The Matter of the Duct Tape Tuxedo

by Steve Levi

  “Yes, I am. I thought I was talking to my wife.”

  “Well, if I see her I’ll tell her that furs are too expensive and not socially functional, even if you live in Sandersonville.”

  “Thank you very much. And you are. . .?”

  “I’m Detective Geraldine Blakely of the Peninsula City and County Sheriff’s Office. I’m not going to tell you how I got your name because I’m catching you on vacation.”

  “Commissioner Lizzard has been loose with his lips again, right.”

  “I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  “All right, Detective Blakely. I’ll bite. Why are you calling?”

  “We’ve got a problem down here in Peninsula County that is unusual . . .”

  “That’s usually why I get called.”

  “Yes, sir. That’s what I’ve been told. What makes this problem so pressing isn’t so much what happened but who the perps were and what was found on their person.”

  “Surprise me.”

  “We had some reports of strange activities at the local land fill so we staked out the area . . .”

  “Land fill, as in garbage dump.”

  “We prefer to call it a sanitary land fill but, yes, it’s a garbage dump.”

  “You’re kidding, right? You caught perps digging into a garbage dump?”

  “Yes, sir, caught them actually. And no, sir, I’m not kidding. It was a simple stakeout. I mean, who would believe anyone would be stealing anything from a garbage dump?”

  “You’re right. I don’t believe it.”

  “Well, we caught them all right. It turns out that three of the four perps were, as some of my co-workers say, pretty bad dudes. Two of them were wanted on federal weapons charges, for smuggling lots and lots of guns, illegal flight to avoid prosecution, armed robbery and kidnapping.”

  “What nice fellows.”

  “Actually they are women. A third was about to go to trial under RICO charges and was out on bail for two murders in New York which relate to the largest cocaine bust in that city’s history.”

  “That must have been one heck of a cocaine bust!”

  “It was. Something like three boxcars of the substance. It was being smuggled in as experimental chemical for livestock weight enhancement experiments.”

  “Cute. The third was a woman too?”

  “How’d you guess?”

  “Just smart. They’re all women, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “OK. I can’t stand the suspense. Tell me about the fourth.”

  “This’ll be a twist for you. The fourth is a non sequitur. Widowed mother of four. No priors. No aliases. Life-long resident of Peninsula County. Social pillar of the community. Net worth about five million, give or a take a few hundred thousand. Son at Harvard. Daughter at Bryn Mawr. Two others away in prep school.”

  “Hardly the kind to be with the other three. Was she there under duress?”

  “No. She appeared to be calling the shots.”

  “OK. Now, what made it so important that you call me on vacation?”

  “The fourth perp, the non sequitur had a timing device in her possession. But it was running in reverse. When we picked them up – about ten hours ago – the timer read 131 hours.”

  “And they won’t tell you diddly, right?”

  “Yeah. You got it. The two real bad dudes we put on ice. The other two we had to release.”

  “Not illegal to wander around on a sanitary land fill, eh?”

  “Right. They didn’t even bother to ask for a lawyer.”

  “Did they have any equipment with them?”

  “Shovels, dosing rods, metal detector and an arthroscopic camera on a ten-foot cable.”

  “I doubt that any of that stuff is going to help them with whatever they were looking for.”

  “That’s what we thought.”

  “Were they standing in one place or wandering.”

  “Oh, they were standing and digging in one place when they were apprehended. There is no evidence of other digging in the general area.”

  “Do you know where the garbage came from?”

  “Yes and no. Yes, it came from the residents of Peninsula County during the month of May – as in three months ago. As far as which subdivision, nope, haven’t a clue.”

  “Was anything else unusual found with the perps?”

  “Unusual? What’s usual about this group? Let’s see. All of them had wallets: ain’t that a laugh. We checked all the wallets. Nothing out of the ordinary. Credit cards, theirs, about $200 in cash, family pictures, spare house keys, yadda, yadda, yadda. Two of them had pocket knives, one had a pen and pad – with no writing on the pad, let me quickly add. Yes, I know, check the pad for impressions of writing. We did that last night and found zip. All of them had keys. All of them were wearing pants. All of them had belts. That’s it.”

  “What kind of shoes were they wearing?”

  “Shoes? That’s an odd question. Let’s see. Three of them were wearing what we call combat boots down here, you know, like hiking boots. The non sequitur was wearing Reeboks. New. As in brand new.”

  “Did you do an analysis of the shoe bottoms?”

  “Sorry. No.”

  “Too late to get a search warrant?”

  “For what?” Blakely laughed. “We are talking about Ms. Peninsula County here. There isn’t a judge in Florida that will give me a search warrant when the charge is digging in a public garbage dump.”

  “I kind of thought that would be the case.”

  “Well, sir, now you know about all I know. Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

  “You seem quite confident I can solve this oddity of the criminal world.”

  “Yes, sir. Our commissioner says you’re the only one in America who can do it and your commissioner feels the same way.”

  “He would,” Noonan replied helplessly, “I solve the problems and he gets the glory.”

  “Welcome to the wonderful world of law and order, captain.”

  “I’m not sure I can help you, detective. But I’ll do what I can. Let’s see. I’ll give you the FAX at my brother-in-law’s house but I’ll need some more information. But, like I said, I don’t know how much I can do for you. Take the exact moment – and I mean the exact moment – when the timer will expire and compare that with everything you can there in Peninsula County, court appearances, weather reports, high school graduations, tour ship arrivals and departures, flight arrivals and departures, military exercises, time locks on banks. Anything. Do the same thing for New York. Send me what you can on the other three perps. I don’t think that will help much but see what you can find. Since our commissioners are pushing this so hard, have your commissioner call Commissioner Harold Wilkerson in New York.”

  “We’ve already started on that.”

  “Good. Second, try for a search warrant. Yeah, I know you may not get it but give it a shot. But only for our non sequitur. She’s our key. If you get that search warrant, go for long distance calls too. Casually talk to the mailman, neighbors, lawn care people, pool maintenance, whoever. If they knew where they were digging they must have talked to someone at the solid waste facility. Take a look at her bank account, investment portfolio. See what you can dig up about her past. Does she have a college degree? In what? What did her husband do? Where did the money come from? How did the husband die? When did he die? Any court cases involving her husband?”

  “Most of that stuff we already have and it’s useless. Our non sequiter was involved in another case.”

  “Another case? Involving this woman?”

  “Yes. There was a law suit.”

  “This is rich. Dare I ask what the law suit was about?”

  “A vagrant cat. It is alleged . . .”

  “How alleged is this alleged?”

  “I’d say it was true but the police don’t get involved in civil matters.”

  “OK. What is alleged that was probably true?”

  “That a ca
t was pooping in a neighbor’s yard.”

  “That’s the law suit?”

  “Yup.”

  “Don’t the people in Peninsula County have anything better to do than sue each other over cat poop?”

  “I didn’t file the suit. Apparently there was another allegation . . .”

  “Oh joy. How alleged was this one?”

  “Garbage, if you ask me. It was alleged that the cat poop was damaging the surface feeding ability of some prize Camellia flowers.”

  “What were the damages?”

  “Filed or awarded?”

  “I’ll bite, both.”

  “Mrs. Hendershoting sued for $500,000 in damages and $500,000 in pain and suffering.”

  “Pain and suffering? That’s novel. Her’s or the Camellia’s?”

  “Who knows? She lost the case because she could not prove that the poop she extracted from her garden was indeed that of the cat in question or some other, and I quote, ‘peripatetic feline.’”

  “Talk to Mrs. Hendershoting. She probably doesn’t have a nice thing to say about our perp.”

  “Mrs. Hendershoting is our perp. The other party was an out-of-state corporation.”

  “How can an out-of-state corporation own a cat in Florida?”

  “Exactly what the judge asked.”

  “And our perp said?”

  “She said the poop belonged to the cat and the cat belonged to the corporation so the corporation was illegal polluting her yard. She also filed complaints with the Florida departments of clean water, sanitation, regulatory commission as well as the EPA and ASPCA.”

  “This is the woman worth $5 million that’s been digging in the garbage dump?”

  “I never said this was an easy case.”

  “OK. Let me think on it. Get me that information as soon as you can.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And call me, Heinz.”

  As soon as Blakely hung up, Noonan placed a call to the Peninsula City and County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. He asked for Geraldine Blakely and got her voice mail. The voice matched so Noonan was willing to believe that the call had been legitimate. Being in Alaska, one could never be too sure. After all, this was the land of absurding where it was a state sport to hoodwink gullible Outsiders on the most outlandish stories imaginable.

  The first thing Noonan did after lunch – besides begging his wife over the cell phone to forget about buying a fur coat – was to take a cab out the Anchorage land fill. He had no trouble at all talking with the manager and the cabbie was more than pleased to sit and read the newspaper while the meter ran.

  “You’re with the Sandersonville Police and you want to talk about an Alaskan landfill?”

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I meant. I just have a few questions?”

  “You’re the first cop that ever wanted to talk about a garbage problem.”

  “Not a lot of crime happening out here?”

  “Hey, you can have whatever you find out here.”

  “I imagine that’s the case everywhere in the country?”

  “Probably. Our problem is what people are bringing in; not what they’re taking out.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, you want to get technical? You can dump anything except toxic and hazardous items like paint, dynamite, tar, refrigerators, oil, batteries, chemicals and dead bodies.”

  “You get a lot of dead bodies?”

  “Got one last winter. A drunk died in a dumpster and we didn’t know about it until his cadaver fell out of the truck. No, we don’t get a lot of ‘em. The three we’ve had since I’ve been manager have all been DOA, if that’s the correct term to use in a land fill. There was no crime associated with them.”

  “How long have you been the manager here?”

  “Eight years.”

  “Can you tell where your garbage came from in the land fill?”

  “If you mean can I walk to the exact spot where the Muldoon Route 7 garbage from last year is buried, not exactly. I can come close. Last week I can be a bit more specific. But it’s not that easy. Garbage is not something that is compartmentalized. Each day one-sixth of the city has its garbage collected. It’s dumped into the land fill in the order the trucks make it here. Then it’s mixed with garbage that comes in daily from people driving in and dropping household garage. Everything is crushed with rollers – those at the big bulldozer-like pieces of equipment you can see rolling around on the landfill. When they aren’t pulverizing garbage they are rolling down earth. Every three or four feet of garbage is covered with a layer of dirt. That’s how the landfill is built.”

  “If I wanted to find something that had been collected three months ago, how close could I get?”

  “If and if and if and if I’d say somewhere in a circle about 30 feet across to a depth of four or five feet. But that is a lot of garbage, something like 300 cubic yards. Unless it was really big, I don’t think you would find it – unless you had the 101st Airborne helping you.”

  “Is there anything that would help me find an object?”

  “How big?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I can’t think of anything. A metal detector wouldn’t help because there is so much metal.”

  “How about dosing wires?”

  “Dosing wires? Aren’t they used for finding water?”

  Noonan shrugged his shoulders. “Is there anything I could use to find something that was four feet down?”

  “About the only thing I can think of would be some kind of a camera on a cable. They use those kinds of things to look for living people in collapsed buildings. But people are pretty big things, if you know what I mean. Since you don’t know what you are looking for, I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “Well, thanks for your time.”

  “Was this a joke, by the way? I mean, who tries to dig up something that’s already been dumped? Usually when something is dumped, it’s gone forever.”

  Noonan’s next stop was an arthroscopic surgeon who laughed at more questions than he answered. Then Noonan visited a fire station where he talked about equipment used to find trapped people in a collapsed building and was told that you had to know the people where there before you went looking for them. Once it was established that people had been in the building, the best initial piece of equipment was a dog. The razzle-dazzle probes worked adequately in a collapsed building because they could be snaked into and out tight spots in the general vicinity of where the dogs indicated the people would be. A landfill was different because everything was compacted so there was no room to run the cable.

  Everyone thought dousing rods were for water.

  When he returned to his brother-in-law’s home, the FAXes waiting for him offered no clues. He was still pondering the situation when he got his second call from Blakely.

  “Did your wife buy the fur coat?”

  “Shhhhhhh! Don’t even whisper the word.”

  “Sorry,” Blakely said in a hush. Then, in a normal voice, “There’s been a development.”

  “Let me guess,” said Noonan thoughtfully. “The federal government has stepped in and seized jurisdiction.”

  “How, how did you know that?”

  “Just a guess. From the documents that you FAXed I see all the women are in their upper 60s, early 70s. These aren’t perps. They’re matrons.”

  “We got the list of their crimes off NCIC. That’s all we’ve got.”

  “Their last names are interesting. All Anglo in an area where Latinos outnumber the Anglos. Let me also guess that they are all Cuban and their Anglo names are those of their husbands.”

  “That’s also a good guess – and accurate. How did you know that?”

  “Lucky guess. Did you find out who our prime suspect’s husband was?”

  “He was Anglo and worked for a multi-national import-export firm. He specialized in selling agricultural farm equipment, tractors and combines. That kind of thing. Primarily to South American countries and
large corporations.”

  “So he flew out of the country a lot?”

  “I would presume so. It would be my guess that the largest buyer of agricultural equipment in the Western Hemisphere would be South American farmers. The Miami area would be the best place to live.”

  “Good point. Do you still have the file on that cat poop case?”

  “Yyyyesss, why?”

  “I’d like some information.”

  “I can get it on line. What did you need to know?”

  “What was the name of the out-of-state company she sued?”

  “Just a second.” There was a series of clicks and pops on the other end of the line. Then Blakely was back. “International Consolidated Investments, Inc. The point of contact for the suit was a Hector Rodriguez in Virginia.”

  “Where in Virginia?”

  “McClean. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well, I think I have some good news and bad news for you. Which do you want first?”

  “You’ve solved the case?”

  “Not exactly. But I think I know what’s going on.”

  “What about the ticking clock? We haven’t got that much time left.”

  “Not to worry. I’ll bet you could not find anything that matched the countdown.”

  “That’s right. Don’t keep me in suspense. I’ll take the good news first.”

  “The good news is that you don’t have to worry about the case. It would be my guess that all of your records on the four are going to be seized and sealed by the FBI within a matter of hours. That will finish your involvement.”

  “That’s going to leave an unsolved on my watch.”

  “It’s going to leave nothing on your watch. It’s going to be as if the situation never happened at all. Some federal man or woman in a black suit and white shirt will tell you that the case never existed.”

  “I wish all my cases were like that. What’s the bad news?”