Dead Bang (11 page)

Marg glowered at the radio and said, “Why not take your cell phone?”

“I don't want the police harassing my clients because I have their numbers in memory.”

“I have an appointment this afternoon.”

“Don't answer it unless you're here.”

Marg let out a sigh that she finished with, “Fine.” She picked up the radio and deposited it in the top drawer of her desk.

“You know what kind of flowers Wendy likes?” I headed for the door.

“If you have to ask me that, I'm not surprised you're in trouble.”

I grabbed the door handle and turned back to Marg. “I know what I usually get her, but nothing seems to be right.”

“Trust me,” said Marg. “When a man thinks flowers will help, it's usually too late for flowers.”

I opened the door. “Thanks.”

“Try not being a jerk.”

I said, “Too late,” as the door fell shut behind me. I ran up the stairs and shouldered open the door. In my car, I looked at my watch again. Two minutes.

I scooted out of the lot, turned right—east—onto Forty-fourth, and watched for Van Huis's fake-wood-paneled minivan on the way. At Breton, I turned into the bank parking lot and backed into a space.

After sixteen minutes, I looked up from my watch. Van Huis and a marked Kentwood cruiser steamed up Breton and stopped in the left-turn lane. I couldn't see them. The bank blocked my view—and theirs. I pulled out of my spot and eased up to the apron onto Breton. They made the left, west on Forty-fourth. I turned south down Breton.

At the Kentwood Municipal Building, I hustled up to the police desk and asked for Detective Van Huis. He was out. Fancy that. “You can take a seat and wait,” said the officer on duty.

“That's all right,” I said. “I talked to him on the phone, and he said if I missed him he wouldn't be back until Monday.” The officer searched his clipboards and looked confused. I popped a card on the desk and said, “I'll be back Monday.”

He shrugged.

I left.

Back in the parking lot, my radio squawked. “Five-six, this is Five-zero base. Over.” Marg. I clicked twice. “Lieutenant Van Huis was just here.” I clicked back and turned off the radio.

From the parking lot, I turned south and caught the first left over to the Beltline and headed north, mindful of speed, turn signals, and amber lights. At the Woodland Mall, I stopped at the Sears Autocare Center and left my car for an oil change. I told them, “Take your time. I'm going to shop.”

I caught a cab. Twelve bucks to the federal building—more than the ride is worth. For once I didn't have to waltz my sidearm up to the fifth floor for a stop at the security lockers. I headed straight for the FBI office
on the seventh floor. On the elevator I chuckled—with half the police agencies in western Michigan looking for me, I'd gone to a lot of trouble to wander, uninvited, into the office of the FBI. I hoped the plan was so stupid that no jury would believe a charge of fleeing and eluding.

The directory at the elevator supplied the room number—no signs are posted on the offices. In a back hall a video camera hung from the ceiling above a solid metal door. Next to the door a keypad and a buzzer were mounted on the wall. I buzzed.

“Yes?” asked a man's voice.

I looked up at the video camera and said, “Art Hardin for Matty Svenson.”

“You have an appointment?”

“I was at that house in Wyoming that got shot up last night.”

The door buzzed at me, and I pulled it open to find an agent at the reception desk, an imposing fellow at nearly six feet, with a broad frame and weighing a lean and athletic one hundred eighty or ninety pounds. His olive skin and neatly trimmed black hair framed piercing black—and accusing—eyes. He said, “Agent Svenson is bringing in a witness.” His blue suit coat hung from the back of the chair he'd pushed aside to stand at the desk. He wore a Beretta nine millimeter in a high-ride holster on his right hip. He added, “You may take a seat,” but his tone and assertive body language made it sound more like, “Sit down and shut up.” Nonetheless, I liked the “witness” part of what he said.

A plastic plant separated the two metal folding chairs in the cubicle that made up the reception area. I took the one closest to the door because I could get an oblique view of the monitor on the reception desk. The screen provided a split view: one of the elevators and the other of the hall and door. The hall-and-door picture didn't come from the camera hanging from the ceiling outside, so it was a dummy. They probably had a chip-cam in the exit sign at the end of the hall.

From a wicker flower basket on the floor, I chose a year-old copy of
Grand Rapids Magazine
with the address label torn off the cover. The agent watched me settle into the chair with the magazine before putting his pen to work on something out of sight on his desk. We'd shared a few minutes of uneasy truce when someone in the hall hit the buzzer. I looked up to the monitor. Detective Van Huis.

“K
ENTWOOD PD,”
said Detective Van Huis.

The agent hit the buzzer. I hauled in my feet to give the door room to swing and hoisted my magazine to cover my face.

Van Huis pushed the door open. “I need to talk to Special Agent Svenson,” he said, without coming all the way in.

“Agent Svenson is bringing in a witness for a statement.”

“How long ya think?”

“From Wyoming,” said the lean agent with the fat nine. “Half hour, maybe a little longer.”

“She bringing in Karen Smith?” Van Huis stepped in and let the door settle against him.

“You need to talk to Agent Svenson.”

“If it's about that home invasion in Wyoming,” said Van Huis, “I need to talk to her about one of the witnesses.”

“You're welcome to wait.”

Van Huis took another half step. I could see his shoulder and elbow past the edge of the door. “No,” he said. “Thanks, but I need to go down and talk to the marshals—that's who's doing security on the front door downstairs, right?”

“That's right.”

“I'll be back,” he said, but missed the chance—by inflection—to make it a joke. He left.

I stole glances at the monitor until I saw Van Huis step into the elevator. “Restroom?” I said, as I stood, leaving the magazine open on the chair as if to save my place.

“Down the hall on the left.”

Down the hall and on the right, I took the stairwell. The doors from the stairwell to individual floors turned out to be locked. I ended up stepping out into a lime-green basement hallway. Exit signs led me to the garage below the federal building. I waded through government sedans to a door that opened into the parking ramp beneath the city/county building. The city/county ramp dipped under the bank building and led to a set of double-glass doors opening into a small shopping mall with an exit to Crescent Street. I crossed Crescent Street, entered the Waters Building, and hustled to Pete Finney's office.

“Art Hardin for Pete Finney,” I said to the slim twenty-something siren posted at the reception desk.

“Mr. Finney is with a client,” she said. The placard on her desk read
CELESTE
. With raven hair and burnished umber skin, she made a fantastic Celeste. The flap front of her red-wool suit jacket fastened at the shoulder with a single gold straight pin.

“Could you at least let him know I'm here, Celeste?”

“Marianne,” she said. “Celeste is at lunch.” She flipped her hair with her hand. “I've seen you on the news.” She wrote “Art Hardin” in floral swirls on a yellow sticky-note. “Mr. Finney doesn't like to be disturbed, but I can put this note on his door and he'll see it when he comes out.” She smiled.

“Thank you, ma'am,” I said.

She rose from the desk and revealed a flash of ruffled white blouse under the jacket that didn't quite meet her pleated skirt. Her long black hair swayed in counterpoint to her hips under her just-to-the-knee skirt. I wondered if I looked like I was eating ice cream again.

The oak paneling in Finney's outer office made his furniture look cheap—which it was. I'd helped him rescue it from a South Division mission store. I settled into the corner of a black vinyl settee and sorted a battered copy of
Popular Mechanics
from magazines piled on a glass-topped coffee table.

Halfway through an article about scramjet airliners that skipped across the atmosphere, I heard Pete's voice summon me from the hallway.

“Arthur,” he said, discarding the “r” and pronouncing it “author.” He held the door and motioned me into his office. Coatless, he wore red suspenders over a blue cotton shirt, loose at the neck, with the cuffs turned up. “I have just a moment.”

I hustled past Marianne and answered her smile with a nod as I passed. “I have at least two police agencies scouring the planet for me.”

“Who?” asked Finney.

“Archer Flynt from the attorney general's office and Van Huis from Kentwood.”

“What did you do?”

“Shot some crazy woman at lunch yesterday and ran away from a home-invasion robbery last night.”

“And that's it?” asked Finney, looking up from a file open in his hands.

“Recently,” I said.

Pete followed me into his office and pulled the door shut after us. “I talked to the prosecutor this morning. He's of the mind to settle the matter without charges as long as you surrender your weapon and your concealed carry permit.”

“Not happening.”

“So the answer is no?”

“I'm a detective,” I said.

“My investigator works without a pistol,” said Pete.

“You're on your third investigator,” I said. “And every time the shit hits the fan, you call me.”

Pete rolled down his cuffs and cinched up his tie. “I have a motion in fifteen minutes. I'll tell the prosecutor that you have refused his offer. If he asks where you are, I shall have to tell him.” Pete peeled his suit coat off the back of his chair. “If the authorities turn up before I get back,” said Finney as he shrugged into his jacket, “not one word.”

“Maybe I can talk them out of it,” I said.

“Please do,” said Pete. “I have my eye on a Boxster. Thought I would trade the Miata.”

“Mum's the word.”

“Spirits are in the cabinet,” said Pete as he slipped his file into the half-bushel black satchel he used as a briefcase. “Don't muddle about the things on the desk.” He left.

In the cabinet, I found a small fridge and a wet bar. Pete had a very nice bourbon and a single-malt scotch. The fridge housed imported beer and orange soda. I went with the soda, kicked off my boots, and stretched out on his sofa. This one was leather.

• • •

Pete Finney clattered through his office door, shambled over to his desk, and dropped his satchel on the floor with a thud. Loosening his tie, he
said, “Detective Van Huis and Detective Flynt are in the hallway.” He made it sound like, “Boil the water before you drink it.”

I swung my feet down to the floor and wiped the fog out of my eyes with the heels of my hands. Pete slipped out of his suit coat, draped it over the back of his chair, and asked, “Are you wearing your pistol?”

“No, sir, I am not,” I said. “They have enough of my hardware.” I took off my jacket and draped it over the arm of the sofa. “You can tell ‘em to come in.”

Finney climbed into his chair and scooted up to his desk. “Not just yet, Arthur. I told them we needed a few minutes to confer.”

“They went for that?”

“They don't have a warrant,” said Finney.

I took the straight-back chair across from Finney. “They hounded me out of my office and camped out at my house.”

“They want you to say something that will establish probable cause for them to seek a warrant.”

“We covered it all yesterday.”

“This doesn't concern the shooting at the restaurant,” said Finney. “The prosecutor has elected not to pursue charges at this time.”

“What brought that on?” I asked.

“The Shatner woman killed her mother and left a note,” said Finney.

“Heard that on the radio on the way to work.”

“The man she shot at the restaurant was a bank fraud investigator. The pregnant woman was his daughter. She worked at the restaurant. Her father had an office in the bank across the parking lot. He visited her at lunchtime just about every day. The Shatner woman's note named them as targets and promised that she would keep killing people until the police stopped her.”

“What put the burr under her saddle?”

Finney flopped a yellow pad on the desk and uncapped his fountain pen. “We have a more pressing matter. Tell me about John Vincenti.”

“Name's familiar, but nothing comes to mind.”

Finney rolled his eyes up from the pad. “Jack the Lookout Vincenti?”

“That
John Vincenti?”

“Exactly,” said Finney.

“You've got to be kidding.”

“The police are in the hallway, Arthur.” He raised his head. “They are quite serious.”

“That son of a bitch!”

“Vincenti?”

“Mark Behler, Channel Six,” I said. “He was picking at that old sore
when we had lunch, right before the lady went nuts and shot up the place.”

Finney folded his hands on the desk. “Then we need to talk about John Vincenti.”

John Vincenti, bookmaker and sometimes Teamster organizer, had taken two in the ticker and one in the mouth with a canary chaser. “Last time I saw him, he looked real dead,” I said.

Finney rocked bolt-upright in his chair. His face drained of expression, leaving the ice-cube countenance he used on his what-kind-of-a-deal-can-you-get-me? clients.

“This is thirty years ago,” I said.

“Arthur, you know as well as I do that there is no statute of limitations on murder.”