Chapter 17
Immediately after Ralph hung up in the most famous face he was ever likely to, April Dane opened the bathroom door, allowing the telephone to drop on his foot. When he was through jumping around, she said, “Important call?”
“Just getting the weather. Jesus.” He propped his foot up on the toilet lid and dabbed at the three cut toes with Mercurochrome from the medicine cabinet.
“When I woke up and saw you were gone, I was afraid you’d run out on me. Then I saw the cord and followed it in here.” She started to giggle.
“What’s funny?” He wiggled the toes. They didn’t seem to be broken.
“You are. When you’re naked.”
He put his foot down and sucked in his stomach. “I don’t jog or nothing like that. I got a car.”
“I meant the hat.”
He looked up at it. “I think I forgot to take it off.”
“I couldn’t help staring at it. I kept waiting for it to fall off, only it never did.”
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong?”
“I seen your eyes rolling up. I thought it was for another reason.”
She grasped him by the most available handle and drew him near. She was naked too. Her dark hair was tousled and her face looked fresh without makeup. He could feel the heat from her body, or maybe it was from his. Every part of him protested except the part she was holding.
“It wasn’t just the hat,” she said.
“No?”
“Uh-uh. Come back to bed.”
“I got work to do.”
“You can’t start work until I finish paying your retainer.”
“I think I owe you change now.”
“Well, pay up.” She gave him a squeeze.
“What about your sister?”
“Let her find her own detective. You’re my private dick, right?”
“Uh-huh.” He gritted his teeth.
“Hardboiled dick.”
“Jesus.”
“The heat.” She applied a hydraulic motion.
“Damn.”
She looked down at him. “Whoops.”
He let out his stomach then. There wasn’t much point in holding it in any longer.
“Go away, Ralph.”
Neal English was seated in a semicircular booth upholstered in red leather in the Cadillac Club on West Lafayette, under a framed caricature of Herve Villechaize. The insurance actuary’s monolithic face, ripe for a caricature of its own, was framed by a white bib with a scarlet lobster on it. The remains of a similar life form lay on his plate, where he was busy dismantling it with a mallet. Ferns decorated the room, swaying to classical music turned down very low.
“The girl in your office said I’d find you here.” Ralph slid into the booth.
“Next time you talk to her, tell her she’s fired.”
“You get anything out of them big cockroaches, or do you just like to wrestle?”
“I see nobody killed you yet.” Neal crushed the lobster’s skull and picked out its brains with a miniature fork.
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I’ll do you after this lobster.”
“You always was a card, Neal.” Ralph returned his menu to the waiter, a plump man with white hair and a red face. “Ain’t you got no burgers?”
“The ground sirloin is quite good, sir.”
“Okay, burn one and slap on a slice of Velveeta. None of that Swiss crap.”
“Would you like a beverage?”
“What’s on tap?”
“We have a full assortment of imported beers.”
“That Mexican piss gives me the trots. Bring me a Blatz in a can. I found a rat hair in a bottle once,” he confided to Neal. “What’re you waiting for, Maurice, your tip?”
“May I take your hat, sir?”
“Why, your head cold?” When the waiter had withdrawn, Ralph winked at Neal. “What do you think, he does it to the busboy or the busboy does it to him?”
“Jesus Christ, Ralph.”
“They’re the only people that can carry a tray without dropping it. It’s all in the hips.” He took a gulp of Neal’s ice water. “Listen, you still a whiz with computers?”
“I never was to begin with.”
“Sure you were. I seen you put Arnie on line when we was with Great Lakes.”
“I helped him set his digital watch.”
“You got a computer where you are now?”
“I’m on timeshare, with an office-system Kaypro.”
“No shit? Congratulations. What I want to know is, you got a computer where you are now?”
Neal broke the lobster’s neck. “Why?”
“I want to bust into the computer files at the Justice Department.”
“Okay, don’t tell me. I wasn’t going to do anything for you anyway.”
“No, I mean it.”
“You’re talking about the Justice Department in Washington, D.C.?”
“They don’t have one in the state of Washington. I asked.”
“What is it you want to find out?”
“Why Willard Newton would want to kill a prostitute and a bishop, and what that has to do with a dead monsignor.”
“Willard Newton.”
“That’s the man.”
“The secretary of state?”
“No, the attorney general.”
“That’s Gregory Tobin.”
“I think Gregory Tobin’s Health, Education, and Welfare,” Ralph said.
“No, that’s Henry Wazuki.”
“Henry Wazuki’s the place kicker for the Miami Dolphins.”
“Their files I can break into.”
Ralph’s ground sirloin came, on a big plate with broccoli, parsley, and less identifiable pale, rounded vegetables arranged artfully around it.
“This joint running low on produce?” he asked the waiter. “I could drive a truck between the carrots and onions.”
“Those aren’t onions, sir. They’re leeks.”
“Don’t say it,” Neal warned.
“Am I supposed to eat this shit or frame it?”
“Sir, you may shove it up your ass for all I care.” The waiter left.
“Don’t tip him,” Ralph told Neal. “He forgot my beer.”
“What makes you think the attorney general would want to kill anyone?”
“When I called this number I found in Bishop Steelcase’s notebook and told the broad it was Detroit calling, Newton came on and called me Carpenter.” Ralph spoke through a mouthful of ground sirloin. “Carpenter’s the one booby-trapped the hooker’s apartment. You’ll hear about the bishop on tonight’s news.”
“It was on the radio this morning. Cops have a suspect in custody.”
“That was me. They kicked me at sunup. So what about the computer?”
“Those things have security codes. I couldn’t get in if I wanted to.”
“Sure you could. Just last week I read where some kid in Jersey tapped into the Pentagon and sent four hundred cases of Trojans to Tehran.”
“A worthy cause, if it cuts down on the number of little Iranians,” Neal said. “So get the kid.”
“This ain’t a favor, it’s a business proposition. When they took down the bishop, the meal ticket went with him. Before that we stood to split a thousand a month for life.” He cut the figure in half out of habit. “If Steelcase was going to pay that much to hush up what happened to the monsignor, think what Newton would contribute. All them jerks in Washington want to be president.”
“Why would Newton care how a Detroit priest died?”
“That’s what I want to find out. It’s hard to blackmail somebody when you don’t know what you got on him.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I just give you back your pictures? I’m not cut out to be a crook. I stink at it.”
“There could be a million in it.”
“Dollars?”
“Hell, BMWs. You ever seen what a politician pays the phone company?”
Neal pushed away his plate. “I’d need to program the machine to keep throwing codes until it accessed.”
“Sure. Whatever.”
“You didn’t let me finish. I can’t do that on my system. You need an office computer for that.”
Ralph chewed and thought. “If I get you one, can you do it?”
“You don’t find them in the five-and-dime. You need the use of a state-of-the-art system for several hours.”
“Answer the question.”
Neal sighed. “I was honest before you came along. Yeah, I can do it.”
“I knew it. From now on it’s you and me, pal, fifty-fifty. Just like the old days.”
Neal glared at him from under his heavy brows. “You cross me, I’ll have your balls for breakfast. I’ve got a client owes me a favor. G. Gordon Liddy fired him because he scared him.”
“I never stiff friends.” Ralph finished his meal and rose. “Don’t forget what I said about the tip.”