An impressive mix of metaphors for sure.
“It’s one of the names you might run across,” Jeri said. “There are others. People around Reinhart.” She got a sheet of paper out of her purse and handed it to Ma—names she’d pulled off the DMV site. Registered owners of the kind of SUV we were after.
Ma looked it over for half a minute. “These are names you got that you never heard of before, that right?”
Jeri nodded. “So what we need are names associated with these that we might recognize.”
“Associated.” Ma stared at the paper. “People around Reinhart. Relatives, business partners, political backers, maybe spouses and maiden names of those people, favorite singers, like that?”
“Probably not favorite singers,” I said.
“Settle down, hon.” She patted my knee again.
“I only say things like that because I like it when you pat my knee, Ma.”
Ma brayed laughter, hard enough to make her cough. “Don’t do that, darlin’. I’m not as tough as I look.”
Right. She was a two-dollar steak in a Hell’s Angel roadhouse.
“Glad you two’re having fun,” Jeri said. She blew me a kiss from six feet away.
Ma closed her eyes and thought for a while. “Okay, so I come up with names associated with registered owners of these SUVs. We’re lookin’ for a connection to Reinhart—either Reinhart himself or someone around him who’s associated with someone around one of these SUV owners, that about right?”
“That’s it,” Jeri said. “Mort?”
“If I could figure out what she said, yeah.”
Ma looked off into space for a while. “Not gonna be easy,” she said at last. “We’ll need background from both sides—Reinhart’s and SUV owners. Have to look deep, too. Reinhart’s wife, children, campaign manager, publicity agent, possible running mates, which I don’t think have been put out there yet. Not sure who’d want to run with that meathead anyway.” She looked at me. “Who else, boyo?”
“Pat my knee, Ma.”
She did.
“You two’re a laugh a minute,” Jeri said, but she couldn’t help smiling.
“Jayson Wexel,” I said. “Harry’s so-called chief of staff, who—imagine this—was either an accidental death not long ago, or a not-so-accidental murder. Found in his house, which had burned to the ground.”
“Talk about a big goddamn bell clangin’ away,” Ma said. “I’d put him on a list right up there with Reinhart himself.”
“Right,” I said. “There’s a lot going on. Whoever chopped off Reinhart’s hand didn’t like him much, so we need to look into his enemies, too. Whose toes did he step on on the way up? Wexel’s been with him a long time so he might’ve been involved in that toe-stepping thing. Who is Reinhart running against? And he’s got a trophy wife, so there’s probably a non-trophy wife out there who might be nursing a grudge. A guy like Reinhart probably has a crooked lawyer lying around, too, maybe a few girlfriends lurking in the wings.”
“Christ, all that’ll make a long freakin’ list,” Ma said. “Not easy to get at, either. Especially secret girlfriends.”
“What about the lawyers of all those people?” Jeri asked.
“Lawyers?”
“Privileged conversations allow them to conceal unethical behavior. You might want to look into the lawyers of people close to Reinhart, political insiders, close friends—”
“Je-sus,” Ma said. “What you want is a phone book. Bet you don’t know any of those people, which means I’ll have to round up their names. That’ll be a job and a half in itself. One other thing . . .”
“What’s that?”
Ma patted my knee. “Reinhart’s hand was sent to you, darlin’.”
I looked at Jeri. Jeri looked at me. Silence for half a minute. Then Jeri said, “Mort was nationally famous not long ago.”
“Still am,” I offered humbly.
“What I mean, Mort, is you were well known when that hand was shipped. Because of what we did this summer.”
Interesting that we were talking about shipping Reinhart’s hand around like it was something from Hickory Farms. We never did anything like that in the IRS.
“Guess you’ll have to look into people close to me, too,” I said to Ma. “Like Jeri over there. She looks pretty tough. You should find out if she owns a chainsaw.”
Jeri hit me in the face with a pillow then said, “Mort and I will handle the Reinhart-Wexel side of things—public records stuff, try to identify people close to them, as many as we can.”
Ma nodded. “I’ll have to dig way down in that list when you’re done.” She took a drag and blew a plume of blue smoke skyward. “I’ll work on these”—she held up the sheet of SUV owners Jeri had given her. “Who knows? We might get lucky and get an early hit on the two lists.”
I patted Ma’s knee. “That’s the spirit, kiddo.”
She laughed, coughed, then leaned toward an ash tray on the coffee table and stubbed out her cigarette. “Piece a cake,” she said. “Whole thing shouldn’t take more’n two months.”
“Two months—?”
“Kiddin’, greenhorn. Take it easy.” She patted my knee one last time then gave it a squeeze.
“Greenhorn?” I whispered to Jeri as we were going down the steps to the front yard. Early afternoon sunshine filtered through elms that were starting to think about shucking their leaves.
“Don’t take it personally. To her, I’m still a greenhorn. She’s really good, Mort. I mean, really good. There’s no way we could do this without her.”
“She didn’t teach you her best tricks? The quasi-legal stuff ?”
“Nope. She said it would just get me into trouble. Said it was best if I kept things on the up and up for the first ten or fifteen years. Told me if I discovered my own tricks, I’d have a better idea how to cover my tracks.”
“Smart lady.”
“You have no idea. Seeing her like that, in a housecoat with a beer in one hand, you’d never know, never even guess. Her going rate is a hundred fifty bucks an hour.”
I stopped. “Christ, Jeri. We’ll be broke in four days.”
She grabbed my arm, kept me going. “Maudie owes me for other stuff. Something I did
