The Key (15 page)

A
s far as I could tell, Peter and Frank Kryzluk had nothing in common beyond both being males of the human variety.

Peter was the son of a lawyer and a doctor and had been raised in an environment of enlightened liberalism, complete with whole-grain baked goods, organic vegetables, fervent recycling, and family vacations that involved hiking, cross-country skiing, and other healthy and ecofriendly pastimes. When he left his parents’ comfortable Bay Area home, he didn’t go far, earning his degree at Stanford and then returning promptly to San Francisco. In fact, before his recent move to New York, he’d never lived anywhere but northern California. He was handsome in a boy-next-door kind of way, and his quiet charm sometimes made it easy to forget just how smart he was. He also seemed to have been spared the gene that was responsible for interest in professional sports, golf, and cigars, and, until the advent of the trucker cap, he had never dressed in a way that embarrassed me.

Frank Kryzluk had a couple of decades and more than a couple of pounds on Peter, and he wore his flannel and relaxed-fit denim ensemble as if this was his customary attire. He’d never attended college but had gone directly from high school to his first factory job. “I got my union card the same day I got my diploma,” he told us proudly in a booming voice, after insisting that we toast to the Steelers.

Given their differences in background and interests, I could come up with only one explanation for why Peter and Frank hit it off so well and so fast: the hats. Frank’s trucker cap was almost identical in style to Peter’s, albeit more worn and adorned with a Steelers logo. And, to my eye at least, Frank’s hat looked like it belonged on his head, whereas Peter’s didn’t quite seem to fit.

But it was as if wearing the hat had changed more than Peter’s usual fashion statement. His voice was louder, and his manner was practically gregarious. He was also exhibiting a taste for draft beer—and belching—that was completely unfamiliar to me and more than a little disconcerting. I only liked to drink beer with spicy food, so after a few sips and in the absence of a decent Pinot Grigio or Shiraz, I’d focused my attentions on Diet Coke. Peter, however, had been sucking down glass after glass of beer, and he didn’t stop when we joined Frank at his table. Watching the two men bond over Iron Cities, I made an executive decision that once it had fulfilled its current mission, Peter’s favorite new accessory was going to mysteriously disappear.

Kryzluk’s initial reaction when we introduced ourselves was a mix of surprise, concern, embarrassment, and curiosity. Surprise because he thought he’d warned us off, concern because of the dangerous turn events had taken, embarrassment because he’d both enjoyed and recognized the absurdity of his cloak-and-dagger shenanigans, and curiosity because he was eager to hear if we’d turned up any new info.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that you thought Perry had Brisbane manipulating the contracts?” I asked, trying not to sound impatient.

Frank rubbed his nose, which was on the large side and reddish in color. “I didn’t have any way to know for sure. I had a hunch, but that was it. I was worried that you’d think I was some sort of crank, or not trust my motives, being the union president and whatnot. I thought I could give you some hints and get you interested. Then you’d start digging around.”

“Why me?”

His nose grew redder. “Well, I don’t know if you’ll like the answer to this one.”

“Try me.”

“I had my daughter call that Gallagher guy’s office and pretend she was Perry’s secretary. She got a list of all the folks who were working on the buyout, and I thought you’d be the best person to contact, being a female and all. I wasn’t trying to be a male chauvinist. It’s just that sometimes women care more about these things.” I had been a pretty soft touch as it turned out, so I probably couldn’t blame him.

“Dahlia gave you my name, but how did you get my e-mail?”

“That was my daughter’s doing, too.” The pride in his voice was almost tangible. “She’s only fourteen, but she’s a real computer whiz. She figured that a young urban professional lady like yourself would probably have that fast Internet thing—”

“Broadband?” interjected Peter, popping a potato chip into his mouth. I brushed ineffectually at the crumbs that dropped on his sweater.

“Broadband, right. She figured out which companies offer that service where you live, and then she called them pretending to be you. After a couple of tries she found the right one. That’s how she got your e-mail, and then she got me all set up to write to you. Wasn’t that smart? She’s a real pistol. She does all my research for my show, too. Did you know I’m a TV personality?
FrankTalk with Frank
it’s called. Every Saturday morning on public access channel fifty-five.”

It was a bit unsettling to learn that an adolescent girl in another state was successfully able to impersonate me and access my various service provider accounts, but I would worry about that later. Instead, with Peter’s help, I brought Frank up to speed on our theory about Jake and Annabel being responsible for Gallagher’s murder and the ways in which I had been set up to take the blame. “But not only do we not have any proof about what Perry and Brisbane and Gallagher were all up to, I’m wanted for murder and the real murderer and his girlfriend are about to make a mint.”

“That’s a real pickle,” Frank agreed.

“My friend Luisa is checking for any sort of legal paper trail that can show that Brisbane and Gallagher were invested in the deal, but I doubt she’ll be able to find anything before the shareholder vote tomorrow morning.”

“Well, I have a plan for that. I had to do something, and I didn’t realize you two were going to show up when you did, so I hatched a plot of my own. But now that you’re here, I could sure use your help.”

Frank told us his plan over more Iron City and in between greeting the steady stream of “buddies” dropping by his table to toast to the Steelers. He also insisted that we join him in playing a few rounds of a game that involved trying to throw miniature basketballs into miniature rings in order to make different bells and buzzers go off. Apparently, the bells and buzzers also indicated points accumulated. I wasn’t very good at this, but Peter was a natural. Frank was enthusiastic about his new protégé, and a great deal of high-fiving, back-slapping and beer-glass-clinking ensued.

“Where are you kids staying tonight?” he asked. “Nonsense,” he said, when we told him we were going to find a motel. “You’ll stay with us. There’s one of those pullout beds in the rec room.” He checked his watch. “But we should get going. Little Frankie—that’s my daughter—she’s got her band practice on Friday nights, but I like to be there when she gets home.”

I insisted on driving. I might be a little near-sighted, but at least I wasn’t drunk, and I wasn’t sure I could say the same for Peter. When all was said and done, Frank had probably had two or three beers, and I was practically afloat on a sea of Diet Coke, but Peter had gone through the better part of a keg on his own. He boozily extolled Frank’s virtues from the passenger seat as I concentrated on the taillights on Frank’s battered minivan.

The Kryzluk residence was a modest ranch house on a street lined with similar houses. I parked Luisa’s car at the curb as Frank pulled the minivan into the attached garage. Peter grabbed the small athletic bag that held our limited collection of belongings, and we followed our host inside.

For dinner, Frank had promised to whip up a batch of his homemade pierogies, which, according to him, were famous. Peter volunteered to help him out while I called in a quick update to Luisa. She had little new to report, except Hilary’s frustration—apparently both Jake and the mysterious stranger had slipped her trail.

I’d finished the call and was trying to convince Peter and Frank that I could be sufficiently trusted with a knife to chop something when Frank’s daughter arrived. From the way he’d spoken of Little Frankie, I’d automatically pictured a teenage-girl version of Frank in a polyester band uniform and befeathered hat lugging a tuba and a zip drive. Little Frankie, however, defied all expectations. She may have been a band member and computer whiz, but her fashion inspiration seemed to come from Gwen Stefani rather than Bill Gates, and she had more jewelry protruding from more piercings than I’d ever seen on one person’s face.

Her behavior, however, was straight out of Emily Post. She greeted her father with affection and his guests with friendly welcome. When Frank suggested that she fetch clean linens and make up the bed in the rec room while he prepared dinner, she readily agreed. I offered to help, and she chattered on about her band and her blog as we carried sheets and blankets down into the basement.

The rec room appeared to serve many functions. A ping-pong table with a broken net was pushed up against a wet bar, and a classic Barbie town house sat on a cardboard box. “I had the same one,” I said approvingly, pausing to admire it.

“I haven’t played with it in years.”

“Me, neither. But I really loved mine.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool.” Frankie pulled on the string that moved the elevator up and down between the four stories. “I could probably sell it on eBay or something, but I’d rather hold on to it.”

Camera cases and video equipment filled one corner, and green metal file cabinets filled another. Framed photographs vied for space on the crowded walls. “All of the family pictures are upstairs,” explained Frankie. “These are just from my dad’s other stuff—you know, the TV show, and union things.”

I didn’t recognize any of the people in the photos of Frank interviewing guests on a makeshift set, but I assumed that they were mostly area natives. There was a picture of a slightly younger Frank being sworn in as union chapter president, with a proud, younger, and less pierced Frankie at his side. Then there was a series of group photographs featuring men, women, and children decked out in red, white, and blue outfits.

“Those are from the annual union picnics,” Frankie said, guiding me from photo to photo and narrating their progression. “This one’s from forever ago; from before my dad was even president.” A banner above the crowd indicated that the picture had been taken on the Fourth of July eight years earlier. I guessed that eight years qualified as forever when it accounted for more than half of your life. “See, there I am, and there’s my dad.”

I obediently followed her pointed finger with my eyes. Then I noticed the man next to Frank. “Who’s that?” I asked. He looked both nondescript and somehow familiar.

“Him? That’s Mr. Marcus—he was the union president before my dad—and that’s his wife, Mrs.Marcus. She passed on, though. Cancer, I think. And these are their kids, Andrew and Bobby.”

I looked at the first boy she pointed to, and then back at his father. “Andrew Marcus?”

“Yeah, that’s him and Bobby. I haven’t seen them in a couple of years, but they’re a lot older than me anyhow. They both went off to college. I forget where they went, but they didn’t move back here after. I mean, who’d want to, right? Especially after their mom died. I don’t know where they live now, but it’s got to be more interesting than Pittsburgh. Anything is.”

“Andrew Marcus,” I said again.

“Do you know him or something?” asked Frankie.

“Sort of,” I said. Because I sort of did.

Just by a different name.

I may not have been able to see too well at a distance, but I could see just fine up close.

The boy smiling out from the picture was none other than a teenaged Mark Anders.

F
rank related the sad saga of the Marcus family over a hearty meal of pierogies and yet more Iron City.

Our drive-through adventure was a distant memory by the time we sat down to dinner, and my Big Mac, however big, seemed like it had been eaten in another lifetime. But I’d still been wary when Frank had first heaped my plate with the Polish dumplings. I’d gotten over my concerns quickly. In fact, I was finding them surprisingly delicious. I made a mental note to ask Frank to teach Peter how to make them. Assuming Peter ever sobered up. While the beer had no discernible impact on our host, Peter’s expression was taking on a glazed look. I had the unfortunate feeling that I was in for some world-class snoring later that night.

“Bill Marcus was a great guy,” said Frank, stabbing a pierogie with his fork. “A real salt-of-the-earth type. We used to go to the games together.” I didn’t have to ask which games; it was clear even to me that he could only be referring to football. “We’d go hunting together, too—me and him and his boys. Little Frankie here’s a vegetarian. She never wants to go hunting with her old dad, do you, cupcake?”

“I’ll go hunting with you when you go to Tai Chi with me,” she told him mildly.

“Hunting?” Something clicked. I looked up from my plate. “They hunted?”

“Sure. Bill was a great shot. The kids, too.”

“With rifles? Or with handguns?”

He snorted. “You ever try to bag a deer with a handgun? I’m talking rifles. What else would folks hunt with but a rifle or a shotgun? But if you’re asking about handguns, sure—sometimes we’d go to the practice range and play around with those. Andrew really shined at it. He had crackerjack aim—even the instructors would stand around to watch.”

“It must have been him.” I poked Peter. “I’ll bet you anything it was him.”

He gave a start. “Ouch,” he said, rubbing at his ribs.

“Mark, Andrew, whatever his name is. He must have been the other guy at the boat basin. He figured out what Jake was up to—maybe he overheard Jake on the phone with me that night, at the office—and then he followed him. And he managed to shoot the gun out of Jake’s hand, in the dark, at a distance.” I turned back to Frank. “Was Andrew Marcus that good a shot? Could he do something like that?”

“Probably. Andy won a bunch of contests they had at the range. He must have got it from Bill. Now, Bill—he was a truly great shot. And one of those natural leaders, too. They made him chapter president when he was just a young man. Usually nobody gets elected until they’re in their late forties or early fifties, but Bill won by a landslide when he was only thirty-seven or thirty-eight.”

“Why do you keep referring to him in the past tense?”

“Yeah, Dad. Why?” asked Frankie. “It’s not like he’s dead or anything. You stopped in to see him last week.” Her various lip and tongue adornments didn’t seem to be getting in the way of such mundane tasks as eating, although there was the occasional clinking noise as she chewed.

Frank shook his head and exhaled a slow breath. “Funny, I didn’t even realize I was talking about him that way. He’s changed a lot over the years.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it’s a long story, and not a happy one. I guess it all started back when Bill was the union president, right before the Tiger buyout. And he worked at Tiger, too. So before the deal was done, while Tiger was still in a slump, he was the one in charge of negotiating the labor contracts when they came up for renewal. And because Tiger was in such a slump, he wasn’t exactly in a position of strength for the negotiating.”

“And?” Peter prompted.
And
was a hard word to slur, and yet he managed to slur it. I reached out a hand to move his beer glass away from him, but it was already empty. Instead, I swiped his cap off his head and sat on it. His expression once he realized what I’d done was stunned, but the Iron City had slowed his reflexes and it was too late for him to act.

Frank was wrapped up in his story and didn’t seem to notice. “Well, Bill had to make some difficult decisions, and he was in a real tight spot. Perry and his guys, they made him choose, and neither option was so good. He could either agree to layoffs, or he could agree to cutbacks in benefits. He chose the cutbacks. Better that people have jobs and incomes, right? I should know—Perry’s got us in the exact same position now over at Thunderbolt. Right over the old barrel.”

“So Marcus agreed to the cutbacks. Then what happened?”

“A couple of years later, Carol, his wife, got sick with cancer. I heard it was the sort of thing that usually has a decent survival rate. But I guess she wasn’t having regular checkups—their health insurance didn’t cover them anymore. When she finally got the diagnosis, she was pretty far gone. And then the HMO gave her a whole runaround, making it hard to see the right specialists and get the right treatment. I’m not saying that if she’d had decent health care coverage she wouldn’t have died. I don’t know that. But I do know that you want to feel like you’ve done everything possible when something like that happens.” The way he said this made me wonder what had happened to Frankie’s mother, but it seemed intrusive to ask. “Bill couldn’t feel that way. If anything, he felt like it was all his fault.”

“Because of the cutbacks he agreed to. The poor guy. It must have been terrible for him,” said Peter. He was still slurring, but at least he seemed able to follow the conversation. And he looked much smarter without the cap, even though he had a bad case of hat head.

“Terrible doesn’t begin to describe it. He was convinced he’d failed everybody—his wife, his kids, the union—everybody. Meanwhile, Perry and his cronies took Tiger public again on the same day Carol Marcus died at three times the price they paid for it. They made out like bandits.”

“Literally,” I said.

Frank raised his bottle of Iron City to the light and squinted at it. “Bill always enjoyed a beer or two—most people do. But after Carol died, it wasn’t just a beer or two. He started drinking, and drinking hard, and he’s been doing it ever since. He resigned as union president, and eventually he lost his job at Tiger. He couldn’t be counted on to show up, much less show up sober.”

“Let that be a lesson to you,” I muttered to Peter.

“Bill’s been living all holed up like a hermit for years now. Won’t hardly see anybody or talk to anybody. I think he collects some disability, and his kids send him some money, and his friends do what they can. Otherwise I don’t know how he’d get by.” Frank sighed again. “I drop in every so often to see him. In fact, he’s the one that got me wondering when Perry started in on the Thunderbolt buyout. Bill’s got boxes and boxes of articles on Perry, and Brisbane, and even on that Gallagher guy. He’s the one who convinced me that there was something shady going on. It took awhile for me to take him seriously. Just between us, he’s a bit off his rocker, and he’s sort of obsessive on this topic.”

“And one of his sons just happens to show up at my firm, eager to work with the banker who handled the Tiger deal. What do you think it means?” I asked. “It can’t be a coincidence.”

“Are you sure it’s the same boy as in the picture?”

“Almost positive. The Mark Anders I know looks like an older version of that boy and a younger version of his father. Besides, the name is too similar for it not to be him. Andrew Marcus became Mark Anders.”

“But why?”

“I wish I knew.”

Peter leaned forward. “Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Jake didn’t kill Gallagher. Maybe Mark—or Andrew, or whatever you want to call him—killed him.”

“To avenge his mother’s death in some way?” I thought about this. “It’s possible, I guess, although there’s a lot that it doesn’t explain. Like why Jake then came after me. And Mark seems like such a mild-mannered guy.”

“Andy was always a good kid,” said Frank. “Responsible.”

“Besides,” I added, “if he were trying to avenge his mother by killing Gallagher, why would he attack Dahlia? What did she ever do to him? For that matter, why wouldn’t he go after Perry? He’s the most obvious target. Or even Brisbane?”

“It doesn’t add up,” Peter agreed. “But he must have something to hide. Why else would he change his name? And say he was from New Jersey when he’s from here? And not mention that he knew Perry and his entire history?”

“Maybe he’s just trying to distance himself from an unhappy past,” offered Frankie. “By changing his name, he can be someone different. That’s what people do online—they make up different names, and they can be whoever they want to be.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But he wasn’t exactly distancing himself by following Gallagher to Winslow, Brown.”

Dessert was chocolate pudding served in individual plastic containers. This, too, was surprisingly delicious. Even better, apparently I could buy it right off the shelf at my local grocery or deli. Or so Frank assured me when I asked him to include it in the cooking lesson he’d offered to give Peter.

It was close to eleven by the time we’d polished off dessert, tidied up the kitchen, and finished finalizing our plans for the following day. Peter and I retired to the basement rec room, where, his moment of lucidity clearly over, he pitched himself fully-dressed onto the sofa bed. Given the snoring that began the second he hit the bed, it was a good thing he was facedown—that way the noise was at least partially muffled by the pillows.

I slipped into the pajamas Frankie had loaned me—cozy pink flannel with a pattern of gray elephants—pushed at Peter until he only occupied two-thirds of the bed, and lay down beside him. Despite the activity of the day and the heavy meal, I realized that it wasn’t going to be easy getting to sleep. I was wondered-out, at least temporarily, on the topic of Andrew Marcus/Mark Anders, but there were a number of other things that seemed likely to keep me awake.

My usual level of caffeine intake was sufficiently high that I was practically immune to its effects, but I had set a personal record in Diet Coke consumption that evening. There was also a small window set high in the wall, at ground level with the front of the house, allowing a sliver of yellow light to stream in from the street. Of course, the windows of my bedroom in New York let in far more ambient light, but this lone sliver was somehow more distracting than what filtered into my apartment. And then there was Peter’s snoring. In Manhattan, there were sirens and traffic noises and the occasional shout ricocheting up from the pavement. It was loud, but to me it was soothing, analogous to one of those sound machines featured in
SkyMall Magazine
along with the electrodes that promised to reshape even the flabbiest abs into a six-pack. Here the surrounding silence threw the snoring into high relief.

I flipped onto my stomach, but this didn’t make me any more sleepy. I began counting sheep, but that made me think about wool, which made me wonder if I should learn how to knit, which reminded me of a particularly unpleasant elementary school crafts project involving yarn and sticks. Soon I caught myself mentally giving my former art teacher a piece of my mind, which left me more revved up than I had been before I started with the sheep.

I flipped back onto my back. Maybe it would help if I could get Peter to stop snoring.

I tapped him gently on the shoulder. “Stop snoring,” I said politely.

He grunted and continued to snore.

I tapped him again, harder, and repeated my request, albeit less politely.

This time he didn’t even grunt, but the snoring continued.

I had resorted to a childhood game—picking shapes out of the shadows the light cast on the opposite wall—when I realized that not only were the shadows moving, the light was changing color. Red and blue alternated with the yellow.

I heard footsteps, and then the lights were temporarily blocked out by moving figures on the front walk.

I sat up in bed.

It looked like we had company.

And it was the sort that came accompanied by flashing red-and-blue lights.