The Angel Singers (25 page)

Luckily, I had a spare umbrella at the office, but when I got about halfway to the bar, the drizzle turned into a downpour; by the time I walked in the door at Hughie’s, the cuffs of my pants were soaked.

Joey, whom I spotted immediately at the end of the bar nursing a beer, was apparently not the only street hustler seeking shelter from the rain; there were three or four others in varying stages of wetness.

He spotted me, too, though I wasn’t sure if it was because he recognized me or, more likely, just the automatic response of any hustler when a potential john walked in. I took a bill out of my wallet as Bud and I vectored in on the seat next to Joey.

“How’s it goin’, Bud?” I asked as I sat down.

“Same as always,” he replied, taking a napkin off a stack and putting it and my beer in front of me. Taking my money, he walked off.

“You the guy I just called?” Joey asked. He gave no indication that he’d ever seen me before, which wasn’t surprising. I’m sure that when you’re a hustler a face is a face. I did not envy Joey doing what he did.

“Yeah,” I said. “The name’s Dick.”

“So I heard,” he said. Neither of us extended our hand. “So, you got someplace to go?”

I wondered if he thought I wanted to see him because I was interested in his services. Apparently, the words
Private Investigations
on my card hadn’t clued him in.

“I think we can handle everything right here,” I said.

He gave a cursory shrug. “So, what do you want for your twenty dollars?”

“Information.”

He stared at me, expressionless. “About what?”

“About a guy who picked you up on Genessee late last month—the twentieth, to be exact. A Tuesday. Guy about forty, forty-five. Not from here. Greying brown hair. Medium build. You took him out to Prichert Park.”

“You got the twenty?”

I pulled out a bill from my shirt pocket, handing it to him. He shoved it in his jeans pocket then shook his head.

“Man, are you serious? You know how many guys pick me up in one week? And you want me to remember one from last month? No way! And I take a lot of guys out to Prichert Park if there’s no place else to go.”

Well, this is going well,
I thought. He was right, though. He could hardly be expected to remember one nondescript trick from another.

“He was from New York,” I said. “Staying at the Montero.”

The glimmer of a light came on behind his eyes, and he chewed his lower lip for a second or two.

“Oh, yeah. I remember him. The asshole told me he was staying at the Montero so ‘Of course’—that’s what he said, ‘Of course’—he couldn’t take me there. Like I was some piece of shit he wouldn’t be caught dead showing up there with. I been there before. Lots of times.”

I chose to let that pass without comment, saying instead, “But you have no idea of the date?”

He shook his head. “Not a clue.”

“You went to Prichert Park.”

“Yeah. It’s got a couple of places to park where you won’t be seen. But when we got there, I was pissed—they had blocked off the path to the one spot I always go.”

“Blocked off?” I asked.

“Yeah. It looked like somebody had knocked down a power pole, and an electric company truck was parked right in the middle of the turnoff.”

And we may have a date after all, I thought.

“Would you be willing to tell that to a friend of mine?” I didn’t want to scare him off by mentioning the police.

He looked suspicious anyway.

“A cop?”

“A friend,” I repeated. “Don’t worry, you’re not in any trouble.”

“What’s in it for me if I do?”

“Another twenty.”

He looked at me. “It’s worth more.”

“Forty,” I said. I knew the police couldn’t pay for information, but I could; and it would be worth it if it could either nail or clear Farnsworth.

“Fifty.”

“Don’t push it.”

“Fifty,” he repeated.

“Only if you show up at my office Monday morning at ten o’clock sharp.” I should have said “tomorrow,” but since it was already late Thursday afternoon, I wanted to talk to Marty first and be sure he could be there.

“You still have my card?” I asked.

He patted his pocket and nodded.

I chugged my remaining beer, picked up my umbrella and got off the stool.

“Ten o’clock,” I repeated.

“Yep,” he agreed, and with a wave to Bud, I left. It was still raining.

Hoping to catch Marty before he went home, I returned to the office rather than just getting my car and going home. A message from him was waiting on my machine, and I called him immediately. Luckily, he was still there.

“Had a chance to talk to Earl Carpenter for a second a few minutes ago,” he said. “They’d been interviewing people all day, including Booth’s latest ‘house guest,’ who seemed more upset by losing Booth’s promised sponsorship for his racing career than by Booth’s being dead. He had an alibi for Wednesday night, so I mentioned they might want to check with Charles Stapleton. I’m sure they would have gotten around to him eventually anyway, but I thought they could use a heads-up. Anything new from your end?”

I told him of my meeting with Joey, and he confirmed he could be at my office Monday morning. He said it was probably too late in the day to check with the power company to see if they could give him an exact date and time their truck repaired a broken power pole in Prichert Park, but that he would call tomorrow. If the power company records did not show a truck being there on the twentieth, Farnsworth was still a viable suspect. But if they had been there on anywhere between six and seven at night, he was pretty much off the hook, and I would be right back on familiar ground—square one.

We agreed it would probably be best for Marty to come alone Monday to avoid intimidating Joey by having too many people present.

“Oh, and one thing while I think of it,” I said. “I’d assume Carpenter and Couch are looking into Booth’s gambling problem as a possible key?”

“I’m sure they are,” Marty said. “But thanks.”

*

The weekend was hectic, as they increasingly seemed to be, though being busy kept my mind from spending every minute thinking about the case and how little I had actually accomplished on it.

I picked Joshua up from day care on Friday so Jonathan could load his car up with materials and several flats of plants to take over to start his landscaping job at the Conrads’ on Saturday. He left the apartment right after breakfast Saturday morning.

His absence meant that Joshua and I were left to our own devices as far as dealing with our usual Saturday routine of cleaning, laundry, and grocery shopping. The latter was enough of a chore with two adults riding herd on a five-year-old boy who never met a breakfast cereal, bakery item, or junk-food snack he didn’t like. I considered duct-taping him to the shopping cart but was afraid I’d get nasty looks from the other shoppers.

If I’ve ever given anyone the impression Joshua was a little too good to be true, I can assure you one trip to the grocery store on a bad day would dissuade anyone of that notion. While he was, overall, an exceptionally good kid, there were times when I could have cheerfully throttled him; and being the showman that he was, he always seemed to pick a time when there was a crowd around to throw out a field test of the limits of my patience. Grocery stores therefore tended to become the Coliseum, with Joshua and I as the featured gladiators.

Probably because Jonathan wasn’t there to back me up, Joshua decided it was a good time for an encounter, and put a jar of pickled eggs in the shopping cart. I took it out, told him we didn’t need pickled eggs, and to return it to the shelf.

Let the games begin! Apparently not intimidated by the fact that I had a hundred and some pounds and a couple of feet in height over him, he put the jar back in the cart. I took it out and handed it to him, telling him to put it back. Defiantly: back in the cart. I finally took it back to the shelf myself, which opened the floodgates.

At that serendipitous moment, a woman came by carrying a crying baby and followed by a boy about eight or nine. I knelt in front of Joshua and took him by the shoulders.

“You see that baby and that big boy?” I asked. “Which one do you want to be?”

Slowly, the storm abated and we got on with the shopping.

I know it might seem that I spend far too much time talking about Joshua, but he’s become a major factor in my life. There’s no way to separate him from what goes on.

My life had changed profoundly in the past five years. First came Jonathan to yank me out of what I call my “slut phase,” in which I spent a great deal of time hopping from bed to bed. I thought that was a sea-change, and it was. Then came Joshua.

I’ve always had a strong protective streak, often verging, as Jonathan can readily attest, on the overprotective. But being protective of a partner isn’t the same as being protective of a child. Although Joshua is not genetically related to me, I had come to consider that fact less and less; and for the first time in my life I felt I could fully appreciate how heterosexuals feel about their own children.

So, we made it through the day and had the table set and dinner preparations well under way when Jonathan arrived home around six, looking as though he had lost a mud-wrestling contest. He immediately went into the shower while Joshua helped me with dinner. With Joshua’s enthusiastic approval, I opted for an old family recipe from my single days—knockwurst (I know, we’d had it within a week or so before, but we all liked them) slit lengthwise and stuffed with sharp cheddar cheese, over which a teriyaki marinade was poured. I’d picked up some fresh potato salad at the store to add one more element of class to the meal.

Jonathan was very happy with how the day had gone.

“It’s really going to look great,” he enthused over dinner. “And Mrs. Conrad seems very happy with what I’m doing.”

“How could she not be?” I said. “You’re terrific!”

He grinned. “And you’re only slightly prejudiced.”

“I think you’re terrific, too,” Joshua said, his good-kid personality back in place and not wanting to be left out on the chance for a bit of mutual admiration action.

“Thank you, Joshua,” Jonathan said, soberly. “I appreciate that.”

Joshua grinned.

I could tell Jonathan was exhausted, and he nodded off while we were watching TV prior to Joshua’s bedtime. As a result, we went to bed not long after Joshua did.

*

I had to make a quick stop at the bank to pick up some cash on my way to work Monday morning, assuming Joey would show up—and I was pretty confident he would.

In fact, everything went like clockwork. Marty showed up at 9:52 saying he had put a call in to the electric company on Friday and hoped to hear back later in the day. Dan Carpenter was using the time to question Farnsworth once more about the details of his alibi to see if he might mention the fallen power pole or the electric company truck.

Joey arrived at 10:05 in what I thought of as his full work uniform, and I wondered if he ever wore—or had—anything else. He was aware Marty was a cop, even though he was in plain clothes. Obviously anxious for his fifty dollars and to get on with his day, he told Marty exactly what he had told me. Though he still couldn’t describe what Farnsworth looked like, remember the kind of car Farnsworth drove, or state with certainty the exact time they got to Prichert Park or Farnsworth dropped him off back on Genessee, he did remember that the guy who’d picked him up was staying at the Montero, and stuck to his recollection of the pole and the truck.

When he’d finished his story, I handed him an envelope with the fifty dollars in it and he opened it to check it before standing up to shove it in his back pocket.

“I gotta get going,” he said. He turned, went to the door without looking back, and left.

Marty sat looking after him and shaking his head. Then he turned to me and said, “One more soldier in the Army of the Lost.”

I don’t know why, but I was struck by the wistfulness and insight of his observation.

“I’ll bet you write poetry when no one’s looking, don’t you?”

He shrugged and grinned. “Gays don’t have a corner on the market on being sensitive, you know.”

He was right, but I was surprised, nonetheless. There are certain jobs I could never do simply because of the constant exposure to pain, sorrow, death, and the worst life has to offer. I ran into enough of that as it was. How health care workers and police manage to do their jobs without having all the sensitivity stomped out of them I couldn’t imagine.

Obviously, most of them are able to handle it, and I have the utmost respect for them. I’d liked Marty before, and now my admiration had been bumped up another notch.

It was clear the police investigation into Grant’s death was also teetering on whether Farnsworth/Johnson/Smith’s alibi held up. Marty told me they still had not completely ruled out either Charles Stapleton or the now-deceased Crandall Booth, but that they had not yet come up with anything concrete.

As he was getting up to leave, the phone rang.

“Hardesty Investigations,” I said in my best Professional Private Investigator voice, evoking a slight smile from Marty.

“Dick, it’s Dan Carpenter. Is Marty still there?”