CAPRIATI'S BLOOD (ALTON RHODE MYSTERIES Book 1) (8 page)

“Alt, have you ever tried screwing while on LSD?”

“I imagine it would be tough. I mostly use an Allen wrench and had enough trouble putting together a computer station sober.”

“No, you idiot. I mean sex, on acid.”

“I know what you mean. The answer is still no.” I had a sudden terrifying thought. “What the hell is in these cigarettes?”

She laughed.

“Don’t worry. They’re harmless. Maybe a touch of peyote. I did acid once and the sex was incredible. I came forever.”

That thought was conjuring a vision of Dante’s Second Circle of Hell when there was a fluttering of wings and a squawk from a cage in the corner of the room.

“Elvis disapproves of the smoke,” she said.

The green-and-yellow Elvis did look annoyed and was scuttling back and forth on his perch bobbing his head the way parrots do.

“I would have thought you had your hands full taking care of all the plant life around this place.” But for the fence separating the properties, Nancy’s home and grounds so resembled Botanical Garden exhibits she could have charged admission. “Why the bird?”

She took in another lungful of smoke, held it, and let it hiss out appreciatively. The smoke wafted toward Elvis. I thought I saw him wobble.

“He flew into the greenhouse at work a couple of months ago. Probably escaped from somebody’s home. I put an ad in the paper, but nobody claimed him. And no one on my staff wanted the poor thing, so I’ve adopted him.”

“Why do you keep him in here,” I said.

“I had him in the kitchen, but he just moped around.”

“Probably got lonely.”

Cooking was not among Nancy’s many talents.

“Whatever. But he seems happier in here.”

“More to see.”

“What, are you shy? I can always cover the cage, if that bothers you so much.”

“He can still hear, for crissake.”

“Don’t worry. He’s never spoken a word. I don’t think he can. Probably why nobody wanted him back.”

“You’d better hope he isn’t biding his time.”

“Forget the fucking Maltese Parrot, will you.” She put out her cigarette. “You looked like you enjoyed yourself at the party tonight,” Nancy said. “Who was that good-looking broad you were capering around?”

“I don’t caper.”

“Who was it?”

I told her as I slid my hand down her stomach.

“Don’t tell me you are jealous.”

She laughed.

“I hate to break it to you, Alt. But you weren’t my first choice tonight.”

“I’m crushed.”

She sat up a bit on her elbows, but carefully, so as not to dislodge my hand. She looked at me appraisingly.

“Please don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Alton. We’re just pals. If I thought you were auditioning to be my next ex-husband I’d be very disappointed. You aren’t, are you?”

The look on my face made her laugh.

“Thank God. Even if you were the marrying kind, which you’re not, you’re not my type of husband material. Don’t get me wrong, honeybun. You are a terrific guy, one of the best I’ve known. But you’re such a boy scout. I prefer men without too many principles. You would drive a wife crazy.”

“Boy scout?”

“Oh, I know. You don’t think of yourself that way. You will bend the rules, but only in the service of a good cause or to help a friend. Or, saints preserve us, because it’s the honorable thing to do. Look how you ran off when they called you up.”

“I didn’t have much say in the matter, Nance.”

“Yeah, I know. But you did it with such goddamn enthusiasm. Like I said, poor marriage material.” She moaned. “Jesus, don’t stop, I like that.”    

She lay back, arranging herself to give me greater access and maneuvering my hand the way she preferred.

“Oh, God.” She moaned, and then shuddered. “It’s so nice to have a friend with benefits. “Oh, God.”

Just then Elvis said, “Oh, God.”

Clear as a bell.

“Shit,” Nancy said.

“Shit,” Elvis parroted.

***

The next morning Nancy mumbled something about making me breakfast but was back asleep before I’d finished dressing. As I closed the bedroom door Elvis said, “Oh, God.” He left it at that. Maybe he didn’t curse on the Sabbath.

I went home, showered and changed into work clothes. Then I drove to my office, stopping at a deli on Bay Street to pick up a couple of bacon and egg sandwiches and a container of coffee. The guard at the desk was the old fellow from Friday night.

“You still here?” I kidded him, then gave him one of the sandwiches and the coffee. I escaped without seeing any more pictures of his grandkids.

When I got upstairs I put on my own pot of coffee and spent the rest of the day cleaning, polishing, vacuuming and otherwise putting the finishing touches on my office. By late afternoon I was sweaty and tired, and feeling pretty good about it.

I then devoted an hour to searching various databases on the web for any references for William Capriati. Private investigators, lawyers, accountants and the just-plain nosey typically sign up for specialized fee-based search engines. And as a former law enforcement officer I had access to certain sites not available to the general public. I wasn’t supposed to use some of them but did, and would as long as my passwords still worked. I wasn’t particularly worried about a Government computer watchdog back tracking my inquiries. Contrary to common belief and television shows, the Feds aren’t all that good at that sort of thing. Their computers are usually a generation behind current and their top technicians quickly leave for lucrative jobs in the private sector. If the Government was serious about uncovering billion-dollar investment frauds it would ask Bill Gates to sign on as a $1-a-year man to bring its systems up to speed.

I turned up a surprising number of male Capriatis, including several Williams, all the wrong age by a long shot. My Billy apparently didn’t exist, except in Ellen James’s memory. I couldn’t even find any references to his life on Staten Island, subsequent bank embezzlement or any other crimes. That didn’t particularly surprise me, given the amount of time that had elapsed. All his notable activities might have been basically pre-web. Post-web he might have reformed and bought himself a new identity. He could be married with six kids and coaching Little League in Iowa. Or soccer in Italy. He might be dead. Of course, I still lacked his Social Security Number. But I had the suspicion that wouldn’t be a game changer. None of this helped Savannah James. All I basically had was Wagner College and a general idea where his family came from on the Island. So that’s where I would look.  

It was late afternoon when I closed up my office and headed home. Abby was now on the desk in my lobby.

“That was the second-greatest eggplant sandwich in history,” she said.

“What’s the first?”

“The next one.”

I got in my car and headed up Bay Street in a steady drizzle. The light at Water Street was changing and I would have made it but for a bus whose turn was halted by a pedestrian. I jammed on my brakes and was lucky not to skid on the slick road through the intersection. I heard a screech behind me and braced for an impact that never came. At least it never came to me. But the car following me was rear-ended. Even with my windows up, I heard the tinkle of glass.

Feeling somewhat responsible, I got out. By the time I reached the second car, the third one, a red Volvo, had backed up, done a sliding U-Turn and fishtailed away, leaving the driver of the other car in the middle of the street waving his arms and shouting. I couldn’t see the plate in the dark and drizzle. I asked him if he’d gotten it. He hadn’t.

The damage to his car was minimal. The glass on the street had apparently come from the Volvo.

“What the hell did you stop short for?”

He was just venting and we both knew it. He would have seen the bus. I let him go on for a bit until he realized neither of us was to blame.

“Oh, fuck it,” he said. “The fender was already pushed in. The other car lost a headlight, I think. Should I call the cops? They took off. It’s a hit-and-run, right?”

“More like a bump-and-run. Probably drunk to take off like that. You said ‘they.’ Bunch of kids?”

“Didn’t get a good look but there were just two men. Bastards almost hit me turning around. Hey, what about insurance? If they report it and I don’t, I could get screwed.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it. They left the scene.”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

By this time we were both thoroughly soaked and cars were beeping at us. We looked at each other and then both said “fuck it” and went to our respective cars and drove away.

I hadn’t eaten since the morning so I stopped at Tug’s, a waterfront restaurant on Richmond Terrace a few blocks from my house. It was early for dinner so I scored a table with a nice view of the Kill van Kull. The
Yokahama Maru
would have passed right in front of the window where I sat sipping a Guinness stout and eating fish and chips. Of course, it would have been the entire view. After I finished eating I went home to watch some football and catch up on my sleep. It promised to be a busy week. 

CHAPTER 9 – CLAPPER

The next morning I worked the Internet some more at home and didn’t find out anything else. Then I called Dave Clapper at Wagner and told him what I needed.

“That kind of information is strictly confidential,” he said.

“How long?”

“Give me an hour, hour and a half, tops.”

Enough time for another run to the King’s Arms, where I ordered juice, coffee and a bagel. I called Alice Watts on her cell while I ate. Got a recording. After the beep I said, “I decided to slow down our relationship, which is why I didn’t call you yesterday. I’ll be at Wagner today. If you are around, how about a platonic cup of coffee? If that’s too daring, perhaps we could just wave to each other across the quad.”

I left my name and number. I thought about calling her home as well, but that would have ruined the poetry of the cell message.

When I got to Wagner College, I parked in the visitors’ lot across Howard Avenue and headed over to Ithan Hall, which was the name of the school’s new administration building, cutting across the wide lawn that is the centerpiece of the campus. Many college campuses are beautiful, but Wagner still surprises. It looks as if someone dropped New England onto Staten Island. Broad green expanses, tall trees, ivy covered buildings, rolling hillsides. And glittering in the distance, framed by the valley cut by glaciers in one of the Ice Ages, sat New York Harbor in all its glory. The only campus I’d seen that could compete was Cornell. But Manhattan was 30 minutes away from where I stood. Cornell was upstate in Ithaca, where they made good shotguns but lousy Saturday nights.

It was a splendid day and there were plenty of students out and about, walking between classes carrying books, sitting on benches or under trees and generally not wasting the best years of their lives. Good for them. They weren’t all scraggly dressed, which surprised me. I paid particular attention to the co-eds, and was rewarded by a few who gave me
it’s not likely pal but it’s possible
smiles that made my day.

The designers of Ithan Hall had tried to conform to the architecture of the surrounding buildings, some of which were almost a hundred years old and wouldn’t have looked out of place at Oxford. To their credit, they had mostly succeeded. The building looked new, lacked arches and turrets, and had too much glass, but at least it didn’t stick out on the campus like tits on a bull. It would even be better once the ivy got going. Maybe the  Botanical Garden student interns could do something about that.

Inside everything looked like the starship Enterprise. Dave’s office is on the first floor, just outside the college president’s. I could hear his voice through Bradley’s  partly closed door. A middle-aged woman looked me over with a friendly but non-committal gaze from behind a wraparound desk. I was too old and too well dressed to be a student, but just about the right age for a parent or, better still, a well-heeled alumnus.

“May I help you?”

“My name is Rhode. Dave Clapper is expecting me.”

“Oh yes, the Commander mentioned it. You’re the detective.” If she was disappointed I wasn’t about to endow a wing on a new dorm, she hid it well. “He said you can wait in his office. Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thanks. But I thought Dave retired as a Coast Guard Captain.”

She looked confused for a second, then smiled.

“Oh, yes, he did. ‘Commander’ is just a nickname the kids gave him. He’s really made an impression on them, with all his efficiency and can-do attitude. They love him. Now we even call him that.”

Dave had been hired by Spencer Bradley to shape up the college ship before it made the expected jump to university status. Dave wasn’t an academic, so there was a blessed dearth of tomes and diplomas in his office. Flow charts, graphs and corkboards dominated the walls and ledges. There were a few personal touches, family photos, and a framed and yellowed military wall map. I went to the map. It showed the landing zones for the planned invasion of the Japanese home islands in 1945. The assault beaches were named after American cars: Buick, Cadillac, Chrysler, Ford, Desoto, Pontiac, Lincoln, Studebaker, Packard and so on.

“Thank God for the A-bomb,” Dave said as he walked into the office. “That invasion would have been a bloodbath.”

“If they landed today, they’d have to use fewer beaches or come up with a different set of names,” I said. “I doubt they’d use Corolla or Camry. Where did you get this?”

“I’m third generation Coast Guard. My grandfather was involved in the planning for the invasion. He brought that home as a souvenir. A lot of people forget the Coast Guard was a fighting branch in World War II.” 

“Also did a hell of a job during Katrina.”

“Glad somebody noticed.”

I thought of something.

“I’ve been seeing a lot of Coast Guard emblems on illegally parked cars lately. Is there something I should know about?”

He looked pained.

“Just between us?”

“Sure.”

“The Borough President wants the Guard to back one of his hair-brained schemes for a new Cromwell Center. He’s been passing out parking stickers and placards to officers like M&M’s.”

“What’s the scheme?”

“Would you believe a floating barge with basketball courts? Gives a whole new meaning to the pick-and-roll play.”

“Not to mention the dunk. But it would free up the shoreline for condos.”

“Still the cynic.”

“I’m just glad it has nothing to do with global warming.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Dave was a short, well-built guy, with buzz-cut black hair and brown eyes. He was probably 50, could undoubtedly fit into his old uniform and still moved with a military bearing. His dark blue tie had little yellow sailboats on it.

“Do I have to call you ‘Commander’ around here?”

“A simple ‘Sir’ will do,” he said, reaching into his desk for a thick manila envelope he slid across his desk. “It’s not much, I’m afraid. Been 14 years since Capriati graduated and there wasn’t a hell of a lot on him. I gather he was a pretty decent student. But other than being a damn fine wrestler he did a bang-up job of being inconspicuous. Never joined a fraternity, not even Delta Nu, which gets all the jocks.”

I knew he’d have read the material before letting it out of his sight. Once military, always military.

“Dom said he got into some minor scrapes off campus.”

“Good for him. Proves he was human, at least.”

I opened the envelope. Inside were copies of William Capriati’s college application forms, medical records, transcripts and graduation information, as well as various photos and articles about the wrestling team from school and local newspapers. Coach DeRenzi was in a couple of them. Dom’s looks had not improved with age, something I looked forward to telling him with photographic proof in hand.

“Good-looking kid,” Dave said. “The photos and clips weren’t in the school files. I had one of the kids at the school paper do a little digging.”

“This going to cause trouble for you?”

“Be serious,” he said. “Colleges have strict rules about confidentiality. We protect students’ privacy religiously. Or since we’re talking about academia here, maybe agnostically. Unless, of course, the banks want to lend the kids money they can’t pay back or give them credit cards they don’t need. After they graduate we hunt them down like dogs for contributions. And you should see what happens when a professor or dean wants to screw someone out of tenure or a choice committee spot. All sorts of confidential information gets leaked. Place is like a hen party. What a crock of shit.”

“I thought you liked it here. Everybody says you’re doing a bang-up job.”

“Like it? I love it. Did my 30 with the Coasties, have a nice pension. Pay here is good, working on another pension, the benefits are outstanding and I’m getting a doctorate for free. Bumping into co-eds all day is just a bonus. That doesn’t mean I can’t recognize bullshit when I see it.”

“Any of Capriati’s teachers still here?”

I hadn’t seen any names on the transcripts.

“Jesus, Rhode, you want me to do your job for you? Go down to the Registrar’s Office and find out.”

“All you academic types are lazy.”

“Mention my name at the Registrar and if you talk to any of the professors. Though I’m not sure that will help. They live in their own world and they don’t like me in it.”

I held up a grainy photo of Capriati wearing a jacket and tie.

“Yearbook shot?”

“Yeah. When he was a senior.”

“Can I get the yearbook?”

“There’s only that graduation shot of him and a couple with him on the wrestling team. They’re all in the file. Like I said, he wasn’t a joiner.”

“I may want to blow this up and have copies made. The resolution isn’t good. I’d rather work from the original page.”

“The photographer is listed on the credit page. Maybe you can go right to him. If he’s still in business he may still have the negatives.”

“I’d like the yearbook just in case. Besides, it will have the names of his classmates. Might give me some leads. Maybe he kept in touch.”

“That’s a lot of kids. The yearbook won’t tell you who Capriati was close to. You can’t contact them all, can you?”

“I’d probably contact those who still live around here. I might get lucky. Six degrees of separation and all that.”

Clapper looked dubious.

“You have heard about the Internet, haven’t you?”

“This is an unusual guy.”

“Must be. Anyway, I’ll call the library and tell them to pull the yearbook for you. They’ll want it back. Not too many left after all this time. Don’t lose it, for God’s sake. I’d rather go through Katrina again than have a hassle with one of our librarians.”

  After I left Dave, I found a bench outside on the common and went through the file. It didn’t take long. Clapper was right. Billy Capriati had been a solid student, maintaining a 3.2 Grade Point Average as a finance major. He showed a particular aptitude for mathematics, which undoubtedly came in handy during his embezzlement. Only a few B’s and C’s, and one D, all in Liberal Arts courses. One of the C’s was in something called “Moral Decisions in a Pragmatic World.” I suspected Billy Cap hadn’t drawn the right conclusions from that course. The D was in “America’s Real Manifest Destiny: The Subjugation and Exploitation of Women.” He should have aced that one.

Most of the other stuff in the file was boilerplate. The news clips that mentioned Capriati ran along the lines of one that said “Bear Wrestlers Pin Ryder 9-3.” If ever a headline called for a typo, that was it. He didn’t seem to have any extracurricular interests outside wrestling. Not even intramural football to mitigate the lie to Ellen James. His medical reports listed a few minor injuries related to wrestling and some of the meds he was on, mostly low-dose painkillers. There were some mildly warning comments about neck sprains, rotator cuffs and a hip flexor. But he was always cleared to wrestle, and did. For a conman, Billy Cap was a tough-enough kid. 

The admissions and graduation information was more productive. I wrote down his address, phone number and other personal data. All of it was ancient history, but better than nothing. There was also his Social Security number, which Ellen James had not been able to provide. Social Security numbers are ageless. They follow us from cradle to grave, and sometimes beyond. The other private dicks and the cops Ellen had contacted had the number by now, but it was still my best chance of tracking Capriati down. My cell phone beeped. It was Alice Watts.

“You are nothing if not persistent,” she said.

“Telemarketers are persistent,” I said. “Private eyes are dogged.”

“Do you know where the Bear’s Den is? In the old Admin building?”

I said I did.

“I’m free in about an hour and a half, at 12:50. Is that convenient?”

I said it was.