Spooker

by Dean Ing

  "Do you know," said Forster in a dreamy tone, "I may have another piece of this thing. Genet's hair was straight and, according to his dossier, he wore it long. Unfashionably so. It was taken from his body - nearly all of it, scalp and all. It may have been Genet's blond hair the young one was wearing."

  Visconti whistled softly. "I never heard of that as a part of Sov tradecraft," he said.

  "Nor of anyone else's that I know of," Forster said.

  Gary tried to ignore the gooseflesh on his body. "Some sonofabitch wanted my hair for a wig!" he said.

  "And got it," Visconti added. "Be glad they didn't scalp you for it."

  "Lots of blood involved," Forster said. "They may have discovered that while taking Genet's. I don't know, but my guess is that with every operation, they try to improve their technique."

  "Going beyond proven procedures is definitely not professional tradecraft," Visconti said.

  "Not as we know it," Forster mused. "But if they're gifted amateurs, they're awfully, awfully good."

  As he gazed into the wall, Forster's face was alight with admiration.

  22

  MAY 1994

  Gary found it difficult to concentrate on fresh casework after Graham Forster's unsettling visit. The notion of a hostile counterspy group not connected to known intelligence services was good news and bad, said the CIA analyst. If free-lancers, they would not have the huge resources of, say, Russia's GRU. On the other hand, they had been numbingly successful with limited resources, perhaps for the very reason that they did not play by the traditional rules of engagement.

  Forster's next step would be another dip into the files of VICAP, the violent criminal apprehension program begun by the FBI against America's growing problem of serial killers. This, Paul Visconti had observed, would be something of a new spin on serial killings, in some ways akin to the old Murder, Incorporated. Forster left after he promised to send Visconti a report of his findings, inasmuch as the attempt on Gary spanned the current connection between the two agencies.

  Gary signed out in mid-afternoon and, a half-hour later, wearing a tie and sport coat, strolled up a concrete walk to the smallish, many-windowed administration office of little Briant High School. A few youths were still in the halls, and young voices echoed from a nearby athletic field. He flashed his ID and his gentlest smile to the registrar, a formidable large-boned woman in a frilly white blouse and horn-rims. At the moment she was risking carpal tunnel syndrome, fingers flashing at the keyboard below a Macintosh screen. Using the name Garrett, which she was free to consider a surname, he mounted his diving board and took the plunge by asking how long she had been on the staff.

  She'd been teaching part-time, he learned, in 1987, and the classes weren't that large. Did he have a particular student in mind? When she heard the name, a faint film of regret crossed her face. The Lowerys were very active locally, she said, and generous to a fault in funding school activities. She recalled the younger boy, Danny, who had graduated only three years ago. But Steele? Oh, yes, a wary aspect in her face as she reminisced, he had made his presence felt. She had not forgotten the furor over his disappearance. Had he finally turned up somewhere?

  Gary replied obliquely that he might have been located. The registrar had given him fair warning of her bias; if the Lowery family was so generous to a small school its registrar was wise to use discretion. Well, not to worry, he said easily; young Steele Lowery wasn't a wanted man.

  At this, the woman relaxed visibly. "I always hoped he was destined for a military career; reasonably bright, carried himself like a general. Really a striking specimen - a natural leader in the physical sense - certainly the best athlete at Briant High in his day. He was due for graduation, just about this time of year."

  Gary wondered aloud if he might look over the boy's personal file, note his special interests, health, behavior patterns. A slow head shake; not in these litigious times, she said, though a transcript was another matter.

  In the 1980s, she remarked, Briant High had not computerized its files. The woman disappeared into a cabinet-filled room to return minutes later with a manila file on LOWERY, STEELE JAMES. "I'll be at my desk," she said. "Please keep the pages in order."

  It was a transcript, all right, but it was also more. Visits to the principal, absences, records of immunizations. Some of those absences were noted as plain truancy, but no long-term pattern emerged.

  Young Lowery had taken part in several sports, 4-H, debate. Gary made a note of the family's address, a rural delivery route, and finally asked if he could pay for Xeroxing the transcript.

  The woman took off her glasses and gave him a frank stare. "I don't think so, Mr. Garrett. You might ask the principal during school hours, especially now during dead week just before graduation. He is the one who approves transcript requests. Usually. I hope you understand."

  The woman was clearly protecting her job and Gary nodded. "I think so, and I appreciate the help. But I wonder about a couple of things." He put his finger on the file. "Debate? Somehow that doesn't fit a jock profile."

  She smiled. "No, I don't think Steele got past regional competition. But at Briant High he could be quite persuasive. Steele Lowery had a lot of charisma, a forceful way about him," she added, choosing the phrase with care, eyelids flickering with what could be wry humor. "Good family, lots of potential."

  "One more thing, ma'am. Can you recall any special friends he had, either sex? Especially any who are still around?"

  "Everyone wanted to be his friend, Mr. Garrett. It seemed like a good idea. I wasn't privy to all the gossip, but I gather he could select a girl as another boy might select a different chocolate bar. He was probably considered quite a catch.

  "But Steele couldn't field a baseball team by himself or run interference for himself. He seemed to value a relationship with - " her brow furrowed, eyes shut momentarily. She attacked her keyboard and, in moments, smiled at the screen. "Kenneth Kirk. Heavyset young man, not the sort to move very far away from his roots. I know he works at the Shell station but the name escaped me. Sorry. It's been some years, and I trade at Texaco." And now she did smile, and Gary decided she should do it more often. "The school library down the hall isn't very large but it has yearbooks back to the Year One. And a Xerox machine that takes dimes," she added, pointing down a hallway. "I'm covering for the librarian, this late in the day." Wink.

  "And for myself."

  Gary grinned back at her and checked his change pocket, moving quietly down the hall. Five minutes later, he found the yearbooks, slender volumes full of fond memories for most; for a few, reminders of lost potential. He noted that Briant's league played eight-man football, and that Steele Lowery rated a full page

  ". . . in our minds and hopes." The kid had worn a tie for his annual portrait: prominent jaw, unruly dark hair, strong nose. In the sports photographs, it was obvious the Lowery kid had been a stud: slender thighs and waist, well-developed calves, long trunk, good set of shoulders on him. Not an easy mark to dump down a mine shaft, Gary decided. He Xeroxed all four pages of the graduating-class pictures, replaced the yearbook, and left without speaking to a soul. The registrar did not look up from her screen as he passed; but as he waved, she nodded.

  Gary drove to a combination roadhouse and convenience store at the edge of Briant. He was still officially on duty and, if his beeper insisted, he would use his car phone. He brought a carton of buttermilk and a pack of Fritos back to the car and, in the shade of a huge eucalyptus, took his time studying those Xeroxed pictures, swigging, crunching, guessing.

  Two of the girls in the class of '87 had been active in everything, doubtless the socialities of their set.

  One, Ruth Madden, was a real knockout, the homecoming queen. The other, almost plain-faced with short bangs and a smile to fight tigers for, had been valedictorian. Gary bet himself that the beauty would have been Steele Lowery's choice - and that she would have parlayed those looks into a career in a bigger place than Briant. He would pur
sue these leads further with a phone directory that evening.

  He studied other pictures idly. In quotation marks below the names, before their listed activities, were nicknames - perhaps nicknames invented by the yearbook staff. Steele Lowery's nickname had been

  "Hoss." They don't always shoot horses, Gary thought. This one had apparently died in a fall.

  Kirk, Kenneth Robert, alias "Mongo," had been a big neckless fireplug of a kid, face innocent of malice - and of anything else worth noting. His portrait grinned back at Gary like Alfred E. Neuman, like a smiley face, ready for a joke or a pass-blocking assignment. It seemed that the Kirk boy had taken up exactly those activities that had interested Steele Lowery, and no others.

  Gary could not avoid grinning back at Kirk, the nickname an obvious reference to a comic character in Blazing Saddles, played by Alex Karras, another walking fireplug and an all-pro NFL guard of stupendous talent. Legend had it that Karras could show the wit of a pixilated genius. Somehow, Gary suspected, Kenneth Robert Kirk would not quite measure up. "Well, Mongo, let's see if you're still pumping Shell," he murmured, and folded the Xeroxed pages away.

  The Shell station was only a block from Texaco, advertising gas for identical prices. Gary drove up to the pumps, heard a bell resonate somewhere in the service bay where an old Volkswagen beetle was perched on the lift, rear wheels foolishly sagging like a broken toy. He got out and proceeded to top off his own tank, cradling his corn chips under one arm, then saw a pale round face emerge from beneath the VW.

  It sat atop the shoulders of a bowling ball of a man, unmistakably Kenneth Kirk with several years of accumulated fat.

  "With you in a minute," Kirk sang out in a voice still boyish, using a grease gun on another fitting without haste. No hurry, said his manner, I'll be here for the rest of my life.

  Gary took a bite of chips and pulled cash from his pocket, glancing at the pump, then at the overall-clad bowling ball who now sauntered up. "Eight sixty-five; uh, you could check the oil," Gary said and then, in pretended surprise as Kirk turned toward the Camaro's hood, "Hey, don't I know you?"

  "Been here awhile," said the young man, wiping his hands on a red shop towel as he manipulated the hood. He glanced at Gary with a tentative smile. "I'm not that good with faces."

  With a finger snap, Gary smiled back. "Yeah, you were a hot jock here a few years back. I used to do a little scouting for a friend, coach for special teams. He didn't always listen. You were Church - something like that?"

  "Still am. Ken Kirk. Long time ago," he said, the smile fading like a fond memory.

  "Yeah. Hell of a lineman," Gary said. "You had a great back, I remember. Big strapping guy. He do well in college?"

  The smile had faded but now it returned in another incarnation, Kirk's dark eyes nearly closed in enjoyment. "Hoss Lowery. Naw, I don't think so. Or maybe so; jeez, man, who knows? He just dropped outa sight one day in April, didn't even graduate. It was in the papers," he added. "I thought maybe he got tired on one of his solo hikes, hitched a ride, maybe with some chick, and just kept goin'. That's what I told his folks, too. They didn't like that. Huh! Never were partial to me much, neither."

  Kirk showed Gary the dipstick reading, up to the correct mark, and replaced the metal rod. Gary offered his half-empty bag of junk food. "Hands are greasy," Kirk said, but with a glance of longing.

  "If it's grease you want, there's enough of it in these to lube a John Deere," Gary joked, and held a group of the curled chips toward Kirk's face. "Open wide, Mongo."

  A startled look - not of pleasure - from Kirk, who nonetheless took the mouthful of chips. Gary did not miss that look, having tried for a friendly ploy and fallen on his face with it. "Wasn't that your nickname?

  Sorry, I thought I remembered - "

  "Fuckin' Lowery. That was his idea, always playin' with your head. Gave everybody names, even if you didn't like 'em. Great jock, though, like you said. Yeah, we had some fine ol’ times then." Kirk swallowed noisily. "I was his best friend. You didn't have to take a whole lot of his crap if you were Hoss's buddy."

  "I'd think everybody was," Gary prompted.

  "You'd have to think again." Kirk looked into the distance, remembering, and shook his head. "Don't get me wrong - everybody pretty much got along."

  "Pretty much, but not always, huh?"

  Kirk pulled his head down as if unconsciously ducking away from controversy. "You had to be there.

  Like with those numb-nuts nicknames, if you rolled with it, your day went smoother. Even with guys a year ahead of Hoss, they knew there wasn't no quit in him. Say you managed to put him down the first time, next day he'd come at you again. If he took the notion, sooner or later he would beat the shit out of you. Even if you won the first one, it wasn't no fuckin' picnic, I learned that as a sophomore. Kids just learned, if you gave him his way everything would be cool. Let the Wookie win, you know?"

  "You say he just took off? Sounds like a mystery, Ken. Mysteries fascinate me." Gary offered another bit of chips and Kirk accepted like a tame hippo, opening wide. Knowing that a bit of misdirection sometimes elicited surprising tidbits, Gary said, "Anybody take off with him - maybe eloping, you think?"

  "Not from around here - he played the field. Some Fresno dolly, maybe. His folks have money, and his little brother, Dan, would'a told me if Hoss had been in touch. Not these days, though." Kirk looked around him as if his surroundings explained everything.

  Putting on his most innocent air, Gary nodded. "I knew a kid in L.A., skipped out. But he was running nickel bags of pot, and ended up running from some leg breakers. You don't suppose - "

  "Not ol' Hoss. He'd take a toke now and then; me, too, if he wanted me to. But he could buy anything he wanted - booze or a joint - and he wasn't into hard stuff. Naw, I used to think instead of a chick, maybe he joined the marines, somethin' like that, just for the general hell of it." Kirk laughed. "That, or somebody finally run him off. Now that, I don't think he'd have told me."

  "Why not, if you were buddies?"

  "If somebody ever made him back down, he'd have kept it to himself. And maybe he wouldn't've stuck around, in case they wanted bragging rights. Nobody did, though, so it prob'ly didn't happen."

  Kirk was showing signs of being restive, and now Gary handed him the pack of chips, shaking the bag suggestively. "Go ahead, I'm full. But I'd hate to see who'd be big enough to run that kid off."

  Easily bribed, Kirk shook himself a mouthful of chips. "Maybe a bunch together. Hoss Lowery knew how to piss 'em off by the handful. They wouldn't'a told me, even if he did frost my ass with that fuckin'

  nickname." He glared at Gary over a mountain of emotional baggage, the pain still there. "Shit, I just wanted to be Ken, you know?"

  "I give up. Who else did he piss off?"

  "Guys whose girls he took out. Girls he dropped; boy, the names he laid on them! Loose-tooth Ruth, Dirty Dottie, Candy Andy."

  Gary chuckled. "Briant's Don Rickles, huh? But he missed the boat on that last one."

  "No he didn't," Kirk said, and paused to shake the last brittle shards of Fritos from the pack. "Andy wasn't a girl." Chewing, shaking his head: "Hoss just let on he thought so. Naw, he wasn't queer," Kirk went on, seeing the sudden surmise in Gary's face. "Just blew kisses, grab-ass, stuff like that - always tryin' to get the kid's goat."

  "Did he?"

  "Nope. But if you knew Hoss, you knew he'd never quit tryin' to. Worst thing you c'd do to Hoss Lowery was shrug him off. Dunno why Candy Andy couldn't see that. Give the top jock his due, show him you know he's the boss hoss." Kirk balled up the empty packet, tossed it into a trash barrel in a perfect left-handed hook shot. "Maybe he's bossin' some bunch of roughnecks in the oil fields now. One of these days he'll show up and hand me a three-day line of bullshit about it all. I hope so. Well, look, I gotta finish lubin' the bug there," he said, leaving a smudge of grease on his chin as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Gary did not wait for his thirty-five cents'
change, waving as he drove away. If Ken Kirk heard about the discovery of Lowery's body, he would recall that conversation. But he had already recalled enough to make this inquiry useful: if young Lowery had criminal connections, they weren't known to his best friend; but not everyone in Briant had been sorry to see the last of him, not by a long shot. Loose-tooth Ruth?

  Dirty Dottie? Steele Lowery had been one spirited kid. A mean spirit.

  The drive back into Fresno gave Gary time to reflect on his next focus, and to mentally compose the notes he would make. If Steele Lowery had been such an arrogant bully, perhaps that yearbook comment about minds and hopes had been a careful insertion by the faculty, a gesture of sympathy toward the Lowery family. Well, by now the Lowerys had to know the worst even if the word hadn't spread. Wheeling into the graveled apartment-parking area, Gary decided not to contact the Lowerys. Whatever he was looking for, it wasn't a whitewash job.

  His new apartment seemed vast and empty now that Jan had left. Sitting at his built-in breakfast nook, he unfolded the Xeroxed pages and sipped the rest of his buttermilk, jotting notes in his pocket-sized spiral binder. Then he rummaged in a box of still-packed books and came up with last year's phone directory. He did not yet have phone service in the apartment, but there was a pay phone near the pool.

  Gary used his personal calling card several times in the next half-hour. He located the beauty queen's father in Auberry after four wrong guesses. Last he heard, Ruth was modeling in Nevada, he said. Used some stage name - she wouldn't tell him what.

  Gary was too kind to tell him that a lot of Nevada models wore costumes they could hide in a dimple and if his daughter didn't want her stage name known, she probably modeled epidermis.

  Her old high-school chums? She had shaken the San Joaquin dust from her heels fast as she could and hadn't kept up any friendships he knew of, said the father. Andy Anderson or Steele Lowery or Ken Kirk?

  Well, he remembered that spoiled punk Lowery, the father admitted, adding that he was going on vague memories of a big handsome kid with a great opinion of himself. The girl had dated Lowery enough to find another girl for him which, said the father, wasn't like the old days - but then, what was? And by the way, if the caller managed to track Ruthie down, would he mind asking her to drop Dad a postcard? Anything at all, he said wistfully, would be better than nothing.