Lovely, Dark, and Deep

by Frank Zafiro

  I pulled my empty hand out of my jacket pocket. “No gun.”

  He shook his head at me. “What the fuck do you want, asshole?”

  “I wanted to say thanks.”

  “Thanks? For what?”

  “Solving the mystery for me.”

  “Man, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about Beurkens. And Tate. And the bribe for the Looking Glass Condos development.”

  “I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about.”

  I shrugged. “You might not know about the condos. But I saw you at Beurkens’ house, right before I went inside. I saw you leave.”

  “So what? Who’s going to believe you?”

  “No one,” I said. “Especially not after the shit you planted in my bedroom.”

  He smiled. “You liked that?”

  “No, but it worked. The cops seized it as evidence.”

  “Too bad. And you thought you were so smart.”

  “I was smart enough to know Beurkens didn’t hang himself. You did it.”

  “You’re a fucking genius.”

  “You killed Tate, too,” I said. “That’s why you planted the drugs along with the duct tape. The duct tape was from Beurkens, but the pills were from Tate.”

  “What is this, some Sherlock Holmes shit? You’re like the master detective who spells it all out before you point out the big, bad murderer?”

  “No,” I said. “It won’t do any good. There’s no evidence you did it, and the cops caught me at the scene. Then they found the tape and the pills you put in my bedroom. Pointing at you didn’t do any good before, and it won’t do any good now.”

  “So why the fuck did you come here?”

  “My goose is cooked,” I said. “They’re going to charge me and the best criminal defense attorney in the city is pretty sure I’ll take the fall for at least some of it.”

  “Boo-hoo. Don’t go sticking your nose where it don’t belong and shit like this won’t happen.”

  “You’re right.”

  He shook his head, and turned up his hands. “So, what then? When you said you want to come out here, I thought you were nutting up. We coulda had this conversation at the bar.”

  “How long did you box?”

  His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “A while. Why do you care?”

  “I looked you up on the Internet.”

  “Yeah? Congratulations.”

  “I should be congratulating you. Number fourteen in the world? That’s impressive.”

  “Leave it alone,” he said.

  “Of course, it was only with the one federation that you were ranked that high.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Not the big ones, either. It was one of the smaller federations that no one really ever pays attention to.”

  “I said, shut up.”

  “Too bad it all went away with one punch,” I added.

  “Fuck you.” He took a step towards me. “I’m gonna kick your ass.”

  “You ever hear the term, a puncher’s chance?”

  He laughed. “You ain’t got one.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He waded in, but this time I had a chance to raise my hands defensively. I took a bladed stance and crouched slightly. As he drew near, I loaded up my weight on my back leg, giving my bad left knee some cushion and coiling up for one punch. I figured that was all I’d get.

  He didn’t come close enough to hit. Instead, he circled, his hands at shoulder height, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet, sizing me up. “You train?”

  “Long time ago.”

  “Not boxing,” he said, rolling his shoulders forward several times, then backwards. He stretched his neck to left and right in short snaps. “Karate or some shit.”

  “Something like that.”

  “It ain’t gonna help you.”

  “We’ll see.”

  He smiled and stepped in. His left jab snapped out once, twice, a third time. Bassen let out a sharp exhale with each punch. I swept away all three punches with my own left, but the third one caught the meaty part of my forearm. The strength of the blow sent shock waves up and down my arm.

  Bassen stepped back, out of range, a cocky, vicious grin on his face. “You made a big mistake coming here,” he said.

  “You talk a lot for hired muscle.”

  He scowled. Then he feinted to the left and stepped straight into me. His jab flashed out. I moved my head to the side and threw a straight right directly into his mid-section. My punch landed solidly as he exhaled. He stepped to the side, moving as if I hadn’t even touched him. A moment later, he whipped a left hook over the top of my right hand. His fist caught my jaw flush, and I saw stars against a black field.

  I don’t know what he hit me with next, only that something landed in the pit of my gut, then my forehead, then my chin. The next thing I knew, something huge slammed into my whole side, from ankle to crown.

  I wanted to shake my head to clear it, but I couldn’t make my body move. I was frozen, stunned.

  A second or two later, I realized the last blow came from me hitting the ground.

  Another second and I could finally shake my head like I wanted to. It didn’t have the desired effect. Instead, vertigo and nausea washed over me. My stomach clenched and I heaved. Eggs and bacon exploded out of my mouth and onto the concrete beside me. The smell of vomit, mixed with the pervasive odor of garbage, made me retch a second time. Almost nothing came up.

  I groaned.

  Then I heard laughing.

  I blinked, and pushed myself into a sitting position. Bassen stood by the back door. The bright light above the door silhouetted him so that all I saw was form and shadow.

  “Don’t bother,” he sneered. “Ten count’s already come and gone.” He let out a derisive bark of laughter. “There’s your puncher’s chance.”

  I spit a mouthful of saliva and leftover vomit onto the concrete. Then I wiped my mouth with my jacket sleeve. My head was pounding and I was short of breath.

  “I guess we’re done,” I managed to say.

  “We were done before we even got started,” he said. “You just didn’t know it.”

  He shook his head in disgust, spat on the ground near me, turned around and went back into the restaurant.

  I watched him go. When the door slammed behind him, I reached into my pocket with a shaking hand. I pulled out the small tape recorder. The red light was still on.

  We were done before we even got started.

  “You got that right,” I whispered. Then I shut off the recorder, and spit again. I struggled to my feet and walked in a slow, shuffling gait to the nearest pay phone.

  44

  Just in case, I stayed with Clell that night. Three aspirin and a hot shower did wonders for me, and I felt almost human again. Clell loaned me a T-shirt and a pair of his sweats while my clothes were in the washer. They were about three sizes too large. But even though I swam in both, it felt good to be clean.

  I’m poor but clean, I thought, and I figured that was good enough.

  I figured I’d be amped up and wanting to talk about everything, even though I knew Clell wouldn’t necessarily approve of every decision I made. But between the shower, the lack of sleep and the beating I took from Bassen, my body was just about ready to give out. I crashed on Clell’s couch and slept through the night without a dream.

  The next morning, Clell dropped me at Harrity’s office on his way to his bank job. I noticed an unmarked Crown Victoria with a large radio antenna poking out of the trunk lid parked nearby. Hard to miss a detective’s police issue cruiser.

  Harrity’s secretary brought me a cup of coffee and chit-chatted about the weather for a few minutes until the lawyer was ready for me.

  I wasn’t surprised to find Ray Browning sitting across from Harrity. The detective was dressed almost as nicely as my lawyer and with a little more flair. His expression was flat, but not nearly as angry as I remembered it being during the e
xecution of the search warrant at my place.

  “Detective Browning,” I said, purposefully avoiding the use of his first name.

  Browning gave me a nod of acknowledgement.

  I shook Harrity’s hand and sat in the chair next to Browning.

  “Well,” Harrity said, “everyone knows why we’re here. Let’s not waste any time.”

  I removed the recorder from my pocket, placed it on Harrity’s desk, and pressed play. Browning listened, not reacting to any of it. When it was over, I pushed stop.

  Harrity leaned back, steepling his fingers. “I’d say that’s exculpatory evidence, wouldn’t you, detective?”

  “It’s open to interpretation,” Browning said.

  “To a philosopher, perhaps. But not to a judge or a jury. Mr. Bassen clearly admits to being at the Beurkens home, and to planting the items you seized at Mr. Kopriva’s apartment. One could even argue that he makes a tacit admission to killing both Mr. Beurkens and Councilman Tate.”

  “Maybe you heard that. Maybe other people would, too. But I can’t use any of it.”

  Harrity didn’t answer.

  “I can’t use it,” Browning repeated. “This is a two-party consent state. You can’t record someone without their consent.”

  “What about when you guys use wires?” I asked.

  Browning gave me an annoyed look. “We get a court order, signed by a judge.”

  “But I wasn’t acting as an agent of law enforcement,” I said. “I did this on my own.”

  “Which is technically a crime,” Browning said. “Another crime. And I still can’t use it.”

  “It may not be admissible in a trial charging Mr. Bassen,” Harrity said, “but it would not be precluded from evidence if you went to trial on charges against my client. In fact, I think it would be rather compelling evidence of his innocence.”

  “Innocence?” Browning raised his eyebrows. “You call what he’s been up to innocent?”

  Harrity waved away the question. “We can discuss degrees of moral behavior in a society of laws at the next conference we both end up at, Detective. Let’s stick to the factual matter of this case.”

  “The fact is we caught him in the house. And Beurkens was murdered. Probably Tate, too.”

  “Yes,” Harrity said. “And now you have proof that my client was not culpable.”

  Browning gave Harrity a long look, then glanced over at me.

  I shrugged and said nothing.

  “It’s simple enough, Detective,” Harrity continued. “You’ve got evidence that you are obligated to use to exonerate my client. The fact that the same evidence is not going to be admissible in charging another suspect doesn’t make it any less exculpatory for my client.”

  Browning shook his head. “I don’t even know if that’s a true recording. He could have faked the whole thing.”

  “Does his face look faked?” Harrity asked. “You have a booking photo. Unless those additional injuries happened while he was in custody, I’d say it’s reasonable to assume he was assaulted as he described. And by Mr. Bassen.”

  “I don’t know that it was Bassen.”

  “He made several identifying statements,” Harrity said. “I’m sure witnesses saw them together last night at the restaurant. And I will have a copy of the recording sent to your office for voice analysis. That should remove almost all doubt.”

  Browning jerked his thumb toward me. “I want him to take a polygraph on this.”

  Harrity shook his head. “No. But you will drop the charges against him today, Detective. Or I will refer him to the best civil rights attorney I know.”

  Browning stared at Harrity, bristling. Then he stood without a word and left the office. He didn’t slam the door, but I could still sense the anger in the air.

  Anger? Hell, fury.

  Harrity opened his hands to me. “There you go. Say goodbye to the murder charge and the drug possession charge.”

  “And the burglary?”

  “Trespass at most. And if they elect to go forward with that, I’ll move for dismissal. You had no criminal intent when you went in that house. If they charge you with trespass, I’ll argue that fact and that they are being retaliatory.”

  “So it goes away.”

  “Nothing’s for sure, but I’m pretty confident it will be dropped by the prosecutor or dismissed by a judge. Or maybe the detective will withdraw the complaint.”

  “I doubt it.”

  Harrity shrugged. “You can probably count him out when you’re making a list of your friends down at the police department.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Still, I’ve not known Detective Browning to be vindictive. He may make it easy on all of us and just pull the case.”

  “If it’s his decision at all. The lieutenant down there at Major Crimes hates me.”

  “Who, Crawford? He hates everyone. Don’t feel special.”

  “What I feel right now,” I told him, “is lucky.”

  45

  There was a sense of vibrancy in Monique that I hadn’t seen before. I’m sure it was the way she was in her everyday life, but I’d only ever seen her in this hospital bed with bandages and tubes. Now, she sat up in the bed. The only tube was the IV. The bandage on her head was smaller than it had been a couple of days ago. There was strength in her eyes and energy in her smile.

  “I think you look worse than me,” she said.

  “I’ve avoided looking in a mirror for that very reason,” I said. But that was a lie. I’d stolen a glance after my shower that morning. In addition to the purpling of both black eyes, Bassen had added deep bruises on my jaw, forehead and chin. I looked like I’d gone twelve rounds with the champ. Or more accurately, I looked like a guy who couldn’t pay Bracco the vig. On top of that, my stomach hurt like I’d done a thousand sit-ups.

  “So it is over?” she asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah, I think so. Either over or at a stalemate. You’re safe from Bracco. Rolo took care of that.”

  “But nothing happens to the man, the boxer? He gets nothing for what he did to me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Or for hitting you?”

  I shook my head again.

  “And all of the corruption, that political stuff?”

  I turned over my hands and shrugged. “Business as usual, I guess.”

  She frowned. “It isn’t right.”

  “Nope.”

  “It seems like you and I are the only ones who paid anything in all of this.”

  “I don’t know. Bracco lost his front man in the contractor business. Beurkens and Tate lost their lives. I think we came out considerably ahead of the two of them.”

  “I suppose.”

  “And I did get paid, after all.”

  She squinted in confusion.

  “Rolo,” I said. “That’s where all of this started for me. Him paying me to find out who attacked you.”

  “And you did,” she said.

  “I did.”

  She sighed. “What a messed up world we live in.”

  “It keeps philosophers and cops in a job,” I said.

  She laughed softly, then fell quiet.

  After a while, I asked her, “When will you be able to travel?”

  She looked surprised. “Travel?”

  “Yeah. You were going to Montreal, weren’t you?”

  She smiled sadly. “I was. With him. But that was just a dream, wasn’t it?”

  “It sounded pretty real to me when you were describing it before.”

  She shrugged. “Dreams don’t have any value unless they can seem real to us while we’re dreaming them.”

  “You could still go.”

  She shook her head. “Why?”

  “A fresh start.”

  “With what money? And with whom?” She shook her head. “No. Everything I have now is here.”

  “So you’re going to stay?” I asked, surprised.

  “Of course.”

  “And do what?
Go back to work for Rolo and Rhonda?”

  “Of course.”

  It was my turn to sigh.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked, but I could see in her eyes that she knew.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Part of me was frustrated with the fact that she was going to pick up right where she left off. She wasn’t going to take a chance on a fresh start. But another part of me railed against the first part, calling bullshit on everything I said. If a fresh start was such a grand thing, why was I still in River City after everything that has happened to me here? I was being hypocritical.

  Another part of me had a fleeting fantasy of the two of us taking a train to Montreal as soon as she got out of the hospital, but that one died on the vine.

  She was right.

  It was a messed up world.

  46

  The Rocket Bakery was full. Dishes clattered, the espresso machine hissed and the hum of conversation filled the air. It wasn’t exactly optimal conditions for chess playing, but that didn’t seem to bother Adam. He made short work of my defenses and ten minutes into the game, I was already on the run.

  “Your face looks better,” he said after he took my bishop, almost as an apology.

  “Wish I could say the same for you.”

  He smirked.

  “It doesn’t help when you make faces, either,” I said. “Just so you know.”

  “It’s your move,” he said.

  “I know. I’m thinking.”

  “Fine time to start.”

  I smiled in spite of everything. “It’s a new strategy I’m going to try out.”

  I moved my king one space to the right, but it was in vain. Once you start moving your king around, you might as well concede the game. At least, that’s how it was playing Adam.

  “Did you get jammed up over what you told me?” I asked him.

  “Nope,” he said, studying the board. “Browning had no clue.”

  “And Lieutenant Crawford?”

  He chuckled absently. “If Browning didn’t have a clue, how far from one do you think the lieutenant was?”

  That made me smile slightly. One things cops loved to do was run down the brass. Of course, most of them probably deserved it.