Marked Man

by William Lashner

  I entered the doors at the southwest quadrant, climbed the wide granite steps to the second floor, where I headed toward the prothonotary’s office. Prothonotary is our local term for clerk, like cheese steak is our local term for health food and councilman is our local term for crook. I ducked in, looked around, ducked out again, spotted no one suspicious in the hallway. I proceeded to make a grand tour of the building, starting with the mayor’s office. A cop was stationed at the door, to keep the FBI from sneaking inside and bugging it again, no doubt. I took an elevator to the fourth floor and walked past the Marriage License Bureau and the Orphans’ Court, two locales still thankfully foreign to me. I climbed down another huge stairwell to the third floor, walked past City Council offices, felt my sense of morality disappearing into some strange vortex. At the elevator I looked around and went back down to the second floor.

  The cop in front of the mayor’s office eyed me as I passed by. “You looking for something, pal?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, “but fortunately I’m not finding it.”

  I entered another of the wide stairwells and climbed down to the ground floor again. I was now at the northeast corner of the building, the exact opposite of where I had entered. I slipped out of the building and quickly raised my hand.

  A battered old Yellow Cab with its top light off pulled up beside me. I opened the door and slid inside. The cab veered around a few lanes and then headed north on Broad.

  “I expect there’s a reason for all this subterfuge and flimflam,” said Joey Pride from behind the wheel.

  “Just trying to keep the body count down,” I said.

  “Whose body you talking about?”

  “Yours.”

  “Well, then, boy, flimflam away. And at least you sent me a messenger easy on the eyes.”

  “Yes, I did,” I said, smiling at Monica Adair sitting beside me on the backseat, her hair back in a ponytail, her face freshly scrubbed. While I was staying busy at my office, I had sent Monica to intercept Joey in front of my apartment and direct him to our rendezvous. I hadn’t been able to spot who was following me—I was no Phil Skink, who could spy the tail of a mouse at fifty yards—but after what happened with Charlie at Ocean City, I had begun to take precautions.

  “So, Joey,” I said, “you wanted to see me?”

  “Your boy’s trying to screw my ass,” said Joey Pride, “and I just wanted you to tell him it’s not worthy of our past together.”

  “Do I have any idea what you are talking about?”

  “Maybe we ought to drop her off before we keep talking.”

  “Oh, Monica’s fine,” I said. “Anything I can hear, she can hear, too. Her profession is all about secrets.”

  “Okay, then. Remember that fish we was discussing before Ralph got it in the head, the one handing out the Benjamins?”

  Lavender Hill. Damn. “Yes, I remember.”

  “He got hold of me once again. Said he was close to working out a deal with Chuckles the Clown, and that Chuckles, out of the generosity of his shriveled Greek heart, had decided what my share will be when the deal goes down.”

  “And what share is that?”

  “Well, he figured, since there was five of us in that long-ago escapade, that I should get a fifth.”

  “That makes some sense.”

  “Did thirty years ago, don’t make that kind of sense now. Ralph is dead, Teddy has been missing since the painting was took, and considering what he ended up with, he don’t deserve nothing more, and Hugo ain’t going to be begging for his share, I can tell you that.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It don’t matter. What matters is that, the way I see it, the split should be fifty-fifty.”

  “Fine, but leave me out. I can’t be part of any negotiation.”

  “You part of it already, Victor. You the one who set this up.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No other way it could have played out, so don’t pretend you’re wearing a white suit here and glowing like an angel. You get back to our boy and tell him it’s fifty-fifty or there will be trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble, Joey?”

  “He’s still got a mother and sister, don’t he? They still got a house, don’t they? It ain’t smart business to trifle with a desperate man on the run from ghosts.”

  “Did you hear that, Monica?”

  “I heard that.”

  “That is a threat, which is absolutely against the law. As an officer of the court, I have a duty to report any crimes I see.”

  “I have a cell phone,” she said.

  “You ain’t making no call.”

  “I don’t need to,” I said. “Let me give you a piece of advice, Joey. Don’t mess with Mrs. Kalakos. She’ll carve you proper and then make soup from your bones.”

  He thought about it for a while, driving north on Broad, toward her territory and his past. “She’s old.”

  “Not old enough. Your concern about the shares is duly noted and, all the time remembering my responsibilities, I’ll see what I can do to make your grievance understood.”

  “Am I going to get any more than that lame assurance from your skinny ass?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess it will have to do.”

  “Good. Now I have some questions for you.” I leaned forward, took a photograph out of my pocket, shoved it in front of him. As he drove, he glanced down at it, looked up, glanced down again.

  The taxi swerved left, a horn honked, the taxi swerved right again.

  “Mind your own damn lane,” Joey yelled out the window.

  “You recognize her?” I said.

  “No.”

  “So says your words, but the steering wheel gave you away.”

  “Take another look,” said Monica. “Please.”

  He glanced nervously up to the rearview mirror.

  “Her name was Chantal Adair,” said Monica. “She was my sister.”

  “Your sister?”

  “She disappeared twenty-eight years ago,” said Monica. “Could you please take another look?”

  He glanced again at the photograph. “Never saw her before.”

  “That’s what Charlie said, too,” I told him, “but he was lying, just like you.”

  “Who you calling a liar?”

  “Calm down. Let’s talk a little bit about what happened after Teddy gave you his speech in that bar. When did he tell you that the opportunity he had in mind for all of you to save your miserable lives was to rip off the Randolph Trust?”

  “That very night. He laid it out, and then he left us to chew it over. I had already been in the pen, didn’t want to go back, ever. Ralph never had a larcenous bone in his body and Charlie was not the type. But with Teddy gone, it was Hugo who went about convincing us. Said all that talk about changing our lives didn’t have to be only talk, that we could do it. We just needed the balls to step up and take what was ours.”

  “He was in on it from the start.”

  “Hugo?”

  “Sure,” I said. “How else did Teddy know so much about what was going on in your lives? From what you told me before, I figured one of you was recruited before Teddy ever stepped into that bar.”

  “Hugo. Damn.”

  “So the four of you signed on.”

  “All that talk of becoming something new, it was more intoxicating than the booze we were swilling. So we were in, and Teddy, he had a plan for each of us.”

  “You took care of the burglar alarm.”

  “That was my job, that’s right, that and the driving. Teddy, somehow he got the electrical drawings for me. The setup was complicated, the drawings looked like a plate of spaghetti, but I eventually figured a way to beat the thing. A wire’s just a wire, a current’s a current, it ain’t too hard to make them electrons dance the way you want.”

  “What was Ralph’s job?”

  “Muscle during the operation. And all the while we was preparing, he was quietly setting up
a shop in his mother’s basement to take charge of whatever gold and silver we brought in. He was going to melt it into something we could sell without it being traced.”

  “What happened to all the equipment after?”

  “We buried it, right there in the basement. Cracked the cement floor with a sledge, buried it in the dirt, along with our clothes and the guns we used to keep the guards quiet. We poured homemade concrete right on top. It’s all still there, best I know.”

  “Buried in the basement so that nothing could be traced.” I made a mental note to give Sheila the Realtor a call. “And Charlie was there to take care of the safe, right?”

  “If he could. If not, Teddy said they’d blow the damn thing. When he laid out his plan, it was all ‘if this, then that, if not that, then this.’”

  “How did you guys get inside?”

  “That was Hugo’s department. Hugo was hard and sly, like a fox with brass knuckles.”

  “How did he get in?”

  “I’m not talking about Hugo.”

  “Why not?”

  “Remember what I said about ghosts? Some of them are more dangerous than others. More solid, too.”

  “Then just tell us how the girl got mixed up in everything.”

  “What girl?”

  “The girl in the picture, Joey. Chantal Adair.”

  “I never saw her.”

  “Joey?”

  “No, I admit, I recognize her picture. I seen that picture before, in all the papers. About the same time as the heist, this girl went missing. It was that girl, right?”

  “That’s right,” said Monica.

  “But it wasn’t her who was hanging around all the time as we were making our preparations.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said. “Who was hanging around?”

  “Teddy was a real pied piper. All the kids took to him. Always had a piece of candy or a little toy. It was just the way he was. And there was one kid who was hanging around all the time, flitting around like a moth. A boy. Towheaded dude.”

  “What was his name?” said Monica.

  “Who the hell remembers?” said Joey. “Who the hell knows?”

  “I do,” I said.

  43

  Sometimes it’s a chore to find someone, sometimes it can take days, years, an entire bureau of detectives. Whole investigations have stalled because one key witness couldn’t be found. Sometimes it’s a chore, and sometimes it’s the easiest thing in the world.

  “What are you doing here?” he shouted.

  The room was an airless filthy mess, the floor covered with clothes and crumbs, the bed an unmade tumble of creased sheets and blankets. It smelled of the sickly-sweet scent of contained sweat. The screen of the computer in front of which he was sitting suddenly transformed from a lurid mix of flesh tones and red to a photograph of a gently rolling hill of green beneath a lightly clouded sky.

  “No one’s allowed in here,” he said. “Get the hell out. Both of you.”

  He was wearing a grimy T-shirt and ripped briefs, a pair of black socks, a pair of glasses. His arms were flabby, his jaw unshaven, the hair on his legs bristly. And when he turned to stare at us, his expression was one of horrified indignation, the holy imam whose mosque had been invaded by gaunt crusaders.

  “Hello, Richard,” I said. “How’s tricks?”

  “Monica,” he whined, “get him out of my room.”

  She looked around at the mess, shook her head, and then leaned forward to pick up a wrinkled pair of sweatpants. She tossed the pants to her brother. “Put these on,” she said.

  He clutched them to his groin. “Go away. Please.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “We have business to discuss.”

  “Monica.”

  “Put on your pants, Richard dear,” she said.

  He looked at his sister, then at me, then back at his sister before standing and turning around. His skin was the color of hard-boiled eggs, his ass was saggy, the back of his neck was pimpled. Until looking at Richard Adair in his underwear, I had never realized the health benefits of simply walking outside. With his back to us, he climbed into the sweatpants and then turned around again.

  “Now will you go?”

  I stepped to his desk, littered with half-eaten food, empty soda cans, scraps of paper, magazines, rolled-up panties. Panties? I fiddled with his mouse until the verdant hill was transformed once again into the mass of lurid colors. I tilted my head and stared at the colors for a moment until the array of limbs and breasts and lips and cocks all came clear.

  “Yowza,” I said. “Doing research for our Web site, Richard?”

  He reached over and pressed a button on the screen, turning the cathode-ray tube to a deep, empty green.

  “What do you want?”

  “Like I said, we have business to discuss.”

  “What kind of business?”

  I pointed at the now-dead computer screen. He stared at it for a moment and then turned to his sister. She shrugged.

  “Really?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

  “Monica?”

  “We discussed it,” she said. “I’m ready to listen.”

  “Okay, then. Great.” He rubbed his hands. “I knew I’d get you on board, Victor. This will work out, I’m sure of it. Why don’t you guys take a seat.”

  “Where?” I said, looking around at the room.

  “Here,” he said, grabbing a bedspread and pulling it over the mess of his sheets and blankets. “Just sit down here.”

  I looked at the filthy spread now covering his bed, shook my head, and leaned against the doorjamb. “I’ll stand.”

  “Monica, go ahead,” he said, gesturing to the bed.

  Tentatively, she sat, her hands safely in her lap.

  “Good,” said Richard, turning around his chair and sitting, leaning forward like a copier salesman making a pitch. “Now, I have some experience with these sites, and I know this will be huge. We’ll start with just photographs and a chat room, small like, you know. I’ll take care of all the chatting. I know what these guys want to hear, how to make them depart with the cash. And I’ll answer all the e-mails. Later we might want to do a Web camera, but that’s way down the line, when you’re more comfortable with things. Right now we should start small. A few pictures, a few advertisements, a minimal access fee to talk to Monica online, and a very few items to sell.”

  “Items?” I said.

  “You know, underwear and things that Monica has worn.”

  “Doesn’t it bother you, Richard, to put me up on a site like that?” said Monica.

  “It’s just pictures, just digital dots and dashes. It’s not real. Trust me, Mon. And half the girls with sites that are bringing in real cash are like little rodent girls compared to you. It’s all attitude, you know. You just got to work it.”

  “What about the photographs?” I said.

  “I’ll take them. I got a camera. We can set up something in the basement, a few sheets for a background. Or”—he lifted up his hands—“if you want to take care of that, Victor, that’s fine.”

  “What kind of pictures will I be taking?”

  “Look, I’m not talking anything hard-core. Yet. Just show some ass, some tit, those long legs, pout a bit. Give the shirt a lift. It’s all just a come-on to get them to open up their wallets.”

  “And you really want me to do this?” said Monica.

  “We’re just talking about pictures,” he said. “And the money will be great, better than you’re making slaving for those asshole lawyers. Nothing you’re not comfortable with, Mon. And we can use a different name if you want.”

  “Why don’t we call her Chantal?” I said.

  He turned his head to me with a jerk, as if I had hit him smack across the face, and the enthusiasm visibly ebbed from his features.

  “I mean, if we’re going to be consistent,” I said, “we might as well keep the name the same as the sister you sold out before.”r />
  “What are you talking about? What’s he talking about, Mon?”

  “We’re talking about Teddy,” I said. “We’re taking about how your special friend Teddy ended up with Chantal.”

  “Monica?”

  “I don’t blame you, Richard. You were as much a victim as she was. We just want to know what happened.”

  “Nothing. I don’t know nothing. I told you that before. I told them all.”

  “Nothing,” he said, but the quiver in his lip said something else.

  “Oh, Richard, sweetie.” She left the bed and walked over to her brother and knelt before him, putting her head on his leg. “You’ve been holding it in all this time, and it’s been killing you.”

  Richard tried to respond, but the shaking of his lower lip grew progressively worse and his eyes began to leak and all he could get out was a weak, tearful “Mon.”

  “Look around, Richard,” she said. “Look at what has happened to you. Look at this room. You’re my big brother, my hero, but look at you. Keeping it in and staying like this can’t be worse than telling someone the truth about what happened.”

  “What about the Web site?” he said.

  “We don’t want to hear about the Web site,” I said. “We want to hear about Chantal.”

  He was crying now, the tears falling in big droplets onto her cheek. “But I don’t know what happened,” he said through the sobs. “I don’t.”

  She raised up on her knees, took his ugly wet face in her hands, hugged him close. She was crying now, too.

  “Just tell us what you know, baby,” she said.

  “No.”

  “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”

  “It’s not.”

  “It will be,” she said. “We’re going to find her. I know it, I can feel it, she has spoken to me. But we need your help.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Sweetie, yes, yes you can. Just tell us what you know.”

  And then, through sobs and tears and the racking breaths of a ruined life, he did just that.

  HE HAD been a wanderer, Ricky Adair, a loner who floated through the neighborhood, the streets, the back alleys, the narrow stretch of Disston Park running after the squirrels. In those days the neighborhood was safe, and mothers let their children off on their own. Go out and play. Go out and get some fresh air. And that was what he had done, roaming wild over a landscape that was rooted in both the urban reality and the fluid fantasy of his imagination. The haunted house on Ditman, the troll who terrorized Algard Street, the witch that flew with the bats in the dusky sky above Our Lady of Consolation on Tulip. And it was on one of his wanderings that he met the Halloween Man, who was sitting on the stoop of an alleyway smoking a cigarette.