chapter twenty-one

flash drive

My idea made perfect sense the more we drank and toasted Lonnie, flushed with hard liquor and anger and bent on retribution, but in the sober light of a new day it all looked like so much Swiss cheese.

Still, doing something is better than nothing.

My curiosity mingled with anxiety.

And sometimes curiosity gets a cat killed.

The mail in my box from yesterday did nothing to calm my fears.

A plain brown manila folder with a letter containing three colored business-size envelopes had been stuffed into my mailbox. It bore no return address and the stylized calligraphic letter inside read:

Dear Mitchell,

If you’re reading this, you know I’m dead. Whatever version Maynard releases to the press, know this: I was murdered in cold blood. I’ve moved on to a better place, but this story needs a final chapter. You deduced the existence of Mr. Anthony on your own, and that means others can as well. He is completely untraceable to me and loyal to a fault. My final wishes will be carried to their fitting conclusion, as long as Mr. Anthony remains undisturbed.

The green envelope contains a modest reimbursement for your counsel and the friendship you offered. I know you see gratis clients but that didn’t seem right, so I based the amount on a sliding scale therapy rate for local not-for-profit agencies of twenty-five dollars an hour since I was technically indigent. I allocated my entire share to others more worthy than I and Mr. Anthony has the accounting records to prove it. I realize this amount is far below your normal hourly wage, but I thought it was a fair compromise. If it was all about the money, you wouldn’t have seen me at all and ventured out of your comfort zone for a stranger. You helped me stay sane in an insane place, but as the weeks passed, I think in some small way I helped you get your drive back. I saw the fire return to your eyes a little more each week. You have a difficult job, but you probably hear that all the time. I wish you the best.

The red envelope is to be used at your discretion and contains, among other items, fifty of my counterfeit US one-hundred-dollar bills. When we first met, I warned you that I wasn’t a pet sociology project of yours. Consider this a sociology test, if you will. Have special agent Wilson inspect the bill with the small white paper clip attached to it. Tell him you received it at a venue that would be impossible to trace, perhaps from a cashier at a local casino, and you’re concerned about its authenticity. I sensed skepticism when we discussed this earlier, although you were kind enough to reserve judgment after the news segment.

Once the bill passes the scrutiny of the St. Louis Secret Service office (and it will), you may be tempted to think this is a legal tender US bill I planted among my counterfeits. That will be the party line of the experts. Have them vet all fifty bills if you wish. That is why I’ve attached the dated photograph. The truth should never be a casualty.

Beware the black envelope. Hide it in the safest place you know. It is dangerous and I cannot in good faith ask you to act directly on what is inside. If Benny’s murder is a prelude to the confirmation of my worst fears, and if by some twist of fate you or the proper authorities are able to find those who possess his duffel bags, this will seal their guilt. Wouldn’t that be something!

If this plays out the way I believe it will, and if you are able to successfully use the last two envelopes, this time I think you should consider a book or movie deal.

I'm sorry that so much information was withheld from you. Painted into the same corner, I'd do it all over again, but at least now you know why.

Good luck and watch your back.

LW

P.S. Mr. Anthony sent you the lone bill. I hope you had it checked. It was also one of mine.

Not knowing what else to do, I opened the black envelope. A brief note explained the flash drive. I inserted it in my computer to make sure it contained what the note promised and taped it securely to one of the top blades of my bedroom ceiling fan. Then I picked up Maynard’s personal schedule that Debbie had pilfered from his office and began following him.

The first day, the Golden Boy was phallanxed by beefy security staff who limoed him to every daytime destination while Fallon clung like a sycophant and hovered like a mosquito. He had lunch with his trophy wife Barbara, the mayor, and Fallon downtown at Tony’s on Market Street. By day’s end, I worried that my sporty rental Mustang may be too conspicuous, so I stayed farther back. Maynard attended meetings in the city and county, leaving his office four different times, but all I could do was watch him enter and exit buildings. After his last scheduled meeting that night, security drove him to his gated community home, leaving me on the wrong side of the bars, parked alone in the dark with my mind numb from one of the longest, most boring days in memory. I left Maynard’s locked gates and traded the flashier white Mustang for my parents’ nondescript blue Toyota Camry LE. Sensible Dad, a tenured professor of accounting, kept asking why I had to trade cars in the middle of the night, while Mom, a retired school teacher who still pined over selling my great aunt’s ’67 Corvette when I was young, happily grabbed the keys.

“It’s a long story, Dad,” I said.

“I’m sure he has a good reason,” Mom told him, hanging the Mustang keys by the door, smiling. “We’re going for a ride in the country tomorrow to put that pretty white horse through its paces.”

Mom picked up on my anxiety level when I left, but didn’t ask questions. She was the intuitive one and knew I’d talk when I could, deftly balancing a mother’s trust with a mother’s worry.

I drove home in their car and invited Tony over for a drink. I’d studied the bug earlier and Googled it. It seemed to be a compact transmitter only, with no built-in recording feature or miniaturized cassette tape.

I showed it to him.

“Where’d you get this?” he said, slowly turning it over in one hairy hand.

“Taped under the table where I meet—met with Lonnie. The same room where he met with his attorney.”

“Slap my ass and call me Susan!” He did a double-take and said, “No shit?”

“Is there any way to track where this came from, Suzie?”

He took a gulp of beer while he thought. “A friend in vice occasionally shows off some of her spy toys to me. It’s a newer transmitter, but there’s no way to find out where it came from or who planted it because your prints are undoubtedly the only ones on it now. There’s another problem …”

My hopes sank. “Which is?”

“There are more sophisticated models to listen in on even whispered conversations from greater distances and the drop ceiling in that moldy room is a perfect place to conceal it, even a miniature camera if they wanted.” He tossed it back to me. “Somebody has to be listening in for this little baby to be effective. If you had the tapes of your privileged conversations or testimony from the person eavesdropping, you’d have something.”

No wonder Kendall was so smug. I imagined a cop sitting in another room with his feet up, eating doughnuts while he listened. My gut told me this is how they found Earl, but I had no proof. Any hope for a mistrial with the bug now seemed like a mirage on a distant road. Kendall was right, the cops would continue to claim they used good old-fashioned, honest police work to capture Earl.

“Who’s his court-appointed?”

The guy was so unremarkable I had to pause. “Young kid named Hanover.”

He rolled his eyes. “He’s a newbie. Wouldn’t be surprised if they cherry-picked him.”

He looked around the living room. “Shit on a shingle, I just thought of something.” He whispered conspiratorially, “What about here?” He made crawly motions with his fingers.

I shrugged.

He drained his beer. “Jumping Jesus Christ, you’re in deep shit again, Mitch. Too deep, buddy. You gotta let this one go.”

“He may have been a counterfeiter, but he didn’t deserve to be murdered. I think—”

Tony shushed me by putting his finger to his mouth.

He wrote on a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Will bring over my vice friend with detector equipment tomorrow night—only way to be sure.” He winked and smiled, “She looks up to me.”

“Don’t be stupid and venture down that road again.”

He waved away my admonition with a hairy hand. “Strictly platonic—but she does have a great rack.”

He badgered me with more scribbled questions until it grew tiresome and I kicked out my paranoid friend and went to bed.

I dreaded my second mind- and butt-numbing day of undercover work. I thought, what would Baker do?, and put together a bag for the car. Eight years of college and I was borrowing my parents’ Camry and sticking a pee jar in the front passenger seat.