Rembek doubted very much it was a coincidence that Mackey checked out of his motel in the morning on the same day that Kasper checked out of prison in the afternoon.
The top report on Detective Rembek’s desk told him that no progress had been made in either finding Mackey or learning who he actually was. The next two folders were mostly the results of the wiretaps on Angelo Marcantoni and Maryenne Williams, wiretaps that had been granted by the judge at nine P.M. on Thursday, less than four hours after the escape, and had been in operation ever since. No police officer actually sat next to the recording machine twenty-four hours a day; it was a voice-activated tape, picked up at eight every morning, and four in the afternoon, and midnight.
Angelo Marcantoni, according to the transcript, did very little on the telephone, and then it seemed to be mostly about bowling; if that were a code, as far as Detective Rembek was concerned, Marcantoni was welcome to it. In any event, he appeared to be the law-abiding brother, married, three children, with absolutely no criminal record of any kind and an unblemished work record with a supermarket chain. Detective Rembek thought it unlikely he would risk all that to help a brother who’d been in increasingly serious trouble since he was ten.
As for Maryenne Williams, she appeared to be a young mother who spent all her waking hours on the phone with other young mothers, discussing their babies, discussing their babies’ (mostly absent) fathers, and discussing boys they thought of as ‘cute’; as though they didn’t have trouble enough already. That’s what the MW transcripts had been up till now, and that’s what they looked like for last night, too, boring and tedious to read but necessary.
And then:
11:19 P.M.
MW: Hello?
C: Hi, it’s me.
MW: (audible gasp) Are you okay?
Detective Rembek sat straighter, holding in both hands the paper he was reading.
C: Yeah, I’m fine.
MW: What are you gonna do?
C: I think I gotta go away.
MW: Oh, yeah, you do. You need money?
C: I’m gonna get money in a couple days, I’m okay. I got a good place to stay, and next week I’ll take off.
MW: Listen, uh
Almost said his name there, Detective Rembek thought.
MW: you remember Goody?
C: Yeah, that one.
MW: Well, he come around, he said, any way he can help, buy you tickets or stuff, whatever, you should call him, because it wouldn’t be good for me to do anything.
C: No, no, you shouldn’t do anything. I’m just calling I wanted to tell you I’m okay, and I’ll be going away, next week.
MW: That’s the best thing. If you need help
C: Goody.
I wish I could hear how he said that name, Detective Rembek thought. Does he think Goody will help him, or does he think Goody isn’t any use? He won’t tell his sister, because she thinks this Goody is all right.
MW: I’m glad you called.
C: Well, yeah, I had to. Listen, kiss Vernon for me.
MW: I will, (crying) Bye, now.
C: Bye, now.
The call had been traced, after the event, to a payphone on Russell Street, a nondescript working-class neighborhood. Two police officers were at this moment searching the area, with no realistic expectation of finding anything.
Detective Rembek took notes. Goody; find this fellow Goody, squeeze him a little, see where he leads.
And there was one other thing. Detective Rembek looked back through the transcript and found it:
C: I’m gonna get money in a couple days, I’m okay.
Going to get money in a couple days. Where?
7
It took Buck two days to figure it out. He’d known from the get-go there was something funny going on with that little scumbag Goody, to make him all of a sudden up and leave his sales post early on a Thursday, but he just couldn’t see in his mind what Goody was up to. A family emergency; shit. What would a piece of garbage like Goody be doing with a family?
But if it was something else that took Goody away in the middle of the best sales period of the day, when the workingman wanted a little taste to bring home with him after another eight hours throwing his life away for pennies to the Man, what was it? I’m not stupid, Buck reminded himself. If there’s something there, and there’s got to be something there, what the hell is it?
Of course he saw all the stuff on the television Thursday night about the three boys broke out of Stoneveldt prison, and he even noticed that one of them was a brother, but he never made the connection. And he didn’t make
