by Mike Reuther
Just as I reached the corner where this last drug transaction had taken place, a cab pulled up beside me. Sitting behind the wheel was my old cabbie friend, a shit-eating grin pasted on his face.
“Didn’t know you frequented this part of town,” he said.
I was in no mood for stimulating gab with the guy. My head throbbed with each beat of my heart. I just wanted to get into that cab. Why I had even considered the long walk to the ball park was beyond me.
“To the ball park,” I said.
“Yeah,” he cracked, looking at a phantom watch. “If we hurry we can just make that doubleheader.”
The cab passed silently for a few blocks. I sat slumped in the back, letting it all reel past me: the boarded up storefronts, the street corner loafers, a drunk feeling his way uptown - all the crap that passed for street life. The cabbie, meanwhile, was stealing glances at me in his rear view mirror, that damn shit-eating grin still on his face.
“You got it figured out yet?” he asked.
“What? The meaning of life? Sure. Those who are good reach heaven. The other poor schmucks get to spend eternity riding around with one-horse-town cab drivers.”
“Come off it. I’m on to you. You’ve been trying to get the dope on that murder.”
“I’ll bet you got a master’s degree in criminal justice.”
“Save the sarcasm. I know some things that might be of use to you.”
“Yeah. What’s your price high roller?”
“Ain’t no price. Let’s just say I wanna help.”
We were driving into the ball park’s big unpaved parking lot. At night, with no game going on inside, it didn’t even look like a ball park. The big dark walls and sloping grandstands made it look more like some sort of forbidding fortress. The cab pulled to a stop, and the cabbie shut off the engine and the lights. No one said anything for the longest time. For some reason, he’d parked the cab on the very edge of the parking lot a good fifty yards from the main entrance.
“So why did you want to come here?” He was studying me in the rear view mirror again.
“As if it’s any business of yours.”
“Look pal. The ball park’s closed. And I don’t think you want to go in there anyway.”
“No?”
“Absolutely not.”
He started up the car, and with the lights still off, put it into gear and drove forward very slowly a few yards. “Look ahead.” He shot a finger out the window. There, parked at the bottom of the dike just beyond the main entrance were the Porsche I’d recently seen and a police car.
“Still wanna go in there?”
“Okay. Talk.”
What my cabbie friend had to say didn’t surprise me. Not in a town the size of Centre Town where the power brokers can’t help but rub shoulders with the sleazy element. As if there’s any difference. Some of these power brokers, Miller being one, occasionally fed their drug habits through some of the teenage suppliers the cabbie knew. The cabbie was aware of this because he’d personally driven Miller on one occasion.
“That explains Miller’s Porsche at the corner a little while ago.”
He nodded. “Let me tell you. Miller ain’t the only guy with a love affair with the illegal stuff.”
I threw him a long, hard look. “Let’s get out of here,” I said.
The next evening I made a late night stop at Red’s. Just as I’d hoped, Gallagher was already there, a bottle of Scotch on the bar before him. Sober or drunk, Gallagher’s eyes didn’t miss much, and they didn’t fail to catch my entrance into the barroom.
“Crager me lad,” he shouted. “It’s been ages. Come now and have a drink with me.”
Red was several feet away from him on the other side of the bar rinsing glasses. As I took a seat next to Gallagher he reached above him for a shot glass hanging from the rack.
“Well now Crager. The last time I seen you, me and Red here was putting you into a cab.”
“The ravages of alcohol,” I said.
“Ah yes. The ravages of alcohol. I like that lad. How about it Red? The ravages of alcohol.”
Red grinned and put down the shot glass in front of me. “Play nice boys,” he said, giving us a wink.
“How about it Crager me boy,” Gallagher said, nodding at the bottle. “Shall we give this thing some attention?”
“Why not.” I said, allowing him to fill my glass.
It was a good sign. Gallagher, I could see, was well on his way to tying one on.
The bottle was better than a third gone so it wouldn’t be too long before his words became slurred and his tongue loose. Since I was starting out sober this time he was well ahead of me. It was going to be easier than I thought. After briefly touching on the usual subjects - sports, politics, women - Gallagher launched into another harangue on city hall.
“What’s that policy the mayor is pushing for the police department?” Red asked, giving me a wink.
“How’s that Red?” I said.
“He wants to see the police force ten percent women by 1995.”
“Over my Irish ass,” Gallagher thundered.
“What’s the matter?” said Red. “Afraid some woman might show you how to clean house in this city?”
“A bunch of politically correct pansies running this town,” Gallagher grumbled.
“Sure. Give ‘em all a badge and a gun. Let the whole fuckin’ city fall to drug dealers.”
This was my opening. I had to step lightly though.
“Hell. Legalize the drugs.”
“How’s that Crager?” he said, giving me a sidelong glance as he drank off a shot.
“It’s the best way to remove the criminal element from drugs.”
“You talk like one of them liberal types Crager.”
“Look at it this way. Who sells the drugs?”
Gallagher spun his big bulk around in the stool to face me. “You tell me Crager.”
I could see now that the alcohol had begun to really take a grip. His eyes had become a bit glassy, his movements somewhat unsteady. The slightly loopy grin he held on me failed to mask the belligerence in his voice.
“Criminals,” I said simply.
“Ah. And your point is Crager?”
“Legalize the drugs, and you take the criminal element off the streets.”
He shook his head. “You think that’s going to stop those scumbags? Let me tell you something. They can legalize every last one of them drugs, and it still ain’t going to stop them people from finding reasons to shoot up the streets.”
“I don’t know. Seems to me it would change the whole ball game.”
Again he shook his head. “You’d have more dope heads than ever. And more little innocent kids strung out on the stuff. And that’s the truth.”
Gallagher turned back to his drink then, and it looked like the conversation would end right there. He finished off what was left in his glass and reached for the bottle. As he poured himself another drink he noticed Red standing on the other side of the bar a few feet away. “Say Red. Where in the hell’s Erma tonight?” He nodded at her empty stool at the end of the bar.
“She found another bar for drinking. Got sick of waiting for you to make love to her.”
“You sombitch.”
I allowed this humorous interlude to pass before starting back in.
“Sure. There’s always going to be dope heads. People who need to feed their addictions. Take you and me. Some people might say we drink too much.”
Red took a few backward steps. “No,” he said, covering his mouth. “Not you two.”
It was a subject Gallagher and me had covered before and one that especially made him uncomfortable. He turned partly away from me, making little circles on the bar with his shot glass. But I wasn’t planning on making this an AA meeting.
“I supposed there’s a point to this Crager?”
“Just this. If alcohol suddenly became illegal would it stop you from drinking?”
“But it ain’t ill
egal Crager.”
“Right. Now if heroin, cocaine, marijuana, any of the so-called street drugs, were suddenly made legal, don’t you think the same people who now use those drugs would continue to crave them?”
Gallagher just stared at me.
“There’s always been people who have needed to feed some kind of addiction. It’s part of the chemical makeup of many of us. The very nature of a drug being illegal does not make it evil.”
Gallagher was still staring at me.
“Hell,” I continued. “We’ve all experimented a little.”
“How’s that Crager?”
“Smoked a little reefer. Popped a pill or two.”
“Nah.” He pointed to the bottle. “This stuff here has always done well enough by me.”
“C’mon. You’ve never done anything on the sly? No hallucinogens?”
Gallagher shook his head.
“A little speed to stay awake?”
“Your ass Crager.”
“Hashish?”
“Hell no.”
“Not even marijuana?”
“Sorry lad.”
“He just refused to inhale is all,” laughed Red.
Gallagher shook his head. “Never needed to bother with any of that stuff lads.”
“Cops I used to work with back in Albuquerque used to resell confiscated dope. That is … if it didn’t go up their noses or in their lungs first.”
Gallagher nearly sprang from his bar stool. “You can bet that kind of shit would never happen in my department Crager.”
I leaned in close to him. “I hear it already is.”
That did it. His eyes considered me with real hate. For a moment, I thought he might take a swing at me. I’d never seen him so angry. He spun away from me, wrapped his big hands around the bottle and stared into his drink. Then, in a voice barely above a whisper, he said, “I don’t need this bullshit.”
And there he sat for the next few minutes, hunched over the bar with his hands about that bottle. I half expected steam to come out of his ears. Red and I stole glances at each other. Nobody dared say another word. Finally, after the longest time, Gallagher pushed himself away from the bar and without looking at either of us, left the place.
Chapter 10
I didn’t know where to turn next. A lot of crazy things had been happening, a lot of what really didn’t add up to much. The ransacking of my apartment could have been nothing more than the work of a couple of druggies looking for a quick fix. Then again, word had definitely gotten around that I was on the case, and there were more than a few people who weren’t happy about that. I wasn’t even so sure Centre Town’s finest was too cool on the idea of me snooping around in their territory. Experience had told me that cops hated nothing more than private detectives getting their nose into crimes they believed were better left to them. Gallagher wasn’t crazy about me looking into the case either, but I ruled out his having anything to do with my getting knocked on the head. We went back too far. Besides, it just wasn’t his style. But then again it wasn’t his style to screw around with drugs either.
Sometimes when I’m having a tough time making sense of a case I’ll do my best to remove myself totally from it - at least for a while. This doesn’t mean I give up. Instead, I’ll clear my mind of everything I’ve learned and take a fresh approach. Make like I know nothing about the damn case and begin collecting information. But that’s never easy. It’s like having prior knowledge about a murder before being selected for the jury hearing the case. Try as you might you can’t help but form some partial feelings about the defendant or the victim. One thing was for sure. Lance Miller’s life had crossed the lives of more than a few nefarious characters during his short few months in town. But whether there was any connection to them and this murder was anyone’s guess.
Hell, maybe Gallagher was right. Perhaps Lance Miller had been nothing more than a victim of some drug-crazed nut. But I really didn’t believe that. Yeah. It was time to start over. And I figured the best place to start was with Lance himself.
I hadn’t been to the Centre Town Public Library in years. It was one of those stately downtown buildings carved out of stone - a majestic relic from the town’s boom days of a hundred years ago. Capped by a dome and five stories high, it was a real piece of work. There was a circular fountain in front of the steps leading up to the place. By the looks of the fountain, it hadn’t been turned on in years though. Tufts of grass grew from out of a long crack running the length of its concrete base. I can’t say I was surprised to see signs of neglect elsewhere. On the porch of the building, these massive Roman-like pillars running along each side of a high archway looked like they hadn’t been scrubbed in decades. Graffiti and pigeon droppings from God only knows how long ago littered the crumbling floor of the porch. It was depressing to linger outside so I didn’t. I had work to do.
A librarian, one of those mousy types with thick glasses and her gray-streaked hair in a bun, was busying herself behind this huge circular desk that I took to be the check-out area. She had the sort of plain features that made it hard to guess her age. I figured her to be about forty, but she could have been as old as sixty-five.
“May I help you?” she said.
She gave me a pinched smile. You could tell right off that people weren’t exactly her strong suit.
I asked if the library had an index for the Centre Town Progress.
“Certainly,” she said. “We have an index that covers every year back to 1921. If you’d like information for earlier editions you need to consult Ocyl College. They have a more extensive index.”
What I had in mind was to check out the progress of Lance Miller’s career. There was no doubt in my mind that the Progress’s sports department had kept a close watch on their hometown boy through the years. The index would give me easy access to back copies. I can’t say I had a real good idea of what I hoped to find, but I’ve found from experience that just knocking around pieces of information can occasionally turn up something valuable. I asked her where I could find the card catalogue.
She looked at me as if I’d just spoken in Swahili.
“All our referencing is now catalogued by computer sir.”
“Computer?” I responded like an idiot.
“Certainly sir. We’ve found indexing and referencing our materials is much more efficient in this manner.”
I just stood there looking at her. The thought of dealing with a computer didn’t exactly titillate me. You might say the information age has left me completely behind. Back in Albuquerque I’d managed to get by on an Apple that was pretty easy to operate once I learned a few simple keystrokes. Away from that particular machine, which all the cops had had access to, I was lost. The librarian sensed my misery.
“If you’d like, I could show you how to operate one of the terminals. It’s really quite simple.”
For a moment I considered just telling her to forget it. Hell, I didn’t even know what I was looking for. But then I thought better of it. After all, I was already here.
“Lead me to paradise honey,” I said. Just for fun, I threw her the kind of grin that suggested I had a real sort of paradise in mind.
You’d have thought I just asked her for a spanking. Her eyes widened with surprise. Then she brought her hand to her face and giggled. It sounded more like a bird cooing if anything. This was not a woman used to laughing up a storm. That was for damn sure. She turned with a little pirouette like grandma at a square dance and so help me, put a little bounce into her hips as she led me to the reference area.
As it turned out, the terminal wasn’t hard to operate. A few taps on the keys, and I was right into the index. There was actually a reference for Lance Miller too.
“If there’s anything else you need Mr. …. “
“Crager. But you, sweetheart … can call me Cozz.”
The eyes behind those thick glasses batted at me.
“You’re fresh.”
“But you love it.”
It was too much for her. She gave me a playful backhanded slap on my arm and danced away back to her desk.
I found plenty on Miller. And why not? The guy was Centre Town’s most celebrated athlete. There were dates for particular issues of the Progress listed beside each entry. Entries included under his name were: high school sports, signing of baseball contract, injuries of, marriage, Major League debut, trade to Indians, trade to Mariners, trade to Angels, and finally drugs.
The drugs entry particularly aroused my interest. I got out my pencil and notebook and wrote down all of the other entries though. That done I needed to find back copies of the Progress. I figured the library would have the newspaper on microfilm. But it wasn’t to be. Back at the reference desk my flirtatious librarian told me the only back copies on hand were for the last five years.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to venture over to Ocyl College for a more extensive review of the Progress Mister Crager,” she said.
“What kind of a joint is this,” I said. “It’s bad enough there’s a lousy backlog of the hometown rag, but I have to fight off the advances of the librarian too.”
“Now just stop it Mr. Crager,” she cooed.
I leaned toward her over the wooden counter separating us. “Not that I mind. How about it there doll. You and me. Dancing under the stars till dawn.”
“Oh my. But I know nothing about you Mr. Crager.”
I figured it was high time to nix the verbal foreplay. The poor sex-starved thing didn’t have a clue.
“Later doll,” I said as I started for the front entrance.
“I do hope we see you again Mr. Crager,” she called out.
I turned and bowed, and for good measure, threw her a phantom rose and then a kiss. I think she swooned.
Ocyl College is a private institution, so I had to come up with identification and sign out a paper at the main desk before using the microfilm.
Then I got to work.
I briefly scanned some back issues chronicling Lance’s days as a high school jock. I have to say there was something more than a little eerie about seeing old photographs of a teenage Lance Miller. He’d been so young and alive and healthy then. Now he was a stiff in a morgue. As a scholastic jock, Lance had starred not only in baseball but in basketball and football as well. I found grainy newspaper photos catching him swinging a bat, sidestepping a defender on the gridiron and dribbling a basketball past an opponent. Different articles I came across mentioned that schools - Notre Dame, Penn State, USC and other football factories had wanted him badly as a quarterback. Yeah, the guy had been a regular phenom. A real natural athlete. Hell, the guy was the local sports scene from 1974 to 1977. I got bored after a while with the touchdowns and home runs. It wasn’t what I was looking for anyway. I reeled ahead the microfilm and came across the June 10, 1980 issue. The entire first page of the sports section was given over to Lance. The Major League baseball draft had been held just days previously, and Lance, just coming off a few years at Centre Town Junior College, had been picked in the second round by the New York Yankees. Lance was quoted as saying he looked forward to reporting to his first minor league team. He talked about his chances against minor league pitching, the prospect of living away from home for the first time and being on his own. Pretty boring sports story stuff mostly. And there was the usual fluff about his marvelous athletic skills and the quotes from coaches, teammates and opponents recalling some of his eye-popping feats. This wasn’t exactly hard-hitting stuff. But then, the sports pages usually aren’t, especially in cities the size of Centre Town. One quote I found interesting though. It was from that of his baseball coach, Lefty Johns. I remembered Johns all right. Back in my school days, he’d been the gym teacher. A tough bird but fair, the kind of guy who didn’t put up with crap from students. If he thought you were horseshit he told you so. Tell a kid that today and they’ll haul you into court for causing the kid emotional distress.