by Dave White
Turning it down, I said, “Where to?”
The street was empty and I pulled out of my parking spot. In the rearview, Blanchett followed.
“Drew University,” Daniels said.
“You could have told me that ten minutes ago.”
“I like watching you get nervous.”
My mind flashed to Diane Peterson rolled in a tight carpet, resting in front of the entrance. I didn’t want to go back, and I had no idea why Daniels and Blanchett were taking me there.
“Do I have to call my lawyer?” I asked.
“You should have done that when you were taking your sweet time drinking the coffee.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess you’re right.”
I made a right turn at the corner and headed toward the campus.
Chapter 45
“Park in the visitors’ lot,” Daniels said.
“Not on the street?”
“Nah.”
I turned the car onto a small drive that led through a gate. A security guard watched us approach. I told him we were just visiting, wanted to take a tour. He handed us a one-day parking pass. Behind us, I noticed Blanchett flash his badge and get in without a pass.
We took the first available parking spot, up against a small bush. Getting out, we watched Blanchett circle the lot for another open spot.
“What happened to your face?” Daniels asked. She wasn’t even looking at me.
“Fell down the stairs.”
She said, “That’s what they all say.”
Blanchett parked and made his way across the lot toward us. In one hand he carried a manila folder. He ran the other through his hair and surveyed the surroundings as he walked, like he was expecting to be ambushed. I wasn’t sure who worried me more, the cop who was all about the job, expecting anything to happen, or the cop who was too cool for school.
“You guys going to tell me what’s up?” I asked when he reached us.
“Walk with us,” Daniels said. She was running the show.
They started off toward the campus. I stayed put. When they turned to see why I wasn’t walking with them, I said, “No.”
Blanchett swore.
Daniels took the classier route, saying, “Excuse me?” Like someone just took a shit on her foot.
For a moment, I didn’t say anything. I let them stare at me, see if they could figure it out. Off in the distance I could hear a Dave Matthews song bouncing off the buildings. Commuter campus, dorms, you couldn’t get away from the guy no matter what college you went to. “Walk with us,” Daniels said again, a little more oomph this time.
“No,” I said. Before she could say anything else, I added, “You drag me around like I’m in your dog-and-pony show. I sit in an interrogation room and you watch me drink coffee and don’t say a word. Now you have me drive out here, but you won’t tell me why? We do this here or I’m leaving.”
I had more important things to do. Like find Anne Backes. My earlier curiosity seemed unwarranted.
Blanchett looked at Daniels. Her play. She stared into my eyes, like she was trying to find a poker tell. I wanted her to think I had pocket aces.
She returned Blanchett’s glare and nodded her head toward me. Blanchett sighed and they both came back my way.
“We know what happened with you and the incident the other day,” Blanchett said. “I know I mentioned it before, but we know the whole story.”
“How?”
“We have our ways,” Daniels said, unfortunately not attempting a German accent.
I didn’t laugh. “So, what does that have to do with anything?”
“Public record, we don’t agree with how Detective Martin is handling things,” she said. “But we might be able to use it to our advantage.”
“You’re going to use me?”
“Be nice,” Blanchett said, “if you’d cooperate.”
“What are you talking about?”
Daniels took the manila folder from Blanchett and passed it to me. I didn’t open it.
“Did you know Rex Hanover’s name was a fake?” she asked.
I debated my answers. Nothing to lose now. “Pablo Najera,” I said.
Her eyes bore into me. How long have you known? What else have you been hiding? I knew that look.
“Come on,” I said. “With a name like that, it was the first place I looked.”
I didn’t want them to know about Tracy. “We see shitty names all the time.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Just look at yours.”
I tried to laugh it off. Didn’t work too well. But it worked better than breaking his nose.
“What else do you know?” Daniels said, cutting off the pissing match.
“Not much. He’s involved with Michael Burgess somehow. A few days ago, it seemed like he was on the run. Now it seems like they’re together.”
Blanchett said, “You’ve seen him?”
I pointed to one of my many yellowing bruises. “Son of a bitch. And you didn’t call us?”
I shrugged. “With the concussion and all, I forgot.”
“Asshole.”
“All right,” Daniels said. “You should have told us, Donne.” I shrugged again. “Why am I here?”
“We’ve come across information from a confidential source. And it might come to light at trial.”
“What information?” The folder suddenly felt heavy in my hands. “Look in the file,” she said.
I opened it. There was a picture of Hanover—Najera, though I couldn’t bring myself to call him that—on top of a few official-looking papers. He was in an army uniform carrying a machine gun. The uniform wasn’t American. I flipped through the papers, but they were written in Spanish.
“What the hell is this?” I asked.
A car pulled into the lot, circled, didn’t find a spot, and pulled out. A bird landed on top of my Prelude, checked out its reflection in the chrome, and flew away.
“That is Pablo Najera, when he was a member of the Mexican national army.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” Blanchett barreled in, “that he was a member of the army, but he was discharged.”
“Honorably?”
Daniels shook her head. “Not according to our source.”
“So, what happened?”
“Well, according to our source—”
“Who is your source?” I asked.
Daniels shook her head. “According to our source, a funny thing happens to disgraced Mexican soldiers. They become hit men for Mexican drug lords.”
My blood ran cold. “And Najera?” I said, finally acknowledging the name.
“Became a hit man. But apparently, he got fed up with the Mexican drug lords and came to New York to find work,” Blanchett said.
“And he hooked up with Burgess.”
They nodded in unison. They looked like marionettes.
“So, what am I supposed to do with this information?” I asked. Daniels cleared her throat. “You gave it to us.”
“When?”
“When you had your cup of coffee,” Blanchett said. “If this goes to trial, we can’t have our source on the stand. So we need you.”
“You’re going to fake a witness?”
“It’s plausible. You witnessed the murder. You’re a private investigator. You got curious, did a background check. Came up with this,” Daniels said.
“I don’t know.”
Daniels frowned. “This is more than you would have ever known. We gave you information on a silver platter. You don’t really expect us to give you that for nothing?”
“I need to think about it.”
“Take tonight. Otherwise, we won’t see what we can do about getting your license back in order, maybe even keeping you out of the courtroom.”
“What? I thought the police rumor mill was being selective.”
“Ve haff our vays,” Blanchett said, this time with the German accent.
“Who’s your source? FBI? N
SA? CIA?”
“Someone who could cause a bit of a scandal if he were put on the stand and the press caught wind of it,” Blanchett said.
“Help us out, Donne.”
“Why bring me all the way out here to tell me this?” I asked. Daniels shrugged. “No one around to see. It’s spring break. And I like watching you get nervous.”
They left me there, heading back to the unmarked. It wasn’t until they pulled out onto the main road that I realized they’d left the file with me.
Chapter 46
I walked over to the front gate, file in hand.
The air was cool and the streets were empty. The silence seemed rare for this area. I stared at nothing, remembering the cold, dark night when Diane Peterson was laid there hanging out of the rolled-up carpet.
I wondered about a lot of things. There was a spot of reddish brown on the sidewalk concrete. Could it be some of Diane’s blood? Now that I had more information about Najera, it was clear that this murder wasn’t a lovers’ spat, but a hit on a drug dealer. So why would Najera take the trouble to drag her body out to the gate? Such a public spectacle. And what could Diane have done to cause a hit to be put out on her?
And was Tracy caught up in this as well? Or was she being honest when she said she had to get out?
A small piece of newspaper blew across the sidewalk in the breeze. It twisted and flipped and found a direction to move in, only to be pulled back by a crosswind. It scraped the concrete, then flew out into the road, and was torn in half by an oncoming car. I thought of Tracy the night before, pulling me into her room, kissing me. I thought of Artie begging me to take the case, and Blanchett and Daniels wanting me to play witness. Martin took my license and Jeanne’s memory. I felt like I was going in eight different directions.
Shaking my head, it felt like maybe I needed to get more sleep. Either way, I’d been standing, staring at nothing for too long. Time to get back to New Brunswick.
***
The file sat on the passenger seat, closed. A few times I glanced at it, but there wasn’t any traffic slowing things down enough for me to get a chance to give it any more attention. For once 287 was empty, and the car was pushing ninety.
Half an hour later, car parked and office unlocked, my computer screen lit my face. I was able to resist the allure of Najera’s file in order to look up the Anne Backes information. There were two hundred fifty-three entries on my screen, fifteen of them in New Jersey. I had done an East Coast search to start, just to try and keep the numbers down. Didn’t work too well.
Jersey’s always a good place to start. I picked up the phone, chose a woman in Hawthorne, and got lucky on the first dial.
“Hello?” a creaky voice said, after three rings. “Ms. Backes?”
“Who’s calling?”
“This is Jackson Donne. I’m a—”
“Ah,” she said. “The private investigator. I was wondering when you’d call.”
“You’re expecting me?” Well, that was easy.
“Ever since I heard Gerry died.”
“Well, I was wondering—”
“If you could come and see me? Well,” she croaked, “I don’t see why not.”
She gave me an address, which I scribbled on a Post-it note. I didn’t know Hawthorne well—it was in northern Jersey—but I was excited enough to rush out of the office without getting directions.
***
Union Street was just off Goffle Road in Hawthorne. I didn’t know the area, but eventually I made the correct turns and ended on the right street.
The house, one of crumbling black shingles, faded yellow aluminum siding, overgrown grass, and a rusty fence, was not exactly the shining sight on the block. The rest of the block was spotless, two-story, shiny, expensive houses for their moderate size. This area of New Jersey, this close to New York, the houses sold for three hundred grand at a minimum. If you kept the houses in good shape, like most of the block, you could make a mint.
Pushing the gate open, I stepped directly into dog shit. The first sign that this was going to continue being a hell of a day. I scraped my shoe against the sidewalk, hit the porch, and rang the bell. The wind whistled through a hanging mobile. The metal clinked together, breaking an eerie silence. To my left, a window and a curtain moved slightly.
Finally the door creaked open, revealing a short woman with dark hair, standing straight and confident. She had bags under her eyes and crow’s-feet at the corners. Her laugh lines were deeply set, and her chin showed some loose skin. She looked me up and down. “Thought you might be a Jehovah’s Witness or one of them kids selling candy again. I hate that,” she said. Her voice wasn’t as rough as it sounded on the phone. In fact, it had a tinge of sass that seemed to be her holding on to her youth.
“Ms. Backes? I’m Jackson Donne,” I said.
“I know who you are,” she said. “But I still want to see ID.” I showed my driver’s license.
“No PI license?”
“Long story.” I hoped I could leave it at that.
Once more she eyed me up and down, taking in every wrinkle in my clothes. She pushed the screen door open farther and stepped out of the way. “Come on in,” she muttered.
She wore blue jeans that were loose and a buttonless blouse. The blouse was sleeveless and yellow, as if it went with a blazer. She didn’t wear shoes. Her toe- and fingernails were both painted red.
The house didn’t smell of mothballs, it didn’t smell like steam, it didn’t smell at all. I hoped to find pictures, cards, trinkets, anything that would give me an indication of Anne’s life that would connect her to Gerry. Anything at all.
The house, however, was threadbare. There were pieces of furniture, cabinets and a TV, dark blue carpet, and a few paintings. However, the place looked hastily cleared of memorabilia; motes of dust rested on the wooden furniture, but there were clean spaces on the mantelpiece like there were missing picture frames. As if they’d been recently moved.
“Can I get you anything?”
“No, thanks.”
I took a seat on the couch and nearly sank into the center of the earth. The cushions were fluffy and soft.
Anne must have noticed, because she said, “Comfortable, huh?” She took the easy chair across from me. “I don’t know anything about it. Only what I read in the paper.”
I waited for her to add “so there,” but it never came.
“I’m not interested in last week. I want to know about you and Gerry.”
“What do you mean?” She sat back in the chair, but she didn’t sink.
“First off, how come no one could find you? Whereas I click your name into a computer and an hour and a half later I’m in your living room.”
“Because by the time the computer age came around, no one cared. No one wanted to find me. Before that I wasn’t listed, I moved around a lot.”
I nodded as if this information was very important. It might have been. I didn’t know yet. A dog barked. I looked for it.
“He’s in the yard,” Anne said. “Tell me about Gerry.”
“I hadn’t seen him in years.”
“There wasn’t much in the paper about it, what happened to him.”
“I know. I only saw the obituary.”
I smiled. “Short, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. Didn’t mention me.”
“It didn’t mention you because Gerry didn’t mention you.”
“Did he suffer? Was it quick?”
“He was hit by a car,” I said. Let her make her own conclusions. “Didn’t you go to the funeral?”
“No,” she said, smiling. “Didn’t you?”
I shook my head. “Tell me about Gerry.”
“I told you, I don’t know anything.”
“Tell me about when he was in Korea or when he was acting. Or about when you left him.”
We were dancing, verbally. Neither of us wanted to give away a weakness. I didn’t want to tell her too much, because she might cover up what I wanted to know
, using clues from my questions. She didn’t want to tell me anything because she was suspicious of me. That led me to believe she knew things. Important things.
So we kept dancing.
“You know a lot about Gerry’s past already,” she said. “Not enough.”
“I haven’t seen him in years. At least twenty. What do you want me to say?”
“Just tell me what you do know.”
“That’s very broad, isn’t it?”
“Okay. Why did you leave Gerry?”
“Because he was a terrible father.”
“You left your son with him.”
“Maybe I wasn’t the best mother, either.”
“You weren’t there when your son died. You weren’t at the funeral.”
“How the hell do you know where I was?”
“I was at the funeral. I didn’t see you.”
She smiled, mirthless. “You didn’t see me because I didn’t want anyone to see me.”
“Why so secretive?”
“Because I didn’t want Gerry looking for me.”
And Gerry had obviously gotten that message long before he’d met me. He never mentioned Anne. Never said anything. If he’d wanted to find her by the time he’d met me, he’d have asked me to look for her.
We sat silently for a moment. I formulated my next question; she looked at an ashtray on her coffee table. It was the only item on the table.
“Gerry was an addict,” she said.
“Drugs?” I asked, surprised she’d volunteered anything.
“Not exactly. I mean he smoked weed, but he was an addict. Anything he did he was addicted to it. The army? He didn’t even come home on leave. Acting, at every rehearsal, staying late. Never sitting out, even a matinee. Anything he worked at, he went all the way.” She shook her head.
“Is that why you left him?”
She wiped her mouth. Then she picked up the ashtray and looked at the bottom of it. The ashtray didn’t look used and the room definitely didn’t smell like smoke.
“He never saw our kid . . .” She wiped again, as if trying to catch the words. “Our son. Gerry never saw him. We argued about it all the time, and eventually Gerry got violent. So I left. I wasn’t a good mother, I wasn’t thinking straight. I left him with our son, so he had no choice but to spend time with him. It seemed right at the time. Now I know it was wrong.”
