Soft Case (Book 1 of the John Keegan Mystery Series) Page 15

late to call it quits, so I stuck it out and gave George Foreman, the champion, a run for his money. It went the distance. It was 5:15 when the asshole judges gave the decision to Foreman. I clearly won the brawl. Foreman couldn’t land anything solid on me. But, when you are fighting the guy who got paid to have his name in the title of the game, you have to expect unfair treatment from the judges. Besides, you really have to knock out the champion to take his belt. Instead of fighting again, I wanted to go one on one with the Playstation, give it a piece of my mind. When I realized what time it was, I figured all I could do was go one more fight.

  I knocked Foreman out with a solid left hook at 5:58. Did it in the ninth round, after beating up on him all the way through. He fell twice in the third, and once again in the fifth. Tough bastard. I shut the system off, and glanced out the window, catching the beginning of sunrise. Rick would be there at 8 to pick me up, so I figured sleeping wasn’t an option. I didn’t feel tired anyway. I was still riding high on my winning the belt. Pathetic, I know.

  With not much else to do, I went to my computer to do a little research. I had an old computer, one they were throwing out down at the department. I don’t know much about computers, other than the fact that the one I had was a relic. It connected to the Internet, slowly, and I could send an email to friends I didn’t feel like talking to.

  I signed on to my computer and opened my email program, which cheerfully let me know I had mail. Big deal. I didn’t bother checking it. I went to Techdata’s website first, out of curiosity. It was a fairly basic site, nothing that looked cutting edge at all. I expected more.

  I checked a few things out on the site, and came to the announcement that they were considering a merger with a company called Onyx, supposedly a big name in broadband communications. I had never heard of the company, which didn’t surprise me. I found this in the “What’s New” section. Funny, there was no mention of Mullins’ death. I figured they didn’t want to scare their potential investors too much. I wondered if that deal with Onyx would go through, with Mullins out of the picture. I couldn’t remember if Sondra had mentioned anything about that, and I reminded myself to check Rick’s trusty notepad. No more than a second later, my cell phone rang. It was in my jacket pocket, across the room. I didn’t feel like answering it.

  I did, anyway.

  “Yeah,” I said, after fumbling through the jacket to find the phone.

  “It’s Geiger.”

  “Good morning.”

  “I’ve got some news.”

  “Go ahead.” I cringed at the thought of what he was going to say. I smelled bad news coming.

  “I just got a call from Agnelli. He’s satisfied with the fact that it was a suicide. He said the tape proves it,” Geiger said. He didn’t sound like he believed it either.

  “Okay.”

  “He wants the investigation closed.”

  “But we don’t have any hard evidence,” I said.

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Like hell it didn’t.

  “So, that’s it?”

  “Officially yes. But I see nothing wrong with you investigating it for a few more days. I want you to. Agnelli won’t know what you are working on either way.”

  “That tape doesn’t prove anything. What is Agnelli up to?” I asked. I didn’t know enough about him to decide if he was dirty. He may have just been stupid.

  “I don’t think he wants to risk making the Precinct look bad. I can’t blame him for that. But this stinks, if you want my opinion.”

  “It does.”

  “Also, Harold Chapman got in last night. He’s scheduled a press conference for twelve. I want you there, and I want you to talk to him.”

  “Okay,” I said. I tried to be brief with the boss.

  “Get to the bottom of this, and do it quickly.”

  “Okay. You speak to Calhill yet?”

  “No, I called you first. He’s probably still getting his beauty sleep.” I loved the fact that, in the middle of a mess, Geiger kept his sense of humor.

  “Probably. Either that, or he is doing crunches and can’t be bothered.”

  Geiger chuckled. “Call him in an hour. I want you two here before nine. Few things I want to go over.”

  “You got it.”

  “See you then.”

  I flipped the phone closed, and went back to my computer. I printed up the news release about Techdata and Onyx, grabbed a can of soda out of the fridge and went into the shower.

  This was going to be a hell of a day.

  I called Rick forty-five minutes later. He sounded wide-awake, almost chipper. I couldn’t imagine how someone could do that.

  “What do you think is going on?” he asked me, after I explained the situation to him.

  “Agnelli doesn’t want bad publicity.”

  “Wouldn’t not finding the truth be bad publicity?” Rick asked.

  “Depends on how you look at it, I guess.”

  “There’s only one way to look at it.”

  “Not when politics are involved. They can think of ways neither you or I could even conceive.”

  “True. I’ll be there in forty minutes,” Rick said.

  “Okay. That roll/coffee thing was nice yesterday.”

  “Give me forty-five.”

  “See you then.”

  Another free meal. I guess that’s what you get for being the digital Heavyweight Champion of the World. Or for being one of the biggest pains in the ass known to modern man. It didn’t make a difference. Not to me, at least.

  I got dressed, in the sport jacket from early in the week. I got together some stuff I could bring to the same-day dry cleaner on the way to the station. Hadn’t seen them in quite a while, the dry cleaner people. I grabbed my favorite blue suit, a dark green one, and four shirts, which were scattered across my bedroom floor.

  I needed a maid.

  Rick picked me up, we dropped off the clothes, and I wolfed down the roll and coffee. The roll tasted a little stale, crumbly actually, but I was hungry. The coffee was better. Real coffee, in a world of flavored coffees. The coffee world had become the ice cream world. You needed 31 flavors to compete. Actually, the next big thing would probably be flavored-coffee-flavored ice cream. Like Hazelnut Crunch Coffee ice cream, or something like that. Maybe I should have gone into business. I had vision. But I liked real coffee.

  Only problem with that breakfast combo was the fact that it was thrown on top of half a pie of sausage and extra cheese pizza from Dante’s. The coffee and roll were all the pizza needed to be thrust back out into the world. The pain hit hard, just below the waist, right in the middle of traffic.

  “You see a place that looks like it has a bathroom, you stop,” I said to Rick. “And I mean business here. You got that?”

  “Can’t you wait? We’ll be at the station in ten minutes.”

  I looked at him through strained eyes.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Got it.”

  Rick swerved and pulled over in front of a McDonald’s. He cut off two taxis and a black Lincoln. He didn’t use the lights or the siren, which I would have, but he got the job done. Good man.

  I got out of the car, hunched over slightly, and entered the McDonald’s, a big one on Lexington. The place was packed, lines almost to the door. For what, Egg McMuffins? The smell of the place didn’t interact well with my bowel troubles. With no other alternative, I forced my way to the front of the line, amidst a bunch of comments from the people on it.

  “Sir,” a middle-aged woman in a McDonald’s hat said to me, “you’ll have to wait in line.”

  “Bathroom,” I muttered.

  “That’s for customers only.”

  I produced my badge. “Where is it?”

  She pointed toward the staircase, by the right comer of the building. “Upstairs, to the right.”

  I made my way back through the line, made more difficult because the people that were pissed at me decided not to budge, and got to the staircase. Another pain wave hit
. My body was letting me know it was entering ‘evacuate’ stage. I had precious seconds left. Seconds.

  The upstairs section was quiet, with only two teenagers sitting in a comer by the window, sneaking cigarettes. I found the door the men’s room. It was locked. The clock was ticking. I knocked, hard.

  No answer. I could hear two people talking in there.

  “It’s occupied,” one of the teenagers said from the corner table.

  I knocked again.

  Nothing.

  The final warning pain wave hit, and I had to use every bit of muscle control and concentration to prevent myself from letting go right there. I mustered up whatever strength I had left, and kicked the door in. I knew my cop training would help me in a real life situation one day.

  The door gave way, and flew open, bashing into a kid standing by it. He went flying into the wall, and ended up half-slumped behind the door. Another kid, about sixteen, I would say, was standing over the sink with what looked like a pipe in his hand. The smell gave it all away. Crack. My badge was still in my left hand, so I flashed it to him when he turned around. Needing to act quickly, I grabbed the pipe from the idiot kid, and smashed it on the floor. I grabbed him by the belt of his ridiculously oversized jeans, and flung him out the door.

  “Get out of here, before I lock you up,” I said. He fell to the floor just outside the bathroom. The other kid, who rubbed the back of his head, left on his own accord. He picked his friend up, and they ran down the stairs. Maybe I should have arrested them, or gave them a speech about not doing drugs. I didn’t have the time.

  I closed the door, which surprisingly still worked, and did what I went there to do. The toilet seat