Cold City Streets

by L.H. Thomson

  David’s expression turned to mildly irritated. “If you did the job that I have to do, you’d understand. The people I deal with? A lot of them are just absolute filth. The worst human garbage, people without a feeling for anything or anyone but themselves, addicted to whatever sick fucking thing they have going on. And in this town, we’ve always had fewer serving members than needed. S’not easy.”

  “The answer isn’t to come here and scare me.”

  “SCARE you?” he exclaimed. “Jessie, I love you.”

  She almost felt sorry for him. Almost. “How did you get here?” she asked, struck by the idea.

  “Don’t worry, I’m gon’ walk home. Only twenty blocks.”

  In another time, at an earlier and more forgiving stage of her life – or perhaps one grounded in naiveté – she might have offered him a ride. Instead, Jess just nodded.

  “Well, good,” she said, before closing the door and locking it tight behind her.

  She went to the kitchen and watched through the window for a few moments, his shadow lurching around the front step until he decided to give it up for the night, then stumbling down the street, only a paper bag and a bottle away from being even more embarrassing.

  Jessie sat down at the kitchen table and breathed a sigh of relief. She looked at the wine bottle sitting on the coffee table in the adjacent living room. She’d already gotten it down to the label. The image of David stumbling drunk killed the mood; she rose, retrieved the bottle, and put it back in the refrigerator.

  34

  When Jessie got to the office the next morning, Cobi’s car was already parked halfway down the block, and the protesters were already in full voice, enjoying a sunny-but-frigid day.

  The latest refrain filled the air. “Bring-back-the-death-penalty-hang-Paul-Sidney.” Most of the pickets were women in their sixties and seventies, and they booed in unison as Jessie approached the steps.

  She was tempted to give them a mocking bow, but ignored them for professionalism’s sake. And it wasn’t like their intentions were bad; they wanted their community to be safer, that was all.

  The young officer who’d been controlling the crowd a few days earlier was nowhere to be seen; probably a local beat cop, Jessie figured.

  The little bell chimed when she opened the door. Rhonda looked peeved, and gestured frustration with both hands, the phone cradled on her shoulder as she gave the other caller a blast of both barrels.

  “You are the most useless, selfish, mean-spirited, no good drunken bum I ever laid eyes on,” she said.

  Rhonda slammed the phone down then noticed Jessie standing there, eyebrows raised at the outburst. “Your father called.”.

  “Yeah… I got that. Any other messages?”

  “Lisa called and told me to remind you that I didn’t raise my daughter to be inconsiderate and forget her friends’ important events.”

  Jessie’s head tilted back and she closed her eyes. “Damn it, her reading.”

  “Something about you being at the library at seven o’clock last night.”

  “The Second Cup by the library. She was giving a poetry reading from her new book.”

  “And what were you doing?” Rhonda asked, skillfully moving the conversation away from her ex-husband.

  “Just working, as usual. You know the drill.”

  “Unfortunately, I do. You do this too often. Anyway, she wants you to call her back. She sounded ‘friend’ mad, not ‘mad’ mad. And you got a call from your contact at the Crown, something about records you were looking for.”

  “You couldn’t have started with that?”

  “I’m sorry loving you wasted a few seconds of your life.”

  “Mom…”

  “Oh, and Cobi’s already here; he’s waiting in your office.”

  Jessie was curious about that; she’d only been ten minutes late. “When did he get here?”

  “He was waiting at the door when I showed up just after eight o’clock.”

  That made her smile, a mild sort of pride swelling up at the idea that he was already that dedicated to what they were doing. It wasn’t going to make finding his extra five bucks an hour any easier, she knew, but he sure was worth every dime, so far.

  Probably better to keep that to yourself. Too much flattery and maybe he eases off. Or not. Don’t be a douchey boss, Jess. Just be cool about everything.

  “Good morning, Mr. Tate,” she said as she strode into her office.

  He was sitting, one leg crossed over the other, looking at a printout from her evidence file, and he looked up for a brief second to acknowledge her. “Hey.” Then he went back to the file for a few more seconds, a forefinger tracing a line across a garbled document, a printout of a statement from one of the crime scene techs. “One sec,” he said. He continued reading, and Jess stood there awkwardly for a moment before remembering she didn’t need permission to sit down in her own office. She slumped a little in the modern leather desk chair, trying to look laid-back. Then she realized he wasn’t really paying attention. And laid back was never my style. Jessie sat up straight and pulled the chair towards the desk slightly.

  He seemed to sense the cue, looking up and smiling, then tossing the file back onto her desk. “Nothing. I thought maybe they would have noted the absence of shells at the scene – not the detectives, the crime scene analysts.”

  “Good idea. I’d already checked their statements over a few times but it’s always good to have a second set of eyes. Mom said you got here early?”

  “Yeah. Couldn’t sleep that well. Probably the change in air pressure or something.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ain’t nothing.”

  “You up for going through piles of paperwork today? Line by line? All of which will probably be completely irrelevant?”

  “You’re really selling it. And are you going to join me?”

  “Yeah. These aren’t trial exhibits, just things the Crown has asked for in due diligence, because I’ve given him enough reason to think they might have been overlooked. If it becomes relevant later, even if it’s on appeal at a later stage, he could lose a conviction and his job if he ignores it. So instead, he requests the item from the police and both sides get an unbiased look at it. This works well with items that can be copied and have arguable relevance, like documents; but if we were talking items of obvious direct involvement, like shell casings, they’d have to log it as evidence, keep it secure.”

  “Then we can get copies and bring them back here?”

  “No,” Jessica said, “you can go get copies and bring them back here. And Timmy’s, too.”

  “So now I’m the office errand boy?”

  “You’re an investigator. It involves gathering evidence. This is evidence.”

  “And the coffee?”

  “Motivation. You have to start drinking the stuff at some point.”

  The pile of paper towered a foot tall and sat in the middle of the round conference style table at the back of the office waiting area, the three of them staring at it.

  Rhonda reached out to touch it, just lightly brushing her finger against the top of the pile, her face screwing up into a look of professional discontent. “Shouldn’t this be… I don’t know, collated or something?”

  “They hadn’t gone through any of it yet,” Cobi said. “Something about not having confidence it wouldn’t be a complete waste of time.” He took a long sip on his black coffee and gave Jessie a look that suggested he agreed with them.

  It tasted awful. “Dang… how do you do this?” he said, staring at the brown paper cup.

  “So what have they given us?” she asked, ignoring the peanut gallery,

  “Credit card receipts. Cell records weren’t part of the package.”

  “Was there any issue with them obtaining this from the wife?”

  Cobi shook his head. “Nah. Turns out the police had requested it all back at the beginning of this, but just never got to it. Didn’t need to.”

  “How many page
s are here? It looks like a scale model of the CN Tower.”

  “About three hundred, give or take,” Cobi said. “He did almost everything by credit card, and he had both personal and corporate accounts. This goes back nearly four years. So what now?”

  “We each grab a year while mom holds the fort. And we go through it line by line, looking for any patterns of use: calling the same people, visiting the same places, anything that looks out of place for a middle-aged oil executive.”

  Cobi wasn’t sure what that meant. “So you’re expecting me to tap my vast experience of what oil executives like to do in their off hours? Something like that?”

  “Sure,” Jessie said, her nose already into the first document and not really listening.

  They were meticulous, working on laptops and using a spreadsheet, every dollar amount noted, cross-referencing dates and places. After two hours, Jessie nodded Cobi over to her side of the table. “Check this out.”

  The pattern practically jumped off of the screen. “It started a few months ago, regular stops at this ATM, including on his last night, just a couple of hours before he was found. But on a couple of them, he bought gas at the same time, and we have a location for that, a station just off One Hundred Twenty-fourth Street and One-eighteenth Avenue. So that’s probably where the ATM is, too. But why there?”

  “You know that area?” Cobi asked.

  “Yeah, my old man had a house there for a while, in Inglewood. Kind of low rent, a few pawn shops, a few bars, a Mickey D’s. A few hookers, depending on the time of day. You know Norwood, west of the stadium?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s like that, same sort of thing.”

  “Tough neighborhood, by Edmonton standards.”

  “A little, yeah. Trying, though; getting better. Like most of the avenue.”

  “It still doesn’t sound like the kind of place some rich dude would be hanging out.”

  “Not really, unless he was up to something he shouldn’t have; but maybe that’s a given,” Jessie said, “if your theory about this being gang-related is correct.”

  “So now we have to figure out what he was up to. How you figure we’re going to do that?”

  She thought on it, her brow furrowed. “The same way you figured out who your crank caller was: I think you need to go down there and find someone who saw Brian Featherstone. Chances are, if there’s more than one, they’ll also know what happened to him later on, maybe know who he was mixed up with in the community.”

  “And you’re staying here, I take it?”

  “I have other clients besides the Sidneys, Mr. Tate. I have to catch up on some of their work. I’m sure you’re up to it.”

  “So basically what you’re saying is I should go kick over a few hornets’ nests, see what flies out.”

  “Something like that.”

  35

  It wasn’t exactly a picture of urban blight, but Cobi felt a familiar sensation of unease after less than a block of walking the neighborhood where Brian Featherstone had last spent money.

  People on the street had a look in their eyes he’d seen back in Detroit, a nervous tension and suspicion of anyone unfamiliar who might pass by. It was a look born from struggling daily to make it, and knowing that the next guy might take what little they had.

  Cobi surveyed the two blocks on either side of the street. On the north, it was storefronts, old buildings from fifty years ago still in use for specialty sales. On the south ran another block of stores and then a strip mall, just a typical drive-up block of six stores: a hairdresser, a liquor store, a payday loans shop… and two bars, both low rent enough to attract the kind of people who might have robbed and killed an oil executive.

  The Iron Dragon occupied one corner of the lot, a thirty-seat draft bar with a half-dozen Harleys parked outside. Cobi pushed the doors open and was greeted by the sound of the jukebox, the Allman Brothers’ Rambling Man in mid-first verse. The place was busy despite the early hour, and the dozen or so patrons were all bikers. Behind the bar, a bearded giant in a leather vest and cowboy hat poured shots for a trio. There was a stage against the south wall, the backdrop a giant Confederate flag.

  I am most definitely in the wrong place. The glass door thunked to a close behind him and a few heads turned in the room. Then a few more, until most of them were staring at the new arrival.

  The bartender quickly scurried around the end of the bar and over to the door. “Can I help you with something?” he said, keeping his voice low. His face seemed puzzled. Cobi got the sense they hadn’t had too many people of color in recently.

  “Yeah. I was just trying to find someone, see if anyone here had seen them recently, is all.”

  “I don’t think we seen anybody,” the bartender said, his face stern. Then he leaned in and said quietly, “Look, I don’t have any problem with you folks, but some of the fellas here, they’re not what you would call cosmopolitan.”

  Cobi tried to bluff. “You think they’d change their tune if I pulled out my badge and started being a dick about this?”

  The sympathetic look disappeared from the bartender’s face. “Can’t help you,” he said. “Don’t mind the brothers, but nobody in here is going to talk to the likes of you, OFFICER.” He said the last word loudly enough to draw everyone’s attention. “Now unless you have a warrant…”

  Cobi held up both hands and backed to the door. “Just a friendly visit,” he said. The room’s eyes stayed on him until he’d pushed it open and left.

  Outside in the parking lot, the bite of cold air seemed like a relief.

  The other bar was smaller, a dive called Thrifty Mike’s, specials inked on the windows outside, the inside guaranteed to attract absolutely no one for any reason other than convenience with only a handful of four-person bar tables, a small stage and public address booth, a round bar, and a couple of televisions. At the back, a couple of guys played pool, and three more rummy regulars hunched at the bar.

  Cobi fished Featherstone’s photo from a jacket pocket. Might as well start with the bartender again. He nodded towards the man as he walked over. “Hey, how’re you doing today?” he said.

  The bartender kept wiping a glass as he looked up. “We got a five-dollar minimum if you’re staying,” he said.

  “Just looking for some information,” Cobi said.

  “Can’t help you. What you see is what you get,” the bartender said warily.

  “Can you take a look at a picture for me? The place isn’t exactly busy right now.”

  He looked put out, but the bartender took the picture when Cobi handed it to him, staring at it for a second before throwing it onto the bar counter. “Never seen him before.”

  “You sure? This dude would stick out here like a sore thumb.”

  “Hey, man, what can I say? A lot of people come in here. And I mostly work days anyway.”

  “You know someone who’s here nights who could…” Cobi stopped the question abruptly, the sudden look of anxiety on the bartender’s face setting of alarm bells. He stared over Cobi’s shoulder towards the door.

  “We don’t need any trouble, guys,” the bartender said. “I’m dialing nine-one-one right now.”

  Cobi turned. Two men blocked the door, both young and fit. He scanned the room quickly, looking for options. Two more men blocked by the back door. If I wait for them to converge, I have to deal with four guys at the same time. He sprinted towards the front door, grabbing a wooden chair by the back with his right hand in mid-stride, swinging it even as the two men raised their fists, ready to mete out damage. It smashed into the first man, the chair breaking, and he went down hard, even as the second threw a roundhouse that missed Cobi’s head but caught him on the left shoulder, spinning him around.

  Cobi threw an elbow backwards, knowing the attacker would be on him right away, luck on his side as it connected with face and bone, the young man falling to his knees, clutching at the painful mess of bloody broken teeth. Cobi looked up to see where the other two
were but they were already gone, the back door swinging shut behind them. He took off after them, legs kicking into high gear, muscles pumping, hitting the back door with his shoulder and knocking it wide open.

  The two men jumped into a car, a dark sedan. Dark blue maybe? He ran towards it just as the hand extended from the driver’s side window, pistol aimed in his direction. Cobi dove to the left as the driver opened fire. The car sped away, its back wheels spinning and sliding slightly in the fresh, wet snow.

  Jessie and Rhonda were well into the month’s calendar when Cobi got back to the legal clinic; Jessie perched on an office chair pulled up beside her mother’s desk, so that they could look at the range of dates together. Keeping up the calendar was a constant struggle, because court dates changed incessantly.

  They looked up as he walked in, both surprised by his appearance.

  “You face-plant or something?” Rhonda asked.

  “I think I ran into our caller and some of his friends,” Cobi said. “I had to dive out of the way of some gunfire.”

  They both rose quickly. “Oh my God, are you okay!?” Jessie asked. “What happened?”

  “I got down to the area bar he was hanging around. It looked like maybe the kind of place a bad dude like our shooter might hang out, so I tried talking to the bartender.”

  “Someone spotted you in the ‘hood,’ and all of a sudden you’re dealing with multiple problems,” Jessie surmised.

  “Never let it be said that I didn’t give my daughter an education in real life,” Rhonda bemoaned.

  “She means we lived in a lot of bad areas,” Jessie interpreted dryly.

  “Anyway, I had to throw down with a couple of them, and then the other ones run off, with our shooter behind the wheel. He let off a clip at me.”

  “Which is why you’re all wet and covered in dirt.”

  “Yeah… but it was worth it.”

  “Okay,” Jess said. “So what do we know now that we didn’t before?”

  “Well, for one I figure that bar was maybe that gang’s regular spot; if our victim got into trouble with them, that’s the most likely place.”