The Fall-Down Artist (5 page)

“Gotta get off. Gotta go,” Radovic mumbled into the receiver. “Guy just came in.” He hung up the phone and scratched his stomach through his windbreaker. Dorsey could feel the fat man's eyes roam over his unfamiliar face.

“Kinda on the cold side in here, don't think?” Dorsey asked, avoiding introductions. “Somebody must've forgot to hit the thermostat.”

“Ain't no corporate fuckin' penthouse,” Radovic said, his gut straining his jacket and pressing at the table's metal edge. “Poor town, fella. No bucks for heat. Little guys, that's what we got here.”

“C'mon, no bucks, Movement Together?” Dorsey knew his best move would be to ease himself back out the door, but his more playful side was taking charge. Even as he spoke, an inner voice reminded him what an asshole he could be. “No money? I see the priest, your leader, on TV. At least I think he's still a priest. He's on TV, and not just on the news when you guys are getting back at the Japanese by busting up Toyotas with sledgehammers. He does his own commercials, and they cost. You have the shitty end of the stick. Put your office in for a bigger budget next year.”

Radovic rose slowly from his chair and crossed toward Dorsey. “Who the fuck are you, tellin' me about gettin' the fuckin' shaft? You got nothin' new to teach me about that. We been gettin' it from the money boys all along. This place ain't about no shaft. This is gettin' even, kickin' 'em right in the balls.”

“Hey, slow down.” With a hard-case radical on his hands, Dorsey saw he'd better back off some. In just two days, he thought, in the course of one investigation, you have pissed off two people and thereby pissed in your own hat. Corso's easy money is getting to you.

“Asked you who the fuck you was.”

Dorsey knew the laws on misrepresentations, although he did break them from time to time. But this was different. He had an angry man on his hands who knew him for a stranger in a town that had so few. Being only from the insurance company and not the evil agent of Corporate America could get him outside without a fight. Dorsey identified himself and the company he represented.

The tension lessened in Radovic's eyes but only a degree.
Dorsey figured it to be a downgrading from murder to maiming. “Get the fuck out,” Radovic said. “Got nothing to say, prick. Get a lawyer, he can talk to my lawyer.”

“The company has plenty of lawyers. I trip over a couple everytime I visit the office. We can call them if that's how it's got to be.”

“Said for you to get the fuck out.” Radovic stepped around Dorsey and opened the door.

“Carl,” Dorsey said, gambling, hoping to salvage something out of his blown surveillance. “I'm going to be straight with you. I've been behind you for a while and you move pretty good for a disabled guy. I'm winded just trying to keep up. Scooted right along, you did. No limps, aches, pains, nothing. You've got a little something going here, from what I can see of it. So c'mon, Carl, give me a little of your time.”

“Time.” Radovic gazed out at the street, tapping his toe. “I'll give you time, I'll give you a hard time. Gonna put in a call, get some of the boys over here. Same guys you saw on TV, with the Toyota that ain't worth a shit now. Remember what that car looked like when they got bored and gave up? No resale value, that's what we said about it. No resale value. I'm dialin'. What you gonna do?”

Hiking back to the Sheraton, Dorsey came to the grim conclusion that through his own temporary (he hoped) ineptitude, the investigation was a bust. He had a few facts that others might convincingly call opinions and nothing on which Ray Corso could act. Radovic had taken a long walk and used a telephone. Oh, Dorsey thought, how the workers' compensation board will be impressed by that! And that man is not being paid to be in that office, he's dedicated and ruthless, the kind that mans the ship even when the water is over his head. Still, maybe this mess can be saved.

Dorsey pulled the Buick out of the motel lot and for the first time on this trip he left the flat bottom of the crater that held Johnstown and climbed up Route 271, headed north. Passing the Flood Museum, Dorsey amused himself
by thinking of the whole town as an extension of that institution. With hard times, flood memorabilia had become the town's primary industry. Street signs marked a walking tour; bars and restaurants were decorated with flood scenes where photos of boxers and baseball players once hung. Water retention had replaced steelmaking and coal mining.

Dorsey found Mundys Corner just south of where 271 links up with U.S. 22, several miles past the point of level ground. Though it was only a small village, it took Dorsey thirty minutes to find the correct house, glad it was thirty minutes that could be billed to Ray Corso. The house, set back from the road with only a dirt drive cutting through some pines, was like many found in the highlands, constructed of stone, with wood stoves and high chimneys.

Dorsey introduced himself through a locked screen door while a suspicious Mrs. Maynard examined him closely. Short and wide, her eyes squinted against the outdoor light as she looked up.

“You from the unemployment? My Claudia, she got the mail-in cards, she don't have to go to the office each week—to register, I mean. They give her a lot of cards; they do it to hold down the lines. You been gettin' her cards? She said onna phone she was sending 'em in regular.”

Patiently, Dorsey explained again that he was not from the state unemployment office and that he wanted to speak to Claudia concerning an accident at the mill. “Private insurance matter,” he told her.

Mrs. Maynard explained that her daughter was on an extended vacation; she wouldn't be home for two more weeks. It took some doing, but Dorsey persuaded Mrs. Maynard that her daughter might have said something to either her or Mr. Maynard about the accident. He was shown to an easy chair in a cramped living room, and Mrs. Maynard went for her husband.

“She liked it there, Claudia did,” Mr. Maynard said from the sofa opposite Dorsey. Built similarly to his wife, he was dressed in matching green work clothes. “Told me
she always got along real well with everybody at the mill, even the fancy office types. Even when she got axed in the layoff she didn't have no hard feelings personally. Didn't tell anybody off. The big shots stay and she goes, but she don't make a fuss.”

“Sounds like she just sort of tolerated management types, the ones she worked for.” Dorsey hoped to learn as much as he could through small talk before getting down to a line of questioning. “Sounds like she wanted to get along.”

“Claudia grew up right. And she's loyal to her people.”

“Mr. Maynard,” Dorsey said, working on a casual expression, “this business I'm here on is pretty routine stuff. It's about an accident down at Carlisle Steel. Just a few questions to set the record straight.”

“Sure, we can talk, if that's all it is,” Mr. Maynard said. Dorsey caught the trace of reluctance in his voice.

“Claudia, she was in the personnel office, right?”

“Secretary, general clerk stuff.” Mr. Maynard ran his hand through his sparse gray hair. “Kept track of overtime and pay rates, looked after the time sheets. Typed a lot, mostly for the personnel director. She said he liked her, liked her work. But when the time came she got the ax with all the rest. How come, if her work is so good? Anyways, each layoff broke her heart. She had to get the time cards together for the guys who were goin'. Nasty job.”

“How about this last one?” Dorsey asked. “Must've been specially tough; she must've known she was being let go. Did she know very long ahead of time?”

“At least a week, as I remember. You're right, it was tough. But let's get back to what you came for. Some guy got hurt down at Carlisle? Maybe I know him. I'm retired from there, ya know.”

“The guy's name is Radovic, Carl's his first name. Lives in town down on Otterman. Sound familiar?”

“Carl? Yeah, I know the guy,” Mr. Maynard said. “Supposed to be in bad shape. Haven't seen him since I left the plant. Still, I hear things.”

“How about Claudia, she know him?”

“Could be, but it's unlikely. Old bachelor like him wouldn't run with the same crowd as Claudia. Could've met him at the plant. Maybe he came into the office, about a mistake in his pay or somethin'.”

“Just thought I'd ask.” Dorsey thought this conversation might look good once it was reduced to paper, but it was going nowhere. “I saw Carl today,” Dorsey said. “He's working for Movement Together, those union people.”

“Union people? Gimme a break.” Mr. Maynard used his hands in a gesture of dismissal. “That's some outfit they got there. Oh, there's
some
union guys, guys like Carl, but not many. Carl's a hothead, so his throwin' in with those people isn't surprising. Of course he was always just an errand boy, and I'll bet he still is. Not like my Claudia. She don't go in for marches or throwin' stink bombs in churches and department stores, but she knows the wheels, the big shots. Her bein' involved on that level I can live with, her workin' sometimes with the leaders. She even knows the priest, Father Jancek. Andy, that's what the young ones call him.”

“She should stay away from him!” Unseen, Mrs. Maynard shouted from the hallway. “Priests should leave young girls alone!”

Mr. Maynard grinned. “She makes a lot out of nothin'. The priest's okay, when it comes to that. Claudia's seen him lots and nothing's come of it.”

“Father Jancek: he's the guy on TV leading the marches?” Dorsey asked. “Saw him saying mass at the mill gates. Is he still a priest?”

“Can't say. One bishop says he ain't, the other says he is. Better ask the Pope. But you wanna talk about Carl.”

“Claudia, she wouldn't've known Carl even through the priest?”

“No way,” Mr. Maynard said. “Carl is strictly rank-and-file. Claudia knows the bosses.”

Maybe, maybe not, Dorsey thought. But now at least he had something to put in his report.

Three years
earlier, approximately four months after his mutually unmourned departure from the Allegheny County District Attorney's office, Dorsey had purchased an electronic telephone answering machine. The unit came off the back of a truck parked in the Strip district, and Dorsey suspected it originated in the back of another truck. Proud of his bargaining powers, he was sure the tape would soon be crammed with messages from prospective clients. Sadly, this was not the case, and the aggravation caused by the silent tape led Dorsey to disconnect the entire unit. But now, with the newfound affluence brought by Ray Corso, the machine was back on the job. It had taken Dorsey and Bernie two hours and three beers each to get the unit up and running.

Dorsey pulled his mail from the black metal mailbox anchored in the brick by his door and searched through the envelopes for checks from Fidelity Casualty. Disappointed, he unlocked the front door and went through the hallway into the office. He dropped into the swivel chair and slipped a cassette into the tape player. While the Ellington orchestra softly played “Prelude to a Kiss,” Dorsey played the answering machine tape, hoping for better results than he had gotten from the mail.

“I get through tonight at eleven,” a young female voice said. “It's been a bad one today, so I know I'll want out
fast. Please: at eleven, not twenty after. See ya.”

“I'll be there,” Dorsey muttered. “I'm always there. Most times.” The next voice was also female, older and much more self-assured.

“Carroll, your father asked me to call.” It was Irene Boyle, his father's personal secretary: Ironbox Boyle, the only woman Dorsey ever remembered working for his father. Hard and cold, as Dorsey remembered from his youth; that box has to be iron. Dorsey hit the stop button, hoping to kill the woman, but only silenced the voice temporarily. “. . . this evening. He would like you to come by this evening. Dinner's out. I'm sorry, but it's just not possible. He's got this affair, a gathering for a judge or a candidate for judge, I forget which. Be here around eight-thirty. He'd really like to see you.”

He had planned a quiet evening of typing reports and listening to Ellington, with a little comforting companionship later on, but this message was a well-worded summons. Dorsey had not said no to Mrs. Boyle in all his thirty-eight years, not since she had partially filled the void when his mother died when he was twelve. Strong on discipline but without maternal love, she gave directions and never made requests. Dorsey smiled at the smooth manner in which Mrs. Boyle had avoided the possibility of dinner. Dorsey had not eaten at his father's table since the day in 1970 he'd dropped out of Duquesne Law School, the day before he enlisted in the army.