Bluff Walk. Charles R. Crawford

fast food outlet known to man to the west precinct station house, parked, and walked in. The police probably wouldn’t tell me anything, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask. And if I asked in person, instead of over the telephone, it might be a little bit harder to say no.

      Except for the police cars parked around, the station looks like any other business on the street. It doesn’t look much different in the public areas inside, either, except for the uniforms, and it smells better than the fast food restaurants, since all arrested suspects go directly to the Criminal Justice Center downtown without a stop at the precinct.

      The civilian receptionist took my card and request to speak to a detective and politely asked me to take a seat. I sat down and flipped through a fitness magazine. I had just decided that the text wasn’t much but that some of the pictures were pretty good when a door opened and a voice said “Mr. McAlister?”

      I looked up and saw an angular white man well over six feet, with his wet looking dark blond hair cut just on the long side of a flattop. He was wearing grey pleated slacks, a starched blue button down shirt and an expensive-looking tie that matched his light green eyes. An empty tan leather holster was attached to the belt on the left side of his waist, positioned for a cross draw with his right hand.

      “Yes,” I said, standing up. He stuck out his right hand and introduced himself. “I’m Lieutenant Steiner, detective squad. I understand that you asked for a detective?”

      I nodded my head as I shook his hand. “Come on back to my office,” he said, leading me through the door.

      I followed him down a couple of halls, breathing his cologne and another half familiar scent all the way. A surreptitious sniff at my hand revealed that I smelled like both odors now, too.

      He turned into a small office that contained a metal desk and a swivel chair, and was lined with filing cabinets. It was an internal office, so there were no windows. There were no photographs on the walls or desk, just a pile of folders on one side and a spread open newspaper on the other side. On the newspaper there was a greasy looking rag and a short pistol barrel cleaning rod with a dirty cotton patch stuck in the end. An open bottle of Hoppe’s gun oil lent its fruity smell to the room and answered my question about the mystery odor. A Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special with the three inch barrel and an open cylinder lay on the paper beside a box of .38 Special hollow points.

      “Sorry for the mess,” he said, sitting down behind the desk and waving at another chair. “I was at the range this morning and I didn’t get a chance to clean my weapon there.”

      “No problem,” I said. “I’ve always liked the smell of Hoppe’s. It reminds me of my father. He would always use it to clean his shotgun after he went duck hunting.”

      “You duck hunt?” he asked, running the rod through each one of the chambers in the cylinder.

      “Sometimes,” I said. “I don’t belong to a club, but I’ll go two or three times a year with friends. Sort of for old times sake. What about you?”

      “No, I’m out at four in the morning freezing my ass off enough in this job not to want to do it for fun.”

      I could have asked him about his golf game then, or whether he was a University of Memphis basketball fan, and kept on talking for another fifteen or twenty minutes about nothing. But I didn’t say anything for a minute while he peered through each of the five chambers.

      He then set the gun down on the paper with the cylinder still open. “So, how can I help you?”

      I explained about Thomas, and told him the name of the two arresting officers. “I was told they were working out of this precinct, and so I thought you might be able to tell me something that would help me find Tuggle,” I said. “I assume you’re looking for him, too, so I figured you wouldn’t mind telling me what you know,” I lied. “I’ll be glad to tell you what I know, but it’s not much.”

      “I’m familiar with the Tuggle case,” he said. “But you go first.”

      I had already decided that, despite Lucy’s wishes, talking to the police wouldn’t harm Thomas. She had the ingrained distrust of the police that was almost a genetic code in many of her race, even though the mayor and about half of the force were now black. The police were already looking for Thomas, and they might let something slip that would let me find him first. If I found him, I could then decide what to do about the law. And I doubted that I knew anything that they didn’t.

      I told him that I was working for the family, and that I had talked to Thomas’s bail bondsman. I told him that Jackson didn’t think Thomas was a crack dealer, but I didn’t mention his other business. Basically, I told him that I didn’t have anything.

      When I had finished, he said, “That’s it so far, huh?”

      “Yeah, it’s not much, and I don’t know if it’s going to get any better,” I said.

      “You realize if you find him that you have a legal obligation to advise us, right? If you don’t, you’ll be an accessory,” he said.

      “I hadn’t really thought about it like that, but I guess you’re right,” I said.

      “Now,” he said, “you said you’re working for his family. Do you mind telling me exactly which family member?”

      I didn’t see any point in not answering, so I told him I was working for Thomas’s mother.

      “If a crack dealer’s mother is paying you to look for him, she’s probably doing it with money he made selling crack,” he said. “That bother you?”

      I started to tell him about Amanda, but decided not to. I didn’t want him calling her and asking her questions.

      I shrugged. “I don’t have any indications that’s where she’s getting my fee.”

      He smiled and began to load his revolver.

      “I’m serious,” I said. “His mother doesn’t think he’s a crack dealer, which I admit doesn’t carry a hell of a lot of weight, but neither does his bondsman. His bondsman said he wouldn’t have put up the bond for him if he thought he was.”

      Steiner was picking rounds out of the cartridge box using the oily rag to cover his fingers. He didn’t want fingerprint oil to get on the shells and then transfer to the insides of the cylinder and cause rust. He filled all five chambers, and then gently closed the cylinder using the oily rag over his hand. Holding only the checkered walnut grips, he slipped the little gun into its holster and snapped the strap.

      “Everybody else is going around with fifteen shot semi-automatics these days. You feel comfortable with a five shot revolver?” I asked.

      “You know what they say,” he replied, grinning. “It’s not what you got, but how you use it. No, really, the guys out in the patrol cars need the firepower, they never know what’s going to pop up. But I’m comfortable with five shots in my job because I know where they’re going, and most of the people who’ll be shooting at me with their Berettas and Glocks have no idea how to hit anything with a firearm. They watch television, they think you just point the gun in the general direction of someone, pull the trigger, and they fall over dead. They need fifteen shots to have a chance of connecting, and they’re still most likely to shoot some innocent passerby.”

      “You know this from experience?” I asked.

      “Yeah,” he said and grinned again, with a sparkle in his eyes.

      I smiled back at him automatically, but I didn’t like that grin. When I didn’t say anything, he asked, “What else do you know about Thomas Tuggle?”

      “Jackson, his bondsman, told me he had served time for receiving stolen property. I’ve got his picture and his address. That’s about it.”

      “That’s not much.” He screwed the top back on the bottle of Hoppe’s and stuck it in a shoebox with the rest of the cleaning material. He put the top on the box and put it away in a drawer. Either he hadn’t