The Bricklayer

by Noah Boyd

  “For thirty-seven glorious years.” “Glorious” was meant to be sarcastic, but Vail could see the pride in his eyes. He was already eyeing the cap in Vail’s hand, so Vail placed it on the counter. The owner picked it up, holding it appraisingly as if it were a rare gemstone. “That’s older than my store.”

  “Any idea what it belongs on?”

  He looked at Vail curiously, now knowing he wasn’t there to buy anything. “Usually people who come in here know what kind of car they drive.”

  Although he had no identification, Vail thought he’d try to invoke the magic three letters one last time. “This is part of an FBI investigation.”

  “Not the one that’s been in the paper where they’ve been having those shootings?”

  “Actually, yes.”

  “I’ve got to admit you look like an FBI agent, but I’ve had enough dealings with cops to know the first thing they do is show a badge. You didn’t.”

  “I was fired today.”

  “Was that you in the shooting?”

  “It was.”

  “Fired for what?” the owner asked in a way that told Vail if he answered the question correctly, they would be on the same side.

  “Not letting management in on things they would screw up.”

  The owner laughed. “Now you know why I started my own business thirty-seven years ago. Bill Burton.” He held out his hand. “Besides, business has been slow, so I’ll do anything short of extremely illegal to keep from going nuts.”

  They shook hands. “Steve Vail. That’s more or less how I got here.”

  Burton turned the cap upside down. “There’s some numbers stamped inside. I can’t read them.” He handed it to Vail. “Can you make them out?” Vail read them and the owner wrote them down. “Come on in the back. I never throw anything away. I think I’ve got every parts catalog all the way back to the stagecoaches.”

  Once they reached the large storage room, Vail discovered that Burton hadn’t been exaggerating. The shelves were organized but crammed full. Boxes were stacked along the walls almost to the ceiling. Burton stepped behind a six-foot tower of them and said, “The old catalogs from the fifties are back here. By the construction, that’d be my first guess when your car was manufactured.” On the floor were piles of stained catalogs. He handed them out to Vail a dozen at a time until he had more than fifty of them. “This’ll go a lot faster if you can give me a hand.”

  “Just show me what to look for.”

  For the next two hours, they pored over the catalogs, Vail occasionally asking for clarification. A couple of times customers came in and Burton stopped to wait on them.

  Finally the owner said, “I’ve got it.”

  Vail stepped behind Burton, reading over his shoulder. “A 1957 Packard Clipper. That’s the right number.”

  “Do you know what they look like?” the owner asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah, you’re a little young. They were huge. You could run one of today’s cars into them and you’d total it, but that old Packard wouldn’t even be dented. Come on, I’ll show you what it looks like.” Vail followed him into an even more cramped office. Burton typed on his computer and after a few seconds turned the monitor so Vail could see it. “There it is. The thing’s a tank, isn’t it?”

  Vail studied the boxy vehicle with the heavy rolled chrome bumpers and could see how it would have been indestructible. “I need to find the one that distributor cap belongs to. Any ideas?”

  “I suppose there are a few around belonging to collectors, but I haven’t seen one in—I’ll bet—thirty years. I don’t know where you’d even get parts for one.” Burton started to say something else, but Vail’s focus had become distant, causing the owner to stop speaking.

  Finally Vail said, “I think I do.” He held out his hand to the owner. “Thanks to you, Bill.”

  THE HOUSE ON SPRING STREET where they’d found Bertok’s body looked the same with the exception of the yellow crime-scene tape, which was a little more windblown and droopy because of the recent rain. A newly installed hasp and lock again secured the front entrance. The iron gate protecting it was also relocked. Vail pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine.

  He grabbed the distributor cap, got out, and walked over to the fence that separated the house from the auto graveyard. Turning it in his hand almost as if it were a compass, he now understood its importance. He hadn’t taken the time to consider why Salton was watching the house the day that Kate and Vail discovered the secret to Stan Bertok’s “suicide,” or why he would be driving around with the three million dollars in his trunk. It had nothing to do with the house. He, and possibly Radek with the two million in his car, was there to hide the money in the salvage yard. Then, having spotted Vail, they would know that their frame of the dead agent was going to blow up if they didn’t do something about it.

  Vail found the two fence boards that were not nailed at the bottom, pushed them to the side, and stepped through. He wound his way through row after row of cars, some of which had been crushed flat and stacked three high. A few of them he had to reconstruct mentally to decide whether they could be the boxy Packard. There must have been a couple hundred of them altogether. Finally, he found himself in a corner of the lot that was farthest from where he had entered the property. And there it was, sitting on the ground, its tires still inflated. Once pink and white, the steel body was now mostly pitted red-brown, but intact. He walked around to the driver’s side and tried the last long key in the door lock. It turned easily. He got in and gave the interior a cursory search, finding nothing but some old registration papers in the glove box.

  He reached back and unlocked the rear door, getting out. The hinge on the back door was rusty, and he had to use considerable force to pull it open. The rear seat came up easily, but there was nothing underneath it. That left the thing that he had been avoiding—the trunk. Remembering the “flamethrower,” he slowly pushed the key into the trunk lock. Standing as far to the side as possible, he turned the key and suddenly felt his heart beat a couple of hard strokes when the lock snapped open. He held the lid down as he walked around the side of the car. When he was completely clear, he let it rise a couple of inches on its own. Nothing happened. He stepped a little closer and peered into the partially open trunk. It appeared to be empty. He raised the lid. All the way in the back of it was a new battery, which had a plastic carrying handle across the terminals.

  Walking around to the front of the Packard, Vail searched under the hood with his hands until he found the release. Feeling around it, he tried to determine if there was anything connected that shouldn’t be, not that he would be able to identify anything out of place in such an old vehicle. Slowly he pulled the release. The hood popped up an inch. As he had done with the trunk, he went around the side of the car. A strip of chrome molding was hanging off the side. He tore it free and, again keeping as far to the side as he could, pried the hood up. When it was raised a foot, he could see there was nothing out of the ordinary, except that the battery and distributor cap were missing.

  He stepped back a couple of feet and examined the position of the Packard. It was surrounded by other wrecks. There wasn’t enough room to drive it more than five feet forward, if that. So why had Radek disabled it by keeping the battery in the trunk and its distributor cap under lock and key at his home? Had the money been stored in the Packard’s trunk at one time and moved to another location? But then why keep the part and key? He looked around to see if there were any other cars that might have become a newer hiding place. Finally he decided this was one of those problems that if you stared at them too long, you’d never find the solution. He had found the car. If there was more to it, maybe it would come to him when he stopped thinking about it.

  When he got back in Radek’s Chevrolet at the house, he took out the key ring and inspected the lone unidentified key again. It was definitely not a car key. Everything was starting to take a toll on him and he suddenly felt
exhausted. He tried to remember when his last full night’s sleep had been, but his mind wouldn’t calculate anything more complicated than his most immediate perceptions. He leaned his head back and quickly fell asleep.

  The 2 a.m. messenger came early, causing Vail’s eyes to snap open. It was dark. He checked his watch to figure out how long he had been sleeping, but he had no idea when he had dozed off. Not remembering where he had put the key ring, he searched himself quickly. Then he realized it was in the ignition. He held up the last unidentified key and said, “Now I think I know where you go.”

  He went to the trunk and took out the two empty suitcases.

  Turning on his flashlight, he made his way through the fence and back to the Packard. He shined the light under the car. The earth around three of its four tires looked flat and hard, but the left rear had the dirt pushed up around its base. Vail scraped it away with his hand. Underneath was a steel plate.

  He took the battery out of the trunk and hooked it up to the terminals. Then he snapped on the distributor cap and attached the wires. He got in and turned the key in the ignition. It ground for a couple of seconds and then caught. He dropped it into gear and drove it forward until it hit the car five feet in front of it. After turning it off, he took the keys out of the ignition and went back to the steel plate, using his hand to clean the dirt off. Underneath was a two-foot square of steel with a keyhole in the middle. The metal had the color and rough-cut appearance of the steel plate that had almost crushed him in the factory and was the same as the box at the steam cleaners. The Packard’s rear tire had rested right on top of the keyhole, so the car had to be moved before it could be accessed. He shined the light into the tiny opening and there was a pin in the middle of the lock. Vail fit the last key into the opening and turned it. He felt something release and lifted the lid. Inside, the compartment was crammed with neatly banded stacks of cash.

  Kaulcrick’s dismissive offer to let Vail keep the money if he could find it replayed itself hauntingly. He said to himself, “Well, Don, if you insist.” He unzipped the suitcase lids and flipped them open. Then with a certain degree of sensual pleasure he dug both his hands into the thick, cool bundles of one-hundred-dollar bills.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  EVEN THOUGH THE SUN HADN’T FULLY RISEN, TYE DELSON DIDN’T switch on the light in her office as she entered. She went over to the window and raised it as far as she could. The air outside was warmer than in the room, and it felt good. She turned around, took a cigarette from her purse, and lit it. In the flaring light, she was startled to find Vail sitting against the back wall. “Steve, you scared me.”

  “Sorry,” he said with intentional insincerity.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He stood up and carefully placed a handcuff key on the desk.

  She calmly took a drag from her cigarette and studied him for a few seconds. His demeanor was somber yet composed, convincing her of the reason for his visit. A smirk tightened her features.

  “I didn’t really think I would fool you, not for long anyhow. I haven’t slept since I set you up to kill Radek. I would apologize for that, but I’d be surprised if you felt bad about killing someone like him.” She took another drag, and as she drew it in deeply, a small sob rattled down her throat, revealing she was not as calm as she was trying to appear. “How did you figure it out?”

  “I didn’t until I found the key hidden in the radiator. A dozen possibilities occurred to me how it got there, but only one of them made sense. Then when I ran all the little inconsistencies through my head, every one of them made perfect sense.”

  “Such as?”

  “When Kate and I searched Bertok’s apartment, we found those documents in the bathroom because of the finger smudges on the side of the vanity. I thought maybe the Evidence Recovery Team just wasn’t very good, but since then I’ve worked with them and realized they wouldn’t have missed that. Only a few people knew we were going in a second time, and of course you were one of them. You even delayed us from going in that night, citing not enough probable cause, giving yourself enough time to get in there and plant the evidence. At that point you had Bertok and his keys, so entry was no problem. Then the call to his phone that led us to being on hand for his suicide. That trail was just too textbook. Again, you were one of the few people who knew about the pen register. From the beginning there were indications of insider information. At first I thought it was the Pentad trying to give off that illusion. There were a dozen other things that didn’t make sense until I found that key. You needed it because you had to be locked up when you sent me that video, but then had to get free to get Radek to try to kill me. And then lock yourself up again and hide the key while I was breaking down the door. You had to have it available if something went wrong like a fire starting or both of us lying there dead.”

  “It seems like you’ve figured out most of it. But have you asked yourself why I was involved?”

  “There are usually only a few basic motives: money or love immediately come to mind.”

  “I certainly didn’t love Radek, if that’s what you’re thinking. And the money is in that salvage yard next to where you found Bertok. Under an old car. If that were my motive, would I be telling you that now? In fact, I gave you a way to find it when you asked me where the handcuff key was and I directed you to Radek’s key ring. It was to steer you to the money. You would have figured it out eventually. I even stashed Radek’s phony driver’s license in his car where you’d find it. It would have led you to everything. You didn’t find it?”

  “If it wasn’t Radek or the money, what was it?”

  “Has the name Michael Vashon come up in your investigation?”

  Vail thought for a second. “Is that the inmate they suspected Salton of killing?”

  “Salton, Radek, one of them. Michael and I were in love. I had just started with the United States attorney’s office when he was sent to prison for insider trading. It was something he had been involved in briefly a couple of years before we met, and he had forgotten about it. He wasn’t the main subject of the case but a good friend of his was, a guy named Danzinger. Because the trades had been made in Michael’s name, he was the easiest one to charge. They offered him a deal if he’d give up Danzinger, but Michael was a loyal friend and went to prison instead. Don’t get me wrong. Michael saw a way to make some easy money and he broke the law, but he was not a hardened criminal. He was sent to Marion for three years to see if the place wouldn’t change his mind about talking. Unfortunately, it didn’t.”

  “What was Radek and Salton’s problem with him?”

  She took another drag. “The prison pecking order being what it is, Radek and his crew immediately try to find out what they can get out of Michael. They just smack him around the first time and tell him they’re going to lease him out to other inmates unless he can come up with a better idea. After Michael was involved in the insider-trading stuff, but before he got arrested, was a little more than two years. He was a genius with computers and had gone to work for a company called Investcomp. It was an online investment service and they were designing software for investors. I don’t pretend to understand the technical aspects, but Michael was tasked with testing the finished product, actually to look for flaws in it. What it was supposed to do for the investors was when they brought up a stock on the monitor, it showed a chart of its progress. More important, it provided a green arrow indicating the time to buy and a red arrow when they should sell. Michael found a flaw by which the red arrows could be delayed for a couple of hours. He said it would have taken a major code change to correct it, and since it would have no effect on the software performance for the investors, he never told anyone. He just forgot about it until Radek threatened him. To save himself, he told Radek about the glitch and that if they delayed the red arrow by a couple of hours and then shorted the stock when it went down in response to the Investcomp customers selling off, they would make money.”

  “Let me guess. They need
ed someone on the outside to buy and sell the stocks, and Michael convinced you to do it.”

  “He had left a ‘back door’ in the Investcomp system, if you know what that is.”

  “A way to circumvent security.”

  “That’s right. At first I refused to do it, because I was an assistant United States attorney. It was why we never told anyone about our relationship. But his situation in prison became more desperate by the day, so I gave in and we started shorting the stocks. Nothing big. A couple of thousand here and there. Enough to keep them off his back. He had less than a year to go for parole.”

  “Why did they kill him if he was their golden goose?”

  “I don’t know if Investcomp picked up on the delaying trend, or whether as a routine update of the software, they found the flaw or his back door. All of a sudden, Michael couldn’t get in. When he told Radek, Michael said that he went nuts. That was the last time I talked to him.”

  “That’s when he was killed,” Vail said.

  “Yes. Of course, I had no way of knowing since I wasn’t listed anywhere in the prison records. A couple of days after our last conversation, the phone rings. It’s Radek. He’s vague, but he’s talking to me like I’m his girlfriend, telling me he’ll be out soon, and he’s looking forward to seeing me. I’m freaked out, but I keep my cool and ask him to have Michael call me. The last thing he said to me was ‘Oh, by the way, Michael was beaten to death today,’ and hangs up. Just like that.”

  “So Radek gets out and has you as a ready-made accomplice for his extortion. One with the right connections. And you can’t object because he’ll implicate you in the Investcomp scam.”

  “Exactly, but it wasn’t quite that hands-off. The first I learn of his plan is when I wake up a couple of months later in the middle of the night, and he’s standing in my bedroom. He introduces himself and proceeds to rape me. And I’m not talking about forcing me to have sex, I’m talking about how they do it in prison, starting with a beating and ending…well, I’ll leave that to your imagination. Then he rolls over, lights a cigarette, and starts talking to me, again like I’m his girlfriend. That’s when he starts laying out the extortion plan, and how I’m an important part of it. I must have looked incredulous, because he slapped me so hard I was almost knocked out. He never said anything about murdering people. But that was his MO. The plan presented never sounded that violent, until you were in the middle of it.”