Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (12 page)

She draped her coat over a chair.

“I’m sorry about this afternoon. I didn’t know you’d react so strongly about Jay.” She reached down and removed her shoes.

“It’s just chemistry,” I told her. “That plus I think he’s a smarmy, puffed up, self-important weasel who will use anybody he feels like using to further his career. Besides which he wants to get under your skirt. Or in this case, dress.”

Bonnie had just stepped out of that selfsame dress. She held it aloft. “He’ll be disappointed. Nobody’s home.” Her arms were twisting behind her back as she stepped over to me. She was unfastening her straps.

“I don’t have a lot of time. I have to be back at the station. Would you unzip me?”

“Unzip you? You’re already naked.”

“I know. Would you please … unzip me, Hitch. I’ve had sort of a lousy day.”

“Oh … unzip you.”

“That’s what I said.”

I love euphemistic women. We hopped into the sack and unzipped each other. It was very fun, if very brief.

“I have to get back,” Bonnie said.

“What for? Can’t Mimi Wigg just tell us that it’s cold outside and that it’s going to stay that way for a couple days?”

“I have to do it.”

“Call the station. Have them say you ran out on assignment.”

“Can’t. They sell advertising around my spot. I have to be there in the flesh.”

“You’re here in the flesh.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

“I promise I’ll come right back. You don’t have to move. Stay right here.”

“And do what?”

Bonnie got out of bed. “Pine for me.” She put her clothes back on as swiftly as she had taken them off. She stepped over to my side of the bed and backed up to me.

“Zip me?”

“As you wish.” I zipped her zipper and gave her a smack on the fanny. “Zip me. Unzip me. You’re a demanding little tramp, aren’t you?”

She leaned down and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “I’m not a tramp. I’m just a healthy girl.” She grabbed her coat. Alcatraz trotted in. Bonnie snapped her fingers.

“Here boy. Up. Keep him company while I’m gone.”

Alcatraz stepped up onto the bed and collapsed at my side. All wrinkles and paws.

“It’s not the same,” I said.

Bonnie was laughing as she went out the door. “I hope not.”

H
ere’s the formula: Men are dogs. I am a man. Therefore I am a dog. (It doesn’t work backward, by the way. In that regard, it’s like evolution. Alcatraz, for example, remains a dog.)

After the eleven o’clock news, Bonnie had come back over for a warm winter’s nap. She didn’t seem aware the next morning that she was waking up next to a dog. Two-legged version. If she had been able to access my subconscious at any point during the night for a front row ticket to the evening’s presentation of Hitchcock’s Dreams, she might have known. It had been a Waggoner sister extravaganza. Bottle blondes. Hourglass figures. Butterfly tattoos
all
over the place. There were lights, there were cameras, there was action. There was even someone I took to be Gypsy Rose Lee—another of Baltimore’s favorites—standing in for Ruth Waggoner. She was standing in an alley behind a brick building, holding open a stage door while several dozen versions of her daughters, dressed in glitter and veils and showing lots of leg, went dashing through the door into the building.
Everything’s Comin’ Up Waggoner
.

I hustled Bonnie on out of there. No coffee. No sweets. No waffles. Nada. Nil. Zilch. I conjured a dentist’s appointment I didn’t really have and told Bonnie I would catch up with her later. It wasn’t a terribly happy Bonnie who pulled on her coat and gave my front door an Olympian slam. The moment she was gone I was on the phone. I got Vickie Waggoner’s phone number from information and dialed it. She answered on the third ring. I reached into my bag of lame excuses and pulled out a tattered veteran.

“I’ve got some papers for you to sign. I’m sorry, I forgot to give them to you yesterday.”

She wanted to know if it could wait. “I don’t think I can get a sitter for Bo,” she said. “And I really don’t want to take him over to the funeral home again.”

I suggested that I could swing by her place. I invented an appointment at Hopkins University—which was near where she lived. I told her that I was going to be in her neighborhood.

“By the way, Billie told me that you called yesterday to ask about cremation. We can go over that as well.”

She agreed to my stopping by. Though not with much enthusiasm. Alcatraz eyed me accusingly as I abluted with vigor.

Vickie Waggoner lived near Memorial Stadium, former home of the Baltimore Orioles, the Baltimore Colts and, for a short period until they got their new home, the Baltimore Ravens. Do you get the impression that professional sports teams couldn’t wait to leave the place? It might look that way, but actually that’s not at all the case. The Orioles and the Colts made Memorial Stadium their home for over four decades collectively before moving on. Each enjoyed a great number of heydays in the grand old horseshoe. The Colts only vacated Memorial Stadium because of the dictates of an imperious and tradition-snubbing owner who ordered the team in 1984 to pack their stuff into moving vans and sneak out of town. Which they did, at three in the morning, bound for—it still hurts—Indianapolis. Local news cameras captured the predawn flight for posterity and eternal derision. To old-time football fans in Baltimore, the shadowy tape of the Mayflower moving vans pulling out of the training facility near Reisterstown is as indelibly etched on their brain pan as the Zapruder film.

The Orioles, on the other hand, mastered a graceful and emotional exit from Memorial Stadium in 1991 in order to move downtown near the harbor into one of the crown jewels of modern American baseball: Orioles Park at Camden Yards. A packed stadium watched on huge video screens as the Memorial Stadium home plate was dug up and whisked to the new facility downtown for a ceremonial planting at its new home. As for the football affront, the city eventually played tit for tat by venturing out to the Midwest to snatch up somebody else’s football team (Cleveland’s), rename it the Baltimore Ravens and bring it back to town with the promise of erecting a similar jewel right behind Orioles Park. During construction, Memorial Stadium had been dusted off so that the Ravens could move in temporarily, allowing Charm City sports fans the chance to undo the untimely silence that had befallen the venerable house and to pack the joint once more with roars and cheers and boos. Say what you will about the fickle infidelities of sports teams and their owners, Memorial Stadium refuses to roll over and die.

The stadium is located smack-dab in the middle of a working class neighborhood of brick row houses. The narrow streets shoot off from the stadium like wheel spokes. I found a parking space right in front of Vickie Waggoner’s building.

“There’s somebody here,” Vickie whispered to me as she pulled open the door. It sounded halfway between an apology and a warning. She was wearing a brown plaid skirt, gray V-necked sweater, with pills, and a tired expression. Or worried. Both, I decided. And it wasn’t from her fanciful rompings in my dreams. What she didn’t look like was a porn star and a stripper. Current or former. Her hair was pulled back off her face and bunched into a large, plastic clip—the same sort of coiff Helen had sported the night she was dumped at my doorstep. I took an extra hard look into her eyes. My mind reading technique. It hasn’t worked yet.

Vickie’s living room was tidy and unexceptional. More Ethan Allen than Ikea. Secondhand Ethan Allen. The sofa, the chairs, the throw rug, the coffee table … not a virgin in the bunch. The room felt a little musty. The painting on the wall above the sofa was large and lousy, a light-drenched depiction of a mountain, a glen, a river, a pine forest, a deer. The kind of thing you’d pick up at one of those so-called Starving Artist’s Sales for $59.99. Cranking out garbage like this, it’s no wonder the guys were starving. I once watched a fellow on television paint one of these. It took him all of thirty minutes. If he hadn’t been yakking so much he’d have knocked the damn thing out in about half that time. I scanned quickly for any photographs. I saw none. There were no detectable personal touches. This could have been anybody’s living room.

An archway led into the dining room. A man was seated at the table, along with Bo, who was interacting energetically with a bowl of cereal. Milk and cereal bits all around the boy’s mouth made him look like he was wearing clown makeup. The man looked up as Vickie and I came in from the living room. It took me a few seconds to place the face. He was no longer sporting a full beard, though he appeared to be several days into a patchy new one. His hair was short and bristly, prematurely spiked with gray. The man’s eyes were not as intense as the last time I had seen them. The fires had been dimmed; the whites had gone milky. In fact they looked half asleep. Terry Haden no longer reminded me of Al Pacino in
Serpico.
He reminded me more of Al Pacino in
The Godfather Part III.

Haden didn’t recognize me. He barely even acknowledged my presence. I thrust out my hand, which he stared at for a moment before taking it. He surprised me with a steel grip. I led off the festivities.

“Hitchcock Sewell.”

He murmured, “Terry Haden.”

Apparently my uncommon moniker didn’t register either. Granted, we had only met a few times, but I would have thought that between my name and my needling him about his flak jacket, I might have landed a place in his recollection. Haden wasn’t wearing a flak jacket now. He looked thinner than I remembered him. Aside from the hair ionizing into gray, the rest of his rugged good looks had gone somewhat sallow. He was smoking a cigarette—it was burning in an overflowing ashtray on the table—which I thought was a cheesy thing to do around a three-year-old eating his breakfast. Haden released my hand and picked up the cigarette and took a drag. He squinted at me through the smoke.

“Funny name.”

“It’s short for Terrence, isn’t it?” I said.

“I meant yours.” He gave me a not very pleasant smile.

“I know you did.”

He took another pull on his cigarette and studied me as if I were some sort of surrealistic sculpture. I gathered that he was zonked on something. I smelled no liquor, there were no glasses on the table, no bottle. Whatever it was it probably came in pill form. Or powder. Haden seemed content to simply stare at me. Maybe he was actually asleep with his eyes open. Maybe I was appearing to him as if in a dull dream. Vickie stepped up next to me.

“I’m going to take Bo in for a bath.” She reached for the boy.

Haden snapped out of his reverie, waving her off. “Leave him. He’s fine.” He turned to Bo, who was attempting to push his cereal bowl around the table using his spoon. “You’re okay, aren’t you?”

The cereal bowl was taking an uncharted turn, toward the edge of the table. Haden grabbed the bowl and dragged it out of the youngster’s reach. He picked up a cloth toy—a large yellow clown with an ink-stained arm—set it down in front of the boy, then looked back up at Vickie. “He’s fine.”

“You really shouldn’t smoke around the kid,” I remarked.

“Well, yes sir.” Haden made a show of jabbing out his cigarette. Then he made a show of his empty hands. Then he made a show of his ugly teeth. It was all a slow motion show. I decided to speed things up. I reached over and snatched up the butt-filled ashtray, took it into the kitchen, emptied it into the trash can, ran the ashtray under the tap to clean it out, then filled it with as much water as it would hold—maybe a quarter inch—and returned to the living room. I set the ashtray back down on the table, carefully, so as not to spill the water.

Haden glared at the ashtray. “What’s that? I can’t fucking use that. My cigarette’ll get wet.”

I tapped my finger against the tip of my nose. “Yeah, I’d heard somewhere that Einstein had a roommate.”

There was nothing slow about the way Haden jumped to his feet. He was about five inches shorter than me, but he did his best to get in my face.

“Who the fuck are you anyway?”

“We just met,” I said blithely. “Don’t you remember? One of us had a funny name?”

“Screw you.”

Vickie reached for Haden’s arm. “Don’t—”

Haden whipped around and caught her by the wrist. “Don’t
what
?” He was twisting her wrist backward. I immediately reached out and clamped my hands over both of the man’s ears and jerked his head so that he was looking straight at me. The limit of my suffering fools is when they start hurting other people.
“Don’t be an asshole,”
I mouthed. Though, because I had Haden’s ears blocked, he couldn’t tell that I hadn’t actually spoken. He looked confused, which was what I wanted. I jerked my hands, giving him a little taste of whiplash, and he let go of Vickie’s wrist. Immediately I released his ears, keeping my hands up where he could see them. “Can we cool off here?” I asked. I didn’t really intend it to be an actual question. Haden glared at me.

“You big guys always think you’re tough.”

I corrected him. “We always think we’re big.”

“Yeah,” he muttered. He looked over at Bo, who had set down his spoon to watch the big people shove each other around. The three-year-old didn’t seem at all bothered by it. “That’s Bo,” Haden said, as if I had just walked in the door.

“I know. We’ve met.”

Haden’s gaze lingered on the boy before he turned back to me. He was smiling that ugly smile again. Again I didn’t like it.

“He’s mine.”

Haden and I retired to the living room while Vickie took the boy off for his bath. I was guessing that she was probably just looking for an excuse to get Bo away from Haden. A creep like this could carve a nasty impression into an impressionable little mind. It was clear to me that Vickie didn’t want to say a whole lot to me in front of Terry Haden. Her eyes had warned me off from pursuing the issue of his being the boy’s father. In the living room, Haden made a big deal of offering me a cigarette before he shook one out for himself. He gave me a patronizing sneer.