by Tom Pitts
“Hiding the bodies, huh? Using ’em for taco meat?” Tremblay laughed, but the young officer did not. Tremblay coughed, worked up a ball of phlegm, rocketed it into the grass a few feet away.
“What do you do now, Mr.…” he glanced at his notepad again, “Tremblay, is it?”
“That’s right. Now I’m in the private sector. Security, PI shit. Got to keep the bottle full, know what I mean?”
Peters nodded, but Tremblay could tell he didn’t know what he meant. He would. One day.
The first cop that Tremblay had spoken to appeared at the entrance to the house. “Derek,” he called to one of the officers on crowd control. “Get the yellow tape. This is the real deal. Goddamn. Peters, when you’re done, have one of these guys stay with our friend here and come up and have a look at this. This is really something.”
***
Quinn ordered a steak with a glass of red wine. Steven said he wasn’t sure if he was hungry again, that he was still full from the last meal.
“That wasn’t a meal, that was a snack,” Quinn said, and told the waitress, “He’ll have the bacon cheeseburger, medium rare, and a pint of Sierra Nevada.”
When the waitress said she needed to see some ID from the young man, Quinn said, “Never mind. He’ll have a coke, I’ll take the Sierra.”
While they waited for their plates, Quinn made comments on the décor: how they knew they were in an okay place because it had tablecloths. The drinks arrived and Quinn slid his beer across the table to Steven. His commentary continued. The weather, how all these green hills were going to be brown as camel humps in about a month. And the drinks, the wine was shit and did Steven like his beer. It was the Budweiser of micro-brew and gave you the farts, but it was still pretty good. Next round he’d get Steven an IPA.
During all this, Steven said next to nothing. After the food arrived, Quinn dug into his bloody steak and moaned with delight. Steven, still having trouble chewing, nibbled at his burger while his teeth ached.
“So you know a little about the marijuana business.”
Steven nodded with his mouth full.
“How old’re you, Steven?”
Still chewing, Steven said, “Twenty.”
“No shit? Guess your ID wouldn’t’ve helped much anyway. Goddamn, to be twenty again.” Quinn paused to take a slow and thoughtful sip from his wine. “What do you know about the speed business?”
Steven didn’t answer, but he arched his eyebrows as he swallowed his food.
“Speed. Meth. Crank. Go-fast. Whatever the hell you kids are calling it nowadays. You know anything about that stuff, Steven? Is it Steven or Steve?”
“It’s fucked up. What else is there to know? I’ve done it; I don’t really like it. I got an older brother that’s wrecked his life over it. He was a good guy, we used to be close. Now he’s gone, prison. I know it’s hot, that you get more time behind speed than weed.”
Quinn chewed and listened, studying Steven. The kid was showing what he knew, acting sage, but he was green. Quinn set down his knife and fork and took another slow sip of red wine.
“I was thinking maybe you could help me with something down in San Francisco. I need somebody young, somebody who’s been around this shit before.”
A thought had been stuck in Steven’s mind ever since Quinn found him in the alley, so he finally came out and asked. “You a cop?”
Quinn laughed. That cool chuckle showing his white teeth. “No. I’m not a cop.” He waved over the waitress and asked for an IPA. The server looked at the pint glass in front of the boy and gave Quinn a disapproving glare, but turned to go and fetch the beer anyway.
“Listen, I got a daughter about your age. Sweet kid. She’s gone and gotten herself mixed up with some asshole in San Francisco. Some speed-freak fuck. She won’t call; she doesn’t have a fixed address. I need to find her. I thought you could maybe help me out.”
“In San Francisco?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said. In the city.”
“That’s why you wanted me along?”
“Honestly, I could use the help. You know, I help you; you help me. People been doing it for centuries.”
Steven seemed to consider it for a moment. “I only need to get to the city. I can find my friend from there.”
“Look, I’ll get you there. You give me some help in finding my little girl, and I’ll see to it you walk away with some scratch. Cash on the barrel. How’s a grand sound? Not only would you be helping me, you’d be helping her. The real payoff would be karma, my friend. Nobody can have too much of that stacked up. What’d ya say?”
Chapter Four
Carl Bradley sat in front of his TV with the remote control in his hand. He thumbed the channels up, one after another. The curtains were drawn against the afternoon sun and the ceiling light was off. He reached the last channel and the screen flashed onto snowy static.
“Goddamn cable. Ain’t a dang thing on,” he said to his dog, a tired brown and white walker hound that didn’t even lift his head at the sound of his master’s voice.
Carl began to descend through the channels again. The phone rang. His cell. Not many people had that number. He was unaccustomed to the shrill ringtone. He let it ring.
It took about a minute after the ringing stopped before the home phone rang with its old-fashioned metallic bell.
“Jesus Christmas, what the hell is it now?”
He got up with a grunt and ambled over to the kitchen where the phone hung on a wall.
“Hello?” His throat was full of phlegm and he hoped it wasn’t his daughter calling. She always felt the need to nag him about his smoking. He’d quit, but it didn’t stop her from chiming in.
It wasn’t his daughter. It was Patrolman Peters. He recognized his voice immediately. The young officer was painfully polite.
“Yeah, this is Carl. How’re ya doin’, Peters?”
He kept the receiver to his ear while he patted his leg to summon the hound. The dog didn’t move.
“You don’t say? Well, I guess that is unusual…You talked to the help?…Perez can help you there; he can translate…Everybody still down there?…Sure, sure I can. All right, then. What’s the address?”
He scratched the location down on a notepad fastened to the phone mount and hung up. He turned to the sleeping dog. “Boy, you’re gonna have to watch that TV by yourself today.”
He walked into the bedroom, entering it for the first time in weeks. Carl had taken to sleeping on the couch in front of the television. The bedroom air was musty and the stale smell of unwashed clothes hung in the air. Carl pulled open his dresser’s top drawer and reached for his service revolver. Then he paused. No, I’m not a cop. Not anymore. I won’t need this damn thing. I’m only a consultant here. Old habits die hard. He pushed the drawer shut. He sat down on the bed and pulled on his favorite pair of boots—his only pair of boots.
Carl moved quickly now, jacket on and toward his front door. It was hard not to feel a little excited. It was nice being called on for his expertise, nice being called on for anything. He hesitated at the door, his hand on the knob. He turned to his hound and said, “You might as well come, too, boy. Maybe you’ll learn something.”
***
Carl pulled slowly up the long driveway. The three squad cars still sat with their lights flashing in front of the villa. Something about the sight made Carl a bit melancholy and he savored the view. A crime scene.
He pulled his pickup in front of the house and rolled down the windows for the dog. The hound repositioned himself and sat his chin in the open space. Patrolman Peters stood on the steps of the house, a wide grin breaking on his face. Peters was one of Carl’s last hires before leaving the department. It’d been a few years, but he still shared a unique bond with the young man. Peters had come in, full of enthusiasm, right when Carl was downshifting his career. Peters looked to Carl as a mentor in his first days as a policeman—a seasoned veteran to show him the subtleties of the job, the stuff that wasn’t
in the playbook—but Carl saw their relationship differently. Peters saved him from an irreversible slide into negativity. He’d become jaded, not with the job or the people of Calistoga, but with the department itself. The bureaucracy that buried him in the last decade of his job soured his outlook on life. His wife watched the burnout and urged him to speed up his retirement. It wasn’t until she became sick that he finally pushed to leave. Too little, too late, in Carl’s opinion. But something about Patrolman Peters had resurrected Carl’s belief in being a police officer. Doing the right thing, protecting the community, fighting for what was right no matter the odds. What brought him to the job in the first place.
“Carl,” Peters said. “Glad you could make it out.” He tipped his head toward the dog. “Still got her, eh?”
“Him,” corrected Carl.
“What’s that?”
“Him. She is a he. And, yes, Buford is hanging in there, just like me.” Carl arched his back and yawned. “What’d ya got for me?”
“Full-on homicide. The owner got it with a knife in the kitchen. Murder weapon is still in there. Killer left it in the sink. Washed it first, though. Not much in the way of evidence.”
“Who found the body?”
“Fella named Tremblay. Ex-police outta San Jose.”
“Where’s he?”
“Cut him loose after we took his statement. Staying at the Holiday Inn Express. He ain’t going nowhere, I told him if we needed him we’d call.”
“Tremblay? Sounds familiar. You talk to the amigos?”
“Sanchez did. Said they didn’t see nothing. Grey truck pulls in and then leaves ten minutes later trailing a BMW. Said Mr. Oulilette had all kinds of friends coming and going. They never took much notice. Ask me, they’re telling the truth.”
“They all still here?”
“Perez is still taking their statements. Fucking illegals are so tightlipped. They’re afraid they might say something that’ll get ’em deported.”
“What time this thing happen?”
“Tremblay called us at one-forty-two.”
Carl spat at the ground. “Mr. Oulilette smoke?”
“Excuse me?”
“See any ashtrays in the house? Smell like cigarettes in there?”
“No, why?”
Carl pointed with the toe of his boot toward two cigarette butts sitting on top of the gravel. Fresh and uncrushed. “Think maybe our boy smokes Marlboro red?”
Peters said, “Shit, I didn’t even see that.”
“You might want to start treating this like an actual crime scene, Peters.” Carl felt like having a cigarette himself. Two years he’d been wanting a cigarette. He took out a small tin of sugar-free mints and popped one into his mouth.
Peters called out to another officer to bag the butts in an evidence bag. “You want to go in and take a look?”
“You know I do.”
***
Before they got into the BMW, Quinn tossed Steven the keys.
“I have the upmost confidence in you. I’ll play co-pilot for a while.”
Steven was excited to drive the car. He pulled out of the restaurant parking lot so quickly he didn’t even see the waitress running out after them, angry, and waving the credit card slip in the air.
Steven had never driven anything so sporty and was surprised by the small car’s power. He liked it, liked the feel of the polished wood steering wheel, liked the look of the modern dash. He forgot about his problems for the first time that day, enjoying the drive. He wasn’t thinking about the cash he now owed his friends back home, or the guy waiting on him in San Francisco—or how he was flat broke, far from home, and cut off from his life. Even his pain receded a little. With Quinn pointing the way, they were back on the road south in no time.
They settled into the ride. Steven was starting to like the stranger, his endless rambling, his enthusiastic energy. Quinn kept the conversation one-sided, telling what he knew about the countryside, telling what he knew about wine. “I know how to open the bottle and pour,” he said. How he thought global warming was bullshit. Stuff about unions and China, illegal immigration, and American-made as opposed to American-assembled. His take on the commonly recognized rules of etiquette: If I got an itch, I scratch it. I don’t go checking to see if I got permission. On and on. Soon Steven tuned him out and just drove.
When Quinn realized his audience had grown bored, he started flipping back and forth between radio stations. He’d catch the news on AM and turn it back to a pop or country station, then fifteen minutes later, he’d flip back to hear the same news report.
“How old did you say your daughter was?” Steven asked.
“Hang on, I want to hear this.” Quinn leaned in toward the radio. When the most recent news report turned to sports and weather, Quinn said, “She’s nineteen. Sweet kid. At least I hope she still is.”
“She lives with her mom?”
Quinn chuckled. “Hell no, her mom’s been out of the picture forever. Lost in a bag of dope. Might as well be dead.”
“Geez, I’m sorry. When’s the last time you saw her?”
“Her mother?”
“No, your daughter.”
“Almost two years ago.”
“In the city?”
“No, she was in L.A. Culver City, actually. She was finishing out high school there. We were having trouble already, me and her. But, I figured, kids’ll be kids. Bullshit. I shoulda known better.”
Steven didn’t say anything and kept his eyes straight ahead and on the road.
“You’ll like her though. Pretty girl. Funny.” Quinn paused a moment, then added, “Be a fuckin’ shame if I lose her to drugs. What a waste.”
Steven shifted in his seat. “I don’t understand what it is you want me to do.”
“Easy. We go to where she’s at. You get in there, buying crank or whatever, chat her up and get her to walk outside. Go to the store for smokes, anything. I’ll be waitin’; I’ll talk some sense into her. That’s it.”
“How am I supposed to walk into some drug den where nobody knows me? They’ll think I’m a cop or something.”
“We’ll worry about that when we get there,” Quinn said. “You gotta piss? I gotta piss. Pull over next chance you get and we’ll take a break.”
***
Carl spent the afternoon mulling over what he’d seen. He started by heading over to Denny’s and having a late breakfast. The food wasn’t too good and the coffee was worse, but there was a cute little waitress who was always nice to him. Him and every other widower over sixty-five, he was sure. At least four other lonely old fools lined the counter getting unnecessary refills from the same girl.
He wasn’t on the force anymore so he had to hightail it when the Sonoma County Sheriff’s crime scene unit got to Oulilette’s. It didn’t bother him; he’d been around a few homicides during his thirty years on the job. When he saw the knife washed in the sink and the lack of bloody footprints, he knew the killer had been careful. He’d let the techs look for prints, but he doubted they’d find any. Peters and the police were still trying to locate next of kin; until then, there’d be no one who could tell them if there was anything missing from the house. It didn’t feel like a robbery, though. What did bother him was Tremblay, the ex-cop. He’d heard that name before. He finished his meal and decided to call an old friend that used to be with the San Jose Police Department and check him out.
“Carl! How’s it hanging, old man?”
“Old man? That’s the pot calling the kettle black, Yuri. You’ve been out of the game for almost as long as I have.”
“Loving it, too. Don’t miss it a bit. What’re you up to?”
“Me? I’m sitting beside my dog in a Denny’s parking lot in Calistoga, trying not to look like the ol’ curmudgeon I am.”
“Listen, Carl, I heard about Barbra. I’m real sorry I didn’t make it up to the services.”
“That’s okay, we had ’em without you anyway.” He was tired of taking sympathy co
mments about his wife. It’d been almost a year and Carl was doing his best to keep the memories at bay. “The reason I called is I got a question. You remember a guy on the force by the name of Tremblay?”
“Tremblay? Yeah, what a piece of work that one was. A real sleaze. Wonder how he ever ended up in law enforcement. He was working here late eighties, early nineties. They used to call him Terrible Tremblay or Tremblay the Terrible or some shit. I seem to recall some kind of trouble, something they couldn’t quite pin on him. Probably had his hand in the cookie jar. Next thing you know he got a job with San Francisco. How he swung that with IA on his ass, I don’t know. Last time I saw him must have been ninety-four.”
***
Tremblay stood in his room at the Holiday Inn Express, wondering if he should stay the night. He knew in his gut Quinn would be heading straight to the Bay Area. He wanted to relax first, before the chase resumed. The air conditioning in the room churned. He wanted a drink. Or two. Or three.
He walked to the bed and unzipped a small overnight bag. He pulled out a thin laptop and sat on the bed, its mattress bending to his considerable weight. After the computer powered up, he brought up the browser and went to his favorite bookmark: Craigslist personals. He was thinking it might be tough to get laid in this little town. He was right. No amateurs working the Craigslist thing. He knew there was no strip in Calistoga. He figured he may as well head down to the hotel bar and try his luck there.
He set the laptop aside, stood back up, and checked himself in the mirror. He leaned in; saw his whiskers darkening his face. His hair was a bit greasy, but not too bad. No, he didn’t need a shower, but he did need that drink. He said Fuck it to the mirror and headed down to the hotel bar.
The lounge was nearly empty, like he thought it would be. Subdued lighting, subdued atmosphere. Some shitty song whimpered in the background. Light rock hits from a lost decade. He hated that shit, too.
