Bad Bird (v5)

by Chris Knopf

  “This would not stand up in federal court because I’m making too many artistic assumptions. The wizards in intelligence would know it was a righteous enhancement, but any half-baked defense lawyer would tear my technique to shreds.”

  “Defense lawyers don’t tear people to shreds,” I said. “We peck them to death.”

  What we saw emerge was Eugenie’s Harley. More important, with Matt Jr. sitting on it.

  “So now we know where the Harley came from in the first place,” I said. “It was probably Matt Jr.’s, and he left it in the garage when he split the scene.”

  “But that’s still not the most interesting part,” said Randall.

  “You’re taking a long time to get to the point,” I said. “This is uncharacteristic.”

  He looked up from the screen.

  “Much of the beauty is in the process, not just the outcome.”

  “He’s right,” said Harry, transfixed.

  I sighed.

  Randall went back to the screen and clicked his mouse.

  “Let’s go back to the original image of Matt Jr. and his Harley at the motorcycle rally. Notice this guy.”

  He used his cursor, which was a little arrow after all, to point at someone standing in front of Matt’s bike. With another series of clicks he zoomed in on the figure, which quickly started to lose its definition. Randall fiddled with the clarity and contrast, then asked us to stand and move about ten feet away from the computer screen.

  “Sometimes it’s better to move back than to zoom in,” he said. “Who do you see?”

  We were all quiet as we stared at the screen.

  “I have no idea,” said Harry.

  “I do,” I said.

  “I knew you would,” said Randall.

  “Who, who?” asked Harry.

  Randall went back to the keyboard and brought up the photo of the fund-raiser from Eugenie’s memory card. Then he cropped out one of the attendees and superimposed the image next to that of the figure at the motorcycle rally, who was grinning and holding up a beer. Then he cropped out the ghostly image from Eugenie’s photo of Delbert’s that I found on her memory card and put it alongside the others. All three cropped portraits, side by side.

  “Benson MacAvoy,” said Harry.

  “Voilà,” said Randall.

  “It could all be just an illusion,” I said. “Those are pretty fuzzy images.”

  Randall looked up at me.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  “I think it’s Benson MacAvoy and that it’s inadmissible in county and state court, much less federal court, but who cares. Randall, you are indeed a samurai of the digital image.”

  “Thank you,” he said, in that neutral, Native American way he had.

  “Bastard lied to me,” I said. “Implied he’d only known Eugenie as an adult, as the pilot of his air taxi. But here he is with Matt Jr., then Eugenie, when they were all basically kids.”

  Randall rose up from his chair. Though several inches shorter than Harry, he was still like a redwood tree standing next to me.

  “Who wants Jolt and who’s for Mountain Dew?” he said.

  I climbed into his chair and took control of the mouse while he and Harry concocted some sort of evil brew out of available materials. I clicked around the thumbnails until I came to the original Chronicle photograph of the motorcycle rally from which Randall had extracted Matt Jr.’s and Benson’s images. I created the little cropping box around the two of them, then expanded it to include a few more people standing by. I moved this image into a separate window, opened it up, and made it a little bigger. Then I did as Randall had instructed before. I stood up and moved away from the screen. Now well versed in the visual tricks of highly pixilated images, I saw him immediately, standing right behind Benson.

  My brother, Billy O’Dwyer, also grinning and holding up a beer.

  18

  Joe Sullivan left a message on my office voice mail that they’d tracked down the sender of the death threat, and to call back as soon as I could. There was a dilemma. The cops rarely like you discovering things before they do. This is a lesson I never stop learning. On the other hand, they hate wasting time even more.

  I decided to just face the music and call.

  “It’s the Great Khan, but you probably already know this,” said Sullivan. “Assuming Randall Dodge is as good as he’s supposed to be.”

  “He is.”

  “Does he have a close working relationship with the plainclothes division of the Nassau County seventh police precinct?”

  “I don’t believe he does.”

  “Then he’s not as good as we are,” said Sullivan.

  “By that criteria, I’m in full agreement.”

  “You should be. My contacts told me they’ve been watching those skin joints for months, rotating undercover people through on a regular basis. There’s all kinds of illegal shit going down there. And they know your boy Khan.”

  “Do they know who jumped on his open e-mail?”

  “No. But now they’re watching. No big deal. They’re there anyway, and it’s a good tip for them. If your perp could do it, so could anybody. We also passed word along to the feds to monitor the Khan’s messages, but don’t hold your breath on that one.”

  It was still morning, plenty of time to dash over to Massapequa. I printed out a map and checked the Khan’s blog, which looked like any other blog, better than most, actually. The content was in English, with full sentences and decent spelling and punctuation, but it made no sense at all. Brilliantly so, because it read rather well.

  Best of all, it had a picture of the Great Khan, who looked for all the world like a guy whose real name was Sid Kronenberg. I printed out that page as well, and the contact pages with maps of the two homeless shelters I could identify in Massapequa.

  Technically, Long Island is bracketed by the Hamptons at one end and Brooklyn/Queens at the other. Although, if you live here, it’s the part in the middle that you think of as the essential place, the one you mean when you say Long Island. It’s Western Suffolk and Nassau Counties. This is the tractless land of single-family houses arranged in grids or along gentle curves that can easily snare the unwary, strip development so brilliantly lit you can see it from Jupiter, expressways and parkways, muscle shirts, comedic accents (only to those who live somewhere else), and some remarkably creative applications of ostentatious jewelry, by men and women alike.

  Because you have to drive through acres of pine barrens that stand like a barrier reef between the Hamptons and the rest of Long Island, it’s easy to feel like we live on our own island, which reinforces the sense of otherness as we drive west, crossing over to the mainland, an alien place.

  Massapequa stood near the center of this universe. I’d been there a few times to depose witnesses for Burton’s criminal cases, so I had a vague sense of how to get around. Since I’d navigated most of my life with a vague sense, I thought this shouldn’t pose much of a problem. And, after all, I had a map and directions.

  The worst part about getting lost, which I did anyway, was having to ask people on the street how to get to the Hot Spot. When I was pushed to describe the place, things got worse.

  “Sure, sugar, now I know what you’re talking about. You a dancer?”

  This caused me to dispense a number of business cards, which I hoped wouldn’t yield too much in the way of fresh trade.

  As Randall had described, the Hot Spot was flanked on either side by a strip club and a porn shop, called, respectively, Salutations and The Gentleman’s Place. I wondered if the gentlemen who frequented that place favored pipes, ascots, and the London Times, as one would assume from the name. “Salutations” I thought was self-explanatory. Hello, you patsy, you degenerate, you pathetic sexist lonely heart.

  A single parking lot served the complex. I got as close as I could to the Hot Spot, but still had to walk past a corner of the club where some of the girls were leaning on a metal rail smoking cigarettes. They all w
ore long coats that on a different type of professional you’d think were out of season. I waved as I walked by, and they all waved back, one saying, “Hi, doll.”

  Compared to the inside of the Hot Spot, Randall’s place was lit by Klieg lights. It took a while for my eyes to adjust well enough to locate the operator, who sat behind a counter just to the right of the door. I stumbled over to him and introduced myself.

  “I’m looking for one of your regular customers. Sid Kronenberg, also known as—”

  “The Khanster. No question. Here all the time. When he’s not aligning the magnetic fields that contain the Universal Force.”

  As my pupils stretched to their maximum diameter, I was able to make out some of the guy’s features, not happily. His face was a fleshy oval—high forehead, little nose, and no chin, a deficiency exaggerated by a penciled-on moustache and goatee. His voice came out through his nose, and was about three registers higher than Randall’s, which explained why Randall had thought he was talking to a kid over the phone.

  “Is he here now?”

  “Are you from Social Services?” he asked.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Tell them to get that son of a bitch into a bathtub. I don’t mind the rants, but the stink is over the line.”

  “I will. Where do you think I can find him?”

  I saw a shadowy shrug.

  “No idea. Under a bridge somewhere, I guess. Or picking up bottles and cans. Gotta get the money somewhere for the online time.”

  “Does he have a favorite computer?” I asked, peering blindly into the room.

  “Number three if he can get it.”

  He flicked on a tiny LED flashlight that lit up the number three on what I took to be the outside of a cubicle.

  “Do other patrons ask for number two or number four whenever Sid’s in three?” I asked.

  “That’s what everybody wants to know,” he said.

  “Everybody?”

  “First some guy on the phone who was all over the Khan thing, then a couple cops from the seventh precinct who made me turn on the lights so they could do whatever nonsense they wanted to do back there. Freaked the hell out of the customers.”

  “So do they? Ask to sit next to Sid?”

  “Not to my knowledge. Or if it happens, I don’t remember the details,” he said, instinctively following the advice I’d given Ross and Sullivan.

  “Anyone in three now?”

  “Nope.”

  “Mind if I take a look?”

  “Knock yourself out. Take this,” he said, handing me the flashlight, which turned out to be built into a pen. I shot it in the same general direction, and felt my way in the dark. At this point, I could see the outer walls of the room, reflecting the glow of computer screens, which helped establish my bearings. I reached number three and squeezed between it and number two and sat down in front of the screen. I looked around the near pitch black and thought, This is a ridiculous waste of time. But then I thought, This is also where the person who threatened me launched his poison. Who was likely the same person who attacked me, or at least was in cahoots with him. So it might have been a waste of time, but it wasn’t ridiculous.

  Right then a guy next to me moaned and said, “Oh, yeah,” prompting me to work my way back to the front door. I handed over the mini-flashlight.

  “Why’s the Khan so popular all of a sudden?” the guy asked. “He’s not like the Unabomber or some shit, is he?”

  “If you see him, please give him my card. I just want to talk to him.”

  The guy acted like he could read the card in that light. Maybe he could. Maybe he’d already evolved the ability to perceive lettering in the dark, sensing the words through his fingertips.

  “That’s cop speak for ‘The Khan knows something or did something he shouldn’t have done,’ ” said the guy. “Any lame ass would know that.”

  “Mr. Kronenberg is actually more the victim in this case, in a manner of speaking. So yes, he might know something that would be helpful. Can you give him my card?”

  “Sure. If you promise me you’ll hose him down. With Clorox.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Back outside, I was grateful to be out in the light, nearly blinded though I was. A man in a business suit brushed past me on his way in, caught between averting his face and looking at what sort of woman would be a Hot Spot customer. A frustrated woman, as it turned out, but not for reasons he might have imagined.

  It took another tortured effort to find Hope Haven, one of two homeless men’s shelters on my list, in terms of time spent wandering the streets of Massapequa, though not so much in asking directions. Everyone probably assumed I was Social Services, and I let them.

  The guy manning this counter also had a goatee, but what a difference a chin makes. The goatee was black, and the man was tall, trim, and hard as a hickory branch. I could see this from his arms, exposed by his black T-shirt and covered in prison tats. On his head was a thin, black knit cap entirely disguising what was underneath. His handshake was a knucklebuster, not unlike Benson MacAvoy’s.

  “I’m looking for the Great Khan,” I told him. “I’m a representative of the Universal Force, and we’re concerned that we haven’t heard from him in a few days.”

  “He’ll be relieved,” he said, in a coarse but calm voice. “It’s not easy being the only archangel in North America. Sometimes you feel so alone.”

  “What’re your special powers?” I asked.

  “Seeing through the transparent contrivances of law enforcement,” he said, using the tips of his fingers to tap out a rhythm on the surface of his desk.

  We studied each other for a few moments. If we’d been a pair of dogs, tails would be wagging, but hackles slightly ruffled.

  “You better polish up on the powers, friend,” I said. “I work the other side.” I handed him a card, the one that emphasized defense attorney.

  “You Sid’s lawyer?” he asked.

  “It’s not like that,” I said. “It’s a case I’m working on. Sid might know something that would help. Or he might not. That’s all.”

  “The cops have been around saying the same thing.”

  “Nobody wants to hassle the guy. Trust is a hard thing to convey in just a few minutes, isn’t it?” I added, suddenly struck by how true that was. I’d lied, or at least undersold the truth, so often that it got easy to believe any means were okay if the ends were pure. Yet for the people being lied to, does that really make a difference?

  “It is,” he said.

  So I abandoned all technique and simply told him the truth, that someone had become aware that Sid frequently walked away from his computer while he was on his e-mail, and had jumped on that opportunity to create a new address on Sid’s account so he could write a death threat. To me.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “In a nutshell. Your local cops are on it because my local cops are trying to look after me, because even though we’re usually on opposite sides of the contest, they like me, I think, sort of. Or they’re operating under the principle that she might be a pain in the ass, but she’s our pain in the ass.”

  The guy was wavering, so I sat on the edge of his desk and took a pen out of his shirt pocket. I used it to write in the margins of the official-looking form he’d been filling out: “A little trust won’t kill you. Might even do you some good.”

  “Have we met?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re acting like we have.”

  I stood up from the desk.

  “You’re right. I’m being presumptuous. And impetuous, which is a problem of mine. I’m working on it in my spare time. Meanwhile, I’d really like to have a sit-down with Sid Kronenberg. You can be there if you want. In fact, I’d prefer you were. For Sid’s sake as well as mine.”

  The guy stuck out his hand.

  “Marshall,” he said.

  “Jackie.”

  “Come with me.”

  I follo
wed him out the back door of the storefront office to a small parking lot, where I got into his rusty GMC pickup with barely a hesitation. He said I could pick whatever I wanted on the radio, but I opted for nothing. The truck smelled floral; the exact type, a florist could have probably deciphered, but I hadn’t a clue. So I asked.

  “My sister uses the truck to bring lavender out from the North Fork,” he said. “I don’t know what she does with it after that, but I do like the meat loaf and gravy dinners she gives me in return.”

  “Where did you do your time?” I asked.

  “Sanger first round. Hungerford second. About a nickel each. For the record, I was falsely accused on both occasions. But I did my civic duty and served my sentences without complaint.”

  “Do you know Matt Birkson?”

  “I thought this was about Sid Kronenberg.”

  “It is. Just curious,” I said.

  “You might be curious, but not just. Yes. I know Matt. Checking my bona fides? Everybody knows Matt.”

  “Ever meet his kids?”

  He looked at me with a strangely sympathetic look.

  “You talking about little Matty? Man, that’s a long time ago. Ball of fire, that kid. Only time I saw the old man soften up, the time I said he had a fine-looking boy. Put his arm around the kid and nearly smiled. Kid had the look of trouble in his eyes, despite all that. I remember it clear as a bell.”

  “What about the girl, Eugenie?” I asked.

  He shook his head.

  “Heard she had the same devil in her, but never had the pleasure.”

  “So what’s the deal with Sid. Mental illness–wise.”

  “Schizophrenia. Pretty full blown. Has trouble separating reality from delusion, though he’s pretty well organized even in that state. The Great Khan thing is pretty well developed, loopy though it is. I think there’s also an underlay of bipolar disorder, mostly manifest in the manic state, though I’ve seen him dive into the dumps.”

  “You a shrink?” I asked.