Regina's Song (8 page)

“Here we go again.” Erika sighed, rolling her eyes upward.

“We’re not going to get all bent out of shape, toots,” Charlie promised. “I want to have a talk with my older brother about that guy who got killed on campus last night. My brother’s a cop, and he’ll know a lot more details than we got from the news reports. He hits the Green Lantern just about every night on his way home from work. I can probably wheedle the story out of him. Then we’ll know whether it’s something we need to worry about.”

James shrugged. “I don’t really have anything better to do,” he replied. “I’ll come along. I can count the number of beers you drink and rat you off to Trish when we get home.”

“You wouldn’t!” Charlie said.

“Only kidding, Charlie. Relax. I never fink on a buddy.”

“Male bonding in action,” Sylvia said sardonically.

“And Budweiser’s the glue in most cases,” Erika added. “Take ten guys and a keg of beer, mix well, and they’re stuck together for life.”

“It’s one of those guy things, Erika,” I told her. “It crops up during hunting season—or just before the Super Bowl. I don’t watch football on TV, so I’m sort of an outcast. Well, gentlemen, shall we tiptoe off to the Green Lantern and abuse our livers?”

Sgt. Robert West was a plainclothes detective with the Seattle Police Department, and he and his younger brother seemed to be fairly close, despite a pretty good number of differences between them. Charlie had bounced from job to job for a number of years, but Bob had taken aim at the Seattle Police Department when he’d been about fourteen, and he’d never even considered an alternate profession. He was a solid citizen with a wife, two kids, and a mortgage. He lived in the Wallingford district, and he customarily stopped by the Green Lantern after work for two beers—three on Friday, I learned later—then went on home. Charlie’d told James and me that you could set your watch by his brother. They looked quite a bit alike, but I doubt that Charlie even knew how to tie a necktie, while Bob wore one to work every day.

After Charlie had introduced James and me to his brother, he got down to cases. “I don’t want you to bend any rules, big brother,” he said, “but we’d like to know if we ought to start wearing bulletproof vests to class. If the gangs are moving onto the campus, it could turn into a war zone. What’s the scoop on the guy who got knifed last night?”

Bob looked at James and me. “This won’t go any further, right?” he asked us in a low voice.

“It stops right here,” James assured him.

“All right, then. The victim was a fairly high-ranking member of a Chicano gang, and somebody obviously wanted to pass a message on to his pals. What happened down by the lakeshore last night wasn’t your average, run-of-the-mill stab in the back. Somebody went to a lot of trouble to make it
very
messy.”

“Who was the dead guy?” Charlie asked.

“His name was Julio Muñoz, and his gang’s recently moved out this way to try to attract customers from the student body for various feel-good products. U.W. students have been doing dope for years, but they usually had to go to other neighborhoods to buy it. Julio and his buddies decided to set up a branch office in the university district. Evidently, another gang had the same idea, and they weren’t too happy about the notion of a price war.”

“Any ideas about
which
gang decided to carve up Julio?”

“Nothing very specific. Lieutenant Burpee thinks it might have been Cheetah, but Burpee’s sort of obsessed with Cheetah. He’s been trying to nail
that
one for about the last three years.”

“Burpee?” James asked mildly.

Bob smiled faintly. “We don’t call him that to his face. His real name’s Belcher.”

“It
does
kind of fit, I guess,” James agreed.

“Who’s this Cheetah?” I asked.

“A downtown drug lord. He’s a mixed breed psychotic—part black, part Mexican, part oriental, part rabid bird dog. That’s one guy we’d
really
like to get off the streets. He swings big-time drug deals and amuses himself with random murders. We haven’t been able to pin him down because he hasn’t got a fixed address. He never sleeps in the same bed twice, and he’s got two or three hundred aliases. Muñoz had a rap sheet as long as your arm, but Cheetah’s never been busted, so we don’t even know what his real name is. We’ve got a rough description of him, and that’s about all. I sort of hate to admit it, but old Burpee might be right this time. Cheetah tends to be exotic, and the cutting last night was
at least
exotic. I’ve seen a few guys that were fairly well cut up, but whoever went after Julio scattered pieces of him all over the grass down by the lake. There’s no way an undertaker’s going to be able to put him back together again, so we’re probably looking at one of those closed casket funerals.”

“You saw the body, then?” Charlie asked his brother.

“I sure did. I got to the scene right after the uniforms did. That one’s going to give the coroner a real headache. Whoever took Muñoz out didn’t stab him the way most knife killers do. It was a carving, not a stabbing, and I’d guess that it took Muñoz a long time to die. It wasn’t for money, that’s certain. His wallet was still in his back pocket, and it was loaded.”

“It was strictly a drug business thing, then?” James asked.

“That’s our current thinking. Most of Julio’s arrests were drug-related. He’s been busted for that a half dozen times. He’s been a suspect in several shootings and a couple of rapes, but we could never pin him to the mat on those. We haven’t nailed him on a dope deal for over a year now, though. Evidently, he graduated from street dealing and moved up to being a supplier. There’s more money in that, I guess, but last night it looks like he came up against one of the occupational hazards of going big-time.”

“The rubout?” Charlie guessed.

“The slice-out in this case. I don’t think there was much rubbing involved. Whoever took him out might have had some experience as a meat cutter, since it sort of looked like he was trying to bone out the carcass even after Muñoz died.”

“Homicidal maniac stuff?” Charlie asked.

“Pretty much. It looked to me as if the cutter was pretty well worked up. We’ll probably have to wait for the autopsy to find out what kind of knife was involved. There didn’t seem to be any stab wounds. It was all slices. What’s surprising about it is that nobody in the vicinity heard anything. I’m sure it took Muñoz a long time to die, and nobody I’ve talked to heard any screaming. The only thing anybody heard was a dog howling.”

“Then you don’t think anybody on campus had any kind of connection with the killing?” Charlie asked him.

“Probably not. It’s more likely that Muñoz was doing a drug deal down by the lake, and the opposition—whoever it was—caught up with him there. I don’t think you’re going to need a police escort to take you to and from class, Charlie, if that’s what’s got you so worried.”

“Up yours,” Charlie told him.

“Always nice talking with you, little brother,” Bob said with a faint smile. Then he glanced at his watch. “Oops,” he said. “Running late.” He stood up.

“Say hi to Eleanor and the kids for me,” Charlie said.

“Right. Stop by once in a while, huh?”

“I’ll make a point of it,” Charlie promised.

CHAPTER FIVE

I volunteered to drive Twink to Lake Stevens on Friday of that week, since I was free. All my scurrying around to get settled in for fall quarter might have been too efficient. Everything was in place, and I didn’t really have anything important left up in the air.

Oddly enough, Friday was all bright and sunny, and I didn’t even have to turn on my windshield wipers as Twink and I went north on Interstate 5.

Dr. Fallon spent the customary hour with Twink, and he seemed to be fairly satisfied with her progress. At least he didn’t put her in a padded cell.

After the session, Twink and I went back to Everett for dinner with Les and Inga. It seemed to me that those weekly visits might not be a bad idea, and since Twink had to go north every Friday anyway, it fit together smoothly.

The following week
really
dragged on.
I
was ready to start classes, but the university wasn’t quite up to it yet. I did a lot of puttering around with my bookshelf project and hit the library several times, but I didn’t accomplish much.

The fall quarter began on Monday, September 29th, and I finally had to come face-to-face with John Milton. You don’t walk into the Ph.D. exams in English unless you’ve got graduate seminars in Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton under your belt. Shakespeare and I get along fairly well, and Chaucer’s a good buddy, but Milton seems a little silly to me. “How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, stol’n away my three and twentieth year,” seems ridiculous coming from a guy who didn’t shave regularly yet. Besides, Milton was wall-to-wall puritan, and puritans set my teeth on edge.

The Milton seminar was one of those early-morning things—seven-thirty to nine-thirty—and the first session was largely taken up with bookkeeping. Full professors generally prefer to ease themselves into harness. After class I drove back to Wallingford to have a word with Twink.

I didn’t want to wake Mary, so I went around to the back door and tapped on the window. Renata opened the door, touching one finger to her lips. “She’s still asleep, Markie,” she whispered.

“No kidding? Gee, the day’s half-over.”

“Quit trying to be funny. Do you want some coffee?”

“Thanks, Twink, but I’ve had four cups of Erika’s already, and that’ll probably keep me wired until about midnight.”

“Is her coffee that strong?”

“Industrial-strength. I just came by to tell you that I’ll pick you up about twelve-thirty. Our class starts at one-thirty, and that’ll give us plenty of time to get there.”

“You don’t have to do that, Markie. I’ve got my bike.”

“Yes, Twink, I know all about the bike. This is the first day of class, though, and I want to show you exactly where Padelford Hall’s located, where my office is, and how to find the classroom. After you’ve got the lay of the land, you can pedal around in the rain all you want.”

“Oh, all right.” She sounded peevish about it.

“What
is
your problem, Twink?”

“Everybody’s treating me like a baby. I’m a big girl now.”

“Save the declaration of independence, Twinkie-poo. I just want to make sure you’ve got the lay of the land before I turn you loose to roam around campus by yourself.”

“Twinkie-poo?” she said. “Are we going back to baby talk?”

“Just kidding, Twink. I know most of the trees on campus by their first names, so I can save you a lot of time by showing you shortcuts and places where the traffic piles up at certain times of day. Let’s just call this ‘show Twinkie the ropes day.’ I’m not trying to insult you or infringe on your constitutional right to get hopelessly lost down in the hard-science zone. Just humor me today, OK?”

“Yes, Master,” she said with a vapid expression. “Yes, Master.”

“I thought we’d gotten past that stuff, Twink.”

“The old ones are the best, aren’t they? If you want to baby me, I suppose I can put up with it for a day or so. But don’t make a habit of it.”

“Oh,” I said then, “as long as I’m offending you today anyway, let’s get something else off the table. Don’t get too carried away with how you dress. The kids here are pretty laid-back when they go to class. Blue jeans and sweatshirts are just about the uniform of the day—every day. You probably wouldn’t want to wear fancy clothes in the rain anyway, and it’s always raining here in muck and mire city.”

“Aww,” she said in mock disappointment. “I was going to make a fashion statement.”

“Save it for a sunny day, Twink. A lot of freshman girls try that on their first day of class, and they get pretty embarrassed when they find out that they’re overdressed.”

“What books am I going to need?”

“I’ll give you some of mine. I’ve got lots of spares.”

“I can afford to buy my own books, Markie. I’ve even got my very own checkbook. Les made a big point of that. There’s oodles of money in there, and someday I might even be able to make it balance.”

“Never turn down freebies, Twink—particularly when you’re talking about books. I’ll see you about twelve-thirty, then. I’m going back to the boardinghouse now to start rummaging around in
Paradise Lost
, and I’m not looking forward to it very much. I don’t think Milton and I are going to get along well at all.”

“Aw,” she said, patting my cheek, “poor baby.”

“Oh, quit,” I told her. Then I left and drove back to the boardinghouse to dig into Milton. John-boy irritated me right from the git-go. He was such a show-off. All right, he was gifted, he was intelligent, and he’d been a member of Cromwell’s government. Did he have to keep rubbing my face in it? Writing sonnets in Latin is probably the height of exhibitionism, wouldn’t you say?

I hung it up about eleven o’clock and went downstairs to slap a sandwich together. Erika was there, brewing another pot of coffee. “Hi, Mark,” she greeted me. “Coffee’s almost ready.”

“Thanks all the same, Erika, but I’m still trying to shake off the four cups I had at breakfast.”

“Suit yourself.” She was wearing a heavy-looking pair of horn-rimmed glasses that made her look older and more mature. They seemed to complete her. That deep auburn hair and golden skin had made her seem somehow almost unreal to me.

“Are the glasses something new?” I asked her.

“No, they’ve been around for years. I’m just giving my eyes a rest from the contact lenses.”

“Trish says you’ve got an outside job,” I said, rummaging in the refrigerator.

“At a medical lab,” she told me. “It’s not challenging, but it pays the bills. What
are
you looking for, Mark?”

“Sandwich makings. I’ve got the munchies.”

“Go sit down. I’ll fix you something.”

“I can take care of it, Erika.”

“Sit!” she commanded. “I hate it when people tear up the kitchen. Aunt Grace was too timid to scold the party boys, and the mess they made used to drive me right up the wall.”

“James told me that you were living here before your aunt got sick,” I said, moving out of her way and sitting down in the breakfast nook.

“I was strapped for cash,” she replied. “I’d been working at a lab over near Swedish Hospital, and the headman there was a groper who couldn’t keep his hands to himself. I cured him of that, and he fired me.”

“Cured?”

“I threw a cup of scalding coffee in his face.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“He felt pretty much the same way about it,” she said with an evil little grin. “Anyway, Aunt Grace had an empty room, and she let me stay here until I got back on my feet.” She started putting some sandwiches together. “That’s what set off our ‘serious student’ program. You wouldn’t
believe
how noisy it used to be around here. After Aunt Grace had her stroke, I yelled for help, Trish came running, and we clamped down.”

“James told me about that when I first found the place,” I told her. “He said he backed your decision all the way.”

“Oh, yes. And nobody in his right mind crosses James. Truth is, I had to nudge
Trish
to persuade her to put that ‘no drinking on the premises’ policy into effect. She was a little timid about it.”

“Timid? Trish?”

“She was worried about the rent money. That was all that we had to pay Aunt Grace’s medical expenses. I told her not to be such a worrywart. I knew that sooner or later we’d get the right kind of people here, and things would turn out OK.”

“You’re putting a whole new light on things around here, Erika,” I said. “I assumed Trish was running the show, but you’re the one calling the shots, aren’t you?”

“That’s been going on since we were kids, Mark. Trish wants people to notice her. I don’t need that, so I let
her
stand around giving orders. As long as she gives the orders I want her to give, I don’t interfere.” She came over and handed me a plate with two fairly bulky sandwiches on it. “Here,” she said. “Eat.”

“Yes, boss,” I said obediently.

She let that pass. “I’ll bring you a glass of milk.”

“I’ve sort of outgrown milk, Erika.”

“It’s good for you,” she said. She poured me a glass of milk and brought it to the table.

This girl was going to take some getting used to, that much was certain.

After I’d finished eating, I went back to Mary’s place to pick up Twink. I was fairly sure that Mary was still asleep, so I went around to the back door again to avoid waking her.

Twink was waiting for me, and she had one of those black plastic raincoats that always seem to make a lot of noise. They keep the rain off well enough, I guess, but they crackle with every move.

“Did you bring my books?” she asked.

“We’ll pick them up at my office,” I told her. “I don’t keep my spares on my own bookshelves. They take up too much room. Let’s hit the bricks, Twink. I want to get in and out of my little clothes-closet office before the suck-ups get there and go into the usual feeding frenzy.”

“Suck-ups?” she asked.

“The ingratiators. The second-rate students who swindled their way through high school by laughing at the tired jokes of third-rate teachers, and the personality kids who’d
really
like to be my friend so that they can smile the C-minus they’ll earn up to a B-plus.”

“You’re in a foul humor,” she accused, as we went out to my car.

“It’ll pass, Twink,” I told her. “I always come down with the grouchies on the first day of classes. I know for an absolute fact that I’m going to come up against a solid wall of ineptitude, and it depresses the hell out of me.”

“Poor, poor Markie. You can cry on my shoulder, if you want. Maybe if I mommy all over you, it’ll make you feel better.”

I laughed—I don’t think I’d ever heard “mommy” used as a verb before. “When did you get mommified, Twink?” I took it one step further.

“Probably while I was in the bughouse,” she replied. “Dockie-poo Fallon always prescribed mommification—or daddyfication—when one of the bugsies went brain-dead. He’d either mommify us or embalm us with Prozac. And believe me, if you really wanted to, you could probably calm a volcano down with Prozac.”

We clowned around all the way to the campus, and I realized as I pulled into the Padelford parking garage that Twink had banished my grumpies. I was supposed to be taking care of
her
, but she’d neatly turned the tables.

“Where do you want me to sit when I go into your classroom, Markie?” she asked me when we climbed out of the Dodge. “Since I’m not a real student yet, am I supposed to hide under a desk or something?”

“Pick anyplace you want, Twink. The other people in the class won’t know that you’re only auditing, and I wouldn’t make an issue of it. Just blend in.”

“What am I supposed to call you?”

“Mr. Austin, probably. That’s what the others are going to call me. Let’s keep the fact that we know each other more or less under wraps—the other kids don’t need to know. Doc Fallon says that you’re here to get to know more people—’broaden your acquaintanceship,’ he calls it. I may not altogether agree, but let’s play it his way for now. I’ll give you some time for the after-class chatter before we go back home. Try to keep it down to about a half hour. Oh, don’t get all bent out of shape about some of the things I’ll say today, OK? It’s a little canned speech I picked up from Dr. Conrad. It’s called ‘thinning the herd.’ My life’s a lot easier if I can scare the incompetents enough to make them go pester somebody else.”

“You’re a mean person, Markie.”

“God knows I try.”

Inside the building, I showed Twink where my office was, gave her the books she’d need, and led the way to the classroom. “Hang around out here in the hallway until the place starts to fill up,” I advised. “Then drift in with the rest. Don’t sit up front, but don’t try to hide at the back of the room, either—that’s where the hopeless cases usually are. Try to blend in as much as possible.”

“You sound like a bad spy novel,” she accused. “Next you’ll be talking about code words, disguises, and invisible ink.”

“Maybe I
am
being a little obvious,” I admitted.

“
Real
obvious. I’m a big girl, and I know all about blending into the scenery.”

“OK. Today’s class won’t be too long. We’ll do the bookkeeping, I’ll deliver my speech, and then I’ll split before anybody can pin me to the wall. You mingle a bit, then go back out to the garage. I’ll be in the car.”

“Why not wait in your office?”

“Because I don’t want to spend the rest of the day here. The suck-ups will home in on that place like a pack of wolves. Are you going to be OK here?”

“I’m fine, Markie. Quit worrying.”

“OK, I’ll see you after class, then.”

I went back to the garage to gather up the official-looking junk I had in the backseat, then I ran over my canned speech to make sure I’d hit all the high points. The first class session sets the tone for the rest of the quarter, so I wanted to be sure I had it right.

I kept a close eye on my watch and hit the classroom door at precisely one-thirty. I went directly to the desk, opened my briefcase, and took out the stack of papers I kept in there. Then I faced this year’s crop of freshmen. “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” I said briskly. “This is section BR of English 131, Expository Writing. My name is Austin, and I’ll be your instructor. Please pass your enrollment cards to the left, and I’ll distribute the course syllabus when I pick them up.”