Lawrence Block - The Devil Knows You’re Dead

She said, “What a question. Did he ever mention any of his relatives by name? If he did I don’t remember. The thing is, neither of us talked much about our families.”

“What about his mother’s maiden name? Did he happen to mention that?”

“I’m sure he didn’t,” she said. “But wait a minute, I just came across it on his group insurance policy. Hold on a minute.” I held, and she came back to report that it was Benziger. “ ‘Father’s name — John Holtzmann, Mother’s maiden name — Hilda Benziger’ ” she read. “Does that help?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I called Altoona Information again looking for an insurance agent named Benziger. There was none listed, and I didn’t bother chasing the Benziger name any further than that. The uncle in question could have been an uncle by marriage, husband of the sister of one of Glenn’s parents. He could even have been an honorary uncle, the father of a second cousin. There were just too many ways he could have a name that was neither Holtzmann nor Benziger.

I hung up the phone and sat there trying to figure out what to do next. It seemed to me that I was knocking on plenty of doors, but I kept getting them slammed in my face.

Was I going to have to make a trip to Altoona? God knows I didn’t want to. It seemed a long way to go to chase down information that wasn’t very likely to lead anywhere. But I didn’t know if I could manage it from a distance. Up close, I could chase his parents’ names through old city and county records, find out who all his relatives were, and come up with a name for the uncle in question.

Assuming the people I encountered were cooperative. I knew how to ensure cooperation from record clerks in New York. You bribe them. In Altoona that might not be possible.

Was I going to have to find out?

I glared at the phone, and I’ll be damned if it didn’t pick that moment to ring. It was Lisa. She said, “After I hung up I started thinking. Why insurance? Because he never told me he was ever in the insurance business.”

“He told Eleanor Yount.”

“He told me he sold cars,” she said. “He sold Cadillacs and Chevrolets. And something else. Oldsmobiles?”

“When did he do that?”

“After college,” she said. “Before he moved to New York, before he went to law school.”

“Under Auto Dealerships,” I said. “Do you see the name Holtzmann anywhere? Holtzmann Motors, Holtzmann Cadillac?”

They were remarkably patient at Altoona Information. While she checked I pictured Glenn Holtzmann stretched out on the pavement in front of a Honda dealership and across the street from a muffler shop. The city’s largest Cadillac dealer was only a block or so away.

There were no Holtzmanns in the Altoona listings. I asked her to try Benziger. That rang a bell, she said, but she couldn’t say why, or find a Benziger Motors on the page. I told her I was looking for a dealership that sold Chevrolet, Cadillac, and possibly Oldsmobile.

After a brief search she reported that only one local dealership listed itself as an agency for Cadillac. They had the other lines I mentioned, and GMC trucks, and Toyota as well. “Sign of the times,” she said of the last. “That would be Nittany Motors,” she said, “out on Five Mile Road.”

I took the number and dialed the call. The woman who answered didn’t believe there was a Mr. Holtzmann present, unless it was a new man in the service department whose name she didn’t know as yet. Was that who I wanted?

“Then I guess Mr. Holtzmann’s not the owner,” I said.

The idea seemed to tickle her. “Well, I guess not ,” she said. “Mr. Joseph Lamarck is the owner and has been as long as there’s been a Nittany Motors.”

“And how long has that been?”

“Why, quite a few years now.”

“And before that? Was there a time when it was Benziger Motors?”

“Why, yes,” she said. “That was before my time, I’m afraid. May I ask the nature of your interest?”

I told her I was calling from New York, that I was involved in the investigation of a homicide. The deceased seemed to have been a former employee of Benziger Motors, and might have been a relative of Mr. Benziger.

“I think you ought to talk with Mr. Lamarck,” she said, then came back to tell me he was busy on another line. Would I hold? I said I would.

I was lost in space when a deep male voice said, “Joe Lamarck here. Afraid I didn’t get your name, sir.”

I supplied it.

“And someone’s been killed? Used to work here and a relative of Al Benziger’s? I guess that would have to be Glenn Holtzmann.”

“Did you know him?”

“Oh, sure. Not well, and I can’t say I’ve thought of him in years, but he was a nice enough young fellow. He was Al’s sister’s boy, if I’m not mistaken. She raised young Glenn by herself and died about the time he went up to State College. I believe Al helped them some over the years, and then took Glenn on after he graduated.”

“How did he do?”

“Oh, he did all right. I don’t think he had any real feeling for the automobile business, but sometimes that comes with time. He left, though. I couldn’t say what it was he was tired of, Altoona or the automobile business. May have been Al. Damn good man, but he could be hard to work for. I had to quit him.”

“You used to work for Benziger?”

“Oh, sure, but I quit, oh, musta been a couple months after Glenn started. Nothing to do with Glenn, though. Al chewed me out one time too many and I went down the street and worked for Ferris Ford. Then when Al had his troubles I came back and bought the place, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.”

“When did that happen?”

“Lord, fifteen years ago,” he said. “History.”

“That was after Glenn left.”

“You bet. Several months after that Al had his troubles, and it was some time after that before I took over.”

“What kind of troubles?”

There was a pause. “Well, I don’t like to say,” he said. “All just history now, anyway. There’s nobody around played any part in it. Al and Marie left town soon as they could, and I couldn’t guess where he is now. If he’s alive at all, and it’d be my guess that he’s not. He was a broken man when he left Altoona.”

“What broke him?”

“The damn federal government,” he said with feeling. “I wasn’t going to say, but I’m not hurting anybody and you could find out easy enough. Al was keeping two sets of books, been doing it for years. His wife Marie was his bookkeeper and I guess they worked it out between them. He had an accountant, of course, Perry Preiss, and he was in trouble there for a while, until it turned out that Al and Marie had kept him in the dark all along. Still, I understand it hurt his practice.”

“What happened to the Benzigers?”

“They settled. No choice, was there now? IRS had ’em cold. It was out-and-out tax evasion, too, with a fraudulent set of books and some secret bank accounts. You couldn’t say you made a mistake, you didn’t report this and that because it slipped your mind. IRS wanted to, they could have put the both of them in jail. Had ’em over a barrel, and didn’t show a lot of mercy, my opinion. Took Al Benziger for everything he had. I wound up buying this place. Somebody else bought their house, and somebody else got their summer place down by the lake.”

“And Glenn was gone when this happened.”

“Oh, sure. Didn’t come back to rally round, either. If he even heard about it. Where was he at the time, New York?”

“New York,” I said. “In law school, paying his way with the money he came into when his mother died.”

He asked me to repeat that. When I’d done so he said, “No, that part’s wrong. Glenn Holtzmann grew up in a trailer in Roaring Spring, and they didn’t even own the trailer. I don’t guess his mother ever had a dime aside from what her brother gave her.”