by Lee Lamothe
“Nope.” She dried her eyes on her sleeve and made a small laugh. “Right now, I’m barely a cop. We’re quitting, Ray and I, after we put this case down and each get a little more time in, bump up the pensions or the buyouts. We’re too good for this. I can’t give any more, and I won’t let him. He’s a painter, you know. We’re moving to Paris.” She made a little laugh. “That’s in France.” It was an inside joke on herself. One of the first comments she’d made to a task force sniper after she’d downed a fat drug dealer the year before. She’d said she and her city cop, Ray, were moving to Paris. “That’s in France.” But now it was a year later and here she was, back in Murder City, working a case too big for her skillset because she’d been lonely.
Sally Greaves got up and walked to the window. She stared out into the darkness and down onto the parking lot below for a long time. She turned as Ray Tate, Hambone Hogarth, and Brian Comartin came into the room with coffee. “Ham, I need the room.”
“Sally, be careful, now.” Hambone Hogarth looked suspiciously at Djuna Brown sitting on the couch. “Take some time, think about it, Sally.”
“Ham?” Sally Greaves stared at him. “Just go, all right?”
Djuna Brown nodded at Ray Tate. Without saying a word, he put the coffee cups down on the table and left with Hogarth and Comartin.
Chapter 25
In the conference room Ansel Partridge and Martinique Frost ignored each other. Marty Frost could listen to her own heart beat all day, could imagine she heard her eyelashes moving. What mattered was putting down the poor ladies’ case and heading to Spain with the traffic poet. She knew the face couldn’t truly hide the mind, so she thought pleasant romantic thoughts to give Ansel Partridge something to get wound up about. She’d done some research on Spain. Much bigger than she thought. Diverse in every way. Barcelona, which her poet pronounced with a th, seemed infinitely more interesting than the places to the south. Marty Frost liked food. One of the food articles she read described Spain as the new France and Barcelona as the new Paris. Cooking had always been of interest to her, but being alone for so long she’d stuck with take-away and a lot of frozen trays of meat and potatoes with a giant, healthy, white lumberjack on the packaging. The wildest she’d ever gone out of a recipe book was a spaghetti carbonara and it had been a gummy tragedy. As things developed with Brian Comartin, she hoped she wouldn’t have to try to cook him a meal before they pulled their pins and flew away.
“What are you smiling at?”
And then Marty Frost had his number. If he’d sat in brooding silence, she would have started making small disturbing observations, drilling into his reticence. But Ansel Partridge wasn’t used to not talking. She could see him in his op life and in his actual life, verbalizing the entirety of himself. His beliefs, his exploits, his possessions, his connections, his dick and his fists and his tongue. Probably he could sit in a room for hours without speaking, but only if there were no one there with him and he could think up cool things to say when they arrived. It was ego-shattering to him if he was present and wasn’t talking or being talked to or being talked about.
She looked up as though she’d forgotten he was in the room. “Sorry?”
“You’re smiling down there. I’m in handcuffs up here. What’s so fucking funny?”
She had nothing for him. He was like the big muscular stupid kids she dealt with in the youth unit. Soon a thing of the past. That assignment had shaken her faith in the turnaround ability of any living soul. Giving up on kids was hard. But there were some people who were voids, and you had to avoid spending yourself on them, wasting yourself. No reason to be circumspect, make them want to marry her, tell her she had beautiful eyes, for a black person. Ansel Partridge was nothing to her. He’d go for the murders of the ladies or the Chinese.
She winged it. “I’m thinking, and I don’t know, so I’m guessing, that it takes a few minutes, the needle. Not when it goes in and they start piping in the drugs. At that point there’s no hope, no prayer. But leading up to that. The formalities.” She laughed, nasty. “You’ll have to let me know, after.”
“I ain’t getting no needle.”
She spoke as if he hadn’t spoken. “You got some buff muscles going on there. Nice big snaky veins. I heard they sometimes have trouble with those veins and all that muscle work, the needle breaks off, they have to put things on hold for a half-hour while they fish it out with a pair of tweezers, go find a new needle, start the procedure all over again. All while you’re strapped to a gurney, waiting. I’m not thinking about the time after the needle finally does the job. That half-hour, waiting, that’s what I’m wondering about.”
“Fuck you, bitch.”
“Fine.” She relaxed her face and thought about paella. In an article she read about it, paella sounded pretty good, easy. Rice and seafood, some saffron. Even she couldn’t fuck that up, she’d thought. But then there was a detailed note in a sidebar article about the type of pan needed, the degree of heat, and the creation of something called sofrito. That didn’t sound like simply opening a can of tomato soup, that sofrito action. Brian Comartin had been to Spain. He’d know if the sofrito was done right. Maybe he could cook.
“You fucking people don’t know who you’re dealing with. This is an SPA op. This is way above your pay grade. You’re all going down, when this is done. Your lives are over.”
“I’m sure.” She kept her face right. Lots of shrimp in paella. She’d always eaten shrimp without checking that someone had removed the black thread, the guts, down along the back. The shit sac, it sounded like. She wondered how many she might have eaten in her life, without knowing it, before reading the paella recipe. Shrimp shit. That sounded bad, worse than fucking up that sofrito stuff. What if she made paella with shrimps and he started running his knife down the back, stripping out the shit sack. Even by candlelight on the terrace of their little apartment overlooking a square, not romantic. She smiled.
“You want to ask me something. That’s why they left you here. What? Ask me. I can tell you stories, curl your hair.” He laughed. “But you already got that conky hair going on.”
She gave him a small smile. “You want to answer my questions? Even though Sally told you to shut the fuck up and you don’t want a lawyer? You must be pretty stupid, An-Sell. Just sit there and wait, okay? I’m just the secretary on this case. Taking notes. No coffee for me. I don’t get any credit when they charge you, I don’t get any crap if they don’t. They don’t make muscles for the kind of shit I have to put up with, okay? Not from you, from them. But it’s all pensionable time so leave me the fuck alone.”
“Pension. Fuck that. What you make, last year? Overtime, all in?” He waited and she saw the opening. It was the comparison game. How much more valuable he was than she was, how much more he made, how free he was, unrestrained by rules and regs. But she waited until he said, “What, thirty-six grand. Then taxes. Then union dues. Credit union. Then fuck-knows what else?”
She knew where he was going, another comparison of value. She said, “Forty-one-six. Overtime. What do you care? You made, what, a fast five grand from Sally? Another couple grand for testifying? Except whatever you got, you don’t get to spend because of that pesky needle.” She wanted to wind him up. It was unusual for her. Usually, she was the mother. The good wife. The achieving daughter. Someone you could relate to. “When I’m spending my pension in Spain, your toenails and hair will be growing inside a casket.”
“No way. No fucking way.” He looked a little off- balanced by the image. It was a good one, she had to admit. The specificity of it. “I made forty-one grand the last four months. Tax free. A white man’s wage, before you people started sucking off the welfare money, leaving the cities in debt. Fuck you, you fucking bitch.”
“White man bullshit.” She pretended to be outraged at what he’d said. “No way Sally gave you that kind of dough. More like, she got you for a case of Bud, a TV with rabbit ears, and a bag of crank. You fucking trash asshole. White nigger
. She’ll go on banging her hot chick and you’ll be forgotten. Ansel Who? Oh, that guy that killed all the women, tried to make it look like an action, but he just liked to do the dark because no decent white woman would have him.”
He glared at her. Before her eyes, he seemed to inflate. She feared the handcuffs would pop, that he’d come howling down the tabletop like a storm. She wondered if Brian Comartin had cinched the cuffs tight enough. Casually, she put her hand near her gun. She felt a little anxious. She hadn’t known Brian Comartin long enough to know if he did it right. “Calm down, An-Sell. Just chill. They’ll be back in a minute.”
“You wish, you hope. I saw that. I got to you. You’re fucking afraid. The white man. You people recognize it. Like a dog seeing the whip and pissing himself. I fucking got you.” He was satisfied.
He had, a little, but she had to try to work it. “Well, you’re a scary guy, An-Sell. You’re a fucking nut. I seen what you did with those women there,” she nodded at the stack of photos, “and I see whoever did that is a fucking animal. You should be put down, what you did.” As she spoke, she felt her fear blossom in to real anger. She casually put her hand on her gun. “You know what, Ansel? I hope you walk out of here tonight. I don’t give a shit whether you did it or not. I want you out on the parking lot. I’m going to save the state the cost of a needle.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He was still happy. “But check this, Jemima. What if I didn’t do them? And if I didn’t do them, then somebody else did, right? And when you find out it maybe weren’t me, maybe, you’re gonna realize that even if you get the real guy that did it? There’s still me and guys like me out there. Makes no difference. Maybe if you go back to A-free-ca you’ll be okay. But here? No. Your black ass will never be safe in my America.”
“You’ll go. Guys like you always go. America’s going to get you. We’ll get you in the courtroom or we’ll get you in the streets. Down, down like dogs.” She got her game back and laughed. “Think about this, An-Sell. Your pal Sally, there, she’s got a job, she’s got a chick, she’s got a pension. She going to give it all up so you can get in a courtroom and start telling your lies? I guarantee you, I guaran-fucking-tee you, you die before this gets to trial. This, or the Chinatown fire murders. You’re a fucking menace to a lot of people. Sally won’t want you anywhere in her life.”
It had the wrong effect. She saw that. Something she’d said.
He sat back against his handcuffs. “Old Sally, that old dyke? Not a problem. Fuck her pension and her job.” He laughed aloud. “You ever see that ring she wears? The snake and the apple?” He made a satisfied smile and stopped talking. “Make sure your phone’s on. Anytime now.”
Martinique Frost didn’t know what he was talking about but she felt something had just been busted and that was enough. He’d mentioned Sally could lose the job and the pension, but not the love. She wondered what he knew about the love.
And what was that about the ring?
Ray Tate, Hambone Hogarth, and Brian Comartin went back down to the cafeteria and punched out some coffee. The crew of maintenance guys were at a table, thumbing through a skin magazine and passing it around with vocal relish. The Irish guy was the loudest, saying what he’d do to what part.
Hambone Hogarth looked at him and said, “Dead man walking. Nice to know one guy’s getting it, anyway.”
Ray Tate said, “You okay, Ham? You covered in all this? When Sally’s thing comes crashing down?”
“I’m square, Ray. You have no fucking idea how square my ass is, this thing ends.”
They sat for a few minutes in the anteroom. The security desk guy was yawning uncontrollably, repeatedly. Djuna Brown asked him to go yawn in the hallway for a while.
“Sure, dear. Sing out if you girls need me.”
Sally Greaves told Djuna Brown, “I hired him because of Monica. We were out one night and ran into him. They’re cousins. Ansel had had some trouble, but was trying to get straight, he’d been running with a bad crowd. Into racist stuff. Knew the druggie players. Gunrunners. Monica was very big on family. If I could find work for him. He looked the part. He acted the part. But he had a good heart, she said, he’d seen the light. So, I had some ops on the go and we could use a guy like him. We can always use a guy like him. We paid him a thousand a week against a bonus for the bodies he set up. He scooped up a lot more money, I’m sure, running action on the side. Meth, hydroponics, whatever. Guns. He delivered the goods, so his little sideline was overlooked.
“We saw the Volunteers were getting pretty active. With the plague coming on, we thought there’s going to be trouble. But we’ve got Ansel. We fire Ansel in there, he gets them active before they’re ready, and when they go we got them before they can get the idea themselves. Right off, he spotted that Corey Garnett had some weird sex action going on. Down to the bars in Smoketown, hiring black hookers. Ansel turns that back on him, but like a buddy. Says he knows, but he doesn’t care. Forget that separatist stuff, the compound up the Badlands. Ansel wants them to take all of America back and Corey’s a natural leader. Textbook stuff. Frighten, then reassure, belittle, then praise. Tear down, then support. Now, he’s drilled in to the Volunteers, especially Corey. They’re all afraid of him and he works that. They start buying up guns, they start training. Before, they’re just white power goofs, talking big and planning their own dream city up in the Badlands. Marginal, but they could go off, if the right cause comes along. And the backlash against the Asians could be that flashpoint. If they’ve got it in their hearts to go, then we want to choose the time and place. So, Ansel gets in there. Ansel’s what you might call a catalyst for change.”
Djuna Brown wished Ray Tate or Martinique Frost were there, sitting in. She didn’t know what to ask. Sally Greaves was open for the taking. She was waiting for questions, she was waiting to justify or confess. Djuna Brown went with what always worked for her. Honesty. “Ah, look, Sally, I don’t know about these ops things. I don’t know if there’s something going on with them that isn’t right. I hope you covered yourself. The money and stuff. I think you probably know how to protect yourself. I hope so. Really, I do. That’s not my kind of policing. But the women, the dead ladies. And Ansel. Do you think he’s capable of doing that?”
Sally Greaves sat in thought. “At first, no. When I met him he was strange, but charming. No racist talk, no swearing. He came around with Monica for dinner and … he was trying to turn his life around, like she’d told me. Now, now after the charge he’s got, I think he’s capable. I think he’s maybe viable.” She took a shuddering breath. “If I’m responsible for him doing …”
“Don’t say anything to me about that, okay?” Her cellphone rang. She answered and listened for a few seconds. “The victim, is she black? We’re looking at him for some black ladies … When did she come forward? ... Is the other one laying charges? Anything tying them together? Any good M.O.? That’s creative … I need the dates. Got it. No, no, we’re looking at him for murders. Okay, thanks for or getting back to us.” She clicked off and then punched a number. From inside the conference room she heard Marty Frost’s cellphone emit. “Marty, ah, you guys getting along?”
“Me and An-sell, we’re buds. We’re going to change the world together.”
“Well, good, let me know if I can help out with that. Look, I just got a call back from the guy investigating that rape, that old Ansel is charged with. There’s actually two victims, both white. After the first one heard the second one had reported, she came forward.”
Marty Frost spoke away from the phone, “An-sell, you’ve been a very bad boy. Very, very bad.” Back into the phone she said, “The dates? Do they fit … ah … with our thing? That maybe he used our ladies to get himself ramped up?”
“No. They’re off, happened earlier. One was a year old.”
“Maybe practice runs? How’d he … You know.”
“Both were taken from a skating rink. He slammed into them, came back and helped them up, took them for a drink, calmed
them down. Put rohip in their drinks and the next thing they know, they’re face down alone in the bathtub at home. He put both through a thorough cleaning, inside and out. Just letting you know, in case, you know …”
“Nice to know, nice to know.” She clicked off.
Djuna Brown stood up. Sally Greaves looked pale. “Sally? You okay? We should get the other guys back in there, let them get back to Ansel. And you might want to talk to Ray. You can trust him. All he cares about is the poor dead ladies.”
“I’m going to sit for a while.” Something had changed. Sally Greaves seemed defeated, suddenly. Her overbite gnawed at her lip. “I’m going to sit, okay?”
“No problem. You want another coffee?”
“No. Just to sit.” She looked into Djuna Brown’s eyes. “Thank you. For this.”
Djuna Brown went out into the hallway. The duty desk officer was asleep, standing up against the wall.
“Hey, snoozy. Wake up, man. Go back in there, secure the conference room door. Nobody in, not even the lady, until we get our team back up here. Stay awake.”
“You know who she is, right, the dyke? SPA. She outranks me by about six.”
“Yeah, but this is chief’s special business. You want Pious Man Chan to explain the chain of command to you?”
She went down to the cafeteria. The maintenance crew saw her come through the door and stared, all of them turning in unison as she passed. There were sounds, little lip noises so subtle she thought she might have not heard them at all. It was people like this, she thought, that made people like Sally Greaves have to hide, made them targets for opportunists and driven into lives of secrecy where they could be preyed upon with impunity. For a second she thought of throwing down on them all, put their shadows on the wall, scalp herself some stupid night-shift face. But instead she smiled and gave them a pleasant look as she sat down with Ray Tate, Hambone Hogarth, and Brian Comartin.