“My client can’t afford that.”
“Well, we could only do it for a week. We’ve got to go back to school.”
Sean shook his head and grabbed the paper. He wrote, “I’ll go back late. My friends’ll cover for me. This is too good to pass up.”
“That’s still four grand. She can’t afford that. If she could, we wouldn’t be chasing him.”
“We have a deal with Mickey. On these old papers, if we can serve them we get to keep all the money. How much was he getting for this one?”
“Because of the amount of money at stake, he was getting two hundred for the paper. That would have been a hundred for you. I’ll tell you what, since we’re almost out of time. If you find this guy, it’s worth five hundred dollars, all to you.”
“How about our expenses?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Money to informants, stuff like that.”
“Up to a hundred dollars, with an invoice.”
“Okay, we’ve got a deal. We’ll send you a letter to confirm this.”
“Good luck, guys, you’re running out of time.”
“Is there any information you can give us on this guy? A description, work history.”
“Yeah, he’s a big guy, about six feet, over two hundred pounds. White, brown hair, brown eyes. Anything other than that would be ten years old. He was a custom builder back in Louisiana. There was a significant discrepancy between his declared income and what his clients said they paid him, as I recall from the filings. That was a big issue in establishing the child support. He was getting paid in cash a lot. I’ll check the file, see if we have anything else that would be useful. If I come up with anything, how do I get in touch with you?”
Matt gave him the cell-phone number. “It’s on all the time.”
He hung up the phone and pumped his fists. “Yes. Five hundred and a hundred for expenses.”
“Let’s go to the courthouse and see what they have on this guy. It’s like you said, he had to be in hiding until recently or Mickey’d have found him,” Sean said.
They grabbed their jackets and line-danced out of the apartment, singing, “Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.”
Matt said, “If that’s our theme song, we ought to find out whose song it is.”
Their mother rolled over in bed, her arms clasped across her chest, her fists under her chin, and said, “Martha and the Vandellas. Good luck, boys,” as she heard the door quietly close.
Two hours later they sat in the cafeteria of the Fairfax County Circuit Court building, reviewing their notes. They had a home address and phone, office address and phone, and state corporation filings for the last two years for Burle Hitchens and DNT Contracting.
“This makes no sense. He hasn’t been hiding. We should have found him first time out of the box a year ago.”
“Who cares, Matt. Whoever Mickey gave this to didn’t. They screwed up and it’s our good fortune. Let’s call him, make sure he’s at the job site or at his office, and go pay him a visit. Easiest five hundred bucks we’ve ever earned.”
In the car they dialed DNT’s office number from the sign.
“DNT Contracting.”
“Is this Burle Hitchens?”
“Who’s calling?”
“My name is Sean Ellis. I saw your sign on a house in my neighborhood. I’m thinking about adding a deck onto the back of my house, maybe making it a covered porch. I was wondering if I could talk to you about the job.”
“Sure. Why don’t you come by the office. I’ll show you some pictures of other projects we’ve done.”
“Great. What’s the address?”
Hitchens gave it to them and they hung up. His office was in his house, on Route 123 down near Lorton, Washington D.C.’s prison. They pulled into the dirt driveway and parked next to a white pickup truck. The house had a wide, raised front porch that ran across the front, supported by columns at the corners. It was a white wooden salt-box with dormers on the second floor. The windows were open, and gauzy white curtains billowed with the breeze. The backyard had a chain-link fence with a ‘Beware of Dog’ sign. The truck had a bumper sticker that read, “White men can’t jump. We don’t have to. We hire black men to do that.”
“I’m gonna love tagging this guy,” Matt said.
“You want to do it?” Sean asked.
“I don’t care. We’re splitting the money, right?”
“Of course.”
“You can do it. It should only take a minute.”
“Okay, you write notes for the affidavit.”
Sean climbed out of the car, walked across the packed dirt yard, up the steps to the porch, and knocked on the door. The door was opened by a large man and Sean stepped inside.
Matt flipped over his pad and began to note the address, time of day, and who went to serve the papers, when he began to realize that Sean was gone longer than a simple “Tag, you’re served.” Hitchens knew they were coming. He’d be ready to meet Sean. Maybe he was on a phone call and Sean had to wait outside the office. Matt reached down and felt around for the foot-long steel bar by the edge of the front seat. He looked around to see if there were other vehicles out back. There were none. If Hitchens made a run for it he’d have to come out the front to get to his truck. Matt thought he’d just slide out and liberate some air from one of the truck’s rear tires.
Just as he opened the car door, he saw Sean walk out of the house. He bounded down the stairs and strode briskly to the car like he was all done and ready to go, but he wasn’t smiling. He should have been smiling.
Sean slid into the car.
“What’s the matter? Wrong guy?”
“Oh no, he’s the right guy. That’s the problem. I know why he wasn’t served before.”
“Yeah?”
“He just offered me a thousand dollars to forget that I found him. He said, ‘Oh, you guys again.’ Somebody in the office found him and he bought them off.”
“Yeah, so what, you papered him, right?”
“Not exactly. I told him I’d come out here with someone else who knew where he was. So he offered you a thousand, too. I told him I had to come out and get you to agree. He says he can get the money, in cash, of course, this afternoon. Anyway, I started thinking.”
“You can stop thinking. We aren’t doing this.”
“Hear me out. This guy says taking the money isn’t a crime. We’re not sheriffs, we’re not officers of the court. We can’t be bribed. If we don’t file an affidavit that says we couldn’t find him, then we haven’t committed fraud. We just walk away. That’s all he’s asking. Walk away with two thousand dollars. Somebody else has already done it.”
“Sean, we can’t do this. Mickey gave us this chance. We’d be stabbing him in the back. Hell, we have to tell him that somebody else sold him out. We’re doing this for the summer, we’re passing through. This is his life. We can’t ruin his reputation.”
“Yeah, but two grand sure would make our lives easier.”
“No doubt. What do you think a hundred grand would do? We’ll make more money someday. So this year we’ll eat a lot of ramen, we’ll mooch off all our friends, we’ll go inactive at the fraternity. It’ll pass. If we do this, that woman and her kids will never get that money.”
“I know, I know. There’s got to be a way to take the money and then paper him. I have no problem lying to a weasel like him.”
“I don’t know, man. That’s real iffy. We’ve just got his word that it’s not a crime. If you take it, maybe it’s some kind of conspiracy to commit fraud even if we don’t do it. It’s his word against ours. We’d spend all the money in legal fees just trying to hold onto it or stay out of jail. Let it rest. Go back inside, tag him, and go. Agreed?”