Mike Reuther - Return to Dead City (13 page)

“Let me guess. She commented on your striking wardrobe?”

“Hell. The bitch refused to even acknowledge me. Piled her plate with snails and moved right past me.”

“Tsk. Tsk. The brutality of these class wars.”

“Class wars shit. It had more to do with the man she tied the knot with.”

“Er. The Reynolds chap.”

“You got it. Roger Reynolds. Law school graduate. Ex-football star. Talk about a hunk. Ha. It figured someone like Reba would end up with him.”

“Heh. Heh. You don’t mean to say you and the future counselor …”

Pat allowed herself the slighest of grins. “Let’s just say ol’ Reba wasn’t the only one who got to know him in the biblical sense.”

“You little slut.”

Pat’s kids had tired of the wrestling. In fact, each member of her tireless, terrible tribe was stretched out motionless on the small quilt rug in front of the television.

“I was waitressing at the old White Horse Inn the night he and a group of his buddies came in,” she said. “The place was a dump but always drew good rowdy crowds.

He was looking pretty good that night I first saw him. Well dressed. At least a lot better made up than most of the goons who came into that place. He had a real swagger in his walk. You could tell he thought he was a pretty hot commodity. Don’t ever let a woman tell you that stuff isn’t a turn-on.”

“Sweetheart. You’re talking to the king of swagger.”

“I managed to wait on his table,” she continued. “He was no different than a lot of young guys. Get a little alcohol in them
,
and they start thinking with their dicks. He tried the usual lines on me and then asked for my phone number.”

“Hmmm…Let’s see. You shot him down?”

“You better believe it. No one gets me that easy.”

“That’s what I like about you honey.”

“Besides he came a couple of nights later. Sober and with a bouquet of flowers.”

“What a guy.”

Pat gave my arm a pinch. “Hey. It was kind of out of left field. But sweet too.
Know what I mean?”

“Come now. He didn’t have ulterior motives?”

“Don’t they all
?
That was okay though.”

“So you let this saloon Sam win and woo you before dumping him like a bad habit.”

Pat was staring past me out the window that overlooked the park across the street.

“I don’t know who dumped who really. That was what? Ten years ago. I was just nineteen. He was twenty-six, damn near through law school at the time with this wonderful future. We really didn’t have a thing in common. I think we both just saw it for what it was - a short fling. To tell you the truth I don’t remember losing any sleep after it ended. It was only about a year later, when I saw him with Reba coming through the buffet line at their wedding reception that I really felt I’d lost something pretty good.”

I looked at Pat. She was still staring out the window again, biting down on her lower lip, the forefinger and thumb of her one hand twisting a strand of her hair.

“Hey. I thought this guy didn’t mean anything?”

Pat suddenly rose from the couch and went over to where her kids were sleeping on the floor. She very quickly got them all to their feet and off to their beds. In about five minutes she was back.

“A couple months after the wedding Roger mangled himself up in an auto wreck,” she continued. “It was a pretty bad one out along the River Road. He’d been drinking pretty good that night at some bars.
”

“Did he
get killed
?”

“It was touch and go for awhile. He pulled out of it though. But he was never the same. He ended up in a wheelchair.”

“Bad break.”

“Real bad break.”

Pat was usually tough as nails. She wasn’t one to shed tears over puppy dogs being run over by trucks. Few things really got to her. After all, if you took all the lousy stuff from her life and piled it up
,
it would come to one hell of a crap heap. Yet here she was crying - long, streaming tears running down her face. A part of me wanted to reach out and hold her. But it wasn’t my style.

“He can’t even practice law. I guess the accident just took too much out of him.”

“I take it Reba…er…found other diversions.”

Pat’s eyes turned hard. “It didn’t take the little gold digger long. If I remember correctly, she had Ron Miller before a preacher saying ‘I do’ right after the divorce went through.”

“Interesting. By the way, whatever happened between you and Reba later on at that wedding reception?”

“You know me too well don’t you?”

“All of the better parts anyway.”

“I thought about dropping a plate of food on her. But that would’ve created a scene. I decided to get her real good.”

“Let me guess. You gave her a mean right cross which led to a neato hair-pulling fight between the two of you.”

“Nah. That would’ve been no contest. Besides, it would have gotten the men all hot and horny. I went for the throat.”

“Oh.”

“I strolled over to the groom and planted a good, long kiss on him.”

“How bold of you. Pray tell. Was it one of those wet ones?”

I moved closer up against her.

Pat gave me one of those suggestive, sidelong glances. “I think it’s safe to say there was some tongue involved.”

“Heh. Heh. Think some of that tongue is available?” I asked as I nudged her onto her back.

Chapter 8

The next few days crawled by without me making any kind of real progress on the case. August had the damn town in its death grip and with no sign of letting up. The days were damp, gray, and sweltering with humidity. By late afternoon, the haze would hover above the downtown like the fog of a bad horror movie drifting into a graveyard, and the street lights would come on to lend a yellowish, surreal kind of ambience to everything. God. It was enough to drive anyone to the bottle. Since my drinking episode of a few nights earlier though, I’d been a good boy, staying completely away from the hard stuff and tapering my intake to a few beers during some evening stops at Red’s.

At different times in my past I’d been able to all but sever my cozy relationship with booze. I’d gone as long as five and six weeks without even a beer. One stretch of sobriety - my all-time record - had lasted ten weeks, three days. But then the shit starts to happen. As a cop you see it all: the bullet-riddled bodies, the kids strung out on coke, all the crap of a patrolman’s job. You go to bed at dawn with it all spinning through your brain, a kaleidoscope of horror and gore that even Stephen King couldn’t serve up. The booze softens it a bit, but it’s all still there, waiting to be thrown up like all the vomit of a bad meal.

I entered Bradley Park on my way uptown from my apartment. Earlier in the summer, when the sun and warm weather was still a refreshing retreat from winter and the chilly, wet days of spring, the park had crawled with action. Kids had been everywhere - toting ball gloves and throwing
F
risbees,
zigzagging
along the concrete walkway on rollerblades and skateboards, or just playing grab ass with each other. But on this early evening the park
looked
deserted. There was no one on the ball field tucked away in the corner of the park; the band shell at the park’s east end was empty. The city fathers had failed miserably at getting some use out of the band shell. Every Sunday night a church choir, a barbershop quartet or what was supposed to pass as a jazz band would take its turn playing to sparse audiences.

Drawing closer to the band shell, I saw there was some action after all. A small group of punker teenagers stood around one of the benches that faced the band shell.  They were a sight, all of them - dangling earrings, bad haircuts with Halloween colors, and clothes claimed from a flea market. I figured them all to be about fifteen or sixteen. A girl, her blonde hair chopped in a Mohawk and wearing black bikini briefs and what looked to be a man’s shirt, sat on the grass, her legs spread out, jabbering with one of her tribe. The two of them were sharing a joint.

Passing on through the park, I began to run the facts of the murder through my mind. From some aspects the killing seemed to be one screaming with leads if not clues.

Still, just who the hell was Lance Miller other than this aging ballplayer trying desperately to hang onto baseball? Did his connection to Mick Slaughter have anything to do with him turning up dead at the Spinelli Hotel? How about Jeannette? An ex-wife could very likely figure as a suspect. Or her lover, Giles Hampton? Certainly, he could have good reason to want Lance out of his life, especially if Lance had been trying to get back with Jeannette. The Millers couldn’t be dismissed as possible suspects either. And what of Lance’s teammates? All sorts of jealous rivalries evolved among athletes.

Add to the mix a police department that was either stumped or being unusually close-mouthed about the crime, and you had all the elements of one mysterious case.

Gallagher’s contention that the killing had been the work of a drug dealer looking for a fix didn’t sit well with me. Was my old police chief buddy hiding something? I couldn’t be sure.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t known Lance Miller so I was working from a disadvantage from the very start. But even those who’d been acquainted with the guy didn’t seem to have much of a handle on him. I had no illusions that he was any type of saint. From what
I could tell he’d had a healthy appetite for the ladies. That in itself has the potential for leading to some messy situations. Apparently the guy had been a loner but a loner whose acquaintances if not friends weren’t exactly of the strongest moral character. Like Mick Slaughter. If the hotel deskman was right and my cop’s intuition right as well, Slaughter had ties of some kind to organized crime. At the very least I felt sure the guy had connections to some small network of thugs or criminals. Since leveling him with that sucker punch I had half-expected to get an unwanted visit from some of his goons.

I had been walking for about ten minutes, another late summer rain just getting started, when I found myself standing in front of Myrna’s. There were only a few crusty souls inside. I wasn’t in the mood for much company anyway so I ducked inside and out of the rain.

Myrna was pushing a broom behind the bar, appearing, as always, weary and fed up with the world, the stub of
a
cigarette hanging from her mouth. I took a seat near the window and almost immediately, Myrna came by with some steaming coffee. Without a word she plopped my cup down on the table, causing some of the coffee to spill over its rim. I raised my cup in a mock salute to her as she trudged away.

I sat there for a few minutes watching the raindrops from outside the window plink off the sidewalk when the strangest sensation came over me. For some reason I felt I was being watched. I took a slow sip from my cup and allowed my eyes to go around the room. There was a guy over near a booth playing one of those poker machines, and over at the bar a couple of geezers were conversing. Obviously, none of them w
as
even aware of my presence. Over near the men’s room, on the other side of the room, I spotted him. Scarface. He was at a table sitting with some other character, who, like Scarface, looked liked he’d been coughed up from the gutter. He was a hunchback with scraggly gray hair down to his shoulders. I had him figured for about thirty, give or take a few years, despite the silver mane. His face was smooth and round, free of the ravages of time. Nothing about the guy made him distinct from the rest of the derelicts to be found in this part of town.

The two of them sat across the table from each other talking in a whisper. Or rather, Scarface talked while the hunchback nodded his head. I had a feeling something was going down with the two. It was a bit warm to be wearing jackets
,
and I was pretty damn sure this pair hadn’t donned coats to make some fashion statement. Scarface’s coat was one of those leather jobs you often see on the backs of bikers. The hunchback had a military jacket, one of those khaki coats you can pick off the rack of any Army surplus store.

I walked right past their table and into the men’s room. Instead of closing the door though, I left it open just enough to get a good peek at the pair. What happened next caught me by surprise. Scarface threw a bill on the table, and the two of them headed for the door. I didn’t waste a moment.

By the time I hit the street they had disappeared around the corner. An alley running between Myrna’s and an abandoned store front gave them an escape route. It was little more than a walkway really. I doubt a single car could have made it through. As I entered the alley I could see it wasn’t much better for pedestrians. It was a dark, narrow passageway, and I needed a flashlight just to see twenty feet ahead. I knew better than to tail a couple of derelicts down an alley. Unfortunately, I had to be reminded of just how stupid I can sometimes be.

The blow caught me on the side of the head, jolting my brain like a zap of lightning. My world went fuzzy, but only until my back hit pavement. For a second I tasted vomit and caught the rotten aroma of the whole stinking alley. Two pairs of feet were circling me. I didn’t want to move.

“See what he’s got on him.”

It sounded like Scarface. I felt some weight on my lower back, then a hand began to furiously pat different areas of my prone body. It was hardly a professional job, and I couldn’t help but recall this bad joke back during my old days on the force. It had to do with a transsexual cop who’s working vice in a gay bar and is forced to pat someone down. The punch line eluded me though.

I was still being patted down when Scarface said, “Grab his wallet, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”

I didn’t have my wallet on me. But that didn’t stop the hunchback from trying like hell to find one. It cost him. He was off my back and kneeled beside me patting down my legs when I sprang up and let him have it with a single, well placed kick to the groin. The next thing I knew Scarface was swinging a club like Barry Bonds swatting at a hanging curve. I ducked under one of Scarface’s roundhouse cuts and tackled him. The club went one way, and the two of us toppled against a brick building wall and onto the clammy pavement.

Scarface was fast and wiry. But I had about forty pounds on him. As he tried scrambling away I managed to tackle him a second time. Hunchback, meanwhile, grabbed the club and moved toward me like he wanted to split open my skull.

“Drop it Scum or I’ll remove that lump in your back permanently.”

That stopped him. He considered his options for a few moments before allowing the club to fall. He backed up a couple of steps, then a couple more before turning and running up the alley.

Sometimes you can bluff  ‘em. Sometimes you can’t. That left me alone with
Scarface. I pulled him to his feet and backed him against the bricks. He didn’t resist at all.

“So what sort of business were you pair of Rotarians transacting?”

“I don’t have to tell you nothin’,” he sneered.

“No. But I have some friends who might be interested.”

I reached into his coat pocket. He tried to pull free, but I pushed him up harder against the bricks. As I suspected, he had a bag of crack on him. I held it up for us both to see.

“Why don’t we talk huh.”

Right away, he questioned my authority. I told him the police might be interested in his drug dealing activity. That caused him to chuckle. Go ahead. Tell them, he said. “Them guys won’t touch me. They’re some of our best customers.”

“You’re lying.”

“Yeah. You think so? Talk to your buddy Gallagher. I’m sure he’s dying to tell you about some of his purchases.”

“Joe Gallagher? Smoking crack? Don’t make me laugh.”

“Okay Jack. Have it your way.”

“Fine. How about I just bounce you off the pavement a few times?”

“Come off it Jack. I can help you if you give me a chance.”

I tightened my grip on him, then thinking better of it, let him go. I decided to let him talk. First, I asked him about Mick Slaughter. He claimed he knew him only by name.

“What about Lance Miller?”

“I only seen him around the Spinelli.”

“You didn’t know the guy?”

“I told you. I only seen him around the Spinelli. I know his ex-wife though.”

“Jeannette?”

“That’s her. And her fag boyfriend.”

“Hampton?”

“Yeah. My meal ticket.”

“Meal ticket?”

“You got it Jack. I was Hampton’s errand boy, you might say. I got him lots of things he wanted.”

“Like drugs?”

“You got it Jack. Marijuana, speed, rock candy. I got it all for him.”

“Hampton doesn’t strike me as the hardcore party animal.”

“The stuff wasn’t for him. He liked to have it around to feed his guests.”

“Guests?”

“Mostly the students he liked to poke.”

“Huh?” It took all kinds. Giles Hampton, luring young flesh into his den.

“How does Jeannette take all this?” I asked.

Jeannette? Hell. She don’t care. She’s set up just fine with Mr. College Professor.
Nice place to live. No more working at Jay’s Lounge.”