Seven
On the following morning, Vera headed toward downtown. She called the office to check in with her receptionist but the phone rolled over to voicemail. “Ms. Minnie, this is Vera. It’s after nine. Hopefully you’re just running late. Look, I’m going to stop by police headquarters and I might not be in until late. Please advise callers that I won’t be taking any new clients for a while. I’m just scratching at the surface and this case is more than likely a deep pit. Hey, call me when you make it in. Bye.” By the time Vera closed her portable flip phone, she’d concluded that her trusty office manager was not in any hurry to assist with Rags’s dilemma. She’d made her position on that loud and clear by disappearing the day before. Vera didn’t like it but she tried to understand nonetheless. Sometimes it paid to be afraid.
At police headquarters, Vera waved hello to a number of officers she’d done business with in the past. Salutations with veteran members in law enforcement typically came in the way of warm smiles and cordial winks. Vera’s smile grew noticeably wider when her eyes found Homicide Detective Donald Beasley stuffing his face with a heaping dose of crème-filled delight. Detective Beasley loved donuts and had been dieting unsuccessfully for as long as Vera had known him.
“Ahhh, now that’s just sad,” she teased, while approaching his cluttered desk. The large man raised his head slowly like a child getting caught with a hand in the cookie jar.
The dark-skinned cop with a receding hairline hesitated then bit down into a chocolate covered éclair. “I thought I heard the diet police marching in. It’s Vera Miles as I live and breathe.” He wiped his hands with a paper napkin then he pressed flesh with his visitor. “Sit down and take a load off.” The detective shoved another piece of dough in his mouth and shuffled some papers on his desk. “Mmmm, you look great, Vera. I suck at diets. What else is new?”
“Well, I went to sleep with you on my mind last night,” she answered jokingly. “Guess what, you hadn’t moved one inch when I climbed out of bed this morning.”
Beasley laughed. “I’m flattered. Was it good for you?” he flirted playfully. “Don’t tell the wife. She thinks I spent the night with her.”
“You know what I mean, Donald. I caught a strange one this time and I could use your help. A man stumbled into my place and paid two grand just to hold my attention. It could be nothing but I’d bet it’s a live one.” The cop leaned his thick frame closer to hers with exaggerated interest.
“Humph, I’m all ears.” Since Vera was one of the smartest private investigators he knew, there was reason to take note and listen to what she had to say.
“Here is a list of homicides.” She handed over the copy she’d gotten from Lucius. Beasley took one look at the pages then folded them over.
“Where’d you get these, Vera?” he whispered gruffly. “This is privileged departmental information. Hell, it’s even printed with departmental subheads.” He exhaled then surveyed the immediate area. “You could get into a lot of trouble with these and I could catch a lot of grief.”
“I know, Donald, and I’m sorry for putting you at risk but all I need is to be pointed in the right direction. Then, I’m out of your hair.”
Detective Beasley grimaced. “I must be out of my mind. A beautiful woman struts into my office and pulls a list of fatal shootings out of her behind, then here I go.” He glanced at Vera, who had her fingers pressed over her heart.
“Donald, you said I’m beautiful. Does that mean you’ll look into it?”
“Keeping two women satisfied is harder than I thought. I always imagined that stepping out on my wife would be a whole bunch more fun that this.”
“Don’t short yourself. That was very good for me,” Vera whispered softly, with her hand over his. “Thanks so much, Donald.”
“You might want to hold your applause until the show is over. I don’t even know what you hope to gain from this.” He laid his outstretched hand down on top of the list. “What does this client of yours want to know, exactly?”
“Okay, here’s where it gets kinda tricky. I need a needle in a haystack, a gunshot victim, white male, forty plus. My client thinks he has information on one of these murders,” she said, as not to give away Rags’s position.
“Good, bring your guy in and I’ll interview him personally.”
“No, I don’t think he’ll go for that. Besides, he may be mistaken altogether. I’d hate to get him involved unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
Beasley grunted his displeasure. “Oh, but it’s quite all right to involve the hell out of me?”
Vera batted her eyes at him. “You’re built for this, Donald, he isn’t. Don’t go breaking my heart. All I need to know is which of those homicides on that list are white male victims and are still unsolved.”
“And that’s it?” he said, finding it hard to believe her. “I won’t be asked to divulge any forensic evidence or nothing like that?” He smirked at Vera when she shook her head to affirm his question. “Just so you understand I’m not paddling up the creek alone if this goes south. Okay, let’s get wet.” Detective Beasley ran the same type of search that Lucius had but he tweaked the information to shake out non-males. He watched Vera gnaw on her bottom lip. “You’re going to tear a chunk out of it if you’re not too careful.” She stopped after realizing he was talking to her. “Where’d you say you got this list?” he asked again. “Never mind, I don’t want to know.”
Beasley circled three of the names on the paper Vera strolled in with. Afterwards, his countenance changed dramatically. One of the names he ruled out immediately because the victim was a biracial male. Another victim happened to be a white female who’d undergone a gender reassignment surgery. Beasley was sure of it because he caught the case himself after the body was discovered. The remaining name didn’t ring a bell whatsoever but that wasn’t unusual since there were holes in the police department’s bookkeeping system. The officer informed Vera of that so she wouldn’t get her hopes up.
After a round of pleasant goodbyes, Vera folded both pages into her purse and strolled toward the exit. Narcotics Detective Frank Draper casually passed her to get a closer look. He’d been checking out their interaction the whole time. “Beasley, you old dog,” Draper jested. “First, you overdo it with the donuts and now this. What’s the wife and five little Beasleys going to say about your juicy piece of action on the side?”
“Not that it’s any of your business but Vera’s an old friend, a PI looking into something for a client. I used to toss her a bone every now and again. This time she’s just asking about unsolved homicide cases, gunshot victims and such.”
“Maybe I can toss the lady PI a bone on occasion too,” the white cop replied. “Any case in particular? I’m down with dark meat.”
“Sorry, Draper, not that kind of bone. One thing I never liked about narcs, they all think everyone is out to score.”
While Detective Beasley was protecting Vera’s honor, she was stretching her legs. She walked directly over to the County Sheriff’s Office on the next block. She experienced an eerie feeling that someone was following her, although there wasn’t anyone suspicious lurking around as far as she could tell. The sheriff’s office kept most undesirables away on general principle. Vera knew that criminals with a lick of sense steered clear of that area whenever possible, so she pushed past the glass doors and entered the building with the thought of being followed diminished.
After she cleared the metal detectors and received her plastic visitor’s badge, Vera stepped off the elevator on the forth floor. Cecelia Montez, a clerk with twenty years on the city’s dime peered over a cubicle wall on cue, as if she’d been waiting for Vera’s arrival. “Hey, Cecelia,” Vera sang. “You’ve got to be up to something, looking that good in the middle of the week.” The Spanish woman wore a pair of slacks tighter than anything Vera dared crawl into. Green polyester was stretching every which way but that didn’t stop the spirited Latina from pulling a pirouette to show off her voluptuous figure.
“Holà, chica, I have an early lunch date,” Cecelia told her. “My new man is young and greedy so I got to keep it hot and ready.”
Vera patted her on the shoulder approvingly. “Ooh, I know that’s right. You’ve got to keep the young ones on a short leash.”
“Tell me about it. I moved him into my place last month so he wouldn’t wander off. If he strays on me, his insurance better be paid up, because you know I don’t play.” Cecelia’s bark was bigger than her bite; knowing that made Vera laugh even louder.
“Cecelia, you ain’t gonna ever change.”
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” she replied, with a welcoming gesture for Vera to enter her cubicle. “Who’s running from you now, chica?”
“Cecelia, I just signed on to help this guy find somebody, but he’s not sure if his head’s on straight.”
The clerk frowned, nodding toward the sheet of paper Vera had taken from her purse. “What’s that got to do with it?”
Vera explained as much of the case as she was comfortable with. Although she and Cecelia went back at least nine years, she’d grown way past tired of random digging and hoping to hit pay dirt. If this search failed to pan out, Vera was determined to hand her shovel over to Rags and send him on his way. After Cecelia punched in the name on the page, she hummed a soft Spanish tune mixed in with English-sounding words to amuse herself. Before long Vera was bobbing her head and humming along.
“Oh, here it is. Harold Newel, died over two years ago,” said Cecelia, as she read notes off the monitor. “This man was into some real rude stuff. He had a lot of priors for drug possession but got it kicked each time. Either he had one hell of a lawyer or somebody was looking out for him on the inside. His luck was running good, for a while. Nine pops and no convictions; maybe he was on a cop’s payroll.”
“I thought paid informants got protection as part of the standard health plan,” Vera said, jokingly.
“I don’t know. Too bad poor Harold’s friends couldn’t pull him out of this one. He was found dead in a motel bathroom. Somebody wanted him gone for real. Four shots, two in the face, one in the heart and the other aimed a lot lower.” Cecelia looked at Vera, hoping she hadn’t gotten herself tied up with the people who ended poor Harold.
Vera winced when a morbid thought kicked her in the head. “I know I’m going to regret asking this, but do you have any crime scene photos?”
“I’ll show you but I haven’t eaten yet, so get what you need while I’m powdering up in the women’s room.” The senior clerk got up from her desk then excused herself without apprehension. She’d run background checks for Vera over the years so leaving her alone and unattended wasn’t out of line. Cecelia’s office worked with private eyes routinely, because they were known to get into places cops couldn’t without a warrant.
While the clerk was away, Vera read the crime scene report. Harold Newel, age forty-five, dead. There were two paragraphs discussing articles of clothing and drug paraphernalia found in the motel room. After Vera scrolled down to view the crime scene photos, she gathered why Cecelia would rather not carry that vision with her throughout the day. A graphic tribute to blood and guts spanned across the screen. From the description Rags had provided, this stiff wasn’t the one she was after. Harold Newel was short, thin and nearly bald. By the looks of the disfigured corpse, Cecelia was correct in that someone did want him gone for real. She figured it was the work of a deranged killer or a scorned lover with an axe to grind. Either way, Vera felt relieved that Rags wasn’t the responsible party, very relieved.