Mexico Is Forever Page 3

  I resisted the impulse to throw the book away and decided to stop on the way home and donate it to the public library.

  At six I called Dan Kearny.

  “Dan Kearny Associates,” a woman’s voice announced. Could this be the fabulous Giselle Marc? Dan had raved about her one night at the Council of International Investigators annual convention. I tried to remember what else we’d talked about, between the cigars, the booze, and the all-night poker game. Nothing came back as clearly as Giselle Marc.

  “Dan Kearny, please. Tell him it’s Leo Haggerty calling.”

  After a moment, Dan came on the line “Leo, how are you? Been a long time. What can I do for you?”

  “I’d like to use your people to locate and interview somebody in San Francisco.”

  “Sure. No problem. Who is it and what do you want to know?”

  “The woman’s name is Rachel Porter. All I know is that she moved to San Francisco from Los Angeles no less than six months ago. No address, no social security number, nothing. The name itself could be phony. She was given as a reference by a woman calling herself Sarabeth Timmons in a contested inheritance case I’m handling out here. Six months ago is when the Timmons woman was identified as the heiress by the trustee. The Timmons woman, if that’s really her name, claimed that she and Porter were roommates and, she implied, lovers for three years down in L.A. Also that the Porter woman supported her completely. No paper on Timmons at all, not even a driver’s license yet. As soon as things come in here, we’ll forward them to you. If you can find this Porter woman, I want everything she can tell you about Sarabeth Timmons. We’re trying to verify her story from the lies and nonsense she gave us. Every little bit will help.”

  “It isn’t much, Leo, but I’ll see what we can do. If the name is legit we’ll find her. We’ll start in the gay community. I’ll call you when we have anything, even if it’s a blank.”

  “Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it.”

  I spun in my chair and faced the portrait of General William Tecumseh Sherman that hung on the wall behind me. The portrait was the photograph by Matthew Brady: Sherman on the edge of his seat, back rigid, arms across his chest, furies contained. He’s looking away from Brady and the camera that will freeze him in that moment. I imagine a colonel in the doorway, telling Sherman that the enemy is on the move. That’s where he wants to be.

  His uniform is a mess: rumpled, repaired. He lives in it like his tent. His beard hides his terrible skin. Cratered, sunlight sits on it like acid. No time wasted shaving. His eyes are like bayonets and his hair, wild, ragged, chopped by a blind barber.

  I’m reading his memoirs these days. The father of “total war” who marched across the South and tore its beating heart from its chest and held it in his hands. He perfected the hell of war and brought it to the masses. Now appearing in a town near you: Bill Sherman and the Yankees, the War Is Hell Tour, 1864.

  Every night I read his words, looking for something, some lesson, I don’t know what. He has to have something to tell me, to teach me. After all, I had torched my own fields.

  “So, Bill, what do we do tonight? Burn some bridges? Poison wells? Rip up some roadways? Necktie a forest?”

  He told me to go home and go to sleep. I told him I’d try.

  CHAPTER 5

  I got up as usual, around five, and then went to the gym. Twenty-five years in gyms and on playing fields had left me with a weather-sensitive left knee, an ankle one turn from being fused, a shoulder that had half its range of motion, and a wrist operated on so many times the last surgeon closed it with a zipper.

  Reluctantly, I’ve cut back on my maxes, slowed my jumps. Every injury takes at least six months to heal these days. One stupid moment and I’m out for half a year. I’m learning to be patient and prudent. Aging sucks.

  A mile in the pool takes me an hour. My petition for a movie screen on the bottom of the pool has not been answered. I don’t want to get in better shape. Any longer in the water and I’ll wrinkle to death.

  When I’d finished I dressed and went out to eat. I polished off some hash browns, sausage, eggs and biscuits, and coffee at the Sunrise Grill and was ready for a day at the office.

  I waved to Kelly when I arrived, checked for messages, and went to my office to dump my briefcase. In the kitchen I poured a cup of coffee I didn’t need and read my messages.

  The most interesting was a referral from T. Benjamin Wilhelm who wanted me to go to England on behalf of his clients, the children of the famous renegade psychotherapist Clive McNair, to continue an investigation into new evidence about the doctor’s mysterious death the year before. I made the rest of my calls and set up an appointment with Ben Wilhelm. A courier arrived from Joe Anthony’s office with the photos of Edward John Timmons, the contract and retainer from Peter Skrepinski, and the executor’s authorization to look at the old bank records.

  I buzzed Kelly. “Kelly, please fax that authorization to Rosa Cravat. Let’s unleash her on this one.”

  “Right away. Larry wants to talk to you. He has something on the Timmons woman.”

  I knocked on Larry’s door before I walked in. When he was surprised, he stammered violently. He looked up and smiled.

  “So. Larry, you got something for me?”

  “Sure do.”

  Larry did better if you didn’t look directly at him. So I walked around the desk, sat on the radiator, and looked into the parking lot. Maybe it would have helped his therapy if I challenged him more, slowly adjusting my gaze until he could bear it and speak. I just didn’t have the patience for it. This way he spoke just fine. The rest he’d have to do on his own.

  “First, the mother, Alice Cecilia Timmons. She filed for divorce, citing mental and physical cruelty. Her husband never responded, and it was granted on grounds of desertion.”

  “What about child support?”

  “She got that and alimony.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I got her social security number. That’s also her Virginia driver’s license number, but you already know that.” Larry nodded to himself. I watched a woman from the next office get into her car and drive away with her purse still on the roof. It flew off and spewed its contents all over the lot. Bet she wanted to rewind that one.

  “I called California Department of Motor Vehicles. They had records of her transfer of license but no renewal after 1970. She had no tickets or violations. I got her address for her initial permit and the bank that held title to her car. They’re both in L.A. They had no request to transfer her license to another state or for a name change. I’m going to call the bank and see what they have and also use old reverse directories to see who her neighbors might have been back then. I’ll call and see if they remember her.”

  “Good work, Larry.”

  No car in L.A. since 1970? If she hasn’t moved, she’s dead, disabled, or incarcerated.

  “Tell you what, call the local hospitals, medical and mental, and the prison for the area and see if she’s in any of those places. What’s next?”

  “The father, Edward John Timmons. I did the same things for him. For his birthplace, I got it off the death certificate. I’m working my way through the Timmonses in Virginia Beach. If that doesn’t work, I’ll get his birth certificate, the parents’ names, and old directories to locate them. Everything else on this guy was negative. No car, no driver’s licenses, no passport, no police records, no fingerprints on file. All I’ve got is the death certificate.”

  “Let me see it.” Larry handed it to me and I scanned it. Edward John Timmons, born July 14, 1941, in Virginia Beach, Virginia, dead on arrival at Fairfax Hospital on November 23, 1987. A white male of unknown marital status, education, and social security number, presumed to be American, unemployed. He’d been cremated. His last residence was noted and the informant for the certificate was his landlord, Earl Wayne Durham. Cause of death was slow systemic poisoning by iron particles from twenty-nine needles imbedded in the body. More precisely, in the palms o
f his hands, his scrotum, around the anus, under the nipples and lower palate.

  “Larry, remember to attach this to your report when you turn it in today. Also call Rosa Cravat, tell her you want the names of all the towns this guy passed through after he left Virginia. Then call the mental hospitals serving those towns, see if Mr. Timmons ever resided with them.”

  I handed Larry the death certificate. Just the tip of the toilet. I could hardly wait to lift the lid and dive in.

  “What about the girl?”

  “This is good, Leo. You’re going to like this. I went over the deposition and used her answers to get started. First, the social security number she gave is a Virginia one, not a California number. Now, I know she said she never worked out in Los Angeles, but she claimed she rode with a motorcycle gang. So …” Larry stopped briefly for me to savor his handiwork. “I checked with Virginia D.M.V. There’s no transfer from California on this license. Why not? Why stand in line and take all the tests, pay the fees, if you don’t have to? So, I checked out the credit card number. It’s like she says, she’s an approved user on this other woman’s credit card. So I ask to see the credit application. I checked out the application dates. Guess what? Social security first, then she gets a driver’s license, then on the credit cards. As far as the paper goes, this lady didn’t exist until she showed up here in Virginia about eight months ago.”

  “That doesn’t contradict her story, though the license bit is curious. She could be Sarabeth Timmons with a life by Alfred Hitchcock. Anything else?”

  Larry surveyed his desk, shifting papers until he found what he wanted. “I called about the Hounds of Hell. They were real, that’s for sure. Very unpleasant people, apparently. No records of Sarabeth Timmons riding with them, but that wasn’t conclusive. The guy she mentioned, Chino? He was stabbed to death in a prison fight in Vacaville almost two years ago.”

  “Of course, why should it be otherwise?” I asked the deaf-mute god of detectives.

  CHAPTER 6

  After lunch I paid bills, signed payroll checks, balanced the bank statement, argued with the accountant, and got the week’s receivables ready to deposit.

  Around three Rosa called in. “Tell me, what’s the little girl’s birth date?”

  “Hold on a second, Rosa.” I found it on her birth certificate. “July 7, 1967. Why?”

  “Suppose the father, he doesn’t pay the child support. He tells the court to, excuse me, fuck itself. He may send money or gifts to the child on his own. When is he going to do that? Christmas or her birthday. I’m going to focus on checks around those times. Particularly since he’s a long-distance dad and he’s moving around. He might send checks directly to her or he might write them to stores for gifts. Maybe he has them ship them for him. So he has to give them her address. That’s why.”

  “Sounds good to me Rosa. See if it works.”

  Clancy cruised in about six, waving fresh photos at me. “Hot off the presses, Leo.”

  I took them, turned them around, and spread them out on the desk. “What’d she do today?”

  Clancy flipped open his notebook. “About eight-thirty she leaves the house, drops girlfriend off at Metro. I can tell you already me and Del are sad. These two need all-day parking for kiss and ride. They play a little tonsil hockey, actually a lot of tonsil hockey, then girlfriend hits the bricks.

  “Our girl goes up to Skyline to work out. So me and Del go in and tell them we’re interested in joining up and get the tour. Timmons is in some fitness class. Me and Del we sit down, have a cup of coffee, and watch all this. I’m sweating just watching her. She can fill a leotard too. Did I forget to mention that? Anyway, she doesn’t seem to have any friends in the class. When they’re done she just walks off by herself, goes into the locker room, changes, and leaves. We follow her to a bank over on Route Seven. She uses the automatic teller to get some cash. Cautious lady, I’d say. There was nobody in the lobby. Then she goes to a private storage place over on Seminary Road. She didn’t leave the office so we figure all she’s got with them is one of their private safety deposit boxes.

  “Then she hits another branch of the bank. Same routine, more cash. Figure she’s hitting the max each time. She’s got six hundred in cash now. She stops over at the little post office on Gallows Road and mails a letter. Not at the window, though. She stays out front and uses the box. So me and Del look at each other and I says, ‘What’s up, Doc?’”

  “Yep. It looks like she’s getting ready to rabbit. Stay with her round the clock now. Is that where Del is?”

  “Yeah, he dropped me off after we got the photos so I could get them developed.”

  I picked up the pictures. Good shots, face front and full length. She was wearing wraparound iridescent sunglasses, a Stetson with a peacock feather in the band, a huge costume jewelry watch on one wrist, and an equally distracting chunk of glass on the other hand. Patterned tights disappeared into a clingy low-cut short dress. Tooled cowboy boots completed the look. Dressed like that everybody would remember her and no one would be able to describe her face.

  “How’d you get these?”

  “Del and me flipped for it. I won. He says I do dumb and lost better than him anyway. She was on the move, real hard to get anything good on her at all. So we decided to distract her on the sidewalk, get her in a conversation so she’d stay put, and then Del would shoot her from the car.”

  “What did you ask her?”

  “Well, I wanted to see how nervy she was. So I walked up to her and told her she looked just like this sister of an old friend of mine.”

  “How did she react?”

  “Real cool. I was impressed. Here she is getting ready to rabbit and she’s chatting up one of the hounds. Asked me questions about my friend, his sister, where they were from. Felt like she was trying them on as a new identity. I asked her out for a drink, but she passed. Not her type, I guess. God, what a waste.”

  “Good work. Give everybody on the case a copy of the facial. On the back pencil in the particulars of her description from my notes. Send copies of everything we have to Dan Kearny in San Francisco. Anything breaks after hours, get me on my beeper. I’m going to try to ease her rabbitosis a bit tomorrow.”

  I waited until Clancy had gone, turned on the TV, and watched until about eight forty-five. ESPN had golf. I watched some poor bastard blow a six-stroke lead on the final round. On the seventeenth his drive was so far into the rough he hit his next shot with a Weed Wacker. After that he abused one of his clubs and was reprimanded for being a churl. Someday I’d be mature enough to play that maddening game.

  When my choices were down to a tractor pull and pro wrestling, I decided to leave. I made sure my desk was locked, killed the lights, and pulled the door closed. The cleaning crew would be in at ten. A Jamaican couple who set up a boom box in the waiting room and dance-cleaned to a reggae beat. They were amazingly happy for that hour of the day. I suspected better living through chemistry, but they were reliable and nothing was ever missing so I let it pass.

  I checked all the other offices, the answering machine for any late messages, made sure the coffeepot was off and the records room locked. When I ran out of reasons to stay, I turned off the lights by the front door, locked up, and went home.

  CHAPTER 7

  When I came in, Clancy was sitting on Kelly’s desk, telling her some story.

  I clapped him on the back. “Out so soon? How many days do you have left on jury duty?”

  “Three more days. But I’ve found a way to beat it.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I carry this book with me. I’m always reading it or holding it in a visible place.”

  “Let me see this magical book.” Clancy handed it to me.

  The cover was a broken gavel with the title in huge block letters: THE SHAME OF OUR COURTS.

  “Jesus, Clancy, is this for real?”

  “Sure is. I found it at a used book stall. One look at the title and nobody wants me in the box. Pros
ecutors think I’m an anarchist and the defense thinks I want the death penalty for shoplifting. Either way I’m outta there.”

  “I think I admire your resourcefulness. Just be sure I see some of it around the office.”

  “Kelly, when you get a minute, could you bring me a cup of coffee? There’re some things I want you to do.”

  “Sure.”

  I emptied my briefcase. Last night had been a long one. Nodding out around one and then coming to at four. At least it wasn’t routine anymore.

  Kelly handed me the mug, sat down, and flipped open her notepad. She’d been with me for almost five years and was the first person I’d hired when I took over the agency. She was reliable, good with details, ambitious but not terribly imaginative. A good secretary gradually comes to embody their employer’s will. Our relationship had been unconscious for a while now. Since I rarely asked her to be my servant, she didn’t resent it. Every once in a while I was too damned tired to do everything for myself.

  “Our little Miss Timmons is a lying bitch and I want to exploit that to our advantage. She hit two bank machines for cash at a bank where she doesn’t have an account, or so she claimed. Type up a letter thanking her for trying our new makeup line and that in accordance with our special offer, we are sending her a ten-dollar rebate check to show our appreciation. If she wants any further information on our line ask her to call us. Use the unpublished number. If she does call to check, you answer it and tell her we’ll get back to her. Use the Diversified Products letterhead and the P.O. box address. Go down and have the bank cut a cashier’s check for the ten bucks on the Diversified account. Get the name right but the address wrong. Backdate the meter. Then have Clancy hand-deliver it to her mailbox. Scrawl ‘delivered in error’ across the envelope. If she bites, she’ll open it because it’s in her name and it’s rerouted to her. She’ll figure that the error is actually wrong name, right address, a computer mailing list glitch. Then I hope she’ll cash the check. That way we get her endorsement and account number. She wanted that account kept secret, so she lied about it. That makes me want to know as much about it as I can.”