Jack Davis Mystery - 01 - Shakedown by Joel Goldman Page B

his suspenders. “My sister gone missing.”
    I looked at Grisnik, who nodded at me. “What’s your sister’s name?” I asked.
    “Oleta Phillips.”

Chapter Fifteen
     
    “Tell Agent Davis when it was you last saw your sister.”
    Rodney Jensen pulled at both of his chins. “Day before yesterday. We was all standin’ outside where Marcellus and them stay at. Oleta, she went to see Marcellus on account of her boy, Tony, gettin’ hisself killed. Boy worked for Marcellus, and Marcellus, he done the right thing. Give Oleta three thousand dollars—funeral benefits, he called it.”
    “Tell Agent Davis what kind of bills Marcellus gave your sister,” Grisnik said.
    “All twenties. I seen ‘em.”
    “You seen the money since?”
    “No, sir. I ain’t seen the money and I ain’t seen my sister.”
    “What makes you think she’s missing instead of just off on her own?” Grisnik asked.
    “She don’t got no off on her own. She stays with me. She ain’t been home in two nights.”
    “Do you have a picture of your sister?”
    “Might have one in the house.”
    “See if you can find it and then you go with the officers. They’ll take you downtown so one of our detectives can get the rest of your information,” Grisnik told him. “Let’s go for a ride,” he said to me. “I’ll drive.”
    The Crown Vic was clean, but lived in, the upholstery faded and coffee-stained, the faint smell of cigarettes hanging in the air. The two-way radio hummed with calls to be answered. Grisnik ignored them, easing the car from the curb, letting it glide down the street barely above idle.
    “Troy Clark came from here,” he said when he turned east at the first cross street.
    “That’s right. You, too?”
    He gave me a sideways grin. “No. I grew up in Strawberry Hill. Not too many Croatians lived in Quindaro. They had their neighborhood and we had ours, us and the Poles and the Lithuanians, even a few Dutch. It was real nice until they cut it in half with I-70. Some called it the Canyon after that but we still call it Strawberry Hill. It’s finally coming back, like a lot of the rest of the city.”
    “Except for Quindaro.”
    “Doesn’t help when people like Troy Clark turn their backs.”
    “If you mean he shouldn’t freeze you out of the investigation because you both grew up here, you can forget it. That’s not the way Troy thinks.”
    “How does he think?”
    “He thinks about the case, how to pull it together. All he wants is to do it right and get it right.”
    “Even if he shits all over you?”
    I thought about Grisnik’s question, though I knew the answer. “Yeah, even if he shits all over me.”
    Grisnik turned north. We were skirting around Marcellus’s block. The streets were quiet.
    “I know why you pulled that scam with the fugitive warrant,” Grisnik said.
    I didn’t answer. If he knew, he’d tell me. I’d learn more by letting him.
    “You figure someone in my department was taking money from Marcellus. Could have been me. Could have been those two officers. Could have been the whole goddamn department. But you didn’t care who it was so long as word got back to Marcellus. That way he’d be ready for you when you showed up with that phony warrant. That’s why you wanted our cops to back you up. The more cops knew about the warrant, the more likely someone would tell Marcellus.”
    We were doing the dance, giving a little to get a little, hoping to get a lot more. There was no reason not to play.
    “I put a camera in the ceiling fan in the front room.”
    “So you got the killer on tape?”
    “Lights went out just before the shooting started.”
    “That’s real handy. Makes you wonder if the killer knew about the camera.”
    “That it does.”
    “Anyone outside of your squad know about the camera?” Grisnik asked.
    “Hard to say.”
    “Looks like you and me might have the same problem.”
    “And I didn’t think we had anything in common.”
    He parked the car at the next