Private Heat

by Robert E. Bailey

  “So?” I asked, “I take it no one is going to be available.”

  “Depends,” he said with a shrug.

  “That’s a maybe?”

  “That’s a product. If you stay in this line of work, you may need them.”

  I’m pretty sure that was the good sergeant’s idea of a joke. I smiled, gave him a nod, and departed.

  Happily, the parking lot was devoid of Officer Talon and his playmates. But as I pulled out of the lot and onto the apron to turn right onto Bridge Street, one of the Community Service crew’s ratty Ford Escorts with two men in the front seat charged out of the police garage. A short opening in traffic let me onto Bridge but blocked their exit.

  I went right on Monroe half a block and turned left into the city parking structure. I grabbed a ticket and watched my mirror. As the arm on the ticket dispenser came down behind me, the Escort crossed traffic to turn into the parking structure. Neither occupant was Randy Talon. The car held a salt-and-pepper crew that went shoulder to shoulder and door to door.

  4

  I scooted to the down ramp and shot down one floor to exit on the other side of the structure. The attendant took my buck and I scorched up to the street, turned right, and honked on it for half a block to the Old Kent Parking Lot. By the time the beef trust in the red Escort had driven up the chute to street level, I had hustled out of sight among the crowd of cars in the street level bank lot. The twenty-something professionals flashed by the lot, and after a panicked, head-swiveling hesitation, burned the light at the corner of Ionia and Lyon.

  I hit the Kmart on Buchanan and Twenty-eighth Street, happily unescorted. Inside, I picked up a can of pepper spray. On the way to the register I recollected the size of the two characters in my rearview mirror and went back for a second can.

  “Got a lot of mean dogs in your neighborhood?” asked the honey blonde at the register. Svelte and in her mid-thirties, she wore one of those dorky green smocks over a pleated skirt.

  “Yes ma’am, I do,” I said. “Suppose if I went to Sam’s Club Warehouse, I could get a really big can?”

  “I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure out what to do with a twenty pound can of Crisco.” She added a flash of eyelid flutter. “That’s thirty-two eighty-seven,” she said.

  I paid her and fled. Finally in the Union Street S.E. neighborhood I keyed the hand mike with my thumb and spoke, “Five-six, five-seven, radio check, over.”

  “This is five-seven,” Ron answered, “I hear you Lima-Charlie, over.”

  “Natives leaving you alone?”

  “Local constabulary came by. They said I should have checked in at the station.”

  “I was just there. I didn’t mention you.”

  “Told them it was an insurance thing,” he said. “Our charge had a visitor when I got here: male, white, six foot, two hundred pounds, late thirties, and driving an emerald green newer model Corvette. It had one of those vanity plates.”

  “Did you run it?”

  “Yeah, came back to some outfit called Alton, Burns, and Fay Securities—no lien.”

  “Wonder if they have any openings?”

  “If you find Karen Smith dead,” Ron said, “the cops just might free up a position for you.”

  “You’re just trying to get rid of the competition,” I said as I rolled by Ron’s position. The placard on the side of his van now read: “AAA CEMENT/RADON GROUND TEST/PHOTOGRAPHIC PLATES IN USE/DO NOT DISTURB.”

  “Love that sign,” I said. “Does it work?”

  “Like a charm,” Ron laughed. “Told the neighborhood watch guy that we use radon emissions to X ray the pavement for hidden cracks and faults.”

  “I’m convinced. Maybe we can sell some of that work when the insurance stuff gets slow.”

  “I can do that job,” he said. “You call Wendy yet?”

  “Nah, I’ll call her from the client’s house.”

  “Five-six, out.”

  “Seven, out.”

  I pulled into the charge’s drive and filled it up so that the subject would have to park on the street and I’d have a few seconds to eyeball him before he got to the door. A pile of domestic rubble—two battered suitcases, a collection of cardboard boxes, and a two suiter, zipped up but lying unfolded across the pile—lay stacked on the porch.

  The porch was less than a dozen strides from my car and only one step up from the walkway. Crowning the pile, a shirt box lay open so as to place the contents on display.

  The contents explained a lot. Several hypodermic syringes and a half dozen pharmaceutical cartons containing liquid anabolic steroids filled the box. I pried the top loose with my ballpoint pen and was fitting it back over the box when someone snatched the door open and startled the shit out of me.

  “Who the hell are you?” Karen Smith demanded to know. She was in her mid-twenties and lean, with a firm but hardly extravagant figure, and just over five feet tall. Her hair made a halo of permed auburn that framed her face and her penetrating slate gray eyes. She was braless under a bare-midriff tank top, wore shorts that revealed more than a hint of cheek, and had a tan Velcro and plastic tether strapped to her right ankle.

  “Art Hardin. I’m the minder your uncle hired. Get your ass back in the house.”

  “Fuck you,” she said. “You’re fired.”

  “Ta-ta, sweets,” I said and shrugged as I fished out my keys. I was all the way back to the car and starting to feel real relieved when she yelled after me.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Come back!”

  She didn’t sound sorry. I opened the door.

  She closed her eyes and crushed her bosom with folded arms. Her fists were clenched. “Please, come back,” she said and made a little stomp with her right foot.

  I looked at her and scratched my five o’clock shadow.

  “Plee-hee-hee-ze!”

  I went back. I’m easy. “Let’s go inside,” I said.

  “You’re covering up for him.”

  “You have a phone?”

  “In the kitchen,” she said looking at me a little askew.

  “Go call the police department and ask for Internal Affairs. Rat him out. They don’t want their people using that shit. They’ll come and get the stuff. They’ll help him.”

  “I don’t want to help him,” she said. Looked real sincere.

  “No, you just want to be a weasel.”

  She fixed me with hot eyes. “How can a stupid old has-been like you do me any good?” Her arms were folded again.

  “Listen, doll,” I said. “In my business you don’t get stupid and old in the same package. And I ‘has-been’ a lot of things, none of which were a slut, a thief, or a weasel.” I paused and waited for an answer.

  She twisted her head and exhaled a snort through her nose.

  “If we’re done with ‘Dear Abby,’ show me around the house.”

  The kitchen was on the north end with a door leading to the attached garage. A sliding glass doorwall in the west wall of the kitchen provided access to a deck that ran the length of the rear of the house. Four-foot cyclone fences guarded the right and left boundaries, and at the back of the yard, an eight-foot wooden privacy fence. I opened the garage door, stuck my head in, and found a twenty-two-foot Ski Nautique powerboat on a trailer. Decals boasted a 454 Chevy engine and jet drive. I closed the door and locked it, then locked the doorwall as well.

  “I didn’t see the boat on your divorce filing,” I said.

  “We’re just storing it for a friend.”

  Next to the kitchen, first door on the right and down a short center hallway, was a bathroom. It had only one window—one of those frosted and textured things—high on the back wall. It was locked and painted shut.

  A door on the left side of the hall opened into a small bedroom mostly furnished with weights and exercise equipment. A double-bed-sized air mattress lay on the floor with the blanket and sheets at low tide. A variety of fast food bags and cartons flooded out of a paper grocery bag that had been
pressed into service as a waste can.

  The master bedroom, at the end of the hall, took up the entire south end of the house. A rumpled king-sized waterbed sported a mirrored canopy and was attended by the usual dressers and closets. Heavy red velvet curtains covered the windows and a sliding glass doorwall out to the deck. Cushy maroon shag carpeted the floor. I stepped into the attached bathroom and found a glass-enclosed shower stall, hot tub, and walls done in mirrors and lavender tones with no windows to the outside.

  “Wow,” I said.

  “Used to be a small bedroom off the hall.”

  “Who’s your decorator? Van Hedonist on South Division?”

  “No,” she answered deadpan. “We did it ourselves. Do you like it?”

  “I find it positively motivating,” I said, turning my face to hers. “You have any visitors today?”

  “Like who?”

  “Door-to-door salesmen, Jehovah’s Witnesses, anybody?”

  “No.”

  I played a blank face and made busy by locking the doorwall and the windows. I pulled the curtains closed.

  “Any calls?” I asked. “Aluminum siding, window salesmen, or maybe just a hang-up call?”

  “Just some sergeant from the department. Franklin, I think. He said to put Randy’s stuff on the porch.”

  “Five-six, five-seven, over,” Ron’s voice announced from the radio in my pocket.

  “Who’s that?” Karen asked, wide-eyed.

  “A friend,” I answered and fished the radio out of my coat pocket. “This is five-six, over.”

  “Six, you’re getting cruised by a beat-up red Ford Escort. So far, they’ve made three passes.”

  “Salt-and-pepper crew?”

  “Right. White guy’s wearing a do-rag and an earring.”

  “That’s a four. They’re the subject’s playmates.”

  “That’s Paulie and Chuck,” said Karen. “They’re crazy, you know. They just don’t care.”

  “Chuck and Paulie who?”

  “Charles Furbie and Paul Milton—they work with Randy.”

  “The charge says that they are Paulie and Chuck and that we are in deep doo-doo.”

  “Chucky-wucky and his sidekick are parked about a block south on the east side watching the world go by.”

  “Costume party with guns.”

  “Roger that,” Ron said.

  “Roger’s in San Diego seizing Korean ‘Gucci’ bags,” I said and laughed.

  “He doesn’t call me any more.”

  “Roger said he’d be up in the fall,” I told him. “Let’s get together.”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  “Let me know if our pals grab their socks.”

  “Soit-in-lee,” answered Ron, “seven, out.”

  “Six, out.”

  “What are you going to do if they come in here?” Karen wanted to know, a little quiver in her voice.

  “Maybe it’s just a social call,” I said.

  “I doubt it,” she said. She made it sound like a threat.

  “Then I’ll do what I have to do; what I get paid to do.”

  “I’m gonna laugh when they kick your ass,” she said like she was defending family.

  “Why would they come in here?”

  “Well, you know, because of Randy.”

  “Policemen get divorced all the time. I don’t hear much about their squad members stalking their soon-to-be ex-spouses.” I let that float for a moment and finished with, “Unless there’s something else?”

  She stalked out of the room. “There is nothing else,” she said without looking back. Halfway up the hall she stopped dead and turned to face me with her arms folded again. “If you’re so smart, why do you think they’re sitting out there?”

  “Maybe they just want to make sure I don’t abuse Randy when he comes by to pick up his personal property.”

  She answered with a nervous laugh.

  “Maybe they’re just good friends and want to make sure Randy doesn’t do anything stupid,” I said. That wouldn’t explain why they tailed me out of the police station, but Karen was rattled and, I hoped, close to spilling the beans.

  “They think Randy is a dork.”

  That surprised even me. “That leaves the infamous something else,” I said.

  “Yeah, I think the ‘something else’ is they want to kick your old-fart ass,” she said, stomping off into the living room.

  “It’s showtime,” Ron announced, omitting the usual net chatter. “You’ve got the blue Monte coming at you with a driver and no passengers. There’s a marked police car behind it.”

  “What’s Chucky and company up to?” I asked.

  “They’re doing a U-ee and making feet as we speak.”

  The right front tire of the Monte Carlo climbed and then descended the curb. The car lurched to a stop.

  “Six, out and off the air,” I said. I turned off the radio and deposited it under a sofa cushion. “Get in the bathroom and lock the door,” I said. Karen didn’t question her instructions.

  Police Officer Randal Talon stood up through the open roof of his Monte Carlo, his pony tail and open flannel shirt ruffled in a warm evening breeze. Facing the house he hollered at the top of his lungs, “What the fuck are you doing parked in my driveway, you piece of shit?”

  Sergeant Franklin pulled up on his bumper and blocked the drive with his new full-sized Chevrolet patrol car. He exited the vehicle and made straight for the front door of the house.

  “Just get your property, Randy,” said Franklin as he made fast, long steps across the lawn.

  “Bullshit, Franky!” said Talon. His voice rasped deep over curled lips. He stepped out of his vehicle without opening the door. “Get that piece of shit out of my house, goddammit!”

  Sergeant Franklin stepped through the door, pulled the screen shut, and filled the doorway. “Just get your stuff, Randy,” he said, “and then we’re out of here.”

  “Arrest that motherfucker,” said Randy. “He’s trespassing on my goddam property. Bust his ass for illegal entry.”

  Officer Randal Talon crossed the porch in one step, snatched the screen open, and buried a low shoulder into Sergeant Franklin. Sergeant Franklin cascaded into the room backward. On the way down, he said, “Don’t do it, Randy!”

  Randy did it. “Karen, you bitch!” he said and scanned the room. “Get your ass out here!” He started for the kitchen. I stepped to block the way. “You’re under arrest, asshole.” He launched himself like a lineman after a quarterback.

  The stream of pepper spray hosed him on the forehead. His eyes crossed and his face went from mean to “Aw, shit.” I’ve heard a lot of people say that pepper spray would not deter them. Randy probably would have said the same thing. He would have been wrong. I had to sidestep as he sailed by. He hit the carpet—most of the way to the kitchen—knees and forehead first, his hands being occupied with covering his face. After a moment and a loud “son-of-a-bitch,” he abandoned the custody of his face to his left hand and groped his right hand back to the Highpower.

  Franklin got to his knees and fell, hands forward, onto Randy’s gun and hand. Rolling like a shark with a mouthful of seal, he wrestled the pistol loose.

  Unfortunately, the front room being small and closed in, the good sergeant and I also got a small dose of pepper gas. Franklin got to his feet, and despite his discomfort, hooked Randy under one arm and started dragging him toward the door, the Highpower dangling in his right hand. He summoned me with a nod of his head, and I hooked Randy under the other arm. We hauled him out the door and set him on the edge of the porch.

  A white-striped green garden hose lay coiled next to the door. I turned it on, adjusted the spray to a cone of fine mist, and hosed my face down.

  Franklin punched the magazine out of Randy’s weapon and put it in his pants pocket. He slid the weapon into his belt just behind his left hip. Randy remained seated and folded very tight. I handed the hose to Franklin. He hosed down his hands and then his face. Betwe
en eruptions of profanity Randy reexamined his lunch. When Franklin was satisfied, he turned up the spray and set about hosing Randy.

  “I told you to just get your stuff,” he said. “Why didn’t you just get your stuff?”

  My eyes were getting smoky again, so I went back into the house. Karen peeked out through a narrow crack in the bathroom door. I shook my head and she closed the door and snapped on the lock. In the kitchen I rinsed my face in the sink. On my way back out I opened a side window in the living room.

  I stepped back through the screen door and onto the porch. Talon was very wet but mostly composed. “You’re under arrest,” he said, “for illegal entry, interfering with an officer, assaulting an officer—”

  “No. He’s not,” said Franklin, “but you’re getting close.”

  “Bullshit, Franky,” said Randy. He leaned toward the sergeant and pointed his finger at himself. “I’m a police officer. I said he’s under arrest.” He shook his finger at the sergeant. “It don’t matter what you think, you gotta back me up.”

  I took the shirt box off the pile and dropped it onto Randy’s lap. “Keep that up and all you’ll be is a thug on the street, a liar in the courtroom, and a monster in your own home.”

  Talon threw the box at me. It hit me, edge on, in the middle of my chest. I took two quick steps back, hoping to avoid the sharper contents of the box. Hypodermic needles and pharmaceutical bottles exploded in a shower over the porch and lawn. He scrambled to his feet and I had the pepper spray out.

  Sergeant Franklin stepped between us. He backhanded the can, looped a headlock onto Randy, and bulldogged him out to the Monte Carlo. As Franklin handcuffed him to the steering wheel of the Monte Carlo, a patrol car pulled up with the rollers on. Franklin dispatched them with a rough nod of the head.

  “Give me your keys,” said Franklin.

  Randy provided him with a stream of profanity.

  “Not a problem,” said the sergeant, “I can open your trunk without them.” He started back to the patrol car.