“ Didn't see 'em, no… but I wondered what Kellerman was doing so far off his stomping grounds this time a day.”
“ He and his squeaky partner Bennett've been doing their level best to pick a fight. I think they're hoping I'll throw the first punch.”
“ Setup?”
“ Yeah, and it almost worked.”
“ Restraint, Alex… restraint in the Old Remorse,” replied Ben in a balladeer's voice, finishing in his best imitation of Andy Rooney with, “I… like… that… So, how'd it go in the morgue?”
“ I was thrown out.”
“ Thrown out of the morgue?”
“ Carl got pissed.” Alex looked across at his friend and partner, a growing smile coming over him until both men laughed heartily, causing others in the bar to wonder what was being said between them.
After a few minutes, the IAD boys left. Not long after Kellerman motioned Bennett to the door and they too disappeared, leaving the place in a pleasant stillness, people at the various tables talking animatedly now among themselves. No one was disappointed that IAD had vacated their watering hole, leaving it the sacrosanct place that it was.
“ You think they bugged the booth?” asked Ben. “No, I don't think so.”
“ But they were here before you arrived?”
“ Yeah, they were.”
Ben was equal in his suspicions. He called Stubby over to their booth with a conspiratorial grunt and a large, curling finger. “Anybody use this booth today before us?”
“ Nobody.”
“ You lie to me. Stubby, and I swear you'll be too damned short to be called Stubby ever again, understood?”
“ I'm telling you, nobody was in here before you guys, not today, not in this booth, no.”
“ Whataya mean, not today?”
“ I don't know… couple of guys were in here last night asking questions, or so Wanda told me. Wanda said they asked when you guys come in here and where you usually sat.”
“ Christ, they did bug the damned booth.”
“ Find it.”
Stubby had come over with a bowl of soup which neither of them had ordered. He now placed it on the table, and he dropped a small metal device into the soup, the device sinking like a lead weight. “Not to worry, gentlemen, not in my place. Enjoy the soup, Ben. It's on the house. And as for you, Lieutenant Sincebaugh, you haven't been in touch with your old man for weeks. He's worried about you.”
“ How the hell would you know, Stubby?”
“ He's on the phone over here.” Stubby indicated with a curt motion of his head. “We had a nice, long chat. Great guy from what I could gather. Got some idea you're in over your head with this Hearts case thing.”
“ Oh, please…”
“ He's like any father… just worried about your health. Go on, talk to 'im.”
“ Whataya saying, Stubby? He's still on the line, holding forme?”
“ Yeah, now go talk to the man.”
Frowning, Alex slid from the booth and located the phone behind the bar. He talked amiably with his father for a long time, the old man allowing him the freedom to get a few things off his chest, and Alex felt good at having had his father to use as a sounding board. Before hanging up, he promised to come by and see his dad at the first available opportunity. His father agreed with everything he said about the Department's putting a psychic on the case.
“ You take some time off and we'll go fishing, like the old days, son. Don't let the bastards wear you down, Alex” were his father's last, reassuring words.
Alex almost allowed his paranoia to kick in again when he cradled the phone back into place. If that asshole Meade could touch IAD and guys like Kellerman and Bennett, then why not put Alex's father on his case? When was the last time his father had asked him to go fishing?
21
O heart! O heart, if she'd but turn her head. You'd know the folly of being comforted.
Sincebaugh looked up from his unofficial desk-the end corner booth at the Old Remorse-to see that it was Dr. Kim Desinor casting an intrusive shadow over the dossier he was reading, information on a drug case he had been working off and on now for the past several weeks in addition to the Hearts case.
“ Well…” he began, sizing her up. “So, Doctor, is it? Whatever you were peddling back at the morgue to the yoyos won't wash here, so don't waste your time or mine.”
The place was fairly well filled with cops, both uniformed and plainclothes-obviously a favored watering hole of the NOPD, she'd surmised the moment she had entered.
“ Joseph Wambaugh could do a story about this place, no doubt. Call it the Onion Room, maybe.”
“ It doesn't smell that bad.” Alex momentarily reflected on how he had himself said to Ben before Ben had left to return to the precinct that there was so much deceit and mendacity in the air that it had to be peeled away like an onion. But he didn't dwell on the coincidence. “Like I said, what're you selling here, Doctor?”
He made his final word sound like a racial slur. She asked if she could take a seat across from him.
“ Yeah, sure… sit down.”
“ Look,” she began as she slid into the booth, “I can understand your reluctance to accept me-or any psychic-here on your case, but why not at least give it a try? What can it hurt?”
“ Nothing ventured, nothing gained, you mean? Isn't that what you so-called psychic detectives count on? So long's you get paid?”
“ You know, Detective, I see no reason for your hostility or your judgmental-''
“ I've been a cop for over twelve years, Doctor, and I've worked some pretty bizarre shit that would curl your pretty hair.”
“ Is that right?”
“ And I've worked with your kind before, and you're all alike.”
“ Is that right?”
They were becoming loud; others around the room were staring.
“ You throw up a smoke screen of predictions and clairvoyant visions, virtually all vague and self-fulfilling prophecies any high-IQ Mensa type might count on to come true, and you squeeze all you can from these so-called pre-”
“ You mean like when I named Lennox and his killer?”
“ Give me a break, lady. Odds-on guesswork, the significance of which is only colored in later by gullible cops, ESP advocates and a public only too willing to believe. In this case Stephens and Meade and that clown from the mayor's office.”
“ Funny you don't include your captain in that group.”
He sat in stony silence.
“ Naturally,” she continued, “we all have a built-in wish to believe, fed by the media, which has a tendency to exaggerate psychic claims.” She sounded as if she agreed with him and this threw his timing off.
“ Yeah, right, the press so sensationalizes you people that you're made saints, heroes, because sensational sells. You think the NOPD hasn't used psychics in the past? In every department in the country there's at least one cop wasting his time and the taxpayers' money by remaining in touch with a psychic… ahhh…” He hesitated.
“ Go on!”
