The kitchen, a modern, spacious white-and-gray affair, had no plastic on the floor, just linoleum. A breakfast nook with a little table in a booth right out of a restaurant was off to one side, with a window that let in moonlight. He motioned me in and then slid in and sat across from me, his hand with the. 38 on the table, casual but ready, like a fork in his fist as he anticipated a meal.
“Now, let’s think about this,” he said in that genial if squeaky tenor. “We have clients with similar interests, right? Both of them want that cheating prick of a professor hung out to dry by his gonads.”
“Agreed.”
His round head tilted. “But there are places where we overlap, our interests…and places where we don’t overlap. Would you agree on that point, too?”
“I may not be following you.”
He shrugged. Frowned, dark little pellet eyes narrowing. “My client, the wife, wants evidence on this horny asshole, so she can divorce his unfaithful ass and get as much of his loot as possible.”
“Oh…kay.”
With his free hand, he gestured grandiosely. “And I have photos that demonstrate this fact-some that catch him naked as a jaybird…with females the same buck nekkid way.”
“You didn’t get that from sitting across the street. Through a window, huh? Up close and personal?”
“Yeah-I got him through his study window and his bedroom, too.” He leaned across a little. “You know, this guy likes to gets blown more than he wants to get fucked; he likes to sit in his chair in that study and have those sweet young things worship his cock.”
“Better than no religion at all, I guess.”
He snorted his laugh and I backed up a little, in hopes of avoiding spittle; no such luck. “You’re a funny kid, Jack. That sense of humor. I just knew we were gonna be tight.”
“So you have photos of Annette and Byron.”
He leaned back; the grin widened again, his pride palpable. “Damn straight. But I also got photos of him and a little blonde. Which is where things get interesting.”
I frowned. “You mean, that girl Alice, who tore the professor a new asshole yesterday?”
“Yeah. He was banging her the morning before. Or she was blowing him or whatever. Anyway, she was in there with him, and they kissed in the doorway for about a month, before she left in her little car, happy as a clam. And then that afternoon, the brunette showed.”
“This is the day before yesterday?”
“Yeah.”
“Did she stay the night, Annette?”
“No. But she did last night.” He smiled cannily. “You knew that, though.”
“Yeah. Just trying to get a pattern down.” I shook my head. “It’s Grand Central Station around here.”
He leaned in with his yellow grin. “But that’s a good thing, Jack. See, we can serve both our masters and still make some real money.”
“How?”
He shrugged elaborately. “Your boss wants to confirm that the prof is banging his daughter. You’ve pretty much accomplished that by now, so I figure before long? You, or one or more of the Chicago bent-nose boys, will come lean on the prof and teach him, for a change.”
“You mean kill him?”
“No! No, I don’t think so.” He laughed heartily, genuinely amused. “I’m not supposed to think you’re a hit man, Jack! Please. Nice clean-cut kid like you-you really fit in around here, which is great. I could use somebody like you, your age, able to blend with these hippie shits.”
“Thank you.”
“Naw, the girl’s father will put the fear of God into that horny bastard, and the prof will stay away from daddy’s little girl in future, out of fear of something worse happening.”
I shifted in the booth. “Okay. Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say you’ve figured this out perfectly. Where do our interests converge, Charlie? Where’s money to be made for you and me?”
The grin widened and the Nixon jowls turned into chipmunk cheeks. “If I give my pictures of daddy’s little girl going down on the Prof to my client…Mrs. Prof? Of sweet Annette riding Byron’s pecker like a rodeo queen? Then those photos could find their way into divorce court, and lots of embarrassment, the tabloid variety, could ensue.”
“Okay. I can see that.”
With the hand not holding the gun, Charlie held up a finger, as if he’d just had a brilliant idea, though he’d obviously been working on this a while. “ But — I also have pictures of the prof with the little blonde, every bit as damning. These I could give to my client. Then I will sell the pictures of Annette and the prof, and the negatives, no tricks, none whatsoever, to her father. We don’t need the Annette shots to make the divorce case. Your client is happy. My client is happy. We are happy. What do you say, Jack?”
“It makes sense. You have a figure in mind?”
His eyebrows lifted. “What do you think the market will bear? I mean, this is not the kind of person you want to piss off, the girl’s father.”
I lifted my eyebrows. “No he isn’t.” I leaned forward conspiratorially. “Could you live with ten grand?”
He thought about that, then demonstrated his math skills out loud: “Half of ten, five for me, five for you?”
I shook my head. “No-I think ten apiece is possible. Without seeming too greedy and getting our asses in a sling.”
The tiny eyes glittered. “Cool! We have a deal then?”
I grinned at him. “We have a deal.”
Again I held my hand out for him to shake. This time he put the. 38 on the table and extended his hand and I picked the gun up and shot him between the eyes, right above that disgusting nose.
After the sharp crack of the gunshot, I said, “Goodbye, Charlie…or as the French say, adieu.”
Knowing how much he appreciated my sense of humor.
But he didn’t hear me, too busy flopping onto the tabletop, his forehead making a dull thump as he left on the wall behind him a nice splash of color in this drab kitchen.
FIVE
I had things to do, and Charlie wasn’t going anywhere, slumped as he was at the breakfast nook tabletop, like a school kid napping at his desk. In his right trench-coat pocket I removed not only my nine millimeter but his car keys and also, on a separate little ring, three keys-each had tiny strips of masking tape with black-marker lettering that identified one as FRONT, another as BASEMENT and the other, which was somewhat smaller, as PATIO.
His gun I dropped into my right-hand corduroy jacket pocket, and I slipped out the back way into the cold, my feet crunching on snow that had turned crispy with ice. My nine millimeter was back in my waistband and I figured anything that came up, Charlie’s. 38 would do nicely, a gun after all traceable to him. I went into the garage not to get my car, but to remove a flashlight from my glove compartment; the flash I dropped in my other coat pocket, and then I returned to the great out of doors.
Perhaps I was overcautious, but I moved along the back yards of the half dozen split-levels on my side of the unlived-on lane. No street lamps were up yet on the nameless street but that full moon illuminated the landscape, so I felt I should take a roundabout route to the split-level opposite mine, where Charlie said he’d been camped out. He had not mentioned working with anyone (other than me, had I gone along with him), but I saw no reason to trust a sleazy little character who would sell out, or anyway compromise, his own client. A round-the-clock surveillance, if that’s what Charlie had been up to, might mean a second PI in that other split-level.
Of course, they might be trading shifts, with Charlie alone with his partner due to show up any time- assuming I wasn’t just imagining this partner. At any rate, a look inside that house might tell me if Charlie had or had not been working alone.
So I went all the way down to the end of the lane and beyond into a wooded area, through which I cut just a little ways to come up through the back yards of the other half dozen split-levels. The snow was crunchy back here, too, but I moved very slowly and carefully; on the other hand, if the interior of Charlie’s split-level had that same plastic on the floor, I might wind up fucked.