Dead Ringer (12 page)

“
There’s a body in front of the dumpster out back. Female. She’s nude, full of bullet holes.”

“
Maggie,” Gordon said.

“
It couldn’t be Maggie,” Jonas said. “She said she was going straight home. You called her there.”

But Gordon wasn’t listening. He was off his stool and out the door before the cop could protest. An icy dagger wormed into his spine. Spasms racked his chest. He was in shape, but a heart attack wasn’t out of the question. He was the right age.

He stopped at the mouth of the alley. Jonas and two cops were already there. They’d come through the kitchen. They were standing over a bloody body. The light from Jonas’ kitchen gave the alley a kind of black and white look, surreal.

“
You don’t want to see this.” Jonas came toward him, blocking his view.

“
Get out of my way.”

Jonas stepped aside.

“
You know her?” the cop who had come into the bar said.

Gordon sank to his knees with a thud. He dropped his head into his hands.

“
Sir, we have to ask you to step back,” the policeman said.

Gordon pulled his hands from his face. Tears covered his cheeks. “Get something to cover her with.”

“
I’m sorry we can’t do that. Not yet.”

“
Come on, Gordon.” Jonas put a hand to his shoulder.

“
I won’t leave her.”

“
Please, sir,” the policeman said.

“
Do what you have to. I stay.” Gordon took her hand. There was still some warmth.

“
Sir, please don’t touch the body.”

“
Just her hand,” Gordon said. “I’ll be careful of any evidence that may be under her fingernails.”

“
I’m going to have to insist,” the officer said.

“
Or what?” Gordon looked up at the cop. He bit into his lip to stop the quivering.

“
Just the hand then.” The young officer’s face was pasty white, he looked like he was about to be sick.

There were some people behind the cop. A small crowd was gathering, despite the hour. There should be more cops. Probably on the way. “Keep them back till your people get here,” Gordon said. “I won’t disturb anything.”

“
Yes, sir,” the cop said and with Jonas’ help, they moved the crowd back.

Gordon ached to wipe the hair from her eyes. She hated that. “Oh, Maggie,” he whispered. So much blood.

A couple more uniforms pushed through the crowd. They saw Gordon, one started to speak, but the first officer raised his hand and the man held his tongue. More cops, arriving in pairs. The alley was cleared of civilians, save Jonas and the uniforms.

Gordon stroked the back of Maggie’s hand with his fingers.

“
It’s Wolfe,” one of the cops said.

“
Fucking ghoul,” another said.

“
He gets the job done,” still another said.

Gordon looked up to see a man in his mid-thirties push through the crowd. He was wearing faded Levi’s, a threadbare sportcoat over a white Dodgers T-shirt and a blue Dodgers baseball cap over a shaved head. He didn’t look like a ghoul.

“
Clear everyone out. I need a few minutes,” Wolfe said, voice barely above a whisper.

“
I heard about you. I know what you need,” one of the uniforms said and the police started to move back, taking Jonas with them.

“
Come on,” the cop said to Gordon.

Gordon met Wolfe’s eyes. They were pale blue, but sad, like they should have been brown. Gordon tightened his grip on Maggie’s hand.

“
He can stay,” Wolfe said. “Give us fifteen. If the lab van comes, tell them it’s me, they’ll understand.”

Then the alley was empty, save for Gordon, Wolfe and, of course, Maggie.

“
Your wife?” Wolfe whispered.

“
I’m gay.”

“
How would I know?” Wolfe’s voice seemed to carry years of pain. More than a whisper, almost a rasp. Sad, begging empathy. He squatted down to Gordon’s level.

“
I don’t know. Some people seem to.”

“
Everybody cries,” Wolfe said. “Everybody hurts.”

“
Not just that.”

“
People are what they are.” He reached over and took Maggie’s hand from Gordon. He studied her face. “Who is she?”

“
Maggie Nesbitt,” Gordon said. “She lives upstairs from me. We’re friends.”

“
More than friends, I think,” Wolfe said.

“
Yeah, we’re close.” Gordon didn’t want to admit she was dead.

“
She have a husband? Someone we should notify?”

“
Nick Nesbitt.”

“
The news guy?”

“
Yeah, that’s him.”

“
He at home now, you think?”

“
He wasn’t earlier. Maggie was upset about it.” He paused. “Why’d you clear the cops out?”

“
I have to spend some time alone with the dead. Get a feel for them. Her.” He nodded toward Maggie. “It makes them real. I need that for me to do my job.” He handed her hand back to Gordon, then brushed the hair from her eyes. “She was beautiful.”

Gordon turned away from her, sad that he had to see her this way, afraid this was the way he was going to remember her. “You’re going to get him, this monster?”

“
I am. Now, before they come back, tell me all you can.”

And Gordon did, finishing with Maggie coming into the Whale and telling them about the two men, Virgil and Horace with the ferret face, who’d chased her and the homeless men under the pier who’d rescued her, Darley Smalls and Theo Baptiste.

“
She remembered their names. Both the ones from the store and the men under the pier?”

“
Yeah.”

“
And you remembered, too?”

“
Yeah, I remembered, too.”

“
Most people would have forgotten the second they heard it.”

“
I’m a bright guy.” Blood rushed to Gordon’s face.

“
Sorry. Don’t take anything I say personally. I have to ask. You understand?”

“
Yeah.” Gordon took in a long breath, calmed back down. “My IQ’s off the chart and I have a photographic memory. Show me a page in book and I can read it back a month later.”

“
That’d be great for my line of work.”

“
For me it was a curse. I learned to hide it.”

“
Why?”

Gordon was still holding onto Maggie’s hand. The warmth, what there had been, was gone now. She was getting cold. Gordon shivered. “Being gay wasn’t a good thing when I was growing up. It’s easier now. I was in the closet and didn’t want to draw attention to myself. If people knew how bright I was, they’d want to know why. They’d snoop, find out.”

“
You think?”

“
I know. There was this guy in San Francisco. An ex-marine. He knocked the gun out of Squeaky Frome’s hand as she was popping caps at President Ford. Saved Ford’s life. A hero for a day, till the press found out he was gay. Dragged him out of the closet.”

“
I didn’t know that.”

“
Truth.”

Wolfe looked back at Maggie, nude, lying broken by the trash. “What did you think of her story?”

“
I believed it. Every word. I wanted to go home with her, but she didn’t want me to leave my chess game. Jonas wanted to drive her, but she insisted she’d be safe. She was going to run straight home, not leave the sidewalk. She made it there. I know, because we talked on the phone. She said she was going to bed, but she must’ve changed her mind, gone back out for some reason.”

“
Who do you think did this?”

“
Not those characters under the pier. If they were that kind, they’d have done her there and sent her body out on the tide.”

“
I’ll have to talk to them, but I think you’re right. It was the two who chased her. Virgil and Horace with the ferret face.”

“
Your head, why do you shave it?”

“
Is it relevant?” Wolfe said.

“
It is for me.”

“
Chemo. I had cancer. It’s in remission. I keep it off now because I don’t want anyone to know if it comes back. I was lucky, it was diagnosed early. I took a year off, told my work I needed time to get my life together. They don’t know.”

“
So, you know what it’s like to be in the closet.”

“
No, I don’t live in fear. If they find out, I lose a job. It wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

Gordon looked into Wolfe’s eyes. “She’s cold.” He rested her hand on the pavement.

“
I’m good at what I do. I’ll get the ones who did this.”

“
Gordon Takoda.” Gordon held his hand out.

“
Billy Wolfe.” Wolfe took the hand, shook it.

“
No partner?”

“
No.”

“
You got one now.” Gordon forced himself to take a quick look at Maggie, brushed a hand against her cheek. He stood, dusted off his pants.

“
I work alone.” Wolfe’s rasp was cold, final.

“
I’m not just some guy who fell off the turnip truck. I put in twenty years with the FBI. I know my way around an investigation.”

“
How’d you do that?” Wolfe stood too.

“
Except for a gay pride parade in San Francisco in the ’70s, I was in the closet. I quit right after my twenty was up, for the pension. I came out the next day.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me this straight off?”

“
I wanted to know what kind of man you were. If you were a jerk who shaved his head for some stupid macho reason, you know, like Kojack, I woulda had to find this prick myself.” Gordon turned away and started toward the crowd at the end of the alley.

* * *

Horace looked at the gas gauge. He’d spent a quarter tank driving. Stupid. He was almost into L.A. Somehow he’d wound up on the Santa Monica Freeway. He took the Vermont off ramp and got back on heading south. Where was his mind? Nowhere.

“
Gotta keep it together,” he mumbled.

He popped a Meat Loaf CD into the player, cranked it up loud. Keeping it together wasn’t gonna be easy. Not with that smell back there.

He kept the van in the right lane, chewing up the interstate. He cruised onto the Long Beach Freeway, tapping his finger on the wheel as Meat Loaf made love by the dashboard light. He punched the repeat button. He loved that song.

He got off the freeway in Lynwood, drove to one of those car washes he knew about where you do it yourself. Something had to be done about the smell. He backed the van into the middle stall, so nobody could see in when he opened the back doors.

Chopped Harleys lined the curb in front of the biker bar across the street, but Horace wasn’t worried about them. They’d be sucking ’em up till last call and then some. He had plenty of time.

He got out of the van, fed quarters to the coin box. He turned the knob to extra soap, then opened the back doors. His brother was covered in blood and stunk like shit. Horace shook his head. Poor bastard.

He went for the hose. It had a gun-like handle with a yard long nozzle. Horace held it like a range shooter, arm extended, and imagined he was picking off rattlers in the desert. Virgil loved that. Not anymore.

Horace climbed into the passenger seat, dragging the hose. On his knees, facing into the back, he held the hose out.

Virgil was lying, head toward the back door, feet facing Horace. He jerked on the trigger and soapy spray shot out of the hose. Aiming at his brother’s shoes, he blasted the soles, moved up to the legs, shooting blood, shit and the woman’s clothes out the back of the van.

He kept it up till the money ran out, then surveyed his handiwork. Virgil lay on his side, Moby Dick, whiter in death, his whiteness contrasting with the metallic black paint on the inside of the van. Black floor, roof, walls. White Virgil, white and dead.

Across the street a couple of bikers wearing Angels’ colors came out of the bar. Time to wrap it up. Horace put away the hose, picked up the shoes and clothes, tossed them in the trash. One of the Harleys rumbled to life, then another. Horace started the van as they roared off in the direction of the freeway.

* * *

Gordon waited at the end of the alley while a police photographer shot a couple rolls of film. The lab men filled baggies with blood samples and bits of evidence from around the site, a lot of it irrelevant, but they were leaving nothing to chance. The coroner’s wagon backed up the alley. There were more people out now. It was a quiet crowd, but somehow the neighborhood knew, as if death’s quiet voice traveled from house to house, waking them, letting them know he’d come calling.

“
You wanna take a ride with me?” Wolfe took Gordon by the elbow, moved him away from the gawkers. He led him to a nineteen eighty-something Chevy, opened the passenger door, closed it after Gordon got in.

Gordon watched the night roll by as Wolfe drove. He picked a teddy bear off the floor. “Yours?”

“
My boy’s. He tossed it up from the car seat in back. Got an arm on him like Sandy Koufax used to have.”

“
Dodger fan?”

“
That your IQ at work?”