Life's Work (15 page)

It had happened too many times to be coincidental. It gave me the certain feeling that the phone company knew something I didn't. But then I'd had that feeling long before I'd ordered call-waiting. This time, I decided to forego my usual juggling act and let the second call go. It was lucky I did, because Mike picked up a moment after the call-waiting quit buzzing.

I knew Sabatto well enough to drink with him whenever we found ourselves in the same bar. Balding, ungainly, and acerbic, Mike was as Catholic as Elmer's sister, with a long-suffering spouse, six children, and that dour look of resignation that comes with the good Catholic life, like Continental Breakfast on the European Plan. Although he was barely thirty years old, he looked forty-five and acted it.

After asking him about his wife and his kids and his St. Louis in North College Hill, I turned the conversation to the day's headlines.

"We knew he'd skipped camp four days ago," Mike said when I mentioned Parks.

"How come it didn't make the papers?" I asked.

"You'd be surprised what doesn't make the papers," he said with glee. "The Cougar front office told us that he had 'personal problems,' and to hold off on the publicity until they'd had a chance to talk to him. We don't usually agree to that sort of thing, but in this case they made it clear that we'd be sorry if we didn't play ball." Sabatto laughed raucously. "Who's sorry now, I ask you? If they'd been upfront about the drug thing, they could have saved themselves a black eye."

"I'm surprised one of you guys didn't get wind of it anyway," I said. "You didn't have any trouble finding out about Monroe, Calhoun, and Greene."

"That's 'cause the DEA wanted us to know about them," he said.

"Why wouldn't they have wanted you to know about Parks?"

"They had their reasons," Sabatto said mysteriously. "You know they don't go public with everything. A lot of pretty nasty stuff is settled in closed chambers or out of court. We hear about it, but unless we can dig up sources willing to go on record, we can't print it."

"Where'd you manage to dig up the source on Parks?"

"A DEA guy phoned in the whole story right after the murder."

"You wouldn't know his name, would you?"

"I'm not supposed to," Mike said, "but for a friend ... His name is Clayton. Phil Clayton. He's a local cop, a narc in the Second District who was detailed to help the DEA out with the Cougars. From what I hear, he was more or less in charge of Parks's case."

"Do you know what he got Parks on?" I asked him.

"Possession of controlled substances is what I hear. I guess that means cocaine."

It was a safe guess. "Do you know who Parks was scheduled to testify against?"

"Some local dealers."

"And did he testify?"

"That I don't know," Mike said.
 

After I finished with Sabatto, I tried calling George DeVries at the DA's office to see if he could tell me whether Parks had testified before the grand jury, and whom he'd testified against. But it was almost four thirty by the time I phoned, and George was never one to spend a long Saturday at the office. When I couldn't rouse George at home either, I called Lieutenant Al Foster at the CPD. Although Al hadn't heard anything about Parks and the grand jury -or claimed that he hadn't- he did confirm that Clayton was a narcotics agent.

"I don't know why you're asking about him, Harry," Al said in his achy, high-pitched voice. "But I'll tell you this -he's not a guy you want to fuck with. Believe me. He's built up quite a rep in the Second District."

"A hard case?"

"The hardest. He uses people up. Turns them, bleeds them, then hangs them out to dry. And Clayton always ends up getting a commendation." Al laughed mordantly. "It's a helluva world, isn't it?"

"A helluva world," I said to myself.

"Do yourself a favor," A1 said. "Steer clear of him. At I least, for the next couple of weeks."

"Why for the next couple of weeks?" I said.

"There's something in the works. An inhouse thing. Clayton may get his ass fried. That's all I can tell you now. And if you tell anybody that I told you that much, it's the last help you'll get from me."

"It'll be our little secret," I told him.

I hung up and stared morosely at the desk. Apparently Clayton wasn't just a dangerous cop, he was a crooked one. At least, that's what I took Al's comments to mean. He'd compiled a hell of an arrest record in the Second District -good enough to get him a job with the DEA. And now his methods had landed him in some trouble. Thinking back, I realized that he'd acted like a man in trouble the night before. At the time I couldn't figure out what he had to be worried about. Hell, I couldn't figure out what he was doing at the ranch house, at all. But if Parks had been Clayton's case, then the O'Hara murder would have given him plenty to worry about. You don't get a star next to your name for cutting a deal with a psychopath. Maybe that was why Clayton had implicated the Cougars in the plea-bargaining process. Maybe he'd been trying to spread the blame for his mistake. On the other hand, he could have been telling the truth.

I took the Candy Kane rap sheet out of the desk and went through it again. According to the papers, the drug bust was made in December. So was the assault arrest. And both collars were made by Clayton. It was obvious that the two were connected, although I wasn't sure how. But I had the gut feeling that the Candy Kane arrest was a stalking-horse. God knew, that the case was flimsy enough. I'd thought that from the moment I'd seen the rap sheet. A charge pressed without a complainant, with a hostile party as the only witness. And one thing more something that had occurred to me as I was reading through the report again. I'd almost come up with it the day before, when I'd talked to Laurel in the pizza parlor. It was the date of the assault arrest -December 31. According to Laurel, Parks had moved in with C. W. O'Hara at the end of December, right after she'd told him about her pregnancy. By all rights, Parks should have been with the O'Hara girl on New Year's Eve, not with some stripper named Candy Kane.

The surest way to find out what was really going on was to talk to George DeVries, who would have access to the pretrial material in both cases. Since he wasn't available, my next best bet would be to talk to Candy Kane herself. I was about to call the Caesar Apartments to see if Candy was still living there, when Laurel wandered into the room.

Glassy-eyed, disheveled, and smelling of sleep, she made her way to the couch, sat down heavily on the cushions, and curled her legs up beneath her. She had put on one of my shirts over her panties, and she jerked the tail down over her bare knees as if she were straightening the hem of a skirt.

"What time is it?" she said groggily, kneading her cheeks with her fists.

"About five," I said.

"Five?" she repeated dully.

I stared at her for a moment. Un-made up, her electrified hair standing at all angles, her right cheek wrinkled like a sheet from where she'd slept on it, she looked, even to me, like a visiting relative -a niece or a cousin.

"Are you all right?" I said.

She shook her head. "No. My head hurts."

"It's the sedative they gave you."

She looked confused for a moment. Then it started to come back to her and her face went white.
"Oh, my God," she said softly. "I almost forgot."

"Best to forget," I said.

I went over to the couch and sat down beside her.

"Oh, Harry," she said, giving me a forlorn look.

"What am I going to do?"

"You can stay here with me," I said, pulling her against me, "until you feel better."

"But how will I live?" she said helplessly. "I gotta work. I got things to do."

"I think you better lay off work for a few days. If you don't want to stay with me, you could take a vacation. Visit your folks."

"In Corbin?" she said, making a tragic face. "I don't want to go there. I want to go home." She began to sob. "I didn't do anything wrong. I just wanted to help, for chrissake."

I thought she was going to break down again, as she had the night before. But this time the tears stopped almost as quickly as they'd begun. Laurel rubbed her eyes fiercely and straightened up on the couch, shaking my hand from her shoulder, as if she could do with a little less comforting. "Cut it out," she said to herself, like a coach in a locker room. "You're not a child anymore. You can take care of yourself."

She looked around my shabby living room, seeing it for the first time. "Where are we?" she asked.

"At my apartment."

Laurel sighed. "That's what I was afraid you'd say. It looks just like my place -cruddy."

She stood up with a jerk, as if she were coming to attention. "I've got to take a shower and a shampoo. I must look like hell. Then I've got some decisions to make."

"The bathroom's right through there," I said, pointing down the hall.

She glanced at me. "Is there any word about ..."

"Not yet," I said.

"I hope they get him soon," she said fiercely. "I hope they get him and I hope they do to him what he did to her."

"They'll get him," I said. "There aren't a whole lot of places where a man like that can hide."
 
 

I didn't have any luck locating Candy Kane. Not that I thought that I would. It was an obvious stage name just one more thing about the arrest report that made it suspect. I tried a few Newport strip joints after I phoned the Caesar, but nobody at the clubs was willing to talk over the phone. It occurred to me that Laurel would probably recognize the name, since she had danced in Newport. But I wasn't sure I wanted to ask her. Each time she helped me out she unwittingly got herself more deeply involved in the case. Each time she put herself in more jeopardy. It wasn't fair to use her like that -not without telling her about the risks she was facing. She didn't know about Clayton. And while she knew that Kaplan was a drug dealer, she didn't know that he might have been indicted by the grand jury.

I decided to wait until I'd talked to Petrie before I asked Laurel for any more favors or did any more detecting. I still wasn't sure I wanted to stay on the case, especially since there was no question that it was drug related and very dangerous. In fact, if I'd known the way things were going to fall out the day before, I would have quit on the spot. But the previous night had changed things. You can't witness a crime like that and not be changed by it.

At six sharp, Petrie knocked on my door. By then Laurel had showered and dressed and was lying on the bed, leafing through an old copy of Popular Photography. I'd told her that I was expecting company, and as soon as Petrie walked in she closed the bedroom door.

Petrie walked over to the rolltop desk and sat down in the captain's chair. He looked thoroughly worn out eyes ringed with fatigue, his granite jaw peppered with a day's growth of beard. He smelled through his suit of sweat, bone-weariness, and alcohol.

"When's the last time you slept?" I said.

"Not since you got me up this morning." He rolled his head back and the muscles in his neck bulged above his shirt collar. "It has not been a good day."

"Not for any of us," I said.

"I suppose you saw the afternoon paper?"

"I saw it," I said. "Is it true?"

"Christ, no," he said in an outraged voice. "I told you a couple of days ago that we had nothing on Parks. Hell, I didn't have any proof that he had a drug problem until this guy Clayton told me about it early this morning. That's precisely why we need your help. We want you to prove that we had nothing to do with helping that murderous moron out of whatever problems he was in."

"And how do you expect me to do that?"

"By finding out what really happened to Bill, writing it up in a report, and submitting it to me. After that, I'll take the appropriate legal action."

"You may have to sue Clayton. In case you didn't know it, he was the one who told the newspapers that you helped fix Parks's ticket."

"You're kidding!" Petrie said in a shocked voice and his face turned an angry red. "Why that son-of-a-bitch!"

"He's a nasty son-of-a-bitch, Hugh," I said. "Last night he warned me, in no uncertain terms, to stay out of the case. And from what I understand he does not make idle threats."

"I don't make idle threats either," Petrie said icily. "If you can prove what you just said, I will sue his fucking ass off. DEA or no DEA."

"What else did Clayton tell you this morning?" I asked.

"He gave me the details of the case against Parks and he asked about the progress of your investigation."

"How did he know that I was on the case?" I said.

Petrie looked perplexed. "You know, it never occurred to me to ask. I suppose someone told him. Or he observed you. He was supposedly keeping an eye on Parks, wasn't he?"

"Did he give you a reason for asking about me?"

"Not really," Petrie said. "I had the feeling that he wanted to find out how much we knew about Bill's drug problems. I suppose he was worried that this plea-bargaining thing would find its way into the papers before the grand jury indictments came out. That's a guess, understand. After what you just told me, I don't know what the hell his motives are."