by Eric
"They work in teams, you know. I tracked down her partner. A young fella named Nick Kemp."
"That doesn't sound gypsy."
"Oh, the name's just a lie they use with the rest of us."
"Where'd you find him?"
"Over to McCook."
"I didn't know there were any gypsies living over to McCook."
"You know much about gypsies?"
"No, I just meant I thought they lived in the big cities."
"Kemp lives in Denver."
"So what was he doing in McCook?"
"Beats me. It all just happened lucky, me making the connection with him. In a diner it was. You know the diner across the street from the railroad station in McCook?"
"I haven't had occasion to go to McCook very often and when I did go there I didn't notice any diner across from the station. But I suppose there's a diner across from every railroad depot in the country, isn't there?"
"It was just one of those lucky chances," I said. "I was over to McCook asking did anybody see a young woman hanging around the station early in the morning. I had the purse we found along the right of way with me and—"
"What purse?"
"When George found the rest of the girl's body down along the river, he found a lady's pocketbook too."
"Why didn't I get to see it?" Freeman asked, his voice rising in agitation.
"Take it easy," I said.
He looked around and saw George and Crack watching him. Bess was standing at the foot of the couch watching him too.
"You're making too much out of the authority you've got as coroner. You're second potato to the sheriff no matter how you slice it. Besides, there was nothing much in the pocketbook and George and I decided it might not be a bad idea for me to take the purse along with me when I took the rest of the body back to Denver."
"How's that?"
"In case anybody could identify it along the way."
"You said you were in McCook. That's the opposite direction from Denver."
"I went to Denver. After I went to McCook. I had an idea, so I went there to ask a few questions. That's when I got lucky about Kemp. See?"
"I still should have had a look."
"Well, don't you go taking the trip to Denver to have a look," I said, "because the pocketbook's not there anymore."
"Where is it?"
"I sent it to Nick Kemp care of that diner over in McCook. When he identified it as his girlfriend's, I told him I'd do my best to get it back for him and that's where I'd send it."
"Something like that could get lost in the mail," Freeman protested.
"I didn't mail it. I put it on the eleven-o'clock train."
"The eleven o'clock's heading west and McCook's east."
"I know that. But the train comes back again, don't you know. The pocketbook will be at the diner by two o'clock tomorrow morning—not this morning coming but the one after actually—and the gypsy boy can pick it up there when he pleases."
The wheels were turning in his head.
Was he wondering if I was the fella who stepped into the diner and stepped right out again? Was he thinking that I saw him and was jerking his chain for the fun of it before telling him that I knew he'd been sitting with the gypsy?
"Where'd you come off doing a thing like that?" he said.
"It was no big thing, Freeman. I just wanted to do a little something for a poor fella who'd lost his sweetheart."
THIRTY
Once we were quits of Freeman and back in the kitchen having coffee at McGilvray's house, George said, "What the devil was that story you spun for Freeman all about?"
"As Sitting Bull said just before Little Big Horn, 'I saw my chance and I grabbed it.' "
Which was fine, except that now I had to contact Nick Kemp and guarantee his cooperation, get Trask and maybe Janosky to agree to it, hope that Freeman, though a wary old trout, was hungry enough to snatch at the bait, and see if Maggie Wister thought she'd be able to do what I hoped she could do.
"Well, it was just about as complicated a bunch of comings and goings as I ever heard. By way of accomplishing what?" George said.
"You happen to know how Trask left town? Did he go in Janosky's car or what?"
"Janosky left him to find his own way home and went back to Denver. Trask asked him would he drop him at the Donut Shop so he could get a bite to eat and have a place to stay warm until the eleven o'clock pulled out for Omaha."
"Do you think you could take a run down there and see if he's still hanging around? Maybe I can give him reason to stay over one more night."
"Well, aren't you going to tell me what your grand scheme's all about?"
"No reason to chew my cabbage twice. You go fetch Trask and I'll tell it once for the two of you."
"And me?" Bess said.
"I surely wouldn't leave you out of it," I said as George went to get his coat and limped out the door.
"Can I use your phone?" I said.
"It's right there on the wall," Bess replied.
I punched in the number the gypsy youngster had given me. After a long time a woman's voice came on. When I asked for Nick, she told me there was no Nick living there but in case there might be a Nick stopping by what should I say I wanted to talk to him about.
"You just tell him it's Jake Hatch."
Kemp got right on.
"I'm not saying the fella who calls himself Jackson around you had anything to do with actually killing your sweetheart, but I've got to tell you there's reason to believe he's committed some serious crimes against the country. What I want to ask you is are you willing to do what you can to help us get the goods on him?"
There was a long silence on the other end of the line.
"I can hear you counting up the costs and figuring the profit, Nick. I don't think that's the right thing to do. Your sweetheart's dead and I'm ready to do what I can to get her things back to you. Things you might want to keep as tokens. Stop thinking there's you and then there's us. Do what's right and never mind the profit."
His voice came over the line as though it was clogged with sand and glue. "What do you want me to do?"
"Somebody'll deliver a lady's pocketbook over to the diner in McCook. That'll be around two o'clock in the morning. We'll make sure the diner's open. Right after two we want you to go in and get the pocketbook. Take it over to that corner booth next to the big plate-glass window. The one where you were sitting before. Understand?"
"Yes."
"Go through it like it was your sweetheart's and the things in it are dear to you. When Freeman comes in—"
"Who?"
"I mean when this Jackson comes in—if he comes in—you say that it's Cara's purse when he asks you."
"How do you know he'll ask me?"
"If he goes to the diner and talks to you, he'll ask you about the pocketbook. Believe me. So you tell him it's hers. He'll ask to look through it. You tell him like hell. You don't want any stranger pawing through your dead sweetheart's belongings. Then he'll probably offer you money just to have a look. Act suspicious as hell—"
"I would be suspicious as hell anybody asked to do something like that."
"You bet. Then you start acting shrewd. Tell him you want to know why a man would pay good money to look in a girl's handbag. What we want is for you to get him to say right out that what he hired you and Cara to get from that other fella could be in that bag. You say that unless he tells you what it is he can go scratch."
"He's a big man. Suppose he just decides to take the bag away from me by force? Will I be clean if I take a knife to him?"
"Don't do that. For God's sake, don't do that. Just let me say that you won't be alone. Somebody'll be close by. You got all that?"
"Yes, I've got it."
"Say it back to me."
He said it back to me practically word for word.
I'd scarcely hung up when George was back with Trask in tow.
"Sit down and let me tell you what I have in mind," I said.
/> I reviewed for Trask's benefit what I'd said down at the sheriff's office when Freeman had come to have a look at Annie's body. Then I told them both about the arrangement I'd made with the gypsy.
"That sounds like a fine idea," Trask said. "Well, it would be if it goes off like clockwork. Except for one thing."
"What's that?" I said.
"How do you expect us to get close enough to bear, witness to anything that passes between the gypsy and Howard Freeman?"
"The Widow Wister," I said.
THIRTY-ONE
The whole business, from the instant the emergency cord had been pulled at 4:20 A.M. on a cold, pitch black, rain-lashed right of way along a spine of lesser mountains, through the finding and delivery of the body parts to Akron that morning; and the day lost getting up the search party that went out and found the other half of Bela Mazurky, AKA Benjamin May, that night; and me getting my ear clipped before I transported the rest of him back to Denver and Bosley's care; and then going back to Akron, snooping around Freeman's farm, putting up storm windows, hearing how George McGilvray had plucked the other half of the girl out of the river and me taking her back to Denver with a stop in McCook along the way where I lucked out about Freeman and the gypsy youngster; and the discovery of poor old Annie McMonigle, until the minute when a small crowd of us were gathered in the waiting room of the station in McCook, had taken more than five days but just short of six.
I felt a hundred and ten years old, give or take a year.
George had come along even though he had absolutely no authority and could participate in no arrests so far out of his jurisdiction, in another state let alone another county. Deputy Dan Crack had asked to go along to be there when the son of a bitch who'd murdered Annie got caught, but George'd persuaded him that it'd be a lot better if he stayed at home and minded the store because with his temper—Crack was as mild-mannered as a pup—there was no telling what he'd do to the killer if he lost it.
Trask had called down to Omaha and had three men from the field office there flown to McCook and Janosky flew four along with himself over from Denver.
The local chief of the constabulary had to be informed about what was going down in his bailiwick, so Chief Charlie Ogden was there with three of his officers.
Maggie Wister was sitting next to me on a bench. She was the calmest woman I knew—I'd scarcely ever seen her do so much as lift an eyebrow at anything I ever told her—but I could tell that she was a little excited about the role she was going to play in this.
When they spotted the television reporter Karen Olliphant, both Trask and Janosky came to me wanting to know who she was and what she was doing there. We'd already made it up between us, when I got in touch with her at the motel, that we'd play it like we were strangers. I craned my neck to look at her, then asked them how the hell I was supposed to know what a woman was doing in the waiting room of a train station with a train due to come through on the way to Chicago any minute. She winked at me behind their backs. Trask went over and asked her if she'd please inform him before going outside in case she got a notion to do so. She asked him what was going on, the way any curious bystander would do. He told her they were on a stakeout and she said, in a very sweet, innocent way that she'd always thought a stakeout was a lonely operation done by two or, at the most, four cops sitting in cars or working in the streets dressed like utility workers.
I went over and gave Cooley one of Bess's pocketbooks wrapped in brown paper. It had the usual stuff any woman would carry in her handbag. In the change purse, along with some nickels, dimes, and quarters was the plugged nickel.
Nick Kemp drove up and parked in front of the diner right on schedule. He went inside and we could all see him slide into the booth at the end. Cooley came out from behind the counter to get his order and hand him the package. They both looked over to the station as though Nick had asked where the man who'd delivered it had come from and Cooley'd told him. The gypsy took the brown paper off the purse.
The train going to Chicago pulled in and out around l:53, right on the button.
The one passenger who got off looked at the crowd in the waiting room, wondering what the convention was all about.
Chief Ogden went over to him and said, it's nothing, Jethro, just some Shriners passing through. Go on home and think nothing about it."
Jethro just nodded and went out the door. But be, didn't go home, he went directly across the street to Cooley's and climbed onto a stool at the counter.
"Chief Ogden," I said, "I think it might not be a bad idea if you strolled over to the diner and told Jethro not to mention the crowd hanging around the station." I raised my voice a little so everyone would hear. "And if I were the rest of you, I'd go into the station office, the toilets, or back up against the wall. The man we're expecting used to be an FBI agent and he'll surely still remember how to brush his coattails."
There was a lot of shuffling of feet as they lined up like ducks along the walls. Ogden went to the door. George, who was stationed at the window that looked out on the street, said, "Here comes Freeman in his pickup." So Ogden had to stay.
I got a pair of compact binoculars out of my pocket, handed them to Maggie, and moved her to the window at an angle so she could see into the diner across the street without being seen. I had another pair for myself. I tapped her shoulder so she'd look at me.
"You need help with the focus?" I asked.
She threw me a glance as though I wasn't very bright, then went back to looking.
"Is the stenographer who takes sign ready?" I said. A skinny FBI agent wearing two sweaters came over with a pad and pencil ready and leaned against the wall so he could watch Maggie's right hand like a hawk.
Inside the diner I saw Nick Kemp pour water on the seat on the other side of the table, just like I'd told him to do. Fifteen seconds later, after standing on the step and looking around very carefully, Freeman went inside. I could see him make a beeline for the gypsy. He was about to sit down when Kemp pointed. Just as I'd hoped, Freeman didn't bother mopping up the mess but just shoved in alongside Kemp when the youngster slid over and made room. So they were both facing our way and Maggie had a fair to good look at both their mouths.
Her hand started flashing. The stenographer's pencil flew. He spoke as he wrote.
"The boy says:
'Hello. What the hell're you doing here?'
'I was just about to ask you the same thing.'
'I came to get a package that was left for me.'
'Oh, is that so? What kind of package?'
'This was in it.'
'Looks like a pocketbook.'"
I could see Freeman open the pocketbook and start going through it. Kemp started to protest but Freeman shot him a look and the boy thought differently about it. Maggie went on. "The boy says:
'It was Cara's.'
'Now, who'd give you something like that?'
'It was found on the train. She must've dropped it. My telephone number was inside and some nice person in the crew called me. I asked them to drop it here.'"
This was a sticky part.
Maggie signed and the stenographer said out loud," Freeman says:
'Why would you want them to deliver it to you here?'"
Kemp didn't say anything for a couple of seconds. Freeman had opened the change purse and was pouring the coins out on the table. He turned his head toward the youngster, a suspicious, inquiring look on his face. Then, clearly, something dragged his attention right back to the coins. He picked one of them up. I knew it was the nickel.
"Freeman says:
'Well, what the hell do you know about that. Why the hell not. Who needs the formula when you can steal a sample?'"
He jerked his head up then, looking toward Jethro, who was talking to Cooley. He half stood up, his hands supporting himself as he leaned closer to the window, looking across the street right at us, looking sharper now for the crowd of cops and men gathered in the railroad station that Jethro was gabbing about.
"The rabbit's on the goddamn run!" I shouted, and headed for the door, jerking it open just about the time Freeman got into his pickup and slammed the door. He was racing off while the rest of us were still jammed up in the doorway like a bunch of Keystone Kops.
THIRTY-TWO
Freeman lost us on the dark roads right from the starting gun. By the time we got all unscrambled and settled into the various vehicles standing by, he was probably at McCook's city limits. Anyway, the McCook police decided to drop out of the chase about the time we hit the Red Willow County line.
When we crossed the state line into Colorado, I could only see one of the two cars loaded with FBI following George's cruiser with Maggie, Karen, and me in the back.
"Where do you think they're going?" George said, glancing in the rearview at their headlights.
"I'm willing to bet you a dinner they're just following you."
"Well, where the hell am I going, Jake? It looks to me like the bird has flown."
"I don't think so, George. I think he's making a beeline for his farm."
"Now, why would he do a dumb thing like that?"
"To get his hands on a couple of things he's got there, for one thing," I said. "And because he's not really on the run for another."
"I can't see how you figure that."
"Well, I could be wrong, George, but I don't think I am. No use talking about it till we get there. If it's all right with everybody, I think I'll have myself a little nap. Will you wake me when we get to Freeman's farm?"
Before George could say any more, I closed my eyes.
I wondered should I lean my head to the left and rest on Maggie's shoulder or to the right and rest on Karen's. I decided to let my head fall forward while I pondered that.
I woke up to the sound of George's tires braking on the gravel drive alongside the farmhouse's side door. I had a crick in my neck so bad it was giving me a headache. A few gulps of cold air sliced off the top layer or so as we unloaded ourselves from the car.
Trask, Janosky, and two agents drove in behind us.