'Or never,' I said, starting to feel pretty stupid. Fifteen more minutes went by without us talking. It was getting darker. I didn't see the use of waiting around much longer.
'Karl, I can't just sit here, it makes me nuts. I'm going to visit our friends in black.'
'Duff, I don't think that's a good idea. They could be dangerous.'
'Yeah, well, sitting around in a car listening to the two of us breathe is dangerous to my mental health.' I opened the door and headed to the brushy area behind the bowling alley. I heard Karl's door open and close a few seconds behind me and his running footsteps as he caught up with me.
'What are we going to do when we get there?'
'They're scrawny kids. What are they going to do? Pop a zit on us or something? We're adults and they'll be scared of us because they'll think they're about to get in trouble.' We got to the edge of the bowling alley. I looked at Karl. He raised his eyebrows as if to say 'What the hell?' I nodded as a signal to go.
We walked around the corner, stepped over an overgrown hedge, and looked into a cleared circle with empty beer cans, cigarettes, milk crates, a tire, and an old bike frame. There were no kids there. It looked like every kid's spot for bush drinking I had ever seen.
Karl walked ahead of me looking around.
'They went out this way.' Karl pointed to a hole in the fence that went to the back of the bowling alley. He bent over and picked something up.
'Duff, you better see this.'
I walked over and looked at Karl's find.
'Those are shell casings to a high powered assault weapon. They're similar to the ones I used. Newstrom would have access to them. He's been training them and he's equipped them.'
'How do we know it's not kids screwing around and this is their clubhouse type of thing? Maybe there is nothing more serious than target practice going on.'
'BB gun, slingshots, CO2 pistols are one thing, Duff. These are high-powered assault weapons. Where would McDonough kids get them?'
I didn't have a plausible explanation for any of it and I knew it. It felt like something awful was about to happen and I didn't have a clue what to do about it. I decided to call Jamal and tell him what we had found.
'Duff, I'm at practice. Can't this wait?' he said after picking up his cell phone. I told him I didn't believe it could wait and asked him for some of the kid's names. He told me the ringleader, if you could call him a leader, was Andy Katzman, and his two best friends were Michael Corona and Eddie Stain. He didn't know their exact addresses, but said they lived north of Jefferson Hill on the west side of the city.
'Hey, Duff, what makes you so sure they're going to do something?'
'Sometimes you get a feeling, Jamal.'
'How have your instincts been serving you lately?' I didn't have a good answer and hung up. Next I called Kelley and begged him to come see what Karl and I had found by the bowling alley. He wasn't pleased, but agreed to meet us there in a half an hour. In the meantime Karl and I went the six blocks over to the public library to look up the kids' addresses. We found three addresses for kids with the names Jamal gave us in the West Jefferson neighborhood.
We got back to the bowling alley and saw Kelley had beaten us there. His cruiser, parked like any other car in the lot, idling like he was taking a break.
'You got something to show me?' Kelley sounded just a tad more impatience than usual.
'Follow us,' I said. The three of us walked back to the area behind the bowling alley.
'We found some shell casings to some serious assault weaponry. This isn't kid stuff,' Karl said. We got to the back of the bowling alley, each of us swinging our legs over the half wall. In silence, the three of us walked to the center area where Karl and I had been about half an hour ago.
'They're not here. They were here just a minute ago. Somebody must've come and scooped them up to cover their tracks,' I said.
Kelley just looked at me for a minute. Then he put his head down and kind of gently kicked the gravel. He looked up at me again.
'He's not crazy, Officer,' Karl said. 'I saw them myself. They were from a military issue.'
Kelley kind of squinted at Karl; then he looked at me, and he put his head down again. He sniffed a little bit, looked up at me again, and then exhaled hard. It looked like he tried to say something, but he couldn't find the right words. Then he started to walk away.
'C'mon Kell, I'm not nuts, I swear to God I'm not nuts.' He kept walking and didn't slow up.
36
Back at the Blue it was time to make a plan. Everyone who knew me at all thought I was crazy. I knew Karl was crazy and Karl called himself crazy. I don't know if we made the foundation of a real strong think tank. Fortunately, we had a Black Muslim basset hound to help us-though his arch enemies appeared to be the sparrows.
'Karl, if we're going to go through with this, we have to at least get some handle on what Newstrom and his high school buddies are going to do and when,' I said. I paced back and forth in front of the couch where Karl sat with Al's head on his lap.
'Yeah, that's kind of the tough part,' Karl said.
'Let's break down what we know. Let me think out loud and you fill in the gaps,' I said. Karl sat up with his elbows on his knees. Al let out a heavy exhale and spun around on the couch three times.
'Go Duff,' Karl said.
'Alright, what's Newstrom's goal? Money, right?'
'It's only part money. The rest is power and control.'
'Okay, what are his resources? He must have the backing of someone or some group.'
'His resources are almost endless. He's literally got billions of dollars at his disposal.'
'What are our resources?' The room got quiet as we looked at each other and Al. 'Okay, let's not focus on our resources too much.' I chewed the end of my thumb because that's what guys in movies did when they thought deep thoughts. I was no Brad Pitt.
'We have the knowledge of what's going on-no one but Newstrom seems to know or care,' Karl said.
'Which is why he cares about us. We know what he's up to, but everyone thinks we're nuts. Why does he even bother with us.'
'We're loose ends. He's military, he hates loose ends,' Karl said.
'So why not just kill us, make us disappear and be done with us?'
'He might do that, but think about it Duff. You're reasonably well known and I'm your client. If we both turn up dead for no good reason, there will be questions asked. It's not efficient.' Karl petted Al's head while he talked.
'So you think his goal is to eliminate us while he has his gang of misfit kids go Columbine on McDonough.'
'That seems to be what he said. He would prefer it if I just killed myself. Then he might not have to do the other stuff here.'
'Do you think he believes you'd do it?' Karl looked down at Al, thinking.
'There was a time I would've, and it was when he knew me. He could still believe I would,' Karl said.
'Could we fake your suicide and get him off our backs and maybe save ourselves and McDonough?'
'How do you fake a suicide? We'd need help and everyone who could help thinks we're nuts.'
'Yeah.' I stopped pacing and looked Karl in the eye. Al opened his eyes for a second and furrowed his brow. Then he closed them and rolled over on his back.
'So if Newstrom's goal is to take us out and do a Columbine at McDonough, what can we do?' I said. The room got quiet while we both thought.
'Duff?' Karl almost whispered.
'Yeah?'
