Cold City Streets (15 page)

Cobi could see Allan just ahead, running along the tracks. But it wasn’t like real life, because it hadn’t happened that way. Cobi hadn’t been there. But in the dream version, Cobi chased his older brother, hand outstretched, pistol hammer cocked. And then he could see it from another angle, like a camera setting up the perfect shot, his brother in that black-and-red Adidas track suit, sprinting for his life, the gunman’s hand outstretched, the hammer slamming home again and again. In the dream, he looked down, and the gun was still smoking, and Cobi tossed it, threw it as far away as he could.

He looked down at his hands, expecting blood; but instead, they merely shook as his father stood over him, twice his size, a giant demanding an answer. “What have you done? Do you know what you’ve done, boy? This is your fault.”

The stare cut through him, and Cobi looked away in shame, his father’s voice off in the distance now, gone, part of the past. All was quiet for a moment, just the boy scared in the dark.

Cobi could hear feet shuffling.

“Is this the fucking guy?” a voice said. “This is the dude you’re so worried about?”

He opened his eyes slowly, his head still ringing slightly from the blow from behind. The lights were low, and he was ina chair. He blinked through the haze until his eyes refocused and could see the three men standing just ahead of him, near the door to the old gymnasium.

“Wakey wakey, you pain in the ass,” Leon Gross said. He and Darren Reed were standing five feet away; a third man, smaller, stood to one side. He had a flat cap on and scraggly sideburns, and he held a red plastic bucket in both hands.

“Lenny, wake him up right,” Leon said.

Before he could brace himself, Cobi received a douse of cold water. He spluttered and shook it off, wide eyed.

“Now,” Leon said, “you, Mr. Tate, are going to tell us every little thing you know about Brian Featherstone. And I mean everything, or Darren is going to rearrange your intestines into a pretty little bow.”

As if to emphasize the point, Deathtouch cracked his shoulder and neck muscles just by turning his head. “Looking forward to it,” he said.

“Uh huh,” Cobi said. “Deathtouch, when you got a guy pinned down on the ground the way you do…”

“Yeah?”

“You ever think about giving him just a little kiss? You know, just a little smooch to tell him you care?”

Rage burned in the fighter’s eyes and he started to move forward, before being cut off by a straight-arm across his chest from Leon. “Easy big man, easy” Leon said. “We need him to talk. For now.”

Deathtouch pointed at Cobi. “You better watch your mouth, you little shit. I eat ex-football players for breakfast.”

“Don’t you mean ‘invite them to stay for breakfast?’ ”

Leon restrained his fighter again before the man could leap forward. “Cobi… Look, stop baiting the man, okay? I didn’t want to have to do this…”

“What, kidnap me? No, you really, really didn’t, Leon.” He meant it. Cobi figured he was angry enough to give even Deathtouch some trouble. “But I hear you have some interesting friends you have to answer to, guys from Eastern Europe.”

“Hey, I didn’t ask you to start snooping around in stuff that wasn’t your business. In fact, if you think about it, this is your fault to begin with…”

“Eh? You smoking something?”

“If you’d have taken my offer when you got cut from the team and joined my crew, you wouldn’t be working some penny ante errand boy job for some lawyer. What’s that shit pay, anyhow? Two hundred a day? Maybe three?

“Twenty an hour. And fuck you, Leon. It’s honest work.” He started to get up from the chair.

“Sit down!” Leon waited a moment. “Better. Now what the fuck was that supposed to mean, honest work? As opposed to what we do?”

“As opposed to what you do, whatever that is. If you’re getting Buddy Gaines to do your dirty work, it ain’t honest, I know that much.”

Leon looked nonchalant, like it was a line he’d heard before, maybe a few times too many to care. “Yeah? Well, in this town, a man has to diversify, keep his options open. And it doesn’t pay to cause problems for the people above you. So are you going to tell me what the fuck you’re up to, or what?”

“I told you. We think someone else killed Featherstone and moved him.”

“Why’d you go to Peter Kennedy’s office and start asking about Au-rex?”

Cobi was too cold and too tired to bother hiding his surprise. “You hanging around with politicians these days, Leon? That’s low even for you.”

“In this neck of the woods, it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Always has been.”

“Times are changing,” Cobi said. “People here are getting tired of the Peter Kennedys of the world.”

“Maybe so,” Leon said. “Maybe so. But I also guarantee you they don’t give one rat shit about what happens to a washed-up ex-quarterback; at least, not on the whole. How many picks you throw in that game against Montreal? Four was it, before you got the hook? Man, fans in this town would probably thank me if I let Darren rearrange your shit. Now, I ask again: what’s your interest in Au-rex?”

“I told you already: we’re working on a theory Featherstone was moved. Someone shot him somewhere else then dropped him on that street.”

“So…”

“So put two and two together. Maybe one of y’all was real pissed about losing that money. Maybe you confronted the dude, shot him, and then when you realized what you’d done, you dropped him all the way across town.”

Leon smiled. “So basically you don’t know fuck all, you’re just chasing some theory.”

“You say.”

“I do say. And you know why, Mr. Tate?”

“I’m sure you’re going to tell me…”

“Because I don’t have a motive for killing Brian Featherstone, and neither does Darren.”

He seemed genuine, not a flicker of deceit. “What about Au-rex?”

“What about it?” Leon asked.

“Didn’t you both invest heavily?”

“We did.”

“And didn’t the stock tank when the whole thing turned out to be a geologist’s scam?”

“It did.” He was still smiling. Cobi’s gears churned.

“But if you didn’t lose your money that means you must have sold the stock before it tanked. Now, where would you have gotten the idea to do that? I’m guessing your boy here didn’t have the smarts to advise you to cut and run.”

Leon shrugged. “Hey, what can I say, kid? I got lucky.”

“And I’m guessing Peter Kennedy and Brian Featherstone got lucky, too, if Kennedy has you chasing after me. That ain’t the message they put out to the public, to the people who lost their life savings.”

Leon’s face hardened. “Now you’re venturing back into the realm of shit you shouldn’t stick your nose into.”

“Still plenty of motives for you and Kennedy,” Cobi said. “Maybe he was going to bust y’all and admit what you did.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“I’m just saying.”

Deathtouch was done being polite. He strode over to Cobi’s chair and yanked him to his feet by the front of his shirt. Cobi tried to remove his arm. “Hey! Get off me, man.”

The door behind them swung open.

“Evening, everybody.”

It was David Nygaard, the cop who’d been dumped by Jessie. He walked over and joined them, hands in his coat pockets. “There I was, out for an evening stroll, when what should I see but the lights on in a gym that usually closes, according to the sign on the door, at eight PM. Now, seeing as how it’s my job to enforce and uphold the law on-duty or off, I felt a strong urge to wander over and make sure everything was okay. Is everything okay, gentlemen?”

Deathtouch let go of the front of Cobi’s shirt.

“We’re all good,” Cobi said.
Did he follow me here?
“You going to arrest these guys for knocking me out and holding me hostage?”

David gestured towards Leon Gross. “That what happened here, Mr. Gross?”

“Heavens, no! We found him in the street outside, and he was already groggy. I thought he’d had too much to drink, so we brought him inside.”

“Uh huh,” Cobi said. “You buying this shit?”

David gave him a stony gaze. “You see who hit you, Mr. Tate?”

“Well… no, it was from behind, but…”

“Then you can’t positively identify these men as doing so?”

“Nah.”

“And you were unconscious between then and just now?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m afraid we’re not going to be able to press any charges. Maybe you’d be better off just to accept that it’s nice to have a cop in the neighborhood sometimes and get on out of here.”

Cobi headed for the door. “I’m soaking wet.”

“Then I’d suggest you call a cab, Mr. Tate,” David said. “I’ll walk you out.”

“We’ll be seeing each other again,” Leon said as they left.

“Not if I see you first,” Cobi said.

David pushed the heavy fire door open, and they went out into the lobby. Cobi took out his phone and called a cab while David watched him silently. When he was done, he returned the phone to his pocket and turned to face the officer.

“Were you following me tonight?”

David was silent for a moment, sucking on his tongue, perhaps weighing his most effective response, or whether he should at all. Eventually, he said, “It’s Detective Nygaard to you. You know, everyone who knew Jess and me as a couple said we were perfect together. That she made me a better person.”

“Okay…”

“Are you sleeping with her?”

“What? She’s my boss. Not that it’s any of your business.”

“HEY!” David grabbed Cobi by the scruff of the neck and opened his coat, showing him the holstered nine millimeter on his belt. “You remember who the fuck you’re talking to. I can lose you in Remand for so long you’ll watch your grandkids grow old and die.”

“Okay… Okay!” If there was one point Cobi’s father had reinforced, it was that an angry, upset cop was not someone to mess with.

“She’s everything to me,” David said. “You mess in another man’s pool, you better be ready to pay the consequences. You got that?”

Cobi said nothing. The officer lingered right on edge, his stress evident. He breathed in deeply through his nostrils and settled himself.

“Did she talk about me?” David asked.

“Sure.”

“What did she say?”

She thinks you’re a creepy stalker.
He knew he had to be careful. “She doesn’t want a relationship with anyone, I don’t think. She thinks you’ve lost your perspective a little.”

“WHAT?!? What the fuck did you just say to me? Perspective?!?”

He pushed Cobi up against the wall and drew the pistol. He pointed it at Cobi’s head. “ARE YOU…” His face flushed red. David looked ready to blow and Cobi held himself motionless, not wanting to do anything that might prompt a reaction. “Are you sleeping with her?”

A set of headlights cut across the glass of the foyer windows. Both men glanced that way, seeing the rough shape of the cab in the dark parking lot, its roof light confirming the notion. David composed himself, seemingly snapping out of the violent temper. He holstered his gun and let Cobi go. “Go on, get the fuck out of here,” he said. “Go on.”

Cobi didn’t need another invitation.

Paul Sidney looked like a different man already. For the second time in a month, they’d moved him to an isolation cell to protect him from one of the larger gang members who wanted to remove his spleen. Both of his eyes were blackened, his lip split again in two places, and he was weak from too little nutrition, giving up some of his food daily to avoid more beatings.

He sat on the bunk feeling isolated and hopeless, even as he held onto the shred of possibility that Jess Harper would succeed at the prelim and get the cops to admit their mistake. But he didn’t expect it. He hadn’t had hope for anything positive in a long time, not since the birth of their daughter. He wasn’t sure if he was ever going to see her again in person.

Through the small rectangular window in the steel door he could see the odd person come and go, the weight of the trial and his own poor decisions coming down upon him.

The lock clicked and the cell door swung open. The guard said, “You got a visitor.”

At the meeting area, he saw Jessie Harper’s face already onscreen, logged in and waiting. He’d only been in the Remand Center for a few months, but his own image on the video view screen suggested he’d already lost a lot of weight, his face taking on a slightly gaunt appearance, the sallow skin suggesting he was always a little more tired than a person should be.

And then he saw Jessie Harper’s expression, and he frowned. “It’s not good news, is it?”

“No, Paul, unfortunately it’s not. We finished the preliminary inquiry and the points I tried to raise with respect to the weakness of the investigation were largely dismissed by the judge.”

“But… what about the car? You said that the fact that they didn’t search it…”

“The judge said it was irrelevant for the same reason that we thought it would help us. He said we can’t demonstrate that the car under the snow in the first scene photo was the same car parked in your driveway later on, when my associate Mr. Tate visited your street.”

“That’s crazy.”

“No, that’s a sound interpretation.”

“But you said…”

“I didn’t think of it that way myself before I made the argument.”

“So you blew it.”

Legal aid wasn’t the game to be in and expect gratitude, Jessie knew; but the aggression was trying some times. “It wouldn’t have mattered. I still had to try it. It stemmed directly from the idea that he’d been moved…”

“Yeah?”

“He didn’t buy that, either. The forensics report was inconclusive, he said, and the police had a viable suspect that suggested the crime occurred right there.”

Sidney groaned slightly with exasperation.

“You have to remember, Paul, the judge isn’t saying we’re wrong, he’s just saying these aren’t issues that derail the Crown’s argument to charge you, and that we can argue them at trial. We’re a long way from being beaten.”

Her client looked down, despondent. “It doesn’t matter, does it, Ms. Harper? We all know this dead guy was some sort of big shot, and around here that means someone’s got to pay… right? By the fuck… she’s an unfair one, this.”

Jessie had to admit to herself that part of her wanted to scold him, tell him to be a man, fight for his innocence. But she also knew that guys like Paul didn’t come from easy backgrounds, or happy childhoods, or stable relationships. They weren’t ever accustomed to anything going right. They weren’t ever accustomed to any sort of validation. They never won anything. To the Paul Sidneys of the world, life began as a kick in the teeth and ended young, maybe violently. Either way, no one would pay much attention.

She spoke gently, but firmly. “Paul, when I say we’re not done yet, I mean it. This is just a bunch of procedural stuff. Mr. Tate is working hard on finding evidence suggesting a whole lot of other people had much better reasons than you to kill Brian Featherstone, and he’s getting somewhere. But you have to hang in there, remain positive. I don’t spend my time taking on hopeless cases; there are too many people out there who need my help for me to waste the energy. And your case isn’t hopeless, do you understand me?”

He looked up, his attention more focused. “I’m not a great believer in living in false hope, Ms. Harper, ma’am. So we get to the time you think my goose is cooked, then you best tell me. Don’t lead me into thinking I’m going to see my wife and daughter again if I’m not, ‘cause I’m not having them out there waiting for me if I’m doing life.”

“First off, there’s no way they’d get first-degree murder on this one. So it would likely be ten-to-fifteen years for second-degree, or less for manslaughter.”

“That’s a real comfort there, eh?” he said sarcastically.

“Second, we have a long way to go before your options are exhausted. So stick with me, okay? We’ll get you through this.”

He nodded slightly, trying to feign a semblance of support. But the look on Paul Sidney’s face suggested he didn’t share her optimism.

Jessie parked her car in the alley spot behind the legal clinic building. Around the corner, on the sidewalk ahead of the front door, the protesters continued to recommend she burn in Hell.

She waved at them as she went past; a few booed and murmured insults, but a couple of the elderly lady-pickets held up one hand each in a little cupped wave back. It had all become so familiar in so little time, she thought, that it was even sillier than the day they arrived.

Cobi Tate hadn’t checked in with her yet, though she’d told him the day prior that she’d be out at the Remand Center and on her phone. Maybe he had nothing new to report. After the assurances she’d given Paul Sidney, she hoped that wasn’t the case.

“Hey, Jess!” The voice came from the old BMW pulling up to the curb across from the office.

She crossed the street. “What’s up, Mr. Tate?”

“I was just about to leave. We got a call this morning from Michel Edman, the eco activist who made the papers for threatening Featherstone. He’s willing to talk for a few minutes, but we have to meet him right away; he’s going out of town until next month.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as she rounded the car and climbed into the passenger seat.

“He wants to meet at Hawrelak Park. He said you’ll see a familiar face there who’ll take us to him. Dude sounded way-out paranoid. Like, real scared.”

He fired up the engine and pulled the old BMW out onto Ninety-sixth Street.