Soft Case (Book 1 of the John Keegan Mystery Series)

by John Misak

you know?”

  “I do.”

  “I’ll get lunch ready,” my mother said.

  “Good, I’m starving,” Donny said.

  “I could eat too,” I said.

  Mom made us one of her great lunches. She took food seriously, being Italian, and what we ate that day would have qualified as a good dinner for anyone else. She made some pasta, salad, and garlic bread. It was good, but I felt like I was about to explode after I was done. Dad had a few beers at lunch, but I had to limit myself to one because of the stares I was getting from Mom. She didn’t like to see me drink. Made me feel like a kid, but there were worse things in life to worry about.

  Donny had kept to his usual tricks with my sister and she the same, so they traded barbs across the table. I tried sneering ever so discreetly at Donny, but he didn’t seem to pick it up. My sister wouldn’t listen to me, so I didn’t bother with her.

  After we were done, we moved into the living room, where Mom had some cookies, Entenmanns’s chocolate chip mind you, and coffee. Man, it was good to be home.

  Donny started bothering me about the case again.

  “He really killed himself?”

  “I said I don’t know.”

  “Jesus Christ, leave him alone already,” Laura said.

  Donny shot her a look, but decided not to say anything. He got up and walked toward the bathroom. Mom went into the kitchen to finish cleaning up, and Dad started to fall asleep.

  I spoke with Laura for a moment, some idle chitchat. We didn’t talk as much as we should. We really did get along. She and Donny just had marriage growing pains and I knew little about it.

  Mom came back into the room, saw us sitting next to each other, and smiled. She looked at my father who was completely passed out.

  “I don’t know why he does this to himself.”

  “He’s just tired,” I said. A feeble attempt at his defense.

  “He’s drunk. He must have had at least seven beers.”

  Nine, actually. And that was all I counted. Lord knows what he’d had before I got there.

  “He’ll be alright.”

  I stayed there for another hour or so. I would have stayed longer, but I couldn’t get my mind of my situation. I wanted answers. I wanted a solution. My father was probably right about speaking to my uncle at the FBI. I wasn’t sure what he would be able to come up with, but at least it would be something. It would offer me direction.

  After we had run the small talk down to nothing, I caught my mother in the kitchen.

  “Mom, do you have Uncle Paulie’s number?” I asked.

  She looked at me sideways, the way she did when I said something that didn’t seem to make sense. Yeah, she looked at me that way often.

  “What do you want to speak to him for?” she asked, not in such an inquisitive way. She sounded like she expected me to just tell her outright.

  “It has to do with this case. I think he might be able to get me some information that might help,” I said, knowing my soul took a ding for lying like that.

  “It’s in my blue phone book, in the drawer underneath the television,” she said, waving in that general direction.

  I went to the drawer and came up with three blue phone books.

  “Which one?” I asked,

  “The blue one,” Mom said,

  “They’re all blue.”

  “You know which one I called the blue phone book. The one with the gold lettering.” She really said this as if it were indisputable fact.

  I found it; battered, the spine shot and loose pages falling out. Why my mother didn’t just buy a new one and transfer all the names from all the books was beyond me. Each phone book held some sort of significance, but I never could decipher what that was.

  I fumbled through the book, trying to remember what my mother’s system was. Some people were listed by first name, some by last, and some by title. For instance, Uncle Paulie could have been listed under ‘P’ for his first name, ‘S’ for his last name, Shortino, or ‘U’ for Uncle. I found him under ‘S,’ surprisingly, and jotted the number down on a business card I had in my wallet.

  “Thanks Mom,” I said,

  “You sure everything’s okay?”

  “Yes. But I need one more favor.”

  “What do you need?”

  “I need to borrow the car for a few hours.”

  “The Toyota?”

  “I could use your car, that’s fine.”

  She went over to her pocketbook and handed me the keys. “When are you going to get a car of your own?”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I might have to do that soon. “When I need one.”

  “Just don’t leave me on empty, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  I said my goodbyes to my mother and sister, shook Donny’s hand when I went through the living room, and walked outside. I couldn’t imagine having to face my mother and tell her that I was being kicked off the force, or worse, going to jail. She had been so proud of me when I’d graduated from the academy, and even more so when I got the gold badge. Her father had been a cop. Though she was worried about me, she beamed every time she talked about my job.

  Sixteen

  I drove aimlessly for about an hour in my mother’s Cadillac Deville. It was an older model, a 1984, the long squared one. It was a coupe, only because my mother wouldn’t drive anything else, and it was in perfect condition. I felt like an idiot with a huge statue of the Virgin Mary rising up from the dash, but there was no way to take that off. The car was a steel blue, with shiny spoke rims and whitewall tires. I didn’t even know they made those anymore.

  I looked at the odometer. The car had just a little over 27,000 miles on it. No wonder she still had the whitewalls. The tires were probably original.

  I was headed back toward my apartment when my cell phone rang.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Keegan,” was all the man at the other end replied. It was Geiger.

  “Hey, boss.” I was at first happy to hear from him, but then I remembered what my father had said about him. Even though I didn’t believe it, I couldn’t get it out of my head.

  “Big mess, Keegan. Big mess.”

  “Don’t I know it. I’m the one they are going to hang.”

  “No, they probably won’t even pursue the charges.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “They don’t have anything on you. They’ll just carry out the suspension for a short time, and then everything will go back to normal.”

  “They planted evidence on me,” I said. “It’s the only way any of this could have gone down.”

  “You really think our guys did that? Come on John, use your head. It has to be something else.”

  I couldn’t figure out what Geiger’s angle was.

  “Who else, then?”

  “How about Mrs. Mullins? Ever think that maybe she did that? Ever think she might have been looking for a sucker all along?”

  Was he trying to get the information out of me that the IA guy and Peters couldn’t the day before? I didn’t even want to think that, but I did. Alarms were going off in my head. My Dad’s words echoed in that empty space too.

  “Listen, I can’t talk right now,” I said. My heart sank as I considered the man I trusted in the department above all else as the one who led me to my doom.

  “Come in and talk to me. We’ll work this whole thing out,” he said. His tone turned suspicious in my head.

  “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

  Right then I realized I could trust no one. I got pinched for someone’s satisfaction, pretty much. The rotted line of corruption ran high, from what I could tell. They had gotten to Rick, and it seemed they had gotten to Geiger. I was on my own, and had to fight my way out.

  Odds were that I would lose, but I had to try.

  I pulled over, got out the business card with my uncle’s number, and dialed it. I couldn’t speak directly to him at first. When I finally got through, I had to tell him
right away that the line wasn’t safe.

  “My favorite nephew, how are you?” Uncle Paulie asked. He sounded jovial as always.

  “I’m fine, but a little tangled.”

  He knew what that meant. He was the one who taught me that line. “Yeah, it happens often. I had a feeling. You got involved with a lot of string.”

  “I just need to run a few things by you,” I said. “Do you have the time for that?”

  “Sure. Remember the last place I saw you?”

  I did. It was a steakhouse near Chelsea. Angelo and Maxie’s. “Yes.”

  “Meet me there by four.”

  “I will.”

  I hung up the phone and made my way toward Manhattan. I felt a little better because, if nothing else, I was going to give as much hell as I received.

  I had a few hours to kill before I had to meet my uncle, so I went to my apartment to pick up a few things. One of the things was a gun that I hadn’t given to the guy the night before. It was a small Walther PPK 380. It fit in the back of my jeans nicely. Yeah, I was breaking the law by carrying a gun that wasn’t registered, but I didn’t feel comfortable not carrying one.

  I scanned the apartment. Part of me thought that maybe someone had been there, but I was just spooked. I didn’t trust anything or anyone. Nothing looked like it was touched. But, of course, I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t like the fact that I didn’t feel safe in my own home. I felt violated.

  The restaurant, on the corner of 21st was packed as usual for a Friday. It was a place I went to fairly often. I liked it because the food was good, the prices were decent for a city joint, and there were always a ton of women there. It was new, but it had a sort of old feeling to it, like Smith and Wolensky. The place was decorated in wood, and was dark. As soon as you walk in, you see the main