by Neil Plakcy
“Sold.”
I drove back to River Bend, very pleased with the way the afternoon had worked out. Mark hadn’t committed to everything I needed, but I had a hook in him, and I thought that once he saw Friar Lake he’d be intrigued by the challenge. And I had a little gift for Lili for the next time I did something dumb. All in all, a very productive time.
When I got home there was a generic sedan parked in my driveway. It belonged to my parole officer, Santiago Santos. He sat in the front seat, his dark-haired head bent over his tablet computer.
9 – A Black Glove
I assumed that Santos’s habit of showing up unexpectedly was part of his job; if one of his parolees was misbehaving, a drop-in might catch the ex-criminal in the act. In my case, maybe he hoped to find me sitting at my kitchen table hacking into some database. Fortunately for me, the laptop was completely clean.
Santos was intent on whatever he was doing with the tablet in front of him. Was he looking up my records? Did he have something he was planning to confront me with?
I smiled weakly and waved as I walked past him, and said, “Have to let the dog out. Be with you in a minute.” He just nodded.
Rochester was barking like mad and jumping up on his hind legs when I walked in. I hurried to drop Lili’s gift on the kitchen table and grab his leash, and then took him out for a quick pee. I kept looking nervously back at Santos’s car, worrying about what he might have to say. His visits always set my nerves on edge; I didn’t like having my faults examined, and I resented the power he had over me. I’d be delighted when my parole was up at long last and I never had to see him again.
I picked up the evening paper from the driveway and walked back in the house. After I dropped it on the kitchen counter, I looked down at the floor and noticed that Rochester had dug one of my black wool winter gloves out of my closet, and begun gnawing on the fingers. “Bad dog!” I said. “No! No chewing!”
Santos was right behind me. He was about five-seven and stocky, maybe ten years younger than I was. “You’re not taking him to work with you anymore?”
I put the frayed glove down on the table beside the comb for Lili. “I had to run an errand in Stewart’s Crossing,” I said. “Antique shop. Not a place for Rochester.”
Santos bent down to scratched behind the big dog’s right ear. “How’s the boy?” Rochester opened his mouth in a doggie grin and woofed once.
“I know, it’s a dog’s life,” Santos said to him. Then he looked up at me. “How’ve you been, Steve?”
“All right. Changes going on at work, though.”
“We can talk over coffee,” he said, and began nosing around in my living room. His ability to snoop in my affairs irritated me. I always had a momentary spike in adrenaline, worrying that I might have carelessly left something around that might incriminate me. But I took a deep breath. I hadn’t done anything illegal for a long time and there was nothing he could catch me on. At least, I didn’t think so.
Part of our ritual was drinking coffee as we talked over my trials and tribulations, so I walked into the kitchen, pulled forward my cappuccino maker and filled the reservoir with water. Santos was Puerto Rican by birth, and he favored strong espresso in a demitasse cup. I took mine with foamed milk, chocolate syrup and whipped cream. I thought the way we took our coffee said something about our respective world views: his was strong and undiluted, and mine was complicated and needed explanation and sweetening.
I retrieved the bag of ground coffee from the freezer and poured some into the filter basket. I slotted it into the machine and flipped the switch. I opened the container of chicken and rice Lili had made for Rochester and poured some into his bowl.
I thought about how best to present my new job to Santos as he retrieved my laptop from the living room and joined me in the kitchen. Rochester began wolfing down his chow and Santos popped the computer open and turned it on.
“I just got a promotion at Eastern,” I said, sitting across from him. “I’m excited, and the new job has real long-term potential.”
Santos had installed tracking software on my personal laptop so he could check my activity every visit. He looked up from his log-in. “Great. Not something in computers, I hope.”
Even though I knew it shouldn’t, his remark rankled. I was a grown man and perfectly able to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate computer use, though sometimes I didn’t follow my own best instincts, and I hated the way he kept flinging my past in my face.
“No more than normal,” I said, determined to stay calm. “I’m going to be running a conference center for the college.” As I explained to him about Friar Lake, and how Eastern had come to acquire it, he ran the tracking software.
“Doesn’t sound like there will be much for you to do before the place opens, though,” he said, when I finished. “My abuela used to say cuando el diablo no tiene qué hacer, con el rabo mata moscas."
Rochester looked up from his food bowl.
"The devil finds work for idle hands to do," Santos translated.
“My dad used to say that idle hands are the devil’s workbench,” I said. There was my dad again, popping into my mind. “But there won’t be any danger of that. My workbench will be pretty busy. I have to coordinate all the furniture and decorations, and work with the faculty to organize a series of course offerings, so we can launch our programming as soon as the place is ready.”
The cappuccino machine began to drip and I got up to fix our beverages. When I was in high school, my parents had taken a tour of Italy, and my mom had brought home a set of demitasse cups. I pulled out one of those cups and poured some of the thick coffee in for Santos. I carried it over to him with a couple of packets of raw sugar, then returned to the counter to assemble my drink.
When I left the California state penal system, I moved in with a bachelor friend in Silicon Valley for a couple of weeks. He had a friend who managed a coffee shop, and I applied for work there as a barista. Unfortunately my criminal record prevented me from getting a job where I’d handle cash. Even though I was a white-collar criminal whose only offense was breaking and entering into computer systems, I couldn’t be trusted to work a register.
I did like making coffee, though. The ritual was comforting, and so was the drink, once I had the coffee stirred up with cocoa powder and raspberry syrup. The mug was nearly overflowing by the time I topped it off with whipped cream and chocolate sprinkles.
“How’s everything else going?” Santos asked when I returned to the table. He often reminded me that a strong support system was important in keeping his parolees out of trouble, and he worried that I had no close family in the area.
“Still friendly with Rick, still dating Lili.” I held up the package with the comb. “Just bought her a present today.”
Santos knew Rick Stemper professionally, and he often said he was glad that my best friend was a cop. “Very good,” he said. “You know I like the structure of owning a dog. And your girlfriend’s a very sharp cookie. But I’ve worked with you for nearly two years now, Steve, and I don’t think I’ve seen much of an adjustment in your attitude during that time.”
He picked up the dainty coffee cup and sipped. “I want you to succeed. Not just while you’re under my supervision, but after your parole is up. You’ve never really copped to the fact that what you did was wrong. Not just against the law, but wrong.”
I wanted to argue, but it was true. I still believed that by hacking into those databases, I had been doing what I thought was right for Mary and for our marriage. Yeah, I knew that the law said something else.
“And until you get that idea in here,” he said, tapping his head, “you’re still in danger of winding up back where you don’t want to be. In prison.”
He swigged the last of his espresso and shut down my laptop. “Congratulations on the new job,” he said. “Just don’t screw up your life by letting your ego get ahead of your brains.”
“Got it,” I said.
I was
n’t a real rebellious kid, but I hated it when my parents made blanket statements like that. If they said “don’t,” it made me want to “do.” Especially when it was something my friends were doing. My dad used to say, “If your friends jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge would you want to do that, too?”
I was always tempted to say yes, considering that it wasn’t all that easy for a teenager to get to Brooklyn from Stewart’s Crossing, so it was a pretty unlikely possibility.
I restrained my smart mouth, though. Santos picked up his tablet, gave Rochester a goodbye scratch, and walked back out to his car.
I locked the front door and turned back to the kitchen, where I spotted my frayed glove. “What’s up with the glove, puppy?” I asked him. “It’s July. Where did you even get this?”
I truly believed that Rochester had an instinct for crime-solving. Whenever he did something out of the ordinary, I had to stop and wonder if he was trying to send me a message. But a winter glove? What could that mean?
Wait. He had discovered a hand out at Friar Lake. Was he trying to tell me that the body it was attached to had been there since winter? But the Benedictines had still been at the abbey then, and Lili’s impression was that the body had been left there in springtime.
“What is it, boy? If the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit? Oh, wait, that’s from the O.J. Simpson case. You weren’t even born then.”
I slipped my hand into the glove and held it, palm up the way the hand had come out of the ground.
Rochester came over to nuzzle me, and licked the leather palm of the glove. It was lighter than the rest of the glove, and for some reason reminded me of the way a black person’s palm was often lighter than the surrounding skin.
“Is that it, Rochester? Are you trying to tell me that the hand you found came from a black person?”
He tossed his head up and down a couple of times, which could have meant anything from yes to no to I want to play. He jumped up and put his front paws on the kitchen counter, pushing the newspaper to the floor.
I picked it up, and sat down with it at the kitchen table. I flipped through quickly, until I got to the police blotter column in the local section. A body had been found at the former Abbey of our Lady of the Waters. Leighville police were investigating.
So much for keeping the news of the body from President Babson. I’d have to make an appointment with him the next day to tell him what I knew.
My phone rang as I was thinking about how to phrase that bit of information. I thought the call might be from Santos, having forgotten something—but instead it was Rick Stemper. “Hey, Frank Hardy,” he said. “You and your dog want to go for a ride?”
“Sure, brother Joe,” I said. “Where are we going?”
“I’ll tell you when I get there. Be ready in five minutes.” He hung up before I could ask him if he’d heard anything from Tony Rinaldi about the identity of the body at Friar Lake. But I’d certainly ask him when I saw him.
10 – Cruising the Estates
I hooked Rochester onto his leash, and we were sitting on the grass in front of the house when Rick pulled up in his truck. Rascal jumped up and rested his black and white paws on the side rail, and he and Rochester barked at each other.
I unhooked the tailgate, and Rochester jumped up into the truck bed and began tussling with his friend. I secured the gate, then climbed into the front seat next to Rick.
“So?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
“Crossing Estates. I downloaded a list of every address from the property appraiser’s website. We’re going to look for any houses that look like they fit the pattern for these burglars. Then I can write up a warning to go out from the chief along with some instructions on how to improve their safety.”
“Why are you taking me along?”
“I need somebody to write down the information and all the uniformed cops are busy.”
I flipped down the visor to avoid the glare of the setting sun. “How come you’re not in a squad car if you’re on department business?”
“I’m trying not to be too conspicuous,” he said. “Just in case the bad guys are out doing the same thing.”
“Cool,” I said. “I just finished a session with my good buddy Santiago Santos.”
“How’s that going?”
“I’m getting tired of this constant supervision. It’s been almost two years—my parole is up in the fall. By now Santos should have seen that I don’t need a nanny.”
“You haven’t exactly been abiding by the terms of your parole,” he said as we pulled out of River Bend and he turned inland. He held up a hand. “I know, I’ve enabled you a couple of times, asking you to snoop around for me, or ignoring where some of your information has come from.”
That was true. Rick was a cop, but a pragmatic one, and he’d accepted information from me in the past that helped bring bad guys to justice, even though I was sure he knew that I didn’t get the data legally.
“I’m not kidding myself, and you shouldn’t either,” Rick said. “You agreed to the terms of your parole when you left prison. You’ve been able to hide some stuff from Santos in the past, and I haven’t said anything to him. But he’s no dope. He knows. He also knows he has to catch you doing something to violate you, which is why you’re still free.”
“You think he does?”
Rick shook his head. “Here’s your real problem, Steve. Not your interest in online snooping. This idea that you’re the only smart guy in the room. Which is most assuredly not true.”
I wanted to protest, but what Rick said was pretty true. There was a steady stream of traffic and our stop-and-go progress irritated me further. I just wanted us to go. Somewhere. I didn’t care where.
“I’m not a moron either,” I said, thought I knew I was sounding defensive. “I want to take control of my life again, and I don’t want to report in to anyone. I told him about the new job at Friar Lake, and all he wanted to do was lecture me.”
I shifted in my seat. “Anyway, not to change the subject or anything, but have you spoken to Tony Rinaldi lately? Hear anything from him about the body Rochester found up at Friar Lake?”
He shook his head. “Nope. But it was probably one of the monks.”
“I don’t think so. Lili thought the body looked to be about three months old, and the monks were gone before that. And you’ve told me yourself that there are criminals all over the county—grow houses and meth labs and chop shops. He was probably some kind of crook, and his body was dumped there because the property was abandoned.”
“Steve, Steve. You’re getting yourself worked up over something that’s none of your business.”
“Since Rochester found the body, I feel some kind of responsibility to find out who it is, and what happened to him or her. If it’s murder, then whoever did it deserves to be brought to justice.”
“And you don’t see the irony in that?”
“I did the crime, and I did the time. That doesn’t make me believe in justice any less. And besides, I admit – I’m curious. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“Besides the fact that curiosity killed the cat?”
“Yeah, but satisfaction brought him back.”
He shook his head, slowed and signaled for the left turn that would take us into Crossing Estates. Two curving fieldstone walls sheltered the entrance to the community.
“A group of residents are starting a petition to close off the property and put up guard gates,” Rick said, while we waited for traffic to clear.
Crossing Estates had been built before the mania for gated communities had reached Bucks County. Though there were thick hedges alongside the road, anyone could drive right in.
“That’s a big project,” I said.
“Yeah. There’s already a community association, but it’s very loose, and membership isn’t mandatory. The pro-gate folks have to push through a zoning change and have the county assess the homeowners for the expense. Going to take some time.”
&nb
sp; We turned into the main drive. Huge homes with fieldstone exteriors and broad driveways sat on half-acre lots. Landscaping varied from house to house, though it looked like each had come with a maple or an oak in the front yard. Some homes sported flowerbeds, others thick patches of pachysandra around the tree bases. But almost every lawn was lovingly tended, probably by a maintenance company.
“I remember when this was all farmland,” I said. “That must be why there are so few older trees here.”
“Me too. I remember coming home from State College after I hadn’t been out this way in a while. Drove up with my dad, and I was shocked to see all these houses going up.” He pulled up just inside the stone entrance and grabbed a clipboard from the back. “Each of the four different models has the same sliding doors at the back -- part of the original design. So each house is a potential target. The trick is to start narrowing down the list.”
“How are we going to do that?”
He showed me the form he’d prepared. “We check off these criteria for each house. Do they have an alarm company sign out front? Are there luxury cars in the driveway? As the sun sets we’ll be able to tell if someone can see inside the house.”
He pointed to the first house ahead of us. “1200 Conway,” he said. “See the little sign for ADT? That’s one of the big alarm companies. So we check that off on our list.”
“Skateboard and bike dumped on the front lawn,” I said. “So they have kids, which means the house is less likely to be empty, right?”
“Good call. All the families that have been hit so far either have no kids, older teens, or kids in college.”
We checked all the houses on Conway, and then turned onto DeKalb. Number 1500 was a strong prospect—no alarm sign, Mercedes in the driveway and uncurtained windows on the dining room. A glowing chandelier illuminated a china cabinet full of knickknacks, and beyond it, in the living room, we saw a big-screen TV.
I took the notes as we cruised along the curving streets. I was surprised at how many of the houses looked vulnerable. My mother grew up in Trenton, my father in Newark, and they were alert to all kinds of dangers. From a young age I had been taught not to talk to strangers, to accept candy or to get into cars. I noticed the way my mother held her purse close to her body, the way my father seemed extra alert in dark parking lots.