Neely Tucker - The Ways of the Dead

“Looking for Rudy Jeffries,” he said. “Could you tell him Sully Carter is here?”

“Why does Sully Carter want to see Rudy Jeffries?”

“Because I’d like to ask him about a missing woman. Actually, maybe two.”

She put both elbows on the counter and arched an eyebrow, bored or giving every appearance of it. “Relatives?”

“No.”

“Dependents?”

“Nope.”

“Then why do you need to talk to Sergeant Jeffries about them?”

Sully shifted his weight. “Because I’m a reporter working on a story about them, and I think Sergeant Jeffries might be able to help. He knows me.”

“I’m thrilled he does. You didn’t check in with Sergeant Malone, in the media relations department, did you? ’Cause he didn’t call up saying you were coming.”

“I know Sergeant Malone, and no, I didn’t, because I’m not looking to quote Rudy. I’m just-”

“Since you know so many people, you should know the protocol. Sergeant Malone is on the second floor. But then, hey, you know him. So you know where to find it.”

She was turning her back to him when Sully rapped on the counter and leaned forward. “Nobody’s trying to get around any departmental regs, okay, Officer? I got a simple question for Rudy about how something works. It’s no big fucking deal.”

He dropped the expletive for effect, figuring it would backfire or blast the door open a crack. It didn’t really matter if it was the former, since she was shutting him down already. Malone, he’d relay the request to Rudy, yes, but in his own sweet time, and Sully would lose half the day. She was the troll at the bridge, and trolls ran the bridges, and trolls were a pain in the ass, but you couldn’t get around them.

She sauntered back between the desks, and then into the corridor of offices. A minute later, Rudy came into view, beckoned impatiently, and disappeared back down the hall. Sully lifted the divider in the counter, smiled sweetly at the officer, who ignored him, and walked down the narrow corridor. The door was open. Rudy had his bulk crammed behind his desk. He was on the phone and motioned for Sully to sit down.

“’Cause I told him to be there,” he said into the phone. “I’m not interested in stories, Leon. I don’t care if it’s an excuse or a reason. I don’t care if his dick fell off. Tell him to pick it up and meet me at the time and place appointed.”

He hung up but kept looking at the phone, keeping his hand on top of it, as if it were going to run off if it got the chance.

“Kid is seventeen about to be eighteen and he’s got a dope problem, right, and he’s run off from home and now his momma’s looking for him, getting us involved?” he said, still looking at the phone. “Kid gets a lawyer. Didn’t hire him, see, just talking to him, right, on the phone, getting advice , and the kid doesn’t want to go home, and he’s saying, See, if I stay gone for another month then I’ll be eighteen, and the lawyer’s saying, Hhhmm, and I’m trying to get the kid’s ass outta wherever he’s staying before he gets picked up for something else, something that’s going to send his punk ass to lockup.”

“Why’s the lawyer care?”

“Leon. Leon King, one of your pale-faced brethren on a mission to save us from ourselves. Kid’s telling him life’s shit at home, momma’s a crackhead, blah blah.”

“Is she?”

Rudy rolled his neck, popping his vertebrae as he did so and finally looked up at Sully. “Merlie? I really don’t fucking think so. We graduated Roosevelt the same time. She works at Macy’s, the makeup counter. Sings alto at Metropolitan AME. So no, dipshit is not being raised by a crack momma. Her problem is she loves the little chump, which is a losing proposition, you ask me, but she called me up and got in my ear about it.” He leaned forward, meaty forearms on the edge of the desk, already looking somewhere between tired and worn down. “Which is not why you’re here.”

“Thought I’d come by and flirt with my girlfriend. What’s her name out there?”

“Sherice? Nah, Sherice don’t care for your kind.”

“Which ‘my kind’ we talking about?”

“Reporters. But now that I think about it, she probably don’t care for white people too much, neither.”

“Pity.”

“Well.”

“Noel Pittman.”

“Yes.”

“You ever see the pictures?”

“They are legend, brother.”

“You guys chasing it as a homicide?”

“Go ask Homicide.”

“It started off as a missing persons.”

“Out there in 4-D, yeah.”

“The homicide case did. But I’m talking about when it was just a missing persons thing. Don’t y’all track missing adults, citywide, out of this office?”

“Used to. But in that reorg the chief loves so much? He moved all the missing persons cases out to each ward last year, when he transferred Homicide out of central command.”

“Ah, shit.”

“Yeah, baby. The way it is now? The seven wards, they’re supposed to report their numbers into us but work the cases themselves. The adult cases, that is. The kids, citywide? We still do that here.”

“This sounds sort of fucked up.”

“It sort of is.”

“So even though Pittman started out as a missing person-an adult-you guys didn’t do anything with it down here out of headquarters.”

“Goodness, but you’re a bright boy.”

“The name Lana Escobar ring a bell?”

Rudy paused. “Last year. I was still in Vice. She turned up dead, up there at Park View.”

“So she was, as they say, known to the vice squad?”

“You’d have to call over there for the Rolodex. If she got booked, there’d be a record. It wasn’t a big enough name for me to know about, I can tell you that. I just remember, you did a little squib on it. Again, all this is when Chief started moving shit around. I was leaving Vice. People were leaving downtown, Homicide and Major Crimes and all that, out to the wards.”

“Her family says they filed a missing persons report.”

“Bully for them.”

“I mean, they said that when they reported her missing, that’s when they found out she was a Jane Doe down at the morgue.”

“I am grieving for them still.”

“It bother you that Noel Pittman, once a missing person, turns up in a basement in the 700 of Princeton Place, and Lana Escobar, once a missing person, turns up on the outfield grass at Park View Rec Center, which is also in the 700 of Princeton Place? And that they went missing within about six months of one another?”

Rudy leaned back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. The fluorescent light overhead gleamed on his shaved dome. He looked up at the ceiling. “This is your story the other day.”

“Dick Jensen didn’t like it.”

“Dick’s not all bad. A hard-ass and old-school, but there’s worse. Played golf with him once. He didn’t cheat.”

“So you think the story was bullshit, too?”

“Well, look, you put it like you just did, the missing females? Yeah, it sounds off. But you know how many missing persons cases we get? Forty-one hundred last year. We’re at three thousand and change this year. That’s about ten a day, all year long, including weekends, holidays, and your religious observances. I think the homicide number last year was 260. This year, so far it’s 190? Something like that. So in a city that’s all of sixty-nine square miles, filled with thousands of reports of missing people, and where you get a homicide about every thirty, thirty-five hours, you’re asking is it odd that you get a combination on the same block?”

He unclasped his hands from the back of his head, pulled his gaze down from the ceiling, and leaned forward in his chair, his forearms back on the edge of the desk. “So I’d say probably not. I’d say maybe. You think it’s to the right of that.”