“LIKE FLEAS ON A DOG. I REMEMBER.”
Harlan grinned. This time he didn’t look like the skinny goofy sailor with the crooked nose, who rose to the bait I provided that day in the bar. He looked menacing.
“I remember, honey. You really got me goin’. I went home, told Sam about it. He cussed up one side and down t’other, told me you was a private eye.”
I moved forward, away from the Camaro, onto the concrete sidewalk that paralleled the road. “You really have the shitkicker routine honed to a fine edge, Harlan. The cornpone accent, and all that ‘T for Texas’ bullshit. You play the buffoon, and no one takes you seriously. Not even Sam. He must have been surprised when Cousin Ty blew him away.”
Harlan laughed. “Me? Now what makes you think that?”
“Harlan T for Tyrone Pettibone.” I moved another step away from the Camaro and he watched me warily. “Not Texas, not tiger. Tyrone. Tiny bones,” I said. I’d been singing the phrase in my head for the past few days, and it was an effort not to sing it now. “When you were kids, Sam used to call you tiny bones, because you were short and skinny and it’s a play on both your names. Later he shortened it to Ty-Bone, because everyone called you Ty.”
“Where’d you get all this stuff?” Harlan asked. He raised his bony shoulders in a shrug, then strolled toward the open driver’s side door of his car.
I angled in that direction, stepping off the curb onto the road in front of the Camaro, to see what he was up to, but he merely stood next to the door with both hands visible, resting on the hips of his black jeans.
“I talked to your cousin Nancy down in Gilroy this morning,” I said. “She filled me in on the family history. Your mother’s maiden name was Tyrone. Lots of Tyrones down in Bakersfield. They came out here from Texas during the Depression. Your mother is Ida, younger sister of Alma Raynor and Elva Burgett. You were born in Bakersfield. You never even got to Texas until your parents split up. Your mother married Ed Coffin and you didn’t like him, so you went to live with your father in Lubbock. But you used to come to Gilroy in the summer and stay with your aunt Alma. You and Cousin Sam raised some serious hell.”
Harlan blinked his pale eyes and raised his right hand to rub his chin. “Yeah, we did at that. Now, I admit to bein’ a hell-raiser. What makes you think I’d kill somebody?”
“Money. That long green stuff you just collected from your partner in the Caddy.” I watched him as he stood near the car. Was it my imagination, or had he moved closer, as though he were going to slip behind the wheel? I edged a little farther to my right in an effort to see him clearer. Now I was in the middle of the right lane of the parkway.
“It was always money.” My body tensed as I stared at Harlan, ready to move if he did. “That’s where I got sidetracked. So many people who had good reasons to hate Sam, whose lives were destroyed or damaged because they came in contact with him. I lost sight of the fact that this whole case was about the money he was hiding from Ruth. Sam wasn’t murdered because of all that white-hot passion. The motive was cold hard greed.”
Harlan backed up, leaning against the Camaro, just behind the open door. “How do you figure that?” he drawled, still twanging the Texas accent. He even hooked his thumbs on his belt loops for effect.
“I don’t have to figure. I’ve got account numbers and balances. Twelve separate accounts in banks from here to Vacaville, all in your name. All opened with amounts less than ten thousand dollars, so you wouldn’t attract any attention. All opened within ten days of Sam closing his account at Wells Fargo in San Jose, the one that received the wire transfer from Guam.”
“You’re a damn good detective, honey. Don’t mind telling you, you had ol’ Sam worried.”
“Worried enough to want to get his money back from ol’ Harlan. But you didn’t want to give it up. So you killed him instead.”
“I got busted for fighting Saturday night,” he protested, raising his open hands in a parody of supplication. “Wasn’t anywhere near Sam.”
“I’ve got witnesses who place you at the scene, every step of the way. You were at Fenton’s with your buddies at ten-thirty. From there you went to the corner of Forty-first and Howe. You met Sam there, at Sam’s request. Sam was pissed off because he figured out it was you who stole the Mercedes. He also told you I was getting too close and he wanted to stash the money somewhere else. You argued about it, in voices loud enough to be heard across the street. One of you even slapped the car.”
I watched his face in the light from the nearby street lamp, looking for some reaction, but I saw none. “Sam demanded his money back,” I continued, speculating on what those voices actually said. “He gave you an ultimatum. As far as he was concerned, that was that. Then he headed across the street. He wanted to throw a scare into Ruth. You tagged along. Maybe you were still arguing. Maybe you even wanted to keep Sam from doing something stupid to Ruth. Mostly I think you were looking for a chance to hang on to all that money. And you found it.”
A jet took off at the airport, and I waited until the roar died away. “You were out in the hallway waiting for Sam. Then you heard Sam and Ruth fighting. You heard the gun go off. When you went into the apartment, Sam had his hands around Ruth’s throat. You pulled him off her and shoved him out the door. But the gun was right there, with opportunity written all over it. So you picked it up and followed Sam outside. You shot him in the back, wiped the gun and dropped it down the trash chute. Then you hopped in your Camaro and drove over to the enlisted club at the air station. You walked in looking for a fight, jumped those two Marines and got yourself tossed into the brig. It gave you an alibi and it kept me away from you. Until now.”
I could probably prove most of it. Harlan didn’t help matters by confirming anything I’d just said. Instead he reached behind the driver’s seat of the Camaro and pulled out a shiny metal object. Without a word he launched himself at me.
I hate to admit it, but I’m afraid of being beaten up. I’ve encountered physical violence before. I’ve come to blows several times during my tenure as an investigator, though I usually rely on a quick tongue and quick reflexes to avoid getting punched out. But sometimes that isn’t enough. A couple of years ago I was pistol-whipped in a parking lot and I wound up in the hospital. It left me with a scar on my forehead and some trepidation about mixing it up. I was several inches taller than Harlan and no doubt outweighed him. But he was flailing at me with vehemence born of desperation.
All these thoughts flashed through my head as the shiny object Harlan held connected with my left shoulder. Now thought flashed into pain. What the hell was that thing? A tire iron, the kind that looks like a large plus sign, used to loosen lug nuts. Harlan swung at me again, this time at my head. I dodged, but the end of the tire iron grazed my head. Was that pain roaring from my cranium, or another jet blasting down the runway?
I moved to the right, kicking at his feet. Then I grabbed the crossbars of the tire iron and we struggled over it, our heads close together, close enough for me to see his ugly little face, contorted with fury, glistening with sweat in the waist-level light from the Camaro’s headlamps. We partnered each other in this awkward dance, then I shoved him back against the hood of the Camaro and kneed him hard in the groin.
Harlan bellowed in pain and outrage, but my blow to his scrotum didn’t put him out of commission. It just made him madder. I tried to wrench the tire iron away from him, but he sprang forward, his tightly coiled body shoving the tire iron hard into my stomach. I stumbled backward and fell, my butt smacking painfully on the asphalt in front of the Camaro.
I felt gravel on the roadway surface, poking at me through the fabric of my jeans. Harlan moved in for another try, his right foot drawn back to kick me, his right hand holding the tire iron above his head, ready to bring it down on mine. He landed one kick on my hip, painful, but it would have been worse had he not been wearing high-topped sneakers.
I scrambled to my feet, left hand scooping up a handful of gravel. I peppered his face with the rocks. He bellowed and his right arm dropped. Now our struggle over the tire iron took us into the middle of Harbor Bay Parkway, toward the grassy median strip. Where were all those cars that passed us earlier?
I snatched the tire iron from him, but I had little time to savor that victory. Harlan rushed me, knocking me off my feet once more. I fought for balance but my left ankle twisted painfully. I fell onto my left side, landing hard on the pavement at the edge of the median strip, my head just grazing the concrete curb. I lay there for a few seconds, stunned, expecting to ward off another kick. What I got was the roar of the Camaro’s engine and the sudden bright flash of the headlights as Harlan jerked the car out onto the parkway.
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the pain in my hip. I ran along the grassy median toward Maitland Drive, as though I had the defensive line of the ‘Niners on my tail. I might have had a better chance with the ‘Niners. Harlan Pettibone intended to mow me down and leave me as flat as road kill.
Harlan zoomed the Camaro up onto the median strip, where it bounced and slewed in my wake. He hit something, a bush maybe, that slowed him down for a moment. I ran back across the parkway to the sidewalk that bordered the street and the golf course, gaining some distance. Then I was pinned in the merciless glare of the headlights as he barreled off the median, angling across the roadway toward me.
Suddenly I realized I still clutched the tire iron I had wrenched away from Harlan. I tossed it away and made a running jump for the golf course fence. Harlan aimed the Camaro at the fence and lurched forward, hitting hard as I reached the top. My grip on the steel mesh loosened and I fell, managing to get my feet under me, knees bent to cushion my landing.
I dented the hood of the Camaro when I landed. As I leapt to the ground I spotted the tire iron I had dropped, just a few feet away. I seized it as Harlan threw the Camaro into reverse. But he was stuck. He’d run over a small tree to get to me. Now his wheels spun furiously as the car’s rear end backed up against the broken trunk. The Camaro wasn’t going anywhere.
“You crazy son of a bitch,” I yelled.
I brought the tire iron down hard on the driver’s side of the Camaro’s windshield and it cracked. Harlan bellowed at this affront to his beloved tigermobile. I hit the glass again, feeling childishly satisfied as the crack widened and deepened. By the time Harlan got the door open I was at his side. I grabbed him by the shoulders, ignoring his flailing fists as I hauled him out of the driver’s seat. I shoved him back against the car and drove my fist into his stomach. That knocked sufficient wind out of him so that I could hold him pinned with my right hand while my left quickly reached for the keys, killing the Camaro’s engine. Then I pulled him away from the car, bent his arms behind him and frog-marched him toward the road.
When we reached the sidewalk under the nearest streetlight, I kicked his high-tops out from under him. He was sprawled belly down on the concrete as I knelt on his back. My adrenaline rush had faded. My aches and bruises were in full cry as I wondered what to do with him.
I saw lights and looked up. A car drove toward us, big and sleek and boxy. It came to a stop beside us and I heard soft music as a window rolled down. In the yellow streetlamp glare the woman’s face was round and middle-aged. She looked quite appalled at what she saw.
“Here now, you leave that man alone,” she warned. “I’m going to call the police.”
“That sounds like a wonderful idea,” I told her, with a weary grin.