Shadow Games (14 page)

"All right,"
Cobey
said, gulping and standing up. In his dark suit and white shirt, he resembled a young and successful
business man. He looked even more so standing next to the disheveled Cozzens.

"We'll be right back," Cozzens said.

He led the way to the bar, but they hadn't taken six steps before Cozzens slid a fatherly arm around
Cobey's
shoulder

 
"God." Veronica said. Tears stood in her eyes.

"He'll be all right," Puckett said, wondering at the depth of her reaction.

"I need to go to the powder room," Anne said, trying to cool it. "Care to come with me, Veronica?"

Veronica nodded and then asked Puckett, "Doesn't that detective have to tell
Cobey
what's going on?"

"That's probably what he's doing right now," Puckett replied, soothingly.

Veronica's tears were becoming more evident. "They're
always
picking on him just because he got in trouble a few times."

Anne took Veronica's hand and led her off toward the back of the restaurant.

Puckett sat there and sipped his scotch and water. Every minute or so, he'd glance at the bar to see what was going on.

Cobey
and Cozzens sat on bar stools next to each other. Even from here, Puckett could see that
Cobey
was drinking his Alcoholic's Delight, his Diet Pepsi. He admired the kid for waging the battle. It was a bitch.

From up near the bar he heard some loud and sudden shouts.

He turned, just in time to see
Cobey
push Cozzens from his stool and into the bar.

In moments,
Cobey
was running from the bar, across the dance floor and into the kitchen doors.

Cozzens was up and following him now, shouting for
Cobey
to stop.

But
Cobey
wasn't about to stop.

He pushed and shoved his way through a small crowd standing in front of the back door.

Shouts went out. The back door opened—and then slammed shut.

"He got away!" somebody shouted.

Puckett watched as the bartender handed a phone over to Cozzens. Puckett knew just what the detective would be doing. Putting an APB out on
Cobey
.

What the hell was going on here, anyway?

B
y now,
Cobey
was long gone, lost in the maze of rainy Chicago streets.

T
en minutes later, Puckett and Cozzens stood at the restaurant bar, sipping their drinks and talking.

Anne and Veronica stood close to them so they could hear, and when Cozzens mentioned a young woman named "Beth," Puckett noticed a curious look on Veronica's face—she'd recognized the name.

"She was beheaded?" Puckett said.

"I think that's the word you're looking for," Cozzens said, allowing himself a wry little smile. "I'll spare you the details of what she looked like."

"But why question
Cobey
? What's he got to do with it?" Puckett asked.

Cozzens looked anxiously at Veronica. "He was, uh, involved with this woman."

Puckett expected some kind of protest from Veronica. None came.

"Several people told me that, including her best friend," Cozzens said. "And
Cobey
and the Swallows woman argued.
A lot. And pretty violently, from everything I've been able to piece together."

Puckett saw that Cozzens hadn't had much choice but to ask
Cobey
some questions—and to seriously consider him a suspect.

Quietly, Veronica said, "I know
Cobey
, Detective Cozzens. I know him and I love him—and I just know he couldn't have done what you said."

Cozzens finished his drink and brought his glass down a little harder than necessary on the bar. "Then he shouldn't have run, Veronica. He sure as hell didn't do himself any favors."

Cozzens put his hand out and Puckett shook it.

"I appreciate the help, Puckett."

"I just hope
Cobey
turns himself in before something else happens," Puckett said, frowning.

"Believe it or not," Cozzens responded, "so do I. I don't want to see him—" He was aware of Veronica watching and listening carefully. He paused. "I want everything to work out well for everybody concerned."

And with that, Cozzens nodded and left the restaurant. The diners were settling down again after all the commotion.

"I think I'll call a cab and go back to my hotel," Veronica said quietly. "I'm pretty tired after all this." Her wan smile was sorrowful to see.

"One thing, Veronica," Puckett said.

"What's that?"

"If he calls you, don't help him in any way. Convince him to turn himself in. That's the only way."

She nodded, kissed Anne on the cheek, and walked to the front of the restaurant.

"Poor Veronica," Anne said.

Puckett grunted. "Poor
Cobey
, too. He's in one hell of a lot of trouble."

I

W
hile he was still at the top,
Cobey
fell in with a mannered and self-described "existential" group of actors who spent most of their time discussing Jack Kerouac; who they were presently bopping; and why any actor who was successful was innately a piece of shit—no offense, Mr. Teen Idol, Mr. Nielsen Top 10, Mr. Billboard-with-a-bullet-burning-up-the-charts.

All this was back in the early eighties. The Group studio was in North Hollywood (where else?) and was run by a very old gay man who continually hinted that he'd once had some kind of sexual experience with James Dean. Uh-huh. In between acting lessons in which everybody learned to be tortured in the manner of the late Montgomery Clift,
Cobey
and his more experienced (and courageous) friends picked up girls and had wine parties, watched hours of bad movies and howled, and rolled drunks and had plenty of cash in their pockets.

Cavanaugh was the name of the kid who taught
Cobey
how to roll drunks. Cavanaugh had three rules: a) Always wear dark clothes; b) Always wear a mask; and c) Always roll prosperous drunks.

Cavanaugh and his group mostly worked parking lots in Beverly Hills and Malibu because you saw a lot of drunks there, and drunks in such places always had lots of cash, or at least lots of credit cards that could easily be sold to a fence.

At the time,
Cobey
didn't need the money, but he did need the kicks. He enjoyed rolling drunks far more than he wanted to admit to himself. The danger was what appealed to him. His new favorite word was existential and if rolling drunks wasn't existential, what was?

Before going out for a night of battering high-class winos,
Cobey
got very upset. Once or twice he even barfed. Once he called Cavanaugh and told him he just couldn't go through with it anymore. Cavanaugh—whose biggest claim to fame was a three-week stint on
Family Life
as a bratty cousin—of course called him a pussy and said
Cobey
was going whether he liked it or not, Cavanaugh being the boss and
Cobey
not being jack shit.

Cobey
went—and scored nearly six hundred dollars and a Master Card Gold and felt good about himself and the world.

Unfortunately, all this had an unhappy ending. Cavanaugh himself went out drunk one night to roll drunks and tried to score on some chubby little bald guy who turned out to be a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and, what with one thing and another, Cavanaugh's neck was broken and he died lying right next to a new red Ferrari. The chubby little bald guy had not been a pussy after all.

This incident inspired
Cobey
to go straight. He gave up the Actors' Group and he gave up all his friends who said that anybody who was successful was innately a piece of shit and he went back to Lilly, with whom he'd had one of his twice annual fallings-out, and said get me some more record work, I want to go into the studio again. Which she did el pronto, the network having been asking for a new record for years (in
Cobey's
defense, it wasn't any fun having record critics maul everything you did).

Now, all these years later,
Cobey
was back to rolling drunks.

When he'd fled the restaurant after his run-in with that cop,
Cobey
hadn't even had time to take his jacket, and he'd made the mistake of leaving his wallet in his jacket.

He'd spent two hours running through alleys, tripping, falling down, swearing, crying, pissing his pants, wanting to give himself up, terrified to give himself up, trying to tell himself that he really hadn't killed Beth Swallows, but realizing that he very well may have killed Beth Swallows. He knew what he was like when booze got to him—and God knows he'd had enough booze that night—and so all he could do was run. And keep running.

He sort of thought of himself as Richard Kimble,
The Fugitive
, one of his all-time favorite shows. In fact, that was just how he saw life, as a sweaty run through the jungle, dark forces on his tail at all times.

But actually being a fugitive had proved to be not so romantic or existential at all.

In reality, being a fugitive, especially one without any money, meant trying to find a restroom to use; trying not to be noticed as he walked around; scurrying, but not scurrying so fast that he attracted attention, whenever he saw a cop car; and looking for a place to get out of the silver, slanting rain when it started coming down around midnight.

Which was when
Cobey
had remembered Cavanaugh and rolling drunks.

He prayed to whatever gods there were that the drunk he picked on wasn't some kind of Marine commando disguised as a priest or something. Just give him a good old overweight insurance agent from Skokie, somebody in a brown suit from Sears, wearing lace-up Hush Puppies.

He had found a block of restaurants and lurked in the shadows of the alley running behind. Now he didn't feel like Richard Kimble, he felt like Darren
McGavin
on
The Night Stalker
. Freezing. Nose running. Rats nearby gnawing their
way through the garbage. Feeling almost numbingly sorry for himself.
I didn't do it. Or did I?

Mostly couples had come out, chunky, middle-aged, middle-class couples, high and silly on a few middle-aged drinks, getting into Buicks and
Oldsmobiles
and Audis. Wrong sort of people.

Finally, around one,
Cobey
getting bolder, and more desperate, he crouched behind this dumpster and saw the guy he'd been waiting for.

Mr. Peepers. No fooling. No more than 5' 3" tops. No more than 135 pounds tops. Walking like a tipsy ballerina. Probably a drama teacher in some high school.

There was a God after all.

The guy had even been considerate enough to park his one-tone Chevrolet at the wee end of the shadowy lot, just where
Cobey
waited to spring.

The guy got the key in the door and then nearly pitched over backwards. He was really bagged.

Cobey
jumped.

And felt exhilarated. Existential. There was no other way to put it. He was a goddamned existential drunk-roller. It might sound pretentious, but...

Cobey
started to reach out...

Started to grab the guy by the overcoat collar...

Tried to keep the little bastard from falling over backwards and cracking his skull on the pavement...

When the guy, who was still somehow upright, started—and this was just plain
effing
unbelievable—when the little guy, still on his feet, his key still plugged into the car door, started
snoring
.

He was out on his feet.

Was this a mugger's dream, or what?

Cobey
leaned against the little guy so he wouldn't fall over backwards, and then started going through the little guy's pockets.

In moments,
Cobey
was the happy possessor of a wallet chock-full of credit cards and maybe two hundred dollars in crisp, green twenties.

And the guy was still snoring.

Cobey
got the car opened and put the guy in behind the wheel as if he was going to start this baby up and tear off toward the Dan Ryan, but then his head flopped back against the seat and he started snoring loud and wet again and he was somewhere outside the known solar system.