Hearse of a Different Color (Hitchcock Sewell Mysteries) (20 page)

Kruk spent a lot of his time talking to Morris Martick. The restaurateur was wearing his trademark Charlie Brown sweater and an impatient look on his sad beagle face. I overheard him telling Kruk that Popeye came in for lunch every day of the week and that he sat at the same table and ordered the same meal, the pâté, a spinach salad and two Scotch and sodas. The strip joint owner had apparently just been served his meal when the gunman of many sizes and hats buzzed the buzzer and, on being let inside by Martick himself, stalked directly over to the table where the old man was sitting and took dead aim. He fired four times, three of the bullets entering Popeye’s chest. The fourth bullet hit the old man in the foot. On this point—if on no other point—all of the eyewitnesses concurred that the gunman had very specifically lowered the gun after the first three shots and had taken aim at Popeye’s right foot. Basically he blew the old man’s big toe right off. I could see one of the detectives holding up a plastic evidence bag and turning it left and right. Inside was what was left of the shoe.

“Interesting.”

I turned around. Jay Adams was standing there. The slender reporter acknowledged me with a slow nod. He was wearing all the trappings of his profession: a fedora
and
a long overcoat. I half expected to see the word PRESS on a piece of stiff paper tucked into his hat band.

“What brings you here?” he asked me.

I rejected my first two responses (“The pâté” and “A taxi”) and settled on: “I was just in the neighborhood.”

“You’re becoming a regular Jessica Fletcher, aren’t you?” Adams said. “The bodies are dropping like flies. It might not be so safe being around you.”

“You could always leave,” I suggested.

“Got to earn a living.”

Adams went off to troll about the perimeter of the crime scene, asking questions and jotting down his Pulitzer prize–winning observations in his notebook. Kruk finished with Morris and moved on to a discussion with another of his detectives. As he ducked under the yellow tape, he caught my gaze and signaled me to hang tight. I went over to Morris and asked him what were the chances I could get a drink. “We’re closed,” he grumbled.

“Okay,” I said. Then I asked him again what were the chances I could get a drink.

He grumbled again, “No mixing.”

“Bourbon on the rocks.” Morris gave me a sneer. “What?” I said. “Adding ice is mixing?”

Okay, okay, so a long-standing customer had been shot dead at the very beginning of the lunch crunch. The restaurateur was in a bad mood. I told Morris straight up was fine. He told me it sure as hell was, and he went inside to fetch me a glass.

Kruk had finished with his fellow detective and came over to me just as Morris was bringing me my medicine.

“Kind of early in the day, isn’t it, Mr. Sewell?”

“My internal clock is different from yours,” I said. “I can reset it to be any time I wish.”

“Are you going to make me ask the obvious question, Mr. Sewell?”

“You’d like to know what I’m doing here.”

“Give the man a beer.”

I pulled my whiskey to my chest. “Don’t try to pull a fast one, Detective.”

I explained to Kruk what I was doing at Martick’s. He listened without interrupting as I told him about my phone call to Vickie Waggoner the day before and about her making as if I was the police. I told him how I drove over to her place to find the front door open, one of Bo’s toys on the sidewalk and not a soul in sight. He knew vaguely of this, from the message I had left for him when I called the station. I explained to him how I had gone down to The Block this morning to see if I could scare up a clue as to where Terry Haden might be holing up and that a woman wearing three ounces of clothing had aimed me toward Martick’s for a chat with Popeye.

I concluded, “As you can see, somebody ruined my plans.”

One of Kruk’s eyebrows went up the pole. “You’re not suggesting that the old man was gunned down for the sole purpose of keeping him from talking with you, are you?”

“I should be so important, Detective. Of course not. I have no idea why the guy was shot. I’m just saying it was a matter of very bad timing.”

“For him or for you?”

“Well, I’m still standing.”

It was only then that my whiskers twitched and I glanced over my shoulder. Jay Adams was leaning against a nearby lamppost, making no effort at all to pretend that he wasn’t listening. He had heard my entire story. In case I wasn’t aware that he had, he gave the brim of his fedora a little tug and smiled a salamander smile at me. I turned back to Kruk.

“Isn’t that man loitering? Can’t you toss him in the hoosegow?”

“Come over here.” Kruk led me over to his unmarked car. Adams didn’t tag along. Kruk hitched his thumbs under his belt and let his eyes scan the rooftops of the nearby buildings, as if looking for a sniper. I set my drink on the roof of the car.

“So, you believe that Terry Haden is the one who murdered Helen Waggoner, is that it?”

I told him yes, this was exactly what I believed.

“And you base your suspicions on what?”

“Strong hunch,” I said. “A new man was definitely in Helen’s life. She was spending money she hadn’t earned.”

“So you assume.”

“She was pregnant. That usually signifies a man has been somewhere on the scene.”

“Go on.”

“Well, as I see it, she and Haden got back together. I don’t think it was a sudden attack of fatherhood on Haden’s part. I’ve met the guy. I think that Haden and Helen got back together, and they partied like it was 1999. But I think Haden’s intention all along was to get Helen back under his wing. To get his cash cow churning again. But just like before, she ups and gets pregnant and decides that she’s going to keep this one too. I think that Haden went ballistic when Helen told him she was pregnant. I know for a fact, because he told me, that Helen could frustrate the hell out of him. I mean,
really
frustrate. I think he killed her. That’s my theory.”

“Nice theory,” Kruk said.

“Thank you.”

“Except it doesn’t float.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t float?”

“You know how Haden makes his living, right?”

“A little of this, a little of that. Very little of it legal, I understand.”

“Exactly. He’s a hustler. A supplier. Drugs. Escort services. You name it. He’s a one-man warehouse of illicit goods. We’ve had Mr. Haden downtown for coffee on a number of occasions.”

“And he dabbles in the film arts as well.”

“Real Oscar material, I can tell you.
Debbie Does Dundalk.
”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Kruk shook his head. “Not on company time I’m not. That’s for real. Terry Haden’s got his fingers in all sorts of dirty pies. To be honest with you though, he’s strictly small-time. He’s a hophead. If the guy would make a serious effort to get off his little pills, he might actually amount to something I could worry about. But he’s a small fish. I really don’t see him as murderer material.”

“But why would he hightail it the moment he thought the police were on the way?”

“He wouldn’t need a reason. A hophead like Haden, his own shadow can spook him.”

“I don’t know. I like my theory more than I like your conclusion.”

Kruk let out a sigh. “Your theory pretty much hinges on Haden and Helen Waggoner’s getting back together, right? Her getting pregnant by him again and all the rest of it?”

“Right.”

“Well, I hate to ruin your fun, but our friend Haden just got back last month from a ten-month vacation up in Jessup, compliments of the Maryland taxpayers.”

“He was in jail?”

“Yes sir. Locked up like a sardine.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You keep saying that. No, I’m perfectly serious. He’s been rehabilitating for the past year. You see what that does to your theory.”

“Haden couldn’t have been the new guy in Helen’s life.”

“Exactly. And he didn’t have any conjugal visits, I can tell you that much.”

And you can’t do this thing through the mail. Not yet anyway. “Damn.”

“You sound disappointed.”

I was. If Haden had been locked up in prison the past ten months, then Kruk was correct, my theory couldn’t float.

“But then, why would Haden run off if he thought the police were on the way?” I asked. “I mean, you had already questioned him about Helen’s murder. If he was innocent, why skedaddle?”

“Did Haden appear to be high to you when you saw him?”

“He was jumpy. Down one minute, very up the next. Yeah, I suspected he was riding some sort of train.”

“There it is. That’s a parole violation right there. Haden couldn’t risk a by-the-book cop dropping in on Vickie Waggoner and deciding to crack his ass for parole violation. He’d have gone right back to Jessup. Not a place you really want to be.”

“What was he in prison for anyway?”

“That little film I just mentioned?
Debbie Does Dundalk
?”

“So you really didn’t just make that up.”

“It’s legit.” He corrected himself, “It’s for real.”

“What about it?”

“Little Debbie wasn’t old enough to vote. And old Lady Justice doesn’t like that.”

“
Child
porn?” I hadn’t thought that my estimation of Helen’s former boyfriend could have gone much lower, but it was practically spelunking at this point.

“Teen,” Kruk corrected me. “Of course, Haden swore that she lied to him about her age. Blah, blah, blah. Who knows, maybe she did. But he cast her as a baby-sitter in his little epic. The girl had sweet sixteen written all over her.”

I thought about Helen. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen when Haden had gotten ahold of her.

“So, okay, that shoots Haden being the father of Helen’s next kid. But still, only a month after the guy gets let out of prison and bang, Helen gets killed? Did Haden have an alibi for the night of the murder?”

“He gave us one.”

“Did it check out?”

“He claims he was with Debbie.”

“
Dundalk
Debbie?” Kruk nodded in the affirmative. “Is that kosher? I’d think that’s a parole breaker right there.”

“She’s eighteen now. She can legally make whatever bad judgments she’d like.”

“Still. It sounds like a weak alibi. What did Haden say they were doing?”

“He said they were at the movies.”

“I think Debbie needs to get out more,” I said.

We were interrupted by another detective, who came over to confer with Kruk. They moved off to where I couldn’t hear them. I didn’t even see Jay Adams until he was right in front of me. The reporter was smiling that salamander smile at me again. Damn, I wish the guy would just come out and show his dislike for me. It would make things a lot easier.

“Intriguing, isn’t it?” he said.

“What’s intriguing?”

“The foot.”

“What foot? What are you talking about?” A gnat. That’s what the man was. He was a gnat.

“The old man. Popeye. Three shots to the chest, one to the foot.”

“Maybe the killer didn’t want the old guy running after him.”

“I think the three to the chest took care of that. So you really don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” The aggravation in my voice didn’t faze him. It never does faze the ones who’re prompting it. That’s what is so aggravating.

The olive-skinned snake had a pencil in his hand. Right in front of my eyes he put the eraser end to the brim of his hat and pushed the fedora an inch or so up his forehead.

“The lawyer, you know the one who was killed the other day? In Mount Vernon? Along with his wife.”

“The one everybody’s quivering about. What about him?”

“I guess you don’t read the papers.”

“I would if I liked the writing.” Blanks. I was shooting blanks at this guy. All he did was grin even wider.

“Same MO,” Adams said. “Bang, bang, bang, point-blank into the chest. And then one more. In the foot. Same deal with the wife. It’s the shooter’s signature.”

“You’re saying that the person who just killed this old guy is the same person who killed the lawyer and his wife?”

“He left his signature. Look.”

I looked over to where Kruk and his colleague were standing. The other detective was holding up the plastic evidence bag—the one containing the blown-apart shoe—turning it left and right. The two detectives looked as if they were hoping the shoe would suddenly speak.

“So who kills a high-powered lawyer and his wife and then goes after the owner of a two-bit strip joint?” Adams asked. I presumed the question was rhetorical. In the sky overhead, the cotton-candy clouds were breaking off into a half dozen tufts. Each tuft swirled into the perfect—if fuzzy—shape of a question mark.

I hadn’t a good goddamn clue.

W
hen I got back to the neighborhood, I headed over to Julia’s place. Chinese Sue was reading an Action Comic at the register. One of her antennae twitched as I came in the door. She didn’t look up, but she knew it was me. The gallery had only a few customers. Strictly window-shoppers. Nobody appeared to be on the verge of actually buying anything. Julia’s stuff is fun to look at. Mostly she does skewed reality, people eating beach-ball sandwiches, pigeons enjoying afternoon tea, that sort of thing. For a king’s ransom Julia will do your portrait. For twice that much she’ll even do it straight. Though in my view that would be your loss. There is a CEO of one of the hotshot brokerage firms in Baltimore who proudly displays in the firm’s swanky reception area the portrait he commissioned from Julia a number of years ago. The likeness is dead-on. Unsmiling. Vaguely menacing. Why Julia chose to seat him in a red Radio flyer and dressed like a monk is something else altogether. The CEO flipped for it. And paid through the nose.

“Boss lady in?” I asked Chinese Sue. A pale, slender finger rose above the comic book, pointing toward the heavens. “Nice nails, Sue.” Her talons were a nausea of color.

Julia was lounging in a silk robe on a wicker settee, languidly turning the pages of a travel magazine.

“It must be the reading hour around here,” I observed as I came up the spiral stairs. “You got any Hardy Boys handy?”