Freeze Frame

by B. David Warner

"Garry, I swear the shooting wasn't our fault. Another man held the gun. Higgins reached for it, and it went off."

  "Darcy, the two guys they arrested in the Viper are telling their version of the story. Every badge in town is looking for you. You've got to come in.”

  "Garry, you don't understand..."

  "I understand they've got a description of you and Higgins in a black Avatar, and you're lucky you haven't been picked up already."

  "But there were witnesses."

  "Three witnesses say Higgins shot the cop, three say the other guy shot him, one says it looked like an accident. But the two other guys are talking and you're not."

  "It's that disc Vince Caponi had, Garry. It’s at the bottom of everything.”

  “Darcy, you’re betting your life on that. Think about it. Higgins is the prime suspect in one murder and now he’s wanted for another.

  "Look, my caller ID’s got the number you’re calling from. Stay there, I’ll come get you."

  With the Roseville police looking for us, and a Detroit cop who also happened to be my ex-husband racing our way, I had to do something.

  5

  Twenty minutes later, Higgins sat sipping from a Styrofoam cup as I approached him from behind.

  "Let's get on the road."

  Startled, Higgins choked on his coffee. He looked up. "I need to get back to Cunningham."

  "Call him later. Kaminski’s on the way. We've got to get out of here. Now."

  We started walking quickly--out of the small coffee shop, past the sleepy cashier manning the only open register, through the automatic doors and into the parking lot.

  The cars hunched in the small group were still the only vehicles in the lot. As we approached them, I wondered how long it would take Higgins to notice.

  "Where's the Avatar?"

  "Over there," I pointed. “The white one.”

  "The white one? What the hell do you mean, the white one?"

  "I painted it."

  "You...what?" We were now standing next to a very low, very white, Avatar AVX.

  "It took five cans of touch-up paint. They were on sale. Didn't you see the display?”

  "Are you nuts?" Higgins’ face was beet red. "You’ve screwed up a sixty-thousand-dollar paint job. It took six weeks to get it right. By hand."

  "Are you nuts? The cops are looking for a black Avatar. They find it, we're in prison. For life.” Higgins had to admit I was right. While the AVX was a prototype with a much more powerful engine than the standard Avatar, it shared the body style familiar to sports car enthusiasts around the country. The white color would give us a better chance at freedom.

  I held his gaze. "Now, are you driving, or am I?"

  Higgins held the keys. A touch of the remote button and the car’s gullwing doors unfolded.

  "Watch the paint," I said, sliding into the passenger seat. “It's wet." Higgins shot me a sour look. A turn of the key provoked a snarl from the engine.

  Pulling out of the parking lot onto M-59, Higgins kept to the right, melding into the morning rush hour. Watching on-coming traffic, I saw my former husband, the cop, speed by in the opposite direction.

  I couldn’t help smiling as I thought of him running around the store looking for us.

  "I heard you tell Ken Cunningham you have relatives up north,” I said.

  "My aunt and uncle have a cottage in Gaylord, about forty miles below the Mackinac Bridge.”

  "Think they'll put up a couple of fugitives?"

  "They're in Florida.”

  "We're going to break in?"

  "I know where they hide the key."

  But would we make it that far?

  6

  Seven Days Earlier

  Monday, Oct. 11 – 9:15 a.m.

  I hadn’t known Vince Caponi, but news of his death touched me. Years ago, married to a Detroit street cop, violence became my constant companion. When I divorced Garry Kaminski, I thought I had jilted that companion too, leaving it behind when I bolted for Grand Rapids. Now, returning to the Motor City, I found my old nemesis on hand to greet me the first day on the job.

  When Garry and I split, too much of my former husband remained in the places we had known –- the Fox Theatre District, Greek Town, Belle Isle –- for me to feel comfortable anywhere near them.

  I moved back to Grand Rapids. My father, alone after Mom’s death, welcomed me home, and at first the situation seemed comfortable as the proverbial old shoe. But I soon realized my hometown had become several sizes too small.

  Nearly five years passed before the call came from Ken Cunningham, Adams & Benson's executive vice president and an old family friend. The position of creative supervisor on the American Vehicle Corporation account had opened. I’d been recommended by A & B’s executive creative director, my former boss, Sid Goldman. "And by the way," Ken had added, "Sid had a heart attack. He almost died."

  After getting past the shock of Sid's heart attack, I weighed the proposition. The job paid well and I’d be back writing about my first love: cars. The truth is, I know more about wheels than most men.

  Two weeks later I moved back to Detroit.

  My office turned out to be on six, a floor routinely sealed off from the rest of the agency during the months of creative planning for next year's AVC models. You needed a key to open the door when the elevator stopped there. I learned that because of this tight security, the account team of Niles VanBuhler, third party candidate for President of the United States, had insisted on taking over half of the floor when they moved here from D.C. three months ago.

  As I stood gazing out the floor-to-ceiling window of my new office, the view of the Detroit River with Windsor, Ontario, on the other side was breathtaking. I could see a cabin cruiser bouncing eastward, fighting white-capped waves toward Lake St. Clair. To my right, the cylindrical towers of the Renaissance Center shot into the sky. Below, the A & B parking lot stretched two hundred feet along the river.

  I vowed to do something about the bare wall on my left soon. I’d been an avid art collector since college, scraping together dollars to buy a lithograph by one artist or another. My favorite genre was the American southwest and painters like Remington, Russell, Inness and Whittredge. My collection remained in Grand Rapids. I’d bring a few lithographs next trip, to cover some of that wall space.

  A stack of folders sat on the center of my desk, each containing a work profile of the writers and art directors on my new staff. I had known a couple from my previous stint at A & B, but several had joined the agency in the interim. I spent the morning reviewing the profiles.

  I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been nervous about taking this job: a huge step from a small town to directing the creative product of an account spending nearly a billion dollars in a single year. Every creative person goes through periods of self-doubt, and right now I had to fight to keep those thoughts at bay.

  “Just because it’s your first day doesn’t mean you can’t break for lunch.”

  Startled, I looked up from the last profile to see a six-foot-two male of African American descent in the doorway. I recognized Matt Carter from the photograph in his personnel file. Behind him stood two others: a short, dark-complected man in a blue striped short-sleeved shirt and a taller, sandy-haired man in a business suit.

  “Hi, Darcy, I’m Matt Carter and your two other lunch companions are Manny Rodriguez and Paul Chapman.”

  The shorter man, Manny Rodriguez, smiled and nodded. “Nice meeting you, Darcy. I like the work you did on the Avatar last time you were here. Your ads remind me of the early Volkswagen campaign.” I had just finished reading Rodriguez’ folder. A late bloomer, he had joined Adams & Benson as a copywriter after a long career in the Army.

  “We promise we won’t let Manny bore you,” said the taller man, Chapman. “He’s a walking encyclopedia of advertising trivia.”

  "You account guys are all alike," Rodriguez smiled. "You don’t care about the creative product as long as you have directions to the clien
t's country club."

  "Somebody’s got to schmooze the clients so they’ll approve the copy you write,” Chapman said.

  Carter turned to me. “Paul’s a scratch golfer, except when he’s playing a client.”

  "I had to hit eight balls into the water last Thursday, to keep from kicking Denny Desnoyer's butt by more than fifteen strokes," Chapman said.

  "I'm surprised Desnoyer did that well," said Carter. "How he swings a club past that gut of his ranks with the mysteries of the pyramids and the missing link."

  "Speaking of stomachs," Rodriguez said, "mine's empty as a vp’s office on Friday afternoon. Let’s go.”

  "You're sure I won’t be in the way of some kind of male bonding session?" I asked.

  "You kidding?” Rodriguez said. "How can you bond with guys who don’t even know what a gerund is?”

  The repartee continued as we left the building heading for Big Norm’s Restaurant two blocks away.

  At one point I heard Carter whisper to Chapman, “What the hell is a gerund anyway?”

  “I’m not sure,” Chapman whispered back. “I think it’s one of those old golf clubs. Like a mashie or a spoon.”

  “Be worth a lot of money, you had one in good condition.”

  “Damn straight.”

  7

  To paraphrase Yogi Berra, lunch at Big Norm’s Restaurant turned out to be “déjà vu all over again.”

  I’d been inside Big Norm’s last during my bon voyage affair five years ago, and as we approached the well-manicured old building memories danced in my head.

  The sign in front advertised “A Dining Experience,” but to Adams & Benson employees who treated its elegant lounge like a neighborhood bar every night after five, it would more accurately have read: “A Drinking Experience.”

  Now that would have been truth in advertising.

  As we walked through the front door, Willis, Big Norm’s tall, distinguished maitre d’, greeted me with a hug. We asked to be seated in the lounge and got the last table, a white-cloth-covered four-top just inside the door. It was SRO at the bar itself, and waiters and waitresses hustled drinks from the service bar to tables, and carried trays filled with the seafood dishes that put Big Norm’s on the culinary map. As we sat down, I couldn’t help notice that a tall, wiry, red-haired man in the crowd at the bar seemed to be staring our way.

  "Matt, did you know the guy who was killed last night?" Manny Rodriguez asked as he unfolded a white cloth napkin.

  "Caponi? Yeah. Darren Cato and I used his studio a lot. Vince and I golfed once or twice, and I had dinner with him and his wife a few times. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

  "Murdered," Chapman said with an exaggerated shiver. "Who would kill a guy like that?"

  "Do the police have a motive?" I asked. Glancing toward the bar, I noticed the red-haired man continued to glare toward our table. His attention seemed focused on me, but why? It was my first day here after five years.

  “The motive wasn’t robbery,” Carter said. “Vince had a wallet full of money and credit cards."

  A waiter appeared, setting menus and a basket of Big Norm's hot-from-the-oven onion rolls on the table. He retrieved a notebook from his pocket and took drink orders. The redhead at the bar continued to stare my way.

  "Have you had the dubious pleasure of meeting Sean Higgins?” Chapman asked as the waiter left. He apparently had heard enough talk about violence.

  "What do you mean, dubious pleasure?" I asked, my attention returning to the table. I knew Higgins by name only. He had joined Adams & Benson as account head of the American Vehicle Corporation business during the five years I had been gone. I knew we’d be working together, and my title as creative supervisor meant, in theory, we were equals.

  "I mean you won’t find many creative people worshipping at the shrine of Sean Higgins,” Chapman said.

  "Let me put it in less religious terms,” Carter smiled. “Sean Higgins thinks creative people are more interested in doing commercials that win awards, than in selling the client’s product.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “We’re merely trying to create print and broadcast advertising that stands out...that breaks through the clutter.”

  “Tell that to Higgins,” Carter said. “If you get the chance. When it comes to dealing with creative people, he has the tact of a pit bull on steroids."

  “Darren Cato found that out,” said Rodriguez. “Remember the time he walked into Higgins’ office with his shades on?”

  “Yeah,” said Chapman. “It wasn’t so much the sunglasses as Cato’s way of strutting around in them. He’s a producer-type, thinks he’s strictly Hollywood. Higgins brought the meeting to a screeching halt and made Cato leave his sunglasses out in the hallway.”

  “That’s Sean Higgins,” laughed Carter, “pure hard ass. He thinks he’s still playing football for the University of Michigan.”

  Rodriguez turned to me. "You’ll have to excuse Matt, he’s never gotten over the fact that Higgins didn't fall for his memo." I had to ask. "What memo?"

  Rodriguez leaned forward, his smile widening. "Rumor has it that Matt, here, was responsible for a certain memo sent to all employees under the signature of one of the senior vps. The memo requested that account executives drink whiskey instead of vodka at lunch."

  "Whiskey? Why?”

  "So that during afternoon meetings clients would know the account executives were drunk, not just stupid.”

  That got the table laughing. In the middle of it, the waiter appeared to distribute the drinks. He pulled the pad from his pocket and waited for our food order.

  "I haven't even had time to look," I said, reaching for the menu.

  "Big Norm's is famous for broiled salmon," Chapman said.

  “Salmon it is."

  One by one, the others ordered and the waiter left, snaking through the crowd at the bar where people now stood two deep.

  "Hey, look...Baron Nichols." Carter pointed to the red-haired man who had been staring at me from the bar. Catching Nichols' eye, he waved him to our table.

  "Baron, meet Darcy James," Carter said as Nichols approached. "She's the new group creative head on AVC."

  I held out a hand that Nichols ignored, instead staring coolly into my eyes. "I hope she can handle it," he said. Then the arrogant bastard left to rejoin his group.

  "You could scrape the ice off that greeting," Rodriguez said. “I heard Nichols had a screaming match with Ken Cunningham when you got the job as AVC creative head instead of him, but there’s no excuse for that behavior.”

  "No harm done,” I said. “Believe me, I’ve encountered worse.”

  Truthfully, I felt more angered than embarrassed by Nichols’ snub. And while he may have acted like an ass, there seemed no point making an issue of it.

  8

  Chapman finally broke the embarrassed silence that followed, changing the subject. "I hear Darren Cato didn’t show up for his meeting with the VanBuhler people.”

  “Yeah, said Carter, “his girlfriend’s Sue Askins; the woman in Research? She tried to call him all morning. She left just before lunch to check his house.”

  “He’d better not miss many meetings with those people,” Rodriguez said. “Have you seen that guy Bacalla? He looks like he sprinkles guys like Cato on his breakfast cereal.”

  “What's happening on the VanBuhler campaign anyway, Paul?” Carter asked. “We haven’t seen much of you since you got assigned to the team. You must be important."

  "Yeah, tell me about it. Fact is I'm more go-fer than executive. Bob Bacalla quarterbacks all the plays."

  Rodriguez reached for another roll. "Is he as mean as he looks?”

  “He’s tough to read,” said Chapman. “I’ve worked with him for weeks and I know less about him than when I started.”

  I jumped in. “The election’s coming up fast, Paul. How about a prediction?”

  "It’s going to be a lot tighter than people expect.”

  I had been following the
campaigning. "For a third-party candidate, VanBuhler sure ate up the primaries. New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Illinois..."

  Entering the race as an independent, Niles VanBuhler straddled the fence on virtually every issue. His boyish, sun-tanned good looks and impeccably combed, prematurely silver hair played well with the press. When it came to sound bites, the guy was a piranha. With the election just weeks away, VanBuhler’s popularity rivaled that of the incumbent, David Nordstrum.

  "What does VanBuhler's contingent say about his mysterious success?" Carter asked.

  "Nothing, nada, zero," Chapman said. "Funny thing is, they don't seem all that surprised."

  The waiter interrupted, setting steaming dishes in front of each person. My plate held a salmon steak nearly three-quarters of an inch thick.

  A sudden ringing came from somewhere close. Carter set his fork on the plate and reached for his pager.

  "Ain't technology great?" he said. "Even without my cell phone, the office can find me anywhere." He stood up and headed for the sole pay telephone near the restrooms.

  "Poor Matt," said Rodriguez. "It’s not enough to be a producer, he’s trying to be a writer, too. The guy's been running his butt off."

  Chapman started to speak, but stopped as he noticed Carter hurrying back.

  "A package just arrived," Carter said, taking a quick bite of whitefish without sitting down. "It's addressed to Darren Cato. Since he’s AWOL they plopped it on my desk.”

  "What's the hurry?" Chapman asked.

  Carter took a gulp from his water glass and set it back on the table.

  "The package is from Vince Caponi.”

  9

  Now

  Riding north on a concrete ribbon, we twisted past the factories of Flint, the factory outlets of Birch Run, up and over the mammoth Zilwaukee Bridge, winding around Saginaw and Bay City, then straight through mile after mile of flat brown autumn fields that reached out to touch the horizon.

  Just when it seemed the land in this part of the state grew nothing but monotony, trees closed in on either side of the highway and we were in Michigan's north country. I peered out the side window and took in a blur of autumn reds, oranges and yellows, interrupted by the occasional dark green of a stand of pine.