Morris visits another computer café that Sunday night, and does his own quick bit of research. When he’s found what he wants, he fishes out the piece of notepaper with Peter Saubers’s cell number on it, and jots down Andrew Halliday’s address. Coleridge Street is on the West Side. In the seventies, that was a middle-class and mostly white enclave where all the houses tried to look a little more expensive than they actually were, and as a result all ended up looking pretty much the same.
A quick visit to several local real estate sites shows Morris that things over there haven’t changed much, although an upscale shopping center has been added: Valley Plaza. Andy’s car may still be parked at his house out there. Of course it might be in a space behind his shop, Morris never checked (Christ, you can’t check everything, he thinks), but that seems unlikely. Why would you put up with the hassle of driving three miles into the city every morning and three miles back every night, in rush-hour traffic, when you could buy a thirty-day bus-pass for ten dollars, or a six-month’s pass for fifty? Morris has the keys to his old pal’s house, although he’d never try using them; the house is a lot more likely to be alarmed than the Birch Street Rec.
But he also has the keys to Andy’s car, and a car might come in handy.
He walks back to Bugshit Manor, convinced that McFarland will be waiting for him there, and not content just to make Morris pee in the little cup. No, not this time. This time he’ll also want to toss his room, and when he does he’ll find the Tuff Tote with the stolen computer and the bloody shirt and shoes inside. Not to mention the envelope of money he took from his old pal’s desk.
I’d kill him, thinks Morris—who is now (in his own mind, at least) Morris the Wolf.
Only he couldn’t use the gun, plenty of people in Bugshit Manor know what a gunshot sounds like, even a polite ka-pow from a little faggot gun like his old pal’s P238, and he left the hatchet in Andy’s office. That might not do the job even if he did have it. McFarland is big like Andy, but not all puddly-fat like Andy. McFarland looks strong.
That’s okay, Morris tells himself. That shit don’t mean shit. Because an old wolf is a crafty wolf, and that’s what I have to be now: crafty.
McFarland isn’t waiting on the stoop, but before Morris can breathe a sigh of relief, he becomes convinced that his PO will be waiting for him upstairs. Not in the hall, either. He’s probably got a passkey that lets him into every room in this fucked-up, piss-smelling place.
Try me, he thinks. You just try me, you sonofabitch.
But the door is locked, the room is empty, and it doesn’t look like it’s been searched, although he supposes if McFarland did it carefully . . . craftily—
But then Morris calls himself an idiot. If McFarland had searched his room, he would have been waiting with a couple of cops, and the cops would have handcuffs.
Nevertheless, he snatches open the closet door to make sure the Tuff Totes are where he left them. They are. He takes out the money and counts it. Six hundred and forty dollars. Not great, not even close to what was in Rothstein’s safe, but not bad. He puts it back, zips the bag shut, then sits on his bed and holds up his hands. They are shaking.
I have to get that stuff out of here, he thinks, and I have to do it tomorrow morning. But get it out to where?
Morris lies down on his bed and looks up at the ceiling, thinking. At last he falls asleep.
13
Monday dawns clear and warm, the thermometer in front of City Center reading seventy before the sun is even fully over the horizon. School is still in session and will be for the next two weeks, but today is going to be the first real sizzler of the summer, the kind of day that makes people wipe the backs of their necks and squint at the sun and talk about global warming.
When Hodges gets to his office at eight thirty, Holly is already there. She tells him about her conversation with Tina last night, and asks if Hodges will talk to Howard Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, if he can’t get the story of the money from Pete himself. Hodges agrees to this, and tells Holly that was good thinking (she glows at this), but privately believes talking to Ricker won’t be necessary. If he can’t crack a seventeen-year-old kid—one who’s probably dying to tell someone what’s been weighing him down—he needs to quit working and move to Florida, home of so many retired cops.
He asks Holly if she’ll watch for the Saubers boy on Garner Street when school lets out this afternoon. She agrees, as long as she doesn’t have to talk to him herself.
“You won’t,” Hodges assures her. “If you see him, all you need to do is call me. I’ll come around the block and cut him off. Have we got pix of him?”
“I’ve downloaded half a dozen to my computer. Five from the yearbook and one from the Garner Street Library, where he works as a student aide, or something. Come and look.”
The best photo—a portrait shot in which Pete Saubers is wearing a tie and a dark sportcoat—identifies him as CLASS OF ’15 STUDENT VICE PRESIDENT. He’s dark-haired and good-looking. The resemblance to his kid sister isn’t striking, but it’s there, all right. Intelligent blue eyes look levelly out at Hodges. In them is the faintest glint of humor.
“Can you email these to Jerome?”
“Already done.” Holly smiles, and Hodges thinks—as he always does—that she should do it more often. When she smiles, Holly is almost beautiful. With a little mascara around her eyes, she probably would be. “Gee, it’ll be good to see Jerome again.”
“What have I got this morning, Holly? Anything?”
“Court at ten o’clock. The assault thing.”
“Oh, right. The guy who tuned up on his brother-in-law. Belson the Bald Beater.”
“It’s not nice to call people names,” Holly says.
This is probably true, but court is always an annoyance, and having to go there today is particularly trying, even though it will probably take no more than an hour, unless Judge Wiggins has slowed down since Hodges was on the cops. Pete Huntley used to call Brenda Wiggins FedEx, because she always delivered on time.
The Bald Beater is James Belson, whose picture should probably be next to white trash in the dictionary. He’s a resident of the city’s Edgemont Avenue district, sometimes referred to as Hillbilly Heaven. As part of his contract with one of the city’s car dealerships, Hodges was hired to repo Belson’s Acura MDX, on which Belson had ceased making payments some months before. When Hodges arrived at Belson’s ramshackle house, Belson wasn’t there. Neither was the car. Mrs. Belson—a lady who looked rode hard and put away still damp—told him the Acura had been stolen by her brother Howie. She gave him the address, which was also in Hillbilly Heaven.
“I got no love for Howie,” she told Hodges, “but you might ought to get over before Jimmy kills him. When Jimmy’s mad, he don’t believe in talk. He goes right to beatin.”