Out of the Blues (23 page)

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H
AVING
AGREED
on Cuban, they were headed up “The River Ponce,” as the street that fronted their office was known to some, highlighting the divergence of cultures between the more affluent and sedate communities on the north side of the avenue and the club scene, edgy art, drugs, and prostitution on the south side. Businesses and residences differed significantly from one side of the street to the other. New upscale condos on the north side of the street overlooked the “Murder Market” grocery and the Clermont Lounge, where aging strippers were known for crushing beer cans between their breasts; the Majestic Diner, serving breakfast at all hours of the day and night since 1929, majestic in a weirdly beautiful way—neon flickering, never completely out; and the pimps, cops, derelicts, drunks, geeks, creeps, and weirdos of all stripes on the south side.

It had started to rain, spattering the reflections of streetlights, equally glittering on a bank building, the old library, fast-food joints, the garbage bags worn by committed-to-the-street people, and gathering in holes and torn places in the asphalt. Everything shone in the iridescent rain. Salt and Wills parked on a side street and ran for the café's awning. They shook off their coats beneath the rain pattering on the stretched canvas above, the sound making the space below seem intimate, a small protective hollow. “Nights like this—crossing the River—it feels like my city.” Salt looked across the six-lane
street at a hilly rise to a small park where the street citizens had parked purloined grocery carts.

“You know that back in the 1800s there were actual springs here and a beech grove, where people used to come from downtown, what was considered the city back then, to commune with nature. It wasn't a river, but they'd have picnics beside the streams. That's where Ponce got its name. The springs were named for the explorer searching for the fountain of youth, if you remember your fourth-grade history.” Wills opened the door for her and they entered the warm, sweet-smelling café.

A white-shirted waiter showed them to a window seat and left them with menus. “It occurred to me today that it's probably not often that a detective meets and gets to know a soon-to-be victim and ends up investigating his death. How are you doing with that?” Wills asked.

“I don't think I know yet, but I'll feel a lot better if we catch the shooter.” Salt looked down at the menu. “Remember, I knew Lil D's mom, had known her and her family for years. I don't know that I'll ever feel unaffected by her death. I'm starting to wonder if there isn't something that gets to us, for better or worse, about every death investigation. You've got a red ball on your hands, a mother and her two children.” Salt resisted the urge to reach across the table to Wills.

“Yeah, but I've been doing this for a while. I just put one foot in front of the other, follow the leads, document for court, and overall do the best I can. I love the work—putting the pieces together. Can't let the tragedy derail you.” Cars on the avenue sprayed through the rain, flinging prisms of water. “I can't have a black dog on my shoulder while I work.” Wills leaned back as the waiter came back for their orders.

The waiter had barely left when Salt leaned forward. “What did you say—about a black dog?”

“Winston Churchill. That's what he called his depression. You never heard that?”

“No, I hadn't heard that one.” She shook her head. “I sometimes worry I might have inherited the black dog from my dad.” Rivulets narrowed to heavy streams and slid down the window beside them. “A box of blues—connections. I hope it's a good thing. Felton said each of you brings something different.” She shrugged.

Wills brought out a spiral notepad that he opened and flipped to a blank page. “One thing for sure you're bringing to the table”—he tapped the linen-covered surface—“is your connection to The Homes, Man, and the gang. It might be just what we need. What did he tell you?”

“That DeWare is at Toy Dolls and that the way in is with a drug warrant.” She and Wills leaned back to make room for the paella pans brought by the waiter.

“You think he's reliable?” Wills asked as soon as they were alone again and he had cleared his first mouthful. “Umm, I was starving.”

“Yes, but not legal reliable. We can't use him as an informant for the warrant—first, he wouldn't do it by the book and we'd never be able to establish his reliability. He'd never do what the law requires. But yes, he's got his own reasons for offering up DeWare. I think he wants Spangler out, wants to take control of the clubs, and believes DeWare could lead to Spangler's downfall.”

“So we ask Narcotics to help us with a buyout of the club.” Wills jotted on the pad. “DeWare's photo.” He made another note. “He won't go down easy, I'm sure.”

“According to Man, he's probably good for both the Solquist murders and Dan Pyne.” The window beside her warmly reflected the lights and activity in the café.

“Why does Man suspect him for Pyne?” Wills held up a finger to order coffee.

“He as much as said that DeWare was aiming for me. At this point DeWare may be a loose cannon, like Stone. Their fuses were lit a long time ago and there's no predicting how or when they'll go off. But you know all that.” She shrugged. “Why was Stone put in that room with me without handcuffs? We may be missing a piece, something that links DeWare and Stone—I don't know. But if Dan hadn't asked me to dance . . .” Salt looked past the reflections of herself and the café, out to the night and the rain.

Wills shut the notebook as their coffee came. “Come on, girl. We've got this working now. I put a bug in someone's ear in Internal Affairs, the corruption supersecret group. They'll work Sandy Madison. We'll get with the narcotics folks, maybe tonight. Sarge'll get the Special Victims' history. How was your paella?”

“Good.”

S
alt drove while Wills called Sergeant Huff so he could set up a meeting for them with a Narcotics supervisor. She headed in the direction of the Old Fourth Ward, where the Narcotics Unit had taken offices in another closed school. An eight-foot-high controlled-access fence protected the lot where the detectives parked their personal vehicles, indistinguishable from the undercover cars, some of which had been confiscated in drug busts. Wills gave her the keypad code and the gate slid back to admit them.

The rain had stopped and clouds were parting around the kind of close-up moon Salt thought of as a howling-wolf moon, when the sky was very dark and the light from the moon bright, silhouetting the fleeing clouds. She drew her coat around her as she followed Wills along the portico that led to the side entrance.

Fluorescent tube lights lined the hall and room ceilings, giving everything a bluish glow. The entrance double doors clanked shut behind them and one of the narcs stuck his head out of a classroom
midway down the hall. Smiling broadly, he said, “Welcome to the war,” motioning them forward to the room. “L.T., the reinforcements have arrived,” he said over his shoulder. He kept the smile up, grabbing Wills, hugging Salt. “Wills, Salt, it's good to see you. You make a good-looking crime-fighting duo.”

Salt and Wills stepped back and gave each other exaggerated scrutiny, scanning each other up and down. “Too bad we're just partnered for this one case.” Wills wiggled his eyebrows at her.

The “L.T.,” Lieutenant Mary Shepherd, sat at the teacher's desk at the front of the room. Pepper sat in front of her on an aqua-colored hard plastic kid's chair. “Hey, girl,” he said, his hands in an almost undetectable prayer bow as she came over.

“Namaste,” she replied, sitting down next to him. The room's light called attention to the glassy-looking skin on his long scar. “I thought you'd be out there mixing it up with the boys in the hood,” she said, remembering Ann's anxiety and hoping that he wouldn't be a part of this detail, something she'd initiated.

“L.T.” Salt held up her hand in greeting. Wills and the narcotics guy who greeted them pulled up desks to close the circle.

Lieutenant Shepherd had a reputation as a tough, street-hardened veteran. She came across as wary, but was known to support and defend her colleagues, especially other women on the PD. “Tell us what you've got, guys, and how my team can help. You both probably know these two. We got our veteran.” She nodded her appreciation to her detective. “And our man Pepper is, as you know, new, but has great promise—if we can keep his ass alive long enough to get him past the hand-to-hands.” She referred to the street-level buys that the new detectives, their faces unknown to the drug dealers, tried to transact.

But nothing about Pepper looked rookie, from his height to the
scar to the baggy street attire he was wearing. Affecting an admiring glance at his outstretched fingers, nails polished to a high shine, he said, “I clean up nice, don't you think?” She thought of their day putting the rough fence posts in the ground. He poked her in the ribs and laughed.

“God, you scared me for a minute.” Salt shook her head but wasn't relieved of the anxiety that had set in when she realized Pepper might be in on this.

“Salt has come up with a location where DeWare, our suspect in the Solquist murders, might be hiding.” Wills took out the notepad. “We've identified him as DeWare Lovelace, DOB 8/22/75, black male, five eleven and one hundred eighty pounds. Not only is he suspected in the Solquist case, but he might be the doer at the Blue Room last week.”

“So he likes to shoot.” Lieutenant Shepherd made notes of her own on a yellow legal pad.

“I'd say,” Wills nodded. “And he has the usual record a mile long that includes gun arrests.”

“But you don't have good probable cause to get a warrant for his hidey-hole, right?” the narcotics guy said.

“Did Man give you this?” Pepper knew The Homes almost as well as Salt did.

“He's always been reliable in my dealings with him for over ten years. He admits his own agenda. Says we can get in with a buy. I've never known him to steer me wrong. I did push him, though.”

“Where does he say DeWare is?” Lieutenant Shepherd asked.

“Toy Dolls,” Wills answered.

The lieutenant had been relaxed in her chair listening but now sat up, leaning in at a sharp angle. “Could be a cluster fuck to serve that place.”

The city's Narcotics Unit had a recent history of botched raids and
bad warrants based on dubious information or outright lies. Undercover work lent itself to eagerness that had to be tempered by someone with a long view. The unit had been cleared of miscreants, some of whom had completed their careers with the justice system behind bars. Lieutenant Shepherd had been one of the house cleaners.

“Who will they sell to? Anybody? Everybody? Who's their main market?” asked the lieutenant.

“They'd recognize Pep at Toy Dolls,” Salt said, eager to protect him, especially in light of her conversation with Ann. There was no way she wanted him endangered because of a lead she'd initiated.

Pepper frowned at her, lifting his eyebrows in puzzlement, twisting his mouth down.

“Don't look at me. It's close to our old beats,” she said.

“I don't know that we'd have to use him for the buy, but he needs to get the warrant service, as well as the tactical experience. Will they sell to white dudes there?” The lieutenant looked at her veteran, who shrugged his gameness.

“Actually, L.T., you fit the perfect buyer at the Dolls,” Salt said. “Black lesbian friendly there.”

“My husband, four children, and minister would all take offense at that,” she said, laughing. “'Course my girlfriend would be pleased.”

There was a sudden silence in the room. Nobody moved.

“Kidding. Jeez, lighten up.”

“Whew,” Pepper exhaled. Wills leaned back. They stretched their legs and waited for the lieutenant's word. “Let me give this some thought, come up with a plan and think of who to make the buy. I'd be game to do it myself, actually. I've been off and out of the action long enough so I wouldn't be made,” said the lieutenant.

“L.T., I didn't—”

“I know you didn't, Salt. But if I'm best, I'm best, and I can't think of any of our folks right now that fit the profile as well, like you say.
I know there's a sense of urgency because of the Solquist murders and now the Blue Room shooting.”

“I can deal with the push, L.T. No way do we want to put anyone at unnecessary risk.” Wills sat up straight.

“Let me get a plan—two days, at the most next week depending. Okay?” Shepherd put her pen down and stood up, stretching her back, dismissing them.

Wills walked out with the narcotics guy talking about their Rottweilers, leaving Pepper to escort Salt down the hall. “How are the boys and Ann? I enjoyed having lunch with her.” Salt stopped halfway to where Wills stood talking, scrolling and showing his phone.

“We're in a bad patch—too little time for each other. The boys take up so much energy—sports, school, extra activities—and then her job, my extra jobs, and the new assignment. It's a lot.” Pepper looked away from her, cleared his throat, and adjusted his shoulders.

“It's probably a lot more fun to come here and slip into pretend world, where you can become Mr. Street Cool, no ties, no responsibilities, no one relying on you. I know I'd rather play cops and robbers than . . .”

“What? Figure out that old family crap that causes you to put yourself too close to the edge?” Pepper gave her a playful punch, but it landed on her collarbone and hurt.

She winced and they looked away from each other. They were out of sync, missing their usual cues. “Seems like we're both a little on edge,” she said.

“Namaste,” he said, stopping and bowing as she continued on out to join Wills.