Authors: Jack Fredrickson

A Safe Place for Dying (19 page)

BOOK: A Safe Place for Dying

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“You had nothing to do with that?”

“Ask me what you really want to know, Elstrom. Ask me if Chernek's money problems give him a motive. Only an idiot wouldn't see that. And though I'll deny it, it's why we grabbed him as quick as we did. If he's got potential, we need him neutralized.”

“He's out on bail now?”

“They had him less than two hours. The kind of connections he's got, they did real good having him that long.” He turned to Stanley, who hadn't said one word so far. “What's going on at your end?”

“Mr. Ballsard will be the chief contact for the investigation instead of Mr. Chernek.”

“I meant about evacuating Crystal Waters.”

“I don't think Mr. Ballsard has made up his mind.”

“Jesus, Novak.”

“I'll tell him you're concerned, Agent Till.”

Till leaned forward in his chair. “Tell Ballsard to quit dodging my calls, or I'll have him brought down here. Tell him Chernek's arrest means nothing. He must get his people out of Crystal Waters, send them to their summer homes or wherever people like that go, until we know what we're doing. Tell him if he doesn't get those people out of there, I'll call the press and spread the word like I'm ringing a bell.”

Perspiration beaded across Stanley's scalp.

“You don't think it's Chernek,” I said to Till.

Till turned to look at me. “I'm ruling nobody out.”

“Then why don't you act like it? Don't you think you should be investigating anybody who's had access to Crystal Waters in the last six months?”

“Like the people who plant the shrubs and cut the grass?”

“Among others, certainly.”

“I work with what I've got, Elstrom.”

“We'll still pursue Jaynes?” I said.

“You mean the A.T.F. should still pursue Jaynes.”

“Exactly.”

“Our computer artist is doing an aging of his Army photo, to get some ideas of what he might look like now. We'll send it to San Francisco and to our offices in the Midwest. They'll send it on to electrical suppliers and contractors. Maybe we'll shake something loose.”

“Like you did with Nadine Reynolds?”

Till stood up. We were done.

“I think Mr. Chernek is an honorable man,” Stanley said.

“One can hope,” Agent Till said.

In the elevator, I told Stanley I was finished with the case.

He was surprised. “Why?”

“I've been working for Anton Chernek, who is now a prime suspect. You've got the attention of the F.B.I. and A.T.F. They need to check out this Michael sighting, sweat Lucy like I can't. And they need to open up the investigation, start considering others beyond the missing Michael Jaynes and Anton Chernek. I can't do any of that, Stanley. It's got to come from A.T.F.”

“I'll talk to Mr. Ballsard. I need you to stay involved.”

“Ballsard and I â¦”

“I'm sure he no longer thinks about last Halloween. Let me talk to Mr. Ballsard.”

In the parking lot, he told me he'd be in touch.

I called Leo from the car and suggested fine dining at Kutz's. The coarse onions Kutz dropped like carpet bombs on his hot dogs would scour away any lingering effects of the California granola cakes with raspberry. And I wanted to bounce an update off Leo's head.

Traffic outbound on the Eisenhower was light, and I got from downtown Chicago to Kutz's while the line of construction workers and truckers was still a dozen deep outside the order window. I parked at the far end of the lot to wait for Leo and fell asleep.

Stan Getz's saxophone backing Astrud Gilberto woke me up. Leo had pulled up next to me, wearing a Panama hat and the kind of big plastic sunglasses they give to old people after cataract exams. In his enormous purple Hawaiian shirt, he would have looked like a retired jeweler who had wandered away from an assisted living facility in Miami Beach, except that he was driving a brand-new Porsche Carrera convertible with the top down.

“How many miles did last year's Porsche have on it, Leo?” I asked out the open window of the Jeep.

He grinned up at me. “Fifty-four hundred. But Endora saw this color and said I ought to snap it up before they discontinued it.”

I stepped down from the Jeep and walked around Leo's new car. It was silver, with a pinkish cast to it. I looked at Leo, still seated behind the steering wheel, in his ridiculous straw hat and black septuagenarian sunglasses and smiled.

“Endora said I'd grow to love the color,” he grinned.

I nodded. One of the many reasons I liked Endora was that she melded her eccentricities with Leo's, encouraging Leo to be Leo, only more so. If that meant a pink Porsche once in a while, so be it.

Leo was buying, so I ordered two hot dogs. “My billing client may go under indictment, so you might have to feed me until I collect Social Security,” I said as we waited by the window.

“Makes sense.” Leo slid the sagging tray carefully off the
counter and carried it to a table in the shade of the viaduct. “Tell me what you learned about Michael Jaynes,” he said, shooing away a pigeon and sitting down.

“Don't you want to talk about the Bohemian?”

“In due time. First Jaynes.” He picked up a hot dog.

“He calls.”

That stopped him. He set down the hot dog.

I told him about Nadine who became Lucy Vesuvius, about the random arrivals of the ten- and twenty-dollar bills over the years, and about the man named Michael who called the store in Clarinda every few months.

“No telling, though, whether it is your Mr. Jaynes?”

“Nor, if it is, if he ever gets up to Lucy's place.”

“There's never a letter with the cash?”

“And such a modest amount, at that.”

Leo took a bite. “Meaning?”

“Meaning once again this case is defined by 1970 dollars. Dollars that don't make sense.”

Leo's eyebrows inched up from behind his cataract glasses, waiting.

I went on. “I believe the money demandsâthe ten thousand, the fifty thousand, the five hundred thousandâwere written back then.”

Leo nodded. “You've said that.”

“Why use those old notes at all, Leo? Why not write new lettersâletters demanding much larger dollars?”

“You've said that, too.” He started on his second hot dog.

“Then there's the money Nadine's been getting all along. Ten or twenty bucks would have bought a big bag of groceries back in 1970, but it's not even a tank of gas today.”

“It's all he can spare.”

“
Could
spare, Leo. The last envelope was postmarked three days after the half million was left behind Ann Sather's. If Jaynes had
just come into half a million dollars, wouldn't he have stuffed a lot more into the latest envelope?”

Leo's dark eyebrows were all the way up now, poised just under the brim of his straw hat. “Unless?” he prompted.

“Unless the bombings are not about money at all.”

Twenty-one

I called the Bohemian's office from Kutz's parking lot. Griselda Buffy answered the main line, put me on hold, and, in less time than it should have taken, came back on and told me Mr. Chernek would see me whenever I could make it. I told her I could make it right away. I hopped on the Eisenhower for the third time that day and got down to the Bohemian's building in the same time it took to chew a roll of Tums.

I stepped around a young man in a too-tight dark suit studying the building directory in the foyer, punched the elevator button, and rode up.

The reception area was empty. I sat on one of the creased green leather wing chairs and picked up a two-week-old issue of
Business Week.
Several subscription cards fell out. Two weeks old, the magazine hadn't been touched.

Fifteen minutes passed. The phone didn't ring; no one came through the reception area. The only sound came from the grandfather clock in the corner, slowly ticking as if it were fighting the loss of each minute.

I got up and opened the walnut door to the general office. No
typing on keyboards, no opening of drawers, no talking on telephones. The office was dead, like a bus station in the middle of the night after the last bus has pulled away. I walked down a row of empty cubicles to the private offices in back.

Griselda Buffy stuck her head around a filing cabinet, her face startled. In that morgue, I must have sounded like a brass band.

“Mr. Elstrom. I didn't know you were here.”

“There's nobody up front.”

“I'll tell Mr. Chernek you've arrived.”

She went down the corridor, tapped on a door, and went in. I looked around. The secretarial desks were deserted, cleared of papers and pencil cups like the cubicles. The doors to the private offices along the back were closed. I wondered if Griselda Buffy and the Bohemian were the last ones there.

The door down the hall opened. Griselda stepped out and motioned me to come to the Bohemian's office.

“Vlodek,” he called out while I was still five feet away, rolling the vowels in his usual robust way. When I walked through his doorway, though, I almost stopped at the change in his appearance. His bronzed country club tan had gone pale, and the white collar of his apricot shirt lay loose around his neck. He sat behind an enormous paneled walnut desk, in a high-back burgundy leather chair that looked too big for him. It had only been three days since I'd seen him, but he looked like he'd shrunk in that time.

“Please, sit,” he said. Cardboard file boxes, some with their lids removed, were stacked on the floor and on the four guest chairs. Opened manila folders were spread everywhere. I took two boxes off one of the side chairs, set them on the floor, and sat down.

The Bohemian set down the sheaf of papers he was holding and looked at me across the desk.

“Tell me what's going on,” I said.

I thought I saw a faint tremor in his big hands as he folded them on his stomach. “I am accused of stealing from a client, to
cover the losses I, and my other clients, have suffered from my poor investments. And, though I have not as yet been accused of anything more, the losses also give me an excellent motive to set off bombs and extort money from Crystal Waters.”

“What have you told the F.B.I.?”

“The truth, Vlodek. My accuser, Miss Terrado, suffered losses in her portfolio as a result of my advice. That I do not deny. But so did many other of my clients, as well as many of the people who work here, including myself. I admit I am guilty of not being able to predict the future, but all of Ms. Terrado's investments have been intact; none have been removed from her account. The records will prove that.”

“Did you show those records to the F.B.I.?”

“I have not been given the chance. One would assume they would have wanted to review my files before they launched a grandstand play like a public arrest. But they did not.”

“Because they like you for the Crystal Waters explosions.”

“Yes. They need a suspect on hand, in case another house blows up. I'm available, here and now, unlike our elusive Mr. Jaynes. And because of my undeniable market losses, I do have cause for a motive. Unfortunately, since this is a criminal matter, my lawyers and I don't get to depose my accuser, the government, or their source, the troubled Miss Terrado. I've got to be tried to fight back.”

“Tell me about Miss Terrado.”

“I have not as yet been formally terminated as her advisor, which is her true goal, so I can't tell you everything, but since the woman is ruining me, I feel I am entitled to certain liberties. She has been liquidating her inheritance to the tune of a million a year, most of which goes for powder for her and her friends to put up their noses. The last asset she's got is the trust account her late parents set up for her with me, with me as administrator. She left that for last because she knew I'd fight her wasting it away, but now she has no choice. She needs the money for her addictions, so she's got
to get me off the trust. So she accused me of pilfering. When I'm removed from overseeing her account, the trust reverts to her control, and she can sniff herself into oblivion.”

“But you say your records will exonerate you.”

He waved at the boxes of files stacked around his office. “That will be in a year or two, in pretrial, when the government is forced to examine my evidence. Unfortunately, the news of my being cleared will be buried in the back section of the paper. By then, I will have long since been ruined.” He managed a smile. “I guess I don't need to tell you how this feels.”

If it was performance, it was masterful, especially the part that played on my own dissolution. But I liked the idea better that he was telling the truth.

His eyes locked on mine. “They must be convinced I have no potential as a suspect at Crystal Waters. How was California, Vlodek?”

I told him about Lucy Vesuvius, the long-ago police car explosion, and the most recent twenty-dollar bill in the envelope.

“You say Michael Jaynes calls every once in a while?”

“The woman at the store said whoever calls leaves just a first name, and that it is Michael.”

The Bohemian's face had regained some of its old healthy color. “That's good. He's taking big chances, keeping up with those calls, now that the bombings have resumed. If we could just get Till to set up a trace on that store phone.”

“What's Michael Jaynes been hiding from? Blowing up the back wall of the guardhouse in 1970? You told me it was never reported to the police. Why would he hide?”

The Bohemian shrugged. “Jaynes doesn't know we didn't report it. Or maybe he did something else that caused him to hide all these years.”

“I don't buy it.”

“What are you saying?”

“I'm not sure Michael Jaynes is involved anymore.”

His face flushed suddenly. “Why the hell would you think that?”

“As I told Stanley and Till, a guy who's just scored a half million dollars doesn't keep sending a twenty to an old girlfriend after he's hit pay dirt. He sends more.”

“I need Michael Jaynes, Vlodek.” He leaned across his big desk. “He disappeared right after the guardhouse in 1970. He didn't pick up his last paycheck. Both actions are consistent with him grabbing ten thousand dollars in extortion money and then taking off.”

“Maybe he wrote the notes, planted the D.X.12, and blew up the guardhouse, but he's been gone for too long. I think he collected the money in 1970 and disappeared for good. Changed his name, kept his nose clean, the works.”

“Then who is sending the notes and setting off the D.X.12?”

“Someone who wants us to think he's Michael Jaynes.”

“Someone else picked up the ball and is running with it?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Who?”

“Could be you.”

“Shit.” He spun his chair to look out the window. The back of his neck was red. After a minute, he spun around. “You find Michael Jaynes.”

“I don't know how.”

“Learn.”

“A.T.F. is involved. They can do more than I can.”

“Not for me, they won't.”

“They will, if it gets them the truth.”

“Find Michael Jaynes, Vlodek.”

His phone rang, loud, like an alarm inside a drum. He picked up the receiver, spoke into it, and started shuffling through the folders on his desk. I told him I'd get back to him and went out.

Griselda Buffy sat typing at the reception station, perhaps trying to make the place sound less like a tomb. It wasn't working.

I went down the elevator and crossed the street to the lot. Just as I started the Jeep my cell phone rang.

“How's Chernek?” Till said.

I switched off the engine and looked around the parking lot.

“Crown Victoria, last aisle by the bushes, closest to the street.” I picked out the dark green car parked in the shade. “Stick your hand out the window and wave.”

I did. A hand waved back. Till was in voice contact with the driver of the green sedan.

“I have a unit by the door on the other side of the building, too,” Till said.

“Was that your young man in the ill-fitting suit in the lobby when I went in?”

“Cheap suits are all we can afford on government pay.”

“I thought you were too short-handed for Crystal Waters.”

“The lads in the two units are rookies on stakeout training. Sitting in hot cars watching doors is the real work of the A.T.F.”

“You really think you'll get something that way? He'll spot you.”

“He already has. We made sure of it.”

“You want him to know you're watching?”

“We like to intimidate. If he's our man, it might prevent him from setting off another bomb. Of course, we've got two other suspects.”

“Two others?” I was surprised. “Jaynes and Chernek. You've only got two suspects, total.”

“There's you. That's three.”

My throat went too dry to fake a laugh. “Me?”

“You work for Chernek.”

“Damn it, Till.”

“You've got motive, too.”

A nerve tingled behind my eyes. He wasn't kidding.

“What motive, Till?”

“You hate rich folks. You married one of them, moved into her
fancy house at Crystal Waters, nobody made you feel welcome. Almost right after, you got your face plastered all over the papers for manufacturing evidence, you lost your little business, and now you'd not only shamed your wife, her important father, and your new neighborhood, but you'd bankrupted yourself as well. You were broke. Your wife dumped you, took off for Europe, but let you stay in her house for a month. You sat and drank and plotted revenge. Somehow you'd heard about the bombing of the guardhouse. You got hold of some D.X.12 and a few sheets of old tablet paper. You got creative. You wrote notes, planted a few bombs, before they threw you out, drunk, last Halloween.”

“What about the wiring that connects everything together? When did I do thatâat night, wandering around drunk?”

“I don't need to put it all together, Elstrom, not yet. It's enough that you interest me.”

“Like Jaynes and Chernek?”

“They interest me. But you I really like.”

“You've got two suspects.”

“Three, Elstrom, and one of the primes hasn't been heard from in thirty-five years. That leaves Chernek, the man with the goldplated motive, and he's real smart. And you. Not so smart, but still with motive and means.”

“I can't believe your gut is telling you it could be me.”

“My gut, Elstrom? You know how on T.V., after the second commercial, the wise cop sits on the edge of a desk in some gray squad room, rubbing his belly, shaking his head, and saying, âMy gut tells me â¦ ,' and then he names the bad guy?”

“The famed lawman's intuition.”

“It's bullshit. My gut's like my ex-wife, been lying to me for years. The times my gut told me I know something, it turns out it's wrong. The only time my gut is right is when it tells me it's hungry, and then I dump chili in it and it shuts up. The rest of the time I ignore my gut and plod.”

“Sounds like real law work, Till, pursuing me because you need to plod.”

“It's what I can do, Elstrom. It's what I can do.”

“What are you doing about Michael Jaynes?”

“Two agents interviewed Lucy Vesuvius this morning. She insists she hasn't seen him.”

BOOK: A Safe Place for Dying

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