A time for reckoning, p.7
A Time for Reckoning, page 7
Lewis meets my eye across the bar, studies me curiously for a moment, and then cocks an eyebrow in an arrogant smirk before turning away.
“Not sure you wanna be looking at Lewis like you’re thinking of walking over and kicking his ass,” Dirk cautions after watching the exchange.
“I feel like kicking his ass.”
“Down boy,” Dirk says. “Remember our chat before we came. There’s only two of us. I count five of them over there.”
I nod. “I hear you.”
We chat sports while Lewis and company grow increasingly loud and obnoxious. The waitress delivers wings and more beer, careful to avoid getting close to Lewis as she does. On her next visit, Lewis pulls the empty wing platter close in front of himself and winks at her. “Come and get it, honey.”
When she edges a little closer to his side of the table and reaches for the plate, Lewis strikes like a snake, grabbing her arm as she starts to pick up the plate. “No need to be in a hurry, honey,” he says as he pulls her close and ogles her chest from close range. “See? Nothing to fear.”
I can see my brother in this guy’s manhandling of the poor woman. The front legs of my chair hit the floor with a crack as I sit forward. Dirk shoots me a sideways glance and clamps a hand on my arm. “Uh-uh.”
The waitress tries to wriggle away, but Lewis keeps his grip on her wrist and leers at her. “Keep the beer and that tight little ass of yours coming, and there might be a nice tip in your future. Maybe a little more action, too, if you know what I mean.”
The girl hurries away while Lewis casts his gaze around the table with a loud guffaw. His buddies dutifully join in. Yup, good times in Douglas tonight, boys!
Dirk leans closer. “What the hell, man? Yeah, that’s caveman bullshit, but the malice in your eyes is unsettling. What gives?”
I think long and hard on the question. Do I want to explain Frankie to a guy I hardly know? As it happens, the distance between us makes it easier to open up about my brother and what he did to Trish. “So,” I conclude while my eyes track back to Mark Lewis, “I saw my brother when he manhandled the waitress.”
“Jesus,” Dirk mutters. “I’m sorry as hell about what happened to your girlfriend.”
“Thanks. I see what Grazyna’s up against here.”
Lewis and his pals are eyeballing us.
“I think you’ve seen what you came for,” Dirk says, picking up his glass and draining the last of his beer as Lewis and company continue to watch us. “We should get out of here.”
I lock eyes with Lewis while Dirk talks, drain my glass without breaking eye contact, and push my chair back. I stand to my full six-and-half feet height while Lewis continues to stare. That’s right, asshole. I’m a pretty big guy, and I don’t like you. I nod curtly, then turn my back on him and follow Dirk outside.
He holds his hand out for the keys. “I know my way around here. I’ll drive.”
I toss him the keys and climb into the passenger seat.
My gaze fastens on a beautiful British racing-green sports car sitting in the midst of a sea of pickup trucks in the bar’s gravel parking lot.
“What’s that?”
“Mark Lewis’s Aston Martin,” Dirk replies. “He cruises all over the state and down to Denver in that beauty.”
“Big dick-waving opportunity for him, is it?”
Dirk chuckles. “Couldn’t have put that better myself, pal.”
“We’ve got company,” he says when we’re halfway back to the hotel.
I glance in the side mirror at a pickup truck that has been riding our bumper for the past few minutes. It’s jacked up and has a light bar across the top of the cab. “Just some clown who likes to tailgate,” I say dismissively.
“He followed us out of the bar parking lot.”
I cut my eyes at Dirk. “Seriously?”
“If I were a betting man, I’d say that Lewis and his minions want to know where we’re staying tonight. Maybe we should head back to Casper. We’ve done what we came to do.”
He’s right, but I’m not going to let Mark Lewis run me out of town. “I aim to make that SOB take note of me, Dirk.”
“Do it in the courtroom.”
I clamp my lips shut for the rest of the drive. Our tail cruises on by when we turn into the Hampton Inn & Suites lot. Good riddance. I march resolutely back to my second-floor room after we park.
Dirk follows and grabs my arm in the hallway when we reach the doors outside our connecting rooms. “Are we heading back to Casper?”
“You’re free to,” I reply. “Take the pickup if you want.”
He shakes his head. “Leaving you here with no wheels to get back in the morning? I don’t think so, pal. I ain’t driving back here in the morning to fetch you.”
“Suit yourself.”
Dirk gives me a long look. “Jesus, man. You sure you wanna stay?”
I nod, slip the keycard into my door, and push it open. “See you in the morning.”
“Yeah,” Dirk replies with disgust as he turns back to his door. “Make sure you unlock the connecting door between our rooms.”
I do so, then brush my teeth and strip down to my boxers before throwing myself onto the bed. After a long day and a few beers, I’m asleep almost before my head hits the pillow.
The room is still pitch-black when I hear the lock on my door click. My eyes pop open as a shaft of light from the hallway slices into the darkness. What the hell? I scramble off the far side of the bed as a couple of silhouetted figures fill the doorframe. So much for inside corridors keeping us safe.
I turn on the bedside lamp as the door clicks shut. The largest of the losers who spent the evening licking Mark Lewis’s ass is standing behind a hard-looking, stringy little man who hadn’t seemed to quite fit in with that crowd. Even though he’s six inches shorter and fifty or sixty pounds lighter than the big oaf, I realize in an instant that this is the guy to be afraid of. His eyes glitter with malice as he stares at me. A vile smile creases his face.
“Mr. Lewis didn’t like the way you was looking at us, mister,” he says. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our town?”
A chuckle escapes the oaf when the pip-squeak slips a knife out of his pants pocket. A gleaming six-inch blade snaps out of the handle as he steps closer to the bed that separates us. At the moment, Casper seems like a very nice town. Wish I were there.
“Answer when I ask you a question, asshole,” the little man snarls, easily tossing the knife back and forth from hand to hand, a trick he’s probably seen on some cheesy TV show or movie. Show-off.
“Just out for dinner and a beer with a buddy,” I reply.
“Didn’t look that way to us.”
I shrug, doing my best to project a nonchalance I don’t feel while I try to see a way out of my predicament without being carved up like a holiday turkey. My fear starts to give way to anger as I realize that I’m going to have to fight my way out of here. How, I don’t know, but if I can face down Frankie, I can face down this little jerk, knife or no knife.
“Get out of my room,” I bellow, hoping Dirk isn’t a heavy sleeper. If he isn’t, maybe we can even up the odds and get out of here safely.
Knife guy moves around the end of the bed until he’s no more than five or six feet away. “Ready to go, bigmouth?” he asks.
The door between my and Dirk’s room crashes open.
“What’s going on?” he growls as he takes in the scene.
After an initial spurt of surprise during which knife guy’s malicious grin wavers just a pinch, he shoots a glance at his buddy. “You look after asshole number two if he takes another step in here.” Then his dead eyes again settle on me. “I’ll take care of this prick.”
“Get the hell out of here,” the human ox orders Dirk.
“You don’t wanna mess with me, pal,” Dirk retorts. “Take another step and I’ll put a bullet in you.”
My eyes are riveted on the knife in the hand of the little man when I catch a blur in my peripheral vision, followed by the crash of the big man being slammed against the door.
“Now who’s outnumbered?” Dirk asks my would-be assailant.
Knife guy freezes and glares menacingly at Dirk, but says nothing.
Dirk’s lips curl into a mirthless smile. “Close your knife and toss it on the bed, then get out of here before you get hurt.”
When the command produces no more than a defiant sneer, Dirk points his gun right into the little man’s face. “I’m done fucking around,” he warns with ice in his voice. “I’m not gonna tell you to drop that knife again. We’re in a stand-your-ground state, pal. I’m free to shoot you dead right where you stand.”
Knife guy snaps the knife shut and insolently jams it back into his pants pocket before turning on his heel to push the ox out the door. Then he turns back to glare at us. “Guess you dumb bastards don’t know what county you’re in.” His eyes travel from Dirk to me. “You two are dead men walking.”
After he stalks out and slams the door, I turn to Dirk. “You’re a good man to have around in a scrape. The adjoining rooms worked out, after all.”
Dirk glowers back at me. “Pack your stuff, hero. Time to get the hell out of Dodge.”
11
I’m safe at home with Brittany in the basement of our Liberty Street home the following Saturday evening. We’re jamming on our guitars, which is a fairly recent development in the Valenti household. An empty pizza box from Lou Malnati’s sits on a corner table, flanked by a quartet of empty soft-drink cans. We’ve been at it for a while now. We may even be making progress. Deano, who lost interest after the last slice of pizza was consumed, is lounging against the bottom step, eyeing us warily. Perhaps some of the sounds coming out of my Vox AC15 amplifier are frightening him. Even Brittany seems startled by them now and again. Guitar Hero Valenti is a work in progress.
Brittany started playing guitar with a few friends back in our Atlanta days. She picked it up again a few months ago, lamenting the fact that she didn’t have anyone local to play with. Pat, bless her heart, had volunteered the information that I played a little during our high school days. Sure enough, I’d been roped into buying a guitar to accompany Brittany. I suck, but not quite as badly as I did a month or two ago. Looking on the bright side, today’s rehearsal time is winding down. I have an important meeting to get to, during which I hope to learn something important from Jake Plummer and Horace Greenwood. But first, I’m trying to plow through Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’” one more time. It sounds great when he does it with The Heartbreakers. It’s not sounding so great at the moment.
“C’mon, Pops,” Brittany groans after I botch my part again.
“It’s a twelve string, for God’s sake!” I complain. For which I have no one to blame but myself. I’d been dumb enough to run out and buy one of my dream guitars, a Jetglo black Rickenbacker 360/12. Great guitar in the right hands. Playing twelve strings instead of six is a bit of a challenge—even if you’re not a couple of decades removed from your rock and roll glory days.
“Try it on the Epiphone,” she suggests.
I reluctantly set the Rickenbacker aside and pick up my brand-spanking-new Epiphone Casino (USA Edition) hollow-body electric, which cost about four times as much as the regular model, but, hey, the Beatles, Byrds, and everyone else played these things. Good enough for them, good enough for Lightning Fingers Valenti. My ABA credit card is getting a bit of a workout at the guitar store these days, but I’m excited to be playing instruments I only dreamed of owning back in the day. Of more interest to Brittany is the fact that artists from this century also play guitar-based rock on Epiphones and Rickenbackers, so I’m also jamming out to songs by Vampire Weekend, The Strokes, Larkin Poe, and The Kings of Leon. Turns out that you can teach an old dog new tricks, so long as you keep your expectations within reason.
We get through “Free Fallin’” a couple of more times, albeit without the signature ringing Rickenbacker flourishes. On the other hand, I don’t screw up nearly as much.
Brittany grins at me when we hit the final chord. “That was better!”
“Yeah, but—”
“Yeah, yeah,” she laughs. “Do some practicing on your own, old-timer. Then you can try the Rickenbacker again.”
I smile back at her. The guitar thing is turning out to be a great distraction for us, not to mention a bonding opportunity. It’s bringing us a lot of joy, as only music and other art can. Alas, it’s time to turn away from the fun to dive back into the guts of a manhunt.
An hour later, I settle into a chair at the Cuff and Billy Club, a cop bar a few blocks away from the Leighton Criminal Courts Building and the Cook County Jail. My drinking buddies are Cedar Heights Chief of Police Jake Plummer and Chicago PD Detective Horace Greenwood. They’re here at my invitation. Apparently, it doesn’t take more than an offer of free beer to get these two out of the house on a Saturday night.
“How was Wyoming?” Jake asks.
I tell the tale, starting with Janine Dabrowski, which prompts a couple of approving grunts from my cop friends. Then I tell them about my evening in Douglas with Dirk, which elicits a pained groan from Jake.
“Didn’t I tell you to keep your nose clean out there?” he asks in exasperation.
“Maybe,” I reply with a grin.
Greenwood shoots me a look and shakes his head. “Guess Jake wasn’t shitting me when he said you find all kind of ways to get your ass in a crack.”
“Sooner or later, he’s gonna get it stuck in one he can’t get out of,” Jake mutters wearily.
I don’t argue. At the rate I’ve been going the past couple of years, it may well come to that.
We pause while a waitress delivers another jug of draft beer, then settle back for a minute, just long enough to ascertain that the Chicago Cubs are getting their tails kicked at Wrigley Field.
“Probably gonna be another one-hundred-eight-year drought between championships,” Greenwood grumbles.
“Probably so,” Jake agrees sourly.
We’re not here to talk baseball, so I draw their attention back to the table. “How about an update?” I ask Greenwood. “Any closer to finding Frankie?”
His eyes cut to Jake. “Aw, hell, man! You told me we weren’t coming to talk about this.”
Jake hooks a thumb at me, accompanied by an annoyed glower. “Because this guy told me he wouldn’t bring it up.”
“What else did you two think I’d want to talk about?” I ask with a shrug. “Anyway, now that we’re all here with a full jug of beer at hand that I paid for, we’ve got to talk about something. Why not Frankie?”
“Because you’re a civilian, Mr. Valenti,” Greenwood replies. “I can’t share details of an ongoing investigation with you.”
“You know that, goddammit,” Jake snaps at me.
“Maybe I can help,” I suggest. “He’s my brother. I know things about him that you don’t.”
Greenwood’s eyes study me with curiosity. “We think we’ve got a pretty good handle on the guy, but you’re right. You know him better than we do.”
“Don’t encourage him,” Jake warns.
Greenwood chuckles. “Doesn’t seem as if he needs much encouragement, brother.”
Jake eyeballs me and finally chuckles, as well. “You’re some piece of work, Valenti.”
I smile back. “Why, thank you, Chief!”
Greenwood falls silent and spins his glass in place with his fingertips as he thinks. He raises his eyes to mine. “Some of what we’ve done is self-evident. Touched base with the Marine Corps, his employer, his wife. Nothing doing there.”
“What about the place he was renting?” I ask.
“Paid his rent six months in advance and hasn’t been seen since,” Greenwood replies. “We had the local police poke around a bit and they’re stopping by now and again to chat with the landlord, but, unless she’s lying, he hasn’t been around.”
“What about Molly O’Reilly?” I ask Jake.
Greenwood answers. “We’ve spoken with her, as well. Claims she hasn’t heard from him in several months.”
“We haven’t seen anything to suggest she’s lying,” Jake adds.
“She’s breathing, isn’t she?” I ask. The woman lied on the witness stand at Papa’s trial, and was stupid enough to tell us she had.
Jake chuckles.
“Is Tony suggesting that the ex-missus O’Reilly has a tendency to utter untruths?” Greenwood asks lightly.
I look him in the eye. “She’s a lying bitch.”
“What he said,” Jake says.
“What did Jo tell you?” I ask Greenwood.
“Hasn’t seen or heard from him since you two had your little dustup.”
The little dustup he refers to is a brutal scrap I had with Frankie a few months ago in the kitchen of our childhood home. As always, I’d gotten my ass kicked, but had landed a few shots of my own. The important point was that I kept him off my daughter and Frankie’s wife and kid, plus Trish and Pat until the police arrived. I suspect this incident prompted Frankie’s assault on Trish.
“I have no reason to doubt what Jo told you,” I say to Greenwood after a long draft of beer. “But I’ve also seen how thoroughly cowed she is by my brother. I think I’ll pay her a visit. She might tell me more if she’s confronted face-to-face.”
Greenwood gives me a long look. “You think she might open up with you in person, huh?”
I nod.
“And if Frankie happens to be around, then what, Tony?” Jake asks sharply.
“I’ll cross that bridge if and when I come to it.”
“You’ll get yourself tossed off a bridge or worse if you stumble across him,” Jake shoots back.
“I can’t persuade you to back off and let us do our work?” Greenwood asks me.
“Not unless you’re making a lot more progress than seems to be the case.”
He sighs. “I’ll let you in on a couple of more things. Can you keep this stuff to yourself?”
I nod solemnly.
He eyes me for a moment longer, as if he’s pondering the wisdom of saying more. “To be perfectly honest, we’ve been turning over rocks looking for your brother since Miss Pangborne fingered him as her attacker. We haven’t got a whiff. His government pension and company paychecks are piling up in his bank account, which he hasn’t touched since he split. Why he’s still getting paid is a mystery to me—I have to assume that wherever he is, he’s still doing work for those folks. Not that they’re telling us a damn thing. Our best guess is that he has another source of income or a bank account and/or credit cards we don’t know about—but we haven’t been able to locate one. We’ve asked his landlord to reach out to us if she sees or hears from him. Same thing with his employer, though I doubt we’ll hear from them. Other than that, we’re at a standstill, but we’ve got our antennae out.”
