Last Call (20 page)

“How would you know if you never tried?” Nancy snaps.

Frank sighs. “You’re a civilian, Nance. Your life revolves around your son and hanging out with your friends and watching reality TV. My life
is
reality TV. I spend sixty hours a week dealing with the worst people can do to each other. I see things I don’t want to tell a decent person about, things no one should ever have to hear about. What do you think we’d have in common? What could sustain anything between us?”

“Sometimes it’s enough just to be with somebody warm at night.”

Frank closes her eyes. The pain inside her head is preferable to the pain outside. Keeping her eyes closed, she listens to Nancy sniffle. “Look. I don’t remember what happened last night. I don’t know what I did. If I led you on I am truly sorry. I was drunk. I was wrong. I never meant to hurt you, Nance.”

“Oh, yeah, I know. Because I’m so
nice.”

Frank doesn’t know what else to say. When they get to the bar, she says, “Thanks for the ride.”

Unlocking her car, she half expects Nancy to chase after her. She doesn’t, and Frank blows lights all the way to the station. Because it’s preferable to her shame, Frank nurses her irritation with Nancy. There’s never been more than a mild flirtation between them, but suddenly Nancy’s acting like they’re the lesbian Romeo and Juliet.

“Fuck her,” Frank swears. “Just absolutely fuck her and the duck she flew in on. Fuck Nancy. Fuck Gail. Fuck all of ‘em.”

She’s still fuming as she changes into a clean suit in the locker room. Her blouse is wrinkled but will have to do. She dry swallows a couple naproxen and brushes her teeth.

Smacking her cheeks, watching blood replace the pallor, she murmurs, “Christ. I’m as bad as Johnnie.”

She says the words, but refuses to believe them.

After a perfunctory briefing she retreats to her office and closes the door. She curses under her breath at the knock that immediately follows. “Yeah.”

Lewis pops her head in. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

Lewis is barely off detective probation and Frank regrets she’s been neglecting her. Waving at a chair, Frank answers, “Always. S’up?”

Lewis delivers Frank two neatly typed 60-days.

“Got an ID on the religious case?”

“Nah.” Lewis flops a meaty hand. “Still a John Doe.”

While she’s got Lewis in her office, Frank decides to confront a nagging concern. “I hear you and Freeman been knocking boots. That true?”

Lewis is so taken aback she forgets to be angry. Then she remembers. “Who the hell tolt you that?”

“Heard it a couple different places. If you two think you’re being discreet, you’re not. You’re a senior officer, Lewis. He’s a patrolman. I hope it’s worth it.”

“We ain’t doing
nothing!”
Lewis shouts.
“Damn!
We went out a couple times. That’s all.”

“Might want to limit it to that. You know the regs about mixing it up in the ranks. Wrong person gets wind of it, even if there’s nothing going on, might end up in your package.”

“God
damn,”
Lewis complains. “How the hell a girl supposed to find somebody? Can’t date a cop and cops the only one who understands when I run out at three in the morning and don’t call for two days.
Damn.”

“Don’t go out of pocket on me, Lewis. I don’t write the rules. I’m just telling you what they are. You can go places. You got the brains and the backbone. You want to risk it all on some joystick, that’s your business. Just don’t say you weren’t warned.”

“It’s not like that,” Lewis insists.

“Whatever. I’m just telling you. Word’s out.” Frank turns her attention to Lewis’s follow-up reports.

“Damn,”
Lewis repeats on her way out.

Frank wants to tell Lewis to not even bother, that sooner or later the romance will end badly. She should just concentrate on her career, because at the end of the day, especially in this line of work, that’s all she’ll have. But even this is not true, and Frank wisely keeps her counsel.

Over the next few days, she checks in frequently with the Bakersfield PD. If she lived there she’d be surveilling the Ferrises’ place every night. Being this far away, all she can do is wait. Frank reinterviews Sharon Ferris’s old neighbors. None of them have anything to add about Antoine Bailey. She helps Diego with a messy banger case. The nine-three has three unsolveds in a row and Frank wants to break the cold streak. She stays late at the office and doesn’t drink. She avoids the Alibi but knows she’ll have to eventually face Nancy.

She goes by after a Saturday afternoon spent at the station. She’s been sober all week and allows herself three drinks because it’s the weekend. She’s surprised to see Nancy, who usually works weeknights. It’s slow, but Nancy lets the new girl wait on her. When Nancy is alone at the bar, figuring a tab, Frank approaches her.

“Hey. You ever gonna talk to this asshole again?”

“Hi,” Nancy says without raising her head.

“Look. I’m sorry I was such a—”

“Save it, Frank. I don’t need your apology. I don’t need anything from you.”

Squaring her tabs together, Nancy drops them into her apron and leaves Frank at the bar.

The stack of rented movies doesn’t hold her attention. She tries reading but can’t concentrate. She’s finished dinner and the dishes are done. She walks circles in the den after shutting the stereo off. All her music is irritating tonight. She’s feels like she’s got crabs under her skin.

She makes a pot of decaf and pores over the Pryce books, pacing all the while. But eventually even they lose their grip on her. She has her suspect. All she can do is wait him out. She’s already had a grueling workout, but Frank returns to her punching bag. She savages it for almost an hour. The assault leaves her soaked and weak. She thinks maybe she can sleep now. After her shower she rewards herself with a nightcap. Just one. But it’s a big one.

A sergeant from Bakersfield PD wakes her at three-thirty. She’s pleased about waking Fubar to explain where she’s going. Double-checking that she has the warrants, she begins the easy drive north.

She slaloms through light traffic, wind blowing through the car. L.A. recedes and the stars emerge, hard and bright. She falls back to Gail’s irrepressible enthusiasm about the stars, how they were shining before she and Frank were born and how they’d be shining long after they were dead and gone. Gail found their continuity reassuring. Frank only finds it depressing.

Watching the blacktop unroll in the path of her headlights, she plans how she’ll play Bailey. Frank is wound tighter than coiled steel. Like a tiger stalking a deer, she’s deferred hunger for opportunity. She’s waited for the perfect moment to strike, and that moment is approaching at eighty miles an hour. One misstep and the prey gets away.

She coordinates with the Bakersfield boys. They park near Bailey’s camper. In the new dawn, she knocks on his thin metal door. When he answers, she dangles the search warrant. She tells a stunned Bailey that she’s looking for stolen property. She’s looking for Ladeenia Pryce’s panties, so that’s partly true. Frank drops the warrant loosely to her side. By not drawing attention to it, she hopes Bailey will disregard it.

He protests, “I ain’t stole nothin’.”

“Well, let’s just have a look,” she says. Swinging into the doorway, she forces Bailey to jump down. Frank steps inside. Behind her, Bailey jabbers about harassment and planting evidence, just like they did to O.J., but in Frank’s head it is quiet. This is her moment.

Though the camper reeks of stale grease and cigarettes, it is clean. Frank lays her hand on the built-in table to her left, aware of an old-fashioned, diner-style sugar dispenser. She studies the metal finish encircling the Formica. The same material girdles a narrow counter opposite. Frank pulls a picture from inside her jacket. When she smoothes it against the table, she sees her hand is trembling. There are four smudged lines in the bruise on Ladeenia Pryce’s thigh. There are four raised ribs in the metal band. She holds a small ruler against the table edge. The ribbing corresponds roughly to the spacing on Ladeenia’s bruise, and Frank gets shaky.

“Easy,” she whispers, her voice as thin and gray as the light seeping through the curtains. She shifts her focus to the rest of the camper, wondering what else it might be hiding. She puts the picture away and allows a quick smile before hopping down to join Bailey.

“What did you find?” Bailey demands.

“What should I have found?”

“Nothin’,” he insists.

“I still need you to come downtown and fill out a statement for me.

“A statement? For what? I ain’t done nothin’.”

“That’s what I need you to explain to me.” Frank makes a show of checking her watch. “Sooner we get this over with, the sooner you’re back home. And the sooner I’m home.”

“Yeah, and I’ma
sooner
your lily-white ass good. This is harassment. Plain and simple. You only checkin’ me ‘cause I’m a black man.”

“If that were the case, Mr. Bailey, then there’s a half a million other black men I could have picked on.” She guides him toward the unit, explaining, “The boys’ll take you in and bring you back as soon as we’re done. Let’s get this shit cleared up and be on our way.”

“Yeah, you wanna get this shit cleared up all right, ‘cause you done fucked up, white girl. You picked on the wrong nigger this time.”

She slides him into the back of the unit, assuring him, “If that’s true then this ain’t gonna take long.”

“It’s gonna take long for you,” Bailey fires back. “I’ma have the ACLU and the Anti-Defamation League crawling up your ass!”

The cop behind Frank murmurs, “Isn’t that for Jews?”

Rolling her eyes, Frank closes the door and taps the hood. The car pulls away. She follows, leaving the second unit with instructions to impound the camper. Ahead of her, Bailey rants. It’s like watching TV with the mute on. She’d requested a unit with a Plexiglas panel to separate the front and rear seats so Bailey can’t ask for a lawyer en route to the station.

Frank drives into a smudgy sunrise, vaguely aware of the smell of her sweat. She’s nervous but refuses to dwell on how much is riding on this interrogation. Pulling in a lungful of brown air, she tells herself, “Steady as she goes, girlie-girl.”

Joe used to wink that at her as they stepped into the box. She wishes he were here. Wishes Noah was too. Maybe he is.

“Then it’s time to pull a rabbit out of your ass, buddy. Help me nail this baby-fucker.”

Frank tucks her apprehension away. Bailey’s what she should be thinking about. Nothing else. She’s got to be on him like crumbs on toast. She has to think like him and then three steps ahead of him. It’s a chess game, his every gesture, nuance and word, the pieces.

Interrogating perps reminds her of the fable about the sun and the wind. The sun and the wind saw a man walking down the road one day. The wind said, “I bet I can get him to take his coat off faster than you can.”

The sun thought about it and replied, “You’re on.”

So the wind blew and blew. The harder it blew, the tighter the man clutched his coat. Exhausted, the wind finally gave up.

“Let’s see what you can do,” the wind panted to the sun.

Smiling, the sun turned to face the man. She shined on him until sweat popped out on his face. The man kept walking and the sun kept beaming. Pretty soon the man stopped to wipe his face. The sun shined on and the wind started to gloat. The man walked a few steps more, then paused.

“Phew,” he said, and then wiping the sweat from his brow, he took his coat off.

Based on the sister’s description of his temperament, Frank had decided to work Bailey with persuasion rather than aggression. His behavior so far reinforces her decision. He didn’t read the search warrant. He didn’t refuse to come in. He hasn’t asked for a lawyer and he’s still shooting his mouth off. These are all good signs. She’s just going to shine on him like a hot sun. Later she’ll blow.

Bailey doesn’t have an extensive police history, and without underestimating his intelligence, she believes she can manipulate his legal naivete. And his pride. The man’s gotten away with murder— and Christ knows what else—for six years, and waltzed on two priors. He probably feels pretty good about himself and Frank wants to keep it that way. She wants to make him feel confident enough to talk without a lawyer, hoping to get him so entangled in lies that he hangs himself.

The unit pulls into the police station and Frank parks next to it.

“Here we go,” she whispers. “Showtime.”

When she opens his door Bailey picks up where he left off.

“This ain’t right. I want—”

“I know, I know” she interrupts loudly. “We all want a lot of things, Mr. Bailey. I’d like to win the lottery and you’d probably like to be left alone. I can’t win the lottery, but you can probably go home if you just answer a couple questions for me. So what we’re gonna do is take you inside here, get you a nice cup of coffee and see if we can’t clean this mess up. If we can, then I’ll cut you loose and you’ll be on your way. No fuss, no muss, and you can start your lawsuit against me.”

“I’m gonna,” he mutters. “You best believing that.”

Escorting Bailey through the station she maintains a running patter. Frank emphasizes getting him home and clearing this up, as if it’s all a mistake that can be explained, no big deal. Frank wants Bailey thinking he can talk his way out of this jam.

She leaves him in a small interrogation room, returning with two cups of coffee. His has cream and sugar.

“Taste it,” she tells him. “I think that’s just the way you like it.”

He does as instructed and Frank watches.

“S’okay?”

Bailey nods, suspicious. “How you know I like it like that?”

Frank pats her fat murder books. She’s brought the open box of taped interviews in for effect. Indicating all these, she says, “That’s just the tip of the iceberg, Mr. Bailey. I know a lot of things about you, so don’t even try to bullshit me. I got a very sensitive bullshit meter. Be square with me and we can clean this mess up. Get the fuck outta Dodge.” Punching the record button on a tape recorder, Frank tells Bailey, “This is for your protection. If I try to beat you up or force you into doing something you don’t want to do, you can take this tape to the ACLU and say, ‘See here? She made me do this.’ Now let’s play this back so you know it’s working okay.” While the tape rewinds, she slips in, “I should probably read you your rights, too, before we go any further, else that’ll be something else for you to nail me with.”