by Tracy Clark
Back off, Raines. I could feel Mrs. Vincent’s hand on my shoulder and knew it was there to soothe me, but there’d be no solace for me, not soon, maybe not ever, because Nate would never be four again. And someone, me, surely, but someone else, too, would answer for it.
* * *
It took some time to sort it all out. The police took the report and canvassed witnesses, then I did a canvass of my own, walking the block, knocking on my neighbor’s doors, looking for something, any scrap of information that might help. Marie and Nate went to stay with her mother. Stuart Kallish was downstairs packing up a few clothes and things to tied them all over for a time. I sat in my kitchen, staring at the rooster clock. It was well after three and I hadn’t moved in over an hour. I wanted to check on Nate and Marie, but everybody said it was too soon.
Barb handed me a cold can of ginger ale from the fridge. “They’ll be fine. You couldn’t have known this would happen.”
I took the can, but didn’t drink. “I should have known. He’s packing their things.”
“They had a bad scare. They need some time to process it. Marie says they’ll stay with her mother for a little while. See how things go.”
“They won’t be back. She couldn’t even look at me.”
“Time,” Barb said.
I rose from the chair, leaving the soda. “I’m dead on my feet. I’m going to bed.”
* * *
I went, but didn’t sleep, couldn’t sleep, and it was becoming a thing. I watched the bedside clock and wondered if Nate and Marie were okay. My brain hurt from pushing it. I kept seeing the car speeding away, kept hearing the screams. Pop, gone. Cesar, gone. Yancy, gone. Now little Nate was going. And Dee Dee was still an unanswered question. Where was she? Who was she? I rolled over and buried my head in a pillow to muffle the chaos in my head. One link, that’s all I needed. I’d put Cesar and Dee Dee and Pop together, or thought I had, but what connected those three to Buddy and Boss? No, not Boss. The Boss. That’s what Fleece had said. How did he know who I was? I finally drifted off to an unsettled sleep. There was a lot I had to do, but I couldn’t do it yet. My heart hurt too much.
The phone on my nightstand rang, startling me awake. The room was dark, and it was dark outside my bedroom windows. I sat up in bed, picked up the receiver. “Yeah?”
“Cass, get over here. We got him.”
I stood. “Whip? What?”
“Bolek,” he said. “Me and Pouch had a hunch. Figured this guy wouldn’t do his dirt in the light of day, so we started watching through the night. Three days, nothing, right? But tonight we got lucky.”
Now I squinted at the clock. I hadn’t thought to do it before. Eight-thirty P.M. That couldn’t be right, I thought. I couldn’t have let that much time get away from me. “Where are you? Where is he?” I searched along the floor for my shoes.
“The church. He got here about fifteen minutes ago. He’s here with another guy and they’re up on a ladder going after the gutters. Old church, I’m figuring they’re copper. They also dragged some stuff out of the basement. Can’t tell what. Me and Pouch are waiting till they really get going, then we’re going to swoop in and grab their asses.”
“No. Don’t do that,” I said, running for the door, one shoe off, one on. “Hang up. I’m calling the police. You and Pouch stay where you are. Do not move. Whip? Do you hear me? Whip?” He’d hung up on me. “Dammit.” I grabbed my keys from the bowl and flew.
* * *
I slipped into the alley behind the church. It was dark, half the alley lights still not working. It was par for the course in this part of town. I knew Bolek was dirty. That’s why Pop was riding him, keeping him close, likely trying to figure out what he was up to, and then giving him a chance to make the correction on his own. He wouldn’t have wanted to turn him in to the police. I, on the other hand, didn’t care one fig about Anton Bolek’s immortal soul. I wanted him locked up. I wanted to see the cops knock that cocky smile right off his face.
I spotted the dark panel truck parked at the church’s back door, well out of range of the two alley lights still working. Stealing copper gutters from a church. Most would assume a man couldn’t get any lower. I knew better. There was always lower, like taking shots at a frightened four-year-old. But that didn’t mean I’d give Bolek a free pass.
I saw the ladder and two dark figures, one on the ladder, one below keeping it steady. It had to be Bolek on the ladder because the man standing at the base of it was too thin to be him. I looked around for Whip and Pouch, but didn’t see them. Maybe they’d done as I’d asked. Keeping to the shadows, I moved forward, watching as Bolek handed something down to his spotter, who then walked it over to the truck, slipped it into the back, and returned to the ladder. Suddenly, two more figures, one tall, one short, darted out from somewhere and grabbed the ladder and the man standing next to it. Whip and Pouch. Whip grabbed the spotter by the collar, pushed him against the church, and held him there. Pouch shook the ladder till it rattled, which forced Bolek to scurry down before it slid out from under him. I groaned, then ran toward them, hoping to get there before someone got hurt.
Whip clocked the spotter, dropping the man to his knees, then turned on Bolek, throwing a roundhouse punch to his face, connecting knuckles with jawbone, which emitted a sickening sound. “You thieving bastard,” Whip said. Bolek yelped, fell backward, and slammed to the ground, out cold. Pouch, dressed in all black tonight, including the fanny pack, stood there holding a piece of gutter like a club, bouncing on the balls of his tiny feet, waiting for Bolek to bob up from the ground. He did not. These were petty thieves, not master criminals, and Bolek was in no shape to tangle with Whip, or anyone else for that matter.
When I reached them, I turned to Whip and Pouch, and shook my head. I eyed the gutter in Pouches hands, then narrowed my eyes. He slowly laid it at his feet and backed away. Whip, high on adrenaline, danced around like Muhammad Ali in Manila, itching for more.
“Got him,” Whip said. “Lights out. Bam.”
I stared down at Bolek and his accomplice. “I see that, though I’m pretty sure I asked you not to get him.”
Whip’s eyebrows rose unconvincingly. “Really? I must have misheard you. My bad, Bean.”
Beneath us Bolek came to, moaning in pain. His companion just sat there and wisely kept his trap shut. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Pouch moving suspiciously, and I turned to face him. “Put it back.”
“What’s that?”
“Whatever you just palmed from the back of that truck, put it back.”
Sheepishly, Pouch eased a shiny screwdriver and wrench from his fanny pack. He grinned. “Can’t turn it off, apparently.”
I walked over to Bolek, kneeled down in front of him, our eyes holding. “You stole from him. Still he tried to give you a chance, didn’t he? You didn’t take it. Your loss.” The sirens came next. I stood and listened for them. This would be the second time in as many weeks that the police had to race to St. Brendan’s in the dead of night
I looked up to find Whip staring at me. “You don’t look right. You okay, Bean?”
I looked away. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want him to see it. “Sure. I’m good. All good.”
His eyes bore in. “I know when you’re lying.”
I smiled weakly, placed a hand on his arm. “Later.”
The piercing sound of the sirens grew closer.
“Man, they sure are loud, aren’t they?” Pouch said.
“I feel sorry for the neighbors,” Whip said.
“I’d invest in a little sound-proofing, myself,” Pouch said. “Block it all out.”
A beat passed. I turned to stare at Pouch. “What’d you just say?” I’d only been half listening, my mind instead on the things I still had to do. There was my father’s alibi still to check out, Fleece, the missing Dee Dee. I’d been too involved in searching for Yancy, waiting for him to be able to talk to me. Now he wouldn’t.
“I said I’d invest in some sound-proofing, cut
down on all the noise,” Pouch said.
Someone else had said much the same thing to me. It came to me in a flash. George Cummings. That’s why he said he hadn’t heard the sirens the night Pop died. I’d searched around his house, peeking into his windows. Hadn’t the car in his garage been brown? A brown Cutlass. A speeding brown Cutlass.
I’ve got to go,” I said to Whip. “You know what to say to the police, right?”
He pulled back, scowled, as though I’d insulted him. “Since I was twelve. Go. Do what you gotta do.”
I took off for my car.
* * *
The Cutlass had been sitting in George Cummings’s two-car garage. I’d seen it again as it sped up my street, after whoever was inside had taken a dangerous shot at my family. I called Ben.
“It’s George Cummings,” I said. “The brown Cutlass, the guy at the hospital, the assaults on the homeless, Pop and Cesar, all of it.”
“I know. We finally tracked Dee Dee through her disconnected cell. It led to her address, which turned out to be Cummings’s place. And, thanks to Father Ray’s cryptic scribblings you showed me, we found Dee Dee and her mother at Hathaway House.”
HWY. That’s what it was. Not a highway, but Pop’s shorthand for Hathaway.
“Cummings is Dee Dee’s stepfather? He’s the one Pop tried to make peace with. And you found her and her mother at a women’s shelter?”
“Guess that says a lot about their home life. Anyway, we’re rolling on his house now.”
“He won’t be there. He’ll have gone under by now.” I wanted to kick myself for the time I’d wasted. What if that had been all the time Cummings had needed to get away? That potshot at my place could have been his last play.”
“We still have to roll on it,” Ben said. “Sit tight. I’ll let you know when we grab him up.”
A close friend of Pop’s, he’d said. He’d offered his help in finding Pop’s killer and then sat at his memorial weeping like a child. All the while, he’d orchestrated three deaths. He was Yancy’s wolf in sheep’s clothing, had to be. And now Yancy’s roaring polar bear made sense. It was the white van from Cummings’s yard, the one he was working on when I met him, the one Cummings drove to the lot at Gentle Peace to check on Dee Dee, the one Lillian Gibson said had the faulty muffler you could hear a mile away. I felt as though I might be sick. George Cummings had been one of Pop’s pall bearers, hiding behind smiles and rosary beads while I ran all over town trying to figure it all out. And then there was Nate. A wave of fury overtook me, and I could barely contain it. I couldn’t sit tight, or sit still, I just couldn’t. I headed out looking for George.
* * *
I walked the perimeter of Cummings Contracting, studying the chain fence for weak spots. No white van this time. The bay doors were down. The lights were off. It didn’t look like anyone was inside. Maybe I’d made the wrong choice. Maybe I should have gone to his house and waited with the cops. I switched off my phone and slipped it into my pocket, then eased out my standard equipment from the glove box—picklocks, gloves, flashlight, chewing gum—the last item to steady my nerves. If Cummings wasn’t here, then maybe he’d left something behind that would tell me where he went. I’d make it work. I had to make it work.
Sticking to shadows, I quietly jogged around to the back, looking for a way to get inside. I really did not want to have to scale razor wire. I’d had a rough night already, a rough couple of weeks, as a matter of fact, and had no desire to break my neck on top of everything else. The metal chain and padlock on the back gate matched the set out front, which dashed all hopes of my getting in without exerting any effort.
Resigned, I studied the fence for a good, dark spot to start my climb, but then quickly spotted a small section of fence where the links had come loose, creating a very small, but expandable breach. I searched the ground for something strong to pry open a wider gap, but there was nothing available. Then I remembered the pipe in my trunk and ran back to get it. The pipe was for emergencies. Maybe breaking into a murderer’s business didn’t exactly rise to the level of one, but I was going to use it anyway. Back at the fence, pipe in hand, I ran the plan over in my head.
Make a hole. Get in. Look for a hint to where he might have run. Get out without getting caught.
I slipped on my gloves and quietly got to work.
I peeled back more of the fence, looking over my shoulder, checking the street, chewing the gum, envisioning Cummings behind bars wearing an orange jumpsuit. When I’d made a big enough hole, I slipped through the gap, then slowly rolled the pipe back through to the other side to pick up on my way back to the car. I ran for the back door, then had a terrifying thought. What if Cummings had an alarm? Had I just worked up a sweat for nothing? I trained my flash along the glass in the back door, looking for wired circuits. I didn’t see any, but that meant nothing. Alarms were getting more sophisticated every day.
I turned back and eyed my point of escape. If I picked this lock and the horn of Gabriel blew, I was going to have to haul ass. I mentally ran through my dash and scramble through the wire, then flicked the flashlight beam down to my shoes to make sure my laces were tied tight and offered up a prayer for safekeeping, not at all sure tender mercies extended to those willfully trespassing on another man’s property.
Squatting down, I began to slowly tickle the lock’s driver and key pins. Minutes went by, and I was still at it. I gasped in relief when I heard the familiar slide, slide, click. I was in. George Cummings’s office wasn’t much—desk, chair, another desk, another chair, a file cabinet. I slid a couple of desk drawers open, but they were empty. A bulletin board made of cork hung on the wall with colorful push pins stuck into it, but there was nothing on the board for the pins to hold up. On one of the desks there was a week-old newspaper gathering dust. I fanned through the pages on a desk calendar, but Cummings hadn’t written anything down in weeks and there were no dates circled that would indicate he had anything pending. He was right. His business wasn’t doing well at all. I shivered inside my jacket. The heat was off. A flick of the light switch yielded no result. The electricity was off, too.
I spotted the door to the vehicle bay and went for it. Get in. Get out. It was fast becoming my mantra. I turned the knob. The door was locked. Back to the picklocks, but this time, I managed to shave a good minute off my time.
I stepped softly into the dark, cold bay, which reeked of motor oil, old rubber, and rags. Sweeping my light toward the center of the room, the beam instantly bounced off the chrome of a brown car, a Cutlass Supreme. The car was just sitting there as bold as you please. On the other side of it sat the white van with CUMMINGS CONTRACTORS stenciled on the side, and beyond that, a door leading back out into the yard. I flicked off the flash. There was just enough moonlight coming in through the bay doors to navigate by.
I padded over and felt the car’s hood, because that’s what you did when you checked out a car parked somewhere you didn’t expect to find it. The hood was warm. I drew back my hand, froze in place, the moment as chilling as watching someone pull back the hammer on a revolver pointed at your head.
“That’s how you pick a lock?” The booming voice, part playful, part chilling came from behind me.
I reeled around to meet the source and watched as Fleece Jacket stepped out of the shadows and smiled. He took a step toward me, his right hand buried deep in his pocket, the pocket bulging. He was armed.
“Knew you’d make it here sooner or later.”
I gripped my flashlight. I could maybe use it to bash in his head. My gun, unfortunately, was in my pocket, the butt gummed up with glue from the duct tape, safe and sound, and useless to me. There was no way in hell he was going to let me reach for it. He’d come to my home; he’d come after my family. I wanted to kill him.
“There are locks on the gates,” I said.
He grinned, fished into his pockets and came up with a key ring. He jangled the keys.
“Lights off in the office?” I asked.
> “Those little bulbs come right out of those sockets.”
“And you’re driving George Cummings’s car.”
He grinned. “Fair trade.”
“And you are?” I asked. “You know who I am already. Seems only fair.”
“Don’t matter, does it?”
“They’ll need something to put on your booking sheet.”
He chuckled. “You’re funny for a dead woman.”
I scanned the room looking for an out. I turned back to find him staring at me. “Funny, I don’t feel dead.”
We locked eyes, neither of us saying anything for a time. He was wearing the same thing I’d seen him in last, the fleece jacket now ripped at the sleeve. I hoped I’d ripped it. “You flipped that lady out of her wheelchair.”
He bowed his head slightly as if acknowledging a compliment. “Needed the big dumb cop to move.”
“Then you killed Yancy Gantt.”
“That his name?” He shrugged, appearing unconcerned with trivialities. “I got to do what the man says do.”
I took a determined step forward. “And you shot at an innocent four-year-old and his mother.”
He sneered at me. “That was for the hospital.”
I was seething inside, but tried not to show it. Maybe I’d get my shot, but first I had to get out of here in one piece.
“George Cummings is your boss.” The boss, not boss.
Fleece’s gaze stayed even, cold. “If you say so.”
“This is his business you’re standing in.”
Fleece looked around as if seeing the place for the first time. “Sure is.”