Hiding Tom Hawk (16 page)

“Great, I’ll tell him.” She hung up.

“All set. Report to work in the morning and bring your clothes and stuff.”

“Okay. Thanks, I guess. I’m not sure I’ll like Gary better than my last roommate. As soon as I’m gone you should still come clean with the police about seeing someone, Angelo or not, on your beach.”

“No. I have my own problems with the police, Tom. I’m not legal yet as a B&B, only as student housing, and I have non-students here. And I’m kind of on probation.”

“Probation for what?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

“Anything that might bring a law officer around has to do with me these days.”

“Ah, crap. Fine, here it is. I had a boyfriend I was serious about a couple years ago. He was drafted and sent to ’Nam, where he dumped me for an Asian woman. I got depressed and blamed Nixon. My parents are both teachers. They relocated a couple years ago to my mom’s hometown, a northern Detroit suburb, for better jobs at a new high school named after President Eisenhower.” She stopped and bit her lip. “I went there to see them and go with them to the opening ceremony. Then I learned that Nixon was going to come and dedicate the place.”

“And you assaulted him?” He was incredulous.

“Of course not. I spray painted a peace symbol on his helicopter, is all I did. They caught me right away. I gotta tell you,
no one
who works for Nixon has
any
sense of humor. My mom and dad nearly got fired. I spent four nights in jail, and I had to see a shrink for three months.”

“Unbelievable. You’re one tough cookie, Beth Kessler.” He meant it, but just now she looked afraid, fragile.

“Tom, stay with me.”

“What? We’ve already made a deal for me to go to Gary’s place.”

“I mean right now. Stay with me right now.” She got up and went to lock the door.

He moved to her bed.

****

The next morning Robert told Tom Gary had called and told him he was demoted to grocery store clerk. Later at breakfast he told everyone there was no way he was going to keep working for that prick and leave Renada defenseless against the evil Horst. He went to the hall to call Gary back and quit.

Wyatt was puzzled. He asked Tom, “Don’t you work at that grocery store, too?”

“Yeah. Actually, I’m going to stay there a few days while Beth works on my room.” Tom looked for reaction from Dani, Robert, and Renada, who had all been briefed on the defense plan. They kept eating calmly.

Wyatt offered, “I could use something part-time. Could they use more help?”

Tom thought about it. It would get Wyatt out from underfoot during the day and he wouldn’t be wondering why the other four were on guard. He looked at Robert, who shrugged as to say
Go for it
.

Tom called Gary, who grumbled about Robert being an ingrate but agreed he needed a replacement, fast, at least for the mornings. Robert gave Tom the keys to the Plymouth and went to patrol Beth’s property with cheap binoculars, a can of Pepsi, and one of her baseball bats. Tom packed his belongings in the Plymouth trunk and drove to the store with Wyatt following him in the muscle-bound Firebird, of which Tom was by now blatantly jealous.

Looking at the exterior back of the store, the apartment part, he decided to put in his first day’s work before moving his worldly goods into so dubious a dwelling. Gary installed Wyatt at the front counter without ceremony, telling him to come and get him if he needed help, but he had to talk to Tom whom he motioned to the back of the store. “Why did Robert quit me, Tomahawk?”

Tom wasn’t going to discuss his problem with Harv and Marv unless he had to. It might scare Gary and get Tom fired. He said, “Robert’s girlfriend has a problem, thinks she is in danger and needs his protection.”

“Does she?”

“I don’t know. She’s a strange woman. Also, he says fronting for you has got everyone in the county mad at him and he is going to lay low for a while. He’s convinced some of your deferment clients were going to scrape a county road with him.” Tom described the visit to Mildred’s.

Gary sighed. “That lad needs to grow a pair. He’s afraid of the IRS, the draft, the elders, the students, and from what you say, Mildred.”

“That’s about it.” Of course, Robert had also been kidnapped by two mobsters looking for Tom.

Gary whined, “I really hoped we could nail down the deal with her. I could go to seventeen thousand on the mineral rights if I had to.”

“Gary, she wants to sell the whole place, not just the mineral rights. She wants a hundred grand.”

“Nuts. That’s what I get for keeping this store open to spare her pals having to drive their charcoal gray and pink De Sotos to Houghton for groceries. She’s one mean old lady. You think someone’s putting her up to this?”

“I have no idea. She’s dating the Chief. They went out last night.”

“Aw, triple nuts. We’re going to have to be careful those two don’t cut
us
out. I can’t afford to buy her whole place. Look, I’ve got to pull some legal stuff together to go to court. You have to go across the street and see Mildred at work; make sure you guys understood her right.”

“Across the street?”

“Yeah, she works over there three doors down at the Chamber of Commerce office.”

“Gary, I’ll go, but I know what she said, she said a hundred grand for the whole place.”

“Well, maybe she’s changed her mind. Maybe the Chief gave her some sugar last night and she’s feeling more reasonable. Just go over and ask, will you? I’ll finish training Wylie.”

“Wyatt.”

“Uh-huh.”

A small sign on the Chamber office door informed visitors the place was closed for thirty minutes. Like so many such messages, it didn’t tell when the thirty minutes had started. Tom reported back to Gary in that little tiny office. He was not pleased. He complained, “We absolutely have to talk to her again. Robert has screwed this up. He screws everything up. From now on you’re my number two, Tomahawk. You help me with every part of the operation while I deal with these chicken shit lawsuits.

“Robert will come crawling back. You can use him for a gopher or fire his sorry ass if Wynn works out. I don’t care. You’re my right-hand man now.”

“I can’t just walk in and pick up on everything, Gary. I need to see the mine, the factory, all of your businesses.”

“Oh. Well, sure, but I may not have time to take you to our other operations today.”

So Beth was right. There weren’t many tangible assets to Gary’s empire besides the grocery store. “I still need to somehow understand what it is you do around here if I’m going to help you. So what
can
I see this morning? How about a look at your books? You have to be open with me if I’m to help you.”

Gary’s eyes flickered nervously. He stood motionless for several seconds. Finally he insisted, “If you’re going to see the books, then you have to be open with me too. You’re hiding from the law, Tomahawk, isn’t that right?”

Tom sat in stony silence.

“Come on. I’m not going to rat you out. You’ve got cop problems.”

“Yes, sort of.”

“I knew it. Relax, kiddo. That might be your biggest charm for me. Come on.” He took him further to the rear of the building, into a storeroom with a door straight ahead to his living quarters, and another to the left with a heavy rotating latch. Next to that door was a cracked interior-wall window.

“What the heck is this?” Tom wanted to know.

“This
was
a walk-in freezer.” He opened the latch and the door. “The refrigeration is off now but it still works. The place is super-insulated. But now, it’s the core of my operation.” He opened the door, triggering an overhead light. It smelled of paper dust, not meat. The far wall was filled with scratched and dented file cabinets, each with a sturdy lock.

“This is where you keep the ‘pizzas’ and stuff, then?”

“Bingo. And the books, but that’s not to go any further, Tomahawk.” He unlocked a file cabinet. “Okey-dokey then, I wonder which set of books would get you started sooner.”

“Which set?”

“Yeah, in the top drawer there’s the set Robert keeps for me that has basically everything. Then in the bottom drawer there’s my simplified set that I use for the IRS, the bank, and the university folks. I probably shouldn’t have brought this up. Robert doesn’t know about my set. He gets rattled so easily by this sort of thing.”

“Can I ask a question?”

“Sure, anything, you’re my main man now.”

“What you’re doing, keeping two sets of books, that’s illegal. Yet you’re telling me all about it, letting me rummage through them. How do you know I won’t turn you in, Gary?”

Gary looked disappointed in Tom. “I thought we’d just been through that. You’re in trouble with the cops yourself and you’re hiding here. If one of us goes down, we both do. As to the books, after you go through them you’ll see most of my operation is either legit or harmless to anyone but Nixon and General Westmoreland. My second set of books is more to keep life simple for everyone than to cheat Uncle Sam or the local bankers. And by the way, if this does get out, Robert takes the fall.”

“I see. I need to look at both sets so I don’t screw anything up for you.”

“Fine then, knock yourself out.” Gary took out two battered ledgers and re-locked the cabinet. “There you go. When you’re done we’ll talk about Mildred’s mining rights.” The street doorbell tinkled and Tom took the ledgers to the office. Gary headed to the front of the store to watch Wyatt serve a customer.

Both sets of books were abominable. Robert could be jailed for sloppiness and Gary for wildly crooked numbers. Gary was forgiving of his elderly grocery customers, who bought on credit and had trouble paying. The store ran at a loss, but Gary’s books showed a profit to deflect suspicion. Was he some sort of food basket Robin Hood?

The records alleged minimum wage pay to numerous student “employees.” Maybe Gary actually gave them money; probably not. It was harder to figure how he handled the student’s payments to him for stolen final exams, fake early scheduling letters, and bogus critical skills jobs in science and engineering.

The Grant mine was the derelict property adjacent to Aunt Mildred’s place that he’d stumbled upon the day before. From the look of it, if Gary had ever conducted any operations there, it had been at about age six. He did have a factory six or seven miles away where the defense widget for the Navy was made.

Gary returned, whistling happily, seemingly satisfied with Wyatt’s work and unconcerned about his court date. Whatever his defects, the man was optimism personified. He inquired, “Okay, Tomahawk, what do you think?”

It would not be tactful to characterize the bookkeeping, so Tom said, “I think I can be of most help to your manufacturing operation. I want to go and see the plant. But there’s no need for you to babysit me, I can go out there alone.”

Gary shook his head. “Not now. I’ve got to get over to the courthouse, so I need you to watch Wyatt watch the store so we’re sure he can handle it. We’ll both go over and talk to Mildred when I get back. Then, when that’s done, we can go and look at the factory.”

Gary left to drive off in a blue Thunderbird with a crease in the left quarter panel. Tom watched Wyatt wait on a couple of elderly customers; bent-over women and pot-bellied men. One senior woman smiled at Tom and commented on how tall he was. Ha. Dani should hear this.

****

Beth Kessler was at her bedroom desk near the open door to her room. The three women were alone in the house. Tom and the new boarder, Wyatt, had gone to the grocery store, and Robert was on guard patrol.

Although reared in Midwestern Protestant orthodoxy, Beth felt no guilt about what she had done last night. She was twenty-six years old and a believer in first impressions, even first impulses. Tom Hawk impressed her. Maybe she wasn’t in love, but she guessed she was on the way there. How else could they have found the passion to have done what they had after he’d told her about Renada and the Stasi and Dani and the mob?

Before breakfast, Renada had insisted on invading her kitchen and Beth, spent after a night with Tom, had not complained. The German had prepared a fantastic breakfast strudel that they had all raved about. Her coffee had been heavenly, and Beth told herself that wasn’t just because she’d had a busy night: first fretting about the dead man and if she’d help kill him, and then screwing a big Marine.

She thought that Tom and she had acted naturally at breakfast. If anyone suspected what they had done, they covered it well. Wyatt had seemed as clueless about her and Tom as he did about everything else, and Robert had been preoccupied with quitting Gary and the defensive arrangements for her house. Renada’s breakfast conversation had turned toward ideas, overconfidently stated but good ones, for the success of the B&B. Only Dani had seemed to cast the lovers some sideward glances.

Renada appeared beside the desk and interrupted her daydreaming. She smiled at Beth. “Have you been in your parlor since breakfast?”

“No, why?”

“I have been a bad girl. And I made Dani to help me. Come.”

They had moved furniture. The area rug and twin flanking sofas were at forty-five degrees to the walls of the room. Now any seated person could look out the bay window. The room no longer looked under-furnished, and the traffic flow was improved. A pair of chairs and a lamp table had been relocated, and Beth saw at once that this astonishingly made a more intimate grouping and yet better tied them to the rest of the seating, if that was what you wanted. “This is fantastic, Renada.”

“It is just an application of some proven Oriental principles.” The words were modest, but her posture and eyes brimmed with pride.

Beth bit her lip as she always did when formulating important words to speak. She ventured, “You’re a great cook and you really have a lot of good decorating ideas. I was wondering, are you thinking of getting work locally?”

“Yes, I want to stay and I must therefore work.”

“I could use you here. I can’t pay you much, maybe a little over our minimum wage, but the room would be free as part of the deal.”

“I could also make breakfasts?”