Dying Embers

by Robert E. Bailey

  Tiny Tim showed up clad in green scrubs and leaning on a noisy cart instead of a crutch. Wearing latex gloves and a surgical mask he “just popped” a couple of stitches in my lip. “No need for additional anaesthetic.” God bless us, every one—no goose for him.

  After a few moments of peace I heard someone stroll into the cubicle and stand around making groaning noises. I retaliated with rude silence. They pulled up a chair. I lifted the mask to see who it was. Jacob Marley, done up as Detective Bart Shephart, wearing yesterday’s shave and a battered coat over a knit shirt with a raveled collar. By way of a sympathetic greeting he said, “Hardin, you look like shit.”

  I eased the ice pack down on my face. “That’s not a point I’m qualified to argue with you, Shep,” I said.

  “They have to shave off your moustache to sew up your lip?”

  Anyone else, I would have said, “Sure,” and let it go at that. But Shephart’s a detective and should have noticed.

  “I shaved it off before I talked to you at my office.”

  “Didn’t notice,” he said, deadpan.

  I said, “There’s a lot of that going around.” It’s hard to be catty with an idiot.

  “So you think I’m an idiot?”

  Mind readers are worse than idiots. They catch you lying. “I don’t think you’re an idiot,” I told him. “I think you drink too much.”

  “I never drink on the job.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “A beer with lunch doesn’t count.”

  My guess is that Detective Shephart needed a slug of gin to slow his hands to the point that he could light that first cigarette while he sat on the edge of his bed. “A beer for lunch is drinking on the job,” I said.

  “I can handle it.”

  “You’re an alcoholic.”

  “I can quit any time I want.”

  “Drinking causes problems in your personal and professional life.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “Maybe you’re a problem drinker. Quit.”

  “I didn’t come here for a lecture,” he said.

  “Too bad. The novocain’s wearing off. Lecturing helps me share the pain.”

  “Your pal, Scott Lambert?” said Shephart. “He’s the doer. He’s in custody, and he’s taking you with him.”

  “Lambert was a client. Maybe he did it. I didn’t help him.”

  “Hank Dunphy? You know who he is?”

  “Works for Scott Lambert,” I said.

  “Says you set up the meet between Lambert and Anne Frampton.”

  “He’s lying,” I said. I didn’t look up, but I heard Shephart moving in his chair. “If you’re going to arrest me, read me my rights.”

  “You’re already in custody.”

  “Discharging a firearm in the city limits.”

  “Prosecutor is talking conspiracy to commit murder.”

  “Prosecutor has his dick in his hand,” I said.

  “Prosecutor has Lambert by the ass,” said Shephart. “The soda can in your office had Lambert’s prints on it. And he’s a secretor, the cigar butt in the can was his. Anne Frampton had some of his hair in her hand.”

  “He broke into my office to steal the report? That makes us conspirators?”

  “Maybe you did it yourself to cover your tracks.”

  “Right. Then I spread around a load of kiddie porn to throw you off the scent.”

  More foot shuffling and silence. After a moment Shephart said, “Prosecutor wants you off the street. He’ll run it up the pole to see if the jury salutes.”

  “He’ll get egg on his face.”

  “You think he cares?”

  “I think he likes a good box score.” I said. “Why complicate a canned shoot on Lambert?”

  “Exactly,” said Shephart. “You can be a witness. You gotta get on board before the train pulls out.”

  “He knows how to write a subpoena. I already told you everything I know.”

  “He’s had you on the stand before. You play to the jury. They like you. Or maybe you take the fifth.”

  I pushed up on one elbow—big mistake, hurt like hell—took the ice pack off my face and said, “So he sends you to snake in here like a pal and threaten me.”

  Shephart looked down at his scuffed brown wing tips. “More like a Rabbi,” he said. “I’m the only one you’ll talk to.”

  “I wish I hadn’t,” I said. My eyes throbbed. I lay back down and eased the ice pack back on my face. “Doesn’t this seem a little easy? Lambert isn’t stupid. He’s a scientist. Maybe he leaves a clue, but a neon sign? Christ’s sake, come on.”

  “The jailhouse is full of geniuses.”

  “What about the guys I shot it out with on Michigan Avenue?”

  “Covering his trail,” said Shephart. “You got no reason to protect him now.”

  “Pete Finney,” I said. “You got any more questions, he’s my attorney.” Shephart stood up. I heard the chair slide.

  “Tell ’em I need something for pain,” I said.

  “You need a guard on this door,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.” Shephart made it sound like an apology.

  “Shep, I can’t even sit up. I sure as hell am not going to stage the great escape.”

  “Not to keep you in,” he said. “To keep them out. We found the Suburban at the bottom of the gravel pit up on Plainfield and the Beltline. Found a guy in it. Blue coveralls, not the guy with the beard.”

  “Frank,” I said. “He drown deep-sixing the truck?”

  “Shot twice,” said Shephart, his voice grim. “You know this guy?” I heard his pen click.

  “Don’t know him. The driver of the Suburban yelled his name. Maybe one of your guys got him.”

  “Our guys don’t shoot .45 hollow points.”

  “I’m sure the prosecutor is thrilled.”

  “Two of ours got hurt. The prosecutor has reports from three different officers who say you were defending yourself.”

  “So that’s three cops he don’t call to the stand.”

  “Look, even the guys that don’t like you respect what you did.”

  “Yeah, if I’d done it right nobody would have got hurt.”

  “See, that’s the thing, Art. You think you’re Jesus Christ, and everybody else is stupid. And you’re a hot dog. That’s why the guys don’t like you.”

  “I thought it was because I was private heat.”

  He laughed. “Course not! Anyway, you did call us first. You tried to arrest them. You stood and fired against the draw, even after you were banged up.”

  He told me the rest—about spinning like a top and about the witnesses on the street. And how Fidel/Andy and his pals hosed the news helicopter to make their escape. It was all on the news. The prosecutor’s office was withholding comment pending the investigation.

  “We don’t get the news here,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “More than you should have told me.”

  “Yeah,” said Shephart. He left.

  A nurse came in and gave me a shot. I never felt the needle come out.

  • • •

  I recognized the voice of Matty Svenson, Special Agent, FBI, but not much else when I opened my eyes. I was in a bed—handcuffed to the rail—and in a private room. An IV dripped into my left arm. The band-aid in the crook of my right arm testified to a blood draw—I’d missed that as well. The ice pack was gone. I had a metal strap pasted over the bridge of my nose. Matty said I looked like shit. I guess some things had not changed.

  Matty smelled better then Shep—Gardenia, I think.

  I blinked to get her in focus. She had hair down to her collar with a little flip and dressed like a lawyer—navy business suit with a white knit shell and an a-line skirt.

  “That’s what Bart Shephart said this morning.”

  “Yesterday,” she said.

  “What a difference a day makes. I’m working my way up the ladder. Tomorrow I get the CIA?”

  Matty made a face. “You a
wake?” she said. “I need you to be awake.”

  “Gimme a minute.”

  “You want coffee?”

  “I want the puddle pan.”

  “I’ll get the coffee,” she said. She rattled her knuckles on the door and it opened as if it were spring loaded.

  In less than thirty seconds a Valkyrie in white rode in, a brown plastic carafe in her hand. She wore her light brown hair braided and coiled on the back of her head like a yarmulke, held in place with a yellow wire butterfly perched on a hairpin. A yellow ribbon had been stationed on her lapel. She measured my work in a beaker and poured it into the toilet.

  “You’re lucky,” she said. “I’ll be back.”

  I didn’t like the look in her eye and it’s hard to figure “lucky” against being handcuffed to a hospital bed.

  Matty traded places with her and brought a large 7-11 coffee with her. No bag. I looked from the coffee cup to her face.

  “What?” she said. “You want a latté from Starbucks?”

  “Too fast,” I said. “How many guys you got outside that door?”

  “Enough.” She handed me the cup. “Drink your coffee.”

  “Too hot. I’m awake. What’s up?”

  She picked up a portfolio from the chair beside the bed and unclipped a photo from a stack of papers. “This the man you saw in Brandonport?” Fidel/Andy.

  “I took the picture,” I said. “Did you get a good print off the camera?”

  “This the man you shot at on Michigan Avenue?”

  I counted on my fingers. “Four times. I didn’t miss. He was wearing a vest.”

  “El Guitmo,” she said. “A terrorist.”

  “Speaks English like you and me,” I said.

  “Really,” she said, deadpan.

  “And?”

  “And, Uncle Sam needs your service, Colonel.”

  “Sorry, I’m retired and I have another rather pressing engagement just now.”

  “Maybe this is more important,” she said. “I have to talk to my boss, and he has to talk to his.”

  “I’m lying in a hospital bed.”

  “Perfect, if you want the job.”

  “Sure,” I said. “What’s the job?”

  “Bait,” she said.

  • • •

  Gretta—good name for a Valkyrie—turned out to be a sweet soul. She took the dressing off my foot while she explained that the doctor had decided to let the burn air out.

  I told her that I hadn’t heard from my wife. She said that she couldn’t carry messages for prisoners, but that my attorney was in the hall. Maybe he could help.

  She left and Carl Norton walked in. I called him Pete, but I was studying my foot—beet red with a blister just under the knot of my ankle.

  “Beastly sorry,” he said, feigning Pete’s British accent, “but Squire Finney has been summoned to other matters.”

  Squire Norton was black and a picture of sartorial splendor, his suit Italian, his shirt linen—a dandy down to his waistcoat, french cuffs, and the diamond stickpin in his tie. He’d shaved a full head of hair in favor of a fashionably shiny pate. Bespectacled in gold self-dimming aviator glasses, he had affected a goatee trimmed too short to pinch but waxed into immobility.

  “Private practice suits you,” I said. “The last time we met it was polyester and permanent press.”

  He said, “Crime pays, very well, every day, and usually in cash.”

  “Can I afford you?”

  “I doubt it. I don’t think you’re a criminal. Pete asked me to call because he has taken the Lambert case. The prosecutor is offering a deal—he wants you as a witness for the prosecution.”

  Carl Norton had run for County Prosecutor while working as an assistant prosecutor. Things had been amiable in the press, but Carl lost the election and found himself relegated to shoplifting and drunk-driving cases. He quit and went into the criminal defense business.

  “Do tell,” I said.

  “You plead guilty to attempted possession of child pornography and he scores you a walk on the Lambert case.”

  “He wants his cake and thinks he can eat it too.”

  “He’s an optimist,” said Norton. “He knows you don’t get what you don’t ask for.”

  I held out the plastic thunder jug. “Tell him to rub this and see if a genie pops out.”

  Carl smiled and looked away. I planted the jug back on the tray table.

  “Supposed to be a lamp,” he said, and turned back. “And every time he rubs your lamp the damnedest genies pop out—civil rights lawyers, old meat-eating dinosaurs from the Justice Department, and armed goons from federal agencies nobody has heard of show up dressed like undertakers. He wants to use the kiddie porn charge like a crucifix to fend off the creatures of the night.”

  “The guys I shot it out with broke into my office and planted that crap, and probably the evidence against Lambert.”

  “Much too big a bite for a jury,” said Carl. He folded his hands in his lap. “Better to let it all come down to possession.”

  “They found it in my office.”

  “Just so,” he said. “To be in possession of anything, you have to be able to exercise control of the disposition of the objects or property. Pete tells me you can prove that you were out of town until the morning the break-in was reported.”

  “People get busted all the time for pot and paraphernalia other people left in their cars,” I said.

  “They didn’t leave it in an automobile that you were apprehended driving.”

  “Thin,” I said.

  “But substantial,” he said. “In this case I viewed the contraband. Two hundred and eighty-seven copies of the same magazine—all but seven of which remain in shrink-wrap packages—hardly seems like a personal reading collection. Especially since every one of them belongs to the post office.”

  “You’re putting me on?”

  “If you like, but in this joke the post office keeps a certified inventory. The inventory indicates that the items found in your office were on hand at the close of business Saturday, two days before they were recovered from your office and while you were out of town.”

  “How did someone get evidence out of a federal facility?”

  “Not our problem. The contraband wasn’t being held as evidence, anyway. It’s used in postal sting operations.”

  “The Post Office? I don’t believe it.”

  “Doesn’t matter. What matters is that I know and I can prove it. If the prosecutor knew he would have to tell me. I don’t have to tell him.” Squire Norton showed me a full arcade of baking soda fresh teeth. “I owe him one.”

  “Come on,” I said. “You know. He has to know.”

  Carl made a round mouth and arches of his eyebrows, “Oh,” he said, “that would be bad … wouldn’t it?”

  “I don’t think his dislike for me would override his caution or his respect for the law.”

  Norton had “not if he thought he was going to get caught” written on his face. But instead he said, “You’re probably right, so you should be thinking of your defense in the death of the Frampton woman. He’ll take Lambert first and then come after you. Separate trials.”

  “Expensive.”

  “For you,” said Norton. “I need a ten-thousand dollar retainer. That doesn’t make your bail, and it doesn’t last past your arraignment. I’ll need a complete statement of your net worth.”

  “What kind of fish do you think I am?”

  “For this you’d better be a tuna,” Carl said, with a Cheshire smile. “A fish with a lot of meat.”

  “So, basically my choices are a) give all my money to the state, in fines and restitution—and go to jail, or b) give you all my money and don’t go to jail.”

  “You could still go to jail,” he said, nonchalant, like a cruise on the SS Jailhouse was a fringe benefit. He studied my face dimly, brows knitted behind the wire rims of his photo-gray glasses, and shrugged. “Maybe not as long.”

  “I thought I w
as being held on discharging a firearm.”

  “Just so. But if we get you arraigned on that charge and make bail, we’ll just force the prosecutor into action on the other charges. As long as you’re already in custody, he has other fish to fry. Right now, all he wants is to hear the results of our meeting.”

  “Tell him I declined your services,” I said.

  Carl twisted his head and leaned back.

  “For now,” I said and tried to mimic Carl’s cat face.

  Norton laughed. He shook a finger. “I always hated it when your name appeared as the defense investigator.”

  “I need to think about it,” I said, trying for the sound of sweet innocence. I showed him my open palms. “They keep me shot full of pain killers. I need to let my head clear.”

  Carl Norton stood up, peeled a business card out of his pocket secretary, and handed it to me. It was the cheesy one. The card with no gold leaf, the kiss-off card that lawyers give to people they don’t want—or don’t expect—to call back. He walked out and I could hear him laughing in the hallway.

  17

  I DREAMED OF A GOAT-FACED MAN wearing a striped top hat. He gave me the finger—the index finger. He said, “Uncle Sam wants you.” I woke up still handcuffed to the bed frame.

  Two guards had been posted outside the door. They never looked in. I could have been hanging from the light fixture. They wouldn’t have known. They passed their time with gossip until I went to sleep.

  As often as I adjusted my position, the handcuffs woke me. I learned that, “So and so was a screw-up.” And later, “Somebody else got promoted on their face when they should have been out on their ass.” Now the voices in the hall were gone.

  Someone wearing heavy shoes with cleats on the heels clanked up the hallway toward my door. The room was dim with that oblique morning light. Nautical twilight. The time when things happened before Uncle Sam discarded me, before his armed minions became creatures of the night.

  Nurses wore crepe soles that squished and squeaked on the buffed tile floors. In any case, it was not yet time for soupy oatmeal and burnt toast.

  The door handle cranked hard and noisily. I raised my right arm and let it lay across the pillow—pulling on the head rail to preload my right hand—and watched through one eye, open a slit.