Memory Lane Read online

  Chapter 2

  From the outside it looked like an ordinary, badly neglected, broken-down east-side house. The kind of place that, were it a self-respecting horse, would politely ask for a bullet between the eyes. Paint peeled away from the clapboard walls in drab and scabrous sheets, as if hoping to escape before the building came tumbling down. Detective Jack Willows was no carpenter, but to his eye all that was holding the house up was force of habit.

  The front gate had fallen flat on its ass, but someone had taken pity on it, picked it up and leaned it against the faded picket fence. Willows stepped over the yellow crime-scene tape that twisted in the cold damp wind. A uniformed cop waved a four-battery MagLite in his face, mumbled a gruff apology, redirected the beam towards Detective Claire Parker’s long and shapely legs.

  Willows heard quick footsteps behind them. He turned. The MagLite’s beam washed all the colour out of Bobby Dundas’ handsome face.

  Bobby said, “Get that fucking searchlight off me or I’ll shove it so far up your baggy ass people will mistake you for a fucking X-ray.” He smiled at Parker. “Evening, Claire.”

  Willows said, “What’re you doing here, Bobby?”

  “Detecting.” Bobby wore a black fedora that went well with his cashmere overcoat, but he was quick to take advantage of Parker’s umbrella. Willows hadn’t even bothered to turn his collar up against the rain.

  “Aren’t you off-duty?”

  “Yeah, sure. I was on my way home when the call came over the radio. Murder! How could I resist? Christ, I almost broke out in a sweat.”

  The flashlight had gone away. In the orange glare of the streetlights, Bobby’s face had turned that same slick shade of yellowish green as the flesh of an unripe avocado. Bobby had come to homicide straight out of vice. He was the kind of guy who kept a flattering picture of himself — and nobody else — in his wallet. There wasn’t a single cop in Serious Crimes who would admit to finding him likeable, and Willows was at the head of the list, partly because Bobby kept making moves on Claire. Bobby saw himself as an inevitable force, and didn’t care who knew it. His first day on the job, he’d told Parker she was wasting her life, messing around with a married man. Especially an old dude like Willows, who’d done the father routine once and wasn’t likely, at his age, to want to do it again. Willows and his wife, Sheila, had split up years ago, and Willows had recently initiated divorce proceedings. But none of this mattered to Bobby.

  Willows and Parker made their way up the front-porch steps. Bobby kept his distance as he followed along behind. The porch light was on. Bobby posed beneath the naked bulb. The light cast shadows all over his face. His hands fluttered like the wings of a mortally wounded moth. Smiling, he said, “Okay, beat the truth out of me. I came over because I wanted to watch the master at work, see if I could pick up a few pointers.”

  As they made their way into the house, Bobby slipped his arm around Parker, pressed his hand against the small of her back. She turned on him, but before she could say anything he glided past, taking the lead. His cologne mingled with the stench of burnt food. A uniform leaned against the banister, rainwater puddling at his feet on the worn linoleum floor.

  Parker glanced around. To her right, a narrow staircase rose steeply to the second floor. On the left an open doorway led to a living room cluttered with falling-apart furniture. A three-legged table reminded her of Jack’s new cat, the accident victim he’d adopted, Tripod. Dead ahead, a cramped hall led to the dimly lit kitchen. Someone with a sturdy pair of boots and plenty of energy had kicked several holes in the lathe-and-plaster walls. A strip of green plastic sliced from a Glad bag made a brittle crackling sound as it flapped in the breeze coming in through a broken window.

  Into her ear, Bobby Dundas said, “Can you imagine living in a dump like this? Not that it’s a great place to die…” He touched her arm, his gloved hand trailing lightly across the fabric of her coat. Then, abruptly, he turned his back on her, seemed to forget about her. Parker felt a sudden surge of anger. Bobby was right — it was a dump. But she liked to think that nobody would live in circumstances like these unless they had to.

  Too bad it wasn’t true.

  The living room ran straight through into the dining room. At one time it had been possible to separate the two rooms with a pair of sliding pocket doors, but the hardware had broken or the doors had come off their tracks, so they hung at an odd angle, broken and useless.

  The victim sat in one of five mismatched chairs that surrounded the bright yellow oval of a fifties-era Formica table. He had fallen face forward on the table, and a pool of blood had gathered around him. The man was bald except for a horseshoe of dirty blond hair above his ears. He was in his mid-fifties, thin to the point of emaciation. He wore a sleeveless T-shirt and checkerboard pants, cheap running shoes. Blood had pooled in the crotch of the pants. There was more blood on a chrome-plated table leg, and on the shabby carpet between his stockinged feet. The dull black haft of a knife protruded from his throat. On the table in front of him lay a kitchen knife with a stubby, serrated blade. Parker moved in on him, as close as she could get. The man’s eyes were pale brown, almost gold. He had died needing a shave.

  Bobby winked at Parker. He said, “Looks like suicide to me, kids. Well thought out, too. He’s even got a backup knife, in case the first one didn’t work.”

  “Shut up, Bobby.”

  “’Scuse me?”

  There were playing cards scattered on the table, but no chips or money. The victim’s hand lay neatly before him, spread out like a fan. He’d died holding a full house — aces over kings. Sometimes, if a man wasn’t careful, he could get a little too lucky.

  A spill of fingerprint powder made her sneeze. The victim’s skin was coarse and wrinkled. His pupils had shrunk to pinpoints, as if overwhelmed by the headlight of the big train that had overtaken him and crushed him flat. A feline howl of anguish and rage was followed by a sudden babble of voices from the kitchen.

  Parker followed the noise to its source. Willows lingered for a moment, and then followed. A pudgy uniform leaned against a sink full of Salvador Dali plates and plastic glasses as he sipped at a can of Coke. Willows took a second look. The plates were made of cardboard; they were disposable. A woman who might’ve been the cop’s not-so-sweet mother slouched in a corner, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette. The cop said, “This’s Hilda. She’s a player. There’s another of ’em on the back porch, and two more upstairs.”

  “In separate rooms?”

  The cop nodded smugly. He gave Parker the once-over, filed her physical description for future reference.

  The woman was wearing baggy brown slacks and a pink angora sweater that Marilyn Monroe would’ve died for, if it hadn’t already been too late. Her hair needed washing. So did the rest of her. She smelled of Bounty, a cheap fortified cooking wine, and many other, less easily identified liquids. Parker hunkered down next to her, made fleeting eye contact.

  “Hilda?”

  The woman nodded. She’d been crying. Her eyes were red, her cheeks swollen with grief.

  Parker said, “You were at the table when your friend was stabbed?”

  Hilda’s fingers worked at her tangled hair. She muttered unintelligibly. Her loose body shuddered beneath the angora.

  “Was he a friend of yours, Hilda?”

  Hilda sniffed mightily. She peered at her reflection in the crusty oven door. What she saw must have pleased her. She smiled broadly, with a logjam of tobacco-stained teeth. “He was a good friend of mine. A really good friend. Share his last drop, know what I mean…”

  “What was his name?”

  “Richard Beinhart. But everybody called him Rick. Or Ricardo, or Richie Rich. But he didn’t like those names all that much. So mostly we called him Rick.”

  “Were you sitting at the table when he was stabbed?”

  “Yeah, sure.” Concentration rumpled her forehead. She clawed a fistful of hair out of the way, tugged mightily at a surprisingly delicate ear. �
�Leastways, I think I was…”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Not really.” Hilda leaned her head against the stove. She shut her eyes. Her mouth sagged open. She sighed.

  Parker touched her knee. “Hilda?”

  “Hmmmm?” One eye popped open; the other held its ground.

  “Did somebody hurt him? Was there an argument, an argument over the cards? Is that what happened, Rick got into an argument?”

  Hilda roused herself. She tried to stand up, lost her balance and began to topple sideways. Parker leaned into her, helped her find the wall. The pudgy cop made a gurgling sound as he drained his Coke. Hilda said, “I heard people shoutin’. Everybody was shoutin’. Yellin’ at each other. Me too.” She shrugged. “I got no idea what everybody was so mad about. It’s fun sometimes, yellin’ and screamin’.” She jerked her cigarette at the cop. “Then Rick made a noise like he just did.”

  “Were you playing cards?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Poker?”

  “Crib.”

  “Cribbage? Where’s the board, the pegs?”

  Hilda stared quizzically up at the naked bulb that dangled, cartoon-like, from the ceiling. “I sure hope I didn’t do it,” she whispered. “Rick was such a nice guy. I loved him like a brother, know what I mean?” She slid down the wall to the floor. Her head lolled on her shoulder. She began to snore.

  Willows came in from the back porch. “Get anything?”

  “The victim’s name is Richard. She says they were playing crib. Fifteen-two, fifteen-four…”

  “With the little pegs, right?”

  “Her name’s Hilda,” said Parker. “Says she loved Rick like a brother. Said she hopes she didn’t do it.”

  “You believe her?”

  Parker nodded. “Absolutely. What’d you get?”

  “Alvin Da Silva. The way he tells it, they were playing crib, matchstick a point. He remembers an argument, raised voices. There’s blood all over his shirt but he has no idea how it got there, just can’t remember. He told me Rick was a real nice guy and he hopes like hell that he wasn’t the one who killed him. On the other hand, he doesn’t know who could have done it. They were all the best of pals, bottom-of-the-bottle buddies…” Willows glanced over Parkers shoulder, into the living room. “Where’s Bobby?”

  “I thought he was with you.”

  Willows glanced down the shotgun hall to the wide-open front door. The wind had picked up, bellying the crime-scene tape. Two quick strides took him to the dining room door.

  Parker said, “Maybe he left.”

  “Or snuck upstairs to interview our suspects.” Willows turned and strode briskly towards the stairs, leaving Parker to wonder why she’d said something so utterly stupid.

  The pudgy cop rotated his empty Coke can, brought his hands together in a futile attempt to squash the can flat. Parker hurried down the hall after Willows, the slightly rounded heels of her plain-but-practical flats clicking like a steel ball on a slow-spinning wheel.

  They found Bobby in the upstairs front bedroom, standing by the window, looking down at the street. He turned as Willows and Parker entered the room. There was blood on his knuckles. The room’s window had no curtain. Lights from the emergency vehicles parked outside flashed anaemically on the walls and ceiling. Bobby grinned, his teeth stained pink and blue. On the floor of the room’s tiny walk-in closet, an elderly man had tucked himself into a ball, and wept silently.

  Bobby said, “Good news, Jack. We got ourselves a perp.” Willows stared coldly at him. He’d never liked Bobby. The detective smelled too pretty to be handsome. He spent more on clothes than any other cop Willows knew, male or female. Bobby had been working homicide close to eight months. Jack still hadn’t figured out how many pairs of shoes he owned.

  Bobby slapped the blood-smeared wall. “I never laid a finger on him. Punched some plaster, that’s all.”

  Willows crouched in the closet doorway. The man’s face was unmarked, but when Willows rested a hand on his shoulder, he flinched mightily. Willows said, “I’m not going to hurt you. Did anybody hurt you?”

  “Nope.”

  The man’s eyes were a soft, evasive blue. His voice was hardly more than a whisper. His breath smelled of decay. He coughed, and Willows involuntarily drew back a little. “What’s your name, pal?”

  “Bill.”

  Willows jerked a thumb towards Bobby Dundas. “Did that man over there hit you, Bill?”

  Bill thought about it. Finally he said, “Not so’s I noticed.” He gave Willows a crooked, uncertain grin. “I don’t think so.”

  “Do you know what happened to Rick?”

  “He’s deader ’n a doornail.”

  “Did you tell this officer that you stabbed him?”

  “He told me I did it.”

  Bobby growled in disgust. Willows ignored him. Parker had positioned herself so she was standing between Bobby and the old man. Outside, the street was littered with police cars, media vans. An ambulance straddled the boulevard. Uniformed cops bantered with the crowd.

  Willows said, “Bill, did you cut Rick?”

  “No way. At least, I don’t think so. Probably I was a little drunk. But Rick was a sweetheart. Why’d I want to stick a knife in him?”

  “Somebody did. You were there. Didn’t you see who it was?”

  Bill tilted his head sideways, as if for a better view of the past. “Everybody was yellin’ and screamin’. I saw the knife lyin’ there on the table. It was spinnin’ around, pointin’ at everybody. I shut my eyes so it wouldn’t be me.” He clawed at his face. “Everything was kind of hazy…” He hugged himself and violently rocked to and fro. “Sometimes I drink too much and say stuff I shouldn’t of said. Who doesn’t, eh?” He wiped his hands on his shirt. “But I never tried to stick nobody in my whole life, so I kind of doubt it was me who did it.”

  Bobby said, “We got four suspects. They all tell the same story. Almost word for word. Everybody loved Rick! What is this, Casablanca? A bunch of falling-down drunks! There was an argument. They were all screaming at each other. We’ve got a victim, don’t we? Somebody’s got to be a murderer.”

  Bill said, “Maybe it was a suicide. That’d be my guess.”

  Downstairs, a violent crumpling sound was followed by a strangled shout of triumph. Parker’s brain raced. What now?

  Nothing much. The pudgy cop in the kitchen had dropped his Coke can on the floor, and stomped it flat.

  Chapter 3

  Ross lay on his bunk, tossing and turning. It was scary, knowing that, come the dawn, he’d be on the other side of the wall. He hadn’t become institutionalised during his five years in the slammer, but he’d made the necessary adjustments, and he felt at home in the yard, and in his cell. The world out there beyond those razor-wire-topped walls was no more real than the world he peered quizzically at through the eye of his television. All those impossibly pretty women, the shiny cars and big houses and apartments, all of it looking brand-new, unused, as if it had just come out of the box. Ross thought about brand-new women. He rolled over on his side. Now he was thinking about Garret again, the armoured-car robbery that had gone all wrong, the two hundred grand that had gone astray, a woman Garret’s pal Billy had met and fallen in love with. Nancy Crown. The way Garret told it, Nancy was beautiful and rich, unfulfilled. Married.

  Garret had ended up in William Head, doing a solid twenty-five years for murder in the first degree. But during his fourth year of incarceration Garret’s stomach had started hurting, and they’d taken him to the infirmary. Six months later, he’d turned belly-up and died. A tumour…

  But during their time together, Garret and Ross had gotten to be pretty good friends. Both of them about the same age, mid-twenties, and both of them in for a good long time. Both of them killers and both of them with the same survivor’s attitude — that life was a joke, so why not have a good laugh?

  Garret had told Ross over and over again about the robbery, how Billy had
run off with a bag stuffed with two hundred and twenty thousand dollars that had never been recovered. Garret wasn’t worried about that, not at all. He claimed that he and Billy had worked out where to hide the money, in the event of a hot pursuit. Ross wanted to believe him, but never quite got there. He wondered if Garret had told his girlfriend the same unlikely tale. If so, it would go a long way towards explaining why she was such a faithful pen pal.

  There was a rumbling in the walls. Somewhere not far off, someone had flushed a toilet.

  Ross shifted on his narrow bed until his back was against the wall. He listened hard, but heard nothing.

  Garret had told him about his whole life, those last six months. The abusive, alcoholic father who’d left home when Garret was fifteen. The mother who had ‘adios’d’ a couple of years later. No drunker than usual, she’d tumbled down the back-porch stairs and snapped her neck. An instant winner in the quadriplegic sweepstakes. Congratulations, Mom. Ross didn’t have much to brag about, either. His father, an accomplished lush, had considerately died of kidney failure shortly before Ross was old enough to miss him. His mom was okay, though. Straight as an arrow, a maid, gainfully employed at a downtown hotel. One of those special moms who was always there when you needed her, no matter what.

  Without telling Ross what he’d done, Garret had written a will, and left him most of what little he owned.

  His Timex watch. The eighteen dollars and fifty-three cents in his prison account. The clothes he’d bought for his trial: a pair of cheap shoes, a white shirt, a pair of black nylon socks and a funeral-black off-the-rack suit from the Bay. There was a faint but still-clear lipstick kiss on the shirt’s button-down collar, and the suit was a little short in the cuffs, but Ross had nothing but his prison blues, so he was grateful for the gift.

  Surprised, too. In his whole adult life no one had ever given him anything except a bad cheque or a headache.

  But what Garret had left Ross that Ross valued the most was a whole head full of memories. Ross was a good listener, and Garret was the talkative type. He’d quit school when he was nabbed breaking into lockers for cash and drugs. He’d drifted from one low-paying job to another, with long stretches of unemployment in between. In time he’d hooked up with Billy, and they’d launched a career of breaking into cars for whatever scraps of wealth they might contain. He was still living at home when he and Billy, seduced by high ambition, tackled the armoured car.