Outlaws by Higgins George V

Author:Higgins, George V. [Higgins, George V.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Crime, Mystery, thriller
ISBN: 9780345804662
Amazon: 034580466X
Goodreads: 15998211
Publisher: Vintage Crime/Black Lizard
Published: 1987-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

26

At 5:45 P.M., Terry Gleason told Det. Sgt. Fred Consolo he had failed to return the first two calls from Christina Walker. He gestured at the top of his desk, covered with piles of yellow paper, trial transcripts in blue covers, manila folders spilling documents and fat brown bellows files tied with faded maroon ribbons. His red-and-blue-striped tie was down from the unbuttoned collar of his shirt; his bottom eyelids were also down, sagging under his bloodshot eyes.

“I figured,” he said, “I figured: ‘If I haven’t got enough on my plate as it is, it’s certainly enough to suit me.’ You realize how long it’s been since I’ve had six — not eight but six — consecutive hours sleep? It’s been since Memorial Day. I keep telling myself: ‘This’s the big time, Gleason, my man. This is what you wanted. The heavy-lifting, big-dough cases, ninety days of trial.’ And I guess it probably is. And I am enjoying it. But it’s the same thing, you know, the tomcat said about the affair he had with the lady skunk. ‘I really liked as much of it as I could goddam stand.’ ” He sighed. “So,” he said, “I got the messages. I knew she called. But I didn’t call her back.”

Consolo had dressed impeccably in muted brown plaid sport coat, white button-down shirt, neat patterned tie in brown and gold, lightweight grey flannel slacks with welted seams and deeply polished brown loafers. His greying hair was trimmed and brushed back at the temples. He sketched deliberately on his notepad, making diagonal lines and connecting them into tiny trapezoids. “You didn’t have the time,” he said.

Gleason shook his head. “Yes and no,” he said. “If maybe you’d’ve come up here some evening, late afternoon, nothing special on your mind, if you’d’ve just come up here and said to me: ‘Terry, my friend, let us go and have a beer,’ I would’ve been out of here like a shot. Because there wouldn’t’ve been anything complicated about that, you know? I would’ve grabbed the break. But Christina was a different story. That was complications.”

Consolo’s left eyebrow went up. He made pentagrams. “But if you didn’t know what she was calling about,” he said, on a rising inflection. “Since you didn’t know why she was calling at the time?”

“Didn’t matter,” Gleason said. “I didn’t have to know exactly what she wanted. All I had to know was that she was the one who wanted it. And that was complications.”

“I don’t think I’m tracking,” Consolo said.

“Freddie, Freddie,” Gleason said, “you gonna sit there and make me take you back to school? You know how I met Christina. You were around her brother’s case. You were gaping her yourself. Everybody was. Don’t start giving me that shit, you’re not tracking me. You know exactly what I mean, why I shied away. Don’t jerk me around.”

Consolo chuckled. He drew octagons. “But that,” he said, “that was, what, seven years ago? You gonna sit there and tell me, that still sits on your mind? You two haven’t been an item for six or seven years.

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