Iceman

Buckhead Station

Jack Eichord woke up hurting all over. He felt as if he might have had 3 1/2 hours’ sleep, and his neck hurt the way he imagined it would if someone had taken a ball bat to him. He'd awoken scrunched up against the headboard, head at an impossibly weird angle, and he tried unsuccessfully to pop his second vertebra. Two aspirin hadn't helped. His throat, and nose, and sinus cavities felt the way they use to feel after fourteen hours behind the wheel of a car, back in the days when he still boozed and set fire to three packs of Winstons a day. His tongue was thick and coated with something that proved impervious to toothpaste, mouthwash, and coffee. He went in and found Donna's Darvon and popped one, and stood still and rotated his head back and forth.

They'd violated one of their own iron-clad rules. They'd gone to bed mad. Always before, when there was a problem between them, they'd talk it out, but they'd got into it over the boy again last night and each had said things they shouldn't have said, the way you sometimes will in a fight. Jack was downright mean to Jonathan. Donna was unwilling to sit on the kid. Each agreed the other was a shitty parent. Nobody won, and this morning it was still a draw. Nobody felt like hugging and kissing and Eichord ended up leaving the house in a silent, sullen cloud of frustration and fear and anger. Another first.

It had started when he came home and she hit him with the housework bit again; she had busted her back all day, she was through with the kid, “it's your turn."

He'd gone in to a screaming, defiant Jonathan and worked to calm him down. Let's play blocks, he said. They played blocks. Jack took a block just slightly below his left eye, thrown hard. For a two-year-old, he had to give him credit. The kid had an arm on him. Now if he could work on a slider and his change-up...

Did she fully realize the implications, he wondered, of a child like this, who felt such bitter hatred at two? The corny phrase “SPAWN OF EVIL” always managed to type itself on his mind screen when he had such thoughts. Jesus Christ! The child's murdered father had BLINDED A MAN when he was—what?—eight or nine years old! Again he allowed himself the guilty quasi-pleasure of regretting having fought for the kid's survival. Maybe it would be better for all concerned if he would ... And he let the thought die out. That kind of thinking was just jacking yourself off. It might feel good for the moment, but it's better when you grow out of it.

By the time he got to work he could feel his paranoia quotient building like Dana's high blood pressure, and the morning had barely started.

“Eichord,” he grumbled into the telephone mouthpiece.

“Jack?” It was the C.A.

“Listen,” the man said, and Jack duly listened, the phone cradled between his sore shoulder and neck and his throbbing head, words crackling meaninglessly as he jotted notes on legal pad paper. The call ended and another phone rang beside him, and he listened to Peletier get invited to a customs seminar in New Orleans, or so it sounded from his eavesdropped side of the call. What the fuck would a Homicide copper be doing at a ... Ah, fuck it. Little did he realize the telephone was about to strike him like a lightning bolt.

He shuffled papers and tried to attack his mountain of paperwork with little success. He read a memo rerouted to him via MacTuff, from a weapons consultant who suggested a new slant on the Tina Hoyt case. His thesis was that the killings were acts of political terrorism, and he had some fifty-six pages of documentation available on the use of a sharpened bicycle spoke as an assassination weapon. The killer, he proposed, was a hit man for the Ton Ton Macoute. Eichord, who never ruled anything out at first glance, filed the memo in the Graham file and flashed on the tire track cast. Shit, why not? But it didn't help his neck or headache any.

Now he'd misplaced the notes from the C.A.'s call, and as he shuffled papers, he found a crude drawing of three stick figures beside a doctor's name.

This was Jack's doodled shorthand reminder to buy dolls. The bottom line from a phone call to a woman psychologist recommended to him by Doug Geary. She'd offered a pleasant and logically reasoned suggestion about Jonathan.

Jack had told her he understood about the Terrible Twos, but this wasn't just a kid slamming doors, or breaking something, or throwing a tantrum. He was extremely concerned about the boy. He told her about the biological father—a monstrous mass murderer, the incarnation of evil. A tortured child who had grown up to become a cold killer, who had later acted as midwife to the birth of the infant son, literally ripping the child from his mother's womb at the moment of birth. Could such a thing have caused some kind of awful traumatic damage to Jonathan? When the Twos become SO terrible that it might be beyond the stage of such a child's expected development, how much more is okay before it's abnormal? How much of this was Jack overreacting?

She told him about dolls. Buy this little house. Dolls. Play a game with the child. It was all about association and role models and things that Eichord thought made perfect sense, and he vowed to buy them today. Tonight he would show Jonathan that he, Daddy, and Mommy loved their son. And that son would love Daddy and Mommy in return. And they'd all live happily forever after. Unless something else happened and one of them slipped and fell in the shark tank, eh?

He found the notes he was looking for. They read, burden of proof ... beyond reasonable doubt ... prosecutorial stance ... a lot of bullshit, he thought, and round-filed it.

The telephone on his desk rang and he picked it up. “Homicide. Eichord."

“This is Bonnie Johnson. I had a message you tried to get in touch with me."

“Hi, Bonnie. Thanks for returning my call. I had some information here on Mizz—” He fumbled around on his desk, turning pages, trying to find the dossier.

“Diane Taluvera. Yes, sir?"

“You still haven't heard from her?"

“No, sir. Just that postcard."

“Has anybody received any sort of direct communication from Ms Taluvera? A phone call—something like that?"

“Not a word."

“Do you think something has happened to her, Bonnie?” He tried to use an individual's first name whenever he could, but he had caught himself saying Mister Schumway a whole lot.

“Yes.” He could hear the catch in her voice. “I'm afraid for her. It's not like her to run away like that."

“You think this person that she was seeing, the man she referred to as Al, might have abducted her?"

“I did until last night, but now I don't know what to think. His secretary called me and they all want to come talk with me about Diane. He is as worried as I am. It's the car dealer Al Schumway. And he said he got a postcard from Diane too. He wanted to know what was going on. If I had got a call from her. He can't understand why she hasn't phoned him."

“Alan Schumway called YOU?"

“Well, no. Yeah. His secretary did. And then he got on the line for a minute. We talked. He seemed real concerned. I don't know."

“When was this?"

“Last night. About ten o'clock. He wanted to know if we all could meet and I told him I was too tired last night. And I really was. I was just exhausted. I hadn't slept for the last two days. So I guess I'll get together with them tonight. She's coming over to pick me up after work. I never realized, you know, Diane never said anything about him being in a wheelchair and I—"

“Listen, Bonnie—” He had a shortness of breath. “I, uh, want you to forget we had this conversation. Temporarily, please don't say anything about this call. Be sure not to mention it to anybody. Now, what I want you to do is this...” He was having a hard time swallowing. “I want to make sure you are safe for the next day or so. I will clear all this with your employers, but I want you to take sick leave this afternoon. You feel awful and you have to go home. I don't care what you use as your health excuse. Dizziness. Whatever. Just don't come back after your lunch period. When is your lunch hour?"

“It's at eleven-thirty. I don't understand. How come you want me to—"

“Bonnie, I don't want to take time to explain right now, but make sure you don't go home. Not for any reason. Do you have a cat or dog that has to be fed? Anything like that?"

“No."

“I want you to go to a hotel or motel. Don't tell any of your friends where you are. Don't tell the bank. I'll take full responsibility. How about relatives, Bonnie—anybody who might worry if you couldn't be reached for twenty-four hours or so?"

“They're all in Florida."

He ended up explaining to her what he wanted. Took her parents’ phone number in Ft. Lauderdale. Had her vow she'd call and leave word in a certain way as soon as she checked in. If he should be away from his desk, she was to leave word with anyone there in Homicide that Mrs. Lauder was in such-and-such a room at this number. It wasn't particularly clever, but his brain had vapor locked and it was the best he could improvise. He hung up and was out of the squad bay all in one motion.

He drove to Buckhead Springs first. Trying to decide which way to go on it. The search warrant, that was the biggie. Should he get the goddamn thing or not? Which way to go? Finally, he decided what he'd do. It scared him a lot to think about the plan. It made him want to pee, and he was glad the traffic wasn't too bad. He didn't want to red-ball it. In a few minutes he was parking in their garage. Donna was gone. This was her shopping morning. She had Jonathan with her. He checked the house to make sure nobody was home, then went in and took a leak, came back out to the garage, and took a deep lung full of gas fumes. Oi veh.

His heavy toolbox was under the bench, coated in oily grime and spider webs. He removed the hammer, drill, files, pliers; it was full of hand tools. His whetstone box was wrapped in an oil-soaked rag. He unwrapped it. The box carried the legend dont let the bastards grind you down in Latin, with the cardboard gone at the end so it read non carborund. He took the silver thing out and slipped it in a Baggie. Four rounds followed. Carefully wiped. The surgical gloves went in one pocket, pick gun in the other.

Back in the plain Jane and moving toward North Buckhead.

Would Bonnie go along with what he wanted? There were a couple of weak holes in his plan. He'd made enough Homicide cases he had some idea of the number of ways he could fuck up right now, and it just didn't matter. He knew what it was now. Very clear. And when Bonnie Johnson had phoned, he had this nudge from the corner of his mind about the lady in the women's group who had told a detective she THOUGHT she might have seen Tina Hoyt leaving the church with a young woman.

So this was how Spoda or Schumway did it. He had a surrogate all along. After twenty years he somehow talked his sexy, live-in secretary girlfriend into setting ‘em up for him. But the thing was, Eichord couldn't make a fucking case without a d.b. If he was willing to put Bonnie Johnson's life in peril, no sweat. Maybe they could stake her out like a fucking goat and let Nicki move in, and ... Shit, it wasn't working for him. Postulates bled like wounds. Fuck the circuit attorney's office with his aloof “iffy DNA shit."

If Eichord was right, Spoda, Schumway, was chair-bound. Without Nicki for legs, he'd have a helluva time doing his thing. He might be able to off somebody, but dispose of the victim? That could be a bit tougher. If Nicki baby was out of the game, Arthur Spoda could still be a player, but it was going to slow him down something fierce.

He stopped and called Dana on a pay phone, and by the time he pulled down the block from Schumway's house the surveillance car was gone. Eichord had roughly a quarter-hour before the surveillance van man rolled by. He'd be a memory by then.

Moving toward the house at a brisk pace. Just short of a jog. The pick gun out. No problem. Easing in nice and quiet. Standing dead-still. Breathing in the sounds of the house. Strange feeling. Nicki. She could be asleep in a bedroom. Or waiting. He stood there for a long two minutes. Slipped his shoes off and moved up the stairs. The elevator was a closed door he wouldn't investigate.

Did the whole house fast, Where the fuck WAS she? Took a couple of things out of his pockets. Put a couple of things back in. Time was ticking. He got paper out of Scumwad's desk and wiped it, even though he was using gloves, then decided that was wrong and opted for the top sheet on a notepad. Then changed his mind back again and took a full-size sheet.

The typewriter was a fancy electric with the guts in one tiny, self-contained compartment. The cartridge would have whatever he typed on it now, but he would gamble on that. He typed the brief note, then some other extraneous information to move the cartridge along. Had an inspiration and typed another. Enough. Every key sounded like a gunshot.

The penetration of the cabinet was a snap. He opened up the clay box and did a nice careful casting of both sides. The latex mold could work wonders, but you had to have a smooth matrix to work from.

He thought about checking for a catalog of mail-drop companies, matching company names with canceled checks, that kind of thing. Looking for the Polaroid collections these jokers sometimes like to keep. The nasty little scrapbooks. If he'd had three more hours instead of three minutes, he might have done that very thing. What he did do was ... he left. Why spoil a good thing? He didn't even check for hidden security systems, although he wanted to know more. Was the joint miked to a sound-activated recorder, for example? Later for you, house, he thought, and he was outta there.

By the time Bonnie was leaving for lunch, and not coming back, so was he. Back in the squad room listening to Tuny's rasp cut through the fog, “You wanna eat Spic?"

“Shit, no,” Tucker told his partner. “I don't wanna eat that shit."

“Why the fuck not?” fat Dana whined. “Get some of that hot babyfinger chile.” Dana claimed he'd once found a tiny fingernail in his favorite Mex-Tex restaurant, hence Babyfinger Chile con Carne.

“Less eat honky. Go over to that shithole on Central and get some nice, rare greaseburgers."

Eichord felt his stomach turning and he had to pee again. He went into the men's room and NIGHT-CRAWLER was waiting for him on the wall above the urinal. He felt alone. It was a feeling like being lost at the heart of a dark and foreboding maze. He zipped his pants, washed his hands, went back into the squad room, and sat down at his desk. He noticed Dana had put the surveillance back on the house like he'd told him to. Eichord felt a surge of affection for his old pal and glanced over at the two massive detectives.

“Hey. Ya know what? You guys do good work, didja know that?"

“Does the pope wear a hat?"

“C'mon, man,” Monroe Tucker said, looming over him momentarily, “we gonna go scarf up some nice, bloody greaseburgers. Sound good?"

“Gee, Monroe. That does sound tempting. Wish I could."

“Oh, Jackie, PLEASE change your mind,” Dana simpered, half-swishing, half-waddling past.

“Pass,” Eichord told him, blowing a kiss.