Tag Man

by Archer Mayor

  “That Jordan and Underhill once had a relationship,” Sammie joined in.

  “And that Jordan eats at Bariloche,” Willy said, returning to the fray. “I got a look at the restaurant’s receipts. Turns out Jordan and the trophy wife eat there a lot.”

  “That night?” Joe asked.

  Willy grimaced, slightly caught out. “If he was, he paid cash, but he did that too, sometimes. I asked, once I got them to remember that he came there at all. He’s a lousy tipper, big surprise.”

  “Not to be obvious,” Tony Brandt said from the back of the room, “but since you’re writing a checklist, you might want to add that somebody killed Leo Metelica.”

  There was general laughter to that. “Oh, yeah,” Lester cracked. “Knew we were forgetting something.”

  “Good point, though,” Joe said. “We shouldn’t lose sight of our primary purpose here. All this chatter about the mob and Underhill and our obsession with Lloyd Jordan.”

  “Not an obsession if Jordan killed the guy,” Willy said sourly.

  “Granted,” Joe agreed, while Sammie silently rolled her eyes. “Your hypothesis is that Underhill took out a contract on Jordan but that Jordan got the jump on his killer instead.”

  “Just because it’s straightforward doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” Willy told them.

  “Why now?” Ron asked. “Hasn’t this hands-off arrangement between Jordan and his mob pals been in place for years?”

  “Maybe Jordan’s running low on funds and put the squeeze on,” Willy said. “What the hell do I know? Maybe Underhill got tired of having a pebble in his shoe.”

  “But why ambush him at the restaurant?” Lester asked. “Downtown, high visibility, not sure of the timing—or even if the target would be eating out that night.”

  Willy was scowling by now. “Hey, these guys are fucking animals. All of a sudden, they gotta think rationally?”

  “Someone was rational enough to hire Metelica,” Joe said quietly.

  Willy shook his head. “Fine. One of you can come up with something else. I heard somebody wanted to hang this on the restaurant owner.”

  Joe held up his hand. “Hold on. Let’s not get derailed. There is something rising to the surface with all this—something we’ve been missing.”

  He rose from his chair and perched on the windowsill—a position they’d all grown accustomed to and were pleased to see him resume.

  “We mostly agree that Metelica was hired to kill somebody and that whoever that was turned the tables on him. Any arguments there?”

  Silence greeted him.

  Joe continued. “So, what follows is that one planned surprise resulted in an unplanned surprise replacing it.”

  Willy murmured “Jeez” loud enough for everyone to hear it.

  Joe smiled. “Bear with me. We’ve talked about a few variables that Metelica had to deal with. Would his target come to the restaurant that night? Who might be with him? What time might he leave? How would he leave? By car parked right outside the front door, or by walking a distance into the darkness, which might make him available to being picked off?”

  “Making the whole proposition look weaker and weaker,” Brandt commented. Even Willy’s expression had changed from angry to merely sullen.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Joe reacted. “That’s less my point than the fact that so many variables mean more time needed to address them.”

  Willy suddenly looked up, his mood instantly reversed. “The motherfucker had a motel room.”

  Joe laughed. “Bingo. If Metelica was caught off guard, and not even a toothbrush was found in his car, it suggests he has a room somewhere in town with all his stuff still in it.”

  Lester was already getting to his feet. “Assuming it isn’t all in a Dumpster by now.”

  * * *

  It took them most of a day to locate Leo Metelica’s motel. Not that they actually located his room. Lester had been right about that. Metelica’s possessions had been removed a few days earlier, once management had concluded that he’d skipped.

  But they weren’t in a Dumpster. They’d been placed in a large garbage bag and relegated to a storage room, following the motel’s policy of keeping such items for a month before disposing of them.

  Joe, Willy, Ron, and Lester made for a large group in such a space, so Joe asked the counterman if the empty breakfast nook off the lobby might be used for a preliminary inventory of the bag’s contents.

  Lester poured their discovery out across two small tables shoved together, under the placid gaze of a muted, wall-mounted TV set in one corner, and a row of silent and empty coffee and cream dispensers, two waffle irons, and several pedestaled cake holders designed for doughnuts, crullers, bear claws, and other standards of the American diet.

  There wasn’t much in the garbage bag—a small overnight bag, barely larger than an old-fashioned doctor’s case, a toilet kit, a few changes of socks, underwear, and shirts, and a plastic folder closed with a rubber band.

  Knowing that they’d be putting it all under close scrutiny later on, Willy wasted no time, quickly and expertly opening the folder with his latex-enclosed right hand.

  What fanned out before them was a map, some photographs similar to what they’d found at Metelica’s apartment, along with a single, close-up portrait of a man wearing a black watch cap and black turtleneck. The man pictured was either distracted or unaware of the lens, which was angled high, as might befit a surveillance camera.

  “I’ll be goddamned,” Willy said, almost to himself.

  “You know who this is?” Joe asked.

  Willy was staring at the image as if willing it to confess. “I should. I’ve been working him as a CI for years. That’s Dan Kravitz. He must’ve been the target—not Jordan. What the hell?”

  * * *

  “I don’t know, Dad. I’m starting to understand why you live alone.”

  Dan appeared from the back room. “The accommodations not up to prep-school standards?”

  She laughed. “It’s better than living in a van, for sure. As for the academy, I think they keep their lawnmowers in something like this.”

  Dan had found them an empty hunting cabin, northwest of Brattleboro, high in the hills and deep in the woods, on loan from a friend of Dan’s he hadn’t identified and Sally hadn’t asked about. She was long used to her father’s ways, and his eccentric taste in living arrangements.

  “Speaking of vans,” he said, leading the way to the rear door, “I thought it was time to upgrade our transportation.”

  “Oh God,” she said. “What? A sixty-eight Beetle with a flower-power paint job?”

  He stopped shy of the threshold and looked back at her. “I had no idea you were so versed in nostalgic iconography.”

  She pushed him gently. “Show me the heap, Dad.”

  He threw open the back door and gestured with a flourish. “Ta-dah.”

  Her eyes widened at the sight of an old but well-maintained Land Rover, complete with spare tire mounted on the hood.

  “Cool,” she said, circling the car and running her hand along its flanks. She looked happily at her father. “You have really traded up this time.”

  “Well,” he cautioned, “it’s only a loaner, so don’t get too attached, but I thought it might be a good idea to drive something not associated with us—or me, at least.”

  That lowered her high spirits. She grew more serious. “You think this guy is that good?”

  “I think it would be foolish to assume otherwise.”

  The hard-thinking logician in her responded with a nod. “Right.” She then smiled again, patting the Land Rover like an oversized pet. “Kind of funny to be anonymous in something that sticks out like this.”

  He shrugged and rattled the keys. “So let’s enjoy it while we can.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Now? Where’re we going?”

  He waved the postcard back and forth that she’d found in Paul Hauser’s room. “How ’bout Claremont?”

  *
* *

  Claremont was somewhat larger than Brattleboro, and utterly different in character. Once a mill town, across the river from Interstate 91, it featured some splashier architecture than its southern neighbor’s—like an impressive Italian Renaissance town hall—but also a stretch of depressingly abandoned factory buildings, hulking and useless, that generally caused more debate than action about urban rehaul and improvement. To the east, straddling Washington Street, was also a commercial strip that rivaled Brattleboro’s Putney Road in its tacky abandonment to fast food restaurants, shopping outlets, and motels. In all, to Dan Kravitz’s taste, Claremont had its points, but lost significantly in terms of flair and uniqueness. To him, it simply existed, and as such remained no more than a place to drive through.

  But then, he considered himself a bit of an expert in driving through—both places and people—and conceded to having become a hobo/snob.

  The address on the postcard was perhaps predictably located along Washington Street’s oldest and most downtrodden stretch, where the miracle had left that mile, yielding to newer, larger, more frequented commercial attractions down the road. The building in question appeared to have once been a motel, long ago converted to apartment units, or maybe just a failed prefab stack of apartment-size boxes, done quickly in an effort to offer some cheap housing.

  Affordable or not nowadays, its budget-minded genesis starkly stood out on its weather-streaked, exhausted surface.

  Sally craned forward in her seat to appreciate the entire structure as Dan pulled up into its weed-choked parking lot.

  “Wow—nice place to call home, just in case you had too good a day at work.”

  She turned suddenly to face her father. “Why’re we here, anyhow? This is ancient history, right?”

  Dan killed the engine and joined her in surveying their surroundings. “It’s a long shot,” he agreed. “Given what little we’ve got, I’m hoping somebody here dates back to when the postcard was mailed.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “We’re going to knock on doors?”

  He stepped out of the car and smiled back at her. “We’ll start with the most reasonable one first—see what that gives us.”

  The manager thankfully lived on site, as Dan had been hoping, and even had a sign on his door advertising the fact. And though no one answered when Dan rang the bell, he and Sally were still standing there when a voice rose behind them.

  “Who’re you?”

  They turned to see a small, thin man wearing a single earring and no hair. In his hand he carried an antique wooden carpenter’s box, filled with an assortment of old hand tools.

  Sally smiled broadly. “Hi. We were looking for the manager.”

  The man’s narrow face remained pinched and severely set. “Why?”

  This was not Dan’s strength, dealing with potentially hostile people. Sally approached him with her hand out in greeting. “I’m Sally. This is my dad. We’re kind of on a history-hunting trip, looking for my long-lost uncle Paul.”

  The man shook her hand reluctantly, not quite willing to be outright rude.

  “So?”

  Sally pointed at the wooden toolbox, her face brightening. “I’m sorry. It’s just that my gramp had one of those. I used to love that thing. Are you a woodworker?”

  “No.”

  She carried on, unsure of her direction. “Me, neither, not that I’m not interested, but it’s harder than it looks. That’s cool, though. Where did you get it?”

  He glanced at it as if surprised to find it in his hand. “My grandfather. Who did you say you were?”

  Sally crouched down to study it closer up. Startled, he took a half step back.

  “I’m Sally. This is my dad,” she repeated, looking up. “This really is just like Gramp’s. And the tools’re old, too. You like working with them?”

  He considered the question seriously. “They feel good in the hand,” he conceded. “Better than the newer stuff.”

  She straightened and tilted her head slightly. “I’m sorry.”

  His brow furrowed. “What?”

  She indicated the toolbox. “That must’ve seemed a little weird, is all. My getting all worked up about it. It’s not like we know each other. Kind of rude, really.”

  He passed his hand across his bald pate, his confusion plain. “No, that’s okay. It triggered a memory, right? No crime in that.” He bowed ever so slightly at the waist and added, “I’m Jonny Bombard. I’m the manager. Who did you say you were looking for?”

  “Paul Hauser. My aunt Sylvia died last week—that’s my dad’s sister. She was once married to this guy who we think lived here for a while, and they were really happy until things went wrong over a stupid misunderstanding and they never talked again and it totally broke her heart—”

  Dan saw his cue and steeled himself to talk, touching Sally’s elbow. “Sweetheart. Give the man a break. Not everybody’s as enthusiastic as you.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Bombard said. He thought for a moment, his eyes downcast in concentration. “Nah,” he finally conceded. “Doesn’t ring a bell. When did he live here?”

  Dan answered, “In the eighties sometime.”

  Bombard’s mouth dropped open. “The eighties. Are you kidding me? I have no clue who lived here back then. I thought maybe you were talking about a year ago or something. People pass through here like it was a motel, sometimes.”

  “Is there anyone who might know?” Sally implored. “Someone who’s lived here longer than most?”

  Jonny watched her face, as if gauging her sincerity. “Look,” he relented. “There is a guy. Used to be manager before me. Norm Myers. He’s old, though. I don’t know what he’s got left, you know?” He tapped his temple with his index.

  “Where’s he live?” Sally asked.

  “Vermont. On Kendrick’s Corner Road, near the Springfield airport—at least he used to. It’s not far from here.” He pointed off into the distance, adding, “Due west, ten, fifteen miles. He worked here for more years than anyone knows. I think maybe he even owned the place when it was new. Something like that.”

  “How do you remember where he lives?” Dan asked, typically struck by the sudden detail.

  “He came by a couple of times when I first signed on,” Jonny explained, now readily talkative, largely because of Sally, who was pretending to hang on his every word.

  “That was about ten years ago. Some niece or daughter or whatever drove him here. A trip-down-memory-lane thing. It was actually kind of handy because he knew stuff that turned out to be a big help—service panels, utility lines, shit like that. I didn’t know much about running a building back then. I guess it was less run-down in his day—at least that’s the way he made it sound.” He added after a moment, “Nice old guy.”

  Bombard suddenly smiled at Sally, which startled her enough that this time, she took a step back. “Reminded me of my granddad, like you said.”

  “That’s neat,” she said softly, genuinely touched.

  “Anyhow,” Jonny returned to Dan, “I think Norm’s your man. The way he was talking, he knew all the tenants like he was a dorm parent or something. Really into it.” He eased past them both and opened the door to his apartment. “I’ve got something with his address on it somewhere. I kept it in case some other piece of this pile of bricks falls apart I can’t fix.”

  * * *

  Joe, Willy, and Ron reached the top of the narrow staircase and fanned out across the pristine wooden floor of the large room above the Bariloche restaurant.

  “It’s like a ballroom,” Ron commented.

  “Might’ve been,” Joe told him. “Back when the factories were going full guns, there were a bunch of dance halls around town, to keep the workers entertained.”

  “I bet,” Willy cracked, looking around.

  “Not like that,” Joe corrected him. “Look at the chair railing.” He pointed to a broad horizontal strip of wood running around the wall, about four feet off the floor. “See the regularly spaced,
slightly dark smudges? That’s from the hair pomade the men used to wear. They sat along the walls on Saturday nights, leaning back and waiting for their turn to dance with the girls, maybe passing a bottle around, maybe not. From what I was told, it wasn’t usually rowdy. Everybody was too tired from six days of work.”

  Willy crouched in the middle of the floor to get a better angle on whatever might still be resting on its polished surface—any scuff mark, piece of fabric, or scrap of paper. There was nothing. The room might as well have just been reconstructed for a museum exhibition, and awaiting a shipment of period furnishings to match Joe’s narrative.

  “Well,” he said admiringly, given his own cleanliness issues. “It’s pretty obvious Dan wasn’t too pressed for time to leave this place like a surgical room. We got zilch here.”

  Joe nodded in agreement. “Except that the restaurant owner said he was here one day and gone the next, like a ghost in the night.”

  “Or a man on the run,” Ron suggested.

  Willy fixed his boss with a look. “Did you check out his daughter, Sally? At school?”

  Joe nodded slowly, still glancing around. “Soon as we figured out Dan was Metelica’s target.” He smiled sorrowfully. “Call me hypervigilant nowadays when it comes to collateral damage. But she’s vanished, too. At least it doesn’t look like she was grabbed—her father phoned right after they noticed her missing to sort out some final-exam issues, but that was it.”

  Willy stood back up. “That settles it. If he cleared the kid out of there, we’re in for the hunt of our lives. That girl means everything to him—if he’s got her under his wing, he’s good to go to hell and back, and we’ll probably never be the wiser.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The address Jonny Bombard had given them on Kendrick’s Corner Road belonged to a simple, tidy, one-story ranch with a garage at one end and a mother-in-law extension at the other. The name on the mailbox said “Harrison.”

  “You think?” Dan asked his daughter.

  Sally hitched her shoulders. “Jonny said it was a woman driving Norm around. Could be her married name.”