Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [13]
It was a familiar feeling. He tended to be depressed. At least they’d told him he did, “they” being his ex-wife and two pop-psychologist daughters, his boss at the Washington, D.C., MPD, his chiropractor, primary care physician, and a few others including a nosy, chatterbox neighbor, the bartender at his favorite hangout down the street from his apartment, and Flo Combes, his current lady friend. He never argued with them; what was the use? It wasn’t as if bouts of the blues rendered him useless, curled up in the fetal position for days on end. If he was depressed it was because he had reason to be. Perpetually happy people got on his nerves. There was plenty to be depressed about. All you had to do was turn on TV at any hour, or spend your days as a cop dealing with the dregs of society.
“You want another?” the bartender called from where he was drying glasses.
“No. Hey, do I look depressed to you?” Brixton asked.
He meant it as a joke, but the bartender looked at him as though deciding whether his customer was crazy and about to cause a scene.
“Forget it,” Brixton said as he tossed down some cash and left, aware that the bartender was watching his every step, poised to reach for the baseball bat he undoubtedly kept behind the bar.
Brixton walked slowly in the direction of his office. A police cruiser passed with two uniformed officers in it. It brought back memories and he smiled for the first time that afternoon.
Half a block from his building he noticed the red pickup truck parked across the street, the driver sitting stoically behind the wheel, windows open, puffing on a cigarette. Brixton realized he hadn’t had a cigarette since leaving the attorney’s office and wanted one. Instead, he crossed the street and went up to the passenger side of the truck, leaned on the door, and smiled. “Hello,” he said.
The driver was big and bulky, a dyed blond with a scraggly reddish blond beard, wearing a faded blue-and-white short-sleeved shirt open to his navel, and jeans. His face and massive arms were sunburned, an outdoors kind of guy. He scowled at Brixton.
“Why do I get the feeling that you’re interested in me?” Brixton asked, widening his smile.
“Get lost,” the driver said.
“For some reason I’ve seen you too often where I’ve been,” Brixton said, taking note of the shotgun rack over the driver’s seat.
“What the hell are you, some fag trolling for queers. Get lost!”
“Oh, you shouldn’t talk like that,” Brixton said, maintaining his pleasant disposition despite wanting to reach in and smack him.
The driver started the engine, snapped the gearshift into Drive, and burned rubber as he spun away from the curb, almost dragging Brixton with him. Checking the truck’s license plate was second nature to Brixton and he wrote it down on a receipt he pulled from his shirt pocket. It was at times like this that he wished he were still on the force, whipping out his badge and weapon and taking the blond hulk down a peg.
The brief confrontation snapped him out of his dark mood. After a quick cigarette, he went to the office, poured himself a thimble-size shot of scotch from a bottle he kept in a desk drawer, put his feet up on the desk, and processed what had transpired over the past two days. A few things nagged at him.
The first was the series of phone calls Eunice Watkins had starting receiving.
The second was the moron in the red truck.
She hadn’t received such calls until she’d visited him the day before.
And the pickup and its driver had started showing up at the same time.
Coincidence?
Possibly.
Then again …
The ringing phone interrupted his introspection. It was Wayne St. Pierre.
“I’m callin’ to invite you to a soiree at the old homestead,” St. Pierre said.
“What’s the occasion?” Brixton asked.
“Do I need an ‘occasion’ to throw a party? Just havin’ a few friends over for cocktails and thought you and your lovely lady, Miss