Season of the Witch (2 page)

“What’s the matter, Roland, you think I’d be doing hard time by now?”
 

“Actually, I figured you’d be dead.”
 

Harry laughed, a quiet, ironic sound. We both sat down.

“How are you this lovely evening?” Harry smiled his legendary smile.

“Good enough, Harry.”

“I heard about you leaving the force. I was pretty amazed, because you were such a good cop. Somebody told me you started drinking, is that so? That’s really kind of hard to believe . . . .”

He stopped, looked intently at me for a second, and then the smile returned. He had read in my face that he ought not to go on; I’m sure he saw pain there. It was hard for me to talk about that time, three years ago now. We let the subject die away, with the moan of the wind against the panes. Harry started the conversation over.

“So how’s that giant thug of a partner of yours?”

I smiled, glad to let the subject shift to something more agreeable.

“Broom’s fine.”

“Didn’t figure that much had changed with him. Is he still a cop?”

“He’ll always be, I suppose, as long as Birmingham needs them. I may have changed, but not old Lester Broom.”

Harry’s manner and face suddenly became very serious. “A lot has changed for me, too, Roland.” He leaned forward and stared at me with great intensity. “I’ve kept myself clean for the past few years, and it’s paid off for me. Just like all of you cops at North Precinct always said it would. I’ve met the right girl, a perfect girl, and well, I’ve made up my mind to settle down. I ditched the life and all my old friends, except for a few, and went totally straight.”

The life.
His old life of crime.

“That’s great, Harry. Really. Glad things are going so well for you. I remember hearing about you getting shot. I hate to admit it, but I remember hoping you pulled through.”

“It was a break-in gone bad. Some people just won’t listen to reason. No, I know that what I did was wrong. I don’t blame that shopkeeper for shooting me. Maybe I would have done the same thing.”

Nothing to settle a man down like a little hot lead. I let him go on.

“After I got shot, I spent a lot of time in the hospital. I did a lot of thinking. I wondered if I was going to make it. I could’ve died, right?”

“You could have died lots of times. You and your pals used to pull some capers.”

“Well, it took getting shot and realizing I was stuck with this bum leg for the rest of my life to teach me a lesson.”

“So, you wised up and started doing the right thing. Good for you. A lot of people never do, no matter what happens to them. A lot are less lucky than you, limp or no limp.”

“Exactly.” He seemed filled with eagerness to tell me more.

“So things are really going that good, eh? Why don’t you tell me about them?”

“Well, you see, that’s just it, they were going fine, up until I lent a . . . friend of mine . . . some money, which he was supposed to pay back, and it looks like he skipped on me. This I get from my so-called friend? That’s why I’ve come to you, I need you to find him and get my money back.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do. What’s this friend’s name?”

Harry smiled his neon smile, and hesitated a second. “Itchy Danny Weber.”

I sat back in my chair and gave Harry my most damning glare. This seemed to affect him less than the room temperature.

“You expect me to believe that you lent money to a crook like Itchy Danny Weber?”

Harry hunched his shoulders in a comically exaggerated shrug and sat looking out into the cold and wet night.

“Itchy was my best friend, and I was trying to help him out. You’d have done the same thing.”

I grimaced. “Harry, You forget that I know Itchy Danny. He was, and is, one of the most well known small time crooks in the city; I used to bust him all of the time for petty theft. You know that. Do you really expect me to believe that you trusted him?”

Harry sat back in his chair and muttered a barely perceptible,
“Oy vey
.”

“This world’s too full of blame,” Harry waxed philosophically. “You used to bust me too, Roland. So what? I got my act together. Danny might have too, right? He was there for me back when I got shot. He helped me get back on my feet, you know? So I trusted him a little too much I guess. You can’t really blame me. We’d always been tight, and back in the day, you know, we’d gotten into a few pinches together. That’ll make you trust a guy. You should know that.”

“Harry, Danny took a step beyond the petty stuff you guys used to pull. Forget pilfering. Danny went up a few years back. I heard he was serving time for aggravated assault.”

“Still, he’s a friend.” Harry gave another of his all-dismissing shrugs.
What are you gonna do?
It seemed to say. He seemed serene as a monk.

I decided to practiced my meditation and let the master continue.

“I was doing all right for myself, like I said, but I didn’t want to turn my back on Itchy. He was a friend. He said that he would pay me back in a month, after a big score that he had planned, but it’s been three months and I can’t locate the schmuck. I been asking around, you know? Which is why I’m here.”

“Would I be wrong in assuming that this was some sort of criminal activity for which Itchy needed the money?”

In response, Harry positively beamed, but said nothing. I have a terrible knack for saying the wrong thing and ending all the giggles. I decided to show off.

“How much money did you lend Itchy, Harry?”

“My girl and me, it was our savings. That’s another reason . . .”

“Harry. Come on. How much?”

“Well, five large . . . five thousand.”

I sat brooding over Harry’s little mess, listening to the wailing wind and the early evening rain. I liked Harry, and wanted to trust him. That was part of his magic. You always wanted to trust him. But then again, I knew him, and in the past my longing that he straighten out and fly right had always come up empty. I put out a cautious feeler.

“I might be able to help you, Harry. But if this money’s dirty—”

“I would ask you to do that? Please. With you, I’ll be square. I just want what’s owed to me, what belongs to me. And what belongs to Eve.”

“Eve?” The way that he’d said the name had carried a peculiar weight, as if he were a priest reciting a mantra. I paused.

“Eve is the young woman I was telling you about, the one that I’m going to marry. Some of the money is hers, and she’s always been a really straight person. She’s not like all the other girls I used to hang out with. She’s from a good family. So naturally, feeling the way I do about her, I tried to keep it under wraps, so to speak, that I’d lent Itchy Danny the money because I thought that he’d be paying me back pretty quick. You see—”

“—Eve doesn’t even know you lent your savings to a two-bit criminal? And this is the woman you plan to marry?”

Again, I received the all-dismissing shrug, the disarming smile.

“Now she does. I mean, I
had
to tell her after a while. I felt bad about what had happened. It’s not like I
wanted
to keep it from her. She was pretty damn mad, I can tell you that. Now, that’s a side of her you don’t want to see. But, I’d told her about you before, how we went way back, and so she thought that since you were a private eye now, maybe if I came to you we could work something out. Maybe I could get you to go after Itchy Danny.”

“For old time’s sake?”

Harry held his hands up, palms out.

“Oh, no, Roland. You should know better. It isn’t like that. This would be legitimate business.” He appeared to be deliberating; then he slid forward in the chair and leaned closer.

“We’ll pay you a thousand to find him. Of course, it goes without saying that you have to collect the rest of the dough.”

Outside, the empty moan of the wind became a little louder. I waited for it to die away.

You should know better,
a little voice in my head was telling me.

“Well, the truth is, I’m already working a case and that’s taking up a lot of my time. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that I take your case. This thousand . . . when would I receive it?”

“After you find Itchy. You can take it out of whatever he’s got left. Even if he’s spent it all, I guarantee your fee. I mean, I’m sure you’ll find him. You’re the best.”

I ignored the patronizing remark, and took my time in responding. Inwardly, I was mightily displeased with myself, because I knew what I was going to say already. I suppose that Harry did too. Which was also displeasing. Soft-hearted Roland Longville, Private Eye. That’s me. I should have my own TV show. Maybe Harry could be my sidekick.

“Okay, Harry, I’ll see what I can do.”
 

Harry extended his hand once again, as he stood. “Thanks a million, Roland. Oh! But I almost forgot, and if I forget, Eve will kill me.”

“And what, pray tell me, would get such a severe reaction from the Perfect Woman?”

“If I forget to invite you over to our home for dinner Friday night.”

I started to protest, but something about the mad twinkle in Harry’s dark eyes forbade it. I let my shoulders fall in mock defeat.

“Okay, Harry, that sounds good. It’ll be good to catch up on things after so long.”

“And also to meet Eve, don’t forget.” The strange emphasis on the name was there again.

“Ah. Yes, Eve. Looking forward to meeting the woman who has salvaged you from a life of petty crime.”

Harry gave me his address, and told me to show up around seven thirty. We shook hands a third time, and he was gone, an unreal figure from the vanished past which I had only moments before sat pondering. He had disappeared back out into the moaning sleet and the growling thunder. I stood there for a moment, and shook my head in silent disbelief. The wind howled like a lost soul.

The weather had turned cold as a landlord’s heart, and even the petty thieves and prostitutes that populated the streets of Westmoreland Heights had sought cover indoors. No one interfered with me as I slouched toward my decrepit Buick, which I always park next to the abandoned Magic City Bakery across the street. I jangled the keys in the lock and slid inside. I started the engine and let it warm up a little before pulling out onto the slick, empty street. I pointed my car to the Northeast and drove through the pelting sleet to my humble home.

Chapter 2

I still had that other case that I was trying to bring to a close, and I had yet to confront the principal figure in that drama. This was the cause for much of my brooding. It was a wandering daughter case, and I had found the daughter. Her name was Lena and she was living in a once middle class part of the city that was filled with crumbling brownstone buildings older than even my own venerable Brooks Building.

It was the kind of case that I usually don’t take—disgruntled college kids ditch their parents’ ideas of domestic bliss all of the time. Usually they turn up, older and wiser, with a child or three. Sometimes they never come back, disappearing into the vast and intricate wilderness of America without leaving a trace. In either case—no, in
most
cases—there is a force at work quite beyond my own humble powers to interdict.

I had been sitting in my office one day in the fall, congratulating myself over having just dug up a particularly well hidden dead-beat dad for Human Services, when the telephone rang and a somber voice on the other end requested to meet with me over a matter of the utmost importance. The person on the other end refused to discuss the matter over the phone. You get that sometimes.

That was how the Waters family had entered my life. They had appeared early the following morning with their tears, their outrage, and a sad story about their missing daughter. They were nice looking people; in other circumstances, I’m sure they were very charming. Mr. Waters was a prematurely graying, but otherwise youthful-looking man; his wife was growing solid and matronly but still attractive. Nevertheless, something about them was too mild. I gathered that they lived very sheltered lives. My office is not the most squalid place on earth, but even there they looked out of place, like ballerinas in a whorehouse.

They were obviously extremely disturbed. When they walked into my office, they looked around as if in a daze, as though wondering where they were. I had seen that look before. A catastrophe had taken place in their quiet suburban lives, a shipwreck that they had somehow miraculously survived only to find themselves washed up on this alien shore, bereft of hope, and stunned and vulnerable.

I hadn’t wanted to take the case, but I had made the mistake of listening. I brooded over the details, gazing out at the sliding rain and inky clouds that so well reflected my mood. Both parents had convinced me—the eternal softhearted sap—that their daughter was different. Lena had been corrupted, they claimed, by a worldly young man, a would-be artist, like herself. He had captivated her and run away with her to the city. They were sure he had, by this time, abandoned her, leaving her destitute and living on some street corner with no means of support. Lena had been in regular contact with her parents, but that had abruptly ceased over four months ago. They were fairly out of their minds with worry. And I was obviously out of mine, too, as I had reluctantly agreed to take the case.