I Googled “Peter Margolis” and got 353,000 hits. I looked at the first hundred. There was a Dr. Peter Margolis in St. Petersburg, Florida, who did boob jobs. Another Peter Margolis in Lincoln, Nebraska, had won first prize in the county fair pork and beef grill-off. I stopped there. I’d have to find someone who understood this Internet stuff.
I got up to go and put the tapes back in my stash. I looked next to the Paul Newman classics where I’d left them the night before. Gone. Cool Hand Luke and Harper were missing as well. I couldn’t believe it. I tiptoed around the house, checked all the windows and doors. No sign of a break-in. Nothing else disturbed. I’d violated a basic rule of survival: what belongs in the stash stays in the stash—always. A real professional doesn’t think it’s a waste of time rolling up rugs and prying off floor boards. It’s always time well spent. Someone was invading my space. My first thought was Jeffcoat, though I wasn’t sure why.
I phoned him but his secretary told me he was out of town for the week. When I told her who it was, she wouldn’t give me his cell number or tell me where he’d gone or when he’d be back.
She did agree to take my message.
“Tell him if I don’t hear from him by the end of the day, I’ll Fed Ex the tapes to the webmaster of Zebralove.com.”
“I’ll give him the message.”
He phoned me three minutes later. The secretary had grasped the urgency of the situation. I assumed he was poking her as well. Just a gut feeling. I figured we still had him by the balls but our grip was getting a little loose.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he said before I even had a chance to let him have it. “Whatever you have to say, say it straight to me. People can read between the lines. I don’t need that.”
“Call your thugs off and return what they stole,” I said. “There’s plenty of copies in other places. In Leavenworth we killed anyone who stole from us. Anyone.”
“I don’t have thugs,” he said. “It’s not my style. And I’m not a thief.”
“So you have no idea who broke into my house last night?”
“I wish I did,” he said. “I’d like to give ‘em a medal.”
“You’re pushing me to where I don’t want to go,” I said, “but I’ve been there before. It’s uncharted territory for you.”
“You live in a fantasy world,” he said. “Too bad you never investigate anything before you make wild allegations. You’re a moron, Winter. Recognize who you’re dealing with. I’m not from the world of breakins and broken thumbs. I’m a businessman, but I’m no Scout Master. When I’ve had my fill, I fight back. You don’t want to go there.”
“You’re nothing special just because you have an office on the fourteenth floor. We all come from the jungle.”
“So you’re stupid enough to think because I let my dick get the best of me now and then I’m a murderer?” he said. “Have a nice day, Mr. Winter.” He cut the phone before I had a chance to tell him I wouldn’t let him alone until he spilled his guts. He was just an arrogant bastard. I was beginning to think he might have killed Prudence after all.
The worst part of it all was that Jeffcoat was learning how to make me feel like a fool. Too quickly. This talking game was supposed to be my turf. I had to settle into my groove or Jeffcoat and his thugs, if he had any, would be dancing on my face.
Before I had time to pour another shot of Wild Turkey, Red Eye phoned.
“My buddy’s through with tape number nine,” he said. “He can’t recover the audio and the video never came clear enough to ID anyone. All he knows is that the guy has a tattoo on his right arm and another one over his heart. Can’t see what the tats say.”
“How many guys we got in Oakland with tattoos?” I asked. “A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand?” It wasn’t my day. I asked him if his buddy could follow up Peter Margolis.
“I tried,” I told him, “but there’s about five thousand Peter Margolises around. I don’t know where to start.”
“No problem,” Red Eye said, “homeboy is the bomb on computers.”
We arranged to meet later that night. I didn’t even tell him the other tapes were gone. I was too wiped out to listen to his advice on how I should have put them back in the stash.
I filled in the afternoon with a business matter—matchmaking. Only for me it was usually more pleasure than business. If you got a perfect match it was like doing a good deed for the day. Even the Calvin Winters of the world like to do a good deed every once in a while.
As it turned out, I wasn’t sure if this match qualified. I found a Filipina woman for Sunny Jim Fitzpatrick in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. Sunny Jim looked like a geek. No teeth, no eyebrows. He’d pay $4,000 plus airfare. Corazon Pehau, his partner-to-be, said she was five foot four, 130 lb., aged thirty. She looked closer to 95 lb. and barely legal. Hard to tell in a photo, and I had to be careful in this business. Trafficking in minors was dangerous. Could get me plenty of federal time at 85 percent with no reduction for good behavior. Besides, I had some boundaries. I wasn’t about selling some kid into sex slavery. If a grown woman wanted to put herself on the market, that was different. It was her affair. I was just a broker. Without the middleman, most trade would never happen.
I decided Corazon was over eighteen and e-mailed the photos to the prospective client. Like most Filipina women in my line of work, Corazon was ready to come at the drop of a hat, even if future hubby looked like the back end of a pit bull. I’d found out this modern world of ours had generated millions of desperately poor women in the far corners of our planet. Their flip side was the flood of lonely, socially misfit males in the United States. The women, the Prudences of the world, supplied companionship, sex, a little cooking and housecleaning, plus the image of a marriage—exactly what lames like my man from Idaho demanded. Of course Sunny Jim’s demand was backed up by what made the whole process function—money.
Sunny Jim claimed to have a three-bedroom house on half an acre. He didn’t post a photo of the place, either because it didn’t exist or because the yard was strewn with old transmissions, broken down Lazy Boy recliners and piles of unrecyclable bottles. No guarantees in this matchmaking marketplace. Truth in advertising did not apply. The parties relied on that most elusive of commodities—trust. Hell, I didn’t even know if I could trust myself. At this stage I might tell all kind of lies just to have another body next to me, a voice in the house to suppress that image of Prudence’s eyes receding into her head next to my guest bathroom toilet.
At least, unlike my Sunny Jim, I had a presentable house. It would look good in photos but it was no longer the sanctuary I dreamed of. The house wasn’t really the problem. It was the situation I’d backed myself into. I couldn’t settle for a homely woman who worked at J.C. Penney’s and made a terrific meatloaf. I had to show the world that a harelip could attract a sexy woman, the type everyone wanted to get their hands on. The world was full of Corazons—desperate, homely, hardworking. I wanted glamorous. But the glamorous types like Prudence only came to me when they hit rock bottom. Prudence still had dreams when I met her. A short little ex-con with a harelip was just a stepping-stone. Corazon might stay with that guy from Idaho for years. I couldn’t hold Prudence for more than a few months.
Not long after I’d connected up Sunny Jim with his bride to be, Red Eye arrived for our meeting. He had information and a proposal. The information was that Margolis was a local businessman who died in a water skiing accident somewhere in northern California.
“My partner said something smelled fishy about it all,” Red Eye said, “but he couldn’t put his finger on it.”
I had no idea. Maybe Jeffcoat was driving the boat, maybe Margolis was bangin’ Mrs. J. Red Eye’s friends didn’t always paint in all the numbers, but if Prudence told Mandisa this would buy leverage over Jeffcoat, we had to pursue it.
After the tidbit about Margolis came Red Eye’s proposal:
“Let me move in,” he said. “I’ll be your security. Say for a month or so, until things cool down. I’m sure my parole officer will agree. He’s cool as hell. I’ll tell him you’re paying me a couple grand a month.”
“You mean I have to pay for the privilege?” I asked.
“No, no. Just something to keep Mr. Roosevelt Johnson, my PO, happy,” he said. “He doesn’t trip. A closet Bears fan. Wanted to send me somewhere to get this SS tat taken off my leg. I told him I’d think about it.”
“I think you’re a little bit too late with this offer,” I said.
“Whaddya mean?”
“Somebody broke in and stole the tapes.”
“They got to your stash?”
“Not exactly.”
“Shit happens, bro, that’s why you need twenty-four security. Red Eye’s five-star service.”
It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, even though I had my doubts. Red Eye slept at odd hours, liked weird horror movies, and obsessed on sports betting. Though I had no concrete proof, I bet he snored like a fat lady passed out after dollar-pitcher night. In prison you learn the power of a snore. A real snorter can keep dozens of men awake through the night. If you’re unlucky enough to share a cell with one of those buzz saws, you’re locked in your own private hell. If you don’t move away you’ll start dreaming of smothering him in midroar. I’m sure my Sunny Jim from Idaho made as much noise as twenty hungry warthogs. But Corazon would just put up with it to send a few dollars back to Manila every month.
Red Eye’s offer left me in fits. I needed security but I needed solitude—my own space to plot my next move and completely recover from the death of my so-called wife. I didn’t know how to handle such things other than alone.
I decided on a compromise. I moved all my business paraphernalia, desk and computer into my room. Red Eye could take the second bedroom and the living room for his all hours TV watching. He’d probably be betting on some bantamweight title fight in Indonesia at 3:00 a.m. Far be it from me to get in his way. Just so he kept the volume down. By that night he was camped out on the sofa in front of the TV with his Daily Racing Forms covering the coffee table. Somewhere in the middle of a special on the great Yankee home-run hitters of all time, I phoned Mandisa. I wasn’t sure why.
“I’d like it if you’d just stay out of my life for a while,” she said. “You bring nothing but trouble.”
Before I could get her to rethink, she’d cut off the phone. Mel Allen, the voice of the Yankees sounded like he was jumping out of the press box over some home run that Mickey Mantle had hit fifty years ago. I had a feeling this arrangement with Red Eye might not work out.