At the next station, a guy coated with a sudsy sheen of water over his red jumpsuit pointed to a sign that told me to put the car in neutral. He hosed the car with soap, and it lunged forward, pulled along by the conveyor belt.
As the Saab 9-3 chugged through each automated station, I wondered how Metrick might receive me. I’d heard he’d gone through a rough period. The fact he had a job was a good sign, although my gut told me that Red’s Car Wash was used for multiple businesses, not all of which were recognized by the Better Business Bureau.
We’d played football together at Madison. He was an All-District safety in his junior season, but was caught dealing meth over the summer. The charge got thrown out on a technicality, but he was kicked off the team. I couldn’t remember if he graduated. He seemed to disappear from the Madison campus.
The last rinse cycle cleared the suds, and the Silver Streak was pulled through a blast of air that would have dried out a river. As she was pushed out of the tube, I could see two guys wearing the familiar red jumpsuits off to the right, cleaning out the interior of a black Cadillac SUV.
“Hey, pull in there.” A thin guy with a thin mustache was using arms like he was directing an airplane on the tarmac.
I did what he said while eyeing the two guys still working on the Caddy. I pulled out my phone, sent off a quick text to Alisa telling her I was following a lead on the case and I’d be a few minutes late.
A knock on my window.
“Yo, you want your car cleaned out?”
The guy wasn’t even looking at me, but I could see it was Metrick. Well, Metrick pumped up like a blimp.
Unsure how he’d respond, I emerged from the car before he knew who I was.
“Hiya, Metrick. It’s been a while,” I said, extending my hand.
His bloodshot right eye twitched. I couldn’t determine if it was a nervous habit or some type of condition, temporary or otherwise.
“Booker T. Adams. Um, um, um,” he said, shaking his head, rocking back and forth on his heels, his hands in his jumpsuit pockets. “What’s up, biyatch?”
If there was anything I recalled from my teenage years hanging around Metrick, it was his propensity to cuss, even if the situation didn’t call for it. It was as if he’d come out of the womb rattling off a string of obscenities.
Seeing he wasn’t in the handshaking mood, I pulled my hand back, but kept it casual. “You know, just doing my thing.”
“Ah, yes.” A quick chuckle morphed into chest-jiggling laughter. Then he started coughing and wheezing, and he attempted to cover his mouth. I winced, took a step back, hoping Metrick wasn’t another Typhoid Mary. His health appeared questionable at best.
It took thirty seconds, but he cleared his throat, picked up like he’d just swatted a fly. “The cop from the hood. I guess we should be proud of you for reachin’ the other side of the river.”
I wasn’t sure if he was speaking euphemistically or really meant the Trinity River, often used as a line of demarcation for Dallas’ south-side population.
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so proud. I quit a year ago.”
Pumping his knees up and down, he giggled like a kid in a candy store, then held out his hand like he wanted me to smack it. I obliged, but not with the same enthusiasm.
“That’s my man. Finally woke up, realized you didn’t belong.”
“It wasn’t like that. I enjoyed my job, felt like I was making a difference. But stuff happened, and I moved on. No hard feelings.”
It was easier to say that with a straight face after my discussion with Ligon.
“I hear ya. I’m glad for you, man. Putting people of your own kind behind bars…there ain’t no place for that in our world. People who do that are just a bunch of nig—”
“Hold up, Metrick. I’m not into talking that way.”
He just nodded, sizing me up.
“Besides, I had no issues with putting people behind bars as long as they did the crime. A cop’s job is to protect the general population from the few who want to harm the rest. Hear what I’m saying?”
“Listen to your bullshit, Booker. You fuckin’ sound like a goddamn politician,” he said, his blubbery face showing a bit of a scowl as he looked away. Then he came to attention and mock-saluted me. “Yes sir, no sir, Mr. Booker sir. Is that how you want to play? Fuckin’ Uncle Tom.”
A wave of warm air swept across my face, and I clinched a fist around my key chain. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, whatever. Pretend all you want. The rest of us are living in the real world.”
He turned away from me before I could say another word, walking around the front hood, trying to strut, although his legs squished the jumpsuit, so he didn’t look very cool doing it.
“Oooh boy, look at this ride. What do we got here, my man? A Saab 9-3,” he said, stretching his neck. “It’s got a cool vibe to it.”
“The car wash helps. Hey, how long have you worked here?”
Ignoring my question, he cupped a chubby hand around his eyes and peered through the back window.
“What’s that, a kid’s seat?” He raised his head above the car, his mouth frozen open.
“Never seen one before?”
“Ha! No way Booker T. Adams is married,” he said, laughing then suddenly scrunching up his face. He gave me a hard look. “Are ya?”
“Nope.” A quick image of Alisa came to mind. Someone who was fun but also comfortable, like a pair of sweats.
“How many you got?”
“Just one. She’s six. The greatest thing that’s happened to my life.”
“What? I wasn’t talking about a kid. I was talking about baby mamas. But if you just got one kid, I guess you only have one baby mama. You are living the good life, mother fucker.”
He looked right at me on the last term, his right eye twitching twice more, adding a little emphasis. It was rather obvious he had some built-up resentment.
“Wish I could figure out a way to get my baby mamas off my back.” Metrick was looking at the car, speaking under his breath.
“What do you mean?”
“Four of them bitches just don’t stop. Constantly pestering me, hitting me up for money, saying I owe them this, I owe them that. Just ’cause they didn’t land Shaq don’t mean I gotta pay up.”
I shook my head, wondering how Alisa might be handling this conversation. “Whatever you say, Metrick.”
“I told each one of them, ‘You keep messing with Metrick and one day you might have an accident.’”
This guy was serious, and I couldn’t help but inquire further. “What kind of accident?”
“Who knows? People cross streets all the time without looking. It’s a shame.”
I glanced down the row of cars in the distance, wondering if any might belong to Metrick. Then I spotted it—an old-model Civic, spray-painted black and silver, hovering about five inches off the pavement, with extra-wide rear tires, a tail that could fit a 747, and peeling tinted windows.
Part of me wanted to take Metrick by the collar, shove my arm against his chest, and warn him against hurting anyone…baby mamas included. But I knew it would do no good. It might even instigate some type of emotional response against someone who couldn’t defend themselves. After I left, of course.
“How long you been working at Red’s Car Wash?”
“Oh, maybe three months, four months. Hard to say.”
“You been clean?”
A smirk formed at the outer edges of his lips. “Why would you ask that? What makes you think I’m not rolling in dough, pimping with my homies in one of those fancy glass towers in downtown?”
“You’re working at Red’s Car Wash.”
“Very funny, mother fucker. And what are you doing now that you got fired from the DPD, shoveling shit like a janitor or something?”
“I’m a private investigator.”
His eyes bulged out of his beefy, bald head. “Go fuck a ferret. You kiddin’ me? A PI?”
“So what you want with me?”
“I’m just getting my car washed, Metrick, just like a lot of people,” I said, pulling out my phone, scrolling through mindless pictures. “So, what do you do for fun these days, besides play ‘Keep Away’ from all your…baby mamas?”
Scratching his chin, he said, “Can’t do much. Just keeping my head above water so I don’t get in trouble with my parole officer.”
I expected as much. “What’d you go to Huntsville for?”
“Which time?”
“How many times have you been busted?”
I could see hard lines etched in his face. Prison lines, the kind that have nothing to do with wisdom and everything to do with survival. He blew out an audible breath. “Busted…I don’t know…six, seven, eight times. Lost count. Been to prison twice. Convicted of dealing meth both times.”
He hadn’t learned a damn thing since high school.
“But it was all bullshit, just between you and me.”
He’d been selling drugs on the streets for almost twenty years, and he had the gall to still reject any responsibility.
“You know how many times I’ve heard that?”
Shuffling closer, he brought a hand to his face and rubbed his eyes. The right one twitched again. Up close, the veins were so bright they appeared to be painted on the whites of his eyes.
“You ain’t wearin’ a wire, are you?”
I patted my chest. “I’m clean. Why would you think I was wearing a wire?” I had a feeling he was either coming off a drug binge or was going through withdrawal, which might have something to do with his paranoia.
Leaning in closer, a waft of cigarette smoke hit me like a train. I held my breath.
“My parole officer told me to keep my trap shut if I ever wanted to walk the streets of Dallas without looking over my shoulder.” He glanced around, and I followed his eyes. The place was mostly empty. A couple of his hard-working colleagues were leaning against a car, smoking cigarettes.
“But…” I prompted.
“Well, the last time I was busted, it was all bullshit.”
“You already said that. You do know every guy who’s served time in prison says the same thing.”
“I’m telling ya, man. This cop said I should learn my lesson, stay on my own turf. He pretended to find a baggie of meth on me. He was laughing the whole time.”
“You trying to tell me you were clean?”
He glanced away for a moment, then shifted his enormous eyes back to me. “Nah, I ain’t going to completely bullshit you. I had no way of making money. I was doing a little dealin’ here and there, just to make ends meet, bro. But I’d been trying to get a full-time job at this moving company. I had an old friend who was setting me up. Said the owners would be back in town in a couple of days. I was just chillin’, staying out of trouble, minding my own business. I was actually excited about that job, man.”
Despite the wall of odor, I held my gaze on Metrick. He’d been lying and cheating his whole life, mostly to himself, I guessed. But he had no reason to convince me of anything. Well, maybe a bit of pride was still there, and he could have been trying to give another excuse as to why his life had turned to shit. But it appeared he was doing a great job on his own, without the help of anyone else.
I let myself be the sucker. “Why, Metrick? Why would a cop randomly set you up?”
His eye twitched once more. “This cop was one of those guys that gives the blue a bad rap. I know I lump all you guys into one barrel—”
“I’m no longer one of those guys, by the way.”
“True dat. But this guy had a bad rep, I’m tellin’ ya. Always giving guys shit. I heard he set up some other guys too.”
“Who was it?”
“Donley. Walt Donley. Ever heard of him?”
The guy who was killed last week, set up to look like a suicide. I could feel my pulse tapping my neck. I glanced at Metrick, studying him again, wondering how good a liar he’d become over the years.
“Doesn’t ring a bell. Must have worked out of a different division.”
Shifting his weight back and forth on each leg, Metrick was getting worked up. “That mother fucker…it’s just wrong. It don’t matter that I had a record. It don’t matter which side of the road I was walking on. I wasn’t even talking to anyone, so how could I be dealin’? Shit!”
He patted his jumpsuit, found a pack of cigarettes, and pulled one out.
“Yo, Metrick. No smoking by the car bays. You know the rules. If you want to smoke, you gotta move over by the trash cans.” A guy with a red button-down shirt had poked his head out of the glass door.
Metrick walked toward the cluster of trashcans, taking a drag with every step. I followed the hazy plume, waving smoke out of my eyes until I caught up to him. He turned back around and faced me, flicking his ash in the nearest metal trash can.
“You think I’m still full of it, don’t you?” he said, staring up at the clouds, which had begun to coil into gray pockets, including a few dark patches.
“I followed you over here, didn’t I?”
Shifting his eyes my way as smoke billowed through his nostrils, he looked like an angry bull.
“It really don’t matter what you think, Booker. ’Cause I can’t say shit to anyone that matters. I can’t sue the DPD or the city. I can’t even get anyone to say they were sorry. I have to act like it never happened.” He paused, taking in a ten-second drag. “But I can’t sleep at night. If I ain’t having nightmares about what they did to me in Huntsville, I’m thinking about Donley, how he ruined my life.”
“Don’t you think—”
“You don’t have to say it. I’m not blind. I know I’d already done a pretty good job of ruining my own life. But I thought I had a chance to start over.”
“Like you do now. It took a while, but you’ve got another chance, working here at the car wash. That’s all anyone can ask for.”
Just then he spewed a horrific cough that left him bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, although his cigarette remained firmly wedged between two fingers.
“Dude, you okay?”
“Hell no. Got stage 3 lung cancer.”
“Damn. I’m sorry.” I thought about Metrick the athlete. At six one, a hundred ninety pounds, he had patrolled the defensive backfield like a panther, quick to pounce on anyone that invaded his territory. With the speed of a gazelle, he could chase down any player or football, even if he stumbled or took a misstep. He could have handpicked his Division I college—Texas, USC, Alabama, Florida State.
“You see, I’m all out of chances. Not much to live for, frankly.” His voice started to crack, but he kept puffing on the cancer stick.
“Why didn’t your lawyer bring any of this up in court?”
“And say what? He told me it would be Donley’s word against mine. With my record, I had no chance. He told me I had a better chance if I just admitted my guilt, went into rehab, and quietly served my time. Said I’d get out on good behavior in eighteen months.”
“Did ya?”
“Eighteen months, six days, three hours. Total hell.”
“But you survived. That’s worth something.”
He released a wet chuckle. “When I wasn’t running for my life, I was smoking unfiltered cigarettes. I guess it was a hazard of the job.”
Metrick had made some poor decisions in his life, that much was certain. He’d at least planted a seed of doubt in my mind about his last arrest and conviction, although I knew nothing about Donley’s reputation. Digging into his past was already on the priority list I’d compiled for Henry and Alisa.
I felt sorry for Metrick, but that wouldn’t help him much at this point. I could sense his resentment. Who wouldn’t be pissed as hell? But was that enough to kill Donley? With nothing to live for, had he started to carry out a homicidal vendetta against cops in general?
“Have you seen D
onley since you got out a few months ago?”
His eyes stared holes through me. He let the last of his cigarette drop, and he squished it against the pavement. He pulled out another. The singed butt crackled as he inhaled. “Is that why you’re here? You think I had something to do with his death?”
My back just got stiff. “Never said that. Thought it was a suicide anyway.”
He released three puffs of donut-shaped smoke. “It was a damn good day when that mother fucker died. Damn good. Did us all a favor. Although I’ll never be able to clear my name.”
“Did you ever see him again? Confront him about what he did to you?”
His eye twitched a couple of times. “A week after I got out, he found me rummaging through a dumpster in an alley over off MLK. He had a real sarcastic tone. He started egging me on. He even took off his gun belt and started dancing around me like he was Muhammed Ali or something.”
“What did you do?”
“I begged him to stop. But he kept at it, like he was sick in the head or something.” Metrick poked his skull three times. “I didn’t want more trouble. I couldn’t go back to prison.”
“Did he finally stop?”
His eyes shifted away. “Hell no. Threw a punch at me. I ducked, threw two quick jabs into his ribs and then an uppercut. He went down. It was instinct, I guess, from my time in Huntsville.”
“You knocked him out?”
“Not completely. He got on his knees, went for his gun.”
“And?”
“I kicked it away and ran like hell. I haven’t seen him since.”
I realized at least one of the reasons Metrick seemed so paranoid. And bitter. I couldn’t keep pushing on his further interactions with Donley, at least not without more information to back it up. But then I thought about Miller’s murder just two nights earlier. Henry had said it was brutal, a man’s neck snapped. While Metrick carried an extra fifty pounds or so since his cut in high school, he still looked like he could turn over a small car. Reminded me of some cartoon I’d seen as a kid, featuring a massive blue ox with a nasty disposition.
“I need to get going, but first…real quickly. Where were you on Saturday night?”
Another stare-down. “That’s why you’re here. Trying to pin something else on me?”
BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6 Page 53