Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(16)

He considered the distance between us. He considered the butt of the .45 and my right hand resting a half inch away from it. He looked into my face. Then he bent and placed the stick by his feet. He stepped back from it as his friend’s stick clattered loudly to the floor.

I turned away and took five steps down the bar and then stopped. I looked back at Big Dave. “What?” I said.

“Excuse me?” Dave watched my hands.

“I thought you said something.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I thought you said that maybe you hadn’t told us everything you could have about Helene McCready.”

“I didn’t,” Big Dave said, and held up his hands. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Angie,” I said, “you think Big Dave told us everything?”

She had stopped by the door, her .38 held loosely in her left hand as she leaned against the doorjamb. “Nope.”

“We think you’re holding out, Dave.” I shrugged. “Just an opinion.”

“I told you everything. Now I think you both should just—”

“Come back when you’re closing up tonight?” I said. “That’s a great idea, Big Dave. You got it. We’ll come back then.”

Big Dave shook his head several times. “No, no.”

“Say about two, two-fifteen?” I nodded. “See you then, Dave.”

I turned and walked down the rest of the bar. Nobody would meet my eyes. Everyone looked at their beers.

“She wasn’t over at her friend Dottie’s house,” Big Dave said.

We turned and looked back at him. He leaned over the bar sink and fired a spurt of water into his face from the dispenser hose.

“Hands up on the bar, Dave,” Angie said.

He raised his head and blinked against the liquid. He placed his palms flat on the bar top. “Helene,” he said. “She wasn’t over at Dottie’s. She was here.”

“With who?” I said.

“With Dottie,” he said. “And Lenny’s kid, Ray.”

Lenny raised his head from his beer and said, “Shut the fuck up, Dave.”

“The skeevy guy who manned the door?” Angie said. “That’s Ray?”

Big Dave nodded.

“What were they doing in here?” I said.

“Don’t you say another word,” Lenny said.

Big Dave glanced at him desperately, then back at Angie and me. “Just drinking. Helene knew it looked bad enough she left her kid alone in the first place. If the press or the cops knew she was actually ten blocks away at a bar and not next door, it would look even worse.”

“What’s her relationship with Ray?”

“They do each other sometimes, I think.” He shrugged.

“What’s Ray’s last name?”

“David!” Lenny said. “David, you shut the—”

“Likanski,” Big Dave said. “He lives on Harvest.” He took a gulp of air.

“You are shit,” Lenny told him. “That’s what you are, and it’s all you’ll ever be, and all your retarded fucking offspring will be and everything you touch. Shit.”

“Lenny,” I said.

Lenny kept his back to me. “You think I’m going to say a word to you, boy, you are on fucking angel dust. I might be watching my beer, but I know you got a gun, and I know that girl has one too. And so fucking what? Shoot me or leave.”

Outside, I could hear the sound of a siren approaching.

Lenny turned his head, and a smile broke across his face. “Sounds like they’re coming for you, don’t it?” His smile broke into a hard, bitter laugh that exposed a red sore of a mouth with almost no teeth.

He waved at me as the siren grew so close I knew they were in the alley. “Bye-bye now. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

His bitter laugh came out even harder this time and sounded more like the coughing of ravaged lungs. After a few seconds, his cronies joined in, nervously at first but then openly, as we heard the doors of the cop car opening outside.

By the time we walked out the door, it sounded like a party in there.





5





When we stepped out of the bar into the alley, we met the grille of a black Ford Taurus parked a matter of inches from the front door. The younger of the two detectives, a big guy beaming a little boy’s smile, leaned in through the open driver’s window and turned off the siren.

His partner sat cross-legged on the hood, a colder smile on his round face, and said, “Woo, woo, woo.” He held an index finger aloft and rotated his wrist and made the sound again. “Woo, woo, woo.”

“Frighteningly realistic,” I said.

“Ain’t it?” He clapped his hands together and slid down the car hood until his feet rested on the grille and his knees were almost touching my legs.

“You’d be Pat Kenzie.” His hand shot out toward my chest. “Glad to make your acquaintance.”

“Patrick,” I said, and shook the hand.

He gave it two vigorous pumps. “Detective Sergeant Nick Raftopoulos. Call me Poole. Everyone does.” His sharp elfin face tilted toward Angie. “You’d be Angela.”