The Dirty Book Murder (18 page)

One of the men was lean and swarthy. The other, not nearly so lean and pale as a February moon, wore his long greasy brown hair in a ponytail. They walked stiffly toward the bed as if taking directions. The swarthy one was the first to leap into action, pinning his supposed victim down before straddling her head with his knees. She pretended to struggle, but the man tightened his grip to stop her resistance. The beanpole with a ponytail stripped off his shorts and stood rampant for a moment before joining in.

Close-ups of the sickening climactic scene looped over and over until the camera
zoomed in on a tight shot of Josie’s tear-stained face. The tape ended on that sad note, all the more terrible because her final look of anguish was not in the least bit convincing.

I pulled another beer from the refrigerator and chugged it without leaving the kitchen. Two beers later I was thinking clearly again and dialed the
Brush Creek Gumbo
.

“Josie Majansik, please,” I said to the receptionist.

“Who is that again, sir?”

“Majansik. A reporter who’s been there six months.”

“One moment,” she said.

I heard the shuffling of papers at the other end.

“Don’t you have the number of her extension on your computer?” I asked.

“No, sir, she’s not on the computer. Oh, wait a minute.”

More paper shuffling.

“Yes, here it is on this other sheet. She’s on special assignment with the police beat.”

She connected the number for me, but all I got was Josie’s recorded voice message. On a hunch, I dialed the receptionist again and asked for an old law client at the paper who covered the music scene.

Jason Harper was up against a deadline, but took the call when he heard my name. Years ago, when fresh out of J-school and working as an impoverished stringer for the daily newspaper, he’d accumulated ten parking tickets within a three-month period while covering concerts downtown and in Westport. I got them thrown out for no fee and gained a friend for life.

“What’s up, Mike?”

“I’m looking for one of your colleagues at the
Gumbo
named Josie Majansik?”

“Never heard of her.”

“I heard she was working the police beat.”

“What police beat? We’re a weekly alternative. The only things we write about are sex, rock ’n’ roll, and the latest inanities of the city council.”

My next question was interrupted by the clicking of high-heeled shoes on the tiled hallway outside. Hanging up the phone, I snatched an ice pick from a drawer in the kitchen and rushed to the door. A man and a woman were quietly arguing on the other side of it. The muscles in my forearms tensed when I heard the jangling of keys, but just as quickly relaxed when it became apparent the couple intended to enter the apartment next door.

I plopped on the bed after grabbing another beer and tried to imagine what Josie planned upon her return. Given what I’d seen so far, the odds were good that Rolf
Kramm would be with her to dispatch me. I looked at the ice pick that I’d laid on the floor. Most likely, Josie would enter first. In that event, I would shove her aside and go for Kramm’s throat. But then what? If Josie were to pull a weapon, would I use the pick on her as well? No need to worry about that if she had a gun. It would be too late anyway.

On the other hand, she might be alone, still confident of my naiveté and planning to string me along in the hope of gaining more information for Quist. If that were the case, I might try to play along. But she would see through me soon enough. All I knew for sure was that when Josie returned, with or without Kramm, the result was going to be ugly if I remained in the apartment.

The clanging, bonging, whooping cacophony of a car alarm outside the bedroom window suddenly interrupted these depressing thoughts. After an eternity waiting for it to stop, I went into the bathroom to let out some of the beer.

Great revelations have been known to come to men at such moments. And so it was with me.

While standing over the toilet, my mind buzzed with thoughts of that particular alarm. It was better than thinking about a lifetime prison sentence, Josie’s double-dealing, and my daughter’s dalliance with some very unsavory characters.

I wondered what set it off. Would it turn itself off eventually or go on indefinitely until the owner returned or the battery died?

I remembered how my jeep’s alarm had shattered the Saturday morning peace in Brookside and how Weston Preston had reminded me that there was a second key in a magnet box under the front wheel base. Weston knew how to get in my vehicle, which I always locked. No one else did.

And what had he told me just before leaving the shop today? One of those mindless admonitions I generally ignored. But this was about the “vee-hickle” needing an oil change. “Twenty thousand miles,” he had said, meaning he’d recently seen my odometer.

“Jesus,” I muttered after connecting the dots. Weston killed Gareth Hughes, then set me up by putting the victim’s wallet in my jeep.

Another revelation swiftly followed. Other than a talent for auto mechanics and making cappuccinos, the lamebrain barista didn’t have the gumption to do this without the backing of my only other employee: Violet Trenche.

Josie was straight with me about one thing—the couple, as mismatched as Two-Buck Chuck in a Steuben crystal decanter, actually did seem to have something going between them. I still couldn’t believe that in Violet’s case it was love, but I didn’t doubt that Weston would do anything for her, even go so far as to commit murder.

I left Josie’s apartment with a thousand thoughts jumping in front of me, feeling unable to handle any of them. Still, I had enough sense to use my cell phone to call Pegeen Flynn at The Peanut.

“I need your help,” I said when she answered.

“Boy, I’ll say. You’re all over the news.”

“I know who set me up, Peg. I need to borrow your car.”

“Ah, jeez, Mikey, let the cops handle this, will ya? You’re gonna get yourself shot. Whether it’s the cops or the bad guys it won’t matter. They all want a piece of you now.”

“Still driving the old Saab?”

“Yeah, and what of it?”

“Nothing of it. Maybe I’ll talk your boss into paying you more if I get out of this mess.”

“That’ll be the day.”

“You don’t think I have a chance?”

“Maybe. You’ll just never get that cheap bastard to give me a raise.”

“Maybe you won’t need it. Maybe I’ll marry you and you can live off me.”

There was a nervous laugh at the other end of the line.

“I keep telling you, boyo, I’m not the marryin’ kind. Not according to the laws of Missouri anyway.”

“More’s the pity.”

“I’ll put the key under the mat. There’s half a tank of gas in it.”

“Thanks, Pegeen. One other thing. A reporter named Josie Majansik knows I might contact you. Don’t talk to her. She’s not on my side. Not anymore.”

“Understood. Take care and please try not to get the car shot full of holes. It’s paid for.”

I ran an easy mile from Josie’s apartment to the Peanut parking lot where three pickup trucks, a couple of Harleys, and a 1992 Saab convertible waited for their owners. After leaning against a telephone pole to steady my heartbeat, I walked to the Saab and climbed in. Pegeen had set back the driver’s seat to accommodate me. The considerate act meant a lot. Too bad she wasn’t the marryin’ kind.

It took a few jiggles on the ignition before the old car coughed into action, but as the sun dipped under the horizon I was steering it to Midtown for a chat with Weston Preston.

Weston Preston lived a block north of Thirty-ninth Street in a three-story firetrap.

I parked Pegeen’s car around the corner and walked past a twenty-four-hour Laundromat with no customers, a liquor store that specialized in forty-ounce malt liquor, and a purple-painted shack with a starry sign on the porch that promised someone inside would read my fortune for “$10, 24/7, holidays included!”

The entrance to Weston’s palace had a buzzer lock, but not wanting to announce my arrival, I waited downstairs for someone to come out.

After a few minutes, a slender girl wearing a keffiyeh draped around her shoulders bounded down the stairs, fumbling for keys that dangled on her purse. I nodded a greeting as she held the door open for me, her comely face smiling shyly as we edged past each other.

Weston’s name and apartment number were listed on the postbox in the lobby. I walked quietly up the uncarpeted staircase to the second floor and apartment 2C. The overhead bulb nearest his door had burned out so that the only illumination came from another one at the far end of the hall, where someone in a kitchen was having a love affair with garlic and onions.

I heard movement within his apartment, but when I knocked there was no response, just more of the shuffling noise and then quiet. I knocked again.

“Let me in, Weston. It’s Mike Bevan.”

No answer.

The door was one of those cheap composite things the landlord must have bought on sale at Home Depot. I steadied myself, placing weight on my right leg, and raised the left one preparatory to knocking the door off its hinges. I must have looked like a Doberman pinscher about to relieve itself when someone opened it without my help.

The apartment was dark, with a low-wattage light coming from somewhere to the right.

“Good timing,” I said as I lowered my kicking leg and, gaining my balance, stepped inside. My eyes were still getting used to the dimness when I noticed the long, bony face of Rolf Kramm instead of my 155-pound coffee barista standing in front of me. I instinctively threw a straight right, very fast and well sprung, but he stepped inside it, fast, cool, and clever, and delivered a roundhouse to the left side of my head that sent me
sprawling to the floor.

I reached for the doorknob to pull myself up, but a hard chop to the back of my neck ended that business. An instant later, I was kissing the shag carpet with Kramm on top of me trying to disconnect my spine.

Just when I thought the big Afrikaner would succeed, his weight shifted from my lower back to my shoulders. I felt a gun barrel nudge against my right ear. Turning my head slightly, I saw the hard face staring at me with the expression of a deadpan comedian.

“We will now get up.”

I didn’t argue, but I was in no hurry until he tapped the gun against my skull.

“Move in there, to the kitchen.”

I followed his orders, gingerly stepping over empty wine bottles, Fritos wrappers, and a dozen other things Weston hadn’t bothered to pick up that week.

A bare bulb flickered above a Formica-topped table. Next to it, a hook that had once held a flower basket now supported the rope that, in turn, supported much of Weston Preston by his scrawny neck.

The rayon cord, tied in a slipknot, had expanded his jugular veins to the size of Vienna sausages. His hands were tied behind him and a dish towel had been stuffed in his mouth. He trembled precariously on tiptoes atop the rattling table. Adding to the surrealistic scene, the light created a shadow that covered his distorted face from nose to brow, giving it the hollow-eyed cast of a skull.

“Look who has joined us,” Kramm said, tugging on Weston’s belt, setting his shaking legs further off balance. “You will now have a witness to your execution.”

Unintelligible noises gurgled through the towel.

“Why do this?” I asked, sickened.

“Because he has something to tell me.” Kramm jerked the rope so that it cut deeper into the pale skin above the Adam’s apple. The added pain caused Weston to open his swollen eyelids, revealing a spider’s web of broken capillaries.

“You understand now what you must do to live?” Kramm said as he withdrew the gag.

Weston stared emptily at his tormentor. Although his eyes remained open, the shaking had stopped. I wasn’t entirely sure that he was conscious.

He had shown courage holding out this far, I’ll give him that. But as tough and stubborn as the old sailor was proving, I knew he wasn’t going to sacrifice his life, given the slim chance Rolf Kramm would keep his end of the bargain.

Kramm released his grip. Weston sucked air back into his lungs. His legs began to
tremble again.

The South African stepped back from the table to sit on a kitchen chair. He pointed the gun at my sternum, surveying me as Weston danced for his life.

“He will talk,” he told me. “They always do.”

“Did Richard Chezik?”

“Who?”

“The one-armed man whose throat you cut.”

“Oh, yes. No resistance whatsoever when I showed him the box cutter. Couldn’t get him to shut up.”

“You killed him anyway?”

“Force of habit,” Kramm said tonelessly. He prodded Weston’s crotch with the gun. The barista’s startled response nearly caused the table to tip. “When Mr. Quist heard the weapon came from your store, he suspected that this worm killed Hughes on your behalf. Was he correct in thinking that?”

“If you say so,” I said. “It doesn’t matter anyway. The police know I’m here.”

Kramm’s tongue, thick and gray as a garden slug, caressed the corner of his mouth. He pulled on his cauliflower ear and said, “I don’t believe you. It’s not to your advantage to have told them.”

He settled back in his chair to contemplate something. A few moments later, he ended his thoughts with a grin that displayed a silver right incisor. He looked at me and said over the racket caused by Weston, “It will please me to kill you. Your reckless bidding forced me to spend more than I had been instructed. Much of the difference came from my wages.”

“Well, shucks, Rolf, if that’s your only problem with me, consider this: I’ll cover your loss, up to forty grand, mind you, no more; and you keep it quiet that I paid Weston to knock off Hughes. No questions asked. We’ll pretend I never came here.”

What the hell, it was only money.

Kramm displayed a ruptured grin that I took for a no.

I tried reason. “Kill me and you’ll have to answer to Quist for going beyond his orders. People are going to ask a lot of questions.”

“Mr. Quist won’t mind. He hates you almost as much as he hates that movie man.”