Somehow I knew the phone would ring. I’m only psychic about that when it’s a call I’d rather not take.
Waiting for it gave me time to think about the groundhog in the foyer who’d ducked out when he saw his shadow. I cranked my feet up onto the drawleaf and walked a cigarette across the back of my hand, a parlor trick I’d learned in the old neighborhood. I took up smoking just so I could show it off. I was young then and almost as stupid as I am now.
He didn’t have to have anything to do with the current job. In my time I’d drawn an entourage as long as Michael Jordan’s, if a hell of a lot less glamorous; but not lately. The last three assignments had been in the nature of credit checks and deadbeat loans, quick-money deals I’d put away over the phone, nothing worth sprinkling salt on my tail. If it was the Goss deal, maybe it meant I wasn’t just spinning my wheels after all; be nice if someone would tell me what I was doing right so I could keep on doing it.
On the other hand, the guy might just have wandered into the wrong building.
Just that moment the bell jarred me out of my little sortie into self-delusion. It made me jump, same as if I hadn’t been expecting it. I picked up, and sure enough the voice was that flabby baritone that sounded like a bear coming out of hibernation.
“So we partners or what?” it said.
I put my feet on the floor. They were going to sleep anyway. “One condition, Detective. We keep each other posted on our plans so we don’t wind up walking on each other’s heels, and we meet to compare notes, not just when something breaks.”
“I’m down with that, like the kids say. This ain’t no buddy film. So what’s next for you?”
“Show me yours first.”
“That don’t seem fair.”
“You came to me, Kopernick. There’s an order to these things.”
“Okay. Just now I’m in the basement at the Second, collecting dust bunnies in my ears, catching up with Dan Corbeil, April Goss, and George W. Bush. When a case has been buried this long, you got to back up in order to go forward. Your turn.”
“Not yet. You should enroll your stooges in a remedial reading course. It doesn’t take more than thirty seconds to read five names on a building directory.”
“Hang on, son. I feel like I just walked in at half-time and I don’t know who’s playing.”
I told him about my fraternal twin downstairs.
“You better get your house in order,” he said. “Why would I tranquilize and tag you when we were going to work together anyway?”
“You didn’t know that until just now. I never knew a cop of your type that didn’t wear suspenders and a belt.”
“Shame on you for peekin’. Only you’re barking down the wrong hole this time. If I was to pin a tail on you, I’d pin it so it stayed pinned, at least till he got his teeth into something. I ain’t just sure I don’t resent being called stupid more than I do getting accused of a double cross.”
“Okay, so it wasn’t you.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass if you think so or if you don’t; but if it keeps you from messing your pants I can put a man on your man and play a little handball with him.”
“I can do that myself, and it won’t get me in any worse jam downtown than usual. That’s more than I can say for you.”
There was a thump on his end. I didn’t think he’d keeled over in a dead faint. Probably he’d dumped the load of papers he was going through on a work table. He coughed up a lungful of desiccated paper and eraser shavings. “I guess I don’t know what in Christ’s name you’re talking about.”
“I’m guessing you do. How’d you make out at the blackjack table?”
“Well, ain’t this place just as leaky as the White House. Who you been talking to?”
“Does it matter, if there’s as many holes as that?” I swiped the grin off my face; I’d enjoyed that more than expected. And to think I’d almost kept my mouth shut.
“I’m not putting the boots to you, Detective. In a department that can’t keep track of its rape kits and treats the evidence room like it’s Trader Joe’s, a cop playing hooky to turn a few cards doesn’t raise so much as a scratch in my throat. If we’re going to partner up, we can’t have any secrets about why. Truth to tell, I never trusted you as much as I did once I found out about you and Motor City. You know why I’m working this case; now I know why you are. The way I see it, that makes us Turner and Hooch.”
Paper rustled. He’d returned to his homework. “Okay.” It wasn’t, but a diesel bull is nothing if not a realist. “Just so long as I’m Tom Hanks and not the flea factory. What you got?”
I told him about my arrangement with Mihalich. Paper kept crackling.
“Two clients, one case,” he said. “Ain’t that a conflict of interest?”
“Not when they both want the same thing. I’m only taking money from one, and it’s a fire sale at that.”
“You just said you needed the lawyer to get Corbeil’s cooperation. That don’t sound like he and little sister want the same thing.”
“Baby steps. If I can get him to let her continue with the investigation, and I can prove he didn’t kill anyone, it’ll sure enough be the same thing when he walks out that gate.”
“You’re sold, then. Danny boy’s a pigeon.”
“I didn’t say that; but with the amount of circumstantial evidence the state had against him, going to all that trouble, suppressing the results of the pregnancy exam, seems like more than just gilding the lily. Why tilt the pinball machine when you’ve racked up ten thousand points? Someone didn’t have faith in the odds. Someone who already knew the system, too.”
“Someone being Chester Goss.”
“He’s my guy for now. As April’s father, he’d be emotionally invested in seeing her killer brought to justice enough to go beyond all reason. And even back then he had enough weight to throw around to make it stick.”
“He’s got a hell of a lot more now. Enough to nuke your license and run me out of every department in the country.”
“Well, if you’re scared—”
“Sure I’m scared. I’m scared every time I’m first through the door in a crack house, but I go through anyhow, and I got one hell of a lot more to lose there. Just now I’m just assessing risk, and from where I sit it sure don’t look so bad as that. I just thought I’d mention it so you’d know. Now you brought up the problem, how are you gonna handle it?”
“You’ve got your pronouns mixed up.”
“Huh?”
I’d forgotten he was homeschooled.
“Not me. You.”
He was slower on the draw than I remembered; his neck on the block was impairing his instincts. I gave up waiting. “I’m saying make noise about looking into the Goss case. Force him to show his hand.”
“That’s department policy! I don’t have the pull to reopen an investigation. If I ever had, I sure as hell wouldn’t have it after last year.”
“Who knows about that, outside the department? I’m not saying you make it official. Just drop the hint around the department. A junior crime-stopper like Goss is bound to have some pets downtown.”
“Shame on you,” he said. “The G-men flushed all the bad apples out of here years ago.”
I stopped juggling the cigarette and set fire to it. It burned halfway down to the filter; that airing had dried it out like King Tut. I squashed it in the tray.
“You said that with a straight face. Okay, maybe you’re not just rehearsing for your press conference, and all your colleagues are happy serving the public for peanuts. Maybe they’re just starstruck, think Goss will give ’em their own TV show. All I know is, from what I’ve seen of his, he doesn’t get all his dope from the public record. If it breaks right, you’ll be out of the hole and then some.”
“If it breaks right; and even if it don’t. The chief’ll give the collar to one of his pets and bust me for telling tales out of school.”
“Not if you beat him to it. You had friends in the press when you worked the April Goss case the first time. If you didn’t still have some, that CPR story wouldn’t have survived the Early Edition. The chief already climbed out on a limb when he let the casino business slide. He covered for you then, he’ll do it again when you bring in a trophy.”
I could hear dust motes settling in the basement of the Second Precinct. Then:
“You sure got guts. I guess it’s just my hard luck they’re all mine.”
“You wanted in. I’m not offering free partnerships today.”
“Only on your end. I walk this plank, where’s yours?”
“Right next door,” I said, “and it’s a hell of a lot shorter. I took the first step when I agreed to stir ashes the department threw water on three presidents back. You of all people should know a cold case is city property always and forever, no civilians need apply.”
“You’re used to it. Gimme a minute before I make up my mind to kick the stool out from under me.”
“Take two. I’m easy.”
His tone went down a full octave. He was probably alone in the basement, but I could see him hunkered close to the table, wrapping his body like a tent all the way around the conversation.
“You better not be peddling the Ambassador Bridge. We got a rocky record, you and me.”
“What are pals for?”
“Cut the crap just for once. I find out you dug me a trap, all they’ll ever find of you is a grease slick clear down to Toledo. You think I’m just being colorful, you ain’t been paying attention.”
“You take care too, Detective.” I dropped the receiver back into its cradle.
The sun was back, this time leaving behind the rest of the weather. I swung to the window and held up both hands, one above the other, palms toward me, measuring its commute to the western suburbs; it involved less effort than turning my swivel eight inches to read the wall clock. Two hours to quitting—if I had a job that let me go at five.
It was time to check with lawyer Mihalich to see if he’d made any progress with Corbeil. When I picked up the handset, a string of beeps told me I had a message on voice mail; I’d added the feature to my landline in the thin hope that two people might want to be in touch with me at the same time. It was from Mihalich; life should be like that more often.
“I just got off the phone with our man in Ypsi. He’s on board, and I’ve notified the staff to that effect.”
My watch said I had a couple hours before visiting closed at Huron Valley. I slid into an all-weather coat, just in time for the sky to clear.
I caught a flash of a figure in my side-view mirror as I was climbing behind the wheel; that was pure accident. I was in the middle of swinging the door shut. By the time I turned to look out the rear window, the figure was gone.
That couldn’t be coincidence. Even in Detroit, people with nothing to hide don’t duck out of sight that quick. A narrow alley separated the struggling micro-brewery where I parked and the abandoned mini–police station next door—a lingering hangover from the Murder City years—was barely wide enough for two cats to pass simultaneously, but someone in a hurry to be invisible would find it handy.
I could have run after him. I didn’t. I’d gotten a glimpse of a horse face, a brown Fu Manchu moustache that looked like tobacco spittle, shaggy hair the color of rust streaks on cinder block, and a filthy gray hoodie sagging like wash from a wire hanger. It might as well have belonged to the loiterer in the foyer as to anyone. I’d know it next time.
Throttling the big 255 into life, I had a snap of recognition. It was there and gone, like a single frame in a movie, and afterward I wasn’t anywhere near sure. The more I thought about it the more convinced I was I was wrong.
You can get nuts turning that one over and over, like a half-familiar melody, so I shoved it behind my frontal lobe. But for a fraction of time I thought I’d seen him somewhere that wasn’t my building or my mirror.