Done for a Dime (22 page)

Toby shot a weak smile over his shoulder. “I wouldn’t dream of doing otherwise.”

Reaching the door, he turned the knob and pushed but needed the force of his hip to get the thing open. The blinds on the window rattled. Outside, gazed upon by a half-dozen uniformed men and women assembled at desks beneath the fluorescent lights of the squad room, he searched the various doorways, trying to divine the quickest way out.

Pushing his arms into his jacket sleeves, he made his way down the hallway he hoped led to the lobby. It did. Once there, he found waiting for him a short, powerful, broad-faced woman clutching a small purse to her midriff. Seeing him, she rose from her chair, eyes fierce with sorrow.

“You’re Mr. Carlisle’s son.”

Toby straightened his jacket collar. “Yes, ma’am.”

Her lips flattened against her teeth, almost a grimace, as she blinked away tears. “I am so sorry for your loss. Your father.”

Toby, again, said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“I work at Overlook. I cared after your grandmother when she was there.”

Toby nodded, glancing at the clock. He patted his pockets, checking for his folded-up necktie, his money.

The woman stepped closer. “The police are wrong. Understand? They think my son had something to do with killing your daddy, and that’s wrong. He did not. Doesn’t know who did. It’s the truth, I swear to God in heaven. Please say you understand. Please.” She reached out, took his hand, her grip strong, her eyes not just sad now. Scared, too. “I am so sorry for your loss, a terrible thing. But you can’t let them do this to Arlie. You can’t.”

12

F
erry, at the wheel of the white long-bed van he’d been driving around for weeks, followed Manny as he headed north toward Napa to ditch his car. A winter sun flooded the stark blue sky with buttery light. The air smelled crisp, touched with wood smoke and pine, the sheltering hills to either side of the highway a lush green. It was one of those mornings, Ferry thought, that made you wonder if it hadn’t been created to help you forget the night before.

Manny chose the parking lot for a mall of retail outlet stores not far from the wine train depot, hiding the car among a handful of others belonging to employees who’d already trudged in for the morning shift. When Manny climbed inside the van, Ferry told him they’d be back for his car before the lot was empty again late that night—patrol units would be trolling through, running plates on the cars left behind.

From Napa, they returned south, heading for Sky Valley Storage. Manny sat in his own private realm, curled up inside himself on the van’s passenger side. He’d convened with his works and completed his morning nod before the drive to Napa, hitting that feel-good stride before getting in his car, so this mood couldn’t be blamed on his habit. Must be my company, Ferry thought, fighting a smile. The brooding proved a mixed blessing. The silence was welcome, but without the kid’s usual me-me monologue there was no way to tell how badly his thoughts were bouncing around inside his brain. He just touched his face a lot, especially the puffed-up eye, staring out at the Sunday morning hills like a kid being dragged to church.

Not everyone can kill a man, Ferry thought, let alone do it right—in the back, Christ, an old man. Over a girl the kid had never even talked to. Barely a step up from drowning cats.

Turning into the storage facility’s driveway, Ferry punched in the code and the tall gate shuddered back. Steering the van past the empty aisles to the last row, he turned down and stopped midway to the end. Getting out, he glanced up, saw wisps of white cloud sailing east in a brisk wind. Gusty but clear, he thought. And warm for this early in the day. All things considered, good fire weather. As good as he could hope for this time of year.

The storage space was street-level, full-size, the kind rented by vintage car freaks, antique dealers, gun show vendors. The van blended well enough—Ferry’d bought it at a bankruptcy auction and it still had the plumbing company’s logo on the side. Nobody ever puzzled much over a plumber’s van roaming around, whenever, wherever.

Manny stayed put in the passenger seat as Ferry worked the combination on the padlock. The sliding door rolled up with a howl, slid home on its runners along the ceiling, then rocked a little. Ferry walked up to the driver’s side window, knocked hard, saying through the glass, “Now’s the time.”

Once Manny was inside, Ferry rolled down the door again and switched on the timer for the overhead light. There were a dozen five-gallon plastic buckets in the locker, the kind used for powdered laundry detergent, and an equal number of five-gallon jerricans filled with diesel fuel. Bags of ammonium perchlorate, a box of road flares, and three sacks of aluminum cans collected from a recycling Dumpster comprised the rest of the materials.

That was the great thing about storage facilities, Ferry mused. Everybody has a secret locked up here. You could hold black masses, use naked virgins for altars, eat their flesh, and make marionettes out of their skeletons afterward—as long as you paid your rent and didn’t bum too many cigarettes, no one said boo.

Sensing that he might need to be ready at a moment’s notice, Ferry had bought all the bomb components once Manny had started his arson spree. It seemed eerily prescient now. I should have kept closer tabs on the kid, he thought. Should have played the pal, encouraged him to unburden his moldy little feelings. Maybe then I might have seen it coming.

The diesel fuel gave off a dense, greasy smell that hung heavy in the closed space. For some reason, it alerted Ferry to the fact that he’d just lost his last decent chance to back out. Manny knew where the locker was now, could describe exactly what was in it. Even if Ferry tried to be nice about it—pay him a little on-your-way money, drive him back to his car, tell him, “Too bad, didn’t work out, maybe next time”—Manny wouldn’t go quiet. He’d cause a scene, he was scared. And on his own, loose in the world, the kid posed a real threat. Tagged out there somewhere, as was sure to happen, maybe soon, he’d hand up Ferry in a heartbeat.

It rankled, the fact that a perfectly good plan, an excellent plan, could fall apart because a dog fart like Manny Turpin committed the world’s most mindless screwup. It wasn’t right. You’re better than that, Ferry told himself. Smarter than that. No such thing as a plan that fails, just planners who can’t think on their feet fast enough. You have to know how to improvise. You can do this. It’s your peculiar gift, turning crap into gold.

For the next forty minutes, he showed Manny how to mix the powder oxidizer with the diesel fuel, stirring it slowly till the slurry stood thick enough to support one of the road flares straight up. Next, a half-inch floater of diesel fuel to serve as a timed fuse. Any more than that, the smoke would tip off neighbors or passersby. Any less, the thing might go up before you’re far enough away.

“Cut the cans up with these,” Ferry said, digging a pair of tin snips from a small toolbox he brought in from the van. “Put the shredded-up pieces in the mix. That’ll speed up the burn rate.” Finally, he showed Manny how deep to plant the flares for a five-minute fuse. “Okay, that’s how it’s done. Do the full dozen.”

Manny looked torn. Resentful of being bossed, intrigued by the task. “This stuff isn’t motion-sensitive, right?” With his foot he nudged the one completed bomb just slightly. “Needs flame.”

Ferry wiped his hands on a rag. “Be a good idea not to smoke. And stay out of sight. I gotta figure out how much the locals know about you.”

•    •    •

The truck stop was named Tullibee’s, located along Route 37, the two-lane highway that scrolled west across the salt marshes and the wildlife refuge to the Sears Point Speedway and Sonoma County. The tables sported blue-and-white checked tablecloths, the windows clouded with steam. The waitress on duty had her hair pulled back in a sloppy bun and patrolled the room bearing two coffeepots. “Regular or irregular?” she asked before pouring.

Only four tables were occupied at that hour—a pair of long haulers sitting together, a deliveryman by himself, a woman with a wasted, naked face that spoke of drink. At the last table sat a cop. Ferry always made it a point to befriend someone in local law enforcement. This one’s name was Gilroy.

Off-shift but still in his blues, he sat by himself at a four-top along the wall, attacking a breakfast known as the Sixteen Wheeler: four-egg omelet, four rashers of bacon, four link sausages, two biscuits with gravy, and a short stack. Ferry joined him and, when the waitress appeared, turned his cup over in its saucer and told her preemptively, “Regular.” Once she was gone, he said to Gilroy, “Hear you guys had a shooting up on the hill last night.”

That’s all it took. Gilroy liked talking. He launched into a monologue of what had happened, gracing the narrative with homely truisms and folksy metaphors that often made no sense. Ferry imagined Gilroy regaling himself with much the same monologue as he drove around in his car. As the story wound on, Ferry examined Polaroids of a kid named Arlie Thigpen. Gilroy had shot the pictures through the grating of his squad car. Souvenirs.

“Kid’s part of a crew linked to some guy named Long Walk Mooney. Name ring a bell?”

“Yeah,” Ferry said. Manny had brought it up, said the guys he bought from knew him, worked for him, something along those lines. It was addled, cryptic, and vague, like much of what Manny said.

“Guy like him? Mooney, I mean. We had the money and the manpower, he wouldn’t be out there, doing what he does, hiding behind this rave promoter bullshit. He’d be locked in a box, where he belongs.”

Ferry half listened as Gilroy went on, bemoaning now the general state of local law enforcement, the gutless chief, the two-faced mayor, the tightfisted council, the ungrateful public. The diatribe wasn’t hard to tune out. Ferry had more important worries—like what a load of bad news this was, the fact the main suspect at this point had ties to the same group of losers who knew Manny. Sooner rather than later, somebody’d let it be known that Manny had been crashing right next door to where the murder took place. And then all eyes would turn.

Ferry put the pictures down. “So this Thigpen kid, he’s everybody’s best idea at this point.”

“So far? Sure. Yeah.” Gilroy chewed quickly and hard. It made his huge ears move in an unsettling way. The flattop didn’t help.

“That mean they’re laying off the son?”

Gilroy downed an inch of juice, then wiped pulp off his chin. “So-called son.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“I hear his claim to being family is a reach.”

“From who?”

Gilroy whirled his fork in the air. “Seriously. You ever talk to jigs about their family?”

Ferry sighed. Gilroy launched on.

“So-and-so’s the second cousin of the half sister who married Aunt Nibby’s stepbrother’s nephew’s grandson’s uncle on his mother’s side.” He shook his head, stabbed a sausage. “They say hillbillies are inbred. You’re writing it down, somebody rattles off that kind of crap? Hard enough to take it seriously, let alone make sense out of it.”

“Back to my question, though. This kid the chief suspect or not?”

“For now, yeah, maybe. Him or his pals in the Mooney crew.” Gilroy poured syrup over his hotcakes, catching the last drip from the pitcher with his finger, licking it.

“Give me the story on the guys working the investigation,” Ferry said, gesturing to the waitress for a refill.

“Murchison, he’s primary. Dick Tracy without the squint and chin. Grew up here. Thinks he’s a genius. Worse, thinks he’s everybody’s boss. Righteous fucking know-it-all.”

“This the rust-haired guy you pointed out to me last time?”

“Right. Him.”

The waitress appeared, refilled Ferry’s cup, and shot him a bleary smile of jagged teeth before trudging off to another table.

“What about his partner?”

“Stluka. Head case asshole. Former LAPD.”

“How’d he end up here?”

“Way I heard it, he only moved north after the Ramparts scandal. Wife’s idea. Get out now, before it all turns to hell, or save your off days for visitation.”

“He know what he’s doing?”

Gilroy shrugged. “There’s one good thing to say about him—he makes no bones about the Third Worlders. Told this bitch from the public defender’s office once, I swear to God, ‘Soon as they stop acting like animals, we’ll stop putting them in cages.’” Gilroy shook his head, admiration in his smile. “That said, he’s a prick with a problem. Gets along with just about nobody.”

“Except Murchison.”

“I don’t know that either one of those guys ‘gets along’ with anybody. Even each other. I mean, a joke here and there, palsy-walsy, but nothing tight.”

“And this detective-in-waiting, the one running the scene?”

An ugly light came on in Gilroy’s eyes. “Marion Holmes. Stluka calls him Sherlock. Affirmative action promo fuck. Kind of guy makes you wanna turn in your tin.”

“Okay, but—”

“Watching his back big-time, so damn scared he’s gonna blow it. Sticks his neck out for nobody.”

“Which means, relative to what we’re talking about?”

“This case closes out, won’t be because of him. He’ll wait in line for a good idea.”

Ferry thought all this through. Within tight parameters, he trusted Gilroy’s judgment. He was reliably paranoid, hostile but not unstable, with a decent eye for things around him, an eye informed more by self-preservation than ambition. That lack of ambition, it was why he’d never make it out on his own. Needed the security of the big blue brotherhood, even though he despised or distrusted most of the guys in it.

“Realistically, how close do you think they are? To closing this thing out, I mean.”

“Close?” Gilroy howled through a mouthful of food. “Little banger piece of shit lawyers down the minute Murch gets close enough to say boo. Gotta chase down the rest of his set at this point. Got the whole Sunday morning squad out on a mutt hunt, known associates.”

Ah, Christ, Ferry thought. “Any luck?”

“Beats me. I’m off-duty.” Gilroy chafed a napkin across his lips. “But one other thing? After the Thigpen kid hunkers down, Murchison hauls the mother in. I swear, if ugly was a stick we could’ve booked her for assault.”