Invasion of Privacy - Jeremiah Healy (18 page)

She said, "You have an appointment somewhere?"

"No. I was just wondering how long we were going
to kick around the Wonders of the Ozarks before whoever it is you're
stalling for gets here."

A very slow nod. "I must be slipping."

"Not by much. I brought up the diploma,
remember? All you did was build on it."

Another nod.

I said, "You want to tell me why I'm being held
at all?"

The nodding stopped. "You don't know."

Tasker hadn't spoken it as a question. "No, I
don't."

"Somebody—I'm guessing you—forged a
signature on a letter to fraudulently obtain a former student's
records, seemingly with his permission?

"How about if I promise not to do it again?"

"You've probably violated a federal student
privacy act."

"Can you give me chapter and verse?"

Tasker said, "No."

"Then who are we waiting for, the FBI?"

"No. Our locals."

I leaned forward in my chair slowly, so as not to
excite Officer Dave. "Ms. Tasker, don't you think this is a
little excessive, given the circumstances?"

"Maybe you don't know all the circumstances?

"Like for instance?"

Tasker tapped the folder in front of her. "This
file belongs to Andrew Dees, class of 1973. Harriet's been in the
registrar's forever and remembered his name. He was killed in a car
accident two days after graduation. My first 'for instance' would be
why you're forging the signature of a boy dead twenty-odd years."

I sat back in my chair,
thinking Gail Tasker had a pretty good question there.

* * *

"Gail, what's up?"

We'd sat—Tasker and I, anyway, Officer Dave still
standing behind me—silently for another ten minutes, her studying
the tile like she had a final exam coming up on it. Dave shifted
position just enough to open the door when we heard a knock. The man
entering the room was around fifty, with a beer belly over brown
pants cinched with a cracked leather belt. His broad shoulders had
outgrown the green sports jacket two sizes ago, and he was the first
male I'd seen wearing a porkpie hat in probably a decade. What hair
the hat didn't hide had stayed black, and his walk was more a waddle
as he took up space against the wall near Tasker's diploma.

She said, "This is John Cuddy. Cuddy, Pete
Braverman."

"Detective Braverman?"

The man smiled, cruel and somehow familiar. "Chief
Braverman, if it matters to you."

I looked from one to the other. "Director of
Campus Security, Chief of Police. All the big guns, rolled out just
for me."

Braverman crossed his arms in front of his chest,
seriously threatening the seams of the jacket. "And just what
did you do, Mr. Cuddy'?"

"Maybe you'd best ask the director here."

Braverman kept his eyes in my direction long enough
to let me know he didn't like his questions answered that way, then
glanced toward Tasker.

She summed up what had happened so far.

When Tasker got to the part about Andrew Dees being
the student I was after, Braverman didn't look at all happy. Then he
came back to me.

"You got anything to add?"

"No."

"Why are you checking into things at the
university?"

"Confidential."

"That doesn't count for shit here, Cuddy,"
said Braverman. "You're not licensed in Vermont."

"All I did was try to get a record. I don't need
a license for that."

"Then you don't need to keep it confidential,
either."

"I'm not. I told you what I was doing, just not
why I was doing it."

"That doesn't explain you trying to beat the
registrar out of a record with a forged 1etter."

“
I wasn't trying to beat anything. I'd have been
happy to pay a reasonable copy charge."

The cruel smile. "Pity this isn't thirty years
ago. We'd save ourselves a lot of time."

I said, "Chief, Ms. Tasker already mentioned the
old-fashioned way. Living in the past wouldn't be good tactics for
either of you."

The smile died a little. Braverman brought one hand
up to rub his chin. He blinked twice, then turned to the desk.

"Gail, I got a bad feeling about this gentleman,
but I don't see what all we can do about it."

Tasker reddened a bit. "Pete, he forged a
request on a dead man."

Braverman said, "Yeah, but that just means Cuddy
here didn't know the boy—shit, he'd be what, in his forties
now?—was dead. That doesn't sound like much ground for prosecution
to me."

Tasker reddened a bit more. "So, what, we just
let him walk?"

"It's either that, or we're up to our mutual
asses in paperwork only to see him get less of a slap on the wrist
than a jaywalker down on Main."

Tasker didn't seem to like the way Braverman was
handling the situation. Frankly, I didn't blame her. In his shoes,
I'd have put me someplace while they had this talk, then come back to
me with a united front. Maybe the "don't-you-ever-again-on-my-beat"
sort of warning from both of them, even if they'd decided to cut me
loose. Tasker heard him out, though, before saying evenly, "It's
your call, Pete."

Braverman turned back to
me with a cruel smile. "Well, now, since I've got my car out
front, why don't I save Gail and Dave here the trouble of giving you
a lift back to yours?"

* * *

"Major reason I'm the chief here, nobody could
stand to partner up with me. Can you guess why?"

As soon as we'd gotten in his older, unmarked sedan,
I nearly gagged. The stale cigar smoke was as much a part of the car
as the upholstery it'd invaded. The sensation was like Mo Katzen's
office being reduced to a five-foot cube of tainted air.

Braverman took a thick, half-gone one about three
inches long from the ashtray and used a Bic lighter to coax it back
to life, the smoke puffs almost covering his face. Then he turned the
ignition key and started off.

"Major reason I keep this junker is the headroom
for my hat. Only one I've—"

"There a 'major reason' you let me watch back
there too?"

Braverman seemed to bite down hard on the cigar. "Let
you watch what?"

"You pulling rank on Tasker. She thought she
smelled a skunk, and you made a show of kicking the woodpile, but it
seemed to me you didn't really want to find out what might be in with
the logs."

A heavy drag this time, and a cloud of smoke as we
turned. "Gail called me, only told me her people were bringing
over some wiseass—her expression—who was making a fuss at the
registrar's and would I swing by, have a look. After she explained
the problem back in her office just now, it doesn't seem exactly like
capital murder, somehow."

When Braverman didn't continue, I said, "And so
I'm free to go,"

A variation on the cruel smile, lip winching over the
cigar. "Unless you'd rather be booked. I could still arrange
it."

"I don't think so."

"Good."

“
I mean, I don't think you'd book me."

Braverman made another turn, wagging his head. "And
you seemed so smart earlier."

"I get the feeling, Chief, that you want me the
hell out of Dodge instead of in it, defending myself on Tasker's idea
of charges."

"And why would I want that, Cuddy?"

"I honestly don't know."

We arrived at the Administration Building. "Which
one's yours?"

"The silver Prelude."

Braverman came to a stop behind my rear bumper.

"You like the older ones, too, eh?"

I just looked at him.

"Cuddy, there something still eating you?"

"Curiosity."

"Bad emotion, curiosity. Remember what it did
for the cat."

"You see lots of us cats around, Chief."

Braverman drew heavily on the cigar again. "Just
the live ones. Could be like icebergs, you know? Ten percent you can
see, the other ninety percent under the surface."

I got out of the car. As I closed the door, Chief
Pete Braverman said, "Deep under," before motoring slowly
away.
 

=13=

From the lot of the Administration Building, I drove
back through the gates, searching for a pay phone. I found one near
the Towne Restaurant and started dialing. I tried my office answering
service first. No message from Nancy, but a Mr. Zuppone had called
three times. Next my home telephone tape, tapping in the remote code
and getting three additional messages from Primo, each a little more
desperate, telling me to meet him at "the condo," which I
took to be my place. Still nothing from Nancy.

I thought Primo was better dealt with face-to-face in
Boston, after I knew a little more about "Andrew Dees," but
I tried the DA's office, a secretary saying Ms. Meagher was back on
trial. I left what I hoped sounded like a calm message: "Call me
at home tonight." Given the way the secretary asked if there was
anything else, I'm not so sure I pulled off the "calm"
part.

Then I stopped back in the
restaurant to find out where the local newspaper was located.

* * *

"Hi. Interested in a subscription?"

"Afraid not. I'd like to take a look at some of
your old editions."

"How old?"

"Nineteen-seventy-three."

"Seventy-three?"

The young man on the other side of the veneered
counter said the year as though it belonged to ancient history, which
for him it probably did. Maybe eighteen or nineteen, he had hair
cropped short as a shorn lamb's, so that it looked like acrylic fuzz.
With two steel rings through his left ear and one through his right
eyebrow, I almost asked if he'd like an introduction to Kira
Elmendorf back at Plymouth Willows.

"Seventy-three," I repeated. "The
issues from around graduation time."

"For the university, you mean?"

"Yes."

"We're just a weekly, you know, but I think I
can find them. So you want all of May, right?"

"And June."

He frowned. "June?"

"Yeah."

"The university graduates in May, man."

"Back then it might have been later."

"You mean going to school all the way into
June?"

"Times were tough."

"Tough? Try terrifying, man."

“
Terrifying."

"Totally. I mean, like, strapped to a desk until
. . . ?  Beyond my ability to comprehend, you know?"

I was afraid I did.

* * *

The front page story from the June 19th edition was
consistent with Gail Tasker's summary. Andrew Dees, born in Chicago
twenty-two years before, went off the highway and rolled his car
three times in a "one-vehicle accident," breaking his neck.
Two of his fraternity brothers said he'd had a "a little too
much suds at this party that's been 'happening' since graduation."
The article concluded with, "According to university records,
Mr. Dees has no immediate family surviving him."

"Tragic, man."

I looked up to the boy helping me. "At any age."

"Huh?"

"This guy getting killed, driving drunk."

"Oh, that's not what I meant." He pointed
to the paper's masthead. "I mean, like, the date."

"The date?"

"Yeah, man. It's just the way you told me. They
had to stick with school all the way into June. Tragic, right?"

"Totally," I
said.

* * *

"Harborside Bank. Ms. Evorova's line."

The very formal secretary. "Can I speak to her,
please?"

"And who may I say is calling?"

“
John Cuddy. She's expecting to hear from me."

A couple of clicks, then, "John, you have some
news for me, yes?"

"I do. Are you alone?"

A pause, then a lower tone. "Your news, it is .
. . bad?"

"I'm calling from Vermont, near the university.
I tried to check Andrew Dees' college records here."

Some weakness crept into her voice. "And?"

"The campus police came for me because it turns
out that the student whose authorization letter I supposedly had was
dead."

"What?"

"Andrew Dees died in a car accident over twenty
years ago."

"No. There must be a mistake, yes?"

"I don't think so. I went to the local
newspaper, and I have a copy of the article on the accident. It's
consistent with what the campus police told me, and anyway I don't
see why they would have lied about it."