Penance (20 page)

I had tailed Sheehan’s vehicle from the St. Paul Police Department’s parking lot into downtown Minneapolis, coasting up to a meter across from the redbrick building near the old train depot that housed the presses
of The Cities Reporter.
Sheehan parked in the Employees Only lot next door, but instead of going into the building, he skipped down Washington Avenue, then up Marquette, stopping at a fast-food joint for a cheeseburger and fries. I passed. The only thing fast food had going for it in the past was that it was both fast and cheap and these days it is neither.

My reasons for following Sheehan were vague at best. On the one hand, Sheehan’s tireless search for smearable dirt could have led him to Amy Lamb, Dennis Thoreau and John Brown, whom he’d mistaken for Joseph Sherman—although why he might want to kill any of them was a mystery to me. On the other hand, if C. C. Monroe and Marion Senske actually were responsible for the deaths, it was doubtful they did the job themselves. More likely they hired someone to do their killing, someone who might have already been in their employ investigating the opposition candidates and passing secrets under the table to Sheehan.

Yes, I admit it was weak. But as it clearly states in Chapter Four of the
Universal Private Eye Instruction Manual, Third Edition
, and I quote: “When in doubt, follow someone.”

I shadowed Sheehan back to
The Cities Reporter
and waited. To pass the time, I listened to a jazz station on a portable AM/FM radio I keep in the glove compartment—never use the car radio when the car isn’t running because it drains the battery, especially in cold weather. (And never leave the car running because a car idling for hours at a time is bound to attract attention.) I unrolled my windows to avoid steaming them up. It probably wasn’t necessary. It was cool but not uncomfortable. A van is better, of course. You can stand and stretch in a van. You can fit it with curtains so no one can watch you watching them. You can load it up with a refrigerator, a chemical toilet, a comfy chair, air conditioners, heaters, cameras, binoculars, telescopes, radios and cellular telephones. I really ought to get one one of these days.

I had no idea what time it was and fought the impulse to look at my watch. Time has no meaning when you’re on surveillance except to mark the arrivals and departures of your subject; you’re not going anywhere, there’s nothing you need to do. In fact, there’s nothing you
can
do while on a stakeout except watch. If you have a partner, you can talk. Considering some of the long, rambling conversations Anne Scalasi and I have had, you’d wonder why we weren’t working for one of those Washington think tanks; why we weren’t regulars on “MacNeil/Lehrer.” When you’re alone you listen to music if possible and try to stay alert. You think—you can’t help but think—about a hundred different subjects. Only you must keep your mind from wandering too far. I once saw a suspect walk directly past a daydreaming investigator—the investigator didn’t even see him.

Between pumping quarters in the parking meter and to keep my mind off Amy Lamb, I drew a portrait parlé of Sheehan, a word picture that described him to the smallest detail:

NAME: Sheehan, Hersey

AGE: 25-30

SEX: Male

HEIGHT Five-ten with shoes on

WEIGHT: 180 with clothes on

BUILD: Medium

POSTURE: Stiff [he reminded me of Jack Webb]

COMPLEXION: Tanned [in Minnesota in mid-October? He probably has his own tanning booth]

COLOR: White

EYES: Brown, squinting, long lashes

HAIR: Brown, short in front, long in back, slight wave, part on the left side

MUSTACHE: Brown, thick

EYEBROWS: Thick, arched

EARS: Yes

NOSE: Large, narrow, straight

FOREHEAD: High

FACE: Narrow

LIPS: Pinched

NECK: Short

CHIN: Pointed

CHEEKS: Full

CHEEKBONES: High

TEETH: Big, white

SHOULDERS: Broad

WAIST: Thin

STOMACH: Flat

FEET: Big

LEGS: Long

HANDS: Big, well kept

FINGERS: Long

WALK: See posture

DRESS: Expensive [I didn’t know what his salary was but I knew where it went]

MARKS AND SCARS: Only his girlfriend knows for sure

SPEECH: Strong [from what I heard at the press conference, he could give Sam Donaldson elocution lessons]

HABITS: Women?

Eleven quarters later, Sheehan left the redbrick building and walked to his car. Nuts, I missed on his height (it was closer to six feet) and his hair (the part was on the right side). His chin seemed a little weak, too. Oh well. Practice makes perfect.

Tailing a car by yourself in heavy city traffic is arduous at best. Fortunately, Sheehan didn’t stay in the city. He grabbed the I-35 on-ramp and drove south, past the city limits, past the suburbs into farm country. I drifted along behind him, five hundred yards back and in the other lane. It was a pleasant enough drive: gently rolling hills, stands of trees, farms, cows, horses. I remembered counting farm animals when I was a kid driving with my parents, inflating my totals to better my brother’s count. I wasn’t too worried about being spotted as long as we stayed on the interstate. A lot of cars travel the entire distance between towns and cities; it’s not unusual to see the same vehicle behind you for a hundred miles—which was just about the distance we’d traveled, taking the Albert Lea exit about fifteen miles north of the Iowa border. Sheehan pulled into the parking lot of a Holiday Inn just off the main drag. I drove past, flipped a U and parked at the truck stop across the street. A sign outside the motel read W
ELCOME
G
OVERNOR.

I gave Sheehan a good head start and then crossed the street. The weather had turned colder, but I didn’t mind. I prefer fall to summer. I burn in the summer. I cover my body with all kinds of toxic chemicals, yet it makes no difference. I burn. Then I peel. Then I burn again.

I walked through the lobby like I had a room with a view of the pool, following three men and a woman, all in shiny suits. They led me to a hospitality room where a dozen or more reporters had gathered around an empty podium and about four, five dozen supporters had gathered around them. A man looked me over when I entered the room and I flashed him my best don’t-worry-about-me-I’m-no-threat-no-sirree smile. After that I went unnoticed, hovering near a table loaded with beer, wine, soft drinks and assorted munchies on the far side of the room. I filled my pockets with pretzels—I hadn’t eaten all day.

Just before six, making sure he would make the local TV newscasts, the governor appeared to a smattering of applause. He shook hands with a few followers, greeted a few more and smiled as he went behind the microphones mounted on the podium. Despite the smile he looked like a man who was being marched before a firing squad. And, mama, did the reporters let him have it: What about this? What about that? How damaging was the debate? Have you reconsidered withdrawing from the election? Has the attorney general filed charges? Volley after volley. Through it all the man kept smiling, actually joked with the reporters, who joked back. John Dillinger and Melvin Purvis had a similar relationship.

Hersey Sheehan did not ask a single question, caustic or otherwise. Instead, he stood near the front of the pack of reporters, notebook in his pocket, arms folded across his chest, being seen and not heard. He seemed to enjoy the governor’s attempts to avoid looking at him.

The press conference broke up after about an hour and the governor consented to interviews by each of the TV crews in turn. Sheehan moved to the exit but was detained by a small knot of the governor’s supporters. I threaded past him and loitered in the corridor. Loud voices filtered out of the room. I could only make out two words: Fuck you. They came from Sheehan as he tramped past me, through the lobby and out the door. He was smiling.

Sheehan wasted no time getting back on I-35, this time heading north. I listened to the Timberwolves on the radio as we drove. By the time we reached Owatonna, they had built a thirteen-point lead over the Magic in Orlando. By the North-field exit, the lead was stretched to twenty-one. But by Lakeville, the Magic, led by Shaquille O’Neal, were trailing by only seven points. The game was tied when we reached the Cities.

I was disturbed when Sheehan pulled into the parking lot across from my office building.
Real good, Taylor. You’ve been burned
, I told myself. Only I wasn’t. Sheehan walked past my building to a tavern in the middle of the next block that I hadn’t been inside since the U
NDER
N
EW
O
WNERSHIP
sign had gone up. Well, there was no time like the present. I went inside.

Jeezus, what had happened to the place?
I wondered. Instead of a quiet, intimate saloon with a TV set above the bar, it had been transformed into a haven for yuppie sports fans. The booths had been replaced by dozens of small, two- and four-person tables, some of them pushed together into larger groups. Sports paraphernalia filled the walls. Big- screen televisions were everywhere, all tuned to the Timberwolves game. As for the waitresses, gone were the comfortable knit shirts and jeans, replaced by tank tops and hot-orange microskirts; the waitresses dipped when they served drinks to avoid giving the boys behind them a show. And the prices! I’m sorry, I think four fifty for a tap beer is excessive. I ordered a Summit Pale Ale and nursed it as I searched the place for Sheehan from my perch on a leather stool near the door. I found him in the back, near the restrooms, sitting at a small table. He was talking to a black man whose face I could not see. As much as it pained me, I signaled the bartender for another, then went to the restroom, purposely looking away from Sheehan as I passed. After I finished my business I grabbed a quick look at the black man as I casually sauntered back to my stool. Only I didn’t feel casual. I felt like diving under a table.

Freddie was a grave robber; he’d dig up anything for a buck. And he was mean. Pit bull mean. He was very loose with his hands and he took pleasure in carrying his gun so everyone could see it.

I always figured his churlishness was the result of the merciless teasing he had suffered as a child. Seems his Ma saw Sidney Poitier in
Lilies of the Field
in ’63 and wanted her boy to grow up just like him. She even gave him the actor’s name: Sidney Poitier Fredricks. She dragged Freddie to dance classes and acting classes and forbade him to play football because she didn’t want his face damaged. Whenever Freddie would get in a fight, which was often, Ma would check his baby face, pleading with him to be a good boy, trying to make him understand that his face was his fortune. Finally, Freddie won a small part in a community theater production of
Raisin in the Sun
, he even earned a good review, three lines in the community weekly. Ma was so happy, she finally allowed Freddie to go out for the high school team, persuaded, no doubt, by Freddie’s list of black actors who had gained success on the football field: Woody Strode, Bernie Casey, Jim Brown, Lou Gossett Jr. (as far as Freddie knew Gossett had never played ball, but he had won an Oscar for An
Officer and a Gentleman
and Freddie figured every little bit helped).

Things went well, too. He made second-string All State his junior year. Then a linebacker blindsided him, busting his jaw, cracking two teeth and twisting his lip into a perpetual snarl. Ma was devastated. Freddie insisted he could still act, but Ma said never; the way Freddie looked now he could only get parts playing drug dealers and pimps and there was enough niggers doing that crap already—that’s what she said. So Freddie took a scholarship to play Division III football. By his sophomore year, he was declared academically ineligible and had dropped out of college to join the Air Force. He became an AP stationed at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. For two years his job was to protect the hurricane-wire fence that enclosed the entire base. He would zoom around in a Jeep, his faithful German shepherd at his side. One day he caught three thieves climbing the wire; over their shoulders were sacks of warm beer heisted from the NCO club. Freddie shot them down. Then he turned the dog loose. To pacify an outraged Filipino government, Freddie was quickly court-martialed, found guilty, sentenced to life and shackled to a seat on the next flight home.

By the time he reached San Francisco, the guilty verdict had been overturned. Freddie was granted an early, honorable discharge and the AP lieutenant accompanying him had sprung for a case of Freddie’s favorite beverage, Colt .45 Malt Liquor. Rumor had it the Air Force even fiddled with his service record, giving him enough investigative hours to qualify for a PI license. He would later boast, “Cappin’ those three slopes was the best career move I ever made.”

In short, Freddie was an embarrassment to our profession and the fact that Hersey Sheehan was conversing so pleasantly with him convinced me Kerry Beamon was correct: Sheehan was a sleaze. Call it guilt by association.

I drained the beer and ordered a third without thinking about it. I was out of pretzels, so I asked the bartender for a menu. Six-fifty for buffalo wings? With prices like these, the menu should be leather bound and come with a gold tassel. I slid it away.

“Unbelievable,” the guy next to me said.

“What?”

“The prices,” he answered, nodding toward the menu.

“I’ve seen worse,” I told him.

The guy was dressed in a dirty white T-shirt, jeans torn at the knees and Topsiders. I estimated his beard at three days. He took a long pull on a Marlboro and told me how he’d just been laid off by his advertising agency because some asshole in another department lost a big account and his entire group got the bounce even though they didn’t work on the account while the asshole was still with the agency—all before he exhaled.

“Politics, it’s all politics,” he said. “Nobody cares about the people who do the work. Do you know how many awards I’ve won for these guys?”

I excused myself and got the hell out of there.

I hid in the shadows of an alley across the street from the tavern and waited for Sheehan. It was a mistake. My first clue was when the muzzle of a handgun was rammed into my spine. The second was when Freddie said, “How you doin’, Holly?”