by Martha Carr
That’s what bothered Detective Biggs the most.
“There he is,” said Detective Biggs, already halfway out of the car. “Dickie, hey Dickie!” he shouted, trotting as fast as his bad knees would let him, crossing the narrow street.
Dickie was another one of Mac’s bag men, dressed in the same uniform that was easily recognizable to anyone familiar with Mac’s operation. He was tall and lean, the dark suit making him look even thinner, hanging off of him a little loosely. He had topped it off with a small fedora.
He saw Detective Biggs coming his way and let out a disgusted sigh, taking off his hat to shake his head.
“I have places Mac needs me to be,” said Dickie, smoothing out his lapels as he neatly rolled the hat over and placed it back on his head. “He will not appreciate these impromptu breaks in my schedule.”
The detective slowed down for the last few steps, with Buster slowly catching up behind him.
“We won’t take up too much of your time, Dickie,” said Detective Biggs. “Just a couple of questions and you’re back to what you were doing. We’re not interested in interrupting your collections.”
Dickie let out a sharp tsk and looked around. “That goes without saying. Mac does not take kindly to meddling, even from law enforcement who insist on a strict reading of the laws. Go on, get it over with. Who are you looking for?” he asked, still looking around, pacing a few steps to the left and the right.
“Not looking for anyone, Dickie,” said Buster, spitting a long thin stream of tobacco juice off the sidewalk. “We know exactly where he is this time and where he’s gonna stay. We want to know what motivated him to end up there.”
Dickie raised his eyebrows and shrugged, his hands out. “Well? I’m no mind reader.”
“Who hired Rodney Parrish?” asked Detective Biggs. Dickie looked surprised at first before he started laughing, bent over at his waist, his hands on his knees. Buster thumped him on the back of his head.
“A little respect, Dickie,” said Buster. “We know you have a pretty good idea of what everyone down there in the combinating room is up to, including on their off hours. What have you heard?”
Dickie rubbed the back of his head, scowling at Buster. “You’re talking the big time,” said Dickie. “The Feds have been crawling all over this town trying to answer that question. Why are the two of you even bothering? This inside your jurisdiction?” he asked, squinting at them with one eye closed. The winter sun was right in his face.
“Fortunately, that’s not your problem. You’re doing a lot of ducking and weaving for someone who knows nothing,” said Detective Biggs. He gave a nod at Dickie. “What have you heard?”
“Nothing I’d repeat and hope to live another year. This is bigger than you or me. A lot bigger. Go ahead, arrest me,” he said holding out his wrists in front of him. “I’d rather sit in jail than be your source for this one.”
“We will forget where we heard it,” said Buster, who had stepped closer, his usual sign that he was suddenly very interested.
“Look, I know you two won’t stop pestering the locals till you get something and we,” said Dickie, pressing his long, slender fingers against his chest, “are not your prey today. You gentlemen are going to need a bigger boat. You ever hear of something called Management? No?”
Detective Biggs noticed Buster look away for a moment. He made a mental note to ask him about that later.
“Well, you’re going to need an education but you best be careful about who you ask,” said Dickie. “There’s a good old boy network right under your feet pulling more strings than you imagine and the strings stretch out far beyond our little hamlet,” said Dickie, lowering his voice and stepping in a little closer. “I have no beef with either one of you, so I’m not going to send you into something that will surely help you disappear forever without a trace. Tread lightly gentlemen. Rodney liked to help out some of the locals involved in Management because they had deeper pockets. Somehow they’re tied up in what happened, must have been. Must have offered him more money than I can imagine, I don’t know. But what made old Rodney think he would walk out of there is beyond me. It’s done now.”
“What is a management?” asked Detective Biggs.
“You forget where you heard that word,” said Dickie, pointing at him, shaking his finger. “I still have some good living to do. And don’t keep saying that out loud before you know more. I’ll tell you this, ask the Black Widow. Word is she was tied up tight with them until a recent falling out. One of their bigwigs was shot in the face and the rank and file blame her. It’s caused a little insurrection, too. A lot of heavy hitters, they call them Watchers, blame the Black Widow. She might be willing to talk.”
“Who’s this black widow?” asked Buster.
Dickie smiled and started walking away, taking a few steps back. “Get out more boys. Everyone knows who’s called the Black Widow. Wallis Jones. Lady lawyer living in the West End of things whose bite is far worse than her bark. Tread lightly, gentlemen, so you can someday enjoy your little pensions.” Dickie turned and started picking up the pace, quickly turning the corner and was soon out of view.
“Did any of that make sense to you?” asked Detective Biggs, eyeing Buster, wondering why he wasn’t offering up what he knew.
“I’ve heard rumors, of sorts,” said Buster, “but this entire town is and always has run off of an old boys’ system. I never paid it much attention. We both know Wallis Jones, remember? We found her mother, Harriet Jones in that cemetery months ago. Had a stroke?”
“That night we saw Rodney hurrying through Hollywood Cemetery?” asked Detective Biggs. The phone in Buster’s pocket started buzzing loudly. Buster nodded as he took out his phone and put it up to his ear. “Yeah, okay,” he said, “we’re on our way.” He put the phone back in his pocket and rubbed his face. “Looks like we’re going to get our chance sooner rather than later. A call just came in for a disturbance. The call came from a Harriet Jones.”
“Why are we going? That’s outside of the city,” said Buster.
“Captain said he’s loaning us out. Apparently we’re on his shit list again. He said has something to do with city business, if you can believe that. Come on.”
The drive was long by Richmond standards with the traffic along I64 slowing down to twenty-five miles an hour. Rush hour standards. Detective Biggs pulled up to find a small knot of people gathered on the street, clearly upset about something.
“Oh geez,” said Buster. “A suburban mob of aging taxpayers up in arms. This is gonna be a long day,” he sighed. “Look, there’s even one in a Christmas sweater in November. They’re going to demand action,” he said in a low rumble. He gave a wave at the group of people.
Detective Biggs smiled as he got out of the car. “Looks like more of an impromptu fundraiser.”
“Just wait,” said Buster. “They’ll bring up how they pay our salaries and what are we doing about whatever this is. I don’t even see Harriet Jones out here. Oh geez. Glad I wore the insoles today.”
The two detectives didn’t get very far before someone in the group noticed them and started briskly walking over. The rest of the group followed as if they were all tethered together, stopping just in front of the two men.
“One at a time, one at a time,” said Detective Biggs. Neighbors were all standing in a semi-circle in front of him, pointing in the same direction, giving descriptions of what they had seen. So far, Detective Biggs couldn’t figure out what the exact nature of the crime was that had gotten everyone so excited.
Buster walked around the back of the group and was taking a determined walk up one side of the street and down the other, looking around to see if there was anything out of place. The frown on his face told Detective Biggs that so far he wasn’t finding anything. The handlebar moustache Buster had decided to grow last spring was twitching, which meant Buster was quietly swearing to himself. Buster hated mysteries.
Detective Biggs glanced up and saw a familiar face s
lowly making her way up the driveway, leaning on a cane. “Mrs. Jones,” he said, nodding toward Harriet. “Glad to see you’re still on the mend.”
The noise level dropped around him as Harriet made the last few steps toward him. The detective noticed the reverence the neighbors paid toward the elderly woman who was dressed in a tartan wool skirt and jacket with a large brooch pinned to the lapel. A small string of large pearls encircled her neck. The handle of a leather purse shaped like a trapezoid was firmly gripped in her hand, swishing back and forth with every swing of the cane.
“Going on a job interview?” he asked, getting a smile out of Harriet.
“You don’t miss a thing,” she said, patting him on the arm. “I miss our visits.”
“In the hospital? I think they were more like interviews,” said Detective Biggs. “I don’t get much time to just visit.”
“So, you bring flowers to your interviews?” asked Harriet, raising a perfectly drawn eyebrow.
“No, not often,” he said. “You got me.”
“How is Maynard? Must be driving by now,” said Harriet.
“My son is doing well but driving will have to wait. He’s on lockdown after getting caught watching the drag races across the Patterson Avenue bridge.” He grimaced at the memory of having to pick Maynard up at the precinct in the middle of the night.
“The Veterans bridge?” said Harriet, smiling. “Anyone hurt? No? Well, good thing you caught him when you did.”
“Except he’s grounded and keeps yelling ‘dead man walking’ every time he leaves his room.” The detective tapped the pen he was holding in his oversized hand against his forehead. “Anyone here want to tell me what crime was committed today?”
The hum of voices all started in as one again. “You,” said the detective, pointing to a middle-aged woman in a mauve velour running suit standing next to Harriet. Her grey hair was teased into a sizeable bouffant that didn’t flutter in the cold breeze. The detective was already sorry he had left his puffy coat in the back seat of the unmarked car parked nearby. He thought about going to get it but let it go, hoping he wouldn’t be here long enough for the cold to really bother his bad knee. He was only in his mid-forties but too much running and leaping off of things had taken its toll.
“What did you see?”
“There were several large black cars, the big kind, you know, like almost a truck, all parked along the street. Dark windows, couldn’t see a thing, like they were waiting for something,” she said in a rush, her eyes widening as if she had seen a magic act, right there, on her own street.
“You’re…”, Biggs looked down at the small notebook in his hand, “Mrs. Parma, correct?” How long were the cars parked out here?”
“About an hour.”
“Were the cars empty?”
“No, I didn’t see anyone get out. They must have all been inside the cars.”
“Those were big cars,” said an elderly man. “Could have been a dozen of them.”
“So, all you saw were a few cars,” he said, letting out a frustrated sigh as slowly as he could. He looked up to see a woman coming up the driveway behind Harriet.
Harriet turned around to see who it was and the detective saw the look of pride come across her face. She was a younger, slightly taller version of Harriet with the same precision about the way she was dressed but in a more current version with heels.
“This is my daughter, Wallis Jones. She lives right there. Saw the whole thing,” said Harriet, who was nudging Wallis forward.
“You see the menacing cars too?” asked Detective Biggs. By now, Buster had walked up behind the small cluster and seemed amused by the line of questioning. He let out a short laugh.
“Hello, Detective, thank you for taking such good care of my mother. I did see something. The lead car put down their window and I could clearly see the driver. We called you because I recognized him as someone who used to do the same thing back when Alice Walker was living with us.”
Detective Biggs glanced up at Buster whose face had grown stony and he knew his partner was back to paying close attention. Alice Walker was neatly killed with a cut to her throat in her own tidy bungalow off Patterson Avenue well over a year ago. Both the detective and Buster liked Rodney Parrish for it but as usual, there was no trace evidence and no one saw anything.
The fact that Rodney was finally killed by Secret Service walking out of a hotel after the President of the United States was assassinated only made things worse.
Frankly, Buster wasn’t really buying much of it. Sure, the man was there and the President was dead, and his throat was neatly cut, a favorite method of Rodney Parrish’s for killing someone. But Rodney was always a low-level numbers runner.
Murder was something he did mostly on a whim.
And yet, he had managed to slip in undetected into the heavily guarded hotel and with his weapon of choice and get close enough to the President’s throat. It all seemed improbable.
It was a conversation Detective Biggs and Detective Buster kept having in an endless loop trying to find some other angle or reason. Clearly, someone had hired Rodney and was willing to take a chance on a sociopath for something that had to be planned out to the minute with no backing out once it was put into motion.
That’s where they always got stumped. But stubborn cases were Detective Biggs’ favorite and he wasn’t letting it go. It bothered him though that Wallis Jones kept coming up in the middle of things.
Now, Wallis was saying she saw someone in an expensive SUV with darkened windows who had been shadowing Alice Watkins not too long before she may have run into Rodney and his knife. He stopped paying attention to the rest of the crowd even though they seemed to grow more insistent with their details.
“Did you know who he was?” asked Buster over the heads of the crowd.
“No,” said Wallis, turning toward Buster, “but I think I’d recognize him again. I can give you a fairly good description and one more thing.”
“What’s that?” asked Detective Biggs.
“I got his license plate. You can run it,” she said, holding out a piece of paper.
Detective Biggs always got a certain feeling, a kind of warmth that took over his midsection, letting him finally relax for just a moment, whenever the pieces of a case started to come together. It was always a sign of something. He took in a large gulp of air and felt the corner of his mouth fighting to smile.
He took the back of his rough hand and wiped his mouth, catching a whiff of the drug store cologne that he had put on that morning. Maynard had given it to him on the last Father’s Day and the scent made him feel better in general. Some days, it was the only thing that could make a difference.
“You could have led with this,” he said.
“Alice was like family to us,” said Wallis, ignoring the protest, “and she deserved so much more. I know you have an idea about who killed her.”
“Rodney someone,” said Harriet. Wallis knew her mother had not forgotten Rodney’s last name. It was part of her charm that she could always remember someone’s name. Lately, she was known to play the elderly card to lead someone astray.
“But he was just the hired help. Someone encouraged him to kill her. That’s who I’d like to see pay for it,” said Wallis, leaning forward. A gust of wind blew through the trees, making early Christmas decorations on a nearby tall pine tinkle in the cold air. Wallis’ eyes watered and she pulled her short navy blue cashmere coat close around the neck.
“We treat every case the same,” said Buster, smoothing down both sides of his moustache. “We’ll run down the lead.”
“What about the lurking?” asked Mrs. Parma, a worried expression on her face.
Detective Biggs looked around at the anxious and concerned faces looking at him for an answer.
“Anyone else get a license plate number for any of the other cars?” he asked, trying to put an end to the chatter. Everyone turned to look at Sandra Wilkins, standing near the back.
&nbs
p; “Why, yes,” she said, in a smooth Southern accent. “As a matter of fact, here you go,” she said, handing over a piece of purple stationery. She said the color was a small nod to the old purple door. “I got all three.”
“Nice little neighborhood watch you got going on here,” said Detective Biggs as he reached through the crowd to get the piece of paper. “Any other details you want to hand over?” He was getting annoyed with the need to ask the right question before anyone would offer up what they knew.
“That may be it, detectives,” said Harriet, turning to go.
“Mind if I tag along beside you,” said Detective Biggs, shutting his notebook.
“Ma’am,” said Buster, nodding at Wallis, who glanced up quickly as Detective Biggs let Harriet take his arm.
Once they were halfway down the driveway Detective Biggs leaned in and asked, “What do you know about Management?”
Harriet looked up and said, “Not much, dear. I left the business world to my Walter.”
“I can take it from here,” said Wallis, stepping up to take her mother’s arm. “Thank you for coming so quickly, and all the way from the city. That’s unusual, isn’t it? Please let us know if you find out anything more?”
“Of course,” said Detective Biggs, “and here’s my card if you remember anything else,” he said, holding out the card. Wallis slid the card into her pocket and thanked the two detectives before turning completely away from them.
“They know more than they’re saying,” said Buster.
“Yep, that’s kind of obvious,” said Detective Biggs. “Maybe we can get some information to trade.”
“That would be the Richmond way,” said Buster, “and those two are old Richmond.”
Chapter 8
Ned shifted in his chair, stretching out his long, bony legs. He was getting taller and the small desk he had been using since he was in fifth grade no longer let him slide underneath as easily.
His mother had painted the desk a bright red trying to make it look like it belonged in a teenager’s room. Ned promptly covered the sides with Mass Effect Andromeda and Skyrim stickers. A small poster of the Descendents band was pinned up in front of his desk, high enough to be seen above the two computer monitors that took up most of the desktop.