by Lee Harris
“I didn’t know you were back in town,” he said.
“I got in yesterday. I think we have to talk, Jake.”
“About what? We talked last week. If I know more than I told you, I don’t know that I know it.”
“I want to know about relationships, about you and Carlotta.”
“Me?” He smiled and his face relaxed. “Something between me and Carlotta? Hey, she’s my partner’s wife and I love her like a sister. If there’s something between us, I’m the last guy to hear about it. You better ask her.”
The way his face changed when I asked my question, the way his whole body untensed, I felt that I had hit a dead end. “Val and Annie,” I said.
“I don’t think so. They met years ago, I really don’t remember how. I think she came to Buffalo for a job.”
“Did they go out?”
“Yeah, they went out. It wasn’t anything that produced sparks. When Annie saw Matty for the first time, that was explosive. I don’t think either one of them ever looked at anyone else after that. They just clicked.”
“Did anything happen between Annie and Val after she married Matty?”
“I just told you. Neither one of them ever looked at anyone else. Val included.”
“There’s one thing I forgot to ask you when I was here last week. Your telephone bills for last year. Could I see them?”
“My what?”
“Phone bills. I’d like to see if Val made any personal calls from this phone.”
“They’re not easy for me to put my hands on,” he said. “Besides, you looked at his Rolodex, didn’t you?”
“That’s not the same as making calls.”
“Everyone makes personal calls from work. I call my doctor, my lawyer, my wife about fifty times a day.”
“Those aren’t long-distance calls. I’m looking for long distance that isn’t business-related.”
“You know what you’re in for? Matching up numbers on the bill with numbers on the Rolodex? It’ll take you all day to do one month.”
“I’ve got all day,” I said, watching his growing agitation. “Can I just see the phone bills?”
He looked at a loss. “I don’t know where they are. It’ll take me some time to find them.”
“You must have had them to prepare your taxes in April.”
“Yeah, right.” He scratched his head. “Look, I’m kind of busy right now. Could you come back later, or maybe on Monday?”
“Jake, this is what I’m here for. I can’t sit around all weekend waiting for Monday.”
“Let me see what I can find.” He opened the door to the back area and went toward his office as I followed. He turned into it, and as I reached the doorway, he was dialing a number on the telephone.
“Couldn’t it wait?” I said.
He slammed the phone down. “Who invited you in here?”
“I’m waiting for the phone bills.”
He got up from the desk and went to a file cabinet, opened a drawer near the floor, and pulled out a thick file folder. He went through it as I waited, finally pulling out a rubber-banded pack of bills. “You want last year?”
“Last year’ll be fine.”
He started to toss the pack to me, but thought better of it and handed it to me. He wasn’t happy. “Where do you want to sit?”
“I’ll go to Val’s office.”
“I shouldn’t’ve given you those bills. The cops didn’t even ask for them.”
“The cops think he’s dead.”
“He is dead. Whatever his secrets, they should die with him. Whoever he called, it has nothing to do with you or Carlotta or Matty or Clark.”
“Is this what Carlotta was afraid I would see?”
“I don’t have any idea what Carlotta was afraid of. Excuse me, I have work to do.”
I took the pack of bills to the office across the hall and sat down at Val’s desk. The bills were addressed to the business and began with January of last year. I took the rubber bands off, divided the pack in two so they wouldn’t fall all over the place, and began to go through the January pages. Many of the numbers called were in the same 716 area as the business, but were toll calls nevertheless. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but when I turned the page, I saw that it had been made very easy for me. A small red check mark appeared next to a call that lasted seven minutes. The area code was 905. I wrote down the number, not sure why it was checked, but it was the only one on the page that was. Two pages later, another call was checked. It was to the same number. I flipped to the next checked call. Again it was to the same number. I picked up the phone on Val’s desk and dialed the number. It rang three times, and a mechanical voice said the phone had been disconnected. Could it have been a business? Hardly, I thought. A business would have a forwarding number. This was a personal call, checked because Val was scrupulously honest. When I reached the last page of the month of January, his honesty was spelled out in red ink, the total cost of all the calls he had checked during the month. I felt excited by what I had found. I had no idea where the 905 area was, but someone at that number had gotten calls from Val on a regular basis.
I picked up the phone again and dialed the operator. “I wonder if you could tell me where area code nine-oh-five is,” I said when she answered.
“That’s Ontario,” she said.
“Canada?”
“That’s right.”
“Thank you.”
I hung up and as I did, one of the things Joseph had said to me, the thing she thought might sound strange, flashed into my head: Where were the men going? They were going to Canada, to Ontario, to be more exact, since that was the province on the other side of Lake Erie. And Val called someone in Ontario every few days during the month of January last year.
I grabbed February and started to run through the pages.
“So you found it,” Jake said, as I returned to the outer area about half an hour after I had begun my search.
“Tell me about it.”
“I know as much about those calls as you do.”
“Is he the one who marked them in red?”
“With his own little red pen.”
“Why?”
“Because they were frequent and personal and added up to twenty bucks or more a month, two hundred, maybe three hundred a year. He reimbursed the business for them. Val was that way. He didn’t take anything for free.”
“How long have they been going on?” My search of the bills showed the calls had been made through all of last year.
“Forever. Since he moved in with Carlotta. Maybe before that.”
“You ever overhear a call?”
“No.” The way he said it, he didn’t want any further questions on that subject.
“Sure you did, Jake. You must have been curious.”
“Look, he never made a call in front of me. He must have made them all from his office or when I was out of earshot. I couldn’t tell you if they had to do with sex or money, whether he called a man or a woman.”
“What?”
“I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just saying, he called someone, it was his business and he paid for the calls. End of story.”
“How did he bring it up the first time?”
“You mean years ago? He said he had some personal calls he wanted to make during the day, and he’d pay for them at the end of the month. It was no big deal.”
“But they went on until he disappeared.”
“Until Valentine’s Day. He made the last one that morning, before he left for lunch with Carlotta.”
To say, I’m coming tonight? “And then the number was disconnected?”
“What?”
“I called it. It’s out of service.”
“Jesus.” He looked upset. “You going to tell Carlotta?”
“Probably. She’s the one who asked me to do the digging. You think she didn’t know about the calls?”
“I’m sure of it.”
So what was her problem? Why did
n’t she want me talking to Jake? “Just one more thing. I asked you about Val and Annie. What about Val and Bambi?”
“Shit,” Jake said.
20
“So what did you find out?” Carlotta was standing near her car, which she had parked far enough away from the red brick building that Jake couldn’t see her if he looked out the window.
“Two things. One you know and didn’t tell me, the other you didn’t know.”
“Why don’t you start with the one you think I don’t know.”
“Val made calls several times a week to a phone number in Canada.”
“It was probably business.”
“It wasn’t. It was personal, and he reimbursed the business for them.”
She swallowed, looking very unhappy. “Who was he calling?”
“I don’t know. I dialed the number, but it’s been disconnected.”
“So what are you telling me? That he was involved in the international drug trade? That he had a girlfriend in Niagara Falls that he never saw, but he couldn’t live without talking to?”
“I don’t know. The last time he called the number was on Valentine’s Day, in the morning, before he took you to lunch.”
“Chris.” She looked ill, her face pale, her eyes watering.
“Let’s get in the car.”
She sat behind the wheel, her head bowed. It was the first time since I had met her in February that she had really lost her cool. “I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know why this is happening. I love that man. I want him to be alive, I want him to be in good health. I want him to love me as much as he loved me before Valentine’s Day. Because I love him that much. There’s nothing that could have happened that would change how I feel.” Tears were flowing now, and she reached inside her purse for a tissue.
For the first time since we had met, I truly believed in the power of her love. I felt it as strongly as I felt my own love for Jack. I had no doubts about Jack’s sincerity, about the depth of his feeling for me, and Carlotta felt the same way about Val. Whatever was going on, their relationship had not been changed—from her point of view.
“We’ll find him,” I said.
“Alive or dead?”
“I don’t know yet. There are still a couple of possibilities, and I don’t know which will turn out to be the right one.”
“You mean Bambi.”
“I wish you’d told me.”
“It was over years ago. Jake knew about it because Jake knew everything. But what happened between them has no bearing on what happened on the lake.”
I didn’t want to say what I was thinking, that a gun aimed at Clark might have been responsible for a bullet in Matty if Matty tried to intervene, to save his friend. “Maybe it was over for Val, but not for Bambi,” I said.
“It was over, Chris. Bambi and Clark were very happy together. I’ve never met two people who were more suited to each other.”
“She had a funeral for her husband before his body turned up. You and Annie didn’t.”
“I didn’t because I didn’t believe Val was dead. I knew Matty and Clark were. They knew, too. And we were all right. Annie just wanted a body. And she got one.” She looked at her watch. “Where do we go from here?”
“I want to call Jack. There’s a directory called Cole’s that all the detective squads in New York City have, where telephone numbers are listed first and names and addresses last, a sort of reverse listing. They provide a call-in service for out-of-town numbers, and I want to ask Jack to find out where this nine-oh-five number is. It may not tell us where the men were going that night, but it’ll give us the name of the person who had that phone number, the address, the apartment, even some things about the area. There was no forwarding number, so I have no idea if he or she is still living there, with or without a new telephone, but I think we ought to go up there and knock on a door.”
“But if the phone’s disconnected, he’s probably moved.”
“Maybe the neighbors will know something. Whoever it is, that person had a relationship with Val. He may know things about Val that you and Jake don’t know. Don’t you think it’s strange that a few months after the accident the phone is disconnected?”
“Very strange.” She had started the car and was driving back the way we’d come. “Weird. Creepy.”
“Maybe Val maintained a house in Canada.”
“I would have seen the checks,” Carlotta said quickly.
“But he made withdrawals all the time from his passbooks. He could have paid with a money order.”
“But he called there, Chris. Who was he calling?”
“That’s what we have to find out. I think Jack can help.”
I called him when we got back to the house, but he wasn’t at his desk. I knew I could ask Detective Murdock for the same favor, but I didn’t want to involve him and didn’t want to tell him any more than I had to. I left a message for Jack, thinking I would rather fly home and spend the weekend with him, but I decided to give it another couple of hours. When I got off the phone, Carlotta dialed the Ontario number herself, as if to confirm what I had told her. I watched her hang up after listening to the recorded message.
“I’d give anything to know when that phone was disconnected,” she said.
“So would I.”
“Why did your husband pick this day of all days to be away from his desk?”
“Sometimes duty calls.”
“We’re going to find him, Chris.” She looked at the phone number she held in her hand. “I feel it. It’s close now. We’re really going to find him.”
For the first time, I agreed with her. I just didn’t know if we’d find him alive or dead.
Carlotta was really hyper now. She couldn’t sit, couldn’t read, couldn’t even hold a conversation. I was aching to talk to Bambi again, but I didn’t want to leave the phone in case Jack called. I wanted to be the one to ask him to look up the number in Cole’s, not Carlotta. If he were out on a case, there was no telling when he would be back in the station house. A homicide could take eight hours of on-the-scene investigation, and there was no way I could contact him on the scene. She asked me once to try the number again, but I didn’t want to bother him or the detective squad. I was pretty sure he would get my message; he would call back when he had the time.
At four, the phone finally rang. I picked it up.
“Hey, sorry it took so long,” Jack’s easygoing voice said. “How do you feel?”
“Fine. You out on a big case?”
“Big enough. Over four hours. We stopped to eat on the way back to the house. Man, were we empty. How’s things?”
“I’ve made a discovery, and I need professional help.”
“You psycho already? It usually takes about ten years on the job for most people.”
“Professional doesn’t always mean psychological,” I said with a smile. “I need your Cole’s connection.”
“You got a number?”
“In Ontario, area code nine-oh-five. Val called the number every few days for years. Made the last call the morning of Valentine’s Day. It’s disconnected now.”
“Sounds like a good lead. Give me the number and I’ll get back to you.”
I read it off and he promised to call back as soon as he had something.
“There should be a record of it,” I said to Carlotta. “The directory is an annual one, so whatever was in it at the start of the year should be there now.”
“And they’ll have the name and address?”
“Even more than that,” I said, repeating what Jack had told me some time ago. “They have information on the area, how populated it is, what the average income range is, things like that.”
“I don’t care about that. I just want to know who lives there.”
“Or lived there,” I said.
“Chris, what will we do if they’re gone?”
“Talk to the neighbors. Try to trace a driver’s license, or an auto license, if they drove a ca
r. Let’s not worry about those things right now.”
But she was worried. I munched on some leftovers in her refrigerator and drank a glass of milk, but she couldn’t eat. I knew that if Jack came up with an address, we would be out the door in seconds, and I felt better when my stomach had something in it. Finally, just about half an hour after I had spoken to Jack, the phone rang again.
Carlotta jumped up, but she let me answer.
“Got it,” Jack said. “Got a pencil?”
“In my hand.”
“OK. The subscriber is E. K. Winkel, and he lives at 27 Rosegarden Lane.” He gave me the name of a town I had never heard of. “I looked it up,” he said. “It’s right on the Canadian side of Lake Erie, and the most prominent town that I can find in the area is something called Fort Erie. It’s near the bridge between Buffalo and Ontario.”
“Is there any indication of whether that’s a man’s name or a woman’s?”
“None. I called Ontario information and asked for E. K. Winkel, and they said there wasn’t any listing for that name.”
“So they may be gone.”
“Gone or gave up a telephone.”
“How can you live without a phone nowadays?”
“Makes it harder to find someone. If a guy’s hiding out, information can’t even say he has an unlisted number.”
“Or they may have moved and left no forwarding number.”
“Always a possibility.”
“Well, I guess that’s it.”
“Sounds like I won’t see you this weekend.”
“I don’t know at this point. I’ll talk to Carlotta. If you don’t hear from me, it’s a no.”
“Maybe I’ll do some real cooking tomorrow, and the fumes will find their way to Buffalo.”
“I’ll breathe deeply,” I said.
“Make sure the air is good.”
We had a baby to worry about. It was nice.
We were out the door as fast as I had anticipated, stopping only for a map of Ontario that Carlotta put her hands on very quickly. Then we drove to Buffalo for the second time that day, this time entering at a different point and driving along the lake until we reached a bridge.