“What’s that got to do with me?”
“This morning she left me a message saying she knew who murdered both Brown and a second man. Her name was Amy Lamb; she was C. C. Monroe’s receptionist, the one you couldn’t get past. The second man was Dennis Thoreau. He was C. C. Monroe’s ex-boyfriend.”
“Dennis Thoreau?”
“If you’re not careful, I mean real careful, the cops are going to blame you for everything. You have to give yourself up.”
Stupid, stupid, stupid. I should never have told him about Thoreau and Amy. I knew it was stupid the minute I did it. Five minutes ago Sherman was a frightened, beaten man. Now he was desperate. Stupid, Taylor. Stupid.
“I ain’t gonna give myself up. I ain’t goin’ back to prison,” he said loud enough for several heads to turn.
“What’s going on?” one of the heads wanted to know.
“Counselor, talk to your client,” I told Cynthia.
“I ain’t goin’ back, Miss Grey,” Sherman told her.
“I think Taylor is right …”
“No.”
“I can help you if you give yourself up. There’s nothing I can do while you’re running.”
Sherman shook his head violently. “No!” he shouted and sprang to his feet, a bird flushed out of the corn, trying to outfly the shotguns. I reached for his arm; I have no idea what I expected to accomplish. He pushed my hand away and slipped the Taurus out of his pocket and pointed it at me. It had a satin nickel finish and a Brazilian walnut grip. I stared at it for what seemed like a long time.
Sherman tried to run for the door. Cynthia intercepted him. No one else said a word, no one else moved.
Cynthia ignored the gun and held Sherman’s arms, talking to him softly. He maneuvered around her in a kind of bucolic dance, then slipped past the bouncer and out the metal door. Cynthia, looking defeated, returned to the booth and sat across from me. I finished the Pig’s Eye. It was tepid.
“Now what?” I asked her.
“He said he’d meet me tomorrow morning. Nine o’clock. I’ll take him in.”
“If he shows.”
“Yeah, if he shows.”
“Don’t waste your time, Counselor,” I warned her. “This guy has a one-way ticket back to prison and if you’re not careful you could end up sharing his cell.”
“He came to me for help. What would you do?” she asked quietly.
“Mind my own business.”
“This is my business.”
“Have it your own way.” I stood up. “C’mon, I’ll walk you to your car.”
I offered her my hand. She took it and I helped her to her feet.
“There are a couple of things you should know, Counselor,” I told her once she was standing next to me.
“What?”
“I’m going to find out who killed Amy Lamb. If it’s Sherman, I’m going to hand him to the county attorney with a ribbon tied around his ass.”
“And I’ll defend him,” Cynthia vowed. “What else?”
“You seem to care about people, especially people who need caring for. It’s a quality I appreciate.”
“It’s nothing special.”
“Yes, it is.”
It was nearly midnight and cold. Not cold enough for your breath to steam, but cold enough to remind you that it was mid-October in Minnesota; baseball season was suddenly a long time ago.
Cynthia’s car was parked on the wrong side of Franklin Avenue near the bridge. We were strolling past an ancient gas station, boarded up and long forgotten, when I heard the soft shuffle of feet behind us. Up ahead was an alley. There was no traffic.
“You should have found a safer place to park,” I said.
“What?”
I pushed Cynthia flat against the wall and turned, keeping her behind me. The footsteps belonged to a large black teenager, maybe sixteen, who wore an Oakland Raiders football jacket. The jacket was old and creased. The switchblade in his hand was shiny and new. Another black teenager stepped out of the alley. He wore the same colors.
“Hey, motherfucker, up with it!” the first mugger shouted. The second mugger smiled.
“Guys, I’m in a real bad mood,” I warned them, thinking about the Beretta that was doing me a helluva lot of good in the drawer of my waterbed. The first mugger moved in close, too close for his own good, and started to Hollywood me, brushing the blade of his knife along my cheek, telling me I was a smart motherfucker, telling me what he was going to do to my woman after he took care of me because I was such a smart motherfucker.
“Is that how you talk to Sally Washington?” Cynthia asked in a loud voice. “What would she say if she heard you talking like that, if she knew what you were doing?”
I knew Sally Washington; I’d met her once. She was much loved in the poorer quarters—an activist who disregarded politics, who was more interested in actually helping people; a midwestern Mother Teresa. Apparently the muggers knew her, too.
The second mugger took a step backward. “You know Sally?” he asked tentatively.
“I know Sally. I work with Sally. I work with her at the children’s clinic; I helped her get the funding.”
“You don’t know Sally,” the first mugger insisted.
“Yeah? Let’s go over to the clinic and ask her. Right now. You can explain what you’re doing, pulling knives on people …”
“The clinic isn’t open,” the first mugger said.
“The clinic is always open,” Cynthia told him.
“That’s right,” the second mugger said. “C’mon, man, let’s go.”
“No, wait,” Cynthia said. She fished in her oversized purse and took out her wallet. From the wallet she extracted a fistful of bills and held them out to the second mugger. “Here. You need money that bad, here, take mine.”
“No, man,” the kid said, refusing the cash. “You a friend of Sally’s. We can’t take your money.”
“Why not? You think Sally will be impressed that you only rob people who aren’t her friends? Here, take my money.”
“We don’t mean nothin’,” the first mugger said.
“You don’t mean nothin’? What’s that? You need money, you need a job, I can help you. You want to steal, you want to hurt people, here, take my money. Hurt me.”
The first mugger lowered the blade, the tip now pointing at Cynthia’s knee. I didn’t wait to see if he was moved by what she was telling him. I grabbed his knife hand with my left and with my right I delivered a four-knuckle strike to his throat and then drove a blade kick straight down on his kneecap. The gentleman who taught me that particular kick had made me practice until I could snap a broom handle with one thrust. Believe me, a knee is considerably less resilient than a broom handle. As the first mugger went down, I pivoted toward his buddy. He tried to throw a punch at my face. I ducked and threw a ridge hand to his solar plexus. He staggered. I stepped behind him and followed up with a claw hand to his throat, flipping him backward onto the concrete. Time to leave.
I grabbed Cynthia’s arms and tried to pull her away. She resisted.
“What are you doing?” she wanted to know.
“What’s it look like?”
“Those poor kids …” Cynthia broke free and turned back toward the muggers. The second one was standing, helping the first to his feet. “Wait, wait!” Cynthia called to them as they staggered down the sidewalk and past the gas station. “I’m sorry!”
“Counselor …” I said, shaking my head.
“Why did you do that? You didn’t have to hurt them …”
“They might have killed us.”
“They were going away; they were going to leave us alone.”
“Did you want to bet your life on it?”
“This is BS. You’re just trying to prove what a macho guy you are. Well, I’m not impressed.”
Perfect. Just perfect. The perfect end to a perfect day. So much for helping distressed damsels in the nineties.
“I said you cared about people, Co
unselor. Now I think maybe you care too much. It’s affecting your judgment; it’s making you vulnerable.”
“Who asked you?”
I followed her to the car, listening to her knocks. “Mean, ruthless, cruel and uncaring,” she called me. Yes, well, perhaps. Still, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. That’s trite, I know. But it’s my only excuse.
“You’re nothing but a damn cop.” Cynthia spat and slammed her car door shut. I walked back to my own car feeling let down, a frosty breeze causing me to shiver, wondering why I should care what a do-good nut case like Cynthia Grey thought of me.
SEVENTEEN
I DON’T KNOW what temperature the Mr. Coffee brews at, but I decided it was much too high when the first sip burned the inside of my lip. It was only 7:15 in the morning yet I had been awake for hours—hadn’t really gone to sleep, what with images of Amy Lamb’s blood-splattered body filling my head. I had returned to my office early enough to be the first car in my parking lot and spent the dawn retrieving the cassette tape from my safe and typing notes into my hard drive.
I was standing near the Mr. Coffee when the knock came. It was a light knock, almost as if my visitor was afraid I would answer. I swung the door open slowly. Before me stood a woman cradling an open purse in her arms.
“Hello, Louise,” I said. “May I help you?”
“Are we alone, Mr. Taylor?” she asked.
I answered yes.
That’s all she wanted to know. She reached into her purse and pulled out a small semiautomatic handgun. I didn’t wait to determine make or model. I threw the coffee at her and jerked the gun from her hand while she screamed in pain and terror. She dropped the purse, both hands going to her face. My instinct was to punch her. Instead, I pushed her hard into the chair in front of my desk. She nearly tipped it over. I unloaded the gun, a .25 Ruger. All God’s children have guns these days, praise the NRA.
Louise was in pretty rough shape, doubled over in the chair, trying in vain to rub the scald from the hot coffee away. I slipped the gun into my pocket and bent to recover my mug and her purse. Both were sitting in a puddle, about a half-cup’s worth of Cameron’s Colombian Supremo that had missed her face. I’ll have to mop that up later, I decided as I wiped the mug dry and refilled it; the purse could dry itself. I sat behind my desk in front of the woman, who was just beginning to regain her senses.
“I could call the cops and have you arrested for attempted murder or I can shoot you and call it self-defense,” I told her. “Which do you prefer?” From her expression I could tell neither suggestion appealed to her. “What are you doing here?”
She didn’t answer so I dumped the contents of her purse on my desk. I rummaged through it, finding a thick paperback entitled Discovering Your Homosexuality: The Joy and the Pain. She gasped when I picked it up and began to thumb through it, stopping at a page with a corner folded down. The chapter headline read “Are You Gay?”
“I am not queer,” she insisted.
What, did my lips move? “I believe the proper term is ‘gay.’”
“I know what the proper term is. I’m not … gay!”
“I really don’t care.” I tossed the book on the pile and said, “Listen, I’ve been treating all this somewhat lightheartedly, mostly because you’re the injured party here. But if you don’t start talking to me real fast …” I picked up my coffee mug. “Things could get a mite nasty.” I took a sip and set the mug back on the desk. The subtlety was not wasted on her. Only, rather than answering my question she asked one of her own.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Amy?” she sobbed.
I lied. “I wanted what information you could give me before your grief confused the facts. I wanted it clean,” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she sobbed louder.
And then the truth. “I didn’t want to be the one to break it to you.” It was selfish, I know. I wanted to avoid Louise’s pain and anguish; like a ballplayer who turns his back on a fallen teammate, I just didn’t want to see it. Sometimes I’m a helluva guy.
“I loved her!” she wailed.
“I understand,” I said, glancing down at the paperback.
“No you don’t!” she screamed. “I mean I loved her. No, that’s not what I mean. I mean … Oh God!”
I watched the woman sob into her hands and I might have felt sorry for her, I might have hugged her shoulders and said, “There, there,” except for the gun in my pocket. And except for the words floating back to me, Detective Casper’s words: “When you get five, six gunshots like we have here, you’re talking husband-wife, girlfriend-boyfriend, boyfriend-boyfriend, am I right?” Yeah, he was. The most brutal homicides take place in the closest relationships, and for pure savagery no one can beat homosexuals. With homosexuals you get true crimes of passion—not passion over which TV program to watch or who gets the drumstick or who owes who money—I mean passion as in if-I-can’t-have-you-no-one-can-have-you passion. The real McCoy.
“You and Amy were lovers?” I asked.
The woman shook her head no. Then she shouted, “No!”
Now I really was confused.
“We were roommates,” the woman said between sobs.
“Amy told me.”
“Did she tell you why she left?”
“No,” I admitted and Louise sobbed even deeper and harder.
I took a sip of coffee.
“We were roommates for five months,” Louise said. “Friends.”
“Just friends?”
Louise nodded. “She used to walk barefoot in the house. I must have told her a hundred times to wear shoes. I told her that the oil from the bottom of her feet stains the carpet. She thought I was being silly. That’s the word she used, silly. And after a while, I began to walk barefoot in the house, too. Oh, Mr. Taylor, she brightened my life so much; she meant everything to me. I don’t mean mother-daughter, I mean … I’m not queer—gay, I mean. I’m not. I’ve never been with a woman. Never wanted to be. Never even thought about it. Only, one night, we were drinking wine and listening to CDs. It was a kind of game. We would listen to my music and then we would listen to hers and pretty soon I would be putting on Madonna and she would be listening to Judy Garland, and one night, a Tuesday night, we were drinking wine and listening to music—we were on the couch together and listening to music—and I kissed her. I kissed her on the mouth. It was spontaneous, a spontaneous thing. I wasn’t thinking at all and she was more surprised than anything and I was surprised and I said I was sorry, I said I didn’t know why I did that, I said … That beautiful, sweet child, the look in her eyes … What did I do, Mr. Taylor? What did I do?”
Good question, Louise. What did you do? I finished the coffee and poured another cup while she wept.
“She went to her room and she wouldn’t come out and when she did come out she said she was going to find a place of her own; she said there were no hard feelings and we could still be friends and she was grateful to me for everything I did for her but she had to get a place of her own. And, and she said not to worry. She said she wouldn’t tell anyone. That’s what she said.” Louise was becoming angry now, her voice rising along with her indignation. “That’s what she said to me. Like I had something to hide. I’m not gay, I’m not, I’m not …”
And she probably wasn’t, I decided. You get lonely, you reach out for someone. Sometimes you reach out for the wrong person. Happens all the time. I knew guys who did hard time, they never thought of themselves as gay, would have busted up anyone who accused them. But once they were inside, alone … Ahh, hell, let it go, I told myself. You’re way over your head. I took a sip of coffee. When I finished I asked, “What are you doing here, Louise?”
“I saw the way you looked at her when you two went to dinner, the way she looked when she came back. She was a little girl, damn you!”
“Young, not little.”
“You bastard!” she screamed and then started weeping again. It was getting old, all these tears.
> “Quit crying and tell me what you’re doing here!” I yelled. Amazingly, she stopped. Just like that.
“I wanted to punish you.”
“For what?”
She didn’t say.
“Do you think I slept with her?”
Still nothing.
“Did you think I killed her?”
“If it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t have been living alone. If I hadn’t … If I hadn’t … She would have trusted me to take care of her, to protect her.”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
Louise shook her head and buried her face in her hands yet again. But at least she didn’t cry.
I didn’t know quite what to do. She could easily have killed Amy, yet somehow I didn’t think so. The St. Paul cops were gathering physical evidence at Amy’s home. If any of it supported a female killer I’d give them Louise’s name and gun. As for now …
“Go away,” I told her.
“What?”
I waved at my office door. “Just go away.”
She stood reluctantly, opened her coffee-stained purse and filled it with her personal belongings scattered on my desktop. She moved in slow motion, watching me, her mouth working like she wanted to say something but couldn’t get the words out. Finally, she shuffled toward my office door and grasped the knob with both hands, the purse tucked under her arm. “I loved her, I really loved her,” she said to the door. And then, “I’m not gay.” The door didn’t reply, so I did.
“No, just lonely,” I said.
Louise opened the door and looked back at me. “Can I have my gun?” she asked.
“No.”
C. C. Monroe was dressed in black: black fitted turtleneck with long sleeves tucked inside black gloves, a long black skirt and high black boots. A black scarf was knotted around her throat. Nothing was exposed except her incredible face, framed in butterscotch.
She was standing under the arch just outside the front door of the St. Paul Police Department, describing beautiful, young Amy Lamb with glowing adjectives while raging in general against the increase in violence directed toward women in general and condemning in particular a male-dominated society where women are thought to be less than human. It was a striking performance, made more so by the tears that welled up in her eyes and fell, seemingly on cue, whenever she delivered those brief phrases most conducive to a TV news sound bite.
Penance Page 14