The Complete Matt Jacob Series

by Klein, Zachary;

  I carefully scouted for Clifford or his shadows before I pulled the car into a spot up the block from Kelly’s address. The parking space afforded a view of his first-floor door and two of his small bay front windows. I rejected the idea of a joint, instead smoked a cigarette while I thought about getting into the apartment. Since light facial bruises still peeked out from behind my large sunglasses, I couldn’t pass for Fuller Brush.

  I was surprised by the extent I needed to work. My desire to search Kelly’s apartment was less a function of potential discovery, more a release of pent-up energy. By the time I jammed the butt into the ashtray it didn’t matter. There was always the possibility of finding something the cops had overlooked. Something like Blue.

  The thought had me fingering my shoulder holster. I didn’t plan to shoot, probably wouldn’t even break his hands. But until I had him in my sights, it was possible he had me in his. I wanted to be prepared.

  A slight rustle to the bay window’s shade caught my attention. I took off my sunglasses, sank low behind the dashboard, and stared. I waited but nothing moved. I wondered whether my eyes had deceived, seeing perhaps the movement of a cat on the small porch. I sat up, but the shade on the other bay window shook, so I slid back down. Then the shade cracked open; someone was spying from within. I stayed very still as, almost imperceptibly, the shade closed. Now I fondled the gun, not the holster.

  As if on cue the door opened. I felt my adrenaline rise, but a different color and gender than the one I expected slipped out onto the porch. It wasn’t Blue. A tall, leggy woman with short red hair and oversized “Gloria Steinem” sunglasses leaned forward and worked the lock. She wore a hip length dark green down jacket and black jeans. The lock took a long moment but finally surrendered. I ducked as she turned my way. After a moment’s hesitation, she zipped up her coat, swiveled in the opposite direction, and casually walked away from the house.

  It hadn’t occurred to me that the apartment might have been re-rented.

  I quieted my interior jeering and tried to figure the next move. But sometimes there is no figuring. Sometimes “action is the only reality,” and this was one of those times. If I hadn’t seen her play hide-and-seek, or fantasized about her difficulty with the lock, I might have gone home. Probably not. I stuffed my cigarettes and watched the woman walk. Her arms swung in easy athletic rhythm as she turned the corner.

  I waited a minute before I traced her steps to the intersection and veered off in a different direction. If I was going to play, I’d play it right. When I finally looked back, the redhead was rounding the far corner onto a thoroughfare in the direction of the neighborhood’s “downtown.” I plotted an alternate route to where I hoped we would meet. For a moment I forgot myself and started to jog but stopped a couple of wheezes later. There was no guarantee that she’d continue on foot. Anyway, I liked to breathe.

  I thought about returning to my car but stayed the course, albeit a good deal slower. Unfortunately, by the time I got to my hoped-for interstice, I thought I’d been too clever by half. The woman was nowhere to be seen. I was more surprised than pleased when, a couple of long minutes later, I spotted her coming from a block I hadn’t anticipated. I crossed the street, climbed an apartment house’s set of concrete stairs, discovered a bench, and waited for her to pass. I lit a cigarette, my patience and planning rewarded as she strolled past the steps. She walked with a relaxed gait though she kept her head cocked, her fists curled. I gave her plenty of time to switch her butt up the block, and me time to quell my detective fantasies. I should have returned to the car but I liked feeling invisible while I watched unsuspecting strangers go about their business. I’d always known that voyeurism had partially instigated my social work career, but hadn’t admitted it until I became a detective. The more things change…

  I last-dragged, flipped my smoke, and stood. I didn’t want my enjoyment to frighten an innocent woman so I stayed far behind as I kept pace. What the hell, I was out of the house and she was moving at a clip I found comfortable. Eventually she entered the large Roman Catholic church near the trolley stop. According to the broken white sign in front, there was another five minutes until Mass.

  Most of me knew my imagination was grasping straws, but I sat on a stoop hidden from the church anyway. It troubled me that she had taken a long and circuitous route. Nothing to see but three-deckers, no apparent reason for her twists and turns. The route might have been chosen to shake a tail. And I might be chosen Man-Of-The-Year. Still, there was no rush; if the lady returned to Kelly’s apartment, I could skip the break-in.

  I was crushing my third cigarette onto the stoop—wishing I’d packed a joint—when a few elderly parishioners straggled out from the tired granite edifice. I watched while people said familiar goodbyes. They were clearly regulars who knew each other well. When everyone was finally gone, with still no sign of my redhead, I called it quits.

  I was starting back to my car when the woman emerged from the church. I kept out of sight as she hesitated before heading up the street toward Kelly’s. I was dismayed. She was homeward bound and I was out of fantasies.

  I watched her turn the corner before I began kicking myself up the block. I had pissed the morning away. By the time I got to the corner the woman was gone, but I couldn’t guess where. Incompetence shook hands with my annoyance. Cheryl had been able to tail me to Buzz’s twice, but I couldn’t follow an innocent pedestrian without fucking it up.

  I ran to the next corner and saw her jogging in a different direction from Kelly’s block. There had to be a thousand solid reasons for her behavior, but I had a certain amount of professional dignity to restore. Despite rib ache and shortness of breath, I followed her. Followed until I watched her slow to a walk, and let herself into a three-flat five or six blocks from where we originally began. I gave her plenty of time to settle in or come back out before I walked past the house. I glanced at the address, turned, and aimed for my car.

  Kelly’s block was very quiet: no moving cars, no people. No Clifford. I sat behind the wheel smoking the roach in my ashtray until my ache retreated into a tolerable soreness. A part of me felt guilty for wasting the morning, another part kept returning to the woman’s behavior. I stared at the duplex. The appetite for tradecraft was gone, but my guilty frustration needed fixing. If I broke into Kelly’s, I could tell myself I’d done what I’d intended.

  I entered through the back door into the kitchen, knowing instantly I’d made the right decision. The place was stuffy, with dirty dishes piled high in the sink. Kelly’s bleak apartment was dark and I almost flicked on the light before changing my mind. No need to disturb the cockroaches.

  The redheaded woman didn’t live here, no one did. The living room was a total mess. Books, tapes, and videos were haphazardly strewn about the floor. The beat-up electrical spool that had been used for a coffee table was piled high with pamphlets. It was evident the place had been tossed. Not exactly a surprise. The police weren’t known to clean up if no one was expected to return. Let the landlord worry.

  I methodically pored through the mess, intent on my original goal. Whoever Kelly was, whatever he had been, he was not an easy take. The books were primarily hate literature: Did Six Million Really Die? The Plot Against Christianity, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and the like. Then, a sprinkling of unexpected titles. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, an anthology of Irish poetry, Moby Dick, and a huge book on the history of Ireland. To my surprise they looked as worn as the others. He’d probably bought them used. The tapes were a mix of porn and hate flicks. It surprised me the cops hadn’t pilfered the porn.

  I kicked my way through the crap into the bedroom only to be greeted with more of the same. Kelly’s dresser had been emptied, all but the bottom drawer left on the floor. Someone had dropped everything onto the bed. I pushed a space clear, sat, and started to go through a pile of stenciled hate shirts. I stopped pawing once I got to his underwear.

  I started back to the living room to collect
a hate sampling for Simon. On my way out of the bedroom I mindlessly stooped to push the still filled bottom drawer back into the bureau. The drawer refused to budge. I wondered why the cops had left it that way. I tried pulling but ran into resistance in that direction as well. At first I thought the wooden runners were broken, but when I squeezed my hand behind the back they were intact. I tried to quick-jerk the drawer out but failed. Frustrated, I stuck my hand inside the drawer, felt around, found nothing. If something had been there, it was gone now.

  I started to gather the stuff for Simon but found myself drawn to the book of Irish poetry I’d noticed in the living room. I had once given a similar book to my first wife, Megan. She had slashed it into sections the time she destroyed every gift I had ever given her.

  I scanned the front of the book for a particular poem but didn’t find it. Didn’t even finish looking. The moment the paper slipped onto the floor, I forgot poetry, forgot Megan. The note was dated the previous year, its content a seductive invitation. The note was unsigned but contained an address.

  The same address I had just left.

  Back in my car I sat struggling with an image of Sean Kelly leafing through poetry after a long day robbing armored trucks and rubbing shit on shules. I also had trouble believing the redheaded snoop an Avenger groupie. I wondered how she hooked up with Kelly. Everything I was discovering about my man Sean chipped at the stereotypical image of an ignorant, racist Jew-baiter. Blue, I understood. Fang and the rest of the khakis, I understood. But Kelly was slinking further away, not closer. The facets of his life that fueled Blue’s resentment and jealousy continued to ignite my professional interest.

  I was pleased with my morning’s haul, but the pleasure didn’t send me home blind and giddy. As I drove down the alley past the rear of my building I saw the door to my office slightly ajar. I always locked the door.

  My pleasure plummeted through the gray gravel. Fear has a way of doing that. I kept driving until I came out the alley’s end all the while answering the Isley Brothers. I was gonna find out who was making love to my old lady. I parked the car and skulked into the building’s front entrance accompanied by the sound of a thumping heart. I knew whose. When I got downstairs I secured the gun in my left hand, quietly unlocked the door with my right, inhaled deeply, and dove onto the living room floor arms outstretched and ready to fire. My week-long body pain was dispatched and forgotten. Fear has a way of doing that too.

  Washington Clifford showed a lot of clean white teeth across his broad, polished, ebony face. Sitting comfortably on my couch, feet on the coffee table, he didn’t stop eating from my familysize bag of Fritos. “For someone as sophisticated as yourself, you sure do keep a bimbo’s refrigerator,” he said holding up the bag. “Why don’t you put your little shooter back where it belongs and try your hind legs? You look like a whale out of water laying down there.”

  “Maybe I like diving into empty pools,” I said without moving.

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” he said stuffing his mouth. “But you ain’t gonna shoot me and it’s hard having a friendly conversation while you’re kissing floor.”

  I slowly stood, shook my head to his generous offer of Fritos, stuck the gun away, and sat on the recliner. I didn’t put my feet up. “I’m not used to friendly conversations that begin before I’m here.”

  “I tipped you to company,” Clifford said grinning over the crinkling of the bag. “Anyway, I’m not most people. Most people wouldn’t consider blowing you away for not being where you’re supposed to be.”

  My fear hadn’t dissipated, but the hurt in my body was finding its way back. The pleasure, though, was nowhere to be found. Some feelings are just more fleeting than others. “Okay, Massa, sir! What do I owe for breathing?”

  Clifford shook his big head. “Always running your mouth.” He pulled his legs off the table, grunted to his feet, and lumbered over to my chair. He wore a suit but you could tell he did serious time humping gym iron. He stood over me, one hand hanging onto the Fritos. Before I could ask him to save me a few, his other hand slapped me hard across the face. I felt a tiny warm wet trickle where his ring caught the corner of my mouth, but didn’t move a hair until Clifford was back across the room.

  “I’m glad this is a ‘friendly’ conversation,” I said, daring to reach into my back pocket for a handkerchief.

  “I mean to get your attention.”

  I pressed the handkerchief up against my mouth. “Next time, all you got to do is ask.”

  “What did you say? I can’t hear none too good when you have your mouth full of linen.”

  I moved my hand. “I said you got my attention, Massa!”

  Clifford shook his head. “You can’t help it, can you? I could turn your face into a rotten mango and you’d still spit some wise-ass.”

  I put my palms up. “It’s a nervous reaction, that’s all. You know me, Wash, no self-control.”

  Clifford frowned. “The Wash I don’t know about, the self-control I do.”

  My gut froze as he reached behind the couch, lifted up my gym bag, and put it on the table between us. I tried to wipe the wooden smile from my bleeding face and sit quietly but I failed at both. “Not mine, got it on a case I was working.”

  “Then you wouldn’t have any objection to me taking it, would you, Jacobs?”

  “Of course not. Planned on turning it in myself the next time I was Downtown. It’s Jacob, without the ‘s’, Wash. We’ve been through that routine a couple of times.”

  Clifford shook his head and stood. I knew what was coming. Maybe if he hit me enough he wouldn’t bust me. Or maybe I should just shut the fuck up. This time he grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pulled me out of the chair. He hesitated, and for a second I hoped he’d taken pity at the sight of my fucked-up face.

  He had. This time he tried putting his fist out my back. Through my belly. He let go of my shirt and I tumbled back onto the chair, tears involuntarily dribbling from my eyes.

  “It always comes to this with you,” he complained from the couch.

  “I’m sorry,” I grunted while I wiped my eyes. Washington Clifford was not the type to respect a grown man who cries. “Next time I’ll have more food in the refrigerator.”

  “I’m hoping there will be no next time.”

  He was hoping? When the queasiness in my stomach became manageable I asked, “What are you doing here?”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “Where? And who’s on first?”

  “Buzz’s, a rumble, now Kelly’s. That’s where.” He smiled but the mean never left. “Who is on first,” he added softly.

  The break-in hadn’t restored my professional pride, after all. I wallpapered my face with an ear-to-ear grin. “That’s good, Wash…Mr. Clifford.”

  “That’s all right, Jacobs. Anybody as intimate with my fist as you can call me Wash.”

  “Thanks. You can call me Jacobs. I’m working for Roth.” He must have known; he knew everything.

  “What exactly are you doing for Roth? And I mean exactly.”

  “My job is to investigate Kelly and the White Avengers. Exactly.”

  “What have you discovered, Jacobs? Exactly.”

  “Well the Avengers are now led by…”

  “I don’t give a fuck about the Avengers. What have you got on Kelly?”

  “Very little,” I said earnestly. “Seems like he started as a thief, graduated to armored cars, saw the light and formed the Avengers.”

  Clifford folded his arms across his double-barreled chest. “What did you find in his apartment?”

  “Nothing. I looked through his crap but came up empty. Unless you count the half dozen hate pamphlets and tapes I scored for Roth. I got so happy when I saw your hello in the alley, I left them in the car.” I waited for him to ask about the redheaded woman but he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t know about the note I’d found either. Maybe he wasn’t omnipotent.

  “Why did you go back into his apartment a second time?
”

  In the excitement of discovering the note I’d returned to the car without the literature. “Look, Wash, if you know I went in a second time, you also know why. I walked out without the shit, that’s all.”

  Clifford stared through me as if I wasn’t there. I could only hope. Finally he grunted and shifted position on the couch. “What are you holding back, shamus? You gave that up too easy.”

  I touched my face. “Only easy for one of us, Wash. And I still don’t know why you’re here. You already know everything that I do. We’re not covering any new ground.” I paused for a psychotic break. “Your wife out of town?”

  Clifford stood as I tried to guess which part of my body was going to hurt next. But to my great surprise and greater relief he only grabbed the gym bag. “Jacobs, as much as I think PIs are lower than dog shit, I figure you for smart. Not real bright, but smart. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.” From here on in, as long as he stayed out of beating range, I was gonna agree with everything.

  “Well, it’s not smart to lie to me.”

  I considered telling him about the redhead. Even considered telling him about the note. But like the man said, I wasn’t too bright. “Why the fuck should I lie? All I’m doing is collecting information about a group of racist, Jew-hating punks. The job has less glamour than a divorce gig. Why the hell would I lie?”

  He didn’t answer my question. “What are your plans?”

  “I’m going to behave myself until you’re gone, then I’m going to roll a big fat joint and thank my Maker for letting me live.”

  Clifford closed his eyes and spoke in a measured tone. “What are your goddamn work plans?”