Earl was dressed in checkered boxers and a sweatshirt. He padded barefoot into the kitchen, where he found a pack of cigarettes and lit up.
“What the fuck's going on?” he said, running his hand over his shaved head. He looked nervous. “You told, didn't you?” he said, looking at me. “You told the cops about my business. How long before they get here?”
“I didn't do anything like that,” I said.
“Did you tell that wife of yours? Did she call them?”
“That would be Sarah,” I said. “And no. I didn't tell her. I'm here to ask a favor.”
Earl squinted. “A favor?”
“I need a gun,” I said. “I want to borrow your gun.”
“Forget it.”
“Earl, I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important. There are people looking for me tonight, and until I sort a few things out, I need some protection.”
Earl glowered at me. “You ever owned a gun?”
“No.”
“You ever fired a gun?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“Zack, you ever even held a gun?”
I tried to think. Did toy guns count? And what about the G.I. Joe figures and accessories I'd had as a kid? Did that count for something?
“I guess, technically, no. All my shooting has been with a camera.”
“And what the hell do you need a gun for anyway? How many enemies does a guy make writing space stories?”
“Come on, Earl. Don't you owe me one? Did I make a call to Detective Flint after I left here the other day?”
Earl shook his head. “Look, I appreciate that. But what you're asking, I don't know.”
“Maybe you're going to have to explain,” Trixie said.
And so I started in all over again, for the second time in the last hour and a half, although I gave him the Reader's Digest version. For example, I didn't tell him about trying to instruct Sarah in the fine points of purse safety. I said I'd found a purse.
“So I wanted to return it, and check the driver's license, and it was a woman named Stefanie Knight, who works over at Valley Forest Estates.”
Earl turned away, shaking his head, and reached for a beer from the fridge.
“So I was trying to track her down, and left my name and e-mail address at her mother's place, and then this psycho named Rick comes looking for me, wanting what's in this purse, which at first I thought was all this money, but that turned out to be counterfeit, and then I figured it was this film—”
“Film?”
“A roll of film. Of Stefanie Knight and this councilman in the sack.”
“What councilman?”
I told him. “But it turns out Rick and his boss, Greenway, wanted something more than just the film, they were after this ledger.” I indicated it, on the table, as if I was pointing to Exhibit #1.
“So they're after you for this ledger?”
“Yeah, that, and I sort of pissed off Rick, hitting him in the head.”
Earl sat down, alternating puffs of cigarette and swigs of beer. “You hit him in the head.”
“When he came to my house, and Angie came home. It was a kind of self-defense thing, although I think, under other circumstances, he might have liked me. He read my book and really liked it.”
“That must have made you feel good. You never know when you're going to run into a fan. I've been meaning to read it someday myself.”
“You kind of left out the most important part,” Trixie said.
“Huh?”
“This Stefanie Knight chick, she's dead,” said Trixie.
“I was getting to that,” I said. “I'm having a hard time keeping it all straight. Maybe hanging off the roof of that house has made me forgetful.” Earl took a long drag on his cigarette, blew the smoke over our heads, and I continued. “That's kind of why I've been on the run all night. She was murdered, and I've got her purse, well, I had her purse, and I've still got her car, and I think it's going to take a long time to explain all this to the authorities. But I'm thinking maybe it's time to go see them anyway.”
Earl said nothing for a moment. He was thinking. Trixie looked at me and shrugged. Finally, Earl said, “You need more than a gun, my friend. You need muscle.”
I smiled. “You have someone in mind?”
He returned the smile. “I might. Seems to me you need to pay another visit to this Greenway guy and Carpington and find out just what happened. We might have ways of getting the information out of them that the police aren't really supposed to use. And if this Rick character shows up, we'll have to deal with him as well.”
I felt a renewed sense of confidence.
“You know what might come in handy?” I said. “Some handcuffs.”
Trixie brightened. “How many pairs you need?”
I held up three fingers.
“I'll get you two regular sets,” Trixie said, “and one fur-lined. Don Greenway always liked the soft kind.”
Earl and I looked at each other and then at Trixie.
“So he was a client.” She shrugged. “But he was a lousy tipper. Fuck him.”
25
earl said he had to get dressed and do a couple of things before we headed out. First, I heard him go into the garage, do something with his truck, slam a tailgate, then he wandered past the kitchen door on his way upstairs to put on some clothes. In his absence, I gazed, tiredly, across the table at Trixie and thought how fortunate I was, in my time of trouble, to have a dominatrix and a pot grower to bail me out.
“Thanks for not judging,” Trixie said.
“What?”
“Back at my place. I was waiting for the lecture, the inquisition, why are you doing this, what kind of girl, et cetera.”
I shrugged. “I'm a bit past being able to point a finger. People in glass houses, you know.”
“Yeah, well, if having character flaws disqualifies people from throwing stones, how come there's so much of it going on?”
“I guess people aren't very good at recognizing their own faults. And I'm sure there's much to recommend in your line of work. You get to work from home, you can choose your own hours, and you get to meet a lot of interesting people.”
“That's certainly true. And you get to learn a lot about what makes people tick.”
“True.” I paused. “Like cream cheese.”
Trixie smiled. “You don't want to know.”
“You're right.”
“Things good between you and Sarah? Aside from her thinking you've got a problem with the hydraulics?”
“Yeah, they're good. But after all this comes out, I don't know. This has got nothing on The Backpack Incident, or when I hid her car down the street. I think I've been a bit of an asshole lately. A busybody.”
“Well, you're an asshole, there's really no question about that,” Trixie said. “But you're a reasonably nice asshole, and I think Sarah's a lucky girl.” And then, for reasons I wasn't sure I understood, she looked away.
Earl appeared. He was wearing a Toronto Blue Jays sweatshirt, jeans, and heavy lace-up workboots that hadn't been tied at the top. “You ready?”
I nodded.
He went over to the kitchen drawers, opened the middle one, reached in toward the back, and brought out his gun. “Let's go see if we can solve a few of your problems,” he said, tucking it into the top of his pants.
“maybe you could go over some of this with me again,” Earl said, shoving in the cigarette lighter and waiting for it to pop. “This girl, the one who's dead, was on film boffing this guy?”
“Carpington.”
“A councilman? For the town?”
“That's right.”
“So, they just liked to record the moment or what?”
“My guess is Carpington was being blackmailed.”
“So he finds out, he loses it and kills this girl?”
“It's a motive, but I don't know. He just didn't seem the type. I went to see him earlier tonight, at town hall, and he didn't seem to have it in him.”
Earl
nodded. The lighter popped and he lit his cigarette. “One thing I've learned, Zack, is that people are often not what they seem. They can surprise you.”
I thought of Trixie. And, for that matter, Earl. Both of them ended up being in lines of work that had caught me off guard.
Earl slipped the gun out of his pants and slid it across the seat toward me. “Hold that and get a feel of it.”
I took the gun in my right hand, startled, initially, by how heavy it was.
“See that little thing there, the safety? Make sure it stays set that way so you don't shoot your nuts off. But if you think you're going to have to use it, you move it”—he reached over—“like that.”
“Got it,” I said. I put the safety back on, slid the gun back across the seat. “Maybe you should be the guy who uses this. And I'll ask the questions.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Earl, holding his cigarette between his lips as he turned the ignition. “Where we going?”
“Last time I saw Greenway and Company they were headed to the sales office. That was more than an hour ago, but they might still be there.”
“Why don't we troll on by,” he said, rolling the truck out of the garage and slipping back out momentarily to close the garage door. We turned left on Chancery and drove to the entrance to the Valley Forest Estates, where the sales office was set up.
“Drive by once,” I said.
Earl slowed only slightly as we passed the office. Out front were Carpington's Cadillac and Greenway's Lincoln.
“Looks like Rick isn't there,” I said with some sense of relief. “I don't see his car around. He may still be looking for me. I think he thinks I have the ledger.”
Earl did a U-turn at the next intersection and came back slowly. “Whose car is whose?”
“The Caddy is Carpington's, and the Lincoln is Greenway's.”
“Let's pay 'em a visit,” Earl said, turning the pickup in to the sales office lot. The gravel crunched under the truck's tires. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmed. My breathing grew quicker and shallower.
“Earl, I don't know if I can do this,” I said. “I gotta be honest with you. I'm scared. I'm out of my league. These clowns kill people to get what they want.”
Earl gave me a gentle punch in the shoulder. “Don't worry, pardner. The ones who should be scared are these asswipes.” He nodded toward the office. “We're gonna get the jump on them.”
I swallowed, hard, took a deep breath, and opened the truck door. We strode toward the office, shoulder to shoulder, Earl holding his gun down at his right side. Three sets of handcuffs, which Trixie had run across the street to fetch before we left Earl's, jingled in my jacket pocket. Trixie had decided against giving me the fur-lined ones for Greenway, since it would be a dead giveaway where we'd gotten our restraining devices. She claimed not to have much use for him, but didn't see any advantage in advertising her disregard. I couldn't argue with that.
Earl, between puffs, suggested we circle the building once. Peeking through blinds, we saw Greenway behind his desk, lecturing a sheepish Carpington sitting across from him. All the other rooms were dark, indicating to us that we had only two people to deal with.
“But Rick might be coming back at any time,” I whispered.
“We'll deal with that when the time comes,” Earl whispered back.
We came back around the front of the building and I gripped the handle, squeezing gently and pushing to see whether it was locked. It was.
“Knock,” Earl said.
I rapped on the door. There was some stirring inside, then Greenway's voice from behind the wood. “Who is it?”
My mind raced. “Rick!” I said. I forced my voice a little lower, trying to approximate Rick's tone.
“Where's your key?”
Would Rick have the patience to explain? I decided not. “Just open the fucking door!” I shouted.
I heard the bolt turn back, and once the door had cleared the latch, Earl put his boot to it. The door swung wide into the darkened outer office and Earl forced his way in ahead of me, gun slightly raised at two o'clock. Once we were both inside, I closed the door and locked it, and saw Greenway sprawled out on the floor and Carpington standing in the door of Greenway's office, looking more or less petrified.
“Both of you,” Earl said, sounding very much in control, “in one place, please.” He motioned, with his gun hand, for Greenway to get up and back into his office.
“Please don't shoot us,” Carpington whined.
“Shut up,” Earl said, shoving Greenway ahead of him into his office. He took his spot back behind his desk while Carpington retreated into the chair across from it.
“Cuff 'em, Zack,” Earl said. And I thought, If only I had a nickel for every time someone has said that to me. By now, I'd have five cents.
Carpington was wide-eyed with horror, while Greenway tried harder to look composed, thinking maybe if he exuded confidence we'd be unnerved, that maybe he knew something we didn't. It might work. Even though we had the drop on them, I was definitely unnerved.
“Just tell me what you want,” Carpington said to me. “You said you didn't want money before, but maybe you've changed your mind. I can get you some.”
“Maybe you've saved up some of those weekly payments that are recorded in that ledger,” I said, pulling two sets of handcuffs from my pocket. I grabbed his wrist and slapped one cuff on it while Earl held his gun up to discourage anyone from making any objections. With his left hand, he took his cigarette out of his mouth and tapped some ashes onto the floor.
I forced Carpington's hand behind his back, brought his other arm around, and cuffed his wrists together like I'd been doing this all my life. I felt a little rush.
“You're not doing that to me,” Greenway said as I rounded the desk with the other pair.
“Maybe if you'd fixed my fucking shower I'd be feeling a little more kindly,” I said. I reached for his wrist and he drew back.
“Keep away from me!” he said. “You have no idea who you're dealing with.”
“Neither do you,” Earl said, and fired off a round into the site plan that hung on the wall behind Greenway.
The shot was deafening and caught me as much by surprise as it did our two prisoners. I felt the blast ring in my ears. Greenway jolted back into his chair and Carpington slunk down in his. With his hands cuffed, he couldn't stop his slide and went right to the floor.
“Jesus Christ, Earl!” I shouted. “What the hell you doing?”
“Getting their attention,” he said calmly. “Mr. Greenway, would you be kind enough to let my associate here put some handcuffs on you?”
Greenway grudgingly obliged, then settled himself back into his leather business chair, trying to look as though having his hands trapped behind him didn't detract from his dignity in any way.
“Now,” said Earl, “I need your car keys.”
“Huh?” Greenway said.
“What?” Carpington said.
“Why?” I asked.
“I'm going to move their cars around back, and the truck. Best that no one thinks anyone's here, and that means it's less likely that Rick is going to be dropping by.”
Anything that might keep Rick from showing up sounded like a good idea to me. Carpington and Greenway indicated which pockets held their keys, and I got them out. “Why don't I do that while you keep them covered?” I suggested.
Earl shook his head, handed the gun over to me in exchange for the keys. “You watch them.”
The gun was warm. I didn't know whether that was from Earl holding it, or the fact that it had just been fired. My pulse raced as I wrapped my fingers around it.
“Uh, the safety?” I said to Earl. “Which way is the safety supposed to go?”
He rolled his eyes. I knew what he was thinking. This was not the way to inspire fear in your captives. First, I was scared shitless when he fired the gun, and now I needed a tutorial in its operation. “It's off now. That way, if one of them does something stupid, you can bl
ow their fucking heads off.”
“Sure,” I said. I raised the gun up, moved it around, got the feel of it. Now Greenway and Carpington looked even more nervous, especially when the gun swung in their direction. They must have thought that their chances of being killed had risen exponentially now that the weapon had passed from Earl to me. It wasn't that I appeared more ruthless. On the contrary. But everything about me screamed incompetence. I made a special effort not to point the gun at either of them. I was as worried about my incompetence as they were.
Earl said he'd be back in a couple of minutes.
“Who's your friend?” Greenway asked once he heard the main door close.
“Just another happy resident of Valley Forest Estates,” I said, waving the gun about, trying to look casual with it. “So what brings you all out here tonight?”
“We're having a meeting,” Greenway said. “And we're expecting someone. You might be smart to finish up your business and get out of here before he shows up.”
“Who would that be? Rick?”
“I think he's out looking for you right now. He's very upset with you.”
“You should see my car,” I said, and Greenway just looked at me, not understanding. “He seems like a guy who could benefit from some anger management classes. But then, I guess if he were well behaved, he wouldn't have gotten the job of killing Sam Spender for you, or Stefanie.”
“That's ridiculous. I don't know what you're talking about.”
“I think you do, and that's why my friend and I decided to pay you a visit tonight, to find out what you do know. Because I have to tell you, it's very much in my interest to know as much as possible.”
“I didn't have anything to do with those murders!” Carpington said, struggling to get back up off the floor and into his chair.
Headlight beams swept past the office window. Earl was moving the Caddy around back.
“So if it's not Rick coming by this evening, who is it?” I asked. “Let me guess. It's the famous Mr. Benedetto. He's heard about how much you guys have fucked things up out here and he's coming to assess the situation.”
Their silence said everything.
Finally, Greenway said, “I have a question, if you don't mind.”