LACKING VIRTUES

by Thomas Kirkwood

  “We don’t know,” King said. “We’re trying to find out. Do you remember the name of the man who ordered the job?”

  “Hey, I pour a lot of cement, got a lot of customers. I don’t remember. I swear, that’s the truth. I don’t fucking remember.”

  Elliot took an invoice form out of the tray on the desk. “DiStefano Sand and Gravel,” he read. “That you?”

  “Yeah, that’s us.”

  “Seems to be corporate policy not to remember. If you don’t remember the guy’s name, look it up in your goddamn records.”

  “Huh?”

  “Look it up in your records. You got a computer there, and I assume you file your paid invoices somewhere. Look it up.”

  Chuckie took a deep breath and tried to play it cool. If he blew this one, his uncle would never let him live it down.

  No, it would be worse than that. His uncle Joey might go to jail. Hell, he might go to jail. He’d better start lying with a little more authority.

  “Look, officers, my uncle keeps all of the records like that at his house. He’ll be home in two weeks. You can ask him then. Or I could call his kids and see if I can get the number where he’s at. Maybe he’d let me go looking for what you want.”

  Elliot didn’t seem impressed. He didn’t even respond to the offer. Instead, he walked around the desk and slid out the file cabinet drawer beside Chuckie’s knee. He found the August folder and started flipping through the invoices stamped “paid.” His face lit up.

  “Little jobs, eh? I see here you got one for eleven grand in August. Hey, here’s another one for sixteen. Little jobs? You’re feeding us a crock, buddy. We didn’t come here to investigate you but, like I said before, if you don’t square with us right now, all that’s gonna change in a big way.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. I – ”

  “Know something, kid? They got a guy here at the local IRS office, maybe you’ve heard of him. A wop who loves to bust wops. You a wop? Your uncle a wop? I’d say so. Forget the name, you don’t look like no high-court Brit to me.”

  Elliot gave him a shit-faced grin before continuing.

  “Maybe you even know this wop buster. His name’s Luciano and that ain’t for Lucky. He knows all about you people, how you love to pay taxes, things like that. So here’s your final bottom line, Staffordini. You tell us about this cement job – and I mean every little detail. You do that and we walk out of here.”

  “On the other hand,” King said, breaking in, “you don’t tell us about the cementing job, we take that computer and all of your records with us – we got a search warrant, see? – and we call in your buddy Luciano. When your uncle gets back from vacation, the Feds’ll be waiting for him at the airport. Not us, the Feds. Think Mr. Sand and Gravel will be pleased?”

  Chuckie felt like he’d been kicked in the privates. He tried to compose his thoughts, but all he managed was a beer belch.

  Jesus Holy Christ, talk about being between a rock and a hard spot. He’d heard of that fucking turncoat, Luciano. It would be like bringing home the Devil to let that guy in here. He had no choice. He had to believe these cops weren’t after him; he had to take the chance.

  Elliot sneered. “Well, kid, you gonna talk now?”

  King held up his hand again. Good cop, bad cop – the oldest trick in the profession, but it worked. “Mr. Stafford,” he said politely, “I want to repeat that we did not come here to look into your affairs. If you’ve got tax problems or relative problems or beat your sister, that is not our concern today. All we want from you is information on somebody else. Why would you turn a harmless chat into possible criminal charges for yourself? I guess I just don’t understand.”

  Chuckie slapped the table. “All right, goddammit, all right. I get the point. I’ll talk. Under one condition. You don’t tell my uncle I told you nothing.”

  The two policemen looked at each other. The older one nodded.

  “All right,” King said. “We won’t tell him. Hurry up. It’s getting late.”

  “Yeah, okay. It was strange. We get this call, like I said. A guy with an accent, foreign guy. Tells us just what I told you.”

  “All that stuff about the city inspector and insurance?”

  “Yeah, and he wants the job done yesterday. It’s a real good paying job, forty, maybe fifty grand. So we go out there at eight o’clock the next morning, right on time. We had to postpone three other jobs to do it. Pissed off a lot of contractors.”

  “The man’s name was Stein, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, now that you mention it. Stein. That’s right.”

  “Continue, please.”

  “Okay, we’re there at eight, a whole line of trucks, and Stein pulls up in his car – ”

  “What kind of a car? Do you remember?”

  “Yeah, corporate memory’s getting better. It was one of those big Audis, a big gray Audi. Stein says, okay, this is where I want the concrete. He shows us the coal chute door, unlocks it, we lift off the lid. Takes all three of us, heavy fucker. It’s kind of weird because the chute looks real slick, sort of polished. You know, like no one had ever put no coal down it.”

  “And?”

  “He says, pour it in there, mix it wet so it spreads out and fills the ‘second basement.’ See, there was this second basement under the first one. It was dug too deep. That’s what was causing the shop to sink. That’s what the man said.

  “Anyway, he paid the bill in cash, plus a tip of a grand or so. Then he drove off, and we never saw him again.”

  Elliot grunted. “And you just happened to forget about that cash haul?”

  “Hey,” Chuckie said, “what kind of bullshit is this? That’s off limits, ain’t it? The deal was, I answer your questions, you don’t give me any shit about other stuff.” He looked to the good cop for a ruling.

  King said, “Sergeant Elliot, I believe Mr. Stafford has a point. We don’t care about the payment or what these people did with it. As far as we’re concerned, his uncle accounted for it elsewhere in the proper fashion. So Stein drove off in his gray Audi and you never saw him again?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you finished the job.”

  “On time. Then we locked up the chute cover like he told us.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Stafford,” King said. “Oh, one more thing before we leave.” He reached into his breast pocket and took out a photograph. “Was this the man in the Audi, the man who paid you? Was this Mr. Stein?”

  Chuckie looked at the picture. “This dude? Shit no, no way. The guy who paid us was a rich guy, expensive clothes, looked down on us cause we was pouring cement. You know how they are.”

  “Can you describe the man you saw?”

  Chuckie thought for a minute. The image of the man swam up from the depths, an image you wouldn’t forget. “Yeah. Maybe a hundred sixty pounds, five ten, in his fifties. The hair was brown, slicked straight back. He was a strange bastard, not real big or nothing, but he had this look in his eyes that said, ‘Don’t fuck with me.’ Not like a thug or nothing. Like a rich guy used to giving orders. Lots of orders. You follow me?”

  King nodded. “Would you recognize a picture of him?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  King said, “And you’re absolutely positive this man in the photo is not the man who drove the Audi and paid you for the job?”

  “Hey, this guy here’s some working man, like me or you. Look at the clothes, look at the face. The guy who paid us looked rich, like a doctor of something. I remember his hands, long fingers. Uncle Joey said he got manicures. He didn’t shake hands with me so I didn’t feel ‘em. Wouldn’t shake with me cause I wasn’t the boss. He was that kind of guy. So who’s your picture of?”

  “The real Mr. Stein, the owner of the tool and die shop where you poured the cement.”

  “No shit?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Stafford. And what you’re saying is that you have no idea who the man was who paid you?”

  “He said he
was Stein. That’s who I thought he was. If he wasn’t Stein, I got no idea.”

  King glanced at Elliot. “Well, Stan, we’d better talk to the captain about this. He might want us to start digging.”

  The cops left a few minutes later. Chuckie watched them drive off, bouncing along the pot-holed road in the old Bonneville like one of his uncle’s employees.

  It was spooky, goddamn spooky. When they’d poured the cement, he’d made a lot of jokes to his uncle about someone being down in that hole. But they weren’t really jokes, at least not entirely. Because he’d had this strange feeling someone really was down there.

  He wondered if Uncle Joey had known all along.

  He wondered if Uncle Joey knew who it was.

  But most of all he wondered how those cops were going to dig up an underground bunker of solid concrete.

  ***

  Michelet walked past the newspaper again. He’d walked past it a dozen times since his housekeeper had left it on the book shelf in his study, but he had been too caught up in the storm unleashed by Claussen’s letter to bother with it.

  Besides, even in the best of times, those sensationalist rags infuriated him. Whales giving birth to human beings, and UFOs full of little green people landing in the gardens of the Elysée Palace. Just touching the paper on which such trash was printed made him feel dirty.

  But Nature was calling and he had misplaced Le Monde. He had nothing else to take with him to the bathroom. So he grabbed the Inquisitor and hurried off down the hall. He vaguely remembered Françoise saying something about his daughter when she’d left the paper.

  He glimpsed the photo on page eight, when he was about to wad the disgusting thing up and stuff it into the waste paper basket. The page, which bore the headline “The Many Faces of Love,” was divided into four rectangles, each a photograph of a couple embracing. Two men; two women; a black man and a white woman; and in the lower right hand corner, in the only normal pairing, his daughter being mauled by a handsome blond man. He couldn’t tell whether Nicole was trying to fight the man off or was succumbing passionately to his advance.

  The photograph had captured one of their drinks just as it was being spilled. The ice cubes and pale yellow liquid were blurred by motion, like the UFOs on the front page. Probably added in the dark room for effect, he thought. Another example of form without substance, an American disease shoved off like AIDS on the French.

  The caption read, “Nicole Michelet, daughter of Minister of Industry Georges Michelet, finds love with unidentified man.”

  Michelet stormed into Françoise’ quarters, still hitching up his trousers. He turned off her TV, held up the Inquisitor and shook it like something he was trying to kill.

  “Do you know who this man is with Nicole?” he thundered. “Do you?”

  She gave him the “I told you so” look he detested. He felt like slapping her in the face.

  “Answer me, Madame. Do you know who this man is?”

  “Yes, Monsieur. He is the American tennis pro who replaced Philippe Denis du Péage last summer at the Roches Fleuries.”

  “What? What? She was seeing an American down there and you failed to inform me? I hired you to raise her with proper values. How could you let her associate with trash like that? How could you, Madame?”

  “I had no proof. I’d heard rumors about playfulness on the tennis courts, that is true. I reprimanded her sternly and asked reliable friends to keep an eye on her. Perhaps you might say I suspected, Monsieur, but that is all. You gave me explicit orders not to trouble you with such matters until I had hard evidence.”

  Michelet grunted.

  “I quite sympathize with you, Monsieur, for this most embarrassing situation. However, I do not think it is fair to hold me totally responsible.”

  Michelet wasn’t listening; he was staring at the photograph. “I’ve seen this son of a whore somewhere. Dressed the same way, blue jeans, a flowered shirt . . . no, impossible, where would I see a person like that? What were you saying?”

  “That I am not responsible. I waited, Monsieur, until I had the evidence, and even then it was no small matter to get your ear. You outright refused to speak with me on the subject of your daughter, and you waited several days to open the newspaper I left you. Therefore, Monsieur – ”

  “That will do,” Michelet said. “There is no reason to act in this hysterical fashion. I will set the situation straight. What is the man’s name, Madame? If he is here legally, it will be easy to track him down. If he is not, I shall find him through Nicole and have him deported. So tell me his name and spare me the rest, if you don’t mind.”

  “His name is Steven LeConte.”

  From his study, Michelet rang up a friend at Immigration.

  “Ah, yes, Minister, we have the records of this individual. He has been in Paris for the past two years. Legally? Yes, I think one can say that. He’s often been late with his employment papers and residency documents, but otherwise nothing . . . his address? Of course, Monsieur Minister. Place Maubert, Twelve.”

  ***

  Captain Bullock looked harshly at King. “What does Sergeant Elliot think?”

  “Well, he thinks it would be a waste of money, thinks we’ll spend millions to get down there and either find Stein or not find Stein, and that it won’t make any difference one way or the other.”

  “And you? How do you see it, King?”

  “A crime was committed, possibly a murder. We’ve checked out all the stories the man claiming to be Stein told the cement contractors. They were all bogus. There was no city order requiring structural improvements to Stein’s shop. There was no payment made to Stein by Stein’s insurer.

  “Also, sir, we know that the man who paid for the cement job in person was not Stein. We know that the car this man drove away matches the make and serial number of the car that turned up in New York stripped and abandoned – the car our computers say belonged to Stein.

  “So, Captain, it seems clear to me that this man killed Stein. It seems clear that this man is hiding something under the cement in that basement – either Stein’s corpse or some other kind of incriminating evidence.

  “Now, sir, if I understood my training lectures correctly, it is our duty as police officers to pursue such matters, period. If we drop investigations because of cost, then rich people can avoid justice by placing expensive obstacles such as this concrete bunker in our path.”

  Captain Bullock gazed out at the downtown. His sad drooping eyes reminded King of a dog he’d had as a kid.

  “You know, Officer,” the captain said, swiveling in his chair to face him, “there’s always a trade-off. We have a limited budget in this department. If I allocate a hundred grand to dig up your basement, that’s a hundred grand I don’t have to pursue rapists, drug dealers and dirt heads who blow away convenience store clerks for fifty bucks.

  “So, yes, Officer King, we have an obligation. We have lots of obligations. But we can’t meet them all because we don’t have the money. Your obligation is expensive, and finding out who killed Stein – if, in fact, he is dead – will bring the department no relief. Catching the Renton Rapist, on the other hand, will get about fifteen hundred people – politicians, fathers, husbands, loud-mouthed journalists and shrieking women’s activists – personally off my ass. Therefore, Officer, the answer to your request that we pursue this particular obligation would logically have to be a resounding NO, wouldn’t it?”

  “But, sir – ”

  “Wait a minute, King. I haven’t finished. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea. I don’t want you to think you can come to me in the future with requests like this and have them funded. We are able to move on this thing because of an FBI directive that came down from Washington the other day.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t quite understand, sir.”

  “Neither do I, King, but it seems the Feds are looking for something. They gave us a list of criteria to be on the lookout for. Your crime meets three of these, if not more.
Therefore, it qualifies for federal funding. Believe me, Officer, if it didn’t, we couldn’t pursue it.”

  King’s heart was soaring. His first investigation, which had begun in a Polish deli, was now being funded by Washington!

  “So, Officer,” Captain Bullock said, “go dig up that goddamn basement. Spend Washington’s money. Everyone else does.”

  “Thank you, sir. Thank you. Does that mean you’re putting me in charge?”

  “Why not, King? You don’t have a reputation to lose.”