Temper Read online

  It was Adam’s voice on the other line. “Um, I thought we said Mindspace Investigations was what we were going with.”

  I fought down a wave of irrational anger. “I told you, this one sounds better. What are you calling about?”

  “You just seemed unhappy when I left this morning. I thought—”

  “What did you think?” I couldn’t keep the hostility from my voice.

  “Well…” He sighed. “Anyway, you need me to do something for the firm, I probably can, but it might be slow. Looks like they’re going to keep me hopping for at least a day or two here.”

  Unable to help myself, I asked, “What’s the case?”

  “It’s a journalist who—” His voice cut out suddenly. “Um, I don’t think I’m actually supposed to talk about it outside the department.”

  Now I was really angry. He was there, at my work, at the place I’d called home for over a decade, and he couldn’t even talk to me about it? I pushed out through gritted teeth, “You don’t want to get in trouble right when we need the money I guess. Was there something else?”

  “No, just calling to check on you.”

  “I’m fine, Adam, really. I’m fine.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll see you when this is over.”

  “Fine.”

  “Okay, then,” he said finally and hung up.

  I spent fifteen minutes throwing papers, pens, and whatever else came to hand onto the floor and across the room. I threw punch after punch into the air. And then, chest heaving from the anger and exertion, I knelt down and started picking up the mess I’d made.

  When it was over, I was tired. Too, too tired. But there was work to do.

  I’d knock on some doors and see what turned up. If there was anything I’d learned in almost two decades of police work, it was this: if you knocked on enough doors, chased down enough clues, and went where the evidence took you, sooner or later, you’d find your answer. You didn’t have to be smart as long as you were persistent.

  And since this guy was paying me by the day, maybe smart was persistent. Maybe. If I could get my temper leashed and my patience in a decent place. Patience was a sign of strength, my sensei said. That, and I’d learned long ago that work solved almost anything. That couldn’t be any different with PI work. It couldn’t.

  Adam’s stupid comment had made me think about journalists, which made me wonder if Collins’ blackmailer was one. A long shot, maybe, since a journalist would have more to gain by publishing. But maybe he or she was an idealist, after the big story and the big takedown, and wasn’t ready yet. Worth asking.

  I called my contact at the Atlanta Journal. He knew that he owed me; I’d sent him more than a few exclusive stories (cleared by my old boss) when I’d worked Homicide.

  “Petrov Jabrolski,” he answered, in that chronically stressed voice of his.

  “Hi, Petrov, it’s Isabella Cherabino. I’m calling in one of my favors.”

  “Cherabino, huh? Weren’t you fired from the DeKalb County Police Department for charges of police brutality over in Fulton?”

  “No comment. And you know very well those charges were trumped up. I’m doing PI work now.”

  “Trumped up, huh?” He seemed cautious. “Well, you didn’t seem the type, anyway. The ‘no comment’ can stand for now, but if you’re not blowing smoke up my ass about the charges, I’m the first person you come talk to when you get proof, okay?”

  “You know you will be,” I said.

  “Or for that matter, if you did it and want an interview. I’ve got nothing but inches to fill, and my boss wants more human interest on the crime beat.”

  “Way to be on my side, Petrov.”

  “Hey, I’m not on anybody’s side but the public’s. You know that. Sure I can’t get you to comment?”

  “Nope,” I said. “But you do still owe me some favors, and I’m cashing one in.”

  “Now’s as good a time as any, I guess. PI work, huh? What do you need?”

  “I’m looking into a steel mill and manufacturing plant, as it happens. Owned by the Collins family.”

  “Seems like a weird thing to be doing PI work on. What’s your angle?”

  “Seems like they’re getting a lot of attention lately. You know if anybody at the Journal—or anywhere else local for that matter—is looking into the factory or the Collins family?”

  “That’s not the crime beat. You know it’s going to take me a few hours to figure it out for you.”

  “I can wait,” I said.

  “But really, you can’t tell me what your angle is?”

  “I’m getting the impression there’s a crusader out there against them. Seems like the kind of job a journalist would take on, so I thought I’d call you.”

  I could almost see Petrov perk up. “You’re telling me there’s a story at the factory?”

  I forced myself to laugh, long and hard. “Nothing like that. Just some low-level threats I’m tracking down against the owner’s dog, of all things. Amazing what people will pay for.” I held my breath, hoping I hadn’t given it away…or worse, gotten Petrov interested in dog threats.

  “Oh,” he said after a minute, disappointment apparent in his voice. Good, I’d carried off the lie. “Well, if you call me back in a few hours, I’ll let you know if anybody else is working over there.”

  “Thanks a bunch, Petrov. I appreciate the help.”

  “You get me the first comment on your situation when you’re ready, you hear me?”

  “I hear you. No worries. You know I’ll take care of you.”

  While I was making calls, I called Collins’ assistant on the job and claimed to be a reporter for a mumbled tabloid name. “I’m doing a story on men in dysfunctional relationships. Is Collins still dating the woman who burned down his garage?”

  The assistant seemed genuinely surprised at the question. “Abby Joiner?” he snorted. “Whatever rumor you’re working off of isn’t true. They’ve been broken up for over a year, and I shouldn’t even be telling you that, except it’s ludicrous that he’d still be dating that trash. What did you say your name was again?”

  I hung up the phone. “Hah!” On second thought, I liked this whole private investigator thing. Less Mirandas, fewer prohibitions on lying, quicker responses to phone calls, and sometimes, people told you things just because you asked. Now to find the address for one Abby Joiner.

  Yeah, I thought, yeah I could do this. The department was missing out on their best detective, and I’d prove it to them.

  Oh—I glanced at the clock—if I was going down to the manufacturing district, I’d have time to swing by and serve a set of papers for the city and get paid for that, too. Enough of those little paychecks, and I might be able to pay a bill just from that.

  Twenty minutes later, papers served, feeling self-righteous after the look on the cheating husband’s face, I found a payphone in the right district with a relatively new soya-paper phone book printed up and ready to go.

  Above the phone book, right on the bottom part of the payphone rectangle, was a too-bright yellow sticker that said Reminder: You Are Now In a Radiation Zone. I made a face and fished out the medicine tube I’d bought at the local drug store and swallowed down the foul green liquid, almost gagging. They did not make the effective ones in anything but bitter orange. I threw the tube in the small compactor at the side of the booth, and it made a whirring sound as it processed, recycled, and then compacted any remaining material.

  Then I went back to the phone book, paging through until I found what I wanted—the address of the woman I’d be visiting. Behind me, someone made a huffing sound, impatient.

  I glanced back; it was an older, large-boned woman with a small anti-gravity assist cart, probably intended to tote groceries. From my training, I knew that anti-grav cart could turn into quite a weapon, but from experience, I knew that very few people ever thought of using it as such. “Is there a problem here?” I asked in my best don’t-fuck-with-me tone.

  “You
’re hogging the phone,” she said, flatly.

  “You’re hogging the street,” I said, no sympathy. But I copied down the address and moved out of the way. I was done anyway.

  I got back in the car, which I’d parked halfway up on the curb, and pulled out gently, to avoid hitting pedestrians. Then I punched the fusion-powered engine up a little and moved up into the sky lanes, where I’d be at the top of the world. Back in control of myself, the car, and all the other idiot drivers—I flashed a trucker the bird and pulled out ahead.

  I knocked on the door of apartment 8A, the residence of one Abby Joiner. Considering how quickly she came to the door and how much she scowled at me when she opened the thing, I had probably overdone it on the knocking volume.

  “What?” she demanded in a hostile tone.

  “I need to ask you a few questions about your ex-boyfriend, James Collins.”

  That made her brows come together in an expression of anger, but this time, I didn’t think it was all directed at me. “Bastard probably called the cops on me again,” she said and opened the door wide enough for me to move past her. Maybe this PI thing would be easy; if people made a habit of assuming I was a cop and acted accordingly. Somehow I doubted life would be that simple, though.

  “What is the bastard saying this time?” she asked me, folding her arms, leaning against a scuffed cabinet covered by an even more scuffed countertop. We stood in a small apartment kitchen area, not the nicest apartment in the world, with linoleum and fixtures. It was clean, at least, and the small, open living room area on the other side of the kitchen had a little tri-dee/television set up in front of a couch that had seen better days, as well. A cat glared at me from the sofa cushion next to the remote control, as if he was daring me to move him.

  Abby Joiner had probably been a knockout ten years before this, and despite the sallow skin and stained nails of a smoker, combined with the dark circles and wrinkles of a bitter life, she had plenty of pretty left in her. Thick, curly hair cascaded down her back, bright blue eyes were highlighted with expert makeup, and she had on a very good push-up bra under a low-cut t-shirt, which told me everything I needed to know about her in one piece of clothing. Anybody who’d wear a push-up bra around the house was trying too hard.

  “Well?” she asked me. “What is he saying?”

  I realized that I’d come in here without a solid plan of attack. I was getting lazy in my old age; usually, I let Adam interrogate people—he was the telepath and he had a scary predilection for getting people to spill secrets, so there hadn’t been any need for me to do much but observe lately. Time to snap out of that if I was supposed to be earning my keep here.

  “Well, Ms. Joiner, he’s claiming that you deliberately set fire to his garage and that you’ve threatened to do the same and worse if he doesn’t give you money.”

  That made her scowl, and the scowl took away all the pretty. “Bastard cheated on me. With four girls and a prostitute. Four! And a prostitute! Did he tell you that? He didn’t even have the decency to get tested for an STD! And then, when I made a scene, he had me dragged into the police for bad driving. Like he didn’t run a red light to save his life! He deserved having his garage on fire, hell, he deserved having his whole damn life go up in flames. It’s just a crying shame the fire went out before it did any real damage.”

  I was tempted to quote arson law to her, but I’d seen Adam agree with the suspect and get a lot further, and if there was anything I could agree with in all the world, it was the stupidity of men. “He does sound like a real bastard when you put it that way, yeah. And he reported you for bad driving? Really?” The last I said with some real heat; I hated it when stupid people complained about my driving, too. “It’s not like you got into an accident,” I said.

  She shrugged. “Well, I did, but that wasn’t the point!”

  “What was the point?”

  “He’s a bastard,” she said.

  “I can see that. Is that why you’re demanding money from him? How long were you guys together anyway?”

  She opened her mouth and then closed it, shook her head. “Seven months, and I’ll be totally honest with you, I don’t have a single problem with milking the man for every cent he’s got, but that’s just not me. I wish I’d thought of it, I do. But when we broke up, I said I was done with him. Until the whole cheating thing came out, and honestly, anybody would have done the same thing there. I was upset, and I hadn’t gotten the tests back yet.”

  “Everything okay?” I asked. It was like a soap opera; I couldn’t not ask, I couldn’t look away.

  “Bastard gave me a bug, but it was a treatable one and I sent his lawyer the bill. He paid it, too.”

  “Surely you didn’t set fire to his garage just for an STD, especially once his lawyer paid for the treatment.”

  “He deserved it, the bastard. You can’t just treat people like that and walk away. It ain’t right.”

  “So you set fire to his garage?” I said, not quite sure I understood, not really. I’d seen worse as a cop; people killed over stupid things—but this seemed extreme even so.

  She crossed her arms. “Where I come from, you don’t stand up for yourself, half the world comes calling, wanting theirs. I set him in his place, and I’d do it again. A girl’s got to have standards.”

  Okay. That almost made sense. Another question then, the critical one. “Can you think of anyone who would want to hurt your ex?” I asked.

  She laughed, and it was an ugly sound. “He’s got a list a mile long, and that’s the truth. I can’t be the only one he was cheating on. Somebody’s going to cut him one of these days, you mark my words. Money ain’t no excuse for that kind of disrespect.” I felt the anger from her, real anger, dangerous anger, and I sympathized. But I had to ask.

  “Do you know if he has any secrets that might make somebody try to hurt him?” I was getting perilously close to suggesting the blackmail outright, but something smelled a little off here, for all I believed what she was saying.

  “That man?” she laughed, an angry sound that made me angry too, somehow. “That man’s got more secrets than a cheetah’s got spots. Of course he’s got stuff that would make somebody want to hurt him. If there’s any justice in the world, he’ll get his. And soon.”

  “From you?” I asked.

  She looked up then and met my eyes. “No, not from me. He deserves it, the prick, but I got stuff to do and I can’t be getting in trouble with the cops. No, that union, maybe. Or that lawyer of his, or one of the employees he’s screwed over—there’s got to be dozens, not to mention the exes and whatever criminals are connected to whatever foolish business he thinks he’s running. I don’t got to do a thing—karma’ll get him his.”

  I asked a few more questions, trying, but she didn’t give me anything more helpful, and the more I tried, the angrier she got, so I left.

  Knocking on doors didn’t always get you what you wanted the first time, but it did eventually if you kept at it. I’d have to keep at it. This one didn’t seem smart enough, or with it enough, to blackmail the guy, for all I believed she’d set fire to his garage and might do it again given the right motivation. Might do worse, given that motivation.

  So it was time to keep moving.

  I arrived in front of a low, decrepit brick building south of the city, part of a strip mall where half the occupants had folded up and blown away years ago. The Steel Workers’ Union had a sign up, a small one, in the middle of two other signs for other unions—apparently, they shared space. But the space they shared wasn’t nearly as sad as it looked from the outside; when I walked in the front door, a huge area the size of a soccer field opened up, clean and fresh with potted plants next to the entrance. A few doors opened on either side, glass doors to let the rank and file in the cubicles ahead of me still see what their bosses were up to. I’d seen wealthy politicians provide worse spaces for their political campaigns; the union didn’t do so bad for itself.

  A teen with bright blue hair sna
pped gum from behind a reception desk at the front; she smiled at me with a contemptuous sneer that you only get when you’re sixteen and full of yourself. “What are you here for?” she asked.

  “Here to see Todd Elmer,” I told her. Elmer was the head of the union.

  “What about?”

  I smiled back, not an entirely pleasant expression, and said, “Oh, trust me, Mr. Elmer will want to see me.” All bluff, of course, but what was life without a little bluff?

  Her smirk slipped and she stared for a moment before picking up the phone in front of her. I heard a ring from farther in, and a few whispered words later, I found myself facing a short, dense, dark-skinned man with very powerful arms.

  “I’m Todd Elmer,” he said and then explained that he was the president of the union branch in charge of the workers who worked for Collins’ factory. “What exactly are you here for?”

  “If you have some private space where we can talk…?” I said, ignoring the question.

  He frowned, but apparently, I still had the right tone of confidence because he took me to a small office and closed the glass door.

  “And you are?” he prompted.

  “Isabella Cherabino. I’m doing an investigation,” I said and nothing else. I got settled in the guest chair, all the way back with my feet out in front of me, a stance of power and assurance. “Mr. Elmer,” I said. “You’re a union man.”

  He perched on the edge of the desk and looked at me, just looked. “I’m going to have to know who you are and what you want at some point,” he said. “We’re a public union. We pay all our dues to the parent organization and we get plenty of oversights. I don’t know what you’re fishing for—”

  “I’m not fishing,” I said, realizing he probably thought I was a reporter. I was perfectly happy for it to be that way. I pulled my feet in, sat forward, and decided to take the direct approach. “I have heard through the grapevine that the owner of your factory, Collins, is currently receiving death threats. And that you know who is making them.”