Arbor Hill Read online

  I didn’t know a hell of a lot about dancing, but I could tell she knew precisely what she was doing and that deep down inside her soul of souls she wanted nothing more than to be gracing a stage. But something, or someone, or both, got in the way, and now she found herself trapped in an apartment in the middle of an urban war zone.

  I watched her spin once more, and the way her skirt rose up her legs, revealing her thigh-highs and the black garters attached to them, made my pulse pick up. She certainly wasn’t showing any signs of pregnancy, but I guess it was far too early for that. My throat constricted, and I felt that telltale thing happen inside my mid-section that whispered, you might be middle-aged, Keeper. But you ain’t dead yet.

  Setting down my beer, I found myself rising from the couch, going to her. She completed her spin and dropped into my arms. I pulled her to me, her lips so close to mine I could taste her sweet breath, feel her body heat, hear her heart pounding.

  But then, in my head, I saw something else.

  I saw Val. I saw her sitting across from me while sharing a pizza just a few short hours ago. I saw her beautiful face, her big brown eyes, and her long black hair, and I knew how wrong it would be to cross her. Sure, we weren’t intimately involved right now, but I knew if I were true to her, we would be soon. Could I get away with sleeping with Missy right now? The answer was obvious, all professionalism be damned. But my conscience couldn’t get away with it. Neither could my heart.

  I released her, took a step back.

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

  She exhaled, put on a sad face.

  “What’s wrong?” she said. “Don’t you find me attractive?”

  “You know I do,” I said. “Truth is, I’m starting to see someone again. My ex-fiancée. She wouldn’t know, of course. But then, I’d know, and that would make it even worse.”

  “Then why did you contact me on Tinder?” she said, shaking her head confused. “Does she know you have the dating app?”

  I shook my head. “I guess I’m just not confident it will work out. So, I’m keeping my options open.” It was a lie, of course, but a necessary one.

  “Maybe you should be honest with her,” she said. Her face took on a pouty smile, while she reached out, touched my chest gently with her fingertips. “I have to say, Jack,” she went on, “I could be a little angry with you leading me on like this. But there is nothing sexier than a man being faithful to his woman. Who knows, maybe chivalry isn’t dead after all.”

  “I like to think of myself as the white knight,” I said. “Without the steed.”

  Then, coming from across the room, a little boy appeared. He was standing at the end of a corridor that accessed the bedrooms.

  “Mommy,” he said, wiping his eyes. “Are you having more visitors?”

  Missy assumed a disturbed expression and went to him. She picked him up, held him tight.

  “It’s okay, Teddy boy,” she said, “Mommy’s friend is just leaving.” Her eyes focused on me. “Isn’t that right, Jack?”

  I nodded.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be going now.”

  “The rest of the night is for you and mommy,” she went on. “We can get some pizza and play a game and watch the Muppet Movie. How does that sound?”

  I watched the little boy’s big eyes light up. They were deep blue just like his mother’s. I didn’t have a whole lot of proof, but something told me that, despite her frequent visitors, Missy wasn’t all that bad a mother.

  “I’ll see myself out,” I said, going for the door.

  “Wait,” she said. “Let me get you back for the beer and cigs.”

  I shook my head.

  “No worries,” I said. “It’s on me.”

  Then, I’m not sure why, but I found myself reaching into my jean’s pocket. I pulled out some cash, peeled off a couple of twenties, left them on the kitchen counter.

  “Pizza’s on me too,” I said swallowing something dry and bitter. “I’ll be seeing you around, Missy.”

  She smiled like she didn’t believe me. I guess I couldn’t blame her one bit.

  10

  As I exited the building, I made out gunshots. Three distinct bursts, probably from a semi-automatic handgun. The shots came from out of the east, further up Clinton Avenue. Competing dealers shooting it out, maybe. Or a domestic disturbance turned deadly. Maybe a botched robbery. Maybe two opposing gangs of thirteen-year-olds going at it. Anything could and would happen in Arbor Hill.

  The fine hairs rose on the back of my neck. Heartbeat elevated. Mouth dry.

  Back to that feeling of living in a fish bowl. An overwhelming sensation of vulnerability, of knowing a stray bullet could pop you in the skull at any moment. Or hell, a bullet meant for your skull.

  What the hell was Missy doing here?

  Missy and Teddy.

  Living in Arbor Hill was cheap. But there had to be other cheap, far safer places in Albany. Of course, who the hell was I to question her motives especially when I chose to live and work on Sherman Street? My singular motive was to report back to my client.

  I got back behind the wheel of the 4-Runner, fired her up, pulled away from the curb, made my way to the traffic signal and stopped at the red light. I made out another couple of shots. That’s when I decided, screw it, and blew through the red light. I’d rather risk a traffic ticket than my life.

  I hooked a left on Lark.

  When I passed by the corner bodega, the old man was sitting outside on the front stoop, smoking a cigarette in the cold, gray, March air. He somehow recognized me, and he offered a friendly wave. But I was already gone by the time I had the chance to wave back. Bullets were flying around in Arbor Hill. Surely he heard the exchange. Maybe he didn’t care anymore. Or maybe he was used to it. Immune to it. Live in a war zone long enough, you come to miss the sound of gunshots. Things get too quiet.

  I pulled up to Sherman Street, parked out front, made my way up to the second floor. It was time for more whiskey.

  He was waiting for me when I got to the top of the stairs. Blood, sitting in my swivel chair behind my desk. He was drinking my whiskey from my glass.

  “Isn’t there a song about a stranger sleeping in my bed?” I said. “Or am I thinking of the nursery rhyme?”

  He had his feet up on the desk. At least the lug-soled combat boots were clean.

  “Glenn Frey,” he said. “God rest his soul. The Eagles. White people music.”

  “Why you gotta always bring race into it?” I said.

  “I am a profile of pure excellence,” he said.

  I went around my desk, opened the bottom drawer, pulled out the second of two glasses I kept inside there. I poured myself a shot, drank it down in one swift pull. Then, I poured another, brought it with me back to the desk. I took a seat in one of the two wood chairs I normally reserved for customers.

  “You look forlorn,” Blood said. “Perhaps, dare I say it, despondent.”

  He sipped his whiskey.

  “I went to see her,” I said.

  “She had that effect on you too,” he said. It was a question for which he knew the answer.

  I sipped some whiskey.

  “She dance for you, Blood?”

  “Nope. We too busy making out for that.”

  “We didn’t make out,” I said, staring into the golden liquor. “But we could have.”

  “Val,” he said.

  I looked up and met his stare.

  “Yup,” I said, nodding. Then, “Missy didn’t seem pregnant. She was smoking too.”

  “Some women don’t care.”

  “She looks the type to me to care. Her apartment was pretty nice. Nicer than my joint downstairs. Sure, it’s in a crappy neighborhood. A dangerous neighborhood. But I gotta say, she made it a home. A refuge almost. And her kid . . . She was very good to him.”

  “So I noticed,” Blood said. “Reason why I give her the dough. She didn’t seem the type who’d run out and spend it on street drugs.” />
  “Money wasn’t your’s to begin with,” I said. “Two grand worth.”

  He sipped his drink, cocked his shoulders.

  “Couldn’t think of a better way to spend those punk’s two K.” Then, “I’m guessing you didn’t get out of there without laying a couple bucks on her either. Your own money.”

  I drank a little more whiskey.

  “I bought them dinner.”

  “You a soft touch too, Keep. Hard as a rock. But still a softy.”

  “We’re like Oreos, you and me, Blood.”

  “I take offense to that. ‘Course, you resemble them new vanilla Oreos they got now.”

  “Now that we’ve settled the Oreo thing,” I said, “what’d you find out about McNamee with two ees?”

  He drank down the rest of his drink, poured another.

  “You’re gonna love this,” he said. “Your Jason McNamee ain’t employed at State Civil Engineering no more. He used to work there, but they let him go years ago.”

  “Jeeze,” I said. “No one gets fired from a state job unless they’re a real screw up.”

  “Well, McNamee with two ees must have been quite the screw up.”

  “Or just an asshole.”

  “I looked up his credit rating,” Blood went on, “and it’s in the crapper. Don’t know how he was able to secure a credit card to hand over to Missy, but he did it.”

  “Credit card companies love people with bad credit,” I said.

  “Most people got bad credit,” Blood said. “Seventy-six percent of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, can’t even afford the bill for an emergency auto repair. Me, I pay my bills with cash.”

  “Righteous,” I said. “Me too. That’s why I live and work on the edge of Arbor Hill. It fits my price range.”

  “Righteous? That your way of sounding black, Keep?”

  “I try.”

  “Not hard enough. So, what’s the next move?”

  “Technically speaking, I’m supposed to try and get Missy to give McNamee his money back. But now that I know he’s a liar, and that he freely entered into a transaction with her of his own recognizance, I’m not sure I need to collect it.”

  “I never met McNamee, but I already know I like Missy better. Wasn’t her fault he made bad decisions.”

  I drank the rest of my whiskey, got up, poured another.

  “He paid me for three days’ work,” I said, “not including your time. I don’t see a case here. I’m thinking of giving him back his money.”

  “That hurts.”

  “Won’t be the first time,” I said.

  That’s when sirens broke through the quiet of the evening. Sirens that belonged to cop cruisers. The sirens got louder and louder the closer they came. I got up and came around the desk, looked out the window. Blood got up, stood beside me.

  Sirens weren’t all that unusual for Sherman Street and its proximity to Arbor Hill. What was unusual were the two cop cruisers pulling right up to my building then pounding on my door.

  Blood turned to me, casually sipped his drink.

  “You do something wrong, Keep?”

  “Not that I know of,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. This is Albany after all.”

  The pounding on the metal door downstairs was getting on my nerves. I took another sip of my whiskey, then set the glass down on the desk.

  “And here I thought it would be a quiet night,” I said.

  “You stay here,” Blood said. “I’ll see to the door.”

  “Throw a scare into the boys in blue, right off the bat.”

  “That be the intention,” he said.

  He took his own sweet time descending the staircase.

  11

  Turns out the cops didn’t come to my place to chat it up. They came to personally escort me to the Pearl Street precinct on orders from Homicide Chief Detective, Nick Miller. We stood inside the veteran cop’s small office which was located at the far end of a long, brightly lit corridor made of concrete block which was painted hospital white. He was seated behind his desk going over some eight by ten photos, oblivious to our presence. Or, that’s not right. More accurate to say, he was ignoring us. Asserting his dominance over us. This was his turf, so it was an easy thing to do.

  Finally, he glanced up at us.

  “Gentlemen,” he said authoritatively, like a junior high school principal about to punish us for fighting on the playground. “Would you like to take a seat?”

  Like my office, he had a couple of uncomfortable wood chairs set before his desk. But he also had an old leather couch pushed up against the wall to our left. The wall to our right supported a big bulletin board covered with the faces of the city’s and State’s most wanted. It also contained numerous documents that made no sense to me.

  “We prefer to stand,” Blood said. “Ain’t that right, Keep. Miller should know that by now.”

  The detective smiled, leaned back in his swivel chair, clasped his hands together behind his head, used them as a head rest.

  “You might want to be sitting for what I’ve got to tell you, Keeper,” he said.

  “He don’t scare you, right, Keep?” Blood said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You don’t scare me, Miller.” Then, burying my hands in my jeans pockets. “Ummm, should I be scared?”

  Miller stared at me. Into my eyes. He was tall, even when he was sitting. His full head of white hair was perfectly cut into a flat top. His button down was white and pressed professionally, and the ball knot on the dark blue tie he wore hung down maybe an inch from the open top button. His sleeves were rolled up to just short of his elbows, and the sidearm he wore in the brown leather shoulder holster was a 9mm Sig Sauer and probably came from his personal collection. You’re either a gun guy or you’re not.

  “Missy Neal McNamee,” he said. “You were hired to keep an eye on her. Maybe recover some money for the client.”

  I glanced at Blood. He was already gazing at me.

  “How do you know this?” I said, my eyes back on Miller.

  “Sources,” he said.

  “Sources?” I questioned.

  “Yeah, sources with whom you’ve already been acquainted. Two kids, live in Arbor Hill, run the lower Clinton Avenue line. One with Dreads, calls himself Ace. The other wears an Oakland Raiders baseball cap, aka Reginald, aka Shotgun, aka Super Fly.”

  “That’s a lot of AKAs,” Blood said.

  “Goes with the territory,” Miller said. “You know that better than anyone, Blood.”

  Blood nodded, like he was about to say, Gospel.

  “Yup,” I said. “We uhhh, ran into the two kids.”

  “Well, I pay them good money to snitch for me.” He sits up in his chair, elbows on the desktop along with his cathedralled hands. “You seem to have absconded with some of that unmarked informant money early this afternoon. You wouldn’t happen to still have it?”

  Once more, I looked at Blood.

  “Absconded?” I said.

  “That the word he used,” Blood said. “Miller like big words. He forgets I earned a four-year degree in English lit while in the can.”

  “So, what’s going on, Miller?” I said. “Why the come-to-Jesus during my regularly scheduled cocktail hour?”

  He exhaled and slowly stood.

  “Missy’s dead,” he said. “And all preliminary indicator’s point to you as the perp, Keeper.”

  12

  The news hit me over the head with all the force of a police baton. It’s not that he was trying to shake me up by accusing me of being the perp. He already knew I didn’t fit the profile. It was more the thought of Missy being suddenly gone when I’d only watched her dancing inside her apartment just a short time ago.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, felt my heart pumping.

  “What about her boy?” I asked.

  “Teddy?” he said. “He’s with child protective services at the moment.”

  “They animals,” Blood said. “I can take him in if I hav
e to.”

  Miller shook his head.

  “Right now, we follow SOP, Blood. Protocol means everything in these matters.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Miller said, “It looks like one of her boyfriends or, how do they say it these days? Male suitors? It looks like one of them got a little too rough with her. Strangled her.”

  “And you think I’m capable of something like that, Miller? How many years we know one another?”

  “Freshest prints found in the place are yours. Teddy picked you out in a photograph.”

  I thought about Blood. How he’d been at the apartment not long before me. How is it his prints weren’t showing up? The answer resided in Blood’s attention to the little things. Like not leaving his fingerprints behind at a potential crime scene. It was a lesson I might have learned a long time ago. But then, Blood had done time. Serious hard time inside a prison that I personally supervised. And, in turn, he’d developed an instinct for making certain he’d never again step one foot on the wrong side of those vertical iron bars.

  “How you know he there in the first place, Copper?” Blood asked.

  Miller shook his head. “Did you just call me Copper?”

  “Yeah,” Blood said. “Huggy Bear say it on Baretta sometimes.”

  “Blood’s a big Hulu fan,” I said. “Loves those detective shows from the seventies.”

  “Listen, Keeper,” Miller said, coming around the desk, walking past me and stopping at the coat rack by the office door. “You recall the aforementioned informants. They tell me you had a second run in at the corner deli on Lark and Clinton. They watched you go up to Missy’s place. They’re well aware of her profession.”

  “Okay, snagged,” I said. “But I did not . . . I repeat, did not kill her.”

  “You know that,” Miller said. “Blood knows that. Even I know that. But we gotta convince the DA of that before he gets it in his pretty little left-wing head that he wants to arrest you and convene a grand jury.”

  “I need a lawyer?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “So, where you going?” I questioned.