Crazybone (17 page)

“Yeah. Philip fucking Cotter.”

“Bearer bonds?”

“That’s what Pete said. Some cash, too.”

“How much altogether?”

“Couple of hundred thousand, Pete told us. Lying bastard. Had to be more than that, the way those two lived down in Greenwood. A hell of a lot more.”

“Why would he lie to you?”

“Why you think? So we wouldn’t ask for more than him and Ellen were offering.”

“How much was that?”

“Fifty thousand. Seemed like a fortune at the time.” Another slug at the bottle. “Man, I wish I’d told ’em to take their fifty grand and shove it.”

“Why’d they give you that much?”

“So we’d move, change our names, start a new life like they were doing. So Cotter wouldn’t come after Lynn and me, try to find them through us. He knew where we lived. No question he’d’ve made us pay, too.”

“What was Ellen’s relationship with Cotter?”

“Married to him.”

“Where was this? Colorado?”

“Illinois. Billington, little town near Chicago.”

“What did Cotter do there?”

“Owned a company manufactured some kind of appliance — toasters, something like that. Goddamn laundry is what it was.”

“Laundry? You mean money laundering?”

“Yeah.”

“Mob-connected, then, this Cotter.”

“Not big time, but yeah, connected.”

“The stolen bonds and cash — his or the mob’s?”

“Cotter’s,” Meineke said. “Jesus, if it’d belonged to the fucking

Mafia, Pete and Ellen would never’ve touched it. Bad enough having a sick, ruthless son of a hitch like Cotter looking for us.”

“Sick?”

“Got his kicks hurting people. I mean hurting ’em with his hands.”

“Did he hurt Ellen?”

“Oh, yeah. Some of the things she told Lynn... make you puke.” Meineke grimaced, gulped bourbon. “One of his favorite tricks, if she did something he didn’t like, he’d take a ballpeen hammer and smack her on both elbows until she passed out from the pain.”

“Crazybone,” I said.

“Yeah. Nothing hurts worse than getting hit there.”

I looked away from him, down at the rocks below. One of the larger ones offshore had been sea-sculpted into a shape that resembled a castle on a mount; when the surf broke over it, the white spume gave it a sparkling, immaculate quality. Illusion. Bare black stone was all it was, and beneath the surface dark things clung to it and it was coated with slime.

Pretty soon I said, “How long was Ellen married to him?”

“Two years. Met him when he went to Cincinnati on a business trip.”

“That where she and Lynn are from, Cincinnati?”

“Yeah. Lynn’s older, she moved away a couple of years before and ended up in Boulder.”

“Why didn’t Ellen divorce Cotter when she found out what he was?”

“Didn’t have no money of her own — he made her sign one of those prenuptial agreements. And he told her he’d kill her if she tried to leave him.”

“Too scared to file for divorce, but not too scared to steal from him and then go on the run. How does that add up?”

“Wasn’t her idea. Pete talked her into it.”

“Where does he fit in?”

“Screwing him back then,” Meineke said. “Fell in love with him, she said, couldn’t help herself. At least he treated her decent.”

“What else was he? What was his work?”

“CPA. One of Cotter’s. That’s how she met him.”

“On the money-laundering end of the business?”

“Not according to Pete.”

“What was his last name?”

“Stoddard. Pete Stoddard. Orphan, so
he
didn’t have a family to worry about and buy off.”

“All right. How’d the two of them get hold of the bonds?”

“Cotter had a safe at home,” Meineke said. “He was the only one knew the combination, but Ellen found it out somehow. Or Pete did. Never too clear about that.”

“Doesn’t matter. Where’d they go to cash the bonds?”

“New York someplace. Pete had that part of it figured out.”

One or more discount brokerage firms, probably. Quick sale on all or most of the bonds, lake the money to different brokers or money management firms, have it invested in a stock portfolio under the new Hunter name; and keep the stolen cash to buy off her relatives and for traveling expenses. Then, as time passed, draw out just as much of the stock dividends as needed and reinvest the rest. And pretty soon you’d be well off enough to afford a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house and a free and easy lifestyle in a place like Greenwood. It was just the kind of plan a CPA with enough guts, patience, and gambler’s instincts would come up with.

I said, “And when they were done in New York, they came to see you and Lynn in Colorado.”

“Just showed up in Boulder one night. Fold us what they’d done, laid out their offer.” Meineke belched sourly and wagged his head. “I was a musician in those days. Called myself one anyway. Shit. Played lousy guitar for a lousy band, didn’t make much bread. Lynn was supporting us, waitressing in a café.”

“So the offer looked plenty good to you.”

“Good? Man, fifty thousand in cash was more than we ever hoped to see in one lump. Plus, they said they’d pay all our expenses for a year. We didn’t have much time to think it over. They’d picked a time when Cotter was away on a trip to hit the safe and take off. Five days until he was due back and they’d already used up three. Maybe if we’d had more time we’d’ve seen what a goddamn trap it was and turned ’em down.” He drank. “Yeah, maybe. But probably not.”

“Four of you leave Boulder together?”

“Yeah. In the car Pete’d bought for them in New York — he went there a couple of times before they stole the bonds, setting things up. We just left our old heap behind.”

“Headed where?”

“No place in particular, that was part of the plan. Picked a direction and drove until we got to a place none of us’d ever been before, turned out to be Spokane. We were there about three months. Pete had a way to get birth certificates, real ones, something to do with infants who died of natural causes. That’s how him and Ellen got their new names, how Lynn and me ended up with ours. Mike Meineke, a dead baby’s name.” He drank, shuddered, drank again. “Christ, you don’t know what it’s like. Living with a dead baby’s name for ten years.”

I didn’t want to know what it was like; I steered him off the subject. “And once you had the birth certificates, then you applied for social security cards and driver’s licenses to cement the new identities.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you go from Spokane?”

“Salt Lake City. Pete and Ellen got married there. Couple of other cities, and then Albuquerque. That’s where the four of us split up. Pete gave me and Lynn the fifty thousand cash — that was the deal, full amount in cash when we quit traveling together. Gave us the car, too. They took a plane to Phoenix, got a place, let us know the address. Then we drove out here.”

“How long did they stay in Phoenix?”

“Three, four months. Too hot in the summer, so they moved to San Diego for a while. Didn’t like it there and headed north, wound up in Greenwood. Who knows why they stuck there? The kid, maybe, Emily. Ellen had her in Greenwood. Already knocked up when they left Phoenix.”

“What about you and Lynn?”

“First place we went was Mendocino. She’d heard about it, big artist’s colony, she figured we’d both fit in, get a new start. Yeah, sure. You ever see her stained glass? Lousy. Lousy artist, lousy musician.” Slug. “Lousy,” he said.

“How long were you there?”

“Four lousy years. Up on the Oregon coast for a while. Portland. Back to Mendocino and then down here.” Meineke swallowed bourbon, wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. The bottle was almost empty. He’d guzzled close to a pint in under fifteen minutes, but color in his sunken cheeks was the only visible effect. His voice was a steady, emotionless monotone, the voice of a hollow man. “Should’ve been the good life,” he said. “Was for a while, I guess, but we went through the fifty thousand like shit through a goose. Food, liquor, rent, new car, all kinds of crap we didn’t need. Didn’t work much, either of us — no money coming in. Broke by the time we quit Mendocino the first time. Lived hand to mouth after that. And Pete and Ellen down there in Greenwood with their fancy house, fancy lifestyle. We drove down one time, didn’t tell ’em we were coming, and they were pissed. Didn’t want us to see how much they really had. Bastards lied about how much they got from Cotter, all right. Owed us better for sticking with ’em, that’s what Lynn said. Never’ve gotten away with it if we hadn’t disappeared along with ’em.”

He was right about that, I thought. Still, the planning had been good, careful, and they’d had luck on their side. Statistics, too: fifty thousand people disappear every year in this country, a large percentage without a trace. The police, with all their resources, can’t find them; private investigators, with all our resources, can’t find them. The irony was, if any outfit could have tracked the four down, it was organized crime with all
their
resources. But Pete and Ellen hadn’t ripped off the mob. Cotter’s bonds, Cotter’s cash, and Cotter was at most a low-level underboss, more likely a private-sector recruit used strictly for the money laundering. They might’ve given him some help in the beginning, as a favor, but it would not have involved much manpower or funds and it would have had a time limit. Organized crime’s
capos
can’t be bothered in the long run with personal problems or personal vendettas.

I asked Meineke, “How much more money did Pete and Ellen give you?”

“Not enough. Never enough. Christ, I hate to beg. Lynn don’t mind, she’ll lick your ass for fifty bucks. Licked their asses often enough, that’s for sure.”

“That why the two of you split up?”

“One of the reasons. Nothing left between us, we weren’t even screwing any more after she got so goddamn fat. Couldn’t stand living with her anymore. Caretaker job came up — not this one, another one up in Elk — I took it and walked. Lynn, she kept right on licking their asses. But not me, not anymore.”

One last pull and the bottle was empty. He held it up, peering at it or through it. I thought he might heave it over the cliff to shatter on the rocks below, but he didn’t; he tucked it carefully into his coat pocket. Maybe because the ocean was one of the two things he had left, as he’d said, and he did not want to befoul it with the remains of the other thing.

I said, “Ellen’s been up to see Lynn. She brought your niece with her.”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“How would I know? Told you, I don’t have nothing to do with any of ’em anymore.”

“She left Emily with Lynn. Supposed to come back and get her, but she hasn’t shown up. That’s why I’m here.”

“Running again? Ellen?”

“Looks that way.”

“Why? You don’t work for Cotter, you said.”

“It’s a long story. You care enough to want to hear it?”

“No. Fuck her and Lynn both.”

“Your niece, too? She’s ten years old, Meineke.”

“Their kid, ain’t she?”

I stepped away from the bench. The wind had kicked up and the incoming fog had taken away most of the sunlight; my hands were cold even inside the coat pockets. “Okay, we’re finished,” I said.

He swiveled his head to look at me. His eyes had a ravished look. “No cops, huh, like you said?”

“No cops.” I started away.

“Hey,” he said, and I stopped again. “What about Cotter? You think he’ll find us someday? Any of us?”

“Could be he’s dead by now.”

“Could be,” Meineke said, but he didn’t believe it.

“Does it matter much if he does?”

No answer. I left him sitting there staring out to sea, all alone with Philip Cotter and the rest of his demons.

So now I had the full story. Or did I?

None of what Meineke had told me explained Sheila Hunter’s sudden disappearance, unless the sadistic Philip Cotter had finally found her after ten long years and that was too much coincidence to credit. The stolen bearer bonds and the rest of the scam didn’t explain Dale Cooney’s death, either. There was more going on here, whether it was related to the actions of four morally bankrupt individuals a decade ago or to something in the present lives of the two principal players. My best guess was the latter. The Hunters might have been a close-knit unit in the beginning, when they were on the run with their ill-gotten gains, but time and the ever-present fear of being caught had pulled them apart. Each had taken lovers, and that could have led to deadly secrets of a different kind.

Emily was on my mind again as I drove back down the coast. Innocent caught in the middle. Father dead, mother missing, unwanted by either unstable aunt or alcoholic uncle. I doubted I could ever bring myself to tell her the meaning of crazybone, or the fact that she was the illegitimate daughter of a bigamous mother, or any of the other ugly things I’d just learned.

I kept thinking of her waiting with Karen Meineke. Of how unpredictable and irrational people could be when they were teetering on the edge of panic. She wouldn’t harm Emily, wouldn’t lock her up again in that cold shed — not under normal circumstances she wouldn’t. But these weren’t normal circumstances, and besides, I didn’t really know the woman at all. How could you be sure of what a stranger would or wouldn’t do, given the wrong tick or enough provocation?

I shouldn’t have left that .38 there, I thought. She’ll comb the house for it, and even if she doesn’t find the cartridges in the garbage sack, she can always go out and buy more...

Coming into the outskirts of Gualala now. The turnoff for Port Creek Road was just up ahead. When I spotted it I slowed and made the turn without any hesitation. Karen Meineke’s mental state and that frigging gun. A question I’d neglected to ask Emily, too. But those weren’t the real reasons I was going back there. The real reason was Emily and the fact that I could not come to terms with abandoning her as I had. To hell with the strict letter of the law and the risk to me; leaving a child alone in the charge of an unstable relative was fiat-out wrong.