“Me too,” I said.
“Michigan game in a couple weeks. People get strange ideas.”
“Strange,” I said. But he wasn’t half wrong. The insults and heckling always go up the second half of November, right before the big game.
We left it at that because there wasn’t anything else to do. I was the victim of a victimless crime, unless you counted the busted doorjamb and the mess inside. The officer took my essentials and gave me a case number. When he’d gone, I walked next door and knocked on Shelley’s door and thanked her for calling the police.
“Did you lose much?” she said.
“Peace of mind.”
I went inside and cleaned up as best I could. Took me an hour just to get the basics back in place.
It was past nine o’clock when I realized I still hadn’t brought Pete’s equipment inside. Making sure the broken door would at least stay closed, if not locked, I headed out to retrieve it.
Like a lot of people, I love German Village and hate the parking hassles that can come with it. On rare occasions the stars align and I’ll find a space along Mohawk near my house. But more often than not, I end up following a tiresome routine: drive down to Whittier, turn right, turn right on Lazelle and then right again on Lansing where I begin eyeballing empty spots. It could be worse, I suppose. For a guy whose college football past had brainwashed me to suspect all things Michigan, Lansing wasn’t quite as bad a name for the half-alley half-street as, say, Ann Arbor. And it was generally well lit, except for tonight, when one of the lights was out. But it felt, well, just a little lonelier on Lansing compared to Mohawk. It was, as I said, still the city.
After I got to the van, I opened up the rear, lifted out the box, put it on the ground, then reached farther in and retrieved my trusty baseball bat. I shut the door and hit the van’s remote lock. Bat in hand, I picked up the box and had started walking up Lansing to Mohawk when I heard the sound behind me. Then came the voice.
“Hey! Woody Hayes!”
12
“Your lucky night,” the man standing over me was saying. “A burglary and an assault.”
I said, “Maybe we should wrap this up so I can go buy a lottery ticket.”
I was sitting on the side of an emergency room hospital bed in Grant Medical Center downtown. My head felt like someone had massaged it with the claw end of a hammer, my arms ached if I let them relax by my sides and ached even more if I lifted them off the bed, and my left knee did not appear to be working. On my left a nurse was swabbing something cold and stingy on my shoulder. “This is going to hurt,” she said. “A lot.”
“Honesty appreciated,” I said.
“Shit,” I said a second later. “You weren’t lying.”
“I haven’t really started yet,” she said.
In front of me stood Columbus police Detective Henry Fielding. Light reflected off his shiny white bald head, and I was pretty sure his nose, whenever it had been broken, had involved somebody’s fist and not an accidental encounter with an errant door.
“You’re a private investigator now.” A statement.
“That’s right.”
“Ever seen that movie Point Break? Keanu Reeves is an ex–Ohio State quarterback who becomes an FBI agent.”
“‘Quarterback punk,’” I said. “Yes, I’ve seen Point Break. Except I’m not an FBI agent and this isn’t Southern California. Next question.”
“OK. Got a license?”
I fished it, very painfully, out of my wallet.
“Who do you work for?” Fielding asked.
“Burke Cunningham, mostly.”
“Burke Cunningham? Guy who defends all the killers?”
“Alleged killers,” I said.
“Figured you’d say that. Anybody else?”
“I freelance. People hire me on the side.”
“Cunningham knows about those jobs?”
“Sure. Recommends people sometimes.”
“Why do you freelance? Cunningham doesn’t pay enough?”
“I have more than one ex-wife and two sons I pay a considerable sum in child support for. Happily pay, I might add. Mind explaining what all this has to do with anything?”
“Talked to the officer who took the report earlier,” Fielding said, ignoring me. “Nothing missing from your house?”
“That’s right.”
“But this time they took a laptop?”
“That’s right,” I said again.
“But not your wallet.”
“Apparently not.”
“Any idea why they didn’t take the computer the first time?”
“It was in my van,” I said. “Forgot I’d left it there. I was retrieving it after the break-in.”
“Lucky for you.”
“Lucky?”
“Lucky it was in the van. At least the first time they came by.”
“That’s assuming it was the same people.”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know. There was only one guy in the alley. Gal next door saw two leave my house.”
“Only one guy that you saw.”
“I put up a little bit of a fight,” I said. “I’m thinking a second guy would have jumped in to help.”
“Waiting in a getaway car?” Fielding suggested.
“He wasn’t dressed the same way.”
“The same way?”
“This guy was in all dark clothes. The other guys were wearing gray sweatshirts.”
“OK, same gang, third guy. You said it sounded like he knew who you were.”
“Everybody knows who I am. The first nurse in here gave me a look like I kill puppies in my spare time.”
“Do you?” said the nurse working on my shoulder.
“Only if their eyes aren’t open yet,” I said. “I’m sure he recognized me. You did, didn’t you?”
“Anything important on the laptop,” Fielding said, ignoring me again.
“Important enough,” I said carefully. “Files, documents. The usual.”
Fielding said, “I’m just wondering. A break-in, nothing taken. Pretty rare, in my book. An hour later, you’re jumped and he leaves your wallet but grabs the one valuable thing that wasn’t in the house earlier. Leaves a pretty nice video camera, too.”
“OK.”
“Just seems odd, is all.” He waited. I didn’t say anything. Problem was, I agreed with him.
I was starting to wonder whether it was time to come clean about Pete Freeley and Jennifer Rawlings when the nurse who’d been torturing my shoulder interrupted.
“Gotta take your pulse,” she said.
“It’s sixty-eight,” I said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I’ve got a resting pulse of sixty-eight.”
“Thank you, Dr. Kildare,” she