“Freon’s a gas. You can’t drink it. If you want to know more about this Breck dude, you’re coming with me.”
“I’ve got to get some sleep. At least an hour or so. I don’t suppose the cops would appreciate me snoozing in my truck.”
“You’re coming to my place. We need a computer. Leave your truck. We’re not going to get much sleep.”
I had heard that line from a woman or two before, and it hadn’t had anything to do with computers. I must have sounded stupid when I blurted, “Why?”
She was already halfway down the stairs. “Now,” she said.
EIGHTEEN
Joanie lived in a rented loft apartment near the Eastern Market. The old floors creaked as we made our way down the shadowed corridors. Passing one door, I heard the muted cadence of a weatherman telling Detroit it would be cloudy and cold. No news there. I smelled bread toasting, pictured someone climbing out of a shower.
Secretly, I felt a little nervous as we made our way to the end of one hallway and Joanie’s place. I’d once had a girlfriend who had lived two floors up in that very building and, so far as I knew, still did. She worked at the Free Press and was often out schmoozing sources this late. I’d shot five a.m. pool with her at Aggeliki’s, in fact; she was damn good at sinking the nine on the break.
I was relieved to have Joanie’s door shut behind us.
Her apartment was spare and neat, except for the two cheap wooden desks shoved against the wall beneath her loft. A knot of wires and surge protectors surrounded two computer terminals and keyboards crowded atop one of the desks. The other desk was stacked a foot deep with dog-eared files, stuffed into accordion folders. More files were piled on the hardwood floor next to the desk. Leaned against that stack was the backpack from her Pilot days.
“Still got that thing, eh?” I said. “It’s big enough, you could use it for your hockey gear.”
Joanie was lighting a candle. It smelled of tart berries. “The guy next door smokes like a chimney,” she said. “Back in a minute.” She disappeared behind a door in the wall behind the wooden ladder ascending to the loft.
I listened. From behind the door came a few clicks, then a mechanized voice. “You have one new message,” it said. “Call received today at twelve fifty-eight a.m.” There came another click, then a whooshing sound, probably traffic, maybe in a freeway tunnel. “Hey, babe,” echoed a man’s voice. “I think I got what you-”
Joanie cut it off before Frenchy could say anything more. But an alarm of recognition already had gone off in my head. Frenchy was the guy my old girlfriend, the one who’d lived upstairs, had thrown over for me years before. I had never met him. But I had heard that voice, the one I’d heard over the pool table at Aggeliki’s, on an answering machine just like Joanie’s in an apartment just like Joanie’s. My old girlfriend’s apartment. He left a lot of messages on that machine. Too many.
He had been a computer tech at the Free Press. My girlfriend, whose name was Michele, had called him Albert, or Bert, or Bertie. I didn’t remember her calling him “Frenchy.” She would have thought it a silly nickname, which it was. Maybe he’d given it to himself later. I did remember the things he had threatened to do to her after she had stopped taking his calls. And how, instead of squealing to her bosses at the paper, Michele instead mentioned the guy’s threats to a couple of cops she knew, who had a men-to-man talk with him. After that, she never heard from him again. He eventually left the Freep amid rumors that he kept showing up at the college dormitory of a summer intern he’d had a fling with.
I sat down on one of the vinyl-backed chairs at Joanie’s kitchen table, wishing I was back in Starvation. Joanie emerged barefoot in gray sweats and a white River Rats jersey striped in gold and blue. I recognized it immediately as one I had worn as a kid. The number, 35, was faded, and the “R” and second “E” in “CARPENTER” across the back had peeled away.
“Where did you get that?” I said.
“Your mom. She sent it with a nice note about the time I spent with her up north. Would you like to read it?” She looked ruefully at her desk. “Not sure I could find it.”
“I think I’ve had enough surprises for one day.”
“I think your mom’s sweet.” Joanie motioned toward the fridge. “Do you want anything to drink?”
“No, but I’m starving.”
She reached into a cabinet over the sink and came out with an opened box of brown sugar Pop-Tarts. She tossed it to me. “Sorry, toaster’s on the fritz. Let’s get to work.”
She sat at her computer. I pulled up a chair. She reached under the desk. The machine whirred as she slipped a CD into it. A long minute passed. “Come on, piece of crap,” Joanie said. The screen went all white, then all blue. Then some words materialized in white at the top:
Subject: Breck, Wayland Ezra
Social Security Number: 292-41-6654
Date of Birth: 04/26/48
Birthplace: Detroit, Michigan
“So he’s… fifty-one. Almost fifty-two. He looks younger.” Must be the cross-eyed thing, I thought. “Jesus, you have his Social Security number?”
“I’m not going to give it to anybody.”
“You just gave it to me.”
“Frenchy’s pretty good at what he does.”
I wasn’t a big fan of Frenchy but figured it wouldn’t be smart to let Joanie know. “The freelancer, huh? Just how freelance is he?”
“Excuse me?”
“Do you pay him for this?”
She pulled one of her legs up under the other on her chair. The chartreuse polish on one foot’s toenails didn’t match the frosted pink on the other’s. “When you need something fast-you know, background stuff-Frenchy can get it faster than anyone.”
“Always first, frequently right,” I said.
“How did you know that?”
“Know what?”
“Frenchy says that.”
“So does Whistler. Must be a Free Press thing.”
“Brand X,” Joanie said. “Anyway, Frenchy said this is pretty cursory, he didn’t have much time, but… well, see what you think.”
I watched her click through more than forty pages of documents Frenchy had unearthed from the Internet and scanned onto the CD. Some of them-Breck’s birth certificate, his home address, a couple of newspaper photos, even the clipping I had seen in Mom’s lockbox-came from public sources. Others, like the Social Security number, derived from sources I preferred to know nothing about.
Joanie returned to the first screen. She opened a drawer, pulled out two fresh notebooks, and handed one to me.
“Wow,” I said. “You’re rich.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing.”
“Got a pen?” she said. “You can’t take the disk.”
“I’m not sure I want it. Why are you taking notes?”
“The Times covers Michigan, you know.”
Same old Joanie. She hit Enter.
Wayland Breck was born to Gregory Breck, a draftsman, and his homemaker wife, the former Susan Veronica Wayland. On the boy’s second Christmas Eve, his father was killed in a car crash with a drunken driver, who was
