“I’m only going to let him get involved so far, but I think he could be a help. I think you’re slowing down a little, so I want some backup.”
“Fuck you.”
“Pack a lunch. Three sandwiches and some chips. We’ll stop and get drinks. And clear out your trunk. Me and Curt will be rooming together, and I want space back there for a crate of rubbers. Now that I think about it, you might want to throw out the spare tire.”
30
I drove. Leonard sat beside me, and Officer Carroll sat in the back, leaning over the seat like a Labrador retriever. He had brought enough luggage for a month in Paris and, along with that, a bulletproof vest.
“You really need the vest?” I said.
“Never leave home without,” he said. “That and clean underwear.”
I liked Curt, but he was kind of a pest, so it was like driving on a cross-country vacation with a six-year-old. We had already stopped twice. Once for soft drinks, once for Officer Carroll to pee, and now he wanted to go again.
“Pookie, I told you to go before we left,” Leonard said.
“I was excited,” Curt said. “Are we on a tight schedule?”
“Guess not,” Leonard said.
“Pookie?” I said.
“I call him that,” Leonard said.
“I kind of like it,” Pookie said. “My dad used to call me Poot. I never cared for that much.”
“I can understand that,” I said. “From now on, I’ll call you Pookie too.”
“All right,” Pookie said.
“Shit,” Leonard said, “I should have never let that out in public.”
We stopped and Pookie took another pee, and then on down the road, he said, “I wouldn’t mind getting some coffee.”
“Damn,” Leonard said. “That’s why you always got to pee.”
“If we could stop someplace where they also got pie,” Pookie said, “I’d like that best. I like pie. You guys like pie?”
“I should have left his ass at home,” Leonard said.
* * *
Brett had found us a bed-and-breakfast on the outskirts of Marvel Creek in a little community that would soon be annexed by the town. It was the only real place to stay unless we wanted to drive on to Longview.
Brett said according to the Internet photos, it was quite charming and, better yet, pretty cheap. The money we got from the Mulhaneys was not a fortune, but it was a fortune for them, as it would have been for me just a few years back. It was hard to believe there had been such a turn of fate in my life. I still had a lot of bad stuff going on, but at least now I could afford to be miserable.
Reminded me of my dad. He was a troubleshooter mechanic at one time for a butane company. Had to be on the road a lot, and he was, by all accounts, good at his job. Over time, he asked for a raise. It was promised, but it never seemed to make it into his paycheck.
Next time he asked for a raise, they said again, “Sure, we’ll do that,” but they didn’t. And when he received his paycheck and saw the raise had still not been added, he went to his stall and began packing his tools in his toolbox. The boss came by, said, “Bud, what are you doing?”
“Well,” Daddy said, “if I’m going to starve to death, I might as well be rested.”
Anytime I thought about being in need of more money, I remembered that story.
Brett had checked us in online, and when the lady who owned the place saw one of our group was black and that he and Pookie intended to share a bed, you could see the hair on the back of her neck stand up. The rest of it was in a gray knot on her head.
“You know, I’m not sure that room is ready,” she said. She reminded me of a nervous wasp, the way she flittered behind the desk. I had an idea her reluctance had nothing to do with Professor, who probably didn’t own things this far out.
Still, our credit card looked better to her than her bullshit church-lady morals, so after a bit of nervous fluttering, she decided the room was ready and checked us in. When we left, she would probably bring in one of those hazmat teams that clean up oil and chemical spills, have them give Leonard and Pookie’s room a real going-over, maybe burn the mattress.
“Breakfast is from seven until nine,” she said. “After that, you’re on your own.”
Leonard laughed at her without really meaning to.
31
After I got my stuff stored in the room, I called Brett and asked about the thumb drive. She was supposed to get it to Mercury so he could see what was on it.
“You know,” Brett said, “turns out Jackie is damn smart. Even Mercury couldn’t crack it right off the bat. I drove over to Camp Rapture this morning, gave it to him, and after about twenty minutes he said he was going to need time.”
“Wow. That is some serious encryption.”
“That’s what he said. I think he was impressed. It takes a lot to impress him with computer stuff.”
“I’ll say. Well, we are all tucked in. Pretty soon we go back to shaking trees to see what falls out of them.”
“Be careful something big and mean and ugly doesn’t fall out of one and land on you.”
“Of course. Which reminds me, have I told you the joke about the gorilla hunter?”
“I don’t believe in hunting gorillas.”
“Neither do I. It’s a joke.”
“I think you’ve told me that one.”
“I don’t think I have,” I said.
“Think you have. Don’t remember all the details, but pretty sure you have.”
“You don’t want to hear my joke, do you?”
“Got to go, hon,” and she was off the phone.
I actually have some pretty good jokes. I don’t know why no one wants to hear them.
32
The best way we figured to stir things was to make sure we were seen, and one place we wanted to be seen was at the Coffee Spoon again. Everyone came there. Someone was going to slip a word to Professor, and that was bound to bring out some of his help. Jimmy and Lou maybe, George perhaps, the twins, someone we had yet to meet who wanted to shoot us in the back of the head or beat us to death with sticks and stones. It was always a pleasure to make new friends.
First, we drove over to Marvel Creek and the cop shop to talk with Delf.
“So, you’re an officer of the law?” Delf said after we introduced Pookie and took seats in the office.
“I am,” Pookie said.
“He’s like fucking McGruff the Crime Dog,” Leonard said.
“I am,” Pookie said, “except I don’t sleep in a doggy bed.”
“What happened to Rex?” Delf asked.
“He’s having a spa day,” Leonard said.
“Knew you’d be back,” Delf said.
“You called it,” I said.
“I can be of assistance, but only to a degree. There’s a line I best not cross, but I can cross some lines. You find something, tell me. Don’t get yourself between a rock and a hard place. Also, Johnny, he’s part of this. The other officers, not as directly. I handle them, but Johnny, I can give you his cell and you can contact him if necessary. You can tell him anything you can tell me.”
“Thing is,” I said, “you got your agenda and we got ours. Finding Jackie.”
“Jackie, if she’s found, is dead, my man,” Delf said. “But our agendas cross enough we can be of help to one another.”
“Guess that’s true,” I said.
“Good,” Delf said. “Try not to shoot anybody.”
“No promises,” Leonard said.
“My brothers,” he said. “Don’t let them hurt you, but try not to hurt them. If possible.”
“Deal,” I said, and out of there me and Leonard and Pookie went.
33
We decided we weren’t ready to hang out at the café drinking coffee, and it occurred to me another visit with Jamesway might be in order, and that seemed to suit Leonard and Pookie.
This time we came through the front door, which was unlocked, went through the lobby, and found hi
m in his office with his feet on the desk reading a rather ragged-looking leather-bound copy of the Bible.
“Hap, Leonard,” he said. “Good to see you. Who’s your friend?”
We introduced Officer Carroll by his real name. I immediately feared coffee would be offered.
It was. Leonard and I declined. Pookie, not knowing any better, accepted. We left him to his fate.
“We’re just going over our path again,” I said.
“Meaning you haven’t found Jackie, and you want to know if I know something. And you want to know if I had anything to do with Ace’s death.”
“We didn’t say that,” I said.
“But you were thinking it.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“I told you what I knew about Ace, and that’s it. Next time I heard about him was reading about him in the newspaper, that he was found dead in Jackie’s old house. What can I tell you I haven’t told you?”
“It’s just procedure,” Pookie said.
“Procedure?” Jamesway said.
“I’m a cop,” Pookie said. “I use cool cop terms. Don’t get me started. I got a nest of stuff I can rattle off.”
Jamesway smiled. “Ah.”
“I don’t know if we have any other questions,” I said, “not really. But I’d like to come back to something. Just to touch it again and move on. Jackie’s good with numbers, had what some call odd ideas. Was she odd or just smarter than the average bear?”
“Maybe both,” Jamesway said. “You don’t find bears doing mathematics or theorizing on the universe.”
“Don’t talk like you know all the bears there are,” Leonard said.
Jamesway laughed a little.
“Did she believe she could travel between dimensions, alternate worlds, or some such?” I said.
“She’s a thinker. Maybe even a genius when it came to mathematics and physics, and she had to learn most of it on her own. We used to talk for hours about all manner of things. Did she actually think you could do it, travel between the dimensions? The answer is, theoretically, yes, but she didn’t think she herself could.”
“She wasn’t saying what they thought she was saying?” Leonard said.
“Not at all,” Jamesway said. “Truth is, I miss our conversations. She could make you think, and I was attracted to her. I told you that. But there was always something kind of dangerous about her. Not that she did anything I could put my finger on. It was just a feeling she gave me.”
Jamesway went over, fixed Pookie his cup of coffee, and brought it back to the desk.
I watched as Pookie picked up the cup and tasted the coffee. I thought Jackie might not have passed into another dimension, but with a sip of that stuff, perhaps Pookie temporarily had. One of his eyes twitched.
“Jackie wanted to do something with that brain of hers other than what she was doing,” Jamesway said. “I think she decided she’d had enough of this hole in the road.”
“You don’t think she could be dead?” Pookie asked.
“I hope not. I think she had bigger fish to fry. I think she merely went away to someplace better. Someday, I believe she will resurface. She may not even be hiding. I’d check out the colleges in Tyler.”
Brett had actually done that while I was home. Nothing found, but I didn’t mention it to Jamesway.
“Nothing else?” Leonard said.
Jamesway shook his head. “Sorry…wait a minute. The librarian. Marylou Cinner.”
“Librarian?” I said.
“Friend of hers. Well, she used to be a librarian. But she and Jackie got to be friends there at the end, meaning the end as in when I saw Jackie last. I sort of forgot about it. She didn’t mention Marylou much, but she did mention her, and she said they were friends. I think Marylou, who was a quiet sort, was someone she could talk to about the things she was interested in. Someone to talk to smarter than the rest of us. I think Marylou had about three degrees or something, but what she was cut out for was being a librarian. I can’t say I really knew her, but that’s what Jackie said about her.”
“Do you know Cinner’s address?” I asked.
“I know where she lived. The house is empty now. Up for sale. It was repossessed. Didn’t respond to foreclosure letters, or so I was told. One of the ladies works at the bank goes to church here, and she told me. If you’re quiet, and you know connected people in this town, eventually they talk out of school. One day Marylou Cinner was working at the library, next day she was gone. Didn’t give notice, just up and left. People went to the house, and all the furniture was there, but she wasn’t, and there was a note. Note said she had a sick aunt and had to go take care of her, I think in Ohio. Something like that. Said she was sorry to leave so suddenly, and she was letting the house go back, and that was it.”
“That’s interesting,” Pookie said.
“Yeah. Oh, and she was Ace’s cousin,” Jamesway said.
“Also interesting,” Pookie said.
“Does it mean anything?” Jamesway said.
“If it does, we don’t know what it is,” I said. “Not yet, anyway.”
We thanked Jamesway and left.
On the way to the car, Pookie said, “That coffee is the worst thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”
“I got something for your mouth that can sweeten it,” Leonard said.
“I know that, baby,” Pookie said, and pinched Leonard on the ass.
34
We drove around town hoping to stir someone up, but no one was stirred. We went to the café and had lunch, but no one threatened us. We drove back to the bed-and-breakfast, but no one followed us. I looked out the window from my room. Nothing happening out there, though a large black bird on the lawn looked a little suspicious.
Maybe we had pushed as much as we could. Maybe Professor and his minions had got smart and decided to leave us alone and let us fade away. Maybe Professor had nothing to do with Jackie’s disappearance. Perhaps Ace had been killed by someone who had nothing to do with either Jackie or the Professor. And Marylou Cinner, did she have anything to do with this? No fucking idea.
I sat down and turned on the TV and watched a bit of the news, but the political situation was so much like a shitty reality show, I turned it off before I got sick.
Brett called.
“It’s your wife,” she said.
“I love hearing that,” I said.
“Here’s something else you’ll love. Thumb drive cracked. I picked it up from Mercury. A large part of it is numbers.”
“That fits. She was a self-trained mathematician.”
“Yep, but it’s accounting. Nothing to do with any kind of super-math, but it is fanciful math at times.”
“Come again,” I said.
“It’s records she kept. Way Mercury figured it, Jackie was the bookkeeper for Professor, and she started carefully moving money out of his account, disguising it as this and that, not something you’d notice right off, subtle stuff, but it was getting moved.”
“Where to?”
“You’re going to love this. It doesn’t seem like anything at first. All legit, but she had a clever way to siphon the money off and have it end up somewhere else, and you know whose bank account it’s in, and right there in Marvel Creek?”
“Do I have to guess?”
“Yep.”
“All right,” I said. “Her own account.”
“Nope.”
“How about Jamesway?”
“Nope. Your junkyard man.”
“George?”
“Yep.”
“That’s a surprise,” I said. “I thought he was Professor’s man.”
“George seems to have been his own man. He had this girlfriend who was a math whiz, and either he got her to do it or they were both in on it. Appears they began to slip money away from the Professor. Did it in small bits here and there. Never anything noticeable. Disguised as an expense, but the thing was, the expense was maybe half of what was used to pay out, and then part of the expe
nse got transferred to this or that, traveling through channels, and pretty soon it’s in George’s bank account.”
“I’ll be damned. Might George not have known?”
“It was in his account,” Brett said. “Surely he looked at his bank statements from time to time. There were several different companies under his name, and there were three banks, one in Marvel Creek, one in Longview, and another in Tyler. But in the end, they all came back to George.”
“Damn interesting.”
“Yep. But that’s not all. Mercury figured that later, all that business was reworked. Not so you’d notice it unless you understood money and how to launder it and make everything look clean and on the up-and-up until all of a sudden you got nothing in your account, because what you see isn’t what you get. It’s all been boosted to another account. The figures in the former account are what Mercury calls ghost figures; the remains of dead money. George’s bank accounts got shifted to Ace’s bank account. Again, at a glance, George had money, but when you really looked carefully at the transfer numbers, Ace had it. Maybe Ace had something to do with it all too.”
“Ace would be lucky to know which end the shit came out of an elephant even if he was standing under its ass.”
“However it got there, it got there. But I’m not finished. Later on, Mercury figured out from all the revising what Jackie was doing. She was moving money from Ace’s account to one Marylou Cinner’s account.”
“The librarian.”
“What’s that?”
I said it again and told her the little bit Jamesway had told us, including the fact Cinner had moved off.
“Now, that is interesting,” Brett said.
“Yeah. It is. Cinner hasn’t been a player on the field, and all of a sudden, she is. I’m wondering, did she mastermind all of this?”
“I’ll see if I can find her by the usual routes, on Facebook, that sort of thing, and if that comes up goose egg, I’ll see if Mercury can help me. He’s still looking into the material on the thumb drive. He says there’s more, he’s just not sure what it all means. Looks like Jackie’s long game might have been being aided first by George, then Ace, and then it went to Marylou Cinner’s account. She may have been using them all as channels to take the money out and keep it for herself. Up to you to figure out what it all means. I have given you the tools to do your work, so now you can do it.”