Mexico Is Forever Read online

  “I’ll get on it right now.”

  “Great.”

  When Kelly left, I called Joe Anthony.

  “Speak, troglodyte.”

  “Love you too, Joe. Look, we’ve got a little problem with Ms. Timmons. She’s getting skittish and looks like she’s preparing to bolt. That worries me. If she disappears, you still have a big loose end. She could be legitimate and running for some other reason entirely. I want to calm her down until we know something for sure. Can you make settlement noises to get her to stay put?”

  “Yeah. I agree with you. I don’t want this lady to disappear and show up at a later date after she’s taken care of some other business. Then we have to reopen this mess when it could all be settled now. The best outcome is incontrovertible evidence that she isn’t who she says she is. Beyond that I don’t care if she’s Judge Crater. If she’s legitimate, which I frankly doubt, then my client will have to live with that. I can’t buy you much time. I can’t make a good-faith offer, they might just take us up on it. I can make vague noises, arrange a meeting with Duckworth. Once we sit down to haggle, we’re gonna have to put up or shut up.”

  “I know. Do what you can. Every day helps. She’s doing the AMF shuffle big time.”

  “Okay, I’ll call Duckworth as soon as we get off the phone.”

  It was early afternoon when Del called in.

  “Leo, you’re gonna love this. Guess where we’ve been today?”

  “The library and now the courthouse.”

  “Bingo. Little Miss Muffet’s doing the dead-baby trick.”

  “She look like she knows what she’s doing?”

  “Definitely not a virgin. Knows what she wants, where it is, and how to get it.”

  “Okay, all the more reason to stay tight on her. Any way to tell what obituaries she’s checking out?”

  “No. I’ve been keeping an eye on the clerks that help her. Where they get the files from. That’s about it. She’s made copies of three death certificates so far. I don’t know how long she’s going to be here.”

  “Don’t worry. Stay on her. I have a way to find out what she’s checked out.”

  “Will do. Anything else funky happens, I’ll call you.”

  I hung up and dialed Joe Anthony again. “Tina, Leo Haggerty. Can I speak to Joe now?”

  “He’s with a client, Mr. Haggerty. Can he …?”

  “Buzz him, please. It’s urgent. I’ll take the heat, Tina, okay?”

  “All right, hold on.”

  “What is it, Leo?”

  “Timmons has turned the heat up. She’s getting together information for a whole new identity. I need you or one of your associates to go over to records and get a look at all the pull sheets that Sarabeth Timmons used today. That way we’ll know what death certificates she’s looking at, what new identities she’s trying out. Only police officers and attorneys can get behind the counter and look at that stuff.”

  “Fine. I’ll send an associate right over, but why is she doing this? I don’t get it.”

  “It’s called the ‘dead baby method’ of creating a false identity. If you don’t have major money to spend on professional forgeries or a government agency doing it for you, this is how you become a new person. You go to the library and start looking up obituaries. The ideal person to become is a child who died before age five, the younger the better, and one who would have been close to your age. Perfection is a child born in one state who dies in another. States don’t cross-reference these events. In addition, until recently kids didn’t get social security numbers until they began to work. So you find the right kid from an obituary, get the death certificate from one state, then call Vital Statistics in another for a copy of the birth certificate. When you get the birth certificate, you send a copy to get a social security number. With that number you can get a passport, a driver’s license, start a line of credit, and so on. Next thing you’re a brand-new person.”

  “You think she’s done this before?”

  “My guy says she knows what she’s doing. So, yes. That may well be how she became Sarabeth Timmons. Or it could be a skill she picked up for a rainy day in case she was ever discovered. Any P.I., law enforcement officer, con man, or criminal would know how to do this. There are plenty of books written explaining how to do it. I’ll give you a couple.”

  “No thanks. That’s okay. I’ll get an associate over there and we’ll copy all the death certificates she looked at and courier them to you.”

  “Great. If I’m not in, leave them with Kelly and I’ll look at them when I come back. I’ll be here late tonight.”

  I buzzed Kelly and told her I’d be going out on the Skrepinski case. If I wasn’t back when she left, she should put the package from Joe Anthony on my desk.

  I drove over to Edward Timmons’s last address to talk to his landlord.

  He had lived in a concrete cube with a cartoon face. Little square second-floor window eyes, aluminum-awning eyebrows, a ripped screen-door nose. Thin-lipped cement porch mouth and some color: black iron bars on the first-floor window cheeks. The lawn inside the cyclone fence had a bad case of psoriasis. Three parts brown scaly patches to one part grass.

  The resident manager lived in the apartment just inside the front door. At least that’s what the sign on the door said. I hit the bell but heard no sound. A drum solo on the door got me a bellowed “Hold your water, I’m coming.”

  Earl Wayne Durham looked like his building—in need of some repair. He hadn’t mowed his face in a while and his shirt could have used mending, washing, or burning.

  “Mr. Durham, my name is Leo Haggerty. I’m a private investigator looking for information about a man who used to live here, Edward John Timmons.”

  “Jesus, Dr. Strange. Yeah, he used to live here. Whatcha want to know?”

  “Anything you can tell me, like why the nickname?”

  Durham dredged something up from his throat, massaged it between his cheeks and gums, and spit it behind the door. A regular phlegm-thrower.

  I flipped out my notebook and waited.

  “Why Dr. Strange? Let me tell you.” Durham pulled the door closed behind him. What did he have in there, a girl scout? He sat on the steps and continued.

  “This guy was not from planet Earth. No trouble, mind you. Always on time with the rent. No noise, no pets. No repairs. Never said a word to the neighbors. I used to think he was a vampire. In all day, out all night.”

  “He ever bring in any company?”

  “No one I ever saw. I’m a night owl myself, but he was out past my bedtime.”

  “He ever talk to you, tell you anything about his past, anything about himself?”

  “A little. That was my first clue that he was rubber room material. First it was the food. He didn’t eat normal. He bought most of his stuff from a health food store and from the local pharmacy. I mean, it wasn’t food. It was like chemicals he took. I said something to him about it once, like, wouldn’t a chili dog now and then taste good. He went nuclear. Said more in two minutes than he said in two months. Some long thing about pollution and toxins. A lot of long words. I figured he had to be like a mad professor or something.”

  “Where is the pharmacy and the health food store?”

  “Down the street, the little shopping center before Idylwood.”

  “My records show that he didn’t own a car or have a license. How did he get around?”

  “Guy was a walking fool. Walked everywhere. Real lean and wiry. I’da thought he was in great shape. Had this little knapsack he carried everywhere. Always had it with him when he went out at night. Gives me the creeps now. I thought he was just out walking at nights.”

  “His bank was near here too, right?”

  “Yeah, just down the street.”

  “He have any hobbies? Belong to any clubs?”

  “You gotta be kidding. This was one queer duck. And that’s before he opened his mouth. People kinda backed away when he started to talk. I could see why he kept to
himself. He didn’t have anything anybody else wanted. So no, no clubs.

  “He played chess a lot. Not with anybody, just books, you know. Old games. He had this thing for that guy, you know, uh …”

  I knew. It could only be one person. “Bobby Fischer.”

  “Yeah, that’s him. He read all his books. Played him in his head. He even wrote him letters. Care of his publisher. Never said if he got any answer.”

  “Did he get any mail at all?”

  “Every now and then. A check, I figure. Had to get money from somewhere. Too strange to work. Nothing he ever talked about.”

  I made a note to talk to the mail carrier. “He ever mention any family?”

  “No. That’s a scary idea, I’ll tell you. He never impressed you as being somebody’s little boy or daddy. Just himself—out there.”

  “Anything else you can tell me?”

  Durham scratched his neck. I waited for his hind leg to keep time. “Not really. Like I said, a real bright guy. Used to see him in the library a lot. Always had a book in his hand. Always strange shit. Doomsday stuff. A lot of science, physics, biology, chemistry. Lots of magazines. He was always Xeroxing articles and scribbling all over them. He had these notebooks he used to carry in his sack. One day I saw him sitting on a park bench writing away in one. As soon as I got near him he jammed it into the sack, closed it up, and left. I figured he was working on some kind of book. Some wacko theory about the end of the world.”

  He was probably right. A theory about the end of his world. A world of one. In his own strange way he’d made an impression. Almost five and a half years later Earl Durham hadn’t forgotten him and was eager to tell a stranger about him.

  “Can you give me a description of Mr. Timmons? I’m going to have to jog the memory of other people, like the librarians, who probably didn’t know him as well as you did.”

  “Sure. Let’s see. Like I said, skinny. Pale, ’cause he didn’t go out days. He was about five nine, I’d say, maybe one hundred forty-five pounds. His hair I guess was brown, but he kept it real short, like a burr. I think near the end it was falling out, but you couldn’t tell. His eyes were real light gray maybe. Wore glasses, I remember that.”

  “Any scars, distinguishing marks?”

  “None that I ever saw.”

  “He ever go to church around here?”

  “No. Now that you mention it, that was another one of his pet things. God and religion. It wasn’t like he didn’t believe or care. He really hated churches. Said they’d find the pope in the last ring of hell.”

  “I understand you were the one who gave the information to the medical examiner for the death certificate.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “Did you find the body?”

  “No. He musta died on one of his night trips. They found some books in his knapsack. Took them to the library, got his name and address, and came to me.”

  “You know how he died?”

  “Yeah, they told me. Gave me the creeps. Didn’t surprise me, I guess. He had a real thing about doctors. Never went to one. He got a cold, he just went out and bought some chemicals. Not cold tablets, but raw chemicals. I figured he knew what he was doing. Let me tell you, though, how he died wasn’t nothing. I went up the next day to clean the apartment, figure out what to do with his belongings, you know. Get it ready to rent it out. I can’t even begin to tell you what I saw.”

  Durham leaned forward and dropped his voice. I had the feeling that this was his real reason for talking about Edward Timmons.

  “I went up and unlocked the door. I pushed it open wide first before I even stepped in. You know, like there’s weird and there’s sick. I was hoping for just weird. Weird would have been okay. I coulda done weird.”

  “So.”

  “Place looked like some kind of laboratory. No furniture—well, just a cot and this big work table. The window was lined with some kind of metal foil, and there was this big TV, only whatever he did to it, it wasn’t a TV any more. I didn’t even turn it on. The screen was covered with this metal foil too. Only it was different, like it was painted on the screen. And there were all kinds of wires coming out of the back. Not like any TV you ever saw. Some of the wires went to the window. There were chains around the legs holding it to the frame of the cot.

  “The work table was full of this electronic stuff and diagrams, and machinery, tools, a soldering iron. Oh, yeah, there was a .357 Magnum hanging from a chain bolted to the table—”

  “What about his notebooks?”

  “Yeah, that was strange. There was one on the table, but that was the only one I saw. I know he had others. I saw them when he rummaged around in his knapsack.”

  “He have any books there?”

  “Yeah, a ton of them in stacks on the floor. Mostly library books. From all over the country. I figured the best thing to do was give them to the library and let them deal with it.”

  “Clothes?”

  “Whatever he had was on the floor, in cardboard boxes. A couple of jackets in the closet.”

  “Luggage?”

  “Let me think.” Durham screwed up his face with effort. “Nah, I don’t remember seeing any.”

  Right. This guy is Mr. Perpetual Motion, ready to go whenever a psychic storm hits him, and he has no luggage. My ass. Five’ll get you ten you sold them to cover your losses on this one. “Anything else, Mr. Durham?” I said with a smile.

  “You bet your ass there was. This was a piece of cake so far. I’m in there looking around. Nothing on the walls, nothing else in the closet. It’s just an efficiency. So I go into the kitchenette. Here’s where it goes around the bend. First he ain’t got no plates or glasses. Just paper cups and paper plates. Lots of glass jars though and metal pots. And no silverware. Only plastic forks and spoons. Then I open this one drawer and it’s full of knives and saws and syringes—you know, like on a surgeon’s tray. So I ask myself, Jesus, what did he need shit like this for, and I’m starting to think I don’t want to know. So, I go into the bathroom. It’s as bad in there. There’s all these bags hanging from the shower rod and they’ve got these nozzles and needles on the end of the tubing. Tell you the truth, I never looked in the medicine cabinet. So I go back to the kitchen and I open the pantry. There’s no food there, only these jars of chemicals. So far so good. We’re still in the land of the weird, I’m telling myself. I knew that when I opened the door. No surprises here. So I go over to the refrigerator and I open it. Jesus, there’s these things in there. I don’t know what I’m looking at. They’re all in big jars. That’s all there is in there. And they’ve got eyes. One of them is looking right at me. I’m outta there. I slam the door closed and I never went back in there. Not until everything was hauled away. I bought a new refrigerator with money from his security deposit and had ’em use disinfectant to clean out the whole place.”

  “The things in the jars. Were they parts of people?” Hello, Milwaukee.

  “No. I know what you’re thinking. These looked like some kind of animal things. Not any animals I ever saw. Mutations maybe. I didn’t look twice.”

  “Who hauled it away?”

  “The county. I paid a couple of local kids to take the cot out, the TV thing, the table, and the tools. Told them they could keep what they wanted.”

  “Including the gun?”

  “Uh, no, that I, uh, gave to the cops.”

  “Okay.” Bad lie, that one. There’d be paper on that deal and I’ll eat the revolver if I’m wrong.

  “Who got the clothes?”

  “Kids took them over to the Salvation Army. I didn’t want anything from that guy. Absolutely gave me the creeps.”

  “Chemicals and surgical instruments?”

  “Chemicals went into the trash. The tools, I don’t know.”

  “Anybody ever get back to you on the contents of the fridge?”

  “No, I put a good chain around it to keep the door closed and had them take it out the front door on a hand truck. Put i
t on the street and left it alone.”

  “How long till it was picked up?”

  “I don’t know. Next day probably. I called for a special pickup.”

  Unplugged it would have started to smell pretty soon. If he never heard back, he was lying or the county buried it in a landfill where everything smells and nobody cares. This was probably one mystery best left unsolved. Unless Sarabeth Timmons grew in one of those jars, it wasn’t any of my business.

  “Well, thanks, Mr. Durham. I appreciate your time and help.” I closed my notebook and got one of my cards out of my wallet. “If you remember anything else, please call me at this number. Any time, night or day.”

  Durham looked at the card. “You never sleep, huh?”

  “Hardly ever,” I said, more right than I wanted to be.

  I left Durham staring through his broken screen door at me and went back to the office. Everyone was gone. I sat and read the daily reports, looked at the death certificates Joe Anthony had sent over, made my notes for Kelly, and added some questions to Larry’s report.

  1. Call Skrepinski. Ask him if his father had any notebooks he carried with him when he was at home. Were they important to him? If so, where the fuck are the notebooks now?

  2. Call the police. Find out what happened to Timmons’s knapsack the night he died. Most likely it was ripped off by ghoulus suburbanus. Maybe it was mislaid or forgotten by the ambulance crew.

  I’d hit the library, the pharmacy, and the mailman myself. I drifted through my lockup ritual and went home.

  In the kitchen, I sifted through the mail. It was all junk except for the letter from my foster daughter Randi Benson, now a freshman at UVA, and a parcel with my newest wind chime.