by Ed Gorman
Deeper . . .
12
"Are you sure you're up?"
"I'm sure."
"I can always call back."
"No, Sheila, really, this is fine."
"I found out some things about Tolliver."
"I'm listening."
Sunlight traced the edge of the motel-room curtains. I'd set my travel alarm, but dimly remember stomping it into silence with the heel of my hand and then going back to sleep.
But the intrepid Sheila Kelly was now going to make sure that I was awake for sure.
"You ready?"
"I'm ready."
"He nearly went broke in 1963. He had been CEO of his father's trucking business for three years, and the whole thing came tumbling down."
"But he made it?"
"He'd fired a man named Farraday, a man who'd always been his father's right-hand man. You know how it is with young CEOs, they don't want any reminder of the previous regime."
"You think Farraday's being fired hurt the company?"
"No doubt about it. Farraday went all the way back to the beginning of the trucking industry, back when the Teamsters were still blowing up trucks that weren't registered to union members. This Farraday knew all the routes and all the federal regulations, and how to make money on what they call short hauls. In other words, he was a very important guy."
"And Junior fired him?"
"Right. But then Junior must have had a religious conversion because he hired him back at three times the salary."
"Wow."
"He also gave him ten percent of the net profits per annum."
"Sounds like Farraday had really been mad about being canned."
"Very, very angry. But since he now had ten percent of the company, he made it work again. He stayed there until he died of lymphatic cancer in 1979. By then, Junior had figured out how to run things himself. He was making a lot of money again."
"How about personal life?"
"A widower. His wife died in a sanitarium, in 1983."
"A mental hospital?"
"No. Some kind of fancy drying-out place for the idle rich. You know, people like you."
"What was her name?"
"Kendra. She was a runway model in Chicago when Tolliver married her in 1958."
"Any children?"
"One. A boy named Craig."
"Tolliver said he's dead."
"He is. And guess how he died?"
"How?"
"In a prison escape."
"Tolliver had a son who was in prison?"
"Second-degree murder. Really cut up this sixteen-year-old girl. They found what was left of her in chunks and pieces buried next to a river. Tolliver had to use all his money and influence to get the charge reduced to second-degree."
"He didn't try insanity?"
"Oh, he tried, but the district attorney wouldn't go for it. Or did I mention this wasn't Tolliver's home state? He might be important in Iowa, but not in Illinois. Anyway, Tolliver tried to get Craig declared insane and put in a state mental hospital, but the DA wasn't buying, and neither was the judge or jury. Tolliver's people finally had to plead him guilty of second-degree."
"How long was he in before he escaped?"
"Three-and-a-half years. But there's something else."
"What?"
"You remember that word you asked me about, 'Conmarck'?"
"Right."
"That's the name of the town where the prison is located. It's in Illinois."
"Wow. Then Vic knew something about the escape."
"Vic?"
"This Nora I told you about?"
"The one who claimed to be Tolliver's daughter?"
"Right. She had this assistant named Vic. He's the one who used the word."
"Well, Conmarck was where Craig died, anyway. Three guys were supposed to cover him while he ran from a soybean field, but one of them killed a guard. Craig was shot in the crossfire. He died in the backseat of the getaway car. His three friends died a few miles later in a shootout with a highway patrol helicopter."
"So there's a connection between Nora and Vic and Tolliver after all."
"What?"
"Just thinking out loud, Sheila. Sorry. You've really earned your money."
"I just hope it helps."
"It helps a lot. Just send me the bill to my Charlesville address."
"If you need something else, let me know."
"I will, Sheila, and thanks again."
13
"And here's the old biplane that Curtis Lefler built," Herb Carson said an hour-and-a-half later, as he finished giving us the tour of his aviation museum.
Curtis Lefler was another Iowa flying legend, having built this and half-a-dozen pioneering airplanes in his father's garage.
So far this morning, we'd seen several planes, including a very rare Whitey Sport with its 55-horsepower LeBlond engine, but this was the one I fancied.
Seeing it there in the sparkling sunlight, with a cloudless blue sky like this one, recalled the days of the barnstormers, men and women (there were a lot more female barnstormers than is commonly believed) who bought used WWI planes from the U.S. Government then went all over the countryside putting on shows at carnivals and county fairs, or putting down in a field and taking people for a ride for $3.75 a head.
"She's a beauty, isn't she?" Herb said. He looked older than the last time I'd seen him, and that was a sad realization. I was at the age when most of my heroes were dying on me, Herb among them. In his blue turtleneck and jeans, his white hair burred military-style, his skinny frame bent now with age, he looked like the last of the barnstormers surveying a world that no longer knew what to do with him.
"She sure is a beauty," Jane Avery said, then turned back to me. "Is this the biplane we're going up in?"
"It sure is."
The plane before us was an old Travel Air, one of the first biplanes used by adventurous businessmen back in the 1920s. With a double cockpit and red paint, it still looked jaunty all these years later.
"Great," she said.
Herb grinned. "Always like to see somebody respond to a baby like this one. Does my old heart good. You get ready. I'll go prop her."
"Great," I said.
I looked at Jane. "You all right?"
She shrugged. "Just a little nervous."
"We'll be fine."
"I know. It's just—"
I smiled, leaned in and touched her hand. "Everybody gets nervous. That's part of the whole process."
She grinned, "You're really a damn nice guy, you know that? Most of the time, anyway."
We stood next to the plane. It smelled of sunlight and oil and the worn leather interior.
"Bet you wish you lived back then," Jane said. "With the barnstormers."
"I sure do."
"I can see you doing that, actually. There's something old-fashioned about you." She squinted at me in the sunlight. "That's why it's so hard to imagine you working for the FBI. All that cloak and dagger."
"Believe it or not, it's something I believe in. That's why I did it."
We walked around the plane, taking another close look, two people in a field in the middle of Iowa on a lovely spring day.
For the next twenty minutes, we gave her a complete mechanical checkup, Herb and I, and then the three of us pushed her out to the small patch of runway, and Jane and I climbed in.
"Wish I was going along," Herb shouted, just before he took the propeller and rotated it so that we could get the oil circulated through the engine.
While he was doing that, I was turning on the magneto, which is similar to popping the clutch in a car. Then Jane and I pulled down our goggles.
The plane roared into being, Jane and I waved good-bye, and then I proceeded to do all the subtle things an old craft like this demands.
Then we were airborne.
Only from the air can you appreciate how right Grant Wood was the way he painted Iowa, the rolling countryside, the checkerboard topography.
"This is great!" Jane shouted.
"Not scared?"
"Not at all!"
I gave her the grand tour, skimming low along a winding blue river, tracking between two looming clay cliffs, doing a modified roll and then following a forest of pine and hardwood that stretched for miles.
We were up high enough—but not too high—to enjoy the benefits of temperature inversions which, on a day like this one, kept the temp right at 60.
"Do another roll!" she shouted. "That was great!"
I'd made a convert, and to celebrate that fact, I did another roll. People always worry about falling out but between the strap you wear and centrifugal force, you're actually pretty safe.
I was just taking her down lower when I realized where we were, just above the Brindle farm where the bodies of Nora and Vic had been discovered.
I also noticed something else.
A blue four-door Toyota sedan just pulling out of the barn in back.
It moved quickly down the gravel drive and out to the gravel road and headed quickly back to town.
I recognized the car, of course. It had belonged to Sam Lodge.
I had a good idea who was driving it now.
"How about one more roll?" Jane shouted, seeming not to make anything special of the blue Toyota.
"You're crazy!" I laughed.
And then decided to put the plane into the kind of roll that both of us would remember for a long time.
This time, Jane even screamed a little bit, the way boys and girls do at county fairs their first time up on the Ferris wheel.
After saying good-bye to Herb and walking back to our respective cars, Jane said, "Did you see that blue Toyota at the Brindle farm?"
I smiled. "I was hoping you didn't."
"Are we competing on this case?" She sounded angry.
I wanted to tell her everything, especially about Melissa McNally's being kidnapped, but I knew better.
"No," I said. "We're not competing."
She stared at me for a long time. "This is kind of a confusing situation. And it's my fault. Because I'm the one who's let it become confusing."
"What's confusing about it?"
"I want to take you down to the station and make you tell me everything you know."
"That's natural enough. You're the chief of police."
"But I also want to invite you over for another meal tonight. Maybe some tacos or something. On me."
"Well, why don't I come over about eight and we'll talk about how confusing everything is?"
"I don't know, Robert. I just don't know."
We stood there and looked at each other for a time. There was nothing to say, and I knew better than to try and touch her in any way.
I gave her a little nod, got in my car, and drove away.
14
The historians of Cedar Rapids love to tell the story of the man who built the town's first log cabin back in 1838.
His name was Osgood Sheperd. While most town histories love to extol the noble virtues of their first citizens, the folks in Cedar Rapids delight in revealing that Osgood was, among other things, the town's first tavern owner and a horse thief.
In the early 1840s, the enterprising Osgood converted his cabin on the river's edge to a drinking establishment, which was perfect for those people who wanted to get drunk before they forded the river.
As with most such places, the tavern soon developed its own group of patrons among whom were several horse thieves.
Apparently old Osgood became a part of the gang because, after closing down the tavern because of pressure from responsible civic leaders, he drifted to another state where he took up the noble calling of horse-stealing himself.
Unfortunately, Osgood wasn't nearly as good at it as his cronies.
He was caught, and hanged by the neck until dead.
From the northernmost bluffs, Cedar Rapids looks like a picture-book city. The downtown area, abandoned by merchants who could no longer fight the fight with the malls on either edge of the city, has given way to several new buildings and complete refurbishment. It is now a business center, stocks and bonds, insurance and law offices, fund raisers and research companies. And enough BMWs to make you think that Ronald Reagan is still in office.
I drove right on through, the place I was looking for being in a somewhat-less-pricey neighborhood, one of those that the Chamber of Commerce keeps trying to will out of existence.
325 River Street was an aged concrete block building that had probably started life as a corner grocery store. It was now boarded up, covered with some rather pedestrian graffiti, and surrounded by a sidewalk that was littered with so much broken glass and trash it looked like an obstacle course.
I parked and got out.
Except for 325, this half of the block was nothing but a large grassy vacant lot. Down on the far corner, two young black men stood watching me. They were probably wondering why anybody who didn't absolutely need to would come into a neighborhood like this.
I walked around 325 twice, looking for some kind of peephole for a glimpse inside. Nothing.
I walked down to the end of the block and the two young men. The closer I got, the older they looked. By the time I reached them, they looked a lot older, mid-twenties probably, which made their worn-backwards baseball caps seem like a wistful affectation meant to bring back their youth.
"Morning," I said.
They were a perfect Mutt and Jeff, one tall and rangy, one short and squat. Or Bud and Lou, if you prefer.
They nodded, said nothing.
"You live around here?"
The squat one grinned. "No, man, we live down to those penthouses along the river. We jus' come over here 'cause the scenery's so beautiful."
"I guess it was a dumb question," I said, grinning back.
"You a cop?" asked the tall one.
"Nope."
"You look like a cop. The new kind."
"There's a new kind?"
"Sure. Them college boys. They's real polite, man, till they gets you in the backseat. Then they kick the hell out of you jus' like the old kind."
"They busted us for no reason last Saturday night," said the squat one. "They jus' had a hard-on to bust them some niggers, and we happened to be the ones they found. All we was doin' was walkin' down the street. That's all we was doin'."
"An' this'z what I got for it," said the short one. He took off his ball cap and showed me a half-inch cut on the left side of his forehead. The wound was red and blue, against copper-colored skin.
"Like we don't have no right to walk down the street, man," said his friend.
Hard to tell. Two sides to everything. You sit down with the police officers who busted them and you'd likely hear that these two guys looked suspicious, late at night, shambling down the street, possibly drunk, possibly doped up, and who knew what they were up to? Better to be safe than sorry and all that. So they busted them. And the short one got mouthy. And one of the cops hit him—nothing serious, because if it had been anything serious, these two would have gotten themselves a lawyer by now and instituted some big suit against the city. Just doing their jobs, the cops were—at least that's how they'd see it, and tell you about it.
While, of course, these two young men had a very different version of what had happened.
"You know much about that place?" I said to the short one.
"What place? That building down there?"
"Yes. 325."
He shrugged. Glanced at his friend. Grinned. "Used to be like the place to go when we was kids and wanted some grass or beer or somethin'. Real good hidin' place."
"Have you seen people go in and out lately?"
Another glance, another grin.
"You sure you ain't a cop?" the short one said.
"I'm not. Honest."
The tall one shrugged. "The white Lincoln."
"What?"
"White Lincoln. Guy always wheels in here real early in the morning, two, three in the morning,
but I ain't seen him for a long time."
"Did you ever get a look at the guy driving the Lincoln?"
"Not a good one."
"So you're not even sure it is a guy?"
"Huh?"
"Could be a woman."
He shrugged again.
"Could be," said the short one.
"And he goes inside?"
"Right."
"How long does he stay?"
The tall one shrugged. "Man, we're usually asleep by then. Our wives, man, they kick our butts if we stayed out that late."
"So the guy in the Lincoln could stay all night."
"Could be," the tall one said.
"Thanks," I said, nodding to them.
"That's all you wanted?" the short one said.
I smiled. "That's all I wanted. See, I told you I wasn't a cop."
The padlock was a bitch to get open. Took fifteen minutes.
I got the back door free and stood in the dark doorway. I wrinkled up my nose as the odors hit me. The high tart tang of blood; the sour-sweet smell of bodily waste.
With great reluctance, I went inside, remembering a Cairo garage I'd entered one day looking for an informant that the Agency wanted to protect. I found him, all right, along with three or four of his friends, chopped up and piled up inside a closet. It took several weeks of showers before I felt clean again.
I got the light on. The place was one big room with three smaller rooms off to the right. The big room had an auxiliary battery and video equipment and a large cardboard box shoved into one corner.
I went over and looked into the box. I found wigs and black leather sex masks and handcuffs and women's panties. I also found spiked belts and chains. The chains were dark and sticky with blood. There were also pieces of wound cloth that had obviously been used as gags.
I didn't have to wonder what kind of videos were being shot here.
Two of the three small rooms looked to have been storage areas at one time. Now they held small cots and an impromptu makeup table complete with round theatrical mirror. Somebody had written a dirty word in the middle of it with red lipstick long ago dried out. A lone Polaroid lay on the table, shriveled like an autumn leaf. I picked it up and stared at it. There was a girl, no more than eight, naked and with her legs parted wide, spreading her sex for the camera. It was going to take an awful lot of showers to make me feel clean this time.