Mr. Mercedes Page 8

  Hodges strolls down the broken sidewalk to the overpass. He doesn't think about it and he doesn't hurry. He stuffs his hands in his sportcoat pockets. Cars and trucks drone by on the turnpike extension, projecting their shapes on the street below in a series of shadow-shutters. He hears one of the trolls asking the little kid how much money he's got.

  "Ain't got none," the little kid says. "Lea me lone."

  "Turn out your pockets and we see," Troll Two says.

  The kid tries to run instead. Troll Three wraps his arms around the kid's skinny chest from behind. Troll One grabs at the kid's pockets and squeezes. "Yo, yo, I hear foldin money," he says, and the little kid's face squinches up in an effort not to cry.

  "My brother finds out who you are, he bust a cap on y'asses," he says.

  "That's a terrifyin idea," Troll One says. "Just about make me want to pee my--"

  Then he sees Hodges, ambling into the shadows to join them with his belly leading the way. His hands deep in the pockets of his old shapeless houndstooth check, the one with the patches on the elbows, the one he can't bear to give up even though he knows it's shot to shit.

  "Whatchoo want?" Troll Three asks. He's still hugging the kid from behind.

  Hodges considers trying a John Wayne drawl, and decides not to. The only Wayne these scuzzbags would know is L'il. "I want you to leave the little man alone," he says. "Get out of here. Right now."

  Troll One lets go of the little 'un's pockets. He is wearing a hoodie and the obligatory Yankees cap. He puts his hands on his slim hips and cocks his head to one side, looking amused. "Fuck off, fatty."

  Hodges doesn't waste time. There are three of them, after all. He takes the Happy Slapper from his right coat pocket, liking its old comforting weight. The Slapper is an argyle sock. The foot part is filled with ball bearings. It's knotted at the ankle to make sure the steel balls stay in. He swings it at the side of Troll One's neck in a tight, flat arc, careful to steer clear of the Adam's apple; hit a guy there, you were apt to kill him, and then you were stuck in the bureaucracy.

  There's a metallic thwap. Troll One lurches sideways, his look of amusement turning to pained surprise. He stumbles off the curb and falls into the street. He rolls onto his back, gagging, clutching his neck, staring up at the underside of the overpass.

  Troll Three starts forward. "Fuckin--" he begins, and then Hodges lifts his leg (pins and needles all gone, thank God) and kicks him briskly in the crotch. He hears the seat of his trousers rip and thinks, Oh you fat fuck. Troll Three lets out a yowl of pain. Under here, with the cars and trucks passing overhead, the sound is strangely flat. He doubles over.

  Hodges's left hand is still in his coat. He extends his index finger so it pokes out the pocket and points it at Troll Two. "Hey, fuckface, no need to wait for the little man's big brother. I'll bust a cap on your ass myself. Three-on-one pisses me off."

  "No, man, no!" Troll Two is tall, well built, maybe fifteen, but his terror regresses him to no more than twelve. "Please, man, we 'us just playin!"

  "Then run, playboy," Hodges says. "Do it now."

  Troll Two runs.

  Troll One, meanwhile, has gotten on his knees. "You gonna regret this, fat ma--"

  Hodges takes a step toward him, lifting the Slapper. Troll One sees it, gives a girly shriek, covers his neck.

  "You better run, too," Hodges says, "or the fat man's going to tool up on your face. When your mama gets to the emergency room, she'll walk right past you." In that moment, with his adrenaline flowing and his blood pressure probably over two hundred, he absolutely means it.

  Troll One gets up. Hodges makes a mock lunge at him, and Troll One jerks back most satisfyingly.

  "Take your friend with you and pack some ice on his balls," Hodges says. "They're going to swell."

  Troll One gets his arm around Troll Three, and they hobble toward the Lowtown side of the overpass. When Troll One considers himself safe, he turns back and says, "I see you again, fat man."

  "Pray to God you don't, fuckwit," Hodges says.

  He picks up the backpack and hands it to the kid, who's looking at him with wide mistrustful eyes. He might be ten. Hodges drops the Slapper back into his pocket. "Why aren't you in school, little man?"

  "My mama sick. I goin to get her medicine."

  This is a lie so audacious that Hodges has to grin. "No, you're not," he says. "You're skipping."

  The kid says nothing. This is five-o, nobody else would step to it the way this guy did. Nobody else would have a loaded sock in his pocket, either. Safer to dummy up.

  "You go skip someplace safer," Hodges says. "There's a playground on Eighth Avenue. Try there."

  "They sellin the rock on that playground," the kid says.

  "I know," Hodges says, almost kindly, "but you don't have to buy any." He could add You don't have to run any, either, but that would be naive. Down in Lowtown, most of the shorties run it. You can bust a ten-year-old for possession, but try making it stick.

  He starts back to the parking lot, on the safe side of the overpass. When he glances back, the kid is still standing there and looking at him. Pack dangling from one hand.

  "Little man," Hodges says.

  The kid looks at him, saying nothing.

  Hodges lifts one hand and points at him. "I did something good for you just now. Before the sun goes down tonight, I want you to pass it on."

  Now the kid's look is one of utter incomprehension, as if Hodges just lapsed into a foreign language, but that's all right. Sometimes it seeps through, especially with the young ones.

  People would be surprised, Hodges thinks. They really would.

  22

  Brady Hartsfield changes into his other uniform--the white one--and checks his truck, quickly going through the inventory sheet the way Mr. Loeb likes. Everything is there. He pops his head in the office to say hi to Shirley Orton. Shirley is a fat pig, all too fond of the company product, but he wants to stay on her good side. Brady wants to stay on everyone's good side. Much safer that way. She has a crush on him, and that helps.

  "Shirley, you pretty girly!" he cries, and she blushes all the way up to the hairline of her pimple-studded forehead. Little piggy, oink-oink-oink, Brady thinks. You're so fat your cunt probably turns inside out when you sit down.

  "Hi, Brady. West Side again?"

  "All week, darlin. You okay?"

  "Fine." Blushing harder than ever.

  "Good. Just wanted to say howdy."

  Then he's off, obeying every speed limit even though it takes him forty fucking minutes to get into his territory driving that slow. But it has to be that way. Get caught speeding in a company truck after the schools let out for the day, you get canned. No recourse. But when he gets to the West Side--this is the good part--he's in Hodges's neighborhood, and with every reason to be there. Hide in plain sight, that's the old saying, and as far as Brady is concerned, it's a wise saying, indeed.

  He turns off Spruce Street and cruises slowly down Harper Road, right past the old Det-Ret's house. Oh look here, he thinks. The niggerkid is out front, stripped to the waist (so all the stay-at-home mommies can get a good look at his sweat-oiled sixpack, no doubt) and pushing a Lawn-Boy.

  About time you got after that, Brady thinks. It was looking mighty shaggy. Not that the old Det-Ret probably took much notice. The old Det-Ret was too busy watching TV, eating Pop-Tarts, and playing with that gun he kept on the table beside his chair.

  The niggerkid hears him coming even over the roar of the mower and turns to look. I know your name, niggerkid, Brady thinks. It's Jerome Robinson. I know almost everything about the old Det-Ret. I don't know if he's queer for you, but I wouldn't be surprised. It could be why he keeps you around.

  From behind the wheel of his little Mr. Tastey truck, which is covered with happy kid decals and jingles with happy recorded bells, Brady waves. The niggerkid waves back and smiles. Sure he does.

  Everybody likes the ice cream man.

  UNDER DEBBIE'S BLUE UMBREL
LA

  1

  Brady Hartsfield cruises the tangle of West Side streets until seven-thirty, when dusk starts to drain the blue from the late spring sky. His first wave of customers, between three and six P.M., consists of after-school kids wearing backpacks and waving crumpled dollar bills. Most don't even look at him. They're too busy blabbing to their buddies or talking into the cell phones they see not as accessories but as necessities every bit as vital as food and air. A few of them say thank you, but most don't bother. Brady doesn't mind. He doesn't want to be looked at and he doesn't want to be remembered. To these brats he's just the sugar-pusher in the white uniform, and that's the way he likes it.

  From six to seven is dead time, while the little animals go in for their dinners. Maybe a few--the ones who say thank you--even talk to their parents. Most probably go right on poking the buttons of their phones while Mommy and Daddy yak to each other about their jobs or watch the evening news so they can find out all about the big world out there, where movers and shakers are actually doing shit.

  During his last half hour, business picks up again. This time it's the parents as well as the kids who approach the jingling Mr. Tastey truck, buying ice cream treats they'll eat with their asses (mostly fat ones) snugged down in backyard lawnchairs. He almost pities them. They are people of little vision, as stupid as ants crawling around their hill. A mass killer is serving them ice cream, and they have no idea.

  From time to time, Brady has wondered how hard it would be to poison a truckload of treats: the vanilla, the chocolate, the Berry Good, the Flavor of the Day, the Tastey Frosteys, the Brownie Delites, even the Freeze-Stix and Whistle Pops. He has gone so far as to research this on the Internet. He has done what Anthony "Tones" Frobisher, his boss at Discount Electronix, would probably call a "feasibility study," and concluded that, while it would be possible, it would also be stupid. It's not that he's averse to taking a risk; he got away with the Mercedes Massacre when the odds of being caught were better than those of getting away clean. But he doesn't want to be caught now. He's got work to do. His work this late spring and early summer is the fat ex-cop, K. William Hodges.

  He might cruise his West Side route with a truckload of poisoned ice cream after the ex-cop gets tired of playing with the gun he keeps beside his living room chair and actually uses it. But not until. The fat ex-cop bugs Brady Hartsfield. Bugs him bad. Hodges retired with full honors, they even threw him a party, and how was that right when he had failed to catch the most notorious criminal this city had ever seen?

  2

  On his last circuit of the day, he cruises by the house on Teaberry Lane where Jerome Robinson, Hodges's hired boy, lives with his mother, father, and kid sister. Jerome Robinson also bugs Brady. Robinson is good-looking, he works for the ex-cop, and he goes out every weekend with different girls. All of the girls are pretty. Some are even white. That's wrong. It's against nature.

  "Hey!" Robinson cries. "Mr. Ice Cream Man! Wait up!"

  He sprints lightly across his lawn with his dog, a big Irish setter, running at his heels. Behind them comes the kid sister, who is about nine.

  "Get me a chocolate, Jerry!" she cries. "Pleeeease?"

  He even has a white kid's name. Jerome. Jerry. It's offensive. Why can't he be Traymore? Or Devon? Or Leroy? Why can't he be fucking Kunta Kinte?

  Jerome's feet are sockless in his moccasins, his ankles still green from cutting the ex-cop's lawn. He's got a big smile on his undeniably handsome face, and when he flashes it at his weekend dates, Brady just bets those girls drop their pants and hold out their arms. Come on in, Jerry.

  Brady himself has never been with a girl.

  "How you doin, man?" Jerome asks.

  Brady, who has left the wheel and now stands at the service window, grins. "I'm fine. It's almost quitting time, and that always makes me fine."

  "You have any chocolate left? The Little Mermaid there wants some."

  Brady gives him a thumbs-up, still grinning. It's pretty much the same grin he was wearing under the clown mask when he tore into the crowd of sad-sack job-seekers at City Center with the accelerator pedal pushed to the mat. "It's a big ten-four on the chocolate, my friend."

  The little sister arrives, eyes sparkling, braids bouncing. "Don't you call me Little Mermaid, Jere, I hate that!"

  She's nine or so, and also has a ridiculously white name: Barbara. Brady finds the idea of a black child named Barbara so surreal it's not even offensive. The only one in the family with a nigger name is the dog, standing on his hind legs with his paws planted on the side of the truck and his tail wagging.

  "Down, Odell!" Jerome says, and the dog sits, panting and looking cheerful.

  "What about you?" Brady asks Jerome. "Something for you?"

  "A vanilla soft-serve, please."

  Vanilla's what you'd like to be, Brady thinks, and gets them their orders.

  He likes to keep an eye on Jerome, he likes to know about Jerome, because these days Jerome seems to be the only person who spends any time with the Det-Ret, and in the last two months Brady has observed them together enough to see that Hodges treats the kid as a friend as well as a part-time employee. Brady has never had friends himself, friends are dangerous, but he knows what they are: sops to the ego. Emotional safety nets. When you're feeling bad, who do you turn to? Your friends, of course, and your friends say stuff like aw gee and cheer up and we're with you and let's go out for a drink. Jerome is only seventeen, not yet old enough to go out with Hodges for a drink (unless it's soda), but he can always say cheer up and I'm with you. So he bears watching.

  Mrs. Trelawney didn't have any friends. No husband, either. Just her old sick mommy. Which made her easy meat, especially after the cops started working her over. Why, they had done half of Brady's work for him. The rest he did for himself, pretty much right under the scrawny bitch's nose.

  "Here you go," Brady says, handing Jerome ice cream treats he wishes were spiked with arsenic. Or maybe warfarin. Load them up with that and they'd bleed out from their eyes and ears and mouths. Not to mention their assholes. He imagines all the kids on the West Side dropping their packs and their precious cell phones while the blood poured from every orifice. What a disaster movie that would make!

  Jerome gives him a ten, and along with his change, Brady hands back a dog biscuit. "For Odell," he says.

  "Thanks, mister!" Barbara says, and licks her chocolate cone. "This is good!"

  "Enjoy it, honey."

  He drives the Mr. Tastey truck, and he frequently drives a Cyber Patrol VW on out-calls, but his real job this summer is Detective K. William Hodges (Ret.). And making sure Detective Hodges (Ret.) uses that gun.

  Brady heads back toward Loeb's Ice Cream Factory to turn in his truck and change into his street clothes. He keeps to the speed limit the whole way.

  Always safe, never sorry.

  3

  After leaving DeMasio's--with a side-trip to deal with the bullies hassling the little kid beneath the turnpike extension overpass--Hodges simply drives, piloting his Toyota through the city streets without any destination in mind. Or so he thinks until he realizes he is on Lilac Drive in the posh lakeside suburb of Sugar Heights. There he pulls over and parks across the street from a gated drive with a plaque reading 729 on one of the fieldstone posts.

  The late Olivia Trelawney's house stands at the top of an asphalt drive almost as wide as the street it fronts. On the gate is a FOR SALE sign inviting Qualified Buyers to call MICHAEL ZAFRON REALTY & FINE HOMES. Hodges thinks that sign is apt to be there awhile, given the housing market in this Year of Our Lord, 2010. But somebody is keeping the grass cut, and given the size of the lawn, the somebody must be using a mower a lot bigger than Hodges's Lawn-Boy.

  Who's paying for the upkeep? Got to be Mrs. T.'s estate. She had certainly been rolling in dough. He seems to recall that the probated figure was in the neighborhood of seven million dollars. For the first time since his retirement, when he turned the unsolved case of the City Center
Massacre over to Pete Huntley and Isabelle Jaynes, Hodges wonders if Mrs. T.'s mother is still alive. He remembers the scoliosis that bent the poor old lady almost double, and left her in terrible pain . . . but scoliosis isn't necessarily fatal. Also, hadn't Olivia Trelawney had a sister living somewhere out west?

  He fishes for the sister's name but can't come up with it. What he does remember is that Pete took to calling Mrs. Trelawney Mrs. Twitchy, because she couldn't stop adjusting her clothes, and brushing at tightly bunned hair that needed no brushing, and fiddling with the gold band of her Patek Philippe watch, turning it around and around on her bony wrist. Hodges disliked her; Pete had almost come to loathe her. Which made saddling her with some of the blame for the City Center atrocity rather satisfying. She had enabled the guy, after all; how could there be any doubt? She had been given two keys when she bought the Mercedes, but had been able to produce only one.

  Then, shortly before Thanksgiving, the suicide.

  Hodges remembers clearly what Pete said when they got the news: "If she meets those dead people on the other side--especially the Cray girl and her baby--she's going to have some serious questions to answer." For Pete it had been the final confirmation: somewhere in her mind, Mrs. T. had known all along that she had left her key in the ignition of the car she called her Gray Lady.

  Hodges had believed it, too. The question is, does he still? Or has the poison-pen letter he got yesterday from the self-confessed Mercedes Killer changed his mind?

  Maybe not, but that letter raises questions. Suppose Mr. Mercedes had written a similar missive to Mrs. Trelawney? Mrs. Trelawney with all those tics and insecurities just below a thin crust of defiance? Wasn't it possible? Mr. Mercedes certainly would have known about the anger and contempt with which the public had showered her in the wake of the killings; all he had to do was read the Letters to the Editor page of the local paper.