Night Kills (10 page)

    "I need to see her on the Falcon account."

    Then Shirley looked up. Smirking. "The Falcon account. Yessir." Of course she knew all about Brolan and Kathleen. "Has she called in?"

    "No, but she told me she was having breakfast with Ken Gilman." The smirk again. Gilman was the hunky ad manager for one of the agency's manufacturing accounts. Gilman had made no secret at agency parties of pursuing Kathleen. With her eyes back on her work, Shirley clucked, "Third breakfast they've had in the past two weeks. They must really be working hard on that account."

    Of course she wanted the satisfaction of seeing him hurt or angry. But he wouldn't give it to her. "Tell her I'd like to see her when she comes in," he said, and walked slowly away from her office. He didn't want to give the impression he was running. At one point, though, he shook his head. He knew how frantic and pitiful a figure Shirley would make him out to be to others in the agency. "Comes back here ten times a day. Always looking for her. Looks like a whipped puppy. I don't have the heart to tell him that she's screwing everything in pants." By this point he figured that being whispered about was just one of the costs he paid to pursue Kathleen. The other major tally was Foster's growing disgust with him. Foster genuinely saw Kathleen as a predator and saw his partner as jeopardizing the agency by having a romance with her. In Foster's world men Brolan's age just didn't walk around lovesick. That sort of thing was done when you were in college, perhaps, but never after.

    

    

    The second meeting concerned some disconcerting focus group tests. Raylan Chemicals, a major account of theirs, was about to market a new herbicide for agricultural use. Raylan was a respected name in the agricultural community, many farmers having used its products since the days when Herbert Hoover had promised to put a chicken in every pot. But
Raydar 2
("Hunts bugs down like radar") had been angrily criticized by six different groups of farmers in six different focus-group tests, one on the West Coast, one on the East Coast, the other four in the heartland. The objection was both simple and deadly: price. Several competitors had moved into the herbicide market lately and had been forcing prices down. Raylan was getting nervous. Profits had been sliding, and it was thought that profit potential for
Raydar 2
would cheer stockholders.

    The meeting was held in a small conference room. For most of the hour and a half-while two research-firm guys in Cricketeer suits and bow ties (no kidding)-slogged through page after page of statistics, Brolan stared out the window at the harsh grey day.

    He tried to concentrate on the report and recommendations, but how could he?

    The conference room opened on a hallway that led from the art department. Through the window to the right of the door, Brolan could see various art staffers bundled up and making their way to lunch. When he saw Tim Culhane pass by, he stirred in his seat. He wanted to run up to the man and throw him against the wall and ask him what he knew about the death of a prostitute named Emma.

    Culhane, wearing a snap-brim fedora and a blast jacket, hurried past the glass and was gone. Brolan turned his attention back to the researchers and tried very hard to concentrate. He made it for four minutes, five maximum. Then he gave up entirely.

    "Excuse me, Gil," he said to the agency account executive. "I've got to make a phone call. Why don't you take it from here?"

    "Sure thing," Gil said, giving Brolan a tiny salute of goodbye.

    Brolan thanked the research men and left.

    He wished then he'd counted the people who'd left the art department. Back in the small cluster of offices-and the one big open-spaced production office-there were twelve employees. If all twelve of them had left-and it was now ten past twelve-he'd be safe in doing what he was about to do…

    Culhane's office was in the rear, with its own door, a mark of privilege. Two director's chairs sat on either side of the door, spots for suppliers when they came to call. Brolan checked the open area. All the stools adjacent to the art boards were empty. A radio played an old Doors song. The place smelled of Sprayment and cigarette smoke.

    Before he went into Culhane's office, he tried the two cubicles on either side. These didn't have doors. But they were empty, thank God.

    Brolan went back to Culhane's office, looked around guiltily, and then opened the door and went inside.

    A Dali and a 'blue period' Picasso were framed and hung on one wall. A variety of advertising awards filled another. Culhane's desk was messy with purchase orders and phone messages. Culhane was notorious for not returning his calls, even when they came from clients.

    The place was carpeted and furnished sparingly. It gave the impression of being an order desk in a third-rate print shop. That was the way Culhane liked it, hippie defiance in the face of encroaching yuppiedom. In a way Brolan didn't blame him.

    Two framed photographs stood on the desk. In one two blonde little girls grinned at the camera. They were dressed for winter. One was missing her two front teeth. The other looked sad in a certain distant way. The other photograph showed a thirty-ish woman in a swimsuit. She was too fleshy for so small a suit, and her hair was cut so short, it only emphasised her sagging face. The same sadness in the little girl could be glimpsed in the mother.

    Brolan had no idea what he was looking for. Something. Anything. He sat down in the swivel chair and started pulling out desk drawers.

    The drawers were as messy as the desktop. Paper clips and half pieces of gum were thrown in with pencils and erasers and dozens of pink, cheery phone messages. One drawer held maybe twenty fast food coupons, everything from Hardee's to Domino's.

    Thinking he heard something, Brolan stopped. Frozen. He felt like a small boy, sweaty and guilty and shaken.

    A male voice called, "Tim? You back here? Tim?"

    Brolan recognized the voice of a media buyer named Meyers. Culhane and Meyers often had lunch together.

    "Tim?" Meyers called again. His voice sounded disappointed in the rolling silence of the big room.

    Meyers came closer. His steps were big and flat, like a clown's. He paused, maybe ten feet away, said, "Tim?" and then waited a few seconds for an answer, then said, "Shit" to himself and left.

    Brolan went back to the drawers.

    All the drawers but the bottom one were the same jumble of business odds and ends.

    The bottom one held very explicit girlie magazines and a deck of playing cards that made Brolan sick in a very judgmental way. He tried to believe that anything consenting adults cared to do was their business, and basically he did believe that. But he had never been able to quite accept sadomasochism. The notion of pain equalling pleasure was not something he could grasp. He always had the sense that this was the sort of experience that could quickly get out of hand. Fun turned fatal.

    The girlie magazines were harmless enough if you liked the type. The girls weren't pretty, and many of them were tattooed, and most of them were fat. All of them had their legs spread and showed you their wet pink sex. During the dreary days following his divorce, Brolan himself had bought magazines such as these. Not Penthouse and Playboy, which he still bought, but the down-and-dirties. At that time they'd held a curious appeal for him-their ambience seemed to be part danger and part sorrow. The women looked like the type who always turned up floating in a river somewhere. They bore no resemblance to Hefner's Playmates, with their radiant smiles and radiant bodies.

    Done with the girlie magazines, he set the cards on top of the desk and proceeded to thumb through them. The men and women pictured wore leather get-ups that managed to make them look kinky and silly at the same time. Sometimes the girls held the whips; sometimes the guys held the whips. A few of the photos depicted people with fake blood smeared all over them.

    All he could think of was Emma and what she'd looked like when he was setting her in the freezer. Her body cut up so many ways, so many times. He wondered if this was what all these people in the pictures wanted-either to be the killer or the killed.

    Down near the bottom of the deck, he found the card that had the power to shock him. Even with a domino mask on, she was obviously Emma. She was being whipped by a fleshy man.

    He put the cards in the pocket of his suit jacket, replaced the magazines, and then left the office.

    In ten minutes he was inside his own office, the door closed, writing a letter to his partner, Foster.

    
I've decided, pally, that I need to stay home and get some work done.

    
I hope you understand.

    
I'll check in from time to time.

    When he was finished with it, he took it down the hall to Foster's office. He folded it in half and set it on Foster's desk.

    Then he was in the elevator and on his way to see his old enemy, Cummings.

    He knew he was running out of time. He had to start searching. He just wished he knew what he was looking for.

    

    

    HER SECOND NIGHT in the neighbourhood she'd seen two old drifters go at each other with switch-blades. In a way, scary as it was, it was funny, too. The guys were so old and so drunk on Ripple that they could scarcely get around. But they went at each other pretty good, there in a small circle of light supplied by a light bulb over a warehouse door. It seemed the two old farts had been sleeping in the same boxcar-there was a railroad siding maybe a hundred yards to the east-when one woke up, found he'd drunk nearly all his wine, and then decided to blame the missing wine on the other drifter.

    In all the fight went ten minutes, and neither one of them laid a blade on the other. Not that they didn't try hard. Not that they didn't want to. They were both truly mendacious sons of bitches, hard-core types who'd probably spent a good number of years in the slammer, and who were dying out their days lost amid the urban homeless. In her six months since leaving St. Louis and wandering through the Mid-west with just her little for-hire body and her soft night prayers to keep her going, she'd met a lot of such people.

    Denise thought of all this as she headed that morning for Papa's Place, a grungy restaurant near the sleeping room she crashed in when she had money from turning tricks. In her coat pocket rode the billfold.

    She thought again of the guy who tried to strangle her the previous night. She still couldn't decide if the attempt had been real or if it had just been part of getting his kicks. Maybe at the very last second he would have let her go. Maybe.

    Papa's was filled, as always, with working-class guys breaking all the rules about cholesterol by ordering three eggs, ham, and American fries. This was the meal Denise liked herself. Spend a few bucks on a breakfast like that, and you didn't have to worry about food the rest of the day.

    In the back, in the booths, were the drifters and the hookers, female and male alike. Papa's was one of those very old places with a pressed-metal ceiling, two big wooden-paddle fans to move around the greasy, sluggish air, a wall-length of counter and stools, and a wall-length of booths. Against the back wall were pinball machines that looked kind of neat when they were all lit up at night. Next to them was a jukebox. The guy who ran the place was always arguing with the runaways. He claimed that his real "paying customers" liked country and western. The kids, of course, wanted Madonna and rap music and things like that. Apparently he didn't consider buying a Pepsi or two an horn: proper qualification for being a "paying customer."

    The kids were dressed for winter. The sexy clothes of summer had been replaced by heavy coats and pullover sweaters. There were ten of them scattered over three booths drinking, variously, pop and coffee. At the sight of Denise they waved and nodded but without much enthusiasm. Denise wasn't a particular favourite. She had a tough time talking about her feelings, and she distrusted almost on principle anybody who tried to get close to her. She'd been close only to her mother. But then her mother died. Denise had never forgiven her.

    She went over to the last booth, where Polly sat. Denise hated the name Polly. It didn't fit the girl at all. A seventeen-year-old runaway from Ogden, Utah, Polly was, despite a few extra pounds, a classic beauty. Pretty as Denise was, she envied Polly her regal looks. But Polly was more than good-looking. She was the smartest runaway Denise knew.

    Polly sat with Bobby, a handsome, dark-skinned boy, who was a favourite of men who cruised for boys. Bobby was seventeen and from a farm town up near the Canadian border. With his fashionable haircut and his cute, knowing face, Bobby gave the impression of being very sophisticated. But when he talked, you could tell he was a hick, with hick tastes. Bobby's big dream was to live in one of those condos near St. Louis Park and have a girlfriend. Bobby was always talking about girlfriends. He didn't want any of the kids to think he was gay just because he went with men.

    "Hey, kiddo, how's it going?" Polly said. She always called Denise kiddo. For some weird reason Denise liked it. She guessed it was Polly's way of saying that she both accepted and liked Denise. Polly didn't call anybody else kiddo. Then, before Denise could say anything, Polly said, "You look kinda tired, kiddo."

    "I am."

    Bobby grinned. "Then throw yourself down here." He held his arm out as if he wanted Denise to slip right inside. She didn't mind playing around with Bobby-he was as nice as he was cute-but right then wasn't the time.

    "Bobby, would you be mad if I asked to speak to Polly alone?"

    "Whoa," Bobby said, grinning. "This must be serious stuff."