EIGHT LIES (About the Truth): A collection of short stories (6 page)

“I remember fine,” I said. “Have you got a list of the other top contenders for
grande dame
of the ball?”

“Indeed I do,” the sound of papers shuffling came through the line.

“Any of those women married to a property developer?”

“Um…afraid not.”

“How about someone in construction. Or an architect.”

“My dear boy, don’t…oh yes, yes there is one,” he said with some surprise. “An architect. Steven Young. Abramson, Young & Associates. The wife’s name is Gertrude, as improbable as that may sound.”

“Great. What do you know about Gertrude Young and her architect?”

“I know I have a research file on them, but the file is at home,” he said. “I’ll ring you back in a few hours.” I started to hang up. “Mr. Dudgeon.” I put the receiver back to my head. “Mr. Dudgeon, I know what you’re trying to do.”

“Listen Crawley, I owe you a publishable item—our deal didn’t specify that I have to go after your preferred target.”

“Whomever you go after, I expect a piece by Saturday night. I know you’ve made progress on the Chapman woman or you wouldn’t be switching course. So I’ll run the prostitution piece unless you bring me something of equal value.” I said nothing and listened to Crawley light a cigarette. “I really don’t know how you survive in your line of work,” he sniffed, “the way you endeavor to strike a morality pose. It absolutely reeks of hypocrisy. Don’t forget, I have a research file on you, too.”

“Fuck off, Crawley.” I put the receiver down.

I opened a bottle of Mount Gay Extra Old and poured four fingers of deep amber rum over ice and drank it, while not thinking about what Delwood Crawley might or might not have on me. The rum was good, so I poured another. This one I drank slowly, while surfing the Internet for information about Gertrude and Steven Young. I scribbled a few notes and visited the ProInfoTrace website and ordered a report on Mrs. Gertrude Young, of Lake Forest. I entered the number of my Illinois private detective’s license and a credit card. And selected the rush service, which cost me over four hundred bucks. Thinking
You really are a sucker, Dudgeon. Forty bucks to Judy, at least as much on beer and gas, and now this. And for what? So you can pretend you’re doing the right thing? Don’t be a rube.

But the truth was, it did make me feel better. Gertrude Young was willing to drag Margarita Chapman’s skeletons into public view, and to me, that made Gertrude fair game. Live by the sword, and all that jazz.

If that’s hypocrisy, so be it.

Lake Forest is the most exclusive of Chicago’s suburban towns. Here the mansions are set deep within wooded lots. Gertrude Young ventured out into the world at 8:45 Friday morning. She drove a green Jaguar XK Convertible, top down. A green and gold Hermes scarf protected her hairdo from the warm breeze and sunglasses the size of salad plates protected her eyes from the summer sun.

Gertrude’s first order of business was a visit to her family doctor, whose office occupied a redbrick townhouse on a tree-lined street just off Sheridan Road. At 9:43, she was back in the car and then to Deerpath, where she parked in a tow-away zone and dashed into Walgreen’s. There were plenty of meters available, so I played it safe.

Gertrude browsed through the current issue of Harper’s while waiting for her prescription, paid for the drugs, and returned to her car, which had not been ticketed or towed. She then drove south to Chicago, where we both parked in the garage at Water Tower Place. By 11:00 she was strolling down the
Magnificent Mile
.

Which was good news for me. The ProInfoTrace report had arrived as an e-mail attachment late in the night, and it told me that Gertrude Young had been arrested five times in the last four years. The charges against her had always been dropped and the report did not say what Gertrude Young had been charged with. No help from Crawley’s file, which held whispered rumors that Steven Young might have a boyfriend on the side, but was otherwise empty. So I called Lieutenant Mike Angelo and told him I had two tickets to next Tuesday’s Cubs game and I thought he might like to have them. Mike liked that idea fine, and he looked up the arrest records.

Shoplifting. Apparently Mrs. Gertrude Young, whose husband was rich as Croesus, had a little
kleptomania
problem. Her husband, being not only rich but also politically connected, swung his clout each time and made the charges go away before they even got to court.

I could’ve called Crawley with what I’d gotten from Angelo, but Crawley had insisted on something “of equal value” to the prostitution story, and I knew that he would not consider rumors of past shoplifting equal to rumors of past prostitution. I needed something fresh. I needed to catch Gertrude Young in the act.

And now Gertrude was out shopping. More accurately, out browsing. She tried on hats at Saks, tested lotions and perfumes at Bloomingdales, and inspected jewelry at Tiffany & Co. When she handled the jewelry, I noticed a certain tension, a definite nervousness about her. But then she ate a light lunch alone at Bistro 110 and the tension seemed to dissipate. After lunch, she wandered around Neiman Marcus, where she finally made a purchase. A Prada purse.
If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
It was just after 5:30 when she collected her car.

She hadn’t shoplifted a damn thing all day.

I was sick of following her and disgusted with myself. I paid the $24 ransom for my car and headed home in a funk.

Gertrude Young returned to Chicago Saturday afternoon, parked in the same garage, and resumed her browsing, this time starting with the upscale boutiques on Oak Street. Her nervousness had returned with her and I was betting that the handbag purchase hadn’t satisfied the itch. Today only small items drew her interest. Items that could be easily dropped into pocket or purse.

I followed behind with a small digital camera in the patch pocket of my blazer. Thinking
We’re down the to short strokes, Dudgeon. Crawley’s gonna run with the Chapman prostitution story in
—I looked at my watch—
five hours
.

I even briefly considered the merits of planting some merchandise on Gertrude Young, but before I could convince myself to do something that utterly asinine, she started acting fidgety.
She’s got the itch.

Gertrude slipped behind a gigantic pair of Fendi sunglasses and examined her reflection in the three-way mirror of an optical shop, the name of which I could not pronounce. Her hands flitted about more than normal and when she spoke to the salesman, her speech came out staccato. And she was having trouble with eye contact. Perhaps sensing this, the salesman stuck to her like Doublemint to the underside of a bar stool.

She fled the store empty-handed and retreated to a coffee house, where she sat on the patio and drank cappuccino and battled her nerves. I sat inside with the air conditioner and drank iced espresso.
Four hours…and counting.

She finished her coffee and fumbled her way through an art gallery—
nothing small enough to steal here
—and a jewelry shop—
security too tight
—and then stepped into a cosmetic shop called Skin Deep. I’d seen their full-page ads in
Chicago
magazine. The tag line on all their advertising was:
The next best thing to plastic surgery.

The main floor was eyeliners and lipsticks and blushes and moisturizers and soaps and all that stuff. There was a twentysomething kid in a discount suit pretending to shop for shampoo. I figured him for the store detective.

Upstairs was the tools department. Curling irons and blow dryers and flattening irons and eyelash curlers and wavy irons and face steamers and tanning lamps and corn scrapers and so on.

After buying rouge brushes and emery boards at the upstairs cash register, Gertrude Young twitched her way down the escalator and bounced around the main floor, hands fluttering over the merchandise. Behind tinted lenses, her manic eyes darted around the store.

Her right hand settled on a lipstick, didn’t pick it up. Picked up a rouge, put it back. Scooped a bottle of Givenchy perfume…held it low…and dropped it into her purse.

I moved to the store detective and flashed him my identification and spoke quietly. I told the kid what I’d seen. He puffed out his chest and jutted his chin and marched toward Gertrude Young. I grabbed the camera from my pocket and, using the video feature, captured the scene at thirty frames per second, with audio. I’d set the lens on wide-angle and I held the camera just above my waist, and nobody noticed it.

They were all busy watching Boy Wonder arrest an elegant shoplifter.

Delwood Crawley ran the piece in his Sunday
Chicago After Dark
column. The story rippled through the other local papers on Monday. On Tuesday Gertrude Young held a press conference, which made the evening news.

I perched on a stool at the Old Town Ale House and drank dark rum over ice. On the television at the far end of the bar, Steve Sanders introduced the story and then the screen was full of Gertrude Young, reading a statement to reporters from the front porch of her Lake Forest mansion. I signaled Davey and he tossed me the remote and I brought the volume up.

“…so I am thankful,” Gertrude Young was saying, “and determined to win the fight against this terrible illness. And I am grateful, to my darling husband and precious children and the members of my church, for their unwavering support during this period of personal crisis. And I am also proud—proud to announce the establishment of the
Young Kleptomania
Foundation
, a charity that will spread the word about this misunderstood disease. We are taught that it is never too late for redemption…”

As I lowered the volume, Delwood Crawley came through the door and took the stool to my right.

“I prefer the tables,” he said.

“She was just on,” I said. “You missed her.”

“I saw the newsroom feed. And my sources tell me that the ball’s executive board has chosen Gertrude for their new president.”

“Unbelievable.”

“‘It’s never too late for redemption’,” Crawley smiled. “They ate it up.
Kleptomania.
Can you imagine? A most exotic eccentricity. They loved it.”

“I’ve had enough.” I swallowed the rest of my drink and stood to go.

“Your sensibilities are hopelessly middle-class, Mr. Dudgeon. You can’t hurt these people. They don’t play by the same rules as the rest of us.”

“See you later, Crawley.” I headed for the door.

“Scorn me if it makes you feel better,” Delwood Crawley said to my back, “but at least I know who I am.”

“One Serving of Bad Luck” is a story I had to write. The first half of the story is based on a real case I had when I was a P.I. The dramatic climax is purely fictional, but the basic truths told here are reflective of the world I moved in as a P.I., and I think the story gives a good indication of why people who work in this business so often become cynical. If you want to hear how the real case ended, buy me a drink sometime and ask.

In the chronology of Ray Dudgeon’s life, this is the third of the three stories that take place in the time between the novels
Big City Bad Blood
and
Trigger City
(not counting the Gravedigger story, in which Ray does not appear).

“One Serving of Bad Luck” originally appeared in the
Killer Year
anthology, edited by Lee Child. The story means a lot to me, and I’m very proud that it won the prestigious CWA Dagger Award in the UK. Hope you enjoy it.

T
HE PHONE ON MY DESK
rang and I stared at it. Thinking,
Don’t be so surprised. It’s a phone, it’s supposed to ring.

Only my phone hadn’t been ringing a lot lately. Not since I’d taken that bodyguard job which turned into something bigger and some people ended up dead and others went to prison. They say that there’s no such thing as bad publicity but they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. The case generated a lot of press and I’d gotten the reputation of being stupid enough to go up against Chris Amodeo and the Chicago Outfit. And my clients melted into the ether.

Surviving a showdown against the Outfit had earned me a lot of undeserved street cred, but it didn’t pay the rent. I’d been staying afloat with modest gigs like process serving, background checks, and divorces. Divorce work is bad for the soul, but when the phone is quiet you take what comes your way.

I picked up the receiver and said, “Ray Dudgeon.”

“Say, Ray, how you been?”

“Good. Fine. You?”

“You know, I can’t complain. But I’d be even better if you’d do a job for me.”

I wasn’t going to say anything about Rik losing my number for half a year. How could I blame the guy? Anyway, he was the first of my A-list clients to return and I appreciated it.

Rik’s client was a librarian in Springfield. A woman in her mid-forties, single, no children. Her name was Sarah Shipman. At the end of a long vacation in Chicago she took her car to a Juno Auto Center for an oil change and tire rotation. An hour later she picked up the car and pointed it south on I-55. Forty miles out of the city her right front wheel fell off and the car swerved into a bridge abutment at 68 miles per hour. Something bad happened in Sarah Shipman’s spinal cord and she was paralyzed from the waist down.

Obviously Juno’s advertising slogan, “Done in an hour—and done right!” was only half true. The company offered $600,000 to make her go away.

“Hell, her bills are already near that,” Rik said. “On top of medical, she had to have her bungalow retrofitted for a paraplegic, there’s physical and occupational therapy to teach her how to live the rest of her life in that goddamned chair. And as she ages she’s going to have even more medical needs—”

“I get it, Rik. Six hundred thousand isn’t enough.”

“Six hundred thousand is a bad joke,” Rik said. “We’re asking for ten million. Which, I might add, is extremely reasonable.”

Rik was an ambulance chaser, but I dig through people’s garbage for a living, so he didn’t have to justify himself to me. “Extremely reasonable,” I said. “I wouldn’t give up the use of my legs for ten million. And it’s not a lot of money to avoid some nasty publicity.”

“You’d think. But my client’s history is somewhat less than pristine. You know, a few speeding tickets and a couple of smashups over the years. So they’re challenging the accident report. Truth is, her insurance benefits have maxed out and the kindhearted bastards at Juno figure she’ll fold under pressure and settle on the cheap.”

Rik needed to apply pressure the other way. He needed to interview George Garcia, the mechanic who’d worked on Sarah Shipman’s car. But Garcia had quit his job and his phone was disconnected. So my task was to find him and take a witness statement.

“We don’t have the luxury of time,” Rik concluded, “and you’re the best I ever met at coaxing a witness statement, Ray.” I figured the compliment was his way of apologizing for having ignored me so long. Or maybe he meant it. At the risk of sounding immodest, I am pretty good at coaxing a witness statement.

George Garcia’s last known address was a trailer park in Bensenville. Situated directly under the flight path of O’Hare, it was not a quiet place to live, but everybody’s got to live somewhere. Some of the trailers had little Astroturf front lawns, complete with pink plastic flamingos and folding chairs. But the late-July sun was oppressive and the chairs were empty and I didn’t see a soul as I wandered around the lot. In the relative quiet between the deafening roar of planes taking off and landing, I could hear air conditioners humming. Some residents were home. These were not people who could afford to leave the a/c running while they’re out.

I found Garcia’s double-wide and knocked on the door. Nobody answered. His air conditioner was silent. The lock was easy so I let myself in. The air inside was hot and close. Old air.

I flicked the light switch next to the door and searched the place. No towels or soap or shampoo in the bathroom, medicine cabinet bare. No clothes in the closet, drawers empty. Sweat trickled between my shoulder blades and I decided to step outside and then I heard someone pull back the hammer of a gun behind me.

“I’m in my rights to shoot you where you stand. Where You Stand!” The voice was angry, or scared, or maybe a little crazy.

I raised my hands beside my head. “Please don’t point that at me with the hammer cocked,” I said evenly. I kept my hands up and turned to face him.

He was about five-foot-eight, in his late fifties. His face was full of ragged old scars. One scar began at his hairline and ran down over his left eye and continued on the cheekbone, all the way down to the jaw. The skin below the eye was stretched down and a lot of pink socket showed. Another scar ran sideways from his flattened nose to his right ear, which was missing the lobe. He wore a t-shirt that had once been white, stained blue jean cutoffs and green flip-flops. Blue tattoo art covered his arms like sleeves. The gun was a stainless Colt .357 and it was pointed at my chest and his finger was on the trigger. His hand shook. With the hammer cocked there was a distinct possibility that he might shoot me by accident.

“Please point it to one side,” I said. “You can always point it back at me if you feel the need. I’d hate for you to make a terrible mistake.” Another river of sweat ran down my back.

“You don’t give me orders!” But he pointed the gun to one side. “I’m the property manager here. Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Ray Dudgeon. I’m a private detective. A lawyer hired me to find George Garcia.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You still got no right to be in here.” A stream of tears erupted from his mangled left eye and ran down his cheek and tumbled onto the linoleum. He didn’t seem to notice. Using only my index finger and thumb, I fished my badge from my breast pocket and held it open for him to see. Then I smirked like we were old buddies.

“Listen, why don’t we go to your trailer and have a drink and I’ll tell you all about it. If you don’t like my story, then you can call the cops. There’s a pint of bourbon in my car.”

He eyed the badge for a while and then un-cocked the hammer with his left thumb and lowered the gun. “Got ice in my trailer.”

“Name’s Phil,” he said as we entered his mobile home. A thermometer by the door read 105.

“Say, you get the ice and I’ll crank the old a/c here-”

“Don’t touch that!” he barked. “Your hooch buys some talk. It don’t buy air conditioning.”

I fished a twenty out of my pocket and dropped it on the coffee table. “Twenty bucks.”

“Deal,” he said, and opened the freezer door. I cranked the air conditioner to high.

“You’re no pushover, Phil. I respect that. Gotta be careful, look out for yourself.”

“Fuckin’ A,” said Phil. He ran his fingers through his greasy hair, wiped his hand on his back pocket and grabbed a fistful of ice cubes. He dropped the ice in two grubby mugs and deposited the mugs on the coffee table. I poured bourbon over the greasy ice and we sat and drank. Phil outpaced my drinking three-to-one. And he made it clear that I wasn’t going to hear what he had to say about George Garcia until I’d first heard the life story of Phil the property manager.

Phil had left home at fifteen and drifted from Florida to Chicago. He became a hardcore biker—a member of the Outlaws. He was a pretty bad dude once upon a time and he offered plenty of details to make sure I believed him. But his biker days ended twelve years ago when he lost a high speed argument with an eighteen-wheeler. Which explained the face.

Brain damage was also evident. As he spoke, his left hand occasionally flopped around on his lap like a sunfish on the deck of a boat. He didn’t seem to notice. He also didn’t notice when, every minute or so, he let out a loud vocal tic that sounded like, “HEEP!” I tried not to notice either.

As it turned out, Phil was aware of the problem with his tear duct, which spilled salt water down his face every few minutes. “Fuckin’ duct,” he said, wiping his cheek with the back of his fish-hand. “Fuckin’ bad luck duct.”

I refilled his mug and nodded at a wedding picture on the side table. “Your daughter?”

“Yeah, last time I seen her was eight years past. She got this nerd she’s gonna marry, so I get ready when I hear they was comin’ HEEP!” Phil opened the drawer of the side table and handed me a bullet. “See that? Read it.” I inspected the bullet and found an inscription on the side of the casing:
Gavin Brooks
. Phil pointed at the photo. “So my little girl brings the nerd to meet her old man. She goes shopping and, soon as she’s gone, I hand the kid that thing and tell him to look at it real close. I say, ‘You ever do anything to hurt my baby girl, I’m gonna plant this slug right between your eyes. That’s a promise.’ HEEP! And the kid just about craps his pants.” Phil laughed himself into a choking fit, got it under control, wiped his leaky eye and swore at his malfunctioning tear duct. I handed the bullet back to him.

“And I bet he never hit your daughter,” I said.

“Damn straight.”

“So you’re a man who understands that there’s a right way and a wrong way to treat people,” I said. Thinking,
Let’s get on with it.
“My client represents a woman who is paralyzed from the waist down. No fault of her own, a wheel fell off her car. And George Garcia rotated her tires just an hour before the accident.”

“That’s a real shame,” said Phil, now into his fourth bourbon. “But I don’t know…A couple of tough guys in fancy suits come calling and suddenly George moves away. And now you. George is a good man, and I don’t want to see him hurt anymore.”

Tough guys in fancy suits.

“I’m not trying to hurt George,” I insisted. “Juno Auto Centers has plenty of liability insurance and nobody’s suing George personally.”

“Not yet, anyway.” Phil, the skeptic.

“That’s exactly right. Not yet. And not ever, if Juno pays the claim. But so far, Juno won’t pay. If George gives me a witness statement, the company will have to settle and we can put an end to this whole mess. And I’m sure he’ll start sleeping better.”

Phil drank some. “You talk a good game, mister.”

“I’m not shitting you, Phil. This thing is moving forward, like it or not. If George won’t give a statement, the court will issue a subpoena and he’ll be compelled by law to testify. He runs away from it, he goes to jail. He perjures himself on the stand, he goes to jail. You say he’s a good man and I believe you. He may lose his mechanic’s license and he may have to find a new career. But the woman lost her legs. Giving me a statement will let him put this in the past and get on with the rest of his life.”

I thought I’d closed the sale, so I just kept my mouth shut and pretended to sip bourbon and waited.

“So what’s the cripple want, a hundred million or something?”

“Ten million,” I said.

“Still a lot a bread.”

“I wouldn’t cut off my legs for ten million.” I refilled his mug and watched his fish-hand flop around on his lap. And waited some more.

“Neither would I,” he said finally. Salt water surged from his left eye and fell down his face. “Fuckin’ duct.”

Phil told me what he knew, which didn’t include George Garcia’s current address. I spent the next day in various government offices. I’d learned from Phil that George’s wife split a few months before George quit his job. Apparently she intended the split to be permanent. I got a copy of the divorce papers she’d filed a week before the accident. Then a photocopy of George Garcia’s face from his driver’s license photo.

A variety of other searches came up empty. George hadn’t sued anyone or been sued, hadn’t bought or sold property, hadn’t applied for a firearms permit, and no warrants had been issued for his arrest.

I stopped at my office and stuffed an envelope with $200, the photocopy of George Garcia’s picture and the address of Sparky’s Bar in Bensenville. Phil had told me that Sparky’s was Garcia’s favorite local watering hole before he took off. I called Kate Barrett, a uniformed cop I knew. Kate was happy to earn some quick cash and she was on days, so her shift ended at six.

I left the envelope for Kate at the First District Station. The cop at the desk felt the need to inform me that private detectives are pathetic, bottom-feeding wannabes who make a living on other people’s misery.

I thanked him for sharing.

Seven o’clock found me at Sparky’s, with two pints of beer in the belly and more on the way. I’d lost thirty bucks at the pool table and gained two new buddies. Losing money at pool is an efficient way to gain new buddies who see you as a nice-enough guy and a bit of a mark. Definitely not a threat.