The Staler

I had to delay my nap because the phone was ringing when I walked into the house. It was Roscoe.

"You still available?" he asked.

"I picked up another bodyguard job after you left," I said.

"Damn," he said. "How long you going to be tied up on that?"

"I signed on for three weeks," I said.

"Damn," he said. "You can't get out of it?"

"I'm kind of committed," I said. "I did take the money. What's this deal you have going?"

"It's a woman lives not far from you," he said. "Her name's Jennifer Wilkins."

Hearing Jennifer's name rocked me. I'd had a brief relationship with her a year and a half earlier, one she broke off suddenly, just when I thought it looked promising. I thought about her often. I'd even begun calling her a couple of times, but didn't follow through. For some reason, she'd stuck in my mind.

Roscoe had continued to tell me about the job, but he must have sensed something was wrong. "You're damn quiet all of a sudden," he said. "Something wrong?"

"I...I guess not," I replied. "I know the lady you're talking about. I thought she was married, though."

"Her husband killed himself six months ago," Roscoe told me. "Would you believe he had AIDS? I mean, if you know this lady, you know she's about as gorgeous as they get. Why in the hell would a guy do stuff to get AIDS if he had a wife like her?"

"Roscoe, you of all people, should know that people do things that don't make sense," I said. I knew I had to work on Jennifer's case, although I wasn't exactly sure why it was so important to me. "What's happening to this woman that makes her need protection?"

"I guess she took up with this guy who's causing her all this grief shortly after her husband died," he said. "She wasn't too serious about him, but apparently he got pretty obsessed about her. Anyhow, when she gave him the boot, he started harassing and threatening her."

"Did she call the cops?" I asked.

"Of course," Roscoe replied. "She's got more clout than your average citizen. Her late husband was a big political contributor. The mayor owes him, so does the governor. The state CIB and local detectives have been working on this, but they can't nail the guy with anything. He's pretty slick, from what I've seen reading the police reports."

"What's he done?" I asked.

"Harassing phone calls to start with," Roscoe said, "but he's slick, he has some kind of electronic device that screwed up the cops equipment when they tried to trap his calls. Then he moved on to getting stuff into her house. He's really good, too. He managed to bypass the security system and she's got one of the best ones going. The latest thing has been death threats, you know, 'If I can't have you, nobody can,' that kind of shit."

"So this isn't just some average bozo," I said.

"Not hardly," Roscoe replied. "His name is Raymond Gleason. He's a lawyer, works for a big name firm from New York, and they're supporting him. The cops hauled him in for questioning half a dozen times, then the firm threatened to file a harassment lawsuit against the cops, so the cops backed off. It's a real pisser. The cops know this guy is doing it, but they can't nail him with a damn thing."

"What are we supposed to do?" I asked.

"Keep her safe," Roscoe replied. "We'll have to have someone with her as long as it takes for this asshole to screw up, I guess. That's why I need you. I got a couple other jobs going and I'm a little short on quality people, you know? I mean, I got lots of guys could keep this lady safe, but some of them would look real out of place in her social set."

I knew what he meant. He had a lot of ex-cops working for him who were, for want of a better word, too "free thinking" to remain on the force. A lot of them were people who'd worked in deep undercover assignments on large departments and couldn't make the adjustment back to normal routine police work. Roscoe managed to keep them busy and to use their skills in very productive ways. The thing was, a lot of them were pretty scruffy, not the kind of people who could guard someone at the kinds of social events Jennifer attended.

"Damn, Roscoe," I said. "I wish you'd told me this the other day."

"I didn't know it then," he said. "You sure you can't dump this case of yours on someone else? Maybe I could give you somebody."

"I can't do that," I said. "I gave her my word I'd protect her, so I have to do it." A thought occurred to me. "Look, if you give me a hand with this case I'm working on," I told him, "maybe I can wrap it up and give you a hand with yours."

"What do you need?" Roscoe asked.

"Everything you can get me on a guy named Billy Devlin," I said. I gave him Billy's date of birth and other vital statistics. I'd gotten them from his employment file at the health club.

"You looking for anything in particular on him?" Roscoe asked.

"I need to know enough about him so I can figure out his weaknesses," I said.

"I'll see what I can do," Roscoe said. "You gonna help me with my case if I help you clear yours?"

"You can count on it," I said.

"I'll get back to you as soon as I know something," Roscoe said. The phone went dead.