by G. M. Ford
“Come on. Get real.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
They were still tossing the idea back and forth when the squeaking of Ruth’s shoes announced the arrival of breakfast. When Ruth had gone, Andriatta lowered her voice. “Did you see the way she looked at you?”
“You’re crazy.”
“You must be blind.”
“She’s a married woman.”
“Oh…like that stops anybody these days.”
Corso chewed a piece of toast as he watched Ruth make the rounds with the coffeepot. When she returned to the register, Corso slid to the end of the booth.
“I’ve got something I want to ask her,” he said.
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Stop it.”
She forked in another mouthful of hotcakes and laughed.
Corso got to his feet and moseyed over to the cash register. She was straightening money in the register drawers when he leaned his arms on the counter.
“Now what can I do for the famous author?” she asked.
Corso put on his best conspiratorial face. “You said something about getting a real steal of a deal on a piece of property down in Florida.”
Her expression took on a sly quality. “Did I?”
Corso leaned in closer and lowered his voice. “Yes, ma’am, I believe you did.”
She raised a painted eyebrow and looked at him from the corner of her eye.
“What if I did?”
“You mind if I ask how that happened.”
“We knew somebody who knew somebody who was strapped for cash.”
“Mind if I ask for a name?”
“Which one?”
“The one you knew.”
She considered it. “I think I better ask my old man,” she said finally.
Corso watched as, once again, she disappeared through the swinging doors. A minute passed, and then two, before she reappeared and crooked a beckoning finger at Corso, who ambled down to the break in the counter and followed her into the kitchen.
He was short, not much over five feet, a wiry specimen dressed all in white, except for the dabs of egg yolk adorning the front of his apron. Looked like he hadn’t shaved in a week. The hair on his chest and the hair from his beard met just below his prominent Adam’s apple. His expression said he wasn’t all that happy to make Corso’s acquaintance. “You got a problem with something?” he wanted to know.
“Nothing that’s got anything to do with you,” Corso assured him.
“So why all the questions?”
“I’m still working on what happened to Nathan Marino.”
His scowl deepened. “He got blown to shit. That’s what happened to Nathan.”
“I hear he was a nice kid.”
“Nice kids are a dime a dozen.”
“His family has a right to know what happened to him.” Before he could answer, Corso went on. “I hear you’ve got a couple of girls of your own. Something like that happened to one of them, I’m betting you’d want to know what happened.”
He took a deep breath. “So what’s that got to do with Florida?”
“All right…let me do this another way. Was Randy Shields the guy who knew somebody in a bind?”
Ruth and Myron exchanged meaningful glances. “What if he was?” Myron asked.
“Was he?”
A muted bong sent Ruth scurrying out to the front of the diner.
“Yeah,” Myron said. “It was him.” He cracked eggs two at a time, dumping the contents into a stainless-steel bowl, dropping the shells into a trash can beneath the counter. “He come in one time. Got to gabbing with Ruth.” He shook his head in disgust. “My old woman got a bad habit of sharing her business with people she don’t know.” He pulled half a dozen pieces of bacon from a tray, slapped them on the back of the grill and weighted them down. “She tells him we been thinkin’ about retiring down to Florida. He tells her he might know where we could get us a prime piece of real estate.” He shrugged. “Just sorta happened from there.”
“Seller was a guy named Short. Paul Short.”
“If you already know all this shit, why you in here busting my balls?”
“I just needed to make sure.”
“The sale was good,” Myron said. “Went through title and escrow and everything. I don’t wanna hear about how there’s something wrong with the sale.”
Corso held up a hand. Scout’s honor. “Far as I know there’s no problem.”
Myron walked to the window, spun the little steel carousel and pulled down a couple of orders. “Randy Shields come into the diner often?” Corso asked.
Myron scrambled the half dozen eggs with a whisk. “You want gossip you better talk to my old woman,” he said. “That’s her end of the business.”
Corso thanked him for his trouble and pushed his way through the doors just as the eggs hit the grill.
Andriatta was forking the last morsel of what looked like a piece of lemon meringue pie into her mouth as he arrived. She looked up at Corso.
“Waiting makes me hungry,” she explained.
“I’ll settle up and we can get out of here,” Corso said.
“I’m going to hit the loo. I’ll meet you in the car.”
Corso arrived at the cash register just as Ruth was ringing up the elderly couple at the far end of the counter. She favored him with a small smile. “I’m guessin’ you’ll be on your way back to Seattle here pretty soon,” she said.
Corso handed her the bill. “Pretty soon,” he said. “Just got a few loose ends I want to tie up.”
She punched open the register and then leaned part way across the counter. “That Nathan Marino…he deserved way better than he got.”
Corso nodded. “I believe he did.”
“Can’t say that about many of us, can you?”
“No, ma’am…I don’t believe you can.”
41
T he hotel lobby was jammed. Suitcases, backpacks and garment bags overflowed brass luggage carts. The air was abuzz with a dozen conversations. Looked like a tour bus had dumped about sixty German tourists onto the registration desk in a pile.
One look told Corso the conversation he wanted to have with the assistant manager was going to have to wait. He turned and was headed for the elevator when a familiar voice called his name.
“Mr. Corso” rose above the din.
Corso looked around. Didn’t see anybody he knew and once again started for the elevators. The voice sounded again. Corso stopped.
Carl Letzo spread the crowd enough to wedge his way through.
“I was just trying to leave you a message. I thought maybe you guys might need a ride.”
Corso told him about the new rental. “Place is a madhouse,” he commented.
“Where’s Andriatta?” Carl asked.
“She headed upstairs to her room. I think maybe nature was calling.”
“Till just the other day, I didn’t even know for sure that ladies did such things,” Carl deadpanned.
“So what changed your mind?”
Carl looked around the lobby as if the walls had ears. He gestured with his head over toward a little collection of furniture outside the door to the lounge. Corso followed him over. He waited as Carl unbuttoned his father’s overcoat and draped it over the arm of the couch like a tweed vestment. They sat in a pair of overstuffed chairs separated by a marble-topped coffee table. “What’s up?” Corso asked.
Carl looked around again. “I think maybe I’ve accounted for those lost nine minutes.” He sensed Corso’s confusion. “Remember…the cops said it took the bomb squad less than ten minutes from the time they got the call to get to the scene. Folks in the bank said it was more like twenty.”
“I remember.”
“I did a little digging around.”
“And?”
Carl shook his head in disbelief. “It’s just so typical of this place.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Seem
s…on the morning in question…the emergency dispatcher wasn’t at her post.”
“Where was she?”
“Out on the back porch of the police station smooching with her estranged boyfriend, who, it just so happens, is a city patrolman.”
“Who was minding the store?”
“Seems they been feuding and needed to make up.”
“No phone backup?”
“Nope.”
“Was he on duty?”
“Yep.”
“So you call 911 and nobody answers?”
“Yep.”
“So…she’s fired; he’s fired. The city apologizes. It’s over.”
“She’s not fired and neither is he.”
“How can that be?”
“She’s Hargrove’s youngest daughter. Hargrove got her the job.”
“And they can’t fire him without firing her.”
“Right on.”
“And everybody and his brother’s covering it up?”
“Right on down the line.”
Corso spread his arms wide. “There’s your breakout story, man. The cover-up. Nathan Marino blown to pieces when he might have been saved and everybody from the police chief on down is keeping his mouth shut. Front page. Above the fold.”
“Like Hargrove’s ever gonna let that story hit the streets.”
“You got a local TV station? Take it to them.”
“He owns that too.”
“Wait till the next time he leaves town.”
Carl’s face hardened. “He’s out of town right now.”
“Write it today. Run it tomorrow.”
Carl squirmed in the chair. “No way. God…I did that…”
“Time to stop telling yourself what you can’t do, Carl. Time to start dwelling on what you can. Do it. Leave the house to the termites. Pack your ass up and get out of town. You’ve got a lot of talent, Carl. Go find someplace where you can use it like a real journalist.”
Carl looked away and went silent. Corso could feel his profound discomfort and decided to change the subject.
“Whatta you know about the guy that manages the hotel?” he asked.
“Randy Shields?”
“Yeah.”
“Just got back in town about a year ago.”
“How long had he been gone?”
“Hell…since about five minutes after he graduated high school.”
“Really?”
“Only difference was he came back.”
“Know where he was all that time?”
“Somewhere out in California. Married young from what I hear. Came back from the paratroopers with a gimp leg. Had a son while he was in the service. Kid got killed in a car wreck. I guess Randy was driving the car. Tore the marriage to pieces from what I hear.”
“You know the woman?
Carl shook his head. “Never brought her around here.”
“How long ago was this?”
“Few years back.”
“What else?”
Carl thought it over. “I hear he could pound them pretty good.”
“Where’d he do his drinking?”
“VFW hall mostly.”
“Bad habits?”
“None I’ve ever heard of.” Corso watched Carl go though his memory bank. “I hear he had a hell of a grudge against the government.”
Corso felt the hair on his arms begin to rise. “Over what?”
“I guess he didn’t feel like they took care of him after his injury. Guy I know said he felt like the accident that killed his son would never have happened if they’d helped him out, helped him get a car…you know, a car equipped for somebody with a disability. I guess he sued ’em and everything.”
“No shit,” Corso said.
Carl eyed him. “I touch a nerve here?”
“You have no idea,” Corso said, getting to his feet in a hurry. He reached down, offered Carl a hand and pulled him to his feet. He bent slightly at the waist, putting his nose very nearly on Carl’s.
“Go back to the office, Carl. Write the damn story. Do whatever you have to do to get it on the front page. Pack your car. Leave this one-horse town and don’t look back.”
Corso strode quickly toward the elevators, breaking into a trot for the last few yards, stuffing his arm into the closing door and levering himself in, much to the chagrin of the half dozen or so people already inside the elevator car.
He jogged down the hallway to his room, unlocked the door and rushed inside. The door to Andriatta’s room was closed and locked. He could hear her voice. On the phone maybe. He resisted the urge to eavesdrop and knocked instead. The talking stopped. A moment later he heard the bolt slip back into the door.
She threw her arms around his shoulders, got up on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss. “How’d it go?” she wanted to know.
“I think I got it,” he said.
“Got what?”
“The connection.”
42
T he smile was smug, the desk immaculate. Everything geometrically aligned with everything else. Fancy pen set, desktop flags, federal, state, and some sort of local pennant. Coupla gold framed photos from another era. One gleaming wooden guest chair at each front corner. Gold nameplate exactly in the center. POLICE CHIEF A. J. CUMMINGS it read.
“I thought we’d seen the last of you,” she said.
“I’m like the bad penny, Chief. I just keep turning up.
“To use another adage, you seem to have grown a little moss this time.” Corso introduced Chris Andriatta. “We’re working the case together.”
“What case is that?”
“Nathan Marino.”
The chief leaned forward in her chair and put her elbows on the desk. “I’m wondering if perhaps the fact that I agreed to see you hasn’t muddied the water a bit, Mr. Corso. Or worse yet, I’m thinking somehow I failed to make myself clear to you.” She laced her manicured fingers together and paused for effect. “The Marino case is still open. It’s an ongoing investigation and as such is absolutely off-limits to amateurs such as yourself.”
“It was amateurs like us…” Corso began.
She held up a hand. “I don’t give a damn what you did out in California or what kind of role the Bureau may have permitted you to play. As long as you’re within my jurisdiction, you’re going to keep your nose out of ongoing investigations or I’m going to clap your famous butt in jail so fast it’ll make your head swim.” A pause and a glare this time. “Am I making myself clear here, or should I go on?”
Corso clamped his jaw shut.
“He can be a little hardheaded, but eventually he gets the message,” Andriatta offered with a smile.
“I hope so,” the chief replied. “Because if he doesn’t, you’re going to be bailing him out every day until he leaves town.”
“I think I know what happened to Nathan Marino,” Corso said.
The chief looked at Andriatta, who shrugged and offered an upturned palm.
“Mr. Corso,” she began, “I’m going to listen to what you have to say here, not because I have the slightest hope that you’re onto something, but merely because an officer in my position has an obligation to examine any and all potential evidence in an ongoing investigation.” She folded her arms. “I’m all ears.”
Corso took a deep breath, shot a glance over at Andriatta and then gave the chief the Reader’s Digest version of what had happened in California. Took ten minutes. The chief never blinked.
“All of which has exactly what to do with the death of Nathan Marino?” she asked when he’d finished.
Corso gathered himself. “I could be wrong…”
“You have a documented history of being wrong,” the chief corrected.
This time it was Corso who paused for drama. “Be that as it may…” he began, “…but I think what happened to Nathan Marino here last year was that somebody used him as the trial run for the same bank robbery scheme that played out in L.A. this week.”
“Why Nathan Marino?
Why Edgewater?”
“For pretty much the same reasons I think. They’re both on the fringe of things. Nathan Marino lived his life on the fringe of society. He wasn’t important, or indispensable or much missed by anyone other than his loved ones.” Corso’s eyes clouded over for a minute. “I think maybe he was perceived as somebody whose passing would be unremarkable.”
The chief kept her face as bland and expressionless as a head of lettuce.
“Why Edgewater?”
“Same reason. ’Cause it’s out there on the edge. Nowhere near the center of anything, and definitely not the kind of place to make the network news.”
The chief smiled. “Well that certainly didn’t work now, did it? Nathan Marino wound up in every paper in the country.”
“That’s what they failed to account for.”
“What’s that?”
“The fact that there’s something about a victim with a bomb around his neck that captures the imagination. Something that people don’t forget. Instead of keeping it low-key, the thing went national.”
“And the national attention didn’t deter them?”
“On the contrary, it’s what pushed them over the edge. It added a touch of glamour to what was basically just a revenge crime.”
“And they just picked Edgewater out of a hat.”
“Not at all.”
“Why then?”
“Because it just so happened that one of them moved back home to Edgewater. Gave them a place to try the idea out…about as far away from Southern California as they could get.”
“And who might that be.”
“A guy named Randy Shields.”
“Are you serious? Randy Shields is a respected member of our community. He’s in the Rotary. The Chamber of Commerce. He’s…”
“He’s gone is what he is,” Corso said.
For the first time, the smug smile wavered. “Gone how?”
“Yesterday, he took an emergency leave of absence. Nobody seems to know where he went or what the problem was.”
The chief unfolded her arms and sat back in her chair. “You know, Mr. Corso, your little recitation here is an object lesson on the kind of sloppy investigative work for which you have become…” She went looking for a word. “…let’s, for the sake of charity, say…famous.” She leaned back farther. The spring groaned. The thin smile got wider. “You remind me of those well-intentioned farmers who come out one morning and find crop circles tramped into their cornfields. First thing that comes to their minds is ‘it musta been aliens.’ They skip right over drunken college boys and weird professors…over everything terrestrial for that matter, in favor of something from outer space.” She showed her palms in wonder. “Go figure.”
