Strip Search (13 page)

“What about?”

“Things—everything. Hell, I don’t know. What do you talk about when you drink beer with a guy?”

“You might talk contacts. You might talk buying and selling. You might talk about the profit margin in an ounce of pure.”

“I’m out of the action, Wager. I told you—I’m clean now. And I don’t know nothing about Rick dealing, either. He never said nothing about that to me.”

“I’m just telling it the way a parole officer might see it, Plummer. One who doesn’t want any black marks on his record.”

The man sucked again on the cigarette and then pinched out the fire between his fingers. He stripped the paper from the butt and dumped the remaining tobacco in an ashtray that held a little pile of earlier remains. The pellet of paper shot into the trash. “I had nothing to do with it, Wager.” He looked up, black eyes two glittering specks. “You’re trying to turn me, aren’t you? You want me in your stable, don’t you?”

“I can always use the help of a concerned citizen.”

He shook his head. “I’m clean. You got nothing on me. Nothing!”

“Consorting, Lizard. Suspicion of homicide. Failure to cooperate in a police investigation. Violating the fire code with a dirty ashtray. I’ve got all I need, because it doesn’t take much for a parolee.”

“I didn’t know the guy had a record!”

“That makes no difference and you know it, Plummer. Your name came up in the contact cards as a known associate of a murdered dealer. All I have to do is whisper that to your PO. What do you have left, four years? One whisper, and you’re doing them inside.”

The man turned and walked the three steps to a narrow window that looked across two feet of air at a grimy brick wall. From somewhere came the muffled thump of a stereo, like a manic hammer against the ceiling. Plummer glared up at the sound. “Fucking kid and his fucking record player!”

Wager shifted his weight to his other leg and waited.

“What is it you want?” Plummer spoke to the glass and the wall beyond.

“If you were in on it, I want you to turn state’s evidence against whoever helped you out.” Wager continued as the man turned angrily. “Or, if you had no part of it, I want you to find out who did.”

“That’s all? You just want me to walk down the street asking, ‘Hey, who rubbed Goddard?’”

“I want you to go out and listen, Lizard. Just tell me what you hear.”

“Sure—just like Goddard. You say he got it for being a snitch and now you want me to stick my neck out.” A thought struck him. “Was he one of yours? Is that what you’re doing—putting me in his place?”

“I don’t know if he was a snitch. Maybe he shorted somebody on a deal.”

“Which is what you want me to find out.”

“That’s part of it.”

“Part? What the hell more?”

“Let me know what you hear about these two.” He tore a leaf of paper from his little notebook and wrote down the names of Sheldon and Williams. “They worked at the Cinnamon Club and at Foxy Dick’s. I want to know if they were dealing.”

Plummer frowned as he read the names. “Pussy palaces—that’s not my turf. That kind of crap just turns me off. It’s too damn depressing.”

Wager lifted some twenties out of his wallet and set them on the arm of the worn sofa. “Expand your horizons. As my guest.”

Plummer looked at the bills and then at him. “You’re not really after the guy who snuffed Ricky, are you? You want the one who did for these broads, don’t you?”

“I want them both. But Ricky will be easier—it took more than one person to beat him to death, and they did it that way for a message. Sooner or later somebody’s going to spill. But those two … I can’t even come up with a motive on them.”

“The paper said they were raped—a sex crime.”

“That’s one theory. Maybe the guy’s still around. Maybe you can buy him a drink and he’ll tell you all about it.”

“Great.” The man’s eyes swiveled back to the small stack of twenties; finally, he told Wager where he spent his time drinking and where he’d met Goddard: a hole-in-the-wall bar called the Eveready Lounge. It was halfway down the Colfax strip and there might have been a little dealing going on. “I mean, who can tell, you know? It’s small, it’s quiet, there’s a few girls work there steady, and a lot of regulars, so you know who’s around. If I was in the action—which I am not—it’s the kind of place I’d like.”

“Does Jimmy King hang out there?”

“King? You know about him?” Plummer spat a shred of tobacco. “Yeah. He likes to think he’s big-time. A punk like that! He wouldn’t last twenty minutes in Cañon City. His asshole’d be as big as Eisenhower Tunnel in twenty minutes.”

“Is that where he met Ricky?”

“Once in awhile. Him and somebody name of Clinton. I don’t know him too good. A few other dudes once in awhile.”

“Any names?”

He shook his head. “Wasn’t my business to ask.”

“What did they look like?”

“People. They didn’t look like hoods or street scum, if that’s what you mean. Just people. Straights.” He thought back. “One guy had a big mustache and glasses. Another looked like an albino—you know: white hair and pink skin. There was one big guy—not too tall, but heavy, you know, with his hair brushed up like a brush. Just people.”

“But King had business with them?”

“I guess. Him and Clinton, anyway. The punk’s got his own booth in the back. Thinks he’s a real godfather, you know? He sits back there and these people come in and talk with him. But I don’t know what about, Wager. I never asked.”

“What’s Clinton look like?”

The cigarette crackled faintly as Plummer thought. “About forty-five. White guy. Not too tall, not too short. Likes to wear suits all the time like he’s a salesman or something. Brown eyes. He’s got brown eyes.”

“Color of hair?”

“Dark, I guess. It’s got a lot of gray in it.”

“And Ricky had some business going with him and King?”

“Yeah. He did.”

“What do you think it was?”

“I guess maybe Ricky was dealing a little. It wasn’t big-time, but he wanted to be big-time. I guess he thought King was something hot with his own booth and all. But, shit, I seen bigger in the Boy Scouts.”

“Where does Clinton fit in?”

“I’m not sure. He may be the supplier. He’s bigger than King, that’s for sure.”

“Why?”

“Well, you can tell—Clinton comes in once in awhile and goes back to King’s booth and that kid’s sucking right up to him. Waving his fucking hand at the bartender for a drink for his asshole buddy Clinton, and all. But it’s Clinton does the talking and King listens. King’s stooging for him, that’s what it is.”

“Do you have a line on Clinton? Do you know him from anywhere else?”

Plummer shook his head. “That’s the only place I ever seen him. Like I told you, Wager, I’m out of it. I go to work, I go there for a few beers, I go home—that’s it.”

Wager paused at the door before opening it. “Who do you think killed Ricky?”

Plummer groped in his shirt pocket for a pack of Camels, shook one to his lips, and then shrugged. “Clinton finished him off.”

“Why?”

“Him and Ricky and King were pretty thick there for a while and then something happened. King was pissed off at Ricky about something—really pissed. A couple nights ago, Clinton came in and said something that scared the shit out of Ricky. He came over to my table like he was a goddamned zombie and drank, I don’t know, six or seven gins. Didn’t touch him, he was that scared. He cut out, and I never seen him again.” Plummer lit his cigarette. “Clinton done it. King don’t have the balls.”

Wager laid another twenty on the pile to pay the man for losing his virginity as a snitch. “Okay, Lizard—you get more for me, there’s more of this for you.”

“Don’t call me that,” the man said. “It’s not my fault I had this skin condition when I was a kid.”

Wager studied the scaly, swollen flesh around the man’s eyes and then shrugged. “I thought it was because you ate flies.”

“You fucker,” said Plummer as he closed the door.

In his car, Wager radioed to Records for anything on a Clinton who matched the description Plummer had given him. By the time he reached Colfax and the Eveready Lounge, Records came back with two possibles: Henry Albert Clinton and William Frank Clinton. Henry was a burglar currently doing time in Cañon City. William had an old jacket with four counts of assault or armed robbery and two falls; no arrests since being paroled in 1965.

“Send a copy to me in Homicide, please.”

“Ten-four.”

He found a parking slot along the curb near the Eveready Lounge and backed the car into it. The bar sat between a check-cashing service and a shoe shop whose dusty gray window display was all that was left of a string of small stores which, at one time, sold hardware or greeting cards or appliances to a quiet neighborhood. Now they sold anything that a whisper and the rustle of money could buy in the dark. The lounge didn’t have a parking lot of its own, and that explained why it had a regular trade: people living nearby walked over each evening knowing there wouldn’t be too many tourists; that kind didn’t usually like to get too far from their cars.

Along one wall of the bar was a line of booths whose high backs gave a little privacy for head jobs. The center was open for dancing, and a long bar served the johns who hadn’t yet drunk enough courage to go to a booth with one of the girls. This early in the day—eleven—the place was almost empty and had that cool, stale smell of waking up in damp sheets. From somewhere behind the bar came the domestic aroma of coffee. In one booth, two girls pushed food around their plates with the drowsy look of eating at their own kitchen table.

Wager did not try to hide who he was; it wouldn’t have worked anyway. The bartender, bald head bent over a stock list, looked up, and his face went blank as he nodded good morning.

“I’m looking for James King,” said Wager. He strolled down the row of booths and peered in each one. The sound of the girls’ forks stopped.

“I don’t know anybody named that.”

“Sure you do.” He strolled back toward the bartender. “He lives here. I want him for questioning about a homicide. Anybody that knows him and doesn’t tell me becomes an accessory after the fact.”

The bartender, his round face cut in thirds by heavy eyebrows and a narrow mustache, said, “What was that name again?”

“King. James King. He uses that back booth all the time.”

“There’s a kid named Jimmy sits there a lot. I don’t know his last name.”

“Any idea where he is now?”

“No. You might ask the girls. They talk to him sometimes.”

Wager turned to the two women, who looked at him across a cop-hating distance.

“Do either of you know James King?”

Neither answered. They sat with the stillness of trained animals that suffer the touch of men’s hands but don’t like it.

“He’s wanted for a murder investigation,” said Wager. “That’s a heavy charge.”

“You ain’t with Vice?” The younger one was maybe sixteen years old. Her pale hair, dark at the roots, was cut in bangs across her forehead and hung straight to frame a snub-nosed face. Her wide brown eyes were made even larger with thick eye shadow, and pink makeup almost hid the deepening wrinkles below the corners of her mouth.

“No, miss. Homicide.”

On the scale of crimes, murder was more serious than either girl had been involved in yet, and you had to draw a line somewhere. Even if you might be pushed across it—as so often happened—you drew still another line farther down and then you held out for as long as you could before you crossed that one, too.

“You going to tell him where you found out?” asked the older one. She wore a powder-blue cashmere sweater and a wide skirt; she, too, had bangs, but her dark hair swept over her ears into a long fifties-style ponytail. Wager guess she specialized in middle-aged businessmen.

“No. And he’ll be too worried to ask.” Behind him, the bartender turned on a radio just loud enough to keep their words from reaching him. A female voice mashed flat to the sound of country-and-western wailed, “I used to be your steady flame but now I’m just your ash.”

The girls glanced at each other—you go first, no you—and finally the older one shrugged and said, “He’s got a place on Fillmore, just off Colfax. 1485. Apartment 4.”

The building was made of brick and designed like a brick, too. It was two stories high with a central corridor leading straight back. Pairs of doors marched down the hall. Number 4 was the second on the right. Jimmy King was too scared to act tough.

“I never heard of Richard Goddard. I don’t know the guy.”

“Bullshit. His mother says you came over to his house two or three times. You’re not going to call his poor old grieving mother a liar, are you, Jimmy?”

King was thin and had a downy mustache that curved around the corners of his mouth. A small rash of pimples reddened each side of his pointed chin. Now, as he stared at Wager, he picked nervously at one, drawing a tiny smear of blood.

“Think about it, Jimmy. I found out you and Goddard were buddies. I found out where you live. I found out how you get your pocket change. I found out about Clinton, and I know you and Goddard and Clinton had a deal going. Now you should start telling me what I don’t know. Like what your part in it was.”

“Nothing! I know him, yeah, but I swear I had nothing to do with killing him!”

“If you did the beating and killed him,” Wager went on, “your ass is peanut butter and it’s going to be spread all over the landscape. But if Clinton did the heavy stuff, and if you didn’t mean to kill Goddard—and if you tell me what you know—then maybe we can work a deal.”

Some were like that—they made you wonder how dumb a man could be to help kill somebody he knew for a reason that anyone could figure out. Maybe dumb had nothing to do with it. At least not in the usual meaning. But dumb in the dull and unimaginative way that led some people to surrender themselves to the will of another person and become their tool. It was early afternoon now, and Wager stood in a corner of the brightly lit and silent interrogation cubicle. Max, back from his court appearance, was having his turn at King. The suspect’s thin face glistened with sweat and his worried eyes kept shifting from Axton to Wager and back. His fingers scratched at cuticles until shreds of dry flesh lay on the gray table like bloodless scabs.