Longboat Blues

by H. Terrell Griffin

  “I’m Matt Royal, Ms. Turner. I’m interested in a woman who used to work here. I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time.”

  “Certainly. Come on back. I’m not sure how much help I can be, given confidentiality restraints. Who are you interested in?”

  We went through the door behind the receptionist and down a corridor with offices on either side. We turned into the fourth office, which was furnished with a metal desk like the one in front, and a couple of old side chairs.

  “Connie Sanborne,” I said.

  “Forgive the offices, Mr. Royal. We operate on a tight budget and take a lot of government cast-offs for our furniture. May I ask what your interest in Connie Sanborne is?”

  “Did you know her?”

  “I’ve been here since the beginning, Mr. Royal, more than forty years. I know everyone who ever worked here.”

  I gave her one of my cards, one of the real ones that identified me as Matthew Royal, Attorney at Law, Longboat Key, Florida. “I’m looking into the murder of a woman whose name was Connie Sanborne, and I have been told that she worked here some years ago.”

  “Yes, Connie worked here after she graduated from Northwestern. But she married a boy from U of C and moved to Iowa, I think. But I don’t understand. Her husband wrote me a note a few years back saying that Connie had died of breast cancer.”

  “I just left her husband in Des Moines. I don’t think I’m dealing with the same Connie Sanborne, but the murdered woman claimed to have graduated from Northwestern the same year that your Connie did. Yet, the alumni office only has a record of one Connie Sanborne.”

  “What is your interest in this, Mr. Royal, if I may ask?”

  “I’m representing the man who is accused of killing Connie.”

  I pulled out the picture of Connie taken by my pool, and handed it to Ms. Turner. “Is that Connie Sanborne?”

  “Oh, no. This doesn’t look anything like Connie.”

  “Do you recognize this woman?”

  “No. She doesn’t look familiar.”

  “Does the name Vivian Pickens mean anything to you?”

  “Why, yes. She was one of our clients.”

  She looked at the picture again, studying it intently.

  “If you imagine long black hair on the woman in the picture...”

  “Of course,” she interrupted. “This is Vivian. Was she murdered?”

  “The woman in that picture was murdered in Longboat Key about six weeks ago. She used the name Connie Sanborne, though. I’d never heard Vivian’s name until yesterday. You said she was one of your clients. What does that mean? It was my understanding that she worked here.”

  “Mr. Royal, what I’m about to tell you is mostly a matter of public record, and some of it is gossip. But I guess it can’t hurt Vivian now.”

  She told me this story. Vivian Pickens was from somewhere down south. She had come to Chicago when she was sixteen, running from an abusive parent. She waitressed for a while in coffee shops and fast food joints, and began to experiment with drugs. Her salary and meager tips could not keep pace with the drug bills, and one night she had sex with a dealer for a vial of crack. It was easy. She tried this a few more times, and then started sleeping with men for money to feed her growing habit. Within two years of coming to Chicago she was working as a call girl in a ring run by a pimp known as Golden Joe. She sold her body and provided her johns with cocaine. When she was twenty-five, she was arrested and charged with prostitution and the sale of cocaine. She was tried, convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. She had spent four years at the Illinois women’s prison and was released to the Grant Settlement House.

  It was at Grant that Vivian had met Connie, who was the social worker assigned to her. Vivian was an innately intelligent woman and had taken some business and secretarial courses while in prison. She had used those skills at Grant and became sort of an assistant business manager for the foundation. Vivian had been good at it, and was considered a great success. She and Connie were the same age and had become close. Connie once told Ms. Turner that she, Connie, might have ended up the same way Vivian had if she had come from the same background.

  Vivian had spent one year at the Grant, as it was called, and was ready to venture out on her own. She was put on probation and found a job at an accountant’s office a few blocks north of the University. She would stop in periodically, but eventually the visits stopped. Some time after the visits had ended, Vivian’s probation officer called the Grant looking for her. She had missed two mandatory meetings, and a warrant would be issued for her arrest if she missed another.

  A few weeks later Ms. Turner called the probation officer to inquire about Vivian. She was told that Vivian never showed up again, and that a warrant had been issued for her arrest. This was about the same time that Ms. Turner had gotten the note from Dr. Jarski telling her about Connie’s death. She’d had never heard anything about Vivian again.

  “We have a lot of success stories here, Mr. Royal, but we can’t save them all. Some of these women never get their lives straightened out. I thought Vivian would be one who did.”

  “Perhaps she did, Ms. Turner. If the woman in that picture is really Vivian Pickens, she came to Longboat Key as Connie Sanborne and started a new life. She was the sales manager for one of the beach hotels, and she had a lot of friends.”

  Mrs. Turner expressed her regrets about Vivian’s death, and gave me the name and address of Vivian’s probation officer. I thanked her and left the building.

  I sat in my car at the curb and called Bill Lester on my cell phone. After identifying myself to the police department operator, I was put through.

  “Where the hell are you, Matt?” Bill asked.

  “In Chicago. Look, Bill, don’t you routinely fingerprint murder victims?”

  “Sure. Why?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute. But first, tell me if you ran Connie Sanborne’s fingerprints.”

  “I’m sure the medical examiner printed her, but there was no need to run the prints. We all new who she was.”

  “Maybe not, Bill. Do me a favor and run Connie’s prints through the FBI computer.”

  “I guess I can do that, but why?”

  “I don’t think the person we thought was Connie was really named Connie Sanborne.”

  The chief let out a slow exclamation of breath. “Wow,” he said. “Then who the hell was she?”

  “I have an idea, but I’d like you to run those prints for me and let me know what comes up.”

  “Okay. If she was ever printed anywhere, I should have the information in a couple of hours. Where can I reach you?”

  I gave him my cell phone number.

  I suddenly remembered that I had not had breakfast. It was almost mid-morning, and the day was getting hot; an unusually warm Spring in Chicago. I spotted a coffee shop at the corner and left the car and walked down the street. The neighborhood was decaying. The signs were everywhere. Graffiti were on the walls of many of the building, and no attempt had been made to clean it off or paint over it. Some of the buildings were empty, with large slabs of plywood covering the windows. I guessed that thirty years before this had been a neighborhood shopping district with small shops and grocery and hardware stores. Down a side street I saw what must have been a trucking terminal of some kind. There were about a dozen semi trucks backed into a loading dock, but otherwise the street was deserted.

  I opened the door to the coffee shop, which bore a computer printed sign that said, “Home of the bottomless cup of coffee.” A blast of air came shooting down from some kind of overhead contraption, startling me. I shut the door and the air stopped. A waitress standing by the door chuckled. “It keeps the bugs out,” she said. The small restaurant was awash in air conditioning, the cups of coffee before the diners steaming in the cool air. A television set perched on a shelf high up in a corner, placed so the patrons could see it. CNN was running a newscast about Governor Wentworth and his chances of getting his par
ty’s nomination for President. There was a counter along the length of the shop and booths against the window. The counter seats were taken by burly men and two hard looking women. I assumed these to be the drivers of the rigs parked down the block. I was definitely out of place with the lawyer look. They probably thought I was a pimp.

  I took a seat in a booth and ordered eggs over easy with grits and white toast. The waitress, a small boned middle aged woman in a pink uniform and hair net, informed me that she did not have grits, but that I could have hash browns. I told her that was okay. I asked for coffee, no cream. She said, “You can’t get it here without cream. You can get it without milk, though.” She hooted at her joke and walked off.

  I sat and reviewed what I knew. I was feeling a little out of sorts. How could Connie or Vivian or whatever her name was have fooled all her friends so badly? I was a little angry at Connie/Vivian because she had made a fool out of me and the others. Then I mentally kicked myself, thinking, “You idiot. Think what that poor woman must have gone through.” I wondered how Vivian could have turned herself into Connie so easily, but as I thought about it, I knew it wasn’t that hard.

  They were close to the same age, and Vivian knew enough about Connie to handle any idle questions. She knew where Connie was born, so it would have been easy for her to go to Connie’s hometown and get a certified copy of her birth certificate. She probably had access to Connie’s social security number from her work at the Grant, and could adopt it as her own. She would have gone to a driver’s license bureau in Des Moines, identified herself as Connie Sanborne and told them that she had lost her driver’s license. With the birth certificate and proper social security number, she would have had no trouble getting a duplicate license issued. When she got to Florida she would only have had to turn that license in at any Florida Driver’s license office and gotten a Florida license issued. It was simple. With the license and birth certificate, she had a new identity. She also now owned a degree from Northwestern University, and assuming that a prospective employer did not check too far back, she would have no trouble getting a job. Unless you were trying to find employment in a classified government agency, there was not much of a check done on anyone. The human resources manager of the typical employer might send a routine inquiry to the college to make sure that the employee had the degree she said she did, but that would be the end of it. That is about what happened to Connie, I thought. She had made herself into a different person by taking a dead woman’s identity. But why?

  I paid the bill, left the hard joking waitress a three dollar tip, and went outside, again getting a blast of air from above the door. The streets were heating up, with the sun moving almost directly overhead. I took my jacket off and held it over my shoulder. Sweat was beginning to dampen my white dress shirt. I was irritable and the harsh coffee was settling uncomfortably in my stomach. I reached the rental, got in and cranked the engine, turning the AC to high. I sat there for a minute with the door open, letting the car cool down. My phone rang. I reached over to the passenger seat and wrestled the phone out of my inside coat pocket. It was Bill Lester.

  “Shit, Matt. That wasn’t Connie Sanborne we buried.”

  “What did you get, Bill?”

  “Her name was Vivian Pickens. She was busted in Chicago nine years ago and charged with prostitution and possession of cocaine with intent to sell. She was tried, found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. There is a warrant out on her for violation of probation. What the hell is going on?”

  I told him what I had found out. “What I don’t understand,” I said, “is why she ran. According to the people at the half-way house, she was doing fine. Her probation period was about up, and with her skills she could have gotten a good job. She probably could have stayed right there at the Grant.”

  “Who knows,” he said. “Still, Matt, this doesn’t change anything as far as Logan is concerned. It’s no big deal to change the name of the victim on the indictment.”

  “I know, Bill, but this sure makes me curious about Vivian. Do you have anything else on her?”

  “No, that’s it. Name, place of arrest, charges and warrants. That’s about all you get out of the feds. I remember when you couldn’t get that much without weeks of waiting and begging. Ain’t computers grand?”

  “Yeah. Thanks Chief. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Wait a minute. When’re you coming home, and what about Logan?”

  “I’ll be there in a couple of days. We’ll see about Logan.”

  “Take it easy, Matt.” The line went dead.

  The Illinois Probation and Parole office was housed in a nondescript mid-rise building, called the State Office Center, on Michigan Avenue. I found a parking place and walked the two blocks back to the building in a glaring noon day sun. By the time I entered the musty smelling building, I had saturated my shirt with sweat, and my mood was darker than my navy blue suit. I climbed two flights of stairs and entered a large room full of disreputable looking people lounging in the molded plastic chairs. Some were sprawled across several chairs, sound asleep. There was a counter at one end of the room behind which perched several clerks on high stools staring at computer terminals. I approached one, and said politely, “I wonder if you could help me.”

  “Take a number and be seated,” she said, without looking up from her monitor.

  “I need to speak with Will Ledbetter, please. Is he still in this office?”

  “You’ll have to take a number and wait your turn,” she said, still staring at the monitor.

  “What is your name, please?” I inquired, smiling.

  “What do you need to know that for?” she asked, finally looking at me.

  “Because,” I said, “When the director of this department asks me who was rude to the gentleman who chairs the Senate Committee responsible for this office’s budget, I want to be able to give him a name.”

  Her eyebrows went up. Her mouth opened and then closed, then opened again. “Just a moment, Sir. I’ll tell Mr. Ledbetter you’re here. Your name?”

  “Royal,” I said. “Matthew Royal.”

  She picked up the phone, punched in three numbers, and said, “Senator Royal is here to see you, Mr. Ledbetter.” She paused a moment, said, “Yes, sir,” and hung up the phone. “He’ll be right with you Senator,” she said, a pained smile briefly crossing her face.

  A moment later a large black man, wearing a short sleeve white shirt, a paisley tie and a plastic pocket guard in his shirt pocket came lumbering through a side door. He looked at me and asked, “Senator Royal?”

  “I’m Matt Royal,” I said, sticking out my hand. We shook and he asked me to come back to his office. We walked through a maze of cubicles partitioned off by those cloth covered screens that you see in offices everywhere. His office was small and cramped, with a beat up wooden desk covered in papers. There was a vinyl and metal desk chair situated under a grime caked window, and two fold up metal chairs for visitors.

  He motioned me to a seat, and said, “What can I do for you, Senator?”

  “I’m not a senator,” I said. “I’m a lawyer from Florida, and I think I have some information about one of your probationers.”

  “I thought Carol said you were a senator,” he mumbled.

  “I might have led her to believe that in order to get her attention.”

  “Oh, well, what the hell. Carol is probably having one of her bad days. Come to think of it, I don’t remember her ever having a good day. Who do you have information on?”

  “Does the name Vivian Pickens ring a bell?” I asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I remember Vivian. She was one of the smart ones. I thought she’d make it, but one day she disappeared. I never could figure out if she’s hiding or if she’s dead. What do you know about her?”

  “She’s dead,” I said. “You should be getting notification through your normal channels in a few days.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I always liked Vivian, and thought she would make it thro
ugh the program and turn her life around. What happened?”

  “She was murdered about six weeks ago in Longboat Key, Florida. She had been living there for about four years under an assumed name. You were right about her. She did make it. She was the sales manager for one of the beach hotels.”

  “What is your interest in this?” he asked.

  “I’m representing the man accused of murdering her.”

  “Golden Joe?”

  “The pimp? No. Why would you think that?”

  “Joe’s the only one who would have any reason to kill her,” he said.

  “Why would Joe want to kill her?”

  “She testified against him in a murder case. That’s the reason her sentence was reduced and she got the halfway house. Joe was sentenced to life for the murder, but I heard that he got out of prison about four months ago when the Supreme Court said that the prisoners were entitled to early release if they had a clean prison record. Joe only served about nine years.”

  “What can you tell me about Vivian’s involvement in a murder case?”

  “This goes back to about ten years,” Ledbetter said. “Vivian and a woman named Paulette Massilon were working the convention circuit for Golden Joe. He had bellmen and other hotel people on his payroll, and they would steer out of town johns to him. One night Vivian and Paulette worked a deal together. Apparently some high roller liked two girls at a time, and Joe sent Vivian and Paulette to the Lakeview Hotel to meet him. When they got to the room Joe was there with a shitpot load of cocaine he was selling to the john. Apparently everybody snorted a line and Joe left. There was plenty of booze and coke and everybody used some of it all. At some point Vivian passed out, and when she came to, the john was standing over Paulette beating her with the base of a lamp. Vivian passed out again, and when she woke up Paulette was on the floor with her head bashed in. Vivian had been badly beaten as well and was lying on the floor trying to get to the phone when hotel security came busting through the door. Someone had called to complain about the noise.