Dirty Fire

by Earl Merkel

  “Is that your husband?” I asked. “Might he know?”

  “That is Peter Comstock,” Marita said, in a manner that suggested I should recognize the name. “He’s staying here temporarily, as a guest. I’d introduce you, but I don’t want to disturb his concentration. Peter is just coming out of a period where his creativity was almost completely blocked, you see.”

  I nodded.

  As I watched, the artist carefully lifted what looked like a blunt-edged, thin-bladed paté knife. Almost delicately, he tapped the tip on the edge of a fragile—and, I suspected, a very expensive—bone china serving platter that had been pressed into emergency service as a palette. Thick daubs of pigmented oils, some partially dried and others shining fresh and wet, ran riot like a polychromatic explosion across its surface.

  Then, with an explosive, violent movement of his arm, Elliott slashed the knife in a diagonal arc that angled sharply downward. It left in its wake a path of bright wet crimson, startling and jarring beneath its blade. He was in three-quarters profile to us; the expression on his face was primitive, almost indecent in an excitement that I suspected was neither entirely physical nor completely mystical. Still, it appeared to have definite undertones of both—a complex mix of raw, elemental emotions.

  The artist let his arm fall to the side and stepped backward. As if wanting to prolong the sensation, he turned away, deliberately averting his eyes from his handiwork. As I watched, he pressed one large hand into the small of his back and arched into it, stretching in an audible volley of pops and snaps. Only then did he lift his view to the canvas, eyeing it with an expression that was in equal measures critical, skeptical and pleased.

  Marita watched, the expression on her face one of unabashed delight.

  “Peter! News bulletin: I found some brushes, too!” Marita Travers’s voice was giddy in its self-satisfaction at her discovery. The artist turned and smiled broadly at her; she waited before he turned back to his canvas before addressing me.

  “He hasn’t left the house—not even for supplies,” she said, her eyes still locked on the artist. “Yesterday morning, he said that the urge to begin painting took complete possession of him.”

  She smiled and looked as if she was enjoying a private joke.

  “I’ve been scrounging here. I used to dabble in oils myself, and we have crates full of old canvases from the last time this place was redecorated. I told Peter he can use as many as he wishes.” Again she smiled at secrets unsaid. “They are, after all, not mine.”

  “Oh?”

  “They belong to my husband,” she said, almost sweetly. “We are—how should I say this?—estranged.”

  She turned to me with an air of finality.

  “If there’s nothing else, Mr. Davey?”

  We rose as if in drill.

  “Thank you for your time, Ms. Travers,” I said. “I can show myself out. I apologize for the intrusion.”

  We shook hands as if we were members of the same club, and I waited for her to go through the arched doorway to the artist.

  But I didn’t leave, not yet.

  As I watched, Marita Travers pushed up against Comstock’s back and playfully punched between his shoulder blades.

  “Peter—I want to see!” Marita tried to look over his shoulder, changed her mind and slipped under. She leaned back against him, pulling his bare and surprisingly muscular arm around her waist. She stopped short and stared at the painting, her lips parting slightly. “Oh, my God—Peter, that’s…that’s marvelous!”

  With his free arm, Comstock picked up the makeshift palette knife and scooped a tiny pinpoint of brilliant blue from the platter onto its tip. He carefully touched it to the canvas immediately below the diagonal red he had just added. Then, pressing the blade so it flexed lightly against the fabric, with a firm stroke he spread the blue pigment.

  Before my eyes, I saw the immediate result: in contrast, the crimson streak seemed suddenly to become three-dimensional, dramatically levitating itself so it appeared to float weightlessly above the surface. I felt goosebumps rise on my neck, in spite of myself awed at the effect.

  Marita evidently felt the same impact, if in a somewhat more elemental place.

  “You’re not done, are you?” she breathed, delighted. “Don’t stop, Peter—I want to watch!”

  The artist pulled her even closer and rested his chin on the soft ringlets of her hair.

  “I feel like the guy in that movie,” he complained, happily. “The one who gets chained to the bed by a crazed fan.”

  “Please don’t tell me you enjoy bondage films?” Marita murmured, her eyes still on the painting.

  “No, no…the guy who was Sonny in The Godfather,” Comstock said. “The woman won’t let him go until he writes a book for her. It was in…Misery. I feel like I’m in Misery.”

  “Poor dear.” Marita tilted her head up at him and tried to look sympathetic. “He’s in misery. There, there now.” She smiled into his eyes, and the imp suddenly supplanted the muse. “Perhaps there’s some…comfort I can offer, sir?”

  Comstock scooped her up and did a slow half twirl that made both of them laugh.

  I took it as my cue to leave and slipped away toward the front of the house. But I could not avoid hearing the next words they spoke, oblivious to anything but each other.

  “Work, work, work,” Comstock grumbled joyously as he carried her into the house. “I think I need a union.”

  “What an interesting idea,” I heard Marita Travers say, and her voice was anything but distracted. “Let’s, shall we?”

  Chapter 21

  I was not present when Mel Bird made the discovery that gave us our first big break in the investigation; what follows is a compilation that was reconstructed later from interviews and reports, as well as assumptions that I consider logical. It may not be completely accurate, but I believe it to be true.

  It was early afternoon when Mel slowed to a halt at a small, glass- and precast-concrete structure. It stood astride the driveway leading onto a spacious campus, the world headquarters of TransNational Mutual Insurance. The uniformed guard, a carefully courteous, painstakingly trained smile of welcome on his face, slid back the green-tinted glass. The edge was thick and laminated, and Bird guessed it would stop a bullet from a hunting rifle with little difficulty.

  He flashed the leather holder that contained both his badge and the photo identification issued by the Lake Tower Police Department, and was surprised when the guard examined it closely, even comparing the picture with its bearer.

  “Who are you meeting with, sir?” the guard asked.

  “Miss Melton,” Bird said. “Corporate Relations, I think. I may be a little early.”

  “It’ll be just a minute, sir.” The guard slid the bulletproof window closed, and his fingers tapped on a computer keyboard while Bird’s tapped impatiently on the steering wheel.

  Around him, the suburban setting was a picture of verdant greens and the white blossoms of hybrid cherry trees that lined the driveway. A crew of landscape workers was laying thick sod around the edges of the asphalt drive, but Bird could still see the signs of recent paving work where fresh blacktop had been laid. The guard station, too, looked clean and new. His interest piqued, the police officer peered through his windshield, right and left. He knew what he was looking for, but even so he almost missed it in the artful placement and screening: three, possibly four surveillance cameras.

  The heavy window slid open again, and the guard leaned out to press a bright orange sticker on Bird’s windshield.

  “Please drive ahead on this road, sir. There’s a visitor’s parking area immediately in front of the main building, across from the parking garage. Somebody will be waiting for you there. When you leave, please make sure to leave your visitor’s car pass with me here.”

  Bird looked at the guard. “Just between the two of us,” he said, “is this a good gig?”

  The guard studied him a moment, then leaned closer in a confidential manne
r.

  “Eighteen bucks an hour, plus fringes, just to check in visitors and out-of-town salesmen,” the uniformed man said, grinning. “And no heavy lifting, unless you count when I stand up to go to lunch. So far, friend, best job I ever had.”

  • • •

  “The most simple explanation is usually the best one,” Dane Tornell said politely, while wondering where in the world this policeman got off with this kind of nonsense. “There’s no record of insurance because no insurance was issued.”

  Bird twisted his lips and inhaled deeply. You stuck-up little—a voice inside him said. He let the air out slowly and took a moment to look around the large, well-appointed office. A corner window looked out over rolling acreage dotted with blossoming trees and shrubs.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You already told me that, Mr. Tornell. Like, a half hour ago. Now, just humor me, okay? If—remember, I’m saying ‘if’—I came to you for coverage of my art collection, what are the places where somebody could’ve dropped the ball? You know—mislaid the paperwork or something, so that it turned out you didn’t actually issue a policy.”

  Tornell nodded, as if considering Bird’s hypothesis seriously. Long ago, well before he became a vice president for one of the world’s largest insurers, Tornell had started his career as an agent for another, albeit smaller, insurance company. His early training in sales techniques and what the facilitators called “people-oriented” selling skills had ingrained in Tornell an almost fanatical belief in two precepts he still followed in his present position.

  The first: always wear a tie and a white, short-sleeved shirt; it made you seem friendly, but in an avuncularly professional way. Second: never tell a prospect he was full of crap, even if he was. Especially if he was—and Bird, in Tornell’s considered opinion, definitely fit that description.

  Karen Melton, who sat in a chair at the corner of Tornell’s large desk in a way that gave Bird a clear view of her exceptionally nice legs, spoke up. “Dane, perhaps we could review the procedure for a moment. Is that what you need, Detective Bird?”

  “I’m a plainclothes officer, not a detective,” Bird said, mentally sighing. “Yeah, that might help a lot.”

  “For one thing, Officer Bird, there is no paperwork,” she said. “At least, not on an existing policy to which we are adding coverage. In Mr. Levinstein’s case, he would have called us directly and an underwriter would have input the new information directly into his computerized account. It’s a very efficient system. It immediately updates the account information and coverage specifications, generates a confirmation letter to the customer, and automatically becomes part of the billing database. It also serves as a binder, which provides the customer with insurance protection immediately—or, if an expert appraisal was needed, as it certainly would have been here, on an interim, provisional basis.”

  “What about backup?” Bird asked. “You know—duplicate records in case something goes wrong with the computer?”

  It was Tornell’s turn. “There’s no ‘one’ computer, Officer—we have a network of CPUs and data storage banks in a number of locations around the country. Information that is input here, or by any of our sales agencies in the field, is automatically recorded in several secure locations simultaneously. In addition, our underwriting staff is divided into teams targeted at specific geographical areas in any given region. Each team is supported by a senior coding specialist who also receives and stores the incoming account data as it is entered, and confirms that all of the computers on the network have received, processed and recorded the transaction. This means that at minimum, two people are involved with each account activity as it occurs. And in addition, the coding specialist’s data records are compared to the activity files of all the underwriters on a daily basis and computer-matched with each other.”

  Bird pondered for a moment. “So that tells you what goes in. What do you have that tells you if something goes out? I mean, why couldn’t somebody just erase, or change, whatever is in an account?”

  Tornell shook his head. “Once it’s in, it’s in the system permanently. If coverage is changed, canceled or expires, that information is added to the account record. But nobody can delete or alter any files—the system isn’t set up that way.” Tornell smiled to take the sting from his words. “We’re not exactly amateurs in all this, Officer.”

  Bird was stumped. He had run out of questions. While he would have liked to sit longer, particularly when Karen Melton periodically crossed and re-crossed her legs at him, he was very tired of hearing about “foolproof” computerized systems. Computers screwed with people every day, Bird knew; worse, people screwed with people every day, and some of them used a computer to do it. Okay, so maybe Charlie Herndon had a point about Levinstein and his insure-every-goddam-thing hangup.

  And maybe not, Bird thought, but I’m getting nowhere fast, here.

  He stood up. “Well, thanks anyway,” Bird said. “Looks like I took a little drive for nothing.” Tornell gave him a handshake as practiced as the smile that went along with it. Karen Melton walked with Bird back along the corridors, alive with potted plants and adorned with eclectic artwork, through which she had led him when he arrived.

  He walked alongside and slightly behind her, the better to sneak the occasional sidelong glance. She was dressed in a long-sleeved, high-necked, all-business outfit, black with two rows of brass buttons that led from the collar almost to the mid-knee hem of her skirt. It accented a figure Bird would have described as “voluptuous,” had it been a word that featured in his day-to-day vocabulary.

  Bird hated small talk with the passion of someone convinced of a personal ineptitude in a particular area. But the main entrance was not far away—and Karen Melton did have very nice legs. He tried to think of something with which to engage her conversation, and with luck, her interest. They turned at a corner, and he noticed the camera mounted high on the wall.

  “You’ve got better security here than the CIA,” Bird said. “Cameras all tied into the guard station monitors, huh?” He watched the camera pan to follow their progression down the hallway. “Looks like state-of-the-art stuff.”

  Karen Melton nodded grimly.

  “Cost the company a bundle, too,” she agreed. “But it’s the kind of investment that makes everybody feel a lot better, especially after the incident.”

  Bird looked at the woman, puzzled.

  “Incident?” he asked. “What ‘incident?’”

  Melton looked mildly embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just assumed you knew. I guess we’ve all gotten used to not talking about it around here. Two months ago, one of our people was attacked and killed on campus. Right in the parking garage. That’s when the company got very concerned about security. Up until then, things were a bit more informal around here.”

  Bird felt his scalp tighten. It was a tingling sensation he recognized from other moments of impending excitement, and he was reasonably certain it had nothing to do with the proximity of Karen Melton.

  “Who was the victim?” he asked, and at that exact instant realized he already knew part of the answer.

  “She was one of our coding technicians,” Melton answered. “A young woman named Rebecca Hunt.”

  Chapter 22

  “I appreciate you coming up here again,” I said, braking to avoid an elderly man with a walker who haltingly inched across the street at my bumper. “But I feel bad that you’re taking your lunch hour to do it.”

  “Nah,” said Phil Sozcka, and I could see the color rise on his cheeks again. “I don’t mind.”

  He looked out the window of my LeMans at the noontime throng on Devon Avenue. Without turning his head, and trying to make it sound as casual as possible, he added, “I was thinking, maybe…you know Officer Posson pretty good, right?”

  I glanced over at the Chicago policeman. A blush was spreading up the back of his neck, and I could not fight down the urge to tease him, just a bit.

  “Oh, yeah; good cop, and a great
dancer to boot. Too bad she couldn’t come along this time.”

  Sozcka made a noise that might have been assent, and was silent for the next few blocks.

  “Heard the man walked,” Sozcka said, and the commiseration in his voice was only partly professional. “I’d have been glad to come up and go on the stand, you know.”

  I shrugged. “Would have been a waste of time anyway,” I said. “All we really had was him hitting the woman, and she declined to press. And because he was out the window before we entered and announced, the judge tossed the flight charge. All we had left was a material witness warrant that was shaky in the first place, and Sonnenberg could have had a lot cheaper lawyer get that vacated.”

  “If it was all that loose, how come you busted the guy?”

  “If he hadn’t forced our hand by taking off, we probably wouldn’t have,” I admitted. “As it was, we were lucky. At least the judge didn’t charge us with false arrest.”

  “Way you knocked Sonnenberg on his butt,” Soczka said, and the wistful tone of his voice made me regret having teased him about Terry Posson, “the judge might’ve been afraid to try.”

  • • •

  The door Sozcka had kicked open the previous day was closed, and an unpainted strip of hardwood trim had been inexpertly attached as reinforcement near the lockset. Scocka studied it briefly with a critical eye.

  “Not locked— looks like it’s propped shut from the inside,” Sozcka said, “Lady needs a new door as well as a new boyfriend.”

  Once again, he automatically stepped to the side, out of the direct line of fire and nodded to me to do the same. He raised his large fist and knocked, hard. The door rattled, loose in its frame.

  He listened for a response; there was none.

  “I should have called first, made sure she was here,” I said. “Saved us both the trip.”