Dark Blonde (18 page)

I waited until dark, which comes early in November in Chicago, and drove up to Oak Park. I drove slowly down Whipple’s street. The Tudor sat back from the street in the middle of the block. Driveway empty, house dark, except for a faint glow in a front window.

I drove around the corner and parked the Buick facing away from the house where I could keep an eye on the place through my rear-view mirror from about 300 feet away. This time I took Rick’s advice: I wrapped a sleeve around my ankle and stuck a .25 I’d kept around the office into it.

I slouched in the seat, adjusted the mirror, checked my .45, pocketed an extra magazine from the glove box, and settled down to wait. I craved a smoke, but couldn’t take the chance of being seen.

An hour slogged by. Then my scar started throbbing and heating up. Dad didn’t answer my direct call. Headlights flashed about ten blocks ahead, approaching slowly. I slid down all the way. The car rolled past. I raised enough to see a light-colored Pontiac turn the corner, kill the headlights and turn up the Whipple driveway.

In the dim light the silhouette of a tall thin figure, dressed in workout sweats limped noticeably across the driveway and slipped behind the house headed for the back door. Too tall to be a female.

The windows stayed dark, except for a dimming of the already dim light at the front window, like someone or some object had moved in front of the light source.

In less than five minutes the figure crow-hopped out the back, jumped in the Pontiac and wheeled off down the other street at a high rate of speed. The driver left the headlights off until he reached the far corner.

I waited another minute then let myself out the passenger side. I stayed in shadows until I was at the intersection, then sprinted to the corner of the house and up the driveway to the rear.

I listened next to the house. Quiet as the inside of the Sphinx.

A high moon painted a bluish cast on the stucco house and rear yard. The doors to the garage were closed and it was pitch black inside. A car would have given off some dim reflection, so I took it for empty. My scar was doing the rumba, but I couldn’t go back now.

I snuck down a stairwell and tried the bottom door where Whipple’s underlings had taken me for a tea party. Padlocked. I tiptoed up the stairs to the back door and listened. Faint sounds inside, slow and repetitive but what I couldn’t make out. I turned the doorknob and pushed with the tenderness of a little girl lifting an injured bird.

The door opened to a pantry and I went past the kitchen on my right into a long hallway. The sounds were some sort of music, like a stuck record. Water dripped into a pan in the sink with the same rhythm. I walked on rubber heels across the kitchen to a swing door into the dining room. Easing the door open enough to peek through, I could see into the dining room and hall to one corner of the living room, where pulsating light played with shadows on the ceiling. My scar insisted on being rubbed, so I did.

Unmistakably, a woman’s muffled voice, a couple of words, monotone, came from the front.

I listened.

The music tempo seemed to speed up, not a stuck record after all. Then the same voice said “no” three times, but evenly like they were of no importance. I stepped into the dining room that had an open end to a step-down glassed-in lounge with a wet bar. The moonlight poured through the glass roof like water over a dam, highlighting the detail of every glass and surface. I followed a slim shadow to the dark side of the dining room and tiptoed silently to the hall until I stood next to the carpeted hallway that led off in two directions, one to the dim pulse of light and the strange music.

I approached the archway at the end of the hall where the light shone, my .45 held at the ready. Instinct whispered the woman wasn’t alone. A midget with spiked shoes was tap dancing along my scar. I expected to hear running footsteps or a body fall but there was nothing except the music, rising and beating louder until I recognized it as Ravel’s
Bolero
, and not a stuck record at all, although there really isn’t much difference. Some neurotic sorts even like the melody.

At last I came to the living room opening and closer to the light source. I followed the muzzle of my Colt around the entrance. The room was curtained across the front with the sole light being a candle on a side table some twelve feet ahead of me, or what used to be a candle and now was a puddle of wax with a wick barely alive. The flame was in a draft and danced waves across the walls and ceiling. It dipped and nearly went out. The corners of the room brooded in deep shadows from large furniture. A semi-circle of wingback chairs faced the curtains. Between the chairs reflected the outline of a conference table. The ceilings were ten feet high, with massive dark beams and moldings. Spooky.

My nose caught the lingering odor of marijuana mixed with cheap cologne, maybe bay rum. I held my breath and listened. At my feet was a pile of old mail. I picked up one envelope and made out the address. I was in Kermit Brockway’s house, not Whipple’s, the same one I’d been held in. Brockway wouldn’t wear that sort of cologne. I had no idea who or what lurked in the room besides a woman who liked to say no, which meant she might be any of a few million that I knew. I hadn’t recognized her voice, but it sounded as if she was talking in her sleep.

There might be a killer Doberman in the corner, ready to spring when I approached. Marv and his thug buddy might be hiding behind the curtains with automatic weapons, watching me near the bait with their mouths dropped open, breathing silently. It was the sort of room that you couldn’t enter without your imagination quivering, the kind of place that’s somber even in daylight.

The candle flickered and went out. I realized I’d left the rear door ajar and a draft down the hall had killed the dwindling candle.

I groped to the right for a light switch, something that’s always on the right when you go in a room. Nothing. My eyes adjusted to the darkness. A car went by out front and the momentary glare of its headlights penetrated the room enough for me to make out a davenport to my left, with an end table and lamp next to it. I edged around to the davenport and followed it with my hand extended out in the blackness until it touched the unmistakable folds of the lampshade. Crouching, I felt up under the shade for the light switch, suddenly having a great deal of sympathy for blind people. It was one of those push button switches.

A slight shuffling sound came from somewhere in the room. I froze.

My palm sweat against the cold grip of my .45 held toward the front windows. I expected a loud voice or someone to burst in at any second. The strapped .25 began to bite into my ankle. My foot tingled, half asleep. Two-gun Mike, ready to nail the bad guys on one foot.

The woman’s voice again, this time urgent, just one “no,” came from somewhere in front of the chairs.

I snapped on the lamp and the shadows except those around the curtains vanished. No Tommy-gun surprise, no attack dogs, no goblins, no headless bodies, no blood stains on the carpet. A slight sound came from the chairs, a woman’s catch in the throat.

“Does anyone here need rescuing?” I asked into the backs of the chairs. No answer. I prowled the room with my eyes. The usual living room setup, with love seats, soft chairs and meaningless pictures on the wall. A phonograph was on the opposite wall with the deck open and the record still playing on its last legs. The drop armature was set out so that the record would finish and the arm would return to the middle and replay the record. Endlessly, nauseatingly, just like the choice of music. Ravel himself would have loved it.

An ashtray on the coffee table vomited cigarette and marijuana butts, some with lipstick. On one table a white powder residue. Stained pillows fallen from the davenport. Peeking out of one of the cushions was a bright blue nylon material that became Molly’s borrowed panties when I freed them — the same panties I’d given Julia. Ravel’s neurosis was grinding my nerves now and I lifted the arm and clicked off the power. Slipping the panties in my coat pocket, I wondered what Molly’d say if she knew where they’d been.

A floor lamp tilted awkwardly toward the flank of wingback chairs. I clicked on the light and faced the chairs.

A dark blonde in a full-length silver mink coat draped across the middle chair, her head lolled forward. I lifted her chin. Julia, her coat spread open, naked underneath. Her hands hid deep in her pockets, her hair a riot. She stared blankly at nothing in particular out of a sickly blue-white face. I might as well have been wallpaper.

In the end chair, turned half to the wall, hung the side of a shoulder, an arm wearing a pin-stripe suit with limp hand exposed. I gripped my Colt tighter and crept around to the front of the chair. Unlike the other chairs in a neat semi-circle, this one faced the wall.

Julia mumbled unconnected words and unintelligible noises from her throat. She was hopped up pretty good on some sort of smack. There could have been a marching band striding around the room for all she knew. She wouldn’t have heard it. On her bare stomach a dusting of the white powder. I dipped my finger in the powder for a taste. Big H.

In the darkness I hadn’t noticed the chair turned to the wall, and almost hadn’t caught the arm and hand sticking out. If it had been Marv or French with a big gun waiting in the chair, I would have bought a nasty end to my investigative career right then.

He was slumped down into the chair, his head twisted forward, chin on chest. In his lap a dark purple orchid like it’d just been picked from a hothouse. Some sort of killer’s signature. His eyes were half open like he was bluffing with a pair of sixes. They stared at the table as if the final pot was up for grabs. Ascribing a mood or thought to a dead man’s eyes was a little game my dad told me about that I’d picked up since, his way of blocking out the horror of a murder scene. It never helped much but it’d become my habit anyway. Since I’d imagined Brockway checking and raising with his law buddies, I suppose finding his corpse with half-open eyes connected with that imagery. Rick would be amused at the thought.

One bullet had punctured his skull exactly between his eyes, a point blank shot, small caliber. The gush of blood that ran down one side of his nose was still red and wet. A dark circle with pieces of brains showed in the material behind his head. The slug had exited rougher coming out than going in. At shoulder height on either side of him, holes in the chair, probably bullets fired to get Brockway to talk. The holes in the chair went through the back and down into the carpet behind, but not the headshot. That slug was still in the stuffing of the chair.

I checked Brockway’s pockets. Money clip, twelve one hundred dollar bills, crisp and new. Phone number penciled on a paper slip. Julia’s private number, in a woman’s hand, the numbers artistically styled. Brockway had about as much artistic bent as a plumber. I pocketed the paper.

His neck was still warm. I didn’t need to check for a pulse, but he’d been shot within the last half hour. I stood there looking at him and back at Julia, trying to figure out how she wasn’t the killer. She wasn’t bound or in any shape to fire a weapon with any degree of accuracy.

The five minutes inside was enough — whoever it was must have threatened and shot Brockway, then fled. Everything I’d done, or left undone swam through my mind, like a drunk with army boots at the deep end of the pool. I should have entered the house when I first arrived, seeing no cars in sight. I might have guessed Julia would be there, drugged, held against her will. I worked up a sweat concentrating on how to get Julia out of the mess.

After examining the body, I went back to Julia. I folded her coat back around her.

“Hello, hello. No, no, no. You’re way too late, my Angel man. Too, too.”

I felt her face. Her skin was clammy, pupils wide, fixed like a blind person going to the electric chair. “Too late for what?”

She pulled one hand from her pocket. In it was a pearl-handled, nickel-plated .32. She held it out like it was something dirty. I took it from her and broke the magazine. It was dirty — three bullets gone, fired recently. Again I manufactured another explanation from the obvious: the figure who’d entered the house had left the gun in Julia’s pocket, making her the patsy. Anyway, that’s what I wanted to believe so I did.

The cops would find Brockway, Julia’s prints on the .32, and probably all over the house too. I wiped the gun clean with my handkerchief, then wiped the table in front of her. I went around the room and wiped prints where I’d come in and on the light and ashtray. Then I went back to Julia. Her eyes were closed and she’d opened her coat again.

“Julia, try to stay awake. Can you walk?”

She flopped her head to one side and peeked through her hair and said, “No. Walking with you’s trouble. Sex with you’s wonderful, but trouble. Everything’s trouble for a girl like me.”

Then she mumbled something about Brockway wanting a blowjob and swearing she’d kill him if he forced her. Then she said she must have killed him because the shots were so loud. Then she slumped down, closed her peepers and snored loudly.

 
I grabbed her chin and smacked her a sharp one on the cheek. She didn’t even flinch. I smacked her two more and she opened her eyes with fire starting up in them.

“You beast,” she said. “Private dick with style. Why didn’t you come to Omaha when I was single? Why couldn’t I have seen you before — ” Her voice choked itself in her throat. “I need a drink, a drink, a drink.” She lifted her arms as if to embrace me. They were limp as if floating.