Iceman

Buckhead Station

Eichord pushed rewind and nothing happened. He was all the way to the front. He pushed play. Nothing happened. He checked the remote jack and he had pulled it out as he was supposed to. He pulled the mike jack out as well and hit play again. Nothing. He let some air out and puffed his cheeks out like a fat man, decided he would try the batteries. Unplugged the squad room's glowing adapter and fished a couple of recharged Enercells out, popping them into the little machine. It started immediately. What did the world do before Radio Shack? He wondered if they ever considered manufacturing a car.

“—home for that long a time,” a woman's voice was saying off microphone. The crash-bam clutter clump of movement. A man's flat voice, “One, two, three four, five.” A pause and a click. Harry Wallace was a good ole boy over at the Moss Grove County Sheriff's Office. He had a voice like a mower with the blades set a little low.

“Would you state your full name?"

“Bonnie Louise Johnson."

“Address."

“1622 East Magnolia.” Harry Wallace asked her other questions that appeared on the report be was looking at. Buckhead County, like Moss Grove County, had no Missing Persons. He listened to the woman talk about her friend, Diane Taluvera, the thirty-year-old white female working for the Moss Grove Bank, who'd suddenly decided one day she'd run away from home.

Bonnie Louise had moved to Moss Grove from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, four years ago when her ex-husband—they'd been married at the time—had transferred. She'd been lucky, she had worked for the Lauderdale Phone Company ever since she'd graduated high school, at seventeen, and they'd made her a supervisor. They found a spot for her in the Buckhead office on the four-to-midnight. Her first week in town she'd met Diane Taluvera, who was in HER first week on the job at the bank, and they liked each other immediately and shared a lunch in the park, Bonnie crying about the IBM DASCs and Diane bitching about the fact she'd spit on her MA, and both of them laughing about it and becoming very close.

They were best friends. She'd tried to tell Diane about this strange boyfriend she met recently, somebody she'd met in the bank. This weirdo Prince Charming who was too good to ever be seen with her in public, which of course told Bonnie that he was married. He had a wife and six kids for sure. But Al the Mystery Man was slick. He had her eating out of his hand. He and his so-called “personal secretary.” Some funny stuff going on.

He'd taken her to California. She'd had a postcard from Los Angeles a week ago and it was Diane's handwriting but Bonnie said it “looked very suspicious.” Eichord listened to the tape as he looked at the photocopy of the message on the back of the card.

“Dear Bonnie"—the dot over the I in Bonnie a heart, like a college roomie with a neat hand. “It finally happened! Prince Charming is taking me away from all this. We're running away together, Bon. I'm so excited I'm only going to throw some things in a bag and we'll leave for the Coast tonight. I'll mail this card when we get to L.A. I'm going to start a whole new life, Bonnie, so don't be surprised if I don't write for a long time!” Love, Diane, had the O and the dotted I heart-shaped. Small, neat, looping letters.

The business about Al the Mystery Man and the “so-called personal secretary” kept leaping off the tape into Eichord's ear. He played the cassette through to the end. Rewound it and played it again as he reread the small file:

—The NCIC Alert, —The “missing” report,

—The flyer with Diane Taluvera's photograph that was circulating through metro PDS from California to New York.

—The handwriting report.

—The interview/interrogation with her superior at the bank.

—The copy of the scenic card mailed to the bank from California. Her resignation in four succinct lines. Finally, in the space on the form where Harry Wallace had printed “missing by choice,” Eichord circled the words “by choice” and printed the word “INVESTIGATE."

He phoned the bank. Got the party he wanted after a few moments. Normally he would have read the suspect list first, but this was a financial institution and they were as bad as hospitals and law firms about dispensing confidential data, even to coppers. He IDd himself and told the party, “How concerned are you about Diane Taluvera being missing for this length of time?"

“We're concerned about the possibility that she's missing—sure—but we can only go by the postcard she sent us. We have to take it at face value.” He could see the shrug in her voice.

“Did you know Ms Taluvera the entire period of time she worked there at the bank?"

“No, I've only been here about a year myself. Officer. Would you prefer to speak with someone who knew Diane longer?"

“No, ma'am. In the year you knew her, which is obviously ample time to size up an employee, would you say that the manner in which she quit her job was consistent with the rest of her personality?"

“Not at all. Not in the least. But, on the other hand, she indicated she was getting married, and people tend to get a little whacko sometimes.” She chuckled. “I'm pretty sure of Di's writing and some of the others saw the postcard and I think she wrote it, all right."

“Do you know if one of the customer's of the bank was Alan Schumway, the car dealer?"

“Well, we do have a business relationship with Mr. Schumway, yes. I'm not quite sure just what banking business he does here, but you could ask Mr. Ashton,” she said, naming the president of the bank.

“Did Diane Taluvera have a personal relationship with Mr. Schumway, do you know?"

“Not to my knowledge. I just don't know too much about the employees’ personal lives. The unmarried women don't ... You know, there isn't that much talk inside the bank. So I couldn't say."

“But she did know Mr. Schumway?"

“Oh, yes. He came in the bank often. He comes in frequently. As I say, Mr. Ashton could fill you in on the nature of his dealings better than I could."

“Well, I'll certainly be speaking with him about it. Meanwhile, I don't have much more, just a couple of things. Would any of the women at the bank there, or men for that matter, have any idea who Diane was seeing?"

“No. I don't think so. We've talked about her a lot since she quit like that, you know. I think she pretty much kept her personal life to herself."

“Okay."

“She has a close friend, Bonnie Johnson, I believe her name is. Some of the girls have seen them talking here in the bank together, so you might talk with her.” It was like pulling teeth.

“If you should think of anything that might give us an idea who Miss Taluvera was going with, or if you should hear from her again, would you be sure to give me a call?” She assured him she would and he gave her his number with thanks.

Eichord hung up the phone. Later he'd run the whole list of suspects by all the bank people. He started in on his OTHER list.

Eichord had stared at the list until it had begun to lose all meaning and then he began to doodle on it. The list of names read:

Gloria

Darleen

Ann

Elnora

May and out to the side: 39.6 followed by

Tina

June

Heather and out to the side of that: Diane? and the word “sperm,” but when he looked down, he noticed he had written spermwhale and then he caught the drift of the conversation around him and shook his head as he blacked it out.

“—see him in his goddamn trunks."

“Yeah.” Another voice, laughing. “I'll never forget the time we got invited over there and I told him I didn't think the ole lady would wanna go, ya know, on her period an’ that. I says. She's got a friend in town right now. And Dana goes. Oh, that's okay. Bring her along too."

Jack smiled. Laughing on the outside. Weirded out on the inside. He reached for the nasty plastic thing and dialed.

“Hello, beautiful,” he said when Donna answered. “Know who this is?"

“Sam, is this you?” she said urgently. “My husband's not here so you can say anything you like. Wanna talk dirty?"

“You're taking the words right out of my mouth."

“Oh, nifty! We can discuss what I'm not wearing. Would you like that?"

“Uh huh."

“Okay. What I'm not wearing is my clothes, Sam. How soon can you be here? I mean, I was going to take a little quickie shower. But if you can get here before What's-his-name gets home, we can take a little quickie instead. Sound good, Sam?"

“Unbearably good."

“And another thing. I thought we were going to talk dirty. I haven't heard a salacious remark out of your sexy mouth, mister."

“There's five guys sitting next to me who would love it, but let's wait till later. Speaking of later, it's going to be later than that. Which is to say about eight or nine.” He heard an audible groan. “I'm sorry. Duty calls. But never fear. Old hubby'll drag in the door in a few hours for his leftovers."

“Hubby? Hubby who-hubby. I thought this was my BOYFRIEND.” They agreed Donna would heat up something for Jack when he came in. And maybe save him some dinner, too. And they hung up.

Eichord left the squad room and went upstairs. He asked the girl on the board to call Schumway's, and she did so, finding out they closed at five. He got in his unmarked car and headed for North Buckhead.

Alan Schumway lived in a home that reflected the oddness of the man himself. Set back on an acre of expensive, well-tended lawn, a strange, two-story oddity sat like a stucco monument to an architectural experiment gone awry. Eichord sat a half-block down the street, trying to figure out what the house was saying. He decided it was saying, “I'd rather be at sea,” and surely the home did in fact resemble the prow of an ocean liner with its steeply jutting, angled front and the windows that almost suggested portholes. Eichord had been there for an hour and ten minutes when Alan Schumway pulled up. A new Buick with handicapped plates instead of the expected dealer tags.

“Mr. Schumway,” Eichord said as the man swung his chair out and began locking it into place beside him, “can I give you a hand?"

“No, Tracy, but you can give me a leg or two if you have some to spare. Hands I got. What the hell are you doing out here at this time of night? Did you lose Junior again?"

“Not this time,” Eichord said as he watched the man's powerful upper body wrestle with the chair. Schumway got into the device and slammed the door. “Well, come on, Double-oh-seven, let's go catch a buzz.” And he went off rolling toward the ramp to his front door. “Come along now. Just shuffle along. Try to keep up."

The house was very cool. Almost cold. Beautifully decorated in a chilly, sparse way, as if nobody lived there.

“Let's go upstairs,” he said after checking his mail.

“I won't take up much of your time,” Jack told him as they entered a large service elevator.

“Like what the hell do you WANT, copper?” he snarled in an old-movie gangster voice Eichord knew but couldn't place.

Jack laughed and did his tap dance about Norway. He'd lost the spelling of the fjord. This and that. Schumway didn't seem at all perturbed at the second intrusion, though he was overtly more curious than the first time. Eichord could sense animosity, but that in itself was nothing. Lots of people didn't like police much.

Eichord declined a drink with thanks, and while Schumway poured, he looked around.

“How much do you know about deco?"

“Mm.” Eichord shrugged. “I like it."

“You don't know art, in other words, but you know what you like."

“Right.” No hint of a pun in the man's tone. Could he be that calculating?

“Deco is mid-twenties. Parisian. The ladies’ compacts and the mirrors and the fringed Mondrianesque handbags and the pottery and the architectural moldings and the bronzes and the jewelry and the lighting fixtures.” The man's face glowed with enthusiasm and adoration. “The deco look. The look of the Paris Expo. Lalique and Mallet-Stevens and Desny and Bonet and all those dudes. This is a Desny right here,” he said lovingly, showing Eichord a piece of silver. “Ain't it a gas?"

“Yeah."

“You feel the power of it?” The mocking tone momentarily gone from the man's voice.

“Like a little Chrysler Building or Radio City Music Hall."

“Precisely so."

“Great."

“It all came out of cubism, see. Out of those marvelous Braque things, and the old man, of course, Pablo's seminal goodies. The cubists were the fathers of it, but then it got all hard and cold, streamlined. The prismatic geometric look. All suggestion. All line and sweep and rectilinear exaggeration and classical form and super-stylized angles and planes. Lightning bolts, ovals, repetition of rectangles and octagons, pyramids, silver and bright color and sun splash. The cubist prism, the Aztec temple look, the Egyptian pyramid, the mystic Secret Scarab, the mythical sunburst shapes of the Sun Gods.” He turned to a lit glass showcase. “My babies,” he whispered.

“Wow.” Eichord whispered back, caught up in it now. “Beautiful."

“My Roseville Futura.” He said it the way you point at a beautiful woman out by the pool or the tennis court as you tell your new business acquaintance, “That's my wife."

“Huh?"

“Futura.” His voice was barely audible. Reverence. “Roseville Pottery. The Smith'd fucking KILL to get one of these. These are the top three vases. The black is believed to be one of a kind. The most phallic fucking piece of Futura ever made."

“Yeah."

“I traded a priceless collection of Mayan and Peruvian terra-cotta phallics for that one piece. I would have given anything for it."

“What's that?” Eichord said, looking over at a table.

“Hmm?” The man in the chair had to look away from his precious showcase and glanced in the direction Jack was looking. “Oh, that goddamn thing. It's junk. I gave one of those assholes on Melrose out in L.A. a grand for it—just as a hoot."

“Is it a metal sculpture piece?"

“No.” The man laughed. He wheeled over to the round chrome object and did something to it and music squawked out of it. “It's a RADIO!” He laughed again.

“Wild."

“It's fucking outrageous. Art dreck-o. I love it all."

Eichord was hammered by the man's intensity and the feel of implicit latent power. The thought that kept nagging was, Could Alan Schumway get up from that wheelchair and walk? Do I yell fire? Or do I back off and stir the ashes a little and hope that when I move in to get him he hasn't packed up his wheelchair in his old kit bag and run away to Norway.

“Listen, one more thing, if I may. Somebody mentioned you have a, uh, personal secretary?” He looked down, not wanting to watch Schumway raise his eyebrows and do shtick while he tried to embarrass Eichord. “Does she live in? I was wondering if I might ask her a couple of brief questions while I'm here."

“Does she LIVE IN,” Schumway mocked. “Holy JEEZUS, Feste, you silver-tongued bastard.” Eichord smiled pleasantly while Schumway roared with laughter, then screamed at the top of his lungs, “NICKI!” And saying to Jack as he turned away, “I don't think she's here."

“Does she live here?"

“We hang out,” Schumway said. “Anything else you need right now?” Schumway stared into the glossy depths of the black deco vase.

Eichord doodled with the surface of his mind and had to fight from asking big Al from Norway, “Hey, Alan—is there a fjord in your Futura?"