Peeper (12 page)

“Because the detective on the case doesn't know you like I do. He's liable to send a couple of uniforms to jump up and down on you until you decide to come. Unconstitutional as all hell, but the Supreme Court's backed up even further than we are. So when can we look for your smiling face?”

By dark, the gray stone house belonged in an old Universal horror movie. Light from the coach lamps threw cruel shadows and the firebushes were an obscene scarlet. Ralph paid his cab-driver, who glanced around at the black-and-whites and unmarked units parked in the cul-de-sac.

“'Nother B-and-E, I bet,” he said. “You couldn't pay me to live in one of these places.”

“In that case, let me have my tip back.”

The cabbie cranked up his window and tried to run over Ralph's foot.

A uniformed officer let Ralph into the foyer, where the arson investigator greeted him with a pietà tapestry at his back. The Madonna seemed to be squinting against the smoke from his cigarette. “What bus ran over you?” he asked Ralph.

“Long day.”

“That a hickey on your neck, or are the mosquitoes running big as roaches this year?”

“I caught it in the cab door. Where's the stiff?”

“In the study.” O'Leary didn't move.

“Where's that?”

He grinned. “Yeah, I didn't think you'd fall for that one. This way.”

Ralph followed him down the worm-eaten-oak corridor. The door stood open to the study, where a group of uniforms and plainclothesmen stood talking in front of the big desk. One of them was a man half O'Leary's size, with a pinched face and a natty moustache under a narrow-brimmed hat with a silk band. He had on a tight blue suit and looked like a gangster.

“This is Lieutenant Bustard,” O'Leary said.

“Any comments?” Bustard had a high sharp voice.

Ralph shrugged.

“Lieutenant Bustard is with Homicide,” O'Leary said. “The bishop's behind there.”

Ralph took two steps forward and peered over the desk. The white-haired old man lay on his left side on the carpet, wearing the same black cassock Ralph had met him in, or one just like it. Dark blood from the hole between his eyes had made spidery tracks across his forehead into the creamy waves over his left ear. Except for his overturned swivel chair, the room appeared undisturbed.

“Deader'n Jesus,” O'Leary said. “We won't have to wait three days.”

“There's no need for blasphemy, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”

An Oriental man in his thirties sat on his heels beside the body, placing instruments in a black metal case lying open on the carpet. Bustard said, “How long, Doc?”

“Rigor's fully advanced. Six hours, anyway. Maybe longer. Tell me when he had lunch and I'll get back to you.” He lifted out a package swaddled in transparent plastic, unwrapped it, and made a face. “Anybody like liverwurst?”

“Angle of entry?”

“Downward, about twenty degrees. No powder burns. Killer stood about ten feet in front of the desk. Maybe if I had some mustard.”

Ralph said, “I think I got some on my tie.”

“Eighteen feet from the desk to the door,” Bustard said. “We measured. Steelcase let him get eight feet inside the room without leaving his seat. That means he was expecting whoever it was.” He turned a pair of small pale eyes on Ralph.

“I can't hit a buffalo's ass from ten feet.”

“You own a gun?” asked the lieutenant.

“If you want to call it that. I ain't seen it in weeks, though.”

Bustard gestured to one of the uniformed officers, who held up a Ziploc bag with a stubby black revolver suspended inside. “This it?”

Ralph started to feel sticky under his clothes. He recognized the new grips. Carpenter hadn't left Ralph's apartment empty-handed after all.

“A gun's a gun,” he said.

“I don't blame you.” O'Leary tapped ash onto the carpet. “I owned a piece of shit like that, I wouldn't admit it either.”

“That been dusted?” Bustard pointed at the telephone on the desk. One of the plainclothesmen said it had. He lifted the receiver and dialed. “We called in the serial number an hour ago. The computer should have kicked out a registration by now.”

O'Leary said, “That's two dead priests in two days. You want to tell us anything?”

“You said Monsignor Breame had a heart attack.”

“He isn't in the ground yet.”

“Great.” The Oriental, eating his sandwich on the floor next to the corpse, brushed crumbs off his shirt. “Nothing like going inside an embalmed body forty-eight hours after death to determine cause. Anybody got any salt?”

“Son of a bitch.” Bustard slammed down the receiver. “Computer's down.”

Ralph said, “I want to report a burglary.”

Chapter 15

They put him in the tank with a hammer murderer, a pair of transvestites accused of stuffing a midget pimp named Chester into an Amana Radarange, and a mountain man awaiting extradition to Idaho to answer charges of abduction, sodomy, and boarding livestock in a neighborhood zoned residential.

The transvestites kept to themselves, and the hammer murderer seemed content to sit on the one available bunk pounding the pillow with the heel of his shoe, but the mountain man developed an immediate affection for Ralph. Since he ran close to seven feet and 500 pounds, with a full black beard that tangled with the hair curling over the vee of his shirt, Ralph was not inclined to discourage his friendship. His name was Warren.

“Ralphie,” he said, laying an arm like a tollgate across Ralph's shoulders, “you like sheep?”

“I ain't like them at all,” said Ralph with some desperation.

“Bang, bang,” said the hammer murderer.

“Didja see his face when I punched ‘Cook Code'?” said one of the transvestites.

“No, no,” said Warren, putting Ralph into an affectionate hammerlock. “Do you
like
sheep?”

“Well, how do you mean?” Ralph's reply was choked. “Fried in deep fat with mint jelly, or to take out dancing?”

“Bang, bang,
bang
!” said the hammer murderer.

“That wasn't nothing compared to when you stuck the rotisserie up his ass,” said the other transvestite.

“Sheep's what we got the most of in Idaho, after potatoes,” Warren said. “They serve potatoes with everything out there. If you order fries they give you a baked potato on the side. You can't do nothing with a potato except eat it.”

“That's what I heard,” said Ralph.

“Sheep, now; they're something else. You ever wrap yourself real tight around a wool blanket on a cold night, Ralphie?”

“Bang, bang, bang,
bang
!” said the hammer murderer.

“We shouldn't of left his keys in his pocket, though,” said the first transvestite. “You ain't supposed to put metal in no microwave.”

“What you in for, Ralphie?” asked Warren.

“They say I killed a bishop.”

“That's bad. A bishop. Wow.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You should stick to sheep. They almost never die on you. When they do, you can eat them.”

“Bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang
!” said the hammer murderer.

Warren was reminiscing aloud about a ewe named Margaret when the guard came. “Poteet.”

“Present.” Ralph ducked out from under the mountain man's arm and gripped the bars.

The guard shook loose a key from his ring and inserted it in the lock. “You're sprung. Your lawyer's here.”

“Which one? I called three.”

“Deaf old guy in a green suit. Looks like an abortionist. I think we've had him in here a time or two.”

“Oh. Doc Skinner.”

“Hey,” said one of the transvestites, as the guard was relocking the door behind Ralph. “When do we eat?”

“Hour.”

“How come so long? Ain't you got a microwave?” The other transvestite giggled.

“Take care of yourself, Ralphie,” said Warren, through the bars. “Don't forget what I said.”

“I ain't likely to.”

As Ralph accompanied the guard down the corridor, the mountain man took a seat on the bunk next to the man with the shoe.

“Stanley,” he said, “you like sheep?”

“Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,
bang
!” said the hammer murderer.

Lloyd Skinner was waiting for Ralph in the receiving room, along with Sergeant O'Leary, Lieutenant Bustard, and, behind the desk, the same gray-haired Wayne County Sheriff's deputy who had processed Ralph in three hours earlier. The deputy emptied a paper sack full of Ralph's valuables onto the desk and checked them off against a list on a clipboard.

“One silver ashtray.”

“Hello, Ralph.” Skinner took Ralph's hand in his clammy grasp. He was a shriveled brown man in his seventies, smaller than Bustard, with dirty nails and a hearing aid. He was often mistaken for a disgraced doctor, hence his nickname.

“Hiya, Doc. How's Betty?”

“One crystal toothpick holder.”

“You're out of touch, Ralph. Betty was two wives back. It's Fredericka now.”

“Wasn't you married to a Fredericka before?”

“No, you're thinking of Henrietta. This one's a cheerleader.”

“One notepad in leather cover.”

“No kidding, Wayne State?”

“Fordson high. She'll be eighteen in January.”

“I thought you looked tired.”

“Eleven packages of Sweet 'n' Low.”

“What happened to those other two guys I called?” Ralph asked.

“Jack Scavarda's wanted for nonpayment of alimony and Herb Wassermann's in intensive care at Detroit General. He forgot to show up for Fat Phil Camarillo's preliminary hearing last Thursday.”

“One gold watch.”

“Well, I'm glad
you
showed, Doc. Thanks for busting me loose.”

“One silver watch.”

“Thank these two. I was just starting to make writ noises when they dropped the charges.”

“One watch, metal unknown.”

Ralph looked at the two plainclothesmen. O'Leary shrugged and dropped his cigarette butt to the linoleum. “It's the lieutenant's case.”

“One rubber gasoline syphon.”

“The medical examiner places Steelcase's death somewhere between eleven ayem and two,” Bustard said, adjusting his hat. “You were in Lucille Lovechild's office at eleven-thirty, getting fired—”

“I quit.”

“—and an altar boy at St. Balthazar says you were at the cathedral from a little before noon until past one-thirty. After that you were in Ann Arbor with Sergeant O'Leary. Now, it's barely possible that you could have killed the bishop in Farming-ton Hills at eleven and then highballed it downtown in time to—”

“Quit,” supplied Ralph.

“—but you'd have needed better luck with the traffic lights than I've ever had, not to mention prowl cars. Except for dressing like my uncle Ed used to, we've got no reason to hold you.”

“One zodiac necktie, green,” said the deputy behind the desk.

“So can I go?”

“Two matchbooks from Red's Lithuanian Grill and Topless Talent Emporium.”

“You could be a good citizen and tell us what your business was with Steelcase,” Bustard said.

“Three quarter slugs, two Canadian pennies, and a fifty-cent piece with Art Linkletter's picture on both sides. Sign here.”

Ralph signed the receipt and distributed the items among his pockets. “I wanted to give him my condolences on Monsignor Breame punching his ticket.”

“You some kind of a magician, mac?” asked the deputy behind the desk.

Bustard took off his hat, ran a finger around the leather sweatband, and put it back on. Except for a neat fringe he was as bald as Vinnie. “Come on, Poteet. He was killed with your gun.”

“I said it was stole from my apartment.”

“Speak up, Ralph.”

Ralph looked at Doc Skinner. “I thought it was your job to tell me not to say anything.”

“No, my batteries just gave out.” The lawyer took the hearing aid out of his handkerchief pocket and smacked it against a shriveled brown palm.

O'Leary scowled at a fresh burn in his necktie. “I guess we won't be seeing any more of each other, Poteet. Headquarters took the Lyla Dane arson case away and gave it to Lieutenant Bustard.”

“Ain't she still alive?”

Bustard said, “Attempted homicide's our beat too. Also there's a connection between what happened to her and what happened to the monsignor and what happened to the bishop: you. You'll talk to me yet.”

“In a pig's ass.”

“If you prefer. I was going to offer an interrogation room at headquarters.”

“Fuck you, Lieutenant.”

“Speak up, Ralph,” Doc Skinner said.

Ralph snatched the hearing aid out of the lawyer's hand and shouted, “Fuck you!”

“Oh. Don't mention it. I'll send you a bill.”

Chapter 16

In the hall leading to the Wayne County Jail exit, Ralph met a bearded man in his twenties wearing torn clothes and struggling with his handcuffs and the two officers who were escorting him toward the cells. The prisoner's eyes were glazed and there was foam in his beard. Ordinarily none of this would have been particularly distressing, but one of the officers was the young man who had spoken with Ralph two mornings before while Ralph was sitting in Carpenter's station wagon next to Monsignor Breame.

Ralph turned toward the wall, ostensibly making room for the grunting trio. As he did so, his gaze locked with the young officer's for an instant. Ralph saw recognition there and then puzzlement as the man sought to place him. Then they were past.

Almost.

Just as they drew abreast of Ralph, the bearded man tore free of his escort's grip. His manacled hands, doubled into a ten-fingered fist, swept up and struck the back of Ralph's head, tilting his hat over his eyes and squashing his face into the cinderblock wall. Ralph saw bright lights and felt a number of capillaries burst inside his nose.