The Silent Hour

by Michael Koryta

  "Who hired you—"

  I shook my head.

  "You've been around," he said. "You understand that people can eventually be convinced to share information."

  "I've also seen how stupid and wasteful all that convincing becomes when it doesn't produce any information of value. I've seen the problems that can arise as a result of the effort."

  "You were a cop."

  "I was."

  "Cops tend to feel safe. Off-limits, protected. That sort of thing."

  "I've been to a few police funerals. Enough to know better."

  "Still you refuse me."

  "The name can't help you, Mr. Sanabria. My client is a nobody. Was a nobody."

  "Maybe you like me," he said. "Maybe you like having me around, want me to drop in again. That must be it, because here you have a chance to send me away for good, and you're refusing that."

  "I like you fine. You're terrific, trust me. Even so, I sure as shit don't want you around."

  "You sound a little uneasy there."

  “I am.”

  "You sound, maybe, even afraid," he said, and there was a bite in his voice, a taunt.

  "I'm afraid of my own stupidity," I answered. "There are people I'd rather not be involved with, at any level, at any time. You are one of those people."

  "That could be viewed an insult."

  "It should be viewed as a statement of fact. I don't want anything to do with you, and I don't know anything that can help you. Where we go from here, I guess you will decide and I'll deal with."

  He nodded his head very slowly. "Yes. Yes, I guess I will decide."

  Another pause, and then he got to his feet and walked toward me. Slowed just a touch when he reached me, then turned and went down the steps and opened the door and walked outside. He left the door open. I waited for a few seconds, and then I went down and closed it and turned the lock and sat on the steps. I sat there for a long time, and eventually a car engine started in the parking lot, and then it was gone, and I was alone.

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  For more than a week, it was quiet. At first I checked the locks with extra care, wore my gun when I left the apartment, and held my breath each time I turned the key in the ignition of my truck. Visits from a guy like Dominic Sanabria can make you conscious of such things.

  Nothing happened. Sanabria didn't stop by, nor did anyone operating on his behalf. Parker Harrison made no contact. I was quiet, too—despite promising Harrison that I would pass his name along to the Joshua Cantrell death investigators, I didn't make any calls. After Sanabria visited, it somehow seemed better to do nothing. Amy and I discussed the situation frequently for the first few days, but then the topic faded, and soon I was leaving the gun at home and starting the truck without pause. I'd gotten out of the mess early enough, it seemed, and no damage had been done.

  "Managed to escape yourself this time," Joe said when I called to say that seven days had passed without disaster following Sanabria's visit. "It's good that you're developing that skill, LP. Without me around, you've actually been forced to learn some common sense."

  "Aren't you proud."

  "Not particularly. If you'd had even an ordinary amount of that sense, you'd never have agreed to look at the house in the first place."

  "Harrison assured me he'd been rehabilitated. What else could I do—"

  "I've sat in on parole hearings and listened to true psychotics insist on the same thing."

  "You wouldn't release a jaywalker until he'd done five years in solitary, Joe."

  The conversation drifted away from Harrison then, on to more important things, like baseball, and eventually Joe asked after the weather.

  "Warm," I said. "The sun's shining every day, and it's warm. So why are you still in Florida— I'm pretty sure the rest of your kind has migrated back north."

  "My kind—"

  "Snowbirds, Joseph. Men who sit around the pool all day talking about their experiences fighting in Korea and working for the Truman campaign. You know, your peers."

  "My peers." Joe hated the idea of being one of those flee-for-Florida-in- winter retirees, so naturally I raised the subject during every phone call.

  "Perhaps I'm wrong, though," I said. "Perhaps you're not part of that group. Like I said, most of them are already coming back north. So if you need to stay down there this late in the year, you must be even more old and frail."

  "That must be it, yes," he said, determined not to rise to the bait this time around.

  "When are you coming back—" I asked, serious now. I'd been expecting his return sometime in April, but that month had come and gone and he remained in Florida.

  "I don't know yet. We'll see."

  "We'll see— If it's pushing eighty degrees up here it has to be, what, a hundred and sixty down there— With ninety percent humidity—"

  "Close to that, sure."

  "And summer hasn't even hit yet. Only a damn fool would stay in Florida in the summer when he could retreat to a home near the beautiful shores of Lake Erie."

  "I'll admit I'm not enjoying the weather as much lately."

  "So why not come home— What did you do, meet a woman—"

  He didn't answer.

  I said, "Joe—"

  "Could be the truth, LP. Could be the truth."

  I'd made the initial remark as a joke, but his response seemed sincere, and that silenced me. Joe's wife of thirty years, Ruth, had been dead for five now, and in that time he'd not gone on a single date. The few people who'd attempted to make introductions for him had been shut down quickly and emphatically. If Joe was actually seeing someone, it was an awfully big step for him.

  "Well, good for you," I said after the pause had gone on too long.

  "Oh, shut up with the sincerity. Makes me sick. If I were anybody else, you'd be giving me hell right now, asking which strip club I met her at."

  "A stripper— At your age— No way. I just assumed you'd done some volunteering at a home for the blind. Convinced her you were forty years younger and good-looking. Convinced her you were more like me, in other words."

  "You're neither good-looking nor forty years younger than me."

  "Close enough on both counts, grandpa. Close enough. Can I at least hear the young girl's name—"

  "Gena," he said, "and she is a few years younger than me, smart-ass."

  "You lecherous old dog. How many years— Is she even legal yet— Is this girl—"

  "Goodbye, Lincoln."

  "Oh, come on, you've got to give me more than—"

  "Talk to you soon," he said, and he was laughing as he hung up.

  I was laughing, too, and in a good mood as I went downstairs to check the mail, happy for him even if disappointed that this might delay his return. Had a smile on my face until I took the mail out of the box and saw my name written in unpleasantly familiar handwriting on the only envelope inside. P. T. Harrison, the return address said, but I didn't need that to identify the sender. I'd seen enough of his damn letters already.

  I tore the envelope open as I walked back up the stairs, shook out the contents as I stepped inside the office, dreading whatever twisted manifesto he'd decided to write this time. There was no letter, though. Nothing but a check for five hundred dollars, with thanks for your time written in the memo portion.

  I threw the envelope in the trash but kept the check in my hand for a minute. It was a simple design, blue on blue, standard font, the sort of check most banks issued cheaply. It told me nothing about Parker Harrison that I didn't already know, except that he had a checkbook. I have six thousand dollars. I'll spend every dime…

  I smoothed the check against the top of the desk and wondered if it would bounce. If not, then Harrison had done all right for himself after serving fifteen years in prison. Managing to stay on the streets for twelve years and save at least a little bit of money might not seem like much, but it was more than most of his fellow offenders managed. Twelve years was a hell of a run for some of
them. I had a friend who worked at the Cuyahoga County Jail and referred to the booking area as "the revolving door." Same faces went in and out, year after year, decade after decade. Harrison hadn't done that. From the small amount of research I'd done once he began his letter writing, I'd determined that he'd never been charged with any crime after his release, not even a traffic ticket. I didn't know where he worked or how he lived or what he did with himself, but he hadn't taken another bust. For years, he'd lived quietly and without incident. Then the remains of a former employer turned up in the woods and he'd decided to surface again, surface in my life.

  "Go away, Harrison," I said quietly. "Go away." Then I took the check and held it over the trash can, opened my fingers, and watched as it fluttered down. I wouldn't take his money. Didn't want it, didn't need it.

  For once, that was true. My former fiancee, Karen Jefferson, had mailed me a check for eighty thousand dollars after my investigation into her husband's death in the fall. She was worth millions now, could certainly afford it, but I'd thrown that check in the trash, too, and the two that followed it. Then she sent another, along with a letter insisting that I take the money. I had. Cashed the check but hadn't spent a dime of it. The money sat in a savings account, earning a pitiful interest rate, but that was enough for me. I didn't want to invest it or spend it, but I appreciated the sense of comfort it provided. The sense of freedom. If I didn't like a client, I didn't have to work for him. If I didn't like a case, I didn't have to take it. If for any reason I didn't feel like working, well, I didn't have to. For a while, anyway. That eighty grand kept me at least a few steps ahead of the thresher.

  I spent the rest of the day at my desk writing a case report. A local insurance company had hired me to conduct background investigations on candidates vying for a management job, and by the time I'd summarized the findings on all seven of them it was midafternoon and I was sick of being in the office. I locked up and left, thinking that I'd have an early workout. My energy felt wrong, though, and by the time I got to my building I'd talked myself out of exercise. I got into my truck instead and drove toward Clark Avenue in search of a drink. If you give up on the healthy decision, why not go all out in the opposite direction—

  I was headed for the Hideaway, which had reopened in April after being closed for nearly a year from fire damage. I'd found myself down there often in the past few weeks, maybe trying to recapture something that was already gone, maybe just enjoying the place. I didn't want to overthink it. The owner, Scott Draper, had been a good friend once, and maybe could be again. With Joe gone, I'd become more aware of just how many friendships had wandered off or watered down over the years. A lot of that was my fault—I'd retreated from the world for a while after losing Karen and my job. Hell, if Amy hadn't come around back then, when a kid who'd spent a lot of time at my gym was murdered and she was asked to write about it, I'd be pretty damn pathetic by now. Funny how having just one woman around is enough to make you look like a functioning member of society.

  A week or even a few days earlier, I might have noticed the car behind me while I was on the highway. When I was riding the peak of my paranoia, I'd done a good job of watching the mirrors. That was past, though, and I didn't pay attention to the cars behind me as I burned up 1-71 toward downtown, didn't register any of them until I pulled onto the Fulton Road exit ramp. Even then, it was a cursory thing, just an awareness that I'd been one of two cars leaving the highway.

  When I turned off Fulton and onto Clark and the car stayed with me, I finally gave it a few seconds of study, memories of Dominic Sanabria's visit not completely purged yet. It was a Honda Pilot, newer model, red. Not the sort of thing you'd expect a mob enforcer to drive. I put my eyes back on the road and pulled into a parking space on the street a half block from the Hideaway. The Pilot kept going. Nothing to worry about.

  By the time I was out of the car, though, I saw that the Pilot's driver had just pulled into a spot across the street, not far away. I stood on the sidewalk and watched as the door opened and a tall guy with blond hair stepped out and walked in my direction.

  He came across the street and up the sidewalk without missing a step, even when he realized I was standing there watching him. Walked right up to me, lifted a hand as if he needed to catch my attention, and said, "Lincoln Perry—"

  He didn't match the mob-enforcer mold any better than his car. Tall, maybe six three or four, with broad, knobby shoulders under his starched blue shirt. Something about him made me think of a baseball pitcher. He moved well but without any sense of speed or agility, seemed like the sort of guy who'd be good at most sports despite not being particularly athletic. There was a shadow of beard along his jaw, darker than his sandy hair. Light blue eyes.

  "Why were you following me—" I said.

  "You're Lincoln—"

  "You know I am. You were following me."

  He held up his hands, palms spread. "Sorry, man. Didn't mean to freak you out. I'd just stopped by the gym and was going down to your office when I saw you get into your truck. I was already in my car, so I just pulled out after you."

  "I've never seen you before in my life," I said. "So how did you know that was me, and that it was my truck—"

  He smiled. "The lady who was in the gym office looked out at your truck to see if it was still there before she sent me up to your office."

  "And your natural inclination was to follow me—"

  "Actually, yeah. I'm a PI. You should know how that goes."

  "A PI—"

  "Name's Ken Merriman. You the sort that likes to see ID—" He reached for his wallet, but I waved him off.

  "Don't worry about it, Ken. I'm a little on edge lately. Not your fault."

  "No problem—and, hey, give me some credit. If I'd been tailing you I could have done a better job than that." He laughed and nodded in the direction of the Hideaway. "You working or grabbing a beer—"

  "The latter."

  "Well, why don't you let me buy a round, and I'll try to talk you into doing the former."

  "That kind of visit, huh—"

  "That kind of visit," he said, starting toward the bar.

  "Where are you from—" I asked, falling in step beside him. I knew most of the private investigators in the area, by name if not by face, but neither Ken Merriman's name or face was familiar.

  "Pittsburgh," he said.

  "Keep your voice down, man. People in this neighborhood hear Pittsburgh, they turn violent. It's the home of the Steelers, you know."

  "The proud home," he agreed as we reached the front steps.

  "I also haven't worked on anything that involved Pittsburgh in a long time," I said, reaching for the door handle. "So whatever brings you up here must have a local tie."

  "It did once, at least."

  "Did—"

  "About twelve years ago."

  I was holding the door open for him, but he stopped on the top step, looking at my face.

  "Twelve years—" My voice was hollow.

  He nodded.

  "There's a name I don't want to hear you say," I said.

  "Which one— Cantrell or Sanabria—" He winked at me and walked into the bar.

  * * *

  Chapter Eight

  Draper wasn't behind the bar, but I didn't care anymore—Ken Merriman had just obliterated my plan for a relaxed evening. I followed him as he walked to the back of the narrow dining room and slid into a booth.

  "What do you want to drink—" I said.

  "No waitress—"

  "Not till five. What do you want—"

  "Guinness would be good."

  He handed me a ten, and I walked back to the bar and got his Guinness and a Moosehead for myself, then came back and sat down across from him. There'd been a few guys at the bar, but we were the only people in the dining room.

  I lifted my beer and nodded at him. "Here's to unwanted visitors from Pittsburgh."

  "Come on, don't say that. Here's to fellow PIs, wouldn't that be friendlier�
��" He grinned and lifted his glass. "To Sam Spade."

  "To Sam Spade," I agreed, then touched my bottle off his glass and took a drink. He was a damned likable guy, easygoing and good-humored, but that didn't make the purpose of his visit appealing.

  "I wish you'd just made a phone call so I could've told you not to waste your time," I said, "but as long as you made the drive, I'll tell you what I can—nothing. Somebody asked me to look into the property, see where the owners had gone. I was dangerously uninformed and had no idea that what was left of one owner was in a coroner's lab somewhere and that the other owner was related to Lenny Strollo's best pal."

  Merriman took a drink and shook his head. "Nah, Strollo wasn't that tight with Dominic. Acquainted with him, sure, colleagues you might say, but not that tight."

  "What a wonderful reassurance."

  He smiled again. "You sound damn edgy about this, Lincoln."

  "You would be, too, had Dominic Sanabria paid a visit to your home."

  "By all accounts, Sanabria has settled down these days. Living on the straight and narrow. Nary a complaint."

  "Be that as it may, there were a few complaints in years past, and some of them involved car bombs."

  He acknowledged that with a nod and drank some more of his beer. "Did he threaten you—"

  "Not overtly, but he also went out of his way to make sure the notion was in my head. It wasn't a relaxing conversation."

  "How do you think he got wind of you so fast—"

  "The attorney."

  "Anthony Child— That makes sense."

  "Of course it does. He called you, too."

  He wagged his finger at me. "Wrong. Nice try, but wrong."