The Disposable Man Read online

  J.P. was already working the interior, instructing various Patrol personnel on how to set up the video camera and lights. Kunkle had been the detective on call, but J.P. hadn’t wasted time getting everything into motion.

  “Whatcha got?” I asked him.

  He looked up from his assortment of equipment, a man in the midst of doing what he loved best. “Seems like a smash-and-grab so far.” He waved his arm toward the broken window. “Whoever it was used a brick, both on the plate glass and the counter just inside, picked up what he could reach, and disappeared. I’ve already got canvass teams out looking for witnesses. The back door’s secure, and none of the rest of the store was disturbed. So far, it’s looking pretty straightforward.”

  “We know what’s missing yet?”

  “No. I couldn’t find the manager, but the alarm’s also hooked up to the owner’s house in Springfield, Vermont, and he’s already called us from the road on a cell phone. He should be here pretty soon. Maybe he knows the inventory. I think it was quite a haul, though. The store’s been running ads—had its best stuff out.”

  I nodded to Willy. “See what you can find in the office.”

  Willy disappeared toward the back as I wandered up to the front window, being careful where I stepped and keeping my hands by my sides. A display case with a tinted glass top had been placed parallel to the window, so that it was both visible from the sidewalk and accessible from inside. The breakage hadn’t been quite as random as Tyler had implied. The thief had actually punched three connected holes in a row in order to get at the entire case and had left his weapon of entry—an old red brick—almost as a calling card. It lay where jewelry and watches had once delicately gleamed, resting on a velour pad, surrounded by shards of sparkling glass like some negative-chic statement.

  He hadn’t made a clean sweep—various items remained scattered in odd corners. One necklace was even draped over a jagged tooth along the bottom of the window, just shy of the outdoors.

  “Pierre,” I called out to the officer guarding the front. He turned toward me, staying outside the debris on the sidewalk. “Yeah, Joe.”

  I pointed at the necklace. “If this almost made it out, other pieces might have. They could be mixed in with the glass out there. Don’t disturb anything yet, but just keep it in mind.”

  He looked at his feet as if expecting something to move. “Will do.”

  A tense, disheveled man suddenly appeared out of the darkness, waving at me from the other side of the police tape. “I’m Henri Alonzo. I’m the owner.”

  I knew that. I also knew him to be an officious snob. I nodded to Pierre to let him through and met him at the front door, offering my hand. “Joe Gunther, Mr. Alonzo. Good to see you again. I am sorry about this, though.”

  He made to brush by me to approach the smashed case. I grabbed his arm to stop him. “Hang on. We haven’t dusted all that yet. Keep your hands in your pockets and watch where you step. And move slowly.”

  I released him and accompanied him to the window, where J.P. was already taking pictures from the far end.

  “Do you know what was on display?” I asked Alonzo.

  He was shaking his head. “Where’s Richard? He would know better than I.”

  “He the manager?”

  “Yes. Richard Manners.”

  “We haven’t been able to locate him yet,” J.P. answered.

  Alonzo straightened and stared at me, ignoring Tyler entirely—superior to superior. “God damn the man,” he snarled. “He’s worse than a bitch in heat. Call his girlfriend’s home—Lisa somebody… What the hell is it? Goodfriend—that’s it. Christ, how do you forget a name like that?”

  Willy Kunkle had reappeared from the back and was standing behind us. He nodded as I turned toward him. “I’ll call.”

  “Was it a valuable display?” I asked Alonzo.

  “Hell, yes, it was valuable. Over a hundred thousand all told—oh, my God.” He suddenly reached for the necklace hanging from the shard.

  I caught his wrist in midair. “Remember.”

  His face flushed. “Jesus Christ. You think that’ll have fingerprints on it? It’s just waiting for someone to walk off with it.”

  I pointed to Pierre, standing six feet away, all by himself. “I don’t think so, Mr. Alonzo. If you don’t know what was in here specifically, maybe you can help us out in the office—find an inventory sheet or something. None of this will be going anywhere for a while. Have you called your insurance company? They’ll want to send somebody down here, too.”

  Alonzo looked at me in disgust. “Of course I have… Jesus.” And he stormed off toward the back of the store.

  · · ·

  Two hours later, we were still hard at it, all of J.P.’s efforts completed, trying to determine the extent of Alonzo’s loss. Richard Manners, it seemed, was as disorganized a manager as he was attentive to Miss Goodfriend, and helping him sort through his paperwork was proving quite a job.

  In the midst of it all, Willy appeared at the cramped office’s door and tapped me on the shoulder. “Chief wants to see us.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “He outside? At this time of night?”

  “At the office. He sounded pissed off.”

  It was an unusual request, and a poorly timed one. Nevertheless, I rose from my chair and pointed to Willy. “All right. You take over here, and I’ll see what’s up.”

  Kunkle shook his head. “He said I had to come, too—to stick with you.”

  I scowled at that, making no sense of any of it. Unless one of our selectmen had called Tony in a fit, demanding immediate satisfaction, I couldn’t imagine why I was being called on the carpet. I left the office and waved to J.P., who was packing up the last of his toys. “Take my place in there.”

  Willy and I left the store and crossed the road to his car. The predawn air was refreshing after the stuffy back office, and I breathed deeply to cleanse my lungs. “Why’d he want you along?” I asked Willy. “You gotten your ass in a crack again?”

  “Not that any of you would know,” he said tersely. “He made it sound like you were the one on the shit list.”

  Located at the far end of Main Street, the Municipal Building was all of two minutes away. Like most of its neighbors, it dated back over a hundred years, but it was placed on a hill and equipped with a Transylvania-style spiky roofline that, in the faint blush of dawn, made it look like a medieval prison.

  Tony Brandt, looking grim, met us just inside the locked door leading into the Officers’ Room. “Come with me, Joe,” he said as soon as we’d entered.

  Shrugging to Willy, who for once made no sarcastic comment, I followed Brandt back to the adjacent room and into his office in the far corner. There, also standing and looking unhappy, was Gail’s boss—Jack Derby—Windham County’s State’s Attorney.

  “What’s going on?” I asked them, by now fully aware this was no minor political flare-up.

  “Someone called Jack at home with an anonymous tip, Joe—”

  “Not that I believed him,” Derby interrupted nervously. “I just thought we should cover our butts.”

  Annoyed, Tony resumed, “A bystander at that jewelry store scene said he saw you put something in the outer breast pocket of your jacket.”

  My face flushed. “Bullshit.”

  “That’s what I said,” Tony agreed.

  I reached into my pocket, felt something hard, and pulled out a shiny, diamond-studded brooch, obviously worth a small fortune.

  The only thing I was aware of for a moment was the rapid beating of my heart. “What the hell is this?” I asked softly. I could feel the sweat prickling my forehead.

  Tony looked as stunned as I was and cast a glance at the State’s Attorney, no doubt wishing that Derby hadn’t fielded the call. In his absence, we might have had more room to sort this out. Now, all decisions were already out of our hands.

  I placed the jewel on his desk and heard it click against the wood surface. I felt as though my skull had picke
d up a low internal hum, as from a motor that’s been dropped into low gear. “I don’t know how it got there.”

  “And yet, there it is,” Derby said gently, sounding extremely uncomfortable. The newest arrival on our small but intense political scene, it was obvious he felt he’d had a smoking bomb dropped in his lap.

  I raised my hand to my temple. “Look, I surveyed the contents of the display case as soon as I got to the store. I was careful. I watched where I stepped. I didn’t touch a goddamn thing.”

  “Were your hands in your pockets?” Tony asked.

  “No,” I answered angrily, “but they weren’t rummaging through the merchandise, either. I kept them by my sides… At least, I think I did. I may have moved them around—who the hell knows? But I didn’t tamper with the evidence.”

  I picked up the brooch again and studied it. “It wasn’t there,” I finally said. “I would’ve remembered it. And it doesn’t belong to Gail. I sure as hell would’ve remembered that.”

  They both looked at me wordlessly, and I realized the trouble I was in. Without cause or reflection, I knew in my heart why the SA had been called by that snitch, instead of Tony or the department switchboard, and I knew that the brooch would figure in the inventory being compiled back at the store—that Richard Manners would swear on a stack of Bibles it had been shimmering front and center when he’d locked his doors at closing time.

  A flurry of possibilities suddenly filled my brain, all demanding priority. “Must be Manners,” I whispered.

  Tony stared at me. “What?”

  “Richard Manners, the store manager. He’s a real goof-off. His boss thinks so, anyhow. And his records are in chaos.” Another thought crowded that one out. “Or one of his clerks could’ve done a number on him. He never would’ve known.” Another pause. “Unless he’s cleverer than we think, and he’s leading us by the nose.”

  I lapsed into silence.

  The quiet in the room was eloquent. Still, Jack commented, not without kindness, “We’re still stuck with how it got into your pocket.”

  I dropped my chin and looked at the floor for a moment, a confused torrent filling me from the feet up, threatening my breathing. I felt I could see into everyone’s head, as if I were reading lines from a play. I knew they were waiting for me to say something incriminating, that all I’d said so far had already been tucked away for future misinterpretation. Somebody outside this room had started a process in motion, involving just the right cast of characters, in order to build a case against me—and it was based on the assumption that all cops in a bind are deemed guilty until proved otherwise.

  That’s how the system maintained its integrity.

  “I’m leaving,” I said suddenly. “Any problem with that?”

  “Where’re you going?” Tony asked, his face showing genuine concern. I moved to the door. “Home.”

  He reached out and touched my shoulder. “This’ll go away, Joe. We just need to figure it out.”

  “We could try to do that here and now,” Derby added, almost plaintively.

  I pulled the door open and saw a small, silent cluster of people in the far room, looking at us. Anger half closed my throat, images of Snowden, Rarig, the mugger, and of Henri Alonzo’s peeved expression crowded my mind. “You know goddamn well it’s already beyond that. I’m gone.”

  · · ·

  I walked home, alone in the dawn’s tepid light, my heart and mind in a turmoil, hoping the fresh air might help me to think, and yet paying it no attention. That I’d been carefully positioned into this corner went without saying, but the why and by whom of the equation had too many options, and therefore none at all. And the how had me baffled, too. The more I stalked into the coming day, hearing only the awakening birds over the sounds of my own footsteps, the more confused and enraged I became. Reaching the spot in the road of my other recent claim to fame—now marked by a few shards of plastic and two ugly strips of burned rubber—didn’t help any.

  Gail met me in the driveway, wrapped in a thick robe, obviously forewarned by Tony Brandt. “You okay?” she asked as I drew near.

  “Not hardly,” I said bitterly. “I feel like a cat that’s been staked out on the highway.”

  “What happened exactly? Tony didn’t go into details.”

  “That smash-and-grab I went to. They say I stole one of the jewels when I was at the scene. They found it in my pocket. Christ, I reached in and handed it to them.”

  She’d left the kitchen door open, and we entered together. “How did it get there?” she asked.

  I looked at her peevishly. “How the hell do I know?”

  I saw the hurt in her eyes and reached out for her shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s crazy. There’re just too many possibilities.”

  She steered me over to the island in the middle of the kitchen. “Sit. You missed dinner last night. I’m going to make us waffles.” She held up her hand as I opened my mouth. “Don’t argue. We need to think this one out, and do something while we’re at it. In fact, don’t sit. Make us something hot to drink—tea, coffee, whatever floats your boat. And slice up that cantaloupe.”

  It was, of course, sound advice. I put myself to work.

  “Okay,” she resumed, reaching into cupboards and pulling out what she needed. “Let’s go back to when somebody could have planted that jewel. Maybe that’ll open up some doors.”

  I was by now mimicking her actions on the other side of the kitchen. “I tried that. It could’ve been anytime, and if they were good, or somebody I knew well, they could’ve even done it when I was wearing the damn coat. It was my breast pocket. Ever since handkerchiefs went out, it’s almost never used. Somebody could’ve slipped it in there a week ago, and I wouldn’t’ve known.”

  She paused to look over her shoulder. “A week ago? I thought you said it came from the jewelry store.”

  “It did… No, let me back up. We think it did. The inventory’s still being done, but the store manager’s so disorganized I doubt he’ll be able to swear when he last saw it. It could’ve been missing for days.”

  She pointed at the pocket. “It doesn’t have a flap. If you took the coat off and threw it over the back of a chair, the brooch might’ve fallen out. Whoever went to all this trouble would’ve thought of that.”

  The obvious truth of that startled me, and made me doubt my own ability to think this out. “You’re right.”

  “So it was probably done this morning. Who were you standing close enough to that he might have had a chance?”

  I shook my head. “That doesn’t work. Willy picked me up—” I suddenly froze. “Shit.”

  “What?”

  “We parked across the street. We had to push through a crowd to get in the door, and I ducked under the tape. Someone could’ve… No.”

  “Why not?” she asked. “That sounded plausible.”

  “How would they’ve known where I was going to cut through the crowd?”

  “Where did you? Directly opposite the door?”

  “Yeah.”

  She smiled hopefully. “That’s logical—exactly what the guy would’ve expected.”

  I thought about that for a moment. “Maybe. It seems a little wobbly. If we’d parked on the same side of the street, we would’ve entered the scene from a different angle.”

  “How big was the crowd?” I made a vague gesture. “Bigger than I would’ve expected. The alarm drew them out. A dozen maybe.”

  “That’s not many, Joe. He sees you coming, he moves to intercept.”

  I paused in the middle of putting the filter into the coffee machine. “I don’t remember anyone in motion. I don’t think anyone even saw us coming.” Again, I was struck by the idea’s fancifulness. “It’s such a long shot—putting so much faith on my having the right kind of jacket, presenting it at just the right angle at just the right time—not to mention the skill involved in pulling off something like that.”

  “Be worth checking out,” she said simply, pouring milk into a bowl. “A goo
d pickpocket could’ve done it, working in reverse. Maybe you should look at people with that kind of background.”

  More to mollify her than from any conviction, I said, “Pierre was positioned outside, facing them all. Maybe he saw something, or could remember who was there.”

  “All right,” Gail said, with assumed authority. “That’s a possible how. I’m guessing Kunkle could have done it, too, along with whoever else was there, but that’s pretty unlikely. Agreed?”

  “Yeah. Plus, neither the manager nor the owner ever got close enough to me.”

  “Okay. Let’s go to the why.”

  I measured out enough coffee for one cup. Gail never touched the stuff. I was going to boil water for tea for her. “That’s the one I was thrashing out all the way here. It could be anything, from this CIA thing I’m working on to some bastard I put away twenty years ago.”

  “If the latter’s true, maybe the timing’s important. You could match pickpockets with past cases and recent prison release dates and maybe come up lucky.”

  I turned away so she couldn’t see my obvious skepticism. “I suppose.” In fact, I couldn’t remember ever dealing with a pickpocket. It seemed like a profession straight out of Dickens.

  “Or,” she went on, vigorously beating the contents of the bowl, “it might be connected to a current case—someone hired by somebody you’re squeezing.”

  I opened my mouth to put the brakes on all this when I was struck by the reasonableness of what she’d just said. Once again I flashed back to the Korean War Memorial. “Like my mugger, you mean.”

  She poured a ladle of waffle mix onto the electric griddle and closed it, checking her watch. “Could be.”

  I walked over next to her and placed the kettle on one of the gas burners. “It still doesn’t tell us a goddamn thing.” I grabbed a cantaloupe and a knife but did nothing with either. “I mean, say the CIA tried to have me killed and now is trying to land me in jail, the question still remains, why? I haven’t done anything unique. Some kid found the body, the ME’s office sliced it up, the crime lab came up with that stupid ginkgo seed. I’ve just been a cog in this whole thing. Why do I deserve all the attention?”