“C.W. never mentioned a bust of any kind to you? Drug or otherwise?”
“Nope,” Laurel said. “But she could be mighty close-mouthed about her personal affairs, especially if they didn’t jibe with her plans for Bill and her. All she talked about the last time we spoke was the way Bill’s mom was jacking him around. C.W. said Jewel’d been on Bill’s case all week long.”
“On his case about what?” I said.
“The baby, I think. Jewel’s kind of a weirdo. I mean, she made C.W. look like a piker when it came to being self-righteous.”
“You’ve met her?”
“Once, when she and Bill’s dad came to visit.”
“What did she look like?” I said.
“You know the little picture of Dolley Madison on those fried pies you get at the Stop-N-Go? That’s what she looks like—a round, pretty face and big, dimpled cheeks and lots of curls.”
That sounded like a fair description of the woman in the photograph I’d found in Parks’s desk.
“She looks sweet as candy,” Laurel went on. “But, good Lord, she’s got a wicked tongue! She just about run everybody ragged trying to please her—Bill, and her own husband, and poor C.W. worst of all. Nothing was good enough for her. Nobody did things right. The food was lousy. The way C.W. kept house was lousy. The way she dressed was whorish. Jeez, you could kind of understand how Bill got to be the way he is just by watching her operate. I mean, you could never please somebody like her, no matter how hard you tried. And what made it even worse was that she kept reciting chapter and verse to prove her points. Like it wasn’t enough for her to say that C.W. was a bad housekeeper. She said it was sinful to be a bad housekeeper. I mean Jewel saw everything as a sign of grace. And in her book, poor C.W. was as damned as they come.”
“I guess C.W.’s pregnancy must have been hard for Jewel to swallow,” I said.
“She didn’t know about it until last week,” Laurel said. “They kept that a deep secret—them not being married yet.”
“How did Jewel find out?”
“I think Bill must have told her. He and C.W.’d been fighting about it so much, he must’ve forgotten himself and blurted it out. It was certainly on his mind.”
“Why?” I said.
“He never wanted her to have a baby, for one thing. And then C.W. went into Deaconess for this series of tests, and the doctors found out that something was wrong with the fetus.”
“Do you know what was wrong?”
She didn’t answer me directly. “C.W. acted like it was a shameful thing, like it was her fault that the baby wasn’t right. And Bill—he acted the same way. He was furious with C.W. Like the whole thing was a judgment on her and on him. He got her so upset that she even thought of having an abortion. But Reverend Dice talked her out of it.”
Dice was another name on my list. From what Laurel had said, I assumed that the two doctors, with the initials P and A, were C.W.’s obstetricians.
“You ought to talk to the Reverend,” Laurel said, “if you want to know what was really going on with Bill. I mean, she told that man everything.”
“Who is he?”
“He’s a lay minister,” Laurel said. “A lot of the players’ wives attend a prayer group that he runs. They just love him. He’s so sweet and gossipy. He’s got them doing all sorts of community projects. And they’re building a special chapel for the team and stuff like that. I guess C.W. went to him at first ‘cause it was kind of prestigious. But after she had her car accident, she said the Reverend was a real comfort. And it was a true fact that he changed her outlook. She got religious as all get-out once she started seeing him.”
“She was supposed to see him today,” I said. “You wouldn’t know what about, would you?”
“The baby, I guess,” Laurel said. “She goes to him with just about every problem she has.”
I wondered if she had gone to him after the drug arrest. I wondered if that’s what had sent her to him in the first place, the guilt she had felt over betraying her man. Even if it wasn’t, it was clear that she had plenty of other reasons to seek comfort—the baby, Jewel, Bill himself. Judging by the picture that Laurel had painted, C.W. had spent her last week trying to shore up what must have seemed, even to her, like a hopeless situation. And once Bill found out that she’d betrayed him to the DEA, it had become a lethal situation.
I had one last thing to check out with Laurel before I called Petrie and arranged to pay her off. I opened the manila folder and took out the rap sheet on Candy Kane.
“Do you know her?” I said, handing her the photograph of Candy.
Laurel frowned. “Sure, I know her. It’s Barb Melcher.”
“The rap sheet says her name is Candy Kane.”
“That was just her stage name,” Laurel explained. “We all used them when we danced in the clubs. I called myself Misty Love.” Laurel studied the bruises on Barb’s face. “What happened to her?”
“She was beaten up. According to the rap sheet, she was worked over by Bill Parks, last New Year’s Eve. Apparently she didn’t want to press charges against him, but our friend Phil Clayton filed an assault count, anyway. Bill was scheduled to go to trial on the charge at the end of training camp.”
“That’s gotta be a mistake,” Laurel said, and handed the picture back to me.
“Why is it a mistake?”
“Well, for one thing, C.W. and Barb were best friends. I mean, they were like sisters. They’d grown up together in Lexington. Moved to Newport together. Shared the same apartment at the Caesar, until C.W. moved into the ranch house with Bill. They’d do anything for each other. And for another thing, Barb and C.W. were together on New Year’s Eve, ‘cause that was the night that C.W. told Bill she was pregnant, and she wanted Barb around to lend her moral support. There’s just no way that Bill would lay hands on that girl in front of C.W., especially right after C.W. told him about the baby.”
“Maybe Barb made a move on him,” I said, playing devil’s advocate. “Maybe they both got a little smashed on New Year’s Eve, and Bill and Barb got into a fight.”
“No way,” Laurel said, shaking her head. “Barb was just a little bit of a thing. She never would have fought with Bill.”
“Even if Bill had attacked C.W. for some reason? Maybe he lost his temper after she told him she was pregnant.”
Laurel chewed her lip. “If Bill attacked C.W., Barb might have tried to step in between them. It’s all kind of beside the point, though.”
“Why is that?” I said.
“The cops couldn’t make the charge stick, that’s why. Don’t you remember the car accident I told you about? The one where C.W.’s friend got killed and C.W. got so soulful afterward?”
“I remember.”
“That was Barb, Harry. She was the one who got killed. She’s dead. She died that very night. They were out on Donaldson Road when they hit an ice slick.” Laurel shook her head sadly. “I don’t rightly see how they could press a charge against Bill with a dead person as the only witness.”
I didn’t rightly see how they could, either.
20
I TOLD Laurel that I was going out to get her a helping of her favorite food—pizza. And I did stop at Trotta’s on Queen City to pick one up, but not before I’d stopped downtown to pay Al Foster a personal visit. I’d taken the Candy Kane rap sheet along to keep me company.
It was close to nine when I parked the Pinto in the WGUC lot. Even though the sun had set, it was still hot, and the cops were suffering, along with everyone else. The ones I saw in the brickyard wore their blue serge like coats of mail. So did the desk sergeant inside the door, a tough little Irishman named O’Malley whom I knew from my days on the DA’s staff. He had an ancient rotating fan on the counter in front of him. The fan blade clanged against the protective metal cage each time the fan swiveled to the right. O’Malley stared at the contraption murderously. It clanged, and he grimaced.
“It’s like a toothache,” he said. “I’d like t
o stick my finger in to make the hurting stop.”
“Why don’t you turn it off?” I asked.
He eyed me darkly. “I had to pull rank to get the goddamn thing in the first place. It’s an Underwood.” He pointed to a sooty, rusted tag on the fan’s base. “Underwood, for chrissake! They make deviled ham, don’t they?”
I laughed. “That was after they got out of the fan business.”
“Get lost, Stoner,” O’Malley said. “Before I arrest you for loitering.”
He tossed me a visitor’s tag. I pinned it to my shirt, walked down the hall to the stairwell, and went up to the second floor. I found Al Foster sitting alone in his tiny office, staring morbidly at the lit end of one of his Tareytons. Another ancient rotating fan was spinning listlessly on his desk, and the single office window had been thrown open to the twilight. The thatch of black curls that was all that was left of Al’s hairline was beaded with sweat. Sweat was rolling down his long, grooved cheeks. A drop of it hung like a Christmas tree ornament from the tip of his nose.
“Hot?” I said.
He rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger and smiled. “No, Harry,” he said softly. “But it was good of you to ask.”
I pulled up a chair and sat down across from him. Al kept rolling the cigarette back and forth until the paper dissolved between his sweaty fingers and the livid ash fell sparking into the tin ashtray on his desk.
“You got it wet, Al,” I said. “That happens when you get them wet.”
“You think I should wear gloves, maybe?” he said, looking up at me.
“Or use a towel,” I said.
“It’s a thought.”
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out another cigarette. “I don’t hear from you in six months. And now I get a call and a visit on the same day. So what’s on your mind, Harry, this fine summer evening?”
I laid the folder on his desk. “Billy Parks.”
Foster nodded judiciously and popped the cigarette between his lips. He flicked a lighter, and the tobacco flared and began to smoke. “What’s your interest in him? You working for the Cougars now?”
“For Hugh Petrie.”
“No kiddin’,” he said. “Gee, that’s swell for you.”
“Parks skipped out of training camp last Monday, and I was hired to find him.”
“I guess this one isn’t going to go in your résumé then, huh, Harry?” Foster said dryly.
“We thought he might be running from a warrant, Al.”
“He sure is—now,” Foster said.
“This warrant was from last December.”
“December?” Al said, plucking the cigarette from his mouth. “We had a warrant on Bill Parks from last year?”
“You’ve had four of them on Billy.”
“No shit. What was he charged with?”
“Billy liked to beat up his women.”
“If it was multiple choice, I think I could’ve guessed,” Foster said.
“Parks has apparently got some pull down here at the plant. The first three charges were dropped before he got to court.”
“And the last one?”
“He was scheduled to go to trial at the end of training camp.”
“Well, four is the charm,” Al said. “They’ll give you two if you’re a first-stringer. Three if you’re white and can hustle up a couple of season tickets. But four is pushing it. Tim Williams—he could get four. Farnsworth, too. But Parks . . .” He shook his head. “He’s defense, and that weighs against you in the glamor department.” Foster took the cigarette from his mouth and sighted down it, aiming it at me like a dart. “If I may be so bold as to ask, why do you give a shit about an assault charge at this point? Parks is wanted for aggravated homicide. What the hell difference does it make if he beat up someone six months ago?”
“There was something wrong with the case,” I said. “Something that might have had a bearing on yesterday’s murder.”
“What kind of bearing?” Foster said with interest.
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
“Quit playing games, Harry,” Al said irritably.
I handed him the folder and said, “Read the arrest report, the one on Candy Kane.”
He reached over and pulled the folder to his side of the desk, dribbling some ashes on it in the process. He brushed the ashes off and read through the Xeroxes.
“So?” he said when he was done. “It seems pretty cut-and-dried.”
“Except for the fact that Candy Kane was killed in a car accident on the night of the arrest. She’s been dead for six months.”
“Oh, that’s bad,” Foster said, flipping the folder shut. “That’s bad when your star witness is dead.”
“And I’ll tell you something else. Your friend Clayton doesn’t want me poking around in the murder case. He threatened me last night.”
“He’s a bad man, Clayton,” Foster said seriously. “I already told you that. He made this case?”
I nodded. “He made both this case and the Parks drug arrest. What do you think?”
“No body, no crime. That’s the law, isn’t it?”
“That’s the law.”
“With the Candy Kane girl dead, you know as well as I do the DA wouldn’t press a charge unless Bill had signed a confession. Since confessing to an assault rap is no day in the country, you gotta figure that Bill had some powerful motivation to stand for the charge. What would make a guy like him do that, especially since he’d weaseled out of the same thing three times before?”
I already knew the answer. I just wanted to see if Al came to the same conclusion. “Clayton had something else on him. And Parks confessed to the lesser charge to avoid prosecution on the big enchilada.”
Al stubbed the cigarette out in the tin ashtray. “Sure he had something else on him. And we both know what that was. The drug bust. There was never going to be a trial on this assault thing. It was all arranged. Your boy would cop a plea in closed chambers and get a suspended sentence. In return he agreed to testify before the grand jury. That’s probably why Clayton didn’t want you nosing around. It’s kind of embarrassing when you blackmail a guy into copping out on assault, and the guy goes out the next day and assaults someone to death.”
“Especially when he murders the person who helped you make the drug case in the first place.”
“And what does that mean?” Foster asked.
“Clayton had some help in setting Parks up for the drug bust. The girl Parks killed, C.W. O’Hara, was working for him. And the girl Parks allegedly assaulted was C.W.’s best friend.”
Foster snickered. “That’s sweet, isn’t it? And right up Phil’s alley. Looks like that son-of-a-bitch Parks got shafted royally. They must have all been in on it. They get him angry enough to attack the girlfriend. C.W. calls the cops. Phil shows up, and finds drugs on Bill—just like he knew he would. And busts him.”
“It does look that way, doesn’t it?”
“Tell you what, Harry,” Al said. “You leave that rap sheet with me, and I’ll see that it gets in the right hands. You might want to talk to George DeVries too. He’s got access to the DEA files. And you know George.”
I laughed. “I know George,” I said.
******
Laurel and I spent the rest of the night in. I brought the pizza home, after I’d finished with Al, and she and I ate it out of the box on the living room floor. Around midnight, she started getting ready for bed. I’d already talked to Petrie by then, and Laurel had spoken to Stacey, who had leaped at the chance to go on a free vacation. Two first-class tickets to Hawaii and $2,250 in traveler’s checks were to be waiting for them at the airport.
I could tell from the look in Laurel’s eye that she expected me to make love to her before we went to sleep. Watching her strip down to her socks, I got the urge, all right. Moving sexily about the room, she reminded me a little of Nastassja Kinski, although Laurel wasn’t quite that smashingly good-looking.
Even thoug
h I wanted to screw her and she was ready to screw me, I held back. The sheer rapacity with which she’d extorted the two thousand dollars from me had left a bad taste. Of course, I knew I was being a hypocrite—that I had painted her into a very tight and nasty corner and that she had responded instinctually to being trapped. I suppose it was the instinct itself—the naked greed—that had put me off, although I wasn’t sure why, since she’d evinced it on just about every occasion I’d been around her. Moreover, what she had told me would prove useful. In fact, it already had, with Al. I just didn’t like the price she’d made me pay to get her help.
It didn’t take Laurel long to pick up on the change in my attitude. Her sensors were finely tuned to rejection. When I didn’t respond to her advances, she sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, crossed her legs, put a hand under her chin, and stared at me with a melancholy smile.
“You ever been poor, Harry?” she said.
“I’ve been down and out a few times.”
“It’s no fun, is it?” she said. “To be afraid to open the mailbox, for fear you’re going to find another bill in there that you can’t pay. Or to be afraid to open the door at noon for fear that it’s a certified letter from some collection agency that’s about to take you to court. To be afraid to answer your phone in a normal tone of voice, for fear that the dun on the other end will recognize you and start jacking you around for dough. To be afraid to drive around the streets, ‘cause there are warrants out on traffic tickets that you couldn’t afford to pay. You ever been that poor?”
“No,” I said softly.
“Well, I have,” she said. “And I don’t ever intend to be again. I’ve got to stand on my hind legs in this world, Harry, ‘cause I’ve learned the hard way that no one else is going to be there to catch me when I fall.”
I got up and walked over to the bed.
“No!” she said, holding up both hands to stop me. “I don’t fuck anyone for charity. And I don’t expect anyone to do that to me.”
She lay back on the mattress, pulled the sheet over her, and curled up in a ball.
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