Lawrence Block - A Ticket To The Boneyard

"This guy in Ohio sounds like a pretty decent fellow. What's his name, Havlicek? Wasn't there a guy with the same name played for the Celtics?"

"That's right."

"Also named Tom, if I'm not mistaken."

"No, I think it was John."

"You sure? Maybe you're right. Your guy any relation?"

"I didn't ask him."

"No? Well, you had other things on your mind. What is it you want to do, Matt?"

"I want to put that son of a bitch where he belongs."

"Yeah, well, he did what he could to stay there. A guy like that's a good bet to die inside the walls. You think they can make any kind of a case against him in Massillon?"

"I don't know. You know, he got a big break when they read it as murder-suicide and closed it out on the spot."

"It sounds as though we'd have done the same thing."

"Maybe, or maybe not. We'd have had his call on file, for one thing. Taped, with a chance of voiceprint ID. We'd have run more elaborate forensic workups on all five victims as a matter of course."

"You still wouldn't necessarily find sperm up her ass, not unless you were looking for it."

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter," I said. "For Christ's sake, we'd have been able to say if the husband had any blood on him besides his own."

"Yeah, we'd have probably done that. Except we tend to fuck up a lot too, Matt. You've been away from it long enough to forget that side of it."

"Maybe."

He leaned forward, stubbed out his cigarette. "Every time I quit these things," he said, "I'm a heavier smoker when I go back to them. I think quitting's dangerous to my health. If that semen turns out not to be the husband's, you figure they'll open the case?"

"I don't know."

"Because they're light years away from having a case against him. You can't prove he was in Ohio. Where is he now, you got any idea?"

I shook my head. "I called the DMV. He doesn't own a car and he doesn't have a license."

"They just told you all that?"

"They may have assumed I had official status."

He gave me a look. "Of course you weren't impersonating a police officer."

"I didn't identify myself as such."

"You want to look up the statute, it says you can't act in such a manner as will lead people to believe you're a peace officer."

"That's with intent to defraud, isn't it?"

"To defraud or to induce people to do for you that which they wouldn't do otherwise. Doesn't matter, I'm just being a hard-on. No car, no license. Of course he could be the unlicensed driver of an unregistered vehicle. Where's he living?"

"I don't know."

"He's not on parole so he doesn't have to tell anybody. What's his last known address?"

"A hotel on upper Broadway, but that was more than twelve years ago."

"I don't suppose they held his room."

"I called there," I said. "Just on the offchance."

"And he's not registered."

"Not under his own name."

"Yeah, that's another thing," he said. "False ID. He could have a full set. Twelve years in the joint, he's got to know a lot of dirty people. He's been out since when, the middle of July? He could have everything from an American Express card to a Swiss passport by now."

"I thought of that."

"You're pretty sure he's in town."

"Has to be."

"And you think he's gonna make a try for the other girl. What's her name again?"

"Elaine Mardell."

"And then he'll nail you for the hat trick." He gave it some thought. "If we had an official request from Massillon," he said, "we could maybe put a couple of uniforms on it, try to turn him up. But that's if they open the case and issue a warrant for the fucker."

"I think Havlicek would like to do that," I said. "If he could run it past his chief."

"He'd like to while the two of you are eating rigatoni and talking football. Now you're five hundred miles away and he's got a million other things that need doing. It gets easier for him to say the hell with it. Nobody likes to open a closed file."

"I know."

He got a cigarette from his pack, tapped it against his thumbnail, put it back in the pack. He said, "What about a photo? They got one at Dannemora?"

"From his intake interview eight years ago."

"You mean twelve, don't you?"

"Eight. He was at Attica first."

"Right, you said so."

"So, the only photograph they have is eight years old. I asked if they could send me a copy. The guy I spoke to seemed doubtful. He wasn't sure whether that was policy or not."

"I guess he didn't somehow assume you were a police officer."

"No."

"I could call," he said, "but I don't know how much good it would do. Those people generally cooperate, but it's hard to light a fire under them. They tend to take their time. Of course you don't need the photo until your friend in Ohio gets clearance to reopen the case, and that doesn't happen until they get the new forensic report."

"And maybe not then."

"And maybe not then. But by that time you'll probably have the photo from Dannemora. Unless, of course, they decide not to send it to you."

"I don't want to wait that long."

"Why not?"

"Because I want to be able to go out and look for him."

"So you want a photo to show."

"Or a sketch," I said.

He looked at me. "That's a funny idea," he said. "You mean one of our artists."

"I figured you might know somebody who wouldn't mind a little extra work."

"Moonlighting, you mean. Draw a picture, pick up a couple of extra bucks."

"Right."

"I might at that. So you'll sit down with him and get him to draw a picture of somebody you haven't laid eyes on in a dozen years."

"It's a face you don't forget."

"Uh-huh."

"And there was a picture that ran in the papers at the time of the arrest."

"You didn't keep a copy, did you?"

"No, but I could look at the microfilm over at the library. Refresh my memory."

"And then sit down with the artist."

"Right."

"Of course you don't know if the guy looks the same, all these years, but at least you'd have a picture of what he used to look like."

"The artist could age him a little. They can do that."

"Amazing what they can do. Maybe you'd all three get together, you and the artist and Whatsername."

"Elaine."

"Right, Elaine."

"I hadn't thought of that," I said, "but it's a good idea."

"Yeah, well, I'm a bottomless well of good ideas. It's my trademark. Offhand I can think of three guys who could do this for you, but there's one I'll call first, see if I can track him down. You wouldn't get upset if this ran you a hundred bucks?"

"Not at all. More if necessary."

"A hundred ought to be plenty." He picked up the phone. "The guy I'm thinking of is pretty good," he said. "More important, I think he might like the challenge."

Ray Galindez looked more like a cop than an artist. He was medium height and stocky, with bushy eyebrows mounted over brown cocker spaniel eyes. At first I put him in his late thirties, but that was an effect of the weight he carried and a certain solemnity to his manner, and after a few minutes I lowered that estimate by ten or twelve years.

As arranged, he met us at Elaine's that evening at seven-thirty. I'd arrived earlier, in time for her to make a pot of coffee and me to drink a cup of it. Galindez didn't want any coffee. When Elaine offered him a beer he said, "Maybe later, ma'am. If I could just have a glass of water now that'd be great."

He called us sir and ma'am, and doodled on a scratch pad while I explained the nature of the problem. Then he asked for a brief description of Motley and I gave him one.

"This ought to work," he said. "What you're describing is a very distinctive individual. That makes it much easier for me. What's the worst thing is when you got an eyewitness and he says, 'Oh, this was just an average person, real ordinary-looking, he just looked like everybody else.' That means one of two things. Either your suspect had a face with nothing there to grab onto, or your witness wasn't really seeing what he was looking at. That happens a lot when you've got different races. Your white witness looks at a black suspect and all he sees is a black person. You see the color and you don't see the face."