Private Heat (43 page)

“Don't forget to look under the seats. You know these rental outfits. It could be under the mats—anywhere.”

“Did I miss something here?” asked Ron.

“Yeah,” said Franklin. “I didn't give a shit about your equipment. I wanted to search your van.”

“Hell, I knew that,” said Ron. “What were you looking for?”

“Art's regular carry piece,” said Franklin. “The one he was carrying when he got busted for the Talon murder.”

Ron laughed. “Talk to Art's attorney.”

“You mean …?” asked Franklin.

“He means, talk to my attorney. You gonna get my car or what?”

Franklin took the keys, and he and Ron departed.

“If you were with Franklin when those two guys bought the farm, the gun can't be in your car,” said Van Huis.

“Three will get you five if he doesn't look under the seats; he already searched Ron's van.”

“Sucker bet!”

I scraped up the cards and dealt us a hand of rummy—hard to do wearing handcuffs. I had half my hand in the discard pile when Van Huis picked them up.

“Maybe if you tell them where to find your other Russian pal. Rummy!” he said.

“Easy,” I said. “Watch Rosenko. Solutzkof will be close.”

“Tell me about them.”

“Common criminals.”

“There's nobody here,” said Van Huis. “Just you and me. Common criminals don't hose down most of our fleet, come at us with rocket launchers, or disappear into thin air.”

“Time passes. Things change.” I laid my cards down and fanned them out with a finger to count the points.

“Just when I start liking you, you revert to type.”

“Seventy-five.” I rolled my eyes up to Van Huis and said, “What type is that?”

“The pain-in-the-ass type.”

“Once upon a time there were dinosaurs. They went extinct and rats ruled the world. The rats thought the few remaining dinosaurs were a pain in the ass.”

“You saying I'm a rat?”

“Nope. I'm saying that when you retire, people will think you're a pain in the ass.”

A racket came from the downstairs door. Van Huis made me go with him to answer it. We found a pale-faced Shephart leaning on the door jamb.

“They made Hardin's gun,” he said. “They said because I was with Hardin, I'm a material witness. I have to get Franklin, tell him he's a witness and not to talk to Hardin.”

“Not to worry,” said Van Huis. “Pain in the ass that he is, Hardin saved Franklin's virginity. He hasn't said shit.”

“Where's Franklin?”

“He went for coffee with Ron Craig.”

“They want Craig,” said Shephart. “They want to know where he was the morning Talon got killed. Where he was for the last couple of hours, and if he was in the warehouse before I got there with Hardin and Franklin.”

“He was with you; then he came here,” said Van Huis.

“What time did he get here?”

“Beats the shit out of me,” said Van Huis.

“Better think hard. That's the big question—we got to County General, that Russian cocksucker had vanished. They wheeled him in and he walked out. When they went looking for him, they found Paulie Milton with a bullet in his brain and a silenced Mauser twenty-two pistol on his chest. Emmery's on his way here, right now. He's taking Hardin down to the federal building. They sent you a fax because of the telephones.”

“Shit! We've been upstairs!” said Van Huis.

Shephart stepped in and pulled the door shut.

“Ron Craig didn't kill anybody,” I said.

Van Huis turned toward me, his face red. “I don't want to hear your bullshit. Franklin was right. Everyone's watching you, and it's your pal doing the dirty work. I stuck my neck out to help you, and you and your partner played me!”

“Look, I don't know where my attorney is,” I said. “He should have been here by now. When he gets here, this will be cleared up. Emmery is playing for time. He stole Rosenko's passport. Probably has Rosenko's airline tickets. He knew if I got arrested I'd clam up. He's not coming here.”

Van Huis put a right hook on the side of my head that came out of nowhere. My glasses exploded. It was a head shaker. Thank God for plastic lenses. I backed up a step.

Shephart stepped between us but didn't have the body mass to slow down Van Huis. He went down.

Van Huis had somebody's blood on his hand. He left it all over the back of Shephart's suit. I tried to talk but my tongue was too woolly to operate. Van Huis stepped over Shephart, and I ducked a roundhouse right.

Shephart got to his knees. Van Huis stood sideways to me because of the missed punch. I drove my shoulder into him, and he toppled backward and over Shephart.

“Listen, Jerry!” I managed to say. It didn't sound like me. The words were slow and leaden. “Goddamit, listen! I was late to the meet! It fucked up his timing! He wanted Shephart and Franklin to be able to testify that they'd seen me in town!”

“Asshole sure talks better when you thump him a little,” said Van Huis. “Emmery can have what's left when I'm done.”

Someone made a polite, almost tentative, knock at the door. Everybody looked at the door. Nobody moved until the second knock.

“Your fucking ride is here,” said Van Huis. He smiled.

“Don't let him in,” said Shephart.

“You think I give a shit? Let the bastard sue me. We're insured.” Van Huis got up off the floor.

“Don't let him in. Hardin was with me. He didn't kill anybody! If he's right, he won't make it to the federal building!”

“If he stays here, he won't make it to the door.”

“Open the door,” I said. “It's not Emmery. He won't come here.”

“Go with Hardin to the federal building. I can't go with him because I'm a witness,” said Shephart.

The polite knock turned to a raucous pounding. Van Huis opened the door. It was Emmery.

“I underestimated you,” I said.

“Yeah, but your looks have improved,” said Emmery.

“Rosenko got away,” I said. “But not before pumping a twenty-two into Paulie's brain. Tell these guys the truth. Stay here until they can send enough guys to cover you. You know it all. You can make a deal.”

“You don't ever quit, do you Hardin?” said Van Huis. “Take the son of a bitch. He's all yours!”

“You set Rosenko on fire,” I said to Emmery. “He told me it was going to take you a long time to die. He's a man of his word, and he has a partner you never knew about.”

“Thank God,” said Pete Finney from somewhere in the darkness behind Emmery. “I've been knocking at the bloody front door for an hour.” He had to sidestep past Emmery to get into the building. “I used that bugger red phone by the door, and all I got was the county dispatch. They put me on hold. They just now agreed to send you a fax.”

Pete wore khaki shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, and had seriously hairy legs. He held a folded piece of paper in his right hand.

“Damn, Pete,” I said, “I thought the suit went all the way through. I didn't know there was a person in there.”

“Arthur, you have half the town out of bed. Flowers is downtown dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, and Judge Henry is sitting on her bench in sweats. The only ones properly dressed are the feds, and they're all over town like ants at a picnic.”

“Counselor, you can shag your ass back out of here because your comedian is on his way down to the federal building. I hope the ants have a feast!” said Van Huis.

“You are not to turn Mr. Hardin over to the lieutenant. You have been issued some rather explicit instructions. Please check the fax machine before someone makes a”—he looked at me and then back at Van Huis—“another and rather serious career misstep.”

“I've got a writ in the car,” said Emmery. “I didn't think I'd need it, but I'll go get it for this shyster.”

Finney cast an evil eye on Emmery. Emmery sneered back and stepped briskly through the door.

“The barrel and slide that were on Mr. Hardin's weapon when he was arrested have been in my safe since he was released. I have a writ of habeas corpus for Mr. Hardin,” Finney told him.

Van Huis stared at Pete Finney like he was an apparition. “Why didn't you give me this when you walked in?”

“Mr. Emmery is a man in a desperate situation. His involvement seems to be rather more complicated than conjuring evidence and lying on an affidavit to obtain a warrant. I didn't want to find myself standing in the middle of a gun battle.” said Finney.

“I want to see the writ,” said Van Huis.

Finney handed him the writ and watched him read it. When the light of recognition came to Van Huis's face, Finney went on. “One of the faxes is a warrant for the arrest of Lieutenant Emmery. Detective Cox has made some rather startling admissions concerning the evidence collected at the
warehouse. He has agreed to testify in exchange for immunity.”

Shephart and Van Huis produced their weapons and hustled out the door. Finney and I filed in through the desks. The fax machine displayed a blinking yellow light. It had run out of paper. One fax lay in the tray—said Lieutenant Emmery was coming to give me a lift.

We found the paper in the cabinet below the fax machine. The first fax said to detain Emmery. The second one was a request to let Pete in the door. The last one was a warrant charging Emmery with evidence tampering and making a false sworn statement.

“Not exactly open murder,” I said. “This isn't the kind of thing that usually results in a hue and cry.”

“Apparently you made some disclosures to the FBI.”

“Yes, I did, but only before I was arrested.”

“In the future—if you don't want your alibi slashed to ribbons—you should give it to me to substantiate before it is revealed to the police,” Finney said, his voice low and his eyebrows holding hands.

Shephart hurried in the door, his revolver still in his hand. He told us that Emmery had left and that Van Huis was talking to county dispatch on the red telephone. “Hardin, I didn't know anything about this,” he said.

“So said Detective Cox,” said Finney. “He said he fired Mr. Hardin's weapon on the way back from the state police laboratory and collected the brass and slugs for Emmery.”

Sergeant Franklin and Ron arrived with a box full of coffee and donuts. Shephart holstered his heat and showed them the warrant for Emmery.

“I guess the golf date's off,” said Ron.

“Just doing my job,” said Franklin. “I don't play golf, anyway.”

“Neither do I,” said Ron, “unless you count miniature golf.”

We laughed. Pete took a jelly-filled donut and passed on the coffee. He left, but not before he told me that I needed some ice on my eye and that he charged double after midnight. Van Huis walked in with the pieces of my glasses in his hand.

“Mr. Hardin,” he said, “I have a citizen's complaint form that you may fill out.”

“Jerry, I've signed enough of your forms tonight.”

“I got out of hand. I apologize.”

“I'm not angry, Jerry.” I touched the side of my head. My left eye was already swollen to a slit. “I just wish I'd ducked. If you hadn't kept me here, I'd be cooling in a morgue locker right now.”

I held out my cuffed wrists and gave him a nod. He took the cuffs off. My glasses had carved a half-moon gouge into the second knuckle of his right hand. The bleeding had stopped but the flesh gaped apart.

“That's going to take a stitch,” I said.

“How are you going to get home?”

“I'm nearsighted, not blind.”

“You could get a ticket or have an accident.”

“I doubt that the warrant is off the wire, so if I get stopped, I'm going to get a ride. I've got a spare set of glasses at the house.”

We drank our coffee and taped enough of my glasses together for me to have a pirate's-eye view of the trip home.

I called Wendy. She got it in a couple of rings but sounded sleepy. Finney had called and told her that I had been released. She told me to bring bread and milk.

Ron agreed to drive Franklin and Shephart back to the GRPD to pick up their cars. Van Huis was the last one out of the building and the first one out of the lot.

A slash of red lay across the eastern horizon like a gaping wound. The full face of the man in the moon studied us through a cloudless sky that had allowed the warmth of the day to escape. Thankfully, Franklin had left the top up on my rental car.

I opened the door. The interior lights came on and startled me. I found no one in the back seat. Wasn't much of a back seat anyway. God, I love the smell of a new car.

I wore the broken glasses until they became more trouble than they were worth and pitched them onto the passenger seat. I took the Beltline—a straight shot north with no traffic to speak of, just some idiot behind me with his bright lights on. I flipped up the mirror but he hung with me until Knapp Street, so I pulled over to let him pass. He turned into the Meijer's store.

Just before the Beltline passes over the Grand River, there's a flurry of strip malls on both sides of the highway. Old Mother Hubbard's Cupboard, a twenty-four-hour stop-and-rob, stood on my side of the street. I parked in front of the door.

They charge a lot for the convenience they offer, but they had the new three-liter soft drink jugs at less than two-liter prices, so I bought a couple to even the score.

The clerk seemed pretty calm for a man who worked midnights in a
convenience store. He asked me if I wanted the milk and soft drinks in a bag.

“What happened to your head?” he said.

“Talking when I should have been listening,” I said.

“What about the other guy?”

“I'll bet his hand hurts like the very devil.”

I had him put it all in one double bag with the bread on top so it wouldn't get squashed. “I got a rental car, and I don't want to end up arguing over water stains on the rugs or upholstery.” I picked up the bag, walked to the door, and shouldered it open.