Rainy City (2 page)

My life had capsized, my brain flipped inside out, feeling the way a wet tee shirt does when you pull it off. Kathy had seen me through some ugly times. She had always been staunch, no matter what shape her own life was taking, and I owed her. It was partially on the, basis of our history that I was so easily persuaded to poke into the affairs of her missing friend. That and the fact that Kathy had a premonition about her. If Kathy thought you were in trouble, you were in trouble.

Along with the biscuits and blackberry preserves, Kathy hauled up an enormous glass pitcher of apple juice. As we ate she gradually filled me in on Melissa Crowell Nadisky’s life.

“How about if we mosey over to Burt’s and then you can drop me off at Eloise’s birthday party? She’s having four clowns there, all told. Why don’t you come? It’ll be fun.”

“We’ll see what happens at Burton’s first. Besides, four clowns might be more than I can handle. I have enough trouble with just one sometimes.” Kathy grinned impishly, folded her palms under her chin as if framing a flower and batted her eyelashes. It made me laugh in spite of myself.

As she clambered into the truck, the mound of fresh wet earth beside the Adolf Horstmann caught my eye. I surveyed the neighborhood. Who the hell would have slipped into my yard—in the rain yet—and brained my dog? Being a reasonable man, I had to believe there was a reason. I wondered whether I would ever find out.

“Melissa was one of those ugly ducklings you see arriving at college and blooming right before your eyes,” Kathy said. “She was so shy and backward when I first met her that she almost seemed retarded. That’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s true. What do you think, Thomas? Think we can find her?”

“Does her husband want us to look?”

“I don’t know what Burton wants.”

“What about mom and pop? You saw them? What did they say?”

“I only met him. He’s a fancy Dan executive for one of those big conglomerates. He might even own the company for all I know. I told him

I suggested to Mr. Crowell how strange it was that he didn’t care where his daughter was. He got real annoyed when I mentioned I had a private detective friend who would find her.”

“You happen to mention my name?” I glanced across the seat at her.

“I don’t remember. What do you think the chances of finding her are?”

“It’s more likely she’ll come back on her own. On the other hand, some people who run away want to be found. So they don’t go far and they don’t put much thought or worry into covering their trail.”

Kathy was silent for a long while. When I looked across at her, she was examining the close rows of pre-war housing we were passing near the zoo. For a moment, I admired her clean profile below the top hat.

The missing woman’s husband lived in Ballard and the drive was a short one. Kathy and I wouldn’t have long to talk. I pushed in the choke on the Ford. The motor coughed.

“I only had the one

whatever you want to call it. Just this one-time feeling that something too awful was going to happen.”

“To Melissa?”

Kathy cleared her throat. I could see where the white paint ended just above the hollow at the base of her neck. “I don’t know. Maybe it has something to do with her little girl. But it has everything to do with her disappearance. It’s all connected somehow.”

“You didn’t tell me she had a little girl.”

“Angel? She’s three. She’s a darling. Gosh, I hope this costume doesn’t scare her.”

“I have a feeling there are a lot of things you haven’t told me. Last night you started to go into something about Melissa and then you stopped yourself. What was it?”

“You caught that?”

I grunted. “What was it?”

“In college Melissa was so bashful at first, you almost had to feel sorry for her.

Then she went through a phase. It must have been about her junior year. She became a…kind of a tramp. Nothing else you could call it. Then she settled down and was quiet again. I wasn’t seeing much of her at that time, but I heard about it from mutual friends.”

“You mean she dated a lot of different guys?”

“She dated every guy, practically. And the way I understood it, she slept with all of them.”

“How did people know these things?”

“Melissa didn’t, care who knew. She’d tell you if you asked her.”

“When did she marry this fella, Burton?”

“I don’t know. I lost touch for a few years. Three years ago? Four years? About the time I moved into your basement. She dated him off and on ever since I knew her. But I always had the feeling there was nothing hot and heavy to it. You know, one of those guys a girl keeps on the back burner for a weekend when nothing else turns up.”

“Just like you and me?”

Kathy squinted at me and thrust her fingers into my ribs through my cocoa-colored ski coat. “Give me a break,” she said.

“So what do these people do for a living?”

“Burton’s a poet.”

“Are you talking `poet,’ as in poetry?”

“He’s a real poet. He’s been published in everything, even the Atlantic. He’s quite good.”

“Does he find that puts bread and butter on the table?”

I asked, semi-facetiously. I had written some poetry once.

“Unless they’ve changed, they don’t have a lot of bread and butter on the table. They’re on food stamps. Burton works parttime when he can get it. Last I heard, he worked this summer for a month in Alaska doing something with crabs. But that was months ago and he hasn’t had anything since. Melissa keeps the house together. She used to work at a dime store down the street from their place. Recently, I think she was out of work.”

“Did she graduate?”

“About the time Angel was born. She’s got a teaching certificate. You know about how valuable they are these days. That and fifty cents will get her downtown on the bus.”

“What’s your feeling on this? You never explained what you think will happen. The premonition.”

“You don’t want to hear it.”

“But I do. I trust your feelings. You may not always be right on the button, but you’ve been close enough to make a believer out of me. If you said it was time to sell my mother, I’d have to pack her up and stick an ad in the Times.”

For several moments Kathy debated whether or not to articulate her thoughts, then decided against it. “We’ll find her and then things will work out.”

“Okay, but if both Burton and her father don’t want me screwing around, it’s no deal. It’s tough enough locating someone when you have the family pitching for you. With the family on the other team? No deal.”

“Are you good at finding people, Thomas?”

“I’m good.”

Kathy lapsed into a world of her own and I suppose I started thinking about my dog’s assassin. Perhaps someone thought the mutt was Kathy’s. Maybe some pervert was after her. I decided to break up the somber mood by switching on the Bible thumpers. Though she had been raised in a strict religious atmosphere, Kathy had forsaken all organized worship and loved to mock her past. The radio dial was loaded with proselytizing preachers on this cloudy, windswept Sunday.

“What if Burton’s not home?” Kathy asked suddenly.

“Sunday morning?” I looked at my watch. “Not yet nine-thirty? Are you kidding me? And miss Brother Andy Bob? Even the mayor is home in front of the tube. Hallelujah, Brother! Amen, Sister! Praise de Lord Jesus!”

I rolled the dial and tuned in several evangelical speakers. Each seemed more vociferous and impassioned than the last. Everyone had Sunday fever. After a block, Kathy caught the infection and we were swamping the cab with amens! and hallelujahs! Kathy giggled like a child concealing a pocketful of snitched cookies. It’s contagious when someone you know and are fond of laughs with you. Anyone hearing us would have thought we had both gone over the wall at Western State, one of the local loony bins. Kathy sang out, “Praise the Lord, kiss the devil, and shine my boots!”

The mirth stopped when we got to the street the Nadiskys lived on.

I swerved in the nick of time. It was one of the new, smaller Cadillacs swooshing up the street toward us. The other driver was determined not to give an inch.

Hunched over the steering wheel of the oncoming vehicle was a large, angry man. He had grizzled hair and bushy caterpillar eyebrows. The speeding Cadillac was crowded with faces, among them a middle-aged woman, a small towheaded girl in her lap.

When a car comes at you fast enough to kill everyone involved, you don’t have much of a chance to reconnoiter. All I saw clearly was a strobe-light glimpse of the infant blonde. She looked as if she were in a state of shock, as if Santa had just puked on her. She sucked her thumb madly, a tattered blanket pressed up against the opposite side of her face creating a giant, formless ear muff.

Kathy pulled her hands off the dashboard where she had impulsively reached to brace for an accident. “That was Angel.”

“Melissa’s kid?”

She nodded. “I think that was her grandfather at the wheel.”

“If he eats like he drives he’ll choke to death.”

The Nadisky homestead was around the corner a block away. The houses were all tiny, cramped, squarish, but it was easy to single out the Nadisky place. It was the only yard where the grass grew past your knees. The only place that had an overturned, rusted wheelbarrow canted against the front porch. The only bungalow with water-spotted sheets tacked in the windows where drapes should have been. The only house on the block where the front door stood wide open.

A late-model, tan sedan was parked at the curb, the motor chugging, puffballs of exhaust meandering up the sidewalk. More out of habit than reflex, I stopped behind the sedan and scrawled the license number down on the tablet I kept in the glove box.

“Is that their car?” I asked, realizing even as I spoke that the spanking-new undented sedan did not match the condition of the house, or the rest of what I’d gleaned about Burton and Melissa.

Kathy was already on her way up the stairs toward the front stoop, a clown on the run. “They don’t own a car,” she said over her shoulder. “Burton doesn’t drive.”

I scooted across the truck seat but didn’t catch Kathy until she had already plumbed deep into the residence. It was cold inside, as if the door had been open for a spell. The living room was a shambles, not dirty so much as messy, littered with children’s toys, clothes and sections of the Sunday newspaper. I caught up with Kathy at the entrance to the bedroom—just in time to keep her from taking a blow to the mouth. It was quite a little scene.

Holder was there. So was Burton. Holder wore a nattily tailored sportscoat, slacks and handmade Italian shoes. He stood facing three-quarters away from the doorway, backhanding the hell out of Burton Nadisky. I had seen Holder at work before. He loved violence. He was the sort of guy who ate popcorn raw. There were, few people he couldn’t slam across the room using the back of his hand, probably me included.

“Stay down,” ordered Holder.

Burton was splayed across a tangle of bloodstained sheets, his face looking like a piss-poor club fighter’s last performance. Holder was a mulatto, six-foot-three, about two-twenty, an impeccable dresser. He had been a boxer once. He was a good eight inches taller than the disheveled Burton.

Scrabbling off the bed, Burton lurched to the open doorway. His face was crimson. As if swatting a fly, Holder slammed him onto the floor. The impact made a sickening crunch.

“Now stay down, boy. Don’t you know da score?”

Moving like a sack of rocks, Burton sniffled and began to roll over, presumably so he could crawl, the last vestiges of strength sapped from his trembling legs.

“Leave him alone!” shouted Kathy. She was gutsy—but stupid. Holder would knock her into next Tuesday.

She prepared to pounce on Holder. She might have made a little headway. She might have reached almost to his armpit before he broke her jaw. Already, I could see him doubling up his enormous fist.

I grasped Kathy around her slender waist and flung her to the right of the doorway. Nothing less would have dissuaded her. I had forgotten how little she weighed.

“Stay out of this,” I commanded. Kathy shook her head, cleared the cobwebs and looked at me the way a cat who had been kicked off the dinner table might.

A lump was noticeable in the center of Holder’s back under the tight-fitting turquoise sportscoat, a lump which corresponded to the spot in which some people carry their hip holsters. Holder was too dangerous to mess with. He had been only partially aware of us in the doorway, his mind dwelling on other things, but now we were fodder for the machine.

Burton Nadisky managed to worm his way to my feet. Holder moved to drag him back.

“Uh uh uh,” I said, putting more menace into my voice than either I or Holder had expected. “Enough is enough. Burton, you don’t want to go out there. Your daughter is long gone.” He sank his head to the floor, giving out a low groan.

“Holder? If you want to stop this man from catching his in-laws, why not go out and move that car in front? That’s the only thing he could possibly use. Burton here doesn’t own a car. You think he’s going to catch them on foot?”

Holder glowered at me darkly, straining to recall my name. We had clashed on a case about a year earlier. He was awful with names. He snapped his fingers repeatedly as I picked up a wire clothes hanger from the rubble. I said, “Black. Thomas Black.”

“You’re da private eye who messed wid dat divorce case a mine.”

“Good memory.”

“I owe you on dat one.” He was trying hard to recall precisely how much he owed me. If I was lucky, he wouldn’t resuscitate the entire story.

I fiddled with the wire coat hanger and twisted it into a long shepherd’s crook.

“I’m sure your employer would love for you to stay here and stir up all sorts of trouble. We’ve got friends coming right behind us. It might work out better if you left now. What do you think?”

The mention of additional friends goaded Holder. More people meant more witnesses. He was already cutting it too close. He stepped gingerly over Nadisky and strode past me like a man carrying a mess in his britches. He stopped and stared quizzically at Kathy, who was still on the floor, her red bulb nose askew. Holder conjured up a queer, disjointed face and used it on her. You’d think the man had never seen a clown before.