Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery #1: The Killing Circle (A Neal Rafferty New Orleans Mystery) (11 page)

“Nope. That's not part of the deal.”

“Then maybe I'd better talk to them first. Do you think Carter has the books?”

“Maybe you know the answer to that one and you aren't telling. What I think is writing in the sky. Are you going to tell me or not? . . .”

“No, man, you've got it all wrong. I don't know if he has those books.”

“As I was saying before I got interrupted,” I said, “are you going to tell me where Carter and Lise are?”

He sucked his lips in and shook his head. “I better talk to them first.”

I stood up. “Sorry, Chase, but I don't like that idea. You see, I don't have a whole lot of time left and whether you believe me or not, I am interested in saving Fleming and his son some trouble. One way or another I'm going to talk to the kid today. And you're going to tell me where he is so I can.”

He joined me in an upright position. “What if I won't tell you where he is?”

I took in some air. “There is an alternative to your not telling me, but if you're Carter and Lise's friend, you won't like it anymore than I do. The alternative is I call the police in. But I wasn't hired to turn my job over to them. That means you're going to tell me what I want to know. I don't mind getting nasty about it either.”

He screwed his mouth into a sarcastic grin. “Does that mean you'd pull a gun on me?”

“There's that,” I replied. “Now, let's have it. Where are they?”

“Hell, I don't know.” He started pacing behind the sofa.

“I oughta punch you in the mouth,” I said.

He slowed down and peered at me. “Look. How do I know if you're really a private detective?”

“Want to see my identification card?” I asked politely.

“Shoot, those things are easy to fake. How do I know if anything you've told me is true?”

“I guess you'll have to take my word for it. I'm not fooling around any longer. Come on, you know where they are. Let's have it.”

He put his palms up. “Really, I don't know.”

I sighed. “That's a bad choice for a lot of people.” I started reaching in the general direction of my gun. “Let's go.”

He came around the sofa making conciliatory movements. “Cool it, man, just cool it. I
don't
know where they are, but I can find out. I know they're somewhere outside of New Haven. The deal was that when Carter came back from New Orleans he was jumpy as hell. I couldn't get it out of either one of them what the trouble was and I finally got sick of the little idiot pulling his nerves on me so I told him about a friend of mine who has a farmhouse up there and told him to go take a rest. He made the arrangements but the guy lives here in the city most of the time so I can find out exactly where it is. If you'll wait a minute, I'll go change my clothes and go with you. After all, I can't go around looking like a bum with a high-class detective like yourself.”

I poked through the canvases while Chase scrambled around for what he called his business clothes. He went back through the door under the bed while I continued my survey. Lise André was very good and had a very distinctive style. Fleming's paintings were more abstract, a little like Chase's, but since I don't know much about it all I took Chase's word that he was pretty good, too.

I was finished looking but Chase still hadn't come out of the bathroom. I walked over in that direction. “Chase, let's move it. I'd like to be back in New Orleans tonight, not next week,” I yelled through the shuttered door.

“Just a minute,” he called over the running water.

I turned around to look the room over again. From what Chase had said, Fleming must periodically send someone around to check up on his son. It was no wonder that he didn't pass on the results of these findings to his wife. Her Victorian blood pressure probably couldn't take it. If any of Fleming's courtiers had stuck around long enough, Chase would have been glad to tell them it was a happy threesome; I wondered if Fleming knew about Lise and if it was the reason for his preoccupation the night before. Surely his thumb wasn't that interesting. It might have bothered me some more if I hadn't given up getting peeved over clients’ lack of trust long ago.

I was still musing when something hard was shoved against a vertabra in my lower back. My body stiffened. I started twisting my neck to get a view.

“Don't move.” The command was enunciated very carefully. Water was still running in the bathroom. “Very slowly, and I mean
very
slowly, lift your arms away from your body.”

I lifted them to flying position and a hand came around and relieved me of the weight of my gun. As soon as he had it he moved back.

“Now,” he continued, “you may turn around, but move very slowly.”

I turned. Chase stood there dressed every bit like a Chase Manhattan Jones should be dressed—in a dark suit, white shirt, and a conservatively striped tie. He pointed my gun at me.

“Shit. That was easy. Just used the old knuckle in the back routine and look what it got me.” He jiggled the gun up and down. “You aren't so tough.”

I didn't feel so tough. “Watch it. That gun's loaded.”

He opened his eyes wide. “I should hope so.” We stared at each other. “Now we play by my rules. I want to talk to Carter before you do.”

I shrugged. “As you say, it's your game now. What's next? Are you going to tie me up?”

He nodded and smiled. “Good idea. Thanks.” He stepped further away from me and sent quick glances around the room. “I don't think I have any rope. Got any ideas about what I can use?”

“Any nylon stockings around?”

He smiled some more. “My goodness, you're cooperative when you're looking down a gun barrel. That
is
a good idea.” He opened the door to the bathroom very wide and backed through it. I was already standing opposite. He kept his eyes on me while he felt around and grabbed the knob on a small chest of drawers. He fumbled in the drawer and pulled out a wadded up pair of hose.

“I'm sorry to have to do this Neal,” he apologized, coming out of the bathroom, “but I wouldn't be much of a friend if I let you at ‘em without talking to them first.”

“Think nothing of it. It's just the embarrassment that's hard to take.”

He chuckled as he flipped the hose trying to get them to unroll. They wouldn't. His eyes flicked down to see what was holding them and stayed there just long enough. I grabbed his wrist and began to twist painfully. He made a few gurgling sounds and the gun fell to the floor. I let go and his other hand took the place of mine and felt for damage.

“Hey, goddammit.” he yelled, “that's my painting hand.”

I scooped the gun from the floor. “Well, it's
my
gun.”

We stood there snarling and glaring at each other like a couple of kids vying for possession of a football. I couldn't stand it anymore. I started laughing and laughed like I was seeing W.C. Fields playing Ping-Pong for the first time. I collapsed on the sofa and naturally hit the same spring Chase had been having trouble with all morning. It hurt, but for some reason it struck me as hilarious and I started guffawing all over again.

Chase had fallen into the opposite chair in the same condition. He sobered up first and went off to the refrigerator for beer. He threw one to me and fell back into the chair. When I opened it, it sprayed all over my face. I looked up at him, beer running down to the front of my suit. He tried to swallow before he got helpless again, but he choked before it all got down and we both sat there with beer-soaked ties.

It took a while to establish control, mop up, and get back to the business at hand.

“Look, man, you gotta understand my position. I feel like I'm turning in a couple of kids, for Christ's sake!”

“But you're not,” I insisted. “The old man is paying me. I'm on his side and his son's and his son's girlfriend's. Unless they've committed murder, I'll stay on their side. I don't know what else to tell you to convince you that I'm a good guy.”

“Think of something.”

“Nuts,” I complained, “Okay, try this. Carter was spotted at the scene of the murder. That's what I know that the police don't know. If they find out, there's going to be cops swarming all over this place.”

Chase stood up and flailed his arms around. “But how do I know you're not just telling me that?”

“How do you know I'm not the king of Siam? Think of it this way: Fleming's paying me to find his books and keep his name out of a murder case. But his books, his son, and the murder victim were all too close the day of the murder. He's mad at the kid, but he sure as hell doesn't think the kid's a murderer. He didn't want me to come here; he'd blow a fuse if he knew I had. What he and no one else seems to be thinking about are the consequences if I don't get to the kid first. You think about it.”

Chase leaned his head on a closed fist and mulled it over. After a heavy-lidded meditation he said quietly, “Okay. I'm going to trust you.” His voice got progressively louder. “But I'm going to trust you because every other person who's ever been around here for the old man has been a snooping social register snob who wouldn't have sat on that sofa and spoiled his St. Laurent suit for nothing.” He wiped the slate clean.

I've been liked for some reasons and trusted for some of the same reasons and some different ones, but this was the only time I'd ever been trusted because I was willing to pin my tail on a sofa spring.

15

More About Fathers and Sons

Chase stuck to his story about the farmhouse in Connecticut. He said he was going to have to look up his friend and get directions. We took a subway to midtown Manhattan. Somehow over the roar in the tunnel I was able to think clearly enough to start wondering again why a guy like Chase would take on two starving artists. I asked him how he came to be in the protection racket, what his interest in them was.

“When I met Lise and Carter,” he told me, “they were really having a rough time. I had that big old loft so I moved them in I guess I feel more protective toward Carter than I do Lise. She's pretty tough and she's a better artist than he is. He's having trouble coping with this way of life—it doesn't take you five minutes to figure out he's a spoiled rich kid—but I admire him for trying at all. You see, Lise doesn't need anybody's protection. She would have made it anyway. Carter won't, I don't think, not even with her. I think he'll end up going back home to daddy. Maybe I hope he will.”

“So you put up with Carter because you like Lise.” “Yeah, I guess so. He can really be a little shit sometimes.” He shrugged. “I suppose I'm just jealous of him, which is stupid. The girl is too young for me. Anyway, I've got to get out of this scene, but I won't quit for the same reasons Carter will. I like change and upheaval. And I know how to make money, too. It's just that all of it, the whole thing, is really beginning to get to me.” His eyes shaded over with depression. Then he said in a low tone, threateningly, “You better mean what you say about saving them trouble.”

“Watch it. You're being protective again and you're liking the girl too much. Why don't you find an older woman?”

“I need a lecture from a private snoop?” he queried.

“Sorry,” I conceded.

It was well into the afternoon and I really didn't want this to be an extended stay. I told Chase to find his friend and get the directions while I went to the rent-a-car place and arranged for a car I made the decision to let him go by himself on raw instinct which does go wrong sometimes. But this Jones character struck me as an impulsive type, impulsive enough to trust me for my apparently obscure sitting habits and equally impulsive enough to withdraw that trust if it wasn't returned. I watched him move down the street and wondered if I hadn't had better ideas.

I went into the rent-a-car place to make arrangements and do some flirting with the girl behind the counter. After minor chitchat she told me there would be about a twenty-minute wait and I told her to send Mr. Jones over to the coffee shop next door when he came back.

I ordered coffee and sandwiches and tried to figure out what was going on between André and young Fleming. I couldn't quite see André using Fleming's son to steal the books, and, anyway, Garber must have let Carter walk out of his store with them. If, of course, the box the young man had been carrying contained the Blake books. And if the young man had been Carter Fleming III. That was the only way it made sense. The problem was that I just didn't know enough, but I was laying money and my neck on the line betting that Carter the Third had some answers.

The sandwiches came and I finished mine, ordered more coffee and smoked several cigarettes. Chase still hadn't shown. But the instinct had been so strong. I realized that senility doesn't usually strike a person in his mid-thirties so it had to be that I was losing my touch. The consequences of such a thing happening were not pleasant to think about. I brushed it from my mind. After all, I hadn't been waiting that long. I tried to remember all the things I had heard about the virtue of patience but it probably wasn't a mere thirty seconds later that I began to get fidgety with the notion that a maniac with a tattoo was going to embarrass me for the second time in a day.

I lit what I had decided would be my final cigarette when he slipped into the booth opposite. He was sporting a new haircut.

“Time for a new life and a new image,” he said.

“The little kids will be disappointed.”

“There are other images for them. Hope I'm not holding up the works.”

I told him to have a sandwich. “Did you find out where the house is?”

“It's all right here.” He tapped his shirt pocket. “But it's a little bit farther than just outside New Haven. And my buddy says that he's not sure when they're due back. Hell, they could be on the way now.” His tone was ambivalent.

“We go anyway,” I said.

“I guess I can use some country air”

I paid the check and went to get the car. I asked for a Connecticut map despite Chase's insistence that he could get us there blindfolded.

“If you pass out,” I told him, “I still want to get there.” He called me a dirty copper for not having more faith.