Wall of Glass (2 page)

“No tan,” I said. “You don't have a tan that reaches under your eyelids, they won't let you in. They make you go to Anaheim and hang out with Mickey Mouse.”

She smiled. “I should think that'd be right up your alley.”

I ignored that. “But speaking of L.A., Norman called this morning. He has a line on the Sherman girl.” We sometimes got work that required a. warm body in L.A., and usually we subcontracted it to Ed Norman's agency in Burbank.

“Is she all right?”

“Probably not, Rita. Norman thinks she's running with some bad people out there.”

She frowned. “Drugs.”

“And maybe prostitution.”

“She's only fourteen, Joshua.”

“In some circles, that's considered over the hill.”

“Will he be able to get her out?”

“Probably.”

She sensed the reservation behind the word. “But?”

I shrugged. “You know what the
but
is. Even if he does, even if he gets her back here, there's nothing to stop her running away again.”

She nodded. “We'll worry about that later, if we have to. I'll call him tonight. Did anything else come up?”

“As a matter of fact, something did. We got an offer to fence some stolen jewelry.”

“Oh?” Smiling, she sat back in the chair. “Tell me about it.”

I did. When I was finished, she said, “And what do you think?”

I said, “I think he was fishing. Trying to find out what his options were. I don't think we'll ever see him again.”

She nodded. I could never tell, from the way she nodded, whether she was agreeing with or merely placating me. She said, “Do you think he actually has access to the jewelry?”

“I think so, yeah.”

“He claims he had nothing to do with the theft?” She lifted her glass of lemonade, took a sip.

“He said he was out of town when the thing was stolen. Even if that's the truth, it doesn't mean he didn't know about it.”

“You feel he was involved.”

“Sure. He's real short, Rita. And short people are capable of anything.”

She made a face. “Joshua.”

“And this is a guy who knows about the statute of limitations.”

“So does everyone who's ever watched a ‘Perry Mason' rerun.”

“Yeah, but they don't all show up at the office offering a hundred thousand dollars worth of hot jewelry.”

“He didn't say what kind of jewelry it was?”

“No. On the whole, he wasn't very forthcoming.”

“But you were, apparently.” Another sip of lemonade. “He knows enough now to contact the insurance company by himself.”

“It was all part of this clever ploy, see. Cunningly designed to make him spill the beans.”

“Ah,” she said, and sipped at her lemonade.

I shrugged. “Sometimes these clever ploys don't work so well. Maybe I should've picked him up and put his head through the ceiling. Forget the subtlety shit, right?”

She smiled. “I'm not sure that the physical approach would have been any more fruitful.”

“Yeah. He probably would've punched me in the kneecap.”

“Or shot you.”

“You know me, Rita. Nothing bothers me but kryptonite.”

“Be still my heart.”

I laughed. “Do you think we should go to the cops about this guy?”

She considered this. I considered, in the meantime, the curve of her throat. After a moment she said, “We can give Hector a call.” Hector Ramirez was a friend on the Santa Fe P.D. “But I don't think the police'll be able to do anything productive. He doesn't sound, from what you've said, like someone who'd go to pieces if they turned up on his doorstep.” She smiled. “Assuming they could find his doorstep. And after all, it's only your word against his.” She frowned. “But I wonder why no one's tried to move that jewelry before this. If the claim's been paid, the jewelry was stolen some time ago. Insurance companies don't hand over a hundred thousand dollars without an investigation, and that takes time.”

“Maybe he couldn't find a fence who'd take an item that big.”

“Then why steal it in the first place?”

“Maybe he was waiting for things to cool down.”

“And why is he willing to deal with the insurance company now, instead of a fence?”

“Maybe he saw it on a ‘Perry Mason' rerun.”

She smiled.

“Listen,” I said. “There's a new Rohmer movie playing downtown.”

Her smile was affectionate but weary. “You don't give up, do you, Joshua?”

“I think of it as a selling point.”

“I think of it as stubbornness.”

“And that's something you'd know about, Rita.”

“It's not stubbornness.”

“Pride, then.”

“If you like. Joshua, we've been over this a hundred times. I'll go downtown when I can walk downtown.”

The doctors had said she would probably never walk again. Rita said she would, no probably about it. I tended to put my faith in Rita, but it had been almost two years.

“How's the therapy?” I asked.

“Fine.”

I didn't ask if there was any improvement. She would've told me if there had.

“Why don't you ask Clair?” she said. “To the Rohmer movie. Are you still seeing her?”

“Clair thinks a Rohmer is a guy who never goes home.”

“I thought you liked her.”

“I like her. She's a peach. She's not you, though, Rita.”

“Neither am I, Joshua.” The words crisp, her face blank and unreadable.

“Rita—”

“You won't forget to call Hector?”

I sighed. “I'll call him tomorrow morning. Am I being sent home?”

“It's time for the pool. I'll see you on Monday.”

As it turned out, I saw her before Monday. The next day, Saturday, there was an article in the morning paper about the man who'd come to the office. It gave his name, Frank Biddle, and said that he was a former rodeo star. It had a nice picture of Frank, beaming and holding up a big bronze trophy. He wasn't wearing his cowboy hat; maybe he'd lost it riding the bull. The article said that his body had been found late on Friday night, with four bullet holes in it and two bullets.

TWO

“T
HEY MEANT
four entry and two exit wounds,” said Hector Ramirez. “Two of the slugs stayed inside. All thirty-eight's, and probably from the same gun. According to the preliminary autopsy report, one lodged in his spine and the other rattled around in his rib cage before it tore his heart apart. We dug up the other two slugs from the far side of the arroyo.”

We were sitting, Hector and I, in his cubicle at the Santa Fe police station. I'd called him earlier, after speaking to Rita, and he'd asked me down to make a statement. I'd made it, taped it into Hector's cassette recorder, and in a day or two, after one of the secretaries had transcribed it, I'd come back to sign it.

A sergeant in the Violent Crimes Unit, Hector was short and beefy. The beefiness was deceptive; he ran five miles a day and he could bench press two hundred and fifty pounds, which is fifty more than I weigh and a hundred more than I'd care to think about moving, even with a fork lift. His eyes were dark and half-hooded, giving him the bored sleepy air of someone who's seen it all, twice. He had thick black hair and a thick black mustache that dropped over the corners of his mouth and made him look a bit like the Frito Bandito. Which was something, however, that I'd never had occasion to bring to his attention. Today he was wearing a pale blue pinstriped shirt with a white collar. The collar was open, the knot of his navy blue tie was pulled down to the third shirt button, and his cuffs were rolled back.

I said, “So he was shot there. At the arroyo.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Blood all over.” He laced his fingers together behind his neck and leaned back in the chair, away from the desk, so that his head was nearly brushing against the pale green wall. “His car was parked up on the road. That's why Johnson, the officer driving the unit, stopped to check it out. This was in the middle of the storm, and he thought a motorist might be stranded.”

“Any tracks? Footprints? Another car?”

“Not in the snow. And the ground underneath is hard-packed soil.”

“So he was killed before the snow started last night. Before eleven o'clock.” It had begun then, just a few soft fat flakes spiraling down in the darkness. In fifteen minutes it had become so dense, whipped and whirled by the wind, that you couldn't see twenty feet ahead of you. Johnson had been lucky to spot the car at all.

“Yeah,” Hector said. “Except for the blood, the ground beneath him was dry. From body temperature, the M.E. thinks he was only lying there a couple of hours. Figure the time of death at around ten o'clock.”

“So someone shoots Biddle at ten, then drives away. Or walks away.”

“Drives, we figure. The keys to Biddle's car were in the ignition. If the guy didn't have his own car, he could've taken Biddle's. And the arroyo is maybe two miles from town. Long walk when a blizzard's due.”

“No one saw anything? Heard anything?”

“Nope.”

“It was Friday night, a lot of traffic. No one passed by?”

“Not any who told us about it.”

“You have any suspects?”

He smiled. “Besides you, you mean?”

“The world lost a great humorist when you became a cop, Hector.”

His elbows winged slightly outward as he shrugged his thick shoulders. “Far as we know, you were the last one to see him alive.”

“Next to last,” I said.

He nodded. “Why'd he pick you?”

“Biddle? He didn't. He just walked into the first P.I.'s office he came to.”

“Only a coincidence that it was yours.”

“Yep.”

“You still have that thirty-eight?”

“Why? You want to borrow it?”

“You still have it?”

“I still have it. I don't carry it.”

Hector nodded again, his square face expressionless. “Biddle didn't mention any names?”

“Nope. I said so in the statement.”

“And he said jewelry.”

“A piece of jewelry, yeah.”

“He didn't mention any particular piece?”

“I told you, Hector, no. You're sure asking a lot of questions.”

“Hey,” he said, and shrugged elaborately. “I'm a cop. Wanna see my handcuffs?”

“I don't think so. Have you tied Biddle to a particular piece of jewelry?”

“They're real nice. They're chrome.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe just a peak.”

He grinned and slipped his hands away from the back of his neck, put them along the arms of his chair. “Could be. You know Derek Leighton?”

“Of him. Money. He builds things.”

“Biddle used to work for him. Gardener. Handyman. Leighton fired him last year, beginning of October. Biddle went down to Amarillo for a couple of months. A week or so after he leaves, someone breaks into the Leightons' house, ransacks the wife's bedroom. Takes off with some money, a gun, and a diamond necklace. The necklace was insured for a hundred thousand dollars.”

“But Biddle was in Amarillo.”

“Biddle had a friend. Stacey Killebrew.”

I frowned. “I thought Stacey was off making license plates.”

“He only did eighteen months. They let him out early last year. Good behavior.”

“Must've changed some.”

“He got rehabilitated, they tell me.”

“That's a real tribute to the system, Hector. You should be proud.”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Pleased as punch.”

“Was he alibied for the time of the burglary?”

“Playing poker, he said. Three of his friends corroborated. But for ten bucks apiece, those three would alibi John Wilkes Booth. For another ten, they'd hold his horse while he took in the show.”

“Why did Burglary like Biddle for the snatch?”

“Nolan was handling the case. He found out that Biddle had been running a number with Leighton's wife. Turns out she's one of those women who like rough trade. Nolan figured that Leighton realized what was happening and dumped Biddle, and that Biddle decided to get even by setting up the snatch with Killebrew.”

“But Nolan wasn't able to nail Biddle. Or Killebrew.”

“No.”

“Is Killebrew alibied for last night?”

He nodded. “Another poker game.”

“Same people?”

“Yeah.”

“How much money was taken from the Leightons?”

“Couple hundred. Pin money for them.”

“And the gun. It belonged to the wife?”

“Yeah. A thirty-eight. Police Special.”

“Pretty heavy armament for a housewife.”

Ramirez shrugged again. “Women's lib. Some of these housewives got bazookas now, I hear. Tanks, even.”

“The gun never showed?”