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“I’m not up on this,” Bertrand said. “What homicide are we talking about?”
“It’s kind of complicated. I saw the homicide. Nobody else did.”
The line was silent. Then my friend evidently chose not to attempt working through what I had just told him. “What do you need, Streak?”
“Can you get me some backup? I don’t have a warrant, and I’m out of my jurisdiction.”
“What’s the name of the suspect?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you want to bring him in?”
“I’m not sure. The guy is sitting at a table with Timothy Abelard. I’m going to have a talk with Abelard and a couple of his friends. I’d like to have
a degree of legal authority behind me when I do it.”
“You’re by yourself?”
“Clete Purcel is with me.”
There was another pause. “Sorry, I can’t help on this, Dave.”
“Want to tell me why?” I asked.
“I don’t fault Purcel for being his own man. I just don’t want to take his fall. You might give that some thought.”
When I got back to the banquet room, the general was finishing his speech. The audience rose and applauded, then applauded some more. Through the crowd I saw Timothy Abelard looking at me, his face lit with goodwill, two fingers raised in a wave.
“Where’ve you been?” I heard Clete say.
“Trying to get us some backup.”
“No dice?”
“They’ve got their own problems,” I said.
I felt his eyes examining my face. “They gave you some flak about something?”
“We don’t need pencil pushers.”
Clete turned his attention back to Timothy Abelard and the man with the bandaged hand. “What do you want to do?”
“Wait till it thins out,” I replied.
“Then what?”
I touched a manila envelope that I had rolled into a cone and stuck in my coat pocket. “We give them a look at some unpleasant realities they won’t find in a family newspaper,” I said.
But the Abelards and their retinue did not wait for the party to end. Without fanfare, Jewel pushed Timothy Abelard in his wheelchair down a corridor toward an exit, and the other people from the table followed, the man with the injured hand glancing back once over his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” I said.
Clete swallowed the bourbon-stained ice melt in the bottom of his glass, his cheeks blooming. We walked out into the parking lot, no more than thirty feet behind the Abelard party, the oak trees swelling with wind against the glow of the streetlamps. “Excuse me,” I called out.
But no one among the Abelard party chose to hear me.
“I’d like to have a word with you, Mr. Timothy,” I said. “It’s a matter that concerns your grandson and possibly one of your friends here.”
