Archer Mayor - The Ragman's memory

I thought a moment, my apprehension growing. “Did J.P. hear back on the raccoon carcass?”

“Ten minutes ago-there was too much damage to the brain to do a test, so we can’t categorically say it was rabid. Not only that, but he checked the ricer and the wood samples he removed from the worktable. He couldn’t find a trace of anything except bleach.”

“And the phenobarbital?”

Her expression lightened. “There we might have something. The prescription was filled by an out-of-town pharmacist, which is why we missed it the first time around. J.P. got a warrant based on what we found in Shawna’s hair and took a look at the pharmacy’s records. Tom Chambers has a standard prescription there-has had for the past five years, for difficulty sleeping and nerves, and there was a spike in the purchase pattern at about the right time, as if he’d had to replace a bottle. ’Course, that’s pretty circumstantial-he could say he dropped them down the drain by mistake.”

I tossed the pencil I’d been holding across my desk. “Shit. Without Hennessy, Wallis, or Fallows, we don’t have a goddamn thing, do we?”

“We will,” she said softly.

“What about Ben Chambers?” I asked suddenly.

She shrugged. “Nothing-and nothing to use as leverage, either. He’s a loner who keeps to himself. BTC is a privately held company, so its records are closed without a warrant. We have been asking around, but where NeverTom goes everywhere and sees everybody, Ben either stays at home or visits the office. He doesn’t date any women, go out to restaurants, travel anywhere, belong to any clubs. At business meetings, he either phones in or shows up late and leaves early so no one can chitchat. He’s not a recluse, but he comes close.”

I had moved my chair while she was talking and was now staring out the window at the cobalt-blue sky.

“We’ve got a problem, don’t we?” she said quietly.

I shifted my gaze to her. “Yeah. We focused on NeverTom fast and early. He’s a loud-mouthed creep, he obviously deals dirty, and we had people like Fallows and Eddy Knox to help prejudice us. But I’m worried we missed the boat… Still, how can you dig up as much as we have and still wind up with nothing? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless you’re digging in the wrong direction.”

“You mean Ben Chambers?” I asked. “Where’re the connections? Aside from buying the convention project, he never comes up.”

“Maybe Ben’s using Tom as a front.”

“So why can’t we nail Tom then? It should work out that if we can get one, we get the other. My God-with three dead bodies and a possible fourth, and a fifteen-million-dollar con game going on right under our noses, you’d think we could come up with some solid evidence. What the hell’re we missing?”

Ted McDonald filled his tiny studio. A truly huge man, planted on an all-but-invisible swivel chair, he could reach every knob, switch, and button on his various pieces of equipment without having to do more than bend forward slightly. Ted was WBRT’s news director, not a DJ who read the news, so the two of us were on our own until the top of the hour, when the rock-’n’-roll diet was regularly interrupted for a five-minute informational update.

Not that all he did was sit and wait. He got out quite a bit, sniffing around for material, often filing his reports by remote. Less obviously, he kept in touch with probably a thousand informants, from street cleaners to selectmen to state legislators, all of whom he treated with the same generous equanimity. Although restricted to five minutes every hour, McDonald had enough in his brain to monopolize the air all day.

“So… You did a Deep Throat with Katz,” he said, smiling.

I didn’t bother denying it. On such matters, he was a listener, not a talker. “Hope you didn’t mind.”

“Mind? Christ, no-made perfect sense. I’m a headline service. You needed something in depth to shove under NeverTom’s nose. Did it work?”

“I don’t know. We’re pushing pretty hard, and we’ve got nothing to show for it. I was hoping you could expand on that portrait you drew for me at the construction site.”

“Of the Chambers boys? What do you want to know? I’ve only met Junior a couple of times.”

“What about when they were younger, when the old man was still alive? You said Tom had the balls and Ben had the brains, and that Tom got his kicks putting Ben down all the time. Can you build on that a little? Seems like everyone else we talk to either doesn’t know or is too scared to say.”

McDonald smiled cherubically. “Works that way a lot, doesn’t it? All right, I suppose I could do that. Keep in mind, though, this is all rumor, okay? Quote me and I’ll play dumb.”

I merely nodded.

“The old man was a traditionalist parent, and since his wife died when Tom was born, he was free to do what he wanted. So, traditionally the elder son gets the inheritance, and the younger one gets to screw around and become a drunk, and that’s the way things started out. Except neither son cooperated. Ben was a slow learner-retiring, intimidated by his overbearing father, who was a real tyrant. The more the old man pushed, the less Junior was able to achieve.”

“NeverTom, on the other hand, blossomed. Ignored by his father, a witness to what was happening with his brother, he took all the old man’s lessons to heart, without the old man knowing he was even there. Tom became the athlete, the socialite, the popular one- and a son of a bitch-until his father finally took notice. Then, typically enough, Benjamin dropped Junior like a hot rock, and turned all his attention to Tom, who ate it up. Conversely, Junior was able to get up from under the heat lamp, sorted himself out, and became the scholar of the two boys.”

“He turned into a bookworm, almost an intellectual, even though his brother got the higher grades. You seen that library they have at home? I doubt Tom’s read a single book in it. That’s Junior’s room-his sanctum.”

“Isn’t Ben the one who really runs things? You implied he’s the reason they still have all that money.”

Ted laughed and gave me a Machiavellian look. “I may have misled you slightly the other day-rumor is there isn’t as much money as people think. From what I heard, Junior’s taking the gamble of a lifetime with this convention center.”

I scowled at him. “Wouldn’t the bank know that? They had to have checked Junior’s books when he came riding in as the white knight.”

I could tell Ted was enjoying being the source for once, instead of the mouthpiece. “Harold Matson looked at the books, sure.”

I stared in stunned silence. How many times had we talked around the same subject-a single item lost among dozens-without seeing it in just this way? “Matson cooked the information and then sold it to his board and the other banks?”

McDonald shook his head. “I said no such thing. For all the proof I have, this might as well be a fairy tale.”

“All right, all right,” I retreated. “Let’s go back. So Junior may not be such a hot businessman after all. What’re the rumors specifically?”

“That while he’s been a wheeler-dealer, he’s lost more than he’s made. He’s still got money-both of them do-but it’s less than what the old man left them. That brings up one of the weird wrinkles about the relationship between the two brothers, in fact. Despite the old man’s disenchantment with Junior, he insisted on keeping the eldest son at the helm of the business. That’s Junior’s hold over NeverTom-he controls the cash flow. That’s one of the reasons all of this was kept quiet-politically, Tom couldn’t afford to appear dependent on a recluse loser of a brother, so they’ve both worked well together at hushing up the truth and making Junior look like a winner.”