Leaving the LAW, page 7
When I left Robert E and Lee’s a little while later, I had my dinner in hand: a large roast beef on rye, sides of beans and slaw, and a slice of banana cream pie, baked daily on the premises.
Hey, I was good at lunch.
* * *
Once I got home, I put the food in my refrigerator and dialed the number Paris Soloman had written on the back of his card. After two rings, a young woman’s voice came on the line.
“Community Outreach, this is Tiffany.”
“Good afternoon, Tiffany,” I said. “May I speak with Mr. Witherspoon?”
“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Witherspoon isn’t here at the moment. May I take a message?”
“I’d like to steal a little bit of his time,” I said. “When do you expect him?”
“Actually, not until next week,” she said. “He’s out of town. But I could set up an appointment for next Monday morning, if you’d like. May I ask the nature of your business?”
“Mostly, Tiffany,” I said, “I just want to pick his brain for a while. Detective Paris Soloman suggested I talk to Mr. Witherspoon.”
“Certainly, sir. Would nine o’clock next Monday be convenient?
I assured her that it would and gave her my name and phone number.
It was only three o’clock and I had laundry to do, unless I could think of some excuse to put it off.
* * *
Twenty minutes later, I pulled into the parking lot of the new Home Depot. I didn’t know if Larretta was even working at the moment, and I could have called to find out, of course, but the personal touch is always preferable, especially if it gets you out of doing your laundry, however temporarily.
This was my first visit to the store, though not to the site on which it stood. When I was in high school, my mother worked at the Sears that had been at that location for as long as I could remember. I’d even worked part-time at Sears myself a couple of Christmas vacations. The store closed about seven or eight years ago, at the height of the gang activity in the area, and the building stood empty until the Home Depot folks knocked it down and put up their own place.
When I walked through the automatic doors at the entrance, the third person I saw was Larretta. She was wearing an orange apron and working one of the dozen or so check-out lines near the front of the store. There wasn’t anyone in her line, so I walked over and said hi.
“Mr. Barnes,” she said, “I wasn’t expecting to see you here. How ya doin’?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “How’s Anthony?”
“He’s okay, Mr. Barnes. The doctor sent him home on Tuesday, and he went back to school today.”
She gave a little twirl and said, “How do you like the look?”
I smiled and said, “Very nice. You like working here?”
“Um-mm,” she said. “I do. They pay good, and they have good benefits. But I’ll bet you didn’t come in here to check on my job satisfaction, did you? I got a dinner break in just a few minutes, if you wanna talk.”
We agreed to meet at Vento’s, a pizza joint that was an institution in the area. When Home Depot built its store, the city used eminent domain to knock down several homes and small businesses adjacent to Sears. There was such an outcry about Vento’s closing that Home Depot, in a very smart PR move, offered Sal Vento space for a new shop in one corner of the Home Depot, with access through the store and from the street.
Vento’s wasn’t too busy yet, and I got a booth for us. When Larretta came in, she stopped and asked if she could order for me.
“Thanks, Larretta,” I said. “But I had a late lunch, and I’m planning a big dinner.”
She nodded and went over to the counter and ordered a couple slices of pepperoni pizza. When she came back and sat down, I said, “I’m going to meet with a man named Asaan Witherspoon next week. Do you know him?”
“Not personal,” she said, “but I know who he is. He used to be a gang-banger, back when we had all the trouble. The he got sent to jail for a few years. Came back here when he got out, started the community center. I know he works with the gangs. Is that why you’re gonna talk to him?”
“Yes,” I said. “A police detective said Witherspoon might be able to give me some information about the gangs.” After a pause, I said, “Are you sure that Anthony wants to leave the Links, because if he doesn’t—”
“It ain’t about what Anthony wants, Mr. Barnes. That ain’t the issue here.” As she spoke, her voice had risen, and there was a note of anger there.
“Larretta, I didn’t mean I wouldn’t help, just that I need to know what’s in Anthony’s mind?”
She sighed and said, “Honest to God, Mr. Barnes, I don’t think Anthony knows what he wants and don’t want.”
A teenager brought Larretta’s pizza, and as she began to eat, I said, “I’d like to talk with Anthony again, if you think he’d be willing to see me.”
“Oh, I’m sure he would, Mr. Barnes. After you left the hospital, he kept pesterin’ me with questions about you. He won’t admit it, but he’s interested in you. Said you were the first real live private eye he’d ever met, and that you was in pretty good shape for a old white guy.” She smiled bashfully and added, “Oops, sorry. That last just slipped out. I didn’t mean no offense, and I’m sure Anthony didn’t neither.”
“None taken, Larretta,” I laughed. “From his point of view, I am an old white guy. Anyway, how about if I give him a call next week, after I see Mr. Witherspoon?”
“That’d be good, Mr. Barnes.”
She ate some more of her pizza before speaking again.
“I talked with Anthony ‘bout his behavior in school. I never had no trouble with Anthony until last year, when he took up with that gang. Now, sometimes, I just feel like I’m losin’ him, losin’ my own son, Mr. Barnes. He used to get good grades and go to all his classes, but this year, at Franklin, seems like he’s always cuttin’ and gettin’ into trouble. And every time I try talkin’ to him about the gang stuff, he just says that I don’t understand, that you got to be in a gang these days if you wanna survive. I tell him that’s foolishness, but he just clams up on me.”
“I’ll talk to Mr. Witherspoon, and then I’ll see Anthony,” I told her. “Meanwhile, just keep doing what you’re doing, Larretta. You’re a good parent.”
She smiled a thank-you, and a little later, she went back into the store, and I went outside and walked around to the parking lot and got in my car and drove home. When I got there, the dirty laundry hadn’t magically cleaned itself, so I started a load in the washer and then gave Augie a call. He’d just gotten home from school.
“What’s up, JB?” he asked.
“Just wanna ask a question, Aug. What can you tell me about Asaan Witherspoon?”
“Gang leader in the area until he was sent away on a robbery charge. Got out a couple of years ago, said he found God, runs a community center now. Does a lot of work with the kids. Any of that help?”
“Confirms what I’ve already been told,” I said.
“He knows the kids almost as well as most of the staff at school,” said Augie. “Probably knows the gang kids even better, spends a lot of time trying to get them to keep the peace. You gonna talk to him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Next Monday.”
“Good. He can tell you as much about the gangs as anybody else can. We still on for b-ball next Thursday?”
“Yep. See ya then.”
I finished the laundry and did a few more chores and then had a late dinner while watching a Travel Channel program about Hawaii, but I couldn’t really get into it, because I kept trying to imagine what it would be like to be a parent and think that you were losing your child.
Chapter 18
The next morning, after running and lifting a little, I called Peterson Toyota and talked to Brian in the service department. He said they had an opening at 11:00 for an oil and lube on the 4Runner, and I told him I’d take it. I can change the oil myself, of course. Really. I did it once, over at Angie and Simon’s. Well, Simon helped a little, but it was yours truly who actually popped the hood, which is the first and most important step in the whole process. Think about it.
Okay, so I know beans about cars, which is why I have always taken my vehicles in for their regularly scheduled maintenance. I’m a whiz at whipping off thousand-word essays, not to mention arm-wrestling, but I pretty much suck at anything more involved than topping off the windshield washer fluid. Yeah, I know, how can I be a private detective, which is supposed to be such a manly profession, and not be able to navigate my way around cars? I just never had any interest in learning about the care and feeding of automobiles. A long time ago, I tried my hand at some of the simpler procedures, like that oil-changing thing, in case of emergencies, but that phase of my life came to an abrupt halt when I became aware of the existence of Triple A. I mean, c’mon.
* * *
Peterson Toyota is owned by Phil Peterson, who’s got me by about ten years. I bought my very first car from Phil, when I was still in college. The car was an old Tercel, and I think Phil realized right away that my financial situation didn’t allow for anything beyond basic transportation. He gave me a good deal on the Tercel and didn’t try to talk me into any nonsense like rustproofing, so I’ve continued to buy my cars from his dealership. About four years ago, our relationship took a different turn. Somebody snatched his six-month-old daughter, grabbed the girl out of her stroller at a playground while the babysitter sat two feet away. Within twenty-four hours, two things about the case stood out to the cops and anyone else who’d ever been involved with the abduction of a child. First, the kidnapper was a teenage boy. Second, there was no ransom demand. Every cop in the city was working overtime trying to find the girl. Two days after she was taken, Phil called to ask if I’d help look for his daughter. I told him I would, and then I called Dennis to see what the police had learned.
The babysitter hadn’t been able to provide a very good description of the boy who’d taken the baby, just that he was white and skinny and wore a blue cap. The cops had canvassed the area around the playground, to no avail. There were lots of teenage boys who fit the description, but they all had solid alibis for the time of the kidnapping. Denny told me that the police had also checked with the local hospitals, asking about girls who’d recently had miscarriages or even abortions, thinking maybe one of them and her boyfriend had decided to grab someone else’s baby. You never know with kids. But that turned out to be a dead end, too.
I spent a day looking into other possibilities, with no success at all, and then, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do, I checked with a source in the adoption field, not to see about babies who’d suddenly became available, the cops had done that early on. Instead, I tried the backdoor approach and asked about females, teenagers to early twenties, who’d put kids up for adoption during the previous few months. My friend gave me a sheet with over fifty names on it, which I arbitrarily narrowed to twelve by excluding anyone living more than a few miles from the playground. I was pretty sure that I wasn't supposed to have such a list in my possession, and I was equally sure that I didn’t care. As I scanned the list, one name, Roberta Johnson, caught my eye, something about the paper just a few days earlier. I got on the Post-Gazette’s website and within thirty seconds found the five-line bit on the back page of the Local News section. Fifteen-year-old Roberta Johnson had been reported missing. The other four lines described the clothes she’d been wearing the day she disappeared and mentioned that Roberta was “easily confused.”
A contact at the paper got me Roberta’s home address, and less than half an hour later, I was talking to her parents. Her father told me that Roberta was “always runnin’ off,” and the only reason they’d reported her disappearance this time was his wife was worried “on accounta she thinks Bobbie might do somethin’ stupid, feelin’ bad about gettin’ rida that kid and all.” He had no idea where his daughter was, and he didn’t seem to care. I didn’t find out what his wife thought or felt about anything, since she sat in a straight-backed chair in the corner of their living room the whole time I was there and never uttered a word.
Before I left, I asked about the father of Roberta’s baby, and Mr. Johnson said, “Melvin Baines. Eighteen years old and stickin’ it to my daughter. Prick lives over at the corner of Negley and Winchester, big yellow brick place. They don’t have a brain between’em, why we made Bobbie give up that kid.”
I drove over to Melvin’s house and found no one home, so I parked out front and waited. An hour later, a skinny white kid walked past my car and up the walk to the house. He was wearing a Yankees hat.
The rest was easy. I caught up with him on his front porch and told him I was looking for Bobbie. Within thirty seconds, I could tell that Melvin, too, was easily confused. And his eyes kept moving past me to an abandoned apartment building just down the street.
Two minutes later I was standing in one of the first floor apartments, holding Phil’s daughter with one hand while using the other to call him to come get his baby. Bobbie and Melvin had wanted a replacement baby, and they hadn’t thought it through any further than Melvin procuring one for them.
Phil had wanted to give me a blank check, but I told him there was no charge. Early on, Uncle Leo had impressed upon me that you didn’t take money for looking for children. “Find’em or not,” he’d said, “if there’re little ones involved, there’s no bill.” Then Phil tried to give me a new car, and when I turned that down, too, and he saw that I was serious, he just looked at me and nodded and shook my hand.
* * *
While the boys in the shop had their way with the 4Runner, I wandered around the showroom. No reason not to at least glance at the new cars. Simple courtesy, really. I was checking out a grayish Camry XLE when a slender young black man wearing a three-piece suit approached me and put out his hand.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Randall. Beautiful vehicle, isn’t it?”
“Yes, it is,” I agreed. “And I’m just looking, Randall. Killing time while my car’s being serviced.”
“Hey, no problem,” he said. “My boss says we should greet the customer, and then if the customer wants to be left alone, we’re supposed to leave them alone.”
Actually, I knew that that was Phil’s policy. He didn’t believe in high pressure salesmanship. Randall gave me his card and turned to leave.
“Say, Randall,” I said, “If I was interested in this gray number here, what kind of numbers would we be talking?”
“It’s antique sage pearl, sir, and why don’t we go into my office?”
* * *
Two hours later, I was signing the sales agreement. Randall said I could pick up the car the following Monday, once all the paperwork had been processed. I asked if there was any chance of my getting it by Saturday, and he left to talk to the general manager. When the two of them came back a couple of minutes later, Phil was with them.
“JB,” he said, shaking my hand, “I didn’t know you were here. Randall tells me you’re buying that XLE we got on the floor. Good choice. He also tells me you’d like it by Saturday. I believe we can expedite matters a little.”
“Phil, I’m not asking for any special—”
“And you aren’t getting any,” he said. “Nothing that we wouldn’t do for any other customer who’s been loyal to the dealership over the years.” He looked at me for a minute and then added, “You gonna give me grief over this?”
“Nah,” I said, “I’m not. Thanks, Phil.”
He turned to walk out of the office, then paused and looked back at me.
“Logan’s starting kindergarten next year, JB.”
I nodded.
* * *
An hour later, as I drove home in my Camry XLE, I took a deep breath.
New car smell.
Ya gotta love it.
Chapter 19
I picked Laura up at six o’clock on Saturday night. Usually I park in one of the lined-in spaces out front, as close as I can to the covered walkway that leads to the building’s entrance. Tonight, even though there was a space right beside the awning, I left my Camry at the curb at the end of the walkway. I’m pretty sure you can park a new car just about anywhere you want for the first thirty days. Some kind of state law, I think.
Laura buzzed me into the lobby and said she’d be right down. As I waited, I checked my reflection in the mirrors across the hall from the twin elevators. For this evening’s festivities, I had selected a brown suit with a muted blue windowpane pattern, beige dress shirt with gold collar pin, a dark blue tie with a background of tiny gold triangles, and my best brown dress loafers. It was warm enough that I had decided to go sans coat.
Within a minute, the doors to the elevator on my left slid open and Laura appeared. Whereas I had gone for dressy, it was obvious that Laura had opted for gorgeous. Her long-sleeved, fitted beige dress stopped a couple of inches above her knees and had a high-cut neckline, over which hung a medium length, delicate gold chain that matched the earrings which peeked out from behind the brown hair that settled softly about her shoulders. She carried a small purse that was exactly the same color as her beige pumps with the four-inch heels. Her makeup was flawless, her lipstick was perfect, and as she walked out of the elevator and over to me, carrying a lightweight tan coat over one arm, several parts of her body moved in ways that were most likely illegal in some of your more conservative municipalities.
She stretched up and kissed me lightly on one cheek and said, “You look great.”
“As soon as I can catch my breath,” I said, “I’ll return the compliment. For the nonce, will wow suffice?”
She smiled and stepped back and took a longer look at me.
“Hey,” she said, “we sort of match tonight, don’t we?”
“In every way possible, kid,” I told her. “And now, madam, your carriage awaits.”
