He sighed loudly into the telephone. “All right, I’ll go down and see what they think they’ve got on your boy. With luck we’ll both walk out of there.”
An hour later he called me from downtown. The cops had released Ralston even before he had arrived. There were no charges pending; the evidence consisted only of motive, which the police still considered strong. Twelve thousand-five was a lot of money to a man with Ralston’s checkered past.
“Have they even asked along the block if anybody saw any strangers?”
“They weren’t about to tell me that. You’ve got to assume they did, and found nothing.”
“Which only means nobody was looking, nobody noticed, or nobody’s talking. Or they haven’t found the one who was, did, or will. But it gives them an excuse to stop looking, doesn’t it?”
“They think Ralston wanted the money so he could go back to his gambling, womanizing ways. The missus wouldn’t budge and things got out of hand. Frankly, Whiteside is having a hard time believing that a strapping young guy like Ralston, with his past, would form a personal attachment to a very plain older woman. Ugly I think is the word he used.”
“The son of a bitch had better not use it around me.”
“If he does, you smile, look in his pretty face, and say, ‘Thank you, Constable,’ on advice from your attorney.”
A cop had taken Ralston back to his home, Moses said, and it was assumed that’s where he was now. I thanked him and told him to send me a bill.
Then I drove back up to Globeville. Ralston’s car was no longer parked at the curb where I had seen it earlier, and now the street was quiet and dark. I went up onto the porch and banged on the door. Nothing. I came down into the yard and stood there for a moment wondering where he might be. Finally I realized I didn’t know him well enough to even begin such a hunt.
I was about to leave when I saw a shadow move on the porch next door. Then I saw the darting orange motion of a lit cigarette.
I walked over to the fence and said hi.
“Hey yourself,” came the gruff voice. A black male: not a kid, an older guy.
“You know Mike?”
“Yeah, I know him.”
“You know where he went?”
“Maybe I do. Who’re you and what do you want?”
“I’m his friend Janeway. I’d like to help him.”
“I don’t think anybody can do that.”
Before I could react, he said, “That man’s bleedin‘. He’s bleedin’ out of every crack and sweat hole. Awful damn thing, what happened.”
“Yeah, it was. Denise was great. I didn’t know her real well, but I sure liked what I knew.”
He said nothing.
“You know them well?” I said.
“About like you. Not long but long enough. They ain’t been livin‘ up here real long, and people here tend to mind they own business.”
“Did the cops talk to you?”
“Oh yeah. They talked to everybody.”
“You able to tell them anything?”
“Not a damn thing. I was sleepin‘ all afternoon. The Salvation Army marchin’ band could’ve come through here and I wouldn’a seen ‘em.”
There was a pause. “I work nights, sleep days,” he said. “This’s my night off.”
“Well,” I said. “You feel like telling me where he went? I want to help him if I can.”
“Then you better have one helluva fast car, friend. Mike said he was gettin‘ out of here, goin’ to Vegas.”
BOOK 2 - Baltimore
CHAPTER 14
Eastern Avenue was the color of a Confederate uniform and just about as empty in the pale light before dawn. The Treadwells’ building squatted in the block like a brick fortress. At one time it might have been respectable, with its tiled portico and the leaded glass in its front door. Now the tiles were cracked and worn, the tiny glass pieces in the door replaced with glass that matched poorly or not at all. The sign said books, and just inside the portico another sign, equally peeling, equally faded, was mounted on the door. ten a.m. to six p.m., seven days a week. I had more than four hours to kill.
I cupped my hands against the one clear window, but I could see little more than the dim outline of the front counter, a rickety-looking bookcase with a sign hawking sale books at a dollar each, and just inside the door a poster advertising book fairs in Wilmington next week, Washington next month, and Baltimore later in the summer. Shadows of more substantial bookshelves loomed in the darkness beyond.
I walked back to South Broadway and went down toward the harbor. I was looking for a cafe that might be open that time of morning, and what I found was a dingy place across from the market, which even then was beginning to come to life. I ordered a plate of grease and sat over coffee with my Baltimore Sun untouched on the vacant chair beside me. I could feel the weariness in my bones: the payoff for a general lack of sleep, compounded by the bumpy evening flight from Denver and the loss of two hours over the Mountain to Eastern time zones. It had been after midnight when I checked into a hotel not far from the bookstore. The events of recent days still played in my head, but I slept almost four hours, waking just before dawn.
I heard Willie Paxton’s voice like a broken record: smothered with the pillow…smothered with the pillow…smothered with the pillow…
I saw Ralston’s despair and felt my own.
I never know quite what to do at a time like that. I knew I could find Ralston if he had actually gone to Vegas. A man like that stands out. Give him time to settle and he’d be no problem.
Denise was another matter. If Whiteside didn’t find her killer, and I didn’t think he would, I would have to give it a try. Brave thoughts for an ex-cop who had just burned most of his bridges downtown. Brave thoughts when in all likelihood my first hunch had been the right one, that some two-bit burglar had killed her when she’d walked in and found him there. A spider, maybe a transient: a stranger, in any case. Those guys can be hell to catch, even when you’ve got the resources of a big-city department behind you. Even when you get prints, who do you match them to?
The guy jumps a train and he’s in Pittsburgh tomorrow.
Or he stays pat, right under your nose, and you still can’t find him.
I knew I couldn’t expect any help from the cops. Cops stick together, and I’d be an outcast after news of my snit with Whiteside made its way through the department.
But two days after Denise’s death I had walked along Ralston’s block, knocked on every door, and talked to everyone I saw. In my own police career I had sometimes found that two-day wait productive. It gives talk time to ripple through the neighborhood; it can smoke out a reluctant witness and bring new facts to light. I know the theory of the trail gone cold and most of the time it’s true. But more than once I had found something forty-eight hours later, just by walking the same walk and talking to the same people. In the third house across and down from Ralston’s, I found a kid, about twelve years old, who had seen a man come out of the house just before dark. He didn’t remember much but he was sure of two things: the man was in a hurry and the man was white.
On Saturday night, after brooding about it for another two days, I called Whiteside and left the kid’s name and address on an answering machine.
Thus had the weekend passed. On Monday I had this flight to Baltimore, bought and paid for, so this was what I did.
I walked for a while, found a little park and settled on a bench, where I recovered an hour of sleep. At ten o’clock I walked back to Treadwell’s, timing my arrival well after they’d be open and thus, I hoped, I’d be inconspicuous. But the closed sign was still out and the place was still dark. I cursed Treadwell’s work ethic and waited some more.