“What are they?” said Parker.
“Glucosamine sulphate in a gelatine capsule, vegetable-grade magnesium stearate lubricant. Damn things are worth their weight in gold, healthwise. But they only cost thirty cents apiece, if you buy ’em in bulk.”
“What are they for?”
“Arthritis, rheumatism.”
“I didn’t know you had a problem.”
“Preventative medicine,” said Orwell. “The social fabric of this great nation is in extreme jeopardy. You ask me why?” He rubbed his forefinger and thumb briskly together, like a crazy man desperate to light a fire. “Money. Is medicare going to be around in ten years? I seriously doubt it.” Orwell shook the bottle. The pills rattled like snakes. He said, “We all gotta do what we can to stay healthy.”
Parker said, “Let’s have a look at those.”
Orwell screwed the cap back on the bottle and tossed it underhand to Parker. She slid open the top drawer of her desk, put the bottle away, and locked it.
Orwell said, “Hey, wait a minute.”
“Where’s Bobby?”
“Dentist. I overheard him making the appointment. You know what Bobby’s like. If he could find a way to avoid it, he wouldn’t even tell himself what he was up to.”
Orwell got his bottle of Windex and a fat roll of paper towels out of the bottom drawer of his desk. He picked up the largest of the framed pictures of his wife and children, sprayed the glass and wiped it clean. He said, “If you pay extra, you can get keys cut out of steel.”
Parker said, “I didn’t know that.”
“Then, if you want, you can get the key magnetized.”
Orwell hit the glass with another powerful shot of Windex. He said, “A magnetized key, you want to hide it ...” He put the bottle of Windex down on his desk and shifted his telephone an inch to the right.
Parker went over to Bobby’s desk.
Orwell pushed away from his desk and started towards the squadroom’s self-locking door. “I’m outta here. Better, I never was here.”
A shiny, silver-coloured key clung to the underbelly of Bobby’s phone. Parker pried it loose with the aid of a straightened paper clip. Willows unplugged the phone’s jack and walked down to the far end of the squadroom and dumped the phone into the wastebasket next to the coffee machine. Now it wasn’t Bobby’s key that was missing, it was his telephone. He stripped a handful of paper towels from a roll, crumpled them and tossed them in the wastebasket on top of the phone, together with the business section from yesterday’s paper. He pulled the used filter from the coffee machine and shook wet grounds over the towels and newspaper.
“Nice touch,” said Parker. The desk’s centre drawer had a lock, and the box and letter drawers were both controlled by a second lock. Parker tried the centre drawer first. The drawer contained a box of coloured pencils, a daisy chain of brightly coloured paperclips, a ball of rubber bands, a disposable camera, a chrome-plated nine-millimetre pistol magazine, breath mints, a back issue of Hustler magazine, and several ballpoint pens, including her missing Sheaffer.
Parker slid the drawer shut and locked it, unlocked the box drawer. The LeGrand file was as thick as a city telephone book. She pulled the file and shut and locked the drawer, went over to Orwell’s desk and turned his telephone belly up. She placed the key on the metal bottom panel.
Willows said, “How d’you want to split this up?”
“Right down the middle,” said Parker as she replaced Orwell’s phone. She smiled up at him. “Does that seem unfair?”
“Should it?”
“Sort of, since I read faster than you do.”
There were fifty-three witness reports, all of them bound together by a thick green rubber band that still had a fair amount of bounce in it. Most of the reports were no longer than a paragraph, but a few ran into several detailed pages. Willows passed the reports to Parker. The file was still large enough to be daunting. He scanned the table of contents. His heart plummeted. The damn thing was going to keep him pinned to his desk for days.
Ralph Kearns and Farley Spears had caught the LeGrand case. Kearns had been partnered with Eddy Orwell at the time, but Orwell had organized a month’s unpaid leave so he could try to patch things up with Judith, and his caseload had been dumped on Spears. But only Spears could help Willows because Kearns was no longer a cop; he’d opted for early retirement a couple of years ago.
But where was Spears?
Willows started asking around, and soon learned that the detective had scheduled a late-morning appointment with his dentist for an emergency root canal, and that he wasn’t expected to return to work until the following morning. Willows wondered if Spears and Bobby both shared the same dentist. Strange, that they’d made appointments on the same day.
He looked up Spears’ number, punched the numbers. Spears answered on the first ring. A television blared in the background. He apologized, and turned down the sound. Willows asked him how he was doing.
Spears said, “Terrible.”
Willows explained that he was researching the LeGrand case, that it was possible the perps were involved in his son’s shooting.
Spears said, “You read the file?”
“Not all of it. I was hoping you might recall the highlights.”
Spears was silent for a moment. Finally he said, “Far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing in there that’s going to help you, Jack. Ralph and I worked our asses off, we never got anywhere on that case. LeGrand was crooked as a jar full of drunken snakes. We had fifty thousand suspects. His wife loathed him. Jeez, his own mother hated the bastard’s guts. By our third day on the case, me’n’ Ralph decided if he wasn’t already dead, we’d have killed him.”
Willows said, “If he and his wife weren’t getting along, why was she ready to pay to get him back?”
“Good question, so we asked her. She said five million was a drop in the bucket, compared to the kind of dough he was making. One night we were over there, she’d been drinking, told us she was going to stick it out another five years or until his net worth hit fifty million, whichever came first. Meanwhile, she’s socking away a thousand a week in her private account. Her plan, she was gonna use the money to finance the most rabid lawyer in town, eviscerate her sonofabitch husband with a dull knife.” Spears laughed. “The coroner released the body, she never bothered to pick it up. She sold the house and cars, emptied the bank accounts and bought a one-way ticket to the Grand Caymans.”
“Any chance she was involved in his murder?”
“I didn’t think so. Neither did Ralph.”
“A happy ending.”
“For her,” said Kearns. “The city got stuck with the cost of LeGrand’s cremation.” He hesitated. “Something to think about, Jack. Whoever snatched LeGrand was very, very careful. He took no chances and he took no prisoners. As soon as he smelled cop, he stuffed LeGrand up that pipe.”
“Okay, Farley. Thanks for your time.”
Spears said, “Hold on, there’s something else. We had wiretaps on LeGrand’s office, the house. His wife only got one call. I forget the details, but somebody screwed up, the tape was destroyed. But the transcript’s worth reading, it’s kind of weird.”
“How so, Farley?”
“The kidnapper had taped his message, what he wanted to say. But it wasn’t him speaking. The tape was made up of little sound bites from different movies. A word here, a sentence there. There was a theory that somebody in the film business might’ve been involved in the snatch, but we never got anywhere with it.”
The television blared. Spears had resumed fiddling with the remote control. Willows thanked him for his help, and hung up.
21
Jake sat in front of the big picture window with his feet lip on the sill. Marty lounged against a wall, reading Sports Illustrated. He looked up from the magazine, thinking that it was uncharacteristic of Jake to risk giving a gunman such a clear shot at him. But then, Jake acted uncharacteristically more often than not, nowada
ys.
The window was double-glazed and it was warm and sunny outside, but Jake was suddenly aware of a draft, a cool damp breeze that slipped up the leg of his pyjamas. His mind twitched. Suddenly he was thinking the unthinkable. How had that happened? Must be something else he could think of to worry over, other than his fuckin’ prostrate ...
Random possibilities skittered across the surface of his brain like water striders on a stagnant, scummy pond.
Butch, curled up in a muscular horseshoe shape by the fireplace, vented a startled “woof!” Rolling over on her side, she banged her massive skull against the fireplace’s brick surround. End of dream. She gave Jake a wounded look, as if it were all his fault, then shut her big brown eyes and lowered her head so slowly her operating system might have been hydraulic. She had the attention span of a mayfly. More often than not, she seemed to have very little idea of what she was up to even when she was wide awake. She’d already got her tongue stuck in the mail slot twice. She’d lost her footing and fallen down the stairs so many times even Marty had lost count. It was a wonder she hadn’t broken a leg.
Butch’s owner, the guy Steve squibbed. There’d still been nothing on TV, or in the Province or any of those other papers. What’d happened to the guy’s fuckin’ body?
Jake had told Steve, take a ride downtown and pick up some maps or whatever that explained the speed and direction of the local ocean currents. Steve was curious as to why Jake, who got seasick watching the Discovery channel, was interested in tide charts. In the smallest words he could dredge up, Jake explained that he wanted to work out where the body had gone.
Steve got this look on his face. What’s Jake talking about? What body? Jake had felt a surge of pride. Maybe there was hope for him yet. His first hit, he’d already forgotten all about it!
A shiny beige car took the corner at speed.
Jake’s heart missed a beat.
Melanie beeped the horn of her leased Acura that she was so proud of even though Jake covered the payments. The car’s shiny front bumper nudged the security gate. Jake was shaken by a sudden gust of anger. He’d told her not to bump the fuckin’ gate! He’d even explained that, although the gate looked like it would stop a tank, it was made of welded aluminum, and had a baked enamel finish that was susceptible to chipping.
Marty pounded down the stairs. He yelled at Axel to go back to sleep. The front door squeaked open. Marty sauntered casually down the driveway to the gatehouse. Melanie blinked her lights. Marty took his hands out of his pockets. He waved at her, then disappeared inside the gatehouse. A moment later the gates swung open.
Melanie burned rubber up the driveway. The gates swung shut. Marty trotted after her, eating carbon monoxide and relishing the taste, judging from the goofy smile that was smeared all over his face. He’d left the light on inside the gatehouse — but then, he didn’t pay the electricity bill, did he? Probably wasn’t even aware there was an electricity bill.
Marty accompanied Melanie upstairs. He said, “Here she is, Jake.” He patted his thigh and whistled at Butch. The dog struggled to her feet. Marty hooked a finger under her collar and led her towards the stairs.
Jake said, “Where ya goin’?”
“Take a stroll around the yard, sniff the flowers.”
Jake nodded. Butch yanked Marty headlong down the stairs. The front door opened and then slammed shut.
Melanie wore a snug-fitting diagonally striped black-and-white striped jacket, matching skirt. The suit was reminiscent of a dead barber pole. But, somehow, she looked sensational. Jake said, “Nice outfit.”
“Thank you.” She mock-curtsied. That light-headed girl had apparently forgotten to wear a bra. Vertebra crackled like breakfast cereal as Jake hastily averted his eyes. But for all the rest of that long day, the memory of what he’d glimpsed would chase him around the house like an insecure puppy. Staring fixedly at the carpet, he said, “You was supposed to check in a couple days ago.”
Melanie stood motionless in a beam of sunlight. She was lit up like a movie star, and twice as beautiful. She rolled her eyes.
Jake didn’t like that too much. Her playing at being independent, after all he’d done to her. Oops. Correction, after all he’d done for her. But what was the big difference, really?
Steve and Axel wandered into the room, loitered by the stereo.
Jake said, “Yeah, what?”
“We was just wondering, you need anything?”
“Ya washed da cars?”
“We haff vashed der autos from top all der vay to bottom,” said Axel. He snuck a bold look at Melanie that indicated he’d be honoured to perform the exact same service on her, any time she cracked her whip.
“Find somet’ing else ta do.” Jake made a gun of his fist, aimed at the narrow space between Axel’s foggy blue eyes. “And stop gawkin’! Melanie’s like a daughta ta me, unnerstan’?”
Axel’s chunky smile faded. Jake was an old guy, half a century past his prime. But there was still heat in his watery eyes, venom in his fangs.
For example, Steve had told Axel that, shortly after he’d started working for Jake, he’d driven him to an empty warehouse, driven the Bentley right inside. There were six hoods in there, watching over a bookie named Lalo Espinoza, who’d been skimming from Jake.
Jake and Steve got out of the car. Espinoza was sitting on the floor, his back to a wall, calmly smoking a pipe. Jake crouched. He looked the bookie in the eye and then spat in his eye. He said, “Strip him naked and pound him like veal.” He told Steve to stand back a few feet, and watch. Then he climbed back in his Bentley.
The hoods used their switchblades to cut away Lalo’s clothes. Five of them held Lalo down on the concrete floor while the other hood pounded him with a hard rubber mallet the size of a baby sledgehammer, the kind of mallet used in automotive repair shops to knock dents out of sheet metal. Lalo’s screams echoed off the walls, so it sounded to Steve as if a whole bunch of Lalos were getting mushed. After about five minutes it only took a couple of hoods to hold the bookie down, freeing up four of them to pound away on him. Then, pretty soon, nobody had to hold him.
Steve told Axel about the six mallets constantly rising and falling, how the bookie’s supine body was surrounded by a swirling pink mist.
The hoods took a breather. By then Lalo was unconscious. A hood ran his fingers over Lalo’s bloody, bruised and broken body. He went over to Jake and verified that all the bookie’s large and small bones had been smashed.
Jake said, “Shoot da lyin’ bastad.”
A volley of shots made Lalo’s body twitch.
Steve got back in the car. Jake pointed at him, laughed. Steve looked down at his white shirt and saw it was speckled everywhere with hundreds or perhaps thousands of tiny red dots.
So when Jake turned his watery eyes on Axel and warned him off staring at Melanie, it took all Axels powers of concentration to keep his bladder under control. He swallowed hard and said, “Jake, Marty yust drove off in der Bentley. Me and Steve could sweep the garage until he gets back.”
Jake flicked his fingers at him. “Nah, ya betta stick aroun’, I might need ya services. But no more oglin’, or I’m gonna pull ya eyes outta ya head wit a pair a rusty pliers.” He patted the arm of his chair. “C’mere, babe, put yaself down here nex’ ta me, nice’n’ close.”
Melanie’s delighted laughter was a waterfall of liquid silver. Her hips churned as she strolled past Jake, circled around behind him so he lost sight of her, then circled back. She straddled the padded arm of the chair so she was directly facing him. Her skirt had ridden high up on her silky thighs. Her knees were level with his sunken chest.
Steve and Axel studied the ceiling.
Jake’s nose twitched. He asked after her perfume.
“That’s just me, Jake.”
“Yeah?”
She toyed with the fringe of hair at the back of his liver-spotted skull.
He said, “Wanna drink?”
“Not really. Well, okay. I don�
��t want to put you to any trouble. Maybe a glass of white, if there’s a bottle open.”
“Ya hear dat, Steve?”
“Coming right up, Jake.”
“And gimme a Turkey onna rocks, while ya at it.”
Axel said, “Iss der bartender here? Ya, he iss very tender!”
“Shaddap.”
Steve scurried over to the big mahogany sideboard a carpenter pal of Jake’s had converted to a liquor cabinet. He plucked a bottle of wine from the mini-fridge, uncorked and filled a glass, poured a quarter-inch of Wild Turkey bourbon into a lowball glass, added ice. He served the drinks with soft linen napkins stolen from the Sutton Place Hotel.
Jake tilted his glass against Melanie’s. “Mud in der eyeballs.”
“In their eyeballs,” agreed Melanie.
Jake sipped and sighed, remembering the first pimp he’d buried, more than fifty years ago. Dennis, the chump from Chicago. He’d dug the grave himself. Soft ground, but it was hard work all the same. Late October, cold, raining steadily. He’d dig for half an hour or so, take out his tape measure, check his progress. Meanwhile, Dennis kept pleading for his life, making crazy promises God Himself couldn’t keep. Jake constantly yelling at him to shut up, but he wouldn’t. Or couldn’t. Then he’d hit clay. Hardpan. It had taken him most of the rest of the day to get down another couple of feet. The light was failing as he’d rolled Dennis into his grave. Poor Dennis went splat as he hit the bottom of the hole.
He happened to land face up. He resumed screaming for mercy. More to shut him up than anything else, Jake flung a shovelful of muddy earth into his open mouth. Dennis had looked so surprised. So startled, and so utterly betrayed. Jake had hurried more shovelfuls of mud into his eyes ...
He rested his splayed fingers on Melanie’s thigh. “So, how’s married life?”
“We’re not married.”
“I’m kiddin’ ya. Teasin’. Harold bein’ a good boy?”
“He does the best he can.”
Karaoke Rap Page 16