Cuts Through Bone (7 page)

“How often do you get something like this?” she asked quietly.

Guthrie didn't hesitate; he might've been waiting on her question. “You thinking about bailing?”

She laughed. “Are you kidding? This's what I took the job for.”

“So you'll be thinking about bailing,” Guthrie said gloomily. “If you're looking for murder cases, you want to be a cop. Because this ain't normal for a PI.” He sighed. “Pick a place to eat, someplace we can sit for a while.”

Vasquez started the Ford and pulled out. She drove past St. John's and turned onto 110th Street. The traffic was light. “You didn't answer my question, Guthrie,” she said. “How often?”

The little man smiled. “You've learned some things in the past few days. I gotta give you that. Anyway, every few years something serious like this comes up. Sometimes back to back.” He shrugged. “This isn't where the money is at, you know. It's just where the reputation is at. You make a mark on something like this and people don't forget it.”

“But it's not where the money's at?”

“You gonna drive all the way to the East River?”

“Just down to the barrio, boss. I know a place where the burritos are so fat— What?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking about where we go after lunch. Maybe we should go over the river anyway, but it don't matter.”

She nodded. “The money, follow the money.”

“Most PIs do divorce, custody, insurance—that's steady money. You notice we do background checks, a little camera work, and sometimes just sitting and watching?”

She frowned, threw a sharp glance at him, and changed lanes to pass a truck dawdling on the inside lane. “Whitridge and his niece are the only two clients I've seen come through the door,” she said.

“Exactly. I don't do nickel-and-dime work. Retainers and recommendations only.”

“Whitridge has us on retainer?”

The detective nodded. Brownstones slid by outside the Ford's windows. Kids clustered on the street, waiting for cars to pass.

“So how is that?”

“People don't forget when you make a big mark,” Guthrie said. “Once upon a time, I was in the right place at the right time—and did the right thing.”

“So you were lucky?” She laughed.

“Sure. And I did it. These people know what I'll do, and they trust me to do that. It ain't hard for them to choose between me and calling a big agency where the operatives come and go.”

Guthrie and Vasquez parked down the street from La Borinqueña, a café in Spanish Harlem. The grill had a sharp smell of meat rescued just before scorching, mixed with peppers and tomatoes. The booths had a scattering of customers, and four old men surrounded one table, playing dominoes. Soft music played on a box-top radio. Vasquez took one of the window tables and fended off some razzing from the old men before she ordered.

“Papì always brought me here,” she said after the café settled back into rhythym. “These old guys all know me from when I can't remember. It looks just the same now as when we used to take the train down.” Art Deco tables from the fifties looked old on the red-and-white tile floor. She smiled. “You know I got it figured out now, right?”

“What's that?”

“Why you hired me.”

“Do tell,” Guthrie said, picking a tortilla chip from the basket on the table, then testing it for crunch. He nodded approval.

“You wanted me for a distraction when you interview.”

The detective laughed. “You saw that, huh? Little boys are so easy. And you did real good, challenging him—he wanted to convince you. You're learning.” He paused to eat more chips, and let her enjoy her victory. “It's a good thing that ain't all there is to it, right? When I knocked on your door, I didn't know you were pretty.
That
was lucky.”

“Ay!” she cried.

“Thought detective work was that easy, huh? Not a problem. You're a smart girl—you'll figure it out.”

*   *   *

By the time they'd finished eating, Guthrie had decided that their next move would be to examine Olsen's alibi. The NYPD interview report had a Westchester address. The afternoon was flaming hot, a typical dog day afternoon in the city. Vasquez drove past the Triborough to take one of the little bridges across the Harlem instead. The neighborhoods were empty except for the kids, and mostly they were packed into slim slices of shade. Vasquez whistled when they pulled up on Linney's address. The front of the tenement was sprinkled with bleary-eyed men nursing lunch from bottles wrapped in brown paper. There were no children, and only a few women. Philip Linney lived in a flophouse.

The veteran's room was on the third floor. A patch of fresh plywood subflooring, not yet carpeted, was the only clean smell in the hallway. Men stared at them through open doorways. The little rooms had twin beds and tiny matching bedside dressers. In most rooms, the decor favored empty bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and crumpled fast-food wrappers. One old white man, with nose and ears almost as large together as the rest of his head, shuffled into the hallway in a bathrobe when they were passing and unceremoniously dumped his small wastebasket onto the hallway's floor. He grunted a sullen greeting before turning around. His tattered bathrobe nearly left his ass uncovered.

Philip Linney lived in room 318. He shouted at them to come inside when they knocked on his door. The slim, dark black man was sitting slumped on the twin bed, peering out the window. A faint mustache rode his upper lip, and his hair was wild. An overlarge T-shirt sagged around his torso. He clutched a bag of cookies with one hand, leaving the other free to move them to his mouth. In one unswept corner, a small fan with a wire-head basket labored slowly atop a milk crate, but the room was still hot and sour-smelling. Light reflected in from the window without brightening the room.

“You're the detectives from the lawyer, right?” he asked.

“That's right.”

He studied Vasquez intently and then looked down into his bag of cookies. “You know the cops don't believe me,” he said bitterly. “They got Captain locked up.”

“I know. That's why we're here, Mr. Linney.” The little detective looked around at the wrappers and containers in the room. The smell was sour, but not from alcohol. “You been drinking, Mr. Linney?”

“Hell no,” he said softly. He ate a cookie. “Not in two days. I done stopped seeing shit.”

“You were drinking before.” Guthrie left it hanging in the air like a question.

“I know. Fucking dumbass, like a kid. My chance to take point for Captain, and I blow it.” He scrubbed at his face with his sleeve. “Captain called from the jail.
He
keeps calling to check on
me.
He ain't done this shit, man. He was
here.
Trying to straighten me out. Moms got killed, and I started tripping.” He scrubbed at his face again.

“So you're drying out?”

“Dried out. Just too damn late. Captain was talking me through.” He ate a cookie. “Paid for these, even.” He gestured at a stack of bags along the window side of the bed. “Juice and cookies, the Captain's prescription. Said nothing takes care of you like a cookie.”

“The lawyer said the cops tripped you up on days,” Guthrie said.

“On
days,
” Linney said, “but that don't matter. It's nights that matter. He was here every night. That's when things get bad.” He glanced at the window and shivered. The light seemed to reassure him. “I served under Captain for two years. They say Afghanistan's worse now, but that's bullshit. Just more people complaining makes it sound worse, because the bitching's coming from more mouths.”

Guthrie turned a milk crate so he could sit on it. “Can I get some cookies, Mr. Linney?”

“Yeah, sure.” He jogged at the bags. “You want chip or peanut butter? I ain't decided which juice I like best with each. I got lemonade, apple, and orange.”

“Lemonade and chocolate chip,” Guthrie said. When he stepped over to take the proffered snacks, Vasquez looked hard at a wall before settling into a lean against it. “So Olsen was here every night. What was the problem with the days?”

“I used to get loaded before sundown, okay? That was trying to get through the night. I couldn't remember which day Captain brought the cookies, so I picked one—and the receipt's in the bag. I'm wrong.” He glanced at the window again. “But he was here every night. All night. That's a fact. Captain always finishes the mission. There were times I hated that. Even hated him, but I'm past that. Captain is the real thing.” He watched Guthrie follow a cookie with lemonade.

“You know an AK makes a particular sound? I can pick it out on the street, when the stupid kids play games. It's got a heavier slug, too, sounds different when it hits. Splatters on rock like a fat raindrop.” He laughed. “When I first went in-country, they posted me up north. Mostly Euros up there, in the coalition, right? They hate the sound of guns going off. I had a street attitude—I'm tough, this shit's nothing, all that—just like the kids outside. Now I know better. A drive-by? See, it all changed when I shipped south. Over there, they build units that don't exist over here. You can be detached this, brevet that, temporary duty, stop-lossed. Supposedly they had a system once upon a time, but that went out when they started hurting for infantry. Once you go south, you find out why.

“Once I was temporary to Alpha Strike, I broke in quick,” he said. “Snipers down south are like flies—they'll drive a fucker crazy. Whole units have flipped out—massacres, called air strikes on ghosts, like that. The Pashies hate us. I mean, they hate everything, even the air they breathe, but right now Uncle Sam is at the top of the list.”

“So I ship in to Alpha Strike. I'm a newbie; I'm pulling perimeter. The snipers come out at night.
Bang-splat, bang-splat.
That's an AK, then the bullet striking. An hour into the duty, I'm huddled down like I'm getting rained on. Two pairs of boots walk up. It's Captain and Slip. Slip don't say nothing, just like normal. Captain goes, ‘So you don't know they can't hit you, then?' Big dumb bastard looks like a tree standing there, dripping that slow shit from his mouth. It takes him ten minutes to say anything.

“So he gets me up and starts pointing into the dark. ‘Where is he, Linney? Show him to me.' I look.
Bang-splat.
Captain don't even flinch. I don't see a flash. ‘He can't see you either, Linney. He's shooting the building, because he knows it's getting to you. They're out there taking turns, laughing.'
That's
the Captain. When he's standing there, you can feel your balls get bigger.”

Linney stood up slowly, like it hurt him to change positions. Once he stretched out, he was a slim six feet tall. He crept to the window and squinted into the daylight. “Long time until nightfall,” he said softly. He turned back around. “Are you doing something to help Captain, or is he fucked?”

“You're talking to him every day?” Guthrie asked. “And you're not keeping anything from him?”

His questions fell into the silence of the darkened room.

The vet went back to his bed and reached into his cookie bag. “You on some operational security shit, man. Go ahead, then,” he said. “But you better remember Captain ain't done it.”

The little detective stood up and turned the crate back onto its bottom. “Thanks for the cookies,” he said. “Keep yourself together, Mr. Linney. Olsen might still need you. The shooting was after nightfall.” He paused “Tell him to call me, will you?”

Linney nodded. “He better still need me. I give up drinking.” He laughed.

Guthrie and Vasquez entered the city again. The flophouse was like something that needed to be rubbed away, a sheen of sweat that lingered, unwelcome. The darkness, stench, and ticking quiet was the opposite of the city. Guthrie's old blue Ford wasn't fast enough to outrun the memory. He brooded as Vasquez drove back to Morningside Heights.

Crossing the Harlem, she asked, “You think maybe Linney got it mixed up?”

Guthrie shrugged. “I knew a vet like him, before—bright, funny, when he was sober,” he said. “‘Big Tom,' that's what everybody called him. Before the war, he was a boxer. Silver, gold gloves—he looked good. After the war he ain't had no legs, but he still had a fist like a ham. The VA put him to work making prosthetic arms and legs.

“Big Tom kept extra legs. He had one he drank beer from, and another he made special, he said, just a bit longer, so he could kick somebody's ass from farther away. Tom drank a lot after the war. He would get so drunk as to lay in bed and shoot holes in the walls with a Colt. He always said he was shooting at cockroaches, but I guess he was shooting at the ghosts he saw at night.” Guthrie fell quiet and started brooding again. He looked old, hiding under the brim of his brown fedora.

“So what happened to him?” Vasquez asked.

“He shot himself in the head in 1975.”

*   *   *

The night before, Guthrie had read the NYPD reports, but only found one witness he wanted to interview. He considered the file to be surprisingly thin. The detectives had done little work before pegging Olsen. A passerby had found Camille Bowman's cell phone on the sidewalk outside the Long Morning After, a dance club on 124th Street. The detectives talked to the bartender, and the interview impressed the detective enough that he included it in the daily report. Incidental interviews didn't usually cross over to the reports.

They walked over, after parking on 123rd, and Guthrie took a look at the exterior of Long Morning After. The windows were blocked out with lemon and orange floral designs, thickly painted on the inside of the glass. The neighboring frontage was boarded, and past that, an alleyway pierced through from the street. Bass notes thrummed the windows like a badly timed blinker. Guthrie watched two young men go inside, noting a locked-in vestibule with a concessions window. The little detective studied the sign like it was missing something.