New, Improved Murder

7

He had arthritic hands and wasted eyes, and if he had much more to live on than his social security, I would be surprised. He came in once a month and tried, as he was trying tonight, to steal a five-pound tin of ham. He was a lousy shoplifter. I was literally afraid that he was going to work himself into such a terrified state — the way he looked around, the half hour he took to get the ham up to his overcoat pocket — that one of these nights he was going to fall over from sheer fright.

I watched him for five minutes, then walked to the back of the discount store where I was pulling a security gig this week. I had gone there after leaving the hospital, hoping the evening would provide me with some professionals and a few games of cat and mouse. I needed the adrenaline of clean, cold pursuit. Busting old folks didn’t qualify.

I placed my sixth call of the evening to the number listed as belonging to “C. Travers” in the phone book. If Bryce Hammond was right, the lady could give me all sorts of useful information about Stephen Elliot, including why he’d spit in her face one day.

There was no answer. Again. Either she was a busy woman or she had disconnected her phone. I’d been trying to reach her since the day before.

On the floor, I watched the old man again. He had started into his head-swerving phase, looking around for store dicks like myself.

Satisfied that he was not being observed, he wrapped a gnarled hand around the ham and began to push it into his pocket. I moved quickly, afraid he might be observed from the manager’s office.

“Hey,” I said.

A look of mortification and pure horror filled his face. I touched his hand, guided the ham back to its place in the display.

“You sure that’s the ham you want?”

His eyes were ancient, watery. His bones were hard, but his clasp was soft.

“Huh?” he said, yelling loud as a deaf man.

“I think you picked up that ham by mistake, didn’t you?”

He stared at me a long moment, then started getting tears in his eyes. “Yes, I guess I did. By mistake.”

I could imagine him savoring the ham — sliced and served warm in sandwiches. If the poor bastard had enough to afford bread.

“Fuck,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I said fuck.”

“Fuck what?”

“Fuck everything, old man.”

I picked up the ham and a loaf of white bread — I wasn’t doing him any favors — and laid them in his arms. Then I took a ten-dollar bill from my pocket and put it into his.

“What’re you doing?”

He still sounded scared.

“You won the store lottery.”

“What say?”

“You won the fucking lottery,” I said.

He looked confused.

“Just take the ten and go up front and pay for this stuff, old man.”

“Huh? I never heard of no store lottery.”

“Sure. Now hurry along, okay?”

“Goddamnedest thing ever happened to me.”

I would have just given him the ham, but all security people have to take lie-detector tests and my largess at the store’s expense would have shown up.

I pushed him along, walking behind him to the aisle split, which took me back to the phone and C. Travers. Nothing.

The apartment I live in smelled of steam heat. In bed I ate an apple and read through a script I would be auditioning for the next day, this one having me as a garage mechanic dedicated to only one thing, your gosh-darn satisfaction. You betcha.

I slept very well, awoke around dawn, luxuriating in the feel of my body against the sheets, which were warm in some places, cold in others. I lay there for a time and thought of crazy Donna Harris. She made me feel good — her innocent and somewhat misplaced aggressiveness.

After a shave and a shower I got in my Datsun and drove over to Carla Travers’s place.

She lived in one of those new condominiums along the river, steep and secret in firs and pines.

A few sleepy-eyed people were escaping from her section. They looked at me — even though I wore a new tweed jacket, button-down shirt, and pressed chino pants — as if I had been dropped off here by a muggers’ touring bus.

In the lobby I found her name, pressed her button, and went up before she could say anything into the speaker. There wasn’t a security door in the place.

Her hallway was golden with sunlight patterned through the firs. This was going to be a beautiful morning, not the kind you expected in gray November.

I put a hand on her doorknob and knocked at the same time.

The knob turned easily in my hand.

Three minutes later, after no response, I knocked again.

After a total of ten minutes I twisted the knob to the right and went inside.

The apartment was wide and expensive and nicely furnished with contemporary furniture and colorful graphics on the wall, but, curiously, it lacked a personality.

I said, “Hello,” but I realized it was only a formality.

I closed the door behind me and went in.

Three rooms later I learned that she liked to cook in a wok — she had three of them — had expensive and florid taste in clothes, was sentimental about huge stuffed animals, and had a record collection that ran Neil Diamond and Barry Manilow.

The final room I checked seemed to be a kind of den, a small room that a family would have used as a bedroom. In it she’d put a single bookcase and filled it with a lot of pop-psych and you-can-win type books, a small desk with air bubbles in the varnish that indicated she’d probably finished it herself, a straight-backed chair, and a file cabinet that promised to be the most interesting thing in her entire apartment, especially considering that on top of the cabinet was a framed photograph of herself and Stephen Elliot, arm in arm, at what appeared to be a resort.

For the first time since Jane’s arrest I had a feeling that I might actually be making some progress.

I knelt down, my knees cracking as I did so, and started to pull the top drawer from the cabinet, when I heard something behind me creak.

Whoever it was moved accurately, crossing the distance between the closet where he or she had been concealed and bringing whatever it was right across the back of my head.

Before I slipped into darkness I had time to realize that my instructor at the police academy would be very ashamed of me for being so careless.