Robert Crais: Free Fall

“Irritable.”

“That’s right.”

“He’s irritable, and that’s why you think he’s involved in crime?”

She gave me exasperated. “Well, it isn’t just that.”

“Have you seen him perform a criminal act, or heard him speak of it, or seen the results of it?”

“No.”

“Has he exhibited signs of an income other than his police salary?”

“No.”

I tapped the desk. “Sounds like you think he’s up to something because he’s irritable.”

She gave me more of the impatience. “You don’t understand. Mark and I have known each other since the seventh grade. We fell in love in the ninth grade. That’s how long we’ve been going together. I love him and he loves me and I know him better than anyone else in all the world.”

“All right,” I said. “Do you have any clues?”

She frowned at me.

“Clues,” I said. “An overheard snatch of conversation. A subrosa glimpse of a secret bank account. Something that I can use in ascertaining the nature of the crime.” I hadn’t used ascertaining in three or four weeks.

She said, “Are you making fun of me?”

I was getting one of those headaches that you get when your blood sugar starts to drop. “No, I’m trying to make you consider what you want and why you want it. You claim that Mark Thurman is involved in criminal activity, but you have no direction in which to point me. That means that you’re asking me to surveil an active-duty police officer. Police officers are paranoid by nature and they move around a lot. This will be expensive.”

She looked uncertain. “How expensive?”

“Two thousand dollars. In advance.”

You could see her swallow. “Do you take Visa?”

“I’m afraid not.”

She swallowed a second time. “That seems an awful lot.”

“Yes,” I said. “It is.”

She put the photograph of Mark Thurman back in her purse and took out a red doeskin wallet. She dug in the wallet and got a faraway look like she was working with numbers. Then she pulled out two twenties and put them on my desk. “I can pay you forty dollars now, and forty dollars per month for forty-nine months.”

I said, “Jesus Christ, Ms. Sheridan.”

She clenched her jaw and brought out another ten. “All right. Fifty dollars.”

I raised my hands, got up, and went to the glass doors that lead out to the little balcony. The doors that came with the office were aluminum sliders, but a couple of years ago I had them changed to a nice set of double-glazed French doors with brass handles. I opened the doors, set them so that the breeze wouldn’t blow them closed, and that’s when I saw two guys sitting across the street in a brown unmarked sedan four stories below. A tall guy with shaggy, thick-cut hair sat behind the steering wheel and a shorter guy with a ragged face slouched in the passenger’s side. The tall guy had long forearms and a ropey neck and looked a lot like Mark Thurman. Sonofagun. I turned away from the doors and looked at Jennifer Sheridan. Nope. She didn’t know that they were out there. “Mark work today?”

She looked surprised that I’d ask. “That’s right. He works Monday through Friday, from eleven until six.”

“He let his hair grow since he went to REACT?”

Jennifer Sheridan smiled, trying to figure me. “Why, yes. He had to, for the undercover work.”

Thurman, all right.

I walked back to the desk and looked at her. You could see how much she loved him. You could see that she trusted him, and that she’d never think that maybe he was following her. I said, “Do you and Mark live together?”

She made a tiny headshake and a bit of the red again touched her cheeks. “We’ve talked about it, but we decided to wait.”

“Uh-huh. So you believe that he’s hiding something, and you want me to find out what.”

“Yes.”

“What if I find out that Mark Thurman isn’t who you think he is? What if I look, and I find something that changes the way that you feel about him, and the way that he feels about you?”

Jennifer Sheridan made a little move with her mouth, and then she cleared her throat. “Mark is a good man, Mr. Cole. If he’s involved in something, I know it’s not because he wants to be. I trust him in that, and I love him. If we find out that he is in trouble, we will help him.” She had thought about these things. Probably lay awake with them.

I went back to the doors and pretended to adjust them. Thurman and the other guy were still in the sedan. Thurman had been looking up, but ducked back when he realized that I had come back onto the balcony. Fast moves are bad. Another couple of years on the job and he’d know better. You just sort of casually look away. Shift the eyes without moving the head. Eye contact can kill you.

I went back into the office and sat, and Jennifer Sheridan said, “Will you help me, Mr. Cole?”

I said, “Why don’t we do this? I’ll nose around and see if there is anything worth pursuing. If there is, I will work for you and pursue it. If there isn’t, I will return your money, and you won’t owe me anything.”

Jennifer Sheridan said, “That will be fine,” and then she smiled. Her tanned skin dimpled and her white teeth gleamed and there came a quality of warmth to the room as if a small sun had risen from beneath my desk. I found myself returning the smile. I wrote a receipt in her name for the amount of forty dollars, and noted that it was paid against a due balance of one thousand, nine hundred sixty dollars, payable in monthly installments. I gave back the extra ten with her receipt, then put the forty dollars into my wallet. My wallet didn’t feel any fatter than it had without the forty. Maybe if I went down to the bank and had the forty changed to ones, it would feel like more.

Jennifer Sheridan took a folded sheet of paper from the huge purse and handed it to me. “This is where Mark lives, and his home phone number, and his license plate, and his badge number. His partner’s name is Floyd Riggens. I’ve met Floyd several times, but I don’t like him. He’s a mean-spirited man.”

“Okay.” Riggens would be the other guy in the car.

She took back the paper and scribbled something on the back. “This is where I live and this is my work number. It’s a direct line to Mr. Beale’s office, and I answer his phone, so I’ll be the one who picks up when you call.”

“Fine.”

She stood, and I stood with her. She put out her hand. I took it. I think we were in a contest to see who could smile the most. She said, “Thank you, Mr. Cole. This is very important to me.”

“Elvis.”

“Elvis.” She smiled even wider, and then she gathered her things and left. It was twelve forty-six, and I stopped smiling. I sat at my desk and looked at the paper that she had given me with the information about Mark Thurman and herself, and then I put it into the desk’s top right-hand drawer along with my copy of the receipt.

I leaned back and I put my feet up, and I wondered why Mark Thurman and his mean-spirited partner Floyd Riggens were following Jennifer Sheridan while they were on duty. I didn’t like the following, but I didn’t have very long to wonder about it.

At twelve fifty-two, Mark Thurman and Floyd Riggens came in.

They didn’t kick the door off its hinges and they didn’t roll into the office with their guns out like Crockett and Tubbs used to do on Miami Vice , but they didn’t bother to knock, either.

The guy I figured for Floyd Riggens came in first. He was ten years older than Thurman and maybe six inches shorter, with a hard, squared-off build and weathered skin. He flashed his badge without looking at me and crossed to Joe Pike’s office. I said, “It’s empty.” He didn’t pay attention.