Frag Box (8 page)

Chapter 9

Faux Box

My shadows had managed to become invisible now, but I was sure they would still be with me.
Maybe I should write Charlie an obit
, I thought, and I smiled at the reaction that would have gotten from him. And then I did a mental double take and thought maybe that was exactly what I should do. In a way, anyway. First, though, I wanted to set up a little street theatre.

I headed up the Fourth Street hill and back toward my office, but I went on past it and then across the street and down the block to Nickel Pete Carchetti’s pawnshop. Its name is Pawn USA, but I always call it the Emporium of Broken Dreams.

An old-fashioned jingle bell clanked as I went in the door and saw Pete brooding at his usual perch behind the teller’s cage. With a jeweler’s loupe stuck on his troll-like forehead, he looked like one of the seven dwarfs, just back from the mines. Grumpy, to be exact. His bottle of Pepto-Bismol was on the counter in front of him, half full, and I guessed his Panzer-class heartburn was staging another major offensive.

“Herman, old friend.” He raised his chin by way of greeting and gave me his idea of a smile. Then he took a swig of his pink elixir. “All by yourself, for a change, instead of bringing me one of your sleazy clients with some piece of junk to hock. I feel honored. No doubt you came to take me out to lunch.”

“After you called my customers sleazy?”

“Well what do you call them, pillars of society?”

“Pillagers, more often. But you’re not exactly in the carriage trade, either, you know.”

“Hmm. No, I guess not. I had a great-grandfather who was, sort of, but they called it something different back then.” He sighed, spread his hands on the counter, and stared up at some invisible object to his left.

“Like robbing trains?”

“Stagecoaches.”

“Much more elegant. I need a cigar box.”

“Excuse me?” His eyes snapped back down and refocused, and he looked a little pissed that I had interrupted his reverie.

“You know, one of those little wood things with phony brass hinges and circus graphics on the lid? I think cigars used to come in them once, though I can’t honestly say I’ve ever seen any.”

“I know what a cigar box is, Herman. I’m an educated man. What I don’t know is why you would come to me for one. Try maybe an antique store. Hell, try a cigar store. I’m not in the box business.”

“I will make no comment on what kind of business you’re in, Pete. Do you have one or not?”

“I might could find one. Mind telling me what you want it for?”

“It’s kind of a long story.”

“So give me the made-for-TV version.”

“Okay, the short take is this: it’s possible that I’m being followed right now. If that’s true, I want my shadow to see me come out of a pawn shop carrying a ratty-looking old box that you just might have been holding for me.”

“That all sounds very B-movie-ish. Which by the way, I got a good assortment of. I even got Beta.”

“Beta is deader than Elvis, Pete.”

“No it’s not. It’s good stuff, always was. I got the players, too, is the thing. Give you just a hell of a deal on a whole package.”

“We were talking about boxes, I believe.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right then.” This time he gave me his Oscar-quality sigh. “You care if anything is in this box?”

“It might actually be better if there is.”

“How about a pasteboard item that’s held together by a couple of big rubber bands and is full of some costume jewelry that’s so crappy, even I can’t peddle it?”

“Sounds perfect. Stick a phony claim ticket on it and it will be better yet.”

“The things I do for you.”

***

The box turned out to be white, with a picture of a two-corona owl on the front, and it looked suitably junky and also light-colored enough to be seen from a good distance away. I borrowed a Magic Marker from Pete, peeled back the rubber band temporarily, and wrote:

I smiled at my handiwork and gave him back the marker. He didn’t charge me for the box.

“But you realize, of course, that now you really do owe me a lunch?”

“Fair enough, Pete.”

“Damn straight it is. Just don’t make good on it until you lose your tail, whoever it is, okay? What I do not need in what’s left of my wretched old life is a bunch of cloak and dagger shit, is what.”

“Got it.” I put the box conspicuously under my arm and headed back out into the crisp air. Time to visit the fourth estate.

***

Three blocks later, I was back on Cedar, at the main office of the
Pioneer Press
. The place had a grand lobby at street level that actually contained nothing but a desk for receiving mail, a lot of photomurals, and a big spiral staircase that led up to the skyway level. There, a pretty receptionist at a tiny desk managed to look cheerful and sweet while she mostly told people to go away.

“I’d like to talk to a reporter, please.”

“Do you have a news story for us, or are you concerned about one that we’ve already printed?”

“I’m concerned about one that you should have printed but didn’t. I’d like to find out why.”

“And what is your point of view, sir, if I may ask?”

“I was a witness.” What a nice way of asking me if I’m a nut case with an axe to grind. I gave her what I hoped was a bland smile, just to show her I wasn’t dangerous.

“A witness to…?”

“A fire.”
That’s good, Jackson. Keep it simple. Stay away from the conspiracy-theory stuff
.

“You mean like a house fire?”

“More like an area fire, down in Connemara Gulch.”

“Like a brush fire, you mean? I don’t think we—”

“Not brush. Something directed at homeless people. Somebody was deliberately torching their campsites.”

“I think you should be talking to the police, sir.”

I just never seem to listen to my own advice.

She began punching buttons on her console, but not 911, I noticed. Their own security, more likely. I was obviously making the poor young woman feel threatened. Now she was sending for the people with the white coats and truncheons.

“In fact, sir, I can…” She ran her free hand through her hair, frowned once, hung up her receiver, picked it up again and punched some different buttons.

“I’ll talk to this gentleman, Pam.” The unexpected voice of calm came from a petite, dark-haired woman with a perfectly tailored suit and a bemused look. She had come out of the passing skyway pedestrian traffic, coat folded over one arm and thin leather gloves in her other hand. The receptionist named Pam looked surprised and relieved, and she gave the newcomer a palms-up gesture that said, “your funeral.”

“I’m Anne Packard,” she said, shifting her coat to her left arm so she could offer me her hand.

“Herman Jackson. Pleased to meet you.”

“Herman Jackson the bail bondsman?” Her grip was surprisingly strong for a woman’s, and she held it longer than I expected. I looked at her face again and saw alert and probing eyes that had little laugh creases at the corners, a sharp nose, and thin, not-quite-smiling lips. She reminded me of a psychotherapist I once knew: very pleasant to chat with, but you wanted to be damn careful what you said to her. And she already knew who I was, which was more than a bit jarring.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “I didn’t realize I was known to the press.”

“You should be impressed. It’s part of being a reporter, and I work at it. I know the names of all the businesses that I pass regularly. Sooner or later, I will know all the faces and stories that go with them, too. You, however, have just missed your big chance to impress me. You’re supposed to say, ‘Oh, wow, Anne Packard! I read your column every day! Great stuff.’”

“Didn’t I say that? I was sure I said that. I certainly thought it. I probably thought ‘witty and incisive,’ too.”

“Nice try. Tell you what, though: buy me a cup of coffee at the little deli over there, and I’ll listen to your story anyway.”

“I was hoping for a real reporter. No offense.”

“A
real
reporter? You mean instead of a
mere
columnist? Well, I was hoping for a
real
scoop from an unimpeachable source, and a
real
Pulitzer Prize for writing it. No offense. How about if we both take a chance here?”

“When you put it so charmingly, how could I refuse?”

“God, I hope your story is better than your pickup line.”

Was that a pickup line? I hadn’t thought so, but in any case, we walked over to a little hole-in-the-skyway C-store and mini-deli that had wrought iron chairs and tiny tables, right out in the pedestrian traffic across from Pam’s desk. I got us two regular coffees in Styrofoam cups and we settled down to talk newspaper talk.

I told her all the parts of the previous night’s events that didn’t sound like lunatic raving. The very short version, in other words. I did not say anything about the kid with the snow shovel or my being followed.

“Between a murder right downtown and the fire in the Gulch, I thought at least one of the two stories would have found its way into your paper,” I said.

“Don’t be so disingenuous. You also think the two stories are related.”

“Okay, you got me. I wouldn’t have thought so, except that some street people over in Railroad Island told me a couple of federal agents were there last night, looking for the dead guy’s squat.”

“His what?”

“His nest, his patch, whatever you want to call it. The cardboard box he lived in.”

She nodded her understanding, and I went on. “This morning, the same feds were in my office, looking for something they thought I was holding for him. Turns out, they’re Secret Service.”

“Are you sure they’re the same agents?” She had started taking some notes on a miniature steno pad, which I took to be a positive sign.

“No. To be perfectly honest, I have no proof of that at all.”

She looked up from her writing and gave me a very penetrating look and the tiniest hint of a smile, and I figured I had just passed some kind of credibility test.

“Drink some coffee,” she said.

So I did.

While I tasted dark, too-hot coffee and plastic, she produced a cell phone and made three calls, taking a lot of notes and frequently furrowing her brows. I sat back in my chair and stared at the ceiling, making a show of not trying to hear her conversation.

Finally she put the phone back in its clip-on belt holster and once again stared thoughtfully into my eyes while she tapped the eraser end of her pencil on her note pad.

“Very curious,” she said.

“What is?” If
she
was very curious, that could be very good for the home team.

“I have some good sources in Fire, Police, and the County Morgue,” she said. “Nice folks, people who don’t bullshit me or try to freeze me out.”

“How handy for you.”

“It usually is. Today, they’re all sounding a bit on the phony side. And they’re not even being very clever about it. The official story is that the fire was a brush fire, probably accidentally set by homeless people trying to keep warm.”

“Brush doesn’t usually burn very well in a snowstorm, does it?”

“I’m not sure. And the official story on your homeless guy is that he died of exposure.”

“I agree. Exposure to brass knuckles, exposure to boots, exposure to some very nasty people. The question is, why are the cops trying to whitewash it?”

“Drink some more coffee.” She dug her phone back out and made two more calls, taking still more notes. Then she scowled at her notes, tried some of her own coffee, and looked back up at me.

“Neither of your stories would have made the morning edition. Our usual deadline is four p.m. But my editor says we aren’t running anything on them this afternoon, either. We’re sitting on the death story as a courtesy to somebody who wants to see who comes poking their noses into it.”

“Meaning me.”

“I would say so. Interesting, though, how he doesn’t say who the favor was for, and he also does not use the word ‘murder’ at all.”

“But that would explain my visit from the Secret Service, wouldn’t it?”

“It could explain why they picked you to visit,” she said, “but not why they were interested in this dead person in the first place.” She drank some more coffee and did some more scowling at her notes. “It’s also interesting that my editor told me to forget about the whole business.”

“Does it work, telling a reporter to do that?”

“You bet. It just about guarantees that I will investigate further. And it also allows him to deny he ever told me to.”

“Neat. So now what happens?”

“That depends on how serious you are, Mr. Jackson.”

“Me? Serious?”

“Serious enough to take a little walk with me?”

“To Connemara Gulch?”

She nodded. “Show me where you saw what you saw.”

“Absolutely.”

As she was getting her coat back on, I happened to look down at Pete’s cigar box and get a sudden inspiration.

“Listen, this box is sort of heavy to lug around. Could I leave it with your receptionist, Pam, until we get back?”

“What’s in it?”

“Just some low-grade client collateral.” I hoped I said that loud enough for Pam to hear and remember.

“Sure, why not? Pam?”

“No problem, sir.” She was, I’m sure, delighted to be rid of me so easily.

As Anne Packard and I set off down the skyway at a brisk pace, I noted the location of the security cameras in the reception area. I liked the setup.

“Ms. Packard—”

“Call me Anne.”

“Anne, then. Do you by chance know anybody who can lift a fingerprint off a snow shovel?”

“Is that a trick question?”