“Jericho said you guys work together.”
“Yes, Fernando runs the mail room at the company.”
They small-talked. Sam assured Crystal that Jericho was over their split, that she sounded happy in her new relationship, that a happy woman made for a good mom, that Jericho had also been happy with Henrietta from Radiant Hope, and wasn’t it a tragedy that she was murdered?
“Ever meet Henrietta?” he asked.
“I never did,” Crystal said.
“Just wondering. I guess after a split it’s still painful to think of a former partner with somebody else.”
“Not by me, Sam. It was Jericho who couldn’t deal with me and Fernando. My lawyer said it was best to avoid the subject.”
Sam was satisfied. Jericho was a helluva lot further back in Crystal’s rearview mirror than she was in his. So much for any theories of jealousy between Crystal and Henrietta, although it didn’t rule out a money angle.
“By the way,” he said, “what exactly do you do over at ServMark?”
“I’m a cubicle mouse. I get performance runs from different departments and scan them for outliers and report on them.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It’s a job.”
“Well, Crystal, thanks again for making time for me.”
“It was good to see you, Sam. Jericho’s not in any trouble, is he?”
“Nah. But you know how it is. With Henrietta murdered I gotta talk to everybody.” They hugged, kissed cheeks, and Sam left.
The interview went nowhere except to rule out the Crystal-jealousy theory. But the ServMark connection was still a string of celery snagged in Sam’s tooth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Time was a ferocious beast in a slow-motion nightmare. Bill paced, awaiting a call from Louise, or a boyfriend, or Frank from Dirty Frank’s, or the police, or anyone who could tell him what happened to her.
He kept checking her car, half-hoping he would see it gone, which would mean she retrieved it and was at least alive. His return call from Frank Wilkerson, owner of Dirty Frank’s, made things worse: Frank hadn’t heard from her and she never failed to call in. She still had pay to collect. Did Bill have any ideas? Might she have suddenly left on a family matter? Some regular may have a clue, but Frank wasn’t sure if he wanted her disappearance known to customers.
After four days passed, Bill’s agonizing imaginings that she was with another man gave way to an unbearable fear that something very bad had happened. He called Detective Lanza. Did he know anything about this? Did he think her disappearance might be connected to the young man being shot and killed outside the bar? The close timing was too coincidental to ignore.
Lanza said, “It is strange, but usually, missing people show up. Don’t give up on that. I’ll make a note to the homicide file.”
A note to the file? Pure bullshit!
Bill called Jericho. “Your pal Lanza couldn’t care less about Louise. You must know people who can help me.”
“I’ll call Eddie’s parole officer. But Sam told me they haven’t been able to locate Eddie. It looks like he bolted from his last known address. Looks like he’s on the run. I don’t know why. Nobody thinks he shot the kid outside Dirty Frank’s.”
“Get it for me. I’ll go there myself. I’m afraid she took it too much to heart when I asked her to get friendly with Eddie and pump him for information.”
“I thought you said she became fearful over everything.”
“I don’t know what to think,” Bill said. “When I go to her car I hope it’s gone. When I go to the house I hope the lights will be on and she’s there with an explanation. I just want her to be well.”
“You’re a mess. I’ll get you Eddie’s last-known.”
“Hurry.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Louise lay in Eddie’s bed, nude but covered. He deliberately placed her away from the folded towel that padded the broken spring. She was handcuffed to the bed and her mouth duct taped.
He sat in a wooden chair beside the bed, his face a foot from hers. As she came out of her rohypnol-induced fog, her eyes and face changed from repose to panic as they focused on his tattooed neck. As she tried to move her hands, the cuffs rattled and scraped against the bed’s metal frame. She kicked and screamed through the duct tape, knocking the covers off and exposing her nude body as she fell off the bed with her arms still secured to the frame. Her screams were muffled, and the kicking stopped when she either exhausted herself or saw the futility of breaking free.
He walked around the bed, put his arms under her torso and lifted her back onto the bed. He covered her. Lying there, with the look of a cornered cat in her eyes, she watched his every move. With one hand he put a finger to his lips to signal hush, and with the other flicked at the duct tape over her mouth. He put it back when she tried to scream again.
“I won’t hurt you,” he whispered. “Unless you’re quiet, you’ll have to stay gagged. Do you understand me? If you let me remove the tape, we can talk.”
She continued to stare at him. He sat still, looking at her. After a minute, she nodded yes. He slowly removed the tape.
“Why do you have me here like this?” she said. “You drugged me! How long have I been unconscious?”
“Well, yeah, I did. Four days.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t come with me on your own, even though to know me is to love me.”
“What are you going to do with me?”
“Keep you, pending some business arrangements.”
He still believed she would come to view him for the man he was; a strong leader, clever, and when necessary, feared. At the bar, she saw all kinds of men. She should know better than anybody that when it came to women, he was ideal. After all, what was it they needed? The main thing was protection from predators. He was perfect for that job. Maybe she needed more time.
“I don’t intend to hurt you, but if you act up, I might have to.”
He got up and opened the closet door. “I hope you don’t have claustrophobia,” he said. “This will be your home for a while.”
“Eddie,” she said, “Eddie, don’t do this to me, please don’t.”
“I’ll bring food. When you go to the bathroom, I still need to keep my eye on you.”
“Eddie, when I was unconscious, did you do anything to me?”
He smiled. “No, when we do it together it will be because you want to. Take my word, the time will come.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Bill rang the manager’s bell at Eddie’s last known address. An almost fragile, seemingly demure gray-haired woman in her late sixties answered the door. Her blue rinse left a stain on her neck and heavily padded shoulders failed to conceal the hump of severe osteoporosis. Bill identified himself as Eddie’s brother, and that he was caring for Eddie after taking suddenly ill from a mild stroke and asked to go into Eddie’s old apartment to gather a few things.
“Not until you fuckers pay back rent. Two weeks,” she said. “One-fifty.”
Bill peeled it off. “May I have a key so I can come back for more stuff?”
“Bullshit. You want to come back you pay another week.”
He let it drop. See what’s there. Maybe he wouldn’t need to come back.
The police had combed the place but didn’t find anything. Their search was likely cursory, Bill thought, as they weren’t looking for much other than clues to Eddie’s disappearance and possible connection to the murder of the young man outside of Dirty Frank’s. Bill was looking for something else, some sign of Louise.
The apartment was surprisingly neat. After closing the door, he dropped to his knees on the well-worn but clean-scrubbed floor and crawled every square inch to find something, anything. He carefully sniffed the furniture hoping to smell traces of Louise’s favorite scent. Three weeks before she disappeared he had bought her Opium by Yves Saint Laurent. Its strong and distinctively spicy aroma smothered the bar’s cigarette smoke and re
stroom odor-control dispensers. Nothing. He dug his hands deep into the sofa and pulled out lint, dust, and a few pennies. He shook out the area rug in front of it and…wait! What flew out? He went after the objects that landed near the baseboard and held them up to the light.
What were these things? They seemed familiar. Inch long plastic oval things tapered at one end and painted blue with flecks of silver. Where had he seen them before? He pictured Eddie and various things he wore, but no answer. He put them in his pocket, went into the bedroom and tore through everything. Nothing but Eddie’s toiletries and a few articles of clothing neatly folded in bureau drawers. No hints of Louise. Whatever hopes he harbored blinked off like a firefly. He let himself out and walked the few blocks toward Dirty Frank’s.
Walking against traffic, he saw a green van moving slowly towards him. It stopped beside him and two men jumped out and ran towards him. By reflex, he backed away and saw that it was Angie and Paulie. He turned and ran up Thirteenth onto Sansom.
They ran after him. The portly Angie chugging, the thinner Paulie more athletic. Something hit the back of Bill’s legs and he tumbled head first onto the concrete in front of Irving the Gent’s Tailor’s shop. Bill tried to reach for the tire iron that tripped him up, but by that point Paulie was kneeling on his chest and hitting him in the face and head. Paulie reached for the tire iron but Bill managed to throw him off when a man with pins in his mouth and tape measure around his neck came out of the shop with a Mossberg twelve gauge.
He spit out the pins and said to Paulie, “Let him go. Get your ass out of here before I blow it off.”
Paulie looked straight down the barrel and held his hands up. He slowly stood while Bill tried to clear blood from his eyes and focus again after the bashing he took. Angie caught up to the fracas, grabbed Paulie’s arm and said to the tailor, “We don’t want no trouble mister, this guy owes us money.”
“Then file a lien,” Irving the Gent said, “just don’t go messing up my business.”
The two men scurried away. Bill stood and said, “Thank you. Those guys wanted to mug me.”
Irving said, “Pay your goddam bills. You get outta here too.” He went back into his shop.
Bill hopped a bus and ignored the stares of people looking at his puffy eyes, lacerations, and the McDonald’s napkins blotting blood from his nose. What did those guys want? This was the second time they tried to get him. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out his little finds from Eddie’s apartment. He held one up to the window. It was slightly translucent. What the hell was this thing?
Later, he called Detective Lanza.
“Missing Persons doesn’t even want to talk until she’s missing ten days,” Lanza said. “I’d follow up at Dirty Frank’s, you know, talk it up with some regulars there. You never know. Somebody may know something.”
Bill decided to do just that. For now, he needed an ice bag.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
At least Jericho was a cop…of sorts. Detective Lanza considered this as he sat in his Barcalounger and sipped his third Dewar’s, mentally running down the inventory of crimes, stories, inferences, tics, and questions in orbit around Jericho Lewis and William Conlon. Catching bad guys was less about science and squeezing recalcitrant witnesses, though that was an art, and more about schmoozing people up and earning their trust. Under normal circumstances, anything that Jericho said, Lanza could take to the bank. But with Conlon in the mix, things were different.
Lanza’s ruminations hadn’t impressed his lieutenant, who administered a reaming at his most experienced detective’s lack of progress over the twink’s killing. Sam quietly took it, appreciating the heat from the gay community plaguing the brass. The gays were a noisy bunch, and their latest expression of democracy took the form of blocking downtown traffic for weeks at a time.
His head spun with theories, but too many sips of the amber nectar clouded Sam’s brain. Finally, he decided to have a sit-down with Jericho, not a police interview, but old friend to old friend and maybe get a sense of what the fuck was going on. He turned up the volume on Monday Night Football, and with a head too heavy to do much about it, ignored his wife, all dolled up, surreptitiously slipping out the front door, perhaps to go shopping again.
He called Jericho early the following morning. “I want to have a talk, not at the Roundhouse. Let’s meet at the Oregon Diner. Can you?”
“You want to give me a sneak preview?”
“Nah. Stuff.”
They met at three p.m., ordered pie and coffee, and talked about the Eagles for the next forty-five minutes. During the conversation, both men’s eyes followed the adorable brunette with the shag haircut as she strode up and down the aisle waiting tables.
Finally, Lanza asked, “So how are you doing with your lady friend being gone and all?”
“I’m okay. We weren’t in that deep, but I really liked her. She was different from Crystal.”
“Speaking of Crystal, I interviewed her. Did she tell you?” Lanza said.
“Not yet. I imagine she will.”
That registered with Sam. It didn’t sound as if Jericho and Crystal were in conspiracy mode.
“Was Crystal able to add anything?” Jericho asked.
“Not much, but you know how it is, I had to make sure she wasn’t the one who blew away your girlfriend.”
Jericho laughed. “Crystal? Blow somebody away? Her idea of blowing somebody away is not sending a birthday card.”
“I gotta tell you, I was shocked to find out you became buddies with one of your Graterford charges. He must be a very special guy in some way.”
Jericho recounted Bill’s story and how the friendship grew out of complementary needs. Lanza thought it odd that Jericho didn’t mention that Conlon’s girlfriend, the barmaid, was missing.
“What’s the status of your suspension? Anything I can do to help?” the detective asked.
“I’ll fight it until I find another job, but then I’ll resign. Too much dirt, the prisoners, the staff, the bosses, the bureaucracy, don’t want to be around it anymore.”
It was the Jericho Lewis that Lanza remembered, Don Quixote looking for another windmill.
“I hear you,” Lanza said. “What’s the food thing about anyway?”
Jericho painted the picture while Lanza simultaneously shook his head and lifted his eyebrows, a familiar habit, a combination of tsk-tsk, whaddya gonna do, and is anybody surprised?
“So how did Mikey Osborne fit in?” Lanza asked.
“Never got my arms around it,” Jericho said.
Lanza picked up the check. It was a good meeting. What had once been an amorphous basket of correlations now had lines connecting the dots. Smack at the hub was the so-called priest.
Lanza pulled into the Roundhouse parking lot whistling I Got You Babe.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Bill jumped when the phone rang. He had nodded off, exhausted from worrying about Louise, praying that she not be dead, bargaining with God, though he asked for more than he was willing to give. In his own head, he had never left the Church. In his own mind the Church within him was now on a higher level, without the need for sacraments and constant prayer to strengthen his faith. He picked up the phone and before it got near his mouth yelled, “Yeah?”
“Heard anything?” Jericho asked. “How’re you doing?”
Bill waited for his heart rate to settle, then recounted his visit to Eddie’s apartment and the incident in front of Irving the Gent’s tailor shop.
Jericho said, “Let me guess, it was the same guys.”
“Yeah, and I’m okay. Come with me to Dirty Frank’s. I want to see if any regulars know anything, but the owner doesn’t want any undue buzz. What do you think?”
“I’ll come with you. We can cover more ground. When we meet, we can think up some innocuous premise to bring it up.”
“Like what?” Bill asked.
“Oh, like maybe, gee, we haven’t seen Louise around. Did she quit? Like th
at.”
“Good idea. Say, man, can you work on your buddy Lanza and see if he can open some doors to Missing Persons?”
“MP will take a report as a courtesy to Lanza, but that doesn’t mean they’ll do much until the case gets assigned. If there are no signs of an assault or burglary or kidnapping, it can languish until something turns up.”
Kidnapping? The word hit Bill like an anvil. Of course! It explained so much. Why hadn’t he seen it? And who else was missing besides Louise? That douchebag Eddie Matthews! But what did Eddie have to gain by kidnapping her? At least Bill had something to go on. But how to find Eddie? Maybe those guys, the guys who had just mugged him, the guys Eddie seemed to know, maybe they knew something.
They met at McGillen’s Olde Ale House. Jericho sat with three pork sandwiches and a pitcher of ale while Bill toyed with garlic spinach.
“Those guys in the green van,” Bill said, “what are they up to?”
“They have an interest in you. I don’t know why. Eddie knew them, so it’s no stretch he was behind it,” Jericho said.
“Think it has anything to do with ServMark, goons that they hired?”
“Could be.”
“So, if you’re a fancy international food outfit like ServMark and you want to hire street goons, where do you go?” Bill asked.
Jericho daintily dabbed grease from the corner of his mouth. “The mob? A biker club? Where you going with this?”
“I think Eddie may have Louise. Trouble is, I don’t know how to find Eddie.”
“And you think the green-van-guys could help with that?”
“Yep.”
“How do you get to them? Wait for them to mug you again?”
“Nope, you.”
“They don’t want me. They want you.”
“When the kid got shot they wanted both of us. Eddie too. I’m thinking they only wanted me to get to you.”
“Let’s say we find out who they are. Then what?” Jericho asked.
“We find out who hired them and what they want. We have leverage. We’re witnesses to shooting the twink.”
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