Hell's Detective Page 4

  The ex-lover had skipped his apartment, but even that wasn’t much of a wrinkle. One of his work buddies, some guy he’d probably pissed off by monopolizing the rich wives, had called me to tell me where he was holed up. It hadn’t been challenging, but I was content to take on a low-profile job. I’d vexed some unsavory types recently, chief amongst them Bruno, who ran half the casino action in town. Tommy, an old buddy from my days on the force, one of the rare guys who believed women could be more than dispatchers, had been caught counting cards. Instead of leaving quietly, he’d broken the dealer’s nose and stuffed his pockets with chips. After security booted him out, he got wasted and returned to slash the tires of Bruno’s vintage Cadillac Sixty Special. As the piss de résistance, Tommy smashed the windshield and took a generous leak over the leather interior. Big mistake. Over two decades, Bruno had changed wives four times, but his car not at all. He had hundreds of employees, but every day he washed and waxed the gleaming chrome himself.

  I happened to be on my way in to meet a client as Bruno, cheered on by two henchmen, was stomping on Tommy’s head. I didn’t know the history then—Tommy filled me in later through a mouth of broken teeth—but I could tell from the look of determined savagery on Bruno’s face that he wouldn’t stop until my friend’s skull was as flat as the Caddy’s tires. I encouraged Bruno to desist by pointing my gun at his nuts. He didn’t buy my argument that I was doing him a favor by saving him from a murder rap. As I dragged Tommy away, Bruno outlined the various ways in which he would make me pay. I wasn’t too worried. Bruno tossed out threats like candy, and most of them lasted as long in his memory as a sugar rush.

  I wasn’t expecting trouble in the motel either. Opportunistic blackmailers usually folded like a skittish gambler in a high-stakes poker game. It would take a few hours to retrieve the smutty images and return them to their rightful owner. I would be home by midnight, giving me enough time to heat up my blood in a hot bath, reading The World According to Garp, before Danny came home and heated it up further.

  It was my first time in love, which was considered abnormal for a woman of my years. I didn’t see how it could have gone any other way. My few lovers had been either guys who, after the initial honeymoon period, started fretting for the American dream of a dutiful wife, two kids, and a suburban home or those who were obviously homosexual but didn’t have the guts to admit it so picked the most masculine woman they could find and pestered her for anal sex. I wanted somebody who didn’t care how he was supposed to behave, somebody who wore his skin like it was his own rather than a costume society had lent him. Those kinds of men—those kinds of people—were few and far between. For a long time, it seemed like I would grow old with only my ever-expanding library for company. Then Danny came along.

  I first saw him in the Criminal Courts Building in downtown LA, where I was slouching in the peanut gallery. It was a good way to pick up work when business was slow. If a guilty defendant somehow got off, the victim and their families still wanted justice. I would approach them and suggest they call if they needed a pro to find new evidence.

  The case in progress was as juicy as a rare steak. Some banker had been playing fast and loose outside the marital bed, so his wife hired a private investigator—not me, which had pissed me off. The investigator delivered a slew of incriminating pictures. So far, so-so. Then, two weeks later, the banker turned up in the emergency room carrying his dick in a paper cup. The wife stood accused of hiring an unidentified lowlife to carry out the back-alley surgery. I could tell there was no angle for me. The husband sat pale and hangdog in the front row. If the wife walked, he’d let the case drop rather than face fresh humiliation. I stuck around because I was curious to lay eyes on the investigator due in the witness stand: one Danny Ainsworth. I’d heard his name but never met him. He was fresh in town from New York and was ruffling feathers by trying to muscle in on established operators, including me.

  When Danny took the stand, I didn’t see much in him. He wore a nondescript gray suit, jacket unbuttoned to allow his paunch room to flower. He was around six feet, although the stoop he’d developed from hunching unseen in too many doorways shaved off a few inches. His hair was brown, thinning on top, and he’d obviously shaved before the trial; small cuts clustered under his long, thin nose and over his jutting chin. He hadn’t even bothered to remove the tissue paper from one. I pegged him for midforties. While the attention of the courtroom was elsewhere, Danny turned to the defendant. His eyes, encircled by crow’s feet, had been half-closed, but now they sat open. They were jade green and alive with intelligence. He gave a slight nod. Somehow, I knew then that the woman was guilty and that Danny knew it too. I sat up and started to pay attention.

  The prosecutor, a well-groomed woman in her fifties, launched into the usual schtick: all declamations, leading questions, and dramatic pauses. The witness stand could put anybody on edge: the prosecutor hammering you for cracks in the defense case, the judge glowering down, and the courtroom watching every facial tic. As the lawyer harangued him, Danny lounged on his seat like it was a deck chair. After five minutes of easily fielded questions, she was the one to lose her composure.

  “Are you saying he deserved it?” she said.

  “No,” Danny said. “I’m saying he put his dick in so many suspicious holes, it was bound to get bitten off eventually.”

  Titters raced around the courtroom, but Danny didn’t react.

  “So you think she’s guilty?”

  Danny turned a scathing look on the prosecutor. “Am I not making myself clear? I followed this pecker on legs for weeks. He wasn’t fussy about who he screwed. He’d hump a fire hydrant if it had pubic hair. Half the women had lovers or husbands, and we’re not talking high society. There’s at least three cuckolds out there pissed enough to have hacked off his overstimulated dick. I suggest you go find which one of them did it and give him a medal for services to humanity’s gene pool.”

  The courtroom exploded in laughter. The judge banged his gavel enthusiastically even as a slight smile played across his face. That was the moment I knew I wanted Danny. I’d seen investigators smart-mouthing in court before. Their eyes always flicked to the spectators, checking to see how entertained the audience was, puffing up with pride when they got a big laugh. Danny looked steadily at the defendant, his gaze and demeanor reassuring. He wasn’t playing it for laughs or looking for admiration. He was stating his opinion and sticking up for his client. I slipped out of the gallery to splash some water on my flushed cheeks. Here was a man who didn’t give a rat’s hairy asshole what anybody thought. I had to meet him.

  When he came out, I was leaning against the window across from the courtroom, trying to look calm and collected.

  “Seems like we went to the same charm school,” I said.

  “I don’t talk to the competition,” he said without breaking his stride.

  I scurried to catch up. “Who says I’m competition?”

  “I do, Kat Murphy.” He caught the flicker of surprise on my face. “Yeah, I know who you are. I did my research. You’re allegedly one of the best in town. And I do say allegedly. I followed you last month to see if your reputation was deserved. You didn’t notice.”

  “Predators look forward. Only prey look back.”

  “Yeah, and plenty of predators get bitten in the ass by rivals.”

  Blood was rampaging around my veins, and my breath was short. I didn’t know whether I was angry, horny, or tired from matching his fast pace. All three, I decided.

  “I suppose you’ve got three-hundred-sixty-degree vision,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.

  “I can spot a tail, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How about I tail you? If you don’t spot me, you let me buy you dinner.”

  He halted, a slight smile on his face. “Are you hitting on me?”

  “I only want to swap notes,” I lied. “I can give you the lay of the land here. You can let me know how you do it in New York. We’ll both le
arn something.”

  We stood in the middle of the corridor, gazes locked as human traffic flowed around us. His scent lit up all the right parts of my brain. His nose twitched too, and I was sure he was feeling the same sensation as me.

  “I’ll play,” he said eventually. “Follow me for a full day at some point in the next week. If I see you, we’re done. If I don’t, write me a report about what I did to prove you were there. Manage that, and I’ll buy you dinner. You’d better change that nasty perfume, though, or I’ll smell you from a mile away.”

  He strode off, leaving me standing there, sniffing my collar.

  Three days later, I followed him. He didn’t do anything special: grabbed lunch at a burger joint, met a few clients, and retired to his apartment around seven not to emerge. He saw me. I know he did. But he didn’t let on. We had dinner and then, well, you know how it goes. All love affairs are the same, save for the details. We did the courting dance, swapped life stories, and built our cases to justify listening to what our bodies had been telling us from the beginning. I didn’t know I had so many holes in my life until he filled them.

  This amazing man, who’d been in my life for three years, was out on a job of his own while I prepared to reel in the blackmailer. He’d told me to expect him around one in the morning. I didn’t know what he was working on. We didn’t compare notes, because we never stopped seeing each other as the competition. A few months after we got together, I told him about a potentially lucrative case. He scampered off to see my prospective client and offered a discount on my rates—bad-mouthing my methods, results, and personal hygiene in the process. I was pissed, but the makeup sex was so spectacular and he was so endearingly delighted about putting one over on me that I took it and learned to clam up about work. Even now, it was difficult to ask him what he was working on, even though something was clearly bugging him. He’d been off the last few weeks, not his usual sharp-tongued self. Sure, I’d asked him if everything was fine, and he’d said I shouldn’t worry, but I couldn’t probe for details. When this evening’s work was done, though, I planned to broach the subject properly. I couldn’t stand to see him lose his spark.

  The light was on in number three, so I sidled noiselessly along the wall. I’d already slipped the owner twenty bucks for the spare key to the room. As I edged toward the door, the power went off in the whole motel. Lights still sprinkled the rest of the city, and the urban glow dimmed the stars that had appeared once the rain cloud had retreated. The shoddy wiring had probably blown a fuse when somebody turned a hair dryer on a wet patch on the bed. A couple of guests bustled out and headed for reception. Nobody emerged from number three. I figured the blackmailer had fallen asleep in front of the TV, which would make my job easier. Nothing gave a soft touch the heebie-jeebies more than spluttering awake to a cold circle of steel chilling the forehead.

  I slid out my gun and listened by the door. Nothing stirred. The key grated softly as I slipped it into the lock, and the knob creaked when I eased it to the left. There was still no sound, so I shoved open the door and stepped in. A muzzle flash and dull crump came instantly. My own clumsiness saved me. I’d tripped over the doorframe, tipping forward and to the right. Instead of blowing open my chest, the bullet caught me on the left shoulder. I half-fell, half-dove forward, getting a mouthful of foul carpet for my trouble. The muzzle flash had lit up the room for a split second, illuminating the single bed that now provided me momentary cover from the shooter. There was no pain yet, just a seeping wetness down my arm and a numbness spreading across my chest.

  He’d heard me coming and panicked, the dumb shit. What did he think I was going to do, kill him for the sake of some dirty pictures? I wanted to negotiate, to try to calm him, but it was too late. The adrenaline rush from pulling the trigger would have strung him even tighter, and talking would prompt more gunfire in my direction. I had some experience on that front, testified to by a dime-sized lump of scar tissue on my thigh. I’d gotten lucky that time—the shooter had gone on the lam instead of finishing me off. I wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice. As much as I didn’t like it, this was going to end with one of us coughing up blood; the sooner I acted, the less likely it would be me.

  I rolled out from behind the bed, ignoring the burning sensation in my shoulder. Another flash propelled another bullet, which thudded into the floor by my ear. I aimed at the afterimage and pulled the trigger three times. He got off another shot, but the barrel was pointing up as he fell. The bullet punched a hole in the ceiling. My ears were ringing from the gunshots, but I heard him spit out a whimper. The stink of blood and shit perfumed the air as the body hit the floor. I rose to my feet in stages. Blinking away the spots of light from the muzzle flashes and keeping the gun trained on the dim outline of his prone form, I crept closer. He was alive but wouldn’t be for long; his breath came in a burble. It was all so pointless. He was going to die for the sake of a lousy score he would have blown in a couple of months.

  Still, I had a job to do. Footsteps were slapping the wet concrete outside, and shrill voices were shouting for someone to call the cops. I could smooth things out with the LAPD. It would be time-consuming and annoying, but I wouldn’t go down. My license was up-to-date, and the department knew me as somebody who didn’t open fire without good reason. They would chalk it up to self-defense. Hell, I’d never even killed anybody. I’d had occasion to shoot at people, but through the vagaries of chance or bad aim, none of my bullets had struck anywhere vital. Finally, I’d claimed my first life. I didn’t know how I felt about that and didn’t have time to get angsty. I couldn’t let the cops get the pictures. Honesty wasn’t a universal commodity on the LA force, and there was a chance one of the officers would pick up where the blackmailer left off.

  I pulled out my pocket flashlight and clicked it on. Smoke and particles of gunpowder drifted in the thin beam as it swept across the carpet and lit up the face of the man I’d shot. The flashlight fell from my numb fingers just as the lights clicked back on. There lay Danny, blood pooling underneath his body and staining his cheek. His eyes were drowsy, the pupils jittery as he looked at me.

  “Kat?” he said, his voice obscenely wet. “How did you find me?”

  I closed my eyes against the harsh overhead light and counted to three. I told myself that when I opened them, he wouldn’t be on the floor, sandwiched between a peeling plastic chair and a sagging bed. It would be the blackmailer, his stomach and chest ripped open, dark blood oozing from his lips. Not Danny. But when I let the light back in, Danny was still dying. I fell to my knees and cradled his head in my lap. He didn’t need to know he’d almost killed me. He didn’t need to know I’d killed him.

  “I tailed you,” I said, forcing the fiction out through clenched teeth. “Like when we met. I came in when the fireworks started.”

  He somehow managed to lift his hand and curl his fingers through mine. “I didn’t see you. You’re getting better.”

  “No, you’re getting slacker.”

  He smiled, lips smudged red like we’d been kissing all night. “Did you get him?” he asked, eyes growing suddenly sharp.

  “Yes.”

  He frowned and tried to crane his neck to look for the body. I held him tighter, but I couldn’t fool him. I never could.

  “Oh, Kat. It was you.”

  “I didn’t know,” I said, barely able to see through the tears. “I swear I didn’t know.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be you,” he said, and the light went out of his eyes.

  I knelt there in the blood of the man I loved, the man I’d killed, for as long as it took to absorb the weight of my crime and loss. I rolled him onto his back and buttoned the jacket over his big belly to hide the wounds. I sponged his face with toilet paper wetted from the tap until the blood was gone. I kissed him on the lips one last time. I sat in the chair and picked up my Colt.

  Somebody had arranged for this to happen, but not this way. The lights had conveniently gone out as I arrived, so Da
nny couldn’t see his target’s face. He would have been safe in the shadows with a clear shot at the silhouette in the doorway. He fired the second the door opened. He must have been in fear of his life. That was why he’d been behaving so oddly of late. Somebody had been coming to kill him, or so he’d been told. But the somebody who came, courtesy of an anonymous tip-off, was me. I was the one meant to die in this room at the hands of my lover. Bruno had set this up. I’d lit his fuse and ignored his threats in my arrogance, misreading how angry he really was. But I was the one who’d dodged the bullet that should have killed me and so spared Danny. I was the one who’d pulled the trigger.

  This was all down to me.

  Sirens were growing in volume. The police would be here soon. They wouldn’t punish me. Nobody would. Except myself.

  I put the gun deep inside my mouth and pulled the trigger.

  5

  The Torment spat me out onto the hill, where I lay puking and shivering as it joined its black brothers to wheel back toward the tower. The back of my head tingled as if the bullet had just exploded out in a shower of bone, but that was nothing compared to the razor claws of shame and grief tearing my heart to ribbons. These visitations brought neither nightmares nor visions. They plunged me into vivid Technicolor reality. Each night I lived it all again—every sight, sound, smell, and emotion. Only when I found myself back in the park did I recall where I was and the life I’d been living since I lost Danny.

  I did what I always did. I took deep, shuddering breaths and tried to conjure up happier images of my lover: his triumphant grin as he reduced me to one sock in a game of strip poker while he’d lost nothing more than his jacket; his flushed cheeks after a blistering quickie down an alleyway; his hat blowing off in the wind as we drove to Santa Monica beach, bopping me in the face and, to peals of laughter on his part, making me veer into a bollard. But the images were fuzzy and fleeting; his pale, blood-soaked face kept forcing them out. I tried to tell myself I couldn’t have done anything differently—the motel room was pitch black, I came under fire, I didn’t know it was him, I was defending myself. The sole mistake I’d made, I argued, was that I didn’t find Bruno and torture him to death before decorating the wall with my brains. Above all, I tried to convince myself I’d spared Danny this pit. If his bullet had hit its mark, he would have ended up in Lost Angeles sooner or later and been forced to relive the moment he killed me. Instead, he was somewhere better. He had to be.