Lane looked back at his detectives.
"Was he swabbed?"
Jackson nodded.
"Clean. He doesn't have any weapons either, at least not registered ones. And that goes with what he told us."
Lane nodded his head towards the floor.
"We got into it at the stadium," I said. Lane looked up at me with a furrowed brow.
"What do you mean you got into it?"
"Well, he wasn't very chatty at first. Said some things that hurt my feelings. Pushed me around a little so I pushed him back."
"And when you say pushed, you mean you actually pushed him?" asked Lane, holding on to the toothpick as he chewed at it.
"Well yes, that's exactly what I mean. It might have been a hard push. It might have been with my fist, and it might have been on his nose. But nothing's broken that can't be fixed."
I grinned at Lane but he wasn't having any of it.
"You broke his goddamn nose?"
Lane raised his voice that time. I was still grinning, but I could see my charm wasn't winning him over.
"No, no. I didn't break his nose. Everything's fine, we had a great chat after that. Told me about Gibb's financial problems. Seems the guy owes a lot of alimony to his ex for the four kids. But I don't know that's enough for him to have killed Ensor. Even if he did threaten to kill him."
"And Stark told you all of this?" asked Lane.
I nodded.
"We had a great chat."
"That's not how we do things around here, Anthony," said Lane, sounding very official in his capacity as Captain of homicide. "And I doubt it's how you do things out west."
"You're right. I prefer cuddles by the fire and long walks on moonlit beaches. Listen Lane, it's not a problem. I guarantee it. Stark's not gonna make an issue of it. He was hotheaded and tried to push me around. I had to cool him down."
Jackson and Dykes hadn't heard about this. Jackson was grinning at me. It might have been admiration or he might have been happy to see me raked over the coals by Lane. I chose the first option. Lane looked at me silently for a while, his eyes on mine.
"Alright, but this can't be the default option," he said.
"Never is," I answered.
He nodded.
"Is that it?" he said.
"Sure isn't. I'm just getting started," I replied. "Then there's the manager Kreyling. The bat boy tells me he's putting money on the games. That's a no no. He could get fired for that."
"I assume he's putting money on his own team," said Lane.
"I assume that too, but I don't know for sure. We need to look into it. If not, then he's benefiting from the murder too. And he might be squeezed, might have a gambling problem. Lastly the bat boy, Junior O'Riley tells me the team doctor's doping up the whole team. Ensor isn't happy about it. Wants to get off the juice as he thinks it's making his problem worse. Threatens to take it to the MLB Commish. Anyway, apparently the doc was gonna be taking him off the juice, so I'm not sure that's a strong lead, but might be something to look into if we can't find anything else."
Lane shook his head.
"This is a goddamn dog's breakfast. I used to like baseball. Back in the simpler times."
"Like when they had the color line to put it euphemistically," I said, pushing my luck.
Jackson couldn't believe what I'd just said. I could see him shaking his head slowly from side to side. Dykes was grinning, probably from embarrassment for me.
"Are you always such an asshole, Anthony?" asked Lane, though he didn't seem as upset as he might've been. That meant he took it with the spirit it had been sent.
"Listen," I said, "I've never been a fan of baseball. I like to watch it sometimes to pass the time, but there's been problems with it for decades. Started with the color line. You know all about that, probably better than me. Now we have all this other bullshit. We've got a corrupted league, doping, shady dealings. It reminds of what's wrong with this country."
The view from my high horse was wide and expansive. I could see all the way to the wall just past Dykes head.
"And what exactly is wrong with this country?" asked Lane.
"The same thing that's wrong with baseball," I said. "The idolization of money, of stars. It's supposed to be a team sport. Teams take care of each other. Then how come we've got a handful of stars on each team making the big money. It's not natural and fair. You've gotta be doped up to make it. You've got a whole business machine here working not to make a sport about fair play and honest competition but about how to make billionaires richer. How to squeeze every last nickel out of the hardworking American and how to make the stars richer too. It's rigged like the rest of this country. That's the problem with it."
Dykes gave me a little clap. Seemed sincere, but I couldn't be sure. Jackson grinned at me.
"I like it," said Jackson. "Didn't take you for the philosopher."
Lane looked at me for a while before smiling big and broad like his shoulders.
"You might be an asshole, but I like you," he said. "You may be right, but right now, I've got ninety-nine problems and cleaning up baseball isn't one of them. Can we get back to the task at hand?"
I didn't say anything. I'd probably already said too much. But the reason I got on the job in the first place was to try and make a difference. Try to make this place a little more just and fair. Sounds like I was the sucker.
"We've gotta go see this PI. I think there might be something there. If not, we'll lean on the ex again. If that comes up empty, then we've gotta dig into Gibb or Stark, Kreyling or the doc. One of these wack-a-moles has got to be good for it," I said.
Lane looked from me to Jackson and Dykes. Dykes and Jackson nodded at him.
"I like it," said Dykes. "Feels like we're close. One of these suspects has got to be good for it. Personally, I think the wife's involved somehow. I mean isn't that the way it usually is, Captain? Those closest and those with the most to gain are usually the ones committing the crimes."
Lane nodded.
"Yeah, probably eight, nine times out of ten. But you haven't brought me anything concrete yet. You've got to shake some trees. You've gotta bring me something I can take back to the Mayor."
Dykes nodded.
"Look," said Lane, turning back to me. "You might be right and all with your analogy of baseball and the problems with America. And right now I'm feeling the heat from that massive billion dollar business we call the MLB. They want answers and we've got to give it to them. And if not for them, don't you want to just get down to brass tacks and just find justice for the deceased, even if he was a highly paid sports star?"
"I sure do, Lane," I said. "That's what I signed up for."
"Then get me something, for god's sake. Tomorrow would be nice. This murder is hanging over the World Series like a drunk evil stepmother at wedding. The sooner we get this done the better off everyone will be."
Dykes and Jackson got up.
"We're on it, Captain," said Jackson.
"Good," said Lane.
"Anything else?" asked Dykes.
Lane stood and shook his head, the toothpick seemed shorter than when he'd first put it in his mouth. Maybe it was his fiber supplement. He seemed pretty anal. Maybe constipation was his problem.
"I'm not trying to bust your balls," said Lane. "But the shit's gonna roll down hill, you know that."
Dykes and Jackson nodded. We all left the Captain's office and walked towards the elevator.
"I thought that pep talk went very well," I said.
Jackson laughed.
"Easy for you to say," said Dykes, "you get to leave at the end of all of this."
"But until then," I said. "I remain your ever humble servant."
I grinned at them. I got a wry smile out of Dykes. He pulled out an almost empty roll of Lifesavers and popped one in his mouth. He offered them around. What I needed was a smoke. What I got was a little white mint.
SIXTEEN
Skeef Surveilance Systems
THERE'S a place in most cities where the good rubs shoulders with the bad. It's not a firm line. Nothing like that. Just a slow rolling over into harder times. Sort of like when you're at a bar chatting to a woman who starts to look better the more drinks you have. All cities I've visited have that woman. Only it's sorta backwards, where the pretty woman turns into a witch real slow. Chicago's like that. And in case some of you Chicagoans are feeling bent out of shape it happens everywhere. My lovely LA is a classic example. Take a lazy ride up Van Nuys sometime and you'll see what I mean. That lovely model of a lady starts off fine in Sherman Oaks, starts getting a little unruly around Van Nuys before slapping on some lipstick around Panorama City and Arleta, but she's drinking hard, until she gets rolled up wet and ragged in Pacoima. But it happens real slow, like I told you.
I was getting the same vibe in Chicago. The thing is this lady was so blitzed you could walk a few blocks and end up in a place like Hyde Park where she was looking like a classy hooker looking for her first John and then some streets down you're in Back of the Yards where's she's taken a beating and giving head for nickels. This I'm seeing with my own eyes and what Jackson is telling me as we're heading down to a place called Armour Square in the South Side. It's squashed up against slightly better neighborhoods like a bum curled up against a warm vent.
You've seen places like this. The grass is never green, fact is, it's hard to tell the grass from the dirt. The strip malls that seemed like a good idea in the fifties are now run down and in need of some paint. It was in one of these places that Dykes pulled in and parked the car in front of a panel of pane glass. Above an entrance was a plastic sign like they have in these places. The name of the business, all of the businesses using all the space above their front for their name. This one was in red lettering. Slightly cursive. Might've looked good in the seventies. Not so much anymore. Skeef Surveillance Systems is what it read.
We got out of the car and I looked around. There wasn't a lot going on. There was a halal butcher a couple of doors down, a Hispanic grocer and a lawyer. The lawyer's business was his own name. Deshawn Johnstone JD. I coulda used a smoke about now, but I had a feeling Silent Red and Baller were itching to catch a break on this case.
"Why'd a guy like Ensor hire a bum like this," I said aloud.
"That's a good question," said Dykes. "Let's go and find out."
I followed the two of them into the office. The front was a large reception area. It smelled like cigarettes and whiskey. I thought of my apartment. Only this smell was stale. The carpet was old, thin and beige. Beige was not a good color for carpets in places like this. Stains were all over the place such that it looked mottled. There were cheap reception chairs lined up against the wall. They had thin gray cushioned bottoms and backs. I took a look at a few of them and decided to stand.
A generic, cheap reception desk stood back against a thin, cheap wall with a door off to the one side. This door led into the back. Probably where Skeef had his office. We walked up to the receptionist. She was a middle-aged woman, wide and wrinkled and white. I wanted to say something nice about her. But I couldn't find anything. She didn't look like there'd been better days behind her. She was the type of woman I figured had never seen better days.
Leaning up against the front of her desk which was rib height we could see onto her side. An ashtray was filled with dead butts. A fresh one had grown a long gray nose, the smoke rising in a still, straight stream towards the ceiling. Unperturbed, undisturbed. She looked up at us, over reading glasses as she typed on a computer that was probably seven years old.
She had the jowls of a bulldog and thin gray eyebrows that could've been transplanted from a man. Her hair was calico, but mostly dark gray roots, with a bad tint job that was something like the color of rust on the fenders of my LeSabre. Her hair hung in a pony tail down her back. Her glasses pinched the bottom of her nose and a loose, cheap beady chain mimicked her jowls and hung from her glasses round her neck. She had some makeup on, but it didn't hide her ashen complexion. Her lips were bright red, thin, wrinkled with a smoker's pucker. She didn't smile.
"What can I do you gentleman for?" she asked.
She looked down at her cigarette, picked it up and tapped the ash off before taking a long suck on it. She blew the smoke up towards the ceiling. I followed it. There was a thick cloud of smoke like pregnant udders clinging to the dropped ceiling panels which were stained and mottled like the floor.
"Detective Dykes and Detective Jackson. Homicide," said Dykes. "We want to speak with Robert Skeef."
She nodded as if this was a routine call. She picked up the phone.
"Bobby, you've got visitors," she said. She nodded for no apparent reason. "Yeah, it's them police from homicide."
She hung up the phone and looked at Dykes.
"He'll be right out," she said. "Yous can wait over there."
She was already looking down at her computer terminal. I figured she meant the chairs when she said 'over there'. I stood where I was. Dykes and Jackson walked off and stood facing the window by the chairs, looking out into the parking lot. I was enjoying the only fresh smell in here which was her burning cigarette.
I picked up a trifold pamphlet in a cheap plastic display. This one was photocopied and therefore grayscale. I looked at her.
"What's your name, darling?" I asked.
She looked up at me like I'd insulted her cat.
"Dolores," she said, looking back at the computer.
"Dolores," I said, "you got anymore of these pamphlets in color?"
I figured they had them in color, or at least they were supposed to be in color. She didn't look at me.
"Supposed to be here last week. Printer come up with some excuse why's they're late. I can mail one to you if you like?"
I shook my head.
"Nah, this one'll be just fine," I said. "Skeef quite busy these days?"
Still wouldn't look at me. She shrugged though as she pecked away at her keyboard.
"Some days busier than others," she said.
"Today being others," I said, grinning at her for my own benefit. She still wasn't looking at me. She didn't say anything to that, so I tried something different. "What's the bread and butter of your business?"
"Cheatin' spouses," she said. "Eight or nine times outta ten it's cheatin' spouses."
I looked at the pamphlet. The top third of the front page just had Skeef Surveillance Systems on it. The next third had what was supposed to be a corporate quote but it was way to generic to be trademarked.
"Have a cheating spouse? Call Skeef. Need to find a missing relative? Call Skeef. Have any sort of beef? Call Skeef. We find anything you need with greater speed than the other guy. Cheaper too!"
Inside I groaned. But who was I to judge, I didn't even have an office. The last third of the front page showed who I presumed to be Skeef and a client with thumbs up. Inside was more of the same. Though the inside pictures seemed to be more like staged royalty free photos you'd buy online. There were also three client testimonials that weren't very convincing. Testimonials from first name, last initial that could have been made up. The back page was blank except for the middle fold which had the contact information for Skeef Surveillance Systems.
I put the pamphlet back. It was the last one after all, and I wouldn't be needing his services. I went to join Dykes and Jackson when I heard the door open. We all turned to see who was coming out. Must have been Skeef, at least I recognized him from his pamphlet.
A guy of average height came out. He had several days worth of stubble on his face. A round face that was youthful with fat. I put him in his mid thirties. He had small eyes that seemed a little too close to his nose. He was balding but chose the combover. Some guys. What can I say, a toupee would've been better. His hair was graying. The corner of his mouth had a little mustard stain. Must have caught him at lunch. There was a small stain on his shirt, just over the pocket. It was a white striped shirt that was now off gray. It had blue stripes down it. He wo
re a black tie that was loose around his neck and shouted polyester. Probably like this gray slacks. He wore brown tasseled loafers that needed replacing.
He was hairy. His forearms were thick with hair under his rolled up sleeves which were rolled haphazardly just below his elbows. He wore a gaudy, chunky gold chain around his right wrist. I was gonna go with gold plated. On his left wrist was a bulky Rolex. I'd bet my last bottle of whiskey it was a knockoff. On his right ring finger was a large gold champion ring. Probably from high school. His belly burst at the buttons on his shirt and rode over his trousers like a huge boil. He was friendly though, I gave him that. He walked right over to us with a big friendly smile on his face.
"Detectives," he said, his warmth was contagious. "What can I do yous for?"
Seemed like this little office had its own accent. Skeef reached out his hand. He went for the tallest of us first. That'd be Dykes. They shook hands.
"Detective Dykes," he said, and then looked off to Jackson. "Detective Jackson and that's Anthony Carrick."
Skeef shook hands with all of us.
"You Robert Skeef?" asked Dykes.
"Yes sir, Bobby. My friends call me Bobby," he said.
"Can we talk privately, Bobby?" asked Dykes.
"Yes sir," he said, nodding his head and still smiling. "Let's go into my office."
He turned and walked back from where he came. Just before he entered through the door he turned and spoke with Dolores.
"Dol, can you hold my calls until these here detectives have left?"
Dolores nodded at the computer screen. We followed him into the back of a thin but long office he rented. We passed a small bathroom that needed a clean from the looks of it. There were a couple of other rooms before the big one at the back. Those rooms were closed. On the door to his office was his name.
Inside the office I smelt mustard and cigar tobacco. Smelt sweet like Black and Milds Wine. I was right, I saw a couple of untipped butts in an ashtray on his desk. Also on his desk was an inch left of a 7-Eleven hotdog in its tray. Another empty tray was in the wastepaper basket on the right side of his desk. A Big Gulp was on the desk next the hotdog and a brown bag with a clear window on it held an uneaten donut.
Anthony Carrick Hardboiled Murder Mysteries: Box Set (Books 1 - 3) Page 66
