When I got to Billy's apartment, he was still in his back office, working the computers. I opened a beer and watched over his shoulder while he ran his fingers over the keyboard, popping up government websites and directories. He'd run McCane's dossier and there were some major gaps in it, and that often meant that the person you were trying to track had either spent time in the system, or was in law enforcement, or had somehow had his history expunged. Billy had then called a prosecutor friend in Atlanta who lowered his voice when Billy asked him if Frank McCane's name and the prison at Moultrie rang any bells. He asked Billy not to use him as a source, but told him the story.
"McCane was a d-dayshift guard at the prison and had b-been there for several years. After a change in the governor's seat, there was a c-crackdown on the Department of Correction's internal system, which had been rife with abuse," Billy said. "McCane had b-been the unofficial head of a shakedown club among the guards."
"So he was indicted?"
"Not exactly." Billy said. "When they backed him into a corner with proof, he made a d-deal with the governors office, t-turned over information on the warden and gave up his job. The only s-stipulation was lifelong p-probation. He could no longer w-work for the state, and if he was ever arrested on the outside, they'd re-file the whole l-load of charges from the p-prison on him."
"So he moved out of the state, gave up public police work and went with the insurance job," I said, putting the obvious into the air. "Your friend give any details on what McCane specialized in during this stellar career?
"Very little," Billy said. "He's a state p-prosecutor. It's a political year in Georgia. N-No one's going to b-be in the mood to hang their butt out."
I drained the beer and went for another. Billy declined to join me and I changed my own mind on my way to the refrigerator. The Moultrie prison was stuck in my head from a Philadelphia case, and I was trying to dig it out of its place in the past. I started a pot of coffee.
"Can you find a Philadelphia Inquirer archive on the box?" I called back to him while the coffee was brewing.
"Sure. What are we looking for?"
"Name of an inmate. A guy we tried to help out after we broke a car theft ring. The bust went bad and a port officer got killed. This guy was a locksmith at the time and he ended up on the rotten end of a murder charge."
"They would have done a news story at the time?"
"I hope so."
While Billy clicked at the computers, I sat at the kitchen counter telling him the story, unraveling a day at a Delaware River port warehouse in a time before I was a completely disillusioned police detective.
A handful of us had been assigned to an auto theft task force that was working with Customs on the theft and importation of cars and trucks from the northeast to Haiti and the Caribbean.
The feds had been working the scam up and down the coast. The theft ring was the typical game. At the low end, they hired car thieves to do the heists. The boosters were given special lists of makes and models, actual orders to fill. Most of the cars were high- end SUVs, especially Toyota 4Runners. At the time, the loose pack of military thugs running Haiti had a liking for the all-terrain vehicles. The Toyota emblem on the front of the hood looked distinctly like a bull with horns, and to them the bull image carried an aura of masculine power. The SUVs brought top dollar.
The car thieves were told the less damage the more they would get paid, and they'd boost the cars and park them in a commuter lot at Philly International Airport to be sure they didn't have anti-theft locators. If the cops traced the electronic beacon, all they'd get was the car abandoned at the airport.
Once the cars cooled, the shippers would then move them inside a warehouse at the port where a guy could cut a key. When they were ready, a tractor-trailer would back up to the warehouse loading dock and the cars would be driven inside. The crew would then pack the rest of the trailer, floor to ceiling, with household goods, boxes of clothes, bags of rice. If an inspector decided to pop the back door, all he could see in the first ten feet were legitimate goods for shipping.
"What do you think? Five years ago?" Billy said from the other room, still clicking.
"No, more like seven."
Most of the task force work had been with informants, kids picked up on auto theft charges who were looking to deal information for a break. We'd put surveillance on a warehouse and it was primed. I was one of four detectives, a U.S. Customs agent and a handful of port police used to cut off any escape routes. We were in position. It was hot and dusty as we leaned into a corrugated wall around the corner.
"Summertime," I said to Billy.
"I think I've got it," he said.
We waited in the heat until the tractor-trailer was loaded and started to pull away on its route to the holding area, where the container would be loaded onto an outbound freighter to Haiti. When the trailer cleared the doors we jumped, guns drawn.
"U.S. Customs, hands in the air!" the agent yelled as three of us came through the front and two more took down a door to the back.
The element of surprise. Four men were eating lunch around a wire-spool table, another was in the glass-walled office, sleeping with his feet on the desktop. One was busy near the back of the warehouse, his head down and a pair of safety glasses on his face while he worked over a machine. He was my guy-the key man.
It would have gone down like clockwork but for the idiot in the john. The last one to see us had to be the cowboy.
Everyone in the warehouse had already let the air out of their lungs when the asshole came sprinting out of the cheap wooden door of the bathroom and started firing a second-rate.38, thinking he might get to the loading dock door. He made it twenty feet before he took four rounds and dropped. But one of his random shots also hit a port policeman.
"Harlan P. Moticker," Billy said from his room. "The locksmith."
"That's him," I said, walking into the study.
Harlan was the outsider in the group, hired to cut the keys for the stolen vehicles so they could go abroad in no-fuss driving condition. He was a southern boy down on his luck, trying to make a go of it up north and making extra cash on the wrong side.
All seven men were arrested and when the port cop died of his wound, the ante got raised. Because a person had died during the commission of a felony, they were all charged with murder.
"Can you check the Department of Corrections in Georgia to see if he's still in?"
Billy had already pushed his chair to the other screen.
Harlan P. was the only one of the group who wasn't connected to the offshore ring. As a result, he was the only one who had nothing to deal. He had no useful information for Customs, so no matter how much he wanted to cooperate he still ate the whole twenty-five to life. He'd been paid two hundred dollars for the job.
"Harlan P. Moticker, prisoner ID #3568649. The Haverford State Correctional Facility in Moultrie," Billy read.
I suppose I'd felt for the guy. When we were writing up the case the older guys in the squad kept forwarding the calls from his young wife to me. He pleaded guilty to avoid a trial and when his attorney asked to have him swapped to a Georgia prison near his family for a Philadelphia mob flunky who wanted to come home, I was the one who gave the department's blessing. Nobody else cared.
Now I suppose I felt lucky.
By noon the next day I was driving a rental down a secondary highway in south Georgia. Billy had found me an early flight out of West Palm Beach and he'd also made a call to his prosecutor friend in Atlanta. The lawyer balked at first, but because he owed Billy, he made the request for a visit.
The warden at Haverford said he could not figure why a private investigator from Florida would want to talk with Moticker. The inmate was one of the better behaved and more trustworthy of his 612 convicts. But in the spirit of cooperation, he didn't object.
Well out of the city, the road I was on split an open forest of scrub pines and occasional patches of hardwood, and there were leaves on the forest floor. Here it was true fall. Colors not natural to South Florida dripped and fluttered in orange and red in the trees. Both the temperature and the humidity were under sixty. I rolled the windows down and inhaled the odor of sun-dried clay and slow- rotting leaves. It was almost idyllic-until I saw the flat sign for the prison and turned off onto a slowly curving blacktop road.
There were no buildings visible from the highway. It was just a well-maintained country road until I hit the guard gate to the parking area. I gave the man my name and while he checked I watched the sun glitter off a high, razor-wired fence in the distance. I had been inside prisons before and never liked the feeling.
The guard handed me a pass and pointed the way to administration. I parked, and as I followed the sidewalk I could see down the fence line to a guard tower where the silhouette of a marksman showed in the open window. Inside the offices I stood in a waiting area with uncomfortable cushioned chairs and a portrait of the new governor.
The warden's name was Emanuel T. Bowe and he greeted me with a firm handshake across a state-issue desk. He was a tall black man with gray hair cut in a flat top and a beard that was carefully trimmed to follow the edges of his jaw line. He looked more like a college professor than a southern prison warden.
"So, Mr. Freeman. You were a detective in Philadelphia when our Mr. Moticker was convicted, do I have that right?"
"Yes sir."
"And you are now working as a private detective on a case in South Florida?"
"Yes, sir. It's in the very preliminary stages, sir," I said, the lying coming easily since it was marginal.
"Well, I will be up-front with you, Mr. Freeman. I asked Mr. Moticker if he had any objections to speaking with you and although he said he remembered you and was willing, he seemed, as I am, perplexed as to what information he might have to help you."
I only nodded.
"Frankly, I have only been the warden here for eighteen months, but Mr. Moticker has been here quite some time and has earned a certain respect from both sides out there on the pound. I would not like to see anything change that."
"And neither would I, sir. I'm not sure he can help, but if he's willing, I'd like to give it a try," I said, giving nothing up, and hoping it was enough.
The warden stood up.
"Let's go, then."
An open walkway led out to the first gate, chain-link, with a guard dressed in brown with a radio clipped to his belt. No gun. No nightstick.
He greeted the warden, looked at me, and the first snap of dry metal let us through to a cinder-block control room. Inside a fishbowl of two-inch shatterproof glass another guard said hello to Bowe, and I was quickly run over with a security wand and had to hand over my keys. When we were ready, the guard hit the electronic lock on the second metal door and we were back outside.
"Warden on the pound," a loudspeaker announced.
The compound was a low-slung collection of dull yellow buildings with wide grassy areas between. Spokes of sidewalks led from one to the other. No bushes, trees or other vegetation. Nowhere to hide. There were a few men moving about, obviously inmates because they were dressed in faded blue instead of the guard's brown. They were not being escorted. One might think of a poor man's college campus until you lifted your eyes to the towers and the sight of long-barreled rifles reminded you.
"We're headed to the machine shop," Bowe said, moving swiftly, but not hurrying. "Mr. Moticker has been the senior mechanic for some time."
The warden's long legs made it difficult to keep up without looking like you were trying.
"One never runs across the pound," he said over his shoulder. "The sharpshooters are trained to sight in on anyone running and the guards are taught to run toward the towers if they are in danger so the shooters can take out any assailants."
I knew the philosophy, but the feeling of gunsights on my neck still made the muscles in my back tingle.
"Besides, it makes the inmates uneasy to have to wonder where you are running to and for what reason," he said with a smile that did not indicate anything funny. "Information is a valued thing inside."
It sounded like a warning, and I took it as such.
The machine shop was made up of three open bays and part of a second floor with glass-fronted classrooms. There was a yellow fire engine parked in the far bay and a handful of men were clustered around a rear bumper intently watching an inmate with a welding torch.
The guard who came to meet us was in a brown uniform but his sleeves were rolled up and there were black grease marks on his forearms and hands. He and Bowe spoke for a minute, too low for me to hear. The guard nodded and walked back toward the group.
"Thirty minutes is all I can give you, Mr. Freeman," Bowe said. "There's an inmate count at two o'clock and we keep a very tight schedule. I will collect you when you're through."
I thanked him and watched the guard tap the man with the torch on the shoulder. The inmate raised his face shield and turned to look our way. He handed his tools to another inmate, gave some instruction, and walked across the shop. He was a thin, jangly man. The points of his joints stuck out at his shoulders, elbows and knees. When he got close I could see the gray in his hair and a jagged white scar that crawled through one eyebrow and then over the bridge of his nose. I knew that he was thirty-seven years old. He looked fifty.
"Warden, sir," Moticker said, addressing the superintendent first and then turning to me. "Mr. Freeman, sir." We shook hands and his grip seemed purposely weak.
"Can we do this outside, sir?" Moticker said to the guard, who nodded his head. Only then did the inmate lead me out to a concrete slab just outside the raised, garage-style door. We sat on our heels in the sun but also in full view of the bay.
"How you doin', Harlan," I started.
"I'm okay, sir," he said, taking a single cigarette from his shirt pocket and lighting it with an old-style book of cardboard matches. He took a drag and cut his eyes into the bay.
"How's the family?"
"I see my son on occasion. He's got hisself close to graduatin'," he answered, letting the smoke out slowly. "My wife, well, we got divorced a few years back."
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I never did get to thank you for helpin' with the transfer, though," he said, looking me in the eye for the first time.
We were both silent, having run out of manners.
"I'll just get to it," I finally said. "I'm not a cop anymore, but I'm working a case out of Florida that has to do with an insurance investigator named Frank McCane."
I watched his eyes jump to mine without a movement of his head.
"I know he was a bull here for some time and your years overlapped some before he was, uh, dismissed. I was hoping you might tell me something about him."
"Ol' Milo," he said, a grin coming to his face. "An insurance man, you say? Ain't that a hoot."
Moticker took another slow drag and smiled with a set of bad teeth.
"You're familiar?"
"Oh, anybody who was around then is familiar with Milo," he said, lowering his already soft voice. "Mean sombitch and king of the pound, too. But that's a sore subject round here now, Mr. Freeman."
"I can appreciate that. But the record isn't too clear on his dismissal," I said. "I need a sense of the man without going to someone who might have been a friend or might get back to him."
This time Moticker's pale eyes stayed on mine, the eyes of a man with nothing to lose, but also one who rarely came across the opportunity to gain anything close to payback.
"McCane ran every damn thing in here at one time," he started. "He had a piece of the inside drug trade. He decided whose homemade buck got confiscated an' whose got sold. He controlled the inventory coming in and out of concession.
"Anybody had money, he squeezed 'em. Anybody had anything, he dealt it. Didn't matter what color or what kind. Pure mean and pure greedy, Mr. Freeman, that's the sense of that man."
Moticker finished the cigarette, carefully snubbed it out and put the butt in his pocket. He cut his eyes to the shop again.
"Milo was running the drug trade. Had other guards bringing the stuff in and then flushing the packages down the toilets before they came on the pound," he started, barely whispering.
"He knew the pump station. Would plug the thing by flushing an inmate shirt at the same time. Then he'd order one of the cons down into the station to clear it. Guy would go through the shit while the shooters and assistant warden just watched him get down in there and he would stuff the drug packages in his pockets and then come up with the shirt.
"Hell, nobody was gonna frisk that boy all covered with stink, and he'd get sent to the showers and later pass the dope off to Milo for a cut."
He refocused his eyes on the group of welders inside and seemed to reshelve the memory. "He was the kind of man who knew how to use people and still make them feel inferior," he finally said.
"The kind of man who might be involved with murder for money?" I asked.
The inmate seemed to roll his answer around in his mouth for a while.
"Not by hisself," he said. "Milo wouldn't be that dumb."
Moticker stood up and for the first time I could see a con's deviousness in his face.
"They'd be hell to pay if that ol' boy came back here as an inmate," he said, a crooked grin playing at his lips. "Hell to pay."
I could tell the possibility left him with a vision that could keep him warmly amused for a lot of boring nights on his bunk.
"One thing," I said. "Why Milo?"
He looked quizzically at me.
"The nickname?"
"Oh, hell, that was his own," he said. "Character out that old war movie Catch-22. Milo Minderbinder was the guy that was doin' all the underhanded dealin' getting' hisself rich off the war. McCane loved that."
We went back inside the shop and I shook his hand.
"Hope things work out," he said, and I wished him the same.