Thursday's Child (16 page)

Robert shrugged.

Marcello turned his cold gaze on Beau. “You take on a partner, Mr. Turchek?”

“No.”

“Get rid of him.”

“Tonto,” Robert said, “why don't you go out and soak up some sun by the pool.”

After a moment, Beau got up from the bed. He pulled on his jeans and walked, barefooted, to the door. There, he stopped and turned around. “Robert?” he said.

“Go on, do like I said.”

He went out, closing the door very quietly.

Robert leaned against the desk and lit a cigarette. “You're here about Drago,” he said.

“Of course. The tragedy that occurred in his driveway last night.”

“Yeah, a real heartbreaker, right? Maybe you ought to send flowers,” Robert said dismissively. “Actually, I was going to touch base with you this morning. I thought it would be a good thing to do.”

“You have always been a wise and cautious man,” Marcello said. “However, I am forced to point out that this is coming after the fact.”

Robert acknowledged that silently.

“It is a lucky thing, therefore, that the individual in question was of very little consequence.”

Now Robert smiled faintly. “I knew that ahead of time, sir.”

For just a moment, Marcello smiled, too. Then he got serious again. “Why?”

“It was a personal matter, sir, nothing to do with business. The man who contracted for the job had a grudge against Drago. He was fucking the man's woman. Brought her to Vegas, in fact. Drago was really stupid, sir.”

Marcello nodded. “This was an isolated thing, then?”

“Yes, sir. I'm leaving town today.”

“Very good. And it would probably be better if you stayed away for a while.”

“I will.”

The old man glanced toward the door. “That boy,” he said. “He have a part in this?”

“No,” Robert said flatly. He straightened. “Life just gets complicated, you know?”

“Well, as long as I do not have to become involved in your private complications,” Marcello said.

“You won't.”

That seemed to end the conversation. One of the goons opened the door and all four of them left.

Robert pulled on his jeans and walked out to the pool. Beau was sitting in a plastic chaise, watching an empty beer can float across the pool. Robert sat on the end of the chaise. “That old man,” Beau said, “was he like the godfather or something?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

“He didn't look like so much to me.”

“Right.” Robert glanced at him. “That man would have you killed in a minute if you aggravated him.”

“We didn't do that, did we?”

“Nope.” Robert grinned at him. “I've been at this a long time, Tonto. Trust me.”

“I guess I have to, don't I?” Beau said.

Robert looked at him for a moment and then nodded. “I guess so.” He patted Beau's leg. “Come on, let's get the hell out of this town.”

13

1

Gar was beginning to run out of ideas.

He'd been working hard, checking all of the usual places—the arcades, the beach, the shelters for runaways, even the freeway overpasses under which a lot of kids lived—and talking to the street sources that were usually the most reliable. So far none of what he'd done had moved him one step closer to finding Beau Epstein. The only lead he'd managed to discover so far, and it was pretty damned vague, was the tale of the bloodied kid coming into the coffee shop. Maybe it had been Beau and maybe it hadn't, but whichever was the case, so what? The unknown man and boy, whoever they were, seemed to have dropped from sight.

Gar was having one last beer before calling this a (worthless) night's work when a familiar face appeared in the midst of the crowd in the Touchdown Bar. After the woman had picked up her drink, Gar got her attention and waved her over to the table. With obvious reluctance, she joined him. “Evening, Kiki,” Gar said.

She took a ladylike sip of her pink gin drink. “Hi, Sergeant Sinclair.” The honorary title was a holdover from his days on the force. Back then, he had busted Kiki regularly. She never seemed to hold that fact against him, however, and sometimes she even came through with some pretty solid information.

“How's business these days?”

“'S okay,” she said with a shrug. But she looked tired. No surprise; how easy could it be, after all, for a hooker pushing forty to keep pulling in the bucks?

“You ought to retire, honey,” Gar said. “Find a nice guy and settle down in the suburbs.”

“Sure. They're lining up to marry me.” Her tone was characteristically self-mocking, but now that he looked more closely, Gar could see that it was more than simple weariness that showed in her face. It almost looked like fear.

She seemed to have forgotten that he was even there; her manicure was getting an intense examination. More from pure habit than out of real expectation that she would be able to help him, Gar took Beau's picture from his pocket and dropped it on the table. “I've got a tough one here, Kiki. Maybe you can help me out. Have you seen this kid around?”

She glanced down automatically, blinked, then looked at the picture again. Even with the thick mask of make-up she was wearing, he could see the color drain from her face. The fear that had been subtle before was now obvious. Her lips trembled and she took a healthy gulp of gin.

“What's wrong, Kiki?”

“Nothing. I ain't seen the kid.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure I'm sure. What you think, I got nothing better to do than look out for some stupid kid?” Abruptly, she stood, “I gotta split. Bye.”

“Kiki, wait—” But she was gone.

Gar left his beer on the table and went after her. By the time he reached the sidewalk, she was already disappearing around the corner. He picked up his speed, which still didn't mean he was going to break any records, but he did manage to catch her by one arm. Old whores didn't move much faster than old cops. “Kiki, what the hell is wrong?”

She tried to pull away, then gave up with a sigh and leaned against the side of the building. “I don't know anything about it,” she said in a nervous whisper. “Please, just let me go.”

Gar loosened his grip on her a little, but did not let go. “You don't know anything about
what?
” he asked in exasperation.

“I didn't even know that Marnie was dead until the next day.”

Gar felt as if the situation had slipped completely out of his control. “Kiki, I don't know what the devil you're talking about.”

Kiki didn't seem to believe his protestations of ignorance, but she allowed herself to be talked back into the bar anyway. Gar ordered up two fresh drinks and they sat again. “Okay, honey, you want to tell me what the hell you're talking about? Who's Marnie?”

Kiki still didn't want to talk, but she sighed and did. “Marnie was a friend of mine. Marnie Dowd. She got killed the other night.” Her eyes darted fearfully around the crowded room. “If you tell the cops I said anything, I'll tell them you're lying.”

“So you haven't spoken to them about this?”

Her face turned scornful. “Who's fucking stupid enough to talk to them about anything that matters?”

“I'm not a cop anymore, Kiki. And I'll keep your name out of it if I possibly can. But tell me what you know.”

She was holding on to the glass of gin with both hands. “I had a customer, see, and he only wanted a quick blow-job. Not worth going back to the room for, right? So we found this doorway and transacted our business arrangement. Okay?”

Gar nodded.

“We get all done and he takes off. I was, like, having a quick smoke break there in the doorway. Just enjoying the dark and the quiet, you know? Until I heard the shot.”

“One shot?”

She nodded.

“What'd you do?”

She gave him a look that questioned his sanity. “What do you think I did? Stayed hiding right where I was. That's when I saw them coming out of the alley.”

“Them?”

“Yeah. A man and a kid. They came out together and walked away. Marnie was dead back there and they just walked away. He was, like, dragging the kid by one arm.”

“And you think it was the boy in the picture?”

“It was him, yeah.” She sounded very sure of herself.

Now it was Gar who took a restorative gulp of alcohol. After swallowing a mouthful, he said, “You say he was dragging the boy. So the kid was trying to get away, is that it?”

After a moment of consideration, she shook her head. “I don't think so. More like, he was just trying to keep up with the man.”

After getting what he could about the man—which wasn't much, beyond the fact that he was just “regular,” whatever the hell that meant—Gar slipped Kiki a twenty and watched her leave the bar. His mood was not improved by what she had told him. He didn't like this more than he hadn't liked anything in a very long time.

But since it was late and there didn't seem to be much he could do at the moment, Gar decided to go home to bed.

Just to wrap up a crummy evening perfectly, Mickey was out someplace and so he had nobody to sleep with except Spock.

2

It was still a sort of homecoming every time he walked into the cop shop. There were always a lot of new faces, of course, men and women who didn't know Gar Sinclair from any perp in the place. But even so, there were still enough of the old guys around to shake his hand, slap his back, and talk bullshit about getting together for a beer one day real soon.

The next morning Gar made his way through all the buddy-buddy crap as quickly as possible and headed for Walter Dixon's office.

The black man still had the build of the linebacker he'd once been, but now that tanklike shape was clothed in a three-piece suit and an air of cool authority. Instead of “Monster,” which had been his nickname in the NFL, he was now called Lieutenant. Except by his former partner.

“This is what you do all day now, Wally?”

Dixon's feet, which had been propped on the desk, hit the floor. A sheepish look crossed his face until he saw who it was standing in the doorway. “Shit, they're letting anybody into this place nowadays, aren't they?”

“Yeah, even gimpy pensioners.” He sat down, noticing the half-eaten jelly doughnut in Dixon's massive hand. “Don't let me interrupt your breakfast.”

“I certainly won't.” Dixon took a big bite. He was the only man Gar knew who could eat a doughnut that was oozing grape jelly and not get even a drop on his expensive gray suit.

Gar let him chew and swallow before asking, “You know anything about the murder of a hooker the other night?”

Dixon drank coffee from a mug emblazoned with a drawing of a jolly-looking pig in a blue police uniform. “You talking about Marnie Dowd?”

“That's the one.” It was immediately interesting that the name of a woman who should have been just another dead whore came so quickly to Dixon's mind. It wasn't as if anybody really
cared
about a case like that.

Dixon finished the doughnut in one last bite. “An unknown perp shot Ms. Dowd in an alley.”

“That's all you have?”

“Yep.”

Gar looked at him. “I'd like to know why a big-shot lieutenant even knows about one more dead hooker in an alley.”

Dixon grinned. “Funny. I was just about to ask you why a hotshot locator-of-lost-kids cares anything about that same dead hooker.”

Gar quickly debated with himself how much to reveal to Walter Dixon, who was probably the best friend he had in the world, but who was also still part of the bureaucracy. And while he knew that Wally didn't always move in lockstep with the establishment, he also knew that Dixon was still enough of a company man to be a black in the position he was in.

Gar finally smiled. “I don't have any interest in Dowd herself at all. What I do have is a suspicion that a kid I'm looking for might have been a witness to the killing.”

Dixon's brows elevated. “Really?” He seemed interested in that.

Gar finally noticed that one of the two files on Dixon's desk was, in fact, labeled
DOWD, MARNIE.
“You really do seem especially interested in this whore's killing,” he said, nodding toward the file.

“Hey, it's my job.”

“I told you my motives,” Gar said.

Dixon tapped the file. “Well, there is one pretty interesting thing about this case,” he admitted.

“Yeah?” Gar moved his leg and it hit the cane, knocking it to the floor with a crash. “Shit,” he said mildly. He left the cane where it had fallen. “What's interesting?”

“The gun was found at the scene.”

Gar tried not to show his impatience. Wally always went about things in his own way. Trying to rush him would only have the opposite effect. “Prints?” was all he said.

“Oh, no, not one.” Dixon smiled again, showing that he knew exactly how aggravated Gar was becoming. “Okay.” He turned businesslike. “Over the last few years, there's been a triggerman in town. Good at his job. Quick, clean, a real pro, who's done some very big hits. And he always leaves a gun, wiped clean, at the scene. Bastard must buy his cheap firepower by the carton.”

Gar had to admit that this was fairly interesting, even if he couldn't see that it had much bearing on his search for Beau Epstein. “And?” he said.

Dixon shrugged. “And I'm just a little curious why a man like that wasted his time and considerable talents on a two-dollar whore. It seems out of character.” Dixon had studied psychology in college and never forgot it. “Maybe now you ought to tell me just what it is
you
know about the Dowd killing,” he suggested.

“According to what I heard on the street, a man was seen leaving the alley right after a shot was fired.”

“Oh, yeah? We didn't turn up any witnesses.”