The Disposable Man (14 page)

In the midst of it all, Willy appeared at the cramped office’s door and tapped me on the shoulder. “Chief wants to see us.”

I raised my eyebrows. “He outside? At this time of night?”

“At the office. He sounded pissed off.”

It was an unusual request, and a poorly timed one. Nevertheless, I rose from my chair and pointed to Willy. “All right. You take over here, and I’ll see what’s up.”

Kunkle shook his head. “He said I had to come, too—to stick with you.”

I scowled at that, making no sense of any of it. Unless one of our selectmen had called Tony in a fit, demanding immediate satisfaction, I couldn’t imagine why I was being called on the carpet. I left the office and waved to J.P., who was packing up the last of his toys. “Take my place in there.”

Willy and I left the store and crossed the road to his car. The predawn air was refreshing after the stuffy back office, and I breathed deeply to cleanse my lungs. “Why’d he want you along?” I asked Willy. “You gotten your ass in a crack again?”

“Not that any of you would know,” he said tersely. “He made it sound like you were the one on the shit list.”

Located at the far end of Main Street, the Municipal Building was all of two minutes away. Like most of its neighbors, it dated back over a hundred years, but it was placed on a hill and equipped with a Transylvania-style spiky roofline that, in the faint blush of dawn, made it look like a medieval prison.

Tony Brandt, looking grim, met us just inside the locked door leading into the Officers’ Room. “Come with me, Joe,” he said as soon as we’d entered.

Shrugging to Willy, who for once made no sarcastic comment, I followed Brandt back to the adjacent room and into his office in the far corner. There, also standing and looking unhappy, was Gail’s boss—Jack Derby—Windham County’s State’s Attorney.

“What’s going on?” I asked them, by now fully aware this was no minor political flare-up.

“Someone called Jack at home with an anonymous tip, Joe—”

“Not that I believed him,” Derby interrupted nervously. “I just thought we should cover our butts.”

Annoyed, Tony resumed, “A bystander at that jewelry store scene said he saw you put something in the outer breast pocket of your jacket.”

My face flushed. “Bullshit.”

“That’s what I said,” Tony agreed.

I reached into my pocket, felt something hard, and pulled out a shiny, diamond-studded brooch, obviously worth a small fortune.

The only thing I was aware of for a moment was the rapid beating of my heart. “What the hell is this?” I asked softly. I could feel the sweat prickling my forehead.

Tony looked as stunned as I was and cast a glance at the State’s Attorney, no doubt wishing that Derby hadn’t fielded the call. In his absence, we might have had more room to sort this out. Now, all decisions were already out of our hands.

I placed the jewel on his desk and heard it click against the wood surface. I felt as though my skull had picked up a low internal hum, as from a motor that’s been dropped into low gear. “I don’t know how it got there.”

“And yet, there it is,” Derby said gently, sounding extremely uncomfortable. The newest arrival on our small but intense political scene, it was obvious he felt he’d had a smoking bomb dropped in his lap.

I raised my hand to my temple. “Look, I surveyed the contents of the display case as soon as I got to the store. I was careful. I watched where I stepped. I didn’t touch a goddamn thing.”

“Were your hands in your pockets?” Tony asked.

“No,” I answered angrily, “but they weren’t rummaging through the merchandise, either. I kept them by my sides… At least, I think I did. I may have moved them around—who the hell knows? But I didn’t tamper with the evidence.”

I picked up the brooch again and studied it. “It wasn’t there,” I finally said. “I would’ve remembered it. And it doesn’t belong to Gail. I sure as hell would’ve remembered that.”

They both looked at me wordlessly, and I realized the trouble I was in. Without cause or reflection, I knew in my heart why the SA had been called by that snitch, instead of Tony or the department switchboard, and I knew that the brooch would figure in the inventory being compiled back at the store—that Richard Manners would swear on a stack of Bibles it had been shimmering front and center when he’d locked his doors at closing time.

A flurry of possibilities suddenly filled my brain, all demanding priority. “Must be Manners,” I whispered.

Tony stared at me. “What?”

“Richard Manners, the store manager. He’s a real goof-off. His boss thinks so, anyhow. And his records are in chaos.” Another thought crowded that one out. “Or one of his clerks could’ve done a number on him. He never would’ve known.” Another pause. “Unless he’s cleverer than we think, and he’s leading us by the nose.”

I lapsed into silence.

The quiet in the room was eloquent. Still, Jack commented, not without kindness, “We’re still stuck with how it got into your pocket.”

I dropped my chin and looked at the floor for a moment, a confused torrent filling me from the feet up, threatening my breathing. I felt I could see into everyone’s head, as if I were reading lines from a play. I knew they were waiting for me to say something incriminating, that all I’d said so far had already been tucked away for future misinterpretation. Somebody outside this room had started a process in motion, involving just the right cast of characters, in order to build a case against me—and it was based on the assumption that all cops in a bind are deemed guilty until proved otherwise.

That’s how the system maintained its integrity.

“I’m leaving,” I said suddenly. “Any problem with that?”

“Where’re you going?” Tony asked, his face showing genuine concern. I moved to the door. “Home.”

He reached out and touched my shoulder. “This’ll go away, Joe. We just need to figure it out.”

“We could try to do that here and now,” Derby added, almost plaintively.

I pulled the door open and saw a small, silent cluster of people in the far room, looking at us. Anger half closed my throat, images of Snowden, Rarig, the mugger, and of Henri Alonzo’s peeved expression crowded my mind. “You know goddamn well it’s already beyond that. I’m gone.”

· · ·

I walked home, alone in the dawn’s tepid light, my heart and mind in a turmoil, hoping the fresh air might help me to think, and yet paying it no attention. That I’d been carefully positioned into this corner went without saying, but the why and by whom of the equation had too many options, and therefore none at all. And the how had me baffled, too. The more I stalked into the coming day, hearing only the awakening birds over the sounds of my own footsteps, the more confused and enraged I became. Reaching the spot in the road of my other recent claim to fame—now marked by a few shards of plastic and two ugly strips of burned rubber—didn’t help any.

Gail met me in the driveway, wrapped in a thick robe, obviously forewarned by Tony Brandt. “You okay?” she asked as I drew near.

“Not hardly,” I said bitterly. “I feel like a cat that’s been staked out on the highway.”

“What happened exactly? Tony didn’t go into details.”

“That smash-and-grab I went to. They say I stole one of the jewels when I was at the scene. They found it in my pocket. Christ, I reached in and
handed
it to them.”

She’d left the kitchen door open, and we entered together. “How did it get there?” she asked.

I looked at her peevishly. “How the hell do I know?”

I saw the hurt in her eyes and reached out for her shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s crazy. There’re just too many possibilities.”

She steered me over to the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Sit. You missed dinner last night. I’m going to make us waffles.” She held up her hand as I opened my mouth. “Don’t argue. We need to think this one out, and do something while we’re at it. In fact, don’t sit. Make us something hot to drink—tea, coffee, whatever floats your boat. And slice up that cantaloupe.”

It was, of course, sound advice. I put myself to work.

“Okay,” she resumed, reaching into cupboards and pulling out what she needed. “Let’s go back to
when
somebody could have planted that jewel. Maybe that’ll open up some doors.”

I was by now mimicking her actions on the other side of the kitchen. “I tried that. It could’ve been anytime, and if they were good, or somebody I knew well, they could’ve even done it when I was wearing the damn coat. It was my breast pocket. Ever since handkerchiefs went out, it’s almost never used. Somebody could’ve slipped it in there a week ago, and I wouldn’t’ve known.”

She paused to look over her shoulder. “A week ago? I thought you said it came from the jewelry store.”

“It did… No, let me back up. We think it did. The inventory’s still being done, but the store manager’s so disorganized I doubt he’ll be able to swear when he last saw it. It could’ve been missing for days.”

She pointed at the pocket. “It doesn’t have a flap. If you took the coat off and threw it over the back of a chair, the brooch might’ve fallen out. Whoever went to all this trouble would’ve thought of that.”

The obvious truth of that startled me, and made me doubt my own ability to think this out. “You’re right.”

“So it was probably done this morning. Who were you standing close enough to that he might have had a chance?”

I shook my head. “That doesn’t work. Willy picked me up—” I suddenly froze. “Shit.”

“What?”

“We parked across the street. We had to push through a crowd to get in the door, and I ducked under the tape. Someone could’ve… No.”

“Why not?” she asked. “That sounded plausible.”

“How would they’ve known where I was going to cut through the crowd?”

“Where did you? Directly opposite the door?”

“Yeah.”

She smiled hopefully. “That’s logical—exactly what the guy would’ve expected.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Maybe. It seems a little wobbly. If we’d parked on the same side of the street, we would’ve entered the scene from a different angle.”

“How big was the crowd?” I made a vague gesture. “Bigger than I would’ve expected. The alarm drew them out. A dozen maybe.”

“That’s not many, Joe. He sees you coming, he moves to intercept.”

I paused in the middle of putting the filter into the coffee machine. “I don’t remember anyone in motion. I don’t think anyone even saw us coming.” Again, I was struck by the idea’s fancifulness. “It’s such a long shot—putting so much faith on my having the right kind of jacket, presenting it at just the right angle at just the right time—not to mention the skill involved in pulling off something like that.”

“Be worth checking out,” she said simply, pouring milk into a bowl. “A good pickpocket could’ve done it, working in reverse. Maybe you should look at people with that kind of background.”

More to mollify her than from any conviction, I said, “Pierre was positioned outside, facing them all. Maybe he saw something, or could remember who was there.”

“All right,” Gail said, with assumed authority. “That’s a possible how. I’m guessing Kunkle could have done it, too, along with whoever else was there, but that’s pretty unlikely. Agreed?”

“Yeah. Plus, neither the manager nor the owner ever got close enough to me.”

“Okay. Let’s go to the why.”

I measured out enough coffee for one cup. Gail never touched the stuff. I was going to boil water for tea for her. “That’s the one I was thrashing out all the way here. It could be anything, from this CIA thing I’m working on to some bastard I put away twenty years ago.”

“If the latter’s true, maybe the timing’s important. You could match pickpockets with past cases and recent prison release dates and maybe come up lucky.”

I turned away so she couldn’t see my obvious skepticism. “I suppose.” In fact, I couldn’t remember ever dealing with a pickpocket. It seemed like a profession straight out of Dickens.

“Or,” she went on, vigorously beating the contents of the bowl, “it might be connected to a current case—someone hired by somebody you’re squeezing.”

I opened my mouth to put the brakes on all this when I was struck by the reasonableness of what she’d just said. Once again I flashed back to the Korean War Memorial. “Like my mugger, you mean.”

She poured a ladle of waffle mix onto the electric griddle and closed it, checking her watch. “Could be.”

I walked over next to her and placed the kettle on one of the gas burners. “It still doesn’t tell us a goddamn thing.” I grabbed a cantaloupe and a knife but did nothing with either. “I mean, say the CIA tried to have me killed and now is trying to land me in jail, the question still remains, why? I haven’t done anything unique. Some kid found the body, the ME’s office sliced it up, the crime lab came up with that stupid ginkgo seed. I’ve just been a cog in this whole thing. Why do I deserve all the attention?”

I’d been using the knife as a baton throughout this speech. Gail pointed to it and said gently, “Cut the cantaloupe, Joe.”

I did as she asked, my confusion unabated. “This might make some sense if I thought it was leading anywhere. But even sniffing around the inn, we still don’t have enough for a warrant.”

“You might with time.”

I scooped the contents of the cantaloupe out into the compost bucket. “Maybe, but that misses the point. I was mugged in DC before I knew much of anything, and whoever ordered that couldn’t have known a ginkgo seed was going to suddenly appear to lead us to the inn. That’s too crazy.”

Partly to my regret, that quieted her down. I sliced and prepared the rest of the melon in total silence.

Finally, Gail checked her watch again, opened the griddle, and extracted four waffles, which she placed on two plates. Her voice missing its earlier strength, she asked, “So what’s the department do now?”

I set out the mugs, syrup, and utensils and sat opposite her. “They have to find out if the brooch came from the store. Maybe, if the manager’s as much of a jerk as his boss thinks he is, that’ll be the end of it. But I doubt it. After that, it’ll be by the numbers, and you know what they are—paid suspension, while everyone sets out to prove at least possession of stolen property, and maybe grand theft. They have to come up with intent, knowledge that I knew it was hot, but the way things’re going, I’m sure they’ll be able to do that. Christ knows how.