Past Due (31 page)

I
DIDN’T KNOW
I
was in a race. If I had known I was in a race I wouldn’t have gone back to the office after my meeting with the justice. I wouldn’t have briefed Beth on what had happened to Rashard. I wouldn’t have called Rashard’s mother to tell her it was all being taken care of, that I had already taken her son’s problem to the highest levels. If I had known time was of the essence I wouldn’t have answered my mail and filled in my time sheets before showing up to ask my question. And that’s all I had, one question, a single question, whose answer I already knew.

The sign of the Chop Shop consisted primarily of a huge Harley-Davidson logo, with the store’s name in small block letters beneath the great orange shield. It was a storefront on a narrow road in a grimy commercial part of the city just a few blocks south of South Street. By the time I got there it was dark already and the stores on either side of it were closed for the night and the street was empty. I thought I might be too late, that Lonnie might be gone for the night, but through the bars protecting the plate-glass window I could see a dim light.

I pushed open the door. A cowbell jangled.

The narrow front of the store was a jumble of parts and accessories, exhaust pipes, saddlebags, gas tanks, tires, a row of handlebars fastened to the wall. The counter was piled with old engine fittings,
loose papers, greasy rags, but it wasn’t the mess that struck me first when I entered, it was the reek, a strong and vile combination of ammonia and gasoline and the sharp acridity of methyl alcohol. It forced me to put a hand over my nose.

“Lonnie?” I called out. “Yo, Lonnie. You there?”

No answer.

I made my way around the counter, through a dark doorway into a large space, lit thinly by a soft glow emanating from the rear. The reek became stronger, like a noisome wall, and I gagged as I moved forward. In the shadows I could see parts of a grease-stained cement floor, cinder-block walls, workbenches, hulking motorcycles in various states of being ripped apart.

“Lonnie?”

No answer.

Beyond was a wide, closed door, which I assumed led to the alleyway in the back, through which the bikes were brought. He might be in the alley, I figured. I carefully made my way around the workshop and headed for the door. The foul stench grew stronger, thick and vile, overpowering, it burned my nose and throat, my eyes. I coughed and thought I heard another.

“Lonnie?”

I hurried my pace, tripped over something metal, headed for the alley and fresh air, and then, just as I reached for the door, I tripped over something else.

I stopped, turned to see what it was.

“My God.”

A body, faceup, lying half in–half out of a small office beside the doorway to the alley, a body lit softly by a flicker of blue fire. I reached into the office, felt around for a switch.

“Oh my God.”

It was Lonnie, of course it was Lonnie.

He was lying on the floor, between two workbenches. The benches were filled with beakers and burners and vials set up in the whole mad scientist configuration, flames shooting out here and there, and the smell in that room was murderous. Even as I fought to hold my breath, my skin itched and my eyes burned and the chemical reek was like a living thing fighting to keep me away.

I leaned over him. He was warm, still. His face was in a snarl, his hands were clenched, a wrench in one of them, and there was a small hole in his forehead. From the thick pool beneath his head I didn’t need to imagine what the back looked like. I turned to the side and threw up.

And over the brutal sound of my retching I heard something in the shop, a piece of metal spinning across the floor.

I leaped up, turned back to the shop, saw a shadow flit out of the doorway. I ran toward it. I ran toward it and something jabbed into my thigh and I flipped over. I fell hard onto my shoulder just as something heavy and metallic crashed beside me and a burning ran up my leg.

I tried to push myself up but I couldn’t, my leg was trapped by a fallen bike. I grabbed the edge of the seat, heaved, yanked my leg free, and started again toward the shadow, banging my hurt shoulder into the door. The pain spun me around and knocked me to my knees.

I grabbed hold of the doorjamb, pulled myself up, headed again through the dark passageway toward the front.

All I wanted was a glimpse, I didn’t want to stop him, I was willing to let him go, that fit my style, no heroics, let him go, absolutely, but I wanted a glimpse, I needed a glimpse.

I lunged for the door and pushed it open and as soon as I did the store behind me exploded.

T
HERE IS SOMETHING
perversely cheerful about a crime scene in the middle of the night, the pulsating red and blue lights, the great beams of white, the strobes of—aw, the hell with it.

There was nothing cheerful about what was happening outside the Chop Shop as it burned to the ground along with the two stores on either side of it. The fire trucks came with remarkable speed and the firefighters moved with the calm alacrity of men and women used to holding back the thin yet lethal edge of entropy, but there was not much they could do, what with all the accelerants, both legal and illegal, in Lonnie’s shop feeding the ferocity of the fire. It was Lonnie who had supplied meth to the gang twenty years ago, Lonnie with the wild burning eyes, and I supposed he had gotten back into the business.

Coughing all the while, I told a fire captain everything of what I had seen inside and he told me I should tell it to the fire investigators. I told the fire investigators everything of what I had seen inside and they told me to tell it again to the uniformed police. I told one of the uniformed police everything of what I had seen inside and she told me to wait for the police detectives to arrive.

“Get McDeiss,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow at me.

“Tell him Victor Carl is the witness. He’ll show.”

I stood off to the side, my arms tight around my chest, waiting for the detectives. And then at the edge of the crowd I saw her, staring at the scene with wet eyes, her pretty face drained of all emotion except pain. Chelsea. I walked over to her, lifted the yellow tape. When one of the uniforms started giving me a hassle I just stared at him for a moment and he backed off. I brought Chelsea away from the crowd, to a spot where the fire’s heat could still be felt.

“They said someone was dead,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Is it…”

“Yes,” I said, reaching out and pulling her toward me, holding her as she cried.

“Damn him,” she said, her tears hitting now the street. “Damn him.”

“Who?”

“I told him to stop. I told him it was crazy dangerous. But he missed it. All this talk about the old days. His time in the center of it was coming back to him and he couldn’t help himself. But it’s like Cooper says, the old road always ends in despair.”

“But it wasn’t just a fire, Chelsea.”

She pulled away, looked up at me.

“He was murdered,” I said.

“No. It can’t be.”

“I found his body. Before the fire. He was shot.”

“Stop.”

“Any idea who?”

“No.”

“Any enemies?”

“No. No.” She turned toward the burning building, watched as the fire succumbed to the torrents of water. “Everyone loved him. He was just a kid. An old kid. He never grew up. But there was something rich about him, as if the current of life moved raw through his body. People felt more alive just being near him.”

“And he loved you.”

“Yes.”

“Always and forever.”

She bowed her head. “Yes.”

“It was in his eyes every time he looked at you.”

“Victor, what am I going to do?”

“What does Cooper say? He seems to have the answer to everything.”

“You know what he says, Victor? He says the living go on dying, only the dead will rise unchanged.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know, but right now I hope it’s true.”

Chelsea and I were still standing together some twenty minutes later when Detective McDeiss, wearing his black porkpie hat, ducked beneath the yellow tape, accompanied by our good friend K. Lawrence Slocum. By then the blaze was under control, the crowd had lessened, the street was strewn with water and debris, the air foul with the burning.

“Everywhere you show up is a party, Carl,” said McDeiss, shaking his head as he scanned the desolation, acting as if I was the root cause of the current tragedy. “We ought to put a bell around your neck.”

I introduced the detective and Slocum to Chelsea, told them she was the dead man’s ex-wife. McDeiss asked a few questions and then led her to another officer.

“The detective will take her home after he gets a full statement,” said McDeiss after he returned.

“Thank you.”

“I suppose she’ll have to identify him.”

“I don’t think there’ll be much to identify.”

“Probably not,” said McDeiss.

“All right,” said Slocum. “What happened?”

“I’ve told it three times already.”

“Tell it again,” he said, and so I did, everything from the moment I stepped into the shop until it blew up behind me.

“You see who it was who was running?” said McDeiss.

“No. As soon as I opened the door the place exploded and I was kissing pavement. It was all I could do to get to the other side of the
street and away from the flames. By the time I remembered to look around there was nothing.”

“Did you call nine-one-one?”

“With my cell.”

Slocum was shaking his head at the ruined buildings, the singed facades of brick, the devoured roofs with just parts of the skeletal structure still poking through.

“You sure he was shot?” said McDeiss.

“Pretty sure. I didn’t have time for an autopsy.”

“Maybe he just was overcome by the fumes and fell. Dangerous thing cooking up crank.”

“It looked like he was shot.”

“Any idea of the caliber?”

“Look, I’m not Charleton Heston, all right. Only thing I know about guns is that when I see one I cringe and say, ‘No, please, don’t shoot.’ ”

Slocum rubbed his hand with his mouth. “Okay, Carl,” he said. “I’m afraid to ask but I’m going to anyway. Who was he, this Lonnie Chambers?”

“Twenty years ago,” I said, “he was in Tommy Greeley’s drug ring.”

Slocum rubbed his mouth again. McDeiss turned around and kicked the curb and then hopped around in pain.

“Here’s the story,” I said. “Twenty years ago Tommy Greeley was sleeping with Lonnie Chambers’s wife. Lonnie didn’t like that. Lonnie went to Tommy’s girlfriend to tell her about it, but she didn’t react like he had hoped. She had her own issues to deal with. So Lonnie started following Tommy to find who else he might be screwing and he did, yes he did.”

“Who?” said Slocum.

“Who do you think?

“Jesus Christ, Carl. Didn’t we talk about this?”

“She came to me.”

“And what about him? Have you been a good boy?”

“Until today.”

“Carl.”

“A client who should be in art school was stepped back into
prison as a way for that bastard to get back at me. The client’s a good kid and he’s going to jail just so that bastard can make his point.”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“Really? Talk to the ADA, Melissa Carter, see what she has to say. She was as shocked at the sentence as I was. And remember I told you I was beat up and threatened in my vestibule. I’m certain it was his file clerk, a man named Curtis Lobban, who did the beating and the threatening.”

“You said you didn’t see a face.”

“I recognized his voice.”

“That will sure convince a jury. You promised you’d stay away from them.”

“She’s a vampire,” I said, “and he’s a murderer.”

“He’s a Supreme Court justice.”

“And a murderer.”

“You don’t know.”

“It’s pretty clear to me.”

“You sure this Lonnie found out about the two of them?”

“She told me so yesterday.”

“You sure he told the justice about it?”

“Pretty sure. It seems like he was looking for someone to tell. I was going to ask Lonnie about it just to be certain. That’s why I was here. But I mentioned Lonnie to the justice today. I even told him where the shop was.” As it dawned on me, I spun around in frustration. “I led the bastard right to him.”

“So you’re not sure that Lonnie told the justice back then.”

“Not absolutely, no. But that’s exactly why he killed Lonnie and set the place on fire. That’s exactly why he killed Joey, because Joey could have traced back the killing of Tommy Greeley to him. He’s covering his tracks. And that’s how I ended up in jail when you bailed me out, because of him. He’s doing what he can to discredit and discourage me because I am on to him.”

“Or maybe it was simply an entry error.”

“You don’t believe that. You
don’t
believe that.”

“And maybe this Lonnie was killed by someone not so happy about a competitor cooking up methamphetamine and selling it on
his turf. Perhaps one of the local motorcycle gangs who run the business up and down the East Coast.”

“You’re looking to look the other way.”

“It’s a tough business he was in,” said Slocum.

“How does Babbage fit into your theory?” said McDeiss. “Why would the justice care about Babbage?”

“Maybe Babbage knew something to connect Straczynski to the drug ring. Or maybe Babbage’s death was just a heart attack.”

“Montgomery County coroner, when I asked him, seemed to think it was exactly that,” said McDeiss. “Acute myocardial infarction. Only when I looked at the report something seemed a little off. Some missing hair off the back part of his scalp.”

“Oh?”

“Torn out.”

“It’s him, I’m telling you.”

“It sounds personal,” said Slocum.

“He killed one client. Stepped back another into an unjust sentence. He sent his clerk out to beat me up. He threw me in jail. And now he almost incinerated me. Yeah. It’s personal.”

“How’s your dad?” said Slocum.

“Not good,” I said, “and getting worse,” and as I said it a wave of hopelessness washed over me. It started with my thinking about my father, who was indeed getting worse, every day, every hour, and there was nothing I could do about it, but it wasn’t just my father. I was up against a man whose power was beyond my comprehension, who could throw me in jail, ruin my clients, kill my friends with impunity. I was up against a man who could destroy me absolutely, if he wanted, and he apparently wanted. And the two men in the city’s employ that I admired most, that I had trusted could help me, were turning their backs on what I was sure was the truth. And there was nothing, nothing I could do about it. Nothing.

“He’s going to get away with it,” I said, my voice flat with despondency.

“Why don’t you go clean up and then visit your father in the hospital,” said Slocum.

“It’s past visiting hours.”

“Go on home then, Victor. Get some rest.”

“You aren’t going to do anything. He’s too powerful.”

“Get some rest,” said Slocum.

“You’re terrified of him.”

“By the way,” said Slocum. “You’ll find out tomorrow. The Bar Association has started proceedings against you on the Derek Manley thing. They’re going to try to pull your ticket.”

“It’s him. Don’t you see? Don’t you?”

“Go home and get some rest, Victor. We’ll be in touch. Just go home.”

I went home.

I left Slocum and McDeiss huddled on the sodden, scarred street and went home. My suit stank of smoke and chemicals, was ripped at the knee and the shoulder, a total goner, as were my shirt and socks, all of it smelling as if I had been dancing like a medicine man in the middle of a campfire. Only my tie came through unscathed. But I didn’t undress as soon as I came home, didn’t strip and shower and scrub the stench of the black night off my skin and out of my hair. Instead, I went straight to the photographs pinned to my wall and began, one by one, to rip them down.

They repulsed me, now that I knew how they were taken and whom they were of. One by one I ripped them down and let them drop like dead leaves onto the floor. One by one. But then I stopped.

It was the despair that was driving me, I realized, not the photographs. There was still something clean about them, something of the ideal in them. They had captured not Alura Straczynski, in all her vainglory, but instead the dreams and hopes of Tommy Greeley. I could imagine him, atop his collapsing drug enterprise, the dogged Telushkin sniffing here, sniffing there, getting closer to closing it down and putting him in jail. But there, in that spider’s web of a studio, behind the barrier of a camera, Tommy Greeley maybe thought he spied something true and pure, something that might be able to save his life. And he captured it. Snap snap. And it was still alive, on my wall. And even if it had proved a pathetic illusion, there it was, the thing he prayed would transform his life. On my wall.

My father had felt the same way as Tommy Greeley, I was sure, about the love of his life, his Angel. And though that vision had proven just as illusory, just having it was more than I had ever given him credit for. My father. It was all almost enough to give me some hope.

But only almost. Because I knew the truth of it, the truth behind everything. That our certainties are all false, our dreams are all lies, our loves will always betray us.

The living go on dying, only the dead will rise unchanged.

Maybe he was right, Cooper Prod, meditating on the sins of his past in his prison ashram. Maybe the only hope for life was death.

It was too late to visit, but I called the fourth-floor nurses’ desk anyway, just to find out how he was doing, my father, how he was doing.

Not so well.