Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1)(86)
“Uh-huh, and that thing you said about not turning into an uncle, what was that about?”
“Uncles are retired cops who can’t let go of the job. They call in wanting Marlo to run the plate numbers of cars that strike them as hinky for one reason or another. Or maybe they brace some guy who looks wrong, go all cop-faced on his ass and ask for ID. Then they call in and have Marlo run the name for wants and warrants.”
“Does she mind?”
“Oh, she bitches about it for form’s sake, but I don’t really think so. An old geezer named Kenny Shays called in a six-five a few years ago—that’s suspicious behavior, a new code since 9/11. The guy he pegged wasn’t a terrorist, just a fugitive who killed his whole family in Kansas back in 1987.”
“Wow. Did he get a medal?”
“Nothing but an attaboy, which was all he wanted. He died six months or so later.” Ate his gun is what Kenny Shays did, pulling the trigger before the lung cancer could get traction.
Hodges’s cell phone rings. It’s muffled, because he’s once more left it in the glove compartment. Janey fishes it out and hands it over with a slightly ironic smile.
“Hey, Marlo, that was quick. What did you find out? Anything?” He listens, nodding along with whatever he’s hearing and saying uh-huh and never missing a beat in the heavy flow of morning traffic. He thanks her and hangs up, but when he attempts to hand the Nokia back to Janey, she shakes her head.
“Put it in your pocket. Someone else might call you. I know it’s a strange concept, but try to get your head around it. What did you find out?”
“Starting in September of 2007, there were over a dozen car break-ins downtown. Marlo says there could have been even more, because people who don’t lose anything of value have a tendency not to report car burglaries. Some don’t even realize it happened. The last report was logged in March of 2009, less than three weeks before the City Center Massacre. It was our guy, Janey. I’m sure of it. We’re crossing his backtrail now, and that means we’re getting closer.”
“Good.”
“I think we’re going to find him. If we do, your lawyer—Schron—goes downtown to fill in Pete Huntley. He does the rest. We still see eye to eye on that, don’t we?”
“Yes. But until then, he’s ours. We still see eye to eye on that, right?”
“Absolutely.”
He’s cruising down Lake Avenue now, and there’s a spot right in front of the late Mrs. Wharton’s building. When your luck is running, it’s running. Hodges backs in, wondering how many times Olivia Trelawney used this same spot.
Janey looks anxiously at her watch as Hodges feeds the meter.
“Relax,” he says. “We’ve got plenty of time.”
As she heads for the door, Hodges pushes the LOCK button on his key-fob. He doesn’t think about it, Mr. Mercedes is what he’s thinking about, but habit is habit. He pockets his keys and hurries to catch up with Janey so he can hold the door for her.
He thinks, I’m turning into a sap.
Then he thinks, So what?
10
Five minutes later, a mud-colored Subaru cruises down Lake Avenue. It slows almost to a stop when it comes abreast of Hodges’s Toyota, then Brady puts on his left-turn blinker and pulls into the parking garage across the street.
There are plenty of vacant spots on the first and second levels, but they’re all on the inside and no use to him. He finds what he wants on the nearly deserted third level: a spot on the east side of the garage, directly overlooking Lake Avenue. He parks, walks to the concrete bumper, and peers across the street and down at Hodges’s Toyota. He puts the distance at about sixty yards. With nothing in the way to block the signal, that’s a piece of cake for Thing Two.
With time to kill, Brady gets back into his car, fires up his iPad, and investigates the Midwest Culture and Arts Complex website. Mingo Auditorium is the biggest part of the facility. That figures, Brady thinks, because it’s probably the only part of the MAC that makes money. The city’s symphony orchestra plays there in the winter, plus there are ballets and lectures and arty-farty shit like that, but from June to August the Mingo is almost exclusively dedicated to pop music. According to the website, ’Round Here will be followed by an all-star Summer Cavalcade of Song including the Eagles, Sting, John Mellencamp, Alan Jackson, Paul Simon, and Bruce Springsteen. Sounds good, but Brady thinks the people who bought All-Concert Passes are going to be disappointed. There’s only going to be one show in the Mingo this summer, a short one ending with a punk ditty called “Die, You Useless Motherf*ckers.”
The website says the auditorium’s capacity is forty-five hundred.
It also says that the ’Round Here concert is sold out.
Brady calls Shirley Orton at the ice cream factory. Once more pinching his nose shut, he tells her she better put Rudy Stanhope on alert for later in the week. He says he’ll try to get in Thursday or Friday, but she better not count on it; he has the flu.
As he expected, the f-word alarms Shirley. “Don’t you come near this place until you can show me a note from your doctor saying you’re not contagious. You can’t be selling ice cream to kids if you’ve got the flu.”
“I dno,” Brady says through his pinched nostrils. “I’be sorry, Shirley. I thing I got id fromb by mother. I had to put her to bed.” That hits his funnybone and his lips begin to twitch.