Complicated Shadows

by James D F Hannah

"Jackie, when did you see your dick last time? I'm shocked police sketches of it aren't on milk cartons and posters in the post office."

  "You've got an abundance of lip for a guy found at a murder scene with a dead ex-cop. You and your buddy over here should be in jail right now."

  "I'd be terrible in jail," I said. "I'm a bad man, but I'm so damn pretty."

  Jackie's cell phone rang. "You and Mr. Mysterious are free to go, but you're familiar with the routine," he said. "Make sure you're somewhere I can find you without having to work too hard."

  "No problem. Wouldn't want you to have to work."

  He didn't hear me; he was already on the phone. We didn't hang around to make sure he heard me a second time.

  19

  I called up Jackie the next morning and asked him to meet me for lunch at the Riverside. He told me he was too busy to deal with my shit, what with a homicide investigation going on, so why don't I fuck off for a while and try him again when his world wasn't a whirlwind of shit. I said I'd buy, and he told me he'd meet me at noon.

  Jackie already had a seat at a table when I walked in, drinking a Mountain Dew and reviewing the menu like it was instructions on disarming a bomb. He'd gotten a table near the center of the restaurant. I took the chair across from him. He wore the same tie as the night prior, but a different shirt, this one blue with pencil-thin white pinstripes.

  "The menu at this joint hasn't changed in 40 years, except for the prices, and don't tell me you don't have it memorized already," I said.

  Jackie didn't move his eyes from the menu. "I skipped breakfast this morning, so I'm hungry. Buying lunch on your dime means I need to maximize the damage."

  "Damn, and I was waiting for the home equity loan to get approved."

  The waitress came, and I ordered a Coke and the Reuben and fries. Jackie got fried chicken, an extra side of mashed potatoes with gravy, and collard greens.

  "Doesn't the wife have you on a diet," I said.

  "She does, when she's looking. She's not looking now."

  "How's she doing baby-wise?"

  "Good. Seven months. Did I tell you it's a boy?"

  "You did not."

  "It's a boy."

  "Congrats. It's nice when there's an heir to the throne."

  "The only throne I'm worried about is the upstairs toilet that keeps clogging."

  "Might help if you considered a salad every once in a while."

  "Might help if the kid we've got already would stop flushing Legos. Best part is when he gets pissed off after when they're gone. I would bet your left nut that my septic is swimming with those little plastic fuckers. The only good side is it leaves fewer for me to step on barefoot in the dark."

  The waitress brought us our sodas and a basket of rolls. Jackie split one in half and spread a slab of butter inside. "You going to ask me about Pete?" he said.

  "I was hoping you could suggest lifestyle or fashion tips. Tell me what's big on the runways of Paris or Milan."

  Jackie ate one of the rolls. I looked at the three rolls left in the basket, snagged one for myself and set it aside on a napkin. Jackie paused chewing long enough to look at it. "You think I'll take the damned thing?"

  "I'm debating on if I want it now or later."

  "They're warm now." He finished the roll and grabbed another one.

  "What can you tell me about it?" I said.

  "About the rolls?"

  "About Pete."

  Jackie drank some Mountain Dew. "I've had 12 hours, Henry. How much do you think I can tell you?"

  "Did you find the 100 grand from Tennis McCoy?"

  Jackie shook his head. "Nothing. Even Pete's wallet was cleared out. We're hoping for fingerprints, but those motel rooms are disaster areas for forensics. There could be a hundred different prints in there."

  I took my silverware knife and balanced it on one end under one finger, twirling it around with another finger. "What did the Feds say when they talked to you?"

  Jackie had a chunk of roll midway to his mouth when he froze. "What Feds?"

  "I had two Feebs come by my place yesterday," I said. "A guy and a lady."

  The waitress brought our food out. Jackie sat with his plate in front of him, not making a move. This was the longest I'd ever seen a meal stay unmolested in his presence.

  "Don't tell me you're not hungry," I said.

  He let the roll drop to his plate. It landed in the middle of his mashed potatoes, floating in a pool of chicken gravy. "Why'd the Feds want to talk to you?"

  "About Tennis McCoy. They didn't tell me shit, though. Said it was all part of an ongoing investigation."

  "Goddammit," he said, almost under his breath. "Goddammit."

  "Is this where I intuit that you haven't talked to the FBI? It isn't like I told them anything you didn't know."

  "Not the point. I'm just wondering why they came to you before they talked to us."

  I shrugged. "The Feds play the game the way they want to play it."

  Jackie took a bite of fried chicken. "I don't like it when the Feds come sniffing around. It always means something bigger is going on, and they're not telling anyone, so when things break, we all end up looking like jack-holes and they're the conquering heroes."

  I ate a French fry. "Before you feel like the Feds are assaulting your manhood, can we talk Pete?"

  "We can, but fuck, Henry, like I said, there’s not much there. Everything points neon arrows toward a robbery. That money McCoy gave Pete, it's a motive, but all I have there is your word there even was any money. I’m not holding my breath about trying to ask Tennis McCoy to back up your story."

  "None of it makes sense, though. No one knew about the money, no one knew Pete was in town, no one had any reason to think he had money on him. Did you find any sign of forced entry? Any of the guests in the surrounding rooms hear anything?"

  "We've got nothing besides you and your sidekick picking the lock on the door and breaking into the room yourself. I'd hoped the motel might have some security system in the parking lot, so we'd get footage of a suspicious vehicle, but the manager said the goddamn thing's been broke for months and the owner won't pony up to fix it." He set down a desiccated chicken leg and shoveled up a forkful of potatoes and gravy. "People in the department, they're rumbling around, saying we should bring you and what's-his-face in for questioning, that you killed him because of a gay thing."

  "What the hell does that mean, a 'gay thing'?"

  "A lover's quarrel, or he came onto you, and you said no, and you and your friend came back last night and you killed him."

  "You're shitting me."

  "Nope," Jackie said. "Pete had friends high up the ranks, but no one had a clue he liked taking it up the ass. Doesn't matter, though, because he was a state trooper, and you know how we take this kind of shit. Today, you and Woody are all we've got. We can ID your prints, we have you at the scene of the crime, and a goddamn deputy caught you in the room."

  Except for a stack of chicken bones, Jackie's plate was as clean as if it had come from the dishwasher. I looked at my own. My sandwich was gone, and the fries were already cold.

  Our waitress refilled our sodas. Jackie ordered a slice of apple pie, warmed, with ice cream on top.

  Jackie drank more soda. "I don't believe for a second you didn't kill him, but people don't like dead ex-cops, so they're looking for the easiest answer sometimes. Give me a day or two, and it'll go away. Just don't do anything that makes things even more complicated."

  "Me? Would I do that?"

  "You could complicate a game of 'Go Fish,' Henry."

  Jackie's pie arrived. It was a generous slice, with thin waves of steam rising around a melting scoop of vanilla ice cream.

  Jackie's attitude got better, and he smacked his lips in satisfaction at the sight.

  "Goddamn," he said, "but isn't that pretty as a picture?"

  20

  Woody took a swing at me. I didn't move fast enough to dodge it whole, so the edge of his boxing glov
e clipped me on the chin. The hit was enough to catch me off guard, and the next punch landed square in my solar plexus. The wind left me, and my knees got weak, and Woody connected a left to the side of my skull. Gloves and headgear on, it didn't matter, because I felt that shit, and it sent me backwards.

  I rose my hands in the air. "Gimme a minute."

  "Sure thing, Betsy. Gather yourself together."

  We were behind Woody's house, sparring. Woody had convinced me I needed to handle myself better if things came down to a fistfight.

  "The problem with you guys, used to be cops, is you depend on attitude too much," he said. "You're big, and you're wearing a uniform, so for 98 percent of the public, size and whatever authority you get out of a badge, it's enough."

  "The gun doesn't hurt."

  "It doesn't, but you don't like them, and you're a shitty shot, anyway. It's the two percent who don't give a fuck you have to worry about, because they're the ones who figure they have nothing to lose, so they'll pick a fight, pull their own gun, take a chance they'll win this one. And the way you living your life, you keep running into the two percent."

  "It must be my winning personality."

  Woody was right that almost no one wants to brawl with a state trooper. But it had been a long-ass time since I'd had to worry about that shit, and the price paid for it was I was sluggish and useless in a physical confrontation. Which was why I was letting Woody beat the hell out of me.

  That might be an exaggeration. I could tell Woody was holding back. There hadn't been a punch yet that would have thrown my feet out from underneath me. What had connected was more the realization I'd gotten soft and lazy. I tried to comfort myself with the knowledge that at least I wasn't Jackie. It didn't help.

  We kept it up for another 15 or 20 minutes, and Woody stayed on me, peppering me with body blows I worked to defend, keeping my forearms tight together and my face protected. I took the hits and sometimes gave one back, and I was grateful when he said we'd call it a day.

  As I was pulling off the gear, I said, "Why are we boxing, anyway? It's not like I’ll end up in a polite fight. Why don't we do something like Krav Maga?"

  "For the same reason you don't take the training wheels off for a four-year-old and expect him to drive a Harley. And where the hell did you hear what Krav Maga is, anyway?"

  "One of Ted's girlfriends took classes for it on 'How I Met Your Mother.'"

  "You had to Google it, didn't you?"

  I pretended like I couldn't, but I heard him laughing. He wasn't shy about it.

  I had stopped at Sheetz on the way over and picked up donut holes. We were eating them and drinking coffee in Woody's kitchen. Woody reached into the bag, grabbed one, and ate it whole, licking the glaze off of his fingers.

  "Damn, but those are delicious," he said.

  "The man who decided we should eat donuts with coffee should have gotten a Nobel Prize."

  "Fifth face on Mount Rushmore, bare minimum." Woody ate another donut hole. "I reached out to a buddy of mine, and the Feds who visited you, they check out. They're agents out of the Clarksburg office, with Criminal Justice Information Services."

  "That's all fingerprints and criminal histories. Aren't they a data warehouse?"

  "Nothing in government only does what they say they do. Back in my day, there were units that claimed they weren't anything more than cooks, and they did a hell of a lot more than ladle out chicken and noodles at Dee-Fak."

  "Real world's different from whatever world it was you lived in."

  "Less interesting, too. The balance with that is, in this world, you're less likely to get shot or come across dead bodies. Unless one hangs out with your ridiculous ass."

  I ate another donut hole. "Let the record show I wasn't the one who wanted involved in this. I was willing to walk away."

  "That was never an option. Pete asked for your help. You work with a guy, and he's willing to come and ask for help, you should help him."

  "And now we're obligated to figure out who killed him."

  "Sam Spade said if your partner gets killed, you need to do something about it, that it looks bad for the detective business."

  "The Maltese Falcon, right? I'm sure I watched it with Billy at some point."

  "This is where I feel I must remind you the book came first. It's short. Short sentences. You might like it."

  I flipped him off and drank more coffee. "Do you think you can live your life based on an abstract moral code pieced together from detective novels and movies?"

  "My options are my abstract moral code or the Bible, and I can't get past where you're not supposed to plant two different crops in the same field."

  He went to a cabinet and got a legal pad and a pencil. Across the top he wrote "Reasons Someone Would Kill Pete" and drew a line underneath the words.

  "Look who's all organized," I said.

  "Success in organization is organizing to succeed. We need to get shit straight and work the information we have. What do we have so far?"

  "Someone didn't want Pete finding Isaac."

  Woody scrawled something on the legal pad. "Which would mean someone followed him to Serenity."

  "What if it's Isaac's family?"

  "Why wouldn't the McCoys want Pete to find Isaac?"

  "They dropped a wad of cash on him like it was gas money."

  "Doesn't make sense to kill him. You think Tennis gave Pete the cash, then regretted it, so he opted to take it back?"

  Woody wrote that down on the legal pad.

  "There's also the matter of this cryptocurrency thing Isaac's involved in," I said.

  Woody sipped his coffee. "Back in the day, when I knew a few people who might have wanted ways to move money around without the government knowing—"

  "Why do I suspect you knew more than 'a few people'?"

  "A handful. Anyway, I'll say something like that would make Isaac quite sought-after by these people."

  "To the point they'd snatch him off the street?"

  "Enough they'd follow him around for a while."

  "So now you don't think the Feds were the ones following Isaac back in Morgantown?"

  "I'm saying multiple possibilities exist here. The Feds could want Isaac because of his old man, or because of the cryptocurrency. Conversely, Tennis may have rivals who figure Isaac's the McCoy on the outside, and therefore the easiest one to squeeze, so they could grab him and use him against Tennis. Or they could want the inside line on Cashbyte themselves, and Isaac is the man with the plan in that scenario."

  "Isaac seems to have a lot of balls in the air."

  "That sounds like a gay joke."

  "Only a little. But this goes back to why I wanted nothing to do with this shit-storm, but there's this goddamn moral code of yours."

  Woody set the pen on top of the legal pad. "I prefer to think of it as an ethos. Say what you want, but it's something."

  "What about the Feds? Something's going on, or they wouldn't be asking around. And them asking me questions doesn't mean they want to know what I know so much as they want to figure out if I know anything at all."

  Woody shook his head. "What a tangled web we weave—"

  I leaned back in my chair. "Where's this put us standing now, since now there's a list of ideas?"

  "About the same place we stood at before we had a list."

  "Anywhere on that list did we write 'Find Isaac'?"

  "We should start a second list, with 'To Do' across the top."

  "We may want to make that list and add to it 'Find Pete's killer.'"

  "I'm hoping those are one and the same. I suspect whoever killed Pete doesn't want Isaac found, and this was a way of discouraging it."

  "One hell of a way of getting the job done."

  "Nothing succeeds like excess sometimes."

  21

  What Woody and I didn't have on any list was a long line of suspects, which meant we needed to go back and cover ground we'd already covered. We didn't have shit to work with, and
our best bet was dealing with the McCoys. You don't realize how terrible your choices are when your best option would rather put you in a shallow grave than help. The one thing Woody and I agreed on was that neither of us considered getting shot to be a fun afternoon, so we waited until nightfall to drive out to the McCoy farm.

  It made sense at the time.

  "You think they'll be more hospitable this time around?" I said as I bounced around inside Woody's truck.

  "Our best bet might be they had a big spaghetti dinner and they're all tired."

  "Are we hedging our survival on if they're carb-bloated or not? This sounds like a terrible idea, and we should go home before we get killed or arrested."

  "Which one of those is your worst outcome for this?"

  "They're all shitty ways to spend a night. Particularly the one where we get killed."

  "You have no fucking sense of fun and adventure, Henry."

  "I've got plenty of sense of fun; I'm almost done with that one zombie game on Xbox."

  Headlights cut through the darkness coming up from the gravel road as we came up to the mouth of McCoy Holler. The headlights belonged to a Ford Focus, and as the car braked to a stop, I recognized the faces of my two new favorite federal agents, Burwell and Davies, inside. The car pulled out and went in the opposite direction of us.

  Woody slowed the pickup down as the Focus drove by us.

  "Interesting," he said, flipping a U-turn. He idled 30 seconds, then drove off.

  "What do you suppose they were doing, visiting the McCoys so late?" I said.

  "Maybe the McCoys made too much spaghetti and invited them over."

  "What the hell is it with you and spaghetti tonight?"

  "I suppose I'm just craving spaghetti. If I had to guess, though, my thought is the visit’s about Isaac."

  "You suppose the McCoys told them anything?"

  "The McCoys aren't known for their kind and loving attitude towards the government. They're the sort who would set themselves up as a sovereign nation if they knew what the term meant."

  We kept a reasonable distance back from the Feds' Focus and followed them back into Serenity. They drove through town and into the parking lots for the Serenity Motor Lodge. Woody kept on driving past the entrance. As we cruised by, a head popped up from the back seat. A beat later, the figure in the back seat shoved an ugly-ass cowboy hat on his head.