Hundred Dollar Baby

34

Ollie's clubhouse was locked. There was a big crime-scene sign on the door. But I had a key from Belson, and unlocked the door, and strolled brazenly in. I closed the door behind me and turned the bolt. It was very quiet. The only sound was the hum of the refrigerator against the wall of the outer room. The crime-scene people had dusted for prints and collected and bagged and photographed and studied and gone through the place like they were auditioning for CSI: South Boston. I didn't have to be careful. I opened the refrigerator door. It was empty. I looked around the room. It looked the same as it had. There were two windows. Each of them had a thick security screen. I walkeddown the short hall. At the end was a small bathroom. I looked in. It was empty of everything except the toilet and the sink. I went into Ollie's office. Nothing different. I looked around. There was a security screen over the window in Ollie's office. There were no other windows. No doors but the front one. I opened Ollie's desk drawer. Crime Scene had cleaned it out. The wastebasket was empty. I went back to the front door and began to walk through it.

Okay. Killer came in here. No one's here, or they are here and they leave, for whatever reason. TV might be on, might not. I walk across the room. Even if I've never been here before, there's no place else to go. Down the hall. Ollie's door is open. I go in. He is at his desk. He sees me. He doesn't open the drawer. Doesn't go for his gun. I walk over. Do I talk? Does he talk? Do I have the gun out? Do I take it out? Whatever happened, I am right across the desk, I lean forward a little, point my gun in front of me, and plug him in the forehead right above his nose. I pantomimed the shot. He snaps back, bounces forward, starts bleeding onto his shirt. I put the gun away. Turn around and walk out? Why would I stick around? Somebody might have heard the shot. Unless he had something I wanted. Crime Scene found no sign of anyone looking for anything. No way to know. Anyway, as soon as I can, I leave. I walk back down the hall, out through the lounge, and out the front door.

I stood at the front door and then turned around and looked at everything again. Nothing spoke to me. I went to one of the ratty chairs in front of the TV and sat and looked at the room and the hall. Nothing. I'd seen Belson do this for an hour. Simply sit and look until he saw something. Or until he was certain there was nothing to see. It was more than close observation. I always suspected that if he did it long enough, he'd begin to intuit what happened. He never said so. But I was always suspicious.

Ollie DeMars was a rough guy in a rough business. He would not sit here at night alone in an unlocked building and allow somebody to wander in and shoot him. He had to have known the shooter. The slug they dug out of him was a.22. A woman's gun? Or was I being a sexist oinker? A woman made some sense, though. If he was expecting someone to come in and haul his ashes, maybe he'd send people away, and maybe he'd let a woman walk in and shoot him at close range. ME had said there was no indication of sexual activity. Which meant only that she'd gotten right to the shooting. If she was a she. Lionel was the kind of guy might use a.22, nothing big and heavy that might break the line of his suit. Or it might be some pro trying to confuse us. If so, what happened to Ollie's crew? Did they sell him out? Were they frightened away? If it was a woman, was it April? Why would she shoot him? We'd already chased him off. Could she shoot him? It was hard to figure April. She had not lived like most people.

Maybe it had nothing to do with anything I knew anything about. Ollie was a freelancer and busy. It could have nothing to do with me. But assuming that didn't lead anywhere. I wanted it to go somewhere. Things didn't make sense enough for me to leave it be. I didn't want to blow April's cover. But I wasn't exactly clear on what she was covering. I understood why she and her professional staff wanted to stay off the screen. She was running an illegal enterprise, and if it went public, the cops would be obliged to bust her. I didn't care about the illegal enterprise. Prostitution was probably bad for a lot of prostitutes. But it seemed pretty good to the group I was dealing with. And I had a limited attention span for larger issues. Smaller ones were hard enough.

I sat for a while longer in the silent room, made more silent by the white sound of the refrigerator. I let the silence sink in, looking for an intuition. I didn't get one. Maybe Belson never did, either.