Marked Man

by William Lashner

  38

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Carl, but you’re not on the list.”

  “What do you mean, I’m not on the list?” I said, my voice filled with a false indignation, false because in the whole of my life I have never been on the list. “Of course I’m on the list.”

  “No, I’ve looked twice, and you’re not,” said the large, bald-headed guard at the reception desk. “As a general rule, we don’t allow visitors who are not on the list.”

  And as a general rule, I thought, I don’t feel bound by general rules. “But he’s my Uncle Max. Of course he’ll want to see me. My sister’s in town for only a few days and she was always his favorite niece.”

  The guard turned his stare toward Monica, standing behind me with her gas-station bouquet of flowers. His gaze swooned at the sight of her loose white shirt and tight black leather pants.

  “I haven’t seen my dear Uncle Max in years,” said Monica in her little girl’s voice. “I doubt he’d even recognize me anymore.”

  “But I’m sure she’d cheer him up, don’t you think?” I said.

  Monica smiled, the guard’s eye twitched.

  “Please,” she mouthed, without a sound coming through her lips.

  “Well, seeing that there are no special restrictions on his sheet,” said the guard, “and seeing that you all are related—”

  “On our mother’s side, twice removed,” I said.

  “I don’t suppose there’d be any harm.”

  “Oh, thank you,” said Monica. “What’s your name?”

  “Pete.”

  “Thank you, Pete,” she said.

  “Uh, yeah. Okay. Let me see some ID, sign in, and I’ll take you guys to him personally.”

  The Sheldon Himmelfarb Convalescent Home for the Aged was a cheerful little warehouse in the northern suburbs, not far from where I went to junior high school, so I was familiar with the landscape of its despair. There was a small lawn, a big parking lot, and a host of bright, processed smiles to go along with the processed hospital smell that was pumped out of the vents. We had never before actually met Uncle Max, who wasn’t actually our uncle, but word was that Uncle Max’s visitors weren’t strictly restricted, that he didn’t quite remember as much as he used to, and that he sure would appreciate the visit.

  Pete stood in the doorway watching as I entered the room and spread my arms wide. “Uncle Max,” I said in a loud voice with a great deal of enthusiasm. The unshaven old man in the bed sat upright at my entrance, a puzzled expression on his long, grizzled face. “It’s me, Victor.”

  “Victor?”

  “I’m your second cousin Sandra’s son. You remember Sandra, don’t you?”

  “Sandra?” he said, with a sadness that indicated there were many people now whom he was forgetting.

  “Of course you remember Sandra. Big hips, small hands, and she made that great three-bean salad.”

  “Three-bean salad?”

  “Oh, Mom made the best three-bean salad. It was the waxed beans. She always used fresh, boiled in salt water. It made all the difference. And then a good wine vinegar and basil from our garden. Don’t you just love a good three-bean salad?”

  “I don’t think I know a Sandra,” said Max.

  “And, Uncle Max, you must remember my younger sister, Monica. You were always so close. She came, too.” I yanked Monica so that she stumbled forward until she regained her balance right in front of Max. “Say hello, Monica.”

  “Hello, Uncle Max,” she cooed, leaning over the old man, flowers held out before her. “These are for you.”

  Max’s jaw trembled for a moment at the sight of her. “Oh, yeah,” he said finally. “That Sandra. How is she?”

  “Dead,” I said.

  “It happens,” said Max with a shrug of resignation. Then he patted the side of his bed. “Monica, tell me how goes life with you?”

  “Fine, Uncle Max,” she said, sitting down beside him. From that position she waved her fingers at Pete, who smiled back before heading down the hall to return to his desk.

  “Where are you now, Monica?” said Uncle Max.

  “San Francisco.”

  “And you have a boyfriend?”

  “Oh, yes. He’s an accountant.”

  “Good for you,” said Uncle Max, growing livelier by the second, leaning toward Monica in the bed. “You know, I was an accountant, too.”

  “Really?” said Monica. “I find numbers so alluring.”

  “You mind if I turn up the music?” I said, indicating the small clock radio on the little table beside Max’s bed.

  “Go ahead,” said Max.

  A somber big-band ballad was wrenching its way out of the tiny speaker. I found a station playing good old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll, pumped up the volume, started strumming a little air guitar.

  “Is that Bob Seger?” I said.

  “Who?” said Max.

  “No, but a good guess.”

  Monica laughed. Max raised his eyebrows and opened a drawer beside his bed, pulled out a pint of rum and a small stack of plastic cups.

  “You won’t tell?” said Max.

  “Cheers,” said Monica.

  And so we had a nice visit with Uncle Max, with the music and the rum, talking about our fake mother, our fake family, about Monica’s fake life and fake boyfriend in San Francisco. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that Monica was much happier in her fake life than in the real thing. And I must say, with the way he was laughing and patting Monica’s arm, with the way his eyes rolled when he sipped the rum, Max seemed pretty happy with his fake relatives, too.

  It was small, the room Uncle Max shared with his roommate, just enough space for the two beds, a door to the bathroom, a couple bureaus and chairs, a pair of televisions bolted to the wall, and a drawn curtain that divided the space in two. We weren’t hearing a peep from the other side, just the low murmur of the television on some insipid talk show flitting over the music. Even so, while Max was telling Monica one of his more interesting accounting stories, I took the opportunity to slip around the loose white fabric and visit the man behind the curtain.

  He had once been fearsome, you could tell, big jaw, big hands, his feet reached from under the blanket and over the far edge of the bed, but age takes its bitter toll on us all. Now he lay slack, his jaw shaking, his watery eyes open but unfocused. He turned his head slowly toward me as I stepped close to his bed, registered my presence, and then turned away again. I took the chair, pulled it close to him, sat down, leaned my arms on the edge of his bed.

  “Detective Hathaway,” I said. “My name is Victor Carl. I’m a lawyer, and I have a few questions to ask you.”

  WHEN I STEPPED out from behind the curtain, I was in for a second nasty surprise. Jenna Hathaway and Pete the guard were standing in the doorway of the room, glowering. And Pete had his hand on his gun.

  “Hello, Jenna,” I said as calmly as I could. “It is so nice to see you.”

  “What the hell are you doing, you son of a bitch?” she said.

  “Just paying a sick call.”

  “I’m going to put you in jail for this.”

  “For visiting my Uncle Max?”

  “For trespassing, for fraudulent misrepresentation, for harassment.” She stared angrily at me for a long moment, and then, without taking her hard gaze from me, she said, “Could you turn off the music, Mr. Myerson?”

  Max shut off the radio and, without much guile, slipped the bottle of rum back into the drawer and closed it.

  “I’m sorry these people have been bothering you,” said Jenna.

  “These aren’t people, and there is no bother,” said Max as he patted Monica’s forearm. “They were just checking in with their old Uncle Max. They’re my cousin Sandra’s children.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Second cousin, twice removed,” I said.

  “What does that mean, exactly?” said Jenna.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but it sounds about right.”

 
; Jenna sighed wearily. “You don’t have a cousin Sandra, Mr. Myerson.”

  “Of course I do,” said Max. “Or did. She died. Which is sad for all of us, since she made a very nice three-bean salad.”

  “I need to stop you there, Max,” I said. “Mom made a fabulous three-bean salad. And who among us doesn’t love a three-bean salad?”

  “I want you out of here, Victor,” said Jenna Hathaway.

  “We’re still visiting.”

  “Now,” she said, and there was something in her eyes, both angry and fearful, that stopped me from prevaricating further.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle Max,” I said, “but I suppose we have to go.”

  “It was so nice seeing you,” said Monica.

  “You’ll come again?” said Max.

  “When I’m in town,” said Monica.

  “Good luck, then, in San Francisco and with your boyfriend. Tell him I give my regards, one numbers man to another.”

  “I will,” she said, standing now.

  “And next time you come,” said Max, “bring a bissel of that three-bean salad.”

  When we were out in the hallway, Jenna stared at us both as she clasped and unclasped her fists. “We’ll go to the office now and call the police.”

  “Are you sure that’s necessary?” I said.

  “Oh, yes, I am. I’m going to pull your ticket for this.” She turned her head toward Monica. “And who the hell are you?”

  “Now, where are my manners?” I said. “Let me introduce you to each other. Monica, this is Jenna Hathaway. Her father, the former Detective Hathaway, is Uncle Max’s roommate. And Jenna Hathaway, please say hello to Monica Adair.”

  Jenna stared at Monica for a moment with an expression of awe mixed with disbelief, before surprising the hell out of us all by grasping hold of Monica like a long-lost sister and bursting into tears.

  39

  “It’s been like this for about a year,” said Jenna Hathaway as we stood in a sorrowful group beneath the bright sun in the parking lot outside the Sheldon Himmelfarb Convalescent Home for the Aged. She was fiddling with her keys, her head was bowed, she seemed younger somehow as she talked about her father.

  “It’s been like what?” said Monica.

  “My father doesn’t recognize anyone anymore. Not my mother, not his old friends. I’m just the woman who comes in every other day to say hello. It’s as if all the names in his life have slipped away from him, all but one.”

  “Your sister,” I said to Monica.

  Monica nodded without surprise, as if obsession with her sister Chantal were only to be expected, and, seeing the company she was in, maybe she had a point.

  “Each detective has an unsolved case that haunts him,” said Jenna. “For my father it was your sister’s disappearance. He couldn’t abide the idea that a girl that young, so full of life, could simply vanish. He never put the case to sleep when he was still at the department, and when he retired, he took the file to keep working on it. That was going to be his hobby. But somewhere along the line, his mind latched onto the whole affair with something beyond obsession. Every day and every night he would stare at the file, at the pictures, the clippings, the strange lighter he found in your sister’s drawer. It was as if the rest of the world had ceased to matter and all that was left was the one thing that didn’t exist anymore—Chantal.”

  I could see it right off during my brief visit behind the curtain. That was the first unpleasant surprise I mentioned before. I had come to Detective Hathaway with a series of questions, but he was the only one who did the asking. Have you seen her? Do you know what happened to her? She was just here, and then she was gone. His eyes were unfocused, his jaw trembling. Chantal. Where is Chantal?

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “I have to get out of here. I have to find her. Will you help me?”

  “I don’t think I can, Detective.”

  “You have to, you must. I need to find her.”

  “We all need to find her,” I had said.

  “After a while my mother couldn’t take it anymore,” said Jenna Hathaway in that parking lot. “She grabbed the file, everything he had about Chantal, and burned it all. She hoped that would free his mind of the missing girl. But it didn’t work out that way, it only drove him deeper into himself. We wanted to believe he had willfully shut us out of his life. Somehow that was easier for us to handle than the truth, that his fixation with Chantal was an indication of something going awry in his brain. By then it was too late to do anything.”

  “But you’re still trying, aren’t you?” I said.

  Something changed in her just then. Her back straightened, her eyes flashed anger, she was no longer Jenna Hathaway, bereaved daughter. Instead she was now Jenna Hathaway, self-righteous federal prosecutor. It didn’t last but for a moment, before she deflated again.

  “I thought maybe learning the truth might help,” she said. “Maybe if he found out what really happened to Chantal, he’d find another name to replace hers in his memory.”

  Monica reached over and took hold of Jenna Hathaway’s hand. “I understand,” she said, and they looked at each other with the sad knowledge of their secret bond: They both had parents obsessed with the same missing girl.

  “So how’d you light on Charlie?” I said.

  “There was a task force formed to try to deal once and for all with the remnants of the Warrick gang. It wasn’t my usual turf, but they brought me in to see if there were any tax charges that could be leveled at the leaders.”

  “The Al Capone strategy,” I said. Despite all his thieving and murders, it was a tax charge that finally sent old Scarface to Alcatraz.

  “During one of the meetings,” said Jenna, “Charlie Kalakos’s name popped up. There were rumors that he wanted to come home. He had once before given information against the Warricks, and his testimony could be the linchpin of a RICO charge that could wipe out the gang once and for all. But I also remembered my father telling me of his suspicions about a connection between Charlie Kalakos, the Randolph Trust heist, and the missing girl. So I asked to be assigned to deal with Charlie, and I pressed the FBI to find him. That’s why they were outside Charlie’s mother’s house when you went visiting.”

  “And why you’ve been such a hard-ass about giving him a deal.”

  “I just want to find out what he knows.”

  “But you’re not willing to give him immunity.”

  “If he’s responsible for what happened to that girl, he has to pay a price. And if you have a problem with that, maybe you should ask Monica.”

  We both looked at Monica.

  “I’m with her,” she said, edging closer to Jenna.

  “Thanks for the support,” I said. “Okay, how about this? Why don’t I draft up a cooperation agreement for my client? I’ll send it to you, and you can put in the provisions you want regarding Chantal’s disappearance. I’ll give a look-see to what you have in mind.”

  She stared at me for a moment and then turned her head with suspicion. “That sounds almost reasonable. What’s the catch?”

  “No catch. But I’d appreciate you hand-delivering it to me so we can talk it over. I’ll be running around the next couple of days, but I’ll be in family court on Wednesday morning. The child involved in my case is not at risk, so the judge has been letting the proceeding drag, delaying the trial to deal with more pressing matters. I could be waiting there for hours. That would be a good time to talk. And there might actually be something in my case you’d be interested in.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you then. But you won’t be disappointed.”

  She looked at me again, trying to figure what the hell I was doing, and then she looked at Monica. “How did you guys end up together, anyway?” said Jenna.

  “I began looking into the Chantal situation myself,” I said, “and found Monica. Let me ask you, before he drifted away, what did your father tell you about the case?”

  “Just that he wa
s sure there was a connection between the robbery and the disappearance, and he was focusing on five neighborhood guys. Charlie was one of them.”

  “What about at the trust? Did he think anyone there was part of it all?”

  “There were two women at the trust who were apparently in some sort of death fight. One was a young Latin woman, the other was an old lady who my father said he never trusted. I forget her name.”

  “LeComte?”

  She looked at me, surprised. “That’s it, yes. Tell me, why are you so interested, Victor? Why did you start looking into Chantal’s disappearance in the first place?”

  “You don’t know?”

  “No. How would I know?”

  “Because somebody knows. Somebody made sure that the missing girl’s name was tattooed onto my brain, and I thought you might be the one.”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “No idea, huh?”

  “None.”

  I stared hard at her. Not a smile, not so much as a twitch. Damn, I thought I had figured it out.

  “Nice girl,” said Monica after Jenna Hathaway had shaken her keys for the last time and left the parking lot.

  “You two seemed to hit it off.”

  “Remember how she said I should call her for coffee sometime? I think I will. We have a few things in common.”

  “You going to tell her what you do for a living?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Well, I noticed that you seem more comfortable with a fake job and a fake relationship. So maybe you should lie to Jenna and start up a fake friendship.”

  “Victor, if you want to psychoanalyze me, get a degree.”

  “Exception noted.”

  “What?”

  “That’s lawyer talk for you’re right and I’m sorry.”

  “Did you really think that Jenna was responsible for the tattoo?”