by Alaric Hunt
On the corner of 153rd and Eighth, they found Mother Mary, a fat old woman in a paisley dress. She made hex gestures over the drifter’s name. No good would come of looking for him, she warned—or, worse, finding him. She gave Guthrie a pat on the head, picked up her bags, and hustled down the avenue. The little detective shrugged. He kicked around on the corner for a minute, as if she might come back, but she didn’t.
Later, Guthrie gave a half carton of Camels to a skinny old man named Wheezy. The vagrant wore suspenders and short-legged blue jeans that showed off mismatched socks. His voice was a breathy rasp, almost completely covered by the noise of traffic. Ghost Eddy wouldn’t catch easy, he said. A pair of patrol cops tried to take him in one time. The gray drifter waited until one of them had a grip, then suddenly used him to bludgeon the other cop. He trotted away while they were dazed. The skinny old man laughed and rubbed at his unshaven chin.
Guthrie left behind a trail of promises from people to keep an eye out, but the morning didn’t seem encouraging. He pointed Vasquez to turn from Broadway a last time and park in a visitor’s lot at Columbia University. The campus seemed cool and inviting after the hardscape in the Heights. The little detective began his search with campus security.
The campus cops in the administration building started an immediate whitewash when they heard the names Bowman and Olsen. After all, the killing didn’t happen on campus. Guthrie went along with them without objecting that the victim and suspect were both students. The oldest campus cop held back, catching Guthrie’s eye a few times while he pulled permission to examine Olsen’s dorm room and took some visitor passes. The cop made grim faces when the rest of them joked about Olsen, then volunteered to show them the room in Livingston Hall.
“Mike Hines,” he said, offering a handshake to Guthrie after they were outside. The campus cop was tall and a little overweight. A bushy gray mustache underlined a red nose that came from years of heavy drinking. He slid a hat onto his head and squinted at the sunshine.
“They went over the line, trying to make Greg Olsen seem obvious,” he said. “We never had a complaint about him, though you could say he hadn’t been here for long.” He frowned.
“Is there some more to that story?” Guthrie asked.
“I don’t figure him like that,” Hines replied. “Come on, let’s walk over. I’ll get it lined up in my head.”
Guthrie and Vasquez followed him. The campus was lightly populated. Most of the undergraduates avoided the summer session unless they needed to make up course work. Livingston Hall was quiet because of that. Over the summer, the students remaining were usually more serious. Hines paused once they were back inside the air conditioning.
“Olsen’s a good man,” he said. “I guess I got to explain that. Most of what we got here is kids. They don’t know who they are or what they want. Olsen does. He’s not a girl-chaser type, or a partyer. He was real focused on his studies.”
“Yeah?” Guthrie asked. “Where do you get that?”
Hines shrugged. “We got a support group that runs out of the One hundred and Eighty-third Regiment of the Guard. That’s where I talked to him the first time. I kinda realized he was a student, but he didn’t know I worked here. He saw that later. But the group isn’t for the school. It’s vet stuff. The young wolves I work with, they’re quick to pile on, even when they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
“You figure him for that solid?”
“I ain’t the only one. Ask around. I’ll be seriously floored if he did kill that girl.”
“What about her? You knew her?”
Hines shook his head. “Never noticed. Sorry.”
The campus cop led them upstairs and opened Olsen’s dorm room for them. After a glance around inside, he shrugged. The room was almost entirely bare. He explained that the NYPD had come and gone. The school administration hadn’t decided what to do with the room, now that Olsen had been arrested, but they would probably pack his meager belongings and store them until they were claimed. He shrugged again and told Guthrie to lock the door once he’d nosed around.
Guthrie and Vasquez needed only a few minutes to search the small room. Olsen had a single because he was older. A few books, notebooks with classwork, some clothes, and a few toiletries were the only signs of habitation. Olsen traveled light, or he actually lived somewhere else. Vasquez dropped his notebooks back onto the desktop just before a big young man rushed to the door.
“Yes!” he said. “I missed you guys last time.” He stopped suddenly and stared. He wore dark sunglasses, jeans, and a T-shirt. A shock of unruly black hair made him seem as tall as the door frame. His gaze fixed on Vasquez. “You’re here about Holy, right?”
“You mean Greg Olsen?” Vasquez asked.
The young man grinned. “Yeah. You guys got that all wrong. No way he killed Cammie.”
“He was with you that night?” Guthrie asked.
“No, man. I’m just saying he wasn’t like that. I mean, other nights we clubbed—he was like my wingman.”
Vasquez challenged him with a look. “Okay, so why’d you need a wingman?”
He smiled. “That wasn’t the plan—it was just how it worked out, you know? Holy didn’t run with the Greeks—frats—so he was like a godsend. Man, they hated him. They wanted him, and so they hated him. I was just lucky he liked me, you know?”
“How’s that?” Guthrie prompted.
“The girls chased him.” He looked at the little detective like he might be retarded. “That’s why I started calling him Holy, because he didn’t mess with them. And it rhymed with Oly, like Olsen.”
“So the girls dropped off on you?” Vasquez asked. “You were good with second?”
He laughed. “This is college, Dick Tracy. It’s all fun except for class. Anyway, he didn’t kill Cammie, for real.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Guthrie said. “Didn’t catch your name, by the way. We work for Greg Olsen’s lawyer.”
“Whoa!” the young man said. He took off his sunglasses and looked at both of them again. “You’re not cops?”
“No. We’re working for his lawyer, James Rondell,” Guthrie said. “That change your mind about talking to us?”
“No way! Maybe that’s better, you know?” He frowned. “I’m Robert Deaton.”
Guthrie handed him a card. “Maybe you got some foundation for saying Olsen didn’t kill Camille Bowman?”
Deaton paused a moment, then stepped in and closed the door. “He didn’t need to freak over her, because he had her. She was serious about him, right? She dumped all that Greek stuff for him, and she was like a serious princess.”
“So he was a good guy, and like that?”
“Okay, I get it,” Deaton said. “Just the facts, man. Right? Holy had one weird thing about his scene—the mouse.” He took a long look at Vasquez, and continued: “See, you’re not a mouse.”
Guthrie shrugged. “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s a mouse?”
“A plain girl. Holy drew girls, you know? Some girls just know they ain’t got a chance with some guys, you know? Too much competition. So they fade when the pretty ones show up. But Holy had a mouse.” He frowned. “Or maybe it was Cammie. I don’t know. The mouse was always running behind both of them, so I guess I really can’t say who she was chasing.”
“The mouse have a name?” Guthrie asked.
“Michelle something. She was a grad student, I think, because I never ran into her in classes.”
“Maybe she was a friend?” Vasquez suggested.
“No way. After he hooked up with Cammie, Holy didn’t use this room much. So I noticed when he did, you know? So when the two’d go in, cuddled up and making out, the mouse would tumble after. They were cramming, but not for a test. That wasn’t like Holy, except for Cammie and this mouse.”
“Maybe that’s what you wanted to see?” Guthrie asked.
Deaton frowned and ran a hand over his unruly hair. “No way. This was just the one weird thing. Don’t m
atter if he got something going—it’s just how I saw it, you know?” He shrugged. “Anyway, what’s going to happen to Holy?” He aimed the question at Guthrie.
“We’re looking at it,” Guthrie said. “Don’t be shook up if the lawyers give you a call.”
CHAPTER FIVE
The midday sunshine was blinding after the darkness of Livingston Hall. Guthrie was quiet, thinking to himself, while Vasquez had a quicker step. She wanted to move faster, but the little man kept pausing to rearrange his fedora on his head. She took their visitor IDs and ran them to administration to give him time to reach the car without making her wait. The detective was sitting in the passenger seat when she walked up to the Ford. She climbed in, watched him for a moment, and decided he was bothered about something. His expression was the same as on the elevator ride down from the ISU lab, after Tommy Johnson landed in the crosshairs.
“How often do you get something like this?” she asked quietly.
Guthrie didn’t hesitate; he might’ve been waiting on her question. “You thinking about bailing?”
She laughed. “Are you kidding? This’s what I took the job for.”
“So you’ll be thinking about bailing,” Guthrie said gloomily. “If you’re looking for murder cases, you want to be a cop. Because this ain’t normal for a PI.” He sighed. “Pick a place to eat, someplace we can sit for a while.”
Vasquez started the Ford and pulled out. She drove past St. John’s and turned onto 110th Street. The traffic was light. “You didn’t answer my question, Guthrie,” she said. “How often?”
The little man smiled. “You’ve learned some things in the past few days. I gotta give you that. Anyway, every few years something serious like this comes up. Sometimes back to back.” He shrugged. “This isn’t where the money is at, you know. It’s just where the reputation is at. You make a mark on something like this and people don’t forget it.”
“But it’s not where the money’s at?”
“You gonna drive all the way to the East River?”
“Just down to the barrio, boss. I know a place where the burritos are so fat— What?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking about where we go after lunch. Maybe we should go over the river anyway, but it don’t matter.”
She nodded. “The money, follow the money.”
“Most PIs do divorce, custody, insurance—that’s steady money. You notice we do background checks, a little camera work, and sometimes just sitting and watching?”
She frowned, threw a sharp glance at him, and changed lanes to pass a truck dawdling on the inside lane. “Whitridge and his niece are the only two clients I’ve seen come through the door,” she said.
“Exactly. I don’t do nickel-and-dime work. Retainers and recommendations only.”
“Whitridge has us on retainer?”
The detective nodded. Brownstones slid by outside the Ford’s windows. Kids clustered on the street, waiting for cars to pass.
“So how is that?”
“People don’t forget when you make a big mark,” Guthrie said. “Once upon a time, I was in the right place at the right time—and did the right thing.”
“So you were lucky?” She laughed.
“Sure. And I did it. These people know what I’ll do, and they trust me to do that. It ain’t hard for them to choose between me and calling a big agency where the operatives come and go.”
Guthrie and Vasquez parked down the street from La Borinqueña, a café in Spanish Harlem. The grill had a sharp smell of meat rescued just before scorching, mixed with peppers and tomatoes. The booths had a scattering of customers, and four old men surrounded one table, playing dominoes. Soft music played on a box-top radio. Vasquez took one of the window tables and fended off some razzing from the old men before she ordered.
“Papì always brought me here,” she said after the café settled back into rhythym. “These old guys all know me from when I can’t remember. It looks just the same now as when we used to take the train down.” Art Deco tables from the fifties looked old on the red-and-white tile floor. She smiled. “You know I got it figured out now, right?”
“What’s that?”
“Why you hired me.”
“Do tell,” Guthrie said, picking a tortilla chip from the basket on the table, then testing it for crunch. He nodded approval.
“You wanted me for a distraction when you interview.”
The detective laughed. “You saw that, huh? Little boys are so easy. And you did real good, challenging him—he wanted to convince you. You’re learning.” He paused to eat more chips, and let her enjoy her victory. “It’s a good thing that ain’t all there is to it, right? When I knocked on your door, I didn’t know you were pretty. That was lucky.”
“Ay!” she cried.
“Thought detective work was that easy, huh? Not a problem. You’re a smart girl—you’ll figure it out.”
* * *
By the time they’d finished eating, Guthrie had decided that their next move would be to examine Olsen’s alibi. The NYPD interview report had a Westchester address. The afternoon was flaming hot, a typical dog day afternoon in the city. Vasquez drove past the Triborough to take one of the little bridges across the Harlem instead. The neighborhoods were empty except for the kids, and mostly they were packed into slim slices of shade. Vasquez whistled when they pulled up on Linney’s address. The front of the tenement was sprinkled with bleary-eyed men nursing lunch from bottles wrapped in brown paper. There were no children, and only a few women. Philip Linney lived in a flophouse.
The veteran’s room was on the third floor. A patch of fresh plywood subflooring, not yet carpeted, was the only clean smell in the hallway. Men stared at them through open doorways. The little rooms had twin beds and tiny matching bedside dressers. In most rooms, the decor favored empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and crumpled fast-food wrappers. One old white man, with nose and ears almost as large together as the rest of his head, shuffled into the hallway in a bathrobe when they were passing and unceremoniously dumped his small wastebasket onto the hallway’s floor. He grunted a sullen greeting before turning around. His tattered bathrobe nearly left his ass uncovered.
Philip Linney lived in room 318. He shouted at them to come inside when they knocked on his door. The slim, dark black man was sitting slumped on the twin bed, peering out the window. A faint mustache rode his upper lip, and his hair was wild. An overlarge T-shirt sagged around his torso. He clutched a bag of cookies with one hand, leaving the other free to move them to his mouth. In one unswept corner, a small fan with a wire-head basket labored slowly atop a milk crate, but the room was still hot and sour-smelling. Light reflected in from the window without brightening the room.
“You’re the detectives from the lawyer, right?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
He studied Vasquez intently and then looked down into his bag of cookies. “You know the cops don’t believe me,” he said bitterly. “They got Captain locked up.”
“I know. That’s why we’re here, Mr. Linney.” The little detective looked around at the wrappers and containers in the room. The smell was sour, but not from alcohol. “You been drinking, Mr. Linney?”
“Hell no,” he said softly. He ate a cookie. “Not in two days. I done stopped seeing shit.”
“You were drinking before.” Guthrie left it hanging in the air like a question.
“I know. Fucking dumbass, like a kid. My chance to take point for Captain, and I blow it.” He scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. “Captain called from the jail. He keeps calling to check on me. He ain’t done this shit, man. He was here. Trying to straighten me out. Moms got killed, and I started tripping.” He scrubbed at his face again.
“So you’re drying out?”
“Dried out. Just too damn late. Captain was talking me through.” He ate a cookie. “Paid for these, even.” He gestured at a stack of bags along the window side of the bed. “Juice and cookies, the Captain’s prescription. Said n
othing takes care of you like a cookie.”
“The lawyer said the cops tripped you up on days,” Guthrie said.
“On days,” Linney said, “but that don’t matter. It’s nights that matter. He was here every night. That’s when things get bad.” He glanced at the window and shivered. The light seemed to reassure him. “I served under Captain for two years. They say Afghanistan’s worse now, but that’s bullshit. Just more people complaining makes it sound worse, because the bitching’s coming from more mouths.”
Guthrie turned a milk crate so he could sit on it. “Can I get some cookies, Mr. Linney?”
“Yeah, sure.” He jogged at the bags. “You want chip or peanut butter? I ain’t decided which juice I like best with each. I got lemonade, apple, and orange.”
“Lemonade and chocolate chip,” Guthrie said. When he stepped over to take the proffered snacks, Vasquez looked hard at a wall before settling into a lean against it. “So Olsen was here every night. What was the problem with the days?”
“I used to get loaded before sundown, okay? That was trying to get through the night. I couldn’t remember which day Captain brought the cookies, so I picked one—and the receipt’s in the bag. I’m wrong.” He glanced at the window again. “But he was here every night. All night. That’s a fact. Captain always finishes the mission. There were times I hated that. Even hated him, but I’m past that. Captain is the real thing.” He watched Guthrie follow a cookie with lemonade.
“You know an AK makes a particular sound? I can pick it out on the street, when the stupid kids play games. It’s got a heavier slug, too, sounds different when it hits. Splatters on rock like a fat raindrop.” He laughed. “When I first went in-country, they posted me up north. Mostly Euros up there, in the coalition, right? They hate the sound of guns going off. I had a street attitude—I’m tough, this shit’s nothing, all that—just like the kids outside. Now I know better. A drive-by? See, it all changed when I shipped south. Over there, they build units that don’t exist over here. You can be detached this, brevet that, temporary duty, stop-lossed. Supposedly they had a system once upon a time, but that went out when they started hurting for infantry. Once you go south, you find out why.