by H. P. Bayne
Dez resisted an unhappy reply at the price as he dug a five from his wallet and handed it over with an instruction for the clerk to keep the change. Not that the kid had earned it exactly, but it was easier for Dez to claim five bucks than to remember a more precise figure later on.
He moved along the line toward the pick-up area, listening to the sounds of hissing steam, complicated orders being shouted at waiting customers and indistinct chatter of those seated at the tables inside. Greg waited a few minutes before being handed something in a tall paper cup with Kip’s recognizable cartoon dog on the side. Then he made a beeline for one of the empty tables.
Brief dread seized Dez as he realized Greg had located one of only a handful of empty places in the joint. With two people waiting on orders before Dez, a solid chance existed he’d be left without anywhere to sit once he had his drink in hand. He couldn’t exactly hover along a wall, sipping casually at his tea without being spotted, whatever his appearance.
Fortunately, luck was on his side once again. His drink order having been shouted at him, he seized his paper cup and paced over to one of only two remaining empty tables. There, giving a quick sigh of relief, he positioned himself where he could watch Greg without appearing too obvious about it, putting his chair at an angle and pulling out his cellphone. Phones were good for many things, not least of all giving a person the appearance of being busy and otherwise occupied. Greg didn’t so much as cast Dez a glance.
Five minutes passed with Greg sitting alone at the table, blowing on his drink and attempting occasional sips. Dez had sat roughly parallel to Greg, hopefully putting him in a position to get a good look at whoever might be joining him—because that’s what Dez decided was happening. No way Greg had driven all the way downtown through heavy traffic and paid the exorbitant rates for a midtown parking lot in order to get a cup of coffee he could have found much closer to home. Hell, Dez knew of a cheaper coffee shop just down from Greg’s house with significantly better coffee.
Dez turned his attention to studying people entering the coffee shop, wondering if any of them were here to meet Greg. The man wasn’t married, so maybe he was meeting a date. If so, that could prove helpful. Most men liked to put their best foot forward with potential partners. If he was faking his injury, it might become more immediately apparent if he was trying to impress a woman. He was well into his sixties now, approaching retirement age. He might want to prove he was as fit now as he was in his younger years.
Especially since the woman he was meeting was in her twenties.
Dez held back a low whistle. Well done, Greg, he thought as he watched an attractive lady with curly black hair and flawless brown skin slide in across from Greg. Dez had seen her come in but hadn’t for a moment pegged her as the one Greg was here to meet.
Who knew?
Dez’s phone still in hand, he positioned it in a way that would allow him to snap a photo of the pair. Not the ideal position, with an uproariously laughing man at one of the tables in between throwing his body back and forth and ruining the shot, but Dez managed a few anyway. The woman looked familiar, though he couldn’t place her anywhere. Maybe if he watched long enough, it would come to him.
Not for the first time, Dez wished he could read lips. Conversation was passing between the two, and best Dez could tell, it possessed a certain intensity. The tone was serious.
Not a date, then. So what was it?
The situation took another turn as Greg reached into the pocket of his coat and produced a long envelope, thickly stuffed. This he handed over to the woman, who slid it into her bag. She didn’t provide anything in return—not here and now, anyway—leaving Dez to play a mental guessing game. She didn’t look remotely shady to him. Then again, a lot had changed, even in the few years since Dez had worked in his former profession. The drug scene had changed, and so had organized crime in general. It was bigger business these days, and bigger business might mean more professional players. Anything was possible.
The meeting between the pair lasted too long, though, even for a higher-end transaction. This was something else. All of Dez’s instincts ran that way, and he’d long ago learned to trust his instincts as much as the more-rational part of his brain.
Greg ended the meeting first, standing from the table even as the woman’s expression suggested she was imploring him to stay.
No, definitely not a date. No way a woman who looked like her would need to beg a man for anything, particularly not a man close to three times her age. More likely the situation would be the other way around.
Something else, then. Which left Dez in a quandary. Did he continue to follow Greg, or did he follow this new lead and tail the woman?
He gave it only a brief moment’s thought before instinct once again won out. The woman. Definitely the woman.
Dez waited until Greg left through the door he’d previously entered, casting no glances at Dez or anyone else as he went. Assured his cover was still safe with Greg, anyway, Dez turned his attention to the woman as she did her coat back up and stood, slinging her bag over her left shoulder. He waited until she’d left the coffee shop, then watched her direction of travel through the window. As he stood, he discovered with no real surprise he was one of several men whose gazes followed her as she left.
Keeping his movements casual and slow, lest anyone conclude he was stalking her, Dez carried his half-empty cup to the trash and left the building.
While being tall could make pulling a tail a challenge, it could also be of tremendous benefit.
The woman wasn’t overly tall—Dez put her at five-four or five-five at the most, and that was in heels—meaning she got lost from time to time in the crowds on the sidewalks. His height meant Dez was able to keep an eye on the crown of her head as she moved farther south, taking her deeper into the downtown core.
Dez kept a healthy distance back although it probably wasn’t necessary given how busy the streets were. At last, she reached her destination and hauled open one of a set of tall glass doors.
Dez moved past the building, needing nothing further to identify the woman. He knew now why he’d recognized her.
Sarah Leffler with the Kimotan Rapids Tribune.
Now the question remaining was what business Greg Waterford had with a reporter.
8
Sully found Dez where he’d been sitting when they’d last switched shifts on surveillance, hunkered in his SUV the next block down from Greg Waterford’s.
“Anything?” Sully asked upon dropping into the passenger seat and shutting the door.
Dez lifted a brow. “Interesting day, as they go. Our boy here took a little drive downtown to go to a coffee shop.”
Sully quirked up a corner of his mouth. “Was it a good coffee shop?”
“Only in an informative way. Greg met with a reporter from the Tribune. Sarah Leffler. Know her?”
“Not personally,” Sully said.
Dez pulled out his phone. “Well, I’ve been doing a little digging. She reports on a number of topics, but her main beat seems to be business. Most recently, her byline’s been attached to stories about the proposed development at Dead Man’s Lake. The story that got you hot under the collar this morning? One of hers.”
Sully puzzled over it for a moment before answering. “Okay. Any idea why Greg met with her?”
“Couldn’t sit close enough, unfortunately, and my lip-reading skills aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. What I did see was Greg handing over an envelope stuffed with something or other. They parted ways pretty quickly after the exchange.”
“You think it might have something to do with Brinks Development?”
Dez frowned. “No idea. And I can’t think of a way to ask the reporter. Unless …”
Sully stared as Dez broke into a grin. “What?” Letting the word bleed every ounce of suspicion he felt.
“She’s really pretty, Sull.”
Sully shook his head. “No.”
“Come on, Sull. You’re a goo
d-looking guy. She’s a good-looking woman. You haven’t gotten any in ages. What’s the problem?”
“Are you serious?”
Dez shrugged.
Sully sighed. “Dez, come on. You’re asking me to use her for intel. I can’t do that.”
Dez chuckled. “Okay, Sir Galahad, don’t worry. I won’t ask you to breach your code of chivalry or anything. All I’m suggesting is you swing by her office, put your pretty face to work. See if you can meet with her at her desk, scope out what’s on it. Maybe the documents will be there. If not the documents, maybe some notes or something.”
Sully slouched low in his seat and crossed his arms. He knew he must look like a sulking teenager, but he didn’t care.
And Dez thought Sully’s ideas sucked.
“Come on. I’m not asking you to sleep with her or anything. Just take a quick look. If nothing shows, we’ll ditch the idea.”
Sully heaved another sigh, this one heavier than the last—the sound of unhappy surrender. “Okay. Okay, I’ll go tomorrow, long as she’s in. Satisfied?”
Dez’s annoying grin suggested he was very much satisfied. Sully changed the topic.
“You might be interested to know while you were driving around and going for coffee, I was visiting Forbes.”
“Yeah, and? Find out anything?”
Sully unfolded himself and wriggled up straighter in his seat. “He checked their files for me. Seems like a dead end.”
“So to speak.”
Sully ignored the quip. “Older files are in paper form and stored off-site. I’m not sure how easy they’ll be to get to; hopefully Forbes will check them for us. In the meantime, he went through whatever reports they had in their computer system. They got some calls they got about a man covered in ice, but police have gotten to the point of taking a cursory look and leaving. Far as they’re concerned, they’re dealing with prank calls most of the time. Mostly, they’re being given nothing more than descriptions of a man covered in ice. The ones with additional descriptions talk about dark clothing.”
“No red-and-black-checked coat?”
Sully shook his head. “No. I’ve thought of something, though. I didn’t ask Forbes about time of day or weather conditions at the times of the supposed sightings. Wet material always appears darker than it really is, right? Depending on the lighting outside, it could be the coat he was wearing came off as dark in colour—especially if it turns out the witnesses were a fair distance away. It’s been sunny recently, and your neighbour was pretty close to the ghost. He would have gotten a more detailed description because of it.”
Dez gave a slow nod. “Yeah, makes sense. So there’s a chance some of the sightings have been legit?”
“I’m sure at least a few were. I’m with Marc. Lots are probably made up or mistaken, but some have to be real, given the similarities to what your neighbour saw. I also went through the missing persons’ list Forbes pointed me to. It took forever, but I didn’t find any sign of the man I saw in the water.”
“Which means what, exactly?” Dez asked.
“You tell me. You’re the ex-cop.”
Dez stared out the windshield, eyes slightly narrowed. “Could be no one reported him missing. Or it might be he just never made the site.”
“Except Forbes came up with nothing matching the description I gave either. I think your first assumption is the right one. No one ever reported his disappearance. Why would that be? Most people have someone who’d miss them.”
“Sure, most people. Not everyone. Could be he was a street person. If so, could be no one noticed. Lots of street people aren’t quick to trust the police. They wouldn’t be too comfortable walking in and filing a missing person’s report. Anyway, given the crap he pulled today with you, maybe he was a nasty SOB in life too. When he went missing, everyone around him might have thanked their lucky stars and went on with things with little more thought about him.”
Sully had to concede the point. “Could be, yeah. Makes sense. Of course, that doesn’t help us much. Might turn out the only way to find out who he is, is to ask him.”
Dez turned in his seat, a point ready to be made. “Which isn’t happening. Right?” Less a question than a demand.
“Not the way we did it last time,” Sully assured him.
Dez studied him another few seconds, with Sully holding his eye, determined to assure him he wasn’t going to be an idiot about this. Sure, he’d taken some dumb chances in the past, but he wasn’t attempting this one.
He’d be lying if he said the incident earlier hadn’t freaked him out as badly as it had Dez. Combine his caution around ice with a weighty respect for particularly powerful ghosts, and he wasn’t about to take additional, unnecessary chances.
“I’ll take over here,” he told Dez. “Go home and have yourself a relaxing evening.”
As much as a relaxing evening at home seemed ideal, Dez opted to make another stop first.
The conversation with Sully had twigged something for him, got him thinking about the possibility the Ice Man had lived on the streets. Since the reports went back a few decades, it was questionable how many street people would recall someone who disappeared back then. However, in Dez’s experience, unturned stones sometimes hid the biggest undiscovered clues.
When his phone call went unanswered, he drove the streets of Riverview in search of his friend Billy “Bulldog” Bird. Somewhere in his fifties, Bulldog had lived a hard life and had spent many of his years on the streets because of it. He was well-liked by most everyone and had a large stable of people he could go to for information—the chief reason he’d made such a damn fine informant while Dez had been a cop and why he continued to be useful now Dez was a PI.
Of course, he was only useful if Dez could find him.
He drove half an hour, seeking answers about Bulldog’s whereabouts from a range of people Dez recognized both from his years as a cop and from a rough patch he’d trodden a few years ago. During that dark time, some of these people had gone from being former informants to drinking pals. He’d laid in the ditches with them, no judgment either side, and they hadn’t forgotten.
So it was without reservation one of them directed Dez to a place on Windygate Street, an apartment building nearly as old as the city itself. Dez pulled up in time to see Bulldog walking up the street toward the building’s front entrance.
Bulldog had been nicknamed as such thanks to his jowls, which had drawn lower with age. But as he saw Dez, the skin tightened around a wide grin. Dez was surprised by Bulldog’s beefy embrace, his thick, solid arms catching him around the middle.
“Copper!” Bulldog said. “How the hell are ya?”
Dez patted his friend on the back before pulling away. “All good, man. But you—I hear you’re living here now?”
“Damn straight, brother. Come on up, I’ll give you the grand tour.”
Unable to resist the temptation, Dez followed as Bulldog slipped a key into the entrance lock and let them in. The building was on the run-down side—as were most structures in the Riverview neighbourhood—yet it had nonetheless retained some old-world charm in the wainscoting, light fixtures and stair railings, all of which were no doubt original to the place. The carpets definitely weren’t, and there were enough tears to create a potential legal disaster for the owner should someone trip and injure themselves.
All that said, it was a real residence Bulldog showed him into. Over the years, Bulldog had stayed firmly and proudly a man of the streets, holding tight to his desire to avoid joining what he called “the establishment.” He’d survived by sleeping rough on warm nights and couch-surfing or frequenting shelters when the weather was bad. Never had Dez known him to so much as consider getting his own place.
Now Dez found himself eyeing the nine-foot ceilings and tall living room windows of the beaten-up old brownstone with something approaching awe.
“Bulldog,” he said. He’d intended more, but more wasn’t forthcoming just yet, the words not having fully form
ed between his brain and lips.
“I know.” Bulldog spread his arms as if he were showing the grand prize on a gameshow. “I’ve gone establishment.”
“I don’t get it. I mean, it’s great. I’m thrilled. But … I don’t get it. How are you paying for it?”
Bulldog dropped his arms and shrugged. “Got myself a job. Like I said, establishment.”
Dez was pretty sure the second coming was nigh. “A job? Where?”
“The sporting equipment shop down the road. Old friend of mine gave up on street life long before I did, and he’s managing the joint now. Needed some reliable help, so he asked me. I’ve been there a couple months now. Full-time too. Who woulda thought, huh?”
“Yeah,” Dez agreed. “Who woulda thought? That’s awesome, man. Like, really awesome. Never thought I’d see it.”
“Yeah, me neither. Reality was starting to bite me on the ass, though. I’m getting older, my friend. Sleeping rough or on those uncomfortable shelter beds isn’t my bag anymore. Used to be no problem. Lately, I’ve been waking up with a stiff neck and back. I can’t imagine being out there in ten years.
“Anyway, the streets aren’t what they used to be. Lots of the people I used to hang with are gone. Ones left aren’t people I want to know. Drugs they’re peddling these days, they make people crazy and mean, and everyone’s packing heat. You look at someone wrong, your next bed is a metal slab in the city morgue. Things are changing, Copper, and not for the better.”
Dez turned on a sympathetic smile. He knew what Bulldog was saying. Fentanyl had hit the streets, and the number of overdoses was terrifying. Every month, police released their stats on the calls they’d attended—and they didn’t even attend all of them.
“Fetty’s taken out a lot of people I considered friends,” Bulldog said. “Other people have died from booze or natural causes. Some cleaned up and found jobs through The Hub or other places like that. I felt like I was being left behind.”
Dez clapped Bulldog on the shoulder. “Well, I’m proud of you, pal. I know you’ve lived a crap life, and I know what a huge change this must have been for you.”