"Forget it."
"Bennie," Emil said, his eyes focused. "I want to see you happy. I hope you will find a husband."
"I don't need a husband. I need Eb Darning."
Another list finally materialized on the flat matte monitor. Names in faint green letters floated in an inky background. Emil's sharp eyes ran down the list. "No Darning." He hit another key. "I'll try the next year."
"Thanks." Bennie struggled to keep up with Emil as he read. "Darning might have been a building inspector."
"Not here," Emil barked before he was off to the next list. He and Bennie checked employee lists for all the City Hall departments for the past thirty-odd years, but Eb Darning's name didn't appear on any of them. Then they checked variations on Eb Darning's name, including Heb Darnton, for the same time period. No variations appeared either. Confused, Bennie produced Eb's clean-shaven photo and showed it to Emil.
"Never saw the man," he said, handing it back.
Bennie returned it to her jeans pocket. She didn't tell Emil that Darning was the same man Elliott Steere had killed, for the same reason she hadn't told Bean. He didn't need to know it to help her. "Emil, I know Darning worked here and he might have gotten paid in cash. How is that possible?"
Emil smiled tightly. "I was afraid of this. Perhaps he was a party employee, not an employee of the city."
"So?"
"So he worked for the party. He performed jobs for the party. City Hall was a different place then. You know that. You're a hometown girl."
"So you're saying that Darning wouldn't show up in the employee lists. He was invisible, at least officially."
"Yes."
"Nobody would know him, and if they did, they wouldn't say."
"Yes. He may have been paid for odd jobs. For influence. Even for vote-getting. Does that jibe with your information?"
"Yes," Bennie said. Her thoughts hurried ahead. What was it that Carrier had let slip? "Like 'street money'?"
Emil nodded. "Payment for votes. It was commonplace then. Now, not so. Or so I choose to believe."
Bennie eased back in the chair and tried to process the information. So Eb Darning was a drunk on the party payroll, who was paid street money by someone for votes. Was Steere the someone? He had to be. Why else would Steere kill him? Steere hated the mayor because the city wasn't ponying up for his properties. Maybe Steere had paid Darning to fix votes against the mayor in the last election, and Darning had decided not to keep quiet about it any longer, so Steere killed him. Steere wouldn't take the risk otherwise, especially a personal risk.
It made perfect sense, and Bennie had been around enough official corruption to know it followed the same sleazy patterns. It wasn't Philly's first encounter with vote fraud, and no matter what Emil chose to believe, it wouldn't be the last. Something was rotten at City Hall and Bennie could smell the stink. She stood up and grabbed her wet jacket and hat. "Where's Jen Pressman's office?"
"The chief of staff? Down the hall next to the mayor's. Why?"
"I have to ask her some questions. How can I get a meeting with her? She hates my guts. Because of the police misconduct cases. Every time I sue the city, I put her in the chair."
"I know Jen Pressman. She likes me. I'd be happy to go with you." Emil's dark eyes flickered with the remembered thrill of the hunt.
"No, what I have to discuss with her is confidential."
"I won't go in with you, I'll merely introduce you. Get you in. Pave the way. If it's something big, you'll give me the exclusive."
"You dog." Bennie smiled. "What about that phone call you were waiting for from your editor?"
Emil glanced up at the ancient black clock on the wall. "It's eight o'clock. My shift was over a long time ago. Let him call somebody who's the right size."
48
Marta stood over the metal strongbox in amazement. She had run the thing over in the pickup and it lay crushed in the deep rut of snow. Still, the Master padlock had stayed intact even after the hinges on the strongbox had popped. What were these padlocks, kryptonite? No matter, if Marta couldn't get past the fucking lock, she'd go in through the broken hinges.
She picked up the box, wrenched cruelly out of shape, and squinted through the hinges. She could see the edge of a manila envelope. Her heart beat quicker. She pried the hinges with her fingers but her gloves were clumsy. She tore them off and held them in her teeth while she tried to wrench the lid off the box. No luck. It was too badly smashed.
Marta ran back to the truck with the box and sat in the driver's seat while she searched the tool chest. Chisels, hammers, and about three hundred pritchels tumbled by. Why hadn't they been this easy to find last night? Her fingers groped the bottom of the chest and she came up with a thick Phillips head screwdriver. Good enough.
She grabbed the box and drove the screwdriver between the demolished lid and the box, trying to pry them apart with the screwdriver as a lever. She couldn't wedge the screwdriver in because she'd crushed the box too flat. She tried again and again, breaking a sweat even in the cold car. It was late. The sun was up. She had to hit the road before the cops found Bogosian's body.
Marta abandoned the screwdriver for a hammer, braced the box on her lap, and pounded the twisted metal hinges. The jarring hurt her legs and the pounding reverberated in her skull, but she hammered away. She was about to scream with frustration when the lid popped up. She tore it off and it flopped aside, hanging by the padlock.
Marta's mouth went dry. Inside the smashed box was a manila envelope, the kind her L.A. office used for mailers. The envelope was crumpled from being run over and there was no writing on the front. She ripped open the envelope with a nervous hand. Inside was a stack of paper, which she pulled out and set on her lap. They were printed pages that looked like computer entries:
>18 294 827
>03 04 95
>03 06 85
>03 31 99
>F
>5'7"
>BRN
>C
>–
>*/1
>Jamie Rodriquez
>110 Kenwall Avenue
>Philadelphia, PA 19103
Underneath the single-spaced grouping was a UPC code, a miniaturized signature, and a photograph of a young man with a fuzzy goatee and slacker's expression.
Marta reread the entries. They appeared to be some sort of identification. It was familiar, but Marta couldn't place it. She studied the next set of information, also grouped together:
>29 837 471
>11 10 95
>11 06 55
>11 30 99
>M
>6'2"
>BLU
>C
>–
>*/1
>Cliff Jay Martin
>3329 Dickinson Street
>Philadelphia, PA 19147
Again, underneath was the bar code, a miniaturized signature, and a photo. The photo showed a gaunt man with glasses; its harsh lighting made him look cadaverous. What photo could be so unflattering? Marta thought a minute. It was an ID with a photo. A photo ID that made everybody look their worst. A driver's license!
She skimmed the lines of information excitedly. BLU, for eye color, and the M, for gender identification. Birthdays at the top and expiration and renewal dates. It was the information entered for a driver's license, fields in a record, for computer use. Marta's office grouped information in records like this for form letters and fee agreements. She was looking at a computer file of driver's licenses. But what did it mean?
Marta flipped through the stack and estimated the page count. Just under a hundred pages in the stack and most pages had four fields, each with photos. Why would Steere hide this? What was incriminating about it? It appeared to be perfectly innocent, but nobody buried something innocent.
Marta flipped through the pages for a clue. The drivers all lived in Pennsylvania, so presumably they were issued Pennsylvania licenses. The ages, race, and sex of the drivers were different. Black women, white men, the old and the young, stared up at Marta from the sheets, revealing nothing.