The sun was out, but it seemed far away, and wasn’t doing much to melt the heavy snowfall of the day before. The major streets in Milwaukee were clear, as had been the highways coming in, but many of the residential areas were still clogged with snow. Along curbs cars were surrounded by and heaped with white, their owners not even bothering to try to dig them out; homes with scooped sidewalks and driveways were few and far between. I felt lucky to find the driveway shoveled when I pulled up at the two-story house where Ash lived, or anyway where he had lived a few years ago, when I knew him.
Behind the house was a cement court which had been put in over what used to be a garden to provide parking for tenants. The big old house, with its fine Gothic lines, had been converted into an apartment house perhaps ten years ago: six apartments, four up, two down. Ash’s was upstairs, with entry from the outside, here in back, the access provided by an exposed stairway and balcony that had been added onto the old house when it was changed over, a necessary measure, I supposed, but hardly a beautifying one: the staircase with balcony, and the modern-looking doors to the apartments, all but defaced the building. Which just goes to show there’s more than one kind of murder people are willing to commit to make a buck.
I left my Opel GT in one of several open spaces; it was midmorning and apparently some of the tenants had gone ahead to work, despite the heavy snow. Possibly one of the remaining handful of cars belonged to Ash, but if so, I had no way of knowing which. It had been over four years since I’d seen him, and he’d have long since traded in that Thunderbird of his. Of course, I did know the name he used here, Raymond Drake, and could go peeking in the cars looking at names on registrations, if I was in the mood for making a bare-ass suspicious move like that, which I wasn’t.
I got out of my car. The nine-millimeter was stuck in my belt. I was wearing an old pair of jeans and a long-sleeved sweatshirt that said Wisconsin on it and a medium-weight corduroy jacket with yellow fuzzy fur-type lining. I looked like a college kid; at least that was the object. I’m young enough looking to pass for that, I guess. On jobs I wanted to look as anonymous as possible, and my practice was to dress like a businessman, and to drive a rental car, something ordinary like a middle-price range Ford or Chevy. But today I had my own car, my Opel GT, and it was too sporty-looking for a businessman. It could attract attention, a guy in a drab suit and trench coat stepping out of a sportscar. And attention isn’t a good thing to attract, when you have a nine-millimeter stuck in your belt.
I didn’t have anything fancy in mind. I certainly wasn’t going in shooting or kicking doors down or anything. Ash wouldn’t be expecting me, or at least the possibility of that seemed slim. Of course, if my callers last night were supposed to get in touch with Ash, after killing me, he might be a little on edge, since the only way he might have heard from those guys since last night was if he’d been to a seance.
Still, I didn’t figure Ash was going to be holed up in his apartment with a gun in each fist, waiting to shoot it out with me. Anyway, I hoped not. I wanted to talk to him before any shooting started. It was even possible Ash didn’t live here anymore, and that some new address of his went down with that station wagon to the bottom of that gravel pit, in which case the joke was on me.
But what the hell. Sometimes a calculated risk is necessary. Once I learned Ash lived within driving distance of my cottage, I felt it safe to assume he was still living in Milwaukee, hopefully in this same apartment.
I went up the stairs. Stopped at the first door, which was not Ash’s apartment. I considered knocking, to see if anybody was in there, and if nobody was, going through that apartment so I could use the hallway door to get into Ash’s place. But the advantages of that were outweighed by the disadvantage of somebody possibly answering the door, and getting a good look at me, which is the reason I avoided going in the front door in the first place. After all, while I didn’t necessarily plan to kill Ash, I didn’t necessarily plan not to, either.
So I went on to the next, final door. Ash’s door. Unsnapped my jacket. Put my right hand on the butt of the gun.
And knocked.
Nothing.
And knocked again.
Nothing.
When I tried once more and still got no response, I laid my ear against the door and listened.
Nothing. Not a damn thing.
Meaning he wasn’t in there.
Probably.
Of course, if he was in there, he was being awfully silent, which meant he was dead, or waiting. And if he was waiting, waiting for me, I could be dead. In a hurry.
I took a breath. Did some thinking.
Now, I knew that Ash was like me, as far as safety precautions were concerned. That is to say, he just didn’t bother with them. No fancy locks or burglar alarms or anything of the sort, just his own finely honed senses. If I remembered right, there wasn’t even a safety chain on the door. You could open it with a credit card.
So I did.
Very carefully, though. Once the lock clicked, I flattened against the side of the house, nudging the door with a foot, letting it swing open without filling the way with my own body-size target, and waited for Ash to react, if he was going to.
Nothing.
I went in low and quick, gun in hand, keeping the light from outside to my back, not easing the door shut behind me till I had a chance to scan the room, finding it empty.
Of people, that is. There was no Ash, no anyone else, but there was the clutter that was Ash. He was one of those paradoxical sorts whose professional life was the epitome of organization, and whose private life, at, least as far as his surroundings were concerned, was a shambles. Ash had an orderly mind, precise, even mechanical, in the best sense of that word. But the demands of the profession evidently made him want to let loose a little, when he wasn’t working, when he was home; he just couldn’t be bothered with a triviality like cleaning up after himself.
In other words, the place was a dump.
Not the place itself, mind you, not even the old but serviceable furniture that had come with the place. This was a dump created by the guy who lived in it. The living room, for example, looked like the aftermath of a rock festival: empty beer cans, soda cans, couple of food-encrusted paper plates, discarded newspapers, magazines, paperbacks, wadded-up paper napkins, wadded-up Kleenex, and that’s all I can stand to record. The kitchen, on the other hand, wasn’t as bad as you might think; there was no sink full of unwashed dishes, as Ash did no cooking for himself, outside of TV dinners, and had not lost his liking for Chinese food, as a dozen or so of the little paper carry-out containers for the stuff huddled on the counter, begging to be thrown out. The bathroom was also surprisingly clean, but that only figured. His apartment might look slovenly, but Ash himself didn’t. He was well-groomed, a short, slender red-haired man with pleasant, regular features. Women liked him, and he felt the same about them. It was obvious he was between women right now-he went through them rather fast, once they found out he’d enrolled them as housekeepers first and sex objects second-and it was obvious, too, that he had left fast. Ash didn’t mind living in a mess, but he didn’t like coming home to one. He wouldn’t have left this behind him.
But he was gone, and he hadn’t just stepped out for a while, either. The bedroom was evidence enough of that. In addition to the expected unmade bed and general disgusting mess, I found most of his clothes gone, and there were no suitcases under the bed or in any of the closets.
I wandered out into the living room, cleared a TV dinner tray and last Sunday’s newspaper off a reclining chair, and sat down. Ash was gone. The thing to do, of course, was go after him. But where had he gone? How the hell was I supposed to figure that one out?
There was, I supposed, an outside chance that if I sorted through the junk pile around me I might find some small indication of where he’d gone. But that was doubtful. Maybe Ash had the habit of living like a slob sometimes, but he was never a fool, and he was always a pro. And a pro can’t afford to leave anything behind that could tell you where he went. Not in this line of work.
But Ash had left on apparent short notice… maybe he got sloppy this time…
And I started to laugh.
I sat and looked at the fucking mess the apartment was and said, “Yeah, maybe he got sloppy this time,” and laughed some more.
And somebody knocked on the door.
“Mr. Drake?”
It was a woman’s voice. Outside in the hall I’d made noise up here, was getting sloppy myself, and now I had somebody knocking on the door.
“Mr. Drake?” she said again. “Who’s in there?”
I just sat in the chair, gun in my lap, waiting for her to go away. Waiting for her to decide it was just her imagination, and then once she was gone I could beat it down the back stairs to my car. But I’d be making a retreat without finding out anything, and I needed to stick around awhile and play that long shot that Ash might’ve left something behind that said where he went, so I got out of the chair and put the gun in my belt and went to the door and opened it.
“Hello,” I said
She was a housewife type, dressed for cleaning: an old blue work dress, hair pulled back into a bun, no make-up on at all, but not bad-looking, and probably very attractive when she wanted to be.
“Who are you?” she said.
“I’m Ray’s cousin,” I said.
“Cousin?”
“Hasn’t Ray ever mentioned me? Charlie Wilson? He was expecting me today.”
“Mr. Drake didn’t say anything about expecting anyone,” she said, looking more than a trifle suspicious and perhaps a little scared. “As a matter of fact, he left on a business trip just yesterday, and told me he wouldn’t be back for some time. Possibly as long as a month. Now, could you explain why he’d be expecting you, when he was leaving?”
“No, wait,” I said, smiling, hoping the smile looked real, “you got it wrong. I’m here because he left. He said I could use his place tonight. I came in town to check out some colleges. I just got out of service, and now I’m going back to school. Would you believe it, a guy my age?”
She drew in a breath. Then let it out. Smiled.
She bought it.
She said, “Oh, you don’t look so old.” She touched her face. “Now, me, I look old. It’s this damn woman’s work. You know. Cleaning.”
“Well, this apartment could sure use it.”
“I know,” she smiled. “Ray doesn’t keep a very tidy place, I’m afraid, does he?”
It was Ray, now; I wondered whatever happened to Mr. Drake.
“I was just coming up to clean it, when I heard you up here,” she explained. “Ray asked me to get it in shape for him. He doesn’t like coming home to a messy place, even though he doesn’t seem to mind living in one.”
“You want to come in?” I asked her.
“No, not unless you, uh… want me to clean the place up now.”
“Why don’t you do that this afternoon? If it’s no trouble, I mean. I’ll be out, then. If I get everything done I need to, I might not even have to stay the night.”
“Oh, I see… well, it was nice meeting you, Mr. Wilson. I’ll just leave Mr. Drake’s mail and get back to my work.”
And she handed me an envelope, smiled, touched her face, and left.
It was pretty obvious she and “Mr. Drake” had something going on the side. Something minor, like when her husband wasn’t home and when Ash was between women; a nice fast physical fuck now and then, and probably I could have had one myself, if I’d been so inclined.
And it had been awhile since I’d been with a woman. I could’ve used it, I guess. But I had more urgent needs to take care of.
Though I did owe Ash’s landlady some thanks.
That envelope she handed me was a motel confirmation, and it told me right where my old friend Ash had gone.