“I got to run. You going to be in the office today?”
“Later this afternoon. I’m trying to scrape together the last of the lawyer money, then I’m going to go see Slim. You hear they impounded his bank accounts?”
“How can they do that?”
“The courts can do anything.”
“How’s Slim going to pay his bills, keep his house note up?”
“I don’t know,” Ray said, the weight in his voice heavy, stifling. “He may lose it all. Maybe Herman Reid can get the court to unfreeze the assets before it’s too late.”
“We’ve got a little time,” I said. “It takes, what, three months to foreclose on a house?”
“Something like that.”
“If I’m going to use the time we’ve got, I got to get moving, pal. Hang in there.”
I may hate guns, but I’m not exactly defenseless. If I’m going to hang around an outlaw strip searching for somebody who might just be a murderer, then I was going to use whatever I had to take care of myself.
I took the stun gun out of my pocket and fired it off a couple more times. Inside the right-hand bottom drawer of my desk, the deep, double-sized one, there was a pair of handcuffs, a pocket-sized can of Mace, and a fiberglass nightstick with a little extra weight in the end. I folded the handcuffs together and stuck them in my back hip pocket. They were cold and hard against my butt, but comforting in a strange sort of way. I slipped the Mace into my left pants pocket. Carrying a nightstick openly wasn’t the coolest idea in the world, so I tucked it up under my coat as I left.
Heavily loaded and armed, I crossed Seventh Avenue and retrieved the car. I tucked the nightstick down between the console and the driver’s seat, where I could yank it up in a flash. Then it was through the downtown traffic, past the construction on Second Avenue, up First Avenue, and across the river.
East Nashville slipped on like an old, comfortable sweater as I left the downtown congestion behind me. I headed out Main Street, past the empty grass lot that had once been the sprawling Genesco factory, then around the curve onto Gallatin Road. I left the main drag shortly after and made my way through the side streets to my apartment.
I needed a change of clothes, and if I was going to be out in the field for a while, I figured I’d better ditch the coat and tie. I transferred all my pocket clutter into the jeans, then pulled out the olive-drab field jacket I’d bought at Friedman’s Army Surplus when I was on stakeout in Louisville. The stun gun and the Mace can went into the field jacket’s large side pockets.
Outside, Mrs. Hawkins was bent over a flower bed on the other side of her new garage with a trowel in one hand and a huge clump of dirt in the other. I started calling to her as I went down the stairs so as not to scare her to death, and managed to get her attention as I hit the driveway.
“Harry,” she called. “Where have you been?”
I stooped down next to her in the flower bed. “I left you a message. Didn’t you get it?”
“Oh, that darned machine. I forgot to check it. Pesky contraptions, telephones.”
I smiled at her. “They ought to be outlawed.”
“Looks like you’ve been busy.”
“Very. As a matter of fact, I’ve got to be off now.”
“I’m glad things have improved,” she said. “Sometimes I feel guilty taking rent from you when you’re short of money.”
If she only knew.
“Don’t be concerned about that,” I said. “I’m delighted to pay you rent every month.” I stood up, hoping my nose hadn’t grown to Pinocchio-like dimensions.
“I’ll probably be home late again tonight. Don’t you worry, okay?”
“All right, I won’t,” she said, turning back to her flowers.
I headed for the Mazda, which was parked about halfway down the driveway.
“By the way,” she called. “Did you see that strange man this morning?”
I turned. “What strange man?”
“Well,” she said absentmindedly, “I guess you wouldn’t have. You weren’t here.”
“What strange man?”
“This morning. I slept late, until nearly seven. When I woke up and went into the kitchen to start my tea, there was a man walking down the driveway. He had a pickup truck out front.”
“What did he look like?” I asked, trying to keep my face somewhere in the same universe as casual.
“I didn’t get a good look. By the time I got my glasses on, he was in the truck. He sat there for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do, so I got dressed and walked outside to get the paper. As soon as I stepped outside, he gunned the motor and took off. Made a lot of smoke.”
“Did you see what kind of pickup it was?”
“An old one was all I could tell. Faded gray, rust spots on the side. A Ford, maybe.”
I stepped back over and squatted down next to her. “I’m sure it was nothing,” I said, feeling guilty for having lied to her twice in one conversation. “But just to be safe, you be sure and lock up well tonight.”
She smiled at me slyly. “Harry, this is the city. I lock up well every night. And there’s a loaded shotgun in the closet.”
I smiled back. “Good girl.”
I walked down the driveway to the Mazda, feeling about as low as a vagrant on Belle Meade Boulevard. Sometime back, a case of mine had inadvertently-and indirectly-placed Mrs. Hawkins at risk. There was simply no way I was going to put her in that spot again. Something would have to be done.
If the bastard wanted to stalk me, let him. I can handle that. But if he starts scaring my sweet little old landlady, something’s going to have to be done.
But what?
I got this terrible taste in my mouth as I pulled out into the noontime traffic on Gallatin Road and headed toward Inglewood, like the coffee I’d had at Mac Ford’s office wasn’t going to stay down. I knew it wasn’t the coffee, though; it was just another side effect of having the Ronco Stress-O-Matic going at full throttle. On the good side, the strain of the last few days had played hell with my appetite. It looked like I’d be saving lunch money today, at least for a while.
A few minutes later I passed under the railroad trestle on Gallatin Road and approached the old Inglewood Theatre. Just for shits and grins I turned left, drove behind the theatre, and coasted past Lonnie’s place. His big truck wasn’t there and I saw no sign of Shadow, so I continued on until the street intersected with Ben Allen Road, then made a left.
I’d gotten to know this end of Nashville pretty well over the past couple of years, and I knew exactly which motel Ray was talking about. Ben Allen Road dead-ended into Dickerson Pike near the motel, past the Ellington Parkway, and well into a part of Nashville known for its level of violent crime. There’s not much street crime there, really, since no one would dare walk the streets anyway. But the string of small businesses-pawnshops, X-rated video outlets, used-car lots, mom-and-pop groceries-was prime pickings for holdup artists. An elderly couple who owned a small convenience market had been the lead item in the local news a few weeks back when three guys busted in to rob them and the two started shooting back. Seems they’d been hit before and had taken to packing .38s on their respective, arthritic hips. This time, for once, the justice system was saved the trouble. Even though they outnumbered the old folks, the bad guys lost. Two went down for good, the other paralyzed for life.
I was beginning to wish I didn’t work alone so much. If Lonnie had been home, I might have asked him to go with me. In almost a flash of insight, I realized I was afraid, and I thought of my father’s admonition to me as a young boy that the only way to fight fear was to face it.
Yeah, I remember him saying it, and I also remember it not helping very much.
I turned right onto Dickerson Pike, then immediately slid into the turning lane. I waited for a break in the traffic, then jetted across the oncoming two lanes and into the parking lot of the College Inn motel.
In the far past, back before the government built the interstate highway system and put half the small motels in America out of business, the College Inn had been a stopping place for tourists and a home away from home for politicians when the legislature was in session. But that was maybe four decades ago. Now the place was plain old run-down, a couple of steps above a flophouse, but not much. It was U-shaped, the three sides of the motel angling around the parking lot, with a closed swimming pool in the center of the asphalt baking in the sun. A coating of green slime thick enough to support several discarded beer cans covered the pool, and in the shallow end, the handlebars of a child’s tricycle poked through the goo.