Baby, It’s Murder

Chapter Five

That evening, Mikki was about to go out to a dance with Second, and had yet to emerge from her bedroom, when the boy showed up. Garrett Andrew Williams the Second was dressed not unlike those middle-aged men at the country club — a gold paisley long-sleeve shirt and red bell bottoms — but on him it didn’t look quite as ridiculous.

Not quite.

Standing there in the doorway, after I’d answered his bell, the blond, blue-eyed boy still seemed a little embarrassed seeing me, after my catching him in bed with Velda’s sister.

“Evening, son,” I said. “Stay out there.”

He blinked at me, apprehensively, and I joined him on the porch, its light on, and left the door slightly ajar. I took him by the arm and walked him down the steps and onto the sidewalk. The gold Corvette at the curb seemed designed to go with his apparel, but I doubted even someone with a pedigree like Second’s had multiple sports cars to go with his various wardrobe selections.

The evening was clear, stars already out, and a pleasant balmy breeze had replaced the earlier chill of the day in the Sunrise Hills addition after sunset. Lights were on in neighborhood homes and the world seemed like a safe, friendly place.

“I–I thought everything was cool between us, Mr. Hammer,” the boy said. He was shaking a little.

I raised a calming palm. “This isn’t about the other afternoon when we caught you two, uh, napping. As long as we have an understanding about you using precautions if you and Mikki get frisky.”

Both his palms came up, more surrender than calming. “Absolutely. So, uh... what did you want to talk about? What time to be back with Mikki tonight? The South Hampton Ballroom’s a good half hour from here, and—”

“That’s not it, son,” I said. “Like I said, guys of my generation are nobody to lecture yours on morality. I just want you to stay safe going about it.”

His grin was relieved if nervous. “No problem, Mr. Hammer.”

I stood close enough to him to rest a hand on his shoulder, and did. “What I want to ask you about... and I don’t mean to pry... but how do you think Mikki is doing?”

He frowned in thought. “In what way?”

I removed the hand and gestured to myself. “From our point of view, her sister and me, we’re concerned about any number of things.”

He didn’t seem to be following. “What sort of things?”

“Her weight loss. Her dropping out of tennis. Her near-failing grades. None of it is like her.”

He sighed, smiled a little. “Mr. Hammer...”

“Why don’t you call me ‘Mike’? Just being around kids like you and Mikki makes me feel old enough already.”

Minor traffic sounds, a few blocks over, provided a backdrop for our conversation. Somewhere a baby was crying; somewhere else a dog was barking.

Second laughed a little. “Okay, Mike.” He took a beat and a breath. “I think she’s doing okay. Lots of girls where we go to school are weight conscious. They all want to look like models or something.”

“Guess they don’t know guys like a little meat on the bone.”

He chuckled. “Guess not. Mikki just wants to look nice. Surely there isn’t anything wrong with that.”

I gave him a hard look. “No. As long as she isn’t using weight-control drugs to do it, or going all anorexic.”

Second shook his head; his smile turned serious. “That’s just not her. Mikki’s not that kind of girl.”

“She could be doing such things in private. If she’s self-conscious about her weight, she’s not likely to tell you.”

He shrugged, a little confusion showing. “I suppose, maybe.”

“But you might’ve noticed something. You need to do me, and her, and yourself, a favor. Keep aware of any signs. Read between the lines when you two talk. Could you do that for me, son?”

He frowned. “I hope you don’t mean you want me to spy on her.”

“Not asking that. Just keep an eye out. You know what business I’m in, right?”

“Sure. I know all about who you are, Mr. Hammer. Mike.”

“Well, a good number of my clients in recent years have been the parents of runaways. The parents of girls who hadn’t evidenced any major unhappiness, other than the usual behavior of a lot of kids — secrecy, sullenness. Good girls, fine students, cheerleaders, you name it — wholesome all the way. And then they disappear and when I finally find them they’re junkies or prostitutes or porn queens or all of the above, and lost to their parents and the world.”

Second was shaking his head. “Mike... that isn’t Mikki. You know it isn’t Mikki.”

I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s her. You’re right. But parents and uncles and close family friends are often clueless. It’s a cliché but it’s true: we’re the last to know.”

“I understand,” he said, nodding now. “I’ll stay alert for any signs. But Mikki’s just a young woman who’s changed her mind about a lot of things.”

“As long as I can remember,” I said, “tennis was her life. Now she’s thrown it away like a crumpled candy bar wrapper.”

Second frowned again. “It wasn’t casual like you make it sound. She did love tennis. But she started to feel captive to it. And lost her interest when she started losing. I think it had a lot to do with the pressures she had on her, from her coach and even her mom and sister — when Mikki started losing, it really bummed her out. All those eyes on her, all those expectations for her — they can weigh heavily.”

This kid seemed wise beyond his years.

“I will tell you one thing,” he said, and his tone changed, “and it isn’t any of the things you expressed concern about, Mike. Mr. Hammer. It’s that damn Brian Ellis.”

I cocked my head. “You’re the man in her life now, Second, aren’t you?”

His sigh seemed to start at his toes. “I hope I am. I seem to be. But Ellis is somebody she went steady with starting in junior high. You caught us in bed, Mike, but I’ll be frank with you — Mikki has been sexually active since back then. She shared lots of years of intimacy with that creep. And they are still friendly.”

I gestured to the nearby sidewalk. “Maybe not. I saw them arguing right here the other day. It got heated.”

His shrug spoke volumes. “That’s the kind of argument friends can have. And exes can have, if they haven’t cut ties. You think I haven’t tried to get that bum out of her life?”

“I suppose you have.”

“You can bet I have.” Another deep sigh. “But you know how it is — Ellis has a real ‘bad boy’ vibe that girls can’t seem to resist.”

Some would say that’s what Velda saw in me.

“Well then, Second,” I said, “you need to stay on top of your game. Edge out the competition. But to the degree that kid is still in Mikki’s life, stay sharp. You see anything illegal going down — dealing, for example, on her high school campus? Or hear reliable word that her ex is peddling? You tell me. I’ll come down on Ellis like a ton of bricks. And then I’ll kick the shit out of him.”

That made him laugh, as if I were kidding. Which of course I wasn’t.

I extended my hand to him and he took it. Shook it.

“Mike... Mr. Hammer... I am glad to oblige.”

We found Velda and Mikki on the couch in the living room, waiting patiently for the man-to-man between Second and me to wind up.

Her make-up perfect, at least in the slightly garish current way, Mikki — in a black/red/yellow-striped long-sleeve top and bright yellow slacks — rose and said, “If you boys have negotiated my release, can we please go? The Kingsmen go on at nine.”

“Who the hell are the Kingsmen?” I asked.

“We gotta go,” Mikki said, her remark getting a chuckle out of Second for some reason. Then she brushed by me, taking Second’s arm and heading into the night.

Velda joined me at the door as I watched Mikki and her boyfriend walk to his Corvette. She asked, “You read Second the Riot Act?”

“Not really. Appears he already knows the facts of life.” I shrugged. “He seems like a good kid.”

“He’s a rich one, anyway. If I ever get married, maybe it oughta be somebody rich.”

“Nice to have a goal,” I said, smiling, closing the door on the departing kids. “But who can put a price on my kind of charm?”

Velda and I had made it all the way through Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show and were in our guest-room bed, getting a good night’s sleep. Or anyway I was — Velda was propped up by pillows, reading The Love Machine by Jacqueline Susann (I was a snoring love machine beside her).

My last thoughts before drifting off were how nice it was to be away from the big bad city and its notorious mean streets. This was a suburban world where the worst problem you had to deal with was a young woman who had decided she didn’t want to play tennis anymore. Not some formerly nice girl from the Midwest who was a runaway turned hooker or a businessman pretty sure his partner was trying to have him killed.

I was deep asleep when something woke me — a kind of thump — out in the living room.

I sat up and grabbed my .45 from the nightstand drawer; Velda was sitting up as well, alarmed, her thick novel cast aside. The only light on was her modest bedside lamp, a tiny beacon in the guest-room darkness. The nightstand clock said it was ten after two, and that was obviously in the a.m. — nothing but darkness was edging in around the windows.

Velda slipped out of bed. She put on a diaphanous robe over her blue silk pajamas and, in her delicate feminine way, grabbed her Smith and Wesson 638 from her own bedside drawer. I was in my skivvies, in the lead, as we exited quietly into the hall. No further noises greeted us, but we’d heard something, all right.

Velda hit a switch and light flooded the living room.

“Oooooh,” Mikki groaned.

The girl was on the couch — her flopping there must have been the thump that woke me and alerted Velda. Her multicolor striped long-sleeve top and blinding yellow slacks were rumpled, like she’d plucked them out of a dirty laundry basket to wear, her sandals here and there, as if she walked out of them. Her long brown hair, in a straight Cher style, was a clumpy mess. The careful make-up she’d applied before going out was gone, her pale face looking so young and yet a hundred years old.

Velda leaned next to the girl. “Darling, are you all right?”

Mikki batted the air and turned away. “Lemme alone. Lemme sleep.”

Velda, those big brown eyes never looking bigger, gazed up at me, unnerved. And this woman did not unnerve easily.

“Let’s get her into bed,” Velda said quietly, almost a whisper.

We got her off the couch, a limp creature as if her clothes had nothing in them. We drunk-walked her to her dark room. Velda lay her on the bed, on top of the spread, and I turned on the bedside lamp. The girl reacted to it like Dracula when the sun came up, rolling onto her side, away from the light, still out but whimpering like a sick puppy.

“I’ll handle this from here,” Velda told me, firmly.

I knew enough not to argue with her.

I stumbled back into the guest room, turned off the two nightstand lamps, and got under the sheet and a light cover and, I’m not proud to say, went back to sleep after only a minute or two of concern for the girl delaying that. Wake me in the middle of the night, you only get so much out of me. I had learned to sleep through artillery shells landing in the Pacific, after all.

But some unspecified time later, female hands shook me awake. “Mike! Mike. Something terrible.”

But the Pacific had also taught me to snap awake when the time came — you developed an inner alarm clock that started ringing when the shit went down too close to you. Still in my skivvies, I followed Velda quickly out and across the hall to the girl’s room.

Velda had gotten Mikki out of her clothes and into some loose PJs and under the covers. The long hair was splayed against her pillow and she seemed to be resting, quietly and deep. At first blush it seemed like all was well, after an initial scare.

“You need to see something,” Velda said, again almost a whisper, though I doubted a yell would’ve woken this girl.

She drew Mikki’s right arm out from under the covers and slipped the big, loose sleeve up over that arm, exposing it from the bicep down, the girl not stirring a whit.

The tracks were unmistakable.

The small punctures looked pink. Those were the fresh ones. Above were scabbed-over punctures, on their way to being scars.

Through my teeth, I said, “I should shake her awake and throttle her.”

“No,” Velda said quietly.

The woman had a quiet firmness about her. This was her sister and most females and a lot of men would dissolve into hysterics over such a terrible discovery. But however movie-star beautiful she might be, Velda had a quiet resolve and dignity won by years of being a vice cop and then an O.S.S. agent during the war, preceding her lost years in Russia ducking the Militsiya.

Not to mention some harrowing shit I’d put her through.

But this was Velda’s sister. Her flesh and blood. An innocent girl corrupted by scum who promised heaven and delivered hell.

Still, Vel remained calm, at least on the surface. She curled a finger at me, as if summoning a child, and I followed her into the hall. We returned to the guest room, stowed away our respective weapons, as wordless as a silent movie; then went out to sit on the same couch her sister had been sprawled upon not long ago.

“I’m going to kill somebody,” I said tightly. “Some bastards are going to die.”

“That’s all well and good,” Velda said, always the reasonable one in the partnership, “but it’s not going to be Mikki.”

“Of course it isn’t.”

“We have to help her.”

“Of course we do.”

Velda folded her arms, stared at nothing. “The shape she’s in right now, if we wake her, shake her, it’s not going to do any good. Mikki has to come all the way down from her high, which would appear to be heroin.”

“Fucking smack. I’m going to kill somebody.”

“You said that, Mike. Settle down.”

I shrugged, spoke through my teeth. “Well, at least this explains the missing Rolex and diamond ring your mother mentioned. Mikki herself took them. Obviously.”

Velda took my hand and patted it. Settled me down. “Yes, obviously. Sold them to pay off some dealer.”

Somebody was going to die with a bullet in the brain, but first he was going to have a couple others someplace else, and right before the final one came he would have plenty of time to think about it. Maybe three whole seconds.

I craned my neck toward the hallway of bedrooms. “I can’t just wait for morning to come, for me to confront her. Till she stumbles out. I have to do something. Now.”

“That’s what I love about you, you big lug.”

She was pushing my buttons; she knew if she called me that I’d be putty in those strong, feminine hands.

“Okay,” I said in surrender. “What do you want to do?”

“I’m still thinking it through, frankly. But cold turkey won’t be it. Our best bet is getting her into some private rehab facility.”

“Larry Snyder is the doc who straightened my drunk ass out back in ’63. He’s got his own clinic now. He’ll help us and keep it discreet.”

“Good. Good. Now you’re thinking, too. That’s our best bet.” She squeezed my hand. “Look, Mike — Mikki’s dead to the world right now. We couldn’t wake her if we tried. Let’s go back in her bedroom and be good private detectives.”

“Meaning...?”

“Toss that bedroom... but quietly. Like I said, I don’t think we could wake her if we wanted to. But let’s see what we can turn up. A phone number, maybe. A stash of drugs we can confiscate. Who knows? But we try.”

I nodded. “I’m with you, doll.”

With only the nightstand lamp on, we went through everything, from the bureaus to the closet, and as Velda predicted, the slumbering girl didn’t even stir.

“Let’s try the bathroom,” Velda said, after a fruitless half-hour search of Mikki’s pink feminine bedroom. “That would afford her complete privacy.”

“Good thinking,” I said, and followed her there.

But the closet and the medicine cabinet gave up nothing, and I even checked to see if any meds or bath powders or any damn thing might be in a container used to store something it didn’t purport to be.

“Maybe Mom’s bedroom?” Velda suggested.

“Well, it’s a safe enough place to hide something,” I said, “with your mother in that nursing home for the time being.”

Yet we found nothing there, either, though it took a good hour to go through Mrs. Sterling’s things.

“What about our room?” I asked. “The guest room?”

“Unlikely,” Velda said, “but we should check it.”

Nothing.

And we had no better luck in the kitchen and the living room with its closet.

We returned to the couch, Velda in her robe and me still in my skivvies, the sun threatening to come up, light starting to glow around the windows.

“Let’s try her room again,” I said. “If she’s still sleeping the sleep of the dead, we won’t likely wake her. And if we do, maybe you could paddle her ass.”

“Ah, Mike,” Velda said affectionately, “you are so old-school.”

“That’s right,” I said, “and after graduation I got a doctorate in Tough Fucking Love.”

We had another look, this time including under the bed and taking bureau and nightstand drawers all the way out to check for anything that might be secured underneath. Then I recalled an old junkie trick for hiding their stash, particularly cases like this one, where the families were respectable and the user kids were sneaky.

The window in Mikki’s bedroom had horizontal blinds. I checked the valance and it came off easily. Within it I struck gold.

Or anyway shit.

Taped there in a good-sized baggie were a junkie’s “works” — plastic syringe, length of surgical tubing, spoon with its bowl tip scorched beneath, Bic lighter, and three small aluminum foil packages.

“This goes in the trash,” I snarled. A quiet snarl, but a snarl.

“No,” Velda said softly. “Put it back. Just like you found it.”

I frowned at her, not understanding.

“Please,” she said. And there was a melancholy urgency about it.

“All right, doll,” I said, and reassembled the valance hiding place, contents intact.

The girl was still sleeping like a baby. A baby on smack, anyway.

“Let’s talk,” Velda whispered, and gestured for me to follow her.

Back on the couch, the lovely brunette in the robe and me in my underwear sat and talked. Mostly I listened.

“Begin by approaching your friend Dr. Snyder,” she said.

Her voice, and mine when I used it, were barely audible, as if the world out there might overhear if we weren’t discreet. Or maybe that child in her heroin stupor might come back around and catch us discussing her.

“We keep this quiet,” Velda said. “Keep it in the family. You can do whatever off-the-books handling of whoever’s behind this you choose. I’ll help you if you like, right down to burying the bodies. But let’s not confront the child now. Let’s play detective first. This can’t have been going on for long. She doesn’t have visible red scarring yet. Her track marks are white, healing pink. I’m guessing she hasn’t been using for more than a couple of months. There’s no dark bruising, and if she were shooting up frequently, that whole area of her arm would be look bruised, dark. She has half a dozen needle marks. I don’t believe we’re looking at longtime usage... not yet.”

I was frowning, but it was in thought, not disapproval. “We can afford a day or two of looking into this, you think?”

“I do.” Velda’s sigh wasn’t fun to hear. “Very short-term, though. This is fire we’re playing with.”

“At least we know,” I said, “why she turned away from tennis, and why her grades have slipped.”

“And maybe,” Velda said, “why that Brian Ellis kid is still in her life.”