be over to pay around then. Lester hoisted his thumb and thumped down the stairs.
Mr. Bell cleared a phlegmy throat. He had decided on Friday, September 7 at ten o’clock in the morning, if that was good.
“Good,” Phelan said. “Would you be the gentleman who was concerned about…being located?” Miss Wade had reported they’d had a caller who wanted to be invisible. To someone.
“I want you to find my brother, Mr. Phelan. I suppose you’d say that he is the one…concerned about being located.” As for more details, Mr. Bell would prefer to wait until they could speak confidentially.
All righty. Appointment recorded on the 7 square in September. Phelan hung up the phone, picked up the roller soaked in Apollo White and vanished smudges and patches of spackle. His spirits were rising from around his ankles where they’d been puddled.
He finished painting the wall with the window that faced the New Rosemont Hotel, running the roller up to the cut-in portions. My god, this place was looking different already. He moved on to the wall with the connecting door in it. That one went quick. He set up the paint tray behind his desk, near the wall screaming for coverage—a starburst spray of reddish brown drops and drips like a frozen firework—squatted and bounced to loosen up, rolled his shoulders. The phone trilled.
Again? He made a fist, raised it straight up. Phelan Investigations was booking work. He picked up the receiver with a rag and answered cordially.
His face hardened as he listened. “Yeah, I’m Tom Phelan. ‘Scuse me, say again—who are you? OK, OK, Doctor, got it. Now, they took her where?”
Phelan slammed down the receiver, forced the rotary dial around as fast as his index finger could shove it. He blasted his way past the law office secretary on the other end by barking the word URGENT! When Miles Blankenship Esq., attorney at law, took the line, Phelan rattled out what he wanted: he had a friend in police custody who not only needed counsel, she must NOT set foot in a cell.
He laid out the situation: had Miles read the Enterprise’s headlines about those murdered kids? The man who’d murdered them had been killed down on Orleans Street—Miles read that? OK. Well, it was Phelan’s office he’d been killed in—and Phelan’s secretary who’d taken him out. Pure self-defense. The man attacked her, stabbed her. But there was some crucial history Miles had to know. She was on parole after fourteen years in Gatesville. The charge back then had been voluntary manslaughter: she’d killed a man who had been raping her.
“So this is the second guy—”
“Only been out five months. Don’t want her going back in a cell.”
“You’re clear on that point, Tom. Tell me, was she also armed?”
“No. Unarmed. Broke a liquor bottle. Used that.”
Phelan overrode all objections. Didn’t give a flying fuck if Miles Blankenship’s field was divorce. Miles had passed the Texas bar, he was the single lawyer Phelan knew, and Miles had to hit it, please, for the police station now—in Watergate terms, at this point in time. Phelan would see him there.
Down at the curb, he unlocked his trunk, grabbed out the spare shirt and pants he kept in his P.I. kit. Stripped and dressed on Orleans Street, ignoring a wolf whistle from two guys in a Chevy C-10.
He double-timed the concrete steps.
His route: shoot past the Formica front desk and its likely guard, venerable Sergeant Fontenot with the wire-brush eyebrows. Swerve left into the squad room past bulletin boards tacked with mimeographs, past the cops shooting the breeze in school desks, others jabbing typewriters, a thief or two in the folding chairs. Jog straight to the back past a holding cell and bust into E.E.’s office, where he would persuade his uncle, the chief of police, to take Delpha Wade’s statement without first arresting her, printing her, locking her in a cell.
This fantasy was forbidden by station policy. Also by the Policemen’s Etiquette Guide and the Nephew’s Codebook. Moves like the one Phelan was entertaining were why the Suck-It-Up manual existed. Nevertheless, he nodded to the desk sergeant and kept on walking.
“Whoa dere! Where you passin’ yourself by to, Tom Phelan?”
Couple of uniforms off to the side gabbing. He stared them down and leaned over the scarred Formica to the sergeant. Instead of saying he was here because he’d been the first on the scene—his own office—or that he was Delpha Wade’s employer, which around the station was generally known, Phelan muttered, “You told me they wouldn’t charge her.”
Two riotous gray thatches thrust down over Sergeant Fontenot’s small, blue, troubled eyes. He had said that very thing, and now, appearing irritated by his own turmoil, he stalled. “Who you talking ‘bout?”
Phelan’s lips pulled to one side. “Delpha Wade. Doctor just called me, said police are down at the hospital hustling her in.”
“Hustlin’? Naw, naw, Abels and Tucker, they left here like a herd of turtles. We just bringing her in aks her some questions.”
“Lemme ask you one, Sergeant Fontenot. How many boys you dug up down at Deeterman’s house? What’s the tally?”
Now the uniforms angled toward Phelan.
“Six. So far. They off lookin’ in some other places now.”
“After he did what he did to those kids, you tell me offing that guy wasn’t a bona fide public service.”
“Fucking A,” put in one of the uniforms, a white kid with scrappy hair and a large red ear angled toward the front desk.
“Shut up, Wilson,” Fontenot said wearily. He lowered his chin and challenged Phelan. “Ain’t nobody don’ know that.”
“Then why y’all bringing her in?”
“Cause your uncle, he say so. He’s the chief of police, you don’ notice. You don’ tole him what to do. Pardon your ass, cher, you a private bird dog hadn’t did six months’ worth a business yet.”
“Got me there, Sergeant. But…allow me to remind you what you said to me after my secretary had to fight for her life. You said, ‘Nobody’s touching that girl.’”
“Not makin’ an argue wit you. But ’low me to mind you that anybody get dead, we got forms to fill out. Set your behind in a chair, you.”
Fontenot waited until Phelan’s back was turned then grumbled into the intercom. To E.E., Phelan knew, because the old snitch was grumbling in French.
Edouard Etienne Guidry, hometown: New Orleans, Louisiana; appearance: short, dark, and handsome; sartorial taste: radiant, was married to Phelan’s aunt Maryann, his mother’s younger sister. He was a man Phelan took stock in, and there weren’t so many of those.
Chief Guidry rounded the corner and strode past the desk area, raking thick fingers through his silvered hair. Shirtsleeves, the knot in a kaleidoscope tie wrenched half-way down his broad chest. He rolled his eyes when Phelan started to rise and made a mashing motion at his nephew. Phelan sat back down.
E.E. stood there, hands on his hips, two pinkie sparklers and a wide gold band. “Tete dure, you. Who warn you about hirin’ a ex-con?”
