The Dead of Winter (The Jacob Lomax Mysteries Book 3) Page 7

  “Shut up,” Johnny told her.

  Doreen pouted.

  “I don’t have to talk to you, Lomax,” Johnny told me. “You ain’t a cop anymore.” He smirked. “In fact, I heard they kicked you out after your bitch got killed. Something about you hiding in a bottle.”

  I smiled.

  The black hooker sat back. She’d seen that kind of smile before, probably on the face of her pimp just before he used his razor to put that scar on her upper arm.

  “She wasn’t my bitch, Johnny, she was my wife. And you’re right, I’m not a cop anymore. But I am capable of shoving this beer bottle up your ass and kicking you until it breaks.”

  His Adam’s apple went up and down in his skinny neck, and his hand moved inside his coat. If he was carrying a gun, it was too small to make a bulge.

  “I’m not afraid of you,” he let me know.

  “Take it easy,” I said. “We’re all friends here.”

  I reached over for the bottle of champagne and poured some in each of their glasses. The hookers relaxed. Johnny Toes didn’t. He was keeping an open mind.

  “Looks like you’re in the chips, Johnny. Fine booze, good-looking women. Did Fat Paulie give you a raise?”

  He smirked.

  “Or did you get a bonus for putting a bomb in Joseph Bellano’s car?”

  “Try to prove it,” he said, and smirked again. This time, though, it was forced. He’d like me to think he was a cold-blooded killer. He wasn’t. He was just a lizard.

  “I’m not interested in Bellano,” I told him. “I’m looking for Stephanie.”

  “Who?”

  “You know who. Bellano’s daughter. She’s been missing for a week.”

  “Life’s a bitch,” Johnny Toes said, and sipped the bubbly.

  “Why did she run away?” I asked him.

  “What? How the hell should I know?”

  “You were in Bellano’s shop last Friday. Stephanie came in angry, and she ran out scared to death. You remember, don’t you?”

  His eyelids drooped like an iguana’s.

  “I might.”

  “I think she was afraid of one of Bellano’s customers.”

  “Afraid of me?” Johnny Toes looked about him in mock innocence. “You gotta be kidding. I’m a sweetheart, ain’t I, girls?”

  He hugged his whores, and they laughed.

  “I don’t mean you, Johnny. You couldn’t scare Bambi.”

  He gave me his meanest look. Well, okay, maybe Bambi.

  “I meant the other three customers,” I said. “What do you know about them?”

  “You expect me to remember who was in there?”

  I named them.

  “Sure I’ve heard of Stan Fowler,” he said. “And Gary Rivers. But I wouldn’t recognize either one of them.”

  “The Gary Rivers?” the white whore said. “I’ve seen him on TV.”

  Johnny Toes glared at her.

  “What?” she wanted to know.

  “Shut up,” he said.

  “I can’t even talk? You said we were going to party.”

  “This is a party.”

  “Excuse me for interrupting,” I said, “but what about the third customer. Mitch Overholser.”

  Johnny Toes glanced at me. He sipped his cheap champagne.

  “Sure, I know Mitch.”

  “How?”

  “Ask him. Look, Lomax, who gives a damn about Bellano’s daughter. I’m sure none of these guys did. If they wanted anything from Bellano, it wasn’t his little girl. It was his books.” Johnny Toes licked his scaly lips, flicking his tongue like a gecko. “I wished I had them myself,” he said. “But I heard the cops got everything.”

  “Why would you want Bellano’s books?”

  “His client list and the accounts receivable? Are you kidding? Bellano had a successful business going there, and I’m not talking about his barbershop. If a guy wanted to make some easy money, all he’d need would be Bellano’s books. He’d have a working business plus a list of guys that owed him money.”

  “You’d need something first, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You’d need to get Bellano out of the way.”

  “That goes without saying,” he said. “Speaking of which, why don’t you get out of our way.” He put his arms around his women of the evening. “We’re trying to have a party here, and you’re talking about dead people.”

  I didn’t tell Johnny Toes what MacArthur had told me—Bellano’s records had been destroyed. At least the cops’ copy. There was another copy, though. And I was beginning to wonder if they might contain a clue, if not to Stephanie’s whereabouts, then to Bellano’s killer.

  And so early Sunday afternoon—after I’d checked with Father Carbone by phone but before I visited Angela Bellano—I made a side trip.

  I took Interstate 25 south, then I-225 east between the snow-covered embankment of Cherry Creek Dam and the snowy fields of Kennedy Golf Course. I got off the highway on Parker Road, drove another mile or so to a small shopping center, and parked in front of MicroComp Computer & Software Center.

  There were some Christmas wreaths painted in the windows. Also a few arcane signs: “Sale on Clones!” “30% Off All Hardcards!” “Special on Laptops!”

  It was close enough to Christmas for the store to be open on Sundays. I pushed through the glass door.

  It was a big place, crowded with computer displays. Each one was separated from the carpet by a static-free mat. There were customers scattered here and there. Some stared at video screens and tentatively tapped on plastic keys. The rest nosed through racks of books and packs of software.

  A salesman approached.

  He was around thirty, with bushy hair, thick glasses, and buck teeth. His corduroy sports coat was older than my Olds. The elbows, though, were nice and shiny.

  “Help you, sir?”

  “Is Zeno around?”

  He eyed me suspiciously. “Sure.”

  I followed him across the showroom, then through a door.

  The back room had a concrete floor and bright fluorescent lights. There were worktables with keyboards and video screens, some fitted with small black canopies to cut out the glare. The walls were lined with metal shelves loaded with electronic gizmos. There were two guys in the far corner huddled before a computer. They were talking about bad chips. I didn’t think they meant food. A woman worked alone by the near wall.

  “Someone to see you, Zeno.”

  “I’m busy,” she said. Then, “Hey, Jake!”

  Eunice Zenkowski, known to all as Zeno, smiled up at me from a worktable spewed with the guts of a computer, which lay open before her like a dissected android. Zeno was wearing her usual blue jeans, beat-up white tennies, and dark long-sleeved shirt rolled up over her skinny white arms. She had a narrow, bony face; thick dark eyebrows; and thin, colorless lips. She had pale fuzz on her upper lip. She also had a crush on me. At least she used to.

  “How you doing, Zeno?”

  “I’ll be doing better when I figure out how the owner of this machine managed to crash three hard disks in one month. So what’s up? Did you just stop by to say hi? Or are you finally ready to join the computer generation?”

  “Not exactly,” I said, and looked over my shoulder. The salesman was hovering nearby.

  Zeno told him, “It’s okay, Milton. Jake’s a friend.”

  “Oh.” Milton lingered a moment longer, then returned to the front of the store.

  After the door closed behind him, Zeno said, “Milton’s the jealous type.”

  I looked at her and smiled. Two small dots of color rose to her pale cheeks.

  “You and Milton? Hey, that’s great.”

  “I guess it’s okay,” she said, avoiding my eyes, squirming in her chair like a snagged trout. I let her off the hook.

  “Zeno, I need your help with something.”

  Her colored dots went away.

  “You are going to buy a computer.”

 
I shook my head no. “A friend of mine, recently deceased, has some files in his home, probably hidden in one room, probably computer related. I want you to help me find them.”

  “What do you mean, they’re hidden?”

  “Before he died, he told me the police had searched the room for his files and—”

  “The police?”

  “Don’t worry. We’re not going to be doing anything illegal. Anyway, the police overlooked one set of files, and it was ‘right under their noses.’ His words.”

  “Gee, Jake, I’ll help if I can. But you’re supposed to be the expert at finding things, not me.”

  “The trouble is, I’m not sure what I’m looking for.”

  “I see. I don’t suppose you know what kind of system your friend was running.”

  “System?”

  She sighed. “Computer and software, Jake.”

  “No. Does it matter?”

  “It might. I’m familiar with some more than others. When do you want to do this?”

  “Now. That is, if you’re not too busy.”

  She waved her hand at the mess on the table. “This can wait. Let me get some things.”

  I waited while she packed a small case with tools, disks, and gadgets, then followed her to the front. She told Milton she was going with me on a consulting job.

  We left him burning with suspicion.

  CHAPTER 10

  IT STARTED TO SNOW on the way to Angela Bellano’s house. Icy flakes swirled in the wake of the car ahead of me. They melted when they hit the warm windshield of the Olds. Zeno took off her gloves and scarf and unzipped her bulky parka.

  “Can we have a little music?” she asked, opening the glove compartment.

  “The radio’s over here.”

  “I was looking for your tapes.”

  “You don’t need tapes with a radio.”

  “Geez, Jake,” she said, reaching for the knob, then, “What, only AM?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Geez.”

  She went through the dial from one end to the other, a high-tech kid with a low-tech toy.

  I thought about the first time we’d met, nearly four years ago.

  She’d been a senior in high school, and her little sister, Darla, had been ten. Their mother had recently been killed, run down by a stolen car filled with kids on a joy ride. Zeno’s father, Paul Zenkowski, was devastated by the loss. He began to hit the bottle pretty hard. He was an air force sergeant stationed at Lowry, and after being caught drunk on duty one too many times, he was in danger of losing his stripes.

  Meanwhile, his dead wife’s sister, a genuine bitch named Gwendolyn, was trying to get the courts to give Zeno and Darla to her, citing Paul’s incompetence.

  Paul wasn’t incompetent. He was just drunk. But Gwendolyn’s husband, a cut-rate attorney from Pueblo, seemed to have a fairly strong case. So Paul got an attorney. The attorney hired me to get some dirt on Gwendolyn. It’s distasteful work, but I was new in the business, and I took what I could get.

  What I got were some excellent photographs of Gwendolyn and her husband and their next-door neighbors playing Ping-Pong in the living room. It was an exciting match. Many innovative techniques. Both couples were naked, and the only equipment they were using were the paddles.

  One look at the blowups and Gwendolyn dropped her case. Zeno and her sister and their father were left alone to get on with their lives. Of course, the girls weren’t told the sordid details, only that nice Mr. Lomax had helped them out.

  I parked in front of the Bellano residence. It was snowing more heavily now, blanketing the sidewalks, which had been shoveled this morning.

  When Angela Bellano opened the door, Zeno and I were still stamping snow off our feet.

  “Father Carbone told me you were coming,” she said, letting us in. There was no joy in her voice. Why should there be? Her husband was dead, and her daughter was missing.

  I introduced Zeno as “my associate, Eunice Zenkowski.”

  Angela took our coats and led us through the living room. Empty of mourners, it seemed larger than the last time I’d been here. The sofa and chairs had muted patterns and carved walnut legs. The Christmas tree looked futile.

  We sat in the kitchen. It was filled with warmth and cooking smells, even though there was nothing on the stove or in the oven. I heard a toilet flush in another part of the house.

  “Would you like coffee?” Angela asked.

  As she was pouring it, a man came through the kitchen door. He was in his late forties, with pockmarked cheeks. He wore a white shirt and a navy-blue V-neck sweater, both extra-large, both barely large enough. He was the same guy who’d tossed me out the last time I was here.

  “You again,” he said.

  “Me again.”

  “Tony, he’s here to help, remember,” Angela said. “Mr. Lomax, this is my brother, Tony Callabrese.”

  I started to stand, but he waved me back without offering to shake hands.

  “Give me some more coffee,” he asked Angela. Then he leaned against the counter, where he could sip it and look down at me.

  “Diane called me last night,” Angela told me. “She said you’d flown out there to find Stephanie.”

  “Yes.”

  “She said you seemed nice.”

  Tony blew air out his nose and folded his arms.

  “I wonder, though,” Angela said, “why Joseph didn’t tell me he’d hired you.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he thought you wouldn’t like him bringing in an outsider.”

  “I know I don’t like it,” Tony put in.

  “If it would help find my baby …”

  “Well, what good has he done so far?” Tony looked at me. “What have you done, big shot?”

  He’d like to get something started so he could toss me out again. It was his hobby. When I spoke, it was to Angela.

  “So far, I’ve talked to her friends at college, her teachers, her boyfriend, and—”

  “Boyfriend?” Angela looked surprised. “She never told me she had a boyfriend.”

  She never said she was pregnant, either. But I decided to spare Angela that. At least for now. “Stephanie met him last spring,” I said, still aware of the stiffness in my neck. “An unpleasant young man. Ken Hausom.”

  Angela frowned. “Is he a student?”

  “No,” I said, and let it go at that. “Mrs. Bellano, do you know a girl named Chrissie?”

  “I … no.”

  “Apparently Stephanie met her during the summer. Diane suggested it might have been at Big Pine Lake.”

  “Oh.”

  “Were you there this summer?”

  “Yes. Every summer for years. Joseph would rent a cabin on the lake for two weeks. The … the girls loved it. This year, and last year, too, Stephanie stayed up there after we left. Joseph had gotten her a job. It was only temporary, just for the summer.”

  “Where?”

  “At the clinic in town. She was a receptionist.”

  “I see. Did she stay in the cabin all summer?”

  “No, that would’ve been too expensive. Besides, it was too big for one person. After Joseph and I left, Stephanie stayed in a rooming house.”

  “Do you have the address?”

  ”I’ll get it.”

  She left the kitchen. Zeno and I sat in silence. Tony watched us. Angela Bellano returned. She handed me a slip of paper with an address and a name—Mrs. Henderson.

  “She’s the owner,” Angela said. “But we’ve already called her. Stephanie’s not there.”

  I nodded and slipped the paper in my pocket.

  “Mrs. Bellano, Sal told me when Stephanie ran out of your husband’s shop she was scared to death.”

  She nodded. “Joseph said she looked frightened. He was surprised. He was surprised by her yelling, too. And hurt.”

  “Sal didn’t think it was your husband who’d scared her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He thought it was one of the
other four men in the shop. Stan Fowler, Gary Rivers, Mitch Overholser, or Johnny Toes Burke. Do you know any of them?”

  “Gary Rivers? The one on the radio?”

  “Yes.”

  “I think I’ve heard Joseph mention his name. And I’m pretty sure he was at the funeral.”

  “What about the others?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “I know this Johnny Toes.”

  I looked at Tony.

  “By reputation, I mean. He’s a weasel.”

  “Did Joseph have dealings with any of these men?”

  Tony shrugged and looked at Angela.

  She said, “I don’t know. Of course, maybe they were bettors.”

  “That’s one thing I’d like to find out,” I said. “Which is why I brought Miss Zenkowski with me.”

  Tony and Angela looked at Zeno. Zeno looked embarrassed. She’d been sitting quietly, invisibly, watching our little soap opera. Now she was in it.

  “Mrs. Bellano, when the police confiscated your husband’s records, did they search the entire house?”

  “No. Just his den.”

  “I see. He told me there was another set of records right under their noses. I wonder if you would let me and Miss Zenkowski look for them.”

  “Well, I guess it would be all right.”

  “Wait a minute,” Tony said to me. Then to his sister, “Ange, you’re not going to let this guy poke around in Joe’s things, are you?”

  “If it will help find Stephanie—”

  “How could it, for chrissake? You don’t know this guy from Adam. He could be anybody.”

  “Tony, please, it’s okay. I—”

  “No, it’s not okay. I got a bad feeling about this guy, I don’t care if Joe hired him. I think maybe he’s got something up his sleeve.”

  Angela shook her head and pushed up from the table. I stood, and so did Zeno.

  Angela said, “Follow me, Mr. Lo—”

  “No.” Tony stepped in front of me. “I won’t allow it.”

  Angela turned on him. “This is my house, Tony, you hear me, my house. I say what goes on in here.” Tony blinked, then backed off, hurt. Angela reached for his hand. “Tony, it’s okay if they look. It can’t hurt.” The grieving widow comforting the macho brother. She turned back toward me. “Mr. Lomax. Miss uh …”