T. Parker - Cold Pursuit

"I'm Detective Tom McMichael."

"I can't hear you."

McMichael pointed to his own ears. Victor lifted one of the speaker pads and said, "It's too loud."

"Then turn the music down."

"Okay."

Victor slipped off the headset and put it on the table, then concentrated on the player and punched a button.

"I'm Detective McMichael. I'm investigating the murder of your father."

Victor's eyes widened and his lips hung apart. "McMichael?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Holy crap."

"Can I sit down?"

"You're the one that beat me up?"

"My father, allegedly. But that was never proven, Victor. He says he didn't."

"Oh," said Victor good-naturedly, as if considering this possibility with hopefulness. "You can sit down if you want."

"What are you listening to?" McMichael asked, settling into a chair. He saw the bartender looking at him through the crowd, talking on the phone.

"Bing Crosby."

"I like the Raspberries."

"Me too, with chocolate."

McMichael smiled and nodded. "I'd like to ask you about your father."

"You're a policeman?"

"In charge of the case, yes."

Victor's eyes lowered and his brows sagged into heavy crescents and his chin trembled. "I hope they get the electric chair."

"So do I. You going to be okay, Victor? You have plenty of people to do the things you need?"

Victor wiped a tear with his fist, looked at the knuckle. He sighed. "Well, at the hotel they do all the laundry and make sure I'm okay. They get me on the bus to work and have somebody pick me up off the bus later. After work I've got free time. But I have to be in by midnight or they call Papa or Pat. They feed me and the food's really good. Pat and Gar come over and take me places like the movies or sometimes the zoo."

"Where do you work?"

"Papa owns a car place. A dealership for Fords. I wash the cars for him. You know, some of them. I make enough for the hotel and all the stuff I need. It's the Horton Grand. The best."

"How long have you been at the Grand, Victor?"

"I don't know. A long time."

McMichael wondered at the living arrangements. It was hard to imagine someone with the capacity of a ten-year-old- just three years older than Johnny- living on his own in a hotel.

The waitress brought Victor another scotch rocks and McMichael a shot of Anejo.

"Was your dad worried about anything?"

Victor stared at him. His gentle brown eyes gave away nothing now, and his chin was still. "I don't think so. He was happy."

"Got along with everyone?"

"No, he hated lots of people, too. Hated McMichaels. Hated Irish people. Hated people who didn't know anything about fishing. He hated the cops because they wouldn't let him drive his own car. I think he hated doctors and the government, but I'm not sure."

"Anyone in particular?"

Victor eyed him with undisguised suspicion. "Now, the one who beat me up was your papa, right?"

"Pete believed that."

"Then him. Papa hated him for sure. Gabriel . It happened right behind this building."

McMichael waited for Victor to fully comprehend that he was talking to the enemy, but no emotion registered in his light brown eyes.

"Maybe your papa killed him," Victor said optimistically.

"He was drinking that night at Spellacy's."

"Me too. But here."

"Anybody else your dad was mad at?"

"Me."

"How come?"

"It really made him mad when the cars weren't clean by nine."

"Nine in the morning, before the dealership opened?"

"Uh-huh. Especially the dark ones."

McMichael saw the tremble of his chin. Victor looked at him and McMichael waited for him to cut his embarrassed glance away, but Victor stared straight back as the tears ran down his face. He thought of Johnny and how a child could cry without shame.

"Nobody's perfect, Victor."

"Usually by nine-thirty I could do it."

Distract him, McMichael thought, ask him a question like he would ask Johnny after he'd fallen and scraped a knee. "Use a pressure hose or a regular one?"

"Just a regular one," said Victor. "With a good chamois. The chamois's the secret. But they only soak up water when they're wet, not when they're dry. You'd never think of that, but they do."

McMichael sipped his liquor while Victor sighed, wiped his eyes with his fist again, then took two gulps of scotch.

A Jaguar U-turned out front and double-parked. Garland Hansen bounded out, his white hair catching the streetlights and his coattails flapping as he rounded the coupe.

He cleared a gutter puddle in one long stride and bent over the low wall, grabbing the tabletop. "You loser," he said to McMichael. "What do you think you're doing?"

"This is Victor Braga," said McMichael. "We're talking."

"Come with me, Vic."

"Okay, Gar."

"Drink up."

"I am, I am."

"A city full of shitbags and you have to hassle Victor?" Hansen asked. His thumbs were tight on the rim of the table.

The bartender was looking their way again. "We had a drink, talked Fords," said McMichael.

"Maybe the chief would like to know how you spend your time."

"Tell him Victor had scotch and I had tequila. And don't even think about trying to toss this table."

Victor drank down his scotch, burped, then stood. He was taller than McMichael had thought, thicker, too. "Can we get some ice cream, Gar?"

"We'll talk about that in the car."

"Get him some ice cream," said McMichael.

"See you, Detective," said Victor.

"Take care of yourself, Victor. When I make an arrest, you'll be the first to know."

Hansen pushed away from the table with a strenuous Nordic smile and turned back toward his car.

Back home McMichael poured another tequila and called Sally Rainwater. She was up to her shoulders in a molecular biology text but glad to hear from him. She said the peptones were interesting. McMichael, sitting in the dark and looking out a window past the swaying palm fronds, pictured Pete's painting and the director's chair and the dinette where she studied. He told her a little about Kyle Zisch and Patricia and Victor, feeling just exactly how he'd felt whenever he talked to Steffy about work- vague and controlled and editing as he went. No wonder they lose interest, he thought. Who wouldn't?

"Patricia Hansen said she wasn't happy about Pete giving you those things. Said she made some threats," he said.

"We both knew she couldn't do anything. Pete liked me and she couldn't change that. She called me some ripe names, though."

"She's got a foul mouth sometimes."

"Pete said she was a fisherman trapped in a woman's body."

"Might be some truth to that."

"And he told me about this guy she started to like back when she was twelve. A McMichael . How this guy's father had beaten up Victor, ruined him. But Patricia didn't listen, didn't care. She liked this guy. So Pete and her father stashed her on one of Pete's big tuna boats and hired a tutor and kept her out at sea- off and on- for almost a year."

McMichael smiled at the memory. And at how Patricia had returned home, bigger, more beautiful, and pointedly uninterested in him. How he'd suffered and dreamed and died a thousand heroic deaths for her. How he'd known it was wrong but loved her anyway. How Gabriel had caught him trying to call her and beat him; caught him trying to mail her a letter and beat him again. Most of all, he smiled at the memory of Patricia circling back at him a few years later, hormonally charged and wildly vindictive toward her family. He'd thought it was love.

"When you came to Pete's house that night I didn't put it together," she said. "Until later. I wondered if you were that McMichael."

"I am."

"Nothing's simple as it seems, is it? Not even a damned peptone. So, did you and Patricia get back together when she came off the boat?"