Playtime

by Bart Hopkins Jr.

  To Blaine it rings so false it grates on him like a dentist's drill.

  "Anything else I can help you with man? You can see I'm pretty busy here."

  "Yeah," Blaine says. "I can see you are. This place must be a gold mine. You own it?"

  "Minority partner," Doug says.

  "Really? Who owns the rest of it?"

  "A man who wishes to remain private," Doug says. "I usually just say I'm the owner. It saves all the nosy questions. He's just an investor, anyway. Not even from around here. You wouldn't know him."

  "Try me."

  "You know," Doug says, "I have had this feeling that you and I were going to butt heads since that day you got out of the hospital and came to get your bike."

  "Why?" Blaine asks. "Have I ever been anything but nice?"

  The big man leans back, pile of money still in his hands, but count forgotten. He looks at Blaine with those half-dead, junkie-looking eyes. "No, you've always been nice," he says. "Spookily nice. What you look like to me is one of those guys that just won't let things go."

  "Well," says Blaine, shrugs, "Got to do what you got to do, I guess."

  "Well," Doug says. "Like I say, I'm busy. You know how you came in."

  "One more thing," Blaine says. He hasn't moved an inch from where he sits. "I went down and saw Mandy, and she didn't look that good to me. She looked like maybe she's picking up a bad habit or two."

  "Oh, really," Doug says, kicks one of his boots up on the corner of the desk.

  "I don't know how you run your business, Doug, but I'm going to be checking on Mandy, and if I hear that she is working down here, or if her new habit keeps up, I'm gonna rain some fire into your life, man. I will make it not worthwhile to do business here." Blaine jerks his head at the place around them. He hasn't raised his voice, but Dougie has gone all still and quiet looking at him.

  "You seem to have forgotten who has the gun here, my friend," he says, staring at Blaine, hand about an inch from it. "Not good form to threaten an armed man in his place of business."

  Blaine stands up, raises his Hawaiian shirt up, shows the butt of his .357, and says, "You think you got the only gun in Texas, Dougie? You'd better think again. That wasn't a threat I just made. You know what it was. I don't care what you do in this place, but you leave that girl alone."

  The black girl who was vacuuming appears suddenly at the door, asking for more cleaning towels, and Blaine takes that opportunity to turn and make his exit.

  "I don't care yet," he calls back over his shoulder. "But that could change."

  Chapter 43

  Blaine guns the Dodge out of the lot and gets back on the highway. His cell remains silent, no texts or calls. He feels dirty after being around Doug. Pimp Doug. How could a guy like that paint so well? Just emphasizes that talent doesn't always equal morality. He tries to get his head back in the game, think about Renee. Wishes Haney would call back with some info. Decides to go by and see Nielson, pump him for what's going on. He's probably sick of me by now, he thinks …. What's he going to do, send me to jail?

  He decides to use discretion, and leaves the guns in the truck. No use tempting fate. They had taken his license and, technically, he is not supposed to be carrying them. Nielson is at his desk.

  "I don't see how you solve crime sitting in here all the time," Blaine says, poking his head through the doorway, but not coming in. He's actually not sure what manner of welcome he'll get since Sketch's house and his last session in jail.

  "Where'd you get the idea I solve anything?" Nielson says, waves him in. He had been staring out the window. "Set you free, huh?"

  "Overcrowded system and all that," Blaine says.

  "Look, no hard feelings," Nielson says. "You know they record all that stuff in the interrogation room. I had to say and do certain things to cover my ass."

  "Your honesty is refreshing."

  "Well," Nielson says, gnawing on his glasses again, "It won't help you if anything else happens. Matter of fact, I never said that last."

  "Right, so what's happening with Sketch?"

  "We're covering him around the clock," the detective says. "Full-court press. So don't worry. If your girl is still alive, he will take us right to her. If he's got her."

  "What if he just waits you out?"

  "What if it's not him?"

  "C'mon Nielson," Blaine says. "Do you really think that guy is innocent?"

  Nielson leans back in his chair, rocks back and forth, studies the view out the window. "You know, he's a smart guy, can be sort of charming when he wants. He fielded questions real well when we had him down here."

  "Then why are you guys following him?"

  "Well, for one thing, after your little show over there, if it does turn out to be him, and we just ignore you, we are going to look like total assholes."

  Blaine says: "C'mon man. That's not a good reason unless you have some kind of suspicions of this guy."

  "Something about him gives me the fucking creeps," Nielson says. "I had to really push to get him covered. He does know some people …" His voice trails off. He is looking out the window once more. "The fucking creeps," the detective says again.

  Blaine looks at him. Someone else who might see what he sees. Maybe he's not loony as a bedbug. "In the house, he said something about this not being his first dance. I think he's been taking girls for a while."

  "But you told me he didn't admit anything specific."

  Blaine shakes his head. "No," he says, "nothing specific."

  "The guys that work those cases are combing their files for anything that might tie him to any of them. So far, they haven't found anything."

  The familiar refrain from "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" fills the room and Blaine checks his phone. Marge from Haney's office. He puts it on silence, lets it go to voice mail. He doesn't want to discuss that stuff here. Nielson is watching him like a hawk, wondering why he let the call go. He can tell that.

  "You ever think about being a cop?" Nielson asks.

  "Too much bad history now," Blaine says. "Hell, I'm facing felony charges from you guys."

  "Jail is an ugly place, isn't it? Go on home, Blaine, and let us handle this." But he is saying it more from habit than any real feeling it will have an effect on Blaine. Blaine sees it in his eyes. "It's not us who put you in jail, it's you. We will get this guy. It may take us a while, but we'll get him." He realizes his mistake as soon as the words leave his mouth. Blaine can tell.

  "I don't have a while," Blaine says, nods and gets up and leaves the room.

  Chapter 44

  As soon as he's outside headed for the truck, he dials Marge back. He skips the message. He will get it from her live.

  "Hi," she says, answering on the first ring. Though phones don't necessarily ring anymore, and of course he hadn't really dialed.

  "Blaine Hadrock," he says. "You have some info for me, Marge?"

  "Yes," she says. "Sorry it took so long."

  "No problem," he says, chafing inside, but running through the niceties. "What have you got?"

  "This Irons owns a few things, but most of them are under the corporate name of Steel Capital," she says.

  Steel and iron, Blaine thinks. Cute.

  "He has three of the large parking buildings on the island," she says. "Part owner of a restaurant."

  "No strip club?" He doesn't know why he asks. It just pops into his head. Maybe because Sketch and Doug are both such creeps that his mind wants to connect them.

  "No."

  "How about an auto impound yard?"

  She pauses, shuffles some things. "I don't show anything like that. Mr. Haney did say that time was of the essence, and I could have missed …"

  "Probably not," Blaine says. "I just had a hunch, that's all. Can you give me some addresses?"

  "Sure," she replies, and in a moment he hears the message ding he has turned back on, and thumbing to his mail he sees them. Modern tech is unbelievable. Can do almost anything.

  "Okay, I
got them. Anything else that might help?"

  "I still have one query in," she says. "I will call you if I get a response on that. But that's all I have so far."

  "This has been a big help," he says, wanting her to feel good, though he has no idea if any of it will help at all. It is what you say to people when they put themselves out for you. He hangs up and thinks about the info. Parking garages are big money on an island where the main industry is tourism. No wonder Sketch is rolling in it. Of course, it is the restaurant that leaps out at him but he is sure the police have this information. They have probably been all over the place. If they could find legal means to get inside. He thinks about that. The thing about Nielson is that he always has that building a case mentality going on. He can't help it. He doesn't want to see a big fish get away. Blaine can see that. He wants to do it up legal and proper, button all the hatches. What Nielson is probably thinking is that if Renee is alive, she will be alive for a while longer, and they have Sketch under watch. Probably what he's figuring is she is dead already. Then it doesn't make any difference. It sounds cold when he puts it like that, but really it is just the way the law is. Rights are nondiscriminatory. They protect the guilty as well as the innocent. Blaine should probably feel blessed that they have surveillance on Sketch at all. He thinks that if Nielson hadn't felt that same creepy feeling about Sketch that would not be happening either. They actually had no evidence. The only reason that they had been able to search Sketch's house was Blaine's alleged break-in.

  He is driving through the bright Galveston sunshine once again, through the streets of the playground of the south. The beaches are packed. Traffic is stop-and-go. He is scanning the terrain as he rolls. For … what? He doesn't know. Anything, he guesses. His signature method.

  He reexamines his chain of logic about the police and the investigation and shrugs mentally. How do you second-guess yourself? How much trust can you put into checking a process with the same process? It is a problem that writers face all the time. They are like mothers with newborn children. Their work looks beautiful to them, though it may seem ugly to others. It's almost impossible to get the cold objectivity of an outsider.

  Still you try. What else can you do? It is the reason he loves science, but everything cannot be cold facts and cut and dried. Of course, he doesn't need everything to be. He just needs one thing to be.

  Chapter 45

  Todd has gone someplace, and he has the house to himself. He pulls the guns back out and works them over again. He loves the sheer functionality, the efficiency of them, the way they do just what they are supposed to almost all the time. They are sleek and shiny and gleaming under the oil and rag. He has done this so many times his hands know the way; he doesn't even need to focus hard as he works. They are like most things and people, he thinks. If you treat them right they do right.

  But there are always the exceptions to the rule, guns and people both.

  Where does Sketch have her?

  He thinks of the last few days, the strange turn that his life had taken. He could have lived all of it without seeing this type of madness. He had never pulled a gun on anyone before and now has pulled one twice. Clocked some jail time. He thinks back to the bike wreck. If he hadn't died, or almost died, that day on the street, he would never have gotten back together with Renee. Just wouldn't have happened. He wasn't seeking her, and she hadn't been chasing him. Just came over to do the right thing. Wasn't that true?

  He reloads the .22 and the .357 both and stares down at them on the table. He isn't a gun nut, though he likes them well enough. A realist is what he is. When two countries negotiate over something, it is almost never because one of them has a lot of power and the other has none. No. They each usually have armies and navies and air forces, and when things don't work out at the table then they go to the fields, and men begin to die. And because it concerns entire nations and not just the petty peccadillos of individuals, we glorify it and say we are fighting for our country. Salute the flag. Sing songs. He has the highest respect for the warriors who fight to keep his country safe. They are willing to make the greatest sacrifice imaginable. It is the wisdom of the guys that send them that makes him wonder sometimes.

  So we go to war. And to the victor go the spoils. Blaine had always resisted that thought. For years, when he was a kid, the mantra had run through his mind that might did not make right. And he was convinced of that fact. But he had come to know also that right had to be backed up by might. Kind words were not enough.

  It all comes down to this.

  The rules are great. They keep society moving along a path that at least approximates, sometimes intersects with, the concept of justice, in this day and age, though exceptions could always be found.

  But the rules aren't always enough.

  Nielson has a strong feeling about Sketch. Blaine does too. If they are correct, Renee's life is hanging in the balance. But Sketch is afforded the same protections the rest of us have. Innocent until proven guilty. Protection from undue harassment from the law. Reasonable doubt and all that. The system is slow and clunky, but the wheels do turn, and most of the time, finally, it produces results. It protects us all to have that system in place. Even the monsters like Sketch.

  He loads up, .22 in an ankle holster, .357 in a shoulder rig, slips a light windbreaker over it.

  Goes out to the garage and fires the Shadow up, listens to it run a minute, slaps the heavy bag a few times as he passes. When the SWAT team and the rest of the cops had surrounded Sketch's place a few days ago, they had seen his truck.

  But, as far as he knows, none of them have seen the Shadow.

  He lets it warm for a few minutes, then hops on and dons the helmet and leather gloves. Checks the weapons one last time to make sure they are secure and then jets down the driveway, pauses at the street, guns it and flies right past the place he died.

  It's like most scary things you do in life, he thinks. The first time is the hardest.

  Hang on, Renee. I'm coming.

  Chapter 46

  He had tuned the bike up, made all the necessary repairs, and it sounds good. The fanatics were always talking Harley this and that, but for Blaine's money the Honda is a better machine. Doesn't have that deep roaring rumble, but the engine is great, and what is a rumble but noise?

  He runs it up to the beach, eases into the usual stop-and-go traffic, and turns east toward Sketch's end of town. He focuses on the driving because on a bike you always need to. It doesn't matter how right you are if you are lying on the street like he was the day the Corolla nailed him. The best defense is a good offense.

  The traffic is heavy near Sketch's place, too, and he cuts into the side streets until he can make the turn onto the street where the big man lives. Down the block a ways, like he hoped, is an unmarked car with two guys in it, parked and talking casually as he passes. One of them looks over at him and then continues his conversation with no sign of recognition. Blaine has the dark visor on his helmet, and to them he is just a guy on a motorcycle.

  Which is exactly what he wants.

  Now he knows that Sketch is home.

  He runs the bike back out to the end of the street and turns the corner. Comes up that street, and with another right he is on the road directly behind Sketch's. Goes down it till he sees the big two-story house on the built-up lot, jutting into the sky behind a smaller, gray one-story on this street. No sign of cops here. So much for the vaunted surveillance, he thinks. Unless he is missing something, Sketch could get out the back way without the cops knowing. Though he would be taking a good-sized risk that a neighbor might see him scaling that high wooden fence. Probably the only thing keeping him in the house, if he was in it.

  He parks the bike, bends down like he is examining something on the engine. Looks around. Last chance, he thinks. Last chance to be a good citizen, let the law handle things, the wheels of justice turn. Last stop before the State Prison express begins to roll. He sees no sign of life in the gray house in front of
him. Or on the rest of the street for that matter. Hears the drone of a mower, but it is far down the way. Still no activity in front of him.

  He walks swiftly to the gate on the fence and is inside the yard in an instant more, at the side of the house, out of view of the street. Crosses the back yard to the fence that butts up against Sketch's house. Watches the gray house as he moves across the lawn. There are sliding glass doors but they have drapes across them. Then he is at the fence behind the pool house in Sketch's yard. He grabs the top and walks himself up the wall, and with one heave he is over.

  He drops to the pavement with a slight thump. He is standing on the sidewalk that runs behind the pool house. Eases up to the corner and peeks around it. It is quite a distance to the house, some 20 yards, he thinks. He can see through the sliding glass into the big living area, and into most of the windows. Studies them for a few minutes, gaze going back and forth, but sees no sign of Sketch. Hope he didn't get out the way I got in, he thinks. What kind of half-ass surveillance was this, anyway, for a suspected murderer? Did they think they were going to scare this guy by putting a pair of cops in front of the house? Probably just didn't have the budget to put more. Thought that their show of force in front would be enough to scare Sketch into line till they could get more solid evidence, call the cavalry in. He snorts softly. They don't know Sketch like he does.

  Chapter 47

  He is contemplating his next move when he feels the vibration of the phone in his pocket. He walks back to the far corner of the pool house, takes it out and squats behind a trash can, flips it open. Marge.

  "Yeah," he whispers.

  "Found something else," she says. "House way out on the west end." She gives him the address and he focuses on it for a second so he will remember. "And a boat."

  "A boat?"

  "Right. It is probably kept at that address. That is on the water, I believe."

  "Thanks," he says.