“Are you serious?”
“It gets worse,” he said. “From the tape, we can’t tell who else he might have talked to. We’re concerned he’s been in touch with other people who may be taking steps we don’t know about. We’ve notified the press, hoping to make this too hot to handle. Judge Jarvison and I are being placed under around-the-clock armed protection, but they thought I better pass the information on to you. You’d be smart to contact the Santa Teresa police to see about protection for yourself.”
“God, Lee. I can’t imagine they’d provide any, especially on a threat from out of state. They don’t have the manpower or the budget for that.” I’d never actually called the man by his first name before, but I felt a certain privilege, given what I’d just heard. If Patty was the plotter, Galishoff and I were fellow plottees.
“We’re actually facing the same situation here,” he said. “The sheriff’s department can’t cover us for long . . . four or five days at best. We’ll just have to see how things stand after that. In the meantime, you might want to hire somebody on your own. Temporarily, at any rate.”
“A bodyguard?” I said.
“Well, somebody versed in security procedures.”
I hesitated. “I’d have to think about that,” I said. “I don’t mean to sound cheap, but it would cost me a fortune. You really think it’s warranted?”
“Let’s put it this way-I wouldn’t chance it, if I were you. He’s got six violent priors.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, indeed. The insulting part is he isn’t even paying that much. Five grand for the four of us. That’s less than fifteen hundred bucks apiece!” He laughed when he said this, but I didn’t think he was amused.
“I can’t believe this,” I said, still trying to take it in. When you’re presented with bad news, there’s always this lag time, the brain simply unable to assimilate the facts.
Galishoff was saying, “I do know a guy, if you decide that’s what you want. He’s a local P.I. with a background in security. At the moment, he’s burned out, but I know he’s excellent.”
“Just what I need, somebody bored with his work.”
He laughed again. “Don’t let that dissuade you. This guy’s good. He lived in California years ago and loves it out there. He might like the change of scene.”
“I take it he’s available.”
“As far as I know. I just talked to him a couple days ago. His name is Robert Dietz.”
I felt a little jolt. “Dietz? I know him. I talked to him about a year ago when I was working on a case.”
“You have his number?”
“It’s around here someplace, but you might as well give it to me again,” I said.
He gave me the number and I made a note. I’d only dealt with the man by phone, but he’d been thorough and efficient, and he hadn’t charged me a cent. Really, I owed him one. I heard a buzz on Galishoff’s end of the phone.
He said, “Hang on a sec.” He clicked off, was gone briefly, and then clicked on again. “Sorry to cut it short, but I got a call coming in. Let me know what you decide.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “And thanks. Keep safe.”
“You, too,” he said and he was gone.
I set the receiver down, still staring at the phone. A murder contract? How many times had someone tried to kill me in the last year? Well, not that many, I thought defensively, but this was something new. Nobody (that I knew of) had ever put out a contract on me. I tried to picture Tyrone Patty chatting up the subject with a hit man in Carson City. Somehow it seemed strange. For one thing, it was hard to imagine the kind of person who made a living that way. Was the work seasonal? Were there any fringe benefits? Was the price discounted since there were four of us to whack? I had to agree with Galishoff-fifteen hundred bucks was bullshit. In the movies, hit men are paid fifty to a hundred thou, possibly because an audience wants to believe human life is worth that. I suppose I should have been flattered I was included in the deal. A public defender, a DA, and a judge? Distinguished company for a smalltown private eye like me. I stared at Dietz’s number, but I couldn’t bring myself to call. Maybe the crisis would pass before I had to take any steps to protect myself. The real question was, would I mention this to Henry Pitts? Naaah. It would just upset him and what was the point?
When the knock at the door came, I jumped like I’d been shot. I didn’t exactly flatten myself against the wall, but I exercised a bit of caution when I peered out to see who was there. It was Rosie, who owns the tavern in my neighborhood. She’s Hungarian, with a last name I don’t pronounce and couldn’t spell on a dare. I suppose she’s a mother substitute, but only if you favor being browbeaten by a member of your own sex. She was wearing one of her muumuus, this one olive green, printed with islands, palm trees, and parrots in hot pink and chartreuse. She was holding a plate covered with a paper napkin.
When I opened the door, she pushed it toward me without preamble, which has always been her style. Some people call it rude.
“I brought you some strudel for your birthday,” she said. “Not apple. It’s nut. The best I ever made. You’ gonna wish you had more.”
“Well, Rosie, how nice!” I lifted a corner of the napkin. The strudel had a nibbled look, but she hadn’t snitched very much.
“It looks wonderful,” I said.
“It was Klotilde’s idea,” she said in a fit of candor. Rosie’s in her sixties, short, top-heavy, her hair dyed the utterly faux orange-red of new bricks. I’m not certain what product she uses to achieve the effect (probably something she smuggles in from Budapest on her biannual trips home), but it usually renders her scalp a fiery pink along the part. She had pulled the sides back today and affixed them with barrettes, a style much favored in the five-year-old set. I’d spent the last two weeks helping her find a board-and-care facility for her sister Klotilde, who’d recently moved to Santa Teresa from Pittsburgh, where the winters were getting to be too much for her. Rosie doesn’t drive and since my apartment is just down the street from her little restaurant, it seemed expedient for me to help her find a place for Klotilde to live. Like Rosie, Klotilde was short and heavyset with an addiction to the same hair dye that tinted Rosie’s scalp pink and turned her tresses such a peculiar shade of red. Klotilde was in a wheelchair, suffering from a degenerative disease that left her cranky and impatient, though Rosie swore she’d always been that way. Theirs was a bickering relationship and after an afternoon in their presence, I was cranky and impatient myself. After checking out fifteen or sixteen possibilities, we’d finally found a place that seemed to suit. Klotilde had been settled into a ground-floor room in a former two-family dwelling on the east side of town, so I was now off the hook.
“You want to come in?” I held the door open while Rosie considered the invitation.
She seemed rooted to the spot, rocking slightly on her feet. She becomes coquettish at times, usually when she’s suddenly unsure of herself. On her own turf, she’s as aggressive as a Canada goose. “You might not want the company,” she said, demurely lowering her eyes.
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I’d love the company. You have to see the place. Henry did a great job.”
She wiggled once and then sidestepped her way into the living room. She seemed to survey the room out of the corner of her eye. “Oh. Very nice.”
“I love it. You should see the loft,” I said. I set the strudel on the counter and quickly put some water on for tea. I took her through the place, up the spiral steps and down, showing her the trundle bed, the cubbyholes, the pegs for hanging clothes. She made all the proper noises, only chiding me mildly for the meagerness of my wardrobe. She claims I’ll never get a beau unless I have more than one dress.
After the tour, we had tea and strudel, working our way through every crispy bite. I cleaned the plate of flaky crumbs with a dampened fingertip. Her discomfort seemed to fall away, though mine increased as the visit went on. I’d known the woman for two years, but with the exception of the last couple of weeks, our entire relationship had been conducted in her restaurant, which she rules like a dominatrix. We didn’t have that much to talk about and I found myself manufacturing chitchat, trying to ward off any awkward pauses in the conversation. By the time we finished tea, I was sneaking peeks at my watch.