The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces (20 page)

A light when on in my head.

“Your face just went red,” Prudence said.

“Who is this KGB guy?” I asked.

“Most likely it will be Matusoff,” Yuri said. “I know he has been operating in the Northwest for some time now.”

“Big guy with a flat face and no fashion sense?”

“Well, that could be a lot of people,” Yuri said, “but I suppose it could describe him, too. You've run into him?”

This had to be the guy who had jumped me in my office. “Maybe,” I said. “Go on with your story.”

“Here's our problem,” Yuri said. “We want people to see that security on four-e-four is absolute. Even a murderer can be posting and we won't turn him in. On the other hand, a murderer hiding behind us could be very embarrassing.”

When it hit me, it hit me hard. I put my drink down. I looked at Prudence and then I looked at Yuri. Suddenly they were total strangers. I realized I didn't know them at all. What a sap I was.

“You know who the killer is,” I said.

They didn't deny it.

Yuri and his people knew who the killer was and could have stopped him at any time by simply turning him in to the police. I wondered who on his list of victims would still be alive if they had done that.

“After Gerald Moffitt was killed,” Yuri said, “the idea was to have you solve the case. That way it could be seen that traditional detective methods were sufficient for the problem. You were supposed to get your man before this.”

“So, it's my fault?”

No response.

“I can't get over it,” I said. “I'm busting my butt looking for Pablo and the killer and you could have just told me who he was in the first place.”

“We gave you lots of clues!” Prudence said. Her tone was entirely defensive and that made me feel a little better. At least she seemed to have the good grace to feel guilty about the people who might have died needlessly.

“Was Nathan Ivanovich on the BOD list anonymously?”

“Yes,” Yuri said, “and it's just that kind of quick thinking that we need you for.”

“But all bad documentalists can't be members of BOD,” I said. “Otherwise the list would be very big.”

“Bad documentation is everywhere,” Prudence said.

“You guys could have just given me the full list any time you wanted,” I said.

“We will now.” Prudence dipped into her bag and then handed me a printout.

I took a look. Everyone on the list now had a name and an address.

“What's done is done,” Yuri said. “Now it's time to end this.”

“What do you mean?”

“It's time to wrap it up,” he said. “We tell you who the killer is and you go catch him. You can have all the credit. In fact, we insist on it.”

I lifted my glass but it was empty.

“I suppose Pablo's not really missing,” I said.

“No, he really is missing,” Prudence said.

“So, tell me who the killer is,” I said.

“He called himself SOAPY on-line,” Yuri said. “We cut him off when he tried to take credit for Sadie Campbell.”

“That's how we knew about her so soon,” Prudence said.

“I already knew it was SOAPY,” I said. “I already knew he'd been cut off at four-e-four-com.”

“He called you,” Yuri said. “Prudence told me.” He wrote in his notebook again, ripped out the page, and handed it to me. “His name and address.”

The name on the page was “J. Dotes.” The address was a south-side apartment. The telephone was probably the one the killer had used to call me.

“Do you know this Dotes guy?” I asked.

They didn't.

The name wasn't as obviously fake as say John Doe, but I knew it would turn out to be an alias. Maybe the J was for John or maybe it was for Joe or James or Jack. What did it matter?

I got out the BOD list and looked it over quickly.

“Dotes isn't on this list,” I said.

“No,” Yuri said.

“It doesn't matter,” Prudence said. “We know all about him from his SOAPY identity.”

I doubted that. They hadn't thought it through.

“Let me see if I've got the game plan down,” I said. “You've given me this name and address and you want me to drive over there and nab the killer?”

“That's right,” Yuri said.

Prudence nodded in agreement. “It's a good plan.”

I gathered up the notes Yuri had written and folded them in with the BOD list. I stood up. I walked away, and I didn't look back.

I hadn't decided what I was going to do. One option would be to call Marvin and turn the whole thing over to the police, but I wasn't ready to do that yet.

A couple of minutes later I was in my jeep heading south on Willamette. I'd considered becoming Tag, “the Average Guy,” in case I ran into anyone I wouldn't want remembering what I looked like, but then I decided to remain Skylight Howells. If J. Dotes did turn out to be the killer, our encounter wouldn't be one that demanded subtlety.

There were apartment buildings on both sides of the street beyond Thirtieth, but it didn't take me long to find the one I was looking for. It was one of those two-story apartment buildings that looked like they'd been designed as the setting for some sleazy episode of
Cops
on TV. If you were going to have a crime of passion or a drug deal gone bad, it would probably happen in a place like this. Fist fights over loud music. Conflicts over parking.

I parked down the street from the address in question and walked back up to have a look from a safe distance first. I crossed to the other side of the street, but I couldn't actually see the target apartment from there, so I crossed back again. I'd have to get a lot closer.

By the time I actually could see the apartment, I was so close that I should have just walked up to it in the first place. Sometimes elaborate sneaking strategies come to nothing.

The apartment was on the second floor. The curtains over the big picture window were pulled open. There seemed to be no lights on inside. I walked on up the stairs.

When I got up there, I found a police department notice posted on the door. Crime scene. I was supposed to leave the place alone. That probably meant there was no one inside now. I knocked anyway.

No answer. I could pick the lock in a minute or so, but maybe it would be a good idea to look in the window first.

I wouldn't need to pick the lock. There was no glass in the picture window. I could see now where the outside walkway had been swept up. Inside, no one had bothered. Light glittered from the shards of broken glass. I looked both ways then carefully stepped inside.

I took out my penlight and had a quick look around. I found where bullets had hit the walls but I found no bloodstains. I wondered if Dotes had been shooting back.

My thinking ran like this. Yuri's “other faction,” who would also know about Dotes/SOAPY had told someone, maybe Matusoff, to eliminate the killer, and Matusoff had come here to do the job. Dotes must have gotten away, though, or he wouldn't have been able to tell me someone had shot at him. So, why was Matusoff hassling me? It must have something to do with what I'd found at GP Ink—the DATAPANTS file that I no longer had. Or maybe I was just a loose end the other side was trying to tie up.

I checked out the rest of the apartment, but I didn't find anything that would tell me who Dotes might be. In fact, there seemed to be no personal stuff at all. I looked closely at the furniture and decided it had probably come with the apartment.

In the kitchen there were only empty plastic pop bottles in a recycle basket. Big bottles. High caffeine. I assumed the police had checked them for fingerprints. But maybe not. This probably wasn't a high-priority case, especially if there had been no one dead or wounded left on the scene.

I stepped back out the broken window, and walked back downstairs. I found the manager's apartment and while not exactly saying I was a reporter for one of the local TV stations, got her to tell me that J. Dotes wasn't a big guy, probably less than six feet tall. Brown hair. Blue eyes. Glasses. Very quiet. Mostly kept to himself.

He paid his rent in cash. Hadn't she asked for ID? Yes, she said, he had lots of ID. That would be a lie. You could tell by the way she looked away quickly when she said it.

I was satisfied I wouldn't be making a complete fool of myself when I turned this over to the police. I would let Marvin have it. That ought to irritate Frank. He grills me all afternoon then I turn over some key information to his sidekick.

I drove back downtown.

It might be a little tricky explaining just how I came to know that J. Dotes was the same man who called me about the fourth murder. Maybe I could tell Marvin the guy had called back, or that I'd puzzled out his identity from little clues in the first call.

Marvin would just have to be satisfied with whatever I came up with at the time. This information could be a break in the case. The police probably hadn't thought much about the shooting, but they would pay more attention when they learned it was connected to the Documentalist Killings.

I parked in my usual spot. From there I could see both my building and the police parking garage. I could walk over there now and tell my story. And cool my heels while they called Marvin in, or more likely tipped off Frank. Then I'd spend the rest of the night explaining myself. Frank had already run me through that routine, and once was enough.

I walked on back to my building.

Once inside I called the police and asked for Marvin Zivon. Gave them my name. They would look for him. He wouldn't be in. They would want to know if anyone else could help me. They would want to know if I wanted to leave a message. They would want to know what this was all about. I would need to make something up that would result in no one but Marvin calling me back.

But then Marvin said, “Hello?”

“So you're there.”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

“I have some new information, Marvin,” I said.

“I've been trying to call you, too.”

“Really? What is it now?”

“You first,” he said.

I gave him the address of the south-side apartment. “There was a shooting there,” I said. “There'll already be a police report on it. The thing is the man who was living there is the man who called me about the fourth Documentalist Murder.”

“You're sure?” Marvin asked. “Hang on.”

Then I was listening to sappy police on-hold music.

But not for long.

“I got the report,” Marvin said. “J. Dotes. What makes you think he's our guy?”

I hadn't decided what I was going to say about Yuri and Prudence yet, so I said, “I just twisted the known facts around a little.”

“It seems to me you'd have to have more known facts than we have to come up with this,” Marvin said.

“Look, Marvin,” I said, “I'm handing this one to you on a silver platter. Can we worry about my sources later?”

“Maybe,” he said. “We'll have to see how it pans out.”

“Let's do that,” I said. “So, what were you trying to get in touch with me about? It's not like I didn't see a lot of you already today.”

“New information of my own.” Marvin dropped the volume of his voice. “Disturbing personal information. We need to meet and hash it out. Tomorrow's Saturday. What say you drop in at the Whisper for lunch?”

“What's it all about, Marvin?”

“Maybe Mom will let you try the new chocolate pie she's working on.”

“Your mother shops at K-Mart, Marvin.”

“Hey! Watch it.” Marvin never could come up with snappy comebacks for cracks about his mother. In this area he was pretty much defenseless.

It must have occurred to him that shopping at K-Mart wasn't exactly a major sin. “So?” he said.

“What is this new information of yours, Marvin?”

He lowered his voice again. “One of my guys recognized you while you were waiting to see Frank this afternoon.”

“And?”

“He thought it was a little curious that you were the guy he spotted earlier having lunch with Frank's wife at the Garden Party,” Marvin said.

Oh, boy.

“So,” I said, “is noon okay for me to drop in and try your mom's new chocolate pie?”

fifteen

Saturday was sunny—fall interrupted by a sudden misplaced summer day. The balmy weather would make both buyers and sellers happy at the Saturday market. I decided to take a stroll through the market on my way to meet Marvin at the Whisper Café. I was trying not to think about what it might mean to my life in general that one of Marvin's guys had seen me with Elsie at the Garden Party. What was one of Marvin's guys doing at the Garden Party in the first place?

I put on a tie. It would confuse Marvin, and it would get me an approving nod from his mother. I decided to wear a mustache, too, even though many people seemed to recognize me when I was disguised as Skylight Howells. That caused me absolute panic when I first noticed it, but then I concluded it was a good thing, because when people saw me as Brian Dobson when I was really disguised as Skylight Howells, it meant I was really Skylight Howells disguised as Brian Dobson. In other words, I wore my ultimate disguise—Brian Dobson disguised as Skylight Howells disguised as Brian Dobson.

On the way out of my building, I ran into Prudence on her way in. She was dressed in a T-shirt and cutoff jeans (with cuffs, which meant she probably hadn't cut them off herself) and sandals, and she looked so good I knew I couldn't concentrate on anything until she was out of sight.

“So, what's new?” she asked.

“Oh, this and that.” I kept walking.

“Our guy in jail yet?”

“Not yet.”

She hooked her arm in mine. “Off to do some shopping or some snooping?”

“An appointment,” I said and stopped walking.

“I want to go with you this morning,” she said.