Penance (3 page)

She nodded.

Then I ruined it all by adding, “But that little contest with the Scotch? Really, Counselor, that was one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen.”

“If you say so,” she replied curtly.

I let it go at that.

I left the tavern and made my way toward the public library, hoping I wouldn’t find a parking ticket jammed under my windshield wiper. Along the way I noticed a man pretending to examine a watch in a jewelry store window, a newspaper tucked under his arm. He was wearing a red ski jacket with blue lining—
the old reversible jacket trick
, I told myself, smiling.

THREE

I
T WAS JUST A
house, a large, old Victorian that needed paint in a ramshackle neighborhood where most of the homes could benefit from a little maintenance. There was no sign, no address plate, nothing to indicate who lived there. That was probably the way the residents wanted it. If the locals knew who their neighbors were, no doubt they would organize to force removal of the halfway house—there’s nothing like adversity to bring a neighborhood together. The more enlightened among us, of course, would accuse the locals of everything from shortsightedness to discrimination to hypocrisy. But then, none of us would want a halfway house for convicted felons next door, either.

I parked on the street and followed the crumbling sidewalk to the porch. The front door opened before I could knock and a tall man with a prison pallor stepped outside, followed by a cloud of cigarette smoke and the faint aroma of coffee, extra black.

“What do you want?” he demanded, startling me, moving in close, giving me a good look at a mouthful of decaying teeth.

“I want to play point guard for the Minnesota Timberwolves, but I’ll settle for speaking with the administrator.” I backed away and dug in my pocket for the photostat of my license.

He glanced at the ID. “Smart ass,” he said.

“People keep calling me that.”

“Fuck you.”

“C’mon pal, no trouble for either of us, okay? Just tell the guy who runs the place …”

He poked me in the chest.

“Don’t do that,” I told him.

“I don’t like you,” he said and poked me again. I tried to swipe his hand away but caught only air as he quickly pulled it back. He gave me a playground-bully smile and said, “You wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in the yard.”

I believed him. I took another step backward.

“You’re a fuckin’ pussy. I’m gonna kick your ass.”

I took still another step backward and went into a free-fighting stance, weight evenly distributed, feet at forty-five-degree angles. I took a chance and kept my hands low. My left leg began to tremble slightly with anticipation. Or was it fear? It always does that, even when I’m just sparring, my groin protected with a fiberglass cup, my hands and feet encased in foam rubber.

I’m not a big man. I barely passed the minimum height requirement for a police officer in St. Paul and several veteran officers refused to ride with me for fear they’d continually have to save my ass from various surly and much larger miscreants—small cops are challenged a lot. During my second week on the job, a dis. con. dribbled my head on the asphalt four times before I subdued him with the butt of my Glock 17. Soon after I began studying a combination of judo, karate and aikido. I pulled eighteen separate muscles attempting to master the basic kick and what I did to my hands, plunging them in and out of pea gravel to toughen their edges, I’m amazed my wife ever allowed me to touch her.

Still, I learned fast. I do not have a belt; I have not attempted to earn one. Nor am I interested in the virtues that martial arts are supposed to instill: control, courtesy, discipline, respect. I am interested merely in survival. When I had first approached the
sensai
at Dragons, my
dojo
in Minneapolis, he asked me why I wanted to master the arts. “So I can beat the hell outta people without getting hurt myself,” I answered. He looked at me like he felt sorry for me. He told me the arts must be used only as a last resort; he told me, “When hand go out, withdraw anger; when anger go out, withdraw hand.” I have tried to live by that philosophy ever since. Mostly, I’ve failed.

“Pal, I’m the last guy you want to dance with,” I warned the convict. He didn’t believe me. He grabbed the lapel of my sports jacket. I grasped his hand with my left and pushed up on his elbow with my right. When his back started to arch, I pulled down hard on his hand and pushed the elbow straight up, flipping him on his back, his head thudding loudly on the porch floor. Nothing to it. If the PI gig didn’t work out, I could always get employment as a bouncer at a high-class strip joint.

“This wasn’t necessary,” I told the convict calmly, listening to his pain and applying more pressure to his shoulder joint whenever he tried to move. “This did not need to happen.”

Eventually, another man appeared at the door. “Stop it, stop it!” he screamed in a high, effeminate voice.

“Are you the administrator of this facility?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I released the convict and stood up. “Hi. I’m Holland Taylor.”

He ignored my outstretched hand and demanded to know what was going on.

“Nothing,” my attacker told him, massaging his shoulder.

“I told you what would happen if there was any more trouble, J. T.!” the administrator yelled.

“No trouble,” I said, taking J. T.’s side. “We were just putzing around. I was showing him a karate hold.”

“Yeah,” J. T. confirmed. “Thanks,” he said and retreated into the house, still kneading his shoulder. The administrator watched him go, not believing a word of it.

“Holland Taylor,” I repeated.

This time he took my hand. “Elliot Seeley. Now tell me what really happened.”

“Nothing much,” I said. “He merely took exception to my looks. He’s not the first.”

“I’m truly sorry,” Seeley said and I had the impression he was. “J. T. has had a difficult time adjusting, more difficult than most. He’s been in and out of prison nine of the past eleven years; I think he’s more comfortable inside than he is outside. Anyway, that’s my problem. What can I do for you?”

I showed him my license. He wasn’t any happier to see it than J. T., but at least he didn’t poke me in the chest.

“I’m looking for information about John Brown.”

“What kind of information?”

“When did you see him last?”

Seeley sighed heavily, like he was repeating a story that already bored him. “Saturday night, about six-thirty.”

“Where was he …”

“He left here with Joseph Sherman in Sherman’s four-by-four,” Seeley said, anticipating my question.

“Wait a minute …”

“They said they were going to meet a man about a job. I didn’t believe them, but I didn’t stop them. And no, I haven’t seen or heard from Sherman since, and no, I can’t say where he might be hiding.”

“Who is Joseph Sherman?”

Seeley sighed again. “He was one of our residents. He was paroled to us about three weeks ago after doing six in Oak Park Heights. He and Brown roomed together while they were here.”

“What was Sherman in for?”

“Criminal vehicular homicide, same as Brown.”

“Tell me about his vehicle?”

“It was red.”

“That’s it?”

“I don’t know cars. All I know is he bought it a week after he got out with the money he made in prison.” Seeley shook his head in disgust. “He was paid seven bucks an hour, plus commissions, plus bonuses, plus college courses to do telemarketing work for companies like 3M. I guess he was a superb salesman. He walked out of the Heights with a check for sixty-eight thousand dollars and a bachelor’s degree.”

I was just as annoyed as Seeley. “Who says crime doesn’t pay?” I asked, slipping the notebook from my pocket. “What can you tell me about him?”

“Mr. Taylor, I’ve already told you more than I should; I hope you understand.”

I tried to protest.

Seeley said, “Why don’t you ask the police? They know everything I know.”

“The police?”

“The St. Paul police,” Seeley repeated. “I told the two detectives everything when they were here.”

“When was that?”

“Early Sunday morning.”

“The cops … a salt and pepper team named McGaney and Casper?”

“That sounds like them.”

“Sunday morning?”

“I’m sorry. If you want to know anything more, talk to the police.”

I slapped the dashboard of my Chevy Monza, then apologized to her. She had served me faithfully for fifteen years and one hundred sixty-two thousand miles; she didn’t deserve the abuse.

The first step in any murder investigation is always to contact the last person to see the victim alive. The last person to see Brown alive was Joseph Sherman. Brown was killed in Sherman’s vehicle and now Sherman was missing. So
why aren’t the cops looking for him
, I wondered. Why did they bust my door at 6:00 in the
A.M.
if Sherman was such an obvious suspect? Why did they drag me to the stationhouse only to let me go a couple of hours later?

“The cops are messing with me,” I told the Monza. “And this BS about Annie refusing to see me … All right, I’ll play.”

I fired up the Monza and steered her toward downtown Minneapolis. A blue Ford parked several car lengths behind me pulled out at the same time. I nearly lost him at the light and had to slow down so he could catch up.

“Come along, officer,” I muttered. “I haven’t got all day.”

FOUR

T
HE TELEPHONE
was ringing as I unlocked my office door and I caught it before my answering machine kicked in.

“So, who is it?” Randy asked after he identified himself.

“How you doing, Randy?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m hurtin’, man. I’m hurtin’. I don’t think I can take much more of this,” he moaned. Randy hates for people to think that he is actually making money at his chosen profession and over the years I’ve discovered that his physical pain increases and decreases in direct proportion to his winnings. Considering his extreme discomfort, I guessed that Randy’d had a pretty good weekend.

“Did you finger the mechanic?” he asked again.

“Yeah, no problem.”

“Who is it?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“What the fuck? That’s why I hired you, man.”

“What I meant is, would you be satisfied with your money back? Your money and the money I lost?”

“You lost money? I didn’t hire you to lose money.”

“Aww for crissake, Randy …”

“I want his balls! I want ’em served up with eggs and hash browns!”

“Then I won’t give you the name.”

The way Randy carried on, you’d have thought he was going to have a heart attack; I almost asked him where I could send flowers.

“I don’t goon, Randy, you know that,” I told him when his ranting finally subsided.

“Who’s askin’ you to? I got guys to do the heavy work.”

“Here’s the deal,” I told him. “I’ll get your money back. I’ll put the fear of God into the mechanic. And you can keep my fee.”

Randy paused to think about it. “How long have I known you?”

“Twelve years, ever since I busted your Super Bowl party.”

“Okay, ’cuz of them twelve years I let the mechanic walk; I figure you got your reasons.”

“I do.”

“But I want my money and I want it by Friday or I’m gonna send my guys to talk to you.”

I was so frightened I hung up the phone without saying good-bye.

Every man and woman in America leaves little threads wherever they go. They leave them in computer databases when they are born, apply for a driver’s license, graduate from school, get married, get divorced, buy on credit, make airline reservations, stay at a hotel, apply for life insurance, order freshwater pearls from the Home Shopping Network—hundreds of little threads that when woven together produce a garment of who and what they are. In fact, it is virtually impossible not to become the subject of a record. The average person is on fifty databases at any one time and nearly all of them are readily available to someone with a personal computer, a modem and a telephone. Like me.

Most threads of information are stored in public files gathered by the government that I can access simply by signing on as “anonymous” and using “guest” as a password. Much of this information is contained in private databases such as those of credit bureaus that I can access for a fee. It isn’t easy, of course. Locating banks of files that actually contain relevant information often requires as much detective work as investigating a dozen flea markets in Iowa. I often have to drag one database after another until I find the name I’m looking for. Or the Social Security number, our de facto standard universal identifier. Still, given time, I can usually gather enough bits and pieces to assemble a reasonably complete sketch of an individual, everything from date of birth to high school locker number.