“How’s it goin’, Easy?” he said when I came to light on the stool next to him at the counter.
“I really don’t know,” I answered.
“This here is Marybeth Reno and she’s from Reno too.”
“Hi.” Skinny, freckled, and redheaded, the young waitress smiled and did a little shoulder dance to show me how happy she was to be not only seen but noticed.
I said hello and even shook her hand, ordered coffee black, and watched her go to perform my wish.
“You came in yesterday,” the young woman said when she returned. “Tina served you.”
“How’d it go?” Fearless asked me.
Marybeth took this as a cue to move off.
“I think I might be in trouble if I don’t move just right,” I said.
“I knew that when you said ‘Charcoal Joe.’ ”
I sighed and then asked, “How’s Seymour?”
“He’s gettin’ kinda restless. Can’t say I blame him.”
“Tell him to keep his head down and if we’re lucky he won’t even see the inside of a jail again.”
“Okay. Marybeth wants to go see that space odyssey movie, that 2001. I told her that me an’ Seymour would take her there when she got off. Maybe he’ll relax a little goin’ out.”
“Maybe he likes redheads,” I added.
—
Fearless dropped me off at my house and I drove to Pink’s to meet Melvin. He was sitting out front at a wooden picnic table with two chili dogs and a paper tub of cheese-and-chili fries. Melvin was always early if the meeting place offered liquor or food, earlier still if they served both.
“You hungry, Easy?” he asked when I settled across from him.
“Not really, Melvin. Every time I think about eating I wonder if this is gonna be my last meal and then I lose my appetite.”
The top cop grinned and bit into a chili dog.
“That other guy we shot died,” he said. “Doctor said it was shock that killed him. Can you imagine that? Here you can take the bullet but you can’t survive the scare.”
“Two dead men,” I said, “four if you count Boughman and Brown. It’s a regular Roarin’ Twenties out here.”
“The prosecutor told Gregory Chalmers, the brain of the three, that he could try him for the murder of his partners; said that the fact that they were in the act of the commission of a felony, a kidnapping at that, meant first-degree murder and a death sentence. Greg asked for witness protection so we knew we got ahold of something.”
“Has he said anything yet?”
Melvin put down the nub of his dog and gave me a hard stare.
“You and me are friends,” he said. “You’ve done me a good turn here and there and I respect you. I do. And I know that people in my department plow black men like you into the dirt every day. I often wonder how you can even stand it. But even with all that, why should I share sensitive internal department intelligence with you?”
“Because, Melvin, I will open doors that you don’t even know are there. Because I’m better at what I do than anybody you got on your team.”
He popped the nub in his mouth and picked up the second dog before he was through chewing.
“Chalmers says that Stapleton was in charge of taking mob money and moving it out the country,” Melvin said. “But the Cinch was losing power with the men he worked for, and so instead of moving the money he decided to rob Boughman and run. Boughman was setting up a meeting to trade the cash for diamonds. Boughman was worried about Eugene so he hired muscle, John Brown, for protection. The Cinch said he had an in and so he brought Chalmers and his men in on the deal. They’d kill both Boughman and Brown.”
“So then what happened?”
“The four of them were waiting for Boughman at the meeting place but he never showed up and then, the next morning, Boughman and the bodyguard turned up dead and there was no money anywhere. The eastern mob puts out a notice on the Cinch and so, instead of retiring to Rio, he’s running around looking to save his ass. That’s why his men were on you. Because he thought he could get a line through Seymour.”
“So Stapleton’s still in Los Angeles,” I said as if I didn’t already know.
“He was when he sent Chalmers after you.”
“Who gave Stapleton the wrong address?”
“That’s not clear.”
“But it’s enough to get my boy off the hook,” I concluded.
“It might could be,” Suggs half-agreed.
“It is,” I countered.
“It would be if we could lay our hands on Stapleton and he corroborated Chalmers’s testimony. But you know that man is in the wind searching for the mob’s millions, and we still don’t know what part the kid might have played.”
“He’s just a college kid,” I said. “There’s no connection between him and mob money.”
“The prosecutor needs a man to pin the charges on. They wouldn’t even call Chalmers to the stand unless they were sure it was going to pay off.”
I weighed the benefit of telling Melvin that I had a line on the Cinch; that I’d met with the man and had his phone numbers. I could set him up for a fall, free my client, and move to a new house with numbers the bad men couldn’t calculate.
But from what he was saying there was no solid proof on Stapleton. As a matter of fact Gregory Chalmers’s account gave the man an alibi. And even if he could get something on the Cinch, Melvin couldn’t promise that he’d put him out of commission; he couldn’t keep that man from plotting my demise from his prison cell. Suggs would make me all kinds of promises—and believe them too. But in the end Stapleton could make a deal and Seymour might still find himself the only defendant accused of murder.
“So what can I do, Melvin?” I asked. “You know that Seymour is innocent. You know that because this shit is way beyond some burglar killing another burglar.”
“That’s why I’m eating this chili dog,” he said. “I came out here to tell you what’s what because of the work you’ve done. I came out here to see you face-to-face, to tell you that your boy’s got an uphill climb in his future.”
Melvin was my friend but the world we moved in didn’t rate friendship very high. The difference between friends and enemies in our neck of the woods was that a friend said that he was sorry when he had to slip the knife between your ribs.
—
I picked up Feather from Saturday afternoon softball practice at Ivy Prep and took her out for pizza. We talked about how bored she felt waiting for somebody to hit the ball her way and about her coach, the algebra teacher Miss Simon. She loved taking care of Jewelle’s baby and was getting homesick for her own bed.
“Are you okay, Daddy?” she asked me when I pulled into Jackson’s driveway.
“Sure. Why do you ask?”
“I called Juice and he said that when you need to be alone that you might be in trouble and want to protect me.”
“It’s just that I’m keeping really late hours, baby, and I don’t want you home alone or waking up in the middle of the night with nobody there.”
“It’s not about Bonnie and Joguye?”
“They left Los Angeles already,” I said. “Uncle Raymond and Mama Jo took care of that.”
“Joguye’s gonna be safe from those men that want to kill him?”
“Yes he will, but you got to do me a favor, baby.”
“What?”
“You can’t ever mention him or Bonnie to anybody. Okay?”
“Okay. And, Daddy?”
“What?”
“I love you.”
—
The office was empty by the time I got there. It was Saturday but because all three of us were working, Niska did her semi-regular Saturday morning hours. She’d left three pink slips of paper on my desk.
I might need you and Saul’s help in a day or two, Easy, Whisper wrote. From anyone else that might have sounded like a request for a hand moving some boxes. But from Mr. Natly this was a serious business.
Harry got the pictures to the consortium. They want a formal meeting with us next week, Saul said.
Miss Kuroko called, Niska wrote, she said to call her anytime before 8:00 at the office.
—
“Three two nine eight,” she answered. Milo and Loretta had decided that on weekends she’d answer his phone with the last four digits of the number. I’m not really sure why but it didn’t matter to me.
“Hey, Loretta.”
“Easy. How are you?”
“I think you might know better than me.”
“The man called Ducky, John Brown, was, plain and simple, a killer for hire. He went to prison for beating his mother’s boyfriend to death when he was fifteen. He spent six years for manslaughter and came out west. The rest of his life has been spent killing and hurting people for money. He’s never planned any other kind of crime and he doesn’t, or didn’t, ever hurt anyone for personal reasons other than his mother’s boyfriend.”
“What about Boughman?”
“He’s a very bad man,” she said. “I spoke to Adolpho Venturino about him. He once defended Mr. Boughman on a manslaughter charge.”
“Successfully I imagine.”
“The main witness for the prosecution went missing. The others lost their memory. After that, Boughman used Adolpho for everything.”
“Damn.”
“Is that all you needed?” she asked.
“No,” I lamented. “I need addresses, names of friends and business associates, and anything he might be into.”
“You know that he’s dead, right?”
“I do. But often our actions in life go on beyond the grave.”
“I don’t have much. Venturino owes Milo a favor so I asked if he knew an address for Mr. Boughman. He said that his residence was listed as the Hotel Leonardo in Santa Monica but that he also had a wife that no one knew about who has a house in Coldwater Canyon. Her name is Denise Devine.”
“Kids?”
“I don’t know. Boughman only told Adolpho about her because he wanted her taken care of in case he died unexpectedly.”
“Has he gotten in touch with her?”
“He’s gathering the information first. He won’t call before Monday.”
“Give me the address,” I said. “Do you have a phone number too?”
“Yes…but, Easy?”
“Yeah, Lore?”
“These are serious men. They kill people.”
“I’ll be careful.”
“Sometimes careful is staying away.”
“If you took that advice to heart you’d have quit Milo years ago.”
—
I wasn’t sleeping much. That night I didn’t even go home. I smoked my one cigarette and wondered if it was worth it trying to quit when the odds of my survival were so low.
At midnight I called Fearless.
“Hello?” he said.
“How was the movie?”
“Crazy, man. Ape-men and astronauts. Spaceships flyin’ all over and a computer wanna kill ya. And then, at the end, there was this big unborn baby floatin’ out in the stars. Marybeth came home with Seymour. They out back right now tearin’ up the sheets.”
“I appreciate all that you’re doing for me, Fearless. I don’t think I’ll need you tomorrow but Monday morning at eleven we have to go see Joe out at Avett Detention.”
“You the boss, Easy.”
“Thanks, man. You can’t believe how much I appreciate it.”
36
“Hello?” she said with the sleep still in her voice. It was 7:36 in the morning.
“Miss Devine?”
“Yes?” The sleepiness was laced with fear.
I almost hung up the phone. I almost did because I read the story behind Denise’s tones. Her man had not been home for days. He hadn’t called or told her where he was going. She probably had bags packed and ready for a journey he’d promised. Now all she could do was wait for that call telling her that the life she had been living was over.
“Ma’am, I have to talk with you about Mr. Boughman.”
“What is it?” she cried, her voice doubling in volume.
“I have to see you in person.”
“Peter told me never to tell anyone where we lived.”
“I already have the address, ma’am. I just wanted to call first. I didn’t want to show up at your door unannounced.”
“What’s happened to him?”
“I can be to you in forty-five minutes. I promise that I’ll answer every question you have.”
“I don’t know.”
“I can come there now,” I said. “I’m involved in a difficult, um, negotiation and later I can’t promise that I’ll be available.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ted Waters.”
“Where is Peter, Mr. Waters?”
“I can come to your house or not. I can tell you the things you need to know or you can figure them out on your own. Those are your choices, Denise.”
—
I didn’t exactly feel like a dog on the ride from my office into the canyon. Peter Boughman was one of the bad guys, like the men that bound and gagged me and promised a quick death. I didn’t know his woman; maybe he didn’t either. Maybe he thought she was all ignorant when really she chose him because she knew what he was and wanted to share his dirty money while feigning innocence.
Maybe.
—
The Coldwater Canyon address was just a mailbox surrounded by bushes and sapling trees. I pulled off the road as well as I could and picked my way along the slender trail that led from the mailbox up a steep, wooded incline.
I was breathing pretty hard when I came to the clearing maybe a hundred yards up from the road. The right cuff of my green-gray jacket was folded in at just the right angle to keep the snub-nosed .22 from falling out. All I had to do was curve my hand toward the wrist and the pistol would fall into it.
Not the best defense but probably unexpected.
The house was nothing to speak of, boxy and gray with few windows. It would have been a good starter home for a working-class family six or seven blocks deep on the wrong side of the tracks.
I reached for the buzzer but she opened the dull brown door first. Her dress was blood orange in color, loose with two big white pockets over the thighs. Her blond hair was stiff and brittle from too much washing and application of the dye. Maybe her natural color was black and so she had to double bleach before dyeing. But the face was lovely. White skin like some rose petals with red lips that were never far from a kiss. Her eyes were gray like Mouse’s eyes.
The grimace on that fair apparition was something you’d expect to encounter on a mourner coming from the grave.
“You’re black,” she said.
“I can’t deny it.”
“Who are you?”
“Ted Waters.”
“What are you doing here?” She looked around as if she expected my confederates to descend upon her.
“I told you. I came to ask a few questions about Peter Boughman.”
“How did you find this address?” She was not going to let me past the front door.
“I found a note in his room at the Hotel Leonardo.”
The fact and fiction caused a quite lovely knitting mostly above her left eye.
“You’re lying,” she said.
“If you say so. But here I am. Can I come in?”
Denise Devine produced a .25-caliber chrome-plated pistol from the right pocket and pointed it in the general direction of my diaphragm. I could have fallen to my left, grabbed my own gun, and killed her but I’m not the kind of guy who kills lovely young women in the deep woods.
“The gun isn’t necessary,” I said. “I can just leave.”
“Where is Peter?”
“He’s dead.”
Her own diaphragm wanted to genuflect, and when she wavered I snatched the gun from her hand. She grunted and reached for the piece but I held it away—out of her reach.
&nb
sp; “We can stand out here and I’ll answer your questions, Denise. And maybe you can answer one or two of mine.”
“Tell me what happened?” She accepted defeat with dignity. I liked her.
“He was found in a house down in Malibu,” I said. “Someone had shot him in the heart and the eye. Only good thing about it is that he couldn’t have suffered much with either wound.”
“Why? Why would somebody kill Petey? He wouldn’t hurt anybody.” I believed that she believed these words.
“You know what he did for a living, right?”
“He worked for a gambler named Rigby in Gardena. He was a floor manager in a poker parlor.”
That was the story Boughman told.
“Gamblers can be serious people,” I opined, using his lie to soften the blow. “Were you and Peter planning a vacation?”
I got the feeling that she got the feeling that I could read her thoughts.
“Why?”
“Where were you going?”
“He wouldn’t say. He just told me to get a passport and pack, and pack my bags.”
“Doesn’t that sound like he was expecting a windfall?”
“He might have saved the money.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“Is that why you’re here? Are you looking for some money? Is that why you want to come in my house?”
All very good questions. Maybe there was a fortune on the top shelf of the closet or buried under the flagstone before the dull brown door.
“Found money can be good,” I said. “Getting dealt blackjack at a card table or an uncle you never knew about who leaves you a coffee can filled with gold doubloons. But the kinda money Peter was after belonged to some very bad men. And those men are on the warpath.”
The bottle blonde sneered at me. She was trying to make sense of what I was doing at her door, why her man was dead, and if his death meant that she was now in danger.
“I don’t have any money,” she said.
“Well I hope you have some family somewhere because you know you are no longer safe in this house or this city.”
“Why not?”
“Because your man was plotting against people that will kill anyone that gets in their way. Because the money he was after is missing from their pockets and they will not rest until it’s found.”
Charcoal Joe Page 20
