Irish Eyes (28 page)

“If she shows up, call dispatching and let them know,” Cash said. “No sense beating the bushes for somebody who’s already found their way back home.”

W
illiam’s face told the story before Officer Cash could.

“No sign of the girl,” Cash said. He looked from me to William. “Any reason she might want to disappear? Maybe hide out?”

“Not from us,” I said.

Cash looked at his wristwatch. It was past seven. “I’ll ask the evening watch to keep an eye out for her,” he said. “Who should we call if we should happen to see her?”

I gave him my cell phone number and thanked him. He got in his patrol car and drove away.

“Something bad’s happened,” William said.

But I wasn’t ready to accept that. Not yet. Not when I was so close to the truth.

“She didn’t have a girlfriend or somebody at the complex she might have called to ask for a ride or something?”

William shook his head no. “See, she worked nights mostly, and slept during the day when everybody else was out. Deecie was funny, she called them other women ghetto bitches. Except for that old lady used to keep Faheem sometimes.”

The woman I’d met the first time I went looking for Deecie. “Mrs. Rudolph?”

“Yeah. She and Deecie got along good. But Mrs. Rudolph, she don’t drive.”

“It’s worth checking out,” I said.

“Maybe.” He wasn’t convinced.

We went back inside the waiting room, where Monique Bell was slumped in a chair, her head thrown back, mouth wide open, snoring to beat the band.

“Monique?”

She opened her eyes, blinked. “Where that girl go to?”

“They didn’t find her,” I said. “Do you think she might have called any of your neighbors?”

“Deecie? She thought she was better than all them niggers. No, she didn’t give none of them the time of day.”

“Not even Mrs. Rudolph?”

“Well, she liked her, ‘cause the old lady thought Faheem hung the moon. But why would she call her, with me and William right here?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Monique stood up and stretched. “I don’t know neither. And I ain’t studying staying in this here waiting room no more. I got to be at work. You giving me a ride or what?”

Since she put it so charmingly, how could I refuse?

“I’m staying here,” William declared, planting himself in the chair Monique had surrendered. “In case Deecie comes back.”

“She ain’t coming back here no more,” Monique said. “That boy nurse over there, he called up to the room they keeping the baby at. They say he in guarded condition. Whatever that means.”

Monique worked as a waitress at the Holiday Inn in Midtown. She gave me the address, then promptly dozed off again.

When we got to the motel, I had to shake Monique to wake her up. She sat up, looked around, and reached for the door, without saying a word.

I had to take one last shot at finding Deecie, or at least finding that videotape.

“Monique?”

She yawned broadly. “What?”

I held up the key. “Deecie gave me this today. Right before I left to pick you up. She said she’d hidden something, something she wanted to give me. But she didn’t say where it was. Do you have any idea what this key might go to?”

She gave it only a cursory glance. “Look like any old kind of key. Deecie, she real closemouthed about her business. Like her mama, that way. Think she better than everybody else. She better, all right. Deecie’s mama, she dead, got cut by the man she stayed with. Now Deecie, she probably dead too. Leave me with a sick young’un to raise. I ain’t studyin’ no key. And I ain’t messin’ in that girl’s business. Cops come around, I’ll tell ‘em same as I told you. I ain’t studyin’ what kind of trouble Deecie Styles got into.”

Monique got out of the van and slammed the door shut. After I left the motel, I decided to take another run past Memorial Oaks.

It was dark out, and the place looked more menacing than ever. I parked at the curb with my motor running and tried calling Austine Rudolph from my cell phone. No answer.

I briefly considered a door-to-door canvass, to see if anybody had heard from Deecie, or seen her. As I weighed the options in my mind, people were drifting in and out of the buildings, standing under an unlit streetlight. The two whores from earlier in the day were back, joined by two more girls who didn’t even look old enough to drive, let alone turn tricks. The men stood around, drinking from paper sack-wrapped bottles, smoking what looked like hand-rolled reefers.

When I saw my old friend Tweety Bird saunter down the sidewalk toward the van, I decided it was time to move on, before my windshield took any more abuse.

When I got home, Edna looked up from the hand of solitaire she’d dealt out on the kitchen table.

“Your sister wants to know where her uniform and Grady I.D. badge are.”

“I’ll get them to her,” I said, sitting down at the table beside her.

“Mac called,” she added. “Twice. I told him you’d call him back. Tonight.”

“Maybe. Anybody else call?”

“Am I supposed to be your answering service?”

“It’s been a long day, Ma,” I said. “Deecie Styles has disappeared.”

“You think she’s dead?”

My mother has a way of cutting to the heart of a matter.

“I don’t know. We looked around campus. Her aunt claims she doesn’t know anything about what Deecie was mixed up in. But William, that’s the boyfriend, admitted that Deecie lied about what happened in the liquor store the night Bucky got shot. And Deecie as much as told me the same thing, before she disappeared. She even gave me a key, where she said I could find the videotape of the robbery. But I didn’t get a chance to ask her what the key was to.”

I took the key out of my pocket and placed it on the table.

“Too big for a safe deposit box or a padlock,” Edna commented. “Could be a house key.”

“Could be a lot of things,” I said. “But Deecie didn’t have access to a car after she disappeared. I think she must have hidden the videotape somewhere around that apartment complex her aunt lives in. Either that, or near the warehouse they were hiding in over on Shallowford Road.”

“That narrows it down a lot,” Edna said. “She didn’t give you any idea what was on the tape?”

“No. She just said things didn’t happen exactly the way she told the police. And that she was sorry she lied to me.”

“Lied about what?”

“The money, maybe? At first she was really insistent that she hadn’t stolen any money. Pete Viatkos was just as insistent that she did steal the money. Naturally, I was inclined to believe Deecie. I mean, if she took the money, why didn’t she spend some of it—for a hotel, or a doctor for Faheem? Mom, they didn’t even have enough money for diapers or milk or food. I
had to take groceries with me that time I met them at the warehouse.”

“Maybe she didn’t have the money anymore,” Edna suggested. “Or maybe she was scared to spend it.”

“She was scared,” I agreed. “Terrified. Especially of the cops.”

“That reminds me,” Edna said. “C. W. wanted you to call him as soon as you got in.”

I was antsy, too agitated to talk on the phone. I needed action, not words. I opened the refrigerator door, closed it just as quickly. Walked around the house trying to decide what to do. On a whim, I drove over to the grocery warehouse on Shallowford Road. It was buttoned up tight. The dry cleaner’s out front was closed too. No cars in the lot. No sign that Deecie and Faheem had hidden in that back room, terrified at what the next knock on the door would bring.

I drove home. Edna had given up on the solitaire. She was working the Sunday crossword puzzle. In ink.

I called the hospital to check on Bucky’s condition.

“I’m sorry,” the clerk said. “The family has requested that information be kept confidential.”

“Family?” I sputtered. “What family? Who made such a request?”

“That’s confidential,” she said smoothly.

“Bullshit.” I slammed the phone down. I was shaking with rage and frustration and itching for a fight. But Lisa Dugan wasn’t home. Probably down at the hospital, playing the grieving fiancee.

I called C. W. “Lisa Dugan has left instructions for the hospital not to give out Bucky’s condition,” I said. “Can you believe the nerve of this dame?”

“Calm down,” C. W. said. “They told me the same thing when I called. So I called somebody else down there. Bucky’s the same. Nothing has changed. But that’s not why I called you. Listen, something’s going on. I’ve been hearing things about Antjuan Wayne.”

“Like what?”

“He hired a lawyer all right, but not a union cop. No, sir, I hear he’s got David Kohn on retainer.”

“David Kohn? How does a street cop raise the money to hire somebody like that?”

Kohn was one of the top criminal-defense lawyers in the state. He’d recently managed to get an acquittal for a state Supreme Court judge accused of influence peddling, despite the fact that the FBI had tapes of the judge being handed a cigar box full of hundred-dollar bills by an informant over a breakfast at the airport International House of Pancakes.

“Maybe Antjuan Wayne has friends in high places,” C.W. said.

“More likely friends in low places,” I said. “What else are you hearing?”

“I hear the Febes are sniffing around,” C.W. said. “They’re very interested in what Wayne has to say.” “FBI? Since when?”

“Yesterday. Today. They’re having very quiet talks with officers who worked off-duty security jobs, anybody who’d worked with Antjuan Wayne or Sean Ragan. I hear they’ve already talked to Pete Viatkos. And Boylan. And your friend Lisa Dugan.”

“Just talks?”

“That’s what I hear,” C. W. said. “What about you? What’s going on at your end?”

“Nothing good,” I said. “Deecie Styles is gone.” “You think somebody got to her?”

“I don’t think she’s at Disney World,” I said. “Her baby’s sick, she’s broke, and even her boyfriend hasn’t seen her.”

“Not good,” C. W. said.

A
re you gonna call Mac now?” Edna asked, looking up from her card game.

“No,” I said, reaching for my pocketbook. “I’m going out. I’ll call him later.”

“Save your dime,” Edna said, glancing toward the driveway. “While you were on the phone I heard the Blazer pull up in the driveway.”

I got up and looked out the kitchen door. Mac was striding up the walkway.

I stepped outside to meet him, away from my mother’s prying eyes and ears.

“Hey there,” I said weakly.

“Long time no see,” Mac said. His lips brushed my forehead. A forehead kiss. Not a good sign. “I was just leaving,” I said.

“I’ll go with you,” he said. “Want me to drive?”

“It’s all the way down in East Point.”

“I’ve got a full tank of gas,” Mac said. “And the night is young.”

What could I do? How do you say no to a guy who won’t take no for an answer?

“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said, steering the Blazer toward the Interstate.

“What’s left to say? You want to move to Nashville. I want to stay here in Atlanta. You’ve even got Edna on your side. I think the two of you should go ahead and go. You’ll be very happy together.”

“You know what I want,” Mac said, reaching for my hand.

I let him take it, just to see how it felt. It felt good, damn him.

“It always comes down to this,” I said. “We’re two different people, Mac. We want different things from life. I just don’t see how we’re going to make it work.”

“I thought it was working pretty good up until now,” he said.

“Because we had a compromise,” I said. “How do we compromise on this? Move halfway between Atlanta and Nashville? Live in, what—Chattanooga?”

“Chattanooga isn’t halfway,” pointed out Mac, the eternal engineer. “What about if we commuted? I could spend a week down here, you could spend a week up there?”

“You’d do that?”

“If that’s what it takes,” he said quietly. “It’d mean spending a lot of time on the road.”

“What about your new job?”

“The commissioners are all hot over the concept of flex scheduling,” Mac said. “Two county executives already do telecommuting two days a week. I couldn’t count on coming to Atlanta every week, but with some careful planning, I think it could work. What do you think?”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Say you’ll consider it,” Mac said. “Tell me you’ll meet me halfway on this.”

“I want to,” I said, squeezing his hand. “I’ve missed you, you know.”

“Enough to marry me?”

“You’re full of surprises tonight,” I said. “I thought we were tabling the marriage issue for a while.”

“Why?” he asked. “Marriage would simplify a lot of things.”

“Which things?”

“Our lives. I’m tired of not knowing what to call you. ‘Girlfriend’ sounds juvenile. ‘Fiancee’ sounds pretentious.”

“You could just call me your lady,” I teased. “Or yo’ bitch.”

“Be serious,” Mac said. “There are practical considerations too, you know. If we were married I could have you as a dependent on my health insurance plan. They’ve got a terrific plan up there. Dental and everything. You’d save a bundle right there. Same thing on income tax, married filing jointly is much cheaper. Part of my benefits package would include a county car. You could drive the Blazer and we’d give Edna the van.”

“You think Edna would give up her land yacht just for you?”

“Damn straight,” Mac said, grinning. “She’s on my side.”

“I know.”

“So, you’ll think about it—all of it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Guess it really is too good an offer to refuse—especially since you’re throwing in a car and hospitalization.”

“Good,” Mac said. “That’s settled. Now, you want to tell me where we’re going and why?”

Earl’s Pearl was a classic dive. A baby-blue concrete-block box, it sat in the middle of a pothole-plagued asphalt parking lot full of pickup trucks and late-model American gas guzzlers.

Inside, the booths were all full, so Mac and I found seats at the end of the bar and asked the beefy bartender for a couple of drafts—domestic, of course.

He brought the beers and Mac paid. I could get used to this.

“Is Earl here tonight?” I asked, trying to sound offhand.