Deadfall

Chapter Twenty-one

I spent Monday and Tuesday in bed, my bed. I saw no one except Kerry and, briefly on Tuesday, Eberhardt; I ate nothing other than some soup Kerry insisted on feeding me. Mostly I slept. A beating like I’d taken is a shock to the nervous system, a trauma to the psyche, an embarrassment to the ego; no matter how much rage, how much desire for revenge there might be inside you, you don’t just slap on some tape and liniment and walk away from it, the way people do in movies and crappy novels. You need rest, time to heal. For a man my age, anything else would have been like playing Russian roulette with more than one bullet in the gun.

Kerry hung around part of the time, even while I was sleeping and even though I did not really want her there. She put on a nice smiley front, but the fact of the beating, the physical evidence of it, had shaken her-almost as badly as that time I’d got shot in Eberhardt’s house. Eberhardt didn’t take it too well, either. He’d gone to Mission Creek Sunday night, after taking me home from the hospital, and braced both Dessault and Melanie. I’d told him it wouldn’t do any good and it hadn’t. The girl admitted to calling me but said she’d done it out of a momentary fit of pique, no ulterior motive and not because Richie had told her to; she also said the two of them had made up after he’d explained his absence the past couple of days-he’d gone on a fishing expedition with a friend who owned a boat. Dessault said he didn’t know anything about any thugs, or that I had been following him through the freight yards. That was a shortcut he used all the time, he’d said, was it his fault if the goddamn city was full of creeps and muggers? We had nothing on either of them and they knew it; they thought the law couldn’t touch them. And they were right: the law couldn’t.

But I could.

Not for a few days, though-not until the busted up Humpty-Dumpty put himself back together again. So I slept, and little by little I mended. And sometimes while I slept I dreamed. Most of the dreams were bad: distorted replays of the assault jumbled together with images of Leonard Purcell crawling through blood that was no longer his, that was now mine. Once I woke up yelling and found myself thrashing around on the floor, fighting off the shades of those faceless attackers. Kerry wasn’t there at the time, and it was a good thing she wasn’t. Not only because the incident would have frightened her, but because I would not have wanted her to see my face just then, the naked truth of what I was thinking.

If any of them had been in the room-Dessault, the three sluggers, any of them-I would have killed them all.

But I had other dreams too, much less fearful and without any psychotic aftermath. They were like film montages: faces, objects, juxtaposed and often superimposed in no apparent order. Leonard Purcell, the Hainelin snuff box, Melanie, Alicia, the photograph of Danny Martinez and his family, the cliff behind the Purcell home, Dessault, Tom Washburn, Elisabeth Summerhayes sitting alone among the ruins on Sutro Heights, Margaret Prine, Alejandro Ozimas smiling at me across his breakfast table while the freaked-out blonde picked her cinnamon roll apart and his house boy mouthed the words Fuck you behind his back, Eldon Summerhayes, the housekeeper Lina, the Martinez farmhouse and the crucifixes on the wall, Dessault running away from the barn… other images that I couldn’t quite identify. There were voices, too, but I could only hear parts of them, the way I had only been able to hear parts of the one slugger’s shouted threats. “Deadfall so sorry fall how could you I know who pushed him two thousand dollars extortion the big gold rush fuck anything in pants disgusting little shit challenge man of my tastes whosoever toucheth her shall not be innocent lousy goddamn pervert once bitten twice shy lust is what binds them claws like cats like challenges like proof like profit like deadfall… ” None of it made any sense, and yet it did, I knew it did, it was all there and all I had to do was take the montages apart piece by piece, find the missing images, separate the voices and add the missing words. Except that I couldn’t, not while I slept and dreamed and not while I was awake because I couldn’t think clearly yet, my mind and my body were both still healing.

On Wednesday morning I felt well enough to get up for a while. My left side, where I had the two cracked ribs, gave me hell whenever I moved too suddenly. So did my concussed head. I had tape around my middle, adhesive and gauze here and there, a splint on my sore finger; when I looked at myself in the mirror I thought I resembled a mostly unwrapped mummy with a three-day growth of beard. But it wasn’t funny. Nothing was funny right now.

Kerry had insisted on unplugging the phone the past two days and I hadn’t argued with her. A few people had called Eberhardt at the office, including Tom Washburn; Eb had told me that when he stopped by on Tuesday evening. Nothing new on the case, though. Everything on hold, waiting for me to wade into it again, stir it up again.

I plugged the phone back in and called the office. Eberhardt said, “You sound better today. Feel better too?”

“Enough to get out of bed for a while.”

“How’s the eye? Swelling down on it yet?”

“Yeah. I can see out of it all right.”

“Another few days, you’ll be back in harness.”

“Another few days, hell. Tomorrow, maybe.”

“Hey, come on, hero, they cut you up pretty bad-”

“And now it’s my turn to cut somebody up. Don’t argue with me, Eb; I’m in no mood for it. Anything new this morning?”

He sighed. “Washburn came by twenty minutes ago. Dropped off that photograph he found.”

“What’s it of?”

“Alicia Purcell, he says. You want me to bring it over there?”

“When you get a chance. Anything else?”

“Nada. Well, Ben Klein got a lead on the whereabouts of Danny Martinez’s in-laws in Mexico-Cuernavaca, he said. But you know how it is with the Mexican cops. Be days before Ben gets word, even if Martinez is there and they pick him up.”

“No other calls?”

“That’s it.”

“If there’s anything else let me know right away, will you? I’m not unplugging the phone anymore.”

“Will do. Just take it easy, okay? Thing’s will keep for the time being.”

“Sure,” I said. “But I won’t-not much longer.”

I went back into the kitchen and heated up the rest of Kerry’s soup and ate it with a slice of bread. I wasn’t hungry, the food had no taste, and chewing the bread made my face hurt; but I ate it all just the same, for strength. Afterward I moved around for the same reason, shuffling from room to room; I was so damned stiff and sore from the beating and from lying in bed two days that I needed the exercise.

I got tired before long and sat in the living room and tried to think it all through. Still no good. Too quiet in there: I could hear the silence and it made me restless, edgy. I turned on the TV and stared at a movie that I didn’t really see. That made me drowsy, and I went back to bed and slept some more, and when I woke up it was dark outside and Kerry was there. I found her in the living room, curled up on the couch, reading one of my pulps.

“Hey,” she said when she saw me come out in my robe and slippers, “you sure you should be out of bed?”

“I was out for three hours earlier,” I said. “Didn’t do me any harm.”

“How do you feel?”

“Not too bad. I’ll live.”

“Well, you’d better.” She let me have one of her chipper smiles. I didn’t smile back; I did not feel like smiling, even for her. “Want something to eat?” she asked.

“Pretty soon. How long have you been here?”

“Couple of hours. Since five.”

“Eberhardt didn’t come by yet, did he?”

“He did. I wouldn’t let him wake you up.”

“You should have, if he had something to tell me-”

“He didn’t have anything to tell you. He just left you an envelope-a photograph, he said.”

“Where is it?”

“Over there on your desk.”

I went to the desk-an old secretary that I had bought a long time ago, before sixty-year-old Sears, Roebuck junk became “antiques” and quadrupled in value-and opened up the manila envelope that was sitting on it. The photograph was an eight-by-ten color glossy, professionally done. A full-length portrait of Alicia Purcell wearing a slinky black low-cut gown with glittery stuff on it; she had struck a provocative pose and was smiling moistly at the camera. I turned it over to look at the back. And there was an inscription, in green ink, that said: For Leonard. Love, Al.

Things moved around inside my head-but that was all they did; nothing came of the movement. I looked at the photo for a time. Then I said to Kerry, “I want to make a call,” and went back into the bedroom and dialed the number where Tom Washburn was staying.

When I got him on the line I let him tell me how sorry he was about what he called my “ordeal,” and then I said, “I’ve just seen the photo of Alicia Purcell. Where’d you find it?”

“In Leonard’s study. It was tucked away in one of his business files.”

“That’s an odd place, isn’t it?”

“Yes. If she gave it to him, I can’t imagine why.”

“They weren’t close, as far as you know?”

“Well, he seldom spoke of her.”

“When he did, what did he say?”

“He said she was cheap. He couldn’t understand why Kenneth married her.”

“Did he ever call her ‘Al’ instead of ‘Alicia’?”

“No. Never.” Washburn paused. “Perhaps it was Kenneth who gave him the photo, for some reason.”

“Can you think of one?”

“No, I can’t. If only Leonard hadn’t been so private…”

“I’ll find out, Mr. Washburn,” I said. “I should be back on the job in a day or two.”

“So soon? But your partner said you had cracked ribs and a concussion…”

“They’re healing.”

“Aren’t you… I mean, you’re not afraid they’ll try to hurt you again?”

Yes, I thought, I’m afraid. You’re always a little afraid in this business-more than a little when something like Sunday night happens. But you learn to live with it. And right now what I was feeling was a great deal more rage and determination than fear.

I didn’t say any of that to Washburn; it was not the kind of thing I can articulate. I said only, “Don’t worry about that. You hired me to do a job; I intend to finish doing it.”

Kerry wasn’t in the living room when I went out there again. I heard her in the kitchen, bustling around, and I smelled meat frying. It made me hungry-much hungrier than I’d been earlier in the day. I took that as a positive sign. If I could eat with appetite I was capable of putting my pants on and facing the world again.

We had hamburger-“It’s about time you ate some solid food,” she said-and a spinach salad, and I drank a little beer with it. Afterward we sat in the living room and talked about neutral topics. At ten o’clock I chased her out. And when she was gone I was sorry about it, yet relieved at the same time. I wanted to be alone; I didn’t want to be alone. Ambivalence.

Christ, I thought, I need to get out of here.

Tomorrow, I thought. If I can walk in the morning I’m gone.

I went to bed. I was afraid I might have difficulty getting to sleep, because I had done so much sleeping the past three days, but it didn’t happen that way. I put the light out and I went out with it.

Dreams.

Faces, places-the same as before. And some new ones too: Alicia Purcell in the slinky, low-cut black gown, smiling. Danny Martinez’s son Roberto, smiling.

Voices, old and new. “Deadfall so sorry love Al once bitten whosoever toucheth fall how could you…”

All through the night, dreams.

Morning.

A little after seven, by the nightstand clock.

I lay in bed remembering the dreams and the voices, and I knew I was close. Don’t try to force it; it’ll come. I got up, donned my robe, went into the bathroom and had another look at myself.

Not too bad. The swelling was completely gone from my right eye and the lemon-brown discoloration around it had begun to fade; I could see as well as ever, except for a faint blurriness at the far periphery of my vision. Two other bruises were fading even more rapidly. The face might draw some looks, but nobody was going to be startled or frightened by it.

I flexed my body a little, testing my ribs. Still some of that tearing pain; I would have to be careful how I moved. My head didn’t hurt at all, but that might be a false sign. Head wounds, concussions, could be tricky. Still, my mind seemed perfectly clear… clear enough, anyhow.

Yeah, I thought, I’m ready.

But not right this minute; it was too early to expect to get anything done. I went into the kitchen, made some coffee and a couple of soft-boiled eggs and a piece of toast; ate at the table in there. Went back to bed with a second cup of coffee, to wait and to do some more thinking. Tried to sit up, but my ribs felt more constricted that way, so I stretched out and pulled the blankets over me.

Went to sleep again.

It was an odd sleep-deep and dreamless for a long while, then shallow and restless and heavy with more dreams, and finally not quite sleep at all, just that kind of drifting doze where you’re poised on the edge of wakefulness and dreams and reality intermingle.

Photographs, I thought or dreamed.

Love, Al.

His name is Roberto, he’s a nice little boy.

Photographs.

Deadfall.

So sorry.

Fall how could you…

Love, Al.

Photographs.

Danny Martinez.

Crucifixes.

Roberto.

Lumber, remember the lumber?

I woke up. Sat up so fast that pain ripped through my side and I had to jam my teeth together to keep from crying out. I was soaked in sweat, panting as if I had run a long distance-and in a way, that was just what I’d done.

I had it now… some of it, maybe even most of it. And I knew where to look for the rest. Bad, worse than I’d thought, uglier than I’d thought. Simpler than I’d thought, too. That was why it had taken me this long to figure it out. Too many complications, and most of them false trails, miscalculations, red herrings. The forest for the trees.

What time was it? I looked at the clock, and the hands read 1:03. I stared at them; I had slept another five hours, slept away half of the day. Thursday-another Thursday. Everything of any magnitude on this case seemed to happen on Thursday, including its beginning and now maybe its ending.

I got out of bed, stripped off my pajamas in the bathroom-they smelled medicinal and sweaty, and so did I-and took a careful shower. Then I got dressed, went back to the bedroom. My notebook was on the dresser; Kerry had rescued it from what was left of the suit jacket I’d been wearing Sunday night. My car keys were there too, thanks to her and Eberhardt having retrieved the car. When I checked through the notebook I found that I hadn’t copied down Claudia Mitchell’s telephone number. I could call the office, get it from Eberhardt if he was in, but I did not want to talk to Eberhardt right now. So I dialed 411 instead. There was only one Claudia Mitchell listed-the right one, as it turned out.

Her sister wasn’t there, but she gave me a number where Ruth Mitchell could be reached. The former Mrs. Leonard Purcell did not want to talk to me at first, not about anything so personal as what I was asking; but I convinced her it was important, that it would help bring Leonard’s murderer to justice. She answered my questions finally. And they were the right answers, the ones I had expected to hear.

One more thing to check out, one very important thing. I did not have to go do it myself, I did not want to go do it myself; it would require work, the kind I was in no shape for-hard work, bad work. Call Ben Klein, I thought, lay it out for him, let him take it from here. But I couldn’t do that. It was my case now, mine to finish unraveling, mine to put an end to one way or another. Personally.

You sound like Mike Hammer, for Christ’s sake, I thought. What’s the matter with you?

I watched a man die, I thought, I felt him die. And they beat me up, they hurt me bad. That’s what’s the matter with me.

I got the car keys off the dresser, put on my old tweed overcoat to guard against a chill, and went out. Wishing I owned a gun to take with me, and damned glad I didn’t.