Harry yelled, “CIRBA,” as he took off after the man. His quarry was quick but hampered by leather-soled shoes and whatever he was protecting in his side pocket. He took a sharp right turn behind the office building and slipped on the grass between the sidewalk and the curb. He went down on his side and slid, but made a miraculous recovery when his feet touched the road. Harry gained on him and followed onto a residential street, where again the man slipped on a lawn; this time, he saved himself before falling. Then he ducked between two houses. When Harry made the corner, he saw that there was no way out of the backyards other than climbing a five foot high chain-link fence, and that’s just what his quarry did. The guy vaulted the top of the fence before Harry could reach him. Harry was halfway up himself when a hand caught him by the belt and pulled him back down.
“What are you doing?” Harry screamed at Cirba. “He’s getting away.”
“You don’t want to go in there,” Ed said, pointing.
The fugitive was frozen in fear. There were three dogs. One was a Doberman, the other one was part Rottweiler, part lion. They were walking towards the stranger in their yard with menacing interest but it was the little toy terrier that was charging and actually nipping at the man’s leg. He was terrified and would probably have kicked it away if he hadn’t sensed that if he hurt the little one, the big ones would have him for lunch.
The owner came to her back door.
“Ma’am,” Cirba shouted, “do you have control of your dogs?”
“This is my property,” she said, puffing on a cigarette. “I don’t need to control nothing. What’s your friend doin’ in my yard?”
“Oh, he’s no friend of mine, ma’am,” Cirba said, displaying his badge. “My name is Trooper Ed Cirba of the state police. We’d like to ask this man a few questions. If I come in there and arrest him, will I get eaten?”
“I got full control of the big boys but the terrier’s a feisty bitch. Saying that, she looks preoccupied with your friend’s pant leg. The gate’s unlocked, come on in.”
Cirba let the terrier continue to tug and growl at the fugitive’s trouser leg while he handcuffed his hands behind his back. He was very cooperative, he wanted out of there. When he was cuffed, the woman came out and picked up the snarling little beast.
“He bit me. I’m bleeding. I’ll sue you,” the man said, finding his voice.
“Sure you just don’t want to leave him here with me?” the homeowner said with a wicked smile.
“Tempting, ma’am. I wouldn’t worry about a lawsuit. I suspect you won’t be hearing any more about this.”
* * *
On the dog-free side of the fence, Cirba asked: “Why are we chasing this guy?”
“Inside jacket pocket,” Harry said.
“You think he’s packing?”
“He’s packing something.”
Cirba pushed the man up against the fence and frisked him. The terrier inside barked that she wanted a second taste. Inside his jacket pocket the trooper found a folder folded flat in half. The first paper inside sported the letterhead, “Kevin Sweeney Attorney at Law.”
Cirba called the local police and instructed them to guard Sweeney’s office until he got back.
They took Mr Dog-Meat to the Jim Thorpe General Emergency Room. Harry wanted to take him to Wilkes Barrie County Hospital but Cirba pointed out that it was unethical to allow a suspect to bleed for an extra forty-five minutes just so one can see one’s girlfriend. Harry didn’t see a problem with it.
Harry read the confiscated file as they drove. “Hello,” he exclaimed.
“Something interesting?”
“Guess what this is?”
“He better hope it’s proof of a rabies vaccine,” Cirba said.
“Not quite. It’s a preliminary conveyance agreement to buy land, three miles west of Oaktree, Pennsylvania, from Enterprise Estates.”
“Never heard of ’em,” Ed said.
“Yeah well, you’ve heard of the guy who wanted to buy the land – it’s our friendly neighbourhood titty bar owner – Paul Di Angelo.”
“Him, I heard of.”
* * *
In the hospital snack bar Harry and Cirba sipped weak coffee while they were waiting for DogMeat to be patched up. They struggled to decipher the legalese on the papers they had found. It seemed that Di Angelo wasn’t the owner of the Dew Drop Inn but the manager. It was owned by a company called Suave Entertainment. About two months earlier he decided he wanted to buy the club along with the fifty acres of wood behind it.
“That would be about the same time as Keystone Drilling hit gas at the old quarry, but a month before they announced it,” Harry said. “Harmony told me that Di Angelo was tight with the truck drivers that shipped waste from the old quarry.”
“So he had inside information. He knew the land was going to be worth a lot of money.”
“So, why would he want to steal the paperwork from Sweeney’s office?”
“Our club owner had dealings with Big Bill, and now we find he also dealt with lawyer Sweeney. Of the three of them, only one is alive. I’d tamper with evidence to suppress that knowledge.”
“There was no evidence of tampering,” a man in a black suit said standing over their table.
“Who the hell are you?” Cirba asked.
“Peter Igeldinger,” the man said, producing a business card.
Cirba read it and said: “Lawyer,” with the same intonation he would have used if he had said “pond scum”. “Whose lawyer are you?”
“I represent Mr Morano.”
“Who he?”
“He is the man in your custody currently being treated for a dog bite.”
“Funny, he didn’t tell us his name.”
“I instruct all of my clients not to say anything until I arrive.”
“So I imagine you would like to speak to him?”
“I already have.”
“What?” Cirba jumped. “How?”
“I arrived and told the nurse at the front desk that I was his attorney, and she led me in to speak with him.”
Cirba had handcuffed his arrestee to a hospital bed and told Harry it would be fine to leave him and get coffee. “What could happen?” he had said.
Harry gave the cop a look.
“Don’t even say it,” Cirba said.
“Mr Morano did not tamper with evidence. He rightly assumed that you would be at the lawyer’s office and he was bringing the file to you.”
“He was walking away from the office,” Harry said.
“He had forgotten his eyeglasses in the car.”
“This doesn’t explain why we had to chase him halfway across Jim Thorpe?”
“My client tells me that when he asked you if you were the police you said no.”
Cirba looked to Harry who shrugged in agreement.
“My client says your demeanour was threatening. He was running for his life. For all he knew you could have been Mr Sweeney’s murderers.”
Cirba and Harry looked to each other as the logic of the story sank in. Not that they believed it for a moment, but a judge might.
“How did you know your client was here?” Cirba asked.
“A fellow citizen saw the arrest, recognized my client and called his wife.”
“Was this fellow citizen,” Harry said, “by any chance the driver of the getaway car?”
“I will not dignify that question with an answer. Mr Morano’s treatment will be finished by now. I assume you are taking him to the Hazelton state police barracks?”
“That would be a good assumption.”
“Then we shall speak there.”
On the way to the barracks, Cirba called the local police he had asked to guard the lawyer’s office. He asked them if there was any sign of a break-in and they told him that the door was locked and all looked normal.
“Shit,” Cirba mumbled under his breath.
* * *
Paul Di Angelo was waiting for them in the lobby when they arrived.
“Well, well, well,” Harry said to the strip club manager. “What can we do for you?”
“I was informed that you had arrested my bookkeeper on this… misunderstanding. I assumed you would want to speak with me so I decided to save you the inconvenience of collecting me.” Di Angelo stood.
“That was very considerate of you,” Cirba said gesturing for Di Angelo to sit, “but I am afraid you are going to have to wait until I book your bookkeeper.”
* * *
After photographing and fingerprinting the bookkeeper – a Mr Andrew Morano – he was escorted, with his lawyer, into the interrogation room.
He stuck to his lawyer’s story. He said that Di Angelo, assuming that the police would be at Sweeney’s office, called him that morning and instructed him to go there and turn over the document to the police. When he arrived he felt menaced by two men who said they were not police. He panicked, thinking that maybe these men were Mr Sweeney’s murderers.
When Harry suggested a polygraph, the lawyer laughed at him.
* * *
Outside the interrogation room, Harry said to Ed, “I’m so glad we gave Mr Morano and his lawyer that time alone so that everyone could make sure they were telling the same story.”
“How was I to know that— all right, all right I fucked up. What do we do now?”
“I wouldn’t even bother putting him in front of a judge.”
* * *
Di Angelo was brought in and smilingly regurgitated the same exact tale, but at the end of the interview he said: “I’m going to have a little lunch at Hazel Corners just up the road, you should join me.”
* * *
Ed and Harry walked into the Hazel Corner Diner and spotted Di Angelo sitting alone in the corner booth. He was eating a slice of pumpkin pie, and there were two plates of pie on the table opposite him. They approached and sat down.
“I took the liberty of ordering coffee and pie for you gentlemen. That way we need not be disturbed.”
“I am amazed at how conscientious you are today,” Cirba said.
“We are talking off the record now – is that OK?”
“No, it’s not OK,” Cirba said. “Tell me you ordered Sweeney’s place to be burglarized and I’ll arrest your ass right here.”
“I can see that is what you believe, trooper. Hypothetically, if that were the case, why do you think I did it? What would I have to gain from stealing a relatively innocuous document?”
“It proves you knew the victim and you had business dealings with him.”
“I never claimed otherwise, and so did a lot of people, so why would I do such a thing?”
He looked to Harry, who said: “You didn’t want the police to know you were speculating on land that you had inside knowledge of.”
“Close, Mr Cull,” Di Angelo said. “But I couldn’t care less about the police. Have you investigated Enterprise Estates?”
Harry took out a copy of the documents that were taken from Di Angelo’s bookkeeper. Enterprise Estates was the name of the company that Di Angelo was trying to buy the land from.
“What about them?”
“Let’s just say that Enterprise Estates’ managerial technique is a bit rougher than the normal company’s.”
“The Mob?” Harry asked.
“Even when speaking hypothetically, that’s an ugly word but…” Di Angelo said with a shrug.
“You were trying to buy the land around your club at lowball prices before Enterprise Estates knew about the natural gas hit.”
“Maybe.”
“You weren’t stealing the document to hide it from us, you were hiding it from Enterprise Estates,” Harry said.
“Mr Sweeney and I had already decided not to attempt to buy the land. Maybe I just didn’t want Enterprise Estates to know that I ever even considered it… hypothetically.”
* * *
After Di Angelo left Cirba asked: “Is it unethical to eat a slice of pie bought by a Mobster?”
Harry answered by cutting a piece with his fork and shovelling it into his mouth.
“He’s still a person of interest,” Cirba said between bites.
“More than that: he’s a suspect.”
* * *
Harry and Cirba got back to Sweeney’s office just as the forensic team was finishing up.
“So Amy, was there a break-in?”
“Probably but there’s no proof,” the head of forensics said as she peeled off her latex gloves. “My bathroom has a better lock than this office door. Anybody who knew anything could have opened it. And all of the prints on the door and the filing cabinets are smeared.”
“You think it was wiped down?” Harry asked.
“No, more likely the last person to be in here wore gloves.”
“Morano had gloves on him. Can you match the gloves to the smudges?”
“I wish.”
“Thanks, Amy,” Ed said.
“For nothin’, right?” she replied as she walked past.
Cirba called after her. “Your nothin’ is better than most people’s something.”
* * *
Inside, the place was a mess but no messier than when they were there with a living breathing Mr Sweeney.
“You start with the filing cabinets,” Cirba said to Harry. “I’ll try and make sense of these papers.”
“Maybe we should hire Di Angelo’s bookkeeper. He seemed to know how to find stuff in here.” Harry chuckled to himself. “He probably did us a favour; it might have taken us a week to find that document.”
“I had a word with the captain and asked him if he knew anything about Enterprise Estates. You know what he said?”
Harry shook his head.
“He said, ‘Mob,’ and that we should come see him tomorrow for a briefing.”
“You saying you believe Di Angelo?”
“It kinda fits. It doesn’t seem worth it to hide this information from us. It’s not proof. All it does is make us suspicious but we were suspicious already. On the other hand, pissing off the Mob – that’s worth risking a burglary. What do you think?”
Harry shrugged. “Like I said, I can’t read the guy. Saying that, I get the feeling he’s smart. Of all the reasons to break into this office, that seems the least dumb.”
“Well, thanks to my need for caffeine,” Cirba said, “he got away with it.”
“Also, if you hadn’t stopped for pierogis we would have caught him red-handed.”
“Shut up.”
“Just sayin’,” Harry said, then shut up.
Both men found poring through legal documents a chore. As the day wore on Harry started to get a sense of the professional side of Kevin Sweeney. It seemed that Sweeney tried to be one of those lone jack-of-all-trade attorneys like some “li’l old-country lawyer” in an old black-and-white movie. He did deeds, wills, contracts, and trust funds, small-time criminal stuff like under-an-ounce grass possession or DUIs. But when you looked at the bulk of the paperwork it was obvious that his bread and butter was, like so many rural lawyers, ambulance chasing – or to use a term that Mr Sweeney would have preferred – Personal Claims.
It was dark outside when Harry found a file that was filled with suits against restaurants and stores over their disabled facilities. In one folder was a hand-written letter from a bar owner in Freeland named Chaz who was irate because he had to pay a fine and legal fees that added up to about $3,000 all because the handrails on either side of his disabled toilet were off by six inches. It finished with the promise: “Next time I see you I’m going to shoot you.”
Cirba read it and laughed. “I know this guy. He’s an ornery old cuss, and I’ll give him a visit but he didn’t shoot nobody in Oaktree. I don’t think Chaz has left Freeland in twenty-five years.”
“Well, it’d be a drag,” Harry said, “to be shot for three grand.”
“Wouldn’t it be exactly the same drag to be shot for a million?”
“I’d shoot both of you for a million easy,” said a woman’s voice at the door.
Both men jumped.
“Jesus, MK,” Cirba said, “what are you doing here?”
MK stood in the entrance of the inner office wearing her nurse’s uniform and holding a large flat box in front of her. “Well if that’s the kind of greeting I get I’ll just take my pitz with scamutz with me.”
“No, no, no,” Cirba said. “What I meant was, it is so good to see you, Ms Keller.”
“That’s better,” MK said, as she placed the pizza box on an empty chair and leaned over to give Harry a kiss.
“Nursing doesn’t pay enough so you have to moonlight as a pizza delivery girl?” Harry asked.
“Nursing, pizza delivery, stripagram – a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.”
“Well, of your three professions, pizza is the one that is needed here,” Cirba said.
“Speak for yourself,” Harry said with a wink.
Ed put the pizza box on the floor and the three of them sat around it cross-legged in a circle like it was a campfire.
“So you’d kill us for a million?” Cirba asked, almost inaudibly, with his mouth full.
“With you boys I’m not sure if this question is a joke. Is that what you think happened here?”
“Don’t know,” Harry said. “But when money gets big you never know what some people will do.”
“Well, I want to go on record as saying I couldn’t do it, but I’ve seen parents in the ER with sick kids and no money. You can see it in their eyes – they’re capable of doing anything.”
Harry’s stomach knotted as he thought about someone asking him to kill to get his son back. He wanted to believe he would say no, but if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t so sure.
The pitz with scamutz didn’t last long.
MK said: “I know I’m going to regret this but can I help you guys with all this stuff?”
“Oh, I would love your help,” Cirba said, “but the judge won’t let anybody but the investigation team – client attorney confidentiality and all.”
“Can’t say I’m disappointed.” She turned to Harry. “You going to be late?”
Harry looked to Cirba, who smiled broadly.
“Now that Mr Cull is an actual civil servant, I guess I should look out for too much overtime. I’ll get him home before The Tonight Show starts.”
MK kissed Harry on the lips and then kissed Cirba on the cheek so he “wouldn’t get jealous” and left.
“You lucky son of a bitch,” Cirba said.
Harry didn’t disagree.