Lady Midnight

by Timothy C. Phillips

  The people had cause to gape. Lester Broom was a giant of a man. He towered over me, and I am six-foot three and well-muscled, a big man myself. Broom’s stature matched perfectly with his strength and reputed toughness. He is also my best friend in the world, and I knew that despite his massive exterior, the big cop was also a very compassionate man who genuinely cared about the people and the city he was sworn to protect. Broom and I had partnered as detectives together for what I consider five of the best years of his life. We had worked homicide, and Broom had taught me that being a detective was both an art and a craft.

  Today, my big friend was mightily displeased, and I didn’t have to ask why. Another person had stopped breathing on his beat by unnatural means, and he was left to sort out the tawdry details. As far as law enforcement went, Birmingham was his city, from Central Headquarters on First Avenue North to the North Precinct deep in the crime-ridden North Side; to the South Precinct, out near Homewood; and all the other precincts of the city and the substations that lay between them, Birmingham was Detective Lieutenant Lester Broom’s beat, as far as he was concerned, and people did not murder their fellow human beings in his city, without feeling his wrath.

  The Medical Examiner had yet to arrive, but an ambulance crew was already on the scene. The media always seemed a step ahead of everyone else when blood had been spilled. An EMT gave Broom a cursory but grim shake of his head, thus announcing that the man in the car was officially dead, and Broom, Cassie and I walked over together to peer into the car’s interior.

  “Think this is a mob thing, Les?” Cassandra asked. “The news crews will go all giggly with pleasure, if it is.”

  “Tough break for the news hounds, then. No, Cassie, I don’t make it that way,” Broom said with a shake of his head. “I was thinking that on the way here. The O’Hearn mob bumped off a soldier for Don Ganato a couple of weeks ago, so I thought, here’s the retribution that we’ve all been holding our breath for.” Broom bent down and pointed to the man in the car. “But no way this fellow was one of Longshot Lonnie O’Malley’s goons. I pretty much know all of his ragtag little crew by now. Looks like this guy had some class, which they, to a man, do not possess. All of Don Ganato’s boys are Italian, and this guy isn’t that, either.”

  Lester sighed and looked at me.

  “The mob boys still popping each other?” I asked.

  “We had a couple of shooting incidents last week. Nobody was killed, but it only aggravates the situation. I’m still expecting the whole thing to blow up into a shooting war any day. This job is tough enough, without the professional criminals shooting up the town. What we have brewing here in Birmingham is an old-fashioned mob war. These guys still think it’s 1935. But our little mob war isn’t going to start today. Not on this guy’s account, anyway. Whoever he is, he isn’t part of that. This gentleman is someone else, and I think we can safely say that his death is not related to our local mobster families. Observe.”

  Broom slid a bible-sized hand inside the dead man’s jacket and produced a wallet. He let out his version of a low whistle, which sounded something like a fog horn. “This guy’s loaded.” He reached in again. “And packing,” he said, as he held open the dead man’s jacket to reveal a silvery-gray automatic pistol in a shoulder holster. “Too bad he was so slow on the draw.” Broom looked critically at the man’s I.D. and held it out for me to see. “There’s an Atlanta address. The guy’s name’s Mr. Arthur Bowman. Does that name ring any bells for you?”

  I shook my head slowly. “None.”

  Broom stroked his chin. “The thing is, I can’t make what this guy was doing here. I mean, there’s only three or four businesses in this area, and besides Sally’s, your office is the only thing open right here in Brooks Plaza. I can’t figure what the heck this guy was doing sitting around here in his car on a rainy day. Got any ideas?”

  I shrugged. “I was thinking the same thing, right before whoever it was shot him. He just looked out of place. But that’s all I know. Sorry, Les. I never heard of him or saw him before this morning. All I did was witness his murder.”

  When Broom finished taking my statement, I went back into Sally’s Diner.

  Sally leaned over the counter when I came in. She’s a tall brunette with strong, attractive features and a sarcastic bent. I think she’s anywhere from five to fifteen years older than me; there was no way to tell, and I am not about to ask.

  “There’s a gent back there who’s looking for you.” Sally indicated a corner of the diner with a swing of her head.

  It was Baucom, all right. I knew it even though I had never seen him before. He and the dead guy could have belonged to the same yacht club. He stood and greeted me with a firm handshake and a raised eyebrow. He wore a Yale ring, an Armani suit, and a diamond tie tack. I was pretty sure all three were firsts at Sally’s. He was about five foot nine, and had thinning dark hair and unreadable black, intelligent eyes. He swept me with a swift look of appraisal, going down some internal checklist. Apparently, I passed muster; he gave me an agreeable nod and started talking.

  “Mr. Longville, you have quite a reputation as a private investigator.”

  I made a noncommittal noise. The killing that I’d just seen happen had left me in less than a talkative mood.

  “I’d like to thank you for meeting with me here today,” Baucom continued.

  “Not a problem. So, would you like to hire me, Mr. Baucom?” I asked him, though I already had a feeling what he would say next. He would tell me that he was working for someone else. I thought this was likely because he hadn’t started by anxiously telling me his problem. People always want to tell you their problems first, because they are all sure that theirs are so different from everyone else’s, that you’re just dying to hear about them.

  I didn’t think that Baucom had any problems that were too severe. If he did, I seriously doubted that he would share them with me. He seemed like a man who could handle his own troubles, thank you very much. He exuded the air of someone who was very sure of himself. He certainly didn’t seem worried about anything, and the people who hired me were just about always worried sick about something.

  “Straight to business, then. Actually, Mr. Longville, I come here on behalf of another party. My employer, you see, would like to discuss a very serious matter with you. He’s an important man, and coming here in person wouldn’t have been prudent for him, for a number of reasons. Also, he’s very busy, as I’m sure you are as well. He wants us to set up a meeting at a time convenient for both of you.”

  I nodded. I’d heard all of this before, and would undoubtedly hear it all again, somewhere down the road.

  “So you’ve come to set up a meeting between the two of us somewhere else?” I asked, making a sweeping gesture that encompassed Sally’s Diner and patrons. I felt a bit like an actor feeding someone a line in some junior-high play, because I still felt like I knew what was coming next: Halt, who goes there?

  “Exactly.” Baucom glanced at his watch, approvingly. It was an expensive watch, rather like the murdered man’s had been. I wasn’t wasting his time, Baucom’s glance at the watch seemed to say, and he apparently liked that. He gave a little smile of satisfaction, and thought for a second before he continued speaking.

  “Mr.—Mr. Washington would like to meet you at this location tomorrow afternoon.”

  Mr. Washington. I smiled to myself. Sure, sure.

  Baucom whipped out a black leather notebook and withdrew some folded sheets of paper. On one, written in a precise and careful hand, which was no doubt Baucom’s own, was an address; the other sheet was a computer printout from one of those websites that give you directions on how to get to places. At the top, a time was written in the same precise hand as the address: 2:00 p.m. This one gave the directions to the place I was to be the next afternoon, just in case I was too dumb to get there on my own. Clearly, Mr. Washington, whoever he really might turn out to be, wanted to make sure that I made it to the rendezvous, and on time. I pic
ked up the papers and put them in my inside pocket. Baucom nodded; he liked that, too.

  “Good. We’re all set, then. I’ll tell the—that is, Mr. Washington, that you’ve agreed to meet him.”

  Baucom rose, and we shook hands again. With that, he headed toward the door, not quite like a man who was on his way to a fire, but it was obvious that Sally’s Diner wasn’t a place he’d be visiting again, any time soon.

  I smiled to myself and pretended to savor my new cup of even-colder coffee. Unlike Baucom, I had to leave the proprietress with a favorable impression.

  Chapter 2

  I left the Brooks Building the next afternoon. The directions that Baucom had given me took me to the rail yards on the northeast side of Birmingham. The old downtown district brooded in giant shadows as I drove down Third Avenue North, across the named avenues. That part of town had been in a slide ever since the New Downtown had started springing up farther east, in the Seventies.

  There were still lots of impressive historical buildings in the old downtown area. But they were like lost old men, forgotten by time, standing vacant and awaiting the bang or the whimper that would spell their ends, and inevitably, the end for this whole part of town. A lot of the uglier episodes of the Civil Rights struggle had happened on these streets. Now the old streets were quiet. Uptown, the ghosts had gone to sleep, and nobody was home down here, either.

  The sprawling, rusty Birmingham rail yards are inhabited at night by the homeless and the dispossessed. It was the perfect place to get a dirty assignment, and I was about to get one of my dirtiest ever. The sun had returned after the previous day’s rain. It was really too bad that it was a nice spring afternoon. Otherwise, I figured, we could have had fog and drizzle, and worn heavy trench coats to enhance the cloak-and-dagger atmosphere of it all.

  I pulled into the rail yard in my 1979 Buick Century, and cut the engine off. I loved my Buick; it is in vintage condition, I like to tell people. Vintage, that is, except for the small dent in the rear driver’s side quarter panel, and the fading paint on the hood, and maybe a couple of other little imperfections, here and there. Oh well. I didn’t have the heart to part with old car. It had been my faithful steed for too long. It still ran fine, after all. I sat there for a bit.

  After another minute or so, I heard another car approaching. I looked into the rearview mirror and saw that it was a limousine. Well of course it was a limousine. I wasn’t expecting his employer to show up in anything like a Subaru.

  I stepped out of the car and assumed what I hoped was a friendly posture. The limo pulled up next to my aging Buick and stopped. As I supposed would happen, two large, well-dressed men got out and walked to where I stood.

  “Mr. Longville?” the first one asked with a certain emphasis. I nodded, and raised my hands gingerly. The other man came forward and patted me down. I wasn’t carrying a gun. No point dragging a gun along if it’s just going to get taken away from you, I’d learned a long time ago.

  The two men stepped back. The one who knew my name opened the limo’s rear door, and with a theatrical sweep of his hand, invited me to enter. Two seats faced one another. I took a seat in the one facing backwards, which was empty. Two men sat across from me—Baucom and a tall, white, gray-haired man. I knew him instantly. He wasn’t George Washington, but they were in the same business. I had seen this man’s face on the news many times.

  He was Senator Keith Patrick, who had recently announced that he was running for Governor. Many suspected he wanted to be President, too, if the gig as Governor panned out. His presence here meant he had trouble, and it was probably of the hush-hush variety. I supposed that there must be a few snags that the big man needed to shake loose from before the election began to heat up. No wonder all the cloak and dagger stuff. I figured his problem must be pretty serious.

  Baucom gave a little cough and opened up the conversation. “Mr. Longville, let us apologize for all the subterfuge. For a man in Mr. Patrick’s position, this sort of thing is necessary, at times.”

  “Keith Patrick, Mr. Longville. Thank you for coming here.” The older man reached out his hand and shook mine in a practiced, firm, yet gracious manner, and gave me a caring, fatherly smile. I’m really a heck of a guy, I wish we could be pals but I’m just too busy, the smile seemed to say. I was almost tempted too believe it all, too. But not quite.

  “I won’t waste your time; I’ll come right to the point. This matter concerns my daughter, Mr. Longville. Her name is Constance Patrick, and she is my only child. She has always resented certain aspects that are part of the reality of my life. As a child, for example, she protested that she was often left alone too much,” Patrick volunteered, although he fairly squirmed as he said it. “Her mother died when Connie was very young, leaving just the two of us. She was frequently, therefore, left with nurses and the like while I was away.” He paused for a second.

  “I take it that she demonstrated this resentment in some way, Senator.”

  Senator Patrick nodded. “She has always been, well, sort of a wild child, to be blunt, Mr. Longville. As she grew into a young woman, childish resentment gave way to rebellious behavior, which only grew worse as my law practice, and then my political career, kept me away from home, sometimes for extended periods of time. I love my daughter, and I have always striven to give her the very best of everything, Mr. Longville, but try as I might, I’m only one person. The harder I worked, by necessity, the more I was away. Connie was lonely rather often as a child, and I suppose she harbors some resentment toward me on those grounds. Perhaps a great deal more than I had supposed.”

  Patrick eyed Roland for a second before going on, and then glanced at Baucom.

  “It’s all right, Senator,” I said, sensing the man’s hesitance to reveal so many sensitive family issues to someone he had only just met. No doubt somewhere in his mind he was envisioning tabloids with all the lurid details of his strained relationship with his daughter splashed across them. I had seen that sort of thing happen, and I didn’t blame him.

  “Everything that’s said between us here remains confidential. I assure you that you can tell me anything. None of this goes any farther than the three of us.”

  Patrick nodded and allowed his expression to soften. There was something a bit more human about him in that instant. “Forgive me. Of course your reputation speaks for itself regarding such matters. I do feel that I can trust you, Mr. Longville.”

  “Then call me Roland.”

  Patrick smiled slightly at that. “Okay. Roland. Well, you see, there’s a bit more. Connie has disappeared. She just graduated from college, and dropped out of sight. Well, perhaps ‘disappeared’ is putting it too strongly. I know that she’s gone away of her own free will, but the truth is, a couple of months ago we had a rather big argument. It was a terrible fight, really.”

  Patrick looked grim as he recollected what was clearly painful for him to think about.

  “We’ve had other arguments like it, and in those cases, she’s done the same thing, which is to disappear for a while. It’s her way of punishing me. I’m used to it. This time, though, things were said that were hurtful, and unfortunately, since she’s been gone, something has happened within the family, something that she needs to know about.”

  “The family? Pardon me, Senator, but I thought there were just the two of you.”

  “Well, for the most part. But there was, until recently, my late wife’s father, Claude Ettinger. He was a fine man, though he had become a recluse in his last years. He and Connie were close when she was a child. Not only was he her only surviving grandparent, but he was her last link to her mother. I think that she must have felt that connection acutely, though it had been years, I think, since she actually saw him. He passed away recently, and he left almost everything that he had to Connie. I have tried to notify her, of course, and I made very effort to get in touch with her during his illness, but had no luck.”

  He leaned forward, and added as though it were an after-thought
, “Of course there was the need to keep the matter of her intentional disappearance quiet, so the regular authorities could not be consulted.”

  “You don’t want any of this to get to the media,” I said quietly and flatly.

  Baucom stepped in again. “The Senator’s political enemies would take unfair advantage of his private life to divert attention away from his campaign, and his proposed reforms. They would also harass Connie, we felt. Senator Patrick therefore decided to keep the matter private.”

  I looked at Patrick. I decided to be blunt, too. “So, Senator, you’d like me to find Connie and tell her about her grandfather’s death, and the inheritance he left her. And this, without the news media finding out that she’s done a disappearing act, so your opponents won’t use it to show you can’t take care of your affairs at home.”

  “In a nutshell, Roland, that’s correct,” Baucom answered for Patrick, who was still trying to formulate an answer.

  “Any idea on where she might be?”

  Baucom produced a manila envelope and extended it to me. I opened it and pulled out two large, glossy pictures. The first was of a beautiful young woman, with platinum blond hair that was almost white, and icy blue eyes the color of the sky in ages long gone. Constance Patrick. The second picture was of a young man. He had long, darkish hair and dark eyes, and a friendly smile.

  “That’s Randy Herron. He’s an erstwhile musician,” Baucom explained. “We think Connie is probably traveling with him.”

  “He’s a bum,” Patrick growled. “A bum and a gold-digger.”

  “I take it that you and the young man have met, Senator.”

  “She brought him to dinner, obviously to enrage me, which she succeeded in doing. He continually insulted everything I stood for, and in quite some detail. I told him to get out of my house. I worked my way up in the world, and have no respect for anyone of Herron’s ilk.”