Glow got up from her chair and noted the time on her sports watch. “It’s four-thirty-two. My time starts now. I’ll call you if he keels over or anything. Otherwise, go on and do your thing.”
“Just one problem with that. Rags is squatting right where I need to be, in that curbside restaurant.”
The feisty hustler winked at Vera and grinned. “Why didn’t you just say so?” She turned around and strutted out of the door, a twinkle in her eyes. Vera watched as Glow entered the diner and cozied up to Rags. She waggled her finger an inch from his nose. He shook his head, with an objection in mind, but Glow persisted. Vera didn’t have the slightest idea what she could have been saying to him, but thirty seconds of it got him to pull up stakes from that booth and out of her hair. Rags, still exhausted and short on sleep, stumbled from the seat he’d been perched on all day and followed behind Glow. After what Vera witnessed, she was no longer concerned about Glow being too close to Rags. Her charm would have rectified a bad situation if the knife she carried couldn’t, if he turned out to be dangerous after all. Vera was certain of that. Once Glow had effectively removed her biggest obstacle, Vera was chomping at the bit to stay busy doing what she did best, scratching away at a headache one layer at a time.
After Vera watched her client and good friend drive away in Glow’s sporty BMW, she marched across the street. It was four-thirty-five and the diner was nearly empty because the dinner crowd hadn’t started to come in yet. Vera took the same booth where Rags had spent the better part of his day.
“What can I get you, sweetie?” grunted the weathered waitress. She had a full head of gray hair, appeared to be in her late sixties and too heavy to have any affinity for standing on her feet all day. Vera fiddled with the menu while selecting her words carefully.
“How ya doing?” she offered pleasantly. “I’d like a cup of coffee, no cream please. Oh, and by the way, how long have you worked here? I heard that a police officer was killed down the block a few years back.”
The older woman placed her balled fist on her thick hip and laid her head back. “I’ve been working the day shift here a little more than two years but I seem to recall somebody saying something about that one morning. You’d want to speak with the assistant manager to be sure.”
“Yeah, it was in all the papers,” Vera added to make her interest sound strictly legitimate, as far as nosy customers went. “Is the assistant manager in today?”
“Uh-huh. I’ll see if she can spare a minute whilst I get you going.” The waitress waddled off like her shoes weighed ten pounds each.
Vera stared at the sign above her office, Miles Above Investigators. She chuckled when it didn’t impress her anymore than the diner had in all the times she’d turned her nose up at it. What you see in life all depends on where you sit, she reasoned as a middle-aged white woman wearing dark polyester slacks and a tan blouse approached her table.
“Hey, I’m Linda,” the lady hailed, looking Vera over suspiciously.
“Glad to meetcha, Linda. I’m Vera.”
“Frances told me you were asking about the shooting that happened a bit ago. What can I do you for?” Vera knew that meant, “What’s it to you?”
“I’m a private detective, that’s my place across the way,” she answered, with an air of respectability. When Linda sneered at it, Vera quickly returned to earth. “Anyway, I was handling a case for a real estate company back then, looking to broker a lot of property on this block, then the deal fell apart because of what the buyer called a sensitive dilemma,” she lied, to avoid suspicion.
“I see what you mean, a police officer getting himself shot up dead in the street, that’s sensitive all right,” the assistant manager contended. “It was a darn shame, too. I remember it like it happened yesterday.” Linda’s eyes grew dim like she was trying to recall what occurred during the incident. “Poor man lying in the street like a dog, just didn’t seem right.”
Realizing that the woman must have been on the scene, Vera tried to ease the question out as not to alarm her. “You were here, the night it happened?”
“Sure was, I was working the floor back then and I was the one who made the 911 after that colored fellow stuck up the place. I’ll never forget it.”
Vera was about to burst on the inside now that the former waitress was running off at the mouth. “Forget what, Linda?” she asked, using the witness’s name to foster the rapport needed to get a scoop on everything the employee had.
“Well,” said Linda, as the hefty waitress returned with Vera’s coffee.
“Frances, you mind making that to go with a slice of blueberry pie?” Vera asked with the utmost sincerity. Vera handed her a twenty-dollar bill then insisted she keep the fourteen-dollar tip. She’d have emptied her entire purse in order to keep the waitress away from the table and Linda’s recounting of the story.
“That’s a good idea,” Linda said, grinning from ear to ear. “Honey, I dig your style. Let’s talk about it in my office, nice and private like.” Vera dug her style as well. She nodded mostly while Linda retold the incident that ended with a shooting and a slew of puzzling questions. “No, I won’t forget it,” Linda said, repeating herself. “As I said, a black fella come in out of the rain at around eleven o’clock and shoves this gun in the cashier’s face. Of course she empties the register, per company policy. He snatches the bag and tears out of here. I’m a bundle of nerves while talking to the police operator. I’ll give them some credit though, they got somebody down here quicker’n spit. Two police detectives come flying up in a four-door sedan with the lights glaring. It was hard to see what happened then because of the steam on the windows.”
“The what?” Vera asked, although she didn’t mean to interrupt.
“You know how it fogs up the windows when it’s cold outside and raining, with the heat on inside?”
“Oh, yeah, condensation?”
“Whatever you call it, it was all over the windows, so we couldn’t see a thing going on outside of those blue lights flickering.” A sudden sadness washed over Linda face before she continued. “Oomph, next thing you know, we hear what sounds like firecrackers popping off outside. Hell, I get down with the quickness, and crawl all the way to the front door. I know I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself. That’s when I see him, the dead officer stretched out in the road, with his partner bent over him and crying like a baby. It was just plain awful.”
“Yeah, I can imagine,” Vera said, thinking of Rags’s potential part in the murder. “Hey, Linda, that robber, the black guy, they ever find him?” Vera reasoned that Rags must have been in on the robbery as a lookout or a getaway wheelman.
“Nope, they didn’t,” Linda answered regrettably. “Detective Warren Sikes, that’s the cop who died, his wife came by here seeing if we knew anything the police wasn’t telling her. I never understood why they’d keep anything from her. Now those federal fellows, I wouldn’t put anything past them.”
“The FBI, they came around too?”
“Uh-huh, the day after the robbery,” she replied, as if it was customary for them to poke their noses in a holdup. “It was all kinds of folks in for a while then I guess it was old news fast enough ’cause they all skedaddled after a few days.” Since the police department had the investigation on ice, Vera needed another road to travel along.
“Linda, did the coroner’s office send a hearse for Sikes’s body?”
“No, I believe an ambulance zoomed in and carted him off. Why?”
“It’s just a thought,” Vera whispered quietly.
Linda assumed that Vera had been heartbroken by the story she shared. “I told you it was awful. I wasn’t supposed to keep this past twelve months but I can’t force myself to throw it out.” Linda stood up and pulled a stack of pink copies from a black three ring binder. She flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for. Unbeknownst to her, it was exactly what Vera wanted too. “Incident reports are to be trashed, per policy, but this one is hard to let g
o.”
“You mind if I see that?” Vera asked, hoping the manager didn’t.
“Hell, girl, take it,” Linda offered. “If you don’t, I may never have the nerve.”
Vera read over it carefully. Linda did an outstanding job with the details. Everything she said was there on the carbon copy report, including the name of the emergency medical technician who arrived on the scene.
Linda felt relieved after talking about that terrible night, but there was something else she wanted to say before Vera left her office. “Hey, Vera, are you the kinda private eye that tails cheating hubbies?”
“If you know he’s cheating, Linda, why would you need him tailed?”
“Shoot, honey, proof for when I haul his no-good butt down to divorce court.”
Vera chuckled out aloud. “I’d be happy to get you all the proof you need. How about something in an eight-by-ten glossy?”
“I knew I liked your style, Vera,” Linda howled, with her head thrown back. “I could tell right off you’s a real peach.”
Eleven
Before Vera exited the Leftovers diner with the incident report, she thanked Linda Klaus, promised to bust her philanderer of a husband then celebrate once they’d tarred and feathered his bony behind like Linda always wanted. They decided it was Vera’s job to bring the feathers. It didn’t matter how much Vera’s business threatened to grow, she would always make time for cheating husbands. She was still laughing about the restaurant manager’s penchant for getting even when she hopped into The Silver Streak with that golden nugget of information in her pocket, but she didn’t expect to find any laughter on her next stop.
The clock read five-fifteen when Vera pulled into the parking lot behind Fire House No. 26. The name of the EMT on the two-year-old report read Susie Chow. Vera knew it was correct, because Linda proved to be quite the stickler for doing things by the book. The two-story building didn’t seem any larger than most of the older homes in the area, a historical district north of downtown. The light-brown-colored fire station boasted neatly painted darker brown trim and a sizable lawn. A two-ladder fire engine had been backed into a slot on the side of the station. The image of lusty, muscle-bound firemen washing that fire truck, bare-chested and brawny, swept over Vera as she glided past it. What she meant as a private thought came out much louder. “Ooh, it’s so long,” she said to herself jokingly before strapping on her game face. “Uh-huh, yes it is.”
“Yes, what is?” someone asked from the other side of a big screen TV in the downstairs common area. Vera stopped in her tracks when the man’s voice came out of nowhere. The tanned, dishwater-blond-haired lieutenant raised his head eventually but Vera didn’t mind the view from where she stood. His navy slacks gripped at his backside like a glove as he bent over sorting out wires. For a man of at least fifty, he was just as fit as someone half his age.
“Oh, nothing,” Vera sang. “You weren’t even supposed to hear that.”
“Hear what?” another man replied, as he stepped out of the oversized kitchen. His broad shoulders and black mustache were solid accessories for his ebony-hued skin. Vera smiled uncomfortably at his developed chest beneath a tight blue pullover.
“Oh, y’all just coming out of every nook and cranny on a sistah,” she teased.
“Can I help you with something, ma’am?” he questioned, when she didn’t appear to be offering a reason for what could have easily been misconstrued as loitering.
“I’m Vera Miles, an investigator,” she grunted, clearing her throat. Vera flashed her credentials then an awkward glance at the tall, dark and handsome newcomer. “I’m here to investigate a murder, a two-year-old cold case.” That got the lieutenant’s attention. He stepped in front of the grand entertainment center wearing a concerned expression.
“I’ll take care of this, Rawls,” he said, subtly ordering the younger black man to make himself scarce. “Ms. Miles, I’m Stewart Wilhort, the lieutenant here. Does this involve any of my men?”
“I certainly hope not. I’m looking for Susie Chow, an ambulance tech, or at least she was when the shooting in question took place.” Vera stood a little taller when she felt the white man’s eyes tracing her for all of the wrong reasons. She’d seen them before, curious leers leaning on the side of suspicion. “Well, is she still on staff here or do I need to make a call to locate her latest assignment?” Vera was bluffing. She hadn’t planned on calling anyone that she didn’t have to, nor was she in the mood to become a casualty in the war on sexism.
“Susie’s still on board here,” he informed here. “She should be pulling in soon. Her shift was over fifteen minutes ago. You can have a seat and wait around if you like.”
I know I can, she wanted to say but didn’t. “Thanks, lieutenant, I’ll do that,” she offered in the most professional manner possible, considering how he’d glared at her uneasily.
Nearly an hour had passed when the ambulance tech Vera had been waiting on finally arrived. Antsy and growing hungrier by the minute, she decided to facilitate what she called a rolling interview, where she persisted in getting the answers before witnesses had time to cook up new lies to hide old truths. Vera stood directly outside the driver’s side door after the ambulance stopped. “Susie Chow,” she huffed with a stiff jaw line to catch the attractive Amerasian woman with a short boyish hair style off guard.
The petite mobile medical unit driver hesitated when she saw Vera’s size and serious stance. “What have I screwed up now?” she whined, while stepping down off the running board of her unit.
“I’m an investigator, Vera Miles, and hopefully nothing, unless you try to lie to me,” she assured her plainly. “Lieutenant Wilhort said I’d find you out here.”
“I’m surprised he knows I even exist, unless my dusting isn’t to his liking,” said Susie, as she unloaded rolled bandages and other supplies from the storage compartment inside the rear of the truck.
“Yeah, I know what you mean. I just met him myself,” Vera said to get the ball rolling. “Men either look over me or look me over a little too closely.”
“Yeah, you do know what I mean.” Susie stuffed dirty gurney pads in a laundry bag then took a seat on the tailgate. “Since you’re not here to rag on me, who’s in for it?”
“Just tell me what you remember about a Dead on Arrival pickup you made a couple of years ago and I’ll be out of your hair in no mo time.”
“You kidding? Two years? That a lot of DOAs to sift through,” Susie huffed.
“There was a shooting near the Leftovers diner on Mockingbird Road. A cop was shot in a robbery.” The paramedic froze. Vera watched her eyes widen then grow dim as she traveled back in time just that fast, so she didn’t ease up. “Tell me everything you remember about that pickup, everything.”
“Funny, I’ve spent just about every second between now and then trying to forget it. I wasn’t on the job a week when I got the call, shots fired and a man down. I was supposed to be with another tech but I bitched about getting my feet wet as quickly as possible. My partner sprained his foot the day before and there was my chance. Lieutenant put me with an old fart who didn’t like driving. Said he’d sit on his duff to make the rent but never behind a wheel. I ratted on him and in return, I got stuck with a trainee. That guy, who died, he was a cop. And believe you me, that didn’t help my situation. Gosh, there was so much blood,” she recalled. “I didn’t know a man’s body could hold so much blood.”
“Tell me exactly what you did when you initially arrived?” Vera asked, to keep her story moving.
“It was raining like crazy. Visibility was damn near zero and there I was weaving in and out of traffic to get there. Police cars were all over the place. They waved me through. I climbed out of the truck, sprinted out to him and tried to resuscitate. There was so much blood, so much,” she mumbled, still in disbelief.
Vera nodded her head empathetically. “Okay, I’m with you so far. Keep going. Did he say anything while you were working on him?”
“What? That guy didn’t have any vitals. He wasn’t up to saying anything. Between the cops shouting at me, heavy rain falling and all that blood, there wasn’t any way he had a chance in hell of making it. So, me and this trainee who washed out shortly after that, we roped him up and hauled ass back to the county barn.” Susie noticed how Vera’s face held a question when it shouldn’t have. “I see the way you’re looking at me. No, ma’am, he didn’t make it. I wasn’t sure of too much that night except one thing, that Warren Sikes was dead, deader than most if you ask me. His skin was white and ice cold. The FBI agents saw him when they trapped me at the medical examiner’s office. They signed the forms and transferred his body to the morgue and everything. Don’t believe me, go and ask them.” Much like Linda, Susie was at a loss as to why the feds wanted information and access to the man’s corpse, although she wasn’t interested in causing trouble for anyone if she could help it, namely herself. Vera knew how life worked, and how there was always more than enough trouble to go around whether you stirred the pot or not.
With federal agents showing up after a policeman’s shooting, a potentially guilty man running towards a death sentence and a desperate need for the right man’s touch, Vera made two phone calls. The first one went to Ms. Mineola Roosevelt, her estranged receptionist.
“Hello, Ms. Minnie,” she said calmly, when someone answered from the old woman’s end. “This is Vera.”
“That’s just who my caller ID said you was,” Minnie sniped.
“I can see you’re still mad, but please come in tomorrow so I can attack this case head-on without wondering if I’m missing out on important calls.”
“Ain’t nothing to be mad about,” the woman responded matter-of-factly. “Getting attacked from behind is what concerns me.”
Vera almost smiled but she had something else fighting it off. “Don’t be like that. I’ve been running circles around town and I’m still a ways away from knowing what I need to.”
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