The Staked Goat - Jeremiah Healy (30 page)

I paused. His jaw worked a few times, but no sound.

"You arrange a meeting between yourself and one
Bouvier, a ballsy, reasonably connected holdover from the colonial
heydays. But there's a double cross, and a bit of explosive takes
somebody's head off. Your double cross, my friend, but, more's the
pity, not your head. You and Bouvier are roughly the same size and
coloring, and with everybody thinking he killed you, attention is
shifting from the crooked noncom to the dastardly drug dealer. Of
course, you need some help there, but it doesn't have to be much.
Just one man really. The MP who takes the prints off the corpse. No
head means no face or dental charts for identification. So you draw
Belker into it ahead of time, and after he roll-prints the corpse, he
switches fingerprint cards for you. No big problem. The prints on the
switched card match the ones of yours on file, and you just lay low
for a couple of weeks, then fake enough ID to come out as, what, a
British journalist?"

He stared hard at me. "Canadian," he said.

"Ah, of course, no accent for you to fake.
Anyway, you get back to the States, but you realize then, or maybe
you realized beforehand, that you'd be short one important item
without which you'd be doomed to menial, unpleasant jobs and frequent
relocation."

He swallowed hard.

"You also had a loose end dangling. A
potentially dangerous one. The absence of the item and the potential
of the loose end would make it tough to enjoy your profits much."

I gave him my best smile. "The item was a social
security card. The loose end was Belker. My guess is that you decided
to kill both birds with one stone."
 
My
passenger laughed. It startled me. The noise was like a little
creature chirping, then stopping to listen. "You know," he
said, almost nostalgically, "it was a stone I used. I mean, I
could have bought a social security card, you know, but you never
really know whose card you're buying. Then some computer or
compulsive, low-level auditor spots some discrepancy and where are
you? Nowhere, except the slammer or back on the run. No, Belker was
perfect. I knew about him, you see. I checked his 201 file very
carefully. Neither of us had any family. To know him was to dislike
him, so no friends to worry about coming to look him, or me, up. Just
in case, though, I went through everybody's 201 file who had anything
to do with him. That left me with quite a choice, geographically. I
decided I liked Boston the best." He frowned. "How did I
miss you?"

"I wasn't in Saigon then. I arrived a few months
later."

He smiled. "Well, even so, you would have been
no danger. I changed my appearance, and good God, there must be
dozens of Clay Belkers in this country anyway. If somebody did
stumble on the name, I just wasn't that Clay Belker."

"To avoid even that, why didn't you just change
your name? From Clay Belker to something else, I mean?"

"I looked into it, but it required a birth
certificate. I was older than Belker and, well, applying for a
driver's license or broker's license is one thing, going before a
judge is another. Besides, like I said, there didn't seem to be much
risk."

My passenger was doing an excellent job of lulling
me. He came across as a reasonable, thoughtful man. A sweetheart of a
guy who had tortured and mutilated a good friend.

"You used a stone?"

He blinked.

"You used a stone, you said."

"Oh, yes. To kill Belker. I arranged for him to
meet me in San Francisco when he got rotated back to the States. I
told him that I wanted to wait till he was discharged, so that he
could take off without leaving any tracks that would be followed. He
was discharged on a Thursday. He had all his gear in a duffel bag and
met me in Golden Gate Park. We drove out to a place called Muir
Woods. Heard of it?"

"No."

"It's a stand, actually I guess nearly a whole
valley, of redwoods only about an hour's drive from San Francisco.
Someone, not Muir, saved the valley from being developed. Nobody ever
does anything there except maintain the trails. We hiked about half a
mile off one. I hit him with a stone. A few times. Then I used a
folding entrenching tool to bury him. The ground was pretty soft. It
didn't take long."

"Then?"

"I came to Boston, sent the army a change of
address so I could do my income taxes correctly as Clay Belker, and
lived happily, conservatively, ever since."

"Until last week."

His face clouded. "Yes," he said. "The
fool. How can one contemplate that a moron from the army would go
through telephone books looking for . . . Oh, it's simply too
ridiculous."

"He tried to call you, thought it was the wrong
guy, but—"

"Oh, I handled it badly. My receptionist was out
getting coffee. I took the call, and I realized who it was but
feigned ignorance. He told me later that he recognized my voice. That
was arrogant of him. I think instead that he just could not believe
that he was wrong and came to the of fice to see me. Apparently he
spotted me getting into my car and followed me to my home. He knocked
on my door." He gestured with the gun. "Can you imagine
that? He actually knocked at my door and came in. I told him I would
have to gather the money. We arranged the drop-off for the next day.
A warehouse area"—he swung his head around slowly—"not
unlike this one. He was very nervous. And not too smart, after all."
He sneered at me.

"How did you take him?" I asked.

"I rigged a bundle with a gas trigger. Not
unlike the substance Ricker said he used on you. In any case, the
baboon opened the bundle at the drop-off. He keeled over, and I
waited till he revived and then interrogated him."

"Were you acquainted with Jacquie's father,
too?"

"Jacquie?"

"Ricker's wife." —

"No. Outside of 'Nam I barely knew him. Ricker,
I mean. Or Mayhew. They were just people in the network. Ricker told
me on the telephone that you recognized him from a photo . . . oh, of
course; That's how you recognized me, too. From the photo in the
file."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I
recognized you from the photo in Al's package."

"Package?" He looked pained. "What
package?"

"After Al spotted you, he sent me a package.
Photos of you. From Weston Hills. With a little chronology of how he
found you by flipping through the telephone book."

"You're lying," he said evenly. "You're
definitely lying. He never had time for that."

"Sure he did. He wrapped it up for me.
Fourth-class mail. It didn't arrive until after I left for his
funeral. In Pittsburgh."

"You're lying. He never mentioned anything about
a camera or a package to me." Again the sneer. "And believe
me, he would have, he told me everything else. After what I did to
him, he begged me to let him
tell me."

I took a chance. "If you were so good at
interrogation, how come he never mentioned me?"

Crowley caught himself and lied. "He did."

I shook my head. "No, the first time you heard
about me was when you decoyed the hotel clerk and saw the message in
Al's box. Just after you tossed his room."

"How did you—"

"No," I interrupted, "Al never
mentioned me to you. I was his insurance policy. I was the one who
would see to it you paid the debt if he couldn't make you."

Crowley ground his teeth a bit. "Where is the
package?"

"No," I said. "First we open your
bundle. Then we open mine. Just like at Christmas."

"Where's the goddamned package?"

"You first," I said.

Crowley lowered his weapon till it was pointing at my
crotch. "Where's the package?"

"I'm afraid you're going to have to play it my
way. If you shoot me, I lift my foot and the sanitation men draw some
overtime. If you open your package first, at least you're still in
the game."

Crowley smiled suddenly, in a superior manner.

"You said that his package arrived after you
left for Pittsburgh?"

I sighed. "That's right. At my post office box.
It and three bills are the only other paperwork I've got left after
my apartment was leveled."

Crowley dropped the smile and looked a little queasy.

"By the way," I said, "did you arrange
that?"

"What?" he said, lost in thought.

"I said, did you plant the bomb at my place?"

"No, no. That would have been stupid, an
unnecessary risk. I had no reason to believe Sachs had told you
anything. He never mentioned you. I found your message at his hotel,
and then I held my breath for about three days, poised to run. I . .
. well . . . I assumed that Ricker had taken care of you. When I then
read in the paper about your apartment building and the corpse that
was supposed to be you, it all seemed so . . ."

"Fortunate."

"Yes." He snapped back to the present. "Now
where is——"

"Short memory, my friend. You first.”

He gritted his teeth and worked his jaw and started
twice to talk. His left hand, shaking badly, levered the attaché
case up and between us in the suicide seat, latches and handle toward
me.

"Go ahead," he said. "Open it."

I thought back to Al's alleged mistake at the
drop-off. "You open it."

Crowley smiled. "You are either much more clever
or far more stupid than I thought." He seemed to relax. "My
judgment is for clever. If you had begun to open it then either you
were too stupid to recall how your friend failed, or could ignore it
because you knew that switch under your foot was a dummy, attached to
no bomb." He reached forward and turned the case over, back to
facing him. He was no longer the nervous killer but again the cool,
methodical businessman. He fingered two catches, and the lid popped
up, the case relieved of the pressure of being stuffed to bursting.

"If you had done that," he said, wiggling
his finger at the latches, "you'd be dead now."

I winked at him and pointed to my left foot, "So
would you."

He winked back.

I tipped the case's lid back against the hinges and
toward me. It was full of rubber-banded stacks of old bills, tens and
twenties showing.

"Rough estimate?" I asked.

"Sixty-five thousand." Then, more
wistfully, "All I've got in the world."

I grinned. "More likely one-third maybe of all
the old, passable cash you've got in the world."

He laughed, a real laugh. "You're good, Cuddy.
Maybe good enough."

"Bet on it."

"Oh, I am, I am." He sank back into the
door behind him more, easing what must have been a stiff back. "I'm
betting that you're even clever enough to realize I have no reason to
kill you. Even if you turn to the police. You see, after tonight,
Clay Belker just drops off the earth, through another trap door. I
take off, so I don't care who you go to with your information. You,
and the widow and the kid, get sixty-five thousand dollars. I get a
twenty-four-hour headstart.

I'm not a vindictive man, really. Belker, the real
Belker, and your friend, were genuine threats to me. You're no
threat, not after this time tomorrow. Gentleman's agreement." He
smiled ruefully. "Sorry, poor taste, in view of Sachs', ah,
derivation. I meant agreement as in officers and gentlemen."

"Let's say I'm clever enough to get out of here
alive, with the money. Why should I wait for twenty-four hours?"

"Because, and I really believe this, after
talking with you—you intend that money for Sachs' widow and kid.
Based on what Sachs told me about his motives, they really need it.
No, if you blew the whistle on me, it would be tough for you to wash
that money and get it to them. Tough enough for you that I think
you'll keep your end of the deal."

"And if you're wrong?"

Crowley shrugged. "If I'm wrong, I'l1 find out
about it. And the first thing I do, perhaps the last thing too, but
the first thing I do is get to Pittsburgh and kill Martha and the
boy."

He threw me with that one, and my face must have
shown it.

He laughed his good laugh again. "Oh, come on
now. You thought of everything else. Don't feel badly. Your revenge
has to be financial, that's all. Just strictly financial." He
dropped his voice to a low, authoritative tone. "Let that be
enough."

"It's a deal," I said. "The package is
in the glove compartment. "

His eyes narrowed. "What package?"

"Al's package. The one he sent me."

"What the fuck are you talking about? I searched
his room and his car. Sachs had no camera. He couldn't have sent you
any package."

"Okay, he didn't. Step out of the car and dive
off to the right. I'll drive the hell out of here and you'll have
your twenty-four hours."

Crowley stared at the glove compartment.

"He couldn't have. He wasn't that smart."