Lincoln Perry 02 - Sorrow's Anthem (5 page)

“Yes.”
“I believed that before he said a word. Ed was a lot of things,
Allison, but a murderer wasn’t one of them.”
“People change. Especially when they . . .”
“When they spend years in jail,” I said for her. She winced, but
it wasn’t because she’d stopped the sentence to protect my feelings.
It was a whole lot more personal than that.
“Yes,” she said. “That changes a person.”
“Not that much. I don’t believe it changes someone that much.
But then I’ve never been to jail.” I paused a second before saying,
“For more than a night, that is,” as if that detail mattered.
“He hadn’t been in any trouble,” she said. “Nothing since he got
out. I watch the papers for his name.”
“You have any idea what he was doing since then?”
She shook her head.
“Me neither,” I said, and something in those two words made
her cock her head and frown at me.
“You’re going to find out, though, is that it?”
I shrugged.
“Are you?” she prompted.
“Would it be wrong if I did?”
She shook her head, her eyes watching me with a measure of
pity. “No, Lincoln. But it’s too late to make amends.”
“You think that’s what it’s about? I don’t have to make amends,
Allison.”
“Right,” she said. “We never did. But I’m not sure you ever believed
that.”
“I did. I do.”
She smiled slightly. “So tell me again why you went after Ed last
night?”

“I wanted to help a friend.”
“He wasn’t your friend, Lincoln. Not anymore. Hadn’t been for
years.”

“He’s my friend.”
“And you’re his,” she said. “That’s what you wanted to prove. To
him, to Scott Draper, to anyone who ever knew the two of you. To
the whole damn neighborhood, whatever’s left of it.”
I looked at the wall behind her.
“I’m not discouraging you,” she said. “I’m just reminding you of
what you came here to tell me—he’s dead.”
“His name’s not. It’s still going strong right now, and headed in
the wrong direction. You want the city to remember him as a killer?”
“No.”

We were quiet for a while, and then she asked if I ever saw anyone
from the old neighborhood.
I shook my head. “Some people sent cards or called after my
dad’s funeral. That was the old guard, though, most of them over
fifty. As far as the kids we grew up with, no. You?”
She smiled at me the way you smile at someone who’s just asked
an utterly absurd question.

“No, Lincoln. I’m not thought of too highly around there.”
“Neither one of us is, Allison.”
She tried to make her tone light. “We did what we had to do,
right? Just didn’t work out the way anyone wanted it to. No regrets,
Lincoln. No regrets.”
There wasn’t much more to say after that. I stayed in the kitchen
with her a while longer. She finally poured the coffee. I drank mine
while she cried over hers. She was dry-eyed again when I left.
“You look good, Lincoln,” she said as she walked to my truck
with me. “It’s been a while since I saw you, too, you know.”
“I know.” I turned to her and gave her a hug. She squeezed me
tightly and her fingernails bit into my back. I pulled away when I
felt the first fresh teardrop on my neck.
“You’re still the most beautiful woman I never wanted to sleep
with,” I said, and she laughed not because that was funny but because
she knew it to be true.
She watched me climb into the truck, then motioned for me to
put the window down. When I did, she said, “Call me, Lincoln.
Tell me what you learn.”
Her voice held both a note of pleading and one of command. It
was a blend I’d heard before.

The house is dark because the sun sets behind it, the long shadows in the
room making it seem later than it really is. I’m on the couch. Allison is
on her knees in front of me. Her elbows are braced against my thighs,
her hands clasped. It’s as if she is praying to me, and in a sense she almost
is. Tonight I have been called upon to be a savior.
“You know I’m right;” she says. “I’ve talked to him until I simply
have run out of things to say. He’s not listening. And he won’t listen.”
“He might;” I lie. “You can’tgive up on him this easily, Allison. He
loves you the same as ever. He’s just…”
“He’s just killing himself “ she finishes for me. “You’re trying to
turn a blind eye to that, Lincoln, but you know it’s true. You’re the one
who told me what Antonio Childers is like. “
I turn away from her and stare at the wall. Antonio Childers is one
of the great social menaces in our city, a drug dealer who is also a suspect
in nearly a dozen unsolved homicides. For several months now,
Ed Gradduk has been working for him. It started as petty shit, muling
and couriering mostly, but it’s escalated. Ed’s in construction, had a
run of bad luck with lost jobs and bad bosses, and apparently he found
an alternative income source. I haven’t seen much of him recently;
working nights for the Cleveland police, putting in as much overtime
as possible, trying to get noticed and get promoted. 'That’s how you
make detective, I know, and that’s what I intend to do.
“He’s going to get killed,” Allison repeats, and I avoid looking
down directly into her face.
“I know,” I say softly. Allison and I have had this conversation before.
Ed and I have had this conversation before, too. He told me to
keep my eyes on the other side of the street when I pass him in my
cruiser, and otherwise things would be normal. I told him it couldn’t
work that way. We haven’t spoken much since.
“He’s gone all the time now,” Allison says. “We’ve had calls at all
hours of the night. Once a guy sat in front of the house in a van for
hours, just waiting for Ed to come back. “
They still live on the near west side, which is part of the problem.
Childers has recruited Ed because Ed knows the neighborhood well,
knows who to talk to and who to avoid, and works the streets with all
the familiarity you want from a foot soldier. For the life of me, I cannot
reason out how this began, how Ed could possibly have allowed
himself to get involved with Childers.
“There’s only one way to get him to listen,” Allison says, and she
reaches out and squeezes my upper arms to emphasize her point. “You
told me you could arrange things if it came to that. I’m telling you it
has come to that.”
“Shit, Allison.” I shake my head. “He’s got to talk for it to work. If
he doesn’t. . .”
“He will. 'Trust me, Lincoln. If it comes down to a choice between
freedom and jail, between me and a cell, he will make the right decision.
You know he will. But until he’s faced with that choice, I’m
afraid he’s going to keep looking at it as a game.”
“He’s got to talk,” I repeat.
“He’ll talk. He may not care enough to save himself right now, but
if we press him to that point, Lincoln . . . if we put his back to the wall,
he’ll have to.”
“We’ll save him despite himself” I say sarcastically, but she nods
with an equal amount of sincerity.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. But I need your help.
You have to be involved, have to make sure he has the options. Are you
sure you can do that?”
I run my tongue across dry lips. “I’m sure. There’s a narcotics detective
named Pritchard. Joe Pritchard. He’s got a good reputation,
supposed to be a hell of a cop. And he’s got a serious hard-on for Antonio
Childers. He’s not going to send a small player like Ed to jail when
he could trade that conviction for information about Childers.”

“So you’ll do it.”
I take a long look at her face, then look back at the window, the glass
dark with growing shadows.
“Lincoln,” she says, “Ed is losing his life here. He’s going to be
killed or he’s going to get sent to jail by someone else, someone who will
see that he’s kept there a long time. You know talking is not doing any
good. We have to force him to walk away from this.”
I swallow and get to my feet, step around her and into the middle of
the living room, heading for the door.

“I’ll call Pritchard tonight.”

CHAPTER
6

When I got to the office, Joe had the little television on top of the
tall filing cabinet tuned to a news station. I watched while a grim
faced announcer stood on the sidewalk on Clark Avenue, recounting
the “brutal end to a tragic tale” that had occurred there the
night before.
For a moment the screen was filled with a picture of Anita Sen
talar: a smiling, beautiful young woman who appeared to be Puerto
Rican. She had glossy dark hair framing a fine-boned, mocha
skinned face, and kind, intelligent eyes.
The next face we saw was a different extreme. Old, sour, and angry.
Red-rimmed eyes narrowing on the camera in a glower. This
was Anita Sentalar’s father.
“What comment do I have on the death of Ed Gradduk?” he
said, responding to the question he’d just been asked. “Are you kidding
me? My comment is, fantastic. Good. Street graves are just
what guys like that deserve. It doesn’t bring my daughter back,
though.”
They switched from the Clark Avenue report back to the studio,
where the anchor explained that no relationship between Gradduk
and Sentalar had as yet been disclosed, and then told us we were
about to see some “horrific footage” of the fire that had killed the
female attorney on Train Avenue. I moved closer to the television
screen and watched carefully.
The liquor store security camera had provided a crisp, blackand-white
image of the sidewalk in front of it, and, in turn, the
house across the street. It was a run-down home, a crumbling
structure that had been left untended and empty.
The footage showed a man who walked down the sidewalk
right in front of the liquor store, and the camera got a clear look at
his face. It was unquestionably Ed Gradduk, and he was smiling
while he crossed the street and disappeared along the side of the
house.
“Now we’ll move ahead seventeen minutes,” the news anchor
said, and the black-and-white footage jumped to a new clip. After
a short pause, white flames showed themselves inside the house
across the street, spreading with astonishing speed, licking their
way up the walls and over the eaves.
“Plenty of time for someone else to have burned that house,” I
said.
“Sure,” Joe answered, but he kept his eyes away from mine.
I turned the television off and sat down behind my desk. Joe
looked at me and raised an eyebrow.
“Still a man on a mission?”
“If that means am I still going to see the prosecutor this morning,
then, yes. But you don’t have to come along if you don’t want
to get involved.”
“If you’re involved, I’m involved. You know that.”
I gave a small nod.
“A guy called for you about an hour ago,” Joe said. “Said it’s
about Gradduk.”
“Give a name?”
“Scott Draper.”
“Shit.”
He frowned. “Why’s that bad?”
“He’s the one who took a swing at me last night, accused me of
pushing Ed into the street. Ed had spent the evening hiding in the
guy’s storeroom, soaking himself in bourbon.”
“Amy called, too. She sounded upset.”
“I disappeared on her last night,” I said. “I’ll call her now.”
I had to listen to about a five-minute lecture from Amy before I
even had the chance to get a word in, but then I explained my situation.
When I was done, I switched from taking all the questions
to asking a few of my own.
“Any progress on the arson aspect?” I said.
“Fire investigators are still giving it a look. They’ll probably
make an announcement pretty soon, but they’re waiting for lab results.
Whoever did it was pretty good. Place went up in flames real
fast and burned real hot.”
“Now that Gradduk’s dead, they’ll probably write the case off,” I
said. “Say that justice has been served, if accidentally.”
“I guess.
“You know who owned the house?”
“I think the city owned it, actually. Some urban-renewal deal.
They buy up vacant property and mortgage foreclosures, fix them
up, and put low-income families into them.”
“I see. Who are the cops on the case?”
“Fire officials are assisting with the arson end of things. A
Cleveland homicide cop is working it, too. Guy named Cal
Richards. You know him?”
“Yes, but not well. He’s supposed to be a hell of a good cop.
Closes cases fast, and when he closes them, they’re flawless.”
“That sounds like the man,” she said. “He did seem a little intense.”
“Sure,”
I said, “the way a shark seems intense when it’s about to
feed. Is the coroner’s office working to find out whether the victim
was killed by the fire, or dead beforehand?”
“Lab results will take a while, but I think Richards suspects she
was already dead.”
“I expected that.”
“The city fire investigators are swamped right now. Something
like ten fires in the past two weeks, and more than half of those
could be arson. They’ve got to check them all out. This one gets
priority because there’s a victim, but, still, they’re spread thin.”
“Maybe Joe and I will spur things along when we go visit the
prosecutor today.”
“Prosecutor?”
I told her of Ed’s veiled comments about his interaction with
the prosecutor.
“That guy is maybe the most popular person in the city right
now,” she said. “Hasn’t announced his candidacy for mayor yet, but
it’s almost a sure thing that he will run.”
“Think he’ll win?”
“Probably. The way the city government’s been leaking money
the last few years, voters don’t want another politician in there.
They want an ass-kicker, and he fits that mold.”
“You know him?”

“Fairly well.”
“And?”
“And I think he’s a politician,” she said, and I could imagine her
grin even though I couldn’t see it. “Nice enough guy, sure. But
that’s in a face-to-face scenario. You leave his office and I bet the
mood shifts real quick.”
I’d never dealt with the current prosecutor, Mike Gajovich, directly,
but I knew the crime rate had gone down on his watch and
the conviction rate up. I’d heard grumblings that the conviction
rate had more to do with petty drug arrests than anything else,
though. When the city budget had reached crisis status in the last
year, Gajovich had made himself something of a local hero with
his outspoken criticism of the current mayor, who’d made cuts to
police and fire department personnel even while he was adding
high-paid consultants to his own staff. Gajovich’s brother was in
the department, as well, and most of the cops I knew loved the guy.
“You have an appointment to see him?” Amy asked.
“No.”
“Then you need my help. I’ll call him and ask if he’ll agree to see
us for a few minutes. My guess is he will. Right now the guy is
soaking up media attention whenever possible. You know, catering
to the political bid next year.”
“Call him,” I said. “We’ll triple-team the poor bastard and see if
we can’t get somewhere.”