Ray Tate and Djuna Brown Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Lee Lamothe
“But you won’t, right?” Her lips went into full twist. “All this, all this could just be technique.”
“Could be, I guess.” He chain lit another cigarette. “Look, I don’t know you. I know your story, or some of your story, anyway. I talked to a State guy I know about what happened and he said there were weird doings in Indian country. The guy I talked to is a good guy. He said you beat the face off your partner, but he said you did some good work up there. He said he’s the first to say he doesn’t know it all, but you were a good cop.”
“For a black dyke.”
“He mentioned that, I gotta admit.” He drank some dark and looked at her. She had a smile, not a full smile, but an almost friendly twist to the edges of her lips. He could see chicks going for her, could see a meatheaded partner making a move after dark on a dirt road. He saw her shiver under his coat from the growing wind off Michigan. “But I don’t think he gives a shit. Mostly he was curious why they put a black dyke up there in Indian country, what you call it? The Spout?”
“The Spout. Where they drop you in and pour you out.”
“He said they must really fucking hate you when they do that. He said that tells him a lot.”
“Why?”
“Well, he said it means your problem wasn’t beating your partner. The problem was long before that, before you got there, that you fucked up someplace before, and they sent you up there because you were already fucked.”
“Smart guy, your pal.” She stared at him. “What did you mean, on the phone, when you asked if I ever wanted to be a cop?”
That was what he was waiting for. It was time. Up to now he’d just been bullshitting on the teeter-totter, finding equilibrium. He could chat all night. He’d learned from a Chicago Homicide detective that you solve more cases with the art of conversation than with a nightstick. There was a point in any interview when it was time to make a move. “Reveal who you are, then, when you get a feeling,” the Chicago dick had said, “if you’re an asshole that’s the time to say something, reveal yourself as an honest asshole. If you’re a good guy just doing a job, no personal offence, then you say something then. Don’t think about it. You’ll never be a detective, Ray, but you’ll be a hell of a duty sergeant some day. You like cops and you probably, for all I know, like people, you dumb bastard. So, that’s what you show. Find that point, where the balance between what you are and what your subject is, then ride it like a little kid standing in the middle of a teeter-totter.”
Ray Tate said: “Did you?”
“I did. I wanted to be a cop. I am a cop.” She was biting at her lip, trying to prevent herself from saying much of anything.
Her defences were her coat, not her skin. He saw that. He had an urge to put his hand on hers, on the table. But it wasn’t a pure enough urge, and his Homicide buddy had told him: “It’s got to be total. When you make the human — the physical — connection, you have to be dead certain sure. You have to be able to separate the certainty from the impulse. If you fuck that up, you’ll never unfuck it.”
“Okay.” Ray Tate put his elbows on the table and said her name for the first time. “Djuna, you can play the rest of this out anyway you want. We can drink another drink and talk about Harry fucking Potter, the little fag, or whatever. Tomorrow morning we’re going to be doing stuff. I don’t know what you’re going to be doing, but I’m going to be making a case, with you or without you. If I’m flying solo, that’s okay. It just means I have to keep an eye on my back with you around. I’ve been doing it for a long time, anyway. This,” he waved his hand over the table, “this is just me laying out the land for you.”
“What case are you going to make? There are no cases. It’s fill time.”
“I dunno. There’s that guy on the board, Commander Coke.”
“Captain Cook.”
“Him. If he exists.”
She stared at him for a few minutes. He felt he was being evaluated and took it, looking back with calm. She said: “He exists. Captain Cook is a master fucking bandit and an all round fuckhead.”
“You’ve seen him? You’re working him?”
“Working him, but I haven’t seen him. But I got someone who has. She’s seen him a lot and doesn’t want to, much, anymore.”
Chapter 7
Phil Harvey chewed slowly on a sinker, dipping it into his coffee, and watched the block through the window while the crazy Captain waited for service at the counter. There was a convention in town. He saw cars with Illinois plates, Minnesota plates, some Michigans, and some Ontario, Canada. Drones on their morning coffee break filled the Donut Hole and although there were seats at Harv’s table, no one availed themselves of his company. Three office girls carrying blue, rolled up yoga mats stood nearby, raving about the flavour of the chai and sneaking glances at him. Phil Harvey knew he was a thing of the night, not of the morning. The oversized aviator sunglass and the curtain of hair didn’t quite hide the scars and his long, black leather pimp coat was tucked around him as though he was suffering a perpetual winter. There was no hiding his twisted claw clutching the sinker. His facial burns glistened with the vitamin E cream he uselessly and constantly massaged into them.
Connie Cook carried his cup through the yoga girls and dropped heavily opposite Phil. He put a leather briefcase on the seat beside him. “You look like you didn’t sleep. You up all night, Harv, wreaking havoc?” Connie Cook’s rippled jowls were smooth with knowing kindness.
“Ah, you know, Connie. Running, running, running. Either chasing or fleeing. Spent half the night looking for Agatha but she wasn’t around, so I fucked off to do something else. I guess she didn’t want to become a cook after all.”
“You didn’t see her, eh?”
“Nope. Not a sign.”
“Can’t figure that,” Connie Cook said, shaking his head. “She was hungry to move up, become a cooker.” He had a sudden thought. “What about the chicklets?”
Harv gave him a frown. “Dunno about that, Connie. She didn’t come down. I hung around then I went up and knocked. No answer. I wasn’t about to go in there. I guess where she went the chicklets went. Unless she left them up there.”
“Well, you’re gonna have to go in there, now, Harv. Shut the thing down. Get the guy in the stairwell out of there, tell the money guy on the ground to stand by. Then you go clean out her apartment in case she left the chicklets or something dirty behind. We’ll need a new place, maybe in Hauser North.” Connie Cook pondered creases into his fat forehead. “What else? What else? Fuck, I think I’ve been ripped off. You really never saw her, eh?”
“I told you, Connie: no. I planned to take her and the chicklets up to the truck lab but she didn’t show and she didn’t show and I took off. You sure she understood? To wait for me?”
“It’ll sort itself out. Anyway, Chinamen.”
Harv nodded and finished his doughnut. “I got guys ready. Some real wreckers. You give me the place and the when and we’ll go and put an end to their bullshit.”
“Well, today, I think, at noon, not too late. You want to catch them sleeping. I got a thing I want to get for you first then you go. You go in there, you guys, and you lay waste. I mean it, Harv. Everybody that comes out of there that aren’t our guys, they’re walking funny. Take the pressing machines, any chicklets or powder they got, everything. There’s going to be some money laying around, I’m sure. You guys split it up.”
“You want to come?”
“No.” Connie Cook reflected a moment. “Yeah, you know what? I do. Yeah, I’m gonna. I got to pick something up, though, something I was going to give you, but if I’m going I’ll need it.” He gave Harv a knowing look. “You think something happened