A Bad Night's Sleep

by Michael Wiley

  “First time we’ve closed in seven months,” Monroe said.

  As we stepped out, two of Johnson’s crew came from the hall behind the hostess desk. Someone must’ve been watching the elevator from the video monitor room.

  One of them gave Monroe an almost friendly smile. “Hey, Bob.”

  Monroe raised his hands so the men could frisk him, and I followed his lead. Then the men steered us down the hall and into the conference room.

  Finley sat at the head of the table, his left arm in a cast, a bruise above his left eye. The man to his left had a bandage on his chin. I figured he was the driver when the SUV crashed into the car that Rafael’s friends rolled into the street. The other members of Johnson’s crew sat around the table. Lucinda sat between two of them. I looked her up and down. She was wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt with a V front that hinted at the skin of her breasts. She had a bruise on her jaw and I wondered if she’d picked it up while fighting Johnson’s crew when they pulled her out of the stairwell, or if they’d come into her room and given it to her later. She locked eyes with me, no expression on her face, no fear. I couldn’t read her thoughts.

  Monroe and I took two chairs across the table from her.

  Finley picked up a phone, punched a few keys, and said, “We’re ready.” He did this once more, and a minute later the guy who’d been manning the video monitors came in. Then the door in the back opened and two more men accompanied Johnson into the conference room. Johnson sat in the one remaining chair and the two men stood behind him.

  Johnson looked around the table like he was measuring each person. When his eyes rested on me, his lips curled into a slightly amused smile.

  TWENTY-NINE

  FINLEY LEANED BACK, LOOKED at Lucinda, then me and Monroe, and said, “Okay, Bob, tell us what you’ve got.”

  Monroe said, “Do you have the reports and bank receipts?”

  Finley reached down to the carpet and brought up a leather case. He took out a stack of stapled packets. “Copies for everyone.” He passed the packets around the table.

  I figured everyone had seen what was in them already but Monroe waited until the shuffling of pages stopped. He said, “Two days ago, Joe brought me some bank receipts. He got them before he joined us, when he was investigating us for a group of clients that included the developers of Southshore Village. The receipts worried me,” he said and looked at Johnson. “They angered me. Earl handpicked most of us, me included. And when we agreed to join him, we had a clear understanding. We’d work together. No freelancing. No cutting each other out of a good thing.” He looked from face to face at the rest of the crew. “We’ve all been cops long enough to know that’s what the stupid guys do, the ones we catch after one or two robberies because they turn on each other and fuck each other up.”

  Some of the other guys nodded.

  Monroe looked at Johnson again. “But that’s what he’s been doing. He’s been fucking us up, every one of us. So I did a little digging. I got the reports for the robberies we didn’t do but that looked like what we were doing. As you can see, the dates match the receipts.”

  The guys in the crew paged through the packets and murmured. Except Johnson. He sat stone-faced and silent.

  Monroe moved in for the kill. “I also remember what Earl told me when he asked me to join him. He said he’d stand by me no matter how bad the heat got, unless I crossed him by going solo and pocketing money for myself. If I did that, he said there’d be no forgiveness. I didn’t have to ask him what he meant. I understood. I’m guessing he said the same thing to each one of us here, and I’m guessing you understood too.”

  More guys nodded.

  Finley turned to me. “How did you get the bank receipts?”

  Part of me wanted to admit that Bill Gubman had fabricated the receipts and handed the stack of them to me. I felt like the building would fall down under us if I told the truth and maybe that would be good. I said, “A woman who hired me to locate her missing son has access to credit, banking, and mortgage records. Her son was dead when I found him but she was grateful anyway. I call her from time to time when I need information.”

  “What’s her name and where does she work?” Finley said.

  I shook my head. “Sorry.”

  He looked angry but spoke calmly. “I didn’t ask if you want to tell me. I asked what her name is.”

  Again I shook my head. “When Southshore Corporation hired me, I started off by staking out the construction sites I figured you would hit. I always got it wrong. If I went to a place on the Northside, you would hit the Westside. If I went to the Westside, you would hit downtown. But one night I got lucky. I was half asleep outside a depot near the airport when a white van pulled up and a man got out and cut the lock off the gate. He was alone, and, when he turned to get back into the van and drive inside, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The man was Earl Johnson, and I’d known Earl since we went through the academy together.” Like a shark that keeps swimming, I figured if I kept talking I would stay alive. I said, “After that night, my job got easy. Instead of staking out construction sites and hoping to get lucky, I just followed Earl. Sometimes he went out with the crew, and sometimes he went out alone. I figured he was ripping off the rest of you guys. But that wasn’t my worry. Not then. Not yet.”

  The room was quiet. Then Finley asked again, “What’s the name of the woman who gave you the receipts?”

  I showed him my palms. “Sorry.”

  He nodded to the two men who were guarding Johnson. One of them walked around the table and came up behind me.

  I braced for what would come next.

  “She’s my aunt,” Lucinda said. “Her name is Marta Navarro and she works for a credit company. I sent her to Joe when my cousin disappeared. I can give you her number.”

  “What is it?” he said.

  “It’s in my cell phone—which you took away from me.”

  The man behind me said, “Want me to get it?”

  “Later,” Finley said. He nodded at Lucinda and asked me, “How does your partner fit in?”

  “She doesn’t,” I said. “She came as backup last night in case anything went wrong when Bob and I showed you guys what we’d found. I wouldn’t have asked her to come if I’d known how bad things would turn out.”

  He turned to Lucinda. “Is that right?”

  She said, “Joe’s my partner. I’m involved in what he’s involved in. I know what he knows.”

  I said to her, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

  “Too late,” she said.

  Finley turned to Monroe. “What else do you have?”

  “What else do you need? Earl ripped you off. He ripped me off. The receipts and the reports tell you that. I can’t tell you anything different.”

  Finley nodded and set his eyes on Johnson. “Earl?”

  Johnson spoke softly. “That was very impressive. Total bullshit, but impressive.”

  “You can prove that?” Finley asked.

  “Why should I? Like Bob said, I handpicked you guys. You trusted me when you joined me. You should trust me now when I tell you it’s bullshit.”

  “You’re going to have to do better than that, Earl,” Finley said.

  “And if I do? What happens if I show you that everything Bob and Joe and Joe’s little friend have told you is shit?”

  Finley shrugged. “Like Bob said, we all understood what would happen if any of us crossed the others. That applies to Bob and it applies to you.”

  Johnson turned to Monroe and said, “Are you good with that, Bob?”

  Monroe didn’t hesitate. He said, “I’m good.”

  Johnson turned back to Finley. “Go into my office. Look in the file cabinet—second drawer from the bottom. You’ll find a folder of credit card receipts. Bring it to me.”

  Finley nodded to the man who stood behind me and he left the room.

  For two or three minutes, we sat quiet. I felt calm, mostly. The records that Bill Gubman had given me w
ould line up with times and dates when Johnson would have no alibi. Bill had made sure of that. Still, I wondered what Johnson was up to.

  The man came into the room and handed a file folder to Johnson.

  Johnson said, “Let’s work from the present backward. Give me the dates of the reports and bank receipts in October.”

  Finley read the dates, then said, “If I remember, you weren’t around that weekend. You said you were going out of town.”

  “And so I did,” Johnson said. He dug through the folder until he found a receipt, which he passed to the man next to him. The man said, “Fuck,” and handed it on. When Lucinda got it, her face flushed. When Monroe got it, his fell a little. He handed it to me. It was a Visa receipt for the Golden Crown Paradise Resort in Puerta Vallarta. The dates extended a day on either side of the records we’d given to the group. Johnson’s signature was at the bottom.

  When the receipt reached Finley, he asked Monroe, “How do you explain this?”

  Monroe looked at me, and I said, “It’s phony.”

  Johnson smiled and said, “These too?” He passed around a small stack of credit card receipts for Puerta Vallarta restaurants and a dive shop.

  “Sure,” I said. “They’re phony too.”

  He shrugged and said to Finley, “I’ve got photos at home. If you want, I can get them or you can send someone else for them.”

  Instead of answering, Finley looked at his packet of photocopies and asked, “How about the nights of September twentieth and twenty-first?”

  Johnson leafed though his file and shook his head. “I’ve got nothing for those nights.”

  Monroe smiled. I let the breath out of my chest.

  “How about September fourth?”

  Finley didn’t bother with his file. “That was Labor Day weekend. We were together at your house in Wisconsin. You too, Bob.”

  I felt the room slipping away from me.

  Finley looked shocked. He glanced at the photocopies. “August twenty-eighth?”

  Johnson checked his file, grimaced, and thought for a moment. The grimace faded. “The previous weekend,” he said. “I was training new guys in firearm protocols downstate. You can check at the department. The Travel Office will have the receipts.”

  Bill Gubman had said the dates on the receipts were good. He’d said Johnson wouldn’t have an alibi. Something had gone badly wrong. Monroe looked scared. I figured I did too.

  Finley said, “July thirtieth?”

  Johnson pulled three more receipts from his file. “Out of town again,” he said and handed the receipts to the man next to him. “Upper Peninsula Michigan.”

  Monroe shoved his chair away from the table. “Fuck this,” he said and stood up.

  Finley signaled to the men behind Johnson and me, and they grabbed Monroe before he could reach the door.

  Finley said to Lucinda, “You want to tell us anything else about your Aunt Marta and her credit company job?”

  “No,” Lucinda said.

  Finley nodded to two other guys. They got up and came to Lucinda and me. The one who came to me put a heavy hand on my arm. I shook it off and stood on my own. Johnson didn’t look at us as the men marched Monroe, Lucinda, and me through the door at the back of the conference room. No one at the table did.

  THIRTY

  THEY LOCKED MONROE IN the same room as before. They put Lucinda and me together in the other room. The chair was still gone. Light from the hallway still shined through the hole in the wall. A blue blanket had been tossed in a corner.

  I asked Lucinda, “Do you really have an Aunt Marta?”

  “I did. She died of cancer twenty years ago.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that. You could have walked out.”

  “It’s done.”

  “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”

  She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

  Then she came to me and kissed me, like kissing me was all that could keep the world from crumbling at the middle and falling in on itself. I kissed her the same. My head spun. Lucinda clawed at the inside of my leg. I kissed her neck. She smelled like sweet, salty sweat. I breathed in and held her inside me. Her hand rose up my leg and she held me too.

  I tried to say, “Stop.”

  “I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t—”

  A gunshot exploded. Small caliber—nothing to deafen you, nothing to make you want to call the police unless you stood nearby, kissing and groping for anything that could save you.

  A heavy weight fell to the floor in the next room.

  Another gunshot exploded.

  Then nothing.

  Lucinda let go of me. She walked to the wall by the crumpled blanket, leaned her back against it, and sank to the floor. She stared at the opposite wall, the wall that divided our room from the one where the men had put Monroe, the room with the gunshots. Then she looked at me. “You said Bill told you the dates were clean. Johnson wouldn’t be able to talk his way out of them. What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, though I’d started thinking that maybe I did.

  THIRTY-ONE

  WE WAITED FOR THEM to come for us. We knew we were next. I wondered who would come. Finley? Johnson? Both?

  Five minutes passed, and we heard the sound. The lock rattled and the door opened. Johnson stepped into the room alone, a 9 mm pistol in his hand.

  But instead of shooting us where we stood, he gestured toward the door. “Come on,” he said.

  Lucinda pressed against the wall. I stood where I was. “No,” I said.

  “Don’t be idiots,” he said and stepped back into the hall, leaving the door open behind him.

  Lucinda and I looked at each other for awhile. Then she got up and we followed Johnson into the hall. He stood by the door that led to the service elevator. He opened it, checked that no one was there, and waved at us to hurry.

  “What are you doing?” I said.

  “Trying to keep you from getting killed.” Like it was obvious that a man who’d threatened us a dozen different ways would turn around and save us.

  “Why?”

  “Go!” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Don’t you understand? We used you to make this work, that’s all.”

  Lucinda said, “I don’t get it.”

  Johnson shook his head, exasperated. “Will you get out of here before Finley and the others come?”

  I asked, “Is Monroe dead?”

  Johnson sighed and nodded like the fact saddened him. “Second shooting of an officer in two days. Both in the course of robberies. The coincidence will mean his death gets a lot of attention in the news, especially since he and Raj were friends.”

  I nodded, making slow sense of it.

  “Now are you ready to go?” he asked.

  I stepped through the door and Lucinda followed me.

  Johnson looked relieved. “Take the elevator to the subbasement. There’s a service door to the left. A van will be waiting for you.”

  “My car’s in the garage,” I said.

  “Mine’s down the street,” said Lucinda.

  “You’ve got a death wish? Take the van!”

  “What will Finley and the others say when you tell them we’re gone?”

  “You escaped before. I’ll tell them you got out again. Who’s going to question me now?”

  Lucinda and I ran to the elevator. Before it arrived, Johnson disappeared back behind the closed door.

  We rode most of the way down in silence. Then, as we passed the first-floor lobby and garage and dropped into the subbasement, Lucinda said, “What just happened?”

  I could figure it only one way. “Bill Gubman set us up.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  The elevator doors opened. To the right were rows of steel-mesh storage lockers. Pipes and bundles of electrical cables stretched across the ceiling. We ran to the left and I said, “He wanted Johnson to survive and Monroe to fall. That’s not what he told me but it’s what he wanted.
We just boosted Johnson’s power in the group. No one will challenge him now. And we got rid of his competition.”

  We reached the service door that Johnson had told us about.

  “Why did Bill want that?”

  I pushed the door open and cold afternoon air rushed in. A single flight of concrete steps went up to an alley. At the top, a van was waiting where Johnson said it would be. It was a police van equipped for handicapped access. Bill was in the driver’s seat. He’d parked close to a Dumpster that was overflowing with empty cardboard boxes.

  I said, “Let’s ask him.”

  When Bill saw us, he pushed a button and a side panel slid open. Lucinda climbed into the backseat next to his folded wheelchair. I opened the front door and sat next to him.

  “Welcome home,” he said and turned the key in the ignition.

  I reached for the key, cut the engine, and held the key away from him.

  “Why did you set us up?” I said.

  He held his hand for the key. “We really don’t want to be sitting here.”

  I asked again, “Why did you set us up?”

  He said, “The charges against you have been dropped. It seems that the woman who thought she saw you at the construction site in Wisconsin has changed her mind. A case of mistaken identity. As for the Southshore shooting, our investigation has shown that you were in fact working as a private investigator, not as one of the thieves. The department will issue a formal apology to you—not something the superintendent likes to do, but considering the circumstances he agreed to it this time. It’ll be on the news tonight and in the papers tomorrow.”

  He held his hand for the key again.

  I said, “I was running scared last night. Peter Finley had locked me in a room but I got out. I’d gotten to a place where I was hiding and I called you because I needed help. I needed … I needed you. But you never called back. Why not?”

  Bill dropped his hand and said nothing.

  “Did you track my cell phone call to the house? Did you put Johnson’s crew onto me there?”

  Bill sighed. “Look, for this to work, we needed to play it—”

  “Are Sanchia and her boys okay?” I said.