by Linda Ladd
“Yes, ma’am. But it’s at home.”
“Well, you better run along home and get it. You’ll get this back when I see it with my own two little official eyes. Knife, too. If I don’t see it, I’ll just have the St. Louis PD pay you a call. Got that, sweet lips?”
Sonny Randazzo said, “Now, let’s all just try to get along. No need for all this nasty kinda talk.”
“Get the hell out of here,” Claire told the big guy. “You’re not a good role model for the kids who fight here.”
Huge Thug attempted a tough look. “You better watch yourself. Someday you gonna run up against the wrong fella.”
“Oh, is that right? Well, tell me, are you the wrong fella?”
Then he had enough sense to drop his eyes and the bravado and slink off through the crowd. Claire took a minute to unload the guy’s weapon and stick it in her waistband at the small of her back. She put the knife in her coat pocket. Extra lethal weapons always came in handy.
“Thanks for scarin’ off our security guard.”
“Maybe it’s time to get a new security guard, Dazz. Maybe an off-duty police officer with some couth. Your guy’s a real sleazebag who obviously gets off molesting women.”
Inside the heavy steel door, there was a long white-tiled hallway and the distinct odor of rampaging-young-male-fighter testosterone. Randazzo turned to the left, and Claire followed him past three closed doors. The wide corridor also smelled like co-mingled sweat and damp showers and disinfectant and the aforementioned potent male hormone. When they reached a door that stood wide open, Randazzo walked right in. Claire followed him and found four young guys, just kids really, sitting there in various states of undress but all decent enough for her to interview without being charged for child molestation. They all stopped talking and stared at her as if she were an alien creature come to take them posthaste far beyond the Andromeda galaxy.
“Here they are, detective. Just don’t stress ’em out. They all gotta fight later tonight so don’t need to get ’em all upset and nervous.”
“I need a private place to talk to them, and I want to see them one at a time. I don’t do group sessions.”
“You can use that office over there. I got DVDs of them in action, too, if you want to see them fightin’.”
“Yeah, I do. Any chance I can take those DVDs home with me for a private viewing?”
“Sure thing. They’re $9.99 each. We take credit cards, all of ’em.”
“Then maybe I’ll just borrow them for a spell. Or, if push comes to shove, I’ll get you a nice little signed warrant. I’m not about to spend my own money to watch juveniles beat each other up for my perverse enjoyment. Can’t imagine why.”
“To each his own.”
“Yeah. As long as you get your fifty percent cut, right?”
“Okay, okay, I know you don’t like me much. You do what you gotta do. Just don’t mess up my kids’ heads. I’ll get you the first one.”
Claire walked inside the small adjoining office and glanced around. It had an old gray metal desk with nothing on it, except for three bent paper clips. There was one fluorescent light in the middle of the ceiling. It kept blinking and almost going out. Very similar in appearance to aforementioned midnight alien visitations. The boys were really gonna be spooked. She sat down behind the desk and took out her notepad and Precise pen. There was one scratched-up folding chair on the other side. There was nothing on the walls, unless you counted the black scuff marks and some rather inventive graffiti scribbled in red ink. Or maybe it was blood from uppercut wounds. No other furniture. No windows. Just a lovely little place to relax and meditate and sweat young fighters until they told her the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
The first kid showed up about two minutes later. He stopped just inside the room and smiled shyly. He was naked except for a pair of rather oversized dark blue boxing trunks that hung to his knees. Barefoot and gaunt thin, but with hard, compact, well-developed muscles. Dark brown hair, cut short, with a deep widow’s peak in the center of his forehead. He stood there like a figure on top of an ultra-featherweight boxing trophy until she broke the ice.
“Please come in and shut the door.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He quickly did what she asked but stood just inside the threshold. Obviously, this was a guy who needed step-by-step directions. She wondered if he required a Google map to find his way home.
“You can sit down now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What’s your name?”
“Doyle Carmichael, ma’am. Nice to meet you. I really do respect police officers. I think I’d like to be one someday. One just like you.”
Oh, brother. Polite, clean-cut, as ingratiating as Eddie Haskell on that old TV show Leave It to Beaver, and she was pretty damn sure he was phony, phony, and even more phony. Probably as mean as a gar, too. “Tell me, Mr. Carmichael, are you really mean to most people, maybe even a big bully? Am I right, or am I wrong?”
His eyes reacted. Noticeably, too. Shock, maybe? But his sweet little smile did not. “Oh, no, ma’am. I ain’t no big bully. I just like to make money so I can buy my mama nice things.”
“Is that right? What kind of things?”
“Oh, just stuff she’s always wanted down deep in her heart, ma’am.”
Claire had a fairly good idea that Doyle was now envisioning getting Claire’s head in a headlock and punching her in the face until it looked as raw and unappetizing as three-week-old ground beef. A kind of thrashing with which he was probably quite familiar. She had seen her share of psychopaths and she had a feeling this kid fit the bill. Too bad that Black wasn’t there to give his professional opinion. She was curious to watch this kid’s fight tapes and see how he performed inside the ring. See if he reminded her of Lucifer, or some other dastardly demon. Maybe he was for real, though, just taking good care of his mama like a good little son should. Yeah, right. This kid was messed up. She’d bet her gun on it. But not the shiny new Glock 19. She loved it too much. She should have loaded it and brought it along, too, but she had to sight it in first.
“That’s just so nice of you, Doyle. Spending your hard-earned cash on your sweet mama. We need more kids like you in this world. What did you get her the last time you bought her something special?”
Carmichael’s eyes narrowed a tad; his earnest smile did not waver. Yep, a baby psycho in the works, sans any conscience whatsoever. Take it to the bank.
“Why, ma’am, I got her a big white vase full of red roses. Dozen of ’em. She loves flowers. She grows them out in our yard. She’s got, why, I bet, she’s got a hundred of them pretty rosebushes that she tends.”
“If she’s got a hundred rosebushes in her yard, why do you need to buy her roses?”
Uh-oh, False Smiley wasn’t adept enough yet to answer pointed, and yes, trick questions. He couldn’t come up with a quick answer this time, but he’d get there eventually. But enough about his future criminal proclivities when she’d probably have to arrest him for serial murder. She was definitely going to remember his face, though, for when she scanned the Most Wanted websites.
“Okay, Mr. Carmichael, enough pleasantries, let’s get down to brass tacks.”
“Yes, ma’am. But just so you know, she ain’t raisin’ no red roses. They’s all white and yellow.”
Not exactly quick as lightning but a fairly viable answer. “Well, now, that explains everything, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He grinned and looked sweeter than a mason jar full of golden honey.
“Did you fight at the Lake Inn the other night?”
“No, no, ma’am. Don’t go down there no more. That place is scary weird, man.”
“Scary weird?”
“That’s right. Guys go missin’ over there. Some guys call it the fight of no return. ’Cuz it is.”
Okay, now they were getting somewhere. “Why don’t you elaborate for me, sir?”
“So what’s that supposed to mean?”
�
�Tell me more about those disappearances.”
“Okay, first time I ever went down there? You know, the guy who won that night? He just flat out went missin’. Nobody ever saw him again. Just won that fight, collected the purse, left the building, and poof. He’s probably rotting somewhere out in the deep woods.”
“What was his name?”
“Morris Caplan, but everybody called him Moose.”
“When did he go missing?”
“I guess it was about two years ago. He was good, too. Won ten or more matches. That’s the last time I let Dazz set me up down there. That hotel is cursed.”
“Anybody else go missing on the circuit?”
“Well, nobody’s seen Paulie Parker since he won down there. That why you’re here? He dead, or somethin’?”
“Do you know something about Parker that I need to know?” Like when and how you beat him to death, she thought.
“Nope, but I can read between the lines as good as the next one. He’s dead, right?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Bummer. I kinda liked him, even though he usually beat the crap outta me and never wanted to hang out and have a beer, or nothin’.”
Claire asked him all the necessary questions, and then he left, still smiling, probably planning to surprise his mama with more roses. Black ones, perhaps.
Next up was Malachi Fitch aka Smooth Operator/Sex Addict/ Casanova in His Own Mind. He was big and strong with blue eyes and hair long enough and blond enough to give him free passage on a Viking ship. Oh, yeah, Malachi was a very handsome dude and spent most of the interview coming on to Claire. Claire had a feeling that whenever he had access to a mirror, he probably just stared wonderingly at himself and fluffed out his hair and congratulated his good genes. He also had a bright blue tattoo on his left forearm that said Lick me. I Taste Good. All written in fancy script inside a red heart. Cute as a button, yes, but a big-time whackadoodle.
His first words proved her initial assessment to be true. “How old are you, detective?”
“Too old for you, Malachi.”
“Call me Mal. I like it better.”
“You know what mal means in Spanish, kid?”
“No, what?”
“Bad.”
“Good. I like that. I am bad. So bad that I’m good.”
“Right.”
“Know what? I like older women like you. They like me, too. I’ve had a lot of them, already. I think you’d like me, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t know what you mean. Go ahead, tell me what you mean in clear and precise English. Remember, of course, that I am a police officer with the power to slap you in cuffs and lock you up. And yes, throw away the key forever.”
“I do respect you. I like cops, and you are cop-alicious, to be sure, with that blond hair and those big blue eyes and that hot bod to die for. Those cuffs sound like a real turn-on. Been there, done that.” He was too antsy to sit down, so he moseyed around the room, looking at things, which included the desk and the door and the trio of paper clips because there wasn’t anything else to look at. Finally, he slouched down in the folding chair across from her. “I like to screw women, that’s all I can tell you. And the ladies like it, too. So would you, trust me. I could show you the time of your life. What’d you say?”
“How old are you, Mr. Fitch? I can’t really tell by your sophomoric remarks.”
He laughed. “Twenty-one. How old are you? Not that it matters. You are so damn hot that I’m breakin’ out in a sweat just lookin’ at ya.”
“I do believe that you are being disrespectful to a police officer. Something about that last remark, I guess. I’m not sure why, but it sounded a little off to me.”
“You’re too cute to be a police officer. You oughta be a stripper down in Branson at the North Pole Bar, maybe. I’d come. I’d pay to see you naked. And man, the thought of you twistin’ around on one of those poles in an itty bitty elf suit. I’m already reactin’, if you know what I mean.”
Unfortunately, she knew what he meant. “Didn’t know they had strippers in Branson. It’s a pretty clean-cut place down there with all those senior citizen tours and family Christmas shows. I’ll have to alert my colleagues at Branson PD to pay the North Pole Bar an official visit.”
“Come on, officer. They got strippers everywhere. You know that, don’t ya? Man, I just can’t quit thinkin’ of you naked and all slicked up with baby oil. Whoa, momma.”
“You’re not very bright, are you?”
“Don’t need bright to get what I want.”
Claire only sighed. This boy was also headed for a jail cell. Probably one next door to Psycho Baby. Probably in the near future and for sexual assault. Time to nip his easily stimulated hormones in the bud. “These nasty sexual remarks make you look juvenile and foolish, childish even. You probably ought to edit what you say before it comes out of your mouth.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’ll remember that.”
“How well are you acquainted with Paulie Parker, Mr. Fitch?”
“He beat me up twice. I tried to avoid matches against him after that. I like to win. And all my girlfriends don’t like me to get my handsome face all bruised and cut up. They usually think black eyes are sexy, though. I got lots of girls, more’n you can shake a stick at. None a them complained about me sweet-talking them till you.”
“Ever thought about thinking with your head, instead?”
Laughing, he said, “You’re a firecracker, ain’t ya? I like that in a woman.”
“Sounds to me like you like anything in a woman.”
“Pretty much.”
“Where were you two nights ago?”
“Uh . . . oh, yeah, I was with a hooker down there in Lebanon, Missouri. I stopped at a big truck stop to gas up on the way over here. She was good, too. Well worth the money I had to spend.”
“Okay, Malachi, spare me the sex talk. It’s not working. Understand me? You’re not my type. In fact, you’re boring me.”
“Your loss.”
“Where are you from?”
“Up around Lake of the Ozarks.”
Great, she had a jail cell with his name already on it. “Where at the lake?”
“We got a farm out north of Camdenton. You wanna come see me sometime? I got some big brothers around your age. They’d like to show you the ropes.”
Okay, maybe this kid had been hit in the head too many times and couldn’t discuss but one subject. She would just have to keep him focused. “Paulie Parker’s from up around there, too. Did you know him before you started fighting?”
“Nah. Everybody up there stays to themselves. You know, sort of clannish.”
“So you don’t know the Parkers who live in that area?”
“Nope. We done here?”
First mention of the Parker family, and he was ready to forget coming on to her and fly the coop. Interesting. She had a feeling that the Parkers and the Fitches absolutely knew each other and not in a good way. “I’ll tell you when we’re done here, you got that, Mal?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He kept his eyes steadfastly on Claire’s mouth. What a creepy little boy. It appeared that Randazzo was rubbing off a little too much on his impressionable fighters.
She tried to discuss some of the other guys on the circuit. Malachi Fitch didn’t seem interested in them. It appeared his sole purpose in life was sleeping with women or tossing out sexual innuendoes. And, yes, it was extremely tiresome. She took down his address and itinerary and told him that she and her partner might pay him a call. He said to ditch the partner and he’d show her a good time. Jeez. She wanted to belt the kid. She might have, if he had been older, and she hadn’t been there on police business.
Number three’s name was Frankie Velez. He was the Hispanic fighter to whom Shaggy wanted her to deliver his message. He was also the opponent who lost the fight to Paulie at the Lake Inn. But apparently he was ready to rumble some more. Frankie’s bummed up face bore witness to his loss to Parker. He was big
and muscular and pretty intimidating to look at until you saw his major tattoo. It said I love my mama. He appeared to be a lot more intelligent and articulate than Numbers One and Two, however.
“How old are you, Frankie?”
“Twenty.”
“Been fighting long?”
“Two years.”
“Like it?”
“Oh, yes, sir. I mean ma’am. I just love to fight. It’s just something inside me that I was born with. Love it. I guess I don’t have some kind of chemical inside me, or somethin’, you know, that makes me feel pain, or somethin’. I just don’t feel the blows rainin’ down on me like most guys do. I get the bruises, though, but when I’m fightin’ inside that ring, it’s just the coolest thing in the whole USA. My brothers beat me up every single day of my life, but I never felt it much. They stopped when I got big enough for payback. But we’re all still real close. The whole family is.”
“Where are you from, Frankie?”
“Omaha, Nebraska, originally.”
“Where do you live now?”
“In Lebanon.”
“Lots of action over there?”
“Fightin’, you mean? Oh, yeah. I pretty much dominate, though. I’m big. Tough, too.” He proved it by flexing some serious biceps, which were indeed rather impressive for his age.
“Do you know Paulie Parker?”
“Yeah, I liked Paulie just fine. Too bad about him. You know who got him yet?”
“We’re working on it. Do you know anybody that didn’t get along with him?”
“Yeah, pretty much everybody, ’cause he always beat them. He got the best of me just the other night. But he did it fair and square. And you know what? He hung around that night after the fight to make sure I was all right before he headed home. Not many of the guys’d do that.”
“Sounds like a pretty nice kid.”
“Yeah, he was. He was just a lot better than the rest of us. More finesse. Just really tough and had a lot of heart. Know what I mean? Didn’t ever say much, in or out of the ring, but he just took care of business, quick and efficientlike. He kinda exploded out at you all of a sudden before you could get your fists up. He’ll be missed. He was my major competition. Poor guy.”