Penance (21 page)

I hated that name. “I’ve been better, Sidney,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “How ’bout you?”

“Can’t complain,” he replied, jabbing me a little harder. “You tailin’ me?”

“No.”

“Then you’re tailin’ my man; I take the back door and circle around to learn why.”

“Ahh. So, how did the Wolves do?”

“Shaq beat ’em at the buzzer.”

“Give it to him, the guy’s a player.”

“So, why you tailin’ my man?”

“I didn’t know he was your man.”

“You seen us talkin’.”

“I figured he was writing a story on race relations.”

“There’s somethin’ you should know, Taylor.”

“What’s that, Freddie?”

“I never liked you.”

Freddie grabbed the collars of my jacket and shirt, jolted me deeper into the alley, swung me around and bounced me off the building. I pulled free and went into a cat stance, ninety percent of my weight on the back foot, my front foot high on the ball, both shoulders facing front, my hands in a guard position—an excellent posture for close encounters. Freddie pointed his gun at my face and thumbed back the hammer.

“Don’t even think of tryin’ that gook shit with me, man. I’ll kill ya.”

I dropped my hands to my side and straightened up.

“Put your hands in your pants pockets,” Freddie said. His eyes were confident, invulnerable. I did what he told me.

“Now kneel.”

I knelt.

Freddie stepped away from me, deactivated the gun and exhaled.

“You looked taller in them pictures in the newspapers,” he told me. “You don’t look so fuckin’ tall now. You kinda look puny to me.”

“I’ve lost weight. Hospital food does that to you.”

“How long were you in there?”

“Couple of weeks.”

“Got a lot of ink for that one.”

“I’m a hero, the papers said so.”

“Fuck them papers, you always in the fuckin’ papers.”

“Only twice.”

“That’s twice more than me.”

“What are you talking about? Didn’t the
Sun
call you the next James Earl Jones a while back?”

Freddie grabbed a fistful of my hair and pulled. He waved his gun in front of my face like he was going to hit me with it. I got a good look. It was a Colt Commander. A nine.

“Don’t be doggin’ me, man,” he warned.

“Are you threatening me?” I asked, real calm.

He grinned and shook his head, utterly amazed. Of course I’m threatening you, his eyes told me. Whaddya think? C’mon, get with the program.

“I kick your ass anytime I want,” he announced, releasing my hair. “What you gonna do? Run to the cops? Run to your fancy-ass friends? What that guy pay you for stoppin’ that takeover thing?”

“Twenty-five thousand.”

“Fuck that!”

“God’s truth, Freddie. He wanted to give me the hand of his eldest daughter in marriage, too, but …”

Freddie pushed the Colt back into my face.

“You best watch your mouth, Taylor. You think you’re tough shit gettin’ in the papers, but I don’t see no reporters now.”

He had a point.

“All that press,” he said, contemptuously. “You ain’t nothin’. I’m better ’n you. Better ’n you any day.”

“That just might be,” I told him. “You got the governor. I couldn’t have done that.”

“Yeah, man. That’s right, I got the governor. And I didn’t use no damn computer, neither.”

“That was something, getting the goods on a governor. How did you do that, man?”

Freddie grinned.

“Tell me about it.”

“No big thing,” he said, a picture of modesty. “Simple surveillance is all, just like when I was with the APs. You think this guy is like the president? You think he’s got security, Secret Service guys followin’ him around and shit? Man, you could pop a governor a hundred times a day. And that car he drives—big fuckin’ black Buick—it’s like dog shit on snow, you know what I’m saying? So, I sit on ’im a while, see what the man does when he ain’t kissin’ no babies. You know the governor’s mansion on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, it has the long driveway up front? What most people don’t know, it’s got a rear entrance, too. One night that big black Buick pulls out of the alley and the man’s drivin’, just him and no one else, and I follow him—how tough can it be?—and the dumb fuck leads me to this house in Edina and before he even gits to the door, a woman opens it. A white woman, not bad, neither. She’s wearin’ this, whaddya call it, this chemise thing and nothing else and she comes out and she slips him the tongue right there in the front yard for everyone to see like they was fuckin’ bulletproof or somethin’. They go in and I sneak up to get the address, you know? And I peek under the window shade and they’re doin’ it right there on the living room floor, no shit. So I git my camera. I use a Pentax—I don’t need no fancy-ass Nikon or shit, just a simple Pentax—and I figure to get some shots through the shade, maybe sell ’em off to
Playboy
, you know, do a spread: Governors of the Midwest. Only, shit, man, the guy’s leavin’ already. He’s humped the bitch for only like fifteen minutes and he’s all done, so the best I can do is snap a few shots of him comin’ through the door.

“Now I see what I need to see, I don’t need to see no more, so I motor outta there. Next day, what I do, I call the Hennepin County tax people and I asks, who owns the property at the address and they give me a name of this woman. So I think about it and I figure, hey, maybe this woman works for the government so I look her up in the state of Minnesota telephone directory, you know, the government directory. Only she wasn’t in there. So I check this directory for lobbyists, the
Member Directory of the Minnesota Governmental Relations Council
, they call it. There she be, Council of General Contractors; nice photograph, too.”

“Beautiful, man. Just beautiful,” I said, feeding Freddie’s ego. He was positively beaming and I wanted him to tell me more before he caught on to what I was doing.

“How’d you do the mayor?” I asked.

“He was easy, too,” Freddie said. “What I did, I got this guy what works for a credit union; I slip him a workin’ bee and he gives me the mayor’s personal bank account. Turns out the asshole’s been payin’ six bills a month to this bitch, been doin’ it for years. I get her address out of the book and I go over there, pretend I’m doin’ a Gallup, and guess what? The bitch, she ain’t got no old man but she’s got this five-year-old kid. So I go to the birth records and take a look at the kid’s birth certificate. Know what it says? ‘Father unknown.’ Fuck. Now, I’m pissed at this guy. You got a kid you gotta take care of ‘im, man, you don’t ignore ‘im, pretend he don’t exist. That bites, man. Anyway, I figure I need somethin’ more so I go back to my guy at the credit union and I give ’im another fifty-dollar bill and he works on the woman, gets her employment history. You ready for this? The bitch worked in the mayor’s office until she got pregnant; then she leaves and gets this cake job workin’ for the Family Planning Department over to the City Health Center. Unreal.”

“What’s this crap about tax returns, then?”

“I don’t know, man, that’s Sheehan’s shit. I don’t know why …” And then he stopped, his eyes widening.

I pressed him. “Does Sheehan know that C. C. Monroe is paying for it?”

“I don’t know any C. C. Monroe,” Freddie said defensively.

“Marion Senske, then.”

Freddie didn’t answer.

“Marion and I have a business arrangement, too,” I assured him. “She pays in cash, hundred-dollar bills. Nothing on paper. I don’t know her, she don’t know me. How about you?”

Freddie didn’t speak, but I could hear his breath coming harder and faster.

“She hired me two days ago,” I told him.

“You jerkin’ me, man. She don’t need no fuckin’ newspaper private eye. She got me, she don’t need you.”

“This doesn’t have anything to do with your job, Freddie.”

“Fuckin’ bitch, she don’t need you.”

“Listen, Freddie,” I told him. But he had heard enough. He swung the Colt in a high arc and laid the barrel against the side of my head. The blow seemed worthy of quiet contemplation; I found myself conducting a clinical review of the damage it caused as I sank slowly into darkness, completely detached, like a rookie cop listening to a lecture on forensic medicine.

NINETEEN

I
OPENED MY EYES
and waited for them to adjust, seeing first the reflections, then the shadows of the night. I lay on the trash-strewn asphalt for a while longer, waiting for someone to render aid and comfort. No one did, so I pushed myself vertical and staggered out of the alley. Using the buildings for support, I slowly made my way to my office, shivering uncontrollably with every step. When did it get so damn cold? Several couples passed me. “Drunk,” a young woman hissed. I wish. I nearly threw up during the elevator ride to my floor, but my stomach had settled somewhat by the time I reached the restroom at the end of my corridor.

My hair was wet and the collars of my shirt and jacket were stained with blood, but there wasn’t much of it and that made me angry. A man who’s been pistol-whipped, who feels the way I felt, there should be more blood. I considered a trip to the emergency room of the Hennepin County Medical Center and rejected the idea, deciding I wasn’t badly hurt and remembering the last time I was in a hospital under the care of doctors and nurses who seemed to have had more important things to do. The longer I stayed, the more contemptuous of them I became. I did not thank any of them when I was discharged. That’s what I buy insurance for.

I sat in my swivel chair and tried to chase away my headache with Tylenol and Summit Ale. Nice try. I leaned back, closed my eyes.
What do I do next?
I wondered. Going home seemed like a good idea. That’s when I heard shuffled footfalls followed by the distinctive “click” of my office doorknob turning. I lunged across the room and grabbed Wayne Gretzky’s broken hockey stick, brandishing the jagged end at the door as it swung open.

Cynthia Grey did not speak a word, just stared at me with a quizzical expression on her face.

“I was practicing my slapshot,” I told her and set the stick back against the wall.

“I’ve been trying to reach you all day,” she said.

“Why?” I asked, returning to my chair.

“Joseph Sherman is missing. He was supposed to meet me this morning; we were going to the police together. He never showed.”

“Did you check the bus depot? The airport?”

“It’s not funny, Taylor. You frightened him last night with talk of those other murders.”

“I meant to frighten you.”

Cynthia sighed. “I want you to help me find him before the police do.”

“Not high on my list of priorities right now,” I confessed.

“I don’t understand your … What happened to your head?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing!” she exclaimed, not believing me. She moved to my side and took hold of my head, brushing my hair aside to examine the wound.

“Aay, that hurts,” I told her.

“Do you have any antiseptic?”

“I always carry some in case of emergency.”

“I have some,” Cynthia said, opening her purse and taking out a small bottle of iodine.

“I don’t believe it,” I told her.

She brushed some on the wound and again I cried out, “Aay!”

“I don’t think it’s deep enough for stitches,” she informed me. “How did this happen?”

“A guy pistol-whipped me.”

“Who?”

“A jealous rival.”

“You’re a violent man,” Cynthia said.

“No, I’m not,” I protested. “I’m just having a bad week. Besides, in this business we’re not always ‘touched by the better angels of our nature.’”

Cynthia smiled. “Shakespeare?”

“Abraham Lincoln.”

“You read.”

“No, I picked it up from a documentary on PBS.”

“You interest me, Detective.”

“Why, because I watch TV?”

“I don’t know why. Since we met Monday morning you haven’t done a single thing that I approve of.”

We regarded each other for a pregnant moment. She wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, either. Hell, I didn’t even drink tea. Still, there was something about her. I found myself wishing she were a little prettier—her hair more lustrous, her eyes brighter, her chin smaller, her lips fuller, her waist thinner …

“Well,” she said.

“Well,” I repeated.

“I’ll drive you home,” she suggested.

“I can drive myself,” I told her and to prove it, I stood up too quickly, lurched forward, caromed off my desk, fell against the wall and let her catch me by the arm. “Just a little dizzy,” I said. “I’m all right.”

“I’ll take you home.”

“No, thank you.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

“Humor me.”

“Fine,” I agreed, just as long as we understood who was doing whom the favor.

Ogilvy came bounding into the room when I switched on the living room light, his big ears a-flapping. Cynthia jumped; she probably thought he was a rat.

“My God, it’s a bunny!” she exclaimed.

“It’s a rabbit,” I corrected her as she knelt and reached out her hand for Ogilvy to sniff like he was a dog.

“Hello, bunnyyyyy.”

“Watch it,” I said. “He’s a killer.”

“He’s so cute,” Cynthia said, disregarding my warning.