Gumshoe Rock

by Rob Leininger

  I could go ask Volker, which felt unprofessional, especially since Evelyn Joss had hoped I could do this quietly. But Russell had hired me in July this year because I was unprofessional and a maverick, so there was that. I had a track record. To get the job done, you sometimes have to kick down doors. And I’d already kicked Volker’s door half off its hinges by mentioning that $13,600 the other evening so this wasn’t going to be a nice quiet investigation. It was going to get untidy.

  My forte.

  But going straight at Volker felt premature at this point, so what else might I try?

  Could I find out where he put the money? I gave that some thought, didn’t come up with anything except some “what-ifs” that demonstrated the probable futility of discovering what he’d done with the money. What if he’d purchased some real estate in Idaho or California or Montana, a never-to-be-seen-again deal too good to pass up? How could I get a lead on anything like that? What if he’d given it to someone for some reason and there was no record of the transaction? What if his sister had needed it for some obscure reason, such as paying off medical bills in another state, like Kentucky? What if he was the victim of some sort of a scam? What if he’d purchased $50,000 worth of gold bars after listening to the scare tactics of folks who sell gold?

  Too many what-ifs into which money could disappear as if into a black hole.

  What if the only way to get going here was to kick down a door? Well, I already had Volker’s hanging on by a single hinge. Did it matter if I gave it one more kick with a size-twelve boot?

  Time to think about that.

  There were a number of ways to approach it. What I finally came up with was, of course, sheer genius.

  Bowling night.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHICH WOULD’VE BEEN genius if a pair of IRS goons out of Washington D.C. hadn’t rung the front doorbell at ten fifteen that morning.

  Goons wasn’t correct, but I have long been susceptible to oversimplifications, like when I once called Ronald Soranden a turd to his face when in fact he was an overzealous bureaucratic backstabbing pile of horse extract. Turd worked, however, in the heat of the moment, and had the advantage of fewer syllables. Then again, that particular simplification had left out a number of pertinent details.

  But back to the goons. My first thought, naturally, was that they were FBI, sent by the NSA to round up the clown who had hacked into a bunch of banks in Reno in the past hour. And, of course, I was still in a bathrobe and slippers, perfect for greeting guys in suits with beady eyes and government-issue haircuts.

  “Mortimer Burris Angel?” said the shorter and balder of the two. Relative to me, they were both short and hair-challenged, so right away I had a huge advantage.

  “I don’t use Burris much on a daily basis,” I said.

  “Which isn’t what I asked, but for identification purposes I think it’ll do. But if you’re not Mortimer Angel, though you look a lot like the guy in his picture, you might want to say so now to save us all time, aggravation, and unnecessary paperwork.”

  Smooth. I might like this guy.

  “Let me see the picture,” I said. “Just to make sure, help you guys out if I can.”

  Amused, he brought it up on his cell phone, held it out.

  “Sure enough,” I said. “That does look like me. You might have the right guy.”

  He went silent, gave me a few seconds to think the situation over, then said, “I’m Agent Renner and this is Agent Bledsoe. IRS, D.C.” He whipped out a shiny badge. Bledsoe stood behind Renner. He held up his badge in a no-nonsense black leather case. His badge was shiny, too. Nice.

  “You both have the same first name. Agent. That’s unusual. Probably a source of confusion at parties and such.”

  Renner sighed. “I’m George Renner, this’s Dennis Bledsoe. My boss’s boss, IRS Commissioner Munson, told us you might be like this.”

  Munson. Great. “I might be like what?”

  “Hard to talk to. Which, I’ve gotta say, you have been and it’s only been two minutes.”

  “Uh-huh. How’s Slick Willie doing? He got that Hostess cupcake addiction under control yet?”

  Renner smiled. Man had a sense of humor. Which meant he couldn’t be IRS, no way. “Slick Willie?” he said. “Clinton?”

  “William Munson. We called him Slick when he was the head guy at the IRS here in Northern Nevada. Then he was made commissioner—with Senator Reinhart’s help. Something of a slipshod Nevada nepotism deal.”

  “Then last year you found Reinhart’s severed right hand,” he said, either showing off or making a point.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call it a hat trick since it was FedEx’d to me. All I did was open the package.”

  “Right, right. You don’t kill people, you just find ’em. I heard something about that.”

  I shrugged. “That’s how it’s been. Not sure why I’ve been chosen for the honor, and I should mention that I don’t actually see it as an honor. Anyway, I didn’t have a bit of trouble filling out my 1040 earlier this year, guys. But it was nice of Slick—I mean, the commish—to show how much he cares by sending out his finest. Give him my best, okay?” I started to close the door to see how that would go.

  Renner put a gentle hand on it. “This isn’t about your 1040, Angel. This is about you finding that skull. Dennis and I are in Investigative Services. You’d be familiar with that. How about we come in and talk? Would that be okay?”

  Investigative Services? I shrugged, opened the door wider since they were going to come in and talk one way or another. They didn’t come all the way out from D.C. to say hi and leave.

  “I’ll be right back. Make yourselves at home. There’s milk in the fridge, blankets and pillows in the hall closet.”

  I left them in what had once been Jeri’s office, now a living room with the usual—area rugs, couch, love seat, coffee table, bookshelves, rainbows flitting around like butterflies. I’d left the prisms hanging in the windows. Jeri would’ve liked that.

  I put on dark slacks and an off-white Guayabera shirt, black loafers without tassels, returned to the living room.

  Renner was five-nine, Bledsoe was five-eleven. Shrimps. I detected slight bulges in their suits in the vicinity of their left armpits. These were big guns in the IRS, with the unannounced but real authority to suggest to higher-ups that people’s lives be changed without a trial, so I decided it might behoove me to play nice. Not my style, but a little practice wouldn’t hurt.

  “What’s up, guys?” I said.

  Renner looked around the room. “Rainbows. Very pretty.”

  “Glad you like them. Shows unusual sensitivity. You must be new at the IRS.”

  Renner grinned. “Commissioner Munson asked us to ask if you would be willing to give him an hour or so of your time. He’s at the airport in a Gulfstream.”

  “Ask, huh?”

  “More or less. It’s entirely up to you, but I would suggest that taking him up on it would be a nice gesture on your part.”

  “What model Gulfstream?”

  “It’s a two-eighty.”

  “Yeah? What’s one of those babies cost?”

  “I think right around twenty-five mil.”

  “Our tax dollars at work.”

  Renner grinned again, then shrugged. “Yours and ours. It’s a way to get around.”

  “So’s a Volkswagen beetle.”

  “Beetles almost never get up to five hundred miles an hour. And they don’t have wet bars and bathrooms.”

  “Willie Munson’s slumming here in Reno?”

  “We stayed the night at the Grand Sierra Resort. Munson got a suite, we didn’t.”

  “Isn’t that always the way? And he wants to chat with me? Such a nice man. What’s it about?”

  “I’m sure he’ll let you know. By the way, that must’ve been a nice move you pulled on Surry yesterday in that bar, Wildcat. You’ll have to show it to me sometime. Although,” he went on, “you ducking out the back way afterward might not�
�ve been strictly kosher.”

  “Okay then. How about we go see what Willie wants?”

  “Thought you’d get around to that. We should take our car, save you a gallon or two of gas.”

  “If you insist.”

  “I wouldn’t put it that way. It’s convenient, though. We’re parked right out front and the engine’s warm.”

  “Let’s go.”

  We went outside and I locked up. The car was a basic blue-gray Chrysler 300 sedan. Bledsoe drove. I sat in the back with Renner, at his suggestion. I had the feeling I was about eighty-five percent under arrest, but the Internal Revenue Service treats everyone that way, so I tried to relax.

  The Gulfstream was parked at Reno Charter Services, well out of the way of prying eyes. It didn’t say IRS on the fuselage anywhere because a few folks might have black market Stinger missiles. I had a vision of climbing aboard, the stairway folding up into the body, plane heading into the wild blue, east, toward Washington D.C. and the unknown.

  Bledsoe, Renner, and I went up the steps, not in that order, but the stairs stayed put. William Munson didn’t get to his feet when I went back and found all two hundred ninety pounds of him nestled into a chair of some nubbly blue fabric that looked more comfortable than anything you could buy at R.C. Willey. To call him plump would be a kindness. He folded a newspaper and set it aside when he saw me. On a tray beside him was what looked like a martini, though it could’ve been bottled water with an olive in it.

  “Mortimer,” he said. “Been a while. You look good.” His throat wattled as he spoke. He was only in his late fifties, but he looked closer to seventy, little wisp of gray-blond hair in a nasty comb-over, potato nose, unhealthy sallow skin.

  “Hey, Will. You got out of here just in time. Guess what? Your replacement, Ronald Soranden, lost his head.”

  He stared at me. “That supposed to be funny?”

  I took a seat wide enough for two, facing him. Love seat on an airplane? You don’t often see those on Southwest or United. Renner and Bledsoe took seats closer to the open doorway. I’d glanced at the cockpit as we came in. It was empty, so this might be a social call, not a hijacking.

  “I forgot,” I said. “IRS doesn’t hire anyone with a sense of humor.”

  He chuckled—no doubt trying to prove me wrong, which might have worked if the chuckle had reached his eyes. Munson would laugh when told he had no sense of humor just to prove, inadvertently, that, in fact, he had no sense of humor.

  “What can I do for you, Commissioner?”

  “What is it with you finding … finding …”

  I sighed. People often found it hard to say what had made me a world-class, world-famous PI. “Finding body parts of dead missing people. And entire dead missing people.”

  “And now … skulls.”

  “Just one.”

  “Ronald Soranden. Your former boss here at the IRS. After I left, that is.”

  “Yep. Boss and former thug-mate.”

  “Don’t you find that a little strange?” Munson asked, the “thug-mate” comment not causing so much as a ripple.

  “Strange how?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Strange as in coincidental.”

  I appeared to give that some serious thought. “Wow, Will, that never occurred to me, but now that you mention it …”

  Another dry chuckle. Eyes still beady with the blink rate of a monitor lizard. “The decapitated head of Reno’s mayor, found in the trunk of your ex-wife’s car.”

  Show-off. “That’s old news. And it was a Mercedes S550. She sold it not long after.”

  Another stare. “Decapitated head of the district attorney, found in the dead mayor’s house. Then your nephew’s head, on his desk in his office. Not long after he hired you.”

  “You make it sound like I was having fun. But it turned out to be two crazy women who happened not only to be mother and daughter, but half sisters as well.”

  “I read the file. Crazy doesn’t begin to cover it. Then, you end up with Senator Reinhart’s right hand. Via UPS.”

  “FedEx. I got the principal shaking part of his presidential campaign. FBI still hasn’t solved that one yet.”

  That comment got a nod. “I’ll come back to that in a while. Then you find that nauseating rapper guy, Xenon, strung up in the garage of two girls married to each other, one of whom is the daughter of a senior Reno detective.”

  “You’ve memorized my entire dossier. Good job.”

  “I have. You find missing people.”

  “Who end up dead. It’s a knack. I would give classes but it can’t be taught.”

  “What it sounds like—it’s either the weirdest case of serial murder in U.S. history, or … dumb luck. Which, according to all the files, is exactly what it is.”

  “Luck. That’s a knack too.”

  “Strangely enough, I believe that. Some people are lucky in weird ways. Or unlucky. Park Ranger Roy Cleveland Sullivan was hit by lightning seven times, survived them all. But seven. Figure one chance in fifty thousand of getting hit once in your lifetime, Sullivan beat odds of about a billion trillion trillion to one. Lotteries don’t have odds like that. Not even close. If they did, no one would win. Ever.”

  “I prefer my brand of luck.”

  “I would too.”

  “Although that’s how my dad died. Lightning.”

  “Interesting.” He took a sip of his martini, smacked his lips froglike as he looked at it, and set it down. “But let’s talk about luck. This business about Soranden disappearing and his skull being dumped in your car months later—”

  “Lucy Landry’s car.”

  “Ah, yes. Miss Landry’s convertible. Through the roof into the front seat, I understand. But you were the one who first saw it and picked it up, so let’s say it was meant for you, maybe even in a spiritual, preordained sense.”

  “Yes, let’s. That oughta be a riot.”

  Dry chuckle. “Investigationwise it’s early yet, I know, but I’ve been in close contact with the FBI and I can’t say that I’m hearing a Niagara outpouring of optimism.”

  First sign of a hollow feeling went through my stomach.

  Munson went on: “These things tend to make waves when they get in the news. IRS in particular. You heard about Victor Buchholz over in Toledo?”

  “No. Who’s that?”

  “Local head of the IRS out there, like Soranden was here. He’s been missing since Saturday, eight days ago.”

  “Eight days? He might still be in a bathroom somewhere.”

  “Probably not. And he missed getting an award at a Lion’s club meeting. I doubt you’ve ever met him, but Victor wouldn’t miss an award for anything. Not for anything. Buchholz gone, now Soranden’s skull turns up. This isn’t the kind of thing we’d care to see escalate. Which it could.”

  “We?”

  “We at the IRS, of course. Polls suggest that we are not the country’s favorite institution. Kidnappings, murders, bombings—once that kind of stuff gets in the news it tends to percolate among people who aren’t tightly wrapped.”

  “It riles people when agents bust open piggy banks of six-year-old children to pay daddy’s taxes.”

  “We haven’t done that lately.”

  “Things like that tend to stick in the mind.”

  “Before my time, Angel. I’ve ordered agents not to do that sort of thing. Not only is it counterproductive, it’s insignificant when it comes to filling the nation’s coffers.”

  “Uh-huh.” I looked around the cabin. “Spiffy ride, Will. Better than what you get on Allegiant Air. All of this has been interesting, but are we coming to a point here?”

  “We are. I’d like to get ahead of the curve on this. But very quietly. Like I said, the FBI isn’t optimistic about putting this Soranden murder to bed anytime soon, just like that Reinhart deal, which is still unsolved and it’s been nearly a year. But luck. Luck sounds like just what we need.”

  Splendid. Add lucky to maverick and unprofessional and
guess whose name pops up?

  “Well, shit,” I said into a few seconds’ silence.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way, but … what I would like to do, now that you’ve become a private investigator, lucky one too, is I would like the IRS to employ your services.”

  Perfect. Workin’ for the IRS again.

  * * *

  “And you want it done quietly,” I said. “Not that I accept, you understand.”

  “Not quietly,” Munson responded. “Invisibly. Last thing the IRS needs is for something like that to get out.”

  “You mean, it’s the last thing you need.”

  For a moment he didn’t say anything, then he gave a curt nod. “That’s putting a mighty fine point on it, but yes.”

  “Something like this finding its way into the media is the last thing I need too.”

  He smiled. “Then we agree.”

  “Nope.”

  “No?” He lifted a single eyebrow, which meant his former IRS field training was still operational. Good to know.

  “We haven’t talked money yet. And we need to back up to that business about luck. You’re hiring luck, is that right?”

  “I suppose I am. Yours seems … exceptional.”

  “As if I can conjure it up.”

  “You have a hell of a track record.”

  “Still, there’s no guarantee of anything. At all. Luck isn’t like that.”

  “It’s something of a long shot. I will stipulate to that.”

  “I forgot, you have a law degree. ‘Stipulate’ is one of those words I oughta use more often.”

  He smiled. “I wouldn’t if I were you.”

  “Okay then, I won’t.”

  “I think luck is underrated. I think it exists. But to give it a bit of a push, I will offer a … call it a finder’s fee, if that’s the right term, of, oh, how about ten thousand if you’re successful within, say, a month? And, of course, before the FBI catches up with the perpetrator—Soranden’s killer, that is—at which point all this would become moot.”

  Great. Suddenly I was competing with the FBI at the secret and very likely deniable behest of the IRS. I couldn’t imagine anything more likely to get me into the deepest possible shit. Say, Leavenworth deep.