Chapter 8

Now Vanessa and I could have spread the pedophile word about Arthur Flanders. Through the Sullivans I could have fucked up his finances. We didn’t. He was an old man, twilight time. Plus Sasha had been better off because of him.

But it had been Vanessa’s call. Who turned the decision over to the one person who deserved to make it. Sasha. She and Marina looked at Flanders for a long time. Sasha turned to Vanessa, “Leave him alone.”

Joey Viagra, one of my freelancers, hadn’t been able to help me when I was looking for Lina. That time she’d been pimp-kidnapped outside a Price Chopper. One more good thing about becoming a citizen. You’re less at the mercy of predators when you can call for the cops.

But Joey came through for me on the arson case, which I now think of as the Jill Harrison case.

For $1,000 -- and I made certain he signed a receipt for the cash -- Joey agreed to get hired on with Steve Banyon’s drywall crew. They were specialists who worked for whichever general contractor needed non-union labor. Joey actually knew what he was doing around a construction site so he fit in.

And his constant chatter about pussy fit in as well.

I had told him, “Take your time, don’t be obvious. Cozy up to Steve. If it isn’t working, back off. I don’t want him getting suspicious.”

Joey, who is 24, 25, around in there, gave me exasperated, “Lady, I been hustlin’ for 15 years. Don’t sweat it. Expenses too?”

“Yeah. No more than $50 a day.”

He would earn $15 an hour from Banyon. No benefits, but no deductions either. The cash society.

He actually did okay, did take his time. After-work beers. That I paid for. Plenty of pussy talk. Joey said, “He’s scoring some old rich broad. Money out the wazoo.”

Later, “She’s hooked on him, can’t get enough cock.” Shrugged, “Dames. If they didn’t have a pussy...”

“There’d be a bounty, yeah, yeah, yeah.”

“Winter.”

“Walker.”

“I think Lina likes me. You know ... that way.”

“Walk.”

“Yeah?”

“Get your head out of your butt.”

Joey Viagra came by my office looking like the cat who had swallowed some bonus money. Muscles bulging, that metallic odor unconfined, he worried his body into a Barcelona guest chair.

“Steve and that broad, they’re gonna shack up. But she’s gotta ditch hubby first.”

“Oh?”

He nodded. As well as someone missing a neck can nod, “He did her a majorly favor a while back. Didn’t say what. I don’t press him. Like you said.”

I smiled, pleased that it had sunk in, “Little cat feet.”

“Huh?”

“Subtlety. That’s why I chose you, Joey, subtlety.”

“Oh yeah. Course.”

This was enough. For me. Third-hand and circumstantial. Big ass assumptions on my part. But I would bet Walker’s reputation that Steve Banyon had torched that Summit Street house for Jill.

Gary Jamison, the KCFD arson investigator had told me it had been a crude, amateurish job.

The question was why? Why burn down a house when you could walk away with half of the equity in any reasonable divorce?

Back to the Sullivan twins. I had a suspicion that Jim Harrison had known the girl he was going to marry and that there was a prenup involved.

Why Jill would be able to take part of an insurance settlement and not the equity ... well, I didn’t know that. Just like I didn’t know if there was even a prenup. Just like I really didn’t know that Steve Banyon had anything to do with the fire.

As usual in my work, the stuff I didn’t know outflanks what I do.

“Winter.”

“Walk.”

“Um. Pilar. She ... I ... Um, sex. Just oral. But you should know.” Frown. “Right?”

“Right.” I took both his hands in mine. “I should have known before. But I’m glad you told me, babylove. Really I am.”

Relieved. “We’re not going to ... she said we’ll ... wait.”

“Good. Tell Pilar she can talk to me anytime. To Vanessa too.”

It was time to do something I’ve been looking forward to for a while. No, I wasn’t practicing deferred gratification. Never been much good at that. It’s just I’ve been so damned busy with my caseload, our family, life.

There’s an Overland Park maggot name Darrel Clemson. I’d been keeping a loose eye on him, making sure he was still around.

He had hooked up with a married woman, Cherry Connors. She worked in City Hall -- the Kansas City one, not Overland Park -- and had come to me in tears.

This Clemson asshole secretly taped them fucking merrily away. She was enjoying the clandestine fling, her second in 16 years of marriage.

Clemson, fucking mook, posted the sex tape at seven online porn sites. The tape clearly showed Cherry’s face. And everything else. He gleefully pointed out those links to her. Cherry was mortified. Scared out of her wits. Just what Clemson got off on.

He then sent links to her husband, her 12-year old daughter, her 10-year old son, both of her parents, her boss at City Hall, her coworkers, her friends. To everyone on her Contacts list.

When he sent the links to his own buddy network, he included all of Cherry’s contact information too. She was barraged by phone calls, jerks knocking at her family’s door, coming in to City Hall to seek out the ‘easy lay.’ I got her a place to live, by herself, during the firestorm. But that was just a respite.

I’ve had far more experience with revenge porn than I’d like. But this wasn’t even revenge. It was pure meanness. Cherry hadn’t dumped him, she’d been enjoying the little affair.

But at least I could control the damage. Through the Sullivan twins, using copyright law, we got all seven sites to take down the video. That staunched the immediate bleeding.

The copyright statutes that applied stated that Cherry Connors owned the right to her own images. It didn’t matter who had created the tape.

But her marriage was over. Her two children were bewildered, afraid, being teased and bullied at school. Her husband took them and moved to Denver. Cherry was too traumatized to contest anything.

She resigned from her job in the Assessor’s office. Actually, in a kindness, he fired her so she could collect unemployment.

Needless to say, but why pass up a chance to brag, this was pro bono on my part.

Now it was time to butt-fuck Darrel Clemson. Big time.

Walker sat down with Vanessa. Pilar was right there with him, it had been her idea. He was still fretting about my little fling with 2nd Officer Eamon Nilsson. Walker had known for years that I had an active sex life, but since Vanessa and I married ... well, he wants it to last.

Apparently he’d shared his concerns with Pilar and she isn’t one to let things simmer.

That night in bed, Vanessa whispering, holding me, spooning, said, “I think I reassured Walker. I told him you not only have my blessing, I feel better, more secure.”

“Did he believe you?”

“I think so. And it’s true. I never expected you to give up men. Other women, yes. But I wouldn’t want you to go against your nature.”

Vanessa kissed the back of my neck softly, she knows just the right place.

We all have our little quirks, don’t we?

One of mine involves my doctor. Or her office anyway. It always amazes me to see waiting-room patients casually flipping through the magazines that clutter the tables.

I try not to touch anything that any patient has had her paws on. Not everyone who goes to the doctor is sick at the time, but plenty are. I’m not germaphobic, but I’m not about to tempt the disease gods.

Similar subject. I don’t read medical articles. I don’t want to know about new viruses, new symptoms. If I don’t know about, say, Necrotizing Fasciitis, then I believe I’m more unlikely to have something eating away at my flesh.

Can anyone spell ostrich?

When I’d put in three years with the KCPD, I told Daddy I was thinking of quitting. Of going out on my own. Getting my private license, opening a one-girl shop. I still remember his answer. And I continue to apply it in other circumstances.

“Don’t spend the rest of your life wondering ‘what if?’”

The Sullivan twins hadn’t been able to find any digital trace of a prenup for the Harrisons, nor anything else relating to asset distribution following a divorce.

I had convinced myself that Jill Harrison had talked her boyfriend into torching the family residence. Assuming a fact that I didn’t really know. But it wasn’t totally unwarranted. Joey Viagra had confirmed that she was planning to divorce her husband. And that her boyfriend had performed a big favor.

Okay, it was third-hand gossip. Jill told Steve Banyon who told Joey who told me. Fourth-hand.

Mingo time. Mingo Bernard Cochran, to be precise.

If Bulldog Bannerman is a fixer, Mingo is a tinkerer. Or tinker.

A tinker in the sense of a roaming handyman. He’s sort of like the Romani, he travels the greater Kansas City area in a battered VW Bus, repairing lawn mowers, clocks, watches, toasters. And looking to steal anything that doesn’t have someone watching it closely.

Mingo also tinkers with gadgets. TV remotes, garage door openers, ham radios.

I didn’t know where he was, but I knew how to reach him. There is one parking lot on the Country Club Plaza which isn’t hidden in some handsomely decorated garage. But this one is surrounded on all four sides with retail and dining establishments so it’s hardly an eyesore.

I found a parking spot easily enough, it was only 9 in the morning and most places weren’t open yet. I walked around the corner to what has to be one of the last shoeshine stands in the city.

Jimmy, colorful knit beret where it belonged, grinned at me, “Mingo?”

I slipped him a tenner, “Please.”

Mingo was waiting downstairs at the Livestock Exchange Building when I arrived. Riding up to my office, we shook hands formally. I wasn’t worried, I wasn’t wearing any rings, bracelets, watches.

Mingo is elfin. Not much over five feet tall, not much over 90 pounds. He’s easy to overlook, easy to forget he was ever in your driveway where that Plasma Premium Bike had been just minutes ago.

He has a shock of thick white hair, his pride, if not his joy. He parts it precisely in the middle and secures it with a varnish that would make a big-haired Texas bimbo proud.

“Watchu need, Winter?”

“I lost my garage door opener. Very inconvenient.”

“I’ll say. What was your address again?”

I gave him the Harrison rental house on Grand. And an envelope with five one-hundred dollar bills in it. Mingo counted them. Carefully. Twice. A Benjamin a day keeps the leg-breakers away.

He smiled up at me, innocent little cherub that he is, “Tonight okay?”

“Pleasure doing business with you.”

Early the next morning, two of my freelancers were around the corner from the Harrison house. Birdy Cummings, a 58-year old grandmother who is always happy to do something interesting. For $100. She’d follow Jill to, I hoped, her job at Macy’s in Overland Park. And call me if Mrs. Harrison headed back this way.