by Thomson, Lh
“That… the best…”
“Nope,” I said, hitting him with a roundhouse body shot that knocked his wind out. He started to double over, and as his chin dropped slightly I threw a left cross that caught him on the button, knocking him out, face down in the wet gravel and dirt of the alley.
The other one was struggling to get up and before he could get the gun out of his pocket, I gave him a swift kick to the temple, putting him down hard.
Then it occurred to me: if neither of them got out of the driver’s side, who was driving the….
And that was when the blackjack came down, a shuddering rabbit punch from an inch-thick rubber pipe to the back of my head that rattled my teeth. I dropped to my knees.
A voice behind me said, “Not so fast now, are you?” And then the blackjack came down again, and the lights went out.
When you’re knocked cold, it’s just like being asleep, except instant. One second you’re conscious, the next, you’re dreaming, usually of something that makes no sense, a jumble of disconnected-yet-real passages, of stumbling through corridors, and fistfights and mournful speeches by lost loves, of splashes of color, yellows and greys and reds, and then of something passionate, green-and-white, red-and-black. There are glimpses of reality there, too, decisions you made and now regret, the indifference of others who should care. Choices you’d like to take back, but instead just recall and dream about over and over again…
And when you finally wake, it’s not for some prosaic reason, like trying to avoid death in a dream so you don’t die in real life, or trying to avoid falling, so that you won’t have a heart attack from fright before you hit the ground, or anything like that.
It’s because a homeless guy who lives in the alley in which you’re lying is rifling through your pockets.
Well … that’s how it was for me, anyhow. The feeling of the guy’s hands in my pants shocked me awake. My head was pounding from the attack and bruised ribs suggested someone had given me a good kick. But I seemed okay otherwise, and when he realized I was coming around, the homeless guy scurried down the alley. The wise guys had split and I had no doubt that if I hadn’t taken out the first two, they’d have probably stuck around to finish me off.
It didn’t seem likely that the two guys from the gallery heist were trying to keep me from getting involved. They’d be lying low, no matter what they were really up to. But that meant other muscle was involved, and at least three guys at that.
And it all added up to much more than just a quick robbery. Why would a crook come into a gallery, take down a painting, then remount it on the wall? What was he trying to find? Maybe it was the wrong picture. Maybe they were expecting something else in that spot? Or behind it?”
I’d asked Nora that earlier in the day.
“Maybe he grabbed it to steal it then changed his mind, like he realized he had to follow orders or something.”
“Doesn’t make sense. There was a Beechey there worth at least $60,000. What do you figure that Dufresne would rise to at auction?”
“Maybe…$2,500?”
“So why would a robber even think about taking the picture worth $2,500 when there’s another picture worth about twenty five times within darting distance of the front door?”
Like I said, Nora’s smart. But she’s not psychic. After a second she exhaled deeply. “You got me, Liam.”
Yeah. I wish.
Chapter Four
THE MORNING BEFORE the soccer game, my phone rang early. My brother Davy was working the red-eye shift. That he was calling me at 6:20 a.m. was less surprising than the fact that he was calling at all.
“Listen, I don’t really want to talk to you or nothing,” he said before I could even acknowledge it was me, “but Pa said if I heard anything you could use I should let you know.”
“So let me know.” Like I said, things were tense between us. He was about as warm as a Popsicle.
“Yeah, well, turns out you should talk to a robbery dick named Esterhaus, works out of Center City.”
“You know him?”
“Not a bit. If he’s smart, he won’t talk to your convict ass.”
“It’s knowing you care that counts the most.”
“Yeah, well fuck you, Liam. You ain’t even close to done apologizing for what you done, far as I’m concerned.”
And that was that. Davy hung up on me, and I went back to work, looking up the number for Esterhaus’s precinct house. Davy’s anger towards me was still raw and would take longer to heal, him being a serving member and all.
I got Esterhaus’s machine, and left my name and a suitably cryptic message about the robbery. That pretty much guaranteed he’d call me back, just to make sure I didn’t have info he could use. Then I grabbed a quarter of grapefruit from the refrigerator and some milk, setting both on the small Formica table for breakfast.
After breakfast, I hit the pavement in the neighborhood for a jog, the early morning cool enough and the streets quiet enough to give me a chance to stretch without looking over my shoulder. When I got back, I hit the speed bag for twenty minutes.
Eventually, he called back. “Well, well, well. The son of the Mighty Quinn,” he said. “As I live and breathe.”
That was a stumper “Pardon?”
“I knew your father, back in the day when he was busting heads and taking down the bad guys. We worked together a bit, partnered for a while.”
That was a surprise. Pa was never shy about talking about his cronies from the force. I figured he’d have mentioned him. “Yeah? Must’ve been a while ago.”
“He didn’t mention me?” He sounded bemused. “Not a total shock. But you would have been a little kid anyhow. You wouldn’t remember.”
I made a mental note to ask my father what was up. “So you’re handling the gallery heist?”
“Yeah, such as it is.” He didn’t sound very enthusiastic. “One painting in a city this big? We’ll probably end out shelving this one, letting insurance handle it.”
“Yeah, about that….” I filled him in on my job.
He laughed. “I don’t envy you, kid. We’ve been rounding up the usual suspects.”
“So you don’t think anyone at the show…”
“Come on!” he said, bemused. “This isn’t CSI, kid. In the real world, the crooks don’t do you the favor of hanging around and the people who pay them don’t come along for the ride to the crime scene. Believe me, this’ll be a regular guy from the neighborhood. Maybe we get him, maybe we don’t.”
“You almost sound like you don’t care if you get him at all.”
“I’ve been a cop a long time kid. Sometimes the breaks don’t go our way. You got to learn to let these things slide. You know, your old man would understand.”
What the hell was that supposed to mean? “Maybe I’ll ask him,” I said.
“You do that, kid. Little Liam Quinn… as I live and breathe. Who would’ve thought of one of Al Quinn’s boys growing up? Listen, I got to run kid. It’s been good catching up though. You know where I am if you need me.”
“Yeah, sure. Listen…”
But he’d already hung up.
The crowd was already in full voice by the time we got to the stadium.
If you’ve never heard a few thousand mildly drunken fans sing in unison, it’s a joyous and wonderful thing — particularly if you, also, are mildly drunk.
And Nora was. You need to understand: this is one straight-laced woman. She never drinks much more than coffee, and only has the odd glass of champagne at the usual dozen weddings she has to attend every summer.
But today for some reason, she seemed to want to cut loose a bit. We’d stopped for lunch before heading down to Chester and she’d finished off a small carafe of white wine. Then we each got a pint of beer when they opened the gates.
So by the time we made our way to our seats, about three rows up from the players’ benches, she was joining in without hesitation. She belted the fight song; she took part in the ‘wave�
�; and when the Union scored off a corner, the tall defender nodding the ball into the far corner of the net, she jumped to her feet so quickly she almost fell over, and I had to catch her.
We settled back into our seats, with Nora on pint number two. I was working – although it didn’t feel much like it – so one was my limit, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous. It was a cool, breezy afternoon by the river, and she gripped my elbow both to get warm and to release the tension of the game.
I watched her quietly for a minute in profile, her green eyes flicking back and forth as she followed the play. The Union were in good form, passing circles around Toronto, and it was obvious she’d been caught in the spell.
She had an almost innocent quality, an innate goodness to her. It wasn’t hard to love her, and it wasn’t hard to feel unworthy.
“Why haven’t I done this before?” she asked. Then she quarter-turned and punched me in the shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me how fun this was?”
“I’ve been trying to get you to come to a game all season.”
“Well...yeah. But you didn’t tell me it was such a blast.”
The half-dozen hardcore fans right behind us started singing one of the player’s names to the tune of “La Cucaracha”, and Nora joined in for a few seconds.
“I think I’m getting a little drunk,” she said once she’d sat down again.
“You keep putting them back at this rate and I’ll have to carry you out of here.”
“Ooh,” she said mockingly. “Is the big, strong man going to take care of little ol’ me?”
“The big strong man is going to be left with no choice in short order.”
She laughed. “Don’t worry, spoilsport, I’ll slow it down.”
Story of our relationship. “Listen, at halftime, I have to head down to the concessions to talk to a couple of the young guys down there. Work stuff.”
Nora rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you’re a bunch of fun.”
“The tickets were free, remember?”
She looked at the foam in the bottom of her empty plastic beer cup. “Wish the beverages were free,” she said. “Can you... “
“Drunky. Sure, I’ll stop on the way back, okay?”
I filed my way through the crowds on the cement concourse. The vendor was at the far end, towards one of the sets of washrooms, a Formica counter and three kids in paper hats.
“Welcome to McFinnigan’s, what can I get you?” the kid at the counter asked.
Now, as a good Irish-American laddie, I feel compelled to point out that “McFinnigan” is not an Irish name. It’s made up to sound like one, just as no one at your average Outback Steakhouse has ever trekked through the Australian desert hunting kangaroo.
The security boss, Bryson, had given me a rundown on the three kids who’d been working that night. DeShawn Ellis was the kid behind the register. That made the short tubby kid manning the ice cream station the assistant manager, Jeffrey Tills, and the tall brunette kid near the back David Mince.
“Someone opened the doors to the loading dock so that they could back a pickup up,” Bryson had told me. “If our guys are involved and you can get one of them to rollover on the other two, we might have something.”
I asked the kid for two beers and waited until he’d started pouring and was a captive audience. “Hey, isn’t McFinnigans the franchise that got robbed there, like, ten days ago?”
He looked up quickly but avoided eye contact “Yeah.”
“Scary, man. Were you here?”‘
“No.”
“Not working that day, huh?” The tubby assistant manager had begun to pay attention.
He brought the two beers to the counter. “That’ll be twelve dollars.”
“So you weren’t working?”
“Yeah... no. I mean, it was after hours.” Out of the corner of my eye I watched the assistant manager shoot a sharp look at the brunette kid near the back.
“Must have made you think twice about coming back, eh?”
DeShawn looked nervous and chewed his lower lip slightly. “Yeah, sure. Look, I have to help the next customer.”
“Sure, sure, sorry. Let me get out of your way here...” I moved the two beer glasses onto the adjacent counter, above the ice cream tubs. The assistant manager, Jeffrey, studied me nervously, waiting me to ask something. He had a burn mark on the inside of his forearm, like from a cigarette, and I pointed to it.
“How’d you do that?”
“Leaned on the stove at home,” he lied. The shape was unmistakable.
“Really? ‘Cause I just got out of the joint after three years, and I saw a lot of cigarette burns inside. And that looks a hell of a lot like a cigarette burn to me.” I said it loud enough for the kid in the back to hear it.
He drew his arm away subconsciously and covered the burn mark with his other hand. “It’s nothing.”
The skinny brunette kid was listening as intently as possible without it being obvious.
“Hey,” I told the other kid. “My mistake. What do I know, right? Cheers.”
I left my card on the counter and the kid looking puzzled, which was good. Then I caught up with Nora for the remainder of the game. The Union held out for a win, she had a great time — spending more time standing than sitting, always a sign of a good game — and all was right with the world.
When we got back downtown, I drove Nora over to her parents’ place, where she was meeting the rest of her family for dinner.
The Garcia de Sorias lived in Fishtown, too, but it’s a big neighborhood. They’d come up in the world in the fifteen years after Ramon took “early retirement” from the force, a euphemism for a reduced pension. He’d signed up at nineteen, so he still had plenty of time after his police career to put his security knowledge to good use.
PMI paid him a ton of dough, I’m sure. I wasn’t going up this time, but I’d seen their condo plenty of times and it was stunning: marble floors and kitchen counters, ultra-modern pulls on the cabinets, lean modernist furniture. There was no doubting that man had taste — or at the very least had married it. I wasn’t sure who gave Nora the gift, but I had to suspect it was her mother, Brenda.
I let her off outside the building’s front doors. I like Ramon, but it was Saturday, and when I was away from the office the idea of not talking to the boss had a certain appeal.
“Not coming up? My mom will be crushed. She loves you, you know.”
Nora’s mom should’ve been a national treasure. She raised four really great kids on a cop’s salary, and I don’t think a minute ever went by that she wasn’t smiling warmly.
She had large, fluffy blonde “mom” hair but was all of about four-feet-eleven inches tall, which gave her a kind of magical quality, especially when she’d just baked one of her pies. Kids loved her even more than adults, like a magic elf or a particularly cheerful fairy godmother.
“Nah. I have to get back to work,” I lied.
Truth was, hanging out with Nora was that double-edged sword that cut both ways: chances are neither of us would be happier any time that week ... but she was still going out on a date the next Monday with some schnook from the museum.
Like I said, when it came to women like Nora, I was out of my league.
Halfway back to my place my phone rang. I pulled over and answered; I’m a great believer that, despite the world’s insistence on carrying a phone everywhere, few calls were ever worth dying for.
“Is this Quinn?”
“Depends.”
“That’s a yes.”
“That’s an ‘I have an off button’.”
“Carl Hecht. You want to talk to me?”
“I do.”
“So shoot.”
“I’m investigating ...”
“I know why you’re calling. Get on with it.”
Direct. Well, it was going to save time.
“Mr. Hecht, did you arrange to have that gallery robbed?”
“Huh. Now why would I do that?�
��
“Word is you’re a silent partner and things aren’t going well.”
“So?”
“So maybe DeGoey is forced to sell and you structure it to get a cut before his creditors, for one.”
He chuckled. “That’s pretty creative.”
“Thank you.”
“Not smart, though. If I was going to pay someone to rob the place, why would I do it on the one day of the week that I’m visiting?”
“Because if you weren’t there, you might have been the first person DeGoey suspected.”
He chuckled again. “So if I’m there, I’m a suspect because I’m there. But if I’m not there, I’m a suspect because I’m not there? Besides, I think you’re overrating how much I worry about John’s feelings.”
“Duly noted.”
“I’m not some hoodlum, Mr. Quinn, I’m a businessman. That can be messy enough.”
It should also be noted that when a guy says “I’m not some hoodlum,” it usually means he is.
“Oh yeah?”
“Listen, I’ll keep it short and simple, Mr. Quinn. I like being in business with John. It’s unfortunate that he has run into some trouble financially, but that’s business sometimes. I try to help where I can, but I have my own concerns. But I don’t know anything about that robbery — other than how shocking it was to go through it, of course.”
“Of course.”
“Good talking to you.”
Click.
And that was all I was going to get from Hecht. I hung up the phone and put it back in my pocket, but before I could even pull the car back out into traffic, it rang again.
“Liam? Walter Beck.”
“Been awhile, Walter.”
“Indeed, my boy, indeed. Would you have time to grab a spot of lunch tomorrow?
“I guess. What’s the subject?”
He sounded giddy. “I hear you’re working on quite a case, my boy. I’m thinking we need to go over the pertinent details.”
“You’ve been talking to Leo Tesser.” Like a dutiful student, Alison’s boyfriend had probably gone right back to his boss.
