Gone, Baby, Gone (17 page)

I shook my head. “Hit by a car.”

“Intentional?”

I shook my head again. “Little old lady was driving. Belker just beelined into the avenue.”

“How’s Bubba taking it?”

“He’d had Belker neutered the month before.” I shrugged. “He’s pretty sure it was suicide.”

“Makes sense.” Cheese nodded. “Sure.”

“The money, Cheese.” Broussard waved a hand in front of Cheese’s face. “The money.”

“Ain’t missing none, officer. What I tol’ you.” Cheese shrugged and turned away from Broussard, walked over to a picnic bench, and took a seat on top, waited for us to join him.

“Cheese,” I said, as I sat down beside him, “we got a missing girl in the neighborhood. Maybe you heard about it?”

Cheese lifted a blade of grass off his shoelaces, twirled it between his chubby fingers. “Heard a bit. Amanda something, wasn’t it?”

“McCready,” Poole said.

Cheese pursed his lips, seemed to give it about a millisecond’s worth of thought, then shrugged. “Don’t ring a bell. What’s this about a bag of cash?”

Broussard chuckled softly and shook his head.

“Let’s try a hypothetical,” Poole said.

Cheese clasped his hands together between his legs and looked at Poole with an eager small-boy’s expression on his buttery face. “Okeydokey.”

Poole placed a foot up on the bench by Cheese’s. “Let us say, just for argument—”

“Just for argument,” Cheese said happily.

“—that someone stole some money from a gentleman on the same day he was incarcerated by the state for a parole violation.”

“This story got any tit in it?” Cheese asked. “The Cheese likes him some story with tit.”

“I’m getting to it,” Poole said. “I promise.”

Cheese nudged me with his elbow, gave me a huge grin, then turned back to Poole. Broussard leaned back on his heels, looked out at the guard towers.

“So this person—who does in fact have breasts—steals from a man she shouldn’t. And a few months later, her child disappears.”

“Pity,” Cheese said. “A god
damn
shame, you ask the Cheese.”

“Yes,” Poole said. “A shame. Now a known associate of the man this woman angered—”

“Stole from,” Cheese said.

“Excuse me.” Poole tipped an imaginary hat. “A known associate of the man this woman stole from was seen in the crowd gathered outside the woman’s house the night her daughter disappeared.”

Cheese rubbed his chin. “Interesting.”

“And that man works for you, Mr. Olamon.”

Cheese raised his eyebrows. “Straight up and shit?”

“Mmm.”

“You said there was a crowd outside this house?”

“I did.”

“So, lookee here, I bets a whole boatload of folks were standing there who
don’t
work for me.”

“This is true.”

“You gonna question them, too?”

“The mother didn’t rip them off,” I said.

Cheese turned his head. “How do you know? A bitch crazy enough to take from the Cheese, she may be ripping off the whole motherfucking
neighborhood
. Am I right, brother?”

“So you admit she stole from you?” Broussard said.

Cheese looked at me, jerked his thumb in Broussard’s direction. “I thought this was a hypothetical.”

“Of course.” Broussard held up a hand. “Excuse me, Your Cheeseness.”

“Here’s the deal,” Poole said.

“Oooh,” Cheese said. “A deal.”

“Mr. Olamon, we’ll keep this quiet. Between just us.”

“Just us,” Cheese said, and rolled his eyes at me.

“But we want that child returned safely.”

Cheese looked at him for a long time, a smile steadily growing on his face. “Let me get this straight. You saying that you—the Man—are going to let my hypothetical boy pick up this hypothetical money in return for one hypothetical kid, and then we all’s just walk away friends? That the shit you trying to sell me, officer?”

“Detective sergeant,” Poole said.

“Whatever.” Cheese snorted, threw his hands out in front of him.

“You’re familiar with the law, Mr. Olamon. Just by offering you this deal, we are entrapping you. Legally, you can do whatever you want with this offer and not suffer any charges.”

“Bullshit.”

“No shit,” Poole said.

“Cheese,” I said, “who gets hurt with this deal?”

“Huh?”

“Seriously. Someone gets his money back. Someone else gets her kid back. Everyone walks away happy.”

He wagged a finger at me. “Patrick, my brother, do not attempt a career in sales. Who gets hurt? That what you’re asking? Who gets motherfucking hurt?”

“Yeah. Tell me.”

“The motherfucker who got ripped off, that’s who!” He threw his hands up in the air, slapped them down on his enormous thighs, leaned his head in toward mine until we were almost touching. “That motherfucker gets hurt. That motherfucker gets motherfucking butt-fucked. What, he supposed to trust the Man? The Man and his deal?” He put a hand on the back of my neck, squeezed, “Fuck, nigger, you been smoking motherfucking
crack?
”

“Mr. Olamon,” Poole said, “how do we convince you that we’re on the level?”

Cheese let go of my neck. “You don’t. Y’all step back, maybe let things cool down a bit, let folks work shit out amongst themselves.” He wagged his thick finger at Poole. “Maybe then, everybody get happy.”

Poole extended his arms, palms up. “We can’t do that, Mr. Olamon. You must know that.”

“Okay, okay.” Cheese nodded hurriedly. “Maybe someone needs to offer a certain righteous motherfucker some kind of reduction of sentence for his help in facilitating a certain transaction. What you think about that?”

“That would mean bringing in the District Attorney,” Poole said.

“So?”

“Maybe you missed the part where we said we want to keep this quiet,” Broussard said. “Get the girl back, go on our merry way.”

“Well, then, your hypothetical man, he take that sort of deal, he’s a chump. Motherfucking hypothetical dumb-ass, and that’s for damn sure.”

“We just want Amanda McCready,” Broussard said. He placed his palm on the back of his neck, kneaded the flesh. “Alive.”

Cheese leaned back on the table, tilted his head to the sun, sucked in the air through nostrils so wide they could vacuum rolls of quarters off a rug.

Poole stepped back from the table, crossed his arms over his chest, and waited.

“Used to keep a bitch in my stable name of McCready,” Cheese said eventually. “Occasional trade, not regular. Didn’t look like much, but you gave her the right party favor, that girl could
go
. Know what I’m saying?”

“Stable?” Broussard stepped over to the table. “Are you telling us you exploited Helene McCready for the purposes of prostitution, Cheese Whiz?”

Cheese leaned forward and laughed. “P-p-p-purposes of p-p-p-prostitution. Dang, that’s got a nice ring to it, don’t it now? Form myself a band, call it Purposes of Prostitution, pack the clubs like a motherfucker.”

Broussard flicked his wrist and hit Cheese Olamon in the center of the nose with the back of his hand. It wasn’t a love tap, either. Cheese got his hands up to his nose and blood immediately seeped through the fingers, and Broussard stepped between the big man’s open legs and grabbed his right ear in his hand, squeezed until I heard cartilage rattle.

“Listen to me, mutt. You listening?”

Cheese made a noise that sounded like an affirmative.

“I don’t give a fuck about Helene McCready and whether you turned her out on Easter Sunday to a roomful of priests. I don’t care about your bullshit scag deals and the street you’re still running from behind these walls. I care about Amanda McCready.” He leaned into the ear, twisted his vise-grip hold. “You hear that name? Amanda McCready. And if you don’t tell me where she is, you Richard Roundtree-wannabe piece of shit, I’m going to get the names of the four biggest black-buck cons who hate your dumb ass and make sure they spend a night with you in solitary with nothing but their dicks and a Zippo. You following this or should I hit you again?”

He let go of Cheese’s ear and stepped back.

Sweat had darkened Cheese’s hair, and the thick rattle he made behind his cupped hands was the same one he’d made as a kid between coughing attacks, often just before he vomited.

Broussard flourished a hand in Cheese’s direction and looked over at me. “Judgment,” he said, and wiped the hand on his pants.

Cheese dropped his hands from his nose and leaned back on the picnic bench as blood trickled over his upper lip and into his mouth. He took several deep breaths, his eyes never leaving Broussard.

The guards in the towers looked off into the sky. The two guards manning the gates studied their shoes as if they’d each received a new pair that morning.

I could hear a distant clank of steel as someone worked out with weights inside the prison walls. A tiny bird swooped across the visitors’ yard. It was so small and moved so fast, I couldn’t even tell what color it was before it shot up the wall and over the cyclone wire, disappeared from view.

Broussard stood back from the bench, his feet spread, staring at Cheese, his gaze so devoid of emotion or life he could have been studying tree bark. This was another Broussard, one I hadn’t met before.

As fellow investigators, Angie and I had been treated by Broussard with professional respect and even a bit of charm. I’m sure that’s the Broussard most people knew—the handsome, articulate detective with flawless grooming and a movie star’s smile. But in Concord Prison, I was seeing the street cop, the alley brawler, the interrogation-by-nightstick Broussard. As he leveled his dark gaze at Cheese, I saw the righteous, win-at-all-costs menace of a guerrilla fighter, a jungle warrior.

Cheese spit a thick mix of phlegm and blood onto the grass.

“Yo, Mark Fuhrman,” he said, “kiss my black ass.”

Broussard lunged for him, and Poole caught the back of his partner’s jacket as Cheese scrambled backward and swung his huge body off the picnic table.

“These are some sorry-ass crackers you hanging with, Patrick.”

“Hey, mutt!” Broussard shouted. “You remember me that night in solitary! You got it?”

“Got a picture of your wife doing it with a pile of dwarfs in my cell,” Cheese said. “That’s what I got. Want to come look?”

Broussard made another lunge, and Poole wrapped his arms around his partner’s chest, lifted the bigger man off his feet, and pivoted away from the bench.

Cheese headed for the prisoners’ gate and I trotted to catch up.

“Cheese.”

He looked back over his shoulder, kept walking.

“Cheese, for Christ’s sake, she’s four years old.”

Cheese kept walking. “I’m real sorry about that. Tell the man he need to work on his social skills.”

The guard stopped me at the gate as Cheese passed through. The guard had mirrored sunglasses, and I could see my funhouse reflection in each eye as he pushed me back. Two little shimmering versions of me, the same goofy, dismayed look in each face.

“Come on, Cheese. Come on, man.”

Cheese turned back to the fence, put his fingers through the rungs, stared at me for a long time.

“I can’t help you, Patrick. Okay?”

I gestured over my shoulder at Poole and Broussard. “Their deal was real.”

Cheese shook his head slowly. “Shit, Patrick. Cops are like cons, man. Motherfuckers always got an angle.”

“They’ll come back with an army, Cheese. You know how this works. They’re working a red ball and they’re pissed.”

“And I don’t know shit.”

“Yes, you do.”

He smiled broadly, the blood beginning to clot and thicken on his upper lip. “Prove it,” he said, and turned away, walked along the pebbled path that led across a short lawn and back into the prison.

I walked back past Broussard and Poole on my way to the visitors’ gate.

“Nice judgment,” I said. “Picture-fucking-perfect.”

13

Broussard caught up with me as we made our way down the corridor toward the sign-in desk. His hand gripped my elbow from behind and turned me toward him.

“Problem with my method, Mr. Kenzie?”

“Fucking
method
?” I pulled my arm out of his grasp. “That what you call what you did back there?”

Poole and the guard reached us, and Poole said, “Not here, gentlemen. There are appearances to maintain.”

Poole steered us both down the corridor and through the metal detectors and the last remaining gate. Our weapons were returned to us by a sergeant with hair plugs springing from the top of his head in tiny, tightly wrapped bundles, and then we walked out into the parking lot.

Broussard started in as soon as our shoes hit gravel. “How much bullshit were you willing to swallow from that slug, Mr. Kenzie? Huh?”

“Whatever it took to—”

“Maybe you’d like to go back in, talk about dog suicides and—”

“—get a fucking deal, Detective Broussard! That’s what I—”

“—how much you’re
down
with your man Cheese.”

“Gentlemen.” Poole stepped in between us.

The echo of our voices was raw in that parking lot, and our faces were red from shouting. The tendons in Broussard’s neck bulged like lines of rope stretched taut, and I could feel adrenaline shake my blood.

“My methods were sound,” Broussard said.

“Your methods,” I said, “sucked.”

Poole put a hand on Broussard’s chest. Broussard looked down at it and kept his eyes there for a bit, his jaw muscles rolling up under the flesh.

I walked across the parking lot, felt the adrenaline turning to jelly in my calves, the gravel crunching underfoot, heard the sharp cry of a bird slicing through the air from the direction of Walden Pond, saw the sun soften and spread against the tree trunks as it died. I leaned against the back of the Taurus, placed a foot up on the bumper. Poole still had a hand on Broussard’s chest, was talking to him, his lips close to the younger man’s ear.

All the shouting aside, my temper hadn’t really shown itself yet. If I’m truly angry, if that switch in my head has been tripped, my voice rides a flat line, becomes dead and monotonous, and a red marble of light drills through my skull and blots out all fear, all reason, all empathy. And the hotter the red marble glows, the colder my blood chills, until it’s the blue of fine metal, and the monotone becomes a whisper.