Rochester and Rascal came over and nuzzled him, one on each side. “The bar got trashed and there were arrests for drunk and disorderly conduct,” he continued, “but surprisingly, no one was willing to say what the fight was about. Rumor had it, though, that the Warlords thought the Levitts were breaching walls into their territory. Since then the Levitts have been keeping a low profile. Though individual members may have records or ongoing cases, and I don’t know of any open investigations against the group as a whole right now.”
Rochester got tired of sharing Rick’s attention and came over to me, and Rascal slumped on the floor in front of his dad.
“Can you suggest anyone I can talk to about them?” I asked. “A cop from another area?” Rochester nuzzled my leg and I scratched behind his ear.
“No. And that would be N, O. I’m not going to enable you.”
More psych language. It must be catching.
I held up my hands. “No worries. I’m not doing anything that could get me in trouble.”
“Yeah, right. Like I said before, just tread carefully.”
He left a short while later, and when the dogs went upstairs to Lili, I pulled out the folder Hunter had given me and began to read the articles he’d printed, most of which centered on that big fight between the two gangs that Rick had mentioned.
The tone of the articles from the Courier-Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer was inflammatory, beginning with background on the Warlords, who were as bad as Rick had said, if not worse. Members were suspected of involvement with drug dealing, trafficking in stolen goods, and coercing immigrant women from Eastern Europe into prostitution.
Some of the material was almost silly. One article speculated that a rise in tax on soda in Philadelphia had led to the Warlords getting involved in smuggling untaxed carbonated beverages into the city. I thought of the black cherry wishniak I’d bought at Lorenzo’s and wondered if all the proper taxes had been paid on it.
The Levitts, on the other hand, got little ink, because the reporters dismissed them as a group of wannabes who’d gotten on the wrong side of the real bad guys. And after a few days without anything new, the story died out.
And yet Rick had believed that the bar brawl had been because the Angels were trying to snatch some illegal dollars away from the Warlords. I’d trust him over a headline-seeking reporter, which meant I had to tread carefully.
All Hunter had been able to dig up was that collection of articles. But then, he didn’t have my internet skills, and I turned to my laptop. I found a number of small mentions of the group, mostly in lists of outlaw biker gangs, and by digging through some databases I reached through Eastern’s college library, I found one in-depth article from several years back.
According to the author, a reporter for a crime-focused website, the club’s growth and development was closely tied to that of Levittown. Motorcycle clubs, I learned, had their roots in the immediate post-World War II era of American society. Members rode cruiser motorcycles, particularly Harley-Davidsons and choppers, and they were fueled by a set of ideals that celebrated freedom, nonconformity to mainstream culture and loyalty to the biker group.
Levittown was the very definition of conformity back when it was built. There were only six original house models, from the Country Clubber to the Jubilee, and the meandering streets were confusing. My father used to tell a joke about a guy who lived in Levittown, who parked in the wrong driveway, went into the wrong house and had dinner with the wrong family, because the houses all looked alike and the neighborhoods were so cookie-cutter.
At least that’s the version he told when I was a kid. As I grew up, he expanded it to add that the guy made love to the wrong wife, too.
I could see how someone who was rebelling against the conformity of Levittown would be drawn to such a group. Levitt’s Angels were a smaller group than many, and for a couple of decades they’d focused on small-time crime like protection and prostitution. Several of the members had been arrested for smash-and-grab thefts at small computer stores, though none of them had gotten prison time, and Carl Landsea’s name wasn’t among those who were charged.
That was all I could find. My hands were poised over the keyboard as I thought about where to look next, and I remembered what Rick had said about taking a dive into the deep web.
I often heard cyber guys compare the Internet to an iceberg. Only about ten percent of all networked material is accessible through search engines and web crawlers. Techies call that the surface web.
Material like your bank account information, email folders, corporate intranets and so on—anything that you need a password to access–is called the deep web. These don’t show up in a search engine, and you wouldn’t want them to.
There is another part of that submerged iceberg, called the dark web. And that’s where criminals lurk, selling consumer information, trafficking in drugs, sharing kiddie porn and so on. It’s not illegal to sniff around there, but because most people who were there were in search of illicit materials or connections, I had to tread carefully. I didn’t want my computer’s unique IP address to pop up in some police search and cause authorities to come looking at me. Even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I had skirted the law in the past and I didn’t want to invite scrutiny of my habits.
I had sworn to Rick and Lili that I would resist the urge to hack just because I could, and because I was determined not to jeopardize the new life I’d found with Lili and Rochester. Besides, Hunter could only use information I found legitimately in his defense of Peggy.
So instead of hacking, I’d talk to Peggy. Surely she knew that her husband was no angel, even though I didn’t think she and Carl had been married when he was arrested the last time. Hunter had already given me permission to access Carl’s email account, but I needed Peggy to share details with me that would help me figure out his password legitimately, like his childhood addresses and phone numbers and other words or numbers that had personal meaning to him.
If she’d see me, that is.
5 – Starting Over
Saturday morning, after taking the dogs on a long walk around River Bend, I was in the middle of fixing French toast for Lili and me for breakfast when Rick showed up. It didn’t take much to convince him to stick around and join us. Maybe it was the company, but more likely it was the smell of the cinnamon and the rich challah bread.
“Kids get up so damn early,” he complained as he slid into a chair at our kitchen table. Lili passed him the carton of orange juice, and I handed him a glass. “It was eight o’clock and Hannah called to give Tamsen a heads-up that Justin was ready to come home.”
“Any idea when you’re going to let Justin know you and his mom are getting serious?”
He shrugged. “If it was up to me, I’d have said something already. But Tamsen’s understandably concerned. I’m already his football coach and she’s afraid that if he gets too close to me, and we break up, it’ll hit him hard.”
“Kids are resilient,” I said. “Look at Peggy Doyle. She grew up in the slums, lost her father, then bounced back to be a great student in high school, work her way into that trip to France.”
“I don’t think I want to point out the Black Widow of Birch Valley as a role model for Justin,” Rick said.
“Enough negative talk at breakfast,” Lili said. “What did you and Tamsen do last night…I mean, beyond the obvious.”
“We got a last minute reservation at Le Canal,” he said. It was a fancy French restaurant upriver in New Hope where we’d all gone on occasion.
“Good choice,” Lili said. “It was pretty clear night last night, wasn’t it?”
“It was. Lots of stars out. We walked along the towpath after dinner for a while, just holding hands.”
“That sounds lovely and romantic.”
There was something in her tone that made me think romance might be lacking in our own relationship. “I’ll bet we can see stars at Wildwood Crest,” I said, reminding her of our upcoming getaway.
“You sure can,” Rick said, jumping to my defense.
“Assuming Steve actually makes it to the shore,” Lili said. “Instead of staying back here tilting at windmills and websites.”
“Come on. This vacation was my idea. I am totally looking forward to spending a lot of quality time with you.”
“We’ll see,” she said darkly.
Rick finished his French toast and summoned Rascal to his truck. Then Lili left soon after for a mani-pedi appointment with one of her friends from the Eastern faculty, and I piled Rochester into my aged BMW sedan for the trip over to Peggy Landsea’s. He had a talent for getting people to like him, and if Peggy was going to be reluctant to talk to me, maybe Rochester could woo her over.
Despite the word “town” in its name, Levittown isn’t actually a town. Instead, it’s a cluster of forty-one different neighborhoods sprawled over four different municipalities and three school districts. Each of the divisions has a name, from Appletree Hill to Yellowwood, and within that community all the streets begin with the same letter. For some developments, such as Quincy Hollow and Upper Orchard, that was a good thing—if someone lived on Quaint or Quail, you knew where you were going in the twenty-two square miles of developments.
Fortunately, I already knew that Bark Road was in Birch Valley, otherwise I might have wondered if it was in the other “B” neighborhood, Blue Ridge. Most of the neighborhoods had that kind of pastoral name, referencing plants like violet, forsythia and juniper, and natural features like hollow, brook and orchard.
The reality was grimmer. There were no orange trees in Orangewood, no ponds in Elderberry Pond. Just an endless maze of houses and yards, most of them customized far away from the original structures with carports, faux-stone facades and attached mother-in-law suites.
Birch Valley looked like most of the Levittown neighborhoods I’d visited. Lawns strewn with kids’ toys, driveways jammed with every kind of car from old beaters to brand-new Mercedes. Bark Road was a long, curving street of single-story and split-level homes, and even if I hadn’t known the address I could have picked out Peggy’s—it was the one with the weedy yard, peeling paint and broken window shutter.
I parked in the driveway behind a battered old Nissan compact in the carport. Rochester followed me out my door, and immediately made a beeline for a dying magnolia tree, where he peed copiously.
The woman who appeared at the screen door looked older than I expected, but I recognized her anyway. She had a few more lines on her forehead and there was some gray in her hair but underneath I saw the girl I’d known.
“Steve?” she said, and I could tell her voice had hoarsened over the years, and sounded like she’d had her share of tobacco and alcohol along the way.
“In the flesh,” I said. “And this is Rochester. Can we come in?”
She shook her head. “I told Hunter I didn’t want to talk to you.”
“Why not? I know I didn’t keep up with you after I went to college. I’m sorry, but you know, that’s a two-way street. You had my parents’ address and phone number and I never heard from you either.”
“I was so envious of you,” she said, fiddling with a loose hair that refused to stay tucked behind her ear. “Going to a real college, while I was stuck at BC3. Can you blame me for not wanting to hear about how great your life was going?”
“Well, it didn’t work out that well,” I said. “One failed marriage, a year in the California penal system, and then two years back here on probation.”
Peggy’s mouth opened in surprise. “You went to prison? But you were so smart.”
“Yeah, too smart for my own good is what my probation officer used to say.”
I could see Peggy wavering.
“I served my time for computer hacking, in case Hunter didn’t share that with you. So I know something about computers and retrieving deleted emails. You were kind to me when we were kids, Peggy. Let me do something for you in return.”
She frowned, and then looked down at Rochester, sitting on his butt so politely waiting to be invited in. “You used to have a poodle when we were kids, didn’t you?” Peggy said. “I guess you upsized.”
“You could say that. Rochester’s very sweet.”
She opened the screen door. “You might as well come in then.”
Rochester rose but instead of scampering inside immediately he stopped by Peggy so she could pet him and he could sniff her.
Peggy had never been a pretty girl, but she’d made up for her freckles, lackluster brown hair and offset eyes with a bubbly personality. She wasn’t so cheerful anymore, but the big change was that the slim, almost boyish physique I remembered had been artificially enhanced. Her breasts had gone up a few cup sizes, and she’d probably had work done on her butt as well.
Focus, I told myself as Rochester and I followed her inside.
“I heard the basics of your situation from Hunter,” I said, once I sat down on a big leather couch in the living room, with Rochester at my feet. Peggy sat with her legs crossed under her on a recliner across from me, and I saw the ankle bracelet that kept track of her movements. “He wants me to see if I can retrieve the emails that you say Carl deleted from his account.”
“The lawyers always talk like that,” Peggy said. “That I ‘say’ he deleted. Like it’s not true, just something I’m saying.”
“And that’s all I’ve got to go on,” I said. “For now, I’m taking it on faith that these emails exist. I believe you, because I know the person you were back then.” I pulled a small notebook out of my pocket. “I’m going to need as much information as you can give me about Carl so I can try to figure out his password.”
We went through all the basic data—his birthdate, the day they were married, and so on. I got as much information as she could provide. “The police took his laptop computer, right?” I asked. “No desktop?”
“Just the laptop.”
So much for getting my hands on the actual hardware.
She stood up. “He had an address book somewhere. Let me see if I can find it.”
While she searched, I looked around. The house was neat but dusty, as if someone had cleaned it up and then gone away for a while. I imagined that was because Peggy was either grieving for Carl, or worried about her own future, or both.
The furniture was old-fashioned upholstered wood, and the cushions on the leather recliner had sagged. No books, which surprised me, because Peggy had been a big reader when we were kids.
Maybe she kept those upstairs in her bedroom. I hoped she hadn’t given up on the escape that books could provide – reading had helped me get through prison, and then the lonely months after I returned to Stewart’s Crossing, before Rochester came into my life.
Peggy opened a big armoire made of distressed wood and began to sift through the junk inside. Rochester got up and stood beside her as she looked, and in between moving papers and folders around, she petted his head. “Here it is,” she said.
She closed the doors to the armoire and crossed the room, Rochester hard on her heels. She handed me a small leather-bound address book that looked like Carl had owned it for much of his life. Names and addresses had been crossed through, updated and crossed through again. But it was quite readable, and might give me the clues I needed.
“You think you can do anything?” Peggy asked as she sat across from me again. Rochester stayed beside her, as if he knew she needed his love. “I know Carl was into some bad shit with the Levitts, but none of them will talk to me.”
“I’m going to plug all this information into some software I have that generates passwords. The program will keep spitting out possible choices and trying them on Carl’s account. I know from past experience this email provider keeps everything archived on their servers for as long as you have your account. With some luck, I’ll be able to get in there and see what’s in his trash folder.”
“And if you can’t get in?”
“I have some other alternatives,” I said,
and I felt that familiar tingle in my fingertips that came when I was about to break into some site where I wasn’t supposed to be. Rochester sat up and sniffed my hand, and I wondered if thinking about hacking set off some endorphins in my brain that he could sense or smell.
“I’ve got enough to get started,” I said. Then I looked over at Peggy. I couldn’t believe that she’d tampered with her husband’s brakes. “Who do you think killed Carl?”
Peggy’s posture sagged, as if she was remembering all over again that her husband was dead, her mouth turned down at the edges and her eyelids drooped. She took a couple of deep breaths to center herself, then looked up at me.
“I’m not even sure someone killed him. Carl was always working on his bike, and I think it’s possible that he screwed up the brakes without realizing it when he was working on something else. He tried to show me how the bike worked a couple of times but I was never interested enough to pay much attention. But I know all those wires are interconnected.”
I nodded. “And you told the police and Hunter that?”
“Nobody listens to me,” she said. She faced down, her back bent, and body language closed. I knew enough to interpret that as serious depression.
“I’m listening,” I said. “Any other ideas?”
She looked up, her lips pursed, her eyes intent. Finally, she said, “I figure it had to be one of his biker buddies. They were always drinking too much and getting in trouble. That’s why I wanted to see Carl’s emails. See if they were planning a crime and maybe they were worried Carl was going to rat them out. He did that once. Turned over on another of the bikers.”
“You know the guy’s name?”
Another Three Dogs in a Row Page 43
