Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (157 page)

“And don’t forget my manuscript.”

She shoots me a smile while taking another sip of her martini. “Anything else I can do for you?”

“Don’t forget sex with the woman of my choice.”

“I never sleep with my clients.”

“That mean you’re taking on my book?”

“You’d trust me with it, knowing about my sordid past?” She slurs the
S
in sordid.

“Yup. I believe you’re the type who never makes the same mistake twice.”

“I’ve been married and divorced three times.”

“But not to the same man.”

“Naturally.”

I dig into more steak.

Suzanne drinks and ignores hers.

For dessert I will get back on the trail of Roger Walls and wallow in the knowledge that not only is Suzanne Bonchance going to represent my book, she’s going to sleep with me too.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SINCE I’VE STILL GOT nearly half a day to kill until I meet up with Erica and her writing professor, I decide to start at the start. That means driving over the big iron and concrete Patroon Island Bridge that spans the Hudson River into Rensselaer County and heading out toward the old town of Chatham, which lies on the hilly, rural borderlands between Massachusetts and New York State.

The drive in Dad’s funeral hearse is scenic and peaceful. Miles and miles of the prettiest farm and wild country you ever did see. Soon a stream emerges on the right side of the road. The stream is known as the Kinderhook. A favorite amongst the local fly fishermen. Even I’ve been known to drop a line in its swift moving, crystal clear water from time to time.

When I come to a short metal bridge that spans the stream and that connects with a narrow country road that leads into town, I pull the hearse off onto the soft shoulder and get out. I spot a lone fly fisherman working the area under the bridge for the trout that might be hiding there amongst the rocks in the shadows. Walking onto the designated pedestrian pathway set along the far right side of the bridge, I stop in its center. I lean both elbows onto the railing and poke my head over the side to look directly down onto the fisherman. For a quiet moment, I watch him work his line with all the skill and grace of a lion tamer and his bullwhip. I don’t want to disturb his concentration by shouting out at him, so I wait until he senses my presence and looks up.

“Any luck?” I pose.

“Haven’t caught anything but a chill today,” he says.

“Maybe they haven’t stocked the stream yet. It’s early in the season.”

The bearded man takes in some line with his right hand while holding to his fly rod with his left.

“An optimist you are. Are you gonna watch or you gonna fish?”

“Neither. I’m working.”

“Somebody’s got to.”

“You from around here?”

“That’d be about right,” he says, gearing up for another cast, cocking the nimble rod over his right shoulder.

“You know of a man named Roger Walls?”

He stops his cast, allows the loose line to drop onto the swift moving stream.

“Kind of question is that? Anyone who lives here knows Roger. He’s famous.”

“Well old famous Roger seems to be missing in action these days and I’ve been hired to try and find him. Any ideas?”

“He’s missing? What are you, a cop?”

“A private detective. His literary agent has hired me to find him.”

The fly fisherman smiles.

“You really a private detective?” he asks with a smile. “Or you telling tall tales?”

“Says so on my license.”

“You carry a gun?”

I open my leather coat just enough to reveal the inverted butt of my shoulder-holstered Browning .38.

“Nice piece,” he nods. “I sometimes deer hunt with a pistol in the fall.”

“Any idea where Roger might run off to if given the chance?”

“Can’t imagine why he’d run off, unless he shot somebody again.” He shoots me a quizzical look. “He shoot somebody again?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Must be he’s on one of his benders.”

“He pull a lot of benders?”

“Good for one or so a year.”

“He always leave town when that happens?”

The fly fisherman nods, while once more retrieving his line.

“Almost always. But he always comes back after a week or so, claiming to have no idea where he’s been.”

If all this is simply about a bender, I could probably camp out in Chatham for a week, collect my money from Bonchance, and wait it out on the comfort of a bar stool until Walls shows back up. Maybe even do a little fishing. But that wouldn’t be very honorable of me and I suck at fly fishing.

“Where’s a good place to start looking for Roger? In your opinion?”

“How about the tavern? It’s the only one in Old Chatham. Just keep on following the road until it makes the bend at the start of town. It’s directly across the street from the post office. Roger has his own stool in the far corner as you walk in the door. There’s a bust of him set there too.”

“A bust. You mean, like a statue?”

“Yup. Local artist carved it up in clay. Pretty good likeness.”

I thought about my own book. If it sold, I wondered if I would ever become famous enough to have my own stool at a village tavern. My own bust.

“How nice for Roger. Must be nice to be famous.”

“Can’t be that great if he feels the need to get fucked up all the time.”

“You got a point there. It’s why I avoid being rich and famous myself.”

The fisherman laughs.

“Hey, Old Chatham is smaller than small. Blink and you’ll miss it altogether. Whether he likes it or not, Roger is one famous writer. And he’s our local Hemingway. He brings in much needed revenue from tourists looking to catch a look. Or wannabe writers anyway looking for advice.”

“I’ll start there. At the stool and the bust and the bar.”

“Good luck.”

“You too.”

He casts his line under the bridge. I hold my position to see if a trout strikes. But nothing happens. What did a famous fisherman say once? They call it fishing because you can’t always expect to land a fish with every cast. Otherwise, they wouldn’t call it fishing at all. They’d call it, catching.

“Don’t give up I say.”

“Back ‘atcha.”

I walk back across the bridge toward Dad’s ride while contemplating the fact that I am fishing for Roger Walls. And so far, not a single nibble.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE CHATHAM TAVERN LOOKS like one of those ancient American watering holes that might have been frequented by the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson back in the day. Maybe the joint they would have come to immediately after scribbling their signatures on the Declaration of Independence and committing high treason against Mother England. Made entirely of rough wood planks and heavy beams, the low-ceilinged establishment is heated by an honest-to-goodness hearth-and-kettle brick fireplace to the left of the door as you walk in. To the right is a long wood bar that is so old, its thick plank top is worn from the countless elbows, glasses, mugs, and bottles that have no doubt occupied it for a century or more.

Just like the fly fisherman told me, at the very near end of the bar as you enter through the wood door, is an empty bar stool sporting a gold-plated plaque that’s been screwed onto two of its four legs. Even from where I’m standing just inside the door I can see that the plaque has the name ROGER WALLS embossed into it in thick upper-case letters, as if the name must be presented in a way that resembles the larger-than-life literary legend. Set to the right side of the stool on top of the bar, is a life-sized bust of Walls’s bulbous head. It’s made of hardened, kiln dried clay, and it depicts the writer’s bearded, wide-eyed face as it scowls ferociously at the patrons who occupy the rest of the bar, as if even in his absence, they are nothing but a royal pain in his writerly ass.

There aren’t a whole lot of customers at the bar. Two men I take to be spin fisherman drinking tall-necked
Buds
. Both of them wearing the same green, brown, and white camo overalls and lace-up boots they might wear during deer hunting season, with matching camo baseball hats.

Rednecks.

It makes sense to me that they’ve gravitated to a place along the empty bar situated directly across from a deer head that’s been mounted to the bar-back wall, a Remington lever-action rifle like the kind Hoss used on
Gunsmoke
supported horizontally atop its twelve-point rack. There’s a framed black-and-white photograph hanging on the wall below the deer head. It’s of a clean-shaven man who’s dressed in checkered hunting jacket. No doubt the man responsible for the impressive kill. Possibly the original bar owner, if my built-in shit detector serves me right. Moonlight the master sleuth.

I wait at the bar in Walls’s designated spot for a full minute or so, with only the pine wood-burning crackle coming from the fireplace and the mumbled voices of the rednecks to fill the silence. Until a woman appears out from behind a curtain that separates the bar back from an adjoining room. Standing maybe five foot one or two with short, spiked black hair, she’s bears the stocky build of a country woman who doesn’t take shit from anyone, not the least of which would be a drunken, belligerent customer. I peg her for about forty-five or forty-six. She’s wearing a plain gray sweatshirt over a pair of loose blue jeans and on her feet, a pair of black pointy-toed cowboy boots. Far be it from me to make any kind of judgment regarding one’s … let’s call it, sexual preference. As far as I’m concerned, whatever anyone does behind closed doors is their own business so long as it doesn’t involve kids and so long as they aren’t harming anyone. But if I had to guess, I’d venture to say this woman prefers the fairer sex when it comes to getting her rocks off. Something we both have in common.

She approaches without a smile.

“That seat’s reserved,” she says, her lips hardly moving when she speaks.

“I can see that,” I say, putting on the best Moonlight smile I can manage. “Mr. Walls is precisely the reason why I’m here.”

She stares at me. Correction. Not at me necessarily, but into me. As if on cue, the two rednecks behind her put an abrupt end to their conversation midstream, and glare at me from over her shoulder.

“Okay now that I have everyone’s attention,” I say after a beat, “my name is Dick Moonlight. I’ve been hired to find Roger. I’m a private detective.”

More silence. More stares. Like I’m an old rusted out pickup they want to tear up for spare parts.

“Tell you what,” I say, my eyes focused only on the barmaid. “Why don’t I start all over? How about you give me a
Budweiser
like the kind these fine gentlemen are drinking.” I dig into my pocket for a five-spot, set in onto the bar. “I’ve already had one today. What can one more hurt?”

The barmaid peels her eyes away from me long enough to slide open a cooler and dig out a beer. Uncapping the top with the metal opener mounted to the underside of the bar, she sets it not directly in front of me, but in front of the empty stool beside me to my left. I get the point and shift myself over.

She grabs the five, makes change with it, and sets it down beside the beer.

“Keep it,” I say, trying my best to maintain my Moonlight smile.

“What’s this about Roger going missing, Mr. Moonlight?” she begs.

“You don’t have to tell this Moonlight asshole nothing’, May,” barks one of the rednecks. He’s the taller one of the two, sporting a black, three-day growth. I can tell he’s downed a few already by the way he’s trying not to confuse the syllables in his words. “Ain’t none of his business.” He says “business” like “bishzzznezzz.”

“Gospel,” chimes in the shorter, chubbier, clean shaven one. “And he ain’t showed you any ID neither.”

In my head I’m picturing the movie
Deliverance
. Tighty-whitey-wearing Ned Beatty being raped doggy style by two backwoods gangbangers. Makes me yearn for the city life.

I drink down a swallow of beer, wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Tucked against my ribs inside my leather coat is my Browning .38 caliber. Not that I’m going to need it for anything. But it feels good to know it’s there, hanging right beside my broken but still beating heart.