Good Lord, Deliver Us (21 page)

Funny, how the rules of the "dating
game" had changed ... but for men only. Today's women still
believed sex to be adequate payment for services rendered. (Z
guessed, because men were as glad as ever to accept that kind of
reimbursement.) What would happen, though, if a modern man, wanting
some work from a woman, would say that, to pay her, he'd be glad to
screw her? In the old days, he risked a slap. Today, a charge of
sexual harassment.

It was a "funny" world.

And getting "funnier."

Had the lady's voice
carried a hint of surprise that
Z
was still alive? Had she thought that, in spite
of her warning about her hubby being a hitter, Mr. Smith would make
short work of Mr. Z? (An outcome that might very well have
happened, Smith waiting for Z with a loaded, leveled gun.) She'd
even cautioned Z to have his
own
"gat" at the ready -- a suggestion Z had allowed
her to believe he'd follow.

The only thing Z could say
for certain was that the evening hadn't gone as the lady said it
would. First and foremost, was that Z had found no tape on the
inside of the husband's door, making a liar out of the wife who'd
said a gun was
always
taped there. It was more the case that the bureau drawer,
left open, was where a panicky man might go to get his
gun.

The third "mess-up" was
that Smith had been tipped off that Z was coming (the warning timed
so that an adrenalin pumped Smith
must
choose fight over flight,)
Smith alerted by someone with a noticeably high voice.

Somewhere between Smith's
apartment and the shopping center -- maybe at the long wait for the
left turn light at Vivion and Antioch -- it had occurred to Z
that
children
had
elfin voices, a thought that triggered a memory of Mrs. Smith
saying it was possible for little Sammy, snug in his beddy-bye, to
hear what was going on in the living room. If Sammy had heard ...
too much ... it could have been the child who'd called his father.
Leaving the question, would Smith fail to recognize his own son's
voice? Maybe. Maybe not, depending on how often he saw little
Sammy. Identification was also contingent on the quality of Smith's
telephone reception. Also on the "fear factor," it surely not doing
Smith's nerves any good to be warned his life was in imminent
danger.

Rethinking the
child-possibility, Z realized he'd only brought it forward to
explain a call Mrs. Smith could
not
have made.

The trouble was, the lady's question,
"Is he dead?" had thrown the proverbial monkey wrench into Z's
"child-call" mechanism.

For starters, Z could think of many
more sensible questions Mrs. Smith could have asked, all of them
boiling down to, "What happened?"

Thinking about it, the only reason Z
could imagine for "Is he dead?" was that the woman expected a
whispered, "Yes."

Which would have been the
case if Z had been so frightened of her husband's "hitter"
reputation that Z had entered the man's apartment, trigger finger
twitching. Or if Z was a cold-blooded killer, the kind who left no
witnesses. Or if her husband, alerted to Z's visit, was ready
with
his
gun, Z
shooting first in "self defense."

An ugly possibility was
coming into focus; that Mrs. Smith had deliberately tried to
frighten Z with that story of her husband, the hitter. After that,
believing Z to be armed, knowing the time Z would arrive at her
husband's apartment, she could have dialed her husband, using a
disguised voice (according to the playbills,
she
was an actor, too) to warn him Z
was coming so that hubby goes for
his
gun. The result? A possible
double homicide, acceptable to a woman trying to get
everyone
off her
back.
Desirable
if -- as the husband said -- the woman hated men.

So far, the possibility that both Z
and the husband had been set up was nothing but mental gymnastics
on Z's part. And would remain so until Z made another
call.

But not tonight.

Finished with the Smiths, it was time
Z was back on the spook case with Jamie Stewart.

Z groaned.

Found himself longing for the ghost of
Abraham Lincoln to appear and set him free!

* * * * *

It was late Monday morning before Z
won another desperate struggle to get himself together and out of
bed. (Z thought he knew, at last, how tinker toys must feel in the
hands of a precocious child.)

But he'd made it, gotten
up and into a faded, short-sleeved shirt and worn cotton pants. Had
the air conditioners on; had the fire started in his tin fireplace.
Too late for breakfast, he'd gone outside under a cloudy, cooler,
but dust-dry sky to get the morning/evening paper, now jokingly
called the
Star.

A quick check of the headlines and Z
was ready to go to the office.

"If you don't like
Missouri weather, wait ten minutes," was the saying Z thought of
when he emerged from his apartment into an unexpected shower, the
weather always and forever a surprise since the twin air
conditioners plugged up both living room windows. He hadn't
heard
the rain begin, of
course, the chugging of the coolers able to trump the roar of a
charging
cyclone
.)

A welcome sprinkle for the cool of it.
Though it made the air so water-thick you needed gills to
breath.

Into the car and out on
the street, Z noticed that the cloud burst was keeping the traffic
down, not
that
much of an advantage in the Gladstone backwater.

A drawback to the shower
was that the wet of it made Z's knee feel worse. Either that, or Z
was still suffering last night's strain from the proper positioning
of an inert Sam Smith. (Or, possibly, from the
improper
positioning of a lively
Jamie Stewart!) He'd developed a sore throat, too. Also not helped
by rainy weather.

As for Mrs. Smith's story -- forget
it! Some badly needed sleep plus a slug of aspirin had sunk the
lady's claim that her husband was a killer. (For one thing, the Mr.
didn't have a single tool of the professional bopper's trade. That,
plus the man's cheap apartment and cheaper clothes had Z placing
the hubby-hitter notion in the dead-end file under: "woman
scorned.")

Ridding himself of the hit-man scam by
the time Z had driven past an assortment of Antioch gasoline
stations, private houses, and mini-shopping centers, Z turned left
on Chouteau, his windshield wipers keeping him company along the
north flank of the Antioch center where, just beyond Boatman bank,
he caught an uncommon green light at Vivion and
Chouteau.

Quickly through the light and past the
K-Mart complex to the south, it was time to settle back and drift
by houses and more houses; past churches and kiddie parks, Z so
relaxed he almost failed to brake in time to avoid a shark-white
Cadillac on the prowl for bottom-of-the-food chain
Cavaliers.)

Arriving at his rehabbed office
building, he slanted to a stop in the lot by what Z always thought
of as the Worlds of Fun overpass.

Squeezed out of his sardine can of a
car, Z splashed down the walk and through the
added-as-an-afterthought glass doors fronting the
building.

On the first floor were accounting
firms, insurance agencies, an income tax lady and the dilapidated
office of a seedy detective. The second floor was divided between a
beauty "college" and an equally nonaccredited secretarial
school.

Down the hall to the very back, Z
quick-keyed himself into No. 16.

Pushing shut the hollow, plywood door,
pausing to squeegee water from his hair, drying his hands on his
shirt as best he could, Z leaned over his "secretary's" desk to
jiggle the loose, table lamp wire, the lamp bulb finally sparking
to life.

Circling the work space, Z eased down
into his "secretary's" narrow chair and pulled the phone to him.
Dialed.

"Gladstone Public Safety," said a
female voice, "Gladstone Public Safety," the city's euphemism for
police department.

"Detective Newbold."

"May I say who's calling?"

"Confidential."

"May I say in reference to
what?"

"Something confidential."

An irritated pause at the other end of
the line was followed by a couple of clicks. Then a phone ringing.
And ringing some more.

Was the operator jerking Z around
because he'd refused to "share confidences." Or was Teddy in the
bathroom? Either way, Z could try Ted later.

Time -- past time -- to put in another
call he'd been meaning to make.

Z dialed the number.

"American Insurance. Here only to
serve you."

More bullshit on a bullshit kind of
day. "Susan Halliwell"

"One moment, please."

A couple of rings.
"Correspondence."

"Z."

"I was just thinking about you," Susan
said, speaking quietly like she always did when talking to Z from
her office. As rich as the owners of the insurance company had
grown off devising clever schemes to keep from paying claims, they
frowned on their peons using the phone for anything but company
business.

"Lunch?"

"Have to be something quick. It's a
madhouse here today."

"OK."

"I've been hearing about a
Mediterranean place. East of Oak. It's in the Englewood Strip Mall.
I hear it's good." A big girl, Susan didn't "pick at" her food, Z
approving of
all
her appetites. "It's called something like Cafe
Mediterranean. Something like that."

"Yeah."

"To save time, let's take separate
cars."

"OK."

"How about meeting me there at
twelve-fifteen?"

"Fine."

After hanging up, Z felt guilty about
not being able to do more for Susan than take her to lunch. The
ghost house job had to end soon, though, no matter what the
outcome.

* * * * *

Z almost missed the
restaurant, first, because Susan had gotten the name wrong,
secondly, because the entire establishment was nothing but a
15-foot-wide slot tucked between other, more impressive businesses:
an insurance office to the left; a barber shop to the right,
wedging the eatery between
two
places that clipped you.

Arriving first, stepping inside, Z had
to jam on the brakes to keep from hitting the restaurant's back
wall.

No place to go -- literally -- Z
seated himself in a small, bent wood chair at one of the miniature
square tables crowding the tiny dining room.

Small though it was, the place was
interesting, high shelves at the back displaying eastern
Mediterranean memorabilia: slender-spouted teapots, small brass
palm trees, daggers in showy, curving, glass-jeweled scabbards.
Hookahs.

A framed aerial photograph on the left
wall was labeled: Beirut. A painting featured the cliff-carved city
of long-dead Petra.

Another wall sported a tacked up
"flying" carpet: its design of toy camels and their drivers woven
by the Arabic equivalent of Grandma Moses.

The dining -- closet's?? -- miniature
tables were decorated with white lace cloths overlaid by thick,
clear, easy-to-wipe plastic.

The music was "jumpy eastern." Disco
-- but whined in Arabic to the tune of twanged rubber bands,
buzzing kazoos, and jingled junk.

Two other tables were occupied, one,
by three businessmen from the shopping center, the other by a young
Greek?? couple, the lady with the kind of tan that cost George
Hamilton a million bucks.

The door opening, a
most
American Susan
Halliwell came in: black, bedroom-tousled hair, generous lips, a
no-need-for-implants-figure, and rapier legs. She wore a beige
linen suit with an understated silver broach, and silver circle
earrings.

A waiter wearing a white apron
appeared, a handsome, dark-skinned young man with curly black hair
and a golden smile for Susan.

Susan slid into her chair, like Z,
finding the table too low for tall folks.

"Good morning," said the waiter,
handing them each a fold out menu. "The special, it is gyros
sandwich for $5.80. Come with salad: olive, goat cheese, and
cucumber dressing."

"Sounds good," Susan said, scanning
the menu quickly, tapping the elegant fingers of her other hand on
the table. Just arrived, she was as flighty as a butterfly in a
strong wind. "Make mine a beef and lamb gyro. And I'll have ice
tea."

"Me too," Z said. The food that is.
"Got Coke?"

"Sure."

"Diet Coke?"

"Sure."