Peerless Detective Page 2

  Josephine knew enough to stay out of his way, but he would see her from time to time, peering into a room where he was working, shaking her head in a combination of wonderment and embarrassment. He shrugged. “I don’t have much to show for bumming around all that time, but I did pick up a few things here and there. I can actually do things.”

  Jo set about her own tasks, cleaning her aging house from ceiling to floor. She washed floors and walls, lined shelves and cupboards with new contact paper. She took down curtains and drapes and washed years of dust and smoke from them, and spent hours at her ironing board, singing to herself in a tuneless voice.

  At night Billy wandered, visiting old haunts and meandering all the way into East Lansing and onto the campus of Michigan State. He walked fast through the campus, half-convinced that the kids could tell he was an outsider who had no business there, in someone else’s world.

  In a gas station he bought himself a street map of Chicago and a small pamphlet highlighting the city’s sights, and late at night he tried to commit as much of all this to memory as possible—the names of the main streets, the location of the museums and shopping centers. An inset made it seem that the whole of the thing emptied down into the enormous lake that made up the right side of the map. He memorized and took notes and tried to ignore the voice in his head that told him this was all a long shot. There was no telling where in this vast place a woman running from her life would end up, no real way to know she would even stay there. Billy looked at the vastness of Chicago, a city bigger than any place he’d ever been to, and told himself that if it were Billy trying to find a place there, he wouldn’t last a week. Still, you had to try. He remembered his mother sitting at the edge of his bed one night, attempting to summarize for him why she’d stayed with his father.

  “You have to try. You can’t just give up, you have to try.”

  Just before dinner on the third night of his stay, a man came to the door. He knocked, and before Billy or Jo could go to the door, the visitor stepped inside and said, “Jo? Josie?”

  Josie? Billy thought.

  He stepped into the living room to intercept. The stranger was about sixty, tall and thin and newly shaven, and he wore his dark shirt buttoned up to the neck. Billy extended his hand and said, “Billy Fox. I’m a friend of Jo’s.”

  The man nodded and smiled. He smelled of Vitalis and Old Spice. “Oh, I heard all about you, son. I’m Fred Hicks. I come to see Jo.”

  “Me and Fred are very old friends,” Jo said.

  “Second time around,” Fred added, and Billy wondered about the backstory there.

  After dinner, Billy excused himself and let the two lovebirds have the place to themselves. For an hour or more he roamed his old neighborhood, noting the things that hadn’t changed but many more that had. On Ottawa Street, he found a diner he’d known in the old days and stopped in for coffee. A guy sat on a stool at the far end of the counter, staring at the wall and blowing smoke into the air. He sensed Billy watching him, turned, and after a moment waved. Ray Wills.

  Billy moved his cup down the counter.

  “Hello, Ray.”

  “Billy.” Ray Wills put an arm around Billy’s shoulder.

  They made small talk about the Army and Ray’s life—divorced now and working at a dead-end job in his old man’s TV repair shop.

  “So you’re set?” Billy asked, knowing the answer.

  “No. I’m gonna quit, the old man already knows. I’m going out West. See the country.”

  “Then what?”

  Ray shook his head, puffed at the cigarette, blew out smoke. “Start over. Square one, start over. Find a job, stay clean, get my head straight. Find a girl. Start over—it’s what guys like us have to do, Billy. Start over until we get it right. And you?”

  “I have to do a few things here in town, then I’m gone. I’m going to Chicago.”

  Ray watched him, saying nothing.

  “Yeah, you know why. I’m looking for Rita.”

  “That town’ll swallow you up, man.”

  “Maybe so. I can’t worry about that.”

  “Think she wants to see you?”

  “Me? No, probably not. But I want to see her, see if she’s okay. She don’t want anything to do with me, okay. Right now, though, I need to find Kenny Coyne.”

  Ray gave him a stricken look. “You, Billy?”

  Ray’s face fell and Billy laughed.

  “I’m not using.”

  “Then what for?”

  Billy raised his eyebrows.

  “Ah. Think that’ll help?”

  “Don’t know if anything will help.”

  “He runs with some bad guys. You need to pick your spot.”

  “Right.”

  “I’ve seen him at DeLuca’s. Patricio’s. The KoKo Bar.”

  “The KoKo Bar. I always liked the KoKo Bar. Thanks, Ray.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Yeah—hey, Ray? You got used TVs there, at the shop?”

  “Sure. You need a set? I’ll give you a deal.”

  • • •

  Handsome Kenny Coyne, it seemed, had gone to ground, though Billy twice spotted Kenny’s “known associates.” He stopped for a beer in the KoKo Bar, the closest thing he’d had to a hangout in the old days, a rundown roadhouse on the very edge of Lansing. He knew the bartender, a pouchy-eyed white man named Marvin, and spotted a black kid named Eddie, a Golden Gloves boxer who worked at the Oldsmobile plant.

  “Foxy Bill,” Eddie said. “No more soldier?”

  “Nah. Thought I’d take up boxing.” He clapped Eddie on the back. They talked, and Billy fed quarters into the juke box and listened to Otis Redding, Marvin and Tammi, and Junior Walker, and he was trying to decide whether to have one more beer when Kenny Coyne came in.

  Billy had to admit that Kenny Coyne knew how to make theater of entering a room. He paused just inside the door as though he might change his mind, looked around the room, nodded to the bartender, and strutted to a place at the far end from which he could watch the door, like an old gunfighter. As always, he was dressed entirely in black: sport coat, slacks, shirt, tie. Kenny was tall, thin, and pale—“Kenny the Count,” some people called him—and Billy thought he looked like a vampire fallen on hard times.

  “Hello, Kenny,” he said.

  Kenny made an almost imperceptible nod and said, “Hey. Fox. Yeah. I heard you were back.” He ordered a beer and drank in silence for a time. Eddie the Boxer made small talk about his chances in the next Golden Gloves competition and Billy bought him a beer, and Kenny Coyne drank as though there was no one else in the room. As Billy finished his beer, he looked down the bar and caught Kenny’s quick look.

  You oughtta be nervous. He looked at Kenny now and held the stare until the other man met his eyes.

  “You trying to grow a mustache, Kenny?”

  Kenny’s hand moved to the sparse growth on his upper lip. Then he caught himself.

  “So when did you get back, Fox?”

  “Couple weeks ago. I heard you had a busy life while I was gone. You got married, I heard. And then she left you.”

  “That what you heard? Well, good riddance to that bitch. But that’s none of your business, Fox. None of that’s got anything to do with you.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  Kenny tried on a smile. “She married me, Fox, not you.”

  “Yeah, talk about stupid choices people make, huh?”

  Kenny’s color changed, a high patch of red came into his cheeks. “Oh, yeah? Well, she must not have thought so.”

  “Bet she thinks so now. I heard you beat the shit out of her.”

  From behind him, Billy heard Eddie the Boxer say, “Uh-oh. Hide the children.”

  Kenny shrugged. “Whatever I did, she had coming. But like I said, Fox, it’s got nothing to do with you. She’s my wife. Until I say she’s not.”

  Billy said nothing, just held his stare. He turned slightly to face Kenny.

  Kenny made a show of sipp
ing his drink, glancing at his massive watch, pulling out a pack of smokes and tapping them on the bar. He started to take one out, then paused.

  You don’t want to take that out because your hand might shake.

  “I like your outfit, though. I thought dealers were supposed to be subtle. Me, I think all dealers should dress in black. It would give ’em—what? Dignity. That’s it. So this is your uniform, you know? Like a car mechanic has those coveralls. You got a black cowboy hat to go with that? And a six-gun, you got a six-gun, Kenny? Then you’d look like—what was the guy’s name, the cowboy with the whip? Lash LaRue.”

  “Don’t start with me, Fox. You don’t want to fuck with me. This is not soldiers in the Army.”

  Billy almost laughed. No, he thought, it’s not like the Army—it’s a small-time pusher in Lansing, Michigan, who’s seen too much television.

  He pushed away from the bar and moved toward Kenny.

  “Billy—” Marvin said, backing away behind the bar.

  Don’t do this, the voice in his head said. It might have been Jo’s voice, it might have been his guardian angel, but all he knew was that he was not going to pay any attention to it.

  “I want to hear again how she had it coming, you beating the fuck out of her. Tell me about that one more time. People always said I’m kinda slow-witted.”

  Kenny turned to face him. One hand went to his back pocket, and he was flicking open the knife when Billy decked him. Kenny went down hard and hit the base of the bar with his forehead. He grunted and tried to get up, but his foot was caught in the legs of the barstool.

  “Now, Billy—not in here, Billy,” Marvin said, and sounded worried.

  “Dude had it comin’,” Eddie offered. “Nasty dude.”

  Billy bent over and picked up the knife. He tossed it on the bar. “There you go, Marvin. Put that in your collection, with all the marbles and yo-yos and whatnot.”

  Kenny had extricated his leg, but seemed in no hurry to get up.

  “See you around, Kenny. Sorry, Marvin. I’m going now.”

  He waited outside the KoKo Bar, leaning against a light pole, and when he heard the door open, he knew it would be Kenny. He waited with his back to the tavern until Kenny made his final dash toward him, and then spun round and met him. They traded punches, and Billy caught one on the side of his face but he’d been waiting for this time, this moment, and he laid into Kenny with urgency, driving his right into Kenny’s ribs and midsection, his left to the head. In close, he drove an uppercut to Kenny’s chin and Kenny wobbled. A straight right put him down.

  Kenny rolled over and got to his knees but no further.

  Billy stood over him and thought his chest would burst with the urge to finish Kenny. He moved around in front of Kenny and cocked his right hand back.

  One punch in the proper place would cave in Kenny’s face. He heard his own ragged breathing and Kenny sucking in air through a damaged mouth. His chest throbbed with the urge to ruin this man, to ruin something. He listened to his breathing and to his heart.

  “Ah, what the fuck,” he said. Then he swung his open hand and caught Kenny with a loud flat slap that nearly knocked him back onto the pavement.

  “Guys that beat the shit out of women, bad things happen to them.”

  “Bad things—” Kenny panted. “Bad things gonna happen to you, Fox.”

  A few feet away Eddie the Boxer leaned against a tree, arms folded across his chest. He nodded.

  “Not bad, Billy Fox. Nice combinations. You got no speed, though. You easy to hit.”

  Billy smiled and nodded and tried to catch his breath.

  “That boy usually runs with a posse, some bad people. You want to lay low now.”

  “I was just leaving. You take it easy, Eddie.”

  In the morning Billy went to see Ray Wills. On one last frivolous impulse, he bought a small color TV for Josephine and deposited it without ceremony on her living room table.

  Josephine was speechless. She kept saying “a color TV” as though Billy had invented it.

  • • •

  Billy Fox waited for the doors to open on the bus for Chicago. Josephine stood at his side like a watchful mother and managed to make him feel twelve years old. She watched him earnestly, holding the bag of food she’d prepared. Grease stains spreading across the bottom told him there was fried chicken inside.

  The door to the bus opened with a sound like gas escaping, and the short line of passengers began getting on. Josephine watched him with moist eyes. She tried to smile.

  “You did a good job on the house, Billy. You did so much in just a few days. I’m so grateful.”

  “And you put me up and fed me. Seems like as far back as I can remember, you were always putting somebody up and taking care of them. I know you took care of me and my Ma when the Old Man left, before she got back on her feet. I never forgot that.”

  He leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. She gave him the bag and stole a quick kiss on the cheek.

  “You be careful. That Chicago’s a big place. You don’t know what can happen to you.”

  “Maybe something good. It’s possible. Give my regards to Fred,” he said. Josephine blushed and turned away.

  “He’s—we’re real good friends.”

  “Yeah, I saw that.”

  He got onto the bus, and he waved to her as it pulled out of the bus station. When he turned away she was still waving, and he knew she’d stand there watching the bus disappear into the night until she could no longer see it.

  A long-ago image came to him then of the two of them—Billy and Rita—sitting on a bench in a park. A couple of Lansing kids, a pretty, dark-haired girl and a tall, skinny boy with a mop of bushy brown hair, both of them forever young. It could have been any of a dozen or more such occasions, but one in particular always came back to him, a time when they’d stayed in the park long after dark, long after the park’s closing, and talked well into the night of their plans and the many choices open to them. In the end, they decided they would marry at twenty and move to Los Angeles—Rita’s idea because she thought she might become an actress, or work in make-up.

  Hollywood, Billy thought, and shook his head.

  Now it was a whole different reality for both of them. That time and those dreams were lost to him.

  Still, she’d left her husband, she wanted to start over, and Billy might be able to find her. After that, anything was possible.

  ONE

  Lost Soul in the Big Town

  Later, Billy would remember that the first thing he’d seen in Chicago was a man dancing by himself in the bus terminal. This one image would stand out amidst the general chaos that was his first impression. Chaos and darkness and a crazy guy dancing. People were shoving to get off the Greyhound, and the cavernous depot had eaten the daylight, and this guy along the far wall of the depot was dancing. Billy followed his rumpled, sour-smelling fellow passengers off the bus and stood for a moment to get his bearings.

  He fetched his duffel from the storage compartment and walked toward the end of the depot. There he found more chaos, and noise to match it—a crowd of people jostling, one group leaving the area and another hurrying to a bus on its way out of the city. The music was louder now. A radio was somewhere close by playing something Billy recognized—Smokey Robinson and the Miracles. If you lived in Michigan, anywhere in Michigan, you knew all this music. You knew the Soul stuff out of Detroit and all the people on those labels, the Motown people, and before them the Gordy label and the Tamla label. Here was Detroit music pounding in the dark tunnel of a Chicago bus depot, and the dancer was boogying to it, a small man sliding and shuffling and clapping to the music and drawing a crowd all his own. A small, white man in a belted sweater, this boogie-artist was, wearing a red bandanna and dark glasses despite the dense gloom of the depot. He was sure-footed, nimble, and he stayed on the balls of his feet, spun and came back to the same spot, and clapped his hands. People slowed to watch him, and Billy found himself drawn
to the entire scene, the smiling people, the slick moves of this nutcase in sunglasses.

  There was a bar just inside the station, a windowless dive with half a dozen men sitting around it. He needed a cold beer and a plan. Across from him, a dapper black man was attempting to pick up a young white guy in coveralls. Billy watched them for a moment, slightly surprised—he’d always somehow believed homosexuality to be the province of white people. The bartender took his eyes from a ballgame long enough to pour Billy a beer. He sipped absently from his beer as he unfolded one of his maps. The lake, he knew, was east, and if he could find that, he would have the basic directions. He’d studied this map and others, and now that he was here, he wondered if you could learn anything from a map. An old white man on the stool a few feet from him watched a Cub player hit a ball into the seats and cackled. He wore a sweat-stained, red baseball cap and a sport coat made for a man with shorter arms. His gray hair stuck out from under the hat in a dozen directions, and he’d cut himself shaving in several places, so that he looked as if he’d been in a fight.

  “It’s their year,” the man called out to no one in particular. Sensing that he’d gotten Billy’s ear, he turned and fixed him with a dark-eyed stare.

  “This year,” he tapped the bar with a bony finger. “This year, 1977, is the year they’ll do it.”

  Billy nodded and looked around for a less exposed place to sit. The old man leaned into his line of sight and nodded.