Wood cracking against a ball turned our heads. Once you’ve heard it, you never forget the sound—music to a baseball lover. Levi had sent one flying into left field. We were on our feet. It was easy to see how you could get caught up. As we held our collective breath, he rounded first and slid into second base. One set of bleachers roared; the other heckled. He strayed a few yards from base. The pitcher looked over his shoulder, faked a windup, then spun and hurled the ball to the second baseman. Levi slid in, hands first.
“Out,” the base umpire yelled. Levi Sobol’s coach was on the field and in the ump’s face in fifteen seconds flat. The umpire’s hat came off and hit the ground, revealing a shiny clean-shaven skull. He scooped up his cap, banged it angrily against his pant leg, then shoved it back on his head. Both bleachers were on their feet. It felt like a schoolyard just before a fight breaks out. Phil Sobol and other parents were yelling suggestions at the field and generally impugning the umpire’s vision. The coach kicked sand at the ump’s shoes. The umpire pressed a pointed finger against the coach’s chest. Their faces were too close. Someone ran out and tugged the coach off the field. Levi Sobol walked calmly back to the dugout. The kids, it seemed, were the only ones who hadn’t totally lost their cool.
“Friendly game, huh?” Rauser whispered.
I thought about my dad putting my brother and me in his pickup truck and hauling us to games long before we were old enough to understand the sport. But we did understand the vibe, the food and the crowds, the over-the-top excitement from a normally quiet and unemotional father who’d leap to his feet and cup his hands around his mouth and offer loud, unsolicited advice to both players and coaches.
I leaned forward once the drama had subsided and spoke to Virginia Sobol. “I understand your grandfather was a baseball fan. I’m sorry for your loss. He must have really enjoyed coming out to see your son play.”
“Oh he did,” she said. “Mother didn’t really want Granddad getting out too much. She worried he’d fall out here. But we couldn’t keep him away. If we couldn’t pick him up he’d just find another way. He’d call a volunteer or take MARTA or call a cab.” She shook her head, smiling. “I think Levi was the only one who could get along with my grandfather. He was sick, and he’d gotten mean. But he and my son loved one another.”
Rauser was staring out at the field, but I knew his cop’s brain was doing sixty-five. Had Kelly’s family arranged the old man’s murder? What would connect Troy Delgado to that scenario? Had one of the parents gotten too heated up over Troy Delgado’s super-charged pitching arm? If so, what connected Donald Kelly and Fatu Doe and Miki? I knew he’d put cabdrivers on his mental list. His detectives would soon discover what companies and which drivers came out to this ballpark and when. No one, no possibility had been excluded.
His phone went off, and he looked at the screen. “Robert Crammer,” he whispered, and handed it to me. I looked at the photograph of the man who had served us the hot dogs.
We said good-bye to the Sobols and ambled around a little. Rauser wanted to get a feel for the place, work our way casually back to the food vendor. I struck up a conversation with the woman behind a collapsible table covered with folded T-shirts. She had a metal cash box open on the table, flimsy, drugstore variety. Clearly, security at the ballpark wasn’t a big issue. She was a volunteer, she told me, along with several of the parents. Everything sold under the wooden canopy was to help buy new uniforms. I shelled out seventeen dollars for a T-shirt and watched Rauser talking to one of the parents who was selling canned Cokes and bottled water from a cooler of ice.
“I heard one of the players was killed,” I whispered in a gossipy way as she handed me change for a twenty. She then explained how awful it was for everyone to think something like that could happen in a “good” neighborhood.
I felt Rauser’s hand on my shoulder and noticed he’d turned his baseball cap to the backward position, which meant he was feeling cocky. He gave the T-shirt seller a winning smile. And she gave him one back. I let him have the moment.
We crossed over the poured concrete of the pavilion. A man in a stained white apron and a Braves baseball cap that matched Rauser’s was leaning against the concession trailer watching the field where Levi Sobol’s team played. I noticed Robert Crammer’s shoes right off—thick-soled and black.
Brown eyes cut from the field and tracked our approach. Was this the man who had twisted a piece of fine rope around a child’s neck, the man who had murdered a sick old man and hung his body from a door frame? Was this the man who nearly killed me and Neil today?
“Must get hot in that hot dog trailer,” Rauser remarked in a friendly way.
“Y’all ready for another?”
“You Bob?” Rauser asked.
“That’s me.” The man shook a cigarette out of a red-and-white box, lit it, dropped the match. His eyes landed on me, then back to Rauser. He was close to Rauser’s height, doughy but powerful.
“I’m thinking about a burger this time,” Rauser said.
Bob crushed his cigarette under his heel and opened the trailer door, went up metal drop-down steps to go inside. He pulled the door closed behind him.
“You make ’em yourself, Bob?” Rauser was still shooting the shit with him.
“Every morning.” Bob opened a big cooler, the kind ice-cream vendors use. He pulled out a hamburger patty wrapped in paper and dropped it on the grill. It sizzled like bacon in a skillet.
“Must be hard to make a living,” Rauser said. “You gotta do a lot of these events, I bet.” He covered his burger with pickled jalapeños and yellow mustard and ate it while Bob bragged for five minutes about how successful he was. The mobile vending business was impervious to downward shifts in the economy, he claimed. He owned two concession trailers and two stationary versions of Burger Dog Bob’s in shopping malls. He handled events all over the metro area.
Rauser demolished his burger in about five bites. Rauser ate like a cop—fast, on the go, never sure when he’d have time for another meal. He balled up his napkins and burger tray and tossed them into a bag-lined event bin. “Hey, honey, how ’bout taking my picture with Bob here before he gets too rich and famous to be bothered? Come on out, would ya, Bob?”
Crammer came out of his trailer, wiped his hands on his fry-cook apron. Rauser threw an arm around him. I backed up so I could get the whole package, Bob head-to-thick-soled-shoes, the trailer, the logo. Robert Crammer was a thick, powerful man. The victims shared a certain physical vulnerability—young, elderly, female. So the killer’s selection process was designed to satisfy not only emotional needs and fantasy behaviors but certain practicalities as well. He wanted to be able to physically dominate them.
I held out my camera phone and looked at the two of them through the display. Rauser crossed his eyes just as the tiny shutter opened and closed. It was not only the picture Rauser’s detectives would later enlarge and circulate through the department as a way to torment him, they’d hang it on their suspect board. The cropped version along with the driver’s-license photo Williams had sent to Rauser’s phone would be shown to Balasco, the Kelly family and their neighbors, everyone at the assisted-living facility, drivers, cabbies, the Delgado family and their neighbors, the staff at the Majestic Diner, the Midtown building supply. I messaged both photos to Miki’s new number before we had reached the car.
My phone rang. Neil’s name came up. “You’re awake,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“What happened, Keye? They took a bullet out of my leg.”
“I’ll explain everything. I’m on my way.”
29
I found Neil’s room and peeped through the door just in time to see a woman leaning over him with her lips pressed against his. Women always seemed to like Neil. He had an artsy, shaggy boyishness about him, something that said he was probably brilliant and needed gas money, which was a joke. I think Neil makes more money than I do. And for less work. But the whole package really seemed to attract female ca
retakers. Pretty ones, apparently. I waited outside until the door opened. I watched her walk down the hall, a girly girl with a ribbon holding back sandy hair.
“Hey, looks like somebody has good insurance.” I set flowers from the hospital gift shop on the window ledge. “Nice digs.” I pulled a chair close to his bed. “Who’s the blonde?”
“Tammy. Cathy’s on the way. They forgot they were mad.”
“Do all your girlfriends have cute names? When do Misty, Mandy, and Sandi plan on showing up?”
“Keye, what the hell happened today?”
I told him about the phone call, sitting in my car listening to Miki’s stalker rage at me through a voice disguiser. “Then my window shattered and all hell broke loose.”
“I was at my desk. You know how the office is. The AC was blasting. I had music on. I heard something. I couldn’t tell if it was a gun. I went to the door and that’s pretty much all I remember.”
“Just a suggestion: When you hear shots, don’t open the door.”
“I should have opened it sooner. You could have been killed. Jesus. I could have called the cops or done something.”
“I’m sorry you were hurt,” I told him.
“Ah, well, they have great drugs here.” He peeled plastic wrap off a plate of cookies on the hospital overbed table. He took one and handed one to me. They were chewy, with chocolate chips that were still warm and velvety.
“I think you and Blond Tammy should get married so I can have cookies more often.”
“They’re both blond, by the way, and blue-eyed. And sweet. So let out all your snarky shit before Cathy gets here. Hilter’s dream girls. Aryan Nation. What else you got?”
“That pretty much covers it.” I took another cookie. “I’ve been thinking about something. The business is growing so fast I can’t keep up. When the whole story comes out about this crematory thing, it’ll get worse. We’ll have more clients than we’ll know what to do with. The business has been in a place for a while where it could grow. I’d like you to be a partner and help me figure out how to make it happen.”
Neil’s eyes searched my face. “Is this about me saying I quit?”
“So you do remember.” I smiled. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.” Something about bullets flying around had made me take stock. “I just realized today it just wouldn’t be fun without you.”
“Well, since you put it that way,” Neil said. “But listen, Keye, we have to have some agreements going in. We’ve both proved we suck at the office stuff. And you’ve been putting off hiring someone for a really long time. I know it’s hard to let people in. It’s understandable you’d have trust issues, but we have to do it. Half the new business gets turned away or doesn’t get a return call. You need someone to manage all that and to get your schedule under control. And we need to think about hiring another investigator too.”
He was right. I had been putting things off. We didn’t have time for the day-to-day grunt work, what with frequent trips to Southern Sweets and Cakes & Ale. Plus, Neil needed to smoke a couple of joints a day. So we were busy. It’s just so hard to bring in a new person. I dreaded it. Whom can you trust with your business and your life? Who’s going to have a crazy girlfriend or a kid that calls all day or bad habits? I mean, what if they sucked their teeth or moaned when they got up and down? Just the thought made me twitch. And there were baskets full of unfiled invoices on top of the file cabinets, and unreturned messages, and the billing piled up, which meant cash flow was lousy.
“Agreed,” I told Neil. “But it has to be a good fit. We can’t just hire the first person who comes along. And I want you to agree to not bring pot into the office. I don’t care where you do it or how much you do it, just don’t smoke at the office.”
“Okay,” Neil said. “I can respect that. How about this consulting thing? On the table or not?”
“No.”
“You like dodging bullets? Because I don’t.”
“If it makes you feel any better, he wasn’t shooting at you. The bullet ricocheted.”
“Doesn’t make me feel better.”
“It’s not on the table, Neil. Look, you’re doing what you love. But this business, it wasn’t my dream. It was just a way to keep the lights on. I miss doing work that matters. Consulting is a way to make a difference. And maybe get back a little of what I lost.”
“You can’t relive the past, Keye.”
“Well, thank you very much, Dr. Shetty.”
I heard the door open behind me. Neil hastily handed me the cookie plate. I turned and saw another pretty young woman, pale, short hair, perky, a Carol Channing bob. She was carrying a gift bag bristling with glossy ribbons. She rushed to his bedside. “Oh my God! You poor thing!”
“I’m fine.” Neil patted her hand. “I’ll be out in a couple of days.”
“You’re going to have to have crutches. You’ll need a lot of help at home,” she told him.
Neil began to squirm. I stood up. “You must be Cathy. I’ve heard so much about you. I’m Keye Street. I work with Neil.” There was not a hint of recognition on her face when she shook my hand. I was as much a surprise to her as finding out Neil had two girlfriends was to me. “Well, I’ll leave you two alone.” I shoved the cookies at Neil. “I made them myself.”
“Stay safe, Street,” Neil called, as I left the room.
I left the hospital knowing I had a bull’s-eye on my forehead. On the phone, the killer had gone off like a road flare, then unloaded a 9mm. “I’m saving you a seat at the table.” Don’t have to be a genius to know what that means. “You’re late for the party.” He was raging, hated women, felt his control slipping with Miki. She’d been out of psychiatric hospitals for a couple of years. She was more confident. She’d stopped cutting herself. Fatu had been moving forward too, I thought. She was clean. She was off the streets. Could that be the connection?
I walked in and bolted my door. White Trash came trotting to see me. I went to the front windows and looked out on the street. The Fox Theatre had been running a summer classic film series. Casablanca was on the marquee. To my left, a constant stream of headlights twisted into downtown. I could see the hospital, where I hoped Neil was resting, and the pale light under the filigreed dome at the Bank of America building glowing in the checkered skyline. I lowered myself into my desk chair, jotted down on a legal pad: Transition. Shifts. Change. Attachment. Obsession.
White Trash jumped on my lap. I reached for my phone and called the one person on earth who could always pull me up out of a sinkhole.
“Oh my God!” I put on my best Paris Hilton. “It’s you.”
“Oh my God! It’s you too,” my brother shot right back, and proved he was a much better Valley girl. “I was going to call you first thing in the morning. I have something to talk to you about.”
“That sounds mysterious.”
“I know how you love a good mystery.”
“So tell me.”
“You tell me what’s wrong first. I hear it in your voice.”
“Long day,” I said.
“Want to talk about it?”
“I hardly know where to start, Jimmy.”
“Start anywhere. I’ve got time.”
“Miki has a stalker. He’s dangerous. He shot at me, and Neil got hurt. He’s okay, but he’s in the hospital for a couple of days. Miki’s in Mississippi or Alabama or somewhere chasing tornadoes. I’m consulting with APD on murders this man committed. I have the willies. I wanted a drink as soon as I hit the door. And our mother thinks she’s the next Paula Deen.”
“Okay, wow,” Jimmy said. “Wow.”
“Sorry.”
“This bastard is shooting at you? Is APD close to making an arrest? No wonder you’re upset, sweetie.”
“Getting closer. Big break in the case.” I told him about a possible connection to events held in Midtown and Stone Mountain, the ballpark, Mr. R. I told him everything I knew so far. I’d always talked to Jimmy. Apart from my shrink, he might have b
een the only person on earth who just listens without judgment. I poured grape juice in a whiskey glass, three fingers, and curled up on my couch. I told him about Mother’s audition for the cooking network, and we laughed about our parents as we always did behind their backs. White Trash joined me on the sofa. She was really needy. I’d been away more than usual this past week.
“Paul’s been offered a promotion.” Jimmy gave me his news when I’d finished. “If he takes it, we would transfer back down South.”
“To Atlanta?” A flicker of sunshine crept into my glum mood.
“His office would be in town. But I think I want to look for something outside the city.”
“That’s fantastic! Please tell me he’s going to take it. God, I’d love to have you guys here.” Jimmy’s silence felt like it was coming through a loudspeaker. “You don’t want to come,” I said.
My brother is not as romantic about our southern roots as I am. The streets were too narrow here for a boy of color and undetermined heritage. The dewy breezes, the dogwoods and cherry blossoms and blackberry vines—all of it, in Jimmy’s opinion, was just camouflage for a racist heart. I had begged him to come back from Seattle over the years. He’d left Georgia immediately after graduation and headed for Stanford on scholarship. Paul was a coppery redhead from Missouri who watched sports on weekends and liked to strum the guitar and sing at parties after a few beers.
“I’ll make peace with it if it’s what he wants,” Jimmy told me.
“It’s a different world here now, Jimmy. It’s not like it was when we were kids.”
“And you would know this because you’re black, male, and homosexual? I don’t think you get it, Keye. Do you know that our mother informed me that one of my birth parents must have been either white or, I don’t know, Afghani or something? Because I have light eyes. She told me this with a lot of excitement. She’s been looking at pictures on the Internet. Can you imagine? Our mother is Googling things like ‘black people with light eyes.’ You don’t feel the undercurrents like I do. It’s different for you. Everyone just always assumed you’d be a scientist or something. And I’d beat my wife and wind up doing time.”
Stranger in the Room Page 25
