Fiddle Game

by Richard A. Thompson

  “No. It has been there since late this afternoon.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I think they are waiting for you, Herr Herman.”

  So much for karma.

  Chapter Six

  Flight to Avoid

  I suppose most people would have made a mad dash for the rear exit then and there, but I had used up my panic reflex for the day. I moved away from the window, had another sip of coffee, and looked at the man who had been my host for the past couple of hours.

  “Why do you say they’re looking for me, G.B.?” But even as I said it, I suddenly knew the answer. The name on the shop door, that I hadn’t quite recognized, was also on the certificate of authenticity for the Amati. It was an automatic connection, and I had walked right into it.

  “I’m not positive, mind you. They didn’t tell me a name, only that I should be watching for a man who was looking for a very old violin.”

  “Looking for one? Are you sure they didn’t say he would be bringing one for you to look at?”

  He shook his head. “They said what I just told you. But then, they didn’t strike me as the sharpest tools on the bench, either. They could have got it wrong. They fooled around with my instruments, like a bunch of obnoxious little children, and then they tried to act serious and important. I didn’t like them very much.”

  “Are they still here, in the building?”

  “Only the uniformed officer out in the car, I think. Maybe another one out in front. I haven’t looked there for a while.”

  “So what do you intend to do?”

  “Do? Why would I do anything? I already told you, I didn’t like them.”

  “And that’s it?” I said. “That’s all you need to be willing to harbor a possible fugitive?”

  “I have lived in places where the police know how to intimidate people, Herr Herman. Intimidate and hurt. I assure you, these fellows are amateurs, and not very talented ones at that. I don’t like them, and I do rather like you. Yes, that is all I need. What do you need?”

  I thought about it for a while and then told him.

  ***

  When I went over to the squad car at the curb, the officer inside was busy tapping something into the keyboard of his big onboard computer, which left him looking away from me and the building I had just come from. That explained a lot. He seemed to have a computer instead of a partner, and I had to wonder how much comfort that was when the shooting started. It was the coming trend, though. Robo Friday, virtual partner.

  “Are things as dull out here as they are inside?” I said.

  He whirled around to face me and began to reach for his pistol. Then his eyes registered the phony badge that I had carefully placed just peeking out from behind the lapel of Feinstein’s raincoat, and he relaxed and gave me a more leisurely look.

  “I didn’t know we had a man inside,” he said.

  “It figures, doesn’t it? It wasn’t enough of a bullshit operation to start with, so they threw some more manpower at it.”

  “You got the ‘bullshit’ part right, anyway.”

  “Yeah, well, it all pays the same, they say.” I stuffed my hands deep in my pockets, the way I hoped a bored detective would.

  “That’s what they say, all right,” said the cop. “And it all counts for thirty.” What a stimulating conversation. It even made me feel like a cop. So far, so good, but sooner or later, he would…

  “I don’t think I know you, detective.”

  That, right there, is what he would do. And with his hand alarmingly close to his weapon again, too. Well, there was nothing for it now but to pick a name and try it out.

  “Hanes,” I said, offering my hand. “I work with Evans.” And in my off-duty time, I manufacture underwear.

  “Bunco, huh? I don’t get over there much. Been on the strawberry wagon a lot lately. Lots of action, but no weight, if you know what I mean. I’m Benson.” He took my hand and, to my astonishment and joy, shook it, rather than cuffing the wrist it was attached to.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I know exactly what you mean. Pleased to meet you.” I had no clue what he meant. But the information about Evans being on the Bunco Squad was certainly interesting. Not Homicide at all, but the division that dealt with con games and grifts. My, my, my. I would also have liked to find out what case Evans was officially working at that exact moment, but I figured I had pushed my luck far enough. Time to wrap up this little bit of street theater, before the set fell apart on me.

  “How long you been out here?” I said.

  “Three and a half hours, but who’s counting?”

  “Nobody relieved you?”

  “Do I look relieved?”

  “That really sucks, man.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Tell you what, Benson,” I said. “I’m on my way out, but if you want, I’ll stay with the unit for fifteen, while you take a code seven.” I may not know what a “strawberry wagon” is, but I do know that a car is a “unit,” and a “code seven” is a rest break. In this case, it was also the magic phrase.

  “You sure about that?”

  “Absolutely.” If he only knew how sure.

  “You’re on.” He hoisted himself out of the car, dropped his flashlight in its holster, and motioned to me to take his place.

  “Use the computer, if you want,” he said. “But don’t forget, CIS can tell every site you went to, even if you erase it, okay?”

  Still more unsolicited information. I was starting to like this guy a lot. Maybe I wouldn’t steal his squad car, after all. I nodded and climbed in the driver’s seat, and he went off toward the building, walking like a man who has just remembered he has a bladder he’s been neglecting. I figured he wouldn’t be gone long, though. After all, I never did find a coffee machine in the building, and Feinstein damn sure wasn’t going to give him anything.

  I decided to leave the car, and the sooner the better, but first I wanted a look at that computer. I’m not even slightly proficient with these things, but it was an opportunity I couldn’t resist. The screen was full of dialogue between Benson’s unit and at least two others, mostly in some language known only to cops. Not what I wanted, even if I could decipher it. I looked around for a mouse and found none, but I did find a cute little black pad that made the cursor move when I fingered it, and I figured the bar at the bottom of the pad was the equivalent of the mouse-clicker. Or whatever the hell it’s called. I sent the chit-chat display off into some electronic Never Never Land and looked at a screen full of icons. I didn’t see any that might be a gateway to homicide or bunco files. I tried opening something that called itself Day Book, but found that I needed a password. Seeing none written on the windshield or dashboard in magic marker, I gave up on that. I looked instead at the little bars at the bottom of the screen that showed what files were already open. One of them was labeled APBs, and I clicked it into a new window.

  There were about twenty listings of outstanding warrants, a couple of which had added notes about recent apprehensions. When I scrolled down, I could see the lists from previous days, too. A lot of familiar names there. Some good, long-time customers and some I wished I had never heard of. Hector Ruiz, a regular of mine, was wanted for smacking his grandmother around again, and Henderson the Pain King was wanted for smacking anybody he could find. Willie Martin, better known as Whisper, was wanted for murder one. That would make the fourth time, if memory served. No bond there, and that didn’t break my heart in the slightest. That guy gave me the creeps.

  I went on down the list of candidates for County housing, smiling at the predictable repeaters. Actual and potential scenes of confrontation or flight, fight, arrest, and even death, were all laid out in a crisp shorthand that was positively chilling. One officer had been shot that day, though not fatally, and one drug dealer named Slick Cicero had gone down, rather than go in. My man Benson hadn’t made a high-profile arrest in days, poor soul. But then, as we had both j
ust said, it all pays the same.

  My own name was about halfway down the list. Shit.

  I was only “wanted for questioning in connection with…,” which wasn’t too bad, except that I was listed as “armed and extremely dangerous.” Get real here, folks. Maybe Evans just didn’t want to admit he’d been taken out of the play by an unarmed amateur, but the other cops reading the list wouldn’t know that. Or maybe he just wanted me to get shot. Too many maybes to contemplate, and I had already tarried too long behind enemy lines. The simple fact was that I was wanted. It was a different game now.

  I closed the APB window, left the real window on the real cop car open, and got my wanted body out of there. A glance back at the building told me that Officer Benson was still making the most of his break, while at one of the windows, G. B. Feinstein was giving me a thumbs up. I gave him a quick wave back and melted into the shadows between the nearest two apartment buildings. I trotted for a while, putting several blocks and a freeway ramp between me and the abandoned “unit.” Then I slowed to a more leisurely pace, switching to alleys and backyards. The Stealth Bondsman vanishes again. What a guy. I could hardly wait to see what he would do next.

  A man on the run needs three things: money, transportation, and a destination, which is not the same as merely a place to lay low. All three of those needs are possible traps.

  A lot of wanted felons don’t make it past need number one. They get picked up waiting around for their bank to open, or going into a traceable cache, or just talking to somebody who owes them money or might conceivably loan it to them. Or if they’re really dumb, which most criminals definitely are, they get nailed adding an armed robbery or two to the list of performances they’re already wanted for.

  Those who manage to get some operating cash without blowing the whistle on themselves may still get caught by driving their own car too long or traveling on plastic. And of the ones who avoid all those pitfalls, a large percentage are picked up at their homes, their girlfriends’ pads, their favorite bars, or Mom’s place. Especially that last one. It is a wonderful bit of trade irony that the more dangerous and desperate a fugitive is, the more likely he is to go to Mom. I’ve never even tried to figure that one out, but I’ve seen it enough to believe it absolutely. Jackson’s Theorem Number Six: If a man goes to hide with his mother, apprehend him with extreme prejudice and a lot of firepower.

  I have also observed that if a man commits none of the above acts of criminal stupidity, travels without using plastic, and goes to a place he has never been and has no reason to ever go, he is virtually impossible to catch. Until he comes back, and there’s the rub. That’s why a place to lay low is not the same as a destination. If your ultimate plan involves getting your old life back, then any hiding place that doesn’t let you work on that problem is just a dead end. Most fugitives do come back, and so would I, but not until I had arranged a better script for my reception party. Meanwhile, it was definitely time to go to ground.

  The stakeout with Patrolman Benson was most likely an informal operation, set up on Evans’ personal authority. If he was only Bunco, he wouldn’t have enough clout to set it up for multiple sites. So I could probably risk one trip back there, if I didn’t linger. Also on the plus side, the computer listing for me had not included any mention of my car, so it should be safe for me to drive it around for a few hours at least. After that, I had better be financed and gone.

  I headed back towards downtown, keeping to alleys and poorly-lit streets. Walking past the back of a block of tenements, I was surprised at how many lights were still on in the shabby apartments, despite the late hour. Jumbled black and gray background, with dim little windows of yellow light, floating in space, showing film clips of other people’s lives.

  My instinct was to stare, and I felt a bit dirty about it, like an intruder, even though there was nothing very interesting to see. In one dingy kitchen, some men sat around a table, playing cards and drinking beer. In another, a frail white-haired woman was feeding a scrawny cat on top of a similar table. Several windows were filled with the flickering blue light of TV sets. The TVs were animated, but the black silhouettes in front of them were not. In yet another kitchen, a man and a woman were standing in the middle of the room, holding each other. Not hugging and kissing and fondling, just holding. Each one claiming the other as a sole ally against the night. The reason could be deliverance or tragedy, joy or unbearable sorrow: the phone call from the hospital, the telegram from the Army, the layoff slip or the bonus in the pay packet, the good or bad numbers in the lottery, the check that was or wasn’t in the mail. All with the same result. That’s what couples do, I thought, if they’re real. They hold.

  Watching them, I suddenly knew. I didn’t have a mom to get me trapped, or a woman to hold, or any other family that anybody knew about, but I knew where I needed to go.

  ***

  I got back to my office, cased it front and back from a block away first, and then went in, leaving the lights off. The floor safe under Agnes’ desk had a little less than a thousand dollars in it. I left the two hundred I had promised to Wilkie, plus another two for operating capital for Aggie, and took the rest. I threw it and some clothes into the briefcase I had gotten with Stroud’s stuff, locked up again, and left without a backwards glance. No phone calls, no notes, no computer nonsense, just in and out in less than five minutes. The streets were still empty, the night quiet, and I held back premature thoughts about being home free. Two blocks away, I cased the parking ramp as carefully as I had my office. The place was deserted, and I quickly found my old BMW on the third level and took it out, driving neither fast nor slow.

  I drove straight to the Amtrak depot on Cleveland Avenue, where I parked in the long-term part of the lot and locked the car up. Inside, I bought a ticket on the morning train to Chicago, with a connection to Seattle on the Empire Builder, complete with observation car and diner. But I didn’t get a sleeping compartment. People with sleepers get catered to and remembered. Coach-class passengers might as well be cattle, for all the notice that’s taken of them. I paid for the ticket with a credit card. The train didn’t board for another three hours, and I made a point of asking the ticket agent if there was a good coffee shop nearby. I have no idea what he told me, but we had a nice chat about it. This was good. I also went to the lobby ATM and drew another $500 out of two separate accounts.

  Outside, I found a vacant cab to take me to the Hertz agency at the main Twin Cities airport, where I rented a Pontiac sedan. I used the Cox credit card and driver’s license from the briefcase, the ones Wilkie had said were really good fakes. They had better be.

  “You don’t look much like your photo, Mr. Stroud,” said the agent at the counter.

  “It’s old,” I told her. “I’ve put on a lot of weight since then. The disease, I’m afraid. Probably terminal.”

  “Oh, my God, I’m so sorry.” She began doing busy, important things with papers. Nice kid, but a bit on the ditzy side.

  “My problem. Don’t trouble yourself about it.”

  “Geez, that’s so brave.” Then she paused and got a thoughtful look, which may have been a bit of a strain for her. “I thought most diseases made you thin, not fat.”

  “You think I’m fat?”

  “No, I didn’t mean that, at all. I think you’re actually, kind of, um. Well, I just meant…”

  “When I get depressed, I eat a lot.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. I can see doing that. Me, too.” She did some more important things with papers, working even harder at being helpful now. “Great, then. Just sign here, and initial here, here, and here. I don’t suppose you want the supplemental insurance? I mean, I’m sorry, but I have to ask, you know?”

  “How much is it?”

  She told me, and I said, “Sure.”

  “Really?”

  “You can’t have too much insurance.”

  “I guess. But I mean, well…wow.”

  Two minutes later, I w
as headed out of the lot, having kicked the tires, inspected all the existing scratches in the paint, and assured the agent that she really didn’t have to worry about me. It almost seemed a pity to go. I think she wanted to take me home with her. Probably not the holding type, but she did a good “wow.”

  The Pontiac had kind of a rubbery ride, I thought, and it smelled of air freshener, but it had pretty good sight lines and plenty of power, and it looked like a million other cars on the road. It would do. The clock on the dash read 3:22, which was just fine. It was about six hours, plus rest stops, to where I was going, and there was no point in getting there before mid-morning. Upstate, they call it, and every state has one. Way upstate. So far, in fact, that it was in a different state altogether. There, the only real family I ever had, my Uncle Fred, was doing his third stretch in a prison called the Bomb Factory.

  Chapter Seven

  Upstate

  It wasn’t called the Bomb Factory because it was full of anarchists, but because that’s what it had originally been. It was built in World War II to make bombs and artillery shells. Maybe napalm, too, though only the people who worked there knew for sure. They were very big on secrecy back then. A slip of the lip could sink a ship, even a thousand miles from any ocean. They were also very paranoid about saboteurs. The high concrete walls that ringed the complex were built to keep people out, not in. The machine gun towers at the corners were also original, and a mile of open marshland in every direction gave them a free field of fire. Against whom, your guess is as good as mine. Neo-Luddites, maybe.

  Its first name was the Redrock Munitions Facility. Now it’s called the Redrock State Penitentiary, and it’s a medium-security prison for nonviolent repeat offenders, like my Uncle Fred. The old smokestacks are still there, and the open lowland, the cost of wrecking and reclaiming being astronomical. The stacks lean a bit now, and the walls that surround them are cracked and crooked in places. Someday, the whole complex may simply sink into the surrounding marsh, which would leave nobody either surprised or sad. Meanwhile, it’s actually not the worst place in the world to do time, I’m told. In any case, nobody has ever escaped from it. Maybe nobody has ever tried. Least of all, Uncle Fred.