Tropical Depression (Billy Knight Thrillers 1)

He didn’t lose the grin, but he shook his head. “I’d love to, Billy, but I can’t afford to burn my suit. How ’bout you come on out instead?”

“If you’re sure—”

“Oh, I’m sure, Billy. I’m very damn sure.”

I stood up. It was a lot harder than it should have been. My knees creaked, and my back didn’t want to straighten out. But after a few moments I got them to do what they were supposed to do, and we all went over to the door.

“Can I assume you had the weekend off, Ed?”

He nodded. “Otherwise I never would have missed this,” he said.

“Are you going to get me out?”

He smiled a little broader, nodded. “In a minute. Let me look a little longer. This the most fun I had in a long time.”

There was a certain amount of paperwork before I got my belt and wallet back. They didn’t have my sleeve. Or my watch, or my shoes. I asked for a copy of the arrest report and they gave it to me.

I looked it over as we walked to Ed’s car. Ed shook his head. “It’ll be clean, Billy. I already checked.”

“You know these guys?” I asked. The two arresting officers were M. Stokes and G. Pietsch.

Ed nodded. “Stokes a brother. I know him, he’s all right. Little too serious, but—” He turned a hand over and raised an eyebrow. “Pietsch wouldn’t hurt nobody. All he cares about, the triathlon twice a year and his wife.”

“So they’re clean?”

“I don’t know they clean, Billy. But they ain’t got nothin’ to do with a asshole like Doyle, I know that.” He pointed his finger at me. “You got set up, man.”

“What else did you find out?”

He smiled and shook his head. “They got you off Boyd Street. Alarm went off in one of those toy warehouses. Pietsch and Stokes get there, you lying in front, covered with broken glass and stinking like old, cheap muscatel.” He looked at me with mock disappointment. “Thought you a Chardonnay man, Billy.”

It was a pretty good set-up. It even looked like they were showing leniency, reducing the charges from breaking and entering to drunk and disorderly. Two honest cops, and it was their word against mine.

And my defense? Well, Your Honor, a high-ranking police official beat me unconscious and I guess he must have brought me down here and broken the window himself so it looked like I did it.

Why? Well—you got a minute, Your Honor?

We were at the car. Ed walked around to the driver’s side and I climbed in the passenger seat. I had to move a huge pile of papers into the back. It didn’t quite fit.

Ed’s car was a 1967 Mustang. The engine and body were in perfect condition. The inside looked like somebody had dumped a filing cabinet onto the couch and then emptied ashtrays on it for a week.

Ed slid in, pushed the keys into the slot, and then just sat back. “So how come you ain’t dead, Billy?”

I looked at him. He wasn’t smiling now. He looked more like the Ed I’d seen briefly at the Thai restaurant, the one you could still hurt.

“I thought about that a lot,” I said slowly. “I think it works out like this. If somebody sort of credible is walking around saying Doyle is a killer and a racist, things could get tough for him. Even if there’s no real proof, it could be enough to get somebody good to start digging into his background. And sooner or later, somebody would find something. Nobody is so good they can hide everything forever—he’s got to know that.”

“But if the somebody saying all that bad shit have a record of Drunk and Disorderly, and shows up barefoot, smelling like his ten best friends been peeing on him for two weeks, that’s a little different, huh?” said Ed, nodding. “Yeah-huh, I can believe that.”

“And in a way, it’s better to have somebody saying this stuff if that somebody is hard to believe. Because that way if it comes up again, it’s old news from a crank. So he makes sure I’m not credible anymore, and then the charges of murder and racism aren’t plausible ever again. In a way, I’m a lucky break for him,” I said. “As long as he can make me look bad enough.”

Ed looked at me from the driver’s seat. “Don’t have too far to go with that.”

“He’s taking away my options, Ed. And I would guess that he’d have something cooking for you, too.”

Ed started the car. “Shit,” he said. “My ass already cooked.”

“Maybe,” I said, “but you better just drop me at the hotel and forget about me.”