To the Devil, My Regards Read online

  I had to admit to myself that I’d been thinking hard about skipping town. I’d had a world record breaking string of bad luck lately, and I was tired of bashing my head against a wall. This thing with Rachel was enough to send a guy over the edge. Robert Woolf had changed all that.

  Now I had to know what happened. If not for myself, then at least for Robert Woolf and fathers everywhere who had daughters out there in the darkness.

  I thanked Millie and left.

  I remembered my car and turned down an alley toward the impound lot. I felt a tap on my shoulder and turned, thinking it was Woolf who’d come back for round two.

  The fist that hit my face this time knew what it was doing. The fireworks went off and I stumbled backwards into a noisy row of trashcans. I shook my head, stood. Enough was enough. I’d been sucker-punched twice within twenty minutes, and I was tired of being a sucker.

  I untangled myself from the cans, stood with fists out ready to go at it.

  It was the kid from the bus stop, the one with the ring in his nose.

  “You want to talk about it first?” I asked. “Or do you just want to skip ahead to the punching?”

  THREE

  A couple more punches and I was out. I came to with someone slapping me awake. Ironic enough, you think? Nose Ring must have been stronger than I thought, because where I woke up was nowhere near where I’d blacked out.

  I was strapped in the front passenger seat of a Jaguar. Nose Ring in the driver’s chair was the one doing the slapping. Through the front window I saw Mobile Bay. The car was parked at the edge of a parking lot near an interstate overpass. It felt close to nine in the morning, but the air conditioner was so cold, I thought “Midnight in the Yukon” for a second, except for the fumes of pineapple air freshener spray.

  “Z. Z. DelPresto,” said a voice from the backseat. A high-pitched voice that was trying to be deep. I turned my head to make sure it was coming from the only person I’d heard speak that way. It was: Edward Pfieffer. He’d hired me two weeks ago to follow Rachel’s mother because he was afraid she was cheating on him.

  I had told him, “Of course she is. With her husband.”

  “No, no. That’s a lark. She said her husband wasn’t interested in women, if you catch what I’m saying. She was a beard.”

  “Hell of a smooth beard,” I had said, flipping through a few snapshots he had given me. This was a knockout Mexican-American woman, thirty-nine years old with her jet-black hair cut short and straight. Movie star presence. I looked at the picture long enough to feel uncomfortable before glancing up at Pfieffer. He was younger than Mrs. Woolf—I thought college boy at first. A thin guy with bony wrists, all dressed up in a gray suit and dark blue shirt, hair gelled back in a style that came and went in the eighties. Behind the times in all things except one: he was a dot-com millionaire.

  I was surprised to see him again there in the car. Last time we spoke, I had assured him Mrs. Woolf—Nania—only had eyes for him. It was an utter lie, but it was the right thing to do. Rachel had begged me. I had done everything Rachel wanted, and now she was dead.

  “Pfieffer. You could’ve sent an email, set up an appointment.”

  “You’re not one to keep appointments, or tell the truth, for that matter.”

  I shook my head. It felt like lava rocks up there. “You hired the best, you got your answer. You’re an insecure little prick, aren’t you?”

  Nose Ring grabbed my earlobe and twisted it like taffy. Jesus, I thought it was coming off. Van Gogh-ed before my time. He held tight while Pfieffer leaned forward between the seats.

  “Perhaps I have a better understanding of what ‘truth’ is than you, Mr. DelPresto. Following her for an hour, someone can find out she’s not coloring in the lines, but you followed her for a week. What, did I hire a blind guy?” He waved his fingers in front of my face. “You need an eye exam?”

  “Why did you hire me if you could just do it yourself, anyway?”

  He slumped back, glanced at the seat beside him, where a laptop showed swirling colors until he tapped the keypad, punched a few keys. A screen of thumbnailed photos popped up. He held the screen to my face. They must have been taken with a hidden video camera at the Woolf home. Stills of Nania and Pfieffer (trust me, his bony ass don’t make good porn), Nania and another man I didn’t know, Nania and the man I had seen her with at a condo in Pensacola, and then, the worst of them. Taking my ear off would’ve been less painful. He had a few of me and Rachel at a hotel that looked as if they were taken through the blinds.

  “You can’t tell me you’re that ignorant, DelPresto. You took my money on a lie, and thought I’d be dumb enough to skip away laughing. I’m in business, man. You think I can’t smell a pile of shit from across the table?”

  The pain in my ear traveled down my neck as I bunched my shoulder, an instinct that did nothing for my pain. Another moment and I might have lashed out. Might have died trying.

  And then there was a tap on the driver’s side window.

  I thought they were going to ignore it at first. But when the second tap was louder, they mouthed silent, wide-eyed words to each other. Nose Ring let go of my ear, and I turned to see who had done the tapping.

  Detective Nelson stood at the door, so tall I could only see his belt buckle and his hands, a badge in one and a gun in the other. Nose Ring lowered the window. Nelson took his sweet time squatting until the open window framed his face. I had never been more happy to see the awkward son of a bitch.

  “Gentlemen,” Nelson said, nodding at all three of us in turn.

  “Something we can do for you?” Nose Ring said.

  “I was just walking by, noticed you might be assaulting my friend Mr. DelPresto here.”

  “Maybe you saw wrong.”

  “No, pretty sure I didn’t.” He tossed a Polaroid onto Nose Ring’s lap. There it was: the punk twisting my ear. Nelson and his Polaroid, what can you say?

  Pfeiffer lowered his window. “Detective, you can’t judge from one photo, right?”

  Oh, I wanted this guy testifying at my trial.

  “It was affectionate,” Nose Ring said.

  Nelson reached into the window and grabbed Nose Ring’s nose, gave it a mighty twist. A shrill noise like a birdcall came out of Nose Ring. Blood trickled from his nose from where I supposed the ring was punching a new hole. But Nelson didn’t tear the ring out. He let go just as gently as he had with me hours earlier.

  “I love you,” he told the punk.

  I reached for my seat belt latch and the strap slid off my chest and lap. Pfeiffer almost grabbed my shoulder, but a glance towards Nelson stopped him. I opened the door and stepped out, the heat nearly flooring me. So hot that I considered getting back into the car. But Nelson patted his new friend Nose Ring on the shoulder and told him to drive away. The windows slid up and off drove the Jaguar. Nelson and I stood a car width apart, neither ready to make a move.

  “Guess I owe you a beer,” I said.

  He nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t drink. I wouldn’t drink water offered by you even if I watched you pump it from the well myself.”

  “Come on, I’m not so bad a guy.”

  “I didn’t think so until what I saw this morning.” Nelson holstered his gun and fit the badge case into his coat pocket. He had always been a quiet player in my confrontations with the police. Always seemed to treat me like the innocent, like my law-bending ways were none of his concern as long as it didn’t hurt him or his family. He would bring me coffee when the cops banged me up alone for hours to shake my confidence. He was the one who always told Forrest to keep his cool after a big blow up. At first, I thought it was “good cop/bad cop”, but over time I felt I was getting real vibes from him. He was what he was.

  To lose his respect, that would be a fucking blow.

  “Coffee?” I said.

  He grinned, let out a stuttering breath. “Sure. Get in the car.”

  *

  We took his unmarked LTD to the mall and had
coffee at the mega-bookstore. Nelson liked weird coffee, stuff from Indonesia, with cinnamon and skim milk. I wanted a double espresso just to keep the hallucinations and nightmares away for a few more hours. I didn’t want to sleep so much as pass out. Nelson grabbed a magazine full of floor plans for log cabins and pretended to flip through and ignore me, see if I’d talk.

  In my situation, anyone would talk.

  “I didn’t kill Rachel. You wouldn’t understand if I explained it to you, but what it looked like—”

  “You were stabbing her with the knife.” His eyes flicked up at me, then towards the next table, where two young women had stopped griping about their office work and were trying to listen in by looking elsewhere.

  “I loved her.”

  “That’s a crime, too. You sure you want to keep this up, Z. Z.? We can try your lawyer again.”

  I rubbed my face hard, but with my eyes closed I saw her corpse again. Blinked open immediately and took another swig of sweet caffeine.

  “Remember when you were hired to deliver those drugs? That coke? You had no idea at first, but when you found out, you still kept it until you had proof to bring both your client and the other party down. Almost got yourself in a big hole over that. But you waited it out, did the right thing.”

  “I waited for the check to clear, actually.”

  “They didn’t stop payment?”

  “Maybe. I closed that account and transferred the money. Clean like bleach. His loss.” I drummed a punchline roll on the table. Nelson shrugged his shoulders, took a slow sip of his coffee. I didn’t like the smell of the cinnamon or the perfume from the woman at the next table, who was still trying to listen. Curly hair and a button nose. Her friend looked like Winona Rider after an allergic reaction.

  I leaned towards the curly-haired one and said, “Wait, I know you. Didn’t we, uh, you know, do the thing once? I left a fifty on your dresser, right?”

  She flustered and held up her palms. Her and the friend stood, walked away, quickly.

  Nelson returned his cup to the table and said, “I’ve seen bad guys and good guys, but you I can’t make my mind up about. On the average, a good guy who’s too much of an ass to look like a good guy. Your methods are all wrong.”

  “But still, ends justify means, right?”

  He raised an eyebrow like Spock and nodded. “So, you want to keep your batting average above five hundred? Tell me what you don’t think I’ll believe.”

  So I did.

  FOUR

  “The bony prick with the punk-rock sidekick. His name’s Pfieffer. It all started with him.”

  “So talk,” said Nelson.

  “Sure.” I was supposed to start the story, explain why I shouldn’t be in jail, but all I could do was stare in my coffee cup, hoping there were answers at the bottom. I didn’t want to screw with Nelson. I needed all the friends I could get. But it was way too soon to feed him the whole story, and I wasn’t sure I knew all the angles myself yet.

  Nelson rapped a knuckle on the table. “You awake over there, gumshoe?”

  “Okay. You want the story. Here’s the story.”

  Pfieffer had come to me to find out who was screwing his girlfriend, Nania, Mrs. Woolf. Rachel’s mother. He was a jealous, neurotic little turd with a wad of new money burning a hole in his pocket. Sometimes that’s the trouble with the suddenly rich. They’re so used to having everything their own way, they start thinking it’s okay to bend the rules. It was while I was keeping an eye on Nania Woolf that I met Rachel. I supposed that’s why I’d let the case drag on, for a chance to get at the daughter.

  So I did my job but not with any degree of professionalism. I figured a nerd like Pfieffer wouldn’t know the difference. Rachel wanted me to lay off anyway. So I told Pfieffer that Nania was a saint, closed the file and spent the next four nights showing Rachel some tricks I’d learned from an acrobat.

  It was great while it lasted.

  Then I got the phone call. Somebody had used an electronic gizmo to disguise the voice, and I couldn’t tell if I was talking to man, woman or what. I checked the caller ID right off, but it turned out to be a payphone. All I could do was listen.

  The voice said a guy like me could make ten grand really quick. Cash. I’d find it in a bus station locker. The key would be mailed to me. All I had to do was run one small errand: Make Nania Woolf just as dead as possible. I said I wasn’t in that kind of business. The voice said a shady character like me could probably branch out if the paycheck had enough zeros. I said NO. Then the voice kind of laughed and said if I wasn’t part of the solution, then I must be part of the problem. That’s how the conversation ended.

  “Wait.” Nelson broke into my story. He couldn’t help it. He was a cop. “Who knew you were tailing Mrs. Woolf? Pfieffer and Rachel. Anyone else?”

  “Nobody. Unless Pfieffer or Rachel blabbed.”

  “Right.” Nelson nodded, digested the information. “Okay. Keep talking.”

  “I certainly don’t suspect Rachel. For one thing, she’s dead. Pfieffer’s another story. I’ve seen his type. He’d want to punish Nania for slutting around. When Pfieffer sent his punk boy to grab me, it might be because I didn’t take him up on his offer.”

  “That’s pretty thin,” said Nelson. He scratched his chin. He still wasn’t sure what to think about this case or me. “But I guess it gives me something to check out. Let’s hear the rest.”

  I shrugged, put all my effort into looking sheepish. “That’s it, Nelson. I can’t tell you anymore until I check out some things.”

  He shook his head. “Then this has been a big waste of time. The captain might have told us to lay off you right now, but with the evidence we’ve got, you’re looking at a jail cell real soon. Maybe worse. It’s sad, DelPresto. Really sad that you won’t help yourself.”

  “Come on, man. I told you what I could. I’m just asking for some time.”

  He looked at me, eyes narrow. “Okay. You bought yourself some time. Don’t waste it.” He pushed back from the table, stood. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  *

  Talking to Nelson had been good for me. It made me realize the kind of soup I was in, and it helped me straighten out some things in my head. One thing was for sure. Pfieffer wasn’t through with me yet. Nelson had interrupted our little play session, but there was more to come. I decided I’d better take an interest in Pfieffer pretty fast to determine what should or could be done about him.

  Another thing. Too many people were looking for me, and I wasn’t even sure who all of them were. I still didn’t have my car or my revolver, but I wasn’t that far from my apartment. I started walking with the idea I’d pack a bag, check into a cheap motel and make myself hard to find. I couldn’t very well do any investigating if I was constantly looking over my shoulder.

  Before going into my building, I planted myself behind a lamppost for ten minutes. After ten minutes, I was satisfied nobody was hanging around waiting to fit me for a pine box, so I dashed in and took the stairs up to my third-floor apartment. I let myself in, closed the door behind me and locked it. I made sure the chain was on.

  Somebody cleared his throat behind me.

  Shit.

  I turned. The guy in the expensive black suit sat in my chair by the window. He appeared relaxed, legs crossed, bland smile on his face. So far I hadn’t managed to lose anyone who’d been following me. He pointed a sleek, silver automatic at me. It looked like a Beretta.

  “Oops,” I said. “I seem to be in the wrong apartment. I’m not Z. Z. DelPresto at all. My name’s . . . uh . . . Ludwig Pennymasher. I’m an aluminum siding salesman from Butte, Montana.”

  He expressed his disbelief by shaking his head and lifting the automatic. “I was told you were an amusing fellow, Mr. DelPresto. I don’t especially appreciate your brand of comedy, but I acknowledge the effort.”

  “I know a few card tricks.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’m a hired killer, and I’m here to end your life
, Mr. DelPresto. Please get on your knees.”

  I got on my knees.

  “I’m not usually in the habit of announcing to my prey that they are about to meet their end, but my employer specifically requested that you suffer a little first. Let’s see, how to begin? How’s this?”

  He balled up his fist and punched me hard between the eyes. I fell over backwards. The stars cleared, and I was looking at my ceiling. I’d been punched in the face three times today. It wasn’t even noon.

  He bent over me, looked like he was genuinely concerned. “Did that hurt?”

  “Yeah. That was a pretty good one.”

  “This isn’t really how I prefer to do business. If you think you’ve suffered enough we can move on to the next phase.”

  “That depends on what the next phase is,” I said.

  He pulled a little, hand-held tape recorder out of his pocket and hit PLAY.

  RECORDED VOICE: “Hello, Mr. DelPresto. This is Nania Woolf. I think you’re familiar with the numerous reasons someone like me would wish to see someone like you dead. But before you go, I just wanted you to know it was me who arranged it. This is for what you did to Rachel, and what you were going to do to me. Goodbye, Mr. DelPresto.”

  The hired killer thumbed the rewind button. Then he handed the tape recorder to me. “Mrs. Woolf wanted you to have the opportunity to record any last words or pleas for mercy.”

  “Like this?” I hit the play and fast-forward at the same time and Nania’s speech spewed out as chipmunk blather.

  “No, you fool. The other button.”

  “This one?” I pressed the EJECT and the tape flew out.

  “Stop that,” said the killer. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s not rocket science.” He stepped over me, bent to grab the tape. As he did, the barrel of the gun drifted to the side until it was no longer pointing at me.

  I kicked up hard and caught him in the balls. He whuffed air and dropped the gun, clutched at his groin as he fell over in a heap. The Beretta clattered along the hardwood floor and came to rest under my coffee table. I scrambled for it, but the killer had recovered a little. He grabbed my calf and pulled me back. Struck the back of my knee with a karate elbow. Pain lanced through my leg.