“Whattaya know from shinola? You taking the word of a drunken bum over a respectable businessman? Not to mention a thousand witnesses plus a million TV viewers.”
“I haven’t seen the Nielsen ratings. I suppose you had a good angle on the action, though.”
A shrug.
“When exactly did Mitchell cut himself and ditch the gig?”
“Gig... Buddy really smartened you up, huh?”
“I mean, if Mitchell was so inept, you probably saw when he cut himself. When did it happen exactly?”
“He was supposed to do it right before Delaney climbed down outta the ring to kick his ass. But I was on the other side of the ring, so I didn’t catch it. What else you need?”
“I guess that’s it. Maybe we’ll have some more questions after we look at the tape.”
“You guys are costin’ me money holdin’ on to that,” Rose said, seemingly unconcerned otherwise.
Brewer started to turn and then looked down at the posters on the floor. “Big night on the twenty-third, huh? How far in advance do you get all this stuff printed?”
Rose had already picked up his phone. “You still here?”
“How long?”
“Three weeks.” He started dialing.
Outside, the city air never smelled so sweet. Brewer took the program out and checked the match-ups. It proved nothing, but Chuck Mitchell’s name was not there.
He got in the car and thought about the man in the hellish back room. Rose was one of those pathological tyrants that cropped up now and then, sometimes as the head of a terrorized household, sometimes in the highest seat of government, like the ones he and Bud Mitchell had signed up to fight against. All of them, despots foreign and domestic, had the same appetite for power, the same hard-on for cruelty and violence, which they used to cow their followers and to subordinate men to do their worst bidding. On top of it all, Rose was sheltered by this kayfabe, the omerta of “the business.”
Too bad Wendt had talked to the creep at the arena and not in these squalid surroundings. He might have taken a harder look at him.
Brewer started the car, hoping Rose hadn’t been calling Martin Delaney.
Thursday — 4:45 P.M.
Delaney lived in a decent subsection of small prewar bungalows a few miles west of town. His was sided with pastel-green asbestos shingles. A big, well-trimmed lilac stood near the front walk like a polite greeter. The grass was neatly clipped and dandelion-free. Beds of yellow tulips cupped the late sunlight to either side of the porch steps.
No one answered the bell, so Brewer went down the driveway past a shiny black ’56 Chevy and saw more tulips, reds and pinks, alongside the house in orderly ranks between tubs of green mint. Every exterior wooden frame, soffit, and shutter had a recent coat of white paint. The place was so well kept that Brewer could not imagine its owner connected to the human spider he’d met in town.
Far down the long backyard, he saw a big blond man kneeling over another flower bed, both hands kneading the earth. A dark-haired woman sat in a wooden lawn chair behind him and pointed out something for his attention. They didn’t notice Brewer, even when he had drawn to within five paces and stopped to assess them; they were too intent on their project. A lively mockingbird and the shouts of children in a neighboring yard continued to mask both his presence and the couple’s companionable murmuring.
The man wore bib overalls and nothing else. Huge triceps moved rhythmically as he probed the earth with his pitchfork hands. The woman, wrapped in a pink housecoat, had a fine, delicate profile; but when she turned Brewer’s way, he saw signs of protracted strain slicing away from the wide mouth and gentle brown eyes. The hand she touched to Delaney’s shoulder was crippled, the fingers painfully gnarled.
Delaney looked Brewer’s way and sprang to his feet, the gentleness and cultivation gone from his posture. He stood a head taller than Brewer, and his yellow, Buster Crabbe hair avalanched toward the cop. He stood between his wife and the intruder, his face a caricature of ferocity, his bunched, earth-encrusted fists resting on his hips like Superman’s.
It was the woman who spoke. “Can we help you?” How even and placid her voice was, despite her obvious excruciations.
“Good evening, ma’am.” Brewer touched his hat brim and showed his badge.
“Oh,” she said. “It’s about that poor boy.” She looked up sadly at her husband.
Brewer looked at Delaney too, at the scarring from harelip surgery that ran down like petrified snot and made the man’s face doubly fierce. Delaney’s posture suggested that only his wife’s presence held him back from responding physically to the invasion.
“Martin,” she said gently. Reluctantly, the man stood down from whatever he had contemplated.
“I got nothin’ more to say.” The husky voice sounded like it had been injured by shouting.
“You know Bud Mitchell, don’t you?”
Delaney’s look got harder. The man turned to his wife and said, “I’m gonna walk down the lawn with this guy, Edna.”
“Help me up,” she said. “I’ll go inside; it’s getting buggy.”
They watched her step carefully toward a ramp built over the rear steps. It seemed an injustice had befallen this couple, but Brewer kept the thought to himself. Delaney appeared the type who might take any spoken sympathy as unwanted pity — or an interrogation ploy.
“I know you know Bud.”
Delaney held his tongue until his wife had made her laborious climb up the ramp and entered safely into the house.
“I know the bastard,” he said harshly. “Him and me mixed it up plenty.” He rounded on Brewer just as histrionically as Mitchell had said he would.
“Please. I know you were friends until he messed up his shoulder and left the game. You knew Chuck was his kid too — your friend’s kid.”
“He was nothin’ like his old man,” he said, folding his muscular arms across his chest. “Kid had a mouth on him.”
“So he deserved a beating?”
“Look, I don’t see the point of talkin’ about it no more. I don’t want my wife worryin’. Since you’re talkin’ to Bud, you can tell him I’m sorry about his boy.”
“Why don’t you tell him yourself? Eye to eye.”
There was finality in Delaney’s silence.
“Mr. Delaney, if I leave right now, you’re coming with me.”
Delaney sized him up. Brewer knew his only advantages were the police special clipped to his belt and Martin’s possible unwillingness to do anything that might upset Edna.
“So tell me exactly what happened from the time you tossed Chuck out of the ring.”
“I already told Wendt.”
“Tell me.”
Delaney measured his words. “Look, it’s a rough business. Guys get hurt. Bad. Ask Bud Mitchell. Him and me, we’re old school. We earned our push, and we got hurt sometimes in the process. Now they want pretty boys, and they bring ’em along before they’re ready. The arena rats, the broads, they go for these guys, so they get put on top of the card but they’re still green. Some of ’em think they know it all, and then they get hurt, like the Mitchell kid. Maybe he was a snot-nosed little piss-ant, but we still had a job to do. I done mine right. He didn’t. End of story.”
“What’s that mean, he didn’t do his job?”
“He screwed up. You think I wanted this to happen? I puked! I haven’t had a decent night’s sleep since. So screw you — and you need to get off my lawn.”
Thursday — 6 P.M.
Instead of going home, Brewer picked up some food and drove to the precinct, knowing a backlog of his normal backlog had accumulated by now. Lawns, shaded streets, and troops of kids on bikes gave way to brick and asphalt and herded traffic. He thought about his two interviews, searching for a salient into the guilt he detected in both. He needed to see more people to give it shape, and eventually he would get a handle on it and take it to Wendt. But would he be able to do that before Bud Mitchell’s timer ran out?