Homicide Related

by Norah McClintock

  Lorraine.

  She was dead, and for the first time ever Dooley felt some regret with regard to her. Maybe it was because he was older. Maybe it was because he was straight. Maybe it was all that bullshit therapy that they made him sit through. But he felt—too late—that maybe he had a sliver of insight into her, not that it was going to do him any good. It was too late for that.

  Because someone had killed her.

  And then there was Jeffie. Also dead. After being tortured. Why? By whom?

  He knew what the cops were thinking: Dooley’s uncle knew Jeffie. Jeffie had drug connections. Dooley’s uncle could have got the drugs from Jeffie that had ended up in Lorraine’s arm. Dooley had even managed to develop his own theory on how that could have happened. Maybe his uncle had run into Jeffie down there while he was on his way to or from a meeting with Larry Quayle and Jeffie was contacting his pizza-number guy. Maybe his uncle had arranged to meet Jeffie there again that time he was supposed to have been at Larry Quayle’s office but wasn’t. Yeah. And he could see Jeffie assuming that this cop from his past worked there now, maybe in security. Theory: Dooley’s uncle had bought drugs from Jeffie and then had offed him to get rid of any loose ends.

  But then why did they want to test Dooley for DNA? That must mean that they’d eliminated his uncle as Jeffie’s killer.

  Or had they?

  What if they’d found two specimens—his uncle’s and someone else’s? He thought about all the questions Randall had asked him. What if they thought that Dooley had been in on it with his uncle?

  Dooley shook his head. That couldn’t be right. Even assuming he could imagine his uncle killing Jeffie—or anyone else, for that matter—he couldn’t imagine him doing it with someone else. Why take the risk?

  Jesus, listen to yourself, Dooley.

  Someone killed Jeffie.

  Maybe the guys he owed money to.

  Or … What about those pictures?

  The non-existent pictures—the ones Jeffie said he wished he’d taken.

  Think, Dooley.

  Jeffie had said he’d seen his downtown guy out behind Jay-Zee’s. He’d said the guy had been with someone, but he hadn’t said who. He’d said the guy hadn’t seen him. He’d said he wished he’d taken pictures. And he’d been dancing around out there on the sidewalk the whole time he was telling it, jazzed, excited about getting Dooley’s money back and even more—enough to move back down east. This had been on Monday—the day after he’d seen something on TV. According to Teresa, he’d been watching the news. The late news. What on earth had he seen on the late news to make him dance like that?

  Dooley had watched the news late that Sunday night. But the only thing he remembered about it was Lorraine’s face and that he’d been glad that Beth wasn’t around to make the connection between that and the woman she’d seen outside Dooley’s school.

  Jeannie had also seen Lorraine’s face that night and heard her name. It had reminded her that she felt like strangling Dooley’s uncle.

  But what about Jeffie?

  Jeffie had seen something, too, something to do with his downtown guy, his guy in the gold building. Jeffie had seen an opportunity. What?

  How could a person sleep with all those questions, all those fears, running through his head?

  But he did. He must have, because he woke with a jolt. It had been right there the whole time, practically staring him in the face. He spent an hour staring at his ceiling, his heart racing, trying to decide what to do. Finally he got up, pulled out a notebook, and started to write.

  Twenty

  Dooley was up early the next morning—too early. Offices don’t open until nine o’clock. By nine o’clock, Dooley would be on his way from homeroom to the first class of the day. Either that or he’d get marked late, and Mr. Rektor would be on him about it if he did, ready to make a federal case of it. He thought about asking Jeannie for a late note, but to do that, he’d either have to tell her the truth—which was far too complicated and, anyway, he didn’t want to have to explain all about Jeffie, especially since she’d helped Teresa—or he’d have to lie. Dooley didn’t want to start lying to Jeannie.

  He stuffed a thick envelope into his backpack and headed off to school, making one stop on the way at a doughnut shop where he fed two quarters into a pay phone and tried the number in the self-help book again—and ended up again in voice mail.

  At five to ten, in the five-minute period between classes, Dooley stepped out onto the playing field behind the school and called the phone number for the company that sounded like a law firm in the gold building downtown. He punched in the four-digit extension number and, shit, found himself in Ronald D. Malone’s voice mail. He tried again. Voice mail again. And again. Still voice mail. Fuck, fuck, fuck. One last time.

  “Ron Malone,” said the same rich, smooth voice that was on the voice mail message—a voice that bothered Dooley because there was something familiar about it. “How can I help you?”

  Dooley drew in a deep breath.

  “Hello?” Ron Malone said.

  “Yeah, hi,” Dooley said.

  “May I ask who this is?”

  “Jeffrey Eccles,” Dooley said.

  There was silence on the other end of the phone, just a second or two, but enough that when Ron Malone said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know any Jeffrey Eccles,” Dooley was pretty sure he was lying.

  “Sure you do,” Dooley said. “We did some business.”

  “Look, I don’t know who you are or why you’re calling—”

  “I can give the pictures to you or I can give them to the police,” Dooley said.

  “Pictures?” Ron Malone said, confused or managing to sound that way. “I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  Jesus, did he or didn’t he? Was Dooley wrong about the ridiculously easy-to-remember phone number? Had Jeffie being doing business with someone else who worked in that building? All those companies with all those offices, Dooley bet there was someone else, maybe two or more people, who worked for different companies in the building and had different phone numbers but the same four-digit extension. He could think of only one way to find out.

  “You have sixty seconds,” he said. “You call this number if you want to talk.” He rattled off his cell phone number. “If I don’t hear from you, I call the cops. I’m sure they’ll be interested in what you were doing back behind Jay-Zee’s. I hope you’ve got a good story.” He pressed end and stood there, holding his cell phone, wondering if he had done the right thing.

  He counted to ten.

  Eleven.

  Twelve.

  Thirteen.

  His cell phone rang. He checked the read-out.

  “You know where to find me?” Ron Malone said.

  “Yeah. The gold building downtown.”

  “There’s a food court under it. Meet me there at noon, in front of the sushi counter. We can talk.”

  Dooley bet the food court would be jammed with office workers at noon—probably thousands of them. How would he recognize the guy? But he couldn’t ask—he’d just told him he had pictures. If he had pictures, he should know what Ronald Malone looked like.

  “I heard there’s a restaurant at the top of that building where you can get a twenty-five-dollar hamburger. How about we meet up there? I’ll even make the reservations.”

  “I think I can handle that,” Ron Malone said. “Noon. Be there.”

  Dooley closed his cell phone and headed back inside. Warren was just about to go into math class when Dooley found him.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said.

  “But the bell—”

  “Warren, I need a favor.”

  Warren glanced over his shoulder into the math classroom. Dooley saw the math teacher—the same one Dooley had—up at the board. The teacher glanced at Warren before zeroing in on Dooley.

  “I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important,” Dooley said. “And there’s no one else I can ask.”
r />   Warren cast a nervous glance into the classroom, but he followed Dooley down the hall to the boys’ bathroom where Dooley scrawled some numbers on a piece of paper and told Warren what he wanted him to do.

  “You might get Rektor up your ass for skipping—”

  “I’ll tell my mom I had an allergy attack,” Warren said. “I’ll get her to write a note.”

  Just like that. Without even asking what it was all about. Dooley didn’t understand Warren, but he sure was glad that he knew him.

  Dooley left first, taking the back stairs and cutting across the athletic field to the bus stop.

  Dooley squirmed as he rode the elevator up to the top floor of the office tower. People got on and off every other floor or so, and Dooley noticed that none of them was dressed in jeans and sweatshirts. He started to worry about what it would be like at that restaurant with the twenty-five-dollar hamburgers. What if some snooty maitre d’ wouldn’t even let him in? He’d look like a complete idiot.

  He got off the elevator on the top floor. The entrance to the restaurant was right there. He crossed to it and approached a man in a black suit who was standing behind a little podium that had a big book open on it with names written in it. The man inspected Dooley’s jacket and sweatshirt and jeans before looking at Dooley. He waited for Dooley to speak.

  “I’m meeting Mr. Ron Malone,” Dooley said. “He has a reservation.”

  The man in the black suit took another look at Dooley’s jacket and sweatshirt and jeans. Then he raised a hand and flagged a waiter. The man in the black suit told him Malone’s name, and the waiter looked at Dooley’s jacket and sweatshirt and jeans.

  “Follow me,” he said.

  Dooley followed the waiter past the maitre d’ and across a big room filled with tables and booths and with floor-to-ceiling windows on two sides. The tables weren’t all jammed together like they were in most restaurants Dooley had been in. They were spaced out so that the people who were eating could talk to each other without the people at the neighboring tables hearing everything they said. They had white linen table cloths, and there were delicate little flower arrangements in the middle of each one. The waiter led Dooley toward a booth on the far side of the restaurant. Dooley stopped and stared at its occupant—a man with wavy black hair, generous lips, and piercing blue eyes. He was wearing a charcoal gray suit with a pale blue shirt and dark-blue-patterned tie. His right hand was wrapped around a glass of water, and Dooley could see that he’d had a manicure, either that or he spent more time on his nails than most girls did. He looked up at Dooley and held him with his eyes, his lips curled into the semblance of a smile. It was obvious he was loaded, with money, with confidence, with balls. Jesus, and this was the guy Jeffie had tried to snow?

  The waiter had reached the booth and turned to locate Dooley. Dooley continued on to the table. The waiter stood aside so that he could slide onto the upholstered bench across from Malone. He set a menu down in front of Dooley.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” Malone said as the waiter withdrew. He slid out of the booth and motioned for Dooley to do the same. “This way,” he said, indicating a door off the main dining room.

  Dooley hesitated.

  “You come with me or you walk away,” Malone said.

  “Your choice.”

  Dooley followed him. The door opened onto a corridor.

  “In there,” Malone said.

  There was the men’s room.

  The place was deserted. Opposite a row of urinals were four stalls. But these were more like little rooms, with walls that went right down to the floor and right up to the ceiling.

  “The one at the end,” Malone said.

  It was the wheelchair-accessible stall. Malone nudged Dooley inside. He came in with him and shut the door.

  “Hey,” Dooley said.

  “Strip,” Malone said.

  “What?”

  “You called me and said you were Jeffrey Eccles,” Malone said. “That’s that kid who was found murdered. I read all about it. He was known to the police. It said in the paper he was a drug dealer.”

  “You said you didn’t know him. If that’s true, what are we—”

  “Don’t give me that shit,” Malone said. “I’m here, aren’t I? But how do I know you’re not a cop? How do I know this isn’t some half-assed cop sting operation?”

  “Sting operation?”

  “How do I know you’re not trying to set me up?”

  “I’m not a cop,” Dooley said.

  “Did the cops send you here?”

  “No.”

  “Prove it,” Malone said. “Strip. No strip, no talk.”

  Shit.

  Dooley pulled off his jacket. He yanked his T-shirt and sweatshirt up over his head.

  “Okay?” he said.

  “The rest of it,” Malone said.

  Dooley pulled off his boots. He unbuckled his belt and then hesitated.

  “Go on,” Malone said. It seemed to Dooley that he was enjoying himself.

  Dooley kept his eyes on Malone’s as he unzipped his jeans and lowered them. Malone went through Dooley’s pockets, paying special attention to Dooley’s cell phone. He seemed to know what he was looking for and he obviously didn’t find it because he handed the phone back to Dooley, who stuffed it into his jeans pocket. Finally Malone said, “Let’s have lunch.”

  He leaned against the door of the stall and watched as Dooley got dressed again. He didn’t even check before he opened the door and strode out. Thank God there was no one else in the room.

  Dooley followed Malone back to the booth.

  Malone slid into his seat. Dooley saw that a drink had arrived for him while they were in the men’s room. It looked like scotch. A double. Malone took a sip.

  “So,” he said, caressing the glass, “why am I talking to you? What do you want?”

  Dooley looked at the amber liquid in Malone’s glass. He wished he had a drink, too, to take the edge off.

  “I want what Jeffie wanted,” he said.

  Malone looked evenly at him for a moment. Dooley wondered what kind of business he was in. A cold one, he decided, something to do with money and all the crap you had to do to make a lot of it.

  “I believe you said something about pictures,” Malone said.

  Dooley nodded.

  “Do you have them with you?”

  “First we make a deal,” Dooley said. “Then you get the pictures.”

  “In other words, you don’t have them with you.” Malone smiled at Dooley. “There are no pictures.” He said it smoothly, as if there was no question about it.

  “Yeah, there are,” Dooley said. “Jeffie told me he saw you back behind Jay-Zee’s. He took pictures.”

  “Jeffrey was mistaken about seeing me,” Malone said. “And since he was mistaken, there are no pictures. He admitted as much to me.”

  He came across like a smart guy, but there was just one thing.

  “If you weren’t there like Jeffie said you were, and if there are no pictures, why did you agree to meet me?”

  Malone picked up his glass, swirled the liquid around in it, and took another sip.

  “I was curious. I knew Jeffrey slightly. I think you know how. He knew that I have money. He knew I liked to enjoy myself. Instead of being discreet as someone in his business should be, he tried to take advantage of me. He tried to blackmail me, if you can believe it. Then I read in the paper that he died.”

  “He was murdered,” Dooley said.

  “And the next thing I know, you pop out of the woodwork. I wanted to see what you would do, how you would play it. I wondered what kind of person imagined he could squeeze money out of me with such a ridiculous bluff.”

  Yeah, confidence and balls.

  “Well, I guess now you know, huh?” Dooley said.

  “You’re wasting my time,” Malone said.

  “I sure don’t want to do that. So maybe I should be a good citizen and go have a talk with the police.”

&
nbsp; Malone laughed.

  “You think that’s funny?” Dooley said.

  “Forgive me, but you don’t seem the type to go running to the police.”

  “Yeah, well, I didn’t used to be. But now I try to do the right thing.”

  “Like blackmailing me.”

  “Like telling the cops that right before he died, Jeffie went to see you—to try and blackmail you, just like you said.”

  “He was bluffing. He was an idiot.”

  “He was murdered. And I think he was murdered because he tried to blackmail you. Okay, so maybe he didn’t have pictures. But he did see you behind Jay-Zee’s. He saw who you were with.”

  “You think I killed Jeffrey?

  “You have an alibi for when he was murdered?”

  Dooley didn’t like the way Malone kept smiling at him.

  Was he wrong about this guy?

  “What possible motive would I have for killing Jeffrey Eccles? As I’ve already said, he was mistaken about what he thought he saw.”

  “Was he?” Dooley said. “So it won’t matter to you if I tell the police what Jeffie told me? You’re that sure no one else saw you that night, no one else saw who you were with? You’re sure no one saw your car? You’re sure that if the police start looking into it, they’re not going to find anything? Because one thing I’ve learned about cops, they’re not as dumb as some people think they are. You want to take that risk? Your alibi for that night is solid?”

  A cell phone trilled—not Dooley’s.

  Malone dipped into his jacket pocket.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” he said.

  Dooley snuck a peek at his watch. Right on time.

  “Pizza?” Malone was saying, annoyed now. “You have the wrong number.” A pause. Then louder, pissed now, his sharp eyes even sharper, like knives, so that it wasn’t hard to see him pressing a lit cigarette into warm flesh: “What are you—deaf? I just told you. You have the wrong number.” Dooley felt his belly clench as he watched Malone flip the phone shut and drop it back into his pocket. He wished it was his hand wrapped around that glass instead of Malone’s. He wished he could raise that glass and smash it right across Malone’s face.