He took it about the way I expected he would. At first he tried to deny it and then he got pissed off and then he got scared and then he said, “I’m probably next.” He had been waiting in the car but when I’d told him about Robards he’d gotten out of the car and started pacing.
“Let’s get in the car,” I said.
“Did you hear me? I’m probably next.”
I held the door for him. “Get in the car.”
He looked behind him. Frantically. “Aren’t you going to call the police or something?”
“I’ve already called them.”
“You sure he’s not dead?”
“I’m sure.”
On the freeway with the windows rolled down and both of us freezing our asses off, I said, “I want you to tell me.”
“Maybe you’re better off not knowing.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit. I’ve been through too much to hear it. I want to know what you and Robards were up to.”
He said it then and it was simple as hell. It always is when it’s the truth. “We were selling secrets.”
“To whom?”
“To Channel Six. Our competitor. That’s who Ross, the private detective, worked for.”
“What sort of secrets?”
“Oh, after we’d have a conference where we’d discuss what investigative reports we’d be doing, we’d sell what we knew to Ross and the twins, and they’d sell them to Channel Six.”
I looked over at him. He was reciting all this in a flat dead voice. “Why did you do it?”
“Because we hated them, Fitzgerald and Kelly Ford and all the fucking consultants. They rule our lives, you know. They tell us how to dress, how to behave; they make fun of us to our faces. They were going to replace us — we started stealing the research reports from Kelly Ford’s office over a year ago — and we could see in their private studies that we were going to be fired eventually. So we decided to make money while we could. So we sold the information.”
“Did any of the information have to do with the suicide of the Chandler boy?”
“No. And that’s the funny thing.”
“Why is it funny?”
“That’s all Ross talked about.”
“Stephen Chandler?”
“Yes.”
“He knew the kid, didn’t he?”
Hanratty nodded. “Yes. See, Stephen was on Channel Three six months ago, after the first time he tried to commit suicide.”
That I hadn’t known anything about. But it made me very curious.
“So how does Ross figure in all this?”
“I’m not sure. I just know that he offered me ten thousand dollars if I could find out what really happened to Stephen Chandler.”
“What do you mean, what really happened? He committed suicide, didn’t he?”
He sighed. “I’m in deep shit, Dwyer.”
“Keep talking.”
“Deep shit.”
“Goddammit, go on.”
He sighed again. “One night I went up to Ross’s place.”
He didn’t say anything else.
I said, “Yeah. So what?”
“I started to go in, but I heard all these voices — it was the twins talking with Ross — and what I heard, well... The twins knew the Chandler boy pretty well. They talked about getting him laid and letting him drive their car and giving him pocket money. They had the kid do errands for them, dirty work, mostly. Nothing serious. They were trying to develop him into kind of an assistant because he had good looks and charm and a real lot of balls, I guess. A real lot.”
“So?”
“So they said there was no way he committed suicide. They said somebody murdered him.”
“Jesus,” I said. “What?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“What makes sense?”
“Curtis’s death; somebody trying to kill Dev Robards. Because the Chandler kid wasn’t a suicide at all. Somebody murdered him.”
Hanratty looked out the window at the night. Trucks rolled by. Headed for the plains and then the mountains. I wanted to go with them.
“Could Ross have murdered Stephen Chandler?” I said.
“No. In his own way he was honest. He didn’t know who had killed Chandler. He just knew that somebody at Channel Three had gotten the kid unconscious and purposely fed him an overdose and then dumped him back at Falworthy House.” Then he said, “Shit.”
“What?”
“I gotta puke again.”
I wheeled over to the side of the road.
He didn’t make it down the ravine this time. He stood right there off the macadam. Cars honked at him. You could hear laughter.
“You and your wife got any place you can spend the night other than home?”
“I owe her a night at a motel,” he said.
“Make it tonight then.”
He leaned his head in the window. He looked like an altar boy again. “He’s a very nice man.”
“Who?”
“Robards.”
“Yeah, he is.”
“You really think he’s gonna be all right?”
“Yeah, but you two dipshits were way out of your league.”
“You’re right. You’re so fucking right.”
I handed him a stick of gum.
“What’s this for?”
“You won’t smell quite so bad when you see your wife.”
“Oh. Yeah. Right. Thanks.”
He was long gone. Nerves and terror had taken him away, our singing weatherman.
24
I drove around the phone booth several times before finally pulling in. Even then, still not sure, I stood in the spring night having a smoke and watching young women stroll by. For once they held no particular interest for me. Not with what was on my mind.
Finally I decided it would be best if I did what was only proper to do. As people kept reminding me, I was only a security guard. Hell, I’d been fired, so I wasn’t even that.
I went into the booth and dropped in my quarter and called the precinct house number from memory. I’d dialed it a thousand times in my days as a cop. I asked for him and the man on the desk said, “Wait a minute please,” and then he came back and said, “He’s not in this evening. He had some time off coming.”
“Thanks.”
Then I tried Edelman’s house. His wife, one of the truly decent people in the universe, answered and said, “He’s bowling.”
“Bowling?”
She laughed. “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” Then she was more serious. “Hasn’t he told you about his blood pressure?”
“No.”
“It’s very high. The doctor’s worried. They tried him on tranquilizers, but they just make him sleepy, so he’s taken up bowling.”
“Is the blood pressure coming down?”
“Slowly, thank God.”
“Well, just mention I called if you would.”
“I sure will. And it’s going to be good to see you whenever that day comes around again.”
I was always promising her I’d be over for dinner one day. Soon.
“Thanks,” I said, and hung up.
The trailer court was dark. Just the glow of lights and TV screens in the window. When I pulled in, I saw a young couple strolling by. She had her hand stuffed deep down the back of his trousers and he had his hand stuffed deep inside her blouse. It made me smile. It would be nice to be so publicly horny again.
There were three cars parked around Marcie Grant’s trailer. The last one was a new red Firebird. I took my old route, along the side of the trailer and up to the back window.
The Ayreses, identical as always in matching white shirts and black slacks, had big Mike Perry, the sports-caster, tied in a straight-backed chair. Marcie Grant they had on the couch. All she wore was panties. Even in the dim light you could see the odd violet glow of her eyes. What they emitted now was terror.