“Maybe, maybe not.”
Wilde paced.
“The other option is to wait and hope he shows up,” he said. “I’m tired of him being the one in control.”
119
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
Waverly called the Chicago investigator, Drew Blackwater, to see if he’d found out anything about Bristol or the tattoo guy who broke into Waverly’s apartment. It turned out that he had.
“The guy you described with the scar and tattoo-the one I thought sounded vaguely familiar-he’s been around town before,” he said.
“Really?”
“Really.”
“You got a name?”
“Not yet,” Blackwater said. “What I have is a bartender who remembers him. That’s all.”
“Did you check the hotels?”
“Yes, for him and Bristol. Nada on both of them.”
“Can you keep digging?
“I can but the bill’s racking up.”
“I’m good for it, I promise.”
Silence.
“Where can I contact you?”
“You can’t.”
“Then call me in a couple of hours.”
“Thanks.” She almost hung up but pulled the phone back and said, “Drew, you still there?”
He was.
“When did that bartender see the tattoo guy?”
“He wasn’t certain but it was a ways back,” he said. “More than a year.”
“Two years?”
“Possibly.”
“August of ’50?”
“Possibly.”
“So he’s the one.”
“We don’t know that.”
“Well he certainly could be the one.”
“I’ll give you that much,” he said. “Maybe he works for this Bristol guy.”
“Maybe.”
“Can I give you a piece of advice?”
“No.”
He laughed.
“Good, because here it comes. Let it go. That’s my advice, let it go.”
“Someday.”
“If you don’t it will kill you,” he said. “Either from the inside or the outside, but one or the other for sure.”
“I’ll call you later today. Have something for me.”
Waverly’s stomach growled and she ended up at a ratty diner with a plate full of meatloaf and mashed potatoes in front of her and a glass of milk at the side.
She needed to check in with the boss man Shelby Tilt but couldn’t.
If he had any idea how deep she was, he’d pull her off faster than he’d yank her panties down if she ever gave him half a chance.
His cigar-stained face was best left in the dark for right now.
Clouds were building up outside.
Their bellies were black.
A storm was coming.
When she got back to her hotel, Su-Moon was sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against the building with her knees hugged up.
“Big news,” she said. “I just called my investigator back in Cleveland to see if he had anything else for me. It turns out that Bristol wasn’t just in town the exact same day as when that woman-Bobbi Litton-got dropped off a roof, but there was a piece of paper in her purse that said:
Tom.B.
Monday, 1:00
Euclid and 9th
Tom B has to stand for Tom Bristol. Do you understand what I’m saying? He actually knew the woman. He was in town to meet her about something.”
“How did the PI find that out?”
“He has connections down at the police department,” Su-Moon said. “He called and asked if the name Bristol ever came up in the Bobbi Litton investigation. It didn’t specifically but they had this mysterious Tom B. note that never made any sense.”
Waverly wrinkled her brow.
“The blond with Bristol, Jaden, had an interesting theory,” she said. “She said someone might be setting Bristol up. If that’s true, maybe he planted the note in the woman’s purse. Jaden’s running it down this afternoon. I’m going to meet her at four.”
Su-Moon looked at the sky.
“I thought it was supposed to be sunny in Denver,” she said. “I can get this back in San Francisco.” A beat then, “If someone was going to set Bristol up, don’t you think they would have used his name instead of Tom B.?”
True.
Very true.
“I want to run it down anyway,” Waverly said.
“We already know the answer. Bristol’s the one.”
“I need to be a hundred percent certain,” Waverly said. “I don’t want any second thoughts creeping into my life after I do what I’m going to do.”
“Which is what?”
“Which is something serious.”
Waverly must have had a tone in her voice because Su-Moon backed off a half step and studied her.
“You’re going to kill him?”
“Let’s put it this way,” she said. “If he stays on the streets, someone else is just going to end up dead.”
Su-Moon shook her head.
“Let the police handle it.”
“With what evidence?”
“What do you mean, with what evidence? With all of it.”
“All of it is basically nothing,” Waverly said. “There isn’t enough at any one place.”
120
Day Four
July 24, 1952
Thursday Morning
River exercised outside with his shirt off, occasionally pulling in the industrial area with his peripheral vision to verify that the woman with the binoculars was still in place. January ought to be getting close. In hindsight River should never have let her go. She was armed but the other woman might be too.
He worked through the pain of one final set of seventy-five pushups, then wiped his brow with the back of his hand and headed inside.
Thunder rolled through his veins.
He pulled the roof in with the binoculars.
The woman wasn’t visible.
She was in her down position.
He kept the scene in sight, ready to dart to the side at the first sign of a head popping up.
“Whoever you are, you’re going down.”
Suddenly there was movement. Two figures were fighting, standing chest to chest and pounding each other in the face.
They dropped.
Seconds passed.
River ran outside and took the ladder to the top of the boxcar, hoping to get a line of sight over the parapet. It didn’t work. Whatever was happening was out of view.
Come on.
Come on.
Come on.
Then a partial silhouette of a figure appeared, not frantic, not fighting, but visibly shaking. Then the figure stood upright and turned around.
It was January.
She looked directly at the boxcars and waved her arms.
That was it.
That was the signal.
River dropped the binoculars and ran that way, cutting across abandoned tracks and knee-high weeds, trying to not step on anything that would jack-up his foot.
When he got to the building, January was waiting for him at street level. Her face was a mess, her hair was disheveled, her shirt was ripped, her arm was scraped.
“Where’s the woman?”
“She’s up on the roof,” January said. “She’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yeah, dead. We ended up in a fight. It was her fault. She’s the one who started it.” A beat then, “So what do we do now, just leave her there or dump her somewhere?”
River weighed it both ways.
“We’ll dump her. Go get the car, I’ll bring her down.”
Up on the roof, River recognized the body. It was that woman who worked with Bryson Wilde. He picked her up, flung her over his shoulder and carried her down to street level. January was already there, waiting for him with the car.
River looked around.
No one was in sight.
He dumped the body in the trunk and slammed the lid.
Then they got the hell out of there.