Tracing Tory’s Investigation
Novel draft, copyright WRBJr. Living Trust
Pennsylvania, 2–8 pm EDT
Dillon Rice ate a late lunch at Paxtang Grill, eponymous borough eatery near Hugh’s gun shop, before returning to Tory’s headquarters work-station. Ever-methodical in a paper chase, he first examined Tucci Enterprise audits. Indistinguishable from her other routine audits, as expected; no startling clues to a dead employee in Denver. That out of the way, he resumed on her notebooks. With central-district enforcement division again deserted, all hands afield, nothing disturbed his concentration.
When he broke for coffee in the tenth-floor canteen, the afternoon had leaked away. Board employees on break from commercial operations, retail-licensing, fiscal, and office-support were a-buzz over payday and the imminent weekend. Could be any canteen, any civil service, any agency. The sheer normalcy clashed with Hugh Poindexter’s dark view of the Board as all-powerful monolith above any law but profit.
Rice had always seen bright-line separation between licensed premises and state liquor stores. A bright line burning inspectors when they tried to arrest state-store employees for the same liquor-law violations they routinely made against licensees. Central Stores always prevailed in debates about handling state-store violations in-house, not criminally. The irrefutable argument: keep Board political enemies at bay. Effective inspectors turned a blind eye to state stores — the Board gave them enough grief for prosecutions against politically connected retail licensees.
Hugh believed “authorized” liquor-reps were far more powerful than any mere retail licensee. He’d said Tory was punished when her force-out probe annoyed the real powers-that-be. That her punitive transfer only resembled promotion–a pay increase, badge and gun — to fool outside eyes. Another example of Board secretiveness. A subtle solution to a maverick auditor causing trouble — with bureaucratic subtext: you can be had. The gadfly had been swatted. Peddler-Board interactions continued unchanged. The Board probably forgot Tory, until her SBACI inquiry alerted James Keyes.
Rice left fellow Board employees to their happy weekend plans and carried a fresh coffee back to her cubicle. He had abandoned plodding through every notebook, skipping instead to each folded or re-flattened page.
He was looking for more about Keyes or SBACI when an unusual entry caught his eye. An international code, 011–61, and phone number:
Telcon Perth, 4:30 pm EST/ Mrs. Littman (Joan) Poor Alex/ Tragic death/ Good man“ethical”/Board ignored facts re: Gray Market/ wrote me about it/ So angry before he died/hated corruption — Call JL back! (she saved his letters!!)
Gray Market again. Tragic death? Corruption? He looked at the clock: almost five EDT. Close enough to when Tory had called. Go for it. The state WATS operator verified country code, recorded his agency and badge number, placed the call. A phone on the other side of the world was answered in a gentle female version of a Crocodile Dundee accent.
“Mrs. Littman?”
“This is she. Oi! An American! How no-ice.” Well along in years, but wide-awake on an early Down Under morning to spot his accent in two words.
He admitted his nationality, identified himself, learned despite her age he should call her Joan — Australians didn’t go in for formality. “M’mm,” was his inadequate response. “Did Inspector Poindexter say why she was interested in Mr. Raymond’s letters?”
“His last ones before he died you mean. Course she did, Dilbert. Sharp cookie, Tory is!”
Dilbert made him smile. He was, after all, in an office cubicle. “Do you suppose you could share her reasons?”
“Well of course, luv. I could. But you have to tell me why she didn’t call me back herself.”
“M’mm. Her investigation took another direction.”
“That doesn’t make any sense at all. Now does it?”
“M’mm. Doesn’t it?”
“If it took another turn, you wouldn’t waste government money calling me all the way from the States to ‘follow up.’ Now would you, Dilbert?”
“M’mm.”
“That a speech impediment you got there, ducks? You sound like West Indian Wogs I knew in me globe-trotting days. M’mm-M’mm this. M’mm that. After we whipped the Japs I did a lot of traveling. All us Aussies go walkabout you know, not just our abos. You Bahamian by any chance? ”
Rice caught himself forming the sound. Cleared his throat while the term walkabout bounced around in his head until he recalled it was written on back of Cowboy Jed’s photo right here in Tory’s desk. Actual coincidence; disregard.
“Don’t mind me,” she rattled on. “Nothing to be ashamed of, a speech defect. On the other hand — if you aren’t Tory’s co-worker — just trying to blow smoke up me skirt — you should be ashamed.”
She subsided. “Mrs. Littman, we didn’t know Tory called you, until today. She was working from a document Mr. Raymond prepared for our Board. I don’t know how that led her to you, but — “
“Didn’t ask her then, did ya?” Right over him. “See why I got me doubts?”
Rice gave in. “Mrs. Littman, Tory can’t tell us anything. She was assaulted. She’s missing, may have been abducted. I’m trying to find who had a motive.” Silence; hum of an electronic connection right around the world. “M’mm, Mrs. Littman?” Hell, it did sound like a speech defect now she’d said it.
“Dear God.” She didn’t remind him to call her Joan, or chide his verbal tic. “Did they do Tory like they did Alex?”
“Who, Mrs. Littman?” He came forward in Tory’s chair. “Did who do her?”
“Liquor profiteers, that’s who. Poor Alex. Toward the end he said the States would be better off if those crazy Dry people with hatchets never let liquor be sold legally again.” Her voice strengthened. “Speakeasies and rum-runners and colorful Yank hoods like Al Capone at least made an honest crooked quid back then. Guess I should say buck.”
“M’mm.” He scribbled Liquor Profiteer. “Tory’s notes refer to corruption. Would that have been corrupt state officials? Or liquor companies?”
“You think Tory’s — dead?” She sounded old now. Old and stricken.
“All we know is she’s missing. I try not to presume ahead of facts.”
“Just about what your M-squad detectives said when I told them about Alex. Not jumping to conclusions must be a Pennsylvania thing.”
He couldn’t help himself: “M’mm, M-squad?”
“Dial M for murder. Murder squad. Oi, you’re too young, you’re telly-gen. Homicide coppers, luv.” He wrote M-Squad — homicide? She shifted gears before he could form a question. “I been to your little city in Penn’s Woods, you know. To bury Alex. Well, not bury him, he wasn’t family though it felt like he was. His grand-nephew delayed the funeral till I could get there. Roger’s grandson you know.”
“Roger?” He just had to let her have her head; he’d lost control of this interview.
Her voice warmed with remembrance. “Alex’s brother. Roger Dodger, my dashing Yank fly-boy in the big war. Handsome as a prince!” Then roughened with old pain: “Japs killed Roger out over the ocean somewhere. They never even found a wing. I couldn’t get to the States for Roger’s memorial during wartime, now could I? And his widow wouldn’t have been very welcoming — ”
“Alex was also in Australia during the war?”
“Oh no, luv. Alex was 4F, I think they call it. Flat feet. Just out of college, already working where he worked until they killed him forty years later.”
“M’mm, Mrs. Littman — ” But she plowed right on. “Alex wrote me after Roger died, Roger’d told him about me. He was very kind. I wrote back. Our correspondence sort of — blossomed — after the war. Poor Alex gave his whole life to that Liquor Board of yours. When he figured out how bent it all was, he got fed up. Swore he’d retire and come see me, get shut of the whole sorry lot. He was too old to bring it down.”
“He wanted to bring the Board down?”
“The system, Dilbert. The lying thieving money-grubbing system that made a mockery of everything he stood for. That’s nearly a direct quote.”
“M’mm. So you found his letters?”
“Always knew where they were. I was just worried what to tell Tory. Sleeping dogs, you know. Afraid they’d do her like they did Alex…” She trailed off. Then: “They did, didn’t they?”
“M’mm. Somebody certainly meant her harm. I’m looking for who. Did Mr. Raymond’s letters name suspects in this alleged corruption?”
“Same thing Tory asked. Course he named names. You want names?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Rice said. “I certainly do.”
*****
In his last letters to Mrs. Littman, Alex Raymond had unburdened his conscience about his inability to correct what he saw as wholesale Board perfidy. Sentences she quoted were plain-spoken, more damning than his Exit Comments carbon.
Simply stated, he accused the Board of conspiring with authorized liquor reps to bilk the liquor-buying public out of millions of dollars. He had reached this startling conclusion after learning another Control State slashed premium-brand prices five and six dollars a bottle simply buying from “unauthorized” sources: a parallel-supply chain he called the Gray Market.
Rice made a note. Was this the “international distribution question” hinted in Raymond’s carbon, highlighted by Tory?
Keyes had downplayed the term, saying the Board had no international regulatory authority. Now Rice grasped Keyes’ clever misdirection: Raymond’s issue was not regulatory authority, it was purchase authority. The Board was vested by Constitutional Amendment and state statute with authority to buy liquor anywhere on the planet.
Raymond told Mrs. Littman he tried to interest the Board in consumer savings realized by the other liquor board. A fine public-relations move, he explained — to make the public think more kindly of his Board. He had been stymied repeatedly by Board members cozy with “authorized” liquor peddlers. They had milked the largest liquor cash-cow in the world for a long time, weren’t ready to be weaned. Largess for complicit Board members and Central Stores bosses ensured they wouldn’t be.
Not to put too fine a point on it, Raymond accused them of what amounted to a classic price-fixing conspiracy with the Board in knowing collusion. And there was not a scrap of paper in Board records mentioning any of this.
Rice wrote hurriedly, taking advantage of her tendency to intersperse quotes with doleful memories: the long march of years since the war. How her fondness for Alex grew over decades, and she wrestled with guilt toward her lost Roger-Dodger when her feelings deepened for his surviving brother. Her new grief at never telling Alex they had. At never coming to see him before it was too late, when all she could do was attend his funeral.
When she finally lapsed into silence he double-checked his notes. Secured her agreement to fax relevant copies. Gave her state credit-authorization so she wouldn’t be out-of-pocket. Promised to call when Tory’s fate was learned.
“M’mm, Mrs. Littman. One more thing. After your M-Squad comment, we went off on a tangent. Can you explain it?”
“Course I can, Dilbert. Alex dying like that, right when he was after big-time crooks, didn’t set right. You know? I talked to your coppers while I was over there. Least they were polite, didn’t act like I was a crazy old lady. Just said no evidence of foul play…”
City cops or State Police? He was about to ask but the incoming-call light on Tory’s second line began to blink. “Excuse me, Mrs. Littman. Another call.” He punched the blinking button.
“Dil? Thornton. Knew that’s where you’d be.”
“Chief?” Rice was disoriented. “I’m on the other line. Following up Tory’s notes. I found — “
“It’ll keep, Dil. Write this address down.”
Rice did. “Whose is it?”
“Poindexter residence. I need you out here. Hugh shot some punk prowling his place.”
“Hugh shot somebody?” Rice couldn’t catch up. “Dead?”
“Not yet. Critical though.”
Rice asked his boss to hold, went back to Mrs. Littman and told her. “Her husband now?” she said.
“Their home? Go! These rotten people have to be stopped! You can always call me back.” He switched lines.
“How soon can you be here?” Thornton asked.
Rice glanced at the clock. “Twenty minutes.”
He made it in fifteen.
Long shadows on a long June afternoon. The Poindexter townhouse was ablaze with lights. Neighbors moved restlessly on sidewalks, stood in knots talking. Rice parked his unmarked on a fireplug, flipped down the Liquor Board visor ID. Thornton opened the front door before he got there. “We’re in the kitchen.”
Hugh sat at the end of his kitchen table, face in his hands. Rice shook hands with the two assigned State Police detectives, both large economy-size, overcrowding the kitchen along with Thornton’s bulk. Radzinsky was the one who’d called him at home. The bigger trooper’s name had more consonants and Rice didn’t catch it.
“They took my Browning,” Poindexter said forlornly.
“Gotta do the routine,” Radzinksy said kindly. “You’ll get it back. Local PD will turn this over to us.”
Thornton nodded. “Too much coincidence, this happening after Tory goes missing. City chief agrees State Police should take it.”
Hugh looked up. “You think this has to do with Tory?”
“Can’t overlook the angle,” Radzinsky said.
“What if the kid dies?”
“Then he dies.” The larger trooper’s growl was a cement-mixer grinding rock. “You know the drill, Hugh. See a kid duded up like that, martial-arts headband, he flicks something at your face, you shot to stop the attack. What you supposed to do, wait to see if it buries in your skull?”
“M’mm. Martial-arts headband?”
Radzinsky nodded. “Like them Hong Kong flicks. Look at this one close, it’s got grinning worms on it. And lines of computer code. I ask you!”
“Something of a custom nature then. Teens? Early twenties? M’mm, perhaps ‘colors’ of a hacker gang.”
Radzinsky grinned. “Cyber Bloods? What next, huh? Anyway, Rip here had the duty on Hugh today. Was parked down the street, heard the shot, came a’running.”
“You probably saved the kid’s life getting here so fast,” Hugh told the huge man. “I hadn’t even called an ambulance. If I knew I had protection I would have waited for you.”
The big trooper looked shamefaced. “I was told not to contact you, Hugh.”
“Oh.” Then, “Of course you were. I’m a God-damned suspect in my own wife’s disappearance.”
“Now Hugh, I don’t know about that, just followed orders. Felt odd, being a customer of yours.” Radzinsky looked a question at him. “His indoor range. Why you think I shoot circles around you in qualification?”
“Ain’t seen the day you shoot circles around me, Rip.”
Thornton laid a hand on Hugh’s slumped shoulders. “I asked them to keep an eye on you. Don’t fret about it now. Or anything.”
“He was just a damn skinny little punk.” Hugh’s voice cracked. “A damn computer disk! I thought it was one of those martial-arts throwing stars.”
“Skinny little punks kill people every day,” the huge trooper said grimly. “Don’t second-guess yourself.”
“M’mm. You have this disk?” Rice asked.
“Right here.” Radzinksky produced an evidence baggy. “All Hugh saw was a spinning blur.”
“You said colors of a hacker gang, Dil,” Thornton put in. “What made you think of that?”
“With her laptop gone I had wondered if she kept backups on her home computer.”
Thornton pursed his lips. “Maybe somebody else wonders too. Maybe they don’t have her laptop. Or her.”
“You think this here and the assault on Tory connect to her inspector work?” Radzinksy said.
“M’mm. I just learned Tory was investigating possible Board corruption.”
Hugh wagged his head. “Oh God. I should have known.”
“M’mm. Where’s her home computer, Hugh?”
“Upstairs.”
“I need a look at it. Anyone have crime-scene gloves?”
Radzinsky said,”I’ll get you a pair.” When they got upstairs he said, ”Odd. Hugh said she always unplugs it when she’s away. But I hear a fan.”
“M’mm.” Rice sat at the desk facing her monitor in a smallish room down a hall from back bedrooms. Peripherally noting a fancy-looking sewing machine, baskets of cloth in various colors and textures. He would not have taken Tory for a home-seamstress. “Monitor dark,” he said unnecessarily. “I wonder…” He pushed a gloved fingertip against the monitor on button. It came to life. Lists of files scrolling rapid-fire, too quickly to read.
Radzinsky loomed over his shoulder. “Huh!” Rice heard a snick. A small curved blade was in the trooper’s hand. “What did I do before Spyderco?” He probed the computer housing under the desk.“Hah!”
Rice now saw the bright power-light. “What did you do?”
“Peeled off dark tape over the light. Our little Cyber Blood was here all right.” He thumbed the power-button off. Scrolling files vanished. The monitor faded to black.
“M’mm. I wonder — ” But the computer immediately came back to life. The screen flickered: racing flies again.
“Shit!” Radzinsky moved around the desk, fast and light for a big man, squatted. The power-light went out. The monitor went dark. “When in doubt, pull the plug. That didn’t work I might have to shoot it.”
“M’mm. Off-site hacker with access, I would guess. If Tory does disconnect it, the intrusion was to turn it on for a hack. We need computer help.”
