1979 - You Must Be Kidding (4 page)

‘Come on! Come on!’

He drank, then fortified, he took the telephone she thrust at him. For a moment he hesitated, then he dialled his brother-in-law’s number. He leaned back in the chair, closing his eyes. There was a pause, then a booming voice said, ‘Hi, there!’

‘Jack . . . this is Ken.’

‘Hi, fella!’ Jack sounded drunk. ‘We’re waiting for you. What’s holding you?’

‘Look, Jack, I’ve got a goddamn breakdown. I’m in a garage and the guy’s working on it now.’

‘Hey! What’s wrong?’

‘God knows! The engine just died on me. I’m sorry, Jack.’

‘You can’t do this to me, Ken! This is our anniversary! The big deal, Ken!’ A pause, then he went on, ‘If everyone wasn’t so stinking drunk, I’d get someone to collect you. Where are you?’

‘On the highway. Look, Jack, as soon as it’s fixed, I’ll be with you. Maybe it won’t take long. Explain to Betty.’

‘Sure . . . sure. They’re starting the fireworks. Come as soon as you can,’ and his brother-in-law hung up.

Ken replaced the receiver and stared up at Karen.

‘That body. . .’ He shuddered. ‘We must call the police!’

‘Ken! Use your head!’ Karen exclaimed. ‘The police? They would want to know what you were doing here when you should have been at your party. Do you imagine anyone would believe you came out here to fix shelves? Do you realize what my goddamn father would do if he found out you and I had spent time in this cabin? He’s dumb enough to think I’m still a virgin, but he’s not that dumb to know once he knew we were together here, that we haven’t been screwing! You would lose your job and I would lose this cabin! No police! Now, come on, let’s go!’

The Scotch Ken had drunk was now hitting him. She was right, he told himself. No police! As she had said, this ghastly murder was nothing to do with either of them.

Some other person would find the body. He realized that if Sternwood found out he had committed adultery with Karen, he would not only give him the gate; but he would be vindictive enough to get him black listed. He would never be able to get another job in insurance. Then there was Betty! God! What a mess he had got himself into!

‘Come on!’ Karen said impatiently.

He followed her out into the humid heat of the night.

Half walking, half running, she led him down to the beach, then skirting the thicket—Ken couldn’t bring himself to look at it, knowing the gruesome body lay there—she led him onto the beach. Then, once past the thicket, she moved inland. Turning a bend around a clump of scrub bushes, they suddenly came upon a man, walking fast towards them. The bright moonlight revealed him as tall, thin, bearded, wearing only a pair of tattered jeans, a duffle bag slung over his shoulder. His shoulder length hair and his vast beard only showed eyes and a long, thin nose.

The man stopped.

‘Hi, there!’ he said.

Ken had an uneasy feeling the man was staring at them.

‘Hi!’ Karen said, smiling.

Ken felt cold sweat break out over his body, but he forced a smile.

‘Looking for Paddler’s Creek,’ the man said. Ken guessed he was around twenty years of age.

‘Straight ahead,’ Karen said. ‘About half a mile,’ and stepping around him, followed by Ken, she walked on.

‘He’ll know us again,’ Ken said huskily.

‘That fink? He wouldn’t know himself in a mirror,’ Karen said contemptuously.

Ken looked back. The bearded man was standing, looking after them. He raised his hand, then turning, headed towards the hippy colony.

‘Keep on,’ Karen said stopping. ‘Just around those trees is your car.’ She moved up to him and her arms went around his neck. ‘It was good, huh?’

The feel of her hot arms made Ken flinch.

‘It must never happen again,’ he said and moved away from her.

She laughed.

‘They all say that. The reservoir fills up.’ Her fingers caressed his cheek, then turning, she ran across the sand towards the sea.

two

A
t 20.30 quiet reigned in the Detectives’ room at Paradise City police headquarters. Detective 3rd Grade Max Jacoby was mouthing silently such phrases as:
Se voudrais un kilo de lait. Mais, moti
petit, le lait ne se vend pas au poids: ca se mesure.

Any hunkhead would know that, Jacoby thought, but desperately anxious to speak French, he mouthed the sentences from his Assimil
French Without Toil.
Jacoby’s burning ambition was to take a vacation in Paris, and chat up the girls.

At his desk, across the big room, Detective 1st Grade Tom Lepski was wrestling with a crossword puzzle.

Lepski, thin, tall, had been recently promoted. He was very alive to the fact that he was on his way up. His secret ambition was to become eventually Chief of Police.

The telephone bell rang on his desk. Scowling, Lepski snatched up the receiver.

‘Detective Lepski!’ he barked in his cop voice.

‘You don’t have to shout, Lepski,’ his wife said.

‘Oh, you. Why honey, this is an unexpected pleasure,’ Lepski said, softening his voice.

‘Where are my car keys?’

Lepski sighed and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. He loved his pretty, bossy wife, but there were times when he wished she didn’t nag him so much.

‘Car keys?’ he said blankly. ‘I’m not with you, honey.’

‘You have taken my car keys! I have a date with Muriel and the keys aren’t here!’

Lepski sat up straight. This was fighting talk.

‘Why the hell should I take your car keys?’ he demanded.

‘There is no need to swear at me! My car keys are not where I keep them. You have taken them!’

Lepski began to drum with his fingers on his desk.

‘I’ve never seen your goddam car keys!’

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Lepski! Such language. My car keys are missing! You must have taken them!’

Lepski made a noise like a car backfiring.

‘And don’t make a noise like that to me!’ Carroll snapped.

Lepski sucked in a long breath.

‘Sorry,’ he said between his teeth. ‘I don’t know a god . . . I don’t know a thing about your car keys. Have you looked?’

‘Have I looked?’ Carroll’s voice went up a notch.

Jacoby put aside his Assimil and settled himself to enjoy this. He had often heard Lepski and his wife shouting at each other on the telephone. As a performance, he had often thought, it was as good as any T.V. comedy act.

‘That’s what I said.’ Lepski was now on the offensive. ‘Have you looked under the cushions? In all your bags?’

‘Lepski!’ The snap in Carroll’s voice stopped him short. ‘My keys are not here! You have them!’

Lepski gave a laugh a hyena would have envied.

‘Come on, honey! Why should I take your goddam car keys?’

‘Stop swearing! You take things and lose them! You have them!’

Lepski shook his head sadly. There were times when Carroll jumped to stupid conclusions.

‘Now, honey, you look again. You’ll find them. Just act like a smart detective like me . . . really look.’

He dipped his hand into his jacket pocket for his cigarette pack. His fingers touched metal and he gave a start, observed by Jacoby, as if he had been goosed with a hot iron.

‘I’ve looked everywhere!’ Carroll screamed.

Even Jacoby could hear what she had said.

Lepski fished his wife’s car keys out of his pocket, stared at them, moaned softly and hurriedly put them back into his pocket.

‘So, okay, honey,’ he said, oil in his voice. ‘You have mislaid your car keys . . . could happen to anyone. Now, here’s what you do. Call a taxi. I’ll pay. No problem. Take a taxi there and back. When I get home, I’ll find the keys for you. How’s that?’

‘A taxi?’

‘Sure . . . sure. I’ll pay. Have a lovely evening.’

‘Lepski! I now know you have found them in your pocket!’ and Carroll slammed down the receiver.

There was a long silence in the room. The drama over, Jacoby returned to his French studies. Lepski stared into space, wondering how, when he got home, he could find a hiding place for the keys that would convince Carroll she had unjustly blamed him.

Then the telephone bell rang on Jacoby’s desk.

‘Jacoby. Detective’s desk,’ he said briskly.

A man’s voice, low and husky, said, ‘I’m not repeating this, fuzz. Shake what brains you have alive, and listen.’

‘Who’s this talking?’ Jacoby said, stiffening.

‘I said listen. You have a stiff to collect. Paddler’s Creek. The first thicket on the drive down. A bad one.’

The line went dead.

Startled, Jacoby stared across the room at Lepski. He reported the conversation.

‘Could be a hoaxer,’ he concluded.

Lepski, ever ambitious, snatched up the telephone and called the communications room.

‘Harry! Who’s covering Paddler’s Creek district?’

‘Car six. Steve and Joe.’

‘Tell them to investigate the first thicket on the drive down to Paddler’s Creek, and pronto!’

‘What are they supposed to find?’

‘A stiff,’ Lepski said. ‘Could be a hoax, but get them moving!’

He hung up, lit a cigarette, then got to his feet.

‘Get your report written, Max,’ he said. ‘I’ll wait for Steve to call back before alerting the Chief.’

While Jacoby was hammering out the report on his typewriter, Lepski prowled around the room, giving a fair imitation of a bloodhound straining at the leash.

Twenty minutes later, his telephone bell rang.

‘This is Steve. We have a real bad one here: a girl, ripped. Murder all right.’

Lepski grimaced. It was a long time since there had been a murder in Paradise City.

‘Stay with it, Steve. I’ll get action.’

At 21.15, four police cars converged on the thicket down to Paddler’s Creek. Chief of Police Terrell, Sergeant Joe Beigler, Sergeant Fred Hess of Homicide, Lepski and three other detectives were the first to view the gruesome remains. Then Dr. Lowis, the police M.O. and two interns arrived with an ambulance. A police photographer unwillingly took photographs, then hurried into the thicket to vomit.

There was talk. Finally, the body was taken away.

Terrell went over to where Dr. Lowis was standing.

‘What’s it look like, Doc?’ he asked.

‘She was hit on the head, stripped and ripped. She hasn’t been dead more than two hours. I’ll tell you more when I get her on the table.’

Terrell, a massively built man with greying hair and a determined jaw, grunted.

‘Let’s have it as fast as you can.’

He walked back to where Hess, short and fat, was waiting.

‘Okay, Fred, I’ll leave you to handle it. I’ll get back to headquarters. Find out who she is.’ Then signalling to Beigler, Terrell walked to his car.

Hess turned to Lepski.

‘Take Dusty and chat up the hippies. Find out if she belonged there. Terry has polaroid photos of her. Get them from him.’

Lepski went in search of Terry Down, the police photographer. He found him sitting on the sand, holding his head and moaning to himself.

Down, young, but a top class photographer, had only been with the Paradise City police for six months. With an unsteady hand, he gave Lepski three prints of the girl’s face.

‘Jee-sus! What a horrible . . . ugh!’

‘You won’t see much worse than that one,’ Lepski said.

He studied the prints in the light of the moon. The girl wasn’t pretty. Her face was thin, her mouth hard. A girl, Lepski decided, who knew all the answers, and had had a real tough life.

Dusty Lucas, Detective 3rd Grade, joined him. Dusty was around twenty-four, massively built, with flat features of a boxer as he was: the best heavyweight of the police boxing team.

‘Let’s go, Dusty,’ Lepski said and got in his car. Dusty sat beside him. Lepski drove along the hard, white sand until he could see the campfire and the gas flares, lighting the tents and cabins. He pulled up.

‘We’ll walk from here.’

The sound of a guitar and drums were soft. A man was singing.

‘Why the hell Mayor Hedley doesn’t clear this scum out of the city beats me,’ Lepski growled. ‘Phew! What a stink!’

‘I guess they have to live somewhere,’ Dusty said, reasonably. ‘Better for them to be here than in the city.’

Lepski snorted. He walked briskly to where a group of around fifty young people were sitting on the sand, around a big camp fire. They were of any age from sixteen to twenty-five. Most men were bearded, some with hair to their shoulders. The girls too followed a pattern: jeans, Tshirts, hair mostly cut in a deep fringe, dirty.

The man, singing, was lean and tall. His face and head were so covered with thick curly hair it was hard to say if he was good looking or not. He spotted the two detectives as they came out of the shadows, and he abruptly stopped singing. He was seated on an orange crate. As he got slowly to his feet, a hundred or so eyes regarded Lepski.

Somewhere in the darkness, a voice said, ‘Fuzz.’

There was a long moment of silence and stillness, then the tall, lean man put down his guitar and walked around the seated hippies and paused before Lepski.

‘I run this camp,’ he said. ‘Chet Miscolo. Something wrong?’

‘Yeah,’ Lepski said. ‘Detective 1st Grade Lepski. Detective Lucas.’

Miscolo nodded to Dusty who nodded back.

‘What’s the trouble?’

Lepski handed him the three polaroid prints.

‘Know her?’

Miscolo moved to a gas flare, regarded the prints, then looked at Lepski.

‘Sure, Janie Bandler. Looks like she’s dead.’

A sigh went through the group who were now all standing.

‘Yeah,’ Lepski said. ‘Murdered and ripped wide open.’

Again a sigh went through the group.

Kiscolo handed back the prints.

‘She arrived last night,’ he said. ‘She told me she was only staying a few days: had a job waiting for her in Miami.’ He rubbed his hand across his mouth. ‘I’m sorry. She seemed okay to me.’ He spoke regretfully, and Lepski, watching him, decided he was sorry.

‘Let’s have all you know about her, Chet.’ Aware of the tension in the group, Lepski sat on the sand. Dusty followed his example, sitting close to the gas flare, taking out his notebook.