It was five past two when I left the hospital to find Mitch Corbett.
CHAPTER 28
I didn’t have my truck at the hospital, so I had to walk it. The house was about two miles from MetroHealth. I walked down the empty sidewalks, keeping my hands in my pockets and my shoulders hunched against the light chill the storms had left in the night air. A car cruised past me slowly, a couple kids sticking their heads out of the windows and yelling at me. I didn’t look up. One of them tossed a bottle that hit ten feet away and shattered. They laughed and drove on.
Although I was feeling confident that Corbett had been in the house, I wasn’t sure he’d still be there. The day after the fires, the cops would have had to put some scrutiny on the Neighborhood Alliance. They would have checked the other houses, probably accompanied by an arson team. If they’d flushed Corbett out, would he have returned? All I could do was hope that he had.
The house on West Fortieth looked just as it had the last time I’d visited it in the night—dark, lonely, and forgotten. A neighborhood lived on around it, but this house was no longer part of that. I approached the back door.
I didn’t have a gun. My Glock had been lost in Rocky River, and I hadn’t gone back to the office or to my apartment before making this trip. I wasn’t in a mood to let that worry me, though.
The door wasn’t locked. The knob turned freely in my hand. I pushed the door open about six inches, then stepped to the side, and listened. There was no sound of movement. I gave it a few seconds longer, then pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside. I remembered the layout and moved fairly quickly through the kitchen and into the living room. As I entered, I heard a soft thump and moved to the side again. A car passed outside, and light slid over the room momentarily. It was enough to show me a familiar gray-and-white cat on the floor, looking up with wide eyes that shone in the darkness, and a large man stretched out on the floor under a thin blanket, a handgun beside him.
I shuffled close to him, and the cat meowed loudly. The man didn’t stir. I felt along the dirty floorboards with my left hand, searching for the gun. I touched something else and discovered it was a metal-handled flashlight. I took it in my right hand, then kept searching till I found the gun and put it in my left hand. When I picked the gun up, the cat yowled again, louder this time. The man on the floor grunted softly and sat up. I hit the flashlight button and shot the beam into his eyes.
“Rise and shine, Mr. Corbett.”
He covered his eyes with one arm and swept the other across the floor, searching for the gun.
“I’ve already got it,” I said, and he stopped moving. His eyes were shielded and he squinted, and still he couldn’t see me, because I was standing behind the light.
“I’m Lincoln Perry,” I said. “And we’re going to do some talking. Talk well enough—and that means honest enough—and you might not die tonight, Corbett.”
He sat on the floor with his back against the wall while I stood in front of him. He was a big man, over six feet and carrying probably 220 pounds. He wore grimy jeans and a T-shirt, and a new growth of beard covered his face. The cat had curled up beside him, and he stroked its fur absently while he talked.
“Whatever Cancerno told you is a lie. The only thing he knows about the truth is how to avoid it. Ed was my friend. You think I had anything to do with what happened with him, you’re out of your mind.”
“You know what did happen, though?”
“Most of it.”
“Then what the hell are you doing here, instead of down at a police station trying to help before more people die?”
“You just told me,” Corbett said, “that it was a cop who shot your partner.”
“Yes.”
He laughed softly. “So there you go, man. There you go. First Anita went down, then Ed, and I knew it was time for my ass to clear out. Not that I expected to make it long. I got no money, no place to go. And Jimmy Cancerno is not going to let me stay gone for long. When the man finds me . . .” He shook his head. “Dying isn’t going to be easy for me. He’ll make damn sure of that. Take his time.”
“Why?”
“Why? Because I put it all in motion, man. I told the old stories. And he knows that. Everything that’s happened since? Jimmy’s holding me personally responsible. I guarantee that.”
“Explain it. If you put it all into motion, I want to know how. Every last detail, Corbett.”
He ran a hand over his scruffy beard and sighed. My night vision had adapted to the point that I could see him even without the flashlight. The empty living room smelled heavily of dust and mold.
“It goes back a ways,” he said. “For you to understand what Eddie got into, you got to listen a bit.”
“I’ve been through a lot to hear the story. I’m sure as hell not going to get impatient now.”
His eyes searched for me in the darkness, and he nodded once. “Okay. Then I’ll get to telling it.”
______
It started, Mitch Corbett told me, when Norm Gradduk lost his job. It hadn’t been in April, which was what Norm had offered to his family. It had been the previous October. For six months, Norm had left the house every day pretending he was on his way to work. In reality, he was on his way to the Hideaway or another drinking establishment of choice. Norm had gone through a handful of jobs in the two years leading up to that, and at his last firing Alberta had hit the roof. He didn’t want to deal with that scene again, so he decided he’d just keep things quiet till he found another job.
“Problem was,” Corbett said, “he didn’t find another job.”
So Norm needed cash, and a steady supply of it. Didn’t want to go for unemployment, though. There was pride at stake, and of course it was more likely Alberta would find out the truth if he did go on the county. Maybe even leave him. One of Norm’s friends, maybe Scott Draper’s dad, maybe somebody else, introduced him to a neighborhood guy named Jimmy Cancerno. Told him this was a man who could give him some cash, a short-term loan, a long-term loan, whatever he needed. Cancerno was more than cooperative when the two men met; he was downright friendly. Slapped Norm on the shoulder and told him the money was his. They’d work out terms of repayment later, he said with a wink. At first, Norm borrowed as little as possible, just enough to keep the electric bill paid and food on the table. But the money was given so freely, without hassle or heartache, that it also became easier to ask for it. The weekly loans increased. So did the debt. And Norm’s drinking and gambling.
“You know much about Cancerno?” Corbett asked me, his voice low and quiet in the dark.
“Big player in the neighborhood, I understand.”
Corbett laughed that unamused laugh of his again. “He runs this neighborhood, man. Owns it. And the loan- sharking was just a different sort of investment plan for him. He wasn’t counting on getting the cash back. What he wanted was favors. He wanted to have guys who owed him so bad, they’d be willing to do a lot of things for him. Do things that would make Jimmy a hell of a lot more in the long run than what the guys owed him on the loans. He liked to set the hook, Jimmy did. Still does.”
“I believe it.”
Winter came and went, and Norm started to pull himself together again, Corbett explained. Got off the barstool and back out looking for work. Fessed up to Alberta about his employment status, but didn’t tell her how long it had been since he was fired. Didn’t mention his arrangement with Jimmy Cancerno. Norm found a job. Awful pay, but the best he could do at the time. Then summer rolled around, and so did Jimmy Cancerno.
By then Norm owed Cancerno somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five grand. Not an astronomical sum, but a lot to a guy whose new job paid about four hundred a week. And Cancerno wanted repayment immediately, with value added. When Norm confessed that it would likely be a few years before he could cover all of the debt, Cancerno made him an offer—he could work the debt off. Clear thousands owed in one night, by setting a few fires. A guy named Terry Solich was really beginning to cramp Cancerno’s business style, and Cancerno had
