The Referral Game

feels was coming to her all along.”
    “It’s still got that divorce work feel to it,” I said.
    “Listen,” Frank went on. “All I told him was that you would talk to him. If he gives you bad vibes then skate. I just thought you could use the work.”
    He was right about that, but it rankled a little anyway.
    “Alright when does he want to meet?”
    “Tonight he’ll be there at six. I already set up an appointment for you. No charge,” He said with a laugh.
    “ What if my dance card had been full?”
    “Is it?”
    I let that hang fire.
    “ Okay you win. But if he turns out to be a screwball you’re buying the next round.”
    “I’ve bought the last ten times, why break a streak.”
    “Okay, okay then we’ll make it eleven.”
    “How are things at the old precinct?” I asked.
    “ It’s pretty tense,” he replied. “ The media is all over us to make an arrest on this Hanson thing. And Captain Woodward is pushing for an arrest too.”
    “ Anything look promising?”
    “ Are you sure you want to hear about this Frank?”
    “ I’m not a kid Bill. I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know,” I replied with a little heat.
    “Frank we both know you’ve got a problem in this area.”
    “I’m fine.”
    “Okay, but if Woodward hears that I leaked anything to a PI, and you most of all, he’ll burn me good.”
    After all this time Woodward still had it out for me. He had gotten his way. He had practically run me out of the department. I wondered why he still hated me. Well at least it was one thing I could count on. I didn’t have many of those.
    “Consider me the Sphinx,” I said.
    “ Alright, there’s not much to tell anyway. We pulled in the usual suspects on this kind of case. We got half a dozen in interrogation right now and they’re just what you’d expect under the circumstances child molesters and various sex offenders. I don’t have to tell you the recidivism rate for this guys. One of them lived right around the corner from the Hanson place, just got out of the pen on a sexual battery charge involving a minor. You know the type.
    “ Yeah,” I sighed. I had seen enough of them in my time in uniform as he well knew. An hour-long shower at the end of a day like that and you still felt dirty. You wondered how these guys lived with themselves. At least Lady Macbeth had the good taste to go mad and all she did was put the knife in her old man’s hand. Even so the blood stuck to her. Something like that, maybe I heard it wrong. That Shakespeare was a riot.
    “ It’s a crazy world Frank. Don’t let it get to you.”
    “ Thanks for the analysis,” I shot back. “And Bill about the referral…”
    “Yeah?”
    “Thanks.”
    “Don’t mention it,” He said. And hung up without saying goodbye. I hate that.

Chapter 2

The Client

T hanks to Bill I now had an hour to kill. I pulled my travel chess set out of my desk and stared at it. It was one of those fold up cases where the men have magnets on the bottom so they don’t slide around. It looked pretty chintzy, but it was a nice time waster and I could carry it with me. I had been playing some guy I’d never met, except by mail, for the past two months. I saw a notice in the back of a magazine for a chess partner and replied to it. I never could talk anybody into playing for real. He was beating the pants off me, but what really bothered me was he was probably some twelve-year-old kid who went around at the school playground telling his buddies he how he was scamming me into believing he was an adult and winning the chess game all at the same time. I was in a rotten position all over the board. I was up a rook and a pawn, but he had taken my queen. When a queen doesn’t have to worry about another queen that’s bad news.
    Something made me feel like I was being watched. I looked up from my desk and there she was. She was standing in the doorway staring at me. She didn’t say a word. She never did. She was a woman of roughly twenty-five years. Long brown hair parted down the middle and brown eyes. She had high cheekbones and clear skin. I don’t know what her teeth looked like because she never smiled. She was wearing a dark blue dress belted at the waist and black low heel shoes. Her arms were at her side and she looked so sad. I don’t remember anymore when I first saw her. She just showed up at times. I used to try and talk to her, but I had long since given up on trying to get a response. I leaned back in my chair