Suspect, p.2
Suspect, page 2
‘Why’s that a crime?’ I asked him. ‘Hooking up? What’s the US Attorney investigating?’
‘Because she’s a public official,’ Rik said.
‘Because she’s a woman, Boss. Men still hate it when a female does what she wants with her body. These dudes’ stories make no sense. Yeah, okay, men can get raped or assaulted, but not usually when they’re carrying a .38. Not to mention the basics: If winky-dink doesn’t want to come out to play, there’s no game. So how’d she force them?’
‘They say they didn’t want to.’ Rik shrugged.
At that point—the day Rik met the Chief for coffee a month ago—all we knew were the few details that had been leaked to the Tribune. Even so, it was clear that somebody canny about election-year politics was involved. The P&F complaint, which was filed a few days later, was clearly timed to put maximum pressure on Mayor Nieves, who’s running again, to fire the Chief. Instead, the mayor, who’s learned how to swerve after twelve years in office, said she would leave it all up to the Police and Fire Commission. Rather than give in, the Chief declined to take a leave.
“This is all horse hockey,” the Chief says now. “I wanna see those jokers up there testifying to this crap, that I supposedly said, ‘Sex or else.’ This is just typical police department baloney. Cops think the worst of everybody, especially half the officers they work with, and are always making up shit about them.”
“Okay,” says Rik. “Okay.” He nods several times, clearly trying to determine how safe it is to probe. “But all three of these guys got promoted, right?”
“Sure. And I signed off. But there was a good reason in each case.”
Rik asks her for a thumbnail on the three men accusing her, ‘the allegators’ as Rik calls them in the typical grim humor of the world of criminal defense.
“Well, two of them,” she says, “Primo DeGrassi and Walter Cornish, were in Narcotics together for years, until I moved them out. Cornish retired last year, and DeGrassi left about twelve months before. I can tell you right now, if you dig around”—she points straight at me—“they’re both connected to the Ritz. He’s behind this.”
That’s the second time she’s said ‘the Ritz.’ Part of what freaks me out about other people is how often I can’t follow them or make the connections everybody else sees as obvious. I can remember watching TV when I was a kid and being so baffled about what was happening with the characters that I’d ask my younger brother, Johnny, to explain. ‘Why did she just say she hates him? I thought she liked him.’ ‘She does like him. That’s why she said she hates him. Because she’s real disappointed.’ Even now, I often find myself feeling lost and a little panicked.
“The Ritz?” I ask, although Rik prefers I just listen. “Like the hotel?”
She smiles, nicely. “It’s a nickname for a really bad guy.”
Rik lifts a hand so he can continue to direct the conversation. He wants her to tell us first about the third officer in the complaint.
“Blanco?” she asks. “We call him Frito around the station. He’s the big mystery. Former altar boy and Eagle Scout. Bronze Star in Afghanistan. Quiet. Never gets excited. A coppers’ cop. And I been so good to him. I got no idea why he’s making up this shit.”
Rik jots another note and then says, “Okay, I’m with Pinky. Who’s the Ritz?”
The Chief responds with a bitter laugh.
“Everybody around here knows who the Ritz is. Moritz Vojczek?” Voy-check.
“The property guy?” I ask, proving her point. Vojczek’s name is all over. His company seems to manage every apartment building in town, including mine. He owns the biggest real estate brokerage in Highland Isle and is clearly the busiest developer. If you see a hole in the ground in HI, odds are there’s a sign in front that says ‘Vojczek.’ Definitely a local power.
“I read in the Trib last year,” says the Chief, “that the Ritz is worth about 300 million dollars. And he owes it all to me.”
“To you?” Rik asks.
“Cause I fired his ass from the police force as soon as I became Chief. Well, not fired. Suggested he resign.”
“Didn’t you say you rode with the Ritz in Kindle County?” I’m still confused.
“Right,” she says. “We both started out there. I could take all afternoon telling you stories about the two of us, but the long short is simple: He’ll spit on the ground I’ve walked on because I canned him. Not to mention that I still have my eye on all the dirty shit he’s got going around here.”
“What kind of dirty shit does a real estate mogul have going?” Rik asks.
“A lot. When the Ritz was in Narcotics, everybody knew he was dealing himself. He’s better insulated now, but he’s not changing his spots. Fentanyl’s the money drug right now, so he’s probably got some angle there. I mean, I’d be happy to testify about all the bad blood between us.”
Rik spends some time shaking his head.
“Lucy,” he says, “you’re not going anywhere near a witness stand for a while.”
Rik details the odd procedural footing of the P&F case. Because of the political heat, the city attorney, who acts as the prosecutor, has agreed to convene the hearing so the three accusers can tell their stories in public. But because of the Fifth Amendment, the Chief won’t present a defense until the US Attorney has cleared her.
“Which is the best of both worlds for us,” says Rik. “We chew holes in these guys’ stories, using all the great stuff Pinky is developing.” He shoots me a smile, and I know better than to gulp. “Once the Feds decline to prosecute, if the City hasn’t dismissed the case already, then you get on the stand and say, ‘This is all bull-pucky, I never had sex with any of these guys.’”
The Chief takes a long time, but the dimples are gone.
“Well, maybe that’s not exactly what I’d say,” she finally answers.
“Oh,” says Rik eventually.
The Chief studies her watch and says, “Let’s put a pin in this.”
Rik asks me to walk her out. He’s still at the conference room table, massaging his temples, when I return. His eyes rise to me.
“Clients,” he says.
3. The Weird Guy Next Door
My job with Rik is probably the first time in my life I’ve headed for work in the morning without feeling like I’m going to prison. (Hanging around with Pops was always cool, but my job there was an eight-hour day inside a fortress of paper.)
Years before, I had been pumped at the thought of being a cop. I was sure I could be less of a jerk than the guys who’d harassed me when I was in my super-druggy phase, right after I broke my back and had to give up competitive boarding. And the squinty-eyed distrusting way cops look at other people is, frankly, pretty close to my basic attitude toward everyone. Crashing and burning at the academy left me feeling for a long time like I’d missed the chance to be myself.
Becoming a private investigator never occurred to me. It was my grandfather who thought I might have a talent for it. When Pops and my aunt, who were law partners, decided to retire, they offered to pay for a PI training course for me as outplacement. I was like, ‘Why not, okay,’ but I had no clue how much I’d get into it.
Yet here’s the truth—I love to snoop and pry. I get a butt-tightening thrill out of it. Maybe some of that has to do with how often I miss signals. Investigating is like being the Invisible Man—not the one from the book I had to read in high school, but the old movie, somebody who can drift around and look in on people without ever really being seen. Oh, I think often, oh, so that’s this chick’s deal.
And when I’m being a PI, I can do stuff that’s hard for me ordinarily. I don’t have to grope for the words with strangers, because I’m there to ask, ‘What do you know about Joe Blow or Clown Brown?’ I don’t care about the usual judgy thoughts people have about Crazy Pinky, because I’ve got a job to do.
At night, I spend hours watching YouTube and visiting obscure sites, trying to master what I call the P.I. BOT. The PIBOT has nothing to do with algorithms or robots. It means the Private Investigator’s Bag of Tricks. That started with a concealed carry permit, training included in my PI course. Now I’m always reading about and practicing skills—surveillance techniques, disguises, clever ruses to get people to talk.
But none of that has helped me learn much about the weird guy next door. I’ve taken to scribbling notes, guesses and whatnot, so I can review every little detail and put together two and two, but so far nothing is really adding up.
Tonight, after our meeting with the Chief, as I approach the apartment building, The Weird One (or TWO, as I’ve started calling him in my own brain) is in the old tiled foyer, on his way out. He is a creature of unvarying habit. Judging from the yellow plastic bag he comes back with every night, he’s on his way to Ruben’s, a little Mexican storefront two blocks away, where the whole family cooks.
TWO has got manners, I’ll say that, since he holds the door open as he sees me headed up the walk. Then again, it gives him something to hide behind. He’s literally shielded by the beveled glass panes of the old entry door as I pass by.
“Hey,” I say. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t smile. Not even a nod. He’s gone as soon as I skinny past.
Through the so-called wall, substantial as a communion wafer, that separates our units, I thought I heard voices not long after he moved in around March 1, and I immediately decided to eavesdrop. The old tricks from 1930s movies—a glass against the wall or a stethoscope—do pretty well, but they have nothing on today’s amplification apps, which both increase the sound and cancel extraneous noises. They are also purely illegal, which means I’ve never told Rik about them. In PI school, they always reminded us that your employer can be held responsible for whatever you do. Which led me to adopt what I regard as the PI’s Golden Rules. One: Don’t tell your boss more than he needs to know. Two: Above all, never get caught.
But listening in on TWO, I have learned next to nothing. Most of the time, I can’t even make out his shoes on the floor or the hardwood creaking. It’s like he’s over there meditating or practicing how long he can hold his breath. I hear the plumbing now and then. My two biggest discoveries are that he has hay fever, because he sneezes loudly on occasion, and that he likes the History Channel, especially shows about old wars, which is what the voices I thought I’d heard turned out to be. Otherwise, zero. If he’s typing on a computer keyboard, he has it silenced. And he must have started listening to his TV with headphones, since in the last several weeks I haven’t even heard that.
Yet my Spidey-sense tells me this guy is up to something strange or dangerous. What if he’s building a bomb and my last thought, as the building and I become a million pieces of debris, is, I knew it, I fucking knew it? And so, after I watch TWO turn the corner, I decide the way I decide most things, without thinking about it much, to follow him to Ruben’s. This isn’t completely odd, because I stop in there at least once a week, although usually closer to closing time at nine.
Ruben opened this place after the worst of the pandemic. He had lost his job, like so many other restaurant people, as establishments closed. That left a lot of vacant restaurant space here on the edge of downtown Highland Isle, and Mayor Amity used some of the federal COVID money to fund a loan program, basically begging people to give it another try.
Ruben’s is doing really well, because the food is absolutely banging. The carnitas in particular rival a G-spot orgasm. Ruben uses pulled meat—no ground beef here—and spices you can see them grinding in the kitchen.
Three generations toil there in sight of the tiny dining room. The younger teenagers are chopping up the veggies to make salsa. The big hit in the online reviews is Grandma, who sits over a hot stone oven in a corner flipping tortillas. The pretty daughter, who is in college, and whose English is way better than her parents’, works out front to greet the customers and take the carryout orders. If there’s any lull, she goes back to her books. She told me once she wants to be a pediatrician.
“Usual?” she asks when I’m halfway from the door, and I answer, “You know it.” I follow her toward the cash register and tap the credit card gizmo with my phone. Mr. Weird, who I caught sight of as I came in, is sitting at a tiny table not ten feet behind me and waiting for his food.
Once I’ve ordered, I turn and do the whole what-a-surprise thing. “Hey,” I say, all warm and friendly, a mode I am not especially good at. He’s reading a newspaper. There are folks, like me, who can be so shy it hurts, and if that was his story, I’d let him be. But it takes one to know one, and TWO is not that kind of person. Nobody scares him. His narrow black eyes are hard as marbles. He says nothing as he glances back to the paper.
I am really bad about taking ‘Fuck you’ for an answer.
“Okay if I sit with you while I’m waiting?” I ask.
His mouth sours. I can see that if he could bring himself to say it, he would answer, ‘Go away,’ but he knows that if he pisses me off, I can start banging heavy metal at three a.m. Instead, he waves a hand, sort of like ‘I can’t stop you,’ and I plop down in the molded chair on the other side of the two-top. There’s a total of ten tables in here, a couple rows with red-checked paper tablecloths, lined up between the store window and the kitchen. Colorful woven hangings with simple figures are on the walls.
TWO continues studying the paper, with an intensity that is clearly faked. Fact is I’ve never seen a newspaper in the trash or recycling bins for our floor, which we share and which I’ve examined periodically, hoping futilely for signs of what TWO is up to. My guess is he either grabbed what he’s reading off the table or else bought it for a special reason. There are two other customers waiting for their orders, but they’re doing the standard thing, thumbing through their phones.
“So like what’s the weather?” I ask him. I mean, could I do any worse? When I say I’m lame with other people, I am lame. “Do you think climate change is real?” I add. That is maybe even stupider than my first remark, and so in total shame I find myself babbling. “Cause like I’m a snowboarder, I was anyway, before I broke my back doing it, and, you know, I like had a professional interest in snow, and I mean I can see that it’s different, we get ass-little here anymore. I mean, maybe I don’t have to tell you that. Are you from here?”
He sits over there with his bullet eyes, calculating whether he needs to answer at all.
“This paper doesn’t do the weather,” he says. These are the first words I’ve ever heard him utter. His voice is wispy and he’s got just the faintest accent, like he grew up with another language besides English.
I lean a little closer to see the facing pages of what he’s been reading.
“Is that the Wall Street Journal?” I ask.
He glances at the top of the page, as if he’s not sure himself, then makes a sound to say yes.
“Oh, so you’re like in finance?” I ask.
“No.”
“Just an investor?”
“It’s something to read,” he says.
I think about asking him what he ordered, and aren’t the carnitas epic, but I sense he’s on the verge of changing tables. The paper remains raised as a barrier. In the kitchen, the family chatters in high-rpm Spanish, shouting occasionally to be heard over the ranchera music that booms out for the benefit of the customers.
It’s just my luck that my order comes up before TWO’s. Ruben himself emerges from the kitchen in his apron and plastic gloves, holding the yellow bag.
“Clarence,” he says, “su comida.” For carryout or other places where you need to give a name, I’ve lately started saying ‘Clarice,’ which I was christened with. Partly it’s because nobody ever gets ‘Pinky.’ I’m called Stinky, or Peeky, or Penny, which is super annoying. Also, sometimes I like to pretend a little. Actually, I like pretending a lot—another great thing about being a PI, since I often have to act out some off-the-hook cover stories to hide what I’m up to.
Calling myself Clarice is different, naturally, but it’s still a way to kind of pretend, as if I’d been born into a different family, or at a different time, or with a different mom. My mother’s mother’s name was Clara, and Clara stuffed a rag in the tailpipe of her Cadillac and suicided herself in her garage about six months before I was born. In memory of her, I was named Clarice, but my mom, still overcome with grief, found herself choking on a name so much like her mother’s. As a result, she accepted it when my dad started referring to me as Pinky. He thought he was a complete stitch, because his demented grandmother couldn’t remember ‘Clarice’ and just said, ‘Hello, Pinky’ whenever she looked at rosy little me down in the bassinet.
But Ruben doesn’t get ‘Clarice.’ He’s been calling me Clarence since the first time I came in here. I’ve stopped trying to correct him and just take the yellow bag.
I return to His Weirdness at the table and say, “You heading back? I’ll wait.”
He won’t answer for a second, then says, “I’m going to eat here. Take care.” Again, the look that goes with this remark is about as friendly as a pointed weapon.
“Sure, okay.” I stall a second longer and go out the door, feeling humiliated and terminally stupid. That was some ace investigative work. I know nothing more about TWO, except he’s kind of a dick, and he’s sure now the inked-up chick next door is a complete creeper.
I’ve strolled a block when I suddenly reverse and go south to a little convenience store on the corner, where I ask whether they still have some of this morning’s papers. The South Asian guy behind the counter just points. I find today’s Wall Street Journal and pay for it.
I walk an indirect route home, taking my time to look in windows and stopping twice to check my phone. As I get close to our building, I see just what I expected, TWO heading in, his yellow bag and dinner at his side. Like I said—creature of habit. I stifle the urge to sprint up and say something to embarrass him, because it would be counterproductive to let him know I didn’t buy his act.
Instead, I lay back until he is inside. Spring or not, it’s a chilly night, and I’m wearing a puffy coat with my shorts. In this part of the country, April is a write-off, often damp-cold and gloomy, even a little snow sometimes.
