The Labyrinth Of Dreams Page 5

  That still left the question of why he was in this mess in the first place. Not that guys like him were honest; it was just that they generally let the underlings do the dirty work and take the big falls.

  It took about three hours to get the file together on him, and that was just about the time Brandy returned with a whole mess of packages. These proved to be some shirts and pants for me and a small wardrobe for her, all off-the-rack stuff. She’d tried on only a couple of hers, and guessed at my sizes, but she was dead on. The sleeves on the sport coat were a little long, but it was a damn sight better than what I had at home.

  I was a little surprised when she stayed with her old jeans and sandals and faded shirt. “I called Minnie,” she explained, “and she’s expecting me. Any black folks in that neighborhood don’t look like Aunt Jemima are arrested for suspicion of burglary. You still got that old cop ID with the fake shield?”

  I nodded. “Uh huh.”

  “Then you take the missus and I’ll take Minnie.”

  We walked down to the street, and I was startled to see a new-looking Ford parked there behind ours. Brandy handed me the keys.

  “You didn’t charge this!”

  She laughed. “Sure I did. At Avis. Looks a lot like the cars the detectives drive. You take the front and it; I’ll take our car and the servants’ entrance. We’ll meet back at the Midway Diner and compare notes while we buy each other dinner.”

  Whitlock’s place was a simple one-story brick rancher off a long driveway in Ardmore, one of the richer suburbs of Philadelphia. The fact is, the place didn’t look all that big from the front, but if you started walking around you found out it went back a ways. Like maybe Pittsburgh.

  There was only a single Mercedes wagon in the driveway, but even Little Jimmy could tell me that Whitlock’s two-door sports Mercedes coupe was still parked in his marked space in the Tri-State lot downtown. I put on my glasses, which I normally use only for reading, and was just going to the door when I saw our two-tone Chevy come up and pull around to the side and Brandy get out and walk on back. I rang the bell and stood there awhile, wondering whether it was that nobody was home or only that with the housekeeper occupied, it was beneath the dignity of a Whitlock to open her own door.

  It wasn’t. I guess even blue bloods get caught in the John.

  She was tall and very slender, with a conservative hairdo, with makeup even in the late afternoon with no place to go. “Yes?”

  “Mrs. Whitlock? I’m Sam Horowitz, with the Department of the Treasury. Is your husband at home?”

  “You know he isn’t. Your people were here earlier today.”

  I harrumphed apologetically. “Well, there are two separate agencies involved in this, and I guess you understand the bureaucracy.” She finally invited me in, and we had a pleasant if inconsequential talk. I did finally get to see a photo of him; a distinguished-looking man, much younger in appearance than his years would indicate, with short, peppery hair, light complexion, blue or gray eyes, clean shaven, no moustache, beard, or even sideburns, which look a bit out of date these days. I have bushy sideburns myself, but that was overcompensation for what was missing on top. I know what I look like with a beard, though, and forget it.

  I didn’t expect to ever get back here—or be able to, once the feds found out I was here at all—so I decided to play a chance card or two and see if I passed Go.

  “Mrs. Whitlock, I know how hard this must be for you, but we have some evidence that your husband was involved with organized crime. Laundering drug money, to be precise. That’s what this is all about, and why we think he left. We think he stole some mob money and skipped.”

  She was not completely surprised by this, but some of it was new. “Oh, my. They said something about the Mafia or something, but I find that hard to accept. Drug money, you say! He—he was on the Mayor’s Council for Stamping Out Drug Abuse. He always hated drugs. Wouldn’t permit a smoker in the house, and had to be ready for the hospital before he’d even take an aspirin.”

  “If that’s true, then it makes even less sense,” I told her honestly. “I mean, he had a nice family, money, position . . . Why do it? He wasn’t a thrill seeker, was he? Somebody who might do it just out of boredom?”

  “Oh, my, no! He never even drove the speed limit in spite of his sports car!”

  “Then they had something on him. Some kind of blackmail. Do you have any idea what they had that they could blackmail him with?”

  “Certainly not! His life was an open book!” But I could tell by her eyes that she was hiding something.

  There wasn’t much more I could press, and I kept seeing the real feds coming back any minute now, so I made my apologies and my sympathies, palmed a cameo portrait of him from an end table, and bid her good-bye. Our car was still in the driveway, but I wasn’t going to wait for Brandy.

  The tail wasn’t hard to spot; they wanted to be noticed, and on the winding little road leading back down to the expressway at Conshohocken, there wasn’t much chance of shaking or evading them if I wanted to. I knew who it was, and when we got to the bottom just before the entrance to the Schuylkill, the flashing light went up on top and he pulled me over into the parking lot of a rustic-looking restaurant or catering joint.

  I got out and leaned easily against the car, waiting for them. There were two there, but one was on the radio while the other glared at me, then finally got out and came up. “Can I see your driver’s license and registration, please?”

  “Can I see your ID first?” I responded. “I want to know who I’m dealing with and I got a right.”

  He reached into a breast pocket and did a quick flip of a case too fast for me to read, so I reached in and did the same damned thing. He reached for it and I said, “Uh uh. You show me yours open and I’ll show you mine.”

  He took it back out, looking pissed, and held it open. Marshall Kennedy. Neat first name. I wondered if it had influenced his eventual line of work. He wasn’t a marshal, though; it was Drug Enforcement Administration.

  I nodded. “Sam Horowitz, and I’m private, licensed in New Jersey,” I told him truthfully.

  He frowned. “So what was that shield you flashed?”

  “My old ID with a regular shield. I use it like you do, to get into places easily. It’s part of the job.”

  “You’re looking for Whitlock.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. “Why?”

  “I was hired to.”

  “By who?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. I suspect, though, that it was by somebody who wanted to bring the whole weight of the feds and local cops down on me so they could free their own people to look for him.”

  He considered that. “I still want the name. PI’s don’t mean shit to me, and don’t give me any shield-law crap. There’s no federal law covering you. Besides, might be interesting to find out just who you told the little lady there you worked for. Impersonating an officer’s good for a yanked license and maybe a year.”

  “Better a year than getting my brains blown out,” I told him. “Be reasonable. I’ll tell you what I know, short of violating my ethics and my right to life, and you see if you’re happy. You know I’m the patsy in this. I knew it from the start, only the money was too good and I was flat broke.”

  “I’m listening.”

  I told him about Whitlock stealing mob money and putting the squeeze on the middleman. I also told him about what I’d learned so far, and that I hadn’t yet figured out how he’d gotten sucked in in the first place.

  He wasn’t communicative in return, but I got the very distinct feeling that he didn’t know, either. They were at the same point we were, in spite of their head start. He did, however, offer one very interesting new fact.

  “He didn’t leave the country. He called his wife this morning. Didn’t talk long, so we couldn’t get a trace, but it was definitely a local call. You wouldn’t by any chance be carrying something he wants or needs, would you? If you are, you’re aiding and abet
ting a federal fugitive and I’ll slam you real hard if you don’t come clean.”

  “I’m as clean as they come. Search away if you want.”

  He did, starting with me. “There’s still a price tag in this jacket,” he noted. “What’d you do? Raid Sears today?”

  The car was given a good but not complete going-over, since they’d had me in sight from leaving the front door and I sure hadn’t had time to do much more than stuff something between the seats or like that. While they were still searching, night fell, and Brandy drove by in the car. I pretended not to notice, but I sure hoped she had.

  The fed finally was as satisfied as he was going to get. “Okay, Horowitz. You’re on my list now. You be where I want you when I want you, and you report anything you learn to me even before you tell your client. I’m letting you run only because I think you’re what you say you are—a stalking horse. I have to say, though, that I don’t like you very much. I don’t give a damn about P.I.’s one way or the other as long as they stay out of my way, but if you’re working for the ones he stiffed you’re no better than they are. You’re free only so long as you’re useful, but to me you smell like an accessory, and that’s the way it’ll read if your client finds out something from you before I do. Get it?”

  “I got it. Now I’m telling you to back off and give me some room. All you’ll do is spook everything if you come along with your heavy boots like you did here. I don’t care who gets him, but I want a crack.”

  Kennedy shrugged. “We’ll keep a safe distance, don’t worry. I’ll even give you one lead, if you don’t have it already. Not much, but it’s a brick wall. He had a second life someplace. He’d be gone sometimes from home for weeks at a stretch, supposedly out of town on business, but the bank has no record of those trips or expenses for them. His marriage has been mostly name only for years.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Mistress on the side?”

  “If so, we can’t find any trace of her. It’s weird. He’d be at the bank sometimes but never leave the parking lot to go home. That’s why nobody was surprised that his car stayed there overnight. Sometimes he’d take a leave of absence for a while, often up to a week every month, but nobody knows where. He sure didn’t use any family funds, or bank funds, either.”

  “Nice puzzle. Let me see what I can do.”

  I drove off then, feeling very lucky, but I was now paranoid about every pair of headlights. Now, at least, I knew why we were worth the bucks. We’d trod the well-worn trails with the feds knowing us and breathing hard on us while Little Jimmy’s big agency, probably an out-of-towner, poked and probed in anonymity. Was it worth fifty gees—maybe a hundred, the way Brandy was using that card—to somebody to do that? When this much was at stake, maybe it was.

  Brandy was waiting at the diner, and I told her about the feds and what I’d learned. Come to think of it, except for the picture, I’d learned more from Kennedy than I had from Mrs. Whitlock. Brandy, however, had far more.

  “He’s pretty kinky and she knows it,” she told me. “There’s three closets up there in the master bedroom. His, hers, and hers.”

  “Two wives? He keeps his mistress’s clothing at his house?”

  “Uh uh. The other hers is also a his. He’s a transvestite. He likes dressing up in women’s clothing and pretending to be one. Minnie says there’s an old album she found once in a closet that shows him in drag back from his teenage days. She says he’s better looking than his wife.”

  “Hmmm . . . That explains a lot, including how he was able to vanish so completely even in a panic, and maybe why his marriage is a name-only affair. So he is a thrill seeker after all. Probably not gay, though. Few of them are.”

  “He might swing both ways. That’s Minnie’s feeling, anyway. But most of the stuff at the house hasn’t been touched in months, and the bulk of it was donated to the Goodwill long ago.”

  It was beginning to come together. If he had photos, so did others, and somebody on the wrong side, maybe even an old classmate from Harvard who was graduating Magna Cosa Nostra, knew about it and filed it away. He had another place somewhere, and that place was probably downtown. He had periods when he came to work normally, yet didn’t go home at night. He wouldn’t want to risk going even by taxi or public transportation, for fear of being recognized by some bank employee or other and finally being traced. That meant walking distance.

  “Sansom Street,” we both said together. “Now, who do we know in that area?” I added, trying to think.

  Sansom was a tiny little street right downtown that was the focus for the local gay community, but also had been a refuge for the social misfits from other areas. It had those kinds of shops that sold incense and handmade leather goods, and had others that sold bean curd by the pound. It was more picturesque and quaint than raunchy, which is why it survived. The raunchy areas weren’t far away, but Sansom was safe. These blue bloods sure had more interesting lives than the folks I hung out with.

  The trouble was, while this narrowed down the area and gave us someplace to look, it also vastly complicated matters. We didn’t really know what he looked like dressed as a woman, and Minnie had said that the album had vanished and was never seen again after that one time. Hell, he could be wearing a wig in any style, made-up, wearing a padded bra under a dress, high heels, and come right up to us and ask us to buy him a drink. Worse, he’d walk right past the feds at the airport or train station, laughing all the way out, carrying the money in checked luggage.

  Maybe Little Jimmy did simply need all the help he could get.

  3

  The Path to G.O.D.

  I have to admit that I’d really underestimated Martin Whitlock, just like the feds and the mob had. It took some kind of brains to steal two and a quarter million bucks from the mob, get exposed in a drug-laundry scheme, and vanish for three days without a trace while not moving more than six blocks from his office. The only amateur’s slip he made was calling his wife. That was the crazy thing. I think they still loved each other, in a way. She wasn’t just protecting him for image’s sake; this stuff was bound to hit the papers in a big way sooner or later—his disappearance already had, and the reporters had no problems tying it to federal bank examiners moving in at Tri-State. Hell, Minnie might well sell the sordid stuff for the right price if nothing else happened. No, his wife was protecting him because, in spite of everything, she still loved him. And he had risked a farewell phone call to her, too. And I thought we had problems! Just goes to show that millions of bucks and two Mercedes mean less than you think. Of course, I’ll still take his money and my marriage any day.

  The trouble was, this new situation had made me fall back on resources I really didn’t like to use. I called Little Jimmy and briefed him on the case to date, and he seemed really excited about it. I also told him about Agent Kennedy, something he took in stride, and his taking it in stride made me very upset.

  “Listen, Nkrumah, I’m not doing any stretch because I was hung out to dry for a measly few grand and a charge account. You want me to lead them away, you tell me, and I’ll lead them away instead of pressing this. No more games, though, huh?”

  “Why, Samuel! I wouldn’t dream of hanging you out to dry on this! In fact, those people are why I cannot move through normal channels. They have everything sewed up tight. I can’t breathe without them noticing and in their ham-handed way notifying certain parties of my, ah, problem. In fact, if it makes you feel any better, give this Kennedy a call and brief him from time to time. Just be certain it’s the second call you make.”

  “That won’t give you much breathing room,” I noted.

  “Oh, that’s all right. I have resources in high places.”

  “Seems to me you’re thinking that your own bosses are mighty dumb,” I couldn’t help but point out. “I mean, this guy’s vanishing act hasn’t hit the front pages yet, but it will sooner or later.”

  “Oh, they won’t care about him. I don’t mind if they do think he took a powder just a
head of the bank examiners and the narcs. It’s my money, not theirs, that is at stake, and they are getting things exactly as they expect. Don’t worry. I can keep things under control—if you can on your end. It might be best if we arranged a different number to use. I really don’t mind them discovering who you’re working for—they probably already know—but I really would mind if they overheard something and queered it. Don’t call again. I’ll be in touch with alternatives.”

  “Okay, but I need a guide through these local sewers. Somebody with clout whose information will be reliable and who won’t go squealing to Kennedy all the time.”

  “I have an idea. Go home. Get some sleep. I’ll see what I can do.”

  And he was as good as his word. Believe it or not, the next morning the man from Federal Express came by with one of those overnight letters and it was from somebody I never heard of in Sacramento, California. Still, when I opened it, there was a note that I could only assume originated with Little Jimmy a couple of miles across town.

  There will be somebody at a phone booth at seven AM and again at seven PM at each of the numbers below. Call them, in order, at the indicated times with your reports and needs. Ask for Sandalwood. If the person on the other end is not responsive, hang up and try the next number. Do not reuse a number. When the last one is dead I will get you a new list. As for your trusty guide, try Sgt. Albert Paoli, Central District Vice. You and he will just hit it off perfectly.

  I knew Paoli—or, at least, I knew of him. He was wholly owned and operated by the mob, although which branch I never really knew. Still, with his years on the pad and who-knew-what skeletons in his vast closets, he wasn’t the kind of guy to betray anybody—and he was too low a fish to get complete immunity if he got a sudden case of nerves or conscience. The last thing any cop wants is to do time in the pen.