A Week In Hel (4 page)

I was closing on the Karman;
as a matter of fact I was about to take a bite out of his bumper,
when he got wise and stomped the gas. There was no way in hell that
little Karman was game enough to get away from 400 horses cookin’
full tilt boogie. The driver knew he was had. It was just a matter
of time. I was gonna get to the bottom of this right here and
now.

“
Damn!” I muttered a minute
later, when I glanced at my rearview mirror and saw red and blue
lights.

Reflexively, I let up on the
gas and it was all the Karman needed to start pulling away. I
glanced at my radio and thought better of it. He’d know I was a cop
as soon as he ran my plates, and it would be hard to explain that I
was running pursuit in my unmarked personal ride, with a female
civilian on the front seat next to me.

“
Look what you did now,”
Candi groaned in the reflected red and blue lights.

I slowed a bit and dropped
over one lane, before I pulled over to the side of the road. The
police car angled in behind me, and the searchlight came on and
aimed into my rear-view mirror. Whoever the prick was, he was good,
textbook even.

Once I stopped, I killed the
engine and pulled out my wallet. I flipped it open, exposing my
badge and police ID.

“
Let me do the talking,” I
said to Candi as I heard a car door open and shut behind
us.

“
Don’t worry about me.” She
said it as if she’d not spoken all evening.

The officer approached on my
side and stopped just behind the door frame, weight on his rear
foot and ready in case I was to do something stupid, like poke my
Roscoe out at him and let go with a few hot ones.

“
Goin’ someplace in an all
fired hurry, are we?” the officer said in a disapproving
tone.

“
I was, yeah,” I snapped
back at him. Give me a break, run my plate already I was
thinkin’.

“
I’ll need your license and
registration sir,” he growled.

I hung my wallet out at him,
badge first. After a moment and a disheartened sigh, he took it and
read my ID.

“
Sorry, if I ruined your
pursuit,” he said as he stepped forward and handed back my
wallet.

“
S’awright, this one was
extracurricular,” I said, looking him right in the eye.

He nodded so slightly that
Candi wouldn’t have noticed.

“
I reckon I’ll let you get
back to it then,” he digressed and started back toward his
cruiser.

“
Hey,” I called after
him.

He wheeled around and came
back, “Yeah?”

“
What’s your name anyhow?” I
wanted to know because he was a familiar face. We worked at the
same place, and I’d never talked him before.

“
Rivers, Dwayne. Patrolman
first class,” he said with precision.

“
Yeah, nice to meet you, I’m
also patrolman first class.”

He smiled and we shook
hands. “How long you been on?” he asked.

I had to think about it. Had
it really been a year? “Be a year in August. I started on the
fifteenth. I just got loose of my FTO in May,” I told
him.

“
I just got loose of mine
today. I started at the end of October, and last Friday was my last
day with him,” he said, a little hint of nerves coming out behind
it.

“
Who’d ya have? I had Mark
Spitz, but I work days.”—I wanted him to know that I had been
trained by the Day Shift Patrol Supervisor himself.

“
Terry Orndorf, you know,
our Sergeant was off for a long time and just got back to work.” He
wanted me to know that he’d gotten foisted off on a drunk waiting
out his days until retirement.

“
Sorry about
that.”

“
Yeah, me too. I got a
little bit of training on how to do the important stuff, and a lot
on how to sleep under bridges and avoid going on calls.”

He sounded surly about it
and I couldn’t blame him. The only reason a guy with 20 years on
the force is on nights is because somebody hoped he’d get pissed
off and quit. This, of course, puts the screws to somebody young
who wants to learn the job.

“
Are you coming to days
anytime soon?” I was just curious if he had any news I didn’t know
yet.

“
Not that I know of. I
wouldn’t mind it, but I’m assigned to Pleasant Hill in District
Two. I’m covering for Lisa Wexler tonight. She usually has the
strip.” He wanted me to know that he wasn’t relegated to chasing
tail lights.

“
I work that beat during the
day,” I offered.

“
I better get back to
chasing cars,” he said reluctantly.

I started the Ford as he
walked away. It sucks to be the responsible one when you are
supposed to be a trainee. I didn’t say anything, but that guy was
almost my FTO. Lucky for me he had a bad shooting put him off the
job for a few weeks before they decided what to do with him—the
friggin’ burnout.

“
I thought your ass was
had,” Candi said as I eased the Ford out into traffic.

“
Nah, it takes a felony to
get a cop into hot water in this town. Unless you beat up your old
lady or something,” I added just to pull her chain. I didn’t want
it to go unnoticed that I was sore about losing that Karman, or
encountering its driver in the first place.

“
Aw, is my big bear
unhappy?” she fawned at me, unbuckling her seatbelt, and scooting
over next to me. She laid her head on my shoulder and started
rubbing my thigh. I gotta give it to her, she could kiss ass when
she needed to.

I had a hunch and turned off
of North Street onto Walter, and then cutting left onto High
Street. I followed it east for a couple of blocks and then went
south on Bechtle. I knew that Karman Ghia was going to be somewhere
around White Walls Tavern in Pleasant Hill. I wasn’t sure what I
was gonna do if it was, but I just had to know if there was more
going on at White Walls than some protection racket.

“
He ain’t gonna be at the
bar if that’s what you’re thinkin’,” Candi said as we turned onto
Pleasant Street.

“
Oh, no?” I just couldn’t
figure her. She acted like the girl done wrong, up until I started
to buy into it. Other times she acted like she was some sex starved
girl next door. Then with this meat bag, she’d tried to tell him
anything he wanted to hear just to get him to let me alone. What
she was up to, I had no clue, but something told me that I was in
for one hell of a long night. I didn’t know what to expect, so I
decided it might be a nice time to stop and have a
drink.

We were about to pass White
Walls, when I made a sharp right onto Clark Street and angled into
a parking spot at the side of the bar. I shut off the engine and
glanced at Candi, who looked like she’d just swallowed a
canary.

“
Why are you doing this?”
She asked with more than a hint of nerves.

“
Cause I know there’s
somethin’ goin’ on and if you won’t tell me, I got no choice but to
ask that other guy,” I said with more candor than she was
comfortable with.

She put on the doe eyes,
“Wouldn’t you rather take me home with you and we could get cozy?”
she offered it as a reward, not like something she was really
excited about.

“
Our night got ruined
anyhow, so let’s just have a nightcap and I’ll take ya home.” I let
her think it was her idea, but she knew there wasn’t a lot of
choices.

“
Okay, one drink,” she said,
trying to sound tough, but we both knew she was scared to death. I
was just wondering what she was scared of and why she wouldn’t tell
me.

So for the second time I
walked into White Walls. It was your typical neighborhood beer
joint. There was a dark stained bar about twenty feet long with the
usual brass rail at the corner where it turned to run along the
short wall inside the inverted L shaped barroom. I doubt it was
real mahogany, just judging from the cheap vinyl rail pad that ran
the length of the bar. It was frayed in several places and the
yellow foam padding was poking through.

Don’t get me wrong, it was a
nice enough place. The décor was, as Candi had pointed out earlier,
the work of a man who loved hot rods. There were several expensive
looking prints on the walls of some classic rides, and a bunch of
photos behind the bar, of who I assume was the owner, shaking hands
with some of yesteryear’s racing giants—Jack Bowshier, Carol
Shelby, and King Richard Petty.

Candi was hanging close to
me, so I put my arm around her and moved in the direction of the
bar. There were a few people seated along the bar, and a dozen or
so scattered among the twenty tables. There was no need to go to
the rail; it wasn’t exactly a busy night.

The barkeep this evening had
the used up look of a career lot lizard. She looked tired, half
drunk, and pissed off. When she saw Candi, she sneered and rolled
her eyes, while she made a show of wiping the same spot on the bar
with a towel that was obviously dirtier than anything she was
trying to wipe off.

“
She doesn’t like me,” Candi
whispered in my ear. “Hasn’t since I ratted her ass out for giving
away booze.”

As she told me this, she
made it a point to brush a few stray hairs to make it look like she
was genuinely concerned with my appearance. Then she took my hand
with both of hers and kissed it. It was just then that the hygiene
deficient barkeep sauntered over, presumably to take our
order.

“
What d’you want?” she asked
in a very hard Kentucky brogue.

I looked at Candi to confer,
and she tilted her head a little in what I thought was some kind of
signal, but I didn’t get it.

“
Give me a shorty and a
fuzzy navel for the lady,” I told the barkeep, not
impolitely.

She snickered and rolled her
eyes at Candi again, “Humph, if you say so pal.”

She turned around to a
lowboy cooler, pulled out a Champion City Brewery stub-neck
Pilsner, and sat it on the bar while she poured a shot of Dement’s
best Peach Schnapps into a chilled Collins glass, and then drowned
it with orange juice.

She sat the beer in front of
me, and the cocktail in front of Candi, and in her best faux kindly
voice she cackled, “N’you watch that honey, it might get to the
head of a nice little thing like you.”

There was no doubt that she
was being sarcastic, but at the same time, she had a point.
Dement’s Schnapps were 100 proof and a six ounce Collins glass with
five ounces of OJ and a shot of the good stuff in the furnace might
be enough to scuttle someone incapable of holding their
sauce.

“
I think I’m in good hands,”
Candi said in a sweet but razor sharp stiletto voice, and looked up
at me with those damned doe eyes again. Every time she did it, I
got the feeling that I was doing something wrong by not taking her
straight home and tossing her in the sack. I’m ordinarily a closer,
and I do all right with girls. But Candi, I’m telling you, was some
kind of ankle. I thought she was trying to jazz me up and dupe me
into the sheets before I knew it. I’d done the same to some
unsuspecting tail in the past, but this was ridiculous.

So we took our drinks around
to the back corner of the joint where it was mostly deserted, and I
could sit with my back to the wall, and observe both the front door
and the door to the back of the house. I wasn’t about to be
surprised again. One gun behind my head with an unseen shooter is
enough for two lifetimes.

Candi slipped into the
booth. I sat down next to her and gave a look around the joint. The
people in the bar were mostly couples, save for the guys up at the
bar, and none of them looked like the trouble type. Mostly factory
guys drinking their dinner; all but one, a skinny little mug with
an angular jaw and a razor blade moustache. He was drinking at the
bar near those other guys, but he wasn’t with them by any means. I
decided to keep my eye on him.

“
So here we are, sweetie,”
Candi whispered and took a long pull on her drink.

I watched as she lowered the
glass, expecting the spirits to take her breath away, but I was
wrong. She held it just fine. I was impressed.

“
Yeah, here we are.” I
unscrewed the cap from the beer and drained half of it. I could
have taken it all easy, but I was relaxing. She didn’t hit hers
hard again either.

I think the schnapps might
have lubricated her jaws a bit, because after a few minutes she
decided to start talking.

“
Did you bring me here to
get me drunk?” she giggled, “I don’t want to be drunk if
we…”

I covered her mouth with my
hand and I growled at her, “What the hell are you
doin’?”

She crossed her eyes at me,
and licked the palm of my hand. When I pulled my hand away from her
mouth, she smiled.

“
You said you wanted to have
a drink and then you were taking me home,” she said insistently,
“so guzzle your suds already so you can take me back to my place,
screw me, and fall out of my life.” Her words were hard, cold steel
brandished like a knife and just as sharp.

I flushed. I mean, I’d never
had one come on to me like this. I mean, right out in public like
some kind of drunken prom date. She took my arm around her, put my
hand on her boob, and held it there. I can’t say I didn’t enjoy it,
but it wasn’t comfortable for me to have my girl all over me in a
public place.