Day of Wrath (19 page)

It occurred to me that he wouldn't have been necessary
unless someone—Irene or one of the more respectable Crofts—hadn't thought
I could be a problem. Which might have meant that Irene was implicated
in Robbie Segal's disappearance, though it seemed more likely that Clinger
was implicated and that my investigation would link Irene to him and to
the missing girl.

So I'd been told to steer clear of Miss Irene, but Lavelle
had not warned me away from Clinger. And that, I thought, was significant.
It looked as if the Crofts had determined to throw Theo to the dogs, with
the understanding that the family name wouldn't come up in the
aftermath.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I became
that that had been the meaning of the scene with Lavelle: stay away from
Irene, and Clinger is your business. I still had to find him, with my best
source of information blocked. But the situation was far from being hopeless.
I could always try blonde Grace again or try to locate the boys in The
Furies band. They seemed like my best bet. Grace knew who I was and what
I was looking for, and she was tied to the Clinger family. It was smarter
to hunt up some fresh faces, I thought, before going back to The Pentangle.

So I shifted the Pinto into gear and drove up Celestial
to St. Gregory and then down to Hill. It took me about five minutes to
find Corky's—a small, storefront bar halfway down the street with a neon
Busch Beer sign blinking in the curtained window. The front door had been
stopped open, and through it I could see the dark, rolled bar, gleaming
with the red and blue lights of pinball machines. A couple of dozen wooden
tables were arranged on the floor and what looked like a jerrybuilt stage
was parked against the back wall. There was no one on the stage. I coasted
down to the foot of Hill, parked beneath a budding hackberry, then walked
back up to Corky's Bar.

I found an empty table just inside the door. While a pretty,
blonde barmaid was getting me a beer, I took a leisurely look around. The
place had begun to fill up a bit, which probably meant that showtime was
near. I wondered who was performing and settled on a particularly large
group of kids who were huddled around the tables next to the stage. It
was hard to tell at that distance, since most of the light in Corky's was
coming from neon beer signs and pinball machines, but I thought that I
recognized one of them. A tall, skinny boy with shoulder-length blondish
hair and a cool, imperious look on his face. I thought he was the same
kid who had been holding a guitar in the photograph of Bobby and his two
friends.

When the waitress came back with my beer, I asked her
if she knew the kid's name. She put a hand above her eyes, as if she were
sighting down a fairway, and said, "That's Roger Tomilin. He plays rhythm
guitar for The Furies. You ever heard them play?" I shook my head.

"Well, stick around," she said. "They're on in about fifteen
minutes."

"They're good, are they?" I asked her.

"They used to be. But their lead guitarist, Bobby, got
himself killed a couple of days ago, and they're kind of shaken up about
it. Plus, the guy they got to replace him isn't very good. That Bobby—he
could really play."

She shook her head sadly and walked back to the bar. I
turned in my chair and studied the youngsters gathered around the tables.
There were ten of them—five boys dressed in T-shirts and jeans and five
girls. One of the girls was sitting with her back to the group and staring
glumly at the floorboards. She didn't look very old. None of them did,
actually. But this one had a dimpled baby's face and curly brown hair that
danced about her head like loose brass bedsprings. She was wearing a denim
jacket, jeans, and hiking boots; and there was a nylon backpack at her
feet. From the distraught look in her eyes, I figured she was trying to
make up her mind about whether or not to leave the bar. Maybe she was thinking
about leaving for good—the backpack looked full. The boy sitting beside
her—a short, muscular twenty year old with a walrus moustache and long,
jet-black hair—glanced at her jealously then turned to the rest of the
group with a frown on his face that seemed to say that his girlfriend just
wouldn't listen to reason.

The four other boys seemed bored with his problems. Their
minds were on the stage, where the house roadies were setting up amps and
microphones. The girls seemed more sympathetic. They eyed the curly-haired
girl hostilely, then looked at one another and shook their heads.

The throng in the bar continued to grow—a young, raucous
crowd dressed like refugees and speaking a hoarse variety of tongues. From
the look of their audience, The Furies were new wavers, which meant they
weren't likely to have much use for a thirty-eight-year-old private detective
in a sports coat. Especially if that detective started to ask them painful
and embarrassing question about a murdered boy. Of course, they had been
Bobby Caldwell's friends, and that counted for something. I just wasn't
sure how much.

The roadies began to assemble the drum set, and that meant
I didn't have much time to make up my mind  about what to do. The
boys would be on stage in five or ten minutes, and after that I'd have
to take the chance of catching them between sets. I stared at them again.

The girl with the curly hair was the one I really wanted
to talk to. And it would be better still, I thought, if I could get her
alone, away from her friends, where her mood might work to my advantage.

I glanced at the kids sitting around me, sucking on beer
bottles and puffing cigarette smoke out into the room. Pinball machines
had begun to thump and clang along the walls. And the crowd noise was growing
very loud. In a few more minutes, the place would be roaring with guitars.
I decided to go ahead and give The Furies a quick try, holding the curly-haired
girl in reserve if I didn't get anywhere with the band.

I got up and worked my way across the room—tilting chairs
back and apologizing to the kids sitting in them. A boy just missed spilling
a pitcher of beer on my shoes. And I just missed running into a waitress.
The whole room was beginning to smell like sour beer to me. I squeezed
through the last obstacles—a couple of chairs placed back-to-back—and
broke free right in front of the boy named Roger. He stared at me as if
I were a clumsy drunk and said, "Get lost," in a squeaky tenor voice.

It was a bad beginning and I needed something to put me
in command of the situation. So I reached into my coat, pulled out my wallet
and flashed an old special deputy's badge in Roger's face. It looked official.
And I wanted as much of his attention as I could get.

"He's a cop," one of the kids said to the girl sitting
beside him.

"Aw, man," she said disgustedly.

"We already talked to the cops," Roger said.

But the noise was so loud that I didn't think I'd heard
him right. "I want to ask you a few questions about Bobby Caldwell and
Robbie Segal I shouted over the din.

Roger shook his head and stood up. "What's the matter
with you people?" he shouted back at me. "I just got done talking to a
cop."

"When?" I said. "What cop?"

"
Did you hear what he asked me?" Roger yelled to the kids
at the table. "Talk about not getting your shit together!"

I looped my hand through his T-shirt and pulled him to
within an inch of my face. His body went limp and his eyes clouded up sullenly.

"I asked you what cop and when?" I said between my I teeth.

He turned his head away from mine. "A couple hours ago.
I don't know his name. He had white hair and he pushed a lot harder than
you do."

I let him go, and he fell back into his chair. "I still
want to talk," I said.

"We got a set to do, man."

"Then afterwards," I said.

Roger said something very nasty under his breath and the
rest of The Furies gave me ugly looks. Things were not working out the
way I'd wanted them to. But then I'd chosen to act the part of a tough
cop, thinking it would give me leverage with a bunch of punk rockers. If
I had known that Bannock had been there before me, I would have taken a
more sympathetic role. I should have called the son-of-a-bitch like I'd
planned to do, I thought.

I glanced down at the curly-haired girl, but she was scowling
at me, too. Great, I said to myself. Someone on stage yelled at Roger,
and he said, "All right."

He looked at me as if he were asking my permission to
start the show. I nodded and the band got up. While they were tuning their
instruments, I slunk back to my seat, sat down, and stared miserably at
my glass of beer. Someone had dropped a cigarette in it—which pretty
much summed up the way things were going for me that night. I felt like
crawling out of the bar. Instead, I leaned an elbow on the tabletop and
pretended to listen to The Furies, who proved to be very loud and not very
good. They butchered "Satisfaction," then began to work on
p an old blues song.

I was thinking vaguely about Bannock—wondering how he'd
gotten to the band before I had and wondering stupidly why he'd gotten
rough with them—when I noticed the curly-haired girl picking up her backpack.
She walked toward the rear of the bar. As soon as she'd cleared the door,
I got up and followed her.

It was close to nine o'clock and Hill Street had begun
to jump. Bar doors were open up and down the street, filling the sidewalks
with noise. The pedestrian traffic was fairly heavy, too. I pushed my way
through it, trailing the girl as she walked north up Hill into the dark,
residential side streets at the top of Mt. Adams. She was a fast walker,
so it took me a couple of minutes to catch up to her. By then we were on
Hatch Street, where the only lights came from gas lamps and the only noise
was the sound of our footsteps on the pavement. When I got abreast of her,
she glanced at me, then lowered her head like a bulldog and stepped up
her pace.

"I haven't broken any laws, have I?" she said as we jogged
along.

"No," I said hoarsely. Hill Street had been a forty-degree
grade, and the girl was practically running.

"
Then I don't have to talk to you," she said.

"It's about Bobby Caldwell," I panted.

"I heard in the bar."

"
Yeah, but I'm not really a cop. I'm a private detective
hired by the mother of Bobby's girlfriend."

She eyed me suspiciously. "Why didn't you tell Roger that?"

"I don't know," I admitted. "Judging by his looks, I didn't
think it would mean much to him."

"You. thought right," she said with a bitter laugh. She
began to slow down a bit. Which was a very good thing, because my legs
were starting to give out.

"You're not in very good shape for a detective," she said
acidly.

"I'm not eighteen years old, either," I said.

"Nineteen," she said with a touch of defiance. "I'm nineteen
years old."

"
I'm thirty-eight," I said as if it were a kind of greeting.

She thought things over for a second, then stopped so
abruptly that I walked past her. She stared at me while I I tried to catch
my breath.

"Are you really a private detective?"

I pulled my I.D. out of my pocket and handed it to her.

"
And you're working for Robbie's mother?" she said.

"You know Robbie?" I asked her.

The girl nodded. "I know her," she said.

"Do you know where she is? Her mother's going crazy with
worry."

"
Her mother's a first-class bitch," the girl said.

I wanted to say something in Mildred's defense but knew
it was the wrong approach to take with this girl.

So I ended up saying, "She cares about Robbie. Enough
to have hired me to find her."

"And what will you do—if you find her?"

I told her the truth. "I'll take her home." The girl gave
me a searching look and I added: "I'll take her home whether she wants
to come or not, if that's what you're wondering."

Apparently it was exactly what she'd been wondering, because
her face closed up like a dent in dough. "I don't know," she said slowly.

"If I were in your position, I wou1dn't know either,"
I said. "As it is, I've had to think about it myself—a couple of times.
Runaway cases aren't much fun for anyone."

She almost smiled. "I think you must be a lousy detective,"
she said, handing my I.D. back.

"Actually I'm a very good detective. This is just a lousy
case."

She looked around us, at the dark, silent brownstones
on Hatch Street. "Do you have a car?"
I told her I did.

"Would you give me a ride some place?"

"
Sure."

She adjusted one of the straps on her backpack and said,
"This is kind of heavy, and I want to make it to the bus station by ten."

"
You're leaving town?"

"I'm leaving," she said a bit guardedly, as if she didn't
want to be asked why.

"We1l, come on, then," I said. "I'm parked down the street."

She took another quick look at me, decided I was all right,
and started walking back down to Hill. "My name's Annie," she said.