Bark of Night

by David Rosenfelt

  I really hope he’s here, especially since I’m going to be walking into the alley alone and unarmed. I feel like Michael Corleone hoping that the gun is actually taped to the bathroom tank so that he can go shoot Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey. But this situation is even worse, because if the gun wasn’t there, Michael would still be able to go out and eat the best veal in the city. I’m not going to have that option in the alley.

  But if I’m going to do this, I have to do it right, so I turn out the lights in the office to alert the bad guys that I am, in fact, leaving. It’s important that they notice.

  I go downstairs, stopping to take a quick look out the back window to see if they have any buddies waiting back there. I don’t see anyone, but I don’t have a sightline to the whole area.

  Finally I open the front door. It’s gotten pretty dark out, and while there is a streetlight not too far away, the area where I am is not very well lit. I don’t want to look toward the bad guys, but I do want to make sure they see me. So I pause for a few moments, almost as if I’m deciding which direction to go in.

  Then I close the door pretty hard behind me. I don’t slam it, because that might be too obvious, but it should be loud enough for them to hear it, if they haven’t already seen me.

  I’ve left enough clues about my departure for anyone with half a brain to follow, but in the brief conversation Laurie and I had with them the other day, I got the feeling that neither had ever been offered a Rhodes Scholarship.

  So now all that is left for me to do is either go into the alley or lie on the ground and curl up in the fetal position.

  I go into the alley.

  It’s pretty dark here in the alley. There’s some light from the building next door, but not much.

  I peer ahead as I walk, but I don’t see Marcus. The buildings have some columns that jut out into the alley, and he could be behind one of them; it’s hard to see in the dark. Of course, no one ever sees Marcus until Marcus wants to be seen. Sometimes I think he can beam himself in and out of places at will.

  I hear noises behind me. Those noises sound like feet walking quickly. While I don’t turn around, I have a strong feeling that the people who own those feet are wearing jackets with an X on the back.

  I increase my pace slightly, resisting simultaneous urges to break into a run and scream “Marcus!” The walking noises behind me seem quicker, closer, scarier.

  Then there is a different noise, sort of a muffled combination scream, gasp, and moan. Now I do turn around, and in the dim light, I see three people. One of them is lying on the ground, motionless. Another is being thrown against the side of the building by the third figure, who I sure as hell hope is Marcus.

  It’s a weird visual. He throws the guy against the wall from about three feet away, and the guy bounces back to him. Then he throws him again. It’s a form of handball, except the ball is human … and moaning.

  I walk back toward them and say, “Marcus.”

  He turns to me and stops the wall-bouncing routine. Instead he pushes the guy forward, toward me and the end of the alley. Then he reaches down, grabs the collar of the guy who seems to be out cold, and starts dragging him along. The only sound is coming from the guy’s shoes, as the backs scrape along the cement.

  So I fall in as well, and we make a weird procession to the back of the building. It’s a bit lighter back here, and I see something I hadn’t noticed before. There’s a third potential assailant, also lying unconscious on the ground. At least I hope that’s his condition; it’s pretty hard to tell the difference between unconscious and dead in a dark alley, from a distance.

  Marcus has been busy.

  We stop near the third guy and Marcus deposits the unconscious guy he has been dragging next to him. His head comes to rest on the third guy’s chest; under different circumstances it would be sort of a poignant scene. In this case it is scary and surreal, and for the life of me I cannot remember a law school class in which this scenario was covered.

  Marcus makes a motion that seems to indicate that I have the floor.

  “What’s your name?” I ask the one who’s still conscious.

  He doesn’t answer, so I ask again. He continues not to answer, so Marcus takes a threatening half step toward him. “They call me Zip.”

  “I don’t care what they call you. What’s your name?”

  “Alex.”

  “Alex what?” I ask.

  “Huh?” he asks in return.

  My interrogation has obviously got a great flow going, which is mercifully interrupted when Laurie comes walking down the alley toward us.

  “Everyone okay?” she asks.

  “Only on the good-guy team,” I say.

  “What have we learned so far?”

  “The conscious one’s name is Alex, but they call him Zip.” There is some moaning coming from the two guys on the ground, but I’m still keeping them in the “unconscious” category.

  I turn my attention back toward Zip. “Why were you coming after me?”

  “We weren’t coming after you.”

  “Zip, don’t disappoint me.”

  “We were just going to scare you,” he says.

  “Better men than you have tried,” I say. “Who sent you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Was it Chico Simmons?”

  “Don’t know him.”

  Marcus starts to take another step toward him, but Laurie holds up her hand, and he stops. “Maybe I can get somewhere with him. Zip, come down here with me. We need to talk.”

  She starts to walk down the alley, taking Zip by the arm and moving him along. “Be careful,” I say.

  Laurie holds up her left hand, which has her handgun in it. “Zip and I will be fine.”

  So Laurie and Zip walk down the alley and engage in a conversation that I cannot hear, but which goes on for at least five minutes.

  Alone time with Marcus always makes me uncomfortable, and the presence of two groggy gang members does nothing to ease that feeling. I say, “Thank you,” to Marcus, since he once again saved me, and he responds with a grunt of some sort. I guess I could be making small talk, maybe asking how the baby is doing, but this doesn’t really feel like the appropriate time or place.

  Laurie and Zip finally come back toward us. When they arrive, Laurie says, “Zip and his friends are free to go, as soon as they are able. We can leave now.”

  Obviously Laurie doesn’t want to speak in front of the three defeated assailants, so I don’t ask her what was said. I trust her instincts just to go along, and I know she will be updating me as soon as possible.

  As we start to walk away, Laurie says, “Let’s go for a cup of coffee.”

  We drive to a diner on Route 4 in Elmwood Park.

  There’s no sense hanging around in my office neighborhood, in case Chico Simmons sends out a posse to look for Zip and friends. Because Laurie, Marcus, and I all came in separate cars, we don’t get a chance to talk until we’re all situated in a booth in the back of the diner.

  The place is relatively empty, so we can talk without fear of being overheard. Which is good, because I am dying to hear what Laurie has to say.

  The waitress comes over and Laurie and I order coffee. Marcus orders a club sandwich, a hamburger, clam chowder, and pasta. I have never seen anyone eat like Marcus, but I resist the temptation to ask the waitress to bring him a shovel.

  “I think I’d like to hear about you and Zip now,” I say, when the waitress finally leaves to get a flatbed trailer on which to bring Marcus his food.

  Laurie nods. “Okay. At first Zip didn’t want to say anything. So I threatened him. I told him that Marcus was going to drive away with him, just the two of them. That scared him, no question about that, yet he still wouldn’t answer my questions in any meaningful way.”

  “I hope we’re approaching a ‘but,’” I say.

  “We are. But when that threat didn’t work, I told him that we were going to have the police pick up Chico Simmons for questioning f
or murder, and have them mention that it was Zip who fingered him. That scared the hell out of him, so he said he would talk as long as it didn’t get back to anyone, meaning Chico.”

  “He was more scared of Chico than of Marcus?” I ask. I, for one, would be more scared of Marcus than of Jack the Ripper. Or Godzilla. Or Russia. When Laurie nods, I add, “Chico must be a very unpleasant guy.”

  “No doubt,” she says. Marcus has no comment; he’s in the process of inhaling the entire basket of bread. Laurie continues, “But even though Zip was suddenly willing to talk, he really had nothing to say regarding our case. He’d never heard of Haley and had no idea why we were asking about him.”

  “You believed him?”

  “At first I didn’t, but then I did. Zip thought we were there because of a different murder.”

  “What does that mean? What murder is that?”

  “Christopher Tolbert, the homeless guy found executed in Nash Park. The guy whose funeral service Haley attended.”

  “I don’t understand,” I say, because I don’t. “What did Zip have to do with that?”

  “He claims he had nothing to do with it, which may or may not be true. But reading between the lines, he basically said that Chico was behind it.”

  “What did Tolbert have to do with Chico?”

  “Zip doesn’t know, or at least he claims he doesn’t know. But I couldn’t get any more out of him. I told him that if we find out he’s lying, Marcus would pay him a visit, and that we would spread the word that he fingered Chico. You could call it double jeopardy. But I couldn’t get anything else; I don’t think there was anything to get.”

  When Marcus eventually finishes eating, we get the check. Laurie and I each only had coffee, and the bill comes to sixty-one dollars. But based on Marcus’s efforts tonight, it is without a doubt the best sixty-one dollars I’ve ever spent.

  Laurie and I obviously drive home separately. I get there first, and when I open the door, Tara is standing there with her leash in her mouth; it is her way of telling me I’m home later than promised. Sebastian is asleep in his bed, which is his default position.

  I doubt that Tara will care if I offer excuses about Zip and Marcus, so instead I take both of them outside. Laurie pulls up and joins me on the walk.

  “What do you make of what Zip told me?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure yet; I need some time to process it. I assumed that Haley went to that funeral service strictly because of the film he was shooting; it made sense that he might do that. But he questioned Joey Gamble about Chico, and now he goes to a service for a murder victim that Chico is tied to. The coincidence alarm is going off.”

  “There’s something linking Chico to Adams to Haley to Tolbert,” she says. “And while I don’t know what it is, it sure as hell has nothing to do with Joey Gamble, who is sitting in jail.”

  “Let’s talk this through, because I’m feeling like all the players here have been other than what they appeared to be. Maybe the same is true for Tolbert.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, he was homeless and on the street, so we just accepted that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and got himself killed. But he was executed; he wasn’t beaten to death by punks on the street. And he apparently had nothing of value, so robbery wasn’t a motive.

  “There’s something else I was thinking about on the ride home. When I spoke to your friend Sergeant Rubin in Philadelphia, he originally thought we might be calling about the Tolbert murder. I hadn’t even heard about it at that point, but he said that they had two murders that fit the same MO. He even thought they might have a serial killer on their hands.”

  “So you think they might be connected?”

  I nod. “All along we couldn’t understand where Adams fit in; I mean, what the hell brought him here from Philadelphia? But if he’s the link, then maybe it starts to fit.”

  “So let’s find out what we can about Tolbert,” she says. “I’ll call Rubin to try to get more information about the Philadelphia cases.”

  “Unfortunately, we won’t have standing to get discovery information on Tolbert because we can’t connect it to our case. What Zip told you in an alley would not be compelling to the court, and Dylan won’t give it to us if he doesn’t have to.”

  “So you want to put Sam on it? Maybe he can find something about Tolbert online that we don’t know.”

  “It’s worth a shot,” I say. “At this point, pretty much everything is worth a shot.”

  Laurie is going to have Marcus watch out for me.

  I know that for a couple of reasons. One is that whenever I’m in any kind of danger, she has Marcus watch out for me. The other is that she just said, “I told Marcus to watch out for you.”

  I could argue the point, but she won’t give in and I’ll just look weak when I cave. Trying not to look weak is particularly important to weak people like myself; it’s one of our weaknesses.

  Instead I just say, “Not today. Please tell me it’s not starting today.” We’re on our way to Ricky’s camp for visiting day, and the last thing I want is Marcus hovering around the ten-year-olds. It could easily send them to therapy until they are visiting their own grandchildren at camp fifty years from now.

  “No, it wasn’t necessary to start today,” she says. I know she means that she is here to protect me today, so Marcus doesn’t have to. It’s one humiliation after another.

  I never went to overnight camp when I was a kid. We weren’t poor by any means, but that was an extravagance that was a bit beyond our means. I was always fine with that and have remained fine until today.

  The camp is a really cool place. Great sports facilities, a beautiful lake for swimming, a building chock-full of computers and other techie stuff … what’s not to like?

  Seeing Ricky is phenomenal. All the parents waited down near the ballfield when the kids came running down. Ricky came at full speed to us and gave us both big hugs; he seemed genuinely happy to see us. And we could not have been happier to see him.

  So we’ve spent the day letting him take us around the camp, showing us the projects that he’s worked on, demonstrating his newfound ability to swim, and introducing us to his friends. He clearly loves being here, and I love that he loves being here.

  I just wish he would come home with us.

  But the day is not ending on a high note. There is a father-son foul-shot tournament in the gym. Through a very unfortunate series of flukes, the two finalists are Ricky from the kids, and me from the fathers. And at this moment, I am about to shoot for the final time.

  If I make it, the fathers and I win. If I miss it, the sons and Ricky win.

  I don’t know what to do, and Laurie is too far away among the observers in the stands to give me advice. I don’t want to win; I want Ricky to win. But while the easy thing to do would be to intentionally miss, I have this vague feeling that it would be wrong to do so. It feels somehow dishonorable and worthy of Ricky’s disapproval, even though he would never know.

  But making it feels even worse. Why shouldn’t the kids win? Wouldn’t that make everybody happy, including all the parents? And wouldn’t they look at me with justified disapproval if I beat all their kids, including my own?

  So I’m going to miss, without making it too obvious. I’ll shoot it to the right, clanging it off the rim and letting it fall harmlessly to the floor. Then I’ll pretend to be disappointed, but, good loser that I am, I will proudly put Ricky on my shoulders and let him bask in his victory. And every parent in the place will know I missed on purpose and will think I am terrific for having done so.

  Losing is a win-win.

  I am not a very good shooter, and though I aim to the right, I miss my target by three inches, to the left. That sends the ball swishing smoothly through the net and means that this visiting day will forever be known as the day Andy Carpenter made losers out of a bunch of ten-year-olds.

  Once we’re in the car and heading home, Laurie says, “You tried to miss that
shot.”

  It isn’t a question, just a statement, so there is no need to deny it. She knows me too well anyway. “I did,” I say. “I missed the miss. I choked under pressure. You think Ricky will get over it?”

  “I think he forgot it already,” she says. “He’s having way too much fun to let something like that bother him.”

  “That’s the difference between us,” I say. “It will bother me for the rest of my life.”

  We’re still a couple of hours from home when my cell phone rings, and I see by the caller ID that it’s Sam Willis. “Hey, Sam,” is my clever opening.

  “Andy, are you still at the camp?”

  “On the way home.”

  “You have fun?” he asks.

  “I hit the game-winning shot,” I say, as Laurie looks over at me and frowns.

  “Cool. Ricky must have been proud.”

  “He was thrilled. What’s up?”

  “It’s about the Tolbert case.”

  We had given Sam the task of finding out what he could about Tolbert, hoping to uncover something to connect him to Haley and our case. I had also told him about the similar cases in Philadelphia, in case he could dig up some connection there too.

  “What about it?” I ask.

  “I’ve got something to show you. Can I bring it over when you get home?”

  I’m not happy to get this request; I’m tired and I want to walk the dogs when I get home and go to sleep early. Destroying a bunch of ten-year-olds’ sports dreams is exhausting. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

  “It can; actually, that will give me more time to search and put it all together.”

  “What is it?”

  “Andy, I think it’s better that you see it. Then you’ll be in a better position to make a judgment on it.”

  “Okay, Sam. Come by the house in the morning?”

  “You got it, Chief.”

  Trial dates remind me of cars in the passenger-side mirror.

  They don’t actually move, but they are closer, and I mean always closer, than they appear. And the one constant is that defense attorneys are never ready for them. You could tell me that a trial is scheduled for twelve years from Tuesday, and I’d be cramming at the last minute and complaining that I need more time.