The phone rang at 8:05.
I pounced on it.
“It’s me,” Sam said.
“Another field trip?” I asked. “I think I’m busy.”
“I’m calling from the pay phone outside Moe’s. The place is crowded even after a blizzard.”
Moe’s Bagels was in a little shopping center on North Broadway not far from Sam’s house. I made an assumption that he was out for his prescribed morning rehab walk and was seeking moral support from me much the way that an alcoholic might call his sponsor from outside a saloon. I said, “It’s okay, Sam. But get something with whole grain. And nonfat cream cheese. Not the good stuff. But lox is okay. Omega-three oils.”
“I’m not asking for help with the menu. I’m calling from a pay phone outside of Moe’s so that if somebody ever subpoenas your phone records, they won’t show that I talked to you at eight o’clock on this Sunday morning.” His tone was gruff.
I sat down. “Yeah? Why?”
“Because Sterling Storey is dead. And I’d rather people not know that I’m the one who told you. Just in case that becomes important.”
“What?” My exclamation had to do with surprise at the news of Sterling’s death. But I was also wondering how it could become important from whom I’d heard the news. Paranoia wasn’t part of my friend’s character, so I assumed that Sam was a step or two ahead of me. Although all the chess pieces appeared blurred on the board to me, Sam was plotting moves farther down the line.
“Lucy came by to see me last night, kind of late. You know, to check on me. She told me about it.”
“Why is Lucy worried about you?”
“That’s not why I called, either, Alan. Focus.”
I considered pressing it; after all, he’d offered the opening. But I didn’t. “Okay, then what happened to Sterling?”
“I don’t know what happened to Sterling Storey. All I know is what I’m hearing.”
Another one of those critical distinctions that Sam liked to make. I asked, “And the Storey story is what?”
His voice changed. It became a little louder, a little less patient. “Hold on. I’m waiting for a woman to stop staring at me thinking I’ll get off the damn phone any second if she’s rude enough. I hate that. Don’t you hate that? Now she’s like five feet away. She’s staring right at me. I’m staring right back at her.
“Hey, lady, I’m going to be a while, do you mind? Get over it.”
“Did she go away?”
“She’s like sixty or something-she looks exactly like my aunt Esther-and she just flipped me off behind her back as she was walking away. What is that? I don’t think I want to live in a society where old people are pricks.”
“She’s an exception, Sam. Tell me about Sterling.”
“You know he was in Florida, producing coverage for some football game? Yeah, of course you know that. After his damn football game was over yesterday, he was driving from Tallahassee to visit an old college friend in Albany, Georgia. You know where that is? Me, neither. Personally, I think he was avoiding coming back here to face the music, but it’s a free country, right? Until the cuffs are on, hey-he can do what he pleases. Lots of people want to talk to him, but nobody was ready to arrest him.
“Anyway, there was some freak rainstorm all across southern Georgia yesterday. Flash floods, the whole thing. A biblical-type storm. Witnesses say a car went off the highway and was about to slide into the Ochlockonee River. If I said that name right, I deserve a prize. I thought Minnesota had goofy names for places, but the South? It’s like they had a goofy name contest and there were a thousand winners. No, ten thousand winners.
“Anyway, Sterling, being the sweet guy we all know he is, stopped his rental car and went to help this woman whose car was about to go in the river. He slipped on the bank, fell in, and went underwater almost immediately. His body hasn’t been found.”
“Wow.”
“That’s it? ‘Wow’?”
“Sam, the man’s about to be picked up for questioning for a homicide and instead he dies a damn hero trying to rescue a stranger from a car wreck? That’s world-class irony.”
“Warms your heart, doesn’t it? Three witnesses to the whole thing, too. One of them is a damn preacher. The others are twin sisters. A social worker and a pediatrician.”
“I take it you don’t believe what you’re hearing?” Sam often didn’t believe what he was hearing. It wasn’t evidence of a character defect so much as it was the foundation that made him a good detective.
“What do the lawyers say? Render up the body? Do I got that right? Well, when they render up the body, then I’ll believe it. It’s all too convenient as far as I’m concerned.”
“How do you fake a rainstorm and a biblical flood, Sam? Sterling Storey isn’t Moses.”
“Moses? What Bible do you read? Moses doesn’t fake any floods in the Bible I read. Forget my question-I don’t want to know what Bible you read. No. All I’m saying about Sterling Storey is that maybe… maybe the guy thinks on his feet, that’s all.”
“I assume that the Georgia cops are looking for his remains.”
“They are. The river he went into-I’m not going to try to say the name again-is pretty wild, apparently. Lots of things underwater-trees and shit-where a body could get caught up.”
“Sam, why do you care about this case so much? You have plenty more important things to worry about.”
He was silent for ten seconds before he replied, “I’m not sure. I think I’m going to go back home.”
“Wait, Sam. Hold on. Do you know anything about Jara Heller’s husband? Judge Heller?”
“I saw the paper. Nothing more than that.”
“Will you do something for me? Will you check and see how they became suspicious of him? How they knew he was involved?”
“Why?”
“It’s important.”
“Somebody fingered him. You can count on it. Maybe he walked into a sting, but odds are somebody gave him up. You hang around with people who do drugs, especially people who buy and sell drugs, you come to realize that it’s not the most honorable segment of our society.”
“Just check for me, please. If somebody turned him in, I’d love to know that. I promise I won’t ask who did it.”
“You promise?”
“Yes, Sam.”
“That means you already know who turned him in. You just want me to confirm it for you. Am I right?”
I stammered.
He said, “You should be seeing a higher quality of clientele. You hang out with a lot of scum.” Then he hung up.
Across the room Grace-bless her-continued to entertain herself. She was absolutely captivated by the wrong end of a spoon.
I called my office phone and checked for a call from Gibbs. I wondered if she even knew what had happened to her husband the previous night, whether anyone had called her.
The only messages on my voicemail were from other patients. One was a cancellation; another was from a patient requesting an additional session. And one was a confirmation from a paranoid-obsessive guy I was treating named Craig Adamson. Craig always required confirmation that I hadn’t forgotten his next appointment. Always. It was sad.
All in all, the messages on my voicemail were a zero-sum game and included no frantic calls from Gibbs Storey.
I was trying to decipher what that meant when, behind me, Lauren said, “Who was that who called?”
A big smile exploded across Grace’s face, and she said, “Mom Mom.”
I pivoted.
TWENTY-NINE
My eyes stayed glued on the cranky old lady until she was all the way down by the wine store. I didn’t want her to think I was getting off the line for her. When she hopped from the curb to jaywalk over toward Ideal Market, I hung up the phone.