Shadow Games (7 page)

As Puckett frequently said, before he began to investigate anybody, he spent a few hours at a computer terminal learning such things as where the man was born, what sort of education he'd had, any notable sports or interests he indulged
NESTFORM
, and any information available on ex-wives or lovers. In addition, he also checked out the man's financial background thoroughly, any liens, lawsuits, bankruptcies, etc.

Puckett's next step was to go to the man's house and check through his garbage. You could find marvelous things in garbage and it often told fascinating tales. Thus armed with all this information, Puckett set about the serious, formal phase of the investigation, which usually meant interviewing friends of the man.

Listeners loved it.

The vampire hour had come. He called it that because, with darkness, they would appear, the freaks and geeks and victims and observers of the night. They would be furtive, little old ladies robbed by gangs of twelve-year-olds for a few dollars; half-naked dancers of many sexes enjoying the noisy, incandescent kiss of the disco spotlight; a farmer from Iowa coming out of his third-rate hotel to find that his two-year-old Dodge had been stripped clean of everything valuable; the junkie so desperate for a fix he decides to share a needle despite seeing the way his friend died of AIDS last year; a priest in a runaway shelter counseling a fourteen-year-old Michigan girl to at least call her parents and tell them she is all right; an S&M participant feeling the first lash of the whip ripping his flesh as his scream of pleasure and fulfillment sings on the air; a little girl hearing the brawl between her mother and drunken father, whispering frantic prayers that her mother
won't be beaten as badly as she was last time; a very angry black youth sticking up a liquor store owned by a very angry Korean man, both so filled with hatred and rage they can barely contain it.

This was Chicago, but it could just as well have been Los Angeles or Detroit or Miami...

This was night, and sometimes Puckett thought he should go back to the old family farm in Maine and live out his life there. No vampires there, except maybe for those in Stephen King's books.

He was contemplating all these things—he was a great, if useless, contemplator, was Puckett—when a familiar name came on the radio talk show he'd been vaguely listening to.

"Our guest tonight is Anne Addison, one of the best-known non-fiction writers in the United States. Anne is in Chicago doing an interview with
Cobey
Daniels, the former teen-star whose new play is dazzling everybody who sees it. Good evening, Anne, and welcome to our studios."

"Good evening, Ron. I'm pleased to be here. Thanks for asking me."

"Why don't we talk a little bit about how you prepare for an interview, and then we'll take some calls from our listeners?"

Puckett tried hard not to be seduced by that soft, intelligent, but completely unaffected voice of hers. He tried to concentrate on his surveillance job and he glanced determinedly up the hill at the dark outline of the apartment house.

He had left Los Angeles yesterday because the man he'd been tailing was originally from Chicago and consequently—and unbeknownst to his wife—kept a place here.

The Ardmore was a big playpen for wealthy adults. In this case, the toys were three swimming pools, a physical training room that would rival the most sophisticated gym, tennis courts, squash courts, a jogging path and a "social" room so splashy and upscale that very good rock bands often showed
up for a set or two. The Ardmore was constructed of unfinished wood and sprawled over a hillside that pitched perilously toward a raw, jagged ravine below. There were enough floodlights on the ground to make you think there was maybe a movie premiere going on here tonight.

Puckett was here because of a geezer named Fenwick, a round, bald, sunburned man who had impulsively deserted his wife of forty years for the receptionist he'd hired six months ago. Said receptionist had previously been an aerobics instructor, a flight attendant and a runway model for several second-tier department stores. She had also put most of her hard-earned money back into her one and only product, which was herself. Puckett had discovered that she'd had plastic surgery on her breasts, her nose, her chin and her bottom.

Mrs. Fenwick, or Mildred, as she insisted Puckett call her, was actually a very nice, rich, older woman who just wanted some photos of her husband making a fool of himself—on the dance floor, poolside with his considerable belly hanging over his swimming trunks, or in the lobby of a French restaurant where the girl on his arm would look very much like his daughter, and a slightly
whorey
one at that. Mildred Fenwick was convinced that once her husband saw how ridiculous he looked in such photos, he would come to his senses and return home.

Puckett didn't necessarily believe that the aging American male was all that sensible, but he wasn't being paid for his beliefs. He was being paid to tail Fenwick, and get photos of him in as many contexts as possible. And that's how Puckett, good gumshoe that he was, came to be in Chicago tonight.

"I'm a real fan of your writing."

"Thank you," Anne said to the caller.

"Do you have any opinions about where
Cobey
Daniels disappeared for that nine month period?"

Several years ago,
Cobey
had vanished. Utterly. A nationwide manhunt ensued. But no
Cobey
. Then one day he
simply showed up again. He would never talk about where he'd been or what he'd done. Ever.

"I'm afraid I don't know any more about it than you do," Anne said.

Hearing her voice again, Puckett couldn't help himself. He picked up the hefty Chicago phone book on the seat next to him, looked up the number of the station where Anne was, and then called the place and left a phone number for her to call—and the name of the hotel where he was staying. The receptionist treated him about the way he'd expected—as an unholy masher.

Twenty minutes later, Puckett's replacement showed up—the agency, thank God, had a working agreement with a Chicago investigative agency—and Puckett went and found himself a
Hardee's
drive-up. He did not exactly have gourmet tastes...

2

A
round eleven, Puckett decided Anne was neither going to call or show up, so he took off his trousers and watched the second half of Jay Leno in his shorts.

He also spent a lot more time than he wanted to thinking about Anne Addison.

Two years ago, after the magazine she was writing for assigned her to interview a private detective, she spent a week with Puckett on the job. She was a bright, fetching woman with coppery hair, little-girl freckles and one of those great, odd smiles that seemed to contain both joy and sorrow.

Their relationship lasted much longer than either of them planned, ending one night when she smashed up a good share of his living room after he told her, as gently as possible, that she was an alcoholic. She called him arrogant, smug and
uncaring, all the things most alcoholics call people who try to point out the obvious.

Puckett still felt sorry for her, of course. She was a thirty-one-year-old woman who'd endured an abusive first marriage and, four years earlier, had seen her five-year-old son dash out into the street and be struck by a car. Donny had died six days later, having never emerged from the darkness of his coma.

So Anne drank: at first just to kill the pain, but then out of habit and, finally, out of overwhelming need. By the time Puckett had first met her, she had two distinct problems: the loss of her son and her alcoholism...

Puckett had phoned her many times following their terrible, violent argument in his apartment but it had done no good. She wouldn't return any of his calls. He'd even written her twice. She wrote
RETURN TO SENDER
on the front of the envelopes and mailed them back. He wanted to know how she was doing. He cared about her, more than he imagined he might. Hell, he'd been half-assed in love with her when they'd had the shootout that night. If they'd kept on seeing each other...

Toward the end, things had gotten pretty crazy, her drinking taking more and more of her sanity, her anger becoming more frequent and more strange...until one night in the parking lot of a cocktail lounge, trying to steer her into his car, Puckett had watched as Anne raised a gin bottle she'd stolen from the lounge—and smashed Puckett's windshield in, shattering both safety glass and bottle as she did so.

As he tried again to grab her, she startled him by pushing the jagged edge of the gin bottle right in his face.

"You want me to cut you up, you
sonofabitch
?" she'd screamed. "Then keep your fucking hands off me!"

She spent the next day calling to apologize for the night before, but by then Puckett knew that their relationship was quickly and grimly coming to a close...

Not long after that he told her she was an alcoholic. That was the last time they'd gotten together.

But now, as he thought about Anne, the worst of the memories faded. And he thought, instead, of her little-girl laugh, of her gentleness after lovemaking, of the sad, yet dignified way she dealt with troubles when she wasn't drinking...

It was good to think of her again, sweet and tender to remember the clean scent of her as she stepped from the shower...and the quick, melancholy brilliance of her smile.

The phone rang.

He grabbed it immediately, knowing with a rush of exhilaration who it would be.

"God. I couldn't believe it when I got out of the studio and saw the note from you," she said. "
Why're
you in Chicago?"

"Work."

"Figures. You still haven't learned how to relax, have you?"

He laughed. "I guess not."

"Are you decent?"

"Depends on who's asking."

"I am. I'm downstairs in the lobby."

T
hree minutes and seven floors later, she knocked on the door. As he opened the door, he caught himself sniffing the air and felt ashamed of himself. He was already assuming she was drunk.

"Hi, Puckett."

"Hi, Anne."

"Surprised to see me?"

"Very."

She wore a Dodgers T-shirt under a rust-colored suede car coat. Her white jeans hugged her neat little bottom and her long, slender legs very nicely.

"I've missed you, Puckett."

"Ditto."

She laughed. "Same old 'ditto' routine, huh?"

Then she was in his arms.

Neither of them made a move to kiss; they just stood there in the doorway, holding each other, as if they weren't quite sure if they were lovers or just friends.

She sure felt good, Puckett thought. He'd always been comfortable with her sexually because they liked the same things and liked sex at about the same rate. But it was more than that, of course. He knew, now, just how lonely for her he'd really been.

He closed his eyes and just held her, liking the familiar smells of her, too, the baby shampoo in the hair, the sweet, subtle perfume, the warm, clean aroma of her flesh.

"This is really nice," she said.

"This is better than nice. It's great."

She giggled. "I just wish we didn't have to go and ruin it all by closing the door."

God—he'd actually forgotten all about standing in the doorway.

He led her inside the pleasant but unremarkable room with its pleasant but unremarkable furniture and its pleasant but unremarkable atmosphere.

Then he just stood there staring at her, a dumb, love-smitten junior at his first high school prom.

Anne Addison had come back into his life
.

T
he name of the treatment center was St. Francis Xavier and the name of the priest there, himself a recovering alcoholic, was Father
Doheny
. Anne had stayed there four months, until she had just about run out of insurance money. At least twice
a week she'd started to call Puckett, but always stopped at the last moment because her memory of trashing his living room was too acute. She'd done many things in her drinking years that embarrassed her, but none as much as that. So she hadn't called.

After she got out of the treatment center, she went home and stayed in her apartment for a full month without leaving or even calling anybody. She was afraid to go out, afraid she wouldn't be strong enough to pass by a bar without going inside and ruining her five months of sobriety.

Then an editor called one day and gave her a freelance assignment, an interview with a European director staying in Malibu. Anne specialized in serious journalism about the film industry.