“Nothing?”
“Almost nothing. The guy uttered, ‘Shit,’ and then coldcocked me from the side as I got close to the bottom step.”
“That was it? Just the one word?”
“Your man Kovacs isn’t much for discourse. The fact that he continued beating me, though, after I lost consciousness means he was expressing disappointment that I wasn’t you.”
“You saw nothing?”
“I’d turned on the lights downstairs, as we’d planned, and slipped a hundred-watt bulb in the outside light. Like I told the cops, the guy came at me from under the stairs.”
“I don’t know that those guys will do much, Leo.”
“Malloy and Crack?” This time he made a whole smile with his damaged lips. His teeth were pink with blood. “They’ll go have coffee cake. They were humoring your Michigan cop’s request, bringing by those pictures. We can forget them. Word is, they do their own breaking and entering, on city time. They don’t have time for anybody else’s B and E.”
I’d heard the same rumors. The Rivertown squad was not known as crime stoppers.
Leo mumbled something.
“What?” I asked.
“Was the guy there to kill you, or was he looking for that numbered key?” he murmured.
“Looking for the key. He took a chance, coming in when somebody was there.”
“Dek?” He was fading, his voice becoming inaudible. “You said that Kovacs was driving up.”
“He couldn’t have made it that fast in a car. He must have taken a flight.”
“He didn’t get his key,” Leo said. “You should get out of Rivertown for a few nights. Go stay with Amanda in her armored condominium.”
“She’s not returning my calls.”
“Bring wine, bang on her door.”
Ma and Endora loomed at the edge of the curtain.
I started to turn to leave.
Leo motioned with his good arm. I bent back down.
“I told the cops that, as greasy as those Kovacs brothers looked in the police photos, with their oily hair, and boils and pimples, jeez…” He stopped, searching for the word. “He smelled fresh. That’s it: fresh. That’s it,” he said, his voice barely audible now. “There was something fresh about the bastard, like spring.”
“What do you mean, fresh?”
“Tired,” he murmured, and then he closed his eyes and went to sleep.
The dumbest man on the planet took a long time to straighten all the way up. His head was suddenly, and hugely, heavy with all the wrong assumptions he’d made. He concentrated on making his feet work as he stepped around the gloom that was Ma and Endora. The cancer man said something, but the dumbest man on the planet didn’t want to hear anything above the clacking of his shoes on the glossy tile floor.
He knew the smart play: Call Dillard in Michigan, Patterson in Iowa, tell them of the man from Michigan, the brother from Iowa. Have the two cops conference in federal authorities to dispatch manpower and make arrests. Then sit back. The wise plan was obvious.
But the wise plan would do nothing for the furies in the dumb man’s heart. It would do nothing for the memory of the woman, haunted and hunted, fleeing to Michigan, only to be murdered and burned. And it did nothing for the pain of the good, trusting fellow who lay beaten on a hospital bed, trying to wisecrack his way through a body full of pain.
The wise plan did nothing for revenge.
The dumbest man on the planet checked his watch. It was eight o’clock. There was barely any time at all, and the dumbest man on the planet had a lot to do.
Thirty-eight
East Chicago, Indiana, was only an hour from the turret. It was all the time I could afford, but it was enough. East Chicago was plausible, little more than ninety minutes from Rambling.
I stopped at a men’s clothing store, bought a shirt, a pair of suspenders, and an extra-large golf hat that rode too low on my head. Then I pulled into the first bank I saw.
The Workman’s Bank of East Chicago was an old two-story building that was missing mortar from its rows of red bricks. Inside, the oak transaction tables, the granite-topped teller line, and the roll-top desk visible through the president’s open office door were old, too.
The safety deposit box vault was in the basement. The slender lady in the floral dress might have been younger than the bank, but only by a few hours. She wore glasses with thick lenses.
She peered at me. “You said the largest we have?”
“Yes, ma’am. I need to lock up a lot of stuff.”
“That’ll be a hundred and twenty-five dollars, for the one year’s rental.”
She cleared her throat politely. A careful woman, she wanted to see the money first. I paid with most of the rest of Maris’s cash. I hoped it was appropriate.
The slender lady fussed behind the short counter riser and slid a signature card through the opening.
I started to write, then said, “Darn.”
“Something wrong, young man?”
“I wrote my name illegibly. May I have another?” I moved the original card aside.
“Of course.” She handed me a second card. I printed the name, then wrote the signature as I remembered it, from studying it in the Jeep five minutes before. I slid the card back.
“Thank you, young man.” She filled out the four-part rental agreement and handed it to me.
“Bottom copy mine?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I printed and signed again, made a show of separating the pink bottom copy because I was a helpful young man, and handed back the remaining three copies, still attached.
She handed me a small blue envelope. “Two keys inside, young man. Twenty-five-dollar charge if you lose one key, fifty if you lose both and we have to drill the box.”
I opened the small envelope. The keys were old, and ridged; not like the numbered key Maris had left.
“What if I only want one key?” I asked.
“Two keys is the policy. Folks who don’t want the second key put it in the box and leave it there.”
Yes, ma’am.
I checked the clock on the wall. At least eight hours remained until dusk. I was back to expecting that my visitor driving up from Florida wouldn’t show up until after dark.
“One more thing, ma’am?” I smiled.
“Yes?”
“I want to make double sure I don’t lose these keys. May I have a letter envelope and a sheet of paper to wrap your little key packet in?”
She smiled at my caution-someday I would make a fine senior citizen-and gave me the envelope and a piece of stationery. Both had the bank’s name and logo on them.
“Perfect,” I said.
The folks upstairs were just as nice, more than willing to let me used the old Selectric typewriter abandoned on a vacant desk in the corner. I fed in my newly acquired sheet of letterhead and, on behalf of the entire staff of the Workman’s Bank of East Chicago, Indiana, typed a letter to its newest lockbox renter, welcoming him to Workman’s family of happy customers. I added that everyone hoped he would stop in again. I typed the matching envelope, folded in the letter, and stuck it with a postage stamp from my wallet. I mailed it outside.
I called Aggert’s cell phone from the Jeep. He didn’t answer, of course, but he’d still be checking for messages.
“A friend of mine got beat up last night, by someone looking for that lockbox key. I’m done working for Louise Thomas’s estate. This is all too risky. I’ve just mailed you the key. You give it to Dillard.” It would keep him in West Haven, waiting for the mail.
I started the Jeep, then called Dillard. He was in.
“False alarm,” I said. “That Kovacs brother that’s supposedly headed up here hasn’t left Florida yet.”
“Where exactly did you get that information to begin with?” he asked. I’d been brief and vague when I’d first called him, but he’d gone along. Now he was not happy.