Racing the Devil

by Jaden Terrell

  “I’ll pass it on to Frank and Harry.” This was one thing I didn’t miss about the job. I regret to inform you . . .

  A familiar voice interrupted my thoughts. “Hey, Jared! Jared McKean!”

  I turned to face the owner of the voice and found myself face to face with Louis Wilder. Lou was about my height, but stockier, with short red hair cut in a buzz and a broad, square face with a thick neck. His shoulders strained at the jacket of his double-breasted suit. He would have looked more natural in cleats and a football jersey.

  “Hey, Lou.”

  Jay stepped aside, as if announcing we were not together. Which in a way, made it look even more like we were.

  Lou’s eyes darted from me to Jay, then back again. I saw the question in his face, but he didn’t ask it. Instead, he said, “I been trying to call you.”

  “I got your message. Sorry I haven’t been able to catch you.”

  He shuffled his feet, cleared his throat. “I heard about that little mess you got yourself in.”

  Only Lou would call being arrested for murder a little mess.

  “Yeah. I’m working on it.”

  “Well, I thought you should know. I did a job on you awhile back.”

  “What?”

  “I had a client, wanted me to follow you, find out where you went, what your routines were, all that stuff. Wanted to know everything. He was real interested in what went down with you and Ashleigh Arneau last year.”

  “Was he?”

  “Yeah, well, this guy wants to know all about what happened, how serious you were with Ashleigh. He wants to know where you go on Friday nights. He wants to know how often you see your kid. Everything.”

  “And you did this?”

  “Hey, man. A job’s a job. Somebody hires you to shadow me for a couple of weeks, you gonna turn it down?”

  “I’d want to know why. But yeah, I’d probably turn it down.”

  He flushed a deep red, laughed a short, harsh burst. “Yeah. Well. Maybe. You’re a better man than me, Cowboy. Anyway, I thought you’d want to know, under the circumstances. I heard Ashleigh Arneau say you were claiming that some mystery chick had set you up. And I thought, hey, maybe he’s right.”

  “Who, Lou?” My fists clenched. I took a deep, calming breath and forced them open. “Who hired you?”

  “Aw, now, you know I can’t tell you that.” He backed away, hands raised chest-high. “Client confidentiality and all.”

  “Lou, I want to know who hired you.” I moved toward him, and he backpedaled as fast as he could go.

  Jay caught me by the elbow.

  “No, Jared. Don’t.”

  I shook him off and said through gritted teeth, “This bastard knows who set me up, and he is by God going to tell me who it was.”

  “Sorry, Charlie.” Lou slipped into the crowd with unusual grace for a muscle-bound hulk. “Gotta run. Lotsa luck.”

  I went after him like a shark after chum, grabbed him by the back of the collar and spun him around. “You call Frank Cam-panella. Homicide. You call him, you hear? Tell him what you just told me.”

  “Take your hands off me, McKean, or people are going to start calling you Captain Hook.” His Neanderthal jaw jutted out, and I knew he meant it. I was past caring.

  “Try it, Wilder.”

  “Jared . . . ,” Jay started, and clamped his mouth shut.

  I shoved my face in close to Lou’s. “Listen to me, you lard-brain, no-neck piece of crap. My ass is on the line here. I’m looking at life in prison, and you know who put me there. You don’t want to tell me, fine. But you get your ass on the phone, and you tell Frank Campanella someone hired you to get information on my personal habits. You do it, Lou!”

  A vein in his forehead bulged, and for a moment, I thought we just might have to kill each other. Then his jaw unclenched. His muscles relaxed. I felt the stubbornness leak out of him like water from a cracked glass. I sighed and let him go.

  “Do what you can, okay, Lou?” I said, suddenly exhausted. “I’d appreciate it.”

  He stepped back and gave me a broad smile, smoothing the front of his jacket with his hands. “Well, sure. All you had to do was ask nice.”

  He turned and stepped into the crowd we’d gathered, and they parted for him like the Red Sea parting for Moses.

  I sank into my chair as the meaning of what had just happened hit me.

  It wasn’t Randall.

  Randall wouldn’t need to hire a detective. He could have gotten anything he needed from me. Or Jay. Or even Maria.

  Even though I’d known it, relief washed over me.

  “Well,” Jay said. “That was unique.”

  “Sorry.”

  He shrugged. “Oh, that’s all right. You’re entitled to the occasional outburst, under the circumstances.”

  A young man wearing jeans, a Rolling Stones T-shirt, and a Dodgers baseball cap stepped out of the crowd and spat on Jay’s two-hundred-dollar Italian shoes.

  “Jesus hates faggots,” he said, glowering at the two of us.

  Jay looked stricken. My right hand curled into a fist, but I knew punching the little bastard would just make Jay feel worse. Not to mention possible assault charges.

  Instead, I scowled and said, “As much as He hates bigots?” Then I took Jay’s elbow and guided him across the street to the car.

  “I’M SORRY,” JAY SAID. He was hunched so far over on the passenger side I was afraid he might meld with the door.

  “You’re sorry?” I glanced over at him, then back to the road. “What do you have to be sorry about? I’m the one who nearly got into a street brawl.”

  “I wasn’t trying to look like a couple.”

  “I know.”

  “It just oozes out of me, doesn’t it? I shine like a beacon, even to people with lousy gay-dar.” Gay-dar is the ability to sense when someone is homosexual. It’s short for gay radar, and Jay’s is finely honed. He can spot another gay man from a thousand yards.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I don’t want to embarrass you. Maybe we should go home.”

  “I promised you dancing. And I always keep my promises.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t mind.” He eased himself away from the door. A good sign, I thought.

  “Jay,” I said, “we are going to a dance club if I have to carry you there in a sack.”

  He laughed, though without much humor.

  “Now, please tell me where to go,” I said. “And make it a gay club, because I don’t want to meet anybody else I know.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” he said. “You might be surprised.”

  It wasn’t as bad as I expected, which is to say, it wasn’t as bad as getting your foot shot off, or even as bad as a root canal. I got hit on more times than I cared to count, which was both flattering and upsetting; I never got hit on that much by women.

  “Men are more aggressive,” Jay said when I groused about it. “Even gay men. Don’t worry. I have very good gay-dar, and I promise you, you’re one hundred percent straight.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  He shook his head and pushed away from the bar, went off to mingle with the crowd.

  He didn’t ask me to dance, and I didn’t volunteer. Instead, I sat at the bar, fending off advances and watching Jay work the room. Then I saw his back stiffen. I turned my head toward whatever had caught his attention, and there he was.

  Mr. Perfect.

  Mr. Eric-Fucking-Cad.

  My jaw tightened, and I started toward him. He saw me coming too late to avoid a confrontation. “Hey, man.” He laughed nervously. “I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” I took his arm firmly, but probably not too painfully, and turned him toward the dance floor, where Jay was pretending not to notice us. “You see that guy in the gray suit? Blond hair. A little thin. You see him?”

  Eric swallowed hard, eyes flitting like caged butterflies. “I see him.”


  “You said you’d call him.”

  “I . . .” He looked at me and seemed to get his courage back. “Hey, man. I got busy.”

  “Yeah? You too busy to act like a decent human being?”

  His face flushed. “Hey, you got no call to—”

  “I got call,” I snapped. “I got call. I’m the one who has to watch him beat himself up when dickheads like you lead him on and use him and then dump him like yesterday’s trash. I got call, all right.”

  “All right.” He backed away, looking for an escape, but I had him firmly by the arm. “All right, man.”

  “It’s not all right. You understand? You hurt him. He thought you were something special, and you treated him like junk. You want to know a secret, Dickhead? You’re not good enough for him. A dozen of you wouldn’t be good enough.”

  “I meant to call,” he said.

  “Oh. You meant to call. You know what? Then call.”

  “I will. Let go. I’ll go talk to him now.”

  “If you’re just going to dump on him again, then you can just leave him the hell alone.”

  “I’m not. I mean it, man. I really meant to call him. It’s just . . .”

  “Just what?”

  He sighed. “It’s just that he’s so damn needy.”

  “So what? He gets a lot, he gives a lot.”

  “He’s got the virus.”

  “I see.” I let go of his arm. “You think he’s going to get sick and you’ll be stuck with nursing him.”

  He had the grace to look ashamed. “It happens, man. I’ve been there before, and believe me, it sucks.”

  A muscle in my cheek pulsed. “Let me put your mind at ease. Jay doesn’t need you to nurse him, and he doesn’t need you to take care of him. I’m there for that, Eric, and I will always be there for that. What he needs is someone who will love him.”

  “And you don’t?” He rubbed his arm where I had grabbed it. “Coulda fooled me.”

  “I’m not gay,” I said.

  “Uh huh.”

  “You going to ask him to dance, or you going to give up what might be the best thing that ever happened to you?”

  He looked at Jay, slow dancing with a young man wearing tight black jeans and a black mesh muscle shirt. The look that crossed his face was almost enough to make me sorry I’d called him a dickhead.

  He started toward the dance floor. “I’m going to ask him to dance.”

  FIRST THING MONDAY MORNING, I put in a call to Frank.

  “You talk to Shannon?” I asked.

  “Yeah. I did.”

  “The guy in the red car. I think it might be Sonny Vanderhaus.”

  “We checked him out. For Amy and Hope both. He was on the radio both nights. Live show. So, unlikely as it seems, we’re looking for another blond guy in a red Corvette.”

  “Is he about the same size as me?”

  “Pretty close.”

  “The guy served time. Could you look up his record for me?”

  “No need. We already pulled it. Sonny Vanderhaus. There was a series of B&E’s in his old neighborhood, and word on the street was he was behind them. Sharp guy for a junkie, always had some sugar mama to look after him.”

  “They catch him for the breaking and entering?”

  “Porn. Mostly doctored photos, mix and match stuff, Marilyn Monroe’s head on some stripper’s body, stuff like that. Some kiddie stuff too, that’s what got him. Indications are, he wasn’t into it himself, but he’d make photographs and videos for other people. For a price, of course.”

  “And he only did six years?”

  “He didn’t take the pictures himself. Just doctored ‘em. Plus, he made a deal. Ratted out some of his clients.”

  A child pornographer and a rat. I bet that made him a popular boy in prison.

  “So he could’ve made the pictures you found in my truck. Do you know if he and Walter were in at the same time?”

  I heard him shuffling papers on the other end. “Looks like it,” he said. “How’d you ever guess?”

  SHORTLY BEFORE ELEVEN, I took Interstate-40 downtown to Demonbreun, then took a sharp left off Music Square to the office complex where Sonny Vanderhaus worked at AudioStyle Recording.

  At noon, I saw him come out and get into the custom-painted Corvette. When he’d turned the corner and was out of sight, I got out of the van and went inside.

  The woman at the desk looked to be in her mid-forties. Rich, coffee-brown skin, thick-lashed, almond-shaped eyes so dark they looked black, elegant understated makeup. She wore a light green, short-sleeved sundress with matching earrings and a necklace of large, brightly colored beads.

  Nice.

  I flipped my wallet open to my detective’s license and held it across the counter to her.

  “Afternoon, Ma’am,” I said. “Would it be possible to ask your mastering engineer a couple of questions?”

  She looked at me doubtfully. “Which one?”

  This was unexpected. I’d expected her to tell me he was gone, and I would say that I could talk to someone else, then. This was better.

  “It doesn’t really matter. I need to know about the job, not about a specific person.”

  “Oh.” She looked relieved. “Just a minute.”

  She spoke into the intercom on her desk. “Mr. Schroeder, there’s a detective here who would like to talk to you about mastering. Do you have a minute for him?” She was silent for a moment. Then she gestured toward the hall behind her. “He says you can go back. End of the hall, first door on the right.”

  The mastering room had ninety-degree angles on three sides, with the fourth wall resembling half a hexagon. Three video screens and two speakers adorned that wall, and parked directly in front of them was a desk with a computer, a mixing board with a mind-boggling array of slide controls, and a swivel chair which held, barely, a burly man with bushy brown hair and glasses. He looked like a bear wearing spectacles. There was some kind of maroon cloth covering the walls. I poked it with my finger, and the cloth gave beneath the pressure.

  “It’s girl-cloth,” said the man behind the desk. At least, I thought that’s what he said.

  “Giri-cloth?” I asked.

  He gave a boisterous laugh. “Griiie-cloth. It absorbs sound, keeps the echo down. That’s why the room has these crazy corners, too. No square rooms in the recording business.”

  “I wondered. You’re Mr. Schroeder?”

  “Kerry. Kerry Schroeder. You wanted to know about mastering?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I took a stab at it. “You guys do the audio work for that Sunday morning preaching show, right? The one they do for Road to Glory Church of the Reclamation?”

  “Sonny does that. It’s kind of a personal project for him. We don’t make much on it.”

  “Well, let’s just use that as an example. He records it at the church, right?”

  “Right. It would cost too much to rent the studio time every week.”

  “So, he records it at the church. And then?”

  “Well.” He picked up something that looked like a miniature videocassette and handed it to me. It was about two inches long, an inch and a half wide, and maybe a half-inch thick. “That’s a DAT. D-A-T. That’s Digital Audio Tape. We just call them dats. They’re not real reliable, because they’re so tiny, which makes them really delicate. Lots of stuff can go wrong, so you always have a backup DAT.”

  “Why use them, then?”

  “Because they’re so easy to use. He records the service onto a DAT first. He does that at the church, sets up the mikes, balances the tape machine, and so on.”

  “When you say ‘balance’ . . .”

  “Sets the mike level so they’re not too low and not too loud.” “Okay. Then what?”

  “Then he brings it back to the studio and edits it.” I waited.

  He gestured toward the computer. “Okay. What that means is, he puts the tape into
the tape deck, which loads it into the hard drive of the computer. Then he can do pretty much whatever he wants to with it. The software we use is called SADIE. That’s Studio Audio Digital . . . something. We just call it SADIE.”

  I looked over his shoulder at the computer. “What can you do with that?”

  He shrugged. “Well, once it’s digitized, you can start changing things. Say there’s a baby crying in the church. You can separate that sound and take it out. Or if the altos are too loud, or the sopranos are too soft, you can fix that. You EQ the sound. That means you equalize it. You make everything all beautiful and even. We have compressors, which kind of . . . squash . . . the sound a little bit; it fine-tunes everything, squashes the loud sections and brings up what’s too quiet. You can clear up any static. Or extraneous noises.” He leaned back and laced his fingers behind his head. “We have this one machine, it’s called CEDAR—that’s Computer Enhanced Digital Audio Restoration. It clears up poor sounds, filters out stuff. We used it to help out the FBI a couple of years ago. They had this tape, like on an answering machine, and there was some kind of stuff going on in the background. Like an airport terminal, or something. We cleaned it up and pulled up the station sounds, took out the other stuff.”

  “Like in The Fugitive.”

  “Yeah. Just like.”

  “Where was he? The guy on the answering machine.”

  “Oh. Somewhere out of the country. Sweden. Norway.”

  “If you have a DAT with someone’s voice on it, can you change the words around? Make it say something it didn’t?”

  “Sure. It’s like that software program, Photoshop. You put in a picture, and then you can add or subtract things, tweak the colors, that sort of thing. Well, it’s the same with sound. There’s software designed just for editing, and you can do pretty much anything you want to with it.”

  “And the pitch?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  I grimaced, trying to find the right words. “Well, if I say ‘my bitch is about to have puppies,’ and ‘that horse is getting too fat,’ and ‘Aries was the Greek god of war,’ and somebody turns that into, ‘My God, that bitch is fat!’, wouldn’t the inflections be all off?”