The Wrong Man

by Jason Dean

  Bishop just shrugged and said, ‘All right,’ before moving into the living room.

  Frowning at her brother, Jenna followed him down the stairs to the basement. She could tell he was annoyed and knew it wouldn’t be long before he gave her the reason why.

  He pointed to some paperwork lying on the worktable before kneeling down to open the small safe he kept under his desk. She checked through the three-page document, nodding at the official-looking stamps and signatures.

  ‘Not bad,’ she said and glanced up. Ali stood watching her. ‘Okay, what?’

  ‘This is bad on so many levels,’ he said. ‘Wanna know exactly how many?’

  ‘Not really,’ she said, sighing. ‘But I’m sure you’ll tell me anyway.’

  ‘Number one,’ he said, ‘that man upstairs is currently America’s Most Wanted. You buy him a cup of coffee and you go down for harbouring. And you got him staying at your apartment?’

  ‘This from Mr Good Citizen,’ she said, dropping the papers onto the worktop. ‘You’re the one said he’s okay, remember? So what else you got?’

  ‘They’re all variations on that one.’ He just shook his head slowly from side to side. ‘What you trying to do to me? I thought you were way smarter than this.’

  ‘This isn’t about you, Ali. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a big girl now and that means I get to choose my own path. James is innocent and right now he needs my help. And if that means letting him stay with me for a while, then fine.’

  ‘James?’ Ali raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Jeez, you’re sleeping with him, too.’

  Jenna shook her head in irritation. This was getting them nowhere. She glanced at the two wallets in his hand and said, ‘Look, why not just give me the IDs and we’ll leave you in peace.’

  ‘Hey, take it easy,’ he said and handed them over. ‘I’m just looking out for you, is all. With Mom gone, all we got is each other, and don’t forget, I am the older one.’

  She softened a little. ‘I know, Ali, but I don’t need somebody passing judgement on my choices. Even Mom knew better than that. I could use some support, though.’

  ‘Sure, you got it.’ He smiled at her. ‘So, they what you wanted?’

  ‘They’re perfect,’ she said, kissing his cheek. ‘But I’d expect no less from you.’ Behind Ali she saw an open laptop she recognized. ‘So that’s where my old iBook is. My brother, the thief.’

  ‘Thought I told you. Mind if I hold on to it for another hour or so? I’m transferring some special software.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said and began climbing the stairs. ‘Maybe I’ll come back for it later on the way back.’

  ‘If I’m not here,’ he said from behind her, ‘you can let yourselves in.’

  In the living room Bishop was sitting on the sofa watching CNN. On the screen was a Photoshopped image of himself with his new buzzcut. It closely matched his current appearance.

  Jenna and Ali came in from the basement. The reporter was saying, ‘. . . his escape from Greenacres Prison three days ago, convicted murderer James Bishop is believed to be still in the state of New York. The FBI has released this computer-generated image to all news agencies and believes it to be very close to how he now looks. They also warn that under no circum—’

  Bishop clicked the remote and the screen went black.

  Jenna said, ‘Maybe this trip isn’t such a good idea. Ali and I can do it instead.’

  Ali said, ‘It’d have to be tomorrow; I got a couple of business appointments this afternoon I can’t postpone. But Jenna’s right. That picture’s bad news.’

  Bishop shook his head. ‘Forget it.’

  Jenna watched him, then said, ‘Okay, boss.’ She tossed him one of the wallets. ‘But a makeover wouldn’t be a bad idea before we go.’

  FORTY-EIGHT

  They drove Brooklyn’s streets in silence, Bishop behind the wheel and Jenna next to him with her head down, looking through her notebook. A gauze pad covered his nose. It was held in place by three strips of athletic tape and itched like crazy.

  Jenna turned to look at her handiwork and said, ‘I’m having second thoughts about this.’

  Bishop shrugged. ‘Don’t. People will be too busy wondering who I pissed off to really look at me. And you’ll be doing your part, too.’

  As they drove over the Carroll Street Bridge he pressed a finger to the gauze, then reached over and switched on the radio. Brahms’s second symphony came on and he raised his eyebrows in silent approval. He’d thought Jenna was only a rock ’n’ roller. She didn’t comment on the track so he just drove and listened for a while. Or tried to. The reception wasn’t too good. Deep in the background there was a high-pitched whistle. The kind that could get annoying pretty quickly.

  ‘Try another one,’ Jenna said.

  He was about to do just that but, as they were crossing Hoyt, Jenna leaned forward in the passenger seat and said, ‘That could be it up ahead.’

  Bishop turned the radio off and followed her gaze. The street they were on was mostly made up of industrial buildings, except for a fenced-off section up on the right. As they got closer, Bishop saw a section of the chain link fence had been wheeled across to allow vehicles to pass in and out. A large metal sign with COURT WAREHOUSE CO. written in large type was attached to it. Further in, vehicles had to pass under a security barrier locked in the raised position. There was a small hut next to it and in front of that stood a uniformed guard talking on his cell phone. In plain view behind him were the warehouses – three of them – with a half-full car park in between. To the left of the entrance was a small, single-storey building that Bishop guessed was the front office.

  He lowered the window as he pulled in next to the guard. His name tag identified him as Karl Reilly.

  ‘Help you?’ Reilly asked, placing the phone in his side pocket and focusing on Jenna. She’d taken off the jacket and undone the top three buttons of her blouse. Bishop could see his bandage hadn’t been necessary.

  She gifted the young guard a nice view as she leaned across and showed him the new ID Aleron had made for her. ‘My name’s Margaret Huntley from the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division, with a court order to inspect documents housed in Warehouse C. This is Sergeant George Wright of the NYPD, who’s accompanying me as an official witness.’

  Bishop opened his new wallet, but Reilly was too busy trying to study Jenna’s credentials to notice.

  ‘Is everything in order, Mr Reilly?’ she said.

  ‘Er . . . yeah. That’s fine.’ The guard swallowed and said, ‘You want Pearson at the front office just over there. He’ll take you.’ He sneaked an additional peek at Jenna’s legs before straightening up and walking back to his post.

  As Bishop raised the window and edged the car forward, Jenna muttered, ‘Pervert.’

  He stifled a smile as he steered them left and parked in the last angled space in front of the office. ‘I’ll let you do all the talking,’ he said. ‘You seem to have a gift for it.’

  ‘Thanks, I think,’ Jenna said, grabbing her large shoulder bag and jacket from the back seat. ‘You just stay in character then. Your captain’s saddled you with this lame babysitting assignment, so you just need to look impatient and generally pissed off.’

  ‘No problem there,’ he said and got out.

  At the reception entrance, he pulled the door open and let Jenna go through first.

  Had Bishop really been a cop, he would have felt right at home inside. A counter separated them from the office area. Three security guards sat at a row of desks. Two were on their computers, the other was speaking into a telephone. A coffee machine, a steel table and three uncomfortable-looking chairs sat on their side of the counter.

  Jenna approached the partition and said, ‘I’m looking for a Pearson?’

  One of the men looked away briefly from his screen and pointed to the grey-haired man on the phone. This guy held a finger up to her as he finished his end of the conversation. Jenna nodded and turned
back to Bishop. He was leaning against the wall, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else. He wasn’t acting. The grey-haired guy could be a retired cop for all he knew. The kind who liked to chew the fat about mutual acquaintances.

  The man approached the counter and Jenna rummaged through her shoulder bag for the paperwork.

  He said, ‘I’m Pearson.’

  She pulled out her ID again and told him their names. Pearson glanced at Bishop before turning back to her.

  ‘So what do you need, Ms Huntley?’ he asked.

  Bishop watched her unfold the three-page document and lay it on the counter between them. It seemed Aleron kept a portable hard drive containing examples of just about every kind of US official paperwork in existence, including warrants and legal documents for all occasions. Bishop knew the world opened up as long as you looked the part. Pearson would be the litmus test.

  ‘Mr Pearson,’ Jenna said, ‘this is a court order allowing us to inspect documents relating to Cavendish Private Hospital, pre-1970. I believe they’re housed in Warehouse C?’

  He watched Pearson skim over the legalese without any real interest. He skipped to the last page with the signatures and yesterday’s date. The name of the judge was real, although he’d died five years ago.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, looking up and pushing the paperwork back towards Jenna. ‘That’s our storage warehouse. A and B are mainly for commercial use.’ He walked back to his desk and picked up the cap he found there. ‘We’ll walk over.’

  The warehouse was huge. A series of corridors travelled the length of the building. Each was lined with storage racks filled with large blue crates. The racks stretched halfway up to the ceiling fifty feet above. Wheeled ladders waited at random intervals, and Bishop could hear the hydraulic sounds of forklifts echoing from other parts of the building.

  Pearson was leading them down the leftmost aisle. He turned back to Bishop without breaking his stride. ‘What precinct you work out of?’ he asked.

  ‘77th on Utica,’ Bishop said. No need to give him any more.

  Pearson faced forward again. ‘I thought they would have sent somebody from the 76th on Union Street. They’re a lot closer to us, and I know some of the guys from there. Don’t know you, though.’

  Exactly why Bishop had avoided mentioning it. He knew what was coming next. Let’s just nip this in the bud before it goes any further, he thought and raised an eyebrow to Jenna walking beside him.

  She nodded back and said, ‘I chose Sergeant Wright to accompany me, Mr Pearson, based on who was available at the time. Apparently, the 76th is understaffed to the point where they’re unable to provide me with an escort today.’

  Pearson snorted and said, ‘That sounds about right. Everybody’s understaffed these days.’ He came to a stop and pointed down to his right. ‘You’re in luck, Ms Huntley. We won’t need to call one of the forklift guys over for you.’

  Bishop and Jenna looked down at the large blue plastic crate at the bottom of the rack. The sticker on the side was stamped #C7634 – Cavendish Hosp. – Confidential. Bishop and Pearson both leaned down and carefully slid the heavy crate out of the rack onto the concrete floor. Pearson then ambled over to one of the wheeled ladders fifty feet away and sat on one of the rungs.

  ‘I gotta keep watch,’ he said, shrugging. Then he pulled a folded handgun magazine from his back pocket and proceeded to do exactly the opposite.

  Perfect, thought Bishop. All conversation was finished.

  He watched Jenna kneel down and unlatch the top flap and pull it open. Inside was a collection of large cardboard boxes. Each one was stamped with a year. They were all stuffed with paperwork. Jenna raised her eyebrows at Bishop and then picked a box.

  FORTY-NINE

  Three-quarters of an hour later, Jenna said, ‘Timothy Ebert.’

  She was perched on the rung of a ladder with an open ledger on her lap. Bishop was sitting opposite her on a box marked Jan-Jun 1963. He was going through a stack of tedious administrative papers and fast losing the will to live.

  ‘What have you got?’ he asked, looking up.

  She took off her spectacles and said, ‘Not sure. I think it’s some kind of security log for 1968. The handwriting’s pretty bad, but he definitely gets a mention in December. No first name, just Ebert. But how many of them can there be?’

  Bishop glanced to his left. Pearson was still on the other ladder, out of earshot and engrossed in his own reading material. ‘Why were hospital security interested in him?’

  ‘Seems he disappeared from the home on the evening of the nineteenth. This guy found his room empty while doing his rounds. Says he got some of the nurses to help search the place, but found nothing. No mention of alerting the police, so he can’t have been much of a security risk.’

  Bishop studied a faded tyre pattern on the floor and said, ‘Anything else?’

  Jenna replaced her glasses, skimmed over the next couple of pages. ‘Yeah, here. Apparently, the missing patient from room eleven turned up again two days later.’ She closed the book and stood up and stretched, extending her limbs like a cat. She then came over and dropped the book at Bishop’s feet. ‘And so ends 1968. Heavy year, that one. Lots of assassinations.’

  She bent over and pulled out another book identical in size and colour to the one she’d just finished, this one marked 1969. She took it back to her makeshift seat, opened it to the first page and began to read.

  Bishop didn’t know how much time had passed, but when he looked up Jenna was still in the same position, scribbling something in her notebook as she read a passage from the ledger. There weren’t many pages left.

  ‘A real page-turner, huh?’ he said.

  Without raising her head, she said, ‘You could say that.’

  He hoped so. After going through all the ’68 and ’69 boxes he’d found no other mention at all of their mysterious patient. If these were indeed the files Cortiss had gone through, he’d been very thorough. Ebert’s existence was almost completely erased. Not even copies of bills paid or records of family visits. Nothing.

  Jenna finished writing and came over to sit on a box next to him. She placed the book out of sight of Pearson and frowned. ‘It’s weird, right? If Cortiss was so good at covering his tracks, how did these two security logs get past him?’

  Bishop had already looked through a few pages of the ’68 journal. ‘I think the main reason is these aren’t official logs. There are no daytime entries for a start, and he keeps going off on tangents. And the guy’s handwriting isn’t just bad, it’s abysmal.’

  She nodded. ‘Yeah. And some of the prose is almost flowery. Hardly what you’d expect of an official record. In fact, there might not have been a security log. This place wasn’t exactly a hotbed of activity. Yeah, now you mention it, these read like the personal diaries of a bored night watchman. If he’d bothered to put his name on them they would probably have been returned to him. I’m not surprised they slipped past Cortiss’s radar; I had to wade through a lot of stream of consciousness crap to get to the interesting stuff.’

  She looked around, found her shoulder bag and pulled it towards her. ‘On top of that, Ebert’s only actually mentioned by name once.’ Watching to make sure Pearson wasn’t looking her way, she opened her bag and dropped the 1968 ledger into it.

  Smiling, Bishop said, ‘But he is mentioned again?’

  ‘Yeah, but only as “Eleven”.’ Jenna picked up her notebook and turned back a page. ‘Mr Eleven discharged himself from the home at least five more times in ’69 without telling anybody beforehand. On each occasion he’d return a few days later, like before. February 17, May 5, July 3, September 26 and October 11.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bishop said, rubbing his palm over his scalp. ‘That’s it?’

  ‘Not quite.’ She opened the ’69 diary to a page marked with a Post-it note and said, ‘Listen to this entry from November 13: “Some excitement at last, or at least what passes for it in my nocturnal existence. Agent Mandrake’s returne
d with written authorization to inspect certain patients’ files. He doesn’t say much, just requests that I unlock the door to the records room. I leave him in there at 11 p.m. and he doesn’t emerge again until 2 a.m.”’

  ‘Agent Mandrake?’ Bishop said. ‘A fed?’

  ‘Doesn’t say. He’s not mentioned before this. Maybe his previous visits were during the day.’ She continued reading aloud. ‘“He asks for my thoughts on the patient in room eleven and I tell him I haven’t had much contact with him. Just that he’s as moody as everyone else here, and that he has a habit of flying the coop every once in a while on the sly. I can see he finds this particularly interesting but he doesn’t say why.

  ‘“He also asks about the hospital routine and if we ever arrange outside excursions for the patients. Sure, I say, there’s usually something planned every month for those who want a change of scenery. Museums, ball games, that sort of thing. I tell him Eleven usually puts his name down for these before he asks me and he cracks a smile and asks when the next one’s due. This Friday, I say. He thanks me for my help and then departs eastwards.”’

  Jenna took off her glasses and said, ‘And that’s about it. If this Mandrake came back to search Ebert’s room, it wasn’t during this guy’s shift or it would have made it into the book. Everything else seemed to.’

  After another glance at Pearson, Jenna slipped the 1969 diary into her bag, zipped it closed and grinned at him. ‘Don’t know about you, but after all that, I’m famished.’

  ‘Help me put this all back,’ Bishop said, getting to his feet, ‘and I’ll treat you.’

  FIFTY

  Bishop pulled into the drive-thru off Court Street and ordered them a box of chicken wings, a large cheeseburger, two large seasoned fries and two iced teas. They parked in a space on the next street along to eat, under the shadow of an elm tree. The guy who’d handed them their order hadn’t even looked at Bishop’s face, but as suburban streets had nosy neighbours he decided to keep the bandage on.