Shot Girl (14 page)

"It’s Ralph, isn’t it?" she asked, sidestepping past me out into the hall, pulling off the gloves.

I followed her down the stairs to the kitchen, where she had a pot of coffee brewing. She poured each of us a cup and we sat at the table, the sunlight illuminating the bright white room.

I opened my mouth to speak, but she held up her hand to stop me.

"I didn’t tell you because grand jury investigations are secret."

"But he was dead," I tried, knowing the lawyer in her was going to win this one.

"We didn’t know then that it wasn’t murder. I couldn’t risk it. It’s a federal case."

Again I thought about Paula. I wondered whether she knew about this, and if she did, whether she knew Ralph was my ex-husband. Paula wasn’t like Priscilla. I hadn’t known her as long and I didn’t tell her too much about my marriage and divorce. Maybe a mention in passing—I couldn’t remember if I’d even called him by name.

"I still can’t tell you anything, and your friend at the FBI can’t, either," she said, reading my mind.

I sighed. "Tom told me some things this morning. I have to ask you, did Ralph tell you that he had pictures of me?"

The puzzled look on her face indicated he’d said nothing. "What sort of pictures?"

"If
he
wasn’t spying on me, he had someone doing it for him," I said, relating everything Tom said.

Her worried expression concerned me. "You didn’t know anything?" I asked.

My mother got up and poured herself another cup of coffee. She held up the pot, asking me without words whether I wanted more, but I shook my head. Between this one cup and the iced latte Tom brought me, I’d had enough caffeine. She carried her cup back to the table. "When Ralph came to me, he didn’t say a word about you."

"Why did you take him on as a client?"I asked. "You never liked him."

"I don’t have to like my clients."

The words hung suspended in the cold air between us. I gripped my coffee mug a little tighter, warming my hands on it. "So you took him on like anyone else?"

"I took him on as a favor to Ira."

Ira Hoffman was one of my mother’s law partners. "Ira? What does he have to do with this?"

"Let’s just say it was a favor for a favor for a favor." I could tell by her tone she didn’t want me to ask any more questions.

She should know me better than that.

"Whose favor, ultimately, was it?"

She shifted a little in her seat, debating mentally with herself. Finally, "You didn’t hear this from me."

Christ, my own mother going off the record. "Okay, okay," I promised, if it would get me some information.

"Ralph was a friend of Reginald Shaw’s. You know who the Reverend Shaw is, right?" She didn’t wait for an answer. "Shaw came to Ira about it, said he owed Ralph and wanted to get him the best representation he could."

Chapter 18

Shaw? What was up with this?

"What did he owe him?" I asked. "I mean, what did Shaw owe Ralph?"

My mother shrugged. "I don’t know. All I know is, Ralph was very complacent, wanted to repent for his ’sins, as he called them." She emphasized the word with her fingers. "I just figured he’d found Jesus or something like that, and Shaw had helped him."

But that didn’t explain why Shaw would owe him; it would have been the other way around.

I thought about my conversation with the good reverend yesterday. If he’d known that Ralph was my ex, he didn’t show it in any way. Maybe he didn’t know. Why would he?

Although Jack Hammer had. And I’d seen Jack and Shaw looking rather friendly at the nature center. Jack had indicated at Rouge Lounge that he knew all about me. There was no reason why Ralph wouldn’t have told Shaw about me, too.

My thoughts were circling the runway, but they had nowhere to land.

My mother was watching me try to work it all out. She cocked her head and lifted her chin. "What do you know?"

I sighed. "I have no idea. I met Shaw yesterday. Doing a story about the community garden program he’s working on with some city kids. I hadn’t met him until then." I paused. "Do you know a Jack Hammer? I mean"—what was his real name? Oh, yeah.—"John Decker?"

She was visibly startled. "How do you know him?" she asked sharply.

"He was at the Rouge Lounge the other night when Ralph died," I said. "I met him then, and I saw him yesterday again at the nature center. After I met with Shaw. How do
you
know him?"

"I can’t say."

Jack was involved somehow in all this shit with Ralph. "Was he selling guns illegally, too?"

My mother toyed with her mug for a second, then lifted her eyes to my face. "I’m not at liberty to say anything about Mr. Decker."

"So the investigation is ongoing, even though Ralph is dead?"

She shook her head. "The only thing I can say is that Ralph was not the only one involved in this. He was cooperating with the authorities; I was trying to help him."

I knew what that meant: Ralph was naming names to get a lesser sentence if indicted and convicted.

"I can’t divulge any other information at this point, Anne," my mother was saying. She got up and took her mug and mine to the sink. "Bill’s going to be home anytime now. Would you like to stay for lunch?"

She knew how to get rid of me.

I slid my chair back and stood. "No, thanks. I have the weekend shift. Have to get to the paper, anyway."

She came to the door to see me out, and I gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

"Oh, by the way, I’m having a barbecue tomorrow. Would you like to come?" she asked before I could make my escape.

Shit. One of her parties. That was the last thing I needed on top of all this. I shook my head. "I doubt it. I’m exhausted."

She knew I was making excuses, but she didn’t call me on it. Instead, she put her hand on my arm.

"Annie, be careful. I don’t know why Ralph had pictures of you—that I can definitely say—but he was into some very serious criminal activity. Please let Tom do his job and find out what was going on with those pictures." She paused, lifted her hand to my cheek. "You might want to keep Vinny close, just in case."

 
Easier said than done. I tried Vinny on his cell on my way to the paper, but his voice mail picked up immediately, indicating the phone was off. My mother had scared the shit out of me enough so I felt it necessary to tell him as soon as possible about the photographs at Ralph’s, and for the first time I didn’t think I’d be upset if he insisted on being my twenty-four-hour bodyguard.

I couldn’t stop checking my mirrors all the way to work. Even though Ralph was dead, someone was still calling me, so I couldn’t say for sure that I wasn’t being followed anymore.

As soon as I walked into the newsroom, however, my mood lifted.

"I’ve got bad news for you." Jane Ferraro was the weekend metro editor, and she truly looked upset. "The quilters had to cancel. The AC went out in the senior center, so they can’t meet today."

Darn.

"I’ll find you something else to do," Jane said, going back to her desk and shuffling through some papers.

I went to my desk and booted up my computer. While I waited for it, I noticed the red message light blinking on my phone. Instinctively, I tensed up. Was I going to be like this every time I got a phone message? I shook myself out if it and hit my code, then listened.

"Ms. Seymour, this is Reggie Shaw. I just wanted to tell you how lovely it was meeting you yesterday, and if you have any more questions, please don’t hesitate to call." Shaw rattled off a number and hung up. I stared at the phone. The number he gave me didn’t jibe with the one I had for him, so I replayed the message and scribbled this new one in my notebook. And what was up with the "Reggie"? He hadn’t introduced himself so informally the day before.

Jane still hadn’t come over with an alternate plan for my afternoon, so on a whim, I Googled Ralph’s and Shaw’s names together. Nothing. I’d already tried Googling Shaw and came up with a big fat goose egg, so I Googled Ralph and scrolled through a bunch of links to the Colorado White River Rafting Association—they listed a Ralph Seymour as president. I didn’t think so. I saw the link to the story from the
Herald
about Ralph’s death, but nothing more.

I stared at the screen for a second before Googling Jack Hammer.

I had no idea how popular he was. He was the topic of quite a few blogs about recent male-revue shows, and one of the links would’ve gotten me in huge trouble with the company if I’d clicked on it, I was sure of that. One of our sports guys had been suspended after visiting porn sites after midnight, when he thought no one would know. It was the same sort of bullshit reasoning as thinking you might be indispensable.

My phone rang, startling me out of my Jack Hammer reverie.

"Newsroom," I answered, making my voice lower than usual so if it was someone I didn’t want to talk to, I could pretend it wasn’t me.

"Annie? It’s Priscilla."

"Hey, there," I said in my normal voice.

"How are you? You never called me back. I talked to Ned. He said he saw you." Priscilla had a habit of answering her own questions, so I didn’t have to say too much. But when she paused, I realized it was time for me to participate in the conversation.

"There’s been a lot going on," I said, realizing the moment it came out of my mouth how lame it sounded. "Sorry," I tried.

"So what
is
going on?"

Priscilla had actually known where Ralph lived, so she certainly knew more about him than I did. "Do you know why Ralph had pictures of me?" I asked, trying to keep my tone from getting too frosty.

The silence could mean one of two things: She didn’t know shit or she did. I waited.

"I have no idea what you’re talking about," she said. "What kind of pictures?"

I told her what Tom had said. "You have to tell me if Ralph said anything about me or anything else," I finished.

More silence on the line meant she was digesting this information, either that or she was having her morning coffee. A small sound indicated it was probably the latter.

"Listen, Annie, I don’t know anything about any pictures. Do you want me to come out tomorrow?" she asked. "I’ve got tomorrow off. We can talk about this face-to-face." She paused. "Ned thought maybe we should all get together."

"For what, a fucking wake for Ralph?" I asked, a little too loud because Jane looked up from her desk, frowning. I lowered my voice. "Come on, Priscilla. You guys can mourn all you want, but I really don’t give a shit one way or the other whether he’s dead."

Okay, so maybe that was an overstatement. I did care, but only because I wanted to find out why he had those pictures, and if he were alive, it would be a helluva lot easier to find out.

"You could ask Ned about the pictures, see if he knew about them. The phone calls, too," Priscilla said.

That made sense, but before I could respond, the scanner started to screech. Priscilla was saying something, but I tuned her out as I listened to the report of a shooting. On the city’s Green at one of the bus stops. I glanced around the newsroom. I was the only reporter. Jane was the only other person in the newsroom. She was looking anxiously in my direction. Should she send me or would she catch shit?

"Listen, Priscilla," I said quickly, "I’ve got to go. If you want to come in tomorrow, let me know."I hung up and jumped out of my seat, going over to Jane.

"You have to send me," I said flatly.

It was bigger than me, and she knew that. The city’s annual International Festival of Arts & Ideas had just begun. During the festival’s two weeks, there were events on the Green, concerts and theater productions and kids’ shows, stuff like that, in addition to events scattered throughout the city. I usually didn’t get involved because this was the features department’s baby.

Jane was shuffling through the brochure with the festival’s events listed in it. When she raised her eyes to me, I knew it was bad.

"There’s a kids’ concert scheduled there in half an hour," she said, her voice full of tension. "Some rip-off of Raffi, I think."

We were both thinking the same thing: Families had probably been gathering for the last hour or so all over the Green.

We could hear the pandemonium on the scanner. We couldn’t ignore this just because I wasn’t supposed to be covering the beat at the moment. I was the weekend reporter; I was it. That was all there was to it.

Jane gave a slight nod. "I’ll get a photographer over there," she said, making a dash for the photo lab.

I grabbed my bag and a notebook off my desk. Fuck Charlie Simmons.

It was news.

Chapter 19

I had to park on Orange Street, near State. A couple of long blocks away. That was the closest I could get.

I jogged up Chapel, the flashing red lights strobelike against bodies and strollers coming toward me, away from whatever danger was behind them. I shoved through the throngs and managed to make it to the intersection with Church Street. Cops were everywhere, the ubiquitous yellow crime-scene tape taut around the old-fashioned-looking steel bus stops that lined the south end of the Green, hugging Chapel Street across from the old Chapel Square Mall, which now housed a Starbucks, Ann Taylor Loft, and Caffe Bottega.

A glance toward the northern end of the Green caught the huge stage, and colorful balloons filled the air like fireworks, floating on the wind.

A cop with a bullhorn was trying to tell everyone to stay calm, but no one was listening. Piercing screams of toddlers and babies pounded against my eardrums as the mass of people scattered at the edges of the Green to try to reach their cars to get to safety.

It was going to be a goddamn traffic nightmare.

I’d never seen anything quite like it.

I reached the edge of the yellow tape, which was slung from the concrete pillar in front of Starbucks across Chapel Street to a parking sign parallel with Church Street, then wound its way in back of the bus stops, and along the width of the Green.