“What’s in Albuquerque?” Rosa asked.
“Gila monsters, dust, armadillos.”
“You’re the hardest person to talk to I know.”
“It’s a knack. And I work at it.”
Then RPD Detective Russell Fairchild walked in. “I was driving up Fourth Street, saw some guy, thought it might be you headed this way. You got a cane, put on weight?”
“Hey, look,” Rosa said, pointing at the television.
We looked. There I was, six o’clock news, telephoto shot of me entering the police station with Russell and Officer Day. Ronald Soranden’s skull was still above the fold, so to speak. The fact that he was the top IRS man in Northern Nevada before he went missing kept the story on a front burner. People really liked that IRS part. A lot of folks believe in karma.
“Over here, Mort,” Russ said, nodding toward a table in a far corner where the green lighting didn’t penetrate.
I grabbed my disguise paraphernalia and we sat at the table, facing the bar and the entrance.
“What do you know about Soranden?” Russ asked me.
“He was a shithead, that help?”
“Not much. He was IRS, so that was a given. You know anything personal or private that might help me figure out who killed him?”
“Other than being a shithead and having eighteen hundred enemies? Isn’t that enough?”
“You’d think. So far it hasn’t been.”
I closed my eyes. Couldn’t see Soranden, but Ramon was still there. His butterfly knife made that evil snick-snack sound as he whipped it open. “Give me a while. The knife fight I got into this afternoon still has me a little loopy.”
He gave me a classic double take. “Say what?”
So I told the story again. Most stories improve with age, but this one still sucked. After what happened earlier that year, Russ and I had few secrets we couldn’t share. Ours was a mutually-assured-destruction relationship, but it felt as if a real friendship was starting to bubble up out of this summer’s initial murk when I’d found that dead rapper in his daughter’s garage.
“Can’t let you out of my sight for a minute,” he said when I was finished.
“I’ve already had my head slapped thrice about it, so unless you pull a gun your softball opprobrium isn’t worth a shit.”
“Opprobrium. That’s a big word. Ripped the guy’s arm out of his shoulder and tossed it on the bar, huh?”
“That’s not what I said, but it’s a meaty image. I might use it when I write my memoirs.”
“That hint of pride in your voice gave you away. Hold on.” He got out a phone, hit the screen a few times, asked someone on the desk at RPD if he ought to know about anything going on that afternoon downtown. He listened, had to ask a few leading questions, finally hung up after four or five minutes.
“One Ramon Rafael Surry, age thirty-two, is still in surgery at Renown Medical getting his arm reattached. Someone about beat him to death with it.”
“Must’ve happened after I left. His arm was still connected to the rest of him when I went out the back way.”
“Kidding. But Surry’s in bad shape. Considering he’s done time and has a record of robbery, assault, and dealing means you deserve a medal, not that you’ll get one since they don’t know who tore him up, just some guy in his forties or fifties, six-six, maybe six-seven, blond hair, heavy black frame glasses, blue jeans, polo shirt, blue ball cap with something about Grampa above the bill. I’ve heard worse descriptions, but I think they’re not gonna get anywhere with that one.”
“Six-seven, huh? Man, that’s big. Arness was six-seven. It could’ve been him, except he’s deceased.”
“Who the hell is Arness?”
“Gunsmoke, Russ. James Arness. Before our time. Way before, but you can still watch it on DVD.”
He shook his head. “Lady bartender was the only one they found who saw the guy. If she’s short, then six-four or six-seven is about the same. Anyway, eyewitnesses are unreliable as hell. Still got that knife on you?”
I dug it out of a pocket. “It’s a souvenir. My first and last knife fight. Booth said it’s worth about three hundred bucks so I think I’ll have it bronzed.” Wasn’t a cop in the city who didn’t know Rufus Booth.
Russ fumbled the blade out, tested it with a finger. “Sharp sonofabitch. Bronze would take the edge off, so I wouldn’t. We could book Surry for assault with a deadly weapon. Record like his, he might get ten years.”
“The room emptied. No one actually saw the fight. And it would drag me into it, Reno’s ‘heads’ guy. If you want a circus, there it is.”
“Not sure we need to put a rush on it. Surry’ll keep.” He handed the knife back. “What’re you gonna do with that if you don’t have it bronzed?”
“I might use it in the kitchen. Hate to throw out a three-hundred-dollar knife.”
“Slicing mushrooms, apples, stuff like that?”
“It’s like you’re a mind reader, Russ.”
He got up, stretched his back. “About Soranden. Anything you think of that might help, call me anytime.”
“Three in the morning?”
“Any time—if you get something. I’d love to stick it to the fuckin’ FBI. Bunch of prima donna hotshots.”
He took off on short bandy legs. I went back to the bar and sat beside Rosa again. “Sarsaparilla,” I said to O’Roarke.
“That’s more like it, Spitfire. Hard stuff doesn’t suit you. Welcome back.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
NINE FORTY-FIVE P.M. I was sitting in my Toyota three doors down from Volker’s house, other side of the street, ruminating on how stupid one private eye could be when “Purple People Eater” made me jump. Might be time to change the ringtone to chirping birds, or maybe a snoring hamster. It was Lucy.
“Hola, kiddo,” I said.
“That knife fight joke thing, whatever it was, it got me thinking about it all evening. That wasn’t like you.”
They are so much smarter than we are. I ran that “joke” past O’Roarke before I left, and he smiled and said, “Good one, Mort,” and went fifteen feet down the bar to serve two ladies of advanced middle age who had come in desperate for mai tais, asking if they could get those little paper parasols in them.
I said, “I should tell you about my day, Luce.”
“Uh-oh. Seriously?”
There wasn’t anything I could do except tell her what had happened. That brought it all the way home for me, how stupid I had been. I didn’t want any part of Ramon’s world, but I had let it touch me. Well, never again. This gumshoe thing had nearly killed me four times before Ramon pulled that knife on me. I’d had a sword run through my chest, a gun blasting away at me in the desert night, been buried alive in the trunk of a Cadillac and shot high in the shoulder with a .38, lost a quarter-inch off the top of my right ear that I had to hide with long wigs that didn’t always suit me. Add it up like that and this gumshoe business was a bitch. Last thing I needed was to put myself in the sights of a lowlife scumbag like Ramon. I smacked myself upside the head, made it sting.
“What was that?” Lucy said.
“Proxy Rufus slap.”
“Rufus is there?”
“Nope. I’ll explain the word ‘proxy’ when you get back to Reno. Maybe even give you a demo.”
Silence. Then, “I’m coming home.”
“You find Megan?”
“Ma can handle it—as long as she stays off the freeways around here. You need me.”
“No argument there since the bed has been so empty lately it actually echoes, but I’m okay—and I’ve got this Rambo thing under control, so if Ma still needs you …”
“Rambo. Right.” Then she sort of snickered, which was a nice sound. “I’m the one who chopped down Buddie, not you, in case you don’t remember.”
“Makes you Ramboette,” I said, “but with a merit badge.”
Lucy had stuck a tree saw with razor teeth nearly an inch long right between the legs of a naked three-hun
dred-fifty-pound maniac who was, at the time, charging around trying to kill me, and had popped a nut out of his scrotum and opened a femoral artery, all while I was looking like a fat kid in a dodgeball game.
“At least you didn’t get hurt,” she said. “Did you? I mean, not at all, right?”
“Just my self-respect, Sugar Plum. I thought the neurons in my head worked better than that. But this was a onetime deal, never to be repeated.”
“Good. And I like the Sugar Plum. So, did the experience teach you anything?”
She sounded like my mother when I was nine, so I said, “Avoid iffy situations, don’t go into bars inhabited by the kind of scum who carry concealed weapons, don’t smoke in bed, and don’t accept rides or candy from strangers.”
“Okay, then. That candy thing in particular. And I’m still gonna come home. I’ll let you know when my flight gets in since I don’t actually have one yet.”
“I’ll be waiting at the gate, whatever time it is.”
The call ended. I gave up watching Volker’s place at eleven ten when all the lights went out, drove home, went to bed, dreamt much of the night about fishing of all things, something I hadn’t done since I was sixteen years old, but the fish were big and had needle teeth, dead eyes, thick blubbery green lips, the water was dark and deep, and I was scared to death I might actually catch one of them or fall in and get dragged under and eaten.
* * *
Monday morning. Lucy phoned at eight, told me she would arrive at 7:44 that evening on Southwest. I told her she would probably need a good cleaning after a long flight, cooped up in a tight space like that, and she said she probably would and she might need help with that. I told her it sounded like a lot of work for me, and she said, tough, I had chores to do just like she did, and complaining was childish.
Good ’nuf.
So I had nearly twelve hours to kill. I thought about how far I’d gotten in the Joss investigation and decided I was truly a neophyte. In a dark corner of the kitchen, Hammer and Spade were nudging each other, agreeing that, yes, I ranked somewhere below a greenhorn amateur and putting PI after my name on a business card was hubris of the first order.
As I saw it, the immediate problem was a lack of coffee. I brewed it strong and dark, not bloodless caffeine-free shit either, but the real thing that makes your heart palpitate.
When the drugs reached my brain, I tried again to come up with an approach to the Joss-Volker situation. And it occurred to me that if Volker had needed money back in June, he might’ve tapped his own resources first. If so, then the situation, whatever it had been, was desperate.
Worth looking into.
Which meant I needed a way to peek at Volker’s checking and saving accounts, and maybe other things, like mutual funds and precious metals. So I gave Fairchild a call.
“You’ll need a court order,” he said in the kind of hollow voice that meant he was cupping a hand over the mouthpiece.
“Thanks.” I hung up.
We weren’t going to get a court order. I called Ma on her cell phone. She answered on the first ring. “Hey, Ma, I need to get a look at Volker’s banking accounts.”
“It’s nice of you to tell me that on what amounts to an open line,” she said.
Well, shit. I would have to rephrase. And dump this call in case the NSA was on the party line.
“Call me back, Ma. On my cell.” Ma was big into burner phones, which were cheap, untraceable, and kept us out of prison.
I disconnected. My burner rang ten seconds later. “Yeah?” I said. “Who is this? If you’re sellin’ I ain’t buyin’.”
“What was that nonsense about a goddamn knife fight?”
Well, shit again.
“That’ll be the last time I wander into Wildcat, Ma. Place has marginal folks with emotional problems.”
“Wildcat? What the hell were you doin’ in there?”
“Trying to get a sarsaparilla. Had to settle for a Pete’s.” If I could spin her around a little, maybe she would forget about the other thing.
“What was that about a goddamn knife fight, boyo?”
Nope.
“Guy called Ramon got feisty. I had to take his knife away. He didn’t like that, but it’s hard to call it a knife fight since it lasted three seconds and no one got nicked or cut.”
“Jesus. Testosterone’s a bitch, huh? You okay?”
“Never better.”
“So what about that Joss-Volker thing and banks?”
“You got a way to check accounts, past and present? Back as far as May or June.”
“I can. You can’t.”
“Let me parse that. Suppose I could use some information in that direction. Is it your contention that I’m like a kid outside a locked candy store and you could be of some assistance, like with a set of keys or a brick or some such?”
“Jesus H. Christ. Here’s Lucy.”
“Hi, Mort!”
“Ma in a snit?”
“No, she’s in a coffee shop. Well, so am I in case that’s not obvious. Also, she’s in dark slacks and a dark green shirt, if that helps, not sure why it would.”
“You sound a lot like me when I want to be annoying.”
“It’s catching. Kinda like dengue fever, which is also called breakbone fever.”
“Wow, sure hope that’s not catchin’. Put Ma back on.”
Moments later, Ma said, “Got a pen, pencil, something to write on?”
“Gimme a sec. Okay, go.”
“5YG23P1B8AD4. Just the way I taught you. All caps on the letters. Now read it back.”
I did.
“Okay,” Ma said. “And send it through Finland.”
“Gotcha.”
Then she gave me instructions, which I had to write down in detail because they were specific and fairly complicated.
I ended the call, happy that Lucy was coming back, not so happy that she and Ma thought it was necessary, then I went to work on the code she’d given me.
It wasn’t meant to fool anyone more sophisticated than an insurance agent working a newspaper Jumble while his secretary did all the work, which is the routine at every State Farm agency I’ve ever been in, but “the way she taught me” meant dump the first two characters, which got me to G23P1B8AD4. Then start at the back, then bounce to the front, then second from the back, second from the front, and so on until you’ve gone through all the characters. Simple enough. This resulted in 4GD2A38PB1, an anagram of what she’d told me, minus the 5Y.
Three point six million permutations, which would take the NSA about point zero six seconds to run through, if they knew they had to drop the first two characters, and had been on the burner line, and had any idea who was on the burners, and where and how and when the code was going to be used.
Routing numbers are open-source data on the internet. I found all the bank routing numbers for Nevada and printed out the pages.
I got on the laptop, logged onto a proxy server in Sweden—Finland was just verbal misdirection—and the bottom line according to Ma was that 4GD2A38PB1 would get me into an encrypted program created by a hacker in Reno where I could input a bank’s routing number, type in a name, and access the account for that name, if it existed.
Man, how illegal was that?
But I was going to do it through a server in Sweden, so maybe no one would break down the door and haul me away. Still, it made me nervous, so I tried to work quickly.
I went through the biggest banks in Northern Nevada first, typing in routing numbers and the name “Volker.” I found a few Volkers in the first bunch of banks I tried, but none of them were Michael. Finally, I got a hit on Fidelity National, fifth bank on the list. The home address also matched.
For the past four years, Michael and his sister, Marta Geer, were joint tenants with rights of survivorship. Michael was the primary. His sister could only access the account in the event of Michael’s incapacitation or death.
Account activity showed a checking balance of $2,883.27 on June te
nth, unchanged on the eleventh. But a savings balance of $3,201.88 had dropped to a hundred dollars in that same time frame, just enough left in the account to keep it open. But the amount removed wasn’t huge, didn’t have a crisis feel to it.
Now what?
People often had money in both banks and credit unions. So I hunted through the local credit unions and came up with a Michael Volker in Washoe Sierra Federal Credit Union.
Two accounts: $33,496.40 in savings on June 10, stripped down to $200 on June 11. And an IRA of $95,288.05 that hadn’t been touched, most likely due to the ten-percent penalty and tax implications that meant Uncle Sam would give Volker a pittance of his own money and use the rest to send a passel of senators to Tahiti for ten days on a fact-finding mission. Volker had taken $33,296.40 from savings—which had that crisis feeling I was looking for.
I got out of the program, got out of Sweden, turned off the computer, glanced out the windows to be certain federal agents and a SWAT team weren’t setting up outside, not entirely sure what I would’ve done if they had.
Now—drop the pennies and add it up.
$33,296 plus $3,100 plus the $13,600 he’d taken out of the business account came to $49,996, which was remarkably close to $50,000. He could find another four dollars in a pile of loose change on his dresser top.
Inescapable conclusion: Sometime around June 10, Volker had needed to come up with $50,000 on an emergency basis.
* * *
I began to feel better about this gumshoe business. Ma would be so proud. Even more proud if I could find out what Volker had needed the fifty thousand for, so that was next on my bucket list—which, according to Lucy, was not something to strive for, at least not in this instance. A “bucket list” should be called a “kick the bucket list” since it’s a list of things to do before you kick the bucket, and I hoped to find out why Volker wanted those fifty Gs a good many years before I bucketed.
I had a little trouble with the next part—trying to think up a way to find out why he’d needed $50,000 almost overnight.
Gumshoe Rock Page 9