The following morning, as he was catching up on some of his neglected work, Deacon’s receptionist announced a Ms. Fran Ellis to see him. It took several moments for him to place the name. It took more moments to ponder what the private investigator might want—another job?
She slipped into the same chair where the birdwatcher had sat only a few days previously. Deacon said nothing, merely raising his eyebrows, staring at the dull eyes. “I don’t think I mentioned it when I spoke to you in my office,” she began, “but my specialty is surveillance. Business has been slow lately, so I thought I’d keep in practice by following you.”
Deacon’s face remained a blank.
“I sort of had the feeling you’d pay Lawyer Bart a visit. And sure enough you did. I didn’t follow the two of you into the bar. Just waited outside. I’m good at waiting. Waited outside his office after you pretty much carried him up there. The wait wasn’t long, after that. I saw you carrying out a manila envelope. That made me curious. You’re easy to follow, by the way. You always drive real careful.
“So it wasn’t much trouble tailing you out to Cottrell Canyon. I was born and raised on a ranch out in that area, and knew better than to follow you down that dead-end road. Just waited until you came back out. It surprised me to see you hiking out. That’s when I got real curious. I drove up to that cliff overlooking the Canyon and began to figure out what was going on. It will be a while before anyone spots those cars smashed to pieces at the foot. It will be easy to believe it may have been just one accident, what with the road so narrow there and the sides crumbling off. Of course, when I looked over, the second car hadn’t arrived yet.”
Her face remained expressionless and the tone of her voice was flat as she went on. “It took me a while, but I managed to put two and two together.”
Until this moment, Deacon wouldn’t have believed his visitor was capable of adding that high.
As though reading his thoughts, she continued, “I added another two when I saw where you’d hidden your car. Even so, I couldn’t be sure. So I picked you up again at your office, followed the taxi you took to the Wal-Mart parking lot and saw what happened. That added another two, and I had a perfect eight. I didn’t have to follow you after that. Instead, I tore out to Cottrell Canyon and found a perch where I could watch the whole proceedings.” As she said that, she rose, took an envelope from her purse and emptied the contents onto his desk. He fingered the photos carefully.
The focus was every bit as good as Hanson’s, though the composition lacked the birdwatcher’s aesthetic bent. But maybe there just hadn’t been any clouds out there yesterday.
Ellis rose, saying, “I’ve always wanted to live in the Caribbean.” She dropped a card on top of the photos. “This is the address of the Cayman Islands National Bank of Commerce. I’ve spoken to a mid-manager there who will be taking care of my account. The sum I’ll be expecting is written on the card. He’ll be looking for a deposit in that amount on the first of every month. If it doesn’t arrive by the tenth of any month, then his instructions are to send an envelope of photos—duplicates of those—” she pointed to the pile on the desk, “to the police here.”
For the first time, as she stood by the door about to leave, she smiled, “Oh, yes. I thought you might like to know. Cayman banks will never reveal the names of their mid-level managers. Furthermore, bank managers down there don’t drink. They aren’t allowed to.”
DUMB LUCK
Joe McPeace is dumb. And I mean real dumb! D-U-M-B, dumb!
Here I thought he’d work out. It doesn’t take much smarts to steal cars. Hell, all you gotta do is walk along the street or through any parking lot and watch for one with the keys left in the ignition. I can usually find a cincher in about a ten-minute walk. My guess is about one out of every fifty parked cars is free for the taking. Just slide into the driver’s seat and off you go.
Some of those guys who call themselves professionals have all kinds of fancy equipment. They claim they can break into a locked car, jam the ignition and drive away in fifty-five seconds. And the poor slobs who watch those TV-exposé shows actually believe that crap. Well, I’ve seen those guys operate. They sweat and stew. They take five minutes just to break in, and then the alarm goes off.
Yeah, they’re working on a demand basis. Looking only for a Mercedes-Benz E-Class or a BMW 74OiL. And when they score, they can usually get a big chunk of cash from the shippers. But it’s not worth the grief. I never carry any tools, so I’m clean if I do get busted. I take whatever’s handy, drive it into my garage, strip it of everything it doesn’t need for driving, then move it out a few blocks away and abandon it. I never keep it for more than an hour, maybe two sometimes, so the risk is practically nothing.
Old man Flannery at the junkyard gives me a fair shake on parts—everything from spare wheels to radios. He’ll even give me something for cigarette lighters and windshield wipers. I like the old guy. You can trust him. He’s real honest.
So that’s what I was trying to teach Joe McPeace. I’ve been solo for years, now, and it made sense to me to set up a stable. I don’t move as fast as I used to, and that’s part of the reason why I figured if I could get a half-dozen young guys like Joe out there hustling for me, I could maybe put in my time doing the stripping. I wouldn’t be making me a fortune, but it’d cut back on the lean times I run into every so often.
Joe seemed to be a good place to begin. No police record. Young. Kinda open-faced and innocent looking. He was blonde, blue-eyed, and looked like one of those college kids in a Fifties movie. No spiked purple hair or snakes tattooed on his eyelids or rings in his tongue. And, as I explained the racket to him, he seemed to be listening close.
I took him on a walk along 43rd between Madison and Barnes. That’s a good block for a car heist, starting around eight or nine at night, especially on weekends. The dope dealers are making their rounds, the whores are working the trade, and the cops are too busy watching for strong-arm action like stickups and break-ins to bother checking on who gets in and out of cars. That’s the nice part of this business. How’s a cop going to figure out who’s an owner and who isn’t? They can’t go questioning everyone who gets behind a steering wheel.
So I walk Joe along and explain the racket to him. You watch for someone jumping out of a car and going into a store, then look for a key in the ignition. It couldn’t be easier. Once in a while you can find one just sitting there, but you have to be kinda careful then because, for all you know, the owner may be on his way back to the car. Couple of times, I got caught that way, but it’s easy to talk your way out. “Oops, sorry mister. I thought this was mine.” Then you point to something like it down the street, act embarrassed, excuse yourself and walk off. It works.
So we spot a Chrysler Concorde—a nice-looking baby—where the woman got out and crossed the street to one of the shops. Joe and I pile in, and off we go. I keep explaining things to him as we pull into my garage. “Check the trunk first,” I tell him. “You never know what you might find there.”
It’s surprising how often you can pick up something valuable in the back like luggage. I even got myself a fancy laptop out of a trunk. Flannery gave me a hundred bucks for it, which was almost as much as I got for the rest of the strippings.
“And don’t forget the hubcaps,” I told Joe. There’s a big demand for some of them.” So we cleaned the Chrysler out of everything including the floor mats. It was all over and done with in forty-five minutes. And then I had him drive it out to the Safeway parking lot, where I picked him up and took him back to Barnes and 43rd.
Now, the whole heist had gone so smooth I figured I could turn him loose and see how he’d do. I gave him the north side to patrol, while I watched him from across the street. In about ten minutes, I saw he’d spotted a possible. It was an old clunker, an eighties-something Toyota Tercel, hardly worth lifting. But I figured, for the first time on his own, what the hell!
He looked pretty smooth. Crossing over to the driver’s si
de, he slid into the car nonchalantly as you please. And then he did something which should have tipped me off to just how dumb he was. Damned if he doesn’t pop the lid on the trunk, get out, go back, open it up, and look inside. That’s when I remembered what I’d told him when we were at the garage. “Check the trunk first.” Jeezus! He couldn’t figure out he was supposed to check the trunk after he swiped the car, not before.
So then he pulls away from the curb and hasn’t gone three feet when a hooker comes by. This you won’t believe! Instead of just driving off, he rolls down the window and chats with her. The first thing you know, she climbs in. I’m slapping my forehead and thinking I must have been drunk when I took Joe on. This is a complete disaster, because she’s no ordinary hooker. She’s so damn good looking, anyone but a first rate idiot would know she was a police plant. That class of street whore exists only in the movies, believe me.
By then I know I’ve scraped the muck off the bottom of the barrel to be my first hustler, when things get even worse. What does Joe do but run the red light at the corner of Barnes. And sure as hell, a patrol car, with nothing better to do at the moment, flashes on its light and pulls him over.
About all I can do is to go back to my apartment and wonder how my luck could be so bad that I could ever have run into Joe McPeace.
I do feel some obligation to the poor dumb bastard, though, so I show up bright and early at municipal court next morning. Like always, it’s a madhouse. The hall’s crowded with the usual manacled losers in orange jump suits being hosted by their jail guards. Police are standing around waiting to testify. Seedy-looking public defenders are trying to make themselves heard by their clients above all the racket. And there’s everything else there from crying babies to old ladies trying to find someone who’ll bail out some relative or other. The one surprise is the bunch of TV cameramen and news reporters. I can’t figure out what there could be at eight o’clock municipal court that would bring out a crowd of news hounds.
In with the police I see last night’s fake whore chatting away with them, so I sidle over in their direction. I hear enough to learn she’s Detective Sergeant Kathleen Brady, that she’s there to testify about sexual solicitation by three different men the night before, and that the cops got a big one, a city commissioner who they’re eager to nail. That explains the sudden media interest.
The courtroom scene is no improvement over the hall. The bored judge, a big, black sleepy-eyed character, runs the mob through about as fast as he can bang his gavel. “Thirty-days.” Bang! “Next.” “Twenty-five dollars.” Bang! “Next.” “No bail.” Bang! “Next.” “See the clerk for a trial date.” Bang! “Next.” Our justice system sure stinks. It’s no wonder the city is overrun with criminals.
Finally, we get to Joe’s case. So who does he have for a lawyer? A public defender who doesn’t look much older than Joe and who must be on his first case, because, what does he do? He pleads Joe not guilty!
Everything comes to a standstill. I know the judge can’t believe his ears. I sure can’t believe mine. I figured, as a first time loser, Joe would get a max of five hundred dollars, even though he’d managed to commit three offenses in three minutes. But now this joker, who’d probably had his first shave six months before, is going to try to convince this no nonsense judge that Joe’s not guilty of anything. Gimme a break!
I do have to give the judge credit, though. His eyes opened wide, and he recovered from his surprise a lot faster than I did. “All right,” he says. “We’ll hear the case right now.” And the poor, deluded attorney jumps at the chance.
And that’s when I find out Joe is not only about the dumbest joker I’ve ever run into, but probably the luckiest one, too. It turns out the car doesn’t have any registration, no one has claimed it, and Joe’s attorney argues you can’t steal something that doesn’t belong to anyone. The judge looks at his watch, shrugs his shoulders, and agrees. Sergeant Brady sashays in, and while her progress to the witness stand brings a hush over the courtroom followed by a couple of low whistles, she doesn’t do much for the state’s case. Maybe she’s just got her mind on the big one, the City Commissioner. Anyhow, the way she presents it, it really isn’t clear but that Joe might just have been giving her a ride out of the kindness of his heart.
I about puke, but the Judge just rolls his eyes, checks his watch again, and has the bailiff go out into the hall to find the cop who ticketed Joe for jumping the light. Lady Luck smiles down on Joe again. The cop never bothered to show, figuring no one’s going to argue the ticket. The only charge left is driving without proper registration.
“One-hundred dollars.” The judge lifts the gavel a yard up into the air. BANG! He glares at the attorney, who wants to protest a misdemeanor traffic offense that won’t even go into Joe’s files. It finally penetrates though the lawyer’s thick skull how there are limits, so he shuts up and gives in.
“Next!”
I get to the clerk in a hurry, pay the fine and go off to find McPeace. He’s out in the hall chatting up one of the jailers. Turns out Joe had spent most of the night playing cribbage with him. I get my ex-hustler aside to tell him in no uncertain terms what I think of him.
I interrupt his thanks for paying the fine, and his insistence he’ll pay me back, some day, “For sure.”
I’m too damn mad to listen. “I don’t ever want to see you again. I don’t ever want to talk to you again. I don’t ever want to hear from you again. I don’t want anything to do with you again. Ever!”
He just looked like a whipped dog as I turned and stomped out of the madhouse.
Maybe setting up a stable wasn’t such a good idea after all. I stopped thinking about it, heisted and stripped a few cars, and Flannery was happy to see me. I even began to feel my luck had changed when, driving through the warehouse district one night, I spotted a new Lincoln Town Car sitting out by itself. I thought, “What the hell!” drove a couple of blocks away, parked my old Ford and walked back down the deserted street. Sure enough, the keys were in the ignition. Less than ten minutes later, the beauty was sitting in my garage. I couldn’t help but remember McPeace as I walked around to the back of the Lincoln. “Check the trunk first.”
This was one trunk I wish I’d never checked. I wished I’d never seen the damn Lincoln. I even wished I’d taken a job at Macdonald’s instead of heisting cars. The body was an old geezer who obviously had had his head crushed by a blunt and heavy instrument. His face was covered with dried blood, and he looked like he’d been stuffed in there for at least a day. I couldn’t tell for sure, and I wasn’t about to try to find out. For sure!
The one thing I knew for sure was I was going to get rid of the Lincoln just as fast as I possibly could. But where? The warehouse district was out. Someone could be there looking for their hearse, and I had a feeling, whoever they were, they wouldn’t be pleasant people to deal with.
It may have been a crazy idea, but I decided Forty-third was probably the best place to shed the car. After all, if it was easy to steal one there without being noticed, it should be just as easy to leave one there without anyone noticing who’d left it. And fancy cars did show up in the neighborhood. City Commissioners weren’t the only prominent citizens to prowl the block.
After two double Johnny Walkers and half-a-pack of Marlboro’s later back at my apartment, I finally began to stop shaking. That explains why it wasn’t until I was an hour or so through one of the local news shows before I realized I hadn’t heard a word of what they were talking about. What woke me up and hit me in the face like a pitcher of ice water was a grinning Joe McPeace suddenly showing up on the screen.
The reporter who kept sticking a mike into Joe’s face was saying something I couldn’t understand at first. Then I began to make some sense out of it—but not much.
“The first thing I did was check the trunk,” Joe said.
I groaned.
“Did you recognize the body?”
Joe shook his head. “All I could think of was some
one had killed the man, and I drove right off to the police station.”
“So you hadn’t heard that Simon Hansen, the CEO of Microchips International had been kidnapped and held for ransom?”
Joe smiled his idiot smile into the camera and shook his head.
“And you didn’t know there was a hundred-thousand dollar reward money for any information leading to the discovery of Mr. Hansen, dead or alive?”
Joe was good at smiling and head shaking.
“What plans do you have for spending the money?”
Joe didn’t know.
I was damn sure he couldn’t count that high.
So it turns out he’s welcomed with open arms by the police, even when he confesses to having planned on taking the Lincoln for a “joy ride.” And, not surprising, there’s no registration in this car either, and no one claims it—or ever will, I’ll bet.
I don’t sleep well for the next few nights, and pull only a couple of jobs. I’m too pissed at myself for not having been dumb enough to do what Joe did. Anyhow, it’s about two weeks later I run into him. I’m so fixed on my ex-employee wearing a five-hundred dollar suit, that it takes me a minute to realize the bimbo on his arm is none other than Detective Sergeant Kathleen Brady.
Joe looks kinda scared for a minute. I think he remembers the scene in the courthouse hall where I’d chewed him out and said I never wanted to hear from him again. But his smile comes back when I break the ice and ask him how he’s doing—not that I couldn’t tell how he was doing.
The very first thing he does is to reach into his pocket and pull out a roll that looks big enough to hold the whole hundred thousand. His grin gets wider, and he says, “I really appreciate everything you’ve done for me, and I want to pay you back.”
Mayhem, Mystery and Murder Page 19
