FrostLine (21 page)
I got my hands up and debated my options. Wrench in the skull? Screwdriver in the gut?
I deserved this. I was supposed to be a survivor, but somewhere along the line I'd stopped paying attention. Blundering into three-on-one fit a pattern of royally messing up. Too solitary, unfocused, I was all over the placeâlurching clumsily after three women at onceâhoping to somehow connect with Julia Devlin, hoping Rita Long would come home from Hong Kong saying she'd suddenly known I was the one. While in the process, screwing up with Vicky. What a gorgeous trio they'd make, visiting me in Intensive Care.
J.J. cocked his head.
Then we all heard it, the measured click of heels coming up the driveway. Get me out of this, I thought, and I promise I'll be good. Fat chance. It sounded like only one manâprobably bringing beer.
The biker with the wrench turned to watch.
Thank you, Lord.
I knocked him down with a left hook to his ear, and eluded J.J.'s belated slash with the screwdriver.
Around the house came Detective-Sergeant Arnie Bender. Wrenchman got up, quickly. J.J. snickered when he saw that Arnie was not very big. Their booted colleague was waking up. I could almost see the Derby Death thinking, We'll throw both bodies in the mill race.
But right behind Arnie came Marian Boyce wearing running shoes, which hadn't clicked, and a mad-dog street face I had never seen before. She wasn't any less womanlyâit would take industrious transsexual surgeons a long time to change thatâbut she looked ready, able, and eager to shoot someone and didn't particularly care who.
Their weapons appeared at some silent signal.
“State Police.”
For two people who disliked each other, Marian and Arnie put up a very convincing front. Neither biker questioned their solidarity, much less their jurisdiction within the city limits of Derby. Wrench and screwdriver thunked and clattered to the cement.
“Hit the deck,” said Arnie, gesturing with his weapon, a .357 Magnum, which looked enormous in his little hand.
The Derby Death lay down on the cement beside their awakening colleague. Old hands at this sort of thing, all three crossed their arms behind their backs and waited to be cuffed.
“Boy am I glad to see you,” I said.
“You too, jailbird. On your face!”
If the prisoners were hoping to garner some advantage from jurisdictional discord, they were disappointed. The Derby Police provided the paddy wagon and seemed on excellent terms with their colleagues from the state. Marian stood by joking with a Derby uniform, while Arnie and a couple of local plainclothes frisked us and marched the Derby Death one by one into the van.
“What the hell's the charges?” yelled J.J. when his turn came.
“You were caught in the act of assaulting a tourist.”
This was my third time handcuffed in three months and I liked it even less than the night in Ollie's cruiser. My face hurt, so did the back of my neck and my ribs, not to mention the various parts that had collided with the remarkably sharp and pointy Harley.
The plainclothes cops hoisted me to my feet like a fence post. The Derby Death watched intently as they marched me to the paddy wagon.
“We'll take that one,” said Marian. “He isn't worth the paperwork.”
“We need him for the complaint.”
Marian nodded the Derby plainclothes out of earshot. They spoke awhile, then another nod, and my handlers marched me over. “Ben,” said Marian. “We'll need you to press charges against these guys who beat you up.”
“What guys?”
“You see what I mean?” she said to the Derby detective.
“Look, Abbott, we'll run you in and charge you right along with those whacked-out scum.”
“Charge me with what?”
“Disturbing the fucking peace, fighting, and brawling.”
“There was no fight.”
“No fight? Where'd you get the face?”
“Tripped over a motorcycle.”
Marian said, “He majored in Ethics at Leavenworth U.” I looked at her. She knew damned well I had never ratted in prep school either.
“Yeah, well if there's no fight maybe he wants to ride with his friends. Maybe we'll park it down by the river for an hour. Let you get to know each other even better.”
Nothing in Marian's expression suggested she would come to my rescue and not let that happen.
The Derby plainclothes grabbed me. “Okay, tough guy. Let's go.”
When your hands are cuffed behind your back, and you ache all over, and your face looks like Lennox Lewis' speed bag, all you've got left of Main Street privilege is your voice. “I know an excellent criminal lawyer. You'll want his number if a prisoner you're responsible for is ever injured while in your custody.”
Arnie and Marian stuffed me in the back of their unmarked cruiser. I said, “They'll trash my car if you leave it on the street.”
“No problem,” said Arnie. “Derby's impounding it.”
“For what?”
“Look for drugs. You'll get it back after they chop it.”
I said, “Detective-Sergeant Bender. I know you've always wanted to see how fast she'll go. Now would be a good time. You have my permission to borrow my car.”
Arnie's eyes gleamed. The bored and stroked Caddy V-6 that a mechanically gifted Chevalley had shoehorned under the hood had some miles on it, but when the Olds lunched, Jags and BMWs went hungry.
Marian passed him their FBI light. “You owe me, Little Boy.”
Bender fished my keys out of my pocket and started the engine, his weasely face benign with ecstasy. He clapped the FBI light on my roof. He laid rubber all the way up the street, narrowly missing the only late-model car on the block, a shiny Ford Taurus that hadn't been parked at the corner when I arrived.
Marian followed, sedately, eyes straight ahead as we passed the Taurus and Josh Wiggens tossed me an ironic salute.
***
In the back seat, still handcuffed, I said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Try.”
“How'd you happen to stop by J.J.'s?”
“We've got an assist thing going with the Derby cops,” she lied. “In return, they were running registration checks on J.J.'s visitors. We heard about a certain light green Olds, and swung by for a look.”
“Amazing,” I said. “Just in time.”
“Well, we didn't barge right in. Thought it best to watch what was going down.”
“You watched those guys trying to kill me?”
“What guys?”
“Marian.”
“You screwed up our surveillance, you jerk. We were praying you'd take them so we could maintain cover.”
“There were three of them.”
“I lost a buck to Arnie backing you.”
“Sorry.”
“My fault. Betting with my heart instead of my head.”
She drove in silence, for a while. Then she found my eyes in the mirror and said, “I'm mildly curious. How'd you handle your no-rat policy at Annapolis? Don't they have an Honor Code?”
“I honored the Code.”
“By the way, that was a neat strategy, letting those guys wear themselves out punching you. The dummies thought they were winning. I'm going to try that next time I fight three on one.”
“I really appreciate your saving my ass. Could you tell me again how you happened to come along in the nick of time?”
“Ben, I want you out of our faces.”
“
Your
faces? Every place I go, you've been already.”
“Like where?”
“Josie Jervis, Party Box, the
QE2
, Mike's Hardware, and now this jerk.” Was that a prideful shine in her eye? Was she toting up all the places she'd been to first? Or the others I hadn't even thought of yet?
She said, “That's what the State of Connecticut pays me for.”
“We could be partners, except I'm trying to free my client and you're trying to hang him.”
“I already have a partner.”
“Unless he runs my car into a light pole.”
“I wish you'd get a private detective license,” she said.
“Why?”
“Then we could take it away.”
As if I hadn't thought of that a long time ago.
“Seriously, Marian. Want to trade a little?”
Her answer was along lines I'd been expecting. And she sounded a little weary. “We're being dicked around from up above. I do not want to be dicked around by you below.”
“Oh yeah? Who's dicking from above?”
Marian stopped the police car, slammed it into Park, turned around, and stared. She had great cheek bones and they were red with a degree of anger that surprised me.
I spoke before she could.
“Let me guess who's yanking your chain. Henry King's mega-clients would like to get on with their lives. They don't care if Mr. Butler helped Dicky blow the dam. But you're in their way, threatening their privacy with your highly imaginative investigation. So someone had a word with the Feds and now the Feds are slipping it to your bosses sideways. No actual threat. But if the Connecticut State Police don't lay off, there's suddenly a slight problem with funding for some nice little extras, like a new DNA lab or GPS locators for your road cops. Nothing you could put your finger on, of course.”
“Basketball courts.”
“They're taking away your gym?”
“Not
our
gym, you jerk. The kids'. The Feds were funneling money for lighted basketball courts in the neighborhoods. Give teenagers something better to do than shoot each other, make us look good.”
“And of course no one is actually
ordering
you to lay off. But if you don't, everyone knows that Sergeant Marian and Sergeant Arnie let underprivileged children drift into a life of crime.”
“You're not very funny.”
“I'm on target.”
“This is the kind of thing they wreck you on,” she answered quietly.
No woman rose as swiftly in the state police unless she was very ambitious. Marian was that. Like Vicky, she had an agenda, which, ironically, was political, too. She was working on a law degree and planned to retire in her mid-forties to run for state office. But she was burdened with high standards.
I said, “I feel for you. You're standing in front of people who get what they want. Is that why you're playing footsie with Josh Wiggens?”
“Who?”
“The guy who tipped you I was getting my head handed to me.”
“Never heard of him.”
“The guy sitting in that Taurus on the corner.”
“Friend of yours?”
“No.”
“Then why would he tip the police that you were getting beat up?”
“I have no idea.”
“It makes no sense, right?”
“No sense at all,” I agreed. Unless Josh had some interest in keeping J.J. Topkis out of deeper trouble. Had King sent him? I wondered. Or was Josh playing his own game?
“Ben. If you can't tell me why such a thing would happen then it didn't happen.”
“What's he offering? Is he helping you somehow?”
“Who?”
“Josh Wiggens. He works for Henry King.”
“Oh, yeah. King's security man.”
“I'd be very careful of him, if I were you.”
Marian turned around and drove. I asked, “Is Arnie pushing to sell out?”
“As a matter of fact, no. He's got his dander up.”
“So you'll do the right thing.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Except,” I said, “it's the wrong thing.”
“How's that?”
“There was no conspiracy. Mr. Butler did not put Dicky up to it and did not help him.”
“Says the real estate agent.”
She headed north on 34, along the river.
My whole body ached. I'd been taught how to take a punch and I was not horribly wounded. But I still wanted a hot bath and to close my eyes in a cool, dark room for awhile.
“You wouldn't want to uncuff me, by any chance?”
Silence. For miles. Finally, crossing the Stevenson Dam, she said, “What do you have to trade?”
“You first.”
“Up yours.”
Silence, again. More miles. Deep into Plainfield County, on back roads even I didn't know. My turn: “Mr. Butler did not conspire with Dicky to blow King's dam.”
“Sure of that?”
“Positive.”
“Why?”
“You first.”
“Up yours.”
There was a fork in the road ahead that I recognized. Right led to Plainfield, the State Police Barracks, and jail. Left to Newbury.
I said, “âUp yours' was essentially what Josie Jervis told
you.
I'll tell you what she told
me.
If you'll tell me what the Derby cops get out of J.J. Topkis.”
“Everything she told you?”
“Every fact,” I promised, damned if I was going to share Josie's lunatic theory that Mr. Butler accidentally killed his son.
“Deal,” said Marian, and veered left. “When Derby's done with Topkis, I'll decide if it's worth a trade.”
“Would you take these goddam handcuffs off, please?”
She tossed the key over her shoulder. “You didn't mind them last time,” she reminded me.
“Last time was different.”
***
I found a note under my kitchen door. “I'm at the Drover, if you feel like a beer. Julia.”
I felt like many beers. After some bourbon, a bath, and an ice pack. Many beers.
It was nearly an hour before I limped into the Yankee Drover's cellar bar, scrubbed and dressed in a clean shirt and pants, with Jack Daniels beginning to numb the pain. Aleve might have worked as well, but I'd miss the side effects.
Julia had been at the jukebox again.
There was a kind of a bittersweet pall hanging over the place, not exactly melancholy, but a lot of people not normally given to reflection appeared to be re-examining their lives. God knows what she had played firstâ
Deus Irae
, maybeâbut Bob Seeger was just finishing “In Your Time,” and his promise that peace lay across the “unbroken void” did not seem to cheer those hoping things would straighten out sooner.
I cranked in some Smoky Robinson and made for the bar on a tide of “Since I met you, baby.”
Julia had reserved the stool next to her with her bag. Blue jeans, tonight, blue as her mood. Snug, sleeveless stretch top. Her hair long and loose. She saw me and a tired smile wavered uncertainly. “What happened to you?”
“Slipped in the shower.”
“Seriously, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I'm okay.” I sat carefully, nodded at her Rolling Rock. “You did say beer?”
Ann Marie, one of the new owners who had turned the Drover into a much friendlier place than their surly predecessor ran, hurried over.
“Slipped in the shower,” I explained, adding that a beer would make things much better.
Julia seemed too preoccupied to ask questions, which was fine because I was not in an answering mood. So we listened to the music. But when I suggested another round, she said, “I've a better idea. You're getting swollen. Let's go to your house and put ice on your face.”
It was a better idea. In fact it would have been perfect, if we hadn't run into Vicky as we were walking out. “Ben, what happened to your face?”
“Slipped in the shower. You remember Julia Devlin, from Fox Trot?”
“Nice to see you again,” said Vicky. Her pretty, lively face was framed by her curls like a ruby in a filigree setting.
Julia nodded, a cool diamond on black velvet.
“Ben, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I'm going to do ice. Come along and watch, if you like. Thought we'd sit out back and have a beer.”
She hesitated for an instant. Then the light drifted from her face. “No, I can't. I'm meeting someone.”
Julia, who had stood by noncommittally, said as we stepped outside, “Am I causing you a problem?”
“No, I'm pretty good at that on my own.”
“Ben, if you want to do ice with her, feel free.”
“Don't worry about it.”
I took her in the kitchen door and opened a couple of Amstel Lights. Julia filled a plastic bag from the freezer and wrapped it in a towel and we went out to my cutting garden, where the day still lingered in the sky.
I eased into an Adirondack chair and held the cold cloth to my face. Julia wandered the narrow paths, exclaiming at the lush colors. I enjoyed looking at her. She was a fitting addition to the garden, an ornament in fine-lined opposition to the extravagant, jungly end-of-summer foliage.
She cast off her blues. “I love this,” she kept saying.
I credited the seeper hoses buried under the mulch that had kept the flowers from wilting in the August heat. Coreopsis were hanging on, daisies, black-eyed Susans, zinnias and cosmos exploding into their own. My tea roses had just caught their third wind.
“This is what Captain Jack dreams of at sea.”
Of our beloved Patrick O'Brian novels, Jack Aubrey, a red-blooded fighting man and the scourge of Napoleon's navy, had a black thumb ashore, where his often-bankrupt estate was host to every cutworm and weevil in the British Isles.
“How do you do this?” she asked. The awe in her voice made me inordinately proud.
“My Aunt Connie taught me, âPut a fifty-cent plant in a five-dollar hole.'”
Julia really did seem to love flowers, so I winced up out of the chair, filled a coffee can with water, and cut her a bunch. She followed me to the mulch pile where I stripped excess foliage and arranged some semblance of a bouquet, highlighted with blue spikes of salvia. “Change the water and trim the stems every few days.”
She studied them bloom by bloom, then surprised me with a warm kiss on the cheek. “Oh. Oh, God. I hope that didn't hurt. Your poor face.”
We sat down and drank beer.
“Need more ice?”
“No, it's fine. Tell me, How's the King-Butler defense fund coming along?”
“I don't know, yet. He may go for it. I can't promise.”
“Is he making your life miserable about it?”
“No.”
King couldn't be happy. The dilemma's horns I'd sent his way would scare the gonads off a matador. If he were involved in
killing
Dicky Butler, then Mr. Butler's conviction for accessory to murder would end all investigations; but the trial could get awful messy if Mr. Butler repeated his claim that he had set charges that King had defused. But if King or his people
didn't
murder Dicky Butler, the horns took on triceratops proportions: a trial that exposed King's secrets would anger betrayed clients; yet Butler's incarceration would let him snap up his farm.
I said, “His best bet is to move quickly to get the charges dropped.”
Julia changed the subject. “What are you doing to get his bail reduced?”
“Tim's hunting precedents back to Governor Winthrop's administration. And tapping old friends of his father.”
“That's a lot of work pro bono.”
“Ira Roth, mentor from hell, is encouraging him.”
“And what are you doing?”
“Going around asking questions.”
“Is that how you got the black eye?”
“You shoulda seen the other guys.”
Julia smiled, a startling flash of white against her olive skin and midnight hair. “How many were there?”
“Three. But I had some help from the cops.”
“Cops? What were they doing there?”
“I got lucky. A concerned citizen tipped them off.”
“That
was
lucky.”
“Yes,” I said, wondering if any of this was news to her. “They showed up in the nick of time.”
We talked about luck as the evening fell. Patrick O'Brian wrote about it as a serious commodity. Henry King taught his acolytes that they needed three things to succeed. Talent, hard work, and luck. “He says we can't make it big with only two.”
“Are you lucky?”
“In waves,” she answered. “I was lucky to meet Henry. Got me out of a dead-end job.”
“Doing what?”
“I could see down a long life of civil service like a tunnel. Suddenly there was light.”
“A train.”
“In a way. Henry came roaring through and I jumped aboard. Never looked back.”
“Sounds like you left somebody lying on the tracks.”
“In the station.” She tried to smile, tried to make a joke. “Please. I'm not that bad.”
“Josh Wiggens,” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“The concerned citizen. Who called the cops.”
“Josh? What was Josh doing there?”
“Beats me.”
“Are you being deliberately mysterious?”
I was, but I denied it. “No. Maybe you could tell me what Josh was doing there.”
“How would I know?”
“Well, you work together.”
“That may be, but I don'tâWhere was this?”
“Derby. It's a river town.”
“I know Derby. We were down there buying stained glass for the house.”
“Then you know it's a long way from Fox Trot.”
“Ben.” She shook her head and looked baffled. “I don't know what to say. He goes off on his ownâ¦.”
“Well, when you see him, tell him thanks. Saved me a trip to the emergency room.”
“I have no idea what he was doing there.”
“Maybe he was visiting his girlfriend or some old CIA buddy. There's a helicopter plant near there. At any rate, it was lucky for meâ¦.Are you still lucky?”
“Hope so. How about you?”
“I think your friend Josh cashed in most of mine today.”
“Henry says you should make your own luck.”
“Lucky people say that. Makes them feel less afraid they'll lose theirsâ¦.Am I right that you're a little down, tonight?”
“Just work.”
“Okay.”
“Maybe I'm a little depressed.”
“Something happen?”
“It was justâhe was justâ¦He screwed up and thenâ¦I don't know.”
“And then he blamed you.”
“I guess that's what happenedâwhy do you keep pushing that button?”
“In New York I had a woman like you work for me. And I saw plenty others. Big business, small business, there's always a glorified go-fer stashed in the back room to keep the boss on track. Always a woman. Job description includes be cool, be calm, think ahead, cultivate contacts, cover the guy's ass, and take abuse. It's a hard life. The only happy ones go up and out.”
“Did yours go up and out?”
“Like a Saturn rocket. Nothing left but cinders on the launch pad.”
“How did you feel about that?”
“I survived. And so will Henry.”
“But how did you feel? Were you scarred? Did it take forever to recover? Have you recovered?”
“Yes. Mostly.”
“Do you hate her?”
“On my good days I tell myself I can look back in fifty years and say, âBetter she got out than got old and tired carrying my bags.'”
Julia bristled. “Well, Henry would be the same way. He'd support me if I wanted to leave. He'dâ¦do everything he could to help meâBen, why do you make me doubt him?”
“I'm sorry. I have a big mouth sometimes. I get very opinionated. And, to be honest, I like you. I'm fascinated by you. If you told me you were dumping him, I'd say, âHow about a date?'”
Julia regarded me for one of the most serious seconds I've ever experienced. “You know what I like about you?” she finally asked. “I like that you're not afraid to annoy me.”
“Why should I be afraid? I don't need anything from Henry King.”
“
Everyone
wants something from Henry King. All those bloodsuckers feeding off him.”
“You mean like Josh and Bert?”
“
You
want Mr. Butler's lawyer paid.”
“That's a decision I can't influence. I've done my job. I've brought it upâ”
“That's not what I mean.”
In the fading light I could see a little pout shape her lips and cloud her eyes. “What did I say? You look hurt.”
“I wasn't talking about Henry King,” she answered quietly. “I was talking about me. You don't know it, but when I'm not with him, I'm a very strong person. Most men are afraid to annoy
me
regardless of the boss I happen to work for.”
“The boss who happens to treat you like a very weak person.”
“Maybe you're just like him.”
“Me?”
“Maybe you're bullying me under a guise of telling me how terribly he treats me?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Maybe you want me to betray him.”
“Better than betraying yourself,” I answered, with no idea whether we were talking about Mr. Butler or sex or love. Or, with luck, all three.
An unlucky mosquito chose the moment I was leaning closer to land on Julia's knee. I killed it and said, “Let's go inside. They're beginning to bite.”