Undue Influence

by Steve Martini

  She starts to slip the envelope back into the drawer.

  ‘Okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’ll talk to her alone. Nobody else. But I may have to subpoena her.’

  She gives me a smile. ‘Good luck.’

  There’s a rap on the glass behind my head. Cramped quarters. I look at her.

  She is white as a sheet, more than a little fear. She’s looking at the shadow through the glass.

  She silently mouths a single word: ‘Haslid.’

  I read her lips.

  But the light is on. Whoever is outside can see us through the translucent door.

  He knocks again.

  She gives me a little shrug, a concession like we may as well open it up and take our licks.

  I do the honors. I get the door open just enough for the guy to stick his head through. It’s the mail carrier from the loading dock.

  I can hear her breath of relief from this side of the desk. Marcie is hyperventilating.

  ‘Goddamn it, Howard – you took five years off my life.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘Maybe you’ll get the hell out of here and go back to work.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Courier with a package for you.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘That’s what he says.’

  I get up, move the chair away from the door. Outside is a guy in another uniform – dark blue, with white running shoes, a white stripe down the side of his uniform pants, a private courier. He is young, maybe late twenties, good-looking, square jaw, hair cut close like something from the military. He’s either wearing an undersized shirt or maybe he does weights in his off-hours.

  ‘Got an express packet,’ he says.

  ‘This is looking like a fucking convention.’ Howard is pissed. ‘I’m supposed to be in charge when the man’s gone, and you put me on the spot,’ he says. ‘Finish up and get the hell out of there. He’s not supposed to be in here.’ The guy’s looking at me. ‘And you’re not supposed to be in that office.’

  ‘Just a couple more minutes,’ Marcie tells him.

  Howard is the kind who screams and yells a lot, uses profanity like it is a second language. But he lacks a command presence. In any shouting match I suspect that infants probably throw up on his shirt and dogs lick his face.

  Marcie looks at the courier. ‘Who’s sending me a package?’ she says.

  ‘Sign here.’ The deliveryman is in the middle. He just wants to do his job and run. He can’t get through the door, so he hands me the letter pack and a clipboard with the form to be signed.

  ‘She’s number eighteen.’ He puts an X on the line for her signature.

  The package is heavy, bowing out the seams of its cardboard container.

  ‘And you’ – Howard, the postal employee, is looking at me’ – somebody wants to see you at the loading dock.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Is there anybody else in there?’

  ‘Nobody knows I’m here,’ I tell him.

  ‘Good for you,’ he says. ‘All I know is that somebody wants to talk to the guy who’s inside meeting with Marcie. Somebody knows you’re here.’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘What am I, Western Union?’ he says.

  Marcie’s finished with the clipboard and I hand it back. The deliveryman is gone like a shot. At a quick jog he’s headed for his van. Howard looks at him, shakes his head, a mocking grin, like he’s seen the kind before, some butt-licking hustler looking to make an impression with his employer. Howard’s civil service. Besides, he knows there isn’t a hope in hell of his owning the post office one day.

  I follow him out toward the loading dock. This time we take the direct route, through the center of the sorting area. Employees looking at me. Little sniggers. I can see Howard’s head shaking from behind. Like he’s running a tour and escort service.

  We get to the dock. Howard’s friend is still loading the other van. Except for Howard and me, he is alone on the dock.

  ‘Where did he go? The guy who wanted to see me?’

  Howard scratches his head, walks to the edge of the dock, and looks down the alley. Nobody. He asks the other carrier.

  ‘I dunno. Here a minute ago. Musta got tired waiting and left,’ he says. He gives us the government-issue shrug.

  I look up the alley the other way. The courier is at the curb, standing at the open door of a vehicle, looking back over his shoulder in my direction. There’s no one else in sight, just an old lady and a vagrant walking down the sidewalk that cuts the alley at Seventh Street.

  ‘If he comes back, tell him to wait.’ I’m looking at Howard.

  ‘What am I – your messenger?’

  ‘I’m going back inside. Unfinished business,’ I tell him.

  Howard gives me the look, the face of authority, withering like blossoms in a drought. He makes no effort to stop me. Alas, the man is not management material.

  I head back through the door, wondering who could have been looking for me here. I didn’t tell the office where I was going. It couldn’t be Harry. One of those nagging things, like a ringing phone in the night, with nothing but heavy breathing on the line. An annoyance. I try to put it out of my mind.

  As I clear the mail-sorting area, I am still filtering the sights from the loading dock, like light through a camera lens set on a quick shutter speed, fading images being processed, the man’s silhouette at the curb. Why, I think, would a private courier be getting into the backseat of a dark sedan?

  The thought is fused in my mind by the searing blast, the flash of light followed in an instant by heat that toasts my face. The concussion sends me reeling against the wall. Splinters of wood, particles of glass spray my body like gravel shot from the barrel of a gun. In a dreamscape I find myself sprawled, supine, bathed in the warmth of glowing embers. Dazed, things move about me, over my head, white and blue butterflies.

  My eyes focus. Little shards floating in the air, not butterflies, but pieces of papers, singed at the edges, drifting down. One of these settles on my nose, balanced perfectly, then teeters toward one eye. I close the lid, surprised that I can muster that much control over any part of my body.

  Slowly I stagger to one knee, then two. Hands and knees, I feel for the wall, warm sweat running down my face. I can hear nothing but the ringing in my ears. People are moving about me now, soundless emissions coming from agitated faces. One of them takes my arm. He says something in my face, but I can’t hear. I shake my head, motion with my hands, like speak up. Only the ringing in my ears. He steadies me against the wall and moves toward the door, the office where Marcie is.

  I’m holding my head with one hand. Wet warmth. I look at my palm, glistening with blood. It is not warm sweat that is trickling down my cheek.

  The door to the office where Marcie is has disintegrated. The glass blown out of the upper portion. The lower panel of wood is a fringe of splinters. What is left of the chair that I had been sitting in has been blown through the door.

  Two guys kick out what’s left of the lower panel. One of them steps through.

  Mouths are moving, people trying to shout, but they have all lost their voices.

  ‘Somebody call 911,’ I say. But I don’t hear the words.

  Two of the clerks have come from the front counter.

  I steady my legs and push myself forward to the doorway. My head is ringing. The pounding in my ears. A wave of nausea. I turn toward the wall like I am going to retch, but force it down. I fight for control.

  From the doorway I can see nothing of Marcie. The chair where she was sitting has been blown over backwards. It rests partially embedded in the wall behind the desk. One of its wooden arms splintered. No sign of Marcie.

  I move inside the room and steady myself with my hands on the desk, little droplets of blood forming with the dust and shards of paper on its surface.

  Then I see her. On the floor, sprawled on her back. The clothing gone from her upper body. Only her bra, which is singed, and a few strings of fabr
ic from one sleeve remain to cover her frail torso.

  I look at her face, singed and burned, even more innocent and childlike now, gripped in the sleep of death. One man at the pulse of what is left of her thin wrist, looking up, shaking his head, a universal message requiring no words.

  People are beginning to congregate at the door. I see my briefcase, flattened against the wall, its surface scarred like a pistol target, a half dozen nails through its thick latigo.

  Then I see it on the floor, near the chair and my briefcase. The little envelope. The note that Marcie pulled from the drawer of the desk. The one sent to her by Kathy Merlow. Its edges are charred.

  I move in a world of ringing silence. People are milling toward the desk, at once curious and recoiling. Their thoughts for the moment fixed on the fragile form on the floor. Tiptoeing over to look.

  I slip behind two of the women who have pushed their way to the edge of the desk. I reach for my case, tattered, its cover imploded by the force of the blast, studded with nails.

  In as fluid a motion as I can manage, I reach down, trapping the little envelope on the floor between two bloodied fingers. As I rise up, no one seems to notice that there is one less scrap of paper on the floor. Another wave of nausea. I catch the bile in my throat and swallow hard. My hand to my mouth. Bloodied prints on the little envelope. Slowly I back from the room. I can see over the front counter, two federal cops in blue uniforms and shiny badges. They’re headed for the door that leads back here.

  I walk, stumble, pick up my pace, try to make a straight line to the rear of the building.

  On the loading dock I am alone. Everyone is inside. I manage to get down the stairs, tripping and dripping as I walk, moving as quickly as I can toward the safety of my car, clutching the little envelope in my hands, my only link to Kathy Merlow and what she knows.

  Chapter 12

  ‘I need your help,’ I tell her.

  I’m in the office with Harry, picking at one of the bandages on my forehead. There are three stitches and a score of lacerations on the right side of my face. A young doctor picked glass out from under the skin at a surgicenter, one of those walk-in doc shops where with enough plastic you can have anything from your tonsils out to your tubes tied, no questions asked. My face feels like hamburger pounded into shape on a gravel driveway.

  I’m talking to Dana Colby on the phone. It’s a little after six in the evening. The city is beginning to die, surface streets emptying. I’ve caught her just coming through the door from work. She’s a soft voice on the phone and I can’t hear her.

  ‘You gotta speak up,’ I tell her. ‘The blast got my ears.’ I’ve told Dana that the trail of George and Kathy Merlow led me to the post office and the deadly letter bomb. She’s heard about the explosion. It’s a hot topic on the news – every channel and the local radio stations are laying it on thick to the commuting crowd. Dana now senses she’s on the cutting edge, listening to everything I say, eyes and ears to what happened.

  Harry’s shaking his head. He thinks I am being foolish to involve her. To Harry, gender and good looks notwithstanding, Dana is just another prosecutor. He’s trying to talk in my other ear.

  ‘Big mistake.’ Harry writes this note on the pad on my desk and slides it under my face to read.

  We’ve been over all this, Harry and I. He thinks I did the right thing by running, not staying to talk to the cops. Now he thinks I’m blowing it.

  I ran because I wanted to avoid the police and their questions. Lama alone would hold me for a week for questioning. Cavorting with the feds would be bigtime for Jimmy. And to Lama the opportunity to spread pain my way would be better than sex. They would want to know why I was there talking to Marcie Reed. One thing would lead to another, Kathy Merlow and her note, which the cops would want. It is my only lead to the Merlows and what they know about Melanie’s murder.

  I wave Harry off. He’s in my ear.

  ‘Please – I can’t hear myself think,’ I tell him.

  He turns and walks toward the window, a lot of motioning with his hands, talking to himself.

  ‘No, not you,’ I tell her. I’m back to Dana. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. Can we meet at my house?’

  ‘I can be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘No. I need at least an hour,’ I tell her. ‘One errand I have to run.’

  ‘I’ll be there in an hour,’ she says.

  We hang up.

  ‘You’re outta your mind,’ says Harry. He’s still facing the window, away from me.

  ‘You tell her you were there, and she’s gonna call in the fibbies.’ Harry’s term for the FBI. ‘They’ll have you in a chair with bright lights in your eyes before you can sneeze. You may as well have stayed there and talked to ’em at the scene. At least it would have looked better.’

  Harry gives me one of his better expressions, the ones that tell me when I’m being a dumb fuck.

  ‘You gotta admit, I mean, you go to talk to this girl, Marcie Reed. You leave the office for two minutes and she’s turned into Spackle, all over the walls.’

  ‘Oh, shit!’ Suddenly I’m staring off at the middle distance, right through Harry.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he says.

  ‘I’d forgotten,’ I tell him. ‘The package. The one the courier delivered. I handled it. I handed it to Marcie,’ I tell him.

  ‘How did you manage that?’

  ‘The room was too small. He couldn’t get in. So I handed it to her.’

  ‘Oh, great.’ Harry’s a quick-step, pacing between the window and my desk slapping his thigh, going, ‘Oh, great! That’s great. Why didn’t you finger the fuse while you were at it?’ he says. ‘You’re gonna need one helluva lawyer,’ he tells me. ‘I hope you know one.’ Harry’s not offering.

  I’m wondering if forensics can lift prints from tattered and singed bits of paper. Not that it matters, I suppose. It’s only a question of time until they place me in the room. Fingerprints on the desk, witnesses who saw me.

  ‘I just need to buy some time. Long enough to check out the note. Try and run down the Merlows.’

  ‘And you think she’s gonna give it to you?’ He’s talking about Dana.

  ‘I’m hoping.’

  ‘Good luck!’ Harry’s face says it all. ‘In your dreams.’

  He’s standing, staring out the window, looking at the lights of the city, the Capitol five blocks away, lit up like a crown by incandescent lights that arc up the sides of the dome, setting off the cupola topped by its golden sphere.

  There is a gray cast that has us in its grip. The central valley in winter, where they know how to do fog.

  I sit at my desk, studying the contents of Marcie Reed’s little singed envelope. There is a snapshot, its edges charred. In the photograph, what looks like a small one-room church, green clapboard over starched white plaster, set in lush greenery, tinges of a brilliant blue sky. There are glimpses of a few headstones, a small graveyard next to the church.

  And there is the note, written in a feminine hand:

  Dear Marcie:

  I’m sorry, but I need to ask a favor. Left my Mom’s ring in the top drawer to my desk. Could you send it, general delivery, care of ‘Alice Kent.’ Thanks for all your help. You have been the only friend I have had in two years. This place is the end of the earth. One day when this is all over, I will call. Take care. All my love.

  K.

  My guess is that Alice Kent is a name of convenience, something quick and easy that Kathy Merlow could use to collect a package at general delivery. By now she would have some plausible ID, maybe more than one. Given the speed with which they lost themselves after Melanie’s murder, and the absence of any tracks – Harry still has no word from the Resolution Trust Corporation on the house rental – these are resourceful people, the Merlows. I look at the envelope, the little circular postmark.

  Then I turn the snapshot over. On the other side a note, scrawled in a faint pencil, Kathy Merlow’s hand:

  ‘If I take th
e wings of the morning

  and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea.’

  It is a special place, where I spend my afternoons.

  I flip the picture over, study the little church.

  Whoever took the picture was careful. No place-names or signs in the frame, nothing I could use to blow up, to get a fix on where it is. Nothing I can see, anyway.

  Harry’s looking over my shoulder.

  ‘My guess it’s part of a poem,’ he says.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The wings and the sea,’ says Harry. ‘Lyrical stuff.’

  Your heathen roots are showing,’ I tell him. ‘Sunday school does have its benefits.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘It’s part of a passage from the Bible. One of the Psalms.’

  The doorbell rings. I haven’t had time to even take off my coat. Dana’s made it in less than an hour. I open the door to greet her.

  ‘Hey, man, you the lawyer? Danny Vega’s uncle?’

  On my front porch are three kids, maybe sixteen, dark-complected, coal-black hair, shades dangling from their shirt pockets. They are wearing khaki pants and oversized black shirts with long sleeves, part of the uniform, Pancho Villa’s army of revenge, gang-bangers all.

  ‘Who wants to know?’

  One of them has his hair tied in a tight bun, a black hairnet drawn over the top. He’s the one doing all the talking.

  ‘Hey, man. Just answer the question. Don’t give us no shit. You know Danny Vega? You know where he is?’ The kid has sixty-year-old eyes set into a face that is at best sixteen, but mean.

  His two companions are giving me faces of resolve, expressions of enforcement.

  I’m looking at the security chain, hanging limp from the frame of my door. The only thing between us is the tattered screen door, which has been mauled and ripped by one of my neighbor’s cats.

  ‘I think you should go.’

  ‘We goin’ noplace till you tell us where Danny is. We don’ wanna get into it with you, man. But you push us –’

  One of them pulls a butterfly blade from his pocket and whips it open. For the moment he’s cleaning his fingernails, making sure I see the razor-sharp edge.