by David Grace
“Well.” Virgil started to rise.
“I’m not good with people,” Lyla said suddenly. “The real reason that I don’t have a regular practice is that I never know what to say, when to talk and when to keep my mouth shut. Psychiatrists have to know that, know how to keep their mouths shut.
“We’re not supposed to just tell a patient, ‘Your problem is this’ or ‘To feel better you have to do that’. We’re suppose to ask questions and sometimes bury little hints in the way we phrase them or in the tone of our voice in the hope that the patient will figure out the answers to his problems all on his own.
“The idea is that a patient will never change his life, change the way he sees the world, because of what someone else tells him; that he will only accept a painful truth and act on it if he discovers it on his own. Do you believe that’s true, Virgil?” Lyla asked with a sudden intensity and leaned toward him.
“I think things work better if you just say what needs to be said. At least that way it’s the other person’s choice if they want to listen or not.”
For the first time since he arrived Lyla gave him a genuinely pleased smile.
“You would make a terrible psychiatrist,” she told him. “If we just told people things then thirty or forty hours of billable time would be shrunk down to fifteen minutes. . . . But, personally, I’m glad to hear you say that.”
“Why?”
“Because I like you. That’s why I invited you here. I saw that video of you on YouTube and I saw what a handsome, honorable man you were, and I thought that maybe . . . but there I go saying the wrong thing again.”
“I’m very flattered. You’re a beautiful woman. Unfortunately, my job here is only temporary. I’ll be gone in a couple of months so there wouldn’t be much point in our starting anything up. Otherwise. . . .”
“That’s. . . , well, thank you. I told you that I can’t turn off my . . . ‘talent’ I suppose you would say. I just see things about people whether I want to or not. Would you like me to tell you what I see in you?”
Do I? Virgil asked himself, then the question, Is ignorance really bliss? morphed into, Am I such a coward that I’m afraid to hear what she has to say?
“I would appreciate that,” he said and wondered if he hadn’t just made a terrible mistake.
“All right.” In an instant Lyla’s face seemed to collapse into an emotionless mask. “One of the reasons you became a police officer is that you wanted to protect the world from people like the man who killed your father. You became a police officer to take over the job he started but that he wasn’t able to finish, the job your father gave his life to do – protecting the innocent.
“What you need to remember is that your badge and your gun are not who you are. They’re only symbols of what your father and now you stand for. Doing your job is the better part of you, but there’s a danger that you may allow what you do to become, in your mind, what you are, so you have to watch out for that.”
What? Virgil thought. Where did all that stuff come from? But she wasn’t done.
“On some level you’re struggling with feelings of abandonment. First, your father left you, then your wife left you, and then your daughter left you.”
Out of nowhere the thought, And Janet left me, jumped into his head.
“Of course, none of that is factually true. You father didn’t choose to leave you. He died. Your daughter didn’t choose to leave you. She was taken away against her will. Your wife did leave you, but that decision flowed from her disturbed personality, not from any fault of yours. Intellectually, you know all this, but knowing it and accepting it are sometimes two different things.
“Feelings of abandonment can lead to insecurity and guilt which in turn can fuel irrational or obsessive actions. If you cling to those emotions, to feelings of guilt and insecurity, then you may become a prisoner of obsessive and possibly destructive behavior.
“If you can emotionally understand that you have done nothing wrong, that you have not failed those who love you, then you can deal with what’s happened in your life. You have to accept that you’re not responsible for their leaving you, that you can remember them without letting their memory keep you from moving on with your life. . . . Wouldn’t it be wonderful having me as your girlfriend?” Lyla said, only half jokingly.
“I–”
“No, don’t say anything. Just put everything I’ve told you in the back of your head and we’ll pretend that none of this happened. Maybe someday it will mean something to you, or maybe I’m just . . . . What’s a polite word for ‘crazy’? Sorry. I told you I was a terrible psychiatrist.”
Before Virgil could speak Lyla stood and quickly led him to the door.
Chapter Eighteen
Zug Island was created in 1888 when a semi-circular barge channel was gouged out of the earth between the Rouge and Detroit Rivers. From the air it looked like the tip of a severed finger and its sole inhabitant was a massive steel mill. Half a mile west on the other side of the canal lay the Detroit Sewage Plant. In the gap between the two were acres of weeds and stunted trees, abandoned factories, cement plants, and auto graveyards. As he entered the center of this urban wasteland between Springwells and Jefferson Stan Kudlacik’s GPS announced, “Arriving at destination.”
The battered sign to his right read “Steel City Wrecking & Salvage.” Kudlacik turned onto the cracked asphalt drive and wove between towers of crushed cars and rusting washers and refrigerators. A weathered double-wide trailer covered with brown paint squatted in the center of the debris. Over the door was nailed a two-foot by three-foot sign: “Office.”
The guy at the little desk behind the counter had black and silver steel-wool hair, knobby wrists at the end of oddly long arms, and a face whose color was a sickly tone of olive fading into liver-disease yellow.
Kudlacik didn’t need to pull out his tin. Cop and ex-con, each recognized the other as if they had been wearing signs.
“What can I do for you detective?” the man asked, warily getting to his feet.
“Anthony Gershner?”
“I’ve been clean for ten years,” he said, holding his hands out, palms up.
Kudlacik glanced at the rows of scuffed binders and faded girlie calendars stuck to the walls. “Big Boy Exhausts & Wheels” was printed above the image of a vacant-eyed woman whose breasts looked like water-filled balloons. Kudlacik made a clicking sound with his tongue and turned back to Gershner whose skin had suddenly become shiny and slick.
“You’re the registered owner of a 2012 E-150 Ford van, license number. . .” Kudlacik flipped a page in his notebook and read off the plate.
“So?” Gershner stared at Kudlacik for a moment then lowered his eyes.
“Where is it?”
“What’s this all about?” Gershner complained after a half-second’s delay.
“It’s about your van. Where is it?”
“Somewhere around here.” Gershner waved vaguely at the piles of half-crushed cars outside the trailer.
“You’re saying you crushed it?” Stan asked, giving the ex-con a hard look.
“I’m . . . uhh, look, I’ve got hundreds of vehicles out there, thousands. I can’t remember all of them.”
“I’m not asking about all of them. I’m asking about this one Ford van. Where is it?”
“What’s this all about? Have you got a warrant because I don’t have to show you anything without a warrant,” Gershner complained, puffing out his chest.
“A warrant?” Stan said, as if the concept was foreign to him. “I could get a warrant if you want. Would you like me to do that, Tony?”
“You can’t go snooping around–”
“You know, that might be a good idea.” Gershner gave Kudlacik a satisfied smile, but it didn’t last. “Because if I come back here with a warrant I wonder how many stolen cars I’d find. Oh, not so proud of yourself now?”
“Why are you hassling me? I’m an honest businessman–”
“Then you have nothing to worry
about. We’ll start by checking the VIN numbers on your inventory, and if they come up clean, then we’re good.”
“Look, I can’t be expected to–”
“But if some of them come up as stolen, then you’re in deep, deep shit, Tony.” Gershner scowled and looked at his hands. “Are you familiar with the Habitual Offender Law? Section 769.12? They make us memorize that on the first day of Detective School.
“What have you got, Tony, two strikes? Three? Two prior felonies doubles your sentence. Three priors and it’s twenty-five to life.” Kudlacik stared at Gershner for a moment then smiled. “By the way you’re sweating, Tony, I’m guessing it’s three. That’s too bad. You’re still a relatively young guy. What are you, forty? Forty-five? How long do you think you could live in the joint? Another thirty, thirty-five years? That’s a hard jolt for a few stolen cars. But, hey, I don’t make the laws.” Gershner’s skin had turned a pale yellow and a drop of sweat rolled down his cheek. “Do you still want me to get that warrant?”
“No,” Gershner said, not looking up.
“Good. Where’s the van?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Gershner shook his head. “Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll find it when we search this place.” Kudlacik pulled out his phone.
“Wait!”
“Did you suddenly remember where you put your van?”
“I don’t know where the van is.”
“Jeez,” Stan muttered and raised the phone.
“Just wait! Look, I don’t have it, OK. I loaned it to a guy.”
“What guy?”
“Just a guy.”
“You loaned a fifteen-thousand-dollar van to ‘just a guy’?” Kudlacik laughed. “Tony, as much as I’ve enjoyed your bullshit routine I’m getting a little bored so how about you cut the crap?”
“Fine! I sold it to him and I didn’t file the paper work. What do you want from me?”
“That van was used in the commission of a crime. That makes you an accessory.”
“I don’t know anything about–”
“Shut the fuck up you lying sack of shit!” Kudlacik shouted. “You’ve got a yard full of stolen property. You’ve looking good for accessory to armed robbery. Shit, we think these guys took down a bank!” Stan lied. “That’s a federal beef. Christ, after you do your thirty years in Baraga they’ll ship your ass to Leavenworth.”
“I can’t do that kind of time. I can’t!” Gershner said, suddenly breaking down into tears. Kudlacik waited while Gershner buried his face on the greasy counter and sobbed.
“Hey! Are you ready to tell me what I want to know?” Stan shouted. Gershner sniveled and after a few more seconds lifted his head, grabbed a used napkin from his desk and blew his nose. “Details! I want all the fucking details on that van or I swear I’ll take you in right now.” With a CLANK Kudlacik laid his cuffs on the snot-covered counter.
“Yeah, yeah, all right!” Gershner took a breath and bowed his head. “All right,” he said in a defeated voice. “He told me his name was Vince and he needed a clean van. If anybody asked I was supposed to say it was parked at the back of the yard and then pretend that I hadn’t noticed it was gone.”
What the fuck? Stan thought, unable to make any sense of what had just happened.
“You were supposed to pretend that you hadn’t noticed that the van had been stolen?”
“Yeah.”
“Then why didn’t you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Gershner said, hanging his head in shame.
“What?”
“I don’t like cops, OK?” Tony said a moment later. “You come in here, throwing your weight around, giving orders. . . . I’m tired of fucking cops giving me orders, so I told you to pound sand, then you started talking about a warrant and the habitual offender law and all that crap and I got scared. I just wanted you to go away and leave me alone. I fucked up, all right!”
Kudlacik shook his head in dismay at the stupidity of some criminals.
“Let’s have the rest of it,” Kudlacik said a moment later, “and don’t even think about jerking me around any more.”
Gershner paused for half a second then his shoulders slumped.
“He said he heard I could get him a clean vehicle and that his name was Vince, but I knew who he was. His real name is Paulie Sturdevant. He did a bit up at Chippewa while I was there. He’s a bad guy. He’s a guy you don’t say ‘no’ to. He’d slit his mother’s throat for a baloney sandwich.”
Stan wrote down the name. “Does he know you know who he is?”
“Shit! You think I’m a moron?” Stan resisted the urge to say ‘Yes.’
“Did he say anything about what he wanted the van for?”
“Are you kidding me?”
Right, dumb question, Stan thought. “Who’s he hanging out with?”
“That psycho? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. He told me his name was Vince and he gave me the cash and I gave him the keys and that was the end of it.”
“What’s his number?” Kudlacik asked, pen poised over his pad.
“We didn’t exchange addresses,” Gershner said with a snort.
“How were you supposed to contact him?”
“I wasn’t. Do you think he wanted me to know where he was hanging out? And I sure as hell never wanted anything to do with him. We were like those ships that pass in the night, or whatever.”
Kudlacik gave Tony his best, Don’t give me that bullshit stare but this time Gershner held firm.
“That’s it!” Tony almost shouted, swinging his hands out wide. “That’s all I know. Are you going to fuck me over? I told you everything. All I did was sell a guy a van. Are you still going to ruin my life?”
“What other vehicles did you sell him?”
“None, nada, zero!” Tony whined. “Just the van. That was it.”
“Did you ever see any of the guys he runs with?”
“I told you – I don’t know who he runs with. Check his record. He’s done at least two bits. Maybe he hooked up with somebody he knew inside. I was a thief, OK? I didn’t kill people and I didn’t hang around with guys who did. Jesus, what do you want from me?” Gershner said in almost a scream.
Stan paused for a moment. “I don’t buy it. If I were him I’d want to know if anybody came sniffing around, asking about the van.”
“But you’re not a paranoid psychopath,” Tony shot back. “You don’t call them. They call you.”
“You’re saying that he calls you?”
“Called,” Tony said, emphasizing the ‘ed.’“Every couple of weeks or so he’d call from some burner phone. ‘It’s Vince. Anybody asking about the van?’ is all he’d say. I’d tell him, ‘Nothing’ and he’d hang up.”
“How’d you know it was a burner phone?”
“I’ve got caller ID and it always came up ‘Unavailable.’ Plus he’s not an idiot. What crook doesn’t use a burner phone?”
Stan paused for a moment then put his notepad away.
“I’m going to have some guys come by here tomorrow and go through your phone bills, see if we can find those burner calls of his.”
“Sure, sure, anything you want. No problem. Does that mean you’re not going to jam me up over this?”
“We’ll see,” Stan said. “Here’s my card. You call me if you hear from him, see him, hear anything about him, spot your van at the gas station, anything, you got it?”
“Sure, absolutely. Whatever you want. Just don’t, please, just don’t send me back. I can’t go back. I can’t. I’m begging you. I–”
“You just keep cooperating and let me know if you hear anything. Do I have to explain to you that it would be a really bad idea for you to tell him I was here?”
“You think I want that guy to know I’ve been talking to the cops? Jeez! I’m not an idiot.”
If only I could believe that, Stan thought and headed back to his car. He sat there for a minute filling up a page and a half in his noteb
ook with a summary of his interview with Tony Gershner, then he grabbed his phone and hit speed-dial three.
“Captain,” he said when Janet answered, “I think we just got that break we’ve been looking for.”
“Hold on. Virgil’s with me. I’m going to put you on speaker. . . . OK, go ahead.”
“I’ve got a name, Paulie Sturdevant. Sounds like a heavy hitter with a record. He bought a white E-150 van on the down-low from an Anthony Gershner who owns Steel City Wrecking & Salvage out near Zug Island. We need to track down all of Sturdevant’s known associates and see if we can get an address on him. My gut tells me he could be one of our guys.”
“That’s great work, Stan,” Janet said. “Where are you right now?”
“At the wrecking yard. I scared Gershner pretty good. I think he’ll cooperate.”
“Fantastic, Stan. Tomorrow we’ll put everybody on Sturdevant. Look, you go on home. Get a good night’s sleep. You’ve earned it.”
Stan closed the phone and drove down the buckled asphalt drive. Inside, Tony Gershner watched from a slit in the blinds and as soon as Kudlacik disappeared around a mountain of rusting steel, Tony tapped a number into the burner phone he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk.
“Who’s this?” a voice answered on the fourth ring.
“It’s me, Tony G. You told me to call if anybody came snooping around, asking about the van.”
“Tell me.”
“A cop, a detective. He gave me his card. Stanley Kudlacik, Fugitive Felon Squad. You want his number?”
“No, I don’t want his fucking phone number! What did he say?”
“Just that he was looking for the van.”
“Did he say why?”
“He said it might have been used in a bank robbery.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. . . I mean, just what we said. I led him out back and acted surprised that the van wasn’t there and said it must have been stolen. How long do you want me to wait before I file the stolen vehicle report? I can stall it for a day or two if you need time to get rid of it.”
The phone was silent for a moment. “Yeah, hold off until late tomorrow.”