Aaron Conners - Tex Murphy 02 (13 page)

I’d almost finished my cigarette when Melahn came back into the room. Even with no makeup and red, puffy eyes, she was beautiful. The body, the face…but there was more to it than that. I’d never been a good judge of female character - my wife had sworn to that under oath in divorce court - but something indefinable about Melahn told me that there was a good deal more to her than I, or maybe anyone else, had first thought. The Colonel must’ve seen whatever it was she had. Maybe he’d met her through one of his cases and helped her back on her feet. He’d always been smarter than I was.

But now he was dead, and I wasn’t. Melahn sat back down on the wicker chair and buried her nose in a tissue as I stubbed out my Lucky Strike. “I hope you don’t mind.”

Melahn shook her head. I looked at her, knowing that I needed her to talk to me, but not sure how, or if the subject should be broached. Luckily, she took a shaky breath and looked over at me. “Sorry, I haven’t cried in years.”

I nodded. She dabbed her nose and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. After a moment, she glanced at me. “You’re not a cop.”

I paused and thought it over, then shook my head. “No, I’m not. I’m a PI…and an old friend of the Colonel’s.”

Melahn nodded. After a few seconds, she straightened up and pulled her robe tight.

“What do you want to know?”

I shrugged. “Anything. I’m just trying to find out who would’ve killed him.”

“I can’t help you. Roy never talked about his work. And we’d only been seeing each other for a few months. I knew him, but not about the other things in his life.” She raised the tissue to her nose, then folded her hands in her lap. She didn’t look like a hooker.

“That was the way he wanted it. He said we were starting over, together. We didn’t talk about other things.”

A wave of disappointment washed over me. I didn’t want to be insensitive, but I’d been hoping that Melahn could help. Apparently, she couldn’t. I believed what she was telling me, as much as I didn’t want to hear it.

“Tell me, Melahn, is there anything you can think of…anything…Roy…said during the past few times you saw him?”

Melahn’s eyes focused on the floor thoughtfully. After some time, she shook her head.

“No.”

I looked up at the ceiling. Maybe I was asking the wrong questions. “Do you remember him saying anything about CAPRICORN?”

Melahn’s head moved slowly from side to side.

“How about something called the Winter Chip?”

“No.”

Melahn stared back at me, her eyes were starting to brim again as she said, “I’m sorry.”

I was sorry too, and for more than one reason. I stood up and walked to where she was sitting. She looked up as I put my hand on her shoulder. “Me too. I’m sorry about what happened, and I’m sorry I had to tell you.”

I reached into the inner pocket of my overcoat. All I could find was a cash register receipt. I wrote on the back of it, then handed it to Melahn. “Here’s my name and my number. If you can think of anything, or if I can help in any way at all, give me a ring.”

Melahn nodded. I felt like dirt and really wanted to get home and shower. There was probably something I should have said, but I couldn’t think of anything constructive. I put on my hat and walked to the door.

“Wait.”

I turned around, and Melahn stood up. “Roy left some things here. You can see them if you think it’ll help.”

I crossed the room and followed Melahn into her bedroom. She looked into a closet and several drawers and laid a handful of items on the bed. There was a hardback novel, which I flipped through and found nothing in, a pair of cheap reading glasses, a tartan vest, two shirts, a pair of khaki trousers, and a half dozen boxer shorts. I didn’t bother to search the undies, and the shirts and pants turned up nothing. I’d just about decided that I’d hit a dead end when I checked the watch pocket of the vest. Inside was a notebook, about two by three inches. I held it up. “Do you mind if I borrow this?”

Melahn shook her head and began to gather up the items as I left the room. I reached the door and glanced back. She had sat down on the edge of the bed, her face in her hands. I turned and closed the door quietly behind me.

As I walked down the stairs, I flipped through the notebook. Something fluttered out and dropped to the floor. It was a clipping from a newspaper, folded up. As I opened it, a picture in the center caught my eye. It was a photo of the countess’s statuette.

I checked my watch as I left the Knickerbocker building. It was just after 9am. I’d been up for almost a day and a half, and it felt more like 21 o’clock… p.m. Louie’s coffee had sobered me up, and now I needed another drink.

I lifted off and headed for the nearest bar. Why did the Colonel have a photo of the statuette? Suddenly, his disappearance was connected to the bogus Countess. When I’d been in the Police Commissioner’s office, I honestly hadn’t thought I was even remotely involved in the Colonel’s murder, but now I was starting to think maybe I was. But how?

I needed bourbon and time to meditate. I glanced down at the street below and caught sight of a sign: The Gaslight Lounge. The open sign was lit up, and I still had $40 in my wallet. The Gaslight Lounge looked like just the kind of dive a destitute PI would waste the last of his cash in.

It was dark and stinky inside-a perfect place to think and drink when one’s biological clock is on the fritz. I ordered a serving of Old Grand-Dad with a sidecar from a bartender named Denny and carried the Papa glass and the Baby glass to a circular booth in the corner. The malt was cheap, but adequate, all things considered. As the harsh, caramelly taste ran down my throat and blazed a trail into my stomach, I pulled out the newspaper clipping and examined it.

The article said that a daring heist had been pulled off in a museum in Berlin. The only item stolen was the statuette shown in the photo. The article went on to say that the statuette had only recently been unearthed while renovating an old section of the city.

There was no date shown anywhere on the clipping.

I took another sip of Old Grand-Dad and closed my eyes. My brain was filled with puzzle pieces that didn’t seem to fit together. The first piece was the Colonel stopping by my office for no apparent reason. Then there was the call from that “Countess”. She hires me to find this statuette, claiming that it’s an old family heirloom that had been stolen from her. Of course, she’s lying, but I don’t know it at the time. I take the job, find out about Eddie Ching, and follow his trail to Mexico City. I find out that he’s in some sort of illegal exporting business, but how the statuette got from the museum in Berlin to Ching’s apartment is a complete mystery. Regardless, I get the statuette, but it’s stolen from me in Brownsville. All indications point to me being set up and followed.

According to the police, the Colonel disappeared about the same time I left town, and the newspaper clipping in the notebook shows that he probably knew about the statuette before I did.

Now, for the questions: How, if at all, was the statuette connected to the abduction of the Colonel? Were the people who set me up and jumped me the same people who

kidnapped, and possibly killed, the Colonel? How did Eddie Ching fit into the picture?

Why did everyone want to get their hands on the statuette?

Maybe I could find some answers in the Colonel’s notebook. I opened it, half-expecting to see a comprehensive listing of women’s names, addresses, phone numbers, and vital statistics. Not that that would have been necessarily bad. The Colonel had always had good taste with regard to the fairer sex. But my suspicions were unfounded. As I flipped through, I saw everything from Freudian doodles to grocery lists, but nothing noteworthy.

Then, close to the end of the used pages, I ran across something that reminded me of the mysterious index card I’d received in the Mail. The Colonel had jotted down a series of letters and numbers: BCM1206428X8. But this was the Colonel’s personal notepad.

Why would he use a coded message to himself? It had to mean something.

The code was too long for a licence plate or vid-phone number. I looked it over for several minutes, then noticed something interesting. If I inserted two spaces and two slashes, I got BCM 12/06/42 8X8. I checked the date on my watch. December 8. And the last time I checked, it was 2042. The centre part of the code was 12/06/42. It had to be a date… the day before yesterday.

I poured the contents of my sidecar into the larger class. BCM, BCM. The letters seemed somehow familiar. I lifted a glass of bourbon. Three booths away, I saw a tiny, elderly grandmother-type reading a newspaper. The Bay City Mirror. BCM.

I looked down at the notebook. Bay City Mirror, 6th December, 2042. It had to be the answer. But what was the 8X8? Maybe it referred to an article on page eight, in the eighth column. I thought it over four minutes, then decided not to worry about it for the time being. The bottom line was, there might be a message of some kind contained in the newspaper from two days ago.

Now, where to get one? The public library kept them. I started to gather up my things, then stopped. Maybe there was one here at the Lounge. It was worth a try. I sidled up to where Denny the Bartender was standing behind the bar, applying a lemon wedge to the rim of a glass containing some sort of sissified cocktail.

Denny glanced up at me blandly. “Help ya?”

“Another Old Grand-Dad please. Straight up.”

Denny nodded and had a tumbler in front of me momentarily. He didn’t seem overly friendly, so I handed him a ten. “Keep the change.”

Denny raised an eyebrow and gave me a reassessing look. Apparently I didn’t look like a tipper. “Thanks.” He opened a register and deposited the ten, pulled out a five, and dropped it into a big glass jar, then turned back to me.

“Want some peanuts? Or I think I got some goldfish crackers around here somewhere, if you like those.”

“No, thanks. Actually, I was wondering if you might possibly have for the Bay City Mirror from a couple of days ago.”

Denny furrowed his substantial brow. “Lemme think. I might have one laying around somewhere. I got today’s. Louise is reading it.”

He motioned toward the dowager three booths away from mine.

“No. I need the want from the day before yesterday. The 6th.”

The Bartender pursed his lips importantly. “I’ll see what I can do. Go ahead and have a seat.”

I thanked him and return to my booth. Denny disappeared into some nook behind the bar. Impatiently, I glanced around and, for the first time, looked closely at the surroundings. The Lounge had probably been something special in its heyday. The silver-sheened wallpaper was-top-of-the line a hundred years ago. Now it was patched and dull, like most of the clientele, at least those I could make out in the dim, smoky light. There was a pretty good crowd for the time of day. At least a dozen people were drinking alone in books or at tables. Three college kids were shooting pool on a single table crammed into one corner. A handful of haggard regulars were clustered at one end of the bar, engaging in barfly banter.

Half a smoke later, Denny stopped by and handed me a newspaper. I thanked him and spread it out across the tabletop. I started by turning to page A8. There were only six columns. In fact, none of the pages had more than six columns. I’d never noticed. I checked the 8th paragraph, the 8th sentence, the 8th line, and the 8th story. Nothing.

I moved on to B8, then repeated the process for the C, D and E sections. All came up empty. I turn back to the front page and started a methodical search. There was no way to know what I was looking for, so I made sure to inspect every word closely. By the time I hit the local-news section, however, it struck me that I wasn’t conducting a very logical search. If I wanted to leave a message in a newspaper, where would I place it? I flipped to the back and found the classifieds.

This portion of the newspaper, unlike the others, was divided into 10 columns. I turned excitedly to the 8th page and read the entire 8th column, but nothing stood out. I tried other combinations of 8 and 8. Three cigarettes later, I had squat. I was tempted to abandon hope, but I still had a strong hunch I was on the right path. Since I didn’t have to be anywhere anytime soon, I decided to cover the entire classifieds section.

Other than an embarrassing fascination with the Women Seeking Women personals, I’d never had much interest in this part of the paper. For me, it was the sports section, the comics page, my horoscope, and maybe the crossword puzzle. The personal ads were a seedy, pathetically lonely place I’d never wanted to visit.

Undaunted, I pulled a pen out of the breast pocket of my coat and began scanning. As I read through Men Seeking Women, I marvelled that guys who obviously had difficulty meeting women in person would be capable of such macho posturing. As I perused Women Seeking Men, I wondered at the level of desperation that drove these ladies to pay good money to advertise for Mr Right. As I scanned the Women Seeking Women, vague visions of naughtiness danced in my head.

I stopped cold at Men Seeking Men. I guessed I’d been wrong about the code in the Colonel’s notebook. There didn’t seem to be anything relevant in the newspaper. He certainly wouldn’t have been corresponding in the Men Seeking Men section. Not the Colonel. Not that I had a problem with it. I’d always been an open minded, live-and-let-live kind of guy. It was just that… well, it was like country music. Some people really liked it, and that was fine. It just wasn’t my bag, so to speak.

I picked up my lighter and clicked it open and shut several times. I knew I should check it out anyway. At least I was in an anonymous setting where no one I knew would catch me hunched over, intently studying the Men Seeking Men section. I glanced around, just to be sure, and then started going through the entries.

I was prepared for some weirdness, but the fourth ad was especially odd: “I gave the extra one to David. He seems elated. Counting exact as per policy norm.” It certainly wasn’t much of a personal ad. I had a feeling it was what I’d been looking for.

I checked the Colonel’s notebook. What was the damn 8X8 reference? Maybe it had something to do with counting exact as per policy norm. I tapped a pencil against my cheek. I was missing something. Maybe the word norm was important. 8X8. Eight times eight. Multiplication had always been one of my strong suits-using single-digit numbers, at any rate. That would be sixty-four. I counted the letters in the message. There were sixty-four.