Shakedown

Chapter Twenty-six

I was fine until we got back to Grisnik’s car. He didn’t say a word while I shook myself out. I didn’t understand how I could hold myself together during an interrogation and crumble five minutes later. Whatever the reason, I was grateful it had worked out that way, although it was a measure of the change in my life that I even had such a thing to be thankful for.

“When I was growing up, we had rugs all over our house, no wall-to-wall carpet. My mother always said that was for the rich folks who lived in Johnson County,” Grisnik said after I settled down. “She used to hang the rugs up outside and beat the hell out of them to get rid of the dirt. The way you shake, you remind me how she made those rugs?op every time she cleaned house.”

The prison was fading in the rearview mirror, the town passing by in a blur as we headed back to the highway. I wasn’t paying attention to either.

“You have a remarkably soothing bedside manner. I bet you’re a real hit at executions.”

“Hey, man,” Grisnik said, one hand raised in self-defense. “What do you want me to say? It is what it is.”

“Don’t say anything. I’m not putting on a show and I don’t need any reviews of my performance.”

He rubbed his jaw, trying to expunge the embarrassment from his red face. “You’re right. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s just hard to watch and not feel something for you. I was just trying to keep it light.”

“Light is good. If it makes you feel any better, these shakes don’t hurt even if it looks like they do.”

Grisnik gave me a quick turn of his head, his natural color restored, one eyebrow raised like I couldn’t be serious. “If it doesn’t hurt, why do you make those faces and grunt like you been kicked in the balls?”

“I get all caught up inside, like I’m locked in a clinch and can’t let go. The facial expressions and the sound effects just happen. I can’t control any of it.”

He nodded his head, not doubting me this time. I was in a netherworld, unable to explain to myself or anyone else what was happening to me. If people were uncomfortable, I could understand that even if I couldn’t do anything about it. But the last thing I wanted was pity, and Grisnik hadn’t offered any. I was glad when he changed the subject.

“What’d you think of Rice’s performance?”

“The guy was all over the place,” I said. “Nervous, friendly, sad, tough, scared, pissed. He went through enough personality changes I thought he was auditioning for the lead in The Three Faces of Eve.”

“Could be he was all those things. Prison messes a man up.”

“What about his face? How’d you read him? Was it for real or an act or some of both?” I asked.

“Shit, man,” Grisnik said. “I start out believing they’re all liars, everyone one of them. Rice was no different. He was definitely playing us at the beginning. At the end, when you suggested his wife was cheating on him, he was one seriously pissed-off fat man.”

“Yeah, but was he telling the truth about being afraid? All that crap about I couldn’t help him because he was in a federal prison and I was just a city cop. You suppose he was trying to tell me something?”

“Like what?”

“He said his problems are federal, all the way around. Maybe he’s not just afraid of his fellow inmates. Maybe he’s afraid of someone on my side of the aisle,” I said.

“Like your FBI agent who is buying his house and his car and who you want Rice to believe is also boning his ex-wife.”

“That’s one way to read it,” I said. “My squad has put a lot of people away. It wouldn’t be hard to make a connection with one of them, buy a favor now, and pay for it later. Make Rice’s shower-room nightmare come true.”

We were crossing the Missouri River again, passing from Kansas back into Missouri, the Platte City water tower announcing our arrival. The highway and the river ran roughly parallel the rest of the way back to Kansas City, though we wouldn’t see the river again until it turned east for its last leg across Missouri, where it would disappear into the Mississippi River just outside St. Louis.

“Could happen that way,” Grisnik said. “But it takes time to set something like that up. Hard to keep the circle of knowledge small. More people you have to bring in to get it done, the more likely it is that someone talks to someone, buys his own favor, or gets paid back the same way as Rice. Inmates keep killing each other, sooner or later the guards are bound to notice.”

“You have another explanation?” I asked.

“Yeah, I do. By now, everyone on Rice’s cellblock knows he had visitors today. The only visitors on Thursdays are cops and we don’t make social calls. Inmates don’t care what really happens when someone talks to us. They assume a guy like Rice snitches and they’ll kill a snitch just for practice. Hell, just by coming to see him, you probably caused him more trouble than that poor slob can handle. I was him, I’d be afraid, too.”

“What about his face? You think you can tell if someone is lying just by looking at their face?”

“We try to do that all the time,” Grisnik said. “Doesn’t mean we get it right, but we do it. Suspect acts scared, we assume it’s because he’s guilty. Doesn’t answer our questions, looks the other way, licks his lips. All kinds of shit like that. First thing we say, the asshole is guilty, why else would he look like that?”

“What if he’s cool about the whole thing? Smiles, chats you up, or has the perfect poker face.”

“That’s what the polygraph is for. Hard to beat the machine even if the courts won’t let us tell the jury about it,” Grisnik said.

“I don’t know. I don’t trust faces. People have too many masks. That’s what bothers me about Rice. He had enough for everyone at a masquerade ball.”

“Hold him up against what you do know. Ask yourself: what did he say that you can prove was the truth or a lie? Only thing he really told us is that it was none of our business what his wife did with the house and the car. He didn’t admit or deny anything. All you did was scare him. I don’t think we learned a damn thing.”

“Rice isn’t a career criminal,” I said. “He screwed up big-time, that’s for sure. But he didn’t grow up to be a cocaine dealer.”

“But that’s what he became, so what’s your point?” Grisnik asked.

“Rice understands money. He’s going to get half the proceeds from the sale of a house worth close to a million bucks if his wife sells it for what it’s worth. He invests his share well and he’s set when he gets out. She’s about to take his future away from him. He ought to be a hell of a lot more scared and pissed about that than what he’s going to tell his cellmate about why we came to see him. On top of which, he’s a salesman. He’s in the bullshit business. He’ll come up with something to satisfy any suspicious inmates.”

“Bottom line?”

“Rice has no reason not to talk to me unless someone has already gotten to him.”

“You could check the visitor records. See who’s been to see him,” Grisnik said.

“I can’t, but you can. I don’t want Detective Funkhouser’s good name to be dragged into this mess any more than it already has been,” I said.

“I’m having a hard time thinking of a reason why I should. I’m the one who’s going to have to explain about Detective Funkhouser, not you. Only reason I agreed to bring you up here was you promised that Rice could help me with my case. I didn’t hear either one of you mention Oleta Phillips or her son.”

“I didn’t promise you anything. I said that Rice might know someone who knows something about Oleta. I’m not wrong yet. I know I’m working this case ass-backwards, but it’s the only way I can go at it right now.”

“How is that supposed to make me feel any better?” Grisnik asked.

“Try finding out who has been to see Rice since he’s been in prison and find out if he called anyone after we left. That might make both of us feel a hell of a lot better.”