by Dan Flanigan
There were those things, but then there was another. A vision. A vision of achieving a treasure hard to attain. The words of the Yeats poem came to him:
I went out to the hazel wood
Because a fire was in my head . . .
It had been one of his and Harrigan’s favorite poems:
Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
KELLY WOKE IN the middle of the night. She still had her clothes on, and she could not remember where she was or how she had come to be there. Maybe she had died and this was her grave. They had all left her alone and forgotten. Then she remembered she was at her dad’s apartment, on his couch, with her clothes still on, without a fresh, clean sheet beneath her. He had just stuck a pillow under her head and laid a blanket over her. She heard a drunken snoring from his bedroom. And she thought she heard the sound of someone walking softly across the front porch. Just her imagination again? Or the man in the ski jacket, the man without a face? And if it wasn’t her imagination, if it was the man in the ski jacket or some other monster coming to get her, would her dad be able to wake up from that snoring sleep to protect her? She pulled the cover over her head and pressed her hands against her ears. Go away, she prayed. Go away, imagination. Go away. Go away, whatever you are.
CHAPTER 17
MONDAY MORNING CAME far too quickly. They hardly spoke on the flight. Harrigan seemed to be deliberately avoiding conversation, as if he felt his words could only do his friend harm, that a tight-lipped silence punctuated by sputters of awkward small talk was the only true gesture of friendship he could offer at this difficult time. He marked furiously with his gold-plated mechanical pencil on the documents he kept pulling out of his briefcase while O’Keefe stared out the tiny window on his side of the airplane and wondered why perfectly rational people like Harrigan and himself so blithely entrusted their lives to a puny, little, whining machine and a pilot they had never even laid eyes on prior to the flight.
“I’ve got the usual dilemma on an out-of-town deal,” Harrigan said, as the pilot traced his pre-landing pattern over the tiny rural airport. “Do I let my hometown boy Carruthers do the job and wish I’d done it myself because nobody can do as well as this particular prima donna, or do I do it myself and hope the judge hasn’t just been waiting for the chance to nail some smart-ass, big-city lawyer to the cross? And the only thing that’s riding on my decision is your ass. So this bail hearing might be a bit of a rehearsal today, so I can see whether it’s me or Carruthers who should handle the trial.”
“That’s fine, but I wouldn’t want you to forget the job at hand. This bail hearing’s definitely one of the high points of my life. I’d like not to spend a night or two in that calaboose down there while somebody’s trying to raise the bail money for me. This cow ain’t stump-broke yet and doesn’t want to be.”
Harrigan tried to keep from smiling. “Not a chance,” he said. “Carruthers has a bail bondsman standing by in case we need him. I’m betting we don’t need him. If we do, that’s gonna be a real bad sign.”
“What’s the problem?”
“The county attorney wants a hundred thousand dollars bail.”
“Jesus!”
“I’m sure the Sheriff insisted on that. What we want the judge to do is let you go on your personal recognizance, no bail money at all.”
“Just show me where to sign.”
The Sheriff greeted O’Keefe with handcuffs.
“Come off it, Sheriff,” Harrigan said, his head tucked back into his neck in that involuntary, snapping turtle motion of his.
“Standard procedure,” the Sheriff said, grinning maliciously, displaying a snaggled, tobacco-stained front tooth as if it were a medal he’d won somewhere. “I can’t treat your friend here no better nor no worse than any other criminal we got down here.”
The Sheriff exercised his prerogative to exclude Harrigan from the arrest, booking, fingerprinting, and mug-shooting process. The process reminded O’Keefe of the Marine Corps, as did the Sheriff, who never took off his Smokey the Bear hat and looked like a boot-camp DI gone to seed. Some of the DIs used to make offending privates kneel in front of them with their hands to their sides while the DIs aimed side-thrust kicks at their bellies, going for a square hit in the solar plexus. O’Keefe thought the Sheriff would be very good at that.
“Were you by any chance a Marine, Sheriff?”
“Sure was.”
“So was I.”
“I hear the Corps’s gone soft. I hear all kinds of trash and shitbirds make it through nowadays.”
“Any leads on those murderers, Sheriff?”
The Sheriff showed off his tooth again and advised O’Keefe that he had the right to remain silent and perhaps the obligation to do so.
“You know those were professional hits, don’t you, Sheriff?”
“Didn’t look too professional to me. The way the woman was left, it looked to me like a sex murder. Like something one of those serial killers might do. That’s probably what it was. One of those serial killers roamin’ the country. Just got hungry when he was passin’ through.”
“Come off it, Sheriff. You think it was a serial killer that threw that Molotov cocktail into that cabin?”
“Who knows what kind of enemies you’ve made, Mr. Private Eye?”
“You know that’s bullshit too, Sheriff. They were after the lady, not me. Maybe you should remember that they were looking for her at her house earlier in the day.”
“All I got is your say-so about that, and I’m not sure your say-so is worth spit. I’m not so sure you didn’t do both of them yourself.”
“You planning to call in the FBI, Sheriff?”
“Hell, the FBI wouldn’t piddle with this little ol’ deal in this dinky ol’ town even if I did call them in.”
“Sounds to me like there isn’t a chance in hell of catching those killers.”
“I wouldn’t know about that. All I know, Mr. Private Eye, is that whatever chance I had to catch ’em, you fucked it up.”
“One more question, Sheriff.”
“Boy, I thought I told you that you had the right to remain silent.”
“I just wanted to know if you were born an asshole or just studied real hard to get that way.”
O’Keefe had never seen a portly man move so quickly. A leaden fist in his solar plexus collapsed the air from his lungs, and a boot nearly crushed his testicles. He staggered around in a drunken dance before he fell to the floor, curling up in a ball, trying to summon enough breath to be able to vomit.
“Now, why don’t you see if you can prove I did that?” the Sheriff said and walked away.
Harrigan decided that Carruthers should handle the bail hearing. The judge set bail at twenty-five thousand dollars and let O’Keefe sign for it himself.
“So when might you fellas be wantin’ to try this case?” the judge asked the lawyers at the end of the hearing.
“First date open on the criminal docket in January,” said the county attorney. “Isn’t that our agreement, Hugh?”
Carruthers stood up and mumbled his agreement. Harrigan, who during the hearing had not said a word, not even whispered in Carruther’s ear, who had only watched and listened to everything with his fanatic’s gaze and the concentration of a mongoose sizing up a cobra, suddenly stood up and addressed the judge.
“Your Honor, I’ll be filing some motions this week. We think this case ought to be dismissed. I’ll admit every item of evidence they have, without objection, without even cross-examination, and they still can’t make a submissible case with it.”
“Well, Mr. Harrigan, we’ve got a good deal of respect down here for the good sense of a
jury. They usually do the right thing. Don’t you think so, Mr. Harrigan? Don’t you think juries usually do the right thing?”
“They probably do, Your Honor, but I know I’ve won cases I should have lost and lost cases I should have won. And I think Mr. O’Keefe here has the right to rely on you to keep him from having to endure a trial if a trial is not justified in this case. And Mr. O’Keefe and I fully intend to rely on you to do your duty in that regard, Judge.”
O’Keefe winced at Harrigan’s last remark and hoped Harrigan knew what he was doing.
“Well, Mr. Harrigan, you file your motions, and I’ll see what kind of duty I think I have. And, by the way, Hugh, have you told Mr. Harrigan I don’t read anything that’s more than two pages long?”
Carruthers and the county attorney chuckled with the judge like courtiers fawning upon their king.
Good old boys, O’Keefe thought. God save me from the good old boys.
“I try to be to the point, Judge,” Harrigan said, “but I don’t think two pages will do justice to my cause.” Harrigan had paused a beat after the word “justice.”
“Well, Mr. Harrigan,” the judge chuckled, “I guess you’ve been fairly warned. I can’t remember the last time I read a motion more than two pages long.”
“Well, Your Honor,” Harrigan said, smiling himself for the first time, “I guess I’ll just have to take my chances on that. And I’m sure it won’t go completely to waste. Because I know there’s an appellate court that will read it.”
Later, as they walked out of the courthouse, Harrigan said, “I hope I didn’t fuck up with that judge today, but I’ve never gotten anywhere by kissing a judge’s ass. If you do, all he does is make you kiss it some more.”
“I guess I’d rather have you than those good old boys,” O’Keefe said. “Those good old boys have to live with that guy every day of the week, so they’re not gonna push anything too hard, including my cause.”
“Just know, Pete, that I’m going to pull out all the stops for you on this including bringing to bear all the political clout I might have developed up to now. If you go down, it won’t be because I didn’t give it all I’ve got.”
“I don’t deserve you, Mike. Never did.”
“What the fuck am I living for if not to rescue fuck-ups like you?”
They laughed.
“Just try to help me out a little bit, please. Try not to dig this hole any deeper than you already have.”
They were careening down an otherwise empty highway toward the airport in a black Lincoln Town Car that seemed considerably larger than the airplane they had flown down in and that waited now on the little strip of runway to take them back to the city.
“I’m gonna stay down here for a while,” O’Keefe said as they pulled up to a wire-mesh fence that separated the parking lot from the airport runway.
Harrigan started to protest vigorously but then seemed to think better of it, shrugged, and said as mildly as O’Keefe had ever seen him muster, “Do I have to tell you I think that’s a dumbass idea?”
“Save your breath. I’m not letting it go. And ‘reason’ is just one of the multitude of important things I won’t listen to.”
“Is it the lady?”
“Maybe her testimony will help my case.”
“Bullshit. They see her in front of them, they’ll know damn good and well why it took you so long to report those crimes.”
They laughed. Just like good old boys.
Harrigan climbed out of the car and looked back in the window with a melancholy smile.
“If you do find her, I hope she’s worth the trouble.”
O’Keefe watched Harrigan struggle into the cockpit of the tiny plane. The plane wobbled and bumped down the runway and lurched off, miraculously he thought, into the darkling, late-afternoon sky.
An enclosed metal hangar beside the runway contained one person, a straw-blond tomboy sort of girl who performed all airport functions, from air traffic control, such as it was, to auto rental, such as it was. She wore greasy overalls, a red-and-black flannel shirt, and a pair of mud-caked, waffle-stomper hiking boots that looked elephant size. She regarded O’Keefe with suspicion, and he wondered if she had been appointed Mistress of the local Xenophobia Brigade.
“Not goin’ back with your friend, huh?” she said, eyeing him as if she would as soon knock his block off as give him a dollar’s worth of change.
“Guess not. Do you have a pay phone?”
“You know that car’s s’posed to be back here by five o’clock today.”
“Does somebody have it reserved?”
“Nope. Just s’posed to be back, that’s all.”
“And what happens if I keep it past five?”
“Nothin’. If it ain’t in by ten in the mornin’ though, it’ll cost you an extra day.”
“I plan to have it back by then.”
“How you expectin’ to get outta here now?”
“I don’t know.”
“Ain’t no commercial airplanes come in here. Closest place for that is Elrod. One plane a day. Eleven-thirty every morning to St. Louis. That’s it.”
“What if I want to leave the car in Elrod?”
“Drop charge. Big one.”
“But I can do it? Leave it up in Elrod?”
“Long as you let me know that’s what you’re gonna do.”
“Good. Well, I guess I’ll do that.”
“You leavin’ tamorra?”
“Not sure yet.”
“I guess you’ll have to let me know then.”
“Guess I will. See you later.”
“Hey!” she yelled as he walked out the door, “I thought you wanted to use the phone.”
She watched the black Lincoln drive away, then reached for the phone to use it herself.
He stopped at a service station and used the pay phone. He remembered the banker’s name, Jerald Ullman, but he had forgotten the name of the bank. Bank names all sounded the same. Luckily, the town contained only two banks, and Ullman worked at the first one he called.
Ullman answered on the first ring, like he had been sitting there waiting anxiously for a call.
“Mr. Ullman, my name is Peter O’Keefe. I’m a private investigator hired by the directors of Prosperity Farms, Inc. to check on some things down here.”
Ullman snorted a laugh. “I know who you are.”
“I understand you were the company’s banker here locally.”
“Who told you that?”
“Jane, Lenny Parker’s secretary.”
O’Keefe heard a slight hiss on the other end of the line, a sharp intake of breath, then utter quiet as if some monstrous secret had just been revealed.
“So what do you want with me?”
“I need to ask you some questions.”
“Well, I don’t know if I can answer them. There’s privacy laws and rules about that kind of thing.”
“The corporation was your customer, right?”
“I guess so.”
The lie came to him easily. “I’ve got a signed statement from the board authorizing me to investigate and waiving the benefit of all privacy and other applicable laws.”
“How do I know who the board is?”
“I guess I need to talk to your boss. What’s his name? Can you transfer me to him?”
“Mr. Tolliver won’t want to be bothered with this.”
“Well, I’ve got to bother somebody. I’m just a working stiff doing my job, Mr. Ullman. A few simple questions and I’ll be out of your hair.”
“When did you want to talk?”
“Right now. I need to leave town tonight.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
O’Keefe hung up and reluctantly called his office. Everyone, including him, had to check in daily. If an operative failed to call in at least once a day, the police were called immediately, and people were sent out to find him. Yet he had considered breaking the rule. He did not want to deal with Sara.
“It’s me
,” he said when she answered. “Just checking in.”
“Do you want your messages?” she asked.
“Only if they’re urgent.”
“Herman Sanders is upset that you haven’t returned his call. He says, if you’re so busy, maybe he ought to stop sending you business for a while.”
Tell Herman Sanders to stuff his business, O’Keefe thought. Let Herman Sanders threaten some other idiot with the loss of his favor.
“Do you want to tell me where you are?”
“Down in the lake country.”
An awkward pause.
“Jarvis wants to talk to you.”
“Okay.”
“Pete?”
“Yeah,” he said impatiently, trying to intimidate her with his tone of voice, keep her from prying.
“When are you gonna get around to telling me why you’re doing this?”
“What makes you think I’m doing anything?”
“Save that for somebody else. How can anybody help you if you won’t let them?”
“Why are people always under the illusion that they can help? Usually they can’t.”
She said nothing else, just transferred him to Jarvis.
“That you, Pete?”
No, it’s your fairy godmother, he thought. “That’s me,” he said.
“I picked up a helluva new piece of business today.”