Jericho called Crystal from Bill’s apartment, would she meet him for lunch at Wendy’s? He wanted her to meet his friend Bill and talk about his job developments, especially the forthcoming hearing in Harrisburg.
“She’s not going to like this,” Jericho said to Bill after hanging up.
“Tell her you have good job leads.”
“She’ll know. I don’t lie well.”
“Here,” Bill said, pushing a phone book into Jericho’s hands. “Call INA, call Aetna, call Travelers. Right now. Ask them how you apply for work. They’ll tell you. Boom! You have leads.”
“Did you learn deviousness in the seminary?”
“No, devious is what I learned to get around what they otherwise tried to teach me.”
Jericho placed his calls. Armed with leads, they left for Wendy’s. Bill took long strides; Jericho took little steps that looked like gliding on invisible skates. Before Bill knew it, they were practically there.
“Tell Crystal you may be forced to resign because they fear you’ll be a whistleblower over the food thing and they want to bury you in accusations.”
“That’s not so much a lie, is it?” Jericho said.
“No, but this is: You’ll also tell her you intend to bring a huge law suit and that it will involve ServMark and your lawyer told you it can result in a big recovery, and it may take a few years to play out but you certainly intend to share half of any recovery with her.”
“You know, Bill, you got convicted of the wrong thing. They should have tacked on a count for fraud.”
Jericho’s tone had a dollop of irony, maybe knowing, maybe not, that it was part of Bill’s baggage, that he wanted to be a servant of God, but nobody explained that the Church’s absolutist morality also included a million permutations of good and evil. The sacraments weren’t enough, confession wasn’t enough, and prayer wasn’t enough to make it all clear.
“Kidding aside,” Bill said, “there’s a kernel of truth to what I say. Think it through.”
“Yeah,” Jericho said, “and maybe she can operate as a mole inside ServMark, help us bring those bastards down.”
“Now you’re thinking like a pragmatist and not a cop, and don’t forget Mikey.”
They were so engrossed in conversation they almost walked past the place. Crystal was already there. She was fair-skinned with doe eyes and a big mop of shiny, black hair that looked like a mass of tangled calligraphy. She smiled at the men.
“Crystal,” Bill said, “I’m so glad to finally meet you,” and held out his hand. Jericho kissed her cheek and the men slid into the booth in the Walnut Street window.
Condolences regarding Henrietta were offered, as well as polite inquiries into Bill’s relationship with Louise and how highly Jericho always spoke of him.
“I trust Fernando is well?” Jericho said. It came out formal sounding but made conversation possible instead of barely constrained hostility.
“So what’s this about my employer?” Crystal finally asked.
Jericho unpacked the suspicions, law suits, and problems caused by the food at Graterford and other facilities around the state, about the implication that he surreptitiously had something to do with ServMark getting the contract. Finally, he told her about Mikey.
“It’s a horrible story,” Crystal said. “Nothing would surprise me. But all this has nothing to do with me.”
“But it does,” Jericho said. He told her how he might lose his job over it, and who knows, might even be sanctioned in some awful way.”
“Prison?” she asked.
“If they come after me for fraud or profiting from a state contract…”
“Did you? Did you ever?”
Jericho sat up straight and cocked his head in disbelief. “You don’t know me better than that?”
“Sorry, I forgot what a boy scout you are.”
Bill liked the exchange. It afforded Jericho the high ground of indignation, an important defense for the falsely accused, a status Bill hoped would prove out.
Jericho went on as scripted. He explained to Crystal that he had other prospects, “with insurance companies for one,” plus he was seeking an employment lawyer about a whistleblower law suit and that, of course, he would share any recovery with her.
The anger in her eyes over Jericho’s treatment by the DOC told Bill that her enlightened self-interest had become fully engaged. A cherry on the cake was when she said, “How can I help?”
“Do you see profit and loss data by cost center?” Bill asked.
“Do I see it? I help build it.”
“Does the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections have its own cost center?”
“I don’t do the eastern division, but yes, it will.”
“Can you get it?”
“I suppose. I’ll have to think of a ruse. Somebody in my department may remember that Jericho works in that system. It may raise suspicions if I dig too aggressively.”
“We have time. Don’t do anything to tip your hand. Let me think about it, maybe come up with an idea,” Bill said.
Jericho reached over and put his hand on hers. His eyes were moist. Bill reckoned they had been at loggerheads so long that Jericho was touched by her willingness to help. His torch for her still hadn’t flamed out. Bill would help him with it. He’d remind him that she would go home that night and fuck Fernando. Maybe Jericho already understood it but loved her anyway. The heart is a simple pump, blood in, blood out, but also a deceptively complex torture device.
“Thanks, Crystal. You’ll really help our case.”
They kissed cheeks and left.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When Eddie got home after having his jaw wired he took a long look at his mouth in the bathroom mirror. The metal contraption with little rubber bands not only looked like hell, his wall-to-wall prison tats notwithstanding since to Eddie they looked good. After eating shitty prison food all those years and finally able to enjoy prime rib, having to drink through a straw and eat baby food for the next six weeks was punishment worse than the pain.
With two weeks to deliver Jericho Lewis to Luca, there was no time to waste, and if seducing Roller Bitch into helping was a problem in the past, it now was like scoring a date with Princess Diana.
He walked into Dirty Frank’s in mid-afternoon, after lunchtime video store clerks, tattoo artists, and shoe salesmen drinkers had left the bar to return to work. She was behind the bar stocking clean glassware.
“Hey, Eddie,” Louise said, “what’ll you have?”
His lips formed the words without moving his jaw, “Gimme a draft anything.”
She poured his beer and set it in front of him. “I need a straw,” he said.
She looked at him, puzzled. “I broke my fucking jaw,” he added. He parted his lips to show her the erector set of wire and bands clamped to his teeth.
“Jesus, Eddie, what happened? Your mouth looks like the Brooklyn Bridge.”
“I fell and hit my jaw on a coffee table.”
She gave him a straw and looked at him sympathetically. “Oh my God! Does it hurt?”
He liked this new Louise, not a ball-buster or frigid bitch. Maybe it was the injury.
“Not so much now but all this metalwork is a pain. Does it look awful?”
“You look fine, Eddie. But I thought you were indestructible.” She gently squeezed his arm.
Eddie saw admiration in her eyes. That must be it. It must be the injury. She must be one of those Mother Theresas, a hard-ass on the outside but sucker for a sob story.
“Seen the priest around?” he asked.
“Bill? Uh-uh. They must have changed his shift at the school.”
That lying bitch. He knew her real story but she didn’t know his. “His buddy, the really big guy, he ever come in with the priest?”
“You know I don’t talk about who comes in, but I’ll make an exception since you’re hurting. No, he’s mentioned him when we’ve chatted, but no. He has something to do with the prison, right?
”
“Yeah, he’s the deputy warden. Him and the priest hit it off in some way. Pretty unusual, a con and a deputy warden becoming pals.”
“Eddie, are you able to eat anything with that jaw and all? Let me make you an egg nog. It’ll be good for you.”
“Geez, would you do that for me?”
She shot him a smile and turned to make his drink.
“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. I’d like to make it up to you somehow, you know, more than just a tip.”
“I don’t go out with customers if that’s what you mean, but if I need a favor some time, can I call on you? In case I have car trouble or something?”
“You sure can, babe,” Eddie said. “You can always call me.”
Customers trickled in. Louise got busy at the bar. Eddie paid his check, left her a twenty-dollar tip, and winked at her on his way out. Yeah, she was carrying on with the priest, but the priest’d have no chance against a guy like Eddie Matthews, not once Eddie made up his mind. And she might be worth making up his mind about. He saw how she looked at him, touched his arm two times, made him egg nog.
Eddie called Luca. “This guy, the priest, him and Lewis are joined at the hip. We might have to take both of them. I think they’re in this thing together. Might be easier to take them both at the same time.”
“That’s messier than I planned,” Luca said. “Set it up. Let me know what kind of help you need. Do what you need to do, Eddie. You got ten days left.”
Eddie couldn’t stop thinking of Louise. So she limped real bad. So what? That night, he put his usual porn on the VCR to help with his masturbation fantasies. As he ogled close-ups of breasts, vulvas, and horse-sized penises and toyed with himself leading up to his moment of truth, his imagination superimposed Louise’s body and face and welcoming openness onto the tape’s action. Eddie, Eddie, give it to me, give it to me, give me all of it. Until a jolt of electricity contracted all his muscles and fully formed ego pulsated out as if he was…who? Captain Marvel. That was it, Shazam!
Bill was assembling an Ikea bookshelf when Louise arrived home from the early shift. She hung her pea coat and scarf on the clothes tree just inside the doorway of the modest three-story row house. It was spread throughout with flowering cyclamen, purple bougainvillea, Arabian jasmine, and eucalyptus as a palliative against the stench of cigarette smoke, beer and urinal disinfectant she was forced to inhale half of every day six days a week.
“Earl Grey?” she asked as she walked past him to the kitchen.
“No, hemlock if you got any,” he said, turning the instruction pamphlet sideways trying to match it with the pieces on the floor.
She returned from the kitchen with two cups, handed him one, and plopped into a big, stuffed chair. He sat on the ottoman facing her.
“You’ll never guess who came in, broken jaw and all,” she said.
“Michael Corleone.”
“Not as good looking—Deadly Eddie Matthews. Said he fell on a table.”
“Yeah, and I’m Duncan Phyfe,” Bill said, pointing to the orphan pieces of bookcase.
“I flirted with him a little, like you asked. Well, not flirted but softened up. I think he’s buying it.”
If Bill didn’t know better, he’d think she was enjoying her assignment.
“Can you get him to talk?”
“Maybe. He asked about you and Jericho, if you ever came into the bar together.”
“He wants to know what Jericho knows about Mikey’s murder, wants to know if he’s in the clear or not. But look, be careful with this guy, he’s a murderer,” Bill said.
“Hey, I’ve been taking care of myself my entire life, including from the biggest, toughest women on the planet, amped with enough steroid to grow a herd of cattle.”
“Louise, they may have been murderous, but Eddie is a murderer. By the way, I think we recruited Crystal Lewis to help.”
“How?”
“Hard to say for now, but she’s a CPA and works in accounting for ServMark. She can come up with incriminating stuff. The question is whether she will.”
“And why wouldn’t she?”
“She has a lot to lose as a CPA, not just her job. Speaking of risk, ever fire a .38?”
“Dad was ex-military, remember? Fired all kinds of weapons.”
“I’ll give you one to carry.”
“Why?”
“Just do it. Do it for me.”
She got quiet and sipped at her tea. He couldn’t tell if she wanted to carry or maybe bit off more than she could chew by sidling up to Eddie.
“Will you bring Jericho into the bar, like Eddie wants?” she finally said.
“Right now Jericho has other priorities.”
“Grieving?”
“No, worrying. I’m riding with him over to Harrisburg next week. Corrections officials want to talk to him.”
“Should he be seen with an ex-convict?”
“No, he should be seen with a lawyer. But he’s acting as his own counsel. He thinks if he lawyers up it will tie his hands from investigating this mess, like with Crystal and maybe Eddie, and God knows who else comes out of the woodwork.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Even after the police released his Expedition, Jericho couldn’t stand to be in it. He put a blanket over Henrietta’s bloodstains and brain residue and took it to the dealer to install new windows, an entire new interior, and new paint job before trading it in.
As Bill and Jericho tooled back to Philadelphia from Harrisburg in Louise’s Mustang, Bill let his friend talk. Jericho sat in the passenger seat, pushed all the way back.
“That fucking Londell really sold me out,” he said.
His choices were to resign, keep his pension and forget everything; or find himself part of the Inspector General’s investigation which had broadened to possible criminality and which Attorney General Preate was closely monitoring. The public wanted blood. Jericho was a signee on behalf of Graterford on the contract between ServMark and the DOC. The last was a surprise revelation to Bill.
“Londell lied. He told the Board that he repeatedly asked me how ServMark performed during the contract’s trial period and that I gave an enthusiastic recommendation.”
“Why are you surprised?”
“Aw, Bill, you don’t know state politics.”
“Uh, excuse me? The Church was doing politics fifteen hundred years before Machiavelli.”
“All my years of loyal service didn’t amount to shit.”
“What’s their theory?”
“At best? I was negligent. At worst? I’m on the take. I’m going to need another job.”
“Does it help that I believe you’re innocent? Or that you have excellent credentials and can make better bread than as a civil servant?”
“Yeah? Well, I’ll never find better work.”
“Then dealing with prisoners? How about cleaning septic tanks?”
Jericho laughed.
Bill went on. “Since you’re between jobs, we can roust Eddie. He asked Louise about you and me and if we were ever in Dirty Frank’s together.”
“Keep Louise away from that creep,” Jericho said.
“She’s been friendly to him, see if he’ll talk,” Bill said.
“You saw what happened to Henrietta. You and I are radioactive to people around us.”
Jericho had figured it out, but had guilt brought him to his knees? Bill looked for signs.
“I knew it would dawn on you that you were the target,” Bill said.
“Yeah, and don’t think it doesn’t make me feel like shit that she was hit and not me.”
“I got a good analgesic for that.”
“For depression?”
“No, for guilt. It’s called vengeance.”
“We call it justice, Bill.”
“Yeah, that too.”
Detective Lanza had summoned Jericho to the Roundhouse. After the interview, Bill and Jericho drove to Dunkin Donuts. Jericho thought the meeting with Lanza
had gone as badly as the Harrisburg meeting. The detective had questioned Jericho’s suspension, the prison food issue and ServMark Hospitality. The way Jericho anxiously described it between bites of toasted almond, coconut, and glazed donuts, he was fucked.
“He thinks he’s onto something,” Jericho said. “Then, when he grilled me about Henrietta and Crystal and he found out Crystal worked at ServMark, his eyes got big as dinner plates.”
“He believes the dots connect,” Bill said.
“We have to let him do his work,” Jericho went on. “It’s the right way to go. I’m innocent. I know I am. It will play out okay.”
“We wave the white flag when the enemy stops making war,” Bill said. “I don’t know how well you know Lanza, but a cop who smells blood scares me.”
Jericho broke a powdered sugar in half and dunked it into his coffee. “Can you drive me to the auto mall?” he asked. “I need to check on my car’s rehab and maybe look at cars.” Bill saw his friend needed a break from his worries.
They drove to Bickel Ford at the auto mall in South Philly. Jericho’s car wasn’t quite finished, but he was impressed with the new tan leather upholstery, clear windows and new paint job, so he decided then and there to keep the vehicle rather than trade it in. Bill thought it was a sign that his friend had turned a corner about Henrietta’s death. Maybe Jericho wouldn’t leave everything to Lanza after all. Good thing. To Bill, Lanza’s tune hit a lot of sour notes.
Other than the war in Bill’s own head, there was still Eddie to contend with and whoever was behind him. “Just keep Crystal in the picture,” Bill said, on their way back into town. “She might still be able to help. And if Eddie has allies connected to ServMark, it’s probably beyond Lanza’s reach.”
I Detest All My Sins Page 7