Tagged for Murder

by Jack Fredrickson

  ‘To race,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Goat racing,’ I said, to be even more precise.

  ‘It’s become popular, from time to time.’ He stuck his hands into the pouches on either side of the tool belt that were meant for nails or screws.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Iowa, among other places.’

  ‘Corn is popular in Iowa, but you’ve not planted any here.’

  ‘Laugh if you must.’

  And so I did. I laughed, long and loud and with some relief. There’d been so much death.

  ‘And now goat racing is poised to take off here?’ I asked finally.

  ‘On opening day, which is in just a few days …’ He faked a cough, and pointed to the back of the trailer.

  My laughter died. ‘You’ll be needing your freezer?’

  ‘Ice cream is set to be delivered soon.’

  And that, too, was a relief of sorts. It established an end point, a time when I must give it all up. ‘I’ll remove the meat,’ I said.

  I left then, because there was always the chance that, if I hung around in too close a proximity to what I’d left in his freezer, I might become as hysterical as the goats.

  I drove over to the city garage at ten that night, well past dark. Booster Gibbs came out, smiling, and handed me three of the five C-notes I’d given him to find the Jeep and bring it back to Rivertown.

  ‘Including the cleanse?’ I asked, surprised. Two hundred dollars for his crew was too cheap.

  He shrugged. ‘I sent two guys in a tilt flatbed. They never made it as far as Austin. They spotted your Jeep on a side street just off Chicago Avenue, in Oak Park. Your keys were in the ignition, your phone in the cup holder. They drove it back.’

  ‘Let me guess. It was close to the bus stop.’

  ‘A half-mile away, but yeah,’ he said. ‘It was dumb luck my guys spotted it at all.’

  It was close enough to where Weasel had picked up Mister Shade, the kid who may, or may not, have gone missing. Weasel could have caught a bus west toward Rivertown from that bus stop, or caught a cab.

  ‘Let me get this straight, Dek,’ Booster went on. ‘It was Weasel you were afraid we’d find shot dead in your Jeep, in Austin?’

  ‘It was a concern, yes. Bullets were flying everywhere.’

  ‘You were close to the Jeep when the gunfire erupted?’

  ‘The Jeep had stopped, I think. I was between it and the house I was looking for.’

  ‘Easy targets, you on foot and Weasel in the Jeep. He survived, right? Not only survived, but for all the gunfire you heard, not a single bullet hit you or your Jeep?’

  ‘Yes again,’ I said. He was saying what I’d just about come to believe.

  ‘And then, unmolested, he drove your Jeep to Oak Park, left it with the keys in the ignition and the cell phone in plain sight …?’ He let the question trail off, so I could answer it.

  ‘Where maybe it could be stolen after he walked to the bus stop,’ I said, becoming smarter by the minute.

  ‘What a crafty guy, that Weasel,’ he said. ‘He was hoping the Jeep would vanish, making it look like he was a victim, too, pulled from the car and having to escape on foot from the guys who came after you.’

  ‘I was set up to be scared, but not to be killed,’ I said, sure of it now, and relieved.

  ‘Except by random gangbangers, passing by.’

  ‘For sure, but the intension was to have me scared away, stranded, without a car to keep nosing around in.’

  ‘Weasel’s not crafty enough to set something like that up by himself.’ He laughed. ‘He got scared, too, even though he knew what was about to come down. The interior was drenched with milk. He’d splattered almost a whole quart speeding away, the rat. And since I always figure it’s best to cleanse, even for things we can’t see, we washed it out.’

  ‘That bastard,’ I said.

  ‘I beat him up in fourth grade for stealing my baseball glove.’

  ‘Did it feel good?’

  ‘Only until the next day, when he stole it again. I never did find that glove.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  He shrugged. ‘Only thing I could do. I beat him up again.’

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  I was up on the roof at nine the next morning when the black Impala pulled to the curb. A huge thunderstorm had just passed over, the first of the approaching spring, and I’d gone up to make sure the pole net I’d left there, at the ready, hadn’t been blown away.

  I bent over the balustrade as the rumpled Kopek and the unwrinkled Jacks eased out of the Impala and started for the turret.

  ‘I’ll be right there, gents,’ I called down.

  Both looked up, but only Kopek shook his head.

  ‘Been busy, Elstrom?’ he asked, when I opened the door.

  His hands were empty. He’d not brought a bakery bag, and that was a disappointment, for I’d finished the pastry surrounds of the last prune kolachky the night before, outside on the bench by the river. The prune filling itself I’d tossed to a duck, which was otherwise floating peacefully along the Willahock. He was a wise duck. He let it sink.

  ‘There are always things to do,’ I said.

  ‘Herbert Sunheim,’ he said.

  ‘Any word?’ I asked, pretending.

  ‘You went to Rickey Means’ answering service to drop off a report on Sunheim’s behalf.’

  ‘That was agitation,’ I said.

  ‘Once we’d identified Means as the victim, we asked his service to notify us of anyone trying to contact him. Clever, you going there, pretending you didn’t know Means was dead.’

  ‘And passing yourself off as Sunheim,’ the almost always reticent Jacks added.

  ‘Agitation, as I said. I wanted to see if anyone would call Herbie’s office, acting on behalf of Means,’ I said. ‘Alas, I don’t think anyone did.’

  ‘We would have let it go, but then we received these.’ He pulled out his phone and showed me a picture.

  ‘Tire ruts, artfully photographed,’ I said. ‘I sent them to an insurance guy at CSB.’

  ‘Again, passing yourself off as Sunheim.’

  ‘More agitation.’

  ‘CSB’s man, a Mr Hanson, wants us to believe these pictures prove his rail line isn’t responsible for anything, since the photos seem to show someone else pulled the railcar to the end of the spur.’

  ‘His lawyers want to think that,’ I said, ‘but it doesn’t matter who tugged the railcar. It’s those who tossed Rickey Means out the window that you want.’

  ‘You dangled the pictures in front of Hanson, to learn what the shipment contained,’ he said.

  ‘Restaurant fixtures of some sort, he said.’

  ‘Where is Sunheim?’

  ‘This isn’t just about a body on a boxcar, is it? Or my reporting Sunheim missing?’

  ‘Where is Sunheim?’

  ‘You tell me. You talked to his landlady in Brookfield, right?’

  ‘Twice. The second time, she told us an insurance man had come looking for Sunheim. She showed us your card.’

  ‘I had to pose as myself, since she already knew Sunheim.’

  Jacks groaned. Kopek didn’t smile. ‘You led that woman on. You told her she could recover rent by filing a claim against insurance proceeds,’ he said.

  ‘That was a sort of dangling, too.’

  ‘She left you alone in Sunheim’s room.’

  ‘There was nothing there, as you saw for yourselves. I’m guessing the landlady gave it a good scrubbing, looking for something to hold in lieu of past due rent. He’s not been there for some time, she said.’

  ‘Maybe you missed something, or maybe not,’ Kopek said.

  I put confusion on my face.

  ‘Paint flecks under the bed,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ I asked, like I hadn’t tried to sweep the damned things away.

  ‘Paint flecks,’ he said again. ‘We noticed a few under the bed the first time we visited. We didn
’t think they were important. But when we went back the second time – this being after you’d been there – we noticed that there were more scattered beneath the headboard. Plus, several had made it well past the mattress, like someone had tried to brush them away.’

  ‘What do paint flecks have to do with anything?’ I asked, because it was expected.

  ‘That’s what we wanted to know, so Jacks here crawled under the bed, that second visit. Want to know what he found?’

  ‘More paint flecks, like you said.’

  ‘A loose baseboard,’ he said, watching my face.

  ‘Meaning the landlady had bumped it with her vacuum cleaner?’

  ‘The nails had been removed so it could be pulled away from the wall. That loosened the paint, scattering those few little flecks we noticed the first time. The nail holes were filled with white toothpaste to disguise the fact that the nails were missing.’

  I had to play along. ‘You think more flecks mean someone removed the baseboard between your visits?’

  ‘Got any thoughts on who that might have been?’

  ‘The landlady told me visitors come and go for all her tenants.’

  ‘She told us the only one she saw was you.’

  ‘She told me she doesn’t see all the visitors. What was behind the baseboard?’

  ‘Nothing except an empty hiding place.’

  ‘I saw no paint specks, no loose baseboard, so I saw no secret hiding place.’

  ‘You work for Sunheim, Elstrom. What’s he trying to hide?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘When’s the last time you spoke to him?’ he asked.

  ‘We’ve been over this. The morning he hired me to take photos at the Central Works. And then he texted me early the following morning, thanking me for the pictures.’

  ‘So why keep working this, if Sunheim’s gone?’

  ‘He sent me twice the agreed-upon fee. For a guy who loved every nickel he didn’t have to spend, paying double meant he wanted more, but he never got around – I mean, he hasn’t yet gotten around – to telling me what else he wants me to do. After he returned none of my calls, I contacted the police.’

  ‘Sunheim’s assistant told us you’ve been agitating her, too.’

  ‘And Sunheim’s wife,’ I said, skipping past Violet Krumfeld. ‘Mrs Sunheim is angry, interested only in divorce and getting out from under a Cadillac lease. At first, I thought she wasn’t concerned enough about his disappearance, but then I realized she doesn’t want to talk to him; she just wants some checks. I said my finding Herbie might get her those checks, and that’s why she ought to give me his new address. I think she’s innocent in whatever’s gone wrong with Herbie, but have you checked out whether there is life insurance on Herbie?’

  ‘Small stuff. They have a hundred grand policies on each other. But we are interested in that fancy car she drives.’

  ‘As I said, it’s a lease. He didn’t fork down the big money to buy it outright.’

  ‘He must have been anticipating good times, financially, to have leased the thing?’

  I had the thought, then, that he knew exactly what was no longer behind Herbie’s baseboard. I shrugged, said nothing.

  He gave it up. ‘Who else have you agitated?’

  ‘Walter Dace,’ I said, still surprised he hadn’t learned it already from a security camera video.

  ‘The property manager for Triple Time Partners,’ Kopek said.

  ‘And that answers the question you ducked earlier. You’re investigating everybody involved with the Central Works. Why?’

  ‘It’s bothersome, finding a corpse on top of a railcar. Now, about a question you ducked. Violet Krumfeld? How much did you agitate her?’

  ‘I gave her a dummied report, too. She doesn’t know anything about Herbie’s dealings with Central Works.’

  ‘How recently did you talk to her?’

  ‘She ran Hanson’s name out to me yesterday morning,’ I said, mindful of the black Impala, perhaps Kopek’s, that had followed her away.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’d misplaced my phone. And then I dropped in on her later in the day.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To press her one last time about anything she knew about Central Works. I’m trying everything I can to find Herbie.’

  ‘You drove all the way into the city to press her? You couldn’t have called?’

  ‘I was hoping to have lunch with my ex-wife. She wasn’t available.’

  Jacks nodded. ‘Miss Phelps’ assistant says she gets tied up a lot, and often can’t be reached.’

  ‘You called Amanda?’

  ‘We tried. We never got past her assistant.’ He made it sound casual, but they’d begun keeping tabs on me, building a file.

  ‘This isn’t just about a body on a boxcar, is it? Or a missing person I reported?’

  Kopek just smiled. ‘Have you heard from Violet Krumfeld recently?’

  ‘You mean since midday, yesterday, when I saw her?’

  ‘She’s not answering the phone at Sunheim’s office.’

  ‘She might have followed my advice and quit. I told her I doubted Herbie would ever write her another paycheck.’

  ‘Because he’s disappeared?’

  ‘Missing men don’t often write checks. Get her phone number; she’ll tell you what I said.’

  ‘We’ve found no record of a cell phone, or a landline, or even where she lives.’

  ‘She knows nothing,’ I said, again.

  ‘How was the prune?’ Kopek asked.

  ‘In desperation, necessary,’ I said. ‘I threw the filling of the last one at a duck.’

  ‘What did the duck do?’

  ‘Ducked,’ I said, because I could think of nothing smarter to say.

  Kopek nodded at that, and they walked to their car and drove away. They’d come about paint flecks and a baseboard cavity.

  What I couldn’t tell was what they’d taken away.

  TWENTY-NINE

  It started raining black Impalas. Another one showed up that afternoon. Two men got out. Both were in their early thirties, wore well-cut dark suits, and had even better cut, gelled dark hair.

  ‘No trespassing,’ I said to the one holding up a badge, coming up to my door.

  He didn’t smile, just like he hadn’t smiled when I’d snapped his picture next to the No Trespassing sign the first morning I’d gone to Central Works.

  ‘Interesting color combination,’ the other one, the driver, called out. He walked over to the Jeep. Making a show of looking at my license plate, he pulled out his phone and murmured into it.

  I recognized him, too, by his voice, from the day I’d hidden from them both inside the Central Works. He was the one who’d gone to watch my Jeep.

  According to the ID that went with the badge, the cop who’d come up was named Raines. ‘Green top on a red paint job,’ he called back, arching his eyebrows.

  ‘People might consider it too Christmassy,’ the driver said, still holding the phone to his ear. ‘You never see those two colors combined on the same vehicle.’

  ‘Almost never,’ Raines said. ‘But we saw it recently, didn’t we? Parked up the street from an abandoned factory?’ He turned to look squarely at me. ‘Different driver, though.’

  ‘The other guy was more colorful, dressed like a parrot,’ the driver said, putting his phone in his pocket as he came forward to join Raines. His ID said his name was Cuthbert.

  ‘Jungle colors, you called it,’ Raines said, reminding him. Reminding me, too, though I hoped they didn’t know I’d overheard.

  ‘Your interest in my ride speaks well of your ability to appreciate innovation,’ I said.

  ‘So, who the hell is this guy?’ Raines asked the driver, Cuthbert.

  ‘How did you find your way here if you didn’t know who I was?’ I asked.

  ‘Vlodek Elstrom, according to his license plate registration,’ Cuthbert said. ‘Vlodek?’

  ‘An ancestral name I never use. I’m c
alled Dek,’ I said. ‘You were just passing by and spotted my Jeep?’

  Cuthbert turned and started back to the Jeep. ‘Mind?’ he asked, over his shoulder.

  ‘I have a choice?’

  Cuthbert took that as acquiescence, opened the driver’s door and leaned in for a look. He only took a minute. Coming back, he said, ‘You keep a clean car, Elstrom. The carpet’s damp with shampoo.’

  ‘I am manic about some things,’ I said.

  ‘Just washed?’

  I nodded, thinking they’d gotten tipped to my being in Austin two nights before, and wondering who might have told them. A bigger wonder was how they knew when Kopek and Jacks did not.

  I decided not to ask. It didn’t seem to be a morning for candor.

  ‘Where did you wash it?’ Cuthbert asked.

  ‘Some place in the city, coin-operated, do-it-yourself,’ I said, because such places didn’t give receipts that could be traced. ‘I spotted it, driving by. I probably couldn’t find that place again in a million years.’

  ‘Herbert Sunheim,’ Raines said. ‘What’s your interest in him?’

  ‘Do you know Detectives Kopek and Jacks?’

  ‘Heard of them,’ Raines said.

  ‘You’re working the same case. I’ve discussed all this with them.’

  ‘Discuss Sunheim with me,’ he said.

  ‘As you must know, Herbie was the realtor who brokered the sale of Central Works. As you must know, Rickey Means, the man found on the boxcar, was the lawyer on that sale. Herbie hired me to take photos of the building and the railcar the day after Means was found. You remember that, right, Raines? I even took one of you, frowning. I sent the photos to Herbie, and heard nothing afterward. He’d quit answering his phone. I got worried and called the police, to see if Herbie had been found somewhere.’

  ‘Found how?’ Cuthbert asked.

  ‘Found dead. Until just a few moments ago, I assumed Kopek and Jacks were the lead detectives on the Means investigation, because they were the ones who responded to my missing person call. But now you’ve arrived. I’m struggling to see how you fit.’

  ‘It’s a complex case,’ Raines said. ‘We’re working different angles.’

  ‘Including following Violet Krumfeld? That’s how you found me, right?’