The Crime Writer

I listened, but the sound neither rose nor faded.

Keeping to the sidewalk, I moved down the street, the noise growing louder. I made my way past two lots, pausing before the high stucco wall that guarded the corner house's driveway. The wall played with the acoustics; I was unsure if the running car was just behind it or farther along on the intersecting street.

Keeping the pistol raised before me, I leaned around the wall, but the vehicle if it was there was too far back to draw into my line of sight. Holding an inhale, I stepped past the wall onto the dark driveway. The outline of a facing car, maybe ten yards up the long, narrow drive, the windshield an impervious black sheet, exhaust clinging to its rear. The house was up around the bend, set back above a sharp slope. The memory of cigarette smoke tinged the air. To my right, the reliable wall, on my left, a bank of ivy.

Had the driver kept the car running for his return, or was he in there now, watching me?

Vigilant of ambush from the side or behind, I shuffled forward, aiming at the windshield, braced to run. Despite my fear and the cold, I managed to keep the gun steady, the recurrent puffs before my face an indication of how much my breathing had quickened.

A few steps revealed the car to be a Volvo. Dark paint. The license plate had been removed. Another few feet and I'd be able to make out if there was a form in the driver's seat.

The headlights flared, blinding me. The engine roared and the tires squealed, seeking purchase. The Volvo leapt forward. I fired, the bullet punching a hole in the top right corner of the windshield. Bolting left, I got in a step and was airborne when the hood clipped me. I rolled up the edge of the windshield, the driver a passing blur, and flew off the side, landing in the ivy. The Volvo skidded onto the street, through the intersection, and was gone. I lay on my back, panting, a sprinkler head dug into the small of my back. Rats rustled around me through the damp matting. After a time the crickets resumed. The neighborhood remained silent, unimpressed that I'd just fired a shot.

Pulling twigs from my clothes and hair, I again registered that hint of cigarette smoke. Crawling on the driveway, I looked for a hand-rolled butt. To the side, caught on a broad leaf of ivy, was a matchbook. Guess what was printed on its cover?

I found a twig and used it to lift the matchbook so as to preserve any prints. The matches had been used up, but written on the back side of the flap in a familiar block print, an address.

It was an address I'd be unlikely ever to forget.

Chapter 38

The skull and crossbones glowered at me from the match-book, preserved benignly in a Ziploc. I paced under my kitchen lights, glaring back. Like the cigarette smoke, the matchbook struck me as a contrivance. But how was I supposed to interpret it? That Mort had written Genevieve's address when first stalking her? I doubted that matches dating back four months had only just been used up. Had he jotted the address while planning the copycat killing? Maybe he'd been using Genevieve's house as a workshop, taking Broach there after the kidnapping to avoid leaving evidence at his apartment. More or less unoccupied, it would make an ideal safe house. My windshield kiss raised additional questions: If Mort was framing me for the murders, why run me over now? Because he knew I was onto him? Was he trying to take me out before I could get something concrete to the police?

I thumbed open my cell phone and dialed. Angela answered, accepted my apology, and handed off the phone to her husband.

As always, Chic sounded alert, as if I'd caught him on a morning stroll. He listened quietly. I finished filling him in and asked, "Can you meet me at Genevieve's?"

"Course. Why?"

"I don't buy the matchbook any more than I bought the bondage rope. Someone who's been this careful with evidence wouldn't pull up on my street, have a smoke, and toss a matchbook with a convenient address on it out his window."

"Unless they thought you was gonna be too dead to find it."

A reasonable point.

"I think I'm being led."

"And you gonna follow."

"Yeah. I think he planted something in that house for me to find. Something that incriminates me further. And I want to find it before the cops do and get out before the trap springs."

"Dangerous game."

"That's why I need blackup."

"Then blackup gon' be what you get."

I stood in the gutter, Chic and his brothers two I knew, one I didn't beside me, Genevieve's house looming over us. We'd finished checking the surrounding streets and land, and Fast Teddie had squeezed through a bathroom window with a gold-plated Colt. 45 and safed the house, making sure no one was inside.

Chic nudged me. "Ready to take a gander?"

I was.

We passed the strip of lawn with its broken sprinkler, made our way up the shifting pavers to the floating porch. There the philodendron, there the terra-cotta pot with the cracked saucer.