Favorite Sons (31 page)

“Why do you say that?”

“One of them said it was an investigation into the misappropriation of funds. I asked by who and he said it wasn't any of my business because it didn't occur in your jurisdiction. I asked
them if I could see the checks and they just laughed. Is it possible they were investigating whoever sent him the money?”

I wondered just how committed Carson Nash was to suffocating events so long past. “Very possible. I was going through some old campaign records in Jefferson County this morning and found a decades-long series of payoffs to the county prosecutor.”

“Why would they be looking at records in Summit County?”

“I don't know. Maybe money is being funneled through the prosecutor's office to Vukovich.” “Hush money?”

“It's just a guess, but it wouldn't surprise me. Why else would the Main Street Task Force get involved? The prosecutor here is a guy name Botticelli and he's as slimy as they come.”

“Well, that's all I have.”

“Good job. If you find out anything else, give me a buzz.”

“Will do, boss.”

I disconnected from Judy Norris and hit the voice mail, picking up a message that had come in during the call. It was another of what seemed to be a steady stream of events designed solely to twist my intestines in knots. “Mr. Van Buren, it's Barbara Zeffiro with the
Beacon Journal.
I'm interested in talking to you about Peter Sanchez. Would you please return my call at your earliest convenience. Thank you.”

My groan was audible, and that familiar salty bile filled the top of my throat. I made it my policy to always return phone calls, and return them promptly if the call was from a reporter. While I didn't want to return this one, I was afraid not to. I highlighted her number and hit the talk button. She picked up on the first ring.

“Newsroom, Barbara Zeffiro.”

“Barbara, it's Hutchinson Van Buren.”

“Oh, Mr. Van Buren, thanks for calling back. I wanted to ask you about Peter Sanchez.”

I had been around reporters long enough to know that when they had the goods on you, they clobbered you with the information right from the get-go. Opened-ended questions usually signaled a
fishing expedition. “Peter Sanchez? You need to help me out a little here, Barbara. What about him?”

“Uh, well, quite frankly, I was hoping you could tell me.”

“I'm not sure what that means.”

“I received an anonymous phone call this morning. The caller said that if I wanted a good story I should ask you about Peter Sanchez.”

“That's all he told you?”

“Pretty much.”

“I don't think I can help you out, Barbara.”

“Is he a target of an investigation?”

“If he was . . .”

“You wouldn't be able to tell me anyway.”

“Correct.”

“Okay, if there comes a point where you can talk about this . . .”

“You'll be the first to know. I always honor a scoop, Barbara.”

“Great, thanks, appreciate it. I've got to run.”

I breathed with relief, the tightness in my chest leaving with my breath. Vukovich had launched one over my bow, letting me know he was serious. I had not for one second believed he wasn't.

I called Margaret. “Any calls?”

“Mr. Van Buren, do you enjoy asking me questions that you already know the answer to? You know what this office is like. It's a fire fight, just like always, but I've got it under control.”

“That guy who was in my office Wednesday . . . ?”

“You mean Jack?”

“Yes, Jack. Have you heard from him today?”

“Only about eight times. One time he's angry, the next time he tries to charm me. He's a very strange bird.”

After disconnecting from Margaret, I pulled the index card from my wallet and alternately watched the road while punching in Vukovich's phone number. “What's the deal, Jack?” I asked.

“Where are you?”

“None of your damn business. What are you doing calling Barbara Zeffiro? You said I had a week; it's been two days.”

“When I call your office, I expect you to get back to me, pronto. I'm not screwing around. I was letting you know I'm serious.”

“So, do I have a week or not?”

“I want to know where things are, right now.”

“I'm still mulling over my options.”

“What options?” he yelled. “What are you using for evidence, fairy dust? If that cop had anything solid I'd already be in jail.”

“If that's true, why did you show up in my office?” I enjoyed his moment of silence. “Just so there is no misunderstanding, Jack, the next sound you hear is going to be me hanging up on you.” I pushed the end call button. I had made a tactical error, however, by calling him on my cell phone. He had my number and it took all of about twenty seconds for my phone to ring again. I let it roll to voice mail. I was starting to hate my life. Every time I took a step it was on a land mine—Shelly, Vukovich, Botticelli Junior.

Before I went back to the Stoney Hollow Motel, I stopped by the drugstore for shaving cream, went to the post office to get a package in the mail, and ran the Pacifica through the car wash. All along I was talking into my digital recorder, making verbal notations of ideas, to-dos, and general housekeeping items at the office that I needed to attend to once I finished dealing with the chaos created by the ghost of Petey Sanchez. As the spinning brushes of the car wash rolled over my hood, I dug through my briefcase until I found a black folder containing business cards. I tapped out the number of Darrell Tubbs, who was the director of the Main Street Task Force, a caustic former Cleveland police captain whose days were numbered if I won the election. His secretary answered the phone and I was put on hold for nearly five minutes. The Pacifica was getting a hot carnauba wax when the canned music began playing in my ear, and I was driving toward the Stoney Hollow Motel on Dean Martin Boulevard when he finally picked up the phone.

“Tubbs speaking,” he said.

“Mr. Tubbs, this is Hutchinson Van Buren in Summit County.”

There was an uncomfortable pause as he refused to acknowledge the statement. It was an intimidation tactic, but one with which I was familiar. He wanted me to keep talking. I said nothing, and after several seconds he asked, “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Van Buren?”

“You could tell me what members of your task force are doing snooping around in Summit County.”

“Mr. Van Buren, you know how this game works. I'm not at liberty to discuss ongoing investigations, even with someone who might be my future boss.”

“This has nothing to do with politics. Your investigators are working in my county and I'm the goddamn prosecutor. When you go into another agency's jurisdiction it's considered professional courtesy to contact them.”

“Sounds like you found out on your own.”

If I won the election, I was going to personally fire his ass and take great pleasure in doing so. “Your men told my investigator it was a misappropriation of funds investigation. I know who received the money. Is the sender of the funds the target of your investigation?”

“Again, I'm not at liberty to discuss specifics. However, I can tell you this. When we pull this guy down, it's going to be big news.”

“I'll be talking to you, Tubbs.” I hung up, hoping he knew he was in my crosshairs. “Big news,” I thought. For all their talk of fraternity, cops loved nothing more than to take down one of their brethren, or an elected official. The most frequent targets of the Main Street Task Force were elected officials. Perhaps there was more to the Botticelli-Nash connection than I realized.

T
here was a man who used to eat at the horseshoe dining counter at S.S. Kresge in Steubenville who was missing the left half of his face. It looked as though his face had been made of wax and he stood too close to a flame, the skin dissolving into a convex mass between his skull and a thin jaw line, taking with it his eye, ear, and a part of his nose. The pink of the left side of his lips slid into a swirl of crumpled flesh. His name was Kilpatrick and I had heard two stories, one that he was disfigured by a German grenade in World War II, and another in which molten slag slopped out of a thimble car in the mill and splattered on his face. He was a Civil War reenactor and I saw him squatting near a cook fire at an encampment at Community Park in Crystalton one Fourth of July and he winked at me.

He was one of the many characters of my youth. The valley was full of hardy men who wore hard hats and sleeveless shirts and carried metal lunch buckets to work. But there also was a slew of characters that would have seemed out of place anywhere else in the world. There was Rooster Man, who pushed a wobbling grocery cart loaded with his possessions through the streets of Steubenville, stopping periodically to flap his arms and crow. Box Man, who lived in a maze of cardboard refrigerator and appliance boxes that he wove together with duct tape and clothes hangers under the Market Street Bridge. We got to know The Troll, a foul-smelling, low-level mob courier who hung around the Federal Restaurant and collected numbers and sports spot sheet wagers for the Antonelli crime family
in Pittsburgh. Boon Bachman was a millwright at Weirton Steel who opened beer bottles with his eye socket and claimed to have once knocked out the great Rocky Marciano in an amateur boxing match.

They were a lively bunch who I embraced as my own when I was growing up in the Upper Ohio River Valley. I was thinking about Rooster Man, Box Man, and The Troll as I pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Crazy Horse Bar. A muscular man with Confederate flag tattoos on both biceps and a skinny guy with a ponytail and filthy blue jeans leaned against the side of a pickup truck and gave me wary eyes as I got out of the Pacifica and made my way to the front door. These were no longer my people. Or rather, I was no longer one of them. I had long ago left the valley and was now the interloper. Although I hadn't lived there for years, I had always felt my roots were still in the valley. Now, it was painfully obvious that I was every bit the outsider.

The Crazy Horse Bar was barely visible from Jewett Germano Road, tucked into a hollow in a one-story cement block building with white paint chips the size of a man's hand peeling off the exterior walls. Neon beer signs clogged the small windows that were cut close to the roofline. An aluminum storm door was bent back on its hinges; the wooden exterior door skidded across worn linoleum as I pushed and walked in behind it. The inside was dark and smelled of cigarettes, marijuana, and beer-soaked carpet. Not every set of eyes turned to look when I walked in, but enough did to make me uncomfortable.

I took a seat on a vinyl stool around the corner of the bar from a man whose ass could have covered three stools. He had scraggly brown hair that hung to his shoulders and a beard to match; his face had such rolls of fat that he looked like a giant insect dressed in bib overalls. I was wearing khaki slacks and a blue dress shirt with pink pinstripes. It had not been a wise wardrobe decision. As he drank a draft beer, the man stared at me without subtlety, trying to play the role of the badass. There are men in this world that it takes just one look to realize they are not to be toyed with, men like Ricky Blood or Elmer Glick. It's not their arms or chest or the way they talk; rather, you see it in their eyes. Their eyes look like those of a shark, cold and dark. The slob at the bar had no such look. I had prosecuted
enough men to know the difference. He was fat and soft, flab rolling down around his belly. Having said that, he was still six inches taller and a hundred and fifty pounds heavier than I was.

The bartender was trim, in a clean white T-shirt, with a ducktail haircut and a cigarette tucked behind an ear. He nodded, not a hello nod, but a what-do-you-want nod. I ordered a bottle of Budweiser. I kept my eyes on the bartender, but could feel the eyes of the big man boring into the side of my head. When the bartender set the beer in front of me, I slid a five across the bar and said, “I'm looking for an old friend of mine. I was told he hangs here.”

He looked at me for a moment, then said, “Is that a question?”

“His name's Adrian Nash.”

He crossed his arms. “What do you want him for?”

“I just need to talk to him.”

“You a cop?”

“Do I look like a cop?'”

“That isn't what I asked you.” The giant insect got up and walked behind me, but off to the left enough that I could see him out of the corner of my eye, and close enough that I could smell his breath, a mixture of beer and the rancid odor of rotting teeth. The bartender's eyes darted between me and the insect. “Want to try this again? You a cop?”

I took a sip of my beer and tried not to act rattled, though I could feel the burn of anger and fear creeping up around my collar. “Who I am doesn't matter, but who I'm going to be in two months does. In two months I'm going to be the attorney general of the state of Ohio.” I pulled out a business card and pushed it across the bar; it landed near the five-dollar bill. The bartender looked at it, but didn't pick it up. “There are four girls over at that table and I'd bet my mortgage that at least three of them are underage. I smelled marijuana the minute I walked in this shit hole, and I'll bet there are more health code violations and cockroaches in that kitchen than one man could count in a lifetime. If you want to give me a hard way to go, trust me that I won't forget this after I'm elected. So, tell the big grasshopper behind me to quit breathing down my neck and answer my question. Is Adrian Nash around?”

He motioned with his head and the big man slid back onto his stool. “If you're old friends, why don't you recognize him?” He walked to the other end of the bar.

Booths lined the walls of the Crazy Horse in the shape of an L. I scanned the short wall where three men and a woman talking with a cigarette in her mouth were tucked into one corner. I slipped off the stool and walked the longer length of the bar, looking into the booths in search of Adrian. He occupied none of them. I went back to my seat at the bar and gave the bartender a quizzical look. His arms were crossed and he lifted only an index finger and pointed to the foursome in the corner.