Missing (31 page)

"What does that have to do with Grandin? He’s
dying of it."

"Let him die of it."

"What possible difference does it make to you
whether he dies of it in prison or in a hospital bed?"

"He committed a crime. He goes to jail."

"What crime was that?"

"Stoner," he said, leaning forward to the
desk, "I’m in the street every day. I know what I’m doing. I
know what I see. This kid was holding drugs. He’d been busted for
possession and possession for sale three times previous. I saw him
flush the shit down the toilet. He lived a scumbag life and is dying
a scumbag death. Now you tell me why I should forget what I saw?"

"Because of Greenleaf."

"I didn’t kill him," Stiehl said.

"You helped. Look, I know the drill, too.
Counting the army, I was a cop for seven years. I did some things I
wasn’t proud of. Every cop does. You can’t second guess yourself
I’m not saying you should. But when something’s this wrong, it’s
got to be corrected. Last night in the bar, I was going to forget
this whole thing because of something I did five years ago. Something
I’ve been carrying around with me and never made iight. Maybe
that’s why
I’m doing this now—because
somebody died because of me and I never made it right."

Stiehl stared at me. "You’re saying somebody
died?"

I nodded. "A man named Chard."

The two cops exchanged a look.

"What’re you telling us this for?" Sabato
asked.

"So we can get past this shit about who’s got
the upper hand and just do the fucking right thing."

"I don’t get it," Stiehl said, shaking
his head. "We’re not priests. Confessing your sins isn’t
going to change a thing."

But it had changed something. I could see it in his
face. I’d given him some leverage. It was what a guy like him
mostly understood: the physics of dominance.

He glanced over at Sabato. "Go on out in the
hall, Ron. I got something to talk about with this one you don’t
have to hear."

Sabato got to his feet. "I don’t want any shit
in here, Art."

"We’re past that," Stiehl said.

Sabato grunted, went over to the door and out into
the anteroom, closing the door behind him. Stiehl stared at me.

"Look, I don’t apologize except in the
confessional. I do what I think is right and live with it. That night
at the bar is no different. This guy, this Greenleaf was acting like
we could be bought—bought by the likes of him. I put him straight
on that. And when I went after him in the lot, I’ll admit I was
going to work him over."

He paused for a moment and said, "But I didn’t
work him over."

I gave him a look. "You’re saying you didn’t
beat him up?"

"I didn’t have to," Stiehl said. "I
followed him over to his car, calling him every fucking name I could
think of. Telling him I was going to bust his ass in the morning.
Laying it on thick about how he was going down and going away. I’m
dead serious, Stoner. And this guy knows it. Each word, he bends over
a little more with the weight. Anyway, he gets to the car, turns
around, and smiles. Weird fucking smile. I tell him to wipe the
fucking smile off And then the crazy son of a bitch does something
like I ’ve never seen before. He raises his head, still smiling,
and bashes it into the roof of his car.

Just . . . bashes it into the car—face first, right
down on the car. Two, three times. Until he knocks himself silly and
falls down on the pavement."

Stiehl shook his head disbelievingly. "I never
saw anything like that in my life. And I’ve seen a lot of guys do a
lot of shit. I stood there with my jaw hanging open. He’s
scrambling around on the ground, groaning, crying. I was so fucking
shocked, I give him a hand into the backseat of his car. Told him he
was a fucking idiot. Then turned around and went back into the bar. I
never hit him, Stoner. That’s the truth."

I sat there, thinking about the raw terror and
self-disgust of Mason Greenleaf ’s last hour on earth. "What
difference does it make if you hit him or you didn’t, Art?"

"Not much," he conceded. "But I
didn’t."

Neither one of us said anything.

"If I go along with this, it’s not like I’m
admitting I did the wrong thing," Stiehl said after a time. "As
far as I can tell, Greenleaf deserved what he got. He queered that
kid, and then when the boy ended up with AIDS, he tried to pull the
kid’s ass out of the iire and cover his own. What kind of friend is
that?"

"If it makes a difference, I don’t think he
did a thing to that kid, except show him charity. He felt guilty
about his own life and wanted to iind a way to make up for it."

"Then he should have gone to a priest. He
shouldn’t have come to me." He glanced at the door and called
his partner back in.

"You done?" Sabato said, edging nervously
into the room, looking relieved to see I was still in one piece.

"We’re done," Stiehl said to him. "So
what do you say? Do we pull the plug on Grandin?" Ron shrugged.
"What’s it cost us to go uptown? We didn’t really catch him
with the goods. He’s dying anyway."

Stiehl thought about it for a moment, then got to his
feet. Sabato stood up, too.

"You’re a lucky man, you know that?"
Stiehl said to me. "I was pretty close to killing you when I
came in."

"I know you were."

He held out his hand, and we shook.

They walked out the door. When I was sure they were
gone, I opened the desk drawer fully and took out the Gold Cup,
unloaded it, and wrapped it back up in its oilcloth in the safe.
 

33

I DROVE straight out to Cindy’s house, drove like a
kid out of the army going home. And when I got there and found her
there, I hung on to her for a long time. I never did tell her what
Stiehl told me about Mason’s last half hour in Stacie’s lot. And
she seemed content not to hear it, as if she knew it would be
terrible, as if she’d turned a corner in our relationship that had
taken her away from the violence of Mason Greenleaf ’s death, as if
we both had.

Terrible it had been. In some fashion, that fire
Stiehl talked about had consumed Mason Greenleaf too, while he was
trying all alone to put it out. He’d simply gone to the wrong
person for help. Maybe there hadn’t been a right person. Maybe
those last five days had been a circuit that merely took him back,
through Cavanaugh and Paul Grandin and Ralph Cable, to a guilt and
regret he’d never been able to shake. In the end the retribution
that Mulhane had said he was waiting on had been waiting on him. I’ll
admit it haunted me a little, even though I’d managed to get that
kid off the hook for him. Later that same week, Stiehl and Sabato did
what they’d said they’d do. The charges were dropped, and Paul
Grandin got to spend his last few months out of court and out of
jail. He died in the winter of the year, alone, staring out the rest
home window at the snow.

Throughout the winter Cindy made a slow adjustment to
life with a PI. I made my adjustments to life with her. I don’t
drink as much as I used to, or as often, We spend as much time as we
can together and toy with the idea of getting married—maybe after I
retire. The only time she talks about Mason Greenleaf is sometimes at
night, when he comes back to her in dreams.