The Twenty-Year Death (35 page)

So much for Constant Comfort.

I went outside. A bank of phone booths stood against the wall of the building. A broad-shouldered man in a navy blue suit and no hat leaned against the nearest booth. His hair was slicked back and his brown brogues were freshly polished. But he wasn’t there for me. He held a racing form folded into a rigid rectangle about the size of a closed street map, in case anyone might be confused about what he was doing there. He looked up at me as I came down the steps, then looked back at his paper when he saw that I wasn’t a customer. I went into the booth furthest from his, and pulled the door shut. The overhead light turned on and the exhaust fan in the ceiling began whirring. It didn’t help. The booth was still stifling.

I dropped a coin in the slot and dialed. It was answered after one ring. “
Chronicle
.”

“Pauly Fisher, please.”

The line began to hum, and then there was a click, and then Pauly’s warm voice came on. “Fisher here.”

“It’s Dennis Foster.”

“Foster. What you got for me?”

I cracked the door just enough to get some air. “Maybe something. Maybe nothing. You remember a murder in Harbor City just before Christmas? Jane Doe, slit throat, carved-up legs?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. What about it?”

“You only get the news that’s in the paper or do you get the real stuff?” I wiped the back of my neck with my handkerchief.

“What? You’re thinking of this starlet that got herself cut up yesterday?”

“Sounds like they were cut up in the same ways.”

“Sounds like a coincidence to me.”

“Well, can we find out if it’s been a coincidence any other times?”

“You must be kidding.”

“What?”

“You know what I’d have to go through to find that out? I hope you don’t need it this week.”

I tried to entice him. “I think I’ve got a name for Jane Doe.”

“Nobody came looking for her. It’s not news.”

“Don’t you find that odd? You’d agree that a cut throat and carved-up legs normally is news, right? Especially when it’s a nice-looking young woman on the receiving end.”

“Yeah.”

“Then why was it buried on page three? And a dead story two days later?” I heard the faint electric whistle along the phone line that passed for silence. Now I had caught his interest. I sweetened it. “What if it wasn’t a coincidence? What if there were other women?”

“You been reading about Jack the Ripper again?”

I waited.

He sighed. “Okey. But it’s going to take me a while.”

“Try my office first. If I’m not there, try the apartment. Oh, and Pauly, one more thing, do you know anything about a horse named Constant Comfort?”

“I know about horses as much as I know about Einstein.”

“All right. Thanks.” I hung up. I opened the door and stepped out of the phone booth. There was one man around here who’d know more about horses than about Einstein. He was in the same spot I had left him, still holding his little folded racing form. I walked down the bank of booths.

He saw me coming and he tucked the paper under his arm and held out his hands, palms up. “I’m just waiting on a call from my aunt to tell me my uncle’s out of the hospital.”

“What’s he in for?”

The man readjusted his stance. “Appendicitis.”

“Next time try he was in a car wreck. Sounds better.”

He tilted his head and squinted.

“I’m not a cop,” I said. I held up a five-dollar bill. “What do you know about a horse named Constant Comfort?”

“You’re sure you’re not a cop?”

I crinkled the money. “Private.”

He checked to see if he needed a shave. He did. He probably needed to shave after every meal. “Comfort doesn’t race anymore. He won a couple of pots last year. Out to pasture now.”

“You know who owns him?”

“He was in Daniel Merton’s stable when he was racing. I don’t know about now. Why? You in the market for a horse?”

“Nah, your horse might have appendicitis.”

I held out the bill to him, and he snatched it away as though he expected me to do the same. He pocketed it and made a big production of taking the racing form out from under his arm and finding his place. He leaned back against the booth again, but his eyes weren’t moving across the page. He was waiting for me to leave.

At the curb I got back in my Packard. Daniel Merton was one of the founders and owners, and the current president, of Merton Stein Productions. If he had owned the horse before and Chloë Rose owned it now, he must have given it to her. But he was also the man she worked for, which made him the one the mystery man on the phone had been calling on behalf of. Why would Merton want to buy back a horse he’d given her?

I started the engine. None of this was my business. I had a client, and he probably expected me to work for my money.

I checked the time. Almost five. It was too early for any of the right people to be on Market Street in Harbor City and too late to go sit around the office. I decided to go home, and wait for Pauly Fisher’s phone call. The sand-colored coupe decided to join me.

I didn’t bother locking my apartment door. If Hub’s men wanted to get in, they’d get in, the only question was whether I’d have to deal with a busted doorframe afterwards.

I took up a position so I’d be behind the door when it opened. I stood there and nothing happened. I kept standing, feeling like a fool. But in the last thirty-six hours I’d had a gun pointed at me, been threatened by gangsters and by the police, and found a mutilated body. I waited.

The knock came, three heavy thuds made with the meat of a fist. I stayed quiet. We all listened to the floorboards. The knock again, more insistent, and this time, “Come on, Foster. We know you’re in there. We just want to talk.” It was Mitch’s voice.

I heard a hand on the doorknob, and then the door swung towards me, but faster and harder than I’d expected. It slammed into my hip, sending a sharp pain up and down my side. I must have cried out, because Mitch hurled his full weight against the door, pinning me behind it. I tried to lean forward but my shoulders were pushed together, my arms in front of me like a fighter trying to protect his middle. I was stuck.

Mitch peeked around the door, still holding his weight against it. At the sight of me, he eased the pressure for a moment only to fall back against the door, shooting pain along my shoulder blades.

A second man appeared, rail thin and well over six feet tall, wearing a gray suit with a black vest underneath. He patted me down to see if I had a gun. I didn’t. He took the newspaper article I’d stolen from the library out of my pocket. Then he nodded at Mitch.

The weight fell away from the door and I staggered forward. “What do you two want?”

The tall man unfolded the newspaper article, glanced it over, and looked back at me. “For somebody not working on a murder, you have an interesting choice of reading material.”

“I just ripped that out for the crossword on the back.”

He held up the backside, which wasn’t a crossword. “We were told to give you a chance. We were told to use our discretion.”

“I told it to Gilplaine straight. I’m working another job.”

“Then how do you explain this?”

I couldn’t explain it. I couldn’t even say why it was important. I didn’t know anything other than I was a damn fool for having gotten mixed up with this business in the first place.

“Mr. Gilplaine finds your explanation unconvincing,” the tall man said. He turned to Mitch, who was jumping lightly in place on the balls of his feet, like he was warming up. “Leave his face alone. This is only a warning.”

I tried to dodge to my left in an attempt to get out the door, but Mitch barreled into me, slamming me back up against it. Holding me there, he punched me in the kidney. One would have been plenty, but he did it again and then a third time, so that my legs went watery and tears pushed out between my squinting eyelids. A fire lapped around my midsection. He let me go since he was sure I wasn’t going anywhere now. Before I could collapse, he propped me up and punched me just once
in the stomach. I doubled over, throwing my upper torso into Mitch’s waiting fist. The dull ache of my pectoral met up with the fire in my side, and I fell back against the door, trying to draw breath and failing.

Mitch stood up, his breathing only slightly heavy. “He doesn’t look too good, does he?”

The tall man made no comment. We could have been reading the stock prices. He was bored.

Mitch jumped in place again. “I think I better even him out.” He twisted his torso, bringing his arm all the way back. He was going to show me that fist long before it was going to get to me. I couldn’t move anyway, and he barreled it into my other kidney. I fell forward onto my knees.

“He’s blocking the door.”

“You’re in the way,” Mitch said. He shoved me over with the toe of one shoe. I didn’t resist. I couldn’t have if I’d tried.

“I think we’ve made our point,” the tall man said.

Mitch kicked me in the stomach once more for good measure. Before I could catch my breath, he bent down and snaked a thick arm around my windpipe, his hot breath up against my ear. “Just because I’m not supposed to mark up your face don’t mean I’ve got to leave you conscious, you flatfooted...”

Whatever it was that he called me was lost to the ages. There were more interesting things to command my attention, black splotches appearing before my eyes intermixed with white flashes, and then the black beat out the white and then I was drifting above the floor, high up near the ceiling, and then I wasn’t.

The black-and-white flicker of a movie screen came on in front of me, the test strip counting down five, four, three, two,
one. Chloë Rose lit up the screen, a radiant aura around her. There were quick cuts and there was a knife and there was a gun, and then there was a body floating on a pool of blood. Chloë Rose came back again, and she was screaming. She was beautiful. Then there was a man seen from behind. It must have been the star of the picture. John Stark or Hub Gilplaine. He came to a mirror and I saw that it was me. But I’m down there with the paying marks in the cinema seats. How could I be up on the screen? The image flickered past. There was a lanky brunette stuffing a body into a car. There was another body floating in a pool of blood, but this time the blood was mixed with white foam. It was on the beach, and the waves were lapping away at the black blood, white, black, white, black, a gaping throat. A gunshot. And they’re off. The horses pounded around the track. Cut to the stands. Chloë Rose. The horses rounding the far turn. Cut to the stands. Mitch and the tall man and me holding our tickets. The horses are coming around. Cut to the stands. John Stark holding hands with Greg Taylor. The photoflash! It hurts my eyes. And then the horse race was a prize fight and Mitch was in the ring with me and the bell was being rung...

And then suddenly it was a telephone ringing.

A voice said, “Turn off the lights.”

I took a deep breath and immediately started coughing. Every part of my upper torso ached, except when I moved, at which point the ache was replaced with shooting pain.

“It’s too bright,” the voice said. “Turn off the light and bring me a drink.”

No one answered, and it’s a good thing, because I was alone.

I looked over at the phone, but it had stopped ringing. If it ever had been ringing. Maybe it had just been my head.

I put my hand against the wall. It was a good wall. It stayed where you left it. Not like my breath. I gasped to draw it in, my throat getting tight, but in it went, and I exhaled with the only consequence being more throbbing and jabbing along my ribs.

The wall helped me to my knees and even held me when I fell against it. Like I said, it was a good wall. I was able to reach up and flip off the light.

Now it was too dark. Whatever little light was supposed to come from the window in the bathroom wasn’t there, so I’d been out at least a couple of hours.

Okey, Foster, one step at a time. That’s the way. Hands and knees. Now just knees. What do you say about feet?

One foot was under me now, and then with the help of the doorknob I got up onto both feet and stumbled across to my chair and fell into it. The newspaper article was sitting on the bed. That was nice of them. They were solid people who wouldn’t steal a newspaper clipping from an unconscious man. The library should hire those two. They’d never have any late returns again.

I rested for some amount of time, re-learning how to breathe. I got so I was pretty good at it. I could even do it with my eyes closed. When I had gotten that under my belt, I figured I might as well try for that drink. I got to my feet, and this time it wasn’t like riding a bicycle with a bent wheel. I made it to the liquor, poured a stiff drink, and drank it off in one gulp, enjoying the only burning inside of me that I had put there. While I poured another one, the phone began to ring again. Or maybe it was the first time. I looked at it way over on the side table. It was
probably Pauly Fisher. Anything he had to tell me, I didn’t want to know just then; he could call me at the office tomorrow.

I made my way back to the light switch with the second drink in my hand, the phone still ringing. The lights came on and I squinted, holding up my hand as if to ward off a blow.

I drank the second drink. I could see then. The clock on my nightstand said it was almost half past eight. It had been just about five when I’d left the library. I’d been out for three hours, assuming it wasn’t the next day.

The phone was still hollering at anyone who would listen. Pauly Fisher wasn’t that persistent, but I didn’t want to find out who was. It was still plenty early for Market Street—in fact, it might still have been too early. But it was time to go either way. Because that was my job. All of this other stuff was just a sideline, a hobby.

I looked at the newspaper article again. Gilplaine had done me a favor in his own vicious way. He’d told me this dead woman was much more important than I’d known. That seemed like a mistake a man like Gilplaine wouldn’t make. Maybe someday I’d know why.

I thought about a third drink, but left my glass on the table and went to the door instead. I got it open without any problem. No one was waiting outside. It was just me and the hallway. They seemed pretty confident I’d gotten the message. I’d gotten it, but it might not have been the message they intended.