Of Mice and Murderers
Book #1 in the Z-Detective Series
John G. Stockmyer
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 1991, 2012 John G. Stockmyer
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Acknowledgements
Cover Art: Ronald L. Brink
(1942-2011)
Ronald L. Brink was first and foremost a professional educator, and had taught Speech and Theater courses at the high school and college level. He also was a self-taught artist and illustrator, and had been drawing and painting most of his adult life. Watercolor was his medium of choice. In "retirement," he sold his drawings of pets and homes to clients throughout the Midwest. Brink received a B.A. from Missouri Valley College (1964); an M.A. from the University of Denver (1967); and a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Missouri-Kansas City (1983). He taught full-time at Maple Woods Community College in Kansas City for almost 30 years. He was the principal illustrator for the Z-Detective Series. Ron was a colleague and close friend of John G. Stockmyer. During his tenure at Maple Woods, Brink and Stockmyer collaborated on many cutting-edge educational endeavors, such as the Great Moments in History Series, and the Time Machine. In his final months, Ron was pleased to learn that his work had made the jump to cyberspace. He will be missed.
eBook Conversion: John L. Stockmyer
John L. Stockmyer is currently an Associate Professor of Marketing at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico. In his spare time, he dabbles in e-commerce, audio-book production and eBook design. He is also an avid disc golfer. His current ambition is to help talented "undiscovered" authors (like his dad) find an audience through the use of non-traditional media and innovative technology.
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Ebook Conversion: John L. Stockmyer
John L. Stockmyer is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Eastern New Mexico University in Portales, New Mexico. In his spare time, he dabbles in e-commerce, audio-book production and eBook design. He is also an avid disc golfer. His current ambition is to help talented "undiscovered" authors (like his dad) find an audience through the use of non-traditional media and innovative technology.
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Introduction
The time: 1990.
The place: Kansas City, Missouri.
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-1-
After supper, Bob Zapolska (Z, for short) was back in front of the Maddox house, prepared to stay until he was certain no one inside could still be awake. Six-thirty was un-Daylight-Savings-Time dark in January, the night unusually black because someone with an air rifle had shot out the streetlight down the block. Dark enough to have frightened off the trashy Ford; dark enough to bury the Cavalier in deepest shadow; dark and cold.
For this job, Z had put on his heavy black jacket, thick dark pants and black boots. Then gotten his detective case out of its cubbyhole under his fireplace -- had the satchel on the passenger's seat.
Prepared to wait for hours if necessary, he caught a break at 7:30 when the silver car zoomed out and off again, the lady remembering this time (unfortunately) to close the garage door with the "remote." Was the young wife off to spend time with girlfriends? Could she be out on this frosty night to tend a "sick aunt"? (When a sugar daddy bought the high school queen, he got what he deserved. Not much. And not often.)
The young woman whizzing off, Z had a wrenching thought about where Susan was at that moment -- remembered about her night school class. At least, that's where she should be; where she'd told him she would be.
The wife gone, Z took the black ski mask out of his detective suitcase on the seat beside him, pulling on the wooly hood to complete his all-black, nighttime rig.
Next, he stretched on the skin-tight leather gloves he'd packed under the ski mask, then shut the case, the rubber band-wrapped catch locking silently.
Though he wouldn't need all the items he had with him, his modified black bag held the standard tools of the detective trade, each secured with wide elastic bands: lock picks, jimmy, a length of nylon rope, straight razor, small jar of gas plus the rubber tubing he'd used to siphon it from his tank after getting home that afternoon. (He hated siphoning gas! Always sucked some into his mouth.)
He'd also brought the coil of dynamite fuse -- never could tell what he might need until he'd looked over the situation -- and the honed hunting knife. The padded blackjack with its flexible, woven-leather handle was already in the pocket of his "night fighter" jacket, his "dog detector" in his right pants pocket.
An elasticized pocket in the traveling bag contained his insignias of authority: authentic-looking paper or embossed metal badges proclaiming him to be an inspector for K.C. Power and Light, insurance investigator, dog catcher, or the license he could use to knock on any door, Pastor of the Church of the Living Word. (Forged credentials like these were the kind of thing Johnny Dosso could get for him. Looked like the genuine article. Even came in billfold-worn plastic protectors.) Z also had his camera in the suitcase.
Ready, Z pulled back the car's inside doorhandle, the greased mechanism releasing the door with little sound.
Elbowing the door open, picking up the valise, swinging his body out with a single, fluid motion, Z eased the door shut behind him with only the lightest of metallic clicks.
A half moon in a cloud-patched sky had Z staring into every shadow. Little snow left, but still a danger of slipping on black ice.
Seeing no one, he allowed himself to limp across the blacked-out street, pulled himself over the rough, unmortared limestone wall, and disappeared into the shrubbery.
Once on the Maddox grounds, taking his time, he quick-walked from decorative grove -- to shrub -- to statuary; keeping to the shadows; approaching the mansion downwind of the outside dog. What little smell he could detect in the quiet night was of pine trees and clipped, fir hedge.
Confident he had what he needed (he'd left his air rifle in the Cavalier's trunk), Z worked his way up the Maddox lawn, across the front, then turned right to hug the left side of the mansion, coming to the last of the three, garage bays, ducking around it to hide in the inky dark of the house's far side.
Breathing hard by this time, Z took time to rest. And to rub the pain out of his knee.
This job had been phoned in by a Professor Hugh Calder, a psychology instructor at Bateman College in nearby Liberty, Missouri, Dr. Calder saying he needed help in recovering money from a bungled construction job. The Dr. had tried to reason with Maddox Construction, but had gotten nowhere. He'd called the Better Business Bureau. No dice. Phoning his home owner's insurance company, he's also struck out. It was when he'd looked in the Yellow Pages for his insurance agent's parent company that he'd seen Z's ad; noticed that the Zapolska Detective Agency was located North of the River.
Dr. Calder didn't think he'd need a private detective, but.....
Before taking the case, Z had gone to the young prof's home to assure himself Calder had been wronged, finding that the sunroom Maddox Construction had been hired to build had been butchered -- rain allowed to destroy the insulation, windows crooked, walls cracking. From what Z knew about construction, Maddox owed Calder four-thousand in damages.
Phone calls plus a visit to the construction firm failing to settle the matter, it had come to this: a "black bag" job in the elegant Briarcliff section of Kansas City North.
Z had taken a look at the property this afternoon, of course, arriving at seventeen twenty-four Willow Drive without difficulty.
Drifting past the Maddox mansion in the old Cavalier, Z's first helpful discovery was that the "estate" was so large no other houses were in sight, Z glimpsing the Maddox property through a screen of woods, plantings, and sculptured hedge. Tudor style. Dark-stained half-timbers; used brick; diamond-pane windows of antique glass.
He'd also noticed the streetlight on the corner, detectives needing to pick up on details like that.
Another discovery was an eight-feet high, chain-link fence -- enclosing half a football field of timbered lawn out back.
Big money.
At least four-thousand dollars of it owed to Dr. Calder.
Z had kept on driving down other streets-of-the-rich-and-Northland-famous, pushed to the side of the road as luxury cars (Lincoln, Caddy, Jag) sighed by -- all the while considering his first problem: how to stake out the target property. Stated simply, could his sheep of a Cavalier graze near the Maddox place without attracting attention in these Jaguar-haunted hills?
Circling back to the Maddox home, Z had been able to hide the Cavalier behind a leprous '64 Ford ... a car that had to be owned by the "help" (cook, cleaning lady), the old car giving Z's Chevy protective cover.
Shutting off the motor, he'd levered back the thinly-padded, reclining bucket seat until, like a hippo in a slime-scummed lake, only his nose and eyes were visible above the dash.
The result of three hours of boredom? A silver Miata backing out of one of the three garage doors, coming down the curving drive, and buzzing off into the late afternoon, Z getting a glimpse of the young, pretty woman at the wheel. Late twenties. Too old to be a daughter; must be the wife. Fur coat. Dressed up to go to work which, in the case of that gift-wrapped package, was shopping on the Plaza.
At least the second wife. Probably the third, later wives of successful men with that glossy, never-had-to-sacrifice-to-build-the-business look.
Cute, but careless, the bimbette forgetting to activate the remote that would lower the garage door.
Finding what he'd come for -- a crack in the Maddox armor -- Z had started the Cavalier, at the same time having a guilty thought about a middle-aged Robert Zapolska's relationship with beautiful, glamorous, and much too young for him, Susan Halliwell; banished the ugly thought with the certain knowledge that Z had won Susan, not bought her! Unless stopping a Susan-bound bullet could be conceived as payment for her continued services.... No!
It hadn't been like that. At all!
The engine warm enough not to stall, Z had pulled a U-turn, then turned right at the street flanking Maddox's estate.
Drifting by, Z looked into the whale mouth of the far garage bay through which the little minnow of a Miata had escaped.
Small garage window at the end of the left stall.
Past the house, a twist of the rear view mirror had given him a fast look through the open garage door.
Three, unpartitioned stalls.
No cars inside.
A door leading from the far bay into the house.
No cars meaning that hubby was out humping on the job. Working hard to steal the kind of money that would have his girl scout of a wife keep selling him her cookies.
So, what were the problems?
First, that long, tall fence enclosing the grounds out back.
Not to keep in little nippers. Any children old man Maddox might have whelped by his cast-off wife now grown to be the cheating image of their dad.
No babies by Barbie. Stretch marks were a violation of the third wife deal.
Back to the fence, a fence like that meaning....
Dog.
Outside guard dog. Shepherd, Doberman.
No way the lady of the house would have a vicious inside dog. Not even let "Adolf" in the garage, would be Z's guess. Might chew up -- then bury -- her Miata.
Good.
Outside dogs were no problem.
Which didn't mean there wasn't a lapdog within. A yappy Pomeranian. Even worse, a Pekingese -- those little lions not afraid to jump a tiger.
Fortunately, Z knew a way to cancel the small dog threat.
And that had been that. All in all, a good day's work.
That was then. This was now.
His breathing back to normal, Z edged down the back wall to discover what he'd found on other occasions; that the far, end window was locked with nothing more than a simple, circular catch.
Strange, how nobody thought to safeguard the window in an attached garage.
To be fair, it was easy to overlook a small opening in a structure with big, wide doors to worry about.
His entry point discovered, Z popped open the case and took out the knife -- was able to reach up and slip the blade between the center window frames and snap back the catch.
The window unlocked, he gentled up its lower half, the rising sash making an acceptable squeal, the garage's insides smelling of gas, oil, plastic, polish, wax, and chamois.
So far, so good.
Knife back in the case, Z measured the window with his hands.
Small, but not too small.
And not that high. Ignoring the risk of further damage to his knee, he could pull himself up and in.
First, the case. Lifting the satchel, he pushed it through the window, lowered it as far as he could, and let it clunk softly to the concrete floor inside.
As ready as he was going to get, he put his head through the frame. Placing his hands on the sill to push himself up, at the same time "climbing" the outside walls with his rubber boots -- P.I.'s were not called gumshoes for nothing -- pushing, pulling, scraping, he got the upper half of his body inside the narrow window.
Now for the bad part. Taking a deep breath, he stretched out his arms in an attempt to cushion his fall.
Nothing else to be done, he wriggled past the balance point, turned loose the sash and let his body weight pull him the rest of the way through the window.
Thud!
Even breaking the tumble with his hands, Z hit in a heap.
Getting up slowly, painfully ... his head ringing ... his left arm paralyzed from the "funny" bone down, he checked for other injuries ... finding that, except for scuffing some meat off his ribs, he was in one piece.
Halted for the moment, Z fumbled out, then gulped down a number of the aspirin he'd poured in his pocket before leaving home this evening. (Not a doubt in his mind that he'd need them before the night was over.)
Rubbing feeling into his left hand and forearm, Z used the time to let his eyes adjust to the heavier gloom of the garage; made out a long, black shape in the middle garage bay.
A Lincoln.
Figured.
Another minute of rubbing to bring his arm back to normal, bending down, Z groped until he located the satchel.
Picking up the case, stepping quietly, he crossed the empty Miata bay, squeezed past the front of the Lincoln in the center stall, and crept through the other unused bay.
Stopped at the house wall, more by feel that by sight, he located the doorhandle, wiggling it ... to find that, true to form, nothing but a spring lock protected the door, the kind everyone knew how to open with a credit card.
Putting down the case, Z slipped out his wallet, again by feel, extracted the plastic card he always carried for these purposes.
Carefully, quietly, he inserted the stiff plastic in the crack between the leading edge of the door and the door frame, slipped back the lock tongue, then shouldered the door forward enough to keep the latch from springing back.
Holding the door in that position, Z thumbed the card back in his billfold and returned the wallet to his back pocket.
The latest in locks and alarms had to be protecting the mansion's other windows and doors; the house was too big, too rich, and too alone to be left unguarded. He could only guess (judging by the garage door slip-up) that Maddox had installed the security system himself, the builder too "know-it-all" to hire a professional.
Ready, Z pushed the door until the smallest possible crack appeared; put his ear to the slit; listened with absolute attention. Hearing ... for an eon ... nothing but his own breathing.
Punctuated by the pounding of his telltale heart.......
No other precautions to take, he opened the door enough to peek inside.
Laundry room.
Partially open door across the way with a dim light coming through.
No doubt, the kitchen.
Carefully, the leather glove on his hand making it difficult, Z dug into his pants pocket for his silent dog whistle.
Found it; began raking out the small tube, feeling, at the same time, the inside of the pocket coming with it.
Stopping instantly, Z took his time working the whistle clear. (Attention to detail was his specialty. In his business, lack of concern for simple things -- in this case, the accidental raking out that pocket's car keys -- could mess up his escape.)
The whistle out, Z shifted the small, metal cylinder to his other gloved hand, at the same time fingering the pocket back inside his pants.
Ready at last, putting the business end of the whistle in his mouth, he blew. Two long, inaudible shrills.
Soundless to humans.
A shrieking challenge to any self-respecting dog.........
No whining.
No barking.
No eager sound of slipping doggy toenails on the tiled kitchen floor..............
No inside dog.
Satisfied (not liking the idea of dealing with a house dog), he slid the whistle back in his pocket. Z didn't like dogs, but didn't want to hurt them, either.
The way clear at last, Z picked up his satchel, opened it, by feel found his blackjack and put it in a coat pocket, snapped shut the case, and slipped inside the house where, certain there was nothing left to stop him, he padded like a midnight menace through the laundry room ... the lighted kitchen ... a dark dining room ... living room ... guest room ... library -- walls of books. Piano.
Until, valise in hand, a shadow blending in with shadows, he approached a spacious, lighted recreation room at the back.
Edging an eye around the side of the archway leading to that room, he saw the lumpish contractor's back, the man sitting on a comfortable looking riot-of-large-pink-and-white-flowers-on-solid-black-fabric sofa.
Along the back of the divan (on Z's side) was a dark, wood credenza with "pretties" on it: figurines, vases of cut flowers, small pictures in filigreed frames. Beyond the couch, facing the room from either side, were deeply-upholstered, bright-red chairs, their legs skirted in the same vermilion fabric. End tables between the sofa and chairs completed the conversational grouping, one table sporting a red lacquer lamp, the other, a lamp of sparkling faceted crystal, both lamps switched on, their light softened by white pleated shades.
Leaded windows dominated the blush-pink outside wall to the left, the windows decorated with bunched half-drapes of floral-patterned fabric.
No glass-doored cabinet on the far wall.
Good!
Flush with the dark oak floor across the room was an arched, open-fronted fireplace, Z seeing ashes inside and a burned-rusty, cast-iron grate. To the right of the hearth were brass fire implements -- tongs, brush, leather bellows -- held upright in a shiny, golden stand.
What looked like two impressionist paintings in gilt frames had been hung on the right end wall.
The room's cathedral "spire" soared another story -- the first floor "ceiling" marked by horizontal, open, brown-stained beams.
Z was particularly interested in the fireplace on the far wall and in a white-painted, cast-iron radiator adjacent to it. Steam heat? Perhaps the home wasn't as new as he'd thought: only looked that way because of loving, detailed maintenance. He inhaled delicately. Yes. There was a light paint smell about the place.
Could there be a doubt that a professional had "done" this freshly redecorated room? On the other hand, it took a special kind of courage for a young wife to let herself be guided by an expert's judgment. Perhaps the little lady wasn't as shallow as he thought. More than ever, he was glad she'd found somewhere else to be on this icy January night, a sensitive woman apt to be traumatized by being hog-tied by a hulking, hooded terrorist.
Even a cursory examination of the place told Z the room could not reflect the "taste" of Maddox, the dumpy man's paunch showing even from the back; not that hairy-gorilla-in-a-beer-stained-undershirt plunked down on the flowered sofa; not this coarse, balding piece of fatty meat; not this bull-necked redneck -- sucking beer while leafing through a girlie magazine ....
Something else caught Z's attention.
Another ... odor.
Besides belched beer, the room gave off the smell of ... flowers ... and ... of furniture polish.
So! The Ford of this afternoon belonged, not to a maid, but to the cleaning woman.
It always pleased him to be able to snap in every piece of a detective puzzle.
Maddox hadn't heard a thing, of course. Nor was there a glassed-in piece of furniture -- Z had checked -- in which Maddox could glimpse the wavering reflection of an assailant, weighted sap in hand, skulking up behind him.
Careful appraisal making Z sure of his invincibility, two soft steps and a quick tap over Maddox's right ear had Z opening the detective case to get down to business. (For the young wife's sake, Z hoped the beer the man spilled didn't make a permanent stain on the pretty couch.)
As for the job itself, the first difficulty was getting the fat man's clothes off; shirt, pants no difficulty, but proving easier to take a razor to the man's "jockey" underwear than to slip his "unmentionables" off over his awkwardly sprawling arms and legs.
What was hard, was dragging Maddox off the couch and over to the fireplace. Why was it that "dead" weight was so much heavier than "live"?
No problem getting a rope end tied around the man's ankles, or tossing the rest of the coil over the center of the beam just in front of the fireplace.
What presented the most difficult part of the operation (a squared-off beam making a poor pulley), was hoisting the man's limp body off the floor.
Finally, though, after considerable strain, Z had hauled the man high enough for Z's purposes, Z lashing the other end of the stretched, sharply-slanted rope to the radiator in the corner.
The rope tied off, he had the man where he wanted him – strung up so that, while Maddox's hands dangled far enough to touch the wood parquet in front of the fireplace, his head cleared the floor by a couple of feet.
After that, Z tore up the porno magazine Maddox had been reading, crumpled its pages and stuffed them under the fireplace grill. Finding wood in a built-in storage bin in the hearth wall, Z put some kindling on the grate, then a generous pallet of split oak logs.
To neaten up the place, he finished by tossing in what was left of the man's clothing, placing Maddox's steel-toed work boots on top of the firewood.
As a final preparation, Z got the half-pint Mason jar of gasoline from his suitcase and screwed off the flimsy top, setting both the lid and the open jar beside the hearth.
By this time sweating from all these preparations -- his black ski mask unbearably hot and scratchy -- Z was impatient for the man to wake up so Z could reason with him (one more time) before things got serious. Z liked to provide even cheaters with more chances than a hard life had given him.
It was even possible, he believed, to end it here. Experience had shown that the men he'd stripped buck naked and tied up by the heels were often more cooperative than they might have been under other circumstances.
As for Maddox, the man had started to twitch -- a good sign. He'd also begun to move his arms, his hands dragging on the shiny floor.
"Son-of-a-bitch," were the first words Maddox uttered, said groggily, thickly. By degrees, the man was waking up, the strange look on his reddened, upside-down face saying that the contractor was at a loss to explain how he'd come to be hanging from the ceiling like an albino bat.
It was time, Z squatting down so Maddox could see Z's black-hooded bulk.
"Sir," he rasped, still trying to be polite, the rough purr of his voice sounding even stranger through the loosely knitted mask, "you owe me five-thousand dollars." No sense bringing in Calder's name. Z never tied a client to any action the cops might view suspiciously -- part of the Zapolska code.
"What?" Maddox was rolling his eyes, not yet fully recovered.
Z could afford to wait.
Another half-minute serving to bring the man around, Z could tell that the contractor's thought processes had now shifted, if not to fear, at least to thoughtful consideration of his circumstances.
"Time to settle up, you piece of shit!"
Z checked himself immediately. There was no reason to get angry. It was just that he'd gone to considerable trouble to motivate this man.
Z also knew that part of the reason he was feeling snappish was that his knee had begun to ache in earnest. Scrambling through the garage window had been punishing, to say nothing of the lacerating strain his ligaments had undergone in stringing up Maddox's rubbery-thick body.
"You've got money in the house."
Though Z was guessing, it was a good guess. A cheat like Maddox would want his "resources" in cash, to keep from paying income tax. "Get it and we stop the game."
"You son of a bitch!" the man shouted in his rough, used-to-cursing-at-his-men, outdoors voice.
With that, he spit, only Z's superior reflexes allowing Z to duck in time.
Spirit.
The man had spirit.
Z was feeling his temper fray its leash.
But ... was able to calm himself.
"The police'll get you!"
Police? At least this explained why the man was so belligerent, Maddox under the delusion that Z could not have broken into the house without tripping one of the home's elaborate burglar systems, silent alarm to the police station, all that.
Z had seen the alarms, of course: the perimeter sensors attached to the doors and windows -- the buzz-top door stopper.
"You can forget the cops," Z rasped soberly. "I knocked out your security."
As for the man, he just hung there, his paunch looking ridiculous as it flopped down (up?) on his chest -- not the only part of him that looked ridiculous dangling upside down.
"Instead, we play the game. Turn your head and you'll see you're almost in the fireplace." The man refused to even try to move.
Choosing to ignore Maddox's insolence, Z continued.
"I'm going to make a fire. Already got it laid."
Maddox's curiosity aroused at last, he twisted to get an upside-down look in the fireplace.
With that, Z bent over (keeping his bad knee out of the contractor's sight), picked up the jar of gasoline he'd put by the hearth, and splashed gas on the kindling. For effect, hurled in the empty jar, the glass shattering noisily on the grill and firebrick.
Taking one of the extra-long, fireplace matches from the mantel, a scratch on the inside grate was all it took to touch off the acrid-smelling gasoline, a blue flame roaring up, the kindling immediately crackling into life.
"Hey!" cried Maddox, the man using his hands to "walk" himself backward until he was holding his upper (lower?) body as far from the flames as possible, as far as he could and still keep his palms on the floor to balance himself.
"Good. That's one thing you can do. May get tired though."
A change of expression on Maddox's lumpy face said the man was catching on, Maddox now paying attention, something in his upside-down eyes that said Maddox might soon be more reasonable. (The bulging blood veins in his neck and on the man's weathered forehead were nothing but the result of being upside down for so long.)
"There's a better way to keep from getting roasted -- at least for now," Z added, anticipating the man's limited options. "You ever read The Pit and the Pendulum?" The man didn't answer, perhaps because he'd already discovered that holding himself back from the burgeoning flames was a losing strategy. "Here. Let me help."
Bending down, Z grabbed a handful of what was left of the man's gray-flecked hair, hauled Maddox a reasonable distance to the side, then let him go, Maddox swinging past the fireplace like a wrong-way Tarzan.
Stopping at the top of the arc on the other side of the hearth, the contractor swept back again, past the blazing wood, his pivoting body fanning the flames to new brightness.
Maddox had also begun a slow rotation, winding up in one direction until the rope unwound him in the other.
Roast more evenly that way.
"Better keep swinging," Z advised. "Slow down and you get a permanent tan."
Though by this time the builder had begun to make moaning sounds, the man still said nothing.
The contractor twirling on the rope, first one way, then the other, at the same time swinging back and forth before the growing, fascinating fire, almost put Z in a trance. First one way. Then the other. ......
But in ever shortening crescents, Maddox's head spending more time in front of the fire on each successive swing, the fire more respectable by the second, the charred edges of the split oak glowing with hardwood heat.
This fire was beautiful to watch. And it smelled good, too. Nothing but the best in seasoned oak for the criminal element.
"I've got to go," Z wheezed. "But I'll be back after awhile; to see if you need basting."
"Wait!" Maddox cried.
The rest had gone smoothly enough. First, Z had taken pictures of the man as he swung so gracefully before the fire, the photos to be circulated should Maddox continue to be troublesome. Elbert Orledge Maddox the Second was not the kind of man who'd enjoy having these kind of "bondage" pictures spread around.
After that, sure enough, Maddox had told Z about a wall safe hidden behind the traditional picture in the library, Z cutting Maddox down so Maddox could work the combination. The man having a bad case of the shakes, taking awhile.
But a rewarding "while" as it turned out, the safe stuffed with stacks of rubber-banded bills. (Z's little joke about Z being from the IRS hadn't even produced a chuckle from the man. Among Maddox's other unattractive qualities was his lack of humor.)
Four-thousand for Z's client, Dr. Calder, plus an additional thousand for Z's fee -- a sum that was fair. Why should Professor Calder -- the victim -- have to stand the expense of hiring a private eye to catch this criminal? (While P.I.s without Z's standards would have taken the bundle, Z counted out only what Maddox owed: the legal five-thousand.)
Tying Maddox up again, Z left the man on the recreation room floor, the other end of the rope knotted to the radiator. He even suggested that Maddox might think of a way to get a coal out of the fireplace; use it to burn through the rope to set himself free. (If the man got loose on his own, it would spare his little woman from having to learn what had happened in her absence.)
A half-hour later, Z was home and taking a long, knee-relieving soak in water as hot as he could stand it, Z having time, at last, to judge that the evening had gone well. The good guy had gotten justice; the bad guy had been made to pay.
Viewed right, since Maddox didn't know what future illegality on his part might make those pictures surface, the snapshots Z took had done a work of rehabilitation.
All things considered, a satisfying conclusion to the Calder case.
-2-
Z came awake with a bad, thick taste in his mouth -- just another trick that age played on you. He hadn't slept well, though he'd gotten more sleep than if he'd persuaded Susan to invite him over. Too busy for him. She was always too busy these days. Big Bob Zapolska. The big Z. High school hero in the long ago. Had dropped another pass.
More awake, he remembered to reach for the bottle of aspirin on the stand, groped out a quantity of pills; managed to get them in his mouth. Crunching up the aspirin, he swallowed the acid powder with the first spit of the morning.
Though it'd been a full day since the Maddox break-in, his knee still felt bad, a bum knee his excuse for not yet seeing Dr. Calder.
He yawned, the sour bite of the aspirin helping him to wake up.
As soon as the painkiller took hold, he'd be ready to face the day.
Lying there, he reflected that, except for woman trouble, things were going as well as they ever did. He'd made money from the Calder case, for instance. A small job, to be sure. Low-class P.I.'s not hired to hunt for the killer who'd strangled ladies of the evening in Gilliam park, the man croaking as many hookers as Jack the Ripper.
It wasn't like the detective novels said, that the P.I. got the hard cases, the ones the cops had muffed. It was more like a private detective scavenging jobs no one wanted (like being hired to join the search party for the runaway who turned up dead in a Johnson County field).
It didn't really matter, though. He liked the detective business more than any of the jobs he'd had since high school. For one thing, a little checking on possible clients meant you didn't have to work for bastards.
Z moved his left knee. Better give the aspirin another couple of minutes.
He looked at his watch, eyes still blurry. Eight o'clock? Nine? He couldn't tell in the winter light of his bedroom's north window. Maybe, when his eyes had a chance to clear, he'd be able to see those wiggly dial numbers.
If he could keep from thinking about Susan, this was going to be a good day, the day he'd collect the rest of his money from the security client; from that secretary at Bateman College. Ogden. Beth Ogden.
Good-looking for a woman Z's age -- but nervous. Too scary to be living all alone way out there. Still, she hadn't liked his suggestion to sell her barn of a farmhouse and move into a security apartment. Sentimental about the old homestead, he guessed. She said she'd just inherited it.
Most security installers would have put in modern-style deadbolt locks right away, deadbolts the kind of lock all his customers knew about. Z had wanted to do just that, but the lady had insisted that any hardware must "fit" with the original "style" of the house.
Women ....
They did make antique "reproduction" locksets with built-in deadbolts -- but they were expensive, and hard to find. Until he located some of the new/old deadbolts, he'd tried to do his best for her peace of mind by telling her she'd be just as safe if she propped chair backs under the doorknobs, front door and back. While he concentrated on buttoning up the rest of her house.
He'd have normally put in a silent alarm to the cops. It was just that, out in the country like she was, police help would take too long to arrive to do any good. So he'd started by putting bars over the windows: the fancy filigreed steel ones, all vines and flowers, but bars nonetheless; first, over the windows that needed it most, the first-floor windows, then the windows on second, then on third. Bolted all the steelwork from the inside.
Not wanting to think about standing on a long ladder with his bum knee, he'd been fortunate to be able to do the job from inside. (Stiff and painful, he could live with. Having his knee give way while three floors up .... Enough said.)
He'd installed peepholes in the doors.
All he had to do now was locate the new/old locks for the front and rear doors and collect the money for his labor, the lady then able to put her chairs under the dining room table where they belonged.
Short of living in a vault (something he didn't tell Ms. Ogden), there was no way to be completely safe. As a boy, he remembered reading about Japan, how the people there lived in houses with rice paper walls. At the time, he'd thought how stupid the Japs must be -- to think they were protected by paper panels. As an adult in the P.I. business, he'd come to realize that any house could be cracked.
The steel window filigree he'd installed for the lady would slow somebody down, at least. Give the lady time to call 911. (He'd also taken the trouble to bury the phone line so nobody could cut it.)
What she hadn't done was take the hint and hire him to run off whoever was giving her a problem; she'd just said it was living alone that frightened her. And maybe that's the way it was.
Z bent his knee again. Better. The pills were doing their job.
Just for good measure, he chewed up another couple of aspirin; sucked them down.
Moving his knee again, it felt OK. OK in the sense it would never get any better.
Gritting his teeth, he slid out of the covers and eased himself up on the linoleum floor, the slick floor shivering cold. He'd heard they didn't make linoleum any more, and certainly not in the shade of purple to match the walls.
His feet adjusting to the chill (by going numb), no one to see him, he let himself limp to the bathroom.
Showered, teeth brushed, shaved, hair combed -- all without looking -- he finally found the courage to stare at himself in the steamy bathroom mirror.
God, he was ugly! Limp, iron-gray hair; lines in his face gone deep as August cracks in a Kansas prairie; under it all, a Dick Tracy jaw that still had some skin attached; narrow, mucus-colored eyes.
At least he'd found employment where ugly was an asset. Reared up like a grizzly, he looked larger than his six-feet plus. Even bigger with his paunchy, two-hundred-twenty pounds. Big and ugly.
Plus a croaking voice as a bonus extra. (Another couple of hits on the old squawk box and he'd be down to a whisper.)
He made himself look in the mirror again ... to find he didn't look his age. ... More like twice his age.
His body wisping steam on reentry into the cold bedroom, Z got his good blue suit out of the closet. Had to look your best when you were going on campus, Susan had said.
Dressed, he slipped the change from the dresser top into his pants pockets. Also his lighter, billfold, and keys.
Putting on the suit helped. Then again, dressed up like people, even chimps looked human.
Giving himself a final once-over in the dresser mirror ... deciding he didn't seem too frightening ... Z brightened with an idea. He'd get his pay, then go to the Nelson to have lunch in the gallery's Rozzelle Court. Expensive, but what the hell. Lunch, and then lose himself for an hour in all that beauty.
No matter what else happened (or didn't happen) with Susan, he had her to thank for the Nelson Art Gallery. When the job she'd hired him to do had gone wrong, to help him recover from the gunshot wound, the doctor prescribed walking as the best way to recuperate, Susan suggesting he shuffle through the gallery. Too weak to argue with either of them, he'd given in.
Slow-walking in the gallery for those two months had him falling in love with art, Z first liking the suits of medieval armor. As a knight in steel, Z guessed he'd feel ... invulnerable -- the way a green, high school football player felt in pads. You never thought about your knees when you were in high school.
High school. The good old days when being dumb was your shield against the world.
He'd then become fascinated with the life-sized marble lion in the Ancient room.
Now, everything in the gallery interested him. Living the hand-to-mouth life he did -- dealing with the worst kind of people -- he needed beauty in his life ... for balance.
"Satisfied" with the way he looked, Z limped down the short hall into the kitchenette, where he hung his coat over the back of a straight chair at the dinette table.
As always, got the bread, grape jelly, Skippy smooth, and a can of Diet Coke from the fridge. No decisions to be made here. That was all the food he kept in the house.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich for breakfast, and when low on money, the same for his other meals. He used to feel bad about eating so much peanut butter until he read that a doctor had invented the sticky stuff as a way to get more protein into the diet of the poor, making it obvious that peanut butter and a poverty-stricken Bob Zapolska were meant to "stick together."
Toast the bread? Not today, though he did that sometimes, for variety.
Sandwich on a paper plate, Diet Coke hissed open, both transferred to the table, and he was ready to build his morning fire.
Stepping to the wood box, he got a handful of kindling and stuffed it in the stand-alone fireplace he'd put in the 10 X 12 living room. Stooping again, he picked up the jar of kerosene from under the circular fireplace rim and splashed a little kerosene on the stovewood. The fire "primed," first tossing in a couple of split oak logs, he fished out his lighter and touched off the kerosene.
He'd installed the black steel fireplace himself; had even climbed the rose trellis outside his door to fix the chimney pipe through the tarpaper roof of his add-on apartment. And never regretted the money he spent. The fireplace also served a secondary, but very important function. Needing a secret place to hide the case containing his "detective tools," he had installed the firebox in such a way that, when pushed in precisely the right direction, it would slide sideways. A specially-made flexible stainless steel vent pipe permitted the firebox to move just enough to allow access to a hidden compartment in the floor -- just large enough for his case.
Nothing like a fire to take the chill off winter mornings.
Trying to be as honest as his mom had wanted him to be, Z had to admit that he built a fire every day in the summer, too. Had plugged up both living room windows with air conditioners -- to cool down the summer fire's heat.
The flames catching, kindling popping -- smelling of white pine -- oak bark beginning to blaze, he looked at his watch, holding it at arm's length .....
With the little hand nearing 10:00, he'd better speed up if he was to get to his office before 11:00.
Z's true office was his answering machine. Oh, he'd rented a tiny two-holer of a workplace in the cheap-rent district on Chouteau. Had even added a second desk just inside the splintered door for a "soon-to-be-hired" secretary. In reality, though, his business was a couple of phone numbers in the Yellow Pages: one for Robert Zapolska Detective Agency -- the other for Robert Zapolska Security Systems Installation. You didn't have a lot of walk-in business in either the detective or the security game.
Still, he liked having what office there was; gave him a reason to get out in the mornings; provided him with another place to read in peace.
But first things first. Like getting the paper so he could eat.
Hurrying, Z got his heavy coat from the divan where he'd thrown it last night, and struggled into the coat. Scarf stuffed in. Gloves on. But no hat. (A real man didn't need a hat.)
Three, painful steps, plus a ham-handed twist of the doorknob put him out the front (side) door.
Shutting the door, swinging right, he started the long walk to the front to retrieve the Star, refusing to let himself limp -- never could tell who was watching out a window -- the weak sunlight reflecting from ice patches on the walk, making it easier to dodge them. Little snow so far. None left on the ground.
Z hated winter because his nose got so cold he couldn't smell; in summer, liked to make a game out of guessing odors -- helped pass the time on stakeouts.
The old trees along the curb cut off most of the raw, January wind.
Back straight, hands in his pockets, Z tried not to limp down the crumbled concrete leading to the front of the moldering, brown house that, for longer than even it remembered, had been chopped into cheap apartments.
Strange, how every twist in a person's life forced you down a path that led you to where you were at the moment. Looking back, it seemed to have been ordained that he move into this two-room-with-kitchenette apartment.
A "dry spell" a couple of years ago had him living in his office until he got a call from an old lady named Urquhart. It seemed that a street gang was keeping her awake "to all hours" and would he do something about that. She'd read his ad in the Yellow Pages. (The detective ad that concluded with: "Inexpensive. Results Guaranteed.")
He'd quoted her a price she could live with.
The "gang" turning out to be some kids playing basketball in the alley behind the old lady's apartment house on North Troost, the guys stringing lights so they could play at night. (The night Z went to have a talk with them, he'd gotten a laugh out of watching them play. A bunch of slow, short, white kids. Playing basketball.)
He'd watched awhile from the shadows until he'd identified the "gang's" leader; called him over; tried, gently, to talk a little sense into him.
Now when Bob Zapolska was a punk kid, getting a lecture from Frankenstein's monster would have given him the picture. Quick! But not with today's youth. (Z realized the smart-mouthed kid could have been in his 20's, everyone looking young to an aging P.I.) Anyway, Z's little talk about how kids should respect helpless old ladies hadn't done the trick. (Since when had today's kids started saying "piss off" and "fuck off" to grownups?)
In short, Z had to figure another way to convince the "gang leader" to give up late night b-ball. Thinking about that made Z smile. It must have been a shock when the kid woke up to find that mournfully deflated basketball on the pillow beside his head, a wicked looking butcher knife stuck in the ball. (Almost as scary as finding a horse head in your bed.) What was important was that "beheading" the basketball had gotten results.
Instead of paying her bill in cash -- it turned out Mary didn't have the money after all -- the old lady offered him a discount on an apartment. Said it'd make her feel safe to have him, "permanent-like," on the premises.
So, he'd moved in. Low rent? Translate no rent most of the time.
Not paying made Z feel guilty, though, a sick old lady like that. Fat. One leg lost to diabetes.
On the other hand, putting in the fireplace had made up for some of the rent. Still, he was determined that part of what the secretary paid him today would go to Mrs. Urquhart.
Rounding the broad front porch but with still a ways to walk to get the paper, the idea of getting paid had brightened his spirits so much he'd begun to consider having another go at the rental equipment case.
An old guy had come to Easy Rental to get a jackhammer, small ventilator fan, three powerful halogen lights, four kerosene heaters, and a hell of a lot of heavy-duty electric cable. Then disappeared as if he'd fallen off the edge of the earth. It seemed the thief had used a stolen driver's license when signing the rental form.
Easy Rental's owner had called the cops.
When that didn't get him his merchandise back, he'd called the Bob Zapolska Agency.
All Z had done was the same thing the police did: interview the owner of the driver's license. Walters. Hiram Walters, who said he'd lost his license at a party he'd gone to; a blowout for the staff of Bateman College, a doings where he'd had too much to drink. (The drunk part, Z could believe, the man's cirrhosis-yellow skin and cherry-tomato nose saying the guy abused the bottle.)
And that was it, Z's investigation stopping there (just like the cops had), a failure particularly unfortunate in Z's case since he didn't get paid until the equipment was returned.
A year ago. And in all this time, the vanished goods had never turned up.
What was so irritating was there had to be a clue in the odd bunch of items the robber stole. Had to be. All Z could come up with, though, was the image of a modern caveman building a second bedroom with the jackhammer; ventilating it with the fan; lighting and heating supplied by the halogens and heaters. The cable? For tapping into someone else's power source? (Sometimes the best sense you could make was nonsense, given the sad condition of the world.)
All the way down the walk of Mary Urquhart's grand-house-gone-bad, bending down on his good right leg, Z picked up one of the three papers there. (He got one paper, Mary a second, the Rogers family on the second floor, the third.)
Pivoting neatly on his stiff leg to make it seem more useful than it was, he started back.
Grumbling.
For he'd just remembered that the damn newspaper owners had axed the evening paper. Oh, there'd been a smokescreen at the time, about how having only a morning paper would make everyone's life better in Kansas City. They'd even named the morning paper with the name of the evening paper, the Star!
Bullshit! (Z tried never to swear. Not even to himself. His mom had drilled it into him that people who swore did so because they had limited vocabularies. It was just that canceling the evening Star was one of those messing-around-with-your-life issues that provoked a man's passions.) All that smoke-and-mirrors crap about how one paper was going to be so much better, about how surveys showed no one in Kansas City cared about the evening paper, that everybody was getting their evening news on TV. Bullshit! The owners had axed the evening paper to cut costs, thinking everybody was so dumb they wouldn't notice.
That was mainly what was wrong with America. People couldn't leave things the way they were!
Z had tried to be reasonable about this, had tried to cope. First, by dividing the paper by sections, reading some parts in the morning, others in the evening. But that didn't work. (Who wanted to read local and national news one time of day and the rest of the paper another?)
Next, he'd tried tearing the paper in half at the fold, reading the upper half of the paper in the morning, the lower half in the evening. And while that worked pretty well for the comics, it didn't work for news. (Unless half a story was more than you wanted to know.) He'd thought of calling the Star and suggesting they print all of a story either in the top half of the paper or in the bottom half, so people tearing the paper in two like he was, would have complete articles to read -- some in the morning, some at night. But he knew they wouldn't listen to him. People with big money didn't listen to the little guy. Never had.
Thinking about the paper problem long enough to get him up the path, Z pawed open his apartment door and was quickly inside, the cold shut out once more.
Leaning across the coffee table to drape his coat on his davenport, he moved forward to sit at the two-seater dining table. Stripping off the paper's rubber band as he settled in, he turned to toss the band in the fireplace.
Burning rubber. You could never mistake that smell.
All preparations made, he spread the news beside his sandwich and Diet Coke.
Behind him, the fire was blazing, the rivets in the sheet-iron firebox snapping as the heated steel expanded.
Satisfied that things were as they should be, he took a big bite of sandwich, washed it down with a swig of Diet Coke, and was ready to read his paper -- back to front like any sensible person. (The end of an article was where you found most of the information.)
Even before he could flop the paper over, though, a bold, front page headline caught his eye.
ART THEFT AT THE GALLERY
The Nelson?
According to a spokesman for the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, the gallery's most famous Monet was stolen sometime Wednesday night. The "Boulevard des Capucines"....
Z almost upset his Coke. He knew that painting; it was his favorite in all the gallery! In the Impressionist room. In fact, there was a bench in front of the "Boulevard" where Z sat to gaze at the "Boulevard." And they let somebody steal it!?
Cat-quick, Z was up and pacing, his lighter in hand, thumb flipping the spark-wheel. Flame on. Flame off. Flame on.....
Steal his favorite painting, would they! Not without big Bob Zapolska doing something about that!...................
But ... what?
-3-
By the time Z had read the rest of the paper, rolling up a section at a time, twisting it, and placing it in the fireplace like he always did, he'd settled down. Checking out the rest of the art theft report had been a waste of time, however. All that seemed to be known was that, night before last, a substitute painting of the "Boulevard des Capucines" had been taped in the picture's place, the real "Boulevard" spirited off. The theft discovered too late to make it into yesterday morning's paper, and hadn't been in the evening addition because THOSE RICH BASTARDS HAD STOPPED PRINTING AN EVENING PAPER! Probably been on TV last night, for those who liked their news to be brief and mostly wrong.
Oh, there was a speculation that one of the Nelson's own guards might have stolen the painting, a quick check of gallery personnel finding a missing guard named George Hobson. There was even a theory that a terrorist had kidnapped both the painting and the guard.
Anyone knowing of the whereabouts of Mr. Hobson -- thought to be in his seventies -- was urged to call the police hot line. (No picture yet available).
What it all came down to was that somebody had cut the Monet out of its frame and stolen the painting.
On the other hand, if there were puzzle pieces the police were not revealing -- as was often the case -- Z had a way of finding out. He could call Teddy Newbold.
He hated to do that. Ted's rat-faced captain -- an incompetent named Scherer -- didn't like Bob Zapolska; didn't want Ted having anything to do with Z. An attitude problem on the part of Captain Scherer that could be traced to that time Z had turned up evidence that the Betterton woman (who Scherer had taken noisy credit for arresting) wasn't a drug dealer, after all, spoiling the bust that was to be Captain Scherer's ticket to Clay County politics. Too bad.
This was one time, though, when Z was going to put in a call to Ted; take advantage of their high school friendship.
At the same time, he had to be careful not to get Teddy in trouble -- which wasn't easy. To be fair, it wasn't so much that Ted was dumb. He'd managed to finish a year of college before he became a cop. It was just that, when trouble came knocking, it generally paid a call on Ted.
In and out of high school, Z had been Ted's "fixer." Even the yardage Ted piled up as a running back was due to the blocking of Z and Andy Smith, the two of them pounding holes in the line a lovesick moose could amble through.
One way to look at it was that Z was still making "holes" for Ted by calling in tips Teddy could use. In return, Teddy was good for that odd bit of information that police departments turned up.
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