Practice to Deceive (27 page)

It was Anne Scalasi.

“I want you to come over right now and answer a few questions,” she said.

“Why?”

“So I don’t have to send a team of detectives to pick you up.”

“Annie?”

“Bring your lawyer,” she told me.

C
YNTHIA
G
REY WAS
sitting at my side when Anne Scalasi asked, “Can you account for your whereabouts at ten-thirty this morning?”

“Don’t answer that,” Cynthia commanded.

It seemed like good advice to me. Especially since I’d been breaking and entering the Dully residence at ten-thirty. My left foot started to beat a nervous rhythm against the leg of the interrogation room’s wooden table. I originally had been happy to see that Annie had been returned to the case. Now I wasn’t so sure. What did she know?

“I decline to answer on advice of counsel,” I said, trying to keep my voice down.

Anne slumped in her chair. “This isn’t fun anymore,” she told me.

“It stopped being fun a long time ago,” I agreed. “What happened at ten-thirty?”

“Someone shot at Amanda Field.”

Without thinking about it I rose from my chair, putting all my weight on my wounded legs. I didn’t feel a thing.

“Is she …?”

“No,” Anne said. “Just a scratch.”

“My God!” I muttered.

“From what we can determine, it was a drive-by. Mrs. Field was working in her garden, her back to the street. She didn’t hear the first two shots. They pancaked against the house just above her head and tossed out a few splinters; one caught her cheek. She heard the third shot, though. She said it sounded like a low pop.”

“A suppressor,” I volunteered, retaking my seat.

“Yeah. Homemade. The same as when you were hit. A plastic two-liter pop bottle stuffed with rags, the bottom shot out. We found it two blocks away. No prints.”

“The third shot?”

“In the dirt,” Anne said.

“Ballistics?”

“Thirty-two.”

“Does it match?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Oh, God.” I was up again, my hands on my hips, staring at the empty tabletop. But there were no answers there.

“Taylor, I have to ask—”

“I didn’t do it, Annie, and I wish to God I had an alibi to give you.”

“So do I.”

“Did Mrs. Field see the car?” I asked.

“No.”

“Neighbors?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Dammit.”

Anne paused, decided there was something I should know. “Mrs. Field received a telephone call a half hour before the shooting. A man threatened her. She said the man sounded like you.”

I shook my head.

“She said the man said he was going to get her for stealing his money.”

“What money?”

Anne didn’t answer.

“The two hundred and eighty-seven thousand?”

“The caller didn’t say.” Anne looked me up and down, pursing her lips.

“What?” I asked.

“We put a trap on her phone after she reported that you violated the restraining order. The ACA insisted. The call originated at a pay phone on Edgerton Street near the Merrick Community Center.”

“Railroad Island,” I said, invoking the nickname for that depressed neighborhood.

“Mean anything to you?”

A spark of recognition flickered in the back of my head, then went out. “I don’t think so,” I answered.

“Do you intend to hold my client?” Cynthia asked.

Anne shook her head.

“Then we’re leaving.”

Anne spread her hands wide, like she didn’t give a damn what we did. So we left. During the elevator ride down, Cynthia whispered, “So, Taylor, tell me. Where exactly were you at ten-thirty this morning?”

“Searching for evidence to prove that Levering Field was dirty.”

“And was he?”

“He and a lot of other people it seems.”

“You know what the good thing is about being a private investigator?” Cynthia asked.

“No, what?” I answered, anxious to hear her opinion.

“A private investigator doesn’t have to discover who’s guilty, only prove that his client isn’t.”

“Ahh.”

“In this case the client is you, right?”

“Is that a hint?”

“The point is to get out of trouble, not cause more.”

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

T
HE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
of what was left of the Roosevelt County Housing and Redevelopment Authority did not want to speak with me, but it wasn’t personal. It had been painful for him when the agency was forced into bankruptcy, and he would have rather discussed a more pleasant topic. But I insisted, and after a few minutes he gave me the short version of the story.

“We couldn’t pay our debts,” he said with a kind of grimace. “The HRA built several low-income housing projects. Lincoln Park. Crystal Pond. We built Lincoln Park six years ago for seven and a half million. One hundred units. But by the time the doors opened, the debt on the project was fourteen million dollars.”

“How did that happen?” I asked.

“The debt was financed at nine-point-seven-eight percent. When the market dropped, it became impossible for the HRA to meet interest payments, let alone pay off the principal. We tried to refinance the debt, tried to convince the bond holders to devalue the property, but we couldn’t get anyone to go along. Finally, we were faced with a six hundred and sixty thousand dollar balloon payment that we couldn’t meet, and it was over. Sad thing is, all the units at Lincoln and the Pond were occupied and renting at the market rate.”

“What about the money Willow Tree loaned you?” I asked.

“I don’t follow you.”

“I was told that Willow Tree agreed to loan the Roosevelt HRA a considerable sum of money to help you meet your obligations.”

“No, that’s not true. We spoke with Willow Tree about some additional low-income projects. But that was before our financial problems became acute. We had no discussions with them following that. Certainly we did not discuss a loan. I’m not sure that would have been appropriate in any case.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Why do you ask?”

I didn’t tell him that I was merely surprised that Joan Dully would tell me a lie so easily uncovered.

I
F YOU
’
VE EVER
borrowed money from a bank, a mortgage company, a credit union or a credit card company, you will be listed with at least one and more likely all of the nation’s major credit bureaus—whether you like it or not. Most of the information the bureaus compile, especially your credit history, is restricted by the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and, at least in theory, guys like me can’t get at it. However, for a price we can gain access to your “header” information, your noncredit data such as name, address updates, DOB, social security number, employment history, et cetera.

I was back in the office now, researching Dully, Joan, and Dully, Peter. It took about five minutes to discover that up until they formed JPD, Inc.; both had been employed by Saterbak Incorporated, he as CFO and she as VP-sales manager. A few months ago they returned, getting their old jobs back. But that wasn’t what interested me most. What interested me most was the location: Saterbak was headquartered in the Adolph Point Office Complex. That’s where Amanda Field had gone after I sent her flowers addressed to Crystalin Wolters. That’s where she had met her friend.

I punched up
Dunn’s Direct Access
and dragged its bank of Twin Cities businesses. It told me that Saterbak, Incorporated, was an investment firm specializing in start-ups. It had been founded and wholly owned by Carson Saterbak of Minnetonka, Minnesota.

CS. I wrote the initials on a yellow legal pad and circled them several times. Then I referred to the list I had stolen from the Dullys. Yep. CS. $1,000,000.

Carson Saterbak was easy to access. He must have been listed in a dozen data bases: the
Dialog & Knowledge Index, BRS Information, Newssearch
. I printed out twenty-three pages on him, although I probably would have been satisfied with just one—the page that told me Carson Saterbak had been cocaptain of the football team at Irondale High School his senior year—the same year Amanda and Levering Field had graduated.

I
NEEDED MORE
information, and I knew just where to look. But I couldn’t go after it until the following day at the earliest, so I pushed the thought out of my mind as best I could, concentrating instead on the adductor exercises Tommy Sands was so gleefully subjecting me to.

“Let me see some sweat,” he demanded, and I showed him plenty. My T-shirt clung to my body like the skin of a banana. Apparently Tommy approved of the effort because following the exercises, he announced that I could start walking without crutches if I took it easy. But not too easy.

“You want to avoid a limp,” he told me. “You want to walk through the pain. The tendency is to take short steps with your strong leg and long steps with your weak leg. The tendency is to take the weight off your weak leg as soon as possible. Don’t do it. Don’t shift your shoulders and pelvis to one side as you walk. Maintain an honest step. If the pain is too much, then get back on your crutches.”

I told him I would.

“You won’t have speed or power, so don’t look for any,” Tommy warned. “Walk normally. Concentrate on using your hurt leg. Don’t be afraid of it.”

I told him I wouldn’t.

I walked out of the St. Paul Ramsey Medical Center into bright sunlight, carrying my crutches. The snow had long since melted, gone from even the shadowed areas, gone for at least seven months, knock on wood. And baseball season had begun. The Minnesota Twins were playing their home opener that evening against the White Sox, although not as many fans seemed to care as did before the strike—including me. Lately I’ve been thinking of baseball season as the weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day, when the St. Paul Saints play minor league ball at Midway Stadium. Still, there was something about opening day that filled me with optimism.

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Life was good.

Putting the crutches in my back seat, I slid behind the wheel of my Dodge Colt and for a moment regretted buying an automatic. I felt like “peeling out,” as we used to say when I was a kid: popping the clutch and leaving about a ten-foot strip of rubber behind me. Only you just can’t do that with an automatic. Pity.

T
O MY GREAT
disappointment, the toilet paper draped over the branches of my willow tree and lilac bushes had not disappeared. So, bad leg and all, I was out in the yard trying to clean it up. I first used a lawn rake to pull down from the tree and bushes what I could reach, then a snow rake for what I couldn’t. But the snow rake, designed to remove heavy snow from roofs, was much too long and top heavy; it was difficult to maneuver. I ended up pulling down more tree branches than Charmin, which caused me to curse the contraption. Yeah, I know—it’s a poor workman who blames his tools.

In the ninety minutes I was out there, my mood had shifted from supreme optimism to outrage. With every stroke of the rake on my tree, I found a new target for my wrath, shifting from the sonuvabitch who had vandalized my home to the house itself to Irene Gustafson to my parents and eventually to the president of the United States for not being tougher on crime. Even my fourth grade teacher took a few of licks. And my mood wasn’t helped much by the fact that, after all my hard work, the willow tree still looked like it had been topped with whipped cream. There was nothing I could do about it except wait until the toilet paper degraded.

While I was raking, a car carrying a young couple pulled into my driveway. The man got out and the woman stayed inside. The man said, “I read the ad in the
Pioneer Press
, but I don’t see any signs. Is this house for sale?”

Well, was it or wasn’t it? I had been thinking about selling since the day I arrived home from the hospital. I had been thinking about the property taxes and the maintenance and the size. It was so much larger than I needed; there were rooms I hadn’t stepped into in weeks. And I’d been thinking about my vulnerability. So was it for sale?

Standing there, a rake in my hands, a throbbing pain in my leg, I surprised myself by telling the young man, “No, it’s not.”

The answer actually made me feel better.

I
WENT TO
bed early. But the facts I had gathered that day were making a helluva racket in my head; I couldn’t sleep. I ended up in my kitchen at two
A.M.
drinking milk and munching Old Dutch potato chips. The telephone rang. It didn’t startle me at all. I knew who it was before I picked up the receiver.

“Had enough?” a muffled voice asked.

“More than enough,” I told it. “Exactly what do you want?”

“You know what we want.”

I jumped on the “we” like a fumble on the goal line.

“No, I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.

The voice chuckled. “All right,” it said. “Have it your own way.”

“No, wait!” I yelled, but it hung up.

I checked the caller ID:
PAY PHONE.
The number was
UNAVAILABLE
.

EIGHTEEN