“Is he friendly?”
“He’s not a snitch, if that’s what you mean. He’ll take some work.”
“Well, let"›h i’s do it.”
Kunkle remained seated, his face regaining that familiar cloud. “So who shakes him down?”
I stood and showed him both palms. “Hey, Willy, he’s your baby. I’m just riding shotgun.”
Still Kunkle stayed where he was, reading the summary. “So Stan followed you to Susan Lucey’s and supposedly Christ-knows-who tailed you from Connecticut. Have you been watching your back lately?”
I still hadn’t told anyone about the private detective from Burlington. “I didn’t see much point.”
“Why not? It sounds like an easy way to pick up bad guys, maybe even Ski Mask.”
“So what do we do? Get one of our own to tail us, and hope he picks up the competition?”
“It’s an idea. We might get lucky. If nothing else, it might dissuade people from following you around and lousing up the case.”
It seemed silly as hell to me. I don’t know why-pride maybe-but I wasn’t going to antagonize Kunkle now that he’d agreed to help out. I picked up the phone and arranged to have an unmarked car follow us from a distance.
· · ·
Ted Haffner lived in a trailer park on the outskirts of West Brattleboro-the last cluster of urban dwellers before Route 9 began its gradual climb into the Green Mountains. In fact, it was so much on the fringe it was hard to tell whether the homes or the trees were gaining the upper hand in taking over the real estate. My personal bet was on the trees. Mostly evergreens, they stood tall and dark, their bristling skirts massive and ancient in the flat, gray light. The trailers, by contrast, sandwiched between the icy crusts on their roofs and the rough turmoil of ground-up, dirty snow around them, looked like the remnants of a civilization long on the ropes.
We bumped along a winding track, weaving between snow covered sofas, rusting cars and assortments of trash and cordwood. No one was visible, although several of the battered, dark-windowed homes leaked thin strings of gray smoke from their oily metal chimneys.
“I see the drug trade stood Mr. Haffner in good stead.”
Kunkle was at the wheel, trying to save his car’s suspension from as much abuse as possible. “Like I said, as a businessman, his mind tended to wander.” He stopped before an oblong metal shack, modest even by these standards, a mobile home whose only movement was toward disintegration. “This is it.”
We climbed out and walked unsteadily across the frozen debris scattered outside the small aluminum front door. Kunkle pounded on the wall. “This is purely a formality. He never does answer.”
He grabbed the doorknob and pulled. As the door swung back, I noticed a faint, wispy cloud billow out like a belch. Kunkle put his foot on the high threshold and heaved himself inside. I followed him, my nostrils flaring at the overheated stench. Before my eyes adjusted, I thought the place was totally blacked out, but a faint glow slowly grew at the far end, where Kunkle was already talking with someone.
“Hey, Ted. How’re you doin’?”
There was a mutter in response. I groped down the length of the trailer, leaving the decayed and littered kitchen/living area where we’d entered, squeezing through a tiny hallway with a stinking bathroom on one side and ending up in a heavily curtained bedroom. Kunkle was sitting on the edge of a bunk, looking at a long-haired, bearded man propped in the corner against a pile of blankets and dirty pillows. To say Ted Haffner appeared unwell is an understatement-I’d seen pictures of Egyptian mummies that looked healthier. Curiously, his eyes were clear and normal looking, as if the body and the mind were totally separate entities, the one dying, the other trapped within.
I could distinguish the slurred muttering now. “This is private property. Scram.”
“Don’t be hostile, Ted. This may be worth your while.”
“How much is my while worth?” I thought that was a good question, given his appearance.
“Twenty bucks.”
“Fuck off.”
“All right. I’ll ask the question, and you put a price tag on it.”
“Five thousand for the time of day.”
“What’s your problem?”
“I don’t like you.”
“Hell, my wife doesn’t like me; she still takes my money.”
“She’s greedy and stupid then.”
“So I guess that makes you just plain stupid, right?”
“Why don’t you get out of here? You’re trespassing.” Haffner made an attempt to get up, but it was half-hearted and unsuccessful. He lay back, breathing heavily.
Kunkle placed his hand on the man’s bony chest. “You don’t look too good. You got something around I can get you?”
“Yeah, shoot me up.”
“Food, Ted, food. When was the last time you ate something?”
“Fuck off.”
“You can’t afford it, can you? I got a history question for you; it’s not a snitch job. You tell me about old times, I lay a fifty on you and you get a square meal, or a trip to outer space. What’s the harm?”
Haffner looked at us sullenly, weighing the offer. “What’s the question?”
“About three years back, when you were top dog, a buy was made-a one-bag deal that ended up in the room of the black guy who iced the chick at the Huntington Arms. You remember that?”
“Sure I remember.”
“But the black guy didn’t make the buy, did he?” Haffner gave us a big smile. “You said history. This sounds more like current events.”
Almost simult›Al usaneously, I heard the floor creak behind me and felt a cold draft on my neck. I turned to see a tall man wearing a black jumpsuit and ski mask pointing a gun at my head. He had made the distance from the front door to the back bedroom in an instant. “Hi, Joe.”
Kunkle jerked around, his hand moving to his belt.
“Don’t do it.” Kunkle saw the gun, now jammed in my throat.
“What the hell’s goin’ on?” Haffner again tried to sit up.
“Shut up.” Ski Mask moved into the room and looked around. I was having a hard time breathing with my windpipe half closed off. He motioned to Kunkle. “Hand over the gun.”
Kunkle handed it over. Ski Mask slipped it into his jumpsuit pocket and added mine to it. He then told Kunkle to slip his handcuffs through the handle of the closet door farthest from Haffner’s bunk and to lock himself in. He attached me to the other end. Finally, he patted us down, took the key to the handcuffs, and sat where Kunkle had been.
He put his own gun away and smiled at Haffner. “So, what were they asking you?”
“Who the fuck are you?”
Ski Mask turned toward us. “What’s his name?”
Kunkle looked at me in amazement. “Is that him?”
I might have laughed if I hadn’t felt such an enormous sensation of menace in this man. Ski Mask was like a panther who had stalked his prey for days on end, calming his growing hunger with thoughts of the inevitable feast. The tone in his voice indicated that mere thinking was no longer doing the job, that some action was required, at whatever cost to all concerned. I was scared to hell for everyone in that hot and fetid room.
I felt all this because he was obviously taking a calculated chance. The two questions he had asked-Haffner’s name and the topic of our conversation-indicated just how much he was gambling that this one half-dead man might give him a crucial advantage. In fact, if we were lucky, he’d gambled too high; I was thinking of the tail Kunkle had insisted upon.
“His name’s Ted Haffner, but he’s got nothing to tell you. He’s a dead end.”
“Maybe that’s because you don’t know how to ask the right questions.” He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a long, black, cylindrical object. It clicked sharply in his hand, and a thin, tapered blade sprang into view, glinting in the half-light. “Or maybe your methods are ineffective.”
Haffner started to squirm on his bed. “Who the hell are you, man?”
“I’m here to collect all the answers you weren’t going to give these gentlemen.”