Private Heat

by Robert E. Bailey

  I went to the closet and picked out three vests, two in the extra-large size for Ron and me, and one of the ladies’ persuasion—Wendy’s from when she was still a full-time street detective—for Van Pelham’s niece.

  The vests are white cotton clamshell devices that hang from the shoulders on wide straps and fasten at the sides with Velcro closures. The Kevlar ballistic pads can be removed from the front and back so that the garments can be laundered. These had been, so I made sure the sides of the ballistic pads labeled “out” faced away from the body. A large pocket sewn to the front of the vest covers the area of the heart, lungs, and spine. I slid a steel ballistic plate into the pocket of each vest and stowed them in a heavy-duty duffel bag I keep in the closet.

  I picked two radios out of their chargers and tested them. Both hit the repeater nicely, providing the gratifying second click when I let off the push-to-talk button. I loaded them into the bag, along with a couple of extra batteries, a spare radio, and a cigarette lighter power-and-charger plug.

  “You going to Beirut?” asked Marg, standing in the doorway.

  I zipped up the bag and dropped it on top of the clutter on my desk. “Nah,” I said. “I’ll be on the street in town for a couple of days, maybe. I’ll call when I can.”

  “You said you needed a deposit ticket.”

  “Right,” I said and sat at my desk. “Five thousand dollars.” I pulled out the top right-hand desk drawer.

  “You silver-tongued devil,” she said with a smile.

  “I was warming up to telling you I need a couple of checks.” I fished a squeeze can of gun oil out of the drawer.

  “You can’t cash a check against anything you deposit today,” she said with a little meow in her voice.

  I peeled my pistol off my hip and punched the magazine out into my left hand. “I’m depositing certified funds,” I said.

  “You’d better cash your check when you make the deposit.”

  “Yes ma’am, that’s my plan.” I racked the slide to the rear and locked it.

  “So who do you need the check for?” she asked.

  “Ron Craig,” I said. “Five hundred dollars.” I oiled the slide rails and the outside of the now exposed bell-shaped barrel of the Detonics .45 caliber lead launcher that was my daily companion.

  Every morning that you get out of bed and strap on your sidearm, you’re halfway to jail. Just make the right mistake and your career as a snout—street detective—will be a short one.

  Cops occasionally have an accidental discharge. They might even inadvertently flash their heel—expose their holstered firearm—in public or mix alcohol with their gunpowder. As long as they don’t cap Grandma at the bus stop and cause the city to get sued, the prosecutor tends to forgive and forget. The same is not true for the private sector. Tick off any of the above errors, and you will meet the judge. The prosecutor will be hot to cancel your permit to carry, punch your private ticket, and provide you with long and tedious days of making colorful new friends in the house of many slamming doors.

  “That’s very generous for two days’ work,” said Marg.

  “You wouldn’t say that if I took the job at that price.” I picked up the magazine, snapped it home, and thumbed the slide stop. The slide slammed into the battery, chambering a fat, two-hundred-grain semijacketed hollow point. I thumbed the magazine release, and the magazine jumped out into my left hand. I set it on the desk. Pointing the weapon at the cement-slab floor that lurked under the carpeting and away from myself and Marg, I eased the hammer down. “Anyway, he bills us for five hundred more when the job is done.” When I turned back, Marg glared at me with laser heat.

  “Hell, I’d do the job for that kind of money!” she said and folded her arms.

  I set the pistol aside and plumbed another round out of the box in the drawer. “He’s not doing it for the money,” I said and thumbed the round into the magazine.

  “Well, he should be,” she said. “You need to hire a couple of shoe leather snouts. If you’re going to do everything yourself, you’re wasting money renting space for an investigators’ room. All we do is store the file cabinets and hang our coats in there.”

  “I keep my weight bench in there. It’s cheaper than a health club.”

  “It’s adolescent.”

  “You’re the one who said it was cheaper to subcontract than pay the insurance and payroll-based taxes for employees.”

  “Not at these rates,” she said and started out the door.

  I slapped the magazine back into the Detonics, snugged the weapon back into the high-ride holster on my right hip, and snapped the thumb-break strap over the hammer. Marg was back.

  “You said you needed two checks.”

  “I need working money,” I said.

  “Fifty, sixty bucks should be enough for a couple of days.”

  “Two hundred.”

  She gave me the owl eyes and asked, “Why so much?”

  I replaced my two spare Detonics magazines with two custom eight-shot Colt magazines. When seated in the pistol they stick out of the frame a little, but it gives me a place to rest my pinky finger. Should things get exciting, the extra length makes for positive seating in a magazine change.

  I fixed Marg’s eyes evenly and said, “Because I’m going to be too busy to sell pencils for gas money.”

  She wheeled and marched out of the office. A heartbeat later the checkbook sailed unaccompanied through the office door. She banged things around in the front office for a minute and slammed the door as she left.

  I got what I needed, returned the checkbook to her desk, turned off the lights, and flipped on the answering machine. After locking the door I hauled the duffel bag out to the trunk of my car and aimed my black Olds sedan at the Calder Terrace Building to visit the office of Van Pelham and Timmer.

  The Calder Terrace Building towers over the banks of the Grand River, among the new generation of fifteen-to-twenty-story office monoliths built along the river to bracket the statuesque Amway Grand Hotel and to suck the life out of the older buildings in the downtown business district. The staid flagstone, brick, and mahogany of the past fell to the slow but certain assault of jackhammers making way for the plastic, cement, and steel of sports arenas, parking lots, and convention facilities.

  I parked in the tower adjacent to the Calder Plaza Building and made my second visit to the offices of Van Pelham and Timmer. The first visit had been for a deposition while pressing my false arrest litigation. I half expected—and half hoped—that Van Pelham had developed a case of short arms and deep pockets.

  The offices of Van Pelham and Timmer consume the entire top floor of the building, and half of the floor below. Around the outside of the building, the offices feature floor-to-ceiling windows. The senior partners have a view of the river. Lesser lights make do with a view of the city as it changes before their eyes and often in their hands. The reception area is a czars’ Winter Palace of oak paneling, marble, and beveled mirrors.

  The receptionist, a matronly and distinguished lady in a cream-colored silk blouse and brown wool suit, seemed out of place wearing a Dictaphone headset and speedily fingering an old IBM Selectric typewriter. Even the ambulance chasers were using computers these days.

  She looked up to greet me. The hoop meant to go over the top of her head dangled under her chin so that it didn’t muss her hair. She laid the headset on the typewriter and turned to face me with her hands folded on the neat and polished desktop.

  “Good afternoon,” she said. “Do you have an appointment?”

  I stuck my hand out. “Art Hardin,” I said.

  “I am Elizabeth,” she said and took my hand. She gave it a gentle squeeze and added, “I am pleased to meet you.” With her hands folded on the desk again she asked, “How may we be of service?”

  “Mr. Van Pelham told me that I could pick up some paperwork and a check after one-thirty today.”

  Recognition swept over her face and she produced a small sheaf of papers from the
top drawer of her desk and laid them in front of me. The top sheet was a straightforward rendition of the agreement that Van Pelham and I had come to over lunch. Van Pelham had already signed. Elizabeth handed me a gold fountain pen that was probably worth more than the contents of my office. I signed above my typed name.

  “May I see your driver’s license, please?” asked Elizabeth.

  I thumbed my license out of my ID case and handed it to her. She examined it and then me. When she was satisfied she produced a notary seal, signed the document, and embossed the paper over her signature.

  “How many copies of this will you require?” she asked.

  “At least two copies of the agreement with Mr. Van Pelham,” I said. “And I will need another copy of the restraining order. There are only two here.”

  The door behind Elizabeth’s desk concealed a closet with a copy machine. She made my copies and returned to her desk. From the top drawer she produced a stationery-grade envelope. My name was handwritten on it in flowing script. She handed it to me with the papers.

  I said, “Thank you,” and started for the door. She swiveled toward the typewriter and picked up the headset. I pulled the door toward me but stopped. “I’ll bet you type only the stuff that has to be done right the first time.”

  “I typed your letter,” she said and smiled.

  I nodded and left. Alone in the elevator I peeked into the envelope—five thousand and fifty dollars. I’d have bet against the fifty-dollar part.

  Van Pelham did his law firm’s banking at Old Kent Bank and Trust. It was a walkable distance. Van Pelham’s check was made out to the Ladin Agency. A businessman can’t just walk into a client’s bank and cash a check made out to his business. However, the bank will issue a “certified funds” instrument made out exactly as the tendered check. With that, and a friendly teller, you can usually pry a little money out of your own bank.

  By three in the afternoon my client was five thousand and fifty dollars lighter and I was roped into a job that, given a misstep, might just spread me as thin and even across Grand Rapids as a fly on the windshield of a bullet train.

  I headed straight to the Hall of Justice at the corner of Monroe Avenue and Bridge Street. I’d told Van Pelham that I was familiar with the case from news accounts but he’d said far too much about me and not nearly enough about his niece or his personal involvement. Maybe he’d just done a lawyerly job of stroking my ego. Maybe it worked—a frightening thought—but to quote Mr. Doyle, if some other “game was afoot” I hoped that it had left its tracks in the court records.

  The Hall of Justice backs up to the Grand River and shares space with the Grand Rapids Police Department. The ground-level front of the building is all glass and doors. Above that, the building rises three windowless floors. You may enter by only one door, the one that leads to the metal detector staffed by two blazer-clad private security guards. They are unarmed—sort of the same concept as using a herd of sheep to clear a mine field.

  As I approached the metal-detecting portal, I flashed my private ticket and concealed pistols permit at a young man in a brand-new blazer. He nodded and I stepped through.

  The machine ratted me out loudly, and the young man seemed astounded. He proffered a small wooden bowl. “Put your metal stuff in here,” he said, “and step through again.”

  I looked from the bowl to his face and said, “All my metal stuff won’t fit in there.” I showed him my license and permit again.

  His eyes dialed to the F-l setting. “Are you carrying a gun?” he said, and forgot to close his mouth.

  “Yes.”

  “You can’t come in the courthouse with a gun unless you’re a police officer,” he said.

  “Yes, I can,” I said. “What I can’t do is leave a firearm unattended in a vehicle, because doing so would be a misdemeanor and some punk might steal it and use it to commit felonies. But there is a compromise procedure.”

  He looked relieved. His partner had already fled to tattle on me at the police desk.

  “You walk me over to that desk, and we put my sidearm in a locker,” I said. The other guard had panicked the law enforcement college student assigned to work the desk. She pushed her chair back, pivoted, and stepped into the open office door behind her.

  “What would I do if you were a nut case?” the guard asked.

  “Be the lead story on the eleven o’clock news,” I answered. “That’s why you make the big bucks.”

  A uniformed police sergeant—Franklin, on his name tag—stepped through the door. I didn’t know the sergeant’s first name. I’d heard other cops call him Franky now and then. Franklin loomed large over the counter and looked hard enough for the National Football League. He wore wire-rimmed glasses and a walrus mustache. When he came through the door he had eyes only for the metal detector and serious purpose on his face. Seeing me he shook his head and waved me over.

  “They didn’t tell me shit,” said the guard. “I just started today at noon.”

  “Good luck,” I said and walked over to stash my heat.

  I took the stairs to the third floor to check Circuit Court records. The two elevators available to the public are slow and tend to lurch and hesitate. Sometimes they hesitate—for a while—between floors, so building employees, attorneys, and regular visitors avoid them. A crowd filled the third-floor hallway. Today was “Let’s Make a Deal” day.

  The court clerk schedules pretrial conferences by the batch and then summons the accused to “come on down.” They end up standing around the third-floor hallway looking like deer caught in the headlights. Court-appointed attorneys hurry back and forth between meetings with assistant prosecutors and defendants. Hence the name “Hall” of Justice—all the work is done in the hallway. By the time a defendant gets to the courtroom, all the mystery and magic is over.

  At the clerk’s office I ordered Karen Terisa Smith’s divorce file and her red jacket—Kent County files criminal matters in red folders. Not too many years ago you could look up the files yourself on a computer provided to the public for that purpose. Now they charge five dollars a search but I really don’t mind. I pass the charge back to my clients and the fee system makes for a quieter day than in the counties where you have to start by arguing with the county clerk over whether or not court records constitute a body of public records.

  Karen’s original Summons and Complaint for Divorce was dated weeks before the FBI had nosed out her boss at the airport. It listed “breakdown in the marriage relationship” as the cause for the divorce and omitted any mention of Officer Talon’s alleged assaultive behavior or death threats. It also left out any mention of four hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars in a Bahamian numbered account.

  Officer Talon filed the cross complaint only after his wife’s arrest, when her banking and philandering had been whispered about on the front page of the Grand Rapids Press. The filing revealed that Talon drove a late model blue Monte Carlo T-top, owned weights and a stair climber, and—oddly for a policeman—owned only one firearm, the nine-millimeter Browning Highpower that he carried on duty.

  Just a week prior to my calling for the file, Karen’s attorney, some curmudgeon from deep in the bowels of Van Pelham’s dungeons, filed additional information concerning a federal lien on Karen’s assets and some colorful accounts of Randy’s fast hands and quick temper. They both continued to reside at the same address on Union Southeast. For all I knew, Officer Talon could have been placidly mowing his lawn while his soon-to-be ex-bride’s uncle hired me to help the court evict him from his home.

  Karen had a thin but illuminating red jacket. After her arraignment, the case went over to the federal building. A good deal of the missing money was withholding tax and Social Security payments that had gone absent without leave before Karen’s boss, Wayne Campbell, had snatched the last payroll in its entirety. It added up to a total score of eleven million dollars and change.

  The IRS had been breathing hot and hard on Wayne Campbell long before the FBI too
k any notice of him. But it wasn’t bad breath that had ended his criminal career. Wayne Campbell’s criminal career ended when a twenty-two-caliber bullet entered at the base of his skull and, most likely, made U-turns until his brains were mush.

  3

  I arrived fifteen minutes late. Ron Craig’s white surveillance van stood empty, parked in the Department of Natural Resources lot on the west side of the river, just south of the IRS building. Ron had tinted the windows very dark and installed a roof rack with a couple of extension ladders. Magnetic signs on the doors purported the van to be a home-maintenance vehicle. Other signs stored in the van provided various pretexts du jour.

  I found Ron leaning on the shoulder-high cement flood-control wall, his forearms resting on the top of the levee and his chin perched atop his stacked fists as he watched flotsam tumble down the fish ladder. I unwrapped a cigar and screwed it into the corner of my face. “Catching any?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, “I got a bicycle tube and a potted fern.” Ron was a tall, lean, blond, good-looking type with good teeth, the kind of guy we rumpled old farts are usually jealous of and women find it so easy to talk with. He was vain enough to wear contact lenses and fast enough with his hands to keep his face from collecting scars. I found a scant scrap of mean-spirited solace in the fact that his forehead was starting to march up into his hairline.

  Ron wore denim coveralls that were now open to the waist, revealing a V-neck sweater, white shirt, and tie. He started plumbing his costume for a cigarette.

  “How are Jennie and the girls?” I asked and fired up my smoke.

  “Kelly needs braces, Nina just started school, and Jennie’s pissed at me.” He found a Marlboro in his shirt pocket.

  “Too many late-night surveillances?” I handed him my lighter.

  “Not enough,” he said. “Jennie’s pregnant.” He turned his back to the wind and thumbed a flame loose inside his cupped hands. He turned back and tendered the lighter.

  I took the lighter with my left and grabbed his hand for a shake with my right. “Congrats,” I said.