Hear the Wind Blow, Dear... (Vic Daniel Series) Read online

  'My hero,' she said a mite scornfully, or sarcastically, if you will, her hands on her hips, looking down at me. 'Home from the wars, are we? Lose a fight with a Mack truck, did we?'

  I smiled amiably at her, despite her heartless behavior. Then, with me directing, she got to work. Pain pills. Cold water. More cold water. Freezing water. Butterfly bandages on the forehead. Nose taped so tightly the tears came. Icy cold freezing water. I hate cold water. Sponge. Some sort of liniment. Warm sheets. Warm Evonne next to me, in her outsize waterbed. I hate waterbeds, they're so Californian and every time you try and snuggle a little closer to a girl in one you've got to wait for a favorable tide.

  'Go to sleep,' Evonne said crossly.

  Well, I like that. I'm the one who's dying and she's cross. It was ironic, though, a supremely ironic moment – it was the first time I'd ever been in her bed and I was bashed up so badly I couldn't have done any of those fun things people do in beds even if she'd let me. Which, needless to say, she didn't, in about ten seconds she callously went off to slumberland. Truly did Liberace once remark to a drinking buddy, 'Dames is grief', to which his buddy replied, 'Time's a thief'. I like Liberace's line best, although it's a tough choice.

  Came the dawn. Came the aches and pains, came the bruises – yellow, purple and Indian brown. Came the sweats. Came my sweet with pain pills and a mug of tea, all dressed and ready to go to work. One of her eyebrows had been drawn on unevenly.

  'Leave the key under the pot on the left when you go,' she said.

  'Yes, dear,' I said meekly.

  She started rummaging through my pants pockets.

  'The money's in the wallet, babe,' I said.

  'Don't be stupid,' she said. 'Your car's blocking mine. I need the keys.'

  'Probably still in it,' I said.

  She flounced out; a minute later I heard her doing her best to strip my gears as she tried to find reverse. She came back in with a piece of paper from a scratch pad which she put down on the bedside table.

  'Doctor Asami. He's just down the street if you need him.'

  'Nah,' I said. 'I'm O K, I'll be out of here by noon. Thanks for everything. You done good. I wasn't really trying to get into your bed. I mean, I was, but not this way. Maybe just a little.'

  'You big palooka,' she said. 'In fact, you enormous palooka.' She bent down and gave me a quick kiss – raspberry, my favorite.

  She left; I dozed, visions of an angry red-faced golfer with an Irish accent dancing in my head, one Mr 'Gillespie' I could only presume. I mean I didn't have so many enemies I didn't know who they were. In fact I only had one regular, Mick the prick, and he was about as Irish as Mohammed Ali and roughly the same color. I would have to find Mr Gillespie and have a word with him. He had found me without too much trouble and I had even less trouble figuring out how – he gets my name and description from his wife one way or another, probably the other. He looks me up in the phone book and gives me a tinkle, to see if I'm in. My mom helpfully says no, but she knows where I am, because I always leave an address and phone number when I go out at night in case Feeb needs it for anything. Inflamed by the demon rum, no doubt, he follows me from the Kalvins' until he catches me alone, standing on the corner waiting for the parade.

  I felt a touch better when I woke up for the second time later that morning, well enough to get dressed. I even rinsed my tea mug. Then I called Mom, who sounded fine, and told her her naughty boy, battered but unbowed, was on his way home after a night on the tiles. Then I called Meg, a florist I knew over on Chelsea Drive, and arranged to have some roses delivered to Evonne where she worked as (1) where she worked was within Meg's delivery area and (2) it would give the other secretaries something to gossip about. Then I departed, leaving the door key where I was supposed to, under the flower pot on the left, the first place a sneak thief would look.

  At home I took a couple of real pain pills, Demerols, had a glass of buttermilk and betook myself back to bed where, except for a bite of supper, I remained until late the following morning, dozing and reading some old Max Brand Westerns my mother must have smuggled into the house sometime when I wasn't looking. I also came up with a few ideas of how to locate Mr Gillespie and a few more about what to do to him when I did find him. Evonne called, we had the kind of conversation I'm best at, one about nothing at all.

  Before going into work Wednesday I rebandaged my nose and had my back checked out by an osteopath I went to once in a while whose office was near mine, Larry, an earnest young chap who was mostly beard. He asked me the usual searching personal question – cash or insurance – then cracked my neck, stretched my vertebrae and had his assistant Mary-Lynn give me some deep heat right in the small of the back.

  At the office I remembered to call Lieutenant Ronald Isaacs at the sheriffs station serving Mr Kalvin's neighborhood and we chewed the fat for a while. And I tried Art Feldman in case he'd come back early but he was still lost in the rough somewhere. Then I went through the mail, of which the most interesting item was a note from my ever-hopeful dentist saying it was time for my six-monthly check-up and would I please phone for an appointment. I set up Betsy, then had a phone call from Sara the punk poet, Sara with the Technicolor hair and three earrings in one lobe and none in the other.

  'What's up, Shorty?' she wanted to know. 'What's been goin' down? Glad I'm back?'

  'Thrilled,' I said. 'Now beat it, I'm busy.'

  'Ha ha,' she said. 'That'll be the day. You're probably playing some kid's game on that dumb computer.'

  'Computers are not dumb,' I said. 'People are dumb. And I am not playing a kid's game, I happen to be playing an extremely difficult adult search and destroy game called "Attack on Mongo".'

  'Listen,' she said. 'I'm bored. You got anything for me to do?'

  'No,' I said. 'Go write some more unspeakable poetry.' I hung up. What a twerp. Five foot nothing of skinny punk twerp.

  While I was on the phone I'd noticed a worried-looking individual walk past my window a couple of times and sneak a quick peek in. He must have finally made up his mind because the next time he passed he actually stopped at the door, read the sign on it – 'V. Daniel – Investigations', it said, followed by my office hours and office and home phone numbers, then he came in and introduced himself.

  'Jonathan Lubinski,' he said, handing me his card.

  'Victor Daniel,' I said, taking it. 'Lubinski, Lubinski and Levi, Family Jewelers for over Twenty Years', it read. I knew the store although I'd never been in it. It was right across the street from Mrs Martel's stationery store and the post office I used.

  We shook hands, we sat down. I switched Betsy off and looked attentive. Mr Lubinski was a slender gentleman in his sixties with gold-framed glasses, wearing a well-cut dark-green suit a shade too tight showing plenty of large, round cufflinks that looked like gold-plated watch movements. Slim tie and gold tiepin. Highly polished black loafers with tassels. Cream-colored shirt.

  'What can I do for you, sir?' I asked him.

  'I don't quite know,' he said. With his Middle European accent the 'quite' came out more like 'k'vite'. 'Yesterday I had a visit from a man, a gangster, a Mafia, a hoodlum, a nothing. More gold on him than me even.' He smiled, showing perfect teeth. I bet he never needed reminders from his dentist.

  'Did he give you a name?'

  'Fat chance.'

  'What did he look like?'

  'A hoodlum! Italian. Black hair. Sheepskin jacket. Fake suntan.'

  'Big?'

  He shrugged. 'To me, big. To you, not so big.'

  'So what did he want?'

  'It turns out he wants to sell us gold.'

  'How much?'

  'Lots.'

  'For how much?'

  'Two-fifty,' said Mr Lubinski.

  'How much is that in dollars?' I said.

  'It is in dollars,' he said. 'Two hundred and fifty US dollars an ounce. Yesterday the New York Comex current closed at three hundred and forty-two dollars. And twenty cents.'

  'Well, t
he price is right,' I said.

  'And that's all that is,' Mr Lubinski said. 'At that price it has to be stolen or smuggled. I said, did he know there were laws specifically designed to prevent such a sale? Such as all wholesalers have to buy precious metals from registered brokers? Such as, every ounce must be accounted for in our annual inventories and sales? Or else automatic loss of trading license, or else a fine as well, or else, half the time, jail as well? Then what do you think he said?'

  'I don't know,' I said.

  'He said, "That's your problem, Mr Lubinski." And that is when Mr Lubinski started getting worried.'

  'How much does he want you to take?'

  'Four lots of ten thousand dollars' worth, for starters,' Mr Lubinski said, patting his pockets. 'Sometimes I wish I still smoked. I could use a smoke. I could use a drink. I had a drink last night – in fact, many. My wife wanted to know if it was another woman. I said I only wished it was.'

  'In what form would the gold be?'

  'He didn't say yet but that much, it has to be bars or parts of bars. It ain't going to be charm bracelets.'

  I had to laugh.

  'So you think it's funny, eh? I told him Lubinski, Lubinski and Levi couldn't use all that much anyway, and he says, "You got friends, don't you?" So I says, "Listen, tell you what, with Lubinski, Lubinski and Levi it is impossible, take my word, but why don't you try that madman Salomen over on Victory, that thief, he'll do business with you like that, with the snap of a finger, that cheap momzer."

  '"So forget it," he says. "My employer has decided to do business with Lubinski, Lubinski and Levi, and believe me, Mr Lubinski, I like to keep my employer happy. He's terrible when he becomes annoyed, simply terrible. Like an animal," he says, "Violent. Crazed. Why, once I saw him hit a man with an ash can, an elderly gent like you, too. Then he had a truck full of two tons of sand driven right through the man's store front, imagine." Well, I could imagine, all right, and that's when I started really getting worried instead of just worried. So then he shakes hands politely and off he goes, he doesn't even bother telling me not to go to the police – what am I, totally insane? But Lubinski has to do something, and fast. I thought about selling out and moving to Israel to visit my trees but you never heard my wife on the subject of Israel. I thought about selling out and moving to Israel without my wife. So I was in the paper store across from me and Mrs Martel says, "What's by you, Mr Lubinski?", only she calls me Solly as we're old friends, "You look like you got problems."

  '"Problems," I said. "I wish that was all I had. What I got is a catastrophe." "So go see my good friend and valued customer Mr Victor Daniel," she says with a wink. "He's good at things like that." It couldn't hurt, I tell her, worse than it does now, so here I am.'

  'Fine woman, Mrs Martel,' I said.

  'Sally,' Mr Lubinski said, a hint of longing or perhaps memory in his voice. 'Together we're Sally and Solly.'

  'Who's the other Mr Lubinski?' I asked him.

  'My cousin Nate. My mother's sister's boy.'

  'And Mr Levi?'

  'With the angels, God bless that wonderful man.'

  'Does your cousin know what happened?'

  'Not yet and please God he shouldn't have to,' said Mr Lubinski. 'Now let me ask you a question – what do we do now?'

  'Let me have a think,' I said. 'When's that guy coming back, did he say?'

  'Saturday morning, bright and early, is what he said.'

  I stood up. 'All right. I'll give you a call when I've worked something out. And don't worry, with your brains and my muscle we should be able to handle one Italian errand boy.'

  'It's the animal, thank you, his employer, I'm worried about,' said Mr Lubinski, getting up as well. 'Listen, son, you want something on account?'

  'Next time,' I said, and walked him the few steps to the door.

  'Next time yourself, don't forget to duck,' he said over his shoulder as he walked away, the only comment he made at all about my battered visage.

  I was just thinking about closing up, having some lunch, and maybe taking a long stroll to work out some of the stiffness and also have a ponder about the venerable firm of Lubinski, Lubinski and Levi when the phone rang. It was a very worried Ricky.

  'Chico never came home last night,' he said. 'I waited all night at his place, I just got to the office. I don't like it. I hate to bother you but I can't go to the police or even my own department as he's an illegal alien illegally living on government land and I put him there.'

  'Maybe he just slept out, did he ever do that?'

  'Never,' said Ricky positively. 'Never once, since his days in the mountains. Anyway, with what? He's got no sleeping bag, his blankets are on the bed, all his things are still here, and it's January, man, it gets cold at night. I don't like it.'

  I didn't like it a hell of a lot myself. I liked it as little as I liked people who asked me what the weather was like up there, which was not at all in the slightest.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I met Ricky later that afternoon, as arranged, in Parson's Crossing, after he was done work for the day, and once again we bumped and slid our way up the old logging road to the top of the rise where we'd stopped before. Then, after he had donned his all-purpose survival belt again, we finished the trip on foot.

  The cabin looked and felt the same, there were no obvious omens of disaster, no circling vultures or two-headed calves being born or cackling witches. Or maybe there just wasn't enough of the mystic in me. I went inside, leaving the door open to get a little light on the scene while Ricky prowled around outside looking for clues or merely burning off some of his worry-inspired excess energy.

  When my eyes became accustomed to the comparative gloom I took a long, careful look around although I didn't know what I was looking for, nor did I know if there was anything there to look for or if I would recognize it when I saw it. It does get complicated, my line of work. However, good habits are their own reward, as an old cellmate used to say. Chico's bedding was still there, as Ricky had said. So was his cold-weather gear, a sort of sweater coat made of heavy, raw wool I'd noticed on the last visit. Then I spied with my little eye something I'd also noticed before but it hadn't sunk in – hanging from a nail on the wall, beside the fireplace, among Chico's dried and drying herb collection, was one large sprig of a herb whose primary function wasn't to be sprinkled into beef goulash or eggs maryland. This one you smoked. People claimed that after a few puffs you giggled a lot and developed an inordinate hunger for anything at all you could scrounge including dry muesli or warm pickle juice.

  So I gave the sprig a sniff and a feel – it was drying but still resinous, i.e. fairly fresh. I went back outside and sat on the tree stump that was holding the door open til Ricky wandered by a few minutes later.

  'See anything?' I asked him.

  He shook his head. 'You?'

  'Yep.' I handed him my discovery. He crushed a few leaves and smelled them.

  'Weed,' he said.

  'Yep,' I said. 'You bring it for him?'

  'No,' he said. 'Never.'

  'Ellena?'

  'Not a chance. She didn't think it was good for him. She hates the stuff. But Chico was always growing it or finding it somewhere.'

  'A pretty problem, then, Señor Watson,' I said. 'Let us reflect a minute. Did he grow it around here?'

  'No,' said Señor Watson. 'Not around here. I covered a mile, maybe a mile and a half, all around here yesterday looking for him. Anyway, it needs direct sunlight and there's too much cover here. And along the roads would be too obvious.'

  'How about wild?'

  'No,' he said again. 'Not in this neck of woods. Anyway, this isn't wild. It's cultivated. It's strong shit, man. Maybe he gets it from that park.'

  'I can find out,' I said, picking a bit of bark off the tree stump. 'I've got to call the animal lady anyway. I should have done it before, about replacing those bloody sheep. But from what she told me about the place and how uptight they are I don't think it's a likely source of fu
ll-grown pot plants. Someone there may have their little stash hidden away for emergencies but not au naturel, so to speak. So who else? Who else does he know?'

  Ricky shrugged restlessly. 'No one, hombre.'

  I had a thought. 'How about the fire-watcher, didn't you say you took him up there once? If I had to live all alone up a tower in the middle of a jungle I'd probably smoke dope, too. Did Chico ever go back there?'

  'I can find out easy,' Ricky said. 'He's got a radio phone.'

  'Can we visit him instead?'

  'Sure, but why?'

  'Just for fun,' I said. 'I've never been up in one of those things.' And I wasn't looking forward to the first time, either. I suffer badly from vertigo, so much so I can't even sit up in the balcony of a movie house anymore even if I'm lucky enough to be with the kind of girl who would sit in the balcony with me in the first place. I did manage to fly once, but never again. And I've never forgiven, nor do I ever intend to forgive, that nerd Sara for forcing me into it that one horrible time.

  'So let's do it now,' Ricky said.

  'Is it far?'

  'As the crow flies, no, but we got to go around, so maybe three quarters of an hour. There'll be plenty of light left if we step on it.'

  'Anda,' I said. 'Mush, you huskies.' I hung Chico's weed back on the wall upside down as I'd found it, took a last look around, then got out of there and followed mi amigo back to the Wagoneer. I didn't think I'd ever be back. But I was wrong.

  We had to retrace our route almost back to the forestry office in order to pick up the road we wanted, so we stopped off to phone from Ricky's office. He called Ellena to fill her in, then I started tracking down Olivia, the keeper of the flock.

  I finally got through to her in the canteen. She was eating the vegetarian plate, she told me. I was in Parson's Crossing, I told her, eating a stale Mars Bar I'd just bought at Mae's dinette.

  Then I told her, with suitable modesty, that I'd solved the case of the missing mutton. Without going into all the petty details (and one or two of the important ones) I informed her they had been taken by a troubled soul who had been camping nearby, that I had apprehended him, that it wouldn't happen again, that although the original animals were no longer alive I was empowered to cover any costs involved in replacing them. I suggested she call Emile Who Talked to God to see if he had any suitable animals. If he did, and as he owed me one, he woud let her have them cheap and that saving could be passed along to the Troubled Soul who believe me had enough problems without paying top dollar for five Suffolks. If she agreed not to prosecute him I would show my gratitude by reducing my already ludicrously low fee to say a token twenty bucks and gas. Plus a free ticket for sometime in the future for admission to Wonderland Park for a family of three. Make that three and a half. Finally, I would agree to cancel my impending lawsuit against her and Wonderland Park for the savage and unwarranted attack made on me by that South American carnivore.