Peeper (17 page)

“Only when she comes to work with that ruffled thing around her neck. It makes her look like a Victorian turtle.”

Ralph laughed. “Tell her.”

“I couldn't.”

“You got to. Otherwise that stuff keeps building up till it comes out your ass and you'll be carrying around one of them inflatable inner tubes for the rest of your life.”

“You better listen to him,” Neal said. “Ralph knows his assholes.”

“Thanks, Mr. Poteet. I'll remember.”

Neal shut down the system and stood. “Where do you go from here, Ralph?”

“I got a place to hole up. Can I get a lift to Ann Arbor?”

“You won't know till you stand out front and stick your thumb out.”

“Come on, Neal.”

“What happened to your car?”

“I gave it to a bum.”

“I bet it never knew the difference.”

“The police recovered it,” Waverly said. “I heard it on the radio. They found it abandoned.”

“How about you, kid? I bet you're busting to take somebody for a spin in that Rabbit.”

Waverly puckered his forehead. “Isn't that—?”

“Aiding and abetting and accessory after the fact of murder,” Neal finished. “Knowing Ralph is a treasure trove of once-in-a-lifetime experiences.”

“You should turn yourself in, Mr. Poteet. The sooner you do that, the sooner you'll clear your name.”

“Right now it ain't my name I want to get clear.”

“Leave the kid alone. You already made a burglar out of him.”

Waverly reached for the telephone by the keyboard. “I'll call a cab.”

“Tell them to pick me up on the corner.”

Ten minutes later, Ralph stood on the corner, hands in his pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold. Neal had left first and Waverly had stayed behind to rearm the burglar alarm. Ralph had Absolution on his mind, surely a first.

A pair of bright headlights swung around the corner and slowed, blinding him momentarily. He stepped forward and grasped the cab's door handle. At that instant he realized it wasn't attached to a cab at all, but to a black station wagon, whose driver stuck his martyr's emaciated face and head of stubbly hair out the window and said, “Get in.” Carpenter's hand was wrapped around the butt of a silenced automatic resting on the windowsill.

Chapter 22

To his knowledge, Ralph had been in the presence of a genuine killer only once, when while representing Great Lakes Universal Life, Casualty, Auto, and Paternity, he happened to be in the living room of a widow whose husband had died of a respiratory disorder when the police came and arrested her for feeding him cyanide. Ralph had read somewhere that you could see it in their eyes, but he had been staring at her breasts, and since at the time he was preoccupied with the fact that he had just drunk a highball prepared by her, he had taken note of little else after the arrest. He had not had a mixed drink since, as they were all caught up in his mind with stomach pumps and the emergency room at Detroit Receiving. More to the point, he had concluded that writers who claimed that about eyes were probably full of shit.

It was in Carpenter's eyes, though; yawning behind the large black irises like open graves.

Ralph had no idea how long he stood there, staring at the man with the closely shorn head and general appearance of figures Ralph had seen in paintings of the Crucifixion, at the wheel of a vehicle that bore too close a resemblance to a hearse to be mere coincidence. Long enough, he reasoned, to ruffle even Carpenter's patience, for he made one of those gestures that can only be made with a gun and told Ralph again to get into the car.

“Good night, Mr. Poteet.”

Whether it was the sudden imposition of Chuck Waverly's youthful voice or the brilliance of the Volkswagen's headlights as the car swung out of the alky next to Lovechild Confidential Inquiries, Carpenter blinked and took his attention off Ralph. In that instant, Ralph threw his bulk into action: scuttling down the sidewalk, clawing open the Rabbit's door on the passenger's side, piling into the seat next to the startled young operative.

“Gun it, kid.”

“Huh?”

Grunting, Ralph swung a leg over the shift console and squashed his foot down on top of Waverly's on the accelerator. The little engine mounted behind the backseat wailed. The car didn't budge.

“Take your foot off the fucking clutch.”

“Yessir.”

The car lurched ahead and stalled.

“Put it in low,” Ralph said calmly.

Waverly depressed the clutch and downshifted, banging the lever into Ralph's testicles. Through a haze of pain Ralph watched Carpenter barreling out the driver's door of the black station wagon, automatic in hand.

“Start the car,” Ralph said.

The engine ground into life.

“Go.”

This time Waverly released the clutch smoothly as he pressed down the accelerator. As he pulled around the station wagon, Carpenter stood in front of the Rabbit, bracing the gun in both hands police-style. Waverly started to slow down, but Ralph tramped on his foot again. Tires chirped, Carpenter filled the windshield. At the last instant he threw himself out of the Volkswagen's path. Ralph leaned on Waverly's foot. In the sport mirror on the right side of the car he saw Carpenter, growing smaller by the second, scramble to his feet and make for the open door of the station wagon.

“What'll this crate do?”

“Speedometer says eighty.”

“Fuck the speedometer.”

“Where are we going?”

“Anywhere that creep behind us ain't.”

After two blocks Ralph returned his leg to his side of the console and nursed his groin. Waverly drove with his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel and signaled all his turns. As he prepared to stop for a red light, Ralph reached over and rapped him on the side of his head. The young man understood the gesture and sped through the intersection. Fortunately, there was no crossing traffic.

Although it was still early evening, not many cars were out. When a pair of headlights appeared several blocks behind them, Ralph knew they were Carpenter's.

“Take St. Antoine to Woodward and get on 1-94 westbound,” Ralph said. “And lay off the goddamn turn signal.”

“Yessir. Sir?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that the man you were telling us about?”

“No, he's my ex-wife. She went and got a sex change operation and now she's after me for back alimony. Oh, shit.”

Police strobe lights were flashing on the entrance ramp to the interstate, where a semi lay on its side across the mouth like the last dinosaur.

“Cut over and take the southbound Lodge,” Ralph said. “Kind of hurry.” The station wagon's headlights had gained a block on them.

“Southbound Lodge is closed for construction.”

“Son of a bitch, I forgot. Turn here.”

They tore down a side street.

“Keep turning. That gas hog's got us for speed, but this bucket can outmaneuver it into next Tuesday.”

Waverly was a competent driver, taking sharp corners without slowing down or damaging pedestrians. Ralph saw neighborhoods he hadn't visited in years. The town was funny that way: a million and a half people, and every one of them wore his own little rut and never departed from it. Carpenter's lights had long since disappeared from the mirror.

“I think we've lost him,” Waverly said.

“Probably cut his lights.” But as they continued on their corkscrew course, Ralph believed they had left their pursuer far behind. He popped open the glove compartment. “You got a bottle in here?”

“I don't drink.”

“Kids today.” Closing the compartment, he took a pull from his flask, which he had transferred to his hip pocket before giving his suitcoat to Homeless. He took another pull, then put away the flask and adjusted his seat, subsiding against the cushions. After a moment he chuckled.

“What's funny, Mr. Poteet?”

“Just that hooker back there on the corner.”

“The one in the cowboy hat and go-go boots?”

“Texas Annie. She's been there longer than the streetlight. They tried busting her once, but she called the Detroit Historical Society and got herself declared a historic spot.”

“Really?”

Ralph chuckled again. “Drive, Kato. Take Jefferson to Cadieux and climb on the westbound 1-94 from there.” He tilted his hat over his eyes.

“Mr. Poteet?”

He came awake slowly. He'd been dreaming that the governor had appointed him state treasurer. “Just fill the bag,” he muttered. “No small bills.”

“Mr. Poteet?”

He realized they'd stopped. Sitting up, he tipped back his hat and looked at the black station wagon parked across the 1-94 entrance ramp. “Holy shit.”

“He must have seen us slow down at the other one,” Waverly said. “What should we do?”

“Burn ass!”

Waverly hurled the Rabbit into a U-turn, tires shrilling as he came out of it and fishtailed back the way they had come. In the mirror, the station wagon's lights raked the sides of the street, turning.

Cadieux dead-ended at Lake Shore Drive, an extension of Jefferson. “Which way?” Waverly asked.

“Pick one. Jesus Christ.”

They turned left. To their right, the India-ink surface of Lake St. Clair at night rippled under a broken yellow moon, while to their left the residential neighborhoods of affluent Grosse Pointe grew less dense, the houses becoming larger and spaced farther apart, surrounded by great sweeping lawns that looked black under decorative gas lamps. Behind them, a dark car with its headlights off gleamed in the moonlight reflecting from the water.

“Turn in there,” Ralph directed.

The route indicated was a curving composition driveway between stone gateposts, leading to a white Georgian mansion with all its windows lit. Waverly hesitated before turning.

“Step on it. Looks like a party. Even Carpenter wouldn't try anything in a bunch of swells.”

A uniformed parking attendant Waverly's age stepped down eagerly from the long porch, paused when the little Volkswagen slid fully into view behind a line of Bentleys, Jaguars, and Eldorados, and leaned a disappointed face down to the window on Ralph's side.

“You with the serving staff?” the attendant asked.

Ralph looked back down the driveway, at the end of which the black station wagon had stopped. “Yeah,” he said.

“Take it around back.”

Behind the house they parked beside a white van with
MARTY'S PARTIES
painted in elegant script along its sides. A black maid with white-rimmed glasses let them in the back door. “Kitchen's that way.”

The kitchen was as big as a ballroom, paved with stainless steel and men and women in white aprons and serving uniforms. The air smelled of radicchio and anchovies and other small weird foods preferred by the wealthy. A tall man, balding in front, wearing a black cutaway and white shirtboard, studied Ralph and Waverly from head to foot with predatory eyes.

“Was there an accident?” he asked.

Ralph said, “We always look like this. What do you want us to do, Mac?”

“To begin with, I don't want you to call me Mac.” The tall man flung open a cupboard and removed two short gold jackets from hangers inside. “Put these on. Then pick up two of those trays of canapes and serve them in the parlor. Go through the swinging door and turn right. You do know which way right is.”

“I go by my dick. What do you use?”

The tall man sighed. “My father begged me to go into the vinegar business with him. I said I wanted to work with people.”

Ralph's jacket was too long in the sleeves and wouldn't fasten around his middle. He gave up and hoisted one of the silver trays aligned on a stainless steel sideboard. “So what's the shindig?”

“The annual convention of the F.A.N.A.P.B.B. and T. Don't they tell you fellows anything?”

“Sounds like a wet fart. What's it stand for?” Ralph headed for the swinging door.

“The Fraternal Association of North American Pit Bull Breeders and Trainers.”

Chuck Waverly caught Ralph's tray. The young man's jacket hung on his slender frame like bunting and now a canape clung to one lapel like a barnacle.

“Clumsy idiot!” said the tall man. “Are you filling in for someone competent?”

Ralph said, “Sorry. What do these guys do, like get together and talk about their dogs?”

“Of course not. It's a dog show.”

“Let me get this straight. You're sending us into a room full of pit bulls, carrying food.”

“There hasn't been an incident in two years.”

“What happened two years ago?”

The tall man made a gesture of exaggerated impatience. “‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' Franklin Delano Roosevelt.”

Ralph thrust his tray into the tall man's hands. “‘Fuck you, Tony.' Lyndon LaRouche.”

“What about Carpenter?” Waverly asked.

“Let
him
carry in the can of peas.”

“Canapés,” corrected the tall man. “Are you going to do your job or not? If the answer is no, you're, in the way and I'll have to ask you to leave.”

“Do we get to keep the jackets?”

“Out! Get out!”

“Okay, okay. Gimme the munchies. You sissies got no sense of humor.”

The tall man gave him the tray. “There's really nothing to be concerned about. Pit bulls are very well behaved, so long as they don't smell fear.”

Ralph said, “Which way's downwind?”

Chapter 23

Twenty minutes later, Ralph and Waverly, their pantslegs shredded and their gold jackets in tatters, spilled into the kitchen and shoved the door shut against the snarling and scrabbling of claws on the other side. Ralph was missing his right shoe.

“What happened?” demanded the tall balding man in the black cutaway.