Murder Straight Up

24

I drove around the phone booth several times before finally pulling in. Even then, still not sure, I stood in the spring night having a smoke and watching young women stroll by. For once they held no particular interest for me. Not with what was on my mind.

Finally I decided it would be best if I did what was only proper to do. As people kept reminding me, I was only a security guard. Hell, I’d been fired, so I wasn’t even that.

I went into the booth and dropped in my quarter and called the precinct house number from memory. I’d dialed it a thousand times in my days as a cop. I asked for him and the man on the desk said, “Wait a minute please,” and then he came back and said, “He’s not in this evening. He had some time off coming.”

“Thanks.”

Then I tried Edelman’s house. His wife, one of the truly decent people in the universe, answered and said, “He’s bowling.”

“Bowling?”

She laughed. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Then she was more serious. “Hasn’t he told you about his blood pressure?”

“No.”

“It’s very high. The doctor’s worried. They tried him on tranquilizers, but they just make him sleepy, so he’s taken up bowling.”

“Is the blood pressure coming down?”

“Slowly, thank God.”

“Well, just mention I called if you would.”

“I sure will. And it’s going to be good to see you whenever that day comes around again.”

I was always promising her I’d be over for dinner one day. Soon.

“Thanks,” I said, and hung up.

The trailer court was dark. Just the glow of lights and TV screens in the window. When I pulled in, I saw a young couple strolling by. She had her hand stuffed deep down the back of his trousers and he had his hand stuffed deep inside her blouse. It made me smile. It would be nice to be so publicly horny again.

There were three cars parked around Marcie Grant’s trailer. The last one was a new red Firebird. I took my old route, along the side of the trailer and up to the back window.

The Ayreses, identical as always in matching white shirts and black slacks, had big Mike Perry, the sports-caster, tied in a straight-backed chair. Marcie Grant they had on the couch. All she wore was panties. Even in the dim light you could see the odd violet glow of her eyes. What they emitted now was terror.

The place had been ransacked. It didn’t take genius to know what the twins were looking for. They wanted the audiotapes that Stephen Chandler had made. Marcie was probably a long shot but these days the twins were desperate. She’d been the producer of the suicide series. She was probably worth checking out. Besides, they seemed to take genuine pleasure in their work.

I went back to my car. The other day I’d been batting flies with my son. I still had my old Louisville Slugger (Henry Aaron model) in the trunk. I went and got it, and what I did next was primitive, but it worked.

I stood behind a hedge and picked up rocks and started lobbing them at the trailer door. I had to throw several innings’ worth of the damn things before I heard the conversation stop inside and one of the twins say, “Listen. What the hell’s that noise?”

There was a grave and lengthy silence, and then the other twin said, “Nothing. You’re just getting spooked.”

“Spooked my ass. I heard something.”

“Let’s just get on with it, all right? There wasn’t any noise.” I heard him kick over something. “Now listen, bitch, where are the tapes?”

I threw another rock. This one was a spitball. It banged off the door, and one minute later the first twin appeared. By then I was behind the door with my Henry Aaron model. It was a clean good hit and he went down first to his knees and then to his face. He crashed with the pleasing sound of something being crushed.

“Rick?” the other twin said from inside after another minute. “Don’t move, bitch.” Then he too came to the door.

He surprised me. Just when I was raising Henry to do battle, he turned and saw me and leveled a .45 at my midsection.

I got him across the face. I heard things break in his nose and mouth and jaw. He looked shocked and furious, and then he collapsed next to his brother.

Inside the trailer Marcie Grant lay facedown on the couch.

Mike Perry, still tied up, watched me come into the room, his eyes widening in recognition. I went over and untied him.

“You just saved yourself some grief, pal,” he said. He didn’t seem unduly grateful for the fact that I might just have saved his life.

“How’s that?”

“The last time you were here, you kicked me in the balls and then knocked me out.”

“That’s right, I did.”

“So I was going to pay you back, but in light of what you did tonight, I won’t.”

“Gee, thanks.”

Marcie got up from the couch, her wonderful breasts still naked.

“Jesus Christ,” Perry said. “Haven’t enough people seen your tits already?”

She ran off into the bedroom.

Two minutes later we sat around the kitchen table sharing a quart of Budweiser, and Marcie Grant told me what she knew about the Stephen Chandler case.

“All I knew was that something was wrong with the way he died. I never believed his suicide. I’d spent a lot of time with him and I knew all about his California ideas. Despite the way he talked sometimes, he was actually a reasonably happy young man. Very bright and very ambitious. But I was afraid to say anything after he died.”

“Why?”

She looked at Perry and then flushed. “This is going to make me sound like a real cold-hearted bitch.” Perry said, “Tell him.”

“I was afraid that if somebody had killed him, that would detract from the power of the story.” She paused. “I’ve been nominated as producer for a major news award. It’ll really help my career. Part of the power of the piece was that he actually committed suicide. But if he was murdered—”

I said, “Channel Three really profited from that story, didn’t they?”

“Well, we were number two and that made us number one. That’s why Channel Six got so nervous. They’d been afraid for a long time that we were going to overtake them. When we did the first piece on teenage suicide three months earlier, it helped our ratings considerably. That’s why we decided to do the second part. That’s when Stephen Chandler committed suicide.”

“He was murdered.”

They looked at each other. Then she sighed and said, “Yes. That’s what I was afraid of.”

“And you could have been the one who did it.”

“Me? Are you crazy?” she said.

I told her about what the janitor had said. That a blond woman had been the last person to go up and see Stephen Chandler the night he died.

“It couldn’t have been me,” she said.

“Why not?”

“The night the Chandler kid died, Mike and I were in Hawaii on vacation.”

Perry said, “We’ve got lots of proof.”

So that was that. My nice neat theory. I had only one other possibility. The janitor had mentioned a limping man. There didn’t seem to be much doubt about who that might be. I finished my beer and stood up.

“You all right?” Marcie Grant said.

I nodded.

“He’s onto something,” Perry said.

“Are you really?” Marcie asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” I said.

“What should we do with the twins?” she asked.

“Call the police.”

“Is it all about over?” she said. She sounded weary.

“Yeah,” I said. “Just about.”