“I can’t say.”
“Can’t say ’cause you don’t know or you won’t say? Something happen I should know about? Someone step to you?”
“Naw. Nothin’ like that.” He turns to me, makes good eye contact. “No strings attached?”
“No, but it is a job and you work for me. You want to quit, you tell me. Give me notice. Don’t just up and disappear.”
“Those are strings.”
“No they aren’t.” I smile. “That’s called being an adult.”
Something I know little about, but I’m learning.
“Being a man comes with strings,” he tells me.
“Yeah, and just so you know, I did meet with your uncle the morning I came to pick you up. Knocked on the door, thinking you overslept, and he answered.”
He doesn’t say anything. Looks down.
“You were right. He’s a good man.”
“I know.”
A couple of minutes later the counter man sets Calvin’s plate in front of him.
He digs in right away. I finish my coffee, signal for a refill. It’s like drinking the coffee I used to have at the branch, tastes like it’s been sitting from the night before.
I think about Darling and what’s going on there. Still hard for me to take in. I reach down to my backpack on the floor at my feet, dig through it and find the Polaroid. I pull it out, look at it, but only a second. The image is tough to look at, and I’ve seen almost everything.
“I have a photo I want you to look at and tell me if you know her.”
Calvin looks up from his food, his face almost buried in the plate.
“A’right.”
I hand it to him.
He nearly jumps out of his seat.
“Aww…fuck. Damn. Disgusting crackhead pussy. Shit. Right when I’m enjoying my food.”
I notice a couple of the guys at a table to the side of us look up from their drunken slumber.
“What the fuck you wanna go and show me this for?”
I take the photo, cover the lower extremities.
“Look at the face. You know her?”
“This an old picture?”
“Yes.”
“Looks like some crackhead whore is all. I seen hundreds of them, just not their pussies. Aww…”
“Think of her a little older, cleaned up.”
Studies it.
“Naw. I don’t know her. But like I said, I been out of this shit for a bit now.”
“All right.” I return it to the backpack.
“Why she important?”
“I don’t know yet.”
He looks down at his plate.
“Damn, man, I done lost my appetite.”
Forty-Eight
I pull the car up near the front of his uncle’s house. It’s almost 7:00 a.m.
“I’ll wait here to make sure you get in.”
“He’ll be up by now.”
“Let me know if you need me to talk to him.”
“Won’t have to. I’ll tell him I got temporarily confused.”
I almost chuckle after he says that. I don’t know if it’s a dry humor or he’s serious.
“You’re not confused now?”
“Not as much.”
“All right, dude. Stay home and get some rest. I’ll be by tomorrow morning to pick you up.”
He grabs his backpack and steps out, looks back at me briefly. Can’t read him. Maybe ’cause I said dude. He closes the door and walks up the stairs, has to pull his pants up after a few steps.
I wait while he knocks on the door. His uncle answers. I give a couple of taps on my horn so the uncle can see me. He waves.
I drive home, make myself some more coffee when I get there, check the time. Lustig should be in the detectives’ office for daywork by now. I want to see if he’ll run the Explorer’s tag.
“Hey, Gary. This is Frank Marr.”
“What’s up, Frankie?”
“This a bad time?”
“It’s always a bad time when I’m working.”
“I can imagine. Listen, I’m working Luna’s shooting and have a tag to run, if that’s cool.”
“Yeah, I don’t give a shit. Stand by. Let me log on.”
“Thanks.”
“Okay, go.”
I give him the tag. I hear his fingers hitting a keyboard. I have my notepad and pen at the ready.
“Ready to copy?”
“Yeah.”
“Comes back to a Patricia Holm, with a DOB of 02/01/1939.”
Patricia Holm?
He gives me her address. It’s on the 1600 block of Euclid Street.
“Everything looks up to date. Anything else?”
“No. That’s good. Thanks.”
“No problem, bud. Hope it helps, and keep me informed with Luna’s situation.”
“Will do.”
I power on my laptop. Open LexisNexis and run Patricia Holm with her DOB. I can run basic background checks through this service—nothing like what I could work when I was a cop, though. I check prior addresses, and it appears as though she has always had the same address. She’s also had only one job: file clerk at Superior Court. Been retired for several years now. Associates are just about everyone in the Holm family, most prominent, her son, Cordell Holm. I laugh to myself. Sort of a nervous laugh, ’cause I don’t know what the fuck’s going on.
Does she know these boys are using her car?
My experience tells me she does, but hell, it’s family, and what a connection that family must have had when she used to work for Superior Court.
So how do I play this? I go back with Tamie Darling, like Al does. Well, not exactly like Al does. Mine was a working relationship, far from that shit he was into with her. I hope it doesn’t go further than that. I consider him a best friend, but shit, you never know someone as well as you think you do. Look at me.
My next call is Leslie, but again, straight to voice mail. I leave a message for her to call me back when she gets a chance.
I also don’t have a clue as to how all this is going to play into the shooting, if at all, but I have to work it through.
I call Al, tell him I’ll be out and about and ask if he wants me to bring him lunch.
“I have leftover takeout from last night, but thanks.”
“Man, you can’t survive on that shit. It’s gonna rip a hole in your stomach.”
“I have an iron stomach.”
“You get the window in yet?”
“Still boarded up. The window is a special order, so it’s going to take a few days before I can get it put in. He used three-quarter-inch board, though.”
“Yeah, I remember. Stronger than the window, then.”
“And more private. Maybe I’ll keep it.”
“I meant to ask you something before.” Not true, of course. “I was recently thinking about the Cordell Holm case—”
“What the hell you thinking about that piece of shit for?”
“’Cause no one ever told me where he got sent after sentencing.”
“Some federal prison up in New Jersey. Why?”
“Was driving by 17th and Euclid the other day and thought about it is all.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“Maybe I’ll stop by later this evening and we can have a drink.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Later.”
Damn, and I thought I was paranoid when I was putting that shit up my nose. Not a good feeling now, especially when you have to keep things from your good friend.
Forty-Nine
I wake up later than normal. Had one too many with Al and Leslie last night. I didn’t have a chance to get with Leslie privately, fill her in on what I know. She does need to know. After all, it could come back to bite Al, especially now, with the connection between Darling and members of Cordell’s crew. I don’t have long until Freudiger forces Al’s hand with the subpoena, so I need to get to the bottom of this, which means Tamie Darling.
Before I leave
, I open my stash wall and count out Calvin’s pay for the day. I also count out another two grand.
Calvin is already on the sidewalk by the time I roll up to the front of his uncle’s house. He lets the backpack slide off his shoulder and carries it to the front-passenger door, sets the backpack at his feet when he sits.
“What’s the plan here today?” he says with a quiet tone, as if embarrassed.
“There are a couple of things we need to work.”
Him taking off the way he did is one of the things. I reach into my backpack, which is sitting on the floor in back, find the folder that contains the photo Rattan gave me, the one Calvin had appeared to have a reaction to.
I drop it on his lap.
“Who is this?” I ask.
He doesn’t pick it up, just eyeballs it and looks out the front windshield, then back to me, and says, “I told you, I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. I think seeing this before is the reason you took off. Who is it?”
“Man, you startin’ to sound a lot like my uncle.”
“Right now I’m your boss, and I expect answers.”
I give him time but don’t take my eyes off him.
He picks up the photo, looks like he’s studying it.
Shakes his head.
“Can’t say for sure, ’cause the quality ain’t that good, but he looks a lot like a dude I know as Rule.”
“Why’d you keep this from me?”
“Why you think? First off, I ain’t hundred percent on it, and second, you show me it in front of that detective woman. I knew she’d ask too many questions just like I know you about to. Difference is, she don’t know my background like you do.”
He sets the photo on the center console. I take it and slip it back into the folder in my backpack.
“Where does he stay?”
“Back when I knew him, he stayed at one of those buildings on Fairmont.”
“Fourteen hundred block?”
“Yeah.”
“So he knows those boys we followed to the house on Queen?”
“I used to see him with Ty, but that was a few years back.”
“He connected to Cordell in any way?”
He hesitates, but says, “Cordell was his supplier. I don’t know about now, especially since Cordell got sent up.”
“Crack, heroin?”
“Mostly crack.”
“Listen up. We work together, which means you never hold things back from me. You want to learn this business, then there has to be trust, and some rules, like any other job.”
He looks at me like trust and rules are words that are difficult to comprehend.
“I can understand you not wanting to say anything in front of Detective Rattan. Hell, I’ve kept things from the police until they need to know. Sometimes even keep things from them I don’t want them to know. But you should’ve come to me after, not fucking take off like you did because you didn’t know how to handle it. I can keep you out of this one here. No worries.”
He nods.
“You never went back to the neighborhood, then?”
“Naw.”
“Really?”
“For real, man. How many times I got to tell you? Shiet, I took that advice you gave me when you decided not to kill me and I didn’t go back. Between you and thinkin’ the cops knew I was the driver for that police killing, I stayed away. I don’t want to go to fucking jail.”
“Yeah, you stayed away, like three blocks away. I mean, the day I followed you to your uncle’s, you passed Seventeenth, which is about two blocks north of Euclid. You’re telling me you never ran into any of the old crew on Columbia?”
“No, man. I be like a ghost when I walk.”
“Shit. Ghost. If I can see ghosts, so can they. What I’m starting to think is Cordell put a hit out on me after he got sentenced, which wasn’t that long ago. Maybe even Luna, too, ’cause he was one of the lead detectives.”
“How you fucking think that?”
“’Cause this boy here killed a cop, wounded another one, and almost got me. And it all happened too close to my home. Not to mention his connection to Cordell.”
“He like Little Monster. He a crazy fool, and that right there ain’t a good combination. If it is something like that, he be acting on his own. Cordell ain’t stupid like that. I never known him to order a hit on a cop, even an ex-cop like you. Shiet.”
“He was stupid enough to allow you and Little Monster to do the drive-by that killed Officer Tommy, and again, almost me.”
“That was all Monster. He acted fast ’cause you were taking that girl, Cordell’s property. He didn’t think. He just act.”
“Property?”
“Fuck yeah, man. Property. She knew it, too. You talk this trust shit, then trust me that I ain’t part of that no more. I got some PTSD over all this shit here.”
PTSD? That wouldn’t surprise me. Almost makes me laugh.
“Do you know who is running things for Cordell now?”
“Fuck no, and please don’t say you want me to try to find out.”
“I wouldn’t put you in that kind of situation.”
Intentionally, anyway.
“We can’t keep this info about Rule from the police. It could endanger lives. I have to give it to Detective Rattan.”
“How you gonna say you got his name?”
“I’ll keep you out of it. We’ll tell her it came from a source. They won’t care as long as they have a name or a nickname to work. I have to make a quick stop first.”
Fifty
I drive to Riggs, to a house I hit a while back. A bedridden old lady lived there—or rather, was kept prisoner by her two drug-dealing grandkids. Needless to say, those youngsters are doing good time now and the old lady’s been freed of their shit.
Depending on what the outcome of a stash house hit is, I try to help her out financially at least once a month. She doesn’t know the money is dirty. At least I hope she doesn’t. She’s not stupid, though. I told her when I first gave her a bag of money that it was from neighborhood donations. Now my story has changed, and I collect donations from different philanthropic sources, all cash, of course, because they want to remain anonymous. She still calls me the tax man. I forget why. But I advised her she doesn’t have to claim this income on her taxes.
Calvin wants to wait in the car, but I make him go with me.
“What’s this about?” he asks.
“An elderly woman who needs help on occasion, that’s all.”
“What kind of help?”
“All kinds of help. Don’t worry about it. Just go with my story.”
“Story?”
“Yes, story, and if you talk, watch your mouth. In fact, maybe don’t talk.”
“Shiet.”
I knock on the front door. A couple of minutes later, I hear someone moving around on the inside, near the door.
“It’s Frank,” I call through the door.
“Frank?” she says softly, like she doesn’t know.
“The tax man,” I say, and roll my eyes at Calvin.
“Oh, for—” I hear her begin, and the dead bolts unlock and the door opens.
First thing she does is give Calvin a hard look. He takes a sliding half step back on the porch.
“How are you, sweetie?” she says to me, and bends her frail self over to give me a hug. “Come in, now.”
She steps away from the door, and I walk in. Calvin stays where he is.
“This is Calvin. He’s one of our volunteers.”
“Oh, you come in, too, then, young man.”
His eyebrows furrow, but he obeys.
I sit on the sofa, set my backpack at my feet.
“You sit, too,” she tells Calvin.
He looks at the armchair covered with protective plastic. The only place to sit.
“You go and sit there,” she tells him.
He does. It squeaks and crinkles when he sits and even more when he adjusts himself. He gives me a hard look.<
br />
It’s a new chair. Didn’t see it last time I was here. Looks like she’s putting some of the money to good use.
“I like the new armchair,” I say.
“That was delivered last week. Good for watching that big television.”
The large flat-screen is sitting on a console against a wall on the other side of the living room. It is too big for the room, but I bought it anyway. Like having her own little theater.
“I can make tea,” she offers.
“No, thank you. We can’t stay long. Today’s a busy day for us.”
“Must be. All the good you do, and now you have this young volunteer to help.”
“Yes, I’m thankful for that.” I smile.
Calvin sits very still, staring straight ahead, clearly not in his element.
The old lady moves slowly, sits on the sofa beside me. I grab a brown paper sandwich bag out of my pack. It’s folded over to not reveal what’s inside. I hand it to her.
“God bless you, son,” she says.
“We’re happy to do it.”
“You sure you boys don’t want some tea? I can make coffee, too, if you prefer.”
“No. We really have to be going. Shouldn’t have even sat down. Now it’ll be hard to get up. It is a comfortable sofa.”
I remember the old one, coated with crusty vomit and soaked with blood. Not mine, but the two thug grandkids who took over her house. I almost killed those bastards.
“Those boys haven’t tried to contact you from prison, have they?”
“No. Thank the Lord.”
“You tell me if they do.”
“I surely will.”
“You need anything done around here before we go?”
“No, thank you, sweetie. I have a wonderful lady that comes in now three times a week to help around here and go to the grocery store for me. You two go on about your business. You stay longer next time.”
“I will.”
I lean over and give her a hug, grab my pack, and stand. Hugging her is like hugging a cricket. Calvin does the same.
She starts to pull herself up from the sofa. Her arms look double-jointed, as if they’ll snap in two.
“Don’t get up. We’ll let ourselves out.”
“Okay, now,” she says.
“G’day, ma’am,” Calvin says uncomfortably.
Trigger Page 16
