Bad Moon Rising (12 page)

“She sure is nice.”

“She sure is, Sarah. And so are you. I'm going to find Bobby Randall and meanwhile you're invited to stay in this luxurious office of mine as long as you want to.”

Jamie returned just as I spoke. “Don't worry, Mr. C. I'll take good care of her. I'll show her some of Laurie's baby pictures.” She beamed down at Sarah. “Laurie's my baby.” I was surprised she hadn't already told our guest all about her. People who've been in my office for more than three minutes usually know the whole story by heart.

12

I
'd been to Bobby Randall's place only once. Two years ago a woman who worked in the courthouse asked me to tell him to stop seeing her sixteen-year-old daughter. He was, after all, in his early twenties. His age made him prosecutor bait but she didn't want to press charges because, she said, her daughter, who was very much taken with the handsome, arrogant Bobby, would never forgive her. The woman told me that she had nightmares of her daughter getting pregnant.

I'd seen Bobby around town. In his red Thunderbird he was hard to miss. His trail of heartbroken women provided tavern talk for other young men. Bobby was not beloved. In the words of the Everly Brothers, he was a bird dog. He seemed to take particular pride in sleeping with women who were affixed to boyfriends, fiancés, and husbands. He had the looks, all dark curly hair and features that were almost pretty, and swagger that would put my favorite draft dodger John Wayne to shame.

As I pulled into the alley where he had turned a three-car garage into his workshop, I heard the competing sounds of rock music and circular saw. I pulled off the gravel onto blanched grass crosscut with tire tracks. This was the visitor parking area.

The doors were wide open, allowing in heat and flying kamikaze bugs. The setup was impressive. Lighting was provided by overhead fluorescents. The walls were covered with shelving and pegboard that contained hammers, pliers, extra saw blades, screwdrivers, and so many other things that I gave up looking. He was cutting two-by-fours on a workbench big enough to play Ping-Pong on. He stood in a T-shirt and jeans on a floor of wood that he'd covered with a linoleumlike surface. Everything was bright and new, as if it would be used for a photo in a trade magazine. The one element that enhanced even the splendor of the workshop was the splendor of the blonde in the very tight Levi's cutoffs and braless pink T-shirt who sat perched on a stool in the corner. She held a long cigarette in one hand and a magazine in the other. Neither she nor Randall looked up when I entered because neither could hear me above the whine of the saw. The smell of freshly sawn wood took me back to the days when I was little and watched my father make wonderful things in his own tiny workshop.

When he'd shaved as much as he'd wanted to off the two-by-four he reached down for another board and that's when he saw me. His first reaction was anger. He changed it quickly to a smug smile. “I could have you arrested for trespassing.”

“Who is he, Bobby?” She was the mythic mountain girl in all of Charles Williams's Gold Medal novels, pure animal sex and ravishing insolence. The voice didn't work with the body—cigarettes and booze and, likely, drugs.

“He's a nobody who thinks he's somebody because he works for Judge Whitney.”

“That bitch. She put my brother in county for six months.”

“You don't have any friends here, McCain.” He lifted his saw and jabbed it in my direction. “So if I was you, I'd leave right now.”

“You could take him one-handed, Bobby. He don't even come up to your shoulders.”

Bobby nodded to the blonde who was, for all her looks, a pretty nasty lady.

“She's got two brothers, McCain. She grew up watching them beat the hell out of each other. She knows about fighting. If she says I can whip your ass, take her word for it.”

“How much dope were you selling Vanessa Mainwaring?”

That got us past the tough-guy talk.

The dark eyes narrowed in fear.

“A murder like that, the police are going to start looking into her background for the county attorney. The drugs'll come up and your name is going to be in the papers and on TV.” It was bullshit but he was too dumb to know that. “You're going to find yourself up against some heavy-duty charges. Paul Mainwaring's going to see that you get put away for a long time.”

The blonde started to say something but stopped herself. She had a scorching glare. I could almost feel my skin shrivel.

“The kind of business you're in, Bobby, you'll be lucky to get out in fifteen years.”

“You bastard. You've been waitin' to nail me, haven't you, McCain?”

“You're wasting my time, Randall. I want to know how much dope she was buying and what kind.”

“And then you run to the cops.”

“Or that bitch of a judge.” Blondie.

“Your Thunderbird was parked outside the barn where Vanessa's body was found.”

He finally put the saw down. He made a show of flexing his bicep as he did so. Even in panic he had to peacock it. “So what?”

“Your car was there during the time the coroner said she was killed. So where were you?”

“You don't have to tell him nothing, Bobby. It's two against one. All we gotta say is he made alla this up.”

“I just walked around the commune the way I usually do, McCain. I like the fresh air out there.”

God had provided Randall with enviable skills—enviable to me anyway—as a carpenter and handyman. His law degree was apparently still in the mail.

“Mike Potter has checked all the footprints in the barn. He's accounted for all of them except two. I haven't mentioned you to him yet. But how would you like it if I went straight from here to a phone and told him to check out all your shoes?”

Even Blondie gulped when I said this. For just a second not even her cunning could disguise her apprehension. I wasn't sure what they were hiding from me but obviously I'd made both of them nervous.

“Let's go back to the dope. How much and what kind?”

“This is really bullshit, man. Like I said, I could charge you with trespassing.”

“Yeah, you could. And I could always call Mike Potter. How about if we swap, Randall? You tell me about the drugs and I won't tell Potter anything if I believe you're telling me the truth.”

“Don't tell him anything, Bobby. That bitch judge of his'll just put you in prison the same way she did Ronnie.”

How could anybody as ravishing—and she was—as Blondie be such a bitch? And not exactly a bright one at that.

“I wouldn't listen to her, Bobby. She wouldn't be able to help you when Potter and the county attorney started snooping around. I can help you if you help me now.”

“You back off, Dodie. I gotta be careful here.”

Dodie? I had nothing against the name but somehow she wasn't a “Dodie.” Dodies are cute and pert in my mind; this Dodie was a long-legged female swashbuckler who used sex and her belligerent mouth to get her way. Dodie?

Dodie slid off the stool and came up to stand next to Randall. She stood hip-cocked and spectacular. Just as long as she didn't open her mouth. “He's conning you.”

“Maybe so, but I want to hear him out at least. Why don't you go in and see about supper?”

“I want to stay here.”

At this rate ol' Bobby was soon going to get kicked out of the He-Man Club. You know, the guys who don't take crap off anybody, especially women. Dodie-with-the-unlikely-name was clearly in charge here.

“All right, but keep quiet.”

“I'll keep quiet as long as you don't say anything stupid to this asshole.”

When I thought about it, I could almost feel sorry for Randall.

“How long were you selling her drugs?”

He glanced at Dodie as if seeking her permission to talk. To me he said, “Six, seven months.”

“How often?”

“She was one of my best customers. Every seven or eight days or so.”

“You ever think maybe he's wired and you're talking yourself into hard time?”

“I'm not wired, Randall. And you're doing the right thing. What kind of drugs did she buy?”

This time he didn't look for permission. “Across the board. At least of the kind I sell. Pot, speed, coke, acid. Once in a while I get weird shit like peyote or something. She liked acid. She loved tripping. The kids at the commune, all they ever want is pot and acid.”

“You get to know her?”

Bobby Randall, cool cat and heartbreaker, blushed, which wasn't doing much for his image. The blooded cheeks told me that she had likely seduced him the way she'd likely seduced a lot of young men. He had to clear his throat to speak. “Talked to her a little bit.”

“That better be all you did.”

“Dodie, I already told ya nothin' happened.”

“I seen her. And I seen the way you looked at her.”

“Yeah, well, nothin' happened.”

“Why was your car there so long last night?”

This time he didn't blush. He lowered his head and stared at the ground for half a minute. Then he looked up and said, “Remember, it's two to one. Your word against ours.”

“You can relax, Randall. I think you're a scumbag but right now I could give a rat's ass about your drug deals. I want to find out who murdered Vanessa and Neil Cameron. So what were you doing there so long?”

“Don't tell him anything more, Bobby. He's got enough to put you away already.”

“None of this goes to the cops, right?”

“They'll nail your ass soon enough. They don't need any help from me. I won't repeat anything we talked about here today.”

He pawed at his face, the same thing I'd been doing to mine. Between the heat Dodie was exuding and the temperature, Randall's garage was one steamy place.

“Me'n Richard—Richard Donovan?—we got a deal. I give him a cut and he tells all his people to buy strictly from me. I've been worried about cops so Richard agreed to let me put my stash in the barn. I was unloading then covering it up. And I didn't see any dead Vanessa.”

“How did Richard act when you got there?”

He was in need of permission again. A quick glance to Dodie then back to me: “Kinda nervous. That doesn't mean anything. All the drugs I was hiding, I was nervous, too.”

“Did you hide them in the front of the barn or in the back?”

“Front. Richard had dug this deep hole, then I had to dig another one. Then we went to my trunk and started loading everything into these army ammunition boxes. You know, metal, and they'd lock real tight. Then we pushed an old refrigerator over the holes we dug.”

Sounded feasible but this was Bobby Randall. I trusted him slightly less than I did Dick Nixon.

“I guess that'll be it for now, Randall.”

“You happy, you dumb bastard? You just talked your way into prison.”

“She's a sweetie, Randall. Make sure you keep her.”

He sighed and shrugged. I gazed into the blazing eyes of Dodie Dear, then I did some shrugging myself and started walking toward the alley. I got my last glimpse of his site. My father would have been overwhelmed by the entire arrangement.

I had just about reached the door when I heard Randall shout: “McCain, duck!”

I pitched myself leftward just in time to see a hammer flying toward the point where my head had been a moment ago.

“You better watch out for Ronnie and Donnie,” she screamed. “They'll make you sorry you were ever born!”

And in this moment of Mountain Beauties slinging hammers at me, Randall shouted out the most preposterous thing of all. “Take a flier with you, McCain. In case you know somebody who needs some carpentry work.”

Right next to the door was a straight-back chair with fliers piled on it. And damned if I didn't pick one up.

13

I
hadn't asked Bobby Randall about Eve Mainwaring. I was lucky he'd told me as much as he had, especially with Mountain Girl there. I doubted he'd talk about Paul's wife anyway. If his story was true about working with Donovan to off-load all his dope, then he had a good excuse—as opposed to an alibi—to be out at the commune. And to spend so much time near the barn. Eve Mainwaring was another matter. I wondered—and he had to be wondering, too—what his carpentry customers would think of him if they knew that he was sleeping with the wife of a man who'd hired him as a handyman.

With his flier on my passenger seat I drove the twenty-eight miles to the Sleepy Time Motel, the just-far-enough-away concrete bunker where you went when you were too scared to try it close to home. Given all the sneaking around and close calls, adultery should be an Olympic sport.

On a summer afternoon when the sun bragged on how mean it could be, I wanted my old Ford ragtop back. And I wanted my father to be alive. And I wanted my mother to make a life for herself, not turn into one of the old ladies who spend most of their free time in church, arthritic hands entwined with rosaries, and memories their only comfort. And I wanted to convince Wendy to marry me, to take the chance at least a part of her knew was worth it.

The radio was still filled with responses to the police riot at the Democratic convention. Mayor Daley was denying he'd made any anti-Semitic remarks, and the police commissioner just couldn't find a single thing his officers had done wrong. It was all the fault of the “anarchists.” Somebody from the police union gave an even stronger defense of the cops. He talked about all the danger they'd faced that night, even though they were the ones with the clubs and guns and punitive rage. Never a mention about how we were feeding an entire generation into the bloody maw of an unnecessary war and how the president and the Pentagon lied every single day to the American people—the president worried about his place in history and the Pentagon not wanting to stop the flow of money to the great war machine Eisenhower had warned about as he left office. The kids weren't in the streets to have a good time—though some were, I suppose. They were there to protest their lives being wasted on the lies of old men.