had more strength in one hand than Twill did, even as a teenager, in his entire body.
There was nothing else for me to do about the ledger entries so I called Tiny to see what progress he had made.
“Hey, LT,” the young man answered. He didn’t even give me a chance to ask the question, just launched into the report. “The girl’s name is Mardi Bitterman. She paid for the IP with her father’s credit card. His name is Leslie. He’s an office manager for Parley and Lowe, a company that buys up debt and liquidates properties.”
“Anything on ’em?” were my first words.
“Not even a parking ticket. The girl is a fair student. She has a younger sister, Marlene, but the mother’s not on the scene.”
“Died?”
“I can’t find anything on that. She’s just not there.”
“Thanks, Bug. Can you dig a little deeper?”
“Are you paying?”
“The going rate.”
I CALLED TWILL and he answered on the first ring.
“Hey, Pops. What’s happenin’?”
“I wanted to ask—” I began.
“Hold on a minute,” he interrupted. And then, to someone else, “It’s my father, Teach. Mom’s in the hospital and I might have to go help.” Another moment passed and he said, “What can I do for you, Dad?”
“Y«ontomeou could start by not lying to your teachers.”
“It’s almost the end of the period,” he said. “And you know I wouldn’t even be in summer school if it wasn’t for my sentence.”
“No lying.”
“Okay. Done.”
“I want to get together with you soon. Make sure you’re home tonight. All night.”
“Uh . . . I did have some plans.”
“For me, junior.”
After a momentary pause he said, “You got it, Pops.”
GETTING OFF THE PHONE, I took a deep breath, and then another. I had liked the slow breathing in the dream. I tried not to worry about the problems that surrounded me. My mantra, behind the breathing was,
It worked until the landline rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mr. M,” Zephyra Ximenez said. “You have a couple of minutes?”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“A Mr. Towers called your office and cell seven times yesterday afternoon. I only answered because you said you wanted me to. He was very rude. I hope you tell him that I really don’t know how to get in touch with you sometimes.”
“Sorry. I’ll talk to him.”
“He never left a message but there’s still the one from the day before that you haven’t listened to.”
“Thanks, Z,” I said. “You’re a pal.”
“I love it when you talk like the old movies.”
“That mean you’ll go out with me?”
“Fifty years ago? No problem.”
I DIALED THE NUMBER to the answering machine that Zephyra kept at her house. I use a machine because I can be sure when I erase the tape that no one else will be able to retrieve it. The automated voice told me that I had one message.
“Hello, Mr. McGill, this is Ambrose Thurman. I’m afraid that I haven’t been completely honest about the investigation you conducted for me. I was trying to protect my client.
“To begin with, my name is not Thurman but Fell, Norman Fell. I do live in Albany. I am a detective. I used a fake name because my client di«se >
“But that’s all water over the dam now. It has come to my attention that Mr. Frank Tork has been murdered—”
I heard a slight sound in the background of the recording.
“—who are you?” Fell said with a gasp.
There was a stifled yell and a thud, a clattery jumble of hard items, maybe even the smack of a skull against the desktop. There came a sickening gurgle and choking sound and then the hiss and shuffle of something heavy being moved. I pressed the phone so hard against my ear that it hurt.
After a moment the phone was placed gently in its cradle.
E€„
21
I listened to Norman Fell’s last words eleven times, moving the receiver from left ear to right. I listened from behind closed eyes, and with my head bowed. Once I even pinched myself. But try as I might I couldn’t get any more out of the recording than I did on the first hearing.
Of all the things I’d done wrong I had never been a party to murder, at least not directly. I had killed, but that was in self-defense. So hearing the panic in Fell’s voice in those last moments struck a deep chord in me. The killer was brutal and remorseless, he hadn’t spoken one word or uttered a sound.
When I put down the phone I realized that my fingertips had gone numb. Looking around the office, I noticed a clump of dust in the corner next to the Swedish couch. There was a solitary cloud hanging in the sky, perfectly framed by my old-fashioned window. I wanted to get up and open the window but my body said that it wasn’t moving, that it was going to stay put.
The shade of white of the ceiling, I noticed for the first time, was subtly different than the white of the walls. I wondered if that was because of some kind of electrical or plumbing work they had done above and when it came to repainting they were unable to match the hue; maybe they just didn’t care.
I realized how absurd my meandering was, so I decided to pull my mind back to the murder. But instead I conjured up a name somewhat like Norman’s. It was the name of a man I’d never actually met: Fellows Scott.
Scott was an investment banker at Bowman Towne Home Security. He was in charge of loans and foreclosures. Fellows had managed to make a loan to a collective town in southeast Alabama named People. He was aware that some years from the date of the loan the property would grow in value exponentially because of a plan he’d been made privy to by one his wealthier Japanese clients.
Fellows Scott gave the people of People a loan with a balloon payment that would have choked a sperm whale. But this odd collective of college professors a®'3'nd farmers had a plan. They were building a dam. With that they could not only power their collective but could also sell the extra electricity, making more than enough money to pay off Bowman Towne.
“Socialists should never put their trust in capitalism.” That was something my father said almost every day. “The hot lead of the revolution is far more trustworthy.”
When Scott heard about the dam, he offered to make another loan and to find a contractor who would give them the best possible bargain.
It really wasn’t such a good deal. The substandard materials used to fabricate the dam gave way in four years. Seven people died. The town was nearly destroyed. And that big red balloon floated all the way from People to lower Manhattan. Sadly, Fellows had no choice but to foreclose and sell to his foreign clients, who built a large car-parts factory in the hole that had once been a dam.
A romantic might tell you that Fellows couldn’t help himself. He had a reason to be so greedy. He loved gambling and prostitutes. Almost all of his ill- gotten gains went into these pastimes.
I got this story from Gert Longman, the perennial temp who went from place to place, helping me find patsies who could take the weight on the various jobs I had taken on.
Fellows Scott’s employers knew about his wanton ways but they had no desire to fire someone who had brought in so much lucre. So they made him vice president of a bank in Queens.
His luck went bad when Sam Beakman burgled that branch. He had an inside man give him the codes he needed to get next to the vault. Gert had long ago met a reformed working girl who knew the story of the town called People. It seems that Fellows, who was close-mouthed as a rule, was a regular blabbermouth with prostitutes. I guess he’d never heard of the six degrees of separation.
The setup involved two doctored phone records, which Bug was happy to provide, and a key to a safe- deposit box with a little of the stolen money inside.
The police love gamblers who spend their nights with whores; juries hate that kind of guy. Scott’s involvement in the fraud, and his malicious intent toward the town of People, came out in the trial. Bowman Towne are still in court over the suit against them.
Beakman died in an armed-robbery attempt before the Scott case ever came before a judge. Fellows died of strangulation the next year in what the newspaper article called a sexual assault.
Gert told me that Fellows deserved what he got.
“Yeah, I know, babe,” I said. “But don’t we deserve it, too?”
THE PHONE RANG and I answered reflexively.
“Hello?”
“So what’s the answer, LT?” Tony the Suit asked.
“To what question?” I replied.
I knew that he’d never speak literally about something so serious over the phone. I guess I was feeling kind of mean and so without a fly to pluck the wings from I decided to torture Tony.
“You know what I’m talking about.”
