Legwork (15 page)

Stoney didn’t look as if it had been perfect.
He looked like he was getting an ulcer.
His shoulders slumped as if he were weary of the entire game and wouldn’t mind warming the bench for a while.
“Leave me alone with Ms.
Jones for a moment,” he commanded.
Stoltz and the three volunteers behind him hesitated halfway out the door.
“Just a few minutes, Adam.
Then we’ll leave for Asheville.” The advisor and his lackeys took their leave reluctantly.

“I hate that stuff,” Stoney confessed when we were alone.
He did not return to his seat behind the desk but instead pulled up an armchair until it was only a foot or so from mine.
He plopped down in it wearily and ran his fingers through his hair.
It was thick and springy, like teddy bear hair.
I wouldn’t have minded running my fingers through it myself.
And maybe patting him on the back and rubbing the kinks out of his shoulders while I was at it.
The Rockman looked exhausted.

He sighed and exhaled a good five seconds of air.
“Listen, this really does suck,” he said.
“Mary Lee doesn’t deserve this kind of crap hanging over her head and all anyone is asking me about is the murder.
I’m tired of it.
I was running a good campaign, a clean campaign, until this.
I want it cleared up and cleared up fast.”

“But not enough to tell me where you were on Wednesday night?”

“Look, Casey,” he confided, leaning toward me until I could smell his aftershave.
Yum.
“I had to tell the police, I know that.
And I had to use some family pull to get them to keep it quiet.
I didn’t like that, but it had to be done.
But I won’t tell you and I won’t tell anyone else.
The woman in question is married and any disclosure would cause her and her family a great deal of pain.
I can’t do that to her.”

“Does your mother know?” I asked, partly out of curiosity and partly because I was pissed that he wouldn’t tell me.

He flinched.
“No.
She knows something is going on.
She doesn’t know with whom.
That’s a battle I’ll have to fight on my own.”

“How long do you expect it to go on?” I asked.
“Are you planning to sneak her into your D.C.
pad or what?”

He sighed.
“Look, I don’t expect it to last. There are too many problems.
But I’m not giving her up until I have to.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.
The words surprised both of us.
“Really, I am.
You haven’t got a private life and I know it’s difficult.
I can tell just by looking at your mother.”

He nodded.
“The trouble with my mother is that she’s usually right.
She knows North Carolina politics better than anyone in the state.
But I could not walk away from this… woman.
And I won’t until I have to.
I hope you understand.”

“I hope you get to keep your secret,” I said.

He smiled thinly.
“Want to have a drink with me when this is all over?”

“What?” I almost dropped my drawers.

He looked up at me, his face a little sad. “No, I mean it.
I like you.
You’re smart and you don’t hide it. You’re strong and you let people know it.
I know who you are.
How many people can you really say that about?” His blue eyes bore into mine like he really expected an answer.
He didn’t get one.

“Well, maybe I’ll ask you again sometime,” he finally said.

“You do that,” I answered, standing to go.

The corridor was crowded with volunteers and paid workers, including Stoltz and Stoney’s mother.
They watched silently as I walked down the long hallway, my thoughts filled with more questions than I’d had when I arrived.

I couldn’t figure Stoney Maloney out.
He was not what I had expected at all.
He seemed genuine about wanting to help.
Yet it was a dangerous offer for him to make.
He had nothing to gain except a little advance notice of anything I unexpectedly uncovered.
And he had a lot to lose if my path led to him or his campaign.
I struggled to separate the real man from his image.
I was starting to believe that he was the rarest of people, someone whose heart led the way.
Yet I felt downright naked without my cynicism.

Let me explain what happened next.
I appreciate a man with principles (when I can find one) but that doesn’t mean I go so far as to trust a guy just because he makes my cooter twitch.
After leaving Maloney headquarters, I circled back to Hillsborough Street and parked behind the dumpster of the nightclub across the street.
I had my eye on a little red Mazda Miata waiting near the back door of campaign headquarters.
I knew it was Stoney’s and I knew I was going to search it.
Then I would trust him.
Maybe.

Half an hour and two lukewarm Diet Pepsis later, a black stretch limo pulled into the parking lot of Maloney headquarters and slid to a halt near the rear entrance.
The building door opened and an entourage emerged, blinking into the sun.
Adam Stoltz looked around nervously as if he knew I were watching, but Stoney was too busy consoling his mother to be suspicious.
He had his arm draped over her shoulders and was bent low, talking intently as she scowled.
Several volunteers brought up the rear, their arms piled high with promotional giveaways.
The driver of the limo hopped out of the front seat and went around to the trunk to help the campaign workers dump their loads of buttons and bumper stickers inside.
Stoney wasn’t big on ceremony.
He opened the limo door himself and climbed inside, leaving Mom on the outside looking in.
Adam Stoltz and the volunteers joined Stoney and the car pulled away in a cloud of exhaust.
Sandra Douglas Jackson stared after the tail lights.
She watched the car for as long as she could, then marched back inside Maloney headquarters as if she were in need of a few good people to kick around.

Leaving my Valiant nosed in between two dumpsters, I dashed across Hillsborough Street and slipped behind a large hedge that sheltered Maloney headquarters from the dental offices next door.
I emerged from the boxwoods ready for action, my trusty Slim Jim in hand.
It’s a nifty curved piece of metal that can jimmy the lock on just about any car door, especially Mazda’s—which are as easy to open as a can of tuna.
The back door of Maloney headquarters was firmly closed and the only noise was the steady hum of the air conditioner.
I slipped the Slim Jim down between the inner and outer hulls of the driver seat door, sliding and pulling it until I hooked the right assembly and the lock indicator popped up.
I was in the front seat within seconds, sprawled across the soft leather so that I was invisible to anyone walking by.
At least I hoped I was.
Chances were good my refrigerator butt was poking up a few inches.
But I’d just have to risk it.

Stoney was something of a pig when it came to his car and I felt a certain kinship between us.
The floor was covered with political pamphlets, fast food wrappers, one black sock, and two empty Mountain Dew cans.
I decided not to hold his beverage of choice against him.
There were no empty beer cans, open liquor bottles, or patriotic condoms to be found.
The console between the two front seats held a supply of quarters and I wondered why.
There were no toll roads near Raleigh.
Phone calls perhaps?
To his secret love bunny?
I saved the glove compartment for last, preferring to draw out the suspense.
Hey, I take my kicks where I can get them.
When I finally opened it, a Niagara Falls of registration and insurance papers, crumpled napkins, aspirin bottles, sunglasses, plastic fast food sauce packets, and badly refolded road- maps tumbled to the floor.
It was awkward lying sideways across the seat with oozing ketchup packs plastered to my forehead, but fortunately I’m used to suffering.

I heard a door slam and froze, contracting my muscles in an attempt to shrink to a size I could never hope to attain.
Voices approached, two women arguing about some man named Artie and whether it was okay to have an affair with a married man if his wife knew and didn’t care.
The one who was all for hopping in the sack and damn the torpedoes was on the verge of convincing the other of her viewpoint when they passed by, high heels clicking on the asphalt just inches from my twitching ear.
A cramp shot up my right calf and I winced, shifting slightly to ease the pain.
The gear shift poked into my bladder and I felt an intense urge to take a pee.
It’s easy when you’re a guy and can whip it out and whizz into a can.
Us females on stakeout have it harder.
I silently willed the two intruders to get the hell on with their lives. Obligingly, their voices faded and I began scrambling through the pile of documents before the rest of the world passed by.

Among the fascinating facts I discovered about Stoney Maloney was a propensity to speed, a disregard for local parking laws and a habit of failing to have his car inspected on time.
I wondered if he bothered to pay for all the tickets or if they just sort of disappeared into that never-never land of good old boy favors.

I found the motel receipts stashed inside a AAA towing assistance wallet, gummed together with bits of ketchup from another burst packet.
The imprint was blurred on most, the carbon bleeding from exposure to the ravages of vinegar and tomato paste.
He wasn’t using his real name, or rather, he was using a variation on it.
It looked like his alter ego was S.
Pickett Jackson Maloney.
I examined the crumpled slip marked for the Wednesday night Mitchell died and realized I was holding Pickett’s charge in my hand.
Talk about brushing up against history.
What in the hell had possessed his mother to name him Stonewall Pickett Jackson Maloney?
Did she think he never intended to travel above the Mason Dixon line?
But worst of all, the name of the hotel was about as legible as grammar school graffiti.
I turned each slip sideways, upside down and even held it up to the light above me but about all I could decipher was the word “Inn.” The jerk at the front desk had been sloppy with his charge slips; every one of them was imprinted way to the left so that the name of the establishment trailed off one side.
I’d lodge a formal complaint with the management to fire his ass on the spot.
But first I had to find the spot.

I rammed the mess back into the glove compartment, arranging the layers as best I could to replicate his unique storage system, grabbed a couple of campaign flyers for their pictures of Stoney, and got the hell out of there.
I’d barely dashed to safety behind the hedge when Stoney’s mother stomped out the back door of the building with several volunteers following. They climbed into a cream-colored Lincoln Continental and pulled away, Sandy Jackson sitting in the front passenger seat with some poor browbeaten-looking fellow at the wheel.
The driver cowered nervously as he passed by my hiding spot, then proceeded to jerk and sputter his way down the avenue.
Talk about stop and start driving.
They’d have whiplash by the time they reached McDowell Street.

It took me five phone booths to find an intact phone book but at least the directory was only a year out of date.
I found six motels with the word “Inn” in their name, ripped the pertinent pages from the book—hey, none of us is perfect—and spent the rest of the afternoon checking out the decor and friendliness of smooching spots across town.

I was on my third motel when I spotted the tail.
I would have noticed it sooner, but I wasn’t expecting one.
I thought Bill Butler and the Raleigh Police Department had blown me off as a crackpot.
I had just pulled out of the circular driveway of the Plantation Inn north of Raleigh when I spotted a blue sedan lurking behind the dumpster of the convenience store next door. Now, come on, people—I had just gotten through lurking behind a dumpster myself.
The driver could have been a little more original.

Pulling out into traffic behind me, he stayed about five cars back.
He was relatively subtle, which was why I had missed him until now.
Plus the little bugger was persistent.
I couldn’t see his face because he was wearing these discreet black sunglasses that wrapped around his temples and were about as subtle as a sign on his ass saying “I’m a cop.” But I could see enough to know he’d barely met the minimum height requirements of the force and that he wouldn’t need to worry about RPD haircut guidelines for much longer if his balding forehead was any indication.
I tried shaking him at a couple of stoplights, but there was a pair of retirees in the car in front of me who were managing to piss me off every three feet with some new boneheaded driving maneuver.
They were an insurance company’s nightmare the way they wandered back and forth across the lanes and stopped at every yellow light.
God, when I grow old I’m going to move up North and spend my days driving really slowly up and down their superhighways.

I finally said the hell with it, let him follow me, and headed toward the airport to try the Courtyard Inn. There, the lovely girl at the counter refused to answer any questions, but she didn’t have to.
There was a pile of charge slips next to her elbow that matched the ones in Stoney’s car.
Plus, she would never make it on Broadway.
Her painted eyebrows almost kissed her bangs when I showed her Stoney’s pamphlet and asked if she recognized him.
I returned to my car in triumph, though I did admit I didn’t know all that much.
I knew where Stoney took her and that Stoney took her, but I didn’t know who “her” was.
I had five days until next Wednesday night and, if he chose to chance their regular spot, I could spend the evening in the parking lot and catch them that way.
What it would accomplish, I wasn’t sure.
But at least I had confirmed that his liaison was no figment of his imagination. The Rockman lived.

I wasn’t through with my tail.
I’d done my job and now it was time to play.
I visited six more motels at random.
It was easy since the airport area offered plenty.
I popped into each lobby, used the restroom, or had a Diet Pepsi in the air conditioning, and once stopped for a vodka gimlet straight up because the bartender was cute and I was getting tired.
I stretched my game out for a good two hours, determined to make the guy tailing me earn his overtime.
On a whim, I led him out to Garner, a small country town next door to Raleigh, and pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Babydoll Lounge, a joint I recognized from Bobby D.‘s topless bar wanderings.
I parked my butt at the end of the bar, ignoring the horny construction workers and tired old geezers who were trying to decide whether I was more likely to put out than the professionals grinding away on the pathetic stage behind the bar.

When I saw my tail walk in and take a booth near the front door, I struck up a conversation with the dusty redneck next to me.
He had three teeth total, all on the right side of his mouth, but I needed him for distraction purposes, not for marriage.
I bought him a beer and told him the sad, sad tale of my ex-husband, a former cop turned bad, who couldn’t seem to let me go.
After years of beating me, I confided, I’d finally broken away but he just couldn’t stand to let me live my own life.
The guy’s biceps bulged further with each new atrocity I invented and his eyes gleamed more dangerously with each beer we shared.
I finally left him, saying I’d be right back, I just had to shake the dew off my lily.
I stayed in the ladies room long enough to make my tail nervous and, sure enough, when the cop left his front booth and followed me into the back of the lounge, my bar side companion followed him.
I could hear them arguing on the other side of the bathroom door.

“Hey man, it’s history between the two of you,” my toothless paramour was sputtering.
“Give it a rest, man. She’s a lady.”

“Who the fuck are you?” I heard my tail answer.

I didn’t wait for the rest.
I hopped up on the toilet and opened the single window in the bathroom, shimmying out onto the gravel parking lot.
It cost me a few snags on my now grimy Anne Klein pantsuit, but it couldn’t be helped.
I was gone in sixty seconds flat.
I was sure the guys would work it all out. Testosterone and alcohol is such an interesting combination.

“What the hell happened to you?” Bobby D. demanded.
“You look like shit.” It was nearly nine o’clock and he was still hard at work, munching on a pizza.

“Wild goose chase,” I explained.
“I was the goose.”

He grunted but didn’t ask any questions. When he’s eating, Bobby likes to concentrate.

“I’ll take one of those,” I said, grabbing the largest slice I could find.

“Hey!” he barked.
“Go easy.
I need to keep my blood sugar up.”

I almost choked on my pizza I was laughing so hard, but Bobby D.
managed to stop me in mid-guffaw.

“There’s a guy waiting for you in your office,” he mumbled through a mouthful of pepperoni and cheese.