“Copy that,” I said.
“You got a thingie in your ear, G-Dawg? Talking to your guys out front? Calling for backup ‘cause you can’t handle us on your own? So which one is Pete, the pretty boy spic or the tall chink?”
“Don’t let someone like that provoke you, son,” someone said. “He’s not worth it.” I didn’t recognize the gentle voice but it carried an accent and sounded as if it belonged to a very old woman.
“Time to go, lads,” Lansing said. “Goodbye, Gideon Rimes.” He sang my name as if trying to do an Elton John impression and ended with a fleeting laugh. His hand shot out from his chest in a Nazi salute. “Weiss Macht!” Had PAUSA not been as crowded, he might have goose-stepped out of the back room. His clowns fell into line behind him, their voices muffled by rubber as they echoed his chant. “Weiss Macht! Weiss Macht! Weiss Macht!”
“Let them out, Pete,” I said. “Then lock the door.” I looked at the table where my loved ones sat. Bobby seemed agitated, with Phoenix and Kayla holding his hands and talking softly to him. Betty looked stunned. Sam had joined Drea at the mike and now held her tight. Her face was a mask of anguish, his one of fury. A scan of the rest of the room told me there was relief but also agitation and restlessness. People were stirring, ready to escape. “Listen up!” I called. “I know you’re upset. But please keep your seats for a moment.”
“Are the police on their way?” someone said over the babble.
“There’s no need,” I said. “The incident is over without injury or property damage. Please give us time to make sure it’s safe for you to go.”
“Go?” This speaker was a young man at the end of the bar. “We gotta talk about what just happened, man! We need to talk about it. Nazi clowns? That was some freaky shit!”
There were murmurs of agreement. Heads nodded. At least a dozen phones were still out, recording. I would be on the web by morning. There was nothing I could do about that.
“I understand. All I ask is that everybody stay put for a minute. Thank you for your cooperation.” I turned to Zulema, still near Drea and Sam. “Zulema, I need five food-storage plastic bags, now.”
She signaled one of her servers, who nodded and disappeared into the kitchen.
“Ramos, bring me your Sharpie.” He had been using the fine point marker on the labels for the contraband collected at the door.
The server returned with the bags as Ramos handed me the Sharpie. Remembering where Lansing had stood, I used a cloth napkin to slip Lansing’s wine glass and utensils into the first bag. Then I zip-sealed it and wrote his name on it. The room was eerily silent as I collected items from each of the other places at the table, numbering the bags one through four. “Zulema, do I have your permission to remove from the premises these bags with your property inside?”
She leaned into the microphone. “If you’re gonna take it to a lab somewhere to identify those culos, hells yes!”
Cathartic laughter eased the crowd into an hour of discussion no one had anticipated having. The corridor between rooms thickened as those in front pressed in to see. Will Johannes worked his way through the crowd and stopped near Corso’s table. At Drea’s request, Rory Gramm joined her and Zulema to moderate but Randall declined, though he did stand when Drea identified him and Johannes as two of the conference organizers who had brought her to town. While Randall took a half bow to brief applause and Johannes waved, Bobby came to me and whispered he thought the man in what I noted as clown position four might have been part of the crew that assaulted him. I nodded and promised myself bag four would get extra attention.
It was a literate, educated crowd that offered more than outrage at the clowns and sympathy for Drea. Several explained the trappings of white supremacy. “The nine percent thing,” one man said. “Some of these groups think only nine percent of the people in the world are pure white.” A UB grad student in a pink halter explained that since H was the eighth letter of the alphabet, two eights side by side was code for Heil Hitler. Someone else offered a thumbnail history of the blood drop cross. A woman who taught high school said Weiss Macht was German for white power. No one could explain Clown World.
A frail woman with papery skin and wispy white hair got to her feet with the help of the short, dark-haired young man seated beside her. A beige dress draped on her shoulders as if she were a hanger, she gripped the back of her chair to support herself. “I was five when they came for us,” she said, her accent underscored by a flutter. “They put us in a train car, my whole family, stuffed in like livestock. I remember everything like it happened yesterday. The smells of sweat and waste, tears, dead bodies held up by the press of others, bodies still warm because they had no room to cool. I was too young then to understand where we were going or what any of it meant.” She paused to drag a liver-spotted hand across her eyes. “But I learned fast and have understood this kind of evil for more than eighty years. Unless it is cut out at the root and the ground that fed it burned to ash, America will be drawn to its own destruction.”
I recognized the voice. “Ma’am, you’re the one who told me not to let him provoke me.” She nodded, teetering unsteadily. I moved to where she stood and reached her in time to help her back into her seat. The young man beside her, who sprang to his feet, thanked me. Great-grandson? I wondered. Then I looked down into the woman’s watery brown eyes. “Thank you for what you said then. It helped steady me. Thank you for telling us your story.”
“I do have one question, young man,” she said. “What’s an HNIC?”
Several Black people in the audience laughed as I paused to consider how to answer her question. Truth, I decided, was the best approach. But I had no wish to embarrass her, especially if our exchange made it online. I leaned down to whisper into her ear. “What he called me, HNIC? I’m sorry but it means Head Nigger in Charge.” As her eyes widened and she covered her mouth, I straightened and put a hand on her bird-bone shoulder. “I promise you, it didn’t bother me. I’ve been called worse.”
What did bother me—though I kept it to myself—was my inability to determine how Lansing knew my last name was Rimes.
25
It was past two in the morning when Drea came into the suite’s living room. Wrapped in a white terrycloth robe with the hotel’s bold TT logo on the upper left pocket, she sat on the edge of my pull-out bed. Phoenix had left two hours ago. I was sitting up, my back against the couch cushions and my computer warming my lap.
“You’re still awake,” she said, pushing her glasses up. “I saw the light under my door.”
“Had a few things to do before bed.”
“Phoenix didn’t stay the night.”
“It wouldn’t have been appropriate.” I looked up at her. “Her being here would have distracted me.”
Drea laughed. “I doubt that. You don’t strike me as the distractible type.”
“She knows how much I need to focus when I protect somebody. A good bodyguard has to outthink the guy threatening his client.” Having attached a final image to my outgoing email, I hit SEND and let out a breath. “Most often it’s somebody close to the target—ex-husband, ex-boyfriend, business associate.”
“So it’s usually a man.” There was a note of resignation in her voice.
I shrugged. “Your situation is more complicated. When your stalker’s an intimate, you can tell me things about his habits and motives that may help me do my job. But you don’t have an ex who can’t let go. You’ve got a batshit crazy gang of racists capable of anything.”
“That must make the job harder.”
“It makes the job demand more focus.” I closed the Driftglass Investigations email account. “Phoenix only came to make sure I was okay. She said she’s never seen me as angry as I was tonight. She didn’t want rage to cloud my judgment.”
“Rage? You did a good job of hiding it.”
“Not from her.” I grinned. “She knows what it took to keep me from punching that SOB Lansing. She let me talk it out and stayed till she kn
ew I could do what I had to do.”
“Which is what you’re doing now.”
“Just finished.” I studied her a moment. “So, why are you still awake?”
She frowned. “My brain won’t shut down. It keeps replaying what happened.”
“Things did get kind of tense tonight. Maybe—”
“Don’t mansplain, Gideon.” She smiled and shook her head. “Men. I listened to you. It’s your turn to listen to me.”
“All right,” I said, closing the laptop. “Sorry.”
“My mind keeps replaying tonight because something’s been nagging at me. At the time I was too stunned about everything happening to think about it.” She pressed her lips into a tight line and narrowed her eyes. “But now that I’ve had some time to mull it over, I’m sure the man you call Lansing was in my house that night. He helped tie up my husband and beat him to death.”
I sat forward and took hold of her hand. “I’m so sorry. What’s bothering you is part of what’s bothering me.” I told her about the Alliance for Public Progress meeting and the parking lot violence. “Bobby thought one of the clowns was in the gang that attacked him.”
“You think these are related?”
“Phoenix told me the men who killed your husband weren’t the same ones who beat Bobby. But maybe she was wrong. Maybe there’s more to link them than a shared sickness.”
If Lansing was part of Liberty Storm and Clown Four was who I thought he was, the disruption inside Temple Beth Zion and the violence outside had not been a coincidence. Coordination meant the danger to Drea, maybe the entire conference, was not hypothetical. That threat could take any shape, from a simple hit on one woman to an armed attack on plenary sessions. Liberty Stormers were unlikely to hack the hotel’s operational systems to shut down elevators or steal money. But poisoning food and water or planting an IED would be within their skill set. In the Mouth of the Wolf had put active membership at ten to nearly sixty, few with more than a nickname and all led by Wally Ray Tucker. Brick Butler was dead. Charlie Stoneman was in jail for killing Jody Cropper. However many might have left the group as Cropper had done, there would still be too many left to ignore. If one knew my name, they all did. How many were in Nickel City right now? More to the point, was Tucker himself here to take command of whatever operation was planned?
“What if Wally Ray is here?” Drea asked, echoing my unvoiced thoughts. “When the Fairfax police told me, off the record, he didn’t have a passport, I was relieved he couldn’t go to London. We’re still careful because he could send somebody. But why go overseas when you can get to Buffalo by car? Maybe he isn’t in hiding like I thought. What can we do?”
“I could talk to cops I know.” I released her hand and sat back, thinking. I could go to the mayor too, but Ophelia would call the commissioner, who once had made it clear how little he cared for me. “Maybe I could get Pete to go straight to Commissioner Cochrane,” I said. “But he’ll demand proof to do more than they’re doing now.”
“We don’t have that proof, do we?”
“Not yet,” I said. “You wrote about the photo arrays the cops put in front of you, so many pictures of young white men you got dizzy. You were sure only about the dead guy in your house and Wally Ray. Do you now think Lansing was there too?”
“Maybe. Without glasses. But what jerked me out of sleep a few minutes ago wasn’t his face. It was his laugh.”
“That screechy-tinny quality, like he’d promised to get Dorothy’s dog but didn’t go into full Wicked Witch mode?”
She nodded. “It was so quick it took me awhile to make the right connection, to realize I’d heard those notes before. But now I’ll never forget it.” She hesitated. “That’s probably not enough to get him picked up for questioning either, is it?”
What if Wally Ray was there? I thought before answering her. What if he was in disguise and pulled on the clown mask precisely because Lansing drew Drea’s attention to the group? “No, but let’s see what my friend in the FBI comes up with. Maybe he can find enough for me to go to my cop friends or the mayor.” I pointed to the plastic bags lined up on the side table beneath the flat screen on the wall. “What I did tonight was lift prints off the glasses and tableware I took. I scanned them into my computer and emailed them to LJ.” I didn’t tell her only four of the glasses and four of the plates yielded prints, prints that would include PAUSA kitchen staff and servers. Nor did I reveal that Clown Four’s place setting had been wiped clean, as if in anticipation of my effort. When Bobby had drawn my attention to the man in that spot, I had made a mental note of what I had seen before the mask went on. Average height, dark hair. Beard? No. Mustache? Maybe. Could blond Wally Ray Tucker have shaved his head, worn a wig, and applied Just for Men to any facial hair?
“Here I thought you were going after DNA,” Drea said.
“You can get a fingerprint kit on Amazon, not a complete DNA lab.”
She laughed.
“If I want DNA, I have to beg my sister, who’s a county medical examiner. Then she has to beg somebody in a lab for an expensive favor that doesn’t involve paperwork.” To my surprise, I yawned at that moment, which meant my brain was beginning to power down. I swallowed. “None of that can happen this time of night anyway.” Pulling off my glasses with my left hand, I massaged my temples with the thumb and middle finger of my right. “I don’t know the hoops LJ has to jump through but his access to AFIS is our first step. By tomorrow we’ll know if C.J. Lansing and his buddies are in the system.”
26
The fingerprints had been easier to sort than I had expected and had led to the identification of three men in addition to Lansing. After a dishonorable discharge from the army, Andrew Carey had been busted for assault in Arkansas. Owen Robbins had done time for petty theft in North Carolina. Stanley Maxwell had applied for a law enforcement job after flunking out of Duke and later faced charges for assaulting a live-in girlfriend. C.J. Lansing was actually Maryland-born Carter John, whose maternal grandfather Lambert Lansing had a Ph.D. in mathematics but whose disinherited mother Whitney quit college to marry Russell John, the English lit grad student who impregnated her. John’s fingerprints were in the system because of three misdemeanor arrests and two sentences of less than a year served in different county jails. Named in no outstanding warrants, none of the men could be detained for return to other states. I hoped John at least could be picked up for questioning—if he could be found.
By seven-thirty I had removed the Brink’s bar from the door, finished a quick read-through of LJ’s printed email attachment, and reviewed surveillance video. After my daily call to Mark Donatello, who would join us today for our briefing, I called Terry Chalmers.
“I take it this isn’t official business because you called my cell,” he said, slurping what I presumed was coffee. “Your name isn’t anywhere in the murder book open on my desk right now, so be quick.”
“Sorry you’re stuck with what comes out of that old Mr. Coffee.”
“This machine was Mr. Coffee’s sclerotic blood donor,” he said. “What is it?”
“Something I thought you should know.” I explained who Drea was and the events of last night. “Two of these guys may be the ones who killed her husband,” I said. Bobby and Drea’s certainty they’d had violent encounters with them increased the likelihood of some kind of disruption, maybe an attack on us when we were in the community or on the conference itself.
“You’re calling the Homicide Squad why?”
“I didn’t call Homicide. I called a friend who happens to be a lieutenant in Homicide. You’re the highest-ranking cop friend I have. I figured you would know what to do.”
Terry said nothing for a few seconds. “I hear Pete Kim is working with you now.”
“Yeah. He’s in the shower at the moment.”
“In the shower?”
“We have our client stashed in a four-room suite at Torrance Towers. We’re with her round the clock. If you want to talk to Pete—”
“I don’t need to talk to him. Jeez! Guy’s retired five minutes and you put him back in the crosshairs—with domestic terrorists, no less.” He gulped more coffee. “Got backup?”
“Two people from Weisskopf, day shifters contracted by her publisher. They go with us everywhere. Hotel security is our backup when we’re inside. The Donatello group.”
“The Weisskopf guards any good?”
“They’re both conscientious. The guy is young and inexperienced but he does what he’s told. The woman’s older and a vet. Comes across as very capable. She’s got a carry permit. The kid’s got a Taser.”
For a time there was no sound but his breathing. “Look, G, I know you’re not one to cry wolf, but cops show up after the fact. Unless you have information that tells us where and when to stop a crime…”
“I don’t know the where and when. Or the what.”
“You don’t know the play, but you’re sure there’ll be one.”
“Yep.”
Terry sighed. “Where are you and this woman going to be today?”
I recited the schedule.
“You’re starting at the downtown library, in B-District. Okay, I’ll talk to the chief there and see if she can spare a uni to tag along this morning and afternoon. She’s an old friend and will probably say yes. But there’s nothing we can do for the conference. Until you or James Torrance can give the department specifics, security falls to the Donatellos. As far as I know, they’re a good outfit.”
“They are. I already told them about last night.” I thought for a moment. “Can you do me a favor at least?”
“What?”
“If I email what LJ sent me, can you have Carter John picked up for questioning?”
“Sorry, man. We need something more solid than he broke up a talk with a clown mask and confederate flag. Even assholes have freedom of speech.” Terry paused. “Did he threaten you or your writer? Say anything she can use to file a complaint?”
Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) Page 21
