Текст книги "Dead Wood"

Автор книги: Dan Ames

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Chapter Twenty-Nine

I knew a guy in college who’d been planning on going into law enforcement too. He was a beast of a guy, six feet six inches, nearly 400 pounds. His name was Nick Henderson, and his terribly original nickname was “House.” He ended up not being a cop. In fact, he never finished college, never even got his degree because he beat the shit out of some frat boy. The Delta Chi ended up with a fractured skull, and House ended up having all kinds of legal problems. Anyway, he’s now a guard at Jackson Federal Prison, located appropriately in Jackson, Michigan, an hour or so west of Detroit. Probably the better place for him than on the suburban streets of America. His brand of justice was perfect for a maximum security prison.

After a few minutes of searching for the number, calling the prison, and getting transferred a couple times, I finally got hold of him.

“House,” I said. “It’s John Rockne.”

There was a brief moment while I could practically hear him searching his mental Rolodex. It sounded a little rusty. Finally, he said, “Hey, man, how ya’ doin’?”

His tone was warm enough even though we’d never been really good friends. Still, a guy that size, you never want to make an enemy.

“Good, good. How are you?” I said.

“Drinkin’ beer and crackin’ skulls, my friend.”

“Good times,” I said. Good Lord.

He laughed and said, “What’s up? You need a job?”

He’d obviously heard about the end of my career a few years back. Apparently he thought my failures had continued. Maybe that was his impression of me from way back then.

“No, I actually wondered if you ever knew an inmate named Rufus Coltraine,” I said. “He just turned up dead and may have something to do with a case I’m working on.”

“What do you mean you’re working on it?” he said.

“I’m a PI.”

“Oh.” In the background I could hear some shouting and the occasional slam of a metal door. It was beyond me how someone could choose to work at a prison. It was a dirty job, but I guess someone had to do it. And I guess no one was better suited for it than House.

“I can’t say I know anything about him, John,” he said. “I think he was in Cell Block D, and I spend most of my time down on A and B.”

“Do you know anyone who works on D?” I said. “Someone who might talk to me?”

“Hmm. You could try Joe Puhy. He’s the guy on D and could probably tell you all about Coltraine. I don’t know how much he’ll cooperate, but offer to buy him a couple beers. That might do the trick.”

“Okay,” I said. “How can I get hold of him?”

“I can transfer you if you want.”

“All right,” I said. “Thanks a bunch, House.”

“Sure. Good luck, man. Keep in touch.”

“I will,” I said, and then I heard a beeping and slight static. After twenty seconds or so, a tired, slightly grizzled voice said, “Puhy.”

I introduced myself, told him that House had transferred me to him, told him about the premature ending to Rufus Coltraine’s life, and then asked if he knew anything about his former inmate.

“What do you want to know?” he said. With a voice that wasn’t exactly Welcome Wagon caliber.

“Did he seem like the kind of guy who would run out and OD as soon as he got out?” I said.

“Who fucking knows what they’ll do once they get out?” he said. “Some of the most normal, well-adjusted guys go out and commit a murder just to get back in. Quite a few even kill themselves.”

I could see Puhy was a real student of human behavior.

“If you had to guess, Mr. Puhy,” I said. “Would overdosing on heroin seem like behavior consistent with Coltraine?”

“Nah, I guess not,” Puhy said. “He was into music and that kind of shit. But you never know. They get a taste of freedom, they want to taste a few other things too. I’ve seen so many guys who’d changed their lives inside, and then a few months later, they’re back after going on some kind of drug or violence spree.”

“Did anyone ever come and visit him?” I said.

“Not that I know of. He didn’t have any pictures of family in his cell,” he said. “I think they were in Tennessee or something. I thought that he would go down there when he got out. But I don’t think he got any letters that I can recall.”

“Anything interesting about the people he hung around with?”

“No, but he was a pretty social guy.”

“What kind of music did he play?”

“A mixture. Blues. Rock. Some jazz. He was pretty good.”

“Did he play the guitar?”

“How’d you know that?”

“Just a hunch.” So Rufus Coltraine was a musician, gets out of prison, kills a woman who makes special guitars, maybe sells one, buys drugs, and overdoses. On the surface, it made a certain kind of sense.

“Yeah, he was pretty serious about the music,” Puhy said, warming up slightly to the subject. “I think he had something going on. Like he could do something with it once he got out. But I don’t know if that was just a pipe dream or what.”

Maybe Rufus felt like he needed a special guitar or two to make his big break. What had Shannon Sparrow said to me, about how well Jesse’s guitars recorded?

“Look, I gotta get back to work,” Puhy said.

“Do you mind, if I have any more questions, if I call you back?” I said to Mr. Puhy.

Puhy hesitated.

“Maybe we could meet and I’ll buy you a few beers,” I said.

“No problem,” Puhy said. “I’ll be around.”

I started to say goodbye, but all I heard was the sound of a metal door slamming and then a dial tone.

•

It was rare that a case of mine collided with a case of my sister’s. I was usually involved before crimes happened. The husband cheating on the wife. The guy getting disability, going for the bocce championship in Windsor. You get the idea. My sister, on the other hand, showed up after the cheating husband was run over by the cuckolded wife. Or after the guy on disability took a potshot at the insurance investigator.

But when our cases ran together, there were a few benefits. I got to use Ellen’s resources, chief among them: computer databases, addresses, phone numbers, and unofficial police approval to bend a few rules. I’d gotten help with parking tickets as well. Free coffee and the occasional donut too.

I parked the white Sunbird in the farthest corner of the police department’s parking lot and went inside. Ellen was in one of the briefing rooms, so I waited in her office. She’d told me recently that she missed being on patrol, that it was getting harder and harder to keep in shape considering how much time her ass was planted in the chair. The price of being in upper management, I guess.

There was a police magazine on her desk, and I started reading about the latest weapons. By the time Ellen came in ten minutes later, I was ready to buy an automatic pistol that held seventeen rounds and came with a laser guide and a night scope.

“What do you want?” she said, with all the enthusiasm of a middle-aged man submitting to a prostate exam.

“Big meeting?”

“Big laughs,” she said, smirking.

I waited for the punch line.

“That conference room looks out on the parking lot. We saw this middle-aged loser pull up in a white Sunbird. Trying to park as far away as possible to avoid the humiliation. It didn’t work.”

“It’s a rental.”

“All this schmuck needed was a bald spot and a gold chain, and we’ve got a mid-life crisis in full alert.”

“If that was a meeting about Rufus Coltraine, I’m mad I wasn’t invited,” I said, ignoring her delight at my ride. Actually, the more she made fun of me, usually the better her mood. Sometimes, though, it was just the opposite. I wondered if she’d found something out, and more importantly, if she planned on sharing.

“It was, and your invite must’ve gotten lost in the mail.” Her expression resembled newly dried concrete. Flat, emotionless, and no sign of cracks.

“What’d you find out?” I said.

“None of your fucking business, Mister Sunbird.”

I waited a moment then said in my most caring, parent voice possible, “Mom and Dad were very clear on the importance of sharing.”

She sat down and rubbed her hand over the top of her head. In Ellen’s repertoire of tells, this meant she was frustrated.

“All the music stores and pawn shops turned up squat,” she said. “No Rufus Coltraine. No Jesse Barre guitar. We even sent emissaries down to fucking Toledo. No dice. If he hawked a guitar, it most likely wasn’t around here.”

“And if he didn’t hawk it,” I said, “how’d he get the dope and why was a valuable guitar sitting in his apartment?”

“Twenty bucks buys enough dope for what he had in him,” she said. “You don’t need a guitar for that.”

I didn’t rise to the bait. Instead I said, “How’d you get the call on him?”

“Landlord. Neighbor said they saw someone in that apartment doing drugs.”

“Which neighbor?”

“Landlord didn’t know.”

I nodded. “Ever hear that one about the big pink elephant in the room?”

She crossed her eyes at me.

“They say it’s like living with an alcoholic who won’t admit the problem,” I said. “It’s like a big pink elephant sitting in the room, but everyone pretends it’s not there.”

When she saw where I was going, she flushed a little.

“Coltraine was set up,” I said. “No one wants to admit it, but he was.”

“Prove it,” she said.

“That’s what I’m doing.”

“No, you’re speculating.”

“Which is the first step in proving something,” I pointed out.

“I need evidence.”

Which meant that maybe Ellen felt something was wrong but didn’t want to come out and say it.

“Right now I’ve got evidence that links Rufus Coltraine to the murder of Jesse Barre,” she said. “Maybe he was walking by, saw her in the workshop alone, and did what he felt he had to do. Maybe he killed her and then got high right away, planning to sell the guitar later.”

“What about the Shannon Sparrow guitar?” I said. “Where’s that?”

She didn’t have an answer for that.

Her phone rang, and she picked up the receiver, “Hold on just a second,” she said. She grabbed a few sheets of paper and shoved them at me then lifted her chin at the door.

“The Sunbird is calling,” she said.

Chapter Thirty

My mind was on Jesse Barre. Thoughts about the case were hopping and skittering across my brain like stones skipped across a lake. Rufus Coltraine, aspiring musician, dead from an overdose. The connections started to come fast and furiously. I had a sudden, urgent desire to learn more about Shannon Sparrow. After all, it was her guitar that was missing. She had a link to the deceased. By the nature of her occupation, she had a link to the dead ex-con. And there was something about her and her people that made me want to dig. I don’t know if it was the arrogance of her manager, or the seediness of the hangers-on, or maybe just Shannon herself.

I fired up the Internet, and after less than an hour, I’d dragged about fifty articles onto my desktop. I tried to read them in a rough chronological order, and by the time I’d gone through five or six, I started speed reading, passing over the expected redundancies. There were the obvious details: an early gift for music, a great ear, a few important teachers, and breaks along the way.

And then there were a few surprises. Her parents had both died in a plane crash in Mexico a few years before their daughter broke through. There were unsubstantiated rumors of drug use that may or may not have had anything to do with the tragedy.

Shannon had apparently moved on. There had been an early marriage that, according to what I could find, had lasted less than a year. She had been young, probably seventeen or so.

The next twenty articles or so all said the same thing, talking about what kind of makeup she wore, which boy toy she was currently seeing, her inspiration for her latest album. I noticed that not long after she really exploded –when her first hit began to climb the charts and she signed on with powerhouse manager Teddy Armbruster—all the articles started to sound the same. In fact, they’d changed from the more direct, more honest appraisals to a glossy version, highlighting all that was great and grand about Shannon Sparrow.

By the time I was three-quarters of the way through my cyber-stack, I realized I wasn’t going to find anything else. I started to drag the whole fucking mess into my trash can, and then I stopped. Maybe if I went back through the articles and information before she signed on with slick Mr. Armbruster, there would be something I could uncover. So I trashed the later articles, made a folder for the earlier stuff, and then dug in.

After another half hour of poring over most of the articles I’d already skimmed, I came across a surprise. It was a reference in one article to a different interview Shannon had done. In the current article, Shannon wouldn’t talk about it. The reference was to a magazine called Women on the Rock.

I immediately searched and found that the magazine was defunct. Still, I wasn’t about to give up. I did a search for the individual Women on the Rock issue that featured Shannon’s controversial interview and found two links. One took me to one of those annoying “page not found 404” messages.

The other one led me to pure gold.

A devoted fan of the magazine had put all the issues online, and I found the one I was looking for. It had each page scanned like microfilm in the library.

Apparently the magazine was for women recovering from domestic violence or abuse of some kind. And the article was really small, just a sidebar interview of sorts, but in the interview Shannon was asked about her first marriage. She said the marriage was stormy, that there was abuse, and that she’d finally found the strength, mainly through her music, to get out of the situation. It was one of the last things she said in the interview that caught my eye. When asked about where her ex-husband was now, Shannon replied, “Where he belongs.”

Alarm bells started going off, and I immediately went back to the computer. I did a search under different headings for Shannon Sparrow’s ex-husband. Three search engines turned up nothing, but then finally I hit pay dirt.

The article was from the Free Press, nearly eight years ago, just before Shannon’s career took off. It was a short article, just a few paragraphs:

DETROIT MAN CONVICTED OF ATTEMPTED MURDER

Associated Press—Laurence Grasso, thirty, of Detroit was convicted in Wayne County Circuit Court of first-degree attempted murder, intent to commit bodily harm, and violation of a restraining order. He has been sentenced to thirty-five years in prison. Grasso, married briefly to singer Shannon Sparrow, will be eligible for parole in fifteen to twenty years.

I hit print and soon my printer was spitting out a copy of the article. I went back to the Internet and did a search for Laurence Grasso. I immediately got a hit.

It was again from the Free Press, and it was a few weeks after the first article. It contained only one nugget of information, but it was big enough to make me sit back and take a deep breath. The article detailed where Mr. Grasso would be serving his fifteen years.

The same location Rufus Coltraine had called home.

A little place in the country called Jackson State Prison.

Chapter Thirty-One

Ellen was in her office when I arrived back at the station. Normally I would have called, seeing as how I had just been there. But I felt this new information merited a back-to-back visit. Besides, I knew my sister absolutely cherished time with her little brother. She couldn’t get enough of me. Who was I to deny her of this intense joy created by my presence?

I walked into her office, and she let out an audible groan.

“Christ, you spend more time here than I do,” she said.

I filled her in on what I’d found out about Shannon Sparrow—her early marriage and the later exploits of said hubby. I said, “Let’s dig up a photo of Mr. Laurence Grasso and see if he’s the guy I think he is.”

“Have Becky hook you up,” she said.

I went back out to the lobby and found the department’s resident computer guru. Becky Kensington was a bleached-blond, solidly built woman in her late forties. She had something like eight or nine kids, but I never knew her to look tired or frazzled. I only have two kids, and there are days where I’m looking for a noose and a strong ceiling beam.

“Chief What’s-Her-Name wants a file on this guy, Becky,” I said, handing her the sheet of info I had on Mr. Grasso.

“So how you been, John?” she said as she took the sheet of paper and led me back to the department’s tech center.

“Keepin’ busy,” I said. “You?”

“All those kids in school, all I see are upper respiratory viruses, colds, sinus infections, and the occasional strep throat,” she said. “Our house is a petri dish with a leaky roof.”

“Cupboards full of amoxicillin?”

She nodded as she typed.

I watched the screen, anxious, then sensed movement behind me and saw Ellen watching too.

“Turn around,” she said, cuffing me not so gently on the back of the head. I was never fast enough to duck those.

Becky laughed, and I said, “That’s a quick glimpse of my entire childhood.”

“The childhood that never ended,” Ellen said. We would have kept going, but the computer screen blossomed into a black-and-white mug shot of Mr. Laurence Grasso. He was a sandy-haired, slightly buck-toothed guy with high cheekbones and eyes that looked bored but that would clearly entertain the idea of violence. I compared it to the face I had seen behind the wheel of the black Nova.

“Fuckin-A,” I said.

“Spit it out,” Ellen said.

“Hello, Randy.”

•

Of course, we had no fixed address for Mr. Grasso. I supposed his nickname growing up was Asshole Grasso, which considering my experiences with him, would have been entirely appropriate. Anyway, his last place of residence was vacated. There were no known family members in the area.

The initial search was best left in the hands of the capable police, namely my sister and her counterparts at the St. Clair Shores Police Department, who were leading the Nevada Hornsby investigation.

They would use all their resources to find Grasso and they would be able to do it faster than I could. On the other hand, if they didn’t have luck right away, I would have to see what I could do.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I was by no means a cyber sleuth. I did use the Internet for business, but mostly just e-mail. Lots of e-mail. I scrolled through my mailbox and saw one e-mail, whose subject line asked me if I wanted to see hot, horny housewives in action. I deleted it without opening it.

I cursed myself once again for ordering a sexy outfit for Anna from an adult catalogue because now I was on their e-mail list. Their latest offering was a product called the Fleshlight. It was a masturbatory device for men that looked like a flashlight, but one end was actually . . . well, you get the idea. Clever, but no thanks.

There were several messages on my answering machine from potential customers. I returned their calls, left two messages, and on the third call, I set up a meeting to talk to a woman who had some “concerns” about her husband. This usually meant she was concerned that his knockwurst was making the rounds. And usually it was the right call.

That done, I put my feet up on the desk and clasped my hands behind my head. No word from my sister yet, so I let my mind wander to thoughts of Shannon Sparrow’s ex-husband Laurence Grasso. Probably Larry to his friends, though I doubted he had any.

So ol’ Mr. Grasso had found the beautiful, young, talented, driven Shannon Sparrow, seduced her, probably controlled her, and then married her. Once she got a little older and a lot smarter, she dumped his genetically shortchanged ass. Free from the steadying influence of someone with a brain, Larry was free to slide into the life of crime for which he was destined. Not too much later, he wound up at the big house—the same house where Rufus Coltraine sat, ten years into his twenty-year sentence for armed robbery and second-degree murder. Rufus was probably playing his guitar in his cell.

I also wondered what their first meeting had been like. Maybe Grasso had tried to shank him. Or Coltraine had saved Grasso from being raped by the brothers. Who knew? The house of detention could apparently make very strange bedfellows.

I picked up the phone, scanned my notes, and called my favorite Jackson State prison guard, Joe Puhy. I wasn’t sure if he would talk to me because I’d never come through on the beers I owed him. After several transfers and sitting on hold, he came to the phone. I re-introduced myself, and he remembered who I was. He didn’t seem pissed. After my apologies and reassurances that I would take him out for some refreshments, I got to the point.

“Tell me about Laurence Grasso,” I said.

There was a soft chuckle then a low whistle.

“Stay away from that one,” he said.

“What do you know about him, other than the fact that I should keep my distance?”

“He’s a bastard. Nasty. Mean. Crazy.”

“Did he know Rufus Coltraine?” I said.

“He sure did. I always wondered about them. They never seemed to fit.”

“How so?”

“Rufus was easygoing, laid back; he had his music. Larry was the opposite. A tried-and-true Detroit boy with a chip on his shoulder, something to prove, always looking for trouble,” Puhy said. “And he was a sneak too. Any little way to bend a rule, or even just plain ol’ break it, Larry was the guy.”

“So were the two of them buddies or something?” I said.

He thought about it for a moment. I could almost hear him scratching the stubble on his jaw. “I wouldn’t say they were buddies exactly,” he said. “More like guys who maybe had something in common in here, but outside, would never hang out.”

“Was Grasso into music? Did he play?”

“Not that I know of,” Puhy said. This was a mild surprise to me. “He seemed to like Coltraine’s music, but he didn’t play anything himself. ’Cept probably the skin flute.”

Prison humor—it gets me every time.

“So what the hell were they doing together?”

“Talking mostly. Sometimes, just sitting and listening to Coltraine’s music.”

How quaint, I thought.

“I don’t know,” Puhy said. “I wish I could tell you more. Maybe I could ask around, see if anyone knows anything. Be like a consultant for you.”

Like a bonefish on the flats, I heard the sound of bait hitting the water.

“Would you?” I said. “That would be great—maybe I could come up with a finder’s fee or something.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Puhy said in a tone of voice that indicated I should very, very much worry about it.

We said our goodbyes, and I hung up. What a pisser. Two guys with nothing in common hanging out in prison together. Both get out, and one tries to kill me while the other one is being killed and possibly framed for the murder of Jesse Barre. So was it Grasso who killed Jesse? Why? Did he have some score to settle with Coltraine—and was Jesse just in the wrong place at the wrong time? That didn’t make sense. After all, Jesse was building a guitar for Grasso’s ex-wife. Somehow the two were connected. Maybe Coltraine was in on it with Grasso. Maybe Coltraine really did kill Jesse. Maybe he wanted one of her guitars for recording purposes, knew he couldn’t afford one, and killed her for it. And then maybe he stole Shannon’s guitar, and Grasso went and ripped off his old prison mate. It didn’t sound too convincing. And if I wasn’t convinced, I knew Ellen wouldn’t be either.

I started to get a headache. Too much thinking did that to me.

Still, the idea that I was closing in, that I was just a connection or two away from cracking this thing, got my blood going. It was time to find Laurence Fucking Grasso. Since my sister hadn’t called, I figured she wasn’t having any luck.

But I had an idea.

•

I could rule out all the things my sister would be checking on. Past acquaintances. Family. Places of employment. Former landlords. The cops would check out the logical places. Whether or not they would have any luck, I had no idea. So far, Shannon Sparrow’s shit-for-brains ex had proven to be crude but effective.

There was really only one place I might have an edge.

And that was the non-logical aspect of the hunt for Laurence Grasso. I tried to put myself in his shoes. I’m out of prison. I’m running around causing the kind of trouble I love to create. It’s what I do. For some reason, I’m sticking around. I’m not running off to Canada. So there’s still something I need. I’ve got to stay close but can’t go entirely underground.

Where would I be?

My mind grazed over everything I’d learned about Mr. Grasso. I thought back to what Joe Puhy had said, what the police record had shown, and what I knew about him from when he’d chased me and tried to kill me.

I wondered if he would try to go back to Shannon Sparrow. No chance. She wouldn’t have anything to do with him at this point in her life. Still, it would have to be pretty powerful for a guy like that. To think he’d once been married to, had slept with, had shared everything with someone who was now a celebrity. Who was now on the covers of half the magazines in the world.

It reminded me of a joke. A guy and Cindy Crawford are stranded on a deserted island. After a long time, they start sleeping together. They do anything and everything, sexually speaking, exhausting all possible positions and breaking every taboo known to man. Finally, one day, Cindy says to the guy, “Whatever you want, whatever your greatest fantasy is, I’ll do it.” So the guy has her put on a hat and one of his shirts. He then sidles up next to her and whispers, “Dude, I’m sleeping with Cindy Crawford!”

Illustrative of the minds of many men. I had the feeling that Grasso was mean and violent but also arrogant. It made sense he might want to spend a little time gloating over the “good old days.”

So where would he go to revel in his past yet still feel safe? I dug around for the stack of articles I’d used to study up on Shannon. After a half hour or so, I finally found the one in which she admitted being abused, where she opened up a little bit about her first marriage.

I skipped down to the section I was interested in. “I met him at a bad time in my life,” she said in the article. “I was dancing at this hole called the Lucky Strike.”

The name didn’t ring a bell with me. It had probably gone through a few dozen name changes since then. But it was obviously a place Grasso had frequented in the past. Why wouldn’t he go down there now and see if he could find anyone who might remember Shannon? Maybe buy ’em a beer and start bragging about how he’d bedded the great Shannon Sparrow.

Flimsy, I knew. But there was video of Cuban refugees making it to Miami in boats even less sturdy than my big idea.

What the hell.

I was sure the Lucky Strike would be worth the effort.

•

I didn’t consider it any kind of noble statement to say that I’d never been a big fan of strip clubs. Or titty bars, as the boys liked to call them. As a young man, I’d been to my fair share of them. Gotten the ol’ boobs-slapped-in-the-face treatment. Nothing high and mighty about it. I still noticed if an attractive woman walked by.

All these lofty thoughts were on my mind when I pulled up against the curb just past the Lucky Strike. As it turned out, the club wasn’t actually called the Lucky Strike. There just happened to be a giant plastic Lucky Strikes sign, probably from the ’50s or so, hanging above it. It didn’t look like the club itself had a name. Like the vast majority of clubs in Detroit, it was located on 8 Mile Road, the great divider between the city of Detroit and the suburbs to the north. It also happened to be a few doors down from a giant Home Depot and a Burger King. Nice. Stick dollar bills in G-strings then swing next door for sandpaper and a bucket of paint, followed by some chicken wings and fries.

I locked up the Sunbird, thinking that only a moron would steal it. But I didn’t want to have to walk home just because I’d run up against a thief with no sense of style.

The door was heavy, wooden, and painted red. I pulled it open, worried about the germs that probably coated the handle, having been grasped by a group of men who would buy ten-dollar, watered-down beers for the chance to watch a naked teenager dance. Occupational hazard, I told myself, trying not to think what these guys do with their hands.

Inside was a beautiful marble foyer with a long mahogany bar and waiters in tuxedoes. Kidding, of course. It was actually just what you’d expect. A stage running down the middle of the place with a bar at one end and a curtain at the other. Small groups of tables surrounded the runway, with some chairs right up against it for those fifty-yard-line kind of spots. For the guys who liked to get right in on the action.

There was a girl dancing on the stage. She had on a fishnet body stocking, or what was left of it, anyway. Her breasts poked out of two holes and sat unnaturally high. Judging by the three or four guys who sat watching her, they probably didn’t care if they were looking at a plastic surgeon’s handiwork. I moved to the end of the room where the bar was and ordered a beer in a bottle. Six bucks. Ah, that good ol’ naked-girl surcharge.

When you got right down to it, there were only so many ways to get information from a place like this. You could stake it out over the course of a few days, or even a couple weeks, and try to learn something that way. Or you could have an idea of who your target was ahead of time and watch for him or her. Or you could walk in blindly and start asking questions. You could probably guess which path made sense to me. I didn’t have time for a two-week stakeout. And even though I knew who I was after, I didn’t think Grasso would be so stupid as to just hang out somewhere in the open.

The dancer was really working her stuff on the stage to the incongruous tune of Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical.” As I watched the fish-netted youngster on stage bend over and grab her ankles, I figured the Australian singer didn’t exactly have this kind of imagery in mind when she performed the feisty little ditty.

I hadn’t touched my beer and understood immediately that I wouldn’t be putting my mouth on anything in this bar, unlike the four-hundred-pound guy waving a dollar bill at the dancer hovering over him.

Before I’d left the police station, I’d made a copy of Grasso’s mug shot. I’d had to do it without Ellen noticing, but old habits die hard, and it’d been easy to go around behind her back.