Mister Jinnah Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Donald J. Hauka
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sprayed it with ketchup. He looked mutely at the man.
“Some son-of-a-bitch broke in here last month,” said the Tin Man, voice hard with anger. “Hit me on the goddamn head. That’s my blood! Sprayed up there like a fountain, right outta my head!”
“Yes, how terrible,” Jinnah coughed. “Dreadful, my friend. I do hope you —”
“Kill the bastard if I catch him,” growled the Tin Man.
Jinnah stood, transfixed, as the man’s cyclopean eye squinted slightly and his voice dropped to a suspicious stage whisper.
“Never did get a good look at his face,” he said menacingly. “Might even come back, pretendin’ to be interested in gas cans.”
Fantastic, thought Jinnah. This is what comes of being an enterprising, self-starting reporter who doesn’t swallow the police line. An axe-murderer wants to check my fingerprints against his scalp to see if I did the head-dance on his nut. Jinnah tried to reassert what little control of the proceedings he could.
“About the fire,” he coughed. “Did you happen to see anything, my friend?”
By this time, the Tin Man had positioned himself between Jinnah and the door, barring escape. Any hopes for a quick resolution to the interview vanished as he banged his fist on the nearby counter.
“I haul wood, y’know! Outta the river — used to be a fisherman, y’know that? That’s how I had my accident.”
Before Jinnah had a chance to assimilate this information properly, the man leaned close to him, balancing his weight on the counter with one bony hand while his other drew an unsteady line down the middle of his face.
“Years ago. Line snapped on me. Tackle block came flying back before I could get outta the way. Took my left eye out and part’a my brain. Should be dead.”
“I’m awfully sorry to hear that.”
Jinnah felt in his jacket pocket for his cellphone in case he had to call 911 — not that they’d arrive in time, but at least he would have tried to save himself.
“Listen, this fire. It was Sunday evening?” Jinnah persisted, not wanting to seem unsympathetic, but business was business.
This remark elicited a strange response. The Tin Man looked around his shack as if the walls had ears.
“Shush!” he hissed. “Mounties got this place bugged!”
Jinnah found his eyes involuntarily scanning the ceiling and walls for likely spots to place a listening device. He was convinced this man could very well have burned Sam Schuster alive in cold blood — if it was possible to burn someone in cold blood. The Tin Man stood there silent for a second. He looked as if he had something devastating to add, then shook his head as if he’d forgotten what he’d been talking about and walked past Jinnah to the table. He started shuffling through the mounds of paper.
“I know why ya come,” the Tin Man said once more, using the blade of his axe to scrape a layer of newsprint and other paraphernalia off the midden. “With all yer questions about fire!”
Jinnah’s head was pounding. He felt sick. He needed both a cigarette and a tranquilizer. But some fresh air would do in the meantime and the Tin Man’s movements had opened a clear path to the door. But despite his terror, despite the feeling that he was about to hurl the contents of his stomach (mostly coffee) onto the shack floor and despite frantic messages from his brain to take three steps to freedom, the reporter in Jinnah could not help but ask one last question.
“Did you see the fire on Sunday night, sir?” he asked, steeling himself.
The Tin Man looked up sharply. His already tight face went rigid. His axe rose from off the table in his shaking fist as he transfixed Jinnah with his cyclopean stare.
“Questions! Always questions! You can never ask enough, your kind!”
This struck Jinnah as being pejorative. His jelly-like spine stiffened a scintilla.
“What do you mean by that?” he said, although not too stridently.
The Tin Man held his axe at chest height and his whole frame trembled.
“Why do ya need to know? Haven’t I given enough, eh?” he cried. “Yer a dark messenger from the black forces!”
“I’m brown, not black,” Jinnah said peevishly, now convinced the Tin Man was insulting his race and heritage.
“Black!” shouted the Tin Man. “You’re all black! All shall be consumed by fire! Ye shall burn in the flames of righteousness that the Lord shall send —”
The Tin Man raised his axe over his head with both hands as high as the low roof of the shed would allow. Jinnah needed no further prompting. Live to be insulted another day, he thought. He bolted towards the door, slipped in a puddle of ooze, lost his balance and hurled headlong out the shack onto the muddy flat. The impact knocked his glasses off. Panicked, he frantically clawed at the ground while scrambling to regain his feet. His hand closed around one glass lens just as the Tin Man appeared in the door.
“And the Lord went before them by night in a pillar of fire to lead the way!” he screamed, waving the axe. “A just and vengeful God is our Lord —”
Jinnah didn’t hang around to argue theology nor try to impress on the man the limitless mercy of Allah. He turned and put his glasses on in a single movement, then ran off at a speed that a heart constricted by decades of cigarette smoking is not designed to sustain for any great distance. The flow of oxygen to his lungs was further strangled by the conviction that a heavy, sharp axe could at any moment imbed itself in his skull. Jinnah ran faster and further than he had since he had been in compulsory military training back in Africa. He hung a wide, ragged right at the sawmill site, added his own set of deep tracks to the confusion of the crime scene, then fairly threw himself into the satellite-guided Love Machine. Hands shaking, he managed to find his keys, jam them into the ignition and roar away down Marine Drive without putting on his seatbelt. He looked in the rearview mirror at the rapidly receding driveway. There was no sign of his one-eyed host. That didn’t fool Jinnah. He put the pedal to the metal.
He drove furiously, alternately fumbling with his right hand to find and light a cigarette and his left to somehow pull out his seatbelt and snap it into place, his hands trading places on the steering wheel every few seconds like a punch-drunk boxer throwing his fists around wildly. He did not meet with a great deal of suecess on either front. He realized with a start that he was panting so hard he could scarcely breathe. Jinnah pulled over. Shaking, he turned the ignition off and got out of the van. His knees nearly buckled as he rolled around the front of his vehicle, putting a hand on the hood for support. He made it to the bushes at the side of the road just on time to heave.
“Son of a bitch!” Jinnah gasped, drawing his breath in deep, uneven gulps.
All he had wanted was some proof there had been someone else at the crime scene the night Sam Schuster died. He hadn’t planned on actually meeting that someone. Looking on the bright side, however, he now definitely had a story. Wait until he ran this little tid-bit past Sergeant Graham: he’d have to talk now. Feeling a modicum more composed, Jinnah wobbled back into the driver’s seat, lit a cigarette with palsied hands, and, after several attempts, finally managed to get his seatbelt on. He drove, quietly smoking, towards the Tribune, composing his story in his head. He was nearly there when a voice almost made him jump out of his brown skin.
“You should be in the left-hand lane within the next hundred metres in order to arrive at your designated destination,” said the on-board computer.
“Bastard!” shouted Jinnah and punched the off button so hard he nearly broke the console. “I know exactly where I’m going!”
Jinnah may have known exactly where he wanted to go when he arrived at the Tribune, but every avenue he tried proved to be a dead-end. He entered the building via the back, taking the alleyway entrance and trudging up the rear stairwell that took him to the corridor between