62 – Need to find out

 

 

 

"This is crazy," Bobo protested as Dan pulled the car into the slanted parking slot. The meter still had time on it, though he finished a dime out of his pocket and added two hours. "Who the hell knows if he's even alive?"

 "If he is we need to talk to him."

 "Why?"

 "To find out what happened and what he saw."

 "You mean he might have seen...?"

 "That's what we're here to find out."

 "What about Mike? Shouldn't we be looking for him?"

 "We've still got hours before the meeting. If we know who Buckingham is, we might be able to stop things before the killing starts."

 Bobo nodded and climbed out his side of the car, staring up at the brick face of the building, his gaze jittery. "I'm not fond of these places, Dan," he said softly.

 "Nor am I," Dan mumbled, the tightness growing in his chest. He wondered if his face showed the pain and if anyone would notice it inside as he prowled the halls.

 Witch doctors is what he'd called them after their pronouncement of death.

 What do you mean you don't have a cure?

 Sometimes that happens, they said.

 But this is 1970, man. Science can cure anything.

 Not anything. Not even remotely. And certainly not the thing he had. Rest. Breathe clean air. Maybe then, he would live a reasonably long life.

 "What if he is dead?" Bobo asked.

 Dan had no answer to that. Not after Bobo's Jake, or his woman in East L.A. People like Billy deserved to die. But there was something uglier about the death of innocents, like a shotgun blast into a gang of kids.

 "Let's hope he isn't," Dan said and started up the walk towards the glass doors, sunlight shimmering off the windows around him with artificial cheer.

                ***********

 Her hands shook as Mike pressed the receiver into them.

 "Just stay calm, honey," he said and popped the coins in, one quarter after another till the required amount vanished into its maw. She could hear the chimes of each one falling, like some strange form of music which she would remember for the rest of her life-- Daddy's music-- Dancing the 1500 miles back to Detroit. She could almost picture his broad face and ample smile, and the glow in his eyes whenever he looked at her.

 "Dial," Mike whispered, his own voice shivering, as if Daddy were already on the other end of the line and could hear everything. She nodded and began the sequence of coded numbers-- some which she had to read from a piece of paper held up by Lance. But the last seven digits she knew by heart, having dialed them ten thousand times for more, always followed by the same ringing, always leading to her own voice saying: Daddy, I'm in trouble...

 Yet never so deep in trouble as this time, and never so painful to confront.

 This time the ringing sounded dim and distant, reaching all the way to Daddy's private office-- a luxurious room to which he often went to escape-- mother's hounding, the pressures of home life, the idea of being a husband, father, and important figure in the community. His sons were little more than a pack of jealous wolves, waiting for him die. His wife, her mother, a bitch who wanted everything she saw. Only Marie ever made the man's life bearable. Only Marie had this number to reach him at need.

 "Hello?" a weary voice said-- Daddy's voice-- but a voice strained through the ghosts of the long distance wires, like a ghost itself, full of the memory of his kindnesses and rages.

 She slammed the phone down. "I can't..." she sobbed.

 "Damn it, Marie!" Mike howled. "You've got to!"

 "Why? Why can't we just leave town. It isn't as if we've got to meet Buckingham! He's not going to help us get out of the country anyway. Let's just go and hide somewhere, Mikie, till everything blows over."

 "It isn't as simple as that any more," Mike said.

 "Why isn't it."

 "Because Buckingham won't rest. He'll come looking for us."

 "So we've kept out of sight before? We're good at it, remember?"

 "Not that good," Mike mumbled, as much to himself as to her. "Sooner or later someone will recognize me. Maybe we'll be in a store somewhere where they've seen my picture on TV. Or maybe it'll just be some freak acquaintance with enough connections back in the drug community for word to filter out. The next thing we know Buckingham'll be lying in wait, taking aim at us. We have to end this thing here and now. We need to know why he is doing this and get him to stop, or kill him."

 "And we can't set up another meeting?"

 "Sure, but you're father's boys'll be there, too. They seem to have their thumb on the pulse of this thing and know as much as we do, or Buckingham. Maybe Buckingham called them, I don't know. Nothing would surprise me any more considering what he seems to know. Sometimes I think he's inside my head, knowing what I'm going to do before I do it. He knows how I'll react to a thing like he's studied me for years. But we need to out fox them all. And if that means doing something as terrible as calling your father, then we have to do it. Because it's the last thing Buckingham would ever expect us to do. Now call, honey, and tell your father what I told you to say."

 She took up the phone again, eyeing Mike, feeling the urge to kill him herself. Why did she ever take up with him? What did she see that was so special? She saw only the hunted, frightened eyes now, nothing like her visions of Jesse James, nothing like the story-book figures her father's men hunted in olden days. She wasn't sure she even loved him any more. He seemed too much like Daddy, telling her how to live her life. She caught a glimpse from Lance, an expression mixing pain, lust and sympathy, as if saying he understood a little of what she was going through, or wanted to. Why didn't he tell Mike to lay off her then. But Mike was too much like Daddy in that respect, too-- one couldn't argue with him once his mind was made up.

 "All right," she said coldly. "Put the money in already." And as Mike dropped the coins in the slot, she rehearsed her speech:

 Meet me in Griffiths Park, Daddy...

                ***********

"I'm sorry," the nurse said, eyeing them across the visitor's desk with all the sympathy of a potted plant. "Admission's restricted. Close relatives only."

 "But I am close, damn it," Dan protested. "I'm his brother sort of."

 "Sort of doesn't hold any weight here, young man," the woman said, her cold gaze moving up and down Dan in a swift and critical assessment. "You must be a blood relation to get in. Doctor's orders."

 "Let me handle this, Dan," Bobo said, wedging himself between the red-faced Dan and the unmovable nurse. "Ma'am, you don't understand how important this is to my friend here. Of course, he's not related by blood. The poor man inside doesn't have a soul to call his own, raised from childhood by this man's parents-- like a brother, if not so in fact. And we just got word of this tragedy and came to give him some comfort before the end."

 The nurse glared at Bobo. "And I suppose you're his brother, too?"

 "No, just a dear friend..."

 Dan caught a shift in her gaze, a slight rise to view something behind them, her head nodding ever so subtly as if some kind of signal.

 "Bobo," he whispered. "Let's just...."

 "All right, you two," a hard voice said as the point of something cold touched his neck. "Why don't you lift your hands up real slow. That's it."

 Cops! And more than a few by the feel of it. Hands patted him down and turned him. Pistols and shotguns filled the lobby with a sea of metal. Grim-faced men shoving Bobo against the counter in a repeat from the Selma.

 "Now just come along real quiet," the closest cop said. "And neither one of you'll need a doctor."

 They slapped cuffs on and dragged them down the hall, his legs unable to stand the pace of their march. Dan got pushed into a small, bright office where Demetre's splotched face greeted him with something of a smile.

 "Sit them down there," the super-narc said, motioning towards two wooden chairs. Dan landed on his hands and complained, but the uniformed cop growled for him to behave.

 "I can take it from here," Demetre said, motioning them away, staring down at Dan and Bobo. "We do meet in the strangest places," he said, sitting back, putting his feet on the desk and his hands behind his head.

 "I thought we had a deal," Bobo complained.

 "Did we?"

 "You know damned well we did!" Dan shouted.

 "Ah, you mean that thing back at the Selma Hotel. I seem to recall some bit of trivia there."

 "Then why are you hassling us?" Bobo demanded.

 Demetre let his feet slide off the desk, then stood, his face twisting into a mask of rage. "Because I'm sick of following a trail of blood!" he shouted. "A trail which you two seem to have some intimate connection."

 "What exactly are you talking about?" Bobo asked, glancing with a confused look at Dan.

 "This, damn it!" Demetre said, grabbing up a file folder. He removed several 8x10 black & white photos and slapped each onto the desk. The first few showed the East L.A., apartment and its devastation. The last showed the dead lover's embrace. "I've got witnesses putting you two at the scene."

 "After the fact," Bobo argued. "They were already dead when we got there."

 Demetre eyed Bobo, squinting with disbelief. "Oh? Your lover in bed with another man and you expect me to believe you didn't kill them?"

 "That's right."

 "And then you go onto the Free Press office just out of coincidence?"

 "No, not exactly."

 "Which means what?"

 "We were looking for Mike."

 Demetre's expression changed, the anger melting from his face. His gaze shifted startled from Dan to Bobo and back. "You mean to tell me you don't know where he is?"

 "Not exactly," Bobo said.

 Demetre sat down heavily into his chair. Something had gone out in his eyes.

 "We really didn't kill any body," Dan said.

 "I know," Demetre said flatly, staring at the desk top, but not exactly at the photographs. "They were dead for hours before we followed you there."

 "Followed us?" Bobo said indignantly. "You mean to tell me...?"

 "What the hell do you think?" Demetre asked sharply, but still with a vague sense of not being with them. "I'm going to let two suspects wander around the city without my keeping an eye on them. I know a much about your activities as you do-- except this bit about Mike. That's bad. Real bad."

 "Why?" Dan asked. "Did something happen?"

 Demetre looked up, but he seemed not to hear Dan. "All right," he said softly. "No more bullshit. I want the story from beginning to end. Everything. You leave out a detail and I'll break you."

 "We don't know much," Bobo said.

 "But you know where Mike'll be tonight for this meeting-- and it's not in Griffith's Park."

 Bobo's mouth clamped shut.

 "Damn it, you two!" Demetre yelled. "This is important. You're not going to save Mike's life by keeping silent. Buckingham is going to kill Mike that meeting unless someone's there to stop him."

 "Maybe Mike'll kill Buckingham," Dan said.

 "Maybe," Demetre said. "Which would be just as bad. I want Buckingham, too. But the right way."

 Bobo shook his head, his eyes glowing darkly. "No."

 "Fine!" Demetre snapped. "Then you'll both rot in a Goddamn jail cell."

 The cop clamored up and around the desk, as if to call someone in. But Dan spoke up.

 "A deal," he said, stopping the cop at the door.

 "No, Dan," Bobo howled. "I don't want that son of a bitch busted. He's mine!"

 "He won't be anybody's if we're in jail."

 "What kind of deal?" Demetre demanded.

 "I'll tell you where the meeting is if you let us see Free Press Bob."

 Demetre stared. "What good'll that do you?"

 "Maybe none," Dan admitted. "But he's a friend and we wouldn't be here if he didn't matter."

 "All right," Demetre said. "You got your deal. Now where and when?"

 "First these?" Dan said, holding up his cuffed hands. "And the visit. Then, we'll tell you everything."

 "By then the meeting'll be over," Demetre growled.

 Dan shook his head. "There's plenty of time. Mike set it up for midnight."

                ***********

 He looked as if he should have been dead. Someone had shaved his beard to fit the accumulation of tubes and other devices. His mouth seemed stretched and his face pale. His eyes were closed when they came in, and his breathing regulated by the machine beside the bed.

 Dan felt the pang hit him as the smell swarmed over him. The chemical scent of death that had followed him from New York.

 Clean up your act, boy, the doctors had said. Or you're going to die.

 The twinge of pain came and went from his chest. He felt as if he should have been using the machines instead of Free Press Bob. The smell as prevalent as Nazi gas or Vietnam napalm.

 Anger swelled in him. He couldn't connect salvation with the chemical scent. Pure capitalism. Like war merchants selling arms to both sides of a conflict, or prescription drug companies in Denver selling speed and acid to the street. Life, death, morality beside the point. Profit was everything. Just like on Wall Street.

 "Bob?" he whispered.

 The eye lids fluttered open, the man inside the eyes looked trapped. A frightened animal locked in a cage of flesh, squirming to be set free. But which dial did that, Dan wondered, as he gaze swept across the machinery? It was an expression Dan had seen hundreds of times down on the street, in the eyes of junkies just suddenly realizing an on-coming overdose, or on the faces of prostitutes arm-in-arm with men who would do them in. The look of a helpless soul adrift in a sea of madness. Small and insignificant in the scheme of reality.

 "It's me, Bob," Dan whispered again.

 The look altered subtly as the eyes shifted towards him. The head moved, but only a fraction of an inch in Dan's direction. The face within the prison of tubes almost smiled.

 "Hello, Dan," the hoarse voice said, choking out the words from around the tubes. "Good to see you."

 "It's good to see you, too," Dan said-- though not like this. Want a joint, Pal? Want to fuck a hippie chick? "How do you feel?"

 Free Press Bob gestured with his shoulders. It might have been a shrug.

 "I know this is rude of me to ask," Dan went on, glancing over his shoulder towards the door, where Demetre and Bobo waited just outside. Privacy part of the deal. Maybe the room was bugged. And then all this was for naught. But the odds seemed against it. What would the cops listen to? The man's gurgling tubes?

 "I've got to know who did this to you, Bob," Dan said, pressing the man's cold fingers, feeling death creeping up from them like an inevitable shade. "Did you see him?"

 The man in the bed made a definite shake of his head. "Shot in the back," he gurgled. "I think he was in a hurry."

 "Why?"

 Again came the shrug. "I was in the way," Free Press Bob said. "I think he was cleaning house."

 "Cleaning house?"

 "...got the feeling everything... almost over."

 Yeah, it would be with the meeting set for tonight. Almost over. And yet why mess with Free Press Bob unless the man knew something? Unless each victim had had some connection with Buckingham in some way.

 But what? How could Free Press Bob connect other than as a messenger service, or street lawyer, housing director... Perhaps he was simply too powerful an opponent to leave untouched, as if Buckingham was a chess master looking ten moves ahead for potential trouble.

 Cleaning house?

 He had felt that much in Denver with the men from the Drug company. A closing down.

 Was Bobo's friend Jake an obstruction, too? A dark angel whose good works somehow interfered with the master plan? Hadn't there been some other more subtle way of getting the drugs from Selma without mass murder. Or was Buckingham simply sweeping down anyone and everyone with any kind of power?

 A dark thought came into Dan's head.

 To whose advantage would a sweep of street people be? And who seemed to float in and out of the scene from its beginning, haunting the trail from Denver, pressing in on drug company and local dealers with the same iron hand, who might be pretending to hunt himself in the name of law and order?

 There was a murder in Albuquerque with Demetre there. And in Phoenix. And L.A. And that package of dope had somehow managed its way onto the Van after the search.

 It wouldn't have been the first time a cop had given in to such temptations, seeing himself as the new lord of supply and demand. He could play both sides with the drug companies, too, taking the drugs as Buckingham, while using his alter-ego as cop to keep pressure on. And with his abilities and the whole Federal Government as an information source, who could stop him? Demetre could easily be the king of the west.

 "Look, Bob," Dan whispered. "I got to go now. You rest and get better. It's almost over. When the dust has settled I'll come bring you candy."

 "A joint," Free Press Bob croaked. "I'd rather have a joint."

 "Okay," Dan said with a glance over his shoulder. "I'll see what I can do."

 "Hey, Dan..."

 "What?" Dan asked, stopping on his trek from the room.

 "I had other visitors looking for you."

 "Oh?"

 "Dark men in suits from the drug company."

 "Shit!" Dan hissed and hurried out.

                ***********

 "You son of a bitch!" Bobo growled as he slammed the passenger side door. "You spilled everything!"

 "It was part of the deal," Dan said, his voice strained and his hands trembling as they gripped the wheel. He felt empty again, and scared. Hunted. And for the first time, he truly understood the weariness that came with being pursued. It just went on and on without point. And the real temptation was always one of giving into it, letting whoever and whatever catch him.

 He had felt the same way back east after the doctors had pronounced his doom, after his wife had refused to go west with him, after his whole life vanished in the smokey magic of prescriptions and insurance forms.

 You're dead, boy, the inner voice had told me. Maybe not right now. But sooner or later.

 Was death an empty feeling then? A sense of being hollowed out from the inside?

 He could run. But where? Back to Phoenix?

 Lance had mumbled something about going North to Frisco or Portland? Maybe he could find a niche among the loggers, and air clean enough for his disease to vanish.

 "Fuck the deal!" Bobo said. "I want Buckingham." The man slammed his heavy fist down on the dashboard.

 "How much more of him do you want?" Dan asked, quietly.

 Bobo, about to shout again, sputtered to a stop, and cast a puzzled glance at Dan. "And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"

 "I think Demetre is Buckingham."

 "What?"

 "Think about it-- things fit."

 "No they don't fit!" Bobo said. "The biggest narc in the country isn't an independent dealer. That's crazy."

 "Maybe," Dan mumbled. "But I don't think we should take any chances."

 "Isn't it a little late to think of that? You've just spilled your guts out to him."

 "I didn't tell him anything he wouldn't know already."

 "If he's Buckingham, you mean. But what if he isn't?"

 "Then he and Buckingham can meet in the park."

 "And leave me nothing?"

 "You're not thinking, Bobo. This isn't a street game now, where you can play and leave. Let the big boys battle it out among themselves. Let's just get the others and scoot, before any of them get hurt."

 "Some of them have already gotten hurt!" Bobo snapped. "Like Free Press Bob. And Billy Night Rider. And my old lady. And Jake. How many more of us are going to get hurt before the idea catches on in your head that we've got to stop this son of a bitch and not leave it to the cops."

 "You're the one who's missing the point. Since we came out of Denver, we've left nothing but a trail of death behind us. Everyone we touch or care for winds up eating bullets. I'm tired of it, tired of your dreams  and my illness. I'm even sick of long hair and hippie life."

 "So what the hell did you have in mind?"

 "Just find the others and get all of us out of the line of fire. Afterwards, we can make plans."

 Bobo stared outside. People came and went from the hospital, some obviously employees, others the crumbling masses of a city that never really changed, that lived on being born and dying in more ordinary ways despite the fury of a few.

 "All right," Bobo said after a time. "Where do we look?"

 Dan looked up at the sky through the tinted glass. "It's getting late," he said, noting the slanting sunlight coloring the brick side of the hospital in afternoon light. "If I was Mike I'd be setting up some sort of trap in the park."

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