Bad Moon Rising

9

“W ould you like half my sandwich, Mr. C? It’s bigger than I thought it would be.”

“I’m not really hungry, Jamie. Why don’t you eat what you want and then stick the rest in the little refrigerator down the hall and take it home tonight.”

“Turk doesn’t like leftover stuff.”

Well, since you’re supporting the family while Turk is loafing, he should be grateful for any food he gets. If I didn’t care for Jamie as much as I did, I would have erupted like that five times a day, every time she unwittingly revealed how Turk took advantage of her. They’d broken up a few years ago because he’d had another girlfriend on the side. The marriage had been called off. But gradually she’d weakened under all his promises to be the man-or punk, in my estimation-he knew he could be. Her parents couldn’t pay for the small, informal wedding so I made a present of picking up the tab. I also got her on a decent low-cost insurance plan because I knew she’d be pregnant soon enough. She’d confided to me through tears-this when she’d discovered Turk’s girlfriend-that Turk didn’t care for rubbers. At that moment her period was late and she was terrified. The period came a few days later. I put Turk on the same insurance plan only because she pleaded with me. I had dreams of running him down with my car just to see how reliable the insurance coverage was.

“Aw, what the hey, Jamie, I’ll take half your sandwich.”

“I always like it when we eat together here. It’s real homey.”

Turk, you son of a bitch, if you ever hurt her again I’ll tear your throat out.

The pastrami on rye she’d gotten from Goldblatt’s deli down the street was excellent as always. We mostly talked about her baby. Jamie was starting a college fund that she was keeping secret from good old Turk because he “sometimes” tended to spend every cent in the house. She said that she wanted her baby to be a doctor or a lawyer-” just like you, Mr. C.”

Then the two phone lines started buzzing and it was back to work.

Without quite knowing why, I called the Wilhoyt Investigative Agency in Chicago. This was a prominent firm that had recently helped bring down a powerful and corrupt politician who fought every civil rights bill that came up, despite the fact that he had a Negro mistress. He didn’t seem to understand the incongruity. He must have thought he was back running the plantation.

My contact at Wilhoyt was an older man named Pete Federman. He’d hired me four times to work on cases he was overseeing in Iowa City and Cedar Rapids. The checks were about double what I charged here. Federman had a cigarette hack and a lot of jokes about what it was like living under the burden of being a Cubs fan.

“You see the game yesterday, McCain?”

“Couple innings on TV.”

“I’m taking a cyanide capsule with me next time I go. They screw up like they did yesterday, I’ll just slide it under my tongue and that’ll be that. The way my oldest boy’s been carryin’ on, that doesn’t sound all that bad anyway.” Hack. “So what can I do for you?”

I told him about Eve. Gave him all the details about her background I’d managed to put together.

“If this isn’t all bullshit she must be quite the doll.”

I told him about Vanessa’s death. “The girls couldn’t stand her. After talking to her this morning it was easy to see why.”

“Solid gold bitch, huh?”

“Yeah, and one who seems to enjoy the role.”

“I’ll probably need twenty-four hours on this. I take it you’re on an expense account.”

“Yeah.”

“Then no discounts. For you personally I’d go twenty-five percent off.”

“Hey, I appreciate that.”

“You do good work, kid.”

“Well, you do good work, too, Pete.”

The big agencies had access to people and documentation all over the country. The starting point would probably be Dartmouth, where she’d been a professor. They’d likely work backward from there.

I’d been talking on line one. As soon as I began lowering the receiver, line two rang. Jamie answered, “Sam McCain’s law office.” She sounded official as hell. She listened and then said: “He’s right here, Commander Potter.” She nodded to me. I picked up; she hung up.

“Hi, Mike, what’s going on?”

“You know that old Skelly station near the roundhouse? Been closed down for a couple years?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Well, somebody spotted Cameron there and I jumped in the car and found him.”

“You bringing him in?”

“Yeah, Sam. But there isn’t any hurry. He put a. 45 to his head and killed himself.”