“So just let go of it,” I said.
“You know what I’m supposed to be doing right now?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s not having a heart-to-heart talk with me in the men’s room.”
“Checking the VIN plates on curbstoned cars.” Matty shrugged her shoulders as she spoke. “He just pulled that one out of his ass and told me to get the hell out of the office.”
“I’m looking for something large and dark—preferably that hasn’t recently been on fire.” I fished a card out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Give me a call if you see something that’s in good shape, you know, if the price is right.”
She looked at the card and then threw it at me. “Asshole! Call somebody in the yellow pages.”
“I already told you what you want to know. Think about it.”
“Somebody that Chuck and Paulie were afraid of! That’s a little goddam thin.”
“So, go find me a car,” I said. “Your boss likes you. He thinks you have a future. He’s nicer than me.”
“I want him, them, whoever.”
“Tell Fay you know about the guy that Chuck and Paulie were afraid of, and ‘him, them, whoever’ will find you.”
“An FBI agent?”
“They think your smug authoritarian air is amusing.”
“So I tell Fay, then what?”
“Get your back to the wall and kill the next son of a bitch that gets close enough to press the muzzle of a silenced Mauser against the back of your head.”
“What if I kill the wrong guy?”
“So, there’s a downside.” I shrugged. “And if you’re going to use Fay to flush out ‘him, them, whoever,’ I’d do it quick. In the meantime I have a question.” Matty twisted her head. “You ever have a fish tank?”
“Hardin, you’re a nut case.”
“Easy question.”
“No, Hardin, I don’t keep fish. I have shit to do.”
“Too bad. My wife keeps fish, and you’re right, it can be a lot of work. One thing is the tank, the glass, it gets a lot of slime on it. My wife says it’s algae.”
“For God’s sakes, is this going somewhere?”
“Yeah. See, you can clean the slime yourself or you can do what my wife does.”
“Do tell.”
“She has this fish, a bottom feeder, it goes around and eats up all the slime.”
“You don’t really believe in that, do you?”
“I didn’t when I was your age, but I’ve mellowed.”
“I’m not that mellow, Hardin, and I’ll tell you something else. I’m real tired of being charming.”
“Matty, things aren’t always what they seem.”
“Agent Svenson, and if I don’t get some direct answers, I’m going to make your life a shit storm.”
“Good, that should keep you busy. Maybe Neil Carter will let you borrow his carton when you clean out your desk.”
“I really don’t care. I have to go find ‘him, them, whoever,’ and thanks to your sterling help, I’m looking for a goddam fish.” She snapped off the music.
“It’s not a fish, it’s a bear.”
Matty squared her shoulders, turned to face me, and switched the music back on. “This bear have a name?”
“Actually it’s two bears. They change their names like they change their socks. I have some names, but they won’t help you.”
“What do they look like?”
“Big guys, my age, but otherwise nondescript. They look like everybody. They look like nobody, or whoever they need to look like. These bears are an experience, not a description.”
“That’s not much better than looking for a fish.”
“Yes it is, because not everybody knows that there are two bears. You can bet that Fay doesn’t. One bear works the front and the other stays in the woods. The front bear is the shooter. He can kill you with his hands or a rolled-up newspaper, from across the street or a block away. A soft lead twenty-two in the back of the head is his signature move. The bear in the woods is the one that makes things go bang. He can rig your toilet to explode with what’s in your cupboard and under your sink.”
“So?”
“Walk away,” I said. “Take your partner and have a nice lunch. This afternoon, maybe, you’ll find a stolen car, an out-of-state one. You bust the guy selling it and then you turn him. You take down the whole ring—fanfare, you’re a hero. In twenty-five or thirty years you’re the director. What do you think?”
“I think I need the names that you have for these guys.”
“Vladimir,” I said. “Sehenlink has a picture.” I reached over, snapped off the tunes, and walked back to my office.
23
“I know where the money is,” I said into the telephone. The pictures were spread out on the desk in front of me. Marg had dropped them on my desk with the mail from my PO box while I was haggling with my car insurance company over a rental car.
“Where?” said Ron.
“Not on the phone,” I said. “How quickly can you get over here?”
“I’m on my way.”
I flipped through the stack of mail. Got a couple of checks—nice—also a slick mailer from one of the computer-search firms. I flipped it in the trash. The last item in the stack—an orange broadside mailer, folded in thirds—was from Bernie Hecker, a local guy I referred divorce cases to when I was flush enough to pick and choose my work.
Bernie had set up in the computer records search business. “Had to happen,” I said. “Bernie, you’ve lost my respect.”
“What?” Marg called out from her desk.
“Got a couple of checks,” I said.
“They can wait until tomorrow,” she said, “unless you’re going out.”
“I need some expense money,” I said. “Write me a check and I’ll deposit these while I’m at the bank.”
“You owe me eight dollars for the pictures, and don’t come out of there until you have your expense ledger in your hand.”
I dialed up Bernie and got one of those computer-generated answering systems with four or five selections. I hit the telephone on my desk twice and yelled into the handset, “Bernie, this is Art Hardin, answer the goddam phone!” He had a one-room office behind a bait shop up on Plainfield Avenue. He picked up.
“Jesus, Art! What’s eating you?”
“I hate talking to machines.”
“Why? You afraid your wife’s gonna buy a vibrator?”
“Never crossed my mind.”
“It’s the wave of the future.”
“Vibrators or talking machines?”
“Technology, Art! You got to come out of the Stone Age! You’re going to starve to death over there!”
“Good, let me talk to your fucking computer.”
“I didn’t get that option, but I’m gonna—you know, when I see how things go.”
I held the handset out at arm’s length but found no words of comfort written on it. I let out a stifled scream.
“Hey, Art, you all right?” Bernie’s voice was small and distant. Marg’s head appeared through the door way.
“What’s all the pounding and yelling?” she said, but her face looked more concerned than angry.
I put my left hand over the bottom of the handset.
“Nothing,” I said. “I just hate doing my expense ledger.”
“You have to learn a little discipline.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said and nodded. She gave me her narrow-eyed schoolmarm face, her arm came through the doorway to provide a finger shake, and she was gone.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I told Bernie. “I got your mailer. I got a job for you.”
“No shit! I wasn’t sure you were worth the stamp.”
“You’re not as surprised as I am,” I said. “It’s just I’m kind of pressed for time on this one.”
“What’s your pleasure? I’m doing a discount on license plates.”
“County records,” I said. “I’m looking for marriage licenses for a Caro
lyn Timmer and a Brenda Clemments. I want you to check Kent, Ottawa, and Allegan counties.”
“You got Social Security numbers?”
“Just run the names.”
“You’re looking to spend a yard and a half here.”
“Dazzle me,” I said. “When can you get back to me?”
“Hold on,” he said. I heard him click the mouse around the pad and then he mumbled the letters of the names as he pecked them out one at a time.
“Jesus, there’s a ton of Timmers,” he said.
“Read ’em off,” I said. The third was the charm. Carolyn Timmer married Philip Emmery at a Dutch Christian Reformed Church in Holland, Michigan. The Clemments woman was a dry hole.
Birth records in Kent County revealed that Carolyn Timmer was the daughter of Van Pelham’s law partner. That little tidbit ran the tab up to two yards. It took twenty minutes.
“Bernie, you may be a genius. Give me an invoice number and I’ll have Marg cut you a check.”
“You want hard copy?”
“Can you do that?”
“Sure,” said Bernie. “The computer can’t talk yet, but it writes good.”
“Fax me, I’ll put the check in the mail.”
“My man,” he said and hung up.
I’d oiled my sidearm and finished my expense report by the time Ron wondered in and Marg’s fax machine spit out the “hard copy.” I folded it and put it in my pocket.
“What’s the matter, Art?” Ron said.
“Nothing,” I said. “Just when I think things can’t get any stranger, I find out I’m wrong.”
“So, where’s the money?”
“Not here.” I got up and went to the closet and got us each a vest and a radio. “Know what happens when you hunt the bear?”
He pulled off his coat and started on his tie. “The bear hunts back,” he said.
When we had the vests snugged up and our clothes arranged, I scraped the pictures together and we left. Marg took the expense ledger and smiled. She had the deposit and a check for me ready to go. I gave her Bernie’s invoice and expected her to complain about having to cut a check immediately on a thirty-pay invoice. She surprised me. All she said was “Be careful.”
On the way to the bank I told Ron, “Matty Svenson stopped by. She wouldn’t talk in the office. She said Ralph Sehenlink sent Neil Carter on a permanent vacation and her pet racketeering case got shut down.”
“I wonder if anybody thought to shut down Rosenko and Solutzkof?” We pulled into the bank lot and parked.
“I don’t have any faith in that idea.” I took the pictures out of my pocket, handed them to Ron, and strolled into the bank.
When I got back, Ron handed me his cell phone. “Marg called,” he said. “She wants you to call back.”
I did. Sergeant Franklin called right after Ron and I walked out; he left a message for me to meet him at The Chance around eight. She said that he was pleasant enough about it and hadn’t been really insistent. That part of the story made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Talon was killed on the boat,” said Ron. “There’s a bloodstain on the transom.”
“It ran down in rivulets,” I said. “Paulie said that he caught Randy trying to double-cross them.”
“Where was this picture taken?” he asked.
“City impound yard. Kind of an interesting place these days. They have that red Ford Escort down there under a tarp, except it’s burned to a crisp, the VIN tag is gone, and the fire department found a roast in the oven.”
“Chucky-wucky?”
“That’s my guess, but the body was mutilated and burned so bad they have to hope for a DNA match.”
“Dental records?”
“The head is one of the parts they don’t have.”
“I can’t believe they’re going to leave the boat outside,” said Ron. “It’s the piece of evidence that Cox and Shephart had to be cribbing. I mean, there wasn’t a word about the boat in the press.”
I gave Ron the paperwork that I got from Bernie. He scanned it and his face went pale. “Small town,” he said. “I guess we watch the boat.”
“I have to pick up a rental car,” I said. “Franklin wants me to meet him at The Chance around eight and that means you’re on the boat alone until I get back.”
Ron dropped me at the car rental agency and headed over to the impound yard. I had to haggle and pay extra to get a car larger than a coffin. I told them that I wanted one big enough to have a spare tire in the trunk instead of a body bag. They didn’t see the humor. They gave me a black Mustang convertible.
When I got to the impound yard, I found the boat and trailer parked inside the fence behind the building and Ron set up in the Grand Rapids Area Transit Authority employee parking lot. He had a good angle for film. I set up across the street and east of the impound office so I could watch the gate.
At ten after five, a red Jeep Cherokee showed up with Fay’s wife at the wheel. Good old Arnie climbed out of the passenger door. He walked around to the driver’s window. They made a little kissy-face and she left. Fay went inside.
At a quarter after, Fay was back outside with the guard. The guard opened the gate. Fay located and fired up his Suburban and backed it up to the boat. The guard helped him line it up. A van marked “K9-Corps Security, Inc.,” arrived at the gate.
“Five-six, Five-seven, over,” I said into the radio.
“Seven, go,” answered Ron.
“I’m going to take the lead. Fay might make the van, over.”
“That’s a four,” said Ron. “I won’t move until you’re out of sight. Seven, out.”
“Six, out.”
Fay pulled out past the gate, and the guard handed him a clipboard through the driver’s window. The security van backed in and unleashed the soup-hounds into the fenced yard. Fay handed back the clipboard and pulled out.
He couldn’t scoot in a truck pulling a boat trailer like he did in his Corvette, so I laid back. He wasn’t hard to follow and he didn’t lead me far.
Fay went north up to Fulton, hung a left, and towed the boat into a coin-operated car wash. He pulled the truck through so that the boat was in one of the bays that featured a high-pressure water hose with a three-foot metal nozzle. When he got out of the truck his head was all swivels. He stood in front of the bay and lit up a cigar while he dog-eyed the street.
“Seven, hold up where you’re at. We’re at the Power Wash on Fulton, and Fay is looking hard.”
“I’m in the alley behind the fruit market across the street. Let me know when to come out.”
“Try to set up a block north,” I said. “Maybe you can get an angle between some houses and crank on a little lens, over.”
“You got it. Seven, out.”
I parked at a meter in front of a pawn shop, across the street and past the car wash. I got out and kept my back to Fay, then plugged the meter and went into the pawn shop.
“How can I be helping you?” asked the man behind the counter. He had a dark complexion and very sharp features. He stood behind a thick Plexiglas partition.
I held up my radio and my folded ID case. “You want to buy a badge and a radio?”
“We are running an honest business here.”
“Of course. Do you mind if I stand here and look out your window for a while?”
“Certainly, not at all.”
I took that to mean yes. Fay finally stuck his hand in his pants pocket and walked over to the change machine. He fed it several bills and beat on it with his fist. He must have got his change because he went back to the bay and went to work.
I keyed the radio and said, “Seven, go. Six, out.”
“Excuse me very much, sir.”
“Yes, what?”
“If there is being trouble you may be counting on me for very much help to you.”
I turned around and found him displaying an auto-loading magnum, just a hair smaller than a crew-served weapon. “Right,” I said, “but everything�
�s under control.”
When I turned back, Fay stood inside the boat hosing down the seating area. He ran out of whoosh and had to climb down to pump more quarters into the machine. Ron called and in half a dozen words said that he was in and had a good angle.
“Excuse me very much, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Is there going to be robbery?”
“Not here.”
The clerk smiled large. Fay kept it up until I began to wonder if the stolen money was going to float over the gunwales. After an hour and another trip to the coin changer, the sun was low and Fay was satisfied. He pulled out. I thanked the clerk for his community spirit. A couple of customers had walked in, saw me, and departed. The clerk never complained, which is a lot to ask from a man who runs an honest business.
Fay went west on Fulton. He crossed some railroad tracks, and just past a taco stand, turned north. Half a block up, he swung wide to the left, turned right, and stopped, blocking both lanes in our direction and one of the oncoming lanes.
I pulled down the sun visor, pulled up close, and laid on the horn. Fay was nosed into the drive of a two-story, turn-of-the-century brick-and-cement-slab warehouse. A roll-up door wound its way slowly open in front of him.
Fay laid a small black box on the dash and flashed me the bird. I kept most of my face behind the visor. The opening door revealed a ramp that angled up to the second floor. When he had clearance, he drove in. The door rolled down behind him.
I couldn’t make out an address on the building, but there was a large “FOR SALE” sign nailed to a boarded-up second-floor window. I wrote the information down and scouted the area.
A neighborhood of two-story clapboard houses and narrow streets spread out behind the warehouse. Two blocks east, the streets crossed the rail line. Where the rail lines bisected the streets, there were warning lights but no control arms. A half-block past the rail grades, the residential streets emptied onto a north-south street that served as a truck access to an unbroken row of furniture factory buildings. Four blocks north, the neighborhood ended at a viaduct that allowed the expressway to pass over the rail lines.
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