“In jail? Fuck that. I can get that by walking out of here and giving myself up.”
“And take a shiv between your ribs while you’re in the tank. Anyone who would murder a bishop and a monsignor wouldn’t be above slipping heroin to some addict to kill an out-of-work detective. Material-witness status will get you a cell to yourself and a guard around the clock.”
“Well, I ain’t giving up my hole card for county food. If talk’s worth a thousand, them pictures gotta be worth five.”
“In your dreams. As I said, the pictures are incidental at most.”
“Bullshit. Five grand’s the price.”
Richard appeared at their table with Coleman on a leash. Ralph swore his drink curdled. He gestured understanding and the bartender led the dog to the door to wait.
“I can let you have five hundred,” Carpenter said. “I’m over my expense budget as it is.”
“Five thousand.”
“Six-fifty.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
Ralph shrugged. “Before this week, a hundred was as high as I ever got. A man should know when he’s ahead.”
“Six-fifty, then. Where should we meet?”
“Give me a number where I can get you and I’ll call you from Neal’s bank. That’s where he put the pictures.”
Carpenter gave him the number of the cellular telephone in his station wagon. Ralph borrowed the reporter’s pen to write it on a shirt cuff.
“I’ll go out first,” Carpenter said. “It’s better if not too many people see us together.”
“I had a wife felt the same way. Uh, I need cash to get around. Them cabs is murder.”
The reporter took out the envelope and counted five ten-dollar bills into Ralph’s palm.
“That’s it?”
He gave him another ten. “For the tip.”
“You sure you don’t work for the government?”
“My pen,” Carpenter said.
“Huh? Oh.” Ralph took it out of his shirt pocket.
“Keep it.”
Carpenter left. Ralph was still timing his own exit when Lieutenant Bustard and a uniformed officer Ralph had never seen before came out of the men’s room with their guns drawn.
The plainclothesman looked gangsterish as always in his narrow-brimmed hat and a tight navy overcoat. His pinched face appeared ruddy in the red light of the Budweiser sign in the window, the natty moustache pasted on.
“Assume the position, criminal,” he said. “You’re under arrest for suspicion of homicide and being a general pain in the ass.”
As Ralph was being frisked by the uniform, Richard said, “Sorry, man. I got a liquor license to look out for.”
“Don’t sweat it.” Ralph allowed himself to be handcuffed by the uniform. “Sal the Hippo will be glad to hear you been skimming the Saturday night take for that little redhead from Ferndale.”
“Let’s go, killer,” said Bustard.
“What about my rights?”
“Looks a little more pink than your left, but I’m no expert on ladies’ bedroom slippers. It isn’t your color.”
Ralph exercised his right to remain silent.
The interrogation room was a little larger than the bathroom of Ralph’s apartment and contained a yellow oak library table with one short leg and three mismatched chairs. Ralph sat on one, rubbing his freshly unmanacled wrists and watching the clumsiest spider he had ever seen trying to spin a web in a corner of the ceiling. It kept falling off.
He had been sitting there ten minutes when Lieutenant Bustard came in. Bustard didn’t have his hat on, exposing a pale bald head whose dark fringe of hair ended precisely where the hat had begun. He looked smaller without it, a bonsai cop on the bottom lip of the minimum height requirement. Ralph watched him take off his blue pinstripe suitcoat and arrange it carefully over the back of one of the vacant chairs. Everything the lieutenant wore was built to scale, from his eyelash-width moustache to his small tight vest to the delicate-looking revolver in his belt holster with its mother-of-pearl grip. When he was through smoothing the seams on the suitcoat, he drew a slim cassette tape recorder from a pocket of his vest and put it in the center of the table without turning it on.
“Comfortable?” he asked pleasantly; or as pleasantly as he could manage considering that his voice reminded dog-shy Ralph of a terrier’s yap.
“My shorts are riding high. Thanks for asking.”
Bustard fashioned a smile, small and pinched. “Not as tight as the fix you’re in, I bet.”
Ralph said nothing. He couldn’t take his eyes off the uncoordinated spider. It was wobbling on the edge of its web, directly above Bustard’s naked scalp.
“Who was the man you were talking to in the bar?” asked the lieutenant.
“My Mary Kay lady.”
“You got a smart mouth for a dumb guy, Poteet.”
“It’s the shorts.” It felt like he had a rock stuffed up there.
“They’ll fix that in Jackson. They give you those sturdy cotton skivvies to go with the denims. Have you ever been inside? Prison, not just jail.”
“My mother used to take me to visit her brother in Joliet.”
“What was he in for?”
“He fell in love with a cop.”
Bustard stroked both sides of his moustache. Above his head the spider was hanging on by one leg, waving the others frantically for balance. “Well, you’re going to get a taste of what it’s like from the wrong side of the bars. You were the last person seen with your landlord just before he disappeared.”
Ralph felt some small relief. They hadn’t guessed Vinnie was dead at the time. “That don’t prove nothing.”
“We tossed your place. The boys in the lab found some fibers imbedded in Vinnie’s neck. We matched them to a tie we found hanging in your closet.”
“Vinnie was always borrowing my stuff, sometimes when I wasn’t home. They could of been from before.”
“Normally, a man doesn’t tie a tie around his bare throat.”
“Who said Vinnie was normal?”
Bustard shifted gears. “You sticking to that story about your gun getting stolen before Bishop Steelcase was killed with it?”
“Yeah.” Ralph was watching the spider.
Just as it lost its hold on the web, the lieutenant bent forward and turned on the tape recorder. The spider landed on the curve of his shoulder, skidded, and fell to the floor.
The recorder’s speaker had a tinny sound, but Ralph recognized his own voice.
“I’m here, Your Bishopness,” he heard himself say. “Where the fuck are you? This is gonna cost you.”
Ralph said, “Who’s that?”
“We wondered why there wasn’t a tape in Steelcase’s answering machine,” Bustard said. “Then it came to police headquarters in yesterday’s mail.”
“You saying that’s me?”
“We know you were at the rectory; you gave your card to the altar boy. You had business with the bishop, but he didn’t show up, so you went to his house and shot him to death. Thanks for putting your threat on tape, Poteet. Not many killers oblige.”
“That wasn’t no threat!”
“What was it, a telephone solicitation?”
“It was the killer sent it! When I went to call back and leave my name, somebody hung up the phone on his end. The killer was there then. He copped the tape and sent it to you to pin the kill on me.”
“You called back to leave your name?”
“Hey, who knew?”
Bustard tugged down the points of his vest. “The tape was mailed from the post office on Fort; dropped through the slot. We’re running prints, but they’ll belong to the clerks who handled the envelope. No return address, naturally. Who needs one? A voice print will prove you left the message.”
“You don’t even know when I left it.”
“Sure I do. You just told me.”
“He’s gotta get rid of me. He could kill me like the others, but it’s a lo
t simpler to get me sent up.”
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ran out of lies finally?”
Ralph said, “Shit.”
“You just named the creek you’re up, Poteet.” Bustard tapped the recorder. “We’ve traced two murder weapons and a clear threat straight back to you. You even look like someone who should go to jail. I’m betting you couldn’t even dig up a character witness whose testimony wouldn’t get the Michigan legislature to reinstate the death penalty just for you. I’ve been a cop twenty-seven years and I never worked a case as tight as this one. I’m going to have the transcripts bound and give away copies to my in-laws at Christmas.”
He stopped talking. After a long silence he drew out the chair opposite Ralph, sat down, and rested his forearms on the table. The fluorescent lights threw haloes off his dome.
“Tell it,” he said.
“Tell what?”
“Everything. What was your business with the bishop and what did it have to do with the murder of Vinnie Capablanca and the attempted murder of Lyla Dane? It sure isn’t as if you might talk yourself into a worse jam.”
Ralph glanced at the spider, lying motionless on the floor where it had fallen. Well, at least it wasn’t a roach. He drew a deep breath and released it slowly. “Can I have a matchstick?”
Chapter 28
A reel-to-reel tape recorder had been brought in and now occupied the spot where the pocket cassette machine had rested. Lieutenant Bustard and Sergeant O’Leary, the arson investigator, sat hunched on either side of it with their hands on the table and their chins on their hands, listening to Ralph’s voice droning out of the speaker. They had had to record his statement all over again after the sergeant had inadvertently flipped a smoldering cigarette butt at the tape. The room still smelled of incinerated plastic.
Bustard switched off the machine. “What unmitigated horseshit.”
“Monsignor Breame,” O’Leary said. “He taught my boy to play baseball. The kid still can’t hit a curve with his ass.”
“We got a sleazy P.I.—no, check that, he isn’t even employed, which makes him just a sleaze—who says he can implicate a dead bishop and the secretary of defense—”
“Attorney general,” Ralph corrected.
“Why not the president?”
“Just indirectly.”
“Christ.” Bustard punched the rewind button on the recorder.
“What are you going to do with the tape?” O’Leary asked.
“Erase it. Or leave you alone with it and one of your goddamn butts long enough and save electricity. If this one gets to the commissioner I’ll be swinging a stick on Cass by Halloween.”
“Let’s hang on to it.”
“This isn’t your case, Sergeant. I only called you in as a courtesy because you were in on the Dane thing.”
O’Leary looked at Ralph again. “How can we get in touch with this Carpenter?”
“Beats me.” Ralph placed a hand over the telephone number on his shin cuff.
“We can at least call the Post,” the sergeant told Bustard, “ask them if they have a Carpenter working for them.”
“Only if this asshole pops for the toll.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
The tape finished rewinding. Bustard turned the machine off again. “Use an outside phone. IAD’s poking through the bills this month.”
O’Leary went out, trailing ashes.
Ralph broke the silence. “A cheeseburger would go real good about now.”
“Eat the fucking matchstick,” Bustard said.
The spider had returned to its web to continue spinning and stumbling.
O’Leary came back. His cheeks and squinched nose were flushed from the October cold. “They never heard of anyone named Carpenter.”
“Ha!”
“He’s undercover,” Ralph said. “It’s probably a blind.”
“Tell it to the block captain, Poteet. You’re going down and down for murder uno.”
“What’s my motive?”
“Maybe you’re on a campaign to bump off everybody who’s better than you. We’ll tell the jury we saved the human race.”
“Woman I spoke to had the answer for me right away,” O’Leary said.
“So?”
“So usually they have to check. The Post employs a lot of people.”
“It’s a slick operation. You’re too accustomed to the half-ass way we handle things here.”
“Hey, you got me.”
Bustard leered at Ralph. “That was about as tough as catching a dose of clap in a whorehouse. I knew if we staked out your favorite watering holes long enough you’d show.”
O’Leary said, “Maybe everyone at the paper has instructions to deny the existence of certain reporters. You know, in case someone gets suspicious and checks up.”
“You been watching Lou Grant reruns again. Get somebody to run this scroat down to County. I want to have the room sprayed.”
“Let’s put a wire on him, see what he attracts.”
“’Let’s put a wire on him.’” The lieutenant sounded nastier than usual. “You got shares in Radio Shack? Take a look at the son of a bitch. He’d hock the wire on his way to Tierra del Fuego.”
“Says you,” Ralph said. “I don’t even know where that is.”
“Where’s he going to run with a tail?”
Bustard was silent. Ralph thought the lieutenant was unwilling to cast doubt upon his department’s surveillance with a suspect in the room. “Suppose we do put a wire on him,” he said finally. “Who’s he going to talk to?”
“Poteet?”
“I was thinking of giving Willard Newton a whirl.” What the hell; he couldn’t shake anybody down from inside the Wayne County Jail.
“Sure,” said Bustard. “I bet he hops on the next plane. Who could resist an interview with a pile of human compost like you?”
“Maybe he’ll send an aide.”
“Kissinger, I bet.”
O’Leary lit a cigarette and tossed the match over his shoulder. It burned a fresh hole in the linoleum. “We’re talking cover-up and murder, Lieutenant. Newton doesn’t know how much Poteet knows or that the press has found out as much as it has. At the very least he might draw fire.”
“Maybe if we get real lucky Poteet will get whacked and we arrest the shooter.” Bustard played with his moustache. “You’re very persuasive, Sergeant.”
“Do we get the wire?”
Someone knocked on the door and leaned inside. It was the uniform who had helped bring Ralph in. “Visitor here for the suspect, Lieutenant.”
“His lawyer?”
“A woman.”
“About eighteen, nice ass?” Ralph asked.
“That’s her. Said her name’s April something.”
“The Dane woman’s sister,” O’Leary told Bustard. “That who you used your one phone call on, Poteet?”
“Everybody else I know hung up on me.”
“Why didn’t you tell her to wait?” Bustard demanded.
“Did I say she has a nice ass?” asked the uniform.
“Stall her. Then find Connors and tell him to bring his kit here.”
“Yes sir.” The uniform withdrew.
O’Leary said, “We going to do it?”
“Yeah. Maybe Connors will screw up and electrocute the bastard.”
Chapter 29
Connors was a rodent-faced plainclothesman with a lopsided crewcut and slender hands like those of a concert pianist or the man who made pizzas in the window of an Italian diner. With them he opened the black vinyl case he had brought and removed a transmitter in a gray plastic shell the size of a package of cigarettes. “Strip to the waist, please.”
Ralph peeled off his shirt.
“That reminds me,” Lieutenant Bustard said. “I promised my wife I’d pick up some whitefish on the way home.”
Connors clipped a small battery pack to Ralph’s belt, plugged in the transmitte
r, and used adhesive tape to fix it to his chest.
“Watch the hair,” said Ralph.
“What hair?”
“How come I got to wear this rig now? I ain’t even made the call yet.”
Bustard said, “When you aren’t used to wearing one it takes some adjusting. In a day or two you’ll stop stumping around like Frankenstein and nobody’ll guess you’re wired.”
Ralph put on his shirt. “Do I turn anything on?”
“No.” Connors was emphatic. “Avoid bending over, and whatever you do, don’t touch it. If you change shirts, make it anything but nylon. That static electricity is murder.”
“Can I fart?”
“Quietly. And try not to sweat too much. We had one short out once and catch fire.”
“How is Appleby?” O’Leary asked.
“I ran into him the other day at K mart,” Connors said. “He goes in for his last skin graft next week.”
“What’s it been, two years?”
“Nearer three. The guy he busted got out in July.”
Ralph started unbuttoning his shirt. “I changed my mind. Put me in jail.”
Bustard said, “Too late. You’ll be followed by a department van with Sergeant O’Leary and Officer Connors inside. Same principle: when you get used to pulling a shadow you’ll stop looking over your shoulder. What kind of car does your girlfriend drive?”
“Blue ’63 Corvair. Where’s my Riviera?”
“In lockup. You can pick it up at eight when the garage opens.” The lieutenant regarded him. “You look like a guy who’s been getting it pretty regular lately. You better do it with your pants and shirt on till we get something on tape we can use.”
“Better yet, don’t do it at all,” said Connors. “Unless you like barbecues in bed.”
“Thank you,” Ralph said.
Snapping shut his case, Connors shook his head. “First time anyone ever thanked me for that.”
“Your hunch better work,” Bustard told O’Leary. “If I wind up back in blue I’ll see they put you on park detail.”
The arson investigator, banished with a fresh cigarette to the corner farthest from the delicate electronics work, ran a hand over his face, smearing it with ashes. “One killer more or less won’t do much to the stats. Anyway, I sort of want to help Poteet out. He reminds me of me on the worst day I ever had.”
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