by Ace Atkins
“Nope.”
“That must be horrible.”
“She’s pretty upset,” I said. “As you can imagine.”
We finally made it to Linnaean and walked up the steps of Susan’s Victorian, where she lived and kept her practice. Pearl jumped up the steps as if ready to repeat the entire walk. I held on to the bannister and stretched out my leg. There was a neat little sign by the front door that noted SUSAN SILVERMAN. PSYCHOTHERAPIST.
“Do you ever get walk-in clients?” I said.
“You’d be surprised.”
“Do we have beer?”
“And wine and soon a pizza,” she said. “What more could a good Jewish girl want for an evening?”
“Let’s get changed and I’ll show you.”
“My mother warned me about a goy like you,” she said. “She said they only think of one thing.”
I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek as she unlocked the door. I whispered into her ear, “Your mother was right.”
24
The next day, I hadn’t been in Blackburn all of two hours when a cop pulled me over with his flashers. He asked me to step out of the car and put my hands on the roof.
I told him this technically wasn’t a car. “It’s an SUV,” I said. “It has four-wheel drive and everything.”
“Get the fuck out of the car, smart-ass, before I drag you out.”
“That would be interesting to see.”
“What?”
“I said I’d be thrilled if you’d try,” I said. “You know, reach in, grab me by the arms, and see what happens? It’ll be fun. You look like you could use a little workout this morning.”
He looked hard at me. I looked at him. I noted the name on his badge. Murphy. I took in the features of his round face and weak chin. A thin scar over his right eye. Small, vacant blue eyes and squat, wide nose. Short, oily blondish hair. I reached down to my smartphone and flipped through the apps as I kept eye contact. Looking at him wasn’t very pleasant. It took great effort and fortitude. His breath smelled like the back alley of a seafood restaurant.
“You resisting?”
“You keep breathing on me and I’ll write out a confession.”
“Get out of the vehicle now.”
“Are you arresting me?” I said.
“You bet your ass,” Officer Murphy said.
“Just for the hell of it, what’s the charge?”
“You people make me sick.”
“Educated?”
“Pederast,” he said. “Bopping little girls. Probably keep porno shit on your computer. Now get out of the car.”
There was a lot of blood rushing into my face and I felt a jolt of adrenaline zap my chest.
I wanted to hit him very hard and very fast in the big bazoo. The cop had his hand on his sidearm and stepped back so I could open the door. I touched my smartphone to start recording as I got out.
“I think you have me confused with your old priest.”
He stared harder at me. I resisted the urge to shudder.
My window was down as I closed the door. Several cars zoomed past on Central Avenue. Across the street was a used-tire business, and you could hear the quick zapping of the air gun on the lug nuts. I started to yell over to the men working in the open bay but decided that would be cowardly. Besides, I wasn’t a local. Only special visitors to Blackburn get harassed.
He touched my shoulder, very light, and I spun very fast. He jumped back and pulled his gun. “Wow.”
“You want trouble,” he said, “you got it, big guy.”
“Big guy?” I said. “Wow. You improvise that? Or have you been practicing that in the shower. Along with other things.”
“Turn around,” he said. “Hands behind your back. And shut up.”
He touched the mic on his lapel. He let dispatch know he’d gotten the guy and would need another unit to transport. It made me feel very important.
“Are you going to tell me the charge? Or would that ruin the surprise?”
“Attempted lewd and lascivious act with a minor.”
“This minor have a name? Or was this with all the minors in Blackburn?”
“Beth Golnick.”
“She tell you this?”
“Her mother filed a report this morning,” he said. “You got the girl into your car, or fucking SUV, right by the old mill. You told the girl you wanted her to service you.”
Yeah, I very much wanted to punch the man in the bazoo. But it was a joke to him, and to me, and the more I tried to fight him, the more I’d make his day. Judging from the food stains across his uniform, I didn’t believe he had a hell of a lot of things going for him. A second unit arrived and the cop I’d met at the courthouse got out.
The young guy with the military cut had on the same dark sunglasses. He stood cocky and sure, popping gum as he looked at me. His face had so many pits in it, it resembled pictures I’d seen of the moon.
“Thank God you’re here,” I said. “Officer Murphy and I were having a misunderstanding. I just know you’re here to straighten it out.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “Put the cuffs on him, Murphy. If he keeps talking, put a sock in his mouth.”
“‘O, speak to me no more; these words like daggers enter in my ears.’”
“What?” Murphy said.
“It’s a slick way of telling someone to keep quiet.”
They would arrest me no matter what I tried. I could kick both of them in the teeth, but they were dirty cops with guns drawn. When the dust settled, I’d be dead, and their version of the truth would win. I crossed my arms over my chest. It wasn’t much, but it was something. More cars zoomed past. The guys at the tire place hadn’t so much as turned their heads, finding threadbare tires a lot more interesting.
“Hands on top of the vehicle,” the pitted-faced cop said. “I got to frisk you before I cuff you.”
I shook my head and placed my hands on my Explorer. “Do me a favor?”
“What’s that?” the pitted-faced cop said. Murphy had sidled up to him and was giving the old stink eye.
“Be gentle,” I said. “I bruise easy.”
The young cop sighed and pulled the .38 I wore on my right hip. He handed it over to Murphy. Murphy called a wrecker for my Explorer and then I was chauffeured to the Blackburn Police Department.
25
They had me wait a great long while in a cinder-block room with a long table and four folding chairs. They’d taken away my phone, my .38, and my pen. I didn’t even have the pleasure of scrawling Officer Murphy Sux on top of the desk. My wrists were still cuffed.
So I sat there and waited. I paced a little bit, but the room was short and the pacing didn’t last long. I rolled my head around on my shoulders to loosen my neck. I thought about all the kids who’d probably waited in this same room. Dillon Yates, Van Tran, Jake Cotner, Ryan Bell, and Beth Golnick, who I thought wanted my help. I had little confidence there was any truth to anything the cops said. I imagined the city erecting a sign with a new town slogan: BLACKBURN, WHERE LIES ARE A WAY OF LIFE.
I wondered how Dillon was making out on Fortune Island.
I wondered if the Sox would return to the lovable bums of old.
I wondered if Bobby Talos would invite me to one of his yacht parties.
An hour later, Murphy opened the door and a man I assumed to be the chief walked into the room. He had receding gray hair and a wide florid face with bright blue eyes. He wore a blue uniform with four stars on each of his epaulets, an American-flag patch on one shoulder, and a patch that said CHIEF ARMSTRONG on the other. He sat down across from me without a word. He slipped on a pair of half-glasses he wore loose around his neck and read through a stapled report. His lips did not move as he read, which I took as a sign of middling intelligence.
When he finished, he ca
refully slid the paper to the middle of the desk. “What do you have to say for yourself, Spenser?”
“I’m a friend to dogs and bartenders everywhere,” I said. “Turnoffs are corruption and cops abusing their position. Especially for dirty judges.”
“Those are some big-time accusations,” Chief Armstrong said. “A lot to hear from a guy we caught cruising around with a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“I don’t start leering until they’re twenty-one,” I said. “Beth Golnick reached out to me. I met her regarding a case I’m working on.”
“I bet that piece of paper you carry around impresses these kids,” Armstrong said. “I understand you offered to let her polish your pistol.”
“I don’t mind waiting around for two hours in this craphole,” I said. “But there’s a quota to the bullshit I can hear in one day.”
“You weren’t making advances to Miss Golnick?” Armstrong said. He craned his head over his left shoulder to grin at Officer Murphy. Murphy’s big cheeks brightened with pleasure.
“Nope.”
“She appeared with her mother this morning,” Armstrong said. “The little girl was in tears. She said you told her you were a cop and needed her help to find out secrets about Judge Scali.”
“Jeez, you guys have it all figured out,” I said. “I think this is the part when you look at me over the top of your glasses and wait for me to quiver a bit. After you think I’m scared, good and scared, you kick me loose and tell me not to come back to these parts again.”
“No, sir,” Armstrong said. “You’re being charged with an attempted lewd act.”
“Don’t forget lascivious,” I said. “You leave out the lascivious and the meaning of it all is shot to hell.”
Armstrong thumbed his nose. What was left of his hair was swept back in a large mound, exposing a lot of real estate on his forehead. He blinked at me a few times and pursed his lips. He thumped his fingers and then looked at me again.
“Who’s your client?” he said. “If you even have one.”
“You already know that,” I said. “You’re in cahoots with Officer Lorenzo.”
“What?”
“Cahoots,” I said.
“Are you trying to blackmail Judge Scali?”
I didn’t think that one deserved a response. I waited. Armstrong pushed the half-glasses farther up on his nose, read the report to himself again for emphasis, and then took off the glasses and looked up at me. “This will ruin your reputation,” he said. “No one will want to hire a guy with charges like this against him.”
“People have made up a lot of stories about me before,” I said. “It all works out.”
“I guess we’ll see,” he said, standing. I hadn’t moved. I sat very still and relaxed, keeping both Murphy and Armstrong in vision in case they tried anything.
Murphy reached into his pocket and handed over a digital recorder to the chief. The chief set it in the center of the table and pressed play. I recognized Beth Golnick’s voice immediately. She spoke calmly and without much emotion about our meeting last week. Some of it was true. Much of it wasn’t. A woman was asking her questions.
A: He offered to give me a ride to school.
Q: What did you say?
A: I said no. But he kept asking. He said he didn’t want the local cops to see us in public.
Q: Did he force you?
A: At first, no. He was quiet while we drove.
Q: When did he first touch you?
A: When we stopped near the school. He told me I was pretty. He touched my leg.
Q: And what did he say?
A: He asked me to do something for him.
I held up my hand. “Enough,” I said. “Not that I don’t enjoy the Lux Radio Theatre. Nicely done. I imagine this is what you had in mind when you arrested her in the first place. Really grand job. I have to hand it to you.”
Armstrong leaned back into his seat. He did not smile. The heater cut in overhead and even more hot air filled the small room.
“Judge would look favorably on a confession,” he said. “You think this sounds good on tape? Wait until we get her in front of a jury.”
“Would this be Judge Callahan?” I said.
“You bet.”
“What are the chances?”
“I don’t know your agenda, Spenser, or who hired you to try and shake down some good men, but you can’t act like this up here.”
“Is it the judges or the solicitation?”
“Both.”
“A double play.”
“Call it what you like,” Armstrong said, showing a lot of effort getting out of his seat. He left the recorder and the report on the table and walked out past Murphy.
“Come on, sunshine,” he said. “Let’s get you processed.”
“Do I get to call my attorney, or has the Constitution been suspended in Blackburn for adults, too?”
“You can call who you like,” he said. “But it’d be a shame if you didn’t make your first appearance in the morning. You just might get to stay with us a few days. You know?”
I stood and winked at him. “Murphy, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship,” I said.
“Shut the fuck up.”
“Or perhaps not.”
Tony Ponessa came for the boy late that afternoon. The guards had the kids on the west beach picking up garbage among the rocks and sand. They had sticks with nails in them to poke the trash, and when a stick didn’t work, the guards told them to use their hands. It was disgusting stuff: old soda cans, burger wrappers, and a few condoms. The stuff people put in the harbor was enough to make him never want to eat seafood again. He had a half-filled black plastic bag when he felt the long arm around his neck and a nail in his side. Ponessa put his mouth close to the boy’s ear and told him to get down on his knees and kneel to him.
The boy shot a hard elbow back into Ponessa’s ribs. He heard the boy make an ooof sound and stumble back. The other boys on the cold beach, fifteen of them, started yelling and waving their sticks. None of the guards said a word. Ponessa had his stick in his hand and swiped it at him, the nail snagging the boy’s pants, and then tried to jab it into him.
The shoreline was rocky and tricky to walk across. Old stones and broken pieces of concrete jabbed upward. The skies were gray and growing darker. A few ragged seagulls flew in loopy patterns over the little islands, landing in the tall grass up on the bulldozed dunes.
“Come on,” Ponessa said. “Come on. Get on your knees. And I won’t stick you.”
The boy waited for him to lunge again as they circled. Behind him, the crew-cut guard watched with a big smile on his face. Ponessa made a couple quick pokes and then went hard for it, stabbing at the boy’s center. The boy stepped aside and grabbed the stick. He got a good two hands on it, like you would hold a bat, and twisted it from Ponessa. He tossed it far into the harbor as Ponessa jumped on him.
All the boys had formed a circle around them, closing them at the center, black and white and Asian, and yelling for them to please, for the love of God, kill each other.
Ponessa made a lot of noise when he fought. He called the boy a lot of names and threw sloppy, hard punches into his kidneys. The boy knew he’d have to get him to the ground, spinning quickly and snatching Ponessa’s head to pull him into a headlock. He twisted the kid’s neck, pulling all of Ponessa’s weight forward, and tossed him hard into the sand with a hard thud.
Now all the boys were screaming, going crazy. The mayor was down. The mayor was down.
Ponessa went for the boy’s eyes, clawing and screaming. The boy was breathing hard as he pulled in Ponessa’s neck tighter, walking with his feet, finding purchase and pinning both the kid’s shoulders to the wet sand. With his free hand, he pummeled Ponessa good several times until the blood was flowing free from his nose. Ponessa was yelling
that he couldn’t breathe and making gaspy little-girl noises.
The boy felt good and started to let up on Ponessa’s neck when a thick forearm reached around his own and pulled him up and off the sand and breaking surf. The crew-cut guard spun to face him and smacked the boy hard across the mouth. He pushed the boy hard with the flats of his hands, knocking him back time and again until the boy lost his balance and fell forward.
“Get the stick,” the guard said.
The waves were ice-cold and breaking hard off the concrete and rocks. Even if he knew where to find the stick, he didn’t want to get in the water.
The guard stepped up closer and looked down at him. He kicked the boy hard in the ribs, knocking all the breath from his lungs, and told him to get to his knees. “Start diving and don’t come up without no fucking stick.”
“I’ll drown,” the boy said.
The guard picked the boy up by the back of the neck and walked him out knee-deep into the freezing water.
26
Not making good on their promise, the Blackburn PD didn’t wait a week but instead sent me over to the courthouse the next morning. I had not shaved, showered, or changed my clothes. I was lucky. They gave me an orange jumpsuit to wear. Rita Fiore, who sat across from me in a client conference room, didn’t seem impressed.
“Orange is not your color,” she said.
“I thought it brought out my blue eyes.”
“Charging you with an indecent proposal is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” Rita said. “Jesus, you won’t even make one toward me. The judge will toss this out quick.”
“Did I forget to mention Callahan and Scali are buddies?”
“Which one is Scali again?”
“The one who sentenced Sheila Yates’s kid to hard time for poking fun at his vice principal.”
“Okay, you’re screwed.”
“Such a fancy legal term.”
“Seriously, you’re screwed,” Rita said. “But let me see what I can do. Even judges have limits to what kind of bail they can set.”