Crazybone

15

Anchor Bay was a few miles above Gualala, and the winding stretch of Highway I north of there was a pretty one — thickly wooded slopes to the east, the ocean close on the west and visible in snatches through more pine woods running along the cliff tops. Wisps of fog threaded the blue sky now; but the wind had slacked off and the offshore bank was moving slowly. The lowering sun had lost some of its brightness, so that its rays among the trees had a pale, filtered look.

At the six-mile point on the odometer I began scouting for the landmarks I’d been given. When the last of them appeared near the top of a rise — somebody’s mailbox built large to resemble a birdhouse — I slowed down. The Wilkerson driveway was just beyond the crest, half hidden by trees and undergrowth. I almost missed it, braked just in time to make the turn ahead of an oncoming logging truck.

Some nice piece of oceanfront property lay ahead of me, spread out behind a gated fence. At least two wooded acres, with an ultramodern wood-and-stone house squatting at the edge of the cliff and a couple of outbuildings in the trees closer to the highway. The security gates were open — I seemed to be lucky in that respect lately. The reason here was a stakebed truck parked midway along the drive, its bed mounded with dry brush and tree branches. A man dressed in overalls was clearing out more dead wood under the pines nearby.

I drove on through and stopped behind the truck. The man had straightened and was coming my way by then, dragging a six-foot limb in one gloved hand. I got out, walked around to meet him.

“Afternoon,” I said. “I’m looking for—”

“Wilkersons ain’t here. Not expected, either.”

He was thirty-five or so, all bone and gristle. Gray stubble flecked hollow cheeks and a weak chin. Broken capillaries made a tracery of red and blue lines across nose and cheekbones; the whites of his eyes had blood in them, like the albumin of a fertilized egg. You had to look close to see that he was the same man in the wedding photo, and not because he was lacking the beard and his hair was cut short. Even then I couldn’t be a hundred percent positive.

“Your name Meineke? Mike Meineke?”

“Why? I don’t know you and I’m not buying anything.”

“I’m not selling anything. I’m here about your sister-in-law.”

“Who you talking about?”

“Sheila Hunter. Or I should say Ellen. Lynn’s sister. Their real names, right. Mr. Willis?”

He stared at me. The bloodshot eyes showed fear now, but it was not the consuming terror I’d seen in Emily’s mother and aunt; it was a shadow, a wraith, of something that had grow n weak and shriveled with age.

“So it’s finally happened,” he said. “All along I figured it would someday. A man like Cotter never gives up, no matter how long it takes.”

I let the name slide by for the moment. “Ten years,” I said.

“Yeah. Almost eleven.” His mouth worked as if all his spit had dried up. “What happens now?”

“To Ellen?”

“Her, Pete, Lynn. Me.”

“Pete. Ellen’s husband.”

“Who the hell else?”

“He’s dead. Two weeks now.”

“Jesus,” Meineke said. “Cotter do it? You?”

“No, he died in a head-on collision with a drunk driver.”

That confused him. He shook his head.

I said, “Nobody told you? Your ex-wife knows.”

“Her. We ain’t said a word to each other in two years.”

“Tell me about Ellen and Pete.”

“Tell you what? If you work for Cotter—”

“I don’t work for Cotter. I don’t know Cotter.”

“Listen,” Meineke said, and shook his head again, and worked his dry mouth. “Just who the hell are you?”

“A private detective. Working for Jack Hunter’s insurance company. And for his daughter.”

“Emily? She’s a kid. That don’t make sense.”

“You make sense for me, I’ll do the same for you.”

“I don’t have to talk to you. You’re not from Cotter, you said you don’t even know him.”

“Talk to me or to the police. Your choice.”

“Police? Oh, no, you don’t. I didn’t do nothing wrong. Lynn and me, we had nothing to do with stealing those bonds—” He broke off, his gaze sliding away from mine.

“What bonds, Mike?”

“No,” he said.

“Pete and Ellen stole them, right?”

“No.”

“And you knew about it, maybe shared in the profits—”

“No.”

“Either way, you’re an accessory to a felony. You can go to prison, minimum of five years, if I report it to the authorities.”

That was more bluff than not. If theft was the only serious crime here, it had happened long enough ago for the statute of limitations to have run out. If Meineke knew that—

But he didn’t know it. He still wasn’t meeting my eyes and there was a slump to his hotly now, a loosening of his facial muscles — all signs of defeat in a man. He’d talk to me. All I had to do was give him back a little hope.

“I don’t want to make trouble for you, Mike. Facts are what I’m after. Give them to me and I’m out of your life as fast as I came into it.”

He ran a gloved hand over his face; I could hear the scraping of cloth on heard stubble. His eyes flicked up. “No cops?”

“No cops.”

“All right. What the hell. But I need a drink first. Christ, I need one bad.”

He put his back to me and shambled down the driveway. I followed him to the nearest of the outbuildings, a small, square cabin made of redwood logs and shakes that could not have contained more than two rooms. I went all the way into the doorway to make sure a drink was all he was after. A full pint of cheap bourbon stood on a table next to a bunk bed; he snagged it and took a long pull, then put the cap back on and came outside with it.

He didn’t say anything to me or even look at me. He walked around the side of the cabin, onto a beaten path that cut through the trees to the cliffs edge. A bench had been anchored there facing the ocean; Meineke sat down on it and slugged again from the bottle. It seemed colder out there, in the pale sun with the vanguards of mist curling in overhead. I buried my hands in my coat pockets, went around and stood on the other side of the bench. From there you could look down a hundred feet of eroded rock wall to a white-water cover where waves broke over offshore rocks and kelp beds. The big main house was about fifty yards away and partially screened by pines. If you sat with your back to it, I thought, as Meineke was sitting, you’d have a sense of what it was like to be all alone on the edge of the world.

“Come out here every chance I get,” he said. “Ocean’s about all I got left now. Ocean and booze.”

I had nothing to say to that.

“Fucking money never bought me anything but grief. Lynn and me, we were happy in Colorado before it happened. We didn’t have a pot but we had each other. We had something.”

“The bonds belonged to Cotter?” I asked.

“Yeah. Philip fucking Cotter.”

“Bearer bonds?”

“That’s what Pete said. Some cash, too.”

“How much altogether?”

“Couple of hundred thousand, Pete told us. Lying bastard. Had to be more than that, the way those two lived down in Greenwood. A hell of a lot more.”

“Why would he lie to you?”

“Why you think? So we wouldn’t ask for more than him and Ellen were offering.”

“How much was that?”

“Fifty thousand. Seemed like a fortune at the time.” Another slug at the bottle. “Man, I wish I’d told ’em to take their fifty grand and shove it.”

“Why’d they give you that much?”

“So we’d move, change our names, start a new life like they were doing. So Cotter wouldn’t come after Lynn and me, try to find them through us. He knew where we lived. No question he’d’ve made us pay, too.”

“What was Ellen’s relationship with Cotter?”

“Married to him.”

“Where was this? Colorado?”

“Illinois. Billington, little town near Chicago.”

“What did Cotter do there?”

“Owned a company manufactured some kind of appliance — toasters, something like that. Goddamn laundry is what it was.”

“Laundry? You mean money laundering?”

“Yeah.”

“Mob-connected, then, this Cotter.”

“Not big time, but yeah, connected.”

“The stolen bonds and cash — his or the mob’s?”

“Cotter’s,” Meineke said. “Jesus, if it’d belonged to the fucking

Mafia, Pete and Ellen would never’ve touched it. Bad enough having a sick, ruthless son of a hitch like Cotter looking for us.”

“Sick?”

“Got his kicks hurting people. I mean hurting ’em with his hands.”

“Did he hurt Ellen?”

“Oh, yeah. Some of the things she told Lynn... make you puke.” Meineke grimaced, gulped bourbon. “One of his favorite tricks, if she did something he didn’t like, he’d take a ballpeen hammer and smack her on both elbows until she passed out from the pain.”

“Crazybone,” I said.

“Yeah. Nothing hurts worse than getting hit there.”

I looked away from him, down at the rocks below. One of the larger ones offshore had been sea-sculpted into a shape that resembled a castle on a mount; when the surf broke over it, the white spume gave it a sparkling, immaculate quality. Illusion. Bare black stone was all it was, and beneath the surface dark things clung to it and it was coated with slime.

Pretty soon I said, “How long was Ellen married to him?”

“Two years. Met him when he went to Cincinnati on a business trip.”

“That where she and Lynn are from, Cincinnati?”

“Yeah. Lynn’s older, she moved away a couple of years before and ended up in Boulder.”

“Why didn’t Ellen divorce Cotter when she found out what he was?”

“Didn’t have no money of her own — he made her sign one of those prenuptial agreements. And he told her he’d kill her if she tried to leave him.”

“Too scared to file for divorce, but not too scared to steal from him and then go on the run. How does that add up?”

“Wasn’t her idea. Pete talked her into it.”

“Where does he fit in?”

“Screwing him back then,” Meineke said. “Fell in love with him, she said, couldn’t help herself. At least he treated her decent.”

“What else was he? What was his work?”

“CPA. One of Cotter’s. That’s how she met him.”

“On the money-laundering end of the business?”

“Not according to Pete.”

“What was his last name?”

“Stoddard. Pete Stoddard. Orphan, so he didn’t have a family to worry about and buy off.”

“All right. How’d the two of them get hold of the bonds?”

“Cotter had a safe at home,” Meineke said. “He was the only one knew the combination, but Ellen found it out somehow. Or Pete did. Never too clear about that.”

“Doesn’t matter. Where’d they go to cash the bonds?”

“New York someplace. Pete had that part of it figured out.”

One or more discount brokerage firms, probably. Quick sale on all or most of the bonds, lake the money to different brokers or money management firms, have it invested in a stock portfolio under the new Hunter name; and keep the stolen cash to buy off her relatives and for traveling expenses. Then, as time passed, draw out just as much of the stock dividends as needed and reinvest the rest. And pretty soon you’d be well off enough to afford a four-hundred-thousand-dollar house and a free and easy lifestyle in a place like Greenwood. It was just the kind of plan a CPA with enough guts, patience, and gambler’s instincts would come up with.

I said, “And when they were done in New York, they came to see you and Lynn in Colorado.”

“Just showed up in Boulder one night. Fold us what they’d done, laid out their offer.” Meineke belched sourly and wagged his head. “I was a musician in those days. Called myself one anyway. Shit. Played lousy guitar for a lousy band, didn’t make much bread. Lynn was supporting us, waitressing in a café.”

“So the offer looked plenty good to you.”

“Good? Man, fifty thousand in cash was more than we ever hoped to see in one lump. Plus, they said they’d pay all our expenses for a year. We didn’t have much time to think it over. They’d picked a time when Cotter was away on a trip to hit the safe and take off. Five days until he was due back and they’d already used up three. Maybe if we’d had more time we’d’ve seen what a goddamn trap it was and turned ’em down.” He drank. “Yeah, maybe. But probably not.”

“Four of you leave Boulder together?”

“Yeah. In the car Pete’d bought for them in New York — he went there a couple of times before they stole the bonds, setting things up. We just left our old heap behind.”

“Headed where?”

“No place in particular, that was part of the plan. Picked a direction and drove until we got to a place none of us’d ever been before, turned out to be Spokane. We were there about three months. Pete had a way to get birth certificates, real ones, something to do with infants who died of natural causes. That’s how him and Ellen got their new names, how Lynn and me ended up with ours. Mike Meineke, a dead baby’s name.” He drank, shuddered, drank again. “Christ, you don’t know what it’s like. Living with a dead baby’s name for ten years.”

I didn’t want to know what it was like; I steered him off the subject. “And once you had the birth certificates, then you applied for social security cards and driver’s licenses to cement the new identities.”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d you go from Spokane?”

“Salt Lake City. Pete and Ellen got married there. Couple of other cities, and then Albuquerque. That’s where the four of us split up. Pete gave me and Lynn the fifty thousand cash — that was the deal, full amount in cash when we quit traveling together. Gave us the car, too. They took a plane to Phoenix, got a place, let us know the address. Then we drove out here.”

“How long did they stay in Phoenix?”

“Three, four months. Too hot in the summer, so they moved to San Diego for a while. Didn’t like it there and headed north, wound up in Greenwood. Who knows why they stuck there? The kid, maybe, Emily. Ellen had her in Greenwood. Already knocked up when they left Phoenix.”

“What about you and Lynn?”

“First place we went was Mendocino. She’d heard about it, big artist’s colony, she figured we’d both fit in, get a new start. Yeah, sure. You ever see her stained glass? Lousy. Lousy artist, lousy musician.” Slug. “Lousy,” he said.

“How long were you there?”

“Four lousy years. Up on the Oregon coast for a while. Portland. Back to Mendocino and then down here.” Meineke swallowed bourbon, wiped his mouth with the back of one hand. The bottle was almost empty. He’d guzzled close to a pint in under fifteen minutes, but color in his sunken cheeks was the only visible effect. His voice was a steady, emotionless monotone, the voice of a hollow man. “Should’ve been the good life,” he said. “Was for a while, I guess, but we went through the fifty thousand like shit through a goose. Food, liquor, rent, new car, all kinds of crap we didn’t need. Didn’t work much, either of us — no money coming in. Broke by the time we quit Mendocino the first time. Lived hand to mouth after that. And Pete and Ellen down there in Greenwood with their fancy house, fancy lifestyle. We drove down one time, didn’t tell ’em we were coming, and they were pissed. Didn’t want us to see how much they really had. Bastards lied about how much they got from Cotter, all right. Owed us better for sticking with ’em, that’s what Lynn said. Never’ve gotten away with it if we hadn’t disappeared along with ’em.”

He was right about that, I thought. Still, the planning had been good, careful, and they’d had luck on their side. Statistics, too: fifty thousand people disappear every year in this country, a large percentage without a trace. The police, with all their resources, can’t find them; private investigators, with all our resources, can’t find them. The irony was, if any outfit could have tracked the four down, it was organized crime with all their resources. But Pete and Ellen hadn’t ripped off the mob. Cotter’s bonds, Cotter’s cash, and Cotter was at most a low-level underboss, more likely a private-sector recruit used strictly for the money laundering. They might’ve given him some help in the beginning, as a favor, but it would not have involved much manpower or funds and it would have had a time limit. Organized crime’s capos can’t be bothered in the long run with personal problems or personal vendettas.

I asked Meineke, “How much more money did Pete and Ellen give you?”

“Not enough. Never enough. Christ, I hate to beg. Lynn don’t mind, she’ll lick your ass for fifty bucks. Licked their asses often enough, that’s for sure.”

“That why the two of you split up?”

“One of the reasons. Nothing left between us, we weren’t even screwing any more after she got so goddamn fat. Couldn’t stand living with her anymore. Caretaker job came up — not this one, another one up in Elk — I took it and walked. Lynn, she kept right on licking their asses. But not me, not anymore.”

One last pull and the bottle was empty. He held it up, peering at it or through it. I thought he might heave it over the cliff to shatter on the rocks below, but he didn’t; he tucked it carefully into his coat pocket. Maybe because the ocean was one of the two things he had left, as he’d said, and he did not want to befoul it with the remains of the other thing.

I said, “Ellen’s been up to see Lynn. She brought your niece with her.”

“Yeah?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“How would I know? Told you, I don’t have nothing to do with any of ’em anymore.”

“She left Emily with Lynn. Supposed to come back and get her, but she hasn’t shown up. That’s why I’m here.”

“Running again? Ellen?”

“Looks that way.”

“Why? You don’t work for Cotter, you said.”

“It’s a long story. You care enough to want to hear it?”

“No. Fuck her and Lynn both.”

“Your niece, too? She’s ten years old, Meineke.”

“Their kid, ain’t she?”

I stepped away from the bench. The wind had kicked up and the incoming fog had taken away most of the sunlight; my hands were cold even inside the coat pockets. “Okay, we’re finished,” I said.

He swiveled his head to look at me. His eyes had a ravished look. “No cops, huh, like you said?”

“No cops.” I started away.

“Hey,” he said, and I stopped again. “What about Cotter? You think he’ll find us someday? Any of us?”

“Could be he’s dead by now.”

“Could be,” Meineke said, but he didn’t believe it.

“Does it matter much if he does?”

No answer. I left him sitting there staring out to sea, all alone with Philip Cotter and the rest of his demons.