15. Roberts
Chapter fifteen
Roberts
“I’ve been having him followed at your insistence. You’ve been having him followed. Stanley, he’s not the guy!” Roberts was tired of having this conversation with Walter Stanley.
Stanley, for his part, had been as tenacious as a vicious hunting hound with a rabbit, doggedly pursuing Linus to the point where the man simply did not appear to leave his house anymore.
“You give too much benefit to doubt that man,” Stanley said. “He still doesn’t want her disappearance made public, and you think he has nothing to hide.” He was sitting on the couch in his parlor, smoking a cigar. There was a glass of whisky on the coffee table in front of him, placed neatly on a coaster. This attention to aesthetic detail was frankly so absurd that it made Roberts want to laugh.
He was smoking a cigar, too, courtesy of Stanley, and on his third whisky. On his way out of the police station, Stanley had called him and asked him to stop by his house on the way home so they could have another conversation about Linus. The cigar and the whisky were nice enough, but he wanted to be home in his pajamas, reading the paper and maybe fucking his wife.
“I just think that we’re wasting too much time and energy on him,” Roberts countered, going on with his pacing, pausing only when he drained his glass and smacked it down onto the coffee table, no coaster.
“Well, what other grand, genius theories have you come up with, Lieutenant?” Stanley was getting that dangerous tone in his voice. Colder and colder. His temper was not hot. It was icy, so cold that it burned. “Unlike you, I’ve been turning this town upside down. I have guys looking everywhere. Making inquiries. Bribing people. Offering a reward. And you, you have nothing. You are doing nothing.”
Roberts started to open his mouth to retort when they were interrupted.
“You’ve got some visitors.” It was Stanley’s right-hand man, Andrews, stepping through the door of the parlor. He was bigger than Stanley and his face was a lot more scarred and grizzled. Stanley inspired a specific type of spine-tingling fear, but Andrews was the sort of guy you didn’t want to get into a fist fight with. He gave off a strong energy of pure, brute strength with seething anger boiling just below the surface.
“Show them in.” Stanley didn’t get up or move or otherwise indicate that he was about to receive someone into the room. He just went on smoking his cigar in a manner that Roberts would have described as moody if he didn’t know any better. Stanley was not the sort of person typically disposed toward moods.
Andrews returned a moment later with a tall, plain, pink cheeked young man with a black eye and a swollen lip, and another young fellow named Jerry who ran errands for Stanley sometimes.
“Who’s this?” Stanley asked in a soft, raspy voice. He took a puff of his cigar, eyeing the unknown young man with only the vaguest of interest.
“This is Simon,” Jerry said. The young man fiddled his wool cap, held in front of him, with white-knuckled hands. He was clearly terrified of Stanley and Roberts couldn’t blame him. “He works for the Lockwood brothers.”
“Brother,” Stanley said without any emotion.
Christ.
“Yeah, him,” Jerry said, his face reddening. “Anyway, he has some–”
“I came for the reward,” Simon said, stoutly. Trying to look brave, though he obviously had the sense to be very wary of Stanley.
“Did you?” Stanley studied him with a touch more interest. “And what do you offer in return?”
“I know where they’re keeping her,” Simon said. “That Evelyn broad.”
Roberts’ eyes snapped to Stanley, but he still did nothing to betray an ounce of emotion.
“Where? ”
“A-Are you–” Simon stammered. “Uh, the money–” Trying so hard to play it cool and failing.
Stanley put his cigar between his lips and slowly stood. He walked to a beautiful antique landscape painting and pulled it away from the wall, revealing that it was carefully secured with hinges. Behind it, a safe was set into the wall. They all watched in tense silence as Walter Stanley spun the dial with deft fingers. The sound of the bolt drawing back in the lock made Roberts flinch.
Jesus, he was getting skittish.
Stanley put his hands into the safe, producing muffled shuffling sounds. Then, he turned around, a wad of bills held in his large pale hand. He closed the safe. Lowered the painting back onto the wall.
Something pricked at the back of Roberts’ neck. Strange that he would so casually reveal the location of a safe to a stranger.
“A thousand bucks, as promised,” Stanley said. He held the wad firmly in his hand as he approached Simon, stopping only an arm’s length away from him. Roberts did not miss how the young men took just half a step back.
“Tell me what you know and it’s all yours,” Stanley said.
“They’re holding her at the speakeasy,” Simon stammered, though he straightened up taller, perhaps trying to redeem himself for his show of fear. “The Red Crystal, downtown.”
The tiniest hint of Stanley’s icy temper began to flicker in his eyes. “And what are they doing to her? ”
“N-Nothing,” Simon said. “I don’t think so anyway. Just holding her. I don’t know why. They’re just keeping her. Not doing anything. Just waiting for something.”
“Why are you turning against them now?” Stanley asked, taking a leisurely puff on his cigar. “Your employers?” He gestured to Simon's face. "They do this to you?"
“I– I–” The young man’s cheeks turned bright red. “We had a disagreement.”
“Over what?” Stanley made no move to hand the money over. The young man’s eyes darted to the wad of cash and he swallowed.
“I– She, uh, she took an interest in me and they didn’t like that.”
A muscle beneath Stanley’s eye twitched but he did not otherwise exhibit any emotion. Still, that one twitch made Roberts cold down to his toes.
“An interest in you?” Stanley asked, casually. “What sort of interest?”
The young man, though, didn’t seem to sense danger and he went on talking, apparently unable to resist the urge to brag. The idiot even smiled arrogantly.
“To tell you the truth, she begged for me to fuck her, so I did,” Simon said, smugly. “And, well, they found out.”
The stupidity was truly stunning. Roberts almost covered his face with his hands.
Stanley nodded slowly. Then he breathed in through his nose deeply and then held the wad of cash out to Simon.
“Thanks for your help. ”
Slowly, Simon reached out to take the money as if he couldn’t quite believe his luck. The greed in his eyes sparkled as his fingers closed around the bills. He was still too busy staring at them to notice that when Stanley lifted his hand and put it inside his jacket, he was reaching for his revolver, not his cigarettes. The young man had enough time to widen his eyes in surprise before Stanley put the barrel of his gun against his forehead and fired.
The young man dropped like a sack of potatoes and Jerry shouted, slapping his hands over his ears.
“Jesus, Stanley,” Roberts said, resisting the urge to do the same. The unpleasantness of the ringing in his ears was eclipsed only by the horror of the dead young man on the floor, bills scattered around him like funeral flowers.
“Shut up, Jerry,” Stanley said in a sharp voice. Jerry obeyed at once, though he stood there shaking like a baby deer, staring at the dead young man on the floor, covered in a fine mist of blood. Stanley had shot the young man with his back to the open doorway, so most of the brain matter and blood had been propelled onto the upper part of the doorframe and out into the hall. A sticky, dark pool of blood was leaking out onto the white marble underneath his head.
“Go find someone to clean up this fucking mess, Jerry,” Stanley said. “And pick up that money, it’s yours.”
Not looking remotely like he was interested in having it, Jerry bent quickly and gathered up the bills from around the dead body. He stuffed them in his pocket and stumbled out of the room without looking back .
Stanley turned to Roberts, eyes dark with rage. “We’re going in tonight.” He looked over at Andrews. “Everything they own is going to burn.”