The Fall-Down Artist (9 page)

“Maybe so.” Dorsey drank beer directly from the bottle, shunning the glass Al had set before him. “Seems funny to me, that's all I'm saying. All these people were the same: radical types. Acted like I carried a disease and tossed me out of the house like I was the cat who pissed on the living room carpet. Everyone the same.”

“Anything else?” Bernie asked. “Besides Radovic and the girl. Anybody else treating with Tang?”

“One more with Tang,” Dorsey said. “Another knee case. The rest are back problems treating with a group of chiropractors in Latrobe. Those bastards will say anything.”

“Bad times,” Al said, shaking his head sorrowfully. “Chalk it up to bad times. Guys, they go nuts. Way of life is changin' and nobody knows how to change with it. Things used to be: a steady check from the mill, now and again a short stay on unemployment, then back to the mill. Guys were content. Most have never seen anythin' like what we have now. All they want is somethin' steady comin' in. Reliable. Drives 'em crazy.”

“Ain't blaming anyone, Al,” Dorsey said. “Just trying to be a success in my chosen profession.”

The town
of Washington was too short a drive, twenty-six miles, for an overnight stay, so Dorsey was forced to commute along Interstate 79 for the two-day job on Kenny Borek. He spent the first day on an uneventful surveillance of Borek, who left his apartment only once, for an afternoon newspaper. Although Borek's Beau Street neighborhood was busy with shoppers and other pedestrians, forcing Dorsey to reposition himself several times, he was sure enough of Borek's movements to file his first day's report.

The morning of the second day was equally dull, so much so that Dorsey intended to knock off at noon and move on to the next job. With most of his concentration split between his father's offer of riches and daydreams of Gretchen, he interviewed a half dozen of Borek's neighbors and decided the man qualified as a hermit. Most of them didn't recognize Borek's name, and only one elderly woman was willing to venture a guess that he might be the young man who rented the second floor of the house next door. To wrap up the assignment, Dorsey spoke to the owner of the corner grocery, where Borek had purchased his newspaper the day before.

“Young guy, rents Ethel Stimic's upstairs.” The owner, a small elderly man, stood behind a low counter loaded with bread. Wearing a cardigan sweater over a checked flannel shirt, he stuffed newspapers with advertising supplements
as he spoke. “Comes in for cigarettes and the paper, smokes Winstons. Heard he was in a crack-up.”

“He's the one.” Dorsey watched a sly grin work its way over the shopkeeper's face. “He's off work because of it. You don't see him much, huh?”

“Cigarettes and the paper, that's all he comes in for.” The old man held on to his smile, annoying Dorsey. What a lunatic, Dorsey thought.

“Haven't heard about him working anywhere, have you?” Dorsey asked. “Something under the table, bring in a little extra dough?”

“All I know is he smokes. And if he can't read, he's wasting a quarter every afternoon.”

The old man's grinning got the best of Dorsey, and he decided to close out the conversation and head for Midland, the site of the next job. He gave the shopkeeper a business card and asked him to call if anything occurred to him about Borek.

“Some kinda detective, huh?” The old man settled onto a stool behind the counter. “Supposed to be interesting work. You look bored, like I'm keepin' you from something.”

“We get our slow days too.” Dorsey turned for the door.

“Maybe I can pick this one up for you.” The old man pulled the sweater closer to his chest.

“What have you got?”

“You sure can't be their ace, I can tell,” the old man said. “Why waste your time going door-to-door? This Borek got hurt in a bad car crack-up, hurt so bad he can't work. Tell ya something. I've been on this corner for thirty-seven years. Know 'em all, every house, every car and its parking spot. And none are missing. Borek, he got hurt driving a car, but he sure don't own one.”

In the front seat of the Buick, Dorsey reviewed portions of Borek's claim file, spreading the statements and forms across the unholstery. On the day of his accident, Kenneth Edward Borek, age thirty-one, was operating a 1972 Electra,
license plate 618-KE3. There was no indication that a full check on the ownership had been run.

Dorsey drove to the Washington barracks of the state police, where for twenty minutes he sat in a chair of plastic-covered cushions waiting for Corporal Dennison. During that time Dorsey again decided to refuse his father's offer. And then again the thought of being able to keep up with Gretchen financially, as the years went by, crept into his head. Money's the biggest problem you two could have, Dorsey told himself. She'll be making plenty and you'll bring in shit by comparison. Lots of tension from that. It could be avoided.

“This is what you do for a living?” Corporal Calvin Dennison watched the lines of information forming on the CRT at his desk. Tall and black, with short-cropped trooper's hair, he laughed and gave Dorsey a playful slap on the shoulder. “Figured you for sheriff by now. You were hot shit, DA office detective. Good to see you got humble, good for the soul.”

“You've done pretty well yourself.” Dorsey sat in a chair opposite the CRT. “Let's see, you were a rookie at the Monroeville barracks eight or nine years ago. And now, after eight or nine years, you make corporal. That's one hell of a leap.”

“It's the skin.” Dennison slipped a palm across his ebony chin. “Upper echelon still got it in for us. Figure if we're too slow to go on the take with the rest, we just don't have the stuff for the job. Me, I have every intention of taking a payoff and breaking the color line. Not for myself, you understand. I'll be acting as a pioneer, in the service of my brethren.”

“What about the car?” Dorsey asked.

“Not really supposed to do this,” Dennison said, craning his neck around the CRT to smile at Dorsey. “But you were a fellow soldier in the war against crime.”

“Some people might figure me for a deserter.”

“An amnesty is granted,” Dennison said. “Ford did it for the pussies who ducked out to Canada; I can exercise
my official powers as well.” Dennison looked closer at the CRT. “Okay, here it comes. Electra, same plate. Registered to Carmen's Rentals, Main Street in Brownsville. Hate the place.”

“Carmen? Why do you hate his place?”

“It's Brownsville I hate, not Carmen.” Dennison cut the power to the CRT. “Nasty place, cramped little hole near the river. Carmen, he rents old secondhand bombs for cheap.”

Back in his car, Dorsey concluded that Dennison could be right; Brownsville might be hell, but the road to hell was paved in rose petals. U.S. 40, the National Road, was the route to Brownsville through wooded countryside and farmland at the roadside. Touching on little hamlets named Scenery Hill and Richeyville, it was Dorsey's favorite stretch of road, especially when autumn turned the woodlands into smears of reds and browns and yellows intermixed. For twenty miles or so, U.S. 40 could pull him away from depositions and court appearances and remembering to give the subject of his surveillance a block-and-a-half lead. And as he pulled into Brownsville, crossing the bridge and turning left at the Russian Orthodox Church to get to the business district, the beauty of the countryside held on to Dorsey long enough for him to conclude that factory towns were aberrations. Just sooty pockets of life dropped into valleys that were green in summer and surrounded by even greener hills.

The show lot at Carmen's Rentals, dominated at the center by an office trailer, was located near Water Street and was clogged with junkers. Dorsey figured them to be second-and third-hand models picked up cheap at the wholesale auction near Harrisburg. When he pulled into the lot and stepped away from the Buick, he found a comical pride in having the best-looking machine in sight. Once inside the office he identified himself to a receptionist and asked to see the owner. Leaving her desk and opening an inner door, she told an unseen someone that the guy from the insurance company was here.

“How's that, insurance company?” a voice from the office said. “Here about the accidents?”

Dorsey shouted past the receptionist that he had come to discuss several of them. The receptionist quickly ushered him in and closed the door as she left.

A fat young man dressed in jeans and a terry-cloth sport-shirt rose from his seat and offered his hand across a metal desk, the kind Dorsey remembered from community recreation centers. He introduced himself as Carmen Avolio and poured them each a cup of coffee from the Mr. Coffee sitting on a corner filing cabinet. Dorsey took the plastic cup in his fingertips to save his palms from burning.

“So, what's it gonna be?” Avolio strained his recliner chair to its limit. “How much higher can my rates go?”

“The accidents.” Dorsey hoped to string Avolio along. “Face it, there's been more than one.”

“Too many in too short a time,” Avolio said. “The guy on the phone, the agent, that's what he said. Still, look what's on the lot. Crap on wheels. Shit, I get another rate hike, they should just come and shut me down.”

“It's the medical.” Dorsey sipped carefully at the coffee. “Crap, sure, but they've got people inside them when they get smacked. Borek, for instance.”

“Fuckin' shit, man.” Avolio pulled his weight forward and rested his elbows on the desktop. “Listen, I rent cars, fuckin' cars. Fast and cheap. A guy comes here because he can't come up with the daily rate at Hertz or Avis. Only way this place stays open. I start demanding customers take a defensive driving course, I better turn the place into a Seven-Eleven.”

“Business is good? High volume?”

“Real good,” Avolio said. “Rural place like this, where people are hard pressed for enough cash for even a used car? Sure, business is good. Young kids, they like to have a car for the weekend even if it's only a rental. I have 'em coming from all over, hitchhiking to get here. And that's where these accident-prone assholes come from. From all over.”

“All over where?” Dorsey asked. The fat man began counting on his fingers.

“There was Borek from Washington, then a guy from Greensburg, another from Homestead, and a guy from Uniontown. Last was the little blond chick from Somerset, fucked up her knee in a crash on One-nineteen.”

“Karen Stroesser?” Dorsey asked. Stroesser was Dr. Tang's lateral compartment patient.

“She's the one,” Avolio said. “Couldn't make up her mind which car she wanted. She'd look at one, then ask how heavy it was, kept banging her foot on the bumpers, testing them. Finally she takes out this Chrysler, one of the big ones. And one of the best cars on the lot. Had hopes of having it around for a while. It'll be okay, the dents and all are pounded out, but people get leery when a car's been in an accident. They think the frame's bent no matter what you tell 'em.”

Dorsey asked for copies of the rental agreements and four out of five names were familiar: Borek and Stroesser, Klazak from Homestead, and Stark from Greensburg. Only the Uniontown man was a stranger. All four had been the subjects of investigations done for Fidelity Casualty. Before leaving the office, Dorsey placed a call to Ray Corso. Carmen collected two dollars for the copies and three for the toll call.

Dorsey gave Corso a quick rundown on what he had found, hoping his voice conveyed what he thought was the gravity of the situation, an organized rip-off. He also suggested that they meet as soon as possible to map out a strategy.

“It's certainly something to think about.” Corso sounded preoccupied. “Write up the report and enclose the rental agreements. When they get here I'll have the legal people look it all over. Then maybe we'll get together and review a few things.”

“Ray, please listen.” Dorsey was fighting Corso's famed inertia. “Four, maybe five guys, here alone are putting shit
over on you. All have lost wages to figure in on a final liability settlement. We have to talk.”

“Send in the report,” Corso said, ending the conversation.

Dorsey knew Corso's history and knew he was a jumper. Claims work is filled with nomads moving from company to company, and Ray Corso was a true bedouin. One step ahead of the ax, Corso moved to another job, pushing a hoax as a successful claims manager, just as his former employer learned to appreciate the magnitude of his shortsighted laziness. The Inert One. Dorsey thought the nickname was well earned. Slow-boat, pipe-smoking asshole was another.