The Key

by Jennifer Sturman

  “Me, neither. But I really loved mine.”

  “Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” Frankie pulled on the string that moved the elevator up and down between the four stories. “I could probably sell it on eBay or something, but I’d rather hold on to it.”

  Camera cases and video equipment filled one corner, and green metal file cabinets filled another. Framed photographs vied for space on the crowded walls. “All of the family pictures are upstairs,” explained Frankie. “These are just from my dad’s other stuff—you know, the TV show, and union things.”

  I didn’t recognize any of the people in the photos of Frank interviewing guests on a makeshift set, but I assumed that they were mostly area natives. There was a picture of a slightly younger Frank being sworn in as union chapter president, with a proud, younger, and less pierced Frankie at his side. Then there was a series of group photographs featuring men, women, and children decked out in red, white, and blue outfits.

  “Those are from the annual union picnics,” Frankie said, guiding me from photo to photo and narrating their progression. “This one’s from forever ago; from before my dad was even president.” A banner above the crowd indicated that the picture had been taken on the Fourth of July eight years earlier. I guessed that eight years qualified as forever when it accounted for more than half of your life. “See, there I am, and there’s my dad.”

  I obediently followed her pointed finger with my eyes. Then I noticed the man next to Frank. “Who’s that?” I asked. He looked both nondescript and somehow familiar.

  “Him? That’s Mr. Marcus—he was the union president before my dad—and that’s his wife, Mrs.Marcus. She passed on, though. Cancer, I think. And these are their kids, Andrew and Bobby.”

  I looked at the first boy she pointed to, and then back at his father. “Andrew Marcus?”

  “Yeah, that’s him and Bobby. I haven’t seen them in a couple of years, but they’re a lot older than me anyhow. They both went off to college. I forget where they went, but they didn’t move back here after. I mean, who’d want to, right? Especially after their mom died. I don’t know where they live now, but it’s got to be more interesting than Pittsburgh. Anything is.”

  “Andrew Marcus,” I said again.

  “Do you know him or something?” asked Frankie.

  “Sort of,” I said. Because I sort of did.

  Just by a different name.

  I may not have been able to see too well at a distance, but I could see just fine up close.

  The boy smiling out from the picture was none other than a teenaged Mark Anders.

  chapter twenty-nine

  F rank related the sad saga of the Marcus family over a hearty meal of pierogies and yet more Iron City.

  Our drive-through adventure was a distant memory by the time we sat down to dinner, and my Big Mac, however big, seemed like it had been eaten in another lifetime. But I’d still been wary when Frank had first heaped my plate with the Polish dumplings. I’d gotten over my concerns quickly. In fact, I was finding them surprisingly delicious. I made a mental note to ask Frank to teach Peter how to make them. Assuming Peter ever sobered up. While the beer had no discernible impact on our host, Peter’s expression was taking on a glazed look. I had the unfortunate feeling that I was in for some world-class snoring later that night.

  “Bill Marcus was a great guy,” said Frank, stabbing a pierogie with his fork. “A real salt-of-the-earth type. We used to go to the games together.” I didn’t have to ask which games; it was clear even to me that he could only be referring to football. “We’d go hunting together, too—me and him and his boys. Little Frankie here’s a vegetarian. She never wants to go hunting with her old dad, do you, cupcake?”

  “I’ll go hunting with you when you go to Tai Chi with me,” she told him mildly.

  “Hunting?” Something clicked. I looked up from my plate. “They hunted?”

  “Sure. Bill was a great shot. The kids, too.”

  “With rifles? Or with handguns?”

  He snorted. “You ever try to bag a deer with a handgun? I’m talking rifles. What else would folks hunt with but a rifle or a shotgun? But if you’re asking about handguns, sure—sometimes we’d go to the practice range and play around with those. Andrew really shined at it. He had crackerjack aim—even the instructors would stand around to watch.”

  “It must have been him.” I poked Peter. “I’ll bet you anything it was him.”

  He gave a start. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing at his ribs.

  “Mark, Andrew, whatever his name is. He must have been the other guy at the boat basin. He figured out what Jake was up to—maybe he overheard Jake on the phone with me that night, at the office—and then he followed him. And he managed to shoot the gun out of Jake’s hand, in the dark, at a distance.” I turned back to Frank. “Was Andrew Marcus that good a shot? Could he do something like that?”

  “Probably. Andy won a bunch of contests they had at the range. He must have got it from Bill. Now, Bill—he was a truly great shot. And one of those natural leaders, too. They made him chapter president when he was just a young man. Usually nobody gets elected until they’re in their late forties or early fifties, but Bill won by a landslide when he was only thirty-seven or thirty-eight.”

  “Why do you keep referring to him in the past tense?”

  “Yeah, Dad. Why?” asked Frankie. “It’s not like he’s dead or anything. You stopped in to see him last week.” Her various lip and tongue adornments didn’t seem to be getting in the way of such mundane tasks as eating, although there was the occasional clinking noise as she chewed.

  Frank shook his head and exhaled a slow breath. “Funny, I didn’t even realize I was talking about him that way. He’s changed a lot over the years.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, it’s a long story, and not a happy one. I guess it all started back when Bill was the union president, right before the Tiger buyout. And he worked at Tiger, too. So before the deal was done, while Tiger was still in a slump, he was the one in charge of negotiating the labor contracts when they came up for renewal. And because Tiger was in such a slump, he wasn’t exactly in a position of strength for the negotiating.”

  “And?” Peter prompted. And was a hard word to slur, and yet he managed to slur it. I reached out a hand to move his beer glass away from him, but it was already empty. Instead, I swiped his cap off his head and sat on it. His expression once he realized what I’d done was stunned, but the Iron City had slowed his reflexes and it was too late for him to act.

  Frank was wrapped up in his story and didn’t seem to notice. “Well, Bill had to make some difficult decisions, and he was in a real tight spot. Perry and his guys, they made him choose, and neither option was so good. He could either agree to layoffs, or he could agree to cutbacks in benefits. He chose the cutbacks. Better that people have jobs and incomes, right? I should know—Perry’s got us in the exact same position now over at Thunderbolt. Right over the old barrel.”

  “So Marcus agreed to the cutbacks. Then what happened?”

  “A couple of years later, Carol, his wife, got sick with cancer. I heard it was the sort of thing that usually has a decent survival rate. But I guess she wasn’t having regular checkups—their health insurance didn’t cover them anymore. When she finally got the diagnosis, she was pretty far gone. And then the HMO gave her a whole runaround, making it hard to see the right specialists and get the right treatment. I’m not saying that if she’d had decent health care coverage she wouldn’t have died. I don’t know that. But I do know that you want to feel like you’ve done everything possible when something like that happens.” The way he said this made me wonder what had happened to Frankie’s mother, but it seemed intrusive to ask. “Bill couldn’t feel that way. If anything, he felt like it was all his fault.”

  “Because of the cutbacks he agreed to. The poor guy. It must have been terrible for him,” said Peter. He was still slurring, but at least he seemed able to follow the conv
ersation. And he looked much smarter without the cap, even though he had a bad case of hat head.

  “Terrible doesn’t begin to describe it. He was convinced he’d failed everybody—his wife, his kids, the union—everybody. Meanwhile, Perry and his cronies took Tiger public again on the same day Carol Marcus died at three times the price they paid for it. They made out like bandits.”

  “Literally,” I said.

  Frank raised his bottle of Iron City to the light and squinted at it. “Bill always enjoyed a beer or two—most people do. But after Carol died, it wasn’t just a beer or two. He started drinking, and drinking hard, and he’s been doing it ever since. He resigned as union president, and eventually he lost his job at Tiger. He couldn’t be counted on to show up, much less show up sober.”

  “Let that be a lesson to you,” I muttered to Peter.

  “Bill’s been living all holed up like a hermit for years now. Won’t hardly see anybody or talk to anybody. I think he collects some disability, and his kids send him some money, and his friends do what they can. Otherwise I don’t know how he’d get by.” Frank sighed again. “I drop in every so often to see him. In fact, he’s the one that got me wondering when Perry started in on the Thunderbolt buyout. Bill’s got boxes and boxes of articles on Perry, and Brisbane, and even on that Gallagher guy. He’s the one who convinced me that there was something shady going on. It took awhile for me to take him seriously. Just between us, he’s a bit off his rocker, and he’s sort of obsessive on this topic.”

  “And one of his sons just happens to show up at my firm, eager to work with the banker who handled the Tiger deal. What do you think it means?” I asked. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Are you sure it’s the same boy as in the picture?”

  “Almost positive. The Mark Anders I know looks like an older version of that boy and a younger version of his father. Besides, the name is too similar for it not to be him. Andrew Marcus became Mark Anders.”

  “But why?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  Peter leaned forward. “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Jake didn’t kill Gallagher. Maybe Mark—or Andrew, or whatever you want to call him—killed him.”

  “To avenge his mother’s death in some way?” I thought about this. “It’s possible, I guess, although there’s a lot that it doesn’t explain. Like why Jake then came after me. And Mark seems like such a mild-mannered guy.”

  “Andy was always a good kid,” said Frank. “Responsible.”

  “Besides,” I added, “if he were trying to avenge his mother by killing Gallagher, why would he attack Dahlia? What did she ever do to him? For that matter, why wouldn’t he go after Perry? He’s the most obvious target. Or even Brisbane?”

  “It doesn’t add up,” Peter agreed. “But he must have something to hide. Why else would he change his name? And say he was from New Jersey when he’s from here? And not mention that he knew Perry and his entire history?”

  “Maybe he’s just trying to distance himself from an unhappy past,” offered Frankie. “By changing his name, he can be someone different. That’s what people do online—they make up different names, and they can be whoever they want to be.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But he wasn’t exactly distancing himself by following Gallagher to Winslow, Brown.”

  Dessert was chocolate pudding served in individual plastic containers. This, too, was surprisingly delicious. Even better, apparently I could buy it right off the shelf at my local grocery or deli. Or so Frank assured me when I asked him to include it in the cooking lesson he’d offered to give Peter.

  It was close to eleven by the time we’d polished off dessert, tidied up the kitchen, and finished finalizing our plans for the following day. Peter and I retired to the basement rec room, where, his moment of lucidity clearly over, he pitched himself fully-dressed onto the sofa bed. Given the snoring that began the second he hit the bed, it was a good thing he was facedown—that way the noise was at least partially muffled by the pillows.

  I slipped into the pajamas Frankie had loaned me—cozy pink flannel with a pattern of gray elephants—pushed at Peter until he only occupied two-thirds of the bed, and lay down beside him. Despite the activity of the day and the heavy meal, I realized that it wasn’t going to be easy getting to sleep. I was wondered-out, at least temporarily, on the topic of Andrew Marcus/Mark Anders, but there were a number of other things that seemed likely to keep me awake.

  My usual level of caffeine intake was sufficiently high that I was practically immune to its effects, but I had set a personal record in Diet Coke consumption that evening. There was also a small window set high in the wall, at ground level with the front of the house, allowing a sliver of yellow light to stream in from the street. Of course, the windows of my bedroom in New York let in far more ambient light, but this lone sliver was somehow more distracting than what filtered into my apartment. And then there was Peter’s snoring. In Manhattan, there were sirens and traffic noises and the occasional shout ricocheting up from the pavement. It was loud, but to me it was soothing, analogous to one of those sound machines featured in SkyMall Magazine along with the electrodes that promised to reshape even the flabbiest abs into a six-pack. Here the surrounding silence threw the snoring into high relief.

  I flipped onto my stomach, but this didn’t make me any more sleepy. I began counting sheep, but that made me think about wool, which made me wonder if I should learn how to knit, which reminded me of a particularly unpleasant elementary school crafts project involving yarn and sticks. Soon I caught myself mentally giving my former art teacher a piece of my mind, which left me more revved up than I had been before I started with the sheep.

  I flipped back onto my back. Maybe it would help if I could get Peter to stop snoring.

  I tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Stop snoring,” I said politely.

  He grunted and continued to snore.

  I tapped him again, harder, and repeated my request, albeit less politely.

  This time he didn’t even grunt, but the snoring continued.

  I had resorted to a childhood game—picking shapes out of the shadows the light cast on the opposite wall—when I realized that not only were the shadows moving, the light was changing color. Red and blue alternated with the yellow.

  I heard footsteps, and then the lights were temporarily blocked out by moving figures on the front walk.

  I sat up in bed.

  It looked like we had company.

  And it was the sort that came accompanied by flashing red-and-blue lights.

  chapter thirty

  I probably should have panicked, but I was getting a bit jaded. The entire fugitive-from-justice thing was losing what limited novelty value it had once had.

  I sighed, pulled my sweater on over Frankie’s pajamas, and stuffed my bare feet into my shoes. It took a few concerted shoves to rouse Peter from his Iron City-induced coma, but once up he moved quickly. In our haste, he forgot about his cap. I didn’t, however. Under the cover of darkness, I slipped it discreetly into the folds of the sofa bed as we trundled it back up.

  There was a glint of light on metal on the stairway, and I gasped. Perhaps I was more scared than I realized.

  But it was only Frankie. “Follow me,” she whispered, seemingly unaware of the way in which the red and blue of the police flashers bounced off the jewelry studding her face. At least I had one question answered: apparently she did not remove the various rings and studs when she went to sleep.

  There were heavy footsteps above us and the sound of Frank’s booming voice. “What car?” he was asking. “Oh, the one parked on the street? It’s not mine, but I sure wish it was.” Even from a distance his tone sounded forced; I might have finally found someone who lied even less well than I did.

  I hoped that the car had attracted interest simply because of the make, model, and location and not because they’d somehow connected its plates to Luisa and then to me. But then I heard another voice and the phrase “murd
er suspect.” It looked like we were going to have to abandon Luisa’s car for the time being.

  Frankie guided us quickly through an adjacent utility room where a clothesline caught Peter square in the throat.

  “Ooof,” he wheezed, belatedly ducking his head.

  The bolt on the cellar door groaned as Frankie undid it, and the squeal of the hinges sounded like an airhorn in the still night. A dog barked in the yard next door.

  “Come on,” Frankie urged under her breath as we climbed a set of concrete stairs. And then she took off across the grass.

  Frank hadn’t mentioned anything about Frankie being the star of her school track team, but maybe he had been too busy talking up her computer skills. I ran after her at a sprint, and Peter brought up the rear. We reached a chain-link fence, which Frankie scaled with practiced ease. Peter hoisted me up before clambering over it himself.

  We were now in the yard of the home directly behind Frank’s. “This way,” whispered Frankie, hanging a sharp left.

  Her pace didn’t slow as we scrambled after her, across one yard and then another, skirting the occasional above-ground pool and tarpaulin-covered grill and leaving a trail of barking and yipping dogs in our wake. I caught a brief glimpse of a white poodle throwing itself against a picture window in an agitated frenzy, frustrated by its inability to give chase as we ran past.

  Each backyard gave way to a new one in a seemingly endless chain, and my breath was ragged by the time we vaulted a final hedge and hit sidewalk. Frankie drew up short, and I nearly collided with her.

  “Where are we going?” Peter asked, skidding to a stop behind me. I was breathing too hard to talk. I’d forgotten just how much I hated suburbia.

  “Get down!” said Frankie, yanking my arm. We dived back behind the hedge we’d just vaulted. A second later a police cruiser glided slowly by. Through the leaves, I could make out the faces of the men inside, carefully surveying the quiet street. I willed the car to pass.