by Linda Barnes
Belatedly, I checked my cell for messages, found that Geary had called twice, Chaney once. Face it, Sam’s unexpected appearance had knocked my professionalism for a loop. I wanted to call Paolina, scold her, praise her, reassure her, but knew I wouldn’t get through. She has a cell, but they make her turn it off in school.
Geary was in and had news, but first he needed to express his annoyance that I hadn’t gotten back to him immediately. Just who did I think was paying my fee?
I cut him off. “I’ll explain later. What’s the deal?”
“Chaney was picked up. They actually arrested him. Fingerprinted him, took a mug shot. He’s out on bail now. I had it set to go the last time. This time, they surprised me. Picked him up last night. Margo called me every five minutes; I’m not kidding. At first, I didn’t think they were going to charge him. I thought it was gonna blow over. I thought he’d have some sort of explanation.”
“For what? What happened?”
“They linked that guy Dowling to the money Wilson took out of the bank. Evidently he had an alias, a second identity, as Ben Dennison. This Dennison deposited the exact amount of cash that Chaney withdrew, the day after Chaney withdrew it. So now it looks like some kind of payoff. You know anything about it?”
I ignored his question. “How did the cops make it?”
I could almost hear him shrug. “They’re cops. They investigate.”
The woman who ran the cleaning service, what was her name? Fidelia Moros Santos. She could have gotten in touch. Or the anonymous tipster could have been at it again.
“Find out,” I said. “And tell me what happened at Improvisational Technologies five, six months ago. Why did they hire new security? Was there a breakin?”
“I don’t think so.”
“A breakthough? A new discovery?”
He took his time, then said, “No.”
“Think back. We’re talking December, January.”
“Is it important?”
“It could be.”
“Let me check my calendar.” He put me on hold. I watched Sam’s profile, studied his hands on the wheel. “Yes. Well, near the end of January, that’s when the Swiss came over. A medium-sized Swiss firm, not one of the giants. They were interested in buying Improvisational, but it didn’t work out.”
“Why?”
“These deals are immensely complicated. It usually doesn’t come down to one single make-or-break item. I know Chaney was opposed to it.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sorry. Can’t say.”
But do you know? My fingers tightened on the phone. I felt like forcing the issue, knew it would be a waste of time.
The lawyer’s voice turned demanding. “Look, Chaney wants to see you, wants to know what you’ve got. When can you make it over here?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He sounded incredulous.
“I’ll be in touch.” I hung up.
We stopped for coffee at a convenience store. Sam went in; I stayed in the parking lot to make more calls. The sun was high overhead, but I felt like it ought to be midnight. I decided to try Helen Orza, make sure she or Gagnon would be there, before going any farther. Maybe I ought to give it up, go back to Cambridge, deal with the lawyer, deal with Chaney, I thought. I wasn’t feeling all that great, that was for sure.
“Hello.” A woman picked up after four rings.
“Helen?”
“No, you’ve got the—”
“I’m looking for Phil Gagnon,” I said.
“Oh.”
“Is he there?”
“No.”
“I was supposed to—”
“Are you the lady who called from Massachusetts, the one—”
“Yeah.”
“He said if you called again, and if you had the money—”
“I do.”
“Then try him in Brentwood.”
“Brentwood?”
“Not like L.A., not like whatchamacallit, the wife-killer, not O.J.’s Brentwood. Brentwood, New Hampshire. South of Epping. He’ll be at Wiseman’s, across from the county courthouse.”
“Change of plans,” I told Sam when he came out carrying two enormous Styrofoam mugs. He handed me one, our fingers touched, and the electricity sparked.
“I know what you mean,” he said.
I leaned in and kissed him, thinking, God, if Paolina could see me now. I climbed back into the car, again wanting nothing more than to travel the quickest route to the nearest Victorian inn with flowered sheets and scented candles. A canopied bed, a rug in front of a fireplace. Hell, I’d settle for a secluded lover’s lane, a quick encounter in a cramped car. I wondered if Sam felt the same way.
He went back into the convenience store, got directions to Brentwood’s county courthouse from the clerk.
“I don’t know. Maybe I should just go home.” We hadn’t gone more than half a mile. I was chugging aspirins with my coffee.
“Maybe,” he said noncomittally.
But what if I’d been run off the road just so I wouldn’t connect with Phil Gagnon? What if that was the reason for the attack?
We kept driving. Picture-postcard New Hampshire gave way to poverty New Hampshire. Smaller houses on narrower streets. The infrequent larger homes had battered signs in front of them, posted on unruly lawns, advertising inns and rooming houses, antiques, and legal services. Low flat buildings that might have once been warehouses or factories looked abandoned, with broken or boarded windows, brick walls covered by grafitti. Then we’d take a turn, and another town center with perfect grass and white clapboard houses would appear. The towns were small, the changes sudden—built-up, run-down, rural, city, someplace in between. We got lost twice, in spite of the map and the directions, and twice yellow detour signs made me grind my teeth.
The county courthouse was a big square building, granite and brick, with an ornate dome. The county jail was almost next door, on the next block, an imposing edifice that looked more like a high school than a jail. Wiseman’s had to be Wiseman’s Bail Bonds, located in a row of similar shops across the street from the courthouse, as the woman had said.
Sam pulled up across the street.
“Bail bonds?” he said.
“I guess that’s where Gagnon works.”
The place looked like a pawnshop, or, if you took in the whole row of shops, a cheap motel. Each featured a storefront window, some barred, some with pull-down metal awnings. One had a hand-lettered sign over a boldface phone number: you ring, we spring. Wiseman’s slogan seemed inevitable: a wiseman stays out of jail.
“You going in?”
“Well,” I said, “that was the point.”
“Want company?”
This chauffeur role did not come easy. It cost Sam even to ask permission. Gianelli men don’t just have healthy egos; they tend to have women who stay home, don’t ask questions about work, have lots of kids, do what they’re told.
“Why not?”
“Good. You gonna be who you are?” He knows I don’t always tell the whole truth and nothing but when I’m on the job.
I nodded.
“Okay.”
I put a hand on his arm, thought better of it, and let go. I wanted to tell him I’d prefer it if he didn’t go in strapped for bear. I was sure he had a carry license, but if he didn’t—well, none of my business.
To my relief, he made a discreet stop at the trunk of the car. You sometimes find a cop or two in a bondsman’s shop. A night in the hospital’s bad enough. I didn’t relish the prospect of a night in jail for a chaser.
CHAPTER 33
A tinny radio blasted seventies rock and roll in the entryway, but the din receded as I crossed the linoleum floor to the counter. Behind the counter, an old man, late sixties, early seventies, ran his palm over his grizzled chin. He wore a plaid shirt, a skinny tie, a knitted vest, and suspenders, and his hair stood out in a puffy gray cloud over a broad forehead. He made a tsk-tsk sound with his ton
gue, started talking before I had the chance.
“Hello, cookie,” he said, talking fast, like a transplanted New Yorker. “Is that a shiner I’m seeing or what? This a domestic, right? You gonna go his bail and it ain’t even turned color yet?”
Sam started to protest and I bit my cheek to keep from laughing. “How’d you figure that?”
“Lookit youse. I don’t gotta be no Einstein. What? You’re a drug dealer, a gang banger? Unless you’re trying to sell me something I don’t need, you’re a domestic. What I advise is you let him sit in the tank and think it over, young lady. You don’t gotta bail out no guy does that to ya.”
“If he did it, trust me, I’d let him rot.” I handed the chatty gent my card. “Guy smacks me around, I’m not going his bail. You Mr. Wiseman?”
“Howdja guess?”
“I’m looking for Helen Orza.”
He spread his arms wide, glanced around the perimeter of the shop as if he were seeing it for the first time. “Search me. Ain’t got her.”
“Phil Gagnon, then.”
“Hey, you’re the one with the money for Phil? He told me you promised him a C to sit tight last night, but then ya didn’t show.”
“I was detained.”
“Well, Phil says you can give me the money. You trust me, don’tcha? A guy old as me, where can he run?”
“Where’s Phil?”
“I sent him on a job.”
Shit. I didn’t want to sit around all day waiting for Phil Gagnon.
“Maybe I can help yas,” Wiseman said. “Gagnon doesn’t know much. What he knows, probably I know. Probably I know twice what Gagnon knows. Four times.”
“Do you know where I can reach Helen Orza?”
“Hang on,” he said. “Gotta take a call.”
The phone was ringing so loudly, it felt like a drill working its way through my forehead. I was grateful when he plucked the receiver off the hook. Everything about the place was loud—the music in the foyer, Wiseman’s voice, Wiseman’s shirt, the general decor, which continued the cheap motel motif. There was a square of bright green carpet in front of the counter, like a putting green, clashing with the bright blue paint on the walls. I wondered if Wiseman was color-blind as well as slightly deaf. He hollered into the phone, yelling numbers: “That’s a buck and a quarter; that’s nineteen ninety-eight.” I didn’t think he was talking single bills. A buck and a quarter bail would be a little over a thousand, very cheap.
Sam summoned me with a nod so small it almost didn’t count, more a movement of his eyes than his head. On one end of the counter stood about a hundred windup toys, small sets of teeth, beer kegs, tiny animals made of bright-colored plastic. Sam wound up a giraffe and set it moving in a jerky splay-legged rhythm. I frowned at him.
“Go ’head and play,” Wiseman called from ten feet away. “Calm your nerves. Let the lady talk to me some more.”
I walked back while Sam wound up a boxing kangaroo. “So can you help me?”
Wiseman nodded his shaggy head. “You wanna know about Helen?” He rubbed his chin again. He’d done a bad job shaving. “Man, Helen’s giving me trouble. I can maybe give you a number for her, but she’s never there when I call.”
“A Boston number?”
“Six one seven anyway. That’s eastern Massachusetts.”
“Does Helen work for you?
“Yeah. Her and Phil, the both of ’em. I’m an equal-opportunity employer.”
“She’s a bail agent?’
“Yeah.”
“She do other stuff on the side? Regular investigative work?”
“Far as I know, she just does bail.”
So much for her working for Mrs. Chaney trying to document Professor Chaney’s extracurricular activities.
I said, “So who’s Helen looking for? In Boston.”
“Well, that would be telling.” Wiseman offered me a crooked grin.
“Look, I drove up here because Phil Gagnon said he’d be able to give me some info.”
“Sell you some info.”
“Yes.”
“Phil’s an ass.”
“I kinda suspected that.” We shared a smile.
“You like my windup toys?” he asked, nodding at the far end of the counter, where Sam had about a half dozen of them in motion now, making herky-jerky movements, a clatter of small noises.
“They’re extremely cool,” I said.
“You did say you’d pay him?”
“I did. I intend to, if I get something of value.”
“Whicha the toys is your favorite?”
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Okay, I gotta ask. You a retriever, too?”
Retriever. Skip tracer. Bounty hunter. “No.”
“’Cause your card says PI, so you could be, and if I got a skip out there who’s into two bondsmen, I’d like to hear about it. Guy over there, playing with the toys, he could be your muscle. He’s kinda overdressed for it, but who knows with guys?”
“He’s not my muscle. He’s my driver.”
“Okay, see what I mean? Now little Helen, she’s been working for me—what?—six, seven months is all. Nice young kid; I know her brother. He’s in the can. Family’s got a bail history, you know what I mean, so she needs dough. I figure she’s got a lot of the wrong kind of connections. You know what I mean?”
“I know.” I couldn’t help liking the old coot. He was wizened and crabby, but he had laugh lines all over his face.
“Used to be, I didn’t use no women in retrieval work. Used to never see many women here, period, except cryin’ mamas pledging their jewelry and stuff. Women in the can, you know, they get picked up, their pimps bail ’em. Cost of doing business. But now they’re bringing in girls for all kinds a shit. Domestic disturbance, gang fights. I’m not complaining. It’s good for business. But you know, as a father of daughters, a grandfather of granddaughters, it stinks.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Who was Helen looking for?” I was starting to feel a little woozy, but I didn’t want to sit. If I sat on the wooden bench to the side of the counter, I’d feel like a felon, first off, and second, Wiseman would talk my ear off.
“You got Phil’s money?” he asked.
I handed him two fifties.
“She had three, maybe four files out. Which one you want?”
“I don’t know.”
He made a sound in his throat. “Then I figure you’re not a jump specialist. Least we know who we’re after. We just don’t know where to find ’em.”
“Does it matter, me not knowing?”
“Well, four files. I don’t know.”
“How’s this? If I locate any of your skips, I’ll let you know.”
“On the house?”
“On the house.”
He still looked undecided. I counted out another twenty, another fifty, another hundred.
“Now you’re broadcastin’ on my wavelength,” he said.
We made a deal—for copies of the files, plus Helen Orza’s number. He threw in the windup giraffe when I declared it my favorite, and he warned Sam that if he ever hit me again, he’d go looking for him personally. We were both giggling by the time we got back in the car.
“You’ve got an admirer,” Sam said.
I settled myself into the leather seat, pressed my hands over my eyes. “Whoa. That was some vicious old-guy breath back there. I thought I might faint for a minute.”
“Seriously, you look like you’re going to faint. How about some food?”
The block had pawnshops, bail bondsmen, beer cans in the gutter, the bleak air of failure. “Not around here.”
“We passed a diner a mile back.”
“Fine.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes. I’d thought I’d crack the files the minute I was out of Wiseman’s door. Instead, I clutched them against my chest and concentrated on breathing in and out, told myself I’d look them over in the diner.
There were only two other people in the place, sin
gles at the counter. Sam commandeered a booth and a bowl of whatever soup was on tap, as fast as the lone waitress could bring it. I think a bill changed hands. The next thing I knew, I was spooning minestrone soup greedily into my mouth while Sam consulted a plastic menu and ordered.
My cell rang and one of the two men on the counter stools glared at me like I’d just interrupted his elegant meal in the whispery softness of the Ritz dining room. I thought about letting the damn thing ring, but then I grabbed it out of my backpack.
Leon. I told him I was okay, couldn’t talk, that I’d be in touch. Sam was watching with a carefully neutral expression on his face.
“A guy I’m seeing,” I said when I hung up. Then I thought, damn it, I didn’t have to say anything. It’s not like I owe him an explanation of my life.
“FBI?”
I raised an eyebrow, spooned more soup. My stomach was starting to settle, my headache diminish. The red counter stools looked less abnormally bright.
“Couple guys thought they ought to warn me. You like him?”
“I like him. Let’s not talk about this now, okay?”
“Okay.”
The waitress slammed plates in front of us. The grilled cheese sandwich came with a bag of potato chips. There was another bowl of soup, and I chose that, along with a packet of saltines and a Pepsi.
Sam said, “So who do you figure is in Wiseman’s files? Your dead con, Ben Dowling?”
I swallowed, took a breather. The soup still felt good going down, but I was getting full. “No. I’m figuring the con’s partner, the blackmailer, also possibly the murderer. Somebody Dowling was working with.”
“How will you recognize him?”
“Probably I won’t. I’ll go back to the head of security at Improvisational Technologies and convince him to let me run through their tapes.” I tapped Wiseman’s files with my index finger. “I’ll spot one of these bail jumpers going in or out of Impro. Then I’ll find out why the guy has it in for Chaney, the whole deal, give it to the cops.”
“Sounds good,” Sam said between bites of his sandwich. “Maybe we could have dinner tonight?”
“Sam, you know I’d love to, but let me see how I feel later. I may need a nap.”
“That would be good, too.” He gave me a long, meaningful glance from under hooded eyelids. “You going to finish that soup?”