Private Eye Four-Pack, page 77
When he got home he picked up his phone to check his voice mail. He had one call, a call that would change his mood for a long time. Actually, it would change his life.
“Streeter, it’s me.” It was Darcy McLean. She was sobbing. “Bill’s in the hospital. He’s hurt awfully bad. Someone beat him. Please call whenever you get in. I mean, I’m at Swedish Hospital. Please come.”
He played it over several times, hoping it would change. When the message finally sank in, he froze for a minute, nauseous. He went to the bathroom, but nothing would come up. Then he got in his car and drove to the hospital.
SIXTEEN
William Mclean was still unconscious when Streeter got to the hospital. He had suffered a severe concussion along with several broken ribs and numerous broken facial bones. His left arm, particularly at the elbow, was badly mangled. The doctors didn’t know the full extent of his internal bleeding. He was in serious but stable condition, and word was that he would live. No one could tell if there would be any permanent brain damage, but, because of his age, the sooner he regained consciousness, the better.
Darcy was waiting in a television room down the hall from intensive care when Streeter arrived, shortly before three o’clock. She was so pale and tired that he barely recognized her. Stacy, her sister, was with her, and there were two cups of cold coffee sitting on the table coagulating silently in front of them. The television was off, and it seemed so quiet, like the entire hospital was empty. Streeter noticed that the two women didn’t look like sisters. Darcy had dark features, ink-black hair streaked modestly with handsome gray, and lively hazel eyes. Her sister had washed-out, brown features and light hair that approached being blonde. The only common threads in their appearance were their height—both about five feet six inches—and their clothes: khaki shorts, sandals, and white polo shirts.
Stacy left to get fresh coffee.
“What happened, Darce?” Streeter asked. “Is he going to be all right?”
She looked up and smiled, but it barely creased the pain and fatigue in her face. “He’s going to live, but they’re not sure how he’s going to come out of it.”
Streeter stood there for a minute with his mouth open, vaguely aware of how foolish he must look. That was the best he was able to do: he couldn’t focus his thoughts clearly. Finally, he mustered up a weak, “How’re you doing?”
Darcy shook her head cautiously, as if it was fragile. “I’m sick to my stomach. My God, I was so scared. When they first called me it sounded like he was dying. I can’t even imagine that. I got here about ten last night, while he was still in surgery. This is nothing but pure torture.”
“What the hell happened?” Streeter sounded hoarse, as if he had just woken up.
“Somebody beat him. The police don’t know who it is yet. They used bats or sticks or something. Can you believe that? It was still light outside. It must have happened last night, about six or so. It’s all such a big mess that nobody knows for sure. To be honest, I didn’t understand half of what the police told me. I was too upset. I felt like one of those hysterical bimbos from daytime TV. I just kept picturing Bill getting beaten. Maybe dying.”
“It’s going to be okay, Darce.” He sat next to her and put his arm around her shoulder. Despite her fear, she felt solid and wasn’t trembling. “Tell me what you can.”
Stacy got back just then with the fresh coffee and gave a cup to each of them. “I ran into the floor nurse out there and she told me they don’t expect any change for tonight,” she said as she stood next to the couch looking down at them. “Are you going to stay here, Darcy? I’ll stay with you.”
Darcy stared at her for a long time, as though she had difficulty understanding what her sister said. Finally, she nodded. Then she looked back at Streeter. She took a sip of her coffee, and that gave her a boost.
“The officers said they found him down on South Santa Fe, behind one of those little sleazy hotels.”
“What was he doing down there?”
“He was supposed to meet a client. Bill got a call about four, maybe four-thirty. It was from a brother of this man he represented last summer in a really bitter custody fight. The brother called and said the man got picked up for stealing—shoplifting, actually—and he’s supposed to get bailed out of jail pretty soon. He asked if Billy would meet the both of them at his motel in a couple of hours, because the guy needed legal help. He pleaded, so Bill went. It turned out that the motel was closed and it was all a trap. Obviously.”
She took another sip of her coffee and was quiet. Streeter felt a growing sense of guilt, and he couldn’t understand why. Darcy’s voice brought him back.
“What kind of animal would do this? Tell me, Streeter. You know all of these low-lifes.”
“Thanks a lot.” He thought of the most logical answer, but when he said it he didn’t sound too convincing. “It could have been someone he put away back when he was the DA. Bill nailed a lot of sickos and made more than his share of enemies. Most likely this is a revenge deal. Some jailhouse brainstorm.”
Darcy nodded solemnly, as if that made a great deal of sense, and then looked straight ahead. “I hope they catch the bastard and fry him.” Suddenly she looked back up at him. “There’s not much you can do here. Stacy’ll stay with me. But I’d like you to do something for me over the weekend.”
“Of course. Anything.”
“Talk to the cops. I want to know everything they know, and I want to know it right away. Ride them hard, Streeter. I want to keep the pressure on to find this guy. Will you do that?”
“Sure. But I’ll hang around here tonight. I can’t sleep anyway.”
Streeter didn’t eat again until late Saturday afternoon. By mid-morning, he started smoking cigarettes. He hadn’t smoked more than a couple of packs in the past ten years, but now it was steady Camels, no filters. Pure, high-octane self-punishment. He couldn’t shake that guilty feeling. The only thing that made him feel better was hounding the police. McLean regained a shaky consciousness shortly before noon. For the rest of the day he didn’t know where he was or much of what happened, but the worst was over. When he heard that, Streeter called Story and filled her in on the beating.
“Thank God he’s not going to die,” she said, obviously shaken. “This is terrible. You don’t think it had anything to do with my suit against Cooper?”
“Could be. Like I told you, I don’t believe in coincidences. I’m going to check around, and I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“When you talk to Bill, give him my love. I’d like to come to the hospital and visit him. Do you think that would be all right?”
“There’s a lot of family there today and he’s not really thinking too clearly yet,” he told her. “Maybe you better wait a day or two, until things settle down.”
In the early afternoon, Streeter drove to police headquarters, across the street from the Denver Mint. He went to the assaults division and talked to the sergeant heading the investigation. Because of McLean’s high-profile DA career, his beating drew media coverage as well as a high priority with the police. Sergeant Stan Haney, a rubber-faced veteran with an obvious fashion impairment, told the bounty hunter that the beating looked like the work of at least two people.
“The doctors took wood splinters from Bill’s skin,” Haney said, his voice raspy from years of cigarette smoking. Although he was fifty, he still had the squat, stocky build of an old-time football player. A leather-helmet kind of guy. He was wearing a loud sport coat and a wide tie that indicated he hadn’t been to a clothes store in well over a decade. “They found two different types of wood. One came from a baseball bat. The other was from a piece of raw oak. There was a deep cut on his right side, too. Looked like some sort of weird knife. They worked him over pretty hard, but I don’t think they wanted to kill him.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, for one thing, he was obviously still alive when they stopped. If they meant to kill him, they were pretty sloppy. He crawled about a hundred yards from where he was beaten. And it wasn’t no robbery, either. They left his wallet and they didn’t even bother to go through the car. We figure probably some assholes he sent down to Cañon City who wanted a little payback. Prison-style bullshit.”
“Who found him?”
“Some guy that lives next to the motel. Checked out okay. He was working at the time it happened. When we found him, he was scared shitless, too.”
“Did they leave anything at the scene that’ll help you out?”
“Not much. We found tracks back there that look like they’re from a big car. We’re checking that out now. The weapons weren’t there and, believe me, we scoured the whole place looking for them.” Then Haney glanced off, smiling. “I think maybe Bill got in a lick or two himself.”
“What makes you say that?”
“The doc told us the knuckles on Bill’s right hand were badly bruised. One of them was broken. My guess is, he got a couple a punches in.”
Streeter smiled. McLean boxed at Northwestern as an undergraduate. “I’m sure that whoever did this didn’t expect the job to be quite as tough as it ended up. Anything else?”
“Nothing really.” Haney paused. “We’re doing all we can. Bill McLean has a lot of friends on the department. Give me a holler if you need anything else, and tell his missus we’re all pulling for him.”
When he got back to the church at about eight that night, Streeter went to Frank’s apartment to kick around some ideas. The bondsman, who had known McLean longer than Streeter had, was badly shaken by the news. He looked terribly old and almost lost in his thick terry-cloth bathrobe. Frank had seen enough violence in his life to fill a Clint Eastwood film festival and he was sick to death of it.
“Jesus, big guy. I don’t know what it’s all coming to anymore.” Frank grabbed a half-full bottle of Johnny Walker Red from the counter in the kitchen and then nodded for his partner to follow him to his office. That’s where the two did most of their drinking together. When they sat down at his desk, Frank poured two tall ones—neat—and proposed a toast.
“To Wild Bill McLean.” The bondsman held out his glass for a second and then took a long pull on the Scotch.
“To William.” Streeter nodded and took a small sip. He noticed that he still was wearing the same jeans and T-shirt from the night before at Story’s. Suddenly he felt grimy and wanted to take a shower. “This has got me thinking, Frank. That gunfire last week, and now this. Between Cooper and whatever cop is running around out there, I can’t believe this attack was a con that McLean put away in the old days. I’ve got to believe it was tied in with Doug Shelton and that whole crew.”
“You’re probably right. But, hell, Bill won’t be blaming you. That’s not his style and he knew what he was getting into when he took on Cooper.”
“That may be true, but I’ve got to put an end to all this junk. It’s getting way out of hand. Shootings, beatings, vandalism.” He lit another Camel and then crushed it out almost immediately. “I just met Carey for a few hoists down at Nalen’s. He did some checking today and found out that Kovacs, the cop I think’s behind this, was at a seminar Friday afternoon until way after six. Then he went to dinner with some of the boys. He couldn’t have done Bill.”
“He could have gotten some other cop to do it for him.”
“Yeah, but then you have a conspiracy. A police conspiracy, no less. That’s not likely. Plus, that court hearing was just the day before, and Bill kicked the shit out of Cooper. He might want some quick revenge while he’s still hurting.”
“That makes sense. You find out where Cooper was last night?” Frank held up the bottle to see if Streeter wanted more.
Streeter shook his head. “Cooper didn’t do this himself. Carey told me about a guy that works for Cooper. The guy’s name is Psycho or something nutty like that. There was talk that Cooper sent him to slit the throat of a witness not long ago. Bill was cut by a knife, too. This nut has a sidekick, and I was told there were two people who beat Bill. Then there were all those hang-up calls last night. That sounds too chicken-shit for a cop but, who knows, a couple of these jerks that Cooper would hire might think it’s pretty clever.”
“Sounds very possible. Did you discuss all this with Carey?”
“Yeah, we ran over all the options together. For all we know, Cooper and half the police department are in on it together. I’m not sure why a cop would hassle Story or why someone shot at us. And I’m not sure why Bill’s in the hospital. Neither is Carey. I tell you, Frank, this makes my little bail jumpers look halfway decent. Very sane and simple. All I know is, I have to do something. I have to talk to all these jerks and see what I can shake out of them. This Psycho and his playmate for starters. Carey said this was a message to Bill. There’s been more messages flying around here than at a damned Western Union convention. Maybe it’s time I start sending some messages of my own.”
“I hear you, but be careful,” Frank said with a dismal smile as he struggled to get up from the desk. The Scotch had taken its toll. “You’re heading into the low end of nowhere with these people. They’re poison, all of them. I don’t want to have to break in a new skip tracer and get a new tenant for that loft of yours.”
“That’s a very warm thought, Frank. I’ll hold it close to me in the days ahead.”
SEVENTEEN
“Will you relax, Ronnie? You don’t even know for sure it was them.” Cooper kept trying to grab her shoulders to steady her, but she was too agitated to be touched. Ever since they saw the news of McLean’s beating on television Saturday night, Ronnie’d been hopping around like her shoes were on fire. She was furious and scared. It was now Sunday afternoon at Cooper’s downtown loft, and she’d whipped herself into a state of inconsolable bitchiness that he’d never seen before.
“You had to make all those threats against him after the hearing,” she said. “Right in front of those two freaks. I told you they’d see that as the green light for some kind of violent horseshit like this. And what the hell do you mean, you’re not sure it was them? Get real, Thomas Hardy.”
“Okay, it probably was them,” he conceded. “I’ll be more careful from now on. But why are you so upset? You didn’t even know this damned McLean. And they said on the tube he’s going to pull through. It’s not like he was actually murdered.”
Ronnie glared at him. Then she adjusted the front of her silk bathrobe and looked away. The hell you gonna do with this mutt?
“What a relief! He was only beaten half to death. And here I was starting to worry that you didn’t have a conscience. You know, after that Commerce City stunt, we don’t need more attention from the cops.” Her voice rose as she spoke. “Even they can’t be so stupid that they’re not going to start putting this together fairly soon. It looks pretty obvious to me that you’re the common denominator here. One might think that professional police detectives would notice that, too.”
Cooper drew back, his forehead chopped deep in concentration; his words came more slowly now. “But they have nothing on me. Absolutely nothing concrete in nature. You must understand, Rhonda, that what seems ‘pretty obvious’ to you simply does not convict people in a court of law.”
“Oh, right, Thomas Hardy.” She spit the words out. “You’re always right. For another thing”—she stopped to light a fresh cigarette off the one she was finishing—“these are very dangerous guys. They get an idea in their heads and someone gets hurt. What if they get the idea you’re in their way? Or me? We might get something very ‘concrete in nature’ from those two, in the form of a baseball bat to the skull.”
She thought of Soyko’s visit to her apartment. She wouldn’t tell Cooper about it, but the idea of him coming back for another visit was always with her, like ground glass under her fingernails.
“I’m their boss. They work for me.” Cooper’s voice was loud and shrill again. “They’ll get back in line.”
“Aw, Tom, you really don’t get it.” Her voice softened and she lowered her head a bit. He looked kind of pathetic, standing there in crisp new blue jeans with his pudgy stomach oozing out over his belt. Pressed jeans, for Chrissakes. “They work for themselves. You’re just the guy that gives them stupid ideas and pays them. You like to have them on the payroll because it gives you a sense of power. Like you’re suddenly above the law and you can reach out and hurt people any time you want. But you’ve got no power with them. No control. That should be obvious by now. Look at that little welder. Dopps. And now this. These two freaks are beyond you. They’re beyond everything but their own crazy reality.”
With that she walked into the kitchen area and poured herself another cup of coffee. Cooper’s loft had twelve-foot ceilings and few interior walls. Ronnie didn’t like it: it reminded her of a furniture-store showroom.
Fundamentally, Cooper knew she was right. He had been feeling a growing sense of fear since they heard about McLean. The beating bothered him more than the Dopps hit. At least with Dopps he’d instructed Soyko to go talk to the witness and get him to leave town. McLean was totally free-lance. All their own idea. But he had had enough of Ronnie’s lip, and he couldn’t bring himself to show her he made a mistake. To let her know she was right and he was powerless. He stalked after her.
“Listen, you.” He was spitting lightly as he spoke. “They work for me and so do you. I’m sick of your whining about those guys. An arrogant son of a bitch like this McLean deserved everything he got, and more. So did that worthless punk up in Commerce City. I’m glad they did it and I’m glad I gave them the idea. And you let me worry about the cops. If they get within ten miles of me on this, I’ll turn Soyko and that detestable little fuck Romp over to them in a second. I’ve got this thing under control, but I’m getting sick and tired of the way you talk to me. You were nothing before I met you, and I could turn you out any time. Now I’ve got to go to the office for a while. Just lighten up. I’ll be back about five. In the meantime, why don’t you make yourself useful and clean up around here!”
