3 - Buffalo Mountain: Ike Schwartz Mystery 3

by Frederick Ramsay

  T.J. missed the Christmas lights. Donald’s father always put up lights on the house. They would run all the way around the porch and up on the pointy part of the roof and out front. He had a Santa that laughed and had a light inside him, too. In town, in front of the post office, they used to have a manger and all those people, wise men and shepherds and, of course, the baby Jesus and his mom and dad. They didn’t put that up anymore, either. He never understood why, though his mother told him a hundred times.

  “T.J., I’ve told you a hundred times. It’s against the law now.” Why would statues of all those nice God people be against the law? He put it down in that part of his brain with all the other things that he could not understand, like the moon changing shape. Cause and effect worked at a simple level. Brakes on—car stops, no brakes, car hits something. He could grasp an immediate outcome. Long term was another matter.

  The wind tore at the covering on the truck again. T.J. watched as it lifted and fluttered like an uncleated sail. Donald’s special truck—the one the girls at The Pub liked so much. T.J. wondered, if he saved enough money working for Colonel Bob, if his mother would let him buy a truck like Donald’s.

  When Mrs. Donald’s Mother lived next door, before she went to the Loony Bin, there were flowers in the yard. Now the thin dusting of snow only covered Donald’s bottles—the brown ones he drank from and then threw aside.

  The canvas covering snapped in the wind and nearly tore away from the few milk bottle anchors that still held it. Donald stepped out on the small gray painted porch and down the stairs into the yard. He did not look happy. He looked like he might be ready for the Loony Bin. T.J. moved back from the window. He did not want Donald to see him. He did not know why, but some primal instinct, some response in the deeper recesses of his brain, the part not involved with cognitive processes, sounded an alarm and he yielded to it instinctively. For the first time in his life, he understood that Donald was not his friend.

  He watched as Donald lifted the tarp from one side of his truck and inspected the passenger side door. T.J. stared at the truck, too, taking it in. He felt a little sorry for Donald. Too bad, it was his special truck.

  T.J. had perfect vision. The eye doctor told him, “T.J., you have perfect 20/20 vision.” The woman who checked his eyes when he got his driver’s license said the same thing.

  And his memory functioned just fine.

  Chapter 37

  It had been a particularly bad week for Sam. Her phone died. Her car developed a funny noise she couldn’t identify, and the closest Subaru dealer was in Roanoke. Sam stared at her phone. She’d tried to sort out the voice messages. They were all garbled. She deleted the lot. The new battery went dead in less than five minutes when she installed it, faster after that. So her problem lay somewhere within the phone itself. She wished she had a phone like the secure one Ike had been using. She had managed to unscrew the back cover plate, half expecting it to explode or release a deadly gas when she did. Nothing happened, which was her first clue there wouldn’t be anything useful for her to remove. She did find a computer receptacle built in it and had managed to fit a cable from her desktop to the phone. It required the same hookup as her Palm Pilot. She’d been able to explore the contents of its microchip, but every attempt she made to download or copy the program was blocked. She did pick up one or two ideas, however.

  She checked in with Ike, who told her to draw another phone and turn in the old one. She should also post the new number and… She said she got it. Essie gave her a new phone—actually an old phone, but in better shape than the one she’d turned in. Her eye caught sight of Essie’s dog-eared copy of Cat’s Eye propped up on a shelf over her desk. Sam picked it up and flipped through the pages, noting the turned page corners where Essie had marked particularly salacious passages.

  “You know, Essie, this is crap, unreal. This guy, Sledge, gets himself shot, stabbed, and God only knows what else and…nothing. Nothing happens. No six weeks in rehab so his gunshot wounds can heal. No remorse, no chance for failure, not a qualm, doubt, or hesitation. He just keeps pegging along, seducing air-headed women and filling page after page with one idiotic bulletproof moment after another.”

  Essie took the book from her, a frown on her face. “But—”

  “But you and I know that in the real world, our world, people get hurt. They bleed and die and suffer and usually because some moron or some greedy, angry, or evil bastard decides to do something irrational and stupid. And then, people get hurt—maybe die. But we’re real…the things we do every day…what Whaite did every day…”

  At the mention of Whaite’s name Essie’s customary one-hundred-watt smile faded.

  “It cost him his life and there was nothing romantic or heroic about it.” Sam felt tears in her eyes as she finished.

  Essie stared at the book, leaned forward, took it between thumb and forefinger, and without a word dropped it in the wastebasket.

  Sam nodded and pushed through the door. Outside, she wiped her eyes, took a deep breath, and called her parents. They would need her new number. There wasn’t anyone else to call. She thought about Karl and managed to pump up her anger sufficiently to keep from crying again.

  ***

  Karl Hedrick snapped his phone shut and yelled at no one in particular. He’d been calling Sam for days, leaving voice messages. Sometimes the phone would ring and then drop the call. Sometimes it would switch him directly to voice messaging. His partner got wind of what he was trying to do and reported him. Karl found himself driving back to Washington, where, he was sure, a thorough reaming awaited. He made up his mind he’d give as good as he got. He called Sam one more time and discovered her phone had been removed from service and would he like to try a different number? What had happened, he wondered. One day everything is fine, the next, it’s all gone.

  He called his own number. Maybe today there’d be a message, an explanation.

  “Yes, hello?” A woman’s voice, she sounded young. “Who is this?”

  “Karl.”

  “He’s not available. Who’s calling?”

  “No, I’m Karl. Karl Hedrick, I’m calling for messages.”

  “Come on, who is this?”

  “You are the answering service, right? You are answering my phone. Is that how you always answer it?”

  “You’re sure you’re Mr. Hedrick?”

  “Positive. I just checked my driver’s license and that’s the name on it. Now, are you the answering service or not?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to announce that? Not just say hello?”

  “Some of the girls do, but I think it’s so, you know, like formal, so I just say hello.”

  “You realize that anyone calling me would have no idea that you were a service and might reasonably assume you were in my apartment when you picked up.”

  “But I’m not in your apartment, am I?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “What difference does it make? I mean who wants to hear ‘Answering service, may I take a message?’”

  “I would, because then I’d know who I was talking to and not make the mistake that I think others may have. Who told you to answer like that?”

  “Nobody. I just thought, you know, it sounded more casual like.”

  “Do you have a protocol you are supposed to follow?”

  “A what?”

  “Skip it.” He disconnected.

  Karl had started his trip back to DC by taking Route 460 through Lynchburg. As he approached Appomattox it hit him. He pulled into a turnoff and sat staring through the window. If Sam had called him at his apartment and that airhead had picked up the call, she might reasonably think…He let his head fall against the steering wheel. He could not reach Sam. He had to be in DC for his meeting with his chief on Monday first thing, and he had been barred from connecting with her in the meantime. Somehow, the gods of love had abandoned him. He checked his watch. At the rate he was going, and with a stop fo
r food, he’d make Washington by seven or seven-thirty. He’d take the weekend to think about the mess his well-meaning but tunnel-vision boss had created for him. But one way or the other, he planned to be back on this road, headed in the other direction, by Tuesday at the latest. He put the car in gear and continued north.

  ***

  Ruth called Ike after dinner. Her usual in-your-face tone, while not totally missing, seemed significantly subdued. She had called, she said, to find out how he was holding up. Ike, in turn, banked down his I gotcha and they talked quietly for fifteen minutes. He did not bring up her nightmare, although the thought crossed his mind. She refrained from suggesting her faculty might have an issue with any of a number of police procedures. Overall, it was a remarkable quarter of an hour for them.

  “What’s new in the search for the Russian guy’s killer?”

  He filled her in and shared his doubts about Charlie Garland’s take on the homicide. “It’s really complex. Charlie is making it way too simple.”

  “Perhaps you’re making it way too complicated?”

  “Me? No. What makes you say that?”

  “Suppose, just for the sake of argument, you are all wrong about your black programs and sub-rosa plots and schemes. What are you left with then?”

  “Not much. What I can’t figure is why anyone would want kill Whaite.”

  “Maybe they didn’t want to kill him, just hurt him and his fancy car, or he met up with a drunk driver, or it really was an accident.”

  “Anything’s possible. The person he was tracking was a lead, not a primary, you see?”

  “Yes, but I say again—suppose you have it backwards and this second or third degree lead is more than that?”

  “Where is all this analysis coming from?”

  “I’m an historian, Ike. I know that most great events arise from relatively trivial causes. An anarchist with a political agenda having nothing to do with the balance of power in the Balkans assassinates Archduke Ferdinand and all hell breaks out in Europe. The end result is a communist Russia, a world war, and a society that would never be the same. So don’t assume that a person removed from the center of things can’t be a significant player.”

  Ike thought she might be on to something, but like many ideas people not familiar with his line of work offered, he needed to think it through.

  “We have the service for Whaite tomorrow. Pop suggested sometime early next week for the holiday do. You okay with that?”

  “Sure. What…is there anything special I should wear?”

  “Wear?”

  “Well hell, Ike, I don’t know how those things go. I know my Santa suit won’t work, but a scarf over my head? You all will wear a yarmulke, I guess.”

  “Actually, it’s called a kippot, and no, we won’t. Just dress the way you would for a party. I’ve invited Leon Weitz, by the way. He wants to meet Abe. Thinks he’s local history.”

  “You know he is. Are you okay, Ike?”

  “Sure, fine.”

  “You say so. Why don’t I believe you?”

  “You are a suspicious woman who has a secret thing for policemen.”

  “Not much of a secret anymore, sad to say. I liked sneaking around with my fascist cop. Does a nightcap by the fire sound good?”

  “It does. Your fire or mine?”

  “You don’t have a fireplace, do you?”

  “I could make one. There’s a skylight in my second bedroom that would work as a chimney and I have the barbeque grill…”

  “My study, fifteen minutes—no, make that a half hour. I need to get ready.”

  “On my way. And if you want to wear your Santa suit—”

  “What Santa—?”

  “You said you could wear one to the—”

  “I was speaking metaphorically.”

  “Wear your metaphorical Santa suit, then.”

  “Half an hour, smartass.”

  He hung up. He could use a break. He shrugged on his parka. The phone rang again.

  “Sheriff Schwartz?”

  “That’s me.”

  “You don’t know me but I need to talk.”

  “And you are?”

  “This is Steve Bolt. I heard about your deputy and I think I’m in trouble.”

  Chapter 38

  Ike let the words sink in. Bolt had somehow managed to survive. What did that do to Charlie’s theory about Russian assassins?

  “What kind of trouble are we talking about?”

  “I know something about Harris, and your guy was asking about him and me.”

  “What can you tell me about Harris?”

  “I figure it’s worth something, don’t you think?”

  “It’s worth a great deal to us. So talk to me.”

  “No. I meant it ought to be worth some money. I can tell you things that can maybe solve who killed him.”

  “You know he’s dead? How do you know that?”

  “I hear things.”

  “But you know he’s dead for certain?”

  “Okay, I give you this one for free and then you can decide if a thousand dollars is a fair price for the rest. See, I did odd jobs for him, you know. Like, if he didn’t want anybody to see him but he needed money, he’d give me his bank card and the pin number and I’d go withdraw what he wanted.”

  “You didn’t skim a little on the side?”

  “I thought about it, but he always paid me good, so no, I didn’t.”

  “That’s it? That’s the free information that’s going to convince me to hand over a thousand dollars?”

  “No, no, let me finish. He gave me this package to deliver if anything ever happened to him, see. He set up this, like, code deal where if he didn’t do something two days in a row, I was to deliver it. Well, two days went by and so I figured he must be dead.”

  “Did you deliver the package?”

  “I might have. How about my money?”

  Ike sat down and scratched his head. He was getting hot. He unzipped his parka. He looked at his watch and realized he was five minutes away from being late at Ruth’s. He needed time to mull through what Bolt said. He remembered the Washington Post articles he’d read. Could there be a connection? He made up his mind to bluff.

  “So you drove to Washington and dropped the package off to someone in Rock Creek Park. Have I got it right?”

  Ike waited. Silence at the other end. Ike knew he’d guessed correctly.

  “That guy’s dead now, did you know that, Bolt? He’s dead and his apartment was trashed. Are you listening?”

  “Hey, I don’t know about that. I just —”

  “Listen to me. You can forget about money. You need to think about your future and if you have one. Right now, with the evidence we have, you are looking good for a murder.” He heard Bolt try to interrupt. “I said, listen to me. That’s worse case, I can probably hang this one on you—if not directly, at least as an accessory after the fact. Now, there’s a rumor you’re dead. If I let it out that you’re not, do you suppose some folks just might come gunning for you?”

  “I didn’t do nothing wrong. I took the package like I was told and delivered it. That’s it.”

  “And your house got torched and two beefy guys dragged you out of a fleabag motel. Doesn’t that suggest something to you?”

  More silence. Ike wondered if he’d hung up. “Bolt, you still there? I have one more thing to say to you. The deputy who was killed came from your part of the world. If someone killed him, what do you suppose will happen next? He was a Buffalo Mountain man.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus. Somebody else will be killed.”

  “What happened?”

  “I told you, I took the package to—”

  “No. Before that.”

  The line remained quiet. Ike could almost hear the gears grinding as Bolt thought through his options.

  “Okay. See, Harris, like once a month, he would go to Richmond to, you know, get it on.”

  “Get it on?”

  “With wome
n.”

  “He visited prostitutes?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Port of Richmond—bars, stuff like that. Anyway, before he left, he’d use his cards, the bank card especially, to get cash. Then he’d leave them behind in a desk drawer. I guess he thought they could be stolen in one of them places. He was probably right. I had a friend who went to this massage place in Roanoke and they pretty near cleaned him out.”

  “Identification?”

  “No, he didn’t even take a driver’s license.”

  “He did this often?”

  “Yeah. Like I said, once a month or so.”

  “So Harris is supposed to leave for Richmond, and then what?”

  “Well, now I think he did leave but he never came back. That’s my take on things. Anyway, I knew where he was going so I says to that nut case Donnie—”

  “That’s Oldham?”

  “Yeah. I says, ‘We’ll wait ’til he leaves then fake a burglary,’ only we were too late.”

  “How, ‘too late’?”

  “When we got there, the whole place was, like, turned upside down and the cards were gone.”

  “Oldham didn’t take them?”

  “No. I made him turn out his pockets. He didn’t have nothing except a cigarette lighter and silver penknife he copped.”

  “He didn’t double cross you and get to Harris early?”

  “I don’t see how he could. I mean he ain’t too bright. How’d he know who he was—he never met your guy before that.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Um…I guess so.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I don’t know. What do you want me to do?”

  “You have a good hiding place now, I expect. Get back in that hole for the weekend. Monday, you call me again and we’ll arrange to meet—someplace safe.”