Short on sleep, he had caught himself dozing more than once, and now he sent a weary glance up from the wrappers to the guy’s building.
And, behold, the raggedy black Ford Fairmont that Tina, the strung out dancer, had told him to look for, was parked right in front of the apartment.
Then he watched the young guy get out of the car and quickly disappear down the stairs.
“Thank you, Jesus,” he said aloud and took one last look at the school newsletter photo of Giordano on the seat next to him. Reaching to open the glove compartment, he removed a small black metal box and climbed out of the Nova.
Down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from the apartment he walked until he was just past a point even with the Ford. Then he crossed the street and moved in behind the car. With one quick glance at the apartment’s entryway, he squatted, flipped a switch on the box, and attached it to the frame near the underside of the rear bumper.
Chapter 83
Inside the apartment at his kitchen table John filled a shopping bag with three T-shirts and a worn pair of jeans, two library books—Elmore Leonard’s The Big Bounce and them by Joyce Carol Oates—the two editions of the Free Press he had picked up off his doorstep, his toothbrush, a half-rolled tube of toothpaste, and the Minocycline pills he’d forgotten for his acne. It was amazing how carefully he had worked out every detail of his plan and yet was thoughtless about some obvious basics.
On the counter next to his phone he pushed a button on his answering machine. The tape rewound briefly, then played.
“Honey, it’s your mother, calling from the great north woods. Just wanted to say hello and see how you’re doing. Any job prospects yet? If not, I’m sure a good one will come along soon. I wish you would come up and spend a few days with us. It’s so gorgeous up here, and we’ve got more than enough room in this cottage. Harry and I would love to have you. Well, dear, take good care of yourself and call me soon. Love you. Bye, bye.”
The machine beeped and stopped. Shaking his head, he lifted the shopping bag from the table and moved to the door. When he opened it to leave, the large, imposing figure of a black man stood in his way.
“How you doin’, John?”
His mouth puckered, and he swallowed hard. “Ah, okay. How about you?”
“I’m fine, John, just fine. Looks like you packed a few supplies. You goin’ someplace?”
“Oh, just out for awhile.” He paused, feeling weak. Finally he asked, “Do I know you?”
The black man smiled. “I don’t know. Do you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I don’t think so either.”
His nerves doing a violent hum, he tried to sound pleasant. “Then how do you know me?”
“That’s my business, John. By the way, mind if I come in? It’s kind of awkward here in the doorway.” The guy pushed past him into the apartment.
“Well, I was just...”
The guy stopped and turned in the kitchenette. “You were just what?”
John took a breath. “I was just leaving. So I’ll have to ask you to go.”
The black man smiled again. “I’ll be happy to go, John. Just tell me where you’re keeping Megan Monelli.”
Shocked and sliced with fear, he opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. Until this moment he had clung to the hope that this strange, menacing guy was about something else. There was no possible way, he had told himself repeatedly, that anyone could connect him with the girl. Now, obviously, he’d made some kind of awful mistake. Finally he said, “Ah, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do, John. And I’m ready to do whatever it takes for you to give me that information.”
The guy had stopped smiling. John felt barely able to breathe. Somehow he managed to hold himself together. “Look, I told you I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you could do anything you want to me, and it still wouldn’t help.”
Saying nothing for a few seconds, the black man just stared and seemed to gauge the intensity with which John stared back.
Finally, the guy said softly, “Well, John, I’ll tell you what. I want you to think real hard about what your life is gonna be like after tonight. Then give me a call before five o’clock.” He slid a business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to him.
Looking at it briefly, John put it in his jeans pocket and actually began to breathe again. “Okay, Charles, thanks for the advice. I gotta be goin’ now.”
The guy nodded and walked out the door ahead of him. As the two emerged from the stairway onto the street, John moved to the driver’s side of the Ford. The black man gave him one last look.
“Think about it, John.”
“Right. See you later.”
“I hope so. For your sake.”
John started the Ford, put it in gear, and drove off noisily as the black man stood on the sidewalk watching him go. In the rear view mirror, he watched the guy cross the street diagonally to a white Nova with what looked like a dented roof. Then taking his time, John made a right turn at the next corner and continued at a moderate speed until he reached an alley where he slowed to make another right.
Carefully moving the Ford up the alley, he glanced often at both the rear and side view mirrors. A half-block up the alley he stopped to one side, then turned to watch out the rear window, his hands damp, his pulse racing.
Biting the skin at the edge of the nail on his right index finger, he continued for a minute watching the street from which he had turned into the alley. But then after a while, he began to feel that somehow the black man was watching him, that he had magically found his whereabouts and was standing now right in front of the Ford, staring at the back of his head. John turned suddenly on the bench, but found no one in front. Then he turned back to the rear window, just in time to see the white Nova moving quickly past the alley entrance without the guy giving the alley a glance.
With the skin stinging next to the nail, John turned back to the wheel, put the Ford in gear and moved through the rest of the alley. At the next street he took a right and then drove with pace, his eyes moving quickly from the way ahead, to the side streets he passed, to what the mirrors showed behind.
There were only a few cars moving in this half-dead neighborhood, but the white Nova was not one of them. His nerves were still humming, but he was reasonably certain that Charles Watts, Private Investigator, traveling in the opposite direction on another street, had been given the slip.
Chapter 84
With the Nova idling at a red light, Charlie reached under the seat and pulled out another black metal box, this one larger than the one he had placed on the Ford. It had an antenna and a scope, and when he pushed the power button, the antenna extended and the scope glowed green, showing a grid pattern with two white dots, one blinking to indicate the relative position of the other box. This box also began beeping regularly as he made a tight u-turn to follow in the direction the Fairmont had traveled.
Glancing often at the green scope next to him on the seat, he continued to narrow the gap between to two dots until, far ahead he caught a glimpse of what he was sure was the Ford. Then he backed off a bit, and, satisfied with the configuration of the dots on the grid, continued to follow while staying far enough behind to remain out of sight.
When he knew they were approaching an entrance to I-94, he pulled over and watched the scope more carefully. When the lead dot suddenly began moving to the right, he guessed the Ford had entered the eastbound ramp. A minute later, nearing the freeway, he slowed but passed the eastbound access and continued for a block before stopping in the overgrown lot of an abandoned supermarket. Watching the scope for a few moments, he nodded to himself, then headed back for the eastbound ramp.
A minute later he had merged with medium and fast-moving traffic and was glancing at the dots every few seconds, grateful this cat-and-mouse game had started before the rush hour jams. When he finally hit Harper Woods, the first eastern suburb, the vehicles ar
ound him began thinning out. He glanced at his watch: 3:30 pm.
Fifteen minutes later he found himself on a mostly rural highway he had never seen before.
Chapter 85
With the outside door of the office locked again, he placed the shopping bag on a desk, turned on the lamp next to the couch and carried the Sears bag to the bathroom door. He opened the padlock and knocked. “You doing okay?”
He stared at the door and heard nothing.
“Megan, I got you a change of clothes.”
Still no answer, so he knocked again. “Megan, how about a change of clothes?”
With only more silence he had the crazy thought that somehow she wasn’t in there. Totally crazy but what if...? He opened the door, and there she was lying on the cot and giving him a frigid stare. Finally she said, “What kind of clothes?”
He handed her the bag. “Here, look for yourself. It’s nothing special, but it should be more comfortable than what you’re wearing.”
“Sears?”
“What’s wrong with Sears.”
“I don’t wear Sears, Loser Boy.”
He turned away. “Com’on out when you’re ready, and I’ll make some hot dogs.”
“Oh, goody.” Her voice dripped mockery.
Saying nothing, he closed the bathroom door. Back at the desk, he snapped on the old portable TV set he had brought from the apartment a few days ago. After a moment, when the set had warmed up, it offered the last several seconds of a Depends commercial, followed by a stern-looking black woman who said, “Fourteen years as an abused wife.” And after that came another woman’s voice: “Next at 4 on the Oprah Winfrey Show.”
Chapter 86
In the Cadillac’s back seat, dressed impeccably in a black suit, gray shirt and a lighter gray patterned tie, Monelli sat alone with his thoughts as Robert turned the car into the entrance to the station compound at WTEM-TV. They stopped next to the gatehouse, and Robert lowered his window.
“This is Mr. Steven Monelli. He’s scheduled to be on with Frank DeFauw.”
The guard nodded quickly. “Oh, yes, sir. Just follow the road around to the back entrance, and someone will meet you there.”
Raising the window, Robert accelerated past a Detroit Police car and its two officers parked inside the gate.
Two minutes later, carrying an attache case, he moved through the double doors to the reception area and held one for Monelli. In the lobby they eyed two more uniformed officers, one in an armchair, the other on the couch, both of whom eyed them back When Oprah Winfrey’s theme music came on, a TV set built into the wall regained their attention.
As Robert was about to say something to the receptionist, a smartly dressed young black woman walked up with a smile and extended her hand.
“Hello, Mr. Monelli. I’m Fay Banks, Mr. DeFauw’s producer. I see you found us all right.”
“No problem.” Monelli barely touched her hand and only glanced at her eyes.
“Great! Let me show you to our Green Room where we’ll ask you to wait for just awhile before your segment comes up on the news.”
Monelli nodded but didn’t move. “Is there a phone I can use in that room? “
Fay’s smile retained its wattage. “In the Green Room? Oh, sure. Use it as much as you want.”
Chapter 87
With the jaws of the large cutting tool gripping the rusty chain, he grunted once and snapped it. Then he swung the creaky old gate open wide and moved back to the Nova, idling behind him on the highway shoulder.
Tossing the chain cutter in the back seat, he moved the Nova past the gate and up the overgrown road. The weathered old building he had glimpsed from the highway came slowly into view, and he was barely able to decipher the badly faded sign on its front wall: “Giordano Cheese.”
As he spotted the Ford parked close to a door marked Office, the black box on the seat next to him was beeping like crazy. On the green scope the two white dots had merged. He hit the power button on the box, then backed the car out of sight from the office door and shut down the engine.
On foot he moved quickly to the building’s cement block wall and followed it until he was close to the office. The window in its door had been boarded over, but moving closer, he saw a tiny crack of light coming from under the board at the lower left corner of the window. From inside he could hear Oprah Winfrey saying, “So tell us, dear, what he would do when he’d come home in that condition.”
Moving back away from the door, he retraced his route along the wall, figuring there had to be other ways into this place. Turning a corner he came first to a large, drive-up opening, a loading dock covered with a rusted metal roll-up door. When he climbed up on the dock and tried to lift the door, it wouldn’t budge.
Moving again along the side of the old plant, he gazed up at a bank of narrow windows, inaccessible at about 20 feet off the ground.
Chapter 88
Inside the office the hazy picture on the old portable showed Oprah, her large eyes full of deep concern, leaning toward a pretty woman in her mid-30s weeping and wiping her cheeks. “Just let it all come out, dear,” said Oprah, as John stood at the desk and laid out hot dog buns on paper plates.
He started to look at his watch again and then stopped himself. Surely it had been less than a minute since he had last checked the time. And if he kept checking so often, this incredible thing he was doing and the time it was taking would only drag even more.
But his nerves buzzed, and his patience had frayed badly. His thoughts were jumping all over the place, from the girl’s look when he had pulled the gun from under the seat, to that view of her father hurrying into the bus station john, to the desperate edge in the guy’s voice on the phone, to his own strange elation—excitement, yes, but a weird kind of calm—when he had locked the girl for the first time here in the bathroom cell.
On the TV now Oprah was sticking a microphone in front of a young black woman standing in the audience. “And you say?”
Chapter 89
The large screen in the Green Room at Channel 5 offered the same image, brighter and sharper. The woman with a microphone in front of her was saying, “I say I’d never stick around long enough to let a man beat on me.”
Monelli was not watching the set. Instead his gaze was locked on a telephone on a small table next to the chair in which Robert was sitting.
Fay Banks popped her head in the door with a smile. “Just as an update, Mr. Monelli, you’re now scheduled to be on with Mr. DeFauw at 5:15”
Monelli barely glanced at her. “Okay, 5:15.”
Fay lingered. “Oh, and I just wanted to let you know that we have found a way to accommodate your request to be right on the set with Mr. DeFauw.”
“My request?” Monelli finally looked up at her.
“Yes, we don’t normally do ‘Up-Front’ interviews that way, but I understand it was a stipulation from your people right from the first phone call.”
“Okay, fine.” Monelli stared back at the phone.
Chapter 90
At the far rear corner of the old plant Charlie finally came to a solid panel door along with a couple of windows that were only a few feet off the ground. Trying to look through one of the dirt-caked panes, he could barely see the remains of what appeared to have been a locker room. At the door he tried the handle and found it securely locked. Pulling out his small lock-pick tool, he inserted its two prongs in the keyhole, twisted it back and forth, flicked it a few times, then twisted again. And nothing.
He tried three more times, the last two with variations, but the lock refused to open, and he decided it was probably rusted closed. He tried shouldering the door, but there was no give at all.
Back to the window, he peered through the grime. It was locked. A quick look in the other window showed the same thing. So which sound would more likely reach the office? Breaking glass or pounding the door enough to snap it open?
He moved away from the door and, with a powerful three-step rush, slammed his left
shoulder into it a foot above the lock. He felt it give and heard wood crack, but it would still not swing open. Listening closely in the silence between birds chirping in the trees around the old plant, he could just barely hear sounds coming from the TV set in the office. One more bull rush, with another thud and wood crack, and he was into the locker room. Standing stock still for a few seconds, he could still hear the TV set.
In this dust-laden room he looked around for a moment to get his bearings, then walked between two rows of lockers toward another door.
* * *
On the office TV Oprah was shouting to the heavens, “I don’t believe this,” as her audience roared and applauded. With the hot dogs finished in his old microwave from the apartment, John added potato chips to the plates and filled two paper cups with 7-Up.
“Megan?”
As usual lately there was no answer. He turned the volume down on the TV.
“Megan, you ready? How about a hot dog?”
Still no answer.
This time he yelled, “Megan, hot dog?”
Finally she answered. “Hold your little weenie, Loser Boy.”
And after a pause: “Or maybe you’d like me to hold it.”
“I told you to cut that out.”
He turned up the TV volume again.
* * *
In the locker room at the rear of the building Charlie was confronted now by a simple push-through door. But when he tried it, carefully, it moved only a few inches before hitting something that blocked its way.
Admission of Guilt (The detroit im dyin Trilogy, Book 2) (The Detroit Im Dying Trilogy) Page 19
