The Two Gentlemen of Altona (Playing the Fool, #1) Read online

  “Afternoon,” the officer said.

  “Afternoon.” Henry flashed him an apologetic smile.

  “This your car?”

  Fuck.

  Not exactly. He was borrowing it. Sort of.

  “I’m test-driving it.”

  He had taken it for a test-drive. He’d wanted to see how it would do over long distances. At night. And across various geographic terrains. Once he was in Richmond, holed up somewhere no one in Maxfield’s gang would ever find him, the dealership was welcome to take it back.

  “No plates,” the cop said.

  “I applied for them. But you know how the—”

  “Get out of the vehicle, sir. Keep your hands where I can see them.”

  “Is there a problem?” Henry kept his movements slow as he obeyed. The radio was blaring “Rapture.” He’d always liked that one. Good song to dance to.

  And here was a familiar dance now. One, two, three, and he was face-first against the hood of the car with his hands cuffed behind his back. Shame. He preferred to lead.

  “Car’s been reported stolen.”

  “I’m sure there’s been some kind of mistake,” he told the hood of the car.

  The cop frisked him; nothing in his touch to reveal that he enjoyed this part of his job any more than he should. Boring, middle-aged, straight-as-fuck cop.

  “Yeah, I’m sure there is.” A smile tempered the cop’s tone like he’d heard it all before but it never failed to amuse him. “And I’m sure we can sort it out back at the station.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Henry agreed.

  The cop plucked the wallet out of Henry’s back pocket. Flipped it open to look at his ID. An Oregon driver’s license. “You’re a long way from home, Henry Page.”

  Yeah. Sure was.

  The cop hauled him upright, then reached inside the car to pull the keys out of the ignition. He checked the floor and then the trunk. For what, Henry wasn’t sure, but he’d kept the car neat as a pin. And he traveled light.

  “This the new Chevy?” the cop asked as he shone his flashlight into the darkest corners of the trunk. “Runs all right?”

  “Oh, yeah. No V-6, but it can still get you off the lights first.”

  “Couldn’t beat that Subaru.”

  “I let him go.” No point denying it. “Look, the Subaru’s okay. A bit flashy for my tastes. All spin and no substance, you know? But the Chevrolet is nice. It’s a smooth ride. Anyway, have you got something against buying American?”

  The cop snorted. “Guess I just don’t support the industry as much as you do, huh?”

  Okay, Henry officially liked the guy.

  “I guess not,” he said with a rueful smile.

  The cop dragged Henry’s bag to the edge of the trunk and unzipped it. Stared at the bulk packages of Skittles, M&M’s, and gummy bears. “Anything in here I ought to know about? Any weapons? Sharps? Drugs?”

  “No, sir. Nothing in there but food and a book.”

  The cop checked carefully. “You never said where you were heading.”

  “Richmond.” He’d kind of hoped to get farther than Dayton, Ohio. Shit, he was still in spitting distance of Dean Maxfield. And he’d seen what Maxfield could do to a guy’s skull, with the help of . . . what was it? A .44? Henry knew nothing about guns, except that he didn’t want to be on the wrong end of one. Ever.

  “Richmond,” the cop repeated, like he didn’t believe it.

  “I’ve got friends down that way.” Henry leaned on the side of the car and watched the traffic.

  The thing with lying, Stacy always said, was not to complicate shit. And she said it quite a lot to Henry, who liked to add a bit of flair to his stories. He usually enjoyed the opportunity to embellish a little, to spin out a story and see where it took him, but not with cops. Against all the odds, Henry still had a clean adult record, and hoped to keep it that way. Which wasn’t to say he’d never been arrested . . . but there was a big difference between arrest and a court appearance, and always a few chances to vanish in between.

  A kid in a passing van waved at Henry.

  Henry would have waved back, except for the cuffs.

  “Okay.” The cop zipped Henry’s bag back up. “Well, they’re gonna be waiting for you awhile.”

  Henry sighed. “Man, this is all a huge mistake.”

  “That so? Guess we’ll figure it out back at the station.”

  “I guess so,” Henry agreed, and climbed awkwardly into the cop’s cruiser.

  “What the hell, Val?” Mac slammed his hands on her desk and glowered.

  Valerie Kimura, to her credit, didn’t even flinch. She looked up from her paperwork and raised a single, quizzical eyebrow. It was a skill Mac had always secretly envied. “What the hell about what, Mac? The fact that Dean Maxfield just walked out of here?”

  “Yeah.” And the asshole had waved at Mac too.

  Val dropped the eyebrow. “What do you want me to do? He’s got enough witnesses lined up to say that he never went near Pete O’Flannery all night, and a girlfriend who swears blind they were both woken up by the gunshot.”

  “Which is bullshit.”

  “Which is bullshit,” Val agreed. “Also, we have a lab report that says the gun was clean. So what can I hold him on? The verbal statement of a witness who up and vanished?”

  Vanished. That was a nice way of not saying that Mac had let the guy walk away. Which was what everyone else in the office was saying anyway.

  He pulled out a chair and sat. “So what now?”

  “I don’t know. What now?”

  They’d been partners before her promotion, and worked together so long that Val rarely pulled rank on Mac.

  He rubbed his forehead. “Well, Toby Seacoal doesn’t exist. No surprises there.”

  Val picked up her pen and began to spin it on her desk. “So what is he? A con artist?”

  Mac thought back to his interview with Gloria Maxfield, who still thought the sun shone out of her little poetry major’s ass. “Has to be. But we’ve got his prints from the guest room at least, so if he turns up . . .”

  “All right.” Val frowned slightly. “Okay, so I’m just throwing this out there: what if Maxfield isn’t lying?”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Not kidding.” Val’s pen spun away from her, and she reached out and smacked her hand down to catch it. “Speculating. I know you’re after Maxfield, and I know the way you fixate on a target. It’s not a bad thing, Mac, but it does give you a hell of a blind spot. Any other crime scene, and who would be your first suspect?”

  “The guy who ran away.” He tried to remember Seacoal’s face. A young face. Good-looking. Brown hair. And shit, he was trained to look for details, but all he’d registered at the time was good-looking cop with a nice ass. Registered it, and filed it away to add to later when he wasn’t rushing to arrest Dean Maxfield. But he thought, he hoped, that Val was wrong. Letting a witness talk his way out of a crime scene was bad enough, but letting a killer do it . . . Mac would never live it down.

  “I don’t think he’s a killer,” Mac said. “Dean Maxfield is a killer, and he had a hell of a motive if he even suspected Pete was thinking of ratting him out.”

  Which Pete absolutely had been. Pete had a daughter, a girl who was getting in some legal trouble of her own. Trouble Mac had promised him would go away if he turned informant. Pete must have betrayed his nervousness somehow, the poor bastard, which gave Maxfield all the reason in the world to kill him. Toby Seacoal, whatever the hell else he was, could only have been a bystander.

  “So talk to Gloria again. See if there’s anything more she can tell us about this mysterious Toby Seacoal.”

  Mac nodded, then turned his head when someone knocked on the door.

  “Mac.” Calvin Hooper stepped in. “We’ve got those photos.”

  “Okay.” He stood, nodded to Val, and followed Calvin out into the main office.

  Penny’s desk was covered in photographs.
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  “Are these chronological?” Mac picked up the first one.

  Gloria Maxfield’s birthday guests. A strange mix of local gangsters, the Carmel Historical Preservation Society, and a group of women who shared Gloria’s passion for quilting.

  “I think so,” Penny said. “Some aren’t time-stamped. A few of the old ladies don’t have digital cameras.”

  “Who doesn’t have a digital camera?” Calvin said with a grimace.

  “Old ladies, Calvin.” Penny narrowed her eyes. “I just said that.”

  Even Mac, who didn’t follow office gossip at all, couldn’t mistake her contempt for the guy. Calvin had it bad for Penny and everyone knew it. Unfortunately for him, Penny thought he was a tool. Everyone knew that too.

  Calvin’s phone buzzed, and he turned away to check it.

  “Oh,” Penny murmured as she pored over the photographs. “Forgot to give some girl a fake number again.”

  Mac cleared his throat. “Have we identified everyone in these?”

  Penny nodded. “All accounted for.” And then she made a face. “Sorry.”

  He studied the photographs. He saw Toby Seacoal at the edge of one, blurred, as though he was turning away. And then in another, standing beside Gloria Maxfield as she blew out her candles, but managing to look the other way. A third: holding up a piece of cake that obscured his face.

  Clever.

  Checking the photographs, Mac got an impression of the guy, but not much more than that. “Pick the best shots and see what the lab can do. See if they can generate a composite from what we’ve got here.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m going to talk to Gloria Maxfield again.”

  She had to know something about Seacoal that would give Mac a lead. And, even if he was clutching at straws, it felt good to take some kind of action, instead of just hanging around the office staring at his reports and castigating himself for being an idiot. Also, he was getting pretty sick of the way whispered conversations stopped the second he walked by. Yeah, he’d fucked up. Yeah, could we move on, please?

  “Any chance I can come with you?” Penny asked.

  “Sorry.” He knew she was desperate to get out of the office; desperate enough to volunteer to go with the Idiot of the Week. But she was on light duty until she was medically cleared after her bout of shoulder surgery. “Calvin?”

  Calvin shoved his phone in his pocket. “Yeah, Mac?”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Sure. Let me suit up.”

  Mac just hoped Calvin wouldn’t spend the whole drive talking about how many reps he could do a minute, which half marathon he was training for, or the chick he’d banged the night before.

  He shifted impatiently. “Hurry. We’ve got to move on this.” Under his breath, he muttered, “I’ve got to move on this.”

  “You know, Mac.” Penny nudged a photo so that it was in line with the desk’s edge. “What happened with your witness? Could have happened to any of us. I mean, most witnesses don’t have the balls to pull a stunt like that.”

  “No shit. But I’d rather not talk about my witness right now. I’d rather focus on getting him back.”

  Penny stared at him, her mouth slightly open. “All right then,” she said shortly. “Good luck.”

  Five minutes later, they were walking out of the office—Calvin in the middle of a story about a woman at his gym who was gonna fuck him any day now—when Emilio caught them in reception. “Mac! We’ve got a call from Dayton PD in Ohio. They’ve got your witness in custody!”

  The tension Mac had been holding in his gut untwisted for the first time in days. “Calvin, hold that thought. I’m going to Ohio.”

  Henry had been in worse holding cells. This one was practically homey. He had it to himself, so he tried to sleep. Which was easier said than done. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Dean Maxfield fire that gun, and Pete’s head come apart like a wet sponge.

  He stared at the ceiling.

  Poor Gloria.

  Not that he had time to worry about her. Dean probably wouldn’t shoot his own aunt in the head. Henry didn’t fall into the same protected category. If Dean found him, he was as good as dead.

  Another man in the same situation might be panicking, but Henry didn’t see the point. He was safe for the moment. He just needed to get moving again, before Dean managed to track him down. Shit, he had at least another two clean aliases, and no pressing need to head back to Indianapolis anytime soon. As far as the cops knew, Henry Page was just a dumb guy who’d made an even dumber mistake. If he made bail—Stacy would come through with the cash—the cops in Dayton would never see him again.

  Fuck, he really needed to make bail.

  Or failing that, a distraction and a five-minute head start.

  He closed his eyes again and wondered when they’d give him something apart from lukewarm coffee. And the donut he’d gotten from his arresting officer after explaining he hadn’t had anything to eat in hours. Well, not explained, exactly. All he’d had done was mention it in passing, and the cop’s good nature had done the rest. His name was Rob. Or Rod. Probably Rob. If Henry hadn’t been so tired, he’d have remembered a detail like that. Rob was much friendlier than his last dealing with law enforcement: the cranky bald guy from the FBI. Who had no doubt gotten a lot crankier once he’d found that empty bathroom. Still, Henry felt he’d more than done his civic duty by calling 911, when he could just as easily have hightailed it out of there and not put himself on Dean Maxfield’s radar at all.

  Not that he hadn’t already been there.

  Shit, no.

  Dean hated him.

  “Aunt Gloria, that little asshole is trying to screw you over!”

  “Nonsense, Dean. Toby’s a good boy, and what I do with my money is my own business.”

  In fact, Dean had probably been itching for a chance to shoot him way before Henry witnessed Dean killing Pete. From the beginning, he’d fixed on Henry with the aggressive determination of a pit bull on steroids.

  Oh well. Fuck him. He could rot in jail, witness or no witness. That’s what forensics were for, right?

  The door opened and Henry sat up straight, hoping whoever was coming in had brought food.

  It was the bald FBI agent. McGuinness? McWhirter? Paddy McGinty’s goat? Fuck. He had a styrofoam cup clenched in his hand, and Henry smelled shitty coffee.

  Better let baldy make the first move. And hope that move wasn’t slamming Henry’s head against the wall.

  McCorkle looked seriously displeased. “Detective Falstaff.”

  “H’llo.” Henry kept his tone polite.

  “You,” McHappy Meal said, advancing into the cell, “are a witness to a homicide. My witness. Do you want to tell me what the fuck you think you were doing, running out like that?”

  “Ah.” He tried for a charming smile. “Impersonating a police officer?”

  “Yeah, let’s add that to your list of charges.”

  “My list?”

  “Car theft.”

  He sighed inwardly with relief. “Well, two things is hardly a list. It’s more of a pair. How did you even find me here?”

  “You left prints all over Gloria Maxfield’s house.”

  “Ah.” Damn it. Henry blamed terrorism. Suddenly every little PD in the nation had one of those fingerprint scanners with the glass plate and a direct damn link to the FBI, instead of doing it the messy, old-fashioned way—with paper, and ink, and a nice healthy delay before they got entered into the system. “I see. I’m sorry, it was Agent McGuinness, right?”

  It was only right that one of them remembered their manners.

  “That’s right. And you are?”

  Whoever his current ID said he was. “Henry Page.”

  “Not Richard Falstaff?”

  “No. No, I am not.”

  “And not Toby Seacoal?”

  “Again, no.”

  McGuinness regarded him quietly for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re
a con man.”

  “I categorically deny that baseless accusation.” He’d always preferred the word “grifter.” It seemed a little less . . . polyester suit and hair oil, and a little more Kerouac and the open road.

  “Do you?”

  “Categorically,” he said again, folding his hands in his lap. Good, solid word, categorically. It had a nice air of authority to it. It wasn’t his fault if MacGyver didn’t understand that.

  “Well, bad news. Because I don’t think it’s baseless.”

  “Do I get a lawyer?”

  “You get to come with me. Immediately.”

  “I hate lawyers.”

  “I went to law school,” McGuinness said coldly.

  “But you’re not a lawyer.”

  “Maybe I should have been. Could be putting scum like you behind bars instead of having everyone in my office whispering behind my back about how I let you walk right past me.”

  Henry gave him a slight grin. “To be fair, I make a pretty convincing police detective.”

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The lives you’ve put in danger by letting someone like Maxfield walk?”

  He was fairly sure Maxfield was the one putting people’s lives in danger—by ending them. “I didn’t let Maxfield walk. If he shot that guy, you should have found something to hold him on.”

  “You were the one who told us he shot the guy!”

  Oh, this was fun. Agent McGuinness was going to burst an important blood vessel if he wasn’t careful.

  “You know who should be our number one suspect?” McGuinness raged on. “The guy who ran.”

  “Why aren’t I?” Not that he was complaining. But he did want to know.

  “Because Maxfield shot Pete. You know it, and I know it, and you’re coming back to Indianapolis with me to tell me everything you saw that night.”

  “I’m glad you’re not a lawyer. Lawyers make me uncomfortable.”

  “And I don’t?” McGuinness sounded a little affronted.

  He studied McGuinness. All law enforcement officials made him uncomfortable, but McGuinness wasn’t so bad. Was actually attractive, and would have looked even better without the scowl. His gaze fell on McGuinness’s hand, still gripping the styrofoam cup so hard Henry was surprised it hadn’t split. He looked up at McGuinness and grinned again. “If you wanted me to be uncomfortable, you wouldn’t have put me in this luxury cell.”