Zafu stuffing shifts
Buckwheat husks rustle
The sound of satin—Szan
It’s not until I turn into Country Club Estates that I realize it worked: meditating kept me from totally zoning out in front of the Jade Pagoda. I’m drained, I’m sick, but I’m present.
Marybeth Waltann answers my knock with a drink in her hand. She wears a pullover top and matching slacks with metallic trims and satin appliqués, and lots of shiny jewelry. Rather than brightening up her appearance the gaudy outfit only heightens her dowdiness. I picture her in a hooded cape but it doesn’t work; instead of a leggy mystery woman I get the image of a hunchbacked and kerchiefed matron.
“Oh, it’s you again,” she says. “I told you not to come back unless Hector’s dead.”
“I’m sorry, Ma’am. That’s why I’m here.”
Her jaw drops and the arrogance completely drains from her expression. The hand holding the glass drops to her side, spilling her drink on my shoe.
“Are you all right, Ma’am?”
“All right?” she echoes faintly. “I don’t know.”
She drifts back into the house, leaving the door open, which I take as an invitation to follow. She stops in the middle of the living room, turns, and asks me, “How?”
“It’s apparently a homicide, Ma’am.”
“No.” Marybeth shakes her head.
“No? You have another explanation?”
The question doesn’t seem to register. Either she’s in shock or pretending to be while she contrives her pretense. “Ma’am?”
“When you said he was dead, I thought, a car accident. Drunk driving, something like that. But murdered? How? By who? When?”
“Sometime last night. By who? That’s what I’m going to find out.”
“Why you? Oh, that’s right, you’re working for some friend of his.” She still seasons “friend” with bitterness.
“Actually, it’s in an official capacity now,” I say.
“You’re a policeman?”
“Detective. Paradise City Police Department.”
She gives me a critical look and well she should. I must look a mess, the slacks that got drenched this morning wrinkled and stained, leather jacket water-spotted and reeking of wet cow, shoes dried hard and cracked, and I have neither badge nor ID.
“It’s complicated,” I tell her.
She shrugs, uninterested. “How did ... it happen?”
“It appears he was stabbed.”
“Stabbed. Stabbed?” She shakes her head again, then shudders. “Hector, Hector. What did you get into?” she murmurs. She stands lost in thought for a moment, then says, “Maybe I should call my son, Terry.”
“Of course.”
“And a lawyer?”
“If you think that’s necessary,” I reply, barely able to contain my surprise and disappointment.
With a wave of her hand she invites me to sit on the couch and leaves the room. On her return she passes the wet bar and looks at her glass as if noticing for the first time that it’s empty. She fills it, then raises the decanter to me in invitation. I shake my head.
When she has settled in the brocade wingback chair, I ask, “Mrs. Waltann, if you had to name someone who could have killed your husband, who would it be?”
“Me.”
Is she confessing? Although that would make this the easiest homicide I ever worked, I feel something of a letdown. I want it to be Overshort. My face must reveal my surprise because she gives me a wry smile. “Ma’am, I should advise you—”
“It had to be said. You’d consider me anyway, wouldn’t you? The angry abandoned wife who wished him dead? I told you not to come back unless he was dead. Those were harsh words. I didn’t mean it literally. You believe me, don’t you?”
That remains to be seen. “You won’t mind my asking, then. Where were you last night, Ma’am?”
“Here. Alone.” Again she gives me that wry smile. “I’m in trouble, aren’t I?”
If she truly believed that, she probably would call that lawyer.
“When did you last see Hector, Ma’am?”
“Not since he moved out. I told you that the last time you asked.” She pauses to drink. “Why? Why would someone want to kill Hector?” Tears slide down her cheeks.
“I don’t know yet, Ma’am,” I reply, although I can guess. “Did he have any enemies?” I ask, as if I couldn’t already name several. “The son you mentioned. They used to work together at Facets. Did they part on friendly terms?”
“Terry was furious about leaving Facets, but it wasn’t Hector he was angry with. It was Marvin who forced Terry out. And just to add insult to injury, Marvin made Hector take out buy-sell insurance.”
“And that is—?”
Marybeth sips her drink. “It’s insurance that pays if a partner dies or becomes incapacitated or wants to withdraw and the surviving partner wants to continue the business.”
Death or withdrawal of partner. The language used in the menacing memos I found in Hector’s bedroom.
“The insurance pays the beneficiary, the surviving partner, enough so he can buy the departing partner’s share, have total ownership.”
Those memos dated back weeks ago. Was Overshort making a bid for the business even then, based on Hector’s absence? Did Overshort foster Hector’s disappearance? Has he been trying to keep me from finding the man so he could put in a claim based on withdrawal? Was Hector’s scarcity not strong enough justification for the insurance, so Overshort escalated withdrawal to death? Murder isn’t an unheard-of career advancement strategy and people have killed for much less than what Facets is likely to be generating.
“You know about this insurance for a fact?” I ask her.
She nods. With narrowed eyes she says, “Marvin rubbed Terry’s nose in it when he fired him. Hector had to take out the policy as a condition of Marvin’s buying into the business. Marvin said if Hector ended up dead, Terry and I would inherit his share of Facets, and Marvin didn’t want to be in partnership with either of us, especially Terry.”
Under the circumstances, it’s a wonder it’s Hector who’s dead and not Overshort. “I see.” I see that Overshort and Marybeth Waltann both benefit from Hector’s death. Overshort gets the business at the insurance company’s expense, Marybeth gets cash from Overshort. How much cash? Did Waltann keep up with the premiums or did he let this policy lapse like the others? “I’ll take that under advisement. Meanwhile, Ma’am, you wouldn’t have happened to have the Eterniti, would you?” I ask.
Marybeth almost turns up her nose, spite effectively obliterating her grief. “I would sooner walk than get in that car.”
Well, where is the car?
I ask a few more questions, get the name of the insurance agent, and leave Marybeth Waltann to sog down her grief.
Before I take this investigation any further, I stop at home to complete the metamorphosis of Will Mansion, ex-cop, into Will Mansion, working detective. In the shower, the lotus tattoo startles me, as though I expected it would have vanished in the transformation. Before the dresser mirror, I knot my tie with sweaty hands. Haunted eyes in a drawn face stare back at me. The only thing missing from this scene is the reluctant hero strapping on his gun belt and loading his revolver. I have neither. All I have is a pawn ticket.
*****
Late on a Saturday, there are few people around the station, so I don’t have to explain my official return to my old haunts. Even the Admin. Assistant is absent from her desk. An open door to Crowberry’s office says that he is in, and available.
At my approach, he waves me in. Two items lie side by side along the forward edge of his desk. One is the resignation form I filled out in another life. The other is a check, an advance on my pay. He stretches his arms out and pats both. “Thought it only fair to give you another chance, if you’re serious about this retirement thing.”
He might just as well offer me the Lady or the Tiger. Either way I’ll get eaten alive. I take the check.
I brief him on my conversation with Marybeth Waltann.
Crowberry says, “So, the wife and the partner both stand to gain. The question is, would the payoff be worth killing for?”
“I’ll see what I can find out from the insurance agent. Assuming that it is—”
“Either of them could have done it.”
“Or both of them together.”
“So who do you like?” Crowberry asks.
Overshort, but it’s likely my personal enmity colors my reaction. “Too early to say,” I reply. “The wife has no alibi. I haven’t checked into the partner’s whereabouts yet.” Not to mention Carlotta Trephino or Shrike. There’s still the matter of the Eterniti which spends its nights cruising the streets taking deadly aim at me with a yet unnamed assailant at the wheel.
“Do that,” Crowberry says. He hands me my shield and ID. “I want Swbyra to look into the drug angle.”
I like those assignments just fine. Before I leave the station, I dial Heidi’s number. Why I think she will be pleased that I’ve gotten my old job back, I don’t know, but some of that feeling is there as I listen to the phone ring. With considerable disappointment, I listen to the recording and hang up without leaving a message. Where is she? Not at work, Facets isn’t open late on the weekend. It doesn’t take a veteran detective to figure it out. It’s Saturday, she’s an attractive young woman. She’s out somewhere. On a date.
*****
When it is late enough to expect the night man to be on duty, I return to the Jade Pagoda. Lit by stingy forty-watt bulbs and the glow of a small television so old it’s almost black-and-white, the lobby appears even shabbier than during the day.
The night man seated behind the counter is more a night youth. Bespectacled eyes and a thin sharp nose point down at a huge volume open on the desktop. He barely glances at my ID. I ask about Hector.
“Oh yeah, the dead guy,” he says. His eyes rapidly rebound from left margin to right and back again.
“Did he have a car?” I ask. Please, tell me he had a gold Eterniti.
“Could have. I didn’t see him with one.”
That’s definitive. “How about visitors while he was here? Phone calls?” I ask.
“Um, phone calls? There’s no phone in the rooms and we don’t take messages for guests here. Visitors? Um, yeah, some girl.” With his right hand he turns a page. With the left, he taps his cigarette into a red plastic ashtray. Little gray cones of ash on the desktop mark where he overshot the tray.
“Really? Who?” I ask.
“Demi Moore.” After a moment, without raising his face, the night kid chuckles and says, “I don’t know. Just some girl.”
“When did you see her?”
“Um, last night. Around one, two, something like that. I was taking a break. Had to whiz.”
“Describe her.”
“Can’t.”
I’m not surprised. He couldn’t describe a freight train if it came through the door and rolled over his desk.
“You don’t remember anything about her appearance? How about hair color?”
“Couldn’t tell. She was wearing a cape with um, a, whatchacallit?” Without raising his eyes from his book, he paints an air portrait, moving cupped hands around his neck and over his head. Ash flies from his cigarette.
“A hood?”
“Right.”
“Height? Weight? Tall or short? Thin or fat?”
“Hard to say what she weighed with that cape. But tall, yeah. Long stems sticking out of that cape.” He turns the page. Taps ash. “That’s all I noticed. I didn’t really pay attention. Wanted to get back to my book.”
“Did she drive? What was she driving? When did she leave?”
“Shit, man, I’m telling you. I didn’t see. I wasn’t staring out the damn window, I was reading.”
“All right, I’ll bite. What are you reading?”
“The Seeing Hand. It’s an art book.” He looks up. “I’m just doin’ this to pay for art school. Soon as I graduate, I’m out of here.”
“Art school, huh? So, can you draw?”
“Of course I can draw.”
“So draw me a picture of the woman you saw.”
He gives me a puzzled look. Then with a shrug of his shoulders, he ducks behind the counter, surfaces with a sheet of paper and a pencil. After a few minutes of concentrated scribbling he hands me the sketch. It’s not much more informative than his verbal description.
“What do you think?” he asks.
Keep your day job. “Thanks. This will help. Now, how about four weeks ago? Another man died in one of the rooms.”
The night youth sighs, rests folded arms on his open book. “Which one do you mean? Lots of men die in our rooms.”
What is this, the company slogan? I can see the ad campaign: The accommodations at the Jade Pagoda are so good you’ll just die. “Scott Corcoran, sheriff’s deputy? A suicide?”
“What about him?”
“For starters, what can you tell me about his activities the night he died?”
The night youth props his chin in his hand, drums his fingers against his lips, rolls his eyes. Finally he says, “I think I saw him walk over to the Lounge.”
“The Firefly Lounge?” I ask and cock a thumb to my left.
“Yeah. Maybe he wanted to use their phone. That’s what people here usually do. We don’t got phones in the rooms and we don’t take messages here.”
“So you said. What time was this?”
“Might have been nine or ten, something like that. Now if you ask me when did he get back, that I can’t tell you. I was—”
“Reading. Yeah, I know.” Maybe the staff at the Lounge was more observant. I thank the night youth and exit the office. When I pass the front window, I see he already has a fresh cigarette in hand and his nose in his book.
Within walking distance of the Jade Pagoda, the Firefly Lounge is open for business. There are, apparently, few hours when it is not. A muddy-hued glow from the combination of red, yellow and green neon beer signs reveals unvarnished pine walls, Formica topped tables whose chromed legs show bald spots of rust, a linoleum floor worn in places down to the black mastic. The customers are well in their cups and half passed out. With little to do, the bartender greets me eagerly.
“Whiskey,” I tell him, and I would love to drink it. The shakes are back, and it’s not PTSD.
I ask if a woman in a hooded cape was here last night.
“In a what?” the bartender asks.
“Never mind. What can you tell me about this man?”
With a scowl, the bartender scans my poor excuse for a photo of Scott Corcoran, Facets’ deceased security officer. “Now this guy I remember. Strange duck. Came in alone, sat at the bar alone, didn’t talk to anyone. Didn’t drink either.”
No wonder he remembers the man.
“Until he made a phone call.” The bartender points to a pay phone on the wall. “Then he ordered a drink. Couple of drinks. Downed them fast. Then he left. Course, a lot of folks from the Pagoda do that—come in alone. Use the phone. Have a few. Leave. This guy, though, he was big-time nervous. Jumpy. Drank like he was in some kind of hurry. Kept checking his watch. When he left, he was real edgy, like.”
Was it the phone conversation that rattled him? Now who or what would shake a sheriff’s deputy? “What do you think he was frightened of?”
“I didn’t say frightened. Nervous. Like whatever was going to happen when it got to be time, he wasn’t sure he was going to like it.”
*****
In my dark bedroom, I put a match to a stick of incense, linger a moment to watch the white smoke rise, catch its sweet powdery scent. At this time last night, and the night before that, and the night before that—far enough back that the memory is already dim—a different powder filled my nostrils: Nearvana. My body, ready for more, has already declared war over being denied. Muscles tense and twitch uncontrollably, threatening to secede. My stomach wants to leave my body through my back.
Before struggling into position on the zafu, I make a bow, so sketchy any onlooker would miss it. It’s a prayer, I think, for success, for strength. My gut knots as if with stage fright. Something is at stake here, and the odds are not good.
Stop. Pay attention. Be here now, not on the Mile, snorting heroin. Breathe.
Inhale, one.
Exhale, two.
Inhale, three.
The shakes are so bad I can barely sit upright. I want a cigarette, need a drink, a fix.
Inhale, one.
Exhale, two—.
Who killed Hector? Not the hookers, Champagne or Rhonda. Sure, they could have rolled him, then killed him. If so, why hang around the Jade Pagoda to be quizzed by the cops? Some killers like to revisit the scene of the crime, but that was one brazen performance.
Inhale, one.
Exhale, t—.
Could any one of the men have killed Hector Waltann? Airol Jones? Marvin Overshort? Shrike? All are too tall or too broad to have successfully disguised themselves as a woman, even one in a cape.
What about Marybeth Waltann? I can more easily picture her in her wingback chair, alone, with a drink, in the dark, stewing over Hector than I can in that room at the Jade Pagoda, slicing him with a knife. Besides, she’s too short to be the caped mystery woman.
Now, Carlotta Trephino, there’s a good possibility.
Stop! This is discursive thinking at its worst. Start again and concentrate!
Inhale, one.
Exhale, two . . . oh, screw it.
I push off the floor, flop onto the bed. The plume of scented smoke arabesques toward the ceiling, as sinuous as the mystery woman’s cape, writhing like the tattooed snakes on Nikki Saint Clair. My fingertips find the site of my own tattoo, the soreness nearly gone now. Images swirl thick around my brain: Nikki, Champagne, and Rhonda all over me. But the kisses are Heidi’s. And the hands, the hands are the sure, practiced hands of Lix Gemini.