With Angie, there was always something she kept in reserve. Even after all these years, Will wasn’t certain whether or not she did this on purpose or if it was just a protection mechanism. There was lying and then there was what he thought of as survival instinct. He was the last person on earth who could fault her for that.
Will said, “Ormewood seemed very upset about his neighbor this afternoon.”
“He really likes kids,” she told him. “His son’s got some mental problem, but I met him once and he’s super sweet. The wife is pretty cold, but I would be too if I had to bang that prick every night.” She explained, “I met them at a retirement dinner for his partner. Ken Wozniak, black guy but another pollack. I thought I’d go and support the home team.”
“Nice of you.”
“I doubt he’s long for this world. Had some kind of stroke right in the middle of the squad. Half his body’s gone.”
“He got any family?”
“Nope.”
They were both quiet for a while.
Angie opened her mouth to speak, then changed her mind. Will knew better than to prompt her, and sure enough she finally told him, “The thing about Michael is, he’s not his own person.”
“Which means?”
“He’s always trying to fit in, but it just doesn’t work for him.”
Will thought the same thing could be said about himself. “Is that a bad thing?”
She stopped a few seconds to think before explaining, “Like with Wozniak. We weren’t close, but I’d seen him around. Big guy, has a gut out to here.” She held out her hand several inches in front of her stomach. “But he’s a real lady’s man, right? Always has a comment about what I’m wearing, ”Can I have some fries with that shake,“ and that kind of bullshit, but he’s an older guy, a real teddy bear, so it’s funny and maybe kind of flattering instead of being creepy.”
“Okay,” Will said, not really understanding the line but knowing the important part was that the man hadn’t crossed it.
She continued, “Ken has these sayings. Like, he hands a civilian his card and says, ”Something to wipe your ass on,“ and it’s kind of disarming, and they laugh, but they keep the card, you know? He may be a freaking cop, but they know he’s a cool guy.”
“Right,” Will agreed. Cops had all kinds of tricks they used to connect with potential witnesses. Everybody had a different bag they pulled from, but they all needed the same magic if they were going to get anything done on the street.
“So, Ken’s in the hospital, right? Laid out on his ass. I mean, frankly, the guy’s not gonna make it.”
“That’s too bad.”
“Yeah,” she waved her hand, dismissing his words. “The point is, a couple of weeks later, I’m on my strip with the girls and Michael drops by. The girls know he’s a cop because… well, fuck, he’s a cop. They can smell it, right?” She sat back in the chair, and Will could see she was getting angry at the memory. “So Michael goes up and down the line, cock-of-the-walk, gives me a fucking wink like what he’s doing is funny and not stupid and risking my fucking cover, and he asks the girls if they’ve seen this guy hanging around, says he’s one bad motherfucker and to stay clear of him. Then he hands out his card and says…?”
Will guessed, “Something to wipe your ass on?”
“Right,” she said. “He’s always like that, always trying so hard to be the cool guy, to fit in, but the thing is, he doesn’t know how so he has to mimic other people.”
“Like guys who copy lines from movies.”
She did a perfect Austin Powers, “Yeah, baby.”
Will thought it through, considered the brief time he had spent with Michael Ormewood before they had found the dead girl in the detective’s backyard. Angie had obviously given a lot of thought to the man’s personality, but Will wasn’t totally buying her conclusion. “I didn’t pick up on that.”
“No,” she said. “But you think there’s something off about him. Your radar went up.”
Her words cut straight to the core of their relationship. Twenty-five years ago, they had met each other in a state children’s home. Will was eight, Angie was eleven. They had both already spent a lifetime honing their instincts; both learned the hard way to listen to their gut when it said that just because someone was wearing a white hat, that didn’t make them one of the good guys.
“Yeah,” Will admitted. “I didn’t get a good read on him. I assumed that was because he was irritated with me. Nobody likes to be forced to play well with others.”
“There’s more to it than that,” she insisted. “And you know it just as well as I do.”
“Maybe.” He picked up Betty to give her a scratch behind her ears.
Angie stood up. “I need you to look up a name for me.”
“What name?”
She walked back into the living room to get her purse. Will followed, holding Betty to his chest. The dog’s tiny frame was so fragile that sometimes he felt as if he was holding a bird.
“Here.” Angie held up a pink Post-it note with block letters neatly printed across the middle. “He said he was mixed up in something. It sounded bad, but I just got this feeling…” She shrugged off the rest of the sentence. “I think he’s in trouble.”
Will hadn’t taken the note. He tried to sound like he was kidding. “Since when do you save people?”
“You wanna help me with this or you wanna stand there with your ass clenched, petting your little dog?”
“Can I do both?”
Her lips twisted in a smile. “His parole sheet only listed the highlights and the complete file is too old to be on the computer. You think you can work your GBI magic and get me a copy out of archives?”
He realized this was why she had really come tonight, and tried not to show his disappointment. He took the note, glancing at the words, which were little more than a blur across the page. Will had never been able to see his letters right, especially when he was upset or frustrated.
“Will?”
He warned, “It might take a while to find it if it’s archived.”
“No rush,” she said. “I’ll probably never see him again.”
He felt relieved, which must have meant he had felt jealous before.
She was already opening the door to leave. “It’s got two e‘s. Can you read that okay?”
“What?”
She sounded annoyed, as if he hadn’t been listening. “The name, Will. The one on the note. It’s Shelley with two e‘s.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Angie lived less than five miles from Will’s house. She drove away with the radio down low, letting her mind wander as she turned down familiar roads. He looked the same as always, maybe a little thinner, and God knows what he had done to his hair. Angie had always cut it for him, and she assumed he’d gotten an electric shaver to avoid going to a hairdresser who might see the scar on the back of his head and ask him who had tried to kill him.
She knew that Will had been living in the north Georgia mountains for the last two years. Maybe he hadn’t gotten out much while he was up there. Will had always let his dyslexia limit his life. He didn’t like going to new restaurants because he couldn’t understand the menus. He bought food at the grocery store based on the familiar colors of the labels or the identifiable photographs on the packages. He would rather starve than ask for help. Angie vividly recalled the first time he had gone shopping on his own. He had returned with a can of Crisco shortening, thinking the fried chicken on the label indicated the contents.
Turning into her driveway, Angie tried to remember how many times she had left Will Trent. She counted them off by the names of the men she had left with. George was the first one, way back in the mid-eighties. He’d been a punk rock enthusiast with a closet heroin addiction. Number two and number eight were Rogers, different men, but both with the same shitty character flaws; as Will often pointed out, Angie was only attracted to guys who were going to hurt her.