Plugged Nickel

Home > Other > Plugged Nickel > Page 7
Plugged Nickel Page 7

by Eric


  Unlike Janel Butterfield, Charlotte Shumway, and Maggie Wister, Harriet can't cook worth a damn. I said I'd stop for some groceries and cook her a meal, and since I didn't feel like lugging a brown paper bag full of lettuce and beans on the public transport, I went and rented a car. Besides, I figured it would be a legitimate expense charged against the investigation along with the lunch I'd had with Bosley.

  I also bought the Denver Post. It's a morning paper and had the news about our discovery of the other half of the male body plastered all over the front page. There was an old picture of George when he was a Denver cop and my name figured prominently in the subheads. I folded it up and put it in with the groceries for more careful reading when I got to Harriet's.

  Then I drove over to the nearest branch library arid killed three hours trying to make sense out of the marks on the nickel. I went through chemistry, physics, electricity, and biology but couldn't turn up anything that exactly suited. After a while my head was so filled with these little symbols that I doubted I'd recognize one of them if it did pop up.

  Driving over to Harriet's, I felt almost like your average householder doing the shopping, then going home from work to eat with the wife.

  I climbed the stairs and rang the bell.

  The speaker beside the door said, "That you, Jake?"

  I said it was.

  "Come on in," she said.

  It was nice and warm inside the huge loft. Just as well, because Harriet was bare naked, standing in front of an easel and a pier mirror, working on a full-length self-portrait in oils.

  "Let me turn the edge on this tit," she said, "and then we can sit down and you can tell me why it's been a month since I've seen you."

  "Did you miss me?" I said, putting the groceries down on a huge plank table near the sink, stove, and refrigerator which roughly marked off the kitchen area.

  "I miss my cat when I don't see him for a while," she said.

  "Still not giving your heart away, I see." I took the newspaper out of the bag.

  "I'm giving damn near everything else away," she said, and laughed.

  I sat down and looked at the charcoal drawings and watercolor sketches taped up all around the brick walls. There were clay and plaster sculptures of Harriet in the nude on stands, boxes, and tables all over the place.

  She laid down her brushes, threw on a thin wrapper, and pushed back her red hair with both hands. "What do you think?"

  "I think I'm drowning in a sea of tits and ass."

  She put one knee on the couch alongside my thigh, bent over, grabbed my cheeks in one big, strong hand, pinched my lips into a pucker, and kissed me. "My pal," she said. She sat down beside me and surveyed the artwork she'd done. I took a longer look myself.

  Some of the female figures in the drawings and statues were struggling in the embrace of some creature or other, a bear, wolf, dog, or a lizard of monstrous proportions. From the expressions on the faces I could see, I knew that sometimes the embrace was affectionate, sometimes vicious.

  One in particular grabbed my attention. In it the struggling naked woman and the beast were so closely clasped to one another that some of the lines separating them had dissolved. They were toppling over into empty space. It was as though they were trying to become one creature, falling to a single death they would share.

  "You're getting very deep, Harriet," I said.

  "Are you planning on staying the night?"

  I raised my eyebrows at her as I handed her the folded newspaper.

  "I don't read those things."

  "You watch the morning news on TV?"

  "I got sick of all the bad news and violence so I threw my set out the window."

  I unfolded the Denver Post for her and tapped the front page.

  "There's your name, Jake," she said. "Does that mean you're famous?"

  "It means that I've been busier than a cat scratching and it's not about to end today."

  "I don't want to read it, Jake. You tell me."

  I told her all about finding the bisected body, thinking it was one person, finding out it was two, then finding the other half of the man, while she blinked at me and shook her red hair out of her face every once in a while. She was breathing a little hard.

  "You've got to stay over," she said.

  "Harriet," I said, "I hope this story I just told you didn't upset or excite you."

  "Well, I'm not weird, if that's what you mean, but what do you think makes nurses so horny?"

  "I didn't know that was true."

  "Well, if it's true, it's because of all the death and misery around them. They want to do something life-affirming. Besides, after what you've been through, I just wanted to help you erase those horrible pictures."

  "That's a very generous thought, Harriet, but I really don't think I can stay the night. I should be getting back to Omaha and consult with my colleagues in this matter. On the other hand, I've rented a car, which should allow me to make my own schedule."

  "What'd you bring for dinner?" she said.

  "You want to eat right now? It's not even four o'clock."

  "I just want to know. I've been so busy I haven't had much more than bagels and coffee in a week."

  I told her what I'd brought with me.

  "Okay, we'll erase your bad memories first, then we'll have dinner."

  FIFTEEN

  I was lying on my back on the mattress on the floor under the giant paisley shawl Harriet used for a bedspread. She was lying on her belly with her face pointing my way and her red hair fanned out across the pillow. It was the lovely quiet moment after. I should have been floating along in it like a leaf on a river, but the thoughts we'd just tried to erase wouldn't go away. George was tramping out there along the right of way looking for the woman's other half. Maybe he'd already found it.

  I reached out for my trousers to get my address book out of the back pocket, thinking I'd give Akron another call. But first I had to blow my nose. When I pulled the handkerchief out of my pocket, I could feel the weight of the nickel tied up in the corner.

  I unwrapped it and brought it up closer to my eyes, shifting my head on my pillow so I could get a little extra light on it.

  "Are you getting up to start dinner?" Harriet said.

  I looked down at her. When I didn't answer her right away, she opened one eye. "I say, Jake, are you ready to get up and feed me?" She saw the nickel in my hand. "What's that you've got there?"

  "A nickel with some marks stamped or carved on it."

  "Let me see," she said. She got up off her belly, turned herself around, and sat back against the wall. I gave her the coin. She gave it a careful going over. "Gypsy patrin."

  "What?"

  "Gypsies haven't got a written language. They read and write the language of whatever country they're living in. But they've got a long list of signs just for themselves."

  "Where'd you learn that?"

  "I've known a lot of different people. I had a friend who played the fiddle and had lovely dark, curly hair as black as tar."

  "Did he teach you how to read these marks?"

  "The secrets of patrin are jealously guarded from the gaje, " she said, flashing me a sideways, impish grin.

  "Don't be cute. I know what's gaje. You and me and everybody who's not a gypsy. I'll bet I've had my hands on more gypsies than you have."

  "But not for the same reasons," she said, giving me a wink.

  "You still know this fiddler with a head like a two-lane blacktop?"

  "I haven't seen him in years."

  "What did he teach you?"

  "I think the triangle with the curved bottom means traveler. These two marks could simply be the Roman number two."

  "How about the triangle with the line through the top?"

  "If I ever knew, I don't remember."

  It wasn't much but it was something to chew over.

  SIXTEEN

  I decided to stay the night after all. Around eight o'clock in the morning I got up and went over to
the morgue to pick up a copy of the final autopsy report including the analysis of the stomach contents.

  "Sausage and sauerkraut," Bosley said.

  "Plenty of that in Chicago."

  "What time does the train pull out?"

  "Two-forty P.M."

  "He ate it on the train, then. Stomach empties out every four hours, give or take half an hour. Takes eighteen hours, generally, from ingestion to elimination."

  I took out my timetable and made a quick calculation. "Means he had the sausage and kraut in Lincoln around midnight. Train would be in the station for fifteen minutes."

  "You think he could've ordered sausage and kraut in Nebraska at midnight? Then consumed it in fifteen minutes?" Bosley said.

  "Not unless there's somebody does hot delivery off, the platform at that hour."

  "And they sure to Goshen don't serve sausage and sauerkraut on the train at any time."

  "So he brought his meal along?"

  "I'd say."

  "Sandwiches maybe, but I never see people bringing hot dinners with them," I said.

  "Not Americans anyway. Americans take sandwiches or snacks, like you say."

  "There was that Fritos package in his pocket," I reminded him.

  "But there were sausages and sauerkraut in his stomach. Corn chips too. He had them a long time after the hot food and just a little while before he was killed. Europeans carry hot meals to eat when they travel on buses and trains. Especially the ones from places like Poland and Czechoslovakia."

  "You keep getting back to that. The teeth. Now this business with sausage and kraut."

  "I'm just telling you what I found and what assumptions we could draw from the facts, if we wanted to."

  "Well, it's certainly something to think about," I said.

  Bosley looked satisfied. "The FBI called, looking for you."

  "They say what they wanted?"

  "I thought they were about to say, but they didn't say. You know how they are. They play their cards very close to their vests. Especially the ones from CI-three."

  "What the hell is Cl-three?"

  "FBI counterintelligence squad."

  "They tell you they were from this CI-three?"

  "I surmised. You don't know much, do you?"

  "Well, I don't know about any CI-three. How come you know so much about it?"

  For a minute I thought he was going to lie to me and act like he'd had secret dealings, but he thought better of it and said, "Read it in a magazine."

  I didn't say anything but "Oh," which meant I didn't put much faith in the existence of top-secret organizations that were bandied about in magazines.

  "Well, you're supposed to call them," Bosley said, acting a little disgruntled as though I were deliberately trying to spoil his fun.

  "I'm on my way back to Akron. I'll do it from there."

  "As you please. I delivered the message." He frowned and stuck his head between his shoulders like a bull about to fight. "So all this doesn't tell you anything?"

  "All what?"

  "The gold foil fillings, the sausage and sauerkraut, CI-three looking for you and acting coy about it?"

  It told me something, but I wanted to know what it told him. "I've got ideas. You got ideas?"

  "It suggests to me that the sucker with the gold foil fillings and the hot lunch was a spy."

  "And how about the woman?"

  He hesitated. "I'll have to think about that," he said.

  SEVENTEEN

  The drive back to Akron took me just under two hours. I wondered if I could justify the extra rental on the car. I'd meant to take the nine o'clock the night before. When I didn't, I figured I might as well get Bosley's final report. After that it seemed foolish to bang around Denver for another day waiting for the next nine o'clock.

  When I pulled into Akron at two o'clock in the afternoon, George wasn't in his office. The female deputy on the desk told me he was still out with the search party looking for the missing half. "He was out there yesterday too, but he had to come back in around midday for the inquest."

  "Freeman called an inquest yesterday?"

  "That's what I said."

  "That was pretty quick."

  "I don't know about that. He's the coroner and I guess he's got the authority."

  "Did the jury bring down a verdict?"

  "Short and sweet. Death by misadventure."

  The way she said it, I could see the shock and excitement about the corpses had just about died down in Akron. The city papers and television stations were still playing the story up, but it was just an abstract horror a long distance removed from them. In Akron, where the bodies had actually lain all ripped apart, the sensation and notoriety were wearing thin.

  "Howard Freeman out with the searchers?" I asked.

  "I expect he would be. He's got an official interest."

  "But not much enthusiasm for tramping around railroad tracks. You know where he lives?"

  She went to a Rolodex and found his file card. She wrote down an address on a three-by-five. "You know how to get out to Danver Road?"

  "You'll have to tell me."

  She took a map of the area out of a box, found the spot and made an X. "Right there. About five miles outside the city limits."

  I looked at the little map and then up to the big map on the wall.

  "That folder doesn't have the detail the big map does." she said.

  "I just had the same thought. Looking at this one in my hand reminded me of something I saw but didn't know I saw."

  She nodded like she understood I was just talking to myself.

  I went over to the big map on the wall. I'd wondered at the time about any roads that might run along the right of way. I expected there might be one, the one that Freeman told the dispatcher was blocked by an unsafe bridge, but I never expected there'd be two. The second road was not much more than a fire road cut through the pines. But there it was, just over the rise that climbed up from the gully on the other side of the tracks above the river. There it was, a high road that could get anybody who wanted to risk it in a storm from Akron to the Zephyr.

  When I started for the door, the deputy said, "Hey! You better watch where you step."

  "How's that?"

  She grinned. "The town's crawling with newspeople. There's even a couple of fellas walking around with cameras on their shoulders."

  "It's the price you've got to pay for fame," I said, and stepped out the door practically into the arms of a pretty young woman wearing a corduroy skirt that had to cost three hundred dollars, a fringed leather jacket worth five, and a two-hundred-dollar pair of boots.

  "Excuse me, ma'am," I said, and tipped my hat.

  I hadn't gone very far when I caught on that she was walking right alongside me stride for stride. I stopped and she stopped.

  "My god," I said, "I didn't know I was so attractive to pretty women like you that all I had to do was bump into them to have them follow me all over town."

  "Well, you've got a way about you. . . ."

  She waited but I didn't give her any help.

  "You got a name I can call you?"

  "Jake."

  "Well, Jake, my name's Karen Olliphant. I'm from out of town."

  "I figured."

  "How did you figure?"

  "The ladies around here don't dress like you dress for everyday. But then, they don't have to appear on television like you do, do they?"

  She seemed pleased that I'd recognized her.

  I hadn't, but why tell her that?

  We started walking stride for stride again.

  "You recognizing me makes us practically friends, doesn't it, Mr. Hatch?"

  We stopped.

  "Hatch? I didn't say my name was Hatch. I said my name was Jake."

  "That's right. Jake Hatch."

  "How do you figure?"

  "When a man with eyes like yours walks out of the sheriff's office as though he had a purpose, I'd say he had something to do with the law. I'd say that m
aybe he was a railroad cop. And I'd say that anybody who was a railroad cop, in Akron, and named Jake had to be the Jake Hatch who found the severed bodies."

  "I wasn't alone," I said.

  "I understand that. And I understand you're not alone now and that you'll be even less alone in the near future. A sensational story like this, everybody wants to get into the act. So before the rest of the wolf pack finds you, brings you down, and bleeds you dry, I'd like to interview you."

  "I'll talk to you, but not on camera," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "Because like you say, a sensational story like this, everybody'll be watching. They'll see my face and I'll be useless for my job after that. Every grifter, cheat, pickpocket, and thief'll see me coming when they work the trains."

  "Okay. Off-camera. But I can quote?"

  "Come on over to the Donut Shop and I'll drop quaint Midwestern sayings in your ear."

  EIGHTEEN

  Millie was behind the counter in her pink uniform and white apron, her yellow hair fluffed out all around her face. She didn't look like apple pie, more like an ice cream sundae, sweet and filling. A little goes a long way. If you compared the two, Millie was the sundae and Karen was an apricot mousse. Expensive and understated, but very choice.

  They smiled at one another like cats and ladies do.

  "I see you're back, Jake," Millie said, as though we were old friends.

  "How's Howard, Millie?" I said.

  Her expression went through half a dozen changes, like flickering shadows in a mirror, and she said, "How would I know about Mr. Freeman, Jake?"

  "I just thought you might've been giving out coffee when the search party left this morning and you'd know if Freeman was with it."

  "Oh, sure. Well, I didn't do the coffee and buns this morning. Calvin got up early for a change. He did it."

  "Didn't mention Howard being with the search party or not being with the search party?"

  "I don't think he'd have any reason to pick Mr. Freeman out for special mention. What can I get you?"

  I looked at Karen. "Just coffee," she said.

 

‹ Prev