The Hearse You Came in On (31 page)

I laughed. Hutch didn’t appreciate it, but I couldn’t help myself.

“Oh come on, Hutch. You need to get out more. Kate is going to get
involved
with me because I’m a suspect in a murder? What the hell kind of story is that?”

Even as the words left my lips, my heart skipped a couple of beats. Kate
had
gotten involved with some-one—Fellows—as part of a criminal investigation. Just who was maybe being naive here? Hutch was pulling something out of his bag. I added, “And besides, why would I kill Guy Fellows in the first place? To drum up business?”

“You were seen arguing with Fellows at the cemetery, when was that… two weeks ago? Something like that?”

“I went through all this with Detective Kruk.”

“I know you did. And right after that he was pulled off the case and Kate was put on.”

“Office politics,” I muttered. “What does any of this have to do with me?”

“Hey, don’t kill the messenger, okay? I know you better than Alan does. I don’t think you’re a murderer, Hitch, any more than I am.”

Small comfort there. Hutch tossed a large brown envelope onto my lap.

“Guy Fellows was blackmailing Alan. He had a partner working with him. I figured it was that woman that you buried. Alan and I both figured that.”

“Carolyn James.”

“Her. But then the next thing we know someone
sticks a knife in Guy Fellows and then a few days later … this.”

He indicated the envelope, which I picked up. I knew what I’d be finding inside.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s the reason Alan Stuart isn’t your biggest fan.”

“He thinks I sent these to him?”

Hutch’s eyes narrowed and I immediately recognized my mistake.

“Sent what to him, Hitch? You haven’t even looked in the envelope.”

I was able to recover quickly. “You said Fellows was blackmailing Stuart. So … let me guess.” I pulled a pair of eight-by-ten glossies from the envelope. “Well. Dirty pictures of Grace Kelly. Go figure.”

“Not everything is a joke, Hitch.”

I slid the pictures back into the envelope and handed it back to him. “I know that. But the future governor of Maryland thinks that an unassuming undertaker from Fells Point is a murderer and a blackmailer … There’s either a joke in there somewhere or a bad punch line.”

Hutch put the envelope back into his bag. About ten feet away, a one-legged man was hobbling in our direction. He was using a single crutch for balance. His pants were undone and he was barefoot. A filthy white towel was duct-taped to the top of the crutch, for padding. Hutch stood up from the bench.

“I’ve got to be going. Fund-raising dinner.”

“Gee, and I wasn’t invited?”

“A thousand dollars a plate.”

“Gee, and I just remembered I’m busy?”

The one-legged man had reached us. He shook a
paper coffee cup at Hutch; the few coins in the cup made a sad echo. Hutch dug into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill, which he tucked into the man’s cup. He looked over at me. “I’m not heartless.”

The beggar continued on his way. “Hitch, I really don’t know what’s going on here. I’m thinking you’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time. And that’s all. I’ve tried to convince Alan of that, but Alan’s not exactly in a reasonable mood about any of this.
Somebody
out there has got him by the balls. The man is seeing red. I just want to warn you, as a friend, to keep an eye out.”

It was occurring to me that sometimes there’s an awfully thin line between a warning and a threat. I hated myself for feeling it, but I couldn’t shake the sense that my political-operative buddy was traveling deftly along that line.

I stood up. “Have a good dinner, Hutch. Make sure you clean your plate.”

I phoned Kate and left her a message to meet me at the Oyster. I didn’t mention my meeting with Hutch. Not on the phone. I wanted to see her reaction to the news that her follow-up blackmailing efforts were apparently yielding high dividends. I also wanted to hear from her just what she was planning to do next. I hadn’t yet decided for certain how many of Hutch’s suspicions I would share with her. I was certain that his speculation about Kate and Stuart still being involved was ill-founded. As was his suggestion that Kate was playing me like a fiddle.

I had another ticket on my car. I’m sleeping with a cop, for Christ’s sake. Shouldn’t I be able to have these
taken care of? I stuffed it into the glove compartment to keep the others company.

I swung by Carol’s new temporary digs to see how she was settling in. She met me at the door in a straw hat, a pair of white bell-bottoms and a low-cut blue-and-white striped T-shirt with three-quarter sleeves. In other words, she was dressed like a Venetian gondolier.

“Do you like my toes?” she asked.

She was barefoot. Her toenails were painted like confetti.

“How much do people charge for that?” I asked.

She guffawed. “Eight thousand bucks. I’m broke!”

We headed over to the Oyster. Kate was waiting for us. Carol looked around the dark bar. A shiver went through her.

“Jesus Christ, I’m homesick. Goddamn it.” She fetched a drink from the bar and drifted over to the dart-board. Bookstore Bob and Al the video guy were there. Arguing as usual. I watched as Carol took a dart from each of them, then turned to the target and took aim.

Kate had come up with a name. Epoch Ltd.

“I went out to the Hunt Valley post office this afternoon and flashed my badge around. I had to do some quick double-talking to explain why a city detective was out there in the country nosing. But eventually I got what I wanted. The P.O. box on Bowman’s FedEx package belongs to something called Epoch Ltd. That’s who has been sending him the money.”

“Who the hell is Epoch Ltd.,” I asked. “Or what?”

“I don’t know. The post office didn’t have an address on file. Or they couldn’t find one. They didn’t even have a phone number. I tried information, but they didn’t have a listing.”

I thought about this for a minute. “Well, whatever Epoch Ltd. is, it must be located in Hunt Valley, right? It’s in one of those buildings.”

Kate agreed. “Sure, but do you have any idea how many office buildings there are out there? And how many different businesses are in each one?”

“You don’t think we could just go from building to building checking the floor directory in each of them?”

Kate shook her head. “There are hundreds of buildings.”

“So? We split up. We’ll make some sort of map and we’ll each take a section each day. Maybe we can get Carol to help out.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.”

“Why not?”

“Bowman,” Kate said. “Bowman is not going to just sit up there in Maine with his pink tissue paper, you know. We set the clock running when we snitched his money. Bowman’s going to know full well that Carol didn’t just
happen
to peek into his FedEx package or just
happen
to have a bunch of pink tissue paper with her. He’ll know that he didn’t just
happen
to get a flat tire right after he
happened
to pick up Carol hitchhiking.”

“You’re saying he doesn’t believe in happenstance?”

“Not that kind. Don’t forget, Hitch, this guy was a detective for fifteen years. He is trained to be suspicious, especially of coincidence.”

“I love coincidence.”

“Which is why you’d make a lousy detective. Hitch, the point is this. Bowman already knows that someone is onto him. He knows that someone plotted to lift that envelope from him. And he’s going to know
that it wasn’t Carol acting all by herself. I mean… look.”

Over at the dartboard, Carol was giving the tip of one of the darts a good-luck kiss. She had the full attention of Bob and Al, who had momentarily ceased their bickering.

Kate continued. “Bowman was a good detective. He’s going to remember you hitting on Carol at the bar—”

“I wasn’t hitting—”

“And he’s going to definitely remember your hijinks with the car, when you tried to cut him off. He’ll remember all that. He’ll put it together. Then he’ll nose around the local hotels for anything odd looking. Detectives do that sort of preliminary in their sleep. And I hate to say it, but Mr. and Mrs. Frank Sinatra registering at that hotel qualifies as odd looking. I shouldn’t have let you do that. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Oh come on, Kate. The guy can’t possibly track us down.”

“Did you put the car’s license plate number on the registration form when you checked in?”

“Well yes, but—”

“And didn’t you use your credit card to rent the car at the airport in Boston?”

“That doesn’t necessarily mean—”

“Are you beginning to get my drift?”

“Sure. But—”

“Hitch, we don’t have the time to go traipsing from building to building in Hunt Valley looking for Epoch Ltd. in a haystack. Lou Bowman killed my husband. And he knows we’re onto him. That makes him a desperate animal, Hitch. If you think—”

A scream split the air. It was Carol. For a fraction of a second I thought she must have gotten a bull’s-eye. But it wasn’t that kind of a scream. It was, in fact, the kind of scream you let out when a burly guy you’ve just flamboozled out of eight thousand dollars up in Maine suddenly throws open the door of the bar in Baltimore where you are innocently tossing darts.

Kate had just enough time to mutter “Shit” before she dove under the table.

Lottery Lou was back in town.

I
think I’ve already described the general layout of the Screaming Oyster Saloon. Only two features in particular are relevant in order to understand what took place in the thirty seconds following Lou Bowman’s entrance. The first feature is that black door down at the end of the bar, the door that leads directly out to the harbor. The second is the weathered old dinghy that hangs from chains attached to the ceiling, chock-full with years and years of empties.

I didn’t mention one other feature. At the time, it seemed totally inconsequential. The bar phone. Over at the far end of the bar. Near the black door. I mention it now for the following reason. At approximately the same moment that Carol spotted Lou Bowman standing there in the door and let out her very impressive scream, the bar’s telephone rang. Sally answered it. It was for me.

“Hitchcock!” Sally called out. Kate had just that instant disappeared beneath the table. Powered purely by reflex, I stood up when Sally called out my name and started for the bar. And that’s what caught Bowman’s attention. That’s what stopped him in his initial
lurching in Carol’s direction and caused him to redirect his lurching … toward me.

“Son of a
bitch
!”

He meant me.

Being closer to that end of the bar to start with and having longer legs anyway, I reached the phone in about five strides. Bowman had the whole length of the bar to travel. He never made it.

The hero of the moment was Edie Velvet. I hadn’t even noticed her sitting there, which of course is what happens when a person becomes a regular fixture in a bar; they come to look as innocuous as… well, as a fixture. Lou Bowman had blood in his eyes. Edie was just emptying the last of her beer into her glass as the Pamplona bull charged past her. I reached the bar and on some inexplicable form of autopilot, calmly took the phone from Sally …

She tossed the empty up into the weathered old dinghy hanging from chains over the bar.

“Hello?”

“Hitchcock?” It was Aunt Billie.

“Yes.”

“Hitchcock. A man was just here looking for you. I mentioned that he might try the Oyster. But now—”

I never heard the rest of it. What Sally had been crabbing would happen for so many years that we had all long ago ceased even hearing her… happened. And it happened quickly. I remember seeing a pair of tiny explosions of plaster dust up where the chains holding the dinghy were attached to the ceiling. And then it was all noise.

CRASH!

The dinghy came down partway onto the bar and
partway onto Edie and partway onto Lou Bowman, who had just passed Edie’s barstool. The old boat exploded into splinters on contact as hundred and hundreds of bottles and cans—and a few other interesting items—
burst
into the air, over a dozen years of shrapnel launching out in all directions. I took a bottle to the head and one to the mouth. Sally’s arms wind milled madly as she staved off the barrage of cans flying at her. Frank got clunked right between the eyes, dropping where he stood. Others in the bar avoided the direct attack, but many got caught in the push of others who were leaping back from the explosion. Something akin to a wave gently mowed them all down. I saw Carol go under.

Edie Velvet and Lou Bowman had caught the brunt of it. The two of them lay half buried on the floor beneath chunks of wood and the hundreds and hundreds of empties. I’ll allow you only about three seconds to picture the tableau, for that’s about how long it took before Lou Bowman stirred. His nose was bleeding and a gash had opened up over his left eye. His mouth was bloody too; he was literally tasting blood. And I could see that he wanted more. He wanted mine.

I acted without thought. Years of witnessing Sally’s swift mobilizations probably helped.

“Sally!” I barked. “The door!” And Sally knew exactly what I meant.

Even as I waded into the cans and bottles that half buried Bowman and Edie, Sally had flipped up the hinged end of the bar counter and yanked open the black door. Lap lap lap went the harbor.

I grabbed hold of Bowman’s collar with one hand
and his belt with the other. Bowman’s attempt to stand—slipping and sliding on the debris—simply propelled him toward the door. I helped him along. The two of us shot forward, me like the guy who is pushing the bobsled up at the start of the track, he like the sled. And thus it was that within thirty seconds of Lou Bowman’s entering the Screaming Oyster Saloon, I literally ran the bastard right back out.

Alas, there was no time to savor the moment.

“Kate! Carol! Let’s go!”

Kate had already popped up from beneath the table. Carol was extricating herself from the human tide.