Avenging Angel Page 12

  "How do I know the bank will like this piece of paper any better?" I asked.

  It was Dash's turn to look embarrassed. "I assure you they'll accept this one," he said, and for some reason I believed him. I took the check and Dash went to the door. He pulled it open, providing me with a conspicuous exit. I ignored my cue.

  "I'm not through yet," I said. "I think you owe me some answers." I put some gravel in my voice and gave him full view of my scar. "You fed me false information and forgeries, embarrassed me in front of my peers, tried to stiff me, and now the Barridales Culture Club wants to give me a new job as soy fertilizer. I know it seems forward but I'd kind of like to know why."

  Dash set his jaw and worked up a passable steely gaze. "You did your job, you have your pay. I don't owe you any explanations." He took a deep, important breath. "I'm asking you to leave just one time, Mr. Strait."

  "Fuck you."

  "Harry!" Dash called out. He'd said the word like a threat, and before it had finished forming in his mouth, Harry barreled through the door like a whiskey-crazed rhino, his face orgasmic with the realization of his fondest dream. He nearly stumbled as he shot past Dash, falling over himself in his effort to get at me. He made strange mewing sounds.

  I stood up. Physically I was no match for Harry, and he definitely had the edge in the hate category. I thought about shooting him, but that would complicate my exit from the Hill. I would have to use cunning and trickery instead.

  It is a fact of nature that if you hit a man in the right place with the right amount of force he will go down, no matter how big or mean he is. I learned that in the Rangers. That lesson was the cornerstone of my aspirations of not being maimed.

  Harry's attack method was straightforward and direct. He rushed me with both hands held in front of him like meat hooks, ready to rend me limb from limb. If he'd ever had any formal training, he'd forgotten it in his eagerness to hurt me.

  I crouched and held my hands out as if I wanted to grapple with him, and he roared his approval, my cooperation pleasing him no end. When he was close enough to me to count the hate lines on his forehead, I slipped left, deflected his right meat hook with my right forearm and let him have it with an all-out, left-handed haymaker to the temple, pivoting my body ninety degrees to get all my shoulder behind the swing.

  The punch should have snapped his head sideways, sloshing his brain to one side of his skull and leaving him with a nasty concussion. But since Harry didn't have a neck, it just served to stun him. He plowed over the love seat, and his skull and the oak paneling compared relative densities. The oak splintered with a heartening crack, and Harry dropped to the love seat, bleeding profusely from the top of his head.

  I moved up beside him and drove multiple blows into his kidneys, but much to my alarm he didn't seem to notice. I hammered away until my hands hurt, but punching Harry was like hitting a bag of wet sand.

  Harry started to move again. He got his feet under him and leaned forward on the blood-splattered cushions of the love seat, trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head. Always with a wily eye for an opening, I stepped directly behind Harry and launched a boot between his legs. It was a shameless and mean-spirited tactic, but I'd worry about my self-respect back in my nice safe apartment.

  Harry bellowed with agony and clutched his genitals. He turned around slowly and faced me, staying in his froglike crouch. Agony cramped his features, but mindless hate still burned in his beady eyes. His face streamed blood from the fountain on top of his head, and he had to blink constantly to keep it out of his eyes. I backed to the middle of the room and waited.

  True to form, he charged again, one hand cupping his crotch, the other held in front of him as if he were a blind man in a strange room. He moved like a rhino with a whiskey hangover, and it didn't take much to get out of his way. I stuck a foot out and tripped him as he lumbered by. He fell to his knees, and I kicked him in the back of the head. He collapsed to his belly, and I dropped a fully weighted knee onto where I estimated a kidney to be. He groaned with pain and tried to do a pushup.

  I walked over to the end table and picked up the marble coke bowl. I tested its weight in my hand. It was cold and heavy. I walked back over to Harry. He was on all fours and trying to get a knee up so he could stand erect. I had to admire the tenacity of the devil. He didn't give up.

  I brought the coke bowl down on the back of Harry's skull, letting the cruel weight of the marble do the work. There was an ugly thunk, and the top of the bowl came off, dusting Harry's head with crystalline powder. The Chamberlains gasped, and I didn't think it was just for Harry's sake. The coke mixed with the blood spurting from the fresh wound to form a shiny pink paste. Harry wavered for a moment, and I was about to be really impressed when he collapsed prone and stayed that way. I dropped the bowl beside his head.

  Neither of the Chamberlains had moved. Babs still stood at the mantel, and Dash still had his hand on the doorknob.

  "Is he dead?" Babs asked breathlessly.

  "I doubt it," I said, a little breathless myself. "I think I'd have to cut off his head and pound a stake through his heart to kill him."

  "That was so savage and vicious," she said with repugnant reverence.

  I nodded modestly, then drew my pistol so they'd take me more seriously this time. I told Dash to shut the door and take a seat. He obeyed, looking numb. He sat in a rocking chair in the farthest corner from me. He kept glancing at Harry's inert figure with the eyes of a child whose favorite superhero had just got gunned down by a small-time hood. I pointed the pistol casually at Dash.

  "Any more interruptions and I'll shoot you," I promised.

  Dash went pale and nodded.

  "Good," I said. I sat down on the edge of the teak desk so I had a good angle of fire on the door in case he was pulling my leg. "I'll ask good questions, and you'll give me good answers."

  Dash blinked at me.

  "Why did you want Crawley killed?" I asked.

  Dash didn't say a word.

  I sighed. "You'll answer me or I'll shoot your kneecaps."

  Dash looked at his kneecaps and said, "He stole some money from us."

  "You mean your daughter, Britt, stole some money from you and gave it to Crawley," I corrected. They looked surprised.

  "How did you know?" Babs whispered.

  "The maid told me. How much did Britt take?"

  "Three hundred thousand," Dash muttered. That checked out, which proved they were willing to tell the truth about some things.

  "So you wanted Crawley dead because he was holding money your daughter stole," I said incredulously. "You don't seem that vindictive."

  "He was corrupting my daughter," Dash said. "Putting dangerous ideas into her head. He was a political troublemaker." A little life returned to his eyes, and he spoke with more conviction. "A thorn in the side of the Party. A diseased leech infecting everyone who came in contact with his lies. He undermined Party policy with his words. He was a wanted political criminal, you know."

  "I know he wrote poetry," I said. "What are you director of?"

  "Dashmeil is the director of resources for the City," Babs chirped proudly.

  "That explains the snort and chocolates," I said. "So I'm to believe that you falsified a warrant, hired God knows how many private enforcers and stiffed a dangerous professional just to remove a negative influence from your daughter's life?"

  "You don't realize how much we love our daughter, Mr. Strait," Babs burst out passionately. It reminded me of her performance in my office. "Britt is very naive and impressionable. She has to be protected. Crawley was a dangerous political hoodlum who was leading Britt down a path to real trouble, for herself and her family. We, er, 'stiffed' you because we couldn't afford to be connected to something like that."

  I felt like screaming at her. I tried to picture Crawley as a dangerous hoodlum and Britt as naive and impressionable. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't pull it off; the images kept contradicting each other. "So you were trying to
prevent a possible political scandal that might affect Dash's good standing in the Party," I said as if I'd squeezed something out of them. "Is that the way it is?"

  Babs looked at her slippers and dolloped out the shame. Dash put on his guilt face, and I wagged my head as though I bought all of it. I stood up, keeping the pistol pointed at Dash. His eyes fixed on the barrel, and the color drained from his face. Babs looked ready to sing out a long high note.

  "And now," Dash said in a hollow voice, "now you're going to kill us."

  "Don't be silly," I said. "I'd never get off the Hill alive."

  "You might not anyway."

  I gave him a long hard look. "I don't think you're that stupid. I don't think you'd draw attention to your little scandal by provoking a shoot-out on the Hill." I walked over to Harry and pulled up the sleeve on his right arm. The Chamberlains gasped, certain that I was going to dutifully take Harry's hand with me, true to my profession. I made a show of patting my pockets, then snapped my fingers dejectedly. I pulled the sleeve back down and said, "Forgot my saw."

  I holstered my pistol, scooped the last of the chocolates from the bowl and walked to the door. I opened it, then spun around, pawing inside my coat as if I'd changed my mind about shooting them. They flinched, then froze.

  "One last question," I said, brandishing a mere toothpick in my hand. "When was the last time you saw your daughter?"

  They both looked at each other, then Babs said, "Three weeks, I think. Or was it four? No, it was three."

  I nodded and left.

  15

  Driving back to the art party, I tried to get things straight in my head. First, most of what the Chamberlains had fed me was bullshit. They had Crawley made out to be some kind of demonic fiend from the Rasputin school of demagoguery, which he certainly hadn't been if first impressions meant anything. And unless Britt had undergone a radical personality transformation in the past three weeks, they were feeding me a line about her, too. Naive and impressionable. I laughed at my reflection in the rearview mirror.

  There was also a lot the Chamberlains weren't telling me. As I expected, on Harry's forearm I'd found a crowned swastika tattoo, denoting him an oberfäuhrer of a skinhead clan. What was a Party director doing being guarded by a neo-Nazi gang leader? And if they loved their daughter so much, why did they have such a hard time remembering when she left? Inconsistencies galore. There was something funny going on, but I wasn't getting the punch line, just the punches. I scowled in the mirror.

  It piqued me that they did all that song and dance and expected me to suck it all up. It was obvious that they didn't consider me one of the formidable intellects of the detective world. In fact, I suspected they thought me an oafish knave. I could use that impression to my advantage, but that didn't cheer my ego any.

  The parking lot was nearly full when I got back. I found a place in the back and killed the lights. I took off my dirty coat, wrapped my pistol and shoulder rig in it and put it under the seat. My pants were a little soiled, but that couldn't be helped. I combed my hair in the rearview mirror, practiced some charming one-liners and headed inside with my invitation. Two large men in white suits took my invite at the door. After a thorough frisk they told me to have a good time. I promised I would.

  The gallery was right off from the reception hall, so I didn't have to get lost finding it. A small crowd was slouching around the spacious anteroom, but the main action was in the gallery proper. I found Joe surrounded by a pack of babushkas, wearing a saccharine smile and rolling out his giggling amphetamine-alcohol rap. The middle-aged matrons, tipsy themselves, laughed and nodded at his rapidfire jokes and piquant observations. Nobody seemed to be looking at the paintings.

  "Bonjour, Joey," I said.

  He stopped giggling and tried to focus his eyes on me.

  "C'est moi, Docteur Strait, de Paris," I said in a dense French brogue.

  "Ah, yes, Dr. Strait," Joe said, remembering the act. "Did you finish the painting you were stuck on?"

  "Oui, oui, though I am afraid I put more paint on my trousers than the canvas." I gestured to my pants, and everyone made sympathetic sounds except Joe, who appeared to be checking for bloodstains.

  Distressed quiet descended until one of the matrons nudged Joe. "Oh, but what am I thinking?" Joe said aloud, like a man forgetful of his manners. "Dr. Strait, this is Mrs. Peterson, our gracious hostess and mother of Robert Peterson, the celebrated artist."

  Mrs. Peterson sort of curtsied, and I bowed, kissing her chubby hand. She giggled like a schoolgirl, and her friends looked envious.

  "So, Monsieur, I mean, Docteur Strait, what do you think of my son's paintings?" Mrs. Peterson asked. "I understand you are something of a specialist in the field."

  "I have yet to have the opportunity to examine these works, madame."

  "Well, let me show you, then!" She grabbed me by the elbow and steered me to the nearest wall. The other matrons followed, as did Joe, though somewhat reluctantly. He had the tense look of someone anticipating imminent disaster.

  The painting was dominated by a large, dark figure in a floppy red hat hitting a small pale creature with monstrously oversize mammary glands. The brass plate attached to the bottom of the frame said The Slap of the Pimp, By Robert Egbert Peterson III, Esq.

  "My son calls it 'neorealistic urban impressionism,' " Mrs. Peterson said in reverent tones. "Don't you think it's very urban?"

  "Oui. Tell me, madame, has your son ever visited the City?" I asked.

  "He's been on protected field studies twice," she revealed proudly. "And he's seen lots of pictures."

  "I see."

  We herded over to the next painting. This one was entitled A Responsibility for All or Feeding the Cannibals. It portrayed a large man in Party uniform handing out loaves of bread and sausages to undersized City dwellers groveling at his feet. The Party man's face was turned slightly to the sky, his eyes fixed on some distant ideal, like the proud workers found on twentieth-century Communist Party posters.

  "So, Docteur Strait, to whom would you compare my son's style?" Mrs. Peterson asked. "Monet? Renoir? Degas?"

  "I was more thinking de Merde," I said.

  Joe grimaced and Mrs. Peterson looked bewildered. She turned to her friends, and they repeated the word amongst themselves for a moment then turned back to me.

  "What sort of style is that?" she asked.

  "Philippe de Merde was a little-known impressionist who lived in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century," I ad-libbed. "He worked in the sewers at day and painted by night. Only recently have his works been applauded as brilliant innovations in the field of impressionism. He is very popular on the Continent at this time. In fact, there has not a day gone by that I have not heard his name pronounced on the streets of Paris."

  "Oh, truly?" Mrs. Peterson squealed happily. "I cannot wait to tell my son!"

  "Yes, you must tell him at once," I said. "Let me ask you, madame, has your son attended college?"

  "Why, yes, of course."

  "Then he must know something of France and its beautiful language."

  "Yes, of course."

  "Excellent. Then perhaps he will know of Monsieur de Merde."

  The matrons lumbered off to reveal my revelations, leaving me alone with a very unhappy-looking Joe.

  I smiled innocently. "How'd I do?"

  "How could you do this to me?" It sounded as if his high was taking a nosedive.

  I shrugged. "Just like to help, that's all." I looked around. Everyone was dressed like Joe. "Wanna get a drink?" I asked.

  Joe shook his head, and I left him to his misery. I strolled over to a portable bar in a corner of the gallery.

  "I'll have a beer," I said.

  The dour-looking barman glared at me as if I'd called him a bad name.

  "Okay, a tequila slammer, then."

  He frowned harder. "We don't stock those sort of… refreshments, sir."

  "What's the strongest thing you stock?" I demanded.

&
nbsp; "Wine spritzer, sir."

  "Jesus. Give me five of those."

  "Guests are allowed to order only three drinks at a time, sir. Mr. Peterson's orders."

  "Where is that penurious swine?" I said, glowering at the crowd. "I'll throttle the chintzy bastard!"

  The jumpy bartender wouldn't point him out, but passed three wine spritzers across the bar. I slammed back the first two as fast as he handed them to me, then leaned against the bar and nursed the survivor. It tasted like lemonade left in the sun too long.

  "How do you get lucky in a joint like this?" I said over my shoulder.

  "Get lucky, sir?"

  "Yeah, lucky. You know, score, pick up, scam. Lasso a filly. Konk a cave girl. Bag a bambi."

  The barman sniffed indignantly. "I wouldn't know about that, sir."

  I looked back at him. "I bet you don't. But I don't hold it against you."

  He sniffed again and I scanned the crowd. A pretentious-looking young man with a permanent frown and an air of self-importance strode into the room followed by a pandering flock of other young artist types. Mrs. Peterson and the babushka herd descended on him like a rival pack of moose, and I took a drink and smiled. I lived for moments like these.

  They met in the middle of the room, too far away for me to hear the conversation but I could read expressions just fine. Mrs. Peterson jabbered away at the young man, and I thought I read her lips saying "de Merde" at least seven times. The young man's head gorged with blood until it looked as if it might swell up and explode. He asked his mother a question. Mrs. Peterson looked around the room, then spotted me at the bar. She gestured in my direction, and her son glared angrily over. I smiled and saluted him with my drink.

  Instead of rushing over and thrashing me within an inch of my insolent life, he brutalized me symbolically by throwing his chin defiantly into the air and stalking out, entourage in tow. Mrs. Peterson appeared baffled and looked over at me for help. I shrugged and gave her a beats-me face. Joe glided in next to her, and I could almost see the soothing words flowing out of his mouth like honey.