Night and Day (37 page)

He leaned back in the booth. “So when this is done, you won’t go see Rachel
Nedelmann. You, me, Shelly Hodge, some of the guys who knew him will go have a couple
of drinks to Dick Nedelmann. Then we’ll all get back to work.”

I hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough.”

Hanritty came around the counter and put the plates of food in front of us. “Enjoy,” he
said.

We ate in silence for a couple of minutes, then Jimmy smiled and said, “You were right
for once. The food is good.”

I nodded. “Did Daryl give you the information I asked for.”

Jimmy dug in the pocket of his windbreaker. “Yeah, I wrote down the names that Joshua
asked about, and what the chief has on them. I guess you and Northport go back a ways, huh.”

“Yeah, long ways,” I said. I studied the list Jimmy passed across the table. None of the
names were familiar. From the notations Jimmy had made next to them, they were mostly
Vees, low-level hoods working for Kaiser, Barozie, or one of the other mobs. “Anything on
Sam Klinger?”

“Not much more than he told us last night. Truck driver, worked at Sisters of Mercy for
the past year and a half or so, since they closed the camps. Apparently a good employee right up to a
couple of months ago. Then he started taking a lot of time off from work. Sometimes he
didn’t show up, didn’t call, nothing. They hated to let him go, but they needed somebody who
was going to be there every day.”

“When did they fire him?”

“Couple of weeks ago. End of September. They told the chief that Klinger took it pretty
well when they gave him his final check.”

“Got an address?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Only address the hospital had was his wife’s apartment. If he
got himself another place when he left his old lady, he didn’t tell anybody. Did the dragon
lady come up with anything?”

“About the same as what the police department has,” I said “Klinger had been a nurse at
Midtown Hospital before the war. That’s where he met his wife. Both of them were nurses.
Interred Camp Delta-5, when they came out the wife stopped working and Klinger got himself
a job as a driver for Sisters of Mercy.”

“No openings for a nurse?” Jimmy asked.

I shrugged. “No idea. It is kind of odd, don’t you think? I thought there were always
openings for nurses.” I paused. “Who knows, maybe he got tired of it. Anyway, that’s all
Takeda could come up with. No current address, nothing that ties him to the case. Did Daryl
give you a contact name at Sisters of Mercy?”

“The chief talked to the director of personnel, a Sister Rose. Guess she’s the one to start
with.”

“Yeah, maybe she heard something about where Klinger’s living. I don’t know where he
fits in, but it would be a lot easier to figure out if we could lay our hands on him.”

I heard a voice say “Sam Klinger is dead.”

Jimmy frowned. It took me a few seconds to realize that the voice had come from behind
him. The guy who usually sat there had his back to Jimmy, and he was eating his usual
chicken salad sandwich.

“Excuse me?” Jimmy asked.

“Sam Klinger is dead,” the guy repeated, never moving. “They fished him out of the river
one night last week. The body was badly mutilated and they didn’t bother to try to identify
him. Just sent him to the crematorium.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I know,” he said. “If you want to talk to somebody about Sam, talk to Kendell, at the
Sisters garage. Sam worked for him.”

“Would you like to join us, Mister . . .”

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to join you.”

“Listen, buddy . . .” Jimmy began, starting to turn to him.

“Easy, captain,” he said. “We don’t want to make a mess in Mr. Hanritty’s
establishment.” I saw him look toward the counter.

I followed his gaze. One of the three guys at the counter had spun around on his stool and
was watching us. His hand was resting on his ample belly, close to the opening in his leather
jacket. I couldn’t tell for sure, but there looked like a pistol-sized bulge under the jacket.

A little ways down the counter, Hanritty was watching the guy too. One of his hands was
below the counter, where he kept his baseball bat. I met Hanritty’s eyes and shook my head
slightly.

“Relax, Jimmy,” I said.

“Good suggestion, Welles,” the guy said. “Dick said you were smart.”

“You a friend of Dick Nedelmann’s?”

“We shared a common interest,” he said.

“Swords?”

He laughed softly. “That, and other things.”

“Look, pal, if you knew Dick and you knew Sam Klinger, I’d really like to talk to you.
You don’t have to get involved, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I am involved,” he said. “Couple of guys I knew are dead.”

“Then why not talk to me,” I said. “Maybe you can help me find out who killed them.” I
paused. “Look, we’re on the same side here.”

“No we’re not,” he said. “You’re a collaborator. You work for the skeeters. All you
want is to find out what happened to your skeeter partner.”

He was part of the Resistance. Had to be. I’d only met one guy from the Resistance who
had impressed me as somebody who had his shit together. He was an ex-soldier who went
from barrack to barrack at Delta-5, trying to get people to rise up against the Vees. He’d also
talked about collaborators, the human guards who watched us in the daytime. And he used the
term skeeters when he talked about the Vees.

When I asked him what it meant, he made a buzzing sound and said, “Mosquitos.
Skeeters. Blood suckers. You see one on your arm, you swat it. That’s what we have to do.
Swat them down, kill them all.”

I hadn’t joined up then, and I wasn’t interested in joining up now. Not that it sounded
like they wanted a collaborator like me anyway.

“Were Nedelmann and Klinger part of your cell, or whatever you call it?” I asked.

He laughed again. “Nice talking to you, Welles. Good luck with your investigation.”

The guy stood and walked to the counter. He put some money down, then slowly walked
out the door. A minute later, the guy at the counter who’d been watching us followed.

“You want to tell me what the hell that was all about?” Jimmy asked.

“You ever get a sense that Nedelmann was in the Resistance?” I asked.

“Resistance?” Jimmy said. “Hell no. If I thought he was even sympathetic to those
assholes, I would have had him kicked out of the department.”

He leaned forward. “Look, I don’t like Vees anymore than anybody else, but you can’t
serve two masters. You either want to uphold the law or you want to tear it down. Can’t
uphold it forty hours a week, then tear it down the rest of the time. Doesn’t work that way.”

Jimmy was silent for a moment, then said, “Is that what he was saying?”

“Didn’t say, but implied it pretty strongly,” I said. “To tell you the truth, it never
occurred to me either that Nedelmann might be involved with the Resistance.”

I paused. “But it wouldn’t be much of a surprise. Dick hated Vees for what
they did to his daughter. And from I heard from Father McCray yesterday, Sam Klinger was
the same way. Hated the Vees with a passion, so much that he threw his daughter out of the
house when she showed too much interest in them.”

“That guy. You got a name for him?” Jimmy asked, pulling a small notebook from his
pocket. “He a regular here?

“Let it go, Jimmy,” I said. “The Resistance is the Vee’s problem, not ours. I think we got
as much out of him as we’re going to.” I waved Hanritty over.

“You having some trouble with Mr. Chicken Salad, Charlie?” Hanritty asked.

“Friendly conversation, Han,” I said. “His friend was a little jumpy, but no trouble.” I
pulled out a ten dollar bill and handed it to him. “Good breakfast. I’ll see you in the
morning.”

Hanritty nodded, grabbed the half-full plates, and walked away.

“Yeah, what I had of it was great,” Jimmy said. “We leaving?”

I nodded. “Maybe we can catch that Kendell guy at the Sisters of Mercy garage before
we head to Delta-5. That’s assuming, of course, that Carolyn won’t be worried about you.”

“She’s been a cop’s wife almost as long as you’ve been alive,” Jimmy said with a smile.
“She’s gotten used to having me at work all hours of the day and night.” He paused. “Hell, if
I ever retired, our marriage would probably fall apart.”

“Then let’s get rolling,” I said.

Chapter Thirty-three

I had to bang on the big metal door a couple of times before it finally opened. The garage
was in a separate building, behind Sisters of Mercy Hospital, two bays, both closed, and a
metal door with ‘Office’ scrawled on it.

A guy who looked to be in his sixties, bushy mustache and no hair, opened the door and
stood there, staring at me and Jimmy. The name tag on his filthy blue coveralls said ‘John’.

“Yeah?” he asked, spitting a thick, brownish liquid a couple of inches from my foot. I
stepped back.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Workin’ on a chaw here.” He tapped the bulge in his right cheek.

Before I could say anything, Jimmy pulled out his badge case and held it up in front of the
guy’s face. “You Kendell?”

The old guy nodded. “That’s me, I’m John Kendall. Am I in some kinda trouble?”

“Not at all, Mr. Kendell,” I said. “I’m Special Agent Welles. Just got a couple of
questions to ask you, if you don’t mind.”

He squinted at me and asked, “You clear it with the sisters?”

I hesitated a moment, then decided to tell him the truth. “No sir, we didn’t.”

“Good,” he said with a grin. “Those old bats like to stick their noses in everythin’ that
goes on ‘round here, even things that don’t concern them none. Why don’t you two gents
come in and have a seat in my office.”

The ‘office’ was somebody’s old kitchen table with a couple of straight-backed chairs in a
corner of the garage. Two good-sized trucks filled the rest of the space. It stank of oil and
transmission fluid, the essential garage smell.

“Sit down, sit down,” Kendell said, waving me and Jimmy to the table. We sat down on
one side and he slid into a chair opposite us.

There was an empty coffee can on the table next to him. I was wondering about its
purpose when he leaned over it and spit. “So what can I do for you officers?” he asked,
hunching forward, his elbows on the table. “Always glad to help the police.”

“We wanted to ask you a couple of questions about Sam Klinger, sir,” I said. “I
understand he worked for you.”

Kendell sighed. “Okay, what kind of trouble has ol’ Sam got his self into now?”

“No trouble,” I said. “We’re just trying to find him. His wife heard he lost his job here,
and was worried about him.”

“Jane worried about Sam?” Kendall asked. He laughed. “I can’t hardly believe that,
Agent Welles.”

“Well,” I said slowly. “That’s what she told us.”

“Oh, I’m sure she did,” he said. “Don’t mean it’s true, though. If Jane is tryin’ to find
Sam, she’s looking for somethin’. Money, more than likely. I say she oughta get her ass to
work. She ain’t no cripple.”

“We don’t want to get involved in their marital issues,” I said. “We’d just like to find
Sam, let him know his wife is looking for him. It’s up to him whether he contacts her or not.”

“Yeah, I understand, I understand,” Kendell said. “Not your business what goes on
between husband and wife, right?”

“Exactly.” I paused. “It was kind of a shame the hospital let Sam go. Bet that
didn’t help his marriage.”

“Not one bit it didn’t,” he said. “I mean, they was havin’ their problems, what with the
girl and all.” He shook his head. “I still can’t understand why one of us would want to spend
her time around them. Ain’t natural.”

“That bothered Sam, didn’t it.”

“Goddamn right it did, if you’ll excuse my French,” Kendell said. “Sam surely did hate
those leeches and the thought of his daughter wantin’ to be around them made him damn near
crazy. Some days, that was all he’d talk about. To tell ya the truth, I don’t hold with kickin’
young’uns out on the street, but I couldn’t blame Sam for finally havin’ enough.”

“You think his daughter had anything to do with him missing all that time, getting
himself fired?” It occurred to me that Sam Klinger might have had a change of heart and been
hunting for his daughter.

“Hell no,” he replied, spitting in the can again. “Sam was a hardcase. Wasn’t prone to . .
.” He shook his head. “What the hell did that leech who came around asking ‘bout Sam call
it? Oh yeah. Bouts of introspection, that’s what he called it. Sam didn’t second-guess his
self. Once he did somethin’, right or wrong, he followed through to the end.”

“A Vee was here about Sam?”

Kendell nodded. “Yup. One night last week. Think it was Tuesday night. Talked to
Sister Rose, she sent him down to talk to me cause she knew I was workin’ late. Wanted to
know what I thought about Sam, what we talked about, how he’d been acting before he got
fired, that kinda thing.”