On the Ropes: A Duffy Dombrowski Mystery (23 page)
It wasn’t normal procedure
to drive a client anywhere. In fact, it was against the rules because it supposedly meant developing inappropriate boundaries. I had driven clients places and even got written up by the Michelin Woman once for doing it. I found it hard to believe that Rhonda was ignoring the rules; she was an administrator and seemed too much like Claudia to be doing something human.
I waited at that corner down the street from Bowerman’s town house for an hour. The Yanks were in the middle of a home stand with the Mariners and it was the top of the third and they were already down five to nothing. Announcer Suzyn Waldman was going on about the merits of the aluminum bat used at the collegiate level and somehow that broke into a discussion of steroid use in the major leagues. John Sterling brought up the fact that just because Barry Bonds’s head was the size of a sixteen-pound medicine ball, it didn’t necessarily mean that he was doing anything unnatural.
Waldman was about to use an eleven-syllable word to keep the conversation going when the national news broke in with a special report.
“We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming for this special report from NBC. We take you now, live to our New York studios and Brian Williams.”
Ever since I was a kid, the sound of a special report scared the shit out of me. It wasn’t like they ever interrupted things to bring you good news.
“Good evening. In Crawford, New York, a city fifty miles north of New York City, four Pakistani nationals were arrested an hour ago. They had in their possession several hundred pounds of explosives and an undisclosed quantity of cesium 147. Cesium 147 is a radioactive isotope used in the treatment of special types of cancers. If combined with explosives, it can disperse large quantities of radioactive material while also rendering damage from the conventional force of the bomb.
“The four arrested are all employees of the Crawford Medical Center. They are Afu Mohammed, an oncology nurse, Faid Ru Abdul, a nurse’s aid, Said Farook, and Nasseem Abdul, both facilities services workers.
“Details are still coming in, but Special Agent Carlisle of the FBI was quoted as saying, ‘The suspects are in custody and the radioactive material is accounted for. The situation is under control.’”
The report continued on but it was mostly interviews with the usual experts talking and debating about the seriousness of a “dirty bomb” and the ability of the four to have been able to carry out their plans. They also went to great lengths explaining how the wind currents in Crawford are ideal for the terrorists’ plans and that it showed that the terrorists had done their homework.
Nothing was going on outside of Bowerman’s house, so I got Rudy on the cell phone.
“Yeah, this is Rudy,” he said.
“Did you hear the news?” I said.
“I’m at the hospital now,” he said. “Everyone is, there are all sorts of mandatory meetings and debriefings.”
“Is Gabbibb there?”
“No, but he phoned in. The FBI is saying it was these four guys and they are directly connected to some sleeper cell of Al-something. It wasn’t Al-Qaeda, but it was something like that.”
“Does that mean Gabbibb is off the hook?” I said.
“It certainly looks like it, Duff.” Rudy exhaled loudly. “Thank God we didn’t do anything rash.”
“The guy’s still a creep,” I said.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t make him a terrorist. Look, I got to run. Why don’t you cool your secret-agent-man hijinks for a while?”
I let Rudy go and breathed a sigh of relief. I wasn’t happy that Gabbibb wasn’t arrested, but I started to come around to the fact that just because a guy is an all-around douchebag, it doesn’t mean he’s involved in all things that are evil. Perhaps I had overreacted to what I saw on the hospital computer. Either way, I had to save Shony.
Around ten o’clock, the lights went out inside Bowerman’s house and I figured the two of them had turned in for the night. I suppose it could have been nothing more than a little over-involvement on Bowerman’s case, but I doubted it. I didn’t see the use in hanging around all night, so I headed back to AJ’s. I was back there by eleven and I was happy to see that not only was Jerry Number Two and the rest of the Foursome there, but so was Kelley.
“The fact that you could see her bush was what got to DiMaggio,” Rocco said.
“I thought it was because JFK was seeing her bush,” Jerry Number One said.
“Wasn’t Bush the head of the CIA during that period?” TC asked.
“Jackass,” Rocco said. “We’re talking about Marilyn Monroe in the
Seven Year Itch
,” Rocco said.
“I know, but didn’t J. Edgar Hoover eventually buy that dress?” TC said.
“Shut up,” Rocco said. “DiMaggio got pissed when that fan blew up Marilyn’s dress and because of the bright lights you could see the bush through her panties.”
“I never trusted Bush,” said Jerry Number Two. “Not any of ’em.”
I sat next to Jerry Number Two. There’s no point in waiting for a polite break when the Foursome is at it. So I broke in between Bush segments.
“Jer, did you find anything out about the pickup?”
“Hey Duff. Yeah.”
Jerry foraged around in his pockets and got a wrinkled piece of lined paper.
“The pickup license plate is LMQ-56 and it is registered to a Daniel Dunston. Dunston’s last address was 3A Rd. #2 in Crocketsville,” Jerry read the information from a neatly typed memo. “Some more digging around also brought up that this guy has spent at least three-quarters of his adult life behind bars. Various assaults, drug charges, and a pretty serious manslaughter. He did eight years in Attica for his involvement in the bombing of that federal office building in Manhattan.”
“What bombing?”
“It was foiled—it had to do with some extremist group.”
“Charming,” I said.
“That’s not all, Duff. He killed a guy in prison. They ruled it self-defense. The guy’s throat was slit from ear to ear.”
“Oh good. Anything on the black guy?”
“Duff—all I know is that he’s a black guy with the name Tyrone,” Jerry sipped his Cosmo. “Most search engines don’t turn up a lot of good information with that query,” Jerry said.
He was right, of course, but after working with Jerry on computer stuff, I think I kind of believed he could find out anything.
“Jerry, one more thing. Can you find out as much as you can about a Rhonda Bowerman, the director of the Jewish Unified Services in Eagle Heights?” I gave Jerry the address.
“You got a social security number?”
“No.”
“All right, but it will take a bit of time.”
“As fast as possible, if you could. Anything on exactly when the webcast is going down?”
“No, just the same sick shit advertising.”
I thanked Jerry and sat for a moment with my Schlitz. I had to go ask Kelley questions that he wouldn’t like, and though I wasn’t looking forward to it, I copied the information down Jerry gave me. Kelley was watching ESPN Classic’s ABA feature. The Kentucky Colonels were up against the Virginia Squires and even though Ticky Burden had thirty-six points, his Squires were still down by eighteen. I sat next to Kelley, but if he saw me, he didn’t acknowledge my presence.
“Kel?”
“Hey Duff.”
“Anything about the website and the child porn stuff?”
“The sergeant told me to stop trying to be a hero and just do my job. He said he’d turn it over to the sex crime task force.”
“Here’s some information Jerry got on the pickup and the bald guy.”
“Oh great, now you got Jerry working for you, illegally obtaining information. What’s next? You going to have the whole Fearsome Foursome form a SWAT team? They can talk all the villains to death.”
I filled Kelley in on everything as fast as I could, just in case, and then I left him alone. I finished off my Schlitz and headed home.
The next morning I
went to see Rudy and borrowed his new Lincoln Navigator. I wanted Jerry to be able to reach me the very second he found something out about Bowerman and when he figured out when the webcast was going to go down. I thought the best use of my time was to find out for certain if Dunston and Baldy were one in the same and if he lived at the address Jerry gave me.
In New York State, when someone lives on a street that has a road number instead of a name, it’s a pretty good bet that they live in a very remote spot. Dunston probably lived off a series of dirt roads in a cabin, a trailer, or some sort of prefab. Pulling down a dirt road in my Eldorado and not being noticed was not going to be easy. I guess if I’m going to pursue the life of a private eye, I’m going to have to consider a new set of wheels. Until I go full time, I am going to have to borrow Rudy’s rig.
The foolish SUV weighed about ten tons, and it was hard to get used to being twenty feet in the air, driving. Rudy had power everything, a CD and cassette player, but no eight-track. Through the years, I have made a handful of Elvis cassettes for just such circumstances so I would have something to listen to. Al was happy that there were power windows because it would give him something to do.
I figured I had a couple of choices. I could stake out Bowerman and Stephanie, but there was no guarantee that they would be associated with the webcast. Stephanie had been on the website in porn poses, but there was a chance that she wouldn’t have anything to do with this event. There was still a chance that Bowerman had taken her to her house for some quasi-legitimate social work reason. I doubted that, but there was a chance.
My other option was to track down the address that Jerry had got me for Dunston. So far, it seemed to me that he was always on the scene. If there was something that needed security or enforcement, I’m guessing he was their guy. There was a chance that the bald guy wasn’t Dunston or that the address was bogus, but I decided checking in on him would be the first thing I would do. If I could determine that he really did live at the address Jerry gave me earlier, then I could decide what to do from there.
The Rd. #2 address was another seven miles east of Eagle Heights. I hoisted Al into his copilot seat, which, with the height of the Navigator, was no easy trick. Al really liked Rudy’s SUV. He sat right up and looked out over the dashboard while hitting all the power switches, making the doors lock, the windows go up and down, and the moonroof slide back.
At ten, I made the turn off Route 44 and started to head down the dirt roads. I got to the end of County Road #2 and decided to walk in the rest of the way. The Navigator wasn’t as conspicuous as the orange Eldorado, but out in these boonies another breathing human being was noticed.
I left Al in the SUV and headed in. There were worn-looking houses with appliances on the front lawns, old rusted car chassis, and dogs tied on chains. There were houses about every five hundred yards. Most of them looked like two-bedroom deals laid on slabs. At least half of them had a motorcycle or snowmobile or both on the front lawn.
About a mile and a half in, I came upon Dunston’s house and sure enough, the white pickup truck was parked outside his dirty white house. He had a homemade carport with three motorcycles in various states of disrepair underneath it. His lawn was overgrown, and there was a rusted refrigerator that the grass had grown around.
I stayed back a couple hundred yards and tried to take in as much as I could. I wasn’t exactly sure what to look for, but I felt compelled to study his house, make a clear mental image, and store it in my brain. When I felt I had it, I went back to the Navigator.
Al was sleeping as the soundtrack to
Blue Hawaii
played on. Over the last three weeks, Al seemed to mellow out when Elvis went into “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” I wasn’t sure what to do next, but I felt like it was time to check in on the Eagle Heights clinic. I figured Bowerman might have taken Stephanie back there. I hit the McDonald’s drive-through on the way there, and Al and I split two quarter-pounders with cheese and an order of fries that was big enough to feed a family of six.
I parked a block and a half away from the clinic. My new wheels made hanging out without being noticed easier. Sure enough, Bowerman’s blue BMW was parked outside. Staring at the front door of the clinic for the next four hours wasn’t easy, and I was going out of my mind with boredom. My lower back was starting to ache and I had to take a leak.
It was almost four o’clock, and just when I thought I couldn’t take it anymore, Bowerman left through the front door of the clinic. I watched her head to the parking lot, but instead of getting in the BMW, she went for the clinic van. She was alone.
She took off in the same direction that she did last night when she went home. I followed her from a safe distance and she took the exact same route.
I was a quarter mile behind her when she turned into her development. I didn’t follow her, I kept going straight. There was only one way out of the development and there was no point in risking getting spotted. I did a U-turn and parked off the side of the country road, a half-mile down from the entrance to the development.
I waited. I had already spent about eight hours in the car today, most of it doing absolutely nothing. I don’t know how guys make a career doing this sort of shit because it was making me crazy.
I killed time devising strategies for beating some of the all-time best fighters. I figured to beat Robinson I would crowd him and make him move to his left. That would make me vulnerable to his hook, but it was worth the chance. Against Joe Louis—easy, I would give him a lot of side-to-side movement. With Ali, I’d be all over him with elbows, forearms, and cuffs. He hated the rough stuff. I was just about to beat Marvelous Marvin Hagler when the phone rang.
“Duff—it’s going down tonight, at eight thirty,” Jerry said.
“Shit. What else can you tell me?”
“Duff,” Jerry was speaking fast. “They’re saying all sorts of sick shit about what’s going to happen to Shony. She’s the feature and there’s three other girls about the same age.”
“It’s a little after four. That gives me four hours.”
I hung up and watched Bowerman pull out of her development.