Praise for
Private Heat
It “deserves praise for sheer action and suspense. . . . Bailey has a good sassy sense of humor.” In this “hard-boiled homage . . . there's no denying his narrative drive, which keeps the reader moving right along until the last page.”
—Publishers Weekly
“First-novelist Bailey delivers a well-constructed, action-packed thriller. . . . A series to watch.”
—Booklist
“PRIVATE HEAT is Robert Bailey’s first novel and the first in his Art Hardin series. No doubt, Bailey will quickly gather many devoted fans (including myself) with this action-packed, well-crafted thriller. His vivid characters and brilliant sense of humor won me over. I look forward to reading more from this talented new author.”
—The Mystery Review
A “knockout debut private eye novel. . . . There are a few classic scenes that would be great for a movie version. . . . Full of high speed, adrenaline-charged action and vividly drawn characters, Bailey's classic hard-boiled effort is a real gem, easily a candidate for best first private eye novel of the year honors.”
—Lansing State Journal
Also by Robert E. Bailey
Dying Embers
Dead Bang
Private Heat
Robert E. Bailey
San Diego
Private Heat
Ignition Books
Published by arrangement with the author.
Copyright © 2002 by Robert E. Bailey.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information please contact: [email protected] or by writing Endpapers Press, 4653 Carmel Mountain Road, Suite 308 PMB 212, San Diego, CA 92130-6650.
eISBN: 978-1-937868-00-0
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, or events either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, corporations, or other entities, is entirely coincidental.
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Private Heat
For the eyes of the owl.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the First Coast Writer’s Festival for selecting this novel as the winner of the Josiah W. Bancroft Jr. Award and to the final judges, David Poyer and Lenore Hart, who were so generous with their guidance and encouragement.
Thank you to my agent, Andrew Zack of The Zack Company, Inc.
Thank you to Frank Green and members of the Bard Society—particularly Darby Grover with his rapier red pen and his wife, JoAnn, who has surely earned her angel wings for tolerating us.
Thank you to Joe Erhardt, the chairman of my writer’s group, and the members—Gordon Andrews, Meredith Campbell, Linda Lyons, Anne Harmon, Heather McLees, Mark Pruett, David Swift, and Maurice Reveley.
Thank you to my wife, Linda, who was the first to take this project seriously; my sons, Adam, Eric, and Sean, who always encouraged me; and my sister, Mary Sue, who never gave up the faith. God bless my parents.
1
Everybody wants to be a detective, carry a big shiny gun, and be all the rage at cocktail parties. Nobody wants to get up at o-dark-thirty and drive ninety-three miles to see if Joe Insurance Claimant—who has been collecting a total disability check for the last three years—is also working for wages on the sly, but that’s the kind of work that usually pays the bills, not the flashy stuff you see on the tube.
This morning’s Joe Claimant was definitely double-dipping and that’s the type of information guaranteed to warm the frozen cockles of any insurance adjuster’s heart, including that of Virginia Hampton, the adjuster who had ordered this morning’s surveillance.
Virginia was usually at her desk by eight-thirty, so I punched up Pacific Casualty on the speed dialer. She picked up the line; her switchboard doesn’t open until nine.
“Pacific Casualty Claims,” she said, cold and all business.
“Morning, Ginny,” I said. I rocked my chair back and stacked the heels of my western boots on the corner of my cluttered desktop. “Art Hardin, over at the Ladin Agency. How’s your Cinco de Mayo so far?”
“Sink-o-de-what?” she wanted to know.
“Mexican Independence Day,” I said. “Like our Fourth of July. Only it’s today.”
“Must be good news for you to call me this early,” she said, her voice friendly now.
“Nah, I just called to be social,” I said. “You have to scrape the frost off your windshield this morning?”
She hadn’t. Just a little dew she cleared with the windshield wipers.
“Guess I was up and out a little earlier than you.”
“Do tell,” she said. I could hear her digging in her desk drawer, maybe sorting out a ballpoint pen.
“You hit the lotto last night?”
“Arthur!”
“I’ll take that as a no,” I said. “I don’t think Mr. Fleming picked the right numbers either, because he went to work this morning.”
She was pleased.
“He left his house at five-twenty this morning and drove to Mount Pleasant Pallet Suppliers. He parked in the employee parking lot.”
She wanted to know if I was positive of the identification.
“Matches the picture on the insured’s company ID card you sent me.”
She wanted to know what he was wearing and if he was using his walker.
“Jeans, a T-shirt, and a lightweight jacket,” I said, “and no walker or cane. I watched him drive a lift truck for about half an hour. He’s pretty good. He can really stack up and move those pallets, vroom, vroom, you know.”
She wanted to know if I had placed a pretext call to verify his employment.
“No,” I told her. “I have no idea who owns the pallet outfit. Could be a friend or relative who’s paying him cash off the books. Since he’s abandoned his walker, I think we ought to run a little film.”
No one has actually taken film in ten or fifteen years. Videotape with time/date generation has become the standard for documentation of surveillance work. I say “film” only because I’m getting a little gray in the muzzle.
She wanted to know what the tab was.
“Five hours and two hundred miles,” I said.
How much for surveillance with film, Ginny wanted to know. She lived in the hope that I’d bid low.
“Sixteen to twenty hours, about four hundred miles, and the rental on a van,” I told her.
Ginny said she’d have to review the file with her supervisor.
I heard the lock in the front door turn and looked up to check the video monitor that hung from the ceiling across the room from my desk. A chip-cam—a very small video camera—hidden in a smoke detector mounted behind the reception desk provided the pictures.
I watched Marg—Margaret Ladin, my late partner’s wife—trundle in the front door with a soft-sided attaché case in her hand and a purse the size of a golf bag hanging from her shoulder. She runs an accounting business from the front office, answers my phone, and takes care of the agency books.
Pete Ladin passed away peaceably enough while attending an American Society of Industrial Security dinner meeting. One minute he’s scarfing the rubber chicken dinner, the next minute he’s complaining about seeing double, and then—bang—out cold on the floor.
The autopsy revealed a waln
ut-sized cerebral aneurysm that had burst. In the county coroner’s opinion, Pete had been dead when he hit the floor.
Marg later sold me her half of the agency for the accounts receivable and one dollar. I got the agency, the license, and accounts payable. Ladin Associates enjoyed a good reputation in the Grand Rapids business community and the logo was painted on the window. I think that last part made Marg feel at home. I didn’t change the name. I told her it was because we’d just bought stationery.
Now we split the office rent. Marg pays a third of it, and I pay the rest. I also pay for the phone, including her private line, and the utilities. She’s sweet with the clients, can read my handwriting, and types the reports and invoices, all of which outweigh the fact that Marg is a shrew.
“Let me know what you want to do,” I said to Ginny. “I’ll send the report and an invoice for what we’ve got.” We made polite good-byes, and I hung up the telephone.
“Morning, Marg,” I called through my office door without getting up. I tried to sound breezy and upbeat.
Marg didn’t answer. I heard bundles thump on her desktop.
“I need some walking-around money,” I said.
“You don’t have any money,” she said as she walked by my office door to hang her coat on the rack in the investigators’ room. She’d done her dark brown hair “big” with a little flip at the end. Her straight blue business suit defied you to notice her ample figure. “Get your fanny out on the street and make some,” she said while she jangled some hangers on the coat rack.
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’ve been on the phone,” she said.
I shrugged and put my feet back on the floor. Sometimes it’s best to let her have her coffee before I make any requests. I stirred the clutter on the top of my desk until a yellow pad surfaced. What I can describe to an adjuster in a few sentences requires five pages of “see Dick run” and “Jane threw the ball” before the insurance company’s attorney will embrace the concept of a fraudulent claim.
The telephone rang. Marg hustled back to her desk and picked up the line. “Peter A. Ladin Agency,” she purred into the phone in a feline alto. “How may we be of service?”
I swear the woman has a split personality.
“Yes, Mr. Hardin is in. Just a moment, please.”
“Van Pelham and Timmer on line one,” she announced from her desk, her voice accusatory.
Van Pelham and Timmer, one of the premier legal firms in Grand Rapids, listed so many partners their letterhead looked like a bingo card. I had a lot of it in my file because I’d sued a county south of Kent for false arrest, and they had hired Van Pelham and Timmer to shovel paper on me in hopes that I’d suffocate. A federal judge awarded me one dollar and attorney fees from the county. Van Pelham and Timmer bleached the county’s bones until they needed a bond issue to replace their patrol fleet. The attorney from Van Pelham and Timmer had painted my character pretty dark all over the federal courthouse, so unless they were calling to thank me for the tasty billing, I was at a loss for what they could possibly want.
“Hello. Art Hardin,” didn’t seem to admit any kind of culpability, so that’s what I said.
“Martin Van Pelham.” His voice was imperious hollow-ground gravel that squeaked only faintly from age—the bold-print Van Pelham.
“It’s a pleasure to speak with you, Mr. Van Pelham. If this has to do with the Berrien matter, send it to Freeman. Anything else, send to Finney down on Forty-fourth, and we’ll sort it out from there.”
“Mr. Hardin,” he said, “I am not suing you. If I were, you’d be talking to a process server.”
“So what’s this about?”
“I have a rather pressing problem that I think you may be able to help me with. Are you free for lunch?”
“No, Mr. Van Pelham. I’m fifty dollars an hour, but if you spring for lunch I’ll forego the four-hour minimum.” The line went silent for a moment. I expected him to hang up. He didn’t.
“Very well,” he said finally. “Someplace out of the way.”
Grand Rapids is the biggest small town in Michigan. Over a million people inhabit the metropolitan area, but they all know each other and take notes. The usual downtown haunts were out.
“How about the Choo-Choo up by Leonard on Plainfield?” The Choo-Choo Restaurant had been retired as a train station in the early fifties and had served as a diner ever since. Despite its size—about as big as a two-car garage—and a coat of red paint over the brick, it still exudes that certain railway charm.
Once upon a time in Grand Rapids, there had been a minor league ice hockey team called the Owls. Some of the fans, players, and hangers-on, most now retired, gather daily to fill the Choo-Choo’s two tables and short counter for breakfast and spirited conversation. The lunch traffic, mostly carry-out, comprises a blue-collar trade that pit-stops for “the best burgers in Grand Rapids.” If you want one of the two tables, you have to get there early.
“Eleven-thirty,” Van Pelham said and hung up.
I finished my report, stood up, and peeled my windbreaker off the back of my chair. I keep a sport jacket—this week, a brown herringbone in wool and Italian silk—and some ties on the coat rack in the investigators’ room. Ready-to-wear suits present a problem. It takes a forty-eight long to get around my chest and shoulders, but the trousers that come with a suit that size can’t be cut down enough to fit my waist.
This morning I’d dressed in the dark so as not to wake my wife, Wendy. Luck of the draw dealt me a yellow broadcloth shirt and black slacks. I passed on the brown tie in favor of a black-and-gold checked silk tie and took it, along with the sport coat, back to my office to saddle up. Properly attired, I clipped a billing slip onto my report and went out to beard the lioness.
Marg had her “leave me the hell alone” half glasses perched on the end of her nose. I dropped the report into Marg’s in-box and waited for her to finish a ledger entry.
“What?” she said.
“I was serious,” I said. “I need a check.”
“Checks you got,” she answered without looking up.
“We billed twenty-five hundred last week, and the P&L says we have forty thousand in receivables!”
“And you’re on a thirty-day billing cycle. A lot of that isn’t due yet, and some of it is late.” She fingered my battered ledger off the shelf next to her desk and smiled malevolently.
“Oh, God,” I said, “don’t beat me with the book. That’s cruel and unusual. Just give me the short version.”
“Taxes and Social Security,” she said and slipped the ledger back into its slot. “Quarterly payments.”
“I’ve got to meet a client.”
“Twenty-three dollars.”
I said, “Great. Gimme a check for the double sawbuck,” and tried to sound chipper.
“You know they charge you for every check.”
“Let ’em take it out of the three spot.”
“You need to think about a retirement program,” she said. She made a little sigh as she dragged out the checkbook.
“Good. Let’s look at this as an investment.”
“Don’t get snippy,” she told me. To get even, she made me take the tax payments, since I “was going to the bank anyway.”
Just short of seventeen thousand dollars swirled into the bank teller’s drawer. She smiled and stamped my coupons like it was nothing. I breezed out of the bank with twenty bucks to operate my business. My black Olds sedan drank a sawbuck for breakfast.
I got to the Choo-Choo at a quarter past eleven and parked on the hard-packed dirt lot that forms an uneven wreath around the building. Inside, railroad pictures covered the dark-stained knotty pine walls. The close quarters behind the counter shone in stainless steel and tile. The serving area featured chrome, speckled formica, and brown Naugahyde—here and there garnished with duct tape.
The usual breakfast crew still filled both tables and four of the seven counter stools. They were down to raucous conversation and
lukewarm coffee. I slid onto a stool and ordered a cup of joe. After ten minutes, a table cleared and I hustled to take possession.
“The service is better up here at the counter,” said the owner/cook/waiter, a fellow as big as a landing craft with hair cut high and tight like a marine drill instructor. He hooked his thumbs in the straps of the starched white bib apron he wore over jeans and a white T-shirt. “I don’t go out there unless there’s two or three people at a table.”
“I’m meeting a friend here in a couple of minutes,” I said. “How about setting us up with a couple of deluxe burger baskets?”
“Eight forty-eight,” he said and pointed at a sign mounted next to the clock. “PLEASE PAY WHEN YOU ORDER.”
I fished out my ten spot and walked it over to the counter—a bad omen—Van Pelham had weaseled out of the lunch tab and he wasn’t even here yet.
The owner made my change and said, “I’ll clear the table.”
Van Pelham walked in wearing a blue pin-striped Italian suit. Pushing the door open, he exposed his left wrist and a gold Rolex watch that cost more than the diner grossed in a month. His hair, flecked with brown when we’d clashed in the Federal Courthouse, was now stark white and just long enough to lie down. Still ramrod straight and six feet tall, he weighed a lean one hundred fifty or sixty pounds and moved lithe as a cat despite his nearly three score and ten years. We shook hands and he said, “I remember you as taller.”
“I remember you as younger.”
“I used to be younger,” he said and gave me the deadpan face that only lawyers and serious card players can muster.
“I used to be taller,” I said and showed him to the table.
Van Pelham took out his hanky and dusted the chair before he sat. The counterman, wiping the table, scowled at him and two of the denizens seated on the stools appraised Van Pelham in an apparent effort to determine what he’d weigh dressed out.
Private Heat Page 1
