by Jan Burke
“I knew I wasn’t going to like this.”
I ignored that. I’ve been tempting Lydia to misbehave for about three decades, so by now I know what to expect in the way of protest.
“Just give out these slips of paper. See? My handwriting. It’s the number for Wrigley’s personal pager. I think it should be dialed. A lot.”
She took the slips, her look of trepidation now replaced with a mischievous smile. That’s my pal.
“How did you ever get this number?”
“The old boy thought I was going to set him up with Claire Watterson.”
“He must be out of his mind.”
“He will be, when we get done with him. Now, I’ve got to get out of here.” I started to walk out, then stopped and turned back to her. “Lydia? Tell them to be creative about the call-back numbers. The pound and the sanitation department are already spoken for.”
I hurried back to my desk and checked my voice-mail messages. One from Frank, one from Roberta. Frank had called me before I left my “beeper” message for him; he was letting me know he’d actually be home for dinner, so I didn’t have to call him back. Roberta just left her number. I debated for a second or two, but there had been an anxiousness in her voice, so I decided to go ahead and call her now. I could always call Burrows and tell him I’d be late. But when I called, I reached her secretary.
“She’s with a client,” the secretary said, “and she has a meeting across town this afternoon. I’m about to leave for the day, but can I leave a message for her? I know she’s anxious to talk to you.”
I gave her my pager number and my home number. I gathered up Ben’s calendars and left the office.
My curiosity was raging. Edison Burrows mentioned a note. Did Lucas leave a note about his activities? I was so preoccupied with trying to untangle my conversation with Burrows, I stood bewildered in the parking lot for a second before I remembered that I was still parked in the alley—or hoped I was. I rounded the corner of the building, greatly cheered to see the Karmann Ghia—until I saw the broken glass on the driver’s side. A brick lay on the ground near the door.
“Shit!” I slowed my steps, trying to brace myself for finding the ignition popped or the interior vandalized. This thief might have been frustrated to find the radio gone—long gone, thanks to the work of one of his predecessors, a knife-wielding asshole who had ripped his way through the ragtop. At least the glass wouldn’t be so expensive to replace. It would come out of my own pocket; the Karmann Ghia was too old to make comprehensive insurance worthwhile.
As I crunched my way closer to the car door, I noticed the hood of the trunk wasn’t fully latched. I peered into the car. No other apparent damage. I brushed beads of glass off the seat, hit the release for the trunk, and went to the front of the car to see if anything had been taken from there. But my earthquake kit, flares, beach blanket, and flashlight were still there. Even my gym bag, which had a set of running clothes and shoes in it, hadn’t been taken. On second thought, maybe my running shoes weren’t such a prize.
I shut the trunk and got into the car, shaking loose another spray of glass beads. I started the car, relieved that nothing seemed amiss with the engine, and drove toward Edison Burrows’s home.
At the first stoplight, I found myself inventing punishments for the vandal. I had a brief moment of mentally asking “What did I ever do to you?” to the unknown, would-be thief. Useless. As the wind came in through the shattered window, I clenched my teeth and told myself that I should be grateful the car was still there.
Should be.
Beyond contributing my input to local crime statistics, I knew there was no point in calling the police. Auto theft and vandalism in southern California is so rampant, those cities which don’t just take reports over the phone send officers out mostly as a public relations effort, not because there is any likelihood of finding the car—let alone the thief.
I haven’t owned many things as long as I’ve owned my Karmann Ghia, and have a sentimental attachment to even fewer. I’m not a car-worshiper by any means, but I’ve spent a lot of time in this one, and the broken window seemed like an injury to an old friend. But with the exception of allowing myself to engage in some rather unrealistic vigilante fantasies during the drive to Burrows’s house, I knew it was best to try to shrug it off.
EDISON BURROWS LIVED in a quiet neighborhood where the branches of big oak trees were beginning to fill in their canopy above the streets with soft, bright green leaves. His house was typical of those built in the mid-1920s in Las Piernas, a small Spanish-style home with white stucco walls, a red tile roof, and arching windows. I parked on the street, got out with the calendars in hand, and caught myself just before I locked the car door.
Burrows opened the heavy wood panel door without bothering to peek at me through the small grilled window in it. The hour since we had talked on the phone seemed to have given him time to collect himself.
“Come in, come in,” he said, then spying the calendars, “What have you brought with you?”
“Oh, just some things I don’t want to leave in my car.” I explained about the window and received just the right amount of sympathy before he seated me in a sunny kitchen and offered coffee.
He was a slightly built man, a little under six feet tall, I would guess. He bustled about the kitchen and talked energetically. His skin was pale but his cheeks were pink, and his thick brows rose and fell as he spoke. He had the look of someone who has spent most of his life indoors. He reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who. The son on the streets? But which of many homeless men I had met in the last few days was Burrows’s son?
“I’m so sorry to hear about Lucas,” he said again, quiet for a moment. “He couldn’t have been more than forty-something, right? About my son’s age. I’m seventy-five—almost twice his age.”
“You don’t look seventy-five,” I said.
“I don’t act it, either,” he said with a wink. “And I’ve got at least another twenty-five to act ornery.”
He picked up a thick folder and a magnifying glass, then sat at the table with me. He set the glass and folder to one side and began to tell me of his years as a documents examiner. He was clearly going to go about this in his own way, and I decided that it would be better to let him do so, if the alternative was something like that phone call.
“I worked for the county for years,” he said.
“Las Piernas County?”
“Yes. About thirty years with them before I retired. Over that time, I had a few courses and studied with some interesting folks, and along the way I got to be pretty good at detecting forgeries and altered documents. I can tell you all about inks and papers. But my real specialty was typewriters.” He laughed. “Boy, has that end of the business changed. Technology went leaps and bounds just about the time I retired.”
“Computers and laser printers?”
He nodded. “That’s just part of it. Anyway, it was much easier in the old days, when all the office work was done on the kind of machine Lucas used. A manual typewriter.”
I thought back. “Yes, I remember now—what was it, a Remington?”
He shook his head. “Underwood. Lots of folks had moved to electric typewriters—IBM Selectrics, or Lanier word processors, if they could afford them. But to our good fortune, Lucas was used to this old Underwood. I guess he’d been using it since high school.” He paused. “I’m getting a little ahead of myself here.”
He patted the folder. “Lucas came to me with a challenge. He said he had some pages he had typed, and some pages someone else had typed. He said that Joshua—my son—had told him that I ought to be able to tell the difference.”
“Your son is here in town?”
He was suddenly less animated. His shoulders drooped a little, and he ran a hand over his short white hair. “Yes. It breaks my heart, but I’ve given up trying to get him to come home. I know people have lots of reasons for being on the street, but with him it’s the booze. I d
on’t know what other reason he would have for living out there when he could be with me. You know how many of those people living out there with him wish they could have a warm place to stay? He’s had all kinds of advantages most of them haven’t had, and it makes not one bit of difference. Why? The booze. I stopped giving him money. It just goes into the bottle with him. But every time it rains or gets cold, I’m sick with worry.”
“He told Lucas to go to you for help, though. So he still thinks of you.”
Edison smiled. “Do you know how great I felt the day Lucas Monroe called me and asked for my help—because my son had recommended me to him? I would have helped Lucas for free for the rest of his life …” His voice faltered. “Well, I guess I did help him for the rest of his life. But not for free. He did work around here for me. Painting, things like that. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“What was it he asked you to do?”
“He said he had a document that someone had inserted some forged pages into. He had typed the original, someone else had typed the forgeries. They had used the same paper, and probably the same machine. Could I tell them apart?” He smiled broadly. “Of course I could!”
He picked up the magnifying glass. “He told me that he would want me to show the differences to you, that you worked for the newspaper and might be willing to help him.” He opened the folder and tapped on the top page. “These are photocopies—excellent copies, but copies all the same. I worked from his originals for purposes of the examination, of course. But I didn’t want to mark those, so I copied them and circled the places where the differences really stand out.”
“Do you have the originals?” I asked.
“Oh… oh no. No, I don’t. He didn’t bring them to you?”
“No.”
“I did have them for a time, but he took them with him the last time I saw him.”
“When was that?”
“Let’s see. He stopped by… not last Saturday, but the previous Saturday.”
“Ten days ago?”
“Yes. I had completed my work by then. It didn’t take very long. Here—I’ll show you.”
27
HE TURNED ONE of the pages toward me. It seemed to be a page of data gathered from a survey of an apartment building. It began with an address with cross-streets included, followed by a detailed description of the building, including number of units, parking spaces, laundry facilities, and so on. The page ended with the start of descriptions of the households in each apartment.
“This is a page that Lucas typed. What do you notice about the typing itself?”
I glanced at it. “It looks fairly neat to me. Is this from his thesis?”
Edison nodded. “Look closer.” He handed me the magnifying glass, then reached over and pointed at several places on the page. “Wherever the letters th appear together.”
As he pointed, I studied words like the, tenth, mother, and father. “The two letters are close together,” I said. “Closer than some of the others.”
“Very good! That’s a habit of his. All typists have habits, patterns they develop over time. That’s how I was able to do my job. There were the easy giveaways, of course—if someone used a different machine or ribbon. Each machine has its own characteristics—type wear and so on. But if the ribbon isn’t available or the same machine was used, it helps to look at the habits of the typist.
“I asked Lucas to type something here for me,” he went on. “Had him use an old Remington I have in my den, told him just to type a note so I might have a sample of material that I had actually seen him type.” He handed over another sheet of paper. “He was fast and quite accurate.”
The paper read:
Thanks for the help, Edison. At least I can now prove this part of it all. Don’t worry if it takes some time to come out in the news. The last time Irene saw me, I wasn’t in such good shape. But I believe she’s the kind of person who tries hard to be fair to others & when she sees what you have discovered, I know she’ll listen to me.
I may be able to hurry things along from the other side, too. I’ve let sleeping dogs lie for too many years.
Take it easy,
Here he had scrawled his barely legible signature, then added this below it:
P.S. Don’t worry about your son. I think he’s on his way home. I really do. I’ll call you in a week or 2. If you don’t hear from me in 2 weeks, please ask Joshua to read PS23 to Irene.
I stared at this for a long time, not because I was studying his typing, but because some things will put your hands right into those of a ghost, and this was one of those things.
“Do you understand it?” Edison asked.
“Most of it, I think.” Except his faith in my fairness.
When I didn’t say more, Edison began talking about another page. Gradually, I tuned into what he was saying. “Could you repeat that?”
“The numerals. That’s the first giveaway. You could see that even if you didn’t notice the th pattern.”
I looked at the page he was discussing. Another apartment-house survey.
“See how Lucas almost always types numerals instead of spelled-out numbers?” Edison asked, pointing to the first page we had studied, and then at the numerals in the note. “He was experienced with typing numerals, used them a lot in his work. Except in those places in the body of the thesis itself where the style book would say numbers should be spelled out, he used numerals. I could show you many examples. But look at this other typist’s work.”
Sure enough, the new page showed numbers spelled out as words. “Three children: two males, aged eight and four; one female, aged six,” one line read. On Lucas’s survey, a similar line read: “3 children: 1 female, aged 12; 2 males, aged 10 & 9.”
“He used an ampersand here, the forger didn’t. Is that true throughout?”
He grinned. “Excellent. What else do you notice?”
I used the magnifying glass. “The th pattern is different, and …”
He laughed, seeing me point at certain letters. “Yes. Excellent.”
“The letters a, q, and z. They’re faint. And there’s something weird about some of the capital letters.”
“Yes, yes! When she uses the left-hand shift key, she doesn’t always depress it properly, or she releases it too soon. Very good, very good!”
I looked up at him. You’d think I’d just asked him to dance. “What can you tell from this, besides that it’s typed by a different typist?”
“That’s quite a big discovery, wouldn’t you say? But to answer your question, based on information Lucas gave me, I would suspect our culprit is Nadine Preston, not Andre Selman.”
“He told you a lot, then.”
“Only after I showed him I could prove two different typists were involved.”
“How do you know it’s Nadine?”
“I’m guessing there, but almost any sample of her typing would probably confirm my suspicions. Lucas said that the little finger of her left hand was crooked—broken in high school and never properly set. Perhaps that finger was a little weaker than the others, or so crooked her typing was impaired. That would explain what we see on the page.”
“So this is what it was all about. Lucas’s mother will be so relieved. If I can find the original documents, we can prove that someone tampered with his thesis. That would clear his name.”
“Clear his name? Oh, that wasn’t really what he was after.”
“Then what?”
He picked up the pages, placed them neatly in the folder, but kept it open, staring down at the stack of copies. “Well, I don’t claim to know all of his plans, of course. But we talked about a few of them. The ones concerning these.” He fingered the edges of the pages, then looked up at me. “These weren’t just numbers on a page, you know. Not to Lucas. They were people. Whole families. He felt a great injustice was done to them, and that he was partly to blame.”
“What do you mean?”
“H
is statistics. He wanted the statistics to represent what was really going on in these neighborhoods. Low-income families, seniors, were living in these places.”
“People who couldn’t afford to move,” I said, understanding where he was headed. “But redevelopment forced them to.”
“Yes.”
“But an argument might be made that the neighborhoods were decaying. That they needed to be brought to life again.”
“Lucas said that some of the places they studied would benefit from office buildings and new retail districts. He said that was what excited him about the study in the first place. But then he saw that it wasn’t enough for Andre Selman and his cronies. They saw money to be made from redevelopment.”
“Andre Selman’s study was used to decide where the boundary lines were to be drawn for redevelopment,” I said. “I’ve already seen how the money-making end of this can work. But Lucas must have had some firsthand knowledge of what Andre’s part in the scam was.”
He nodded. “Lucas said that once he was off the project, Selman tampered with the statistics. Selman made sure that Lucas was discredited. Then he phonied up the numbers so that it looked as if fewer people were living in these places. Instead of an apartment hotel that had fifty families living in it, it suddenly had five. Fewer people to move, so the city doesn’t look so bad forcing them out.”
“And so Lucas decided to confront these people with his proof of their tampering with the numbers.”
“Right. I think that’s what he meant about awakening those sleeping dogs. All this time, they’ve been able to get away with it. Lucas always acted like there was more to it than disproving this study, but this was going to be the start of it.”
It would have been easy to say to him, “This was all so long ago. It’s too late to make amends.” I wasn’t even sure there was a way to make amends. The people who had lived in those buildings had either moved to other places or they were on the street. The “male aged ten” would be in his twenties now.
But I didn’t say any of those things to Edison Burrows. For the most part, I didn’t say them because I was certain there was more to this story, that Lucas had not told him everything. I had made up my mind after reading Lucas’s note—he had wanted my help, and I would not refuse it this time.