Linwood Barclay: Bad Guys

I said, “Do we have any jazz CDs?”

“I hate jazz,” Sarah said. There wasn’t a CD player in the Toyota; it was too old to have come equipped with one. But at home, she often slipped a disc into the stereo. Rock, lots of seventies stuff, Neil Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival. “Why you asking about jazz?”

“No reason.”

This was a new wrinkle to our relationship, this business of having Sarah as my boss. Well, one of my bosses. At a newspaper, you had so many, it was hard to keep track. This was my first experience working for the same person with whom I slept. I had been back working at a newspaper for almost a year now, after spending a few years writing commercially unsuccessful science fiction novels. Okay, the first one did reasonably well, which had given me the confidence to quit a salaried job and write fiction full-time. But as most people who write fiction understand, unless they happen to be Tom Clancy, or a former president penning his memoirs, you can’t support a family and pay a mortgage without a regular job. And I was back at one.

The Metropolitan offered me a feature-writing position. Given my experience, coupled with the fact I’d written four novels, the editors in charge seemed to feel I had graduated beyond the level of general assignment. To my surprise, and Sarah’s, they put me among the stable of city feature writers who reported to her. Although she wouldn’t admit this to me, I’d heard through the newsroom grapevine that she’d fired off a memo to the managing editor, Bertrand Magnuson, expressing some concern, something along the lines of “I can’t get him to do anything I say at home, so what makes you think I can do it here?”

The problem was, the newsroom has a long history of people who sleep together-spouses, and non-spouses, and a few spouses with non-spouses-being thrown into the mix together, and Sarah’s superior probably wrote her back with a note consisting of three letters-“DWI”-which in the Metropolitan newsroom meant “deal with it.”

Moving on, I said, “You know about this Trevor Wylie kid?”

Sarah thought a moment. “The one calling Angie? Not much. He the one had a face like a pizza?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t know anything.”

“I just don’t like the sounds of this guy.”

“Has he done anything?”

“He’s calling Angie all the time, shows up where she is, like maybe he’s following her.”

“You mean, like when you were interested in me?”

“I just don’t like him. You should talk to Angie, find out more about this guy, tell her to be careful.”

“You talk to her.”

“I think she’s still mad at me, over the Pool Boy incident.”

“Yeah, well, who can blame her. I can’t believe Harley didn’t give you a prescription. You ask me, you need to be on something.”

The phone rang as I sat down at my desk. “Zack Walker,” I said.

“Lawrence here. You get any sleep?”

“Not much. You?”

“No. I ended up going back to the scene, talking to Trimble a bit more, trying for more information, but there wasn’t much to get.”

“What’s the deal with you two? I didn’t sense a whole lot of mutual admiration there.”

“We used to be partners. When I was still on the force.”

“Partners? You were partners?”

“Yeah, well, maybe sometime I’ll tell you all about it. We still on for tonight?”

“Of course. I was afraid, after what happened to Miles, maybe you wouldn’t let me tag along.”

“No, it’s okay. Meet me at ten, doughnut shop around the corner from Brentwood’s. Still too much traffic that time of night for anyone to try anything. Anything happens, it’ll be later.”

“You think they’ll come out, the night after they hit a store and ended up killing a guy?”

“Honestly, no.”

“I hate to ask, but you go anywhere near Crandall on your way?” If he wasn’t able to pick me up at home, I’d have to grab a cab, what with Angie needing the car.

Lawrence said nothing for a moment. He was probably consulting one of several mental maps he kept upstairs. “Yeah, sure, why?”

“No car tonight. But if it’s out of your way, I can get a cab, bill the paper-”

“No, no, that’s fine. Give me your address.” I did. “See you round nine forty-five.”

We were parked in the same place we’d been the night before, on Garvin, half a block down from Brentwood’s.

Although we’d not had to meet at the doughnut shop, Lawrence and I still pulled in there. He still had the old Buick, what Lawrence called his “business” car, at least the one he used when the business involved surveillance. When he wanted to make a better impression, he drove a Beemer or Jaguar or some other type of high-end yuppiemobile that he kept back at his apartment.

“Don’t get coffee,” Lawrence warned me. “You’ll be having to take a leak every twenty minutes.”

I ignored him and got an extra-large, triple cream with two low-cal sweetener packets, and half a dozen doughnuts.

“That makes sense,” Lawrence said. “Why don’t you get one more sweetener, and then you can get two more doughnuts.”

But later, sitting in the car, he said, “You got a double chocolate in there?”

“Aren’t you the one who mocked me for buying these?”

“You got one or not?”

I fished around, found a chocolate doughnut with chocolate icing slathered on top, and handed it to him with a napkin. Then I reached down for my coffee, tucked down in the cup holder, and had a sip. “Ohhh, my thanks to whoever invented coffee,” I said. “This is the only thing that will get me through this.”

“Yeah, well, when your bladder’s ready to burst, don’t think that you’re using my emergency kit,” Lawrence said, nodding his head in the direction of the backseat, where he kept a plastic juice bottle with a screw top.

The juice container was, as Lawrence had explained to me on our first night out, a key part of his surveillance kit. When you’re on a stakeout, and expecting your subject to be on the move at any moment, and you’ve got to take a leak, you can’t strike off searching for the nearest men’s room or slip into the nearest alley.

Lawrence fiddled with the radio, located a jazz station, someone playing piano. “That’s Erroll Garner. This is from Concert by the Sea .” He kept the volume down, but loud enough that he could tap his finger on the steering wheel.

I thanked him for picking me up at home. “We’re having a bit of car trouble.”

“Oh yeah? What kind?”

“We need another one.” I filled him in on the daily negotiations to try to get everyone where they had to be, and Sarah’s concerns about spending the money for a second vehicle.

“Interesting that this problem of yours should crop up now,” Lawrence said. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Usual.”

“There’s a government auction tomorrow, out Oakwood way. Where they sell off cars and other merchandise seized from drug dealers and other lowlifes, unclaimed stolen property-people already got their insurance payment, they don’t come looking for what they lost.”

“Okay, so?”

“I got my Jaguar at one of those for a song. You could probably pick up something reasonable, not much money. I know the people there, there’s a guy, Eddie Mayhew, knows what cars look good and what cars don’t. I was talking to him the other day, he said they’re selling off a bunch of merchandise that used to belong to Lenny Indigo.”

“I know that name.”

“He just got fifteen to twenty. Joint operation, local cops working with the feds, got him on trafficking, racketeering, half a dozen other things. They seized a few million in cocaine and took his cars and other toys at the same time. Indigo had his finger into everything in this town from drugs to table dancers and prostitution to robbery. Thing is, his organization is still around, some bozo’s trying to keep it together while he’s inside, but Indigo’s still trying to run the thing from the inside. Anyway, if you’re looking for a car with an interesting history, I know where you could get one.”