killers came from outside the neighborhood. White men are a convenient excuse to avoid the truth. Also you found cocaine and money. Wouldn’t successful drug dealers like those three dead boys have more cash than that?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Your search for the killers might be too wide. Perhaps you need to focus more on why those boys were shot than on who shot them. I don’t know anything firsthand, I just hear rumors. I still think the lovely Miss Brison might help you if you caught her in the right mood.”
Mazzetti was about to pull out a small notepad when he heard a sharp voice say, “Pudge, why you talkin’ to the po-po?”
Mazzetti’s head snapped up to see a thick young man in shorts riding low on his hips and no shirt standing a few feet away. Mazzetti stood up and faced the young man, his hand dropping to his right hip in case he needed to go for a gun. He wasn’t sure what to say to the allegation. He turned to see what Pudge’s reaction was, but the bench was empty and there was no sign of the street prophet.
A two-person surveillance team wasn’t very effective against seasoned drug dealers or the slick white-collar fraud guys who expected cops to be following them. But Stallings hoped he and Patty would be enough to keep a loose tail on a dumb shit like Chad Palmer. They had done all right following Lauer but backed off when they realized IA had their own ideas. Stallings didn’t care who solved the Ecstasy mystery as long as it was cleared up and out of his brain.
He’d slipped a portable tracker under the wheel well of Palmer’s BMW, and Patty was using a laptop computer in her car to keep up with the signal. The tricky part was getting close enough to see what Palmer did once he was inside another building. They had followed him from his office and waited while he worked out at a high-end gym downtown near the river. Then waited while he had eaten at a Panera Bread.
Stallings was surprised when Palmer rolled into the parking lot of the dance club south of the city. It was still early for the dance club crowd, but maybe he tried to maintain some kind of schedule. They waited about twenty minutes. Patty was dressed very casually, in jeans and a cute blouse with her hair up in a ponytail, and was wearing glasses in an attempt to be harder to recognize. It sounded lame when she told Stallings what she was going to do until he saw her and realized a guy like Palmer might not even pick up on her in the club. She looked entirely different from the way she had on Monday morning when they interviewed him in his office. She never failed to surprise the veteran detective.
After about half an hour Patty came out from the club and slipped into the front seat with Stallings.
“He’s in there talking to a very young blond girl at the end of the bar. It looked as if he knew her and she might’ve been expecting him. If we’ve got his car covered out here all we have to do is wait.”
“I don’t see any other choice. But if a girl gets in a car with him, I’m not sure I can let him drive away considering what we suspect him of.”
Patty looked concerned and said, “We’re probably not gonna have any PC. She was at least eighteen, and he wasn’t forcing her into anything that I could see.”
“I’ll find the PC if I have to.”
“I was afraid you might say that.”
He checked for Ann as soon as he walked in the club. She knew that he’d be there early, and he hoped that would be enough incentive for her to show up alone. He’d gone so far as to tell her he’d only be there for about an hour and certainly be gone by nine.
The best he could do was try to develop a new target who had joined him at the end of the bar. But the girl had used her cell phone too many times in the hour that he had spent with her to try and separate her from the herd. If she couldn’t sit there with him, downing Stolies on the rocks, and not have to chat with nine different friends, then there was no way he could slip away with her quietly.
She was pretty to look at and had a breezy manner, but it was mainly that light hair and pale blue eyes that held his attention.
Even the best predators went home hungry now and then.
Forty
Patty Levine wasn’t used to starting her day at noon, but in an effort to use their time efficiently she and Stallings had decided to change schedules. She sat at her desk studying records when Yvonne Zuni approached.
The sergeant said, “Gary Lauer was in Daytona last year and Panama City the year before. The dates line up with the girls’ deaths.”
Patty said, “How’d you find out where he went on vacation?”
“Sometimes you have to work outside the box. I cleared up an ugly issue for a young woman who was romantically involved with Lauer last year. I asked her a simple question, and she gave me a straight answer.”
“That creep has a girlfriend?”
“Several. You’ve seen him, and you know how young people can be. This is a nice girl who thought he was something he wasn’t. The hell of it is she still sees him on and off.”
“How ugly was the issue? Does it relate to this case at all?”
The sergeant slipped into the seat right next to Patty, leaned in, and quietly said, “The son of a bitch knocked her up, then forced her to get an abortion. One night they had an argument that got out of control. He was on temporary assignment to narcotics, so when neighbors complained about the noise the responding patrolman called me to talk some sense into him. He started to get shitty with me, and I had to crack him in the head with my ASP.”
“How’d you avoid an IA investigation?”
“Let’s just say everyone agreed to keep their mouths shut. And don’t tell your partner, but Ronald Bell in IA did a great job of smoothing everything over.”
“I doubt Stall would believe you anyway. He hates Bell.” Patty thought about it and said, “So, what do we do now, switch all surveillance over to Lauer? We told you we thought IA was on him already.”
The sergeant smiled and said, “Again, I’m working outside the box on this. These are still serious but vague allegations. I’m going to brief Ronald Bell on what we’re doing and see what kind of help they can give us. I think he likes to play his cards close. He never mentioned they were going to keep tabs on Lauer. In the meantime, I arranged for Officer Lauer to be offered one of the few overtime gigs still available. He’s going to work the next three evenings at the big soup kitchen near the stadium. The mayor’s office funds a uniformed officer to be there every night. That should keep him busy while we get our ducks in a row.”
“So this guy makes extra cash for being a suspect in Ecstasy distribution?”
“I don’t think it’s right, Patty, but it’s the best way to handle it right now. Don’t forget we’re still working on a wild theory, and he’s not even the only suspect. You guys stay on Palmer tonight, and I want you to keep Stallings in check.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Everyone knows he can become irrational dealing with crimes against young women. He respects you and listens to you. You’re on the list for sergeant-this is as good a time as any to learn the subtleties of supervision.”
Stallings sat on a low wall in the sunshine, eating an Italian sub from Gino’s. He had a can of soda resting perilously on the narrow wall. The Police Memorial Building was not exactly set up for casual dining outside. He liked the feel of the sun and he was hungry, so he plopped down to eat his favorite sub in the whole world. It used to be you could see the river from the spot, but now classless condos rose across the street, blocking the once-beautiful view. He intended to spend a couple of hours at his desk before he and Patty started their surveillance of Chad Palmer again. This was an odd case propelled by politics and his desire to satisfy Diane Marsh’s perfectly reasonable parental expectation that anyone connected to her daughter’s death be found. No matter why it was proceeding, Stallings was committed to see it through.
He reached down for his can of caffeine-free Diet Coke as a shadow fell across him. Stallings squinted into the sun to see who would bother him during lunch. In the bright spring sun all he saw was the outline of a large man in uniform with a holster on his right side and radio on the left. The patrolman said, “You’re not man enough to
