Bones of the Barbary Coast (38 page)

52

B
ERT JAMMED THE brakes as soon as the furthest wash of his headlights picked out Cree's red Honda, cozied up against Ray's van. His face went numb. Seeing her car here, well after midnight, everything that implied, it was something of a last straw.

He idled for half a minute, torn between conflicting impulses. Conflicting, but all of the
fuck it
category:
Fuck Cree if she's that stupid. Fuck
yourself, too, Bright Raven, give it up, lost cause, you're old and burnt to shit and
don't have what it takes,go home.
The other side of that was,
Fuck it, it's lose-lose
anyway, might as well have it out, high noon in the middle of the night, who
cares about the consequences.

He settled for a provisional decision. He cut the lights, put the car in reverse, and slid over to the curb. The position gave him a long angle view of Ray's front door. Tired as he was, he knew he'd never sleep tonight. Might as well keep watch as he sifted through the mental dregs and cinders of one of the worst days on record and tried to decide what to do.

This time last night he was at home, still waiting for the call from Nearing and Koslowski. Planning the operation, they'd agreed that since Bert was already on Ray's radar he shouldn't be anywhere near the action, no possibility he'd be connected. And anyway somebody had to make absolutely sure Cree wasn't there. Bert had driven to her motel, verified that her car was in the lot and that the lights were on in her room, then called Nearing with the go-ahead. He'd gone home feeling giddily pleased, sick, scared.

By three A.M. the call still hadn't come and the tension was getting bad, and he'd almost called Nearing's cell. But then he worried that his call might come at a critical moment, might distract Rich. So he'd held on, dosed himself with whiskey. At last he'd fallen asleep on the couch with his house phone and cell on his chest.

He'd awakened with a jerk to realize that it was Monday morning and there'd been no call. His head was pounding and his teeth were fuzzy, the light from the sliding doors was a death ray hitting his eyes.

First he called Nearing's cell phone. No answer. Koslowski, same result. So he gave it up and called Nearing's home number. His wife was practically hysterical: Rich had said he was going out for a drink but he hadn't come home, did Bert know where he was? He tried to reassure her: Probably he'd gotten called in on some late-night situation and just hadn't had time to check in.

He called Koslowski's place, got basically the same message from his girlfriend. When he hung up, he called a guy he knew at the Night Investigations Unit, who he figured would know about anything serious involving cops. He asked if there'd been any unusual action last night.

Jackpot. Burning up and down the cop grapevine was the news that early this morning, two guys from Narcotics/Vice Division had been brought to the hospital in very bad shape. Some people were saying there was something messy about it, because the brass were not broadcasting the news or calling up the troops. Like maybe Nearing and Koslowski had gotten hurt while engaged in something dirty that needed to be kept quiet pending internal investigations and some spin control.

Bert turned suddenly cold and shaky. It could all unravel from here. If he got caught in it, he was screwed. All the other stuff they'd been doing for the last six years would come out. Hearings, trials, maybe jail. No pension. And if the lid blew off soon, he'd get so tied up he wouldn't be able to follow through on Ray, legally or otherwise.

Damage control time. He needed to find out exactly what had happened so he could consider his options.

It took a while to find out where they were, people didn't know or wouldn't tell. It was almost noon when he drove to the hospital, hoping desperately that it hadn't gotten administrative yet, he wouldn't be prohibited from talking to them. Assuming they were able to talk.

He got a jolt when he found a pair of inspectors already in the room, but then it turned out they were both General Works inspectors. Not Management Control Division. That fact brought Bert's shoulders down a full inch. General Works meant it was still routine, they were just waiting for the victims to be in shape to talk so they could start their assault investigation.

They met him in the hall, so he couldn't get close to Rich and Pete, but through the door he could see two motionless figures in the beds, with bandaged heads and a tangle of IV tubes and monitor wires. They said Nearing had been conscious when the medics brought him in, if pretty out of it from a concussion. But he'd required surgery for a lacerated jaw and was still under the anesthetic. Koslowski was in worse shape, a serious skull fracture, but supposedly the prognosis was okay.

"What the hell happened?" Bert asked.

Minken, the taller GW guy, who seemed to be the lead, answered: "Hospital gets an anonymous tip about two guys in a car over near the arena. They send an ambulance and call the PD. A black and white goes out, gets there and sees two badly hurt guys but an undamaged car, so it's not a car crash, it's assault. No ID on the victims, they had to run the plates to figure out the car owner is Richard Nearing. Naturally the captain at Narcotics heard and got very interested, they put us on it right away."

"Your buddies, huh?" the second inspector asked.

"Rich Nearing is a great guy," Bert said carefully. "His wife's a terrific gal, got a couple of great kids. I hate to see this happen to that family."

The second inspector grunted. "Could have been a lot worse—both their guns were in the car, one had been fired, but whoever the bad guys were, they didn't reciprocate. Used a brick or a rock or something on them. Couple other funny details."

Bert almost slipped up. He almost asked,
Dog bites?
He couldn't imagine any other way Ray had gotten the upper hand with two guys like Nearing and Koslowski. But that would suggest he knew something he shouldn't. He just frowned and asked, "Oh, yeah? Like what?"

But Minken had shot the other guy a look. He shrugged and gave a casual, dismissive toss of his head. "Just little stuff. Who knows if it's worth anything. You know how it is."

Bert knew not to push it. Minken's eyes had gone suddenly flat, and the signal between them had been a reminder:
Don't talk about it.

He stopped at a restaurant and stuffed some food into his face even though he was anything but hungry, then went to a bar chosen at random for a couple of shots. His cell phone went off, but the caller ID told him it was Cree and there was no way he could talk to her now. The next time it went off, he was afraid to even look, maybe it was the first little hello from MCD, the first beat of his career's death knell.

What had gone wrong? The plan had been to go into Ray's, inflict enough damage on Ray to cause him major hurt and keep him laid up until Bert could put him away. They were to take pictures, toss the place and make off with some valuables to make it look like a robbery—a common enough scenario in that neighborhood, easy to fake. What had gone wrong?

More to the point, what would happen next? He forced himself to think systematically about the likely progression of events. By the time he drove home, he felt certain that unless Nearing and Koslowski had a lot more imagination and strength of character than he figured them for, they'd blow it while trying to make up a story about what had gone down. The Narcotics/Vice people already had their antennae up, Minken and the other guy had been warned, so they would separate Pete and Rich for the interviews. The fairy tales wouldn't match, so they'd bring in MCD. A little pressure and soon Ray's name would come up, and Bert's name, and it would all blow.

How soon? How long did he have?

And for what—a fast exit to Mexico? A serious visit to Ray and then the gun in the mouth? Because there was no way he could see being put through that wringer again. Not at this age, this stage. No way.

Bert realized he'd been sitting in the dark car outside Ray's for over an hour. His legs were stiff and cold. He checked his watch and saw that it was almost three o'clock. Time to fish or cut bait. Do something here or go home.

He thought of Cree, in there, getting it on with a guy like that. So deceived. So unaware of how dangerous he was. The rage, the frustration, everything came roaring in. Again he considered storming the place right now. But it wasn't really an option. Ray would have fixed his door, probably armored it this time, and after Nearing and Koslowski he had no doubt taken other precautions. What could he do, stand on the street and shoot at the windows? Even if he somehow got inside, Cree could easily get hurt in the ensuing drama. Or even come in on Ray's side, what would happen then?

He started the car. There was nothing he could do tonight. It would all have to wait until tomorrow. If the internal investigation wasn't casting its baleful gaze his way yet, maybe he could still do something. Maybe Cree could pry herself away from Scarface long enough for Bert to catch him alone. Or Hank Chambers would come up with something on the evidence side.

Actually, that could solve the whole mess: Pin a murder on Ray, even demonstrate a reasonable presumption of guilt, and any internal investigation had a good chance of quietly fading away.

The thought rose quick and bright, a spark of hope. He shook his head at himself as he pulled the car around and started toward home.
Yeah, Bert
Marchetti in a nutshell,
he thought,
the incurable optimist.

53

I
CAN'T TELL YOU how disappointed I am." Ray sounded vastly weary and sad.

"Don't scare me here, Ray."

"Scare you? Why should you be scared?" He came fully into the room to stand among the dogs. They were all just shadow shapes.

"Ray, turn on the light so I can see your face. I didn't tell you earlier, but Bert, he's seriously after you, he's—"

"Yeah, I'm starting to get that impression."

"I was sure he was wrong! I wanted to
prove
it to him, so that he'd—"

"Still so sure?"

"You turn on the light and look at me and see me and we'll both tell each other what's true. Goddamn it, Ray!"

Ray's shadow held for a long minute, but then he did it, he went to a lamp and turned it on. The glow lit the room. He wore only his boxer shorts, and he looked impossibly strong, every muscle chipped and carved. In the better light, she could see his left eye ticking, shivering, from side to side, independent of the right. Cree tried not to shake as they stared at each other from ten feet away.

At last she tipped her head toward the desk. The envelopes. The reports from oncological path labs and the letters from doctors that spelled it out. "Why not just tell me? Why the big secret? Does Horace know? Does anybody?"

"It's nobody's business. It's just my situation. My little challenge. I have my way of dealing with it."

She wanted to go to him, hold him, but the fear sweat was freezing her, she was shaking and couldn't think straight. "I don't know how to do this, Ray Help me. I don't know what hurts or helps, or what part I might have in anything. I don't know how to talk to a dying man."

Ray passed a weary hand over his brow. She couldn't make out what was in his eyes. "Everybody's dying," he said. "I'm just aware of the fact."

Much later there was a vertical band of warm rainbow colors, bright against the cool blue of shadow. It was lustrous and mesmerizing. Cree stared at it for a long time before she realized she was conscious. She was sitting hunched at the end of the couch, and the band was a narrow shaft of sunlight slicing in a long diagonal onto the bookshelf and making the book spines glow. Little motes of dust hung in the invisible beam.

Morning.

She stirred and the ache in her shoulders brought her awake. Sprawled against the other end, Ray shifted and slowly raised his head. Their eyes met across the length of the couch and held. More curious than wary, not a shadow of pretense, no deflection available to either of them.

Ray groaned and sat up. The dogs lifted their heads and the Rottweiler came to demand some affection. He roughed her coat and nuzzled her with his face when she insisted on more.

"Okay," he croaked. "Okay, Sadie. The dog food machine is awake and on duty." He stood, wrapped his blanket around himself, then shuffled off to the kitchen with the dogs.

Cree stared after him, astonished that he could be this way.
Dead man
walking.
A guy with a tumor deep in his head that sometime soon would bring him down and kill him. She had demanded the details from him, and he had spent a few minutes telling her the particulars, the type of tumor, the positioning and infiltration that precluded surgery, the first tumor board's unanimous opinion, the second and third boards' concurrence. His ability to keep running at this stage was highly atypical, his doctor said. The glioblastoma mainly created intracranial pressure and pain, but it also changed brain function, made for weird sensory disturbances, unpredictable mood changes, strange thoughts. Sometimes the effects were troubling, but they could be fascinating, too. He'd been terrified when he'd first learned, but he'd more or less mastered that. He'd studied death and tried to make it beautiful. Took him to some strange places, but it felt like it was sorted out now. She had pressed him for more, but Ray said he wearied easily of the topic and was done for tonight. So then they'd talked about other things. Cree watched him closely throughout, aware that for all the times and ways she'd dealt with death, she had very little real experience of it from this side of the divide.

Now the clunk of the cabinet doors came from the kitchen and the sound amazed her.
That's how you do it,
she thought.
Hey, gotta feed the dogs.
Another day comes with its demands and problems and pleasures and you muster
through it because for now you're alive, and what would you do different anyway?
She wanted to tell him his courage was marvelous, but she doubted he wanted to hear it. He'd say something like,
It's not courage. It's just the
absence
of a choice.

After a minute, she got up. She picked up the empty wine bottle and the glasses and brought them into the kitchen, where Ray was opening dog food cans. He put down the bowls and watched with obvious satisfaction as the animals choffed away.

"So," he said, "today we do the church records?" Drowsily normal. Instructing her on how to do it.

"If you have the time."

"Wouldn't miss it. I've got some sick leave coming at work."

Ray turned to the sink and began filling a teapot with water; Cree opened the refrigerator and scanned the shelves for breakfast foods. Like they were an old married couple. Just your ordinary heart-wrenched empathic parapsychologist trying to uncover the hundred-year-old secret of a wolfman; just your regular dying mystic doing his balancing act, resigned, doing his best to succumb completely to both life and death.

Cree took out eggs, butter, and orange juice and put them on the counter. It didn't really feel artificial. Mainly it felt like a ritual—a tea ceremony, maybe, something to be done with greatest delicacy and precision. She wanted to touch him, even just briefly on the arm, but was afraid to break the spell.