don’t smoke.”
“Pills?”
“Proselytizing going well?” I said to Roy.
“Baby steps,” he replied, slowing for the light at Grant and Livingston. “Wasn’t for me, she’d have spent her evening much differently.”
I tried to think of something snappy to say but came up with fog. Just as well. Roy and his white van and storefront church were a do-gooding force of nature. Much more effective than a private investigator who couldn’t hang onto one stinking laptop.
“So what happened?”
I explained, leaving out the same things I didn’t tell the first officer or Fielding. Roy wasn’t fooled.
“I’m thinking that’s 50 percent of what really happened. “About right?”
“About,” I said.
He pulled up in front of my house. “Need help getting in?” he said.
“No thanks. Look, I really appreciate the lift.”
“You’re welcome. Glad you called. I’ll check in tomorrow.”
I opened the door with difficulty. It was hard to say at this point if there was anything on me that wasn’t hurting.
“Hey, mister,” Theresa said.
“Yeah?”
“Let me come with you. Fifty bucks. All night.”
I turned back to look at her. I said, “Listen to me. This guy here, Pastor Roy? Listen to what he says. Take his advice.”
“Why should I?”
“Because he’s the one guy in the whole city who’s got your back but doesn’t want you on it. You understand what I’m saying?”
She looked at me, blankly.
“You do that for me, listen to Roy and let him help you, and you and I will go get breakfast, on me, wherever you want. Just breakfast, though. And no cigarettes.”
She continued looking at me as if I were a private investigator from another planet.
Roy interrupted. “Theresa’s a little shy. And I’ve told her she has to stop trusting strange men.”
“God knows why she’s with you,” I said, shutting the door with a wave.
Inside, I let Hopalong out to water my dead pansies, let him back in, then pushed a chair up against the knob of the back door and fastened the chain. Best I could do for tonight. I opened the fridge, pulled out my last Columbus Brewing Company Winter Warmer, and used it to wash down some of the Tylenol with codeine I’d left the emergency room with. From there I somehow made it to my bedroom and found myself lying on my back. I managed to keep my eyes open for almost ten seconds before, for the second time that night, things just went black.
13
Even my internal alarm clock couldn’t compete with a baseball-bat massage. I woke up at seven with a raging headache and several aching body parts. It’s possible I’d taken worse overall beatings in my playing days, except they hadn’t involved muggings and I’d been twenty years younger. I staggered to the bathroom, then lumbered around the kitchen slowly, making coffee and feeding the dog. I let him back out into my postage-stamp yard. A walk was out of the question. Plus I had work to do.
“What the hell?” Ted Hamilton said when I reached him. “I hired you to get the laptop, not lose it.”
“I didn’t lose it,” I said for the second time. “Somebody took it.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I’m going to figure out who’s got it and get it back. But I’m not holding out a lot of hope right now. So many pawnshops, so little time, if you catch my drift.”
“Very funny.”
“Speaking of funny, OK if I rule you out as a suspect?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just running down all the leads. You had a motive to make sure the laptop was secured.”
“You think I was behind this?”
“I don’t think anything. I’m just asking questions.”
“You have a hell of a lot of nerve, you know that?”
“Maybe I do. And maybe that’s why I was able to help you in the first place.”
“Big help.”
“Let me try it this way,” I said. “Where were you last night?”
“Listen,” he said, ignoring me. “If this video surfaces, I’m blaming you. I hired you to do something about it, and that didn’t include losing the laptop as soon as you got it. You don’t get it back, I’m going to make your life very difficult. Understand what I’m saying?”
“One more time,” I said. “Where were you last night?”
“Go to hell,” Hamilton said, and cut the connection.
Hamilton was angry, and probably rightfully so, I thought afterward, nursing my third cup of coffee. But you didn’t need to be a private eye to figure out he hadn’t answered my question.
A few minutes later I had a similar conversation with Doug Freeley. He didn’t swear as much as Hamilton, but he was no less angry.
“All I’m saying,” I tried to explain, “is the same day I meet you, and you explain how important that laptop is, somebody breaks into my house, and then a couple of hours later I’m jumped and the laptop’s gone. I’m not saying you had anything to do with it. But I’ve got to check everything.”
“If you say so,” he said, before hanging up.
He didn’t tell me where he was the night before either.
14
Peeved, I walked from the kitchen to my living room and back a few times to let off steam. Calming down, I studied the splintered jamb on the back door, an unwelcome reminder of the night before, and an even more unwelcome reminder of my unfinished business: how to retrieve the Freeleys’ laptop from an unknown assailant in a city where those kinds of robberies happened all too often and the merchandise was recovered in fewer than 1 percent of cases.
A knock at the door interrupted my attempt at exercising the power of positive thinking. Now what, I thought. Standing before me when I swung the door open was a woman a few years younger than me in a long, dark, padded winter coat, looking all business.
“Andy Hayes?”
“It depends,” I said. “Are you here to beat me up too?”
“I don’t know,” she
