For Whom the Minivan Rolls

by JEFFREY COHEN

  This was my first stakeout, and so far, it had been brief and quite pleasant. I had gotten there about fifteen minutes before I knew Ladowski would be leaving the building. I had called his office that morning and asked if he’d been in all day. No, his secretary said, he’d be leaving around 10:30. Thanks, I said, and that pretty much did it for sitting around for long periods of time fogging the window with my breath and hot chocolate steam. In the movies, it’s coffee steam.

  Also, it was sunny and about sixty-five degrees, this early but pleasant April day. I had my tape player on, and Ella Fitzgerald was singing “Someone To Watch Over Me” when Ladowski walked out of the building, into the parking lot, and to the door of a silver Infiniti. Don’t ask me the model. All obscenely expensive cars look alike to me.

  I started up my pain-in-the-butt-minivan, checking my disguise in the vanity mirror, which is on one side of my sun visor. I had pulled down, over my eyes, a New York Yankees baseball cap—a real one, not the kind with the adjustable band in the back. I was also wearing dark sunglasses with a little image of Mickey Mouse in the lower part of the left lens—a pair I bought for an emergency during a trip to Orlando two years ago. A denim work-shirt filled out the image. That’s all that mattered because, if Ladowski saw me at all in the minivan, he’d see me only from the steering wheel up.

  You follow most people so you can observe them without their observing you. But I had just the opposite in mind. I very much wanted him to see someone following him, though not clearly enough that he’d recognize me, because let’s face it, I don’t cut what they’d call a threatening figure. So a little finesse, but not too much, was called for here.

  Milt drove out of the parking lot and toward Route 27, which takes you either north toward the Garden State Parkway and Newark or New York, or south toward New Brunswick. I muscled the minivan, which has steering like a Sherman tank, out of the lot behind Ladowski, and stayed two cars back of his fancy-shmancy Infiniti heading toward 27.

  Once at the two-lane highway, he made a left, which would indicate he was headed south. Good. A trip into the city today might have taken me too far out of the way to be back home when the kids trooped in after school. Different gumshoes have different concerns.

  Milt was driving calmly. He didn’t notice me yet. Probably wanted folks to believe he was listening to Mozart and Brahms on the onboard CD changer. More likely he had a Metallica album on. (I never believe it when people say they only listen to classical music or watch only public television.)

  I decided to push it a little and get his attention. So I pulled the van out from behind an original Volkswagen Beetle I was tailgating and passed it and a Chevy to get directly behind Ladowski. The Chevy driver wasn’t pleased when I nosed my way in between him and Milt, but I wasn’t getting paid to make friends with the Chevy guy. Come to think of it, I wasn’t getting paid at all.

  Milt still didn’t seem to notice, so I got closer, and started to tailgate him. This got his attention, and he speeded up a little bit. So did I. He went a little faster. Me, too. Soon, we were doing 65 in a 45-mile-an-hour zone. He must have begun wondering what the hell was going on.

  He changed lanes. Whaddaya know? So did the minivan behind him. Then he headed for the fork in the road where Route 27 runs into Midland Heights, and coincidence of coincidences, so did the minivan.

  Ladowski, I hoped, was now sweating behind those very expensive sunglasses of his. He was, in fact, driving like a man who was sweating, all right. He wove back and forth in the right lane, wondering if he should call the cops on his cell phone or if he was just being paranoid. Why would this old, beat-up hunk-of-junk minivan behind him be tailing a classy piece of machinery like his?

  I’m assuming he let out a sigh of relief when I passed him on Edison Avenue. But because I knew where he was going by this point, I had made a quick change in my plans.

  I wrestled the minivan into the Borough Hall parking lot, and backed into a space. Now I wanted him to know exactly what he’d seen in his rear view mirror. I pushed the button to open my back hatch, and got out through the back just as Ladowski was pulling into the lot. He didn’t notice the minivan right away, but did a double-take when he saw it. But it was too late. He was already out of his car.

  Ladowski stared at the minivan, frozen. He couldn’t know if the evil tormentor who had tailed him here was still in the vehicle, or if he was walking into an ambush. The thought processes were practically spelled out on his face like that ribbon news line that used to run on Times Square.

  I settled it for him by circling around behind his car, crouching until I was right behind him, and grabbing him from the back. He let out a sound similar to that of a gosling pushed in front of a tractor. (I’m only guessing here.)

  Since I’m considerably smaller and lighter than Ladowski, I knew I couldn’t hold him long. So I snarled into the back of his neck, “this is what it feels like to be followed around by a blue minivan, Milt. How do you like it?”

  When I let him go a little, he spun around. When he recognized me, he began to sputter.

  “Aaron, are you out of your mind? What’s the idea of. . .”

  “Of having someone followed by a minivan, Milt? I could ask you that same question, couldn’t I?” My facial expression was the one I use on Ethan when he’s decided he’s not joining a Saturday night dinner with the family because they’re showing “a very special episode of All That.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ladowski said, in the least convincing voice since Regis told Kathie Lee he’d miss her.

  “Yes, you do. The only one who would have wanted me followed was Gary Beckwirth. He was the only one obsessive enough about what I was doing to care. And Beckwirth wouldn’t have known how to go about finding people to trail someone. If he had, he’d have cracked open the Yellow Pages to find himself a private detective. No, he’d go to his friend and legal advisor, and you’d go through your files of clients whom you’d kept out of jail. And since they weren’t technically breaking any laws except the speed limit, they’d be happy to do it. For a small fee. How’m I doing so far, Milt?”

  He said what everybody says when you catch them red-handed. “You have no proof.”

  “I don’t need any proof. I’m not having you arrested. I’m not even going to get you disbarred. But I’m going to get to the bottom of Madlyn Beckwirth’s murder, Milt. I’m this close as it is”—and here I held up my fingers, millimeters apart. “I know about Gary and Madlyn’s annulment, and I know Gary was married to Rachel Barlow. I know that Gary took out a credit card in your name—it’s easy, if you know the other person’s Social Security number—and paid for Madlyn’s trip to Bally’s. That’s only a taste of what I already know. This whole sick story is going to come out, and when I put a couple more pieces together, your name is going to figure prominently, I’m sure. Look for it to show up in some very prominent publications. I doubt the coverage will be as flattering as the profile in NJ Monthly.”

  I dropped my hands off his biceps, turned, and walked back to the minivan. Ladowski’s expression was a mixture of amazement and something else.

  Fear. That’s what it was.

  Now, I’d better turn something up, or I was going to look extremely foolish.

  Chapter 23

  When I got home from harassing Milt Ladowski, which I have to admit had been, for me, the most satisfying chapter in this whole sorry story so far, there was a message on the machine. I pushed the button next to the flashing light.

  “Hi, uh, my name is Marie Aiello. You left a card in my door a couple of days ago. . . Anyway, I’m looking for Aaron Tucker, and here’s my number. . .”

  It took me as long to dial Marie’s number as it does for Bernie Williams to turn on a fastball and drive it into the right field bleachers. But it seemed like an eternity, and my inner voice was chanting the entire time, “be home, be home, be home, be. . .”

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, this is Aaron Tucker. Is
this. . .”

  “Oh, hi. Yeah, this is Marie. I called you maybe an hour ago. You’re the one who’s investigating about Maddie Rossi, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You know, I wasn’t going to call you. I’ve been getting calls from the papers. But every one of them wanted to talk about Madlyn Beckwirth. Not you. You asked about the Maddie I know.”

  I had written the name that way—Madlyn Rossi —because I figured Marie would recognize it more fondly. But I hadn’t really given it all that much thought. You never know which details are going to make the difference.

  “I spoke with her mother the other day,” I said.

  “And don’t think I didn’t call Mrs. Rossi to check you out,” Marie answered. You had to like a friend who was still loyal after death. “She said you were a nice man, and you had a very cute daughter.”

  “Well, she’s right about my daughter.”

  Marie didn’t have time for me to come over and talk to her right then. She was going to her job as a dance instructor and had to be there in an hour. I heaved an inward sigh of thanks, since I’d been going to enough people’s houses and refusing coffee lately. We agreed to a phone interview, and Marie asked that I “cut to the chase,” and only ask the things I hadn’t be able to find out elsewhere. Mrs. Rossi must have told her that she’d provided enough detail on Madlyn for a three-volume biography.

  “I knew Maddie since grade school. She was my best friend until I went to college,” Marie said. “We kept in touch, you know. I think I was the only one in Westfield she ever spoke to after she had the falling out with her mom.”

  “That was over the abortion.”

  “Yeah. Maddie didn’t want to even tell her mom she was pregnant, but Gary insisted. And the two of them talked her into having the baby. But when push came to shove a couple of weeks later, she decided she was too young, and you know what? She was right. If she’d gone to delivery, Maddie would have resented that baby forever.”

  “Did she resent her mom for making her feel guilty?”

  Marie’s voice was changing into the dreamlike sing-song people use when they’re remembering fond friends. “No, that was the funny thing,” she said. “Maddie always felt bad about her mom, but she wasn’t mad at her, you know? The one she never forgave was Gary. If he hadn’t badgered her, she’d have had the abortion, and her mom never would have known. I don’t think things were ever good between Maddie and Gary again.”

  “Well, they annulled the marriage not long after that.”

  “That was Maddie,” Marie Aiello said. “She called me up right before, straight shooter, ya know? ‘I’m dumping him,’ she tells me. ‘Can’t take it anymore. He’s cute, but he’s a pain. I can do better.’ And she did.”

  “She did? She got married again?”

  Marie took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s where the story gets a little weird,” she said.

  Here? Here’s where it starts getting weird? “I’m bracing myself,” I said in all seriousness, and she chuckled.

  “Okay. Maddie annuls the marriage, but Gary Beckwirth keeps calling her, trying to get her to go out with him. Maybe they can patch it up, that kind of thing. Not exactly a stalker, but he doesn’t go away. Finally, after this goes on for, like, years, they’re still friends. And Gary marries this Rachel person.” The tone on that word spoke volumes. Had she lived in Midland Heights, Marie Aiello most definitely would not have cast her mayoral vote for Rachel Barlow.

  “So that’s good, right? Now Maddie doesn’t have to worry about Gary anymore.” I’m now calling her “Maddie,” more from repetition than calculation.

  “Well, you’d think so,” said Marie. “But they start double dating. Gary and his new wife, Rachel, and Maddie with this guy she’s really getting to like, this guy Martin.”

  My throat was dry, and what I tried to say was “Martin Barlow?” But it came out “aaaaaaarfffilik?” Marie chuckled.

  “That’s right. Martin Barlow. Maddie was nuts for him, like you never saw. Worshipped the ground he walked on—couldn’t get enough of him. I don’t think they left their bedroom even once in the next year. I barely heard from her that year. And eventually, she wore Martin down, and they got married.”

  I’ve always enjoyed the expression, “his head was spinning.” For me, it conjures up images of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. I mean, your head isn’t really spinning.

  My head was spinning.

  “Martin Barlow and Madlyn Rossi were married?”

  “Yeah, they were married about five years. Actually, depending on how you look at it, they were married close to thirteen years.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s pretend I’m a complete and total idiot who’s just learned the English language, and you’re going to explain this situation to me. In nice, small words that the average goat would understand.”

  Marie laughed. “Mrs. Rossi was right, you are a nice man. Okay, let’s see if I can explain this.”

  “I’ll bet you ten bucks you can’t.”

  “Try me. Maybe twelve, thirteen years ago, Maddie and Martin Barlow are married. They’re trying to have a kid. Maddie says, at least, she wants one. Rachel and Gary are married, and they have a kid, but Rachel really hates being a mom, right? Because the boy gets more attention than she does.”

  “Okay, so now you’re telling me that Rachel Barlow is actually Joel Beckwirth’s mother.”

  “See, you can understand. So one night, the four of them, pals that they are, are over Gary’s house—this is when he and Rachel are living in West Windsor—and they smoke, let’s say, a few ‘special cigarettes,’ and down a couple of bottles of wine, okay?”

  “So they’re high and tight.”

  She chuckled. “Very good. And somebody—probably Martin— says, ‘Hey, it’s back to the Seventies night, with the pot and all. Why don’t we go all the way, and have a wife-swapping party?”

  People’s first reactions to unexpected news is always interesting. It’s the most honest we ever really are in our day-to-day lives because we don’t have the time to edit our responses. And so, with great decorum and class, I just burst out laughing. When I finally got myself back into serious reporter mode, I said, quite clearly, “oh, no!”

  “Oh, yes. And everybody’s for the wife-swapping but Maddie, who very much likes being Mrs. Martin Barlow and doesn’t want to have all that much to do with Gary Beckwirth again. But they wear her down, and give her a few more drinks, and the next thing you know, she’s over at Beckwirth’s place re-living the bad old days, and taking care of a kid who isn’t hers. Meanwhile, the not so pretty man she really loves— Professor Martin Barlow—is having his mind blown by Rachel, a woman Maddie really can’t stand.”

  “Okay, so that’s one night,” I said. “That doesn’t explain how. . .”

  “Well, that’s what Maddie thought,” Marie said. Her voice started getting more serious. This was the bad part she hadn’t wanted to tell, and the fun of shocking me was not enough to overcome that. “She figures the next day, she’ll get up, take a really long shower, and go back to her husband Martin. The problem is, she sleeps late, and everybody else decides this is a great arrangement, and they should just stick to it.”

  “Why?” It seemed a logical question.

  “It solves everybody’s problems,” Marie said, a tinge of disgust and anger in her voice. “Everybody but Maddie’s, but then she’s the only one who’d truly been happy up to that point, and they couldn’t allow that. Gary gets back the woman he really wants, though she doesn’t much want him or his kid. Martin gets the hot blonde he’s always wanted. And Rachel gets to ditch Gary, who’s a loser in bed, for a guy who talks like Lord Byron and is an up-and-comer at this big university. So everybody’s happy, right?”

  “Except Madlyn. So why doesn’t she just refuse?”

  “I’ve never really been clear on that,” Marie Aiello admitted. “She just couldn’t take on the three of them. One or the other she could deal with, but no
t all three at once. Maybe she just couldn’t bear to tell Martin ‘no.’ And I think she figured Martin would get tired of old Rachel in a day or two, and that would be that.”

  Imagine living all that time with someone, hating every minute of it, and waiting for years for the person you really love to come to his senses and return to you. Having to endure the thought of him in bed with someone other than you every night for twelve years? It should have driven Madlyn Rossi Beckwirth Barlow mad. Maybe it had.

  “But it kept on going,” I said. “Why didn’t they just get divorces and make it legal?”

  “They didn’t just trade wives,” Marie said. “They traded families. Maddie raised Rachel’s son for her, because that bitch never wanted to have a kid—he was an accident. And then, Gary suddenly hit the jackpot. At that point, there’s no way Rachel’s divorcing him and giving up her right to all his money. So she makes Gary pay big for getting Maddie back.”

  “And,” Marie continued, “there’s no way Gary’s giving Rachel half the money he just made. Not to mention, if Rachel divorces Gary and marries someone else, like, let’s say Martin, she loses alimony, too. Better for Martin and Rachel to blackmail Gary, because he doesn’t mind trading them money in return for the chance to keep Madlyn in his household. He starts paying for Rachel and Martin’s house, their cars—all that stuff. And no matter how much Maddie complains, Gary stays in the driver’s seat, and he knows it.

  “That is the weirdest story I ever heard,” I admitted. “And I lived through Watergate.”

  “You want the rest?”

  “There’s a rest?. . . Sure.”

  “Maddie’s trapped, but she has information they don’t want her to share—mainly that she’s not Mrs. Gary Beckwirth, and that Rachel Barlow isn’t really Mrs. Martin Barlow. Once everybody moves to Midland Heights, reputations start to become a really big deal, since Gary wants everything nice and tidy, and Rachel, well, she wants to take over the world.”