Dead Wood

by Dan Ames

  “It was going to be her masterpiece,” Clarence said. “Shannon was going to play it at her concert next week.” I’d heard about the concert. Shannon Sparrow was playing a free concert as her way of saying thanks to her hometown. Anna had said she wanted to go. She and the girls both loved Shannon Sparrow. Frankly, give me Tom Petty and some old Stones stuff. But I was already planning to go. The kids would love it, and it was free, right? What the hell. Maybe I’d get myself a pair of Wrangler’s like Clarence and do some line dancing.

  There was something in Clarence’s face I hadn’t seen before. It could have been fear. Or more heartbreak. Or maybe he was lying to me.

  “Any reason you forgot to tell me this?” I said.

  He held his hands wide. “It wasn’t that I had forgotten; I just assumed I would come across the guitar. Jesse told me it was pretty much done.”

  I remembered seeing various guitars in Jesse’s workshop and in her apartment. They’d all looked fairly exotic, the kinds of wood you don’t ordinarily see. I wouldn’t have recognized anything special about any of them.

  “Had she shown it to you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then how—”

  “She told me about it,” he said. “Described the wood. It was the rarest of all the wood she’d ever come across. Worm-eaten, five-hundred-year-old tiger maple. She said the pattern was breathtaking.”

  “But how could you know for sure?”

  “I would know,” he said. “Besides, Jesse said she put Shannon’s name on it at the bridge on the neck. On that little metal buckle.”

  “Maybe she hadn’t gotten around to that part yet.”

  “You have to do it to get as far along as she was. So it was done. Plus, she always put the name on the inside of the body as well.”

  “And you didn’t find it?”

  He shook his head.

  “You looked everywhere?”

  He gave me a look that I’d seen a tiger on the Discovery Channel give a springbok just before he killed it. And ate it.

  “Did you tell the cops?” I said.

  “Not yet.”

  “You should tell them right away.”

  “Does it mean anything?”

  I stood to go.

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The Spook reflected that one of the great things about having worked for the CIA was having access to its infinite supply of handy gadgets. Despite the constant complaining on Capitol Hill regarding lack of budgets and depleted funds, the Spook personally had never seen cutbacks or depleted resources in his area of expertise. In fact, never once had he requested a certain new technology and had it denied due to lack of money.

  Take, for instance, the handheld modem and miniature computer screen. The public sector had never seen anything like it—and wouldn’t for years—but the Spook had gotten it quite some time ago. It was a true miracle of modern technology. It was about half the size of a normal laptop and weighed next to nothing.

  You just got a dial tone on the phone, clamped the circular receptor over the mouthpiece, hit “receive” on the keyboard, and an internal modem automatically connected you to any one of several hundred available clandestine mailboxes via the Internet. The connection itself was encrypted and routed through no fewer than a hundred breakers and transferring stations, making it virtually impossible to find out the original location of the source.

  He waited a moment for the connection to establish and instantly an encrypted message arrived, which was then descrambled. The message itself was gibberish unless you knew what it meant. If one were to break the code of the message—a task in and of itself that would require hundreds of man hours—it would have no understandable meaning.

  It was the best way for the Spook to communicate with his customers. And it provided the absolute faceless interaction he needed to not just do business but to stay alive.

  And, best of all, it had been provided by the government of the United States.

  Life was good.

  Now at the corner of Gratiot and 6 Mile Road, the Spook used the technology to access his e-mail account. He had twenty-one new messages, all of them junk mail. With every one of his mailboxes, he made sure he got on the list of annoying solicitors who spray the Internet with sales messages like a dog with a dysfunctional bladder. Should certain people decide to take an interest in his account, the spam would make their jobs all that much tougher.

  The Spook scanned down the list until he saw the message he was looking for.

  It read: “Thank you for your interest in Midwest Condos, Inc. We’re happy that you’ve arrived and are interested in looking into our offerings. We have an especially nice unit near the Village that suits your needs. Let us know your expected arrival and completion of the enrollment requirements, and you’ll qualify for a cash bonus! Units are moving faster than anticipated.”

  That’s the beauty of junk mail—no one really paid any attention to it. And even if someone were to glance at it, in this case, no one would know what it really meant.

  To the Spook, however, it was all very simple. Midwest Condos was his Grosse Pointe client—the same one he’d done some work for a few years ago. And the “unit” near the village was clearly a reference to someone his client had been keeping an eye on from the ordeal a couple years back. His client had decided not to have the Spook take care of the target as, at the time, it was deemed unnecessary. Now, apparently, that may have changed.

  He quickly typed back a response to several messages—again throwing more confusion and red herrings—then clicked on the one from Midwest Condos and wrote: “Thank you for your message. Will appraise unit as soon as possible and let you know when I’ve completed my inspection.”

  The Spook hit “send,” waited a moment, and then unhooked the contraption. He smiled to himself, loving it when clients got nervous. It usually resulted in a bigger paycheck. Besides, he wasn’t worried. He’d been keeping an occasional eye on John Rockne, and the man was making progress faster than he’d expected, but in the exact direction he’d steered him. So there was nothing to worry about.

  He’d play with him a little longer, make him sweat a little more, and then feed him just enough rope to hang himself.

  It was a game the Spook loved to play.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “I need a phone number,” I said into my cell phone. I doubted if I could have looked any more ridiculous. A guy in a white Sunbird talking on a cell phone. I prayed to God nobody recognized me.

  “Try information.” Nate’s voice was tired and more than a little fed up with yet another request from yours truly.

  I drove up Cadieux, just a few blocks from the village. “You’re my own personal information,” I said. “Better than AT&T, although certainly not cheaper.”

  “Speaking of which, you still owe me lunch at the Rattlesnake Club.”

  “We’ll do lunch and dinner one right after the other,” I said. “We’ll be so full and bloated, we’ll get a jug of antacid tablets from Costco and eat the whole fucking thing.”

  “I’ll take dinner at Sweet Lorraine’s.” This was a chic restaurant on 12 Mile Road and Woodward.

  Much more affordable than the Rattlesnake Club. Nate was backing off, not wanting to push his gravy train too hard. I just wasn’t in the mood to appreciate such a magnanimous gesture.

  “I want the Thai noodles for an appetizer,” he said.

  “How about you give me the damn number before you give me your frickin’ order?”

  He sighed. Nothing made him more unhappy than changing the topic of conversation away from food. “What.”

  “Shannon Sparrow.”

  “You want an autograph?” he said. “Or do you want to just tell her how her music has changed your life?”

  “I’ll ask her to sign your ass.”

  He sighed again. “You’re awfully hostile today, John.”

  I was going to tell him abou
t the car chase and shooting but he’d probably be pissed, and I hadn’t called him to give him the story.

  “Any idea how I can get a hold of her, Nate?” I said. “I can almost smell Lorraine’s Chicken and Shrimp Creole.” He said something I couldn’t make out, although he did sound happier now that I’d brought the conversation back around to Sweet Lorraine’s. I heard another voice in the background.

  “Let me call you back,” he said.

  I thumbed the disconnect button and set the cell phone on the seat next to me.

  The village was pretty much deserted, save for the few souls frequenting the Kroger supermarket, Borders bookstore, and Blockbuster. There had been a nice Jacobson’s department store anchoring the village, but it went out of business. They were putting in a giant drug store there. Nothing says “distinguished, well-to-do community” like a giant fucking drug store. When it’s done, Grosse Pointe will have the highest citizen-to-hemorrhoid cream ratio in the country.

  A moment later, my phone rang.

  Nate rattled off a phone number, which I scrawled on the back of the La Shish receipt. Christ, I really needed a little notepad or something. One of those goofy, pretentious-as-hell deals with a suction cup that sticks on the dashboard. It’s like a giant sign that says, I’m so full of ideas I need a pad on my dashboard to write them all down!

  “That’s her publicist,” Nate said, interrupting my Andy Rooney-esque soliloquy. “She arranges all interviews with the media and any interaction with John Q. Publics, such as yourself. She’s probably nasty as hell, a guard dog to attack the rabble. Like you.”

  “She’s not going to know what hit her.”

  “So Rattlesnake Club on Thursday and Sweet Lorraine’s on—”

  I hung up on him.

  It wasn’t that I would welch on him, but agreeing to the bribe was a whole lot different than scheduling payment of the bribe. It seemed like the more time I could put between the two, the better business deal it became.

  While I drove toward my office, I dialed the number. If what I’d heard about stars and their “people” was true, the woman whose number Nate gave me would be on call twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

  She answered right away.

  I introduced myself, explained I was a private investigator looking into the murder of Jesse Barre and that I would like to ask Ms. Sparrow a few questions, preferably face-to-face.

  “Hmm,” she said. “She’s so busy now that she’s home. Is this a police matter?”

  “No, like I said, I’m a private investigator.”

  “I really don’t think there’s a possibility with her schedule . . .”

  “It has to do with the guitar that Jesse Barre was building for her,” I said. “I have to ask her some very important questions. Questions that, unless I get the chance to ask them, will most likely merit a call to the police so they can ask them. Do you understand?”

  The woman at least pretended to give it a moment’s thought. I could practically hear the tumblers fall into place just before the safe popped open.

  “Is there a number where I can reach you?” she said.

  It was a start.

  * * *

  •

  * * *

  In the time I waited for a call back from Shannon Sparrow’s “people,” I got back to my office and checked messages. There was one from Anna reminding me she had book club tonight. They were reading The Good Earth by Pearl Buck. I’d read it in college for a comparative literature class. All I remember was a brutal scene where a Chinese peasant woman gave birth alone in a room, cleaned herself up, then made dinner for her husband. I could picture the fun I’d have giving the book club my view on that scene. I’d never make it out of there alive.

  I opened some mail, leafed through a Bow Hunter magazine that the post office kept delivering for the tenant who’d left this space years ago.

  Just as I was really getting into an article debating the merits of compound bows reinforced with titanium, my cell phone rang.

  “Yeah?” I asked, seeing the number and not recognizing it.

  “This is Molly Lehring, returning your call.” Shannon Sparrow’s assistant had a voice that was the epitome of crisp, cool professionalism. She gave off as much warmth as a meat freezer.

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “Shannon can meet with you in exactly one half hour. She has about a twenty-minute window in her schedule.”

  “What a coincidence,” I said. “I, too, have a twenty-minute window in my schedule. Let’s do it!

  There was dead silence as the woman on the other end let me know that there was no time for levity in Shannon Sparrow’s busy world.

  I started to give a more official acceptance of the offer, but then realized that this woman wasn’t seeking it.

  “Where are you currently located?” I said, sounding like the very textbook definition of professionalism.

  “Eight Four Zero Lake Shore Drive. Grosse Pointe Shores.”

  “I’ll be—”

  She interrupted me with a quick disconnection. Now that didn’t seem professional to me. Apparently, Molly Lehring skipped the class on public relations.

  I checked the number on my cell phone then programmed it into my phone’s memory. I figured if I ever got bored, I’d use it to bug the living shit out of Ms Lehring.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I pulled into the driveway of a monstrous Grosse Pointe, Lakeshore Drive mansion. It looked like a medieval fort with at least three or four turrets and massively thick beams. Brick, slate roof, a couple sets of guest cottages. Easily worth seven figures, probably eight.

  There was no doubt in my mind that the house had not seen many white Pontiac Sunbirds coming up the drive. I parked the car with no small amount of pride and rang the quaint little doorbell, at the same time noticing the high-tech security cameras trained on me. They were recessed tastefully, but they were there.

  The man who answered the door was actually a woman, once I looked more closely. She had a crew cut and wore a short-sleeved polo shirt exposing extremely impressive biceps and forearms, at the end of which dangled two meaty, veiny hands. Picture Ernest Borgnine after a gender reassignment that never really took.

  “John Rockne,” I said.

  “Ah yes, I was told you’d be arriving shortly.” Her voice was worthy of a barbershop quartet. She’d have the baritone’s part.

  Even though she’d been expecting me, she produced a clipboard, scanned down, then nodded her ham-hock head to let me know all the requisite paperwork was in order.

  “My name’s Freda,” she said.

  “Lovely,” I said.

  Sans a visible expression, she stepped aside, and I caught the scent of either Aqua Velva or Hai Karate.

  “This is Erma,” she said and lifted her Kirk Douglas chin toward the hall. Freda’s twin stepped out from a doorway and nodded to me.

  “Hey, Erma,” I said. I sounded nice and chipper. If anything, she was more muscular than Freda. Either one could crack my head like a walnut. Erma wore a sport coat, and among her many bulges, I noticed one in particular underneath her left arm. It would probably be a big-caliber gun. You had forearms the size of Dubuque hams, you needed the opportunity to put them to use.

  I walked down the hall between them, feeling like the special sauce between two all-beef patties.

  The matching Bronko Nagurskis showed me to a small office where a bone-thin woman with wispy brown hair, rosy cheeks, and a small mouth with small white teeth was talking on a cell phone. She sat behind a small glass desk, her black-nylon-encased legs crossed. A white laptop was open in front of her. While she talked, her eyes scanned the computer screen.

  Her fingers tapped hard on the keyboard, twice, and then said into the phone, “They’re your fucking problem now.”

  She paused, glanced at me, then looked back at the screen.

  “You were paid to do a job, not fuck up,” she said. “Fix it and don’t call me until you do.” Her voi
ce was as sharp and cutting as the points of her high heels.

  She disconnected the call and looked at me.

  “John Rockne,” I said.

  “She’s in the studio.” The way she said it, it sounded like I was interrupting Shannon Sparrow in the middle of taking a crap.

  “I’m sure it won’t take long,” I said. “By the way, are you Molly?”

  She ignored me and my outstretched hand, then answered the phone after it vibrated on the desk.

  “Are you sure?” she said, her voice softer, almost warm. Something told me the boss was on the other end of the line. There was a brief pause before she locked her eyes onto mine.

  “I’ll bring him right up,” she said.

  * * *

  •

  * * *

  The first thing I saw of Shannon Sparrow in person was her pubic hair.

  “Shannon, this is Mr. Rockne,” Molly said, and immediately took her leave.

  The famous singer sat spread-eagled in an overstuffed armchair, wearing a sports bra and a pair of bikini underwear rolled down to just above her happy place. I stood there, open-mouthed, God only knows what kind of expression on my face. I didn’t know what to say. “I’m your biggest fan” didn’t seem right under the circumstances. Nor did “I really admire your work.”

  She pressed a wet washcloth against her pubic mound, and then with a straight razor, she sheared about a half-inch off the top of her patch, as it were. She then lifted the razor and with a finger, delicately brushed the pubic hair into an envelope.

  “Is this a bad time?” I said, thinking this was a really bad time for me. Maybe when I was young and single it would have been fun, but a happily married man, even if he is a private investigator, didn’t really need to be seeing something like this.