“It wasn’t an accident, was it?”
We were on our way back to Detroit. It was the first she’d spoken since we left Huron Valley. She’d been looking at the scenery sliding past, not seeing it. Now she was looking straight ahead through the windshield, and not seeing anything there either.
I’d been expecting the question. She was just finishing her visit when the nurse appeared with the orderly I’d spoken to, to unhook Dan Corbeil from the monitor, transfer him to a gurney, and wheel him down the hall and through another set of doors—steel this time, with STAFF ADMITTANCE ONLY stenciled on them. Beyond them was another ward, restricted to a handful of inmates, with a guard assigned to each around the clock; this much I’d gotten from Otto, once he’d agreed to authorize the transfer.
“No,” I said to Chrys. “He’ll be safe in that area. When he’s back on his feet, they’ll put him in isolation.” I told her the story behind the ten dollars I was adding to expenses.
“You mean solitary? The hole?”
I had to grin. “You should switch to the Hallmark Channel. ‘The hole’ went out with Free Dish Night. That kind of punishment never did work anyway. He’ll have all the amenities of his regular cell and the yard to himself and his own private turnkey for company.”
“But why would anyone want to hurt Dan? Does it have to do with you looking into his case?”
“It has everything to do with it. Someone’s sending a message: Lay off, or the next one’s for keeps.”
She opened her mouth, but I interrupted her before anything came out.
“Before you have second thoughts, think. It means Dan’s innocent. Only the guilty party would go to such lengths to stop the investigation.”
“That’s nothing new. I know he’s innocent. I’ve known it all along. That’s why I hired you.”
“You hired me to reopen the case. You were convinced he’d been framed; that’s not the same thing as knowing. I said at the time I’d keep working it till I was satisfied one way or the other. Now I am. Too many people are interested in something that was supposed to have been settled four presidential administrations ago.”
“So what happens now?”
“I wound up some little mechanical men and sent them out in several directions before I got your call. Now I’m going to start gathering them up to see what they brought back.”
The first one answered to the name Barry. After I dropped Chrys off at her place I speed-dialed him. “Not retired yet?” I said.
“Screw you. Just when I think I’m out, you drag me back in. Guess who added his two cents to Kenneth Whitelaw’s parole hearing?”
“Name rhyme with Chester Goss?”
“He submitted a stack of letters written in pencil on yellow notepaper, along with the envelopes they came in, stamped and canceled. All in the same hand, with the same signature. Whitelaw can’t spell for shit, but he spent a fair amount of his time in the Atlanta pen writing thank-you notes to Goss in care of the show, and making his case.”
“‘Bless me, for I have sinned’?”
“Bingo. Struck just the right balance between maudlin and calculating. More on the first side as the correspondence went on, less on the second. A man coming to believe his own publicity. I tell you, if I was chief financial officer of a chain of supermarkets putting in some of my spare time serving the community on a parole board, I’d’ve asked for a Kleenex.”
“What about his record inside?”
“Clean enough. Some contraband, non-lethal, non-drug-related; be suspicious if there weren’t something like that in his jacket. Just because he’s crude don’t mean he ain’t shrewd. Like a schizo that knows how to appear sane when it counts.”
“Thin, even to a supermarket suit. What clinched it?”
“Gainful employment. Goss brought an affidavit signed by him, promising to hire Whitelaw as a stringer as soon as he was sprung.”
“What’s a stringer?”
“Journalese, sorry. A regional source of leads that might prove interesting to a wide audience.”
“You mean a snitch.”
“A snitch with a press pass. You know, like an associate with an escort service instead of a ten-dollar whore. Three hundred a week to start, and a C-note every time he reported something the show could use. Travel expenses, too, if it’s meaty enough to bring him north to discuss details.”
“Details such as tossing my office to see what I’d dug up and dry-gulching Kopernick after he told Goss thanks but no thanks on the job offer.”
“That’s the theory. I can download all this from my source in Dixie and bring it over or snail-mail it to you for your records.”
“Not necessary. It wouldn’t prove anything except to you and me. But since you’ve got that much energy—”
“Palm trees can wait, that it?” But he didn’t sound peeved; once a bloodhound’s got the scent, you can’t stop him with a two-by-four.
“Hang on.” I turned into my driveway. My house was only a few blocks from Chrys’s. “This one’s public record. That means you can put your spies to rest. I don’t want to bother Alderdyce with it; he’s busy balancing his career on his thumb as it is, as a favor to me.”
“Horseshit. He hands out favors like the Grinch hands out candy canes.”
I thought about that. “Grinch; not bad. Not good, either. It’s all in the interest of justice, Barry. It could turn out I’m the generous one.”
“Spill it.”
I told him what I wanted. There was no pause when I finished, to take notes. If I had his memory I’d work onstage. “Where’d you get this?”
“From a little gray man in a little gray office.”
“When do you need it? Don’t say yesterday. I’d say buy me a time machine.”
“Today, then.”
“Go to hell.”
Men with his talent were sensitive about being taken for granted. I said, “Call me at home; landline. This one has me burning through minutes like napalm.”
He didn’t call. I was sitting in the easy chair wondering if the ice in my glass would stand another soaking when the doorbell rang. It kept on ringing until I opened the door because Barry was leaning against the button. He knew I hated that.
“I hope you got more ice.” He indicated the glass in my hand, using the manila file folder he’d brought in for a pointer. “You know what kind. I prefer my liquor unscorched.”
I found a tombstone-shaped bottle in the kitchen cupboard behind a jar of mayonnaise. It was Gentleman Jack. I couldn’t remember who gave it to me. Bourbon’s best for pouring on waffles.
I gave him the easy chair. It needed as many backsides as possible to rearrange the broad hollow Stan Kopernick had left in the cushion. He accepted a glass and I sat on the love seat facing him, jingling the fresh cubes in my Scotch. I pointed at the folder in his lap. “You could’ve given me that over the phone. I didn’t need it in writing.”
“I sweep my phone. Any kid could tap that old rotary of yours with a pipe cleaner and a pair of alligator clamps. You said yourself Goss is wired to the Department. Why stop there?”
“I keep forgetting to ask Alderdyce about that. This is no ordinary link. He gets his information too fast.” I kept staring at the folder. I hadn’t touched my drink yet.
He touched his, set it down on the end table by the chair, and leaned forward to pass me the file.
I opened it, looked at the front-and-profile photo printed out on top. This boy was no Kenneth Whitelaw. He wore dreadlocks and a scowl that would curdle milk. The swastika carved in each meaty cheek was superfluous. “Half Rastafari, half White Power. How’d he last this long?”
“Fact he has says as much about him as his sheet. Spoiler alert: It ends with him doing ninety-nine years and a day for triple murder. If they’d made all the others stick, he’d be serving real time.”
“Pro?”
“All-star. Started with the Colombian cartel, Miami end. He scared them so much they imported a death squad from Bogota to wipe him out; he killed three of ’em before he decided to come north for his health. Not so healthy for the heavyweights he ran afoul of in L.A., East St. Louis, Chicago, and some gangbangers here at home.
“Young Boys Incorporated?”
“There never was a Young Boys Incorporated. That was old Mayor Young’s invention, like his Form 1040. They’re what this prize package took the fall for: He used a welding torch on a big-time dealer, but not before he broke into his crib and cut the heads off the dealer’s girlfriend and her little boy. He let the dealer see his work before he fired up the acetylene.”
“Guess he wasn’t so clumsy then.” I skimmed an arrest report. “Jared Kady. That’s not the name I gave you.”
“You’re looking at an old beef. Last page.”
I shuffled to the back. “Abrahim Ibn Said.”
“Had it changed legally when he converted. Only legal thing he ever did, I’m guessing. Even the Taliban refused to claim credit for him. Terrorist without portfolio.”
“Been bingeing Cutthroat Dogs?”
“Hard to stop. Goss devoted two episodes to him solo. Another guess? Drugs in stir. A lot of smart prison reformers have wasted a lot of time trying to stop the flow from outside. There’s even an unwritten rate sheet: Broken leg, half a kilo of crack; morgue job, two rocks of H. Goss’s tipsters have put enough mules inside for him to arrange regular delivery, just like Amazon.”
“How much of that can we prove?”
“Zilch.”
I riffled the pages. They made a nasty sound, like a buzzing rattlesnake. “No wonder my orderly wouldn’t finger him by name; but he was short on imagination. Said he won’t try the same thing a second time. He doesn’t need a mean guard with a hair trigger to take out Corbeil. He’ll handle it himself.”
“Think he will?”
“The orderly was right about one thing. This state hasn’t had the death penalty for two hundred years. They can’t send you up for life twice.”