The Hanging Tree (37 page)

“No,” she said. “I realize Laird’s not an easy man to get to know. I realize a successful attorney is going to make some enemies. But he’s not just a collection of jury verdicts and bank accounts.”

“It is hard to get to know someone who won’t talk to you.”

“Don’t take it personally.”

“If you say so.”

“I know, I know. For all of his many talents, my husband hasn’t handled things so well of late. I mean, why not just tell your story? Tell the truth, you have nothing to hide. Why let the critics and the naysayers get all the ink?”

“I’m all ears.”

“I know what you think. You know Laird Haskell the plaintiff’s attorney, the guy who makes the tear-jerker speech to the jury, who gets up at the press conference and works up the crowd. But you know what? When he’s not on stage, he’s actually quite shy. He doesn’t talk about the good things he quietly does for people less fortunate than him. I’m reading in your paper about how he doesn’t have the money to build the rink and I’m looking at our checkbook and seeing thousands of dollars going to charities. Especially for women.”

Especially for women.
She wanted me to know that. Why? I was feeling good about my hunch about Felicia Haskell. When I had seen the bouquet at Mom’s, I’d had a gut feeling that she felt somehow guilty, maybe because she knew Gracie had been turned down for that job at the new rink. Or maybe not. But Felicia Haskell had reached out, and when people reach out, they want to be heard. So I was there to give her a chance. But women? Laird Haskell had a soft spot for
women
? It would have been funny if it wasn’t so sad. Especially if that prenuptial agreement was as much of a straitjacket as Jason had said.

“Why women?” I said.

“His mother. She married a jerk. Heavy drinker. Liked to smack her around in front of Laird and his sister.”

“Did she ever get away from the guy?”

“Yes. When she died. Anyway, I wish I could read about that Laird in the paper once in a while. Something positive. I guess you people have to emphasize the negative to sell newspapers.”

She couldn’t possibly have been talking about the
Pilot
. “Could be that people like to read those stories. I will do my best. But Mrs. Haskell—”

“Felicia.”

“Felicia. I suppose the
Free Press
story is, as you say, negative. But would you know if it’s at all true that your husband’s assets have been frozen and he might be looking at bankruptcy?”

She pursed her lips, then said, “I know Laird’s been under a lot of pressure. I try not to pile any more on by asking him a lot of questions. As I said, someone who does what he does tends to make a few enemies.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“That’s not for you to quote.”

“I understand.” I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the photocopy of Gracie’s letter to Haskell. I’d stopped at a shop in Traverse City and made a second copy, which was back in my truck. “Got something here I wanted to show you. Might be bull. Might upset you.”

“I’m a big girl.”

I handed it to her. She unfolded it. Her eyes scanned it once, twice. Then they slid up to me. “What is this?”

“I can’t be absolutely sure. But it looks like a note my second cousin might have sent to your husband.”

Felicia didn’t move. She read the letter again. “Why?” she said. “Because it says ‘L’? That could be Larry or Lenny or Louie or a million other people.”

Or it could have been Laurie or Linda or Lucinda. But Felicia Haskell chose not to even consider a woman’s name.

“We’re thinking it’s your husband,” I said.

The paper was trembling in her hand.

“Who’s we, Gus? Where did you get this?”

“I got it.”

“What are you trying to say, that my husband was …” Her voice caught. “That my husband was sleeping with her? That little white-trash slut? Who slept at the rink and drove the damn Zamboni?”

“No,” I said. “I just thought maybe you could—”

“How dare you show me this. How dare you walk into my home with your ugly insinuations.” She tore the paper in two. I watched. She tore it again. And again. She flung the pieces in my face. “Get out,” she said.

“So it wasn’t your husband?”

“Get out of my house. I’m calling the police.”

I looked around as I walked to my truck, hoping no one had heard her outburst. Not a chance. I hopped in and backed between the snowy walls of pines and out onto North Shore Road. I figured I had the confirmation I’d come for.

twenty-two

Hey there, did you try to call me?”

“Call you? You hung up on me and I’m supposed to call you?”

I had called Nova Patterson from the parking lot behind the pizzeria that only the day before had been called Riccardo’s. A red, white, and green banner that said “
ROSELLI’S—UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
” now covered the Riccardo’s sign stuck in the ground. A corner had come loose and was snapping in the noon breeze.

“I’m sorry. Got myself in a little trouble. I’m OK now.”

“I was worried,” she said. “But you didn’t give me your number. And I’m not allowed to make long-distance calls anyway.”

“That’s OK. Got anything for me?”

“Hang on.”

From my pickup I could see down the hill and over the river to Main Street. A snowplow rumbled down the south side of the street, steering around Mrs. B’s Mercury in front of the
Pilot
. Had she been ordered to call the cops if I walked in the door? Soupy leaned out of Enright’s and flung a bag of trash at his Dumpster.

A teenaged boy wearing a River Rats jacket came out of the dentist’s office, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and hunched his shoulders against the cold. It was Dougie Baker, the Rats’ backup goalie. Decent with his gloves, still figuring out how to use his feet. Taylor Haskell’s teammate would not be playing in the NHL or anything remotely close. He went to the dentist, not balance training.

My gaze drifted toward the lake. A blue Suburban with tinted windows emerged from behind the marina and turned onto Main.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

“Something wrong?” Nova was back.

“No,” I said, keeping my eyes on the Suburban as it moved slowly down
Main then turned up Estelle Street into the neighborhoods behind. “What do you have?”

“All right,” Nova said. “Where were we? I told you the one house, the one on Harman owned by that one guy.”

“Mr. Vend,” I said. I reached into a jacket pocket for a pen and notebook and felt something else there: the brush. I kept forgetting I had it. “And the taxes were paid by?”

“Something—I’ll spell it out: KNB LLC.”

“KNB?” I said, writing it on the notebook cover. “‘K’ as in kitten?”

“‘N’ Nancy, ‘B’ boy, yeah.”

Short for Knob. Or Knobbo.

“Brother.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. What about the other house—the one in foreclosure?”

“Got that right here. The old owner was a company called … not sure how to say this … fee-liss … ?”

“Felicity?”

“Tuss.”

“Felicitous,” I said.

“Felicitous Holdings.”

“Yeah. Right.”

“You’ve heard of them?”

“I think so.”

“Good, because I did a little extra checking for you.”

Nova told me that over the past few months, Felicitous—it had to be Laird Haskell—had sold thirteen properties in Melvindale, Dearborn, and River Rouge. KNB had bought each of them for a dollar. Except the one where Gracie had lived.

I added it up in my head: Whenever his money problems had started, Haskell must have tried to avail himself of some of the cash in that lush niche business he and Vend ran, the one Gracie had been so good at. Now he was trying to get square with Jarek Vend. I had my doubts that cheap bungalows in downriver Detroit were going to do it.

No wonder that blue Suburban was trolling Starvation Lake.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “The house in foreclosure? I was in—I mean, the person living there still has the house. Doesn’t the bank padlock it or something?”

“Not always,” Nova said. “This one’s going up for a sheriff’s sale. But the owner gets to try to pay back the money. You know, to redeem themselves.”

Redemption and Haskell didn’t quite go together. But apparently he had held Gracie’s house back from Vend. I wondered why. For some reason, he must have hoped Gracie would go back downstate.

“One more thing, Nova Marie?”

“Please?”

“Please.”

Out of the mess of old newspapers and fast-food rubbish on the passenger seat floor, I dredged up a foam coffee cup.

“Does your list have an address on Prospect?”

“It does indeed.” She read it to me. It matched the one for Trixie’s women’s center I’d scribbled on the coffee cup.

Trixie might never have known it, but her landlord had once been Laird Haskell. Now, whether she knew it or not, her landlord was Jerek Vend. Of course she was having trouble. Had Haskell discounted her rent because he felt such pity for unfortunate women? Had Vend raised it beyond her means?

It made sense in the twisted, incestuous way that the last few days made sense.

Philo came walking up the hill. He waved and went inside the pizzeria.

“Thank you, Nova,” I said. “I owe you one.”

“How about two—like two tickets to a Lions game?”

I saw Soupy come back out of Enrights, let the door close, and just stand there in the cold, head bowed, arms wrapped around himself.

“You there?”

“Yes, yes,” I told Nova. “I’m on it.”

Soupy went back inside. I thought of the calendar hanging in his kitchen. I looked down the street for Dougie Baker; he was gone. I remembered the piano music spilling over me in the Haskell kitchen. Something about it bothered me.

“And don’t be hanging up on me no more.”

“Shall I spread these out in grease or marinara?” Philo said.

We were sitting in the corner booth at the pizzeria. The only other person in the place was the owner, Belly, who was in the kitchen. Philo held a
file folder against his blue-and-black argyle sweater and surveyed the table with a look of utter disgust. Belly hadn’t yet changed the old
Pilot
covering the table.

“Who cares? They’re just photocopies, right?”

“I would prefer not to wallow around in some stranger’s lunch.” Philo came halfway out of his seat. “Waiter?” he shouted. “Can you bus this table?”

“Hold your fucking horses,” Belly yelled from somewhere behind the counter. “I’m a one-man show here.”

“Well, excuse me,” Philo said, sitting back down.

“Here,” I said, peeling one edge of the newspaper away and folding it in half to expose the bare plastic tabletop. “Let’s see what you know that I couldn’t possibly figure out for myself.”

Philo laid the folder flat on the table and flipped it open to reveal a two-inch-high stack of photocopied documents. Most of them had come from the Michigan Department of Treasury, although I’d sent my freedom-of-information requests to every agency I thought Haskell might have had to file with. Sticky tabs in red, orange, green, and yellow jutted from the edges of the pile.

“I’m impressed,” I said. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Do what?”

“Show me all this stuff, given that I’m persona non grata at the
Pilot
?”

Philo gave me a hard look through his horn-rims. Then he said, “Do you plan to go to the town council meeting today?”

“Why do you care?”

“I might need your advice when I write my story.”

Philo was serious. “I’m flattered,” I said, “even if you won’t be publishing for three days. Anyway, if Haskell’s going to apologize, I want to be there. Who knows? Maybe he’ll apologize to me.”

“Good.” Philo placed one hand flat on the stack of pages. “They didn’t give us everything you asked for.”

“They never do.”

“And this stuff doesn’t tell you very much.”

“Nope.”

“A lot of it’s just routine. Some is blacked out. But there are a couple of things that might be helpful. You were obviously trying to figure out where
Laird Haskell was getting his money, or where things might have gone awry for him.” He fingered the pages back to the green tab he had marked “dt.” He slipped out a few stapled pages and handed them to me. “This could be informative.”

I scanned the cover page quickly. It was a state registration for a business called ExpertWitness Trading LLC. I found the description on line 6A: “Trading of securities and related assets.”

“No way,” I said. “He was trading stocks? Himself?”

“Looks like it. You can’t tell for sure.”

“Good way to piss away a fortune in a hurry.”

I flipped through the other pages. Haskell was not required to report how much he’d made or lost on the business. The last page listed the principal owners of ExpertWitness Trading as Laird Haskell and Felicia Quarles Haskell. I wondered if she knew she was co-owner of a one-man day-trading firm. I thought of Vend showing me the TV screens in his office, the comely young women furrowing their brows over the latest market news, the stock charts pointing infinitely up. Vend knew just how Haskell had been seduced.

“Yes,” Philo said. “And from reading your stories about him, he strikes me as a man who would believe he could master anything.”

“You read my stories? My
Times
stories?”

“Just a few. Found them online.”

“Yeah, well, if you can kick the auto industry’s ass, why not Wall Street?”

“Exactly.”

“Plus, it’s a fun way to fill up a lonely winter day up north.”

“Though I don’t really understand why he’d bother filing the paperwork.”

“Easier to write off the losses on your income tax,” I said. “Or to have a legal cover for laundering money.”

“Why would Haskell need to launder money?”

“Did you read this morning’s
Free Press
?”

“Yes. Of course.”

I handed the pages back. Philo fitted them back in the original stack. I had never seen him so focused on something other than a budget.

“What else you got?”

“The rest of the stuff really just indicates how many different businesses Haskell was trying to run in addition to whatever legal work he might have
had. Real estate, a little retail, the new rink, a bunch of residential downstate. But there was one thing, in particular—”