Murder Straight Up

14

Marcie Grant surprised me by living in a trailer court. New as the mobile homes were, tidy as the landscaping was, it still had that mazelike aspect that reminded me of a prison camp. It all seemed wrong for a young beautiful blonde with stunning violet contacts.

Lights shone erratically in a handful of trailers as I drove down the moonlit lanes looking for 4017. I recognized her car and the car parked next to hers at an angle, as if the driver had slammed to a halt and jumped out before the engine had quite shut off. The car was the one Mike Perry had driven away in this afternoon in order to avoid talking to me.

I killed my lights, parked and got out. The breeze was so spring sweet and the sky so clean, I just wanted to stand here, not know a damn thing more about any of these people, just stand here and forget it all. A pontifical Alan Alda speech on a “M*A*S*H” rerun coming from a nearby trailer brought me back to dour reality. I looked around, made as sure as I could that nobody was watching me, then went along the side of Marcie Grant’s trailer to the rear window. I tried not to think of the charge I’d be facing if I got caught. I didn’t even know why the hell I was doing this.

The skin of the trailer was silver and shone in the moonlight. Alongside the west end of it ran a hopeful little garden that the local dogs probably used as a toilet. The back window was high enough for me to have to stand on my tiptoes and lean over, not wanting to step on her garden, for a look inside.

The bed was mussed, blankets hanging off the edge and dragging on the floor, and clothes were strewn every place imaginable. One exceptional touch was a pair of panties hanging on a doorknob. Marcie Grant had obviously graduated from the same housekeeping school I had.

I tried to swallow my next few breaths so I could hear better. Alan was still pontificating, but when I listened just below his level, I heard something terrible. Weeping.

Ducking down, I moved around the rear of the trailer to the other side. The first thing I checked out was the trailer facing Marcie’s. The windows were all dark. I proceeded along the east side then until I reached a window halfway down, where a light burned.

Mike Perry stood naked to the waist, a can of Pabst in one big hand, looking down at Marcie Grant. His chest was expansive and hairy, but that wasn’t what mattered at all. What mattered was the fist he held — almost as if it didn’t belong to him — the fist that shone with blood.

Marcie was crouched on the couch, holding her hands over her mouth, blood seeping out between the fingers.

He had hit her and hit her hard. “You fucking bitch,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told him, I’m sorry.” When she talked, she sounded as if she’d just gotten novocaine.

“You should’ve heard what he said to me, that faggot.” Perry should have sounded angry. Instead he sounded oddly hurt, as if she’d been the one who’d struck him. “ ‘Can’t take care of your women anymore, so I thought I’d help you out.’ ” Perry smashed his beer into the wall. He lunged at her and jerked her to her feet and slapped her once very precisely across the mouth.

I reacted instinctively. I moved around the front of the trailer and got to the door and jerked on the handle. It surprised me by opening. Perry, who had maybe five inches in height and forty pounds in weight on me, filled the doorway.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” he said. He was angry, which had increased his strength considerably. He reached down like a monster in a Japanese movie and plucked me off my feet and jerked me up the three steps and inside.

It was like being in a car wreck, everything spinning around so quickly, my mind feeling completely out of control. I couldn’t even get in a good punch. Not that I thought it would do a lot of good anyway. He threw me down in the approximate vicinity of Marcie Grant. My elbow caught her in the arm, and she groaned.

“You sonofabitch, what the hell’re you doing here?” He was a berserk animal, and I saw then that he was drunk enough and angry enough for no amount of reasonable talking to help. So much for the psych courses they made you take in police school.

What I did next had nothing to do with bravery — only simple survival. If I didn’t do something, he’d keep me pinned down here all night and bash my head in at will. I eased up off the couch, and just as he came for me, I kicked a perfect Super Bowl field goal, one that just happened to catch him high and hard in the balls.

He went down with a look of agony on his face and a bellow of confusion and rage tearing open his mouth.

The next one landed just below his temple, and this time he went out instantly. He pulled a table lamp down with him. When it hit the floor, brilliant light splashed in every direction, like a strobe.

I went over and stood by him a few moments, just making sure.

“Is he all right?” Marcie said, sounding a little hysterical.

I knelt down, knees cracking, and felt for a pulse. “Yeah,” I said, and stood up.

“You sure don’t believe in fighting fair, do you?”

“I don’t fight to make friends. I fight to save my ass.”

“Jesus,” she said, looking down at Perry and shaking her head.

I looked around the trailer. “You have any beer?”

She flung a left hand toward the refrigerator. The other hand she kept pressed against her mouth.

I found the Pabst and opened one and said, “Why was he beating you up?”

She shrugged. She wore men’s cotton pajamas and looked as ravishing as a young Rita Hayworth. Not even the blood spoiled the effect. “I told somebody something about him that I shouldn’t have.”

“I need to know what you said and who you said it to.”

“Fuck off,” she said. “You’re some goddamn security guard. Big deal.” She fussed with her mouth some more. “Anyway, they got the kid who killed Curtis. It’s all over.”

“The kid didn’t do it. One of you did it.”

“One of who?”

“One of you at the station.”

“Killed Curtis?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you know? You’re just some loser playing cop.”

“Why was Perry so angry tonight?”

“You’re the one who knocked him out. Why don’t you wake him up and ask him?”

“I want to know from you.”

Just then Perry moaned, and the way she jumped I saw how deep her fear of him ran. For just an instant her practiced tough veneer faded and she looked young and frightened.

“You need a friend,” I said.

She watched him — he looked like a felled mastodon there on her floor — and faintly she said, “Yeah.”

She wouldn’t let me help her. She spent twenty minutes in the john getting her mouth cleaned up. I sat by the open window watching the clouds race the moon. By now Perry was snoring.

She came out in fresh pajamas with her hair pulled back. She made instant coffee in a microwave, and brought two big mugs over.

“You feeling like talking?” I said.

“Why not?” She sounded almost bitter. “You want to know why Michael was so mad tonight, right?”

“Right.”

“You really don’t think that kid did it?”

“No.”

“You think one of us did it?”

“Yeah.”

“Michael?”

“Maybe.”

“Shit. I’m really going to sound like a terrible person when I say this.”

I just waited for her to say it. She had to work up the nerve.

“I started seeing David Curtis on the side. And one night when I was pretty drunk, I told him about Michael’s problem.”

I still waited. She was just getting going.

“About his sexual problem, I mean. Most of the time, Michael’s impotent. It’s especially tough for him. I mean here’s this big NFL player, this really handsome guy that all the women think is so neat, and most of the time he has trouble in bed. Not all the time, sometimes he’s just fine and it’s really great, but sometimes...” She shook her head. Stared down into her coffee cup, then over at Perry.

“For the past seven months we’ve been seeing a counselor,” she went on. “He charges us seventy dollars an hour to say the same thing over and over. Michael doesn’t trust women and that’s why he has this problem. He beats me up sometimes, like tonight, especially when he’s drinking. Most of the time I try to accept it and I don’t blame myself, but I get in moods and— It’s not even that I get horny or anything, but sometimes I just need to be with somebody where it’s uncomplicated, where you can just have fun, you know? That’s why I was with David Curtis. It was very uncomplicated until I got drunk one night and told him, and— Well, that changed our relationship, mine and David’s. He started making jokes about Michael. ‘The little prick that couldn’t.’ Juvenile stuff like that. David was a pretty boy and he’d always been intimidated by Michael, because he was so much bigger and stronger. Then one night when we were all drunk at a bar, David said something to Michael, and Michael knew that not only had I been sleeping with other men but that I’d told his secret. You can see what it did to him.”

I couldn’t help myself. While I didn’t have any regrets about kicking him, I felt sorry for him now. He was a victim. “You’ve just given Perry a strong motive for killing Curtis,” I said.

“I know. That’s why I didn’t want to say anything.”

“You’ve given yourself a reasonably strong motive, too.”

“Me? Why?”

“Revenge. In a way he betrayed you. By making jokes about something you’d confided seriously to him.”

“I guess he did betray me.”

“I don’t get the impression from anybody that he was exactly a wonderful guy.”

“He wasn’t. He was an airhead with the right looks and the right style. He never would have been major — I mean he was too stupid to make it at the networks.”

I finished my coffee. “Do you know anything about a break-in at Kelly Ford’s office?”

“Just that it made Kelly very nervous. It would make me nervous, too.”

“What do you think of her?”

She frowned slightly. “If I say what I feel, then I’ll just sound catty.”

“Say it.”

“She’s very bright and very nice, but she’s really kind of mixed up. She left a husband and two children to go out in the world and prove herself, but now she’s fallen into the worst chauvinist trap of all. She’s somebody’s mistress.”

“Robert Fitzgerald’s?”

“Right. She’s — silly about him. Like a teenage girl. If he’s angry with her, she just goes to pieces. You know?”

“I know.”

“And he’s been in a pretty bad mood lately.”

“Know why?”

“Sure. He’s made some extremely bad investments that have depleted his cash flow, and our ratings keep going down. He’s in big trouble — there are even rumors he’s going to be forced to sell the station. And for him that’s going to be a real blow. He never finished college. Instead — this was back in the early sixties, I guess — he was a grip at Channel Three. Reigers, the guy who originally owned it, really admired Fitzgerald and sort of adopted him. He was impressed that anybody who had a lame leg and had come from such an impoverished background would have the drive that Fitzgerald did. Eventually, by the time Reigers died, he had made it possible for Fitzgerald to own the station. If Fitzgerald had to sell it now, he would lose face — and his pride is incredible. He’s been taking his troubles out on everybody, but especially on Kelly.”

“Do you like her?”

“I feel sorry for her. I don’t think that’s the same thing.”

I stood up. Perry groaned again. “What happens when he wakes up?”

She glanced down at Perry again. Shook her head. “I’m afraid to find out. The last few days he’s changed, he’s...” She shook her lovely hair. “He’s even more violent...”

“I’ll take him with me if you want.”

“That would just make things worse.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

Then she touched her fingers to her mouth. “Damn,” she said.

“What?”

“It’s bleeding again.”