Naomi wants to talk about Starcher, so we do. I assure her he was not harmed in any way. He’ll never understand what really happened, and I doubt anyone will tell him. Frankly, he was pampered for about forty-five hours by two people he viewed as buddies. He’ll be at school tomorrow and he needs no special attention. I’m sure his mother will arrive with a long list of demands and concerns, but that’s his mother.
“What a bitch,” Naomi says, dropping her guard for the first time. I’m surprised by this, but love it nonetheless. We spend a few minutes thoroughly trashing Judith and Ava, who we agree is an airhead, and I haven’t had this much fun in years.
From left field she says, “Let’s do dinner.” Ah, the life of a hero. The power of celebrity. The reporters claim I risked my neck to save my son and women are throwing themselves at me.
We establish a few rules. The date has to be a big secret. The school does not expressly forbid its unmarried teachers dating unmarried parents, but it’s certainly frowned on. And why ask for trouble? If Judith found out, she would probably file a complaint or a lawsuit or something from her bottomless bag of dirty tricks.
We meet in a dark, low-end Tex-Mex joint the following night. Her choice, not mine. Since no one speaks English no one will be listening. No one cares, especially me. Naomi is thirty-three years old and rebounding from a divorce. No kids, no discernible baggage. She begins by telling me all about Starcher’s day at school. As expected, Judith brought him early and had some instructions. All went well; no one mentioned his little ordeal. Naomi and her classroom aide kept a close eye on him, and, as far as they could tell, nothing was said by his friends. He seemed perfectly normal and went about the day as if nothing had happened. Judith picked him up after school and grilled Naomi, but it was hardly out of the ordinary.
“How long were you married to her?” she asks in amazement.
“The paperwork says less than two years, but we could live together for only the first five months. It was unbearable. I tried to tough it out until the kid was born, but then I found out she was already seeing her latest girlfriend. I fled, he was born, and we’ve been fighting ever since. Getting married was a horrible mistake, but she was pregnant.”
“I’ve never seen her smile.”
“I think it happens about once a month.”
The margaritas arrive in tall, salty mugs and we dive in. We briefly touch on her marriage, then move on to more pleasant matters. She’s been dating, there are lots of calls, and I can understand why. She has soft, beautiful brown eyes that are hypnotic, even seductive. The kind of eyes you can gaze into for hours and wonder if they’re real.
Me, I don’t date much, don’t have the time, too much work, and so on. The usual disclaimers. She seems fascinated by my work, the unpopular cases, the notoriety, some of the thugs I represent. We order enchiladas and I keep chatting away. I soon realize, though, that she follows the one rule of a great conversationalist: Keep the other person talking. So I push back and ask about her family, college, other jobs she’s had.
I order a second margarita, she’s half finished with her first, and we go back and forth with stories about our past. A platter of enchiladas arrives and she hardly notices. Judging by her figure, she has the appetite of a bird. I can’t remember the last time I had sex, and the longer we talk the more I am consumed with that subject. By the time I finish both the food and the booze, I’m fighting the urge to lunge across the table.
But Naomi Tarrant is not impulsive. This will take time. It’s Tuesday, so I ask her what she’s doing Wednesday. No go.
“You know what I’d really like?” she asks.
What? Anything.
“This may seem a bit odd, but I’m really curious about mixed martial arts.”
“Cage fights? You want to go to the cage fights?” I’m stunned.
“Is it safe?” she asks, and mentions the little episode involving the riot and Starcher’s close call with disaster. Judith sued me again and Naomi got a subpoena to testify.
“If there’s no brawl, it’s pretty safe,” I say. “Let’s go.” The truth is, at least half of the fanatics who show up at the fights and scream for blood are women.
We book a date for this coming Friday. I’m thrilled because there is another young fighter I need to evaluate. His manager has contacted me and needs some financial backing.
8.
Not surprisingly, Doug Renfro has not done well since his wife was murdered by one of our SWAT teams. The civil trial is two months away, and Doug is not looking forward to it. He’s had his day in court and he’s not ready for another one.
I meet him for lunch in an empty deli, and I’m startled by his appearance. He’s lost a lot of weight, pounds that he needed. His face is gaunt and pale, and his eyes convey the pain and confusion of a defeated and lonely man.
He nibbles on a chip and says, “I’ve put the house on the market. I can’t stay there, too many memories. I can see her in the kitchen. I can feel her sleeping in the bed next to me. I can hear her laughing on the phone. I can smell her body lotion. She’s everywhere, Sebastian, and she’s not going away. Worst of all, I can’t help but relive those last few seconds, the gunfire and screams and the blood. I blame myself for so much of what went wrong. I often leave at midnight and go find a cheap motel where I pay sixty bucks and stare at the ceiling until sunrise.”
“I’m sorry, Doug,” I say. “It certainly wasn’t your fault.”
“I know. But I’m not rational. Plus I hate this damned city. Every time I see a cop or fireman or a garbage worker I start cursing the City and the fools who run it. I can no longer pay taxes to this government. So, I’m outta here.”
“What about your family?”
“I’ll see them whenever I need to. They have their own lives to live. I gotta take care of me this time, and that means I need a new start somewhere.”
“Where are you going?”
“It changes every day, but right now it looks like New Zealand. As far away as I can get. I’ll probably renounce my citizenship so I won’t have to pay taxes here. I’m a bitter old man, Sebastian, and I have to get away.”
“What about the civil trial?”
“I’m not going to trial. I want you to settle it as soon as you can. Hell, the City’s liability is only a million. They’ll pay that, won’t they?”
“Yes, I assume. I haven’t talked settlement with them, but they don’t want to go to trial.”
“Is there a way to get more than a million?”
“Maybe.”
He slowly takes a sip of his tea and stares at me. “How?”
“I’ve got some dirt on the police department. Some crap that’s pure filth. Extortion is what I’m thinking.”
“I like it,” he says with a smile, the first and only. “Can you move fast? I want to get outta here. I’m sick of this place.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
9.
When my cell phone buzzes after midnight, it’s never a call I want to take. At 12:02 I pick it up and see that Partner wants to talk. “Hey, Boss,” he says in a weak voice. “They tried to kill me.”
“Are you okay?”
“Not really. I’ve got some burns but I’ll be all right. I’m at the hospital, Catholic. We need to talk.”
I strap a Glock 19 under my left armpit, put on a heavy coat and a brown fedora, and hustle down to the parking lot to retrieve my worn-out Mazda. Ten minutes later I enter the ER wing of the hospital and say hello to one Juke Sadler, one of the sleaziest lawyers in town. Juke roams the City’s emergency rooms trolling for injured clients. Like a vulture, he loiters in the hallways watching for distraught relatives too panicked to think clearly. He’s been known to have lunch and dinner in hospital cafeterias while passing out cards to those with broken bones. Last year he got in a fistfight with a tow truck driver who was hustling the family of a fresh car wreck victim. Both were arrested but only Juke got his photo in the newspaper. The bar association has been af
ter him for years but he’s too slick.
“Your man’s down the hall,” he says, pointing like one of those retired hospital volunteers in pink jackets. They actually caught him once wearing that jacket and posing as a greeter. They also caught him wearing a white collar and black jacket and pretending to be a priest. Juke is an unrepentant slimeball, but I admire the guy. He operates in the dark, murky waters of the law, where we have much in common.
Partner is in a gown, sitting on an exam table, his right arm covered in gauze. I take a look and say, “Okay, let’s have it.”
He was leaving an all-night chicken carryout restaurant with a snack for him and his mom. He got in the van, put it in reverse, and the damned thing blew up. A bomb, probably of the gasoline variety, probably stuck to the fuel tank and remotely detonated by someone sitting in a car nearby. Partner managed to scramble out and remembers hitting the pavement with his jacket on fire. He crawled away and watched the van turn into a fireball. Soon there were cops and firemen everywhere, a lot of excitement. He couldn’t find his phone. A medic cut his jacket off and they loaded him into an ambulance. As they rolled him into the ER someone handed him his phone.
“Sorry, Boss,” he says.
“Not exactly your fault. As you know, that van is heavily insured, for occasions just like this. We’ll get a new one.”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” he says, grimacing.
“Oh really?”
“Yeah, Boss. Maybe we get something that’s not quite so conspicuous, so easy to spot and follow. Know what I mean? Like, just the other day I was driving along the expressway and I got passed by a white cargo van owned by a flower delivery service. Standard white job, about the same size as ours, and I think to myself, ‘That’s the way to go. No one ever notices a white van with lettering and numbers painted on the sides.’ And it’s true. We got to blend in, Boss, not stand out in the crowd.”
“And what exactly do we paint on the side of our new van?”
“I don’t know, something fictitious. Pete’s Parcel. Fred’s Flowers. Mike’s Masonry. Doesn’t really matter, just something to go with the flow.”
“I’m not sure my clients would appreciate a generic white van with a fake name painted all over it. My clients are very discerning.”
He laughs at this. The last client to step into my van was Arch Swanger, a likely serial killer. A young doctor suddenly appears and steps between us without a word. He examines the bandages and finally asks Partner how he feels. “I wanna go home,” he says. “I’m not staying overnight.”
This is fine with the doctor. He loads Partner down with bandages, gives him some samples of painkillers, and disappears. A nurse has the discharge instructions and paperwork. Partner puts on his unburned pants, socks, and shoes and walks out with a cheap blanket wrapped around his upper body. We leave the hospital and drive to the fried chicken restaurant.
It’s almost 2:00 a.m. and a police cruiser is still parked near the crime scene. Strands of bright yellow tape surround the van, which is nothing but a smoldering, blackened frame. “Stay here,” I say to Partner and get out of the car. By the time I walk forty feet and stop at the yellow tape, a cop is coming toward me.
“That’s far enough, pal,” he says. “This is a crime scene.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“Can’t say. It’s under investigation. You need to back away.”
“I’m not touching anything.”
“I said back away, okay?”
I pull a business card out of my shirt pocket and hand it to him. “I own the van, okay? It was a gasoline bomb stuck to the gas tank. Attempted murder. Please ask your investigator to call me later this morning.”
He looks at the card but is unable to put together a response.
I return to the car and sit in silence for a few minutes. “Want some chicken?” I finally ask.
“No. Not much of an appetite now.”
“I think I’d like some coffee. You?”
“Sure.”
I get out of the car again and walk into the restaurant. There are no customers, the place is dead, and the obvious question is, why does a chicken place stay open twenty-four seven? But that’s a question for someone else. A black girl with steel in both nostrils is loitering by the cash register. “Two coffees please,” I say. “No cream.”
This pisses her off but she starts moving anyway. “Two forty,” she says as she grabs a pot, one that probably hasn’t been touched in hours. As she sets the two cups on the counter, I say, “That van out there belongs to me.”
“Well, I guess you need a new van,” she retorts with a sassy smile. How clever.
“Looks like it. Did you see it blow up?”
“Naw, didn’t see it, but I heard it.”
“And I’m betting that you or one of your co-workers ran outside with a cell phone and caught it all on video, right?”
She’s nodding smugly. Yes.
“Did you give it to the police?”
A grin. “Naw, don’t do nothing to help no PO-lice.”
“I’ll give you a hundred bucks if you’ll e-mail me the video, and I won’t tell a soul.”
She whips her phone out of her jeans pocket and says, “Gimme your address and the cash.”
We do the deal. On the way out I ask, “Any surveillance cameras outside?”
“Naw. PO-lice already asked about that. Man who owns this place is too cheap.”
In the car, Partner and I stare at my cell phone and watch the video, which is nothing more than the fireball he’s already described. At least two fire trucks answered the call and it took a while to douse the flames. The video runs for fourteen minutes and, while entertaining because it is my van, it reveals nothing useful. When the screen goes blank Partner asks, “Okay, who did it?”
I reply, “I’m sure it’s Link. We punched out two of his thugs on Monday. Tit for tat. We’re playing hardball now.”
“You think Link’s in the country?”
“I doubt it. That would be too risky. I’ll bet he’s close by, though, Mexico or the Caribbean, someplace just out of reach but someplace that’s easy to get to and from.”
I start the engine and we drive away. I’m impressed with how much Partner has talked tonight. The excitement of getting blown up has loosened his tongue. I can tell he’s in pain but he would never admit it.
“You got a plan?” he asks.
“Yes. I want you to find Miguel Zapate, Tadeo’s brother. Now that the promising MMA career is over, I’m sure Miguel is devoting all his time to peddling drugs. I want you to explain to Miguel that I need some protection; that I’m representing his little brother on a murder rap for free, completely pro bono because I love the kid and he can’t afford to pay me; and that I’m getting squeezed by some thugs who work for Link Scanlon. Fango is one, though I’ve never known his real name.”
“They call him Tubby. Tubby Fango, but his real name is Danny.”
“Impressive. Who’s the other one, the one you plunked with your little baton?”
“Goes by Razor, Razor Robilio, real name is Arthur.”
“Tubby and Razor,” I say, shaking my head. “When did you take care of this bit of research?”
“After the altercation on Monday, I decided to snoop a little. Wasn’t that hard, really.”
“Nice work. So give the names to Miguel and tell him that he needs to contact these boys and tell them to back off. Miguel and his boys are running coke, something Link had control of thirty years ago. It’s unlikely Tubby and Razor have crossed paths with Miguel, but you never know. There are always strange connections down in the sewers. Please make it clear to Miguel that I don’t want anyone hurt; just some intimidation. Got it?”
“Got it, Boss.”
We’re in the projects. The streets are dark and empty. However, if I stepped out of my car at this moment and showed my white face, I would immediately attract some unpleasant types. I made that mistake once before, but, thankfully, I h
ad Partner with me. I pull to the curb outside his building and say, “I assume Miss Luella is waiting.”
He nods and says, “I called her, told her it was just a scratch. She’ll be all right.”
“You want me to come in?”
“No, Boss. It’s pushing three. Go get some sleep.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
“You got it, Boss. Are we shopping for a new van tomorrow?”
“Not yet. I have to deal with the cops and my insurance company.”