A Tap on the Window (23 page)

FORTY-TWO

If
Roman Ravelson weren’t so unlikable, I might have felt bad mocking his ambitions. If I’d had a daughter and he’d sent her a photo of his erection, I’d have made him eat his phone. And I didn’t think much of him sending Sean and Hanna all over Niagara and Erie counties selling booze out of the back of a truck. It exposed them to countless risks, legal and physical. If Roman wanted to make a buck selling booze to minors, fine. But he didn’t need to be getting others on board.

I got into my Honda, thinking about Roman’s zombie movie, about his character named Tim, out to save the world from an alien plot to—

Tim. Timmy.

The name hit me like cold, wet spray coming over the bow of the
Maid of the Mist
. The young man with the limp who came into Iggy’s every night for a late dinner. The man who left the restaurant only seconds before Claire did.

Where was it Sal had said Timmy lived? It was the four-story apartment building just a stone’s throw down the road.

Maybe Timmy had noticed something.

It was a long shot, to be sure. But not only had they left at almost exactly the same time—Timmy had struck off in the same direction the driver of the Volvo had taken.

I pulled away from the Ravelson house and headed back to Iggy’s.

* * *

There
was no mistaking the building. There was only one like it within spitting distance of Iggy’s. Most everything along this stretch of Danbury was commercial. Fast-food joints, gas stations, strip malls, a Target on the other side of the street. The low-rise apartment complex stood alone as a place where anyone near here might actually live.

I tried to remember what Sal had told me. Timmy came in at the end of his working day, after his shift, wherever that shift happened to be. My guess was Timmy didn’t have a car. If he did, he’d probably drive to Iggy’s on his way home, not walk over. Which meant he worked very close to where he lived, or took a bus from work every night. Either way, it meant he probably finished work around nine, and most shifts were seven or eight hours.

It was twelve thirty p.m. My guess was if Timmy hadn’t already left for work, he’d be coming out the lobby doors of that apartment building anytime now. I parked the car where I could watch. If he didn’t show in the next fifteen or twenty minutes, I’d go into the lobby and see if I could find him, but I knew the directory wasn’t going to be much help. Even if last names were attached to the buzzers on the intercom system, I didn’t know Timmy’s. If there was no super in the building, I was going to have to go knocking on doors. The building had at least forty units, and while I was wandering the halls, my man Timmy could be slipping out the front door.

I only had to wait ten minutes.

He hobbled down the building’s front steps and headed straight for the sidewalk. When he reached it, he didn’t turn left or right, but watched for a break in traffic. He didn’t walk very quickly, so that break was going to have to be a long one. Across the street were a Target and several other stores clustered around it like pups nursing off their mother.

I got out of my car and ran over to him before he started his trek across.

“Timmy?”

The man turned and eyed me curiously. “Huh?” he said.

“You’re Timmy?”

He looked afraid to say yes, but after a second’s hesitation, he said, “Yeah, that’s me.”

“My name’s Weaver. I wonder if I could ask you a couple of questions?”

“What about? Who are you?”

I handed him a card. “I’m a private investigator. I need to ask you about something that happened a couple of nights ago. What’s your last name?”

Hesitantly, he said, “Gursky. Timmy Gursky. Has this got something to do with work? Because I’m heading over there right now and I don’t want to be late.”

He pointed. Not to Target, but to one of the other businesses. An electronics store, it looked like.

“The stereo place?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“This isn’t about work. And you’re not in trouble. But you might have been a witness to something I’m looking into. Two nights ago, when you were leaving Iggy’s, there was a car pulling out of the lot, and I’m hoping you might have noticed it.”

“Noticed a car? You kidding?”

“I admit, I’m grasping at straws here.”

“How do you even know I was there? And which night you talking about?”

I told him, briefly, about reviewing the surveillance video at Iggy’s, that I’d been trying to find a girl who got into a silver or gray Volvo station wagon, and that Sal said he ate there most nights, around that time.

“Sal, yeah, he’s an okay guy,” Timmy said. “Yeah, two nights ago. You know what? I actually do remember that car.”

“Seriously?”

“Son of a bitch nearly ran over my foot. Like I need any more trouble. My knee here got all fucked-up in Iraq.”

I wanted to ask about the car, but felt obliged to ask about his knee first.

He grinned. “That’s always a good line to use with the ladies, you know? I usually come up with a better story for them than what I’ll tell you, which’ll be the truth. I was working in what they called the Green Zone, you know? Inside the compound but not with the actual army or anything. They had, like, this whole city inside there, with everything all American. I worked for Pizza Hut. We had this trailer in there, soldiers could come up, get a slice just like they’d get back home. So I’m coming out of the trailer one day, miss the step, and come down right on my goddamn knee. Fucked it up big-time.”

“Sorry to hear that,” I said.

“Still hurts like a son of a bitch. You figure, you go over there, if you have to come back hurt, it better be because of some car bomb or missile or something, am I right? I had to hurt myself coming out of a pizza trailer. The ladies do
not
get that version.”

“You said the driver of the Volvo nearly ran over your foot.”

“Yeah,” he said indignantly. “I noticed the car early on, because it was parked with the motor running, and the thing was really pumping out the exhaust, you know? It was an old car and the motor was noisy and really needed a tune-up. So anyway, I’m walking toward home, right here, across the lot, which is pretty empty that time of night, and I hear this noise coming from behind, to my right, and I look around, and there’s the car you’re talking about, zooming out of there. For a second, I thought they’re trying to run me down, but I think the asshole behind the wheel, he just couldn’t see me.”

“It was a man.”

“Yeah, I mean, I could tell that much. I didn’t get a real good look at him, but yeah, it was a guy.”

“With a girl in the passenger seat.”

“I didn’t get a look at her. I could tell someone was there, but I couldn’t tell ya if was Britney Spears or Sarah Palin.”

“But you saw the driver.”

“Yep. Not much I can tell you about him, but I think it was a black guy.”

“Okay. What about age?”

“I don’t know. Not old, but other than that, I can’t really say. Except he was an asshole. He came right up alongside me. I jumped back and gave him the finger. Then I went down.”

“You got hit?”

He shook his head. “Just lost my balance. Didn’t hurt myself. But I guess the driver must have been scared he’d hit me because he hit the brakes and stopped. I was getting up, so he must have seen me in his mirror, figured I wasn’t dead, and then he floored it.”

“You get a look at the license plate?”

Timmy shook his head. “You kidding? It was dark. I mean, I think it was a New York plate, but I couldn’t tell you any more than that. Listen, you need anything else? I have to get to work.”

I said I didn’t, and thanked him for his time.

My cell went off as I was putting on my seat belt.

“Hello?”

“Hey, finally.” It was a man, and in two words he’d managed to convey exasperation. “Bill Hooper here.”

“Mr. Hooper,” I said. “Thanks for getting back to me.”

“What can I do for you? I have to tell you, right up front, I’m not taking on any new jobs. I got all I can handle for now, I’m shorthanded, and it’s the end of the season anyway. What I’d suggest is, try me in the spring, we might have some people move, cancel service, and we could put you on the list.”

“That’s not why I was calling. I need to know about Dennis Mullavey.”

“Oh,” he said. “Him.”

“Yeah. He worked for you?”

“I can’t believe Dennis’d put me down for a reference. That takes balls. Guy walks out on me, doesn’t give me any notice at all. I’d think long and hard about hiring him. I mean, he’s a good worker and all, a good kid, but you gotta be ready for him to quit on ya just like that.”

“I don’t exactly have his résumé in front of me. You have a number where I can reach him? An address? I gather he’s not from Griffon.”

“Haven’t got any of that on me,” Hopper said. “I could get my girl to call you. I think he’s from around Rochester. Came to work for me for the summer, even rented a room in my house. Look, he’s a nice kid. I liked him, he did good work, was pretty reliable, right up until the end. And now that everybody is back to school, I can’t get anyone else to work for me till the snow starts to fly. I only got one other guy. People say there’s all this huge unemployment, but you think you can find someone willing to push a lawn mower or ride a tractor or swing a leaf blower around? I’m behind. I got some clients, I haven’t been to their place in two weeks.”

“That’s rough.”

I thought of the long grass at Phyllis Pearce’s house. I asked, “You do the Pearce place?”

“Yep, that’s one. I’m way behind getting to her.”

“Why’d Dennis quit?”

“No idea. All he did was leave a note. ‘Thanks for the job, sorry about leaving’ was all he had to say. I still owed him some money—even if a guy quits on me I’m not going to stiff him on what I owe him—but I don’t think my girl’s been able to get in touch with him. He just cleared out his room and he was gone.”

“This girl—is it the one I called initially?”

“Yeah, that’d be Barb. I’ll give her a heads-up that you’re going to call.”

“I appreciate it. One last question. Dennis have a car?”

“Yup,” Hopper said. “But if he needs it for work, I don’t know how reliable it is. He had it parked here all summer. I let him use one of my trucks off-hours, if I had one available. He always topped up the tank, I’ll say that for him.”

“What kind of car?”

“Volvo. A wagon.”

“Thanks, Mr. Hopper. I’ll give Barb a call shortly.”

“Okay,” he said, and hung up.

I sat there for a moment, thinking. If Dennis Mullavey had been maintaining the grounds at Phyllis Pearce’s place, why didn’t she have any idea who he was? Then again, she might have never known the name of the young man tending her property, or been at Patchett’s when Hopper’s crew came over to—

My thoughts were distracted by another phone call.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Weaver? It’s Sheila Skilling.” Her voice was shaking. “They arrested Sean, they think—”

“I know,” I told her. “I’m sorry.”

“You have to help us,” she pleaded. “You simply have to help us.”

I wasn’t sure what I could do for the Skillings at the moment. Finding Claire was the priority. What Sean needed was a good lawyer. But I did have some questions for Sheila and Adam Skilling. For example, how much did they know about what Sean and Hanna were doing for Roman Ravelson? And there was one question I wanted to ask Adam Skilling privately.

Why was he on Iggy’s surveillance video, standing at the counter, so soon after Claire and Hanna had switched identities?

FORTY-THREE

The
woman says to him, “I’m going to ask you something, and I need you to be totally honest with me.”

He sits in the wheelchair, avoiding her eye. “Of course,” he says.

“Did you write anything in the book other than the usual?”

“I . . . I told you, I can’t find it. I need you to get me another empty one so I can start writing things down again.”

“I know you gave it to the boy. You admitted it the other night. What I want to know is what you wrote in it.”

“Like you said, just the usual. Nothing to worry about.”

“But you always wrote down the dates.”

The man says nothing.

She puts her fists on her hips. “What the hell were you thinking? Can you tell me that?”

“I don’t know.” He speaks so quietly she can barely hear him.

“If he gives that to someone, someone who remembers your little habits—I swear I don’t know what gets into you.”

“I’m sorry. I’m really—”

She doesn’t hear the rest. She steps out of the room, closes the door and slips the lock on. Her son is standing there, by the washer and dryer.

“He’ll be the death of me,” his mother says. “What are you doing here?”

“I think the detective might be getting close.”

His mother nods. “I get the sense he doesn’t give up easy.”

“But this is good,” the son says. “I’m going to drop everything for a while. Indefinitely, I guess, while I see where he
goes.”

“We need a contingency plan,” she says, and lowers her voice to a whisper. “If the girl, and the kid, show up on their own, before Weaver finds them, we need to be ready. We need to be able to deny everything. We need to be able to show the kid up as a liar. We say we don’t know what he’s talking about.”

The son leans against the washing machine, folds his arms across his chest and shakes his head. “You’re talking about moving Dad?”

The woman hesitates. “I guess you could say that.”

“Where would we move him? Where could he go where we could still look after him?”

His mother says nothing. Her silence speaks volumes.

“No, Mother. We can’t do that.”

“I can’t keep this up,” she says. “I just can’t.”

“Look, just let me see how this plays out with Weaver. If we’re going to have to get rid of anybody, I’d rather it was him and the others, not Dad.”

“Of course,” she says. “That goes without saying.”

“That Weaver guy, God, he’s as big a pain in the ass as his kid was. At least everything worked out the way it should have with him.”