Fire Lake (28 page)

I picked up one of the brown envelopes and stared at
it. Mexican smack was brown, I'd read somewhere. Norvelle had had a
hoard of it--enough to keep him happy for weeks. Enough to kill him.

I dropped the glassine envelope on the bed and walked
back down the hall to the turreted room. Its door was closed. I
pushed it open and stepped inside.

It looked a lot more like a bedroom than Norvelle's
barren digs. There was a desk with a lamp and a phone on it on the
right side of the room, a brass bed with a parachute hung above it on
the left, an oak bureau on the far wall across from the door, and
assorted blacklight posters on the walls. A threadbare brown oriental
rug covered the floor. Just like the sixties.

I went over to the bureau and opened the top drawer.
It had been emptied. So had all the other drawers. I opened each one
and all I could find were the sort of tail ends--the unmatched
socks, the faded sheets, the torn underwear--that people leave behind
them when they move.

I went over to the desk--an old oak library table
with one long drawer in front. Behind the desk, the turret's bay
windows looked out on Cross Lane.

I pulled the drawer out, picked it up, and put it on
the tabletop. It was filled with the usual items--pens, pencils,
loose papers. I started sorting through the papers and found a school
notebook with Hughes High printed on the cover, a math pad, a
calendar. The notebook and most of the other items obviously belonged
to Cal's teenage girlfriend, Renee.

As I was thumbing through the math pad, a
blue-and-white folder fell out.

At first I didn't realize what it was. I was about to
toss the folder back in the drawer, unexamined, when I happened to
turn it over and saw the greyhound printed on the front. Lonnie's bus
ticket--the return ticket to St. Louis--was tucked neatly in its
paper pocket.

I stared at the bus ticket for a long moment. Thelma
had already said that Lonnie had returned to Cal's house on Friday
night, apparently after he'd run away from my apartment. He must have
taken the bus ticket with him when he'd run. It was logical to assume
that he'd also taken his driver's license. And now the folder with
the ticket was sitting in Cal's desk drawer. And the bloodstained
license had been left at the scene of a murder, where it most
certainly would have incriminated Lonnie, if I hadn't come along to
pick it up.

I started to feel very bad about Lonnie. He wouldn't
have left the damn ticket behind him, or the license, even if Cal and
Norvelle had taken him to meet a friend in the country, as Thelma had
said. I tucked the bus ticket in my coat pocket and put the drawer
back in the desk. As I was closing the drawer I happened to glance
out the turreted window. Jordan's gray Ford was coming down Cross
Lane.

"Jesus!" I said aloud.

I slammed the drawer shut, ran out of the room, and
bounded down the stairs. If Jordan came in the house and found
Norvelle in the john and all that smack in the bedroom, I was a
deadman. I knew immediately that if he stepped through the front
door, I was going to have to kill him or he would kill me just like
he'd said he would. I'd already taken the pistol out of my coat.

When I got down to the living room, I went directly
over to the front windows and peered through the curtains at the
street. I didn't even give Karen or Thelma a glance.

"Harry?" Karen said with concern.

"It's Jordan," I said, still staring
through the window.

She grasped the situation at once. "My God, what
if he comes in."

I didn't answer her. But she could see the gun in my
hand.

"You can't kill a cop, Harry," she said in
a frightened voice.

"I can if he's planning to kill me."

The Ford was sitting in front of the house now,
idling in a cloud of white exhaust. I could see Jordan squinting
through the side window at the porch. He couldn't see me from where
he was sitting because of the glare of the sun.

"Harry, the girl ..." Karen said loudly.

I glanced back at Thelma. She had calmed down
somewhat, but her face still looked a little stoned out, as if she
couldn't fathom all that was going on around her. I stared at Karen,
who gave me a desperate, pleading look.

"Please, Harry," she said, "there has
to be another way."

I peeked through the curtains again. Jordan had
pulled over behind the Pinto. As I watched him, he opened the Ford's
door and stepped out onto the street.

"Is there a back door?" I said, not taking
my eyes off Jordan.

When Thelma didn't answer me, I whipped around and
glared at her. "Is there a back door!" I shouted.

Thelma shook as if I'd slapped her, and nodded
spastically. "Down the hall in the kitchen," she said,
pointing behind her.

I looked out the window again. Jordan was making his
way across the street, toward the house.

"C'mon!" I said. "We're getting out of
here!"

I ran over to the couch, jerked Thelma up with one
hand and Karen with the other.

"Quick now," I said, pushing Thelma ahead
of me. "Show us the way."

The little girl led us through the archway and down a
short hall to the kitchen. There was a windowed door on the rear
wall. I unlocked it, pulled it open, and ushered the two women out
onto the back stoop, shutting the door behind me.

The stoop overlooked a snowy lot that ran between the
back of Cat's house and the backs of the shops on McMillan Street.

"Go!" I said, pushing Karen and Thelma down
the stairs.

Before leaving the stoop, I glanced back through the
tiny window in the kitchen door. I could see all the way up the hall.
When the front door opened, I skedaddled down the steps and followed
Karen and Thelma, who were making their way across the snowy field to
McMillan Street.
 

39

Once we got across the field, we ducked into a muddy
alley between two brick buildings and followed it up to the south
side of McMillan Street. The three of us stopped as one when we got
to McMillan, leaning against the cornice of the building at the head
of the alley, trying to catch our breath. Out on the street, cars
drifted by, wreathed in exhaust smoke and drenched in cold white
sunlight.

"The car," Karen said, huffing. "How
do we get back to the car?"

I shook my head. For a second I couldn't find the
breath to speak. "We don't," I finally said. "We can't
risk it. We'll have to catch a ride with someone else."

"Who?" Karen asked.

I glanced at Thelma. "I don't suppose you're old
enough to drive, are you?"

She shook her head. The run across the field had left
her exhilarated, chasing away the last of the shock that had
paralyzed her inside Cal's living room. She looked herself again-a
fourteen-year-old kid with a punk haircut and a brazen attitude, for
whom death, even the death of a friend, held no real meaning.

"That was a cop outside, wasn't it?" she
said to me with excitement in her voice, as if the whole thing had
turned to TV adventure in her mind.

I nodded. "Are you going to turn us in?"

"Shit, no," Thelma said, looking outraged.
"I hate cops."

"What are you going to do?" Karen asked her
with genuine concern.

Thelma's face knotted up momentarily, as if she'd
taken the question to heart. "Now that Renee and Cal are gone .
. .I don't know. Go home, I guess."

Karen smiled approvingly. "That's a very good
idea. And stay there, honey."

Thelma nodded determinedly. But I could see from the
slight restlessness of her eyes that her resolve wasn't going to last
long. She'd probably have a few nightmares and swear off drugs for a
week or two. But there would be another Cal within the month. For
Thelma, there would probably always be another Cal.

"I guess I'll go, then," Thelma said
regretfully, as if she were leaving a party too early in the evening.

"You can find your way?" Karen asked.

"Always," Thelma said, putting a very adult
look on her kid's face. She gave Karen a quick hug, then walked off
down the snowy sidewalk, toward Gilbert--her little butt swinging
beneath the coat.

Karen stared after her for a moment, then turned to
me. "I hope she'll be all right."

"She'll be fine," I said.

She looked back up the street, at Thelma's receding
figure. "I was like that when I was her age."

"You were a little older," I said, "when
you were her age."

Karen smiled and turned back to me. "Shouldn't
we get off the street?" she said. The run across the field
seemed to have exhilarated her, too. Or maybe it was the fact that
I'd chosen to run rather than to confront Jordan.

I glanced across McMillan. There was a Frisch's a
block up near Victory Parkway. "Getting off the street is
probably a good idea." I nodded toward the restaurant. "Let's
get something to drink."

We waited for a lull in the traffic, then dashed
across McMillan and into the restaurant.

We sat in Frisch's for about a half an hour, drinking
coffee. At first I let Karen do most of the talking--partly because I
was trying to keep an eye on the street, in caseJordan blew by,
partly because I didn't want to tell her about what I'd found in
Cal's desk drawer.

"You know," Karen said, sipping her coffee,
"while you were upstairs, Thelma told me a couple of things that
might be important."

"Like what?" I asked.

"Like the fact that Cal and Norvelle had a big
fight with another man on Friday afternoon. A skinny guy with red
hair. The whitest guy Thelma had ever seen."

"That would be our friend Claude Jenkins."

Karen nodded. "That's what I figured."

"Did Thelma tell you what they were arguing
about?"

"Selling some drugs," Karen said, giving me
an arch look. "A lot of drugs that the white guy, Jenkins, was
holding for them."

"Lonnie's crack from the motel," I said.

"It had to be. Cal and Norvelle wanted to turn
the stuff over immediately."

"To whom?" I asked.

"To a friend of theirs. Thelma didn't know his
name. But the other guy, Jenkins, thought it was too risky to move
the crack right away. He wanted to hang on to it for a while."

"Until LeRoi caught up with Lonnie," I
said. "Or with me. That's why Claude kept Lonnie alive on
Thursday night; so he could play the fall guy with LeRoi."

"After Jenkins left, Cal and Norvelle kept
arguing with each other. Thelma said that Norvelle was pretty strung
out. He hadn't had a fix in better than a day, and neither one of
them had any cash to cop."

I thought of all those glassine bags full of smack,
hidden in Norvelle's pillow. And the seven hundred dollars wrapped in
the rubber band. Between Friday afternoon and Monday morning,
Norvelle had found a lot of dope and a lot of money. I imagined that
Cal had found some, too, and taken it with him when he ran. It was
obvious now how they'd scored--by taking Claude off the way Claude
had taken off Lonnie.

"Thelma went home for supper," Karen went
on. "When she came back that night, Lonnie was there. Later in
the evening, the three of them drove off to a place in the country
together--a place that Lonnie said he wanted to go to. When Norvelle
and Cal came back home late that night, Thelma said their moods had
changed completely. They were talking about partying. Everybody was
going to get well, Thelma said."

I'd heard her say it myself--outside the john.

"Norvelle and Cal must have killed Jenkins that
night," I said. "Taken the crack off him. Then sold the
whole bundle to their friend the buyer. Whoever the hell he was."

"Maybe they didn't sell all of it," Karen
said. "Maybe they just sold enough to party with."

"I found several dozen dime bags of smack in
Norvelle's room, along with seven hundred dollars in change. That's
not just party favors." I reached into my coat pocket and pulled
out the bus ticket. "I also found this."

Karen picked up a paper napkin from the Formica table
and dabbed it in a glass of ice water.
"What
is it?" she said, wiping out her eyes. "It's Lonnie's bus
ticket," I said.

She stared at it for a moment curiously."So?"

I explained it to her, trying my best to gloss over
the worst of it. "When Lonnie ran to Cal's house on Friday
night, Karen, he must have taken this ticket with him and his
driver's license, too. Later that night, the license was planted in
the motel office to incriminate Lonnie. Norvelle and Cal left it in
Jenkins's office, along with a little crack. The murder was made to
look like a revenge killing--like Lonnie had run amuck after getting
ripped off for drugs by Claude."

"Cal or Norvelle could have stolen the license
from Lonnie on Friday night, when he visited their house," she
said, dropping the wet napkin on the table. "The bus ticket.,
too."