Sanguinary Angel

By John Kissinger

Chattanooga private investigator Wayne Hoyer is alone in more ways than one. His indispensible secretary Sally is on vacation, leaving him to run the office by himself. His wife and daughter live with another man, leaving Wayne to go home to an empty apartment each night. He hasn’t heard from his few friends lately, and he is doing what he can to avoid his own shadowy past.
Still, he needs to pay the bills, and at least there are a few clients showing up at his door. There’s Velouette, a frumpy, irritated woman who needs some rare type blood for her daughter’s operation and expects Wayne to find it for her. Sid, Wayne’s friend in the Chattanooga Police Department, has some suspicions about a group of police rookies who share a common past and uncommon social behavior, and wants Wayne to check them out. On top of that, Wayne is summoned to the house of Andrew Batrassen, local crime lord, because Batrassen’s brother is missing and he wants Wayne to locate him. None of the jobs look promising, but we’re talking about paying clients here, and at least it will give Wayne something to do.
One day later, everything has come apart at the seams. Wayne was involved at a shootout inside Batrassen’s house and is running for his life, and there have already been two attempts on his life from sources unknown. Wayne finds himself beholden to a secret organization hiding behind the façade of a local artists’ colony, and he is also a target for another secret organization whose methods are ruthless and murderous even on its good days.
Being alone is starting to look better all the time. Then Wayne meets RueAnn, a beautiful singer with a tragic past and an uncertain future, whose fate is somehow meshed with the seemingly unrelated events of Wayne’s recent history. Well, maybe he doesn’t have to be completely alone…

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 13, 2013
• ISBN: 9781626757721

Book preview

circumstantial.

TUESDAY

CHAPTER 1 - - YOUR SO VEIN

Hello? Is anyone here?

I was minding my own business that morning, that Tuesday morning when the world shifted and my life began to change. I was minding my own business—private investigations—because there should be a law against secretaries taking two-week vacations. Especially a secretary who is indispensably efficient at everything she does, and especially two week vacations that began yesterday. Unopened mail cluttered my desk, the answering machine was full of unheard messages, and my office had become a quiet and lonesome place. I was already counting the days until Sally returned, but still hoped that she and her son were having fun in Florida.

So there I was, sitting in my downtown Chattanooga office, taking inventory on the desk drawer filled with a selection of international candy bars, brooding over a newspaper full of bad news—another young woman found murdered, this one near the roundabout in Coolidge Park—and trying to decide which place would be harder for me to endure: my empty office or my empty apartment, when I heard that timid female voice in the outer office.

Hello? I answered.

Footsteps whispered toward my door.

I switched to brooding on why people with troubles won’t leave me alone.

In here, I called, getting slowly to my feet.

The morning shadows in the doorway parted to reveal a hesitant round face framed with short brown hair. Mr. Hoyer?

Most folk call me Wayne, I said, Miss—

Mrs. Simmons, she said, slowly entering my office. Velouette Simmons. She paused well short of handshake range and I remained behind the desk, so we stood there watching each other.

What can I do for you, Mrs. Simmons? I put more emphasis on the Mrs. than was strictly necessary.

You’re the private investigator? she asked.

Yes.

I need your help, she said, her eyes shying away from mine. It’s about my daughter.

Cold and cranky though my mood might be, just mentioning the word daughter was enough to make my heart melt. The ink on my divorce papers was still drying and my beautiful eight-year-old daughter Tara now lived in another home, with my ex-wife and my ex-rival, and I felt the pangs of that separation every day. The father gets visitation rights, the man who ruined the marriage gets live-in rights, there’s justice for you.

I sighed. I’m sorry, Mrs. Simmons, you caught me at a bad moment.

She nodded and started backing away. I can come back, she said.

No, no, please come in. I walked around the desk, took her hand and gently led her to a chair. Please have a seat. It’s a bad moment, not a bad day.

Her smile was less joy than polity. I know bad days, she said.

She was on either side of forty and her once trim figure was unlikely to return. Large wide eyes in an oval face gave her a slightly comic expression, but those eyes measured a slow and cautious sadness. Her wardrobe came from Target, her accent from the Midwest, maybe Indiana.

So, Mrs. Simmons...

Please call me Velouette.

Velouette, then. What can I do for you?

You find things, right? That’s what private eyes do, they find things. She said it like a mantra.

I tried not to frown. More or less.

I need blood, she said.

My office is parade ground central for people cradling strange requests in their nervous, sweaty hands. Sometimes they need to find someone or something. Sometimes they need to hide something, maybe even themselves, from someone else. Either way, the requests are rarely ordinary, seldom predictable. If they’ve made it as far as my office door, these people need help they can’t find on the street, among friends or family, or elsewhere in the ordinary world. So they bring their strange quests to me because I’m as far from ordinary as they can imagine.

Velouette’s request won this month’s strange request award.

Blood?

For my daughter, she said. Harriet is in the hospital and she needs an operation real bad, but she can’t have it without a large amount of her blood type on hand.

During the final days of our disintegrating marriage, my ex-wife Annie once called me a vampire, but she’d meant it in a Colin Wilsonesque, psychical sense, accusing me of mentally draining her life energies whenever I was around. At the time, I thought it was a fairly creative rationale for divorce, especially coming from Annie. Maybe What’s-his-name—Vance—helped her think it up.

But surely the hospital— I began.

Do you know how many blood types there are, Mr. Hoyer?

I gave in and frowned. Four?

She briefly closed her wide, round eyes, as if summoning patience from some secret source. There are dozens, Mr. Hoyer. Hundreds. A, B, O, that’s only the beginning, there are types based on Rh factors, antibodies, and the antigens are—

Okay, I held up a hand, I get the point. A desire to brood was scratching at my mind’s door, wanting back in. I blinked, tried to re-focus.

Harriet has a very rare blood type. Velouette rattled off a long formula filled with letters and numbers. There is no stock in the blood banks, and the so-called universal donors can’t help her except for small emergency amounts. They keep on re-scheduling the operations and they’ve been seeking appropriate donors for weeks.

What kind of operation?

She squinted in annoyance. I’d interrupted her desperate but apparently rehearsed plea. It’s her heart. One of the heart valves failed to completely close when she was developing as the fetus. I believe it’s called a patent foramen ovale.

I nodded as if I knew what that meant. Harriet had this condition from birth?

Yes. When she was younger, the operation could wait, but now the situation has changed.

In what way?

She drew a shuddering breath. She was involved in an ... accident. The wounds became infected. She’s in the hospital right now for the infection, but her recovery is threatened by this heart condition. Tears welled up in Velouette’s eyes. Big tears.

Which hospital?

Erlanger. We’ve tried all the usual sources: blood banks, Red Cross, the AAAA. There haven’t been any donors close to Harriet’s type for more than nine months.

Mrs. Simmons. I paused at her sharp look. Velouette, I’m not sure I can do any more than the appropriate medical professionals.

But this is what you do, she insisted. You find things.

Yes, I reluctantly agreed.

So find us some blood.

I tried to look helpless.

The phone on my desk rang, my private line. Usually, with Sally not here, I’d let it go to the already full answering machine, but I seized the phone like a lifeline tossed to a drowning man, giving Velouette what I hoped was an apologetic look.

Hello? I half-whispered.

That you, Hoyer?

I have a client in the office, Sid. What’s up?

Sid Angelucci is a detective with the Major Crimes Unit of the Chattanooga Police Department, and the closest thing I have to a friend in this town, which is pretty pitiful, when you think of it. Our relationship is more professional than social, but I’m not in a position to quibble, I’ll take friends wherever I can get them.

The hotel in Charon Village, he asked, this afternoon around three?

I glanced at the clock. Four hours from now. When I hesitated, trying to decide what I could say with Velouette listening, Sid added, It’s a potential job. A paying job.

I’ll be there, I said and hung up.

I re-established eye contact with Velouette.

Why would your work for this be any different, she asked, than finding a criminal or a deadbeat husband or a lost dog? I need you to find some blood.

Though I hated to admit it, Velouette was right. Hers was not the strangest request I’d been handed, not by far.

Once, this guy hired me to locate a paperback copy of The Cave Girl by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Not just any paperback copy, but the one he’d read as a teenager, over thirty years before.

When he was fourteen, this guy spent the summer with his grandparents, and one day he discovered a box of Burroughs books in the attic, Tarzan and John Carter and all the rest. After reading all the books in the box, he haunted local used book stores looking for other Burroughs novels, and bought a copy of The Cave Girl on the same day he met Janelle, a blue-eyed blond girl who was traveling with his aunt, uncle, and cousins. That night, while his cousins watched TV in the living room, he and Janelle made out on the floor of the den, an hour of kissing and fondling that hadn’t gone much beyond PG. She left the next day with the rest of the entourage and he never saw Janelle again. He’d written her phone number on the first paper that came to hand, the flyleaf of The Cave Girl, but never called her. Thirty years later, concurrent with this guy’s second divorce, Janelle started haunting his mid-life crisis dreams and he wanted to find her.

The Burroughs paperback had been carted back to the used book store at summer’s end along with the rest of the author’s oeuvre. Now, three decades later, he wanted me to find that copy, in the forlorn hope that the phone number scribbled on the flyleaf was still valid, permitting him to relocate the girl of his dreams. Talk about a sucker’s hope.

Okay, I said, sinking back in my chair. It’s not so different. I drummed fingers on the edge of the desk and stared at Velouette. I knew next to nothing about blood, blood banks, donor stations, any of that. Hell, I’d never even donated blood. I’ve bled a lot in my life but never on purpose.

Still, if I found a way to pull this off, if I was able to find Harriet some blood, I would do her some good, real and tangible good. A welcome change from the usual dross of cheating spouses or dishonest businessmen.

I’ll need a list of places and organizations you’ve already checked.

She pulled an envelope from her purse and placed it on the corner of my desk, smiling. I thought you’d ask that.

As I sorted through the printouts inside the envelope, I said, I’m guessing she can’t use your blood?

She didn’t inherit it from me.

What about her father?

She shook her head. He’s dead. There was no hint of mourning in her expression.

Other relatives?

Velouette’s eyes took on a hard, annoyed light. Mr. Hoyer, I’ve been through all this with the hospital staff. We’ve tried all the usual ways. I know it’s asking a lot, but—

I held up my hand. Sure, Velouette, I understand. I’ll try, I’ll do that for you and for Harriet. But I do my work by asking questions, I keep asking until I hit the right question and get a real answer.

She relaxed a little. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be short with you.

That’s okay.

One page in the envelope had her contact information. She was staying at a by-the-week hotel on Lee Highway. I wondered how she and Harriet came to be here in Chattanooga but didn’t want to upset her with more questions than necessary. I thought there’d be time for mundane questions later. Shows what I know.

I can’t pay much, she said, her voice and eyes wary.

I can’t charge you much, I said, so it’s a matching set. Don’t worry about money right now. First let’s see if I can do this, then we’ll talk about a fee. Okay?

She nodded. When will I hear from you?

I’ll call you tomorrow. I take it Harriet is not in immediate danger?

They’re working to control the infection, she said, and she’s stable for the moment, but—

I know. She needs the operation and you’re anxious to have it done.

She smiled and her eyes went down to near-normal size. Thank you, Mr. Hoyer.

I stood up and so did she. I meant to walk her through the waiting room to the outer door, but she kept moving ahead of me, as if I were somehow chasing her.

Waving the paper with her contact information, I asked, Is this phone number your cell phone, or the number in your hotel room?

That’s our room phone. Thank you very much, Mr. Hoyer, she said. I know you can help Harriet and me.

You’re very welcome, I said.

She was through the door and walking down the hall without so much as a handshake. I watched until she disappeared around the corner, then closed the outer office door and locked it. I didn’t want to chance any more walk-ins right now.

Back at my desk, I opened the candy drawer and chose a ginger-flavored Kit-Kat bar from Japan, savoring both the aroma and the unusual taste. As I ate chocolate from halfway round the world, I rocked back and forth in the chair and stared out the window at McCallie Avenue’s languid late morning traffic. Okay, Hoyer, I said to my faded reflection in the dusty glass, where are you going to find some blood?

CHAPTER 2 - - WHITE KNIGHT TO KING’S BAD NEWS

After giving my reflection a fair but futile chance to answer, I chose a Crunky bar (I guess that’s how the Japanese think crunchy is spelled) and slipped it into my pocket, locked up the office and set off for the public library to learn something about blood. Velouette’s request was, to mix analogies, off the beaten path of my usual knowledge pool, and I needed some serious background research. Like most people, I have five quarts of blood, most of it cold, running through my veins, but unless I am wounded or watching a woman undress, I never give blood—mine or anyone else’s—much thought.

True, bloodletting was once my stock in trade ... but there’s this secrecy oath that prevents me from talking too much about the past. Let’s just say this: my post-Army career path took several unusual turns before I moved to Chattanooga and started my private investigation practice, married Annie and started a family and was divorced by Annie. Having multiple pasts sometimes makes it hard to figure out which one haunts me more and I’ve spent more than one idle hour trying to move on from all of them. I can say that one of these pasts involved shedding blood but not the idea of moving it from one person to another.

My office is second-class rented space on the third floor of a drab brick building facing McCallie Avenue—close enough to center city to advertise it as downtown. More importantly, it is within walking distance of the public library.

I usually exit my office building through the basement rather than the front lobby, it’s safer that way. Silently descending grimy gray stairs and slipping along dusty corridors whose wall cabinets guarded forgotten necessities. I wondered if the Unknown Player had been here recently, so just before the door leading from the basement up to the building’s private parking lot, I turned right and entered a maintenance room filled with old machinery and shadows.

Near a boiler covered with rust and cobwebs stood a table holding an old chessboard with worn ivory pieces. I had discovered it years ago when I first moved into the building, its pieces standing in dusty but neat starting-position rows. On that long gone day, I made a whimsical opening move, disturbing the white pawns’ stately order. When I next looked in the room, someone had answered my opening with one of the black pieces. I moved another piece, my unseen opponent eventually countered, and thus began our strange and faceless chess tournament. If I moved a piece in the morning on the way in to work, it was often answered by evening. My evening moves were sometimes countered by the next morning. Some answering moves took two or three days to appear. I never saw anyone else in the room. I didn’t try to find out who it was, the mystery was half the fun.

Over the years, we’d kept score by slash marks scored into the table’s soft wood, the Unknown Player and I. The tournament currently stood at Unknown 37 wins, Wayne 29 wins, and two draws.

We were a dozen moves into the current game and it seemed likely that I would lose. Still, it isn’t over until the tall man falls. Studying the board in room’s poor light, I saw that Unknown hadn’t yet answered my latest move. But a small envelope was leaning against my reserve knight. The envelope was addressed to me and contained a note card handwritten in block letters:

YOU WILL KINDLY PRESENT YOURSELF AT THE GATE OF ANDREW BATRASSEN’S ESTATE NO LATER THAN 9 A.M. TOMORROW, TUESDAY THE 4TH.

There was no signature.

This had to be a joke. Andrew Batrassen was a local crime boss whom I’d never met and I had no intention of ending the streak. Was the Unknown Player displaying a hitherto hidden sense of humor? I pocketed the note and exited the building.

Walking to the library takes long enough to qualify as exercise but not long enough to become a chore. I’ve walked the route and its alternates hundreds of time—a private eye’s best friend is the local library—but today the journey felt different. I was uneasy by the time I passed the First Presbyterian Church with its demonic-looking light fixtures, and as I approached the Sailors and Soldiers Memorial Auditorium, I suspected that someone was following me. The usual tricks—using store windows to watch my back, turning to wave at a random passing car while scanning the street behind me, even sitting for a while at a metal table on the corner of Eighth and Cherry only half-pretending to watch girls walking by—failed to spot a tail. I saw no evidence to confirm my suspicion. I kept walking.

The strange note hanging on my knight came to mind, but why would Batrassen have me followed? It was possible that I’d recently and inadvertently stepped on his toes, but I didn’t think so.

Still, I’ve lived this long by paying close attention to my feelings, especially the ones that don’t make sense. Outside the library, I pretended to admire the silvery book and disk sculpture while looking for someone who seemed out of place or overly curious. Nothing. Entering the library, I slipped behind a computer terminal, and watched the entrance for a while. The people who came in didn’t look particularly suspicious so I reluctantly set my feelings aside and went to work.

Blood.

My heart beats 35 million times a year and so does yours. A human blood cell travels thousands of miles a day inside my body. Donated blood is usually separated into red blood cells, plasma, and platelets. Red blood cells have a shelf life of 42 days, frozen plasma can store for a year, and platelets last five days at room temperature. The facts were bleeding ink onto the pages of my notebook. Reading about blood made me overly aware of the relentless pulses inside my wrists and neck, and it got to the point where I could feel the blood coursing—some might say coarsing—through my veins.

Velouette was correct about the large numbers of blood groups. Besides the A, B, and O major types we all know and love, there are a hundred or more minor ones, some of them quite rare, usually because they have uncommon antigens or lack the common ones. Basically, if you have to jab more than two hundred different fingers before you find the matching type, it’s rare. My fingertips began to ache just thinking about it.

The American Rare Donor Program manages the country’s supplies of uncommon blood types, one of several such organizations. Harriet’s type, AB- with unusual rhesus factors and antigens, was so rare it didn’t even make the ARDP’s representative list.

Two hours later, I left the library carrying a stack of books and print-outs. Back on the street, the feeling of being watched returned. I followed a different return route to the office, moving along Georgia Avenue in a lazy, meandering pace while scanning sidewalks and streets behind me in the reflections of office and storefront windows. Either no one was tailing me, or the tail’s craft was high order.

As I dawdled and ate my candy bar, I considered the alleged invitation from Batrassen.

I had little interest in Chattanooga’s organized crime. When my professional life brushes up against crime, it is usually the unorganized kind. Cheating wives or husbands might think they are being careful and systematic, but they are strictly amateur, which is why they get caught. A guy embezzling money from his employer, a secretary selling commercial secrets to a competitor, some poor dope evading tax or bill collectors, these people wouldn’t last two seconds in an organized crime rodeo. On the other hand, criminals with a sufficient degree of organization wouldn’t need my kind of help.

Andrew X. Batrassen III, known to those not actually in his presence as The Third, controlled a lion’s share of Chattanooga’s illegal but lucrative activities, continuing a family tradition. Andrew Batrassen Senior had been a Prohibition moonshiner who raised east Tennessee’s illicit whisky trade from haphazard individual activity to a model of organizational efficiency by absorbing or eliminating competitors, standardizing product quality, and coordinating the production, shipment, protection, and sale of moonshine with competent precision. Prohibition died a morally ambiguous death in the 1930s but moonshine production continued to thrive in the Appalachians. Not only was it untaxed and cheap, but consumers had acquired a taste for its homemade flavor. Andrew Junior took over the family business in the 50s and expanded his scope of activities to include prostitution, dance clubs, untaxed cigarettes and gasoline, gambling, fortune-telling, and other activities that governments frown on.

By the time Andrew Batrassen III took the reins from dad, the family had interests in illegal operations from Knoxville to Atlanta, from Raleigh to Nashville, overlapping and cooperating with neighboring crime bosses when possible, fighting turf wars with them when necessary. According to rumor, the Third’s main innovation for the family business was to channel ill-gotten revenues into more legitimate businesses. He was becoming a man who was, if not welcomed, at least tolerated in genteel society, especially when it needed money.

His main regional competitor was William Fields, but everyone called him Baby Face, even to his face. Based in Cleveland, Baby Face had a history that carbon-copied the Batrassen family epic, except he was a strong supporter, and therefore a strong ally, of local religious organizations like the Assembly of the Lord church whose headquarters were in the hills between Cleveland and Knoxville. He also had a reputation for violence and womanizing that Batrassen either lacked or kept hidden.

What could Batrassen possibly want from me?

What would I possibly want from him?

It was theoretically possible that Batrassen was having me followed to see if I contacted the police about his invitation, but I couldn’t imagine why he’d care. More importantly, it’s not like I had anything on Batrassen to contact the police about.

I entered my office building through the lobby for variety’s sake and took the stairs instead of the elevator. My outer office door was standing open, even though I’d closed and locked it on the way out. A guy slouched on the edge of Sally’s desk in the waiting room, trimming his fingernails with a silver-plated pocketknife. When he saw me standing in the doorway, he took his time sliding off the desk. He was a smidge under six feet, well-exercised, eyes as dull as worn-out dice.

You Hoyer? His Alabama accent was drawn and quartered.

I looked him up and down. Me Hoyer. Who are you?

A friend.

I’ve memorized all my friends, your face isn’t on the list.

I’m here to give you this, he said, holding out a fist, palm down.

On the desk, I said, keeping my eyes on his.

Instead, he dropped something small and metallic on the floor. I didn’t glance down.

And some advice, he continued. Stay away from Batrassen.

This was one of those strange, disconnected moments when I had no idea what was going on and knew that my ignorance meant trouble.

What’s your name? I asked.

I’m Stan, he said, smiling as if he’d told a joke.

Well, Stan, I don’t know you from a hole in the air, why should I take your advice?

His hands fisted to white knuckles but he remained still. He was a flunky delivering a message, his orders and options probably didn’t include insolence from the message’s recipient. He might be uncouth, violent, even dangerous, but he followed orders.

Tell me who you work for, I pressed.

He could squash you like a bug, he said, trying to clench his teeth.

Look, Stan, I’m tired and bored and cranky. Just sign your message and get the hell out of here. You and I can square off someday, but now I just want to finish my day’s work and go home.

To his credit, he kept his anger under control. He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a business card. Eyes still on mine, he placed the card on Sally’s desk with all the deliberateness of a Zen tea ceremony and walked out the door, brushing my shoulder as he left.

I closed and locked the door, picked up the card, and let out a low whistle. This was not good news. The name on the card was William Fields.

First the Third, and now Baby Face, both aimed in my direction and all on the same day. My karma was definitely on a downhill slide.

The small metallic object on the carpet was a narrow brass key with no markings. I used a small envelope from Sally’s desk to scoop it off the floor, tucked it in my pocket.

Like I said, I’d never paid much attention to organized crime in Chattanooga. It wasn’t that interesting and there was no money in it for me. Suddenly, local organized crime was paying attention to me in a big way.

From a file cabinet drawer, I took my Colt and its shoulder holster, checked the ammo clip, and strapped on the weapon. It seemed a prudent thing to do.

An afternoon meeting with Sid was suddenly looking more attractive.

CHAPTER 3 – WHY GUARD HELL’S GATE?

I chose a Hanuta from the candy drawer, exited the building through the basement, watchful in case Stan was still around, and drove north out of the city.

Wolfglow Stream follows a turbulent, boulder-strewn course down a ridge northwest of Chattanooga, creating a chain of scenic waterfalls and noisy rapids on its way to the Tennessee River. Wolfglow is popular among locals as a place conducive to the gentle pleasures of creek-side picnics, rock-hopping, water staring, and occasional fishing. A small and cozy tourist trap called Charon Village blossomed along Wolfglow’s banks over the past century, anchored by a grand old hotel and surrounded by craft shops, specialized eateries, and quaint office buildings for yuppie professionals: somapsychologists, time investment counselors, and clinical aromatherapists.

I usually avoid the place. My ex-wife’s shrink has her office there, and the last thing I need is to bump into Annie just after she’s had her head dry-cleaned for the week.

Most of the buildings in Charon Village face the winding road that parallels Wolfglow, their backs to the rocky mountain stream. It is the kind of picturesque, suave place known to readers of travel books like Tennessee Off the Beaten Track.

Prescott Hotel, once a posh Victorian resort, is today two floors of restaurant in well-worn elegance beneath three floors of empty rooms furnished with aging memories. Many of the restaurant’s tables have magnificent window views of the surrounding mountains, but Sid had chosen a table overlooking the Beer Garden, an open air eatery next door serving German beer, German food, and German oompah music.

Sidney Angelucci was the first cop I met after moving to Chattanooga years ago, both of us involved in a case that we wish we could forget. Since then, our relationship has become somewhat symbiotic: he asks me for favors and gets me out of trouble, or vice versa.

Since Sid is not the type to frequent upscale tourist traps, I assumed that his invitation to Charon Village had a specific purpose. He had waited for me to arrive before ordering food, which meant he wasn’t in a hurry. He nursed a tall glass of water with a lemon twist. Sid is something of a health freak.

So why are we here? I asked as I sat down.

The beautiful scenery, he answered, not bothering to look out the window.

Well, Sally may be on vacation, but I’ve had a busy day. I told him about the note summoning me to Batrassen’s house, and Stan’s brief visit on behalf of Baby Face. As we talked, I studied the view below our window, the Beer Garden with its all-weather carpeting, round tables surrounding a stage in one corner where the band played. The annoying sound of German drinking songs and Polish polkas thumped against the window panes.

Have you ever met Batrassen? he asked.

No. Never wanted to.

Sid looked thoughtful, which really didn’t become him. I don’t like it, you going into his house with no idea why. The Third has had his share of troubles lately, market talk says he’s losing control of operations.

Haven’t read that one in the papers.

Sid shrugged. Guys who work for him have turned up dead the past few years, in higher than usual numbers. At the same time, our informants inside Batrassen’s organization are fading away. The ones who are left say that someone is trying to take over the family business.

Our waitress, Sherry, a tall redhead who smiled at Sid but gave me the cold eye, took our order. I asked for an open-face roast beef sandwich with Jack Daniel’s mustard, cheesy fries with sausage gravy on top, a side of sauerkraut (or as my grandfather called it from his World War I days, liberty cabbage), and left dessert choices up in the air. Sid ordered a naked veggie burger on a plain bun.

I don’t like it either, I said, but an invitation from the Third isn’t something you’d easily ignore. I could use some help.

What kind?

Nothing fancy. A patrol car parked outside his place in the morning. Make my visit official information, in case I never come out.

Sid didn’t blink. We could use information, all we have are rumors.

The air around me felt chilly. You want me to spy on Batrassen?

"Don’t be melodramatic, Wayne. Like you said, you don’t even know him. Right?

So you talk to him, see what he wants, and I’ll keep a car waiting for you outside, just to make sure you get out. You can tell me about it later, just two friends talking. He paused. For instance, locating Zachary would be a help."

The kid brother?

Zachary Batrassen was seven years younger than Andrew, and for a while it looked like he would deny his crime-prone genes. He attended UTC and Vanderbilt, held an advanced degree in English literature, even taught for a while as an adjunct with a local community college. His expensive tastes eventually drove him back to the life his old man had prepared for him, tastes that include gambling, collecting stolen art, and indulging in numerous affairs at the expense of his mousy, forgiving wife.

Guess I knew more about organized crime in this city than I thought I did.

He’s disappeared, Sid said. No one has seen him for a month or two. He might be out of the country on one of his binges or fleeing a jealous husband. It’s no big deal, we were just wondering.

Why did you ask me to meet you here?

I need your help, he said. A police matter, strictly unofficial.

That sounds like trouble.

I need you to follow some police officers, see what they’re up to.

So CPD is outsourcing Internal Affairs?

These guys aren’t doing anything illegal, as far as I know.

Let me guess: you suspect that cops are moonlighting as the Beer Garden band. I gestured toward the window. You want to indict them for disturbing the peace.

This isn’t funny, Wayne. Whatever’s going on with these guys feels slimy.

On the phone, you mentioned something about a paying job.

Sid hesitated. There’s an interested party. He wants to remain anonymous, but he’ll pay your fee and expenses. He has no connection with the department. And if you do this, I’ll owe you. Big time.

I pretended to think it over. Being paid is great, but having a few favor chips with a high-up in the CPD is almost better than cash. Almost.

I’m listening.

In the past few years, he said, there have been more than a dozen rookies hired into the department who were CJ majors from one school, a place called Holm College.

Things must be slow at Major Crimes, you’re passing the time slogging through personnel files.

Sid waved my flippancy aside. I was having lunch one day with my wife, right at this table. She likes places that are old and quaint. Reminds her of me, I guess. While we were talking and waiting for our food, I noticed this guy at a table in the Beer Garden down there and recognized him as a rookie patrolman. Didn’t pay too much attention, you know, while I discussed gardening and furniture and kids with Arlene, but as I watched, a few more rookies drifted in one by one, until there were four of them sitting at the table.

So?

So nothing, at first. They ordered a round of beers and sat there staring at each other. They hardly touched their drinks, didn’t talk much, just sat there.

Maybe they weren’t thirsty. The Garden’s beer isn’t that good anyway, heavy German stuff.

At first, I thought about going down and introducing myself, giving them my welcome-to-the-force speech. But something held me off. When Arlene and I were ready to order cake and coffee, these guys still had full beer mugs and there was a general lack of life around their table.

Where are you going with this, Sid?

You know what happens when four off-duty cops get together for drinks. They drain pitchers of beer, they talk and laugh to beat the band, they’re loud and obnoxious because they’re having a good time and know they’re immune to any real trouble. But these guys just sat there, quiet and sober, like they were in Sunday school or something.

Maybe they were on a stake-out, I said, observing CPD detectives exhibiting nosy behavior.

Arlene was in no hurry to leave, so I kept watching. After a while, this guy enters the Beer Garden, cases the place, and sits down at their table. Older guy, probably in his sixties, furtive looking.

To you, everyone is furtive.

Yeah, well. To me, the table conversation looked like a debriefing. They listened to him talk, then each of them spoke in turn, as if giving report. After a while, he got up and left. The rookies drifted off one by one, the whole scene so nonchalant that it had to be staged. The beers they’d ordered an hour before were still on the table, full.

Sid paused.

So what do you think it was? I asked.

I didn’t know what it was, but it got me curious, so I had a look at their files. I also set up surveillance. The food’s not bad here and you can always get this table, not many people want to put up with the noise from the band. For the next few weeks, I came for lunch, ate and watched. I now know Prescott’s menu by heart.

And?

See for yourself.

Our eyes met. Now I knew why we were sitting here. I leaned