Dead Wood - By Dani Amore Page 0,55

slide into the life of crime for which he was destined. Not too much later, he wound up at the big house.

Where Rufus Coltraine sat, ten years into his twenty-year sentence for armed robbery and second-degree murder. Rufus was probably playing his guitar in his cell.

I also wondered what their first meeting had been like. Maybe Grasso had tried to shank him. Or Coltraine had saved Grasso from being raped by the brothers. Who knew? The house of detention can apparently make very strange bedfellows.

I picked up the phone, scanned my notes, and called my favorite Jackson State prison guard, Joe Puhy. I wasn’t sure if he would talk to me because I’d never come through on the beers I owed him. After several transfers and sitting on hold, he came to the phone. I re-introduced myself and he remembered who I was. He didn’t seem pissed. After my apologies and reassurances that I would take him out for some refreshments, I got to the point.

“Tell me about Laurence Grasso,” I said.

There was a soft chuckle, then a low whistle.

“Stay away from that one,” he said.

“What do you know about him, other than the fact that I should keep my distance?”

“He’s a bastard. Nasty. Mean. Crazy.”

“Did he know Rufus Coltraine?” I said.

“He sure did. I always wondered about them. They never seemed to fit.”

“How so?”

“Rufus was easygoing, laid back, he had his music. Larry was the opposite. A tried-and-true Detroit boy with a chip on his shoulder, something to prove, always looking for trouble,” Puhy said. “And he was a sneak, too. Any little way to bend a rule, or even just plain old break it, Larry was the guy.”

“So were the two of them buddies or something?” I said.

He thought about it for a moment. I could almost hear him scratching the stubble on his jaw. “I wouldn’t say they were buddies, exactly,” he said. “More like guys who maybe had something in common in here, but outside, would never hang out.”

“Was Grasso into music? Did he play?”

“Not that I know of,” Puhy said. This was a mild surprise to me. “He seemed to like Coltraine’s music, but he didn’t play anything himself. ‘Cept probably the skin flute.”

Prison humor – it gets me every time.

“So what the hell were they doing together?”

“Talking mostly. Sometimes, just sitting and listening to Coltraine’s music.”

How quaint, I thought.

“I don’t know,” Puhy said. “I wish I could tell you more. Maybe I could ask around, see if anyone knows anything. Be like a consultant for you.”

Like a bonefish on the flats, I heard the sound of bait hitting the water.

“Would you?” I said. “That would be great – maybe I could come up with a finder’s fee or something.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Puhy said in a tone of voice that indicated I should very, very much worry about it.

We said our good-byes and I hung up. What a pisser. Two guys with nothing in common hanging out in prison together. Both get out and one tries to kill me while the other one is being killed and possibly framed for the murder of Jesse Barre. So was it Grasso who killed Jesse? Why? Did he have some score to settle with Coltraine – and was Jesse just in the wrong place at the wrong time? That didn’t make sense. After all, Jesse was building a guitar for Grasso’s ex-wife. Somehow the two were connected. Maybe Coltraine was in on it with Grasso. Maybe Coltraine really did kill Jesse. Maybe he wanted one of her guitars for recording purposes, knew he couldn’t afford one, and killed her for it. And then maybe he stole Shannon’s guitar and Grasso went and ripped off his old prison mate. It didn’t sound too convincing. And if I wasn’t convinced I knew Ellen wouldn’t be, either.

I started to get a headache. Too much thinking did that to me.

Still, the idea that I was closing in, that I was just a connection or two away from cracking this thing, got my blood going. It was time to find Laurence Fucking Grasso. Since my sister hadn’t called I figured she wasn’t having any luck.

But I had an idea.

• • •

I could rule out all the things my sister would be checking on. Past acquaintances. Family. Places of employment. Former landlords. The cops would check out the logical places. Whether or not they would have any luck, I had no idea. So far, Shannon Sparrow’s shit-for-brains ex had proven to be crude