Cold City Streets

by L.H. Thomson

  She sank the eight… and watched as the cue ball lazily made its way towards the side pocket.

  “Stay out!” she begged, louder than she should. “No!” She waved both hands it as if trying to will the ball from…

  It dropped into the pocket with a clack, and she winced.

  “Hmmm. I win without taking a shot. That was the best tasting game of pool ever,” he said.

  “Okay, smart mouth,” Jessie said. “Next time we bet on it. I play better when there’s something at stake.”

  “When you say ‘stake,’ do you mean as in ‘cheesesteak,’ the sandwich you will be paying for when I beat you?”

  “And if I beat you, my mighty deep-fried onion blossom shall bring your wallet to tears. Or, nine dollars of it, anyway.”

  “Deal.”

  She started racking the table again. “You have family here in the city? I assume most would be back in Detroit?”

  He finished chewing and swallowed before answering. He wiped his mouth with a paper napkin. “My mother. And my cousin Thomas, his family. She lived with them until last year, when her medical conditions became too much and she needed care. So they found a nice rest home, and we split the cost. She likes it, likes being with the other folk her own age.”

  “No siblings.”

  He shook his head. “My brother passed when I was young.”

  “I’m sorry.” She waited for a moment for him to elaborate, but when he didn’t added, “and your father?”

  “He died four years ago.”

  Jessie felt awkward. “You already mentioned that. I apologize.”

  “Yeah, that’s okay…he was only fifty-two, you know?”

  “You said he was a police officer?”

  “He’d been a detective for twenty years and had seen all kinds of crazy ass situations; went through it all without a scratch. Then one day on the way to work, he sees a road rage argument breaking out on Gratiot – that’s this long avenue that runs near my old neighborhood – and he gets out to try and break it up, just being a good cop, you know?”

  He had a distance in his eyes as he recounted it, like he was momentarily trapped in the memory. Jessie felt a chill, goose flesh creeping up her arms.

  “And the driver doesn’t realize this plain clothes guy is a cop. He just sees two angry black men: the other driver and some big guy crossing the road who he assumes is a friend of the dude attacking him. So he opens fire with a nine, misses the road rage dude standing a foot away from him. One of the bullets goes right through my father’s forehead, killed him stone dead.”

  Jess realized she’d frozen, stopped playing in mid setup. “That’s awful. Did they…?”

  “Catch the guy? The driver took off and called the police thinking he’d foiled a robbery. When they asked him if he could come in and talk to them, he must have listened to the radio report; he shot himself a few minutes later.”

  No wonder he didn’t want to go back to Detroit. It was Jessie’s turn to feel awkward, the revelation dwarfing her family issues, revealing her parents’ constant bickering; she put the pool cue down on the table. “You ever need to talk to someone about this stuff, I’m available,” she offered.

  He smiled gently. “More than I usually expect from my boss.”

  “We’re a small shop,” Jessie said. “We need to stick together.” She smiled back. Then she lined up the nine ball and sank it in the side pocket. “Eight ball in the corner. You’re about to owe me lunch.”

  22

  “What are we doing here, exactly?” Jessie had no other plans on a Friday night except maybe a half-bottle of white wine and a movie with her cats, Sonny and Cher. Maybe Lisa would come over.

  Instead, she was in the front passenger seat of Cobi’s aging BMW, watching a downtown building. She took a bite from the pastry in her right hand then placed the remainder, guiltily, in the box on her lap.

  “We’re staking the place out. Don’t complain: I got you coffee and a French cream pastry.” He leaned on his window frame, vigilant. “The doorman at this building told me Mrs. Featherstone uses the place and he didn’t correct me when I said I assumed she was in every few days.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s Friday. If she’s got something going on in the city that she didn’t want her husband knowing about, I’m guessing Friday or Saturday night would be the time; is for most folk.”

  He had a point. “How long are we going to sit here?”

  “You got plans?”

  She shook her head. A steady stream of profiles from guys filled her inbox from an online dating service, but no one that seemed more interesting than a quick toss in the sack. And for all of her talks with Lisa, it still hadn’t occurred to Jessie to start planning her time off.

  “Me neither.”

  He went back to studying the building.

  Jessie sipped her coffee. It had been an interesting couple of days, the case first and foremost. But he’d begun to intrigue her, too. “You mentioned you had a brother?”

  He turned and looked at her for just a moment, tension writ large. “Yeah, that’s a difficult area for me.”

  “He died young?”

  Cobi nodded. “Allan was five years older than me, so I looked up to him, you know? He got mixed up in a bad situation. Just one of those things.”

  Her phone buzzed and she took it out to check her mail. “Damn it,” she cursed quietly.

  Not quietly enough. “What’s up?”

  “My father,” she said “He’s not coming up next weekend for the anniversary of my nan’s death – my grandmother on my mother’s side. It’s sort of a big family thing every year. We visit her grave and make it look pretty and help clean up any loose garbage around the graveyard.”

  “It’s a big deal, then..?”

  “Not to him, I guess. He said he’s playing a gig in Banff.”

  “He’s a musician?”

  “Yeah. He plays bass in a couple of different blues and jazz bands, and he does session work.”

  “Good bass player, then.”

  “Yeah. Pretty rotten father, but I deal with the cards the Creator gave me. We actually get along fairly well these days, compared to when I was younger. It took me a long time to forgive him for cheating on my mother and abandoning us. But he can’t help it; he’s sort of a fuck up, if I’m being honest about it.”

  “That’s kind of bleak, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “What do you want? It’s just reality. He’s never been around. My friend Lisa insists it’s why I’m attracted to dangerous men, because I’m secretly trying to please my father and win his affection, and he’s a badass. Sort of.”

  “That’s… kind of messed up. I knew some girls with those kinds of issues back home.”

  “Let me guess: at least half of them wound up stripping or with drug problems?”

  “Yeah, pretty much. So you got to admit, you being a lawyer, that’s pretty dope.”

  She smiled at that. Non-judgmental was nice. “I like to think I’ve wised up with age, learned the rush of that tough, authoritarian character is just an illusion.”

  “So nice guys only from here on in?”

  She sighed audibly. “Yeah, well, looking for sort of a mix of both… you know, we’ve gotten off on a real personal tangent here…”

  He held up both hands. “Sorry…”

  “No, it’s cool. I brought it up, not you. Real professional.”

  “Well, technically, we’re off regular working hours.”

  “So I don’t have to pay you overtime?”

  He made sure the glare was as disbelieving as possible.

  “Oh fine, but it’s regular time, not time-and-a-half or anything crazy.”

  “Hold on…” Cobi gestured towards the opposite curb. “We’ve got someone here.”

  The limousine pulled up to the front doors. The driver got out and opened the rear passenger door nearest the curb, then helped Deidre Featherstone out. She wore an evening gown and high heels.r />
  The man getting out after her sported a dark suit, although a different one from the last time Cobi had seen him. “Now that right there, that’s interesting,” Cobi said.

  Peter Kennedy.

  “Maybe it’s business. Maybe it’s only interesting,” Jessie said, “if he doesn’t come out again in a few minutes.”

  “Let’s wait and see then.”

  The clock on the dash said nine-twenty at night.

  “You know, I do understand not having your father around,” Cobi said. “My old man was there for me, but he also worked these weird shifts where he’d be on nights for, like, sixty consecutive days and I just wouldn’t see him. Then on top, he worked in the worst parts of the city. So I get it.”

  She looked past him to the front doors of the building. “Maybe it’s just business. I mean, I imagine she inherits her husband’s stake, so she probably has to meet with his partner.”

  “That inheritance is a good reason to kill him.”

  “No; she’s already rich,” Jessie remarked. “This could be nothing more than working on business details after hours.”

  “Or Kennedy was having an affair with his partner’s wife, maybe? I should go buzz her place, see if she’ll let me in.”

  “She’ll just pretend she’s not home. That’s what I’d do.”

  “Then we wait,” he said. “How long until you’re satisfied this isn’t just business? If he stays the night? He has a place in town and a limo driver waiting; he’d have no other reason.”

  “Okay,” Jessie agreed. “So how do we do this? Come back at five in the morning?”

  He smiled and shook his head.

  “How long?”

  “If he hasn’t left by two …”

  “That’s more than four hours.”

  “You might want another coffee. You want me to run up the street to the Starbucks?”

  “Nope.” Jessie unbuckled her belt and opened the car door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I am going to walk up to Jasper Avenue, get a cab home and try to salvage the rest of the night’s wine drinking time. You, being the faithful employee, can bill me for overtime.”

  “Oh, so it’s like that, huh? You’re just going to leave me here.”

  “You need me to stay awake?”

  “Not really.”

  She got out of the car. “Then I am on my way. Good luck, good sir.”

  Cobi gave her a quick salute as she left.

  Shoot. I’d figured on company. He turned the radio the all-news station, 630 CHED, on which a panel discussed the football team’s prospects for the season ahead. The brash young quarterback they’d just signed from Ole Miss was shooting off his mouth, and the veteran journalists obviously weren’t impressed.

  “The question,” the host said, “is whether he can back it up. Is he another Moon or Dunigan? Or is he another Cobi Tate?”

  Never liked talk radio anyhow. He changed the station to 96.1 FM, expecting something mellow. Instead, it had changed its identity for the third time in nine months, and played dance music, his car speaker bass drivers thumping slightly to the beat.

  Things change so quickly, he thought. A year earlier, he’d still been happily married. No. Not happily. She’s right about that. We sure could fight. He wondered if he wasn’t hoping he was right about Deidre Featherstone and Peter Kennedy, for a confirmation he didn’t need that other people could make a mess of their marriages.

  He looked in the rearview mirror. Jessie had already disappeared from view.

  The truth is, Jessie told herself as she dialed a cab, you sort of like him. He’s handsome, and strong, and seems competent, and nice.

  And a single dad. And my employee.

  She gave her head a shake. The cab company answered and she directed them to the corner of Jasper and One Hundred Ninth Street. Jasper Avenue’s foot traffic had slowed to just the occasional passerby, even though the bright lights, storefronts and nearby residential towers suggested there should be more life to the place. A man in a long blue overcoat walked by and gave her a smile, the glint in his eye suggesting interest; she averted her gaze.

  Besides, it wasn’t Cobi Tate or the David Nygaards of the world that kept her out of the dating pool. She just had that nagging feeling that, on some level, her parents’ problems ruined the idea of being in relationships. It was easier to find some guy to be with for a few hours or a few days, before kicking him and his problems to the curb. The guys never seemed to mind, either, and Jessie figured maybe that said something about her.

  She didn’t blamed her parents entirely. She had plenty of other friends and relatives whose marriages had failed; and, as her focus shifted to her career, a lot of guys just became more a sufferable inconvenience than likely route to long-term happiness. An ex-CFL player who was trying to prove himself at thirty and recently split from his long-time girlfriend? You really are losing it, Jess. That’s what proximity and a few stressful days will do.

  It took the cab five minutes to get there, ten to get her to her car; forty-five minutes after she’d called the cab, she finally arrived home. Despite her sincere desire to polish off some wine, she went to bed instead and played games on her tablet until, after fifteen minutes of overstimulation, she fell asleep with the lamp on, with Sonny and Cher both flopped on the bed beside her.

  Her phone rang at five in the morning.

  Jessie fumbled around on the nightstand until she found it. “Meh. You know what time it is?”

  “Thought you’d want to know, a certain politician and friend of the recently deceased just left the apartment.”

  “You stayed there all night?”

  “Figured he’d either leave by one or stay until the early morning, so I set my alarm for four thirty and slept in the driver’s seat.”

  If nothing else, he was tenacious. “That’s pretty impressive, Mr. Tate.”

  “I expect overtime for this.”

  “If it gives us a more viable suspect than our guy, I figure that’s worth it. Now we need to know if it’s even possible. We need to know what our love birds were up to when someone was committing murder.”

  23

  Tommy Orton stood on the corner of One Hundred Nineteenth Avenue and Ninety-eighth Street, rubbing his hands together to keep them warm. It was grey and windy, and the residential neighborhood offered little break from the conditions. He’d lost his gloves a week earlier; and his denim coat, while lined with wool, wasn’t exactly a ski jacket. At least his feet were warm in the brown leather boots. It didn’t matter much to him anyway; Tommy had spent his whole life in the inner city and had been much colder.

  The corner was a favorite of local street walkers; but they wouldn’t be there until later in the day. It was too close to the strip for them until darkness came down, too risky with police around. But after dark, they’d gather just off the avenue and sidle out of the shadows whenever a car slowed down, emaciated, unclean, drug-addicted. These were women at the bottom of the world’s oldest and most dangerous profession, just trying to survive long enough to get high again.

  In the day time, they were rarely around.

  The black Lexus SUV pulled up to the curb, and the tinted power-window lowered. Ritchie occupied the passenger seat. The stereo cranked out Jamaican dance hall music.

  His driver turned the music down. Ritchie nodded towards Tommy. “Why don’t you have gloves on? What the fuck is wrong with you, boy?”

  Tommy shrugged. “I’m okay.”

  “You’re obviously not. I seen you from a block away rubbing your hands.”

  “I lost my gloves last week.”

  “So buy some more, stupid.”

  “Okay, Ritchie…”

  Ritchie mocked his response. “‘Okay, Ritchie. Okay Ritchie’… Don’t be such a pussy, Tommy. Sack up.”

  In truth, there weren’t many in the game brave around Ritchie Grant, and Tommy knew that, too. So he just kept his mouth shut until asked a question. It was a matter
of survival, like everything. If anything positive could come from challenging him, Tommy told himself, he would’ve done it.

  At least, that was what he told himself.

  “Get in back,” Ritchie directed.

  Tommy opened the door and climbed in. Ritchie leaned over from the front with a brown-paper package the size of a twelve-pack of beer. “You work this for the next seven, and then I hit you up again. You got any idea on new turf for this?”

  Tommy nodded. “I was thinking I could go down to Westmount, to the mall. The kids from Ross Shep High School go there for lunch. Once they’re off the campus, it’s easy for me to hook up with them.”

  “You know the drill on that, right? You give them the number, maybe a free taste. But you don’t take money out in public. They call you, they get in your car or go to your meeting spot. You control the situation. Ideally, you get one of your little shit friends from the bar to deliver while you just handle the money. Then there’s no sale for the police to key in on. You listening to me?”

  Tommy nodded. He’d do what he had to do, and neither the nature of the product nor the age of those buying it would factor. Everyone has to make a buck, he’d tell himself. It’s dog-eat-dog out there, baby. You look out for number one, do what you have to do to get ahead.

  A week to catch up on his debt beat the alternative; with Ritchie Grant, that would probably involve a bullet.

  After picking up the stash, Tommy took the train back south to Century Park, near Chantelle’s condo – or the condo in her name but which cost Tommy most of his earnings each month. He knew he couldn’t complain; she did work, when she could get a shift at the salon.

  She was in the living room when he entered, stretching into yoga poses. A series of shopping bags lay near the sofa; the labels were clothing and shoes. He knew that from experience.

  “You went shopping?”

  “I got a few things,” she said. They’d been together for two years and were so familiar, they didn’t even really greet each other anymore when one of them came home. Chantelle executed a lotus position, her arms raised above her and her hands touching. She proceeded into a series of sideways body stretches. “I needed a new dress for Erica’s shower, and they had a sale on shoes at that little place I like.”