Deep Pockets (32 page)

“I couldn’t agree more. Who was Helen looking for?” I was starting to feel a little woozy, but I didn’t want to sit. If I sat on the wooden bench to the side of the counter, I’d feel like a felon, first off, and second, Wiseman would talk my ear off.

“You got Phil’s money?” he asked.

I handed him two fifties.

“She had three, maybe four files out. Which one you want?”

“I don’t know.”

He made a sound in his throat. “Then I figure you’re not a jump specialist. Least we know who we’re after. We just don’t know where to find ’em.”

“Does it matter, me not knowing?”

“Well, four files. I don’t know.”

“How’s this? If I locate any of your skips, I’ll let you know.”

“On the house?”

“On the house.”

He still looked undecided. I counted out another twenty, another fifty, another hundred.

“Now you’re broadcastin’ on my wavelength,” he said.

We made a deal — for copies of the files, plus Helen Orza’s number. He threw in the windup giraffe when I declared it my favorite, and he warned Sam that if he ever hit me again, he’d go looking for him personally. We were both giggling by the time we got back in the car.

“You’ve got an admirer,” Sam said.

I settled myself into the leather seat, pressed my hands over my eyes. “Whoa. That was some vicious old-guy breath back there. I thought I might faint for a minute.”

“Seriously, you look like you’re going to faint. How about some food?”

The block had pawnshops, bail bondsmen, beer cans in the gutter, the bleak air of failure. “Not around here.”

“We passed a diner a mile back.”

“Fine.”

I leaned back and closed my eyes. I’d thought I’d crack the files the minute I was out of Wiseman’s door. Instead, I clutched them against my chest and concentrated on breathing in and out, told myself I’d look them over in the diner.

There were only two other people in the place, singles at the counter. Sam commandeered a booth and a bowl of whatever soup was on tap, as fast as the lone waitress could bring it. I think a bill changed hands. The next thing I knew, I was spooning minestrone soup greedily into my mouth while Sam consulted a plastic menu and ordered.

My cell rang and one of the two men on the counter stools glared at me like I’d just interrupted his elegant meal in the whispery softness of the Ritz dining room. I thought about letting the damn thing ring, but then I grabbed it out of my backpack.

Leon. I told him I was okay, couldn’t talk, that I’d be in touch. Sam was watching with a carefully neutral expression on his face.

“A guy I’m seeing,” I said when I hung up. Then I thought, damn it, I didn’t have to say anything. It’s not like I owe him an explanation of my life.

“FBI?”

I raised an eyebrow, spooned more soup. My stomach was starting to settle, my headache diminish. The red counter stools looked less abnormally bright.

“Couple guys thought they ought to warn me. You like him?”

“I like him. Let’s not talk about this now, okay?”

“Okay.”

The waitress slammed plates in front of us. The grilled cheese sandwich came with a bag of potato chips. There was another bowl of soup, and I chose that, along with a packet of saltines and a Pepsi.

Sam said, “So who do you figure is in Wiseman’s files? Your dead con, Ben Dowling?”

I swallowed, took a breather. The soup still felt good going down, but I was getting full. “No. I’m figuring the con’s partner, the blackmailer, also possibly the murderer. Somebody Dowling was working with.”

“How will you recognize him?”

“Probably I won’t. I’ll go back to the head of security at Improvisational Technologies and convince him to let me run through their tapes.” I tapped Wiseman’s files with my index finger. “I’ll spot one of these bail jumpers going in or out of Impro. Then I’ll find out why the guy has it in for Chaney, the whole deal, give it to the cops.”

“Sounds good,” Sam said between bites of his sandwich. “Maybe we could have dinner tonight?”

“Sam, you know I’d love to, but let me see how I feel later. I may need a nap.”

“That would be good, too.” He gave me a long, meaningful glance from under hooded eyelids. “You going to finish that soup?”

“It’s yours.”

I opened the first slim folder. It contained two sheets of paper concerning a fellow named Domingo Gaston, arrested for felonious assault, with a side of drunk and disorderly on October 18 of the previous year. Juan Marie Franciosa, Gaston’s brother-in-law, was listed as his indemnitor, the man who’d come up with the $3,200 bail. There were addresses and phone numbers for both men, scribbled notes saying that Gaston had missed an appearance in court on January 3, and that Juan Marie had disavowed any knowledge of his whereabouts.

Wiseman had posed Domingo Gaston in front of the counter, taken a Polaroid shot for future identification purposes. My copy of the snapshot was paper-clipped to a sheet of lined paper that said “Height: five eight, weight: 145; brown, brown.” I took the last two to mean hair and eyes.

The waitress brought me another Pepsi. It was in a tall glass full of ice cubes and flat as pond water. I stuck Gaston’s file at the bottom of the pile, opened number two, studied a photo of Markham Rodney Yarrow, and read about his arrest for breaking into a 1999 Mercury Sable while toting a master key and a pry bar. His cousin, Marilyn Sue Yarrow, had cosigned for him, and he’d repaid her $2,900 worth of faith by skipping town. I was surprised at the minimal amount of information Wiseman collected. He didn’t list Social Security numbers, evidently didn’t ask for dates of birth, almost like he was daring his clients to run.

I opened file number three.

“Sam,” I said. “We have to go.”

“Let me get the check.”

He took one look at my face and slapped a twenty on the counter. I was already halfway to the door.

In Polaroid number three, Donna Barnette stood in front of Wiseman’s counter, eyes staring straight at the camera, expression defiant, her whole body sullen and resentful. She had ruffled short hair, wore jeans and a tank top. The notation on the attached sheet of paper said “Height: five two; weight: ninety-five; blond, blue.”

She was Denali Brinkman.

No wonder the Harvard Admissions office didn’t want
to talk about Denali Brinkman. I sat at my desk and shielded my eyes from the lamp. They felt bruised by the light, and I wondered if the curious overbrightness was due to the mild concussion. I wondered how much my insurance company would pay toward a new car, and what I’d buy. I wondered where I’d hidden the aspirin.

Sam was gone, as abruptly and completely as if he’d disappeared in a puff of smoke. The whole New Hampshire interlude was taking on the shape of a dreamlike fairy tale, “Sleeping Beauty” morphing into an offbeat version of “The Frog Prince,” in which the enchanted frog remained amphibious, but the beautiful princess turned into a beast.

Denali Brinkman was Donna Barnette, who’d been charged with forging driver’s licenses and running a confidence game in Epping, New Hampshire, a little over a year ago. Who’d posted $3,800 bail, indemnified by a nonexistent cousin, and evaporated, only to reappear as a Harvard student.

I flipped off the lamp and sat in the shadows. I wondered whether she’d taken the SATs and ACTs herself or found a way to borrow someone else’s scores, how she’d managed transcripts and essays. Had she stolen her essays off the Internet, or composed them herself? She’d have needed a confederate, someone to mail her application and respond to her acceptance, preferably from far away. Maybe from Switzerland. I wondered who old Albert Brinkman really was, a fellow con artist, a stooge?

I felt a grudging tug of admiration. What impressed me most was the planning, the long-term thinking. Most cons have a hard time planning from Monday night till Tuesday morning. Donna Barnette had to have been uncannily bright, driven, Harvard material in an unusual guise.

I leaned forward, head in hands, the heels of my palms massaging my temples. I admit it, I felt wretched. My head ached like hell. The small abrasions along my right side itched underneath the bandages and my shoulder throbbed. Sam Gianelli had dropped me at my doorstep and left.

True, he’d kissed me thoroughly. True, he’d promised to call. True, I’d chased him away, insisting I had work to do that couldn’t wait. There was an added strangeness to the interlude that I was only now starting to appreciate. What had Sam been doing in New Hampshire, alone, with no bodyguards, driving his own car? Not once had he been interrupted by the shrill ring of a cell phone. Since he’d taken over his terminally ill father’s mob job, Sam’s movements had been circumscribed, his time not his own. And yet, he’d been there.

I forced my mind away from Sam and back to the case. How did the knowledge that Denali Brinkman was not who she seemed to be help or hurt Wilson Chaney? I recalled his early raptures, how different she was from the ordinary student, how much more mature than the other girls, what a different life she’d led. The truth about Brinkman made Chaney seem more truthful, and one item he’d emphasized was that Denali had made a play for him, not the other way around. I’d discounted his claim at the time, but now I accepted it as fact:
Denali had made a play for him
. So what had she hoped to gain by seducing her teacher?

My head was pounding like a snare drum. The area under my eye felt tender and my shoulder was on fire. I swallowed aspirin dry from a bottle I finally located in my desk drawer.

Denali Brinkman had entered Harvard under false pretenses. She had seduced her professor, a man currently developing a new ADHD drug. A medium-sized Swiss pharmaceutical firm had wanted the company and presumably the drug, but Chaney had refused to sell. Denali Brinkman had a Swiss connection, possibly the same Uncle Albert who’d neglected to call me back. Denali Brinkman had partnered up with another ex-con, Benjy Dowling, who’d worked at Chaney’s lab. Why?

I slammed the flat of my hand on my desk in frustration, recoiled from the sharp smack. Denali Brinkman was dead. Possibly Benjy Dowling had tried to carry on with her plan, whatever it was. Now Dowling was dead, too. Had Denali/Donna been killed by someone from her former life, or had she been killed by Dowling? Had she killed herself after all, knowing that Helen Orza, New Hampshire bounty hunter, was on her trail, that Harvard would find out who she was, that she’d be kicked out and publicly disgraced?

I chewed another aspirin, shuddering at the grainy bitterness on my tongue. What the hell was public disgrace anymore? Chaney might be a target for blackmail, but he was a university professor. Wasn’t it more likely that Denali/Donna, con artist, once identified as a fraud, would have beaten the New Hampshire charges and gone on the
Jerry Springer Show
to tell the world how she’d made a fool of Harvard? Wind up an instant celebrity, the subject of some made-for-TV movie? Not kill herself.

I still thought she’d been murdered, but did it matter? I didn’t know. I just knew I had to keep moving. The more time passes, the less chance there is of solving any crime, especially murder. Like a shark, an investigation has to move or it dies. I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t slow it down, couldn’t take time to consider what it meant to have Sam come back into my life, Sam, sitting patiently at my bedside till I woke. Damn. This investigation felt more like a runaway train than a shark.

I tried Chaney’s lawyer, Todd Geary, got a recording, listened to tape spooling in my ear until it stopped and began to hum. I clicked the receiver down, closed my eyes, tried to catch the train of the investigation, to remember where I’d been headed before the damned truck rammed my car and temporarily derailed me. I’d been talking to Officer Burkett. I’d asked him about the missing TransAm, speculated about the benzos listed on the autopsy report.

I phoned Burkett at his home, his office. Nothing. I left messages, thanking him for his rescue efforts, asking him to call. I tugged my hair and bit the rough edge off a fingernail. Why didn’t he have a cell? Why didn’t Geary have a cell? I bet both of them did, but neither had given me the damned number. I drummed my fingers on my desk in time with the throb in my shoulder.

I needed to know who’d turned Chaney in this time, who’d told the cops that Dennison and Dowling were one and the same. Who could I call at the Brighton station? Who would talk to me? Who owed me? I recalled and discarded several names. Damn it, wasn’t there anyone? I remembered the Hispanic woman who ran the cleaning service. If the cops hadn’t received another anonymous tip, they’d most likely learned about Dowling’s dual identity from Fidelia Moros Santos. If she’d seen Dowling’s photo in the news, linked it with her Ben, she’d have run to the cops in full cry.

She answered the phone with a dispirited droop in her voice, but her tone changed as soon as I identified myself as the redheaded woman who’d visited after the break-in.

“
Ai
, it is finally you,” she said eagerly. “Who are you, really? What is your name,
por favor
? The
polícia
say they don’t know you. Please, you will come again? I must see you.” She spoke so quickly, I could barely understand.

“What is it?”

“I must see you now. Today. I must ask you — I have decided you are someone I can trust.”

I took the aspirin bottle out of the drawer again, tried to read the tiny print on the label. How many were too many? While I screwed up my eyes, I explained to Señorita Moros Santos that I had no transportation. She was adamant: I must come. I tried to ask her whether she’d spoken to the cops about Dennison/Dowling, but she shut me down cold. She would say nothing on the telephone. She knew about those things — bugs. She knew the telephone was not safe. I shrugged, blew out a deep breath, told her I’d be there, then called Gloria, who agreed to send Leroy with a cab.

“I thought I saw you pull up in a Porsche?” Roz came clattering downstairs, perched on platform shoes. “Whoa, what the hell happened?”

“A crazed New Hampshire motorist.”