Don't Ever Get Old (9 page)

Less than twenty-four hours after Kind had spilled his guts to me as he begged for redemption, someone else had spilled them all over the stage of the church. They were uncoiled on the floor in a grayish-pink tangle next to the emptied-out torso, as if Kind had exploded while giving a sermon. The carpet around the body was soaked black with congealed blood and bile.

Jennings and I were sitting in a couple of those cushy movie-theater chairs, where so many worshippers had watched Kind preach. Technicians combed the stage, taking photos and collecting samples.

Had the big Jew done this? I would imagine the Mossad killed cleaner.

“As much of a mess as he made, it doesn't look like the killer left any physical evidence for us,” Jennings told me. “There doesn't appear to be any of the attacker's tissue under Kind's fingernails. No defensive wounds on the arms. It don't look like the preacher got a chance to draw blood, so we won't be finding any DNA. We're still searching for a lead of some kind, but I'd be surprised to find anything. A lot of care went into this murder.”

“A careful scumbag is still just a scumbag,” I said.

“Well, I've always been an admirer of proficiency and attention to detail. It's something we could use more of in this town, even among our criminal elements.”

“Why'd you call me out here to look at this?” I asked.

“Thought you might be interested.”

“I retired from being interested in this kind of thing thirty-five years ago.”

“Yeah, but this one was a friend of yours.”

I paused for a second, trying to figure out how much the detective might know. It could be that he was making a guess and trying to get me to confirm it for him. I couldn't think of any reason why Jennings would be aware of my conversations with Kind, so I decided to lie to him.

“I met this man once, at a funeral here last week.”

Jennings tilted his head. “Now, that's not quite the truth, is it, Buck?”

Maybe Max Heller's protégé wasn't quite as dumb as I had him figured.

“I know he came to your house, twice in the last few days. I know he came to visit you at one o'clock this morning. As far as I know, you were the last one to see him alive. Other than the guy that did this to him, I mean. So, like I said, I thought you might be interested.”

I yawned. “Not really.”

“Well, I am interested in why he was visiting you at home.”

Had Jennings been staking me out? Why would he do that? I was not going to admit anything.

“What makes you think he was at my house?”

“There is a GPS navigation computer in his car. It has a record of every place he's driven in the last week.”

I didn't know what a GPS navigation computer was, but it sounded like it could be a real thing, so I ceded the point. Goddamn DNAs and DVDs. “My friend Jim Wallace, who died recently, said something to Kind about leaving money to the church. Kind was concerned that Jim's son-in-law, Norris Feely, might be trying to keep the money for himself. He came to my house to ask if I knew anything about it.”

I didn't see any reason to tell Jennings about Ziegler and the treasure.

Jennings nodded. “What did you say to him?”

“That I didn't know anything about any money.”

He squinted at me. “If that's the truth, why would you lie to me about it?”

“Because sometimes, old men forget about things,” I said. “My doctor tells me I might have the dementia.”

He peered at me. “You're old; I'll give you that. But I think you're forgetting things on purpose.”

He leaned in toward me, so close that I could smell the coffee on his breath. I suppose he thought it was kind of an intimidating thing to do. I belched loudly in his face.

“Also, you're an ass, and I don't like you,” I said.

That seemed to conform better to his worldview; he leaned away and wiped at the bulbous tip of his nose with a handkerchief. “Fair enough,” he said. “Do you think Feely did this?”

The possibility was worth thinking about. I considered telling Jennings to get his forensics team to search the scene for knuckle hair, but then Tequila walked into the auditorium.

“What's going on in here, Grandpa?” he asked. Then he saw the inside-out mess that used to be Lawrence Kind. “Oh, holy shit, that's fucked up.”

“You were supposed to wait in the car,” I shouted at him.

“Who the hell is that?” Jennings asked me, pointing at Tequila.

“Detective Jennings, this is my grandson, Jameson.”

“People call me Tequila,” explained Tequila. “It's a fraternity thing.”

“What is he doing here?”

“Somebody had to give me a ride,” I told him. “It isn't safe for a man my age to drive at night.”

“How did he get into my crime scene?”

“I was wondering that myself. You should run a tighter ship.”

His mustache seemed to bristle a little. “The crooks down at City Hall keep cutting the budget. There's never enough overtime, so I've never got enough men. Without resources, without guys to bang on doors and chase leads, without rush jobs on lab work, the only way we catch a killer like this one is dumb luck. But if the homicide clearance rate falls, it's my ass hanging out.” He refocused his annoyance with the situation on Tequila. “Does he know anything about this?” he asked, pointing a stubby finger in my grandson's direction.

I shook my head. “He's a student at NYU. He's here on vacation.”

“Anything I can help with?” Tequila shouted to us. He was still standing at the back of the room, and he looked terrified that he might have to go near the stage.

“Go back and sit in the car like I told you to.”

Tequila left without complaint.

“Every year, they give us less and expect us to do more,” Jennings said. “And every year Memphis becomes a more savage place. We pour blood and sweat into locking up the scum, and the system gives them two days' credit against their sentences for every day in prison they don't stab somebody. We put these shitheads away, and they just let them walk right back out the door to pile more corpses in the streets and more open files on my desk.”

“That's what they pay you for.”

“Not nearly enough. The health insurance just kills me, and the kitchen needs to be redone, and the kid needs private school, and my old man is in one of those nursing places for four grand a month. His Social Security ain't enough to cover that. And when they don't pay you a decent wage to do a clean day's work, it's damn hard to turn away when somebody tries to slip you something under the table.”

“I didn't come out tonight to hear about your homosexual activities, Detective.”

He chuckled a little bit. “I must have forgot who I was talking to.”

“I been forgetting stuff lately myself,” I said.

“Yeah, you told me that already.”

“Sorry. I forgot.”

“You're so full of shit,” he said. And when I didn't respond, he asked, “So, what do you think about Feely?”

“He seems a little too delicate to be a slasher, but I don't know him that well,” I said. “I heard Kind had a gambling problem.”

“From who?”

“Kind told me, last night. He was hurting for money. That was why he was so concerned about anything Wallace might have left to the church.”

Jennings cocked his eyebrow at me. “You know more than you're telling me.”

“Nothing I can remember,” I said. “Seems to me like this might have been done over gambling debts or unpaid loans.”

“We've already got guys snooping around the casinos in Tunica County,” Jennings told me. “Believe it or not, the world didn't grind to a halt when you retired. We can still do police work without Buck Schatz.”

“Then why did you drag me out to this crime scene?”

“Shits and giggles, old-timer.”

“Have I mentioned that I don't like you?”

He laughed. “Yeah, but I didn't think you meant it.” He handed me a business card. “That's got my cell number on it, and I'll answer it anytime. Do me a favor and give me a call if your memory improves, or if you start feeling guilty about impeding a murder investigation.”

 

13

From the church, Tequila drove me to the Blue Plate Cafe, down on Poplar Avenue in East Memphis. It was a cozy little place, built in what used to be a house. They served breakfast all day, and everything on the menu was soaked in grease. I wasn't allowed to smoke in the restaurant, but I liked the buttery biscuits with cream gravy, and Rose never let me get near food like that.

“When I was a kid, Dad used to take me to work with him sometimes, in the summer, when I wasn't in school. We'd always stop here for pancakes on the way downtown,” Tequila said. “It's strange coming home, since he's been gone. You know, we never talk about Dad.”

I ran my fingers around the edges of the memory notebook. “I got nothing to say to you about that.”

“Last night, I sat in the living room, looking at his clock on the wall above the fireplace. I remember, every night he used to climb up on the ottoman, and wind that clock with a little key. Mom doesn't know how to do it, so it's stopped. It just hangs there now.”

I took a long sip from a cup of black coffee and dunked a biscuit into the bowl of gravy.

Tequila crossed his arms. “It's not right. He shouldn't be dead.”

“Lots of people shouldn't be dead, and they're dead anyway,” I said. “That preacher back there, far as I know, did nothing to deserve what happened to him.”

“Deserve's got nothing to do with it,” Tequila said.

“What?”

“Never mind. It's from a movie.” He paused for a moment. “Horrible, what happened, though.”

“At least you managed to keep from vomiting.”

I'd seen the way plenty of soldiers and rookie cops reacted to that first eyeful of a ripped-up human body, and Tequila had handled it pretty well. Of course, kids these days see lots of that kind of stuff at the movies and in those computer games.

“Who do you think killed him, Grandpa?”

“I don't really know.” I had some ideas, though.

The most likely scenario was that Kind, up to his eyeballs in gambling debt, had fallen behind on payments to some bad people, and one of them had made an example of him. But I'd met some hard gangsters and vicious killers in my assorted travels, and it took a special sort of mean to butcher a minister in a church over money. There was no strain of violence too rare or exotic for Memphis, but we were deep in Jesus country, and the local crooks had been raised to fear the wrath of God.

Yitzchak Steinblatt seemed like a pretty good suspect. I had first met him only that morning, but he could easily have been watching the house the night before, when the preacher came by. If the Israelis were after the treasure, then Kind's interference would have been unwelcome. But I couldn't figure out how the big spy would have known that the visit from Kind was connected to Ziegler and the gold. Maybe he was listening with some kind of high-powered microphone.

Norris Feely also deserved some consideration; he seemed like he had a capacity for viciousness, and there was plenty of animosity between Feely and Kind. But I thought I had convinced Feely that I wouldn't be fetching any riches for him, and it seemed unlikely that he would disassemble a man in a dispute over money neither of them could lay hands on.

Of course, there was always the possibility some unknown, unrelated enemy I didn't know about had brought the preacher to his messy end. I was only casually acquainted with the man, and as much as I prided my instinct, I had no way of knowing what he might have been mixed up in.

“What do you think?” I asked Tequila.

He poured syrup over his pancakes. “I dunno,” he said. “I guess Jesus didn't save him after all.”

“That's not funny,” I told him. “I didn't like Lawrence Kind much, but as far as I know, he was a decent enough sort. Facile, maybe, and kind of crooked, and not as smart as he thought he was. But whatever else he did, Kind seemed to believe in the product he was selling, and I think he really cared about people.”

“I never thought I would hear you expound the virtues of caring about people.”

I frowned. “I care about people. I just don't like them.”

“Well, it doesn't matter what he was anymore,” Tequila said. “Now he's nothing but dead.”

He stared at me for a long moment, and I stared back at him. I wasn't sure if we were talking about Kind or about Brian. But we were done talking anyway.

With two quick strokes, Tequila carved a wedge out of his short stack. He stabbed it decisively with his fork and popped it into his mouth.

 

Something I don't want to forget:

On one of the end tables in the sitting room, there's a photo of me with Brian and Billy, all dressed in Boy Scout uniforms, at scout camp, the weekend Billy got into the Order of the Arrow.

The order is sort of an elite group of scouts and adult scout leaders, elected by their troops and inducted through a ritual hazing process called the Ordeal, where the candidates spent a weekend in Hardy, Arkansas, eating very little food and taking apart the summer camp at the Kia Kima Scout Reservation free of charge, all while under a vow of total silence. The event concluded with a campfire ceremony where the youth Arrow leaders dressed up like Indians and solemnly welcomed the new members.

Arrowmen get to wear a white sash with a red arrow on it over their scout uniforms, and they get to wear an Order of the Arrow lodge-flap patch on their shirt pockets. The lodge patches are the most colorful scouting patches available, so membership in the order is coveted.

Brian and I went through together in 1964, when he was a scout and I was a scout leader. I was seventy-six when Billy got tapped for the order, and a little past the point in my life where I was participating in camping trips with the Boy Scouts, but I made a trip to Kia Kima to see my grandson do the Ordeal.