Sacrifice Fly (16 page)

“A few more hours. It’s still too busy to leave Mikey by himself.”

“Let me make the rounds. Then we’ll do some catching up.” He looked at me again and
shook his head. “Damn, it’s been a long time.” Billy Morris took Susie by the hand
and walked to the back of the bar. He was right. It had been a long time. I was starting
to feel better that Mrs. Mac coerced me into this. I missed these guys, the buzz I
got just being around them. I’d almost forgotten about the buzz. I got behind the
bar just in time to be greeted by a flustered Mikey.

“Damn, Ray,” he said. “I gotta take a leak, man.”

He didn’t wait for a response, just headed off in the direction of the men’s room.
I served a few more rounds of drinks, collected a few more tips, and watched as Edgar
made a production of fanning himself with the index card. I brought another pint over
to him. “Okay,” I said. “What’s so important that it can’t wait?”

He handed me the card. “I had a busy day yesterday. Very busy.”

I looked at the card. It had a set of numbers and letters on it.

“What’s this?” I asked. “Some kind of code you’re working on?”

Edgar leaned forward and said, “I swung by the Clemente Houses and Rivas’s block yesterday.”
He lowered his voice. “While I was working.”

Great. “So?”

“So, that’s a plate number belonging to a vehicle I observed outside the houses at…”—he
pointed at some other numbers at the bottom of the card—“… oh-seven-hundred, thirteen-thirty-hundred
hours and down the block from Rivas’s at twelve-hundred.”

I looked at my watch. “Edgar, I’m going to kick your ass out of here at fourteen-hundred
hours if you don’t get to the point.”

He smiled. “Why would this vehicle be parked outside the Houses and down the block
from Rivas, Ray?”

“Because he lives or works in the neighborhood?”

“Maybe.” He pointed at the plate number. “A white van. No markings on the outside.”

“So it was a contractor working in the area. Someone making deliveries.”

“Nope. There was always at least one guy sitting inside. Sometimes two. They were
waiting for something. Or”—he paused for effect—“some
body
. And, come on, Ray. It was outside both places.”

I looked at the card again. Edgar had penciled in the letters
“wv”
next to the plate number in question. I shook my head.

“Don’t you have to account for your time while you’re at work, Edgar?”

“Hey! I get more done before noon than most of those guys get done in the whole day.
My supervisor knows that and leaves me alone.” He tapped the card. “You should get
one of your buddies to run that plate.”

“Why would I want to embarrass myself like that?”

“You got two missing kids, a dead father, and a van doing surveillance outside the
LKA of one of the kids. Why wouldn’t you want to run the plate?”

LKA. Last Known Address. Edgar loved that cop talk. If this conversation kept going,
I was sure he’d work in BOLOs and APBs. I slipped the index card into my back pocket
and said, “Thanks, Edgar. I’ll consider it.”

“Consider it?” I wasn’t taking him seriously enough. “Ray, if I were you, I’d—”

“Ask you to leave?” I warned. “I wouldn’t think of it. You’re on your best behavior,
Edgar. Keep it up.”

“But…”

“Keep it up.”

The kid-at-the-carnival face disappeared and was replaced by the whatever-you-say-Dad
look. I poured him a shot of Jack Daniel’s to ease the pain.

The door to the bar opened again, and Jack Knight filled the doorway. Just like that,
the room grew darker. Damn, twice in two days. He had a case of Heineken under his
arm and swung it on top of the bar. When he saw me on the other side, he leaned in
for a closer look. His breath smelled as if he’d already started his celebrating.

“Well,” he said. “Found something you could do without hurting yourself?”

I ignored the shot and pushed the case of beer back at him. “You probably forgot bars
have their own beer. That’s how they make money.”

“Didn’t know if this hellhole carried my brand, Teach. Whyn’t you just open me up
one and put the rest on ice like a good boy?”

The people within earshot of our conversation stopped, listened, and waited for what
I would say next. Neal O’Connor stepped out of nowhere and put his hand on Jack’s
shoulder.

“Glad you could make it, Jack,” Neal said. “C’mon in the back and have a burger.”

“Soon as the teacher here serves me my beer,” Jack said, removing Neal’s hand by the
middle finger and locking his eyes on mine. “I’m waiting.”

“I think Whack’s had enough, Neal,” I said. “Wouldn’t want him to take a nap while
driving home.”

Jack leaned in again, quicker this time. “Nobody calls me that anymore, Raymond.”

“Maybe not to your face, Jack. But trust me…” I looked around the bar and then stage-whispered,
“They do.”

“Still the wise-ass son of a bitch.” Jack pushed Neal away and made his way to the
service station at the end of the bar. That’s where he bumped into Billy Morris.

“Problem, Jack?”

Jack looked at me and said, “Nothing I can’t handle, Billy.”

“Good, good. Glad to hear it. I can smell ya been drinking. Eaten yet?”

“No. Not yet.”

“Well, I can fix that. Where are those car keys I’ve heard so much about?”

“What?”

“The car keys. How’s about I trade ya a beer for them.”

“I got my own beer,” Jack said. “Just waiting on Raymond to give me one.”

Billy looked over to where I was standing and winked. “And he will. Soon as you give
me those car keys, we’ll have ourselves a time.”

Jack looked at me and then at the crowd around him. After a few seconds of silence,
Billy leaned into him and whispered in his ear. Jack smiled, reached into his pocket,
and dropped his keys into Billy Morris’s outstretched hand. I popped open a Heineken
and placed it on the bar, a few feet away from Jack.

“There ya go,” Billy said, slapping Jack on the shoulder. “No blood, no foul.”

Jack slithered over and grabbed his beer. He took a long sip and eyed me up and down.
“We’ll talk later, Teach. Count on it.”

Billy spun Jack around and gave him a shove toward the back of the bar. He then came
over to me. “Sorry about that, Ray.”

“You think that was a good idea, Bill? Inviting Jack?”

“You don’t exactly
invite
Jack to a party, Ray. He hears about it, and he comes. You wanna tell him he’s not
invited?”

I thought about that for a bit. “He starts in again, he’s leaving.”

“He’ll be fine. I just gotta keep his keys away from him.”

“What’d you whisper in his ear, anyway?”

Billy grinned. “You want the exact words or an approximation?”

“Paraphrase it for me.”

“Told him not to waste his time with you. Now.” He slapped the bar. “You and I are
having a drink.”

“I’m working.”

“You can’t pour and drink at the same time?”

I knew better than to argue with Billy. “Okay.” I reached into the ice and pulled
out a longneck. Billy and I clinked our bottles and drank. “Thanks.”

“No prob. Hey, I heard about the two missing kids and their old man. The boy went
to your school, didn’t he?”

“How’d you know that?”

Billy Morris shrugged.

“He’s one of mine,” I said. “I called in the body.”

“Crossed my mind that mighta been you in the papers. What’s the latest?”

“How much time you got?”

“Talk, son,” Billy said, pulling over an empty bar stool. “I am all ears.”

I got behind the bar and told Billy about my visit to Detective Royce, my trip upstate,
and the hundred-dollar bill with Frankie’s handwriting on it I’d given to my uncle
the day before.

“How’s the chief doing these days?” Billy asked.

“Same as always. He said he’d bring the bill to Royce. Then he chewed my butt off
for getting too involved.”

“Sounds like Chief Donne. A steady diet of asses and other people’s balls.” Billy
took another sip. “Tell him I said hey next time you see him.”

“I’ll do that.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really.” I remembered Edgar’s index card with the license plates on it and took
it out of my pocket. “Well, maybe…”

“What?”

“How much would I be pushing it if I asked you to run a plate for me?”

Now he looked surprised. “You? Wouldn’t be a push at all. What’s up?”

I handed him the card. “That top one with
‘wv’
written next to it?” He nodded. “I’m kind of interested in who owns it.”

“And why would that be?”

“How about,” I said, “I tell you that I think it might have been involved in a ding-and-dent
with one of the teachers I work with?”

Billy’s grin got bigger. “And how’s about I pretend to believe you but you tell me
the real story later?”

“I can live with that.”

“Gimme your number, and I’ll call ya Monday.”

I pulled my newly charged cell phone out of my front pocket along with the slip of
paper that had my new number on it. I read it off to Billy, who wrote it on the index
card.

“Your memory going in your old age, Ray?”

“I just renewed it this morning. Got a two-year plan and a new number.”

“All right, then.” Billy shook his head and put the card into his pocket. “Going to
Clemente and the Southside? Up to Highland? And now asking me to run a plate for a
‘friend.’” He rolled his shoulders and did a little juke with his hips. “You getting
back in the game.”

“I’m not getting back into anything,” I said. “I’m just trying to help a kid.”

“Right.”

“You don’t know everything, Billy.”

“Well,” he said, “if there’s something I don’t know, I don’t know what it is.”

“You know, for a Brooklyn boy, you sound a lot like a country song.”

“Gimme a pickup truck and a banjo any day.”

Mikey was giving me his unhappy look, so I figured it was time to get back to work.
I finished up my beer and offered Billy my hand.

“Thanks again, man,” I said. “I appreciate your help.”

“Son, this don’t come close to paying you back. I still owe you huge.”

“Don’t start. I appreciate your help. Leave it at that.”

“Whatever you say. But I know what I know.”

“I’ll see you before I head out.”

“What? You got a date or something?”

My turn to grin. “Something.”

“Oooh wee! That’s my boy. Back in the game.”

Billy Morris knows everything.

“See ya, Billy,” I said and headed down to the other end of the bar, where Edgar sat
with an empty pint glass. When I filled it, I saw that his happy face had returned.
“What?” I asked.

Edgar shrugged. “Nothing. I just saw you hand the license plate number to your good
buddy, Billy Morris. Guess I wasn’t as far off as you thought, huh?”

“All right, Edgar. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t. I’m betting it doesn’t.
But you do not do anything like that again. I keep telling you, this is not some TV
show.” I realized I was sounding like my uncle. “Got it?”

“I got it, Ray.” His smile grew bigger. “Just happy to be of service.”

“You are this close, Edgar.” I showed him a quarter-inch of space between my thumb
and forefinger. “This close.”

“You know,” Edgar said. “If things jumped off over there—with that Jack guy?—I want
you to know, I had your back.”

“That’s what kept me going, Edgar.”

“Just saying, is all.”

“Right.”

During the next two hours, I served a few hundred adult beverages and cleaned the
same number of glasses. I met a few more guys I used to know, and Billy did a good
job of keeping Jack away from the bar area. By the time I was able to take a breath,
I looked up at the clock. Nearly four. I needed some real air and told Mikey I’d be
stepping outside for a bit.

The Saturday traffic buzzed past the weekend construction work on the BQE above me.
By the time they finished the present round of construction up there, it would be
time to start the next one. Some guys probably put their entire thirty years in on
one stretch of road. Working their whole lives rebuilding a ten-mile-long piece of
highway, handing the job down to their kids, and starting the whole cycle over again.

I found a spot in the shade and used a bike rack next to a row of garbage cans to
do some stretches. My knees were aching from the hours of standing and bending behind
the bar. It felt good to let the blood flow. I was halfway through a thirty-second
runner’s stretch, when a voice behind me said, “Did you finish early?”

I turned and saw Elsa. She had on a white sundress. With the sun behind her and a
slight breeze blowing through the dress, she was a mirage, and I was a man dying of
thirst.

“No,” I said, slowly lowering my leg to the ground. “I just needed some air.”

She looked up at the hazy sky. “Out here?”

“Different air. I expected you at six.”

“I finished my reading and thought it would be interesting to see how the police party.
Research for my final paper.”

“Paper?”

“For my Abnormal Psychology class.”

I laughed. “That’s good.”

She looked at the front door of the bar. “Would you like to buy me a drink?”

“Absolutely.”

The air inside The LineUp felt better than it had before. Maybe it was the heat outside.
Maybe it was Elsa. I got back behind the bar. She was standing next to Edgar, who
was trying not to breathe too hard.

“Edgar,” I said. “This is Elsa.”

Edgar offered his hand. “Edgar Martinez O’Brien.”

“Elsa.”

“Edgar was just about to offer you his seat.”

Edgar practically jumped off of his stool and made a big gesture of wiping it off
and displaying it for Elsa.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Absolutely,” he said, eyes on me. “I insist.”

Elsa slid into the seat as I asked, “What’ll you have?”

“Cuervo Margarita,” she said without pause. “Frozen. No salt.”

I shook my head and grinned.

“What?” she asked.