by John Misak
Rick took a careful first bite, like he was eating something for the first time. This was, of course, impossible. No one of God’s earth, or at least no one in the US part of God’s earth, made it into their 30’s without having a burger. Unless they had whacko, hippie, plant eating parents. Eureka. I discovered Rick’s problem. Well, maybe I did.
“Any good?” I asked.
“Not bad. I’ve had better, but it’s been a long time.”
There went that theory. Boom.
“Don’t eat meat?”
“Red meat. I eat it sometimes, but not more than twice a month.”
“You keep track of those things?”
“Yes. You should always monitor what is going into your body. You are what you eat.”
Which made me a cow wrapped in a flour tortilla. Could be worse. And Rick was a chicken-flavored protein bar, with Brussel sprouts on the side. Or something like that.
“I’m not so concerned about such things.”
“You? I would have never known.”
Wiseass.
“You spend all of that time worrying about what you eat, checking your shit for fiber, and you get hit by a bus at the age of 35. What difference does it make?”
“That’s possible, but look at it this way. I make it to 75, and have a colon that still works, while other people are sucking down Metamucil like it’s going out of style, and have to worry about colon cancer and colostomy bags. It might be a good idea to plan for the remote possibility you’ll make it past fifty.”
Bastard had a point, but I wasn’t going to let that ruin my enjoyment of one of life’s simple pleasures. Unfortunately, he already had, a little.
“I don’t count on such slim possibilities.”
“Well, you should.”
“Right now, I am going to enjoy this burger. I suggest you do the same. If I am not mistaken, one of the worst things for your health is worry, so I would like to remove that killer from myself right now.”
“Do what you want. I was just trying to help.”
“You failed.”
“You know I am right.”
“I said, shut up.”
“Okay, okay.”
I knew he was trying to be helpful, but he was also trying to be a bit of a pain in the ass. It was in his nature. He was a nag. Man, the more I thought about him, the bigger the list of bad qualities he had.
After a few moments, he asked, “What did you get me to drink?”
I reached into the bag and pulled out what looked like an 8 ounce cup. “Water, I played it safe.”
“I do drink soda, on occasion.”
“Then, on this occasion, you can get up and get it yourself. I had your health in mind.”
He looked at the cup, a frown on his face. “I can’t eat a burger without a soda. The two go hand in hand.”
“Then don’t eat the burger. Give it to the starving seagulls out there. I’m sure they wouldn’t need a soda to wash it down.”
Rick sighed. “I’ll just drink the water.”
Damn right you will, I thought. I had myself set up. Napkin on the lap, container opened in the right position to catch any falling residue. I wasn’t going to upset that by getting out of the car to get the pain in the ass a soda. No freakin” way. If he wanted a soda, he should have asked for one. It wasn’t like predicting what the hell he would eat or drink was an easy process. Again, I felt bad for his wife. Very bad
Seven
We made it to the 5th Precinct in Valley Stream by four. It was small, like most Nassau County precincts. The entrance consisted of a small sitting area and a high counter, where two uniformed officers sat. It almost looked like a judge’s bench, minus the gavel, of course. It was made of wood-Formica, and looked to be about fifty years old. It wasn’t a bad place, but it had a very interesting smell to it, like damp wood. There were two people there, probably inquiring about parking tickets, or something like that. One of them was a decent-looking blonde woman, about thirty. She looked like the sort of woman who had been through a lot. You know, the type that had about five bad boyfriends, two of which did some time. I could see it in her eyes, which had permanent rings around them. The sort of woman you’d meet in a local bar. One that would get you through a night.
We walked up to the counter. One of the guys in uniform, a gray haired man with ice blue eyes, looked at us. He instantly recognized us for who we were, city cops.
“I’ll get Walters for you,” he said in a deep voice. “Have a seat.”
“Thank you,” I said. We went to sit down.
“Ma’am,” he said, gesturing for the woman to come to the counter. She got up. She was wearing tight jeans, 80’s style, which displayed a decent butt. Very decent.
“We heard from his lawyer,” I heard the man said. “We can press charges if you’d like, but I’m not sure it will do anything right now. We really don’t have much to go on.”
“But he came by the house.”
“You did speak to him on the phone.”
“She didn’t say anything.”
“He’s not supposed to come by the house.”
I’d seen this before. Shame, too. The woman had been involved in a bad relationship, and had gotten a restraining order. Restraining orders were as useless as a broken watch, and at least the broken watch was right twice a day. My guess was that she stayed in contact with him. It gets tough when someone is emotionally attached to someone that was no good for them. The woman probably had a good heart, trusted people, and paid the price for it. Of course, this was only my assumption, but I had seen the symptoms. I know that some people might think I was jumping to unnecessary and unfair conclusions, but that’s the way these things went. And the law just wasn’t written to protect these women. In my opinion, a guy has a history of terrorizing women, they should be put away, of have their balls removed. They weren’t fit for society. If you can’t handle male-female relationships, you shouldn’t be allowed to have them. Case closed. Forward complaints to my lawyer.
“I understand, ma’am. But, if you press charges, it won’t get you anywhere right now. You need to document these things better, and then we can prosecute him.”
Burden of proof on the victim, as always.
The woman shook her head, then starting crying,
“I just want this to end.”
The guy behind the counter nodded, sympathetically. “I know. And if you supply us with what we need, we will get it taken care of.”
“That’s a shame,” Rick said.
I nodded.
“Thank you anyway,” the woman said, trying to compose herself. She briskly walked past us and out the door.
“You think we could do something to make this guy give us the card? After all, out investigation is just a little more important,” Rick asked.
“We could, but we would have to have a focus on our investigation first. Don’t think we have that right now.”
“You gonna tell Geiger about it?”
“No sense in hiding it from him.”
Rick nodded. I had absolutely no intention of hiding anything from Geiger, except for maybe how I handed that security guy. No need for him to know that. No need for him to have a reason to blame something on me. I would just have to risk Rick pointing the finger at me, which he would undoubtedly do in a pinch. Cover his own ass with mine.
We waited about another five minutes, and then Sergeant Walters came through a door to the side of the counter. He was a short man, near fifty. He was wearing a gray blazer that looked about a size too small for him, mainly because he had a basketball sized beer gut protruding over his thin, cheap belt. Now, I was no GQ-type dresser, but this guy made me look like I came out of Milan. Okay, maybe he made me look like a decent dresser from Ireland. He had a thick moustache, and bushy blonde and gray hair. He didn’t look like a cop. He looked more like a car salesman. A used car salesman. He needed to throw a party, so his tie could introduce his tie to his belt.
“Detective Keegan,”
he said, directed at me. Did I look like a Keegan or something? Everyone seemed to get it right, on the first try.
“Sergeant Walters,” I said, standing up and extending my hand. He shook it firmly with his stubby fingers. He had a grip. “This is my partner, Rick Calhill.”
The two shook hands, but didn’t say anything to each other. Walters reached into a file he had in his hands, and pulled out a sheet of paper, which he handed to me. I expected to see burger grease on it, but it was clean. It was the photocopy of the card. It looked like a fancy card, printed long ways instead of the normal way, with a fancy design. In bold letters, along the side, it said “Techdata.” To the right of that, perpendicular, if I remember my math terms correctly, it read “Ron Mullins, CEO.” It looked legit to me.
“Funny you should find this in that car,” I said.
“Even funnier that you called that car in.”
“Yes. You get any other information on that car yet?”
He shook his head. “Still waiting for prints.”
“Know where the car originated from?”
He opened the file, and read from something. “Been off the
road for four years. DMV thought it was junked last year.”
“Figures. What about the plates?”
“Registered to a Honda in Brooklyn. I don’t think the two cars are related in any way. They probably stole the plates off a random car. Way I see it, at least. We’re going to contact the owner, if for no other reason than to let them know what happened to the plates.”
I held up the piece of paper. “Thank you for this.”
“No problem,” Walters said. He seemed eager to get back to something, a side of beef perhaps. “I’ll let you know if we get anything that might be of interest to you.”
“Yeah, thanks. Nice meeting you.”
“Take care.”
Rick and I walked out of the station. The woman from before was sitting in a Chevy sedan. She must have been a complete wreck.
“That was pretty much useless,” Rick said.
“Guess so. But I want to find out the origin of this card.”
“How are we going to do that?”
“First thing I want to do is get a hold of an original, see if it matches.”
“That would make sense.”
We got into the car. I took one last glance at the woman, felt like shit for being a member of the male race, and a police officer, and pulled away.
The day was turning out to be crap.
The rest of the day consisted of making out the report of what we had so far, which turned out to be a lot of nothing, and making a few calls to the guys who were looking over the car, and the Medical Examiner, Coltrain, who had absolutely nothing new to tell us. Mullins was in perfect health when he died. Exactly what I expected.
Rick drove me home, and I ordered a pizza, which gave me the urge I needed to throw out the other box. I ate my healthy meal, one Rick would have been so proud of, and flipped on the television for a moment. It didn’t take me long to get bored. With nothing else to do, I flipped on my Playstation, and fired up a boxing game. I know, people are surprised to hear that cops do the same things that civilians do in their free time. It’s like seeing your teacher at the supermarket when you are in the sixth grade. People like that aren’t supposed to lead normal lives, mainly because you don’t see them as anything else but teachers, or cops. Well, we do a lot of things that normal people do.
Firing up the basketball game proved to be a bad idea. The problem is, it is a time killer. You start off ranked at like 20. The game I had all real boxers, old and new, and you scan the list to see who is above you. I had Rocky Marciano and Ken Norton to beat to crack the top five. No problem. Actually, big problem. Sure, I could beat them. But, I started the game at 10, and by the time I was ranked eleventh, it was 12:30. My fighter’s stats were increasing, mainly in punching power, because that’s all I put my bonus points on. By 2AM, I had Marciano on the ropes, and headed toward the fifth position. Norton went the distance with me, the bastard, and so did Riddick Bowe, who was insanely ranked at number four. By the time I took a beating from the number three guy, Evander Holyfield, it was 3:30. I never liked Holyfield. I wanted to bite his ear off, but there was no button for that.
I reached the number one position at 4:40, and my thumb felt like it had a marble at the end of it. It was too late to call it quits, so I stuck it out and gave George Foreman, the champion, a run for his money. It went the distance. It was 5:15 when the asshole judges gave the decision to Foreman. I clearly won the brawl. Foreman couldn’t land anything solid on me. But, when you are fighting the guy who got paid to have his name in the title of the game, you have to expect unfair treatment from the judges. Besides, you really have to knock out the champion to take his belt. Instead of fighting again, I wanted to go one on one with the Playstation, give it a piece of my mind. When I realized what time it was, I figured all I could do was go one more fight.
I knocked Foreman out with a solid left hook at 5:58. Did it in the ninth round, after beating up on him all the way through. He fell twice in the third, and once again in the fifth. Tough bastard. I shut the system off, and glanced out the window, catching the beginning of sunrise. Rick would be there at 8 to pick me up, so I figured sleeping wasn’t an option. I didn’t feel tired anyway. I was still riding high on my winning the belt. Pathetic, I know.
With not much else to do, I went to my computer to do a little research. I had an old computer, one they were throwing out down at the department. I don’t know much about computers, other than the fact that the one I had was a relic. It connected to the Internet, slowly, and I could send an email to friends I didn’t feel like talking to.
I signed on to America Online, which cheerfully let me know I had mail. Big deal. I didn’t bother checking it. I went to Techdata’s web site first, out of curiosity. It was a fairly basic site, nothing that looked cutting edge at all. I expected more.
I checked a few things out on the site, and came to the announcement that they were considering a merger with a company called Onyx, supposedly a big name in broadband communications. I had never heard of the company, which didn’t surprise me. I found this in the “What’s New” section. Funny, there was no mention of Mullins’ death. I figured they didn’t want to scare their potential investors too much. I wondered if that deal with Onyx would go through, with Mullins out of the picture. I couldn’t remember if Sondra had mentioned anything about that, and I reminded myself to check Rick’s trusty notepad on that. No more than a second later, my cell phone rang. It was in my jacket pocket, across the room. I didn’t feel like answering it.
I did, anyway.
“Yeah,” I said, after fumbling through the jacket to find the phone.
“It’s Geiger.”
“Good morning.”
“I’ve got some news.”
“Go ahead.” I cringed at the thought of what he was going to say. I smelled bad news coming.
“I just got a call from Agnelli. He’s satisfied with the fact that it was a suicide. He said the tape proves it.”
“Okay.”
“He wants the investigation closed.”
“But we don’t have any hard evidence.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Like Hell it didn’t.
“So, that’s it?”
“Officially yes. But I see nothing wrong with you investigating it for a few more days. I want you to. Agnelli won’t know what you are working on either way.”
“That tape doesn’t prove anything. What is Agnelli up to?”
“I don’t think he wants to risk making the Precinct look bad. I can’t blame him for that. But this stinks, if you want my opinion.” “It does.”
“Also, Harold Chapman got in last night. He’s scheduled a press conference for twelve. I want you there, and I want you to talk to him.”
“Okay.”
“Get to the bottom of this, and do it quickly.”
“Okay. You speak to Calhill yet?”
“No, I called you first. He’s probably still getting his beauty sleep.” I loved the fact that, in the middle of a mess, Geiger kept his sense of humor.
“Probably. Either that, or he is doing crunches and can’t be bothered.”
Geiger chuckled. “Call him in an hour. I want you two here before nine. Few things I want to go over.”
“You got it.”
“See you then.”
I flipped the phone closed, and went back to my computer. I printed up the news release about Techdata and Onyx, grabbed a can of soda out of the fridge and went into the shower.
This was going to be a hell of a day.
I called Rick forty-five minutes later. He sounded wide-awake, almost chipper. I couldn’t imagine how someone could do that.
“What do you think is going on?” he asked me, after I explained the situation to him.
“Agnelli doesn’t want bad publicity.”
“Wouldn’t not finding the truth be bad publicity?”
“Depends on how you look at it, I guess.”
“There’s only one way to look at it.”
“Not when politics are involved. They can think of ways neither you or I could even conceive.”
“True. I’ll be there in forty minutes.”
“Okay. That roll/coffee thing was nice yesterday.”
“Give me forty-five.”
“See you then.”
Another free meal. I guess that’s what you get for being the digital Heavyweight Champion of the World. Or for being one of the biggest pain in the asses known to modem man. It didn’t make a difference. Not to me, at least.
I got dressed, in the sport jacket from early in the week. I got together some stuff I could bring to the same-day dry cleaner on the way to the station. Hadn’t seen them in quite a while, the dry cleaner people. I grabbed my favorite blue suit, a dark green one, and four shirts, which were scattered across my bedroom floor.
I needed a maid.
Rick picked me up, we dropped off the clothes, and I wolfed down the roll and coffee. The roll tasted a little stale, crumbly actually, but I was hungry. The coffee was better. Real coffee, in a world of flavored coffees. The coffee world had become the ice cream world. You needed 31 flavors to compete. Actually, the next big thing would probably be flavored-coffee-flavored ice cream. Like Hazelnut Crunch Coffee ice cream, or something like that. Maybe I should have went into business. I had vision. But I liked real coffee.
