A Safe Place for Dying

by Jack Fredrickson

  Twenty-one

  I called the Bohemian’s office from Kutz’s parking lot. Griselda Buffy answered the main line, put me on hold, and, in less time than it should have taken, came back on and told me Mr. Chernek would see me whenever I could make it. I told her I could make it right away. I hopped on the Eisenhower for the third time that day and got down to the Bohemian’s building in the same time it took to chew a roll of Tums.

  I stepped around a young man in a too-tight dark suit studying the building directory in the foyer, punched the elevator button, and rode up.

  The reception area was empty. I sat on one of the creased green leather wing chairs and picked up a two-week-old issue of Business Week. Several subscription cards fell out. Two weeks old, the magazine hadn’t been touched.

  Fifteen minutes passed. The phone didn’t ring; no one came through the reception area. The only sound came from the grandfather clock in the corner, slowly ticking as if it were fighting the loss of each minute.

  I got up and opened the walnut door to the general office. No typing on keyboards, no opening of drawers, no talking on telephones. The office was dead, like a bus station in the middle of the night after the last bus has pulled away. I walked down a row of empty cubicles to the private offices in back.

  Griselda Buffy stuck her head around a filing cabinet, her face startled. In that morgue, I must have sounded like a brass band.

  “Mr. Elstrom. I didn’t know you were here.”

  “There’s nobody up front.”

  “I’ll tell Mr. Chernek you’ve arrived.”

  She went down the corridor, tapped on a door, and went in. I looked around. The secretarial desks were deserted, cleared of papers and pencil cups like the cubicles. The doors to the private offices along the back were closed. I wondered if Griselda Buffy and the Bohemian were the last ones there.

  The door down the hall opened. Griselda stepped out and motioned me to come to the Bohemian’s office.

  “Vlodek,” he called out while I was still five feet away, rolling the vowels in his usual robust way. When I walked through his doorway, though, I almost stopped at the change in his appearance. His bronzed country club tan had gone pale, and the white collar of his apricot shirt lay loose around his neck. He sat behind an enormous paneled walnut desk, in a high-back burgundy leather chair that looked too big for him. It had only been three days since I’d seen him, but he looked like he’d shrunk in that time.

  “Please, sit,” he said. Cardboard file boxes, some with their lids removed, were stacked on the floor and on the four guest chairs. Opened manila folders were spread everywhere. I took two boxes off one of the side chairs, set them on the floor, and sat down.

  The Bohemian set down the sheaf of papers he was holding and looked at me across the desk.

  “Tell me what’s going on,” I said.

  I thought I saw a faint tremor in his big hands as he folded them on his stomach. “I am accused of stealing from a client, to cover the losses I, and my other clients, have suffered from my poor investments. And, though I have not as yet been accused of anything more, the losses also give me an excellent motive to set off bombs and extort money from Crystal Waters.”

  “What have you told the F.B.I.?”

  “The truth, Vlodek. My accuser, Miss Terrado, suffered losses in her portfolio as a result of my advice. That I do not deny. But so did many other of my clients, as well as many of the people who work here, including myself. I admit I am guilty of not being able to predict the future, but all of Ms. Terrado’s investments have been intact; none have been removed from her account. The records will prove that.”

  “Did you show those records to the F.B.I.?”

  “I have not been given the chance. One would assume they would have wanted to review my files before they launched a grandstand play like a public arrest. But they did not.”

  “Because they like you for the Crystal Waters explosions.”

  “Yes. They need a suspect on hand, in case another house blows up. I’m available, here and now, unlike our elusive Mr. Jaynes. And because of my undeniable market losses, I do have cause for a motive. Unfortunately, since this is a criminal matter, my lawyers and I don’t get to depose my accuser, the government, or their source, the troubled Miss Terrado. I’ve got to be tried to fight back.”

  “Tell me about Miss Terrado.”

  “I have not as yet been formally terminated as her advisor, which is her true goal, so I can’t tell you everything, but since the woman is ruining me, I feel I am entitled to certain liberties. She has been liquidating her inheritance to the tune of a million a year, most of which goes for powder for her and her friends to put up their noses. The last asset she’s got is the trust account her late parents set up for her with me, with me as administrator. She left that for last because she knew I’d fight her wasting it away, but now she has no choice. She needs the money for her addictions, so she’s got to get me off the trust. So she accused me of pilfering. When I’m removed from overseeing her account, the trust reverts to her control, and she can sniff herself into oblivion.”

  “But you say your records will exonerate you.”

  He waved at the boxes of files stacked around his office. “That will be in a year or two, in pretrial, when the government is forced to examine my evidence. Unfortunately, the news of my being cleared will be buried in the back section of the paper. By then, I will have long since been ruined.” He managed a smile. “I guess I don’t need to tell you how this feels.”

  If it was performance, it was masterful, especially the part that played on my own dissolution. But I liked the idea better that he was telling the truth.

  His eyes locked on mine. “They must be convinced I have no potential as a suspect at Crystal Waters. How was California, Vlodek?”

  I told him about Lucy Vesuvius, the long-ago police car explosion, and the most recent twenty-dollar bill in the envelope.

  “You say Michael Jaynes calls every once in a while?”

  “The woman at the store said whoever calls leaves just a first name, and that it is Michael.”

  The Bohemian’s face had regained some of its old healthy color. “That’s good. He’s taking big chances, keeping up with those calls, now that the bombings have resumed. If we could just get Till to set up a trace on that store phone.”

  “What’s Michael Jaynes been hiding from? Blowing up the back wall of the guardhouse in 1970? You told me it was never reported to the police. Why would he hide?”

  The Bohemian shrugged. “Jaynes doesn’t know we didn’t report it. Or maybe he did something else that caused him to hide all these years.”

  “I don’t buy it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m not sure Michael Jaynes is involved anymore.”

  His face flushed suddenly. “Why the hell would you think that?”

  “As I told Stanley and Till, a guy who’s just scored a half million dollars doesn’t keep sending a twenty to an old girlfriend after he’s hit pay dirt. He sends more.”

  “I need Michael Jaynes, Vlodek.” He leaned across his big desk. “He disappeared right after the guardhouse in 1970. He didn’t pick up his last paycheck. Both actions are consistent with him grabbing ten thousand dollars in extortion money and then taking off.”

  “Maybe he wrote the notes, planted the D.X.12, and blew up the guardhouse, but he’s been gone for too long. I think he collected the money in 1970 and disappeared for good. Changed his name, kept his nose clean, the works.”

  “Then who is sending the notes and setting off the D.X.12?”

  “Someone who wants us to think he’s Michael Jaynes.”

  “Someone else picked up the ball and is running with it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Who?”

  “Could be you.”

  “Shit.” He spun his chair to look out the window. The back of his neck was red. After a minute, he spun around. “You find Michael Jaynes.”

 
“I don’t know how.”

  “Learn.”

  “A.T.F. is involved. They can do more than I can.”

  “Not for me, they won’t.”

  “They will, if it gets them the truth.”

  “Find Michael Jaynes, Vlodek.”

  His phone rang, loud, like an alarm inside a drum. He picked up the receiver, spoke into it, and started shuffling through the folders on his desk. I told him I’d get back to him and went out.

  Griselda Buffy sat typing at the reception station, perhaps trying to make the place sound less like a tomb. It wasn’t working.

  I went down the elevator and crossed the street to the lot. Just as I started the Jeep my cell phone rang.

  “How’s Chernek?” Till said.

  I switched off the engine and looked around the parking lot.

  “Crown Victoria, last aisle by the bushes, closest to the street.” I picked out the dark green car parked in the shade. “Stick your hand out the window and wave.”

  I did. A hand waved back. Till was in voice contact with the driver of the green sedan.

  “I have a unit by the door on the other side of the building, too,” Till said.

  “Was that your young man in the ill-fitting suit in the lobby when I went in?”

  “Cheap suits are all we can afford on government pay.”

  “I thought you were too short-handed for Crystal Waters.”

  “The lads in the two units are rookies on stakeout training. Sitting in hot cars watching doors is the real work of the A.T.F.”

  “You really think you’ll get something that way? He’ll spot you.”

  “He already has. We made sure of it.”

  “You want him to know you’re watching?”

  “We like to intimidate. If he’s our man, it might prevent him from setting off another bomb. Of course, we’ve got two other suspects.”

  “Two others?” I was surprised. “Jaynes and Chernek. You’ve only got two suspects, total.”

  “There’s you. That’s three.”

  My throat went too dry to fake a laugh. “Me?”

  “You work for Chernek.”

  “Damn it, Till.”

  “You’ve got motive, too.”

  A nerve tingled behind my eyes. He wasn’t kidding.

  “What motive, Till?”

  “You hate rich folks. You married one of them, moved into her fancy house at Crystal Waters, nobody made you feel welcome. Almost right after, you got your face plastered all over the papers for manufacturing evidence, you lost your little business, and now you’d not only shamed your wife, her important father, and your new neighborhood, but you’d bankrupted yourself as well. You were broke. Your wife dumped you, took off for Europe, but let you stay in her house for a month. You sat and drank and plotted revenge. Somehow you’d heard about the bombing of the guardhouse. You got hold of some D.X.12 and a few sheets of old tablet paper. You got creative. You wrote notes, planted a few bombs, before they threw you out, drunk, last Halloween.”

  “What about the wiring that connects everything together? When did I do that—at night, wandering around drunk?”

  “I don’t need to put it all together, Elstrom, not yet. It’s enough that you interest me.”

  “Like Jaynes and Chernek?”

  “They interest me. But you I really like.”

  “You’ve got two suspects.”

  “Three, Elstrom, and one of the primes hasn’t been heard from in thirty-five years. That leaves Chernek, the man with the goldplated motive, and he’s real smart. And you. Not so smart, but still with motive and means.”

  “I can’t believe your gut is telling you it could be me.”

  “My gut, Elstrom? You know how on T.V., after the second commercial, the wise cop sits on the edge of a desk in some gray squad room, rubbing his belly, shaking his head, and saying, ‘My gut tells me … ,’ and then he names the bad guy?”

  “The famed lawman’s intuition.”

  “It’s bullshit. My gut’s like my ex-wife, been lying to me for years. The times my gut told me I know something, it turns out it’s wrong. The only time my gut is right is when it tells me it’s hungry, and then I dump chili in it and it shuts up. The rest of the time I ignore my gut and plod.”

  “Sounds like real law work, Till, pursuing me because you need to plod.”

  “It’s what I can do, Elstrom. It’s what I can do.”

  “What are you doing about Michael Jaynes?”

  “Two agents interviewed Lucy Vesuvius this morning. She insists she hasn’t seen him.”

  “What about setting up a trace from that pay phone in Clarinda?”

  “And have a man monitoring the line for the next few months, ready to jump on a phone conversation that might be too quick to trace?”

  “How are you going to find him?”

  “He’s disappeared for too many years. If he’s not dead, he doesn’t want to be found, and he’s been damned good at staying hidden. I can’t pull agents off other cases for some nut-cake manhunt, but I didn’t need to. I had you to chase that wild goose, Elstrom, and you got nowhere. Unless …”

  He paused, baiting me.

  I bit. “Unless?”

  “Unless there was nowhere to get to. Maybe you were just trying to fool us all with this Michael Jaynes stuff.”

  “It’s a wrong bet to concentrate only on Jaynes. But you can’t forget about him, not if your only other suspects are Chernek and me.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  “Start looking at everybody who has had access—”

  “Manpower problems,” he said, cutting me off. “What other bright ideas have you been percolating?”

  “Those computer-aging photos you said you were going to do.”

  “You see those things work on T.V.?”

  “And at the movies. I bone up on investigating technique in all kinds of places.”

  “They never work, you know. Too many variables in a person’s appearance.”

  “Why don’t you try?”

  “They’re done. We used Michael Jaynes’s Army picture, added a bunch of years, then did four more with baldness, large weight gain, the beard the woman at Universal Electric said he had, and a mustache. I sent them to our branches yesterday.”

  “And they’ll send them to electrical contractors?”

  “When they can. Maybe you could get your rich friends at Crystal Waters to blanket electrical firms, too. There’s two hundred right now sitting in an envelope in our lobby with your name on it. Come pick them up.” He hung up.

  Till was too twitchy for me to figure. He was firing blindly in all directions. I would have been all right with that, thinking it might shake something loose, except that one of the places he was aiming was at me.

  I pulled out of the Bohemian’s parking lot, my eyes in the rearview mirror. Nobody followed me. Maybe Till was just jerking me around about being a suspect.

  I drove east the few blocks into downtown, parked in the shortterm garage, and went into the A.T.F. offices. As Till had said, an envelope with my name on it was at the first-floor reception desk. I pulled one sheet out.

  There were six images: an Army photo and five computer renderings created from it. When he’d enlisted in the Army, Michael Jaynes could have been anybody’s fresh-faced boy next door: big smile, round baby features under the Army buzz cut. The computer shots aged him, but in each he still looked harmless, like the guy down the block, in plaid shorts, who cuts his grass every Saturday afternoon before going inside to pop the tab on a brewski and watch the ball game. I slid the sheet back in the envelope, went back to the Jeep, and oozed into rush hour on the Eisenhower Expressway.

  Just past Austin Boulevard, the outbound traffic loosened up and I spotted it hanging back, three cars behind, in the far outside lane. Another dark Crown Victoria, this one blue. I changed lanes; they did, too, maintaining the three-car gap. I sped up; they stayed with me. I slowed down; they backed off. They must have picked me up
outside the A.T.F. offices.

  I stayed in the outer lane until just before Harlem, then cut left through a hole in the left two lanes, shot up the inside exit, ran the red light at the top of the overpass, and swung right. They might have been rookies, but they were good enough behind the wheel. They swung left across all the traffic, too, and made the exit without drawing a single horn.

  I went north, then west on Lake Street. A couple of times, I turned off onto the side streets, but that was just for sport. By then I was sure. They stayed with me all the way to the turret, not bothering to do much to conceal themselves. I got out of the Jeep and walked to the door. They parked a hundred yards down, just off Thompson.

  I tried to not think about being under surveillance. I nuked three Lean Cuisines and watched crime shows on my mini T.V. I didn’t learn any useful investigative techniques, but at nine o’clock I did remember the piece of lime pie I’d gotten in Bodega Bay. I found the Styrofoam container nestled in my still-unpacked suitcase. The pie was warm and had congealed into a kind of lime mash embedded with sodden specks of crust that had become mostly indistinct, like the information in the Gateville investigation.

  I ate the pie and went up to my cot. Before I turned out the lights, I looked out the window. The dark Crown Victoria was still there, in the shadows past the streetlamp.

  Twenty-two

  It rained the next morning, so hard the water streamed into the turret like the Devil himself was up dancing on my roof, aiming a pressure hose at the cracks in the tar. The five-gallon pickle buckets I’d scavenged from the deli couldn’t catch it all, and for three hours, I raced the rain, emptying old varnish cans, a plastic wastebasket, and the pickle buckets out of the top-floor windows like a third-world washerwoman. Each time, I was tempted to wave a long finger at the boys in the Crown Victoria.

  Stanley called late in the afternoon. By then the rain had stopped, though water was still dripping in.

  “Mr., Mr. Elstrom—” Stanley started, began again, stammering so badly I cut him off.

  “Let me guess, Stanley. Ballsard thinks the matter is over.”

  “He feels the A.T.F. will keep a close watch on things, and besides, we paid the demand and should be left alone now, anyway.”