Bad Guys zw-2

by Linwood Barclay

  “How was the injury sustained?” the operator asked.

  “I haven’t turned him over. But someone’s tried to kill him. He’s been attacked. He might have been shot, he might have been stabbed, I just don’t know. Is the ambulance already on its way?”

  “Yes, sir. Don’t try to do anything yourself. Wait for the paramedics.”

  “Hey, don’t worry. They may have a hard time finding this place. It’s just a door between two shops. I’m gonna go down and-”

  “Sir, please don’t leave the phone-”

  “I don’t have to. I’m on a cell.” I held on to the phone, but didn’t bother holding it to my ear as I ran out the apartment’s main door and down the narrow stairwell, and turned back the deadbolt on the door that opened out to the sidewalk. The cabby was still sitting where I’d left him. I opened the front passenger door.

  “You’re running up quite a fare,” he said, only half glancing up from his crossword.

  “I need you to stay here,” I sad. “There’s going to be an ambulance here any minute now, and when you see it, direct them to this door.”

  “An ambulance? What’s an ambulance-”

  “Once they’re here, you find me, I’ll pay you what I owe you for the cab. I don’t know if I’ve got enough cash, but if not, I’ve probably got a blank cab chit from The Metropolitan in my wallet.”

  “Yeah, sure, but let me ask you this. What’s a five-letter word for a dog? Starts with a ‘p.’ ”

  I turned and ran back up the stairs, leaving every door I went through wide open. I returned to the bedroom, found Lawrence exactly as I’d left him (like, maybe I was expecting him to be sitting up and making phone calls?), and put the cell back to my ear.

  “I’m back.”

  “Sir, you shouldn’t have left-”

  “Look, I’m assuming you’re sending the police, too, because, in case I forgot to mention it, somebody tried to kill this guy.”

  “Yes, sir, you did tell me that.”

  I was so rattled I was repeating myself.

  The operator wanted my name, and Lawrence’s, and as I gave her all the information, I could hear the wail of a siren in the distance, getting louder with each passing second. And, a few seconds later, a commotion at the bottom of the stairs as the paramedics came charging up.

  “Up here!” I shouted. I told the dispatcher help had arrived, hung up, and slipped the phone back into my jacket.

  Two paramedics appeared almost simultaneously at the bedroom door.

  “He’s still breathing,” I said. “At least he was five minutes ago.”

  Said one, “I’ll have to ask you to move out to the living room, sir, so that we can do our job. But I would ask that you not leave the apartment, because the police are going to have to ask you some questions.”

  I did as I was asked. In the living room, I looked at the CDs and books and DVDs on Lawrence’s shelves, seeing them but not seeing them, while from Lawrence’s bedroom I could hear the sounds of urgency and controlled chaos. Snippets of hurried conversation slipped out.

  “Okay, turn.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Hand me that.”

  “Hello, Mr. Jones, just take it easy.”

  Two uniformed cops came through the door, glancing around quickly, trying to assess the scene as rapidly as possible. One, a bulky six-footer with a thick mustache, focused on me while the other went down the hall to the bedroom.

  Before he could ask his first question, the cabby was at the door.

  “You need me anymore, man?” he asked.

  My cop wheeled around. “You’re going to have to stick around, sir. If you’ll just wait in your cab, I’ll be down to speak to you shortly.”

  The cabby rolled his eyes and retreated, but not before giving me a look that seemed to say, “Thanks a heap, pal.”

  “You called 911?” the cop asked me.

  I admitted it. I told him who I was, and that I was doing a feature on Lawrence Jones for The Metropolitan-

  The cop’s eyes narrowed. “You work for The Metropolitan?”

  The paper has, over the years, been somewhat critical of the city’s rank and file. “That’s right,” I said. The cop said nothing else and waited for me to continue. I told him how I’d joined Lawrence the last few nights on a stakeout in front of a men’s store on Garvin, and when he hadn’t shown up-

  “Wait a minute,” the cop said. This habit of his, of interrupting me all the time, was getting annoying very quickly, but I didn’t see that there’d be much to gain by complaining about it. “Garvin? That’s where that store was hit, within the last hour or so?”

  “Yeah. I called that one in to 911, too.”

  His eyes got even narrower. “Any crime scenes you haven’t been to tonight?”

  They brought Lawrence out of the room on a stretcher, his face under one of those respirator masks, his eyes closed, blood everywhere. He didn’t look anything like the tough, cool, unflappable guy I’d been hanging out with the last few days. They maneuvered him through the door and angled him delicately down the stairs.

  “Which hospital?” I called out to them.

  “Mercy General,” one of the paramedics grunted as he took the high end of Lawrence’s stretcher down the stairs.

  “I don’t know who I should be calling,” I told the cop. “I don’t know about any of his family. All I know is, he’s got a boyfriend… I’m trying to think.”

  “He’s gay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You gay?”

  “I don’t know, are you?”

  “Hey, listen, if you want to be a smartass, I got all night for this, pal.”

  “I just don’t know what that has to do with anything. Lawrence is a friend, someone I’m doing a story on. But there’s someone who should know, I think his name is Kent, runs a restaurant in the east end.”

  “We can worry about that in a minute. Tell me how you got in here.”

  He had several more questions, all of which I answered as honestly as possible. He slipped away a moment to talk to the other officer, who was standing outside the door to the bedroom. These guys were too low on the totem pole to start doing any real investigating. They’d be holding the fort until the crime scene guys and the detectives, the types they built glitzy TV shows around, showed up.

  I wandered into the kitchen, glanced at the picture of Lawrence and the man I had assumed earlier was Kent. Then I remembered the name of the restaurant. Blaine’s.

  I grabbed a phone book tucked up against the wall under the cabinets and opened it to the B’s. I ran my finger down the listings, found the one for the restaurant, and dialed it on my phone. Someone picked up on the second ring.

  “Blaine’s restaurant. I’m sorry, but we’re just closing.”

  “Is Kent there?” I asked.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “My name’s Zack Walker. But tell him it’s a friend of Lawrence’s.”

  I leaned up against the kitchen counter and waited. Finally, “Hello?”

  “Is this Kent?”

  “Yes.”

  “Look, you don’t know me, but I’m a friend of Lawrence’s.”

  “A friend?” Suspicious. I could almost imagine the eyebrow going up.

  “Listen, not a close friend. But I don’t know anything about Lawrence’s next of kin, or who should be contacted, but he mentioned your name one time.”

  “Next of kin?” Kent asked. The words were, I realized as soon as I’d said them to Kent, loaded. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s at Mercy General. You should probably get there.”

  I went downstairs and stepped out onto the sidewalk, took in a deep breath of the cool night air.

  As if there weren’t enough cars at the curb, including the cab that brought me here, an unmarked black Ford with a whip antenna and mini-hubcaps screeched to a stop in front of Lawrence’s door. A tall man with
a mustache and short black hair, dressed in a black Burberry trench, got out from behind the wheel. It took a moment before I realized who he was. Detective Steve Trimble, from two nights before, who’d been investigating Miles Diamond’s death-by-SUV at the men’s store on Emmett.

  He glanced at me as he strode by, no doubt thinking he recognized me from somewhere, then bounded up the stairs two at a time to Lawrence’s apartment. In a matter of seconds he was back down, pointed in my direction, and said, “With me.”

  He started back to his car, turned to make sure I was following him, which I was. He motioned for me to go around to the other side and get in. I did.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he asked. “I know you from somewhere.”

  I said, “If I want to be spoken to like I’m a piece of shit, I can stay home. I’ve got teenagers.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Zack Walker. We met night before last. The thing on Emmett. Miles Diamond.”

  Trimble squinted. “You were with Lawrence.” It was almost a question.

  “That’s right.”

  “And here you are again.” There was something about the way he said it, that this was some sort of cosmic coincidence.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I found him.”

  “Isn’t that interesting.”

  “No more than his former partner showing up to find out who tried to kill him.”

  He tried to conceal his surprise, but the flash in his eyes was there. “Yeah, we used to work together. Lawrence told you that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  I said nothing for a moment. “He told me a lot of things. Why don’t you ask your questions.”

  The flashing red lights from the other emergency vehicles burned shadows across Trimble’s face.

  When he didn’t ask one right away, I said, “He mentioned that you two worked together, plainclothes. That you went through some tough spots together.”

  “Yeah, well, your paper did its best to make sure things didn’t go easy for me.”

  I honestly didn’t know what my newspaper had written about that night when Trimble had frozen and Lawrence had shot that kid. That was back when I was working at home, writing science fiction novels, and not keeping up with the news the way I had to now. For a moment, I felt wistful.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know much about that,” I said. “Before my time.”

  “Who did that to Lawrence?” He motioned with his head in the direction of the apartment.

  “I don’t know.”

  “He’s in surgery now. The paramedics say he was stabbed. So far, none of the neighbors report hearing anything.”

  I repeated for him everything I’d told the uniformed cop. About the store stakeout, the guys in the black Annihilator, how the night before, they’d followed us when we were in Lawrence’s Buick.

  “You think it was that bunch who tried to kill him?” Trimble asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just telling you what I know. It’s kind of convenient, though, getting him out of the way before they raid the men’s shop.”

  Trimble didn’t say anything for a while.

  I continued, “Plus, someone was looking for something. The room he used for an office, it’s been tossed.”

  “Tossed?” Trimble said.

  “Isn’t that the word?” I said.

  He reached for the radio hanging from the elaborate communications setup in the center of the dashboard. “Trimble here. We get anywhere tracking down the SUV that rammed in that store over on Garvin?”

  “Negative,” a voice squawked back at him.

  “If you get anything, let me know. That vehicle may also be wanted in connection with this thing here on Montgomery.” He replaced the handset and said to me, “I guess you’ve got a real good story to write now, huh? Hanging out with a detective who ends up nearly getting killed doing his job. That’s kind of lucky for you, right?”

  I just shook my head. “Let me guess,” I said. “Next you’ll say, ‘Anything to sell newspapers.’ You know what sells newspapers? The horoscope. Where do you get off saying shit like that?”

  Trimble almost looked ashamed. “Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

  “Look,” I said, “I haven’t known Lawrence as long as you, but I like the guy. We hit it off. And if you don’t need me for anything else, it’s been a very long night, and I’d like to go home.”

  Trimble reached into his jacket and brought out a card, handed it to me. “If you find out anything, hear anything, give me a call. My home number’s on there, too. Look, Lawrence was my friend, too, he still is. I’m guessing…” He let the sentence trail off, like he didn’t want to say what he was about to say. “I’m guessing he told you that I let him down one time, a while back, and there’s a lot of truth to that. I wasn’t there for him that night, and I’ve got to live with that for the rest of my life. But if there’s anything I can do now, to help him, to find out who did this to him, I’m going to do it. And I’d appreciate any help that you can give me.”

  I nodded, took the card from his hand and slipped it into my jacket.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I got out of the cruiser and noticed that one of the uniformed cops was just finishing up with my cabby. As I approached the cab, my cell phone rang, and I jumped.

  “Hey,” Sarah said.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Listen, I’m sorry to call, I know you’re on your stakeout now with Lawrence, but I wanted to give you a quick call.”

  “Yeah,” I said, evenly. I felt very tired all of a sudden.

  “I called home, talked to Paul. And he sounded, I don’t know, I think he sounded drunk.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “I mean, he’s sixteen, I’m not stupid, I was sixteen, too, once, but I just wondered what he was like when you left the house.”

  “He was fine.”

  “I asked Angie what he’d been up to, but she either didn’t know or was covering up for him. She says she ran into you at the mall?”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Angie’s home?”

  “You were at the mall?”

  I was trying to remember. It was true. I had been at the mall, but instead of just a few hours ago, it felt like days.

  “Yeah, I guess I was. But when you talked to Angie, was she home?”

  “Yeah, she said she’d just got in. Zack, what is it? You sound almost as weird as Paul did on the phone.”

  “Listen, Sarah, I’m in a bit of a situation here at the moment. Why don’t we talk in the morning?”

  “Is something going on? Is everything okay?”

  “Lawrence didn’t make it to the stakeout tonight. He ran into a bit of trouble. I’m at his place now.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  I wanted to tell her. Sarah was my rock. When I was down or hurting or scared, she was always there for me, even when I was being the jerk of the century. But I was tired, and too weary to handle the hundred questions she’d be entitled to ask.

  “Honey, I’ve really got to go,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it later.”

  She could sense I was holding back. She needed to ask just one question. “Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m okay.”

  As I slipped the phone back into my jacket, I thought, I am so not okay. And I so did not want to go down this kind of road again. A road that led me, and those around me, to danger, and violence, and heartache.

  I asked the cabby to give me a lift back to the doughnut shop where I’d left my car.

  “I got the word,” the cabby said as we drove through the night. “It was ‘pooch.’ ”

  19

  Back at the doughnut place, once again behind the wheel of my car, it occurred to me that, as a staffer with the biggest newspaper in the city, I had some obligation to notify the city desk about what was going on.

  I got hold of Dan, working late on the city copy desk, who genera
lly feels that I am a total fucking idiot, stemming back to an incident before I joined the paper. Because he mostly worked nights, our paths had rarely crossed since I’d started my new job.

  “Hey, Dan,” I said.

  “Zack. Sarah’s not here. She’s at that retreat where all the management types went.”

  “I know, Dan. She’s my wife. She tells me things.”

  “So, what can I do for you then? Pretend to fall down the stairs again?” Some things end up haunting you for a very long time.

  “I thought you’d want to know that a Metropolitan employee, in the course of conducting his journalistic duties, found the subject of his feature nearly stabbed to death.”

  I could hear Dan’s breath intake. “Which Metropolitan employee?”

  “Me, Dan. Is there time to write anything for the replate?”

  “It’s like, ten minutes to deadline. Best I could do would be to get a brief in or something.”

  “What do you think? I’ve got a hell of a story here, about a private detective by the name of Lawrence Jones, who’s been investigating a series of robberies and ends up getting stabbed in his own apartment. I was doing a whole takeout on him.”

  “You found him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And called the police?”

  “Yes, Dan.”

  “What’s the address? At the very least, we can get a photog out there so we have crime scene pics to run with a story for tomorrow.”

  The thing was, there wasn’t that much we could print even if we’d had more time. Lawrence, it was clear, might already be dead on the operating table at Mercy General, and we couldn’t go naming him in the paper before the police had made their attempts to contact members of his family. Nor could we say, with any certainty, that the smash-and-grab at Brentwood’s was related to the assault on a man who lived above a hair salon. Nor would we want to say, in a two-paragraph story, that the injured man had been found by a Metropolitan reporter, thereby tipping the competition and undercutting that reporter’s exclusive for the following day’s paper.

  So Dan decided the best thing to do would be to run a bare-bones item on the Metro page, tucked into the digest, that police were investigating a violent attack on an unnamed private investigator, but details were unavailable at press time.