Virgil stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and lit a Lucky Strike. He had managed to avoid the use of illegal substances for five long years and he never drank alcohol because he knew where that could lead. But as he filled his lungs with smoke he knew he could never call himself drug free until he lost this habit too.
The man who burst through the doorway behind him raised a smile on Virgil’s face. He was almost Virgil’s height, six foot four, with straight, black, stringy hair. His slender frame was wrapped in a buckskin shirt and leather pants. He bounced up to Virgil, talking very rapidly, pointing into Virgil’s face.
“Are you crazy man?” the newcomer asked. “I know you didn’t put a ding in my ride. That car’s a classic, man. Do you have any idea what parts for that thing cost?”
Virgil rolled his yellowed eyes and held his hand forward. “Virgil,” he said.
The other man, startled by this simple action, calmed a bit and took Virgil’s hand. “Fancy,” he said.
Virgil puffed air out of his cheeks in a stifled laugh and pointed with his head toward the parking lot. The two moved on, Virgil walking in his usual slow, steady manner. Fancy’s movement was more frantic. He took two steps when one would do, swaying left to right on the path. As they neared his car, Fancy’s high-heeled cowboy boots began dancing a flamenco around Virgil and his arms waved wildly.
“Holy shit, man. Look at that. I can’t believe you parked that close to my ride. What the fuck’s the matter with you? I can’t even open my damn door.”
Fancy started around his car to the passenger side, but stopped as Quaker rose up from between the vehicles, a short length of pipe in his right hand. “Sucks, don’t it?” Quaker said.
Beside Quaker, Hannibal rose to his feet and stared hard at the face framed in the moonlight before him. He watched as anger and indignation slowly gave way to recognition in those eyes. The man’s lower lip began to tremble as Hannibal’s focus shifted to a space over his shoulder.
“This is him,” Hannibal said. “The man in Ruth’s picture.”
Fancy spun to see a human bulldog with receding hair slapping a baseball bat into his left hand. “Then I guess he’s coming with us.”
On closer inspection, Hannibal decided this Fancy was too dark to be a white man. His hair, hanging about his shoulders, betrayed a Native American heritage. His nose was broad as a black man’s, his eyes dark and piercing as he stared up from the chair in Hannibal’s motel room. He wondered how many tourists went straight to the major hotels on the strip and missed the many small single level motels like this one that surrounded the city.
“So,” Hannibal said, pacing in front of Fancy while he tightened his black gloves, “Shoshone? Hopi? Ute? Paiute?”
“Hopi,” Fancy said. “Like you give a shit. What the hell is this? Why’d you grab me?”
“You know why,” Hannibal said, placing a foot on the bed and resting his elbow on the upraised knee. “I chased you away from Oscar Peters’ house… let’s see, it will be a week ago tomorrow I think. You sure can run, I’ll give you that. I want to know why you were running, Mister…”
“You don’t need to know my name,” Fancy said, sitting up straighter.
“I need to know if you murdered Oscar Peters.”
“Yeah, right,” Fancy said, propping his hands on the arms of the chair. Sarge, Quaker and Virgil held his eyes. “So now you interrogate me, is that it? You and your little gang of leg breakers?”
Hannibal considered for a moment. This man may well be a cold-blooded murderer, but his words were those of an experienced victim. He could, after all have been set up by someone who never thought anyone could trace him back here.
“No,” Hannibal said. “Just me.” He hooked a thumb toward the door while maintaining eye contact with Fancy. He felt rather than saw his partners leaving, Quaker first, then Virgil, and finally Sarge. Hannibal heard the door click shut behind him and saw Fancy’s shoulders drop an inch in relative relaxation. Hannibal opened his top button and pulled his tie down a bit. Half his face smiled at the absurdity of the situation.
“So the question is whether you put a knife into Oscar Peters’ throat. And I really would like to know your name.”
“Many Bad Horses.” When Hannibal looked up in surprise, Fancy repeated. “My real name. Victor Many Bad Horses. Most people just call me Fancy. And no, I didn’t cut Oscar. He was like that when I got there. You a cop?”
Hannibal pulled a two-liter bottle of root beer from the little refrigerator and filled two glasses. “Not a cop, but I have an interest in this murder.” As he handed Fancy a glass he said, “I used to be a cop though. A cop would ask you, if you’re innocent, why’d you run?”
Fancy took a long drink that nearly emptied his glass. Hannibal thought Virgil had been right. This man was a hustler by trade. He was looking for the angle. Staring into the ice cubes in his glass, he must have thought he saw it. “Sure, I see now. Joan sent you, didn’t she? Well she ought to know she can trust me. I might have stayed around awhile, or even called the cops myself if she wasn’t there. But she recognized me, and I didn’t want to get twisted up with whatever the hell she was planning.”
Hannibal nodded and raised his glass in salute before taking a drink himself. Then he nodded, his lower lip protruding, as if considering Fancy’s story and deciding it sounded about right. “And what would you tell the cop who asked why you were there in the first place?”
“The truth,” Fancy said, leaning back and crossing his legs. “Oscar invited me over to help him out. We got to be pretty good friends when he was living out here last year.”
“Really?” Hannibal stood and drank the last of his soda. It tasted good, but left a bitter after taste, like Fancy’s story. “I didn’t think the boy was that type. And anyway he moved to the other side of the country. Why would he be calling you? And why now?”
Fancy’s long fingers wrapped around the arms of his chair and Hannibal could see muscles bulge under his shirt. “What do you know? Oscar had a big heart, big enough to find affection on both sides of the fence. He had lots of people wanting time with him out there in Virginia, but when he was in trouble he called me!”
“Trouble?”
“Somebody threatened him, he said, somebody he took real serious.” Fancy drained his glass, and reached to refill it himself. “I didn’t want to fly out, because plane tickets are too easy to trace. So I hopped in the old Lincoln and drove on out there. I called him when I got there…”
“Which was when?” Hannibal asked, pacing across the room, staying between Fancy and the door. Fancy was becoming a bit too agitated for his taste. Hannibal felt the tension bleeding off him, bouncing about in the deep shadows at the corners of the room.
“I got out there Monday, early,” Fancy said. “Couldn’t get Oscar on the phone so I rang Joan. She said she had a date with him that night, but I should come by early in the evening. So I found a motel, took a long nap. When I woke up I went out for some dinner then went on to Oscar’s place.” Fancy’s eyes dropped to the floor and his voiced dropped into a raspy lower register. “I waited a bit too long. Got there a bit too late.”
For a brief moment Hannibal wasn’t sure where to take his interrogation. It would be easy to believe Fancy’s story, and just as easy to believe he was practicing a script handed him by a cunning killer. Right that minute, Joan looked like the most likely actress for that role. And that suggested a line of inquiry that made Hannibal smile.
“Tell me, Fancy, how well do you know Joan Kitteridge? I mean, you only met her last year, right?”
Fancy’s eyes were hooded. A thick silence surrounded the room, holding his words inside. “Well, yeah, we met when she spent last summer in town here. And I never laid eyes on her again until she turned up here today, asking me all those questions. Except for that night in front of Oscar’s house, of course. Why? What are you getting at?”
“Oh nothing. She stay at the same hotel back then?”
“Uh-huh,” Fancy nodded. “She says she likes The Orleans because it’s off the strip and…”
The single lamp cast much of Fancy’s face in shadow as he stood straight, but Hannibal could see his face twisting into an angry mask. His voice, low again, had an ugly hiss behind it. “Joan didn’t send you, did she?”
Hannibal stood easy, hands at his sides but very alert. “I don’t believe I ever said she did.”
Fancy pulled his right foot up on the chair he had been sitting in. From his boot he pulled a long narrow dagger and turned to wave it in circles, its point poised to open Hannibal’s navel. “All right, just who the hell are you, mister?”
“I can’t believe you don’t recognize me, Fancy man,” Hannibal said, his knees slightly bent. He could almost smell the adrenaline flooding Fancy’s body. “You almost ran me over with the old Lincoln less than a week ago, a
