In my disorientation, I needed to shed her, too.
Amanda tried. She hugged me and screamed at me and hugged me some more. When that didn’t work, she invented a reason to go to Europe, hoping I’d snap out of it if left alone. But she came back to a house littered with empty whiskey bottles, discarded pizza boxes, and a husband, beached and numb, alternately yelling and staring at the walls.
She got me sobered up enough to talk. She told me she loved me enough to throw me out while I could still leave on my feet. I loved her enough to know she was right. She went back to Europe. I packed what I hadn’t sold in garbage bags. Then I sat, until I went trick-or-treating on Halloween.
Leo pulled me out, spoon-feeding me charity assignments he could have skipped altogether. At first, he had to work like a mantugging a mule from a tar pit, coaxing and pleading, and when I began to stagger on my own, he put the arm on a few lawyers who needed him more than he needed them, and I started photographing accident scenes and running down addresses again. It was a beginning.
But if the good, gray, Republican Tribune ever got wind that Wendell Phelps’s ex-son-in-law was somehow involved in a bombing extortion at Gateville and had slept away the stakeout of the money drop, the news would get sprayed on the front page, and everything would start spinning again. No lawyer would ever dare think about hiring me again.
And I could never tell Amanda again that I loved her.
“I staked out the money drop last night.”
The Bohemian inhaled sharply at the other end of the connection.
“I hid in a garage and watched Stanley drop off the money, and then I watched the Dumpster for the rest of the night.”
“What did you see?” His words were terse, clipped. If he was acting, he was good.
“I fell asleep.”
“What do you mean, you fell asleep?”
“I didn’t see anybody pick up the money.”
“Damn it, you don’t think the garbagemen-?”
“I don’t know. They showed just before six. I broke my cover, went through all the bags. The money was gone.”
“So it was picked up.” His breathing came easier.
“That’s what I think, but I’m worried the bag got tossed into the garbage truck before I got to the Dumpster.”
“For God’s sake, Vlodek. What are we to believe?”
“That the bomber got to it sometime between two thirty and six, when it was still dark.”
“When you were asleep.”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing there, Vlodek?”
“Trying to get a photo of the bomber, or a license plate number.”
“Did Stanley authorize this?”
“No.”
“You took the initiative to jeopardize Crystal Waters by yourself?”
“No extra charge.” I sounded hollow. And stupid.
“Yet you saw nothing?”
“Nothing.”
He stopped talking. If he was involved in the extortion, he was relieved that no one had seen the money get picked up. If he was innocent, he was furious-and might spread the word through the legal community that I was unreliable and should not be hired. Even if I were sitting across from him, watching his face, instead of waiting at the other end of a phone, I doubted that I’d be able to tell what was running through his mind.
I was right. He surprised me.
“What is your billing rate?”
“One hundred twenty-five an hour for research; one fifty for field work, plus expenses.”
He had enough style to not laugh. Even when I had a fullfledged office, I rarely got my clients, insurance companies and lawyers, to pop for more than sixty-five an hour.
“Start your meter now, Vlodek. You will report to me on everything pertaining to this case. You will also keep me apprised, beforehand, of your steps.”
“What about the Board?”
“Your contract with them was completed. They hired you to analyze the notes.”
“What are you really hiring me to do?”
“Follow your nose, as I said. But don’t risk Crystal Waters again.”
I told him I’d think about it. He was shrewd, and maybe abluffer of the highest order. He wanted to know what I was thinking, up front, before I made a move. He wanted me in a bag, tied tight by the double knot of forewarning and client confidentiality.
The question was whether that was important-and why.
Nine
The sky had turned overcast while I was on the phone with the Bohemian. After I hung up, I set out my buckets, pans, and wastebaskets on the top floor, guessing at the drip points. Then I called Stanley Novak and told him I was driving out to Gateville. I was guessing at that, too, figuring ace investigators substituted movement for thought when they didn’t know what to do next.
The sky to the west was black when I got to Gateville. A heavy, studded steel beam hinged to a thick iron post had been installed in front of the decorative wrought-iron gates. The tuckpointers were gone, but there was a man up on a ladder, cleaning the glass globe of one of the lampposts. I would have bet there was a Glock in his plastic tray, next to the Windex. I pulled off the road and parked next to the entrance.
Stanley and another guard hurried out of the guardhouse as I shut off the engine. Stanley recognized the Jeep, motioned for the guard to go back, and came over. He wasn’t wearing his usual smile.
“Mr. Chernek called after he spoke to you. He said you staked me out.”
“Not you. The bomber.”
“You took a big risk.”
“We’re all taking a big risk, Stanley.”
“Mr. Chernek said you didn’t see the pickup.”
There was nothing to say to that.
“So what are you going to do now, Mr. Elstrom?”
“Chernek told me to follow my nose, but to do it with my mouth closed.”
Stanley smiled, a little. Things were thawing.
I opened the door and got out. “I thought I’d start with 1970.”
Thunder clapped far in the west.
“The guardhouse explosion?”
“Or before.”
Stanley shook his head. “We never found any link to anything, back then. There was the first note, then the guardhouse bomb, then the second note with the payment instructions.”
“Then the ten-thousand-dollar payment, and the bomber went away.”
“That’s it, Mr. Elstrom.”
A few drops of rain fell. Fifty feet away, the guy on the ladder continued polishing the lamp glass. In the rain. Clever, that disguise.
The lights on the entrance pillars and the row of lampposts came on, bright as surgical lamps. I turned away from the glare.
“Have you upped the wattage on those bulbs?”
“No.” Stanley gestured at the guy on the ladder. “But as you can see, we’re keeping the glass really clean.”
“I don’t remember these lights being so bright.”
“You only saw them from your car, Mr. Elstrom, coming or going at night. They’re brighter when you stand next to them.”
Ten feet away, the lamppost that had been blown out of the ground sat on a new metal base, on new concrete, surrounded by fresh sod. I walked over to it.
“Our man could have pulled off the highway, faking a flat tire,”I said. “He could have dug down with a little collapsible shovel or a garden trowel while he was hunched down by the tire, twisted a dial or pressed a button and dropped the device into the hole, then scooped the dirt back in and taken off. What would you guess that would take? Two or three minutes if he’d practiced, from the time he pulled off to the time he got back on the highway?”
He nodded.
The raindrops started falling heavier. Stanley looked up at the darkening sky.
“But none of your guys saw anything like that?”
“No. I had to be careful how I asked, because they don’t know about the letters or the D.X.12, but they didn’t see anything. Remember, we weren’t watching outside the walls back then,” he said, his gaze shifting to the man on the ladder. He held his palm up to catch a few drops. “It’s raining, Mr. Elstrom.”