The Night Remembers

16

Early in the afternoon I ate lunch in my car, Hardees being the culprit. I sat between a panel truck belonging to a plumber and a motorcycle belonging to a guy my age who still obviously remembered Marlon Brando and The Wild One. About this time, I assumed, George Pennyfeather would be in his lawyer’s office and they would be phoning the police, arranging a time to go over to the police station. While it was not certain that he would be arrested, it was certain that the police wanted to talk to him. After being a good citizen and tossing my crumpled bag into the depository Hardees had prepared for me, I wheeled my car across the street to a drive-up phone. I let it ring twelve times before giving up. Faith and Hoyt had gone someplace. My hand tightened. I could almost feel her bed-warmth in my fingers. Faith; Faith...

Most of my background checks begin at the credit bureau, and for a simple reason. In assessing a person’s credit, the bureau collects all sorts of peripheral information. While legislators have debated the legality of the bureau’s gathering this information, it is nonetheless just the sort of material you need when you’re checking somebody out. You get a lifetime’s worth of employers, any pertinent spousal information, and a pretty good sense of how the person has been doing economically. (I’ve always thought that smart drug czars, for instance, would purposely allow themselves to have a bad credit rating. But then “smart” and “drug czar” are two concepts that usually are mutually exclusive.)

The bureau was busy this afternoon. A neatly dressed woman (big floppy ties were in vogue this season) argued with a clerk about certain things that had been left in her file. A lawyer I recognized from the courthouse gravely pointed out some file items to a very anxious-looking client, the lawyer whispering a bit too loud the phrase. “Chapter 11,” as in bankruptcy. A young couple, cheery and confident and enviably in love, chattered amiably with a clerk about their intentions to buy a little house up in the West Highlands area, and therefore needing a Xerox of their record to take to the realtor and to the bank.

I got the Stella Czmek file by convincing the manager that if I didn’t get it a client of mine would be in great and abiding trouble. He let me see the file. He was used to my melodramas.

She had been born in 1941, graduated from St. Wenceslaus High School in 1959, worked for ten years at Cherry-Burrell in the shipping department, attended Hamilton Business College at night where she learned secretarial skills including dictation, and had then gone to work for a man named Jerry Vandersee, who operated an import-export business out of the Executive Plaza building. Originally, for the duration of her employment at Cherry-Burrell, her credit rating had been terrible. People’s Bank had been forced to reclaim a 1965 Mustang it had loaned her the money to buy; Standard Appliance had sued her for money owed on an Admiral TV console, an Admiral refrigerator, and a Tappan gas range. A revolving charge account she’d had at Armstrongs had been cut off after six consecutive months of nonpayment. She was evicted twice from apartments on First Avenue West for being in arrears on her rent. After finishing her courses at Hamilton, and after joining Vandersee’s International Import-Export, her life seemed to improve — not right away and not as if she’d won the lottery, but over the first year with Vandersee you saw steady improvement in her rating. She’d rented a small house up near St. Patrick’s, started a modest savings account at Merchants Bank, and paid $500 cash down on a 1964 Plymouth. At this time she married a man named Stan Papajohn, who was then employed by Wilson Packing Company in the hog kill. Four months after the marriage, they moved to a house on Edgewood Road, N.W., where they soon bought a motorboat and successfully applied for credit cards at Killians and Younkers department stores. This was in 1973. The marriage lasted eight years, during which time the Papajohns saw their financial status become very, very good. There was even money for a small lake cottage up on the Coralville Reservoir. After the divorce, things didn’t seem to go so well for either of them. Stan Papajohn lost his job when Wilson was sold; Stella Papajohn (who had gone back to calling herself Stella Czmek) was unemployed for nearly two years after the death of her employer, Mr. Vandersee. Nowhere in her file was any mention of children. Apparently broke, Stella Czmek slid back to her old way of life. There were several credit complaints dating from 1982 to 1986. A 1985 Ford Fairlane was repossessed by Farmer’s State Bank in Marion. An eviction from an apartment in the Calder Arms led her in 1987 to her last address on Ellis Boulevard.

From a pay phone in the lobby, I called Stan Papajohn. A somewhat harassed-sounding woman answered as a baby cried in the background.

“Mr. Papajohn, please.”

“Who’s this?”

“My name is Walsh.”

“Who you with?”

“Uh, with myself. I have a small investigative agency.”

“Investigative agency?” She cupped the phone and shouted at the squalling infant to god dammit shut up. “What kind of investigative agency?”

“I do background checks.”

“What’re those?”

“Employers hire me to make certain that potential employees are who they say they are.”

“Oh.” She obviously had no idea of what I was talking about.

“Is Stan there, Mrs. Papajohn?”

“We ain’t married.”

“I see.”

“So I’m Kitty Malloy, not Kitty Papajohn.”

“Right. What time does he get home?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to talk to him a few minutes.”

“About what?”

Always tell the truth, particularly if there are no other options. “I’d like to ask him a few questions about his ex-wife.”

“Why don’t you ask me?”

“You knew her?”

“No, but Stan and his brother Jimmy told me all about her. A real ball-buster, take my word for it. She wanted to wear the pants in the family, if you know what I mean.”

“Did you ever meet her?”

“Just once.”

“When was that?”

“Say, you know she’s dead, right?”

“Right.”

“Does this have anything to do with that?”

Once again, having no choice. I nobly told the truth. “Yes. I’m working for somebody who’s involved in the case.”

“Oh.”

“You said you met her once.”

“Right. She came over here one night, real drunk and abusive and demanding to see Stan. I didn’t have no choice but to let him go with her. They went down to the Cedar View.”

“The tavern?”

“Right.”

“Do you know why she wanted him?”

There was a pause. “You’ll take this wrong, if I tell you.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“I don’t think he told me the truth. Stan, I mean. And he never did that before. Lied, I mean.”

“You’re saying you don’t know why she wanted him?”

“Right. Oh, he came up with some cock-and-bull story about her needing a loan, but she was always the one with the money, anyway.”

“I see.”

“She had some inheritance or something.”

“That’s what she told Mr. Papajohn?”

“Right.”

The kid started crying again and once again she cupped the phone and said god dammit Ricky shut up.

“What time does Mr. Papajohn get off work?”

“Three, if he don’t work overtime.”

“I’d like to leave a message.”

“Lemme get a pencil, Mr. Walsh.”

The kid was crying. She was saying shut up god dammit as she hung up.