predicament. His anger was only partly due to Stallings’s grab for glory.
He snatched his cell phone from the holder on his shiny leather belt and flipped through until he saw Patty Levine’s number. He felt a lift just looking at her name. Last night was the first night in a long time that he didn’t want to be so exhausted all he could do was fall asleep. Holding Patty in his arms, feeling her hard, small body against his, even if it was only outside her door, made him forget about work for a few minutes and gave him a glimpse of what other guys search for so desperately.
But now he didn’t want to look weak and annoying, so he set the phone back on the table. A few minutes later when it rang, he pounced, hoping that Patty had made the call to him. He could picture her on her way to UF to talk to the geologist. It may not be the lead that broke the case but neither would the stack of leads he held in his hands right now. Like any huge case with public interest they’d have to cover everything.
With so many real police stories on every channel from truTV to Bravo, juries expected all sorts of investigative tasks completed. It was no longer enough to follow the good leads. You had to follow up on the weak ones as well. Not only did a cop have to prove a suspect was guilty, but he had to prove no one else is guilty too. It had become a game of being able to say that no one suspect was looked at too hard until there was evidence. This was a catch-22, because it was hard to develop evidence without looking at a suspect really hard.
He slapped his hand onto the pile of lead sheets and sighed. No one was around the Land That Time Forgot right now because he had them out on all kinds of tips. No matter how fast things were rolling or how much praise he was getting from the bosses, he couldn’t shake his jealousy, and he knew that’s what it was, of John Stallings.
If only he could catch the guy passing on info to the media. Then he’d get the credit he deserved.
Stallings didn’t chase people on foot anymore. He preferred to use his car and head them off like he had Peep Morans. It was unseemly for a detective of his age and experience to run. But it was more than that. It used to be suspects stopped when confronted by a police officer. Now people acted edgier. He didn’t know if the street cops were tougher on people or the courts easier. Either way he hadn’t had two people run from him in the same week in years.
He’d caught a glimpse of Ernie as he cut through the scraggly bushes in the rear of the house. It’d be a matter of time before Ernie returned to the house, but Stallings didn’t have that kind of time.
He walked back to the shopping center and picked up his car, then headed east to the last remaining topless bar on the road. Pulling into the Venus Fly Trap, he parked directly in front of the door, then popped out as the top- heavy doorman rumbled off his stool to challenge him.
“This ain’t no valet, Holmes.” The giant black man stopped short and said, “Hey Detective, what’re you doing here?”
“Relax, Terry,” said Stallings, walking toward the door. “I’m not here for an underaged dancer. I’m looking for a guy that just ran from me.”
The big man backed away and opened the door for him.
Stallings patted him on the arm and said, “Did a tall, thin fella come in here in the last ten minutes?”
“Yes sir. He’s in there now.”
“Thanks, Terry. Just wait here. I won’t be too long.”
The doorman nodded and quickly slipped back onto his stool by the front door.
Inside, Stallings paused a minute by the front door so his eyes could adjust to the dark room with lights above the two small stages. The bartender looked up and smiled. “Hey, Stall.”
He nodded to the older, topless woman all the girls called “Auntie Lynn.”
On stage an agile young lady held herself upside down on the pole. She saw him, smiled, and waved from her awkward angle. He could see three heads in the audience. Two were small Latin men, but the third looked around nervously. As soon as he saw Stallings, Ernie sprang up and headed for the rear of the building.
Stallings darted toward the exit to cut him off, but before he could reach the man, a large round tray flew from behind the bar and struck the fleeing man in the head, knocking him onto the hard cement floor.
Stallings stopped, looked over at the bar, and said, “Thanks, Auntie Lynn.”
“If you were chasing him, he must be an asshole.”
Twenty-two
Handcuffs bit into Ernie’s wrists in the front seat of the county-issued Impala. Stallings wanted to be sure they were in a secluded, quiet place. This time of day Brentwood Park was perfect for an impromptu interview. He turned to face the younger man.
“Ernie, why’d you run?”
The man’s eyes flicked back and forth as sweat beaded on his forehead. His greasy brown hair dipped between his eyes.
Stallings said, “I just want to talk. I don’t care if you’re holding. I need help on a case, and I want to know why you ran.”
After a few seconds he said, “I’m holding.”
“What are you holding?”
“Pills.”
“What kind?”
The young man shrugged and said, “Every kind.”
“Where?”
“My shoe, my pockets, a pouch under my shirt.” He leaned back and wiggled his left foot. “Only this shoe.”
Stallings bent down, slipped off the young man’s smelly Top-Sider, and retrieved a plastic bag with sixty dark blue pills. He cut his eyes up to Ernie.
“Ambien.”
Stallings reached carefully into the young man’s front pockets and pulled out two more bags.
Ernie said, “Oxy and assorted painkillers like Percocets and Vicodin.”
Stallings shook his head, then patted Ernie’s midsection until he felt the bag of pills. He reached under the shirt and pulled out the bag with odd-looking and unevenly colored pills. “Okay Ernie, what the fuck are these?”
“Those are all combinations. I know a fella who can melt shit and recast it. Most of it is Oxy with Ambien mixed in. The kids think they’re getting Oxy, but Ambien is a lot cheaper, and once they fall asleep they don’t care. When they wake up they only remember the short high they had first.” He shrugged again. “Just good capitalistic business.”
Without saying a word Stallings opened the car door, took the pills, and dumped them all down a storm drain on the curb. When he came back to the car, he said, “There, you satisfied I’m not trying to make a cheap drug case?”
The young man visibly relaxed.
“Do a lot of dealers mix the two drugs like you?”
“Every single pharmaceutical dealer in the city does it.”
Then it made more sense to Stallings. Trina had been doing the same thing. The Bag Man had tried to drug her but she had built up a half-assed resistance from using this shitty, homemade Oxy-Ambien. The knife wounds were an emergency measure.
Then Ernie said, “I know the girl in the photograph.”
“You saw the photo when Sallie passed it around?”
He nodded.
“Know the girl’s name?”
“Lee Ann.”
“Lee Ann Moffitt?”
“I try not to use last names.”
“How’d you know her?”
