Tag Man (7 page)

He kissed her cheek. “You are too much.”

He let her handle the details of greeting her friend at Bariloche’s closed door a little later, while he set up the apartment’s board-on-bricks arrangement that served as a dining table, setting out paper plates and cups and napkins in his peculiarly precise way.

When she returned, she bore a salad, two sandwiches, and a couple of soft drinks, all ordered with an eye to his various phobias. Not that she worried overmuch—she knew the slack he allowed her. But she was a considerate child, and loved her father deeply.

Which caused her to revisit her earlier concern as she saw him picking at his food.

“What’s up, Dad?”

“Just something I saw,” he tried reassuring her. “You know how I wander around.”

“Something or someone?”

He allowed for a half smile. “Someone.”

She took another bite of sandwich, depositing a blob of mayonnaise on her lower lip in the process. Normally, he couldn’t have borne watching it—not on someone else. But on her, it just looked sweet.

He explained, “I ran into a guy with some odd habits. A little creepy, actually. It just put me off.”

“You think he’s dangerous?”

He considered the question seriously, both out of respect to her and from pure habit. Dan was a man given to the literal truth, and not much prone to protective social niceties.

“He may be.” He stared at his plate for a moment, thinking back, trying to override his emotions with a rational answer. It didn’t come easily. His mind was usually in a tug-of-war with itself, his intellect struggling with his compulsions. This recent memory was no help.

He finally gave up and smiled. “It doesn’t matter. It was just a chance encounter. I’m not likely to see him again.”

“Sounds like a good thing,” she said with her mouth full. “I’d stay as far away as I could.”

He couldn’t argue with that, but after he’d escorted her to where she was grabbing a return ride to school, he yielded to the urge to give the subject the attention it deserved.

He did not retire to the monastic apartment and his perch by the window, however. Instead, he walked across Brattleboro from where he’d left Sally, using back streets and alleyways he knew like the rooms of a family home, until he reached Arch Street—narrow, poorly paved, and largely ignored by the general populace. This dropped off from Main Street down a steep embankment and led to the railroad tracks that ran between the picturesque Connecticut River and the backs of the commercial buildings that fronted Main. As with so many New England industrial-era towns, Brattleboro had shunned the river—at the time, considered no more than a power source and a delivery route for merchandise.

Now, however, aside from a couple of trains every day, this strip was quiet, empty, and sylvan—assuming one’s gaze overshot the nearby tracks, trash, and urban grime in favor of the view.

Kravitz walked alongside the curving rail bed, enjoying the early summer weather, the broad river, and the mountain looming over the opposite shore. But he was also watchful, checking for any movement either on foot or at any of the windows scattered across the redbrick walls above, like the holes of a gigantic colander.

Satisfied, he faded into a recess at the foot of a nearby building, worked the lock of a small, battered door, and vanished from sight.

Once inside, he negotiated the dark hallways with the aid of a flashlight before coming to another door, this one equipped with a combination lock, a deadbolt, and an alarm system. There, he knelt down to make sure the slim strip of Scotch tape he’d left spanning the door and the jamb was still intact, and let himself in.

Beyond was an immaculately maintained, white-walled, windowless room, not unlike a surgery, but outfitted with electronics, reference materials, a desk, and a bed. This was his combination operations center/meditation room, the inner sanctum where he both studied the security systems he needed to defeat and—as now—where he retreated to wrestle with the confusions that too often assailed him from outside.

No one knew of this place, including Sally. Even the landlord and Dan had never met in person. Nor did the landlord know Dan’s actual identity. It was as secure as the places he invaded should have been.

He crossed to the office chair he used when planning his operations, before a semicircle of computers and reference books—a place of comfort and control, with his world at his fingertips—and returned to both the conversation he’d barely broached with his daughter and the far more substantive experience of the night before.

On the face of it, his choice was simple. He should report what he’d found to the police—specifically, his sparring partner, Willy.

But his was not a simple worldview, and his daughter’s advice to simply stay away notwithstanding, he instinctively knew that he’d have to take a more complicated run at a solution. The way he kept his balance in a tumultuous universe was not to run away or delegate a solution, but to supply his own. Even if it amounted to using a sand pail against the incoming tide, it remained a display of effort, and since he was the only audience he wished to persuade, it was sometimes all he needed to maintain equilibrium.

The question here, though, was what to do. Excluding the authorities was well and good, but he wasn’t the man to replace them. Nor did he have or want anyone to act on his behalf. It wasn’t the police he was avoiding, after all, but the whole concept of any outside help.

His first impulse was to do more research. Given his fondness for studying other people’s lives, what more tempting subject—mysterious, horrifying, perhaps even threatening—than Paul Hauser?

Also, Hauser posed an unexpected problem. For the same reasons that he proved interesting, he’d also become a hurdle. Just as Dan could not leave any mess untended—if only tidying it up in the smallest way—so did the specter of Paul Hauser represent a show-stopping example of disorder: Dan couldn’t continue as the Tag Man until straightening this out. Last, digging into and exposing Paul Hauser stood to be truly worthy. Dan didn’t know the significance of the pictures he’d seen, but he doubted that they were staged. And if he was right, and could identify them and link them to Hauser somehow, would that not be the ultimate justification for Dan’s own behavior?

*   *   *

Joe was sitting in his wood shop at home—midweek, midafternoon—an alien situation for him. This room, tacked onto the back of his small house, was filled with the enormous, ancient, cast iron woodworking tools his late father had used to help keep the family farm running, and routinely served as Joe’s sanity restorer—where he went ostensibly to make things like birdhouses and small boxes, but in fact to repair himself by proxy.

However, that was usually after hours, and he hadn’t actually touched a tool, anyhow. He was just sitting there, staring into space, when the phone rang.

Out of habit, he’d brought the cordless phone in and laid it on the bench beside him—perpetually aware of how dependent so many people had become on having him within reach.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” said Gail.

Joe smiled sadly at the phone. “Hey yourself, Governor. So bored already that you’re calling old pals?”

She laughed outright into his ear. “Holy shit, Joe. If I’d only known, I never would have run for this job.”

He doubted that. Much as he loved this woman—if now only as a best friend—he’d never been blind to her unbridled ambition. As lofty as being governor sounded to most, Gail was most likely already pondering something higher up the food chain—a few months into her first term.

“They running you ragged?”

“What did you used to say?” she asked. “It’s like being nibbled to death by ducks?”

He smiled at the phone. “Yeah, according to George Bernard Shaw, I think.”

“Well, it’s nonstop,” she said. “From people telling me I suck as a governor and have a lousy fashion sense, to toadies blowing me kisses, I’m feeling like a human piñata. Christ only knows what half of them are really after. I doubt if
they
do after all the posturing.”

“I bet,” Joe said politely.

She then asked, “How’re you doing? I’m worried about you.”

“You got enough on your mind. I’m fine.”

“Right. You back at work yet? Must not be if I caught you at home.”

“No,” he conceded. “Still working out a few kinks. Seeing a shrink.”

“Good,” she said enthusiastically, as he knew she would. She was younger, more liberal, and more urbane than he. For her, psychologists had the same standing as pharmacists had for his generation—neighborhood experts you consulted almost casually about the most intimate of details.

“How’s that working for you?” she asked.

“It takes time,” he answered carefully.

“Don’t I know it,” she said sympathetically, the rape she’d suffered years earlier suddenly rearing up. He was embarrassed that by comparison, his burden seemed a triviality—a broken heart, inevitably to be healed by time.

To give her credit, she sensed this in his silence. “It’s a real loss, Joe. Like losing a limb. A part of you died with her. Once again,” she added, alluding to his earlier loss of his wife, Ellen.

“Yeah,” he acknowledged. “I’m thinking I’ll give all that a bit of a rest.”

“The job or relationships?” she asked like the lawyer she was.

He hesitated.

“Joe?” she pushed.

“I’m working on that.”

“Work on the relationship angle if you want. There’s no rush there. But you need to get back to work. I know you, Joe. Does the unit have anything interesting going?”

“This and that,” he said vaguely. “I just needed a breather, Gail.”

He heard some voices in the background at her end of the phone. “You better go,” he counseled. “You don’t want to miss out on another tongue-lashing.”

She ignored the humorous out. “I do have to go. I’m sorry. I’ll call again. But listen to what I’m saying, Joe. I love you. I always will. You need to get busy. Have you seen your mother?” she asked suddenly.

Joe’s mother lived in their old house in Thetford, with his brother, who helped care for her, about halfway up the Connecticut River Valley toward Canada.

“Oh, sure. A few times. She sends her love. Solid as a brick.”

“No offense, but I wasn’t asking after her health. She tells you the truth, and I bet she’s saying the same thing I just did.”

He could tell she was shifting back into executive role.

“You’re not wrong,” he told her, about to hang up the phone. “You know your players. Good luck out there.”

*   *   *

Ron Klesczewski sat back in his office chair and studied his computer screen. He had spent the last few hours researching Lloyd Jordan—first through local records and files, identifying when he’d moved into the area, how much he paid in property taxes, and how diligent he’d been in meeting his obligations. He’d then expanded his scope to Vermont’s criminal and civil databases. From there, it had been on to the famed NCIC—the National Crime Information Center—and last, he’d consulted the mother ship, Google, where, no surprise, he’d found the most ore to mine.

Lloyd Jordan, it appeared, had no criminal record beyond a couple of speeding tickets, but he had generated a lot of chatter among the Boston media and bloggers.

“You look like a bird dog hot on the trail.”

Ron twisted in his seat, already smiling at the familiar voice. He rose quickly and shook hands with his old boss and mentor.

“Joe,” he said, moving a chair invitingly. “Take a load off. My God, it’s good to see you. How’re you doing?”

Joe Gunther settled down and dismissed the question with a wave. “Hanging in there. The family hale and hearty?”

“Terrific. My boy is getting top marks at school and knocking them dead on the ball field, and his mother has just gotten her realtor’s license and is pounding the pavement as we speak.”

Joe smiled. “Jeez. Moving right along. I remember when that kid was just a bump in his mom’s belly.”

Ron laughed, wondering when he’d last seen Joe in these offices, or with enough time on his hands to simply drop by.

“You want some coffee?” he asked, using it as a filler as he considered what to say next. Small talk had never been his strength.

“No,” Joe told him. “People are offering me more coffee than I can handle—won’t sleep for a week.”

Ron started there. “Doing a lot of visiting?”

Joe smiled, but his eyes were watchful. “Like dropping in on people who’re trying to work?”

Ron flushed slightly. “Oh, hey. That’s not what I meant—”

Joe interrupted him. “Not to worry, Ron. It doesn’t matter. Regardless of what you meant, I am rattling around a bit. I can’t get my feet back under me. I’m not used to that.”

“Lyn?” Ron asked leadingly.

Joe didn’t argue the point. “I miss her. I’m even seeing a shrink.” Repeating the words he’d used earlier with Gail didn’t make them sound any better. He disliked the idea of psychotherapy, even while he was grateful that it was available. He added, as if to prove something to himself, “It’s more than that. Something deeper, I guess. Could be an age thing, or just burnout. I don’t know…” His voice trailed off.

Ron looked at him, nonplussed, before Joe saved him from further embarrassment by pointing at the screen. “You working on anything interesting?”

Ron gratefully twisted the computer screen toward his guest. “The Tag Man struck again, and I decided to look more carefully at his latest victim. Willy steered me that way. Might have potential.”

Joe leaned forward to see better. “Lloyd Jordan? Never heard of him.”

“He’s a flatlander from Boston,” Ron informed him. “Rolling in dough and arrogant as hell. The minute I met him, I thought he was hiding something. He and his wife are recent arrivals, looking like quite the local fund-raisers and do-gooders—or at least she does; I doubt he gives a shit—but it turns out he may have been up to his neck in the mob in the old days.”

“No kidding?”

“Nothing he was ever caught at,” Ron continued. “But the chatter’s convinced he was dirty.”

Joe’s expression had revived to something more reminiscent of the Joe Gunther Ron knew well.