Known to Evil

37

Agent Plumb took no more than a minute to decide to let me go, but it felt like hours. It was stubbornness and not courage that kept me from falling to my knees, begging him not to imprison me.

I was shivering by the time I'd made it back to the waiting room of that human warehouse. Plumb and Galsworthy ran what an adman might call an "instant prison." At any moment almost any American (barring movie stars, publicly acknowledged billionaires, and sitting members of Congress) could be whisked away to that nameless building, en route to one of our satellite Siberias, and kept there until a botched water torture or the shrug of some judge sent them home.

In the waiting room I went straight for the exit, and then stopped.

Any chance you get to risk your life for the cause is as close to a blessing as a modern man can come. My father's words had no political meaning to me, but their truth outshone their intent.

"Excuse me, ma'am," I said to the Arab woman slumped in the chair.

She looked up at me but didn't say anything. Her children-an older girl and two toddler boys-also stared.

"Your husband has been moved to the Federal Detention Center in Miami. You'd probably do well to call down there."

ON THE STREET I went over the talk I'd had with Ron. I always do that-replay the words and gestures of an interrogation. Usually I find something that I'd overlooked; often that something has nothing to do with the information I was after.

In this situation I remembered comparing the innocence of criminals to an algebraic equation. That reminded me of the famous x, the unknown factor.

In the case of Angie Lear the unknown factor was the black man with no labels in his clothes. The metaphor worked, as far as an intellectual concept was concerned, but it changed drastically when I tried to make it a concrete action in the material world.

The killer was a dangerous man, possibly a hired assassin in league with others of his kind. Delving deeply enough to uncover his name might also set in motion those who would like the questioner silenced.

But time was passing, and someone, maybe even Alphonse Rinaldo, was stalking my client. So I took the A train to the High Street stop and walked over to Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights.

IT WAS ALMOST SIX o'clock by the time I got there, but I was pretty sure that he'd be in.

Randolph Peel's office was just above a bakery and across the street from a bank that was both new and (according to The New York Times) failing. I walked up the stairs and knocked on his door, enjoying the smells of bread baking and sugared delights.

A buzzer sounded and I pushed my way into the ex-cop's lair.

It was an odd room; taller than it was deep or wide, it gave the impression of having been turned on its side by an earthquake, or maybe some kind of explosion. The shelving was askew, layered with papers and books that communicated no sense of order. There were manila folders and magazines piled on their sides, books leaning one way and then the other, and appliances, like an old-fashioned iron, various staplers, an espresso machine, and even a.38 pistol thrown haphazardly into the mix.

Peel's oak desk was also out of the Apocalypse. It wasn't even on a level plane. There were newspapers, empty beer bottles, a half-eaten sandwich on a paper plate, and piles of papers that seemed to have been thrown there just for serendipity's sake.

The buildings across the street did not right the room. Looking out of the murky panes you might have thought that the whole world had been turned on its side in order to fit the office of the private investigator Randolph Proteus Peel.

"LT," THE SLOPPY EX-COP said. "How's it goin' down in the gutter?"

Randy was big, with equal parts pink and gray skin making up his porcine face. Needing a shave, he was leaning back in an office chair, diddling around with a pencil in his left hand.

The slob, I knew, was ambidextrous.

"Just chippin' at it nowadays," I said in deference to Ron Sharkey.

"That's what they been tellin' me," he said. "Somethin' like you're reformed or somethin'."

"Something like that," I said.

I took a seat on the worn red velvet hassock he used for a visitor's chair. A night bird whizzed past his window. A car honked in the street.

"I see you've cleaned the place up," I said.

"Fuck you."

"I thought that was your mother's job."

He sat up straight.

"What the fuck do you want, McGill?"

Many people liked Randy in spite of his slovenly ways and dishonorable discharge. Most white cops still included him in their picnics and at their kids' Communions. With a little help from these friends he'd wrangled himself a PI's license and started to deal in intelligence.

If you wanted to short-circuit the system and get information outside of official channels, you went to Randy. Given enough time, he could get a copy of a handwritten memo page off the desk of the chief of police.

I put a fold of seven hundred dollars down between the hardening sandwich and a calendar called Beaver Shot of the Week. Randy picked up the money and thumbed through the wad.

"A young woman named Wanda Soa was shot dead in her apartment a few days ago," I said before he finished counting. "Her probable assailant was found next to her, also dead. I'd like to get the coroner's photo of his face."

"Come back tomorrow and I'll have it."

"I'll add eight hundred to that if you do it in the next fifteen minutes."

One thing I knew for sure about Randy was that he didn't like to be rushed. Luckily for me, more often than not, he needed cash more than he hated work. He picked up his black phone and entered a number.

"Hey," he said in a husky, almost sexy, voice. "It's me."

Another interesting aspect to the disgraced cop was that women loved him. You'd think that such a disheveled ne'er-do-well would chase any modern girl away. But they flocked around him, agreed to do shocking things for him on desktops, park benches, and in their own marital beds.

He asked for the photo and made an assignation for later in the week. They were talking about a problem with somebody, her husband or boyfriend, when the fax machine started up.

"It's comin' through, babe," he said. "I'll call you back in ten minutes."

I stood up, went around to the fax machine, and tore off the image of the dead man I had seen on Wanda Soa's floor.

I reached into another pocket and pulled out the next payment.

When I turned around Randy was pointing a 9mm pistol at my forehead.

"I could kill you right here and now, Leonid McGill."

I dropped the bundle on his desk.

"But you won't," I said.

"Why not?"

"Because you're a lazy fuck. Because I weigh one hundred eighty-seven pounds, and even if you had a silencer you'd have to get rid of the body or explain it to the cops. Either way you'd miss your evening cartoons."

Randy searched my eyes for fear but found none. I'd given up worrying about my mortality a long time before. The first good body shot I took in the ring cured me of that fear.

Anyway, I knew somebody would shoot me down one day. Why not Randy Peel in Brooklyn Heights?

Peel let out a false laugh and lowered his gun.

"I always wanted to see you flinch, LT," he said behind that empty grin. "I guess you're as tough as they say."