Dark End of the Street

My hands were now only filled with a few remaining sheets of paper and I read as fast as I could, searching for more answers. My heart thudded in my chest as I cruised through the interview with the would-be accomplice. It was short. Only two pages. I guessed juveniles weren’t part of the public-record thing, because the boy’s name and address had been crossed through with a fat black marker.

I took another sip of cold coffee. I wanted a cigarette but instead searched in my coat for a pack of gum. I paced the office for a few minutes.

“So that’s it?” I asked, blowing a bubble from the Bazooka.

U shrugged.

“Ransom… What happened to the rest? They never even arrested anyone? Man, this can’t be the whole file.”

“Look at that first page. Two-twenty-one. Look at your page count at the bottom. They match. I’ve done this a few more times than you, professor.”

I put on my coat and tossed him his leather trench.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Find that detective.”

U shook his head and said, “That mother is probably dead.”

“Let’s find out.”

He tossed me back his coat and walked back into his office and started banging the hell out of his computer keys. I poured some more coffee, downed a little more tofu, and waited.

Chapter 53

U FOUND HIM. He’d found that old bastard, Detective Raymond L. Jenkins, with a computer service called AutoTrack in less than fifteen minutes. I was familiar with the service, my occasional girlfriend had used it in Chicago while we were looking for witnesses to help a blues singer named Ruby Walker get out of prison. Too bad only reporters, cops, and those who worked on the fringes of law enforcement could access it. It would make my life a hell of a lot easier when I was tracking down long-lost singers. But I only asked for favors when I really needed them.

We decided not to call ahead even though there was a possibility that this wasn’t even the same man. His age would be about right and U said he found weapons permits that he expected for a retired cop. Besides, he was only a few miles away in the Cooper-Young district in Midtown.

“Strange neighborhood for an old cop,” I said, looking at all the meticulously renovated houses, many proudly flying their rainbow flags from porches.

“Not really,” U said, taking a turn through a small business district of antique shops, coffee houses, and art galleries. “Probably just holding out for the right buyer.” He took a zigzagged pattern through several narrow streets lined with cottages and bungalows painted bright blues and yellows, and wound his way down around a curve to a dead end.

The house didn’t really seem to belong with the others. Two-story narrow brick. Seafoam green paint and a cast-iron balcony littered with drying socks and Sansabelt slacks. An upstairs window had been sealed with plywood. The bottom windows had been covered in security bars despite the neighborhood looking like a postcard for the chamber of commerce.

The front door was open and we heard hammering as soon as we got out of U’s truck and walked over a reddish dirt lawn.

More hammering. The tinny sounds of a small AM radio. The smell of freshly cut wood.

“Mr. Jenkins?” I called out.

More hammering.

U walked ahead. The walls were mildewed and covered in a splotched gray-green mold. In a narrow hallway, some of the mold had overgrown family photos taken decades ago of a bristle-haired patriarch, his angular, red-haired wife, and three boys. Some unframed shots had been tacked to the wall with toothpicks and seemed like they’d been added by someone other than the person who’d made the family collage. My breath caught in my throat as I saw images of an old woman in a coffin, the same green mold obscuring part of the faded photograph.

I heard U talking to a man down the hall and I followed, the words becoming more distinct and clear as I entered a room that had been stripped of wallpaper and carpet. A half-completed bookshelf stood by a back wall.

Tree branches obscured the view from one dirty window behind Raymond L. Jenkins.

“This is Detective Jenkins,” U said, nodding to the older man who was looking at U like he’d just been approached by a wandering Bible salesman with a glass eye.

Jenkins was in his seventies, a palish white and just as grizzled as you’d expect. His teeth were stained with nicotine and his later years had made his nose and ears so extremely pronounced they almost gave him a rodentlike appearance. Small pale-blue eyes. He wore boxer shorts with red hearts and a white dress shirt with the sleeves cut out. Navy-blue dress socks and sandals.

The old man took a deep breath, wiped his forehead with an oily rag, and sat down on an overturned bucket. We stood. I could tell U didn’t want to soil his four-hundred-dollar jacket. He stepped back a little giving me the go ahead to lead. I knew why. He’d known the subject in about five seconds.