Service Dress Blues (19 page)

“Reppert, dearest love,” Melissa said, exasperation dripping from each syllable as the inning ended, “what if this completely unknown person calls back and suggests that you come to an obscure motel in the boonies to get in touch with Ms. Wolf?”

“I would express disappointment at his lack of imagination and politely decline. I might ask him incredulously if he really thought a lame dodge that worked on a callow eighteen-year old would succeed with a worldly and sophisticated trademark and copyright lawyer.”

“Suppose our hypothetical caller comes up with a less derivative variation?” she demanded then. “Something that's not quite as obviously a trap but still potentially hazardous?”

“I'll ask myself what you would do and be guided by your example.”

“Rep,” Melissa said fiercely, thinking of some of the things she had done and feeling his sly comment like a kick in the pants, “so help me, if you take some insane risk in a display of misguided machismo just because you've flown several hundred miles on a wild goose chase and now your blood is up, the next time I'm within three feet of you I'll smack you hard enough to knock your glasses off.”

“You won't, you know. I wouldn't hit you back and you know it, and then you'd be ashamed of yourself. No worries, though. I'm not a farm boy and I've seen painted women before.”

They exchanged expressions of exasperated love and he ended the call.

***

Annapolis has its charms if you're walking instead of driving along its cobbled streets, and one of them in April is weather that seems very mild to a Milwaukeean. Rep savored the pleasant evening as he completed his journey to the Federal House Bar & Grille. He didn't particularly notice the grizzled man in the red windbreaker who kept pace with him on the opposite side of each street he entered, and he probably wouldn't have thought anything about him if he had.

***

The top of the third went quickly, so Melissa and company were back on top of the dugout, fussing again with caps and gowns, before Rep was inside Federal House.

“Round Three is the tie-breaker!” the brunette said. “So it won't be multiple choice!”

“Essay?” Quaid groaned.

“As long as we don't have to show our work,” Melissa sighed.

“All right, here's the question! On Easter Sunday, 1987, the Brewers won their twelfth game in a row to go twelve-and-oh on the young season! They won that game on a walk-off home run in the bottom of the twelfth inning! Name the Brewer who hit that dramatic, game-winning homer!”

Melissa glanced down the line and saw three faces as blank as her own must be.

“I think this calls for a collaborative effort,” she said.

“I agree,” Watkins said. “Let's caucus.”

The brunette looked a bit non-plussed as the four contestants huddled. The countdown music from
Jeopardy!
began playing over the public address system.

“Does anyone have any idea?” Koehler asked.

“In 1987 I was a freshman at Saint Teresa's Academy in Kansas City and I was a lot more worried about homework and detentions than baseball,” Melissa said. “But Sveum was blushing like a teenager at his first mixer as that question was read.”

“Let's go with it.”

“Aye.”

“It's unanimous.”

“Our collective answer,” Koehler announced as they broke the huddle, “is Dale Sveum.”

The brunette's confirmation was lost in the crowd's roar, for the professors were apparently the only four people at Miller Park that night who hadn't known the answer instantly. After hamming it up a bit with sweeping waves in response to the sarcastic cheers, they hopped down from the dugout for the last time. Instead of pausing immediately in their complementary box seats for the bottom of the third, all four headed back to the prep room under the stands so that they could shed their caps and gowns. With the stadium full and the roof closed, they were sweltering.

“That was quite clever, making that oblique connection,” Koehler said to Melissa.

“Thanks.”

“In a very roundabout way, it reminds me of Ole back in 1957. Alaska statehood was a fairly hot issue. Democrats weren't crazy about it because they figured it just meant two more Republican senators and three more Republican electoral votes. But Ole was a Kennedy guy. He knew the delegates the state sent to the Democratic National Convention would be Democrats even if the congressman it elected would inevitably be a Republican. He figured he could snag Alaska delegates for Jack Kennedy by getting him behind the statehood bill. He sold the idea to Kennedy and managed to get full credit for him from everyone in Alaska, including the GOP. Even Egan, the point man on statehood.”

Nodding distractedly at the anecdote, Melissa took three more strides toward the elevator and then, still twenty feet away, stopped cold. Oblivious to the milling fans gaping at someone in full academic regalia standing stock still in the midst of the bustling concourse, she matched Koehler's offhand comment against the data she'd accumulated about Ole Lindstrom and his murder, starting with Rep's description of the club room in the Lindstrom home. Then she burrowed furiously under her robe to retrieve her phone.

She called Rep first, but he didn't answer. Then she called Kuchinski, laughing in spite of herself as she heard the
Perry Mason Theme
that he used as a ring-tone. It had gotten through
Duh-Duh-Duh-
DUH!
-duh-duh-duh-duh!
when he answered.

“This will sound off-the-wall, but trust me,” she said. “I want you to get in touch with whoever has custody of the evidence in the Lindstrom murder case. Ask them to count the stars on the flag that was wrapped around his body.”

***

Rep walked serenely into the Federal House Bar & Grille, followed a hostess to a dark wood booth, sat down, and began studying the menu. He intended to take full advantage of the opportunity to dine without female supervision. He was still trying to decide between a bacon cheeseburger and a T-bone when he heard a voice over his left shoulder.

“Hi.”

Rep had to twist around to see the speaker, who was not grizzled and was not wearing a red windbreaker.

“Good evening, Mr. Halftoe,” Rep said. “Would you care to join me?”

“I would,” Halftoe said, stepping forward and slipping onto the bench opposite Rep's. “I'm in the mood for a little firewater, as my people supposedly call it. I understand that you want to talk to Laurel Wolf.”

Chapter 25

“Whoever told you I want to talk to Laurel was right,” Rep said. “Can you arrange it?”

“That depends on how you look at it. I don't know where she is, and I don't know anybody who does.”

“Good. That means you can't be accused of harboring a fugitive. If I were wearing a wire any cops who were listening would now be yawning and going back to their crosswords.”

“I guess I would've made make a good lawyer.” Halftoe grinned, showing teeth more even than any adult gets without help from the American Dental Association.

“Stick with being a bagman. It's better for your reputation.”

“It's ‘bundler,' not ‘bagman.' Good line, though. I like it.”

“So now we're on the record that you can't take me to her. Tell me what you can do.”

“I can get you on the phone with a guy who'll listen to you. If he likes what he hears, and I like what I hear, he'll patch you through to Laurel Wolf.”

An auburn-haired waitress approached. Her smile seemed designed to meet the minimum standard defined by a union contract. Her expression said, “Look, but don't touch.” Rep estimated the distance between the hem of her red leather mini-skirt and the tops of her knees at fifteen inches. Her halter top was also red, also leather, and equally skimpy relative to the flesh it was nominally intended to cover.

“Can I get you fellas anything to drink while you're looking at the menu?”

“Actually, I think we're about ready to order,” Rep said. “Bacon cheeseburger medium rare, with fries and extra barbecue sauce.”

“You get a second side order.”

“Better make it cottage cheese. I'm on a diet.”

“What to drink?” asked the waitress, who had apparently heard that one before.

“Miller Genuine Draft.”

“Don't have it.”

“Coors?”

“Nope.”

“Leininkugel? Point Beer?”

“No and no. Best I can do is Budweiser.”

“Water, then. No ice. Fewer calories, lower carbs, and it tastes about the same.”

She turned toward Halftoe.

“How about you, sir?”

“Cosmopolitan.”

“Anything to eat?” she asked, keeping her tone professionally neutral.

“Sure, why not? Plate of hot wings and a Coke chaser.”

“I'll bring your food and drinks together.”

She sashayed off. Halftoe followed the departure with a connoisseur's eye.

“When she comes back you'd better pinch her fanny or she'll think we're gay,” he said.

“I'm afraid she'd beat me up. Besides, I'm not the one who ordered a cosmopolitan.”

“I'm going for metrosexual. Chicks in the Midwest really dig it.”

“Okay,” Rep said. “So. This guy who has to like what he hears. What's his number?”

“Don't you think this venue is a little public for a conversation like that?”

“Public is one of the things I like about it.”

“I was thinking we could go back to your hotel room.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“Pretty please.”

“No.”

“How badly do you want to talk to Laurel?”

“Badly—but not that badly.”

“Don't you trust me?”

“Nope. Besides, my wife said that
she'd
beat me up if I pulled something as reckless as that—and she scares me even more than the waitress does.”

They continued the unpromising discussion for about seven minutes, suspending it briefly when the waitress came back, bearing a tray. With brisk efficiency she distributed the orders. Halftoe killed a third of the cosmopolitan in one gulp, then picked up a mini-drumstick and began playing with it without showing much interest in consumption.

“You're making this a lot harder than it should be, but maybe I can find a way to make it work,” he said. “First, give me an idea of what you plan to say to Laurel if I manage to get you in touch with her.”

“If I did that then you'd have information you want from me and I wouldn't be one inch closer to a chat with her. The American Bar Association would never let me lecture on negotiating tactics again.”

Halftoe snapped his gaze away from Rep, emitting a little hiss of frustration as he did so. Then, squaring his torso against the back of the booth, he pulled his mobile phone from his shirt pocket, flipped it open with a disgusted, have-it-your-way petulance, and hit a speed dial button.

“He wants to do it where we are, in the restaurant…. No, it's not crowded yet. It's Friday night and the early crowd has cleared out. Most of the action now is at the bar…. Okay.”

Halftoe handed the phone across the table. Rep accepted it and, with a sharply regretful pang, laid most of a bacon cheeseburger back on his plate.

“This is Rep Pennyworth. What's on your mind?”

“Why do you want to talk to Laurel?” a low, male voice asked.

“To tell her some things I think she should know.”

“Like how you fingered her to the cops?”

“She already knows that.”

“Why are you so concerned about her all of a sudden?”

“It's like jazz. If you have to ask, you wouldn't understand.”

“Not good enough. I need more than snappy patter.”

Rep frowned. The guy had a point, but explaining would be a challenge. He was concerned about Laurel Wolf for two reasons—one that he couldn't confess, and one that he wasn't sure he could articulate.

“Let me put it this way,” he said after a couple of moments. “Someone murdered my client. I don't know who or why, but if Laurel Wolf isn't the who then there's a pretty good chance the why has something to do with people I care about—starting with me.”

“What good is talking to Laurel going to do? She's not going to answer any questions.”

“It can't hurt and it might help.”

Rep listened to static while whoever he was talking to pretended to think things over—or, perhaps, actually did.

“All right,” the voice said at last. “I'll try to patch us through.”

Rep heard beeps, clicks, two ring-tones, and a female voice with roughly the register and tone of Wolf's.

“This is Laurel.”

“I have Pennyworth on the line. He's the lawyer who said he wanted to talk to you.”

“It's your party, shyster,” the woman's voice said. “You wanna talk, talk.”

“Whoever told you to torch the Lindstrom place is trying to frame you for Ole Lindstrom's murder.”

“And you think that because—why, exactly?”

“Let's call it a dream I had.”

“Is that your idea of joke? Because I'm not in the mood for paleface racist bullshit.”

“I'll tell you the dream and then you decide whether it's racist.” Rep waited through a couple of seconds of silence. “My dream began with someone in a motel room. I can't tell whether it's a man or a woman. You know how dreams are. It's not one of the franchise chain motels, more of a seedy kind of place where you pay cash and no one checks license plate numbers. Suddenly someone else is in the room. Definitely a woman. She's very excited. She says they have to leave in a hurry. Something has gone wrong. That kind of thing. You with me so far?”

“I'm keeping up, but it sounds more like a second-rate cable cop show than a dream.”

“Anyway, they both leave the room and peel out. Then a strange thing happens. All of a sudden I'm checking into the same motel. Not really my kind of place, but I'm wet and cold and little banged up, and it's any port in a storm. What do you think of my dream?”

“I think it's a pretty unlikely coincidence.”

“Not really. The seedy hotel is near Loki, but not too near, and it doesn't keep meticulous records. Just the kind of place you'd pick if you wanted a base of operations for an assignation—or an arson. And because it's near but not too near Loki, it's the kind of place I might stumble over when all I care about is running water and clean sheets. It happens that I did stumble over it, or my wife did, and a car peeled out of the parking lot right around the time the
VACANCY
light came on. Now what do you think?”

“I think you're wasting my time,” the female voice said—but it spoke without conviction.

“Maybe. But I started trying to reach you by leaving the same message with three different people. If I'm wrong, all three of them should have treated it as a crank call. The only reason any of them should have paid any attention to it was that their caller i.d.s would have shown that the call came from the very motel I saw in my dream. Maybe that's just another unlikely coincidence—but the coincidences are starting to pile up here. And if it isn't a coincidence, then your life is in danger.”

“In danger from who? People who were trying to keep you from going to the police with some white man's fairy tale about recognizing my voice?”

“Yes.”

“I thought you said the bad guys were trying to frame me.”

“They are, but they don't want the police to get you. You'd be a much more convenient suspect dead than alive.”

“Right. Got it. Sure.” The voice dripped with sarcasm. “So this is the part where you say I should go to the police myself, right?”

“I have a conflict of interest. The only advice I can ethically give you is to consult an attorney who doesn't. But if that other lawyer tells you to make sure you get the truth down on paper or in a computer disk that can be sent to the cops if you turn up missing, I wouldn't be surprised.”

Rep listened to what he told himself was thoughtful silence for six or seven seconds before he heard the voice again.

“Anything else?”

“Just one thing,” he said. “When I almost nailed you with the SUV door during your escape from the Lindstrom house, what did you say?”

“That's it,” the male voice said brusquely. “End of conversation.”

With the abrupt click from the broken connection still sounding in his ear, Rep returned the mobile phone to Halftoe, who smiled mordantly as he took it.

“The guy told you she wasn't going to answer any questions, didn't he?”

“And she didn't. But he did. He told me whoever I was talking to didn't know the answer.”

Rep went contentedly back to work on his bacon cheeseburger. Halftoe looked at him with undisguised exasperation for a couple of bites, then polished off four hot wings in one minute flat, finished his cosmopolitan, drank half the Coke, and stood up.

“I'm gonna hit the head. I'll be right back.”

“If the waitress comes, do you want me to have her put the rest of the wings in a doggie-bag?” Rep asked Halftoe's back. Except for an I-can't-believe-this head shake, Halftoe ignored him.

By the time Halftoe returned, about five minutes later, the bacon cheeseburger was almost gone and Rep's pile of French fries much diminished. The cottage cheese, however, remained untouched. Relaxed and all smiles now, Halftoe sat down and attacked his buffalo wings with apparently genuine enthusiasm. He was finishing the last of them when the waitress reappeared.

“How about dessert, gentlemen?”

“Not for me,” Rep said.

“I'll pass too,” Halftoe said as he stripped a sauce-sodden wing clean with his perfectly even teeth. After a couple of desultory napkin swipes on his right hand, he pulled a wad of currency from his right-hand coat pocket and peeled a hundred-dollar bill from it. “Let me get this.”

“If you insist,” Rep said.

The waitress took the bill without comment and padded away.

“Okay,” Halftoe said to Rep then, folding his hands and leaning forward in a suggestive, man-to-man, just-between-us-guys kind of way. “With Ole's unfortunate death, your professional engagement in that matter is over, right?”

“True,” Rep admitted. “Death of the client terminates the retainer.”

“So you're now available for other work.”

“Keeping busy pays the rent.”

“You've handled yourself pretty well in this mess. Stayed loyal to your client, kept your eye on the ball. That impresses people.”

“Thank you.”

“Chenequa Gaming Enterprises, Inc. has lots of trademark and copyright work. They have some good lawyers working for them already, but they like to spread their business around. What's your standard retainer for new corporate clients?”

“It depends,” Rep said. “How does twenty-five thousand sound?”

“Sounds doable.”

“Tell you what,” Rep said, digging out one of his cards and sliding it across the table to Halftoe. “Have someone email me a list of potential adverse parties. I'll have a conflict check run first thing Monday morning, and as soon as we're clear I'll crank out an engagement letter and we can get to work.”

Halftoe pocketed the card with one hand and took the wad of cash out with the other.

“Better idea.” He peeled off ten bills. “There has to be some work that you won't be conflicted out of. We'll make this a deposit on the retainer. They'll wire the rest as soon as you get the paperwork done. Meanwhile, there's a project you can get to work on tonight. There are some people in D.C. getting ready to chat up the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Monday. We can run in and see them for half-an-hour or so.”

Rep was shaking his head when the waitress returned with Halftoe's change. Her eyes widened at the pile of hundreds untouched in the center of the table.

“We have a special tonight,” she said. “If that's the tip you get dessert for free.”

“This is your tip, munchkin,” Wolf said, plucking a ten from the change she had brought. “Remember me in your prayers.”

“‘Munchkin?' Never mind. You fellas have a good night.”

Rep waited until she was ten feet away before he spoke again.

“Let's do it by the book. I'd love to represent Chenequa, but it's never a good idea to cut corners. No need for cash. Their credit is good. I'll jump through the hoops and we can hit the ground running Monday afternoon.”