Called by a Panther

by Michael Z. Lewin

  So there it was. Fired.

  And threatened.

  I went outside and studied the street again. Pointlessly.

  I came back in and reread the note.

  It made me angry.

  I sat down and dialed the Frog's number and let it ring thirty times and only gave it up when the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Fourty Seven

  SERGEANT PRISCO APOLOGIZED for being a few minutes early. “It's not as much trouble to park round here as it is downtown,” she said by way of explanation.

  I didn't know what to say. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Great. Thanks. Black. No sugar.”

  That gave me a couple of minutes to get my head together.

  I brought back two mugs. She sat in my Client's Chair. I retreated to my own.

  I fondled my mug like it was a precious thing. I felt bleary, stupid and tired. Anger was giving way to confusion. It didn't help at all that confusion was becoming a way of life.

  “I don't feel very bright,” I said.

  “It must have been a disturbing experience,” she said.

  “What? Oh. Yeah, a bit.”

  “I'll be gentle,” she said. “What?”

  She waited.

  “Oh,” I said. “A joke. Huh.”

  She took a sheet of paper from a zippered case. “I have the report from the officers who attended the incident last night. It seems clear enough, but maybe if I read it to you . . .”

  The written material the police had provided was accurate, if brief. It reminded me of what had happened and I added more detail about Cola Lowis/Monique Seals/Mrs. Ashworth's words before she had pulled the replica gun. But we did not make a lengthy job of it.

  After I signed the statement form I said, “I understand that Ms Lowis has done this kind of thing before.”

  “Yeah, but we've had trouble getting, statements from victims because they don't like to admit how foolish they looked.”

  “It was all over pretty quickly,” I said.

  “Course you might have waited a lot longer for officers to respond to your call if it had happened a couple of hours later.”

  “I don't understand,” I said.

  “Don't you watch the TV in the morning?”

  “Not usually.”

  “So you haven't heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  Ivory Prisco leaned forward. “Those goddamn Scum Fronters went and did it.”

  “What?”

  “They set one off. A bomb.”

  My heart jumped yet again from jog to full sprint.

  “They blew up a government office building on Ohio Street.”

  “Last night?”

  “A little before two. There's a night watchman in intensive care.”

  I was losing the power of speech.

  “People who put bombs around like that just aren't normal, you know?” Ivory Prisco said. “Sure as can be, they were always going to blow something up and I'll tell you this,” Ivory Prisco said. “The whole damn city's going to be after those bastards now.”

  Chapter Fourty Eight

  AS SOON AS IVORY PRISCO left I called the police department. Miller was at his desk. He said, “I don't have any spare time, Al. I nearly didn't take the call,”

  My voice shook. “You've got time for this, Jerry.

  Miller paused. Then he said, “What's that?”

  “I can tell you things about the Scum Front. I've done things for them.”

  “What?”

  “You heard.”

  “What can you tell me? What have you done?”

  “I think I better come down.”

  It felt like I could hear him thinking. Then he said, “O.K. Now.’‘

  I'll be on my way in five minutes,” I said.

  I hung up. I was breathing hard.

  I stood and tried to remember where all the Scum Front bits and pieces were. But I felt faint. I sat down.

  The telephone rang.

  I considered not answering it.

  I went halfway. I picked up the receiver but said nothing.

  “Al? Albert?”

  My woman.

  I said, “Have you heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  “The bastards blew a building up. On Ohio Street. I used to live in a building on Ohio Street.”

  “The radio news said there was an explosion downtown.”

  “They left me a letter this morning. They fired me. They threatened me. And all the time they'd already gone and blown up a building.”

  “The Scum Front did that?”

  I hesitated. “A cop told me they did.”

  “The reporter on the radio said it might be somebody else. They sent a message, but it was about abortion.”

  “What!?”

  ” 'According to reports from senior police officials,' was what the radio said.”

  I tried to speak, but it came out as unintelligible sound.

  “Besides, Al,” my woman said, “you know who one of them is. If they were going to start blowing things up wouldn't they, like, kill you first or something?”

  “I didn't think.”

  “That's what women are for,” she said. It was a comment meant to lead to lighter subjects.

  “I've just made the most colossal mistake,” I said.

  “What's the problem?”

  “I told Jerry Miller.”

  There was a long silence at the other end of the phone.

  “I told him I know things about the Scum Front.”

  “Oh, Al,” my woman said.

  Chapter Fourty Nine

  HOW STUPID IS IT POSSIBLE to be?

  The people with the missing bomb blew up the building on Ohio Street. The Scummies had only “recovered” it because it had been set off by whoever had taken it.

  A mistake in logic of the most elementary kind.

  How could I do that? About something so important?

  Because a cop had told me, and I took it at face value.

  A cop!

  And because I was stressed out.

  And because my life was being changed all around me. Murder dinner parties and commercials and too many clients.

  Because I was being hurried about everything.

  Because it was all too much.

  And because I was plain and simple fucking-A, world-class, mega-death stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Chapter Fifty

  I TOOK MY TIME.

  I tried to plan what I would say.

  It wasn't easy. I didn't want to say anything. But if I didn't go to Miller, he would come to me.

  He might not come in his own body but, oh yes, he would come. In a hundred other bodies, each one dressed in blue and carrying a gun.

  When troubles come, they come not single spies but in battalion.

  When detective panics, he thinks not of now but of lines force-memorized as a child.

  I walked slowly around my rooms. I sought inspiration.

  All I could think of was some form of complete denial. “Oh, just my little joke, Jerry. Sorry if you didn't think it was funny.”

  That would go down a bomb.

  Because I feared he would order a search of my office, I collected all the physical evidence connecting me to the Scum Front. Today's paste-up message and the tape recording I'd made of them were the most damning. I put them in an envelope. I added the hanky.

  On the envelope I wrote, “Keep secure. Hand over only to Albert Samson or his heirs.” I signed it. I sealed it with cellophane tape.

  Then I put that envelope in a bigger, one.

  I found some stamps.

  And my lawyer's address.

  And I left the zip code off. The mail people punish you for that. They take an extra day to deliver. Or maybe a week.

  The phone rang before I left.

  I didn't answer it, but after the noise stopped, I switched my answering machine on.

  Miller left word downstairs that I should be pa
ssed straight through when I arrived.

  I knew the way. I had been to his office often enough. All his offices. Even to his desk, when he first got promoted to detective and was too green and too unimportant to have enclosed space on his own.

  We went back a long way together, did Miller and I. High school kids who didn't grow into the groups we were expected to measure ourselves by. Kids who gravitated toward each other, though black and white didn't mix then even as much as they do now here in the city nicknamed Naptown. Miller and I were two misfits who talked in monosyllables and who, together, took some cars on brief, truly joyful excursions.

  Until we'd taken a turn too fast. I was at the wheel, but it could have been either of us.

  We walked away.

  But we learned that we cared whether we lived or died.

  That certain knowledge further distanced us from the groups— they're organized into gangs these days—that we were expected to hang out with.

  It also led each of us toward the power of words. Reminiscing about joyrides is at first safer but eventually better than the real thing.

  Yes, I'd known Miller for a long time.

  It wasn't the legs that gave out. It was the belly. When I got off the elevator, I turned and ran for the John.

  I got through the door, but not as far as a sink.

  I threw up first on the run. Then standing still, then kneeling.

  Everything in my life was coming back to me. The pressure. My ambitions. It was all lying on the tiles.

  I shook. I turned cold.

  A man with scuffed brown shoes and green checked socks and no cuffs stood somewhere near.

  He said, “There's a mop in the closet by the paper towels.”

  I tried to say, “Thanks.”

  He said, “Amazing! No carrot!”

  Then he left.

  And, as I kneeled, my head began to clear.

  Miller was not just a cop who stood between me and my freedom. He was a guy whose hopes and dreams I knew as well as I knew my own.

  Yes. Yes.

  I stood. I cleaned myself and my mess as best as I could. And then I went to see my buddy.

  Chapter Fifty One

  MILLER STOOD AT HIS DOOR, waiting. He didn't smile. He didn't offer a hand. He was Captain Miller.

  He closed the door behind us.

  “Trouble parking?” he said.

  “Yeah, but that's not why I'm late.”

  He looked at my shirt. “Why are you late?”

  “Because I've made the most awful mistake.”

  He did not speak or move.

  I said, “Do you have a tape recorder going here?”

  “No. Do you want one?”

  “No, I don't want one. And I don't know whether to believe you.”

  “I wouldn't lie to you.”

  “Yes you would.”

  He smiled slightly. He opened a desk drawer.

  I looked.

  A tape recorder was running. The handwritten label on the cassette read, “Albert Samson: Scum Front,” and gave the date.

  “Kill it,” I said.

  He turned the machine off.

  “The tape,” I said. I put out a hand.

  “Why?”

  “In case it's voice-activated.”

  “Ah.”

  He took the tape from the machine and passed it to me.

  “You swear on your mother's Bible and Wendy's wedge that there's no other recording of any kind going on here?”

  “I swear. You didn't give me time to set up anything cute. And besides,” he said, “you're a friend. Why should I need more than one?”

  I pulled a chair over to the window behind his desk. I sat and put my feet up on the sill.

  Miller turned his own chair and we shared the view of the Market Square Arena parking lot.

  “I thought about trying to bullshit you,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?” He waited.

  “They came to me, Jerry. I was just sitting at home, minding my own business, and they came to me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because of the bomb they left in the Merchants Bank Building.”

  “The one that wasn't there?”

  “Somebody took it. They wanted me to get it back.”

  “Why you, Al?”

  My woman had asked the same question. I repeated what I had been told, “Because I work alone.”

  Miller said, “So what happened?”

  “They said if I didn't look for their bomb, then nobody would.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “They said I was the only chance of keeping whoever took it from using it and maybe killing somebody.” I turned to him. “I hear there was a guy hurt in the explosion.”

  “Yeah. They don't think he'll die, though.”

  “Well, that's something.”

  “So why didn't you come to me?” he said.

  “They were very edgy. They were looking for any sign that I was going to the cops. They followed me around and threatened me. They've got a lot to lose if they're caught and they needed to convince themselves they could trust me. I don't know. Yes, I could have come to you and set them up. But finding the missing bomb seemed more important. So I didn't. Instead I made them promise they wouldn't leave any new bombs while I was on the case.”

  “And?”

  “I got a message this morning saying they had 'recovered' their 'missing package' and no longer required my services. I thought they'd found it and set it off.”

  We sat, quiet, for a moment. I knew what he was going to ask. I said, “I can't tell you who they are. Not yet.”

  “I don't believe this,” he said.

  “I'm sorry.”

  “You're protecting them? Terrorists? Do you know what's going to happen to you?”

  “They didn't blow the building up. The people who took the missing bomb—”

  “How the hell do you know that?” He shouted at me, though he was speaking barely louder than a whisper.

  I said, “I know these people now. I don't believe they did it.”

  “And who did?”

  “I don't know.”

  “You been working on it . . . how long?”

  “A few days.”

  “Do you have any leads? ”

  “I have a lead.”

  “And are you going to tell me about that? ”

  “No. I give it to you and it goes out of control.”

  He shook his head. “I don't understand,” he said.

  “What don't you understand?”

  He swiveled to face me. “Do you seriously expect me to let you walk out of here?”

  “I think you should,” I said.

  “Why's that?”

  “Because if you don't, my lead will evaporate and you won't have any idea how to get to the people who set off the bomb.”

  “Because you won't tell us what you know?”

  “I won't tell you anything.”

  “Even though you'll spend the rest of your life in jail.”

  I shrugged.

  “Jesus God!” he said. He shook his head. “What kind of world do you think you live in, Al? Don't you have any idea what you're playing with here? You'll be lucky if all that happens is that you go to jail and they take your license. Terrorism carries the death penalty in this state, you know.”

  “Am I a terrorist now?”

  “If they don't get somebody else they can prosecute.”

  “Well, all I know is that I have a good lead on the person who picked up the bomb from the Merchants Bank Building.”

  “It's a good lead now? A minute ago it was just a lead.”

  “I believe I know someone who can virtually identify the person who took the bomb.”

  “Virtually identify? What does 'virtually identify' mean in English? Does it bear any relationship to what I understand by the concept of identification?”

  “It should.”

  “And I'm supposed to let you walk out of here?”

  “I t
hink that's your best bet.”

  “And I am supposed to carry the can if you come up empty?”

  “Jerry,” I said, “did you tell anybody that I was coming in?”

  “Of course I did,” he said.

  “Your secretary maybe. But did you tell anybody why? What I said on the phone?”

  He sighed. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “I didn't think you'd find the atmosphere of fourteen guys with the devil in their eyes and their guns up your nose conducive to constructive communicative intercourse.”

  “And you also didn't think—after all the help you've given me over the years—that you should share a chance to crack the biggest case of the decade.”

  He said nothing.

  “You haven't run out of ambitions, have you? You think you might make a pretty damned good Chief of Police, if anybody ever decided to give a black guy a shot at it. Don't you?”

  “I'm what you might call a dark horse,” he said.

  I laughed.

  “What you laughing at, man?”

  “I'm laughing because until just then I wasn't absolutely sure you didn't have another tape recorder running.”

  He laughed too.

  We both laughed.

  And then I put my feet back on the floor and walked out.

  Chapter Fifty Two

  IT WAS LIKE BEING BORN again. My brain and body were free. In the elevator I wanted to skip down the stairs. I wanted to sing.

  How the woman with the tag that read “Lt. Sheryl Turk” would have taken an unrehearsed rendition of “The First Day of the Rest of My Life,” I didn't know.

  But I couldn't keep from saying something. The idea of a song reminded me. I said, “You know, there's an Indy singer named Pat Webb who thinks Lawrence Township ought to be renamed 'Larry.' “

  She looked at me.

  “To make it more casual and friendly and inviting.”

  “Do I know you?” she asked. But the doors opened and I made my escape.

  There are public telephones in the entrance foyer at the police department. I used one to try the Frog's number again.

  No answer.

  When I retrieved my quarter I remembered a cop Miller told me about once. This guy opens all the phone change-return trays every morning and scoops them for unclaimed coins. At least he did until a buddy filled one with ketchup.