Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery) (19 page)

Parker handed Willows his food and a white porcelain mug of coffee.

Bobby Chow said, “How’d you know what I wanted?”

Willows put the food on the dashboard.

“A
Teenburger
,” said Bobby. “Every time I knock back one of these babies I feel ten years younger.”

Bobby Chow ate his hamburger in five large bites. He licked mayonnaise from the gold foil wrapper, balled up the wrapper with trembling hands, tossed it on the floor of the car. “Sugar?”

Parker handed him three small white envelopes. Bobby sweetened his coffee, added cream. He said, “You Jack’s partner?”

Parker sipped her coffee. She’d had better, but she’d had worse.

“Silent partner, huh?” Bobby grabbed a handful of french fries.

Willows said, “What’ve you got for us, Bobby?”

Bobby shrugged. “Not much, really. I was all doped up when I phoned. My mind’s a lot clearer now. Sorry I wasted your time.”

Willows opened his door. “Let’s go, Bobby.”

Bobby grabbed the steering wheel with both hands. “No way. I got to finish my lunch.”

Willows scooped up a handful of ketchup-smeared french fries and stuffed them in the breast pocket of Bobby’s suit. “Take it with you.”

Bobby licked his lips, studying the look in Willows’ eyes. After a moment he said, “Good idea, Jack.”

Mountain View cemetery contains one hundred and six acres of gently rolling, well-tended lawn, thousands of graves and a crematorium. It’s the only cemetery inside the city limits, and the main gate is five blocks from the A&W. Willows and Parker, with Bobby slouched in the Celebrity’s backseat, drove slowly down a narrow road of cracked and faded asphalt.

After a few minutes, Willows stopped the car. “Out, Bobby.”

“Now?”

Willows climbed out of the car. After a moment’s hesitation, Parker followed him. Willows yanked open the back door.

“What?” said Bobby.

“We’re going to take a walk.” Willows grabbed Chow by the arm and hauled him out of the car.

“Leggo, you’re hurting me!”

“Not yet, but soon.”

“Jack…” said Parker.

Willows ignored her.

The grass was gray with frost, and crisp as breakfast cereal beneath their feet. Willows walked Bobby into the forest of tombstones and pointed at a rectangle of pink granite.

“Sit.”

Bobby sat.

“Grand theft auto, Bobby. Your probation officer’s gonna laugh his head off.”

“The key was in the fuckin’ ignition. The fuckin’ door wasn’t locked! So I fucked up the paperwork. Jeez, it was a simple mistake. Error of judgement. Could’ve happened to anybody! Long as I pay, Hertz don’t give a shit. I wanna see my lawyer!”

Willows said, “Why don’t you take a walk, Claire.”

Parker didn’t move.

Bobby said, “She wants to be with you. Hey, maybe it’s love.”

Willows knocked him off the tombstone and face down into the brittle, frozen grass.

Bobby started crying.

Parker said, “That’s enough, Jack.”

“I don’t think so.”

“It’s more than enough,” said Parker.

Willows nudged Chow in the ribs with the toe of his brogue. He said, “Is she right, Bobby? Or do you want some more?”

Bobby got up on his hands and knees. He wiped the tears from his face. “Knock it off! You can’t do this, you’re a cop!”

“And you’re a snitch. Don’t forget it.”

Bobby looked wildly around. On the far side of the cemetery, an old woman was laying a wreath on a grave. Bobby started screaming for help.

Willows waited until he ran out of air and then punched him in the kidneys.

“Jesus Christ!”

“He can’t hear you either. And neither can Kenny Lee. But I can, and I’m listening.”

“When I called you I was wired, half-asleep… Jack, I didn’t know what I was saying!”

“Kenny Lee had a wife, two kids. He’s on his way over here, Bobby. The day after tomorrow, they’re going to bury him right here in this cemetery.”

Willows felt a hand on his shoulder. Parker. He spun away, grabbed a fistful of Bobby’s lapel and dragged him across the grass, smashed his face into a sagging granite tombstone. Bobby spat blood.

Parker said, “Hit him again and I’ll file a report. I mean it, Jack.”

Willows turned his back on her and strode across the manicured lawn towards the unmarked car.

Bobby, still on his hands and knees, said, “I asked around. Lee was no high stakes gambler. He didn’t owe anybody a goddamn penny.” He wiped his nose. “You hear what I said, lady?”

Parker said, “Bobby, don’t even think about laying a complaint. Understand?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Look at me.”

Bobby blinked away his tears.

“He’s my partner. You lay a complaint, we’ll find a way to put you away for the rest of your miserable life.”

Parker leaned forward. Bobby flinched. She ruffled his greasy hair and then stood up and strode briskly across the frozen grass to the car. Willows was in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. She got behind the wheel and put the car in gear.

Willows said, “Drop me off somewhere, will you. I think I’ll call it a day.”

“Drop you off where?”

“Eddy’s. I could use a drink.”

“You don’t need a drink, Jack. What you need is a whole new outlook on life.”

Parker braked at the gates, waited for the traffic to clear and turned right on Fraser.

“Bobby rolled over.”

“Yeah?” Willows didn’t sound surprised.

“Melinda was right. Despite his trips to Vegas, her father wasn’t a gambler.”

Willows thought about it. He said, “We ought to call Vegas again. Lee must’ve been in
some
kind of trouble. He had a reason for flying all the way down there, right? Maybe the Vegas cops have got a sheet on him.”

Parker said, “It’s worth a try. Still want me to drop you off?” “Let’s go back to work.”

“You keep hitting people, Jack, you’re going to lose your badge.”

“Not as long as I keep hitting people like Bobby, I won’t.”

Parker said, “Why don’t you arrange to take a few days off, go see your kids.”

“I’ve been thinking about it.”

“They miss you, too, Jack.”

“Yeah, I know.”

*

A chair had been drawn up next to Willows’ desk. The woman sprawled in it was wearing heavy black boots, a pair of skin-tight black leather pants and a fuzzy pink angora sweater. Her hair was the colour of radishes and she sported a diamond in her left nostril. As Willows and Parker made their way across the squad room towards her, she stood up, tugged at the pink sweater. “You’re Detectives Willows and Parker?”

Willows nodded.

She offered a hand decorated with a tattoo of a red and blue butterfly. “I’m Beverly.” She sat back down in the chair, unfolded a scrap of newspaper and smoothed it out on her black leather thigh. “I work the late shift at a restaurant down on Pender. This guy?” She pointed at the police artist’s composite sketch of the man who’d rented William Chang’s warehouse. “He came in for a cup of coffee the night before they found this other one, the Chinese guy who froze to death.”

“You’re sure it’s him?”

“Yeah, positive. A redhead, like me, except natural. Real smart-ass. Asked me if it hurt when I sneezed.” She touched her nose. “Talking about my diamond, and I didn’t like it, not one bit.”

She hadn’t liked the way he’d stood her up, either, but there was no point in telling the cops about
that
.

“Did you get a name…”

“Wouldn’t tell me. But I was leaning way over the counter when he paid for his coffee. Cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie, that’s what he had. Two dollars and thirty cents. No tip. When he opened his wallet, I got a peek at his driver’s licence.”

“Was it local?”

“Yeah, sure.” Beverly smiled. The diamond twinkled; a star to be wished upon. “His name was Garret.”

Parker said, “Is that a first or a last name?”

“I don’t know, I only got a quick look. A guy opens his wallet, you don’t want him to catch you staring.”

“Right,” said Parker, nodding.

Willows started asking questions. Half an hour later, he knew — or hoped he knew — Garret’s approximate height and weight, the colour of his eyes, that he had no discernible speech pattern or accent, and that on the night in question he’d worn jeans and a black leather jacket, a pair of fancy cowboy boots and a black cowboy hat.

“You mind if I talk to my partner for a minute?” He drew Parker aside. “Anything else?”

“She’s a shallow pond, Jack. I think we’ve drained her dry.”

Beverly said, “So, what’re you gonna do now?”

“Run the name through the computer, see what we come up with.” Parker smiled. “We get lucky and come up with something, you mind looking at some pictures?”

“I can’t, I gotta go to work.”

“Not now. Maybe tomorrow, though. Would you do that for us?”

“Yeah, sure. Tell you the truth, I’d like to go to the trial, watch him squirm.”

Parker moved closer, stepped between Beverly and Jack Willows. Speaking very softly, almost whispering, she said, “Did he
do
something to you?”

“Stood me up,” Beverly said, blurting it out. She blushed, her skin taking on a shade somewhere between the pink of her sweater and the fire-engine red of her hair.

“If it does go to trial,” said Parker, “you’ll know all about it, don’t worry.”

Eddy Orwell came out of a witness interrogation room as Parker, still murmuring words of sympathy, walked Beverly to the elevator. He kept his eyes on the black leather until it disappeared from view and then turned to Willows and said, “Hear about Farley?”

“Only that they operated on him, nothing since.”

Parker sat back down at her desk. Orwell, looming over her, said, “You hear about Farley?”

Parker glared up at him. “Back off, Eddy. Give me some breathing room.” She made a note on a pad. “Jack, we should give some thought to how Beverly’s going to look in court.”

“Maybe somebody could give her a hand with her wardrobe. Angora and leather, it can’t be all she owns.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Me either,” said Orwell, “the way she walked out of here, she sure owes me. Anyhow, about Farley. It was touch and go. I been spending all my spare time with him, night and day.”

“That’s really terrific. What a wonderful guy.”

“So if Judith calls, would you mind telling her where I was?”

Parker said, “Know something, Eddy?”

“No, what?”

“You’re disgusting.”

“Jack?” said Eddy.

“Really disgusting, Eddy.” Willows dialled the long distance operator, got Las Vegas and asked for the number of the Vegas police. He disconnected, dialled again.

Orwell said, “How it happened, they were playing that game, you wet the top of a beer glass and stretch a paper napkin over it, drop some coins on the napkin and take turns burning cigarette holes in it. Last person to burn a hole before the coins fall through has to pay for the next round. Farley and the morgue guys, that’s what they were up to. Farley kept losing and he cut his losses by eating the money. Ever heard of anything like it? He must’ve been smashed out of his mind.”

Willows said, “Fascinating story, Eddy. But the way I heard it, Farley had a heart attack and he’s going to be just fine.”

Parker opened the thick black plastic ring binder containing the Lee file. There it was, on page 113. Melinda Lee’s emphatic statement that her father was at most a recreational gambler. Willows spoke briefly into the phone, hung up.

Parker said, “They got anything?”

“Going to call back.”

Parker began to write her daily report. Half an hour crawled past.

Willows’ phone rang and he snatched it up.

The Vegas police department knew Kenny Lee very well. During the past two years he’d flown into town on three separate occasions. The first time had been to pay a five figure bill at the Sands Hotel. An overdrawn Visa card issued in Lee’s name but in the possession of his son, Peter, had been used to cover a suite at the Sands, as well as several cash advances lost at the tables. Lee’s other two trips to Vegas had been for the express purpose of posting bail for the kid. The charges weren’t serious — a gross indecency and a drunk and disorderly. Willows asked about the first charge and was told the Lee kid had been caught pissing on a Lincoln parked in front of the Flamingo. At high noon.

Willows thanked the Vegas desk sergeant and hung up. Parker lifted an interrogative eyebrow.

Willows said, “Claire, did Lee’s son say who he took his ski trip with?”

“I didn’t ask him.”

“When you questioned him, how did he react?”