by A. W. Gray
Ms. Rapp dug a legal-sized sheet of paper from her bag. “This is a parole commission warrant for your arrest, Mr. White. Unexecuted. Thus far.”
Frank’s gaze flicked at the paper, then back up. “I’ve made all my reports. Kept a job.” He scratched his bare chest. He was barefoot, having slipped into loose-fitting jeans while Mr. Shotgun stood by.
“And have consorted with felons,” Ms. Rapp said. “By your own admission. That’s grounds, Mr. White.”
Frank leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “One guy, I told you about. He came by work, I couldn’t just—”
“You told me about, that’s my point. It’s grounds, technical though they may be.” Ms. Rapp glanced at the FBI man as if seeking his approval. “You’ll be entitled to a full hearing, Mr. White, after you’ve been in jail a couple of weeks.”
Frank couldn’t believe this. “I’d lose my job.”
“And have to find another,” Ms. Rapp said, “to comply with the conditions of your release on parole.”
“Let’s cut through,” the agent said, then smiled at Ms. Rapp and said, “Excuse me, Ms. Rapp. I think we’re confusing Mr. White.” He sat back, crossed his legs, and rocked one gray running shoe up and down. “I’m Agent Turner, Mr. White. A while ago you said something about search warrants. I told you we’ve got none. But we do abide by the rules, one of which is that we’re not supposed to contact guys on parole without first checking it out with their parole officer. And none of us want to violate any rules, am I right?”
Frank looked over his shoulder. The two guys in the kitchen had interrupted their search to come forward and lean on the counter. A draft from the air-conditioner vents raised goose-bumps on Frank’s neck and shoulders. He wished he’d put a shirt on.
“So here’s the situation, Stanley,” Agent Turner said. “You got every constitutional right in the book. No mistake about it, you want a lawyer you just say so. We’ll even let you call one to meet you at the Mansfield jail, which is where we take federal prisoners these days. You can call this lawyer and refuse to talk to us and pull every stunt all you guys do to make things worse on yourselves. Personally, I think you could even beat the parole violation charge. After you have this hearing Ms. Rapp was talking about, which would take place after you’ve been in jail a week. Am I right about the procedure?” He looked at Marjorie Rapp.
“The rules say seven days,” Ms. Rapp said, “working days, which is really nine, counting the weekend. Unless he executes a waiver of the time limit.”
“Oh, I doubt he’d do that. Mr. White’s way too savvy to be executing any waivers, huh?” Turner looked at Frank.
Frank intertwined his fingers and stared at the floor. “I’ll bet there’s an alternative,” he said, “dealing with you guys.”
Turner grinned and pointed a finger. “You’re right, Snow White. Smart guy. Ms. Rapp here doesn’t like to mess up anybody’s life, picking the fly manure out of the pepper. She’d like to reserve parole revocations for times when there’s something really serious.”
Ms. Rapp smiled the first smile Frank had ever seen on her, and regarded Agent Turner with a pleasant expression. Bet she’d like for him to get in her pants, Frank thought.
“What we were thinking is,” Agent Turner said, “that maybe you could go along with us without all the yelling for a lawyer and what-not. What we’d do is, just take a little ride and go visit some people. If you would, I think Ms. Rapp might tear up this arrest warrant she’s got.”
Frank sat up and shifted his weight from one buttock to the other.
Turner was suddenly serious. “We’d want it understood, from the outset, that you’re not under arrest. Nobody’s forcing you to do anything. Anytime you want to go, you’re free to. Just you give the word.” He spread his hands in an umpire’s “safe” signal.
Frank couldn’t resist a small grin. “Sure. That way I’m not entitled to a Miranda warning, and anything I say you can use against me.”
Turner laughed. “Miranda…?” He looked to the two guys in the kitchen. “Who said these guys were dumb, huh?” He zeroed in on Frank. “You got the picture, Paul, pretty well. Now. As long as we’re going to be calling on people, I think you should finish getting dressed. Wouldn’t want people to think we’re hauling a half-naked Indian around, would you?”
Frank called Harold Willett to say that he’d be late for work, and that he wasn’t sure what time he could come in. Willett said, “Second time in a week. This is getting sort of old.”
“Nothing I planned,” Frank said. “Personal business.”
“That’s one thing the parole people told us. If you changed your habits, started showing up late, we should let them know about it.”
Frank glanced at Mr. Shotgun, who stood in the bathroom doorway, watching. Then he said to Willett, “Okay, Harold. Give them a call.” He hung up, regretting his words and wondering if he’d still have a job tomorrow.
He put on a lime green Jack Nicklaus golf shirt, slipped his feet into off-white Nikes, and followed Mr. Shotgun out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the parking lot. Puddles of rainwater glistened under a warm springtime sun. Agent Turner stood beside a dark blue Taurus four-door with the driver’s door open, talking to Marjorie Rapp. As Frank approached, Ms. Rapp favored him with a final withering look, climbed into a red Geo Prism, and drove away. Mr. Shotgun stowed the over-and-under in the Taurus’s trunk. Frank opened the rear door on the driver’s side. Mr. Shotgun walked up to him and dug a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. The handcuff chain clinked faintly.
Agent Turner did a double take. “Jesus Christ, he’s not under arrest.”
Mr. Shotgun said, “Oh.” He jammed one bracelet into his back pocket and let the other dangle, then went around and climbed into the front passenger seat. Frank got in back, and Agent Turner slid behind the wheel and started the engine. The upholstery was vinyl and smelled almost new. The air conditioner blew cool air on Frank’s cheeks and nose.
Turner put the car in reverse, draped an arm over the seat, and looked through the rear window to back up. Frank said, “Where we going?”
Turner gave the Taurus a little gas and the car rolled backward. “You’ll see.”
Frank looked through the back window, up the stairs toward his apartment. “Those other two guys. They’re still up there searching my place, huh?”
Turner spun the wheel and dropped the lever into the drive position. “Yeah. If they break anything we’ll reimburse you, that fair enough?”
Frank leaned forward. “Hey, no reason you can’t cut me some slack. I’ve been in law enforcement. What the hell you hassling me for?”
Turner braked at the driveway exit and turned around in the seat. “Once and for all, Allen. You just sit there. When we get where we’re going you’ll find out. Tell you what, though, I’ll give you something to think about.”
“Huh?” Frank said.
“Food for thought. You want to think while we’re driving, don’t you?”
“Well…”
“Sure you do. Now think, Thurman. You know somebody named Margaret Ann Carpenter?”
Frank was suddenly cold. “Meg?”
“Margaret Ann Carpenter. Now, while we’re getting to where we’re going, you try and remember where you know her from. Come up with a good one, okay?”
The last time Frank had taken a ride with the feds was the day of his indictment, and on that occasion he’d been handcuffed. They’d arrested him at main police headquarters downtown, just
as he’d checked his squad car in at the end of the day shift. Frank would never forget the two guys, both wearing dark blue suits, one with a brush mustache and the other with a Band-Aid covering a cut underneath his eye. Just as he’d pulled up to the gas pumps they’d approached along with his shift captain, an overweight man named McFee. McFee had ordered Frank out of the car and had
confiscated his .45 service revolver. Then the agents had flashed their IDs, manacled his wrists behind his back, and led him away. Frank had been too stunned to speak, and had been afraid that he might throw up.
Instead of the usual procedure—loading the prisoner into a vehicle in the police garage for transportation to the marshals’ for booking—the agents had paraded him down the corridor and had taken him up to ground level on the elevator. Then they’d hustled him out through the main exit onto Commerce Street, where a gang of reporters and TV cameramen had been waiting, and Frank had turned his face away from the media people as he’d ducked into the backseat of a G.S.A. Motor Pool car. He’d seen himself on television as he went through in-processing at the county, and even standing in a group of prisoners he’d felt embarrassment. He remembered thinking about his mom and dad, who gathered around the TV every night at suppertime, and wondering how they felt when the image of their boy came on the screen. Since then he’d been imprisoned in the Dallas County jail, three more county holding facilities on his way to the pen, and two federal prisons. Every place where he’d done time, the other men had learned that Frank was a cop on the street. He suspected that the information had come from the guards, though his file was supposed to be strictly confidential. He’d had threats from some of the baddest inmates in the federal system, and even had broken his collarbone fighting off a bunch of prisoners as they’d lined up to do a gang rape on him. But he still considered the awful moment when the FBI agents had brought him into public view as the worst experience of his life.
Until now.
He sat in the backseat of the unmarked Taurus as Agent Turner drove north on Central Expressway, and worried about Meg. Jesus, he just had to know. As Turner exited the freeway just beyond Northpark Shopping Mall, and made a slow-moving left onto Walnut Hill Lane, Frank tried, “Look, has she been hurt or something?”
Mr. Shotgun draped an arm over the seatback and grinned at him. Turner watched Frank in the rearview mirror. Finally, Turner said, “Has who been hurt?”
Frank scooted his rump forward on the cushion. “Meg.”
“Meg who?”
“Carpenter. You know who I…”
“Margaret Ann Carpenter?” Turner said.
“Sure, Meg.”
“You tell me.” Turner and Mr. Shotgun exchanged looks. “Has something happened to her?” Turner said.
All of which told Frank that talking to these guys was a waste of time. He leaned back. “I don’t know,” he said. “Has it?”
For the rest of the drive Frank watched the tree-shaded two-lane street on both sides, big homes getting even bigger as the Taurus proceeded to the west, two-story Gothic and rambling modern houses set behind yards the size of polo fields, creeks twisting through wooded properties. A few blocks beyond Inwood Road, Turner made a left on a curving blacktop, then wound his way even further left beside a three-story with its own moat in front, complete with draw-bridge. They left the main road and entered a gravel drive, lined on both sides with cedar bushes, and crunched over gravel for a hundred, hundred and fifty yards, to stop before a huge stone porch and a massive front door. Dead center in the door was a brass knocker. Frank blinked. Though he’d been raised in Dallas, and except for his time in prison had lived here all his life, he hadn’t been in this neighborhood over three or four times. Once he recalled in connection with a burglary a couple of miles from here, when the chief had dispatched Frank’s squad from South Dallas to help in the investigation because the owner of the burglarized home had political clout. Mr. Shotgun watched Frank with a strange, crooked grin.
Turner killed the engine. “This’s it. You’ve been here before, huh?”
Frank frowned. “Me? Never.”
Turner got out, opened Frank’s door and stood aside. “Sure you haven’t. Get a move on, Marvin, we got people waiting.”
Frank stood up in the drive. Fifty feet away a bluebird hopped and twitted in the lower branches of a sycamore. The driveway up ahead widened into a turnaround, and Frank counted three more unmarked Tauruses in addition to a Porsche and a four-door Jag. The front door to the house opened and two men in dark blue suits came out. Turner climbed the steps up onto the porch and said something to the suits, who looked at Frank. Mr. Shotgun escorted Frank around the three men, past a statue of two cherubs, and on inside. Turner and the two blue suits followed. Turner closed the door with a solid, echoing thunk.
They were in a wide entry hall with a floor of marble tile. A thick oriental throw rug, around ten by twenty, covered the middle of the floor, and about twenty feet ahead a carpeted staircase ascended. Fifteen or twenty steps upward was a flat landing, after which the staircase bent to the left and went on up and out of sight behind the entry hall ceiling. Over to Frank’s left was a teak-wood breakfront; inside the breakfront were delicate china plates, cups, and saucers, and a gleaming sterling punchbowl. Photos in chrome frames decorated the walls; one featured a silver-haired man in slacks and a sweater with his arm around a beautiful woman with striking, graying hair. There were grow-ing-up pictures of a little girl, one at around age three riding a tricycle, another a school picture with the front teeth missing. As Frank looked over the girl’s graduation photo, complete with cap and gown, his eyes narrowed. The next picture in line, a full-length evening gown pose, confirmed it. The girl was Meg. Frank gaped at Turner, then moved in for a closer look at the photo.
The same silver-haired man who appeared in the picture came from the back of the house, around the base of the staircase. He wore a lightweight jogging suit, navy blue with red stripes down the arms and legs. The guy was trim and in shape. He looked at Frank and said to Turner, “This is him, huh?”
Turner didn’t answer. Frank nervously cleared his throat and extended his hand. “Frank White.” He grinned.
The guy said, “You cocksucker,” knocked Frank’s hand aside, and threw a haymaker.
The punch came in from left field and the guy didn’t have his feet planted. Frank saw it coming and moved his head just enough so that the blow glanced off the side of his jaw. Nonetheless the punch stung, and for just an instant Frank’s vision blurred. As the man wound up to swing again, Frank raised his hands in a defensive posture.
The two blue suits moved up, and Turner stepped in as well. “Now, Mr. Carpenter,” Turner said, “you’ve got every right. But let’s keep our purpose in mind, okay?”
Frank thought, Mr. Carpenter? He noted the family resemblance, the same slim nose and prominent dimples. Meg had told him she’d planned to get him together with her parents. Apparently her father didn’t think that was a good idea.
The blue suits herded Carpenter back toward the rear of the house. As they did, Carpenter pointed a finger in Frank’s direction. “You’re dead meat, fella, you hear me? Dead fucking…” He was breathing hard, and showed a pained expression as the agents moved him out of sight behind the staircase banister.
Turner looked at Frank. “How’s that affect you?” Turner said.
Frank bit his knuckle. “How does it…?”
Turner sneered. “It doesn’t. You guys, it never does.” He crooked a finger. “Come on. Follow me.”
The agent led Frank through double doors, through a den featuring a shiny black grand piano and a fifty-inch television screen, into a library which Frank figured to be forty feet long, minimum. The vaulted ceiling was two stories overhead. Bookcases extended floor to ceiling. There was a librarian’s movable ladder attached to the cases, with rollers top and bottom. Frank caught a few of the titles as he passed: Dickens and Thoreau, modern works by Michener, Saul Bellow, and even some by Robert B. Parker, Elmore Leonard, and Stephen King. His feet sank into padded carpet. Ceiling fans whup-whupped overhead.
There were three sets of easy chairs in the room, each set surrounding a small reading table. In the center of one table, ivory pieces were aligned on a pewter chessboard. At the far end of the li
brary was a huge mahogany desk, and behind the desk sat a pretty, fortyish woman in a black suit. Her hair was short and flippy, ice-skater fashion, and she wore tiny gold-framed reading glasses. Agent Turner escorted Frank over to stand in front of the desk. The woman was writing on a yellow legal pad, and now laid her pen aside and looked up. “Hello, Frank.” she said.
Air escaped Frank’s lungs in a long soft sigh. “How you, Miss Tate?” he finally said.
“It’s Mrs. You have a short memory. My friends call me Felicia, but that doesn’t include you at the moment.” She pointed a forefinger in the direction of a straight-backed cushioned chair across the desk. Her nail displayed a clear lacquer polish. “Sit down, please.”
Frank sat. Don’t tell her anything, he thought. The last time he’d tried opening up to this lady, he was pretty sure the conversation had cost him an extra year or so in prison.
She reclined in a high-backed swivel chair and fiddled with her hair. “You know what I think about when I see old acquaintances like you?” Her voice was a husky alto, low-pitched.
Frank thought that one over. “No, I don’t. Indictments. How much time you made us do, I don’t…”
“Those thoughts come later. I mean, when I first see you. Like right now.” Tate’s manner was informal, her voice resonant. In closing arguments she’d take on an evangelistic dialect like Sharon Falconer, something Frank had witnessed firsthand.
Frank rested his ankle on his opposite knee and folded his arms, not saying anything.
Tate put her elbows on the armrests and rested her chin on her intertwined fingers. “I think about my puppy.” She glanced at the matching straightbacked cushioned chair alongside Frank’s. “Sit down, Dave.”