Sunny Sweet watched him at first, then tried to peer at what he was writing.
Without looking up. Powder said, “Sit down, Mrs. Sweet.”
Slowly, she took a chair across the table from him.
“So,” Powder said, “when did you and Manan get back to Indianapolis?”
Slowly she said, “Yesterday.”
“When did you leave Mexico?”
“Couple of days before that.”
“Show me your border papers,” Powder said.
“What?”
“Your passport, visa, whatever documents you stayed in Mexico on. I want to see them.”
“We didn’t—”
“Yes you did.”
“We got here, Indianapolis, yesterday. Was that what you was asking?”
Powder waited.
“We left Mexico a couple of weeks ago.”
“When?” Sharply.
“A couple of months ago.”
“Why did you leave Mexico?”
“Well, it’s nice there and all that but—”
Powder lifted his eyes to meet the woman’s. “Do not waste my time, Mrs. Sweet,” he said with all the considerable menace at his command.
“Yeah, all right. Just don’t nag me, all right? You remind me of my goddamn mother, you do. No wonder you cook frozen pizza for my kid. You’re just like a goddamn old woman!” She snorted a laugh.
Powder waited.
“We left ’cause Dolf got into a little trouble.”
“As in police trouble?”
Mimicking nasally, “As in police trouble.” Then, “What do you think? I got him pregnant?”
“Was he arrested, or did you beat it by getting over the border?”
“If he’d been arrested we wouldn’t goddamn be here, would we? You know what it’s like down there, do you, old-lady cop? It’s like a big pile of dogshit to get arrested down there. We sure as hell did skip it over the border.”
“Drug trouble?”
Sunny Sweet said nothing.
“I asked you whether Dolf got into drug trouble, Mrs. Sweet,” Powder said with force.
“Yeah, drug trouble,” she said reluctantly. After a moment she added, “It was all a setup. None of it was true.”
“I’ve read his police record,” Powder said.
“Yeah, well, he went straight when we left,” she said defiantly.
“When you left Mexico, where did you go?”
“Here and there.”
“Where and where?”
“Southern Gal. We went to Denver for a few days. Last week we spent in St. Louis.”
“Working your way back to Indianapolis?”
“It wasn’t quite, like, planned that way, but we don’t know nobody nowhere else.”
“Short of money?”
“Of course we were goddamn short of money! We had money, we could go live anywhere.”
“So,” Powder said slowly and clearly, “because you were short of money, you sold the information about Sidney Sweet’s real identity to the Gary people.”
Sunny Sweet froze as if snapped by a camera. She stayed that way, not breathing or blinking or, seemingly, alive for several seconds.
When she took a breath it was not immediately followed by another. They came one at a time, jerkily.
“Have you had your money yet?” Powder asked.
She breathed hard. “I ain’t saying nothing.”
“Or is Dolf out trying to get that sorted out now?” Powder nodded to encourage her.
Sullenly she nodded back.
“Did you know,” Powder asked carefully, “that Henry Painter has been arrested?”
The news was another shock. Eventually she asked, pathetically, “Has he?”
“So you haven’t had your money yet?”
She shook her head.
“You passed the information by telephone, maybe thought it was best not to be around when it actually happened?”
To this she nodded slowly.
“What’s Dolf going to do when he finds out you aren’t going to get the money?”
“I don’t know,” she said weakly.
“Leave you?”
She didn’t shake her head. She looked at Powder. She said, “Painter’s in jail?”
“Sure is. And he’s going to be there for a long, long time.”
“You couldn’t, like, arrange for Dolf to see him maybe?”
Powder said nothing.
“Hey, could you do that for me, please? I’d be real grateful,” she said, the glimmer of a plan enabling her to muster a semblance of flirtatiousness.
Powder said nothing.
“I can be good,” she said. “I really can. I’d be grateful to you. I’d be grateful to you now if you wanted.”
Powder watched the woman.
“Or later. Whenever you like. Or . . .” she said, thinking, “or maybe we could find something else. Hey, you got a soft spot for Bobby, don’t you? He said you was a good friend to him when he was alone. You want me to fix it so you get a little time alone with him? That suit you better? A little time alone with Bobby? Hey, me, I don’t mind. It’s a big world. I understand. It takes all kinds.”
Chapter Thirty Six
Powder waited, again, at Fleetwood’s front door.
For a change, when she opened it neither of them spoke. She made way and he came in.
He sat in an armchair and she rolled up next to him. She took his hand. She said, “You look terrible. Powder.”
“That’s funny,” he said. “You look pretty good to me.”
“How was Ferguson?”
“Businesslike. He understood what I was trying to do. He’ll take some time to think about whether he’s sympathetic to it.”
“And then?”
“I hope he’ll make it easy and put Tidmarsh to work proving whether Ace was right that something was happening or not.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Tidmarsh is committed to doing it anyway.”
“I see.”
“For sure it’s out of my hands now. Ferguson’s other problem will be to decide what to do with me.”
Fleetwood watched as Powder smiled at her. “Most likely is that they will overlook my indiscretions if I agree to retire.”
“Oh.”
“I took a lot upon myself that our friends in the higher ranks do not generally incline to look favorably on.”
“You got a lot of results.”
“That’s true,” Powder said. He shrugged. “I would think that I could probably fight it. Kind of depends whether I’m feeling combative.”
“When have you not?”
“But maybe I should retire, for myself. Look at it. I spend years as a team cop, a book cop, and then suddenly I’m out there trying to do it alone. That’s got to be a symptom of something, doesn’t it?”
“You going to start crying for yourself, or what?”
“All I’m saying is there’s no need to rush a decision.”
“Maybe Ferguson’ll be all right,” Fleetwood said.
“There is always that possibility.”
Fleetwood looked at him. “Retire, huh? Sit around and watch the soap operas all day long?”
Powder nodded vigorously. “I got a lot of catching up to do on the stories.”
Fleetwood sniffed.
“Something else crossed my mind to ask you, Sergeant.”
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”
“You ever consider taking on a child?”
“A what?”
“I didn’t say baby.”
She waited.
“I was thinking more like a twelve-year-old kid. Already house-trained. Good glove. What you think? Good idea?”
“No,” she said softly.
“No, I suppose it isn’t.”
“Robert Sweet?”
“It’s just I met his mother today. But it’s all right. Afterwards I took him to my social-worker contact and they’re going to look after him. And I’m
also making sure that the FBI gives him plenty of money.”
Fleetwood looked at Powder sadly.
“Oh, come on,” Powder said. “There are worse things than a kid having plenty of money.”
“You’ve had a busy day, Leroy.”
“I like to keep active,” Powder said.
“You saw Mountjoy too, didn’t you?”
“Sure did, ma’am. You name ’em, I’ve seen ’em.”
“And?”
“I broke down the perfect alibi.”
“Oh, yes?”
“You remember that woman who came in the other day? Martha Miles?”
Fleetwood’s face showed clearly that she remembered the name, the woman and the circumstances.
“Well, she’s had a rough time, the poor dear.”
Fleetwood was uncertain what Powder was getting at.
“After her husband died—and maybe before—I think she was the ‘other woman’ for a small-scale gangland boss in Gary named Henry Painter, Senior. I also think she bore him a son, only when the kid was six, Painter was murdered to keep him from talking to the FBI. It was a contract job, completed by Billy Sorenson. Bad luck on Martha.”
“You ‘think’ . . .?”
“What I am sure of is that there is a strong physical resemblance between Martha’s son—Terry—and Painter’s other son, Henry Junior. Junior was born to Painter’s wife a couple of years before Terry.”
Powder paused. Fleetwood said nothing, but was attentive.
“Junior—he’s twenty-two—seems to have decided recently that it was time to settle the old family scores and that meant killing Billy Sorenson. Now it was always possible that Junior could do it and get clean away, but in case he didn’t, Junior decided it would be a smart move to set himself up with a real good alibi.”
“Involving . . . Terry?”
“With the same kind of moustache, hair colored to match exactly and no chance to look at them together, you couldn’t say which was which. The idea was to arrange things so that someone reliable was seeing Martha’s kid while Painter was doing his killing. The reliable person would be told he was seeing Painter, so he could give an alibi. And who is more reliable as a witness than a cop?”
“They set you up,” Fleetwood said slowly. “The whole thing was to set you up.”
“That’s right. Martha becomes reacquainted. Makes sure I am there. Makes sure I know what time it is. Makes sure I see the imitation Painter while the real Painter is elsewhere, doing his business.”
“I see,” Fleetwood said quietly.
“Now on an ordinary day, I would just have helped Mountjoy arrest the bunch of them and sort it out.”
“But today?”
“I had other things to do. So I denied having seen Painter. Hence he has no alibi and will go down for his killing.” Powder spread his hands innocently. “After all, I didn’t see Painter at Miles’s house, did I? Even if I didn’t know it at the time.”
“Martha’s not going to be very happy with you, Leroy.”
“Good.”
“Tough guy, huh?”
“More important, there are people who aren’t going to be very happy with her, or her son. People likely to make their feelings known.” He hesitated, and shrugged. “Anyway, I put Mountjoy on the right track. Probably he’ll get there even if I don’t say anything else.”
“You’re high as a kite with all this,” Fleetwood said.
“It certainly makes a change from trying and trying but getting nowhere.”
She nodded.
“I think Painter Junior is responsible for Sidney Sweet’s disappearance too,” Powder said. “All part of the same business.”
“So Robert’s father is dead?”
“I’m sure, gut feeling, that he is. But I’ll check it out. Maybe I’ll muscle Mister Jimmy into finding out for me. When I get a chance.”
“Is there anything you haven’t done today?”
“I can think of four things,” Powder said.
“Yes?”
He smiled. “The second is to ask you how Howard Haddix is doing on that case where he’s looking for the father of a girl who’s getting married. The father that left home eighteen-odd years ago. Did Howard find the guy yet?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“Howard was well enough to come to work today?”
“Yeah.”
“He would have told you if he did anything good.”
“I guess so.”
“Right. So I’ve decided to send the girl a present, from her absent father.” Powder held up his hands to quell a response. “I feel like it, so I’m going to do it. It’s just I haven’t done it yet today. So the third thing was to talk to this lawyer guy about the money I got coming.”
“What you going to say?”
“That he should stick the money away. I’ll think about what to do with it later.”
“And the fourth thing?”
“I haven’t had anything to eat tonight.”
“Ah,” Fleetwood said.
“Now do tell me if I’m imposing, Carollee, but I thought, if it was OK with you, I would invite my boy, Ricky, and his girl friend to eat with us tonight.”
Fleetwood blinked a few times as she took this in.
“I thought I’d call them now. I thought they could bring in the biggest goddamn takeout meal any of us has ever seen. My treat. To celebrate my inheritance. Maybe even my retirement. That all right?”
Fleetwood shrugged. “If it’s what you want.”
“I’ll call them, tell them to get here in, say, an hour, an hour and a half.”
Fleetwood looked momentarily puzzled.
“Why so long?” Powder asked rhetorically. “Well, about that first thing I haven’t done today . . .”
“Ricky,” Fleetwood said, “do finish it off if you’re inclined to. I think everyone else is done.”
“Oh. Right. Great,” Ricky said.
Powder smiled at Peggy Zertz. “From a child he was never happier than when he had something in his mouth.”
“Aw, for Christ’s sake, Father!”
Powder said,“Hey, couple of days ago I came across some people I thought you guys might be interested in. Got themselves a nice little cult.”
“A cult?” Ricky asked with distaste through his food.
“No, no. Don’t be like that. These people got a good thing going. Going to take over the country and end up rich without having to work for it. It’s the American dream.”
“Ricky’s not afraid of work,” Peggy Zertz said. “Are you, hon?”
“Don’t be stupid.”
“He’s not. Honest. It’s just a matter of getting into the right kind of situation. Something he can live with and grow with.”
Powder nodded, but did not speak.
“I mean,” Peggy said, “we were talking on the way here. We were saying what with you maybe having to retire, maybe we wouldn’t take that money you said you were going to start giving him. We can get along.”
“That’s real considerate,” Powder said. “But I think I’ll be able to help you out, at least for a while.”
“Wouldn’t want it forever,” Ricky said.
Powder beamed. “We’ll all just take things one day at a time then, shall we?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Ricky said.
Powder exchanged glances with Fleetwood. He said, “We’ll see what fate brings us. Meanwhile, lick your plates, drink up! Peggy, can I light that ciggy for you? Come on, guys, it’s kind of like a party, right?”
About the Author
MICHAEL Z. LEWIN is the award-winning author of many mystery novels and short stories. Most have been set in and around Indianapolis, Indiana, where he grew up. Albert Samson is a low-key private eye and the stories focus on humane understanding of the cases and problems Samson encounters. Leroy Powder is an irascible Indy police lieutenant who truly wants his colleagues to become better cops. They’re bound to be grateful, right? Both central characters h
ave an abiding wish to see justice done. One of the features of the series novels, and some stand-alones, is that that main characters from one book often appear in lesser roles in other books.
Since 1971 Mike has lived in the West of England, currently in Bath where his city-centre flat overlooks the nearby hills. Both his children have made careers in the arts. Masses more information and silly stuff is available on www.MichaelZLewin.com.
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Copyright
First published in 1986 by William Morrow and Company Inc. New York
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Copyright © 1986 by Michael Z. Lewin
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author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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This book remains true to the original in every way. Some aspects may appear
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