Tag Man

by Archer Mayor

  Still, the man hesitated.

  Willy continued with his calculated gamble. “You were his answering service. It’s an old gag with guys like him. They think it’ll cover their tracks. Problem is, the poor sucker they choose ends up being called an accessory.”

  “I didn’t do nothin’.”

  “So share what you didn’t do and we’ll go away.”

  The barkeep carefully unhooked Willy’s finger and stepped back. “Wait here.”

  His shoulders slumped, he retreated down the length of the bar, reached under the cash register, and returned bearing a legal-size envelope.

  This he dropped before them with a slap. “That’s his mail.”

  “All of it?”

  “Yeah.”

  It was too dark even to pretend to take a look, so Willy merely placed his hand upon it, taking possession.

  “He used the phone, too,” Lester stated flatly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he receive calls or make them?”

  “Both,” the barkeep answered.

  “How ’bout a computer? He keep a laptop here?”

  He shook his head. “He used Internet cafés. That’s what he told me—a bunch of ’em, so he couldn’t be traced. And no, I don’t know which ones.”

  Lester smiled. “We’ll be getting your phone records, anyhow. Now you can start sweating about who you might have called.”

  The man’s face set hard. “I don’t have anything to worry about. You people can fuck off.”

  Willy, against type, smiled pleasantly and slid off his stool, picking up the envelope. “I think we will. Thanks for your time.”

  The bartender turned his back and walked away.

  Back in the apartment, all three detectives gathered around the contents of the envelope. Al Davis was gratefully sipping the coffee they’d brought back for him.

  There were three cell phones, a notepad, an oil company calendar, a credit card, and a couple of pens.

  Lester picked up the envelope and peered inside. “That’s it?”

  Willy put on a pair of gloves and opened one of the cell phones. He waited for it to power up before punching several of its buttons. He told Les, “Check out one of the others.”

  Lester aped his colleague, looking up after a minute. “Totally blank. It’s a virgin. Yours, too?”

  “Yeah.” Willy picked up the third, snapping it shut moments later with disgust.

  “What’s the point?” Lester asked, staring down at the pile. Willy had already revealed that the notepad and calendar were also empty.

  Willy stepped over to the kitchen chair tucked under the table, pulled it out, and sat.

  “The point,” he said, “is that I think we better look at this guy from a different angle.”

  Les parked himself on the edge of the table, hiking one leg up. “Which one?”

  Willy pointed generally around the room. “First I thought he was a slob—a low-brow with the brains of a newt. Now I’m thinking he was more like a good piano player with bad personal hygiene.”

  Lester looked at him, waiting, knowing how this worked. Big Al, of course, had no clue. “What?” he asked, drawing the word out.

  “He only did one thing, but he did it well,” Willy explained, unusually helpful for once.

  “He’s trying to say,” Lester supplied, “that our host may have been a decent hit man, after all.”

  “Look at the guns,” Willy explained. “Good equipment, well maintained. He laid his op out in an organized manner, complete with maps, pictures, and the rest. There’re no phones, no computers, none of the gizmos that most of these jerks love and we use to catch ’em.” He pointed to the contents of the envelope. “Even when we found his remote office and grabbed that stuff, you can see how careful he was. No notes, no incriminating messages, and nothing on the phones. And even here, at home—the fridge is almost empty, there’s little to nothing on the kitchen shelves, the trash is loaded with neighborhood fast food wrappers, there’s dust on everything. What I’m seeing is a man who maybe slept here but who lived on the streets—eating, entertaining himself, running his business. I bet when he wasn’t cleaning guns and whacking off, he was out. That’s smart—it stops you from getting attached to a place, and from piling up possessions and electronic gadgets that can be used against you.”

  “But what about the phones?” Lester asked. “Why have three blanks in an envelope?”

  “For grab-and-run missions,” Willy mused. “We know he used the bar phone for his business calls. Fatso across the street told us that much. But look what we got: a calendar, a notepad, a credit card. That all tells me this is his travel stash. The piece of paper with ‘Bariloche’ written on it was the same as the pages on that pad.”

  Les was looking animated by now. “Cool—the credit card’ll probably be blank, too, and I bet he left it behind because Bratt was just a short trip and he didn’t feel he’d need it.”

  Willy shrugged. “I buy that.”

  “But,” Les added, “assuming all that’s true, here’s my question: Where’s the phone we should have found on him?” He tapped the empty envelope. “This is his gotta-go kit. You may not need a credit card, but you sure as hell want a phone—to report in, to get last-minute instructions, whatever.”

  Willy was already getting up from his chair, reaching for his own cell phone. “Jeezum, Les—you’re catching on. Let’s hope the damn thing’s still in the river and not wherever the gun is.”

  As Willy began punching in numbers, Lester turned to Davis. “Looks like we’re heading out. We would sure love to take a look at that bar’s phone records, though.”

  Big Al smiled. “No problem.”

  * * *

  Late that same night, Lester and Willy were on the first floor of Brattleboro’s municipal building, in the detective division of the police department with Ron Klesczewski and J. P. Tyler.

  “You find anything on that?” Willy asked, looking at the cell phone they’d retrieved from the bottom of the Whetstone Brook, about one hundred yards downstream from Metelica’s body, and now resting in the middle of the conference table.

  J.P. cleared his throat. “Well, you were right about it being a throw phone. It’s basically fresh out of the box. I did get a single number off of it, belonging to Benjamin Underhill, of Boston. I checked him out, but,” he added, “it turns out the best information I got was already in-house.”

  Ron held up a stapled report before them. “Joe Gunther to the rescue—again,” he said theatrically. “Joe volunteered to run a background check on Lloyd Jordan for me—he’s one of the Tag Man victims—and interviewed a source in Massachusetts in the process. That person told him that Jordan used to work for or with Ben Underhill in the old days, before he retired here, and that Underhill is both part of the Boston mob and a really nasty guy, something J.P. confirmed with his record search.”

  “Underhill hired Metelica to whack Jordan?” Lester asked.

  There was a momentary silence around the table before Willy said softly, “Maybe it’s time to tell Joe to stop farting around and collect a paycheck.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “You are looking better,” Eberhard Dziobek commented.

  “I’m feeling better,” Joe conceded. “It’s a little confusing. Now part of my problem is I don’t think about her all the time.”

  The older man nodded. “Guilt for not feeling guilty?”

  Joe shook his head in wonderment. “Jesus. The way people screw themselves up, you should have enough work for two lifetimes.”

  “I am not complaining,” Dziobek admitted. “Why do you think this is, though—this improvement? The passage of time?”

  “Maybe. I’m also getting back to work, to a limited degree. I offered to help out my old colleagues at the PD, and I guess that’s turned into a useful distraction. I just can’t get over that she deserves more than to have me burying myself in the same old routine in order to forget about her faster.”

 
“You do that a fair amount,” the psychologist told him. “You head toward a truth and then you veer off at the last moment.”

  Joe looked confused. “What do you mean by that?”

  Dziobek laughed at the question. “I think your subconscious knows very well, but I will explain. I believe that you enjoy your work as a police officer because it is good work; it helps people in need, it puts people in jail who deserve to be there, and it is good for your soul. It is also intellectually challenging, and it has little vestige of what could be called drone work. Every moment of every day is filled with the potential, even the likelihood, that whatever plans you may have had will be altered by some crisis, large or small.

  “Having said that,” he continued, “you diminish that description of your life by invoking a routine, as if you were an office worker fixing an endless row of broken Xerox machines in the basement.”

  He removed his glasses and rubbed them on his tie, no doubt merely smearing whatever had been clouding them in the first place.

  “I am delighted that you are getting back to work. And while I do agree that it is comfortable for you to do so, I do not think that you should cheapen your self-healing by labeling it as an escape from your grief. You are leavening your loss with the worthwhile work that Lyn admired when she was alive. You are grieving differently than you were. That is all.”

  Joe smiled at what had amounted to the most forcefully stated opinion he’d ever heard from this otherwise carefully spoken man.

  “Jeez, Eberhard, I thought folks like you were supposed to nod and say things like, ‘Very interesting.’ Not ream out your patients.”

  Dziobek took up a pad from the small table beside his armchair, poised his pen over its surface, and said sonorously, “Hmmm. Please go on…”

  * * *

  Sally Kravitz took a deep breath and rang the doorbell, as nervous as an actor on opening night.

  A few moments later, the door opened to reveal a smiling elderly woman of generous girth who looked her up and down with obvious pleasure, a response Sally’s father had been counting on.

  “Yes?” the woman asked.

  Sally smiled brightly and stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Nancy. Are you Gloria Jean Wrinn?”

  Gloria shook her hand. “Yes, I am.”

  “I’m so happy to meet you,” Sally continued, trying to forget the microphone she’d clipped to the front of her brassiere, and the fact that Dan was eavesdropping from a couple of hundred yards away. “I work for the state of Vermont, Agency of Human Services, Division of Indigent Residents.” She reached into the canvas shoulder bag Dan had lent her and extracted a business card he’d also conjured up of the most bogus-sounding piece of bureaucracy Sally could imagine.

  “She’ll never buy this,” she’d told him at the time.

  “Trust me,” he’d countered. “It’s just the kind of craziness they do buy.”

  And she did. Gloria took the card and stepped back a foot. “How nice. And you’re so young, too. Would you like to come in?”

  Sally adhered to the cardinal order she’d been given. “Well, not actually, Mrs. Wrinn. I’m just doing a quick survey at the moment—kind of getting things organized for another visit later on.” She reached into the bag again and pulled out a small clipboard with some documents attached to it. “Right now, all I need to know is if a gentleman named Paul Hauser is still living here.”

  Gloria’s eyes widened. “Oh.”

  Sally blinked at the surprised reaction. “Are you all right?”

  The older woman’s hand fluttered like a hummingbird before settling on the doorknob. “Well, it’s just odd, is all.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Paul used to live here, but he’s gone. At least I think he is.”

  This wasn’t what Sally had been expecting, although she suddenly began to make sense of why her father had come up with this whole charade to begin with.

  “You think he is?”

  “He vanished,” Gloria explained. “Leaving a good many of his things behind, and a bit of a mess.”

  Sally filled in the blanks. “You think he just went on a trip or something?”

  “I don’t, not really,” Gloria confessed. “It was just so unexpected; I’m not sure what to think.”

  “When was this?” Sally asked, slipping into her role, remembering what she’d seen on TV police shows.

  “Three days ago, or nights, I should say, since that’s when I think he left. Are you sure you wouldn’t like to come in?”

  Sally made an executive decision, imagining her father’s blood pressure jumping. “Maybe for a few minutes. I think you’d enjoy sitting down.”

  Gloria smiled gratefully. “I would, actually. This has all caught me a little by surprise. I don’t have much excitement anymore.”

  Sally followed her inside, remembering what Dan had told her of this woman’s exuberant, globe-trotting life. She commented on the pictures and tokens crowding the ornate hallway and the coffer-ceilinged living room, where she was led. “It certainly looks like you had an exciting life once, and an amazing one. Did you collect all this on your own?”

  Gloria laughed weakly, heading to an antique love seat and settling down. “Oh Lord, yes. I wish I hadn’t, nowadays—it collects so much dust and I don’t know what to do with it. Larry hates it; he’s my nephew.” She glanced about and sighed. “But it feeds my memories, and I do love to remember the old days…”

  Her voice drifted off, prompting Sally to remind her, “About Paul…”

  Gloria raised her hands in the air. “You see? Hopeless. Yes, yes. I’m so sorry. I simply can’t keep on track anymore. It’s a good thing I gave up traveling. Can you imagine what kind of trouble I’d get myself into?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Gloria lapsed into silence and stared into the middle distance for a moment, causing Sally to think that she’d have to prod her yet again.

  But then she said, “I’m actually a little disappointed in Paul, to be honest. I know it sounds selfish, but I feel he’s done me a disservice, leaving me in the lurch. I gave him a helping hand when people like Larry told me I was crazy, and that he’d probably cut my throat in the middle of the night, or rob me blind.”

  “Did he take anything when he left?” Sally asked.

  “No. As I said, he actually left quite a bit behind—I think he took what he could carry on his back.”

  “Do you know where he went?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Family, maybe?”

  “Maybe,” Gloria agreed halfheartedly. “But he told me when we met that he had no one in his life—that they were either all dead or should be.”

  Sally nodded. “How did you meet?” She had no clue if her father wanted to know any of this—they hadn’t rehearsed this possibility—but by now she was rolling on her own head of steam.

  “He knocked on the door, just like you,” Gloria told her brightly. “And by the end of the conversation, I’d offered him a room in the basement in exchange for his taking care of the place.”

  “So he was pretty likable?”

  Gloria looked thoughtful. “I couldn’t say that. Not truthfully. But I sensed that he was grateful enough that he’d never cause me harm, and I felt that it was long overdue for someone to show him a little kindness.”

  She stared down at her hands momentarily before saying, “I have traveled ever since I could afford to, and visited places that most tourists avoid, in part because I was interested, but also because I felt I needed to understand that not every place is like this.” She took in the whole room with a gesture. “We Americans have it good, and I don’t think most of us understand that. Maybe I was responding a little to that when I took in Paul.”

  “What did he say about himself?” Sally asked.

  “That he was down and out, had no one to turn to, was willing to work for food. He saw that my grounds needed tending—my old gardener had retired and I hadn’t gotten around to replacing
him. He was a quiet man, and I respected his privacy and, as I mentioned, I sensed he needed a harbor that I could supply.”

  Gloria smiled impishly all of a sudden and added, “Plus, taking Paul in really irritated my nephew, and I love to do that.”

  Sally laughed out loud. “Really?”

  Gloria joined her. “Oh yes. He’s a real snob. Can’t wait for me to die so that he can sell everything you see here and probably go out and buy a fancy car or something. The man’s a fool. But he’s the only family I have left.”

  Taking advantage of her father’s inability to cast a vote, Sally decided to take a plunge. “Mrs. Wrinn, I do thank you a lot for what you’ve told me, and I’m really sorry that Paul left you hanging. But I do have my assignment for the agency, and I’d love to see if I can do at least part of it. Is there any way my colleague and I could take a look at Paul’s old room, just to get an idea about him? We might be able to figure out where he went and do him some good—pick up where you left off, so to speak.”

  Her hostess’s face brightened. “Oh, that would be wonderful. I am worried. It seemed so unlike him, and I’d like to know if he’s all right. When I got home from visiting in Connecticut, I found a broken table from the upstairs hallway and a smashed door, and it looked like someone had been in my bedroom. Two of the windows were messed up. So anything you could tell me would be appreciated.”

  Sally thought to ask, “Did you call the police?”

  “Why would I?” Gloria responded. “Nothing was missing. I have no idea how the table and door broke, but it didn’t involve anything precious or valuable, and I didn’t really care in any case. I didn’t think the police could do me much good, to be honest.”

  Sally rose to her feet, still playing the young government worker. “Okay, well, then, if you don’t mind, I’ll round up my partner—he’s doing paperwork in the car—and that way, we’ll be out of your hair all the faster.”

  Gloria joined her, if considerably more slowly, saying, “Oh my dear. I don’t want you gone faster. I’ve very much enjoyed your company.”