Lovelady

by Wynne, Marcus

  What to do?

  I didn’t want to be involved. But something that Jim O’Neal had said nagged at me: “I figured you’d do a favor for another SF guy.” Special Forces is a fraternity; the flash and the green beret mark out a common experience, an experience most people couldn’t tolerate. It was true that you’d do what you could to help out a brother. And this one was dead. That made it heavy. I tapped on the Sky-Pager I wore at my waist. It was my electronic leash, ready to tug me back to the shadow world at any time. I wanted it to buzz and call me away, so I could leave this thing alone.

  But that wasn’t happening right now.

  So I had to do something else.

  After a leisurely walk around the lake, I went back to the house and booted up my computer. I typed “runaway children” into Google and was appalled by the number of sites that came up. I followed a link to the National Organization for Missing and Exploited Children and found a wealth of information about runaways.

  Now I knew more than I wanted to know.

  And I still hadn’t decided what to do.

  When in doubt, decide on something. It’s an old axiom, but true. I don’t dither in my work life, so why should I dither here? I picked up the phone and punched in Lewis Pound’s number from memory. It rang three times, and then he picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Mr. Pound? This is Frank Lovelady.”

  “Yes, Mr. Lovelady?”

  “I’ve thought it over. I’ve got a name at the police department. I’ll see him on Monday, speak to him about Luella. I need you to do something today, though.”

  “Of course!” he said. “What can I do?”

  “I need you to get the latest pictures you have of Luella, her letters she wrote you from Minneapolis, any other information you have. Then I want you to bundle it all up and send it U.S. Mail overnight express. If you send it today, they’ll deliver it tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow is Sunday.”

  “Yes, but Express Mail is delivered seven days a week. I’ll get it. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, yes, I have everything here. I’ll do that right now, get it out to you.”

  “That’s fine, Mr. Pound. You do that, and I’ll have a look around. I can’t guarantee anything, but maybe I can get the police interested in the case. Have you filed a missing person report in your hometown?”

  “Yes.”

  He gave me the name of the officer working the case and the case number. I gave him my address. Now I was armed with what I needed.

  “I’ll be in touch, Mr. Pound.”

  “Thank you, thank you very much, Mr. Lovelady.”

  “Call me Frank,” I said. “All my friends do.”

  v.

  The next day, I went through my Sunday routine: pick up the paper, go to the Diner for coffee, breakfast, and a leisurely read, then back home to sit on my small porch, shaded by the big leafy maple in the front yard, and watch the flow of people heading down to the lake grow larger as the sun rose higher. A U.S. Postal Service truck puttered down the street, and slowed to a stop in front of my house. A portly letter carrier bounded out and brought me a flat rate Express envelope.

  “Express Letter,” he said.

  “Thank you,” I said. I took the envelope. “Sorry you had to be out on a Sunday.”

  “The overtime’s good!” he said over his shoulder as he went back to his truck.

  I slid my finger up the seam and opened the envelope. The first item on the slim sheaf of papers inside was an 8x10 headshot, a portrait from Sears, of a chubby faced blonde girl. She had good bones and brilliant blue eyes, and a faint petulant look to her mouth, the look of a child no one said no to. Once time or a diet shaved some extra weight off her, she’d be an attractive woman. I slipped the photo to the rear of the sheaf and read the letter Louis Pound had enclosed.

  Dear Mr. Lovelady.

  I’ve enclosed what I have. Here’s a picture of Luella we had taken last year. She wrote two letters, those are here as well. She kept a journal, but she took that with her, and there’s nothing else I have. There are a few snapshots of her with friends that she left behind, but those friends are all still here. I put in a copy of the police report I filed with our local police, too. Please call me if you need anything else. Thank you and God bless you for your help.

  Signed, Louis Pound

  Louis and Luella. I could see the problem. An old man in his late sixties, alone, no wife, saddled with a spoiled teenage orphan. It would have been tough all around. And so she got fed up and thought she’d strike out on her own at the ripe age of sixteen. You could be an adult at sixteen. I’d been there. Hard decisions needed to be made, hard actions taken. I’d done it, and it would be arrogant to think that Luella Pound might not be capable of doing it too. From what I’d read, the life of a teenage runaway was hard, but doable. She could work off the books as a waitress or a laborer or a domestic; she could be pulled into prostitution and the sex industry where her youth was a valuable commodity; she could be taken in by someone who’d trade sex for a roof over her head and money in her pocket. It would be harsh, but it could be survived. I’d lived on my own as a teen, sleeping in my old rattle trap car, living on sandwiches my girlfriend smuggled out of her parent’s house. Humans are resilient and always find a way.

  I studied her face in the picture. Where had she gone? What would she do? I couldn’t tell. Her letters were short, and eloquent in what they didn’t say. She said she was fine, staying with friends and looking for work, not to worry about her. Not so subtly, she pushed the guilt button for the old man.

  “I’ve got some opportunities,” she wrote. “Hopefully something will come of it. Don’t worry about me, Grandpa. I’ll be fine. Love, Luella.”

  What sort of opportunities?

  I tapped the stack of papers into a thin, neat pile on my lap, then watched the leaves of my maple tree rustle in the summer breeze.

  When you hunt humans, you need to place them in the context of their daily life: where they live, where they work, what they do everyday, what their routine is. Even the most gypsy-like existence has a structure to it, and that structure circles around the basic human needs: a place to sleep, something to eat, shelter from the elements. When you find where your target does those things, then most of the job is done. The rest is just technique. I didn’t have much to work with in the matter of Luella Pound. A face, a few letters. And I didn’t have the luxury of the government’s formidable intelligence machine turning its all-seeing eye on her and tracking all the signs left in the currents of modern society.

  This might be an interesting challenge.

  I’d worked with not much more than this hunting terrorist gunmen over the water. Once, I’d been inserted into Damascus, Syria with nothing more than a picture and a neighborhood. It had taken some time, but I’d found who I was looking for.

  I could do the same for Luella Pound.

  CHAPTER TWO

  i.

  Dr. Thomas Marks liked his patients to call him Tommy. He enjoyed the informality, and perhaps he thought it fostered more intimacy with his patients than the more formal Dr. Marks would.

  I called him Dr. Marks.

  I resented the one day each month I spent with him, and I didn’t appreciate his attempts at building a chummy relationship. He had a job to do, and that job was to ensure that I was still capable of killing on demand, capable of keeping my mouth shut about what I did, and capable of being left on my own between jobs. He was a leash on me that would never go away, and I hated him for that. He sensed that, of course. That’s what psychiatrists do.

  “How are you doing, Frank?” he said.

  “I need a refill on my Zyprexa,” I said.

  He nodded eagerly, his oversized head bobbing like a toy on a pencil thin neck. He took out a white plastic bottle from a drawer. No prescription refills for me: the Agency took care of all that. Zyprexa was expensive. A month’s supply of thirty pills ran almost two hundred dollars over the counter. B
ut I didn’t have to worry about that.

  He set the pill bottle down on the edge of the desk closest to me. I left it where it was.

  “So, how are things going?” he tried again.

  I shrugged. “How are things going for you, Dr. Marks?”

  “I wonder how you’re sleeping.”

  “Alone.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I sleep between eight and a half to nine and a half hours every night. Sometimes I take a nap in the afternoon.”

  He avoided my eyes, nodding, smiling down into my file as he made a note. “That’s about right. Any side effects you’ve noticed? You look in good shape, you’re taking care of yourself?”

  “Yep.”

  He took a deep breath, closed the file folder and set his pen atop it, then folded his hands together and made eye contact.

  “I get the feeling you’re not too happy, Frank. Is something bothering you?”

  “I don’t enjoy this. I’m not happy that I need to come in here and get my ticket punched once a month.”

  He smiled, grateful to have something to work with.

  “I can understand that, Frank. But you’re involved in sensitive work…”

  “I know exactly what I’m involved in. I take my medication.”

  “Of course you do,” he said, soothingly. I almost laughed out loud at how easily he took the bait. “And you’re doing just fine. That’s why we only need to meet once a month. Just to make sure you’re still on track. That’s all. And if anything comes up…”

  “Nothing comes up. Not even my dick. Is that a side effect?”

  He hesitated. “Are you experiencing impotence, Frank?”

  “I’m having delusions of impotence.”

  He laughed, finally. “Good one. I’m glad to see that you’ve kept your sense of humor.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Alone those lines, are you seeing anyone, Frank? A woman friend, dating, anything?”

  What a ham handed segue. Of course he’d want to know if I was seeing anyone.

  “I like my solitude. I have plenty of company when I work.”

  “That’s not the same thing as having someone in your life when you’re not working.”

  I favored him with a thin smile. “And what would I tell them? Travel writer is thin cover when you’ve got someone in your hip pocket. I don’t need the complications. I have my books and my writing and right now that’s enough.”

  He looked down. “Do you ever hear from your ex-wife, Frank?”

  I hadn’t seen that coming. “No. And I don’t expect to ever hear from her again. She was fed up with me and my life. Last I heard she’d remarried and was getting on with her life. Good riddance and best of luck.”

  “Do you miss having someone in your life that way?”

  “What way?” I said. “Like an ex-wife? I don’t think so. I like my life just fine as it is. I have my work, and I partner with the best people in the world. When I’m not working, I have the time to do exactly what I like to do, which is read and write and listen to music and walk. That’s it. That’s not so complicated, is it? I don’t feel incomplete. I have good friendships to sustain me if I get hungry for the human touch. And I don’t. I’ve learned, the hard way, that it’s better for me to keep my distance. I’ve gotten used to that.”

  Dr. Marks sat forward, eager, a hint of excitement in his voice. “Yes. That’s exactly right. You’ve grown used to it. But does that satisfy you? Don’t you feel the need for more connection than you have?”

  I leaned back in the overstuffed arm chair and looked around his paneled office, his diplomas on the wall, a sickly fern near one window struggling to live on the dim light that filtered through the slats.

  “I’m as connected as I need to be,” I said. “And that’s all for that.”

  ii.

  When I got home, I decided to go for a walk. I wanted to clear the last vestiges of Dr. Marks out of my head. I walked past the Linden Hills Diner, waved to Neil and Barbara, the owners, turned right and went up the hill to 44th Street, then crossed over and followed 44th down to Lake Harriet. I weaved through the slow moving traffic on the parkway and eased into the steady pedestrian flow on the walkways. It didn’t used to be this crowded on the Lake when I first moved to the Twin Cities. Back then, the only time the walkways got really crowded was after a summer concert at the band shell. But Minneapolis had been crowned as one of the best places to live in the country, and my little neighborhood written up as one of the most desirable in the Cities, and that led to inevitable gentrification. I’d paid $140,000 for my house. It was now appraised at almost half a million. If I’d cared to put it on the market, I could sell it in a day. That’s how fast homes went in Linden Hills. But despite the growing crowds of well tended yuppies elbowing out the older and funkier residents, I liked it here.

  I shoved my hands in my pockets and strolled along, admiring the beauties out in their jogging shorts and sports bras. I watched the women in their summer clothing and thought of what Dr. Marks had said.

  Connection.

  I had connection here. I had my house, my regular haunts, the Diner, Sebastian Joe’s, Gigi’s Bar, the Bally’s gym where I worked out, Marcos and a few other people. I had a wide flung set of friends I kept in contact with via e-mail and the occasional phone call. I had connection.

  Did I miss my ex-wife? Hell no. It was star crossed to begin with, and we were both glad when it was done. Did I miss having a woman in my bed? The truth be known, I’d had a few, but none that stuck around. Since the breakdown, I’d had less interest in sex, or maybe that was a side effect of the Zyprexa, though Dr. Marks swore up and down that wasn’t the case. Part of my lack of interest was the lingering wound I felt in the aftermath of the breakdown, a painful vulnerability I kept hidden away. It’s a terrifying thing when your mind turns on you. Having lived in a shadow world full of characters that would and could kill me, it was devastating when my mind began to manufacture more of the same.

  Dr. Marks pissed me off. I disliked his fumbling at my brain and I wished I could be rid of him. But if I wanted to work, I had to put up with him. Whatever it took. I took a deep breath and held it, let it go. I did that ten times as I walked along, determined to enjoy my day as it came to me.

  Of course I was connected.

  iii.

  The Minnesota Kali Group was the best martial arts school in the Twin Cities, and one of the best in the country. Rick Faye, the owner and head instructor, was a nationally renowned practitioner of Filipino kali and Bruce Lee’s jeet kune do. I knew Faye slightly, liked him as far as it went, but I kept out of the school. Marcos spent a few hours there every day, taking classes or working out on the heavy bags.

  I stood in the door for a moment and took it all in. I’d spent a lot of time in martial arts schools when I was younger, so much time that I felt a wave of nostalgia when I stood on worn wooden floors and breathed in the odors of fresh sweat and battered canvas. I kept my own skills up by drilling on a heavy bag and a wooden dummy in the basement of my house. I didn’t want other people to know what expertise I had. It was an operational security issue. You never let people know what your full capabilities were. And why would a travel writer need hand to hand skills? Otherwise I might have come in and worked out, built a circle of friends around the practice of martial arts. Maybe that’s what kept me out of there, even though I felt tugged to join the class in progress.

  There was that issue of connection.

  Marcos was paired up with a massive black man at least six four and well over two hundred fifty pounds, who looked like an icebox with a bald head screwed into the top. They went through the intricate hand movements of a hubud exercise, where they threw punches and elbows at each other in a prearranged sequence, taking turns blocking and countering. They had good flow; their technique looked good. Marcos looked over and nodded, sweat running down his face. I took a seat on the wooden bench beside the door and watched t
ill the class ended with partners taking turns kicking the heavy Thai impact pads. When they were finished, Marcos came over and flopped down beside me on the bench, mopping the sweat from his face with a bandanna.

  “How you doing?” he said.

  “Better than you.”

  “Good exercise, bro. You should give it a whirl.”

  “Looks too much like hard work.”

  He laughed. “Hey, that thing we talked about? The guy, that’s him over there.” He pointed across the room at a trim fit man of medium build, in a muscle shirt and gym pants, toweling off and talking to the gigantic black man.

  “Did you talk to him about it?” I said.

  “I outlined it for him. He’ll talk to you.” Marcos whistled and called out, “Hey Joe! Over here!”

  The trim man looked over and nodded. He had close cropped black hair with a smattering of grey at the temples and a thin, carefully maintained mustache. He raised one hand in greeting, then bent and picked up his gym bag and walked across the floor towards us. You can tell a lot about a fighter by how they carry themselves. This guy was deceptive till you saw how deep and dense his muscles were and how he moved with his weight on the balls of his feet, like a dancer – or a serious fighter. He came over and nodded to Marcos, then looked at me.

  “Good workout?” I said.

  “Yeah,” the trim man said.

  “I’m Frank Lovelady,” I said. “Marcos mentioned me to you?”

  “Frank’s the man,” Marcos said.

  The trim man held out his hand. “Joe Spenser. How you doing?”

  His hand was hard and callused as though he worked with his hands a lot.

  “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me,” I said.

  “Let’s wait and see if I do you any good first,” Spenser said.

  He had cop’s eyes. He made no secret of his appraisal; he was accustomed to using his look like a weapon. He was used to sniffing out bullshit, that was clear, which meant I had to tread carefully.

  “Fair enough,” I said. “Marcos told you I had a friend, he’s dead now, his daughter was being raised by her grandfather? She ran away a few months ago, came here to Minneapolis. The grandfather called me up and asked me to see if I could find out anything.”