by Sean Little
Duff went from sawing logs to awake-and-vertical in the span of a second. There was no languishing in bed. He was up and ready to go. “Just let me drain the lizard.”
They were in The Fucking Embarrassment and rolling toward Schaumburg before the sun was completely above the eastern horizon. The August heat had still not relented. The day was fixing to be hotter than the day before, and the humidity felt like a filmy wall of moisture draped about them like a cloak.
“Heat like this brings a storm eventually,” said Duff.
“Eventually.” For Abe, it could not come soon enough. He was already sweating. There was an annoying trickle of wetness down his spine.
They drove in silence to Schaumburg. The roads leading away from the city were far less busy than the roads leading into the city. It was still a long slog to the ‘burbs, not as long as it was during a peak traffic time, but it still took them a little over forty minutes. When they got there, they stopped at a place called Uncle Bill’s Diner which was technically in Roselle, but close enough for government work. It was a sketchy-looking little place, almost non-descript. It looked like it was a Burger King refurbished into a diner somewhere along the line. It had the distinct vibe of not having any major decorative changes since Reagan was in office.
They sat in a booth where they could watch the chubby Mexican cook work the flat-top grill. The guy knew his stuff and slashed his spatulas like a samurai. Duff got his French toast with scrambled eggs and sausage. Abe went for an egg white omelet with bacon and spinach. The older waitress with a bad brunette dye-job and cigarette-aged skin got their drinks, diet Coke for Duff, a coffee for Abe, and dropped off the steel-wire caddy of syrups.
“How was your dinner with Tildy?” Duff asked while they waited for the waitress to bring their meal. He peeled the end of the wrapper from a straw and shot the bulk of it at Abe. It plonked off Abe’s forehead.
“It was fine.” Abe crumpled the straw wrapper into a ball and flicked it at Duff’s face with his middle finger, keeping the digit extended for a few beats afterward to express his feelings of being a target early in the morning. “She wanted my permission to start dating a boy.”
Duff nodded. “I know. She told me about it a few nights ago while we were playing Minecraft. She wanted to know how I thought you’d react. I told her you’d be cool. It seems like he’s a good kid if what she says about him is accurate.”
“I guess. I’m not thrilled about her dating, but what can you do?”
“I told her to stop growing when she was four. She didn’t listen.”
Abe changed the subject. He did not want to think about Tilda and dating at that moment. “Where did you go last night?”
In the excitement of the revelation of the baby, Duff had not told Abe about his journey. He shrugged like it was no big deal. “I went and saw my mom.”
Abe’s eyebrows arched high on his forehead. He knew the importance of such an act. “Really? She lives in the area?”
“She took a job at DePaul not long after I moved to Chicago. It was sort of her way of keeping a tab on me without ever having to actually talk to me. As it should be. As we both prefer it.”
“You never really talk about her.”
“And I thank you for never really pressing me to tell you about her. It’s something I would have rather left buried.”
“Why’d you go, then?”
Duff reached into his back pocket and pulled the tickets to the Stevens fundraiser. He tossed them onto the table. “My mom has been a Dem supporter since the early ‘80s. She gave us a way to get somewhat close to Stevens. Something might come of it if we go. Maybe. No guarantees, of course.”
Abe picked up the tickets like they were holy relics. “Nice. This is just for the general audience, though. He’s a sitting senator. There will be Secret Service details there, I’m sure.”
“Likely. At least this is better than being outside the venue.” Duff shrugged and blew bubbles with his straw into his glass of diet Coke.
“We have zero evidence on any of this, you know.”
Duff stopped with the bubbles. His soda fizzed angrily. “That fact has not escaped me. I have been over this in my head a thousand times, though. I cannot think of a single scenario which fits the parameters other than this. It has to be high-level. A senator from Illinois explains everything from the cover-up, to the proximity to Washington D.C., to the relocation to Chicago. A regular Joe would not have been able to do this. This needed money to get it done and power to get it done quietly.”
“I agreed, but what about an X-Factor?” The X-Factor was something they used in all their cases. It meant nothing made sense and something really random, something really unexpected could have jump-started a chain of events, something they never would have even thought to consider because it was implausible. Basically, it was what they blamed when they were on the completely wrong path. It rarely factored into the case, but they used it to remind themselves they were fallible and sometimes unexpected things can happen.
Duff dismissed Abe’s insinuation. “I don’t think there is an X-Factor here. What are the odds someone unrelated to Stevens adopted a child illegally in Maryland, covered it up, had the power to cover it up, and moved the child to Chicago? The odds are astronomical. That’s Powerball odds. There’s no way.”
“Still. I’d hate to walk up to a U.S. senator and accuse him of murdering his child and covering it up with another baby. How callous is that? How heartless? That child was a showpiece. He was not there to be loved; he was a prop.”
The line cook finished their meals, plated them, and stuck them on the countertop. The waitress grabbed the plates and slid them in front of the boys. “Anything else?” The cigarette rasp in her voice could have polished glass.
No, ma’am. Thank you so much.” Abe took a deep sniff of his omelet. There was just something about eggs cooked on a true diner flat-top.
“You could hit me with a refill when you see this glass about an inch from the bottom,” said Duff.
The woman winked at him. “You got it, hun. Enjoy, now.”
After she walked away, Duff leaned over the table. “Have you ever had a diner waitress not call you ‘hun’?”
Abe carved off a hunk of omelet with his fork. He thought about it. “No.”
“I think they must teach it in diner waitress school.”
“I don’t think there’s a diner waitress school,” said Abe.
“Then they’re all aliens because it’s a universal thing. No matter what state I’ve been in or what country I’ve been in, morning or night, the waitresses always call you ‘hun.’”
“Maybe they watched too many reruns of Alice. Polly Holiday can be very influential.”
“Kiss my grits, Abe.”
THEY ATE, TIPPED well, and drove ten minutes to Sherry Franklin’s house. They parked in front of it, and Abe surveyed the place with a critical eye. “Does it look like she’s awake?”
Duff checked the time on his phone. “It’s almost eight. Old people get up early. I say we risk it. If we get her out of bed, maybe she’ll invite us in for Danishes or coffee cake.”
“You don’t drink coffee.”
“But I do enjoy cake. I’m a living conundrum, Abe.”
Abe bit the bullet and approached the front door with the printed sheaf of pictures in his hand. He rang the doorbell.
Sherry appeared at the door a moment later, coffee cup in hand. Her hair was not styled, and she was wearing sweatpants and a threadbare Chicago Bears t-shirt. “Hello, boys. What brings you back to my neck of the woods? More questions?”
“Just a couple of brief ones, if you have a few moments,” said Abe.
Sherry pushed open the door. “I sure do. I’m retired. I got nothing but moments. Come on in. You guys hungry? I think I have frozen waffles.”
“Do you have cake?” Duff crossed his fingers.
Sherry looked at Duff strangely. “I have half a Swiss Cake Roll you can have. My granddaughter didn’t finish it.
It’s probably stale.”
“You had me at Swiss Cake Roll.”
They sat at Sherry’s table. Duff busied himself with the remaining chocolate snack while Abe laid out the photos he printed. “Do any of these men look familiar to you? These pictures were taken back around the time of the adoption.”
Sherry set her coffee cup down and squinted at the photos, adjusting her reading glasses as she did. She jabbed a finger at one of the photos. “That’s Robert Stevens.”
“You recognize him?”
“Sure, I do. He’s been my senator for thirty-some years. He’s always on TV. He looks young there. Barely a pup.”
“Was he in the delivery room that night?”
“The senator?” Sherry looked surprised for a moment. Then her face got serious. “Are you telling me Robert Stevens took that baby?”
“No. Not at all. We thought he might have, that’s why we needed you to confirm for us if he was there or not.” Abe and Duff exchanged a glance. The glance was about the possibility if Sherry knew too much and said the wrong thing to the wrong person, maybe someone would come for her.
“Well, I can tell you with one-hundred-percent clarity Senator Stevens was not in the delivery room that night.” Sherry thumped the printed photo on the table with authority. I have thought about that night a lot since it happened, and if I had ever recognized Stevens as the guy in the delivery room, I would have gone to the press about it.”
Duff’s mouth was hanging open, a little shocked. He had been certain Stevens was involved. Abe could see the sprockets in Duff’s mind trying to adjust his theories about the adoption.
“What about this guy?” Abe pointed to Ron Tasker standing next to Stevens. “Does he look at all familiar?”
Sherry picked the photo up and held it at arm’s length. She gave a noncommittal grunt. “I’m pretty sure it was him. His hair was shorter, though.”
“This was taken maybe a month before the babies would have been born. A haircut is not out of the question.”
“He’s got a mustache in this picture. Guy I saw was clean-shaven.”
Abe shuffled to another, later picture of Tasker, one taken after the election was over. He was clean-shaven then. “Like this?”
Sherry studied the picture hard. She gave a huff of breath through her nose. “Yeah. I think so. He looks like the right guy. I mean, thirty-something years is a long time. The white guy stood off in the back more. The black guy was more the aggressor of the situation, but he didn’t say anything. The black guy was silent the whole time. The white guy handled the paperwork and the doctor.”
“You’re not positive, though?”
Sherry shook her head. “Thirty-something years does a lot to fuzz the memories, you know. I know for sure the black guy wasn’t Stevens, and if you put a gun to my head I’d guess this was the white guy.”
“Why are you so certain the black guy wasn’t Stevens?” Duff suddenly came out of his semi-trance state. He popped the last bit of Swiss Cake Roll into his mouth.
“Well, look at him.” Sherry spun the picture of Stevens around so it was upside-down to her but right-side up to Duff. “Stevens was always a little chubby. The guy I saw that night was lean as shoe leather.” She reached up and touched her fingers to her chin, running them along her jawline. “He also had a scar, a real beaut. Looked like he got in a knife-fight or a car accident at some point in his life. Unmistakable.”
Duff’s eyes went blank again. His fingers drifted to his own jaw. “We gotta find the scar-faced man, Abe.”
“He does seem like he would be a rather important piece of the puzzle.
“I got a laptop you boys can borrow,” said Sherry.
“We don’t want to impose,” said Abe.
“Bullshit!” Sherry hustled away from the table. “This is the first interesting thing to happen to me since I retired. Let’s find this turkey!” She disappeared into another room and came back a moment later with a MacBook in her hands. It had a puffy pink dinosaur sticker on one corner. She set it in front of Abe. “Let’s go, Chuckles.”
“As mistress commands.” Abe took the computer and opened a browser. Using a combination of Bing and Google, Abe, Duff, and Sherry looked at photos from Robert Stevens’s campaign, the election debates, and the eventual senatorial win and victory party. They looked hard at any African American man with whom Stevens was photographed. They used a photo program on Sherry’s computer to enlarge and enhance a few faces, constantly scanning for a pronounced scar along the jawline. They came up snake-eyes. Abe even tried other searches like Robert Stevens jaw scar and Stevens aide scar. No joy in Mudville. After more than an hour, they all pushed away from the table.
“I don’t think we’re going to find him, brother.” Duff stretched and a couple of bones in his back audibly popped as he did.
“If you find him, you’ll know. It was a big scar. Six, eight inches easy.” Sherry traced the imaginary scar from the back of her left mandible near her ear to her chin. “Big, ugly, and impossible to hide. Even if he got plastic surgery to lessen it, you’ll still be able to find him. No plastic surgeon is good enough to hide that scar.”
“What about growing a beard?”
Sherry shook her head. “Any scar like that would have messed up his follicles and nerve-endings. I don’t think he’d be able to grow hair on that side of his face.”
“I guess we’ll stop taking up your morning.” Abe shook Sherry’s hand. “You’ve been more than helpful, Mrs. Franklin.”
“Call me Sherry. And you’re welcome. I hope you’ll come back and tell me what all of this is about when it’s over.” She shook Abe’s hand. She moved to shake Duff’s hand, but he just gave her an awkward wave, instead. She nodded and waved back. After thirty years in hospitals, she understood quirky people.
Sherry walked the boys to the door and watched them get into their car. Abe gave her a final wave as the Volvo lurched away from the curb.
“We have to take what we know to Betts.” Abe guided The Fucking Embarrassment back toward the highway. It was after nine in the morning. Traffic into the city would be high.
Duff settled in for a long haul back to their neck of the woods. “I suppose we do. I really would like a harder confirmation of Tasker as the guy at the delivery room, and I’d like to know who the black guy was.”
“I suppose it makes sense. No U.S. senator should show up at a hospital to conduct some sort of illicit activities. Stevens would have someone for that, someone high-ranking in his office, someone he trusted implicitly.”
“But who?”
Abe shrugged. “Could be a lot of people, I suppose. How are we supposed to go about getting names?”
“Website, I guess. Anything about Stevens that’s important should be on his website. We can at least find some names, if not faces there.” Duff was quiet for a moment. “My mom said we should just let this go. Walk away.”
Abe considered this as he navigated around a slow-moving delivery truck. “Your mom is probably right. It would make a lot more sense to walk away. Even if we’re right, what good will it do? Do you honestly see a respected senator doing time over a thirty-five-year-old crime with zero evidence?”
“Nope.”
They were silent for quite some time. Abe concentrated on the road. Duff stared out the window at some buildings in the distance.
“We’re not going to leave it alone, are we?”
Abe shook his head. “I doubt it.”
“Good. I’d hate to be this goddamned stupid on my own.”
-12-
BETTS AND GATES were not thrilled to see Duff and Abe when the private detectives walked into the cop shop. Betts was hustling through the bullpen with a stack of files. He jabbed a finger at the doors. “Get out. We don’t have time for you right now.”
“Why not? I’ve always got time for you, Betts.” Duff gave Betts a cloying, exaggerated smile before slipping into his best Forrest Gump impression. “Why, you and me is like peas and ca
rrots, Jen-nay.”
They ignored Betts and followed him into his office. Betts was perturbed, but not surprised. “There was a gang shootout overnight a couple blocks from here. Three teens dead. I got a mountain of paperwork to do, and I still have no leads on the dead kid from the apartment.”
Duff signaled for Gates to join them. “We got something.”
Gates walked into Betts’s office and shut the door. “What’s up?”
“The Gruesome Twosome here were just about to inform us of the groundbreaking police work they’ve been doing even though they ain’t cops.”
“Someone has to make you look good, Betts.” Duff sat in a chair and put his feet on Betts’s desk. Betts swatted them off with his hand.
Abe handed Betts the photos of Tasker from 1983. “Recognize these?”
“Looks like someone standing next to a young senator Stevens.” Betts shrugged and handed the photos to Gates.
“That’s a young Ron Tasker,” said Abe.
“Who the hell is Ron Tasker?”
“Geez, Betts. You fail Civics for the day. Tasker is Stevens’s chief of staff, campaign chair, and right-hand man.”
Betts was unimpressed. “So?”
“So, we have a nurse who was present at the delivery of the baby who may or may not be Marcus Stevens who said she believes Tasker was one of the two guys who took the baby,” said Abe. “That means something.”
“Thirty-five-year-old I.D. won’t hold up in court, Abe. You know that.”
“We’re on the right track, though. That’s some highly suspect connections, you have to admit.”
“Ev-i-dence.” Betts sounded out the individual syllables with exaggerated pronunciation. “Without it, no one cares. Do you have any?”
Duff affected a casual air, rolling his wrist as he spoke. “How would you define evidence, Betts?”
“I would define it as you getting the hell away from me unless you have something concrete.”
“We need to find someone else, too.” Abe traced the scar-line on his jaw Sherry Franklin referenced at her home. “There’s a black guy with a scar on his jaw. He was in the delivery room, too.”