The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (14 page)

"Dale . . ."

"Do you know," he said blinking, "do
you know how I picked the names, 'Dale' and Palmer'?"

"No."

"Well, when I was younger, and TV arrived, my
favorite cartoon characters were Chip 'n Dale, you know, the Disney
chipmunks. And just after Dad died, this baseball pitcher,
terrifically handsome guy named Jim Palmer, had a great season and
was all over the papers. I was in Baltimore once and even went to see
him play. And I can't stand baseball, to me it's like watching golf,
you know, all tension and no real release. Not like football, where
you get to take out . . . no, no, that's how I named myself, after a
chipmunk and a jock."

Dale closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair.

"Da1e . . ."

"Yes," he said quietly.

"I need to know some things. To help Martha."

"Yes?" he said, opening his eyes.

"I can see for myself that this place hasn't
been brought along at all. There are things that have to be done that
haven't been done."

Dale's expression changed from philosophical to sad.
"Nobody likes to meddle in another family's problems. But pretty
clearly things weren't going too well for Al at his job. I assume
they told you that this morning."

"Yes."

"Well, most of us around here, Al and Martha
included, bought under a special mortgage program. Even if I weren't
half drunk, it would take a lawyer to explain it to you. But
basically, because of some I federal/state deal, we got low-interest
mortgages to come in and try to revive this area. The catch is that
renovations have to be mostly done by a certain deadline, something
like two years after you move in. You also have to complete the work
by something like a year later. Larry and I finished ours way ahead.
Carol was just under the wire. Al and Martha had already been
inspected—the state sends somebody to walk through your house—and
the inspector failed them. I mean, you see the fixtures and all, he
had no choice. With the economy around here, speculators are hovering
like vultures over properties like this. Two families on the next
block already lost their places. I never asked Al about it, but—"
Dale moved his hands in a shrugging gesture that rattled the cubes '
in the glass he was holding but couldn't hurt the long-departed
vodka.

"You mean unless the renovations are done pretty
damn quick, Martha loses the place?"

Dale nodded slowly. "The renovations are the big
thing. The monthly mortgage, property taxes . . . they could be
manageable . . . look"—Da1e leaned forward, put his glass down
on the table and wiped his hands on his pants—"I've never told
Martha, but A1 borrowed money from all of us. Me, Carol, and I'm sure
others, though from the funeral, perhaps not. Al was in desperate
financial shape. I honestly don't know how he thought he'd pull
even."

I got that sick-stomach feeling again, the one I'd
gotten when I heard the radio announcer in Boston describe Al's body
being found. I was beginning to realize how A1 thought he could pull
even.

"How much?" I said. "How much for the
renovations?"

Dale inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. "I would
guess twenty thousand."

I did a quick room-by-room allocation. "That
doesn't sound like enough," I said.

Dale pinched his nose. "One Sunday last fall,
I'd gotten two free tickets to a Steelers home game. I asked Al, but
Martha and A1 Junior were both sick, so he had to stay home. I
dragged Larry along. He's not much for football, but he came anyway
so I'd have someone to go with. Anyway, about midway through the
second half, three guys a few rows behind us started saying . . .
things. About my toupee, about Larry, who had worn some, well, tight
jeans to the game, and so on. They were drunk and really obnoxious,
and we left just before the end of the game. On our way up the aisle,
Larry said something to one of them, and that one tried to come after
us, but we moved pretty quickly and lost him in the crowd.

"It was still nice weather so we had walked to
Three Rivers stadium and were walking home. Just as we turned onto
our street, I heard a car roar up behind and then slam on its brakes
as it pulled even with us. It was the three guys from the game. I
don't know how they found us. There are a lot of bars down in the
square, maybe they were headed for one of them, maybe it was just a
wild coincidence. Anyway, the guy Larry had said something to at the
game got out of the car and came running up, to us. We were across
the street from our place, perhaps live doors down from this place.
The other two guys came up too. The first guy grabbed Larry—he was
at least two hundred pounds—and slammed Larry against the car,
screaming the usual 'homo' stuff at him. I said to let him go, and he
didn't, I said it loud and he still didn't so I punched him hard,
just above the kidney. You know what I mean?"

I thought back to Marco at the courthouse elevator
and said, "Yes, I do."

"We1l," said Dale, "that was a really
stupid thing for me to do. Maybe the guy would have been satisfied to
just push Larry around and scream some more. But once I punched him,
and he sank to the ground, the other two guys jumped on me. One
pinned my arms, the other began punching me in the stomach. The
second punch really hurt, and I cried out. Larry kicked the guy who
punched me, and that guy turned and punched Larry hard in the face.
Larry went backwards onto the hood of the car, blood everywhere. I
was struggling, but weakly because of my stomach hurting so much. The
guy I had hit staggered up. He and the guy Larry had kicked then
started punching and kicking Larry, hard, viciously. I think I
started screaming.

"I never even saw Al approaching us. I found out
later he'd heard some yelling and looked out his front window. The
next thing I knew, A1 was behind the two guys who were hitting Larry.
Al kicked one of them hard behind the knee cap, and he just went
down. The other guy, the one I had punched, turned and swung at Al.
Al just let the man's fist go by his head, then jabbed at the guy's
throat, just quickly and lightly"—Dale demonstrated——"like
a snake striking.

This guy started coughing and dropped to his knees.

The other guy, the one on the ground, was just
writhing, yelling about cramps.

"I realized the guy holding me had let go. He
was watching Al and backing away. I ran over to Larry. He was
conscious but in a lot of pain.

"Al ignored the third guy, instead he bent down
and yanked the wallets of both of the men he'd hit. He dipped through
them, reading, and then pulled out money from each.

" 'Hey,' said the third guy, 'what the hell . .
.'

" 'Just squaring things,' said Al, just like
that. 'Just squaring things.' "

Dale and I looked at each other for a moment.

"Then Al asked the third guy if he was the
driver. The guy said no, A1 said, 'You are now,' and with that Al
pulled open the rear door and tossed, and I mean just picked them up
and threw, the two guys into the back seat. He flung their wallets in
on top of them. By this time, the third guy was getting in on the
driver's side. I got Larry's arm around my shoulder and pulled him
off the hood. The keys must have been in the ignition because the
third guy started it up right away. Al leaned into the passenger's
side and said, 'I know who you two are and where you live. You guys
and us are square now. Debt owed and paid. You give my friends any
more trouble, I pay you guys a house call. Now get out of here!' "

"The third guy put the car in gear and took off,
tires squealing. Al pushed the money into my pocket and drove us to
the hospital. Larry needed some stitches in his lip and we were both
black and blue for a time, but without Al, we'd have been . . . And
then for Al to die . . . the way . . . the papers said."

Dale stopped and bowed his head. It was so quiet in
the house that I could hear the refrigerator motor choking and
whirring.

"No," resumed
Dale, head still bowed. "I have a few friends in the trades who
owe me favors, too. To square things, twenty thousand would be
plenty."

* * *

Dale left a few minutes later. It is eerie to be
alone in a strange house when you can't make much noise. At the same
time, it was the first time I had been on my own, and conscious,
since getting on the plane in Boston. I wasn't really sleepy after my
nap earlier, but I was afraid calling Carol might strengthen a wrong
impression.

I tried to discharge my night-nurse duties toward Al
Junior and Martha. Shortly after closing the door behind Dale, I
tiptoed upstairs and looked in on them. Both seemed sound asleep in
their respective rooms. I came back downstairs and found a science
fiction paperback by Larry Niven and let my thoughts drift with his.
I finished the book at 2:30 A.M. and tried to tote up what I knew so
far about Al's death.

Murphy's investigation confirmed that Al had come to
Boston on business legitimately. Al had called me, seen his
customers, albeit fruitlessly, and had one other appointment. He
hadn't told me he was in money trouble. He had told me he'd made a
bet on the Bruins the night before and won. I couldn't remember A1
ever talking hockey before, and he had never been a gambler. Of
course, a man in a money squeeze might try a lot of new ways to ease
the pressure. Still, Al would have been too smart to trust some guy
in a strange city to pay him off the next night. And I couldn't quite
picture a bookie killing Al by mutilation and passing it off as some
ritualistic slaying to deflect attention.

In fact, when you thought about it, what could have
been worth what Al's killer had gone through? I had to admit that a
secret appointment suggested blackmail. Assuming the killer was Al's
secret appointment, why keep the appointment at all? Why not just
run? Identities can be changed, passage and even sanctuary bought
pretty easily. The killer must have had something more to protect
than just his own skin. Maybe some illiquid asset or business
operation. That would explain the pass-off method of killing. It
would also explain the torture, the tossing of Al's room, and the
gander at my message. The visit to the motel room and desk were both
risks, small risks to be sure, but nevertheless risks of being
spotted, identified, and connected with Al and therefore with Al's
death. The killer would have run that risk only if his identity were
subordinated to protecting something else. He preferred to risk being
spotted in order to be sure something that tied him to Boston was
secure.

And about Al's being so oblique with me on the
telephone? He had to let me know he was tryin something so the
something wouldn't be gone forever. But he also couldn't drag me into
it beforehand and therefore perhaps unnecessarily. No matter how
pressed for money Al was, he would never have asked me to help him
with something shady. He would have had to handle the someone alone.

A someone who was good enough to take Al, who only a
few months before was himself still good enough to cool a couple of
stadium toughies. I didn't think Al would have met someone like that
selling steel gizmos to distributors or general contractors. But we
had both met a lot of people like that somewhere else. I moved J.T.'s
name up near the top of my list of tomorrow's phone calls.
 
 

TWELVE
-•-

I BLINKED. THE DIM SUNLIGHT A FEBRUARY MORNING in
Pittsburgh slanted through the front window. I was lying on the
couch. My teeth felt as though they would fall out if I didn't brush
them soon. I sat up, and my kidneys ached all the way to my shoulder
blades. A full night's sleep on a horizontal and firm mattress would
do me a world of good.

From the kitchen came some quiet tinkling of
tableware and the scuffing sound of slippered feet. I walked into the
kitchen.

Martha was at the sink, her back to me, carefully
stacking glasses on the dish rack. She had pulled on a turtleneck
sweater with a hole in the left elbow. Her hair was drawn back into a
bobbed ponytail. The clock above her head said 10:20 A.M.

"Good morning," I said softly.

She jumped but recovered nicely, reaching for a towel
to dry her hands. "Good morning, John. I wish we had a better
place for you. How did you sleep?"

"Fine." Her voice sounded steady and
strong, with none of the false bravado high, or grief. "You?"

"Uh," she giggled, embarrassed, "those
pills must really be something. I remember Carol making me take two.
I'd hate to think what more of them would . . ."

The possibility darkened her face like a small cloud
crossing the sun. It passed quickly, and the sun shone again.

"I'm afraid I haven't been too steady the last
few days. I do want to thank you for all you've . . ."

I slowly put my hand in a stop sign. She stopped,
broadening her smile. She came over to me, and we hugged as brother
and sister might.

"He tried so hard," she whispered past my
shoulder.

"He always did, Martha."

We broke apart. She returned to the sink.

"I'm sorry I didn't get to those last night,"
I said. She shook her head over the sink.