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“Something else happened.”
“Yeah, what?”
“I got a call from a police detective in Chicago. He wanted to know when I talked to you and why I thought you were dead.”
“What was his name?”
“White, I think.”
“Monroe White?”
“I think that was it.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I gave him my lawyer’s number. Through my attorney we told him that I had researched the book in New York and that I might have heard the rumor there about your death.”
“How’d that go over?”
“Not well. In the book I said you were dead. Period. Definitive statement. To say something like that based on a rumor would have been very sloppy journalism.”
“I hope you told him you’re a shitty journalist.”
“Through my attorney, I said I can’t reveal my sources.”
“When was this?”
“After the book came out.”
That was a long time ago. Well, nearly two years. It certainly seemed like they weren’t following the lead.
“I shouldn’t have talked to you in the first place.”
“Is that the big thing you came here to tell me?”
“No, I came here to call you an asshole.”
“And you decided at the last minute to let your fist do the talking?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re fine. It’s just Lydia. I haven’t told anyone else.”
“Somehow that’s not reassuring. If you can’t keep your mouth shut when a good-looking woman is in the room, what’s going to happen if someone shows up and pushes you around a bit? You’re going to squeal like a stuck pig. And that’s not going to be good for me.”
Instead of attempting to deny that, he weakly said, “Fuck you.”
****
I got back to Long Beach at almost three. I’d taken a detour to Studio City for a quesadilla from Poquito Mas. I mean, why not? I’d just had a conversation that kind of scared the crap out of me. Good Mexican food seemed as good a remedy as any.
I sat in my Jeep eating the quesadilla trying to work things out. The book had come out in 1994. Two years and nothing had really happened. Well, nothing I knew about until today. Deanna Hansen wasn’t happy about the book, but that didn’t mean she knew anything about me. I didn’t have any reason to think she didn’t believe I was dead. Or that she’d do much about it if she didn’t believe it. I wasn’t thrilled the FBI was still looking at her. That could prove to be a big problem. A very big problem.
Monroe White worried me. I knew him, of course. He worked the 18th district in Chicago, which happened to be where I’d killed a guy named Possum. Or at least I was pretty sure I’d killed him. It was dark and I was in a hurry to get out of there.
Possum’s real name was Mike Mazur. I’d done a couple of newspaper searches trying to find out if he was dead. I hadn’t found much. Which didn’t mean anything. People died every day in Chicago. Not everyone made the papers. Not everyone got identified. However, the fact that White was calling around looking for me suggested Possum might be dead. And they might have connected him to me.
White would be close to retirement. I doubted he’d stop looking for me until he retired. Like most cops, he’d want proof I was dead, concrete proof, like an actual death certificate. I was tempted to buy one and send it to him in the mail.
