Authors: Michael Koryta
"No
more bourbon," I said aloud. "No more bourbon."
I
groped along the wall for the light switch, flicked it up, and flooded the
hallway and stairs with light. Halfway to the apartment door, I paused and
turned back, squinting against the brightness, and looked down the steps at the
front door. Closed, and with the dead bolt turned. Of course it was. Of course.
I
went into the apartment and drank another glass of water, this time with a few
ibuprofen tablets, and then went into the bedroom and slept. There were no
dreams.
Morning
found me at the office with an extralarge cup of coffee and a continued
headache, researching Ken Merriman. I spent most of an hour at it, and while
everything he'd told me the previous night checked out—he was from Pittsburgh,
had worked as a PI for fourteen years, was divorced, and had a
fourteen-year-old daughter—there were a few details he'd chosen to omit.
Namely, the unpleasant press he'd received from the Cantrell case.
James
and Maria Cantrell had given an interview after their son disappeared,
imploring the public to help in their quest. As a part of that interview, they
let loose on Ken, claiming he'd taken thousands from them and done nothing on
the case. James even suggested they would consider a lawsuit against Ken but
couldn't afford the legal fees. The reporter had contacted Ken only to be given
a "no comment" response. It wasn't necessarily a fair attack—every PI
in the business knows the headaches that come from clients who believe they're
paying for a specific result, not for work that may produce no result or one
contrary to the client's wishes—but it was the sort of publicity that could
damage a career, too. I was impressed that Ken had survived it, and I
understood a little better why he seemed to be stuck with insurance and
infidelity work now. Still, the Sanabria call lingered with me, and that odd
personal revelation toward the end of the night. Had it been too much— A
melodramatic sales technique—
I
knew a PI in the Pittsburgh area through a group called NALI, the National
Association of Legal Investigators, a generally high quality group of PIs. His
name was Casey Hopper, and he was about Joe's age; he'd been around the business
a long time and knew who was worth a shit and who wasn't. I decided it might be
worth a call to see if he'd ever heard of Ken.
"Good
guy," Casey said as soon as I mentioned the name. "I've worked with
him several times."
"You
trust him—"
"Much
as I trust anyone I don't know particularly well, sure. He's always seemed
genuine enough to me, but, you know, there've been some stories about him.
Well, one story really."
He
then proceeded to relate the Cantrell case to me, and I let him run with it. His
take seemed to jibe with every other account—and that included Ken's.
"You
thinking about giving him some work—" Casey asked.
"The
other way around. He's wanting to partner up on something. I'm not sure about
it."
"Well,
I can tell you this: He's one hell of a surveillance expert. Good as anybody
I've worked with, in that regard. Damn near invisible, and the most patient son
of a bitch I've ever seen." He paused, then added, "You know I was a
sniper in Vietnam, too."
"Yeah."
"So
when I say somebody is patient…"
"Yeah."
"Thing
with Ken, though, is that's really all the work he gets. He has a steady client
base on the surveillance side, insurance and divorce work, shit like that, but
as far as a field investigation goes, I don't know that he has much experience
at all. I gave him an interview job once when I was out of town, subbed it out
to him, and he screwed that up pretty royally. Just didn't know how to take a
statement that would be worth a shit in court. So I've avoided giving him
anything like that again, and that seems to be the general consensus about him
around here. Give him any extra surveillance work you've got; otherwise, find
somebody else. He wasn't a cop, wasn't mentored by a good PI, doesn't really
have any background on a full-scale investigation, but the son of a bitch can
hide in your rearview mirror."
That
wasn't exactly encouraging, since the case he wanted a piece of now was going
to require the polar opposite of his skill set.
"The
Cantrell thing is what he's interested in coming back to," I said. "I
bumped into it inadvertently up here, and he looked me up and asked me to
help."
"He's
back at that— Who the hell is paying him—"
"Nobody.
He claims he wants to finish now what he couldn't then. You buy it—"
Casey
was quiet for a moment. "Yeah, I probably do. It did some real damage to
his career basically
because
he didn't have any other experience to
claim as proof that he knew what he was doing. Ordinary people might forget the
story, but law firms and agencies who sub out work, the sort of people you need
to rely on for quality business, they don't."
I
thanked him for the insight and hung up. Then I went back to search for more
information and found little else. Beyond that story, there was nothing that
stood out, and certainly no indicators that Ken had been telling me anything
but the truth. His loyalty to the family seemed odd, considering the charges
they'd levied at him, but perhaps his real motivation was in proving them wrong
all these years later.
It
was ten thirty by the time Ken showed up, and he looked rough. Same clothes as
he'd had on the previous day, only now his face had a darker shading of beard
and the whites of his eyes wore pink cobwebs. He closed the door behind him
with infinite care, as if a loud slam might shatter something in his brain,
then looked over at me with a pained smile.
"Maybe
I should have told you this last night," he said, "but I'm not a
whiskey drinker."
"I
like a good Scotch," I said, "but that swill wasn't it. It occurred
to me sometime around three in the morning that what the Hideaway considers a
well bourbon is probably closer to leaded gasoline."
He
groaned and fell onto one of the stadium seats.
"Careful
there," I said. "Those seats watched the Cleveland Browns beat the
shit out of the Steelers many, many times."
"I'm
too hungover to even rise to that argument."
"That
bad, eh—"
"Yeah.
You bounced back well. Sleep it off peacefully—"
I
remembered the slap of Parker Harrison's skeleton hand, the way the bones had
burst into powder, how it had looked like fine black dust by the time it
settled around the spinning coin.
"Peacefully,"
I echoed with a nod.
"Wish
I could say the same," he said and then held up the scuffed briefcase he'd
carried in with him. "Last night you agreed to look this over with me. In
fairness, though, I thought I should give you a sober chance to back out of it.
You don't owe me anything, and you're certainly not obligated to waste your
time on this."
"I
can give you a few hours."
He
put the briefcase on his lap and folded his arms over it. "Look, Lincoln,
I might have gotten a bit more, uh, personal than I should have last night. I
mean, shit, you don't even know me, and I was dumping some information on you
that probably made the whole thing awkward for you. All of that crap about my
wife's new husband—"
"Don't
worry about it, Ken."
"No,
it wasn't anything you needed to hear, and to be honest, it embarrassed the
hell out of me once I got back to the hotel and realized everything I'd said.
So, you know, if you could just chalk that up to the booze and forget about
it…"
"I
just said not to worry about it. Okay— It's nothing, man."
He
nodded, and an awkward pause settled into the room for a few seconds before he
broke it by slapping a hand on the briefcase.
"Well,
is this a good time, or you want me to come back in a bit, or—"
"Now's
good. Let's see what you've got."
He
set the case on the table beside him and opened it, and I raised my eyebrows
when I saw all the papers that were inside, hundreds of pages.
"I've
got a lot here," he said.
"No
kidding."
"I
don't want to drown you with shit you're not interested in, so if you've got
any idea on where to start…"
"I'd
be most interested in what you've got from the people who knew them best,"
I said. "Particularly the people who knew them best at the time they took
off. Friends, co-workers, colleagues."
"They
didn't work."
I
lifted an eyebrow. "Neither of them—"
"Nope.
Lived off her money."
"Well,
how the hell did she get so much money—"
"The
late Christopher Sanabria."
"Surely
he wasn't worth that much."
"Was
worth a lot, and when he got clipped, the family discovered he'd left the whole
pile to Alexandra. It was several million at the time, and she had to wait
about eight years until she turned twenty-one and the trust kicked in. By then
it was worth a hell of a lot more. Christopher was well invested, it
seemed."
"She
got every dime—"
"Of
his financial holdings, yes. House and possessions split among the sons."
"Nothing
to the wife—"
"Wife
was dead. Suicide a year before Christopher was murdered. That was the reason Alexandra
was sent away. He thought she needed a female influence."
I
shook my head. "How many sons did he have—"
"Two.
Dominic and Thomas. Thomas was shot and killed by a cop in Youngstown about
five years after the father died. Drug bust, but just one cop went in. Odd,
right— Said he was checking out a tip he didn't have much faith in. Rumors went
around that it was a setup, that the cop was paid for the hit, but nothing ever
came of the investigation."
"Alexandra
was away at her boarding school for this—"
He
nodded. "She left when she was twelve, came back to Ohio after getting out
of college."
"To
work with the prison system."
"Yes."
I
didn't say anything for a minute. I was remembering the way Dominic Sanabria
had spoken of his sister.
Every family has their darling. She is ours.
"Do
you know anything about the family relationship after she got back—" I
asked. "Was there any bitterness over the money— The mob connections don't
even apply to that—father dies and leaves a few million to one kid but not the
other, it would start personal problems in most families."
"No
sign of that, but I always wondered," Ken said. "By the time she was
old enough to take the trust, Dominic was a pretty big deal in Youngstown, had
a lot of other things on his mind, and a decent pile of his own cash. He's more
than ten years older than her."
I was
quiet again, not entirely sold on the idea. Being jilted out of your family
money in favor of another sibling was a difficult thing for a man to ignore,
particularly a man like Dominic Sanabria. It wasn't easy to imagine the guy
going after his own sister, though—that notion of honor among thieves applied
more to family than anything else. I wasn't going to figure that out sitting at
my desk, though, and I didn't want to have to leave my desk on this. Instead, I
waved at Ken's briefcase.
"Well,
if their parolees are the only people who saw the Cantrells regularly, what do
you have on them—"
"Pretty
detailed profiles. There were four of them who worked out there, and three are
still alive."
"You
ever talk to them—"
"Only
two." His head was bowed while he rifled through the briefcase and pulled
out a thick manila folder. "Had trouble tracking the other guy down, and
then the budget ran out and I was off the case."
He
opened the folder and pulled out a stapled sheaf of papers. "The one I
never got in touch with, and he was working with them right up until they took
off, was a guy named Parker Harrison. So maybe you want to start with—"