Extreme Justice (2 page)

“Look, Earl, I can learn any piece of music you give me—”

“I know you can, Ben. Like I said, you got a real nice way with that keyboard. You remind me of some of the all-time great piano professors—Tuts Washington, Huey Smith, Allen Toussaint, Art Tatum. But that ain’t the point. If your heart tells you you’d rather be playing this … this … Harry …” He wiped his brow again. “Oh, hell. What do you call that stuff anyway?”

“Folk music.”

“Folk music?” Earl began to laugh, a deep hearty bowl-full-of-jelly laugh. “Well, blow me over. That’s one I ain’t heard in a while.” He tried to suppress his grin and get serious, although Ben could see it was a struggle. “So anyway, if your heart says you should be playin’ this … folk music, that’s what you got to do.”

“This isn’t exactly a renaissance period for folk music.”

“It don’t matter, son. Listen to me. It don’t matter what the other folks are doin’. It don’t matter what they want you to be. You got to be who you are.” He jammed his handkerchief back in his pocket and steered Ben toward the club. “Your problem, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so, is that you ain’t figured out yet who you are.”

Ben tried to smile. “Thank you, Uncle Sigmund.”

B
Y THE THIRD
time he had dropped the corpse, he was ready to call it a day. Nothing could possibly be worth this much trouble. Could it?

It wasn’t as easy as it looked. He had learned that the hard way. When she was still alive, even just barely, when he stripped her clothes and put her on the bed within the circle of candles, he had no trouble moving her. But something happened to bodies once that last vestige of life trickled away. Once the fonky cat played her last note and Gabriel’s horn started beckoning, the body changed. It became heavy, unmanageable, all loosey-goosey. It flipped, it flopped, and it weighed a ton.

Getting her down the stairs had been the worst. He should have just rolled her down, but at the time, that had seemed a bit callous. Her natural beauty would undoubtedly have been marred by a deadweight run down two flights of stairs. Of course, now it was apparent that her natural beauty was fading fast, stairs or not. By tonight, by the time of the big show, he expected she would be something altogether gruesome.

Anyway, she was down the stairs, but he still had to get her into the van and into the club. He had to set the stage carefully to produce the desired effect. He needed some way to contain her, some way to make her more manageable.

He laughed. Not that she had ever been particularly manageable—even when she was alive. She had always had the upper hand. But now that she was dead, dead, dead, he had a distinct advantage.

He noticed the area rug in the center of the living room. Hadn’t he seen that in a movie once—rolling a corpse up in a rug? It seemed like it would work. It would keep her tragic deterioration from prying eyes, and it would hold her together so he could get her where she needed to go. It would require some alteration of his cover story, but so what? With all the hustle and bustle surrounding the anniversary show, he was certain no one would take much notice.

He bent down, placed one hand against her back and the other against her buttocks, and pushed. Fortunately, the hardwood floor had been recently varnished; she scooted along smooth as Red Tyler’s fingertips. Soon he had her positioned on the rug, and a few minutes after that, he had the rug wrapped tightly around her.

He stood and marveled at his work. She was completely invisible. As long as he didn’t give any indication that the package was heavier than it looked, no one would ever suspect that this innocent rug was a nightmare meat enchilada. It was perfect.

Getting the package onto his shoulder was no piece of cake, but he managed it. Hell of a lot of work, but it was worth it. He had big plans for this victim.

A grin spread across his lips. This victim—and the next one.

On his drive home, Ben timed in to KVOO with Andy O’. It was, admittedly, a country music station, and he had been trying to force himself to listen to jazz, but Andy O’ was a favorite, as was Steve Smith at KBEZ, who had just signed off. The antenna on his van could sometimes pick up the Oklahoma City DJs like Bob & Josh, his personal favorites, but it was too late in the day for their on-air hijinks. KWGS was great for news, of course, but there were times when Ben just wasn’t in an NPR mood.

Ben loved his new car. After his Honda Accord had bitten the dust, he’d been forced to select a new means of transportation. He chose a Ford Aerostar, a minivan. Although he had no kids to tote, he’d always wanted to drive a van, to have the feeling of something big and powerful surrounding him. And it was very useful for gigs, hauling sound equipment around. He and the band were planning to tour during the summer; when that happened, the van would be invaluable.

Ben parked the van on the street and hoofed it to the rooming house where he lived. It might not be one of the swankiest neighborhoods in Tulsa, but it was close to Earl’s club, barely a ten-minute drive. He just wanted to change clothes and get a bite to eat before he returned for the anniversary show.

As he approached the house, he saw his landlady, Mrs. Marmelstein, puttering in her front garden. She was facing away from him, digging up mounds of soft loamy soil with her trowel.

“Bit late for tulips, isn’t it?” he said, hovering over her shoulder.

Mrs. Marmelstein glanced up at him and smiled. “Late? Why, Benjamin Kincaid, you don’t know a thing about gardening, do you?” She was wearing a print dress, blue with a white blossom pattern. She had lived eighty-two years, and Ben suspected she’d had that dress for at least eighty-one of them. “They have to be planted in the fall if you want tulips come April.”

“But, Mrs. Marmelstein”—he leaned closer and whispered—“it is April.”

“April? But we only just had Halloween.” She frowned. “Benjamin, are you playing a trick on me?”

No, he thought sadly, you’re playing a trick on yourself.

It had been like this for the last six months. In September, she had suffered two heart attacks, one right after the other. Although she had recovered, she was not the person she’d been before. Sometimes the change was so profound it frightened Ben. It was like talking to an entirely different person.

Her speech gradually returned, but the blow to her health had advanced her Alzheimer’s with a vengeance. Granted, she had been a bit dotty for as long as Ben had known her, but during the past few months she had become increasingly senile. Ben tried to help where he could; he ran errands, paid the bills, collected the rent. But he knew his efforts were just a tap dance against time, and it broke his heart.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Marmelstein,” Ben replied. “You’re the gardening expert, not me.” And he could always buy blooming tulips at a nursery and plant them in the garden. She’d never know the difference.

Mrs. Marmelstein glanced at her watch. “It’s a bit early for you to be home, isn’t it, Benjamin? I don’t think your bosses will appreciate your taking the afternoon off.”

“Mrs. Marmelstein.” He drew in his breath. What was the nice way to handle it? He could barely remember anymore. “I haven’t worked at the law firm for years.”

She sniffed. “Well, I’m not surprised. Coming home in the middle of the afternoon. Honestly.” She started back at her gardening, then stopped. “By the way, you have a visitor waiting in your room. A female.” She could not have put more disapproval in her voice had she been saying “she-devil from hell.”

“That would be Christina, I assume?”

“Who else?” She eyed him with profound suspicion. “Benjamin, you know I don’t approve of my gentlemen boarders receiving females in their rooms without a chaperone.”

“Mrs. Marmelstein, we’re just friends. And coworkers. Were, anyway.”

“I don’t care if she’s your long-lost sister. I don’t like it.”

“Listen, what if I ask Christina if she’d like to go to the flea market with you this Saturday?” Tulsa had one of the best flea markets in the country, a weekly event at the fairgrounds. And Mrs. Marmelstein had decorated most of her building in flea-market kitsch.

“Well,” the elderly woman said slowly, “I suppose that would be all right.”

“Good. I’ll tell you what she says.” He started toward the front door. “Don’t stay out in the sun too long. Remember, it’s still awfully hot for—er—whatever month this is.”

He bounded up the front steps to the porch and opened the mesh inner door. A glance up the stairs told him Joni Singleton, one of his fellow boarders, was not in her usual afternoon spot. He had to remind himself that she was taking classes at Tulsa Community College this semester. A child development major, if the gossip he got from her twin sister, Jami, was to be believed. Joni’s brief stint as nanny for Ben’s nephew, when Ben’s sister had parked the kid with him, seemed to have had a profound impact on her.

He took the steps two at a time till he reached his room. He cracked open the door and peered inside.

Christina McCall was sitting on the sofa reading. Whatever it was, it was holding her attention. Her eyes were glued to the manuscript pages.

Manuscript pages? Wait a minute—

Ben burst through the door. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Christina brushed her long strawberry-blonde hair back behind her shoulders. “Hi, Ben. Good to see you, too.”

Ben stomped across the room. “I don’t recall saying you could read this.”

“That’s because I didn’t know it existed. Of course, if I had known it existed, and I had asked if I could read it, you would’ve said no.”

“Damn straight.”

“So I saved us both a lot of bother.” She grabbed Ben by the shoulders and grinned. “Ben, you wrote a book!”

He shrugged awkwardly. “Well … I’ve had a lot of spare time on my hands.”

“True crime. Just like Darcy O’Brien. Very classy. And it’s about one of our actual cases. This is so exciting!” She beamed. “You know, television loves these based-on-real-events things. Maybe you could get a movie of the week!”

“Well, that would be the be-all and end-all, wouldn’t it?”

“I love the title. Katching the Kindergarten Killer. I think it’ll sell billions.”

“Only if my mother buys all the copies.” He snatched the manuscript back and stuffed it in his desk. “What say I find a publisher before you negotiate the movie rights?”

“I can’t help it, Ben. I think this is tremendous. Here I thought you were wasting all your time plinking on the piano and pretending you weren’t going to practice law anymore—”

“Pretending?”

“—and it turns out you’re writing a book! I’m so proud of you.”

“Well, now my day is made.” Christina was the best legal assistant he had ever worked with, but sometimes she could be downright irritating.

She ignored him, sweeping around the sofa with unrestrained enthusiasm. “You told me you’d been contacted by some professional ghostwriter and that he was going to write up one of your cases. What happened to that?”

“What happened was he finished it and it was godawful. So I got rid of him. He played fast and loose with the facts. Took a serious serial murder case and turned it into an episode of
Starsky and Hutch
.”

“Really?” Her eyes lit up. “Was I Starsky or Hutch?”

“Neither. You were the useless female who was only around to scream and be rescued.”

“Then I’m glad you got rid of him.” She frowned. “If I couldn’t be smart, I hope he at least made me pretty. Did he say I was pretty?”

Ben covered his smile. “Radiant.”

She plopped back down on the sofa. “Well, this is better, anyway. They’re your cases. No one knows them better than you. You should be the one who tells them. Have you sent the manuscript to any publishers or agents?”

“Dozens.”

“What do they say?”

“ ‘Get lost.’ But nicely.”

“Well, don’t stop trying. You’ll get published. I know you will.”

“Thanks, but you still didn’t have any business reading my manuscript.”

“I saw it there on your desk. How could I resist? You should be grateful I come here at all. Your landlady glares at me like I’m a call girl, and your cat tries to kill me.”

“I guess they’re just protective of me.”

“Well, so am I, but I try not to go overboard.” She bounced off the sofa and jabbed him in the side. “Enough banter. Let’s go up on the roof.”

J
OE WILLINGHAM HUDDLED
in the parking lot across from the bus station at Third and Cincinnati. He used his high-powered Ricoh binoculars to scan the motley collection of passengers who stepped off the latest arrival, watching for the right one.

It was a talent he had developed over the years—an art, really. He could tell at a glance if a person would be susceptible to the scam. Of course what he ideally wanted was someone who would not merely fall for it, eventually, given much time-consuming effort and persuasion, but someone who would fall for it with great aplomb and enthusiasm, someone who could not only be pushed but would tumble head over heels into the abyss. And someone who, in the unlikely event the ruse fell apart, would not be in a position to put up any opposition. The perfect patsy—that was who everyone working the con hoped for. And Joe Willingham knew how to find him.

He continued scanning the passengers until he saw exactly what he wanted. The instant the black kid in the bib overalls and straw hat stepped off the bus, Joe knew he’d found his mark. It was not even something he had to think consciously about. Years of experience had made it instinctive. Truth was, Joe thought, he was the best scam artist in Tulsa—probably the best in the whole damn state. Perhaps his self-estimation was immodest, but facts were facts. He was the best.

He eased out of his crouched position and started slowly across the street. Judging from the rube’s garb, he was from some hick town west or south of Tulsa—Henrietta or Poteau or some backwater burg like that. Probably saved up his money all year long so he could treat himself to a weekend in the big city—see a show, go to a bar or club, maybe transact a little business with one of the hookers on Eleventh Street. One of the first things Joe had spotted through his binos was the fat wallet in the back pocket of the kid’s overalls.