by John Misak
Seventeen
I know I have made it clear about how I didn’t trust anyone. I was that way before this all came down, and I felt even more so afterward. They went after my soul, my reason for waking up in the morning. The real world, I mean, the one outside the force, was just too boring for me. I had been serious about trying heroin on that Tuesday. I had come dangerously close. Now, I had gone in the other direction. I was angry, not bored. Yeah, I was concerned that I would have to find a way to make a living in that real world if I didn’t get to keep my job, but I was slowly taking my focus off of that. I wanted revenge. I had a few people to confront, and the first person on my list was one Rick Calhill.
Rick lived in the city also, in one of those fancy hi-rises in the 60’s. His wife made a good salary, and combined with his, they could afford such a place. I thought they were living just a bit beyond their means, but that was how they were.
I pulled the big Cadillac in front of their building. I couldn’t tell if Rick was home, because they parked their car in an attended garage. One of the benefits of living in the fancy part of town, I suppose.
I walked into the lobby, my footsteps a little heavy because of the drinks I had. The security guard (I had been coming across a lot of these gentleman) dressed in a red blazer and rapidly approaching the grave, had his nose buried in the New York Times. I swear the man looked ninety, and I tried to figure out what he would do if I got physical with him. Not that I got a kick out of beating up old men.
“Excuse me,” I said.
No reply.
“Excuse me.” A little louder this time.
Still no reply.
“Hello,” I said, in a near yell. It was then that I noticed the man was asleep. I nudged him on the shoulder and he slowly came to life.
“What?” he muttered, almost incoherent.
“I am here to see Mr. Calhill.”
“Calhill? Hold on.” He was moving a little better now, and he grabbed a clipboard. “I don’t have any visitors on my list for Calhill.”
“It’s an unexpected visit,” I said. “We work together.”
The man looked at me, and I noticed how thick the wrinkles in his skin were. You could lose a pen in them, or at least a pencil sharpened down about halfway. I tried to imagine who would hire someone like this for a security job. Probably the same guy who hired that Exxon Valdez captain. That guy will never live that one down.
The man picked up a phone.
“Hello, Mr. Calhill. You have a visitor.” The man looked at me. “What’s your name?”
“John Keegan.” I had thought about giving a phony name, but decided it would be better to see if Rick would see me. If he wouldn’t, then I knew he and I had troubles. Big ones.
“A Mr. Keegan to see you.” The old man nodded. “I’ll send him up.” The man looked at me again. “You can go on up,” he said. “Eleventh floor.”
“Thank you.”
I got into the small elevator, which looked as though it could barely hold three people, and pressed the button for the 11th floor.
The elevator creaked, not exactly instilling confidence, and slowly made its way up to Rick’s floor. The elevator stopped with a jolt, and the doors creaked open, revealing Rick standing on the other side.
“Hey John,” he said, smiling.
“Nice elevator you got there,” I said, walking out.
“Yeah, we’ve been petitioning to get a new one, but most of the people that live here don’t want to spring for the cash.” He seemed comfortable, not ill at ease to speak to me.
“Guess you’ll have to wait until someone crashes in it.”
“Yeah.”
Rick started walking towards his apartment. I followed.
“You know, I’m not sure what is older, the elevator, or the security guard downstairs.”
“Who? George? He’s been here longer than I have.”
“He looks like he’s been here longer than the building has.”
Rick laughed. We stopped in front of his apartment, which was at the left comer of the hallway. Apartment 13G, for you detail oriented people.
“Just do me a favor. We’ll have to be quiet. Chrissy is sleeping, and I’m trying to get Jack to do the same.” Rick’s kids were three and almost one, if I remembered correctly. I couldn’t imagine having to deal with that.
“No problem.”
We walked in to the apartment. It was fancy, with shiny ceramic tiles and plush carpeting. There were a few artsy paintings on the walls, one that I recognized as a Picasso, only because I had a girlfriend that was into that stuff. I sat down on the tan leather couch in the living room. Rick had about four large bookcases filled with archaeology and medical textbooks, as well as romance novels. I don’t think I’d want to be married to a woman who read such books. It was their way of telling you that they didn’t have enough romance in their lives. If a woman did that to me, I’d probably start leaving books like “The Art of the Blow Job” on the coffee table. I know how to send a message.
“You feeling any better?” I asked.
“Yeah, I am. I couldn’t stop throwing up yesterday, though.” Information I didn’t really need.
“Wow.”
“It was terrible.” He stopped for a second. “I’m really sorry about that. You know I wouldn’t have gone home if I wasn’t that sick.”
“Hey, I understand. And I am sorry too. I took out everything on you. That wasn’t right.” Yeah, I was sorry. My ass.
“It’s okay. You’ve been through Hell. I mean, Jesus Christ, they treated you like a common criminal.”
“They did.”
“You okay now?”
“I guess so. I just want to find out what is going on. Someone has it in for me.”
Rick sat down in the matching leather chair across from me. I noticed that if someone sat in that chair, the person on the couch had a hard time seeing the big screen TV. Poor planning there, Ricky-boy.
Rick took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, as if to add emphasis to what he was going to say. “You really think it’s someone down at the precinct?”
“I don’t know. Makes sense though, doesn’t it?”
He looked me straight in the eye. “You think it’s me, don’t you? That’s why you came here today.”
“Listen, I don’t think it was you. I’d be surprised if it was. But it was someone. I can’t see you having a motive. For all I know, you would have taken the rap with me, if you had come along. Good thing for you that you got sick. I’d rather spend my night with my head in the toilet than in handcuffs.”
“They cuffed you?”
I nodded. “They went through the entire process. Trust me, you don’t ever want to go through it.”
“I can imagine.”
“No, you can’t.”
“I guess not.”
I wanted to get right to the topic, but I really couldn’t do that. Now that I had said I didn’t think Rick screwed me, I couldn’t start asking him questions that gave away the opposite. I had hoped he was going to spill the beans, but he didn’t seem ready to do that. I’d have to go about it carefully. I preferred to walk out of there with nothing, than to give my angle away. If Rick really was involved, anything I said to him would go right to the wrong people.
“I really need your help,” I said.
“Anything.”
“Well, obviously, I didn’t take any money from Mrs. Mullins, and I’ll tell you this, I don’t think she killed her husband.”
“You sure about that? She had motive.”
“Think about it. If she was going to kill her husband, she wouldn’t make it look like a suicide.”
“Why, because of the insurance? That’s nothing compared to what she would get from the buyout.” That sounded familiar.
“If you’re going to commit a crime, especially one like murder, you might as well get as much money as possible. Why miss out on an easy 5 mil?”
“Because it works as a perfect contradiction to m
otive, that’s why. It’s got you convinced.”
“But no one else, apparently.”
“Hey, I’m not saying that I think for sure that she did it. I’m just saying that she is a good suspect.”
“Everyone is a good suspect.”
“True.”
I could hear one of the babies cry in the other room. Rick got up.
“Give me a second. You want something to drink while I’m up?”
“I’ll take a soda.”
“Diet okay?” I knew he drank diet soda.
“Yeah, fine.”
Rick went into the other room, and I got up to take a quick look around the apartment. It was tough to find what I was looking for. I wanted to see if there was any hint that he had spent the last day and a half home sick. A blanket on the couch would have been a sure sign, but I hadn’t seen that. Maybe the ring of a soda can on the table, but there was none of that either. I really wanted to take a look in the bathroom. I had to find out where that was, and I couldn’t yell out to him, with the baby and all.
I worked my way around the living room, and towards the kitchen, and saw a door which looked to be the bathroom. I opened it. Closet. Real good detective work. I closed that door, and found another, across the hall. That was the bathroom.
Rick had one of those fancy bathrooms, with expensive tiles and one of those stand-alone sinks. I’m not good at interior decorating terminology, but I think you know what I mean. It was fancy. And sitting on the counter was a can of Lysol, opened. Unless Rick was a neat freak, that might have been a sign that he actually was sick. Either that, or he was a lot smarter than I gave him credit for.
Impossible.
I heard Rick go into the kitchen, so I flushed the toilet and walked out. He was standing by the door with a can of soda and a glass of ice.
“Nice shitter you have there,” I said.
“Glad you like it.”
“I do.”
We walked back toward the couch and I sat down. I took the soda, had a swig, and looked directly at him.
“I’m in a bad situation here, Rick. I’ve got the feeling that I can’t trust anyone. Hell, if my own parents were even remotely involved, I would be suspect of them too.”
“I understand. I don’t know what is going on, but if there is any way I can help, all you have to do is ask.”
“I’m not sure if you can, but thanks.”
“No problem.”
“No. I want you to look at them, and maybe copy them. I want to know what was written in the report closing the case. And I also want you to keep me abreast of what is going on with Sondra Mullins. I want to know how they go about prosecuting her.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
I had nothing else to say to him. For all I knew, he was innocent, but I couldn’t talk to him about what I was planning with my uncle, or anything else that I had in mind. I wanted to run this stuff by someone and, in most cases, Rick would have been a good person to do that with, but not now. Possibly, not ever again. But, of course, I am getting ahead of myself, so disregard that whole thing.
After leaving Rick’s, I started driving toward the station out of habit, I guess. As I headed toward there, I thought about seeing Geiger. I hadn’t heard from him, and I really wanted to know what his angle was. What my father said about him stuck in my mind.
It was right about this moment that I noticed I had a tail. It was a Ford sedan, and the driver was doing a good job of staying inconspicuous, but he had followed two erratic turns I’d made, and he was staying at a distance only an experienced tail would stay at. It was no big deal; I had expected to be tailed. I decided to let whoever this was follow me right to the station.
When I made the turn to pull in front of the station, the tail kept going straight. No doubt it was someone from the station who was following me. Probably a plain-clothes guy who was hoping that getting a stint like this might get him the gold badge. Maybe they’d even give him mine, instead of having to shell out the extra bucks to get another one. Fuck them. That’s how I felt.
I walked into the station and was greeted by a bunch of guys I’d never really talked to who were apologetic. They said things like, “Sorry to hear about the bad rap,” and “You’ll get through this,” and “We’re pulling for you.” Sure they were. They couldn’t give a rat’s ass, and I was less than concerned about their support.
I wanted to run into Agnelli there, meet him eye to eye and see what he was all about. I might have even spit in his face if I had another scotch in me. Lucky for him, he wasn’t there.
I walked into Geiger’s office, and he raised his eyebrows when he saw me. As usual, he was on the phone. He rushed the other person off the line, then smiled at me sympathetically.
“What a fucking night, huh John?”
“You could say that.”
“I’m happy you came in. I’ve wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
“You know.”
I didn’t.
“This is all Agnelli,” he said.
“You mean what happened last night?”
Geiger got up and closed the door to his office. He came back around and sat on the edge of his desk. “Yes, last night. Something’s brewing here, and I can’t put my finger on it.”
I wanted to tell him to put his finger up it so it could join his thumb. I wished my father hadn’t said what he had about Geiger. I really wanted to trust Geiger because he was one of the few men that I trusted on a day-to-day basis.
“What do you think might be going on?”
“Agnelli and Chapman. I think they are in cahoots together. I think they have been in some sort of deranged partnership from the beginning, and that Agnelli knew Mullins was going to get bumped off.”
“Sounds sort of like a movie plot, don’t you think?”
Geiger laughed. “Yeah, maybe. Or the plot of a good novel.” “Wouldn’t know anything about novels. Don’t read. Certainly don’t write.”
“It’s nice to see your sense of humor hasn’t left you in the middle of all of this.”
“It’s fading fast.”
“You know that you’ll beat this rap and be back on the job soon, right?”
“Yeah, if I admit that I was suckered in by Sondra Mullins and that I think she was the one who killed her husband.”
“You don’t think that’s the case.”
“I don’t know what’s the case is. I was thinking of just taking everyone involved, throwing them in a room, and then lighting the fucking place on fire,” I said.
Geiger didn’t laugh at that. Damn the timing. “You wanna fry me too?”
“Fry everybody. Why not?”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“But seriously, you don’t have to finger Mrs. Mullins.” I held off on a wisecrack on that one. I have some restraint. “You have to get at Agnelli, and I am more than willing to help you do that. All we have to do is find the link between him and Chapman, and we’ll have all we need. You’ll be back to your normal life, and we can end this whole thing with Agnelli. You can’t even imagine how much better this place would run if he was out.”
“You’ve suspected him of being dirty for this long and didn’t do anything about it?”
“I couldn’t. I never had anything solid. After what he did to you, it just became too obvious,” Geiger said.
Maybe it had. I knew that Geiger had a vendetta against Agnelli from the start, but I never thought it ran that deep. I didn’t even want to think of how much trouble I was headed for if Geiger was the one who was dirty.
“Okay. So what do we do?”
“That all depends on you.”
“I’m listening.” As soon as I finished that word, someone knocked on the door.
“What?” Geiger asked.
“You’ve got the Commissioner on line two,” a man said. It sounded like Peters. I thought about taking my reserve gun out and blasting him right through the door. Then ag
ain, if I was wrong, I’d pull a Hamlet, to make a literary reference. Okay, so I read. But I don’t want anyone knowing that.
“I’ve got to take this call, John. Do me a favor and lay low for the rest of the day. We’ll get to work tomorrow.”
“Yeah, no problem.”
Of course I wasn’t going to lay low. I was on fire, and I wanted to gather as much information as possible. I wasn’t going to tell any of the people who said they were going to help me about each other, and see who delivered. I knew my uncle would come through, Rick would try, and I hoped Geiger would as well. I thought he would. Well, he seemed like he wanted to help. I guess I should just leave it at that.
I slept horribly that night, reminding me of the short time I lived with my ex-girlfriend. I never slept when she was in the bed. She gave off too much heat. I felt hot that night as well, and was afraid to open my eyes the next morning, for fear that she would be snuggled up next to me. That would have been a nightmare. Luckily, when I did open my eyes, I was alone in bed the way I like it.
My head felt fuzzy, not an abnormal occurrence, and my stomach was a bit queasy. It was like a huge hangover, what I was feeling, but I hadn’t drank enough to warrant that. It was my mind, I knew that, and I was pissed off that I’d let what was going on get to me. I’d normally let things slide off me, basically because I didn’t care enough to let them bother me. This was different of course, but in the back of my mind I knew things would somehow work out. I might sound like the epitome of a pessimist, but I always had faith that things would end up okay. You might even say that I was an optimist. I’d say that I think the glass has water in it; I don’t give a damn if it is half empty or half full.
I wanted to jump right into what I wanted to do. It might help if you know what that is. You see, I knew someone was behind all of this, and I had become certain that Mullins didn’t commit suicide. I had my doubts earlier in the investigation, but at this time, I was sure. Someone had killed him, and more than one person had a lot to gain from his death. Which one of them was the culprit? I knew Chapman had something to do with it. He just seemed too seedy to me to not have something to do with it. Sure, he might not have had a lot to gain with the will and all that, but he did have an angle. He was the one I wanted to find more out about. Then, I had Sondra to consider. I didn’t want to consider her, but I really didn’t have a choice. I found her attractive, without question, but attractive women did me more harm than good in my life. I had to believe she was most likely going to continue that trend. She had a lot to gain from the death of her husband, possibly more than anyone else. She also had the most to lose by the death being a suicide, so that worked in her favor too. I also had Steve to think about, the ever-friendly security guard who made me suspicious every time I spoke to him. Then there was a long list of employees, all of whom I didn’t suspect with any real conviction, which made all of them even more suspicious. It was always the one you thought of last.
