Suspect E-Book

Scott Turow

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 629

Beschreibung

A Times, Express and Daily Mail Book of the Year 2022 The scandalous new novel from the godfather of the legal thriller. Lucia Gomez is a female police chief in a man's world and she's walked a fine line to succeed at the top. Now a trio of police officers in Kindle County have accused her of soliciting sex for promotions and she's in deep. Rik Dudek is an attorney and old friend of Lucia's. He's the only one she can trust, but he's never had a headline criminal case. This ugly smear campaign is already breaking the internet and will be his biggest challenge yet. Clarice 'Pinky' Granum is a fearless PI who plays by her own rules. Her 4-D imagination is her biggest asset when it comes to digging up dirt for Rik but not all locks are best picked. It's cops against cops in this hive of lies. And it will take more than honeyed words from the defence to change the punchline and save the Chief from her own cell.

Leseprobe

SUSPECT

ALSO BY SCOTT TUROW

The Last Trial

Testimony

Identical

Innocent

Limitations

Ordinary Heroes

Ultimate Punishment

Reversible Errors

Personal Injuries

The Laws of Our Fathers

Pleading Guilty

The Burden of Proof

Presumed Innocent

One L

SUSPECT

SCOTT TUROW

SWIFT PRESS

First published in Great Britain by Swift Press 2022

First published in the United States of America by Grand Central, a division of Hachette Book Group 2022

Copyright © S.C.R.I.B.E., Inc. 2022

The right of Scott Turow to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

HB ISBN: 9781800751682

TPB ISBN: 9781800752252

eISBN: 9781800751699

For Julian and Stacee

SUSPECT

verb

\sə'spekt\

1. to believe something is probable without certain proof

//I suspect she is telling the truth

2. to doubt or distrust

//I suspect his motives

noun

\'səs'pekt\

a person thought to be possibly guilty of wrongdoing

//She is a suspect in the investigation

adjective

\'səs'pekt\

doubtful or questionable

//His explanation is suspect

SUSPECT

1. SOMETHING WEIRD

There is something weird with the dude next door to me,” I tell Rik. Across the conference room table, his small, weary eyes rise reluctantly from the file he’s reviewing. His brain seems to chase after my words for a second, then he hits me with a sneaky little grin.

“Oh, I get it,” I say. “‘Look who’s talking,’ right? But he’s weird. Maybe not me-weird, but he’s strange.”

“You mean he doesn’t have a nail through his nose?”

“Ha,” I answer. It isn’t even in today. And it isn’t even real, just old Goth jewelry I bought used, the head and blunted point of a framing nail worn as separate studs on each side. It’s been kind of my trademark look for years now. But Rik says I might as well hang one of those road signs around my neck that warns, ‘Sharp Curve Ahead.’ Before I started here two years ago as the investigator in his law office, I promised to ghost the nail when I’m doing interviews or meeting clients. In fact, because Rik is so stressed about this case, I’ve put on one of my three dresses, a shapeless blue sheath whose long sleeves hide some of my most outrageous ink.

“You can mock me,” I say, “but something’s up with this guy. He moved in like a month ago and he doesn’t talk to anybody. He has no visitors. He doesn’t go to work. The inside walls in that building are like those Japanese screens, but it’s been weeks since I heard anything from next door. It’s like he’s one of those silent monks—no voices, no phone, no music. He doesn’t own a car, as far as I can see. And he’s never even cleaned out his mailbox from the prior tenant. The post lady has to dump his mail on the floor, and he walks right over it. Just a very weird dude.”

Rik says, “He sounds like a guy who wants to be left alone. Which means you should leave him alone.”

“I have a creepy feeling about him,” I answer.

Rik holds up a soft hand.

“Pinky, please,” he says. “We’ve got ten minutes before our first real meeting with this client. Let’s make a good impression.”

The case has been breaking the Internet—days of headlines in various papers and even a few national hits on the gossipy TV shows. Our client, the chief of police here in Highland Isle, has been accused by three officers of demanding sex in exchange for promotions on the force—‘sextortion’ as a couple grocery-store tabloids have labeled it. A complaint before the local Police and Fire Commission, ‘P&F’ as it’s called, is asking for Chief Gomez to be fired. Worse, the United States Attorney has launched a federal grand jury investigation, which could even mean jail time. The Chief is in deep.

As Rik is rereading the file, I say, “I just can’t figure this dude. I mean, he goes out once every day around noon with his gym bag. And he grabs some carryout at dinner. Seven days a week, same same. So what’s his deal? Is he stalking somebody? Is he in witness protection?”

Glancing up again, Rik clearly can’t even remember what I’m talking about. You might call Rik and me family, depending on how you’re counting. His dear dead mom, Helen, married Pops, my grandfather Sandy Stern, not long after I was born. As I remember Rik from my childhood, he was this uber-nerdy chubby college student, still super messed-up after his parents’ divorce, who managed to flunk out of Easton College by not attending a single class for forty-nine straight days. Even when he got it together enough to go back, he drifted through college and barely made it into law school.

Now, about twenty-five years later, he’s got the shape of an autumn gourd. His little remaining mouse-colored hair looks like dirty soapsuds that will blow away any second. Still, I sometimes think it would be okay to end up like him, a person who learned from his troubles back in the day and, as a result, is kind to everyone.

After playing rewind in his head, Rik is frowning about me going off again about my neighbor.

“Pinky, your imagination must be one of the most interesting places on earth. It’s like living in 4-D. All this stuff that never could happen, and you’re running it as the feature attraction.”

“Hey, I have great instincts, right? Don’t you say like sometimes I have ESP?”

“Sometimes ESP,” he says. “And sometimes PES.”

I take a second. “PES?”

“Piles of Erroneous Shit.” Teasing me is one of Rik’s favorite office pastimes. Since I was little, being the object of a joke starts a near-riot close to my heart, but with Rik I can mostly ride with it. He is the best boss ever and gets his biggest chuckles at his own expense (like how in high school he decided to drop the c in ‘Rick,’ actually hoping that axing one little letter would make him cool). Plus him and Helen always seemed to like me better than most people in my own family.

“Let’s stay on task,” he says. “I don’t want the Chief changing her mind. You know what this case could do around here.”

Rik doesn’t do much legal work that attracts big attention. I was a paralegal in my grandfather’s law office before Pops closed shop. He and my aunt represented all the richest crooks in the Tri-Cities, and our space had the quiet atmosphere and heavy furnishings of a bank lobby. With Rik, I’m kind of in the working class of the legal world. Our office, in a recovering part of Highland Isle, is cramped, with the same cheap paneled walls people put up in their basements. We do a lot of workman’s comp and quick-hitting personal injury cases to keep the electricity flowing in the sockets. Rik would love to handle headline defenses like Pops, but most of the criminal cases that come through the door here are rumdum misdemeanors—bar fights and first-time DUIs and drunken stunts by teenagers. At fifty-two, Rik thinks Chief Gomez’s case might help him finally step up.

“I thought you’d been retained,” I say.

“We had a get-together at a coffee shop for about ten minutes before the Chief went on vacation. But Mr. Green has not arrived.” He’s referring to a retainer. In criminal, you have to get paid up front, since clients don’t send many checks from prison. “Supposedly, we’ll see it today.”

His attention returns for a second to the P&F complaint, then he suddenly stops cold and squints at me.

“How’s he look?” Rik says.

“Who?”

“Your wacky neighbor. You’ve been keeping quite an eye on him. What’s he look like?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Asian.”

“He’s going to the gym two hours a day, so he must be in good shape, right?”

The man is definitely lean and fit, but what’s most striking is his skin, a rich shade I’ve never seen before, close to what was called ‘ochre’ in my crayon box but with a more lustrous undertone. He’s tall too, around six foot three.

“Point?” I ask.

“Point is maybe you’re a little hot for him.”

“Nah,” I say. “This guy’s maybe forty-five. You know my story, Rik—older women, younger men.”

“Pinky,” he says, “it’s none of my business, but your story seems to be anybody born human.”

“Ha,” I say again, although he’s probably right.

Nomi, Rik’s assistant, peeks around the door.

“Chief Gomez is here,” Nomi says.

Not the kind to wait, Lucia Gomez-Barrera sweeps in with a burst of positive energy that fills the room. She immediately opens her arms to Rik for a hug.

2. THE CHIEF

As Rik tells it, the Chief and him were tight in high school. She was one of those superhot chicks who left a lot of the guys in heat just by walking down the hall, and Rik was her assigned lab partner in Bio who was basically no threat. (Besides, he had already pretty much bonded for life with Marnie, his wife, a fact that, frankly, makes my head explode. At thirty-three, I still regard one person forever as impossible, let alone coupling up before you’re old enough to drive.)

Rik introduces me as his ‘ace investigator’ and the Chief offers her hand. Even today, many police brass have no taste for people like me, inked from neck to ankle and with a magenta Mohawk (and a blue undercut on one side). But Chief Gomez comes on warm as a kindergarten teacher, with a smile that’s 100,000 lumens of pure light, and—get this—dimples. A police chief with dimples!

I have a kinda/sorta ex who never unfriended me and was on the job in HI last I checked. Just to give myself some cred, I ask about her, Tonya Eo.

“Tonya’s the Real Police,” the Chief says, which is top praise. “Just made detective sergeant. Friend?”

“We were cadets in the Kindle County Academy together.”

“Back more than a decade? Did you get sworn?”

“No, I fucked up,” I say. I flamed out on a drug test, the last week. “Story of my life.”

I receive a sweet, sympathetic smile. I’m getting a positive feel about Chief Gomez, which is kind of a surprise. I don’t really like most people to start, and they definitely don’t like me. I tend to get up in their grills almost as soon as we say hello. It took me a while—and a therapist or two—to realize I’m still basically a kid, scared of strangers.

First thing, she slides an envelope over to Rik.

“I took a second on my house, Ricky. I hope you’re worth it, man.”

The Chief is in her dress uniform in Highland Isle’s puke-worthy shade of blue green, which I would call Sick Teal. The long jacket, which is probably covering her weapon, has gold braiding on each shoulder and double-breasted rows of brass buttons, and her actual police star, also gold, over the left breast. The light in here is not what they would choose at the beauty counter: harsh fluorescents and no windows. Even so, in the flesh, Lucia Gomez is prettier than she appears on TV, although, just saying, there is a fair amount of flesh. I make her as five two and maybe 150 pounds. She has a round face with movie-star cheekbones, huge dark eyes and great skin, ‘Warm Beige,’ as they call the shade at Sephora.

Just to get rolling, Rik starts by going over her biographical details. After high school, they pretty much lost touch, and even once they found each other again here in Highland Isle, their contacts have generally been limited to lunch every now and then. Still, given what most cops think of defense lawyers, Rik isn’t surprised that in the current crisis she’s turned to someone she’s known forever.

As for her background, the Chief grew up in Highland Isle, with six brothers and sisters in a three-bedroom bungalow with one bath. Dad was a welder, Ecuadorian, Mom Mexican, and both are gone now. The Chief enlisted in the Army a month after high school graduation, because she figured the GI Bill was the only way she’d get to college. After surviving Desert Storm, she enrolled at Greenwood County JC, which was where she heard about the veterans’ preference on law-enforcement hiring. The Kindle County Unified Police Force offered her space in the academy.

“I never made you for a cop,” Rik says.

“Me neither. But I loved it from the start—except riding with the Ritz, who was my first training officer. But I felt like this is what I was meant to do, something where you could make a difference every day. I took the time to listen to everyone—the victims, the witnesses, even the dude in cuffs.”

She kept going to school at night, got a BA in criminology, then a master’s, and made detective in Kindle County in less than six years.

“They were looking for women by then.” She offers a humble shrug.

She married another detective, but the fact that she was moving up faster than Danny created issues. Hoping to save things, she left Kindle for Highland Isle, where the marriage cratered anyway, while her career continued to boom. She reached commander, number two in the department, in record time.

When the old chief, Stanley Sicilino, got the boot twelve years ago from Highland Isle’s first reform mayor, Amity DeFranco Nieves, the Chief became the consensus choice to replace him. Latinx. Raised in HI. Strong educational credentials. By now, she says, she’s made her share of enemies, but that’s how it goes.

With that soft start, Rik turns to the real business, the P&F complaint. Pops used to tell me that clients come in two flavors: the ones who can’t talk about their cases enough and the others who will do anything to avoid the subject. You might think the talkers are innocent and outraged, but Pops said a lot of bad guys think the next best thing to not having done the crime is to make somebody else believe that. By contrast, the wrongly accused—a smaller group, frankly—are often struggling to get a grip.

The Chief definitely has not been looking forward to this conversation. Once she hired Rik, she took off two weeks for her older daughter’s wedding and promised not to think about any of this, and clearly meant it. Rik says he had to call her four times to get her to come in.

For me, though, it’s easy to see why she’d be having a hard time dealing with the charges, which have seemed totally sketchy to me since Rik first explained them.

‘Why’s that a crime?’ I asked him. ‘Hooking up? What’s the US Attorney investigating?’

‘Because she’s a public official,’ Rik said.

‘Because she’s a woman, Boss. Men still hate it when a female does what she wants with her body. These dudes’ stories make no sense. Yeah, okay, men can get raped or assaulted, but not usually when they’re carrying a .38. Not to mention the basics: If winky-dink doesn’t want to come out to play, there’s no game. So how’d she force them?’

‘They say they didn’t want to.’ Rik shrugged.

At that point—the day Rik met the Chief for coffee a month ago—all we knew were the few details that had been leaked to the Tribune. Even so, it was clear that somebody canny about election-year politics was involved. The P&F complaint, which was filed a few days later, was clearly timed to put maximum pressure on Mayor Nieves, who’s running again, to fire the Chief. Instead, the mayor, who’s learned how to swerve after twelve years in office, said she would leave it all up to the Police and Fire Commission. Rather than give in, the Chief declined to take a leave.

“This is all horse hockey,” the Chief says now. “I wanna see those jokers up there testifying to this crap, that I supposedly said, ‘Sex or else.’ This is just typical police department baloney. Cops think the worst of everybody, especially half the officers they work with, and are always making up shit about them.”

“Okay,” says Rik. “Okay.” He nods several times, clearly trying to determine how safe it is to probe. “But all three of these guys got promoted, right?”

“Sure. And I signed off. But there was a good reason in each case.”

Rik asks her for a thumbnail on the three men accusing her, ‘the allegators’ as Rik calls them in the typical grim humor of the world of criminal defense.

“Well, two of them,” she says, “Primo DeGrassi and Walter Cornish, were in Narcotics together for years, until I moved them out. Cornish retired last year, and DeGrassi left about twelve months before. I can tell you right now, if you dig around”—she points straight at me—“they’re both connected to the Ritz. He’s behind this.”

That’s the second time she’s said ‘the Ritz.’ Part of what freaks me out about other people is how often I can’t follow them or make the connections everybody else sees as obvious. I can remember watching TV when I was a kid and being so baffled about what was happening with the characters that I’d ask my younger brother, Johnny, to explain. ‘Why did she just say she hates him? I thought she liked him.’ ‘She does like him. That’s why she said she hates him. Because she’s real disappointed.’ Even now, I often find myself feeling lost and a little panicked.

“The Ritz?” I ask, although Rik prefers I just listen. “Like the hotel?”

She smiles, nicely. “It’s a nickname for a really bad guy.”

Rik lifts a hand so he can continue to direct the conversation. He wants her to tell us first about the third officer in the complaint.

“Blanco?” she asks. “We call him Frito around the station. He’s the big mystery. Former altar boy and Eagle Scout. Bronze Star in Afghanistan. Quiet. Never gets excited. A coppers’ cop. And I been so good to him. I got no idea why he’s making up this shit.”

Rik jots another note and then says, “Okay, I’m with Pinky. Who’s the Ritz?”

The Chief responds with a bitter laugh.

“Everybody around here knows who the Ritz is. Moritz Vojczek?” Voy-check.

“The property guy?” I ask, proving her point. Vojczek’s name is all over. His company seems to manage every apartment building in town, including mine. He owns the biggest real estate brokerage in Highland Isle and is clearly the busiest developer. If you see a hole in the ground in HI, odds are there’s a sign in front that says ‘Vojczek.’ Definitely a local power.

“I read in the Trib last year,” says the Chief, “that the Ritz is worth about 300 million dollars. And he owes it all to me.”

“To you?” Rik asks.

“Cause I fired his ass from the police force as soon as I became Chief. Well, not fired. Suggested he resign.”

“Didn’t you say you rode with the Ritz in Kindle County?” I’m still confused.

“Right,” she says. “We both started out there. I could take all afternoon telling you stories about the two of us, but the long short is simple: He’ll spit on the ground I’ve walked on because I canned him. Not to mention that I still have my eye on all the dirty shit he’s got going around here.”

“What kind of dirty shit does a real estate mogul have going?” Rik asks.

“A lot. When the Ritz was in Narcotics, everybody knew he was dealing himself. He’s better insulated now, but he’s not changing his spots. Fentanyl’s the money drug right now, so he’s probably got some angle there. I mean, I’d be happy to testify about all the bad blood between us.”

Rik spends some time shaking his head.

“Lucy,” he says, “you’re not going anywhere near a witness stand for a while.”

Rik details the odd procedural footing of the P&F case. Because of the political heat, the city attorney, who acts as the prosecutor, has agreed to convene the hearing so the three accusers can tell their stories in public. But because of the Fifth Amendment, the Chief won’t present a defense until the US Attorney has cleared her.

“Which is the best of both worlds for us,” says Rik. “We chew holes in these guys’ stories, using all the great stuff Pinky is developing.” He shoots me a smile, and I know better than to gulp. “Once the Feds decline to prosecute, if the City hasn’t dismissed the case already, then you get on the stand and say, ‘This is all bull-pucky, I never had sex with any of these guys.’”

The Chief takes a long time, but the dimples are gone.

“Well, maybe that’s not exactly what I’d say,” she finally answers.

“Oh,” says Rik eventually.

The Chief studies her watch and says, “Let’s put a pin in this.”

Rik asks me to walk her out. He’s still at the conference room table, massaging his temples, when I return. His eyes rise to me.

“Clients,” he says.

3. THE WEIRD GUY NEXT DOOR

My job with Rik is probably the first time in my life I’ve headed for work in the morning without feeling like I’m going to prison. (Hanging around with Pops was always cool, but my job there was an eight-hour day inside a fortress of paper.)

Years before, I had been pumped at the thought of being a cop. I was sure I could be less of a jerk than the guys who’d harassed me when I was in my super-druggy phase, right after I broke my back and had to give up competitive boarding. And the squinty-eyed distrusting way cops look at other people is, frankly, pretty close to my basic attitude toward everyone. Crashing and burning at the academy left me feeling for a long time like I’d missed the chance to be myself.

Becoming a private investigator never occurred to me. It was my grandfather who thought I might have a talent for it. When Pops and my aunt, who were law partners, decided to retire, they offered to pay for a PI training course for me as outplacement. I was like, ‘Why not, okay,’ but I had no clue how much I’d get into it.

Yet here’s the truth—I love to snoop and pry. I get a butt-tightening thrill out of it. Maybe some of that has to do with how often I miss signals. Investigating is like being the Invisible Man—not the one from the book I had to read in high school, but the old movie, somebody who can drift around and look in on people without ever really being seen. Oh, I think often, oh, so that’s this chick’s deal.

And when I’m being a PI, I can do stuff that’s hard for me ordinarily. I don’t have to grope for the words with strangers, because I’m there to ask, ‘What do you know about Joe Blow or Clown Brown?’ I don’t care about the usual judgy thoughts people have about Crazy Pinky, because I’ve got a job to do.

At night, I spend hours watching YouTube and visiting obscure sites, trying to master what I call the P.I. BOT. The PIBOT has nothing to do with algorithms or robots. It means the Private Investigator’s Bag of Tricks. That started with a concealed carry permit, training included in my PI course. Now I’m always reading about and practicing skills—surveillance techniques, disguises, clever ruses to get people to talk.

But none of that has helped me learn much about the weird guy next door. I’ve taken to scribbling notes, guesses and whatnot, so I can review every little detail and put together two and two, but so far nothing is really adding up.

Tonight, after our meeting with the Chief, as I approach the apartment building, The Weird One (or TWO, as I’ve started calling him in my own brain) is in the old tiled foyer, on his way out. He is a creature of unvarying habit. Judging from the yellow plastic bag he comes back with every night, he’s on his way to Ruben’s, a little Mexican storefront two blocks away, where the whole family cooks.

TWO has got manners, I’ll say that, since he holds the door open as he sees me headed up the walk. Then again, it gives him something to hide behind. He’s literally shielded by the beveled glass panes of the old entry door as I pass by.

“Hey,” I say. He doesn’t answer, doesn’t smile. Not even a nod. He’s gone as soon as I skinny past.

Through the so-called wall, substantial as a communion wafer, that separates our units, I thought I heard voices not long after he moved in around March 1, and I immediately decided to eavesdrop. The old tricks from 1930s movies—a glass against the wall or a stethoscope—do pretty well, but they have nothing on today’s amplification apps, which both increase the sound and cancel extraneous noises. They are also purely illegal, which means I’ve never told Rik about them. In PI school, they always reminded us that your employer can be held responsible for whatever you do. Which led me to adopt what I regard as the PI’s Golden Rules. One: Don’t tell your boss more than he needs to know. Two: Above all, never get caught.

But listening in on TWO, I have learned next to nothing. Most of the time, I can’t even make out his shoes on the floor or the hardwood creaking. It’s like he’s over there meditating or practicing how long he can hold his breath. I hear the plumbing now and then. My two biggest discoveries are that he has hay fever, because he sneezes loudly on occasion, and that he likes the History Channel, especially shows about old wars, which is what the voices I thought I’d heard turned out to be. Otherwise, zero. If he’s typing on a computer keyboard, he has it silenced. And he must have started listening to his TV with headphones, since in the last several weeks I haven’t even heard that.

Yet my Spidey-sense tells me this guy is up to something strange or dangerous. What if he’s building a bomb and my last thought, as the building and I become a million pieces of debris, is, I knew it, I fucking knew it? And so, after I watch TWO turn the corner, I decide the way I decide most things, without thinking about it much, to follow him to Ruben’s. This isn’t completely odd, because I stop in there at least once a week, although usually closer to closing time at nine.

Ruben opened this place after the worst of the pandemic. He had lost his job, like so many other restaurant people, as establishments closed. That left a lot of vacant restaurant space here on the edge of downtown Highland Isle, and Mayor Amity used some of the federal COVID money to fund a loan program, basically begging people to give it another try.

Ruben’s is doing really well, because the food is absolutely banging. The carnitas in particular rival a G-spot orgasm. Ruben uses pulled meat—no ground beef here—and spices you can see them grinding in the kitchen.

Three generations toil there in sight of the tiny dining room. The younger teenagers are chopping up the veggies to make salsa. The big hit in the online reviews is Grandma, who sits over a hot stone oven in a corner flipping tortillas. The pretty daughter, who is in college, and whose English is way better than her parents’, works out front to greet the customers and take the carryout orders. If there’s any lull, she goes back to her books. She told me once she wants to be a pediatrician.

“Usual?” she asks when I’m halfway from the door, and I answer, “You know it.” I follow her toward the cash register and tap the credit card gizmo with my phone. Mr. Weird, who I caught sight of as I came in, is sitting at a tiny table not ten feet behind me and waiting for his food.

Once I’ve ordered, I turn and do the whole what-a-surprise thing. “Hey,” I say, all warm and friendly, a mode I am not especially good at. He’s reading a newspaper. There are folks, like me, who can be so shy it hurts, and if that was his story, I’d let him be. But it takes one to know one, and TWO is not that kind of person. Nobody scares him. His narrow black eyes are hard as marbles. He says nothing as he glances back to the paper.

I am really bad about taking ‘Fuck you’ for an answer.

“Okay if I sit with you while I’m waiting?” I ask.

His mouth sours. I can see that if he could bring himself to say it, he would answer, ‘Go away,’ but he knows that if he pisses me off, I can start banging heavy metal at three a.m. Instead, he waves a hand, sort of like ‘I can’t stop you,’ and I plop down in the molded chair on the other side of the two-top. There’s a total of ten tables in here, a couple rows with red-checked paper tablecloths, lined up between the store window and the kitchen. Colorful woven hangings with simple figures are on the walls.

TWO continues studying the paper, with an intensity that is clearly faked. Fact is I’ve never seen a newspaper in the trash or recycling bins for our floor, which we share and which I’ve examined periodically, hoping futilely for signs of what TWO is up to. My guess is he either grabbed what he’s reading off the table or else bought it for a special reason. There are two other customers waiting for their orders, but they’re doing the standard thing, thumbing through their phones.

“So like what’s the weather?” I ask him. I mean, could I do any worse? When I say I’m lame with other people, I am lame. “Do you think climate change is real?” I add. That is maybe even stupider than my first remark, and so in total shame I find myself babbling. “Cause like I’m a snowboarder, I was anyway, before I broke my back doing it, and, you know, I like had a professional interest in snow, and I mean I can see that it’s different, we get ass-little here anymore. I mean, maybe I don’t have to tell you that. Are you from here?”

He sits over there with his bullet eyes, calculating whether he needs to answer at all.

“This paper doesn’t do the weather,” he says. These are the first words I’ve ever heard him utter. His voice is wispy and he’s got just the faintest accent, like he grew up with another language besides English.

I lean a little closer to see the facing pages of what he’s been reading.

“Is that the Wall Street Journal?” I ask.

He glances at the top of the page, as if he’s not sure himself, then makes a sound to say yes.

“Oh, so you’re like in finance?” I ask.

“No.”

“Just an investor?”

“It’s something to read,” he says.

I think about asking him what he ordered, and aren’t the carnitas epic, but I sense he’s on the verge of changing tables. The paper remains raised as a barrier. In the kitchen, the family chatters in high-rpm Spanish, shouting occasionally to be heard over the ranchera music that booms out for the benefit of the customers.

It’s just my luck that my order comes up before TWO’s. Ruben himself emerges from the kitchen in his apron and plastic gloves, holding the yellow bag.

“Clarence,” he says, “su comida.” For carryout or other places where you need to give a name, I’ve lately started saying ‘Clarice,’ which I was christened with. Partly it’s because nobody ever gets ‘Pinky.’ I’m called Stinky, or Peeky, or Penny, which is super annoying. Also, sometimes I like to pretend a little. Actually, I like pretending a lot—another great thing about being a PI, since I often have to act out some off-the-hook cover stories to hide what I’m up to.

Calling myself Clarice is different, naturally, but it’s still a way to kind of pretend, as if I’d been born into a different family, or at a different time, or with a different mom. My mother’s mother’s name was Clara, and Clara stuffed a rag in the tailpipe of her Cadillac and suicided herself in her garage about six months before I was born. In memory of her, I was named Clarice, but my mom, still overcome with grief, found herself choking on a name so much like her mother’s. As a result, she accepted it when my dad started referring to me as Pinky. He thought he was a complete stitch, because his demented grandmother couldn’t remember ‘Clarice’ and just said, ‘Hello, Pinky’ whenever she looked at rosy little me down in the bassinet.

But Ruben doesn’t get ‘Clarice.’ He’s been calling me Clarence since the first time I came in here. I’ve stopped trying to correct him and just take the yellow bag.

I return to His Weirdness at the table and say, “You heading back? I’ll wait.”

He won’t answer for a second, then says, “I’m going to eat here. Take care.” Again, the look that goes with this remark is about as friendly as a pointed weapon.

“Sure, okay.” I stall a second longer and go out the door, feeling humiliated and terminally stupid. That was some ace investigative work. I know nothing more about TWO, except he’s kind of a dick, and he’s sure now the inked-up chick next door is a complete creeper.

I’ve strolled a block when I suddenly reverse and go south to a little convenience store on the corner, where I ask whether they still have some of this morning’s papers. The South Asian guy behind the counter just points. I find today’s Wall Street Journal and pay for it.

I walk an indirect route home, taking my time to look in windows and stopping twice to check my phone. As I get close to our building, I see just what I expected, TWO heading in, his yellow bag and dinner at his side. Like I said—creature of habit. I stifle the urge to sprint up and say something to embarrass him, because it would be counterproductive to let him know I didn’t buy his act.

Instead, I lay back until he is inside. Spring or not, it’s a chilly night, and I’m wearing a puffy coat with my shorts. In this part of the country, April is a write-off, often damp-cold and gloomy, even a little snow sometimes.

Our building has a brass nameplate on the front that’s been there for more than a century and says, ‘The Archer.’ The sign is not a slick marketing move—we’re on Archer Avenue. I guess a hundred years ago, buildings were given names because street addresses were just starting to be used. Anyway, it’s a big buff-brick three-flat, solid as a castle and constructed in a U, the projecting wings creating a nice landscaped courtyard out front. I trudge up to the third floor.

I guess when the Archer was first built, my place and Weirdo’s next door were a single apartment, probably crowded with one of the large families of European immigrants who were flooding Highland Isle. On my side now, there’s a galley kitchen with a minuscule living room and a small bedroom. The old bathroom was split in half, leaving me with the claw-foot tub, outfitted with a ring shower. When I was searching for rentals, I also looked at TWO’s apartment. It’s bigger, but not worth the extra three hundred bucks the Vojczek leasing agent was asking.

My little hand-me-down dog, Gomer III—Gomer the Turd, as a woman I was hanging out with called him—peps up and then sags at the sight of me. He is always hoping against hope that it will be Helen, Rik’s mom, Gomer’s original owner, coming through the door. When Pops moved to assisted living, I got the dog by default since Rik’s younger daughter is allergic. Out of mutual gratitude, I was offered first dibs on Pops’s furniture. Most of what him and Helen owned was too big for this place, but I did take a small table that seats four, wicker with a glass top, that doubles as my desk, and a nice blue tweed love seat that I’ve made a mess of by eating there as I watch TV.

Tonight I spread out the newspaper on the table even before I unwrap my dinner. I can honestly say I’ve never opened the Wall Street Journal in my life. The only news I really care about is sports, and I get that from Twitter and The Athletic. The reason I recognized what Weird was reading was because the paper was delivered every day to the reception area at Pops’s law firm.

Anyway, I turn the big pages one by one, looking for the story that was facing me as I sat there at Ruben’s, with a photo of the newest wreckage in Ukraine. On the side TWO was looking at, I don’t find much, just a bunch of four-inch articles, mostly about quarterly financial results of various corporations. For me, they could just as well be written in Etruscan, with terms like ‘fiscal first quarter net’ and ‘EBITDA,’ requiring me to fight the lifelong habit to just quit reading. But I force myself to continue until I finally hit pay dirt, or what might be pay dirt, a squib about Northern Direct, Highland Isle’s biggest employer.

When Amity Nieves beat the so-called Mayor for Life, Lorenzo DeLoria, twelve years ago, while he was under federal indictment, her number one campaign promise was serious redevelopment in Highland Isle. With the help of our US senator, she brought in a ton of federal money. The city center is nicer now, which has attracted a lot of obnoxious hipsters to my part of town. Amity’s other big project, a so-called Tech Park in the blighted, half-deserted neighborhood of Anglia right under the interstate, has had mixed results. In fact, it’s the main issue this year in Amity’s race against Steven DeLoria, Lorenzo’s son, who is kind of his dad with better tailoring and speech classes.

In some senses, the Tech Park worked out well. A few local companies moved in there, including an educational software developer and two ‘green’ manufacturers—one that makes a switch that strengthens your Internet signal, and another that produces veterinary pharmaceuticals. But about 70 percent of the space set aside for the first phase of the Tech Park was awarded to Northern Direct, a huge defense contractor, which builds guidance systems here for missiles and planes. It’s a scary-looking place, a one-story building with these radar dishes on top and no windows, surrounded by chain link and razor wire, and security guys who carry AK-47s.

Direct brought with it nearly a thousand jobs—and a shitstorm. The uber liberals, who hate the military to start with, joined forces with local civil rights organizations and sued to block the tax breaks Amity gave Direct, which are supposedly keeping the City from honoring all the promises it made to the displaced residents. That halted the second stage of development, which is a problem for local businesspeople, like Rik, who bought our office building, anticipating big demand. Now he can’t get the rents he expected, which is why we’re stuck in the dingiest space in the place.

Anyway, the WSJ article says that Northern Direct just won a $92,646,787 cost-plus fixed-fee contract from the Defense Department for a cybersecurity component that will protect air guidance systems from hacking. The paper says other details about the agreement are limited due to national security concerns, including where the equipment will be assembled.

It’s possible TWO was reading about Direct simply because it’s a company with a large local presence. Or because he seems to be a war guy who figures to be fascinated by weapons systems. Assuming the new security component will be built here, TWO, for all I know about him, may even see a job opportunity for himself. There are a lot of innocent explanations. But there are some sinister ones, too, that rush to mind as soon as you say ‘national security.’ Maybe TWO’s a peacenik intent on sabotaging Direct. Or a patent thief who wants to steal this new technology and sell it to someone else. I could probably conjure a dozen bad possibilities.

But this is my first solid clue. I point a finger at the wall we share and murmur, “Dude, I got my eye on you.”

4. TONYA

Rik has had an office in Highland Isle for more than twenty years. He’s very loyal to the place and is kind of Mr. Google, sharing little factoids whether or not I’ve asked. I now know that the population of HI has grown since the last census and is about 120,000 and that the city is an actual island in the River Kindle, which I, trapped on Planet Pinky, had never noticed. To the west, a skinny little tributary, not much more than a ditch beneath the roads, separates Highland Isle from the fancy West Bank suburbs where I grew up in eternal misery. To the east, across about a thousand yards of water, lies Kindle County and the North End of Kewahnee. Since the time of the first settlers, a busy port has operated over there, with freighters lined up carrying prime Midwestern cargo like iron ore and coal and wheat to the rest of the country.

In the 1880s, the poorest of the port workers, mostly Italian and Irish immigrants, became the first residents of HI. In the old-timey brown photos from the period, the island is just an unpromising pile of sand and shale in the middle of the water. The men would row to work in dinghies, except in the winter, when the Kindle iced over and they’d walk, meaning that in the dark some poor bastard was always stepping through a soft spot and drowning. From the start, Highland Isle was grim and tough—and full of crime.

By the 1920s, the mob had taken over, ensuring that the only crimes happening were the ones they were in charge of, especially bootlegging, with crates of illegal liquor boated around the Tri-Cities at night. They also controlled the city government, which was why Highland Isle never got absorbed into Kindle County.

In the 1960s, the white people headed for the nearby suburbs, and Latinos—mostly Puerto Ricans and Mexicans—moved into the blocks of solid brick tenements that are mixed in with rows of small bungalows that always remind me of fat toads. The mob still managed to run the city until a dozen years ago, when Mayor Lorenzo was nailed by the Feds for passing out city contracts to his sons and his brother-in-law and several cousins. Sixteen DeLorias in all got all-expenses-paid vacations in various federal correctional institutions. Steven, this year’s mayoral candidate, was the only close relative of Lorenzo’s who didn’t get indicted, and that was just because he was too young.

From my place in Highland Isle, it’s about a ten-minute drive to Mike’s, Kindle County’s busiest cop bar, which is situated on the edge of the bungalow belt across the river in Kewahnee at the foot of a highway cloverleaf. Mike’s is definitely no-frills. The bar occupies a freestanding storefront that could easily be mistaken for somebody’s garage, a flat-roofed one-story building with shingle siding around the door and a black window. Inside, it’s knotty pine with neon beer signs, including the one I’ve always loved, featuring a twinkling waterfall. Civilians come in here, too, but they are generally ignored.

Mike’s is the place players tend to head after the Monday and Thursday night Fraternal Order of Police Softball League games, now that things are kind of back to normal after COVID. (Since cops always want to appear fearless and don’t care much for rules applied to them, masks were always a rare sight in here.) League rules require each team to have two women on the field at all times, and I was all-conference in high school for three years, so after I flunked out at the academy, my teammates at the Shakespeare Street station found some discretionary fund that continues to pay my FOP dues. On the roster, I’m listed as ‘Regular Female,’ which I don’t hear many other places.

My postgame stops here are pretty much what passes for my social life during the season, which extends from the current mittens weather in April to late October. This is a no-judgment place. Guys get wasted and tell all kinds of lies, strange stories from the street that they heard years ago and repeat as something that happened to them last night. Over time, I have heard three different cops claim to have found an intact human kidney in a Ziploc bag. This is about as comfortable as I will ever be in a crowd. No one seems to look long at my nail or my haircut (although now and then somebody tuning me will whisper, ‘UC, right?’ as they’re handing me a beer, thinking I work undercover and that my ink is something that will wash off in the shower).

It’s 7 p.m., between the after-work crowd and the folks who drift in for a nightcap. We had beautiful weather for our first game last week, but tonight, leaving aside the smokers, it’s too cold to sit out in the so-called beer garden, which is nothing more than a yard with picnic benches and views of the empty lot next door, full of busted concrete from some construction project, and the rushing highway overhead. It’s an indoors night, with the jukebox gunning heavy metal, and the yeasty smell of spilled beer heavy in the air.

I figured this would be neutral turf for a meetup with me and Tonya Eo. No one she cares about will see us, since most HI cops never visit, inasmuch as the Kindle County officers always treat the HI police like they are six-year-olds with plastic stars. I climb up on a wooden stool next to a high-top and wait. I figure it’s fifty-fifty Tonya will show. I messaged her on Facebook that I wanted to talk offline about police business, and she answered ‘ok,’ but ours wasn’t a good breakup, and if it were me, I’d probably decide against being zombied. Aside from a couple innocuous comments about posts, Tonya—‘Toy’ I sometimes called her—and me haven’t had a real conversation in a dozen years.

But about ten minutes later, here she is, in civvies with a belted trench coat, which she quickly throws over a stool. I haven’t spent much time on her feed, and I’m glad for her sake about how good she looks.

“Girl,” I say, “you’re all glo’d up.”

She gives me an itsy-bitsy smile in spite of herself.

“Said bye to a few LBs,” she answers.

She is wearing makeup, which she never used to, and a short blunt cut with a part to one side. In her black fashion jeans, she has a waist now. She’s definitely gone femme.

“Still Lite?” I ask. She likes that I remember, and I signal Dutch, the bartender, for the beer. “How’s the fam?”

“Same same. Dad’s got some stuff with his kidneys.”

“You ever come out to them?”

She rears back a tad and shoots me a tentative look. I can tell she’s not sure she wants to get personal, but she finally answers.

“Couple years back,” she says.

“And?”

“And just screaming and yelling and crying, and then finally they decided, you know, ‘You’re gonna change your mind.’ That’s where they are, waiting for me to change my mind. Like I’m gonna drive up in a minivan full of kids with my husband any day now.”

“That’s tough.”

“You know, it makes me feel better that I did it, but I shouldn’t have been surprised. My mother’s brother in Manila? He’s in fashion, and a sweetheart. I love him to pieces, I swear, but the guy is so gay, and nobody in the family can see it. ‘Uncle Eo? He’s just different.’ He’s sixty and my mom refers to him as a bachelor, like he’ll be next on the TV show.”

I laugh. She’s funny. She’s always been funny. She didn’t usually say much, but that sense of humor was always kind of lying in wait.

“What’s up with you?” she asks. “Still hate your mom?”

“Forever,” I say. “Dad’s still a washout, but it looks better on him now that he’s old enough to be retired. You remember my grandfather?” Sitting here, I recall taking her over once to meet Sandy and Helen. “I’d been living in his house, helping out, but he’s in assisted living now. So I’ve got my own place. It’s in HI, actually.”

I know she also lives in town, because the cops have residency requirements, and the way she perks up when I say that makes me instantly afraid that I’ve sent the wrong signal, as I so often do. I take a sharp left and head for the safety of business.

“I work as an investigator for Rik Dudek. Do you know who that is?” I ask.

“He’s represented the bad guy on a couple of my cases. Not the usual slimebag.”

“He’s a good guy.”

“He’s a lawyer,” says Tonya.

“Well, he’s the Chief’s lawyer. What do you think of her?”

“I think she’s crushing it. She promoted me.” No smile. Very Tonya. Her main act is tough. Quiet. Blank faced. Straight ahead. When I was just getting to know her, years before, catching on to her deadpan was the first thing that made me realize there was more to her than met the eye. “I actually took the HI offer,” Tonya says, “when I graduated from the academy, instead of Kindle, because the Chief had just been appointed. I figured any department run by a woman was a better bet. Kindle County back then, a female cop was either a mother, a bitch or a whore—those were the only ways they’d see you.”

In the academy, most of the cadets stayed the hell away from me. I was an inked-up queerdo who, given my whole vibe, was destined for failure. Eventually word spread that I had once been sort-of/kind-of on my way to the Olympic trials, which bought me something, along with the fact that I kicked ass in physical training, stuff like our morning run, where I beat all the boys.

Still, I noticed when Tonya seemed to make a point of sitting down next to me during the middle of the day when we were doing academic classes, like criminal procedure. She kept to herself so much that she clearly wasn’t there for conversation, meaning I got a feeling pretty soon about what was up. I wasn’t completely sure, because her family had emigrated when she was a kid, and now and then there were cultural nuances that seemed to go past her, so I wasn’t positive she intended the messages she seemed to be sending. That’s me too, of course. Once in a while, some person who is getting to know me, say in a bar, will ask me in a super-nice way, ‘Did you grow up here?’

I did not necessarily find her attractive. She was pretty lumberjack, which is not my thing. She’s got kind of a squinched-up face, and her skin looked like it had been really bad when she was a teen, and she was thicker physically. Then again, she was interesting, secretly funny, and not quite like anybody else I’d met. All I knew about Filipinos was that some racist kid in high school once said they eat dogs, which I didn’t imagine was actually true. Her family was from one of the outer islands, and all the rest of them—her father, her mother, her two sisters—worked as caregivers for older people. I asked her once why so many Filipinos seemed to do that, at least around Kindle County, and she said, ‘We respect our elders.’

“She says you slay, by the way,” I tell her. “The Chief?”

“Oh yeah? How do you know that?” She’s suspicious, as I expected her to be.

“I mentioned your name, you know, when I met her. As someone I knew in her department.”

“Okay.”

“How you feel about the charges against her with P&F? You know the allegations, right?”

She smirks. “Of course.”

“And what do you think?”

She makes a face and says, “I think that’s what you get when you mess around with men.”

This may be meant as a kind of a put-down of me, but I won’t go there. Truth is she always had an edge about guys, like they’re all just waiting out there to rape or beat you. Me, I basically like men. The most reliable people in my life are male—my dad, Pops, Rik. I start out giving a guy the benefit of the doubt and let him show me that he’s a jerk, which, to be honest, a lot of them do. But Tonya’s attitude gives me a way to work her.

“Yeah,” I say, “but don’t you think it’s insane bullshit? You believe there’s a man in the world, let alone three of them, who is going to let a woman tell him what to do with his thing? I mean, guys, men, that piece of meat is who they are. They’d give her a smack, commanding officer or not. Don’t you think?”

“Definitely,” she answers. “No, you’re right,” she says. She sits back to take my measure. “We just spillin tea or what?”

“Rik—and the Chief—are counting on me to come up with stuff to shoot holes in the three HI cops’ stories, and so far I don’t have much ammunition. For obvious reasons, the Chief can’t ask around. I need background on these guys. Anything will help. It can all be on the DL. I won’t write anything down.”

“Background? Well, how about the foreground? Not throwin shade, but have you had a look at those dudes? Even Frito,” she says, meaning Blanco. “He’s younger and a good guy, but he could stand a full season in the gym. The other two, Cornish and DeGrassi? Old fucks, if you don’t mind.”

“There’s got to be mountains about these guys I’d like to know.”

“I’ll tell you right now, with Frito, I don’t see him lying. He’d think God would strike him dead. The other two? You know, when I came on, they were already the usual cop burnouts, turned into sad shits twenty years ago when they figured out the job wasn’t a television show. I worked a little with both of them. On the street, they’re okay. They’d have your back if something went down. But they’re not worth much anywhere else.” She drops her voice a couple octaves in imitation. “‘You write the report, okay?’” She shakes her head. “They hang together a whole lot.”

Twelve years on the street has made her a different person, so much more confident it’s hard to recognize her in a way. I’m glad for her, and wonder for a second what the badge would have done for me.

“Family guys?” I ask.

“Hardly. Fucked their way out of their marriages from what I hear. Both of them. Well, maybe Primo’s wife is still holding on. You know, they’re the kind of dudes, half the guys who come in here are that way—get drunk and hook up with whoever they can. They don’t even have to be that drunk. I know Cornish’s ex better than him, to tell you the truth.”

“She a cop, too?”

“No. I know her from church.”

“Church?” I keep myself from saying anything else. Tonya has definitely been through some changes.

“It feels good. The whole vibe, you know. Mass. The community. And I like the priest.”

“Hip young dude who’s cool with lesbians?”

“Hip old dude. But yeah, he couldn’t care less. God made me, too, you know.”

God on top of everything else. This is why, when I was younger, I promised myself that I would never become a so-called adult and end up just accepting things that deep down have never made sense to me.

“Could you see if she’d talk to me? Mrs. Cornish?”

“Paulette.” She doesn’t think long, before shaking her head. “I can’t get in the middle of this. I’m all for the Chief, but you know, I’ve got a long time left out there. I don’t want to be on anybody’s team. That shit, his faction and her faction, it’s bad for the department. And me.”

“Understand,” I say, “but I bet Paulette’s got no love lost with her ex, given the way he fucked around on her. I wouldn’t want her to make anything up. Maybe you could just ask her? Tell her I’m good people and won’t screw her over. Then just step out of the way.”

She hitches a shoulder, noncommittal. We sit there looking at each other. With every passing second, the past is beginning to take up a lot more space.

In the academy, after a while, I kind of gave in and hung out with Tonya on a few weekends. The cadets were housed in this dilapidated old dorm at the U. We each had roommates but mine drove home when classes ended on Fridays.

With sex, starting with my so-called boyfriends in junior high, I have never been very good at saying no to anyone who seems to genuinely want me. One Friday night we ended up in my room on the crummy mattress, the old bed frame sort of singing along with us as we rolled around. Cadets were supposed to bring their own sheets, but that was the kind of thing I never could remember, and I recall laying there with her on the blue-and-white-striped ticking after the first time. She was crying like she’d lost something. I was clearly a lot more experienced.

‘I just know what I’m doing,’ I said.

‘I’ll say,’ she answered. ‘And you enjoy it so much.’

‘I always do,’ I told her, and that is the truth. I can almost always cut loose, especially with someone like Tonya, who is basically kind.

Now, across the high-top, I ask Tonya, “You ever hear any of the three talk about Moritz Vojczek?”

“Sure. He’s like the yeti. Everybody talks about him. Dude goes from the job to gazillionaire? What do you think?”

“But these guys specifically? They have any tie to Vojczek you know of?”

“They could. Word is the Ritz employs a lot of ex-cops or guys looking for a side hustle after hours. I mean, Primo and Walter, Vojczek was their lieutenant when he was on the job. The Chief was reorganizing the Narcotics Bureau when I started. She got rid of Ritz somehow and split up Cornish and DeGrassi. Some strange shit going down supposedly. Money and drugs disappearing during busts. You know, my heart won’t break for a dealer. But still. Chief straightened that out.”

I nod several times, just to show I am seeing things her way.

“Either of them, Cornish or DeGrassi, have any, you know, kind of enemies on the force or guys who don’t like them?” I ask.

“I don’t know. DeGrassi, he’s kind of a clown really, lots of laughs. Cornish has some edges. I don’t think he gets along with some of the Black officers. He had a fight a couple years ago with a cop named Emmitt LaTreaux about something LaTreaux thought was racist.”

I write ‘LaTreaux’ on a napkin, then say, “I could use your help on a couple things.” I keep going before she can say no. “You Facebook friends with any of the three?”

“Blanco, yeah.”

“Could you friend the other two?”

“I guess.”

“I just want to see their feed. Photos. Profile. A screen grab here and there, if you could. Just print them out and mail it to me at the office in an envelope without a return address. No questions asked.”

Her lips rumple up. “I’ll think about it.”

“Great. Thanks. Thanks. It could really help the Chief.”