Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers (159 page)

CHAPTER TEN

BACK WHEN I WAS just a kid—a teenager—my dad used to insist on smelling my breath whenever I came home from a night out with my friends. It’s not that he didn’t expect me to have a good time and do all those things boys and girls will do when they are coming of age. He didn’t mind if I drank a beer or two, so long as I wasn’t driving and so long as I wasn’t getting in the car with any of my friends who might be drinking and driving. But he wasn’t looking for the smell of beer on my breath, so much as he was looking for pot. Dad was a single parent and a conservative one at that. Smoking pot he used to say, was a wrong that would inevitably lead to other wrongs. All it would take is one toke and I’d be heading down that dark, slippery-sloped, heroin-LSD-crystal meth tunnel from which there was no return other than inside one of the Moonlight Funeral Parlor pine boxes. Whether or not dad was way off base about the effects of recreational drugs leading to hard-core narcotics, I never lost sight of the true meaning behind his paranoia. Once you take the leap and make that first wrong decision, it can often lead to other, even more wrong decisions.

Case and point.

Snorting an innocent line or two and washing it down with a couple of cold beers along with Sissy Walls may sound innocent enough, in relative terms. After all, I’m here to get information about where her husband might have disappeared to. And if she’s in the middle of doing a little partying, the last thing I want to be is a party pooper. Partiers like it when other people party with them. They like forming a bond with other like-minded people. In doing so, they form loose lips. They talk. A lot. And that’s exactly what I wanted from Sissy Walls. Loose lips.

Problem is, those few innocent lines and beers quickly turned into a bunch of lines and a bunch of beers and the next thing you know, we’re tearing one another’s clothes off all the way upstairs on the way to her bedroom.

An hour later I’m lying naked beside the equally naked Mrs. Walls in her big king-sized marriage bed wondering how the hell I got here but knowing full well it all has to do with making that first wrong decision by snorting that first skinny little delicious line.

“Was it good for you too, cowboy?” she asks, while firing up a post-sex cigarette.

“It was all my pleasure,” I tell her. “Believe me. You’re a little spitfire. If you don’t mind my saying so.”

“I don’t mind your saying so,” she says, setting the lighter back down on the night stand, exhaling that initial nicotine-laced hit of blue smoke. “As you no doubt already know, Roger is getting on in years, and his bedroom performances aren’t exactly what they used to be.”

“Viagra,” I say, not without a chuckle.

“Viagra only works if you’re not drunk. It’s powerless against whiskey dick.”

I turn to get a look at her then. She’s lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling, smoking. An unhappy and extremely attractive young woman who no doubt was caught up in the fever of Roger’s charm, only to realize a short time later that infatuation is not spelled the same as love. Not even close.

“We’ve partied and done the wild thing,” I say after a time. “And it’s been lovely. But I eventually have to get around to the reason for my little visit.”

She smokes, exhales.

“Do I have any idea where my husband could have gone?” she sighs posing the question for me.

“That’s a good question to start with.”

“And his hotshot Manhattan agent just can’t rest until she finds him.”

“Formerly from Manhattan agent. But yes, she can’t rest.”

She turns to look at me over her shoulder. “How much is she paying you to lasso him?”

“Enough. Does it matter?”

“Well, I were you I’d get some of that money upfront. She tell you why she wants you to find him?”

“She doesn’t have to. Nor is it my business. But she did tell me that she’s run into trouble as of late and Roger is pretty much her only client these days. She doesn’t get him back behind a typewriter, she doesn’t eat. Or something along those lines.”

She laughed. Snorted out her snowflake-chilled nostrils is more like it.

“Mr. Moonlight,” she says, “Suzanne Bonchance has some money. Some. Money. But not all of it from the sales of her client’s books however. Never mind Roger Walls.”

I roll over, plant my elbow on the bed, rest the side of my head on my fisted hand. Using my free hand, I snatch the cigarette away from her, steal a slow drag, hand it back. Why is it that everyone smokes when you’re trying to quit? Moonlight the hopelessly addicted.

“I’m all ears,” I say, placing the cigarette back in her hand.

“Let me ask you a question,” she says. “Did you like that coke we just did?”

I’m not sure if I could tell the difference between good coke and bad coke. But I’m not about to let her know that.

“Primo,” I say, taking a shot at getting it right. “The best.”

“Yup, not bad, right? You know where Roger gets his shit?”

“You mean who he buys it from?”

The invisible light bulb flashes on over my head.

“His agent,” I say.

“Hey, New York’s top agent has not only fallen from glory with her little literary stealing act, but she’s been forced to resort to some alternative bottom-feeding ways of making a living. She tell you about the FBI investigation?”

I picture the Suzanne Bonchance I had lunch with just a few short hours ago. Done up perfectly in a dark suit, not a strand of hair out of place. Maybe she seemed to be sucking down the martinis but she didn’t seem to be getting drunk. Despite the slurring of certain words, she seemed pretty much in control. But then she did hardly touch her food. If there’s one substance on earth that will kill an appetite, it’s Bolivian marching powder.

“She hasn’t mentioned it,” I admit, remembering how the agent spoke about prank phone calls. Somebody who was out to get her for what she’d done. That someone most likely being the man whose manuscript she stole. Ian Brando.

Sissy stamps out her spent cigarette, rolls over to face me, pulling the covers up over her shoulders like she’s only seconds away from closing her eyes and going to sleep. And maybe she is.

“From what Roger has told me, she’s been accused of cashing some of her former client’s royalty statements, and keeping all the money for herself. That’s a no-no.”

“I haven’t heard anything about extortion. I didn’t see anything about it when I did some research on her.”

“It’s still an ongoing investigation. It isn’t public yet.”

If what Sissy’s telling me is the truth, then either Bonchance is going to have a little bit more explaining to do about her past or I’m going to give some serious thought about first, withdrawing my book from her consideration, and two, quitting my quest to find Roger Walls. For now I’ll give my client the benefit of the doubt and chalk up Sissy Walls as a more or less drunk, jilted, and just plain bored young housewife looking to piss on Suzanne while she’s down. After all, Suzanne thought it would be a good idea for me to talk with her. If she thought for a second that Sissy would paint the lit agent as a drug running loser, two steps ahead of the cops, she would have insisted I stay away Old Chatham altogether.

“I’ll look more into it when I have the chance.”

“She pay you yet? Give you an advance for your services Moonlight?”

Sissy has a point.

“No. But I rarely ask for one.”

“Well, far be it from me to give you advice. You being a professional private
dick
and all.” She shifts her hand under the covers, grabs hold of my now sleeping manhood. “But I’d ask for some upfront money before you waste another second trying to find my drunk husband … Cash.”

I gently take hold of her hand, push it away from my golden jewels.

“I can take a hint,” she says. “Party’s over.”

“I gotta get to work at some point,” I say, sliding out of bed, bending over, gathering up my clothes. The few pieces of clothing that made it up to her room, that is. “So you gonna tell me where you think I should start looking for your husband?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Jesus, do you really have to find him, Moonlight?”

“He’s your sig other, Sissy. Don’t you want him back, safe and sound?”

A grin forms on her mouth.

“I hate the man’s guts, if you want to know the truth. It’s peaceful not having him around all the time. Roger is what you call a heavy. It’s all about him and him alone. He’s my biggest mistake.”

I look into her eyes. Eyes that aren’t afraid to look away from mine. Sissy is most definitely telling the truth when she says she hates her husband. Excuse me … her missing husband.

“He’s a writer,” I say after a long, heavy pause. “Writer’s live in their own selfish world. So I’m told.”

“Roger’s world is one hell of a place to live in, believe me. It’s as vast as it is close-minded and it is hell on earth.”

“So where should I start, Sissy?”

“I were you, I’d head back over to Albany, find a phone book, open it up to ‘Seedy Joints, Grills, Gin Mills, and Tittie Bars.’ Then begin with the
A’s
. With a little luck you’ll catch up to him by the time you make it to the
P’s
.”

“That’s not a whole lot to go on.”

“Hey, you’re the investigator. You think of something, Mr. Rockford.”

I slip into my underwear and jeans. My tennis socks and boots are downstairs.

“Let me ask you one last question. If Roger is aware of all the shit that Suzanne could be pulling, why does he stick with her? He’s a big famous writer. He could have any agent he wants. Why not fire her like everyone else has?”

“If I had a dime for every time I’ve asked him that same question, I would have my own place by now … In the deep-blue-sea Caribbean, far away from him.”

Looks like it’s not only Suzanne who’s leading a secret life separate from the literary life. Or maybe she and Roger are in cahoots together, partnering up on some serious drug running. But why would a rich and famous man of words take a chance like that? I could press Sissy more about the true nature of Walls’s and Bonchance’s relationship, both personal and professional, but I decide to let it go for now. I just want to get the hell out of that bedroom and out of Walls’s house. I slip my unbuttoned button-down work shirt over my head, let it hang out untucked.

“Don’t bother getting up,” I insist. “I’ll let myself out.”

“I had a nice afternoon, Detective Dick.”

“It was rather swell. I’ll be seeing you in all the unfamiliar places.”

I pull a card from my pocket, leave it on her dresser.

“How poetic. You should think about becoming a writer yourself.”

“Thanks, I’ll take your advice into consideration. In the meantime, you think of something else beside phonebooks, give me a call. Day or night.”

“Maybe I’ll call just to call,” she says, that grin growing into a full-blown smile. “You look like the phone-sex type.”

“Let’s not and say we did,” I say, reciting one of Dad’s famous lines.

“What the hell does that mean?” she begs.

I exit the bedroom at a half-jog without explaining.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

MY SOCKS AND BOOTS back on my feet, I fire up Dad’s hearse, and leave the Walls house behind. With my luck, the literary hothead will be heading up into the driveway while I’m heading out. I imagine his gray hair-covered head and thick beard, the exposed skin on his round face turning red-hot with anger. Maybe he’ll slam the brakes on his ride, fishtail it in the middle of the drive, making it impossible for me to pass. Then he’ll get out, cradling a loaded rifle in his hands. A rifle barrel as deep and black as eternity itself will be the last thing I remember as he blasts me to Kingdom Come. Next thing I’d know, I’d either be riding that wormhole to heaven or to hell, or at the very least, waking up in the recovery room of the Albany Medical Center, what’s left of my respiratory system hooked up to some life support machine.

But as luck would have it, I make it to the end of the drive, past the open wood gates and out onto the road without Walls being the wiser.

Thank God for small miracles.

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