Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 116, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 709 & 710, September/October 2000

Whatever It Takes by Benjamin M. Schutz

Edgar Award winner Benjamin M. Schutz described his latest story for us this way: “It is a day in the life of two young private eye/process servers — Hardy Boys for the nineties. It is the product of a summer listening to my sons, two young private eye/process servers, learn bow the real world operates as the bearers of bad tidings.”

“Wake up, Sean, Mickey called. We’ve got work.”

His brother, Matthew, prodded him with a toe.

“You need a shower, too. You’ve still got paint in your hair.”

Sean Ellis grunted but didn’t move. He entered each day with the ease of a twelve-pound breech birth.

“You better get a move on. I’m not waiting. I’ll take all the work myself.”

“Like hell you will.” He rolled over, swung his legs over the side, and followed his brother out of the bedroom. He went into the shower and watched his brother go into the kitchen.

Matthew Ellis opened the refrigerator and took out two bagels and a block of cream cheese. Dropping a bagel into the toaster, he reached up and got down two coffee mugs and poured a cup for himself and one for his brother. He carried his cup, milked and sugared, into the living room.

His mother lay asleep on the sofa. Matthew walked around the living room chairs and turned off the television. More and more often he found her asleep in her clothes in the living room, as if she had only enough energy to get inside the front door.

Chris Ellis was a petite woman, barely over a hundred pounds. Her son thought she was slipping from lean to frail but hoped that he was wrong. Her blanket had slipped down to her waist and her book was open on her chest.

He sipped his coffee and looked at himself in the mirror over the sofa. Stocky and muscular, he was dressed in khaki shorts and a dark blue T-shirt from his stint at the medical examiner’s office. Across his chest ran the unofficial motto of that office:

               Homicide?

                Suicide?

                I decide.

He looked down at his mother’s tiny fists, clenched in her sleep like a baby’s. Her thumbs were tucked inside her fingers. He wondered if she had been fighting in her sleep and hoped that she had won. He wanted to cover them but knew that if he adjusted her blanket, she’d startle and waken.

The phone in the kitchen rang and he rushed to answer it.

“Hello,” he said.

“Matthew, boy. Is that you?”

“Yeah. Who is this?”

“It’s your dad. Don’t you recognize my voice?”

He did, but denied it so that his father would have to identify himself. Every little bit of distance helped. “What do you want?”

“I’d like to see you and your brother. Talk about things. See where we stand.”

“Not a chance. You made your choices, now five with them. We sure as hell had to.”

“Look, Matt, I know you’re angry...”

“Angry? I’m homicidal, you bastard.”

“Put your brother on.”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you. You seem to be breaking up.”

He hung up the phone and began to massage his temples with his fingertips.

“What’s up, Matt?” his brother asked as he walked into the kitchen.

“What else? That was Dad with his Monday-morning overture. Let’s talk, boys, let’s start over, let’s forget everything that happened. I’m a changed man. I’ve found Jesus.” He squeezed his eyes shut and began to use his palms. “I get such a headache talking to him. You gotta take the next one, man.”

“Whatever.” He fixed his coffee, handed Matt the bagel from the toaster, and put one in for himself.

He was as long, lean, and fair as his brother was short, wide, and dark. Like his brother, he’d dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. August around D.C. made anything else unbearable without air conditioning.

“Sean, let me ask you a question.”

“Okay.”

“Have you noticed how gray Mom is getting? She’s only forty. Do you think stress can do that to you?”

“I don’t know, man. I’m the art major, remember. I didn’t take psychology.”

They ate in silence, washed their cups and plates, stacked them to dry, and turned out the lights before they left the apartment. Matt stood by the door, his hand on the light switch, looking at his mother’s shape on the sofa.

“You know, Sean, when I was little, I thought the worst times of my life were those nights Mom came home with a date. I was wrong. I’d give anything for her to come home with somebody now. She doesn’t even use the bed for herself anymore.”

“Let it be, Matt. We’ve got work to do.”

Their ten-year-old Subaru had all the pickup of a pair of drunken oxen. Like their previous car, they had bought it at an auction for less than a hundred bucks, planned to drive it till it stopped and then get another one. Maintenance had no place in their plans. It was just delaying the inevitable. Like a respirator or a feeding tube. Besides, it cost money.

Mickey Sloan’s office was tidy and well organized. He had a sofa along one wall for his field agents to sit on and read the papers they were going out to serve. He sat facing them inside a U-shaped desk. His desk phone had five lines. A missed call was a job lost and so he carried a cell phone and a pager with him at all times. A copy machine sat on top of a wall of file cabinets. On the opposite wall, next to the window, was a large map of the metropolitan region. Through the blinds, Mickey could see the courthouse across the street; a giant paper factory, without any smokestacks. His computer screen had a screen-saver design of a bearded caveman with a piece of paper in his hands, trotting forever across a barren landscape.

Matt and Sean came in, took their packets off of Mickey’s desk, and sat down to read their day’s work.

First up was a Notice of Judgment against Mohammed Ben Zekri out in Herndon, then a witness subpoena for Vu Tran Nguyen in Falls Church. Vu had seen an automobile accident. Lorelei Petty was going to get a notice of deposition in the divorce case of Truman and Molly Wing. She was going to be asked about her affair in excruciating detail. Truman’s attorney had a very limited imagination, and the mechanics of lesbian love had to be repeated over and over before he got it. A restraining order was today’s bit of sunshine for Gustavo Martin, courtesy of his girlfriend Mirabella Montoya of the bloodied nose and chipped-tooth Montoyas. Last but not least was a subpoena duces tecum for the records of Lowell Gorman, DDS, pioneer in the use of anesthetic-shrouded sex as a dental procedure.

“How much for these, Mickey?”

“Ben Zekri, Nguyen, and Petty are twenty-five each; Gorman is thirty, and Martin is fifty.”

“Anything special we should know?”

“Watch out for Martin. Serve him together. This isn’t the first girl he’s slapped around. He’s out on bond and looking at some time inside for this one. He won’t be in a good mood when you find him.”

Mickey cleared his throat. “Uh, I’ve got a piece of bad news for you guys. You know that case you’ve been working on for Barton and Hammon?”

“Yeah,” they said, drawing the syllable out slowly. They had been working for days to find a way to serve Byron Putnam, who oscillated between his gated condominium in McLean and a security office building on K Street. He was now worth $4.00 an hour and sinking fast.

“They want it back. They know you’ve had trouble getting to Putnam. There’s another agency that says they can get into his building.”

“Who?” Matt asked.

“Amanda Marshall.”

“Right. She thinks one of her ho’s in hot pants and a halter is gonna do the job.”

“Yep.”

The boys shook their heads. “She’s probably right,” Sean said. “The gimp at the gate will go brain dead, drool down her cleavage, and the chemical reaction will make her invisible. I remember reading about that.”

“Hey, I’m sorry. I know you guys put a lot of time on that one, but they’re the clients. They can take the paper back.”

“Fine, fine. It’s out in the car. We’ll drop it by their office later today. Any more good news?” Sean muttered.

“No. That’s it.”

“How about letting us into the ‘Icebox.’ We’ve been here almost three months already. You know we can do the job. How about it?” Matt asked.

Mickey mulled it over. They were leaving soon to go back to school. He wanted to hold it out as a carrot to get them to come back over the Christmas break. On the other hand, they were reliable and hard-working. Maybe a taste of bigger things now would whet their appetite. Christmas gifts could run into beaucoup dollars.

“All right. Here’s the rules. The Icebox has papers we haven’t been able to serve. They may not even be valid anymore. You’ll have to check with the lawyer and the client to see if they still want them served. If they do, and you’re successful, you keep all the money. So check with the attorney on that, too; some are worth more than others. But it’s strictly a sideline — something you do after you hit the current jobs. I like keeping that box small. That means we tag all the fresh ones. Understood?”

“Understood.”

Sean took the box down and sat it on his lap. Matt leaned over as they thumbed through the papers. They were filed alphabetically.

“We’ll come back when we’re done today and research these, see which ones we want to pursue,” Sean said.

“Good hunting. You better hit the streets. One last word about the Icebox, even though I don’t think you need it. One reason I don’t let everybody in there is because of the risk of sewer service.”

“What?”

“Sewer service. I once had a guy claim he’d served a paper when he’d flushed it down the toilet. He figured we couldn’t find the guy so he wasn’t gonna show. Easy money. Well, we couldn’t find him because he was dead. That came up at the hearing. Not a shining moment. I got a reprimand and he got sixty days. My reputation rides along with you two every day, but hey, I don’t need to say that, that’s why I’m letting you into the Icebox.”

Mickey’s office was in one of the faux-colonial buildings that ring the courthouse and public-safety building. They took 66 West from there to the parkway, then across the county over the Dulles access road into Herndon. Matt drove and his brother navigated.

“Right here, Matt, into this development. Take the first left and go straight to the end.”

“Where do we stand, Sean?”

“You’re up thirty-five. I figured to take two of the twenty-fives and the doctor. You take the other two and we’re even.”

“All right. This one’s yours.”

They drove past a row of McMansions, five hundred thousand dollar pseudo-Georgians so close together you’d have to mow on alternate days, looking for house numbers painted on the curb. Sean began to count by twos and started to shake his head. The houses came to a halt just short of the address for Mohammed Ben Zekri. They pulled up to the curb and looked at the hole in the ground, awaiting a foundation. Mr. Ben Zekri was gone along with ten thousand cubic feet of dirt.

Matt got out of the car and walked over to the last house and headed up the stairs to the front door. Sean pulled out the cell phone, looked at the signature page on the notice, and called the attorney.

“Klompus, Bogans, and Hess. How may I help you?”

“Jack Klompus, please.”

“Who may I say is calling?”

“Sean Ellis of AAA Process Service.”

“This is Linda, Mr. Klompus’s secretary. How may I help you?”

“I’m here at the address your office provided for Mohammed Ben Zekri and what it is a hole in the ground.”

Matt stood next to him and mouthed. “Empty for six months.”

“In fact, it’s been a hole in the ground for six months. We’d appreciate it if Mr. Klompus could check his file and see if he has a more current address for Mr. Ben Zekri.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Klompus is on vacation. I’ll leave a message for him. His assistant will call you back.”

“Thank you.”

Sean put the phone back in his pocket. “You know, for three hundred dollars an hour, they could check their addresses every six months. That wouldn’t be too much to ask, would it?”

They got back in the car and plotted a course to the next address, a red-brick apartment box in Falls Church, on the edge of “Little Saigon.” There was no grass on the lawn, only dirt, rocks, and glass. The one tree was long dead. A number of windows had broken panes. The chain-link fence lacked only a razor-wire frosting to complete the detention-center look of the place. The boys walked through the graffitied door and looked at the mailboxes. There wasn’t a name on a single one.

“You take the top floor and work down. I’ll go up,” Matt said.

They met on the second floor at the only door that was opened to them. Inside was an elderly Vietnamese woman, her streaked gray hair pulled into a tight bun. She had a young child on her hip and two others behind her. All three children were in diapers with fingers in their mouths.

“Uh, ma’am, we’re looking for Mr. Vu Tran Nguyen. Can you tell us what apartment is his?” Sean asked.

Her face was utterly impassive, an appropriate reaction when assailed by gibberish.

Sean proceeded, “Do you speak English?”

Nothing.

“I thought so. So if I tell you I’m going to rip this child out of your arms and eat him, your eyes won’t widen and you won’t slam the door in my face, will you? Of course not, and so you haven’t. Have a nice day. Welcome to America.”

They turned away and trotted down the stairs. “Didn’t I tell you to take Vietnamese as your foreign-language elective, Matt? No, you had to take French. Have you noticed any place called ‘Little Paris’ around here?”

“Let me think. No, I don’t think so.”

“Me neither. Who’s next?”

“Lorelei Petty over in McLean. Good bet she speaks English.”

“Lucky you, Matt.”

They drove slowly through Falls Church towards Tysons Corner and McLean. Tysons Corner was the largest commercial center in America not located in the heart of a city. Falls Church sat between Washington D.C. and Tysons, and its one main thoroughfare was always distended with traffic, a perpetual aneurysm.

Forty-five minutes later they pulled up in front of Lorelei Petty’s townhouse on the Tysons-McLean frontier, where the proper zip code could mean a twenty thousand dollar difference from the other side of the street.

Matt read the paper. “This is a notice of deposition, so the shit’s been hitting the fan for quite a while. We don’t have the advantage of surprise here.”

“So, call her. See if she’s here. Do we have a description?”

“Yeah, five feet six inches, hundred forty-five pounds, light brown hair, wears glasses.”

Matt dialed directory assistance, got the number for an L. Petty, and then dialed that.

“Hello?”

“Lorelei Petty?”

“Yes.”

“Hi, my name is Matt Ellis. I’m a process server. I have a subpoena for you in the Wings matter. I’m on my way over. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes, is that okay with you?”

“Uh, sure, whatever.”

Matt set the phone down. “What do you think, Sean?”

“A guy, he’d be outa there three minutes tops. A woman, I’d say six.”

They looked down at their watches. The adjacent townhouse had a contractor’s sign hung from the front porch railing. It proclaimed: “Another fine project from the master craftsmen at DNT Contractors. Call Burle Hitchens at (703) 555-9400.”

Five minutes later, Matt rolled up the paper, stuck it in his back pocket, and got out of the car. He was going up the stairs when the front door opened. A woman stepped out and turned back to lock the deadbolt. Matt closed ground.

“Lorelei, is that you?” he asked, eagerly but uncertain.

“Yes,” she said and turned to face her caller.

Matt whipped out the papers and handed them to her.

“You’ve been served, ma’am.”

She backed away, waving her hands at the paper like it was an angry insect.

“No, I haven’t. I haven’t taken these.”

“That’s TV, ma’am. You answered to the name, you match the description, you live at the right address. You’ve been served.”

Matt dropped them at her feet. “I’d advise you to read them and call a lawyer. Have a nice day.”

“I hope your dick falls off, you miserable little bastard.”

“Duly noted, ma’am, and my affidavit of service will include your kind words.”

Matt jumped into the car and it pulled away. “What next?” he asked.

“Our Latino lady-killer, over in Arlington.”

“Where are we serving him?”

“Work. He’s a janitor at a motel in Arlington.”

Their cell phone rang.

“Hello?” Sean said.

“Sean, is that you? It’s Chuck Pruitt. You and your brother want to do some surveillance?”

“Hold on, Chuck, I’ll ask him.”

He covered the mouthpiece, “Matt, it’s Chuck Pruitt, he wants us to do surveillance. What do you say?”

“I say no. He hasn’t paid us for our last two jobs. Working for him is working for free. It’s been over two months he’s owed us.”

“You sure? It’s work.”

“Work? It’s charity. Slow pay is no pay. You can do it. I’ll pass.”

“Uh, Chuck, we’ll pass. You still owe us about two hundred and fifty bucks for work we did in May.”

“Hey, guys, it’s not me. I bill the clients. I’ve gotta chase them to pay me so I can pay you. Every check I get that you’re owed a piece of, I pass it straight on.”

“Chuck, I’m not saying you’re stiffing us. But none of this is gonna pay my tuition bill. Summer’s almost over. I need money now. The school could give a damn. It’s due when it’s due. Sorry.”

“I hate being the asshole of the food chain. The pate’s at the other end, down here it’s all bullshit,” Sean snapped.

“Well, we’ve got two more chances for today. Let’s make ’em count.”

Gustavo Martin was a janitor at the Arlington Inn, which operated on the same principle as its neighbor the Pentagon: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

“You take the front desk, Matt. I’ll find a maid, see if she knows where he is.”

“Wait for me if you find him. He might think twice about going off.”

“Sure.” They exited the car, Matt going to the office, Sean heading upstairs where he had seen a maid’s cart in the hallway. He went up the stairs three at a time, grabbed the rusting metal railing, and swung up and around onto the second floor. The ice machine had its bin door open and a sign taped to the front that said Broken. He walked down to the maid’s cart and looked into the room it was parked outside of.

“Excuse me, can I talk to you?” he said into the darkened room.

“¿Si, quién es?” a woman replied. She was bent over, making the bed.

“¿Dónde está Gustavo Martin?”

“No entiendes ni jota.”

“I know he works here. Just tell me where he is?”

“He’s around. I don’t know.”

“Okay. What does he look like?”

“He’s short, curly black hair, moustache...”

As she spoke, her words coalesced in the space at the end of the hall. The man looked at Sean, saw him take a step towards him, turned, and started down the stairs. Sean leaned over the railing and saw his brother step out of the motel office.

“That’s him, Matt.”

Glancing over his shoulder at his second pursuer, the man ran across the parking lot towards the high grass along the railroad tracks. There were no trains in sight. He would have to run all the way to El Salvador. Matt took off after him. The guy was wind-milling his arms through the high grass, bobbing back and forth above his churning bowlegs. Matt had no speed to speak of, but he and his brother ran five miles a night through their neighborhood. The longer Gustavo ran, the better Matt’s chances of catching him. He heard the slap of footsteps behind him, each one louder than the last. He came out on the dusty path alongside the tracks.

“Hold on, Matt. I’m coming.” Sean ate up ground, each stride longer and faster than those of either of the others.

Committed to a sprint, Matt accelerated. Even if he didn’t catch Martin, he’d make him run flat-out to escape him, and then watch his brother run him down, even if it took ten miles.

Matt figured Martin for a chain-smoking couch potato who’d smack Mirabella if she didn’t get him a Dos Equis with each trip to the kitchen. Four hundred yards in his boots with their two-inch heels and he was doubled over, holding his side and gasping for breath.

Matt and Sean slowed down and approached him.

“Gustavo Martin?”

“No. Yo soy Carlos Gonzalez.”

“Bullshit. We’ve got something for you, Mr. Martin.” Matt reached for the papers in his pants pocket.

“No, no.” Gonzalez spun towards them, his hand digging into his pocket.

“Oh shit,” they both thought. It had to happen. Someday they’d serve someone with a gun. Sean leaped with both arms outstretched to pin the man’s hands in his pants. His brother stepped up behind him, planted his feet, and threw a right hand that hit Gonzalez flush on the chin. Helped by the weight of the other boy on his chest, he slammed backwards into the earth and lay still. Sean grabbed the man’s hand and pulled it out. He was clutching a wallet. While Sean squatted and flipped through it, Matt patted the man down. He had a six-inch switchblade in his right back pocket. Sean handed him the wallet. “Woops.”

All the cards read “Carlos Gonzalez.” He too was short, moustachioed, with curly black hair. They tucked the wallet back into his pants and pulled him away from the tracks.

Gonzalez came around in a couple of minutes. Sean said, “We’re sorry, Mr. Gonzalez. We were looking for Gustavo Martin.”

“Yo soy Carlos Gonzalez.”

“We believe you. Why’d you run?”

No reply.

“Le cremos. Porqué corrio?”

He pointed at Matt’s shirt. “¿Policia?”

“No. No policia.”

“¿Sos de la Migra?”

“No. No Immigration.”

Gonzalez stood up, rubbing his jaw.

“Sorry about that. I thought you were going for a gun. Uh, per-done me, pense que listed buscaba una pistola.”

“No, si tuviera una pistola les hubiera pegado un balazo.” Gonzalez imitated shooting them both.

“I’m sure you would have,” Sean replied. “No guns. No INS. Why don’t we call it a draw and all go away happy.”

They walked away and left him there rubbing his jaw.

“Why are we doing this, Matt? Run it by me one more time.”

“Because the chicks love it. We’re dangerous men. We’re hard and shifty. Men to be reckoned with.”

“Thanks. It’s all coming back now. I must have lost it when I was shitting myself back there, and by the way, don’t wear that shirt again. We’re not the Hardy boys. I don’t want to die in a hail of irony, gunned down by some ESL dropout.”

“No problem. It’s history.”

“And we still have to find Gustavo Martin.”

“Not today. We’ll get his home address and try him there.”

“This doctor, did you arrange to serve him?”

“Called his office, set up an appointment for four o’clock. Should be a piece of cake.”

“With a ground-glass crust. Let’s do it.”

Dr. Gorman’s office was in Tysons Corner, a three-story box of solo practitioners: doctors, dentists, accountants, architects, insurance salesmen, and an individual who advertised himself as a Failure Analyst.

“That’s the best job title I’ve ever seen. You make a living analyzing other people’s screwups. How do you train for that? What was his major?” Matt mused.

“We can ask on the way out. You go on ahead. I’ve got to take a leak,” Sean said and ducked into the men’s room.

When Sean entered Dr. Gorman’s office, there were four other people in the waiting room. It was a battleship grey, with tubular metal chairs arranged around the edges of a purple carpet flecked with white. A central coffee table had a green flowerless plant and a pile of worn magazines.

“Dr. Gorman, please. I’ve got some papers for him,” Sean said.

“I’m sorry, Dr. Gorman isn’t here,” the secretary said, closing her appointment book. She sat behind a sliding-glass panel in the wall, next to an unmarked door.

“What about all these people?”

“We have another doctor covering for him today.”

“Really? I called to set up this appointment. I was told he’d be here.”

“I’m sorry, who are you with?”

“Short Fuse Process Service. How about I leave this with you, Ms...?”

“Not a chance. I’m not authorized to accept service and I’m not taking it. You get out of here or I’ll call the police.” The last part she whispered fiercely.

“Okay. I’ll go, but you tell Dr. Gorman I’m going to his house next. I know he’s got a teenage daughter. She should be home soon from school. I’ll serve her. She’ll love reading this stuff.”

“Get out of here, you despicable piece of...”

“Don’t say it. You’ll piss me off. Right now this is just a job. Don’t make it personal.”

He pulled the door closed behind him. As soon as it settled, the secretary pushed a button on her phone and whispered into the mouthpiece as she pulled the glass panel closed. A bald man with a precisely shaped beard and half-glasses near the end of his nose came up from the back office. They spoke briefly. He grimaced and shook his head at each thing she said. A patient, his hand to his jaw, approached the window and rapped on the glass. The secretary slid it back.

“Excuse me, Dr. Gorman, how long a wait do you think it’s gonna be. My tooth is killing me,” he mumbled.

“I don’t know, I’m running a little behind today,” he snapped irritably.

The patient smiled at this, reached through the opening with the hand he’d held to his face, and dropped a folded piece of paper onto the desk.

“Dr. Gorman, you’ve been served.” The secretary opened her mouth. He pointed at her. “Don’t say a word. If you hadn’t lied to us, we wouldn’t have lied to you. Have a nice day.”

Matt left the doctor’s office and headed to the elevator. He pushed the Down button and the doors opened. Sean was leaning against the far wall. They both raised their arms and slapped palms. Sean started to sing, “Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.”

“Short Fuse Process Service. That was good. You make that up on the spot?”

“Yeah, she was pissing me off. If she’d gotten the doctor or agreed to accept it, I’d just have asked you for the paper. Once she started that bull, I just ad-libbed it and hoped you’d find a place to step in. If not, I figured we’d stake out his house.”

“Does he have a daughter?”

“Hell if I know. I was on a roll.”

“That got my attention. I wasn’t so sure I wanted to serve the daughter. This is ugly stuff. She didn’t do anything.”

“Hey, whatever it takes, Matt. Nobody cares about stiffing us.”

“What is that, our motto? Short Fuse Process Service: Whatever it takes.”

“Sure, why not?”

Matt shook his head. “Yeah, why not? We’re young. We’re hardcore.”

“Let’s go back to the office, file the paperwork, and look at the Icebox. Have you figured out how much we’ve made? Tuition’s due at the end of August, we’ve only got a week left,” Sean said.

“Yeah, I’ve checked. We’re short. We’ll need to take everything we can get. Night jobs, the weekend. If we don’t make it, we can see if they’ll put us on the monthly plan, that’ll give us some more time to come up with the balance.”

“You know, for white male oppressors, we’re not having a lot of fun running this country.”

“Our turn will come. Until then, we go home, grab a bite to eat, and go to the gym. The state bench-press meet is Thanksgiving. If we’re going to have any chance, we can’t let our training slack.”

“What if we get a call at the gym?”

“We go. And we bitch the whole way. That’s why we’re Short Fuse, remember?”

They sat in Mickey’s office and filled out affidavits of service and billing sheets for the day. Each one rummaged through the Icebox as the other recorded his work. Mickey double-checked the forms and countersigned them. “Find anything?” he asked nonchalantly.

“Yeah. One,” Sean said.

“Who is it? Let me see.”

Sean handed him the papers.

“I remember this guy. A deadbeat dad. You guys’ll love tagging him. Good hunting. Remember, call the attorney first, make sure it’s still valid and what they’ll pay. Get it in writing and see if they’ll pick up your expenses. Remember when you had to eat that all-day parking bill? See you tomorrow.”

Sean took the papers back, nodded to Mickey, and the brothers left his office. In the car, Sean pointed to the case citation.

“See that. Chelsea Lyn Dougan v. Burle Hitchens.”

“Yeah, so what?”

“I saw that name today. On a sign. It was the house next to Lorelei Petty. The contractor’s sign. He was remodeling the house. It said ‘Burle Hitchens’; it even had a phone number.”

“That’s crazy. If this guy was doing business openly in this county, Mickey would have found him. DBA’s, corporation lists. That’s the first thing he does.”

“Maybe he wasn’t working back then. Time passed, he got more confident, used his name, no one came after him.”

“Or it isn’t the right guy. Same name, wrong guy. We already tagged the wrong man once today. That’s plenty.”

“Two Burle Hitchens? Maybe. We’ll check it out tomorrow at the courthouse.”

“What do you think we can get for this?”

“The original fee was two hundred. All for us. It may be worth more now.”

“That would be sweet.”

They pulled into their apartment complex, hurried by the pool they rarely had time to visit, and bounded up the stairs of their building. The apartment was empty when they entered. Their mother had left a note on the refrigerator: “I’m working the late shift. It’s a favor for Marge. I owe her one. Don’t worry about me. It’ll be fine. Love, Mom.”

“Look at this, Matt,” Sean said, handing his brother the note.

“Don’t worry, my ass. When will she get off?”

“Eleven.”

“We’re going over.”

“Matt, they have escorts now.”

“I don’t care.”

“Hey, okay. I’m not arguing with you.”

Their mother’s parking-lot rape four years earlier at the hospital was never far from either of their minds. Nor the fact that her attacker was never caught.

“Let’s change and go to the gym. We can come back and eat later,” Matt said.

“What’s the rush?”

“Might be some chicks we can impress. I mean, we almost got shot, right?” he joked.

They impressed no one that evening. Matt put up 315 at a body weight of 162. His brother, with his longer arms, did 245 at the same weight. The only women in the gym were a couple of Spandex-encased Barbies being fondled between reps by their Kens, and a bodybuilder who outweighed them by fifty pounds. At eleven they were in the hospital parking lot where they could watch their mother leave the emergency-room staff exit and walk all the way to her car. She’d never have let them come to pick her up, saying they couldn’t run over to protect her all the time; she had to be able to go to work; that’s why they have the escort service. And they’d never rely on anyone else. So she wrote them notes and admonitions that they silently ignored. If she ever saw them in the shadows, she never said.

Matt was profoundly agitated at these times, a small part of himself wanting someone to try and accost her, to give him the reason to release four years of fury. He imagined that there’d he nothing but melted steel around a crater where he and the attacker had both vaporized.

They recognized her escort as Lucius Weems and watched them go to her car. Matt waited for her to back out and head for the exit as Sean swung by in the Subaru. He jumped in, and they left by another exit and were home, watching Wild Things, nodding in solemn agreement that Denise Richards was the hottest woman they’d ever seen, when they heard her key in the door.

The next morning, they were on the phone at nine to the law office of Joe Anthony, who told them that the Motion for Judgment was still valid. They had served papers for other cases Anthony had handled.

“Do you know where this guy is?” he asked.

Matt said, “No. We’re just cleaning house for Mickey. Toss out the ones that aren’t servable, get updates on whatever we haven’t served yet. We’re still looking; we want to be the ones to get this guy.”

“Well, you better get on it. The statute of limitations is running out on this one.”

“When does that happen?”

“End of the month. If you don’t find him, he walks away scot-free on this.”

“What does that mean?”

“He hasn’t paid child support in ten years. With interest, he owes his ex-wife over a hundred thousand dollars. This is an out-of-state case. The judgment was in Louisiana. They’ve got a statute of limitations of ten years. Even with the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act, Virginia can’t enforce an out-of-state judgment after ten years. So he gets to give his wife, his kids, and the state of Louisiana the finger. That’s what it means. The paper you have is a Motion for Judgment. It has its own clock, a year. Once we filed that, it stopped the clock on the statute of limitations, but if we don’t serve him in a year, then the wife’s suit is dismissed and his clock starts up again. Our year is up in a week. I could nonsuit the case and refile it in six months, but his ten years is up in two weeks, so there’d be no point. It’s now or never.”

“What if he gets served and runs again?”

“That’s the biggest problem. You find him, we have to keep an eye on him until we get into court. He has twenty-one days to file a reply. In that time he can liquidate his assets and flee. We go into court, we win the legal battle. But it means nothing. She doesn’t get a cent. What I’d love to do is have you serve him, then go get an ABJ on him. I could file that on any motions day.”

“What’s an ABJ?” Matt asked.

“Attachment before Judgment. If I could go in and show he was a flight risk, I could get the court to attach all his assets immediately, so even if he goes, all his money stays here. It might not cover all he owes, but it’s a start.”

“What do you need for that?”

“Evidence that he would not honor the notice of suit. See, this guy hasn’t been served yet, you haven’t been able to find him, so I can’t argue that. That’s why we’d need to keep him under surveillance. So we’d know where he went if he ran, and he will. If you boys did the surveillance, what would it cost?”

“Uh, we’re twenty-five dollars an hour each, plus expenses. If we did it in shifts, that’d be six hundred dollars a day for three weeks, uh, twelve thousand, six hundred dollars.” Matt was woozy just saying the number. He wrote it on a pad for Sean to see.

“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?”

“Agreed. Anyway, if I did it what kind of motto would we have? Whatever it takes or best offer?”

Sean walked back to the house and knocked on the front door. Hitchens yelled, “Come on in. Have a seat. I’m on the phone. Just be a couple of minutes.”

Sean sat with the papers rolled up, batting them against his open palm. Five hundred bucks wasn’t bad. Two grand was a whole lot better. But Matt was right. He’d known it before he opened his mouth but sometimes, just talking things out, they’d come up with better plans than either one of them had on his own. They’d served a lot of papers that way. The perfect solution was keeping the money and serving the guy, but that wasn’t an option. He wondered how much they still needed for tuition. Their campus jobs in the cafeteria covered meals, and loans took care of room. That left tuition and books; oh well.

“All right, kid, come on in.”

Sean walked into Hitchens’s office. He was a big man, now well over two hundred pounds, Sean guessed, with long mutton-chop sideburns and a droopy left eye.

“What’ll it be? If I was you, I’d take the money. If you serve me, I’ll just get a friend to say I was at their job site when you claimed to serve me. Some place nice and isolated, no witnesses, just me and a friend. Your service’ll be dismissed, my ten years’ll run out. That bitch isn’t getting one penny of my money. No way. Paying you off is just the cost of doing business. I accept that. It’s easier, cleaner that way. No publicity, no court appearances, no hassles. Do the right thing, kid. Easiest two grand you’ll ever make. It’s a win-win situation. What do you say?”

Sean was adrift in this new sea of words. If the service was dismissed as bad, would they lose the five hundred? Could this turn out to be a complete loss, no service, no money? This guy had beaten the system for ten years. He sure sounded like he knew what he was talking about. Sean had to make a decision. The wrong one would carry a lifetime of consequences. Wasn’t this why they got the big bucks?

“Okay, this is what I’m going to do...” Sean spoke slowly, laying down a path of words like bread crumbs; maybe someone would find him before he committed an irreversible act.

“What we’re going to do is take the money. That’s what we agreed to, Sean, right?”

He looked back at the doorway. Matt strode in and reached out his hand to shake Burle Hitchens’s. “You’re absolutely right, Mr. Hitchens. This is a win-win situation.”

“What the hell?” Sean said, relieved, confused, and angry all at the same time. He stared incredulously at his brother like the RCA dog, his head cocked to the side.

“Sean, what’s our motto? Whatever it takes, right? Well, this is what it takes. Trust me.”

A mechanical chirp interrupted them. Matt pulled a phone out of his pocket and pushed a button to answer the call.

“No, not now. I can’t talk. Look, I’ll call you back in, say, fifteen minutes, okay? Fine. Goodbye.” He disconnected the line.

“Sorry, another case. Look, Sean, serving papers can’t be all that we’re about. There’s more to life. That’s the way I see it. We can do better here. Mr. Hitchens has offered us a way to do that. I think we ought to take him up on it. You understand what I’m saying?” He pointed the phone at him for emphasis.

“Yeah, I guess.” Sean had the faint feeling that he was having two conversations, in two languages, ones that he knew just well enough to misunderstand with confidence. He decided not to speak but just listen carefully.

Matt turned toward Hitchens. “I’m his brother. He told you that we found you together. Let me make sure I understand the deal. You’ll give us a thousand dollars each. Cash money, that’s right?”

Hitchens nodded, “Yeah.”

“In exchange we just take this Notice of Judgment and refile it as unserved, that’s it, even though it is for you?”

“That’s right.”

“No false affidavits, and you don’t want us to destroy the paper, just refile it.”

“Yeah, that’s the beauty of it for you guys. No crime’s been committed. You walk away with the money, no risk of having it confiscated, no risk of jail, painless.”

“Okay. You have the money here?”

“No. I can get it easy enough. Meet you back here in, say, an hour, how’s that?”

“Tell you what, Mr. Hitchens. As a good-faith gesture, how about you give us whatever cash you’ve got in the office. That way we know you’re serious about this, and when we take it, you know we’re serious about our part. We’re in this together.”

“Good point. Let me see what I’ve got.” He reached into the bottom left drawer of the desk and pulled out a metal box. He spun the combination lock, opened the lid, and took out a wad of bills.

He began to thumb the edges back, counting out loud, stopping at four hundred and eighty-three. “That good enough for you boys?”

“That’s fine,” Matt said. He stuffed the phone back in his pocket, took the money, and counted out half for his brother. “We’ll see you in an hour.”

“Nice doing business with you boys.”

“Pleasure’s all ours, Mr. Hitchens.”

Matt led the way out the front door towards the car. Sean hurried to catch up. “What the hell was that all about, Matt? We’re in the shit now. We took the money.”

“Keep walking, Sean, and don’t say anything else. We’ll talk in the car.”

Matt opened the car door and walked around to let himself in. In the car, he pulled the phone out of his pocket and spoke into the mouthpiece. “Did you get all that?”

“Every word. A warrant’s been issued and a car should be there in ten minutes. You need to come straight down to the station and fill out a statement. He’ll be booked and jailed.”

“Great. We’ll stay here until the car arrives, then we’ll be straight over.”

Matt pushed the Off button.

“What did we just do?”

“We did ‘better,’ is what we did. Remember what Joe Anthony told us about serving him and still not getting a penny. I was sitting in the car and I said to myself, why am I letting a criminal tell me what is and what is not a crime? I called the police. His offering us money to not do our duty is a crime. It’s corruption of an agent. Even if we aren’t officers of the court, even if we don’t commit a fraud. The officer said he could get a warrant and a car out here right away if a crime was committed in his presence. So I said, what if you hear it? He said, that’s enough.

“I told him to call me on both fines. First one, then the other. When I answered the first call in the office, all I did was switch to the other line to disconnect him. That line was open and they heard everything. That’s why I was waving the phone around. It was a microphone. Hitchens couldn’t know that we have a two- line phone — when I said goodbye and pushed a button he assumed I’d turned the phone off. I just moved my hand up to cover the lights.”

Matt dialed Joe Anthony’s office as the police cruiser pulled up next to them. “Mr. Anthony. This is Matt Ellis of Short Fuse Process Service. I have good news for you and your client. Not only did we find Mr. Hitchens, but we served him, and he’s also being arrested, as we speak, for corruption of an agent. He offered us a thousand dollars each not to serve him. He’ll be going straight to jail and I’d think that should be enough with our affidavits for you to get that ABJ you wanted.”

“Christmas in August. Great work, guys. Come by as soon as you can. I’d like you to give my client the news directly. You just changed her life and her kids’.”

The police were walking Hitchens out to the cruiser. Sean got out of the car and approached as they were getting ready to tuck him inside.

“Burle Hitchens, this is a Notice of Judgment against you served in the county of Fairfax on behalf of Chelsea Lyn Dougan.” As Hitchens’s hands were cuffed behind him, Sean tucked the papers in his front shirt pocket, arranging them as neatly as a foulard. The officer opened the door and guided Hitchens into the backseat.

“You were right, Mr. Hitchens. This was a win-win situation. Only there were three sides to it, not two.”