The Disposable Man (18 page)

Freer shook his head. “In good time, Bill. Joe was right—Coffin fucked up. No point getting our shorts in a twist. Let’s take him back.”

Nathan’s face colored. “He can hitch his way back.”

Danny stared at him until his partner looked away, then he nodded good-bye to the supervisor and motioned toward the exit. We all three left without saying a word.

· · ·

Gail met us in the driveway, hugging my neck as soon as I got out of the car, allowing Freer and Nathan to slip away without further embarrassment. Just as at the jail, there were no reporters.

“I heard it on the news,” Gail said into my ear, still hanging on. “I can’t believe he’d try something like that.”

I rubbed her back, pleased beyond measure to have her in my arms. “Yeah—quite the sendoff. Everybody but the
New York Times
.”

She pulled away far enough to look into my eyes. “How was it?”

“In retrospect, a slightly nervous drive in the countryside.”

She scowled. “Coffin is such a prick. I’m glad Judge Harrowsmith handed him his lunch.”

We began walking back toward the house. “Didn’t put him on Nathan’s good side, though,” I said.

Gail stopped just shy of the door. “Joe. I want to apologize for last night.”

I put my hand on her cheek. “Don’t. There’s no need. You are being victimized. You have a right to be pissed off.”

“But not at you.”

I laughed. “Maybe, but that’s the way it works, isn’t it?”

She shook her head in response, but I interrupted her before she could speak. “Gail, it’s better to blow a cork at someone who loves you than at someone who wouldn’t understand. God knows, I’ve run you over a few times.”

The phone began ringing inside the house, so I jogged into the kitchen to answer it.

“I was hoping you’d be back by now,” Sammie said. “That was some stunt. Doesn’t give you much faith in the AG’s office.”

“Not that particular AG,” I agreed. “On the other hand, since it didn’t work, maybe he’ll be a little more rational next time.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t sound convinced. “Anyhow, I don’t know that we’ll be able to tie Marty Sopper to Boris’s death, not if Boris was knocked off when we think he was. Willy’s dug up a pretty good alibi for him—he was cheating on Marianne all that night with another woman.”

“And it’s solid?”

“ ’Fraid so.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Okay. What did Ron find out about Rarig?”

“That’s looking more promising. He took your advice about working outside the paper trail, but he did it one better. He started calling people who knew Rarig as a kid—in Ames, Iowa, of all places. There’ll be one hell of a phone bill next month, but I think it’ll be worth it. From the few folks who remembered him, it doesn’t sound like their Rarig’s the same one we’ve got.”

“A switch?” I asked.

“Could be. Hard to say exactly. Rarig’s in his seventies, so anyone who knew him back then’s pretty old, but their descriptions don’t jibe with our guy. ’Course, to be fair, they also don’t exactly jibe with each other, either. Still, I think we’re barking up the right tree. Ron’s still at it. He’s hoping to find out why Rarig’s never been back to Ames and never made contact with anyone there.”

“He doesn’t have any family? Maybe we could get some early pictures.”

Sammie laughed. “That’s why this is looking good. He was an orphan. There’re some school pictures, and we’ll be getting copies of those, but it sounds like real cloak-and-dagger stuff. Kind of cool.”

I wasn’t sure I would’ve phrased it quite that way. “Well, I’m glad it’s going well. Did you get any feedback on the motorist from the other night?” I tried to temper my lingering anxiety by adding lightly, “The one I damn near shot?”

“Nope,” she said without apparent concern. “Not a peep yet. We’re still looking, though. By the way, I have an idea why Coffin tried his little throw-you-in-jail gimmick.”

I shook my head at the phone, caught off guard by her sudden shift of gears. “Better stop there, Sam. You get on the stand, you’ll have to own up to this.”

“Not to worry,” she answered, as she had before. “This is purely informational. I found out about that Mickey Mitchell deal—the shoplifter you got Henri Alonzo to go light on. Alonzo told Coffin’s two boys he felt you pressured him—says he was threatened by the uniform—quote, unquote—and that in fact he wanted to prosecute. His theory now is that you had it in for him because he wanted to walk the straight and narrow, while you were just after brownie points with some snitch.”

My mouth opened in surprise. “What? I never had Mitchell as a snitch. Before you reminded me, I didn’t even remember who he was. And why the hell would I rip off Alonzo years later for a piece of bullshit like that?”

“Beats me,” Sammie said. “But I think that’s what Nathan and Freer were told to sell the judge from Woodstock. It does make you look pretty bad, you have to admit—especially with Coffin painting in the details.”

I muttered something I barely heard myself and hung up, staring sightlessly out the window, my face flushed. Gail came in from the living room and cautiously stood beside me.

“Bad news?”

“It’s not good.” I checked my watch. “I’m going out for a while.”

She looked at me, startled. “Where? You want me to come?”

“No. Thanks. And I better not tell you, either.”

She followed me as I made for the door. “Joe, wait. If you’re doing something connected to the case against you, you better think twice. Or at least fly it by Richard.”

I waved my hand casually at her, crossing the driveway toward the garage. “Not to worry.”

“Joe,” she called out louder, an edge to her voice, “don’t think you’re a cop anymore. Coffin’s just waiting for you to hand him something.”

I faced her from the garage door. “I’m just going to clear something up. No big deal.”

I got into the car and backed it into the open.

She walked up to my window, her face now tight with anger. “This is stupid and you know it. You’re not in a position to clear anything up. That’s not how it works. Let other people do their jobs, Joe. Don’t mess it all up.”

A sudden flash of rage ran through me. “How the hell can I make anything worse? I sit around on my ass, I’ll not only get fired, I’ll probably end up in jail. This whole goddamn thing’s a frame, and it’ll work because the system’s making it work.”

She slapped the side of the car door with her hand. “Yours isn’t the only life on the line, you know,” she shouted. “And you’re not the only one feeling pushed around. You can’t just disappear and play cop because you’re pissed off.”

I put the car into gear, feeling like I was about to explode. “We’ll talk later. I gotta go.”

· · ·

We were both right, of course, which made matters worse, since for either one of us to back down, more than pride would be sacrificed. But in my self-righteous anger, I only saw that while we were both being victimized, I was the one with the most to lose, and the one best placed to do something about it—a male warrior instinct that belittled Gail’s claim, made me feel subconsciously guilty and, predictably, twice as furious with Henri Alonzo.

The closer I got to Springfield, Vermont, where he lived, the more I resented his reckless intervention. An arrogant twerp at the best of times, he’d either gratuitously taken a poke at me when I was down and out, or he was up to something more sinister. Given the scope of everything that was swirling around me—a dead Russian, the CIA, an attempt on my life, and a steel-tight frame—it wasn’t such a stretch to imagine Henri Alonzo as a willing pawn in somebody else’s scheme.

My growing paranoia had become seductively rational, overriding all the warning signals that normally would have cleared my head. Gail might’ve been wrong about putting my trust in the system she’d so recently embraced. But I was dead wrong in taking my present impulsive course.

I’d totally overlooked the sequence of events that had stimulated me to make this drive—and the unseen hand that had carefully stacked them in place.

While Springfield has as distinct an identity as any other Vermont town, Alonzo’s street seemed totally interchangeable with a dozen others I knew. Comfortably outfitted with trees, lawns, and sidewalks, the neighborhood was one of those post-World War Two enclaves, fated to travel the decades with no truly definable identity. Neither classic nor modern, bearing no particularly regional aspect, they all resemble the generic movie sets so common to films of the 1950s.

I parked opposite his house, the address of which I remembered from the night of the burglary, and crossed the fresh-cut grass to the front door.

He opened up as soon as my thumb left the doorbell.

“What do you want?” I couldn’t decide if his tone echoed anger or fear.

I struggled in vain to stay neutral. “An explanation wouldn’t hurt. Why did you come up with this cock-and-bull story about Mickey Mitchell? We both know it’s total bullshit.”

More slightly built than I, he almost cowered in the doorway. “I told them the truth.”

“What truth? Mitchell was no snitch of mine. He was just a kid. We caught him red-handed, he swore on a stack of Bibles he wouldn’t do it again, and you let him off the hook.”

“I was pressured into that.”

I felt like pinching his face in my hand, and totally lost control of my voice. “
Pressured
? You
fucking
little weasel. You told me you didn’t want the publicity.”

He stepped back nervously, and I thought for a moment he might slam the door. “I told you what you wanted to hear.”

I paused, breathing deeply, feeling out of touch with my brain. “Henri,” I tried again more calmly, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this. Did somebody pay you? Are you in a jam we could help you with?”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What?”

My blood rose once more. “I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe you can’t help what you’re doing. Does somebody have something on you?”

He straightened as if stung. “I’m a respectable man. I have nothing to hide. I have always followed the rules. You’re a crook and now you’ve been caught. That’s not my problem. Please get off my property.”

I sized him up for a moment, considering that since I obviously had nothing left to lose, I might just pop him one for fun. But the adrenaline that had propelled me up here suddenly drained away, and I barely felt able to walk back to the car.

“I guess I had it wrong, then. You’re just a nasty little bastard after all.”

He didn’t answer, choosing to look indignant instead.

I left him and drove back to Brattleboro on autopilot, my mind numb. At home I found a note from Gail, telling me she’d gone to spend the night with her friend Susan, that a little breathing room might do us both some good. She ended with “I love you,” which I knew was supposed to be significant, but by then such sentiment had scant meaning for me. I was feeling as I had a lifetime ago—a teenage warrior in full retreat—empty, alone, beaten, and like the most disposable man on someone else’s game board.

RICHARD LEVAY LOOKED AT ME CURIOUSLY,
as if I were located at the business end of a microscope. “You realize what a jackass you’ve been?”

I chewed my éclair in silence. We were hunched across from one another in a window booth at the most fashionable coffee shop in town, a couple of blocks south of the courthouse where I was to be arraigned in half an hour. It was down the street from Dunkin’ Donuts, whose more gluey concoctions I much preferred, but Richard had arranged the meeting and was far more discriminating than I. Also, I wasn’t in the mood to argue about pastries.

“If arraignments didn’t just happen to fall on Mondays in this county,” he continued, “you
would
be cooling your heels in Woodstock right now. Coffin filed an obstruction of justice charge against you two seconds after he hung up on Henri Alonzo, and I seriously doubt the judge would’ve cut you slack twice in two days, not for something like that. In fact, I think the only reason Coffin didn’t nail you just for publicity’s sake, arraignment or no arraignment, is that he set the whole thing up from the start.”

I gave him a blank look, realization only slowly dawning.

Richard shook his head. “You thought he was so full of himself he didn’t know Harrowsmith wouldn’t lock you up. He played you like a fiddle, Joe—got you to lower your guard, convincing you he was a jerk, and then he leaked that crap about Alonzo to Sammie so she could feed it to you and get you all fired up. Didn’t you think it was a little weird the press was at your house when they busted you, but not at the jail or back home afterward? That’s because he used them to turn your crank. He didn’t tell them what jail you were headed to because he knew you’d be kicked loose. He was willing to look bad in the short run, but even his ego has its soft spots—he was only going to give them one photo-op.”

He sat back in his chair. “You seen this morning’s paper?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s a gift-wrapped present from you to Coffin—Katz’s editorial is a sanctimonious warning to all us poor innocents to be wary of tin gods, meaning you and every other cop that’s been held up for public admiration. If it ever comes time for Coffin to wax eloquent in front of a jury, he’ll have more ammunition than he needs. If the public had any doubts about your guilt before, they’re pretty much history by now.”

I turned in my chair to face the window, sightlessly staring at the steady flow of pedestrians and traffic outside.

“I know I screwed up.”

He took the time to tear off a piece from his croissant, dab it with some butter, and put it in his mouth. “Did you get anything out of him?” he asked.

“Alonzo? A lot of self-righteous indignation. Maybe Coffin did pull my chain, but I went up there ’cause I thought Alonzo might’ve been pressured somehow.”

Richard gave me that familiar worried look. “Pressured how? He was robbed.”

I was reluctant to feed his concerns. My theories were increasingly becoming mine alone, viewed by everyone else as paranoid ravings—not that waving guns at motorists and flying off the handle with Alonzo had helped my cause.