by Dana Donovan
“She was not hitting on me. Geez, Carlos, she is engaged to be married, for God’s sake.”
“For God’s sake, no—for your sake, you better not let Lilith smell her tatas on your shirt.”
“Carlos!”
“I mean it, Tony. Lilith will boil your head in oil. She has the scent glands of a cat. I bet she can smell her on you right now, you know?”
I turned my head and raised my shoulder to my nose, and damn if he was not right. I could smell Trish’s perfume lingering on my shirt. “I smell it,” I said.
He waved his hand as if throwing my words back in my face. “Of course you can smell it. She was humping you like a horny Chihuahua. And did you catch what she said about helping you get it up, no problem? She was totally flirting with you in a raunchy way.”
“Okay, that’s it! I don’t want to hear any more. She was not humping me; she was not flirting, she simply brushed against me innocently. Now I will hear nothing more of it.”
“You will if Lilith—”
“Carlos, enough.”
“Fine.” He made a zipper gesture with his fingers across his lips and then reached for his coffee. Of course, he realized then that he could not drink his coffee with his lips zippered shut. I waited for him to look up at me before giving him the okay. He pinched an invisible key at the corner of his mouth and opened it enough to sip. Later, when the food came, I let him remove the zipper altogether. Afterward, we discussed Frank Tarkowski and his involvement with Stephanie Stiles.
“I don’t get it why he lied to us,” I said. “He could have told us he met Stiles without admitting intimacy.”
“We don’t know if that’s true,” said Carlos, shoveling a forkful of scrambled eggs into his mouth. “He may not have mutt stuffy fore weezawrim.”
I splayed my hand before me to shield his spray. “Carlos, please, not while you are chewing.”
He apologized silently, and after swallowing, said, “He may not have met Stephanie before we saw him.”
“You think he went to see her for the first time after we spoke to him?”
“I do.”
“Then why hide in the bedroom? I would not have thought twice about seeing him at Stephanie’s if he told us he was there to close his case file on Landau. It is conceivable he might have had a few questions for her.”
“Well, that is probably what he was doing there.”
“You think?”
“Sure.” He snagged the last strip of bacon and popped it into his mouth. “I would stake my reputation on it. Tarkowski is a company man, no bullshit.”
I finished the last of my coffee and set the cup upside down on the saucer. “I hope you’re right. The last thing we need is another suspect.”
Carlos dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin and tossed the wadded up linen onto his plate. “Of course I am right. I would bet this breakfast on it.”
I reached for my phone without thinking. “Yeah, we’ll see. Let me get this.”
He looked at me funny. “Get what.”
My phone rang. I flipped it open, and what Carlos heard was this. “Yes Dominic, what do you have? Ah-huh. Really? When? Interesting. All right. Any luck down in evidence? Oh? Ah-huh. Okay, keep working on it. Let us know. Yo, and Dominic, nice job.”
I tucked the phone back into my pocket, smiling at Carlos as though I had just killed the proverbial canary. He leaned in over the table on his elbows, his big Cuban brows crowding the wrinkles on his forehead against his hairline. “Well? What did he say?”
“He said you are buying breakfast.”
“What?”
“Tarkowski made a request that his supervisor approve an immediate leave of absence. Seems he is getting married.”
“No! To who?”
“To Stephanie Stiles.”
“Get out!”
“Yeah, but that is not the really interesting part.”
“That wasn’t interesting?”
“It was, but so is this. It turns out that Tarkowski is Paul Kemper’s nephew.”
“Kemper, the lawyer?”
“Yes.”
“Is that significant?”
“Don’t know. It certainly is convenient. This means that Tarkowski may have been privy to everything about this case right from the start.”
“I knew it,” Carlos said, dropping the heel of his fist onto the table. “I never did trust that toupee-wearing runt.”
“Don’t even think of it, Carlos.”
“Think of what?”
I slid out of my seat and pulled a five spot from my wallet. “You are paying for breakfast. That was the deal” I tossed the bill onto the table. “I’ll get the tip. See you outside.”
TWENTY-ONE
Carlos and I caught Frank Tarkowski at his office, packing out his desk and bookcases. He had his back turned to us as we walked in, and upon hearing us enter, said, “And remember that if anyone calls, tell them I’ll be back in a few days.”
I shut the door quietly behind us. “Looks like you are taking a lot of stuff for just a few days.”
He spun about on his heels, his hands locked around a small stack of framed photos. “Detective Marcella, Rodriquez, I thought you were—”
“Not going to find out about you leaving until it was too late?”
He laughed nervously. “No, of course not.” He set the pictures into a cardboard box on his desk. “I was going to say that I thought you were someone else. How can I help you?”
“For starters you can answer a few questions for us, if you don’t mind.”
“I thought I answered all your questions Tuesday.”
“Yes, but we have more.” I pointed to the two chairs opposite his desk. “May we sit?”
“Really, this is not a good time. As you can see, I am getting ready to leave town for a while. Perhaps when I return we can all sit down and—”
“May I ask where you’re going?”
He turned his back and continued collecting photos off the bookshelf. “I would rather not say, Detective. It’s personal.”
Carlos asked, “Are you getting married?”
He froze, his back still toward us. “Have you been spying on me?”
“Is it true?”
He scooped up the last of the framed pictures and turned with them clustered against his body. Carlos and I were sitting now, though he seemed neither surprised nor agitated about that. “It is true,” he said, and he dumped the photos into the box.
“Anyone we know?”
“I doubt it.”
Carlos said, “Is it Stephanie Stiles?”
Tarkowski grinned stupidly. “All right, I guess you do know her.”
“Look,” I said, “We aren’t going to bust your balls over this, but you need to know that Stephanie Stiles is a person of interest in an ongoing investigation, one that you have a professional, and now personal, stake in. I must strongly advise against you leaving town with that woman.”
“Are you placing me under arrest?”
“No.”
“Do you plan to arrest Stephanie anytime soon?”
“Come on, Frank, you know I am not at liberty to discuss the disposition of pending actions in an active case one way or the other. I am here simply to help the cause of a fellow officer.”
“Then you can’t stop us from leaving.” He crossed the room and began emptying the top drawer of a file cabinet filled with personal trinkets into the box. It was time to change the subject.
“Paul Kemper is your uncle, huh?”
He barely flinched. “So, you are spying on me.”
“Do you know how this looks?”
“How what looks?”
“This. You. You were Landau’s parole officer. Kemper, who went to college and roomed with the warden of the prison where Landau served his time, was his lawyer. The warden and the sentencing judge were brother’s-in-law; and all of you were sleeping with Stephanie Stiles.”
Tarkowski slammed the filing drawer shut and turne
d to me, pointing his finger like a gun. “You forgot Sergeant Powell, Daniel Mochohyett and half a dozen other men in this town, Detective.”
“Did Landau know about all the other men?”
“Of course not. He thought he was special.”
“And you? Knowing all the men she slept with, you think you are special, too?”
“Things are different, Detective. Stephanie is a one-man woman now, and I am her man.”
“I see. Frank, I have to ask you, do you own a .38 revolver?”
The question muted his expression to a chiseled stare, which fell to the floor like a stone. “Yes.”
“I am going to ask the court to let us have it for ballistics testing. You can save us the trouble and—”
“I don’t have it.”
“What is that?”
“I don’t have it. I lost it a few days ago.”
“When, Monday night? Tuesday, after we talked?”
“Yes, around then.”
I looked to Carlos. He could hardly believe it either. “Were you ever going to report it missing?”
Tarkowski shook his head. “It was my own personal weapon, not department issued. I do not have to report it missing. Besides, it will show up eventually. I am sure I simply misplaced it.”
“You misplaced a firearm and you are not the least bit worried about it?”
“That’s right. Is there a law against that?”
“There should be,” said Carlos.
I put my hand on Carlos’ sleeve and gave him a look that we had perfected over years. I call it the follow my lead look. Carlos calls it the “here comes the bullshit look, but I’ll play along”. I said to Tarkowski, “Frank, have you ever gone to a bar called Pete’s Place?”
I could see him thinking carefully before responding, perhaps wondering whether or not I already knew the answer. He took a deep breath through his nose, stiffened his chin and replied, “No, I don’t think so.”
I called his bluff. “Are you sure? I showed your photo to Pete yesterday, and he said he saw you and René drinking there Sunday night. Now which is it?”
He cleared his throat with a scowl as though he had just swallowed the skin of a sour grape. “Yeah, that’s right. I remember now. I did see René the other night. Yes, we did go to Pete’s. I guess that was the name of the place. I was thinking it was called Peppy’s or Pop’s or something like that.”
“Of course, you did. So you were there.”
“Sure, listen, it was only for a few minutes. He called me after Stephanie tossed him out of the apartment. I thought I should go to him and help calm him down.”
“But you were his parole officer.”
“I know.”
“Was it not one of his probation stips that he refrains from drinking in public places?”
“Yes.”
“You could lose your badge over that.”
“Look, Detective, the man called me. He was all upset. I did not want him doing anything stupid that might get him thrown back in prison after only twelve hours. I wanted to help him.”
“Help him by sleeping with his fiancée?”
He held his hand up to stop me. “Stephanie and I have been seeing each other since long before she and René got serious.”
“Then why did she get engaged?”
“You will have to ask her that. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get going. We have a plane to catch out of Logan this afternoon at one, but first I need to stop at the bank to get some cash.”
“So, you and Stephanie are still leaving, after all we just talked about?”
“That’s right. Are you going to stop us?”
“I don’t suppose I can, legally.” Carlos and I got up and started for the door. “But let me warn you. If you don’t leave behind some way to contact you if we need to, then I’ll….”
“You’ll what, hunt me down?”
He knew my words were hollow threats. I could do nothing to stop him or to bring him back without something concrete to go on. We left his office and waited out front of the Justice Center in the car for him to leave. As he pulled away, Carlos asked, “Are you going to follow him?”
“Only as far as Monroe,” I said, and I pulled out after him.
“Then what?”
“Then when I see that he is turning down Main to go to the bank like he said, we head to the Edgewater apartments.”
“To Stephanie’s?”
“That’s right.”
“What are we going to do there?”
“I don’t know. I’m still working on that. I will tell you one thing, though. We cannot allow those two to leave town. I feel like things are only now starting to come together. We just need more time.”
“Time,” he said, “is not a luxury we have.” He popped the glove box and snagged a Snickers bar from inside. “Yes! I thought I had of these in there.”
“Carlos,” I shook my head in disbelief. “We just ate not one hour ago.”
He tore the top of the wrapper off and slid the candy bar out of its sleeve and into his hand. “This is dessert, Tony. It’s the most important part of the meal.”
“How do you figure?”
“Simple, without dessert you would never know when the meal was over.”
“How about it’s over when you stop eating?”
“That’s funny,” he said. He took a bite of the candy bar, pointed it out the windshield and said with his mouth full, “how `bout you just drive?”
I did, and the good thing about Carlos’ candy was that it kept him quite for the duration of the ride, affording me the time to come up with a plan that even surprised me. The unfortunate thing about it was that it involved witchcraft, something I thought Carlos might find amusing. I know Lilith would.
We pulled up in front of Stephanie Stiles’ building and backed into a space between two large pickup trucks. I put the car in park and shut off the motor. Turning to Carlos, I said, “I cannot believe I am about to say this, but I need to perform witchcraft.”
He laughed at first, perhaps suspecting I was pulling a prank on him over the candy comment. When he saw that was not the case, he straightened up in his seat and doled out a grin that made him look surprisingly boyish. “You never do magic, not since you did that scrying thing in Salem. Is that what you want to do now? Are you going to scry for something? Hey, I got this lotto ticket, maybe you can tell me if it’s gonna win.”
“No, Carlos, geez! Back down. I am not going to scry. What the hell would I scry for anyway?”
His smile wilted. “I don’t know. You’re the witch.”
“Exactly, now listen to me. I do not want to do this, but I see no other way. Look, we need to keep Stiles and Tarkowski in town, right?”
“Yes.”
“All right, so here’s deal. I am going to make a whisper box and give it to Stephanie when she—”
“A whisper box?” He blinked at me annoyingly. “What’s that?”
“It’s a suggestion spell. Ideally, it is contained in a box, but it will work in an envelope or just about any other vessel. The point is when she opens it, she will release the magic and fall under the spell’s suggestion, and the best part is that she won’t even know it.”
“Oh, you mean like one of them peanut cans with the fake snake inside. I love that. See, you got this spring that looks like a snake and it’s all coiled up in this can, and when you open the lid—”
“Carlos, please focus. Stay with me, will you? We don’t have a lot of time.”
“All right, Captain buzz kill. It’s your prank.”
“It’s not a prank. Like I said, it’s a spell, and whoever falls under it must obey its command.”
“Oh, I get it. That’s how you got into Lilith’s pants, isn’t it? You sneaky devil, you cast a spell on her.”
“No, I most certainly did not…well, okay maybe once, but that’s not the discussion here. The discussion is that now we have to make a whisper box for Stephanie.”
“You wa
nt to get into her pants, too?”
“Huh?”
“Tony, I don’t know; I think you can do a lot better. I mean, I know that Lilith has you sleeping on the couch lately, but….”
“Carlos! Focus! Get your head out of the gutter. I am not going to cast a spell to get into her pants.”
“You’re not?”
“No, I am going to cast a spell that will make her not want to leave town with Tarkowski, in fact she will not want to go anywhere with him.”
“Oh, I get it. Hey. That is a great idea. What do you need to get started?”
“A box,” I said. “In her case, a cigarette box will work great.”
He shook his head. “Can’t help you. You know I quit twenty years ago.”
“I know. What else do we have?”
“Well, let’s see.” He turned around to check the back seat. “We have an umbrella.”
“Oh, that’s great. I’ll make her a whisper umbrella.”
“Really?”
“No! Come on, find me something else.”
He turned back, fished under the front seat and came up with nothing. A search of the glove box yielded a flashlight, a pen, the cruiser’s maintenance log and a map of New Castle, compliments of the New Castle Realty Group. In desperation, he reached into the ashtray and retrieved the crumpled Snickers wrapper that he had put there earlier. Handing it to me, he said, “Will this work?”
I took it begrudgingly. “It will have to, won’t it?” I unfurled the wrapper, poked my finger into the sleeve and blew into it lightly.
“That’s it?” He asked.
“No, that’s not it,” I said, feeling a bit silly for what I was about to attempt. “I’m just getting it ready.”
“Oh, I see.” He scooted sideways in his seat, his back to the door, his left arm up over the backrest. To say that he expected a performance would be putting it mildly. His spirited anticipation reminded me of a kid at a magic show where expectations of conjured magnificence often meet with fizzled disappointment. I did so hope that would not be the case here.
“I have only done this a couple of times,” I told him. “I will need quiet.”
He did the zippered lip thing again and even threw away the key. I tipped the candy wrapper up, and holding the opening to my lips I began whispering the words to one of the first spells I had ever successfully attempted. I felt good about it, too, as the spell is not only a simple one, but also effective. That it worked on Lilith twice proves its powers are strong. My only reservation rested in my choice of vessels. I did not know how and if a candy wrapper would work with a containment spell such as this. After finishing it, I pinched the wrapper closed and folded the top over. I looked at Carlos. Clearly, he had expected something more. “Is that it?” he asked.
