Small Vices

Chapter 31

They picked Parisi up in Medford the next morning, and Miller was in to see me that afternoon. The office door was open, in case there was an impulse buyer wandering the corridor, and I was reading Calvin and Hobbes for the second time because I had heard that the strip was going to end, and I was trying to store up.

Miller came in and closed the door hard behind him. He walked across the room and stopped in front of me and stood looking down at me with a dead-eyed stare that was supposed to make me hide under my desk. I gave him a wide, friendly, open faced smile entirely suitable to the approaching holiday season. We did that for a while.

Finally Miller said, “On your feet, asshole.”

I looked around the office.

“Asshole?”

Miller jerked his thumb in a stand-up gesture.

“Surely you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” I said.

“You want me to run you in for refusing a lawful order, pal? On your fucking feet.”

“Tommy, you wouldn’t know a lawful order if it came by and lapped your hand,” I said. “Sit down. We’ll talk.”

He came around the desk quicker than I thought he could move. I put up one foot and aimed for his groin, but he turned on me and caught it on his hip. He got hold of my foot and yanked me out of the chair. In someone less graceful than myself it might have been sort of ignominious. I kicked at him with my other foot and got free and rolled as he tried to stomp me and got my feet under me and came up and dug a left into his solar plexus. He grunted and made the cop move at my hair, but my hair was too short to get hold of. A perfect blend of beauty and function. I butted him on the chin. That was supposed to put him down. It didn’t. Maybe Tommy was nearly as tough as he thought he was. He kept coming, and his bulk drove me back against the wall of my office. I kept my chin buried in his shoulder and my body pressed up against his so he couldn’t get much of a shot at me. All he could punch was my ribs and back. He was a clumsy puncher, but his hands were heavy. I braced against the wall, got my hands against his chest, and heaved him away from me. As he staggered back, I nailed him on the cheekbone with a straight left and followed it with a hell of a right hook, and it put him down. But he didn’t stay, he lunged up with his head down, and tried to tackle me. It’s a dumb thing to do. I kneed him in the face and hammered him on the back of the head with the side of my right fist, and he went down on his hands and knees and stayed that way for a minute, his head hanging. My knee had probably broken his nose. There was blood dripping onto the floor. But he didn’t stay that way. Slowly he climbed to his feet. When he was upright, he tried to gather his balance around him, looking at me dully, swaying a little. Then he fumbled for his gun. I let him get it out of the holster and then stepped in and took it away from him. He was half out, and his movements were slow motion. I stuck the gun in my belt and got hold of his lapels and shoved him backwards into one of my client chairs and sat him down. As he went down he took a feeble right-handed swipe at my head. I hunched up and caught it on the left shoulder. And then he was in the chair and I stepped away from him. He sat blankly, the blood running down his face and onto his shirt. I went to the wash basin and got my Holiday Inn towel and soaked it in cold water and wrung it out and went back and put it in his hand.

“Hold that on your nose,” I said.

Miller sat motionless with the towel in his hand and stared at me. His jaw was slack, his mouth was half open. I took the towel from his hand and put it against his nose gently and took his hand and placed it on the towel.

“Hold it,” I said.

He had no reaction, but he held the towel. I went back around my desk and sat. And waited. In another minute or two he began to come around. His eyes began to move and he closed his mouth. He shifted the towel a little. Finally his eyes appeared to register me.

“My fucking nose is broke,” he said.

“You’ll need to go have somebody set it and pack it,” I said.

“You ever break your nose?”

“About eight times,” I said.

“Bleeds like a bastard.”

“Un huh.”

We sat some more.

“You are a tough sonova bitch,” Miller said.

“Un huh.”

Miller got up and went to the sink and rinsed the towel and wrung it out and reapplied it. Then he came back and sat down. He wasn’t moving very briskly.

“I know you had Parisi send out some bone breakers to run me off the Ellis Alves case,” I said.

“Yeah?” Miller said.

“And I know that Alves didn’t do that coed in Pemberton.”

“You do, huh?”

“I do, and I’m pretty sure your days of giving lawful orders are over.”

“You think so,” Miller said. But there wasn’t much force in his voice.

“The question is whether Healy fires you and lets it go at that, or whether you do jail time.”

Miller had restabilized enough to show some alarm.

“You talked with Healy already?” he said.

“Not yet.”

“You think you can prove any of this?”

“I can prove it to Healy,” I said.

“Parisi won’t testify,” he said.

“You think so?” I said. “You think if he’s squeezed he won’t talk? You think all four of the jackasses he sent to scare me won’t testify if they’re looking at jail time?”

Miller thought about it. He started to nod and stopped as if it hurt.

“Whaddya want,” he said, his voice muffled by the towel.

“Tell me why you framed Alves.”

“What makes you think it was me?”

“It’s something a cop would know how to do. Especially a cop who was in charge of the investigation.”

“That’s just speculation.”

“You came up with Ellis Alves,” I said. “How? Did you investigate another case where Ellis was involved? Did you request and get a printout on known sex offenders, and pick him off that? You think when Healy starts looking he won’t find a connection between you and Alves?”

I was guessing, but it was a plausible guess, and I must have been right. Miller took the towel away from his nose and looked at it. His bleeding had slowed down to a trickle. I got a box of Kleenex from my desk drawer and handed it to him. He carefully tore it into small pieces and wadded them and packed them into each nostril. It made him look funny but it stopped the trickle.

“You got a drink?” he said. His voice was thick like a man with a bad cold.

I took a bottle of Scotch from the drawer and went to the sink and got a water glass. I poured a couple of inches into the glass.

“You want water?” I said.

He shook his head very gently and pointed at the glass. I handed it to him and he took half of it in a swallow.

“You got your theories,” he said in a thick voice. “And you can’t prove them. And I ain’t going to help you prove them. But I will tell you one thing, and you listen, you’ll thank me. Leave this alone.”

“Why?”

“You don’t know what you’re into,” he said.

“What am I into?”

“Something too big for you.”

“What?”

Miller started to shake his head, but that made his nose hurt, and he stopped in mid shake.

“Too big,” he said.

“Tell me about the Gray Man,” I said.

“Who?”

“Tall guy, gray hair, pale skin, looks kind of gray, when I saw him he was dressed all in gray.”

“Don’t know any guy like that,” Miller said.

He sounded like he meant it. I had listened to a lot of lies and a little truth in my life, and I thought I had gotten pretty good by now at telling which was which. I didn’t depend on the skill. I had been wrong often enough to make me uneasy, but Miller didn’t sound like he was lying about the Gray Man.

“You got anybody else out there trying to chase me off this case?” I said.

“It’s way above me,” he said. “Way above me.”

“How far,” I said.

“Don’t know.”

Miller stood up suddenly. He held himself steady with one hand on the back of the chair.

“Don’t feel so good,” he said. “I’m going.”

He turned and walked to my door with a little wobble in his walk and opened the door and went out without closing it. I didn’t try to stop him. Instead I sat and thought about the interesting fact that the more I learned, the less I knew. Then I got up and went to the sink and let the cold water run over the knuckles of my left hand for a while.