Very Bad Men (7 page)

“I understand he left the clinic early,” Elizabeth said.

Rosalie Bell shook her head impatiently. “I'm not talking about the clinic. He had a gig at the Art Fair tonight.”

A jingling of bracelets as the nanny touched her fingers to her chin. “Oh, of course.”

Elizabeth ignored her and focused on Rosalie Bell. “Maybe you could fill me in. I thought your husband was a nurse practitioner.”

“That's his day job,” the woman said. “But he's also in a band called the Chrome Horsemen. They play covers of Bob Dylan songs.”

 

 

ANTHONY LARK HELD a glass of ice against his forehead. Condensation ran down the surface of the glass and into the gauze wrapped around his left hand. He drew a breath, and most of what he took in was smoke.

A cardboard coaster on the bar in front of him bore a logo like a billiard ball: the number eight within a white circle, with a larger circle of black around it. The Eightball Saloon. Music played upstairs, in a club called the Blind Pig. Loud music with a thumping rhythm that was starting to find its way to a spot behind Lark's eyes.

From his seat at the end of the bar, Lark could survey the room. Two pool tables dominated the space, green rectangles illuminated by a smoky haze of yellow light. The light came from fixtures hung on long chains suspended from the ceiling. Both tables were in use, but Lark had his eyes on the closer one, where four men in their thirties were playing doubles. They wore jeans and T-shirts. One of them was clean-shaven, but the others sported varying degrees of stubble.

The clean-shaven one was Sutton Bell.

An hour ago they had finished their set, broken down their equipment, and hauled it to a van in a parking structure nearby. Lark had thought they might go their separate ways, but they had stayed together and he had followed them here, to this dive on First Street, safely out of range of the tourists at the Art Fair.

And now Bell leaned over the table to shoot the seven in the corner, and the others hooted when the ball sank into the pocket. They drank beer from longneck bottles.

Lark set his glass on the coaster and tried to get the attention of the bartender, a twentysomething guy with a pierced eyebrow. But he was at the other end of the bar putting a cosmopolitan down in front of a woman who looked like she could be a lawyer or a real estate agent.

She was nicely put together in a charcoal gray skirt that probably came with a matching blazer, but she wasn't wearing the blazer. She was wearing a tailored silk blouse with pearl buttons—three of them undone. Wavy brown hair with blond highlights. Smooth forehead, pert nose, alluring mouth.

She was on her second cosmopolitan now and once in a while she turned to look around the room—with particular attention to Bell and his friends. Maybe she knew them, Lark thought, or maybe she had seen them play and thought it might be fun to hook up with a musician.

The bartender took Lark's glass and brought it back filled with rum and Coke. Reaching for his wallet, Lark felt a sharp pain in his hand. It had started to swell beneath the gauze.

Things had gone less than smoothly at Henry Kormoran's apartment. Lark had gone there in the daylight and Kormoran had opened the door for him readily enough. But nothing's ever easy—something his father used to say—and though he had brought along the tire iron, it was nothing like the old man, Charlie Dawtrey. Kormoran had managed to knock the iron out of Lark's hand and then had come up with a steak knife, and after that there had been broken furniture and the lamp and the cord. A close thing right down to the end.

Lark sipped his Coke and held the glass against his cheek. The air in the Eightball Saloon was warm and the smoke stung his eyes.

Sutton Bell came up to the bar for another round of longnecks, and Lark turned away reflexively. He had ditched his safari hat and sunglasses in favor of a baseball cap from a shop on Liberty Street. But he had taken off the cap in order to cool his brow, and without it he felt exposed. He told himself he shouldn't worry. Sutton Bell wasn't going to be around to identify him.

Lark had no tire iron tonight, but he had what he needed in the pockets of his cargo pants. A sap made from a woolen sock and a bag of marbles. A six-inch chef's knife in a cardboard sleeve. They would do the job.

He wiped his forearm across his brow and it came away slick with sweat. He picked up his cap from the bar and put it on, pulling the bill low on his forehead. He wished Bell would leave—soon, and alone.

Sometime later there was a loud crack of billiard balls—Lark felt it in the space behind his eyes—and a cheer went up. One of Bell's friends had sunk the eight ball on the break.

The woman in the silk blouse rose from her place at the bar and walked past Lark, heading for a dim hallway in the back. The restrooms were there, and a door that opened into an alley. A minute later, Sutton Bell said his good-byes, over protests from his friends, and followed the same route. Lark wondered if the two of them had prearranged their exit, if the woman was waiting for Bell even now in the alley.

He slid off his stool and walked down the hallway, hit the metal bar on the exit door with his hip. Outside, the clean air braced him. The door closed, dulling the rhythm of the music within. He saw Bell framed at the end of the alley, saw the top of Bell's head as the man looked up at the sky.

Lark took the knife from one of the deep pockets on the legs of his pants and slipped it into his back pocket, within easy reach. He did the same with his homemade sap.

In the lot behind the bar, Bell's steps were light and careless. Lark followed him. He knew where they were going. Bell's car wasn't parked in the lot; it was on the street two blocks away. Lark's Chevy was on the same street.

By the time Sutton Bell reached the sidewalk, he was whistling. Lark recognized the tune: the harmonica lead-in to “All Along the Watchtower.”

They came to the end of a block and Bell crossed, tennis shoes scuffing over the surface of the street. Lark picked up his pace and began to close the distance between them. Cars passed, heading east into downtown. Leaves rustled in the night wind.

When only ten feet remained between them, the whistling cut off suddenly and Bell turned, walking backward for a few steps. He stopped beneath a maple tree.

“I don't have what you need, my friend.”

His voice was pleasant. It drew Lark up short.

“What do you think I need?” he asked warily.

“Smack, coke, whatever it is, I don't have it.” Bell showed his empty hands. “I'm not holding. And I don't have any money either. So there's nothing I can do for you.”

Lark narrowed his eyes. “I don't want your money.”

“That's good, because I don't have any. I'll give you some advice though. Go home and get some rest.”

Taking a step forward, Lark could feel the weight of the sap in his pocket.

“That's your advice?”

Bell's nod was almost imperceptible. “I saw you in the bar. You looked like hell. You don't look any better out here. I think you're running a fever.”

“It's a hot night.”

“It's not the heat that's making you sweat, my friend. I've seen it before.”

Lark flexed the fingers of his left hand, felt the sharp pain there. He raised the hand for Bell to see. “I cut myself the other day,” he said. “I think it may be infected.”

Bell frowned and moved closer. “You should have it checked out. There's an Urgent Care on South Industrial Drive. You know where that is?”

“I could find it if I had to.”

“They can clean it for you and give you antibiotics. A ten-day course of Keflex ought to do it.”

“Keflex,” Lark said. He almost took out his notebook to write it down. Bell was very close now, almost within reach. Lark pictured what he needed to do. Draw out the sap. Lunge forward and aim for Bell's temple. One solid blow could bring him down. If not, then a second. Then drop the sap and bring out the knife. Drag the blade across Bell's throat.

“You can go right now,” Bell said, and it took Lark a moment to realize he was talking about the Urgent Care. “They're open all night. But you should take a cab. It's too far to walk.” He had a wallet open in his hands. He held out some bills. “That should be enough.”

Lark reached for the bills with his bandaged left hand.

“You said you didn't have any money.”

“That's all I've got,” said Bell. “If you don't get there tonight, go tomorrow. I work there. I'll take care of you myself. The name is Bell.”

Lark stuffed the bills in his shirt pocket, just to have them out of the way.

“I know your name,” he said. “I've got it on my list.” For a wild moment he wanted to take out his notebook and show Bell the page. Ask him if he could see the red letters breathing.

“What are you talking about?” Bell said. “Do I know you?”

As he reached for the sap in his back pocket, Lark said, “Let me ask you: Do you ever think about Harlan Spencer?”

That got Bell's attention. “Who are you?”

“Do you think about Callie Spencer?”

“I don't know what you're up to—”

“Do you have her portrait on your wall?” He could feel the wool of the sap between his fingers, could hear the marbles clicking together. “Do you watch her on the news?”

“You're starting to scare me, pal.” It was
pal
now, not
my friend
.

“You don't have to be scared. I'll make it quick.”

In the shadows under the maple tree, Lark pulled the sap free of his pocket and raised it high. Bell's wallet dropped to the sidewalk as his arms came up defensively. The sap descended, struck his left hand, drove it into his temple. Put him down on one knee. He fell backward as Lark raised the sap again.

The only sound from Bell was a soft groan, but the street was suddenly alive with noise. Clipped footsteps and a woman's voice shouting, “Hey! Stop!”

Lark turned without thinking and saw the woman from the bar—silk blouse, dark skirt. Still far off, but she started to run now.

As he turned back to Bell, he felt a hard blow to the hollow behind his right knee. He toppled over and when his bandaged hand hit the sidewalk it felt as if it had been driven through with a dagger.

When Lark gathered himself to rise, Sutton Bell kicked again at his leg, but it was a weak gesture. Bell was still on the ground, clutching his temple. Lark got to his feet, but the sap was gone, off in the grass somewhere. He had the knife in his pocket but his left hand was on fire and the woman was close. She was reaching into her handbag. If she came out with a gun or a can of Mace, things could go bad fast.

Bell was on hands and knees now and Lark drove his shoe into the man's ribs, sending him rolling into the grass. Without looking back Lark stalked off down the sidewalk and had his keys out before he got to his car. Cranked the engine, left the lights off, tore into the street. Saw the woman crouching over Bell as he passed. He rounded the corner with the tires squealing.

After a few blocks he slowed and turned on his lights. And after a few blocks more he had to pull over for several minutes on a residential street, because the ache behind his eyes had begun to twist itself into a hangman's knot.

S
utton Bell looked boyish, with his long dark hair and lanky frame. He had a bruise on his temple and a brace on his left hand, and they had him sitting up on a gurney in an exam room in the ER of the University Hospital. To Elizabeth he looked like a kid who had fallen off his bike.

He was alert and cheery, but his wife watched over him protectively from her perch on the edge of the gurney.

“Can this wait?” she said to Elizabeth.

“It's better if it doesn't.”

News of the assault had come to Elizabeth while she was still at the Bell house. Rosalie Bell insisted on driving straight to the hospital, leaving her daughter with the nanny. Elizabeth took a detour; she knew the doctors would need time to work, so she drove by the Eightball Saloon first and talked to the bartender and Bell's friends. They told her about a woman who had witnessed the attack. Silk blouse, gray skirt, heels. She had lingered until the ambulance came, and had followed it in her car.

Elizabeth had looked for her in the ER waiting room, but hadn't seen her. Now, in the exam room with Bell and his wife, Elizabeth felt like an intruder. It was plain that Bell's wife wished she had stayed away.

“He has a concussion,” Rosalie Bell said.

Sutton Bell spoke up. “It's a mild concussion.”

“You don't know that,” said Rosalie Bell. For Elizabeth's benefit, she added, “The doctor said we have to be cautious. Sometimes all the symptoms don't appear right away.”

“The hand took the brunt of it,” Sutton Bell said mildly. “Fractures to the middle phalanges of the index and second fingers. I should be worried about playing the guitar again.”

Rosalie Bell shook her head. “He plays terrible guitar,” she said. “He only ever bothered to learn three chords.”

“That's true,” he said. “Fortunately I have a beautiful singing voice.”

“You have a singing voice that sounds like Bob Dylan's,” she countered. Then, to Elizabeth: “Couldn't you talk to him tomorrow?”

Bell laid his good hand on his wife's knee. “I'll talk now. The concussion's not serious. If it were, I couldn't say ‘fractures to the middle phalanges' without slurring the words.” He nodded to Elizabeth. “Ask me whatever you want to ask.”

She sat in the room's only chair and took out her notebook. Started with a request for a description of his assailant, then stepped back and had him lead her through the events of the evening, from his band's performance at the Art Fair to his encounter with the man who had attacked him.