Summer Cool - A Jack Paine Mystery (Jack Paine Mysteries) (9 page)

Up in his office, Paine turned on his answering machine. Billy Rader's voice said, "Call me."

Paine called, and Billy answered the phone.

"What is it, Billy?"

Rader laughed. "I just wanted to tell you the skies are supposed to be crystal clear down here tonight."

"Fuck you, Billy."

Rader laughed again. "I also wanted to tell you I got a name on the fellow we found in Bob Petty's hotel room. Parker Johnson. Local boy. No one saw him go into the hotel room. Hold on, let me get my piece of paper." Rader went away from the phone, came back. "I'm just guessing, but would you say Petty was about six foot or so, maybe one hundred seventy pounds, waist size maybe thirty-four?"

"About that."

"Well, Johnson was five foot eight, a hundred forty pounds, waist size thirty" Rader gave a short chuckle. "The clothes we found in the room were Petty's, so he must have
still been around. And the desk clerk described him as the man who checked into the room. He never came back to check out."

"Anything else?"

"Well,
it
seems some of Johnson's friends say he got very nervous a couple of days ago, and suddenly moved out of his boardinghouse."

Paine paused. "This guy Johnson have any record?"

"Clean. His boarding house buddies say he liked to drink, liked the prostitutes now and then, but otherwise was just an okay type."

"Thanks, Billy."

"Jack, any chance your friend Petty killed this guy?"

"I'd like to think he didn't."

"Sure, Jack. Anything else you'd like?"

"Any chance you could get into the airline reservation
computers, find out if Bob Petty left Dallas-Fort Worth?"

"I'm already working on that. Also the buses and trains."

"I can't thank you enough, Billy."

"Any chance you'd like to sneak on back here tonight, go out to the scope with me?"

"I'd love to, Billy, but—"

"Your loss, Jack."

"Can I ask how you got all this?" Paine asked.

Rader laughed again. "Your friend Landers has a few rivals in the Fort Worth Police Department. Let's just say I've got a lot of friends in high and low places. I'll get back to you."

"Thanks again, Billy."

"I'll think of you tonight while I look at Omega Centauri."

"Like I said, fuck you, Billy."

T
he funeral of Roberto Hermano was not an elaborate affair. All those attending, if they hadn't been scattered throughout the church, might have filled one long pew. The church itself was a model of pre-Vatican II Catholicism—a miniature gothic that must have been, in its polished wood and cleaned stained glass heyday, an inspiration to its congregation. Gloomy, dark, muggily cool, with shadows in the corners, the eye was drawn upward to the vaulted, painted ceiling and its now-faded representations of cherubs floating among the clouds.

Paine's eye was drawn to Hermano's mother, a short, weeping woman in black who had draped herself over the casket parked on its gurney at front and center, and refused to move. The priest waited patiently while two or three family members—cousins or uncles or brothers—tried to persuade her to sit down. But she would have none of it.

"My Roberto!" she wailed. "What have they done to my baby?"

Paine knew what they had done to her baby, and he hoped the police hadn't been stupid enough to tell his mother. He was dead, which was enough.

"Roberto! My Roberto!"

The man Paine was looking for was sitting alone in the far right front. There was a weak pool of light to his left, and he sat shunning it, in the shadows. Paine made his way up the right aisle, past the carved stations of the cross on the wall—representations of Jesus dropping the cross, Jesus
being whipped, Jesus being nailed to the cross—and slid into the pew, in the deeper shadows to the right of the man.

"I saw you come in here," the man said, in a slight Spanish accent. He was slim, impeccably dressed. The open jacket of his silk suit showed a spotless white silk shirt, pale blue silk tie knotted tight and small and perfect. His face was smooth as a baby's, the eyes large and brown, the hair pulled back into a short tight black ponytail. In his right ear was a tiny gold earring. "You sure as hell didn't try to hide."

"I've got nothing to hide, Philly," Paine said.

"Bullshit you don't. I could get my balls cut off, stuffed in my mouth, just like Roberto, just for talking to you."

"You don't seem worried," Paine said.

Philly smiled slightly. "I'm not," he said, "because they'd do it to you first."

"Who killed Roberto, Philly?"

"Good question," Philly said. "The guys who might have done it are sitting five pews behind us."

Paine turned slightly to see three conservatively dressed black men. Their attention was on the antics of Hermano's mother, which they followed with mild interest.

"Are they the South American boys?"

"Let's just say they work for the South Americans."

"Did they kill Roberto?"

"No. "

"Then who did?"

"That's what everybody here wants to know."

"Was it Jim Coleman?"

"Maybe. I heard Coleman disappeared. But any of fifteen people might have done Roberto. He was very smart, but he was also very stupid. He played a lot of cards, Paine, tried to make everybody happy. The South Americans think they've lost a great friend, because he was helping them set up. But at the same time, he was working for Bob Petty, who was setting them up. And at the same time, he was working for Coleman, who was setting himself up with the South Americans for a little piece of their pie when he made sure that
Petty's sting didn't work." In the near dark, Philly moved his fingers up and down. "And there was Roberto in the middle, jerking all the strings. And he was very good at it, too."

"You also said he was very stupid."

Philly turned to look at him in the dark. His slight smile came back. "He's dead, isn't he?"

"What about you, Philly—you finished with drugs?"

The smile stayed. "Look at this body, Paine—does it look like I put drugs into it? You remember the way I used to look." The smile widened. "I'm a beautiful man, Paine."

"One more thing, Philly. Is there any possibility that Bob Petty was on the take?"

Philly looked surprised. "Petty? No way."

"Are you sure?"

"You know, I was thinking about this. With Petty taking off and all. The kind of man he is, him leaving a job behind. I wouldn't be surprised if he was going to catch Coleman too when this whole thing went down. I just couldn't see him leaving like that."

"You think it might have been something else? A woman?"

Now Philly's smile was wide. "What do I know about women? Are you asking me if I think it was a man?"

"Okay, I'm asking you."

Philly shook his head. "You know, Paine, you know a lot, but there's a lot you don't know. It wasn't a man. Not Bob Petty."

"You sure?"

Philly turned his eyes on him in the shadows again
;
this time, there was no trace of humor in the eyes or around the mouth. "I'm sure. You know, I didn't have to say word one to you, never have."

"I know that, Philly."

"You helped me once, I appreciate that. But that favor went out a long time ago. You were a cop then, you're not a cop anymore." The humor was still absent. "You know, there
was a time I wasn't sure about you. You know, I would be very good to you."

"Sorry, Philly."

The humor crept back into the corners of his eyes; the slight smile came back. "No harm in asking, Paine."

"No," Paine said. "Thanks, Philly."

At front and center, the uncles and cousins had managed to get Mrs. Hermano to sit down. The priest had come down off the altar, and was slowly circling the coffin, sprinkling it with holy water. He went back to the altar, returned with an incense burner; raising it up high with one hand, he began to circle the coffin again, swinging the burner, sending puffs of incense toward the ceiling.

Paine got up to leave. As he reached the back of the church the scent of incense reached his nostrils. He turned to see that almost everything was as it should be. The three agents for the South Americans were still regarding the ceremony with interest. A small cloud of incense had reached up beyond the low lights to mingle with the painted clouds and cherubs on the ceiling. And Philly sat quiet, impeccably dressed, in his far corner in the shadows. Only now he had taken out what appeared to be a silk handkerchief, and was silently wiping at the corners of his eyes with it.

P
aine saw Terry get out of her car as he entered his building, and he held the elevator until she came in. "How long have you been waiting?" he asked.

Her eyes didn't look at him. "A couple of hours. I tried you at home after the bus took the girls this morning, and then I left a message on your machine."

"I was at a funeral."

"Oh.
"

"It was Roberto Hermano, the guy Bobby was working with on that drug case."

Now she looked at him. "Did—"

"I don't know what to think. There were things I wanted to tell you yesterday, but you wouldn't let me."

The elevator stopped, and they walked the hail to Paine's office door. Inside, the phone was ringing. Paine got out his keys, but by the time he got the door open the phone had stopped.

"Come on in," he said to Terry.

There was more mail on the floor, and Paine picked it up and threw it on the desk. It was hot and stuffy in the room. Paine threw his jacket on the couch, sat behind the desk, went quickly through the mail.

"I was going to call you yesterday, right after you left," Terry said. She was standing on the other side of the desk, looking down at him. "Last night I almost did. I had a few drinks and went to bed, but I couldn't sleep. I almost called you at two in the morning."

"You should have," Paine said.

Terry paused, and then said, "I'm sorry, Jack."

Paine put on a smile. "For what?"

She didn't smile. "I was serious about what I said yesterday. But I shouldn't have done that to you."

"Did the garbage men come?"

A flush of anger or embarrassment came and faded. "Yes. And they'll come next week for the rest."

"My point was, don't you think you're being a bit hasty?"

"In getting on with my life? When people die, you put their things away and go on."

"Bobby's not dead."

Now her eyes were focused straight on him. "To me he is."

Paine looked at her, and she sat down and put her hands in her lap. "I'm sorry, Jack, but that's the way it is. He's gone now. I know he's not coming back I have a life to get on with."

"Terry, I'm going to find him, whether you want me to or not."

She stood, still clutching her hands, and turned away from the desk. "I know you will. But I don't want to know anything about it."

He saw her beginning to sob, and he rose and walked around the desk.

She turned, crying, and fell into his arms. Her hands moved up to her face, trying to stop the tears, but then she let them come and put her arms around Paine and held him close to her.

"Oh, Jack, I don't know what the hell to do.
. ."

He held her tight, and suddenly she stopped crying and he looked down and her face was there, and she was looking at him with a hard straight look. She looked almost fierce. Tears had flushed her face, and she reached up and held Paine's neck and pulled his mouth down to hers.

Paine tried to stop her, but she held his neck and suddenly Paine found himself opening his mouth and responding. Her kiss was hard and long. Paine tried to fight her, tried to fight himself, but he melted to her, feeling a cloud move down
around him, pushing the world out. He held her a long time and her second kiss was not tentative and hard and fierce but warm and soft. Her kiss lessened and she pulled her mouth away from him and when he opened his eyes she was staring at him hard again, in surprise.