“This place is a dump,” he said.
“Maybe, but I call it home. You going to buy patches for that jacket?”
“I got three others just like it. The saleslady, she said the color matched my eyes.”
“And now you want me to sue?”
“The boss, he wanted to know if you delivered his message.”
“Tell him yes.”
“He’ll be pleased.” He took an envelope out of his jacket pocket and handed it to me. “He asked me to deliver this personally. It is a certain number that a certain party was calling about a certain scam of his.”
“How’d you guys get it?”
“We twisted a nipple, if you know what I mean.”
“Teddy?”
“There you go.”
“It must have hurt.”
“You have any idea of where he is now?”
“Who, Teddy?”
“No, the other guy, the guy what you gave our message to.”
“No, no idea.”
“You sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure.”
“Do yourself a favor, Victor. If you find out where he is, you let us know. We want to talk to him ourselves.” He stood up, straightened his jacket, looked around. “You ought to spruce this place up a bit, Victor. A little color would do wonders.”
“And I bet you have one in mind.”
After Leo left, I ripped open the envelope. A single yellow sheet was inside and on the single yellow sheet was a single phone number, a number that looked vaguely familiar. The person on the other side of this line was the one Joey Parma had been looking to for money, enough money to pay off his debt to Teddy Big Tits and keep his girlfriend, the impossible Bev Rodgers, satisfied.
I picked up the phone, dialed it, and when I heard the greeting hung it up again. That fool, that stupid fool. This was the problem with taking up Joey Parma’s cause. Every step you followed in his sad little life became ever more pathetic.
I closed my eyes and rubbed my face and tried to snap myself back into focus. There was work to be done, work I had been neglecting, a motion for a reduction in sentence to be filed for Rashard Porter, a response to the Bar Association’s frivolous action against me, time sheets to fill out and bills to prepare, criminal opinions to review, cases that I had long been ignoring to stop ignoring. But I didn’t do any of that. I went through my messages, tossed out anything not related to Joey Parma or Eddie Dean or Tommy Greeley – if it was important enough they’d call back – and ended up with two pink message slips in my hand.
“This is Victor Carl,” I said into the phone. “Tell me the news.”
“Where is he?”
“I told you. Did you take the book to the lab? Did they ID the prints?”
“Yes, yes. We did all that. Where is he?”
“Oh hell, Telushkin, did you lose him again?”
“Two hours ago a joint task force of police and FBI entered the town house rented by the Mr. Dean you mentioned to me. It was deserted, nobody home, no sign of habitation. Cleaned out.”
“Of course it is,” I said.
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. What took you so long? He was there when I handed you the book. I came right from his place.”
“These things take time. They can’t be rushed. All procedures must be followed, evidence gathered, warrants issued. We moved as fast as we could.”
“Apparently not fast enough.”
“They want you to come down to the federal building and give a full statement.”
“I can’t right now.”
“I won’t let him escape me this time. I won’t.”
“You already have, haven’t you?”
Once again the fugitive had eluded his grasp. That was Telushkin’s fate, to be skewered by Tommy Greeley. Now it was up to me, though I had suspected it would be up to me from the first, and I was clueless as to what to do. I knew who had set up Tommy Greeley – Jackson Straczynski, using his hood of a brother to beat up and rob the man who was screwing with his screwy wife – but I didn’t know what to do with that knowledge. Whatever crime had been committed it was twenty years old and no murder had occurred and so the statute of limitations had long expired. Joey had been in the clear all along, that stupid son of a bitch, and Derek Manley now had nothing to fear, and neither did the justice. The only one who could still be prosecuted was the running man, Eddie Dean, Tommy Greeley, one and the same, whose indictment had stopped the limitations period from expiring, but he was back on the lam and I had no idea where to find him.
Maybe Kimberly could help. A boat, she had been off that very morning, she had said, to see a man about a boat. What did that mean? He hadn’t left yet, of that I was pretty sure. He still had business here, he wouldn’t leave without the suitcase or the stuff I had brought back from Brockton, or the money he thought was still hanging around. So I had some time, but whatever I did, I would have to do it quickly or he would be gone again, and with him would have fled my last best chance for learning what happened to Joey Parma. That’s why I needed Beth and Skink, together, to talk through the options, to keep me from doing something stupid. On my own I am prone to stupidity, but Beth and Skink keep me sharp, keep me focused.
I looked at the second message, shook my head, dialed the phone.
“We need to talk,” said Slocum.
“That’s never a good sign,” I said. “Does this mean you’re breaking up with me?”
“We need to get together right away.”
“I’m a bit busy now.”
“What did you say to him last night?”
“To who? Derek?”
“The feds have been chewing my ass all morning. They want to know what you said to him. They want to know why after your visit last night he went ape shit. They want to know why he disappeared and where he went.”
“Derek is missing?”
“Gone.”
“What about the baby-sitters?”
“The bastard slipped out the window.”
“There were bars.”
“He had a screwdriver.”
“Nice security.”
“They were secured on the inside. He was the one that wanted protection. But for some reason, after your visit, he wanted out. They need to talk to you immediately at the federal building.”
“I seem to be pretty popular down there right now. Tell them to wait.”
“What’s going on?”
“When I find out you’ll be the first to know.”
“By definition that’s a lie.”
“So it is.”
“Carl, this isn’t funny.”
“I’ll be in touch.”
“Carl.”
I hung up lightly, not angrily, so lightly Slocum was probably still calling out my name before he realized I wasn’t there anymore. So Manley had slipped out the window. Maybe he knotted his sheets together, or maybe he leaped out onto a leafy bush, now a leafy dead bush. That must have been a sight, like a whale falling from an apple tree. What would Newton have made of that? I suppose Manley had some business to take care of and, after delivering his message to that 609 number, I had a pretty good idea of what it was. That was why Leo had come, not to give the envelope, but to enlist my aid in finding Derek. The feds weren’t the only ones rushing around like Keystone Kops looking for him. Run, Derek, run, I thought, because they are all coming after you. But Manley, I figured, could take care of himself; I had other things to deal with.
I saw a light flash on my phone, Slocum phoning back to shout in my ear, I presumed. I didn’t want to talk to him right now, I didn’t want to be hauled down to the federal building and locked in a room with a hungry pack of U.S. marshals who had been embarrassed by a fleeing witness, with the FBI in the hallway waiting for their own crack at me. I didn’t have time for that right now.
“I’m not in,” I called out to my secretary.
She stepped into my office and closed the door.
“I can’t find Ms. Derringer,” she said. “Her cell phone doesn’t answer and neither does her home phone. I left messages on both.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe she took a spa day.”