Murder by Candlelight (2 page)

Not stealing! Only following today's
judicial practice of making the criminal, Kunkle (not the victim,
Bud Izard) pay for his crimes.

Z put the rest of the money back. (Big
Bob Zapolska was a P.I., not a thief.)

Reaching into the drawer again, he
took out a leather notebook; flipped it open to see names and phone
numbers on the first page -- the rest of the pages
blank.

Yes. There was Bud Izard's name,
followed by what had to be Bud's phone number. Next in line: Lee
Dotson. Beside that listing, another phone number.

Other numbers seemed to be
stores.

Leo's -- probably Leo's Pizza. They
delivered.

Standard -- had to be a service
station.

K-Mart -- undoubtedly the place Howard
Kunkle purchased his terminally rusty car.

What Z failed to find in the little
book was an entry he expected to see there: Carrara
Marble.

Back to the drawer, a quick scramble
turned up no evidence of drugs ... something of a
surprise.

What the drawer contained for the most
part, was decks of playing cards, Z's preliminary toss scattering a
loose deck about the bottom of the drawer. As for other decks, some
were in their individual boxes, some out of their boxes but still
sealed in plastic.

He also found cellophane
wrappers -- so carefully removed from card decks that the wrappers
were
intact
, plus
undamaged revenue stamps, the blue kind the feds stuck on the ends
of card decks.

Could
that
be what this secret drawer was
all about? Instead of tearing the tax stamps like you were supposed
to when opening decks of cards, was Kunkle steaming off the stamps?
Did that mean he'd found a way to turn tax stamps into cash?
......... No way!

First scraping up the loose cards to
consolidate them, Z stacked that deck, then the unopened decks, on
top the desk.

Again reaching into the secret drawer,
feeling around, he came out with an aspirin-sized bottle, inside
the capped container, a clear liquid.

Ah! Drugs dissolved in water, most
likely. Heroin. LSD. Angel dust. Ready to be mainlined. ... Except
there was no accompanying syringe. Also missing was the standard
length of surgical tubing, for binding your arm to bring up a
vein.

Clamping the flashlight in his teeth,
directing the stab of light at the bottle so he could see what he
was doing, Z unscrewed the bottle's cap.

Took a cautious whiff.
............

Alcohol.

Not
grain
alcohol, like you found in
liquor, but
wood
alcohol -- found in ... trees?? Poisonous to
drink.

Screwing on the cap, more puzzled than
ever, Z set the bottle on the desk.

Dipping into the rigged drawer again,
feeling around, Z fished out a pair of sunglasses -- only the
faintest tint to the lenses.

Could they be magnifying glasses, the
kind K-Mart sold to people who couldn't afford corrective lenses?
Didn't seem like it.

The drawer's false bottom
nearly empty, Z patted down the inside once more to discover, in a
back corner, a small tube of super glue, the kind they advertised
on TV by sticking a laborer's hard hat to the ceiling, the glue
strong enough to hold up the worker
hanging
from his hat.

And that was it ....

No. Z had almost
missed
the last item --
the object so thin it hardly registered through Z's gloves. A
circular ... something ... no bigger than a dime.

At first, Z thought it was a sequin --
like those sewn on party dresses, a woman in that kind of get-up
glistening like a wet-scaled mermaid. On closer examination, saw it
was a mirror. Silver nitrate backing on it. Perfect reflection. The
kind of looking glass an ant would hang on his living room wall
....

Silly thought!

The drawer empty at last, Z paused to
reflect on the items he'd plucked out and carefully stacked on the
desktop.....................

Suddenly inspired, he picked up the
loose deck -- its cards greasy, dog-eared. Holding the fading light
in his mouth once more, brushing back other decks to make a space,
he dealt the cards (face up and by suit), finding what he'd hoped
he would: that the queen of spades was missing, Z pleased that the
black queen's absence backed Bud's story.

To be strictly truthful,
one of the things Z
hadn't
liked about this case was taking it without
checking out Bud -- a violation of the Zapolska code -- Z happy to
find that Bud had told the truth about Kunkle's threat.

And that was it for the
desk.

Replacing the money, cards, and other
items in the drawer -- but leaving the false bottom up -- Z
switched off the light.

Leaning back on the desk, there was
nothing for Z to do but wait.

Then wait some more, his eyes
adjusting to the dark enough to pick out shapes. All the time,
listening to ... silence. To the blood pulsing through his
brain.

Until he thought he heard a Howard
Kunkle groan.

An inspiration!

Returning to the kitchen, Z pocketed
the candles he'd found and took out one of the sandwich
bags.

In the bedroom, "borrowed" the neck
brace.

Returning to the living room, Z opened
his case to got out the straight razor and what was left of the
nylon cord, cutting off a short piece of cord, using the nylon line
to bind the candles together at their base.

Now came the tricky part. To keep what
was left of the burned-up candles from setting fire to the house, Z
returned to the kitchen to pump water into his confiscated plastic
bag, after that, tying the top end of the bag to make it
watertight.

Returning to the living room, he got
out his grey duct tape, taping the water bag to the candle
bottoms.

Holding the candles with their wicks
pointed down, water bag on top, Z cut another short piece of rope,
then got a straight chair, stepping up on its seat to tie the
upside-down candle package to the living room's central ceiling
fixture, the inverted candles dangling down about a
foot.

Oh, yes. The collar. Stepping over to
Kunkle, getting the neck brace out of his pocket, Z "Velcro-ed" the
collar around the little man's neck, Z then pushing Kunkle-in-chair
to the center of the room, positioning the man's head under the
upside-down candles.

Light snapped off again, with nothing
else to do for the moment, Z continued to stand in the dark, trying
to detect Kunkle-movement by what little star shine penetrated the
grime of the front windows. .......

There! Another moaning sound from the
man.

Judging it to be the right time, Z
switched on the flashlight to find that Kunkle was awake and
struggling, the nylon cords pulling tighter with every jerk and
twist.

Show time.

Z's light pinning Kunkle to the chair,
Z slowly turned the beam toward himself, allowing the little man to
see the very definition of a black-masked menace.

"A warning," Z hissed, his voice even
more strangled when squeezed through the close-knitted ski mask.
"Bud Izard is connected."

Z had seen
The Godfather
; was
pretending to be a member of the mob: an enforcer, shooter, bopper,
button man, hitter. Z was even using Johnny Dosso's Americanized
accent -- without much success. "One warning. No more."

With Kunkle bound as he
was, it was hard to tell if the "mummy man" was getting the
message. On the other hand, you'd have to be pretty stupid
not
to know you were in
one hell of a hole when you awoke to find yourself as naked as the
day the world was born; tied hand and foot in your own chair; being
threatened by everyone's nightmare of a terrorist. (A promising
sign, Z thought, was that Kunkle was sweating, his dark eyes opened
wide.)

Now for the clincher.

Padding up to the little man, Z
extracted the Bic lighter from Z's pants pocket and flicked on the
flame, in the glow, seeing genuine fear in Kunkle's
eyes.

Good.

Reaching above Kunkle's head, Z lit
the wicks of the five upside-down candles.

Ah!

A lovely light!

Z had always been fond of
fire................

Wrenching himself back to the
situation at hand, Z found that the inverted flames were already
licking into the wax, the candles beginning to melt, the first
drops of wax pattering down on Kunkle's head.

Hot. But hardly hot enough to burn the
man -- even on his bald spot. At least, not seriously.

The first drip of wax was now oozing
down Kunkle's forehead -- slowing -- congealing -- another drop
sliding down, traveling a little farther before it, too,
solidified.

With the medical "dog collar" holding
Kunkle's head, the man's body lashed tightly to the chair, Howard
was trapped under what would soon be rivulets of molten
wax.

Z visualized what had to happen. By
the time the candles had burned down (up) enough to melt through
the plastic sack of water at the top, the water running down to put
out the candle stubs, Howard's upper face would be encapsulated in
a hardened shell of paraffin. Probably stick his eyelashes together
before long. Seal his eyelids shut.

All in all, a terrifying
experience.

At least Z hoped so.

His mission accomplished, Z could not
help but think about the excesses someone less dedicated to
peaceful persuasion might have performed on Kunkle's body. Shook
his head. For Z's money, there was too much violence in today's
world.

Going further, Z was
prepared to defend the position that there was
no
excuse for brutality: not when
other methods could obtain the desired result.

Considering this night's work again,
Z's judgment was that Howard Kunkle would cease to harass Bud
Izard. Going further, Z wouldn't be surprised to hear, in the near
future, that Kunkle had moved to Mexico. Even to the
moon.

All business now, Z picked up his
satchel and glided swiftly to the front door, leaving the little
man behind to struggle feebly to free himself, all the while the
recipient of a steady rain of molten wax atop his head. By the time
the tapers had melted, Howard should look like a drip-wax bottle in
a fancy Italian restaurant.

Through the door, pulling it shut
behind him, remembering to take off the ski mask, Z sat on the
stoop to unsnap the case and put the mask inside. He also took off
his gloves and shrugged out of the increasingly hot jacket, tucking
the gloves into the satchel, folding the jacket over his arm -- no
one on such a warm evening wearing more clothing than
necessary.

Closing the case, up again, slipping
past Howard's car, Z went down the walk to turn left on the
hardly-more-prosperous side street where he'd parked the Cavalier,
all the while feeling good, like he always did after doing his best
for a client. In a couple of hours, he'd call in an anonymous tip
to the cops about strange goings-on at the Kunkle place, Z leaving
Howard's front door unlocked to make it easy for the police to
enter. (Like any public-spirited citizen, Big Bob Zapolska tried to
aid law enforcement when he could.)

Nearing his car, only one
thought troubled him: a situation similar to the Arthur Conan Doyle
mystery about the dog that
didn't
bark. (Z had read all the Sherlock Holmes
stories: Holmes techniques plus what Z learned from other detective
novels, the only "formal" training Z had to be a private
eye.)

Thinking back, Z had been surprised
not to have found the one item that should have been in Kunkle's
car; or certainly, in the secret drawer.

So ... where
was
the gun Kunkle had
used to shoot at Bud?

Not that it really
mattered. Most likely, Kunkle's shot had scared the little guy more
than it had Bud Izard, Kunkle going on to deep-six the pistol for
fear that the next time he pulled the trigger he'd shoot
himself
.

* * * * *

Chapter 2

There was never a pattern to the work
that came Z's way, the Kunkle case an example of how a job could
sneak up on you. Not much of a payday, Z had to admit, but a piece
of work that had produced a hundred he wouldn't have had if he'd
stayed home two days ago like he'd wanted.

As Z headed off for Bud's Tavern that
Monday afternoon, driving past the North Kansas City turn-off he'd
taken Saturday, Z had little to do but remember how he'd felt just
two days ago. Remembered the heat. Remembered his unreasoning
fear!

* * * * *

Bob Zapolska -- Big Bob Z to anyone he
was likely to meet this Saturday afternoon -- was
shaking.