Chapter Thirty-One
Meadows was just getting to her car when I caught up to her. She must’ve seen me in the reflection of the driver’s side window, not bothering to turn around.
“What now, Cutter?”
I kept my distance to avoid any misconceptions, and said, “We got off on the wrong foot and I want to start over.”
Meadows turned and faced me, eyebrows raised, impatient.
“You’re part of a murder investigation, so unless you want to confess or have information that leads to the killer, then what foot would you like to start over on?”
“Man, you are cold.”
“No, I’m busy and I’m off the clock. Believe it or not, I don’t like to take my work home with me. I have a life. Goodbye, Mr. Cutter.”
She opened her car door, but I stopped her from doing so.
“What if I had information?”
“Do you?”
I shrugged, didn’t want to show my hand. She gave me daggers through her eyes.
“Don’t waste my time. I don’t like my time wasted,” she said.
“I don’t know if it’s something, but I know it isn’t nothing. Does that make sense?”
“Oddly enough, yes.”
She looked up and down the parking lot as if she wanted to make sure we weren’t being watched. She motioned for me to get into the car, and I slid into the passenger seat. We sat there in silence for a hot second.
“Hungry?” Meadows asked.
“Not really.”
“Well, I am. You can watch me eat.”
She started the car, and we were gone.
Meadows chose a table outside of Miami Subs, away from the main road. Most people sat inside for the air-conditioning. Meadows said she liked the sun.
She chewed into an Italian submarine sandwich while I sipped an iced tea with too much sugar. In the North, we don’t put sugar in our tea. That’s why there are more dentists per capita in the Southern states than in the northern part of the country. As she ate, I gave her the lowdown on Dan and Jankowski. Not everything, but enough to show her I had serious info.
She laughed at me.
“Let me get this straight,” Meadows said. “Because you saw a picture of Chief and Peter Jankowski in an old newspaper, you think… Please.”
“I’m building from the ground up here.”
“You’re reaching. Saving your ass. And you were a cop?”
“Yeah, and a good one, too. Pay attention and you might learn something.”
“Fuck you.”
She leaned an elbow on the table and shook her head. As she chewed on a French fry, she made eye contact with me.
“Why did you quit then, hotshot?”
“Personal reasons.”
She mocked my answer and tossed a half-eaten fry back into the basket.
“If you want me to take you seriously then you have to give me a reason to. Otherwise, go masturbate on your own time.”
“Damn, girl. Okay. All right. I didn’t feel like I was making a difference. Burnt out. One day I woke up and realized I never spent a day working on me. A lot of running. It was Uncle Sam, then the police department. My whole life was attached to a gun. I had to get out.”
“That lieutenant up there said you had disciplinary problems.”
“She said that?”
“Not in those exact words, but I was reading between the lines.”
“Yeah, well, sort of. I jacked the deputy chief of our division on a DUI and tried to make it stick.”
“So, you are an idiot? Or is it more like a problem with authority?”
“Probably both. Most likely both. It just happened the way it did, though. But I wasn’t dirty then, and I’m not dirty now. And I was still a good detective. I’m on to something with this Jankowski shit.”
She sipped her Diet Coke and studied me. I’d shared more about my time with the Detroit Police Department with Meadows than I had with my brother. With anyone, really. As far as folks outside of DPD knew, I did my time and retired with benefits. But the time did me and I was hung out to dry. I’m not the first cop to have that shit happen and I won’t be the last. The blue line is razor-thin and if cops aren’t careful, that line can and will cut their throats.
“Thanks for telling me that,” she said. “It goes a long way. Doesn’t get you off the hook, but it helps.”
“I’ll take what I can get.”
“I won’t say you’re on to something or not. Maybe you are, but I doubt it. This isn’t Detroit, Cutter. Things are different down here.”
“At least look into it.”
She looked at me like I had rocks in my head.
“Let me explain something to you. Key West isn’t some big metropolis in the North. We’re a little island city where most people who live here year-round know each other. Jankowski is a pillar of this community. Born and raised. He has friends everywhere. You understand?”
“Yeah, but—”
“But nothing. There is no way I’m looking into him without something more than a hunch from you. I don’t care how good of a cop you say you were. You could be Sherlock-fucking-Holmes and I wouldn’t follow your hunch. I’m not an idiot, nor do I have a problem with authority. I work with facts, evidence. You might be on vacation, but I have to live here. Get it? I go around asking questions, someone will get a burr up their ass with my name on it.”
“Sherlock Holmes wasn’t a cop.”
“Neither are you, shithead, and don’t fuck with me.”
Meadows gathered up her garbage and tossed it into a trash bin nearby. She leaned across the table, and I did the same. With our faces close enough to hear each other’s thoughts, I breathed in the smell of citrus-scented lotion.
“If you run with this, I recommend you tread lightly,” she said with a soft but serious voice. “And I mean as light as a warm southern breeze, Cutter. ’Cause if anyone, and I mean anyone, gets wind of what you’re doing, no one will be able to help you. You’ll be in a world of shit all by yourself.”
She leaned back, her palms on the table, and waited for her words to register with me. I nodded. She stood. Meeting adjourned.
