The Dead of Winter (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  “Carl, I need two Michelobs, a vodka tonic, and—”

  “Keep your fucking shirt on,” he told her, and flipped up the end of the bar. I thought he might be coming for me, but instead he pushed through the crowd like a rhino through tall grass.

  He stopped at a table with three young men and two young women, all nicely dressed. He leaned down and spoke to one of the guys for a moment, then pushed his way back to the bar, with the waitresses telling him to hurry up and him telling them not to get their you-know-whats in an uproar.

  One of the guys rose from the table and made his way toward me. I swiveled on my stool to meet him. He was a good-sized character, though not nearly as big as Carl the bartender. I wasn’t sure he looked like Tom Cruise. Although he did have dark hair and a smirk.

  “Ken Hausom,” he said.

  I introduced myself and shook his hand. It felt funny, as if there were extra bones. Then I remembered Stacey O’Connor had told me Ken knew karate. The extra bones were calluses from chopping bricks to dust.

  “Carl said you were eager to talk to me.”

  “I’m looking for a girl named—”

  “Aren’t we all.” His bullshit grin widened, and his eyes slid off me and landed on the two young women to my left. I doubted they were old enough to drink.

  “Stephanie Bellano,” I said.

  His attention stayed on the women. They smiled back.

  “She’s been missing for almost a week. Her parents hired me to find her.”

  “Buy you ladies a drink?”

  “Look, Ken,” I said. “I’m in kind of a hurry. There’s a special on Channel 7 tonight I’d really hate to miss. It’s about how a lot of bars are getting shut down for serving minors.”

  “What?” He looked at me, the girls forgotten.

  “You dated Stephanie last spring, right?”

  He studied my face with eyes as hard and gray as ball bearings.

  “What do you want?”

  “Stephanie Bellano.”

  He paused just long enough to get his smirk back in place.

  “We went out for a few months. So what?”

  “So maybe you know where she might have gone.”

  “I haven’t seen her since May.”

  “That special I mentioned might include the Lion’s Lair.”

  “You know,” he said, punching me in the chest with two fingers, “I don’t think I like you.”

  “I can live with that. Now what about Stephanie.”

  He hesitated, deciding whether to throw me out or walk away or talk.

  “I’m telling you I haven’t seen her,” he said, his voice mean and tight. “Sure, I was balling her back then, but it was no big deal.”

  “When exactly?”

  “Early spring. March or April.”

  “And after that?”

  “After that, nothing. She wanted to get married, so I dumped her. End of discussion.”

  “Just one more question.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why would a sweet, intelligent girl like Stephanie Bellano want to marry an asshole like you?”

  The girl next to me must’ve been eavesdropping, because she sucked in her breath.

  Ken gave me a tight grin.

  “There’s a very good reason for that,” he said.

  “What?”

  “First, I gotta know. Are you a cop?”

  “Private cop.”

  He nodded. “Then I’ll show you.”

  He turned on his heel and began pushing through the crowd. I grabbed my coat and hustled after him, following a snaky line between the tables. I glanced back to make sure big Carl wasn’t following.

  When I caught up with Ken, he was already in the long corridor in back. It led past the pay phones and the restrooms to the rear entrance. Ken stopped at the door.

  “You’re sure you’re not a real cop?”

  “Positive.”

  “Okay, then,” he said, and opened the door.

  I slipped on my coat. I wondered just how illegal this thing was he was about to show me.

  He pushed open the screen, and we stepped into the cold, black December air. I followed him across a small, icy paved parking lot—employees only—with four or five cars and a Dumpster. Ken headed toward one of the cars. I was a few steps behind. Suddenly he stopped and spun. I knew in an instant what was going on, but he was much too quick for me. Or maybe I was just getting stupid. Too many beers for too many years.

  His leg went up and around, and his foot caught me in the side of the head.

  I staggered back but didn’t quite go down. Ken moved toward me in little shuffle steps, one foot before the other, his hands raised loosely in front of him. I considered running back into the bar, but suddenly he was all around me, kicking and chopping and punching from five different directions. I blocked a few but caught the rest, one in a very vulnerable spot that dropped me to my knees, where I was an easy target for a chop to the back of the neck.

  Down I went, flat out on the dirty frozen asphalt.

  I was awake, barely, but I couldn’t move, only lie there and stare at the slush-spattered side of a radial tire and listen to Ken chuckle. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

  “That’s for calling me an asshole,” he said.

  I tried to wiggle my fingers and toes. I couldn’t. I hoped Ken hadn’t caused permanent nerve damage. My dancing lessons.

  “I’ll tell you why Stephanie wanted to marry me,” he said, standing over me. “Because she was a good little Catholic girl, that’s why. She was such a good little Catholic girl that she wouldn’t take the pill, so she got knocked up. That’s when I told her to hit the road. You hear what I’m saying?”

  He kicked me in the ribs to get my attention. It hurt, but I took it as a good sign. At least I could feel.

  “I’ll tell you something else. She wasn’t even that good in bed.”

  I heard the back screen door bang open.

  “Jesus, Ken, what’d you do to the guy?” It sounded like Carl.

  “Gave him a lesson in self-defense.”

  “Who is he, anyway?”

  “Some asshole private cop.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “Eating dirt.”

  Carl laughed nervously.

  “Come on,” Ken said, “let’s go in.”

  I heard them move away and close the door. I lay there for what seemed like hours but was probably minutes. Slowly, I became aware of two sensations—pain and cold. Now I could wiggle my fingers and my toes, but I still couldn’t get up. Eventually, I knew, the bar would close and people would come out to their cars and somebody would help me. Unless Ken was the first one out. Then I might get run over.

  I moved my arm. Then the other one. Then a leg. Nothing to it. I pushed myself onto all fours. What a man.

  The dirty ice on the asphalt was melting under the pressure from my knees and soaking my pants. I used a Camaro for a crutch and pulled myself to my feet. My stomach was queasy, and my neck felt as if Ken were standing on it. I let go of the car. See? I could stand all by myself.

  I took a step.

  He walks, too, folks.

  Walk to your car, I told myself. Leave now. Go home. You were stupid and you got suckered and it was your own damn fault, so just forget about it and go home. You shouldn’t be mad at him; you should be mad at yourself. Don’t even go through the bar to the front. Walk around the building.

  Sure.

  I opened the back door. I went in.

  There were two pay phones on the wall by the men’s room. I used one and dialed the number of the other one. Then I turned my back to it and started an intense conversation with the ringing phone—ringing in my ear and ringing on the wall behind me. It rang ten or twelve times before somebody came over and picked it up and yelled over the noise, “Lion’s Lair.”

  “Ken Hausom,” I said, covering the mouthpiece. “It’s important.”

  “Hold on.”

  The guy
let the receiver dangle, then went into the crowd for Hausom. I went into the men’s room and shut the door, then opened it a finger’s width. A few minutes later Ken came down the hall and picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  I stepped out behind him, grabbed a handful of his hair, and smashed his head into the phone. He struggled feebly. I got one arm around his chest and kept my hand buried in his hair. Then I bashed his face into the phone a couple more times, making the bell ring dully inside the black steel box. He went limp. I took a look at him. His nose and mouth were bloody, and his top incisors were broken, but he still looked like a ladies’ man to me, so I rang the phone again. Then I let him slide to the floor.

  “Wrong number,” I told him, and got the hell out of there before he could wake up.

  CHAPTER 7

  ON FRIDAY MORNING I felt as if I’d been in a train wreck. But at least I could chew crispy bacon and slurp ice-cold orange juice. Which was probably more than you could say for Karate Ken. Actually, to look at me, you wouldn’t even know I’d been beaten up. Other than a puffy red ear, my bruises didn’t show.

  I showered and dressed without wincing too much. Then I phoned a few airlines. The earliest vacant seat to San Diego was eight o’clock tonight. I bought it with my VISA.

  Then I phoned Rachel Wynn—first at home, then at her office. I wondered if she was still mad about my questioning of Stacey O’Connor.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  “I’m just leaving for class.” Her voice was cold enough to freeze my ear to the phone. My good ear, too.

  “Was Stephanie Bellano pregnant?”

  “What?” The ice melted at once.

  “You know, with child, in a family way.”

  “No. I mean, not that I know of. She certainly wasn’t showing.”

  “And you would have noticed if she were seven or eight months along.”

  “Yes, of course. What are you saying?”

  I told her about Ken Hausom. I left out the fight.

  “Do you believe him?” Rachel asked, deep concern in her voice.

  “I’m afraid I do.”

  “Then she must have had a miscarriage during the summer.”

  “Or an abortion.”

  Rachel was silent for a moment. “I wonder if her parents know.”

  “I don’t know. If I get close to her mother, I’ll ask. But first I’m going to talk to her sister in San Diego. I’m flying there tonight.”

  “Would you …”

  “What?”

  “After you get back, would you call me?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m really worried about Stephanie.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Talk to you later.”

  I was worried about Stephanie. She’d been gone a week. She had little money and just the clothes on her back. Was she staying with someone? Was she alone? Was she alive?

  My mind was conjuring up worst-case scenarios: Stephanie, battered and amnesiac, wandering the streets; Stephanie, a prisoner of sexual perverts; Stephanie, dead and buried in a shallow grave.

  And what scenarios now tortured Angela Bellano?

  I locked up the apartment and drove downtown.

  It was time to get some input from a real cop. And Patrick MacArthur was that. He’d recently been promoted to head of the Robbery/Homicide Section, which was one step away from captain.

  MacArthur and I had become close friends during our days in the police academy. It had probably started the day we’d been paired in hand-to-hand combat. We’d practically beaten each other senseless. Male bonding. He’d been married and I’d been single, and I think his wife was worried about the bad influence I might have on him. So for the first few years that MacArthur and I were cops, she was continually inviting me over for dinner, pairing me up with one or another of her single girlfriends. She finally found one that liked me. Katherine and I had married a year later.

  Of course, a few years after that, Katherine had been murdered. I’d fallen apart, and MacArthur had helped me put myself back together.

  Since then, we’d moved apart, MacArthur and I. We were still friends, but in a different way. He had his career and family, and I had, well, whatever it was that I had. He’d moved up to management, and I was still down on the production line. And all of his wife’s girlfriends were married.

  I got a visitor’s tag and permission to go upstairs.

  MacArthur was on the phone. He waved me into a chair.

  His shirt was powder blue with a white collar, and his tie cost fifty bucks. He’d recently had a manicure. He looked more like a corporate executive than a police lieutenant. He hung up the phone.

  “Long time no see, Jake. What’s wrong with your neck?”

  “What?”

  “You’re holding your head like a geek.”

  “I fell down in a parking lot.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” He shot out his wrist and checked his thin gold watch. “I’ve got about ten minutes. What’s on your mind?”

  “Joseph Bellano. Any leads on who killed him?”

  “Do you have a personal interest?”

  “The day before before he got blown up, he hired me to find his daughter Stephanie.”

  “Do you know where she is?” His voice was pointed.

  “You seem anxious about her.”

  “You bet I am.”

  “Why?” He was in Robbery/Homicide, not Missing Persons.

  “You go first, Jake. What have you found out about her?”

  If he were anyone else, I wouldn’t be too quick to answer. And of course, he’d pay me back. I filled him in on Stephanie’s involvement with Ken Hausom and her apparent fear of the four men at Bellano’s barbershop. He frowned and wrote down their names.

  “We talked to Bellano’s partner, Sal, and he never said anything about this.”

  “Maybe cops make him nervous.”

  MacArthur pursed his lips. “And Sal told you he couldn’t remember the fourth man’s name?”

  “Right.”

  MacArthur pushed the phone at me. “Jog his memory.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  The phone rang eight times before Sal answered it. He was busy. I asked him if he remembered the fourth man’s name.

  “Stan Fowler,” he recited, “Gary Rivers, Johnny Toes Burke, and Mitch Overholser.”

  “Mitch Overholser,” I repeated. MacArthur wrote it down. “Who is he?”

  “I know one thing,” Sal said disgustedly. “He’s a professional gambler. I got customers waiting.”

  He hung up.

  MacArthur said, “Have you talked to these four?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they’re part of a homicide investigation, and I don’t want you interfering.”

  “Hey, I’m the one who just gave you their names.”

  He pulled back his phone and said nothing.

  “Besides,” I said, “I’m looking for Stephanie Bellano, not her father’s killer.”

  MacArthur looked out the window separating us from the busy squad room. He was getting ready to tell me something. His eyes locked on mine.

  “We’re keeping this out of the press to help us sort the cranks from any legitimate leads. So you tell no one.”

  I waited.

  “I mean it, Jake.”

  “Okay, okay.”

  He paused before he spoke. “The bomb that killed Joseph Bellano was in Stephanie’s car, not his.”

  “What?”

  “His wife told us that his car wouldn’t start that morning. He came back in the house, got the keys to Stephanie’s car, then went out and blew himself to bits.”

  “They were trying to kill Stephanie? Why?”

  “We’ve been asking ourselves that, too. In fact, there’s some question if the bomb was meant for her.”

  “I don’t understand. You just said—”

&nb
sp; “I know, I know. But if you consider her as the target, nothing fits. Method, for one. Bomb in car equals mob hit. The bomb, by the way, has been identified by the lab as a U.S. Army land mine, possibly one—” Jesus.

  “—possibly one of several stolen last year from the armory at Camp George West, along with some assault rifles and hand grenades. Anyway, whoever rigged it to the ignition was a professional. And professionals don’t generally hit college coeds. Which brings up another problem—motive. Why would the mob want to kill an innocent eighteen-year-old girl? She wasn’t involved in her father’s business. From what we’ve learned, she didn’t even know her father was a bookie until the day she ran off. Motive takes us back to Bellano. He was a likely target of the mob. At least a target of Fat Paulie DaNucci.”

  “Then why wouldn’t—”

  “Wait, let me finish. Another problem with Stephanie as the target is that everyone knew she had run away. Her parents were asking about her all over town. If someone wanted her dead, for whatever reason, a bomb in her car would be chancy at best. Who says she’s coming back? Who knows when? The odds are good that someone else might innocently start the car before she did.”

  “Maybe that’s what happened.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you don’t think so.”

  “I have my doubts.”

  I shook my head. “Am I missing something here? Let’s say DaNucci, or whoever, wanted to blow up Bellano. Then why not put the bomb in his car, for chrissake?”

  “One very good reason.”

  “What?”

  “Angela Bellano can’t drive a stick shift.”

  “Huh?”

  “She told us so, and anyone close to her would know. Bellano’s car was an automatic. Stephanie’s was a stick. If you put a bomb in Bellano’s car, maybe you’ll get him, but maybe you’ll just get his wife when she goes out to buy groceries. Conversely, if you put a bomb in the other car, then you’re sure to get Bellano. Especially when his car won’t start.”

  “Sure, unless Stephanie starts her own car.”

  “Exactly.”

  He waited for me to catch up.

  I did. “So assuming the bomb was meant for Bellano, whoever planted it knew Stephanie wasn’t around.”

  “And who better to know than the girl herself.”