“Wildcat Ernie,” I said to the grizzled gentleman at the desk.
He shook his head. Whether in refusal or incomprehension, I couldn’t tell.
I flashed a five-dollar bill. Everything is cheap at the Rivertown Health Center.
“Four-twelve,” he said.
I didn’t bother with the elevator. Even if it was operating, there was no certainty its ancient motor would hum all the way up to the fourth floor. And there was the likelihood it was already occupied by a passed-out resident, similarly unable to hum his way up to his room.
Four-twelve was two damp spots past the stairs. The door was slightly open.
So, too, were Wildcat Ernie’s eyes. But the rest of him had closed down for good. He lay on the thin mattress, a dead man in a flannel shirt, clutching an empty bottle of Gentleman Jack. The pockets of his stained blue pants had been pulled out. He’d been tossed, post-mortem, probably by another resident. Death, too, was cheap at the Rivertown Health Center.
I saw no marks, no blood. I rolled him onto his side. There was a second bottle of Gentleman Jack beneath him. This one was full. Whoever had plundered Wildcat Ernie had missed it.
I looked around the room. It seemed to be furnished identically to the blur in my memory of my own stay: metal bed, chipped pine dresser, one small bulb hanging from the ceiling, a ripped vinyl shade drooping, unsprung, over the window.
There was another empty Gentleman Jack bottle lying in the corner.
A three-pack of Gentleman Jack. Booze enough to float Wildcat Ernie into oblivion.
I went down the stairs, walked past the desk to the front stoop. I had to call the cops. But first I had to call my client. The Queen of France put me right through.
“Big news, Harry: I just found the guy who fingered Petak dead at the Rivertown Health Center.”
He fired up his smoke-eating fan, then his lighter. “Won’t help,” he said, exhaling. “The cops didn’t take a chance on Ernie disappearing. They videotaped him making his statement.” He took another drag. “Cops there?”
“I called you first.”
He blew smoke at our connection, but no more words.
“He drank himself to death, Harry. With Gentleman Jack.”
“What are you saying?”
“Gentleman Jack, Harry. That’s the good stuff, twenty-five bucks a bottle. He had three bottles. That took jingle.”
“Obviously he made some money, if he could afford Gentleman Jack.”
“Booze like that never makes it into the Health Center. The residents buy cheap, to stretch the buzz.”
“Whatever.”
“Somebody gave him those three bottles.”
“Doesn’t matter. We’re screwed. No hope now of tripping up his testimony.”
I left him to his little fan and clicked off.
Brockhouse was in. I told him I’d just found his chief witness drowned in whiskey. He muttered something appropriately profane. I said I’d be outside, waiting.
The ambulance siren came in less than two minutes. Brockhouse was right behind it. He let me follow them up the stairs. The medical techs took a second to verify that the spirit of Wildcat Ernie had indeed left the building, and then stepped back to allow Brockhouse to look around. He was thorough, and respectful of the man dead on the bed.
As he finished, he shook his head at Wildcat Ernie’s pulled pockets. “Whatever he had has been plucked.”
I pointed to the full bottle on the bed. “Except for Gentleman Jack.”
He turned to look at me. “What do you make of that?”
“Twenty-five bucks a bottle.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’m still paying off my college loan.”
“Three bottles of that stuff doesn’t fit here.”
He nodded slowly, then said, “Good thing your man Petak is locked up solid with an alibi. He has motive.”
“Harry Ruffino says this screws Petak. Now there’s no chance to take apart Ernie’s videotaped identification.”
“There is that tape; yes.” Then, nodding at the dead man, he said, “We’ll autopsy.”
“You’re kidding.” Drunks never got autopsied in Rivertown.
“He was the chief witness in a murder case. But like you, I’m seeing alcohol poisoning.”
“Good alcohol,” I said.
“Too good, if it’s twenty-five bucks a bottle.”
“It took jingle,” I said.
I met Albert in the same basement room. Again he scanned the corners, too concerned with vermin to be interested in the pack of Marlboros and book of matches I’d set on the table.
“Wildcat Ernie is dead,” I said.
His eyes worked the baseboards between the corners. “There’s rats here.”
“So you said, the last time. I need more, Albert.”
He looked down, saw the cigarettes. He picked them up, put them in his pocket. “There is nothing more. I didn’t set that fire.”
“Why did you get fingered?”
“I was convenient.”
“For what? Why would Wildcat Ernie give a damn?”
He smiled a little as he stood up. “Thanks for the smokes.” He went to the door, knocked, and was let out.
I started to reach for the matches he’d forgotten. But I didn’t need them. I left them on the table.
The Queen of France told me Harry was gone for the day. I asked her to give me his voicemail.
“You can tell me,” she murmured Frenchly.
“I’ll bet,” I said. “Tell Harry that I got nothing from Albert Petak. Tell him I still owe him a few hours.”
“Merci.”
“I’ll bet.”
That evening, after microwaving something that was pictured to taste like haddock but went down like paneling adhesive, I brought coffee up to the roof to sit in the night air. I was hoping the coffee would cleanse the chemical taste from my mouth and the mud from my mind.
It wasn’t just the Gentleman Jack that was nagging. There was the motive for the fire. The homeless man who’d burned to death was new to town; nobody alleged that Albert had even known him. That made the dead man an accidental victim. And that left the more obvious, and the more usual, motive for the fire: jingle.
Looking out that evening at the jumble of neon from the honky tonks, and the headlights of the slow-cruising parade of johns looking for fast love on the cheap, it was easy to see an insurance motive. Crime for money, big and small, made Rivertown run. Someone had paid Albert to torch the husk of the stamping works, to collect on a policy.
But it didn’t explain Wildcat Ernie’s bottles of booze.
And it didn’t explain Albert’s almost insolent indifference.
I knew a guy who worked for the county. First thing the next morning, I called, asking him to find out who carried the insurance on the Sherman Stamping Works. Then, switching gears in my clever brain, I spent the rest of the morning sanding wood.
He phoned me back before noon. “You owe me, Elstrom.”
“I’d have it no other way.”
“The Sherman Stamping Works has been in bankruptcy for years, but the factory was never seized. Call it...” He paused, not wanting to offend me by being honest about my hometown.
“...the fact that Rivertown real estate is worthless? Who carries the insurance?”
“No insurance.”
My certainty vanished like smoke into Harry’s machine.
“However, I did discover something interesting,” he went on. “All the back taxes were recently paid up.”