The Russian Takedown: Chapter 2

I had a dif­fi­cult time get­ting a call through to Pearl; she always seemed to be out some­where and I could find no one who either knew her pri­vate num­ber or was will­ing to give it to me.  Certainly, her office had no inten­tion of giv­ing it out.

Finally, I went to her office, and though she was­n’t there, I asked them to get in con­tact with her to find out when she would be back in, which pro­vid­ed me a win­dow of when I could either call again or stop in to see her.

Since I was down­town and she was expect­ed back in the office with­in an hour, I elect­ed to grab a cup of cof­fee, wait for her return and go back to her office to meet with her per­son­al­ly.  I head­ed down the street to the Broadway Café, a nice lit­tle local restau­rant that had locat­ed in a build­ing a cou­ple of blocks from the sher­if­f’s office which had once been a phar­ma­cy and before that a car deal­er­ship and, orig­i­nal­ly, I was told, a Kroger store.  The restau­rant took up only a part of the build­ing, the remain­der being used for week­ly auc­tions, draw­ing pret­ty large crowds on a Saturday night.

The ceil­ing over the restau­rant still sport­ed the pat­terned tin ceil­ing that must have been installed in the build­ing when it was first built in the 1940s, offer­ing a touch of nos­tal­gia to the place.

I took a seat at a table near the pic­ture win­dow look­ing out onto Broadway and savored a cup of hot black cof­fee while lis­ten­ing to the errant con­ver­sa­tions of near­by patrons, most of whom were busy dis­sect­ing local pol­i­tics and politicians.

When my cup was emp­tied, a very pleas­ant and thought­ful mid­dle-aged wait­ress would come by with a steam­ing carafe and offer to fill it again.  I only accept­ed the offer once, nurs­ing both cups to expend the hour until I would head back to Pearl’s office.

One of the pleas­ant things about Winchester is that, even if one is only order­ing a cup of cof­fee, the servers are almost always cour­te­ous and friend­ly and ready with a refill.  After pay­ing for the cof­fee, I left a tip that amount­ed to about three times the cost of the cof­fee, was grate­ful­ly thanked by the wait­ress, and head­ed back to catch the sher­iff … hopefully.

“Is Sheriff Drew in now?” I asked the desk clerk, who looked up with a bored expres­sion and asked, “Can I tell her your name?”

“Do you know it?” I asked try­ing to pass a joke.

His expres­sion nev­er changed as he wait­ed for me to answer his question.

“Michael Tate,” I respond­ed, try­ing to regain a mod­icum of decorum.

He rose from his swiv­el chair and head­ed back to an office in the cor­ner of the large open room.  I saw him lean on the door frame, his head par­tial­ly in the door open­ing and say some­thing to the per­son inside who I could not see.  He turned and ambled back to his perch at the front desk.

Watching him come and go, my only thought was that I hoped none of Pearl’s deputies were built like this guy.  He had obvi­ous­ly grown port­ly occu­py­ing the desk chair for too long.  I couldn’t pic­ture him try­ing to run down a perp.

“Sheriff’s in,” he said, tilt­ing his head in the direc­tion from which he had just come.  “She said to come on back.”  His dis­in­ter­est almost sug­gest­ed that he was about to fall asleep.  As I walked around the counter and head­ed to Pearl’s office, I half expect­ed to hear his head slump onto his desk.

“Hi, Michael,” Pearl greet­ed me as I entered through the open doorway.

“Hi, Pearl,” I respond­ed.  “Been tryin’ to reach you for sev­er­al days with­out suc­cess so I thought I’d just come by to see you personally.”

“Well, I’m glad you did.  Not much goin’ on today.  Come on in and sit.”

“Mind if I close the door?” I asked.

“Sure, go ahead,” she said, some­what puz­zled.  “Something serious?”

“No, not real­ly,” I replied some­what sheep­ish­ly as I gen­tly closed the door behind me and took a seat in the wood­en arm­chair in front of her desk.

“So, what’s goin’ on?  Whatcha been up to late­ly?  New house finished?”

“Well, not much goin’ on right now, and yeah, the new place is fin­ished.  Been in for about three weeks now.  Don’t have all my fur­ni­ture and fit­tings in yet; work­ing on it kin­da slowly.”

“Guess there’s no hur­ry, huh?”

“No, not real­ly.  Just tak­ing my time.  Glenda’s been great to work with.  Whenever I get a new piece, I just send her the receipt and she takes care of it.  I think she knows I would­n’t take advantage.”

“Yeah, that’s Glenda.”

Our con­ver­sa­tion was going nowhere fast and I could see puz­zle­ment on her face, won­der­ing just why I had paid a visit.

“Pearl, the rea­son I came by is I want­ed to ask you to din­ner,” I almost stam­mered, get­ting it out.  “That is, if you aren’t see­ing some­one at the moment.”

“Oh, no.  I’m not see­ing any­one.”  There was a look of relief and humor on her face.  Perhaps she nev­er expect­ed a date pro­pos­al from me. 

“I have a pret­ty busy sched­ule and have to be on call most of the time, but maybe we can work out some­thing,” she said as she reached for an appoint­ment book lying open on her desk.

“Did you have a par­tic­u­lar day in mind?” scan­ning the pages.

“Not real­ly.  I’m real­ly flex­i­ble.  We could make it just about any time that works for you.”  I hoped my relief was­n’t too obvious.

“Well, let’s see.  How about this Friday?”

“Yeah, that would be great.  Look, how about com­ing to the house?  I can be a pret­ty good cook at times and it would give you a chance to see the new place.”

“Sure.  That sounds fine.”

“Okay.  Shall I come for you?”

“Nah.  I should prob­a­bly dri­ve out.  I know where your place is and it might be nec­es­sary for me to respond to a call.  Never know.”

“Understood.  Okay, then.  How about sev­en o’clock”

“Sounds fine.”

We sat there for just a few sec­onds more, each of us scru­ti­niz­ing the oth­er, wait­ing for that awk­ward moment when one or the oth­er of us would end the meeting.

Finally, I rose.  “Okay.  Well, I guess I’ll see you Friday.”

“Right, see you then.”

I opened the office door, par­tial­ly turned to look at her, gave a short wave, and walked across the room to the exit.  Holy crap!  I felt like a sopho­more who had just asked out a senior.

The guy at the front desk nev­er even looked up as I walked past.