Big Rob checked in to the Brixton Budget Inn around 6 p.m., and after showering off the road grime with hard water and a tiny biscuit of motel soap, he got in his car and drove to Millie’s Tap Room, which was not the only bar in Brixton but the only one in which Big Rob, after three visits to the village, could order a hamburger without trepidation. He made the first two trips in the weeks after Philly disappeared. The local police – a chief and four cops – seemed perturbed by his questions, but eventually they understood the pain and guilt Big Rob carried within his giant frame and began to value the unofficial input of a former Chicago cop to a staff that rarely handled missing persons and had never coped with a murder investigation, if that’s what this turned out to be.
On his first trip he flew a low-fare carrier to Lincoln, with his girth expanding uncomfortably across two expensive seats. This time he drove, piling highway miles on his old Chevy van. “The Stakeout and Make-Out Mobile” he called it, to the appreciative snickers of his new friends on the Brixton PD.
Officer Crippen already had a table saved when Big Rob walked into Millie’s. “Crowded tonight,” Crippen said. “I had to fend off a few unrulies to save your seat.”
“How unruly do they get around here?” Big Rob asked.
“That’s what we all aim to find out, I guess.” Crippen took a long pull on a bottled Genuine Draft.
Big Rob sat down with an expulsion of air and stress so loud and wheezy it seemed to Crippen less like a sigh and more like a breach of the ex-cop’s hull. “So, what do you know?” he asked.
“What do we know?” Crippen shrugged. “Not much since the last time you were here. But there has been one development in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Tell me.”
“We found Philly’s car.”
“Really? Where?” Superstitious, Big Rob knew better than to release the hope locked within him that his friend might still be alive.
“Lawrence, Kansas. A student at KU was keeping it on campus. Got into a little fender bender. No insurance. The other guy’s insurance investigator started poking around, saw the VIN plate had been replaced, found the serial number on the engine block. He’s the one who eventually traced it back to Canella’s rental company.”
“Where did the student buy it?”
“A used-car lot in Topeka. The papers were pretty badly forged, but he says he bought it at auction, and the dealer he bought it from says he got it in a trade-in. That owner said he answered an ad and paid cash for it to a guy in North Platte. A fellow named Herman Tweedy. We haven’t talked to him yet.”
“Promising?”
“I’d say so. Herman Tweedy went to high school here in Brixton.”
“You’re kidding! Friend of Ricky’s?”
Ricky Weiss had been the Brixton PD’s only suspect from the day Big Rob had first called to report Philly missing. Interrogated half a dozen times by Crippen, once with Big Rob listening in, Weiss first denied knowing the man, then admitted Canella had come to see him, but claimed he left after asking a few questions. Without a body, there was nothing more they could do except put Weiss under very sporadic surveillance. Brixton cops had few resources they could devote to a case with no body and no motive.
In his days on the job, Big Rob had been conditioned not to care about motive. Human beings did horrible things for no discernible reason at all. Motives might matter to the D.A. and they might matter to juries, but good police – even ex-police – don’t expect solutions to come in such square packages.
“The connection to Ricky’s a little tenuous, but we can make it,” Crippen said. “Tweedy’s five years older. He has a short rap sheet. Stupid stuff – pot, vandalism, bush-league grifts – and a reputation a little like Ricky’s. A wannabe hustler, but too lazy to make a living at it. We’re checking the phone records. Asking around.”
“Anything I can do?” Big Rob asked.
“Might be. I hear Ricky’s going fishing in South Dakota tomorrow. Four days in the woods. Lots of beer. No telephone. Crapper on the outside. Maybe this is a good time to approach Peg.”
“The wife?”
“Yeah. I don’t know what she knows, if anything, but Rick keeps her on a tight leash. This might be the best shot we get at her. Has she seen you before?”
Big Rob shook his head. “Any suggestions?”
“She’s a drinker. If I were doing an unofficial interrogation, I might do it at night. With Ricky out of town, she’s sure to hit the bars.”
“I’ll follow her,” Biggie said.
“There you go,” said Crippen. “Buy her a few drinks. Turn on the charm. See what spills out.”
Big Rob snorted and shook his head. “You’re a smart cop, Crip.” The officer blushed. The waitress came and took their orders to the kitchen. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Huh?”
“What are you, twenty-five? Twenty-six? You want to be chief someday?”
Crippen hitched his shoulders indifferently. “Not especially.”
“What happens if you catch Philly’s killer?” Biggie asked. “You’ll be certified murder police, then. You still gonna be happy when they send you back out to put chalk marks on tires up and down Main Street?”
Crippen peeled a beer label, wet with condensation, away from his bottle. “I don’t know.”
“I’m telling you, you won’t be. You catch a killer, it changes you. Makes you antsy. Makes you wanna catch ’em all.” Big Rob unwrapped the paper napkin from his silverware and clutched the dull knife in a whitened grip. “Thing is, you can’t catch ’em all,” he said. “And the ones you do, you never catch them in time.”
– 37 -
Ricky loaded the back of his truck with poles and nets and beer and secured everything with rope and canvas straps. He had three tackle boxes, with the spoons and minnows and flies segregated according to time of day and type of fish. He even had a spear, which he always brought but never used. The idea of spearing a fish thrilled him, but fishing the regular way could be frustrating enough. He imagined himself knee-deep in a stream, poking fruitlessly at the water as trout and salmon detoured around him. It made him angry just thinking about it.
Peg was in a good mood. Three days – almost four – with Ricky out of the house would give her some much-needed time away from his chattering, his dreaming, his needling, his pressuring. Since the day that private detective showed up at their trailer and Ricky did, well, did what he had to do to protect their future, he had hardly let her out of his sight. It was a trying time for their marriage, and Peg asked him many times if he trusted her. Ricky always said that he did, but he kept close to the house and needed to know every detail of her schedule and called the store where Peg worked every evening at 5:05 to make sure she’d left for home. Lately he’d relaxed some, but this trip would be as much a vacation for Peg as it would be for Ricky. She’d already made plans with the girls for Friday night, with drinks and then maybe a trip to the place off the highway where they bring in the male strippers twice a month.
For the first time in almost a year, Peg felt like everything was going to be okay.
The “thing with the guy” (that was what they called it on the rare occasions when it had to be referred to out loud) had upped the stakes on their latest scheme. Someone was dead (accidentally, of course), and if they didn’t see some results from the Jimmy Spears plan, their killing him, all the risks they’d taken, would have been in vain.
Ricky never told Peg what he had done with the body (she had asked only once), but she knew Herman Tweedy had come and picked up the rental car. She assumed he was going to strip it down and sell off the parts. Through the kitchen window, she saw the two of them crawling in and out of it, with Ricky chattering on and on and the two of them laughing like they usually did when they got together. She didn’t figure Ricky had told Herman the truth. It would sadden her to find out he trusted Herman as much as he trusted his own wife. Besides, if they had been talking about the thing with the guy, it wouldn’t have been right for them to laugh so much.
Every morning, Ricky picked up the newspaper and turned to the sports pages. He wanted to be the first to know if anything happened to Jimmy Spears. Every day he expected to read that Jimmy had been killed in a car accident, or maimed in a botched mugging, or that he had mysteriously taken ill, possibly the result of poisoning.
