by Copper Smith
Then Legato smiled a little, not really sure what to do. It had been a while since he’d faced down a parent on a bad news call. And even when he was in practice, he always felt clumsy and weak. “I can totally understand if you don’t want to be reminded of her.”
No answer.
“Thank you. I wish the best for your family.”
“We’ll be fine,” she said, her voice flat. Then she shut the door. And Legato headed to the car again, feeling like shit for using her pain as an excuse to check out that Tolliver boy.
***
It took a phone call back to Cicely’s office and another hour of driving to get to Tolliver’s home in a different moneyed suburb, this one south of Minneapolis.
As Legato carried the box to what he hoped was the right address, the music hit him before he’d reached the top step. Hip-hop, at least two decades old and almost loud enough to be scary in this neighborhood. But the dated rapping didn’t leak from a pimped out Benz. It came from a classy two-bedroom home in a classy two bedroom kind of neighborhood.
After giving the doorbell a ring, he waited too long for an answer. Finally the door was clumsily and cautiously opened.
Black dude, eyes glassy and squinting to find somebody ten inches in front of him. Mood clearly fueled by coke or something stronger. “What’s good, dog?” he slurred, struggling to stay upright.
“Looking for Tolliver. You him?”
The guy giggled a little. “Naw, you want Tolliver. That ain’t me.”
“Can you get him?”
Another giggle. Then he turned and yelled. “Yo, Tolliver!”
Tolliver came to the door. Smug rich white kid, perfect hair. Almost as good-looking as he thought he was. “Yo!”
Legato held up the box, fumbled for the right words and finally just said, “The people at the club thought you might want to have this.”
Both guys took a peek. Tolliver’s face faded into blankness. Then he said, “Come on in.”
Stepping inside, Legato’s eyes widened to take in the home’s expensive bad taste. Zebra-stripped carpet, blood red leather sofa, posters of dead rappers and forgotten nineties movies. Tolliver nodded to a dinning room table. “You can put it there, dog.”
Setting the box down, Legato scrambled for an opening question that wouldn’t offend.
But Tolliver had a question of his own. “You really from Brooklyn, dude?”
Taken off-guard, he had no reply to the easy question.
But the questions kept coming. “I mean, old-school Brooklyn, dangerous Brooklyn before the white boys came in and squeezed the brothers out.”
“You read my accent or did you ask around?”
“Little of both. You sound like Mike Tyson – but in a lower register. Plus I did a little snooping around when I heard you had some questions about Cassandra.”
“Any reason my questions would bother you?” Legato asked.
Tolliver chuckled. “Dude, what’s with the third degree? You here to deliver the box or you got an investigation going on?”
The other guy almost tumbled to the floor in laughter.
“I don’t believe I caught your friend’s name.”
Tolliver’s face tightened, gaze locked heavy on Legato’s. “This is my friend, Lavon. Lavon, this is Jake Legato. Former cop.”
Legato grinned, no sense getting pissed. Through the corner of his eyes he looked for something to help ease the tension. On a living room counter he found it. An assortment of knives and guns splayed out like Halloween candy. He nodded toward it. “Nice. Care to give me a tour of your little museum?”
“Everything’s legal and registered.”
Legato shrugged. “Didn’t say it wasn’t. Just curious.”
Tolliver’s face lightened a little, then he stepped to the counter, held up a funky looking gun with a long barrel. “This little dude is a German Lugar, goes way back. No longer functional, but it looks cool, right?”
“It does.”
The tour went on as he held up a switchblade, then opened it, startling Legato. “Come on, dude! Like this is the first time you’ve had a blade pulled on you? And you’re from Brooklyn?”
And just like that, Legato was the only one in the room not collapsing in pothead laughter.
“My man looked like he just had a rattlesnake at his ankle!” Lavon said. “Yo Tolliver, show him that medieval shit you got!”
But there was no medieval shit on the table. And Tolliver’s face went flush. No more laughter. “Shut up, Lavon.”
“Oh, there’s more?” Legato asked. “I wouldn’t mind seeing that collection also.”
“Yeah and that shit is tight!” Lavon yelled. “All Robin Hood-looking and shit!”
“That’s enough, Lavon! Just shut up.”
“Yo, don’t trip off this dude!” Lavon added. “My man ain’t even a real cop – not no more at least!
“Good point, Lavon,” Legato said, holding on Tolliver’s glare. “No reason you should be afraid of a guy who’s not a real cop.”
Tolliver buckled into slow, mocking laughter. “The way I see it, if you’re not a cop, there’s no reason I should show you anything.”
“True.”
“In fact, there’s no reason I can’t tell you to leave my house.”
“You can tell me anything you like. But I may not be in the most obedient mood right now.”
More laughter from Tolliver. “You hear that, Lavon? Brooklyn’s getting a little pissed. We better watch out.” Then he sent his glare back to Legato. “Dude, you can play that tough guy routine with other people. But I don’t buy it. I know too much about your history.”
“Such as?”
“Such as Mister tough-guy Brooklyn couldn’t handle the Minneapolis police department. I don’t know why you left, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t for being too rough with the brothers.”
“And you’re an expert on how the brothers get treated by the MPD?”
“No, but I got friends who are. Like Lavon.”
“Real talk!” Lavon shouted, his voice now muffled by a sofa cushion.
Tolliver took a seat next to his friend, leaned back and propped his feet on the coffee table. “Okay Brooklyn, give me your best war story. What’s the worst beating you’ve taken?”
Legato kept his eyes on the kid and found something he’d missed before. He’d seen this guy’s type in interrogation. Role players, the detectives would call them. Usually suburban white kids reared on Tarantino flicks and hip-hop. Liked to talk tough and give up nothing. But show them enough true menace and they’d wilt every time.
Legato sat in front of the guys, ignoring Levon’s snickers. Then he pointed to a small scar under his left eye. “How about I tell you about this. See the scar?”
Tolliver smirked. “Yeah, I see that. What, you get that from some mugger or maybe the bully from Brooklyn high school?”
Legato shook his head. “When I was a kid, there was this guy on the block, never knew his real name but they called him Tweaks. Every block had one. Dude used to sniff glue day and night, lived for the shit, dug through dumpsters to find an extra tube. That guy. The neighborhood joke, everybody laughed at his sorry ass – the way he’d twitch and stutter. The way he’d get lost in mid-conversation if you asked him how was doing.
“Then he moved up to heroin and the shit wasn’t funny anymore. He started robbing people, hiding in alleyways with a tire iron. He’d be in and out of prison and some days you’d see him with bloodstains on his collar that he wouldn’t explain.”
The guys leaned forward.
“One day I come home from school, hearing screams in the hallway as I walk up – Mama’s screams. When I get there, Tweaks is there, this baseball bat in his hand and Mama’s laying on the floor, arms up, bracing for a swing. Then he looks up, staring at me, kind of laughing, but it’s hard to tell with Tweaks. He raises the bat over Mama, says to me, ‘You better talk some sense to your mother. You hear me? I need money and this is not going to g
et it!’ He shows me this tiny wad of cash. He stares into Mama’s eyes. ‘Come on, lady! You got more than that!’ Mama was shaking, kept whimpering ‘no’ over and over. She’s looking at me, she’s looking back at Tweaks and I’m scared. Daddy was gone by then, no man in the house. So Mama had a gun, kept it hidden under the bathroom sink. I scampered away, straight to the bathroom, hoping I could get back before it was too late. I was going to shoot this guy, right between the eyes if I had to. I was going put down Tweaks before he put Mama down.
“But then I got back into the living room, that revolver shaking in my hand like an egg timer. I aimed it at his chest, but there’s something about holding a gun and aiming it at somebody. Tweaks started laughing, then came after me with his hand out. He may have been out of his mind, but he knew I didn’t have the heart. I was only twelve, could barely pee straight. And I was talking about shooting somebody? I tried to take aim at his chest again, but I lost my nerve. He turned around, raised his bat and started to swing for Mama’s head. And I fired three shots, two went through his ribcage, sent him to the carpet, shaking like a marlin somebody plucked from the river. The third shot? It went into a mirror off to my left side. A splinter came back and got me just under the eye.” He pointed to the scar again.
The kid said nothing.
“You ready to cooperate with me, Tolliver?”
“Yes, sir,” he mumbled, back erect now, almost respectfully. No more jokes.
Lavon gulped hard.
“Okay. How about if the two of you lead me to that second stash of weapons?”
The guys lead him up the staircase and into a bedroom. They stepped over a jumble of dirty clothes and into a closet. Tolliver pulled out a giant garbage bag and opened it, revealing a bunch of old rusted guns, knives and various archaic tools of torture. He said, “This is it, I swear. Nothing else.”
Legato dug through it. “Where do you get these things?”
“Online sites, old gun stores. Sometimes I get lucky and find stuff.”
“Yo Tolliver, show them that knife you found at the club!”
Tolliver pulled out an old rusty knife, stared at it. “Badass, isn’t it?”
“When did you find that?” Legato asked.
“Yesterday. It’s not as old as the ones I usually dig, but I like it.”
“You found that at the club? At Bootsie’s? Didn’t it occur to you that the police might be interested in that? Especially with your fiancé just getting murdered.”
Tolliver groaned. “Dude, she wasn’t murdered at the club. And she sure as fuck wasn’t murdered with this.” He demonstrated its dullness by running a finger along its edges.
Legato studied Tolliver’s glowing face. He grinned like a toddler enthralled by a jiggling set of car keys. A young fiancé with an odd way of grieving? Or something weirder, more troubling? The sight made Legato’s stomach ripple. He pulled the knife down, unable to watch it anymore. Goddamn role players and their fondness for violence. “Look, here’s how it’s going to go: I’m going to ask you some questions and you’re going to answer them. If I’m not satisfied with the answers, I’ve got a few friends at the police department who might be interested in your little toy box. Do you understand that?”
Both guys nodded then followed him back downstairs to the living room couch. The questions started once everyone was seated.
“What do you know about what went on in the back room of Bootsie’s?”
“What back room?” Tolliver asked.
“Don’t play coy with me. It took me twelve seconds before I knew about the back room. And your fiancé danced there for years and you knew nothing about it?”
Tolliver’s eyes darted. “You mean, Cassandra?”
“Who else are we talking about?”
“I mean… I knew stuff went on back there, but – not Cassandra. Right?”
“You tell me. Did you get her involved in anything illegal? Was she a prostitute?”
“No! Of course not! I mean… as far as I know.”
“As far as you know? Your fiancé could have been prostituting herself and you knew nothing about it?”
“Look, you didn’t know Cassandra. That was her way. She did what she wanted to do.”
“And nobody ever confronted her about selling herself in the back room?”
An itch crept across Tolliver’s face. “Well… there was one guy that worked there.”
“Bartender? Brother with a bald head?”
“No, not Big Trick. Another guy. Fat dude, worked as a bouncer.”
“The only other bouncer I know of was Andy.”
“Yeah, that’s it – Andy!”
Legato brought their faces together, sent a grimace into Tolliver’s uneasy eyes. “I swear to God, you better not be lying to me.”
“I’m not. It’s him. Couple weeks ago, he offered to have Cassandra’s… company for a night. And I turned him down, didn’t want Cassandra mixed up in all that. He was pretty pissed.”
“What happened next?”
“Nothing happened next. He quit working there and that was that. You don’t think he…?”
“What do you think? Your fiancé winds up dead days later. No other suspect turns up.”
Tolliver’s face slowly twisted into something close to horror. “I don’t know what to think, dude. I mean, Jesus, do you know how many shady characters hung around that place? Andy was a teddy bear compared to those pimps and muggers and drug dealers. But do you really think so. Andy?”
With no answers to offer, Legato gave him a pat on the shoulder and backed away. “We’ll figure this out. Give me some time.”
Chapter Five
Sleep eluded him once again, sending him to the back steps for a second night, cigarette dangling from his lips, eyes open but almost dead. Then he started pacing, dodging memories dragged up by the story he’d shared with Tolliver.
Legato learned a lot about himself during that night’s adventure with Tweaks. He learned who he was meant to be, his role if life. Later he’d learn how easy it was for that role to be yanked away from him. All it took was the temptation of a crack peddler’s duffle bag.
After stepping back inside, he reached into his fridge, found the last beer. It didn’t erase the memories, but it settled him into a good night’s sleep – a huge help considering the next day’s agenda: an awkward early morning visit to an old friend.
***
Andy lived in a tiny apartment in a working class Northeast neighborhood. It was a greying brick building lined by a rusty fence and elderly neighbors who didn’t pretend they weren’t watching when a stranger like Legato showed up at the front door.
It wasn’t his first visit. He’d helped his friend move in a few years earlier and attended a birthday party with eight others, mostly cops from the station who felt sorry for Andy. Before buzzing the buzzer, Legato took a deep breath.
“Yeah?” Andy yelled.
“It’s Legato, you up?”
“Not really. Um… what do you need?”
“If you’re not up, I need you to get up. We gotta talk.”
A pause, then: “I guess.” The door unlocked with a loud click.
***
Andy let him in. “Everything cool? I mean… it’s kind of early for a visit.”
A discreet scan of the place revealed nothing unusual. Living room floor littered with half-empty boxes. “Packing up, huh?”
“Yeah, it shouldn’t take much time. Not much to pack. You want a toaster? It’s not in bad shape.”
Legato picked up the toaster, ran his finger along the rusty edge and tested the springs inside. But really he was buying time.
“So… what did you need again?” Andy asked.
Still staring at the toaster, he said. “I just had a few questions about Cassandra.”
“Damn shame, wasn’t it? What’d you want to know?”
“I’m curious. I suppose you were questioned, right?”
“A little, yeah. Didn’t have much to tell th
em.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I’m sorry?” Andy said, voice getting shaky.
Legato turned because couldn’t study his friend’s eyes while staring at the toaster. “What did you tell them?”
“I said I was at home at the time of the murder. Never had any problem with her or anything.”
“Never? Not once?”
“What are you getting at, Legato?”
He moved closer, noticed Andy’s shifting eyes. “Anything you want to tell me about the two of you?”
Andy sat, sent his eyes to the cheap living room carpet, then mumbled, “You talked to Tolliver, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“Shit,” Andy said, avoiding his friend’s gaze. “Not the kind of thing you’d want going around the rumor mill.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I mean you’d think he’d be so embarrassed by it, he wouldn’t want anybody to know.”
Taken off-guard, legato asked, “What would he be embarrassed by?”
Andy’s face went slack from disbelief. “That he was pimping his fiancé.”
After a deep breath, Legato took a seat in front of Andy, leaned forward. “Let’s take this from the beginning. Tolliver was pimping Cassandra?”
“Yeah, he came to me with an offer. I guess I seemed like a likely customer.”
“And when he made the offer…?”
“I turned him down. To be honest I was afraid it was a set up. It seemed too good to be true. This clean-cut girl being pimped by a clean-cut guy. My spidey sense was tingling.” He looked away and added. “Let’s just say, I’ve got a little experience with that.”
“Dealing with prostitutes.”
“Yeah,” he mumbled into his armpit. “Then he kind of panicked, scared I was going to go the cops or something. So he offered me five thousand bucks to keep my mouth shut while he kept things going.”
“And you said…?”
“I said ‘okay.’ I’m not proud of it. But, Jesus, look around. You can see the money I have.”
“What happened after that?”
“Nothing happened. He paid me and that was that.”
Legato stood, not sure of his next move. Staring Andy’s face down didn’t seem likely to get results. He only knew that somebody was lying. And untangling the truth from the bullshit would go a long way toward finding Cassandra’s murder.
Andy managed a grin. “You miss your old job, or what?”
