Her first arrest had involved a gunfight, and she tried to describe the fierce joy she felt when it was over and the let down hours later. Finally, she stopped. “Here I am, with the best suspect I have, in the biggest case I’ve ever been handed. I have to be losing my mind.”
“I didn’t kill him, Dana. I just flat didn’t. I don’t think that what killed him, or who, had anything to do with me.” She had a decision to make. She stood, as quickly as a short skirt and picnic bench would allow, and I rose with her. The physics of the thing brought us face to face, and I was glad that I’d avoided garlic and onions.
I could see that my breath was stirring a few of the long blonde hairs that had slipped into her face. I felt her hand curl around my neck, and she drew herself up taller. She had a hand to my chest and felt my wedding ring on its chain. We were almost there.
I saw blonde hair, instead of inky black, tilted blue eyes instead of brown, and it felt strange suddenly. I found myself standing with my hands at my side. I was within easy reach of a beautiful woman. She was stopped by her job or me or maybe good sense. As I gazed at her, speechless, she reached up to pull the chain around my neck out of my shirt. Along with my confirmation medal, she touched the wedding ring that was strung on it. She tapped me on my chest with the heel of her fist, looking down at the ring.
I thought of all the things I should say, all of the things I could do. I thought about wrapping her in my arms, bending her onto the picnic table and just letting go. Letting her that close, letting myself take a chance at hurting.
She stepped back. That’s all she did. She might as well have turned and run, because it was the same thing. She turned and started walking towards her car.
I opened my mouth to say something. I couldn’t think of a thing and closed it. I watched her walk, with that enticing stride and sway. I admired her figure. I liked her intelligence and insight. I couldn’t imagine what I could want that she didn’t have. I wanted to call out to her, for her to try to have patience. She closed her door firmly. The engine started, and she backed smoothly out, shifted and drove away. I saw her brake lights flare, and then dim, before she drove out of sight.
I had a long drive to make, and the beer I’d had with dinner made me sleepy. The open convertible top helped keep me awake. Whenever I started to relax, the night’s happenings made my heart beat faster, and embarrassment tingle up my neck and across my cheeks. I found my way to the second-rate highway that took me through the last of Massachusetts, and into Rhode Island.
It was one of those trips where you don’t remember the drive.
I woke Mrs. Pina. She looked at me, searching my eyes. She patted my arm, said goodnight and headed upstairs. My clothes wound up on the floor of my bedroom, and I flopped onto my bed in my shorts.
Tossing and turning for what seemed like forever, I suddenly sat up. “Shit,” I said out loud. I rose and got my legal pad, wrote a couple of quick notes to myself and went back to bed. The bed rose to meet me like a true lover would, and I sank into it. And I slept.
Chapter 7
I dreamed of my last night with Isabel, felt her touch on my cheek and woke up. Marisol was there. “Daddy, I have to go to school, but you were talking to Mamacita. You weren’t calling her, but just talking, like you used to at the kitchen table.”
“Must have been some dream,” I said, as casually as I could. “I don’t remember it.” I smiled at her, hating myself for the lie. However good my intentions were, it wasn’t a good thing.
Either she believed me or let it go, because she kissed me, told me that coffee was made and that she had to run. “Have a good day, sweetheart,” I called after her. I was awake for good, and I remembered that I’d written some notes to myself. I got up and poured the coffee, doctored it up and sipped it.
My notes said a couple of things; “Petersen lied. Why? Washington, Son, Daughter, Wife? DaSilva, what’s up with him? Dana, apologize, asshole.” The final one, I was sure, was what allowed me to sleep. First things first. I called Dana’s office, and didn’t leave a voice mail for her. I left a verbal message with the receptionist to call me at home.
I lit my first cigarette of the day, picked up the phone and called DaSilva’s direct line from his business card. It was time to work my way into the enemy camp. I had a good feeling about DaSilva, and some unsavory ideas about Petersen. I had no illusions about DaSilva telling me much. He wasn’t the kind of cop to go easy on me for helping him out.
I believed that he‘d want to know about Petersen’s lie. I believed that he’d find out what was behind it. I didn’t think he’d ever tell me directly. I was a murder suspect; he was investigating the murder. He was under enormous pressure to make an arrest, and I was an easy target. I hoped he could stand up under the load. I wasn’t sure about liking him, and I was damned sure that he had no liking for me, or dislike for me, either. It was all guess and gut, but it was what I had.
“Newport Police, Sergeant DaSilva,” he answered.
“Sergeant, Paul Costa,” and a silence followed.
“Yes?”
“We need to talk, Sergeant; it’s important, and should be unofficial, at least to start with.”
“I don’t want anything unofficial. Murder is as official as it gets. You’ve been evasive, and you’ve created friction within the team. I don’t trust you, and you must know that you’re my best suspect right now.”
“Sergeant—"
“Okay, now let’s try to understand each other, here. You shook a tail, you’ve been asking questions and talking to people. You’ve been working this since it started. You’ve blinded my partner to anything and anyone except you, and there’s an FBI agent who’s resisting bringing you in. We have whole new areas to check out because of you. I have everyone from the President of the United States to the editor of the Providence Journal yelling for an arrest. You’re beginning to piss me off.”
“I didn’t shake a tail, DaSilva,” I said, leaving his rank out on purpose because I wanted his attention. “No counter-surveillance, because I didn’t see the obvious. I didn’t try to lose Petersen, didn’t know he was there, and I wasn’t in Warwick, where he claimed to lose me.”
“How did you know?” There was a pause that turned into a wait. I let him think it through. “Okay, when and where?” he finally said.
I named a doughnut shop in Middletown, just over the line. He agreed to meet me there in an hour. He said he’d worry about the tap on my phone and any surveillance and we hung up. I took a long, deep breath and headed for the shower. The phone rang while I was in there, and I had no idea how many rings I’d missed, but thinking it could be her, I stumbled and with a towel half wrapped around my waist, I heard her leaving the message that, “Agent Kilroy returned your call.” I listened to it a few times, listening for signs of her feelings. I should have known better. She sounded cool, professional and provocative.
I was dry, so I shaved, dressed and fired up the Saab, leaving the top up. I thought about calling her back, but decided that there either wasn’t time, or that I couldn’t think of how to tell her any of it. I hoped to come up with something brilliant soon. I wasn’t feeling brilliant, and DaSilva was formidable enough.
He was waiting for me when I walked in. He’d ordered me a cup of coffee, black, as I liked it. He remembered that detail from the interview at my house. There was a message there, that this man was a serious observer, with a memory that could assemble details into a coherent picture. I warned myself to be careful, as I sat down. “Thanks for the coffee,” was all I said.
“’Welcome. You start.”
“Good to see you, too, Sergeant.”
“You aren’t intimidated. I get it. You start.”
“Petersen was lying. I didn’t lose him. I didn’t go anywhere near Warwick. However I know what he told you, I know it. Okay? He was slow to report it. He was slow enough to wait for me and follow me home and get clear before he called in. He claimed I lost him deliberately. False.” I told DaSil
va where I went, but not Tim Foley’s name. I left Lois out, even though he already had to know about her. “He claimed I lost him in Warwick. False. I told you where I went, and you can corroborate that with your phone logs and tapes. I’m guessing that you have my cell phone monitored, and you can pick up GPS from that, too. You can time it. I was there for about an hour. There’s something about the strip club. He tried to isolate himself from it. Question is why? Maybe it’s personal, maybe it’s related to the investigation.”
“You’ve been muddying the water since you found Morley’s body, and you’re still doing it.”
I had no response to that. “I have to leave town this week,” I said, “Is that okay?”
“No, Costa, it isn’t okay. I need to know where you are; I need to talk with you after I check things out.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“Probably not, but I want to be able to reach you on short notice. I want you to stop your amateur investigation and contaminating witnesses or potential witnesses. I want you to stop running down leads, or having small private ideas about this. I want you to let us do our jobs.”
“You mean like Petersen?” I asked with raised eyebrows.
“Leave Petersen to me. He’s my partner, and he’s a brother officer.”
“So he’s sacrosanct.”
“He is my problem to resolve, and we’ll leave it that before you make me mad.”
“I’m going to trust you on that. I think you’re straight. I could be wrong, but I’ve known a lot of cops. Besides, I’m a bartender, I’m supposed to know things.”
“You’re supposed to know how to mix drinks and keep your mouth shut.”
“That too. Unless you plan to arrest me, I’ll go. I can do things that you aren’t allowed to.”
“Which will seriously foul up my case.”
“Mix drinks, hearing and seeing all, saying nothing, remember?”
He stopped and thought for a moment. “Shit. You know about the surveillance and phone tap. You can lose somebody if you want to, right?”
“Depends, you know, one car, maybe two, no problem. You and the Bureau won’t be throwing parallels and tailing from ahead and helicopters and all of that. I go old school and ditch my cell, and it gets a bit easier, too.”
He looked directly at me and seemed to be trying to see behind my eyes into my brain. “We never had this conversation?”
“What conversation are you referring to?”
“Nice. Washington, right?”
I said nothing, looking into his eyes.
“Right. I can’t pull the surveillance, and your phone is still going to be covered.”
“Petersen’s your problem, those other details will have to be mine.”
“You get nothing from us. You’re still the best suspect we have.”
“No bullshit from you at all, Sarge. That’s why I love you.”
“Too late for sweet talk. You and everyone else. I can sure feel all the love.” Finally he smiled.
“I’ll stay in touch, Sergeant,”
“I would if I were you.”
Before I returned home, I called the hotel to put in for my vacation on an emergency basis. I thought about the other bartenders, and how they’d been eyeing my shifts. I’d worked for a long time to get them. I could find myself working days, having to go through it all again. Assuming I was able to stay out of jail and hang on to my job.
I called Mrs. Pina to tell her that I’d need her full time for the next week, and gave her an additional rent discount. That may have insulted her, based on her tone, but she agreed. So far, so good. I had to tell Marisol, and I could make my reservations on the Internet. No travel agent, and by the time they found the transaction on my credit card, I’d be gone.
I also had to figure out what to do about Dana Kilroy, and get it done privately. Perhaps I could find a way to keep my mind clear when I thought about her. Probably not. Just try not to think of incredible eyes, soft hands and like that. Try to think of your daughter, and maybe saving a life for her. I pictured my daughter’s face, and imagined her the adult I thought she’d be. Lately that had been getting too easy to do. Since I was imagining her as a beautiful young lady, I put a dazzling smile on her face and a wedding gown on her, as I walked her down the aisle towards the fabulously wealthy, loving man of her dreams. She would, of course, remain a virgin until that day.
Then came the tough part. I got home just before Marisol, and was sipping a cup of my own coffee, when she came in. I started out on the wrong foot, referring to myself as “Daddy,” as if she was a toddler. Big mistake. It took at least two apologies to get past that, along with acknowledging that she really was “almost a teenager.” She sulked for a minute or two, and then asked me what I had been going to say.
I almost slipped and called myself “Daddy” again, but caught it and said, “Some of what I need to do isn’t in Newport.” She looked gravely at me with huge brown eyes. She was as unreadable as her mother had been, when listening intently. I took a deep breath, “I have to go away, probably for less than a week.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you. But I’ll call you every day, sweetheart.”
“Why is it a secret?”
“Honey, it just has to be, I’m sorry,” thinking how awful it felt. I had an image of Petersen, or worse, Agent Dana Kilroy asking her where I was.
“Mrs. Pina will be able to reach me after I get there, sweetie.”
“Daddy, will this go on forever? I mean will they always think you killed that man?”
“They’re smart, honey, and they have a lot of ways to find things out. They’ll find the real guy, but I’m just going to help a little.”
“Like when you used to be gone a lot?”
“Just like that, ‘Sol.”
“Mrs. Pina and I will keep things safe and stuff.”
My throat got tight. “I’ll call soon.”
“Okay. I have lots of homework to do, and I have to call Terri.” She headed for her room in a swirl of dark hair and expensive sneakers.
“Paul,” began Mrs. Pina, “Is this wise?”
“I don’t think I have much of a choice. They’ll look no farther than they have to, and they’re being pressed to make an arrest. I trust a couple of them, and one knows what I’m up to, so it should be okay.”
“I meant leaving ‘Sol,” she said, the reprimand clear in her voice.
“No, Mrs. Pina, I don’t think it’s wise, but I have to be out from under. She has to be out of it.”
“The police are to be trusted, aren’t they?”
There were millions of words to be said about that, or none at all. I had to pack and go, so I chose to say nothing. I packed two suits, a couple of dress shirts and dress shoes. I managed a couple of more casual outfits and dressed in a suit and tie. I threw my legal pad, a calculator, an old pocket tape recorder, with some spare tapes and batteries and a few other odds and ends into a briefcase. Now I really had to go to Warwick, and I really did have to lose a follower.
She was lying on her stomach with a book open in front of her. I recognized it as her Social Studies book, with an assignment from this year’s nemesis, Emmett Davis. He was a fine teacher from what I saw, with an eye for bright kids and the imagination to challenge them. He was peculiar looking, with a nightmarish comb over. Marisol had a love-hate relationship with him but kept going back for more.
She wasn’t reading, if the body language I knew so well meant anything. I thought that if she was crying, I wouldn’t be able to go. She wasn’t crying. She was furious.
“Sometimes, you get into your car to go to work or just shopping and I get scared. This is worse. You’re going somewhere you can’t tell me.”
“’Sol,” I said, wondering how to explain about grownups “just doing their jobs,” as if that were an excuse. Then I decided that she deserved better. “I have to do what I can do to be sure that this is over. Nobody, nothing, anywhere is more important to me than
you. And I’m a little selfish, because I hate any time that we’re apart. D’you understand?”
“I’m not stupid, Daddy, and I’m not a baby. Of course I understand. I don’t have to like it, do I?”
“Nope.”
She giggled, finally. “I’m pissed off about it,” she said, looking at me from under her hair.
“Pissed off,” was not supposed to be in her vocabulary and I looked up sharply to see her grinning at me.
“Now that I have your attention,” she said, and giggled again. “I won’t say it again, Daddy. Promise. But I am, you know.”
“Okay, daughter mine, last time I hear that kind of language from you, right? You can slide, this one time. I’ll call you soon, honey.” I kissed her on her forehead, smelling shampoo from her hair. She flung her arms around me, and I sagged, thinking “Daddy heaven.” The last time we’d been apart overnight was the night her mother died.
Up until then, I’d been away frequently, and sometimes for extended times. She didn’t like sleepovers yet. Our counselor said to be patient and let her work out her own limits, not to force it. So, here I was, “forcing it.” That congressman had a lot to answer for. He could have gotten his sorry ass murdered anywhere and based on what I already knew, probably should have, long before.
Chapter 8
It wasn’t hard to spot the car, a Crown Victoria. Did anybody in the world drive them except cops? One head in the car. I hoped it was Petersen. I opened the garage door and pulled out, turning down the street so he would have to turn around, unless they were using multiple cars. DaSilva had to make it look good, but I doubted that he’d have more than one car on me.
Staying within the speed limit, I turned and headed for I-95. He was three cars back, as I pulled up the ramp some time later. Like riding a bicycle, I thought, remembering training exercises and the times I’d had to do it for real. Give him time, make it last, lull his inexperienced imagination. Picture him going back and telling them he’d lost me again, almost as good as a Red Sox World Series win. DaSilva would know. He might have told Dana. If not, she’d guess. Knowing DaSilva, it would be Petersen in the car behind me, in the center lane, cooking along just over the limit.
Last Call Page 8
