“We call that number you wrote down,” she says, putting away files and locking doors.
I wonder why Connie doesn’t look for Paluchek’s folder, but then I see it on her face — Winslow’s recounting has brought Dad’s death right back to the surface. She’s distracted, and if she’s not going to bring up Paluchek, I sure won’t. I want out.
We turn out the lights and leave the office looking as if it had never been disturbed. In the hall, I press the button for the elevator and continue to mull the case.
“It’s clear that Moffit is some sort of hub,” Connie muses as we wait. “He could have told us he represented Holdene. He didn’t need to spill the beans on what for. He must have known we would have put two and two together and start probing, possibly coming upon something Moffit didn’t want us to see.”
Just then, the elevator dings and the doors slide open.
And there, in the flesh, is Kerwin Moffit himself, impeccable in a gray sharkskin suit, carrying a thin attaché in one hand and a laptop computer case slung over his shoulder. When he sees us, his face transforms like a silent movie actor’s, from bewilderment to suspicion to phony good cheer. He steps off the elevator and Connie holds the door open with her hand.
“What are you two girls doing here?” he asks.
“I always wanted to be a lawyer—” I sputter at the same time Connie coolly replies, “I thought I’d found Gregory Holdene and wanted to talk to you about it. But I was wrong.” I notice she stares at Moffit, daring him to give something away.
He smiles again. “Why don’t you come into my office? We can talk about it. Who knows — maybe you did find something.” The way he says it, it’s as if he knows exactly what we found.
Connie steps onto the elevator, pulling me with her. “No can do. We’re late.”
Now it’s Moffit’s turn to stop the doors from closing. He jams his attaché against one, causing it to bounce back instead of gliding forward. “This will only take a moment, I’m sure. Where are you headed?”
“Family dinner,” I blurt out at the same time Connie says, “Meeting with the IA chief.” We really need to better coordinate our lies.
Connie’s is a lot more dangerous — she’s daring him to acknowledge he knows more than he told us. But what she sees as clever detection, I see as risky ploy. I push Moffit’s attaché out of the door with one hand while slamming the “close door” button with the other.
“Really can’t wait any longer. Sorry, Con. Another day, Mr. Moffit! We’ll call …” But my words are lost in the whirr of the elevator.
“What’d you do that for?” Connie snarls. “Didn’t you see his face? He was turning redder than a pickled beet!”
“That’s just my point,” I growl. “That man is connected to bad people, Connie — bad people who make other people disappear.”
“What’d you think he was going to do? Off us in his lobby? He’d never get away with that.” She reaches out to push the button for his floor, but I stop her.
“Moffit doesn’t do any ‘offing’ on his own, in case you haven’t figured that out,” I say. “If he’s involved in any of this stuff, my guess is he’s pulling strings but not getting his manicured hands dirty in the process.”
Connie agrees. I know because she doesn’t make any sarcastic remarks and doesn’t try to zoom us up to Moffit’s floor again.
In the lobby, we nod to the security guard and head out into a now-drizzly early evening. The rain makes it feel later than it is as headlights and streetlights signal the workday’s end. We walk in silence for several blocks until we get to Connie’s car. Once we hop in, she turns on the engine and maneuvers out of the parking spot onto Redwood heading west to St. Paul Street.
“Did you look for Paluchek’s file?” she asks.
“No.”
She mutters a curse. Translation: Moron, moron, moron.
“Hey, you didn’t look for it either!” I cry in my defense. “There might not have been one anyway.”
She snorts. “If Moffit’s the hub of this operation, there’s probably a file on Paluchek. According to my sources, he’s been using some firm in Towson to help him with legal issues, but that doesn’t mean he’s not using Moffit, too.”
She smacks on her left turn signal to move over to the left lane, where she’ll turn on Pratt Street and get us heading toward home.
“Try that number you wrote down,” she orders.
“And say what?” I reach for her cell phone between the seats.
“Say Moffit told you to call to check on the next operation.”
I suddenly wish Kerrie were here to do her Great Actress routine. But I’ll try my best. I’m as eager as Connie to wrap up this case — no, eagerer. I’d like to get the scoop before she does.
I punch in the number and clear my throat, and I’m deciding what accent to use as it rings through — one ring, then voicemail. Just the automated message. Either the phone’s off or the owner’s using it. But while I listen, some huge dark SUV zips into the left lane, blocking our turn down Pratt. Connie lurches her Saab to the right.
More curses, these of an extra-foul variety. “We’re stuck on Light Street unless that jerk moves over.” She eases off the gas to let him slide by so she can get over, but he also slows down to a more normal pace in the heavy traffic. “What’s with the number?”
I tell her about the voicemail. She tells me to try again. I punch in the numbers and wait. This time it rings several times and when a gruff male voice answers, my heart jumps into my stomach. “Hello, this is Roseanna. In Moffit’s office. You finish that job yet?” I sputter in what I hope is a menacing voice that communicates authority.
A pause. Then a laugh. “No, but we’re about to.” And he clicks off.
Just then, I look over at the SUV and, through the darkened glass, can just about see a laughing figure flipping shut a cell phone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“GET GOING, CON!” I drop her cell on the seat and place my hands on the dashboard as if that will help propel the car forward faster.
“Huh?”
“Drive!”
The SUV is no longer beside us — it’s on our tail, within inches of our bumper, and all I can think about is how Kurt ended up with a broken leg after being rammed in his jeep. Kurt, a master driver, a master escape artist. We’re in a dinky little Saab, and even though I know the Swedes pride themselves on the safe and speedy cars they make, I’m thinking they weren’t factoring in SUVs used as ramrods when they did their crash tests.
Connie has little maneuvering room because of rush-hour traffic, and the SUV’s successfully hemmed us in. A van with dark windows pulls up along the other side, and it seems to be working in concert with the SUV, corralling us forward and around the harbor as if we were a steer headed to slaughter.
Not a good analogy. My skin tingles. My breath comes fast.
Forced into the exit lane, Connie heads down Fort Avenue, the street we traveled on the night we thought we saw Paluchek and the mysterious van, and now I’m thinking about uttering my own string of expletives. They’re forcing us to their stomping ground, the area where they’re most comfortable doing their dirty work. We pass the Francis Scott Key Elementary School, and I spot a cross street — Hull. “Turn there, quick!”
Connie follows my directions, managing to cut in front of the van, and bingo-bango, we’re free of the two cars, but slap up against a dead end. “Thanks, blockhead,” she mutters as she throws the car into reverse and does a three-point turn faster than you can say, “I want my mother.”
The SUV, meanwhile, didn’t see us turn off of Fort but knows we disappeared, so it’s cruising by us, now going in the opposite direction back toward town. Connie chuckles and turns right, heading south.
Our glee is short-lived. Maybe they heard her cackle. Maybe they just recognize our headlights. After all, car-chasing villains probably have to take their own SAT-like tests in recognizing such things. “A 1990 Saab’s lights are to a 20
03 Beamer’s as a 2008 Miata’s are to _______.”
“Find another street to turn down!” I yell. I’ve decided general directions are better than specific ones. I just know we need to lose this dude fast. At least the van has disappeared from sight.
We head past a kids’ playing field and slip onto Andre Street. This takes us into a never-never land of rail tracks — bump after bump of them, with some stationary cars on sidings. We zoom past a switching yard, where tracks converge, to another street. I look over my shoulder. The SUV is rocking over the tracks behind us. It’s slowed down, but it’s still there. What’s worse, this is not a well-trafficked area. It’s dark and lonely.
“We have to get out of here!” I suggest.
She just growls at me. Translation: You, dumbkopf, were the one to suggest this route.
“Let’s call for help! Gimme your cell!” I yell at her but she’s focused on driving. And then I realize I have the cell, and I start pawing for it as she makes a fast right onto McComas, which runs parallel to Interstate 95. If only we can get on the interstate — it’s always full of cars — whereas we’re stuck in the middle of Nowheresville, with a big fat target painted on our butts. I wish I could locate the phone — it’s fallen somewhere on the floor around my seat.
Make that Dark Nowheresville. McComas Street leads to an underpass below 95.
“We need to get on the highway!” I shout as the SUV breaks free of the tracks and follows us.
“What do you want me to do? Hook up the helicopter attachment?” She points above us, where the busy highway provides a roof for our dark game of cat and mouse.
“There’s the ramp!” I shout, but she’s already gone past it. “You missed the ramp! Connie, the ramp!”
“Stop yammering! I didn’t see it, okay? Too busy trying to avoid Gas Hog.” She shrugs and presses harder on the gas. Speaking of gas, I suddenly notice her gauge is on the sad side of empty, and has been for some time. I don’t mention this. Somehow, I don’t think it will be greeted with enthusiasm.
“Call for help,” I say again, as if this will make the phone appear, but at last I ease it from the depths of the seat. Thank God. I flash the contacts menu.
“Kurt’s no good. He’s still on crutches,” she says, watching her mirror.
“Nine-one-one,” I say, but she shakes her head.
“The flashing lights appear and these guys leave, but we’re on the hook for a police report Paluchek gets to read.” She’s amazingly calm — calmer than she’s been in weeks.
“Mom—”
“Are you nuts?” Connie nearly hits the curb as she looks in her rearview. “I’d rather call—”
“Paluchek.”
She snatches the phone away from me, and it falls between the seat and the door on her side with an ominous crunching sound.
This doesn’t encourage me. It just means she’s more delusional than I’d thought.
She heads past signs for Locust Point, past a Cruise Maryland terminal, past signs for truck entrances and private byways. I’m worried we’re going to run out of road, but she manages to turn us back around so that we’re …
… heading back onto McComas! Back across the speedbump tracks. At least they’ll slow the SUV down.
I breathe a sigh of relief. If we can get back into town, back around to Harborplace where there’s a crowd …
And that’s when the car sputters to a halt.
Connie turns the key. A weird whirring. Then silence.
Silence, silence, silence!
“C’mon!” Connie shouts to me, opening the door. “We’re going to have to hoof it!”
“What about your car?!”
She looks wistfully at the vehicle and down the tracks. “Nothing to be done about it now. Let’s go!”
We head south down the tracks, and soon we’re in a maze of big container cars, waiting for a ship to take them out to sea. I look back longingly at the Saab, and then at Connie. To heck with it! I run back to the car and find the cell phone. The phone lid is unhinged on one side but it still might work.
While there, I spot my shopping bag. I’m taking those new shoes and bra with me, dagnabit!
My notebook falls off the seat as I drag out the bag. The last thing I’ve written in there is “.32 caliber” — the gun that killed my father. What gun was used to kill Officer Depp in Brenda’s stories? The department didn’t know. “The reports were hazy,” she’d written, “and the gun couldn’t be found.”
“Bianca!” Connie says into the soft patter of misty rain. “Come. On.”
Make that soft patter, plus the bumpety-bump of an SUV starting onto the tracks behind us.
I take off after her, nearly turning my ankle on the tracks. Something is bothering me and it’s not just the fact that some hooded thugs are after us. It’s something about the gun — the .32 caliber mentioned in Moffit’s files on Winslow.
“The gun — Winslow knew what kind of gun it was!” I shout after Connie. I don’t hear the SUV engine any longer, but this isn’t a good thing because I do hear car doors slamming. Connie ducks between some container cars. I follow her. She climbs up and puts a finger over her lips, indicating silence is the wisest course.
“The investigation was secret,” I whisper, shivering next to her in the cool spring rain. “So Winslow wouldn’t have known unless—”
“He probably got at the files,” Connie hisses back. “Shut up, Bianca.”
We both hear the crunch-crunch of feet on the gravelly earth. They’re headed past us on a different stretch of track. Connie makes her way down the car’s ladder and gestures to the east. We head in that direction.
“That’s the point,” I whisper. “It wasn’t in any files we saw or heard about. That was secret stuff. Really secret.” Even Brenda’s stories didn’t reveal that, and her mother had access to the files.
“If it was that secret, it’s because they suspected a cop of doing it.” Connie’s huffing and puffing from darting between cars. We stop and listen. No footsteps. Not necessarily a good thing.
“So how would Moffit know all that stuff about the gun if it wasn’t common knowledge, if it was only in certain files and not all of them?” I whisper to her.
And then, I figure it out, I think. I solve it. “Winslow had to do it,” I say. “He was cleared because there wasn’t enough evidence. But he had to do it.”
The incident had started with Dad going to the Bromowich store, maybe to get some coffee, while Winslow went into the Post Office. To pick up a drop of money from the gang? Could be. Dad saw something or heard something at the Bromowich store, where the clerk had gang connections, and somehow Winslow knew. Maybe Dad said something to him. Maybe Winslow guessed. Maybe it happened too quickly for thoughts to be articulated. Only emotions. Or one emotion. Fear.
“Okay, Sherlock, why?” says Connie. “Paluchek has more motive. Paluchek has come into money—”
“Not back then. We don’t know if he had any money back then.” We climb onto the side of another car so our feet won’t be visible beneath the train. “But Winslow had enough to make IA think he was taking bribes. He went to the Post Office that night to make a delivery or pick up a payment — remember, a bunch of money was left unclaimed. He probably couldn’t go back there after Dad was killed. Too hot. Dad sniffed out something that night. Winslow knew it. He couldn’t let that stand.”
“Paluchek could still be in on it,” Connie says, but her voice is mournful, as if she’s letting go of something deeply cherished. She so wants to pin this on Steve.
“What did Winslow do with the gun?” she says at last. “They would have searched him that night and they didn’t find anything.”
I don’t answer her. I hadn’t thought that through yet. I hear, through the soft muffle of rain, an engine starting. The SUV must be giving up. I relax.
We wait for a few seconds. Nothing. Just the patter of rain and the far-off honking of rush-hour traffic. She tells me to stay quiet while she checks out the
situation. When she heads around the corner of the car, I take out the cell to see if it still works.
Connie’s been gone too long. At least ten minutes, maybe more. My arms are cramping, holding onto the rungs of the container car, and I’m getting cold from the misty rain. But most of all, I’m scared that something bad happened to her, and if I don’t try to find out, I’ll never forgive myself. Stiffly making my way down to the gravel, I venture out from behind the car. The shift in position gives me a shadowy view up the tracks. I see nothing, but I can hear her voice, now clear as day. And what she’s saying about me gets my blood pumping.
“I tell you, she probably fell in the harbor by now. She’s not too bright, you see. She’s nearly deaf and dumb, and slow, to boot. She’s scored in the lowest quartile of the SATs.”
What?! Why is she telling our rescuer all these things? For crying out loud, does she have to grab every opportunity to tear me down? I hoist the shoe bag over my shoulder and sally forth to greet her and … see Connie and the hooded stranger, who has a gun pointed at her back. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t smile or frown or even blink. I can make out only a few features beneath the hood — tan skin, a moustache, a day-old beard. I try not to look too closely.
“You numbskull,” Connie rasps when she sees me. The hooded man jabs her and then waves the gun at me.
“Keep moving.” His voice is low and ice-cold. It sends a shiver up my spine.
We walk down along the tracks toward the harbor. I want to ask where we’re going, but even someone with “SATs in the lowest quartile” can figure that out. We’re headed to the water’s edge because it will be easier to dump us there. Connie shoots me a sideways glance, and my translator begins misfiring out of fear. I pick up just a few messages — something about maybe trying to make a run for it at some point. I wonder if the Hooded Dude’s friends are anywhere around.
“We can pay you, you know,” I say. “We can give you more than Moffit is giving you.”
Hooded Dude says nothing. Okay, that’s not bad. Nothing means he’s listening.
“We’ve got tons of cash. Our stepdad made a killing in the market.” Ouch. Why did I have to say “killing”?
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