You Know Who Killed Me (19 page)

“Looks like it.” I paid her and lugged the sack out to the car.

I hadn't staked out a place in nearly a year. As an afterthought I checked the trunk. The empty Folger's can was there, with a snap-on lid. I put it on the floor on the passenger's side, and now I was good for what I hoped was the duration.

It was the second time I'd been to church that day, and I hadn't spent one second in a pew. Christ Episcopal stood calm as moonlight, its spires outlined sharply against an oyster-colored sky. There were a few cars in the little parking lot. Florence Melville's was easy to spot, a boxy Ford Flex with a crucifix embossed on the license plate: That would let her park in handicap slots and loading zones while she made house calls of a spiritual nature. I found a space in the far corner and backed into it. From there I had a clear view of the Flex.

There's nothing more uncertain in the work than a stakeout. You almost never know what you're looking for, an incriminating destination, a clandestine meeting, or just a suspicious break in the routine. You don't know how long it will take, hours or days or weeks, so you stock up and see to the immediate sanitary needs. You keep your passport current and handy in the glove compartment just in case you have to cross into Canada—or Mexico, for that matter—an up-to-date atlas on the backseat, a Scotsman's purse full of change for tolls, a roll of bills for bribes and other incidentals tucked in a Kleenex box. I carry a credit card I've never used, and a speed-loader in a Vernor's can with a screw lid.

You take inventory of all that, and then you sit. On the passenger's side, so it looks like you're waiting for the driver. You sit, you watch, you smoke, you listen. Doors open, doors close. Cars pull into the lot, cars pull out. A pigeon pecks at the ants crawling over a box from Wendy's. A hole opens in the overcast, lighter-colored clouds drifting from one side of it to the other, morphing into different shapes, a celestial Rorschach. Doors open, doors close. The radio squawks for a few minutes, just to keep you alert; too long and you start to listen to it. A blowhard talks about the president, an avant-garde saxophonist abuses a noble instrument, a giddy weatherman talks about pressures and fronts, another blowhard talks about the president, a hip-hop group sings an ode to cunnilingus. An ambulance howls and hoots and bleats and wah-wahs down a distant street. Doors open, doors close. A chirp close to your ear makes you jump, and the woman parked next to you opens her door, stares your way for a moment, then gets in and drives away. Cars pull in, cars pull out. A medivac copter with jet boosters churns up the air overhead, low enough to rattle your windows. Brakes screech, a horn blasts. (Light's yellow, moron!) You reach behind your neck and pat the hairs back into place. Doors open, doors close. Your lids are heavy as sash weights and it's the middle of the day. You crack a window to let smoke out and cold air in, splash some bottled water into your palm and dash it in your face, take a sip—a little one, so you don't have to use the coffee can until it's absolutely essential. Cars pull in, cars pull out. You eat an apple. The crunch makes you wide awake, so you crank up the window. People pay attention to open windows in freezing weather.

From time to time you start the engine and let the heater run long enough to clear out the chill, and to keep the engine from getting too cold. You do it every fifteen minutes, which gives you something to look forward to.

You think about your life. Then you stop, because that leads to asking why you're sitting on a buttful of dead nerves in a car parked next to a church. You'll have an epiphany if you're not careful.

Doors open, doors close. A commercial jingle sneaks into your head and you try to sing it on out, but it's burrowed in like a tick and if you pull at it the head will stay in and fester and you're stuck with a kid singing the same chorus out of tune forever.

Cars pull in, cars pull out. You get out for a stretch and find out you've borrowed someone else's feet. Stamp, stamp. A tingle. You put your hands on your hips and arch your back, but nothing pops. You windmill your arms a couple of times and sit back down and slam the door.

And the day wanes.

*   *   *

The clouds were nearly black now, ponderous with the weight of the snow they held. The sun was below them, reflecting off their bellies, a torchiere effect and eerie, as if it were shining up from below. That always brought a sense of nameless anxiety, of something building toward something bad. The big red front door opened and the Reverend Melville came out.

She was dressed for the cold, but not in the sexless heavy-duty gear she'd worn to shovel snow. Her black hair with its silver streak was gathered under one of those fuzzy white flowerpots and a green belted coat hung to the tops of fur-trimmed boots. She'd wound a red scarf around her neck and had a red mitten on one hand, holding its mate while she shook loose a ring of keys. The wind was stiffening; she bowed her head into it, hurried down the steps and across the lot to the Flex, started the motor, and let it warm up while she wriggled her bare hand into the other mitten. She turned on her lights and wound out into the street. I started the Cutlass and followed. It felt good to be going somewhere, even if it was just to her house followed by another long session of the same, and on one of the coldest nights of the year. In the work, you take all the pleasure you can out of the little things.

*   *   *

We drove west to Telegraph, then north. She turned into a strip mall, scampered into a florist's shop with a spectacular show of roses, peonies, and poppies looking like orange crepe in the lighted window. Ten minutes later she came out carrying a multicolored bouquet in a small basket covered with cellophane. I backed out of a space in front of a pet-grooming parlor and turned onto Telegraph a couple of beats behind the Flex. Traffic was heavy with commuters in a hurry to get home to a beer, a fight with the spouse and kids, a late night, an early morning, and the same day all over again. She was a careful driver but an aggressive one, changing lanes approaching stoplights in favor of the one with fewer cars between her and the intersection, and timed her speed to catch most of the lights on the green; either that, or God changed them for her.

Despite all the changes locally, ice crystals trickled down my spine when we entered the Iroquois Heights city limits. I felt like a Jewish refugee going back to Germany for something he'd left behind in 1939.

I'd flipped the rearview mirror to nightside when she turned into a narrow drive with an iron fence on each side and a brass-embossed sign nested in a slumbering flowerbed reading:

HENRY GLADWIN MEMORIAL CEMETERY

Gladwin had been the commander of Fort Detroit when Chief Pontiac laid siege in 1763. If the town disliked Indians that much, it seemed easier just to change its name.

I idled at the curb for a minute. A cemetery drive is a lonely place every day but Memorial Day, and you tended to notice your fellow visitors. I poked a butt out the window and turned in. A hundred yards ahead shone a pair of taillights, which stayed the same distance as I crept forward, then brightened when the brakes came on. I cruised fifty feet, then took the first turnoff and stopped a few yards in, cutting the motor and the lights.

I spent a lot of time twisting the focus wheel on the binoculars I kept in my trunk and squinting through the gloom to make out her substantial silhouette in the gathering dusk, carrying what I assumed to be the spray of flowers. I'm still saving up for night goggles and a rocketship to the moon. She stopped at a grave, crossed herself, stooped, straightened minus the basket, crossed herself again, and went back to her car.

I ditched the binoculars, slid under the wheel, and waited while she turned into a side path and made her way back to the state highway. By the time I got to the grave, it was dark enough to need the flash. I slid the switch and pointed the beam at the headstone, red marble with a bronze plaque:

DONALD WARWICK GATES

b. 1976

LOVING HUSBAND AND FATHER

“GOD'S FINGER TOUCHED HIM AND HE SLEPT”

Date of death was problematic, given which side of midnight New Year's Day it had taken place.

There was nothing in it. No law prohibited a pastor from honoring a friend and supporter of the church. There was nothing in it, except friends and church supporters died every day; old lovers less often.

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

Barry met me at the door of his apartment downtown. He had on plaid pajama pants and a Louisville Slugger in one hand. The titanium shaft of his utilitarian prosthesis stuck out the bottom of one leg. His other foot wore a big ugly black oxford.

“You need to talk to your tailor,” I said.

“You need not to wake people up in the middle of the night. You know how many home invasions started with somebody getting his toes stomped on?” He slid the bat into an umbrella stand. I hadn't seen one of those in years.

“It's six thirty
P.M.
,” I said.

“Not in Aspen. You couldn't call?”

“You didn't answer.”

“Right. I turned off all my phones.”

I told him what I needed.

“Tall order,” he said. “I need to know what she looks like.”

“The church must have a Web site.”

He sat down in front of a flat-screen monitor on an L-shaped desk. His connection was first-rate: He had the Christ Episcopal Church's site in no time, and scrolled down a stack of smiling faces until he came to Florence Melville's, a good likeness.

“I like that hair streak,” he said. “Makes things less difficult.”

He was faster on the keys than most people who had all ten fingers. I watched a lot of sped-up images whiz past: people entering and exiting shopping malls, restaurants, hotels, walking on sidewalks. Security footage. I asked him how he got the stuff.

“The owner of the Blue Heron isn't the only person I've done favors for. You never know when some drug lord who's been deported to Sicily might walk into the local Seven-Eleven.”

“Didn't the feds catch a Nazi war criminal that way?”

“September before last, in Southfield. It was my call.”

“Branching out?”

“I should try and compete with the Israelis. Bread on the waters, for when I need Washington.”

His eyes never left the screen. Mine did; watching someone surf the Net is like watching grass grow. The apartment was sparsely furnished, no sofa or TV set, no decoration, not even his Pulitzer. When Sam the Butcher came calling, all Barry had to grab on the way out was a toothbrush.

“Hello.”

I turned back. He'd freeze-framed on a full-length shot of a man and woman standing in a plush lobby of some kind. The woman was Florence Melville, caught in the act of removing a pair of sunglasses and looking over one shoulder. The white streak in her hair was prominent. She wore a lightweight dress with half sleeves. The man had on a short-sleeved sportshirt and pleated slacks. A time stamp flickered in the lower right corner: 3:57
P.M
. 7/8/12.

“Hilton Garden Inn, downtown,” Barry said. “They're waiting for the elevator.”

“The man's face is blurred.”

“Sec.” He tapped a key. The image moved. He tapped again, freezing it.

I held my breath. It couldn't be that easy.

“Can you zoom in?”

Tappity-tap-tap. Donald Gates's mild, slightly pudgy face filled the screen.

*   *   *

“Could be a church benefit,” I said. “Even a lady pastor prefers an escort.”

“Know in a minute.” He stroked the mouse. Rows of square stills came up onscreen. He clicked on one, and now we were looking down at a steeper angle at a carpeted hallway with numbered doors on both sides. The couple, dressed as before, scampered down it at accelerated speed. They stopped in front of one of the doors. Gates swiped a key card through a slot, opened the door, held it for Melville, and followed her inside. I caught a glimpse of a sleek bureau and the corner of a snugly made bed.

“Hotel room's a funny place for an auction,” Barry said. “Things have come to a sorry pass when a man can't step out on his wife without winding up on a reality show.”

“Melville told me they dated before he met Amelie. She sort of left out just when they stopped.”

“She wouldn't be the first clergyperson to break the Sixth Commandment.”

“Seems a harsh trade for breaking the Seventh.” I studied the screen. “Can you print out that last shot showing their faces?”

“Sure. Can I cut myself in, or are you a solo blackmailer?”

“Now, what kind of hell would I be bound for if I tried to shake down a priest?”

“If it's as bad as Detroit, I wouldn't risk it.”

“It's just a shock treatment.”

“Who for?”

“I haven't worked that out yet. I've been in the dark on this one since the beginning.”

“So throw shit on your head and call yourself a mushroom.” He loaded a sheet of photo paper into his printer.

“Keep this under your hat, Barry?”

“I might as well. Looks like my Ukrainians sprouted wings and flew out the window.”

 

TWENTY-NINE

I crossed the MacArthur Bridge for the fourth time in a couple of days. I was beginning to spend more time on the island than James Scott, and he was a bronze statue standing near the fountain named for him. I forget just who he was, philanthropist or robber baron or just a man with money left over when they put him in the ground. Like the city itself, its history was sliding out from under my feet.

Amelie Gates entered the parking lot while my engine was still cooling, accompanied by a woman I'd seen working the food tent. The other woman had on civilian outerwear like her companion's, but when I opened the window to call out to Amelie the smell of baked beans and onions reached me from twenty feet away. She recognized me—or the car—touched her friend's arm, and left her standing there while she came over.