Extracurricular Activities (19 page)

I heard the trooper before I actually saw him. I had just passed the exit for Home Depot when I heard the sirens and looked in my rearview mirror. The red car sped up and pulled out of sight in that instant and I realized that the jig was up, so to speak. I drove a bit past the exit, slowed down, and pulled over onto the shoulder, banging my head on the steering wheel. “Stupid.” I realized that my cell phone was still on the passenger seat and that Crawford might still be on it. I picked it up while I waited for the trooper who sat in his car, probably running my plate. “Crawford?”

“Yes?” he said, preternaturally calm. “Is that you, Lucy?” he asked, doing his best Desi Arnaz impression. Not funny.

“I just got pulled over.”

“Big surprise.” I could hear him sighing over the lousy connection. “NYPD or State?”

“State.”

“You're dead,” he said. “The only trooper I know retired last year. Where are you?”

“Stew Leonard's.” I looked in my mirror again and saw the trooper sitting in the front seat, looking down. I could feel the sob starting in my chest and took a couple of deep breaths. “What should I do?”

“Cop a plea,” he said and started laughing.

“This is not funny, Crawford.” I bit my lip. “He's coming. I have to hang up.”

“Tell him that I—” I heard him say before I flipped the phone closed and put it on the seat beside me.

The trooper tapped on my window, surprising me with the speed at which he had arrived, and I hit the roll-down button. He was a chiseled-jaw Ken doll, kind of cute in a plastic-doll kind of way, with intense blue eyes and, apparently, no sense of humor. His gun was drawn and hanging down by his side. To me, it didn't look like your standard traffic stop, but how menacing could a woman in pajamas be? Judging by his behavior, very. “License and registration, ma'am.”

I didn't have either one with me and had to confess that.

“Step out of the car, ma'am.”

I let out a little laugh. “I'm in my pajamas.”

He didn't seem to care. The trooper stood next to the car, stone-faced, waiting for me to follow his order. When I got out, he asked me to place my hands on the hood of the car. The rain was heavier than when I had left the house and I was soaked instantly. The trooper began patting me down, and unlike my fantasies about being frisked, it wasn't exciting at all.

It was starting to dawn on me that perhaps I was under arrest.

 

Crawford sat on the edge of his desk, facing away from the squad room, eating a Krispy Kreme doughnut from the box that Carmen had brought him when she arrived in the squad a few minutes earlier. Champy had gone out with a young detective to interview a witness in a homicide from the day before and, once again, things in the squad were quiet. He hadn't heard from Alison in the last two hours and all of his calls to her cell phone went directly to voice mail. He felt guilty that he had laughed when she had sounded so nervous; it was apparent that something had happened since their last conversation. He ate the rest of the doughnut—his third—in one bite and dug into the box for another one.

“Easy, big fella,” Carmen said, noticing his excessive eating. She was at her desk, typing a “five” at her ancient computer. “She'll call.”

He swung around. “Where do the Staties take you for questioning?”

Carmen shrugged. “Don't know. Where was she when you last spoke?”

“She said that she was at Stew Leonard's. I don't even know who that is.”

Carmen laughed. “Not who, baby. What.” She stood and tottered over to his desk. Today, her sizable backside was packed into a pair of skintight black pants and four-inch high-heeled boots were on her feet. The buttons of her shiny red top strained across her bosom and she pulled the tail of the shirt down over her hips. “It's a giant grocery store in Yonkers. Right off the thruway. You know, right after the fifty-cent toll?”

“Right,” he said.

“You think they took her in?” she asked, grimacing.

He nodded.

She exhaled loudly. “That can't be good. Those Staties got no sense of humor. And you can't reach out to them, they're so fucking insecure, thinking you're going to steal their collar or whatever.” She perched on the edge of his desk. “What makes you think they took her in?”

“Well, she was speeding, she probably didn't have her license or registration, and God knows what she said when she got stopped. I think they took her in. You know how they are.” Crawford worked on his doughnut, licking powdered sugar off his thumb. “I have no idea where they would take her, though. Any ideas?”

“Not a clue,” she said. “I'll call Ricardo and see what he can find out,” she said, picking up Crawford's phone and dialing her husband. She put her hand over the receiver. “His cousin Javier has been a trooper for the last couple of years. Dios mio,” she said, fanning herself. “What a gorgeous man, that Javier. That man is built like a brick sh—” Ricardo must have picked up because her tone changed in an instant. “Hey, honey.” She explained Crawford's situation, waited a moment and then hung up. “He'll call us right back.”

Crawford finished the doughnut and took another one from the box. He held it out to Carmen. “Want one?”

“Trust me, Crawford. That will look better on your hips than mine.” She put her hands on her hips and wiggled from side to side before returning to her desk and resuming her typing.

Crawford sat at his desk and ate the doughnut slowly, washing down the remnants of it with his sixth cup of coffee. He hoped the doughnut would absorb some of the caffeine in his system, not taking into account how much sugar he had eaten. He opened the Stark case file again and looked at the crime scene photos from both the park and Alison's house.

In the background, he heard Carmen talking on the phone in Spanish. He recognized a few words and determined that she was probably speaking with Ricardo and not on a business call.

After a few minutes, she said, “
Muchas gracias,
baby. I'll see you later.” She pulled a piece of paper off her legal pad, the noise startling Crawford. She threw the piece of paper on his desk. “She's at the barracks at the junction of the Saw Mill and 9A in Hawthorne. Do you know where that is?”

He grabbed the paper. “I'll find it.”

“Hey, what do you want me to tell Concannon?” she called after him.

Crawford stopped in his tracks. Good point. He turned slowly. He had used up his “get out of jail free” with Concannon a long time ago and didn't want to push his luck. “I don't know.”

She looked at him, her black eyes twinkling. “Get going. I'll figure it out. Maybe I'll give him a lap dance,” she said, laughing. “That ought to throw him off. Hell, it will probably put him in the hospital.” The phone on Crawford's desk began ringing and she went over and picked it up. “Fiftieth Detective Squad. Montoya.”

Crawford watched her face for some indication of who it might be and whether he should wait. She held up one long, red-lacquered fingernail, indicating that he should wait. Finally, she held the phone out to him. “Alison.”

I sat in the barracks of the New York State Troopers, in my pajamas and slippers, looking like a sad homeless person who had been picked up on the side of the road. The only difference between me and a sad homeless person was that they probably wouldn't be handcuffed to the chair on which they were sitting. I sat in the room, alone, watching people go past the window in the door, hoping that I would recognize one of them sooner or later. My stomach growled from hunger, but it was obvious that I wasn't getting anything to eat in the near future.

I heard a loud voice, not unlike Crawford's, coming from outside the room and the door burst open suddenly. A short, pudgy man with eyes and coloring similar to Crawford appeared, his long-sleeved polo shirt half-tucked into khaki pants; he was swinging a beat-up leather satchel. He was Crawford after a whirl in a food processor—same features, but lost in the fat of his face. Everything was compressed and rearranged. “Hey,” he said, holding out his hand. “Jimmy Crawford. I'm your lawyer.”

“Hey,” I said back, waving my uncuffed hand. “I can't shake right now.”

His face turned hard. “They've got you cuffed?”

I pointed with my good hand to my cuffed hand, attached to the metal chair on which I sat.

“For fuck's sake,” he said, and exited the room. Moments later, he returned with the state trooper who had pulled me over. The trooper knelt beside me and uncuffed me, without speaking a word. I didn't think he was so cute anymore. He gave Jimmy a look as he prepared to exit and it wasn't the “pleased to meet you” look.

“You ever hear of professional courtesy, son?” Jimmy asked.

The trooper stopped and turned to stand over Jimmy, at least a head taller. The scene resembled a terrier squaring off with a Doberman, but my money was on the scrappy ratter, aka my new lawyer. Crawford had told me that his brother was an experienced attorney and quite the legal mind. When I called him with my sanctioned one phone call, he said he would call Jimmy instead of coming himself, given the circumstances of my situation.

The trooper finally left, defeated that he hadn't even remotely intimidated Jimmy.

Jimmy turned to me. “Asshole.” He held his hand out.

“Thanks.” I held out my hand and shook his. I rubbed my wrist, a little red from the cuff. “Nice to meet you. Although not under these circumstances.”

He sat at the table and pulled a legal pad from his bag. “What happened here?”

I started with the bizarre 911 call, the cop at the house, and my seeing someone in the shadows. I ended with the traffic stop in front of Stew Leonard's (shopping for farm-fresh eggs would never seem the same) and my being taken in and handcuffed to the chair.

He looked across at me, narrowing his eyes. “They say you resisted arrest.”

I sighed. “I tried to get back in the car to get my cell phone. I wanted to call Crawford…um…Bobby.”

He rolled his eyes. “That wasn't very smart. Trooper thought you were going for a gun. Although I don't know why.” He wrote a couple of unintelligible notes on his pad. “You tell them about my brother?”

“About our relationship?” I asked, clueless.

He was still in serious lawyer mode, but he couldn't help cracking a smile. “Uh, no. Did you tell them that my brother is a cop?”

I nodded. Lot of good it did me to drop that nugget of information.

“They also said they got a call from the driver of the red car saying that you were following him or her. They couldn't tell which. Lousy Westchester cell phone reception.”

I nodded. “I was following them.”

He dropped his pen on the paper. “You're not making this easy.”

“Did Crawford fill you in on what's been happening?” I asked.

“Sort of,” he said, leaning back and running his fingers through thick, unruly black hair. “You were following the red car because you thought it was either the husband or wife of the couple who used to live next door.”

“Correct.”

“Aforementioned wife was having an affair with your late ex-husband.”

“Right.”

He looked at me. “And what were you going to do once you caught up to said husband or wife?”

It suddenly dawned on me what the situation looked like. No wonder I had been handcuffed to the chair. I tried to come up with an excuse. “Ask them if they wanted their dog back?” I offered lamely.

He rolled his eyes. “That ain't gonna work, sister.”

I leaned forward. “All I wanted to do was find out who it was, and if it was Jackson or Terri, why they left, where they were going, and yes, if they wanted Trixie back.” I relayed the story of the 911 call coming from inside their vacated house, too, but Jimmy still wasn't buying it. It didn't even sound true to me, and based on the look on Jimmy's face, not to him, either.

“The dog.”

“The dog,” I said, giving him a solemn nod. Sounded reasonable to me.

He drew a couple of lines on the paper and seemed to get lost in thought. After a few minutes of silence, he jumped up. “Wait here.”

He left the room and me alone with my thoughts. Now, instead of just dragging Crawford into my increasingly sordid business, I was dragging members of his family into it as well. I had a lawyer now, and he was a chubbette named Jimmy who I hoped was much smarter than his appearance suggested. He clearly was tough in a street kind of way but I wasn't sure if that translated into book smarts. I had a city cop and a lawyer at my disposal but I couldn't seem to stay out of trouble. I licked my lips, chapped and dry after hours in this institutional environment, and waited for him to return.

He came back fifteen minutes later. “Let's go,” he said, grabbing his satchel from the table.

“What?” I was a little confused by the sudden turn of events.

“Let's go,” he repeated. He leaned in close to me and dropped his voice. “You've still got the speed, but I got the reckless driving, harassment, and resisting arrest dropped. You've got four points on your license and need to take a defensive driving course.” He took my arm and steered me out into the hallway. “A little community service probably wouldn't hurt, either. Got any orphans around you could feed or make clothes for? Any nuns at the college need sponge baths?”

I kept my eyes to the ground as we passed the front desk of the barracks, careful not to do anything that would make them change their minds. My slippers made a shuffling noise on the hard linoleum. Once outside, Jimmy handed me a small plastic bag with my keys and cell phone. He had browbeat the trooper into having my car towed to the barracks and it was sitting in a spot right next to his minivan. I thanked him profusely for coming out on a Saturday, for not mentioning my pajamas, and for getting most of my charges dropped. “It was nice to meet you,” I said.

He smiled. “You, too.” He started for his car and turned when he reached the driver's side door. “Stay out of trouble,” he said, chuckling.

The rain began to fall, a light mist that clung to my uncombed hair and eyelashes. “I will. Thanks again.”

He stood next to his car, swinging his briefcase back and forth. “So, you're dating Captain America, huh?” he asked, amused.

“I prefer to think of him as Detective Hot Pants,” I said.

He started to say something else, thought better of it, and looked at me one last time before he got into the car, a silver minivan with a car seat in the back. He gave me a wave as he drove off, merging onto the Saw Mill Parkway at the base of the barracks' driveway.

I watched him drive off, marveling at my luck at meeting a man who would not only bail me out of jail but who would enlist members of his family to do the same. I was just glad that it was his brother, and not his mother, or sister, who was the crack attorney. Women are far less forgiving of failings in their male relatives' lovers.

Even I knew that it was never good to meet your boyfriend's mother while handcuffed to a chair.

 

Jimmy called Crawford right before he and Carmen left for lunch.

“Your girlfriend's out on bail,” he said, laughing loudly. “They had her on reckless driving, harassment, and resisting arrest. That's the trifecta of arrests.”

Crawford didn't think that was very funny but that was what separated him from his brother—Jimmy's sense of humor. “Thanks, Jimmy. How much do I owe you?”

“I'm just kidding. There's no bail. I got most of the charges dropped but she's got to take one of those moronic defensive driving courses at the local high school. Her and every teenage DUI in Dobbs Ferry.”

Crawford felt the tension drain from his body, relief replacing it. “Thanks, Jimmy,” he repeated.

“I gotta tell you, man, she's cute. Even in wet pajamas and without her hair combed. I can see what you see in her.” His cell phone cut out momentarily. “…gotta stay out of trouble. The Staties won't cut her any slack next time.”

“Jimmy, I owe you. I'll call you later.” Crawford hung up and ran his hands over his face. Owing Jimmy was the last thing he needed; Jimmy had a lead foot and his other car was an eight-cylinder BMW. If he didn't have a brother with connections, Jimmy would have a suspended license from all of his speeding tickets, a fact that didn't stop him from doing eighty on the local highways. He turned to Carmen, still sitting at her desk doing paperwork. “She's out, Carmen.”

Carmen took her hands, but not her eyes, off the keyboard of the typewriter and began clapping. “Can we eat now?”

“One second,” Crawford said, picking up his ringing phone. “Crawford. Fiftieth.”

The breathing was labored and heavy, the voice husky. “Crawford.”

Crawford sat down. “Alex?”

“I got something for you, Bobby. On the hands and feet.”

Crawford felt his pulse quicken. “Shoot,” he said, picking up a pencil.

“Not on the phone.” Alex sneezed loudly.

Crawford expected the stalling; Alex had been an informant for the last five years and was known for that as well as his inability to follow a logical thought from point A to point B; years of abusing his body had taken its toll on his mind. Crawford pushed the point of the pencil through the legal pad, agitated. “Alex, I don't have that kind of time. Help me out here. Give me something.”

Alex sneezed again. “I'm real sick, man. I've been hiding. I've been outside for a while.”

“When I see you, I'll buy you lunch. But give me something to make me come out, Alex.” Crawford heard the squeal of train brakes and suspected that he was in front of Maloney's on Broadway, his favorite spot to pan-handle. “Why have you been hiding?”

“I'm scared, man. I saw the hands and feet.”

“Where? What did you see?”

Alex coughed and mumbled something Crawford couldn't understand.

“What do you have for me, Alex?”

“Well, the guy who got killed was a college professor at St. Thomas.”

Crawford rolled his eyes. “I know, Alex. I read the papers. I'm working the case. I saw the body.”

Alex dropped his voice to a whisper. “I saw the guy who threw them away. He was with a blond lady. She was little.”

Crawford sat up straighter. “What did the blond lady look like?”

Alex paused. “She may have been blond. She might have been a brunette. It was hard to tell. It was dark.”

Crawford slumped in his chair.

“Actually, it might not have been a lady at all.”

“Don't fuck with me, Alex. What did you see?”

“I'm not sure.” He coughed loudly. “I'm real sick, Bobby. I think I have a fever.”

Crawford stood. “Where are you?”

“In front of Maloney's.”

Bingo. “I'll be over in a few minutes. We can go to the drugstore and get whatever you need. Wait for me, Alex.” He hung up and stood. “Let's go, Carmen. We're going to have a guest for lunch.”

Carmen frowned. “Oh, Bobby. How we gonna make out if someone else is there?”

They headed over to Broadway and 242nd Street. There was a fifty-fifty chance that Alex would be there and Crawford preferred to take the “glass is half full” approach. Carmen was dubious. When they pulled up in front of Maloney's, there was no sign of their sick, drugged-out informant.

Carmen held out her hand. “That'll be five dollars, Mr. Man.”

Crawford got out of the car and looked around. He never worried about Alex; although his word wasn't rock solid, Crawford could tell that he was counting on him for a few bucks and a meal. Alex didn't pass up the opportunity for money or food, and would even make up information just to get both. He put his hands on his hips and looked down at the pavement.

Something wasn't right.