by Andy Straka
“Oh?”
“What concerns me is if these ‘bangers turn out to have itchy trigger fingers, what are you gonna be able to do about it?”
“I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
“That ain't gonna fly, bud. You gotta have a plan.”
“I do. Like the sheriff was saying, Ferrier and his partner are going to show up in the morning. I'll throw them a bone or two and see what they think.”
“Yeah, but what if Cowan does turn out to be dirty? You need some decent backup. Maybe let this state detective go in as primary, you and Priscilla stay out of the way.”
“Only one problem,” I said. “I doubt if Warren can get the ‘bangers to agree to any meeting with the state police.”
“Priscilla's sort of police, isn't she?”
I said nothing.
Jake smiled. “I'm shocked to think of them ‘bangers as reverse racists.”
At the top of Afton Mountain the fog lights built into the roadway glowed amber against the descending night. It was migration time for wild hawks and other birds of prey. Many would pass right over this ridge line, sometimes hundreds a day.
“Don't worry, I don't plan on dragging Priscilla into some kind of fire fight.”
“Now you're talking.”
Like it or not, Sheriff Cowan, if he did turn out to be legit, was my best hope for getting Nicky off the hook. He wasn't exactly forthcoming about the progress of his investigation, but I wouldn't expect him to be, not with me at least. Now I knew the way a bird must feel, gliding toward the invisible fowler's snare. Something else was out there, I could sense it. It might try to destroy me, but what choice did I have except to fly on?
“You sure Armistead and Jersey will be okay?” I said.
“They'll be fine, as long as we're back sometime tonight to check on them. What time is dinner with Marcia?”
“Not until eight. I figured that would give us some extra time, if we needed, to talk with Rashid.” The little man had agreed to meet us in the lounge at the Omni where he was staying on the downtown mall.
“You worried?” he asked.
“About what?”
“About what Fuad might have to say. He confirms the kid we put down couldn't have been the one who shot Singer, then that removes any doubt.”
I stared silently at the highway for a moment. “Which doesn't exactly bode well for those of us who've secretly hoped all these years that some evidence would surface to prove that maybe we had been more justified in what we did.”
We watched the highway ahead in silence, maybe neither of us wanting to think about something we had agonized over for years.
Then Jake said: “Gotta watch out for those secret hopes.”
The Omni Hotel in Charlottesville was an oblong, glass-and-steel monument to fiscal largesse. Having gone bankrupt not long after opening, the city had used public funds to bail out the enterprise, figuring a flagship hotel might spur development on the end of a revitalized Main Street-turned-pedestrian mall. Time, a great economy, and developers who poured buckets of money into the area, had either proved the city council prescient or some of the luckiest politicos to ever manage a town.
Fuad, Toronto, and I sat in deep club chairs next to a glass wall that looked over the thoroughfare to a new indoor skating arena with a copper roof. The firearms expert still had the same nervous tic I remembered from years before, an intermittent tremor of the left side of his face that seemed to have worsened somewhat. Otherwise he looked as though he had hardly aged a day.
“You bettin’ on the Knicks this year, Rashi?” Toronto asked.
“Ooh-no,” he said. “Not since they got rid of Starks.”
“Hey, you never know. New blood, new management.”
“I will not hold my breath.”
“How are things in New York?”
“Things are … some ways better, some ways worse.” It was a favorite Fuad saying.
“How long have you been with the department now?” I asked.
“Twenty-seven years.”
Jake whistled.
“This seems like a nice town you have chosen, Pavlicek,” Fuad said.
“Glad you approve.”
“You own horses? There are many big farms here, are there not?”
“There are, but I can't afford horses.”
“I see. Oh, that's right. You gentlemen are into birds, aren't you? Falcons or something … now who was telling me about that?”
We made chitchat for awhile about the hawks. Fuad asked a lot of questions and seemed impressed with Toronto's knowledge.
After awhile Toronto said: “Hate to have to rush you, Rashi, but Frank and I have a genuine dinner date with a beautiful woman in less than hour. We don't wanna keep her waiting.”
“Of course.” He clicked open the clasps on his battered briefcase, lifted the cover, and riffled through a pile of documents before extracting a manila envelope. “Here is what I have,” he said.
There was a typed report with a lot of official and technical language along with several blow-ups of microscopic bullet views.
“Can you give us the bottom line in English?” I asked.
“Yes. There is absolutely no doubt now that the weapon used to murder Officer Singer is the same one we tested years ago that belonged to the Morelli organization.
Any question has been erased since the gun has surfaced.”
“Surfaced? What are you talking about?”
“The gun itself was sent to our labs, just a week ago.”
“You're kidding. By whom?”
“Boog Morelli himself, through one of his attorneys. I compared test-fired rounds with those retrieved from Singer's body.” He held up one of the photos. “You see the scores left by the barrel of this particular Glock? They are identical to the patterns in the bullets taken from Singer.” He showed us the second photo for comparison and then a third. “And here are rounds from a control, another Glock, same model, same load. Different type of pattern altogether. So our computer program was accurate.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Morelli, out of the blue, just up and sends you this gun. Why?”
“Who knows?”
“No one's talked to his lawyer?”
“Probably someone has, but I don't know anything about that.”
I looked at Toronto, who threw up his hands and shrugged.
“So what else can you tell us about the history of this gun?” I said.
“Not much yet, I'm afraid. From what I understand, that's where things begin to get a bit murky.”
“You know who checked in the weapon?”
He fumbled through his records. “No. But if it's important I can make a call and find out.”
Was it important? The gun showing up right now was too big a coincidence to ignore. And what, exactly, was Morelli's relationship with Dewayne Turner? Were we chasing peace of mind or ghosts?
“It's important, Rashi.” I gave him my card with my cell phone number. “Can you call me as soon as you have a name?”
“Of course.”
“You doing all this on your own?”
The little man shrugged and pushed his glasses higher on his nose.
“No matter how it turns out, we owe you.”
Fuad looked embarrassed. “I do what I can. You gentlemen were among the best.”
“Rashi,” I said. “You still are.”
22
After lunch at Cat's a light dinner was all I wanted, but Toronto was hungry again. Marcia said she wouldn't get in the middle of such a debate, so we compromised and ended up eating gourmet pizza at Rococo's just off Hydraulic on Commonwealth Drive. Toronto and I had stopped by my office and apartment earlier so I could pick up my mail and return a few calls. Walter and Patricia were away at the beach, Walter playing golf no doubt. The mail was mostly bills and junk, but a couple of checks would come in handy, one rather sizable from a law firm, which I promptly deposited at the closest bank machine.
<
br /> We sat at a table by a window in Rococo's upstairs dining room. Marcia looked, in a word, stunning. Her bolero vest over tight blue jeans, hair done up in a bun, complemented by pearls. Perfect for pizza.
“You know that waitress has been giving the three of us long looks ever since we came in here,” she said. “I think she has a bet with the bartender downstairs over which one of you is my date.”
“Easy to see her difficulty,” Toronto said.
Mouth full of pepperoni, defenseless, I took a long swig of Amstel Light and decided to let that one pass.
“Hey, you remember what we were saying earlier in the truck, about Cowan?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you oughta call this Agent Ferrier, or whatever his name is, kinda brief him before he has a chance to go face to face with the sheriff.”
“Why? You think Cowan might cast some spell over him?”
“No. Just being cautious.”
“I thought Toronto and caution were antonyms,” Marcia said. “Might this have something to do with a certain Commonwealth's attorney I've been hearing so much about?”
“Ask the lone ranger here,” Toronto said. “He's spent more time with her lately than I have.”
“Really?” Her eyes flew up in mock wonderment.
“Now hold on there,” I said. “There is a big difference between time and quality time.”
Toronto smiled. “Which is what we're spending now. At least you two are. I are just a third wheel.”
“Funny, I've always thought of you as anything but a third wheel,” Marcia said.
“More like a Harley engine,” I said.
“Well this engine's gotta motor off to the little boy's room, if you know what I mean. Excuse me while I check on that waitress's wager you were talkin’ about.” He stood and sauntered away, which for Jake, in his Tony Lama boots and bulging oxford shirt, was akin to whooping and hollering across the room.
“You think he'll ever settle down?” Marcia asked.
I shrugged.
“You know you two bring out the best in each other. I can see why you were such a good partnership.”
“Mmmm.”
“Did you find out anything interesting from your meeting earlier?” Her eyes bore gently into me now, the patient listener.
“We did, in fact.” I didn't want her to worry so I didn't elaborate.
“Was he a friend of yours, the man with whom you talked?”
“I wouldn't say ‘friend’ exactly. He knows what loyalty is, and hard work, and commitment.”
“A good person then.”
“He didn't have to do what he did for us, that's for sure.”
She sipped her wine, glanced around the room for a second before looking at me again. “I'm worried, Frank, about this talk of you and this reporter and attorney meeting with some gang tomorrow night. It might be dangerous.”
“More dangerous than what I usually do?”
She scoffed at me. “I think you can answer that one for yourself.”
I said nothing.
“It seems almost eerie to me, you know.”
“What?”
“This whole thing. You and Jake meeting with that man tonight about what happened long ago in New York. You and a gang dealing drugs and dead bodies again. It's almost like some unresolved entity is drawing you back in. …”
“Well one thing I know for sure is unresolved is Nicky. I just can't see her involvement with any of this.”
“You don't think you're wearing a father's blinders?”
I pursed my lips and shook my head.
“Maybe you should be focusing more on that aspect. If you listen, really listen, she might tell you some things she would never tell anyone else.”
She had a point. Nicky was clearly hiding something from everybody, even her mother. “But I have listened,” I said. “Besides what would she gain by keeping anything from me now?”
“You've never been a teenaged girl.”
“No, but I seem to remember kissing a few.”
“Oh? I'd like to hear more about that. …”
At this point Jake interrupted, having circled the room and come up from the other side. “What's this about Frank and teenaged girls?”
“Never mind,” I said. I punched him on the shoulder, which felt like hitting an oak.
“I always miss the good stuff,” he said.
“You two having fun over there with your hawks? It'll be gun season soon, won't it?” Marcia asked.
“Few more days,” Jake said, reaching his arms above his head and stretching.
“What did your waitress have to say?”
“She had her money on me, of course. Said she thought you looked like the kind of woman who would be attracted to younger men.”
Marcia smiled and gave me a wink.
“Ouch,” I said.
Marcia said: “I was just talking to Frank about Nicky and you two coming over here to see this man from New York.”
“Yeah? He tell you about Boog Morelli too?”
“Boog Morelli? No. Who's he?” Marcia looked at me.
I gave Toronto a look and shrugged. “Just a bad guy from New York whose name has come up in all this. Looks as though the Affalachia County Sheriff's flown up there to check things out.”
“A bad guy from New York.” Now she looked at Jake. “How bad?”
Jake shrugged too. “He's nowhere near the baddest.”
“Oh, that's reassuring,” she said. “First you guys tell me someone tried to kill Frank yesterday and now we've got big-time criminals from New York.”
No one said anything for a few moments. Marcia crossed her arms and looked at her glass on the table.
I waited until she looked up. “I know,” I said. “You're with me, maybe you didn't sign on for all this.”
She held up her hand. “No … I think I just need to get used to the idea.”
Jake was nodding his head.
“Besides, if all you did was spend the rest of your life snooping around divorce and insurance settlements, you might turn into something that neither of us would like.”
I was watching her very carefully. She finally picked up the glass and took a final sip of wine, smoothed out her jeans—not that they needed any smoothing—then very deliberately reached across the table and offered me her hand.
“Like I said, ‘third wheel’.” Jake's eyes were rolling toward the ceiling.
“Shut up, Jake,” Marcia said.
I took her hand in mine. She kept it there until we paid the bill and were preparing to leave. On the far side of the room the waitress was whispering something to the hostess. When we reached the door, Marsh just smiled and offered each of us an arm. Jake and I made a show of ushering her out, a rose between two thorns.
“I don't have to tell you, you're going out on a limb here,” Ferrier said.
I had interrupted his late supper. No TV game in the background tonight. I was on the car phone, climbing Afton Mountain again, this time from the other side. Jake was already snoring, his head propped between the seat belt and passenger door glass.
“I know,” I said.
“I've already talked with Priscilla Thomasen. We need to have some serious discussion about this little get-together you all are planning for tomorrow night. You two are in over your heads.”
“She talk to you about Sheriff Cowan?”
“Yeah. You got any hard evidence of his involvement with Morelli, or just conjecture?”
I said nothing.
“Didn't think so. …”
“But you've got to admit, it all looks suspicious.” I said.
“Maybe. But you forget, the sheriff's got his investigation going too, you know.”
“What does he have?”
“I'm not going to get into that with you now, Pavlicek. He hasn't shared much with us yet, anyway. We'll talk more in the morning.”
“He talk to you about his trip to New York?”
“Not yet.”<
br />
I debated whether or not to tell him about Fuad, but decided I better wait. “Morelli's a big name,” I said. “If his people are in on something with these local gangsters, could mean a whole different problem.”
There was silence on the line.
“You still there?”
“Chad and I will be at the sheriff's department in Leonardston in the morning.” Evasive. “We'll talk more then.”
“Right. I'll try not to get into too much trouble before then.”
“Why am I not reassured?” he said.
Sometime after midnight I was blowing cold air in my face from the vent to stay awake as we passed within a mile of the cutoff to Leonardston. Jake, who had snored most of the trip, had finally stopped, but hardly stirred. I wasn't thinking anymore about Ferrier or what would happen in the morning with the sheriff; I was thinking about Nicky and the things I might say to try to break through her silence.
Suddenly my cell phone bleated. Toronto shifted beneath his seat belt with a moan.
I reached under the seat where I kept the handset and picked it up. “Pavlicek.”
“Oh, Frank, thank God I caught you.”
“Camille?” Her voice sounded strange, as if she were speaking from very far away.
“He's gone, Frank.”
“Who?” I glanced over at Jake who was looking at me inquisitively.
“Kevin. He's gone. I came home tonight from shopping at the mall over in Lexington and he was just … gone. His clothes are all missing. Looks like he took some of my jewelry and silver, a bunch of cash too.”
“You call the sheriff's office?”
“Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“Me. Why?”
“Some things I need to tell you. In person. Not over the phone.”
“Now?” Static filled the line, threatening to end our conversation. There was no moon tonight and the headlights swept over several deer along the road.
“Yes, now … that is, if you can come.”
Jake was interpreting my end of the conversation, already beginning to shake his head. I knew I'd be drinking more of his coffee, sooner rather than later.
“Give me half an hour,” I said.
23
You could smell honeysuckle outside the Rhodes's mansion, even in the dark. A short Hispanic woman answered the door.
