Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine Presents Fifty Years of Crime and Suspense (36 page)

My battered old Canon, loaded with a fresh roll of twelve-hundred-speed print, worked great. I shot up all ten frames, getting virtually every angle except from directly overhead, as Marybeth and the man leaned close together over the table, talking, laughing, drinking drinks, absorbed in each other. Then I strolled out of there, unobserved by both.

I
WAS BACK
the next night, cameraless. I grabbed a stool at one corner of the bar and watched Marybeth and her swain as they went through the routine. The guy must have had a bladder of prodigious capacity, because it seemed like hours before he finally excused himself and went to the john. I followed him.

It was empty except for us. While the guy did his business at the far end, I busied myself combing my hair at the mirror, gambling that he was fastidious enough to wash up after. He was. I let him get his hands full of soapy lather before I said, “Think we can do some business, pal?”

He hardly glanced at me as he scrubbed. “Buzz off.”

I shook my head regretfully. “Not good.” I reached into my hip pocket, pulled out the nice, crisp, three-by-five color glossy, and dropped it on the aluminum shelf below the mirror in front of him. “That's what I'm selling,” I said softly. “You interested?”

The picture was a tight shot of him and Marybeth, noses inches apart over the rough-hewn booth table in Rushing the Growler. I was quite proud of it. Good focus and composition, sharp and clear, with only available light yet.

He stopped scrubbing and studied the picture as the water rinsed his hands clean. He was a young fellow, younger than Marybeth—she's about my age—dark-haired with deep eyes and a thickly muscled, symmetrical, almost handsome face, the skin of which showed five o'clock shadow. He wore a light gray jacket, open-necked white shirt, and dark slacks. His tan could have come from the sun or a lamp, you just can't tell anymore. He shut off the water and flicked the wet off his hands and straightened to face me. He did not look happy.

I said: “For shame. See that ring on your finger? No, not the pinky ring, the one on the
next
finger there. That means you're married, remember? And so's she.”

“What's your interest?” His voice was a toneless, husky whisper.

“Not financial, for once. It's just this. Get off her and stay off, and this goes no further.”

He nodded, lips pressed tight over his good white teeth. Then he said, “Now I'd like to show
you
something, friend. I'm going into my inside jacket pocket, real slowly, fingers only. All right?”

I was unarmed and had made no threats of violence, but I nodded. He reached inside his jacket, came out with a small black wallet, and opened it. The badge gleamed, an embossed picture-ID next to it. Donald Boltz, special agent, Michigan Bureau of Investigation. I said, with more assurance than I felt right then, “That supposed to mean something important?”

“You know,” he said, “there's a thing called obstruction of justice. There's another called interfering with an official investigation. I could mangle you lots of ways, ways you haven't even heard of yet. You follow?”

“I'm scared to death here. Really I am. So humor me.”

“I'm on police business,” he answered, closing the wallet and putting it away. “There's no funny stuff between her and me. Now, if you don't mind my asking, who in the hell are you?”

For some deep instinctive reason, probably because he would have died laughing, I did not show him my private detective license. I answered, “Ben Perkins. I'm her brother-in-law.”

Boltz stared at me. Then he dumped his head back and laughed at the ceiling, even white teeth gleaming in the fluorescent light. I stood impassively, hands folded in front of me, wanting badly for some reason to hit him very hard. When he recovered, he mused, “Isn't that a riot? Out-of-the-way place like this … no suspicious eyes … her brother-in-law!”

“Yeah. Real thigh-slapper. What I'd like to know is, why is the MBI interested in Marybeth?”

He still smiled, but the humor had fled his eyes. “I don't have to waste my time explaining anything to you. She's your brother's wife, so fine, I've explained there's nothing personal going on and that's all you need to know.” Boltz's jaw tightened. “Don't cross my path again. I get upset really easily.”

He walked past me, brushing intentionally close, to the door and then out without looking back. I stared at the space he'd left, remembering his casual yet high-quality and expensively tailored suit, his six-hundred-dollar lizard-skin shoes, the gold pinky ring with diamond chips. For a policeman, Special Agent Donald Boltz seemed to pull down an abundance of disposable income.

D
ICK
D
ENNEHY
studied the picture through his aviator glasses. He snorted. “So. One of the glamour boys.”

“How's that?” I asked.

Dennehy stared at me bleakly. He's a big, somewhat out of shape, grayish blond, wound tight with the cheerful malevolence of the career cop. He wore a gray suit—I believe he buys them by the gross at K-Mart—and the inevitable Lucky straight-end smoldered from the fingers of the hand in which he held the picture. We sat in a booth in Pringle's, the Novi saloon where we met once a week to straighten out the world.

Dennehy, eyes still on me, dropped the picture. “Glamour boys,” he repeated. “I'm with the state police, remember? We're the ones who get called in on cases
after
these glamour-boy clowns with the ‘Michigan Bureau of Investigation'”—he snarled the name—“screw them up.”

“I get the picture.” The barmaid expertly dropped another Signature and rum-and-Coke on our table. “Thanks, Cindy,” I said absently. “So,” I said to Dick as he took a pull from his drink, “since apparently you state police boys don't get along with the MBI, can I assume there's no way you can find out what—or if—Boltz is investigating that involves Marybeth?”

Dick made a gleeful, crooked smile. “O ye of little faith! Sure I can, my spies are everywhere. Be glad to.” He slipped the picture into his jacket pocket, fired up another weed, leaned forward on his elbows, and asked quietly, “You think he's doing the dirty deed to her?”

“Hell, I don't know, Dick.”

“What'll you do if it turns out he is?”

“Don't know that, either.”

“Huh. Now that we're clear on what you don't know, tell me: what
do
you know, Ben?”

“I know what I feel. I feel like Boltz is a bad act. I got a real bad smell from him. I don't trust him—I don't trust much of anything anymore—but I trust that feeling.” I stared over his shoulder at the window that fronted the place. “I feel like I have to watch out for Marybeth at this point.”

“You don't mind my saying so, I didn't think you and your family were particularly close.”

“We're not.” I met his eyes. “But you still watch out for them.”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
I waited at the curb in front of the City of Frederick police department. At ten sharp, Marybeth Perkins came out the big revolving glass door, stopped on the steps, and scanned the street looking for me. She didn't spot me right away, because I was right there in plain sight. Then she grinned, waved, and walked toward me. She passed a tall, gray-haired, hump-shouldered uniformed man headed into the building and said cheerfully, “Good morning, Chief Harran.” He nodded. I got a good look at him before he disappeared into the building. It isn't every day you get a good look at a chief of police, even of a small burg like Frederick. I was impressed.

It was a brilliantly clear hot day, and I had the Mustang's top down. Marybeth swung into the passenger seat with the agility of a dancer, slammed the door, and said, “I'm on break, I've got ten minutes. Drive.” I fired up the motor and rolled away slowly.

Marybeth lighted an Eve cigarette from the dashboard lighter, hung her right elbow out the gunwale of the car, and looked at me. She was tan and freckled, thin and supple, whip-like, energized, and just Bill's height, which explains why she wore shoes like the flat brown dress sandals she had on today. Above that she wore pink snug slacks, and a ruffly white-on-white blouse with a gold pin inserted over her left breast. Her brown hair was a series of waves that ended neatly just above her shoulders. She had a keen mind and, sometimes, a sharp mouth, and I braced myself a little, wondering why she'd asked me to meet her here.

As I swung right on the Milan road, she said, “Don Boltz told me about your conversation with him.”

“Look, it was strictly by accident I saw you two there—”

She interrupted with an edge in her voice. “You thought I was stepping out on Bill.”

“The thought crossed my mind. But—”

She waved her hand. “Never mind. I'm going to tell you what Don told me not to tell anybody.” She breathed deeply. “I'm helping the MBI investigate our department. On deep background.”

I glanced at her. “Funny stuff going on?”

She drew on her cigarette and said quietly, “Worse than that, Ben. It's the chief. He's dirty. Dirty as can be. I've been there eight years, I've seen a lot, and it starts right at the top. Kickbacks, protection, grease, you name it. I looked the other way for a long, long time. Finally it got to be too much. So I contacted the MBI.”

“Does Bill know?”

She stared at me, composing her thoughts, and said, “No. Don said not to tell
anybody
. Besides … well, you know Bill.”

“Sure I do. But go on.”

She took a last offhand hit from her half-smoked cigarette and flicked it away from the car as I made a right into an old residential neighborhood and circled a big block, headed back toward the police station. “Bill's very … traditional. He's a quiet man. He absolutely detests confrontations. He avoids trouble. He's very dutiful, a good husband, Ben, but underneath he's scared. He worries and frets. He doesn't understand trouble, and he doesn't understand people who get into it. You know what I mean?”

It rang true. It explained part of the narrowness of my relationship with my own brother, the tight groove of conversation limited to cars and tools and baseball and the old neighborhood. Bill had really liked Charlotte, my first serious girlfriend, and never understood why I didn't marry her, had never married anybody. He'd never understood why I left my assembly line job to be a gofer for a union boss. During the endless federal investigation of my boss's racketeering and tax-evasion activities, in which I was a notorious and uncooperative material witness, Bill had refused to speak to me. He found my private detective work incomprehensible and never asked about it. For two guys who'd slept in the same room for better than ten years, we'd grown about as far apart as two people can get.

I right-turned on red onto a major street. The police station loomed ahead on the right, and I threaded through traffic toward it. Marybeth said pensively, “I don't make a habit of keeping secrets from Bill. But this time I have to, at least till it's over. And I'm asking you not to tell him, either, ever; you let me do it when the time is right. He's your brother, but I'm his wife, and I'm calling the shots. You've got to help me.”

I stopped in front of the station and turned to her. “Of course I'll help you. Anytime, anywhere, anyhow.”

She had her door half open when she froze, turned, leaned over, and kissed me. I gave her a squeeze and patted her back. She was warm and smelled good, but it was brother-sister stuff, no more. I eased her away and said, “Just one thing. I know the street, I know this work. Something doesn't feel right about this thing, this Boltz fellow. You take real good care, Marybeth. Stay in touch.” I grinned. “
I
don't mind trouble. It's what I do.”

She smiled, nodded, got out, and walked across the sidewalk toward the door. “I'll be watching out for you,” I called.

I
HELD THE
tester up and examined the colors. The pH was right on, the chlorine a tad down. I threw three concentrated chlorine eggs into the skimmer, screwed down the lid, and headed back to Building One of Norwegian Wood as a battalion of kids carrying towels and flotation devices screamed out the side door toward the pool. The phone in the maintenance office was ringing when I got there. It was Dick Dennehy.

“You hollered?” he asked.

“I got the story already. MBI's investigating the Frederick P.D. It's dirty, top to bottom, the chief included. Right?”

“Wrong,” he answered equably.

“No, I'm not. Marybeth told me all about it.” I drew up short as Dick's meaning sunk in. “No word of it out there?”

“Nope. Nothing like that. Boltz is a soldier, nothing more. His thing is chop shops, bad-check artists, stuff like that. Listen, Ben, Boltz isn't senior enough to be doing something like a background inquiry into a police department. Even if he were, he wouldn't be doing it alone. There'd be a task force. And the state police would probably be doing it, not the MBI.” Static whirred in the line for a second. “This smells like leftover fish, pal.”

The phone receiver felt very warm and damp in my hand. I struggled to sound certain, and failed. “Maybe your contacts are uninformed.”

“Don't underestimate me. My contacts are top-aiders. They'd know, no matter how quiet it was. Whatever Boltz is up to, he's in business for himself.”

“I don't like the sound of it.”

“You'll like
this
even less. Boltz is thought of as an operator. A little fast, a little flashy, they think he's been off the reservation more than once, if you catch my drift, only they've never gotten the goods on him. No idea what his game is right now, but if I were you, it being the sister-in-law involved, I'd be extra careful.”

“I'll do that, Dick. Thanks.”

“Chalk up one to that instinct of yours.”