by Tracy Clark
“What about you didn’t he trust?”
A hateful smirk spread across his face. “Guess you’ll have to ask him. Besides, seeing as you’re no cop, I don’t have to tell you anything, do I? Bottom line, he’s gone, I had nothing to do with it, and I got work to do.”
We stood quietly for a time, Bolek appearing satisfied that he’d said his piece. I recognized a brick wall when I came up against it. I’d get nothing useful from him, not without police powers. I handed him my card. “If you remember anything else.”
He took it, slipped it into his breast pocket without reading it. “Don’t think I will.”
I slanted him a look. “It’s possible you might.”
He shook his head, snorted derisively. “You and the cops, you’re all the same.”
I headed for the door.
“You got killers all over this neighborhood,” Bolek said to my retreating back. “Try looking at one of them instead of trying to stitch me up. I got rights, nonalien ones. It says so in the Constitution.”
I rolled my eyes and, for a fraction of a second, considered turning around and correcting him, then decided not to bother. Life was too short, and I’d wasted too much of it already on Anton Bolek.
Chapter 11
Pop had no blood family, only the family he’d fashioned for himself. Hundreds had shown up for his funeral and burial, but they were gone now. I stood alone at the gravesite in St. Kevin’s Catholic Cemetery well past my time, surrounded by an unnatural quiet, my heels sinking into the moist grass. I stared down at the mahogany casket covered by a large spray of white hydrangeas, remembering all the other caskets I’d tossed flowers on before walking away and leaving a piece of myself in the hole. Time didn’t exist inside cemetery gates. The dead had forever. The lives of those who stopped to visit also seemed to halt for a time, as they reverted back to the moment of loss. It was dead time kept on a clock with no hands.
It had been six days since Pop was killed, and still the cops had nothing of substance. Thanks to Ben, though, I at least knew they had a few more details and an ID on the dead boy. Cesar Luna, eighteen, was a low-level gangbanger from the far Southeast Side, and the throwaway gun found next to Pop was thought to be his. Farraday’s theory still stood. Why not? It was neat, tidy, easy. That’s how he liked things.
But easy and tidy didn’t mean right. Farraday didn’t know Pop, I did. Pop wouldn’t have wrestled over a loaded gun. If Luna had come to rob him, Pop would have emptied his pockets and given him whatever he asked for. He would not have taken a life, not even his own. I wiped away a tear and tossed a single white rose onto the floral spray. It was both an end and a beginning.
Earlier, I’d checked the crowds at the church and here for Maisie Ross. I figured she’d show up just to gloat, but I didn’t see her. I was thankful she stayed away. There was also no Anton Bolek, but it was obvious after speaking to him, that he didn’t care enough about Pop to want to honor him in any way. George Cummings had given a reading at the service and wept through half of it, then solemnly helped to carry Pop’s casket to the hearse. Even some of the homeless Pop had helped showed up to pay their respects. Pop would have liked that.
“Hey, Bean.”
I turned to face a man standing behind me. Only a handful of people had ever called me Bean, a childish nickname short for String Bean, and I hadn’t heard it in years. I stared into the man’s face and slowly recognized the young boy behind the grown man’s eyes.
“Whip!?”
He smiled broadly. “You remembered!” He didn’t look much like the thin, wiry boy with the mop of black curly hair I used to pal around with. This man was well over two hundred pounds, broad at the shoulders, narrow at the waist, husky. His dark face, once bright and youthful, was now pale and tired looking, the boyish dimples now filled in, his thin hair cut short. Deep lines spread out from weary eyes that looked as though they’d seen too much.
His real name was Charles Mayo Jr., but no one from the old neighborhood ever called him that. He was Whip, because he was always as thin as one. We grew up on the same block, and his mother died just a few weeks after mine, leaving us motherless children in a world that suddenly seemed too big and too cold. My grandparents loved me and took great care of me, but Whip’s father, well, that was a different story. My father left by Amtrak train, but Whip’s father, a mean, hopeless alcoholic, stayed, though Whip often said he wished he hadn’t. Mr. Mayo used cruel words instead of fists to beat the light out of his son. We clung to each other then, as though we shared the last life preserver on a sinking ship. Both of us, eventually, found our way to Pop’s door.
We hugged and held on, Whip’s winter-blend suit coat straining at the back as though it were a size too small. “I saw you standing here, but I didn’t want to bother you. I hung back, over there by that tree.”
“Why?” I asked, bewildered.
He shrugged, but didn’t answer. He stared instead into the grave. “I can’t believe it. Father Ray . . .” His voice trailed away. He gave me a playful grin. “You look good. Still don’t know what to do with your hair, though. Looks like you comb it with a rake.”
We shared a hardy belly laugh, which culminated in another bear hug. I’d forgotten how much I cared for Whip, and he for me. Time and distance had a way of dulling the pull, until time and distance fell away, and you were right back where you started, as though you’d been together the whole time.
“Last time I saw you,” Whip said, “you had just graduated and were off to the Peace Corps. How long did you stay in?”
“Two years.”
“Making the world a better place, huh?”
“One well at a time. What did you end up doing?”
Whip looked past me. “I stayed around.... Pontiac Correctional. In and out—mostly in.”
The news made my heart sad. “What for?”
“Stealing cars, burglary. I’ve tried a little bit of everything. But I’m out now, and I plan on staying out. Hell, I’m thirty-five. I got to get myself ironed out before I kick it, right?” He smiled broadly. Then he glanced over my shoulder, and I turned around to see what he was looking at. We were the only ones there. “Hey, Bean, I know cops when I see them, and there were some big ones hanging around over there, watching you like you boosted something. I wanted to stick around in case you needed me to run interference or something.”
The cops had been Ben and Paul. “They’re friends of mine. Just here for support.”
“Cops as friends. Never thought of that before. I have a whole different kind of relationship with them.... So what’d you end up doing with yourself?”
I smiled, anticipating his reaction. “I became a cop.”
Whip nearly choked on his tongue, which made me laugh till I cried. It felt good to laugh. Pop would have appreciated the joke.
“Aww, man! Don’t tell me that, Bean. Really?” The pained look on his face made me laugh even harder.
“I went private a couple years ago, though. I run my own one-woman agency now.”
He swiped a hand though his hair. His knuckles were scarred and calloused, boxer’s knuckles. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
We started walking slowly toward our cars. “What’re you doing now that you’re out and staying out?”
“I’m a cook. Work at a little joint called Creole’s over on the West Side. It’s nothing fancy, but stop by sometime and I’ll cook you up something good.”
I looked at him closely, seeing clearly now the boy I’d known. “I’ll definitely do that.”
Whip stopped walking, placed a hand on my elbow. “I know you said those cops were friends of yours, but I got a bad vibe off one of them. The white guy? Big dude. Fancy duds? He was standing away from the other two. How good a friend is he?”
My stomach turned. Farraday. “He’s not a friend. He’s the detective in charge of Pop’s case.”
“Then what’s he doing here? He should be out there beating the bushes.”
“He’s here
making sure I stay out of his way. This is him letting me know he’s watching.”
Whip pulled a face. “See, just when I was starting to think differently about cops. So what are we going to do about all this? How’re we going to set this straight? Because no way is Father Ray a suicide.”
“I’m going to see what I can turn up. Go back to the beginning and try to figure out what happened.”
Whip stared at me. “I said ‘we,’ Bean.”
“You’re staying out of this. I’m on shaky enough ground as it is; you’re on even less than that.”
“Don’t get it twisted. I’m ready to go all in. This is family we’re talking about.”
“I’ll call if I need you.”
He looked as though he didn’t believe me. “You never were any good at passing the ball, Bean.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Do that. I mean it. You need me, you call me.”
“Same here,” I said. “And no more Pontiac.”
He chuckled. “Ha! That’ll be a first, me calling a cop.”
“Ex-cop,” I said.
He waggled a finger at me. “Ain’t no such thing. It’s all in there. Cop eyes. Cop brain. Nobody sees it clearer than somebody with a rap sheet as long as mine.”
We shared a good laugh, then exchanged numbers and parted. I watched as he got into a beat-up Kia and drove through the cemetery gates. Pop would be glad to know that Whip was doing well. Maybe he did know. As I drove through the gates, my mood, which had lightened some at seeing an old friend, darkened again at the thought of Farraday shadowing me.
I checked the rearview, watching as the graves got smaller and smaller the farther I got from them, knowing that I would carry one of them with me always. “Going all in, Pop.”
* * *
Civilians walk in and out of police stations every day, but it seemed like ages since I’d walked through the doors of one without a star, a gun, and an assigned battered desk with all my stuff crammed inside. The experience felt otherworldly, as if I’d traveled light years and back, returning a stranger to a world that had pressed on quite well without me.
Cops milled around the ground floor of CPD’s Area 2 Headquarters like they did in every police station anywhere, their eyes watchful, the centurion intensity not matched by their unhurried steps. Sweat and body odor at varying degrees of ripeness comingled with the essence of well-polished holster leather and poorly ventilated air. Somewhere in the building, someone was getting locked up while someone else was being let go. Only the cops stayed put, moving as though they had years to get where they were going, shoveling smoke for city pay and the promise of an adequate pension.
The desk sergeant called upstairs to tell Ben I was there to see him. I waited on a blue plastic chair, one of many in a row anchored against the wall so belligerent drunks couldn’t hurl them through a window, and watched as activity pulsed around me. Cops. Perps. Marks. All here. All joined together in a free-form dance where the music never stopped, and only half the partners matched the tempo. I didn’t know these particular cops, and they didn’t know me; I was thankful for the anonymity. Ben stepped off the elevator, and I stood, waiting for him to reach me.
I could read his face. He was worried about me. I didn’t want him to be, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. The worry flowed from my end too. Being a cop was dangerous work, now more than ever, and he had to work with Farraday. It made me nervous.
His smile reached me before he did. “The funeral was yesterday. What took you so long?”
“I’d like to see what you’ve got.”
He searched my face, and I tried working up some happy to plaster on it, but I don’t think I succeeded.
“You’re white-knuckling it.”
I met his gaze. “That counts.”
“I’ve kept you pretty up to date.”
“I’d like to see the file.”
He let a beat pass. “You’re not going to pay any attention to what I’m about to say, but I’m going to say it again anyway. Step back. Take time to get your head back on straight. Nothing good’s going to come from you pushing on this.”
“Got it.”
He sighed, rolled his eyes. “Don’t know why I bothered.”
“Look, another set of eyes and a fresh pair of legs can’t hurt, right?”
An angry man stormed through the front doors muttering profanities, a bloody towel pressed to his left eye. Ben and I tracked him all the way to the desk sergeant and assumed defensive positions, our backs to the wall. Force of habit.
Ben planted his hands deep in his pockets, percolating the coins inside the polyester blend. His eyes met mine. “There’s a reason surgeons don’t operate on their own mothers, you know that, right?”
“I do. But I can’t sit back and do nothing while Farraday’s out there grandstanding and kicking dirt under the rug. Pop had enemies, lots of them. It can’t be that inconceivable that one of them might have wanted to do him harm.”
“The gun was next to him, Cass. His prints were on it.”
“And it’s also not impossible for someone to force a person’s hands on the grip.”
“Maybe, but you sticking your nose in can’t end in a good place. You know that. Our files are CPD property, internal use only, and you know that already, too. Still, here we are.”
We stood facing each other, neither of us speaking.
He heaved out an aggrieved breath. “And if you don’t get anything now, you’ll turn up again tomorrow and the next day, until either I go nuts or Farraday tosses you into a cell and swallows the key.”
I held my ground. “So why are we still talking?”
Ben hesitated. “I wouldn’t be standing here if not for you. That factors in. Pick had me cold. My back was to him.”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to talk about Jimmy Pick. “You’d have done the same for me. I’m looking for a little professional courtesy, not payback.”
Ben scrubbed his hands across his face. His eyes narrowed as he surveyed the lobby as though searching for enemy agents crouched behind the potted palms. “I’ll give you ten minutes. Follow me. If anybody asks, you’re my sister.”
“What?”
“From another mother. It happens. Just keep your head down and move like you own the place. Should be easy for you. You do that second part anyway.”
The small interview room had only a sorry-looking metal table and two battered metal chairs in it, and along its back wall a metal bench with a bar behind it to clip handcuffed perps to so they couldn’t do a runner. But what more did you need, really? Cops asked questions, those who weren’t cops answered them. The cop needed a pen and something to write on, the perp a place to sit and cry his or her eyes out. The setup was simplicity itself. Ben closed the door behind us.
“You want something? Herbal tea?”
I shook my head, then thought about the offer. “Since when do cop houses have herbal tea?”
“That tree hugger Gleason’s got a stash of the stuff in his bottom drawer. Looks like weed to me but, hey, if he says it’s tea . . . it’s tea. Park it. I’ll be back in a second.”
“Wait. Could you run a name for me?”
His eyes narrowed. “You’re really pushing it, aren’t you?”
I smiled my sweetest smile. “You have the resources. I don’t. I talked to the handyman at the school. Anton Bolek. He and Pop butted heads about something, but he wouldn’t tell me what. I got a vibe off of him that I didn’t like. He’s hiding something. I’d like to know who I’m dealing with before I take another run at him.” I spelled Anton’s name for him to make the lookup easier.
“What the hell kind of name is Bolek?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Sit tight. But we’re going to discuss who’ll be taking that run.”
Ben eased out of the room, closing the door behind him. I’d have looked around again, but didn’t need to trouble myself—there was only the table, the two chairs, and a grimy wind
ow encased in wire mesh. This is where I’d be spending a lot of my time, if I continued to run up against Farraday. I thought about whether or not that concerned me, deciding finally that it didn’t. Ben was back in less than a minute’s time with the case file, which he dropped like a stone on the table before taking a seat across from me. He slid the file, thick with detail I wasn’t sure I was ready for, into the center. I looked at him. He looked at me. I waited. He waited.
“Are we waiting for a starter pistol?” I asked.
He pointed at the file. “That’s not for civilian eyes.”
“So you thought you’d walk it in here and taunt me with it?”
“I’m gonna get up and stretch my legs, look out that window.” He cocked a thick thumb toward the grimy opening. “Do not rifle through that while my back’s turned.”
I glanced at the window. I knew it faced nothing more interesting than the cop lot. “How long are you going to be preoccupied?”
“You got a safe ten. What you don’t want is to be sitting there when Farraday prances his prissy ass back in here. If you are, I may just have to punch his lights out, and I wore my good shirt today. Besides, there are way too many guns in this building to guarantee any kind of showdown ends well.”
“How can you work with him knowing what kind of cop he is?”
Ben’s eyes bore into mine, suddenly serious. “I watch my back. I take his word for nothing. He nearly got my partner killed. That’s not something you forgive a guy for.”
I sighed, let a moment pass. “I can do ten. Unless, while I’m sitting here not rifling, I come across something I have to go over twice.”
“I could stretch it to eleven, if you need the extra time.”
“Then why not make it fifteen?”
“Is that how long it takes you not to rifle through shit?”
“I’ve never actually timed it.”
Ben shook his head. “Well, take my advice, rifle fast.” He walked out of the room again. Screw Farraday. I knew my lawyer’s number by heart and knew whatever I got charged with, I’d likely skip on. What I didn’t want to do was jam Ben up and put him in his boss’s crosshairs, so I would stick to the time he’d given me and get on my way. I readied my pen and notepad, then closed my eyes and breathed. This was it. Once I opened the file, there’d be no turning back, no stopping, no matter what Farraday threatened me with. I needed the truth.