Penance Read online

  “The cops are messing with me,” I told the Monza. “And this BS about Annie refusing to see me … All right, I’ll play.”

  I fired up the Monza and steered her toward downtown Minneapolis. A blue Ford parked several car lengths behind me pulled out at the same time. I nearly lost him at the light and had to slow down so he could catch up.

  “Come along, officer,” I muttered. “I haven’t got all day.”

  FOUR

  THE TELEPHONE was ringing as I unlocked my office door and I caught it before my answering machine kicked in.

  “So, who is it?” Randy asked after he identified himself.

  “How you doing, Randy?” I asked.

  “Oh, I’m hurtin’, man. I’m hurtin’. I don’t think I can take much more of this,” he moaned. Randy hates for people to think that he is actually making money at his chosen profession and over the years I’ve discovered that his physical pain increases and decreases in direct proportion to his winnings. Considering his extreme discomfort, I guessed that Randy’d had a pretty good weekend.

  “Did you finger the mechanic?” he asked again.

  “Yeah, no problem.”

  “Who is it?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “What the fuck? That’s why I hired you, man.”

  “What I meant is, would you be satisfied with your money back? Your money and the money I lost?”

  “You lost money? I didn’t hire you to lose money.”

  “Aww for crissake, Randy …”

  “I want his balls! I want ’em served up with eggs and hash browns!”

  “Then I won’t give you the name.”

  The way Randy carried on, you’d have thought he was going to have a heart attack; I almost asked him where I could send flowers.

  “I don’t goon, Randy, you know that,” I told him when his ranting finally subsided.

  “Who’s askin’ you to? I got guys to do the heavy work.”

  “Here’s the deal,” I told him. “I’ll get your money back. I’ll put the fear of God into the mechanic. And you can keep my fee.”

  Randy paused to think about it. “How long have I known you?”

  “Twelve years, ever since I busted your Super Bowl party.”

  “Okay, ’cuz of them twelve years I let the mechanic walk; I figure you got your reasons.”

  “I do.”

  “But I want my money and I want it by Friday or I’m gonna send my guys to talk to you.”

  I was so frightened I hung up the phone without saying good-bye.

  Every man and woman in America leaves little threads wherever they go. They leave them in computer databases when they are born, apply for a driver’s license, graduate from school, get married, get divorced, buy on credit, make airline reservations, stay at a hotel, apply for life insurance, order freshwater pearls from the Home Shopping Network—hundreds of little threads that when woven together produce a garment of who and what they are. In fact, it is virtually impossible not to become the subject of a record. The average person is on fifty databases at any one time and nearly all of them are readily available to someone with a personal computer, a modem and a telephone. Like me.

  Most threads of information are stored in public files gathered by the government that I can access simply by signing on as “anonymous” and using “guest” as a password. Much of this information is contained in private databases such as those of credit bureaus that I can access for a fee. It isn’t easy, of course. Locating banks of files that actually contain relevant information often requires as much detective work as investigating a dozen flea markets in Iowa. I often have to drag one database after another until I find the name I’m looking for. Or the Social Security number, our de facto standard universal identifier. Still, given time, I can usually gather enough bits and pieces to assemble a reasonably complete sketch of an individual, everything from date of birth to high school locker number.

  I know PIs who conduct entire investigations by computer, never leaving their offices. There’s a guy in Texas who does nothing but skip traces; he can run one in about ninety seconds. Other agencies specialize in background checks, verifying an individual’s personal history for five hundred bucks a pop. Mostly they run these checks for businesses, pre-employment checks. Yet more and more they run them for single women who want to investigate their male friends and for fathers who worry about their daughters. All in all, it’s a great time to be a private investigator: Nobody trusts anybody.

  Still, I don’t think relying exclusively on a computer is smart. You simply cannot get everything you need on-line and the facts you do generate often come without the nuances that give them true value. For that you need personal contact. You need to interview a witness, conduct physical surveillance, engage in waste retrieval and analysis. Otherwise, it is too easy to be deceived, too easy to come to the wrong conclusion.

  I parked myself in front of my PC and thought it over, trying to decide where to begin. Above the computer hung a newspaper article I had framed in silver. HAVE PC—WILL TRAVEL, the headline read. Just under the headline was a photograph of me, dressed in a trench coat and fedora and leaning on my PC. The story was all about how I squashed the hostile take-over of a much-loved local firm. It was fairly simple, really. I merely followed the Social Security numbers of the CEO, CFO and president of the hostile company to a series of secret bank accounts in Nevada and Nassau, where they had squirreled away nearly fifty million bucks. My discovery, which generated considerable interest from the FBI, SEC, IRS and several other organizations with impressive-sounding initials, effectively killed the acquisition and earned me a twenty-five-thousand-dollar bonus (still unspent) from a much-relieved board of directors. It also earned me a lot of attention from the local media.

  I made the papers again a few months back, only I haven’t seen them. I was in the hospital at the time. Anne Scalasi saved copies; she assured me they all claimed I was a hero. I took her word for it.

  I glanced at her photograph on my desk. She was dressed in blues, her hat hiding a wave of brown hair, the bill shading hazel eyes. The photo was taken the evening the St. Paul Saints won the Northern League minor league baseball championship. We had donned our uniforms and snuck into Midway Stadium, pretending to be security. A photographer who works for the Pioneer Press sports department took the picture for me; Annie doesn’t know I have it.

  Annie’s photograph was next to Laura’s. Laura, my wife. All golden hair and blue eyes. Laura had worked in advertising as an art director; the photograph was taken when she won a gold push pin or some damn thing at a Twin Cities advertising club awards show.

  She and Anne had not liked each other. Anne dismissed Laura as being frivolous, questioning her occupation, her hobby of collecting antique dolls and toys, her interest in fashion. Laura found Anne obsessive, preoccupied with “the hunt,” placing her job above all else including her family. Anne called Laura “the artiste.” Laura referred to Anne as “Kojak.” They never spoke except to send messages to me. The evening Laura was killed she had asked Annie to tell me that since I was working late, she would take Jennifer to her swimming lesson …

  Poor Laura. The man who killed her was given a lousy thirty-six-month sentence. Thirty-six months for her and thirty-six months for my daughter, to be served consecutively. And then he did only forty-eight…

  Wait a minute! The usual sentence for criminal vehicular homicide is twenty-one months per count. John Brown was sentenced to a total of thirty months more because public outrage over the case generated by the Mothers Against Drunk Drivers—and by my being a cop, some say—compelled the judge to ignore the state sentencing guidelines. On the other hand, Joseph Sherman did six years for criminal vehicular homicide. Assume he was a good boy and walked after serving two-thirds of his sentence. That means the judge originally gave him nine years. Who the hell did he kill?

  To find out I dialed up VU/TEXT, the database of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and instructed the c
omputer to drag it for any local or state story containing Sherman, Joseph’s name. Up popped a menu containing eleven items in chronological order. I pulled the text of the last item, the most recent article. The headline read:

  DRUNK DRIVER PLEADS GUILTY

  IN REPRESENTATIVE’S DEATH;

  SENTENCED TO NINE YEARS

  Dynamite. A clipping service would have taken a week and five hundred dollars, yet I had everything I needed in thirty seconds for a fraction of the cost. I prepared a manila file folder, labeling it “Brown, John,” and noted all pertinent information culled from the newspaper articles chronologically on a yellow legal pad.

  To start from the beginning, Terrance Friedlander had been running for his eighth term to the Minnesota House of Representatives. The minority party, anticipating defeat, offered only token resistance, specifically a young, unknown attorney whose political experience consisted solely of writing nasty letters on behalf of the Department of Transportation. The lawyer’s name was Carol Catherine Monroe …

  “So, that’s how she got her start,” I mused, noting the name on the yellow sheet.

  With less than three weeks remaining in the campaign, Friedlander held a twenty-three-point lead in the polls. Yet, he was still out there pressing the flesh, distributing flyers door-to-door, flyers with his smiling countenance under a red, white and blue banner that read VOTE FOR TOMORROW; people actually glad to see him, happy to shake his hand, asking, “What’s this new tax bullshit, Terry?”; “Hey Terry, you’re not gonna let ’em move the airport, are you?”; and Terry smiling back and saying, “Not to worry, not to worry,” until he went to cross the street and the car was on him, seemed to swerve toward him and wham! he was gone.

  The car was a ’74 Ford LTD, pale green with a black hardtop, witnesses said, license plate FAU 367. They found the car in a northern suburb, parked in the lot next to the Babe Ruth baseball diamond, the driver’s door open, the engine running, the front seat reeking of cheap whiskey. They found the driver—the “alleged driver,” the newspapers said—in his apartment three blocks away at 1237 Glendale Street. He was sitting in his kitchen, a liter of vodka on the table and two dead soldiers on the floor, when they came for him. His name was Joseph Sherman, and he claimed he didn’t know what the cops were talking about, claimed he hadn’t left the apartment all day. However, he had a long history of alcohol abuse and three DWIs to his name and when the assistant Hennepin County attorney offered criminal vehicular homicide instead of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and a half dozen motor vehicle felonies, Sherman jumped at it. The paper hadn’t much liked the plea bargain, but the CA’s case was circumstantial; no one could actually identify Sherman as the driver of the car—one witness was even convinced that a woman was behind the wheel. But then the judge ignored the bargain and dropped the gavel on Sherman for nine hard. That made just about everyone happy except Sherman and who gave a damn about him?

  1237 GLENDALE STREET was the address of an aging apartment complex that boasted an indoor swimming pool, sauna, storage facilities and thirty-two moderately priced units, half of which had a wonderful view of Interstate 694. The other half looked out on the lot where I parked my car. I stretched after closing the door, hiding my eyes as I glanced at the blue Ford parked across the street.

  I checked the directory. The caretaker, D. Ladner, was in apartment 101. D stood for Dorothy but after I introduced myself Mrs. Ladner insisted I call her Dot. At first she assumed I was looking for an apartment and told me, “Sorry, no vacancies.” Then I handed her my card.

  “Wow, a private investigator! Just like Rockford!” she exclaimed.

  “Exactly,” I lied.

  “What can I do to help?” she asked, all set to rush to the closet for her trench coat and .38. The woman watched way too much television.

  “I’d like to talk to you about your tenants.”

  “Is it Foley in two-oh-two? Last week I saw him holding a handkerchief to his nose; that’s what happens when you use too much cocaine, isn’t it? You get nose bleeds?”

  “Could be he picked it a little too close,” I said, dampening her enthusiasm.

  Dot thought about it for a moment—who else among her tenants could be a criminal?—then she remembered herself. “Please, please, c’mon in, don’t stand in the hall,” she said. The apartment was simple: bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, living room/dining room combination, with windows on two sides. The carpet was green; the furniture old—“antiquey,” my wife would say. The TV was tuned to a soap. “All My Children.” Dot turned down the volume but did not switch off the set.

  “Who are you after? A drug dealer?”

  “How long have you been caretaker here?” I asked in reply.

  “Eight years. I moved in right after my nephew bought the building, my husband’s sister’s boy, Kevin. He gave me the job after my husband passed. I have a picture …”

  “Perhaps later,” I said, wondering whose picture she was going to show me, the husband or the nephew. “Did you know Joseph Sherman?”

  “Oh, him,” she replied, obviously disappointed. “The police were asking about him the other day. I was hoping you were here about something new.”

  “The police were here?”

  “Sunday,” she replied, glancing at the soap—Erica Kane was in bed with someone. Fetching lass, that Erica Kane. “They were St. Paul police,” Dot continued. “Very pleasant.”

  “Short white guy, tall black guy?” I asked as the soap went to commercial.

  “Yes,” Dot replied, then corrected me. “The tall officer was a person of color. We don’t call ’em blacks no more.”

  “My mistake. What did you tell them?”

  “They asked me if I had seen Joseph Sherman around here and I said I didn’t.”

  “So, you did know Sherman.”

  “Uh-huh. I didn’t like him, though. He was an alcoholic and I have no time for alcoholics. My cousin Ruth’s boy Jerry was an alcoholic and he was no good, I can tell you. He caused Ruth plenty of heartache and then he killed that politician—Sherman, not Jerry—and the reporters came ’round.” Dot shook her head. “I was all set to testify at his trial. The prosecutor wanted me to tell how he was always drunk and causing trouble with the other tenants, only then there wasn’t a trial. I was kinda disappointed, you know? I had plenty to say.”

  “What kind of trouble did he cause?”

  “The tenants were always complaining that he had his TV on too loud.”

  “What else?”

  “Some tenants saw him stagger when he walked, needed to hang onto the railing to get upstairs. This is a respectable place. Anyway, the last I heard of Sherman he was doing hard time in the slammer.”

  “Slammer?”

  “That’s what you call prison, isn’t it?”

  “Among other things,” I agreed.

  “Yeah, the heat busted him for whacking the politician with his ride,” she added, showing off her TV vocabulary.

  “Sure.”

  The woman nodded at me just like one of the actors in “Dragnet.” “He’s out, you say?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I replied in the clipped manner of Jack Webb, who knew as much about being a real cop as your average finishing-school debutante.

  “Think he’ll be coming back for his stuff?”

  “Stuff?”

  “Clothes, furniture; it’s in storage.”

  “Storage?”

  “In the basement.”

  “Show me.”

  Dot took a large ring of keys from a hook in her kitchen. I followed her out the door and down the steps into a huge basement. She moved quickly, without speaking, as if on a mission. She walked me past a dozen or more room-sized lockers with large wooden doors, finally stopping at one with BUILDING stenciled across the front. She bent to the padlock. She had trouble springing it open.

  “After he was convicted, we moved Sherman’s belongings into the storage room and waited for someone to claim them. No one d
id,” she said while she worked the lock. It wouldn’t open. She tried several other keys without success.

  “Let it go,” I recommended at last.

  Dot nodded.

  “Who were Sherman’s friends in the building?”

  “What friends?”

  “Didn’t he have any friends?”

  “Not here.”

  “You sure?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “Who were his neighbors?”

  “There’s only one tenant left who was living here when Sherman was.”

  “Who would that be?”

  “Meghan Chakolis.”

  “Which apartment?”

  “Three-eleven.”

  “Which was Sherman’s apartment?”

  “Three-twelve.”

  “Ms. Chakolis live alone?”

  Dot nodded again. “Ever since her husband left, about six years ago.”

  “Where can I find Ms. Chakolis during the day?”

  “The State Capitol.”

  “The State Capitol?”

  “She works for the government.”

  “What does she do?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Parking at the State Capitol is a joke, so I pulled into the Sears lot across the street and walked through the store, so the security guards would think I was a customer and not make me move my car to a parking lot that cost money. It made for a longer walk, but I didn’t mind. The air outside was crisp and clear—autumn in Minnesota. It’s one reason I remained here when my family moved to Fort Myers in Florida.

  The driver of the blue Ford followed at a discreet distance. It was the sloppiest tail job I had ever seen. Either that or I was supposed to see him.

  The State Capitol Mall is like an oasis in the depressed area that is Rice Street-University Avenue, an area that is making a big comeback thanks to the efforts of its residents, but which still has a long way to go. The State Capitol Building itself is sprawling, ornate and white; if you’re looking for grandeur and sheer elegance in your government buildings, this one would do nicely, with Greek columns, high, arching windows and a massive dome topped with gold. Above the enormous front doors a team of golden horses pulls a golden chariot. Forty-five steps lead to the doors—I counted them years ago while on a grade-school field trip. In the summer about a hundred thousand people will loll on the grass in front of those steps and listen to the Minnesota Orchestra play the “1812” overture while Fourth of July fireworks explode overhead. In the winter the grass is covered by sheets of snow virtually undisturbed by tracks.