There’s a knock on the door. Whistler is relieved. “Stay put. I’ll be back,” he says. Giving orders makes him feel even better.
“You got it, boss,” Schmidt says, unperturbed.
Whistler is nearly giddy to slip into the hall. He finds Ruther holding a cell phone. Whistler hopes the judge has reconsidered the search warrant. “I’ve got a call from Greene. He says he needs to speak with you.” Ruther passes him the phone.
Whistler’s reflexes take over. “Hello.”
“I’m headed to my apartment. I know who attacked Rosa. I think I can prove it. Can you come?”
Whistler’s heart races. Greene’s information is in a file on his desk. He asks the address anyway. He tries to commit it to memory. He can’t concentrate.
Ruther sees his excitement. His mustache flutters expectantly.
Whistler says, “What is it? Who is it? What proof do you have? Just tell me.” He worries the wisp of hope will blow away.
Greene says, “I’m leaving the hospital. I was with Rosa. It will be easiest to show you. Can you meet me?”
“Is she awake? Did she tell you something? They said they’d call. They haven’t called.”
“No. She’s still unconscious. Can you come to my place?”
“I’ll meet you,” Whistler says. The call ends. He wanted something concrete. He wanted to ask if it’s Schmidt. He didn’t have the chance, didn’t think quickly enough. Still, he caught a break. “I’m heading to the professor’s place. He has some kind of proof.”
“Proof of fucking what exactly?” Ruther asks.
“Proof of who attacked Rosa Zhang. He didn’t say what. He sounded agitated, and I was worried about pushing him. I think I need to do it on his terms.”
Ruther is skeptical. “An addled twitch with documented brain injuries thinks he cracked the case, and you run off to witness his delusion in person? Fine. He called you, You can make the decision. What about the ex-con?”
“Kick him. I’m getting nowhere. Let him stew for a while. Maybe I shook his cage. Tell him not to leave town. I’ll scoop him up when I need to. Oh—don’t let him leave without the dog. She’s with Suzuki.”
“Will do,” Ruther says.
Whistler grabs a folder from his desk and is through the squad room before he appreciates the minimal grief Ruther gave him. The thought warms his heart.
Creative Problem-Solving
Calvert pounds up the flight of steps to his apartment. His quick-time footfalls make hollow, rapid-fire sounds like a double bass drum. His mind tumbles to the name Ginger Baker. He doesn’t attempt to unpack the reference. His chaotic memory is losing his interest. He’s focused on the task at hand.
He hits the landing, passes his apartment door, and bangs on the Fluxus Flotsam Artist’s Studio. No one comes to the door. He’s panting. He turns his wrist up, doesn’t have his watch. His taxi ride was fast. Still, he believes Detective Diaz should arrive any moment. Why isn’t Barney home? Barney is never not home.
He slaps the meat of his left palm to his left temple. Think. He thinks of the classic rock power trio Cream. Myelin. He gives his skull a forceful punch. Pinpoints of static burst like floaters in a dropped snow globe. He remembers: Far Afield Festival. The apartment is abandoned because Barney and the others have gone to the art festival. He bashes his body into the studio door. The hard fibers that hold his left arm in his shoulder joint pop and ping as if coming apart. Everything is unraveling. He collapses like his strings have been cut, falls in a lifeless tangle of limbs.
“That’s it,” he says, defeated. “I can’t keep moving this carcass around. I’m ready to be fully dead, please.” The universe does not respond directly. But new thoughts begin to boil to the top of his fevered brain.
This body, known previously as Professor Greene, once put emphasis on logical problem-solving. Now his brain won’t string facts together. All he can manage is a loose pile of misshapen artifacts. Since the Age of Enlightenment, empirical thinking has been held in the highest regard in the Academy. He’d become a professional within that structure. He was an evangelist for the power of education and linear knowledge. But with limited access to the things he once knew, he has to find a new way.
Perhaps I’ve been wrong. People are not successful animals due to logical thought. The ability to imagine a possibility and then bend reality is where human advantage lies. Being human is a creative act. Humanity demands invention to evolve more than logic. The reptilian and mammalian brain combined form the limbic system. Those primitive components allow people to live instinctively, to feel their way as much as utilizing the higher functions of cold reason. The ego has convinced the fat fleshy frontal lobe that it is the most vital part. But the brain evolved to serve the needs of the body. Not the other way around.
Calvert may not be dying, but evolving. He may require less of the expansive complexity of a Tolstoy and instead more of the fantastical playfulness of a Soviet satellite writer such as Kafka or Pushkin. He allows his nimble diagonal rationale to reach back to his first visit to this building. He recalls his curiosity as to what one might raise on a Megan Ranch.
“Please let me know if your neighbor gives you any trouble,” she had whispered. “We’d like to get him out of there. If you see anything illegal going on, let me know. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“What things?” he’d asked.
“Drugs, deviant behavior, any kind of business being run from the premises, anyone not on the lease living in the space.” She’d slipped a business card into his hand. He’d entered that number into his phone.
He stands back on his feet as if hoisted from above. Deus ex machina. He ignores the dead language and rushes into his apartment while rifling his pockets, finds his phone, and dials the number.
“Megan Ranch.”
“This is Calvert Greene. Apartment two oh one and a half.”
“Mr. Greene. I’m running late for hot yoga. If there’s a problem, please call the handyman I provided.”
“The neighbor has been giving me trouble,” he says. Through the phone, he feels her attention turn his way.
“Go on,” she says.
“I suspect illegal drugs in use, deviant behavior occurring, a business being run from the premises, and people living there who aren’t on the lease. Also, they are gone, and they locked property of mine inside. Could you let me in?”
“I’ll be right there,” she says.
Calvert hangs up, feeling like a new man.
Nearly Definitive Proof
Whistler has trouble finding the door to Greene’s place. He asks a woman with an empty cat carrier, and she points behind him. “You’re welcome,” she says as he tugs the door and storms up. Before he can knock, Greene is already pulling the door open.
Whistler walks a circle around the kitchen table, takes in the details of the room. It’s sad and tiny. He leans back against the sink, arms crossed. “I’m here. Tell me what you know. What you think you know.” The light fixture over his head flutters as if it’s considering if it wants to go on. He looks up at it, watches it settle into a steady cold glow. He stares back at Greene, a little less intently.
“I will show you,” Greene says with no urgency.
“Good. Do it. Let’s go.”
“When Ms. Ranch …” He stops speaking mid-explanation. The city noise rises with the opening of the street door. Whistler watches Calvert pivot his head in a stiff way, as if orienting his auditory receptors. Whistler listens too. “Wind ever open the door?” he asks.
In response, Calvert puts one finger to his lips. There is a promising squeak on the staircase. They tip their heads in unison, listening. A woman rounds the corner and enters the apartment like she owns the place, which, perhaps she does. Whistler straightens up.
The woman is wearing a yellow monochrome athletic top, matching soft shoes, and black yoga pants patterned with clusters of small white flowers adorned with yellow centers and curling green tendrils. Her hair is tie
d in a bouncing sprig on top. Her left hand is a fist around a clutch of keys. She has an ecstatic energy, but the presence of mind to introduce herself: “Megan Ranch.”
“Detective Diaz.”
Megan looks at the badge on his hip and nods, businesslike. Without missing a beat she asks, “You want in?” She dips her head in the direction of the neighbor’s apartment.
“If you’d let us in, it would be a big help,” Whistler replies. “There may be evidence pertaining to a crime.”
Megan doesn’t pause to consider the privacy of her tenants. “Let’s go,” she says. She leads the way. Whistler admires her floral pants.
Megan is fast; she has the door unlocked in a rattle of keys before Whistler reaches the landing. “Let’s see what we see,” she says. She gives a cursory knock on the open door as she walks in. “Hello?” she calls as an afterthought. No one responds. “I’m going to take a look around.” She moves down the hall into what looks like a kitchen and disappears around a corner on the right. Greene is there beside him now. “She seems to know what she’s doing. Where’s this evidence?”
“This way.” Greene leads Whistler into a sparse room with a red couch, three ratty dress forms rolled into a corner, and the remnants of a tension mount lamp in pieces on the floor. The walls are bare and freshly painted. The professor’s body stiffens. He looks flummoxed. “This is where they should be.”
“Where what should be?”
Greene ignores his question and meticulously walks the perimeter of the room. He runs a hand over the walls.
“Well?” Diaz asks.
Greene is feeling a place on the wall.
Whistler walks over to see exactly what he’s doing. “Well?” He’s getting tired of the weirdo’s wall stroking.
Greene turns, “I’m not crazy!” He grins like an imbecile. The expression does not inspire confidence.
“I could charge you with obstruction of justice for wasting my time,” Whistler says. But he doesn’t leave. He tucks his thumbs in his belt, willing to be convinced, but nearly out of patience.
Calvert shows Diaz the wall. He rubs at a rough place. “Feel,” he says.
Whistler pulls a skeptical face, but he touches the wall. “So?”
“This is where the picture was hanging. They painted and patched. The photo was here. Right, here.” Greene pats the wall.
Whistler can feel something. He imagines trying to explain this to Ruther. He says, “This,” as he smacks the wall. “This does me no good. Photo of what? Where did it go?”
“I don’t know. But the rough patch is proof the photo was here. It’s a real thing that exists. We only have to find it.”
Megan Ranch silently glides into the room and starts speaking. “You said they were giving you trouble. You said drugs and misbehavior. This place is clean. Tidy even. Only one bed and no proof of people squatting or running a business. I didn’t even find a bong. I have a bong, for Christ’s sake. Everyone has a bong.” She glares at the Whistler. “It’s legal now.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“The toilet was not flushed,” she goes on. “That was disgusting! I had plans. I am supposed to be sweating now. Then a quick shower and”—Whistler attempts to show no interest in Megan’s shower plans—“then a pedicure while reclining in a massage chair. A good massage chair. With Riesling.” She waggles her finger at Greene. Whistler is glad she’s not lecturing him. “The chair is called the Dream Weaver. What the hell?” She seems to run out of words.
“My mistake,” Greene offers as explanation.
“And the trouble Barney is giving you?”
“Sometimes he plays music that is not to my tastes,” Greene replies flatly. “At a volume that is intrusive. He always turns it down if asked. Otherwise I couldn’t ask for a nicer neighbor.”
Whistler has the distinct impression the professor is enjoying himself.
The angry woman turns in a huff and stomps, nearly silently, from the room. There’s a rattle of keys being taken from the dead bolt. She calls from the front hall, “Lock the doorknob when you go. And don’t ask me for any favors. You can expect your rent to go up next year.”
Greene is unperturbed. He walks out of the room. “Detective,” he says. “The pictures.”
Whistler hustles over. On a long table made of old doors, under a chandelier of oversized headlights, are six stacks of framed photos.
“This is what you want to show me? This is the proof?”
“I think so. If it wasn’t sold.”
“What does that mean?”
“There was a photo. It was displayed in there. On that wall with the covered-up nail holes. There was an open house. Some of the photos sold. It may be gone.”
“Photos? Photos of what? Photos of who?”
“I’ll show you.”
“Goddamnit. Just find it.”
Greene examines the top image, carefully sets it aside, checks the next image. He stacks the second image carefully on the first before moving on through the pile.
Whistler jams his hands in his pockets and jangles some change around to keep himself from knocking Greene down and sweeping all the pictures onto the floor. He watches Greene put the first pile back in its original order. “Oh my God,” he blurts. “Let me help. What are we looking for?”
“No. I’ll do it. This is Lyla’s art. We have to be respectful.”
Whistler looks at the top of one of the stacks: a color image, an overhead shot of people on the sidewalk taken out the window of the apartment. His eyes go to a man standing apart with hunched shoulders, wearing a backpack, hands cupped in front of his mouth, lighting a cigarette while shielding his lighter from the wind. His brain starts churning. “We’re close to Coffee Girl?”
“A block away,” Greene confirms. He removes a photo from the top of the next stack.
“These images are from the day Rosa Zhang was attacked?”
“Lyla took pictures all day.” Calvert nods at one of the wide windows.
Whistler goes and looks out the window. “The photographer was set up at this window, close to the attack, on the day of the attack?”
“Yes,” the professor says. He has replaced the second pile and is moving through the third. “One of the shots is a photo of the killer.”
“Who?” Whistler asks. His tone isn’t angry. Greene is screwy and infuriating. But he may have something. Whistler can feel it.
His phone rattles in his coat. It nearly gives him a stroke. He fumbles the phone out. It displays a text from Ruther: CALL ME.
He calls Ruther. “What’s up, Inspector? Did you take a run at Schmidt? Did he crack? You got the warrant? You found evidence in the van?”
“Shut up a second.”
Whistler shuts up.
“Where are you now?”
“With Greene.”
“Forget that twit. The hospital called. Zhang woke up. She’s back asleep already, but not in a coma. She spoke briefly, asked about her kid. Get over there and sit until she’s ready to talk. She may know who we’re looking for. Doctor what’s-her-face said it was fine for her to give a statement when she’s awake. Keep it short.” Ruther hangs up.
It’s only a matter of time before Schmidt is in cuffs, Whistler thinks. He watches Calvert going through the images. The photo is probably gone. Who cares? The pressure that’s had him ready to blow is bleeding away. Rosa Zhang will be an eyewitness. I will close my first case. He feels foolish for doubting himself. He remembers what he promised Moe. Given his pending victory, he feels generous. Why not spread the love? Mostly he wants to brag to someone who might care. “Give me a second,” Whistler tells Greene. He sends his cousin a quick text: Rosa Zhang is out of the coma. I’m heading there soon to get a statement. Don’t print anything yet. I promise you can have an exclusive.
Greene inhales sharply.
Whistler slips his phone away. “Did you find it? This day gets better and better.
Calvert holds up a framed photo. The photo
is dark, but there’s a bright flash of hair.
“Who is it?” Whistler asks. Schmidt has light hair.
“My boss,” Greene says. “Kaz Gladsky.”
Muppets to Blame
Whistler rushes around to take the framed photo Greene is holding. He eyes the figure captured in the predawn light. The man’s head and face lit by a streetlight. It’s Gladsky. He had knowledge of the crime scene north of the river, a white van, opportunity. He was the older man who impregnated Ginny Flores, who followed her home and left her dead in an alley. He looks at the picture. He fed me leads about Schmidt and Greene to keep me distracted. Whistler is irritated. Gladsky was so obvious. He lets the photo fall away, overcome with momentary frustration at his gullibility; he pulls the image back to take a harder look. It’s Gladsky. Is the image good enough? Is there a time stamp? Will the photographer testify? Am I seeing what I want to see? Could this be any man with blond hair? Could the image be refined? Is there a memory card somewhere?
He turns to Calvert, “Did Gladsky know Rosa?”
“I recommended her cortado to him. It’s very good.”
“Hot damn,” Whistler says. Kaz Gladsky is the killer. Not that creepy Schmidt motherfucker. Not this weirdo professor. Whistler wants nothing more than to put Gladsky in cuffs, to prove he knows what the hell he’s doing. He wants to get some respect. It’s all coming together. Moe and I were both wrong. “Moe,” he says. “Shit, Moe.” Whistler shoves the framed photo into Calvert’s hands. “Keep that safe. Lock it up. I gotta go. My cousin is meeting with Gladsky right now.”
He starts moving, going for his phone. As he slips it from his pocket, he’s reminded of Ruther’s news, of his orders to sit with Rosa.
“Rosa woke up,” he tells Calvert. “I have to go to my cousin. Will you wait with Rosa? Call me the moment she wakes. I’ll have my partner meet you there.”
Half Dead Page 27
