by Carl Schmidt
“What do they have on him?” she asked.
“They have compromising photographs of him that would be embarrassing. He’s a public figure, detective. His reputation is at stake.”
“If he meets with them, Mr. Thorpe, his life will be at stake. If Joe Dunham is the one who murdered Anthony Doyle, I can tell you one thing… He is a vicious killer.”
“Was Anthony Doyle shot?” I asked.
“Sorry, but that’s privileged information.”
“Right,” I replied. “I don’t know whether they are driving or flying to Florida, but there are direct flights from Worcester to Miami. They might be on one of them. Do you think you could find out?”
“I’ll call the office immediately and have them check on it,” she said.
“If you manage to locate either of them, please call me immediately.”
“I will,” she replied.
“Do you know what cars they drive?”
“Yes. Just a second, I’ll get that for you.”
About fifteen seconds later she came back on the phone.
“Joe Dunham drives a 2010 metallic blue, Honda Accord, Massachusetts license plate 469 RT3. Sophia Stockbridge drives a 2012 white Lexus LX SUV, Mass. plate 379 TL5.”
“Very kind of you,” I said. “That might help us in Miami. Well, if there’s nothing else, I’ll let you get back to your work.”
“Thank you for the call, Mr. Thorpe. It would be a good idea for you to contact the FBI as soon as possible.”
“Thank you, Detective. If my client permits it, I certainly will.”
• • •
At noon, I called Xavier and gave him the lowdown. He still preferred to not give out his name to the authorities. I suggested that he contact Allan Roth to ask if Allan would be willing to testify about his own relationship with Nicole Shepard. She had tried to run her phony paternity scam on him. That might provide some cover for Xavier in the police investigation. If there was more evidence to suggest that Joe and Sophia murdered Tony Doyle, then suspicion for Nicole’s murder would shift toward them and away from Xavier.
He said he’d contact Allan right away and then let me know how he responded.
Finally I said, “OK. I think you’d better book your flight to Miami. Unless Joe Dunham is arrested in the next twenty hours, I will be driving south tomorrow morning with three associates. We’ll bring firearms and assorted surveillance equipment. We should be in Miami by 6:00 PM on Saturday.”
“I’ll book a flight right now,” he said.
I then put in a call to Father O’Reilly, but got no answer. He could be just as helpful as Allan Roth, but the padre had more at stake.
I called Archie and asked him to pick us up at our office at 9:30 AM. Our Florida trip was looking more likely with each passing minute. Unfortunately, the two Aloha shirts I picked up on Kauai, a few months back, were in my closet in Augusta. They were loose enough to fit nicely over my bulletproof vest. It was January in Maine, and I was in Portland. I had absolutely nothing to wear down South.
I called Eric and told him I couldn’t make the gig on Saturday night in Orono.
“Willie is going to piss and moan, Jesse.”
“It can’t be helped. I’ll be in Florida chasing two killers.”
There was a long pause.
“Jesus! Be careful. Do you want me to come along?”
“Our car is already full. Besides Angele and me, there will be two former police officers.”
“Two?” Eric asked. “Holly and who else?”
“Archie Lapointe.”
“Allstate Insurance,” Eric replied without hesitation.
“How’s that?” I asked.
“You’re in good hands.”
45
Goin’ South
He donned his black rimmed Maui Jim sunglasses, adjusted the side mirrors and put the metallic gray BMW into gear. Archie pulled away from the curb in command of his universe.
Ten minutes earlier, I had introduced him to the ladies. As Holly reached her hand out to shake his, I noticed a slight, but definite, softening of the steely gaze in Archie’s eyes. He smiled and said, “I understand you served for twenty years on the force in New York City. It’s a pleasure to meet you, and it’s good to have you with us.”
They shook hands warmly and released slowly. Holly emitted a quiet glow that lit up the room.
“Eric was right,” I thought. “We are in good hands…two pair, in fact.”
Angele and I settled comfortably into the backseat. In no time, we circled onto the 295. Five minutes later, we were on the turnpike.
The weather was clear along the Eastern Seaboard. The sun glistened on the snow along the highway as we sailed by. I could only hope the outlook in Miami would be as rosy.
Three firearms, nestled in the glove compartment, anchored my attention—Archie’s .45 Caliber Glock, Holly’s .357 Springfield and my .38 Special. I tried, unsuccessfully, to not think about our small battery of weapons.
There were thirty-five hours before Joe would be calling Xavier, and a full two days before the no-money-in-the-bag drop-off would be made. We’d have plenty of time to talk shop. But I wanted a preview, so I asked the one question that had been percolating for a couple of days.
“I assume you two have dealt with some blackmail cases. How does the money usually change hands?”
Archie glanced over at Holly, and her eyes moved to his. In the easy quiet that ensued, each of them deferred to the other.
I broke the silence with, “Did you guys see The Big Lebowski?”
“You mean, where a lunatic tosses the fake money bag out of a moving car?” Holly asked.
“Something like that,” I replied.
“There are all sorts of possibilities,” Archie offered. “Inside a crowded mall, on a lonely beach road or in the Everglades with the mosquitoes and the alligators.”
The third possibility was the least appealing, hence, I figured, the most likely.
“Maybe we’ll sail out on the ocean, beyond the twelve-mile territorial limit,” Angele suggested, “into international waters.”
That was even less appealing than the swamp. I imagined an armed skirmish with pirates at sea where our boat eventually slips into Davy Jones’ locker.
Holly finally said, “We need to keep in mind that no money will be changing hands. If we don’t get the drop on them, we may have to let them go and hope the FBI can track them down. The way I see it, Xavier may end up embarrassed, but I doubt he would ever go to prison. We should not inject ourselves into a desperate situation. The best we can hope for is to catch them off guard. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll live to fight another day.”
Everyone agreed.
The states began rolling by. We were through New Hampshire in less time than it takes to tell it. We skirted Boston, drove through Worcester and reached Hartford by one o’clock.
Angele produced some sandwiches she had packed, and we ate quietly on our way to New York. Archie pulled off the Interstate at New Rochelle, and Holly took the wheel. She was at home driving through the city. We breezed along the East River and arrived at Abe’s just before three o’clock.
“Drop me off,” I said. “I’ll just be a couple of minutes. You can drive around the block if you have too. I’ll ring Angele’s cell when I’m ready to leave the shop.”
I crossed to the south side of 57th Street and into the spy store. I knew right where the Black Cap Spy Cameras were lined up on the shelf. I picked out one with a NY Yankee emblem. The lens of the video camera looked like a white grommet set at the juncture of the N and the Y.
“Nice choice,” Abe said. “That will be $179.95. Do you want me to overnight it to Augusta?” he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
“No. I’m going to wear it,” I replied. “I’ll be undercover as soon as I hit the street.”
“You’ll blend right in…as long as you keep quiet,” Abe said.
“Why’s that?” I asked. “Do I have an accent?
”
“Only when you talk,” he replied. “Is there anything else I can get for you today?” he added.
“Just the hat, Abe.”
“Credit card?” he asked.
“Ah-yuh,” I replied. Abe smiled.
• • •
“I’m leaving the store,” I said to Angele over the phone.
“Go to the north side of the street; we’re rounding the corner now,” she replied.
I crossed over and hopped into the car wearing my new hat.
“Nice look,” Archie said.
“It might come in handy,” I replied.
Archie added, “These folks—Joe and Sophia—are from Boston, aren’t they?”
“I believe so,” I replied.
“They probably won’t take kindly to the Yankee hat,” he said. “Joe might decide to shoot you on account of Babe Ruth.”
“Abe didn’t have a Sox cap.”
“Let’s hope they’re not baseball fans, Jesse,” he said.
Holly drove us across town, through the Lincoln Tunnel to New Jersey and onto the turnpike. The traffic was heavy at first, but thinned out with each mile. We stopped in Baltimore for a quick dinner. I took the wheel just after seven o’clock in the evening.
Angele moved up front with me, while Archie and Holly relaxed in back and reminisced about their time on the force. When Holly mentioned that she retired after being shot in the leg, Archie wanted details. Angele and I listened as she told her story.
“I was driving a cruiser with my partner on a night shift in East Harlem when we got the call. An armed robbery was in progress at a liquor store two blocks away. The shop was on a corner lot; one door faced each street. I dropped Sergeant Williams off near the side door and told him to wait there. I would enter through the front and try to flush the perpetrator to him.
“I looked through the window, but couldn’t see anyone inside. At first, I thought we had arrived too late. The moment I opened the door, I heard someone moaning behind the counter to my right. The gunman must have seen me coming, because he was crouching behind a display case down the aisle on my left. I never saw him. He fired two shots. The first one hit my vest, just under my arm. The second shot hit me just below the hip on my left leg. I went down immediately.
“My partner burst through the side door and shot the assailant four times. He died on the floor for a handful of money and a bottle of wine.”
No one said a thing for several minutes. Archie surely had stories to tell, but he let Holly’s stand alone as we drove through the night. I put on Willie Nelson’s CD, Stardust. I thought it might suit Archie and Holly, and it did. In fact, I heard Holly singing along with “All of Me,” as Willie began repeating the first verse.
All of me, why not take all of me?
Can't you see, I'm no good without you…
It sounded like an invitation, so Angele and I joined in. I watched Archie in the rear view mirror, smiling and soaking it up. It was a good omen.
• • •
Angele took the wheel in Richmond. The moon, a couple of days past full, had risen just above the horizon on the driver’s side and blinked through the trees like a strobe light.
When it was almost midnight, I said, “We’re making good time. We can afford to stop somewhere and sleep for six or seven hours. How does that sound?”
Everyone thought that was a good idea.
The next town was Rocky Mount, North Carolina. I got on my iPhone and looked for a place to stay. There were several hotels just east of the freeway. I called the Marriott and asked if they had any vacancies.
“We’re about half full,” came the reply.
“We’ll be there shortly,” I said.
“One room?” she asked.
“Two or three,” I replied.
“Very good,” she said, and we hung up.
We pulled into the Marriott parking lot five minutes later, parked and walked inside. When we got to the front desk, the woman behind the counter asked, “Are you the ones who just called?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“What’ll it be? Two rooms or three?” she asked.
“Two will be fine,” Holly replied softly from behind my left ear.
“Two will be just fine,” I echoed.
“We have adjoining rooms on the second floor, each with two queen beds. Will that be all right?”
“Sure,” I said.
We grabbed our overnight bags and went to our rooms.
“Looks as if Archie and Holly are hitting it off,” I said.
Angele nodded and replied, “They were made for each other.”
I set the alarm for six o’clock and turned off the lights.
“Joe and Sophia are in over their heads,” Angele added.
“Somebody is,” I thought, but I kept my tongue in check, all except for a goodnight kiss.
46
What’ll Y’all Have?
It was dark when the alarm went off.
I disentangled myself from a dream to discover that I was actually in North Carolina. I thought to myself… “Let’s see. It’s eleven-and-a-half hours to Miami. If we are on the road at seven-thirty, we’ll be fine. We can shower and eat in, say, forty-five minutes. That leaves us with a little extra time.”
The math was easy, and, as it turned out, so was Angele.
She slid next to me, lifted my elbow off the mattress and moved in closer until my arm was wedged between her breasts. She then raised her hand to my cheek and gently rolled my face to meet hers. She seemed determined to arrange my predawn schedule, which was fine by me.
“This should smooth the edges,” she murmured as her hand slipped along my body under the sheets and found what it was looking for. After a couple of minutes, we were generating enough steam to drive a locomotive. At that point, Angele rolled on top.
Truth be told, I had not experienced any rough edges in the hour before I awoke. I was confused, perhaps, but nothing required smoothing. The theater of my imagination tossed together an odd assortment of unrelated, but tasty vignettes—like a Waldorf salad.
In “real life,” the lines between comedy and tragedy are fairly well drawn. We crack jokes at weddings, parties and sporting events, but not during police interrogations, border checkpoints or funerals. Lucid dreams and black comedies, on the other hand, are governed by an amorphous set of social regulations, and the laws of physics no longer apply.
Between five and six that morning, I had been watching a private showing of the new Coen Brothers’ film, Largo. The ground was white as snow, and bottles of suntan lotion dotted the landscape. Most of the women were wearing bikinis—or less.
Joe Dunham, standing near the camera, stage left, opened with a soliloquy, “Just in town on business. Doin’ the old in-and-out…in the Florida Keys.”
Holly Winters, with a magnifying glass in her hand, was eyeballing a tire-track left in the sand. She knelt down, and without looking up, said, “Jesse, it’s either a Gary Fisher Dual Sport or a Schwinn Cruiser.”
I reached down to help her up, but she waved me off.
“Geez,” I said. “Are you all right?”
Holly replied, “It’s just the morning sickness. I thought I was going to barf.”
The scene then shifted. Archie Lapointe, in a police uniform, had just pulled Joe Dunham to the side of the road and was conducting an interview.
“Nice tandem you have there, mister,” Archie said.
“Have I done something wrong, officer?” Joe asked, while reaching for his side arm.
“Hard to tell at this point,” Archie replied. “Perhaps you didn't notice, but half a mile back, your wife fell off your bike.”
Joe eased his hand away from his gun and replied, “Thank God for that. I thought I had gone deaf.”
Archie removed a pen from his lapel and was about to write something down, when the scene shifted again. This time, Holly was questioning Sophia Stockbridge at a desk in a small office. Ranger stood at attention by Holl
y’s side.
“So you haven't had any Schwinns go missing, then?” Holly asked amiably.
“We run a pretty tight ship. Besides, a woman without religion is like a fish without a bicycle.”
Holly scratched her head and replied, “I don’t get it.”
“I loathe cops who rely on dogs to do their bidding,” Sophia continued. “Really, they are cowards without the guts to bite people themselves.”
“Ranger doesn’t bite,” Holly replied in a testy voice. “Have you done an inventory?” she pressed.
I expected Sophia to say, “Ma’am, I’ve answered your questions,” but instead, she reached into a drawer, pulled out a .357 Magnum, and tossed it into the air. When it reached its apex, it became a plantain. Then, before it hit the ground, Angele came flying across the screen, completely naked, and caught it in her outstretched hand.
That’s when my alarm went off.
It was quite a challenge to uncouple from my dream and, at the same time, engage Angele on the bed, but, as one might expect, it was not long before she had my undivided attention. Angele was squirming this way and that, and crying out my name in a thunderous voice. I reached both arms around her and rolled her over.
“We’d better keep it quiet,” I said. “Holly and Archie are right next door.”
“They can’t hear us, Jesse,” she replied, half out of breath. “The shower is running. Their headboard banged the wall several times twenty minutes ago.”
“Really?” I replied. “I never heard a thing.”
“Ooooh!” Angele moaned, loud enough to wake all the roosters in both Carolinas.
“Ooooh,” I echoed, an octave lower, just in case any of the hens were still asleep.
• • •
Twenty minutes later, we met Holly and Archie at the House of Pancakes. The moment I saw the sign, I began reliving my dream sequence once again. As we walked through the door, I looked around, half expecting to see Peter Stormare or Steve Buscemi eating breakfast. I was somewhat relieved to find that every patron in the place was at least seventy years old. To lure the snowbirds into local hotels, Rocky Mount bills itself as the midpoint between New York and Miami Beach. It looked as if we’d be passing the pancake crowd, and their Cadillacs, for the rest of the day.