“Rabold was in the car when they hit him,” I said. “He had to know what happened. What did he tell you?”
“Did you miss everything I just said?” Dean asked.
Everyone was quiet for a minute. The waitress came back to refill the coffees and saw that we all had full cups. She frowned and disappeared again. Across the room, a kid was working with a mop. Closing time.
“It’s personal to you,” Dean said. “We understand that. But when you let personal problems carry you into the middle of something you don’t understand, Mr. Perry, you’re inviting disaster.”
I didn’t say anything. Dean’s eyes were hard on mine, his jaw set. The comic partner of the duo was now making Mason look cheerful.
“The last time Larry Rabold made contact with us was the morning before he was killed,” Dean said. “At that time, it seemed some people viewed you as a problem. Perhaps one that needed to be dealt with. It is my assumption that nothing about your activities in the past few days diminished that perspective.”
“So Padgett’s on his way, then? Cancerno’s problem-solver out to clean up another mess like he did with Ed?”
“Cancerno’s got more problem-solvers than Padgett.” Dean had a leather-bound folder with him, and he reached inside it, withdrew a photograph, and slid it across the table to me. It was a color headshot of a mean-looking Hispanic guy wearing an orange jumpsuit. A prison photo.
“Recognize him?”
“His first name’s Ramone,” I said. “He works for Cancerno’s construction crew.”
Dean took the photograph back and smiled at me. “He’s no master carpenter, Mr. Perry. Most of Cancerno’s people are not.”
“All of them?” I said, thinking of Jeff Franklin, the good vibe I’d had from him.
“He has to have some people who are legitimate on that end,” Dean said. “He handles enough work that having a few good people would be a requirement. But many people on Cancerno’s payroll, be they construction workers or pawnshop cashiers or warehouse laborers, are earning their keep in other ways. The gentleman in that picture is Ramone Tavarez. He’s served time for assault on two occasions, but he’s managed to rotate back to the free world pretty quickly each time, somehow. He’s an enforcer. Violent son of a bitch. He also contacted Jack Padgett about you the day Larry Rabold was murdered. Seemed concerned, Larry thought. As did Padgett.”
“Interesting that I’m the only person bothering these guys. Too bad they aren’t distracted by dealing with, say, police or the FBI.”
“It would be best,” Dean said, “if they were left to dealing with the police and the FBI. Understand me when I say this, Mr. Perry—Cancerno is evil. People who piss him off? Bad things happen. Businesses burn down. Cars blow up. Arms are broken. Some people turn up dead.”
“You know he kills people, why don’t you arrest him?”
Dean smiled. “Right. Good thinking. Why don’t we arrest him. I like that plan.”
I waited.
“I think you’re going to help,” he said.
I raised my eyebrows. “By?”
“What do you think of the word ‘bait,’ Mr. Perry?”
“I’ve never been a big fan of the concept that it’s associated with.”
“Too bad,” Dean said. “But while you might not be a fan of that concept, you’re putting it in motion for us right now, whether you realize it or not. And while we may be able to capitalize from the result, I’m afraid it won’t work out nearly so well for you.”
PART THREE UNDER THE BRIDGE
CHAPTER 22
They drove me back to my truck, past an inordinate number of patrol cars still cruising the streets of the neighborhood. If there’d been more fires, we didn’t see any sign of them. None of us spoke much on the ride, although I had to give directions to my truck. When they pulled in behind it, Mason gave me my gun back, which he’d apparently claimed after they’d found me on the pavement. I climbed out of the car, and Dean put down his window.
“Cell number’s written on the back,” he said, offering a card. “You get into trouble, give me a call. But I’m hoping that isn’t going to happen. I’m hoping you believed enough of what I said back there to just go home and sit the rest of this one out.”
I took his card and put it in my pocket. “If I thought you guys honestly gave a damn about clearing Ed Gradduk, maybe I would, Dean.”
I walked away from them, unlocked my truck, and climbed inside. I was suddenly so exhausted that I wanted to just lean the seat back and go to sleep, not even make the drive home. I’d left my cell phone in the truck, and when I picked it up, I saw I had more than a dozen missed calls. Joe, Amy, Joe, Amy, Joe, Amy, Amy, Joe. I stopped scrolling through them when the phone vibrated in my hand, another call coming in. Amy. I answered it as I put the key in the ignition and brought the engine to life.
“Where in the hell have you been?” she said, the words drawn out and spoken between clenched teeth.
“Detained.”
“I was going to send the cops after you, but Joe told me to wait. He said to give you another hour.”
“I knew he had confidence in me.”
“Actually, he suggested you were probably already in custody. Was he right?”
“No. But pretty close, I suppose. I’m going home now.”
“We’ll both meet you there,” she said, and hung up.
“Easy, Ace.” I gritted my teeth as Amy pressed a sponge soaked in ice water against my head. The water leaked through my hair and trickled down the side of my face.
“Sorry. I’m trying to be gentle, but that’s not easy with the lump you’ve got up here, Lincoln. It’s about the size and texture of a Twinkie.”
That description didn’t make me feel any better. I was back in my apartment, on the couch, with Joe sitting across from me, and Amy insisting on tending to my battered skull. The dull ache that had been there all through my talk with Dean and Mason had become an incessant throbbing. I’d taken a handful of ibuprofen, but I had a feeling it wasn’t going to do the job.
Amy took the sponge away, grimaced, then held it out for me to see. There was a coppery smear across its surface. I’d already washed off the long cuts and abrasions on my arms and hands, but I couldn’t see the head injury well enough to deal with it.
“A cut?” I asked.
“Looks like it’s just scraped up. Nothing too deep.”
“Great.”
She set the sponge aside and then handed me a plastic bag filled with ice, guided my hand to the lump at the crown of my skull. Her fingers were cold from the sponge.
“So tell me again,” Joe said, “who hit you in the head?”
“A building.”
He smiled. “You really ran . . .”
“Right into it,” I said. “Yes. Headfirst.”
His smile widened. Joe is not a strong one for sympathy. At least not for people who run headfirst into buildings.
I took them both through my experience in the house and my talk with Dean and Mason, doing most of the talking with my eyes squeezed shut. The light seemed to exacerbate the headache.
“So you honestly have no idea who pulled you out of that fire?” Joe said.
“The same person who started the fire. So when I do figure out this guy’s identity, I’ll be torn between wanting to thank him and wanting to shoot him.”
“No guesses?” Amy said.
I opened my eyes again. I’d thought about it some on the drive home, but I hadn’t come up with anything substantial. Just possibilities that could be far, far from the truth.
“Mitch Corbett?” I said. “The guy’s missing, and he’s tied to Sentalar and these houses. But then there’s Padgett, conveniently turning up at the scene of one of the fires, just like Larry Rabold did seventeen years ago. Only problem is, I have trouble imagining either pausing to help me out.”
“Right.” She was sitting close to me, and although I’d closed my eyes again, I was very aware of her, distracted by the
faint smell of perfume. I haven’t had much luck sustaining relationships with women, and a long time ago I’d decided that to preserve my friendship with Amy, I needed to keep it a friendship. I assumed that she felt the same way, because, while there was an abnormal amount of flirting in our relationship, she’d never instigated anything beyond that. At times the arrangement seems less than ideal to me, though, and for some reason this had become one of them. The good news was that if such thoughts were passing through my mind at all right now, the burns and the knock on the head hadn’t damaged anything too critical.
We kept talking for a while, but Amy asked most of the questions. Joe was quiet, and I knew why. He was worried about what Mason and Dean had told me, about their suggestion that Cancerno’s network of corruption went deep and was going to be worth protecting to those involved. In Larry Rabold’s basement, Joe and I had likely seen an example of that protection, and I had a feeling he was thinking about that a lot. If I hadn’t been so damn exhausted, maybe I would have had the energy to be worried, too.
Eventually, I threw them out. I needed sleep in a way I hadn’t needed sleep often before. When they were gone, I stripped off my clothes and lay down on the bed, lights off. Tired as I was, the stench of smoke that was still attached to me, trapped in my hair and soaked into my skin, was too distracting. I got up and went into the bathroom, turned the water up as hot as I could stand it, and stepped inside.
There are plenty of problems with my building, the type of problems that are common in any structure that’s stood for nearly six decades, but poor water pressure isn’t one of them. The water hammered at me, and the power of it felt good, even against my burns and the swollen tissue on my head. I closed my eyes and tried to let the water pound away the mental grime, too. I didn’t want to think anymore. Not tonight. I didn’t want to see visions of Ed Gradduk’s body, or Larry Rabold’s, or burning houses. I didn’t want to think about what it all meant, how it all fit. I didn’t want to think about a son of a bitch named Mitch Corbett who could probably make sense of a lot of it for me if I could just find him.
It was then, in this moment of attempting to think not at all, that I began to understand something. I stood there under the water and tried to tell myself that I was wrong, that the idea was the product of fatigue and one hell of a crack on the head. I couldn’t do it, though. It made too much sense.
I stood there until the water heater kicked into higher gear and what had been a tolerable temperature became closer to scalding. Then I shut the water off, wrapped a towel around me, and walked back to the bedroom to get dressed again. Sleep would wait. I needed a computer.
The avenue was quiet as I walked down to the office, the wind gentle and warm. My hair was still wet from the shower, and I spent most of the walk telling myself that I really needed to invest in a home computer.
I went upstairs, unlocked the office, and turned on my computer. I left the lights off and stood at the window while the computer booted up, watching the cars pass. The building felt lonely at this hour. Hell, the city did. Most people were home in bed with their families, or they were working night shifts surrounded by coworkers. One of these days I was going to have to get a normal life.
To cut the silence, I turned on the little television on the filing cabinet. It was tuned to one of the local news stations, and they were rerunning the news from eleven, which had focused on the outbreak of fires. A young male reporter was standing outside the burned house on Erin Avenue. Little was left but wreckage. A total loss, he told us. Fortunately, it had been vacant, as had all the other houses burned in a “wildfire of arson.” I didn’t think the term “wildfire” really applied to arson, but then I’m not a professional journalist.
The computer was finally ready to go. While the reporter told us that there had been no arrests made in the case and the police had yet to announce whether there were any suspects, I logged on to the Internet. I went to the Cuyahoga County Web site and searched it until I found what I wanted—a biography page on Mike Gajovich. It told me Gajovich had begun his career as a deputy prosecutor, then been promoted to chief assistant prosecutor, and gave the dates of service in those positions. He’d been chief assistant prosecutor seventeen years earlier. That settled, I left his bio page and found the bio for the current chief assistant prosecutor. Beneath the bio was a description of duties. Three sentences into it, I found what I wanted: Among other responsibilities, the chief assistant prosecutor reviews all Cleveland Police Department internal affairs matters, including possible criminal conduct and the use of deadly force.
Joe answered on the third ring, but his voice was gruff, choked with sleep.
“It’s me,” I said, and then got into it without wasting time on any apologies for the late call. “Dean told me there’s someone big involved with the police. Most of the guys they’ve tied to it are bottom-feeders, street cops and patrol officers. But he said every indication is that it goes higher than that.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling you have an idea,” Joe said after a pause.
“Mike Gajovich.”
This time the pause was even longer.
“Gajovich isn’t a cop, LP. You said Dean indicated it was someone higher up within the department.”
“You telling me Gajovich doesn’t have any sway within the department? Come on, Joe. You know better. The guy’s one of the top law enforcement presences in this city, and he’s popular with everybody at the department after that stink he raised last year when the mayor cut staff.”
“And you think he’s a player in this because he sent your friend home? Because he came at you a little cold when we talked to him?”
“Gajovich has been with the prosecutor’s office for a long time, Joe. He started with them as a deputy prosecutor, worked his way up the ladder. Seventeen years ago, when my father made the complaint about Padgett, Gajovich was chief assistant prosecutor. According to the county’s Web site, the chief assistant prosecutor reviews all internal affairs matters, criminal conduct, and use of deadly force. Remember how Amos explained that the complaint was serious enough that they bumped it right to the lawyers? I think this is what he meant.”
I heard a grunt and a rustling, probably as he sat up in bed.
“So you think Gajovich went to talk to Alberta Gradduk, and then, what, discouraged her from making a complaint?” he said.
“Could be. All I know right now is it looks like he went to see Alberta, the complaint never developed into a case, and Gajovich is sweating Ed’s death and all the circumstances around it years later.”
He sighed. “We’ve got to confirm it first, LP.”
“Yeah. That’s what the morning will be for. We’ll go see Alberta first thing.”
“Would look pretty bad for a mayoral candidate,” Joe said, “if a harassment cover-up was exposed.”
“Be the type of thing that would keep you awake nights,” I agreed.
“Gajovich’s brother has been with the department for years.”
“I know.”
“Do you know what he does, though?”
“Administrative, right?”
“He’s a commander.”
“Okay.”
“He’s the commander of District Two.”
District Two. Clark-Fulton.
There was a period of silence. The lights were still off, but the computer monitor filled the office with a soft blue glow. Outside, a car blew its horn at the intersection, maybe at some drunk running the red light, or somebody so tired they’d sat through the change to green.
“If either Gajovich really is tied to Cancerno . . .” Joe let the sentence die.
“Yeah,” I said, and it was enough. We both understood the rest. It wasn’t the type of thing you wanted to put into words at this hour of the night, anyhow. Not if you had any hope of finding sleep.
CHAPTER 23
There was no car in Alberta Gradduk’s driveway, but there hadn’t been on any of our previous visits, either. Whatever Ed drove ha
d been impounded by the police, and maybe Alberta didn’t have a car. I wondered if she even had a driver’s license, or if some medical issue prevented her from being on the road. After seeing her with her bourbon earlier in the week, that was more of a hope than a passing thought.
She was home, as I’d assumed she would be this early in the morning, and her face had an ugly expression as she pushed the blinds aside and peered through the window after Joe knocked on the front door.
“You’ve been told twice,” she said. “Go away. Please, just go away.”
“Mrs. Gradduk,” I said, “you’ve got to understand that I am trying to help.”
“Go away,” she repeated, then let the blinds swing back in place and stepped away from the window.
I raised my voice. “I know about the cop that came to arrest Ed, Mrs. Gradduk. I know that my father made a complaint to the police about him years ago.”
She came back to the door, opened it, and stood before me with naked hatred in her eyes.
“You don’t know anything. Not a thing.” Her eyes were still sunken and her skin was still tinged gray, but she’d changed clothes, at least.
“We know you had some problems with Sergeant Padgett,” Joe said. “And we need you to talk about that. We think it’s important.”
“You know I had problems with him?” she said, spitting the word back at him. “That’s what you’ve been told?”
“Am I wrong?”
She was holding on to the doorknob as if she needed the support to remain on her feet. “Problems with him,” she repeated. “Yes. Yes, I had problems with him, if that’s the word you want to use.”
“Explain it to us, Mrs. Gradduk,” I said, taking a step toward the door. “We didn’t come here to upset you. We just want to understand.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Can we come inside?”
“You don’t want to understand,” she said, but she moved aside and let us in. We went back into the living room, and I saw a cluster of fresh glasses on the coffee table, all of them empty, a half-full bottle of bourbon on the floor beside the couch.
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