A Stranger Lies There (24 page)

“I'm just trying to get back to my hotel.”

“Well, you sure as shit won't find a cab around here this time of night.” He reached into an inside pocket of his tattered overcoat and pulled out a cell phone. “Why don't I just call you one.”

“Where did you get that?”

He dialed three numbers, flexed his fingers for me as he brought the phone up to his ear. “I got quick hands.” He listened for a moment, then folded it closed. “This guy shut his service off already.” He put it back in his pocket and pulled out another one. “Try this one.” This time he got through. Asked for the cab company, and gave them our location. “Be just a few minutes,” he told me when he was done. He saw me looking at the phone and handed it to me. “One of those new ones. They're all digital now. Less static but you get cut off more. Probably 'cause of the on-off nature of the technology. I liked the analogs better, except you couldn't do the Web on 'em.”

“Shit, I can't believe it. How long have you been out here?”

“Out where?”

“Here. New York.” I handed him the phone back.

He gave me a quizzical look as he pocketed it. “How bad did they hurt you, anyway?” His voice seemed scratchier, deeper than I remembered.

Then I realized just how out of it I was. This wasn't Walt. Just another street person who happened to resemble my old friend from prison.

“Sorry. Never mind.”

A car drove by, swishing through the puddles in the street. I looked around, wondering how long the cab would take. Got a little dizzy.

“Maybe I shoulda called you an ambulance instead.”

I sat down hard on the steps, my abdomen protesting sharply as I did so. “No. No, I'll be okay. Soon as I get some sleep.”

“You shouldn't be walking around down here in the middle of the night. No telling what could happen.”

“I didn't plan it this way.”

“Either way.” The man reached into his bag and took out a bottle, placed it carefully on the step below me. Then he rummaged around in his belongings, looking for something and muttering to himself.

A cab pulled up in front of us. The driver rolled down his window and asked if one of us had called. I got up slowly, carefully made my way to the street.

“Take care, man,” I said. “And thanks for getting rid of those guys.”

“My pleasure. How 'bout a tip?”

“Sure,” I said, as the cabbie tapped his horn behind me. I took out my wallet, removed everything but a couple of fives, and handed the cash to him.

He reached out and took it, and seeing the amount, kept his hand extended. “You sure?”

“Keep it,” I said. I got in the cab and told the driver the name of the hotel, put my head back and closed my eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Hey. You.” Someone was prodding my arm. It was the cabdriver leaning back over the front seat. His breath smelled of cigarette smoke. “Come on, buddy. Meter's running.”

I looked out and saw the hotel. Its vacancy sign dripped down through the raindrops on the window. “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

“Five-fifty.”

I took out two fives and handed them to him. Dropped my wallet in a puddle when I opened the door and had to wait until the cab left before I could pick it up. My head was throbbing, swimming through a thick current. It had stopped raining but the streets were still shiny, throwing up soft sprays of water with each passing car. I made it to the hotel door, and remembered those men had taken my room key. The lobby was empty and quiet at this hour. A security guard stood near the stairs and the clerk behind the counter was doing a crossword puzzle. When I excused myself, the desk clerk looked up, making no effort to hide a frown over my bedraggled appearance.

“We're full-up, sir,” he told me, despite the vacancy sign.

“I'm a registered guest,” I said, as he glanced at the approaching guard, who was smaller than I was but had a gun on his belt.

“We okay here?”

I put my wallet on the counter, opened it to my ID. “I lost my key. Room uh … it was on the second floor. 2C I think.”

The clerk, in his forties with a paunch under his uniform vest, looked skeptical. He picked up the wallet with his fingertips, squinted at my name, then put it down and wiped his hands on his pants before typing the information into his computer. The guard went back to his post.

“Credit card, please,” the clerk said without looking at me. I pulled it out and handed it to him, not letting go until his eyes met mine. He got my point and managed a half-hearted “Thank you.” After checking it against his display, he gave me the key.

“Did you see a few men walk through in the last couple of hours? Kinda big, wearing black, maybe?”

He put down the pencil he'd just picked up. “No. Should I have?”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I think I am.” He was annoyed. “It's a small lobby.”

I thanked him and turned toward the stairs. When I got there, the rent-a-cop asked if I was expecting somebody.

“Not unless you've seen the guys I just asked him about,” I said, gesturing to the desk clerk.

“Is there something wrong?”

“No. Did you see them?”

“I don't know what to think, you come in here looking like that.”

I told the guard to forget it and brushed past him up the steps. When I rounded the first landing, he was staring up at me. With my aching abdominal muscles, I took the rest of the stairs slowly, shaking my head over the uncanny parallels this thing kept following; not one week ago in Indio, a motel manager had handed out a spare room key under similar circumstances.

I stood quietly in the hallway on the second floor, peered down the dimly lit corridor to my room three doors down. Everything seemed normal—no doors hanging open or busted inward, the window at the far end closed and all the wall sconces illuminated. I checked the carpet and couldn't see any wet footprints leading to my room. Looked back down the stairs, where my own watery shoe-prints, but no others, had followed me. I went cautiously down the hall to 2C, and after a final look around, slid the key into the old lock. It turned without resistance, like it was unlocked. I pushed open the door and stepped back out of sight around the threshold, holding my breath for the gunshots I half expected to ring out.

Nothing happened. A quick peek around the doorway gave me a flash of the bed, which I hadn't used. It was undone and disheveled. I thought I'd left the bedside lamp on, but it was now dark. Other than that the room looked safe and empty. Stepping inside, I noticed the nightstands and their open drawers, then my overnight bag on the chair by the window, unzipped but intact. It was clear they had searched the place without being messy or destructive about it.

I closed the door and switched on the light. In the warm glow from the lamp the room looked homey and lived-in, not at all violated, more like someone had just gotten a good night's sleep snuggled under the covers. Thinking that, it hit me again how wiped out I was, though I wondered if I could sleep with so much on my mind. I checked my bag and saw there was nothing missing or damaged. The room key they'd left on the chair next to it. Considerate. After peeling off my soaked clothing, I fell on the bed and closed my eyes. Thought about how it had gone in that dank warehouse, whether it dictated what my next move should be.

I now had two people to consider as the victim on my lawn: the band manager wannabe and his friend. Of course they could both still be alive and well. But that seemed unlikely, given what had just happened to me. Those men were interested in all this for a reason, and had taken a considerable risk to find out what I knew. Which brought up another point. How had they known where to find me? My earlier suspicion that the bartender had alerted them now seemed off the mark. I wondered if somebody watched me get on the plane in Palm Springs, and one or more of them picked me up at JFK. Wouldn't have been hard to follow me in all the crowds. Maybe that's what I'd felt on the walk over here after the subway. Not just a huge rendering of a clothing model, but someone actually tailing me.

Should I stick around and try to find out who the two friends were? If I could track down the band again, there was a chance one of them would remember a name. But the men who assaulted me probably already had a name, and they seemed as clueless as I was. So I couldn't see wasting the time. And contacting the police here about what happened was completely out of the question if I didn't want to spend hours explaining everything and possibly end up in the can again.

There was something more important anyway. I needed to get back to California to bury my wife.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

I woke the next morning with sunlight streaming through the window, and was afraid I'd slept most of the day away. It was still early, though, plenty of time to catch a morning flight home. I showered and dressed as quickly as I could given my injuries. Deposited the clothes I had worn last night, moist and smelly, in the trash.

At the airport, I was able to get a departure before noon, and settled down in the waiting area with a cup of coffee and a Danish. The morning newspaper was on the chair next to me. I riffled through it, skimming over an article about the drug task force being assigned to Washington Square Park. Beyond the coincidence of last night, nothing stood out for me. Negotiations to avert a trash strike were ongoing, and there was an article on the closeness of the fight for a state senate nomination. Soon, my fatigue overtook me and I dozed lightly until the PA announced my flight. I dropped off again once I buckled in.

*   *   *

The time difference between coasts gave me a few hours. It was not yet afternoon when we landed. In the terminal I took a pay phone and called Tidwell's number at the police station. Someone else picked up.

“Detective Rickman,” came a gruff voice.

“Detective Tidwell, please.”

“He's out. Can I help you?”

“Is Branson there?” I asked, hoping for a progress report on the case.

“You mean
Detective
Branson?”

“Ahh, yeah.”

“No, he's not. Who am I speaking to?”

“Where are they?” I blurted out anxiously.

“Sir. They're out. But I'm sure I can take care of whatever it is you need.”

I told him who I was and asked about Deirdre.

“Oh. Yeah, I think they're done with her.” He gave me a name and number in the coroner's office to call to arrange picking up her body. I fumed at his callous attitude.

“Thanks for your sensitivity,” I said when he was done. “
Detective
.”

I hung up before he could reply. Closed my eyes and squeezed the bridge of my nose, wondering how to get through this. Then I picked up the phone again and dialed the funeral home from their ad in the Yellow Pages. They gave me an afternoon appointment and told me to bring the clothing and jewelry I wanted Deirdre to be buried in. They'd arrange to pick up the body from the medical examiner's office.

I drove home on autopilot, dreading the prospect of going through Deirdre's things so soon.

I forced myself to do it though. Picked out her favorite green dress, and added her jade bracelet, a gold necklace and the emerald earrings I'd given her on our last anniversary. I turned the earrings over in my hand, watching them capture the light and hold it inside as if they were alive.

The freeway into Beaumont was clear, and I was there in twenty minutes. Desert Cemetery was a place Deirdre and I had seen many times before, driving by on the freeway. We liked the simplicity and openheartedness of their slogan, “Serving All Faiths,” and the way the green grass rolled away from the highway.

They showed me around and I picked out a gravesite, a marker and a coffin, then finalized everything in the office. The service would be on Saturday.

By the time I got back on the freeway for home, I was completely numb. All the little details seemed to trivialize Deirdre's death. I drove like a zombie until the dinosaurs at Cabazon caught my eye. The exit took me to the Wheel Inn, a truckstop-style café that had been here long before the Indian casino and the collection of gas stations and chain restaurants had sprouted up around it.

I ate slowly. The cars on the highway sped by and the giant concrete dinosaurs in the parking lot stared down at me through the window. Years ago, Deirdre and I had visited this place. Climbed up into one of those huge animals and looked through its porthole eye at the cars driving by. I wondered how many of them passed here every day without ever stopping. I watched the windfarm windmills in the area slowly rotate. They sprang from the hills like mushrooms, their shiny propeller blades catching the light as they spun.

At home, I called Allie from the spare bedroom.

“Where have you been?” she said anxiously when she came on.

“I couldn't stay here. Why?”

“So you haven't heard?”

“Heard what? I just got back.”

“They know who the dead youth was.”

I sat down, my mind stuck in neutral. “Tell me.”

“His name was John Clayton.” Where did I just hear that name? “His father's running for state senate in New York.”

The newspaper at the airport. “When did this happen?”

“It was just on TV. They broke in with it.”

I picked up the remote and flipped through the channels, not seeing anything. “Go on.”

“The father reported him missing, I guess. Had no idea he was out here.”

“Is there a suspect?”

“If there is, the police aren't saying.”

“My God,” I said, trying to think. I wondered why that cop I'd spoken to earlier hadn't said anything. Suddenly, everything was moving too fast.

“The name doesn't help at all, does it?” Allie said suddenly. “They're not going to find who did it.”

“Don't say that, Allie.”