Fail

by Rick Skwiot

  By the time he was finishing his first cup of coffee his phone buzzed. The Gecko had found something.

  “You’ve already forwarded them to me? Good.”

  In his inbox were emails between Stone and a Father Michael Mohan at Saint Louis University. Gabriel wrote Mohan a brief note, saying he’d like to talk concerning the disappearance of Jonathan Stone.

  Within minutes his phone was buzzing again.

  “This is Father Mohan. What’s this about Jonathan Stone?”

  “His wife’s concerned. She hasn’t seen him in over a week. I was wondering if I could meet with you and chat for a few moments.”

  After a pause came the response: “I guess so. But I really have nothing to tell you.”

  Though something in the priest’s voice made Gabriel doubt that.

  He motored down Forest Park Parkway. Another frigid day. Still snow on the ground. Recent winters had been mild. This season was just ten days old and he was freezing his ass off.

  Gabriel parked at a meter on Lindell Boulevard near Saint Francis Xavier and crossed the street to Jesuit Hall. At the reception desk in the lobby a gray-haired man telephoned Father Mohan’s room and told him Carlo Gabriel awaited him.

  “He said he’d be right down.”

  On the wall behind Gabriel hung a framed photo of Pope Francis. To the right of that a larger-than-life oil portrait of St. Ignatius Loyola by a 17th century Flemish painter, apparently brought to St. Louis from Belgium by Father DeSmet in the 1830s. Ancient history by Missouri standards.

  His gaze was drawn outside by a bus pulling to the curb. A thin old black woman got off, bent into the wind, and scooted away.

  “Lieutenant Gabriel.”

  Gabriel turned.

  “I’m Father Mohan.” Fortyish, muscular, sandy-haired, he wore gray sweats. His face—freckled, with a broad nose and fine lines at the eyes—remained rigid as they shook hands.

  “Carlo Gabriel. Where can we talk?” Mohan motioned with his head toward leather wingchairs in an adjacent marble-floored lounge adorned with artificial potted plants. As they sat, Gabriel began: “We noted that you and Jonathan Stone exchanged a number of emails, the last on Saturday the twenty-first, the day he disappeared, arranging a meeting.” When the priest made no response, Gabriel went on: “Did you meet?”

  Mohan nodded.

  “Can you tell me what you talked about?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Jonathan wanted me to hear his confession.”

  “Can you tell me anything he might have said outside the confessional? What about his state of mind?”

  He shook his head. “Sorry.”

  “His emails indicate you had previous meetings. Anything you can say about those?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.”

  The priest sat stiff.

  “I sense that you can help me, Father, but choose not to. Why is that?”

  “Frankly, I don’t trust you, lieutenant.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Fair enough. I think I know why, and you are right to be cautious. Let me lay my cards on the table—full disclosure—and maybe we can build some trust.”

  “You are welcome to try.”

  “I fear Jonathan Stone may be dead. Some hours after meeting with you on the twenty-first he parked his SUV in the garage at the Arch and left the keys in the ignition. A half hour later 911 got a call of someone jumping into the Mississippi from Eads Bridge. This past Sunday a mutilated body—prop damage, apparently—was pulled from the river in South St. Louis. We’re awaiting DNA results.”

  The priest tightened his grip on the arms of his chair. Gabriel continued:

  “We also found Stone’s computer files—the ones he perhaps meant us to find and the ones he didn’t.”

  Mohan now leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees. “Are you Catholic, lieutenant?”

  “Lapsed.”

  “Then you know I can’t say anything about what he may have told me in the confessional. But I can tell you one thing: Jonathan Stone did not kill himself.”

  “He’d lost everything he had. Yet he didn’t seem depressed when you last met?”

  “Yes, he was certainly melancholy. But he would not commit a mortal sin.”

  “You sure?”

  “Dead certain. Besides, he had not lost everything. If anything, his suffering had enlightened and ennobled him, as it tends to do. If he died at someone’s hand, it was not his own.”

  “You know the powder keg he was sitting on?”

  No comment.

  “I am going to assume you do: that Stone had stumbled upon some highly sensitive information.”

  “Which is apparently your primary concern.”

  Gabriel felt himself flush. “Look, Father. I’m just a cop trying to do my job.”

  “What is your job, Mr. Gabriel? Whom do you serve? The people? Your bosses? God? Yourself? You see why I can’t trust you? Not until I know the answer to that question.”

  It was a question for which he had no ready answer.

  When he got up to go the Jesuit did not rise. By way of parting the priest said, “I’d love to hear your confession sometime, lieutenant.”

  Gabriel stopped and looked at him then turned away without speaking.

  As usual, Alice was behind the bar in the pub at Gabriel’s apartment building. The place was packed for New Year’s Eve. Frank Sinatra crooned about strangers exchanging glances before hooking up and falling in love as Gabriel leaned on the bar with his hand around a highball. Behind him two couples danced in front of the jukebox.

  “Hello, stranger. Happy new year.”

  He turned toward the voice to find Laura Berkman in a black beret and overcoat.

  “Same to you.”

  They touched cheeks, and he helped her with her coat. She wore a black cocktail dress and high heels.

  “Basic black looks good on you. Out styling?”

  “Trying to blend into the zeitgeist while making the rounds. My fourth and final party.”

  “Such as it is. What to drink?”

  He gestured toward Alice, who brought her a brandy. Gabriel and Berkman touched glasses and drank. As he set his drink down, he felt her eyes on him.

  “In your email yesterday, Carlo, you seemed a bit more ebullient than I’m reading right now.”

  “I’ve been somewhat dis-embullied over the past twenty-four hours.”

  “Your City Hall case?”

  He took another sip of his bourbon and soda. “What else?”

  “What did you step in this time?”

  “Thought I had everything wrapped up. But issues have arisen.”

  “What sort of issues?”

  “All sorts. Political, of course. Moral, spiritual, legal, grammatical. You name an issue, I’m dealing with it.”

  “Let’s start with the political. That’s what I’m best at.”

  Behind him, more people started dancing as Earth, Wind and Fire sang “September.”

  “How clean, in your estimation, is Angelo Cira?”

  On the TV above the bar the New Year’s countdown had begun. Berkman shrugged. “Crooked as hell, but at least he’s upfront about it. Makes no bones about awarding city contracts to people who pay his way.” She lowered her voice an octave to emulate him: “‘I figure those who contribute to my campaign are civic-minded citizens who want to support good government. Those are the sort of people I want to work with.’”

  “A great way to solicit donations.”

  “We won’t know how corrupt he really is until he leaves office and we see where he lands. He could mimic Mexican presidents and go into exile, or Illinois governors and go to prison.”

  “Business as usual.”

  Berkman studied him. “Doing some soul searching?”

  “You know I sold that to the Devil years ago.”

  A cheer went up. The jukebox played “Auld Lang Syne.” The revelers embraced, toasted, kissed. Gabriel bent and pressed his l
ips to Berkman’s. Her perfume came to him with the creamy taste of her lipstick.

  “Happy new year, Laura,” he intoned.

  She laughed. “That’s the saddest ‘happy new year’ I ever heard.”

  “Sorry. Not much in a party mood.”

  “Pity. I had thought you might ask me to ride the elevator up with you tonight.”

  “I thought so too. But something pushed my down button.”

  “That doesn’t sound like much fun. Well, we should at least have another drink.”

  “At least.”

  When Alice brought the next round she asked Laura how long she’d known Gabriel.

  Berkman turned to him. “Nineteen years six months. Right, Carlo?”

  “If you say so.”

  “My first month on the job. Cub reporter doing a series on North St. Louis drug dealing. Thought it would be enlivened if I could show the cops in action. They assigned Detective Gabriel to shepherd me around. And that he did.”

  “The cook’s tour, no less. That’s how we roll.”

  “I’m sensing a story here,” Alice said.

  Gabriel felt Laura pinching his leg. “You tell it since you thought it so damn funny.”

  “You have no idea how truly amusing it was. Third and final day out we thought to give the new girl a treat. Told her we were busting a dangerous drug kingpin. Showed her a mug shot of the villain—actually a photo of officer Marvin Davis dressed in a yellow pimp suit. We ride to a vacant flat on St. Louis Avenue and park in the side alley. I tell Roper to go up the back stairs. Mankewicz and I would go up the front. I turn to Laura and say, ‘Geez, we’re a man short. You wait here in the alley, and if the perp comes this way, you stall him till we get here.’

  “Before she has time to protest we go busting ass into the building. A minute later we start yelling, ‘There he goes! Out the back! Roper! Where’s Roper?’

  “Then we send Davis running down the alley in his yellow pimp suit. Of course we’re all watching this from the second floor with the video cam. Laura starts tap-dancing and praying at the same time”—Gabriel clasped his hands together at his chest and did a brief shuffle—“wishing she was covering the garden club meeting. Want to see the tape?”

  Alice gave them a round on the house. And another. Gabriel put Laura Berkman in a cab at one-thirty then went upstairs and right to bed. But he woke at six and couldn’t get back to sleep.

  - 15 -

  Thursday morning, January 2nd. Gabriel had been at his desk for an hour catching up on paperwork when his cell phone buzzed. A woman’s voice said:

  “This is Marais, DNA lab. I was told to call you when we finished the mayor’s rush job.”

  “And?”

  “No go. Given the samples submitted, the swimmer and this Jonathan Stone are two different blokes.”

  “No question?”

  “None.”

  He telephoned Ellen Cantrell, whose secretary answered, and learned she was in a meeting off premises. Gabriel sent a text message to her cell phone:

  “Good news: No DNA match.”

  He sat looking at his desktop, eyes unfocused, for long minutes trying to organize his thoughts. The DNA results, coupled with the assertion of the testy Jesuit Father Mohan that Stone would never harm himself, suggested that the former professor was likely alive somewhere. That was supported by a lack of prior self-destructive tendencies and the serendipitous nature of his disappearance, coming about with the sudden dovetailing of trying personal circumstances. Then there was the purposeful abandonment of his wife’s car, left behind as if to signal her of his estrangement. Further, apparently no one besides Gabriel and The Gecko—and possibly Father Mohan—knew of the potentially explosive research Stone had been conducting. And until certain parties did, Stone was in no danger from them. All this added up to a sobering conclusion: without any money trail or such to guide him, Gabriel was back where he started, nowhere.

  He got out his notebook and flipped through it. Then he browsed the case file on his computer. Finally he grabbed his topcoat and walked to The Gecko’s cubicle. He found him gazing at one of the computer screens glowing there. When he looked up, Gabriel said:

  “Let’s take a ride.”

  Still no sunshine, though the wind had eased. He aimed his unmarked black Dodge north on Union Boulevard.

  “Nice car,” said The Gecko.

  “I’m told it can do a hundred and fifty.”

  “Flip on the siren and let’s see.”

  Gabriel looked at him then back to the street ahead. “Gecko, my man, stick to the virtual world, where you’re safe and warm.”

  Soon he turned right onto West Florissant Boulevard and asked, “Watch the Rose Bowl yesterday?”

  They were talking football when he made a left into Bellefontaine Cemetery. Gabriel said: “Lewis and Clark—one of them’s buried here.”

  “Likely Clark.”

  “Why you say that?”

  “Lewis was shot dead in Mississippi.”

  “You a history buff?”

  The Gecko shook his head. “Homicide enthusiast.”

  Unlike that along the city streets, the snow here—bounding plowed lanes curving between elaborate crypts—still lay pristine white. Gabriel stopped the car and killed the engine. “Let’s walk.”

  The temperature readout on the Dodge had said thirty, but with the calm air it felt warmer. Yet The Gecko wore the flaps on his uniform-blue bomber’s cap down over his ears. Gabriel walked with his cashmere topcoat open. After strolling in silence for fifty yards he said:

  “Stone. He’s still alive. At least the guy they found in the river ain’t him.”

  “Is that the good news or the bad news?”

  “For him, good; for me, bad.”

  “How’d Ellen Cantrell take it?”

  “Not sure. She was tied up, so I texted her. But she’s a hard one to read. Like a sponge: seems to absorb and make use of whatever is at hand, including men.”

  “O, baby, use me up!”

  Gabriel stopped and turned toward him. “I realize that you know nothing about the actual details of Stone’s secret files, since you claim you haven’t read them. So let’s talk hypothetically. Let’s say she was banging the mayor and up to her tits in nefarious and illegal kickbacks and such and that her relationship with her husband—last in league power-rankings and a sociopolitical liability—had deteriorated to the backstabbing stage.”

  “Okay. But who was stabbing whom?”

  “Very good, Gecko: who and whom, nominative case and objective case. Just read about it last night. And a good question. Along with, ‘Who knew who was doing what to whom?’”

  “Think she’s capable of having him put away?”

  “Don’t be premature, Geck. Ellen Cantrell’s living in a goldfish bowl that distorts everything on the outside. Worse, she doesn’t realize it’s actually a shark tank. Here’s a crucial question: How reliable is Stone’s information? He could be making it all up—the phone calls, the conversations, the emails, the hacked files. Or could he really assemble all that?”

  “He could do it, no doubt. You have your cell phone in your pocket, lieutenant? Theoretically someone could be listening to our conversation through it.”

  “Even though it’s off?”

  “Absolutely. You can’t begin to imagine what’s possible these days. We can disable the GPS on your phone so they can’t track you, but they could still be listening and watching and mining all sorts of info.”

  “How?”

  “In two minutes I could install a program on your phone that would let me use its microphone as a listening device to hear any conversation within earshot. Or software that would allow me to monitor your calls and text messages. If you dial a particular number I’m interested in, I can be alerted automatically and secretly patched into the conversation.”

  “Shit.”

  “I can also send you a text message that, when you open it, will activate a GPS system that lets me trac
k you step-by-step anywhere in the world. If you were a terrorist and I was the CIA, I could then put a missile in your ear.”

  “Okay, I hear you.”

  “Plus there’s your computer: Easy enough for me to install a keystroke monitor on your laptop so I know every email, web address, and password you type. And I can access your whole web-browsing history. Put this together and I can follow trails to secret bank accounts, secret social-media personas, secret lovers, secret lives. Or I could simply plant a GPS tracking device in your car that let’s me see what ATMs and girlfriends you visit even if you leave your phone at home. Tip of the iceberg. The technology changes every day.”

  “Any of this legal?”

  “Most of it, I think, even without warrants. But technology’s my thing, not law or ethics. Where does this leave you?”

  “Up the creek, paddleless. This is one sorry-ass messy situation. Would have been a lot simpler if that had been Stone in the black bag—even though I’ve grown rather fond of the bastard.

  “How rude of him to not have thrown himself into the mighty Mississippi.”

  “Yeah, so now I’m back to being an ineffective missing-persons cop tiptoeing through political minefields and no closer to finding the fleeing spouse—dead or alive. Plus, I need to ride this train to the end before I get my ticket punched.”

  They stopped at a large, Egyptianesque mausoleum guarded by a concrete sphinx on either side.

  “Why are you telling me all this, Carlo?”

  “I need some quick closure, my friend. The clock’s ticking on this one. I’ve got to find him soon, wherever he might be. Otherwise I’ll spend the rest of my professional days out here in North fucking St. Louis. After you discovered that first hidden cloud, you said you felt like you were being led on.”

  “Maybe, but maybe not on purpose. But people are people and leave traces of themselves—digital fingerprints—to guide you.”

  “Any idea where?”

  The Gecko shrugged. “He’s crafty. Likes wordplay and mystery and suspense, like a frustrated novelist. Maybe he left clues just as flourishes to amuse himself. Or maybe his wife has an idea.”

  “What do you mean?”