by Lee Lamothe
“So, he breaks. Neighbours at the rooming house hear screaming one night and call the cops, somebody being murdered in there. Door team goes in. There’s George, sitting on the bed, slumped. There’s his viable hanging upside down on the closet door. All fucked up. Teeth on the floor under him, blood. The viable gets a big whack of dough, a settlement. George goes into the void, they rinse his head, park him in dreamland. Which is where we found him today.”
Djuna Brown saw the sadness on his face. “But, Ray, he came through, right? For us. He dollared up.”
“Yeah, yeah, but except for that murder that got under his skin, ruined him, made him care too much? He’d have Hambone Hogarth’s job. And this SPA bullshit wouldn’t be going on. We wouldn’t be doing this at all. He’d never let them protect a killer. He’d burn the fucking house down around them.” He shifted and she put her head under his chin. He said, “George spoke for the dead. And he spoke really loud.”
It was coming together in fragments.
Ray Tate called Brian Comartin and told him what they had. Comartin gave him his private email address and said to send the file over. He’d drop by his place, make some prints and bring them to the hotel. Ray Tate asked him to crop the prints in various ways, some tight so they didn’t look like they were taken by the gate camera.
He stared at Ansel Partridge as he sent the email on Djuna Brown’s laptop. Ansel Partridge definitely looked like trouble. From the shaven head, the solid muscles, and the gallery of tattoos, he was the quintessential ex-con. Even in the shadows, filmed through the window of the ghost car, his eyes glittered. Crank, Ray Tate decided, or crack. Commander Freebase. He wondered how tight Partridge’s handlers were, if they even had a handle on him at all. “This is our guy, Djun’, I feel it. This mutt’s a killer.”
When the front desk called up to say they had guests, they were drinking gin and taps from water glasses, sprawled in towels in leather chairs in front of the window, imagining the Left Bank was out there, waiting.
Ray Tate held the phone in his hand, his palm across the receiver. “We could get them to wait in the bar, fuck our brains out for another half-hour. Who knows when we’ll get the chance again?”
Brian Comartin looked around the room and said it reminded him of Marseilles. Martinique Frost asked if she could move in and sleep on the couch.
Djuna Brown picked up the phone and asked the front desk if there were any more rooms available in the State block. There were; hers was the only one in use. She reserved one for Inspector M. Frost, State Police Barracks Six. “She’s going to stay down here for a few days. Thanks. Four-oh-nine. Got it. Can you arrange for her to pick up a key card at the concierge? Thanks. Is that Gail? Thanks, Gail.” She hung up and told Marty Frost, “Four-oh-nine. Key at the desk. Just sign any name you want. Except mine. Maybe Sally Greaves. That’s a good State inspector’s name. Use Sally.”
Brian Comartin spread out a half-dozen prints of Ansel Partridge. Some were loose, showing Gerry Martin behind the wheel, Partridge in the back seat. Some were cropped tightly of just Partridge’s face. Those ones could have be taken anywhere by any surveillance camera.
Djuna Brown went to the mini-bar and fished out little bottles. She sang out, “State-Police Bar is open for business. May I take your drink orders?”
Martinique Frost went for Heineken, with a Coors Lite for Brian Comartin. Ray Tate went for gin and taps. Djuna Brown mixed drinks at the little bar table and took out bags of mixed nuts and some Toblerones. She laid everything out on a tray on the bed. The hostess.
They sat and drank and nibbled, feeling pretty pleased with themselves. Justice for the dead ladies was possible.
Martinique Frost finished off some beer. “Okay, we’ve got a good suspect. We’ve got pictures. How do we want to play it? How we gonna make them break cover? I say a media leak, leave it at that. Once Sally Greaves sees it on the front page, she’ll have to bring him out, just so they can have a press conference to say they’ve ruled him out. Or we do a little blogging ourselves, put it out anonymously. Watch out for this guy. Anybody seen him?”
“I’m not crazy about that,” Ray Tate said. “If by some longshot he’s a cop, we’re basically burning him. We don’t know if he’s drilled into other covert operations. If we’re somehow wrong about him, I don’t think we want to wear it. I say we go to Homicide and request an alert. Once they see that every cop in the state is looking for Partridge, they’ll put a stop to it, come around asking us questions, try to cool us out, maybe bring him out to us. Open a dialogue. We’re told someone at Sector Four called down to the Jank and gave them the heads up we’re onto him.”
Brian Comartin said, “Or we could just do a records search on Partridge, maybe just put him through motor vehicles. If he’s flagged with that red notice thing, they’ll come to us, show themselves.” He shrugged. “Simple. That still leaves us with alternatives if we need them.”
Martinique Frost shook her head in wonder. “Brian Comartin. Poet detective.”
Ray Tate was appreciative. “I like it. We start a paper trail on this guy. Make them come to us. But we’ll need a badge number, an innocent party, from out in left field. ‘Fuck,’ they’ll go, ‘what’s this all about? Another cop looking at Ansel?’ They’ve got a clue now that we’re drilling into them and if they see one of our numbers pop up, they might lay back, try to wait it out. But, me, I think they’re going to move on us, as more people get involved.”
George Meyers said Billy Stiles was assigned to Sector Four, Area Two, due for a meal break in six minutes. “You find your guy? Where was he September nine, nineteen ninety-four?”
“We’re still looking for him.” Ray Tate smiled at Djuna Brown and shook his head. “You got a cell number for Stiles?”
“You got his badge number? Can’t check without a badge number.” But he laughed and read it off his computer screen. “I’m off shift in an hour. I’m gonna give you my home phone, just in case your guy looks good for my girl. September nine, nineteen ninety-four, don’t forget.”
“I’m on it.” Ray Tate wrote down the number.
He called Billy Stiles. “Hey, it’s Ray Tate. You’re going for a meal break?”
“Yep. Cosmo’s, down in The Boot. Lasagna tonight, little salad on the side. Cosmo emails the menu to the night shift Sector sergeant. Why, you get caught boozin’ and cruisin’ already?”
“No, naw, we’re just doing a thing, thought maybe you could help out.”
“You were talking to George, I saw you. Did he ask where you were on September nine, nineteen ninety-four?”
“Nope.”
“Well, he asked me to find out where you were. ‘That Tate character. Nice guy, father-in-law’s a cop, but, look, Billy, if you bump into him again? If you can without arousing suspicion, ask him where he was that day.’”
“He ask where you were?”
“Oh, yeah. High school. Detention. He actually checked and ruled me out.” Billy Stiles laughed. “So, you wanna meet up? Cosmo’s?”
“There’s four of us. Good lasagna?”
“You leave a buck each on the table. How bad can it be?”
Billy Stiles was rolling lonely. He sat alone in his big vest at the back of the Italian restaurant, with a white napkin tucked into his tunic, a plate of lasagna, a glass of red wine, and a basket of garlic bread in front of him. His shoulder mike was in his epaulet, making sounds only he could understand.
Ray Tate and his crew walked through the thin evening-dining crowd. The cashier read them right off and shouted into the kitchen, “Four specials.”
When they approached the back table, Billy Stiles rose to his feet and shook hands all around. He waited until Djuna Brown and Martinique Frost were seated, then sat himself, the host. Djuna Brown and Marty Frost gave him sweet smiles. He blushed a little.
“Dunno you,” he said to Brian Comartin, “but you’re rolling with the right crew. But you, I know. Marty Frost. I was transport on a guy you sweet-talked abo
ut killing his wife and had her head in a bowling-ball bag. I remember, we was taking him to the lockup and he said, ‘That black woman with the beautiful eyes? Think she’ll wait for me, while I serve my time?’”
“Jerzy Markovic.” Martinique Frost laughed. “Old Jerzy made a mess of his wife’s face. I remember you. You were a boy.”
“Still a boy.” He turned to Brian Comartin. “I’m gonna ask you one, okay. You don’t want to answer, you want a lawyer, okay. But I’m askin’. Where were you on September nine, nineteen ninety-four?”
Brian Comartin said, “What the hell?”
“Don’t worry about it, Brian,” Ray Tate said. “Figure it out, let him know. Important stuff.”
Billy Stiles shrugged. “Unless you don’t want to say.” He leered up an eyebrow. “For some reason?”
A dour, heavy waitress wearing a black skirt and long-sleeved thin black sweater dealt out four plates of lasagna, salad, another basket of garlic bread, and poured some red wine into water glasses. Billy Stiles thanked her politely but she didn’t say anything. As she walked away, Billy Stiles watched her. He was the host and had to have something, a story, an observation, gossip. “Her family are Calabrese, were farmers down at the toe of Italy. There were nine children in her family, eight boys and her. Her old man churned out a boy a year until they had a girl and he retired his dick. So she’s the youngest. When she was eleven there was some kind of long-standing feud with a neighbour came to a head. Over a goat or a fence or something. One night the guys from the neighbours decided enough was enough and came by and there was a gun battle. Dad, died. All the brothers, died. All of them. Shotguns. Traditional weapon for faida. Feuds. Three male cousins in the next village got whacked and they killed a baby boy sleeping beside the mother. They killed all the males in the family, to head off revenge down the road. Boom, boom, boom, boom. The grandmother, mother, and daughter all moved here, never go back. This is a great restaurant, but you don’t want to be in here on the anniversary of the murders.”
It was a pretty good one. Billy Stiles was a good host. They sat in appreciative silence for a few moments, thinking their thoughts, making mental pictures. Ray Tate thought about the charger who’d driven him to his car in Chinatown, after the riots. Pointing out the old bent lady with her bundle of rescued possessions, the widow of the cop that solved the first no-body homicide in Hong Kong, then was whacked. One day, he knew, he’d be cruising that Sector with someone and he’d see her. He’d say, “See that old lady there, shuffling along, looking like nothing? Well, back in Hong Kong …” It was the way. The city was built on layers of stories, each story a citizen or a cop or a crook. It was oral history, it was human context. If you didn’t love it, or at least recognize it, it would crush down on you.
They started into their lasagna, and Djuna Brown was eating fast with her face over the bowl and her mouth full, cheese strings down her chin. “This, man, I needed this. They make this here?”
“Yep. She starts it every morning after church. Every morning. Lasagna al forno. You see al forno on a menu it means it was baked in an oven.”
They were finessed. Billy Stiles was the perfect host.
“So, you guys come down here for an Italian cuisine lesson, or…?”
“Well, not really, although it’s the usual first-rate night out in Sector Four.” Ray Tate drank some of the wine. “You know what we’re up to, right? Finding this mutt, Ansel Partridge that got disappeared. Reason we want him is we like him for some murders, some black ladies that got beat to death. Might be an undercover cop.”
“And the job’s protecting him?” He thought about it. “No. Naw, no way for that.”
Ray Tate thought he was being naïve. “Billy, c’mon, you know and I know there’s cops and there’s cops.”
“Oh, jeez, Ray, I don’t mean a cop wouldn’t do something like that. Just, if it was a cop, there’d be no body to find. A cop’d know the body’s the best piece of evidence, he’d scram it where you wouldn’t find it.” He leaned confidentially toward Martinique Frost. “I got this hole, can’t tell you where, but I dug it deep. When the wife goes too far some night …” He smiled. “That’s how a cop thinks. This guy dumping bodies? No, not a cop. You sure he’s not an asset of some kind? Freelance asshole for Intelligence, SPA? I could see that, they get some sketchy guy, turn him loose, don’t check him too good.”
“Well, he could be. Makes sense. Anyway, we got his name, for sure a cover name, and we got his picture. We want to drill into him, but the moment we do, it’s going to be raining Sally Greaves on everybody. We want to make them come to us, shake ’em up a bit, make them panic a little that more people are onto this guy. Maybe bring him out to chat.”
“Well, that works.” Billy Stiles mopped up his tomato sauce with a piece of bread and popped it into his mouth. “That’s why you’re here. You want to put him through, right? Maybe a bogus traffic stop. Tap his name into the on-board computer. But then the bells go off at the Jank and they come wondering why the guy was put in, then some poor fucking ground pounder is wearing the what-the-fuck.” He smiled at Marty Frost. “You guys want me to be that poor fucking ground pounder.”
“Well, we could do it ourselves, but they might be watching for that. One of our badge numbers comes up on the on-board, they go, ‘Oh those smart guys from the chief’s special, trying to draw us out.’ And they stay away, bury him deeper, assign us all to the morning court bus.”
“Not bad. Your way doesn’t leave much cover for the ground pounder wearing the brown helmet, though, when they come around.”
The sad lady in black came and cleared their dishes silently. Billy Stiles slipped his chair back an inch, respectful, and nodded thanks. He ordered five espressos. When she was gone he said, “How about this. I’m sitting in my ghoster and some plainclothes comes up and badges me. Says he needs to put a name through. I make him sign it in my notebook, that he requested access on my unit. He puts the guy through. SPA or whoever comes to me and I say I was parked when one of you guys came up asked to use my on-board, your rover battery is dead, or something. Well, why wouldn’t I? So, I do. That’s all I know, here’s my notebook, this is the plainclothes badge number, he signed the act. Leave me the fuck alone. What do I know? I’m an asshole working a night shift. They come at me, you come at them. I can get behind that. Then, you got them out in the open, you can tail them home or you can brace them, you know who you’re up against.”
Ray Tate looked around the table. Everyone nodded. It got the job done without jeopardizing Billy Stiles.
The woman in black dealt around five tiny cups of espresso in saucers with little spoons. Djuna Brown looked at the surrounding tables for sugar.
Billy Stiles said, “Sugar? No. They already put the sugar in the cup before the hot coffee goes in. It caramelizes it. Gives it a deep body.” He sat back, pleased, and swallowed his coffee in one shot. It was his table, no question. He was the host.
Ray Tate decided Billy Stiles was going to make a great Road someday, if they didn’t get him fired.
They did it for real. Billy Stiles put himself in front of the bank on Shirley, a well-lit spot that would let the surveillance cameras pick up the action. Ray Tate walked up to the car, showed his badge, and spoke through the window, asking Billy Stiles to run a name, his rover was flat. Billy Stiles wrote Ray Tate’s badge number and request in his notebook, handed it out, and Ray Tate signed it. Then Billy Stiles swivelled the on-board computer to the window and Ray Tate leaned in. A few seconds later, he walked away. Billy Stiles drove off, slowly, and stopped farther up Shirley.
Martinique Frost and Brian Comartin parked the Chrysler three blocks ahead with the ghoster in their review mirror. Ray Tate parked two blocks back. “No point in all of us sitting here like lazy cops. Anything you want to do, Djun’?”
“Maybe check on Evening Evans.” Djuna Brown used Ray Tate’s cellphone to call St. Frankie’s Heart. She got Bronstein and asked about Evening Evans. Could she com
e in, maybe ask a question or two? Bronstein said she was mostly awake, praying with her father, badly wanting a cigarette, so come on by, but no cigarettes.
“I’m gonna go, okay, Ray? You guys got this? I’m going to take a photograph of Partridge. Maybe she got a look at him, maybe checking her out, earlier.”
“If she puts it on him, call me right away, okay? That would be good to know when we get into it with Sally’s people. If we got an eyeball from a victim, she’s going to have to play it straight with us, let him go for the murders, ride out the aftermath.”
She got out and flagged a taxi.
Ray Tate called Marty Frost in the Chrysler on the cellphone, advising he was riding lonely.
Chapter 23
Doctor Bronstein was on the telephone headset in the nursing station. He waved cheerfully as Djuna Brown passed, and she noticed that he was wearing the same T-shirt as earlier in the day. He was unshaven but showed no other signs of the length of his day. In fact, she thought, he seemed energized, his hands in motion as if illustrating some complex procedure.
Samual Darius Evans was in the corridor outside his daughter’s room.
“They’re just doing … some stuff. Hygiene, they said.”
“How’s she doing, sir?”
“Better, they say. To me she still looks pretty bad, but they say better.” He clutched the bible in his hand and closed his eyes briefly. “So I thank the Lord for that. And you for your prayers.”
“The doctor said she’s talking. Wanting a cigarette? That’s a good sign.”
“I always bothered her about that. The smoking. She liked to tease me, say she was down to three packages a day. Even when she was bad, she was sweet.” He made a fond smile. “If the man who did this knew her, even a little bit, he’d never have done this.”
The door opened and a nurse came out. “You can go in. But not long, all right? And no cigarettes. She said if I got her a package of Kool menthols she’d give me a hundred dollars.” She shrugged. “Going rate on the ward is two hundred. We’re negotiating.”
