Good Lord, Deliver Us (12 page)

Z sighed. From now on, he'd leave the
switch on at the wall; turn the light on and off by playing with
the wire coming out of the lamp's base. Not a perfect solution to
the lighting problem, but one that would have to do until he could
think of something better.

Bingo!

As it might happen to anyone at any
time, Z had a flash of insight, a perception so startling Z was at
his desk in the other room and leaning back in the squeaky chair
without remembering how he got there.

Strange, how the mind
worked. How you'd see something, but not
really
see it, suddenly coming to
understand what, at the time, went unnoticed. Or you'd hear a
noise, even be aware that the sound was the trigger to an important
memory ... but not be able to connect the dots until much
later.

With Z, odors often dredged up the
"long forgotten," probably because, since his temporary loss of
smell as a teenager, he no longer took smell for
granted.

But ... not this time.

Something had happened
last night, something he'd
heard
but hadn't "registered" until -- this -- very --
moment. He couldn't even tell what it was that had made his mind
"cough up" what it had "swallowed." Even stranger, it hadn't
clicked when he'd been talking to Susan -- like it should
have.

For
Susan
was the issue. Not Susan in
the "flesh," but Susan in the "name."

Z tried to think back to last
night.

Could he be wrong? Could
it have happened
after
he and Jamie had made love? The first time? The second? The
third? The ......

No.

Well then, what
about
during
the
deed?

As image after shocking
image of last night's activities flicked through Z's mind -- even
in
his
condition,
beginning to get a physical response to those lewd thoughts
.......

No!

Not
while making acrobatic love.

It had happened before they started
breaking all the rules. Leading him on, Jamie's pitch was that,
sometime in the night, Z would be dreaming of his girl, that he'd
mistake Jamie for Susan, begun to cuddle, put his arm around her
......

It was at that precise point in the
conversation that Jamie Stewart threw herself into his arms, Z not
having a rational thought for the rest of the night.

Just before dawn -- the girl a lot
younger that he and so rational enough to set an alarm clock (to
say nothing of having the energy to do it) -- they'd sneaked out of
the house, both of them driving home. (To their respective homes,
thank God!)

Since then, he'd been sleeping like
the dead man he nearly was.

Now more alert, he had to
ask himself something he
should
have tumbled to last night.

The question? How did the
ghost hunter -- a girl he'd never met, a girl who obviously hadn't
met him -- know that Z had a girl named
Susan
?

Z hadn't used Susan's name, he was
sure of that. Not while carrying in boxes; not while exploring the
house; not while setting up the electronics; not while laying
masking tape. Why would he?

And yet, the ghost
hunter
knew Susan's
name
.

How?

Z thought it all through
again.

And thought it through again, this
time with shivers toying with his spine.

Where had the ghost hunter said she'd
gone to college? Duke? And what was it that psychologists studied
there?

Unusual manifestations of the
mind.

Odd mental capacities.

Psychic abilities the girl said were
all false.

All
false?

Maybe.

On the other hand, the
girl could have told him a white lie to mask her
own
strange powers.
Fibbing to protect yourself permissible, even in the code Big Bob
Zapolska lived by.

* * * * *

It was four in the afternoon before Z
got back to the office from a very late lunch: a personal pan pizza
and a Diet Coke at Pizza Hut -- a bargain even without his discount
card.

While waiting for an
individual pan, double pepperoni, he'd started another detective
novel, this one by Lawrence Block, "
A
Ticket to the Boneyard
," featuring a
detective named Scudder.

Now
there
was a
real
detective, an ex-New York cop
who knew what to do under any circumstance. Knew who to call when
he needed something; had an honest-to-God friend on the N.Y.P.D.
instead of a mostly worthless high school buddy like Ted Newbold,
Gladstone's not-so-finest.

New York City.

What a place that must be:
a big-time, big-crime city instead of a sleepy, Midwest town. Not
that there wasn't sin in Kansas City -- just not enough of it
North-of-the-River to enable a stumble bum, unlicensed private dick
like Z to earn a decent living. The only thing
Z
had in common with Block's
detective was that Scudder wasn't licensed either.

Back at his desk, Z was still reading
about Scudder's exploits -- Z lost in the wonderful corruption of
New York City -- when there was a knock on the door, always and
forever a startling sound.

Could it be Susan? A welcome surprise,
normally .... Today, however ....

Launching himself from his chair, Z
fast-hobbled to the door.

Opened it.

Saw ... Ted Newbold.
..................

"You going to invite me in?" Ted,
already taking offense.

"Sure."

Z leading, they went to the back
office, Z to sit behind his desk, Ted to lounge in the "client"
chair.

Z always though of Ted as
... brown. Wore a brown suit. Had brown shoes, eyes, and bottled
brown hair. In short, nothing the cops called "distinguishing
marks." Nothing at
all
"distinguished" about Teddy Newbold, if the truth were
known.

"I was just in the neighborhood and
thought I'd drop in to see my old buddy," Ted lied, Teddy wanting
something bad enough to venture into an area of the city he thought
beneath the dignity of a Gladstone Dick.

To be fair, that was the Z-Ted
relationship. If Z needed a cop-fact, he called Ted; if Ted needed
a favor, he got in touch with his "old buddy."

What Teddy showing up in
the Ludlow building
really
meant, was that Ted wanted something ...
bad!

"Now that I'm here in this
beautiful office," Ted continued, even though needing a favor,
unable to resist poking Z in his unemployed ribs, "there
is
a little something
you could do for me. After all, you owe me."

Better at remembering
favors he'd done for others than those done for him, Ted probably
believed he
was
"owed."

Though it could take a
while to find out what Ted wanted, all Z had to do was wait. Ted
couldn't keep
any
secret for long.

"I know you did me some good, too. Now
and then. But I figure you're ahead."

"Yeah." No sense arguing.

"There's this matter that the K.C.
cops have referred to our department. You know how Gladstone ends
just before the Antioch Shopping Center? How from there on, it's
Kansas City, Missouri? And you know the I-35 overpass about ten
blocks further down Antioch?"

"Yeah."

Well, if you've been driving past that
location lately, you've noticed some bums hanging out there. Or
close to there. They're generally on the Kansas City side of the
line."

"'Work For Food.'"

"That's right. With signs
like that. What's going down is that K.C.'s been getting
complaints. And here's the kicker -- from the bums themselves.
Saying that, now and then, one of them turns up missing. In fact,
we got a
couple
of calls on that from the K.C. fuzz

"Now my captain says, so what? So
they're bums and bums bum around. And that could be right. Probably
is. But when the K.C. cops bother to call on something like that, I
got to figure there may be more to it than meets the
eye.

"The truth is ... I could use
something positive on my record about now."

Oh, oh. That had to mean
Ted had screwed up something
else
, Captain Scherer breathing down
Ted's neck, Ted desperate to counter his foul-up with a home run.
Normally, Ted kept what
he
called a low profile. (What Z called covering his
ass.) Or to put it another way, if Ted had been a turtle, he'd have
been the hide-in-his-shell kind, not the "snapping"
variety.

"So I asked myself," Ted continued,
hooting like the wise old owl, "what if somebody was picking up
these work-for-food bums for illegal purposes? Using them to run
drugs-for-food is what came to mind. Or to bring up greaser labor
from the border. So I said to myself, what I needed was a
plant.

"Now the K.C. cops, they got
undercover narco-types up the old wazzoo. But we don't.

"So I got me this idea."
Ted stopped. Took a breath. "Now don't take offense at what I'm
going to say, but I thought of you mostly because you've got the
clothes to make it work. What I mean is, you could do me a favor --
do the department a favor. Hell, do the K.C.
cops
a favor by doing a little
undercover work. Which would consist of just dressing up in your
normal grubbies, fixing yourself up a cardboard sign saying 'Work
For Food,' and standing near the overpass. There's no pay in it,
but it's not as if I was asking you to do something hard. You'd
just be standing there part-time. Maybe for a couple of hours for a
few days. See if someone wants to pick you up and what they want
from you. I'm not expecting you to go with anybody. Just find out
who's shopping for that kind of labor. License number -- all
that.

"It's not as if you'd be interrupting
anything important in your life, I figure," Ted blundered on,
"because, what have you got going for you that's all that
important?" Z had to give it to Ted. Ted was being as tactful as he
knew how.

"I got a case. At night."

"Hell. I wasn't asking you to do any
night work. Just to spare me a couple of hours in the morning. Say
for a week."

A couple of hours a day. For a week.
For nothing.

On the other hand, Ted was a friend
from high school, Z not having so many friends he could afford to
lose even one like Teddy Newbold.

"OK," Z said -- completely against his
better judgment. "Could be a day or two before I start."

"Well ... if that's the best you can
do."

Ted stood up, Z walking him to the
front door, where Ted seemed to ... "stick."

"Z." Ted had turned serious. "Watch
yourself by the overpass."

"Something I should know?"

"Nothing for sure. But from the mood
of the captain -- he don't want to touch this with a ten-foot pole
-- I got a bad feeling."

"What?"

"Don't know. Maybe Scherer knows
something. But he didn't tell me. And since it's nobody's case, I
can't ask. Just watch yourself, that's all."

"You could call K.C. and
ask."

"I don't got good contacts with K.C.
I'm too far down the totem pole." The simple truth, said with
genuine regret.

The message delivered, Ted was out of
there.

Leaving Z feeling
something
was
wrong with this whole deal. Z might not have many sources,
but he knew the ones he had. Ted, for instance. Not only had Ted
suckered him into one of Ted's self-promotion schemes, but one that
even Teddy thought could be dangerous. (Not that Ted was so afraid
for Z's safety that Teddy would pass up an opportunity to use Z for
Ted's advancement.) Still, when a numb nuts like Ted Newbold
smelled a rat ....

And something
else
wasn't right.
Thinking about it, Z had been wrong about his short list of
friends. Figured correctly, there were
more
people he could consult,
depending on the crisis. For intellectual help, for instance, he
could call Dr. Calder, the pudgy psychologist at Bateman. Z also
had an acquaintance who was a detective on the K.C.M.O force,
Willis Addison. (Addison had even come North-of-the-River to
consult
Z
about a
case.)

Though not believing as strongly in a
favor-for-a-favor as Ted -- but adding in the fact that this was
actually a K.C. case -- Z thought he wouldn't be out of line to
ring up Addison in hopes of learning what Ted's favor meant to Z's
health.