7 - Rogue: Ike Schwartz Mystery 7

by Frederick Ramsay

  “I ain’t said nothing, Uncle Jack. I ain’t talking to these people. It’s their job to prove that one way or other, right? And I figure you probably want to do something about that.”

  “Mister Mayor, I think we need to talk privately and…”

  “Yes, of course. Deputy Sutherlin, I caution you. This had better be a legitimate arrest and not some trick by Ike Schwartz to embarrass his opponent.”

  “Oh, it’s real, sir.” Frank turned to his prisoner. “He’s your uncle? How very convenient for you. He’s a cop and you are a thief. I’m sure you two will have a chat and then you will tell us everything we need to know because, unless I miss my guess, Uncle Jackie will insist on it. He pretty much has to.”

  Smith muttered something that Frank, had he been paying attention, would have recognized as obscene, blasphemous, or both. He marched him into the back room, booked him, and scheduled an arraignment for that evening. And at that moment, Frank had a brief epiphany. Essie and Billy notwithstanding, Jack Burns needed a closer look. Smith was Burns’ nephew. That had to go somewhere. Coincidences might be the stuff of Russian novels, but in his world, they were rare to nonexistent. All Frank needed was a handle. Something didn’t smell quite right. Maybe he smelled hay. Smith and hay, Duffy and hay, and then Uncle Jack?

  Grace White waved at him from the corridor where she’d been hiding from the mayor. “I have something on that phone call Ike wanted to have traced,” she said.

  “The call to Ms. Harris the night she hit the pole?”

  “Yeah. I don’t understand it exactly, but I’ve traced the origin and identified the phone.”

  ***

  “So when did you make the decision to remove the van, and why?”

  Ike made a fresh pot of coffee and Charlie produced the box of Dunkin’ Donuts he’d picked up on his way in.

  “The director received a call from your mayor. In fact, he received and ignored several calls from the gentleman. Apparently the mayor then called the governor, who called somebody, who in turn called somebody else, and the upshot was the director received an order from very high up that he should take the call or else. Your mayor wanted to know why the CIA had a van parked in his town and did the director want to answer him or would he rather see this question referred to the Washington Post? Since we’d pretty much done what we could with Kevin and his machinery, the decision the director made seemed to be necessary.”

  “And expedient.”

  “That too.”

  “I would like to have known about it, but it’s okay. I have had a discouraging morning thus far and you have not added much in the way of cheer, Charlie.”

  “My bad. What might I have said to change that?”

  “Damned if I know. My problem is, I have been pouring over all the information we have. There is precious little here and it occurred to me that if our perp is as I have assumed, he’s out there and we will never find him unless we launch a full-scale manhunt. Only the FBI can pull that off, and they can’t do that without some reason or authorization. Neither the attorney general nor the director of the FBI is going to expend assets on Ike Schwartz’s problem, the DC Metro Police are not going to call them in on a routine auto accident, and if I have correctly figured out the hit, and I am having serious doubts about that now, we would either have our man by now, or we will never get him.”

  “How do you figure that? You are right about all the rest. The FBI is a no-go and obviously we, that is, my people, cannot operate within the borders, but the rest?”

  “Well, you remember my rant about the soldier and the possibilities?”

  “Vividly.”

  “If that were the case—and it need not be a damaged GI. Anyone with a certain twisted mind set could do it. By now he would have told someone, would have made the person he felt had encouraged him know what he’d done. Doubtless the knights who polished off Beckett rushed back to the palace to tell the king and receive their reward. As much as I dislike demagogues, I do not believe they are stupid. If any of them got wind that one of theirs had done something like that, they’d give him up in a heartbeat. Make an anonymous phone call, at least.”

  “And if, for some reason, our guy didn’t run to the king?”

  “We’re screwed. Unless he talks about it to someone and we pick up on it, we’ll never find him.”

  “So what now?”

  “The more I think about it, the more I’m convinced the thing is eccentric.”

  “Is what?”

  “Off-center, it’s related to Ruth and what she was doing, certainly, but not as we, or I, first assumed.”

  “What then?”

  “I don’t know, but I might be close. One piece and we will have the puzzle solved. But where do I find that piece?”

  The phone rang.

  “Perhaps that’s the missing piece calling you now.”

  “I’m not that lucky.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Eden Saint Clare extended her stay an extra day. She wanted to return to Picketsville as soon as possible, but her lawyers were undecided which strategy they should pursue. It appeared that John Harris had executed a series of wills over the last few years. They had to assume that all the will writing and rewriting had been the result of a mind gone gray, but would a court agree? People spoke to him. He understood them or he didn’t. One could never be sure that what he heard had anything to do with what was actually said. At the same time, a will, if it made sense, should stand irrespective of his mental state. It wasn’t as if he’d left his estate to the home for stray cats.

  They were in general agreement, however, that the latest will could be successfully contested, but which of the several previous documents would supplant it? At what point during the process would the will in question stand the test of sound mind? Clearly they needed to inspect them all. To do so, they would need a subpoena to get at them, and might never be sure they had them all. The sister wasn’t being entirely forthcoming, they suspected.

  “We tried to explain all this to your associate yesterday afternoon, Mrs. Saint Clare, but he seemed only interested in the latest version.”

  “My associate? Did you say someone spoke to you claiming to be my associate?”

  “Why, yes. He showed me some identification and a letter from you identifying himself as your representative. He did say he did not work for you often but, as you were in his neighborhood, he’d offered to help.”

  “In his neighborhood? You mean he works in Chicago?”

  “Yes. He had his business card. He is a partner, it seems, with Gavel and Strock. They are a small legal consulting firm located in Skokie, as it happens.”

  “What was his name?”

  “It was…well here,” the young clerk handed Eden a business card. “You can read it for yourself.”

  She glanced at the card. “May I use your phone?”

  “Yes, of course. Is there a problem?”

  “You better hope not.”

  Eden dialed the number and waited for someone to pick up. “Hello, may I speak to Mr. Franklin Barstow, please? What? I am calling about an inquiry he made with this firm, Baker, Baker, and Watts.” She waited another minute. “Mr. Barstow, my name is Eden Saint Clare. Have we ever met? No, I am quite serious. I am standing in the conference room at Baker, Baker, and Watts. I have been informed by—” She covered the mouth piece. “Sorry son, what is your name? By a Mr. Andrew Watts, who, I assume, must be a relation to the Watts. He tells me that you were here in this building asking about some matters currently being handled on my behalf by this firm. Since we have never met, I wonder if you could enlighten me on what that was all about. Yes, yesterday. You were. Thank you, sorry to have bothered you.”

  She hung up the phone. “Junior, describe the man to whom you revealed confidential information. Then fe
tch your dad, or uncle, or whoever or whatever the senior Watts in this firm is. Mr. Barstow and I have never met, and he was not here yesterday afternoon because he was attending a bar mitzvah in Winnetka. We have a problem.”

  “Yes ma’am. The original founder of the firm, Hiram Watts, is dead. I have the same name but am not related. I’ll get Mr. Baker, Senior.”

  This smelled fishy. Either the devious sister had sent a spy to snoop, or…or what?

  “You do that. Then you might want to think about pursuing another profession.”

  “Ma’am?”

  ***

  Ike answered the call on the second ring after he’d checked the caller ID. Frank on his private cell needed to speak to him.

  “Ike, some news. You need to hear what happened today at the office but it takes time. Will you be at the Crossroads anytime today?”

  “I could do lunch. You could join me, that is, if you can keep the Pooh-bahs in the mayor’s office off your case.”

  “No problem there. Not anymore. Okay, right now Grace has some news about the phone call Ruth received the night of the wreck. Shall I put her on?”

  “Of course.” Ike touched the speakerphone button so that Charlie could listen to what Grace White had discovered.

  “Boss.” Grace came on the line. “I was able to do some fiddling with the cell phone you gave me. I know where the call she got that night came from, its number, and where the phone it was made on was purchased.”

  “All that? Tell me what you have.”

  “It’s kind of weird.” Grace thought most of life in the Shenandoah Valley was weird when compared to her upbringing in Maine. “The call was placed in Washington, DC. You probably already figured that part out. The weird thing is that the person who made it bought the phone in Lexington.”

  “Our Lexington? Not Kentucky…the one right up the road?”

  “Yes. See, once I retrieved the number, I traced it to the manufacturer, well actually the United States rep. The phone came from Asia somewhere originally and—”

  “Skip that part, Grace. So they were able to trace the phone consignment that narrowly?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Who bought it?”

  “That’s the part I don’t know. I am calling all the stores in the Lexington area to find out who bought a phone. If I’m lucky, there’ll be a time stamp on the sales slip and if I’m luckier still, whoever bought it will have used a charge card. Then we’ll have him, or her, but that doesn’t seem likely.”

  “Not a woman? Why?”

  “It would take a pretty hefty woman to drive a truck, wouldn’t it?”

  “You ever drive a truck, Grace?”

  “Oh, sure. I sometimes helped my cousin, Rodney, haul logs out of the forest, so sure.”

  “Big truck?”

  “Oh yeah, that sucker ran…oh, I get it. If I can jockey a tractor and log hauler, someone else could manage a stake body, I guess. I stand corrected. Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for. I don’t think you will find a charge slip on that phone. The attacker built his plan very carefully. He would have paid cash. But keep looking, you may get lucky. In the meantime, assuming there is a cash register record of the sale, and assuming you can locate it, check the time stamp and then see if any surveillance cameras might have caught the purchase.”

  “Right. I’m on it.”

  Ike hung up.

  “I guess we put the solitary fruitcake as perpetrator to bed.”

  “Not quite. I never let something go until I have something better to take its place. That’s not the case yet, so we’ll put it on hold. Lexington could simply be a coincidence. Anyone coming up the valley on his way to Washington might very well have pulled off I-81 and picked up a phone. You’d be pretty stupid to buy it in your hometown, assuming you knew it might be traced.”

  “Point taken. Fruitcakes placed on hold, but not discarded. In the real world, discarding fruitcakes is an act of mercy. My great aunt Louise exchanged the same fruitcake with her sister every Christmas for something like thirty years.”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “Only a little.”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  As they made their way into the Crossroads to meet Frank, Colonel Bob grabbed Ike’s sleeve. He rifled through a rucksack he’d duct-taped to the steering mechanism of his scooter, withdrew a thick envelope, and held it out.

  “Here’s what I found for you, Sheriff. I called Saint Louis and talked my way into the main records section. Had to pull rank. Damn, but that felt good! It turned out the major in charge of the unit is the grandson or maybe the great grandson, hard to keep ’em straight, of Chesty MacDaniels. You know General Mac?”

  “Sorry , no. He a buddy of yours?”

  “Chesty and I fought all the way from North Africa, Italy, and Europe together. One time we liberated a whole wine cellar in France and after about three hours of sampling, Chesty decided to steal Patton’s six shooters. See, it was…sorry, off the point, never mind. I got through and the major, nice fellah, asked me what I wanted and so on. Well, I didn’t really know for sure so I had him fax me a list of everyone who served in that unit you asked about during the years you told me. T.J. printed it out for me. There’s a hell of a lot of names, I think. With my eyes on terminal leave, I can’t read it, but if your guy was there, he’ll be on the list.”

  “Thanks, Colonel Bob. So, did you actually steal the general’s pistols?”

  “Nah. By the time we’d generated enough Dutch courage from the wine to do it, we were falling down drunk and our master sergeants had to scrape us up off the floor and cart us back to HQ. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if we had done it, though.”

  “Thanks for the list.” Ike found his usual booth occupied by some travelers on their way to Tennessee and had to settle for a table close by. Charlie, who had remained silent through the colonel’s story and the exchange, sat opposite.

  “Can you imagine what General Patton would have done to him and the other guy if they’d tried it? What’s with the list?”

  “Just a hunch. You know, no stone unturned and all that. I saw on Doctor Fiske’s highly fictionalized résumé that he claimed to have served in a military police battalion. I wanted to find out if it were true or not.”

  “Because of the pursuit maneuver, I take it. Did he?”

  “Yes. Give me a minute.” Ike slit the envelope open with a butter knife and spread the sheets of paper it contained out on the table. “We’re in luck, I think. The lists are for each year Fiske claims to have been assigned. They are in alphabetical order by year and by rank, so…checking the F’s…nope, nope, nope. He didn’t serve as an officer as he claimed, nor did he give himself a promotion on his paper and really serve as an enlisted man either. My guess, he didn’t serve in the military anywhere.”

  Ike read through the list of names again, frowned at one and underlined it, then returned the sheets to the envelope and stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Frank joined them a few minutes later. If a smile can light a room, his would have powered the Las Vegas strip.

  “You seem happy, Frank. Do you want to share?”

  Frank filled them in on the morning events, the mayor’s hasty retreat from the office, and Burns’ difficulties stemming from his nephew’s arrest.

  “So far, Smith isn’t talking beyond repeating that he didn’t have any part in the death of Marty Duffy, and he wants a lawyer. I think our wannabe sheriff is arranging that for him now.”

  “Have we got anything on him that we can make stick or will keep him close until we can dig a little deeper into the Duffy killing?”

  “I think so, yes. I managed to have the judge hand down a search warrant before I came over. I’ll take Billy over to Smith’s place and we’ll toss it. He has a perm
it to carry a nine millimeter. Whoever shot the dog used a nine and I’m pretty sure it’ll be his. It’s not much, but it will do for the time being. We can also put him in the barn. The couple who leased it to Duffy said they can ID his partner, too. So, yes, I think we can keep him for a while.”

  “That’s good work, Frank. And you’re telling me that the office is quiet? Amos Wickwire still lurking?”

  “He is but he looks a little lost and confused. His line to the mayor seems to be shut down.”

  “Poor Amos.”

  “Grace found one of Sam’s old programs that she used to track cell phones and calls. She’s locked it on the one you’re looking for. If it is turned on, she’ll know when and where. If a call is made, she thinks she will be able to monitor and maybe even record it.”

  “Clearly you do not need me or Kevin anymore.” Charlie waved to Flora, who made a point of ignoring him. “How does one order lunch here if you are not on Ms. Blevin’s A-list?”

  “She’ll be by in a minute. She is punishing me for allowing you into her bailiwick. But, she makes money selling what passes for food, so she will be along soon enough, never fear.”

  “What I want to know is, why me? What have I done that she finds so reprehensible that she would blacklist me?”

  “It’s your looks, Charlie. She was once left at the altar by a man who looks remarkably like you.”

  “No.”

  “Could be. Entering and then exiting a black hole is easier than delving into Flora’s psyche.”

  “You could come back to the office now, I think, Ike. There is no way the mayor or his mafia will bother you now.”

  “I appreciate that, Frank. Not today, but maybe later. There are some things I need to do first. Charlie, I never asked. How did you find out about the will?”

  “Oh, no big deal. You know I have a habit of picking up business cards when I can. Never know, and all that. When I was in, that is, when I was away this week, I found one in the parking lot near where I was headed at the time. It hadn’t been stepped on and seemed in reasonably good shape so I picked it up. Using a found card is always better than one which someone might later remember giving to you.”