She leaned back in her chair. “I’m not gonna tell you I’ve managed to put every Griffon parent’s mind at ease, thinking if their kids are drinking, they’re doing it here. Kids are still having parties in their basements, having a wild time when their parents are out of town. There’s quite a little business going on of getting booze to kids who aren’t old enough to go into stores to buy it themselves. They even deliver.” She smiled. “But I do my part.”
“And the police leave you alone.”
“They’re very... supportive. Once in a while, we get some riffraff in from the south, and they look after us in that regard. Couple of fellows out there right now, monopolizing the pool table, have me a little concerned.”
“Maybe the local cops give you a pass because, as you’ve demonstrated, you know everybody’s business. Pissing you off might not be in anyone’s interest.” My eyes narrowed. “And maybe there’s a little something in their Christmas stocking, too.”
“You smooth talker,” Phyllis said, grinning. “Thinking I wield any power around here. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m just a simple businesswoman, trying to get by. But I will say this — that Augustus Perry, he’s a good man.” She served me a sly smile. “Not that I have to tell you.”
“One last thing,” I said. “I’d like a peek at your security tape. See who it was who clobbered me.”
“I can’t help you there,” she said.
“If you don’t show me, you’ll just have to show it to one of Griffon’s finest.”
“Oh, don’t be silly.” She gave me a look of disappointment. “You’re not going to the police about that and you know it. Is that what a real private eye does? Goes running off to the cops every time he gets a knock on the head? Please.”
She was right. I had no intention of reporting the assault.
“But that’s got nothing to do with why I won’t let you see the security tape,” she said, and then waved her arm around the room, like she was about to pull back the curtain to Door Number Two. “You see any monitors in here? We have no surveillance system. No closed-circuit cameras.”
“Not even out front?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“You look surprised,” Pearce said.
“I’d heard different.”
“You were misinformed. Or you misunderstood.”
“Maybe so,” I said, getting up off the couch.
“But if there’s anything else I can help you with, my door’s open,” she said. “You strike me as someone who could use a bit of guidance.”
Twelve
As I walked out I tried to get my sore head around what Phyllis Pearce had told me. No surveillance system? That spot out in front of Patchett’s was only steps from where Claire Sanders had tapped on my window asking for a ride. How was that caught on a security camera if the guy who’d sucker punched me was not?
Before I crossed the street to get in my car, I looked for cameras out front anyway. There were none. But hadn’t Haines and Brindle — one of them, I couldn’t remember which — told me that was how they’d been led to my door? That my license plate had been picked up on the bar’s camera when Claire got in?
Had either of them actually said that? Or had they only intimated it? Allowed me to think it when I raised the suggestion that my car had been caught on closed-circuit?
I couldn’t recall how the conversation had gone exactly, and the throbbing in my head wasn’t helping my powers of recollection. But if they had, in fact, told me I’d been picked up on a camera, why had they lied? If there was no camera, what had led them to me? Did they already have Patchett’s staked out? Were they already following Claire?
It wasn’t a stretch to think the local cops might have a cruiser parked across the street from the place now and then, watching for people getting into their cars who were too drunk to drive. Or maybe they had quotas to fill, and picked up the occasional underage drinker to show they were keeping Griffon a safe and decent place to raise our children, even if they were letting Patchett’s serve drinks to minors.
Maybe the cops had been called to Patchett’s earlier for some kind of disturbance, and before they’d left had noticed a teenage girl hitching a ride with a strange man, and had the presence of mind to make note of a plate number. Then, later, when Claire was reported missing, some cop at the morning briefing said, “Hang on.”
I fumbled in my pocket for my keys, hit the remote button to unlock the car, and slid in behind the wheel. I took a glance at myself in the rearview mirror before I closed the door and turned the lights out. My hair was mussed. I combed it with my fingers to the point where I looked moderately respectable.
I was about to turn the key when the two bikers came out of Patchett’s and wandered across the road to the motorcycles parked directly ahead of me. As they were getting ready to swing their legs over like a couple of cowboys mounting their horses, headlights came on about a hundred yards away.
Almost instantaneously, a bank of multicolored swirling roof lights was activated on the same vehicle. A siren whooped for five seconds before the cruiser screeched to a stop beside the bikes.
The bikers stood there and watched as two cops got out of the car. A woman from the driver’s side, a man from the passenger’s. I recognized the woman as Donna’s friend Kate Ramsey. Late thirties, short blond hair, about a hundred and seventy pounds, no more than five six. Chin up, formidable. Her partner I didn’t know, but I guessed he was in his early thirties, five ten, about the same weight as Ramsey, strong chin and cheekbones.
It looked like Kate was going to take the lead here. I put down my window so I could hear.
“Where you boys from?” she asked. She had one hand on the nightstick hanging from her belt.
Biker One said, “What’s the problem, Officer? We do something wrong?”
“I asked a question,” she said. “Where you from?”
“Elmwood,” Biker Two said. A Buffalo neighborhood, and a pretty nice one at that.
“What brings you up to Griffon?” the other cop asked.
“We just rode up for a couple drinks, play some pool,” Biker One said.
“That’d be all you’re doing up here?” Kate Ramsey asked. “You wouldn’t be up here doing a bit of business?”
Biker Two shook his head. “Listen, we just wanted to get some air, do some riding on our bikes. That’s all. We’re not looking for trouble.”
Kate’s partner said, “We don’t need your kind up here.”
“Our kind?” Biker One said. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Kate said, “we don’t need greasy, drug-dealing dickheads like you two fucking up our town.”
The first biker moved an inch toward Kate, but the other one held up his hand. “Then I guess we should be on our way.”
“We don’t have to take this shit,” the first one said.
Kate’s partner moved forward, taking the nightstick from his belt. “Oh, I think you do.” He walked around to the front of the second biker’s bike, swinging the stick casually. “What’s a headlight like that run?”
“Come on, man, we’ll go,” Biker Two said. “We’re on our way.”
“And you won’t be back,” Kate said.
“Fine,” the first one said. “Who the fuck would want to come back here anyway? Everything they say about this hick town is true.”
Kate Ramsey and her partner stood there and watched as the two got on their bikes, started them up with a roar, then navigated their way around the Griffon police cruiser. Once they were on the road, one of them stuck his hand into the air and offered up a one-finger salute.