And he was a big white guy and he stood and looked at her with his mouth hanging open.
In that second he gave me, I crowned him from behind with the skillet.
For a big man, he went down fast, hitting his cheekbone as he fell, and it wasn’t necessary to clobber him again. Rita came rushing over, questions tumbling out of her, but I snapped an order at her, telling her to get me a tie out of my closet, and she jiggled out after it and back with it in four seconds flat. I quickly bound his hands behind him, but there was nothing to worry about: he wasn’t anywhere near conscious yet.
I flipped him over. Well, he was too heavy to flip, really, alone anyway: I needed Rita’s help to do it, as out of breath as I was.
“What’s this all about, Mal?” she wanted to know. She was so startled by all of this she wasn’t bothering to cover up; I was so startled I wasn’t bothering to look.
“I’m not sure myself,” I said. “But it’s safe to say this guy wanted to do some damage.”
Then, as an afterthought, I searched him quickly and found a small, compact automatic. Blue metal, pearl-handled, it looked like the kind of thing women sometimes carry in purses. I balanced it in my palm.
Rita looked at the gun and swallowed. “What are you gonna do now?”
“I’m going to call my friend John and get him and his hard-ass stepfather over here. I’ll be damned if that sonofabitch Brennan is going to ignore this.”
“Should I get some clothes on?”
I grinned. “Well, it’d make John’s day if you didn’t, but I don’t think Brennan’s ready for it,”
She grinned back and covered herself rather demurely, like September Morn, but I wasn’t completely buying it. “You swing a mean skillet,” she said.
“You swing a mean… go get in your clothes.”
I went over to the phone and dialed.
John answered, groggily.
“Thanksgiving’s over,” I said. “Drag Brennan out of bed and get him over here. Somebody just broke into my place and I had to hit him with a skillet.”
“Huh?”
I told him again and he got it this time. I added that though I hadn’t hit the guy hard enough to kill him or anything, I’d done a good enough job that a doctor would probably be a wise thing to bring along.
“Who is it? That black guy with one eye?”
“Hardly.”
“Well, then, who the hell is he? You ever see him before?”
“Yeah,” I said, looking over at the still slumbering housebreaker. He was wearing a yellow sweater and mustard bell-bottoms. “His name is Davis.”
PART FOUR
TWENTY-ONE
I stood outside the hospital room and leaned back against the wall; its tile surface was cold on my neck. Down the hall a few feet, by the elevator, Brennan was shuffling around the small waiting area, giving the “No Smoking” sign a dirty look each time he passed. He kept turning the brim of his Stetson in his hands like a piece of evidence he couldn’t make anything out of. Then he wandered over to one of the windows opposite the elevator and stared out at the morning blackness.
I left him alone. Went over and sat on a couch. I was just too damn tired to play the I-told-you-so-I-told-you-so game. And Brennan was boiling, anyway-why get him any angrier? It was hard to tell whether his irritation was because of my digging into this when it was none of my business, or if it was just because nobody is crazy about getting rousted out of bed in the wee morning hours. And, as he pointed out a number of times, I really should’ve called the Port City police instead of him.
But he had come out himself, and as yet hadn’t contacted the Port City cops. Which gave me at least some reason to stay a shade wary of his motives.
I yawned. In my head, my eyes were stones. A few minutes crawled by and Brennan drew away from the window and began pacing in front of the couch like an expectant father.
The couch was in a waiting area facing the elevator door, which I was staring at, Brennan’s form cutting my path of vision as he went by. Several minutes more dragged past, and I started nodding off, then got startled awake as the elevator door slid away like an effect in a cheap science-fiction movie. John was standing there with three Pepsi necks in the tortured grasp of one hand and a box of doughnuts in the other. He came over and sat beside me on the couch adjacent mine, and handed me over the box of doughnuts while he put the Pepsis safely down on the floor. Brennan immediately forgot his mad and joined the communal feed.
There were two doughnuts apiece, and I was finishing my first and Brennan was starting his second when he said, through a mouthful, “This Davis.”
John and I looked up at him and I said, “What?”
Brennan repeated, “This Davis,” and swallowed the bite of doughnut.
“Yeah,” I said, “go on.”
“I know him.”
“How do you happen to know him?”
“Know of him’s more like it.”
“Where do you know him from?”
“The Cities. He’s been involved in some things up there.”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, you know, strong-arm stuff. Putting pressure on people.”
“He goes around putting pressure on people.”
“Yeah.”
“Why does he do that, Brennan?”
“That’s what he does, that’s all. That’s his living. Some people didn’t inherit money, Mallory. Some people got to go out and turn a buck, which is something you wouldn’t know much about.”
“What you’re trying to say is he’s a thug.”
Brennan shrugged.
“A thug for the Normans,” I added.
“I didn’t say that. The stuff I heard about Davis dates back to when he was working for some mob guys in the Cities.”
“What mob guys in the Cities? I never heard about any mob guys in the Cities.”
“There’s gambling up there, isn’t there? Anyway, Davis has been in and out of the frying pan, mostly in, and lost his job with his previous employers for fumbling the ball once too often.”
“When did Davis start working for the Normans?”
“Look, that’s an idea you got, not something either one of us knows for a fact.”
“What was he doing with Stefan Norman yesterday?”
“From what you told me, he was eating turkey.”
“Come on.”
“All I know is if Davis ever did do work for the Normans, it would’ve been back when Richard was running for office-you know, running for Congress.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, they were having some trouble keeping some of the garbage about old Simon from out of the papers. You know the press. Trying to do a smear job on Richard by using the old man’s record against the son. Really dirty tactics.”
“Really dirty tactics. I hope Davis straightened everybody out.”
“Listen, Mallory, this is nothing I’m sure about, this is just something I put together in my head.”
“Why are you being so helpful all of a sudden?”
“No reason.”
“Gee, I almost forgot what a nice guy you are.”
Brennan drained the remaining half of his Pepsi in one monumental series of gulps, then shrugged. He said, “All right, Mallory, I’ll give it to you straight. I mean, you’re my son’s friend and I guess I been a little down on you at times, so I’ll level with you once and for all. You were right the other day, I have been doing some… well… coverin’ up for the Normans.”
John dropped the final quarter of his doughnut and it rolled on the floor. He looked at his stepfather with open disgust.
Brennan’s face twisted, turned away from his stepson. “Hell, don’t everybody go all righteous on me, all of a sudden. Nobody’s making me tell you any of this.”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Nothing to go ahead with. The Normans still got their share of pull in these parts, and that’s the whole story right there. Sure, they haven’t been so active since Richard died, but even now their people control county politics, it’s Norman money behind it all. Norman people got to okay the candidates, before they provide campaign money. Simple as that. How do you think I stayed sheriff as long as I have? Here I am, an elected official, still in office after more than twelve years.”