Helpless

Chapter 60

Marvin didn’t pick up his head when Tom entered his office. The lawyer remained hunched over his conference table, where he appeared to be reading from a baseball almanac. A coffee mug and a hefty law journal kept the thick tome pried open. Stacks of papers set upon the floor created a mini obstacle course for Tom to navigate.

“Have I inspired you into a new career as a private investigator?” Tom asked in a voice loud enough to get Marvin’s attention. “Hope you do better than the guys you hired to watch Jill.”

Marvin looked up and impatiently waved Tom over. “I was going to call back and see if you’re even allowed to drive with your head all banged up,” Marvin said, “but I figured a guy who leaves the hospital against medical advice isn’t going to follow any prescribed driving restrictions, either.”

“I’m fine to drive. My head hurts pretty much all the time, so it’s become sort of normal now.”

“Well, that’s one way to cure a headache. Make it the norm. Okay, I’m going to tell you a story.”

“Oh, good,” Tom said. “For a second there I thought you had something really important and useful to show me.”

“Patience, my good man. Patience.”

Tom worked his way over to the conference table. Marvin flipped his dangling tie over his shoulder so that Tom had a clear view of the page in the almanac he’d been reading.

“What do you know about the nineteen eighty-eight Los Angeles Dodgers?” asked Marvin.

“They played baseball,” Tom said. “And got paid a lot of money to do it.”

“Kirk Gibson signed a three-year four-point-five-million-dollar free agent contract to play for the team,” Marvin said. “You couldn’t afford a utility player for that kind of cash today.”

“I wouldn’t sneeze at it,” Tom said.

“Before Gibson signed with the team, the Dodgers typically finished around the middle of their division. Fred Claire, the team GM at the time, brought in Gibson because he knew the guy was a game changer. Real workhorse-type player.”

“So Kirk Gibson framed me?” Tom said.

“Cute. No. He didn’t. But he did impart the fear of failure to his teammates and got them into first place at the end of May.”

“Go, Kirk,” Tom said.

“Well, nobody picked them to win at the start of the season. And nobody thought they were going to beat the Mets, but that’s just what they did to win the NLCS. Next up, the World Series against the Oakland A’s—Canseco, McGwire, and Henderson, the big bad three. Don Baylor went and made the egregious mistake of expressing his disappointment that the A’s wouldn’t be facing the best team in the National League. The Dodgers, huge underdogs, were more than a little fired up. Gibson was pretty much tapped out, though. He’d strained his knee and torn a hamstring in the NLCS.”

Tom had been training to become a SEAL that year, but even he saw the most memorable moment from that Series.

“Gibson smacked a home run, then hobbled around the bases,” Tom said.

“Game one, bottom of the ninth, the crowd went crazy when Gibson took the field. Eckersley was on the mound. Three-two count. Gibson’s swing looked to be one-handed, but he made enough contact to win the game with a home run to right. Dodgers went on to win the series in five games.”

Tom gave Marvin his best “I’m still waiting for the punch line” look.

“A lot of people say that home run was the greatest in World Series history. I’m one of them.”

“Marvin, this is all very interesting, but what does any of this have to do with my case?” Tom tried to keep his frustration from showing.

“Take a look at this.”

Tom followed Marvin over to his computer, where he had a Web page open with a picture of the Los Angeles Dodgers 1988 World Series championship ring on display. Marvin held up his cell phone to show Tom the image he’d taken of the injury to his cheek. Tom didn’t need long to see a matching pattern.

“I knew I’d seen that shape before,” Marvin said. “It’s a baseball diamond, of course. But when I first saw your injury, I thought, if it is a World Series ring, those other markings could be the bottom part of the letters D,O,D,G,E,R,S. I remembered that their ring had the team name on it. I got kind of obsessed over that team after their big underdog win.”

“Outliers,” Tom said.

“But I didn’t want to say anything until I checked it out. So I put on my investigator’s hat and cross-referenced the employees of the restaurant where somebody slipped you a Mickey with people on the Dodger team payroll.”

Tom looked dubious.

“I was assaulted by a former major league baseball player?” he asked.

“Players aren’t the only ones to get rings,” Marvin said. “Anybody on the Dodgers’ payroll that year would have gotten a ring—personal trainers, batting practice pitchers, and such.”

Tom’s face lit up. “Marvin, you are a beautiful, beautiful man,” Tom said. “What did you find?”

Marvin couldn’t keep from smiling. “A ring from eighty-eight could have been pawned or sold on eBay. It was a long shot I knew, but I got a hit.”

“Who?”

“A former equipment manager named Frank T. Delacroix. Know him?”

Tom tried to link the name but shook his head. “Should I?”

“He lives in southern New Hampshire and was in heavy rotation on the local news a while back. That’s why I’m asking,” Marvin said. Reaching for the floor, Marvin hauled up a stack of papers with a glossy black-and-white photograph on top. He handed the photograph to Tom.

Tom examined the picture and nodded as soon as he connected the dots. “Wait, I do know this guy,” Tom said. “He was at the country club shindig Boyd invited me to.”

Marvin returned a puzzled look. “Forgive the judgment pass, but you just don’t strike me as the country club type,” Marvin said.

“I’m not. Believe me, Boyd won’t be inviting me back anytime soon. He’s convinced I’m sleeping with his wife. But before all that, he introduced me to this guy as Frank Dee, not Delacroix.”

Tom flashed on a memory of Frank Dee from the club that night. He remembered wondering whether Dee had recently divorced. Apparently, it wasn’t a wedding ring he typically wore on that hand.

“Frank Dee is his new name,” Marvin said. “He changed it after he was released from prison.”

“Prison? What for?”

“Guess.”

“Betting on baseball?”

“Guess again.”

“Okay. Scopolamine smuggling.”

“Close,” Marvin said, smiling. “Try crystal meth. Seems like this guy was a master cooker. But as you now know, that’s not all he can cook. Mr. My-Name-Once-Was-Delacroix got into the restaurant business after he got out of the meth cooking business. He’s now the franchise owner for a bunch of restaurants throughout the state, including that Johnny Rockets on one-forty.”

“But why wasn’t this guy in jail? Isn’t crystal meth a pretty serious offense?”

“Case never went to trial,” Marvin said. “A few weeks before the trial a wee little procedural no-no came up. A technicality with the search warrant, which renders all the crucial evidence against Delacroix inadmissible in court.”

“D.A. dropped the charges after that, I suppose,” Tom said.

Marvin pantomimed the ringing of an imaginary bell. “And guess who Mr. Delacroix-Dee is related to? First cousin related.”

“Kip Lange,” Tom said.

Again, Marvin pantomimed that ringing bell.

“So Lange must have brought Dee into the deal,” Tom said. “Probably promised him a cut. But how does a guy like Dee run a family business? With the Web being what it is, you’d think somebody would have picked up on his past and made a big stink about it.”

“Well, Mr. Delacroix went through a pretty extensive life makeover. New ID. New Social Security number. Essentially, he became a whole new person. You search the Web and it’s clean of any link between the old Delacroix and the new Dee. Then I came across this New York Times investigative report about how the Internet is making it easier for people to live a double life. One article in the series focused on the Delacroix to Dee transformation. Apparently, the new Dee hired a company that specializes in online reputation management.”

“What’s online reputation management?” asked Tom.

“Basically, you can pay these specialists and they’ll keep you looking good on the Web. Its like a twenty-four-hour-a-day Internet watchdog to stamp out slander, lies, and malicious rumors about their clients. I wanted to know if Dee’s online reputation was still being scrubbed clean by somebody, so I posted a bunch of pretty inflammatory comments on the New York Times Web site that I figured would get picked up in a search engine and broadcast to anybody monitoring for such things.”

“And what happened?” Tom asked.

“Within twelve hours, my comments were removed. Then I got an e-mail from somebody at Cortland & Associates, warning me to refrain from any further attempts at slander or face legal action.”

“Who’s that?”

“Cortland & Associates is a large PR firm headquartered in Boston, but with offices all around the world. They do a lot of standard corporate PR work, but it seems they have a subspecialty in online reputation management.”

“But what you posted about Dee wasn’t a rumor. It was the truth.”

“The Internet is fast replacing television as the disseminator of the truth,” Marvin said. “What’s available online for people to find and read is what the people now believe.”

Tom moved the keyboard to Marvin’s computer over to where he could type.

“You look like you’ve lost another liter of blood,” Marvin said.

“No, it’s the name of that PR firm,” Tom said. “I met a guy at the club the night Boyd introduced me to Frank Dee. His name was Simon Cortland.”

“Interesting.”

“But you just made me think of something even more interesting than that. After I got out on bail, I paid a little visit to James Mann.”

“You did what?”

“I knew you wouldn’t approve.”

“I wouldn’t and I don’t.”

“I suggested Mann conduct a little bit of research. He took the risk. I just supplied him with some names. Anyway, we were talking about who would have framed him and why. He thought it had something to do with an upcoming promotion, but only a few people in the company even knew about that, or so he believed. But they did have the press releases ready to go.”

“The press releases,” Marvin said. “Are you thinking…”

Tom brought up the Web site for Cortland & Associates. He showed Marvin the page listing all of Cortland’s many clients. Using Marvin’s computer mouse, Tom highlighted one name in particular.

PrimaMed Corporation.

Tom and Marvin regrouped at the conference table.

“So Frank Dee is connected to Kip Lange,” Marvin said. “And we’ve got Cortland & Associates connected to PrimaMed Corporation, which is also connected to Mr. James Mann.”

“Lange is connected to me,” Tom said. “And so is James Mann.”

“But from what you told me, the only real connection we’ve established between Dee and Cortland is Roland Boyd.”

“So how is Boyd connected to Lange?”

“Well, he knew Lange,” Marvin said. “Weren’t you guys all on the same military base in Germany at the same time?”

“But he wasn’t involved with what happened to Greeley or with the heroin I took out of the country. Kelly was only worried about one person—the guy who orchestrated the heist and recruited her into his plan. Kip Lange. I can tell you after my run-ins with Roland Boyd that he’s just as dangerous as Lange. Kelly would have been terrified of him if she felt she had any reason.”

“What about Cortland and PrimaMed?” Marvin asked. “Do you think they have any links back to Boyd?”

“I don’t know,” Tom said. “But it sure seems worth finding out.”

Marvin fixed Tom with a cold, unblinking stare. “I need you to come clean with me, Tom. Not that I don’t trust you after you kept your James Mann rendezvous a secret from me, but is there any other reason for Boyd to have you penned on his permanent shit list?”

“No,” Tom said. “We were friends right up until he thought I was sleeping with his wife.”

Tom told Marvin about his having to break in and rescue Jill from inside Roland’s house.

“Are you and Adriana having an affair?” Marvin asked afterward. “Answer me honestly, Tom. Please.”

“No. God, no. Marvin, you can ask Adriana yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“Yes. Ask me.”

Tom and Marvin looked up and saw Adriana Boyd. Their jaws fell open simultaneously. Her truculent stance matched the coldness in her eyes. Tom’s face lit up at the sight of her.

Adriana crossed the room in four long strides. She maneuvered over to where Tom stood, dodging the paper piles with graceful steps.

“Adriana,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

Adriana raised her arm. If Tom hadn’t been so surprised, he would have reflexively shifted into a defensive posture. She swung her open palm in an arc toward Tom’s face. The blow landed hard against his cheek, making a thunderclap sound. Tom felt pulses of pain where her hand had been.

“Don’t you dare touch my son again,” she said. Her voice was low and menacing.

“Adriana… you don’t understand….” Tom could only stammer out the words.

“I understand that you laid your hands on my son Mitchell. Roland, of all people, convinced me not to press charges against you. He said it was all some big misunderstanding. You’re lucky I waited outside in my car as long as I did, or I might not be in control of myself.”

“You followed me here?” Tom said, incredulous.

“I came to your house just as you were pulling out of your driveway,” Adriana said. “Believe me when I tell you that I’m much calmer now.”

“Adriana, look, I understand that you’re upset. But something happened between my daughter and Mitchell that you should know about.”

“I don’t want to know anything about anything, Tom. Stay away from my family. I mean it.”

With that, Adriana Boyd turned on her heels and left.

Minutes passed before either man spoke. Marvin broke the silence first.

“Tom, why didn’t Roland Boyd go to the police after you broke into his house? You told him Jill would probably report the incident. This is a guy who locked you in a cooler because he thinks you were sleeping with his wife. Don’t you think it’s a little bit curious that he didn’t want to press any charges?”

“More than a little,” Tom said.