Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) (22 page)

Peggy said, “What are you doing? You can't leave me here by myself.”

“Doc Cooper lives just down the road. He'll be here soon. I've got to get Anci.”

“They said . . .”

I shook my head. “They're liars. If I let them run, they might kill her. I can't leave it up to them.”

“So you're going?”

“I'm going.”

She started crying again.

“Alone?”

I said, “Not alone.”

I
drove into Marion on rims, then east of the town and out the other side until I found the spot. I left the ruined car in the lot and went inside the building. I convinced the woman at the front desk to let me in to see him. Visiting hours had ended long before, but a bit of persuasion and what cash I had on me turned the key, and I was allowed through the door and into the home. He had money, so it was one of the nicer places, more like a big hotel than a hospital. The lobby was fancy, with thick carpet and red curtains and a piano and a big-screen TV. I was led through the lobby and down a hallway past a library and into a private space, where four old men were gathered around a table holding playing cards and stacking plastic chips. Cheezie Bruzetti looked up at me, and it took him a moment but then he recognized me and smiled. The old man looked up at me, too, but he didn't smile.

He said, “What the hell do you want?”

I said, “Dad, I need your help.”

J
onathan led me to the house. Luster had some real estate investments, apparently, and Temple knew about them. Two or three of them were in places that seemed too exposed to be useful to murderers and kidnappers. But one of them looked to fit the bill: a place inside the reserve, not far from the Estates, in a secluded spot that was just perfect for shadowy goings-on.

When I gave Jonathan the lowdown, he said, “She really did all that?”

“She did some of it anyway,” I said.

“She . . . killed him?”

“No, but it looks like what she did led to his killing.”

“It's the same thing,” he said. “I'd like to say I'm surprised.”

“But you're not.”

“No, I'm not,” he said, and he started to cry and the phone went dead between us.

The house was a big one at the northern edge of the national forest, off Eagle Creek Road and within shouting distance of Glen Jones Lake and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife area. Some reason, that seemed appropriate. The place was surrounded by thick walls of autumn olive and shivering common reed, and some big chinquapin trees bowed over what looked to be an old logging road. There was a deep ditch in the front yard, and a culvert, and the back was fenced in with high, sharp pickets.

The best approach seemed to be to sneak up to the house in the dark, and that's what I tried, but the going was rough. The undergrowth was thick and snatched at my clothes, and eventually my impatience forced me to take a clearer way where the moonlight didn't have to contend with the canopy. It was faster going, but I was exposed from almost every angle and at any moment expected gunfire.

There wasn't any of that. There was only the nighttime quiet and the wind. A big, black Navigator in the driveway was loaded for a long trip, and the front walk piled with boxes and palettes for the movers. She'd been planning to run for longer than a few hours. A sweeping view of the hill valley below was lined with honey mesquite, big bur oaks, and wax myrtles, and they shimmered now like metal leaf in the nervously chilly air. I stepped quickly to the house and around the back, toward the high wooden fence, and I was just getting ready to climb it when who should appear around the corner with a cigarette in his mouth and a hand on his zipper but Tony Pelzer. I pointed Betsy at his chest. He smiled.

“Well, here we are again,” he said.

“Here we are. You mind finishing zipping up? There are some things about you I just don't need to know.”

“Your loss.” He zipped up. He said, “You actually followed us here. After all our threats. After we snatched your girl. After I popped your buddy. Jesus Christ with a chainsaw. You're unbelievable.”

“You never should have taken my kid.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “Time will tell. I guess it's all academic now. You're here, after all.”

“I'm here.”

“Your buddy dead yet? I gotta tell you, I ain't never seen a guy bleed like that. He must've been a stuck pig in a former life. I'd have shot you and your woman, too, if Temple had let me. I saw the way you went after Goines earlier. I told her you'd never listen to reason. You're a runaway train.”

“Feels that way sometimes,” I said. “One thing.”

“Oh, this should be good.”

“The picture of Jim Hart you kept nattering on about. There's an account number on it?”

“Hidden in it, yeah. I should never have mentioned steganography to you, but what can I say? I don't always think too good on the spur of the moment.”

“I guess I don't, either.”

He said, “Temple changed the number after I told her what happened, of course. Goddamn, she was mad. I thought she'd pop me over it, but after a while she calmed down. Still, we couldn't let you keep it, even with the old number. Eventually someone might take a harder look at it, and proof of the existence of any account would tip them off to what we'd done.”

“Okay,” I said. I raised the gun a little more. “Thanks. Time to go nighty-night now.”

“Betsy again? The little heartbreaker? Won't work,” he said. He popped some buttons on his shirt and pulled it open to show me the quilted padding beneath. “I'm wearing a vest. No more beanbags, stupid.”

I said, “No more beanbags,” and pulled the trigger.

When the lead balls in the twelve-gauge triple-decker ammo hit him in the chest, Pelzer basically ripped in half. If it wasn't for his vest, he might have exploded like a balloon, so I guess it got him that at least. It was more noise than I
wanted to make, but it was effective. He went into the dark in two directions and came to rest as a puddle and a closed coffin. I had to hurry now. I ran quickly to the fence, found a likely place, and threw Betsy over. Then I climbed up and dropped down on the other side.

She was in the backyard, pouring a drink from a glass pitcher of martinis and shivering slightly against the cool, but otherwise looking perfectly at home in the winter air.

“Well,
that
was loud,” she said. She was almost cheerful. “But you never really defy expectations, do you? That was Pelzer bowing out, I take it?”

“That's one way of saying it.”

“You did me a favor, then, believe it or not. Anyway, if it weren't this, it'd be something else. He was going to come to a bad end. It was inevitable.”

“Character is fate.”

She laughed. “For you, it's a death sentence. Can I finally talk you into having a drink with me? There might not be another chance.”

“My daughter,” I said, showing her the gun. “Then we can drink.”

Temple hesitated a moment, then sipped her drink some more and shrugged and stood. I followed her across the yard and up the steps and into the dark house.

I said, “Anyone else in here?”

She shook her head.

“Susan?”

She said, “I let her go.”

“You're awfully good at cutting ties.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But maybe that's why I'm so good at life.”

We made our way through the back of the house, weaving between boxes. The place was a maze. Her things were everywhere in piles, luggage and clothes and what looked like bags of shoes. The furniture was draped with clean white cloths. A floor lamp stood in a corner like a ghost.

“I guess the plan is to leave town.”

“And never come back.”

“Someplace sunny, I suppose.”

“And warm year round.”

“Hell?”

Her answer was a snort.

Anci was on the second floor, in a bedroom and groggy. There was a bottle of pills on the bedside table and the smell of medicine was nearly overwhelming. I told Temple to wait in the doorway, and I walked over to the bed and sat down on it. I picked up Anci and held her and I felt her hug my neck.

Temple said, “She's fine. I know what you're thinking, but you've got it wrong. I would never hurt her, Slim. We always meant to let her go.”

“I bet.”

“As soon as we were gone.”

“Cry fluphenazine tears.”

“What?”

“I said you're so goddamn crazy it's leaking out of you. Now let's go.”

She shrugged and turned and went out. I followed closely, carrying Anci downstairs. I wound my way through the dark living room and nearly fell over a piano bench, but I finally made the front door. I could feel Temple dropping behind me in the dark, hanging back. I fumbled getting the
door open, struggling not to drop Anci. I turned the knob and went outside and stepped off the little covered porch. There was a blur and a whiff of cologne. He swung around into view at the same instant and hit me in the neck with the butt of his rifle, and I fell over sideways and dropped Anci in the grass. I tried to scramble to my feet and toward my daughter, but he hit me again and again until he finally tired of it and let me come to my knees. I guess he wanted me to see.

He must have been inside, maybe even saw me approach, and maybe that's why she stalled me, letting me have Anci while she waited for him to come out again. He was a big Average, balding, in slacks and a light blue sweater.

Guy Beckett, alive and well. The sight of him nearly made me swallow my tongue. That and the rifle he aimed at my chest.

“Well, I'll be fucked,” I said, and Beckett looked at me like the scorpion stung the frog.

“Something like that. Surprised?”

“Pretty surprised,” I admitted. “But not exactly shocked. Hell, I might not be much of a private eye, and I don't think I'll ever be an expert at solving murders, but you two aren't as clever as you think.”

“Let's talk about it around back, okay? We get more privacy there.”

I started to pick up Anci, but Guy kicked me in the ribs and I felt one of them flex out of place and crack. Beckett jabbed the rifle at me again, and Temple moved in and lifted Anci off the ground with a grunt. She was still completely under, and I found myself praying she'd stay that way, whatever happened. We went back around the house. Guy
kept the gun on me, and Temple put Anci in a chair and sat again at her table and picked up her drink and took a sip and smiled as though nothing of any interest had happened, la-di-fucking-da.

Beckett said, “You were saying something about being fucked?”

Temple growled from her place, “Guy, there's no reason to talk to him now.”

“What can it hurt?” he asked, but he was sheepish, like a dog called sternly back to heel.

“One thing,” I said, ignoring the exchange, “I just got to know. Why did you kill Dwayne Mays? Couldn't talk him into going along with your scheme?”

“Never even tried. It would have been a waste of time. Dwayne was a lot of stuff, but he didn't have a dishonest bone in his body.”

“I've heard.”

“Yeah, well, he wasn't a saint, but you could never have told him that. He was a pro, though, and he would have gone ahead and published his story, and Galligan's secret would have been out and that would have been that.”

“I can only imagine how happy you must have been when you realized who it was tapping the Knight Hawk's ammonia supplies. It can't be often that blackmail opportunities that perfect come along.”

“Not too often, no. It was beautiful, like hitting the lottery.”

“But then there was Dwayne to deal with. You couldn't bring him in on your deal, and you couldn't leave him running around collecting evidence against Galligan, so you took a trip to the Knight Hawk and talked him into going
below and popped him there. During an active shift, too. That took guts.”

Beckett shrugged. “I did it quickly and cleanly. I don't think he ever knew what hit him. Dwayne was my friend, after all. I wrote the old man's nickname on Dwayne's pad and put it in his mouth, and then I pulled my vanishing act. All of it was made to put Galligan under pressure without giving away the game. And we wanted the old man under as much pressure as possible.”

Temple said, “Christ, Guy.”

Again, Beckett said, “What can it hurt? It's all over now. Besides, this is the most fun I've had in days. I've been dead, you know?”

I said, “Speaking of that, I'm guessing you're the one who killed one of Jump Down's guys and tossed him into the Grendel coal mine.”

“I needed a body. The dude had been talking to Dwayne, anyway, selling out his buds. He was trash. I told him I needed to do some follow-up, told him there was a few bucks in it for him. He was actually smiling when I popped him. Thought he was about to get paid. He got paid all right. I shot him right in his stupid smiling teeth. I burned down his flop and dragged him up to the Grendel and threw him in. I'll tell you, my back smarted something awful after that.”

“Oh, I just hate it for you.”

“Be like that if you want.”

“And you don't think that's going to raise eyebrows when the cops figure it out? I mean, there are ways to tell that body isn't really you.”

Beckett shrugged. “Maybe, but that was the point. The worst thing we could have done was honestly try to fool everyone.
That just leads to a cell. Anyway, all you need to beat the cops is a little confusion. They'll piss around for a few weeks and then file the case away with all the other murders they're too incompetent to clear,” Beckett said. “Not everything went how we planned. We hadn't planned on letting you in on the Galligan angle at all, but after Luster's murder, giving Galligan and Goines someone else to shoot at seemed like a pretty good idea.”

“Thanks.”

“Like I said, letting you in was dangerous, but it offered Galligan another target and tightened the screws on him some more. We'd never have let you go to the police with your suspicions. Temple would have killed you before that.”

“Turned out I was useful anyway,” I said. “After Galligan grabbed her.”

“I couldn't believe our luck,” he said, and he actually looked grateful. “It wasn't like I could go get her. I was supposed to be missing, after all. And your little rescue attempt was the final straw. Galligan had been paying us small amounts since Dwayne and I accidentally uncovered his little secret. I think he was hoping to get us to let our guard down, pop us then, but then Luster bullied his way into it and Galligan suddenly had his hands full.”

“I had a theory that you tipped him off.”

Beckett shook his head.

“Didn't have to. I'll give him this, the old guy was sharp. When he heard about the cold storage shed being tapped, he did the math and came up with the right answer. He went to Galligan and started making demands, and Galligan had Goines kill him, which solves one problem but creates another. Now he's on the hook for a homicide. Your little rescue attempt was the breaking point. As soon as you were out his door the old man
was on the phone, agreeing to pay us off in full and settle the whole mess. That's when the whole thing really came together. It's one thing when they grudgingly agree to pay you. When they actually act
grateful
to give you their money, well, that's a thing of goddamn beauty.”