Identity Crisis

by Debbi Mack

  “How late will he be there?”

  “They close at six, but you should call him right now, I think.”

  “I’m heading up there anyway,” I said. “Maybe I could swing by the place and talk to him.”

  “If you think that’s best,” she said, sounding a little uncertain. “Will this take long?”

  “No, I just prefer to talk to people in person.”

  “It’s that we’re supposed to be in Ocean City right now. If it weren’t for work, we would be. I know he’s trying to leave as soon as possible.”

  The baby let out another whoop. She pulled the phone from her mouth, but not far enough to keep me from hearing her clearly. “Kirsten, stop that. Don’t wave that thing at little Dodo.” She came back, picking up where she’d left off as if nothing had happened. “He might even leave early, I don’t know.”

  I couldn’t stop myself. “Dodo?”

  “His name is Tommy, but Kirsten calls him Dodo.” She started rattling on about kids and their pronunciation and so forth. I checked the clock.

  She paused for breath, and in the interest of cutting the child development lesson short, I asked, “Where’s the dealership?” so fast, it sounded like one word.

  She gave me the name and an intersection. Even as we spoke, I was looking it up online. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Sure. He’s supposed to be there ’til six. Maybe call first, to make sure he hasn’t left.”

  “OK, thanks. Bye.”

  “Bye.” As she hung up, I heard her cry out, “Stop that, stop that now.” Sounded like it was going to be a fun trip to the beach.

  Simpson Motors was on Pulaski Highway. Like Route 1, Pulaski was a showcase of Rust Belt economy—more junk yards, more tire and transmission shops, more fast food, and more decaying motels, interspersed with modern box stores like Home Depot and Circuit City. The dealership was at a busy corner, marked by a string of pennants in carnival colors, looking limp and dissolute in the afternoon heat. Rows of new cars glared with the monotonous pattern of the sun’s reflection.

  Inside the glassy, air-conditioned showroom, a few customers drifted around, idly checking the display models, while men in suits watched them the way lions might watch zebras. I headed toward a small knot of suits hanging around the offices drinking coffee and acting like they’d just met at a dull party. The way a couple of them looked at me, you would have thought I was the hired stripper.

  “Hi, I’m looking for Ryan Bledsoe,” I said.

  Heads turned toward a guy in a dark gray suit and a skinny black tie, with brown hair moussed into a modern do that said, “This is not your father’s auto salesman.” Bledsoe must have been in his thirties, but he looked about ten years younger. He blinked at me from behind glasses with thin, rectangular frames, giving him a mild-mannered, slightly geeky persona.

  “Could we talk somewhere private?” I asked, handing him my card upside down.

  He read it, ignoring the other boys’ stares. Looking puzzled, he said, “Mind if we go outside?”

  “Fine.”

  As I followed him, I could hear low voices and laughter behind us. Bledsoe seemed to care what they thought as much as I did. In the back parking lot, we sat in the building’s shadow on an old picnic bench someone had thoughtfully placed along the wall and watched cars navigate the McDonald’s drive-through next door.

  “So,” I said. “Those offices you use for customer negotiations—they really are bugged then?”

  Bledsoe managed a weak smile. “Am I being sued or what?”

  “Actually, I’m representing a woman who’s been accused of murdering Tom Garvey. Did you know him?”

  He shook his head. “Should I?”

  “He had a friend named Gregory Knudsen. You know him, right?”

  Bledsoe stared at me, his expression transforming from geeky to threatening. “Any friend of Knudsen’s is no friend of mine,” he said, the hint of a snarl in his voice.

  “You went to school with Knudsen. Was it college? High school?”

  He squinted at me. “Are you with the cops?”

  “I’m an attorney, like the card says.”

  “So why all these questions?”

  “I told you. I’m representing someone accused of murder—”

  Bledsoe shot off the bench as if it were red-hot. “Well, I don’t know anything about it.” His voice had raised a notch, in volume and tone. “I haven’t seen Greg Knudsen in years and I’d like to keep it that way.”

  “You were friends once. In school?”

  “Yeah, high school. So what? I knew plenty of people in high school. That doesn’t mean I know them now.” Bledsoe started to walk off.

  I followed. “This could be important,” I said. “I’m representing an innocent woman.”

  “Sure you are.”

  “I swear. Look, you’re my only lead, OK? You wouldn’t want to protect a killer, would you?”

  His hand was on the door, but he stopped and turned toward me. “There was a cop asking me about Knudsen, but he never said anything about murder. Besides, if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never to get involved.”

  I waited a few beats, giving him the kind of look I’d give a jury if I ever defended a death penalty case. “I don’t know about that cop. All I know is, my client’s life is at stake. Your name wouldn’t even have to come into it. I just need to get some background information on this guy. If Knudsen’s a murderer, don’t you want justice done?”

  Bledsoe mulled it over. Of course, I had no reason to think Knudsen was a murderer. I was just pulling out all the stops. It worked, because he finally walked back to the bench and sat down, leaning against the wall and staring before him in a defeated way.

  “Shit,” he said. “Gregory Knudsen. After all these years, I can’t believe I’m hearing that name again. Twice in two weeks, no less.”

  I sat on the other end of the bench. “Why do you hate him?”

  Bledsoe said nothing for a moment. “Look, I don’t know how any of this can help you. This is all ancient history, you know? I haven’t seen Greg Knudsen in ages, but back then, he was nothing but trouble—he and Bruce Schaeffer.”

  “Bruce Schaeffer,” I said. “So Bruce was also friends with Knudsen?”

  “Yeah, we all hung out together. Don’t tell me he’s involved, too?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe.”

  He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his legs, and rubbed his face, looking tired. “I can’t say I’m surprised they’re involved with a crime, but murder?”

  “And you don’t recall them hanging out with anyone named Tom Garvey?”

  “I don’t remember anyone at school by that name.”

  “So tell me about Schaeffer and Knudsen. You said they were trouble?”

  “They liked to pull stunts. They were pranksters, really. I met them in junior high. We did the usual—threw firecrackers into the girl’s room, smoke bombs in the teachers’ lounge. Stupid stuff. But I stopped hanging with them in high school, when things started getting a little too serious.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Their tricks just got too wild for me. By the time we were juniors, they’d graduated to cherry bombs and M-80s. They were the twin terrors of Dundalk High. Seemed too risky to be friends with them. I planned to go to college.” He shook his head. “Glad I dropped them, too, after what happened.”

  “What was that?”

  “They set up something to explode in the chemistry lab. Set it on fire. There was a rumor around school that it killed a kid, but I think that was bullshit.” He closed his eyes and put his hand over them, as if shutting them weren’t enough. “Still, they could have killed someone. Made me sick. Like, how could I have been friends with these guys?”

  He opened his eyes again. “They’d been suspended a few times, and that was the last straw. Both of them were expelled.”

  “Was that the last time you saw them?”

  Bledsoe’s jaw clenche
d. “I saw them around after that. I lived with my parents in Dundalk while attending community college. They had nowhere to go, so I’d see them at parties sometimes. I think people invited them because their past was so checkered. It fascinated them. Like a couple of circus freaks.” He snickered without humor. “Losers.”

  “Do you know anything about what they’ve done since then? I’d really like to talk to Knudsen, if you know where he is.”

  “I haven’t seen them since college, and I don’t ever want to see them again.”

  “You seem pretty bitter.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “Which are?”

  Looking resigned, he said, “I had a girlfriend. We’d been going together a year or so. A real sweet kid. A little naive, maybe. Somehow or other, she ended up getting involved with Greg and dumping me. I always thought Greg seduced her to get back at me for snubbing him and Bruce. Greg could have his way with practically any girl. He was amazing that way. He could probably talk a nun out of her habit.”

  He paused. “I lost touch with her after that, but I heard years later that Greg knocked her up, then left town—split the friggin’ state, in fact. She was a strict Catholic, so abortion—” He shook his head. “Out of the question. But he left her high and dry. That’s the kind of wonderful guy he was.”

  Neither of us spoke. Someone yelled an order for a Big Mac and a Coke, and the drive-through speaker rasped in response.

  “I heard she wasn’t the same after that,” he added. “I heard she flipped out, became obsessed with getting Greg back for a while. When he didn’t come back, it really changed her. Made her bitter.”

  “What was her name?”

  “Barbara Ferrengetti.”

  “Do you know if she still lives in the area?”

  “I never tried to look her up. To be honest, I don’t really want to know.”

  Chapter TWENTY-TWO

  ––––––––

  One of the dealership phone directories listed B. Ferrengetti in Dundalk, the only Ferrengetti in the book. Dundalk was an aging suburb, southeast of Baltimore, close to Sparrows Point and the Bethlehem Steel Mills.

  I retraced my route on the Baltimore Beltway to the last exit before the Harbor Tunnel, which dumped me into a neighborhood where the overall theme was old, cramped, and brick. I stopped for directions at a firehouse, wedged between a funeral home and a liquor store. Despite the urban setting, the smell of water from the Outer Harbor and the seagulls that cried overhead gave the place an odd touch of the beach.

  Barbara lived on a street of identical, rectangular, brick houses, paired off and mated by common walls, each a mirror image of the other. Several of the porches had painted metal awnings and were decorated with hanging geraniums and petunias—probably to make it easier for the residents to figure out where the hell they lived. Whatever restrictive covenant required the fronts to look the same apparently didn’t apply to the backs. The alleys were a visual cacophony of telephone poles, clothes lines, and fences of various heights and materials.

  I parked in the first space I found and walked to Barbara’s house. In front, a short, wiry woman with an array of plastic grocery bags around her feet bent into the back of a new SUV. She grunted with effort as she reached for something, but all I could see was a skinny ass in cutoffs and pale white legs. She wore red plastic flip-flops.

  I cleared my throat. “Barbara Ferrengetti?”

  “Hold on.” With the Baltimore accent, it came out sounding like hold awn. A few seconds later, she popped up with an errant can of vegetables in hand. Closing the SUV, she turned toward me.

  It was the woman I’d seen outside Schaeffer’s apartment, the one arguing with him at the gym. Blue eyes that showed no recognition blinked at me above a pointed nose. Worry lines creased her brow. Despite a thin face, her cheeks seemed to droop, pulling her mouth into a permanent frown.

  “Yeah?” she said, her tone conveying the clear desire to dispense with me and get on to the next tiresome chore.

  “Hi,” I said. “My name’s Sam McRae. I’m an attorney—”

  “Are you from the workers’ comp? Cause you’re supposed to talk to my lawyer.”

  “I just want to ask some questions—”

  “Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-no.” She waved a hand to cut me off. “My lawyer said you gotta talk to him.” Suddenly conscious of the fact she was waving a can of food around, she put it in one of the bags and began rubbing her wrist.

  “Are those heavy?” I said. “I could help you get them inside.”

  She looked me over, perhaps wondering if this were a test of her alleged disability. “That would be nice. I mean, usually I have to make several trips ’cause of my wrist, or my son helps. But since you’re here.”

  We gathered the bags—she made a great show of wincing on picking hers up—and I followed her up the steps and into the house. The kitchen was straight back with the living room off to the left. I stopped briefly to gawk at her wide screen, high-definition TV—fifty inches, at least. She also had a state-of-the-art home theater sound system, made up of several little speakers scattered about the room. A workers’ comp award for carpal tunnel wasn’t going to cover that lot. In contrast, her sofa and chairs looked like they came from the Salvation Army. A carved wood crucifix hung on the wall.

  She took her bags to the fridge, where she unloaded a half gallon of milk and several packages of deli meat. I checked mine for perishables and found iceberg lettuce and frozen orange juice which I handed to her. The kitchen was small—the decor, circa 1950. Over a small table, I spotted a picture of Jesus, with a passage of scripture in fancy print underneath. Blessed art the clever, I thought, for they shall rip government agencies off to provide for their needs.

  “Just leave the rest,” she said. “My son will help later.”

  “Barbara, the thing is, I’m not from workers’ comp.”

  She froze and stared at me. “What?”

  “My name is Sam McRae and I’m an attorney, but I’m not here about your workers’ comp claim.”

  “Well, what the hell do you want?”

  “I need to ask you about Gregory Knudsen.”

  Barbara’s eyes narrowed. “Who do you work for?”

  “I’m defending the person accused of killing Tom Garvey.”

  She didn’t say anything. She stood there, breathing at me, looking ready to bolt from the room any second.

  “You knew Tom Garvey, right?”

  Nothing.

  “And you knew Gregory Knudsen in high school?”

  More nothing.

  “I understand you had his child.”

  Barbara peered at me. “Where do you get all this?”

  “Does it matter? I’m trying to find Knudsen. Do you know where he is?”

  She crossed her arms. “No.”

  “I was told he left the state?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “No.”

  “Have you heard from him since?”

  She paused a few beats. “No.”

  “Do you know if he’s still friends with Bruce Schaeffer?”

  A longer pause. Her upper lip began to twitch. “I have no goddamned idea.”

  “Have you stayed in touch with Bruce since high school?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “Did they know Tom Garvey then?” I said.

  A ripple of some emotion ran through her expression, but I couldn’t finger it. Confusion? Doubt? “No.”

  “You’re sure they didn’t know Tom Garvey?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “When did they meet him?”

  “How should I know?”

  “How do you know they didn’t know him then?”

  She shifted from one foot to the other. I was getting to her. Or maybe she just had to go to the bathroom. “I don’t know.”

  “How did you meet Tom? Did Bruce introduce you?”

  Barbara pursed her
lips. “I think I’ve answered enough questions.”

  The front door opened and closed. A few seconds later, a tall young man came in. He was attractive with a healthy head of light brown, curly hair and blue eyes that girls used to describe as dreamy. His mild, curious gaze glanced off me, but he didn’t look at Barbara. She kept her eyes averted from him as well, her expression flat. The young man walked to the fridge, opened it, and retrieved a Tupperware drink container. Then he put the spout to mouth, tipped his head back, and took a long swig.

  “Dinner’s at six,” she said.

  He finished his drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Going out.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  He shut the refrigerator, a trifle too firmly, and strode out. As we listened to him trot upstairs, she took a deep breath, then released a long, tired exhalation.

  I took out one of my cards. “If it’s OK, I’ll leave this with you.”

  Her eyes were closed now, as if to shut out reality. I put the card on the counter and let myself out.

  φ φ φ

  Even if Barbara was scamming workers’ comp for extra bucks, I didn’t picture her making the kind of money she’d need to afford an SUV or high-dollar home entertainment system. Maybe she was in on the identity theft scheme. Did her argument with Bruce have something to do with that? And what about Knudsen? The subject of Tom Garvey seemed to get under her skin. At the gym, she’d acted upset to hear Tom was dead. You’re trying to protect him. That’s what she’d said to Schaeffer. Protect him from what?

  Before going home, I decided to run by Schaeffer’s and take another crack at questioning him, or at the very least, see how he reacted to the questions I asked.

  I climbed the steps to Schaeffer’s apartment again and knocked on the door. No one answered. I tried again. While I was waiting, the door to my left opened. The red-faced, balding neighbor peered out. This time, he wore Bermuda shorts with his ribbed tank top. Black socks and a pair of women’s nylon slippers. Very tasteful.

  “Hello again,” he said. The garlic was, thankfully, absent from his breath this time, but I could smell the beer.

  “Hi.”