The Long Wait

Chapter Ten

The Ford was still there, but now it was wedged in between a couple of seedy old cars that bore college stickers on the windshield. It was eight-thirty-two by my watch, but by my head it was time to hole up someplace and die. There were lights on in the house now, every window except one a yellow square and at that one I tossed a half-hearted salute and said good night to my Venus.

Okay, so I’m a jerk sometimes. I get the rest of my brains damn near knocked out all for something in style from Venus. But hell, they give medals to soldiers for the same thing, and I’d take Venus to a medal any time. Besides, she was handy to have around for inside info if I needed it.

I climbed behind the wheel and poked the key into the lock. It made some tricky juggling to get out of the spot, but I made it and started around the corner when I heard the wail of the sirens coming up behind me. Don’t ask why I did it, but my hand hit the light switch and kicked off the lights as I jammed into the curb and made like an all-night parker.

There were three of them. Two were official and the other was a coupe, but they all had sirens dying to a low growl and seemed to spill out cops by the dozens. It was a nicely planned maneuver if you were on the outside looking in. They covered the house in pairs so that there wasn’t a chance of a mouse getting through, then Lindsey and Tucker went up the front steps and rattled the doorknob.

Inside, somebody screamed, a door opened and slammed and a couple of guys started swearing and telling the cops off. Then more screams of indignation. None of the voices belonged to Venus.

I grinned to myself in the darkness.

If Tucker had come to pick up a corpse he was going to be a mighty upset copper. I knew two other guys who were going to be a little upset, too. It was funny as hell to watch because the cops weren’t taking any chance on having a corpse run out on them. Or maybe Lenny Servo wasn’t too sure about being a corpse and hoped I’d be made one if I tried to get out of the trap.

The more I thought about it the better it looked and the madder I got. They were playing it cagey and weren’t taking any chances at all. Not even one. The bastards were angling for my death harder than they were at the beginning only now they had the cops ready to pull the pay-off so it would have a nice legal wrapper on it and there wouldn’t even be the trouble of an investigation or trial.

I said to hell with it and started the car up again. If they saw me they could chase me. Just to keep luck on my side I didn’t turn the lights on until I was all the way down the block and heading back toward the city.

Nobody saw me. They were all too busy looking the other way.

The Circus Bar was my first stop. I didn’t see Logan’s car around anywhere so I looked around inside. When I didn’t see him anyplace I cornered the bartender. “You see Logan tonight?”

“Yeah. Yeah, sure. Said he was going on a bat, only his office called and he had to stay sober to see a couple of men.”

“Where’d he go?”

“Gosh, pal, I wouldn’t know where any of these joes go. One minute they’re here an’ the next they’re tearing around the city. You know reporters.”

I said I knew and let him get back to work. I did better on the phone. The city editor told me that a couple of insurance investigators had wanted to see him and had left their phone number for Logan to call so he probably had met them.

After I thought it over a minute I thumbed through the directory until I found Gardiner, Havis, called his number and got the housekeeper. She sounded curt and was starting to tell me that Mr. Gardiner wasn’t in to anyone at this hour, but I heard the echo of footsteps and Gardiner himself telling her that he’d take it, then his voice said, “Gardiner speaking. What is it?”

“McBride, Mr. Gardiner.”

“Yes, Johnny.” He sounded annoyed at being called so late.

“I’ll only take a moment,” I said. “Look, Logan had to meet a couple of investigators tonight. Were they your men?”

“Why yes, as a matter of fact, they were. Both represent the National Bank Insurance Company. May I ask why you want to know?”

“Sure, I want to find Logan. I thought you might know where he is.”

“You might find him someplace in the newspaper office. The insurance men were looking for some recent pictures of Vera West to take back to New York for identification purposes. They thought the paper might be able to supply them.”

“Oh. Okay, thanks. I’ll shop around.”

I hung up and tried the paper again. This time I was connected with the file clerk in the morgue and a voice as old as parchment and just as crackly told me that yes, Logan had been m with a couple of men, yup, they did get some pictures, sure ’nuff Logan had left and said he was going to finish getting canned. And oh, yeah, he was so potted already he had a crying jag on.

I felt like telling the guy to go shoot himself. Crying jag hell. Logan was crying all right, but it wasn’t the whisky coming out. Try being in love with a dame while you’re working to get her hung. Just try it. That’s what Logan was doing.

When I backed out of the booth I was ready to give up and find a sack someplace. It had been another one of those nights with everything happening, yet meaning nothing and my head was starting to pound so much I couldn’t think straight. I was all set to leave when I saw the bartender waving at me and went over to see what he wanted.

“Damn near forgot,” he said. “Your name Johnny?”

I told him it was.

He slid an envelope across the bar at me. “Logan told me you might come in looking for him and to give you this.”

I picked up the envelope and slid my finger under the flap. “Before he left he gave you this?”

“Yeah, not five minutes before. Want a drink?”

“Beer.” I waited while he drew a tall one and carried it over to the table. I put the drink down in a hurry before I pulled the two sheets out of the envelope. Across the top of the first one was the notation: Harlan... name of several counties and cities in the U. S.: Harlan, Inc., manufacturers of electrical appliances. Harlan, paint supply house in Va. Harlan, stage name of actress copyrighted. George Harlan, holdup, murder, life sen. and escaped, captured, killed in attempted escape Alcatraz. Harlan, William, prominent South American financier. Harlan Gracie, worked con game. Convicted N. Y. 1940. This sounds interesting. See clipping.

Logan had stapled the news account to the sheet underscoring a couple of lines. The gist of it was that Harlan Gracie was suspected of being a partner to a con game in which prominent out-of-towners were fleeced. It was the usual thing, a dame and a small-town playboy shacked up in a hotel room with a blackmail aftermath. None of her victims stepped forward to accuse her, but it wasn’t necessary because she had talked too much and a smart D. A. got enough of a confession out of her to send her up a few years. The inquiring reporter who covered the affair added that the sum extracted from her victims was suspected to be considerably more than she let on and that she had worked with a confederate or two who steered the victims her way. However, this was not established at the trial.

The note that Logan had added stated that these were all the Harlans he could uncover, and if it was a place, the nearest Harlan was better than a thousand miles off, and if it was a person, Harlan Gracie was the only one with a criminal record. He said he’d try to get further details from a news source in New York by the name of Whitman and would let me know more about it when he saw me.

I looked the list over again, grinning at the copyrighted Harlan because she was the one Venus had told me about. At least my tall lovely wasn’t handing me any baloney. I folded the stuff back into the envelope, tucked it in my pocket and drained off the dregs of the beers. It was a whole hatful of Harlans, but I’d give every one to know who the hell it was who bothered letting me know about them in the first place.

I didn’t stick around the Circus Bar any longer than I had to. Logan was someplace getting tanked up and I wanted to get him while he was still able to do some good. He’d probably be sore as hell about my little fracas with the boys and if he was it was too bad.

By eleven-fifteen I had traced him through seven bars. In the first one there had been two men with him and they had talked awhile over a drink. The bartender saw them taking notes about something or other. Logan hadn’t seemed happy. In the next six he had been alone and from what I could gather he was pretty well in his cups and brooding hard.

There was one thing that seemed peculiar. None of the bars he had been at belonged to Servo’s Business Group. Maybe it was because he didn’t want a lot of noise and people intruding on his thoughts or maybe it was something else again. At least the bars were still fairly empty with the bartenders standing around ready to pick up the late trade getting squeezed out of the places with the wheels and dice tables. The last bar was a ratty place on a side street called The Last Resort. The bartender said he had been there for about ten minutes, talked to a couple of hustlers, made a phone call, had a few more drinks and left. Wherever Logan went from there he didn’t know and couldn’t even guess.

That’s when I gave up. Logan could wait. Let the guy enjoy his drink and maybe he’d feel better tomorrow. I told the bartender to make me up a whisky and ginger and sat down to watch a redhead operate on a reluctant prospect.

She was going good then all of a sudden she stopped and moved over a seat. The bartender looked at the door and scowled a little bit, automatically reaching for the Scotch bottle on the back bar.

The guy who came in was middle-aged, lanky and in plain clothes, but he had might as well been wearing a sign around his neck that read COP. He said, “No drink, Barney,” and pulled a photo out of his pocket and slid it across the bar. “Ever see him before?”

The bartender studied the picture, read the caption underneath, then shook his head.

“Sure?”

“Positive.”

“You see him around, call in, understand?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Okay.” He put the picture back in his pocket.

“Want a drink?”

“Not now. Maybe I’ll come back.” The cop started to go when he saw the redhead. His smile was a dirty twisting of the mouth. “Hello, Ginger.”

The redhead didn’t bother answering. She barely glanced at him and went back to her drink. “Stay off the streets,” he said.

The redhead flushed, but she had a lot of nerve. “You can’t make pay-off dough when you don’t work someplace, copper.”

His smile kind of warped a little before he got out through the door.

I looked at my hand and it was white around the knuckles from squeezing the glass so hard. The bartender saw it too but didn’t say anything. He glanced back at my face and mentally compared it with the wanted circular and the copy showed him. “Your name really George Wilson?” he asked.

I let him keep a fin out of my change. “Could be, friend. Could very well be. Thanks.”

“No trouble. If that dumb dick had eyes for something else except what comes easy he coulda spotted you quick. I ain’t helping him out none.” He leaned forward confidentially. “I been in stir once myself.”

So I got out of there in a hurry before the cop came back for his drink. There wasn’t any sense in giving him a second chance. Nice, I thought, now the door is shut right in my face. They want me by day or night and there will be a price on my head to make it interesting.

Before I went back to the car I ducked around the corner into a drugstore. I got my number, heard it ring about a dozen times before the receiver lifted off the hook, then a hesitant voice said, “Yes?”

“I want your boss, honey.”

The background hum muffled out for a few seconds and I knew she had her hand over the mouthpiece. A minute later she said, “I’ll put her on.”

The next “Yes,” was a little different. Scared.

“Johnny, sugar.”

“Oh.” That was all she said.

“Somebody there? Can you talk?”

“Yes... go ahead, please.” In the background was the grating sound of a man’s voice, but there was no click or dimming out that would indicate an extension being lifted.

I said, “Did the cops come looking for me?”

“Yes... I’m sure...”

“Did they expect to find me alive or dead?”

“Oh,no...”

“Alive?”

“Certainly.”

“Okay, pretty girl, you can tell the copper bedtime stories. I’ll see you again when there’s no watchdog around.”

I hung up slowly and dug in my pockets for a cigarette. So the cops had come looking for a live man and right after that they were on the prowl for a certain George Wilson.

Somebody had talked.

That somebody had to be either Logan or Wendy and they were going to have to talk a lot more when I caught up with them. And since Logan was dead drunk someplace there wasn’t any use looking for him.

Only Wendy was left. Lovely bottle-blonde black-background Wendy.

I sat there on the corner seat of the booth staring at the phone. When I stared a pretty long time I dropped another nickel in the slot and punched out the number the card said to if you wanted the cops.

Then I asked for Captain Lindsey.

At first he didn’t believe me when I told him who I was. I added real quick, “Don’t bother tracing the call, friend. I’ll walk in if you want to see me.”

“I want to see you,” he said. He sounded like a tiger ready to pounce.

“Swell. Then I’ll walk in and see you. Just tell me on thing, Captain.”

The phone was quiet. I could hear him purring. He liked it fine this way. He liked for me to be so damned cocky I’d put my head under the knife without being prodded. “Sure,” he said. “Shoot.”

“How’d you find out?”

“A little birdie told me. Cops have a lot of little birdies flying around. We call ’em stool pigeons but they like to be known as anonymous phone calls. This little birdie called the turn right on the nose.”

“The little birdie got a name, Captain?”

“No, not this one. He was very careful to disguise his voice.”

“He?”

I could feel his frown come over the wire. “It could have been a she. I didn’t ask. You can come on in and talk to me now.”

The laugh trickled out of my chest. “Oh, Captain, not right this minute.”

“Damn you! I...”

“Uh-huh, Captain, I said I’d be in. I didn’t say when. Pretty soon, maybe, but not right this second.”

“You get your ass down here right...”

I hung up on him.

Two minutes later I was back in my car with a ten-second start over the police car that came screaming up the avenue.

It was enough.

When I found enough traffic to cover me I loafed along in line and ran over it in my mind. So far there had been two anonymous phone calls and I was wondering if the same party made them both. I kept trying to bring back the voice who had told me to look for Harlan. It was feminine enough then, but now I couldn’t be sure.

It could have been a he or a she.

Harlan could be a he or a she or an it.

Harlan. Harlan Harlan. Son of a bitch, there was something I should know about her and couldn’t think of. The damn thing was knocking against the inside of my head trying to make me see that it was there sure enough if I’d only use my brain.

It took a long time, then my fingers went cold around the wheel and I saw it. I had seen the name right after I had gotten the phone call and it hadn’t registered. Harlan was a name that had been scrawled across one of the envelopes the D.A. had on his desk the night he died!

My foot touched the brake at the next intersection. I made a U-turn and drove back through town. I stopped at a bar for five minutes and made a phone call, then drove on to a certain street and parked.

I didn’t have to wait long. The sedan came up behind me, a door slammed, then the one on my right was yanked open. I said, “Hello, Lindsey.”

He wasn’t taking any chances. There was a gun in his hand. “Wise guy.”

I was too tired to argue with him. The gun came up when I pulled out my pack of butts and went down hesitantly when I offered him one.

He took it, waiting.

“You can get me any time, Lindsey. I’m not trying to get away.”

It was the tone of my voice that brought his head up. “I’ll get you now. I’m sick of gags. Maybe we don’t have your prints, but George Wilson and Johnny McBride are both wanted for murder. The lawyers’ll have fun with it, but you’ll swing.”

“First wouldn’t you like to find out who killed Minnow?”

An impotent rage choked him. He kept fiddling with the gun trying to decide right there whether he ought to kill me himself or not. “I’d like that.”

So I told him who I was and why I was there, but that was all. He didn’t believe it. I didn’t care whether he did or not. I said, “Stay off my back for a week. Can you do that?”

“Why should I?”

“Because I may be right, that’s why. If you had a decent police force you would find out things yourself. You can’t. You’re just like me. One guy, hoping to come across something, only you’re too blind to look in more than one direction. You’re tied hand and foot by rules and regulations. Your cops make more in shakedowns than salary so they take orders from somebody else. Servo runs the boys who run you so all you can do is hope. Let me have a week. Hell, it isn’t much. One week and if I don’t get what I want you can take me in and let the lawyers have their field day.”

“You’re nuts.” There was indecision in his voice. “Or I’m nuts for listening.”

“I could have gotten away any time, Lindsey,” I reminded him.

He put the gun away. I watched his fingers wrap around the butt and send it spinning out the window. “What do you want, Johnny? Say it before I change my mind.”

I leaned back and stared at the ceiling. “The night Minnow died... had his office been searched?”

His breath hissed out slowly. He said one word. “Yes.”

“What was taken?”

“I don’t know. The killer didn’t look far because things weren’t too messed up.”

“And you were the only one who noticed it.”

He looked out the window and spit disgustedly. “I didn’t notice it until two days later when I went back to his office.” His shoulders moved under a sigh. “I was so damned mad it took me that long,” he explained.

“There was a letter there. It had ‘Harlan’ written on it.” He got the pitch right off. “You saw his wife?”

“Yeah.”

“I checked on that angle.”

“Without finding the letter. There was nothing.” He held out his hand. “Give me another cig.” I shook one out and lit it for him. “I checked every movement he made that night. His wife was pretty excited about the whole affair... thought he contacted the girl or something, but he didn’t.

“He went out and bought a paper. He drove downtown, stopped in Philbert’s where he made a few purchases, went across the street to a bar and had a few drinks and went home. The bartender said that while he was there he was deep in thought. He didn’t do anything special and nobody noticed anything special.”

“But you never found the letter?”

“No.”

“Did you ever think about what could have happened to it?”

“I think I know. The person came back and claimed it.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Mrs. Minnow said Tucker called him about a special delivery letter.”

“That’s right.” He took a long pull on the cigarette and filled the car with smoke.

“What was it about?”

“Hell, how do I know? He picked it up at the desk and stuck it in his pocket. He probably filed it away somewhere.”

“Find that letter, Lindsey. Go through every damn cabinet and drawer in the place, but find it.”

“Just a minute...”

“You said you wanted to find a killer.” I looked at him coldly. “I’m not ordering you around, I’m giving you something that might tie in. Find that letter.”

His mouth clamped tight. “And what will you be doing?”

“Finding out who wrote it and why.”

He smoked that cigarette right down to the tip without saying anything. When it was finished he threw it out after the other one, squinted his face into a snarl and climbed out. Behind me I heard his car turn over, then pull away from the curb.

A week I told him. Seven days. It wasn’t very long. I rolled the car forward and turned the corner. I traveled slowly and kept my eyes on the street signs until I found the one I wanted.

I parked in front of the building, took the elevator up and pushed the bell that had Servo on the nameplate.

Nobody answered.

I tried again, waited and still nobody answered. I went back downstairs to the super’s apartment and pushed his bell too.

The guy was all smiles at the prospect of company even if he was in his shorts. I said, “Servo come in?”

He shook his head. “Hell, I dunno. His babe went outa here in a hurry awhile back, I know that. Just as I was coming up from fixing the hot water burner.”

“She have clothes on?”

“Yeah.” He showed his gums again. “They didn’t fit, neither. You know what? She had on a green dress with spangles. Them whores upstairs... one of ’em got a dress just like it.”

“Okay. I got it.”

He squinted his eyes at me and kept his voice down. “Somebody kicked Servo around.”

“That was me.”

“Thought so. Give it to him good?”

“Uh-huh. Why?”

“I was wondering. Him and somebody been doing a lot of arguing up there. For a while I thought maybe there was a fight in his place only I didn’t hear anything like that. Just arguing. They was sore as hell about something.”

This time I gave him a ten. He folded it up and kept it in the palm of his hand. “What floor are the babes on?”

“Top. 7E. They’re alone tonight.”

I went back to the elevator and let it haul me up. At 7E I rapped on the door until somebody told me to cut it out, they were coming and to take my time.

The brunette that opened the door had on a housecoat and nothing else. She gave me a surprised grin and said, “Well, if it isn’t our tired playmate. So you finally woke up. Come on in.”

She was one of the pair Jack had sent up to me in the hotel. I said, “I’m not in the market, sugar. Right now I want some information. Downstairs there’s a girl... Servo’s girl. She left awhile ago.”

Her professional smile disappeared. “So what.”

That was the sister-in-trouble act. This was another wall I had to break down fast. “She came up here and borrowed a dress. She lammed and I want to know why.”

“Maybe she wanted to see the town. How’d I know. Look, feller, you go...”

“The kid’s in hot water up to her ears. If you want her to get in deeper then clam up. I can find out someplace else, you know.”

She didn’t like it a bit. Her teeth fastened to her lip while she tried to make up her mind. Maybe I looked honest enough to suit her. “She was scared, that’s why.”

“Servo?”

“She didn’t say. She was damn near hysterical and wouldn’t talk. All she wanted was some clothes. You know what the matter was?”

“No. Did she say where she was going?”

“As far as I could make out she was leaving town. She was scared stiff about something and we thought that maybe Servo had worked her over. He’s good at doing things that don’t show any marks. Good at doing it so it does show too.”

“Just that?”

For a second she chewed on her lip again. “No... there was something else. She was babbling about something in the paper tonight. She said she’d be next or something like that. I was running around too much to notice.”

I let it sink in, then reached behind me and opened the door. “Thanks, I’ll find her.”

“I hope so. If anybody asks where she got the clothes, you don’t know, understand?”

“Don’t worry.”

“That crazy bastard was afraid to let her out without him. He did everything but keep her on a leash.”

“She liked it that way, didn’t she?”

“Hell, why not? She got everything she wanted. She went out often enough and she kept talking of going away for good next year. That’s all she lived for... a little place in California all her own.”

“Tough,” I said. “Thanks again.” I shut the door and let the elevator take me downstairs again.

I found a newstand not too far off and picked up a copy of the Lyncastle News. It was a good copy for my scrapbook. My picture was on the front page with the story of George Wilson, the one-man crime wave, and how he was someplace in Lyncastle. The reporters must have been right on hand when Lindsey got that anonymous phone call and he let them go to town on it. There was a paragraph at the bottom of special interest. It said the F.B.I. was interested in George Wilson too and were looking for him.

Big deal. I get Lindsey to give me a break and Uncle Sam takes over.

But the item I really wanted was on the back of the second page. It was a small squib about four inches long and recounted the details of a woman who committed suicide early that evening. Two kids had seen her jump into the quarry and by the time help arrived she was dead. An autopsy showed she was drunk at the time and a close check on her activities disclosed that she had been making the rounds of the highway taverns. Her fingerprints were on file with the local Board of Health and identified her as a waitress in the ABC Diner. The cause of death was remorse over the recent murder of her roommate. They gave her name as Irene Godfrey, her address at the Pine Tree Gardens and that was all.

There was a picture coming out now. It was like walking in at the middle of a show and wondering how it started. If you stayed long enough you could pretty well guess the cause by seeing the effect. But not quite. You were still guessing. If you asked somebody in the next seat who had been there all along you might find out. If he wanted to tell you.

I folded the paper up and stuck it under the seat. My hand brushed the cold butt of the gun I had put there earlier, so I took it out, checked it and stuck it back. It might come in handy.

I was twenty minutes getting down to the bus station. The lights in the ports were out, but on the train side two hand-cars loaded with mail sacks and packages were standing together waiting for the next connection. I parked the car, got out and walked down the end without getting out of the shadows.

Inside, two men were asleep on the benches. There was another woman with a wailing baby in her arms. The ticket grill was shut on the inside, but through the screened window I could see Nick perched on his stool shuffling papers into a drawer.

Tucker was all the way around the other side, just standing there with an unlit cigar in his mouth trying to be part of the night. I looked again and saw the other guy, a dark blob sitting on a crate. Tucker struck a match and held it to the cigar and I saw his face. He was young, well dressed. Like a lawyer. And F.B.I. agents have to be lawyers.

I made the round trip once more but I still didn’t see what I came to see. Troy wasn’t making any connections out of Lyncastle by bus or train. I slid inside the door nearest the office, yanked the knob and damn near scared Nick off his stool. He slammed the drawer shut with a bang that knocked over a stack of books and turned eyes on me that were ready to fall out of his head.

“Good gosh, you don’t have to scare a man half to death, do you? Get over there and squat down till I get the shade down.”

He reached up and tugged at the partition that covered the grill. When he had it down he shot the bolt through the hasp and turned around. His hands were shaking.

“You got company outside, Nick.”

“Sure. All day I’ve had company. You know who’s out there?”

“I can make a pretty good guess.”

“Damn ’em.” He reached in back of him and pulled a sheet of paper from the top of the pile. “Look here. I have to post it.”

I took it out of his fingers and looked at it. The likeness was perfect. It was the same one they ran in the paper, but this one had a reward notice tacked on the bottom.

I handed it back to him. “Funny place for those things.”

Nick shook his head and stared at the photo. “Law says in public places and this is a public place. Out where you can’t see it is a whole bulletin board of these things.” His fingers gave a sharp snap to the sheet before he folded it out and stuck it in the drawer behind him. “You’re wanted pretty bad, son. You shouldn’t have come down here.”

“I’m looking for a dame, Nick. She was Servo’s girl until something scared her and she took off. She was red headed, wearing a green dress and probably bawling her head off... or looked like she had been. Seen anything of her?”

A frown made furrows in his forehead. “No, not that I remember.”

“Any other way she can get out of town?”

“Busses stop any place along the highway to make pickups.”

“That’s the only way?”

“Uh-huh. Unless she has a car.”

“I doubt if she has. Okay, that’s all I came for.” I started to get up.

Nick shoved me back in the chair. His mustache was working hard around his mouth, a hairy frame for the pink tongue that kept going over his lips. “Easy, son. You can’t be batting around any more. You see that paper tonight?” I nodded. “The same thing on the radio too. I’ve had all sorts of cops in here telling me to be watching out for you. Suppose one of ’em grabs you?”

“Suppose they do?”

“Johnny boy, look. You have to get away. Tomorrow morning...”

This time I got up. “Some other time, Nick. There’s too much I have to do first.”

I got back to the car and managed to get it away from the station without being tailed. My head was starting to pound again and I was getting sick to my stomach. Tomorrow. I’d finish it tomorrow if it didn’t finish me first.

I racked the Ford around a turn and lit a cigarette. It tasted lousy, but the smoke curling up around the ceiling was company. It was funny in a way. What Makes Johnny Run. Nearly like the title of a book. He had a good reason to. A long green reason or a long bloody reason, but on top if it all somebody had to run him out because he didn’t want to do it himself.

A lot of people had told me things. I’d seen a lot of those things myself. I was part of them now. They were all there in a lump, slipping out of the pile one at a time to string out with big gaps between. When the gaps were filled I’d have the answers.

There was a lot I could see now. You don’t play at being a detective. If you are one you work at it, but you have a knowledge of the science and details that goes in back of that work to help you along. No, I wasn’t a detective. I was only a guy trying to dig up a five-year-old body long since fallen apart with decay. It wasn’t easy. There weren’t clues laying around. Just things happening that didn’t seem to have any reason except that they all happened after I came to town.

I was a face that made trouble for somebody. They tried to kill me first. They tried to let the cops do the job instead and when that didn’t work they tried to kill me again. Not the cops. I was so important dead that George Wilson had to be brought out in the open.

Answers. I needed answers. I wasn’t going to be able to figure it out until I had the whole story right there in front of me. And that wouldn’t be tonight.

No, tonight I’d sleep off the big head. It was hurting pretty bad.

I headed west, watching out for Pontiel Road, found it and drove up to the house. I stacked the car in the garage and got the key out of the flowerpot then went upstairs.

When I took a shower and got rid of the last of the tape that was keeping my scalp puckered together I looked in the two doors that led off the bathroom. I was too tired for games so I picked the one that smelled of both salts and powder, dumped my clothes on the back of a chair and crawled into the sack. If Wendy tried crawling in that other bed tonight she was going to find my half of it empty and she ought to be smart enough to take the hint not to go looking any further.

The sheets were cool against my skin, the pillow a soft cloud ready to take me off to sleepytown. I closed my eyes and climbed aboard.

The song seemed to come from far away. There weren’t any words, just a hum with a deep, bouncy rhythm throated to sound like words. My eyes pulled open slowly and stared into the dark, just a little too heavy with sleep to be fully aware of where the song was coming from.

Then the dark seemed to dissolve into something white and flexible that moved along the edge of the room. It snapped me wide awake. Her dress whispered over her head and her slip made static crackling noises when she took it off. The humming paused for a second and I waited to see her go through the double-jointed contortions all women go through to unhook a bra. I was fooled. She did something to the front of it and peeled it off like a vest. There was another whisper of silk, almost inaudible this time, and she throw the last whisper across the chair and stretched her arms up reaching for the ceiling. Like a pagan moon worshipper. Her body a nude shimmer in the dark, absorbing what little light seeped in the window. Her back bowed slowly, making every curve stand out in sharp relief. Then she relaxed into a sultry pose, ran her fingers through her hair and came over to the bed, still humming the wordless tune.

“Beautiful,” I said. “You’re beautiful.”

She sucked her breath in so hard it caught in her throat and froze her there. I reached up for the light over the bed but before my fingers found the pull chain her hand grabbed my wrist and forced it down. “No lights, Johnny,” she said.

Her mouth came down slowly. Her lips were moist and parted. Warm. I could feel their warmth before they even touched me. I ran my hand up the small of her back and she shivered deliciously, making those animal sounds in her throat again.

The outlines of her face and body were tenuous things in the darkness, all the hardness obliterated until she was nothing but beautiful. And warm. And hot. Fiery hot. Her mouth a live, grasping thing squirming on top of me. The darkness closed in around us like a blanket until it exploded and left us there, tired and close, talking about tomorrow.

Tomorrow.

When she would do something for me.

Find out all she could about a cop named Tucker.