Contract Killer Page 7

  “If you two are going to work with me, Prib, it’ll have to be the safe way. We just want to find the guy; we’ll let the cops do the rest. We’re not some kind of posse like in the movies. We have to leave open the possibility it might not be Mike.”

  Prib was unconvinced. “Professors,” he said. He spared the table and bumped an imaginary opponent with his sumo stomach.

  “Melinda, is there anything at all about the assailant that might help us out — assuming it might not be Mike Stark. And what about Mike? What does Mike do? Does he have any hobbies? What does he do on weekends?”

  “Mostly he sits around and reads. Once in a while he gets adventurous and looks for mushrooms. His idea of a party is to stand around and talk about where he found his last stupid batch of mushrooms and drink the cheapest red wine that has a cork. God, the music he used to play. What a bore. If I ever have to listen to ‘Take Five’ again, I think I’ll kill myself.” Her eyes told me she thought I probably listened to more interesting music.

  I could have told her I liked accordions, and her eyes would still have danced. “Professors are full of fertilizer, Melinda, that’s their profession. They’re all that way. If you’re a punker you dye your hair green to shock people. If you’re a professor you listen to scratchy old Brubeck records to impress everyone. What I want to know is, what does he do that other professors don’t ordinarily do?”

  “Well, I don’t know, other than the mushrooms. He even got Willie and Rodney interested in them.” She looked at Willie, who grinned foolishly. “That and he drives a restored 1939 Ford coupe that he polishes every Saturday.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “No.”

  “Do you mind if I take a look at your phone?”

  “Look wherever you want,” Melinda said.

  There was a gadget screwed onto the underside of the end table that held Melinda’s telephone.

  Melinda stared. Willie and Prib leaned over the table, grinning at the gadget. “What’s it do?” Willie asked.

  “It’s a bug. It records whatever is said in this room and relays it to a voice-activated recorder stashed away in this building somewhere.” I saw there was an engraving on the back of the recorder: SPD.

  “Seattle Police Department?” Willie asked.

  “I’d bet on it,” I said. “Did the cops ever say they wanted to tap your phone?”

  Melinda looked surprised. “Don’t they have to get a court order to use those things without asking you?”

  “Good question. Last time I knew, they had to get a court order,” I said. “I suppose I better ask the cops about the damned thing.” I gave each of them one of my business cards. “This number is the Puget Sound Answering Service. Any one of you can leave a message for me. The sexy-voiced one is Emma; she handles most of my calls. The strange-voiced one is Virginia. The young man is Clyde. If Virginia or Clyde handle your call, make sure you have everything clear.”

  Melinda Prettybird put her hand on mine. “There’s one thing you must remember about Mike Stark, John. You must remember. He’ll come across as generous and civilized, a little quirky perhaps, but then again he’s a professor. He’ll charm you and win you over and lie all the while. You mustn’t be fooled. You mustn’t. Sometimes I wonder if he’s forgotten what the truth really is. It’s like he lives in two worlds. I think he’s nuts, I really do.”

  “A liar,” I said.

  Melinda said, “A liar like you just wouldn’t believe.”

  12 - DETECTIVE WILLIS

  I listened to the radio as I drove to the police station the next morning: a frozen human chop had been found behind the pergola in Pioneer Place Park. I punched several buttons on my radio; the newscasters all led with the same story — that’s because most of them used nearly identical news roundups written by the Associated Press or UPI. I don’t think any of the newscasters had bothered to edit the story. The coroner, on tape, said a “sharp instrument” had been used to cut the object from the calf of a human corpse. The coroner identified the victim as a Caucasian male, possibly the body that had yielded the frozen steak a day earlier.

  I was glad to hear the killer was smart enough not to try cutting a frozen corpse with a dull instrument. The terms “chop” and “steak” were added by the wire service reporter in the interest of freaking people out on a slow news day.

  Folks in Seattle were secretly thrilled over a butchered human showing up on First Avenue. They were sensitive to their town’s image; they longed for the status and trappings of a Big-Time City. Big-Time Cities have at least two things in common: big-league franchises in all sports and a crime story bizarre enough to make both the newsmagazines and the network news. Seattle had the Mariners, the Seahawks, and the Super-Sonics, but couldn’t match Boston’s strangler, San Francisco’s zodiac killer, Los Angeles’s hillside strangler, or Atlanta’s killer of young boys. Police reporters in New York were said to get bored with such yawners as a quadruple murder and suicide in Harlem or a family of nine getting torched in the Bronx. It is a curious country in which the residents of a city feel inferior because their city is relatively safe to live in.

  The Seattle police would just as soon pass on butchered human bodies, thanks. The sergeant at the desk was listening to the latest on a transistor radio when I brought in the SPD listening device. His badge said he was M. Gilman. I slid the bug out of a paper bag onto the desk like it was some kind of rare scientific specimen.

  M. Gilman raised an eyebrow. He looked at me. He made a clicking sound with his tongue, like I was a naughty boy. He leaned over and looked at the gadget without touching it. He whistled. He looked up at me. “You do know what this is, I take it.” He whistled the opening bars of Beethoven’s Fifth.

  “Oh, yes, I know what it is.” I leaned over and peered at it close up.

  Gilman whistled more Beethoven. “You want to tell me where you got it?”

  “Found it in a lady’s house. It says SPD there and has a number.”

  “We put those things out there for a reason, you know.”

  “Nobody asked the lady for her okay. We were sort of wondering.”

  Gilman ran his hand over his face. “Well, maybe she’s being investigated for some reason, did you ever stop to think of that? We may be dumb cops, but we don’t go around saying, ‘Hey, lady! Okay if we can bug your house so we can throw you in jail?’”

  “I don’t think she’s under suspicion of anything,” I said.

  “And you are?”

  “John Denson.” I showed him my private investigator’s I.D.

  He examined the license, turned on his swivel chair, and punched some numbers into a computer keyboard. He watched as my police dossier appeared on the screen in neat green letters. Gilman scrolled it with keys on the console and we both read.

  “I was really born in Weiser,” I said. “The certificate was registered in Boise, that’s all.”

  “Never had it changed, huh?”

  “Couldn’t see the point in it.”

  Gilman studied the dossier, then punched a number on his phone. “Donna, this is Max Gilman. Can you tell me if we have a court order for a clandestine listening device?” He gave her the number engraved on the instrument. “I see,” he said. “Can you tell me where it was supposed to be?” He listened, watching me. “Thank you, Donna. What was the address where you found this, Mr. Denson?”

  I told him the address.

  Gilman thought that over. “I guess we better see Willis.” Gilman pushed the listening device back into the bag with his own pencil and rose, addressing a younger man who was working studiously at his own terminal. “Can you sit in for a few minutes, Larry, I gotta take this guy down to see Willis?”

  Larry seemed surprised. “Willis?”

  “I don’t know what else to do?”

  “You get paid to make decisions, I guess,” Larry said.

  “Are you going to give me a receipt for that?” I asked.

  Gilman smiled. “Sure,” he said. He slid t
he bug out so he could get the registration number. He took his time, I thought. When he finished he disappeared for a couple of minutes and returned with a couple of folders. One of them, I saw, had Melinda Prettybird’s name on it.

  I followed Gilman down a series of halls to a door marked LT. RICHARD WILLIS. There was a worn paperback volume of Finnegans Wake on his desk. He was a good-looking man, with silver hair and a small, neat mustache. He wore a three-piece checked suit, with a neat bow tie. He had one of those rare expressive faces that moved fluidly from interest to scorn and disdain.

  Gilman slid the listening device onto Willis’s desk. “You might want to check the number on your list.”

  Without introducing himself to me, Willis looked at the serial number on the listening device, then retrieved a ledger from a small safe. He checked the number against a list. He gave me a look that was not kind; he was not immediately attracted to people who came in dragging listening devices that belonged to the Seattle police. “Where’d you get this?”

  I gave him Melinda Prettybird’s name and address.

  Willis pursed his lips.

  “Ms. Prettybird was wondering why she was being bugged,” I said.

  Gilman laughed from behind me. He handed Willis a folder.

  Willis read the file carefully. “And you are?”

  “John Denson. I’m a private investigator.” Willis looked at Gilman, then furrowed his eyebrows.

  “You check his bona fides?” Willis asked.

  “He’s as okay as these guys get,” Gilman said. He handed Willis a second folder.

  Willis opened the second folder and glanced at the contents. “I want to know when you found it.”

  “Last night, screwed onto the bottom of the lady’s end table.”

  “Hmmmm,” Willis said.

  “Some guy’s been threatening her.”

  Willis looked at the first folder again. “We got people working on that?”

  “Following her ex-husband?”

  “Yes.”

  “I heard the guys talking about it,” Gilman said. He looked impassive and whistled wh-wh-wh-whooo. More Beethoven. “Ex-husband’s a loony.”

  “The bug have to do with Melinda or the guy who has been beating up her boyfriends?” I asked.

  Willis pretended I hadn’t asked the question. “We know how to get in touch with Denson here?” he asked Gilman.

  Gilman said, “I’ll make sure his stuff’s up-to-date before I let him go.”

  “Thanks for bringing this back to us, Mr. Denson,” Willis said. “Concerned citizens like you save the taxpayer a lot of money.” He made it clear I was one concerned citizen he could do without.

  “The lady’s going to want some kind of explanation of how that thing came to be in her apartment,” I said.

  Willis sighed. “Or what, Mr. Denson? Just what the hell are you going to do? For all you know she’s some kind of felon.”

  “Or I’ll have to take it to internal investigations, call the newspapers and all that,” I said. Willis looked at Max Gilman.

  Gilman said, “His poop sheet says he’s a former newspaper reporter. He asked for a receipt. Not much I could do.”

  Willis looked sour. His range of expressions was impressive. “We got a federal fucking judge missing. We got pieces of a human body showing up at Pioneer Place Park. I have to sit on my ass waiting for a goddamn hearing. I figure what the hell, maybe I’ll get a little reading in.” He nudged the paperback on his desk. “Now this. You’ll excuse my temper, I’m sure, Mr. Private Investigator.”

  “Maybe the parts’ll turn out to be the judge,” I said. “Did you ever think about that? It’d simplify the investigation. Save us all a lot of money.”

  “I’m sure somebody around here has considered that possibility, Mr. Denson. They may be slow, but they do their best. I know you’re not required to tell me what you’re working on, Mr. Denson, but if it has to do with Ms. Prettybird’s boyfriends, that involves assault and battery. If whatever you’re doing has to do with Judge Moby Rappaport, you’re looking at possible kidnaping and murder. That, too, is our business. If you hear anything regarding any of that then you come running quick, quick.” Willis snapped his fingers with a pop! pop! that startled me.

  “Maybe I’ll run onto something you can use. You can probably always use the help.”

  Richard Willis gave me a patient look. Then he turned his head at a slight angle and looked uncomprehending. “Help? Mr. Denson, the silly fuckers around here don’t need help — what are you talking about?” He adjusted his bow tie again, as if to recompose himself. He said, “Will you get this asshole out of here, Gilman.”

  I started to leave with Gilman, but Willis stood and motioned with his hand for me to stop. “I remember your name now, you’re the P.I. who used to be a friend of Captain Gilberto aren’t you?” Willis obviously trusted Gilberto.

  “He was a good cop,” I said. Gilberto was now police chief in a small town in Northern California.

  “You do get anything on this, you will give me a call, won’t you, Mr. Denson?” Willis was enraged at something, but I didn’t think it was me. He looked at Gilman as if to ask, well, Sergeant, how did I do? “Remember, Lieutenant Willis,” he said to me.

  Lieutenant Willis was in some kind of trouble. I wondered what it was. “Thanks much, Lieutenant,” I said. “You will find out about that bug for me won’t you?”

  Richard Willis grimaced and said, “Check back in a couple of days.”

  He didn’t look like he wanted to say a whole lot more, so I shut up.

  13 - HILLENDALE’S CALLING

  When I got back from my visit with M. Gilman and Richard Willis, I checked in with the Puget Sound Answering Service and Emma, of the wonderful voice. Virginia, the strange-voiced one, answered, and transferred me to Emma. I could hear Clyde, the excited one, saying, “It’s Denson, it’s Denson,” in the background.

  “Mr. Denson?” Emma said.

  Emma’s voice made me want to groan. Her voice was rich like the actress Suzanne Pleshette’s; it breathed like the singer Karen Carpenter’s used to. “Emma, my new clients are Willie and Rodney Prettybird, and their sister, Melinda. They’ll be leaving messages for me.”

  Emma hesitated. She’d been reading the papers. “Prettybird?”

  “They’re Cowlitz, Emma.”

  “Does this have anything to do with that missing judge, Mr. Denson?”

  “Nothing to do with that, Emma.”

  I could hear Clyde saying, “Somebody’s been chopping the judge up. You wait. Ask Denson what he thinks, Emma, go ahead.”

  I said, “And you might also get a call from a woman named Janine Hallen — she’s the lawyer for the Prettybirds.”

  “A woman lawyer, Mr. Denson?”

  ‘She sure looks like it to me. Yes, she does.”

  “You’ve talked to her, then. Mr. Denson, you know from experience you should ask my advice when you meet a lady, and feel …” she lowered her voice, “… you know what I mean.”

  “Who says there’s any you-know-what-I-means involved here?”

  “Poontang! Poontang!” Clyde laughed. He was a reader and knew his American slang, however dated.

  Emma said, “Clyde!” Then, “I know you, Mr. Denson. I’ve handled your calls for three years now. This woman operates from the left hemisphere, I’ll bet, analytical, reserved, orderly. A firstborn probably, defender of the faith.”

  “All those things,” I said.

  “You freak those kind of ladies out, Mr. Denson. Leave them to men who wear neckties and have their cars washed. Clyde went out to the Doie, you know, we were all curious. He said the man who owned the bar gave some kind of mock evangelical sermon to the people at the bar.”

  Clyde yelled, “He said if we all drank a pitcher of Henry Weinhard’s we’d be forgiven our sins.”

  Emma said, “You’re a Doie kind of man, you know that, Mr. Denson.”

  I knew that. All we right-hemisphere youngest son
s keep hoping we can find a woman who appreciates the Bohemian in us. “Did Clyde save himself?” I asked.

  “Please don’t humor him, Mr. Denson. He gets terrible headaches when he drinks too much.”

  “How about calls?”

  “You got one long-distance from New York. Says his name’s Augustus Poorman, a buyer from Hillendale’s. Are you going to work for Hillendale’s, Mr. Denson?”

  “Well, I don’t know …”

  “My cousin went to Hillendale’s on her trip to New York. Mr. Poorman declined to leave a message, by the way. He said he’d call again shortly.”

  No sooner had I hung up when Augustus Poorman did just that. He sounded like a frog in a barrel on the long-distance telephone connection; his voice was deep, resonant, assured. He was also Southern by origin, as Juantar was, but Texas-Southern, not Louisiana. “This is Augustus Poorman of Hillendale’s, here in New York. I’d like to speak to Mr. John Denson, please, the private investigator.”

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “Did y’all get our note and the catalog, Mr. Denson?”

  “I sure did, Mr. Poorman. I have to tell you, though, I thought your caviar was a bit pricey at seven hundred bucks a can.”

  Poorman laughed. With a voice like that, he could have had a career in politics. “Y’all do check out, Mr. Denson. The Better Business Bureau, the Seattle Police Department, the County Prosecutor’s Office. One of your former clients gave us a recommendation. A straightforward investigator, he says. No caca de toro.”

  “I do my best.”

  “Hillendale’s may be New York, you know, but I want you to know you’re dealing with a Texan. I used to be a buyer for Neiman-Marcus down there in Dallas before one of them New York headhunters gave me a call. They wanted a Texan who knew quality, Mr. Denson. If a man’s a real Texan, his word means something. My great-great-grandaddy went down at the Alamo. Stood right in there with Sam Houston and old Jim Bowie. If Hillendale’s wanted to market barbecued penguin, Mr. Denson, I’d get ‘em young King, fresh out of the Weddell Sea and all slathered down with brown sugar and vinegar and tomato sauce and cooked over hickory smoke, nothing but. What do you know about smoked salmon, Mr. Denson?”