Tag Man Read online

  Then he gathered himself together, sat up without finding anything broken, and staggered to his feet.

  He headed off, limping slightly, resigned that while he’d fended off Hauser here and now, he was going to have to make virtual ghosts of himself and Sally.

  Starting immediately.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Time rewards those who wait,” Ron announced from the open doorway.

  “I hate shit like that,” Willy answered him, not looking up from the gun magazine he was reading.

  “Nevertheless,” Ron persisted, stepping into the VBI office and raising a hand in greeting to Lester Spinney, who was on the phone. “Parking Enforcement just let us know that they booted a car with Mass plates in the Elliot Street garage. Looks like it might be our dead guy’s.”

  Willy opened his mouth to protest before Ron cut him off, laughing. “I know, I know. Your dead guy’s. Wouldn’t want to step on your FBI wingtips.”

  “Fuck you.” Willy tossed the magazine onto his desk and got up.

  “You ever figure out why he had Bariloche’s name in his pocket?” Ron asked.

  Lester had hung up by then and answered, since Willy clearly wasn’t going to. “Nope. The owner only gave us about five names of who might’ve been there that night—regulars or people he just happened to remember—I think he was mostly playing dumb, being protective of his high rollers.”

  Willy was already halfway down the hallway.

  * * *

  The municipal parking garage had been baptized the Transportation Center, in early hopes that commercial bus lines would use it as a depot, which—after the merest glance at downtown traffic patterns—they never had. It was a huge, hulking, oddly designed, multilevel structure whose otherwise acceptable redbrick veneer had been clumsily accented with small clusters of white brick, making the whole building look like it had succumbed to a case of acne.

  But the building fulfilled its purpose, and had, by and large, addressed the parking concerns of the time.

  They found the car facing the Elliot Street exit, a bright orange clamp affixed to its front wheel. Its lack of personality, even from a distance, said “rental.”

  The three men split up as they approached it, studying it from all angles, finally peering through the windows without touching anything, to see what might stand out.

  “Anything on your side?” Ron asked.

  Willy ignored him, but Lester responded, “Nope. You?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You run this by anybody?” Willy asked at last.

  “The rental firm,” Ron told him, speaking over the roof. “The ID used in Boston was for Nate Sullivan. We plugged that into the system and of course got nothing. Did you want to call in the crime lab to process it?”

  Willy was using his pocket flashlight to better see the interior. “Is Tyler around?” he asked.

  J. P. Tyler was the police department’s veteran forensic expert—small, self-effacing, and the man to see about prints, tool-mark impressions, serology collection, and the rest. The advent of DNA and a few other high-end scientific developments had eclipsed some of his talents, calling for more expertise or money than he or the PD could afford, but for most of the day-in, day-out basics, he remained a hard man to rival, and a credit to his chief, Tony Brandt. Most other departments had thrown in the towel by now, choosing to rely instead on an evermore hard-pressed state forensic mobile unit to do their evidence collection for them.

  “Yeah,” Ron answered, a little surprised. “You want him to do it?”

  Willy straightened to stare at him. “No. I just wanted to make sure you were watering him regularly. Yeah, I want him to do it.”

  “For a homicide?” Ron persisted.

  Once more, Willy didn’t react as expected, choosing to explain instead, “I doubt we’ll find much anyhow. The guy was stripped of ID, used a bogus name. What d’you wanna bet he didn’t leave his diary under the seat?”

  Ron was reaching for his cell phone.

  * * *

  Willy had called it correctly, of course. An hour later, J. P. Tyler, clad in a white Tyvek jumpsuit, backed out of the open car and unzipped the front of his costume to cool off.

  “Anything?” Lester asked him. Willy had already wandered off somewhere.

  “Just the same prints I lifted off your dead man,” Tyler said. “But that’s about it. For what it’s worth, I collected soil samples from the pedals and carpeting and lifted a couple of threads off the driver’s seat, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It’s not a new car, so I’d guess a few dozen people have used it before the mysterious Mr. Sullivan. What I found could’ve just as easily come from them. The real world ain’t CSI.” He shook his head as he bent down to repack his tools and supplies, adding softly, “I hate that show.”

  Ron and Lester walked together across the parking lot toward the waist-high balcony overlooking Flat Street and the earlier homicide scene far below, by now a memory only. As usual, kids were clustered around the pedestrian bridge that spanned the water, trading stories and working their cell phones. It was blue-skied and sunny—the kind of beautiful day that helped give Vermont its reputation.

  Both men leaned forward and rested their forearms on the rough concrete edge, enjoying the view. They could see Whetstone Brook sparkling in reflection, the co-op parking lot beyond, and the opposing hillside of the far bank, where South Main Street rose toward the cemetery on top of the hill.

  Both Ron and Lester were family men, the first a local boy, the second from Springfield, up the interstate. Klesczewski had been with the Bratt PD, as locals called it, for his entire career, where Spinney had put in several years with the state police before transferring to VBI. But despite their never having worked for the same outfit, they shared a similarity common to many rural New England cops—a quiet, nonmacho, practical-minded outlook, instilled as much by the practices of their departments as by the values of their region. Unlike the temperamental and iconoclastic Willy Kunkle, they were just hardworking cops, all but invisibly helping society stay on the tracks.

  “You been kept up-to-date on this case?” Spinney began.

  Ron let out a short, soft laugh. “Barely. Willy throws me a bone now and then.”

  Lester smiled knowingly. “I figured. Well, we got a name for our dead guy. Leo Metelica—a fingerprint hit from the U.S. Navy. And Boston PD just called to say they’d showed the photo we faxed them to the rental-car company.”

  “Nate Sullivan?” Ron guessed.

  “Right,” Lester said. “Which was weird, because it turns out Metelica used that alias before. Funny oversight for a guy running around with special bullets and a throwaway barrel. Anyhow, that was enough to make the connection and get Metelica’s rap sheet.”

  “Anything interesting there?” Ron asked.

  Lester laughed outright. “Like is he the Brattleboro town manager’s long-lost brother? No such luck. I mean, these records are only as good as what people put into them, you know? Plus, in Massachusetts, there’re all sorts of files that haven’t made it onto any shared database. For all we know, Metelica had a dozen connections to Vermont or one of our hometown bad boys. But we don’t know.”

  “You think he does?” Ron asked. “He was here for some reason, and he got killed by somebody. Too bad the Bariloche reference didn’t work.”

  Lester nodded. “Yeah.”

  They were silently contemplative for a couple of seconds, before Ron asked again, “So what did Metelica’s paperwork tell you?”

  “Oh—right. The service record’s pretty clean. He worked as a machinist’s mate. Was slapped with a few infractions along the way, but got out with an honorable. Never saw any action, and never stood out for any weapons use.”

  “Not a SEAL, in other words.”

  “Hardly,” Lester agreed. “Looks like he was a regular swabbie—just doing his time and getting out.”

  “He ever do time as a civilian?”

  “Nothing hard. A little jail
here and there. He mistook an undercover cop for a hooker once. That must’ve been disappointing.”

  “Not as disappointing as coming to Brattleboro,” Ron commented.

  “True enough. We do have an address that looks current, in Lowell, Mass., that we’ll probably check out—or ask the locals to.”

  “Tough town.”

  “Tough line of business,” Lester said.

  “Speaking of that, what about the restaurant owner?” Ron asked.

  “Here? Of Bariloche?” Spinney asked.

  “Yeah. Restaurants are supposed to be cutthroat.”

  “Jake Nessbaum. You know him? We interviewed him and checked him out. Nothing popped up.”

  Ron turned to look at his colleague. “Nessbaum. I do know him. Heard of him, I should say. This is like his third business or something. I was told that he opens a place up, makes it all the rage, sells out at just the right time, and starts over again. He’s got to be pretty well off by now.”

  “The place is jammed every night,” Lester said, as if in confirmation. “Looks like he’s doing it again.”

  Ron considered that. “Maybe what you said about the gap between computers and paperwork applies here. High-risk business, unusually successful guy with immaculate timing, lots of cash floating around, and now a hit man found dead in the river with Bariloche in his pocket. Even if Nessbaum’s not in the computer for anything, you gotta wonder. Could be Bariloche, in other words Nessbaum, was exactly what was meant in that note—not that Metelica was supposed to meet anyone there.”

  Spinney remained staring out over the scene, nodding. “Can’t say it doesn’t have a ring to it,” he conceded. “And it’s not like we have a hot lead telling us something different. Still, Nessbaum was seen at the restaurant until closing. After that, his family vouches for him. If everyone’s to be believed, I don’t think he had time to slip out, get into a fight with a hit man, kill him, and resume his nightly schedule with nobody the wiser. It’s possible, but…” He suddenly looked at Ron and asked, “Have you ever met him? Nessbaum?”

  Ron was taken by surprise. “Me? No. I don’t think so, anyway.”

  Lester nodded and went back to sightseeing, speaking to the view. “Let’s just say that if you saw him, you’d have a hard time seeing him doing a kung fu on a trained killer.”

  “Got it,” Ron said, before suggesting, “What about his employees?”

  “Not a big group,” Lester reported. “Kind of what you’d expect. There were a few ex-employees we interviewed, too, and the patrons you know about. A couple had records, some were basically kids, one was a snitch of Willy’s named Kravitz, but none of them jump out as an obvious candidate.”

  Ron braced his chin on the palm of one hand. “Dan Kravitz? I remember him. Odd duck.”

  “Maybe,” Lester agreed. “But Willy didn’t see him for this.”

  Klesczewski made a face to no one in particular. “Well, I hate to be obvious, but somebody sure as hell did.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sally Kravitz was sitting in the back of the classroom, enjoying the fresh air coming in through the open window. The prep school was good for moments like this, more often than not—interesting teachers telling her stuff she enjoyed, in a setting more out of an English movie than reflective of reality.

  Certainly any reality she’d ever known.

  She glanced out the window across a picture-perfect lawn bigger than any park she knew of in Brattleboro, which boasted of more than fourteen thousand people.

  Unbelievable contrast.

  Not that she was complaining. She’d had a more interesting life than most so far, richer and more diversified than those of even her most privileged classmates, whose parents owned yachts and jets but who rarely stepped outside their bubbles. There’d been a couple of urban transplants last year from New York City, scholarship kids like her who’d had a hard time fitting into the school’s air-locked social capsule. The three of them had enjoyed comparing big-city and small-town mean streets. One of the New Yorkers had cleared out after a year. The other, like Sally, had seen what there was to offer, and was still there absorbing everything that she could, expanding an already impressive collection of life experiences.

  That was where Sally felt that she had an advantage over her peers. Her father had seen to it that she encountered more in her few years than many people received well into old age, all while making her feel safe and sheltered. His unique brand of adventurous, nomadic, protectionist parenting had presented her with a guided tour through poverty and privilege, happiness and woe, crime and serenity, loneliness and exuberance—all essentially without a scratch. She’d come to believe that her father, despite his personal demons, would remain the one anchor she could trust forever.

  Living with Dan, she’d once told a friend, was like doing drugs with Yoda—the ultimate unorthodox trip of self-discovery.

  Which is what made the sudden appearance of his face at the small window mounted in the classroom door so utterly appropriate.

  Without hesitation, Sally rose from her seat, walked the length of the room, smiled politely to the teacher, and murmured, “Sorry. I’ll be right back”—without being sure of any such thing—and left to meet her father.

  “I’m really sorry, sweetheart,” he began.

  “Hang on,” she whispered, taking him by the arm and escorting him ten feet down the hallway, out of earshot, before saying, “Please don’t say we’re leaving. I like it here.”

  He stared at her, his wise child, and managed to smile through the concerns that were fogging his mind.

  “I’m not, but something is going on. I need to talk with you.”

  She studied his scratched and bruised face, ignoring the physical damage to watch for the expressions she’d learned so carefully over a lifetime. He was serious, very worried, and completely clear-minded.

  Only then did she reach out and touch his cheek. “Holy cow, Dad. What happened?”

  He stared at her as if she’d spoken in Latin. “Nothing,” he said finally, slowly cueing in.

  She got the message. Stick to the point. “So, talk,” she urged.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “Has everything been normal over the past few days?”

  She answered him directly. “I’m fine, and nothing’s been weird.”

  “Have you noticed anyone watching you? Anyone unusual? This might’ve been from a distance, like at a ballgame or something. Maybe taking your picture? Someone trying to be just part of the landscape.”

  She shook her head. “Is this the man you mentioned in Bratt? You said he was creepy, maybe dangerous.”

  He was already nodding. “Yes, but he’s not alone.”

  A door opened nearby and another student stepped into the hallway, no doubt headed for the bathroom. He looked startled to see them there.

  “Hey,” Sally said in greeting.

  “Hey,” he returned.

  Sally led her father down a flight of stairs to the first floor, and from there onto the grassy expanse she’d been admiring earlier.

  She pointed to midfield, anticipating her father’s needs. “Out there. No one to eavesdrop and we can see everything.”

  He acquiesced, falling into step beside her.

  They were twenty yards out when she said, “Tell me what’s going on, Dad. What happened?”

  He hesitated, not knowing how or where to begin. Not for the first time, he found himself caught between trying to be a good father and keeping the balancing poles of his inner world even. Sally was the one fully rooted point in a universe gone spinning. But he realized with excruciating precision that she was still a child, even with all her levelheaded poise.

  “Does it have to do with the Tag Man?” she asked, sensing his dilemma.

  He stopped dead in his tracks and stared at her. “What?”

  She looked into his face, gently smiling. “Supergirl knew about Clark Kent, Dad.”

  His hand wandered to his forehead. He was at once to
uched by her knowledge and overwhelmed by yet another assault on his need for order.

  “How long…?”

  She patted his chest. “A while. I kind of hoped it was you from the start, without really thinking about it. It was just so cool, you know?” Her face became serious as she added, “But I did wonder about the danger. I thought you might get shot or something, like a burglar. Is this something like that?”

  He nodded slowly, recognizing that she’d given him a path he could follow. “Exactly like that. Somebody else figured it out, only he’s a really bad man.”

  Sally suddenly straightened, her eyes widening as she spoke. “Oh my God. Dad. I heard someone was killed in Bratt, near the co-op…”

  He merely nodded in acknowledgment.

  She covered her open mouth.

  “It was an accident,” he said, confusion welling up. “He had a gun. He said he was there because of you. I just pushed him and he fell.”

  “Because of me?”

  “I asked him why he was stalking me, and he said it involved you. That he’d been hired by people wanting to talk to me.”

  As he said all this out loud, he understood how nonsensical it sounded.

  He shut his eyes for a moment. “Hang on, hang on. I know this isn’t organized.”

  Again, Sally watched him, reading the signs. They knew each other well, these two halves of a draftsman’s compass, and she knew to give him time to think.

  He was clearly under a great deal of stress.

  “I saw him at the restaurant,” Dan started again. “He stuck out—you know how I notice things. He didn’t act like a man at dinner. He was alone; he was on assignment somehow; the food was a cover; he left when he was done and not when the food was done. And I felt him watching me.” Dan touched his chest.

  “But you said he was hired,” she prompted.

  “Right. That was the weird part. And even if it didn’t involve you, he knew that you existed. It’s not like I’m on Facebook.”

  Sally burst out laughing at the idea.