Streeter Box Set

by Michael Stone

  “You want to make it more fair by coming blind?” he asked as they walked to the range. “We should be about even with your glasses in the car.”

  She shot him a glance. “I have contacts, but I could be blindfolded and still outdrive you, Streeter. Golf is my sport and I’m really hot near the green. How about you?”

  He shrugged without looking at her. “I don’t put enough into the game to be hot anywhere. But I like coming out and hitting rockets once in a while. Golf courses are beautiful even if the game tortures me.”

  They bought a large bucket and set it between their tee mats. Thirty feet in front of them the ground dropped off into a lake, so it was hard to tell what kind of roll they’d get. Linda set her first ball off the tee, pulled out a five-iron, and took a practice cut. She was steady and smooth, with a full backswing. Head down, body quiet. Then she stepped up and knocked the ball straight, maybe a hundred thirty yards. Maximum for a five-iron. She could be blindfolded and outdrive him. For his part, Streeter settled on hitting three-irons off the tee. He had better control of irons than woods, and a three still gave him distance. His motion was smooth but short, with little backswing. It kept his shots straight, though not particularly long. Less chance to embarrass himself.

  “Gagliano’s shooting yesterday was all over the news,” he noted. “But the cops aren’t linking it to Watts or Swallow.”

  Linda looked up from her ball and shook her head. “I know. I had coffee with a Sergeant Haney today. He said all they have so far on that is Irwin’s speculation. They’re not even sure it was Swallow. Apparently, a lot of the cops don’t think Carol’s very reliable. Besides, there’s no physical evidence linking Swallow to anything.”

  “I know, but come on. This can’t be a coincidence. Why not just plaster his picture all over the front pages? Maybe they could flush him out. I’m sure Haney at least wants to talk to the man.”

  “He said their old mug shot of Swallow could be practically anyone.” She drove another long shot, this time with a seven-iron. Then she looked at Streeter. “Don’t forget, if it was Swallow who delivered the ribs, Watts looked right at him and probably didn’t recognize him.” Her voice hardened. “How’s Irwin doing?”

  Streeter bent down to put another ball on the tee. When he straightened up, he leaned on his iron. “She wasn’t happy when she heard about Gagliano. I spent half the morning over at her office talking about it.”

  “If she’s wound as tight as you said, who knows what this is doing to her? I’d keep my distance if I were you.” Suddenly she smiled. “It sounds like Gagliano’s lucky he’s still got a unit on him. Did you hear where he was shot?”

  Streeter hunched his shoulders in a shiver. “I can’t even think about that.” They practiced in silence for a while. “It’s spooky how Swallow can get to Carol anytime he wants,” he said. “Then he gets to Gagliano. The papers said that a lawyer’s secretary called Steve yesterday asking him to go to that old factory. Probably the same woman who picked up Watts’ ribs. I met Gagliano once. He’s not too sharp.”

  “Or careful.” She looked at his sweatshirt. “Western Michigan?”

  “I went there for a couple of years, but I never finished.” He glanced over the water and his voice lowered. “On a football scholarship. But there was an accident and I stopped playing.” He debated whether to tell her the whole story but then decided he’d wait until he knew her better. Or until never. Letting people know that he’d killed a teammate in a drunken frat-party fight was no small matter. Only his closest friends knew about it. Streeter was a junior linebacker when he drove a huge forearm into the guy’s chin, breaking his neck on the spot.

  “What kind of accident?” Linda stared closely at him.

  “A football-injury thing.” He took a short swing and shanked the ball wildly off to the left. “Haney have any ideas where Kevin is?”

  “Not really.” She waited a few seconds. “What’s your strategy?”

  “Let the cops catch him and then take credit for it. Actually, I’m doing a lot of what they are. I must have talked to forty people in the last few days. Ones who should have spotted Swallow by now. I’ll just keep nosing around and see where it takes me. Either Swallow or this mystery woman’ll screw up sooner or later. That’s how these butt-heads usually get caught. The pattern’s clear. Carol gets a note, then Watts is killed. Another note, then Gagliano. I just hope his next move is a note instead of an attack on her. Haney say anything else?”

  “Streeter, I’m off work now. All day long, I was looking forward to seeing you and, silly me, I thought maybe you felt the same. I don’t need a damned interrogation.” Linda paused. “Are you really that worried about Carol?”

  He shrugged. “Listen, I was looking forward to seeing you, too. Really. No more questions. By the way, Carol asked if she could move into the church for now. It’s safe, and that way she’d have the cops and me looking out for her around the clock.”

  “Are you going to do it?” Linda now stepped back and leaned in to her club.

  “Who knows?” Streeter smiled. “Would you be jealous?”

  Her face flushed but she ignored the question. “I just wonder how you’d like having her around all the time. You seem like a private person, Streeter. Do you really want to get directly in the line of fire? I’d give it serious thought before you decide.”

  He nodded. “That I will.”

  They finished their bucket and Linda said she had to get going. They kissed briefly at the car, and then Streeter headed back to the church. Rush-hour traffic was picking up, so he had time to think about Carol.

  “This is fucked, Street,” she had told him that morning. “Kevin got past the cops already without any problem. He can get to me whenever he wants. He can get to anyone. Look at Gagliano.”

  Streeter made the mistake of asking what would make her feel better.

  She looked hard at him for a long time and then threw him a cryptic smile, like they had a personal joke going. Stepping toward him, she lowered her voice. “I have an idea,” she said in a husky, confidential tone. “If you don’t like it, I’ll understand. Your place is solid. Secure. Like you, Street. I’d feel protected there. Kevin doesn’t know about it and I wouldn’t really be around all that much. I’m usually at work or at the courthouse. I just need a place to crash at night and relax and feel safe.”

  Streeter focused on her eyes as she spoke. She had the most exotic dark eyes. Long and narrow. Model’s eyes, world-class. Here she was talking about moving into his place, and in a tone that made it sound almost personal. “This isn’t some kind of step to get us back together, is it?” he had asked her. “I mean, I’m sure it’s not, but I have to be sure.” Slick choice of words.

  She gave him the weird smile again and just said, “What are you so afraid of? Lighten up.”

  It wasn’t much of an answer. “I’ll get back to you on it,” he told her.

  “If it makes your decision any easier, I’ve talked it over with the police in charge of my protection and they’re all for it,” she concluded.

  Now, as he drove north, he had to admit that luring Kevin to his home turf appealed to him. Mano a mano, and all that kind of thing. But Carol in his home? Maybe she was different now. Not so demanding. People change. Despite her obvious anxiousness, she had a very un-Carol-like attitude. Almost composed. But what was with all that smiling and whispering? He’d have to think about it.

  EIGHT

  Kenny Chapel actually thanked Streeter when he slapped the handcuffs on him. He seemed to mean it, too. In all the years Streeter had been a bounty hunter, he found that bail jumpers thanked him or apologized more often than not. Still, it always surprised him.

  “It’s cool, man,” Kenny muttered as the metal clamped around his tiny wrists. “Thanks. Really. And not too tight, man. Thanks, man.”

  With his palms practically touching each other in front of him just below his waist, Kenny’s bare arms looked white and stringy. Almost delicate, like
they belonged to a scrawny child. Only an extensive web of crude tattoos on both indicated that these were the arms of a man in his early twenties. Streeter almost felt like uncuffing the bony little guy and letting him go.

  Kenny had been sitting on the floor of his teenage girlfriend’s living room, focused like a heart surgeon on a plastic water pipe, when Streeter saw him through the window. He’d brought Kenny—a house burglar who favored one-stories—back to court twice before. Both times the thief was unarmed and docile. Like now, particularly after he took a few monster tokes of hash. Streeter knocked and entered. Then he brushed past the perpetually pregnant and aggressively sullen girlfriend.

  Frank had taught him long ago that, when looking for bail jumpers, he should “always check the girlfriend’s pad. Two things they need when they’re on the run,” Frank had said. “Money and poontang. They always go right for both.”

  The apartment smelled of smoldering tobacco and hash, combined with a flicker of soiled diapers. A baby cried from the back bedroom. Streeter went to Kenny and stood over him. The burglar looked like a kid playing with his toys on the floor.

  “Time to go, son,” Streeter said softly. “The judge is waiting and we don’t want Frank to lose any money because of you, do we now?”

  Kenny pushed several filthy strands of long, tangled hair from his eyes and looked up with an abstract smile. He didn’t recognize Streeter at first. Then he saw the handcuffs and remembered where he’d seen the big man before.

  “Damn,” he whispered, his smile fading. He looked to his hash pipe and then back up. “Want some, man?” he asked hopefully.

  Streeter said nothing but merely jingled the cuffs. Kenny nodded and got up. His scraggly girlfriend, looking like a grungy anorexic who’d swallowed a bowling ball, began to whine. “Just what the hell are we supposed to do if he goes to jail?” Wearing a T-shirt that implored one to “Party Naked,” she took a long, intense puff from her cigarette. She spoke again, the words coming out in thick blasts of smoke: “What about his family? You ever think of that? Did ja?”

  Streeter looked at her and then glanced around. The “living-room set” consisted of two brown beanbag chairs and a Formica coffee table. Plus a twenty-seven-inch color TV and a stereo system in the corner. There was a bright-yellow price tag dangling from the tape deck. On the walls, four aging posters of rock groups stared down defiantly. A pizza box and several empty beer cans cluttered the top of a wooden picnic table in the dining area.

  “I don’t think you really want to blame me for all this, lady,” he responded.

  “You bastard,” she shrieked with a finality indicating that she’d won the debate. She turned and stomped off to the bedroom where the baby smell originated. Streeter had his back to her and was ushering Kenny out when she reappeared, holding an aluminum baseball bat. She pulled it to her right side and stepped toward the bounty hunter. Then she let out a scream and swung at his head. Because of her advanced condition and Streeter’s being a foot taller, the best she could do was hit him feebly on the shoulder. But the blow startled him and he turned around to face her.

  “Hell, lady,” he said evenly. “Be cool.”

  Grunting “Bastard,” she again drew the weapon back. She swung once more, but Streeter easily caught the end of the bat in his right hand. He yanked it from her and shook his head.

  “Knock it off or I’ll take you in, too,” he said.

  Kenny, in a flash of drug-induced optimism, ran out the door. He was down the stairs at the end of the outdoor walkway before Streeter realized he’d bolted. Bat in hand, he took off after the burglar. By the time he saw Chapel again, the smaller man was getting seriously winded. Kenny hurtled forward from the stairs into the parking lot. With his hands cuffed and his long hair flapping angrily from side to side, he had the stuttery waddle of a penguin. Streeter caught him well before he got to the road.

  “What do you have to be such a goof for?” he asked as he grabbed Kenny’s arm. “You know you’re not going anywhere. And tell that loony girlfriend of yours, if she ever pulls that crap again, she’ll be joining you in a cell downtown.”

  Kenny looked up at him like he’d just seen him for the first time that day. “It’s cool, man. Really. I mean thanks, man.”

  Streeter dropped the bat into his car trunk and put Kenny in the front seat, and they headed downtown. Chapel’s girlfriend lived in the western suburb of Lakewood, so they had about ten miles of city driving time. “You got yourself one screwed-up life going on here, Kenny,” Streeter said as he drove. “Your damn head’s jammed so far up your rear end it doesn’t look like it’s ever coming out. I don’t want to lecture you, but what the hell’s going on?” He turned to look at his passenger. “Dope, kids, squalor. And you with all those felony B-and-E’s. Then there’s your lady. Jesus! Where’d you find her? You’ve got things wired so bad you may never straighten it all out.”

  “I hear you, man,” Kenny said with pained sincerity. He shook his head sadly and looked down at his feet. “Life’s a real bitch.”

  “That’s horseshit and you know it. Life’s just life. You’re making it a bitch.” Streeter was quiet. When he spoke again his voice was more relaxed. “I hate to see you throw it away. Anyone who can open up houses like you certainly can learn a skill. Welding, auto repair. Become a locksmith, for crying out loud. Make something out of yourself. You’ve sure got the smarts.”

  Kenny shook his head again. “I hear you, man.” He sounded like he couldn’t possibly agree more with what was coming his way. “I plan on getting it together. It’s just that life’s such a real bitch. It gets oudda hand real fast for me. Always has.”

  “Right! You’ve just got to change the way you operate. You know Frank’s…”

  “I thought you said you didn’t want to lecture me,” Chapel interrupted, turning to face Streeter. He sounded irritated for the first time. Frank had been his bondsman since he started crossing the line as a teenager. “It sounds like that’s just what you’re doing here, man. I get the picture. Okay?”

  Streeter shook his head. “It’s your life.”

  They stopped for a red light on East Colfax. Denver’s skyline loomed neatly in front of them. From certain angles, it looked like a mini–New York. The light changed, and as they pulled away from the corner, Kenny spoke. “You still looking for that jerkoff Kevin Swallow?” He threw it out there without facing the driver.

  Streeter couldn’t hide his surprise. He shot a long glance at Kenny. “What do you know about him?”

  Chapel eased down in the seat. A grin yawned across his face. With his hands still cuffed in front of him, he pulled a cigarette from his shirt pocket.

  Streeter reached over with his right hand and deftly grabbed it from Kenny’s mouth. “No smoking in here and I asked you a question, son. How did you find out about me and Swallow?” There wasn’t a hint of patience in his voice.

  Kenny sat up and looked pained again. “You promise to tell Frank that I’m still good people? I can’t have that guy all pissed off at me, you know.”

  Streeter didn’t answer right away. Then, “Kevin Swallow. Come on.”

  “Ramos, the fence. Edgar Ramos told me. Jesus, Streeter, lotta people heard what’s going on. Everyone but the goddamned CNN. You been all over town asking about him. The cops, too.” Then he answered the unasked. “No one’s seen him, I know of. He don’t have many friends but a lotta people know the guy. No one’s seen him, and Ramos would know if they did.”

  Streeter stayed quiet and Kenny started to fidget.

  “But it might could be that I heard something that’ll help you out,” the burglar finally said.

  Streeter shot him another long glance. “I’m listening.”

  “You promise to talk to Frank for me?”

  “Maybe. It depends. What did you hear?”

  Kenny shrugged and shook his head. “I know this bartender. Weird guy. Makes a little book, too. Lives out in Aurora. Gino Gallo. You mighta dealt with him. Anyhow, I
was having a beer one night a few weeks ago at this place he works and he’s telling me about his sister. Gina. Ain’t that a pisser? Brother and sister named Gina and Gino. Anyhow, Gino was talking to her earlier that day and she was bragging about her squeeze. The guy’s supposed to be a regular boner who’s done serious state time. Gino said she calls him Kev. No full name, but I’m thinking Kev, like in Kevin. As in Swallow. This all stuck with me because Gino musta gone on about the situation for half an hour. Jesus, the guy gets off on something, he don’t shut up about it.”

  “Do you actually know Kevin Swallow?”

  “What’s the difference? Anyhow, Gina’s saying Kev lives with her and they’re doing all kinds of shit together. Seems Gina inherited their old lady’s place out past Evergreen. Something like that. I gather Gina’s some kind of con groupie that only goes out with total maniacs, which would fit Kevin’s description. She says that what the two of them’s doing is heavy-duty. Gino’s going on about how his sister’s this lost soul and how he’s praying for her every couple of hours. It was like listening to a sermon.” He paused. “Sort of like listening to you.”

  Streeter ignored the crack. “Where does Gino work?”

  “He don’t anymore. Got fired.”

  “Do you know where he lives?”

  “Out in Aurora. He has a place on Horse Turd Lane or one of them screwy street names they got out there.”

  “What makes you think he’s leveling with you?”

  “Why would he lie? To impress me?” Then, in a rare moment of candid self-reflection, Kenny added, “Never no one tries to impress me. That oughta be obvious.” He looked straight ahead again. “Will you smooth things out with Frank?”