Beer Money (A Burr Ashland Mystery)

by Dani Amore

  The temperature in the room had dropped thanks to the constant comings and goings of the cops. The door was open half the time, and the cold air poured in.

  "How about you?" Gabby asked me.

  "How about me what?”

  "Are you used to seeing dead guys?"

  "No, I'm not," I said, my voice even.

  "You know," he said. "You may qualify as the first homicide of the New Year. Prize this year is a wide-slot toaster, I think."

  A man with a large camera came in through the front door. He scanned the room, spotted Gabby. She pointed toward my bedroom. The man nodded and moments later, flashbulbs began to go off.

  "Funny thing, Ashland,” Gabby said. “I've been meaning to ask you about something. I had some follow-up questions for your dead friend's ex-wife," she said. "I went over there. To Elm Grove. She said you had been there and had asked some questions."

  I looked up at her. Forced myself to concentrate. "So?"

  "So I'm wondering how long you've been friends with her."

  "A long time," I said. "We've been friends for a long time.”

  "You know that old cliché about wives cheating on their husbands? How it's always the best friend?"

  I didn't answer her question.

  "It's not a cliché. It's the truth. Accessibility. Familiarity. There's a reason housewives don't go out and fuck strangers. Most women don't want that kind of danger. It's too risky. They like the much safer danger of fucking their husband's best friend. They know all about them. And as a lucky strike extra, the best friend has just as much at stake to keep it a secret."

  I felt anger blossom inside me, but I was in too much pain to do anything about it. Instead, I turned and said, "Here's a news flash for you. Why don't you try to find who actually killed Tim, instead of playing mind games with me?"

  Through my partially open front door, I could see the yellow crime scene tape, the flashing cruisers, the coroner's minivan just pulling up. A few neighbors walked by. They'd been doing that for the last hour.

  "So what was she doing here?" Gabby asked me, looking across the room at Eve.

  "Visiting."

  She laughed out loud. "I love euphemisms, don't you?" she asked. “I'm going to talk to her."

  I moved to follow her but she put a hand out. “’Fraid not, buddy boy. I don't need you coaching her."

  She walked over to Eve, sat next to her on the couch. Eve looked at me. I nodded to her, willing her to hang in there. Gabby caught the look.

  I went to the counter. Picked up a cup of coffee, realized I didn't want any, poured it down the drain. I went to a cupboard and got a glass, filled it with water from the tap.

  The front door opened and through it, I saw a white minivan. The County Coroner. He came in, a tall, thin man wearing a navy blue suit and carrying a large satchel. Again, Gabby gestured toward the bedroom, where the occasional flashbulb still went off.

  I didn't even want to think about the bloodstains in my bedroom. I just wanted it all to go away. The people. The cops. The attention. But most of all the blood. The dead body.

  The glass shook in my hand as I remembered shooting, pulling the trigger, watched as the blood flowed, stained the man's shirt.

  I don't know how long Gabby questioned Eve, but by the time I saw her put her notebook away, the house was starting to clear out. The crime scene photographer was the first to leave, followed a little later by the coroner. They carried the body out in a black plastic bag. More flashbulbs popped outside. I assumed the media had arrived in force.

  Outside, I could hear the reporters talking amongst themselves, laughing.

  The uniformed cops left next and soon it was just myself, Eve and Gabby.

  After several minutes, a man came in through the door. He was a short man with longish blonde hair. He went to Gabby, pulled out a notebook. They huddled together for a few minutes, then both of them looked at me. My stomach tightened involuntarily, a quick burst of fear shot through my chest.

  I caught Eve's eye. They were wide. Alarmed. Scared.

  The short blonde guy left.

  Gabby walked across the room to me.

  She smiled.

  "I have good news, bad news and even worse news."

  “The good news better be that this nurse guy killed Tim.” I had allowed myself to believe it. Had hoped that maybe I’d gotten Tim’s killer after all.

  Gabby shook her head.

  I set the glass down on the counter.

  "Why don’t you give me whatever you got,” I said.

  "The good news is, someone has confessed to the murder of your friend."

  I felt my blood run cold. "Who?"

  "Well," she said, "that's the bad news. The person who copped to the murder is someone you know."

  She almost winked at me.

  "Someone very close to you."

  I wanted to put my hand around her fucking throat.

  Instead, I said, "Who?"

  "Your other friend, Fred Pip."

  A laugh caught in my throat. "That's insane," I said. "You're fucking around."

  A thousand questions went through my mind, but only one made its way to my voice.

  "What's the even worse news?"

  Gabby watched me out of the corner of her eye.

  "Pip confessed in a written note."

  I waited.

  "And then he shot himself."

  Twenty-Six

  The Milwaukee Police Department is on James Lovell Street, just off of State and 8th. The main facade is new and bright, with fresh white paint and light blue trim. Just up the street is the welfare office. Every Thursday you can see the welfare recipients lined up, looking across the street at the place a good majority of them will wind up after blowing their check on malt liquor, whores, and crack. Not necessarily in that order.

  Behind the police department, higher up on a hill is the Milwaukee County Courthouse. In the early evening, with the sun in the West, the police department literally works in the shadow of justice.

  I parked in a two-hour slot praying to God I wouldn't need that much time. After giving me the news about Fred, Gabby said she wanted me at the station for more questioning. I looked at the meter. Two minutes with Gabby was too long. Two hours was an eternity in Hell.

  I used my cell phone to call the hospital where Fred was. Columbia Medical Center, in Shorewood.

  I finally got through to a nurse who told me Fred was in critical condition, a coma, she said. There were visiting hours, but she said there would be no visitors until he was downgraded from critical to serious. I thanked her and thumbed the disconnect button.

  I let out a long, slow breath and forced myself to relax. It would be a bad idea to deal with Gabby if I was keyed up and ready for a fight. She would use that against me.

  The wind whipped me like a stray dog as I fed the meter. A cold front had moved in, with bearable temperatures but a ferocious wind that screamed out of Canada like a runaway train. The wind blasted the cold through my jeans and made my eyes water.

  I crossed the street and entered the building through the middle set of double doors. Homicide was on the third floor. I climbed the stairs, past the second floor where pimply-faced teenagers and impatient businessmen stood in line to pay parking tickets.

  On the third floor I opened a bulky steel door and stepped into the Homicide department's lobby. The air was chilly and had the smell of heavy antiseptic mixed with body odor, stale coffee and cigarette smoke.

  A plaque above the information desk read, "these officers are here to serve and protect."

  The department's receptionist, a stout woman with a bleached buzz cut and dandruff flakes on the shoulders of her blue shirt, looked up.

  "May I help you?" she asked.

  "I'm here to see Detective Engle."

  She gestured toward a small bench in the hallway. I sat while she picked up the phone, punched in a number, and mumbled something.

  "She'll be with you in a minute," she said. />
  Ten minutes later Gabby waved to me from the doorway and I followed her back to a small room.

  She closed the door after me and I faced a room about eleven feet by eleven feet with a small table and two chairs.

  "Have a seat," she said.

  "Correct me if I'm wrong, Detective, but this sort of looks like an interrogation room."

  "Nah," she said. "We just need a quiet place to talk."

  "Maybe I should get my lawyer here," I said. "You look like a woman I can trust, but you never know."

  Gabby grabbed the chair across from me, spun it around and straddled it. I could see her thigh muscles pop through her slacks.

  "We're just as confused as you are," she said. She laid her palms flat on the table as if she wanted to show me that she had nothing to hide. "First your friend, the history professor, is killed. Then you kill someone who breaks into your house. Now your other friend tries to kill himself." She leaned back and folded her hands. "Two homicides. One attempted suicide. What's going on?"

  The room was getting smaller by the minute. I could smell Gabby’s perfume. Just barely.

  "That's why you called me down here? You want my guess at what's going on? You gotta be kidding me."

  "Hey, you’re a private investigator. You can help crack a murder case, being a professional and all."

  I stood to go. "I don't have time for this," I said.

  She looked down at her hands. "So tell me, Ashland," she said. “Do you like gay guys? Swing both ways? Give and get?"

  She pulled out a sheet of paper; I could tell it was a photocopy from the black streaks along the back.

  "According to your friend's note, you, Fred Pip and Tim Bantien were a regular threesome if you know what I mean." She glanced at me over the top of the paper. "I bet Pip was the Lucky Pierre." She looked back at the note, pretending to be absorbed in its contents.

  I held out my hand out. "Let me see that."

  "Ah, can't do that. Evidence."

  I put my hand on the doorknob.

  "Well, all right," she said. I heard her slide the piece of paper across the table. "Take a look."

  To whoever cares,

  This has been a bad year for me. I was diagnosed at the beginning of the year with HIV. Not the end of the world. But it started to affect my mind. Ate away at me. Normal emotions were magnified.

  The jealousy I've always felt over my friends Tim Bantien and Michael Ashland finally got the best of me. For you see, I'm in love with Michael. Have been for years. When he and Tim became lovers, I seethed. Only lately did it become a murderous rage.

  I killed Tim Bantien. It was easy. But Michael was a different story. I met a male nurse in a gay bar and hired him to kill Michael because I'm a failure at everything.

  Finally, the most powerful emotion of all got the best of me. Guilt. I can't stand who I am. What I've done.

  I set the note back on the table.

  "If you believe that," I said, "You've got to be the world's worst detective."

  "Oh, yeah?" she said. "Why's that?"

  "First of all, set aside the fact that Fred couldn't possibly harm another human being it's just not in him." Gabby started to speak but I cut her off. "But you're a cynical cop who's seen it all so we'll just set that one aside. You deal better with fact, and the fact is Fred couldn't throw a fucking brick through a window, let alone a full-grown man."

  "Jealousy. Rage," she replied. "They can give the weak uncommon strength. I've seen it before."

  I put my hand on the doorknob. Turned it.

  Gabby said, "Next time we talk, you better have your lawyer. 'Cuz I think I'll be slapping a pair of cuffs on you. Something you'd probably enjoy."

  I slammed the door shut.

  Twenty-Seven

  There's something about the glare of hospital lighting that can make the healthy and beautiful look pale and strung-out. Even healthy skin looks fish belly white. Dark shadows appear where they shouldn't.

  Columbia Hospital's intensive care unit was on the second floor. I spotted Ordell sitting in a chair, his long legs flung out in front of him, his feet crossed. His high-top sneakers were unlaced, the tongues hanging out. He had on a pair of blue jeans, and despite it being the dead of winter, a tank top t-shirt. His muscles bulged, even when he was relaxed. His long brown suede jacket sat in a chair next to him, like the invisible man was wearing it.

  It looked like he was asleep, although it was hard to tell. He wore sleek black sunglasses that carefully shielded any prying eyes.

  I went first to the desk and asked the nurse about Fred's condition. She told me the same thing Gabby had: that Fred was in a coma and was lucky to be alive at all. I asked about brain damage and she said it was too early to tell, but that the bullet had ricocheted at a severe angle and had missed most of the brain. "Time will tell," she said.

  I thanked her, then went over to Ordell. Saw his eyebrows creep up an inch or so.

  "Burr," he said, his voice soft.

  "I thought you were asleep," I said. He straightened in the chair and stuck out his hand, which I shook. It enveloped mine. But his handshake was soft, as if he had nothing to prove.

  "Naw, I'm just trying to...to deal with this shit. To cope, in some form of privacy," he said and took off his shades. His eyes were bloodshot.

  "Why don't you go home?" I asked. "I'll hang out and call you if his condition changes."

  He shook his head. Glanced at the clock on the wall. "Thanks, but some of the guys from the neighborhood are going to stop by in an hour or so. Fred meant...means...a lot to them." Ordell put his sunglasses back on and in their reflective surface, I could see CNN broadcasting information on the stock market.

  "So what happened, Ordell? Were you there?"

  I saw nothing in his face except the latest statistics on the Dow Jones. Blue chips were down. The tech sector was taking a pounding.

  Ordell finally said, "No clue, man. I was supposed to pick him up at the studio. I came by, rang the bell, no answer. Went back there and found his ass put down on the ground. Blood all over his face." He gestured around his face, and his hand shook. "I thought for sure he was dead. The gun was in his hand. First time I ever saw a gun in his hand. Told the cops that. They didn't seem to believe me."

  I nodded.

  "They ran a check on me," he continued. Shook his head. "Man, when you're black and gay...Jesus Christ. Talk about double jeopardy. But I was clean. When they saw I didn't have a record, they like...lost interest. I guess it would be tougher for them to pin something on me, you know?"

  "And the note?" I asked.

  More silence. Now a commercial for toilet paper was playing on his sunglasses.

  "The note." He looked up at me, I could only tell by his uplifted face. "Some fuck-ass note said you and Fred and Tim were all goin' at it, know what I mean? Said he killed Tim." Ordell laughed. A bitter laugh. "What kinda bullshit is this? Fred kill someone? That'd be like the Pope turning tricks down in the Core."

  Twin tears rolled out from underneath his shades.

  "Somebody wants something and is trying to set up Fred, that's all,” I said. “We both know none of it's true."

  Ordell's attention seemed to linger on me for a bit longer than was comfortable. He shifted his feet. The awesome muscles in his shoulders seem to ripple on their own volition.

  "Yeah," he said.

  I would have liked him to say it with a little more conviction.

  Twenty-Eight

  Dusk was settling in by the time I made it to the Third Ward. Rush hour was coming to a close, road rage was tapering off as the sun finished its departure via the western skies.

  I had decided that it was time to visit the place Tim had been murdered. I’d put it off for as long as I could. I’d hoped that the longer I waited, the less emotional I would feel. Maybe the more time that passed the smaller the knot in my stomach would be. But judging by the feeling in the pit of my gut, that theory wasn't working.

  Finding the place w
asn’t a problem. The stories in the paper had been specific, and Altenburg had told me the address as well.

  I wheeled the Audi next to the curb in front of 1033 Erie. I gazed up at the building from the driver’s seat. Sitting, the third floor looked incredibly high. I yanked open the car door and stood. The wind had picked up, the air had a cold bite to it that had been absent earlier in the day. Despite the cold, my palms were sweaty. I felt a trickle of sweat roll down my back.

  It was one of the many typically abandoned cream city brick edifices that survived, in a sense, the fire of 1896. It had probably been gutted and re-built for light manufacturing at some point around the turn of the century. But it had been poorly done, and was not slated for condo development like a lot of the older buildings in the Third Ward. This would be an eyesore until someone tore it down.

  A sidewalk ran parallel to the building before winding its way around the southeast corner. From the street, I looked between the buildings and saw the crime scene tape attached to four posts, fluttering in the wind. With a sinking feeling in my gut, I walked forward, my feet crunching on the ice.

  A few feet away, I stopped. In the middle of the cordoned off area, faint patches of red seemed to lurk in the patches of ice. It hadn’t warmed up enough to melt the blood away. Tim’s life force was trapped in the icy grips of winter.

  I looked overhead and saw the broken window, a glimpse of the yellow crime scene tape as it flapped around the broken panes.

  I backtracked down the sidewalk and went to the front door. It was padlocked, with a small warning label that read “Milwaukee Police Department.” I tugged on the door handle, but it was rock solid. I glanced around the deserted street, saw no one.

  From my wallet I took the slim jimmy and slipped it into the padlock. I tested the guts of the lock, pinpointed the honey hole, withdrew the jimmy, crimped it, slipped it back in and watched as the padlock sprung open. I put the jimmy back in my wallet, and put my wallet back in my coat pocket. I slipped off the padlock, and hung it, still open, from the hook.