“I have to ask you,” I said, pausing until we made eye contact, “just what inspired you to call me? As I remember it, you described me as a ‘sleazy keyhole peeper’ in the hallway over at the Gerald R. Ford Building.”
“Let’s not recriminate,” he said and looked over his shoulder at the door. When he turned back he added, “I called you because I need your services.”
The front door opened and a man in a grease-stained mechanic’s uniform breezed in and headed for the counter. Van Pelham did a quick head swivel to check him out.
“You still don’t like cops?” he said, like it was a fact I should stipulate to, to save the court’s time.
“I have the greatest respect for the police,” I said and waited till he was looking at me again. “They do a difficult job. Most work hard and serve the public at great personal peril. However, I don’t believe that a badge is a license to—”
He waved a halting backhand. “I heard the speech at the trial.” He folded his hands on the table and said, “You sued the county when you could have walked away from a reasonable mistake and made some good friends in the law enforcement community.”
“Really? Damn! Sure would have cost you a bundle in billable hours.”
“That’s not the point.”
“That’s exactly the point. Trust me on this—with police agencies, respect is a lot more durable than friendship.”
Van Pelham allowed me a little nod of his head. “I had a similar thought this morning,” he said.
The burger baskets arrived, and Van Pelham looked dumbstruck. He stared at the basket of fries and the top of the big sesame seed bun like he’d been served a snake in a bucket.
“Take a walk on the wild side,” I said and hauled my half-pounder out for a bite.
“I haven’t eaten like this since I was an intern,” he said and pushed the basket aside. “My niece is going through a divorce. Her husband has assaulted her on several occasions and has made some very specific threats on her life.”
I nodded through another bite, but his silence made it clear that it was my turn to talk. “I take it,” I said, using my napkin to wipe the ketchup off my mustache, “your niece’s soon-to-be-ex is a police officer.”
“Yes, he is. And that is the problem.”
“Get yourself a restraining order. If he gets out of hand, he has a lot to lose.” I felt like I was preaching to the choir. “If he’s assaulted her several times, he should be on the rubber gun squad already.”
Van Pelham wagged his head in the negative. “She pressed charges once. His sergeant came over and told her that he could get counseling through the department, so she dropped the charges. I still managed to get a restraining order. He should be served when he gets off shift tonight.”
“What flavor?” I asked between bites.
Van Pelham twisted his head like a dog studying a worm on a wet sidewalk.
“State? City? County? One of the suburbs?”
“City,” he said and turned his head to check out a customer who had opened the door to leave.
“Shit,” I said. “Go see the chief. The city is one of your clients. I’m sure he’ll make time for you and take it as a favor that you helped him head off some trouble.”
“Like he took care of the Rat?” asked Van Pelham.
“Rat” is the nickname for a city police detective who married a district court judge. The newspaper made it an occasion for the city, with color pictures of the happy couple standing on the courthouse steps. But, like most fairy tales, it turned out to be an ugly story with a nasty ending.
One morning after the Rat’s customary breakfast of bourbon and beer, he walked into the judge’s chambers, shot her in the neck, and watched her bleed to death on the floor.
The police department took the position that the shooting was a domestic matter and not nearly as bad as if the Ratmeister had wandered into the courthouse and capped somebody at random. The prosecutor couldn’t find it in his heart to personally prosecute an “old friend and professional associate,” so he appointed a special prosecutor.
The Rat took a twenty-five-to-life murder fall in a federal penitentiary but not before his attorney mounted an unsuccessful diminished capacity defense, due to advanced alcoholism. When the good people of Grand Rapids started asking why an active alcoholic had been left on duty, in uniform, and entrusted with a firearm, the police chief mugged for the cameras.
“Hey,” I said with a shrug, “I saw the chief on the news. He flopped the Rat back in the bag from Major Cases because of manpower needs. A lateral transfer. Had him assigned to midnight foot patrol in the tenderloin. An administrative thing. The chief had no idea the Rat had a drinking problem. The press ate that spin with a spoon, and I believed him, too! Didn’t you?”
“That’s the point,” said Van Pelham. “I’m afraid that after her husband gets served he’ll head straight over to the house.”
“Of course he will,” I said. “He has a right to pick up his clothes and personal property. Maybe this is a good time for your niece to take a long weekend. Chicago, maybe, or Traverse City is nice this time of year. The cherries are in bloom.”
“She can’t.”
“Sure she can. This isn’t about principle. This is about common sense.” I leaned forward and showed Van Pelham my open palms. “A trip to Toronto would be cheaper than paying me.”
“She’s on a tether.”
You’re putting me on, I wanted to say. His face revealed that he was not. “What’s her name?” I said instead.
“K. T. Smith,” said Van Pelham—made it sound like “Katie.” He snapped his head to check someone who had opened the door.
Out of habit I’d taken the gunfighter’s chair—back to the wall, with a clear view of the door, and a short unobstructed route to the rear exit. It would have been a mercy to trade seats with Van Pelham. I didn’t. The voice of Sergeant Ochoa, my old ranger instructor, whispered to me from the dark recesses of my memory, “Mercy may fall like gentle rain, but stupidity comes down in great-big-fucking chunks.”
“Karen Smith?” I asked.
“Karen Terisa,” said Van Pelham. “I’ve always called her K. T.”
“That saves me a trip to the courthouse to read the summons and complaint,” I said. The story had been in the newspaper—front page and above the fold for three days. Karen Terisa had been boffing her boss, who ran a payroll check accounting firm. One week all the checks bounced and the boss disappeared. A neat package until the local FBI located his car parked in the long-term lot at Kent County International Airport and staked it out. After a week the car started to get ripe, so they pried opened the trunk and found out that he’d missed his flight.
Ms. Smith turned out to have a numbered account in the Bahamas. She’d been waiting for her boss at Lake Tahoe when he got whacked.
“Officer Smith should be running away from her like she was on fire and he was wearing gasoline boxer shorts.”
“Officer Talon,” said Van Pelham. “She never took his name.”
Talon was one of the brain surgeons on the “Community Service” crew. The Community Service Squad was a plainclothes decoy unit that had recently figured prominently in a rash of civil suits against the city, not to mention some of the members getting busted for assault and battery down in Kalamazoo—exploits reported in the local newspaper.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I said.
“Too much weight?”
“Absolutely. Way out of my league.”
“That’s not quite the whole story, is it, Colonel?”
“Yeah, well, I lied. I never used to be taller. I did used to be younger—just like you. The other’s all reserve crap. I’m retired, anyway.”
“NCIC said you had an SCI security clearance.”
I’ve always wondered why it is that lawyers have to talk around the edges of things; it’s like eating pizza starting at the crust and working your way to the point. “NCIC” stands for National Crime Information Cente
r. Their reports go to police agencies, not slick private practice lawyers. Even so, getting an NCIC report on me wouldn’t have been much of a magic trick; he’d been defending a sheriff’s department back when we were butting heads down at the federal courthouse.
So he found out that I had been a counterintelligence officer for the Defense Intelligence Service. So what? His niece was divorcing a police officer, not some Russian intelligence thug. I’d been a private investigator for a couple of years by the time I ran afoul of a backwoods sheriff in southwest Michigan.
“That case was years ago, and your guy didn’t ask me that question on the stand.”
“Years ago we didn’t want the jury to hear the answer. What’s an SCI clearance anyway?”
Secret Codename Intelligence. “I haven’t the foggiest notion,” I said. “Make up any story you like. It won’t change the fact that your niece and this Talon character are a disaster looking for a chance to happen.”
Van Pelham closed his eyes, tilted his head down, and measured a long breath. When he looked up, he said, “Mr. Hardin, my sister and her husband were killed by a drunk driver. My wife and I raised K. T. like one of our own. She was only fourteen when I lost my wife. K. T. just seemed to go wild. I’ve done my best to protect her.” He rapped his folded hands gently on the table. The motion exposed the French cuffs of his tailor-made linen shirt and gold cufflinks the size of postage stamps. The cufflinks were etched with rampant griffins in profile. Each griffin had a quarter-carat diamond eye. “I have an appointment with Ralph Sehenlink this afternoon. I need you for two days,” he said, “maybe just one, maybe just tonight.”
Cat was out of the bag—Sehenlink was the local U.S. attorney. Van Pelham was trying to barter his niece into a witness protection program. In state courts the prosecutor has the authority to make a deal. In federal courts it is the presiding judge who has that authority, and prosecutors are tentative at best. Whatever she knew was good—it had to be really good—but the judge wanted it all, and Sehenlink was playing hardball to get it.
“Two days,” I said, “not a minute longer.”
Van Pelham offered his hand across the table.
I let it hang and ticked off the rest of the deal. “Five thousand in a check from you, or your firm, today, and I take it to your bank before I start.”
Van Pelham didn’t flinch. I should have asked for ten.
“I need three copies of the restraining order.”
He nodded.
“If I get sued over this, your firm represents me.”
He smiled and nodded again.
“I mean pro bono, Mr. Van Pelham, and you’re the barrister.”
His reach got a little tentative.
“I get charged with anything criminal, and you pay Pete Finney for my defense.”
Van Pelham took his hand back. “I have my own security people,” he said.
“Good, use ’em,” I said and went back to my burger.
“For that kind of money, you have to assume some of the risk.”
I set my burger down, gave my mustache a final wipe, and then straightened the napkin onto my lap. Under the table I took the pistol off my hip and wrapped it in the napkin. I put the package in Van Pelham’s burger basket.
“Do it yourself,” I said. “It’ll be free.”
Van Pelham’s gaze fell unblinking to the package. When he looked back up at me his jaw was slack, but his eyes were predatory. He shoved the basket across the table. His lips started working silently, and he seemed to be trying out different words, none of them complimentary. Finally, he said, “This isn’t about money.”
“Good,” I said. “Tell me what this is about. Tell me why we couldn’t meet at your office and why you jump every time someone walks in the door. And what is this sudden fascination with my military background?”
“Just my niece,” said Van Pelham. “This is all very embarrassing for a man in my position. I was glad when K. T. married a police officer. I’m disappointed that it didn’t work out. And I’m shocked about the current state of affairs. Given those parties and organizations we are up against, your military experience is essential.”
I took the package out of the basket and put it in the pocket of my sport coat. “I’m a parent, too,” I said. “I have three sons and I don’t always like what they do.”
Van Pelham issued me a nod and a “Yeah,” stifled down to a grunt.
“Even when they make me angry I don’t love them any less, but I do know about that little voice. The one that asks those hard questions, like, ‘Where did I screw up as a parent?’ And, ‘My God, what will people think?’ Nothing I can do will make that better for you. Five thousand dollars’ worth of conscience money doesn’t buy you the right to use me as a scapegoat if this all goes to hell.”
I paused and locked hard eyes with his. He chose not to say what roiled behind the sneer that washed over his face. Against my better judgment I said, “If we are joined at the hip for the sole purpose of protecting your niece’s life, then I’ll do the job. I’ll risk my health, my life, and my license for forty-eight hours. You know the terms.”
“I’ll have the check and a contract at my reception desk by one-thirty.”
“Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
Van Pelham shook his head and slid his chair back from the table.
“They ever catch the shooter who parked his trophy at the airport?”
Van Pelham stood up and said, “I think they’re going to get him very soon.” He turned and walked out of the diner.
2
I picked up the mail at the Station C Post Office in Gas Light Village—an enclave of trendy restaurants and used-book stores where the streets are paved in red brick and illuminated by gaslights at night. Flipping through the envelopes, I found a new case from Atlantic Casualty and a couple of circulars from the computer search companies—but no money. I ripped the circulars in half and dropped them in the trash. If they were the future for the detective business, Marg was right: It was time to think of a retirement plan.
A short drive to Kentwood, the first suburb south of Grand Rapids, took me back to my office among the lawyers, dentists, and insurance adjusters that infest the row of three-story brick office buildings west of Breton Avenue on Forty-fourth Street. My first-floor space is down a flight of stairs and sort of half in the basement, where we occupy a location with a big window on the central court meant for a coffee shop or hair salon, both of which I threaten to open monthly.
Marg sat at her desk doing a diet soda and bag lunch when I strolled in the door. She pushed a couple of message slips at me as I passed her desk. One was from Virginia Hampton, the insurance adjuster I had spoken with this morning. I returned her call, but she’d gone to lunch and my call got diverted to her voice mail. The second slip informed me of an “urgent” call from Ron Craig, a good friend but also an energetic competitor.
Ron had worked in the private sector for the past several years. “Budget considerations” used to trim the CIA had cut short his budding career as a public servant.
I called his office but his answering service picked up. They said they’d page him. A recording reported his cell phone “temporarily out of service.”
“Marg, I got a question,” I said as I walked into the front office. She looked up with her soda in one hand and a pickle in the other. “If I sell a job for five thousand, what do I net out?”
“You?” she said with a laugh. “You and the word ‘net’ are never mentioned in the same breath. I gave you twenty dollars this morning. What have you got left?”
“Buck and a half.”
“I rest my case.”
“What’s left after the government has had its way?” I asked.
“I’d have to figure it.”
“Round numbers?”
“Something less than three thousand.”
The phone rang. Ron Craig. I took the call in my office.
“What’s the haps, pard?” I asked.<
br />
“I want to borrow your rowboat,” he said.
“Anytime, you know you’re always welcome.”
“I want to use it somewhere else.”
“I don’t have a trailer, but if you can figure out how to haul it, you’re welcome to use it.”
“Fit in the back of a pickup?”
“Sticks out a little, but that’s how I brought it home.”
“Great! Sunday all right?”
“Sure. I’m mowing the lawn if it doesn’t rain, but you may have to wrestle the boys for it.”
“I’ll pick it up before they get out of bed.”
“How busy are you?”
“Gettin’ by, man,” he said.
“How much do you charge to get shot at?”
“Do they hit me or miss me?”
“I’ll bring the vests.”
“When?”
“Tonight, for sure, and tomorrow, maybe.”
“What’s the job?”
“All-night surveillance, in town. And in a sane neighborhood to boot.”
“How do I get shot at in a sane neighborhood?”
“It’s a domestic.”
“Things that slow?” he said and then laughed.
“This one pays good,” I said.
“How good?”
“Five hundred for openers, and you bill me another five hundred when the job’s done.”
“Christ sakes!” he said. “Who’s the hubby?”
“The hubby is one of Grand Rapids’ finest, and is guaranteed to have a shitty attitude. He’s supposed to get served with a restraining order when he gets off shift.”
“Who’s your client?”
“Like I’d tell you. You in or out?”
“In, I need the money. Where’s the meet?”
“Someplace downtown. How about the fish ladder, say four o’clockish?”
“Roger-dee, I can do that job.”
“Sleaze ya’ later,” I said and hung up. I looked at my watch—already after one-thirty. I took the pistol out of my pocket, unwrapped it, and snugged it back into the holster. “Marg,” I called out, “I need to make a deposit.”
“I have a client,” she said.
Private Heat Page 2
