Pete, we hardly knew ya…
I needed sleep, but I was too wound up to try. One good thing about a Motel 6, the top drawer of the nightstand always contains a Gideon Bible and the drawer below it always has a phone book. Old Dave is nothing if not clean and predictable. The phone book was new. I let my fingers do the walking, flipping back through the white pages to the T’s. There were about four inches of Talbotts in Columbus, some with one T, some with two Ts, and a couple of Peters. Sure enough, towards the bottom, I saw: “Talbott, Peter E., 625 Sedgwick Ave, Worthington, 895-2612”.
Well, I'll be damned, I thought. Whoever the guy was, he had been using my name long enough to be listed in the phone book. That meant this wasn't some spur-of-the-moment thing. They had stashed their Peter Talbott here, him and his wife, and bought him a house and a business to settle into. An accident? Both of them? Not that the world would really miss one CPA more or less, but unless the coffins they buried this afternoon in Oak Hill weren't empty, someone went to a lot of time and trouble to put the guy and his wife here, and a lot more to make him go away.
I picked up the phone and dialed. After three rings, I heard what I expected to hear, “This number is no longer in service in Area Code 614. If you need assistance, please dial…” I hung up and flipped to the yellow pages, to the A's, where the Accountants dwelled, all five pages of them. I saw a simple two-line listing for “Center Financial Advisors, Accounting and Financial Services, 1811 N. Sickles, 758-9119.” No color graphics or snappy, modern logo like the big accounting firms, not even a boxed ad or bold type, only the two lines of plain black-and-white print. That meant the guy was either very, very successful and didn't need any additional business — and I had never known a bean counter who fell in that category — or his accounting business was so far down in the crapper that a small ad was all he could afford.
The clock radio on the end table said it was almost 6:00 PM. I would have at least an hour or an hour and a half more daylight, so I decided to check out my alter ego for myself. After all, my busy social schedule was clear for the rest of the night, so why not?
With my Marathon gas station road map spread out on the car seat next to me, the house on Sedgwick and the office on Sickles proved easy to find. They were a couple of miles apart further in toward town. The house was in a quiet, middle-class neighborhood on the northwest side, about three miles from the motel. It was an older Dutch Colonial with white clapboard siding, dark green shutters and door, flower boxes below the front windows, and two big oaks in front. I could imagine Beaver Cleaver skipping down the front walk on his way to school as Ward mowed the grass in his white shirt, tie, and cardigan sweater, smoking his pipe. Unfortunately, Ward wasn't taking care of this one. The grass was thin and mostly overtaken with weeds, the wood siding on the house had faded, the flowers in the window boxes hung limp and ratty, and the hedges were in desperate need of trimming.
I circled the block past the Neighborhood Watch sign with the big eyeball and parked in front of 625. After all, I was Peter Talbott, wasn't I? If this was my house, I had nothing to hide. I strolled up the sidewalk to the front door, rang the bell, and waited. Nothing. The drapes were drawn across the front picture window. There were no lights on, but leaning out as far as I could, I peeked around the edge and caught a glimpse inside. The house was empty. No furniture. No carpets. Nothing but bare walls and bare wooden floors. Interesting. The two bodies were barely in the ground, yet someone had already cleaned the place out.
Following a line of concrete stepping-stones, I walked around to the side of the house, whistling softly and acting as casual as I could in case anyone was watching. The path brought me to a gate in a wooden fence that ran around the back yard. I opened it and stepped inside. Again, empty. Not even a lawn chair, a rake, or a garden hose. They had picked the place clean.
“Can I help you, young man?” I heard a sharp-edged, woman's voice call to me.
I turned and smiled, knowing it wasn't a question. It was an accusation. On the other side of the fence stood a tall, craggy, gray-haired woman leaning on a long-handled garden rake, watching me like a sentry with a pike. She wore a man's oversized denim work shirt and she drew a steady bead on me with a pair of small, hawk-like eyes.
“You know, you just might,” I answered her with a big smile. “I've been trying to reach the Talbotts for a couple of days now.” I motioned toward the house. “I rang the bell, but nobody answered. Guess they aren't home.”
“Nope. Won't be coming back, neither. They're dead, both of ‘em, in a car wreck, three days ago.”
“That's awful. A car wreck, huh?”
“When you get to be my age, you don't want to speak ill of the dead, ‘cause you might be next. But the way Pete drove, didn't come as no surprise.”
“You knew them pretty well?”
“'Bout as well as I know you. They moved in maybe six months ago and kept to themselves. Didn't talk much to me or anyone else around here, far as know.”
I had to laugh. “Warm and friendly?”
“New Jersey. Same difference. She had a mouth on her could curdle milk. And him? All I ever heard from that fat slob was a loud belch. No, sir, they never fit in, not in this neighborhood, and that's the way they wanted it.”
She pointed to the rear yard. “Look at the place. Used to be real pretty back when the Battersees lived here, but Pete let everything die. Probably so he'd never have to cut it. He was too damned lazy to do it himself and too cheap to hire it out.” She shook her head sadly. “I don't know. It was as if the two of them weren't expecting to be here very long and they couldn't be bothered. So “screw the lot ‘a you” was about all we ever got out of them, if you'll pardon my French.”
“But the house? It's already empty.”
“Yep. A big Allied moving van showed up this morning and took everything.”
“This morning? Before the funeral?
“Yep, lock, stock, and pasta barrel.”
“Pasta barrel? I didn't think they were Italian.”
“Well, you ask me, they were passin'. Talaberti? Talachetti? Talabuttafucco? Whatever. Maybe Pete changed the name for business, but he wasn't foolin' any of us.”
“No kids? No family?”
“None that I ever heard of. Nobody but lawyers.”
“Lawyers?” I laughed along with her. “There was a time I had a few of them as dependents myself.”
“Nice boys. Short hair. Dark suits. Like those two fellas in “Men in Black”, but both of them were white and nowhere near as good looking as Tommy Lee Jones.”
“Tommy Lee Jones?”
“That's just to show you I don't miss much, young man.”
“Oh, I can see that.”
“They sat out there in that gray sedan all morning. Imagine, two lawyers sitting out there in that car, billing by the hour, watching four rednecks load a moving van. I declare.”
“No idea where they were taking the stuff?”
“Nope, they didn't say and I didn't ask.”
“What about the lawyers?”
“From Hamilton, Keogh, and Hollister, that big firm downtown.” She shook her head. “Imagine what they cost? All that overhead. But they were nice and polite, just like you. They showed me their business cards and their papers, 'cause I said I'd call the cops if they didn't. Same reason you're going to show me yours, aren't you?”
Sharp. Very sharp, I thought. She held out her hand and waited for me to produce mine. “Hey, I'd love too,” I said. “My briefcase and all my stuff's out in the car. I can go get one if you'd like.”
She stared at me with a hint of amusement. “If you say so, but I saw those California plates on that Bronco of yours. I wrote the number down too, 'cause we've had enough of people snooping around here lately and we're beginnin' to know what belongs and what don't.”
“Is that what you think I'm doing? Snooping?”
She looked at me and cocked her head. “I don't know. You don't look like that other one, I'll give you that much.”
“The other one?”
“A cheap sports coat with sunglasses and all those gold chains. He drove a Lincoln, but there were others before him nosin' around, lookin', and none of them belonged in this neighborhood. Neither did those two Talbotts. And neither do you.”
“One look and you can tell, huh?”
“Mister, you asked enough questions for one day. Time for you to move along. I got a. 357 Magnum inside the house and that's an NRA Life Member decal on my front window. Now you git.”
“Whoa! I'm with First Ohio National up in Toledo. They just moved me back here from California and the Talbotts are four months behind in their car payments. My job's to track down deadbeats. That's why I'm here.”
“Which one? His old Buick Electra or the Chevy?”
“Actually both,” I said, taking chance out of the equation.
“Then you're half-way in luck. Pete was driving the Chevy when they said he got broadsided by a cement mixer out on the east side some place.”
“A cement mixer? That sounds messy.”
“Sure does. I hope it wasn't any of that quick setting stuff. As big as Pete was, that would've made it a whole lot worse,” she giggled. “My Lord, but that's an awful thing to think, ain't it? Guess it don't matter much though. Dead's dead.”
“You're right, it probably doesn't. You wouldn't know where he left the Buick, would you? Is it in the garage?”
“Nope. If it was, those lawyers would have sucked it up along with everything else.”
“You got any idea where it is, then?”
“Sure do. It's parked up Sedgwick, under that big oak tree in the middle of the next block, where he always left it.”
“And it's still there?”
“It was an hour ago, when I went by, ‘cause I don't think the lawyers know anything about it. It's dirty as sin, but it's still there. You can't miss it.”
“But why would he park it there?”
“With Pete, you never know. Most of the time he just sat there like a fat slug, but the man was no dummy. He knew that I knew about the Buick. I'd passed him on the street down there when he was getting in or out a couple of times. I asked him what the Hell he thought he was doing parking down there. He said he needed the exercise and then we really laughed. He shrugged and called it his “getaway car.” I figured he was jokin’ around again, but with them both dead now and you holding the papers, you might as well know where it is, ‘cause he ain't gettin’ away to anywhere anymore.”
“Thanks. First Ohio National really appreciates it. But how come you never told the lawyers about it?”
“Them? I have a strict “don't ask, don't tell” policy with cops and with lawyers, young man. They didn't ask, so I didn't tell.”
I walked back to the Bronco smiling, shaking my head. Who said all the nuts had rolled west to California? Some of them stuck and took root right where they dropped out of the tree.
Sure enough in the middle of the next block under a big oak tree sat an old midnight blue Buick Electra. I pulled over, parked a few cars down, and walked back. It had to be ten years old: dirty, covered with leaves, and the exterior rusting around the wheel wells. I glanced around, but the street was deserted. I looked inside. The interior was well trashed, with candy bar wrappers, coke cans, and old newspapers strewn about. I tried, but the doors were locked, all four of them. Interesting, I thought. For now, it was enough to know the car was there. But it might be fun to get inside and see what Pete's ”getaway” car held besides the old newspapers and trash.
The sun would not set for at least a half hour. Sickles Avenue was a four-lane commercial boulevard that proved to be no harder to find than Sedgwick. The 1800 block where Center Financial Advisors was located looked like it had once been a fashionable neighborhood commercial street back in the 1920s or 1930s, but that was a long time ago. Now, it was a badly run-down strip of small stores that wouldn't make it any place else. The surrounding residential area showed the first signs of gentrification, but the stores would take a lot longer. The sidewalks were cracked and uneven. The overhead wires sagged in long loops down the street and no one even tried to keep up with the gang graffiti. It would take a lot of gentries and a ton of city money before the Tae-Kwon-Do parlor, the second-hand clothing shop, the adult book store, two gritty neighborhood bars, and a boarded-up Baptist Mission became art galleries, boutiques, trendy restaurants, and a Starbucks.
Half the block was vacant and Center Financial Advisors sat in the middle. Why an accounting firm would locate in this seedy, eclectic mix was beyond me. Center? Of what? Advising whom? About what? Perhaps Pete moved his accounting business here so he could be in the vanguard of the commercial tidal wave soon to follow, but the image of the daring financial entrepreneur didn't exactly fit the slug that let the house on Sedgwick go to hell.
I parked the Bronco along the curb three doors beyond 1811 and walked back. The company name was stenciled on the door and on the front plate glass window. There were no curtains or Venetian blinds to screen the view this time. Looking inside, I saw someone had sanitized the accounting office as thoroughly as they had the house. It was empty from wall to wall, without a broken chair, a cardboard box, or a scrap of paper to be seen anywhere. If I asked around, I'd bet the same Allied van had hit them both.
I kept walking down the street, then turned and followed the cracked sidewalk around the corner. The side street looked even worse than Sickles. Weeds were sprouting through the uneven concrete. Old McDonalds bags, empty beer cans, and glass from broken wine bottles littered the small strip of bare dirt that passed for landscaping between the sidewalk and the curb. I walked to the end of the building and took a quick look around the corner before I turned and set off down the alley. It was cratered with deep ruts and potholes. Someone had tried to fill them with loose rock and pieces of asphalt, but that didn't accomplish very much. Off to my right I could see the rear yards of the two-story houses that fronted on the next street over. Most were cheap three and four flat apartment buildings with brick walls or tall wooden fences along the alley, as one would expect. Looking down the line, most of them looked badly run down, but every third or fourth building was being renovated. Signs of life? Too little and way too late for Pete.
On the left side of the alley, the rear walls of the stores that fronted on Sickles were another matter. This wasn't the high rent district. The few windows that remained and hadn't been bricked up were set high in the wall, opaque with years of crusted dirt, and covered with one-inch steel bars. The rear doors had been replaced with thick steel plates recessed deep into the doorways. Their hinges and locks were on the inside, where they would be difficult for a burglar to get at. Dumpsters lay at various odd angles up against the rear walls or jammed into the occasional alcoves. I looked over the top of several and saw most were half-filled with trash. When I got to the dumpster for 1811, I peered over the top and saw it was empty. Not just empty, this one was empty as if someone had got in and cleaned it out on their hands and knees. There wasn't a scrap of paper, a banana peel, not even a broken beer bottle to be found. Somehow, after everything I'd seen that day, it came as no surprise. The lawyers in the dark suits, the deputy sheriffs in their big brown cruisers, and even the men in the long, black hearses were nothing if not thorough. For a job like that, I wondered if the Junior Associates at Hamilton, Keogh and Hollister drew straws, or did they hire the work out.
There was nothing more to be gained in the alley, so I continued on to the far end and came back around to Sickles again. As I turned the corner, I saw a car stopped in the street next to my Bronco. It was that big, white, Lincoln Town Car, the one from the funeral home. Its engine was running and the driver's side door was hanging open. Between the Bronco and the Lincoln stood the big guy in the beige suit, blue shirt, and ponytail. I couldn't see his face, but there couldn't be two guys who looked like him in the State of Ohio, much less Columbus. As I watched, he cupped his hand and blocked the last rays of the setting sun as they reflected off the windshield as he looked inside the Bronco.
“Hey,” I shouted and ran toward him. “Wait a minute!” As I got closer, he shook his head and looked back at me, frowning, as if I were some minor irritant he'd found on his shoe. When I got within twenty feet, he slipped his hand inside his jacket and pulled out that big chrome. 45 automatic again. He didn't bother pointing it at me. That wasn't necessary. He simply let it hang down his pants leg with a casualness and skill that told me I had just made a very bad mistake. First, because he looked like he knew precisely what he was doing. Second, in that neighborhood no one would know or care if he did.
“That's close enough, Ace,” he warned.
“Who are you?” I demanded to know, bluffing, but figuring if he hadn't shot me yet I could at least ask.
“No. We're gonna try it the other way. Who the fuck are you?”
“You know who I am, I'm Peter Talbott, from Boston.”
“Is that so? Then who was the guy they buried?”
“I don't have the slightest idea,” I offered meekly.
His grip tighten on the pistol. For an instant, I thought he might raise it and shoot me, but he didn't. He just stared at me, angry and frustrated. “That bastard Tinkerton!”
“Tinkerton? You're the one who brought me here,” I bristled. “I was minding my own business back in Boston until you squeezed your super-sized Soprano's suit into my front seat and got me all worked up over those obituaries last night. You wanted me to come here. You were baiting me, and you still are.”
“Let's say I wasn't getting anywhere on my own and I thought having another one of you Talbotts show up in Columbus might make things interesting.”
Standing up close like this, I could see he was even bigger and more muscular than he first looked. I was sure he only carried the automatic to scare off idiots like me and to keep them from getting themselves really hurt, because he could have snapped me in two with his bare hands if he wanted to.
He was looking me over, sizing me up too, until he began to laugh. “This is rich,” he said with a loud roar. “This is fucking rich. Tinkerton brings in his Talbott and we bring in one of our own.”
“Why? So you could get a big laugh out of it? Well, I'm not laughing.”
“Neither was Greene or Dannmeyer.”
“You've been following me, haven't you?”
“Yeah, and I bet they crapped their freakin’ pants when you showed up. I'd have love to see Tinkerton's face, because mistakes like you ain't supposed to happen.”
“What mistake? What are you talking about?”
“You and your wife — one of you dead and the other one still alive.”
“What's going on here? Are you going to tell me, or not?”
“No. And believe me, you don't want to know,” he said as he slipped the automatic inside his jacket. “Besides, I'm not sure I could. It's all smoke and mirrors like a goddamned shell game.” He relaxed and leaned back against the side of the Lincoln. I would have suggested he be careful and not tip it over, but he still had his hand on that big cannon inside his coat.
“Look, Ace,” he finally said. “I usually don't give free advice and I never give it twice, so you listen up, and listen good. Go back to Boston. I know I kinda lured you here with those two obituaries, but when you showed up they didn't panic or do nuthin’. In fact, they haven't done a damned thing, but blow you off, so that's it. Finito! Go back to Boston, because you're messing in some very serious shit here. Keep poking around and you're gonna end up in a box next to that other Peter Talbott up in Oak Hill. Us or them, you're gonna get your ticket punched.”
He turned and opened the driver's side door of the Lincoln.
“Wait a minute,” I called out to him. “Who's we?”
“You don't want to know,” he sighed.
“Then who are you?” I dared to ask.
He paused and thought it over before he answered. “My name's Parini, Gino Parini. Some people say I kill people for a living. I'm sure that's a major exaggeration, but you don't ever want me to see your sorry ass again. You got that?” He gave me one last long, hard look, then added, “By the way, it's good you got rid of that Rolling Stones shit. You ain't no freakin’ college kid no more.”
“You're right, but I needed something more formal for my funeral.”
“Still the smart ass, huh? Well, you keep doin’ what you've been doin’ and it still could be.” Then he got in the Lincoln, slammed the door, and drove away.
Me? I stood there, glad I hadn't wet my pants.