“Okay,” I said.
“We thought Pick—that’s the name I always think of first for Merker—looked good for the first one. Then another guy dies, same M.O. Makes you wonder.” He shook his head. “I wonder where that son of a bitch ended up.”
“He’s in the stun gun business,” I said. “With Edgars.”
“No shit?”
“He just tried to get our cops to buy a bunch of them.”
“Whoa, whoa, hold on,” Cherry said, starting to smile. “Pick is flogging stun guns to cops?”
I nodded.
“Man, that guy has got balls. So, he’s working for a stun gun company?”
“I got the impression he was his own boss. They hit police union meetings. Edgars demonstrates for him. Merker shoots him with the gun, gives Edgars fifty thousand volts. Says he’s done it a couple dozen times to him so far.”
“Jesus. That guy wasn’t working with a full deck of neurons back when I knew him. What must he be like after getting fried with a stun gun a few times?” Cherry kept shaking his head at the audacity of it all. “You know, there’s something about this that rings a bell someplace…” He turned to his computer, started tapping away at some keys. “There was this heist, about six months ago, this place that’s making a new line of stun guns, uses like high-intensity vapor or water or something…”
“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what he’s selling.”
“Okay, here it is. Like, four dozen of these things were ripped off. In Illinois. There’s not a lot of these out there yet. New technology. That’d be a great way to unload them, sell them to cops. Nice way to bring a guy down without having to kill him, avoid a massive investigation. Regular crooks, they’d rather just have guns. It’s not like they’re going to face Internal Affairs.”
“You don’t honestly think,” I said, “that Merker would try to sell hot stun guns to the police, do you?”
Cherry was smiling ear to ear. “I’m flattered that you think that no cop would ever buy anything stolen.” He kept grinning. “This is beautiful. This would be so Pick. I mean, really, who’d check? Who’d even think that someone would try to sell stolen goods to a bunch of cops? They buy any?”
“I don’t think so. I was covering it for the paper, and Merker got kind of skittish when he found out the press was there. Is it ballsy, selling police stolen goods, or just incredibly stupid?”
“With Pick, it would be a bit of both. One time, he calls us, keep in mind now that at the Kickstart, they’re dealing drugs, girls giving blowjobs upstairs, and he’s on our ass about people parking illegally out front of his place. Wanted to know what the fuck he was paying taxes for.”
“And tell me, why do they call Gary Merker Pick?”
Cherry smiled. “Obsessive nose picker, with intense concentration. He could be beating a guy to death with one hand and still have a finger from his other mining away. Don’t shake his hand, don’t borrow his pen. You don’t know where they’ve been.”
I felt queasy.
“I got another question,” I said. “Part of the story I’m working on involves tracking down a woman who I think may have had something to do with the Slots, or with Merker.”
“You got a name?”
“Trixie Snelling.”
Cherry’s eyebrows came together in thought. “Doesn’t ring any kind of bell.”
“She might not have been going by Snelling then,” I said. “I don’t honestly know.”
“Merker had a lot of girls in and out of the Kickstart. Stripping, hooking, waiting tables. Lot of turnover in a place like that. I don’t ever remember a Trixie. What do you know about this woman? You got a picture or anything?”
I took the clipping from the Suburban out of my pocket, unfolded it, and put it on his desk. “She might have looked different then, hair color, that kind of thing.”
Cherry studied the shot, shook his head. “I don’t think so. What can you tell me about her?”
“Last few years, she’s lived in Oakwood. Trained in accounting, but actually making a living as a dominatrix. A pretty good living, I think.”
Cherry’s eyebrows went way up. “Really? The whole whips and chains thing?”
“Yeah.”
“Still doesn’t ring any kind of bell.”
“She might have had a child. Very young at the time. A little girl.”
“I still got noth…A little girl, you say?”
I nodded.
“I seem to recall, I think it was Eldon Swain. I think he may have had a kid. I remember, when he died, there was something about him leaving a baby girl behind.”
“He was married?”
“Don’t think so, but yeah, I think he might have had a kid. Maybe with one of the dancers there, I don’t know.” He thought a moment. “You know who might be able to tell you?”
I waited.
“Wingstaff.”