For his part, the Cubster concluded that Traynor’s ex-stickman was equally skilled at questionable business practices albeit on a smaller scale. He used a silent partner to get around the problems of his criminal record, while providing the real technical smarts of running the operation. It seemed to be working out for him just grand. Far from being in hock to the finance companies with a morass of liens and penalty interest rates to confront, the balance sheet looked downright robust, and their principal bank manager spoke in glowing terms. Maybe he was a pollero or a smoke runner. I’d certainly have liked to fine-tooth his manifests. It prickled me majorly that a guy of his lack of character could be staring down the barrel of an early retirement while I was wearing a five-year-old suit that didn’t fit and driving the Thunderbolt Grease Slapper purchased from Otto the Auto King. I loved that car—but not that much. Still, you can’t fault people for getting rich in America, especially in tough times. Chris headed out to dig up some dirt on any love interest that still existed between the Big Wheel and the widow. The sand was running out on our murder theory. I needed something else to keep my head straight. My thoughts were starting to run away from me—and that was always a sign that El Miedo was laying for me.
After a can of soda and four aspirins, I was starting to feel a little less woozy when I got a call from Wardell, the fat black dude who was partners with Jimmie in the Long Room. Jimmie had been rushed to the hospital. Somehow I wasn’t surprised. Just stunned. It totally blew whatever cool I’d recouped.
Wardell’s East Texas accent swelled with emotion. Definitely a deep fried kind of guy. But he never missed a bridge shot, and that was saying something—given that you couldn’t imagine how he’d keep one foot on the floor. He was bit of a dim bulb but he had a good heart. And it made the bad news sound even worse.
Jimmie had a tumor in the pancreas. The gnarly old fool had finally hauled himself off in pain to the doc that morning like he’d promised, and an urgent CAT scan had instantly told them what he might’ve been suspecting for a long time. The growth was large and situated in a way that compromised major blood vessels and blocked the bile duct. They were doing emergency surgery to insert a stent and resolve the bile problem. Then there’d be more scans and blood tests, but the fear with a cancer that large was that there were already secondaries in the liver. Jimmie always said he was 62, but he’d been 62 for a few too many Christmases. I had a bad feeling about his chances. It was clear Wardell did too.
“Which hospital’s he in?” I asked. “I’ll go right over.”
“St. Pat’s,” Wardell sighed. “But they doin’ the proceeedshure this afffernoon. Maybe he be out and woke up in the evenin’.”
“I’ll swing by after work,” I said. “You hang tough like he’d want you to. He’s a fighter. You know that.”
“Ah knowww!” Wardell sobbed, which made me almost choke up too.
Dell and I had this thing where we’d riff on old Flip Wilson routines. He’d do a Geraldine joke and I’d do Reverend Leroy, pastor of “The Church of What’s Happenin’ Now.” If you’re too young to remember Flip Wilson, sorry. He was a funny man. Now to hear Wardell crying. God. He was as soft as one of Nelly’s buttercreams inside, although he could a punch a hole in a brick wall if he’d had enough to drink. I hung up and said as much of a prayer as I could stomach for Jimmie.
I knew that one-legged little palooka had a place at the Stanton Hotel but I’d never been there. He seemed to live his whole life, or what was left of it, in the gloom of his old pool hall. It was like Kelly’s Barbershop, with the crank-up chairs and jars full of combs soaking in blue barbecide. The Long Room still had brass spittoons and smelled of cigars and pastrami, the way that Kelly’s had smelled of Lucky Tiger Hair Tonic and sun-faded Argosy magazines.
Kelly’s closed last year when Strapper had his aneurism. It got turned into a health food deli selling smoothies, salads and designer sandwiches. The Long Room would go the same way when Wardell cashed out. Maybe it was better for Jimmie to go before the pool hall did. “Never ask a one-legged guy the story,” he used to quip. “When he’s ready to tell you, he’ll only lie about it anyway.” I always liked Jimmie’s lies. One of the few people I can say that about.
I went out to buy a hot dog slathered in fried onions but I ended up over at the Fresh Start Deli where Kelly’s had been. I thought some rabbit food wouldn’t hurt me, especially the disturbing way I was feeling. I settled for a Reuben Wrap and a Zinger Tea. Glancing around, it was impossible to imagine Strapper and Huxley and the other chin-waggers in the bright new feminized surrounds. I felt less out of place than I expected and left considerably less nostalgic for the chipped linoleum and sweaty Naugahyde.
When I got back to my desk, the land line was ringing and there were messages stacked up. I thought it might be Wardell with more news about Jimmie—and then I had a notion that it was McInnes, wondering how my visit to Eyrie Street had gone. I could feel Jack lurking in the background—just like El Miedo. Instead it was Lance Harrigan. He was back from his conference and had made an appointment with the shrink for me for the next week, same day.
“Why, thanks, Lance,” I grassed.
He was undeterred. My appearance and demeanor must’ve worried him.
At least I wrote down the name, address and appointment time, and then sealed it up in an envelope. Lance was an old soldier and had spent several years in the close company of Jack Daniels. But now, he’d beaten the bottle. He had a sexy second wife and was well on track to heading the Coroner’s office. I could do worse than taking a leaf out of his book. I hung up the phone and slipped the envelope into my drawer as Becker from the Two-Four dropped off the background file on Mervyn Stoakes.
When I’d seen him lying in the alley drenched in his own blood, I hadn’t taken much note of his face. Staring at an earlier pic of him from the City Directory, I saw that despite his size—and he would’ve gone 6’2” and 240 pounds—there was a meagerness in his face. A “something’s missing look,” with eyes as cold as a brass monkey. Reminded me a little too much of my reflection in the dirty sink water.
At the time of his unorthodox surgery, he’d been a 44-year-old divorced resident of Foam (a rather unfortunately-named district because the only foam on its excuse for a beach was phosphate residue leeching from the old holding tanks). He worked in the Planning department overseeing developments, subdivisions and building permits, which was a good wicket to be on for taking bribes. Someone who knew the game could quietly skim some thick cream, providing they didn’t get too greedy. I still wasn’t convinced he’d done such a perverse deed to himself. Not without drugs, and the tox scan had come back negative.
Padgett was giving testimony in the first case we’d worked. I hit the phone and made notes, tying up what loose ends that I could, and then decided to shoot over to the Records Department at City Hall and see what I could find out about the projects Stoakes had been working on. I wanted to walk. I told myself it was because of the sultry spring weather and because I still felt a little iffy. The truth was I was getting heavy flashes of Genevieve. Her body. Her feet. That voice. What in hell was her game?
I’d left the house on Eyrie Street in a state of fear. I hadn’t wanted to think of it openly at the time—it only overcame me when I found the dog collar in my pocket. I felt like I’d been selected for some black bag job and hadn’t been briefed. Now I could smell the scarf again, as if the scent was on my hands, coming out of my pores. I’d only known one woman to have that kind of effect on me. This Genevieve was disturbing my peace for real.
In the Records section of the Planning Department, I interviewed three of Stoakes’ fellow employees. All three of them had gotten wind of what had happened to him despite the media supposedly keeping his name out. You could see the revulsion on their faces.
Had he been acting oddly or out of character in any way before the incident? Two of them shrugged and said that he kept to himself so much it was hard to say. The woman in the group got a
little uncomfortable at this question. I bored harder. “Confidentially,” she whispered, with a lactose intolerant expression, she thought he’d started “seeing someone” and that maybe it was “an affair he wanted to keep quiet.”
“Why do you think that?” I asked. He was divorced, but maybe the new mujer wasn’t. I could tell his co-worker hadn’t made up her mind what she’d seen. It turned out that it was just some lingerie. She’d been shopping on her lunch break over at Kettleton’s, one of the older department stores that the big chains and boutiques of the new BayFair Center were trying to drive out of business, and she’d seen Stoakes buying a watermelon shade camisole.
“So, you saw him purchasing a naughty nightie, and you figured he was up to no good?” I smiled. Can’t a poor guy do something nice for a lady without raising eyebrows? No wonder men don’t like shopping for those kinds of dainties.
“It … was a … large size,” the woman said, after much hemming and hawing.
I shrugged. Stoakes wasn’t little by anyone’s standards. Maybe he liked his jellyroll big. I didn’t see why buying a camisole was an example of acting strange—but then I’d never met him.
“And …” she added. “He was upset when he saw me.”
I shrugged this off too. Men feel shy being amongst a bunch of bras and panties. I know. They get turned on and don’t want to show it. They don’t know what to look for exactly and usually get it wrong—it’s either too raunchy or too baby doll. Plus, they’re worried someone’s going to think they’re perverts. On the other hand, given Lance’s professional opinion of what he’d done, maybe his female counterpart was on to something.
“Did he end up buying it?”
“I—I don’t know. He got so agitated I left. He didn’t come back that afternoon.”
That did seem a little queer—as in suggestive. Possibly queer in the other sense too, but I didn’t want to get sidetracked. I thanked her for her help and shifted my attention to his files. Thirty-five minutes later I hit pay dirt.
If Stoakes had been engaging in extracurricular activities, he’d also been busy on the job. In the last two months he’d considered more applications for development projects and granted more outright permits than anyone else on the payroll. The majority were based in Cliffhaven. The pits and vacant lots I spoke of? They didn’t look like they’d be empty much longer.
That was all interesting enough, but if it hadn’t been for the crash course I’d done into the complex skein of Deems Whitney’s business ventures, I wouldn’t have picked up on one detail. The only significant project that, uncharacteristically, Stoakes had not approved a planning permit for in the last few weeks was a Cliffhaven development instigated by a company I suspected Whitney to have recently invested in called Salmaxis. That name had popped up in Whitney’s records and now it popped up again. What was of particular note was that the paperwork approving the permit had been started and then put on hold with the file note, “Pending further review.” I borrowed one of the computer screens to do a company search on Salmaxis. They had UK connections but the West Coast outfit had been registered only six months before by a woman named Denita Kent, another name from Whitney’s list of associates and/or enemies. Whitney wasn’t listed as one of the directors but he had a bevy of holding companies that he could’ve used to invest in Salmaxis. ShoreGens was one such company I recalled from the morning, and sure enough, they featured prominently on the Salmaxis share register, although it looked like this had become official only in the last month. ShoreGens, when I turned over a few more rocks, was a venture capital biz that had its official address listed as none other than 4 Eyrie Street—the Managing Director, Genevieve Wyvern.
I heard in my head that satisfying clack—like when a mousetrap goes off behind the refrigerator at 3 AM.
It was too much to process there in front of a bunch of clerks. Not only were the two investigations I was working related, they connected back somehow, in some way, to Genevieve. If they were suicide, that still didn’t make her connection less any screwy. And it instantly raised a question about McInnes. What did he know about all this, and how had he come by the info? The idea that he’d also sat on the pink couch at Eyrie Street—and had maybe done a lot more—that made me sicker than the chocolate had.
Of course, I could take the bull by the horns, or rather the cow by the teats, and confront Genevieve openly. She was now a person of interest in two suspicious deaths. Part of two parallel and potentially interrelated investigations. She could pull her sleight-of-hand on Birch Ritter, the civilian, but giving false information to a peace officer was another deal altogether. I liked those odds much better and left the Records section with a dip in my hip and a glide in my stride. I’d just swing by for a knock and talk. I might have to reach out to McInnes, but not yet. I needed to gather a bit more intel on my own first.
I don’t know whether it was the rush I got over the link that had suddenly emerged between the two deaths—or whether the Reuben Wrap wasn’t sitting well with my recovering chocolate stomach—but on the way back to the station house I got nature’s call. I’m talking Code 3. Fortunately I was close to the Civic Center, and I knew they had nice clean restrooms in the rear of the lobby by the Ticketron office. I made a beeline there and was relieved to find the echoing john empty. I checked the messages on the cell while I sat there listening to the muffled strains of Billy Joel singing “Don’t go changing to try to please me … I love you just the way you are …”
I have to admit I was there longer than I expected. The hits just kept on coming, so to speak—on the piped-in music as well as the pipe out. I was at last getting around to thinking it was safe to reach for the toilet paper when I heard that old Helen Reddy feminist call to arms from the 1970’s: “I am woman, hear me roar … in numbers too big to ignore …”
I had to laugh, and that almost made me roar some more. Years and years ago that song came on and I remarked to a buddy, whose name I’ve forgotten, that I was surprised at the call for unisex toilets in the lyric. He looked at me like I was loco, and I said, “You know, the line where she says, until I meet my brother in the can.”
I thought he was going to have kittens. I wasn’t sure he was ever going to stop laughing, but when he did he said, “The line is until I make my brother understand.”
Finally, when I’d regained control, I heard other voices. It sounded like an older woman and a little boy. I could hear them stressing outside the door to the restroom. It made me sad to hear them, because I knew how big a deal going into the Men’s Room had been for me at that little kid stage. They nattered on a bit longer and then she must’ve hustled him into the Women’s Room. I heard a door whoosh and their voices faded away.
I finished up, washed long and hard and had a look at myself in the mirror. I remember as a teenager staring at my face, examining each and every acne peak and crater, then turning out the lights—as if I could change my face by changing the mirror. Now I couldn’t have picked myself out of a line-up. I looked pale and pasty, like some kind of illness or change in chemistry was at work. No wonder Lance had been adamant about me seeing a shrink—although it looked like I needed a doctor more than a psychologist. Then I glanced over and noticed the Tampax vending machine. What in hell was a Tampax machine doing in the Men’s Room? That’s typical city administration, I thought. They couldn’t put enough trashcans in tourist hubs and then they whack a white mouse dispenser in the tomcat’s toilet.
Then I got one of those famous sinking feelings. There were no distinctive white porcelain receptacles. No long silver trough with water gently running down. ¡Por Dios!, I thought. I’m in the Ladies’! The kid and the old woman are in the Men’s! It was an honest mistake, but I had to bolt out of there. And just when I did—I ran straight into a woman in a Ticketron uniform. My face went bright red and I gobbled down some air, which made me look and sound even more foolish when I blathered, “Sorry. Police. We heard there was an intruder.”
She backed out the
door faster than I shot through—with the granny and the tyke out in the lobby to see the whole thing. The only sensible thing I did was not dash for the exit.
FELT MORE FLUISH TWINGES WHEN I GOT BACK TO THE Precinct, but I had to do a background check on Genevieve Wyvern. This was the part of the investigation that really got me where I lived. I ran the name through the DMV, voter registration and business licensing—then NCIC, CORI and all the usual other databases—plus a good quick Google. Trumped up profiles turn up either too much detail or not enough. Hers was the bare minimum—like a website designed overnight to bolster a fake company. I tried to detect the handiwork of the Feds, but people who go into the WSP don’t become company directors—or invite unknown men into their houses. Underworld-arranged backgrounds have their own special footprint. This was something else. I couldn’t fix the feel. Just more mystery.
I was due at the firing range to meet the small arms practice requirement, and I was glad of it. As jittery as I felt at first, blasting away at the silhouette targets and doing the reaction course steadied me. I liked drilling and always looked forward to it. I liked the impact of the weapons in my hands, traveling up my arms. I liked the smell of burnt brass and nitrocellulose in a confined space—and for some reason, I liked wearing the hearing protectors. Plus targets don’t shoot back. By the time I got back in the Electra, I was a little better. It was just on 5 PM and I wanted to have a shower and change my clothes if I was going to pay a surprise visit to Eyrie Street. I could claim official business and anyone at the Precinct could ring me on my cell.
Private Midnight Page 6