his face bore the bruised battering Ellis gave him, even if the swelling had gone down. On his lap, folded open, was a paperback edition of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. On the floor next to him was a little silver, walnut-gripped Mauser .22.

On the left side of the house was a homey kitchen where Betty Crocker might have vacationed; and in back of that, a bedroom with framed hunting prints, an apparent guest room. A windowless door off the deck appeared to belong to a hallway; at the rear was a bedroom, and beyond it a TV den. But what was most significant was that other bedroom, which was all gray and ebony with an occasional faux Picasso print, perfect for a romantic fling with either male or female.

And on the bed with its light gray spread lay Mikki, in a near-naked sprawl, skimpy white bra and sheer panties, her long hair fanning out like seaweed. The all-those-years-ago image of Velda, her wrists bound and her lovely naked body hanging from a rafter, blazed in my brain, a horrific fire that would never go out. Mikki looked so much like her mother. Too much, right now.

No one would take what the girl was doing as sleeping — she was in a deep druggy state, her left arm extended like Christ on the cross, only that wasn’t stigmata, it was needle tracks.

How to deal with Second?

I was tempted.

I won’t lie to you. I was tempted to just elbow-shatter the glass of a living room window and shoot that privileged little prick between his bloodshot eyes. That would’ve been doing him a favor, considering the tragedy awaiting him at home — put him out of his misery.

After all, wasn’t he an orphan?

Or I could just ignore him and go through a bedroom window or even the front door, knock him out and tie him up, or if he gave me any trouble, plug him then and there. Maybe he was too zonked out of his mind right now to do much about anything I might be up to.

I wasn’t anxious to kill a kid, no matter how big a baby drug kingpin he might be.

As I got out the lock-pick packet, selected two tools and began work on the rear deck door there in the moonlight, I mulled the situation. Possibly I could find Mikki’s clothes, help her into them, and walk her out the back way, through the rear deck door. Carry her out, if need be, but doing that would risk alerting her bad choice for a boyfriend on that couch.

The picks did their work and the back door opened quietly.

Sig Sauer in my right hand, barrel raised, I crept up the hallway into the masculine bedroom where the feminine child lay in something like, but not really, sleep.

“Mikki,” I whispered, “it’s Mike.”

Nothing.

“We have to get you out of here, honey,” I whispered.

She stirred.

I slipped an arm around her bare waist and helped her off the bed. “Come on, baby. Come on.”

But her feet weren’t working, at least not yet, and a noise toward the front of the place had me setting her back down on the bed, her eyelids fluttering like butterflies while I slipped carefully into the hall, Sig Sauer pointing straight out now.

No further noise.

I made my way slowly toward the living room, listening intently, and I could see the back of that couch where presumably Second still lounged, and as I entered the room he stepped out from the wall to my left and I wheeled toward him as he grinningly pointed his little .22 at me.

Figuring he might hesitate before firing, I squeezed the trigger on the butler’s Sig Sauer... and the fucking thing jammed!

Second reacted, blue eyes popping in that battered mask of a face, but still he didn’t fire, and I threw the gun at him and caught him on the forehead. The gouge bled and red began trickling down into his eyes, affecting his vision enough to keep him from firing accurately, though he did finally fire, twice, the .22s sounding like explosions in the small pine-paneled room, wild shots that flew right by me but made my ears ring and I dove for him and took him down onto the floor, with a resounding whump, but he — we — rolled onto a throw rug, which we both scooted on, taking a short, slippery ride.

Normally I could have knocked him out with one punch, but he was on top and my leverage was limited, and he still had that .22 in hand and before doing anything else, I’d have to wrestle it free first, and with a double grip around his wrist I shook and shook, making fingers out of his fist, the loosened grasp freeing the weapon, which hit the floor and spun a ways away.

While he scrambled like a spider after that gun, I quickly scooped up the Sig Sauer and opened the action, removed the clip, racked the slide till the jammed round flew out, then put the clip back and racked the slide again.

Second got to his feet, with the .22 again in hand, his blond beach boy persona spoiled by a sneer, but that sneer dissolved when he realized I was up too, pointing the pistol at him again, in a pure Mexican stand-off.

“Your gun jammed,” he said, giving me and the Sig Sauer a skeptical look. He had the .22 trained on me.

“I cleared it,” I said. “Should work fine now.”

“Maybe not.”

I shrugged. “Maybe not. Care to see?”

Turns out I was the bandito and he was the gringo, because looking into the fathomless barrel of a Sig Sauer changed his mind about trading bullets with me. I guess my reputation preceded me.

Second raised his hands, one of which still held the .22, and grinned again, but in a shit-eating way now, and said, “I’ll drop the gun, okay? No funny business?”

“I don’t know. I can always use a good laugh. Uh, toss it gentle. These things are known to go off.”

He nodded and pitched the gun, easily, to the floor by the door.

“Step away from the gun,” I said.

Second did as he was told.

“None of this was my idea,” he said, rather apologetically, “if it matters. My dad thought having Mike Hammer nosing around was bad for his business. Can you blame him?”

“I’m generous with placing blame. You get some, too, Second.”

His hands were still up. “Look, I’m the smallest fry there is — a dealer on a college campus.”

“With aspirations.”

He shrugged, risked a smile. “Maybe. But at my age and with my... pedigree? If I got caught at it, it’d be slap-on-the-wrist time. You know that.”

I shook my head slowly. “Not when you go around kidnapping young women.”

He thought a bit before responding to that. “You’d have to be willing to expose her bad habit, shall we say, to the press. Be quite an embarrassment for the family, not to mention Mikki herself. She might have trouble getting into a decent college, after. She’d never be able to pick up the pieces of her tennis-star dreams.”

“Got it figured out, do you?”

Now he was grinning again. “I’m Phi Beta Kappa all the way, Hammer.”

“I heard that. What was Mikki to you, Second? How does she figure into this?”

The question seemed to surprise him. “She’s a customer. And, well... she’s... a customer.”

“What were you going to say, Second?”

“Nothing.

“A nice piece of ass? Is that what you were going to say?”

His smile seemed to curdle. “You can’t kill a guy for that.”

“Oh, I think I could.”

And now his smile was gone entirely.

“Go ahead and put your hands down,” I said, almost friendly.

He did.

I went on: “I’m gonna give you a break, Second. I’m prepared to let you walk away from this... on two conditions.”

“I’m listening.”

“You’re going home to a real mess.”

His eyes tightened. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ll see. No need to go into it now. But you’re to keep me out of the aftermath. And Mikki. We weren’t part of your business plans, or disrupting them. Understood?”

“I guess. But what mess?”

“No. Say it.”

“Understood.”

I gave him the nastiest look I have, and that’s saying something. “Because if you bring me into this, if you bring Mikki into this, some morning you are not going to wake up. The New Yorker will do an article called ‘The Short, Happy Life of Garrett Andrew Williams the Second.’ Got it?”

He had gone a little pale. “I got it, Mr. Hammer.”

Now he got my best smile. “I like that. We’re back to ‘Mister’ Hammer. The other thing — the second thing, Second. You’re going to help me get Mikki out of here. You’ve got her clothes somewhere, right?”

“Right.”

“We’ll get her dressed and out to your car. Then you’ll drive us to where I’m parked and we’ll be on our way and you’ll be on yours.”

I gestured toward the hallway.

But Second stayed put. “What did you mean, I’m going home to a ‘real mess?’”

“Discussing that’s not on the menu. You’ll have plenty of time for that.”

Obviously not thrilled with my response, he stopped at the bathroom to wash the blood from his face, under my supervision of course. Then, under my gun again, he took the lead down the hallway to the male bedroom where the female waited. She was sitting up now. On the edge of the bed. Not that she looked great or anything — she was pale and wan and damn near haggard.

Her clothes were under her bed — the same ones she’d worn this afternoon, a hundred years ago: baby-blue sweater, pink bellbottoms, but dirt-smudged and wrinkled. Even the open-toed sandals looked scuffed. We helped her into them. Second behaved himself. He was almost gentle with her.

Helping her pull the long-sleeved sweater up over her needle-ravaged arm made me cringe.

Mikki spoke for the first time since I’d shown up on the scene. Her voice was soft with a sandpaper edge. To Second, she said, “I need something.”

Second said, “You’re not a customer anymore.”

Mikki said to me, “Mike. I need something.”

“You need help, kid,” I said. “And I’m going to get it for you. I promise.”

She slumped, but she was awake.

I directed him to walk her out, with me behind them, Sig Sauer in hand. That proved to be a mistake.

In the living room, he shoved her at me, virtually flung her, and a pile of Mikki, a ragdoll of a girl, took me down unintentionally, the Sig Sauer flying. I couldn’t be gentle, no time for that — I pushed her off me and went for him, tackled him to the floor, and I was on top of the bastard, ready to cave his face in with a fist, when he stuck the nose of the .22 in my belly, that gun he’d retrieved from near the front door where earlier he’d dropped it.

“Get off me, Hammer.”

Through my teeth I said, “No ‘Mister?’”

“Get the hell off me!”

I eased off him. Rose.

He motioned for me to get away from him, clutching the .22 in both hands. He backed up to the front door, that golden Corvette waiting behind it like a game show prize. “You underestimated me, Hammer. Bad mistake. I’m taking you out of the game before you hurt my father and me any more than you already have.”

I only had one card left to play.

I worked up a sneer of a smile. “That mess you have waiting at home, Second?”

A moment of confused interest colored his frown. “Yeah?”

“Your father’s dead,” I said, each word a distinct bullet. “So are all his partners. Even your fucking butler bought it. Courtesy of me.”

It was a risk. I thought it would unhinge him enough for me to make a play. Give me the second I needed from the Second I knew.

But all it did was bring his hands clutching that .22 high and aimed right at my head. Maybe I should say my stupid head...

The gunshot thundered.

But it only shook Second like the naughty child he was before the trickle of blood over his heart watered the floral shirt and his mouth was in rah-rah fashion when he flopped onto his face, the front door splattered with a bloody bunch of him that was sliding down like a big bug had hit it.

I turned to see Mikki angled behind me with that Sig Sauer in her hand — this time it hadn’t jammed — wearing the coldest damn expression I ever saw on anybody, this side of a mirror. The lovely girl in soiled sweater and bellbottoms was momentarily steady before falling and getting caught by her father before anything else bad could happen to her.