Trigger City (21 page)

I
pulled to a stop behind an unmarked cruiser
and two blue-and-whites with their roof lights flashing. A kid in a police uniform strode toward me, his hand held up like a traffic cop.

“You can't park there.” Blond wisps of hair sprouted from his upper lip, petitioning for a promotion to the rank of mustache.

“Lieutenant Angelo called me in. I'm Ray Dudgeon,” I said.

“Oh, right.” A flicker of uncertainty as he tried to remember where he'd seen my face before. “Come this way.” Still uncertain.

The kid led me behind yellow crime scene tape and through the door of a storefront bar that was stripped bare, midrenovation. The carved mahogany bar had been sanded down and was waiting for varnish. The walls were painted a light green but the electrical outlets still hung from holes in the drywall, waiting for new switch plates. Drop cloths covered the floor. The smell of sanded wood and fresh paint wasn't quite strong enough to block out another smell. A sweet and sickening smell.

“In here,” called Mike Angelo from behind a purple wall of plastic beads that hung down from the ceiling. We made our way through
the beads and into the back room. Mike stood with two detectives, all three of them smoking. A forensics guy fiddled with his box of exotic tools. The body lay on the floor, covered by a blue tarpaulin. The smell was stifling.

Angelo looked from me to Policeboy and thrust his cigarette in my direction and said, “Who the hell is this?”

“He said he was Ray Dudgeon, sir.”

“He said. But you didn't check his ID.” Mike glanced at me and almost smiled but kept it straight.

“No, sir.” The kid's pale cheeks turned red and he looked at his shiny shoes.

“Okay then. Lesson learned, I hope. Get back to your post.” Then to me, “You're late.” The kid muttered apologies and retreated outside.

“Traffic,” I said.

Mike said, “Detective Samuels, Detective Furnandiz,” and they each nodded at me in turn without speaking or offering to shake hands. “I hope you didn't eat in the last hour, Ray.”

Furnandiz dropped his cigarette into an empty Coke bottle and said, “If you did, I hope you saved room for dessert. Somebody made crème brûlée outta this guy's face with a fuckin' blowtorch.”

Mike waved his cigarette at the tarpaulin and said, “Gerry.”

The forensics guy peeled back the tarp. I almost puked. A sharp spasm of the diaphragm but nothing came up.

Samuels said, “Try not to hurl on the vic, Dudgeon.” I recognized his voice from the phone call earlier.

“I gotta let fly, I'll be sure to aim your way,” I said.

“A little focus, please,” said Mike.

I turned my attention back to the mess on the floor. Started with the part easiest to look at. The dead man wore black leather oxfords, black pants, a navy double-breasted blazer, and a white shirt.

The hands and wrists were burned right down to the bone.

If the man had had hair, it was now gone. His entire head and neck were burned through the skin and down to the level of muscle and tendon and bone. Burned all the way to his scorched shirt collar and
half-melted bow tie. No visible skin remained. Lips were gone. No eyes, either.

My stomach did another somersault. I stepped back and managed not to vomit.

“Hey, Dudgeon, check out the eyeholes, maybe you know the guy.” Samuels laughed. “Sorry, Lieutenant.”
Asshole
.

I turned away from the body, braced my hands against my thighs, and drew a few deep breaths, until the roiling in my stomach stopped.

Mike offered me his cigarettes and I took one and lit it and inhaled smoke, which helped deaden the stench a bit.

Gerry the forensics guy said, “For what it's worth, he was dead before he was broiled.” It wasn't worth much.

“How long ago?” I asked.

“Four hours, give or take.”

“Well?” said Mike.

“That's Delwood Crawley.” My stomach clenched again, but not as strong and it passed quickly.

“No shit?” said Furnandiz. He cocked his head to the side like a spaniel and looked at the corpse. “Looks kinda like him, now that you say the name.”

“Right neighborhood for him,” said Samuels.

“Let's not get ahead of ourselves,” said Mike.

Samuels stepped forward to plead his case. “All due respect, Lieutenant, this thing looks pretty obvious. I mean, it's beyond brutal and you know how these guys get when they kill each other. And Crawley was a fudgepacker for sure.” Samuels was working in the wrong district station.

“You know that?” said Mike. “For sure? I mean, the guy was from England. They all seem a little that way.”

“I'm not gonna get ahead of myself. I'm just saying, once the binder's full, this thing's gonna go down as a fag divorce.”

“What about it, Ray?” said Mike. “You knew the guy.”

“I have no idea if he was gay or not. He was a bit theatrical, but
that doesn't mean anything.” I didn't look at Samuels and resisted the urge to use the word
bigot
. “I think he was married once.”

“Lotta fags are married,” said Samuels.

“Can we discuss this someplace that smells better?” I said. “I don't know about you guys, but I could use a drink. I'm buying.”

“Good idea,” said Mike Angelo.

 

We met up again a few blocks away, at a little shoebox on Broadway called Reflections. The place smelled like cigarettes, cheap beer, and Pine-Sol. A big improvement over burned flesh. On the downside, the jukebox was playing
Foreigner's Greatest Hits.

A large fish tank dominated the wall behind the bar and strings of multicolored Christmas tree lights covered much of the ceiling. The lights were dusty but the fish tank was clean and its inhabitants looked healthy enough. Freebie promotional crap from beer distributors covered the walls and there was a basketball game on the television over the bar.

Most of the customers were professional drunks, middle-aged and older, of both sexes. The rest were young gay men who enjoyed slumming with professional drunks.

Samuels and Furnandiz came in behind me and headed to the back of the room, where they flashed their tin and commandeered a table from some fat drunks decked out in ill-fitting Bears jerseys and ball caps.

I caught the bartender's eye, ordered four bottles of Old Style. Mike came in and stood beside me while I waited for the beer.

“Just got a call from Sergeant Warren. He's tied up with an armed robbery over on Racine.” He shook his head. “Some night.”

“Not a full moon,” I said. “I checked.”

“Whatever. This is his case; I'm just here as an observer. Samuels is the lead detective on this.”

“What aren't you telling me?” I said.

Mike glanced toward the cops at the back of the room. Our beer arrived and he picked up three of the bottles. “Sergeant Warren was
a detective until recently. He's new to Area 3.” He held my eyes. “Understand?”

“Yeah. He was one of your dicks who—”

“Right. Now don't fuck around with these guys. They don't know about Warren, but this case is a heater—Crawley wasn't just any old citizen and they're gonna be all over his life by morning. They'll have his Day-Timer, notes, e-mails, everything. If there's a connection to you, they'll find it. So play it straight.”

Mike headed to the table while I paid for the beer.

When I joined them at the back, Samuels said, “Okay, Dudgeon. Somebody tries to off you on the Mag Mile and a couple days later Crawley gets dead while dialing your number. God don't make coincidences that big, so don't even bother. What's the connection?”

“I don't know that there is one,” I said. He started to object but I held up my hand. “I'm not saying there isn't, I'm just saying I don't know, because I don't know who the guy in the mall was or why he came at me. Look, Mike'll tell you I'm a cooperative guy. I'll give you whatever I know.”

“Forget about the mall then,” said Samuels. “Tell us about Crawley.”

“Sure. I think Blake Sten killed him.”

That stunned them. Samuels seemed almost disappointed that he wasn't going to have the chance to play
bad cop
with me.

He said, “And who is Blake Sten, if you don't mind.”

“I don't mind a bit. Sten is vice president of corporate security for a military contracting firm called Hawk River, based in Aurora.” Furnandiz wrote down everything I said in his little notebook.

I glanced at Mike. His look said:
Are you insane?

My look back said:
You told me to play it straight.

“Your next question is why do I think it was Sten,” I said. “When we're done here, take a look at Crawley's column in this morning's
Chronicle.
I was his source for the lead item.” They were going to find out anyway. “I think that item is what triggered the murder. Congress is investigating the billing practices of military contractors…”

“Congress…as in, Washington.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I was looking into it—”

“Who's your client?” said Samuels.

“Not just yet.”

“Listen—”

“We'll get to my client in a minute,” I said. But of course I had no intention of ever getting to my client. “I went out to Aurora a couple weeks ago, asked Joseph Grant—he's the CEO—some questions. He introduced me to Sten, and Sten threatened me off the case.”

“Threatened you how? Like,
I'm gonna kill you
?”

“Not quite that directly. But get this—he asked me if I knew what the best weapon in the world is. He told me that, to him, the best weapon in the world is fire, because it scares people.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He's a vet—Gulf War One—and he's got a nasty burn scar himself. You ask me, he's a sociopath. I were you, I'd pick him up for questioning pretty quick. Looks like he's gone off the rails.”

“What're you, a psychiatrist?”

“Hey. You wanted to know what I think. I'm telling you. But if you guys tell Sten you got this from me, I'm gonna end up like Crawley.”

“Don't worry about it,” said Samuels. I stared at him until he added, “If we question Sten, we'll tell him we got everything from Crawley's notes. For now.”

My cell phone started vibrating in my pocket.

“I gotta hit the can,” I said. “Be right back.”

In the men's room, I flipped the phone open. There was a text message from Holborn. It read:
Under the Bean—2
A.M
. Bring Zhang.

I replied with:
In trouble, need help. With CPD @ Reflections on B'way. Come get me—stat.

Then I speed-dialed Vince. When he answered, I told him to bring Amy to the Bean at two o'clock. Told him I didn't have time to explain. Hung up.

I passed by the table, said, “I'll get us another round,” and kept
walking to the bar. The bartender was busy. Good. It would eat up some time.

Three glam boys in bright silk and shiny leather came chattering into the bar, called out for Jägerbombs, and descended upon the jukebox. I hadn't thought the music could get worse, but they proved me wrong. First up was Madonna. As I paid for the beer and returned to the table, Madonna finished threatening to dress me up in her love and Cher began to assure me that “Love Hurts.”

Don't I know it, sister.

I put the beer bottles on the table, took a swig of mine, and said, “I bet if you check, you'll find a connection between the murder scene and Blake Sten. I mean, the place would've been locked, right? These military contractor guys make a lot of money, maybe Sten is part owner of the building or the bar that was going in, or maybe the company doing the renovations. Something like that. So he'd have keys and he could make sure they'd be alone.” It didn't mean anything. I was just talking, burning up minutes.

“Let's get back to Crawley,” said Samuels. “You fed him a story about your investigation.”

“Basically. Crawley's always looking for gossip…”

“Was,” said Mike Angelo.

“Yeah, was. And he wanted to know what I was working on. He mostly does—did—society and celebrity, but he also liked thumbing his nose at politicians.”

“So you basically got him killed,” said Furnandiz.

“Check his voice mail at the
Chronicle,
” I said. “Also his e-mails. I left him a message last night, told him not to run it, and this morning he sent me an e-mail saying he couldn't resist the story.” I drank some beer. “So don't look at me; I tried to talk him out of it.”

“But you gave him the story to begin with.” He wasn't wrong. I did basically get Crawley killed. But I didn't want to face that right now.

“I already said that, yeah.”

“So you give him the story, change your mind and ask him not to run it,” said Samuels.

“Yes.”

“And he runs it anyway, lets you know by e-mail.”

“Right.”

“Then he goes to meet with Sten at a bar that's closed for renovation.”

“Presumably,” I said. “I have no knowledge of how he ended up at the bar, or if he went willingly, or if he knew he was meeting Sten. I don't know anything after his e-mail to me this morning.”

“And then Crawley calls you from the bar…”

Now the girls of Sister Sledge were declaring themselves a family. The glam boys sang along with the chorus, camping it up and making a few of the older drunks slightly uncomfortable. The bartender asked them to tone it down a bit, but he asked nicely and they complied with playful pouts, returned to their conversation.

I turned back to Samuels. “Sorry, what?”

“Crawley tries to call you from the bar…”

“I'm taking your word for that,” I said. “I never got the call. You say he dialed my number and I believe you. But I don't have any idea why, unless he suddenly felt bad about running the item and wanted to apologize.”