State’s Evidence Read online

  “Which feds?”

  “That cockamamy Strike Force they got up there in Frisco. They been buzzing around here like bees, know more about my business than I do. You tell them I don’t got Gus, so they should keep their eyes out for him. Also, if you’re the first one finds Gus, you tell me where he is and I handle it from there. Me and no one else. You got that?”

  “I can’t promise.”

  “You don’t got to promise, you just got to do.”

  “It would help if I knew who would have a reason to take Gus. Who might want to shake you down?”

  “I got some ideas, like I said, but for now I keep them to myself. That’s business, and I don’t talk about business. If it’s not business, or if I guess wrong, then you and the cops, maybe you’ll find him.”

  I tried to catch him off guard. “What happened down there on Oswego Street?” I asked.

  “You don’t need to know,” he said.

  “Who was the guy you hit? What was Phillip Vincent to you?”

  “Old business. It ain’t got nothing to do with this.”

  “I think it might.”

  “Forget it. Just find Gus. Bust your ass.” It was an order, the last one he intended to give me, at least right there. Fluto stood up.

  “Hold it,” I said. “If you want me to hunt for your grandson and carry messages to the DA and the feds, then you have to do something, too.”

  “What?”

  “Buy me a rug.”

  “What the hell you talking about? You making a joke? What kind of rug?”

  “A Sarouk. It’s Persian. Three feet by five. Write it down. I want exactly that kind.”

  “What do you need a rug for? You a goddamned Arab or something?”

  “A friend of mine lost one. In a fire. It was my fault and I want to pay him back.”

  “I don’t know nothing about no fire.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “A rug. A lousy rug.”

  “When you see what it costs, you won’t call it lousy,” I told him.

  “Hey. If they got one in this town, it won’t cost me nothing. Now you go find Gus.” His eyes shoved me toward the door, then through it.

  I left Fluto in the library and found my way out without passing through the waiting room. I stopped at a pay phone in the lobby and tried to reach Teresa Blair, but there was no answer at the house. James Blair wasn’t in his office. So I put in a call to Tolson. He came on the line with a grumble.

  “Any luck finding Gus Quilk?” I asked.

  “No. You?”

  “No, but I’m looking in the right place and you’re not.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Fluto doesn’t have him.”

  “Oh? What’d he do, cross his heart and hope to die? And you believed him? Well, if you think Tony Fluto would hesitate to kill a cop or a kid either one, you’re the guy who’s driving down the wrong fucking street.”

  “Fluto wouldn’t kill this kid.”

  “Why not?”

  “Take my word for it,” I said. “Which means Gus was most likely snatched by someone who’s moving against Fluto.”

  “Like who?”

  “It’s your town, you tell me. When we talked about this before, the only name that I recognized was this guy Wadley, owns a restaurant. Any other names come to mind?”

  “No, but I’ll check around.”

  “With the Strike Force?”

  “How do you know about them?”

  “Fluto told me. He said the feds have been paying a lot of attention to El Gordo lately. Somehow I don’t think they’re down here for the cuisine. In fact, I think the two guys who warned me off the case last week were Strike Force people. I told you about them, remember? One with a head like a peach; his partner with a petrified tongue? You got any ideas about that?”

  “They’re feds,” Tolson said simply.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “What good would it have done? I was trying to keep you out of all that.”

  “I’m in it now,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, I’ll pull some men off Fluto and have them look elsewhere. Like down the nearest sewer. By the way. The guy behind this Columbus Development Company? That you had us check? It’s Fluto.”

  “I know that already,” I said.

  My next call was to Tancy Verritt. When there was no answer at her apartment, I called the Racquet Club. The receptionist acknowledged that Ms. Verritt was on the premises. I was on the premises, too, in about fifteen minutes.

  The security guard came out of his little house still wearing his pith helmet and his consternation. I warded him off with a day-old version of the truth: “I’m working on an official police investigation,” I said. “If you need confirmation you can call Ray Tolson, chief trial deputy of the El Gordo district attorney. If you try to stop me you’ll be up on obstruction charges by the end of the day.” I smiled. “At least that’s what you can tell your boss.”

  He didn’t have anything in his job description or his world view to incline him to go up against me, so he waved me on with one hand and reached for the phone with the other. Then he dropped them both. “Fuck it,” he muttered. “Which one of ’em you gonna bust?”

  “Which one do you think?”

  He shrugged. “All of ’em could use a night in jail,” he said happily, then repositioned his helmet and went back inside his lair.

  Tancy Verritt was sitting with the same people, wearing the same clothes, wasting the same time. She tried very hard to ignore me, but since curiosity was the only organic emotion left within her, she looked my way within three minutes.

  I beckoned for her to join me. She said something to her friends and stood up. Chip put a hand on her forearm but she shrugged him off and walked to where I was. “What’s the matter?” she asked frostily. “Didn’t you dish out enough humiliation the other night?”

  “That wasn’t humiliation, that was salvation.”

  “I don’t need saving, thank you.”

  “It wasn’t you I was talking about.”

  “Oh.” She frowned. “What do you want?”

  “Let’s sit down,” I said. “This could take a while.”

  She hesitated but finally we crossed to a table off by itself and sat. A waiter was there in a flash. “When I saw you last, I was looking for Teresa Blair,” I said after the waiter had ambled off without a smile or an order.

  “So?”

  “So I found her.”

  “Good for you.”

  “Now I’m looking for someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “A boy named Gus Quilk. You know him?”

  “No.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I could care less what you think.”

  “Unfortunately for you, not everyone in town feels that way,” I said. “One person who doesn’t is the El Gordo DA. He’s going to care a whole lot when I tell him that it wasn’t only Teresa Blair and Gus Quilk who saw Tony Fluto run down Phillip Vincent, that there was one other person down on Oswego Street that night.”

  “Who? As if I cared.”

  “You.”

  Her eyes danced, a whirling reel that told me my hunch was right. “What makes you think I was there?” she asked when she got her nerves in check.

  “Something you said about a promise to keep you out of it, and something a man named Lufkin said about double-vision.”

  “Who’s Lufkin?”

  “No one you’d know; he does his drinking in public.”

  Tancy Verritt rubbed her mouth with her palm, smearing red off her lips and onto her cheek, making her mouth seem bruised and bloodied. “I didn’t see any killing,” she said softly.

  “DAs hear that a lot. They get real good at deciding who’s telling it straight and who isn’t.”

  She sniffed. “What are you here for? Who sent you?” Her voice rose like the call of a night bird.

  “No one sent me,” I said.
“I just need some information. Like I said, I’m looking for a boy.”

  “And if I talk to you?”

  “I let the DA find his own witnesses.”

  “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “I’m not a member of this club.”

  She squirmed in her chair, her face slack and overworked. Fear coursed through her like poison. “This scares me, you know,” she said. “I don’t need this. I left Vegas to get away from all of it, but now it’s back. Worse than before. Why don’t they ever stop? That’s what I can’t understand. They say they’ll stop, but they don’t. It’s in their blood. I swear it. Congenital mayhem.”

  “What exactly are you talking about? And who?”

  Her voice was shrill. “I’m talking about this … hatred. This war. This fighting and killing and pushing to get more or to keep someone else from getting more. I’m talking about madness. No one wins, and it’ll kill them all, sooner or later, and they know it, but they still keep on. Death junkies.” Tears streaked her cheeks and her words.

  “Who’s behind it?” I asked softly.

  “I’m not going to tell. I can’t. I’m no more than a roach to them. I’d be dead in a day.”

  Her face was closed to me, locked, and it would take a tool far more powerful than any I could use to pry it open. I decided to level with her. “I just came from a meeting with Tony Fluto,” I said.

  “Great.”

  I shook my head. “I know Fluto is Teresa’s father. And Mary’s father. And Gus Quilk’s grandfather.”

  The knowledge made me fearsome to her. She looked desperately around the deck for help. “What do you want to know?” she asked at last. “Just tell me, then get out of here and leave me alone.” She shuddered and not from cold.

  I leaned toward her, capturing her eyes. “What were you doing down on Oswego Street that night? What was going on? What brought all of you together? If I knew that, I might get a lead to the boy.”

  “I don’t know anything about the killing,” she repeated. “You’ve got to believe that.”

  “Then start at the beginning. Why were you down there?”

  “I was just along for the ride. With Teresa. She takes Gus down there every Sunday, almost.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Tony, Mr. Fluto, can’t stand the Quilks. Ted, especially, but Mary, too. I guess because she could have come over to him any time and didn’t, even though she’s had it about as bad as a woman can. The only way Tony could see the boy was for Teresa to pick him up and take him to the warehouse Tony owns down on Oswego Street. They would meet there.”

  “Was he alone that night?”

  “Always. He had a real thing about keeping it secret that Gus was his grandchild. He was afraid they’d do something to Gus to get at him, if they found out.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?”

  She shrugged. “It could be anyone. Even a complete stranger. You live like they live you have enemies you don’t even know about. Tony’s paranoid. All of them are. Especially James.”

  “James who?”

  “Shit.”

  “James Blair?” I repeated.

  “Yes,” she said softly.

  “What does he have to do with this?”

  “He’s Tony’s son.” She took a deep breath and forced it out. “James and Teresa are brother and sister. They, I don’t know, they work for Tony somehow or other. Now get out of here. I don’t care who you call, I’m not saying anything else about that.”

  Tancy Verritt saw the streak of shock on my face. “That’s a new one, huh, Mr. Detective? Your new pal Tony didn’t happen to mention that one, huh? People always think guys like Tony are playing straight with them, but guys like Tony never play straight. They don’t know how. Their kids don’t, either. Like I said. It’s in the blood.” Her laugh was meant to inflict pain and did.

  “Why did they pretend to be husband and wife?” I asked, still struggling with the ramifications of the Blairs’ true relationship.

  “I don’t know, exactly,” Tancy Verritt said. “I just know that ever since she came back from Vegas and started living with James, Teresa’s been a different woman. It’s like The Three Faces of Eve, remember that? Joanne Woodward, I think. Well, that’s the way Teresa is now. Nice one minute, cold as a clam the next. She doesn’t even like James—who does?—but still she stays out there in that, that doll house with him, doing something or other, who knows what. It’s weird.”

  “What do you think they do?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t want to know. If you’re smart, you’ll stay just like me. Dumb and happy.”

  “I think that only applies to animals.” I was having trouble focusing on what I had just learned and she took advantage of my silence.

  “I’m going now,” Tancy Verritt said. I held up a hand to stop her.

  “Why was the little man on Oswego Street killed? What was going on down there that night?”

  “I don’t know, I told you. I didn’t see anything.”

  “You were there.”

  “No, I wasn’t. Not exactly. We were all down there, and Tony and Gus were messing around like always, and then Tony said we’d better go because he was supposed to meet a guy in a little while. We started to leave but Teresa couldn’t get her car started. Tony got real nervous as time went past, and finally he told me to take Gus for a walk and not come back till someone came for us. So I did. I was real scared of the neighborhood but even more scared of Tony and what he might be doing, so me and Gus wandered around for about half an hour and then Teresa drove down and picked us up and we dropped Gus off on Winthrop Avenue and Teresa took me home and that was it.”

  “So Fluto was expecting someone.”

  “Right.”

  “Someone he knew.”

  “Right. That’s right.”

  “But you didn’t see what happened. Did Teresa say anything about it?”

  “No. Nothing.”

  “How about Gus?”

  “No.”

  “Could he have seen the killing?”

  “I don’t think so. He was running around all over the place, but we were pretty far away from the warehouse most of the time.”

  “So he probably bluffed the cops, doing the same thing his Aunt Teresa did.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Saving the godfather’s ass.”

  Tancy Verritt took two steps and stopped. “I’m leaving. If you turn me in to the police, I won’t tell them anything. But I guess that’s up to you.”

  “I guess it is,” I said. “Do you know where Teresa is now?”

  “No.”

  “James?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have any idea who might have snatched Gus?”

  “Anyone who knew the little prick. Hey. What do you mean, ‘snatched’?”

  “The cops were bringing Gus to court to testify against Tony this morning. He didn’t make it. The cop is dead and Gus is missing.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Who could have done it?”

  “I don’t know. Anyone I ever met in this town could have done it. They’re all crazy, those people.” Her last word was a scream that attracted other eyes.

  Tancy Verritt wiped the tears from her cheeks and hurried back to her friends. When she got to their table, she stood stock still, looking down at them, one by one. Then she turned and ran through a door marked Dressing Room. A moment later I heard her muffled sob. I went off to find a phone.

  Once again I couldn’t track down the Blairs, sister or brother. I thought about calling Tolson and telling him that Gus was probably a red herring, just like his Aunt Teresa, but I decided against it. I wanted Tolson to keep looking, to get me off the hook.

  21

  I couldn’t get where I wanted to. A burly cop directed me to take a left turn away from the roadblock he was standing by, then urged me to keep moving. I did what he told me to for only a block, then parked the car and set out on foot, back the way I�
�d come. They were keeping pedestrians back as well, but when the cop was giving directions to a girl in a Fiat I ducked under the sawhorse and walked down the middle of the street toward the restaurant, trying to look like I belonged there.

  The neon sign above the building was still blinking out its name, but the word was barely visible through the black geyser that engulfed it. I made my way through red pumpers and long ladder trucks and the reptilian swirl of fire hoses until I had a good view of the burning building. Black-slickered men rushed past me, lugging salvation and the equipment that produced it toward the flames. I looked for something or someone that would tell me what had happened.

  Smoke poured out of the rear of the restaurant in gushing columns, then mingled with the breeze and followed it everywhere. I was increasingly conscious of the heat of the blaze and of the terrible memories it evoked, memories too recently rekindled in the alley behind my office. I grabbed the arm of a fireman who seemed momentarily to lack a mission and asked him what had happened.

  “Grease fire, probably,” he said. “Usually is, with these joints.” His face was gaunt and smeared with soot; he might have just emerged from internment. “Started back by the kitchen, looks like,” he went on. “Going pretty good by the time we got here.” He sniffed, then rubbed his nose. “All these food joints are firetraps. Every one of them. Their safety record ain’t worth shit.”

  “Anyone inside?”

  “Nope. They’re closed between two and five, is the way I hear it. Real lucky.”

  “Maybe too lucky.”

  “You saying something here, buddy?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Someone should check it pretty carefully.”

  “And why is that?”