Steve Hamilton - A Cold Day in Paradise

I found Prudell clearing off a table, a big white apron hanging over his gut. As soon as he saw me, he set his pile of plates down with a clatter.

“Well, look who it is,” he said. “Don’t tell me, you came to take this job away from me too, right?”

“Sit down, Prudell.”

“Here, let me take my apron off for you. You’ll be needing this.” There were a couple truckers at the counter, a waitress serving them, another one just sitting in a booth. They all looked over at us.

“Just sit down,” I said.

“All you got to do is keep these tables clear,” he said. “And once an hour you gotta go clean up the bathrooms. I’m sure you’ll be able to handle it.”

“Prudell,” I said. I was trying to control myself. I was really trying. “If you don’t shut up and sit down, I’m going to hurt you. Do you understand me? I’m going to beat the hell out of you right here in the restaurant.”

“McKnight, if you don’t get out of here right now-”

I grabbed his left hand and bent it back against his wrist. It had always been a great way to convince someone to get into the back of a squad car. Not as dramatic as an arm behind the back, but just as effective. Prudell gave out a little yelp and then he sat down in the booth. The whole place was watching us now, but I didn’t care.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” he said. “You trying to break my wrist?”

I sat down next to him. It was a tight fit. “Listen to me very carefully,” I said. “Do you remember that night in the bar, the first night you came after me? I know you were drunk, but try to remember what you said to me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You said I took your job and now you were going to go broke and you had a family to take care of, remember? You gave me the whole sob story about your kids not going to Disney World and your wife not getting a new car and all that shit. And then you said something else, something about a man who was helping you out. You said he was down on his luck and the only thing keeping him together was running errands for you and feeling like he was doing something important. Do you remember that?”

“I remember,” he said. “It was all true. You really fucked over a lot of people. Not just me.”

It had been five months and change since I took Prudell’s job. He had nursed his grudge for a few months until he had finally worked up the nerve to face me.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Whatever you say. I ruined all your lives. Now just tell me his name.” “The guy who was working for me?” “Yes,” I said. “Tell me his name.” “His name is Julius,” he said. “Raymond Julius.”

A long silence passed while it sank in. Prudell slipped me a quick elbow in the ribs, but it didn’t get him out of the booth. It just made me even madder. “Do that again and I’ll take your head off,” I said.

“You’ve got a lot of nerve, McKnight. Just let me out of here.”

“Where does he live?” I said.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“The hell you don’t. The guy worked for you.”

“I only saw his house once,” he said. “That was a long time ago, before you-”

“Yeah yeah, before I fucked you both over. We’ve been through that already. You were at his house, but you don’t know where it is? What, were you blindfolded?”

“It’s in the Soo,” he said. “On the west side of town somewhere. I don’t remember exactly where, all right?”

“Have you talked to him since then?”

“No, I haven’t.”

I sat there and thought about it. Finally, I got up out of the booth and said, “Let’s go.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere.”

“Yes you are. We’re going to go find his house.”

“Like hell I am. I’m in the middle of working here.”

“Go tell your boss you need to take a little break. Call it a family emergency.”

He worked his way out of the booth, adjusted his white apron, and picked up a plate. “You can go fuck yourself,” he said.

I counted to ten in my head while he cleared the table. “Prudell,” I said. “You got two choices. Number one is I bounce you off every wall in this place and then throw you through a window. I’m sure I’ll get arrested. I don’t care anymore. Number two is you help me find Julius’s house, and I pay you five hundred dollars for your time.”

He looked up at me. “You expect me to believe that? You’re going to pay me?”

“You’re a private investigator, aren’t you? Consider it a case.”

“I was a private investigator,” he said. “Now I’m a busboy.”

“What’s your choice, Prudell?”

“You’re something else, you know that? You’re a real piece of work.”

“Choose, Prudell.”

He dropped the plates on the table and went back through a couple of swinging doors to the kitchen. I didn’t know if he was calling the police, or getting a big knife, or sneaking out the back door. Finally, he burst back out through the doors, untying his apron. A frowning little man who had to be his boss came out behind him.

We walked out to the parking lot without saying a word. He wasn’t happy about the missing window in my truck, especially when he sat down on some of the glass I hadn’t quite cleaned up.

I started the truck and pulled out of the parking lot. “Start talking,” I said. “Tell me about Raymond Julius.”

“God, it’s freezing in here,” he said. It was about thirty degrees outside. I’m not sure what the windchill would be if you were riding around at sixty miles an hour in a truck with no passenger side window. The man didn’t even have a coat on.

“Raymond,” I said again, nice and slow. “Julius.”

“What can I tell you? He was kind of weird. He was way into all that militia stuff. Hated the government.”

“So he belonged to a militia?”

“No. He tried, I think. It didn’t work out. He was more into being a detective than being a soldier. Or a patriot or whatever the hell they call themselves.”

“He had guns?”

“Yes,” Prudell said. “The man had guns. He didn’t have permits for them, but he had guns.”

“Did he have a nine-millimeter pistol?”

“Don’t know for sure,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Would he know how to get his hands on a silencer?”

“I’m sure he would,” he said. “Why are you asking me all this?”

“Which way are we going?” I said. “Three Mile Road? You said the west side of town. Be more specific.”

“Hell, I don’t know,” he said. “I remember getting off there, I think. I had to pick him up one day when his car broke down.”

“Old junker? No muffler?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

I took the exit and headed west. “Now where?”

“I told you, I don’t remember.” He peered out at the road, running his fingers through his hair. “I think it was up by the industrial park.”

“How did he start working for you?”

“I had a listing in the Yellow Pages. He called me up, wanted to know if he could work for me. I told him no, he kept calling me up again and again. Every day. Said he’d do anything, run errands, take phone calls. Said he wanted to be a private detective so bad, he’d start out working for free.”

“What, he expected to work his way up to investigator?”

“That’s how he saw it. I explained to him how it worked. You gotta be certified by the state, you gotta get a gun permit. That really set him off. Like I said, that man hated the government so much. Far as he was concerned, the state of Michigan was the only thing preventing him from being an investigator.”

“And you let this guy work for you?”