Author's note: Part of the reason I put this up on Wattpad instead of just self-publishing it was I absolutely hated one plot point and took it all out ... and then Bob got really sick and I forgot to spackle the cracks. So that's what I'm trying to do here, and it's more difficult when you haven't looked at the thing in close to a year and the story sort of fell out of your brain. This is the only part of the novel that still needed major surgery, and there's still the possibility I've planned this poorly, forgotten something, or screwed something up. So, be alert when you read this, and if you see anything that doesn't make sense, please comment. Thank you for helping me fix this bit of the novel!! --P.D.
***
Dawn woke him at six in the morning. He lay back, unobserved, peering over the dash to watch as cars started and motored out of the lot. Clay's space still stood empty.
Fifteen minutes later a late model white Grand Caravan pulled into the parking lot and into Clay's space. John watched as a short, bald little man emerged from the minivan and went into Clay's apartment building.
John sat, thinking. Right make and model, wrong color, but ... he squinted. There was the green "E" sticker on the bumper. It was an Enterprise rental. The physical description was right.
This guy, if it was the guy, had been out all night. Chances were he was staying put. If it was the right guy and not just a parking-space squatter.
John decided to hang around another half hour, tops. Then he'd have to go home, shower—after all night out here, the shower was mandatory. He'd need to change, eat, and get to work.
He had just cranked the motor to leave when the little man appeared on the steps to the building, keys in hand, on his way back to the minivan. He was wearing different clothes. John placed his age at about thirty-five.
John decided to tail him.
The white Caravan backed out. John followed it down the winding road past the country club, then left and around the corner, through three lights to the McDonald's he had stopped at last night. John drove past the McDonald's, then turned around and doubled back. He spied the minivan parked in the lot next to the street, drove in, and idled in a parking space behind the drive-through. Eventually the little bald man came out, climbed back into the minivan, and pulled out.
John waited until he had two cover cars and followed Egghead onto Chippenham, onto the parkway, through the tolls, and onto I-195, musing about the cigar-smoking old man as he drove. Mother for wife, sister for wife, pictures for flowers, truck for minivan. Could he have meant white instead of black?
Then Egghead signaled for the Cary Street exit, and John realized where the man was going: his house.
Egghead turned east on Cary. He passed the Ukrops, passed the cute, trendy little shops and the animal care places, on down the street and up a block. One block from the narrow white-and-blue house John shared with Lizzie.
Egghead drove past John's and found a place to turn around. John watched him park on the opposite side of the street, several spaces down from his house. He drove on by, not too worried about being made. He saw Egghead sitting there as he drove past, mindlessly eating a hash brown, his eyes glued to John's 442 parked out front. John wondered where he had spent the night. One of Clay's whores, maybe? Or was he out here all night waiting for John to come home? He shivered, picturing Lizzie in the house alone with this guy parked out front.
John parallel parked a block back himself and sat, trying to think what to do. As he idled there next to the sidewalk, a blur of motion caught his eye from his front porch. Lizzie, leaving the house in a tight-laced halter-style top, denim short shorts, and her comfy old sneakers. She laid her satchel down and grabbed the watering can on the front porch, filled it at the outdoor spigot, and watered the marigolds she'd planted around the porch. She had to bend down a lot to do it, offering John and the rest of the street a fabulous view of her behind and her two Vogue-worthy legs.
As he watched, he saw Egghead leaning over in the front seat, with ... yes, binoculars. And that gave John an idea.
He drove around to the alley in back and up to his back yard, where Lizzie had parked beside the alley, thinking.
Some detective he was. Couldn't he even notice when his own house was being watched? How the hell could he have missed this guy hanging around here lately? Egghead must have been here, and, today at least, he wasn't being all that careful about it.
He imagined this guy tailing Pride around—no, probably not; Pride had been called out to the island under false pretenses. But Egghead would have watched Lizzie here, going in and out, tending to her flowers in her short shorts, heading out to the fan film or the modeling agency. God knows when Clay had ordered the tail. Maybe that was how Clay'd figured out he was bugged. John's thoughts squeezed his heart with a cold, cold hand.
He parked the rental in the alley and went in his house through the back, fishing his cell out of his pocket. A guy he'd worked patrol with lived a little further up the street. He cracked the blinds a little to see Lizzie, having shouldered her satchel again, walking around to the back of the house and her car. The faint sound of the motor starting reached him from outside.
"Hey, Diggs! Yeah, it's Robin. Great. Listen, where are you right now? I got a bald guy in a white Dodge Grand Caravan, license number XPV-114, just kind of sitting out here on the street. This isn't the first time I've seen this guy parked out here, just sitting in the minivan, while my girlfriend's out gardening, watering the flowers, stuff like that. Only, get this—this morning, the guy's actually got binoculars, sitting there staring at her rear end! Can you light this guy up? I'm peeking behind the sheers here, I don't want to spook him. Appreciate it, pal. Talk to you."
Then he punched in Mike's cell number and got voice mail. He left him an urgent message. "Clay has a houseguest who's about to get pulled in on a peeping-Tom complaint. Be listening up on the air for a peeper on Cary. This is our guy. I gotta take a quick shower, but call me back when you get this."
John ran through the shower and changed. As he knotted his tie his cell phone rang.
"Robin."
Mike said, "Just heard the call. You sure this is the guy, Johnny?"
"He's staying in Clay's apartment and staking out my house. I followed him back from Clay's and he's sitting in his vehicle a couple doors down."
"Jesus," said Mike.
"Yeah, you were right. Meet me in the parking garage and we'll go over to holding together. I say we lean on him for the contents of Clay's houses, see if we can get our search warrants. I don't want to spook him about the Pride murder or my shooting yet. I want you to go in there and just let him think he's spilling the beans about Clay on the Samuels case first."
"The fire irons," said Mike.
"Yeah."
***
John had to circle the parking garage almost to the end to find an empty spot. On his way he spotted Mike, staring intently at his notepad, talking to himself.
John felt his stomach clench. They could question the guy about the Samuels case only, which meant Mike had to go in; if Egghead saw John, he'd clam up. Mike had had a tough year, and he didn't look like a man up to the task.
John parked, locked up his car, and walked back down the curving row of parked cars. When he rounded the bend, Mike was standing there waiting for him. His notes had disappeared.
He waited for John to get close, then said, "Johnny, you think you really got the guy? Still no hits on Marian's ATM card, nothing on her cell phone. I was over at her mother's yesterday. I think the mother's talked to her, but she won't crack. Says she has no idea where Marian is."
"So if we don't get a search warrant from this guy, we go at the mother," said John.
"Look, I was thinking," said Mike. "We tell this guy we got DNA off the rope ladder from the night he shot you. He's not gonna know how backed up the lab is. If he's sure we've got him on a cop killer bounce—"
John's reaction must have registered on his face. Mike stopped talking and glanced at the floor.
"Good idea, but if too many questions are asked how we linked it to Pride, it could go south on us. Or me, anyway. I'm thinking we'd better not mention Pride at all, just confine this to Julie."
"And that gets us into Clay's beach house how?" Mike scowled.
"I was thinking about that on the way over," said John, keeping his tone light and kind of surprised. He didn't want Mike to feel bad that he hadn't thought of this himself. He needed confidence, not only for all the other reasons, but also for the simple fact that if John found himself in the same room with Egghead for any reason, it would take four guys to haul him off.
"What do you think of this?" John murmured. "You go at him this way..."
***
John's old patrol squad mate Lee Diggs stood looking into the interrogation room through the one-way.
"Diggs! How you doing?"
"Yo, Robin. What are you A-squad guys doing with a peeping Tom?"
"We want to talk to your collar there before you take him to the lock-up, if that's okay," said John. "We've got a cold case we think he might know something about." He tipped his head toward Mike. "Mike Little, we're working together on this." He turned to Mike. "Little, this is Lee Diggs, we worked patrol together in 112."
Mike and Lee shook hands.
Lee gave them the low-down. "Guy gave us the name Michael Silvano, says he's from Brooklyn, New York, age thirty-eight. Says he's here for a few days buying a few rare antique guns from this guy he's staying with, a George Evan Clay living at Evergreen Condominiums in Chesterfield. Primary residence 842 First Street in Hampton."
***
By the time Mike walked in, Silvano was complaining that he needed to use the restroom. Mike opted out of offering him a cigarette and offered him coffee instead.
John leaned on the one-way glass, watching Mike's body language and trying to will his every inflection. The more he looked bored and in a hurry, the more Silvano didn't think he was giving up anything important, the sooner this whole thing could go legal. A good interrogator might be able to cue Silvano to say he'd seen a fire poker at Clay's beach house even if he hadn't—that was all they needed. John didn't want Silvano bailing himself out on John's peeping charge and then disappearing. A search warrant that specified they were looking for Julie's pictures would work as well ... but John didn't think even Arlene was that good. Savonn, maybe. Pride could have done it easy.
For a moment John felt a twinge of regret for those days he stared through the glass like this watching Pride get a confession out of a guy John had sweated all morning. He'd come out and explain his technique, and then the next time John had a suspect in, Pride had this way of reminding him, sometimes just with a word or two, how to go at the guy. He'd give him one nod after a perp confessed; the kind that said, "Good work," better than any praise.
Mike didn't sit down. He leaned negligently against the interrogation table, which was bolted to the floor. He'd left his jacket off and rolled his sleeves up.
"Look, are these your binoculars, or not?" Mike sounded bored. John nodded even though Mike couldn't see him.
Egghead—Silvano—puffed his cigarette and flicked ashes at Mike. "So what if they are?" He spoke in a treble tenor at odds with his New York/Italian accent, the kind John heard in mob movies. Silvano's public defender sat next to him, having arrived just before Mike went in.
"Well, you're sitting in broad daylight ogling an actress, with binoculars right on her ass. She can press stalking charges, and she will. The guy she's living with is one of our detectives, so you really picked the wrong woman. Now, this guy you're staying with. This—" Mike fluttered a hand as if he couldn't recall the name. "This George Clay. How well do you know him?"
"Why? I'm supposed to talk my way out of this?"
Mike cocked an eyebrow. "He's a person of interest in another matter. You help me, I help you. Guy's not there much, is he? This guy live on First Street in Hampton?"
Silvano frowned. "Why?"
"Well, if you're on your way back to the Big Apple, you won't be here to bother the actress, and between that and getting a cold case solved, my buddy might pick the cold case over crucifying you. You've been inside his house, right?"
Silvano rolled his eyes and gave him an insolent, "Duh," obviously meaning the apartment he was staying in.
"So he's got guns in there, right?" and Mike named several common weapons, jotting down a yes or a no from Silvano. "How about drugs? Seen anything like that?"
"Yeah, yeah, dime bags and shit. Never actually seen any coke but he told me he deals." So far, Silvano was playing along.
Mike looked at Silvano and slipped in, "And this is at the beach house, right?"
Silvano's high forehead wrinkled like a Shar-pei's. Then he read Mike's face and said, "Yeah, yeah. Nice house," without breaking that rambling tone, and John made a fist and silently tapped the glass in a symbolic punch of triumph.
"How about a ..." Mike paused to squint at his notebook. "You ever see any pokers in there? Like you use to build a fire with." Mike stretched a hand out and gestured, stirring the embers.
Silvano scowled, then he slid back into his seat. He made a rolling gesture with his arm, sending spirals of cigarette smoke floating towards the ceiling. "So what deal are you guys gonna cut me for this? I mean, I tell you stuff, I get to go. Right? Right?"
Silvano sat back and looked at his public defender. He took a long drag on his cigarette.
Finally he said, "I'm not saying no more til I get something signed on paper. And I want a better attorney. I got a guy I want to use. I want another phone call."
***
Mike's shoulders slumped as they stood in the hallway, watching Diggs recuff Silvano and escort him down the hall.
"He's gonna find a way to warn Clay," said John. "If they're using the same attorney that'll be easy."
"No," said Mike. "I think he's gonna say it. He's gonna give us PC on the poker, and those pictures are gonna get Pride and Julie off the board. All we're waiting for is the legalese. If he thinks we've got evidence tying him to your shooting, he might finger Clay, and there we go."