Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

“Because they aren’t trying to hide the withdrawals from one another,” Biggie said with an understanding lilt.

“Yeah, they’re both in on it. This predivorce legwork takes it out of me, though, I tell you.”

Around six, Philly trolled by Ricky Weiss’s trailer and saw a red pickup in the drive that hadn’t been there two hours before. He parked his rented Focus in the street and walked up to the aluminum door without any thought to what he expected to find inside. He wanted to see his face, hear his voice, and get a look around his home just so he could tell Jackie Moore he did it. Fatten her file. Maybe he could get him talking somehow. Find out something that might connect him to Davis Moore.

He had thought of a story to tell Rick Weiss, and it was a thin one as far as Canella was concerned. He was counting on Ricky being as dense as everyone said.

Philly knocked and a man appeared on the other side of the screen. He was short and thin, and his back and legs bent in strange places, like pipe cleanerers. On his head was a mesh baseball cap with the name of a manufacturing company Canella didn’t know. He wore a white V-neck undershirt with so many stains and handprints Philly guessed he rarely wore anything over it. Through its cheap synthetic weave he could see matted brown chest hair that spread like kudzu up to the shaving line just above the man’s collarbone. There was a tattered leather belt looped around the waist of his grass-streaked jeans. In front was a big buckle with a horse on it, which made Philly wonder when he last saw a real buckle worn unironically on a belt. The man didn’t open the door.

“Yeah?”

“Hi. Are you Ricky?”

“Rick,” he said.

“Rick. Right. Sorry. My name is Phil Canella and I’m a reporter for the Miami Herald. I’m doing a feature story about Jimmy Spears and I heard you knew him growing up.”

“Yeah.” Weiss put his nose against the screen and peered at him. “I know Jimmy. What do you want to know?” Philly thought he looked appropriately suspicious.

“Can I come in?”

Ricky pushed the door open and Canella stepped past him. A city boy, he had never been inside a trailer home before and this one was nicer than he expected, larger than he would have thought. The kitchen to their left had only a small number of tiny cabinets but the counters were clean and clutter-free. The living room was dusted and the end tables flanking the couch were bare except for a beer can centered on a wooden coaster. Through a cracked door Philly saw the made bed, and the decorative pillows lined up across the headboard. Ricky has a wife, he thought. Or a girlfriend.

“So what do you want to know?” Weiss said, looking him over slowly.

“Just a few quick questions,” Philly said, getting Weiss’s permission to take a chair at the kitchen table.

“Yeah.”

“What was he like in high school?”

“What was he like?”

Philly nodded and began writing in his black, pocket-sized, vinyl-covered notebook, which he had plucked from a leather over-the-shoulder briefcase. He wrote down the brand of beer Weiss was drinking and the size of his television and doodled the shape of the scar that intersected with his right eyebrow.

“He was all right. For a jock,” Weiss said. He retrieved his beer and took a chair on an adjacent side of the table. “He didn’t hold it over everybody like some of them.”

“How well did you know him?”

“What are you after?”

“Like I said: a story about Jimmy Spears.”

“There are a hundred people in this town who knew Jimmy better than I did. Why don’t you talk to them?”

Again, no good answer. “Maybe I already did.”

“If you had, then you wouldn’t need me, would you?”

Canella shut his notebook. “I’m sorry. Someone told me you knew him. I’ve made a mistake.” He was trying to act nonchalant, and in doing so, left the notebook unprotected on the table. As soon as Philly said the word “mistake” he understood that he really had made one.

Weiss reached over and snatched it, turning in his chair to protect it.

“Hey!” Philly stood up and tried to reach over Ricky’s shoulder, but the greenskeeper spun away. He tore quickly through the pages and Canella tried to imagine what sense he might make from his notes.

They faced each other, Philly in the kitchen and Ricky in the living room but hardly more than a body’s length apart, and Canella watched helplessly as Ricky squinted his way through scrawled transcriptions of conversations at the diner and the elementary school and notes from other cases that would make no sense at all to him. The one thing Philly knew he wouldn’t find was a single word about Jimmy Spears, NFL football, or the Miami Dolphins.

He stopped on one page and put his finger on the paper, either to mark his place or to make a point. “You’re with the judge, aren’t ya?”

Judge? Philly thought. Maybe this wouldn’t be a waste of time after all. “Who’s that?” he said.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Ricky said in a growling drawl. Canella punctuated his conversation with that word all the time, but Weiss was able to startle him with it now.

“I’m not fucking with you,” Philly said. “Give me the notebook.”

Ricky held it behind his back. “I know what the judge is up to.” There was a nervous edge to his voice, but he was also laughing with the relief of an Italian grandmother leaving confession.

“Why don’t you tell me?” Canella said.

“ Now you’re fucking with me.” Ricky Weiss glanced at the detective and then turned back to the notebook, which he held very close to his face. “You and Forak are in this together. What are you supposed to do? Take care of me? Blackmail me? Shut me up?”

“I don’t know anybody named Forak,” Philly said truthfully. “I don’t know any judge. But maybe we can help each other.”

“Bullshit.”

Canella was frustrated and embarrassed enough to think about leaving. He stood between Weiss and the door. Even at his age, it would be fairly easy to make a run for it. He hated to lose that notebook, though. “A man came to you a few days ago,” he said quickly. “A man and a woman. You met at the diner.”

Ricky smiled with half his face. “I thought you said you didn’t know the judge.”

“He’s not a judge,” Philly said. “He’s a doctor.”

“What’s going on?”

Canella, who was a professional liar, hesitated before telling the truth. “That’s what I came here to find out.”

Weiss took two aggressive steps forward and his right arm snapped like a whip over the table, snatching Canella’s bag and pulling it toward him. Philly, now resigned to honesty in dealing with the enraged greenskeeper, made no attempt to stop him, a gesture he hoped would win the man’s confidence.

But he had forgotten, somehow, about his gun.

“What the fuck?” Ricky took the. 38 out and held it in front of him, pointing the barrel toward the ceiling. Philly could tell by the assured grip of Weiss’s long, thin hands that he’d handled a firearm before. “What the hell is a reporter doing with one of these?”

Philly cursed aloud. He was so stupid. When he had been a cop, he never would have made that mistake.

The door opened behind him. “Ricky!” A woman shrieked.

“Shut the door, Peg!” Weiss yelled.

She did, quickly, closing both the screen and the wooden door behind it. A plastic bag from the drugstore swung from her wrist and a can of shaving cream inside it banged against the door frame. “Ricky, what’s happening?”

“Shut up, Peggy! I’m thinking!” He kept the gun pointed up and away as he brought his hands to his head.

“Who is he?” Peg asked. She squeezed hysterical tears from her eyes. “Where did that gun come from?”