By the Balls Read online

  I remember thinking that these guys were early on the scene. The inspector hadn’t even arrived yet.

  “Sorry if you think I’m telling tales out of school. I know I’m not the one who gets to make the call, but that guy I found in the bathtub looked suspicious to me.”

  “Okay, soldier, let me stop you right there.” He pulled a slim wallet out of the inside pocket of his coat and flashed a badge my way, like I didn’t know he was a cop. “Name’s Brockman. Detective Brockman. That good-looking guy behind me, that’s Detective Weisnecki. Hey, when I say ‘good-looking,’ that’s just a choice of words, nothing weird. Mark’s not my type, are you, Mark?”

  Brockman stuffed the wallet back into his coat, barely pausing to give Weisnecki a chance to respond. Which was fine. Weisnecki had nothing to say.

  “Anywho, let’s cut to the chase. What we’re looking at here is an accident. Smoke inhalation. Nasty way to die. But maybe that’s a good reason not to be in a damn bathtub when your building’s on fire. Ha!”

  “Look, detective, I know it’s hard to tell with the condition the body’s in, but I’ve seen more than a few like that, and I gotta say, what isn’t burned looks . . . beaten. As in, severely beaten.”

  Brockman crumpled his face in something that was probably meant to be a smile. It wasn’t.

  “That’s pretty observant. What’s your name?”

  “Ben Drake.”

  “Drake, you a fire inspector?”

  “No.”

  “You a medical examiner?”

  “No.”

  “Then you don’t know a damn thing. Repeat after me: smoke inhalation. Now get the hell out of my crime scene.”

  I had to laugh. “If this fire and this death are all one big accident, what makes this a crime scene?”

  “Soldier, this whole town is a crime scene.”

  * * *

  I woke up in the late afternoon. Even though I had taken a shower right before I passed out, I took another. The heat wasn’t being particularly kind, and while the night would bring a temporary chill to the air, I had to rid myself of the sweltering grip of the desert.

  Testacy City was always hot, but this was the time of year when the heat really settled in. Fires started easily and fought back hard when we tried to put them out. The jokers on the nightly news called it “fire season.” None of us at the station liked that.

  I put on a fresh-pressed shirt and a dark gray suit. I straightened my tie in the round mirror by the door and grabbed my hat on the way out. If you asked my wife, she would tell you I dressed like a slob when she met me. Actually, she wouldn’t be so blunt, but that’s the truth of it. I wore whatever I could find from the pile on the floor. Though the worst of it were my shoes. A true embarrassment. But in a way, I owe my marriage to those bad shoes.

  I had been drinking at this joint off of Cherry Boulevard. I saw her the moment she waltzed in and couldn’t stop eyeing her. She looked like a movie star who’d walked right off the silver screen. She wasn’t overly glitzy, wasn’t wearing anything super fancy. Nevertheless, wherever she moved, the lights moved with her.

  She moved over to me.

  We talked a bit, the standard flirty back-and-forth. I thought I had been doing pretty well, at least holding my own with her smart, dry wit. I made her guess what I did for a living. She got firefighter on her second try. I went round and round before she had to tell me that she was a graduate student studying epistemology. I told her I was impressed. She laughed at me.

  I was building up the nerve to ask her out, when she fidgeted, ready to return to her friends. I stammered out a few words, sounding no better than a car with a bad carburetor.

  She reached for my shoulder. It instantly calmed me, though my heart was in my throat.

  “Benny—I can call you Benny, yeah?”

  I couldn’t speak.

  “Benny, you’re mighty handsome. And I dare say you’re built better than most men in this sad, sleazy town. But if you’re going to see me again, you can’t wear those shoes.”

  I looked down to the beat-up tennis shoes I had on. I had never even played tennis.

  She went on: “I could tell you something like ‘good shoes always class up a bad outfit,’ but I think you’re ready to hear the real truth.”

  Somehow I managed to take a breath. “Go on.”

  “All of our actions define us. Everything we choose. Everything we choose not to choose. We all like to think we can make the correct choice between right and wrong when faced with something big. But what really defines us is our ability to make the right choice on all the small things.”

  My mouth was dry; my head, in a fog. I knew right then I was in love.

  * * *

  A week later I saw her again in the same bar. I was wearing polished oxfords. She gave me her number that night. And all this time later, she’d never again mentioned my shoes.

  If only I could keep warm thoughts of my lovely wife in my head instead of images of a burned-up body. That’s what haunted my mind when I walked into the H.M.S. Pandora. The first person I saw was my friend Harper “Pappy” Meriwether, seated in his regular spot at the far corner of the bar. He chose this seat so he could keep an eye on all the action. The second thing I saw was a drink on the bar in front of the empty stool next to him. He was a good friend.

  “What’s wrong, my boy?” Pappy sipped at his gin.

  I dropped onto the stool next to him and picked up my drink. The Pandora’s air conditioner was on the fritz, and a single, tiny ice cube floated in the glass, fighting the heat. Fighting, and losing. “Nothing. Had a long shift yesterday, but I slept it all off. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Listen, Ben. You can’t lie to a detective.” He tapped his long, narrow nose. “This thing can smell a lie a mile away, and you started stinking up the place the moment you walked through that door. Now level with me.”

  I inhaled a deep breath and blew it out of my nostrils. Pappy was good, better than a shrink. “All right. This fire I worked last night? It’s been eating at me. I found a body, and I’m second-guessing myself. I hate losing someone. I always feel like I could have done more.”

  “You should stop thinking like that, Ben. That road will only lead to disappointment. I know you, and I am certain you did everything you could have done.”

  “But there’s more to it than that. Something about the whole thing isn’t right. I just can’t figure it out. It’s like looking at an unfinished puzzle made with pieces from two different boxes. You hear anything about this case?”

  I felt a little silly asking, because I knew he’d have an answer. In addition to working at the Always Reddy Detective Agency, Pappy made a habit of picking whatever gossip he could off the grapevine. There wasn’t much that went on in this town Pappy didn’t know about.

  “It so happens I do know something about the case. I know the gentleman you found went by the name of Moshi Scavone. Business owner, married, no kids.”

  The fact that he was married made me wince, thinking of my own wife. What if she found my body burned beyond recognition? I didn’t want to imagine her pain. I tried my best to ignore it.

  “Drake! You’re here!” A loud voice from the other side of the bar helped me push the bad thoughts from my mind. Barton Bourke, the nosy loudmouth who worked the joint, stumbled out from the back room holding a six-pack of Old Style in each puffy fist.

  I sighed. “You know me, Barton. Never miss a night out with the boys.”

  Bourke pulled a can off its plastic ring and jammed the rest under the bar. He popped the top on his beer, tipped it back, guzzled it down. The whole thing sounded like an asthmatic elephant at a watering hole. Beer trickled down his stubbly chin. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, smacked his lips, and leaned across the bar toward me. “So, hot enough for ya?”

  My patience for Barton was minimal on the best of nights, and this wasn’t the best of nights. “Look, Barton—”

  Pappy knew I was about to lose my
cool, so he cut me off. “Barton, old friend, we’re in the middle of a rather frank discussion. Can you give us a few minutes of isolation?”

  “Oh, right, right. Talking up a big case, are ya?” Bourke winked at Pappy. “Sure, sure. I get it. You let me know if you need anything, now.”

  I shook my head as Bourke wandered off to the other side of the bar and started wiping it down with a rag. “What a clown.”

  “Now, now, Ben. You should try to give Barton a little bit of a break. I know he gets under your skin, but he means well. He just lacks the grace of social interaction.”

  “Yeah, I know. Just sometimes . . . I have to be in the mood.”

  “You’ve got a dark cloud hanging over you today, my boy. So what else is eating you? What’s the situation at home?”

  Pappy really knew how to read me. Or maybe I was just that easy to read. “The wife. She’s got plans. Wants to move, wants kids.”

  “Kids, eh? That’s great news, my boy. Being a father keeps a man honest.”

  I chuckled. “Maybe. But I don’t know.”

  “I ever tell you about my kids, Ben?”

  I nodded. “You’ve mentioned them.”

  “They’re all grown up now, so I don’t see them much anymore. But I think about them—even dream about them—all the time. And here’s something odd: in my dreams, they’re never adults. They’re always kids, young, like ten. Strangest thing ever . . .”

  Pappy’s voice drifted off. I glanced over at him, saw a slight smile on his lips and a distant twinkle in his eyes. I let him have a moment with his thoughts.

  Kids. A big step, and one I felt like I wanted to take. But a call like the one last night, it made me think. What if, one of these times, I didn’t make it out? And that made me think about the burned-up body in the bathtub all over again.

  “Say, Pappy, you said Moshi was into business. What sort of business?”

  “If I may continue your simile of the unfinished puzzle: detective work is often more about figuring out how many different boxes you have than simply putting the pieces together. One of these boxes has a picture that looks like this—Moshi is a well-known gambler. Said to frequent a certain bookie by the name of Tyrone Tyrell. The boys call Tyrell ‘Bones’ on account of his affinity with games involving dice.”

  “Damn. So this guy’s into Bones for a lot of cash?”

  “Exactly the opposite, my dear boy. Moshi wins. He wins often, and he wins big.”

  A cold shiver wriggled around in my guts. “All right then, here’s something that might be something. You know I’ve seen more than a few bodies, and I got a good look at this one. I think our man Moshi took a pretty good beating before he got caught in that fire.” I paused, giving Pappy an opening to tell me what he knew. He didn’t take it. I kept going: “So get this. Then a couple of cops showed up, almost before the fire was out, and started shoving their weight around.”

  “Ah, sounds like Bob Brockman and Mark Weisnecki, the finest of Testacy City’s finest.”

  “Yeah, that’s them,” I said. “This Brockman character got in my face and started telling me what I saw—and it wasn’t what I really saw. Makes me wonder what his deal is.”

  “He’s an old jarhead who’s had his gene for compassion replaced with the one for vengeance. An unpleasant fellow.”

  Images of Brockman jabbed at my mind. “What aren’t you telling me, Pappy?”

  “Just steer clear of this guy, Ben. He’s not the kind of man you want to go up against. If he wants you to back off, then back off. Just do your job, go home, and take care of your wife. That’s the wise course of action here. Trust me.”

  He sipped some more gin, shooting me an admonishing glance over the edge of his glass. I tried to shrug it off, downed the rest of my whiskey. The ice cube had long since given up. Maybe I needed to do the same.

  “All right. It’s just that I’m really concerned the cops are playing the accidental death angle too hard.”

  “Accident? What in heavens are you talking about, my boy? They arrested Kane McInnis, a small timer, on multiple counts, including arson and the murder of good ol’ Moshi Scavone.”

  * * *

  I hadn’t planned to spend so much time at the Pandora with Pappy, the time just got away from me. When I got home, my wife was cleaning up after dinner. My plate was in the oven.

  I grabbed some silverware, put the plate on the counter, started eating standing up. “How was your day?” I asked.

  “Fine.”

  The chicken was dry, but that was my own damn fault.

  “You should sit,” she said, drying her hands on a dish towel. “Just because I ate doesn’t mean we can’t have dinner together.”

  I sat down at the small Formica table in the area off the kitchen. She joined me with her glass of white wine. I looked at the opened bottle on the counter and it made me feel like I’d missed something. Maybe I had.

  “You get some rest?” She traced the circle of the wine glass edge with her finger.

  “A little, yeah. Wanted to get more, especially with what’s on my mind.”

  “Still the body in the fire?”

  “Yeah.”

  She drank some more. “You know, I got some news today.”

  I put my fork down. “Are you okay?”

  She smiled. “Yeah, I’m okay. It was a call from UCLA.”

  “Los Angeles.”

  “Yes, silly, University of California Los Angeles. They have a job. Their Kant expert is retiring. They want me in the department. It’s a huge opportunity. For us.”

  I got up and splashed some of the white wine into a water glass, drank a gulp. “That’s great.”

  The excitement she had tried to contain was now bubbling up. “It’s really perfect. Everything we’ve been planning for. Now we can leave this city, start fresh, start making babies.” She winked at me.

  “Maybe we should wait on the kids . . . you know, until you get tenure.”

  My wife cocked her head. She had an insightful streak wider than the 15 freeway that cut through town. “Benny, are you . . . scared? I thought we were on the same page about all this.”

  I paused, only for a second, but it was a second too long.

  “Jesus, Benny. I didn’t know.”

  “Hey, come on. I want kids. I do.”

  “Don’t say it like that, like you have to justify yourself.”

  “I’m not. Not at all.” I took a big breath. Then I grasped her hand. “This is great. You are great. I love you, love you with all my heart. Okay, am I scared? Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. Doesn’t mean this isn’t what I want.”

  We kissed madly. I had half a mind to sweep the plate, silverware, and glasses off the table and start this baby-making business right then and there. I hesitated again, just enough for her to notice. It’s the small things that matter, that determine what kind of man you are.

  She pulled away and smiled, put her hand on my cheek.

  I said, “We should celebrate. A night out. Dinner.”

  “That sounds lovely.”

  We kissed again, like young lovers.

  It was the last time I would ever kiss my wife.

  * * *

  I had to switch my shift so this dinner would be possible. With my wife working down at the public library, I had a few hours of free time. I hadn’t planned on using it to get into trouble, but I could feel the tug of a current more powerful than my self-control. So here I was, walking up the steps of the Testacy City Jail.

  I had never been to a jail before, and I was surprised how easy it was to get through the door. All I had to do was tell a bored police officer my name and that I was here to visit Kane McInnis. I signed a log, and just like that, the guy led me to a small room with a high ceiling. A large piece of Plexiglas divided the space, complete with a pink fiberglass chair and a beige phone bolted to the desk on both sides.

  I sat down, waiting for McInnis to show, and started to wonder what the hell I was doing.

&nb
sp; I’d woken up that morning with renewed vigor, and while finishing up a plate of eggs with thick-cut toast, I’d run across a write-up of the arrest of Kane McInnis in the Testacy City Herald-Tribune. No real detail on the lead-up to his takedown, just a bunch of baloney about “forensic evidence” and the like. No motive, though the papers weren’t likely to speculate on that anyway. They did mention he was in the lockup downtown awaiting a bail hearing.

  So I thought, if I had some questions about this fire, maybe I’d just go straight to the source.

  McInnis shuffled into the other side of the room and lowered himself into the chair across from me. He rubbed at a bruise under his eye and picked up the phone. I did the same.

  The first words out of his mouth surprised me. “Who sent you?”

  “Who do you think sent me?”

  “So you ain’t my lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Some kind of doctor?”

  “Do you need a doctor?”

  “Some kind of news hound?”

  “No, look, I . . .”

  He glowered at me with thin eyes. “I ain’t liking this game you’re playing.”

  “What? I’m not playing a game! I came here to talk. You’re the one who started in with the twenty questions.”

  He grabbed the phone tighter. His bottom jaw stuck out with an underbite that made him look like a werewolf. “You came here to talk? Do I look like the talking type?”

  I’m not sure what I expected to get here, but this sure wasn’t it. “All right, listen. Let’s start over. I’m Ben Drake, with the fire department. I found the body—”

  “Then you know!”

  “Hold on . . . know what?”

  “A setup! A big, stinking setup. Nothing ain’t what it seems.”

  “So why don’t you tell me about it?”

  “You’re kidding me, right? You say you ain’t playing a game, but you’re playing all right. You just don’t know it. What you want, man?”

  “I just want to know about Moshi. And the fire. Did you beat him up before you started the fire? Or . . .” I sighed and pushed my fedora back on my head, then rubbed my eyes. “Hell, I don’t even know. I just need some answers. I don’t like things that are unresolved.”