Absolute Rage (45 page)

She riffled his hair. “You're having a great time, aren't you?”

“Yeah, I never want to leave.”

“Oh, yes, I know just what you mean.”

*  *  *

When Karp returned to the Burroughs Building, he was not amazed to find his wife there, in the room with the state detectives, kibitzing and making herself useful, which was useful indeed. Karp did not believe there were three people in the country he would rather have involved in a criminal investigation than his own dear one, as long as she stayed continually under adult supervision. For the past several days Marlene had realized that she was not, in fact, made to lie around pools. Working on her tan was not enough work, it appeared. So she had started to show up and was accepted immediately by the staties as a colleague. Word had spread about her speckled background.

Virtually all the person-power Karp had at his call had been directed at a single goal: tracing the $7,500 blood money to a source of funds controlled by George Floyd, Lester Weames, or both. He found her working on just this with Mel Harkness.

“Any luck?” Karp asked, kissing the top of her head.

“Zilch. I am prepared to state that at no time in the past six months did either of the two scumbags in question withdraw that sum in cash from either private or union bank accounts. Those that we know of, anyway.”

“Mel?”

“I don't get my head kissed?”

“Maybe later. Is she right as usual?”

“She's right,” said Harkness, a rotund, balding, bespectacled state police detective who looked like an accountant and was an accountant. “We got pretty excited there for a bit. We found a ten-grand check to cash written out, but then there was a ten-grand cash deposit a day later.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Can't say. But if there's no net withdrawal, we can't attribute it to any illegal payoff. Of course, there's a million ways they could have done it that we can't trace. They could have used a kickback from a purveyor. They could have private accounts. The company could have slipped them the cash. They could have cashed in their piggie pennies . . .”

“Unlikely,” said Marlene. “I would be inclined to doubt that either of them spent their own money on this. Weames has a rep for cheapness. Neither of them spend their own money for anything, as far as I can tell. Car, travel, meals—it's all out of the union account. And perfectly legal, too. It has to be union cash, and since your judge won't let us look at the union books . . .”

“He's not my judge,” said Karp. “But let's think about this. They didn't expect an investigation by us, but they had to know that the feds would be interested in the union, since Red had said he was going to bring them in. The feds would want to look at the union finances, therefore they have to be a little careful. So no big cash withdrawals. What do they spend their money on, anyway, the union?”

“Mainly pensions and health,” said Harkness. “Salaries. Mortgage on the hall. Bonuses. Research. Very straightforward as far as the bank is concerned. It could be cooked as hell, but we can't tell from this.”

“Well, we'll just have to follow up every check they cut and make sure it's legit.”

“Better call in the marines, then,” said Harkness.

“He doesn't have marines,” said Marlene, “just us.” To Karp she said, “I bet you wish you were back chasing Beemer and the congressman now.”

“What congressman was that?” Harkness asked.

Neither Karp answered. They were staring into each other's eyes, combining brainpower in a way that they hadn't in a while.

“Smurfs,” said Karp. “Why didn't we think of that?”

“The old guys' spending money,” said Marlene. “The bonuses.” He grabbed her, they kissed.

Harkness stared first at one, then at the other, a confused look on his face. “What're you two talking about?”

“We just figured out how they did it,” said Karp, moving, looking for a phone to call Wade Hendricks.

*  *  *

Royal Eberly lived in the coal company house he had been born in, a four-room wooden affair with a sagging porch. It was painted baby blue with white trim. Red geraniums bloomed in number-ten cans on the windowsills and in the center of a white-painted truck tire in the tiny front yard. A faded American flag flapped gently above the heads of Karp and Hendricks and Eberly, the latter rocking in a straw-back rocker, the others in straight chairs. Mr. Eberly was sixty-nine; Karp thought he looked eighty: hollow-chested, sunken-eyed, hands so knotted with arthritis that he needed both of them to hold the jelly glass of iced tea. They were all drinking very sweet iced tea as Mr. Eberly talked about the old days in the deep mines. He had worked with Hendricks's daddy right here in this coal patch, Racke Creek, forty-eight years, man and boy.

Mr. Eberly was a loyal union man. He thought the world of Lester. Lester had come up to the holler himself when Mrs. Eberly passed a few years back. Last time the whole family was together. A shame. His daughters had moved away, something he had not expected. People used to stay with their kin. Mr. Eberly blamed it on the television. He didn't have a dish himself. Radio was good enough, music all the way from Nashville. He used to play a fiddle himself away back in them days, but now the arthritis had stopped that pretty good. He didn't have that old-timer's disease though, thank Jesus, he could recollect good as he ever done.

Hendricks said, “Now, Royal, I hear you all got a bonus to your pension a couple of months back. Do you recollect that?”

“Sure I do, and it come in right handy. New tires on the truck. New muffler, too. I still got some left. It warn't no bonus though. It was research.”

“Research?”

“Yessir. What they said. How we'ns was all getting along and such. Give us a paper, you had to make little crosses in the boxes, with a pencil, if'n you had a 'frigerator and a TV. How you spent your time, an' all. I didn't mind on account it was the union askin'.”

“And they paid you for this?”

“Yessir. A thousand dollars.” He shook his head. “Lord Jesus, that's how much I made my first two months in the mines. Age of sixteen and one week old. Course, they wanted half of it back. One of the union boys, Jordy Whelan, drove me into the bank and I cashed it.”

“Did they say why you had to give half of it back?”

“Oh, some gummint foolery he said. I didn't really follow it, tell the truth.” A worried look appeared on the worn face. “There ain't nothing wrong, is there? I mean, I won't have to give none of it back, will I?”

“No, you won't,” said Hendricks. “That enough for you, Butch?”

“Yes.” Karp spoke a few formal words into the tape recorder and switched it off.

They interviewed six other pensioners that afternoon, all with the same story. The bank records showed that fifteen checks for $1,000 each had been cut and issued. Each recipient had given half his check back in cash to Jordy Whelan. The Cades said $7,500 had been paid out for the murders. The math was simple.

*  *  *

They drove by the union hall the next morning, with a Bronco-load of staties for backup. These were not necessary, as Jordy Whelan came along with no difficulty. Karp recognized him as one of the bruisers present at the cat-fish dinner at Rosie's, sitting with Floyd and Weames.

“This ain't about not showin' up for my speed ticket, is it?” Whelan asked from the back of the unmarked.

“No, it's not,” said Karp. “It's about some union stuff. Have you worked for the union long, Mr. Whelan?”

Whelan placed a forefinger the size of a spark-plug socket on his upper lip and thought. “Six years, about that. What kind of union business?”

“We'll talk about it later,” said Karp.

They took him to the back of the Burroughs Building and into a disused office full of furniture from a bankrupt firm. They all sat on swivel chairs around a dusty fake-wood conference table.

Jordy looked like an offensive tackle, an appearance supported by his having retained his high-school-team crew cut, a hairdo that left the sides of his head nearly bald. He looked to have added twenty pounds or so since the glory days, mainly beer-gut.

“What exactly is it you do for the union, Mr. Whelan?” Karp asked when they were settled, provided with coffee or RC, and the tape machine was running.

“Administrative assistant, Local Four. That's the Majestic Two mine.”

“And your duties?”

“Oh, you know, keep everything runnin' smooth. Sometimes I drive Mr. Weames places, and interviewin'. Sometimes.”

“Interviewing?”

“Yeah, you know, talk to the members, see if every-thing's okay. Check on the pensioners. How come you're asking this?”

Karp in reply read off a list of fifteen names from a typed list. “Are these names familiar to you?”

“Sure. They're pensioners. Alwin, Murphy, Eberly, all those guys. What about them?”

“They say that over a period of five days sometime in June of this year, you drove them to several banks in this county to cash checks the union had given them, and that you then took half of the proceeds of these checks, in cash.”

“Uh-huh. What about it?”

“You've done this before?”

“Sure. It's the givebacks. Some of the old guys don't have cars, so I drive them.”

“Givebacks?”

“Uh-huh. See, it's like when you go to the grocery store. The food, say, comes to twenty-four dollars and you give the girl a check for fifty, and she gives you it in cash, so you have, you know, for gas and cigarettes.”

“Right. And who told you to collect the givebacks?”

“Oh, that was Mr. Floyd. He's the business manager.”

“And you handed the money to him? It came to what?”

“Seventy-five hundred, all told. Uh-huh, and I gave it to him it must've been a Friday, because the checks always go out on Friday and I recall it took a whole week to collect from all those old boys.”

“Did he say what he wanted it for?”

“Uh-huh. The basement in the union hall needed sealing and the guy was going to give us a break on the job for cash. Oh, and the rats, too.”

“Rats.”

“Uh-huh. Rats in the basement. He said it was for an exterminator.”

“Thank you, Mr. Whelan,” said Karp.

*  *  *

Whistles, cheers, hoots of laughter, filled the Burroughs Building when Karp played the tape for the assembled team.

“No further questions, Your Honor,” said Marlene.

“Yes,” said Karp, “I have had many golden moments in court, but this is going to have a special place in the scrapbook.”

“I want to be a fly on the wall,” said Stan Hawes, “when Seward gets this stuff. He'll want to deal.”

“Oh, he may
want
to,” said Karp obliquely. Hawes met his eye, then looked away. They had an unvoiced understanding. Hawes would do most of the trial work and get the credit and front to the press, but Karp would decide the major strategic moves. Karp could see that Hawes still bore a trace of resentment about this, but Karp was careful not to rub his face in it, and Hawes had enough sense not to bring the subtle hierarchy into the public gaze. There was a little eye action with Cheryl Oggert, too, Karp noted. Maybe Stan manipulating around the edges? Who knew? thought Karp; who cared?

“Well, it looks like the police part of the operation's just about over,” said Hendricks. “I guess the governor's going to be happy about that.”

“Yes, he will,” Oggert agreed. “I get a call from his budget people every other day. It's like we're going to have to close the schools if Robbens County keeps draining resources. I told them you'd be able to release everyone back to normal duty as of the end of this week.”

“This is wise?” asked Karp. “We don't want to depend on the sheriff too much.”

“We won't,” said Hendricks. “We'll keep the detectives, and we'll still keep priority at the lab. But we don't need thirty-six troopers anymore. What I mean is, we already arrested all the bad guys.”

“Your show, Wade,” said Karp. “I just work here.”

*  *  *

Three days later, after the defense had perused the Whelan testimony, and after some remarkable findings had come in from the state laboratory, and after Wayne Cade had been transferred to the jail, still refusing to talk to anyone, including his state-appointed lawyer, a call came in from Floyd's attorney, Milton Seward, asking Hawes for a meeting. Karp insisted it be held in the makeshift conference room in the Burroughs Building, rather than in Hawes's office in the courthouse. When the state's attorney expressed annoyance at this, Karp explained, “I'm the bad guy, Stan. Let me
be
the bad guy, with the meet in the bad guy's castle. They still think you're a patsy. I don't want them to discover you're not until George is sitting at his trial. It'll be a Clark Kent moment for you.”

“This is how they do things in New York?” said Hawes grumpily.

“Yeah, it is, and, you know, people around here ask me that a lot, I notice. It seems to be polite code for ‘Is that some kind of Jew trick?' Answer: yes, it is. So, when we go in on this, I'm going to ask you not to contribute anything. I want you just to sit there and look uncomfortable.”

“Well, hell,
that
won't be hard,” said Hawes sourly.

*  *  *

Milton Seward was known as the Sewer among the members of the West Virginia bar, both because of his frequent use of salty language and because one of his first major cases had been the successful defense of a group of speculating contractors and councilmen accused of rigging bids for the construction of the Wheeling waste-water treatment system. He was arguably the state's premier defense lawyer at the time, a status to which he frequently adverted.

When he arrived, with his client in tow, Karp again noted that of the two canonical premier defense-lawyer personae—(1) slick, pinstriped $2,500 suits, French cuffs, handmade shoes, $200 haircuts; (2) custom-made, monogrammed cowboy boots, cattleman suits, funny Stetsons, sideburns, lots of heavy jewelry—the Sewer had chosen the latter. Waal, Ah'm jest a shit-kickin' good ole country boy who made good: that was the message. Karp thought that the people who chose (2) did so because they were generally short little fucks and the cowboy boots gave them as much as three inches.