career with the paper. That once I’d learned all I could in Canborough, I was off to Groverton, based on no more than a gas station receipt I’d taken from Trixie’s car.
“If you find her,” Cherry said, “you might learn something that could help me with my open file on the Kickstart murders.”
“Maybe,” I said.
He took a swig from the long-neck bottle, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Are you going to dick around with me anymore?”
“No,” I said.
Our cheeseburgers arrived. They were the size of curling stones, without the handles.
“That’s good. Because you seem like a nice guy, and I’ve set up this thing with Bruce, and it would be a shame to cancel.”
“I appreciate it,” I said.
Cherry worked his hands around the cheeseburger. “If this doesn’t make your heart stop, you’ll really enjoy it.”
“You need to hang out in more dives,” Cherry said. “I thought newspaper reporters were a bunch of hard- drinking, heavy-smoking types.”
“That’s kind of changed over the years,” I said. “Now we all own minivans and have to leave work early to get our kids to soccer.”
“Funny you should mention that,” Cherry said.
“What?” I said.
“You’ll see.”
Cherry turned into an industrial area on the outskirts of Canborough. He slowed as we passed a low-rise concrete-block building with bars on the windows. Surveillance cameras and spotlights were mounted in several spots just under the eaves. Half a dozen motorcycles, big ones with sweeping handlebars, were parked out front.
“Clubhouse,” Cherry said. “This is where the Comets hang out, conduct their business. Some of them even sleep here, pretty much live here.”
“Wingstaff?”
“No. He’s got a house in town. Doesn’t look like a bunker, but it’s still got plenty of surveillance equipment around it.”
I felt a sense of unease sweep over me. “We’re going in here?”
“Huh? No. This is just part of the tour. We’re meeting Bruce someplace else.”
Cherry turned around in the gravel lot out front of the clubhouse and headed back into the city’s older residential district. We were driving through a neighborhood of traditional Victorian-type homes when we came upon a large park illuminated with flood-lamps.
We parked, and as we walked toward the park, we could hear the sounds of children’s voices, pounding feet, soft chatter. It was a kids’ soccer match, boys about ten years old, kicking the ball back and forth, working their way from one end of the field to the other. Standing along the sidelines, and sitting in a set of wooden bleachers, parents watched and cheered.
“What are we doing here?” I asked.
Cherry ignored me, working his way through the parents. He glanced up the bleachers and started climbing them, a row of seats with each step. Sitting at the top, off to one side, was a large man in his forties, not fat but big, dressed in black jeans and a windbreaker. He was clean-shaven, with dark, neat hair and glasses. A bit Clark Kentish. This, I concluded, could not be the head of a biker gang. Maybe this guy was going to tell us where we could find Wingstaff.
“Hey, Bruce,” Cherry said.
Okay, so I was wrong.
Wingstaff kept his eyes on the field. “Mike, how’s it going?”
“Who’s winning?”
“Other side. We’re getting our ass kicked. Blake got a goal, though.” His eyes caught something, and he was on his feet. “Hey!” he shouted. “Come on!” He sat back down. “It’s not hockey, for Christ’s sake. You can’t check a guy like that.”
“This is the guy I told you about,” Cherry said. Wingstaff sized me up in half a second and returned his eyes to the field.
“Hi,” I said. “Thanks for seeing me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Anything for Mike here.” His voice dripped with sarcasm. “You’re looking for some woman?”
“That’s right. I think, although I don’t know for sure, that she might have something to do with Gary Merker, maybe from a few years ago. Or Leonard Edgars.”
“This lady you’re looking for got a name?”
“Trixie Snelling.”
Wingstaff was on his feet again. He coned his hands around his mouth and shouted: “Hey, ref! You wanna borrow my glasses?” He sat back down. “Name don’t mean nothing to me.”
“Maybe she wasn’t using that name at the time,” Cherry offered.
“Well, if you don’t know what name she might have been using, then I don’t know how I can help you. Hey, Blake’s got the ball. Come on, come on…Ah, fuck. He’s got to learn how to hang on to it. He’s falling all over himself.”
“Show him the picture,” Cherry prompted me.
It was nighttime, but we were under the spotlights. I got out the picture from the Suburban and handed it to Bruce Wingstaff. He looked down, squinted, reached into his pocket for a pair of reading glasses and slid them on.
“Nice looking,” he said. “But I don’t know…” He glanced up at the field, looked again at the picture. “You know who it could be?”
I felt my pulse quicken. “Who?”
“Well, maybe not, the hair color’s not right, but it looks a bit like maybe it could be Candace.”
“Candace?” I said.
“Yeah, what was her last name…Shit. She got knocked up by Eldon Swain. Remember him?” He was asking Cherry.
“Oh yeah.”
“Car pushed in front of the train, with him in it?”
“I remember.”
“And I would like to state, once again, that we had nothing to do with that,” Wingstaff said. “Given half a chance, we mighta, but we didn’t.”
“Sure, Bruce,” Cherry said. I was having some difficulty getting used to this, a bike gang leader and a cop having a casual chat, talking about old murders like they were reminiscing about somebody they’d known in high school.
Wingstaff was on his feet again. “Go, Blake! Go! Go!” I turned and looked at the field. A blond-haired boy was moving up the field, then tripped himself up on the ball, without any interference from an opposing player, and landed on his face.
Wingstaff winced, made a face.
“So you think this woman might be Candace,” I said. “And that she had a child.”
“Little girl, I think,” Wingstaff said.
“Whatever happened to them?”
He looked up at the stars for a moment, as though the answer could be found in them. “After those three got shot, I don’t remember ever seeing her, or her kid, again. Kid couldn’t have been more than a year old at the time,
