I woke to a murmur of sound that slowly got louder. In time, I recognized Arlene’s pre-cancerous smoker’s rasp, interspersed at intervals with Lucy’s voice. When I finally cracked my eyes open, Arlene was in a chair ten feet away, a cigarette drooping at the corner of her mouth, smoke curling up past her face. She held a snub-nose revolver loosely in one hand and was looking a little way off to my right.
“You didn’t have to kill him,” Lucy said.
Kill who? Me? I wasn’t dead. Yet. I wanted to tell Lucy I was still alive, then Arlene said, “That little shit was in our shed, the one out back. He saw the safe.” Her cigarette bobbled as she spoke, sending ash down the front of her sweater. She took the cigarette out, held it between index and middle fingers as she brushed her sweater. “I could’ve handled that, but he also found a solid silver sculpture of a mountain lion bringing down a nine-point buck. The artist was famous. One of those western guys, like Remington. The thing was on display in one of the bigger Vegas casinos for half a year. They’d presented it to that Jonnie-X guy with all kinds of whoop-ti-do, so thousands of people had seen it, knew it belonged to him. It weighs forty-four pounds. At today’s silver prices, it’s worth about fourteen thousand dollars so Buddie just had to have it. He doesn’t know when to leave something that could ruin us. We’ll have to melt it down, of course, and soon. It’s worth over fifty thousand as a work of art, but it’s too well known so there’s no way to sell it like that.”
“So you killed him,” Lucy said.
I still didn’t know who’d been killed.
Arlene shrugged. “What was I supposed to do with him?”
My eyes felt droopy and I was having trouble making sense of the conversation. Maybe I had another fuckin’ concussion. Goddamn things were gonna be the death of me yet.
“Wrrr-mi-cloz,” I said. I heard my own voice and the words hadn’t come out the way I’d hoped. Not even close. I was in a chair in jockey shorts, nothing else, wrists held together in front of me by a plastic strap. A loop of rope was around my waist to keep me in the chair. The knot was somewhere behind me, out of reach. I’d asked where my clothes were, tried to anyway, but my voice wasn’t working right. The gravel sound of it, however, drew Arlene’s grackle eyes in my direction.
“Ah, it’s awake.”
“Mort!” Lucy said. “Are you all right?”
“Shuuu,” I said. “Yeauuu.” Didn’t sound right to me, so I tried clearing my throat, which about took the top of my head off, then I said, “Sor’v. Yep.”
“He needs a doctor,” Lucy said.
“As if,” Arlene responded.
So, no doc.
I felt chilled. We were in a room with a washer and dryer, a deep sink, cupboards, rolls of toilet paper on shelves, cleaning supplies, old refrigerator, cardboard boxes, a water heater. A door behind Arlene was closed. An overhead light fixture full of bugs cast a yellowish glow into the room. The floor was bare concrete with a few spidery cracks in it. Off to my left, a window was black, so I figured it was still night.
“Whz time zit?” I asked.
Arlene glanced at the wall behind me. “Two forty, not that it matters.”
“Wer’s Bud-d-dee?”
“Digging. Got a little backhoe work to do.”
“Got ano’er steptic t’brry?”
She tilted her head at me.
I gathered up my tongue, blinked to try to get her to quit being double since one of her was more than enough, and tried again. “He bury’n anoth’ sebtic tank?”
She laughed. “He told you that old story, huh? No, Mr. Angel, we don’t bury septic tanks out there.”
I didn’t want to know what they did bury, but even in my sorry state I had a pretty good idea. My telling her wasn’t likely to give them any new ideas, so I said, “Cars.”
She tilted her head again. “Bravo. Give that man a giant stuffed panda.” Her voice held not a trace of humor.
Still, she’d tried to be funny. I thought killing her would be even more amusing.
Lucy said, “They killed the Wharf Rat, Mort.”
Arlene stared at her. “Wharf Rat?”
“Vincent Ignacio,” I said, the words coming out quite a bit better that time as my mouth and brain finally connected. I felt sick, though, knowing he was gone. Knowing we were next.
“Who?” She still looked perplexed.
“You might know him as Bill Hogan. He drove a red Chevy Cruze.”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Hogan. He was snooping around the shed out back, got inside, and ended up rather dead.”
“Is ‘rather dead’ more dead or less dead than just plain dead?”
She smiled, lips pressed together as if they’d been sutured. “You’re quite famous, Mr. Angel. Too bad your legion of fans will never know what became of you.” She looked at Lucy. “Or you, but you’re nobody special.”
“Says you,” Lucy said.
I looked over at her. She had a raw patch on her left cheek and a cut on her forehead that had bled a little. Her hands were also bound with a plastic strap, feet, too. I tried to move my legs, but they were strapped together at the ankles. Second time in less than a year I’d been tied up. That part of this PI thing was starting to get on my nerves.
“How long’ve I been out?” I asked.
“Two hours,” Arlene said. “Give or take. Enjoy your life while you can, Mr. Angel. Soon the lights will go out forever. You and this little woman-child can race off to eternity together.”
Lucy was in shorts and her pink tank top. Her feet were bare. She gave me a sad smile and said, “I’m sorry, Mort.”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. Just . . . everything. This . . .”
“Not your fault, kiddo.” To Arlene I said, “Lot of smoke, but there wasn’t any fire, was there?”
“Of course not. Not in the room.
