“Good Snowy. How about you?”
He’d picked up the high school nickname in reference to his last name and white-blond hair. The five-to-eight stretch he did after college for selling coke cemented it for life.
“I’m getting by Rafferty. Just. You know how hard it can be.”
Snowy was the only guy I knew pulling down upwards of three hundred g’s a year who could refer to himself as “just getting by” with a straight face.
“Hey Rafferty, you must see this. I had it installed yesterday.”
He walked to the single artwork-free wall, made up of a series of square fabric panels. He touched one corner of a panel. Three squares swung outwards and upwards at his touch to reveal a screen the size of your average drive-in looming in the space beyond.
“The latest, my friend. A Sony Videoscope KP-5040 fifty-inch projector TV. Only two in the US. Not even Trump has one yet.”
That was Snowy all over. The biggest and the best. And if Trump didn’t have one yet, Snowy had achieved his goal for exclusivity. A year ago, I’d seen Snowy get rid of a perfectly good Mercedes 560 with only two thousand on the clock. “Now that Trump has one,” he had said, “they are as good as common.”
I bet The Donald didn’t even know who Snowy was and if he had he wouldn’t have given a damn either way, but it all made sense to Snowy, so I made the appropriate noises.
“Wow, Snowy. That’s a sweet set. I didn’t know they made them that big.”
Snowy hurdled the sarcasm and launched into a dizzying array of statistics; screen resolutions, lamp lumens and the future market for cinema-like screens in every home.
Usually I wouldn’t waste time listening to people rhapsodize over commercial crap. Bored the hell out of me. Snowy was a special case; he had what I needed. Manpower. And since I didn’t represent his usual clientele, I needed to provide the occasional ego assist and fake some sycophantic fervor now and then.
The things we do.
See, after Snowy returned from his federally-funded holiday, he had needed to find a racket to keep himself occupied and less likely to see the inside of another cell. So, with the record like a noose around his neck and nobody wanting to give him a job, he figured doing investigative work, like yours truly, was a good place to start. No-one to tell him what to do and, let’s face it, we’re not exactly the white-collar end of town. He fit right in.
He wangled an insurance company as an early client and, in a fit of brilliance, instead of charging them a flat rate for his services, he negotiated a percentage of the money he saved the company.
Snowy always was a mover and shaker, even back as a small-time coke pusher. An organizer, lieutenant, not a foot soldier. Soon, he had a couple of other reformed citizens working for him and he’s orchestrating the business. Building, marketing, growing. And buying the newest and the best stuff along the way.
Fast-forward a few years and his business reaches nation-wide, with fifty or sixty staff, and a downtown office building. Snowy lives in a nice pile in Highland Park, drives a new Porsche 911 and watches Cowboys games on his Sony Videomacallit.
Snowy decided to wrap up his projector pitch, “… guy at Sony Japan will put one aside for me as soon they arrive from the factory. Not even Trump has a deal that good.”
He closed the hangar doors to take the behemoth out of view and sat down on the couch. He crossed his legs, adjusted the razor sharp crease in his silver-gray suit and played with his tie until it looked perfect. Once he was again the picture of sartorial elegance he flashed a smile at me and said, “Enough about my toys, Rafferty. What can I do for you today?”
It was classic Snowy and a gambit designed to trap the unwary.
Don’t get me wrong, he’d been a big help over the years, but I’d learned long ago that Snowy needed to be needed. Providing a service wasn’t enough for him. If you just wanted a favor, then you’d tell your story walking. If, however, you were on your last legs, with nowhere else to go, and Snowy was the only guy who could help, then maybe he’d think about it.
I wasn’t yet ready to accept Don’s word on Dariell. Jakob. Whatever the fuck his name was. The problem was that my research capabilities were limited to the results found within phonebooks and reverse directories for the Lone Star State.
I needed help.
“I’m looking for someone, Snowy. It sounds simple, but I don’t have the resources. And, as you know, money … well, Sony’s not boxing up a new Video Thingamajig to send to my place.” I shrugged.
Shameless, I know, but I’m not above, or beneath, playing the game that’s in front of me.
Snowy waved a hand.
“Rafferty. Think nothing of it.” I knew he expected the exact opposite. “I sleep better at night with the help you gave me those three years ago.” It was Cowboy who took down the nutcase gunning for Snowy, but I wasn’t going to remind him of that.
“My resources are your resources,” he said. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, elbows on knees, fingers steepled in front of his lips.
Now we’re talking.
“I have a name and alias but no address. How wide can you search for that?”
“I assume you mean Dallas and suburbs.”
I shook my head.
“I’m not sure he’s in Texas. He could be anywhere.”
Snowy’s face split into a huge grin.
“Now that is a challenge, Rafferty. I am ready for it. Who is this person that you seek?”
I gave him the Friesen and Thof names, as Don had spelled them for me.
He reached out and pressed one of the twelve buttons on the phone console resting on the coffee table.
“Max? Run me searches on Thof, Dariell and Friesen, Jakob. No known address.” He confirmed the spelling, put his hand over the mouthpiece and turned to me. “Don’t worry about it Rafferty, Max will find him. Max is ex-FBI, I hired a couple of months ago. Max is the best. You will know of the people Max has tracked down over the years. They have always made the papers. And the inside connections to different databases, from time with the Feds … well, you don’t want to know.”
The receiver squawked. As Snowy listened his face morphed from that of a young boy showing off his new bike to the same boy watching a garbage truck run over said bike.
“Thanks Max.” He put the phone down and looked at me, worried.
“You should check those names, Rafferty. Max got almost fifty hits on Jakob Friesen, too many to give useful information.”
“And Dariell?” I asked. Snowy’s frown deepened.
“Max tried a couple of spelling variations in addition to yours, and says this Dariell Thof doesn’t exist.” He rubbed his lip in thought. “And if Max says that someone doesn’t exist, you’d better believe it to be true.” I wasn’t sure which of us he was trying to convince.
That didn’t give me anything extra to put to good use before seeing Don on the weekend. On the other hand it didn’t give me any less, either.
After hearty handshakes and back slaps, I left Snowy to his burgeoning empire. As I closed the door he was sitting behind his desk, crestfallen.
He was probably worried about where to find a new Max and whether Trump already had one.
Chapter 10
With no new answers, nothing else I could do for Kimberly until I met Don, and even though it was still before noon, I straightened up the office, turned the lights off and left for the day. In truth, I only turned the lights off, the office was as straight as it was ever gonna get.
Rafferty’s Rule Fifteen: Sitting in the office waiting for something to happen is not a good use of time. Neither is cleaning.
I poked the Mustang through the city streets to see how close I could park to the only antique store I gave a damn about. The temperature on the Mustang was starting to climb and I had both windows down and the heater going. Only on low, thank christ.
I nosed past the store, turned into Fairmount, where a giant Caddy pulled out of a space a few up without indicati
ng. From the volume of hair above the driver’s seat, the driver was either Aretha Franklin or that weird hairy elephant thing from that kids show. I had no problems swinging the Mustang into the now Cadillac-less space. That was no real claim to fame; the USS Forrestal would’ve fit with room to spare.
I reached for the key, and the car died. I closed the windows and locked up, more out of habit than anything else. Walked back down and around the corner, with a goofy grin you couldn’t have punched off my face.
I stopped outside the store, leaned against the green painted timber work. Looking past the gold lettering of GARDNER’S ANTIQUES on the front window, I used a gap between a hall-stand and an armoire, to watch Hilda doing her thing. She stood with her back to me, black hair curling past her shoulders, burgundy business suit accentuating her figure, serious and sexy at the same time.
The couple she was talking to—at one end of a gleaming dining table the size of my first apartment—fell into that category of people for whom money could never buy taste, no matter how many frogskins they threw at it.
Or perhaps they just didn’t give a shit.
The woman had bright pink hair, which might have worked if she was forty years younger and in a punk-rock band, but even then should never have been teamed with the silver pantsuit she was wearing. Gold dripped at every extremity and bright green finished her finger tips. The Jackie Kennedy sunglasses seemed to be the only part of the ensemble which worked, but I have no idea how she could see anything in the shop while wearing them.
Her husband’s suit wasn’t shiny. What with it being bright orange and lined with shoulder pads a Cowboys linebacker would’ve been jealous of, that wasn’t saying much.
I leaned and watched Hilda as she sold her heart out. She stroked the surface of the table and I knew she would be talking about patina, providence, and the value of long term investment. I could have stood there and watched her all day but Ramon hoisted his disapproving face into my line of sight and simpered. I shifted my weight and tried to look past him. When he moved into the gap between the furniture and crossed his arms, I gave up and went to the door.
The bell was still tinkling when Ramon was coming at me again, gliding across the floorboards.
How did he do that? If I’d been walking that fast, with that much venom, the USGS would’ve been forced to issue an earthquake alert.
“You cannot lurk outside the store,” he spat through pursed lips.
“Ah, now I understand your confusion. I wasn’t lurking, I was leering.”
He let that one go through to the catcher.
“Our customers don’t like the look of …” He looked me up and down. “… people like you.”
I looked myself up and down and laughed.
“I’m not the one wrapped in a sheet that came off the Lunar Landing Module.”
“Ahh.” He prodded his forehead with his manicured fingers. “That’s Baron and Baroness Vonn-Woods. They’ve flown in from Germany and are very interested in the Henry Morgan estate, so …” He looked over his shoulder and leaned in close. I could smell peppermint. “Don’t fuck it up for Hilda, you lout.”
“Such language, Ramon,” I said, but he was already mincing his way towards the middle of the shop, where words like priceless and one-of-a-kind floated back to me.
I tiptoed, as quietly as a guy my size can, back to Hilda’s office and was waiting in her chair, with my feet propped up on a cowhide covered stool, when she came in an hour later.
“Finally,” I said. “I was running out of things to do. I’ve finished your Antiquer’s Digest magazines and I even took the three-page quiz ‘Which Schleiger Number are you?’ Turns out that I’m four-ninety-seven, something called The Amstel. Sounds like a beer to me, but what the hell would I know?”
She stood with her back against the doorframe, and the sunlight from the shop’s display room haloed around her. It ruffled her edges, crinkled through her hair and peeked between her calves where she had her ankles crossed. It would have peeked between her thighs too, I bet, if her skirt had been a little shorter. She smiled and frowned all at the same time.
“The Amstel?” she said. “That’s a delicate rose pattern, so that quiz isn’t accurate. I’d pick you more as thirteen-seventy-five. That’s known, rather colloquially I might add, as Hammer and Anvil.”
“Har de har har,” I said. “You’re threatened by the thought of me being in touch with my feminine side.”
Her eyes flashed.
“Let me tell you buster, mine better be the only feminine side you’re touching, or I’ll show you what hammer and anvil really means. Now stand up and kiss me for chrissake.”
I stood up and kissed her, for chrissake.
When we finally broke, after Ramon harrumphed his way down the hall for the third time, she held me at arm’s length.
“Don’t you have a job, a case, or something else to do? Since when did hanging out in my office become your idea of a good time?”
“Hey, I didn’t hear you complaining that rainy day we spent on the Chesterfield you were holding for that rich bitch.”
“That was fun,” she breathed. The flecks in her dark eyes danced and, for a moment, I could almost tell what color they were. “Though I’d prefer you didn’t refer to my clients as bitches.”
I shrugged. “Just returning serve. Don’t forget that she passed me coming into the store and told you that she’d seen a vagrant outside.”
Hilda threw her head back and laughed. When she laughed, really laughed, it infused her whole body. Her shoulders would shake, knees bend and she’d nod her head. Once she got going, she’d even been known to snort. Once she snorted, that would get her laughing even harder, to the point where she would snort again.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
“And she wanted to look at the Chesterfield one more time and tell me all about her little dogs and I had to wait until she was done and had paid to tell her ‘that was no vagrant, that was my boyfriend.’” She snorted then and we were off and rolling.
When she’d got herself back under control, I said, “So, let’s blow off the rest of the day, grab lunch and ease on in to the weekend. Whaddya say?”
“As tempting as that offer is, I need to get through a bunch of paperwork this afternoon. The Vonn-Woods are coming back next week and I want to make sure I’ve got the whole estate documented. I don’t want to miss this opportunity to sell them the entire package.”
“Don’t say that I never offered.”
“Never would, babe. Your place or mine tonight?”
Uh, oh.
“It’ll need to be yours. The car died as I was parking. We’ll have to take yours tomorrow.”
An arched eyebrow.
“Will we?”
“Something wrong with that?”
She held the gaze a second longer than comfortable, then smiled.
“I was expecting to. I don’t think I could handle six hours in that rust bucket you call a car.”
“Rust bucket?” I said. “I think you mean ‘classic’. Lots of people would be honored to own the Mustang.”
“For parts?”
We were still debating the value of American muscle versus imported luxury when I left a short while later, with plans to meet at Hilda’s at six thirty.
The Mustang started on the second try (hah!) and I wheeled it into McLeod’s Auto Repairs on South Riverfront before the temperature got all the way into the red. McLeod’s son, Peter, who took over the joint after his father Kevin had been confined to the wheelchair, asked me to give him a couple of days to track down the cause of the overheating. I told him no problem.
It was just on one o’clock, the sun was out and one of my favorite bars was a four minute walk away.
No problems at all.
Dealey Plaza was full of lunch-time workers as I cut across.
Sitting in ones, twos and a couple of larger groups, eating sandwiches and take-out, enjoying the sunshine and fresh air. The dedicated ate and scur
ried back to their cubbyholes, concerned about being out of the corporate hamster-wheel for too long. Others enjoyed their breaks at a leisurely pace; young women with rolled-up skirts sunning their legs and men with suit jackets off and ties loosened. A couple of boys on vacation from Delaware (so announced their T-shirts) threw a baseball back and forth until it rolled out onto Elm Street and Mom put a stop to the game.
A gaggle of tourists in shorts and walk-socks stood facing north, taking photographs of the grassy knoll and an ethereal Abraham Zapruder, before swinging their cameras to the building previously, and forever, known as the Texas School Book Depository.
I was nineteen when those shots rang out and things changed. In the years since, there’s been a lot of talk about how that day reshaped the world. If JFK, and RFK for that matter, had lived, the Vietnam war wouldn’t have dragged on, Martin Luther King would have kept dreaming, etcetera, etcetera, and we’d now be living in a different social and political landscape.
I’m not sure.
I was in class at the time, an Aggie sophomore working hard on suppressing the hangover from the previous night’s bull session. About the only thing I can remember through the haze is that there were a few extra empty seats in class that day. Hangover or not, there was no chance I would have been in Dallas to see what happened.
My childhood had been filled with Dad railing about the “bleeding-heart Democrats” ruining this country “that I fought for” and that “these two, Jack and Bobby are more of the fucking same.”
Having Camelot come to our hometown seemed like no big deal at the time.
Besides, Dad was on duty that day and with Mom the way she was, I was headed home after class to help Kate look after her. Dad was late home most nights, but when everything turned out the way it did, we didn’t see him for three days.
After John was dead and the whole country cried, and Oswald was dead and no-one did, life went on the same. School for me and Kate. Drinking and running around with my friends on the weekends.
False Gods Page 6