Dark Lake:A Mike Angel Private Eye Mystery
By David H. Fears
Copyright 2011 David H Fears
Smashwords Edition
Other Mike Angel Novels:
Dark Quarry
Dark Lake
Dark Blonde
Dark Poison
Dark Moon
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Chapter 1
The biggest shock of my young investigative career literally crashed in front of my eyes one warm moonless September night in 1961, in Cicero, a Chicago suburb.
I was lounging on the patio of my bungalow with my late father’s best friend, Rick Anthony, who’d been coaxing me out of a hermit’s disposition to partner up for insurance fraud and criminal investigation. Rick, retired NYC cop, knew the crime end—and all my buttons to push—and I knew the insurance rackets, schemes and swindles. The more we sponged Jack Daniels and talked shop the more my objections shrunk until a partnership seemed downright inevitable.
We were nearly out of booze when the scar I’d earned chasing down Dad’s killers went off like a Pearl Harbor attack was imminent. Dad often warned me of dangers through prickly heat in the scar that ran down my jaw like a dirty snake. Other times I actually “heard” his voice—although only in my head, which made me think I was going off the deep end.
I jerked upright just as a dark Caddy spun out from two-story apartments across the street. We craned to see, our view obscured by trees.
The woman smashed headfirst through a second floor window—a fifteen-foot drop. Whip-slapped hard against the apartment and yanked up short by a rope around her ankles, she hung flailing, wrists tied, while a fireball erupted above her.
At times of total shock I often think silly things, stupid things: the exit was a very definite method for ending a relationship.
Belted with the shock I thought, God, she’s about my age—whoever trussed her up with a ticking firebomb didn’t want her to celebrate any more birthdays. Then I lurched out of my seat and ran toward the flames.
Rick was twenty-five years my senior but right behind when I made the ground below her. I tried to spring up to a ledge but couldn’t reach it.
A ladder would have been peachy. Run back and get one, she’d be fried.
The intense heat already was reddening her feet, legs.
Rick bent and motioned me to jump on his back. He was still a sturdy six-two and about 220, so I scrambled my five-ten and 185 as high as I could climb, but even on tiptoe her hands were a foot away. The rope around her ankles led up through the window. Her eyes were open, staring down through me passively as if she were in a coma. She must’ve been stunned by the slam against the side of the apartment after hopping across the floor for a nosedive.
Thick smoke swirled around us. I choked. The wall next to my face began to blister.
Rick could see I was coming up short and yelled for me to climb to his shoulders, but when I did, he nearly folded.
Sirens wailed off in the distance. By the time they’d arrive it’d be too late.
For a moment I was overwhelmed, and almost fell. I yelled at the girl to hold her breath. Her eyes fluttered shut; she was beyond hearing anyone.
It looked like I’d have to jump down to save myself.
Then the rope slipped some and with some last measure of consciousness, her hands wrapped around mine.
That’s when the wind shifted. My lungs gulped some clean air.
I pulled myself to her waist.
The rope around her ankles—too high to reach with my pocketknife. Flames popped, ripped, buckling the siding around us. I had one chance: climb up her body to reach the rope. If I fell I’d break my neck or hers. I hollered to Rick what I was going to try. I don’t think he heard above the roaring flames.
The knife clamped in my teeth, I sprung up against her, grabbed her knees, felt her body stretch against her bonds, and wrapped my legs around her waist. The rope was burning at the top and I hoped it would break from our combined weight, but couldn’t dangle there and be broiled until it did.
My arms ached. Up, up another few inches.
I hacked weakly at the bonds, wishing my knife were a machete.
I cursed.
More swirling smoke, heat. Dark spots danced before my eyes; blast furnace roared above my head.
Korea again, pulling a buddy out of the flames.
The knife chewed half way through the rope just before it snapped. Rick had thrown wicker yard chairs under us to break our fall. It wouldn’t be the last time he’d save my carcass.
Luckily, the girl wound up on top of me. I don’t think she could have taken another blow. We lay there stunned while Rick pulled us away from the burning building. She raised her head above mine and blinked and coughed. I rolled her into Rick’s arms and we lifted her away from danger, placing her on the lawn. Her eyes were that of a dead woman’s. We cut the remaining ropes, but she lay passively staring up beyond us.
A small crowd gathered. Fire trucks still hadn’t arrived. No sirens anymore. The inferno was beyond control now, anyway.
Rick lifted the girl and hauled her across the street and into the house, while I limped after them.
She peered up through matted black hair and said over Rick’s shoulder, “Please. I can walk.”
With all the excitement, I hadn’t checked her out. It was good to know that for a few moments I hadn’t thought of sex. I thought of it now, again, a reflex. Such things take practice and I’d had some, even at age 32. She was stunning, dark, a touch of exotic about her.
Rick laid her on his cot in the middle of the living room and stood over her with concern, pressing a cold washcloth on her forehead.
I squeezed her limp hand, strangely cold. “We like carrying toasted girls. Rick here’s a first aid fanatic, studied to be a doctor.”
I rifled a first aid kit and Rick ordered me to get some wet towels. He stopped the bleeding, examined her for burns.
“You’re very lucky that Mike can shinny up a girl. Other than a nasty cut on your forearm, blisters here and there, skin off your ankles, you didn’t get mauled too badly. You’re singed, but safe.”
She gaped at each of us like we were ugly wallpaper. It was a long drop inside those dark eyes, as if life had been removed, replaced with ashes. It wasn’t shock; I’d seen that many times. This was some strange resignation, death expected, though we’d deprived her of the big exit, as if it didn’t matter that she’d survived. But no suicide could have been trussed like she’d been.
The rescue, so close to death, struck home to my shaking knees. I sat down next to her.
“This part won’t feel good,” Rick said.
I held her hand while Rick laid a neat row of stitches to close the gash in her arm. She stared right through me, didn’t squeeze my hand, flinch or make a sound. Even with the harrowing rescue, her ebony hair still parted evenly down one side, hung like parentheses framing her vacant expression.
The fire trucks came then and she sat up, wobbly.
“Easy,” I said. “You’ve been through a lot. My useful friend will fix a spot in the bedroom for you to rest. He fills in as maid too.”
I left her in Rick’s hands and crossed the street to watch the men battle the fire. The entire second floor was engulfed, the townhouse apartments a total loss. The firemen managed to keep the blaze from spreading, but it took a multi-alarm effort. Someone in the crowd said that the apartments were being remodeled and were vacant except for a caretaker, who they pointed out huddled, coughing next to the pump engine. The old timer had taken in smoke, and they bundled him up for the ride to the hospital. I heard the codger say between hacks that he’d been asleep, hadn’t heard anything before the firebomb.
Neighbors stood nearby, yapping about the black Caddy peeling away right before the explosion, but strangely, no one asked about the girl or mentioned our rescue. I doubt if they’d seen our barbeque drama.
When I got back to the house, Rick sipped iced tea with something darker mixed in.
He lifted the glass at me. “In my explorations under the sink for cleaning products—quite a strange place to keep rum.”
“My filing system. How’s the female? Get anything out of her?”
Rick killed the last of his drink. “She asked if she could stay until morning then dropped off to slumberland right after you left.” He frowned at his ice cubes. “The one time I’m alone with one of Angel’s saved lollipops, she’s too traumatized to be much fun.”
***
Rick came west after retiring from New York City’s Twenty-third precinct, lieutenant’s pension enough to keep him well as a permanent fisherman in Lauderdale or some equally laid back spot. But Rick wasn’t ready for a rocking chair, even though he was a damned good fisherman. The hunt of bad guys was in his blood. I set him up a cot in the living room of my six hundred square foot cottage that was so small you could gesture and slap three people in the face. I called it Mike Angel’s El Rancho Roacho.
Rick had stuck around the week before the firebombing, playing shrink to me, prying out my disillusionment, feelings of being washed up at 32. A crippling depression of love and hate and anger, still percolated from the first major case of my career, the only one that hadn’t bored me silly.
I’d slogged through six years of fraud, divorce cases when I got snagged on a woman who turned my world upside down—Nika. She was that delicate flower a guy dreams about, one I’d failed to save from a ruthless mob. I didn’t have enough time with her to investigate all the love angles, but the riptide of her charm was undeniable. Had I been in love? The question tormented me. Whether I was or wasn’t, I’d lost something immeasurable. Molly Bennett, my most important support system and office whiz, lost even more—her father died while I busted up the gang downstate in Mattoon. So, I’d moped for months in my yellow bungalow where the walls inched closer by the day. Then Rick came west.
Rick’s arrival gave me someone to confide in, an activity for me like yanking a filthy rope out of my insides that broke every few feet. We sat and drank and talked and listened to the crickets waxing and waning every night for two weeks. Rick was the best of company because he knew what to ask and when to shut up, how to wait for me to get the words out. Maybe that’s because Rick knew me as a kid, served on the force with my old man, and even though he saw all my weakness, he was loyal, a strong friend.
Molly came around the week after her father’s funeral, coaxed me into driving all the way down to New Orleans to spend a week hanging out together. She saw I was twisted up over Nika, and maybe she thought listening would distract her from her own grief. We kept our little rules about no touching during office hours, and while we’d enjoyed growing flirtation, there was a wall between us now higher than the monstrosity those commies were erecting in that poor fractured city of Berlin. We took adjoining rooms in the French Quarter, strolled the river wall, drank hurricanes at Pat’s, hunkered on Bourbon Street curbs, even wasted days on streetcar safaris to the Garden District. Most of what we said to each other was like talking to ourselves.
Molly was pretty broken up inside. Her dad died after a short illness, still a young man. The baby in her family, Molly was pampered by her tough dad. Now she couldn’t tell me the time without tears welling up.
The last night in the Crescent City, I perched on my balcony bathed in soupy Gulf humidity and counted tourists strolling up the gaslight-lined streets. Better tourists than sheep. I’d given Molly her space the last couple of days, and didn’t expect to see her until checkout time the next morning. We kept the adjoining door locked except when we shared room service at breakfast. Even sad, Molly glowed in the morning. Early and late were the best times of Molly’s day. At night her green eyes sparkled with possibilities.
After two years as a personal secretary for an insurance magnate who she worshipped, Molly had moved to Chicago at her sister’s invitation after her boss was murdered. I met Moll while solving the murder, and luckily, my work on the case led me to Chicago as well, where I hired her to help me set up for a fresh start. Or should I say she hired me, because I was pretty low over losing Nika about then. Well, the new start was only a few days old when I followed the clues to Mattoon and broke the case open. Molly and I spent most of those first days together at Sam’s, a bar down the block from my now dormant office. After Nika died, I tried to keep going, but the pain grew faster than my bar bill at Sam’s. My heart wasn’t into working. Something about everyone looking ugly, nothing mattering any more. A sewer of self-pity. I felt washed up as an investigator at 32.
When Molly and I hit New Orleans, we shared a drink in the hotel lounge. I tried to reach inside Moll and let her know that her dad would live on in her memory, that she was tough, as tough as any young woman I’d ever met, and that she’d be all right. I tried, but was no good at it. We were like two drowning souls, clawing at ourselves, neither of us able to save the other.
The first couple of days in New Orleans, she hardly spoke, but I had hopes the trip would pull her out of it. When she did talk, the words kept bringing her back around to the painful memories and guilt that stood between us like a sullen bear. Losing a father is a heavier weight than losing a lover, and I saw through Molly’s pain that mine wasn’t so important. She’d always been a sunbeam, but you only have one father, and like they say about buses, there’s another romance along in a few minutes, that is, if you’re crazy enough to squat on the curb waiting for Cupid Express to flatten you.
So, I listened, patted her knee now and then, and carried an extra handkerchief. Molly kept saying how she hadn’t been a good daughter, beating herself up for leaving home, only returning from New York when her sister sent the SOS. I pointed out that at least she got her goodbyes, thinking all the while that losing mine with Nika was what rankled most. But I couldn’t confess all I’d felt with Nika, not without hurting Molly more.
Shortly before midnight I heard the adjoining door open and turned to see Molly carrying a bottle of Johnny Walker Black with two glasses. She floated in a black, thin peignoir. Her message was clear enough, but didn’t seem to quite fit our moods. Even with flirtation, we’d built up a level of trust and support that hadn’t included the bedroom. I managed to get enough of Molly’s truth serum inside of me to blurt out this critical obstacle, that sex might make things worse for both of us, though I knew I couldn’t resist the peignoir forever.
We huddled on the balcony and argued over where her intentions lie, what my intentions had ever been, and passed the truth around like a beach ball at a formal dinner that kept splashing into the lobster bisque. Talk eventually worked, or at least the Johnny Walker worked. In the last hour before we went inside, the main chords of my discontent wove into some sort of acceptance. Moll was propping me up to save herself, and I no longer wanted to question things.
Stepping back from the doorway into the dim room, Molly let the peignoir slide down her torso to her arms; My debate swung between scolding her and scooping her up. She led me to the bed and reclined against a pile of pillows, rocking those wonderful legs at me, lilac perfume pulling me closer. When she snapped off the bedside lamp, stretched and sighed with streetlamp glow framing her treasures, I knew talk was worthless. Wanting her became so easy.
I slid close. She made small purring sounds, half desire, half release. Still, I held back just a tad, struggling with the illogic that I liked her too much for sex. But my body ignored my mind: currents of two rivers joined, our bodies fit and moved together in a way that was beyond what I’d imagined. I touched, erased a small part of Molly’s pain, but my own flooded out in such a way that I couldn’t separate the two. Later I understood we ditched an ocean of hurt in that room, and broken the ice in such a way that we could never go back. Sex can do that. Sometimes only sex can do that.
When Molly met me in front of the hotel the next morning, she was different—still very young, but more at peace, seemingly older. And thankful. Her skin was browner than when we’d left Chicago. She’d eaten well on the trip, gained weight back she’d lost since the funeral. Her voice carried that lilting hope that’d drawn me in when I first met her.
Driving back, she hummed with the radio, smiled comfort whenever I glanced over at her. Each smile reassured me that our time had been good medicine for each of us. We didn’t talk about love or sex or worry about what the night meant, and neither of us got nervous or sloppy about it. I joked about opening an office in New Orleans and commuting from Chicago. Molly laughed, the only time on the trip. It’s easy enough to make a devil laugh, just step out of line. But making an angel laugh is as sublime as a Chopin nocturne.
We were finally comfortable with each other. Normally, comfortable ties worry me, but with Molly it was natural. It didn’t bind.
As we neared Chicago, Molly slid close. She announced she’d take one more trip up to Canada with her sister, then be back in a few weeks to re-open the office. She said it like she was boosting me to be ready by then. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I wasn’t sure about going on as a private investigator. I’d see her when she got back, which is what I told her when she planted a lingering kiss at her door.
Molly, like so many other giving souls, took death hard, maybe because life had given her such a good start. Her father was a single parent who gave it his all. He’d done an Olympic gold job. Molly inherited his brand of tough, but this was the first time in her 23 years death smacked her on the jaw. She had to plant herself and swing back now, use the best of her dad’s lessons. She had to let a few of those stars in her eyes fall to earth. Molly’s of the world aren’t given to society’s rules as much as they’re led by their hearts. Call it instinct, call it juice, but it’s an internal, infallible compass. I never got much of that juice, but I enjoy being next to it. Maybe every kid has that pure compass at some point, but the darker side of life beats it out of most. If the world had more Molly’s, Eden might just return.
But there will always be snakes, too, as I rediscovered when Rick and I were startled out of our skins on the patio by the woman diving through the plate glass, followed by the blast. The biggest cases always uncover the biggest snakes. And Chicago does everything big.
Chapter 2
Rick was up early rattling around the kitchen making coffee and eggs. I woke up stiff like someone beat me with a board across the arms and shoulders, which could’ve been from last night’s exertions or the hard davenport I crashed on. I felt twenty years older until I splashed water in my face. Then I only felt nineteen years older. Last night’s intended victim was rousing herself when I sat down for coffee. She used the bathroom and followed me into the kitchen, leaned against the refrigerator and eyed us like she had forgotten who we were.
“How many eggs and how do you like them?” said Rick, twirling the spatula.
“Four, over easy,” came the contralto voice.
I pulled out a chair and poured her a coffee. “What do we call you?”
She looked at each of us, a bare scowl bending her thin eyebrows. Slumping in a chair across from me, she said, “It doesn’t matter. Pick any name you like.”
Rick dished out her eggs. He studied her with experienced cop eyes. I could see checklists clicking off in his head.
“I’d rather call you what your mother did, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“I do mind.” Her voice was flat, unemotional. She stared at her plate like it was a mirage.
“In that case I like Jane, as in Tarzan. Rick here can be Cheetah since he likes to monkey around. Beware of older men frying eggs.”
“Lord,” she mumbled into her eggs, “I’ve been rescued by a couple of clowns.”
“As a kid I did want to run off and join the circus,” Rick said, biting a strip of bacon. “Being a clown would have been a great adventure. But then those were different times. Your generation—Mike’s and yours—would see that as square.”
“Which one of you cut me loose? Whoever I landed on wasn’t soft.”
“That would be your host and mine, Mike Angel, private investigator. Your humble cook is Rick Anthony. Please don’t call me Richard.”
“He looks too young to be a shamus.”
“He is. That’s why I’m tagging along, Missy.”
She tried for a smile but it didn’t work. “I should thank you both for last night. So, thank you.”
A scrape with hot death created a monster appetite in Jane, who wolfed down her eggs and coffee, yet refused more.
Fire and police still milled around across the street. Every time a car door slammed, Jane looked toward the door, seemingly afraid.
“You’re safe here,” I said, using my father confessor voice. “There’s some female duds in the bedroom closet if you’d like to change after a hot shower. Feel free. Take what you need.”
“Safe until those animals discover I’m not cooked and come back looking for me.”
Rick and I stopped and looked at her hard, our faces asking for further definition of her “animals.” She wasn’t giving more. It was an awkward moment. Then I offered:
“Rick’s a retired New York detective. He and my late dad worked together.”
“I thought you said he was a doctor?”
Whatever and whoever she was, nothing escaped her. “I said he studied to be one. He couldn’t cut it, right, Ricky?”
Rick, his hands in dishwater, said, “Literally, I couldn’t cut it. Cutting on citizens felt like butchery. Besides, police careers were in my family. I always thought my grandfather died a cop, my dad died a cop, and—”
“Yeah, I know,” I said, “you will too. But now it looks like you’ve a better shot to die a short order cook.”
“How’d you like some fresh sliced cantaloupe, young Jane? Tarzan here swung through the local A&P and harvested them yesterday.”
“Sure. I love melons,” she said, adjusting her bra and scrunching a tear in her blouse together. Rick and I exchanged glances. She was up to joking? He shrugged. Her eyes stayed empty with an occasional hints of anxiety whenever voices of fire inspectors carried through the open window. “Think I’ll take you up on that shower first.”
She rose stiffly and teetered from the table. I instinctively took her arm to steady her, and she stopped, looked down into my face like I’d picked her pocket. She had high cheekbones and a hint of Asian through the eyes, or maybe South Sea Islander. One of those women whose entire aspect changes with different light. A smile from that sort of dish means victory to the average guy.
“I’m okay,” she said. “Let go.” Now she was clearly irritated.
I held her arm an extra second and smiled to see if she’d imitate me. She didn’t.
“Towels in the linen closet right outside the bathroom door,” I said. “Shampoo, soap’s in the stall. Takes a minute to run to hot. You might need female toiletries and makeup in a box under the sink. Can’t vouch for their quality.”
Rick motioned me out to the patio and we stood ruminating at what was left of the smoldering apartments. A uniformed cop and a few suits poked through the ruins and talked to curious neighbors. The law’d come calling before long.
“What do you make of our dark-haired stunner, Sherlock?” I asked.
A familiar brand of lechery flickered in Rick’s eyes. “Nice bones.”
“That all you got to say? With your education?”
“Polynesian, judging from her eyes and facial structure. Mixed with French or Irish. An Anthropological wonder—skin, taut, evenly browned—too evenly to be tanned. Plus, she had no tan line that I could see, even for a wristwatch. But there was a ring indentation on her wedding finger, yet it was tanned.”
“Some pros take a ring off and on, based on who the mark is. A miracle she found the window bound up like that.”
“The two who patched out probably didn’t think she could reach the window.”
“Two?”
“Yes, two. Right before the car took off there was one door slam, but a heavy’d been at the wheel a minute before. Even pitch dark I got a fleeting view inside the car, made out a thin silhouette.”
“She’s pretty withdrawn. Natural, I guess for the weenie roast trap. What else?”
“Pierced ears, double high for a post, like they do in Tahiti. She’s had her fingernails and toenails professionally done. Also, notice that the ends of her hair are layered into a formal style. She’s been keeping herself well, or someone has. I’d say a year or two shy of 30.”
“You’re better’n me. I’d’ve thought 22.”
“Squint at the backs of hands, around the eyes. Hers, Pretty smooth, some creasing. Her figure and tone say she’s some kind of athlete or dancer. The leg muscles are well developed.”
“Maybe she’s a gymnast. Works out a lot.”
“Not with those nails.”
“Can you tell me what she ate for lunch last week, Mister Holmes?”
“No, but with those full lips…” Rick licked his lips. “I’d imagine a guy would let her eat most anything she wanted.”
“That’s the horny Rick I’ve come to know and love. I don’t think Holmes ever had such thoughts.”
“Of course not, he had Watson, Watson.”
I leaned against a tree and watched a knot of cops taking a smoke break. “Firebomb—strange way to kill a woman. If she hadn’t gone out that window, the cops easily determine it’s homicide. She was bound—rope and ash fragments, burn patterns around the rope. Firebombs usually have one easily traced source. Of course, arson’s not my specialty. So what does your logic squeeze out about the arson boys? That they’re clumsy?”
“Too much so. They like souped up ’57 Caddies. Modified suspension. Slightly raked. Continental kit. Laker pipes out the side. Black or a very dark color. I had a clear view through an opening in the arbor. One additional tidbit—the driver loves pistachio nuts.”
“Next you’ll tell me he’s a philatelist with a sister who won the 1960 Miss Michigan contest and his brother’s serving a stretch up at Joliet for statutory rape of a congressman’s daughter.”
“I scouted the street before you and lady lovely deigned to greet the day. On the driver’s side where the Caddy was parked, there was quite a pile of pistachio shells, the kind that purple the fingers. My first wife loved those. Her fingers, always stained.” Rick pointed at the shells he’d carted to the patio table.
“Prints, off those?”
“Unlikely—small surfaces, chemicals would make it problematic. The pile size meant they parked there for some time. An hour or more.”
“How do you know the shells came from the thugs? Couldn’t someone’ve dropped them earlier, say cleaning out their car?”
“The pile was too neat. It rained yesterday afternoon if you recall. The shells were dry. I also noticed the driver flick his hand through the window a few times before the car squealed away.”
“Anything else Herr Detekktive?”
“Jane’s looking to bolt soon. She may well be right about the stooges coming back once they learn there were no fatalities. I’d advise checking visitors’ fingers for purple in the near future.”
“Well, we can’t put her up at your place, Ricky, considering you don’t yet have one. Molly’s still out of town, but there’s a reporter for the Sun-Times who owes me a favor. Newlywed, so probably needs a breather. I’ll give him a call.”
I left a message with Louie Gordon’s office and was hanging up when I glimpsed Jane’s nude form through the open bedroom door. I’d seen a lot of bodies, some nicer, most not, but a studied aspect to hers combined with her aloofness, said sophisticated, high class model. She stood there and casually buttoned up one of Nika’s blouses, gauzy thing I’d kept for sentiment. Jane was used to being eyeballed, that much was clear, but she didn’t let on that my staring turned her crank, either. I’d seen larger breasts, but few that were more perfectly formed. Her small almost black nipples, erect, winked at me through the blouse, but Jane didn’t wink or give any hint or scintilla of seduction. Scintilla—that was one of Rick’s NYU lit class words.
On impulse I walked to the doorway, ready to apologize for accidentally being a peep while taking her in. She maintained her slight scowl as she slipped on a fresh pair of lace panties up over a closely-trimmed thatch of black, then followed with a pair of Nika’s short-shorts. They fit her like she was Nika’s identical twin and made her legs seem even longer. With her curves I should’ve felt electric bolts, some inkling of arousal, but she might as well have been my great aunt Maude. Strange. A dame’s manner can dampen even a horny dog.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to stare while I was looking hard.”
“Maybe you’d like to drool? Take a closer look, it won’t embarrass me.”
She wasn’t kidding. “Don’t rush me. You’ve dropped in rather suddenly. I’m betting there’s a lot to know about you.”
She smoothed her hair. “Does it take that? Knowing things? You mean if you knew my favorite foods and we joked about my childhood and the puppy that got run over and you told me how you got into investigations and we downed a few highballs, then we could fuck?”
She wasn’t a prom date. Not to take home to Mom, anyway.
“Something like that.”
“Uh huh. Give it up—your tongue’s out. You like me enough. Him too, the old coot.”
“Yeah, we do. But Jane, or whatever your name is, no need to put me on the spot. I never apologize for being male. And you don’t owe me sex for cutting the rope. Maybe you’re just—”
“Just what? It’s written all over me what I am. Some guys are turned off by call girls, even expensive ones. So, what’s your angle—you one of those missionary-position prudes?”
The bittersweet night with Molly fled through my mind just then, my reluctance to take the leap. I’d held back then but this was different. Maybe I was a prude, with the wrong dame, but I didn’t want Jane on any terms. Not because she’d peddled it, if I could believe her. The wrong short-term attitude can close a lot of long-term doors, limp a big dick. At least mine.
I tugged at my ear. “Could be. Prudes need love, too.”
“These rags your girlfriend’s? You can do better. Maybe that’s why she’s gone.”
“She was killed, couple months back.”
She took this like I’d told her the time and she knew it already. Either she wasn’t the empathetic type or denial about death came natural for her. Maybe I wasn’t believable to her.
“And I suppose you nailed her killers?”
“Completely.”
“Some things even out, then, don’t they?”
“In a blue moon. Most things don’t. I got lucky.”
She swayed around the bed and stood in front of me, steady like, in control. Taller than Nika or Molly, easy five eight. She must have been born with the slight scowl and was fond of it. She wasn’t giving it up.
“Luck you’ve got. I can see that. Muscles, tall—not too—dark hair, sexy gray eyes in a strong face, even with that scar. Don’t worry, I won’t ask. You’ve a smart mouth though, wise guy. And your friend’s strange. Like a professor on the loose.” She eyed me, about to mount me in her scrapbook.
“Rick’s good strange. He got most of that at NYU while working the graveyard shift for the NYPD. And as for my smart mouth, I’m pretty proud of it. I give it daily workouts.”
“Sure. Here’s my take, mister smarty—I don’t judge who’s good, who’s not. Easier to treat them all like they’re bad—you, him. Don’t take it personal, if you take it at all.”
“Maybe I am,” I said. “Bad sometimes. Trouble with your system, things can get pretty lonely. And the scar was a gift from my dad’s killer, just before he went to hell.”
“Justice served. Oh, I’m tougher than I appear. Don’t let these soft curves trip you up.”
“I haven’t so far. And, I’m uncertain how you appear. Brave enough last night when Rick sewed you up, a real trooper. Or maybe just cold.”
Her eyes lingered below my waist. “I could thank you again sometime, not so cold.”
“No need. Just happy I saved you. Don’t suppose you’ll tell me who was behind the fire party?”
She shook her head slightly, which seemed to stretch the scowl. “No need. I’m out of here. I don’t want to seem ungrateful, so here’s a small token of my gratitude.”
She reached around me and swung the door closed, then slid her arms up around my neck. I could hear Rick whistling away on the patio, reading the morning Tribune. When she tasted me long and practiced, I couldn’t hear a thing except ringing in my ears, and my inner voice telling me this girl might do this for pay, but was no ordinary whore. She pulled away and smirked, her eyes still cold, but with a barely perceptible spark.
“If we had time, I’d be more grateful,” she cooed in that soft contralto, her mouth nibbling around mine. “But you might think I was selling myself since I’m going to hit you up for a loan—say a hundred?” She pulled back and smirked. “Just to get me where I’m going.”
It was quite a close, if that’s what her aim had been. Cold but smooth. She was good. “Sure.”
“I’m not peddling myself. No quid pro quo here.”
“I know. Wouldn’t take quid that way. Glad to help with the quo, though. Leaving town?”
“Fast. When I tap some dough I’ve stashed. It’s in a good place, a place those lunkheads won’t ever look, but you can bet they’ve stripped my place in Glencoe clean by now.”
“Must be tough knowing there’s no one you can trust.”
“There is one. The stash’s in a place we both can get to. But don’t want this person in the vise.”
“You can pay me back when you get where you’re going. Glencoe’s pretty ritzy.”
“I only thought I should reward you. Say, how do you shave around that nasty scar?”
“Carefully. Look, Jane whatever—what I did for you, I’d do for anyone facing that fate.”
She shivered and fear raced in her eyes. Turning, she opened the door again, and sat back on the corner of the bed, her arms propped behind her and those breasts pointing out my way. My eyes got another workout.
“In case your roommate gets nosy, he won’t be envious.”
“He already is. Need to find him someone about 40 who can take his humor.”
“Sorry. I don’t know anyone like that.”
“Why don’t you let us in on the mugs who tried to incinerate you? It’s not like you’d be ratting to the cops, honey. Besides, I’m between cases. Life’s boring between cases.”
She shook her head. “Don’t get mixed up in it. These are nasty people. I turned one of them in for half killing an associate of mine, and, believe me, once they know they didn’t finish the job last night, I won’t be safe in Chicago.”
“I’ve got a reporter friend, recently married a Russian mail-order bride. You can stay with them a couple days till you decide where and when.”
“You’ve done enough for me, don’t you think, Rick?”
“Mike. Mike Angel. Rick’s the perverted coot, as you call him.”
“Angel? Would be. At least you were last night.” She smiled for the second time. This one was half natural. Then she winced and stretched out her right side with a hand on her hip, her arm akimbo.
“Sore?”
“Like a bear tried to break my back.”
“Girls aren’t made too well for climbing. Rick’s also a master masseuse. You should let him limber you up. And I changed the name from D’Angelo after Dad was murdered. It’s a cheap way for me to always try to be my best self, except of course around some females.”
She ignored my remarks about being good and looked out the window at Rick. “He’s an all around gramps, isn’t he? You thinking I’m a stand in for that 40 year old he needs?”
“Wasn’t thinking that. Your breasts were occupying most of my thoughts. What do you say about staying with my reporter friend and his wife?”
She got up and lifted one blind with her pinkie finger. “I need to get the hell out of here. I can’t go to my place—so, I can’t say no.”
Rick had been standing in the kitchen and when I turned he said, “Most lovelies can’t say no to Angel. It’s the ambience of your El Rancho Roacho that does it.”
Chapter 3
Before I drove Jane to Louie’s, she told us her real name was Evie, short for Evelyn. About all she did tell us. Rick wanted to stay behind and gab with the inspectors sifting through charred remains.
While Evie did a marathon job of putting on makeup she found in Nika’s things, Rick warned me that Evie was likely involved in some bad action: why she was playing dumb. Her bruises, mostly on the arm and shoulder, didn’t suggest amnesia.
When we pulled out of the driveway, police sawhorses barricaded the shell of the apartments. Twenty or more cops and suits stood around. I was certain someone saw us rescue Evie and take her in, so I was somewhat surprised there were that many investigators on the scene and none had rapped on our door. With all those flatfeet milling around, I was confident the stooges with purple fingers wouldn’t show themselves for a while.
Evie took the hundred like dough she’d earned. I wasn’t worried about getting paid back; she didn’t seem like the deadbeat, but obviously she’d lived through experiences that’d sucked the warmth from her. I thought about how I’d looked at her body with no reaction. Maybe I was getting older.
Louie’s young wife had been in the country less than a year and Louie often worked odd hours putting out the late edition. She was ecstatic to have any sort of female visitor, but her joy seemed to roll off Evie like an unwelcome hug. I left Louie my number at Roacho and also the office, in case I felt like working again.
Driving back I felt proud of myself that I hadn’t taken Evie up on her blunt seduction offer. Maybe I was learning, finally, that it wasn’t my duty to net every good-looking canary that flew by. Evie was hard, but not the tired sort of hard that hookers get from having too many hands clutch their asses. She was high class but somehow involved in dirt deep enough to warrant a nasty execution. Rick hinted as much and I knew he was piecing things together. He’d make a perfect partner for a stiff like me who’d always gone his own way, always headlong before knowing all the questions, much less the answers. I owed Rick for smoothing things out when I did my brief stint for the Twenty-third. Only honest cop there, rising to detective lieutenant grade the year before he retired, promotion he would’ve won a decade sooner if it weren’t for all the cops on the take who hated him.
I pulled up the driveway and saw Rick standing on the curb gabbing with two suits. They didn’t look like insurance investigators or detectives. Elliot Ness clones.
“J. Edgar’s boys?” I asked when Rick walked in.
“Right, feebees. It seems our Jane, our Evie, might be involved in a white slaver ring. The Feds have been squeezing the case for months. Chased this particular operation for months but were always a step behind.”
“That’s big enough stakes for a hit. You tell them about her?”
“They knew we cut her down. But, no, I told them she’d left early this morning and I didn’t know where. I don’t, do I?”
“Not unless you know where my friend at the Sun-Times lives.”
“There’s a bit more. Something Evie must have known but didn’t mention.”
“Yeah. Who the lunkheads were?”
“No. Another girl who didn’t make it out.”
I plunked myself in a chair and stared at the tops of my shoes. I never find answers there, only scuffs that make lousy Rorschach.
“Tied up?”
“The same.”
“Makes you wonder why Evie neglected to mention it. She wasn’t unconscious.”
“She’s in deep, Mike. I hope you didn’t follow any impulses.”
“Only to loan her a C note.”
“Sucker. Big time sucker. When’s our next poker night?”
Rick wormed more information out of the local flatties than I ever could’ve. He’d be an asset in any partnership, that’s for sure, and I was leaning more and more toward throwing in with him. Between Rick and Molly, I was sure to tow the line. Besides, what other racket did I know? But I knew the true reason I went into investigations was because it was Dad’s dream to do that in retirement, and he was cheated by murder on his very first case.