Chain of Evidence

“I understand that.” He apologized again.

Dart stressed the urgency of his case, building up Corwin’s importance and underscoring that the information was vital to an active homicide investigation. The man rallied to the call, an unusual but welcome response. “I’ll need to go down to the office. Blue tags, you said? Only blues?”

“Blue; Five digits, starting with nine-eight.”

“If we sold them,” Corwin said confidently, “I’ll know who to.” He paused. “You did say murder, right?”

“That’s right.”

“That’s what I thought you said.”

Forty-five minutes later, Corwin called back. “I got two retail and one commercial with blue tags. The ninety-eight thousand series went to Abe’s over on Seymour.”

“Seymour?” Dart shouted into the phone without meaning to.

“Yeah, Seymour Street. Abe’s Commercial Laundry.”

Dart checked the open yellow pages for an address. “Abe’s is not listed in the Yellow Pages,” he complained.

“They’re commercial, not retail. They do institutional work-nursing homes, that sort of thing. I doubt they would advertise.”

“No retail?” Dart asked.

“Some, probably. There’s a storefront of sorts, as I recall-mind you, I haven’t done a delivery in ten years. It’s not a big part of their business-retail. That’s a bad part of town.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Even ten years ago.”

“Yes.”

“Commercial work, mostly. They’re a good customer for us. Big volume.”

Dart thanked the man and was already turning through the white pages, his finger running down columns. A manicured nail entered his vision-Abby had found the listing. Corwin clarified, “You said a murder investigation, right?”

“Yes I did.”

“And I helped?”

“Very much.”

“That’s okay … I like that…. Hey, Detective?” he said, holding an impatient Dart on the phone. “Nail the bastard.”

Dart thanked him again and hung up. He told Abby, “He said to nail the bastard.”

“What did you say?” she asked.

“I thanked him.”

She was over checking the map, pinned to the wall. “It’s Seymour Street, just south of Park Street.” “We can’t go in there alone, Joe,” she chided. “Not without a cruiser. Not without backup.”

He didn’t want to get into this with her. Haite would resist giving him any help, would never grant him backup. What made this worse, much worse, for Dart was that just the sound of the words Seymour Street was familiar to him, but he couldn’t remember why, could not place the voice speaking those words, Corwin’s voice too fresh, too present, in his mind.

But then that voice came to him. After seven years of hearing a voice daily it did not stay blurred for long. Walter Zeller had been raised in his parents’ house on Seymour Street, back when Park Street had been a good neighborhood, not a demilitarized zone. He had spoken of that house, that time, often, affectionately, nostalgically, referring to it simply as Seymour Street.

Dart could not remember what had happened to the house. Zeller had inherited it upon his mother’s death four years ago. That much he remembered well, because Zeller had paid some inheritance tax rather than sell the place, despite its almost worthless value. He wasn’t sure what had become of the place after that.

Perhaps, Dart thought, Wallace Sparco lives there now.

CHAPTER 38

This was it-Dart knew before he set foot out the door.

He stole four hours sleep at home after walking Mac around the block and fixing himself a tuna sandwich. By five-thirty it was dark outside, and it occurred to him that the earlier the better because the worst gang violence came after ten at night, by the time the drugs and the alcohol and the restless anger had taken hold. He dressed in black jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt so that he could walk with hood up and buy himself some disguise.

He made the trip alone, believing that he would find Zeller at the house on Seymour Street, that the man had chosen the perfect safe house-no one from outside, not even a cop, would enter the heart of Park Street at this time of night without good reason and plenty of backup. Maybe Zeller had cut himself a protection deal with one of the gangs-establishing himself on an inner-city warning system consisting of cellular phones and CB radios. The cops always arrived five minutes too late.

As he drove past the courthouse and a string of gentrified houses used as law offices, he was struck by the irony of their closeness to Park Street only a few short blocks to the south. Law and lawlessness, coexisting side by side. Two blocks from these law offices fourteen-year-old girls hustled themselves on street corners and crack dealers sold their goods from the sidewalk. Dart drove with his sweatshirt’s hood pulled up, and he drove fast, running stop signs and disobeying traffic lights.

On the seat beside him lay a loaded shotgun. Under the sweatshirt, he wore a flak jacket, in the pocket a speed key. His sidearm had a round loaded into the chamber. In his left pocket he carried two ammunition magazines taped together into a “speed clip.” The car doors were locked. The closer he drew to Park Street, the slower the traffic and the busier the activities. This was the south end’s Sin Street-the night was alive with possibility.

Despite the November cold, the dark street corners were crowded with Puerto Ricans and a sprinkling of Spanish, Italians, and Portuguese, all under twenty-five. Le Soledos and the Latin Kings ruled this turf. The wrong color socks could cost a kid his life. To show a weapon was to start a fight. They had teethed on Stallone and Lee and Schwarzenegger and Snipes and considered themselves equal to the task. It felt to Dart as if anyone older than thirty had been exiled. The place was ruled by restless youth.

Forty-thousand-dollar BMWs and Mercedes Benzes cruised Park Street at ten miles an hour, driven by teenage kids doing business over cellular phones-and proud of it. To honk at a car for driving too slowly was to invite a stream of bullets.

If it could be snorted, mainlined, or smoked, it was available. If it could be fucked, it was pimped. If it had been stolen, it was for sale. If it was living, it could be made dead.

He felt the glare of suspicious eyes but did not exchange glances. In a moving car a white person would briefly be tolerated-business was business, and a good deal of Park Street’s business came in from the white enclaves to the west.

But for a white person to make more than two passes down this street would quickly spread the word. He knew that he was being watched, monitored. And if Zeller had bought protection, then to leave the car was to face an army of hungry street rats looking to make trouble.

He parked the Taurus on Walcott, three short blocks from Seymour. He grabbed the shotgun and hurried from the car, carrying the weapon in plain view, moving at a slow jog, moving deeper and deeper into darkness and hoping to reach Funk Street without incident.

Streetlights around here were knocked out as quickly as they were replaced. To view this area from overhead in a passing plane, it would appear as a square black box, lit only by the brilliance of Park Street, a block to the north.

Dart cut left, crossed the street, and jogged down Funk toward Seymour, his heart somewhere up around his ears, his body feeling as if he had stepped inside an oven.