by David Grace
“Homeless guy found him,” Stan said, pointing at the body lying in the gap between a rusted dumpster and the wall. A pair of flashes behind them made the shadow from his arm leap as if alive.
“What time was this?” Virgil asked, staring at the pool of blue-black blood.
“The call came in at . . . ,” Stan checked his notes, “5:22.”
“What was somebody doing poking around here in the middle of the night?”
“Our witness is the industrious sort. He has a route where he hits the dumpsters early, looking for aluminum cans, liquor bottles with some booze still in them, maybe a broken cell phone, anything that he can sell or drink.” Virgil gave Stan a confused look.
“No one will hire him,” Kudlacik explained, “and he couldn’t live on what they’d pay him if they would. It’s this or starve.” Stan could see that Virgil still didn’t get it. “He used to work in a travel agency before the Internet killed it. Then the booze got him. Now, this is how he survives.”
Stan pointed toward a figure standing next to one of the cruisers. The man was someplace between forty and sixty and vaguely Caucasian beneath a layer of grime. Wisps of steam swirled from the plastic cup he held to his face with both hands.
“Earle, this is Lieutenant Quinn,” Kudlacik said a minute later. “Virgil, this is Earle Wannamaker. He found the body.”
Wannamaker gave Virgil a little nod and held tight to the coffee cup, which saved Quinn the disagreeable possibility of having to shake the homeless man’s filthy hand.
“Thanks for calling us, Mr. Wannamaker. You mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“Happy to do it. I see something suspicious, I call you guys. My civic duty. Besides if I help you guys out you always take care of me.” Earle held up the steaming coffee. “It gets cold in this town real fast.”
“I’m guessing you haven’t had any breakfast yet,” Virgil said. Earle shook his head and laughed. “Stan, what do you think?”
“How about an Egg McMuffin?”
“I like the one with the sausage,” Earle told him.
“I’ll have one of the uniforms make a food run,” Stan promised and headed toward the cops on perimeter duty.
“Can you take me through how you found him,” Virgil asked, pulling out his pad and pen.
“OK, that alley there is one of my regular spots. That’s where they dump the stuff from The Trotters.” Earle pointed toward a darkened sign a few yards up the street. “Lots of bottles and cans from that place, plus other stuff, smokes, maybe a few joints – I don’t do drugs, just booze, but a man’s gotta live.”
“Sure,” Virgil said, “A man’s got to live,” all the time thinking, If you can call this living. “What time was this?”
“I don’t know exactly. You wear a watch on the street, you won’t have it for long, you know.” Earle’s eyes seemed to lose focus for a second, then snapped back. “Anyway, I’m usually down here around five, a quarter after.”
“Did you see anyone nearby?”
“Nah, it was dead. That’s why I come so early. No competition.” Virgil made a note then nodded for Earle to continue. “OK, so I started going through the dumpster, like always–”
“It was dark. How were you able to see anything?”
Earle grinned and pulled a three-inch long, dark-green, aluminum tube from his pocket and clicked the button on the bottom. A blue-white beam illuminated Virgil’s shoes.
“A man’s got to have his tools. The people at the mission on Polk let me plug the batteries into their charger.”
“OK, sorry I interrupted. You were going through the dumpster. . . ?”
“So, I was shining my light around the top when I noticed that it wasn’t where it usually is, which is pushed up close to the wall, so, you know, I looked behind it and I saw all this stuff piled up there and I started thinking, ‘What’s that?’ like maybe somebody threw out something too big to fit, maybe something valuable. So, I pulled the piece of cardboard off the top and that’s when I saw the body.”
“Did you touch him?”
“Hell no,” Earle said, with an edge of humor in his voice. “Not after I saw that hole in his head. I saw that and said to myself, ‘This guy’s gotten himself murdered. I better call the cops.’ And that’s what I did.”
“Where did you call from?” Virgil glanced around but didn’t see anything that looked like a pay phone.
“I used my emergency phone.” Earle pulled out a tiny phone that looked at least fifteen years old. “I can’t make any regular calls with it but the 911 still works. I charge it up once a week at the mission.” He pressed the power button and a couple of seconds later the tiny LCD screen lit up with the message, Emergency Calls Only. “I dialed 911 and told them what I’d found and your guys came out right away.”
“Did you find anything on the body?” Virgil said as a more polite way of asking if Earle had stolen anything from Anderson’s corpse.
“Like I said, I didn’t touch him. I knew that I’d get into trouble if I took something off him, and you guys would only take it back anyway. Besides,” Earle said, grinning, “I knew that if I helped you with a guy who’d got his head blown off that you people would take care of me. Am I right?” Earle pulled his hand from his pocket and held it out, palm up.
“Yeah,” Virgil said, smiling in spite of himself, “you’re right. Is there anything else you can tell me about what you saw this morning?”
Earle paused then cocked his head toward the lightening sky. “Nope,” he said finally and looked back at Quinn.
Virgil checked his notes then took Earle back through his story again from the beginning.
“What about that bar, The Trotters?” he asked a few minutes later when he was sure he had gotten every detail about how Earle had discovered the body. “What can you tell me about it?”
“Bunch of fucking low-lifes hang out there. I went in there one time to ask if they had any empties they wanted to get rid of and they kicked me in the ass and told me they’d put me in the hospital if I ever came back. You want my advice, stay out of that place.”
Virgil heard footsteps and saw Stan approaching them carrying two, white McDonalds bags.
“Egg McMuffin with sausage and fresh coffee,” Stan said, handing the food to Earle. “Bacon, egg, biscuit and coffee,” he continued, extending the depleted bag to Virgil. “This one’s mine,” he said, holding up the second bag. “You get what we need?”
“Yeah. Earle’s been a lot of help.” Virgil put the bag down and pulled out his wallet. After a moment’s hesitation, Stan did the same. They each handed Earle a twenty.
“Officers and gentlemen, thank you both. If you have any more questions, talk to the people at the Polk Street Mission. They’ll know where to find me.”
Earle shoved the bills into his pocket then took a big bite from his Egg McMuffin. Virgil gave him a nod and he and Kudlacik walked over to one of the cruisers.
“What do you want to bet that Anderson met Kyle Neddick in The Trotters last night and Neddick decided that he knew too much to be left alive?”
“No bet, but where does that leave us?” Stan asked. “His crew is dead or locked up and my guess is that Neddick’s in the wind. We’ve got nothing on him, not even a picture.”
Virgil glanced back toward the alley still swarming with uniforms and crime-scene techs. The deputy ME had just pulled up and was being escorted to the body.
“Maybe we’ll find something on him,” Virgil said but he didn’t sound like he believed it.
“Assuming we don’t . . . ?”
“We still have Dion Jenkins. When he finds out that Neddick’s probably killed off the last man on their crew maybe he’ll think of something that will help us find him.”
“Sure he will,” Stan said.
“You never know.” Virgil raised the paper bag a few inches. “Thanks for breakfast.”
Chapter Forty-Four
Dion Jenkins seemed to have shrunk in the three days sinc
e he had last sat in Interview Room 3. The orange jumpsuit’s cuffs ballooned around his wrists, and the skin around his eyes was damp and tight.
“What you want? I told you everything I know,” Dion complained when Virgil and Kudlacik came through the door. Virgil just smiled and placed a plastic Coke bottle within reach of Dion’s cuffed wrists. Jenkins gave it a half-second suspicious glance, then grabbed it, chugged half of it down, then burped loudly. Stan frowned and studied the wall a foot to the left of Dion’s head.
“You’re welcome,” Virgil said.
“Uhhh, yeah. Thanks,” Dion answered in a more friendly tone. The silence dragged on for another heartbeat. “I told you everything I know. . . . Is this where you do me? You gonna tell me I ain’t got my deal after all?”
“No, nothing like that. You got your deal.” Dion’s shoulders slumped and he gave Virgil a relieved smile. “We just came by to let you know how lucky you really are.”
“Yeah, I won the fucking lottery,” Dion said, holding up his manacled wrists.
“It beats being dead, which is what you would be if we hadn’t found you.”
“What do mean, dead?”
Virgil slid three color prints of Ralph Anderson’s body across the steel table.
“This morning we found your buddy, Ralph Anderson, in the alley next to The Trotters bar with half his head blown off. That was one of Kyle’s places, right, The Trotters?” Dion shuffled through the prints, one-by-one, then looked up. “You’re a smart guy, Dion. I don’t have to draw you a picture, do I? Kyle’s getting rid of loose ends. He’s taking care of anyone who could testify against him.”
Virgil could see the fear in Dion’s eyes, but Jenkins tamped it down before it could reach his mouth. Virgil pulled Dion’s phone from the evidence folder and slid it across the table.
“I’ll make you a deal. You check your messages and if there aren’t any from Kyle asking you to set up a meeting I’ll buy you . . . what would you like? A Big Mac combo meal? A Quarter Pounder? On the other hand, if he did try to get you to meet up with him, how about you thank us for saving your life?” Virgil reached across the table and tapped the bullet hole in the center of Ralphie Anderson’s forehead.
Dion looked at the phone as if it were some peculiar and possibly venomous insect then gingerly picked it up and tapped in his code. The Missed Call List showed four calls from numbers he didn’t recognize and he switched to his IMs. He stared at them for ten seconds as if after more scrutiny the words might change.
“Shit,” he muttered and, frowning, he slid the phone back across the table.
“Here’s the thing, Dion,” Virgil said, handing the now unlocked phone to Kudlacik, “we figure Kyle’s still got you on his hit list. He wants you dead and he probably has friends inside, or if he doesn’t he’s got enough money to pay somebody to take you out. If we put you in gen pop like we promised while Kyle’s still on the loose, well . . . .” Virgil shrugged.
“We’d like to keep you alive to testify against Kyle, but how are we going to do that unless we stick you in solitary, which wasn’t the deal. So, do you want us to lock you down in solitary or put you into gen pop and you take your chances with whoever Kyle hires to put a shiv in your guts?”
“Fuck!” Dion muttered and shook his head. “You gotta protect me!”
“The best way we can protect you is for you to remember something that’ll help us grab up Kyle before he can do you the way he did Ralphie.”
“I already told you everything I know about that prick!” Dion whined.
“Well, maybe you know something that didn’t seem important at the time but might help us. I’ll tell you what – We’re going to go through every meeting you ever had with Kyle, one-by-one, and you tell us everything you remember him saying or doing. There could be some little thing, something about the car he showed up in, maybe some restaurant he mentioned, some woman he was screwing. Who knows? All we need is one little thing that’ll point us to him. How about it? We’re going to be here a while. What do you want to eat?”
Dion thought about that for a moment. “Can I have that Big Mac you were talking about? And another Coke?”
* * *
Her name was Georgia something and Dion wasn’t sure where she lived. She was one of those women who seemed to drift through life with no map and no plan and no particular skill beyond her ability to fascinate men. It took them most of the day but, finally, late Tuesday afternoon they tracked down her last name and an address. Short and a little pudgy, with a round face and big hair, Virgil looked at her DMV photo and wondered if there’d been some mistake. This woman? But how many Georgia Purcells could there be in Detroit?
“That girl, she’s got men comin’ after her all the time,” Dion had told them. “This one time Kyle was breaking our balls and I figured a woman might distract him, sort of, so I set him up with Georgia.”
“What does she do?” Stan asked.
“Do? You mean like in bed?”
Kudlacik’s lips twisted like he’d bitten into something sour.
“I mean how does she earn a living?” he snapped. “Is she a working girl?”
“You mean does she fuck for money?” Dion asked then laughed. “Well, she don’t fuck for free, you get what I’m sayin’?”
“Other than getting money from men,” Virgil interrupted, “does she have a job?”
“Oh. Well, she does a little of this and a little of that.”
“What’s ‘this and that’?”
“Well, hell, you know. Maybe a guy’s got his hands on somebody’s checkbook so he writes a check to, let’s say, Mary Smith, and maybe Georgia’s got herself a driver’s license that says, ‘Mary Smith’ so that’s a check she can cash.”
“What else?” Virgil asked.
“Well, I don’t know. Maybe she finds a credit card on the street and she buys some stuff with it and then she sells the stuff to some guy. You gonna bust her for little shit like that, because she’s got a kid to feed?”
“No, we’re not going to bust her for anything so long as she tells us everything she knows about Kyle.”
* * *
A hundred years ago it was probably home to a doctor or a banker or a man who had a hundred workers delivering ice or coal. Today, Georgia Purcell’s house had been broken down into six apartments fronted by an overgrown yard. Since her occupation was irregular and composed, as Dion put it, of “a little of this and a little of that”, Virgil and Stan drove over late that afternoon figuring the chances were good that she’d be home. And she was.
When she opened the door she was wearing a shiny, tight, red blouse with the top two buttons open just enough to show the swell of full, firm breasts. Down below she wore a pair of burgundy slacks that fit like a glove.
Virgil held up his tin but before he could tell her his name she gave him a big smile and asked, “How can I help you fine policemen today?”
“I’m Lieutenant Quinn and this is Detective Kudlacik. May we come in and talk with you for a few minutes, Ms. Purcell?”
“Well, sure. I’m always happy to help the police.” She reached out and gently took Virgil’s hand. She didn’t let go until they reached the living room where she waved them to a worn but clean couch across from a 51-inch TV. “Can I get you gentlemen some coffee?” She asked, first looking at Virgil, but in mid-sentence switching her attention to Stan. “You look like a man who might like a nice piece of cake, Detective Kudlacik. Did I say that right?”
“Uhhh, yes ma’am,” Kudlacik said, caught off guard. “But you don’t have to–”
“It’s no trouble. I made one yesterday for my daughter Elizabeth’s birthday and there’s plenty left. Actually, you’d be doing me a favor. I have to watch what I eat,” she said and did something with her hips that made her breasts seem to swell. She gave Stan a warm smile and then vanished down the hall. Stan and Virgil glanced at each other and no longer wondered why men would line up to spend time with Georgia Purcell.
“I
brought you each a piece to go with your coffee,” she said a few moments later when she returned with a tray. “Black for you,” she told Kudlacik, “and I’m guessing you’re a man that likes it sweet,” she said handing Virgil a cup lightened with cream and sugar. She settled into the love seat next to the TV and took a sip from her own painted, china cup.
“Now, how can I help you gentlemen?”
Virgil glanced at Stan, a forkful of cake halfway to his mouth, and knew he was on his own.
“Ms. Purcell, we’re after a very bad man. He’s killed several innocent people and now he’s on the run. We have to find him before he kills again, and we’re hoping that you can help us.”
“This is someone I know?”
“We believe you met him once, and we’re hoping that you might be able to tell us something about him that might help us find him.”
“Who is this man?”
“He used the name Kyle Neddick. He’s white, about six feet tall–”
“I remember him,” Georgia interrupted, frowning. “A friend introduced us and we spent a little time together, but he wasn’t my type. He came over one more time and after that I stopped taking his calls.”
“Why is that?” Stan asked.
“Because he scared me,” she replied, giving Stan an intense stare.
“What can you tell us about him? Where he lived, any contact information you might have, anything unique about him, if he ever mentioned the names of any of his friends or relatives or where he was from, where he grew up . . . ?”
“He drove a black Mercedes 500S. I don’t remember the license plate. He never talked about himself. The only friend I knew about was the man who introduced him to me.” She paused then glanced at Virgil. “Dion something,” she said after a moment’s pause. “But you’ve already talked with him, I’m sure.”