“That narrows it down a lot,” Edna said. “She didn’t give you any idea what was on the tape?”
“No. She just said things didn’t happen exactly the way she told the police. And that she was sorry she lied to me.”
“Lied about what?”
“The money, maybe? At first she was really insistent that she hadn’t stolen any money. Pete Viatkos was just as insistent that she did steal the money. Naturally, I was inclined to believe Deecie. I mean, if she took the money, why didn’t she spend some of it—for a hotel, or a doctor for Faheem? Mom, they didn’t even have enough money for diapers or milk or food. I had to take groceries with me that time I met them at the warehouse.”
“Maybe she didn’t have the money anymore,” Edna suggested. “Or maybe she was scared to spend it.”
“She was scared,” I agreed. “Terrified. Especially of the cops.”
“That reminds me,” Edna said. “C. W. wanted you to call him as soon as you got in.”
I was antsy, too agitated to talk on the phone. I needed action, not words. I opened the refrigerator door, closed it just as quickly. Walked around the house trying to decide what to do. On a whim, I drove over to the grocery warehouse on Shallowford Road. It was buttoned up tight. The dry cleaner’s out front was closed too. No cars in the lot. No sign that Deecie and Faheem had hidden in that back room, terrified at what the next knock on the door would bring.
I drove home. Edna had given up on the solitaire. She was working the Sunday crossword puzzle. In ink.
I called the hospital to check on Bucky’s condition.
“I’m sorry,” the clerk said. “The family has requested that information be kept confidential.”
“Family?” I sputtered. “What family? Who made such a request?”
“That’s confidential,” she said smoothly.
“Bullshit.” I slammed the phone down. I was shaking with rage and frustration and itching for a fight. But Lisa Dugan wasn’t home. Probably down at the hospital, playing the grieving fiancee.
I called C. W. “Lisa Dugan has left instructions for the hospital not to give out Bucky’s condition,” I said. “Can you believe the nerve of this dame?”
“Calm down,” C. W. said. “They told me the same thing when I called. So I called somebody else down there. Bucky’s the same. Nothing has changed. But that’s not why I called you. Listen, something’s going on. I’ve been hearing things about Antjuan Wayne.”
“Like what?”
“He hired a lawyer all right, but not a union cop. No, sir, I hear he’s got David Kohn on retainer.”
“David Kohn? How does a street cop raise the money to hire somebody like that?”
Kohn was one of the top criminal-defense lawyers in the state. He’d recently managed to get an acquittal for a state Supreme Court judge accused of influence peddling, despite the fact that the FBI had tapes of the judge being handed a cigar box full of hundred-dollar bills by an informant over a breakfast at the airport International House of Pancakes.
“Maybe Antjuan Wayne has friends in high places,” C.W. said.
“More likely friends in low places,” I said. “What else are you hearing?”
“I hear the Febes are sniffing around,” C.W. said. “They’re very interested in what Wayne has to say.” “FBI? Since when?”
“Yesterday. Today. They’re having very quiet talks with officers who worked off-duty security jobs, anybody who’d worked with Antjuan Wayne or Sean Ragan. I hear they’ve already talked to Pete Viatkos. And Boylan. And your friend Lisa Dugan.”
“Just talks?”
“That’s what I hear,” C. W. said. “What about you? What’s going on at your end?”
“Nothing good,” I said. “Deecie Styles is gone.” “You think somebody got to her?”
“I don’t think she’s at Disney World,” I said. “Her baby’s sick, she’s broke, and even her boyfriend hasn’t seen her.”
“Not good,” C. W. said.
36
Are you gonna call Mac now?” Edna asked, looking up from her card game.
“No,” I said, reaching for my pocketbook. “I’m going out. I’ll call him later.”
“Save your dime,” Edna said, glancing toward the driveway. “While you were on the phone I heard the Blazer pull up in the driveway.”
I got up and looked out the kitchen door. Mac was striding up the walkway.
I stepped outside to meet him, away from my mother’s prying eyes and ears.
“Hey there,” I said weakly.
“Long time no see,” Mac said. His lips brushed my forehead. A forehead kiss. Not a good sign. “I was just leaving,” I said.
“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Want me to drive?”
“It’s all the way down in East Point.”
“I’ve got a full tank of gas,” Mac said. “And the night is young.”
What could I do? How do you say no to a guy who won’t take no for an answer?
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, steering the Blazer toward the Interstate.
“What’s left to say? You want to move to Nashville. I want to stay here in Atlanta. You’ve even got Edna on your side. I think the two of you should go ahead and go. You’ll be very happy together.”
“You know what I want,” Mac said, reaching for my hand.
I let him take it, just to see how it felt. It felt good, damn him.
“It always comes down to this,” I said. “We’re two different people, Mac. We want different things from life. I just don’t see how we’re going to make it work.”
“I thought it was working pretty good up until now,” he said.
“Because we had a compromise,” I said. “How do we compromise on this? Move halfway between Atlanta and Nashville? Live in, what—Chattanooga?”
“Chattanooga isn’t halfway,” pointed out Mac, the eternal engineer. “What about if we commuted? I could spend a week down here, you could spend a week up there?”
“You’d do that?”
“If that’s what it takes,” he said quietly. “It’d mean spending a lot of time on the road.”
“What about your new job?”
“The commissioners are all hot over the concept of flex scheduling,” Mac said. “Two county executives already do telecommuting two days a week. I couldn’t count on coming to Atlanta every week, but with some careful planning, I think it could work. What do you think?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Say you’ll consider it,” Mac said. “Tell me you’ll meet me halfway on this.”
“I want to,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I’ve missed you, you know.”
“Enough to marry me?”
“You’re full of surprises tonight,” I said. “I thought we were tabling the marriage issue for a while.”
“Why?” he asked. “Marriage would simplify a lot of things.”
“Which things?”
“Our lives. I’m tired of not knowing what to call you. ‘Girlfriend’ sounds juvenile. ‘Fiancee’ sounds pretentious.”
“You could just call me your lady,” I teased. “Or yo’ bitch.”
“Be serious,” Mac said. “There are practical considerations too, you know. If we were married I could have you as a dependent on my health insurance plan. They’ve got a terrific plan up there. Dental and everything. You’d save a bundle right there. Same thing on income tax, married filing jointly is much cheaper. Part of my benefits package would include a county car. You could drive the Blazer and we’d give Edna the van.”
“You think Edna would give up her land yacht just for you?”
“Damn straight,” Mac said, grinning. “She’s on my side.”
“I know.”
“So, you’ll think about it—all of it?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Guess it really is too good an offer to refuse—especially since you’re throwing in a car and hospitalization.”
“Good,” Mac said. “That’s settled. N
ow, you want to tell me where we’re going and why?”
Earl’s Pearl was a classic dive. A baby-blue concrete-block box, it sat in the middle of a pothole-plagued asphalt parking lot full of pickup trucks and late-model American gas guzzlers.
Inside, the booths were all full, so Mac and I found seats at the end of the bar and asked the beefy bartender for a couple of drafts—domestic, of course.
He brought the beers and Mac paid. I could get used to this.
“Is Earl here tonight?” I asked, trying to sound offhand.
“He’s out in the kitchen,” the bartender said. “You need to see him?”
“Yeah, if it’s not too much trouble.”
He turned around, pushed open a swinging door with his foot.
“Earl,” he bellowed. “Lady here needs to see you.”
The door swung open again and a short bowlegged man in a pearl-buttoned shirt, blue jeans, and high-heeled cowboy boots emerged. He was in his early sixties, ruddy-faced, with bright blue eyes that took in the length of the bar.
I held my hand out to him. “Mr., uh, Earl?”
“Earl Witherspoon,” he said, grasping my hand. “And I didn’t catch your name.”
“I’m Callahan Garrity. This is my, uh, fiance. Mac Mac-Auliffe.”
“Good to meet you,” Witherspoon said, shaking hands with Mac. “Now what can I do you for?”
I looked around the bar. Things were pretty quiet, and the regulars were openly staring at us.
“Uh, is there somewhere private we could talk?” I asked.
Witherspoon nodded. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Bunch of damn busybodies in here. Y’all come on in the kitchen, if you don’t mind the heat.”
“I’ll just sit here and sip my beer,” Mac said.
I flashed him a grateful smile.
Earl was right about the kitchen. It was tiny and dominated by a huge griddle, where half a dozen hamburger patties sizzled.
“Now, what’s this all about?” he asked.
“It’s about an armed robbery,” I began.
His easy smile evaporated. “What the hell are you talking about? Who are you, anyway?”
“I’m a private detective,” I explained. “You met one of my, uh, associates last week, on St. Patrick’s Day. At the jail. The night after you were held up at an ATM machine. You told her all about what happened that night.”
The mention of Neva Jean seemed to relax him a little. “Ought to have kept my big mouth shut,” Witherspoon grumbled. “Always was a sucker for a full-figured gal like that Neva Jean.”
“I’m interested in what happened to you because I think it might be connected to a series of armed robberies around Atlanta,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know nothin’ about any other robberies,” Witherspoon said. “The police down here in Hapeville never mentioned nothin’ about no other robberies.”
“The other crimes were all in different jurisdictions; Cobb County, Fulton County, and City of Atlanta. But all of them happened at ATM machines. And all the victims were people like you, businessmen about to make large cash deposits, when they were approached by a masked gunman.”
“That part sounds about right,” Witherspoon allowed. “Be damned if I know where that sumbitch came from that stuck me up. All of a sudden, he was just there, cool as you please, telling me to hand over my money.”
“And you decided not to make it that easy, from what I hear.”
“How the hell did I know there was two of ‘em? Hit me from behind, the sumbitch. Doc said I had a concussion, sure enough.”
“The man who robbed you, was he masked?”
“What’s your interest in all of this?” Witherspoon asked. “You say you’re a lady P.I., but why do you care about some two-bit saloonkeeper way down here in the boonies losing a couple hundred bucks? The cops down here sure aren’t as interested as you are.”
“I used to be a cop myself,” I said. “My former partner was shot in an armed robbery at a liquor store in Atlanta the night after you were robbed. The sumbitch who shot him put the gun right to his ear and pulled the trigger. Twice. He’s up in Grady Hospital, hooked up to a bunch of machines. The doctors don’t expect him to live. I’m wondering if the same people might be responsible for both crimes.”
“And you’d like to catch the sumbitch who did all this,” Witherspoon said. “No offense, but what can a little bitty gal like you do to catch these thieves? I mean, why don’t you leave it to the cops? That’s their job, ain’t it?”
“Because,” I said, “I think it was a cop who shot my friend. And a cop who tried to split your skull in two.”
“By damn,” Witherspoon said. “By damn.”
He fixed us both a couple of cheeseburgers and sent one out to Mac. Then he dragged a couple of barstools over to a counter at the far end of the kitchen.
“I wondered if there wasn’t more to all of this than met the eye,” he said, dumping ketchup on his hamburger. “I mean, I been making deposits at that machine for six or eight years. And I never made it on the same night or the same time, just in case anybody was watching. And this was the first time I made such a large deposit. The thing was, we had a pool tournament in here the weekend before that, and I was getting a little uneasy about all that cash.”
“I thought you told Neva Jean it was about eleven hundred,” I said.
He grinned. “I told you, I’m a careful man, Miss Garrity.”
“It’s Callahan. Just how much did you have on you that night—just between the two of us?”
“Four thousand, eight hundred.” His expression was pained. “There mighta been a little side wagerin’ going on during the tournament—just between the two of us.”
“Let me ask you something, Earl. Have you ever hired off-duty cops to work security here? Like as a bouncer or something?”
“Sure,” he said. “Mostly we got a bunch of peaceful drunks in here. They drink, they get drunk, I call their old lady and say, ‘Come get Bubba, he’s bad drunk.’ But here lately, we been getting a different kind of clientele. Mexicans, Yankees, transients. I started hiring guys to stand around and look mean. Worked, too.”
“Did you have a bouncer during the pool tournament?”
“Oh, yeah,” Earl said. “You get some sore losers with that kind of a thing.”
“Was the guy a cop?”
“Now that you mention it, he was a cop. Young fella. Seemed all right.”
“Did he see how much cash you had?”
“Reckon so,” Earl said. “He stayed around most nights and helped me lock up.”
“What was his name?”
He went blank. “We was so busy, I can’t recall it right now. Sorry.”
“How about a check stub?”
He shook his head. “I paid him in cash. That’s the way it works with these jokers. They don’t want to have to pay income tax. Not like us regular stiffs, anyway.”
Witherspoon pushed open the kitchen door. “Hey, B. J.,” he hollered. “You remember the name of that fella who worked as a bouncer for us here last weekend?”
B.J. stuck his head in the kitchen. “Christ, Earl. You don’t remember? It was that guy that got shot Saturday night. Sean. Sean Ragan.”
37
Witherspoon snapped his fingers. “Ragan. That’s right. I ast him if he was related to old Ronnie Reagan, and he said his name was spelled different.”
“You didn’t know he’d been killed?”
“Hell, I don’t pay no attention to what goes on up there in Atlanta,” Witherspoon said. “But I hate to hear that boy was kilt. What happened?”
“He was killed in the line of duty. Shot by a burglar.” I gave it some thought. “Allegedly.”
“By damn,” Earl said. “This is a hell of a crime streak we got going.”
“Tell me what happened the night you were robbed,” I said.
“Wasn’t much to it,” Earl said. “We’re slow Mondays. That’s my day off. Tuesday night was slow, too, so I de
cided to leave early and make the bank run.”
“Was Ragan here that night?”
“He come in at eight, but since it was so slow, I told him we didn’t need him. I had B. J. to stay and finish and lock the place up.”
“What time did you leave here?”
“Prob’ly before midnight.”
“And you didn’t notice anybody following you?”
“Hell, who thinks of a thing like that? I got to the shopping center where the bank branch is. I had the car doors locked. Nobody was around that I could see. I had the bank bag, and I had my little pistol stuck down in my boot. I got out of the car and got my ATM card out, and I was writing out my deposit slip, when this fella sticks a gun in the back of my neck and tells me to hand over the bank bag. That’s when I got the idea to act like I was having a heart attack. Only I was closer to it than I like to admit. I throwed myself down on the ground and started carrying on and—”
“Did you get a look at the guy’s face?”
“He had on a mask,” Earl said. “Like a black wool ski mask, with the eyes and the mouth cut out.”
“White or black?”
“Only saw him a second. White, I’d say, now that you ask.”
“Did you notice the gunman’s hand? Was he wearing a ring?”
“He had a gun,” Witherspoon said. “My eyeballs didn’t go no further than that.”
“How about the voice? Did you recognize the voice?”
“Hell, no,” Earl retorted. “That mask kinda muffled his voice. I could barely make out what he was sayin’. Anyway, the gun told me all I needed to know. And like I was tellin’ you, I was concentrating on getting my gun outta my boot without his noticing it. That’s why I was rolling around, had my knees cinched up against my chest, so I could get my hand down into my boot. Just when I brought the gun out, don’t you know, somebody tried to split my head right in two. The next thing you know, I come to and my money and my pistol was gone. Hated to lose that pistol. My ex-wife got me that for my birthday a few years ago. Fit right in my boot. I loved that little booger,” Earl said mournfully.
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