“And,” I said, trying to preempt her, “Ian Norse Danlord.”
“Nope. Can’t be. That one has an ‘i’ in it.”
“Soranden’s middle name is Isaac.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Middle name, not like Isaac Newton.”
She hit me. “You are so weird sometimes, but I love you anyway.” She went through Ian’s name, checking off letters. “Okay, you’re right. That’s him, but with his middle initial included. And,” she went on, “that ‘i’ means he’s also Lara Rose Donndin.”
“Lara Rose. Lovely name for a man in a tutu. A lot of these names look bogus. I’ll bet Becky Sue is camouflage, meant to hide the name Donndin. Sneaky, using that last name twice, but I always thought of him as a sneaky so-and-so.”
“Uh-huh. He blackmailed Volker for a hundred thousand dollars, so sneaky fits. And larcenous.” She got a highlighter and drew a bright pink line through Arnold Anderson, Donna Del Sarron, Darren Sandolon, Ian Norse Danlord, and Lara Rose Donndin. Then she looked at the list. “I think we got him. Well, about half got him, because the numbers still don’t work.”
“Half is better than nothing,” I said. “Good job. You got us partway there. Now how about we go back to bed, give it a rest, hit it fresh in the morning?”
“Anagrams,” she said softly.
I offered her a hand and pulled her off the couch. When we were on our feet, I opened her bathrobe and mine, gave her a full-body hug designed to get her mind off anagrams.
“Wow,” she whispered. “You’re kinda manly, Cowboy.”
“You oughta see me rope and ride.”
“Rope, huh? Okay, show me that part first.”
* * *
We blew off Sunday too. Sort of. We phoned Ma, told her about the anagrams. We lifted weights in the home gym, one of the few activities in which I was able to show Lucy up. Then she made me try to touch my toes and do a bunch of other stretches that got me humble again. She bent over so far backward that she touched the back of her head to her butt. I got a video of that. We perused the address book from time to time to figure out the numbers, finally gave it up and went on another ten-mile slow run to Mayberry Park and back. Ate good food. Gave Soranden’s sheet another half hour. Read novels and finally fell asleep. Good day, all in all. Except for those damn numbers and me unable to touch my toes without hearing laughter.
* * *
Nine forty-five, Monday morning, we were about to head over to Ma’s when Reno Lock & Safe phoned. Fifteen minutes later, a van pulled into the driveway and two guys the size of medium-large gorillas got out. One of them came to the front door and rang the bell with a furry index finger.
“Got that safe in the truck,” he said. Paul was embroidered on his shirt above the pocket. “Where ya want it?”
“Let’s have a look at it first, see how big it is.”
We went out to the van. Lucy trailed along behind. It was a good-looking safe, powder-black finish. “Nice,” I said.
Paul gave me a look. “Nice? It’s a Brown 7224, over nine hundred pounds with ballistic armor. Shoot a fifty-caliber bullet at it and all it does is knock off a little paint, doesn’t put even a tiny little ding in the armor. So where’s it go?”
“Pull the van around back. I’ll show you. You get to figure out how to get that monster in the house.”
“No sweat, as long as it’s on the first floor. Been doin’ this a long time.”
I showed Paul and the other guy, Judd, a place in a corner of the exercise room. “No sweat,” Paul said.
The gorillas muscled it in on a huge hand truck and eased it down without taking out the floor or a wall.
“Best safe made in the U.S.,” Paul said. “Temporary code is one-two-three-four-five-six. Here’s the instruction manual. You need to come up with your own six-digit code.” He punched in 123456 and opened the door.
“What if I forget my code?” I asked. “Can you break into this thing, get my grenades and plutonium out?”
He grinned. “Break in? No way. Not without destroying it. But the serial number is registered with the manufacturer. They got a fifteen-digit code that’ll open it, overrides whatever code you put in. There’s an eight hundred number you can call if you need to. Anyway, you got to register the safe with them so they know you’re you. Read about it in the manual. And don’t put the manual in the safe. People sometimes do that and then we have to shoot ’em. Sign here.”
He handed me a clipboard, I signed, tried to keep my eyes from bugging out when I saw that the safe cost more than twelve thousand dollars, then he and Judd left.
Lucy looked in the safe. “Groovy. What code should we use?”
“It’s your safe, Cupcake. Come up with something you’ll remember.” I was still reeling from the cost of the thing. I’d seen gun safes in Cabela’s for a thousand, good ones for upwards of three. The ballistic hide on this thing must’ve cost a bundle.
Lucy thought about it for a while. “Landry has six letters. How about the last digit of the number of a letter, its place in the alphabet. Since L is the twelfth letter, last digit would be a two.” She worked it out, finally came up with 214485.
“Perfect,” I said. “Miss Puzzle Solver.”
She was quiet for a minute, working away, then she looked up at me. “Just so you know, M. Angel would be 314752.”
“Nothing wrong with your code, kiddo.”
“Okay, then. We’ll re-code this thing later. Right now, let’s go talk to Ma, see what she thinks about Soranden’s address book. And remind me to phone Dad this evening to thank him for the safe.”
* * *
Maude Clary was in her downtown office. Lucy and I went in, and the first thing Lucy did was go to that fuckin’ poster Ma had laminated and put on her wall. Two posters, one on top of the other. First was a poster of an old-timey ad for Coca-Cola from the nineteen-twenties: The Pause That Refreshes. Swing that out of the way and there I was standing next to a bicycle, stark naked except for a little red body paint covering parts I’d wanted covered, and not a whole lot of paint at that. Holiday had done the artwork in March when we’d ridden in the WNBR in San Francisco. Seventeen hundred people riding around naked in public. I’d gone along with it in honor and memory of Jeri who had wanted to do it, and it was also a celebration of my being back from Borroloola, Australia.
So, of course, Lucy swung the Coke ad out of the way.
“I love this picture,” she said. “It’s so you, Mort.”
“It’s a mood piece,” Ma said. “Whenever I need a laugh. I also show it to clients if they want to know if I can get photos of a cheating spouse.”
Aw, shit, no.
“Tell me you’re kidding or I’ll shoot you,” I said.
“Can’t do that, stud. Got a gun on you?”
“Not right this minute.”
“Then I’d like to see what you think you’re gonna shoot me with. Right this minute.”
Aw, shit. And, of course, Lucy doubled over with laughter.
“Glad you two are enjoying yourselves so much,” I said. “And how about hiding that fucking poster so we can act like adults around here?”
That got more girlish laughter. But we finally got past the poster and put Soranden’s phony address sheet in front of Ma, pointed out the anagrams of his name.
“Two of these are women,” Ma said.
“Good eye, Ma. He liked pink tutus and white tights. And, I think, tiaras.”
She stared at me. “I’ll ignore that, boyo. Okay, let’s take it slow. You think this guy you called ‘The Toad’ goes into a bank and opens up accounts as Donna Sarron and Lara Rose Donndin. What’s he wearing? And if you tell me a tutu and a tiara you’re fired. But, a dress? A wig and a padded bra? Talking in a chirpy falsetto? How about a five-o’clock shadow? Some guys could pull it off, but this Soranden dipwad doesn’t sound like he could make it fly even if he went to a mall and got a makeover.”
“Well, poop,” Lucy said. “Didn’t think of t
hat.”
“That’s if,” Ma went on, “Donna actually has an account. And this other anagrammed-up broad, Lara Rose.”
“What would be the point of coming up with anagrams and not using them?” I asked.
“Who knows? I’m just coming up with ifs.”
Lucy tapped the sheet. “He’s got two sisters, Alice Ann and Esther. Esther has the same last name: Soranden. And she’s local, lives thirty miles away in Carson City. What if she opened the accounts using fake IDs?”
“An accomplice.” Ma smiled. “Accomplices tend not to be a good idea when you’re a criminal, but she’s family so I like it. I particularly like it that she’s still alive, doesn’t live far way, so we can track her down and put eyes on her.”
“And,” I said, “according to Russ, she never married. She appears to have been close to her brother since she’s a named beneficiary on his bank accounts here in Reno. Which means he trusts her.”
“Trusts her how?” Lucy said.
“Not to kill him, sweetheart. So back to the money—it’d be a good idea to spread it around, thin it out. And I doubt that Volker was the first pigeon Soranden hit. No telling how much he’s managed to squirrel away.”
“Pigeon,” Lucy said. “Nice.”
Ma smiled. “We need to get a look at that dame.”
“Dame,” I whispered to Lucy. “Terrific use of mid-thirties noir vernacular—like pigeon. You pickin’ up on approved lingo here? It’ll be on the final exam when you get your PI license.”
“Yup. Got that ‘dipwad’ thing nailed down too.”
“You two,” Ma said. “So, okay, Soranden uses his name to come up with anagrams for two women and three men. And the numbers are probably bank account numbers, that about where we’re at?”
“Real close,” I agreed. “But Lucy and I didn’t get anywhere with the numbers last night so we’re still not a hundred percent about that.” I told Ma what we’d done, how we’d struck out with routing numbers.
“Huh,” Ma grunted. “Sneaky fucker. But they’re right here. These numbers mean something.” She stared at the sheet a while longer. “Lookit all these extensions. Like businesses. Nobody I know knows so many businesses with so many extensions.”
“They might just be camouflage,” I said.
“Possible. If so, I think he overdid it.”
We gave it another five minutes, then I said, “There’s four real people here: Esther, Alice Ann, John George, and Kate. And five anagrams for Soranden. Which leaves eight bogus names and this Triple-A Cal number, which was out of service when we phoned it. No extension on the Triple-A number. Or on the ‘real’ people either. All of which are just observations.”
“But we’re getting familiar with this sheet,” Ma said. “You never know what’ll jump out at you and turn out to be useful.”
I said, “Soranden’s ex, Debbie Combs, didn’t make the list. Russell said she lives in Minneapolis now.”
“Extensions on the anagram names are always three digits,” Lucy said. “The other extensions are anywhere from one to four digits but none of them have three digits.”
Ma nodded. “So it’s likely the extensions on the anagram names mean something.” She looked at Lucy and me. “You two keep workin’ on it. I will too. Something’ll pop. Right now, how ’bout we go down to Carson and see if we can get a look at Esther, who”—she peered at the sheet—“lives on Penrose Drive, which we can Google on the way down.”
“I could use a nap first,” I said.
“Later, Cowboy,” Lucy murmured.
“Oh, for hell’s sake, you two,” Ma said. “Let’s go.”
* * *
We drove to Carson City in what I call the Chariot of Fire, Ma’s ’63 Cadillac Eldorado. She says it’s vintage, I say antique and on its last legs, so to speak. It has soft springs and good shocks, a combination that gives it an eerie floating glide and makes driving hazardous above fifty miles an hour.
Ma asked me to chauffeur. “Take it up to fifty-five,” she said. “Blow the carbon out of it.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Not sure about blowing the carbon out of it, but I got all eight cylinders to fire up, which was something of a coup.
Penrose Drive was basic fifties housing, one-story houses with what looked like two and three bedrooms. Esther’s place was sky blue with white trim, well-kept behind a low Cyclone fence, roses starting to give up their color as fall deepened. We parked in front of the house next door and looked at an angle at Esther’s digs. The two-car garage door was up and a new Ford Explorer was parked outside in the driveway. “Looks like she’s home, Ma,” I said. “Whatcha want to do?”
“First thing—get me a smoke.”
“Mort and I can get out and walk around if you do,” Lucy said. “Sorry, Ma. I can’t do smoke.”
“Second,” Ma said without missing a beat, “we can’t just sit here. Someone’ll call the cops. So one of us has to go knock, see if she’s home, get eyes on her if she is.”
“Draw straws?” I asked. “Or rock, paper, scissors?”
“She’d probably make you in a heartbeat, even if you wore a wig and your old duffer’s clothes, which you’re not. The guy who found her brother’s skull? Nope, I’ll go. She doesn’t know me from Jane Fonda. Pop the trunk on this buggy, boyo.”
“Nice alliteration, Ma.”
“Pop it.”
She got out, lifted the trunk, got something out, banged the lid back down. She came to the window and held out a bunch of Watchtower pamphlets. “I picked up a handful from a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses who came around. Figured these’d come in handy someday.”
“Go save her soul, Ma,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” She clipped a button to the front of her shirt that read GIVE GOD A CHANCE, stuffed a black box in her pocket, then toddled off to a gate in the fence. She opened it, went through, and Lucy and I watched as she walked to the front door and rang the bell.
Moments later it opened. We could see a woman standing in the doorway—unless it was another cross-dressing Soranden. Ma spoke to her for about half a minute, then went inside. Not the usual reaction to a Jehovah’s Witness drive-by.
“What if Esther’s a Witness?” Lucy asked.
“Then we might hear shots. Let’s hope Ma can fake it, and that Esther isn’t a Witness, or another Dahmer.” Jeffrey Dahmer being a former cannibal of some renown.
“Little bit dark there, Mort.”
“Gotcha. Think Esther would know Ma from Jane Fonda?”
“We could go ask.”
“Okay, I’ll be quiet. Unless shots are fired.”
We waited.
Five minutes later, Ma came out. She reached the sidewalk and ambled away from us. I gave her a minute, then took the Caddy up the street fifty yards past her, stopped at the curb. She opened the front passenger door and got in.
“She guilty as sin, Ma?” I asked.
“Remains to be seen. But the good news is, she and I look quite a bit alike. Good news for us, not for her.”
“C’mon, Ma,” I said.
“Just tellin’ it like it is.”
“And why would that be good news for us?”
“Because if she’s Donna and Lara Rose, and if they’ve got bogus accounts, and if all the pieces fall into place, maybe I can go into banks as her and unload an account or two, get some of Volker’s money back.”
“That’s a lot of ifs, Ma. And illegal as hell, in case that didn’t occur to you.”
“Life is full of ifs. Like if I don’t get a smoke pretty soon, I might go postal, so how ’bout you find us a place where I can get out and light up?”
“I’m on it. We can discuss those other ifs later.”
I took her to a McDonald’s, parked in their lot. Ma got out and lit up a Camel. She walked in circles, trailing smoke, then had me pop the trunk again. She got something else out, then got back in the car. “Okay, let’s check the video,” she said.
She took off the button she’d
attached to her shirt. She held it up. “Video camera. Lens looks out of the ‘O’ in God.” She got a small black box out of her pocket. “Wireless recorder. Thirty-two gigs.” Then she held up an iPad. “Voila.”
She turned on the recorder, set it to transmit, fired up the iPad, and we watched an unsteady video as Ma walked to the house, rang the bell, and Esther answered.
Esther looked about Ma’s age, an inch taller, roughly the same weight. Her hair was gray, an inch off her shoulders. They could’ve been sisters.
Ma gave her a pretty good Jehovah’s Witness spiel, which didn’t go over very well. Esther was about to close the door in Ma’s face when Ma asked, pious and sincere, if she could use the bathroom because she was about to have an accident. That got her inside. She cooled the Jehovah talk and recorded the interior of the living room, a glance into the kitchen, got a good look down a hallway before going into the bathroom. Nothing special in the bathroom, but she got a good recording of herself washing her hands, came out, and kept the camera on Esther to catch as much of her mannerisms as possible. She thanked her profusely, tried one more time to leave a Watchtower with her, struck out when Esther gave her a cool, disinterested, get-outta-here look, then she asked Esther if that Ford Explorer got decent gas mileage, got a “what’s-it-to-ya” look, then got out of there.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“GOOD WORK, MA,” I said, “but you didn’t ask her if she was keeping any of Soranden’s blackmail money for him.”
Ma guffawed. “Didn’t fit the narrative, boyo. But she’s got nice stuff in there. I’d say her house has been painted in the last year or two, and it’s fixed up real good inside. And she’s got that almost-new Ford Explorer.”
“So … money?”
“Some. For sure. But we don’t know what her situation is, what income she’s got. She might be on Social Security, have a bunch of retirement money of her own.”
“Bet Warley could find out,” Lucy said.
Ma turned to her. “You’re right.” She looked at me. “You got your old pal Sullivan on speed dial, right?”
Gumshoe Rock Page 21