He led me down a couple of hallways, then into a small office. Cherry dropped into a metal and plastic chair behind a cluttered desk. I glanced at some mug shots on the wall as I sat down opposite him.
“So you’re with the Metropolitan?” he asked.
I nodded. I didn’t see the sense in being specific about my current status with the paper.
“You got some ID?” he asked.
I fished out my laminated Metropolitan card and tossed it on Cherry’s desk. Fortunately, Magnuson had not thought to make me surrender it. If I were a cop, I’d have had to turn in my shield and my piece, but reporters didn’t carry around that much paraphernalia. Cherry glanced at it, tossed it back.
“Long way from home,” he said. “What brings you up here?”
“The Kickstart shootings,” I said.
“Whoa, that goes back,” he said, sitting up in his chair and leaning forward across his desk. “Man, that was something, certainly by this town’s standards. A triple gang shooting. Watcha looking into that for?”
“It’s kind of complicated,” I said. “But there might be a connection between those shootings and a recent murder in Oakwood. A columnist with that town’s paper got himself killed.”
“Interesting. We were never able to close that one. Had our suspicions, of course, but we never nailed anybody for it.”
“Who was your leading suspect?”
“More like suspects. Those clowns that got killed, they were part of a small-time biker gang called the Slots. They had a running rivalry with the Comets over drugs, hookers, that kind of thing.” I was nodding. “Maybe you already know some of this,” he said.
“I did a bit of reading at the library before coming over. I found your name in a lot of the stories. That’s what led me here. I guess I’m looking for anything that didn’t make the papers, recent developments, that kind of thing.”
“Well, no recent developments. It’s an open file, like I said. Couple odd things, though. I was expecting some retaliation after it went down. Figured the Comets would lose a couple guys, maybe their place would get firebombed, something. But it actually got quieter afterwards. Whatever it was, whoever it was, it kind of brought some peace to the situation. In fact, it was relatively peaceful even before that. Few months earlier, another guy from the Kickstart was killed, car got shoved in front of a train, but not much fallout from that either. And it’s not like crime stopped after that triple shooting. The Comets, they took over from the Slots, they don’t have much competition even to this day.”
“So it worked for them, killing those three,” I said. “They scared this Gary Merker right out of business.”
Cherry looked thoughtful. “Yeah, ol’ Pick got out of Dodge. It seems to have worked out that way. But I was never sure the Comets were responsible. The thing is-we off the record here for a minute?”
“Sure.” I didn’t even have a notepad out.
“We got approval for a slew of wiretaps on the Comets. We got hours and hours of their head guy, Bruce Wingstaff-Wingnut to his detractors-and the rest of his crew, chatting away, and there was never a word about the Kickstart thing, other than being somewhat amazed by it.”
“Maybe they knew they were being listened in on.”
“Well, if they did, then why’d they talk about everything else? Dope deals, busting some guy’s knees who didn’t pay on time, girls they had working for them. All sorts of shit. But nothing about the Kickstart. I mean, they talked about it, but more along the lines of ‘I wonder who the fuck killed those motherfucking Slots?’”
“So they were as baffled as everybody else?”
“Seemed that way.”
“What about Merker and his friend Leonard Edgars? They weren’t there at the time, didn’t get shot.”
“Yeah, there’s that,” Cherry said. There was something in his tone, a hint of skepticism.
“What? What are you thinking?”
“Again, this is off-the-record speculation, but I always thought it was convenient that Merker wasn’t there. Him and Edgars, who he always treated kind of like a brother. The slow-witted one.”
“So what are you saying? That he had someone hit the place after hours, shoot his three former pals, then make off with the receipts for the day?”
Cherry frowned. “No, not that. He’d hardly need to hire someone for a job like that. I suspect Merker would have all the requisite skills.”
“You think Merker did it? That he killed three members of his own gang?”
Cherry raised his hands in the air in a gesture of frustration. “Who knows? It’s just one of the things I’ve been kicking around ever since that night. I wouldn’t even be thinking along that line, except there was that other incident, the one I mentioned a moment ago, happened the year before.”
I waited.
“His number two guy.”
“Eldon Swain,” I said.
Michael Cherry made his hand into a gun and shot it at me. “Bingo. Eldon Swain. Got shoved into the path of a train. He’s in the car, truck comes up behind, rams him right into the front of it. Messy.”
“There’d been another, similar incident.”
“Yeah. One of the Comets died that way. Everything about it was the same. Except the first time, it’s a guy from one gang, second time it’s somebody from another.”
“Okay,” I said.
“We thought Pick-that’s the name I always think of first for Merker-looked good for the first one. Then another guy dies, same M.O. Makes you wonder.” He shook his head. “I wonder where that son of a bitch ended up.”
“He’s in the stun gun business,” I said. “With Edgars.”
“No shit?”
“He just tried to get our cops to buy a bunch of them.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Cherry said, starting to smile. “Pick is flogging stun guns to cops?”
I nodded.
“Man, that guy has got balls. So, he’s working for a stun gun company?”
“I got the impression he was his own boss. They hit police union meetings. Edgars demonstrates for him. Merker shoots him with the gun, gives Edgars fifty thousand volts. Says he’s done it a couple dozen times to him so far.”
“Jesus. That guy wasn’t working with a full deck of neurons back when I knew him. What must he be like after getting fried with a stun gun a few times?” Cherry kept shaking his head at the audacity of it all. “You know, there’s something about this that rings a bell someplace…” He turned to his computer, started tapping away at some keys. “There was this heist, about six months ago, this place that’s making a new line of stun guns, uses like high-intensity vapor or water or something…”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what he’s selling.”
“Okay, here it is. Like, four dozen of these things were ripped off. In Illinois. There’s not a lot of these out there yet. New technology. That’d be a great way to unload them, sell them to cops. Nice way to bring a guy down without having to kill him, avoid a massive investigation. Regular crooks, they’d rather just have guns. It’s not like they’re going to face Internal Affairs.”
“You don’t honestly think,” I said, “that Merker would try to sell hot stun guns to the police, do you?”
Cherry was smiling ear to ear. “I’m flattered that you think that no cop would ever buy anything stolen.” He kept grinning. “This is beautiful. This would be so Pick. I mean, really, who’d check? Who’d even think that someone would try to sell stolen goods to a bunch of cops? They buy any?”
“I don’t think so. I was covering it for the paper, and Merker got kind of skittish when he found out the press was there. Is it ballsy, selling police stolen goods, or just incredibly stupid?”
“With Pick, it would be a bit of both. One time, he calls us, keep in mind now that at the Kickstart, they’re dealing drugs, girls giving blowjobs upstairs, and he’s on our ass about people parking illegally out front of his place. Wanted to know what the fuck he was paying taxes for.”
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“And tell me, why do they call Gary Merker Pick?”
Cherry smiled. “Obsessive nose picker, with intense concentration. He could be beating a guy to death with one hand and still have a finger from his other mining away. Don’t shake his hand, don’t borrow his pen. You don’t know where they’ve been.”
I felt queasy.
“I got another question,” I said. “Part of the story I’m working on involves tracking down a woman who I think may have had something to do with the Slots, or with Merker.”
“You got a name?”
“Trixie Snelling.”
Cherry’s eyebrows came together in thought. “Doesn’t ring any kind of bell.”
“She might not have been going by Snelling then,” I said. “I don’t honestly know.”
“Merker had a lot of girls in and out of the Kickstart. Stripping, hooking, waiting tables. Lot of turnover in a place like that. I don’t ever remember a Trixie. What do you know about this woman? You got a picture or anything?”
I took the clipping from the Suburban out of my pocket, unfolded it, and put it on his desk. “She might have looked different then, hair color, that kind of thing.”
Cherry studied the shot, shook his head. “I don’t think so. What can you tell me about her?”
“Last few years, she’s lived in Oakwood. Trained in accounting, but actually making a living as a dominatrix. A pretty good living, I think.”
Cherry’s eyebrows went way up. “Really? The whole whips and chains thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Still doesn’t ring any kind of bell.”
“She might have had a child. Very young at the time. A little girl.”
“I still got noth…A little girl, you say?”
I nodded.
“I seem to recall, I think it was Eldon Swain. I think he may have had a kid. I remember, when he died, there was something about him leaving a baby girl behind.”
“He was married?”
“Don’t think so, but yeah, I think he might have had a kid. Maybe with one of the dancers there, I don’t know.” He thought a moment. “You know who might be able to tell you?”
I waited.
“Wingstaff.”
“The head of the Comets?” I said. “The biker?”
“Yeah. I could give him a call. Get the two of you together. He might know something about this Trixie chick. The two gangs actually knew each other pretty well, before the Slots up and faded away. When they weren’t trying to kill each other, they were probably drinking, fucking each other’s women.”
I glanced at the clock. Nervously, I said, “It’s the dinner hour. We wouldn’t want to disturb him during the dinner hour.” I was pretty relaxed talking to cops, but did I really want to talk to a biker boss?
“Nah, he’ll be fine. We’re on opposite sides, Bruce and I, but we get along. You’ll like him.”
I was not so sure.
Cherry was reaching for the phone, but before he could dial I had one more question.
“There was something, in one of the Metropolitan stories I think, hinting that there was something unusual about the manner in which those three guys were shot at the Kickstart.”
“Yeah,” Cherry said, holding the phone in midair. “We didn’t release everything to the press.”
“It’s been a while,” I said. “What was it?”
Cherry shook his head. “I’d like to tell you, but I’m not sure it would be a good idea at this time.”
“Let me ask you this,” I said, thinking back to the question I felt obliged to consider, even though I didn’t believe it was possible.
“Shoot,” Cherry said.
“Do you think a woman could have killed those three club members at the Kickstart?”
Cherry considered a moment before answering. “Maybe.”
21
Detective Cherry got hold of Bruce Wingstaff. I heard only half the conversation, which struck me as surprisingly friendly. “Okay, so we’ll catch up with you there,” Cherry said, and rang off. “He’s good for seven. That gives us a bit of time. You got plans for dinner?”
I said no. “But I don’t want to be any trouble. Like, I don’t want you to miss dinner with your wife or anything.”
“No wife, no kids,” Cherry said. “We’ll grab something.”
I followed him out of the building the back way. We were almost to his unmarked Ford sedan when Cherry stopped abruptly and said he had to go back inside and tend to one thing he’d forgotten. I waited in the car and he reappeared about ten minutes later. We drove across town to a run-down-looking building that could have been a small motor repair shop, but was actually a restaurant. The clue was the Good Eats neon sign hanging over the doorway. Cherry led me inside, and a cloud of cigarette smoke billowed out as he opened the door. A waitress with big hair, lots of lipstick, and, I had to admit, a rather spectacularly engineered figure smiled at Cherry like he was a regular and showed us to a table.
I waved my hand in the air as Cherry got out some cigarettes.
“This town doesn’t have antismoking bylaws?” I asked.
Cherry nodded. “Sure. We just choose not to enforce them. And Rose, who runs this joint, she pretends not to notice.” He tipped his cigarette pack toward me. “Smoke?”
“No thanks,” I said, “I’ll just breathe the air. How’s the food here?”
“Basic. But good.” The big-haired waitress came over and got close enough to the booth so Cherry could give her a friendly squeeze around the middle. He pushed his head into her breasts. “How’s my honey?” he said.
She smiled. “They ain’t a pillow, Mikey,” she said. “What’ll you have?”
Cherry ordered a cheeseburger with onion rings and I said I’d have the same. When the waitress walked away, Cherry lit up, leaned across the table almost conspiratorially, and said, “So, you’re suspended.”
For a second I thought maybe I’d pretend not to be shocked that he knew this, but I didn’t have the stuff to pull that off.
“That’s right,” I said.
“I made a call when I went back inside. To your paper, to check you out. And they know you there, no question about it. But evidently you were put on a bit of a leave recently. I don’t like it, people don’t play straight with me.”
I swallowed, took a sip from my glass of water. “I haven’t told you anything that wasn’t the truth.”
Cherry put his index finger in the air. “Ahh, but, you haven’t told me everything. That’s a little bit like lying.”
“I’m still on the Metropolitan payroll. And with any luck, if I can figure out what happened up here, and find out what happened to Trixie Snelling, I think I might be able to end this suspension.”
“If you’re straight with me, then I can be straight with you. And if you’re not,” he leaned back in the booth, took a long drag on his cigarette and blew out smoke like he was a steam engine, “I can kick your ass all the way back to the city.”
“Do you think I could get a beer?” I said.
Cherry waved his waitress over. “Couple of beers here, hon,” he said. She had the bottles on our table in under two minutes.
I told Cherry everything I could think of. Finding Martin Benson’s body, Trixie’s disappearance, my being left handcuffed in the basement. Flint’s investigation. How Trixie’s dragging me into this mess might cost me my career with the paper. That once I’d learned all I could in Canborough, I was off to Groverton, based on no more than a gas station receipt I’d taken from Trixie’s car.
“If you find her,” Cherry said, “you might learn something that could help me with my open file on the Kickstart murders.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He took a swig from the long-neck bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Are you going to dick around with me anymore?”
“No,” I said.
Our cheeseburgers arrived. They were the size of curling stones, without the handles.
“Th
at’s good. Because you seem like a nice guy, and I’ve set up this thing with Bruce, and it would be a shame to cancel.”
“I appreciate it,” I said.
Cherry worked his hands around the cheeseburger. “If this doesn’t make your heart stop, you’ll really enjoy it.”
My heart was still beating when we left, but I was pretty sure I’d come down with a touch of lung cancer. My clothes reeked of cigarette smoke. When we came out into the night air, I sucked in as much of it as I could, feeling as though I’d just emerged from a house fire.
“You need to hang out in more dives,” Cherry said. “I thought newspaper reporters were a bunch of hard-drinking, heavy-smoking types.”
“That’s kind of changed over the years,” I said. “Now we all own minivans and have to leave work early to get our kids to soccer.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Cherry said.
“What?” I said.
“You’ll see.”
Cherry turned into an industrial area on the outskirts of Canborough. He slowed as we passed a low-rise concrete-block building with bars on the windows. Surveillance cameras and spotlights were mounted in several spots just under the eaves. Half a dozen motorcycles, big ones with sweeping handlebars, were parked out front.
“Clubhouse,” Cherry said. “This is where the Comets hang out, conduct their business. Some of them even sleep here, pretty much live here.”
“Wingstaff?”
“No. He’s got a house in town. Doesn’t look like a bunker, but it’s still got plenty of surveillance equipment around it.”
I felt a sense of unease sweep over me. “We’re going in here?”
“Huh? No. This is just part of the tour. We’re meeting Bruce someplace else.”
Cherry turned around in the gravel lot out front of the clubhouse and headed back into the city’s older residential district. We were driving through a neighborhood of traditional Victorian-type homes when we came upon a large park illuminated with flood-lamps.
We parked, and as we walked toward the park, we could hear the sounds of children’s voices, pounding feet, soft chatter. It was a kids’ soccer match, boys about ten years old, kicking the ball back and forth, working their way from one end of the field to the other. Standing along the sidelines, and sitting in a set of wooden bleachers, parents watched and cheered.
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