I looked at Lundquist and feigned confusion. “You know where she is.”
“Mr. Graham and I,” he began to explain, “were planning to collect Miss Graham from the Muehlebach Hotel after we’d concluded tonight’s business. In light of how things transpired, I persuaded Mr. Graham that he should return to his estate immediately for the purpose of establishing his whereabouts for the evening. I assured him that I could bring Melinda home shortly.
“However,” he continued after a drag from his cigarette holder, “when I arrived at the Muehlebach and asked the concierge to call her room for me, I was seriously alarmed to discover that the police were investigating an incident that had occurred in her very room. Apparently a man had been attacked and thrown from the window.”
“A man?” I furrowed my brow.
Lundquist nodded, his eyes watching me carefully. “The police asked me several questions, of course. I told them the essential facts: that my employer’s daughter had taken the room for this week and that I’d been asked to look in on her. When did you last look in on her, Mr. Caine?”
“A day or two ago.”
“You can’t be more precise?”
“No, Mr. Lundquist, at the moment, I can’t. I was drugged earlier tonight, if you recall, on top of which someone tried to frame me for murder. My head’s a little full just now.”
“To be sure.” I was getting tired of that phrase coming from him, and fought down an urge to smack him one. “After I finished speaking with the police, giving them my card and assuring them I’d be available for further enquiries, I asked some questions of my own of the night concierge and the house detective. It seems no one has seen Miss Graham at the hotel since she first checked in on Tuesday.”
“She’s keeping to her room as instructed,” I said coldly. “And don’t say ‘To be sure’ or you’re going to be wearing my—” I looked at my empty glass and called the barkeep for a refill.
“The house detective you promised you’d speak to,” Lundquist continued smoothly, “knew nothing of Miss Graham even being at the hotel.”
“That’s what I told him to tell anyone who asked.” It’s an odd thing to lie to a really good lawyer. No matter how strong his instincts are, so long as your answers are logical and don’t contradict the facts, he won’t dare call you on it.
“Have you contacted Mr. Graham about this?” I asked.
Lundquist shifted uncomfortably on his stool. He called for his own refill and took a sip before answering.
“I had no wish to alarm him unduly after what he’d already experienced this evening. I telephoned him and informed him that Miss Graham had apparently stepped out. I advised him to remain at his estate, and promised that I would look for Miss Graham.”
“No kidding? She hang out at the fairy bar a lot?”
“I needed a place to think,” he said simply. I could picture him establishing his own whereabouts with the lawyer buddy I’d seen at his table.
“Is there any chance Mr. Graham beat you over to the Muehlebach?” I asked. “Found some young man in his daughter’s room and let his temper get the best of him?”
“Mr. Graham is a concerned father, not a ruffian.” Not concerned enough to shuck his alibi and find his daughter, I thought. “Mr. Caine, I’m asking you directly: has Melinda Graham been staying at her room at the Muehlebach this week?”
“As far as I know, she has.”
“What do you make of what I’ve told you?”
“Nothing good. Maybe she got spooked and ran. Or maybe...”
“She was taken from her room by force?”
“I’d say we have to consider that a possibility.”
Lundquist and I talked for maybe another half hour. I explained that if the girl had been taken, it would either have been by Trianna or Draymore. If Trianna had taken her as insurance, and he was satisfied now that he had the notebook back, Graham should hear from him soon. If Draymore’s men had her, that might get a little tricky. Now that their boss was dead, they might take some time trying to figure out what to do with her. They might just drop her off on a street corner somewhere, or they might contact Graham to set something up. I told Lundquist to let Graham know he’d spoken with me, but not to mention the incident at the Muehlebach. Tell Graham that he’d wait at the hotel for her – all night if necessary – and that I’d be out looking for her as well. One of us would call the moment we had news. She may have just decided to change hotels. In any event, he was not to call the police. If the worst had befallen her, that kind of heat could make the people who’d taken her nervous, and we didn’t want that.
“But the police are already looking for her,” Lundquist pointed out. “They’re wanting to question her about the incident that took place in her room this evening.”
“Looking for a potential witness to a crime isn’t the same thing as starting up a manhunt for a possible kidnap victim,” I told him. “That’s the kind of heat we don’t want to bring down on Draymore’s people if they have her.”
We finished our drinks and got ready to leave.
“I’ll call the Muehlebach and have you paged if I find her,” I promised, “but nothing may break until morning. You could be in for a long night.”
“I’ll take a room,” he said. “Something close to the ground floor, I think.”
“To be sure.”
I went to my car and drove to my apartment. If Trianna really was satisfied and Draymore was dead, the danger to Melinda should be pretty well over. Still, I didn’t want to go see her and build any false hopes. It would keep till morning. Right now I was worried about Jennings. I’d planted him in the room at the Muehlebach because I wanted him away from the President but still within driving distance, and too many people knew where my office was. But Benny the bellhop had been watching the room, and had tipped off Draymore that someone had gone into it. He’d even stood by to point the way once Draymore’s men showed up. What had their orders been? Grab the girl if she was there and get rid of anyone else?
I pulled into my building, noticing with irritation that I’d left the kitchen light on. Or had I? I took the .45 from the seat next to me and went softly up the walk. I stood to one side of my door, transferred the gun to my left hand, and slid the key quietly into the lock. It turned too easily.
I turned my back to the wall, put the gun back in my right hand, then reached for the doorknob with my left. I took a breath, turned the knob, and pushed the door open, still keeping to the wall. A few seconds later, I cautiously moved my head just enough to see inside, my gun pointed and ready. A man was sitting at my kitchen table, a big man in a dark overcoat and hat. He looked up at me, blinking dully. It was Swelk.
I leveled the gun at his chest.
“Bring your hands up above the table, slowly. And they’d better be empty.”
He took his large hands out of his pockets, showing me the palms and then putting them flat on the table when I told him to. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, keeping the .45 trained on him. I noticed all the kitchen drawers and cabinets were open.
“Who else is here?”
“Nobody.”
“How’d you get in?”
“Jimmied the lock.”
“How’d you find me?”
“Phone book.”
I made him stand up and marched him into the living room, stopping at the hallway closet for a second. The door was open and the coats inside were piled on the floor. In the living room, furniture had been moved around, magazines and books thrown on the floor, pictures taken down off the walls, and the ends of the rug rolled back.
“You do this?” I asked him.
“Yeah.”
I marched him into the bedroom next, and it was the same in there. The bedding had been pulled off and was piled atop the mattress. Everything had been moved around on the bureau and the drawers were all open, clothes hanging out of them. The bedroom closet was open. Old shoeboxes from the top shelf were now on the floor, their contents scattered. I positioned Swelk where I wanted him and got down on one knee to look under the bed, still keeping him covered. I looked in the bathroom. The shower curtain had been pulled back and the items from the medicine cabinet were now in the sink.
When I was satisfied we were alone, I marched him back to the kitchen and had him sit down again, hands on the table. I wasn’t going to risk getting close enough to take any iron off him.
“What the hell are you doing here, Swelk?”
“I need your help.” That threw me. In my profession, I’ve been asked for all kinds of help by most kinds of people, but Swelk sitting at my kitchen table in the middle of my apartment he’d just ransacked was a new one.
“What kind of help?”
“Got a smoke?” I tossed him my case and some matches from an open drawer.
“Keep your hands above the table.”
He shrugged, lit a cigarette, and started talking, the story coming out in his lulling monotone. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and had the vocabulary of a second-grader, but that was fine by me. I hadn’t had much in the way of plain facts in my diet these days, and I was plenty hungry.
The whole blackmail scheme had been Draymore’s idea from the beginning. He’d approached Trianna about it, even given him the idea of the gambling hook to snag Graham’s man Brenner. Once Brenner was in the box, giving up everything he knew about the bribes Graham had paid out over the years, Trianna put his bookkeeper to work encoding it all into a pocket notebook (also Draymore’s idea). Then Craig Carlton, armed with the damning evidence, was sent out to muscle his way on board as Graham’s sub-contractor. Draymore had insisted that Swelk be assigned as Carlton’s personal bodyguard, both to protect him and to make sure Carlton didn’t go getting ideas now that he was custodian of this valuable piece of property.
Draymore had agreed on a percentage from Trianna, a percentage he never planned on collecting. Draymore never had any intention of helping Trianna secure a foothold in Graham’s construction empire; that was all smoke. Draymore’s goal was the information, the detailed bribe list. He’d use it to break Graham one way or another – blackmail him into complete submission, get him indicted, have him sent away to prison, whatever worked – so that Draymore could step in and take over his contracts. Trianna had just been Draymore’s way in.
To make this work, of course, Draymore needed the information Trianna had collected from Brenner. Early on, Draymore approached Carlton with an offer for the notebook. It wouldn’t do to have Swelk just swipe it for him; Carlton would be certain to report any such theft to Trianna. So Draymore made his offer, and Carlton, a loyal mob man from back east, told Draymore what to do with it. Draymore met with Carlton one more time to up the offer, but Carlton had simply laughed in his face.
“This was at Liberty Memorial?” Swelk nodded, filched another one of my smokes, and kept going. After the second refusal, Draymore had given Swelk his instructions, and late one Saturday night in Carlton’s hotel room, Swelk had put two in the back of Carlton’s head. He was to find the notebook and take it to Draymore. Only he never found the notebook. Nobody did.
“Not till we hired a safecracker and took it outta your office. How’d you get it?”
“Keep talking.”
Draymore figured either Carlton had made a private deal with Graham or Trianna had taken the notebook back early on, so he played both ends. He tipped off one of his mob connections about what he’d heard – only heard, mind you – concerning some big play Trianna was trying to make, something that could bring a lot of Pendergast heat down on the mob. Something for which, apparently, Trianna hadn’t gotten permission first. Might have even killed one of their own, guy by the name of Carlton, without just cause. Draymore also started pressuring the police to solve Brenner’s and Carlton’s murders, hoping any investigation would bring the notebook to light.
“You take care of Brenner, too?” I asked.
“Nah, that was Graham’s people.”
“Graham doesn’t have people, you dumb ape. Not that kind.”
“Wise up, Caine. Anybody that rich got people.”
“Draymore have somebody put the dynamite in my car?”
He nodded.
“So I couldn’t mess up his story? Tell anyone where I got the notebook?”
He nodded again. I leaned back against the kitchen counter, holding the gun at waist level, still pointed in his general direction.
“So what do you want with me, Swelk?”
“Don’t you get it? I’m hangin’ out in the wind here. Draymore’s dead. Trianna waxed him after you hit the deck. His boys tossed the room and found the notebook. Now Trianna can tell the story any way he wants, can make me look like I was in on it with Draymore.”
“You were in on it with Draymore.”
“That ain’t the point. Charlie Carollo knows about this whole mess now, and he ain’t happy, not one little bit. Trianna’s gonna turn that notebook over to him and sing whatever song keeps him safe. He’s probably gonna pin Carlton’s murder on me.”
“You did murder Carlton.”
“That ain’t the point,” he repeated, his voice still dull and lulling despite his predicament. “I was followin’ orders. Only now, Trianna can twist things all around, make it look like I was goin’ against the brotherhood. Carlton’s dead. Draymore’s dead. I can’t go to these guys empty-handed. I gotta bring ’em the notebook.”
Was Swelk stupider than I thought, or was I just more tired than I realized?
“I thought you said Trianna has the notebook.”
“The one he took from Draymore’s room tonight,” he nodded. “The one we got outta your safe. Draymore said you told him that one’s a fake.”
Now I understood. Draymore had drugged me so he could get the real notebook, either search my apartment while I was out or wait for me to come to and have Swelk go to work on me. Only Draymore was dead, and Swelk was carrying on as best he knew how.
“I was bluffing,” I lied. “I never had any fake notebook. The one Trianna has is the real deal.”
Swelk frowned at this, suddenly worried.
“That ain’t good. That ain’t good at all.” His eyes stared past me at the wall as he tried to think. “I can’t go to ’em empty. I gotta bring ’em somethin’.”
“Bring ’em what?” I stifled a yawn and rubbed a hand across my tired eyes.
“You.”
I don’t know if it was his answer or his tone, but I snapped my eyes open in time to see him whipping a gun out of his coat. I brought the .45 up and put two into his chest without thinking, knocking him and the chair backward onto the floor. I ran around the table and stepped on his gun hand. He looked up at me, eyes wide, gurgling painfully as air rushed in through the wrong places. It was too late for a doctor, but that painful, air-sucking sound seemed to go on forever until the meager light in his eyes faded completely. Some guys die fast, some don’t. Doesn’t matter, you never lose that soul-sick feeling in your stomach. At least I never have.
I was wide awake now, my mind racing over all Swelk had told me and what I’d have to do next. Swelk had come here for the notebook. When I told him Trianna had it now, that I’d only bluffed Draymore about having the real one, that had shaken him. His one chance to square himself had disappeared in front of his eyes. He’d had to come up with something else and fast.
Like kill me and dump my dead body on Carollo’s doorstep? What good would that do? No, I realized, Swelk would have gone to Trianna. Harold Draymore had had friends on the north side, after all. If his murder could be pinned on a corpse, Trianna and Swelk would both be neatly acquitted, leaving them free to put a story together for Carollo about the notebook.
I looked down at the glassy eyes staring upward at nothing. Could Swelk have put that together on the fly? Finding my name in the phone book and jimmying the lock had probably already taxed his gray matter near to the limit. Still, desperation combined with animal instinct can go a long way.
The fear and shock burned off and I was terribly, terribly tired. And it was going to be an even longer night. No way out of it, though. I went to the telephone and called the police. I gave my name and address, and explained that I’d just shot and killed an armed intruder in my apartment. I had about ten minutes now. Less if a neighbor had already called the cops after hearing gunfire. I emptied the cigarette butts from the ashtray on the kitchen table. Now I needed a story, a good, simple one that wouldn’t have to be altered under questioning. I thought hard and fast, dreaming up possibilities and dismissing them just as quickly. Keep it tight and simple, I told myself. I barely lit the end of a cigarette and dropped it next to Swelk’s body, letting it go as dead as those vacant eyes.
The police were at my apartment for half an hour. Some coroner’s men came and took the body while they questioned me. When we were finished at my apartment, the police took me downtown in the squad car and questioned me there for another five hours, and they had plenty of help. Too much was going on in the city tonight, and I must have met every cop in the department who was on duty then and a few who weren’t. They tried every trick they knew to shake me, trip me up, punch holes in my story. It was their job, and it didn’t matter how tired I was or that I’d been drugged and almost framed for murder or that I’d had to kill a man just a few hours ago, I had to keep it on the sharp and stick to my story.
I came home to find a man in my apartment, I told them, seated at the kitchen table and holding a gun on me. He wouldn’t tell me what he wanted, just told me to stand there. He kept looking at his watch, like he was waiting for something. No, I didn’t recall having seen him before. No, he didn’t tell me his name, and no, I don’t remember that he used mine. We stood there staring at each other for twenty minutes, I guessed (a neighbor might have noticed the time between when my car pulled up and when shots were fired). He asked me for a cigarette, so I gave him one. He asked me for a match, so I opened the kitchen drawer and got him one. I left the drawer open and while he was lighting the cigarette, I pulled my .45 out of the drawer. He saw it, brought his gun up, and I shot him twice in the chest. The end.
Yes, I knew who Harold Draymore was. No, I didn’t know that the man I’d shot was Draymore’s bodyguard. No, I didn’t have any idea what he’d been looking for in my apartment. No, I had no idea what Draymore or his bodyguard might have wanted with me. No, I hadn’t heard that Draymore had been found shot to death in his hotel room at the President last night. I’d been working late in my office around that time. I got the knot on my forehead when I opened the hood of my car to check the oil and caught myself on the corner. Yes, it was clumsy of me. No, I wasn’t usually the clumsy type, I must have been tired.
Yes, I’d gone to the Muehlebach Hotel earlier in the evening. Yes, Brad Jennings, the man who’d been thrown from the window, was an operative of mine. I’d sent him there to check on Melinda Graham, for whom I’d been serving as a bodyguard recently. I’d been hired by her father, Mr. Ronald Graham. No, I had no idea why someone would have done that to Jennings. Yes, I had gone to the hospital to see him. No, I had no idea of Miss Graham’s present whereabouts. Yes, I had seen her at the hotel earlier this week, and had sent a telegram to her father at her request. No, I didn’t know why no one else there had seen her. Yes, I did think that was funny. Yes, I meant funny strange, not funny ha ha.
It went on and on, over and over again. The same questions, new questions, the same questions asked a different way. I stalled with yawns that became less and less of a put on, but I stuck to my simple story and my simple answers, each and every time with each and every new detective. They knew I was stonewalling, but they couldn’t poke any holes, and what had happened at my apartment was a clear-cut case of self-defense. Around six a.m., they sent me to a desk sergeant to type up my statement. It took another hour, because the desk sergeant typed like a buffalo with a sprained hoof. Part of my punishment for not playing ball, and I took it. At least no one tried to rough me up this time.
¥ ¥ ¥
I walked into the lobby of the Muehlebach around seven-thirty in the morning. Lundquist was sitting in a corner with Ronald Graham. I walked up to them.
“Have you found her?” Graham asked quickly.
“No. I take it she hasn’t come back to the hotel?”
“I was here the entire night,” said Lundquist. “I left explicit instructions for the night concierge to notify me immediately if she appeared.”
“Where have you been looking?” asked Graham.
“Nowhere.” I threw my hat on a table and sat down heavily, filling them in on the better part of my night’s activities. They both listened attentively, trading some of their silent exchanges here and there.
“It was Draymore the whole time?” asked Graham.
“The way Swelk told it, and I doubt he was smart enough to make all that up on his own.”
“But what did he hope to gain by killing you?” Lundquist asked.
“I figure he wanted to bargain with Trianna. Trianna gets credit for killing the man who killed Harold Draymore. Trianna uses that to help square himself with Carollo and Swelk gets to share some of the blanket.”
“We need to report Melinda’s disappearance to the police,” Graham said, sounding not quite certain. “Get them out looking for her.”
“That’s exactly what you don’t want to do,” I said. Graham glared at me.
“I’ve had enough of your advice, Caine. That whole mess last night was your doing. You cared less about serving your client than about protecting your own precious skin.”
“And the mess now is because you cared less about looking after your daughter than protecting your precious trade secrets,” I fired back. It wasn’t a helpful thing to say, but I was tired. Graham sat there fuming at me until Lundquist the Diplomat came to the rescue.
“Mr. Caine, why shouldn’t we report this matter to the police?” I’d already told Lundquist the night before; he was giving me a chance to explain it to the boss.
“If Trianna’s men took her, you’d already have her back by now. Lundquist tells me Trianna considers the notebook affair over and done with, that you and he are quits with it. Once he had the notebook back, he’d have arranged to have her returned to you. That means if she was taken, it was Draymore’s people. They’re without a leader now and probably confused as hell, wondering what they’re supposed to do. They’ll discuss it, argue it over, and if you don’t put any additional pressure on them, cooler heads will prevail. They’ll realize the risk to them of harming the daughter of prominent citizen. If they get gutsy enough, they might even ask you for some money and you’ll pay it. But if you go to the police, if these guys find out that every cop in the city is out looking for her, they’re going to get jumpy. And jumpy men make rash, stupid decisions.”
“What if it’s neither case?” Graham asked. “What if some random stranger took her for...for his own reasons?” If a random stranger really had taken her, it would probably already be too late, but I saw no gain in mentioning that to Graham.
“Hell of a coincidence if that’s the case,” I said. “But to be safe, we have to assume that if anyone took her, it was Draymore’s men, and that you can’t risk making them jumpy.”
Graham sat still for a moment, looked over at Lundquist, thought some more, then asked: “What do you suggest?”
“Go home and stay close to the telephone. Give Felding his dueling pistol if it makes you feel better. Lundquist should keep his room here for now.”
“And what are you doing to do about this?”
I stood and grabbed my hat. “I’m going home and get some sleep. My brain doesn’t work too well when it’s tired. In a few hours, I’ll think it through fresh, I’ll get some new ideas, and I’ll start looking.”
Graham looked irritated as hell. Sounded it, too.
“I’m supposed to just sit by the telephone and wait for someone to contact me?”
“That’s what you do in situations like this, Mr. Graham. Go to the police if you really want to, they’ll tell you the same thing.”
¥ ¥ ¥
I went home, stripped off my clothes, set my alarm clock, and fell into a dead sleep for three hours that felt like five minutes. I forced myself out of bed and into a hot shower. I shaved, dressed, had some breakfast, and went back out. Come on, Caine, this is so close to the finish. Trianna’s happy, Draymore and Swelk are dead, and Melinda and I could cook up some story. She got scared, went to another hotel, I found her and brought her home. Maybe I’d get some kind of a bonus for that. Maybe the bonus would be that Melinda and I could keep seeing each other for awhile longer.
I drove over to the hospital and slipped past the nurse at the front desk and up the stairwell. I tried to remember which room Jennings was in. I hadn’t really been at my keenest last night when the orderly had taken me up there.
I stopped outside one room and heard voices. Jennings and his mother talking. I took a deep breath and stepped inside. Mrs. Jennings sat by the bed in yesterday’s clothes and makeup, looking like she hadn’t slept or even moved since she’d sat down. I was sure she hadn’t.
“Mr. Caine,” Jennings called out smiling, giving me a friendly wave with his unslung arm. Jennings mother turned to look at me as well, and I had a hard time reading her face.
“Are you staying for a while, Mr. Caine?” she asked. “I’d appreciate the chance to get some coffee.” I told her please to take her time, that I’d be right here until she came back.
“Well, if you’re sure....” She stood up and gave her son a kiss on the cheek, then headed to the door, stopping for a moment and saying: “Mr. Caine, I would like to speak with you before you leave.”
“Yes, ma’am.” That would be laughs.
I sat down in the warm chair and looked Jennings over. The bandaging on his head had been scaled back a bit; I could see both of his gray-green eyes. The right one was pretty bloodshot, and they were both glazed over with whatever they’d given him.
“How you feeling, kid?”
“I been worse.”
“When was that? Somebody throw you out of an airplane once?”
He gave a morphine giggle and pointed to the toes sticking out of the end of his cast, wiggling them for me.
“See that? Doc says so long as I can do that, I’ll be fine. Just breaks and bruises, and they’ll heal up.” I let out a deep sigh. That was definitely the best news I’d heard all week.
“Do you remember what happened?”
“Kinda hard to forget,” he grinned. “Someone knocks on the door, I don’t answer, so they start pounding on the door hard, like they’re getting ready to bust it in, which they do. Four guys come rushing in. They’re yelling ‘Where’s the dame?’ Of course, I don’t know anything. I start yelling back at them. ‘Who the hell are you guys? What the hell you doing in my room?’ Two of the grab me. I shake one of them off, and another grabs me. They keep asking me questions, about the dame, about the notebook. I keep playing dumb. They search me, search the room, work me over a little, then they just carried me over to the window and pushed me out. Guess they were too chicken to fight.” His grin was shallow but it was definitely there.
“Sorry I pulled a boner on this one, Mr. Caine,” he added softly.
“Jesus, kid—”
“But for what it’s worth, I don’t think they got the notebook. When they first started pounding on the door, I remembered that clock story you told me, and I see a clock just like it. I jammed the notebook up into the little window box. Should still be there.”
“It was,” I told him. “That was some fast thinking, Jennings.”
“You found it?” He gave another weak laugh. “So we’re still ahead of those bastards, right?”
“We’re still ahead of them.”
“Aces. So what’s our next move?”
“Have you talked to the police?”
“They were here this morning,” he told me. “Don’t worry, though, I didn’t tell them anything. Hell, I couldn’t even remember going to the hotel. You know, what with this bump on the noggin.” He pointed to his bandaged head and winked at me.
“Good man,” I winked back. “If they come again and your memory comes back, go ahead and tell them I sent you there to check on Miss Graham. She wasn’t there, you got rushed by some guys, and that’s all you know. Think you can do that?”
“No sweat.”
“How’s your mom holding up?”
Jennings rolled his eyes. “You know women, Mr. Caine. They just don’t understand guys like us.”
Guys like us? For the first time I got the impression that Jennings looked up to me in some way, maybe thought he wanted to be like me. Poor, dumb kid. At least I could set him straight on that, try to talk some sense into him.
“Jennings, I want you to listen to me and listen good. What happened to you was my fault. No, just listen. I should never have put you in a spot like that. I didn’t think it through. Yes, there are risks in this profession, just like there are risks in a lot of professions. But the smart man, the one who wants to stay in the trade, tries to avoid risk anytime he’s able. If you think I’d have walked into that hotel room if I thought there was a chance I’d have left it the way you did, you’re nuts. I don’t go looking for trouble. Just the opposite – I use all the brains I have to avoid it. If you’re looking for a charge, go fly airplanes. It’s safer.”
He looked up at me, puzzled and maybe a tiny bit hurt.
“You saying you don’t need me anymore, Mr. Caine?”
“Jennings, you’re welcome to work for me as long as I can afford you. You’re the best man I’ve ever had. As soon as you’re all healed up, I’ll have plenty for you to do.
“But,” I continued, “it’s not going to be duking it out with thugs, not as a rule. Most of my work is research, poring over documents, interviewing people, like that nutball Jakowski from the candy store. There may be some risks here and there, but when they come up I want you to be smart about them. Right now you’re twenty-four and you just fell four stories and lived to tell about it, and so you think you’re indestructible. I hate to break it to you, son, but you’re not. Nobody is. Don’t make someone have to prove it to you.”
I patted his shoulder gently and told him: “Look, just think about what I said, try to let it sink in a little, okay?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Caine. You’re the boss.” The grin was back.
Mrs. Jennings cleared her throat. I wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing in the doorway. She asked if I had a moment and we excused ourselves and stepped out into the hall where she hauled off and gave me a slap across the face that had her whole arm and most of her back in it, nearly knocking me off my feet.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Caine,” she said, her tone not really matching her words all that much. “I had to do that to somebody and I was afraid if I did it to the doctor, he might not come back.” More like he might not come to, I thought. She suggested we sit down and we grabbed two empty chairs against the wall, me trying not to make it obvious that I was keeping outside her reach.
“Bradley likes excitement,” she began, staring down at her hands folded in her lap. “He likes to go looking for it. His late father was the same way. I tried to browbeat it out of him, and I’m ashamed to say I succeeded. In the beginning, he’d just lie to me more, but after awhile he gave up that part of himself that I found worrisome, the part that would have allowed him to enjoy his life the way he wanted to. I’d see a kind of sad, faraway look in his eye sometimes, one he always pretended wasn’t there when I asked him about it. Do you understand what I’m telling you, Mr. Caine?” She looked up from her lap at me.
“Yes,” I lied, partly to be polite, partly because I didn’t want to tick her off again.
“I’m not going to make that mistake with Bradley. I’m not going to try and kill the spark in him.” She gave a sad smile for her late husband, then went on to explain that there were a lot of bad people in this town whom Bradley could fall in with, amoral people who were always on the lookout for a young man with sharp wits, willing to do risky things.
“If this is how he’s going to live his life,” she continued, “I’d rather he have the influence of someone like you, someone on the right side of the law. Someone who might even be able to get a few things through that thick head of his. It sounded like you were doing pretty well in there, pardon my eavesdropping.”
I had no idea if I’d made any impression on Jennings, but I told his mother the same thing I’d told her son: he always had a job with me if he wanted one. I told her I’d do my best to keep him out of too much trouble, and promised I’d do a better job of it than I’d done last night. That was as much as she could ask, she told me.
“Of course,” she added, “if something ever does happen to Bradley, this won’t be my view at all. You understand that, don’t you?”
“Like I understand water’s wet, ma’am.”
¥ ¥ ¥
My next stop was the address Jennings had given me, his friend who was keeping Melinda Graham’s Pierce-Arrow hidden in his garage. I introduced myself to the young man who answered my knock, showing him my card. He took me out to the garage and helped me pull a large tarp off the car before going back inside the house. Melinda should have need of her car soon, and damned if I wasn’t going to give it a first-class going over beforehand. I spent close to thirty minutes examining every inch the Pierce-Arrow, checking under the hood, under the seats, behind the tires, the glove compartment, and saving the trunk for last. It was still empty except for the purse Melinda had put there what seemed like months ago.
¥ ¥ ¥
It was close to three in the afternoon when I showed up at Melinda’s apartment and gave the secret knock on the door. She opened the door, pointing my .38 in my face, and it took me a second to remember I’d told her to. She lowered the gun as I stepped inside, then put it on the table and ran into my arms.
“Is it over? Is it really over finally? Oh, Devlin, you look so tired.”
“It’s over,” I replied tonelessly. “Feel like some air?” The room seemed a bit close to me, and I hadn’t been trapped in it for the better part of a week.
“For days now! Where are we going?”
“Just out back. We need to talk.”
I led her down the stairs and into the small courtyard where we sat across from each other at the picnic table. I scratched at the peeling paint on the boards, looking around at the lengthening shadows of late afternoon. I looked up at her and she stared at me a moment before putting on a brave smile.
“Oh, don’t look so serious,” she said. “I’m a big girl now. I’ve been out in the world. I already know what you’re going to say: ‘It’s been grand, but let’s not kid ourselves. This was just a fling. It’s all over and done with, and we’ll keep the memories but we won’t get silly over it.’” She forced her smile brighter. “Something like that?”
“Nothing like that. You’re not going home,” I told her. “You’re in bad trouble, Melinda. You have to go away. Far away.”
She blinked at me in surprise before asking meekly: “For how long?”
“For good, honey. You have to go away for good.” She turned her head slowly from side to side, her eyes starting to well up.
“Why?”
I took the small .25 revolver out of my belt, the one I’d found in her old purse in the trunk of the Pierce-Arrow, the one I should have found the first time I went over the car before letting Jennings take it, the one that had killed Steven Brenner. I laid it on the table between us and met her lovely, frightened eyes.
“This is why.”