The sheriff lit up a cigarette and moved a handful of papers to expose a generous ashtray. Riker smiled and reached for his own cigarettes. So far, he liked this little town a lot. He had been in motion for two days on a nonsmoking train, only stopping for a quick lunch in the town square. He had wanted to kiss the floor of Jane’s Cafe at the sight of an ashtray on every table.
“So, Riker, I hear you New Yorkers ain’t number one in crime and murder anymore.”
“Oh, sure we are. And you would know that, if our police commissioner wasn’t the best liar in fifty states.” Riker exhaled a cloud of smoke and felt utterly at home, despite the trappings of another century.
“I don’t know about that.” The sheriff tossed a match and missed the ashtray. He eased his feet up on the desk, knocking files down to the floor, and winning Riker’s heart as a fellow slob. “Miami seems like a real up-and-comer in the killing trade.”
“Well, Miami’s real competitive. They claim to kill more tourists than we do, but that’s a damn lie.”
“According to the newspapers, you New York boys doubled the drop in crime nationwide.”
“That’s slander,” said Riker. “The top cop decentralized the department, and the mayor fired the press liaison. The reporters had no way to check the stats.” Riker draped one leg over his chair and dropped a long log of ashes on the pantleg of his suit. “It’s all politics. New York has the best politicians dirty money can buy.”
“Sorry, Riker. That happens to be our state motto. But you can be forgiven for brassing. We do admire that down here.”
And now Riker wondered why the sheriff had not asked him about his business in Dayborn. Just how slow did things move in this part of the world?
“There’s a friend of yours in town,” said the sheriff. “A man named Charles Butler.”
Well, that explained a lot. How much damage could Charles have done by now? “A friend of mine? This guy says he knows me?”
“He’s from New York City, too.”
“New York is a real small town, Sheriff, only eight million people. And you’d think we all know each other on a first-name basis, but we don’t.”
“What about the man that owned this?” The sheriff fished in his shirt pocket and pulled out a pocket watch. “Louis Markowitz? That name ring any bells?”
“Never heard of him,” said Riker, denying the friendship of three decades, and never going for the bait – not looking directly at the golden disk swinging from the chain in the sheriff’s hand. He made a mental note to rag Mallory about the sentimental mistake of not ditching that watch with the rest of her identification.
“If you think this Markowitz is from New York, I’ll run the name through the department and see what they turn up.” New York had more Markowitzes than Israel did. Riker was confident that he could find one who had not been the former commander of NYPD’s Special Crimes Section.
“Thanks, Riker. I’d appreciate that. But you are here about the prisoner.”
“I’m here because you sent the FBI a serial number on a Smith and Wesson revolver. NYPD has a match. The gun was used in a fifteen-year-old homicide.”
And that much was true. Riker remembered the day, four years ago, when Mallory had pocketed the revolver during a rookie’s tour of the evidence room. She had wanted a gun that would make bigger holes than her police-issue.38. “It’s an unsolved case.” And that was a lie. The case had been closed when both robber and victim had died in a deli shoot-out.
The sheriff seemed skeptical. “Riker, if your homicide was fifteen years ago, it couldn’t be my prisoner. She wouldn’t have been but nine or ten years old then. I can’t see a little girl doing murder with a gun.”
“No, of course not,” said Riker, with somewhat less conviction. He pictured Mallory at the age of ten, when he was still allowed to call her Kathy. Yeah, he could see the kid with a gun. However, Inspector Markowitz and his wife had eventually broken their foster child of all the worst habits and crimes against humanity. “I’d like to talk to your prisoner and ask her where she got that revolver.”
“And of course, you’d like to have the gun back. That’s a lot of paperwork.”
“NYPD doesn’t want any noise, Sheriff. Nothing over the computer, nothing on the phone and no paper trail. The old homicide could be federal jurisdiction. If the FBI finds out that gun is connected, they’ll be all over this town, and they’ll have a warrant for your prisoner. I don’t think you want that any more than I do.”
And now he could see that the sheriff did not want that, not at all.
Riker knew he could always count on mutual law-enforcement contempt for the martinets of the FBI, though he owed one of them a favor for withholding Mallory’s fingerprints. He was only a little uneasy about the payback on that highly illegal good deed.
“I can’t help you, Riker.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Don’t like to waste words, do you? Well, I can see your interest in – ”
“Save the folksy crap for the tourists.” Riker leaned over and smashed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “You bet your ass we have an interest. Now I’m not gonna play village coot with you.” He stood up with the pretense of stalking out. “You don’t want to give us the gun? Fine! If you make my life miserable, then maybe I’ll call in the feds myself. You think I won’t push back?”
The sheriff smiled and exhaled a lazy stream of smoke. “The prisoner and the gun are gone. You wanna join me for a drink, Riker?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
Deputy Lilith Beaudare waited until the sheriff’s car pulled away from the Dayborn Bar and Grill. Tom Jessop was alone at the wheel, so the man from New York must still be inside.
She stepped out from the doorway and crossed the narrow side street to look through the front window. The room was filled with men. There was not one female in sight. So this was still the place where men went to be with their own kind. She suspected that had always been her father’s attraction to the bar. Each time her mother had asked why he would go to a dive like that, he had smiled with a guilty secret. It was not a place where his wife would have gone, nor any of her sex.
Lilith walked in the door, and the conversations all around the room fell off as men turned their heads to have a long, hard look at her – all of her. She didn’t belong here. She knew it, and they knew it.
Then the mantalk resumed, silverware clattered on plates and glasses thumped on the tabletops.
Some of Guy Beaudare’s best stories had originated here. This was the first time she had ever seen the interior, though she knew what it would look like, even down to the details of the fish tank behind the bar, the sawdust and the peanut shells on the floor. It smelled of sweat, tobacco and beer. The jukebox played a Cajun fiddle tune, and against her will her body picked up the lively rhythm of the music as she moved among the men, causing them to lift their faces and follow her with their curious, probing stares. She knew what they were doing to her as she passed each table, naked now, disarmed, undressed and barefoot in their eyes.
She was looking for the man Bobby Laurie had described, a New York cop disguised as a bum. She walked up to the unshaven man at the bar the man with the messy suit and the bad slouch.
“Detective Riker? I’m Deputy Beaudare.”
He smiled amiably, flesh crinkling at the corners of warm brown eyes. “Well, pull up a stool, Deputy.”
“You think we might sit at a booth? Doesn’t look right, sitting at a bar in my uniform.”
“Sure, kid. Come on.” He picked up his glass and led the way to a padded booth at the back of the room where the daylight petered out. Most of the illumination came from a candle in the neck of an old Jack Daniel’s bottle.