I stared at him for a moment. “So you're thinking now that it wasn't an accident?”
“Mr. Walker, we've never thought it was an accident. Mr. Spender was a victim of homicide.”
“I'd been thinking it was an accident,” I said. Okay, maybe I'd been hoping it was an accident. I'd been telling myself it was probably an accident. That he'd tripped, bashed his head on a rock, then rolled over into the water. “You're sure?” I said.
Detective Flint poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue. His cheek bubbled out like he was Kojak eating a Tootsie Pop. “We have some experience with this kind of thing,” he said.
“No, I wasn't suggesting you didn't, it's just, this isn't exactly downtown, you know? You don't expect this sort of thing around here.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes we're a bit behind, but we do our best to catch up,” Detective Flint said with sarcasm. “Mr. Spender was struck on the back of his skull with a blunt object with considerable force. There wasn't even any water in his lungs. He was dead before he fell into the water.”
“I see.”
“So you didn't see anyone at all.”
“No.”
“I understand from Officer Greslow that you knew the deceased.”
“Not personally. But I knew who he was. That he was a naturalist, environmentalist-type person.”
“You know anyone who might want to do Mr. Spender any harm?”
I half-laughed. “Of course not. Like I say, I hardly knew him, and . . .” And I thought back to that day when our paths had crossed at the Valley Forest Estates offices, and I'd had to hold Don Greenway back from lunging at him.
“What?”
“It's nothing. I'm sure it's nothing.”
“Why don't you let me be the judge of that?”
“Well, I don't want to go around accusing people of murder, I mean, that's pretty serious.”
“Yes. It is.”
“Well, you must know that he didn't have a very good relationship with the people at Valley Forest Estates. It was in the paper, letters and articles.”
“Yes, we were aware of that. Do you know anything about that beyond what's been in the papers?”
I hesitated. Sure, Don Greenway was angry that day. But it's one thing to get a little hot under the collar, and another thing altogether to whack a guy in the head so hard his brains leak out. And not only that, if I sent homicide cops after Greenway, would I ever get my leaky shower fixed?
“One day,” I said slowly, waving my hand in the air like it wasn't that big a deal, “when I was over at the Valley Forest Estates offices, I saw Spender and Don Greenway get into quite an argument.”
“Greenway.”
“He's the head of the company, I think. We bought this house from him. Our street's even named after him.”
“What was this argument about?”
I told him. Flint made some notes in his book, flipped the cover over, and slipped it into his jacket.
“Do you think,” I said, hesitantly, “that you could not mention that I told you this, if you're talking to Mr. Greenway? He's, uh, supposed to fix some things around the house here, and he might not be so inclined to do it if he knew I was, you know, ratting him out.”
Flint's eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. “Ratting him out,” he repeated.
“Yeah. Isn't that what you call it? Or squealed? Is it squealed?”
“Ratting him out is good,” said Flint, who showed himself out.
i might not have my police terminology down pat, but I knew the words to describe how I felt: freaked out.
My friend Jeff might have found a dead guy, but I'd found a dead guy who'd been murdered. Surely this beat a guy who just got his head stuck in a storm drain and drowned. And yet I didn't feel even the slightest bit full of myself. What I felt was scared.
By how long had I missed encountering Samuel Spender's killer? Just because I'd seen him have an argument with Greenway didn't mean that had anything to do with his death. What if Spender had been the victim of some nutbar who would have been just as happy to kill me if I'd come along a little earlier? And what if that nutbar was still roaming around the neighborhood, which, up to now, had always been a crime-free paradise?
I needed someone to talk to about this. I tried Sarah at work.
“Dan. City.”
I hung up. I was not talking to that asshole again. I walked to the front window, where Detective Flint was still sitting in the front seat of his cruiser, making some more notes before pulling away from the curb. Across the street, Earl's truck caught my eye. He was home.
He'd want to know about this.
The pickup was backed up to the garage, which was open, and the door from the garage to the laundry room was propped open. Earl was either loading up the truck or taking things into the house. It made no sense to ring the front doorbell, so I entered the garage, mounted the two steps to the laundry room door, and called in, “Earl?”
No answer. Maybe he was lugging plants or something through the kitchen and out the sliding glass doors to the backyard. Most of the houses in this neighborhood had the same basic floor plan; you could go blindfolded into one you'd never been in before and find your way around.
I took half a step into the laundry room, called his name again, and noticed that in the space where I would have expected to find a washer and dryer, there was nothing. How long had Earl lived here? I guessed he was the kind of guy who liked to hang out in laundromats.
A gust of warm air went past me into the garage. The house was hot. Humid, really. “Earl?”
I heard some banging about in the basement. He was making enough noise that he couldn't hear me. I took a few more tentative steps into the house and could see moisture dripping down the insides of the windows. The basement door was only a couple of steps away, and I stood in its frame, feeling the warm humidity drifting up from there.
“Earl?” I shouted over the banging.
And then it stopped, abruptly. There was a moment's silence, then Earl's voice: “Who is it?” There was an edge to his voice.
I walked halfway down, to the landing where the stairs turned. “Earl, it's okay, it's Zack. I just had this detective over to my place, asking about that guy—”
“Don't come down here!”
But by then I'd reached the bottom step and could see that Earl's windows were not fogged as a result of some manufacturing defect.
He was on a short ladder, stripped to the waist, working on a string of lights suspended across the room, dangling a few inches below the unfinished ceiling. There was a network of temporary ductwork that looked like dryer hose, but ten times as thick. I could hear ventilation fans, and the glare from the dozens of light fixtures was nearly blinding. It took my eyes a few seconds to adjust, but when they did I was able to focus on what appeared to be hundreds of long-leafed plants that took up nearly every square inch of floor space. I've never been much of a horticulturalist, but I knew enough to know these were not prize-winning orchids.
I don't know much about guns either, but I recognized what Earl had in his right hand, pointed straight at me.
“Jesus, Zack,” Earl said. “You ever heard of fucking knocking? And what's this about a detective?”
8
as i looked about the room, dumbstruck, Earl hurriedly pulled on a shirt and then ushered me up the stairs to the kitchen. He got two beers out of the fridge and motioned—actually, more like directed—me to take a seat at the table. He set his handgun on the table where I could have reached it if I'd wanted to. I didn't.
“What's this about a detective, Zack?” Earl asked. He did not look amused.
I was having a bit of trouble collecting my thoughts. “A police detective, he just left my place.”
“What was he asking?” Earl took a nervous swig of his beer. “Was he asking about me?”
“No. He was asking about that guy they found down by the creek.”
“Are you sure? You're sure he wasn't asking ab
out me?”
“No,” I said, more emphatically this time. “I'm telling you the truth. It was about the guy in the creek.”
Earl nodded, slowly, but he was still eyeing me warily. “I heard about that. On the radio.”
“Yeah, well, it did kind of make the news. It was that guy with the petition, who talked to us the other day.”
Earl downed some more beer. “Okay. I remember him. You found him?”
I nodded. “The cops say he was murdered. So they had a lot more questions for me, since I came across him when I was out for my walk.”
Earl was shaking his head, like he wasn't listening to me. “Shit. Thank God it was about that and not me. I'm running a business over here and can't afford to have the cops finding out about it. So, why are you over here then, if it wasn't about me?”
“I just came over here to tell you about it. Thought you'd be interested. Looks like maybe I caught you at a bad time.”
Earl took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He ran his hand lightly over the gun. “So, Zack. You gonna turn me in?”
“Jesus, Earl.” I finally twisted off the cap of my own beer and had a swallow. “It's so fucking hot in here.”
“There's a lot of humidity in a greenhouse kind of operation,” he said matter-of-factly. “That's why I keep a lot of beer in the fridge. And bottled water, soft drinks, that kind of thing.” He got out his cigarettes, some Winstons, tucked one between his lips and lit up. “I notice you didn't answer my question.”
“What question?”
“About whether you're going to turn me in.”
“Look, Earl, it's not like I'm worried about the pot, exactly. I mean, everyone's doing it, I gather, not that my own kids are.”
“Of course,” Earl said.
I ignored that. “What worries me is you're in a line of work that requires you to keep a gun around. That's not a good thing, Earl. Most people, unless they're cops, don't need to pack heat.”
Earl said quietly, “Lots of people, not just cops, need guns.”
“The thing is, are we going to be having midnight shootouts on the street here? Is everyone else in the neighborhood at risk of getting caught in the crossfire?”
He pursed his lips and tapped the barrel of the gun with his index finger. “It's just a bit of insurance,” he said. “That's all. You don't have to be worried.”
“I just don't like guns, is all.”
“So if I tell you that you don't have anything to worry about because I've got a gun over here, are you going to turn me in?”
I breathed in deep through my nose, felt a trickle of sweat run down my forehead. “No,” I said. “I'm not going to turn you in.” And instantly wondered whether this was a promise I could keep. I decided to lighten things up. “I guess there's a lot of chips in the cupboard, in case you get the munchies, too.”
Earl snorted. He waved his pack of Winstons. “This is the only thing I smoke,” he said. “I'm trying to look after my health.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“Look at us. You're having a beer. I'm having a beer. I'm having a cigarette. The beer gives us pleasure, mellows us out, might even kill us if we abuse it. And this cigarette”—he waved it around with dramatic flourish—“will very likely mean the death of me someday.”
“I feel you're making your way toward a point.”
“All I'm doing downstairs is meeting a need. I'm providing a service. Just like,” and he gestured toward me, “writing pornography, say.”
“Earl, I don't write pornography. I write science fiction.”
“But if you did write porn, it would be the same thing.”
“But I don't, and it wouldn't be.”
“Okay, but you're missing my point. People have needs, and no matter how many rules you pass, how many laws you make, they're going to have them met, one way or another. People are stressed out more now than ever before in the history of the human race. Pressures from work, pressures from home, we're trying to raise kids the same time as we're looking after elderly parents, we wake up every morning with something new that hurts that didn't hurt yesterday, like you're bleeding from the ass or you can't feel your toes, or maybe you're getting cancer.” He waved his cigarette around, took another drag. “We don't know whether there's a hijacked jet out there with our name on it. Maybe the whole fucking world is going to blow up tomorrow. Some guy with a dirty bomb is gonna walk into the stock exchange. Who the fuck knows? People need some relief, and that's all I'm in the business of doing.”
“Earl, your entire basement is a pot crop. If the cops find out, you're finished.”
Earl grimaced, running a hand over his shaved scalp. “Life's a risk, right, Zack? Surely you understand that.”
I said nothing. Most of my efforts of late had been directed toward minimizing risk. “How's it going so far?” I could imagine Sarah asking.
“Do you even live here?” I asked. “Do you own this house?”
Earl blew out some smoke, nodded. “I got a bed upstairs, and a TV. And I keep the fridge stocked. I even manage to do a little bit of entertaining.” He gave me a sly grin, and a nod of his head toward an empty wine bottle and two dirty wineglasses over on the counter by the sink. “But I've kept the decorating to a minimum. Someone else owns the place, some Asian businessmen, I do the gardening, no one's the wiser.”
I guess, without realizing it, I had been staring at the gun while Earl talked. He said, “You can't be too careful, this line of work. Sometimes your Asian businessmen get in a disagreement with your Russian businessmen, you don't want to get caught in the middle without a little reinforcement. But you have to understand, that would be a very rare occurrence.”
I nodded toward the gun. “Is that thing registered?”
Earl sighed. “Zack, were you a hall monitor in school? Were you the kid the teacher got to keep an eye on the classroom when he had to go down to the office?”
I didn't say anything.
“I knew it,” Earl said, draining his beer bottle. “You mind grabbing me another beer out of the fridge?”
I obliged. A powerful rotting smell hit me as I opened it. “Shit, Earl, I think you might want to clean this out.” I looked in the vegetable hamper, where some celery was liquefying.
“I got no sense of smell,” Earl said, tapping his nose. “I can't even smell these smokes, but I'm hooked on them just the same.”
I handed him his beer and he twisted off the cap. “All those lights downstairs,” I said. “Your electric bill must be through the roof.”
“I bypass the meter,” Earl said. “I'm handy.”
I took another swig from my bottle. It was covered with moisture, the label was starting to peel. For a long time I said nothing, then finally, “I keep thinking about Paul and Angie.”
Earl said nothing, but he watched me closely.
“You talk about pressures. I think of the pressure my kids are under. More than you or I were under back when we were in school. And it's a lot easier to succumb when the thing they're giving in to is so readily available, when it's being processed right across the street from where they live.”
Earl nodded thoughtfully. “I appreciate what you're saying. I would never give anything, I swear to God, to your kids.”
“But the people you do give it to may end up giving it to my kids.”
Earl ground out his butt in a metal ashtray and lit up another smoke. “I don't know what to say. I'm not expecting the Nobel Prize or anything.”
“Does Paul know what you're doing here?”
Earl shook his head. “No, he's never been down there. I've made sure of that. Of course, he knocks first.” Ouch. “I just help him with his questions about plants and flowers, what needs shade, that's all. He's a good kid.”
I had a sip of my beer. “So how'd you get into this line of work?”
“Pays good. No taxes. I need the money. I can make a lot, and I can make it fast. What can I say? I'm not the sort of guy who'd do well at an
insurance company or a bank.”
I put my head in my hand, rubbed my forehead. Sweat collected in my palm. I could feel a major headache coming on. Maybe it was the humidity. “I don't remember this kind of thing happening when we lived on Crandall.”
“You were on Crandall?” Earl asked. “Nice street, nice houses. There was that little fruit place at the bottom of the street.”
I put down my hand, took one last drink, and looked Earl in the eye. “I won't do anything. Not right away, anyway. And if I do, I'll give you some warning. But in the meantime, maybe you should think about some other way to make a living. And please, don't come around our place carrying that.” I pointed to the gun.
Earl put up his hands, cigarette smoke trailing from his right one, like he was under arrest. “Never.” Slowly, he lowered his hands.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “A guy used to be a cigarette smuggler, took cartons by boat from the U.S., across Lake Ontario, when Ottawa was taxing the shit out of tobacco. He'd bring them to the Indian reserve, up near the Thousand Islands. I'd pick up a carton from him now and then, what he didn't turn over to the Indians. Anyway, he made a lot of money this way, and it was illegal, no question about it, the customs people wanted him, the cops wanted him. So one night, he's going across with a couple of other guys, and suddenly there's this other boat, you know? With the searchlight, and someone on a megaphone telling them to stop? The other guys, they throttle up, figure if they can get back past the midpoint of the lake, they can't touch them, right? And the customs boat comes up alongside, and this guy's buddies, they ram the boat, and one of the feds, he goes right off the bow, into the drink, but he's not splashing around, like maybe he hit his head or something? And my friend, he sees this guy, looking like maybe he's going to go under, and he dives in. His buddies on the boat, they think he's fucking lost his mind, this is their chance to get away, while the other customs guys try to find him, but my friend, he can't do that. He figures there's no time to waste, and he gets this guy, grabs hold of him, screams for the feds so they'll get a light on him and pull them both in.”