“May we help you good folks?” he asked. Jamaican.
“Either of you gentlemen know J. C. Damon?”
Mohawk said nothing. Rasta Man took a drag on his cigarette. “J.C.? Yes.”
“Seen him around today?”
“No. Not today.”
Parker did a slow scan of the space that had clearly been claimed by the messengers as their own. A couple of street-ravaged bikes leaned up against a wall. Random bike parts, beer bottles, and soda cans littered the counter. The room had been gutted of its commercial appliances. A filthy, old, once-white GE refrigerator stood in a fraction of the space occupied by what had been there before it. A nasty green sofa squatted where the range had been. A table and mismatched chairs sat near the back door, magazines and messy paperwork scattered over the table. The centerpiece was a hubcap being used as a giant ashtray.
“You know where he lives?”
Rasta Man shook his head. “What you need him for, mon?”
Parker shrugged. “He might have seen something go down last night.”
No reaction.
Ruiz stepped toward Mohawk. “What about you? What have you got to say for yourself?”
“I don’t know nothing about nobody.” Attitude now. He couldn’t run, he couldn’t hide, he went with attitude. “Nice bra.”
Ruiz tugged her coat into place. “The guy works here. How can you not know him, smart-ass?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t know him. I said I didn’t know anything about him.”
“Would you know him if I threw you up against that wall and found dope in your pockets?”
Mohawk frowned. Parker shook his head and rolled his eyes. “I apologize for my partner. She’s got a short fuse. One brutality charge after another.”
Ruiz cut him with a look. “He’s wasting our time. What do you want to do? Stand around and smoke a joint with them?”
“That would be against regulations,” Parker said easily.
She called him a turd in Spanish.
Rasta Man exhaled smoke through his nostrils. “J.C. We call him the Lone Ranger.”
“Why is that?” Parker asked. “Does he wear a mask? Carry a silver bullet? Shack up with an Indian?”
“Because he likes to be alone.”
“No man is an island.”
The courier pushed away from the sink. Standing beneath his spectacular head of gray-brown dreadlocks was a body as strong as a tree. His thigh muscles, clad in black spandex, looked as if they had been carved by a master sculptor. He walked over to the hubcap ashtray, the clips on the toes of his bike shoes clacking on the concrete floor.
“That one is,” he said.
Parker took out his wallet, flashing a stack of green bills as he dug out a business card and flicked it onto the worktable, in the direction of Mohawk. “If you hear from him, he should give me a call.”
He put his wallet away and went out the back door. Ruiz nearly knocked him down, shoving her way around him, trying to get in his face.
“What the fuck was that about?” She kept her voice low, but caustic nonetheless.
“What?”
“You could have gone with me. Backed me up on the drug thing. We could have twisted the little punk.”
Parker looked at a couple of bikes chained to a gas meter. “I could have. But that’s not the way I wanted to play it. My case, follow my lead. Your case, I’ll let you alienate as many people as you want.”
The alley was like any alley downtown, a narrow, dirty valley between brick buildings. The strip of sky above was the color of soot. The limited parking spots behind the businesses were crowded with delivery vans huddling together like horses in the soft rain.
“And your lead is to bribe everybody?” Ruiz said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ms. Ruiz. No money changed hands.”
A dark blue minivan sat wedged into a parking space between a wall and a green Dumpster. PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR STUDENT was neatly affixed to the back window. Eta Fitzgerald’s car.
“The idea of available money is out there,” Parker said, walking around the van. “Doesn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t make any offers. But you never know. Mohawk might think an offer was implied. The notion might influence him to tell us something he otherwise wouldn’t have.”
Ruiz didn’t want to calm down. Parker thought she enjoyed being angry. Anger was the fuel for her energy. And it probably made her feel bigger than she was, stronger than she could ever physically be.
“And then what?” she demanded. “He comes forward, tells you something, and you stiff him?”
“He comes forward, tells me something, I save him from you. I should be so lucky to have someone do that much for me.”
He took a peek inside the van through the windows. The usual load of family crap. A football helmet, action figures, and a black Barbie. Loose bottles of Arrowhead water that had to roll around like bowling pins when the car was in motion.
“What are you doing running around with that much money anyhow?” Ruiz demanded crossly.
“You don’t know how much money I have. I could have twenty dollars in ones, for all you know. It’s none of your damn business anyway.”
She decided to pout, crossing her arms over her chest, shoving her cleavage upward, red lace tempting the eye. “What are we looking for?”
Parker shrugged. “I just like to have the lay of the land.”
“Let’s go find this guy. I’m freezing.”
“Sixty percent of your body heat escapes out the top of your head.”
“Shut up.”
He started to move away from the van, then glanced back, something catching his eye. He frowned, and went back into the building, Ruiz at his heels like a terrier.
Eta Fitzgerald, once again juggling phone and radio mike, froze and stared at them as they approached her window. “What now?” she demanded. “You’re just a bad penny, you. Why don’t you go spend yourself somewhere else?”
Parker grinned at her and put a hand against his chest. “You’re not happy to see me? I’m crushed.”
“I’d like to crush something. Get on with it. You’re worse than a child.”
“It’s your car,” he said. “Can you come out back with us for a minute?”
She turned ashen, cut the mike, and hung up the phone. “My car? What about my car?”
Parker motioned for her to follow, and went back down the hall.
Outside, the mist was thickening again, raindrops falling spontaneously around them. Parker adjusted his hat and went to the back of the van.
The dispatcher followed reluctantly, her breathing short and labored, as if she’d run a race.
“It’s your taillight,” Parker said, pointing. “Busted out. Not a lot of damage, but still . . . You’ll get pulled over for it on a day like this.”
Eta Fitzgerald stared at the back of the van. Her expression was one of sudden nausea.
“Not by me,” Parker went on. “They don’t let me write tickets anymore. Something about road rage . . . I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“Thank you, Detective,” she said softly. “I appreciate that.”
Parker tipped his hat. “We’re here to serve.”
13
Jace watched from across the alley, from inside a soggy cardboard box that had been left behind an Italian furniture store. Crumbs of Styrofoam packing peanuts clung to him like fleas.
Staying in Eta’s backseat was too risky. He’d been a captive there, trapped, vulnerable. No good. He needed space, a vantage point, escape routes. As soon as she’d gone inside, he had slipped out of the van and gone across the alley. The box squatted, half-hidden, in front of the furniture store’s delivery truck. The store didn’t open for another couple of hours. He was safe to squat there for a while.