Mary, Mary, Shut the Door Read online

  “No, not now. I can’t talk. Look, I’ll call you back in, say, fifteen minutes, okay? Fine. Goodbye.” He disconnected the line.

  “Sorry, another case. Look, Sean, serving papers can’t be all that we’re about. There’s more to life. That’s the way I see it. We can do better here. Mr. Hitchens has offered us a way to do that. I think we ought to take him up on it. You understand what I’m saying?” He pointed the phone at him for emphasis.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Sean had the faint feeling that he was having two conversations, in two languages, ones that he knew just well enough to misunderstand with confidence. He decided not to speak but just listen carefully.

  Matt turned toward Hitchens. “I’m his brother. He told you that we found you together. Let me make sure I understand the deal. You’ll give us a thousand dollars each. Cash money, that’s right?”

  Hitchens nodded, “Yeah.”

  “In exchange we just take this Notice of Judgment and re-file it as unserved, that’s it, even though it is for you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “No false affidavits, and you don’t want us to destroy the paper, just re-file it.”

  “Yeah, that’s the beauty of it for you guys. No crime’s been committed. You walk away with the money, no risk of having it confiscated, no risk of jail, painless.”

  “Okay. You have the money here?”

  “No. I can get it easy enough. Meet you back here in, say, an hour, how’s that?”

  “Tell you what, Mr. Hitchens. As a good faith gesture, how about you give us whatever cash you’ve got in the office. That way we know you’re serious about this, and when we take it, you know we’re serious about our part. We’re in this together.”

  “Good point. Let me see what I’ve got.” He reached into the bottom left drawer of the desk and pulled out a metal box. He spun the combination lock, opened the lid, and took out a wad of bills.

  He began to thumb the edges back, counting out loud, stopping at four hundred and eighty three. “That good enough for you boys?”

  “That’s fine,” Matt said. He stuffed the phone back in his pocket, took the money and counted out half for his brother. “We’ll see you in an hour.”

  “Nice doing business with you boys.”

  “Pleasure’s all ours, Mr. Hitchens.”

  Matt led the way out the front door towards the car. Sean hurried to catch up.

  “What the hell was that all about, Matt? We’re in the shit now. We took the money.”

  “Keep walking Sean and don’t say anything else. We’ll talk in the car.”

  Matt opened the car door and walked around to let himself in. In the car, he pulled the phone out of his pocket, and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Did you get all that?”

  “Every word. A warrant’s been issued and a car should be there in ten minutes. You need to come straight down to the station and fill out a statement. He’ll be booked and jailed.”

  “Great. We’ll stay here until the car arrives, then we’ll be straight over.”

  Matt pushed the off button.

  “What did we just do?”

  “We did ‘better’, is what we did. Remember what Joe Anthony told us about serving him and still not getting a penny. I was sitting in the car and I said to myself why am I letting a criminal tell me what is and what is not a crime. I called the police. His offering us money to not do our duty is a crime. It’s corruption of an agent. Even if we aren’t officers of the court, even if we don’t commit a fraud. The officer said he could get a warrant and a car out here right away if a crime was committed in his presence. So I said, what if you hear it. He said that’s enough.”

  “I told him to call me on both lines. First one, then the other. When I answered the first call in the office, all I did was switch to the other line to disconnect him. That line was open and they heard everything. That’s why I was waving the phone around. It was a microphone. Hitchens couldn’t know that we have a two-line phone—when I said goodbye and pushed a button he assumed I’d turned the phone off. I just moved my hand up to cover the lights.”

  Matt dialed Joe Anthony’s office as the police cruiser pulled up next to them.

  “Mr. Anthony. This is Matt Ellis of Short Fuse Process Service. I have good news for you and your client. Not only did we find Mr. Hitchens, but we served him, and he’s also being arrested, as we speak, for corruption of an agent. He offered us a thousand dollars each not to serve him. He’ll be going straight to jail and I’d think that should be enough with our affidavits for you to get that ABJ you wanted.”

  “Christmas in August. Great work, guys. Come by as soon as you can. I’d like you to give my client the news directly. You just changed her life and her kids’.”

  The police were walking Hitchens out to the cruiser. Sean got out of the car and approached as they were getting ready to tuck him inside.

  “Burle Hitchens. This is a Notice of Judgment against you served in the county of Fairfax on behalf of Chelsey Lyn Dougan.” As Hitchens’s hands were cuffed behind him, Sean tucked the papers in his front shirt pocket, arranging them as neatly as a foulard. The officer opened the door and guided Hitchens into the back seat.

  “You were right Mr. Hitchens. This was a win-win situation. Only there were three sides to it, not two.”

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The author would like to thank the following people for the gracious donation of their expertise. Any errors are the responsibility of the author. Attorneys Joe Condo and Chanda Kinsey, Arlington County Magistrate Larry Black, Nancy Crawford, Regional Special Counsel for the Virginia Division of Child Support Enforcement, Mark Simons of Advance Process Service, Guillermo Solorzano, and my assistant, Jennifer Egen.

  Til Death Do Us Part

  “Boss, we’re on our way to the airport.”

  “Do you guys have a credit card for your tickets?”

  “No.” Sean Ellis made it sound like ‘moo’. “Would this be a good time to bring up giving us a company card?”

  “Sure, we can beat that dead horse if you like. The answer is still no. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but I’d have to give them to everybody or explain why not. I tried it once and unreimbursable expenses went up 14%. I’m not doing that again. Besides, you boys are short-timers. After you graduate, I’ll just be left with the headaches.

  “When you get to the airport and find out his flight number, call me and I’ll purchase your tickets electronically, you can pick them up at the gate.”

  “You know, I don’t think you should treat all your employees the same. Where’s the payoff for doing a good job?”

  “Tell you what, Sean, you promise not to ask me that again and I’ll promise to lose sleep over it.”

  The Ellis brothers followed Damien Sylvester’s car out the access road to Dulles International Airport. Inside Eero Saarinen’s masterpiece, under the curved concrete canopy, barely tethered to the ground, Sylvester bought a ticket to Boston. Sean Ellis relayed this information to his employer, Sandra Jones, owner of Metro Detectives.

  “You can’t work in Massachusetts unless you’re under the supervision of a licensed local agency. I’m going to call someone I know up there: James Gruber. He has an agency in Boston. We’ve covered for his people down here. I’ll see if I can get him to meet you with a car at the airport. He’ll have an affidavit you each have to fill out and sign. Remember, this is still our case. You call me first, then Jim. Got that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Sean said.

  Sean’s brother Matt had been watching Sylvester, whose toe-tapping angst threatened to break out in a full Ginger Baker solo at any minute.

  Surveillance work had helped accelerate their growing up. You can’t ‘live in the now’ on stakeout. It’s all about ‘what if?’ and being three steps ahead of your target, anticipating the options, always planning ahead. This is the reason they had carry-ons in the trunk of their car and everything they needed to study for finals.

  “When is your first exam?” Matt as
ked.

  “Wednesday. But it’s advanced drawing. I just have to turn in my portfolio. I’ve got plenty of work done already. How about you?”

  “Biochem is on Thursday. I need to ace this one. It’s important for my transcript.”

  Matt had decided he wanted to go to medical school. Since he also believed that 99 was zero, he had developed a studying jones that drove his brother bonkers. Sean could have benefited from a small transfusion of his drive. He approached deadlines as if they required a magic act. Voila! At the very last minute I shall pull an A out of my hat. The injustice of his successes drove his brother bonkers.

  Once seated, five rows behind their target, Matt pulled out the file that Sandra had given them and began to read it. Damien Sylvester was a junior at Georgetown University. He majored in dissolution with a minor in squandering. He had bounced on and off of academic probation, without ever rising above a 2.0 GPA. He’d changed majors so often that he was faced with needing a fifth year to collect enough credits in anything to graduate. Sylvesters had been distinguishing themselves at Georgetown for generations, but he was putting an end to all that. His father, the late Senator Mark Sylvester, had died when Damien was eight years old. His mother, the appallingly wealthy Catarina Sylvester, nee Littbarski, had recently concluded that Damien was not going to pull himself out of his decade long slough of despond without a kick in the rear, and had administered that by announcing that she had changed her trust, and that for the rest of his days Damien’s inheritance was to be administered by a consortium of Boston bankers hand picked for their penurious ways.

  Damien exploded on the phone, with a tirade on the unfairness of her actions that was equal parts apoplectic rage and mendacious apology. After that, nothing. This nothing had gone on for three weeks and was starting to trouble Mrs. Sylvester. She had contacted Sandra Jones and asked her to keep an eye on her only child. She sent down an old picture of Damien, a hefty retainer check, his address and phone number. She didn’t know anything about his friends or the places that he liked to hang out. She didn’t want him doing anything rash and self-destructive while he tried to get his head around this monumental insult to his narcissism.

  Matt gave the file to his brother to read. When he had finished, Sean turned in his seat and said, “So we just have to make sure he doesn’t open a vein or besmirch the family honor?”

  “I guess so. This could be a real short trip. His mother lives in Boston. He could be going home to make up with her.”

  “Oh, God, please don’t let that happen. We’re looking at easy money here. Twenty-five dollars an hour each; portal to portal billing. For tantrum control. How hard can that be?”

  They landed at Logan on time. While Sean watched Damien at the Hertz desk, Matt met with Jim Gruber’s field agent, got the keys to their rental car and scanned the affidavit he had to sign. Sure that he was felony free and had not dabbled in moral turpitude, he checked the appropriate spaces. When Sean walked out of the terminal, he handed the form to him, and he scribbled his signature. All the while he kept his eyes on Sylvester as he walked across the lot to get his car.

  “Oh yeah, Jim said to give you this. Sandy vouched for you.” It was a New England Investigative Services credit card.

  Ninety minutes later they were on. Route 6, following Damien down the spine of Cape Cod. Surrounded by trees, if you didn’t notice the sand you’d have no idea that you were driving out the flexed arm of Massachusetts. That arm, bent at the elbow, ended in the upraised, balled fist of Provincetown, forty miles out into the cold Atlantic from all-seeing Boston.

  The trees gave way to giant dunes on both sides of the road. In the distance a tower thin as an ice pick pierced the sandscape.

  “The map says there’s an ocean around here somewhere, but all I see is sand. We could be in Saudi Arabia, Matt.”

  The dunes flattened out and the horizon became a deep blue with dancing flashes of sunlight on the surface. Damien Sylvester entered Provincetown. He turned down Cornwell, then right on Bradford and right towards the ocean. Mid-block he pulled into a driveway. Matt stopped the car opposite the inn.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Let’s give him fifteen minutes. See if he gets a room here. Then we’ll register. This whole thing will be a lot easier if we’re all sleeping in the same place.”

  Sylvester left the office, took his bag out of the car and jogged up to his room on the third floor.

  “Excellent. Let’s keep him above us. See what the room numbers are below his and ask for one of those by the stairs,” Matt said.

  Sean walked off to check the room numbers and they went in to register. They got room seventeen and were informed they could stay until next Thursday when the first of the Memorial Day weekend guests would arrive. From then until Labor Day the inn was sold out.

  “I’ll bring the bags up,” Matt said. “Why don’t you stay here and follow the trust fund. You do have your cell phone with you if he leaves?”

  “Right here, Captain Anal,” Sean said, tapping his pocket and then saluting.

  Fifteen minutes later, Damien left the compound and headed for Commercial Street and the center of town. Matt and Sean watched him from the car, got out and followed him.

  “Here’s your room key. It also opens the gate to the grounds. They lock up at eight p.m.,” Matt said.

  “Anything else I should know?”

  “Read this. I don’t know if they give this out to everyone or just Virginians that have lost their way and don’t know that they aren’t the moral majority around here.”

  It was a brochure from the chief of police, welcoming tourists to Provincetown and alerting them, among other things, that people here enjoy freedom that might not have similar acceptance back home and that one issue for which they have absolutely zero tolerance is hate crimes. They are passionate about this topic.

  “Did you know that in Virginia, being gay is unfitness per se to raise a child? Sandy was doing a custody case and told me that was the law,” Sean said.

  “And America is a vast country encompassing many contradictions, all blended together in our non-stick melting pot.” Matt intoned with mock evangelical fervor.

  The brothers followed Damien down the hill towards the beach. On Commercial he turned left and meandered into town, slaloming back and forth with the sidewalks that mysteriously appeared and disappeared from each side of the road without ever being on both sides at once.

  “Do you think they do this on purpose? Like the way they steer shoppers so that you have to go through the entire store even if you only want one item.”

  “Does asymmetry affront you?” Sean asked.

  “No. I just like irregularities to be rational. Is that so much to ask?”

  Sean laughed at his brother. Matt was an inveterate pattern maker, while he was drawn to the eccentric, the unique, and the outliers. At their best they were complements, not opponents.

  Up ahead, Damien sat down in a sidewalk café, ordered a beer and watched the parade of mankind pass by. Matt and Sean sat behind him and ordered two ginger ales.

  There were tight-lipped New Englanders with fair skin reddened by the sun and salt cured by the sea spray. They wore hats and deck shoes. Sunglasses on straps hung from their necks. Foreign tourists, mostly young and judging by their accents, mostly Scandinavian, pirouetted in the street to take everything in. There were many same sex couples holding hands. Moms pushing their children in strollers. And then there was ‘Leatherman,’ he of the bovine britches and vest, collar and cuffs. The sides of his head were tattooed with flames and on top an open mouth with pointed teeth. He had his own ‘Boy George’ on a leash out for his afternoon walk. Outré meets quaint in Provincetown.

  Sean smiled. “Strange stuff happens at the edges of America. Do you ever wonder why that is?”

  “If it isn’t on the MCAT, I don’t want to know. Our boy is on the move.” Matt pushed away from the table. Sean waved the waitress over and paid the bill.
/>   Traffic was light and the crowds were thin. Maybe half of the shops were still closed. There were lots of construction vehicles out, their crews making last minute repairs before high season began.

  “He has no idea he’s being followed. He hasn’t looked back once.”

  “We need a break. There’s no crowd cover out here.”

  Sylvester wasn’t into art and passed the galleries without even slowing down. Sean was in agony.

  “Listen if he stops anywhere for awhile, how about you tail him alone and I’ll hit some of these galleries. I saw really good stuff back there.”

  “Sure. But if you do that, look for a gift for mom. Maybe a necklace or something. She likes beads and shells.”

  “Good thought.”

  Sylvester passed the tattoo and piercing shops, the gay pride store and the windowless leather bar. He did stop to admire a little teddy in white lace, feathers and leather trim on a mannequin in the Erotique Boutique. Playtime Provincetown gave way to the city that works: town hall, police station, public library, post office.

  Sylvester walked out to the town pier. Tour buses filled the parking lot. He stopped at the whale watch kiosk and then continued on to the end. He stood, hands in pockets, his jacket collar turned up and stared out to sea past the beckoning finger of Long Point and its lighthouse.

  Sixty-five feet away the Ellis brothers rotated so that Sean could see Damien over Matt’s shoulder.

  “What do you think he’s doing? He’s been standing there too long for me. There isn’t that much to see,” Matt said.

  “Maybe he’s waiting for his ship to come in. I don’t know.”

  “What if he’s deciding to take a long walk off this short pier?”

  “Then he’s all yours big brother. You’re a much better swimmer than I am.”

  “Shit. If that nimrod decides to pitch himself into the sea because mommy’s teats have dried up, I will tie him to a piling and count his bubbles.”

  “Easy bro. Why don’t we sidle up a little closer so we can blow our cover and tackle him before he enters the life aquatic?”