The telephone rang. Marg said it was for me. I took the call in my office.
“Chet Harkness,” he said.
“What’s up?”
“We talked about the Second Amendment spot.”
“They blew up your building,” I said.
“We’re running last night’s show again today and setting up over at the junior college broadcast arts facility.”
“How long before you can get back into your studio?”
“The south end of the third floor is gone. Could be months.”
“They find Commander K up there?” I asked.
“Not much of him,” said Chet. “Listen, you wouldn’t have to be in the studio for what we have in mind. You’d be a technical advisor. We want you to walk Mark Behler and a camera crew through buying a firearm.”
“Sounds like a hoot,” I said. “When?”
“This afternoon,” said Chet.
“I have a four-hour minimum,” I said.
“Five hundred bucks cover it?”
“When do you want me there?”
“How’s two o’clock?”
I looked at my watch—a shade short of noon. “Where?”
“Lobby of the junior college,” said Chet. “I’ll bring the check if you’ll bring an invoice for me.”
“That would just cover today,” I said.
“Of course. See you at two.”
I opened my office door, and before I could speak to Marg, Lily looked up from the sofa and said, “I forgot to thank you for being so kind to me, even after I’d been angry with you.”
“Wasn’t a matter of kindness,” I said. “I was going to hold you over my head to fend off sparks.”
We laughed.
I said, “I’m glad I could help you.”
“I want to know what happened the night you saw my father.”
“Some things I know, some things I don’t,” I said.
Lily searched in her purse. “I know what my father was.” She handed me a folded and yellowed page of newsprint in a plastic bag. I opened it and found a front page from the Detroit Free Press with a picture of John Vincenti and a story about his racketeering arrest.
“There are two sides to every story,” I said. “Your father never got to defend himself,” I said.
“I lived my entire life angry with a father I thought had abandoned me. I need to know what happened.”
“He died, Lily.” I said. “He didn’t abandon you.”
“I’m paying you!” she said, her voice angry. Tears rolled onto her cheeks.
Paying me? I looked at Marg. Marg made really big eyes and one nod.
“Damn it!” she screamed. “You are hiding something!”
I looked at Marg. She nodded. I turned the straight chair around and sat facing Lily. “Lily, they shot him and left his body on a bus bench with a dead canary in his mouth.”
“Oh, God,” she gasped. She clasped her fists to her face and fell forward. I caught her on my shoulder.
I told her, “Maybe he sent you and your mother away so that you’d be safe.”
“So why is he missing? They knew he was dead.”
“I guess that’s why you hired me,” I said.
“Mark Behler said it was about my father’s union activities,” said Lily.
“Mark Behler has an agenda he wants to advance. He doesn’t care who he uses, or who he hurts.”
Lily sat up and blew her nose in the tissue she’d gripped in her hand. “He said he wanted to help me.” She wiped her nose. “He paid for my trip here.”
“Mark Behler wanted you to be sitting on the set and angry with me while the state police arrested me on his show,” I said. “When that didn’t happen, he moved on.”
Lily looked at Marg. “Where’s the restroom?”
Marg stood up from her chair and put a hand out. “C’mon,” she said. “We’ve got a great powder room.”
As she passed, Marg slid an envelope across the desk to me. With an arm around Lily, Marg led her out the door and down the hall. In the envelope, I found a check for ten thousand dollars made out to Lily from The Mark Behler Show. Lily had endorsed it, “Pay to Peter A. Ladin Investigative Associates.”
I heard the door open. Special Agent Matty Svenson strolled in with a trench coat folded over her arm. She said, “Jesus, Art, what do I have to do, take a number?”
“Busy day.”
“I’ve been sitting on the stairs for ten minutes,” said Matty. She walked past me and around the corner into the investigator’s room.
“Must be your turn, now,” I said, following her. “Nothing in here but the coatrack, file cabinets, and my weight bench.”
Matty looked around the floor, rifled through the trash can, and pulled on a drawer of one of the file cabinets. “What’s in there?” she asked.
“Files,” I said. “What are you looking for?”
Matty strolled into my office. “My earring,” she said. “Last time I was here I think I lost my earring.”
“I’ve never seen you wear earrings,” I said. “And the last time you were here was a year ago. The Lambert case.”
Matty dumped my trash on the floor and moved the crumpled papers around with her foot. “You should shred this stuff, you know.” She walked over to the closet and tried the door knob.
“Locked,” I said.
Matty walked over to my desk and pulled open the drawers one at a time. “A year?” she asked. “That’s why you forgot my earrings. I haven’t had them, so I didn’t wear them.”
I hauled out my keys and opened the closet. “Maybe you ought to look in here?”
“Absolutely,” said Matty. She sorted through my gear and looked in the gym bag I use to haul equipment.
“We should probably look in the files,” I said. “It might have bounced in there.”
“Marg have access to the files?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” said Matty. “If Marg saw it, she would have called.”
“So you don’t need to look in her desk?”
“No.”
“Maybe we should look in my car,” I said. “I might have found it, put it in the car, and then forgot about it.”
Matty smiled. “Let’s start with the trunk.”
We arrived in the parking lot just in time to see Special Agent M. Amad Azzara—he’d been on the front desk when I visited the FBI—chuck the rear seat of my black Buick Sport Coupe out the passenger door. “Ah, Mr. Hardin,” he said, “how are you today?”
“Great,” I said. “Love the weather.”
He knelt on the front seat and played his flashlight over the pit created by the absence of the rear seat. “What on earth are those things?”
I stuck my head in the door. “Gummy bears,” I said, “Wendy and I had the grandkids last weekend. If you find Agent Svenson’s earring back there, don’t tell my wife.”
Azzara squinted his face into a puzzle. “What?”
“When you’re done, look under the seats,” said Matty. She shouldered past me. “Open the trunk.”
“Happy now?” I asked, watching Matty sift through the uncataloged crap collected in the trunk of my Buick.
“Not a question of happy,” said Matty.
“You didn’t really think the money would be there, did you?”
“No,” said Matty. “I was thinking, you know, a big red bow, big black suitcase, maybe a big wad of assorted rubber bands.”
Agent Azzara joined us at the back of the car, pulling on a tan sports coat with brown suede patches at the elbow. “Nothing,” he said.
“I told them we didn’t have Manny’s money,” I said. “Now I have to tell you?”
“They think you have the money, doesn’t much matter what you tell them,” said Matty. “Me, I have to check.”
“I’m not seeing an upside here,” I said and slammed the lid on my trunk.
“Somebody’s lying,” said Matty. “The upside is that now I’m a little less likely to think it�
�s you.”
I fished a package of cigars out of my coat pocket, took one, and shook the remaining two in the package at Matty.
“I saved the one you gave me last year,” said Matty. “My plan is to smoke it before I buy another pack of Pall Malls.”
I offered them to Azzara.
He wagged his head. “I do not smoke,” he said.
I fired up my cigar.
“That doesn’t smell all that bad,” allowed Matty.
“Black cherry pipe blend,” I said. “On sale. They burn a little hot. I think it’s the Chinese newsprint they use to bulk up leaf ends and trimmings they sweep up from the floor.”
Matty piled her purse onto the trunk lid and dug out a still-frame photo made from an airport security video. “This Manny?”
“That’s him.”
Azzara picked up the photo and studied.
“Canadian?”
“Karen saw his passport. She said it had a big maple leaf on the cover.”
“I’m going to check with the RCMP, but I have to make the request through the DC office.”
“How much of him did you find?”
“A toasted foot and most of an arm got blown across the roof and out of the fire,” said Matty. “The county medical examiner says the parts are ‘probably’ from a male person, but a known DNA sample is needed for any further identification.”
“I recognized his voice from the telephone call to Mark Behler. So did Karen and Wendy.”
Azzara rolled his eyes up to me and unfurled a doubtful smile.
“That doesn’t prove it was Manny,” said Matty. “We need a voice sample for comparison. And even if Manny made the telephone call, that doesn’t prove he blew himself into confetti.”
“The guy I talked to this morning said Manny was a martyr.”
“Yeah, and he thought you had the money.” Matty put the picture back in her purse. “Tell me about the guy you talked to this morning.”
I took a toke on my cigar and thought about it. “Very dark complexion. Very sharp features. Mid-fifties.” I blew a large smoke ring. “Five-feet, eight inches and a very soft hundred eighty or ninety pounds. Moustache and receding hair. He spoke East Indian English. He was Muslim.”
Azzara made taut lips and narrow eyes.
“How do you know his religion?” asked Matty.
“He called me a kaffir. Seems like you have to be Muslim to think that’s an insult.”
“And maybe you are just a narrow-minded bigot, braying about an Arab bogeyman under every bed,” said Azzara.
Matty focused an astonished face on Azzara.
“No!” said Azzara, wielding a pointed finger at me, but speaking to Matty. “Manny is a Muslim; therefore, he is a terrorist. The man he says he talked to is Muslim; therefore, he must also be a terrorist. Maybe this phantom man is a criminal. Maybe Manny is a criminal. Maybe Mr. Hardin is a criminal, and that is what they all have in common.”
“Done?” asked Matty, her face stern.
“Yes.” Azzara folded his arms.
“Perhaps you could put Mr. Hardin’s back seat where you found it,” said Matty.
“Perhaps he would like to clean up the candy first,” said Agent Azzara, his arms still folded.
“Put – the – seat – back – in – the – car,” growled Matty with a slight curl of her lip.
Agent Azzara sulked over to the seat, picked it up, and wrestled it back into the car.
“I never said anyone was a terrorist. Manny said he was a terrorist,” I said. “But I have to admit that blowing up a building has a certain terrorist cachet to it.”
“The incident at the Waters Building is in the hands of a task force from Washington,” said Matty. “They came in this morning, and you have to talk to two supervisors just to take their lunch order.”
“But you’re here,” I said.
“You’ll be happy to know that we are working closely with the Wyoming Police on this. Chief Kope feels very strongly that the incident at Karen Smith’s house was a drug-related home invasion and not related to the bombing.”
“The simplest answer is usually correct,” said Azzara.
“Thank you, Agent Azzara,” said Matty. She scrounged an envelope out of her purse and dropped four pictures on the trunk. “The man you talked to this morning?”
“Don’t see him,” I said.
“Look close,” said Matty. “Some of these pictures are ten to fifteen years old.”
“Number three, maybe,” I said. “Add thirty pounds, recede the hair, and add a moustache.”
Matty turned over the photo and said, “Recent photo.”
“Then he ain’t there. They find the yellow Dodge Neon?”
“In the Share-a-Ride lot at Lincoln Lake Road and 1-96. Wasn’t hard to find. It was on fire.”
“Title? Registration?”
Matty scooped up the pictures. “Rented at the airport with a stolen credit card. We’re checking the receipts for fingerprints.”
“The guns still in the trunk?”
“More left of the guns than the body,” said Matty.
“They still have serial numbers?”
“Both stolen in Detroit,” said Matty.
“In the same B and E,” said Azzara.
“Odd,” I said.
“Perhaps there is a simple answer,” said Azzara.
“And that would be?” I asked.
“Soon discovered,” said Azzara.
“Who are the guys in the pictures?” I asked.
“Just pictures, Art,” said Matty. “Don’t worry about it.” She put the envelope back in her purse. “If anybody contacts you about Manny’s money, try to set up a meet.” She handed me a card with an address. “We need a couple of hours, so we can control the environment.”
“This is a rod and gun club,” I said.
“Recent IRS seizure,” said Matty. She tapped the card with her index finger. “This is the only place, or you don’t meet ’em. We get two hours lead time, or you don’t meet ’em.”
“What if they won’t play?”
“You don’t meet ’em,” said Matty.
“What if they jump me on the street?”
Matty gathered up her purse. “If you think you’re being followed, go to a police station.”
“Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that.”
She shook out her car keys and said, “Agent Azzara’s take on this is very popular downtown. Think about that.”
17
“YOU WANT A WHAT?” asked Marg.
“Five-hundred-dollar invoice for The Mark Behler Show.”
“You saw what they paid Lily just to embarrass you.”
“I want to find out about the policeman who was ever so helpful to Mark Behler,” I said. “Using Lily’s Social Security number to further a private enterprise is against the law.”
“Lending institutions and credit-reporting agencies do it all the time.”
“PI’s who do it go to jail.”
“Behler will never reveal his contact,” said Marg.
“It’s not like I was going to ask him directly,” I said. “And I get a quiet afternoon of slumming in gun shops.”
Marg cranked an invoice into her typewriter. “Lily will be here to check in before she heads back to Seattle. You going to have something for her?”
Marg always amazed me with how she could rattle the keys, talk about something unrelated, and never make a mistake. “Touched your heart, did she?”
“I don’t want to return the check,” said Marg.
“Go ahead and play that,” I said. “You ain’t fooling me.”
“Quarterly taxes and FICA are due.”
“I’m on Lily’s case like ants on a fumbled jelly bean.”
• • •
For temporary office space, Mark Behler had landed a card table and folding chair in a utility closet at the junior college, complete with a slop sink and mop rack.
“Nice digs,” I told him.
�
��Hey,” he said, decked out in full curmudgeon, sans the toupee, wearing jeans and a green The Mark Behler Show T-shirt, “I got the only office with running water.”
“A reward for definitive reporting?”
“I’m a journalist,” said Behler. “Journalists write the first draft of history. A few anecdotal facts aren’t important if they tend to cloud the truth at the heart of an issue.”
I rocked my chair back. “You said I was a security guard.”
Behler shook a finger at me but said nothing. He went back to unloading the contents of a cardboard carton onto his desk.
“What?”
Behler dragged a ragged T-shirt from the box and used it to wipe off a dictionary and a thesaurus before he piled them onto the desk. A mahogany gavel with a brass plaque came out of the box next. He gave them a loving rub up and said, “I happen to know that you have a private security license.”
In Michigan, a detective license comes with a security license attached, like a conjoined twin. It doubles the license fees, and if the state police pull your detective ticket, you can’t hang around to bedevil them as a security operator.
“I guess you’ve done your homework,” I said and watched a hint of the fox morph onto Behler’s basset hound countenance.
“I have my sources,” he said.
“What’s the gavel?”
“I’m a past president of the Suburban Rotary Club.”
“Meets at the Beltline Bar?” I asked.
“Familiar?”
“Fantastic wet burritos,” I said. “Saw the Rotary plaque in the lobby. Ryan Kope belongs to that chapter, doesn’t he?”
Behler blinked and talked into the box. “Yeah, he’s the president this year.” Glancing up from the box, Behler filtered, “Sorry to hold you up,” through a saccharine face.
“Hey, you bought four hours, and the coffee here is better than at your studio.”
“Chet makes the coffee.”
“Chet’s a dangerous man,” I said.
Robby, the cameraman, walked in with a tan trench coat draped over a black gym bag.
“Art Hardin, Robby Richards,” said Behler. “Robby will be rolling tape for us today.”
Robby took my offered hand for a quick shake.
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