The Fixer by T. E. Woods Read Free Book Online

secret pot of money or some other miracle, I’m afraid we must eliminate the entire department.”
     
     

Chapter Seven
    Mort walked into the Crystal Tavern just past 5:30, nodded to Mauser behind the bar and headed toward a booth in the far corner. He sat down across from a six-foot-three, two-hundred pound black man with tightly curled graying hair. He’d been meeting L. Jackson Clark for more than fifteen years. Mort made it a habit back in the day to swing into the Crystal, work a crossword puzzle, and drink one Guiness before heading the four blocks home to Edie and the kids.
    “I’m buying a beer for anybody knows an eleven-letter word for ‘accident’. Got an n and a d in the middle,” he’d called out all those years ago.
    The smattering of teachers, nurses, and stay-at-home dads who made up the Crystal’s afternoon clientele had nothing. Mort shook his head and tapped his pen against his newspaper.
    “Serendipity,” a low voice called. “Fate, luck, kismet, accident. Serendipity.”
    Mort raised up on his bar stool to see who’d given him the obviously correct word. He waved the man over, bought him his beer, and thus began their weekly ritual. Five-thirty every Thursday. The first day of the week The New York Time’s crossword puzzle gets interesting.
    Mort reached for the Guiness waiting for him. “Sorry I’m late.”
    His friend glanced at his watch. “I’d say three minutes is well within allotted grace. You look like hell. Anything you care to talk about?”
    Mort took a long sip. “Just trying to figure out how I can be such a fuck-up, is all.” He nodded to the newspaper in front of his friend. “You started? I gotta get mine from Mauser yet.”
    L. Jackson Clark pulled a second copy of the Times from the seat beside him. “Here. Only three left when I got here.”
    “Thanks.” Mort folded the paper to the puzzle and pulled out a pen. The two men worked the puzzle quietly for several minutes. “The prinicipal behind yin and yang. Forty-six down.” Mort looked up. “Make me happy I’m sitting with a professor of religious studies, Larry.”
    “Dualism.” Larry counted letters on his fingers. “Or duality. Got a clue for the last two letters?”
    “Dualism works.” Mort went back to the puzzle.
    “This have anything to do with that young girl found dead at Seattle Center?” Larry asked. “Close to Allie’s age, wasn’t she?”
    “She was.” Mort set his paper aside and watched two women at the bar playing cribbage. “What would someone with your oh-so-many years of schooling call someone who let their impatience and ego interfere with what they knew was right?”
    Larry leaned back against the booth. “I think the term is ‘human’. What happened?”
    Mort brought Larry up to speed on his failure to bring Angelo Satanell, Jr. in for the death of Meaghan Hane. “I had him, Larry. All those times Daddy got him off. This time I had him. I had the DNA. The witnesses. And I shoot my mouth off before the arrest warrant was ready. My money says Angelo, Sr. made one call. Set in motion a play that took me out of the game before I even suited up.”
    “Now wait a minute. Surely you’ll investigate what happened in that evidence room.” Larry leaned in. “A blunder on your part, to be certain. But not a crime. That’s on someone else.”
    Mort shook his head. “Investigation will turn up nothing. Our team’s spotless. It was some other way. Daddy’s money buys the best.”
    “So Satanell walks.” Larry took a sip of beer. “Just like whoever took your Allie away. That what’s got you so angry at yourself?”
    Mort leaned back and exhaled long and slow. “I don’t know. I guess I was hoping for a little justice in the world. Too much?”
    Larry unrolled a slow smile. “Now you’re walking in my world. Is there room in your calculus for divine justice?” He nodded toward Mort’s paper. “That duality you just mentioned. Yin and yang. Good and evil. They make