by David Grace
Victor, she thought, rolling the name around in her head. It always felt odd to her. To her he had always been “daddy” or “dad”, but ever since they escaped Los Angeles it had always been “Victor.” Victor Quinn never cared about us. Victor Quinn would rather chase criminals than take care of his family. Victor Quinn is the reason the drug cartels are looking for us.
Did his friends call him “Vic”? she wondered. Just for the heck of it she tapped in “Vic Quinn” but none of the hits even came close. Elaine sighed and slipped her phone back into her purse. If Google can’t find a trace of him, she thought, he must be gone for sure.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“These people are animals,” Stan Kudlacik muttered for the eighth time that day, then snatched up a new list of names. This one was headed “Paulie Sturdevant Cell Mates.” Kudlacik sourly scanned the page then glanced over at Quinn. Virgil’s head was tilted back, his eyes closed as if in a trance. “Jesus, Quinn,” Stan called out and bounced a crumpled page off Virgil’s chest. “You want to help me find these guys or what?”
“I’m thinking,” Virgil said, not opening his eyes.
“Well, I’m thinking too,” Stan half-shouted, pushing back from his desk. “I’m thinking these human excuses for walking small pox are out there planning their next massacre and all we’ve got are about a thousand names that probably don’t know anything and wouldn’t tell us if they did. Fuck!” Kudlacik stood, paced a few feet toward the coffee machine, then realized that he couldn’t stomach another cup. He stood there for a moment fidgeting, with no idea what to do next.
Virgil typed a string of keys, scrolled down his screen, then smiled.
“What do monsters do on their day off?” he asked in a soft voice.
“What?” Kudlacik turned around and glared at Quinn.
“Where do people like this spend their time when they’re not out killing and raping? They’re not at home with the wife and kids. They’re not running the marathon or touring the new Impressionist exhibit at the museum. They’re drinking, taking drugs, fucking, gambling and partying, right?”
“So what?” Stan snapped, taking a couple of steps closer to Virgil’s desk. “How does that help us find them?”
“If we knew where Sturdevant spent his time we probably could find somebody who’s seen who he partied with, what kind of car he drove, who his pals were. That’s the kind of information that will help us narrow down all these names to the ones who we need to concentrate on.”
“How are we going to do that? This is a big town. There are hundreds of places where low-lifes hang out.”
“Guys like Sturdevant don’t take the bus when they want to have a good time. They have to have a car. Their cars have to have up-to-date plates because they can’t risk being stopped because their tags have expired. And they have to have a driver’s license for the same reason.”
“So they use somebody else’s car and they buy a fake ID,” Stan snapped. “It’s a dead end.” Kudlacik collapsed back into his chair and glared at the piles of pages that covered his desk.
“You get stopped for making an illegal left turn or running a red light or whatever, the first thing the cop does is check your plate against your ID, so they have to match. If they don’t the cop’s going to figure you’re driving a stolen car, which you don’t want.”
“So, you get someone to fake up a driver’s license in the real owner’s name.”
“Sure, if you’re a criminal mastermind planning the crime of the century. Look at this guy’s sheet. He’s a career criminal which means he’s lazy and he’s no Einstein. What’s the simplest thing for him to do once the money from these jobs starts rolling in?”
“I give up,” Stan snapped, throwing up his hands. “What’s he going to do?”
“He’s going to buy some flashy car for cash and register it in his own name at some flea-bag hotel address.”
“Am I missing something here?” Stan said. “Paulie Sturdevant doesn’t have a driver’s license and there aren’t any vehicles registered in his name.”
“That depends on where you look. He did his last bit in Allenwood in Lima, Ohio. He got out eighteen months ago. What if he got himself an Ohio driver’s license before he moved here?”
“No good,” Stan replied. “We ran him through the DMV in Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Pennsylvania. No hits.”
“No hits under the name ‘Paul Sturdevant’,” Virgil said, “but I noticed something in one of his probation reports.” Virgil tapped a dog-eared file on the center of his desk. “Every other piece of paper we’ve got on this guy has him as ‘Paul Sturdevant.’ No middle name.”
“So?”
“There’s always a middle name, and I wondered why Sturdevant didn’t have one, so I kept going farther and farther back until I got to the juvie record of his first arrest. Good job finding that by the way.”
“Jesus,” Stan begged, “just tell me what the hell you’re getting at.”
Virgil flipped to a wrinkled page almost at the bottom of a worn file and began to read:
“Subject S. Paul Sturdevant (born Shirley Paul Sturdevant 03/09/1990 Toledo, Ohio) was arrested on . . . . Well, you see what I’m getting at.”
“Shirley?”
“Probably a family name. His freshman high school record shows him as ‘S. Paul Sturdevant’ and that’s the name he got busted under. Somewhere along the way he managed to lose the ‘S’ but his Ohio birth certificate still reads ‘Shirley Paul Sturdevant’ and that’s what Ohio put on his driver’s licence. Actually, it was good luck for him. It gave him a ready-made official alias. He’s probably been using it to stay off the grid for years.”
“You found a driver’s license?”
“An Ohio driver’s license. It’s got a couple of years left to run. But the important thing is that I found a Michigan vehicle registration for Shirley P. Sturdevant, a 2015 Mustang GT, black. Apparently he came into some cash because he owns it free and clear.”
“Do you have an address on him?” Stan asked, now interested.
“Like I said, some crap hotel. He probably never set foot in the place. But, what do you need if you like watching Internet porn?”
“Jesus, Quinn, what is this, twenty questions?” Virgil just smiled. “Fine! A computer.”
Virgil smiled wider. “True, but the answer I was looking for was ‘a credit card.’“
“How the hell did he–”
“They give credit cards to dead people. All he had to do was open a checking account and give them a social. It would be a low-credit-limit card but he didn’t use it for much other than watching porn and buying gas. The billing address was a mailbox store, but if he lives near where he buys gas and if he drinks near where he lives then we can at least narrow down the places where we need to flash his picture. If I give you a zip code do you think you and Montgomery can come up with a list of bars and strip clubs?”
“Hey, Carl,” Stan called across the squad room. “We got something that requires your low-life expertise.”
“It takes one to know one,” Montgomery called back then headed for Kudlacik’s desk.
* * *
It was too early to work the massage parlors, strip joints, bars, and clubs, but on the off chance that Sturdevant liked to bet the ponies Janet sent Kudlacik and Montgomery out to canvas the workers at Hazel Park while Virgil took the ones at Northville Downs. Nobody recognized Sturdevant’s picture.
A description of Sturdevant’s car was sent to the uniforms and its license number was fed into the department’s plate-reader database. Time would tell if they got any hits. After dinner Janet, Virgil, Stan and Carl divided up the target list of bars and night clubs in the area where Sturdevant had bought gas and they all went back to work.
The sign over the door on the third name on Virgil’s list consisted of a five-foot tall white-neon martini glass holding a glowing, green olive the size of a basketball. Red-script neon above the stylized glass winked “Fred’s Place” at
the rate that an old man breathed. As Virgil neared the club the front door opened and spit out a chunky working girl and a skinny black kid in a leather jacket. They got into a ten-year-old silver Camry and headed for the string of hot-sheet hotels two blocks south. Thinking it a good omen, Virgil slid his department Dodge into the vacated parking spot. A group of young men, smoking and passing a bottle from hand to hand, lounged in front of a bodega a hundred feet up the street. As one, they eyed Virgil’s Charger and instantly made him for a cop.
To the right of Fred’s front door a slender black man on the wrong side of forty nodded to Virgil and rose slowly from a battered folding chair.
“Watch your car for you, Detective?” he asked, carefully holding his palms out and away from his body. Virgil shot a quick glance over his shoulder toward the men at the bodega. Two of them were holding cell phones down low next to their thighs though Virgil figured that at this time of night any video they got would be all shadows and flickering smears of light.
“How much?” Virgil asked.
“That’s up to you. I’ll be sitting here whether you pay me or not,” the man said with the slightest hint of sadness in his voice. The days were still warm but there was a bite of fall in the night air and Virgil noticed that the man was dressed in layers to stave off the chill – dark wool pants that had come off a thrift-store winter suit, a gray, wool vest, a blue, dress shirt, frayed at the cuffs, topped by a burgundy bow tie with dark-blue spots, all wrapped by a tweed jacket that looked like it had spent ten years inhabiting some lecture hall at Wayne State University.
“My name’s Virgil,” Quinn said, holding out his hand.
The man hesitated a moment before replying. “Everybody calls me Numbers,” he said in a tone that a boy might use when confronted by a strange dog, unsure whether it intended to lick his outstretched hand or bite down hard enough to draw blood.
“That’s an unusual name. Are you good with math?”
The guy gave the men near the bodega a quick, nervous glance then looked back at Quinn.
“They call me Numbers because that’s what my name’s been all my life,” he said finally.
“What do you mean’?”
Numbers studied Virgil’s face for some sign that he was being taunted, toyed with the way a bully suckers the kid with the violin case before shoving his face into the toilet. After half a second he seemed to give a mental shrug and leaned back against the brick wall.
“My mama, she left me someplace when I was a baby. The orphanage gave me a phony Baby Doe name and a number, 69112186. They sewed it into my underwear,” Numbers said with a twisted smile. “I saw it every morning when I got dressed. When I turned eighteen the orphanage kicked me out and, well, I did some things, you know. My first time in the joint was at Florence Crane. My number there was AFC87443. I had that one for three years. When I got out I was into the Life, you know. Somebody asks you your name and when you’re living that way you just make one up, Johnny Jones, Bill Smith, whatever. They gave me a name at the orphanage, but I knew it was just some phony words that had nothing to do with me. I hated that bullshit name,” Numbers said with sudden heat.
Though Numbers was facing him Virgil sensed that the man’s attention had drifted someplace far away and that he was now watching a movie of his wasted life playing on the backside of his eyes.
“My next jolt was at Oaks,” Numbers said as if talking to himself. “Eight years. ECF4422981. They did that for the COs, you know, ‘4422981 report to the infirmary’ and like that, but that was my name. Some of the guys used nicknames, Tats or Jerry B or whatever, but 4422981 was my real name so that’s what I used. They called me ‘81’ for short, you know.” He gave his head a little shake as if to clear the memory from his brain. “So,” Numbers said, forcing a little smile, “that’s why they call me Numbers.”
Something sour shivered in Virgil’s gut as he watched Numbers unconsciously rub his fingertips across the edges of his pants.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Virgil said and pulled a ten from his wallet.
Numbers looked at the bill and smiled. “Thank you, detective,” he said and sat back down in his folding chair.
Virgil started with the cocktail waitress. “Club soda with a twist,” he told her and handed her a five. “And maybe you can help me find someone I can give some money to.” Virgil could read the words What’s his scam? as if they were written on her forehead with a Sharpie, but she didn’t say a thing. “This guy died,” Virgil said and slid a picture of Paulie Sturdevant across the table. “I’m trying to find anybody who knew him, friends, anybody who could help us track down his family. I’d be willing to pay for any helpful information.”
“Are you like a private detective or something?” she asked. The plastic tag on her blouse read ‘Shanayah.’
“Something like that,” Virgil said, figuring that the jeans and the black, long-sleeve shirt had been enough to throw off the “Cop Radar” of anyone who hadn’t seen him arrive in a department car. “You remember his ever being in here?”
“He looks kind of familiar,” Shanayah said, as if trying to jiggle a stuck memory out of an overcrowded brain.
“If you can remember when you saw him and who he was with there’d be some money in it for you.”
“How much?” she snapped.
“That would depend on how much you remembered.”
“Remembering is hard work and I get paid for my time.”
“Tell you what,” Virgil suggested, smiling. “You get me my club soda and see if anything comes back to you. If it does then we can talk about price.”
Shanayah snorted and shoved the five into her pocket in a way that made him wonder if he’d ever get his club soda. It finally arrived five minutes later, but from the expression on Shanayah’s face he decided that he would be smart not to drink it.
“Keep the change,” he told her.
“I already have,” she said and cocked her hip to one side as if deep in thought. “You know if you’re still looking for information on that guy I might be able to help you.”
“I’m still looking.”
“Give me twenty and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“Tell me what you know and I’ll give you what it’s worth,” Virgil said, still smiling.
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before. Information is like sex. You have to pay for it in advance.”
“It appears we’re at an impasse,” Virgil said, pushing back his chair. “Here’s my card and a copy of the picture. Maybe one of your co-workers knows something. If you can get them to tell you, call me and you’ll make some money out of it.”
Shanayah glanced at the words “Detroit Police Department” on the card and frowned.
“Private detective, huh?”
“It’s a temporary assignment.”
“I ain’t no snitch.”
“It isn’t snitching if the guy’s already dead.” Shanayah seem unconvinced. “Hey, if you don’t take care of yourself, who will?” She stared at Virgil for a moment, then shoved the picture and Virgil’s card into her hip pocket. Virgil watched her flounce back to the bar, patting the pocket as she went. He figured the bartender would tell her more than he would some unknown DPD detective, and Virgil headed for the door.
Outside the air had gotten colder and a faint halo surrounded the waning, crescent moon. The guys from in front of the bodega had moved down the block to the hot-air vent blowing the smells of pepperoni and melting cheese into the night. Virgil glanced at Numbers and gave him a nod.
“I see she’s still there.” Virgil waved toward his Dodge.
“Nobody bothers the cars I’m watching,” Numbers said with not a little pride.
“Good job,” Virgil told him and, playing a hunch, handed him another five. Numbers peered at the bill.
“Is there something else I can do for you, detective?” Numbers asked as he shoved it into his inside coat pocket.
“It’s like this,” Virgil began, pulling out
another picture of Paulie Sturdevant. Numbers listened to the same story Quinn had told the waitress, nodding as Virgil went along.
“You’re in the wrong place, detective,” Numbers said when Virgil was done. “That guy, he don’t come in here.” Numbers waved a skeletal arm at Fred’s sign. “Fred’s here is too high class for his kind. What you want is Club Bang, two blocks that way,” Numbers pointed down the street to his right, “then three blocks left. That’s where he be hanging out if you want to grab him up.”
“Too late to grab him up. He’s as dead as they come, but I would like to talk to his friends.”
“A man like that don’t have no friends, just accomplices.”
“I thought you said he never came in here.”
“I said he didn’t come in here. He showed up here once and George, he’s the manager, ended up pulling out the baseball bat he keeps behind the bar. The only thing that kept that guy from coming back with a shotgun is that this place is protected and George told him if he showed up again he was gonna end up getting his arms and legs broken.”
“So, you know who he is,” Virgil said more as a statement than a question.
“As much time as I’ve spent in the joint I know what he is. He’s a mad dog on two legs, kill you for the fun of it. Is he really dead?”
“Beyond dead. He’s red paste.”
Numbers thought about that for a moment.
“Good, that’s good,” he said, nodding.
“Okay, you take care of yourself.” Virgil paused then pulled out another five. “Thanks for the information. If you can find out anything else about where he hung out, who he was friends with, women he liked to patronize, give me a call and I’ll make it worth your while.” Virgil wrapped the bill around one of his cards and slipped it into Number’s palm when they shook hands.
“These days I stay away from men like that,” Numbers said as Virgil began to turn away. “I’ve had enough numbers in my life. I don’t need no more of them. . . . You be careful detective. Anybody he hung around with will be animals on two legs. They’ll kill you just because.”