The Bubble Gum Thief

by Jeff Miller

  Dagny expected the usual indifference and denial that accompanied her mother’s visits, but this time was different. “My God,” her mother exclaimed, mouth agape. It was enough to scare Dagny. If her mother thought something was wrong, then it was way past wrong.

  After exams, Dagny checked into the Sunny Hill Treatment Center in St. Louis. She spent the first month there envying thinner anorexics, looking down on the bulimics, trading techniques, and finding ways to hide food so that it would look like she was eating. When she dropped from 83 pounds to 72, the medical staff moved her to another wing, where monitors watched her eat and the bathroom doors wouldn’t lock. Though it helped change her behavior, it didn’t change her mind. It took the death of Becky Ettinger to do that.

  Becky was a mirror image of Dagny—a brainy white girl from the suburbs, just one year older, an inch shorter, and five pounds lighter. Dagny didn’t know her well—they’d spent one evening bonding over music and another playing checkers. One morning, Becky was gone—her bed cleared, her belongings gathered. A rumor spread that Becky had escaped—that she had slipped out in the middle of the night and caught a bus, heading somewhere west. Maybe California. But then another rumor spread that Becky had died from cardiac arrest. Becky’s roommate confirmed it. Twenty-one and dead.

  Dagny spent the next two months trying to change.

  She left treatment healthier and far more self-aware than when she had entered. Armed with tools to carry her forward, she was determined not to backslide. She had learned that a healthy diet and lifestyle could require just as much discipline as starvation, and that reaching the concrete goal of 120 pounds could be satisfying in a way that “thinner” never was. For a while it worked.

  Three. “You haven’t eaten in a week.” Julia dragged a chair over from a neighboring study carrel. “You’re scaring me, Dagny.”

  “That’s not true.” Dagny had eaten some nuts that morning and a bowl of cereal the day before.

  “I mean a meal.”

  “Do we have to do this here?” The Harvard Law School Library hardly seemed like the place for an intervention.

  “No. Let’s go to student health.”

  “Not interested. I have to study.”

  “How much do you weigh?”

  “What?”

  “How much do you weigh?” Julia asked.

  “How much do you weigh?” Dagny retorted.

  “One eighteen.”

  Really? That seemed so high, Dagny thought. She didn’t look that big.

  “How much do you weigh, Dagny?”

  “Ninety-nine,” she said, adding ten pounds to the real number.

  “If you’re going to lie and make up a weight, you should pick one that’s reasonable. Even if you were ninety-nine, that would be way too low.”

  No, it would have been too much.

  “Come with me.”

  “I don’t want to, Julia.”

  “You know you’re not healthy, don’t you?”

  “No.” Maybe.

  “Come with me.”

  Four. “You’re getting too bony.”

  “What?” They were under the sheets. His hand was on her hip bone.

  “You’re all bone, Dag. You need to gain some weight.”

  “So you want me to get fat, Nick? That’s what you want?”

  “Calm down, for crying out loud. I’m just saying that you’re too skinny. You need to put on a little, that’s all.”

  “How much should I weigh, Nick? What do you want me to be?”

  “I don’t know. How much are you supposed to weigh? Aren’t there guidelines for that sort of thing?”

  She pulled his hand off her hip. “So you don’t find me attractive?”

  “No, of course I do.” He kissed her cheek, then her neck. “But you’re too skinny, that’s all. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t eat for my sake.”

  It wasn’t for his sake. It was just who she was. She liked it when her hip bones stuck out from her body. She liked it when she could look in the mirror and count her ribs. She liked it when bracelets fell off her wrists, or when a shirt from the juniors’ department fit comfortably.

  She liked being anorexic.

  She knew it was a problem, and she vowed to change. But she didn’t change fast enough for Nick.

  Five. “I think we need to talk.”

  Dagny didn’t like the sound of that. “About what?”

  “You know I like you. I mean that, Dagny.”

  “I don’t like the start of this.”

  “Well, you need to know that. You’re one of the best agents I’ve got. Which makes this—”

  “Am I in trouble?”

  He took a deep breath. “Did you eat anything today?”

  So it was this.

  Six. They sat in a window seat at the Waterfront, a posh steak house on a barge parked along the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. She ate most of her salad and some of her salmon, and it was more than she had eaten all week. They didn’t talk about her weight or Roberto Altamont. They talked about movies and college and music and travel. Still, she wondered how long Victor had been planning his intervention, and how he could have known that forcing her onto a scale would be so effective. Numbers meant something to her that words didn’t. They were facts, not characterizations; they were statistics, not generalizations. Words were words, but numbers were real. She realized that maybe she was ignoring Julia’s calls, and her mother’s, not because she was so busy with the case but because she knew she was in trouble again. Was she running from them? Running from help?

  After dinner, they checked into the Marriott. Dagny showered, then tossed on a robe and climbed into the bed with her computer. Lieutenant Beamer had sent her an e-mail with the scan from the sketch artist attached. It looked like George Clooney.

  An invitation to video chat flashed on her screen, and Dagny accepted. She caught the Professor up on their interview with Waxton and his identification of a man who looked like George Clooney.

  “Gerry Cooney?”

  “No, George Clooney.”

  “I don’t know who that is. My source in the lab was finally able to get me results from the prints.”

  “From the copy of In Cold Blood?”

  “Yes. They’re a match.”

  “Who?”

  “The prints belong to an agent.”

  “You mean one of Fabee’s idiots touched the book before I got to it?”

  “No. A retired agent. Jim Murgentroy,” he replied. “Pack your bags. You’re going to Nashville.”

  CHAPTER 34

  April 9—Nashville, Tennessee

  From a distance, Jim Murgentroy’s home in the Nashville hills appeared to be crumbling, less a dwelling than a small barn or shack sheltering a moonshine still. Largely obscured behind overgrown trees and shrubbery, its weathered plank walls were irregular and crooked. The whole thing looked as if it would topple in a light breeze.

  Two large dark sedans belonging to the Bureau—Bucars—were parked in the gravel drive in front of the house. Dagny parked next to them and Victor knocked on the door.

  Fabee answered. “I figured.”

  She was surprised when he let them in.

  Despite the ramshackle exterior, the inside of the house was rich and refined, open and airy. Shined blond hardwood floors, red interlocking molding around the ceilings and doorways, Japanese fusuma sliding doors made of bamboo and rice paper. And books. Thousands of books, filling the built-in shelves that lined nearly every wall of the house, even in the bathroom and kitchen. Murgentroy was in the living room, slumped on a plush purple couch. Three male agents stood over him. Fabee motioned for Dagny and Victor to join them.

  Jim Murgentroy was drinking a glass of wine, and from the way he was spilling it, she guessed it wasn’t his first. He looked about fifty. The wrinkles on his face cut deep. Murgentroy’s eyebrows were thick and bushy. He hadn’t shaved in a few days, and his hair hung down to his collar in the back. Despite his dishevele
d appearance, he was a tall, strapping man, and Dagny could see the former agent in him.

  Two of the agents with Fabee looked familiar to Dagny. One was tall and thin, the other was tall and fat. Maybe she’d seen them among the Fabulous in Salt Lake, huddled in front of the Silverses’ house. The third agent was bald, short, and stocky. He had a thin mustache, wore a tan overcoat, and waved a lit cigar in his hand. He spoke with a high, squeaky voice. “Jimmie, we’re just asking for you to help us out. No one thinks you did it.” The agent raised his cigar to his mouth and puffed smoke toward Murgentroy, then reached into his inside pocket and found another cigar. He rolled it between his fingers—a neat trick—and then extended it in Murgentroy’s direction.

  Murgentroy shook his head. “I don’t smoke them anymore, Jack.”

  “There ain’t much left in life if you can’t enjoy a nice cigar every now and then.” Jack held it in front of Murgentroy for a few seconds, but Murgentroy didn’t bite. Jack put the cigar back inside his coat pocket.

  “The smoke messes up the wood,” Murgentroy said, slurring his words.

  “Nah,” Jack said, walking toward the bookshelves along the back wall. He ran his index finger along the spines of the books. “Nice collection, by the way,” Jack said, punctuating it with a ring of smoke.

  Murgentroy laughed, then grabbed his glass, splashing more wine onto the table. “I told you the book was mine, jackass.”

  “But that’s not what we’re asking.”

  “If the Bureau didn’t want me, why should I want to help it?”

  Jack blew a big puff of smoke. “Because you don’t want to go to jail.”

  Murgentroy jumped up from the couch and hurled his glass over Jack’s shoulder; it exploded against the bookshelves. Dagny jumped to avoid the flying shards. One landed on Victor’s arm and he brushed it off. No one said anything. Jack kept puffing on his cigar. Murgentroy sat back down on the edge of the couch and buried his face in his hands. Fabee and the other two agents stood perfectly still.

  Finally, Jack walked around the coffee table and sat on the couch next to Murgentroy. He reached into his pocket, retrieved the cigar, and offered it again. Hand trembling, Murgentroy grabbed the cigar and placed it in his mouth. Jack pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the cigar for him. After a few puffs, Murgentroy seemed to calm.

  “Now look, Jimmie. Someone wants us to think you killed a family in Salt Lake City. We have a plane ticket in your name from Nashville to Salt Lake before the crime, and one after the crime coming back. Plus, we’ve got you on a flight from Cincinnati to DC right after the bank robbery and before the murder in Georgetown. Now me? I don’t think you did it. But the appearance of the whole thing...Plus, you live like a hermit. Nobody’s seen you in months. Now, I know it’s not you. But I need to know how someone got that book with your prints from your shelf. If I get that, then maybe I can find how he flew under your name. But I need to know about the book.”

  Murgentroy rolled the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other—another neat trick, Dagny thought—then reached toward the table for his wineglass and laughed when it wasn’t there. “In the last year, I’ve read probably five hundred books. I’m reading two a day. Three sometimes, if I’m not sleeping. I had seven copies of In Cold Blood, each a different edition, including a pristine first printing. I don’t know who took the seventh copy, but I’m damn glad he left me the first. As for who could have taken it, I can’t help you there, but I wouldn’t be inclined to even if I knew.” Murgentroy looked up at Dagny and Victor, tilted his head and squinted a little. “I don’t know you two, but I’m Jim Murgentroy. You can call me Jimmie. I used to be one of you.”

  Dagny nodded at the former agent. He smiled back. She wondered what awful thing had led him to retreat to a world of expensive books and cheap wine.

  Fabee tapped Jack on his shoulder, then took his place on the couch. “I’m on your side, Jimmie. But how can I clear you if you won’t help me?”

  “Do what agents do, Justin. Watch me.”

  The six of them gathered on Murgentroy’s gravel driveway. The tall, skinny agent stood on Fabee’s right; the tall, fat one on his left. Jack paced back and forth, puffing on his cigar. Victor and Dagny leaned against Fabee’s car, which seemed to bother him, so Dagny leaned back more.

  Fabee folded his arms and stared back at Murgentroy’s house, shaking his head. “Bones and Chunky will take midnight to eight. Dagny and Victor have eight to four.”

  “On what?” Dagny asked.

  “Surveillance,” Fabee said.

  “We’re going to watch him twenty-four seven?”

  “Through the fifteenth. See what happens.”

  Fabee was effectively pulling them from the case again. “You’ve got a hundred men on this case! You don’t need to stick us here.”

  “It’s my case, Dagny. You should be glad I’m putting you at the center of it.”

  “He’s not the guy. You know that.”

  Fabee walked up to Dagny and leaned in close. “Jack and I are taking four to midnight until I get a couple more goons down here. If I’m not too good for this, you sure as fuck aren’t. Christ, I gave you the day shift, you ungrateful bitch!”

  “You shouldn’t be out here either!”

  Fabee stepped back. The red drained from his face, and he smiled. He flashed between crazed and congenial a little too quickly for Dagny’s taste. “He’s a real suspect. He doesn’t have an alibi, and his prints were at the scene. And we’ve got him flying to Salt Lake City and DC.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “You’ve just got tickets in his name. Our man isn’t dumb enough to leave a book with his prints at a murder scene, sticking out from the shelves, begging us to find it. And the wrinkles on his face? Melissa Ryder would have noticed something like that.” Plus, nobody could mistake that man for George Clooney, Dagny thought. Not even a senile old coot like Waxton.

  “Your shift is on,” Fabee said, forestalling negotiation. He ducked into his sedan and emerged with a walkie-talkie. He tossed it to Victor. “Bones has another one,” he said.

  Dagny walked over to the tall, skinny agent, but he shook his head. “I’m Chunky, he’s Bones,” he said, pointing to the tall, fat agent.

  “You’re Chunky and he’s Bones?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I get it,” Dagny said. “What do you call Fabee? Handsome? Einstein?”

  Bones handed Dagny a walkie-talkie. “We call him Boss, which is what you should call him, too.” Bones and Chucky climbed into their sedan and drove off. Fabee started to head to the other sedan, then stopped and turned back to Dagny.

  “Bones used to be skinny and Chunky used to be fat. Then the one went on a diet and the other guy’s wife died and they kind of traded places. But we’d been calling them by their nicknames for so long...who’s gonna change it. As for me, I scored fifteen sixty on my SATs. And since you only managed a fourteen ninety, I don’t think you’re in a position to denigrate my intelligence.” Fabee and Jack walked over to their Bucar, climbed in, and drove away.

  Standing next to Dagny, Victor pressed the transmit button on his walkie-talkie and his voice came from Dagny’s. “You were kind of a bitch,” his voice boomed, peppered with static. “I’ll camp in the woods behind the house.”

  Dagny nodded, agreeing to both statements, and Victor ran to the back of the house. Dagny hopped onto the hood of the Impala and leaned against the windshield, staring up at the front porch. The drapes parted and Murgentroy waved, sipping another glass of wine. She knew that a lot of agents retired to lives of family and travel, but she worried that her path would end, like Murgentroy’s, with loneliness and solitude.

  “Hey,” Victor called over the walkie-talkie. “I bought a sandwich for you at the airport. It’s in my bag in the car.”

  “Thanks.” She’d had a bowl of Cheerios that morning, along with a banana and a glass of orange juice. It would be a few hours before she was hungry again.

&n
bsp; “Are you going to get it?”

  “Yes.” Maybe later.

  The worst part of practicing law had been sitting on a folding chair in a windowless warehouse, sifting through thousands of documents, looking for something that didn’t exist. The worst part of the Bureau was sitting on the hood of a car, watching a house, waiting for something that wasn’t going to happen. Her eyes rolled left across the front of the house—window, window, door, window, window, carport—and then back again—carport, window, window, door, window, window. Back and forth. Like a typewriter...tap, tap, tap, return. She listened to the breeze blowing through the leaves. A squirrel running across a branch. The hum of a car on the road down the hill. A plane flying overhead. Her own breath, in and out, in and out. All the while, her eyes moving...tap, tap, tap, return.

  The fifteenth of April was only six days away.

  Static, then Victor’s voice. “This is boring.”

  Transmit. “The good news is that you can retire in twenty years with a pension.”

  Another plane buzzed above. A dog barked in the distance, at first loud and ferocious, then just a sad whimper. She saw a flicker of light through one of Murgentroy’s windows—the flashing images of a television screen. A glance at her watch. Three more hours until the end of their shift. Three hours until she could—

  Victor screamed.

  Not an alert or a call for help. He screamed like someone who’d been hurt.

  Dagny drew her gun from its holster and jumped from the hood of the car. She sprinted to the side of the house and ducked down behind the bushes. She started a slow, careful crawl toward the back corner, but the sound of two gunshots sent her into a dash. When she rounded the corner, she saw Victor lying on the ground fifty feet away, at the edge of the back woods. Murgentroy stood on the patio with his rifle raised in Victor’s direction. He didn’t see Dagny.