A time for reckoning, p.18
A Time for Reckoning, page 18
Marty has pored over the paperwork we took from Frankie’s office in June and shipped copies ahead of us to a UPS store near Atlanta’s airport, where we picked them up a couple of hours ago. At his direction, Jo had a neighbor let movers into their Wilmington home to collect and send whatever papers we had left behind in June. They were also waiting at the UPS store. Marty insists that we need to have a look at all of it together. All twenty-six boxes of it.
Marty shoots me a sideways glance. “Just think of all those boxes of paper, mate! Excited?”
“I might have checked into a hospital to donate an organ or two if you’d told me before we left Chicago about how much paper we have to wade through,” I say dryly.
We spend a pleasant couple of hours being fed and catching up with Jo and Carly. Their Spartan cabin is indeed isolated; we had to punch longitude and latitude coordinates into the GPS to locate the place. No house number, no street name, not even a town or village close enough to be useful. Jo cocks an eyebrow when I set my new gun on the counter. Jake Plummer had been true to his word. My permit had been approved within a week and the gun dealer had gotten the okay to sell to me within twenty-four hours. Between the daily lessons and additional time at the range with Jake and Max, I’m not a half-bad shot.
“Not half-bad can also be construed as not half-good,” Jake had warned me pointedly.
Marty drags me out of bed at the crack of dawn to get started. When we do, he looks at Jo. “You and Frank have never owned any other property, right?”
“So far as I know,” Jo grumbles.
I feel bad for her. The list of things she hadn’t known about her husband before the past few months could fill a New York City phone book. Well, back in the days when we still had ten-pound paper telephone directories.
Marty gives Jo a sympathetic look and continues, “We’re looking for anything to do with real estate—banking records, correspondence, even utility bills for property other than the house in Wilmington.”
“Where’s Carly?” I ask when we settle in with a banker’s box each, all stuffed to bursting with paper.
“Out hiking. It’s her only recreation out here.” Jo replies. “She’s never spent much time communing with nature. She’s enjoying it.”
“Is it safe?” I ask. “You know, bears and such.”
Jo smiles. “Bear spray. Lots of it.”
“She’ll be gone all day?” Marty asks. He appears disappointed that she won’t be here to help.
“She’s usually out until noon or so,” Jo replies. “But it wouldn’t surprise me if she decides to stay out there until later this afternoon. She even packed a lunch and took extra water.”
Marty looks impressed. “She’s pretty serious about hiking, is she?”
Jo laughs. “She’s seriously averse to picking through these boxes.”
“What exactly are we looking for, Marty?” I ask.
“A safe house to hole up in. A hunting or fishing cabin out in the sticks is a great place to go off the grid. Something near an isolated stretch of the Canadian border would be perfect, someplace where he could slip into Canada unnoticed.”
By late morning, I wish I was out hiking, even under the sweltering midday sun. This is dreary, painstaking work requiring a ridiculous amount of patience and focus. And we’re planning to be here all week.
“Wouldn’t you prefer if Carly had an uncle along for protection on these hikes amongst wild animals?” I ask Jo.
She laughs softly. “She seems to enjoy the solitude.”
Marty grins at me. “Looks like you’re stuck here, mate.”
Wonderful.
“We’re halfway through the day,” Jo announces at noon. “Let’s break for lunch. I picked up cold cuts yesterday and baked some fresh bread. I could go for a nice glass of iced tea, as well.”
“I could go for a cold beer,” Marty counters.
“Not that warmed-over swill you guys drink in jolly old England?” I quip.
He chuckles. “When in Rome.”
Lunch is good. The afternoon sucks. Carly, looking downright chipper after a full day of hiking, rolls in for dinner.
“Find anything?” she asks with a glance at the boxes.
“Lots and lots of paper cuts,” I grouse. Sadly, it’s true.
“I believe the Chinese expression is Lingchi,” Jo says with a laugh. “Death by a thousand cuts.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” I say with a sour smile. “I don’t think I can take another four days of this.”
“I don’t think I can take another four days listening to you gripe about it,” Marty shoots back.
“Uncle Tony is making me sooo sorry I went hiking,” Carly says with a giggle. “I found a couple of super cool places up in the hills. I’m planning to go back tomorrow… and maybe the day after.”
Marty chuckles and points at the boxes. “Depending on how quickly we work through these?”
Carly grins back and nods.
“I don’t feel like we made any progress,” I grumble.
Jo points at six boxes that have been moved from one side of the living room to the other. “That’s some progress, Tony.”
“It means we’ve cleared some boxes that don’t hold the key,” Marty says. “We’re closer to finding the right piece of paper.”
“You remind of the little boy up to his neck in a room full of horse manure,” I counter. “Absolutely sure there’s a pony in there somewhere.”
“That’s a thing?” Carly asks while wrinkling her nose. “A saying or something?”
I shrug. “Maybe. If not, it should be.”
“I say we call it a day,” Jo announces as she slaps the lid on completed box number seven a few minutes later. There’s a tray of lasagna baking in the oven.
I’m on my feet in a heartbeat.
Marty gives me a resigned smile and chuckles. “You civilians. No stamina.”
So, with our toils and torture behind us until tomorrow, we chow down on lasagna while Carly tells us about her day. Then we retire to the living room, where I studiously ignore the waiting boxes as we sip coffee and tell tales. It turns out that we can separate Marty from the boxes, but we can’t get his thoughts off their contents.
He looks at Jo and Carly for a long moment and says, “I want you both to think real hard on this, okay? Is there any place else Frank mentioned—somewhere you’ve never been to? Hunting trips? Fishing? Anything like that?”
“Nothing specific comes to mind,” Jo replies. “He’s been away on plenty of fishing and hunting trips, but he doesn’t usually tell us where he goes.”
Such as Molly O’Reilly’s, I think with disgust. Or when he’s off raping people.
After a crappy night in a sleeping bag teetering on the edge of an inflatable mattress with a buzz saw named Thorne-Dalyrimple two feet away, I awaken to the tantalizing aroma of bacon and fresh coffee. I hustle to the bathroom and am wiping sleep out of my eyes when I walk into the kitchen a few minutes later. Jo is bustling back and forth between the stove and fridge, throwing together a complete breakfast. The buzz saw in the living room switches off, and a well-rested Marty strolls in a few minutes later, full of piss and vinegar and raring to go.
“How did you sleep through the racket you were making all night?” I ask incredulously. “How does your wife put up with you?”
“The snoring is the least of her worries with me,” he replies.
Carly shuffles in wearing a pair of smiley-face pajamas.
“Got an email from another one of our old marine buddies,” Marty announces. “He’s in Asheville. How far away is that?”
“It’s west along I-40,” Jo replies as she serves waffles and sausage. “Couple, three hours.”
I pull Marty’s cell phone in front of me and say, “Looks just like mine, Marty. Mine is flatlined out here, yet you’ve got service?”
“Tricks of the trade,” he says without further explanation.
“Ah, yes, the ninja training.”
He chuckles and nods, but still doesn’t explain. I guess it’s all still top secret and hush-hush, so I don’t push.
After enjoying another terrific breakfast, we get back to work.
Marty is going through a box of old bank statements a couple of hours later when he slides a receipt across the table to Jo. “Frank sent a wire transfer to a guy named Mac who was in our unit. Poor bastard got his legs blown off and his head caved in by an IED. I’d have to check the dates to be sure, but I think Mac was wounded several months before this wire was sent. Do you know anything about it?”
I lean in to examine the transfer with Jo. The copy is old and parts of it are unreadable.
Jo’s brow furrows. “This was a month before Frank came home from Iraq.”
“It’s a good chunk of change,” Marty says.
I’ll say. $53,000.
“Does it mean anything to you?” he asks Jo.
“No.”
Marty goes back to the stack of paper he was sorting through. “This came out of an account Jo wasn’t a signatory to, so she can’t get into the bank records to see what bank branch the wire ended up at.”
She gives him a questioning look. “All our accounts are joint.”
“Guess not,” Marty replies.
“Darn him!” Jo exclaims.
“Knowing where that money went might be a clue about where Mac is,” Marty continues. “I’ll bet he could tell us what this payment was about.”
“Good point,” I mutter.
Marty’s eyes cut to me. “Know anyone who might be able to run this down?”
My thoughts turn to Jake and Horace Greenwood. “The cops.”
Marty nods. “If they can be convinced to dig into it.”
“I think they will,” I say. “If they can’t, or won’t, I know someone else.”
“Who?” he asks.
“A reporter friend of mine. She’s pretty resourceful.”
He nods and thinks, then pulls out his cell phone. “Let me call my buddy in Asheville. He might know something useful. He was pretty tight with Mac.”
We listen to Marty’s end of the call and can hear pretty much everything his pal says. They spend a minute or two catching up, then make plans to meet for dinner and a beer in someplace called Hickory, which is apparently halfway between Greensboro and Asheville. They talk about one or two of their comrades before Marty asks, “What became of Mac?”
“Poor Mac, huh?” comes the reply.
The skin around Marty’s eyes tightens. “Yeah, I’ve often thought about the poor guy. I was surprised he lived at all. I still get nightmares picturing what was left of him lying on the side of the road.”
“Jesus, yeah. That was one of those ‘There but for the grace of God go I’ moments, wasn’t it, Marty? Anyway, as far as I know, Mac went back to Montana after he got out of the hospital and finished rehab. I heard he inherited property there, some sort of camp or cabin where he used to spend time at as a kid. Assuming Mac’s still alive, you might find him out there.”
Marty’s eyes glitter with interest as he listens. “Mac and Frank Valenti were kinda tight, weren’t they?”
“Yeah, they were. I remember Frank and Mac talking about fishing on some lake in western Montana, up toward the mountains. That’s probably Mac’s property. Frank loved it.”
Marty’s eyes rise to mine after he wraps up the call. “That’s something to look into,” he says as he refills his coffee mug. “Fifty-three grand to a guy Frank was pals with. Of course, he may have just been helping out a friend in need.”
I snort. “Not the Frankie I knew.”
Jo looks skeptical, as well. “I’ve never known my husband to do anything for anyone unless there was something in it for him.”
“Yeah,” Marty muses. “So, what did he get for his fifty-three grand? If we can find Mac, he can tell us.”
I call Horace Greenwood and have Marty send him copies of the wire-transfer paperwork, using his phone camera and who knows what all to do so. Maybe it’s just another example of my cockeyed optimism, but something tells me we’ve unearthed a big lead in the hunt for my brother. My eyes stray to my brand-new Glock. I hope we’re closing in on him. The rest of the day doesn’t turn up anything of interest before Marty leaves for Hickory, hopeful that he might learn a little more over dinner and a beer or two.
A search of Montana real estate records by Pat O’Toole the next day reveals that Mac holds title to a piece of land several miles away from Flathead Lake. Marty immediately begins planning a trip to scope things out. Speaking of trips out west, I’ve decided to travel to Wyoming to depose Mark Lewis, so I pitch the idea of making the trip a two-for-one venture with Marty, taking him to Wyoming before we go to Montana. He isn’t keen on the idea but eventually relents.
Next stop, the Wild West.
31
We arrive in eastern Wyoming on the Friday before Labor Day and hook up with Dirk Macho, who immediately hits it off with Marty. A cynic might suspect that each is thrilled to have at least one competent person along for backup. Dirk is behind the wheel of a rented Ford F-150 pickup truck, Marty is riding in the passenger seat, and I’m in back. We’re on our way to the office of L. Smith, Attorney at Law—Mark Lewis’s lawyer.
Dirk meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Make sure you keep your gun visible at all times. Wyoming and Illinois don’t have a reciprocal concealed-carry agreement, so you can only carry openly.”
And here I’ve been so pleased to have my concealed-carry permit.
Marty tells Dirk to stop at a coffee shop a couple of blocks away from the lawyer’s office. While I depose Lewis, he’s going to use the coffee shop’s free internet to do some research and have another look around Mac’s cabin using satellite imagery. He showed me some time-lapse imagery of Mac’s property last night. A little bush clearing took place after Frankie sent the wire transfer. A carport went up a couple of months ago, making it difficult to tell if there’s a vehicle on site. “Smart moves,” he said. “It’s what I would have done if I were setting up a safe house.”
After dropping Marty off at the coffee shop, Dirk drives to Smith’s address and parks in a little lot behind a two-story sandstone office block. He’ll wait for me here while I go inside.
“Go get him,” he says as I climb out.
I wink and pat the Glock on my hip.
“Didn’t think you’d have the balls to come back here,” Lewis says with a sneer as soon as we’re seated.
I stare at him and say nothing.
Smith is a mousy little man with a comically thin comb-over of several strands of reddish-gray hair pasted over the gleaming crown of his head. He fusses with some paperwork while his client and I play out the alpha-dog bullshit. Then he nods at the transcriptionist he’s brought in to record proceedings. “Let’s get started.”
I set a digital recorder down on the table. “I’ll be keeping my own recording of this,” I announce before noting the time, date, location, and participants in the morning festivities.
“That isn’t necessary,” Smith says.
I lock eyes with Lewis. “Oh, I think it is, Counselor.”
Lewis looks annoyed. “Whatever. Let’s get on with it.”
He then proceeds to bluster and lie his way through over an hour of questioning about the history of his marriage and his relationship with his wife. Even with the recorder running, I still make notes on a legal pad of any answers we can use to score points in court.
“I’ve never hit my wife,” he says with a smirk when I ask how often he’s beaten her up. The smug SOB knows the deposition’s transcript won’t reflect the amused curl of his lip or the triumphant gleam in his eyes as he tells yet another blatant lie.
“Did you participate or send men to Chicago to abduct Grazyna on July twenty-second of this year?” I ask next.
“She was abducted?” Lewis asks blandly. “I told her to be careful in the big city. She should have listened. It’s not a safe place for someone as naive as her. I wonder what kind of people she’s gotten herself mixed up with there.”
“Not interested if the abduction was successful?” I ask. “Not curious to know if she was hurt?”
He shrugs. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“Why bother?” I ask. “You already know.”
Lewis turns his palms up. “I don’t know a thing about any of that.”
I set my pen down. “We might as well wind this up. This sounds like a different marriage than the one we’ve heard about.”
“Guess Griz is full of shit, then, huh?” Lewis retorts.
I give him a chilly smile. “Someone is.”
“Waste of fuckin’ time,” Lewis says as he gets to his feet.
“Not at all,” I remark confidently. “It’s always good to lock a witness into a bogus narrative.”
His eyes go hard before he stalks out of the room. I say my goodbyes to Smith and the transcriptionist, then follow him out. Lewis is nowhere to be seen as I make my way outside. When I reach the parking lot, a Converse County police cruiser with lights flashing is sitting nose to nose with our pickup truck. Marty and Dirk are lounging against our front fender while an officer in the driver’s seat of the cop car talks on a cell phone.
“What’s up?” I ask with a pointed look at the cruiser.
“A few of Mark’s pals were hanging around waiting for you and hassling Dirk when I arrived from the coffee shop,” Marty replies.
“One thing led to another, and a few good ole boys got their asses kicked,” Dirk adds with a smirk.
A second police cruiser pulls into the lot a moment later. An older man with a paunch steps out and adjusts his Smokey the Bear hat. The cop who arrived first hops out of his vehicle and hurries over while the newcomer plants himself in front of us and hooks his thumbs into his belt.
“What’s the story here, boys?” he asks us while studying Marty and me. He ignores Dirk.
“And you are?” Marty asks.
“This here’s the sheriff of Converse County,” Dirk tells him.
“Sheriff Donahue,” the new arrival says while shooting Dirk a look that suggests there’s some unpleasant history between them. Then he locks eyes with me. “Sounds like your boys here seem to think someone was looking to kick your ass, boy. Why’s that?”
