Private Heat (37 page)

Matty nodded. “That leaves Chuck Furbie, and he's a scarce commodity.”

“I know where he's at.”

Matty stood up. The door opened. Steve Bartrum, an attorney from down the hall—late twenties, skinny, and usually one divorce case short of making the rent—stood in the portal with his mouth agape.

“Jesus, Art! What's going on here?”

“This is a private party,” said Matty.

“You can't smoke in here,” said Steve.

“Get lost,” said Matty.

Steve looked at me.

I took a drag on my smoke and shrugged.

“I'm going to call the police,” said Steve.

“There's no phone in here,” said Matty. She took her purse off the ledge
and, with her cigarette drooping from her face, fished a handheld radio out of her purse. She offered it to Steve. “Call them. You can use my radio.”

He looked at the radio and fidgeted.

“Call the cops or get the hell out of here,” said Matty.

“I just got to go,” said Steve. He looked like he'd asked permission to leave class.

Matty dropped the radio back into her purse and put the purse back on the windowsill.

“Use the one upstairs,” I said.

“Can't,” he said. “It's locked. Vandals broke the commode and they had to shut the water off.”

Matty made the sign of the cross at him with the edge of her hand. “A pox upon you,” she said. “There, now you have official dispensation. You may use the ladies' room. Just don't take a nap on the sofa.”

“You're insane,” he said. He backed up and the door closed.

“Wait,” said Matty showing me an index finger.

We listened. We heard the ladies' room door squeak open and then clunk shut.

“Now,” said Matty, “this I want to hear,” her face expectant—she really didn't know. I waited for her to look aggravated before I told her.

“He's in the morgue,” I said. “Most of him, anyway.”

She closed her eyes and let her chin sink down to her chest. “What the hell happened?”

“The trooper out at my place said she shot him. He and Paulie split up. Whoever Chuck went to for help cut off his head and hands and barbecued what was left of him in that red Ford Escort that he drove. The car is out at the city impound yard with the VIN plate removed.”

“How do you know it's the same car?”

“I recognized some of the body damage.”

“How do you know the body was Chuck Furbie?”

“My best guess.”

Matty raised her head and opened her eyes. “Your guess isn't going to cut it down at the courthouse,” she said.

“So why did you let this drag out?” I asked. “You were out there when I was. You saw the bag job. You saw the envelopes change hands. Why didn't you just grab them then?”

“And wiretaps,” said Matty, “but it's not that simple.”

“You're an attorney,” I said, “and a special agent of the FBI. Did you have
probable cause? I think you must have because I did.”

“Look,” she said and flipped the butt of her cigarette into the urinal. “An agent doesn't make that call. I make reports. I turn in logs. I make a goddam list and read it to clueless bastards like Neil Carter.”

“You still have Arnold Fay.”

“Wrongo, hotshot,” said Matty. “Fay made bail. He handles the city pension funds and he's looking at, maybe, a slap on the patties for the Columbian marching dust.”

“The crime scene?”

“An unfortunate misunderstanding.”

“What about the tax records?”

“IRS,” said Matty. “They have their own courthouse. The rules are different, and they proceed at their own pace. Besides, I want the racketeering case.”

“So squeeze Fay's partners.”

“Van Pelham is dead and he's the only one we had a good tap on. Neither Alton nor Burns has ever been in the city. Alton does the Chicago Board of Trade business by telephone and takes his check by mail. Burns has a seat on the New York exchange but he's senile. He keeps getting scooped up wandering around Central Park in his pajamas. His son runs the business, and he doesn't come around Grand Rapids.”

“That's not exactly a fresh cover.”

Matty shook her head. “Too easy,” she said. “The New York office says Burns's brain is as blank as a nun's dance card.”

“There's two lady partners.”

“Could be anybody. Women change their names when they get married, and sometimes when they get divorced. They could be nobody, you know, a couple of red herrings designed to keep us chasing our tail. The Social Security numbers are a dead end and nobody at the Alton, Burns, and Fay office claims to know them. Fay, of course, has an attorney reminding him to keep his mouth shut. I'm betting on the red herring theory.”

I took a long pull on my Pall Mall, which hauled the hot end dangerously close to my mustache, so I flipped the butt into the urinal so that it could bob around with Matty's. I studied her face for a while.

“What?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I just thought of something—an insurance thing.”

“Try to focus here.”

“Chuck and Paulie were a couple of the things that go bump in the
night, but they were afraid of somebody. Somebody who was bad enough to scare Paulie out of a hospital bed. Somebody who knew what was cooking before I got out of the federal building.”

Matty walked over to the door and leaned her back against it so that it couldn't swing open.

“This morning Ralph Sehenlink, the U.S. attorney, called Neil Carter into his office. Next thing we know, Carter's on vacation. The marshals told me he had all his desk toys in a cardboard box when he left.”

“Fancy that,” I said. “But it may have nothing to do with your case.”

“Right, that's what my boss told me, right after he shut down my case.” Her jaws were tight and her words hot. “He said to stay the hell away from you.” She shook her head. “‘If you see Hardin standing over a dead body with a smoking gun in his hand, it's a local matter'—that's what the son of a bitch said.”

“So just let go of it,” I said.

“You know what I'm supposed to be doing right now?”

“I'm pretty sure it's not having a heart-to-heart talk with me in the men's room.”

“Checking the VIN plates on curbstoned cars.” Matty shrugged her shoulders as she spoke. “He just pulled that one out of his ass and told me to get the hell out of the office.”

“I'm looking for something large and dark—preferably that hasn't recently been on fire.” I fished a card out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Give me a call if you see something that's in good shape, you know, if the price is right.”

She looked at the card and then threw it at me. “Asshole! Call somebody in the yellow pages.”

“I already told you what you want to know. Think about it.”

“Somebody that Chuck and Paulie were afraid of! That's a little goddam thin.”

“So, go find me a car,” I said. “Your boss likes you. He thinks you have a future. He's nicer than me.”

“I want him, them, whoever.”

“Tell Fay you know about the guy that Chuck and Paulie were afraid of, and ‘him, them, whoever' will find you.”

“An FBI agent?”

“They think your smug authoritarian air is amusing.”

“So I tell Fay, then what?”

“Get your back to the wall and kill the next son of a bitch that gets close enough to press the muzzle of a silenced Mauser against the back of your head.”

“What if I kill the wrong guy?”

“So, there's a downside.” I shrugged. “And if you're going to use Fay to flush out ‘him, them, whoever,' I'd do it quick. In the meantime I have a question.” Matty twisted her head. “You ever have a fish tank?”

“Hardin, you're a nut case.”

“Easy question.”

“No, Hardin, I don't keep fish. I have shit to do.”

“Too bad. My wife keeps fish, and you're right, it can be a lot of work. One thing is the tank, the glass, it gets a lot of slime on it. My wife says it's algae.”

“For God's sakes, is this going somewhere?”

“Yeah. See, you can clean the slime yourself or you can do what my wife does.”

“Do tell.”

“She has this fish, a bottom feeder, it goes around and eats up all the slime.”

“You don't really believe in that, do you?”

“I didn't when I was your age, but I've mellowed.”

“I'm not that mellow, Hardin, and I'll tell you something else. I'm real tired of being charming.”

“Matty, things aren't always what they seem.”

“Agent Svenson, and if I don't get some direct answers, I'm going to make your life a shit storm.”

“Good, that should keep you busy. Maybe Neil Carter will let you borrow his carton when you clean out your desk.”

“I really don't care. I have to go find ‘him, them, whoever,' and thanks to your sterling help, I'm looking for a goddam fish.” She snapped off the music.

“It's not a fish, it's a bear.”

Matty squared her shoulders, turned to face me, and switched the music back on. “This bear have a name?”

“Actually it's two bears. They change their names like they change their socks. I have some names, but they won't help you.”

“What do they look like?”

“Big guys, my age, but otherwise nondescript. They look like everybody.
They look like nobody, or whoever they need to look like. These bears are an experience, not a description.”

“That's not much better than looking for a fish.”

“Yes it is, because not everybody knows that there are two bears. You can bet that Fay doesn't. One bear works the front and the other stays in the woods. The front bear is the shooter. He can kill you with his hands or a rolled-up newspaper, from across the street or a block away. A soft lead twenty-two in the back of the head is his signature move. The bear in the woods is the one that makes things go bang. He can rig your toilet to explode with what's in your cupboard and under your sink.”

“So?”

“Walk away,” I said. “Take your partner and have a nice lunch. This afternoon, maybe, you'll find a stolen car, an out-of-state one. You bust the guy selling it and then you turn him. You take down the whole ring—fanfare, you're a hero. In twenty-five or thirty years you're the director. What do you think?”

“I think I need the names that you have for these guys.”

“Vladimir,” I said. “Sehenlink has a picture.” I reached over, snapped off the tunes, and walked back to my office.

“I know where the money is,” I said into the telephone. The pictures were spread out on the desk in front of me. Marg had dropped them on my desk with the mail from my PO box while I was haggling with my car insurance company over a rental car.

“Where?” said Ron.

“Not on the phone,” I said. “How quickly can you get over here?”

“I'm on my way.”

I flipped through the stack of mail. Got a couple of checks—nice—also a slick mailer from one of the computer-search firms. I flipped it in the trash. The last item in the stack—an orange broadside mailer, folded in thirds—was from Bernie Hecker, a local guy I referred divorce cases to when I was flush enough to pick and choose my work.

Bernie had set up in the computer records search business. “Had to happen,” I said. “Bernie, you've lost my respect.”

“What?” Marg called out from her desk.

“Got a couple of checks,” I said.

“They can wait until tomorrow,” she said, “unless you're going out.”

“I need some expense money,” I said. “Write me a check and I'll deposit these while I'm at the bank.”

“You owe me eight dollars for the pictures, and don't come out of there until you have your expense ledger in your hand.”

I dialed up Bernie and got one of those computer-generated answering systems with four or five selections. I hit the telephone on my desk twice and yelled into the handset, “Bernie, this is Art Hardin, answer the goddam phone!” He had a one-room office behind a bait shop up on Plainfield Avenue. He picked up.

“Jesus, Art! What's eating you?”

“I hate talking to machines.”

“Why? You afraid your wife's gonna buy a vibrator?”

“Never crossed my mind.”

“It's the wave of the future.”

“Vibrators or talking machines?”

“Technology, Art! You got to come out of the Stone Age! You're going to starve to death over there!”

“Good, let me talk to your fucking computer.”

“I didn't get that option, but I'm gonna—you know, when I see how things go.”

I held the handset out at arm's length but found no words of comfort written on it. I let out a stifled scream.

“Hey, Art, you all right?” Bernie's voice was small and distant. Marg's head appeared through the door way.

“What's all the pounding and yelling?” she said, but her face looked more concerned than angry.

I put my left hand over the bottom of the handset.

“Nothing,” I said. “I just hate doing my expense ledger.”

“You have to learn a little discipline.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said and nodded. She gave me her narrow-eyed schoolmarm face, her arm came through the doorway to provide a finger shake, and she was gone.

“Yeah, I'm fine,” I told Bernie. “I got your mailer. I got a job for you.”

“No shit! I wasn't sure you were worth the stamp.”

“You're not as surprised as I am,” I said. “It's just I'm kind of pressed for
time on this one.”

“What's your pleasure? I'm doing a discount on license plates.”

“County records,” I said. “I'm looking for marriage licenses for a Carolyn Timmer and a Brenda Clemments. I want you to check Kent, Ottawa, and Allegan counties.”