Tommy was tall and thin with a nose broken often enough to permanently point it toward his ear. I gave my name and extended my hand; he shook it like it wasn’t worth the effort. Offsetting these negatives, he had beautiful hair, dark and wavy, with a healthy sheen. He had bluish-green eyes that didn’t seem to belong in his face.
The bleached blonde wore a dull look that told me that her bra size exceeded her IQ, which despite her abundance left her not very smart. I said nothing, just stared at the blonde. After a couple of minutes she clearly got uncomfortable, which was my reason for staring. She got up to go, likely disappointed she wasn’t going to watch Debbie work her way through Dallas. Tommy patted her backside as she went out. Then he turned his attention to me.
“Who the fuck are you?” His voice didn’t go with his look. It went with his nose but not his hair and eyes. His diction was bad and he swore too much.
“I’m your conscience. I’m here to give you a chance to die without that load of guilt you’ve been carrying around for the past eleven years.”
“What the fuck are you talking about? I’m not telling you jack until I know just who the fuck you are.”
“Then die with a guilty conscience, your choice.” I pulled out Quirt Brown’s gun. Tommy responded by sticking both his hands in the air, like we were acting out a stagecoach robbery in a 50s B-western.
“I’ve got a few questions I need you to answer. If you don’t cooperate you have no more value to me than did Cory Jackson.” I showed him the picture still in my cell phone of Cory lying in the wet surf with a hole in his forehead. “The picture doesn’t do him justice,” I said. “You can’t see the sea water pooled in the hole.” I paused to grin. “Cory didn’t tell me shit. But then, from now on he won’t be telling anybody anything. So, which way are you going to play it, tough or smart?”
Montoya’s eyes kept flittering between my face and the hole in the end of the gun that I held pointed at his heart. It’s fun to tell the truth in a way that makes the listener feel he heard something different than what you said. Everything I told Tommy Montoya had been the truth. In listening, he added two and two together to come up with a total that to him meant I had punched Cory’s ticket. Being a PI could be so much more fun than playing under cop rules.
“Eleven years ago, you and Cory Jackson consorted to get Eddie Whittaker arrested for killing his woman.”
“I never met this Cory guy.” He flinched, ducked actually, when I crinkled my lips and angled the gun more toward his face. “Really,” he said like that was supposed to make his denial more convincing. “I mean it,” he added for even more emphasis. “I never knew him, but I’ve known the name ever since. He was the dude on the beach who claims he saw the killing.”
“Cory’s history. Let’s stay with you. You lied about Eddie buying gas. Why?”
“For money, man, you know. We all do shit for money. I sold myself as a witness against the guy.”
“Who and why?”
“I got no clue who. When I asked why, the man said, ‘I wanna fuck up the general.’”
“So, how much money?”
“Ten grand.”
“That’s what Cory got too, ten big ones. He also got a bullet, but that came eleven years later. Your bullet could arrive any time now.”
Again, I said one thing, he heard another.
“You here to kill me?”
“My job is revenge against the man who killed Ileana Corrigan. She was Eddie Whittaker’s fiancee. My job is that guy. Cory Jackson played it stupid. He didn’t help me. If you help, I might just get the guy before he gets you. If not, don’t buy any green bananas.”
“I don’t know shit. The way it happened I never saw the guy.”
“Lay it out for me. First sit down.” He did. I remained standing. He sat in a leather Barcalounger that had seen its best days. The rest of his place wasn’t worthy of description beyond tawdry and tired. That same description had fit the blonde.
He started talking without further prodding. “One night late, two or three nights before Whittaker’s broad bought it, I was closing up. Locking up, you know. I went around back and saw light around the door to the women’s can. The gals are always walking out and leaving it on. I have to turn it off every night. If I don’t the boss gives me hell. When I pulled the door open the light went off like magic. Then somebody shined a large flashlight in my eyes. I couldn’t see shit. A voice told me, ‘don’t move.’ I froze, man, couldn’t have moved if I wanted. The dude reached out and stuffed something in my shirt pocket.
“‘Here’s two grand,’ he said. Not those exact words, but something like that. Then he said, ‘there’ll be eight more if you play ball. If you don’t, you die. What’s it gonna be?’ I said I loved to play ball. He handed me a picture and told me to turn around. Then he shined the flashlight over my shoulder down onto the photograph. ‘Study it. Day after tomorrow you’ll see this guy in the papers or on TV about a woman being killed. So you’ll need to pay close attention to the news.’
“I told him I didn’t want nothin’ to do with no woman being killed. ‘You got no choice on that,’ he said. ‘She will die. The only thing that’s undecided is whether or not you die. You catch my drift?’
“‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m with ya. Just don’t pull that trigger.’
“He said, ‘When you see him in the news, you’re to go to the cops. Tell them that a few minutes past nine the night the woman was killed, this guy bought gas from you at the station. That he paid cash. You don’t recall his car, but you remember him because so few people pay cash these days.’
“When I tried to look back over my shoulder, he hit me in the side of the head with his frigging flashlight. ‘Eyes front,’ he said. ‘Study this picture.’ He pointed out a slight nick in the side of the dude’s ear and his square chin. His hair, you know, stuff to help me remember the guy. ‘They’ll do a lineup. Pick him out. Then stick to your story. That’s it, a piece of cake for ten thousand. Drop the ball and I’ll drop you and you won’t get up.’
“I did it just that way. I got my other eight thousand and nothing after that until you show up now. I wouldn’t be telling you shit if that other witness hadn’t gotten iced.”
“Do you remember the guy’s name that you identified?”
“Sure. Eddie Whittaker. Something like that falls in your lap, you remember, man.”
After a few more questions I verified he had not previously known Eddie or Cory Jackson and that he got the rest of his money after Eddie had been released. Pretty much the same story I had gotten from Cory Jackson, secondhand through his half brother, Quirt Brown.
The other three witnesses, the ones who caused Eddie to be released, were more reliable than Cory Jackson and Tommy Montoya. As I recalled, one was a local retired middle school principal and the other two were a husband and wife. He retired from a career as a bank manager, back in the days when bankers were considered respectable. She retired from being a registered nurse. From the D.A.’s viewpoint, three solid citizens trumped a pair of losers so it added up to cutting Eddie Whittaker loose. Right now, things were looking good for the general; his grandson Eddie was coming up clean as a choir boy.
I could see three possibilities, maybe more would come to me later. The first went something like this: Somebody had wanted Ileana dead for their own reasons and felt it would work best if there was a patsy set to take the fall and close the investigation into her death. It could have been one of the sugar daddies who were paying her rent and buying her expensive baubles. Thus the real killer bribed and frightened Jackson and Montoya into falsely setting up Eddie Whittaker as the patsy. The plan soured when three law-abiding citizens just happened to see Eddie dining right where he said he had dined.
Number two spread out this way: The murderer didn’t know Eddie or Ileana, using them both as a ruse in a violent confidence game wherein the real target was the general, or, more accurately, the general’s bank account. This scenario required the killer have a complex plan that would include the two losers to falsely accuse Eddie, and some citizens with solid credentials to come forward to alibi Eddie off the hot seat. Of course, for the second part to happen, the general would first need to pay the shakedown. If he didn’t, Eddie would take the fall. It would also require the illicit cooperation of three people we generally don’t think of being the types who take part in this kind of chicanery.