T. Parker: Red Light

“I can’t go home tonight.”

“Turn off the light. Sit back down. The nurse will bring you blanket.”

She woke up three times that night. The third, Zamorra was gone.

A week later, on the second day of the New Year, Merci rented a little two-bedroom place on the sand at Ninth Street in Newport. It was cheap and smelled of pine cleanser and the ocean. There was old carpet, old furniture, old prints on the walls faded by the sun. Clark helped her and Tim move in, still trying to talk her out of it.

She had cut her hair short. She bought some baggy clothes that wouldn’t hang up on her bandages. She rented the place as Gail White, trying to sweet-talk the old landlord into accepting cash in advance in lieu of proper ID. When he resisted she badged him and asked him to help her out goddamnit and he did. He showed up later that first afternoon with a bunch of carnations.

When Clark left she took Tim down to the waterline for a walk. She watched Tim waddle after the hunkered gulls. She watched the half-day boat put down anchor near a kelp bed. She passed a couple of kids smoking a joint by the lifeguard stand, glowered at them, then reminded herself who she was. Things that are not my problem for a hundred, she thought. She liked being “Gail.” It was her way, off center as she often was, of showing respect.

She read the papers. She slept. She played with Tim. She watched the tube. She talked on the phone a little. She took more walks.

She attempted to call Paul Zamorra twice, as she’d been doing for the last week. No answer at home. No response to her messages. He’d taken a bereavement leave. Nobody in the department had any idea where he was. She made some inquiries with the San Diego SD but couldn’t identify any of Zamorra’s friends.

If I was going to do that I wouldn’t be here right now. I’d crawl away and do it, like an old cat.

Merci also called Joan Cash at the close of each workday. No, Zamorra had not contacted her office with regard to counseling or anything else. Cash and Merci talked for almost an hour each time. They were long, wandering conversations that Cash without subtlety guided toward Merci’s feelings about O’Brien, the Purse Snatcher, Hess.

Merci thought it was easier talking to Cash on the phone than it was face-to-face. She liked the idea of miles between them, even if their voices flew with the speed of electricity. Cash thought that Zamorra’s “old cat” statement was a clear warning and, without saying so, suggested that Merci should prepare herself for anything.

Clark had saved for her all the newspaper articles relating to Mike’s arrest, O’Brien’s death, and the subsequent investigation of the framing of Mike.

She read them and saw that without Jim O’Brien’s suicide letter there was no visible motive for Evan to have done what he did. Not even Gary Brice from the Journal could figure out why the CSI had gone to such lengths to make an innocent man suffer.

Brighton had acted mystified. Glandis had a lot of no comments. The rank and file expressed support for Mike, who refused to speak with the media. And Merci told none of them that she had the key to it all — photocopy of Jim O’Brien’s suicide letter — secured for her by Zamorra before his vanishing.

By the third day she was bored with Gail White, so she got Mel Glandis to come over after lunch.

He slumped his big body into the chair by the window in the living room, following her with his bovine eyes, face flushed and hands folded.

“My getting the Bailey case was no accident,” she said. “You gave it to me for a reason. You knew something was wrong with it from beginning, from way back in sixty-nine. You even had the evidence prove it, but you didn’t have the balls to try.”

He smiled. “What are you talking about, Merci?”

“Evan said he wanted to get to the truth about Bailey. When he asked you to help him dig it up, you jumped at the chance. You knew if you could cast a shadow on Brighton, you could muscle yourself into his office the same way he did. Evan mailed me the key to the storage area, but I think the storage unit was yours. Brighton and McNally had tried to hide that evidence, but you found out where it was. You took it. Kept it for a rainy day. Your little investment in the future. You just never had the nuts to use it, until Evan showed up. Dirty work’s not your thing. All of which makes you more than the garden variety buttkisser I thought you were. It makes you an accomplice to murder.”

His mouth dropped open, his face went redder. “Nothing you just said is true.”

“Evan O’Brien said it was. Dying words, Mel. Admissible in court. He ratted out your fat ass.”

Glandis stared at her. The part about Evan’s admission was a lie, but she had no problem telling it because she figured that most of it had to be true.

“Mel, I don’t think you knew Evan was going to murder Aubrey Whittaker. You wouldn’t have the stomach for that. You just saw a way to open a can of worms, let the stink get onto Brighton. I’m going to let you take it from here. Tell me what happened and you’ll walk back to your job. Lie to me and I’ll have you arrested as a co-conspirator with O’Brien. I’ll ruin you.”

Glandis looked out the window. She guessed he’d roll over in less than thirty seconds. It took ten.

“Yeah, okay. I knew the Bailey case wasn’t right, but I didn’t know how. I thought Brighton was covering something. McNally, too. I smelled Owen and Meeks in it, but I wasn’t sure where. So I kept my eyes and ears open. I was partnered up with Rymers back in seventy-three and we got pretty tight. He got bills from Inland Storage in Riverside every month. Sent to him at headquarters. I wondered why. I heard him and Brighton saying something about the storage unit. I wondered. I saw Rymers get a key back from Big Pat one day. I wondered some more. So I took that key, went to Inland, had a look. They’d kept aside the evidence — the gun, Bailey’s clothes, the tapes, her appointment book. Just in case Jim O’Brien’s conscience got too heavy. Had goods on Meeks and Owen. When O’Brien killed himself I knew they’d ditch the stuff, so I broke in and took it. Took everything in the unit, so they’d think it was a routine burg job. Rented my own little spot across town, stored it all.”

“You think just like a rodent, Mel.”

Glandis shrugged, as if the comment didn’t bother him. Some in his face looked pleased.

“You must have drooled when Evan got hired, started talking about digging up the truth on Bailey.”

“Yeah. When Brighton gave me the unsolveds to assign, you got Bailey. I wanted our best homicide investigator on it. I figured if anyone had the endurance to solve it, you did.”

“I’m flattered.”

Glandis lit up for a split second, looked like he believed her.

“But Merci, I didn’t know what he was planning with Whittaker and Mike. I really didn’t. After she died, I figured one of her johns, you know. Then when you found out all the stuff about Mike, I figured he got carried away with a girl who was going to blackmail him, so he shut her up. But Evan? No. I just knew the Bailey evidence would lead toward Brighton, so I made sure you got it. That’s all. If I’d have known what Evan was up to, I’d have...”

Merci watched him, heard the failure of his language.

“You’d have let Evan do it, Mel, then hoped he got caught. Because you want the department to fail. You want it to sink so you can rise to the top and rescue it.”

He glanced at her, then down at the ancient green shag carpet. He was breathing deeply. He was looking at his small dancer’s feet. Then he sat back and rolled his shoulders like a boxer, and looked straight at her.