A Safe Place for Dying (15 page)
Read A Safe Place for Dying Online
Authors: Jack Fredrickson
“Bullshit.”
“The Members are not as resilient as you, Vlodek. They were not schooled in bouncing up and starting over, like you did. They would not know to bathe at a local health center.”
It was a small thing, but startling. “How do you know that?”
“Stanley apprised me of your status.” He shook his head. “Enough of that. How do we progress?”
“We're out of it,” I said. “Chief Morris has the case, but that's nominal. A.T.F. has the scent; they'll follow it.”
The Bohemian shook his head. “Only until the next rumor of a terrorist threat aimed at a downtown skyscraper. Then we go on the back burner. No, Vlodek, we must pursue this investigation ourselves. Stanley, do you agree?”
“Absolutely, Mr. Chernek.”
“How, Stanley? You know law enforcement. A.T.F. has the databases, field agents, labs, and big-time experience. Things we don't have.”
“Maybe, Mr. Elstrom, but like Mr. Chernek says, we're just one terrorist alert away from being put on hold. You saw the way Agent Till was reluctant to commit to anything, how he wanted the chief to be in charge. Agent Till can't commit resources to a threat against a gated community full of rich people, especially since
what's been destroyed is an empty house and a lamppost. Think what would happen if the papers picked up on that, what they would say about Agent Till nursemaiding a place like Crystal Waters when he should be focused on the airports, the railroad stations, the skyscrapers downtown. No, we've got to stay on this ourselves, like Mr. Chernek says.”
what's been destroyed is an empty house and a lamppost. Think what would happen if the papers picked up on that, what they would say about Agent Till nursemaiding a place like Crystal Waters when he should be focused on the airports, the railroad stations, the skyscrapers downtown. No, we've got to stay on this ourselves, like Mr. Chernek says.”
“So you both believe we should continue our own interviews?”
They nodded.
I pulled out the contractor list the Bohemian had revised. “Do either of you remember anything about these electricians? Any problems, even little ones?”
“I just wrote the checks,” the Bohemian said. “The Safe Haven partners would have dealt with any problems.”
“I've been thinking of something this morning, Mr. Elstrom.” Stanley started drumming his fingers slowly on the tabletop. “At the tail end of the project, one of the electricians didn't show up to wire something, and everybody was worried the final occupancy permits wouldn't be issued on time. They had to scramble to get somebody else to finish the work.”
The Bohemian shook his head. “I don't remember.”
“Would it have had to do with wiring the fountain?” I asked Stanley.
His fingers stopped drumming. “Could be.”
“Ziloski, the electrician I brought to look at the lamppost, told me that's why he was hired back then, to finish wiring the fountain for somebody who hadn't shown up.”
Stanley nodded. “I remember the electrician going missing, and wondering if he might have had something to do with the bomb. But I called his employer and they said he had a family emergency, so I dropped it.”
“Do you remember his name?”
“James, I think. James something. But like I said, he came up clean.”
I picked up my contractor list. “Do you remember which company he worked for?”
“It was so long ago, Mr. Elstrom. And like I said, it was a dead end.”
“You looked for the man's name on the parolee list?”
“I didn't recognize any of those names.”
“Keep trying, Stanley. We're chasing straws in the wind.”
Stanley reached across the table for my copy of the contractor list, circled two names, and gave it back. “You check those electricians. I'll check the other two.”
We left the Bohemian sitting in his grand conference room and rode down in the elevator together and went to our cars.
The sun was going down as I got off the expressway. I didn't want to eat alone. I didn't want to think alone. I swung by Leo's. His Porsche was parked at the curb in front of his mother's bungalow.
“Want to go get something to eat?” I asked through the screen when he came to the door. Then I noticed the silvery, geometric-patterned shirt and the light green slacks. Dress duds. “Going out, or merely planning to change a tire on a dimly lit road?”
“I just dropped Ma at church for Friday night bingo. Endora and I are going to the movies.” He opened the door and stepped out onto the concrete porch. He studied my face in the glow of the yellow bug light. “You all right, Dek?”
“Peachy. Why do you ask?”
“Because you look like shit. When's the last time you ate?”
I thought back. “Lunch, but I left most of it. I'm on a new diet: the Bad Nerves Diet. I'm going to write a book about it and get rich.”
He turned around and held the door open for me. “You hit the jackpot tonight, pal: pork, sauerkraut, and dumplings. A Polish Happy Meal.” I followed him into the kitchen.
He pulled a big plastic salad bowl out of a cabinet, opened the
refrigerator, and filled the bowl with the leftovers. He stuck a fork and a knife upright, like two flagpoles, into the big chunk of pork and handed the bowl to me. It must have weighed five pounds, and it was still warm. “Mind if we sit outside? You're such a pig, and I won't have the time to hose down the kitchen after you're done.” He grabbed two bottles of Pilsner Urquell out of the refrigerator, and we went outside to sit on his front stoop.
refrigerator, and filled the bowl with the leftovers. He stuck a fork and a knife upright, like two flagpoles, into the big chunk of pork and handed the bowl to me. It must have weighed five pounds, and it was still warm. “Mind if we sit outside? You're such a pig, and I won't have the time to hose down the kitchen after you're done.” He grabbed two bottles of Pilsner Urquell out of the refrigerator, and we went outside to sit on his front stoop.
He opened both beers and set one on the cement next to me. “Now tell Uncle Leo what's ailing you, but talk straight ahead, toward the street. I don't want your food on this two-dollar shirt.”
I ate and told him about the extra wires under the lamppost and the meeting with A.T.F. at the Bohemian's. When I told him my theory that all the D.X.12 in Gateville was wired together, he set down his beer bottle so hard I thought I heard a crack.
“One switch blows it all away?”
“Could be.”
“Why hasn't he threatened that, then?”
“I think he's playing with them, stringing them along, one explosion at a time. A cat with a mouse.”
“Or because he thinks he can extract more total money if he does it a chunk at a time.” Leo looked off down the street. “At least you've passed it off to the Feds,” he said.
“I'm still on it. Stanley remembered part of a name from 1970, one of the electricians. The Bohemian wants Stanley and me to chase it down, paralleling Chief Morris and Agent Till.”
“That's probably wise,” he said, taking a pull on the Urquell.
“No, it's not. Using Stanley and me is like using Laurel and Hardy. I'm not equipped for it, and Stanley is supposed to be spending his time watching security at Gateville. Besides, his wife is sick, and he gets called away.”
“What's the harm in you poking around, too? Worst case, you generate some billing that buys you hot water for the turret, unless
you actually enjoy going to the health center and getting naked with winos?” His eyebrows cavorted on his forehead.
you actually enjoy going to the health center and getting naked with winos?” His eyebrows cavorted on his forehead.
I laughed, for the first time in what felt like forever. Leo Brumsky, with his crazy shirts, pastel pants, and furry eyebrows, always found a way through the cloud to the lining.
He grinned and went on. “Talk to coppers, they'll tell you: The damndest things can pop up out of nowhere during an investigation. Everybody's just got to keep plugging.”
I set the bowl of food on the step. It was still over half full. “It's so amateurish. People can die, Leo, unless this thing is handled right.”
“As you said, A.T.F. is on the job. As for you, do your best. Continue on, as this Chernek wants. And don't discount amateurs.” He checked his watch and stood up. “You've been fed. I'm late.” He ducked into the bungalow and came back with a sheet of aluminum foil. “You can have the remaining pounds for breakfast.”
We walked down the stairs to the curb.
“What theater are you going to?” I asked.
He launched his caterpillar eyebrows into a crazed dance that would have made Groucho Marx squirm with envy.
“The drive-in.”
“You're a perv, Leo. What's playing?”
“It doesn't matter. It makes me feel young,” he said as he got in the Porsche.
“And Endora?”
“She feels really young.” He smiled out the window, twisted the key, and drove away, leaving me with a blast of German exhaust, a double entendre, and a bowl of cooling pork.
“Two young boys from the A.T.F. took our old payroll files first thing this morning,” the woman behind the counter at Universal Electric said with an exaggerated southern drawl. She was in her seventies but still fighting. She'd dyed her hair orange and drawn eyebrows to match on her forehead. She wore a low-cut leopard print dress, tight.
I checked my watch. “It's Saturday morning, only nine fifteen.”
Her perfume was strong. The kind, I imagined, that came in barrels.
“It's the early bird gets the worm, honey. They was here at eight sharp.” She leaned over the counter to give me a glimpse of wrinkled breasts. “What's this about?” she whispered, although we were alone in the tiny office. “Those two A.T.F. boys were as tight-lipped as lockjawed sparrows. They showed me a list of names and asked if any had worked here. I said no. Then they demanded our old payroll records, gave me a receipt, and took off with not more than two peeps.”
I looked around like a spy about to pass a government secret.
“They're looking for a guy who bombed a draft office in 1970. They think he was working for you at the time.”
“They're looking for a guy who bombed a draft office in 1970. They think he was working for you at the time.”
It was a good lie. She brightened, keeping the breasts on the counter.
“Which project?” she asked, looking up to make sure I was looking down.
“Crystal Waters.”
She nodded.
“You would have been way too young to have been working here then.”
She dropped her voice even more so I'd have to lean closer. “I was a mere slip of a girl, you understand, too young to be working legal, but I was here then.”
I feigned surprise. “Ma'amâ”
“Call me Willadean, Honey.”
“Willadean, that certainly is a shock. Do you remember anybody named James who would have worked on that job?”
“James, James ⦔ she pursed her orange lips and lifted off the counter. “First name or last name?”
“I assume it's a first name.”
She started to shake her head, then stopped. “Could it have been Jaynes, Michael Jaynes?” She spelled the last name out. “Him I remember.”
“How's that, Willadean?”
“He was a strange, strange man. Wild man with a beard, and full of anger. I remember Mr. Davis, he was the owner then, having to tell Michael time and again to keep his political views to himself. Said he was agitating the other men and Mr. Davis didn't want the work slowed down from arguing politics and all. Michael was always nice to me, though.”
“When did he leave here?”
“That's the thing I remember: He just up and disappeared sudden
one day. I can't recall the specific day, but I do remember there was much consternation about what might have happened, like whether he'd been in an accident or been mugged or something. Mr. Davis phoned the rooming house where Michael was staying, but they didn't know anything. They said his stuff was still in his room. The men working with him didn't know anything, neither. It was a mystery all around. Mr. Davis held onto Michael's last paycheck for a while but finally had me forward it on.”
one day. I can't recall the specific day, but I do remember there was much consternation about what might have happened, like whether he'd been in an accident or been mugged or something. Mr. Davis phoned the rooming house where Michael was staying, but they didn't know anything. They said his stuff was still in his room. The men working with him didn't know anything, neither. It was a mystery all around. Mr. Davis held onto Michael's last paycheck for a while but finally had me forward it on.”
“To where?”
“To the personal contact he wrote on his application, of course.”
“You wouldn't still have that application?”
“Probably was in the box with the other payroll records I gave to them young boys from the government.”
“And that last canceled check?”
“They was young boys from the A.T.F. They didn't know how to ask things of a lady.”
“You've still got it?”
“Oh, I still got it, honey.” She leered across the counter.
I tried to leer back. “For sure, but I meant that last canceled check.”
She cocked her hip and wiggled her finger in a come-hither gesture I'd seen once in a beach-party movie made a few years before I was born. She led me to the back warehouse, walking in front of me so I could admire the shifting tautness of the leopard fabric from behind. As we moved between the skids of cartons, one of the degenerates that lurks in my brain struck up the strains of Maria Muldaur singing “It Ain't the Meat, It's the Motion,” complete with a bump-and-grind drum roll that kept time to the clicking of Willadean's red high heels on the cement floor.
She stopped at the back wall and pirouetted. “The bank records are up there,” she said, pointing one arm and both leopard-covered breasts at a pile of cardboard boxes high on a storage rack. The
boxes were neatly labeled. “Whatever you want, just grab it,” she said, taking a half step toward me.
boxes were neatly labeled. “Whatever you want, just grab it,” she said, taking a half step toward me.
I don't scamperâI'm too bigâbut at that moment, I was as sprightly as a pup chipmunk as I hopped up onto the skid of electrical cables below the cardboard boxes. I pulled out the box labeled CANCELED CHECKS, 1970â1979 and jumped down, clutching the box like a shield. I carried it to a nearby workbench. Willadean unfolded the top flaps and went through the rubber-banded bundles of bank envelopes inside, extracting several.
“You said he would have disappeared in April of 1970?”
“Yes.”
“Then we would have sent out his last check in June or July, and it would have come back processed in August or September.” She opened several of the envelopes and fanned through the green payroll checks inside, finally extracting one. “Here it is,” she said, handing it to me.
It was an ordinary check, dated April 25, 1970, made out to Michael S. Jaynes in the amount of $116.74. I turned it over. A woman's hand had endorsed it first with Michael's name, then with her own underneath, “Pay to Carlinda State Bank. Nadine Reynolds.” The Carlinda State Bank of Carlinda, California, had rubber-stamped it beneath her signature.
“You wouldn't know what relationship this Nadine Reynolds had to Michael?” I asked.
“Only that she must have been the contact listed on his employment application. I don't recall whether the form said she was his wife, his mother, his sister, or anything.”
“There must have been an address for her, to send the check?”
“On the application in the boxes them boys took.”
We walked back to the office, her leading, me a safe five paces behind. She made a copy of the check for me and promised to send another to the A.T.F. agents who'd been there that morning.
“I'm here every day except Sunday, honey, but my nights are free,” she told me at the door.
I told her she could count on me being back, sure as a bee sniffs honey on a dewy rose. I didn't know whether that was possible, but Willadean liked it and smiled an orange smile.
It was ten thirty. I drove east to the other electrical contractor Stanley had given me to check. The owner, about seventy, came out of his office mad and said he'd told “the authorities” who'd come that morning that he didn't have time for such crap, and besides, who saves payroll records from that long ago, anyway? I agreed with him and left.
I called Agent Till from the Jeep. His message tape said he was gone for the weekend. I told his voice mail about Michael Jaynes and Nadine Reynolds and said one of his junior agents would be receiving a photocopy of the canceled check. I asked him to get back to me on Monday morning with the address for Nadine Reynolds shown on Jaynes's employment form.
I spent Saturday lunchtime at the Rivertown Health Center. I ran twice as far as my previous record, breathing through my nose to chase away the sticky scent of Willadean the Electric Lady. She'd seen me as ripe game for her lacquered wiles, and I needed to get younger, quick.
Agent Till called at two fifteen that afternoon. “Who's this Michael Jaynes?”
“Your message machine said you were gone for the weekend.”
“Your government never rests. What do you know about Jaynes?”
“Only what your boys could have found out for themselves. He was outspoken politically. He vanished around the time of the guardhouse bombing, leaving behind his clothes in his rented room. His last paycheck was forwarded to a Nadine Reynolds, apparently to an address shown on the employment application your people picked up. I'd like that address.”
“We'll check it out.”
“Can I have that address?”
“Why?”
“Anton Chernek wants me to run a parallel investigation.”
“Why the hell would he want that?”
“In case you get distracted with terrorists.”
“I don't want to keep you awake, Elstrom. We'll check things out,” Till said, and hung up.
Rivertown hasn't had a public library since Lyndon Johnson was president, so I drove to the one in Maple Hills and Yahooed, Googled, and Lexis-Nexised on one of their computers the rest of Saturday afternoon. Once again, I scared myself at the information that's floating out in cyperspace. Pressing the right Internet buttons gets directory listings for anybody in the country who has a published telephone number. Pressing others gets ages, high schools, spouse's names, aerial photos of their neighborhoods, and maps to their houses. And that's all for free. Spending a little money gets credit reports, divorce histories, and a lot of other information that shouldn't be so easily available. The Internet has taken the wear off gumshoes, and replaced them with calloused fingertips. If Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Sherlock Holmes were sleuthing today, they'd have squinty eyes from staring at computer screens, and carpal tunnel wrists from too many hours spent banging on a keyboard.
There were twenty-four Nadine Reynoldses listed on the Internet, ranging in age from twenty-six to eighty-one. None of them lived in California, but that didn't rule anything out. Nor did the ages. They could be the daughter or the mother of the person I was looking for. I printed the list and drove back to the turret.
I started telephoning the East Coast numbers. The first six weren't home. I left messages saying I worked for an estate attorney, which was true enoughâthe Bohemian did estate workâand
asked for return calls to my cell phone. I counted on greed to make them overlook the fact that they couldn't call it collect.
asked for return calls to my cell phone. I counted on greed to make them overlook the fact that they couldn't call it collect.
Nadine Number Seven was home. She'd spent her entire life in Canton, Ohio, and had never heard of a Michael Jaynes. I kept calling.
At six thirty, I took a break for dinner. I microwaved the last pounds of Ma's pork, kraut, and dumplings and took it to the city bench overlooking the river. After I ate, I fell asleep, sitting up, like an old rummy with a wine load. At seven thirty, I went up to the turret for more telephoning and talked to Nadines Sixteen, Eighteen, Twenty, and Twenty-one, all in the West. All were wrong. During the evening, three of the earlier Nadines for whom I'd left messages called back. Each said she'd never heard of a Michael Jaynes, and each hung up the instant I said there was no potential for inheritance. I made my last call, to Nadine Twenty-four in Eugene, Oregon, at nine o'clock. She wasn't home.
I was at a dead end, except to wait for a few return calls. The A.T.F. would be tracing Michael Jaynes and Nadine Reynolds through the federal database. Things were happening, but for me, there was no place to go. All I could do was sit on the sidelines and wait for the phone to ring.
I parked in the La-Z-Boy and ate a jelly doughnut and watched microscopic men play baseball on my little T.V. The players looked like gnats, flitting around on the tiny screen. And sometime in the middle of the night, after the baseball game, the seventies sitcom reruns, and the junior college broadcast of introductory economics, I fell asleep.
Five Nadines called by nine thirty on Sunday morning. Two of them tried very hard to convince me they had a distant relative named Michael Jaynes who, for sure, would have remembered them in his will. After I was certain each had never heard of him, I
said I'd called for help with his burial expenses. Both hung up without getting my address for their Christmas card lists.
said I'd called for help with his burial expenses. Both hung up without getting my address for their Christmas card lists.
At eleven, the Bohemian called, sounding out of breath. “Your cell phone has been busy all morning. Don't you have a second landline, a regular home number?”
I told him I only had one cell number, one computer line, and one mouth, and some considered that last a blessing.
He didn't voice his agreement. “What did you say to Agent Till yesterday afternoon?”
I told the Bohemian what I'd told Till about my visit to Universal Electric, Michael Jaynes, and how I was trying to track down Nadine Reynolds. “I asked Till for Nadine Reynolds's address from Jaynes's employment application.”
“Do you think our bomber is this Michael Jaynes?”
“It's worth checking out. What's going on with Till?”
“He's riled. He's called a meeting for tomorrow morning at the Maple Hills police station.”
“Because of me?”
“He's angry that I want you to keep investigating, but the meeting is about Bob Ballsard. He won't evacuate.”
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