Читать книгу Ties That Blind - Zachary Klein - Страница 16

I rummaged for clues on my hands and knees until my back stiffened and I realized I wouldn’t know a clue if I saw one. A downside of buying my license, city living, or both. So instead of playing in the dirt, I carefully toured the woods hoping to surprise anyone who might be in the vicinity.

I found no one but couldn’t shake the hair stand. I returned to the sedan, drove relatively close to the Hacienda, staked, and betrayed my morning lie to Boots.

Though the feeling never returned, for the first time, I actually began worrying that Lauren was onto something. Worried again that the trashed car hadn’t occurred in a vacuum. But hard as I tried, I couldn’t just figure her refusal to speak to the police or her inability to notice anything unusual.

By 4am I was home blearily staring at more reruns. Not much choice—nothing new is ever on at that time. . The coffee table in front of the couch held an overflowing ashtray, empty beer bottles, and my dope pipe. Sleep was coming, but I wasn’t exactly getting there on my own.

Unfortunately, the next day began no better than the last one ended. Worse. Instead of worry and depression, I awoke with a brain-banging mad, dragged from a dreamless, dry-mouth sleep by the relentless shrill of the landline. In self-defense I grabbed the receiver, ready to curse.

An unfamiliar voice spoke quickly, impatiently. “Mr. Jacobs? Mr. Jacobs?”

“Hold on,” I growled, swallowing my swear. I swung my legs off the bed and lit a cigarette. Nothing like a brushfire in a desert, but I needed help restraining my temper.

“It’s Jacob, without an ‘s,’” I finally said, eyeing leftover water in a smudged drinking glass. I couldn’t remember if it was last night’s or from the night before. “Who’s this?”

“Ted Biancho. I was wondering if we might meet?”

“How did you get my number?” I lifted the glass and killed the water. As soon as he told me his title, I surveyed the room, irrationally worrying about hiding all my dope. Ted Biancho was the Police Chief of Lauren Rowe’s town.

“Is this a formal invitation?”

Biancho chuckled. “You’ve lived in the city too long. We’re more easygoing up here.”

Easygoing or not, there clearly was no room for refusal. “And what time am I expected?”

“Whenever is convenient. Let me give you directions or you’ll miss it.”

“That would be a shame, huh?”

“Not a shame, a mistake.”

I stubbed out my smoke. “I’ll get a pencil.”

No more sleep for this head hurting weary. No comfortable breakfast of caffeine, nicotine, and newspapers. No sit-ups, pushups, or long loping laps around Roberto Clemente` Field. What the hell, the older I’d become the less I liked to run. But nor was I thrilled to be on the receiving end of an invitation from a town’s top cop.

Although the morning was ruined, I stubbornly refused to rush. Shower, smokes, and caffeine after all. It was past twelve when I picked up my car from Manny’s, long past one when I drove into Lauren’s tiny town. Hopefully the office closed early.

If I hadn’t taken the Chief’s directions I might have made the mistake he warned me about. It was difficult to imagine a more unlikely looking police station. The rambling New England farmhouse had been added to—clumsily—at least twice during its lifetime. One addition was tacked to the back, the other stretched at a right angle from the middle of the main structure. All the connected buildings were painted a pleasant pale yellow, effectively masking its bulk. The only indication that it was headquarters was a small wooden plaque hanging on a hook next to the front door.

I stood on the wooden porch, finished my smoke, and tossed it onto the sidewalk. Uniforms never failed to strum my anxiety and an invite from a heavy Blue had me checking pockets, making certain I wasn’t accidentally holding.

I took a deep breath, walked through the screen door and found myself in a huge white room, completely empty save a large desk and chair butting up to an arch on the far side. Someone had taken decorating lessons from Mussolini.

I was halfway across the oak floor when a slim, medium height, dark-complected figure with close cropped brown hair appeared from the back and leaned against the arch’s frame. I stopped as he took a bite of an apple, chewed, swallowed, and pitched the core into a pail.

“You’re Jacobs?” he asked in a soft, polite voice. He was in his late thirties—an age I hadn’t seen in quite a while. No uniform, although his pleated green chinos and yellow Izod were close to an official something.

“Jacob,” I reminded. “You’re Chief Biancho?” I walked close enough to see his sharp features. Despite the languid pose, his intense dark eyes scraped my face and scratched my nerves.

“Thanks for stopping by.”

“Thanks for the directions. You get hit during the night?” With me, banjo nerves usually came loaded with an open mouth.

Razor thin lines crossed Biancho’s smooth forehead. “What?”

I waved my arm around the empty room. “Some terrorist steal all your stuff?”

He smiled briefly. “I told you we’re a small operation.”

“Small is different than empty.”

“Just a ‘mom and pop’ office with more pops than moms,” Biancho said, a touch less pleasantly. “We don’t use this room. People generally come through the side door.”

“At least you don’t have to rent a hall for the Police Ball.”

Biancho smiled tightly, pushed himself off the frame, and turned his back. His alligatored knit back.

I followed it through the rest of the great hall into a long corridor that led to the additions. The Chief waited until I caught up before heading toward a plain, but large and comfortable, office.

“You usually man the fort alone?” I asked before sitting on a small leather loveseat across from a floral upholstered wing chair. On the other side of the room there was a neatly kept mahogany desk with a framed photograph of a beautiful redhead. Dum dums to silver bullets, we were talking wife.

Biancho shook his head as he sat down in the pretty chair. “Deborah called in sick. I was planning to send her on errands when you arrived, anyway.”

I tried to ignore my sudden shot of panic. “It’s good to be Chief.”

“Pretty good. Got me pegged as a regular small town shit-kicker, don’t you?”

I couldn’t stop wagging my tongue. “Not yet.”

Biancho’s mouth moved but I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or swear. “This morning you asked where I got your number.”“After you told me who you were I figured the phone company.”

“I went through your car yesterday when it was parked near Shore Road and ran across your ticket. Bad habit to leave your wallet in the trunk. Trunks get popped all the time.” Biancho eyes bore into mine.

I hoped he didn’t see how fucking stupid I felt. I’d spent half the goddamn night in a car worrying about nothing. While Biancho’s b&e didn’t explain the trampled grass in the woods, it probably did explain the “feeling.” Still, something about that campsite continued to disturb me.

I raised my brows. “This time it was the good guys who did the popping.” Now that I knew he’d been in my car, I felt a mixture of anger and alarm; I couldn’t remember whether I had finished all my weed before I’d followed Lauren out to the rocks.

“There’s no reason to worry, Mr. Jacob. We’re on the same side. When I called your police department to check on you, an interesting thing happened.”

“Everybody cheered?”

“No cheers, but your name caught their attention. It took a couple of hand-offs but I finally spoke to a mutual acquaintance. Washington Clifford. They called him your “babysitter.”

Whatever wind left in my sail escaped. Washington Clifford was a vicious son of a bitch who more than once Buddy Rich’d my body.

“I’m sure he gave you a balanced report,” I said sarcastically. Clifford lived a sanctioned life between the official cracks of Boston’s Police Department. My dislike was matched only by fear. Clifford’s dislike was undiluted, despite situations where we had helped each other out.

“You leap to conclusions awfully fast, Mr. Jacob.”

“Why don’t you just call me Matt? Mister makes me feel even older than I am.”