Q Is for Quarry

snapped.

Chapter 9
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    With Stacey back in the hospital for a second time in five days, I volunteered to take the Monday interview with Lorenzo Rickman. Dolan had offered to do it, but I knew he was eager to be on hand when the doctors talked to Stacey about this latest round of tests. As it turned out, my chat with Rickman was brief and unproductive. We stood in the service bay of an import repair shop that smelled of gasoline fumes, motor oil, and new tires. The floor, work benches, and all available countertops were littered with a jumble of tools and equipment, parts, manuals, blackened spark plugs, cracked cylinder heads, valves, fan belts, drive shafts, alternators, and exhaust manifolds.
    Rickman was in his late thirties with an angular face and a neck that appeared too thin to hold his head upright. His dark hair was receding, a few feathers combed down on his forehead to form a fringe of sparse bangs. A beard, closely trimmed, ran along the line of his jaw, and he stroked it reflexively with fingers blackened by oil. His uniform probably wasn't any different than the outfits he'd worn in prison, except for the machine-embroidered name above his left shirt pocket. He made a show of being cooperative, but he had no memory of incarceration with Frankie Miracle.
    He shook his head. "Can't help. Name doesn't ring a bell. I was only in jail the one night. First thing the next morning, a friend of mine bailed me out, but only after I promised to join AA. I've been on the wagon-well, more or less ever since." He smiled briefly while he smoothed his hair toward his forehead. "I still get in trouble with the law, but at least I'm clean and sober – condition of my parole. Right now, I do, you know, five, six meetings a week. Not that I like hanging out with dudes hyped up on coffee and cigarettes, but it sure beats incarceration." He put his hands in his back pockets and then changed his mind and crossed his arms, fingers drifting back to his beard, which he stroked with his thumb.
    "What about the other guys in the cell that night? You remember anything about them?"
    "Nope. Sorry. I was eighteen years old, drunk and stoned the night they picked me up. My second or third blackout, I forget which. Third, I think. I could've been in with Charlie Manson and you couldn't prove it by me."
    I tried priming the pump, claiming we had a witness who was there at the same time and said Frankie'd bragged about a killing. This generated no response. I handed him the packet of photographs, which he shuffled through carelessly. He shook his head and handed them back. "Look like a bunch of thugs."
    I tucked the photos in my bag. "I know this is none of my business, but what'd you do to warrant a prison sentence?"
    His fingers became still and then he pulled at a thatch of beard growing under his chin. "What makes you ask?"
    "No reason. I'm just curious."
    "I don't really care to say."
    "Ah. My fault. Sorry. It's your business, of course. I didn't mean to step on your toes." I gave him my card, offering the standard line. "Thanks for your time. If you think of anything, will you let us know?"
    "Sure."
    "Can I ask one more thing? You think you're out for good?"
    He considered my question and then smiled to himself. "I doubt it."
    I stopped off at the hospital on my way into town. Stacey was back on 6 Central, in another private room located down the hall from the room he'd had before. When I glanced in, his bed was empty. Beside it, a wide window looked out on a view of the ocean, maybe two miles away, across the shaggy treetops. An occasional glimpse of a red-tile roof punctuated the thick expanse of green. The room was airy; spacious enough to accommodate a forty-eight-inch round table and four captain's chairs, where I found Dolan sitting with a tattered copy of Road & Track.
    "Oh, hi. Where's Stace?"
    "In X-ray. He should be back in a bit."
    "How's he doing?"
    "Don't know yet. What'd Rickman say?"
    "Regrettably, not much." I filled him in on my conversation. "I think we can safely write him off. Probably Pudgie as well. He's cagey, but dumb, and I don't trust the combination. So now what?"
    Dolan set his magazine aside. He wore a dark blue windbreaker and a Dodgers baseball cap. "Stacey never got a chance to call Joe Mandel to see if he can lay hands on Jane Doe's effects. Soon as he's got a minute, he's going to do that. Meantime, we thought you might have a phone chat with this C. K. Vogel fellow that Arne was talking about.