When One Man Dies

by Dave White

  “Wait,” I said.

  “You’re not going to help. Go away.”

  “We need to talk.”

  “I said all I have to. You walked away from me.”

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Just go away.”

  “I have to talk to you, about Gerry.”

  “Why? You’re not working anymore.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said.

  The air immediately warmed between us. Her shoulders relaxed, and the bags under her eyes seemed to fade just a bit.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Stepping through the door, she wrapped her arms around me, pressing her lips to mine. She kissed me and kicked the door closed.

  We didn’t talk for a while after that.

  ***

  I’m not sure how much time passed, but we lay together in bed, Tracy’s back to me. Running a finger gently down her spine, I breathed slowly. For the first time in weeks I felt relaxed, away from it all. Tracy snored softly. I listened, and didn’t want the moment to end.

  Tracy’s snoring stopped, and for a while I didn’t hear anything. Then she said, “Jackson?”

  “Yes?” I whispered.

  “Thank you for helping me.”

  “I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “You will. I know it.”

  “Well then, Ms. Psychic, you’re welcome.”

  She rolled over to face me and we smiled. She punched me playfully in the arm. Then she kissed me gently.

  “What are you going to do first?” Tracy asked.

  “I want to establish whether or not Gerry was into drugs.”

  “How are you going to do that?”

  I rolled onto my back, letting my head rest on the pillow. The wallpaper on the ceiling was light beige, a soothing color that made me want to nod off right there. I closed my eyes and let air out through my nose. It was okay to do this now, I thought. Jeanne had been gone long enough.

  Despite what Martin had said. Maybe Leonard Baker was right. Maybe it was time to let go. Move on. Tracy felt right.

  “I need to know about Gerry’s past.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “I know he was in Korea. I know he was an actor. I know he had a son who died of leukemia. And I know he had a wife who disappeared.”

  “Okay,” she said. I felt her hand against my chest. “I want to find his wife.”

  For a moment there was silence; the hand slowly moved off my chest. I opened my eyes and rolled on my side. Tracy was propped up on her right arm, looking at me, her left hand covering her mouth.

  “I don’t know where she is,” Tracy said.

  I leaned in and moved her hand away. Kissed her lightly. “I didn’t say you did. But I want to find her and talk to her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she knows things about Gerry. There had to be a reason she ran from him, and I want to know what it was.”

  “She didn’t run. She disappeared.”

  “No one just disappears. It’s against the laws of physics.” I smiled, but it didn’t click with her.

  “Don’t look for her.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too late for that.”

  “You want me to find out what happened to Gerry.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t want you to dig up everything.”

  I brushed a strand of her hair over her ear. “There’s only one way to get answers,” I said. “And that’s to turn over every rock until I find something. I haven’t found anything else.”

  Tracy kissed my cheek. “There’s something I need to know. The other case, the one that was taking all your time away from Gerry. Was it important?”

  “You’re asking if I was just doing nothing instead of looking for Gerry.”

  She nodded. I told her about the case. Her eyes went cold when I said Rex Hanover’s name.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “I knew Rex Hanover. Do you remember when we walked along the boardwalk?”

  “Yes.”

  “I told you I used to date a guy named Pablo. That he was the man you took me away from. His name was Pablo Najera.”

  I remembered.

  “I introduced Pablo to Jen. Just before they met, Pablo decided to change his name to Rex. Something about the police.”

  I let that sink in. Tracy shifted closer to me.

  “I’m involved and I don’t want to be. I think Gerry got into drugs when he met Pablo. We didn’t see each other much, but Gerry was in the tavern all the time. He got to talking to Pablo one night.”

  “Pablo was a drug dealer?”

  She shook her head. “He works for one.”

  “Michael Burgess.”

  “I couldn’t tell you. I needed to get away from this. Drugs have been a part of my life forever. My boyfriend—”

  I didn’t want to hear more. I kissed her to keep her from talking. Bill Martin trying to link Gerry’s investigation to what happened in the bodega yesterday itched at my bones. Everything was connected.

  “Can we talk about this in the morning?” Tracy said, finally. “I’m going to look, whether you want me to or not.”

  She touched one of my bruises gently, but I still felt a shock of pain.

  “I know,” she said.

  I closed my eyes and let her kiss me.

  Chapter 43

  It was late when Michael Burgess called.

  Martin was sleeping and he had to fumble for the handset. “We need to talk. Boyd Park, half an hour.”

  ***

  Boyd Park housed the Rutgers crew team dock along the Raritan River. A small red house, the team kept it up pretty well. Even in the dark, it seemed to stand out against the black water backdrop. No paint chipping, very little litter, only the gentle slap of water against the dock. And the sound of traffic from Route 18.

  Bill Martin visited the park many times before the demotion. He’d been here once to talk to a hit man, broken up drug dealings and taken the evidence himself, and once to pick up a stoned Donne and get him home to Jeanne.

  Now he waited for Michael Burgess. He had enough time to light a cigarette. Burgess and the huge man came from the shadows only a few minutes after Martin got there.

  “Not used to seeing you in open air,” Martin said.

  “We’ve taken care of Mr. Donne,” Burgess said. “Apparently you tried to as well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we saw him, he wasn’t steady on his feet. Shaken up, I suppose. Plus he said he didn’t have a license anymore. That there wasn’t a need for us to put a scare into him.”

  “But you did anyway.”

  Burgess pointed to the burly man behind him. “My associate had a point to make.”

  The big man smiled at Martin. Cracked his knuckles.

  “Anyway,” Burgess continued, “the store has been compromised for the moment. That doesn’t mean we want you to stop what you’ve been trying to do. Get the cops off our street. Let us run our business.”

  Martin nodded.

  “At the same time, I’ve some business to take care of. A strategy that I’ve been working on to increase my own profits. I’d like to ask that you stay away from us for a while.”

  The traffic on 18 quieted. One of the traffic lights must have turned red. The Raritan continued to flow along.

  “Are you saying you’re about to do something illegal?” Bill Martin asked.

  “Just do as I say, Detective.”

  “Okay, but let me tell you something about Jackson Donne.”

  “I told you, we’ve taken care of him.”

  Martin shook his head. “I don’t think you have. You’re right, he was broken. But you should have stayed away.”

  “He injured two of my men. Shot one of them. They’re both lucky to be alive. That can’t go unpunished.”

  “It’s going to trial.”

  “And who would be witnesses for the prosecution? My men? I don’t think so.”

  Mar
tin stepped forward so only Burgess could hear him. “Jackson Donne was beaten. I know him, I worked with him. If anything, you’ve woken him up again.”

  “I highly doubt that.”

  The water rushed alongside them. The traffic had started up again.

  “Trust me,” Martin said. “But I think we’re going to have to take care of him anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Martin closed his eyes and pictured Jeanne. Her smile, her laugh, the last time he spoke with her. How everything was taken from him.

  “Jackson Donne needs to die.”

  Chapter 44

  The next morning, I had a name. Anne Backes.

  It wasn’t much, but enough to begin searching. Tracy hadn’t been able to remember her maiden name, kept calling her Figuroa, but rang her parents and got the name. She lied and said she’d found some of Gerry’s things and wanted to try and get them to Anne. Tracy’s parents said good luck, they hadn’t heard from Anne in years.

  After a quick breakfast with Tracy at a local diner, we went our separate ways. She said she wanted to walk around town, shop and get her mind off things. I wanted to get back to work. Quietly.

  My office door was locked, and I slipped my key in, pushed it open. Checking the room and finding it clear, I turned my computer on and let it boot up. The office smelled like it hadn’t been used in days, and there were papers strewn across the floor.

  I pulled the window open to let in some air, turned the radio on, and picked up the papers. The papers weren’t anything important—Jen Hanover’s reports that I still had to type up—so I put them on my desk under a paperweight. The Who blared.

  Back at my computer, I pulled up one of the search engines I used to find missing people. The keys of the computer were dusty and motes floated through the air between the sunshine and breeze from the open window. I was typing in Anne Backes’s name when the phone rang.

  “Mr. Donne, it’s Blanchett, Madison Police.” He sounded tired. But he probably always sounded tired.

  “How are you, Detective Blanchett?”

  “Listen,” he said. “Word’s out about you and your license. I want to know what you know about Rex Hanover. We need you to come to the station.”

  Apparently Blanchett wasn’t into small talk. I took a deep breath. “Sure,” I said.

  “ASAP.” He hung up.

  After I hit send on the computer, the cursor turned into a timepiece. The Internet page loaded slowly. The page appeared on-screen, and reported 253 hits for Anne Backes. I saved the page and shut down the computer. The trip to Madison would take me close to forty minutes, and I wanted to know what Blanchett wanted. Curiosity got the better of me.

  ***

  The past few days I felt like I’d been all over northern and central New Jersey. The miles put on my car meant it needed an oil change soon. The long interstate and state highways were familiar sights to me, and it was getting easier to predict where the state troopers would be hiding to catch speeders. On 287, trucks hung in the center and right lanes, so I stayed in the left, going about ten miles over the speed limit. It was too early in the day for much traffic, so the trip was relatively easy.

  There was a parking space in front of the Madison Police Department. On the front steps, Blanchett was smoking a cigarette, watching the traffic pass. His tie was loose around his neck, and his hair was still out of place. He gave a little nod in my direction when he noticed me.

  We shook hands on the steps, and he smiled. “Who’d you piss off?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “To get your license revoked.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Apparently the cop rumor mill is being selective on the parts of the story it tells this time.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  He waited, and when I didn’t say anything else, he gave another curt nod.

  “All right. Well, thanks for coming in.”

  “Daniels here, too?”

  “She’s inside. Come on,” he said. He dropped his cigarette, stamping it out under his foot.

  We walked down the long hallway I remembered from the night I found the body. To my right were some offices and the cop bull pen, but we didn’t turn that way. We kept walking toward the interrogation room.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Don’t really want you talking in public out in the bull pen. One, if somebody starts blabbing in there, everyone would hear, and two, there’s more room. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Blanchett was being downright personable.

  “I don’t give a shit where we talk,” I said, just to spice the conversation up.

  He smiled and said, “Good.”

  ***

  We went into the room, bare as before, with just a table and two chairs. I took the chair that was by itself, facing the door.

  “You going to record me?” I asked, remembering Daniels playing with the thermostat.

  “Not if you don’t want me to,” he said. “Who’s going to be good cop and bad cop?”

  Blanchett smiled again. “You want a cup of coffee?”

  “That answers my question,” I said. “Sure. Cream and sugar.”

  He left and for a few minutes I was alone. The room smelled less like coffee this time around. Like someone had taken a can of Febreze and sprayed it around to mask the odor. Maybe there was a deodorizer plugged in somewhere.

  How much to tell them? Finding Rex Hanover wasn’t my problem anymore. And I knew who he was with. I could just give them Burgess’s name and move on. But the connection to Gerry still tugged at my bones, even though I didn’t want to believe it. I wasn’t going to answer any questions on how I lost my license. They didn’t need to know.

  Daniels came through the door carrying two Styrofoam cups of coffee. She wore another black business suit, white shirt open at the top, with a wide collar pulled over the lapels of the blazer. Placing one cup in front of me, a smile crossed her face.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Drink your coffee,” she said.

  I took a sip, steam rising up my nose. “When you play bad cop, you’re not supposed to smile.”

  Daniels smiled wider. “There is no bad cop today. Come on, drink your coffee.”

  She sipped at hers. I took another mouthful. “Laced with truth serum?”

  She looked at the ceiling. “Can’t just drink it, can you?”

  I put the cup down. Some of the coffee sloshed over my fingers and onto the table. “What’s going on? I didn’t come down here just to drink coffee.”

  She placed her hands flat on the table. “We’ll talk in a few minutes.”

  “Where’s Blanchett?”

  She leaned in close to my face. “Stop asking questions. You don’t want me to have to be the bad cop, do you?”

  A thousand jokes crossed my mind, about half of them repeatable. But I kept my mouth shut, picked the coffee back up, and swirled it. I’d been in enough trouble with the police in the last few days, didn’t want to mess with the two who seemed to have some measure of respect for me.

  Daniels finished the rest of her coffee and dropped the cup in the small plastic trash can. Crossing her arms, she leaned against the wall next to the door. She didn’t say a word. This was the strangest interrogation ever, and I’d been through some odd ones. The past few days alone.

  I sipped slowly, letting the coffee cool in my mouth. It wasn’t the best coffee. In fact, it was downright awful, but I was savoring it. If only to piss off Daniels. Who was she to tell me how fast to drink?

  The door opened and Blanchett stepped through. He looked at Daniels, her arms still crossed, then shifted his gaze to me.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, “how long does it take to drink a cup of coffee?”

  What the hell was with my coffee? That’s it, I decided. I was going to wait them out.

  I swirled the coffee and watched as both Blanchett and Daniels’s eyes widened, hoping I would finish it. I put the cup back down and gave them a smile.
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  “Good coffee,” I said. “Hate to waste it.”

  Blanchett’s head was going to explode, I was sure of it. On second thought, maybe it was fun to piss off the last two remaining cops with a bit of respect for me.

  Daniels looked at her watch. “How long have we been in here?”

  “Twenty minutes,” Blanchett answered. He looked me over.

  “Long enough.”

  Reaching across the table, he grabbed the cup of coffee from my hand and tossed it toward the trash. Brown liquid sprayed across the room and splattered on the floor, narrowly missing Daniels’s suit.

  “Nice move, smart-ass,” she said.

  He winked at her and took my forearm. “Come on, you’re taking a walk.”

  “What the hell?” I said.

  “Come on,” Daniels said, too. She pulled the door open and stepped out into the hallway.

  Blanchett waited for me to pass, and then followed me. The three of us were in the hallway, walking at a snail’s pace. Two uniforms were headed toward me. They glared at me as if I was the Zodiac Killer. “Don’t say a fucking word,” Blanchett whispered as we got closer.

  Though they never took their eyes off me, the two uniforms managed to mumble hellos to my escorts as we walked past.

  I followed Daniels out the front doors. It was bright compared to the police station, and I had to squint. The sun reflecting off the police cruisers didn’t help. And I’d left my sunglasses in my cup holder.

  “Where’s your car?” she asked. I pointed across the street.

  “Okay,” Daniels said. “I’m going to ride with you. Harry’s going to follow.”

  “Harry?”

  “Blanchett.”

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “You gonna tell me what the hell’s going on?” Daniels grinned. “Once we’re on the road.”

  We took the stairs and crossed the street. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Blanchett unlocking an unmarked car. It was gray and had a spotlight attached to the sideview mirror, so I guessed he wasn’t trying to be too clandestine.

  I hit the alarm button and unlocked my Honda Prelude. Daniels slid into the passenger seat and had her seat belt buckled before I opened my door. First thing I did was grab my sunglasses. Able to see again, I turned the ignition. The car stereo popped on, playing the Stones way too loud.