Night and Day (5 page)

As I walked along Clinton and stared down at the childish scrawl of the Stein girl’s
handwriting on the postcard, I worked to get my anger in check. I didn’t have the muscle to
bring any kind of trouble down on the cops at Uptown station, but I wasn’t done with the Klinger
case. There was something seriously bent about the whole thing . . . the girl tapped dry, the
evidence of the wound removed, the quick order for cremation.

Each thing, taken by itself, could be explained. People end up in dumpsters. Vees aren’t
supposed to just tap anybody when they get hungry, certainly not tap them dry, but it happens.
Police investigation is cursory at best. And they didn’t have the facilities at Uptown station to do
an extensive postmortem examination of an unusual wound. Short of sending the corpse to
Central, the only option would be to send the tissue containing the wound. Getting that
tissue...well, Vee cops aren’t gentle with human corpses, anymore than a butcher is gentle with sides of beef.

Even the order for quick disposal of the corpse wasn’t surprising. Which is why I was in a
hurry to get to Uptown station. The official rule was three days. In the real world, two days was
about the maximum, and sometimes not that long. If a human corpse wasn’t claimed quickly, nobody
was going to track down next-of-kin.

But when you put it all together, there was a stink coming from the whole damn thing. I’d
have to ask Joshua to talk to his buddies at Uptown station, find out who was involved, maybe
even find out what was going on.

My hunch was that somebody important had gone off the rails and tapped the Klinger girl
dry. Uptown night shift knew who it was and was anxious to keep the lid on. Remove the
evidence, destroy the corpse, and it never happened.

Of course, in the end, knowing who’d done it wouldn’t help me. Knowing wouldn’t let me
to do anything about it. But I like to finish puzzles.

The boarding house was a dead end. The woman who ran it admitted that Rachel Stein had
stayed there for a few nights, but said Rachel had packed up and left a couple of days earlier.
According to her, the girl planned to stay with friends on the eastside.

I believed her. Not necessarily about Rachel moving to eastside, but about the girl leaving.
The woman was pretty angry that the rent hadn’t been paid, and tried to get me to cough up some
money. All she got was my card and a request that she call if she heard anything about Rachel.

As she was closing the door, I saw her crumple the card.

If Rachel had gone to stay with friends on the eastside, it was a break for me. I’d been
assigned there at 83
^rd
Street, before the war, and still knew a lot of the guys on Eastside District
day shift. If the Stein girl was in the district, I’d find her eventually.

It was late afternoon before I left Clinton Avenue, and started back downtown. Three hours
later, I was still 20 blocks from the office, the street and sidewalks were nearly empty, and it was
getting dark.

“My, Charlie, you’re looking especially delicious this evening,” Sara Tindell said as I came
into the office.

Sara looks like she’s about twenty-five, cute face, short, with shoulder-length blonde hair
and a nice body. Pretty much the way she looked almost five years earlier during the war, when some
Vee turned her, and pretty much the way she’d look five years from now. Or a hundred and five
years, for that matter.

I run into Sara a couple of times a month, when I’m in the office late. She’s a hard worker,
has a good personality, and a sense of humor. Joshua’s lucky. Cynthia is a hard worker too, but
she’s wound pretty damn tight. It makes it hard to actually enjoy working with her.

I think I’d enjoy working with Sara. Until I gave some thought to the bottle of O-Negative
that was probably in her lunch bag.

“That means a lot coming from you, Sara,” I said with a laugh. “I mean, you’d know about
that kind of thing.”

“I certainly do,” she said with the barest hint of a smile.

“Joshua in yet?”

She shook her head. “No, he usually doesn’t get in till around seven or so this time of year.
Fall. Days are shorter, you know?”

“Doesn’t stop you from getting in early.”

Sara laughed. “I’m not the boss.”

“My expense report will be on your desk when you come in tomorrow night,” I said, heading
for the door to the office. “I’ll stick around long enough to say hi to Joshua, then head home.”

She smiled and went back to whatever she’d been doing when I came in.

I opened the door, flipped on the lights, and started toward my desk. I was halfway there
before I realized I wasn’t alone.

Chapter Four

Two men were sitting on the couch next to the door. As I passed, one of them stood. I knew
him.

“Charlie Welles,” Ray Holstein said with a smile. “Long time no see, buddy.” He held out
his hand.

I shook it. “Hello, Ray. What is it, about three years?”

I’d worked with Holstein at the 83
^rd
Street station, before the war. We’d
never been buddies, though I’d always gotten along okay with him. He was still the horse-faced,
beefy guy I remembered. That wasn’t a surprise. He wouldn’t be changing any time soon.

Holstein looked down at the other guy, who was still seated. “Burt, I’d like you to meet
Charlie Welles. Charlie and me used to work together at 83
^rd
Street here in the city. Charlie, this
is my partner, Burt Martinez.”

“How you doing,” I said, nodding at the other guy. Martinez had a dark complexion and
watchful black eyes. He didn’t say anything.

“Burt’s the quiet type,” Holstein said with a laugh. “He lets me do the talking, he does the
listening.”

“Sounds like your ideal partner,” I said. “Working in Uptown District these days, aren’t
you, Ray?”

“Let me tell you something about Charlie Welles,” Holstein said, ignoring my question and
looking down at Martinez. “I was in Robbery-Homicide at 83
^rd
Street, and Charlie was a
plainclothes officer, attached to the unit. A real go-getter. If he was assigned to a case, he’d be
on it, day and night.” He laughed. “Day and night, night and day. Pretty funny.”

I smiled but didn’t say anything. I don’t think he expected me to.

“Anyway, Charlie was plainclothes, but he was just itching to be a detective. And if things
hadn’t changed, I can guarantee that he would have had the gold badge as soon as they had an
opening in the squad. Charlie Welles was quite a cop.”

He turned to me. “Yeah, Charlie, I’m at Uptown District station now. Detective Sergeant
with the murder squad.”

“Interesting work.”

“Very,” Holstein said, flashing a shark-like grin. “Rules and regs aren’t as restrictive now as
they were back in the day. You zero in on a suspect, and you know you’re right, you do pretty
much anything you need to, make an arrest, close the case. We’re very...results-oriented these
days.”

“That must make things easier,” I said, turning and walking to my desk.

“Easier, but not easy,” Holstein said, following me. “Still have to figure out who did it.”

I sat down and Holstein took one of the chairs in front of the desk. “You always had a knack
for that, Ray,” I said.

“Yeah, I had a real nose for the bad guys,” Holstein said. “Still do, as a matter of fact.”

He looked over his shoulder. “So Burt, after the war, we’re all in the camp, right? Camp
Delta-5, just outside the city. And it’s pretty fucking miserable, you know? Living in barracks,
shitty food, marginal sanitation, and the occasional midnight run from the guards looking for a
little yum-yum. Not the kind of lifestyle you’d stick with if you had any kind of a choice, right?”

Holstein looked back at me. “Then one day a recruiter comes around. Somebody up the line
has decided to close the camps, let people go home. But they need experienced cops. They want
to rebuild the police department, get things back to normal, you know? Sounded pretty good.
Get back to work, doing what we were doing, and in the process get the hell out of Delta-5. I
mean, who could turn down a deal like that?”

I raised my hand and smiled. “That would be me.”

“That’s right,” Holstein said, pointing across the desk. “This same Charlie Welles, the go-getter, said no way. There were four guys from the 83
^rd
Street detective unit in Delta-5, and three
of us figured it was a pretty good deal. Even without the Peter Pan stuff, live forever, never grow
old. But not Charlie. Old Charlie here was happy enough where he was.”

“Not so much where I was, Ray,” I said. “Just what I was.”

Holstein looked around. “Well, in the end, you didn’t do too bad for yourself,
buddy. Nice job, somebody to keep an eye out for you, make sure nothing unfortunate happens
to you. It’s not the police department, but I guess it’s an honest living.”

“I get by,” I replied. “So what are you doing in this part of town, Ray? Come to see
Joshua?”

“Yeah, thought we might stop by and say hello,” Holstein said. “We had a little incident
uptown this morning
. You hear about it?”

“Might have heard something. Not my business, so I didn’t pay a lot of
attention.”

Holstein leaned back in the chair. Behind him, Martinez stood and walked over to the desk.
I realized he was short. Really short. Maybe five feet tall, if that. He sat down beside his
partner.

“You were in the Uptown District station today, correct?” Martinez asked.

“That’s right.”

“What was the reason for your visit?”

“Working a case. Missing person found herself dead uptown. I was
making arrangements for the family.”

Martinez nodded and pulled a small notebook from his jacket. Looking down, he said,
“While you were there, you threatened two members of the police department, correct? A
Lieutenant Iverson and a morgue attendant named Wilkowitz.”

“I didn’t get the morgue attendant’s name. I’ll take your word for it.”

“You threatened them, correct?”

“So, Martinez, the guys around the station call you Shorty?” I looked at Holstein. “Back in
the day, he wouldn’t have been with the squad five minutes before somebody tagged him with
that nickname, right?”

Holstein flashed a quick grin, but remained silent.

“Iverson and Wilkowitz, you threatened them, correct?” Martinez said.

I held out a hand, putting my thumb and forefinger close together. “It was just a little
threat.” I glanced at Holstein. “So, Ray, you’re here . . . what, to arrest me for being mean to a
couple of cops?”

“Threatening a couple of cops, Charlie,” Holstein said, straightening in the chair. “Uttering
a threat against a police officer has been a crime since before we were both cops.”

I just stared at him.

He was silent for a moment, then shook his head slowly. “No, we’re not here to arrest you
for fucking with a couple of assholes. We’ve all gone off, said things we shouldn’t have, right?
Anyway, I’m sure they deserved it. You were always an even-tempered guy. If you talked shit to
them, you probably had a good reason.”

Martinez didn’t say anything. He continued to stare at me, the open notebook resting on his
lap.

“I understand you have a carry permit, Charlie,” Holstein said. “10mm Glock, if I remember
right?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I’ve never had to use it, but it’s good to know it’s there, if you know what
I mean.”

“Oh, sure, sure,” Holstein said. “I don’t leave home without mine.” He paused.
“Interesting choice, though. That’s a real man-stopper.”

I smiled. “Hell, Ray, if it’s not going to stop somebody, why carry it?”

Holstein smiled back. “Good point, buddy. Very good point. I bet you could . . . well, for
instance, blow a guy’s heart apart with one shot from that hand cannon. You think?”

That’s the problem with a talker like Holstein. They’re so in love with the sound of their
own voice that it takes a while for them to get to the point. “No idea,” I said. “Never tried it.”

“Of course not,” Holstein said quickly. “You just said you haven’t had to use it. So how
would you know?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Exactly,” Holstein replied. “In fact, I was telling Burt, before you got here of course, that
you probably had no clue how powerful that pistol on your belt really is. Am I right?”

“As I recall, you were almost always right, Ray,” I said evenly.

“That’s a hell of a nice thing for you to say about me, Charlie,” Holstein said with a grin.
“Almost embarrassing, really.” He looked over at Martinez, then back at me. The smile was
gone. “You ever swing a machete, Charlie?”

“If he’s cutting sugar cane instead of investigating cases, I need to have a talk with my
partner,” came a voice from the doorway.

I glanced past Holstein. “Evening, Joshua,” I said.

Holstein almost fell on the floor in his rush to get out of the chair and turn around. “Mr.
Thomas,” he said quickly. “Ray Holstein, Uptown District Homicide.” Martinez slipped
the notebook back into his jacket and stood. “This is my partner, Burt Martinez.”