Austin Camacho - Collateral damage

“If she was scared of me, she would have called the police!”

“You still don’t get it,” Hannibal said, beginning to dance around a bit, still working to keep the sun in Isaac’s eyes. “She’s more scared for you. She knew if you tried this crap with the cops they’d just as likely shoot your big dumb ass. And she doesn’t want you to get hurt. The woman loves you!”

Hannibal stopped to see what effect his words were having. Isaac bellowed “No!” and swung faster than expected. A fist as big as a twelve-pound ham raked across Hannibal’s jaw, lifting him off his feet. He rolled across the asphalt to give himself distance and sprang up ready for action, bouncing on the balls of his feet like a boxer.

“All right you get that one for free. Maybe you owed me one for the other night. Now you’ve got to call the next play, big man. You come in on me and you mash my face and the police come and throw you in jail. Or, you come in on me and I’m as fast as you know I am and I break your knee and put your face through a car windshield because I can’t go easy with a guy your size. Or, you go home and I promise Janet will call you tonight and talk about what’s wrong and how maybe you two can fix it.”

Isaac looked startled for a moment. Maybe he expected Hannibal to go down and stay down after getting hit. Or perhaps the sound of Janet’s name had an effect on him. His fists lowered a few inches.

“Tonight?”

“My word on it,” Hannibal rushed to say. When he pulled a card from an inside jacket pocket he watched Isaac’s eyes and saw him register the presence of Hannibal’s pistol. Now he knew Hannibal didn’t have to take that punch.

“My address is right there,” Hannibal said, slapping the card on a car hood. “If Janet doesn’t call you before the night’s over, you can come to me and we can pick this up where we left off if that’s what you want to do. Right now, you need to go home and relax a while.”

Isaac’s big fist closed on Hannibal’s card, but his eyes turned back toward the double doors into the motor vehicle building. Hannibal moved into his line of sight. “You can’t take her back, Ike. You have to let her come back. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it works.”

When Hannibal walked into the motor vehicle office, Janet deserted her post and rushed to him. She hustled him into the back offices and ran to the ladies’ room for a wet cloth to press against his face.

“God, thank you thank you thank you.” The words poured out of Janet, tripping over each other. “Are you all right? What about Ike, did you have to hurt him? You didn’t have to involve the police did you? Is he gone, really gone?”

“Not gone from your life, Janet,” Hannibal said, stopping her hand’s movement over his face and holding the cloth himself, applying less pressure. “I’ll be fine and he’s fine physically, but he’s a man in torment. If this is going to go on, I need to know how you feel about this guy. Do you still love him?”

Her answer was very, very quiet. “I don’t know.”

“What do you want, Janet?”

Janet turned and walked to the closed door. When she turned back, her face was composed again. Her strength was returning with her distance from Isaac. “I want to be safe.”

“I understand,” Hannibal said, “but it won’t be free.”

“I’ll figure a way to pay you,” she said. “I know this is business for you.”

Hannibal stood, dropping the cloth on her narrow desk. “That’s not what I meant. You can’t just avoid him. You’ve got to make peace with him one way or another. I told him you’d call tonight and talk to him. The two of you need to figure out what you want and how to make it happen. Counseling is probably a good idea.”

“I’ll call him if you think it’s important. But I meant what I said about paying you.”

Hannibal considered the inherent strength hidden in this woman and wondered how she ever came to a place where she would let a man beat her. “Janet, you can hardly afford my rates. But we might be able to handle this another way. Take it out in trade, maybe. Tell me, how hard is it to find a person if all you know is their license plate number?”

This brought Janet’s first smile of the day. “You kidding? I’m the shift supervisor. Why don’t you give me the number and a description of the car and let me see what I can do?”

When Hannibal pulled up in front of the palatial rambling home at the edge of Arlington he was replaying his last conversation with Janet in his mind. He had been little more than a mile from her office, stopped at a red light when she called, sounding chipper and in control again.

“You said a red Chevrolet Corvette with Kitty as the vanity plate? No such vehicle.”

“Damn,” Hannibal had muttered.

“But,” she added with an annoying dramatic pause, “I do show a 2004 ‘Vette with a plate reading KITTYCAR. Think that could be it?”

Hannibal pulled away from the light a bit faster than he should have. Irons would have considered that a gay license plate for sure. “Very likely, kid. Whose ride is that?”

“Vehicle is registered to one Langford Kitteridge. And if you’ve got a pad and pencil I can give you his Arlington address.”

Instead, he had memorized the address and driven straight there. Now he sat in the colonial’s extensive driveway, behind a low-slung midnight blue Lexus, gathering his official attitude. He had no doubt that this was the right place. The license plate on the Lexus read KITYCAR1. So the owners had wit and ego to spare. He didn’t know anything about the residents except their obvious financial security. Was this Dean’s last victim? If so, Hannibal might be no closer to tracking him down, but he accepted that as the way the job worked. You followed every lead. Detective work, unlike the romance of the movies, was in fact all about legwork.

The door’s chimes echoed like bells in a church steeple. Hannibal imagined house workers scurrying like bats at the summons, but it was soon clear his image was mistaken. A minute is a long time to stand at a door. In that time he decided no one was home. The parked Lexus didn’t mean anything. Owners of a house like this might well have a third vehicle, an SUV probably, and the owners would be off in that one. Oh, well, it was still good to have seen the place. He’d return later.

But he was only two steps away from the door when he heard it open, and a voice said, “Can I help you?” It was an older man’s voice, commanding but very disciplined. A butler’s voice, Hannibal thought.

When he turned, that image dissolved. The tall man at the door wore sweat pants and running shoes. A towel hung around his neck, and upper body shone with drying perspiration. His bare chest displayed solid muscles and very low body fat. If not for some telltale sagging skin around his waist, it could have been the body of a thirty-year old, onto which someone had spliced a deeply cleft face with a full shock of white hair. Hannibal recalled actors like Charlton Heston and Charles Bronson whose faces looked ugly to him, but were always described by women as having character. This man’s face had character to spare, and charisma and the kind of energy that almost pushed you over.

“I was just finishing my workout,” the man said. “What can I do for you?”

“Sorry to disturb you,” Hannibal said, pulling out a card. “My name is Hannibal Jones, and I was looking for Langford Kitteridge.”

“You selling something?”

Hannibal smiled. “No sir, I…”

“Then come on in. Looking for Langford Kitteridge, eh? Well, you found him.”

Hannibal followed Kitteridge across a living room he normally wouldn’t try to navigate without a map and a guide, into a kitchen many restaurants would be proud of. Kitteridge pulled down a skillet from among the collection hanging above the center island. He carried the pan to the refrigerator and dropped a chicken breast into it.