I Got You, Babe (22 page)

Trudy laughed raucously at that, and Ahmed joined in with another high five, and pretty soon all the frivolity was just about more than John could stand.

He left the convenience store and went back out to his Explorer, tossing the 7UP and the Doritos into the backseat. He made a few notes on the pad he’d brought with him, then pulled a notebook out of his glove compartment. He flipped through it, then grabbed his phone and dialed Leo Botstein’s home number. The man answered with a drowsy, hung-over voice.

“Leo. It’s John DeMarco.”

A loud, painful groan. “Man, stop yellin’ into the phone, will you?”

It appeared that John had remembered right about Botstein’s retirement party. Right now even a ticking clock would sound like a jackhammer to him.

“DeMarco,” he said. “What the hell do you want?”

“I need some information. You had a robbery at a convenience store down on Griffin Street. Elderly lady got shot. Perp was a blond woman. How solid is the case?”

“News flash. I retired seventeen hours ago. That means I don’t give a shit.”

“Gee, Leo, that must also mean you don’t give a shit if I tell everyone about the New Year’s Eve incident with the hooker and the Doberman.”

Silence.

“You’re an asshole, DeMarco.”

“Just tell me about the case.”

John heard a heavy, drunken sigh. “It’s rock solid.”

“Who were the other suspects you interviewed?”

“No other suspects. I had the loot from the robbery, an eyewitness, and a smoking gun. I don’t go looking for something I already got.”

“Motive?”

“Why are you asking me all this crap?”

“It’s my aunt Louisa. One of her friends is the daughter of the old lady who got shot. She’s been bugging the hell out of me, wanting me to check up.” He really did have an Aunt Louisa, so at least that part of the story was true. “Who was the case assigned to when you left?”

“Henderson. He’ll take it to court.”

John slumped with disgust. Oh, that was just
great.
If there was anybody who could beat out Botstein for the Apathetic Cop of the Year award, it was Henderson.

“Assuming somebody finds the suspect,” Botstein added.

“She missed her court date?” John said, feigning surprise.

“Yep. Jumped bail two days ago.” He coughed a little, then burped. “Shoulda been at my party, DeMarco. Farnsworth sprang for a stripper who could pick up a dollar’s worth of quarters with her hoochie.”

“Gee, Leo. Sorry I missed that.”

“Hell of a table dancer, too.”

“And me with all those dollar bills last night, wondering what to do with them.”

“Bullshit. When you worked South, I don’t remember you so much as going out for a drink after work, much less stuffing a stripper’s G-string.”

“Crawl back into the bottle, Botstein.”

“Get a life, DeMarco.”

John disconnected the call. Well, it was pretty clear now that no help would be forthcoming from official sources, even if he could find a way to disguise his real motive for nosing into the case.

He sat there a long time in his car, thinking about Renee’s repeated professions of innocence, about the fact that the victim was half-blind and half-nuts, about how a creep like Botstein had held people’s fates in his hands for the past thirty two years. How many cases had he just tossed off because he was too lazy to dig deeper? How many people had gotten screwed to the wall because he just didn’t give a damn?

Was Renee going to be another one?

Then John thought about some of the arrests he’d made over the years. Were there times when he’d been so intent on putting somebody away for a crime that when a pretty good suspect presented himself, he put the full force of the law behind the arrest without digging any deeper? Had he been responsible for innocent people going to prison?

Maybe he wasn’t so different from Botstein after all.

He told himself that at least his motivation was to see justice done, while Botstein had been trying to do the least amount of work possible and still draw a paycheck. But in the end, the result was the same.

He decided this was one time he was going to make sure that didn’t happen. He decided to check out a couple of other suspects—the two women in Renee’s apartment complex she thought might be hookers.

A few minutes later he pulled into the parking lot of Timberlake Apartments. The place needed a paint job and some landscaping attention, but otherwise it was clean and neat. He parked his car near the building where Renee’s apartment was. As he was getting out, a balding man in a tan windbreaker and brown slacks came from the building across the parking lot and went straight to the late-model Chrysler parked next to him on the left. A cigarette hung out the side of his mouth, the smoke wafting up into his squinty little eyes.

John knew that face. Harold Pinsky, hired heat for a loan shark John had busted in ninety-six. What was he doing here?

John leaned over the Chrysler as Pinsky stuck his key into the lock. The man looked up with surprise, then turned away with disgust.

“Shit. DeMarco. Thought you moved uptown.”

“What are you up to, Pinsky?”

“Just visiting a friend. Last I checked, there was no law against that.”

“There isn’t, unless you break your friend’s legs because he owes you money.”

“You’ve been watching too many cop shows. I’m a businessman. Strictly aboveboard.”

“So who were you here to see?”

“None of your damned business.”

John sighed. “Now, here I ask you such a simple question, and you’re having such a terribly hard time answering it.”

Finally Pinsky shrugged. “Fine. I was here to see the lovely ladies in 317. Would you like the details?”

Three-seventeen. Just where he’d been heading. Only he’d seen Pinsky coming out of another building across the parking lot. “Would those lovely ladies happen to be working girls?”

“Oh, yeah. They work really hard. Funny thing—the more you pay them, the harder they work. And before you get to thinking maybe you’d like to bust a couple of working girls, you might check out their client list. You wouldn’t want to embarrass any of your superior officers.”

“You’re full of shit, Pinsky.”

“Why don’t you go see them, DeMarco? I hear they’ve got a special rate for cops. Maybe they could work the kinks out of that tight ass of yours.”

“The day I have to pay for sex, I’ll consider it.”

Pinsky gave him a “go to hell” look and got into his car, flicking his cigarette butt across the parking lot before closing the door.

Okay. Renee was right. They were hookers. But were they hookers who also robbed convenience stores?

A minute later he was knocking on 317. The door squeaked open and a woman peered through the crack. “Good morning. Do you have an appointment?”

“I hear you take drop-ins.”

“Not generally,” she said, eyeing John up and down. “Harry Pinsky referred me.”

The door closed. John heard the chain rattle, and then the door swung open again. “Come on in, honey. Harry’s one of our best customers.”

John entered the apartment, which was furnished in reds, greens, and golds in an unexpectedly tasteful manner. His blond hostess wore a demure negligee of cream-colored lace, and when the other woman came into the living room, she was similarly dressed.

“Nice place you’ve got here,” he told them.

“Only for two more weeks,” the first woman said. “We’re moving uptown.”

The other one smiled sardonically. “And to think our families said we’d never amount to anything.”

After a few minutes of conversation, John could tell he’d hit a dead end. With the business these women had going, they could probably turn a couple of tricks in a single night and make far more money than had been stolen from that convenience store, which convinced him that this particular pair of blond hookers probably had nothing to do with the robbery. They also appeared to be independent businesswomen without the assistance of a pimp, which meant they were not under the thumb of anyone who might be directing them to do grossly illegal things. He also learned that Harry Pinsky hadn’t been there in over three weeks, which convinced him that there was probably some poor schmuck hobbling around his apartment right now with a broken face or shattered kneecaps.

John gave the women a pair of twenties for their trouble, then left the apartment complex feeling more confused than ever. He’d just eliminated two suspects, which did nothing to help Renee’s case, but there was still the matter of the old lady’s eyesight problems.

He sighed. If he was out to make himself feel better about taking Renee to jail, he’d just failed miserably.

Chapter 11

I
t astonished Renee that she and Sandy talked for over an hour and there wasn’t a single lull in the conversation. Sandy was responsible for most of the chatter, her dark ponytail bouncing with animation as she treated Renee to tales about her and her brothers as they were growing up. As the minutes went by, Renee started to see John in an entirely new light. Up to now she was sure he’d been born a cop and would die a cop with nothing in between, so it fascinated her to hear that he actually had a normal life. And even though Renee was sure she had criminal stamped on her forehead like a tattoo, not once did Sandy say, and
by the way, have you robbed any convenience stores lately?

But best of all, Sandy’s chatter was keeping her mind off the fact that if she didn’t go to the bathroom pretty soon, she was going to explode.

Sandy wound down from yet another story and gave Renee a speculative smile. “So tell me. What do you think of my brother?”

I think he’s going to go berserk when he sees me talking to his sister while I’m handcuffed to his bed.

“Well, we haven’t known each other long, but he seems like a nice guy.” Which was at least somewhat true. He hadn’t thrown her in jail. That was pretty nice, wasn’t it?

“Is he someone you’d like to know better?”

“Uh...yeah. Sure.”

“Good. But I gotta tell you that that’s not going to be easy. Like I said, he’s way too wrapped up in his job. He’s got this bad habit of getting right up to the point of actually having a relationship with a woman, and then she complains a little about the hours he works, or that he talks about nothing but his job. He hates that, so then he turns around and does something to piss her off just to get her to leave, or he’ll find fault with petty things she does and break up with her. He once sent a woman packing just because she used his toothbrush. Can you believe that?”

Oh, no.
She couldn’t
imagine
that.

“He’ll pull that nonsense on you, too, if you let him. But if you’ll hold out through all the crap he’s liable to dish out and let him know that he can’t drive you away, he might actually see that a long-term relationship isn’t the heinous thing he’s always made it out to be, and you’ll actually have something together.”

Oh,
that
sounded like fun. Kind of like crawling on her belly through enemy territory and praying she didn’t hit a land mine. “So it’s as simple as that, huh?”

“Okay, so I made it sound like a descent into hell. But let me tell you something, Alice. He’s worth it. Even he doesn’t know that, but he is. He’s a very good man who’s just far too focused on the wrong things in life. But I promise you that if you hang on to him, you’ll be glad you did.”

A very good man.
Renee felt a little tingle down her spine when Sandy said that, because in the past few days, she’d seen little glimmers of that. The fact that she was here and not in the county jail attested to it. Amid all that yelling and cussing and hard-ass cop pronouncements, she’d seen a few chinks in his armor, and Sandy was widening those chinks with every word she spoke.

Then Renee heard the clink of a key in the front door. Her heart flew instantly to her throat. Unless another family member had decided to drop by, it looked as if John was home. “He’s finally here,” Sandy said. “It’s about time.”

Renee heard footsteps coming down the hall. Quick, heavy footsteps. A moment later John appeared at the door of the bedroom. He saw Sandy and stopped short, a look of utter astonishment on his face. His gaze flitted to Renee, then to Renee’s handcuffed wrist, then back to Sandy again.

Sandy zeroed in on John’s bruised face. “Good Lord! What happened to you?”

“Uh...accident,” he murmured.

“Well, I’m gonna screw up the other side of your face if you don’t get over here and unlock Alice!” Sandy came to her feet, her fists rising to her hips. “Were you planning on keeping her in handcuffs forever?”

“I know I went along with it last night, John,” Renee said quickly, in the sweetest voice she could muster. “And it was fun. Really. But it might have been nice if you’d unlocked me before you left the house.”

Understanding appeared to come to him in tiny bits, and she knew the precise moment when he finally realized exactly what lie she’d told to keep them both out of hot water. She thought it impossible, but the big bad cop actually blushed.

“Hey!” Sandy said. “Don’t just stand there! Get over here and unlock her!”

John looked so flustered that if Renee hadn’t known how furious he was going to be once they were alone again, she probably would have laughed. He extracted a key from his pocket, then took hold of Renee’s wrist. With his back to his sister, he gave Renee a wide-eyed
what the hell has been going on here?
look that Renee couldn’t answer without giving them both away.

He pulled the cuff from her wrist and let it clunk against the headboard. Then he turned back to face his sister, assuming his stem cop voice. “This is not what you think it is.”

“Oh?” Sandy’s voice held a note of amusement. “Then what is it?”

John grabbed his sister by the arm and pulled her into the hall. Renee could see them through the crack in the door, though, and even though they spoke in angry whispers she could still make out every word.

“Okay,” John said. “It’s what you think it is. Now will you get the hell out of here?”