“I’M BORED,” I said.
Lawrence Jones ignored me. We’d been sitting curbside in his rusting ten-year-old Buick for nearly three hours now, on Garvin Avenue, half a block down from Brentwood’s, the expensive men’s shop owned by Arnett Brentwood, who had pooled his resources with some other proprietors to hire Lawrence and some other detectives to find out who was busting into their places of business at night and making off with their inventory. This was not some “lame-ass security gig,” Lawrence had assured me. Arnett Brentwood and his fellow clothiers not only wanted to stop these guys, but find out who they were and get their merchandise back.
Lawrence sat behind the wheel, rarely taking his eyes off the storefront. It was probably the third or fourth time I’d suggested I was not being sufficiently entertained, and he was learning quickly that the best way to deal with me was to pretend I wasn’t there.
He was an ex-cop in his late thirties, black, fit and trim, slightly over six feet, and gay, which I thought explained why he was a much better dresser than I. After a couple of minutes of dead silence, he said, “Sorry.”
“Hmm?”
“Sorry this isn’t more exciting for you. If I could have, I’d have called these guys, told them to rob this place sooner, that you had to go to bed early.”
“I appreciate the thought.”
We’d been watching the traffic, paying close attention to any vehicles that slowed down as they went past Brentwood’s. We were still in the city proper, but beyond the downtown. Few of the buildings around here got above two or three stories. Brentwood’s took up two floors, with an apartment on the third. Brentwood didn’t live there. He was doing too well to live above his shop and had a nice house in the Heights.
“So, are we looking for any particular kind of car?” I asked.
Lawrence did half a shrug. “Not sure. Probably a truck, something big like that. Middle of the night, they drive up, ram through the front window and into the store. You can’t do that in a Civic. Guys run in and grab armloads of suits off the rack, run back into the truck, and they’re gone. Usually do the whole thing in under a minute.”
“Neat. Maybe it’s a pit crew, those guys who can gas up a car and change the tires in ten seconds.”
“Well, there’s a driver, at least two more guys running in and out, that would be my guess. Brentwood got hit once before, about three months ago, and his security cameras picked up some blurry images of guys all dressed in black with black ski masks, looked like a bunch of commandos. Some of the other places around the city, didn’t even have any cameras, but sounds like the same bunch. Cops promise drive-bys, but they’re not going to solve this unless they stumble onto some warehouse and find the suits by accident.”
Lawrence’s cell rang inside his jacket. “Yeah?” he said. “Nothing happening here either. Yeah, right, at least I got company.” He cast a sideways glance my way. “I’ll check in with you in half an hour.”
He slipped the phone back into his jacket. “That was Miles.”
“Miles?”
“Miles Diamond. I work with him a lot, pass stuff his way. He’s watching Maxwell’s. They haven’t been hit yet, but they’re just the kind of place these guys like. High-end stuff, Italian suits, right on the street, big window that goes right down to the sidewalk. Perfect.”
“Miles Diamond,” I said. “Now, there’s a name for a detective.”
“It helps make up for the fact he’s this little bald white dude. He’s good on surveillance, ’cause you can hardly see him behind the steering wheel.”
“You meet him when you were on the force?”
“Miles is too little to ever make it as a cop. He’s always been private. And he’s got this gorgeous wife, she must be five-ten, spectacularly engineered. Saw them out dancing one time, he’s got his head nestled in between them there, looking very contented. Not my kind of thing, but hey, he’s happy.”
“So, if it’s quiet at Maxwell’s, maybe our guys are going to hit here tonight?” I suggested, ever hopeful. This wasn’t going to be much of a feature on the life of a private detective if all we ever did was shoot the breeze in a rusted-out Buick.
“I should’ve got a coffee,” I added. “Tomorrow night, we get coffee.”
“Just makes you piss,” Lawrence said.
I made a few notes in my reporter’s notebook, some color, how the street looked so late at night. Hardly any cars passing by-
“Hold on,” said Lawrence. “Big black pickup ahead.”
I looked up from my notes. It was one of those Dodge Durangos, with that front grill as big as a barn door. But it didn’t slow as it passed Brentwood’s, and there was no one inside but the driver.
“Stand down,” Lawrence said.
We were quiet for a while. When I felt it was time to attempt a bit of conversation, I said, “What do you do for anxiety?”
“Anxiety?”
“Yeah. You’ve got a stressful job, things to worry about, you make a living tracking down not-very-nice people. So how do you deal with that?”
Lawrence thought for a moment. “Jazz,” he said.
“Jazz?”
“I go home, I put some Oscar Peterson, some Nina Simone, maybe some Billie Holiday or Erroll Garner on the stereo. Sit and listen to it.”
“Jazz,” I said. “So you don’t actually take anything. You listen to music.”
“You’re not paying attention. Not just music. Jazz. And no, I don’t take anything. What the fuck would I take?”
I felt on the defensive. “I don’t know. Xanax? Herbal remedies?”
Lawrence smiled. “Yeah, herbal remedies. That’s me.” He glanced at his watch. “Time to check in.”
Lawrence got out his cell again and punched in what I presumed was Miles Diamond’s number. He put the phone to his ear and waited. “Come on, Miles, pick up.” There must have been time for a good eight rings. Lawrence gave up, held the phone in his hand, which he rested on the bottom of the steering wheel.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“I don’t know.” His cheek bulged out as he moved his tongue around. “Sometimes you just can’t answer your phone. I’ll give him another minute.”
We didn’t say anything for the next sixty seconds. Lawrence entered Miles Diamond’s number again, put the phone to his ear.
The phone probably rang only twice. “Hey,” said Lawrence, and then something happened to his face. His eyes narrowed, grew sharper.
“Who is this?” Lawrence said. “No, why don’t you tell me who you are, and then maybe I’ll tell you who I am.”
I could hear, faintly, someone at the other end.
“Fuck,” said Lawrence. “It’s me, Steve. It’s Lawrence. What the hell’s happened to Miles?”
He listened quietly, then said, “I’ll be there in ten.”
He put the phone away, turned the ignition, and the Buick rattled to life. I just looked at him, waiting.
“Nothing’s going to happen here tonight,” he said to me. “But Miles got a little action.”
Lawrence put the car into drive, swung the car across Garvin so we were headed in the other direction, and drove a lot faster than that car had any business going.
We rounded the corner onto Emmett, a short but trendy street with several ritzy stores, including a jeweler’s, a shoe store, a place that sold rare art books, a couple of high-end ladies’-wear places, and one storefront that was nothing but shattered glass and splintered wood. Above what used to be the window was the name Maxwell’s.
There were three black-and-white police cars, and a couple more unmarked cruisers with their trademark tiny hubcaps, plus an ambulance, but the attendants weren’t doing any rushing around. Most of the attention seemed to be focused on something in the middle of the street.
Lawrence pulled the Buick up onto the sidewalk about a hundred feet back, and we both got out. A uniformed officer approached Lawrence, raising his hand up flat to press against his chest and keep him away from the scene, but before he could touch him Lawrence said, with some authority, “Where’s Steve Trimble?”
“Over there,” the cop said, lowering his hand and using it to point.
A tall white guy with short dark hair, glasses, and a pencil-thin mustache, who was kneeling over the facedown body of a man a few steps away from the curb, glanced our way and got to his feet. He and Lawrence approached each other with an uncomfortable familiarity, like they knew each other but weren’t friends. Still, I thought maybe Lawrence would extend a hand, but he didn’t, and this Trimble guy didn’t either.
“When he got hit,” Trimble said, “at least it didn’t break his cell phone. When we heard it ringing inside his jacket, I grabbed it. What was he doing here?”
Lawrence looked over at the dead body of Miles Diamond. “He and I were watching different stores, thinking they might get hit. I guess his did.”
Trimble pursed his lips, nodded. “You friends?”
“We each threw each other a bit of work. He was a good guy. He’s got a wife.”
“I’ve seen her,” Trimble said, grinning. “He was a lucky guy till now. Who’s this?” he asked, tilting his head toward me.
“Zack Walker. He writes for The Metropolitan.”
“Hi,” I said. Trimble glared at me briefly, then said to Lawrence, “What’s he doing, a piece on guys who couldn’t hack it on the force?”
Lawrence ran his hand over his mouth, like he was going to have to physically keep his comments to himself. He slipped his hand into his pocket and said, “Do you know what happened here, Steve?”
“Mr. Diamond appears to be the victim of a hit-and-run. We got a witness, guy walking his dog, about a block away, said this black SUV was backing out of Maxwell’s here after taking out the front of the store, and squashed our guy here. He must have got out of his car-that’s it parked over there-I don’t know, but he woulda been better off staying put.”
“So they ran him down,” Lawrence said. A vein I’d not noticed before was pulsing at the side of his head.
Trimble shook his head slowly. “Not sure. The dog walker, he said Miles was behind the SUV, one of those big tall ones, you know, and he was so short, they just might not have seen him when they were backing up. These SUVs, they should all go beep-beep when they back up, like trucks, you know?”