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“Yeah, that’s it.”
The baby burped and Melton said, “There we go,” and the faint odor of vomit dispersed around Virgil. And, she asked, “What are you guys doing today? Any leads?”
“After we talked to you last night, we staked out Maggie’s house, and nothing happened, except I froze my feet,” Lucas said.
Cooper: “Maybe he won’t come at all.”
“I think he will,” Lucas said. “You deliberately baited the trap, and when he thinks it over, he’ll know that he has to take another shot at you.”
“I hope,” Cooper said. “I’m not going to let you guys back in my house. If you wait outside, I think there’s a good chance he’ll see you. If he sees you first, he’ll never come back.”
“Tell us who he is,” Virgil said.
“Nope.”
“Heath was released last night,” Virgil said.
“That sonofabitch,” Cooper snarled. “I have to settle with him, too. I just...” She touched her face, and the crazy eyes were back. She refocused and said, “Stay away from my house.”
—
“Is she nuts?”Virgil asked.
“The thought had crossed my mind,” Lucas said, as he turned onto West Seventh Street. “She seemed to go back and forth between focus and out-of-focus. Might be a concussion, I guess. But... I dunno.”
They spotted the Silver Star and found a parking place. The gym was in a redbrick building with inset panels of glass blocks that would bring in exterior light, but without allowing passersby to actually see inside.
The front door was windowless, with a full-length steel plate; an unlighted sign in the shape of a silver star hung above the door, and over the sidewalk.
They pushed through the door and walked down a short hallway into a room the size of a basketball court, without the finish of a basketball court: concrete floor, exposed beams, bright white fluorescent lights overhead. Two men were working out in a full-sized elevated boxing ring; a woman was punching at a swinging target in a second ring. There were racks for weights, several speed bags, a line of black heavy bags, hanging like oversized blood sausages, with two more men and a woman punching at them. The place smelled of sweat and something else, something medicinal, that wasn’t alcohol; more like all-purpose cleaner.
The back wall showed two doors, one with a sign that said “Men,” the other, “Ladies,” apparently going to locker rooms.
To the left was a desk and a man sat behind it paging through a copy ofGuitaristmagazine; he had the battered face of somebody who’d lost a lot of fights, but was wearing a pink golf shirt and aturquoise pinky ring. He looked up when they came in, put the magazine aside, and said, “Can I help you, officers?”
Made Virgil smile. “Yes. We’d like to ask you about your employees.”
Lucas: “Specifically, about the coaches in the children’s evening program.”
“Why?”
“That would be between us and them,” Lucas said.
“Well, then, I got just the guy for you,” the man said. His shirt had a machine embroidered tag that said “Rudy” in sky-blue script. He reached under the desk and came up with a handheld microphone and said, “Wiz, please come to the front desk.”
And to Lucas and Virgil, “I think he’s back in the Ladies...”
A moment later, a chunky man came through the door that said “Ladies” with a wet mop. He leaned the mop against the side of the door and walked over to the desk. Like the desk man, he was wearing a pink golf shirt, and also shorts and boxing shoes. To Rudy he said, “We got cops?”
“We got cops,” Rudy said. “They want to talk about the kids’ program.”
“What do you want to know?” His golf shirt had a blue tag that said “The Wiz.”
“Step over in the corner where we can talk privately,” Virgil said. As they walked over, Lucas asked, “What’s your real name?”
“Buddy Corbin.”
“Buddy’s a nickname?” Virgil asked.
