When we were alone in the white linoleum hallway of the courthouse, Morris said, “The lady at your office, the one at the front desk, told me you’d be here.”
“Rita.”
“Yes. Such a haimisheh girl, very helpful.”
“Rita?”
“She gave to me this for you.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pink message slip folded in half.
I opened it and read it and smiled.
“Something good, I hope,” said Morris.
“For me at least,” I said.
“It’s okay, I hope, that I came to the courtroom,” said Morris. “But I had news for you. Windward Enterprises was exactly right. Exactly. Your lady friend, what was her name?”
“Beth.”
“Beth. Such a smart girl. Beth. She was exactly right. Maybe she should be helping you with this fancy trial in federal court?”
“She is.”
“See, you have sechel too. Good. Maybe you might just win this fancy trial after all. Now, let’s see.” He put on his glasses, pulled out his grimed notebook, and started flipping through the pages. “Frederick Stocker had a second home down the shore, Ventnor, on the bayside. Such a home, all done up with columns and glass. His wife sold it when he disappeared. She had nothing, of course, just that shore house, and a mortgage on their place in Gladwyne. She told me she didn’t know where he was, and I believe her for a very good reason.”
“You spoke to her?”
“How else do you find someone? Talk to people, Victor, you might learn things. She was a very angry lady, this Mrs. Stocker, which you can understand of course, angry, angry. She had a tight little mouth, like a tochis, that tight, and her fingers were twisting around each other and after talking with her I suspect I know why this Frederick Stocker he disappeared.”
“That bad?”
“You don’t want to know how bad. A real kvetcherkeh. This woman could pickle cucumbers without the brine. He had a boat, she said. He called it The Debit. Such a clever name for an accountant who is also a thief, don’t you think? A thirty-foot sloop. What’s a sloop, I couldn’t tell you if you klopt mein kop with an anchor, but that’s what it was, a sloop. He cared more for the boat than he did for her, she said. I hate boats, wouldn’t get on another for the life of me, but between you and me, I agree with him. Mine guess is that this thief Stocker he sold his boat and bought another and is sailing somewhere full of joy because he is on his boat and his wife is not.”
“So that’s it, then. He’s somewhere on the high seas.”
“Yes, that’s it, but of course who can sail forever without putting in to land? October, the seas start getting colder, Stocker the thief will want to find a harbor he can dock in, kibbitz a bit, find a bummerkeh or two, spend some of the money he stole. My guess, Victor, and it’s only a guess, is that he is sucking down schnopps on his boat in a marina somewhere it is warm.”
“So there’s nothing to be done, right?”
“Quiet, now. You hired Morris Kapustin. Morris Kapustin will decide when there is nothing more to be done. There are ways to keep looking, registries of marinas.”
“There must be thousands. How are you going to check all the marinas in the country?”
“By computer, how else? Acch, you leave it to me, I’ll do what I can. I tried this once before looking for a boat.”
“Did it work?”
“So once it didn’t work, I shouldn’t keep trying? Mine son, the computernik. Such a chachem, trying to drag the business into the new world and who am I to stop him. He knows from machines, computers, cars, he was a locksmith in his summers away from school. Me, I know from people. You can learn from people things computers never dreamed about. But, of course, trying to find one boat in all of the Atlantic or Pacific, for that you need a computer. Oh, by and by, Victor, bubeleh, this is for you.”
He put his notebook back into his jacket and reached deep into one of his pants pockets. He pulled out the heavy gold and green chip with the boar’s head on it and flipped it to me. I dropped my briefcase as I fumbled to catch it. The chip eluded me, spinning on the floor in a wide circle that I followed.
“I can see a basketball player you weren’t,” said Morris with a deep laugh as I stepped on the rolling chip and scooped it into my hand.
“I was all right,” I said.
“Now I insulted you, I’m sorry. You were a regular Magic Jordan, I see that now. How I could have missed it I don’t know? Seven feet four you were in college, but the years have been hard, you shrunk. I too have shrunk. It happens.”
“What did you find out about the chip?”
“A very special chip, that is. I asked around. Yitzhak Rabbinowitz, the accountant? Pearlman and Rabbinowitz, maybe you heard them? Well, it turns out that Yitzhak, and I knew his grandfather too, though he was no prince like Abe Carl the shoe man, it turns out that Yitzhak does work for certain private organizations. I showed the chip to him and he said immediately what it was. Especially made for a gentlemen’s club in South Philadelphia. I wrote out the address for you. They play poker there almost every night with these chips. But it’s not a club you can just walk into, Victor. It’s a very private club. I think maybe you should forget about that chip.”
“What kind of club?”
“How should I say it? It’s a club for taleners, alte kockers, and not all of them were vegetable sellers in the Italian Market, do you understand? A club for retired mobsters, for old gangsters. It’s a dangerous place with dangerous men, not a place for a nice Jewish boy like Abe Carl’s grandson.”
Before I paid a visit to South Philadelphia I took I-95 to Chester and then followed the directions I had been given to a cracking industrial road ending at a gray trailer with a hissing neon sign set above it that read: PETE’S YARD – TOWING, STORAGE & REPAIRS. CLASSIC CARS OUR SPECIALTY. Stretching out from the trailer was a chain-link fence, topped with barbed wire, circumscribing an expanse of more than a acre, and what was atop that acre was cars. Lots of cars. Shiny ones and smashed ones and new ones and ones without any wheels, parked in long rows spreading out from that trailer, enough to excite the fancier with the sheer number and variety. But I wasn’t excited. I never cared much for cars. I figured when I had the money I would see which BMW everyone else was driving and then drive one level better. Until then I’d drive what I could afford, which was my seven-year-old Mazda compact, registered at my father’s suburban address to keep my insurance down.
I parked in front of the trailer. Inside there was a young woman reading a magazine behind a Plexiglas guard. Above her was another sign: TOWING $50. STORAGE $10 PER DAY. NO PERSONAL CHECKS. ALL FINES MUST BE PAID AT TIME OF REDEMPTION. PLEASE HAVE REGISTRATION AND IDENTIFICATION READY.
“I’m here about a car,” I said.
“That’s good,” she said, without looking up, “because we don’t take in dry cleaning.”
She was cute, in a trashy little car yard way, and the remark had been clever enough so I couldn’t help myself. “Do I know you?”
“License plate number,” she said flatly. I decided then and there I would have to get a better line.
“I’m here about a car seized for the Sheriff’s Office,” I said, and then read directly from the pink slip. “Number 37984.”
She went into a file and searched for the paperwork. “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Carl,” she said, suddenly smiling. “Pete wanted me to get him personally when you came in. If you’ll wait just a minute.”
Pete was a big, sandy-haired man, his stomach bursting from beneath his belt. His tie was loose, it had been tied loose, and his jacket was too tight for him, bunching up around the armpits. Just the sight of it made me flex my shoulders in a claustrophobic reflex. Pete was one of those guys who had never accepted the last fifty pounds. He reached out to shake and pumped my hand like a jack handle. “Glad you made it, Mr. Carl,” he said heartily. “I wanted to show you personally what we picked up for you.”