Night cover, p.14
Night Cover, page 14
“Sex is what I mean.”
“How the hell do you know something like that?”
“I have if from a good source.”
“Jefty?”
“His wife.”
Powder thought about it for a minute. The physically fit French teacher. “She never told me that.”
“You probably never asked her.”
Powder laughed. “True. Women confide their troubles to you, do they?”
“I don’t know for certain it applies to Jefty and this Cable girl,” said Samson, rejecting Powder’s mild thaw. “But Jefty held her future in his hands. Then Rex found out money is what’s, important to Jefty, not kids’ futures. He came to you and drew a blank. Meanwhile, the last time Cherry Cable’s been seen is Friday in school.”
Powder sighed, but listened.
“The point, Powder, is that there’s a sick girl who may have been taken advantage of. It looks like she may have been thrown into a bout of depression. Now, I don’t know whether you know it or not, but depressives kill themselves. You’re already responsible for the police not looking for her for three days. You may already have killed her, but you should damn well take the brakes off. Unless you like to see kids kill themselves.”
Powder paused. “All right. There’s a case for looking for her. We’ll look for her. But if you’d told us this stuff before now, you’d have saved some time yourself.”
“You may not know it, copper, but it takes longer for one man to get information than a police force. You could have put it together in half a day.”
“And let me tell you something, gumshoe. This stuff still doesn’t absolve your client from his responsibility for breaking into that school and filling his pimply pockets. He got me to help him. And then in return he committed a crime. I don’t forget that kind of favor. I want him for robbery. I think you ought to tell him to give us a little help, save us a little time, for that one.”
“I don’t think he did it,” said Samson.
“There are things you know?”
“I know plenty that you don’t know, Powder. I’d be afraid you couldn’t take it all in at once. When you find Cherry Cable, or dig her body out of the river, then maybe we’ll have a little talk about the University School.
“You know what obstructing justice is?”
“I know, Powder. Do you? It’s talking tough when you should be on the phone getting your beef out looking for eighteen-year-old girls. Ones to help, I mean.”
As Samson walked away, Powder rubbed his face with both hands.
18
Powder signed off duty and walked down the long staircase to parking-lot level, frowning. He shuffled along the long corridor to the garage, purposely dragging his heels. When he got into the car, he rubbed his face twice and thought about slapping it. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what was troubling him. Or which of his troubles was troubling him most.
He felt embarrassed to sit too long without going anywhere, so he started the car. He drove, though slowly, out of the lot. Sighed to himself. Shook his head. What am I doing? He couldn’t answer himself.
He drove to All Knight Ribs.
“Let me ask you something,” Powder said halfheartedly, trying to form a hypothetical question. He was working on the second half of a double order of ribs. Not that he was hungry, but he felt a need to maintain appearances.
“Sure,” said Knight amiably.
“Hey, is that a new gold tooth?”
“No, man. Same one. That’s what you want to ask me?”
“Where would you go to find a girl?”
Knight raised an eyebrow. “A girl?”
“A girl.”
“You mean a girl?”
“No, of course not,” said Powder. “I mean a girl like who’s missing.”
The way he approached it was backhand. He told himself that he couldn’t think of anything else to do, so he drove home.
Knowing that Margaret should be home, he parked on the street and walked up to the house. Let himself in quietly. With luck she wouldn’t know.
He walked through the darkness to Ricky’s room. Undressed and slid in between the sheets. Within three minutes he was asleep. Only a quarter past four, almost like a normal person after a late night.
At eleven, when he woke up, the first thing he noticed was his door was ajar.
On the breakfast table he found a note. “I heard you come in last night. You know the rule, you bastard.” At twenty to twelve, as he walked to the car he could see something was wrong.
When he walked around the hedge he saw exactly what. The two front tires were flat.
He turned around and walked back to the garage for an old hand pump he had found there when he was working on the shelves on the weekend.
After pumping up the tires he looked under the hood. The leads were intact. She must have been in a hurry. He tossed the pump on the back seat.
Of course she was in a hurry, he thought later. Only two of the tires.
He caught Gartland just before the captain left for lunch with a revolver manufacturer’s rep. Powder put his case quickly and Gartland was surprised.
“Aren’t you taking this a bit seriously, Roy?”
“I feel responsible, but I figure if I want to work on my own time, you can’t really knock it.”
“I can,” said Gartland.
“But you won’t.”
“I don’t understand. So you made a mistake, maybe, and the kid took advantage of it. If you were bucking for promotion …”
“I don’t want to be responsible for making work for people. Maybe I gave this kid too much time. If I did, it’s my responsibility to clean it up. If Groce doesn’t mind, I don’t see why you should.”
“I don’t,” said Gartland as he shrugged the conversation to a close. “I just don’t see why after all this time … You’ll be asking for day assignment next.”
Powder decided to treat it as a suggestion.
“I never heard of nothing like this, Lieutenant, if I may say so.”
“What’s to hear you’ve heard.”
“Look, if this is a job you want done, just tell me. But the way you were talking yesterday, it sounded like you wanted me to ease off.” Groce, like almost every detective sergeant, had the sense to suspect something worth hanging on to when a superior wanted to take a case off him.
“You pick up the con man you were telling me about yesterday?”
“No,” said Groce. “This afternoon, if it all breaks right.”
Powder just nodded. But it was a sign-off. Powder wanted this case done after all. Powder wanted to do it. Groce would complain loud and long to the little woman when he got home that night.
19
To rest content with a smattering of knowledge, says Mao, is to behave like a blind man groping for fish. Christ, thought Powder. I’ll be taking the pledge next. Or whatever they do.
There were more than a dozen kids standing in front of the University School as Powder pulled into the No Parking Zone. Ordinary-looking kids, they parted like the sea as he strode to the door and went inside.
Powder didn’t knock at the office door; he walked right in to find Jefty pointing a finger at a young woman and saying,”… financial aspect.” He turned to Powder, angry at interruption, then uncertain. “Don’t I know you?” He turned the stubby finger in Powder’s direction.
“Detective Lieutenant Powder, Homicide and Robbery.”
The young woman started.
Powder said, “I want to speak to you alone.” Pointedly he held the door for the young woman, who left without hesitation.
Jefty did hesitate. “You … you’re the one who was here last week.”
“Sunday, yes. I have some more questions I want to ask you.”
“I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.”
“You didn’t help us a great deal,” said Powder. Jefty, in his school role as commander-in-chief, started to contradict him, but Powder projected chin and voice, “So I want some more help now.”
Jefty paused, thought, and sighed. “What can we do for you?”
“The scope of this investigation is widening,” said Powder, trying to inspire fear of the unknown. “I want the names and addresses of your current students and the teachers you’ve employed in the last five years.”
“Oh no!” said Jefty. “That would take hours.”
“You don’t keep such records in a tabular form?” Powder said as if he knew a law that required it.
“Well, no,” Jefty said. “We have record cards for the students and a book we keep track of instructors in.”
“Let’s see,” said Powder. It was partly abrupt and partly conciliatory.
“Which?”
“Both.”
Powder left Jefty muttering in his office, trying to decide whom he could take out of class to type the lists Powder still claimed to want.
Powder drove off toward Guilford Avenue north of Kessler Boulevard East. His dual object at the University School had been to stir Jefty and to get Cherry Cable’s home address.
6218 North Guilford was a modest brick house which peeked from behind and beneath two woolly evergreen trees.
Powder walked up the path and knocked on the door.
A woman answered the door after tens of seconds. She opened the door less than a foot and showed an eye. “Cha want?”
“Are you Mrs. Maxine Tedesco?”
“To you?”
“Police,” said Powder. He showed her his identification, held it up for quite a while. “Are you Mrs. Maxine Tedesco?”
“Yeah?” said the woman.
“May I come in and talk to you, Mrs. Tedesco?”
The woman hesitated and seemed in discomfort.
“It’s about your niece, Cherry.”
The face nodded, though the eye frowned; the woman stepped back and opened the door for Powder, who wiped his feet before he came in.
Mrs. Tedesco weighed a good 250 pounds; she led him to a dark living room.
“S’down,” she said and she went to the window, where she drew back the net curtains. It didn’t improve the light; the two spreading trees saw to that.
The choice was between two settees and a couch. Powder took the couch. Mrs. Tedesco sat down across from him. She looked uncomfortable.
She said, “’S it bad news?”
“I haven’t brought news, good or bad,” Powder said. “I’ve come to try to get help from you.”
“Oh,” said Mrs. Tedesco. She seemed to relax. “’S a relief.”
“When did you report Cherry missing?”
“Didn’t,” she said. “Got worried last Friday. She didn’t come home. Called them up when it was Saturday.”
“Who?”
“You,” she said, meaning the police. “Said to come downtown.”
“Did you?”
“’S not easy. Sunday morning her friend came here, said he’d take care of it.”
“Which friend?”
“Rex,” said Mrs. Tedesco.
“It’s not usual, then, for Cherry to go missing for a few days?”
“Oh no. No. Part of probation.”
“Probation? Have you told her probation officer?”
“No.”
“Who is her probation officer?”
The big woman twisted uneasily. “Don’t remember.”
“I can get it from records. Please don’t waste my time,” Powder said. “What’s the probation officer’s name?”
“Think she’s in trouble?”
“I’m trying to find her. We’ll worry about her trouble then.”
“Mrs. Buffington.”
“Thank you.” Powder wrote it down. Didn’t press for address, phone number, other details. “How long has Cherry been here with you, Mrs. Tedesco?”
“November fourth.”
“Last year?”
She nodded.
“And since then she’s never been missing? Not even one night?”
“No.” Said definitively.
“I’m not working for the probation people; I need to know the facts, whatever they are.”
“No.” Still definitive.
“Does she have transportation?”
“Scooter.”
“Do you have the license number somewhere?”
“AR3952.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said Powder. “I take it the scooter’s gone, too?”
“Yes.”
“When she left Friday morning, did you notice anything out of the ordinary? Did she leave early or late? Did she take anything with her that she ordinarily didn’t take? Was she upset? Anything unusual?”
“Been different for about two months, nervous. Been worried about her.”
“Do you know what she was worried about?”
“Things at school, but don’t know what.”
“Did she have a lot of friends there? Of her own age?”
“A few.”
“Do you know their names? Besides Rex.”
“Ross Hodge. Arthur Nowlchuk.”
“No girls?”
“No. Never liked girls.”
“Did she have friends, apart from school?”
“Think maybe.”
“Did she like school, Mrs. Tedesco?”
“No.”
“Not at all?”
“They were unfair. Didn’t allow for her problems. She hadn’t been at any school for two years.”
“How old is she?”
“Just eighteen.”
“Do you have a picture?”
“No,” said Mrs. Tedesco. “No pictures here.”
Powder had a close look at Cherry Cable’s room. He almost thought, in the dim light, that he’d found her in her bed, but when he went to it he saw the figure tucked under the blankets was an enormous stuffed lion.
“Called Frank,” Mrs. Tedesco said from the hall. “After m’ … m’ brother.”
To see better, Powder turned on the reading light over the bed. It was as bright as all the other lights he’d seen were dim. Mrs. Tedesco drew back from the doorway.
There was no direct information on Cherry or her activities to be found. But things stuck in Powder’s mind. Frilly lace curtains and bed trim. Books which filled the bookcases. And when he closed the room door, he found a now familiar poster photograph of Chairman Mao.
Powder spent half an hour in the room, but without much reward. The girl was on the tall side, from the clothes and the fairly large shoes. Variety of tastes: full-skirted square-dance dresses to the gray of the liberated. Reading, less than there appeared to be, because two of the three bookcases were filled with children’s books. Powder hadn’t realized so many Bobbsey Twins existed. But the third bookcase was interesting, too. Lord of the Rings, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Unsafe at Any Speed, Manchild in the Promised Land, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden, Jeeney Ray, the letters of George Jackson.
Before he left, Powder tried to think about what wasn’t in the room. Photographs and letters. That’s what he missed most.
He turned out the light and went back to the living room. Mrs. Tedesco stood before the window looking out.
He surprised himself by standing silent in the doorway watching her, a prisoner of flesh.
Then he said, “I’m finished now.”
Mrs. Tedesco turned slowly. “Find her,” she said.
“I’ll do what I can,” Powder said.
“’M responsible for her. Love her.”
20
By quarter to five Powder was in the police parking lot. He walked the long corridor to the police basement, but instead of making for the stairs he took the elevator up one floor and got out. The public level.
He walked through the police wing, across the City/County Foyer and studied the index for the other side of the complex. Found the Probation Department and took the elevator. Just another tourist.
At the Probation Department main desk he identified himself and asked for Mrs. Buffington.
“I’ll check for you, Lieutenant,” said the delicate young man he spoke to. “Would you take a seat?”
Powder stood at the desk until the kid’s return.
“I’m sorry, Lieutenant. Mrs. Buffington is out.”
“Is she coming back here before she goes home?”
“I’ll check for you. Would you take a seat?”
Two minutes later.
“I’m not sure if she is going to return to the office, sorry.”
“I’ll leave a message.”
“OK.”
“Well, don’t just stand there. Give me a piece of paper.”
“Oh, right.”
Powder wrote a note. The young man disappeared and when Powder finished the note, he had to pound on the desk.
“All right!” said the kid.
“Do you have an envelope?”
“I’ll check for you.”
“No, I won’t take a seat.”
The young man brought a huge envelope. Powder frowned, but put his succinct message inside it.
“Thank you,” the young man said pointedly as Powder handed him the envelope.
“You know, kid,” said Powder, “you’d do your job a whole lot better if you anticipated the needs of people coming to this desk. If you kept track of where people were and what they were doing. You know that?”
“I’ll suggest it to my boss,” said the kid. “Care to take a seat?”
Ah well, Powder thought. Mao says we must take care of our troops, give them guidance and help them correct their mistakes. I tried.
“Bastard,” the kid hissed behind him.
With a couple of hours to kill before he came on night duty, Powder took a walk. Downtown Indianapolis, he thought, and then went north instead. Up Delaware to the Bash Seed Store. He browsed, letting his mind have the rest of a change. Artichokes? What the fuck are artichokes?
Then he ate dinner at the bus-station cafeteria because he wanted to talk to a guy he knew there. But the guy was off. The cafeteria didn’t serve artichokes.
Rubbing his face, Powder walked slowly up to his day desk, where he found an envelope from Tidmarsh. He didn’t know whether to read it on the spot or to take it downstairs.
“I found ten dollars.”
