Ghost of a Chance

20 The Company

“Back again, Mr. Lockerby?” Edmond said from behind the reception desk of the Hall of Records. He looked better today; the dark circles under his eyes seemed faded and his hands weren’t shaking. He’d even slicked back his white hair. He wore a broad smile that showed off a dimple in his left cheek and straight, if yellow, teeth.

“They’ve got you working up here today?” Alex asked.

“No,” Edmond said with a laugh. “I’m just filling in for our receptionist while she’s at lunch. We all have to chip in around here.”

His smile was easy and friendly. Alex was surprised the man remembered him. Most government desk jockeys couldn’t be bothered to remember anyone. It was refreshing.

“I can take you downstairs if you need some more permit records,” Edmond continued. “It’s not very busy during the lunch hour.”

“That’s okay,” Alex said, leaning on the counter. “I’m looking for business records today.”

Edmond looked thoughtful for a moment, then shook his head.

“You need to have record or application numbers if you want to look up business records,” he said. “We don’t store permit records by business name.”

“I’m not looking for permit records,” Alex explained. “I need the paperwork a company has to file in order to do business in the state.”

Edmond’s brows furrowed for a moment. Alex had hoped someone in the office would be able to tell him exactly what he was looking for. He knew companies had to file paperwork so they could open a bank account and pay taxes, but he’d never had to do it himself.

“Is there someone here who can help with that?” he asked.

Edmond’s look of concern melted away and he began smiling and nodding.

“You want to see their articles of incorporation,” he said, then he shook his head. “For a minute, I couldn’t remember what they were called.” He looked around as if he were suddenly afraid of being overheard and leaned in, conspiratorially. “I must be getting old,” he said with a wink.

Alex laughed at that.

“So companies have to sign articles?” he asked. “Like pirates.”

He’d read Treasure Island enough to know that pirates did that. It seemed eerily coincidental that companies had to do it too.

Edmond laughed.

“Just like pirates,” he agreed. “You want the office of business filings.” He pointed at the vaulted ceiling. “Third floor.”

“Thanks,” Alex said, starting to turn away.

“Wait,” Edmond said, reaching out to grab his sleeve. “They’re at lunch.”

Alex wasn’t really surprised; it was a government office after all.

“If everyone’s at lunch, why are you still here?” he asked. “Why not just hang a gone-to-lunch sign on the door like everyone else?”

Edmond laughed. His smile was infectious, but Alex noticed that there were dark spots on his gums where they met his teeth. No doubt a symptom of his illness. Alex had almost forgotten that the vital man across the counter was under a death sentence.

Just like me.

Alex reminded himself that if Edmond could soldier on with a smile on his face, so could he.

“Too many politicians come in here on their lunch break,” Edmond explained. “They get cranky if they have to wait, so half the building goes to lunch at noon, the other half at one.”

Alex pulled out his pocketwatch and checked the time. It was over half an hour until one.

“I guess I’ll go get some lunch myself, then,” he said, replacing his watch. As he slipped his hand into his pocket, however, he remembered that he only had about two bits on him and he needed that for crawler fare.

“On second thought,” he said with a sheepish grin. “Maybe I’ll just wait here.”

“Oh you don’t have to wait,” Edmond said, looking around with his conspiratorial grin. “I can help you.”

“What if someone comes in?”

He shrugged and pulled up a paper tent from under the counter that read, back in ten minutes.

“The only people who come in at this hour are either lost or they’re the politicians I was talking about. They know their way around plenty good enough.”

Edmond led Alex past the wide stairway that led up to the second floor, down a hall to the elevator.

“You’ll have to pardon me,” he said, pushing the button to call the car. “I’m not up to two flights of stairs these days.”

Alex mimicked his conspiratorial grin.

“Me neither,” he said in a low voice.

The car was one of the new kind, without an operator, so Alex pushed the button marked three.

The Office of Business Filings was enormous, taking up the entire north wing of the building. Edmond simply twisted the handle of the darkened door and opened it. Alex filed away the knowledge that the clerks didn’t lock the office during lunch for possible later use.

Inside there was a large waiting area with tables under magelights that lit up when Edmond flipped a switch by the door. A long counter ran along one side of the area with rows and rows of shelves running off into the dark behind them. A ticket dispenser stood on one end of the counter, and a sign invited patrons to take a number, just like at the deli.

“You know how to find things in that?” Alex asked, pointing to the towering shelves stuffed with file folders, boxes, and folios.

“Sure,” Edmond said, lifting up a hinged part of the counter to step behind it. “It’s just like downstairs except things are filed alphabetically by company name instead of by permit number. So what are you looking for?”

“Anything you can give me on North Shore Development,” Alex said, leaning on the counter.

Edmond turned back toward the files, but stopped after a step, leaning heavily on a desk.

“Are you okay?” Alex asked, lifting the hinged counter and moving to where Edmond stood. Before he could grab the older man’s arm and help him to a chair, Edmond waved him off.

“It catches up with me every once in a while,” he said. “I’m all right.”

Alex wanted to ask if he was sure, but Edmond straightened up to his full height. All traces of the weakness that had affected him a moment before were gone.

“Go wait out there,” Edmond said, pointing back to the waiting area. “I’ll catch hell if anyone sees you back here.”

Alex wasn’t happy about leaving, but Edmond was a proud man and Alex didn’t want to insult him.

Retreating to his side of the counter, Alex lowered the moving piece into place and leaned on it. He considered smoking his last cigarette. Since he had a dinner date tomorrow, he resolved to save it for then.

Absently he wondered where he would take Jessica. He supposed there were still a few dollars of emergency money in his safe, the hollowed-out book he kept on the shelf right next to the Archimedean Monograph. If they went to a diner, he might have enough for a decent meal, but what would Jessica think of that? She’d told him to take her somewhere nice. He suddenly realized he didn’t have the faintest clue what she might like to eat.

Some detective you are, he chided himself.

“Here you go,” Edmond said, coming back with a heavy looking folio. He dropped it on the counter, kicking up some dust from inside, then took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow. He looked paler than he had before.

“You should go home,” Alex said, turning the folio around and removing the elastic band covering the cardboard flap on top. “Spend time with your family.”

Edmond smiled at that, but it was wistful rather than happy. He didn’t have any family. Alex instantly felt like a heel.

“Don’t be sorry,” Edmond said, reading Alex’s expression. “My wife and I had a good run before she passed.”

“No kids?” Alex knew he shouldn’t ask, but his curiosity got the better of him.

“A son,” Edmond said with undisguised pride. “I lost him in the war.”

Alex had heard that story before. A lot of people lost sons in the war, but it never got easy to hear about it.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“And I said don’t be,” Edmond admonished. “I miss my family, but I’m grateful for the time I had with them. Besides, I’ll be with them soon enough.”

Alex looked down at the folio. He missed his father, of course, and now Father Harry, but he still had Iggy and Leslie. If he played his cards right, he might even have Jessica in his life. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose them all. To be alone.

“You got lucky,” Edmond said.

“What?”

The old man pointed at the paper tag on the outside of the folio.

“According to that, North Shore Development went out of business about ten years ago,” he explained. “These records are scheduled to be moved to storage in a couple of months.”

“Yeah,” Alex said, talking just to ensure the awkward silence didn’t come back. “Lucky.”

He opened the folio and pulled out an inch-thick stack of papers. Some were stapled together into packets, but others were loose and none of them seemed to be in any kind of order.

“Here it is,” Edmond said, reaching into the stack as Alex fanned them out on the counter. He pulled out a yellowed packet of papers that had been stapled together. The cover had the name North Shore Development on it and several official-looking stamps.

Alex turned to the front page and found a mass of legal phrases and clauses. Skipping that, he turned to the back and found what he was looking for.

A slow smile spread across his face as he read down the list of names of the partners in the company. There were eleven all total. All were names that Alex recognized.

He laughed out loud and Edmond looked confused.

“Something funny?” he asked.

“No,” Alex said, still grinning. “Definitely not funny.”

He copied down the names, then wrote down the index number on the folio.

“That’s all you needed?” Edmond asked, somewhat incredulous. “Who are those people?”

“If I’m right,” Alex said, stacking the papers neatly and returning them to the folio, “they cheated someone out of a fortune a long time ago.”

Edmond looked shocked, then sad.

“Some people,” he said. “Did they get away with it?”

“For a while,” Alex said with a sigh. “But as near as I can tell, the man they cheated is killing them one by one.”

“So, you’re going to stop him?” Edmond wondered. “The killer I mean.”

“That’s the plan.”

“What about the people who cheated him? Are they going to keep getting away with what they did?”

Alex gave Edmond a determined smile.

“Not if I can help it,” he said.

Alex walked Edmond back to the reception desk, then went to the pay phones near the door.

“It’s me,” he said as Leslie picked up. “Did you get an address for Duane King?”

“Yes,” Leslie said in a worried voice, “but we’ve got bigger problems. Did you see today’s issue of The Midnight Sun?”

Alex groaned.

“Don’t tell me,” he begged.

“They printed that entire list of names you gave the cops,” she said, ignoring Alex’s entreaty. “That Lieutenant over the case called here and raised hell. He wants you to call him right away.”

“Do me a favor,” Alex said. “If he calls back, stall him. Tell him you haven’t heard from me.”

“You on to something?” There was hope in her voice.

Alex grinned.

“Get this,” he said. “The company that bought King’s land at the tax sale, well it turns out the assessor wasn’t just working with them. North Shore Development was entirely made up of Seth Kowalski and ten people who worked for him.”

Leslie whistled.

“And you think Duane King is the one killing them?”

“Makes sense,” he said. “But I’ll need more evidence if I want to get Detweiler off my back. I’m going to go by King’s address and see if he still lives there.”

Leslie gave him an Inner-Ring address and he wrote it in his notebook.

“What do I do if Detweiler sends cops here?” Leslie asked.

“Just don’t let them answer the phone.”

Duane King’s address turned out to be for an elegant brick home a block from the park. If he could afford to live here, he had the money to pay off the taxes on the land he inherited. As Alex stood looking at the tidy home, he wondered if he might be wrong about who was killing former members of North Shore Development.

Steeling himself for disappointment, Alex opened the gate and walked up to the heavy door. It was stained dark and had polished brass hardware and an enormous knocker to match. Alex rapped smartly with the knocker, then took a step back from the door.

“Yes?” An older woman said as she pulled the heavy door open. She had brown hair and thick glasses, and peered at him through the lenses.

“I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am,” Alex said, quickly taking off his hat. “But does Duane King live here?”

She smiled and shook her head.

“No,” she said. “I’ve lived here for thirty years.”

That would have meant she moved in around the time King let the land go to the tax sale. Maybe he was having money problems after all.

“Mr. King lived here about thirty years ago,” Alex said.

The woman’s face brightened and she smiled.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “King was the name of the man we bought the house from, my husband and I.”

“You don’t happen to know where he went after he sold you the house, do you?”

“He moved to Florida,” she said. “A town called Boca Raton, there was a doctor there.”

“He was sick?”

“His wife,” the woman said. “Poor thing, she had tuberculosis.”

Alex had never heard of Boca Raton but if there was a doctor there who specialized in treating TB, it shouldn’t be too hard to track them down. The doctor would undoubtedly have more information on the Kings.

“Anything else you can remember about Mr. King or his wife?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s been a long time since I thought about them. I hope she got better.”

Alex thanked her and headed back to the street. TB wasn’t always fatal; there was a good chance that if the mysterious doctor helped her, then Mrs. King might still be in Boca Raton.

The problem was that in order to find out, he would have to go home. Since he didn’t have a fist-full of nickels, Iggy had the only phone he could use to call long distance. It was a risk, with Detweiler looking for him. Alex wouldn’t put it past the man to have a few cops staking out the brownstone.

He sighed and put his hat back on. If he wanted to get Detweiler off his back, it was a risk he was going to have to take.

When Alex reached the brownstone that afternoon he didn’t see anyone staking out the place, but he went around to the alley behind the house just in case. The door to the tiny, walled back yard was protected just like the front door, but Alex’s pocketwatch let him pass without any trouble.

Once inside, he found that Iggy was still out. One of the lessons the old man had taught him about being a detective was that it was often better to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. With that in mind, Alex crossed the kitchen and picked up the telephone receiver.

“Get me Boca Raton, Florida,” he said once the operator came on. Five minutes later he was connected with the operator in Boca Raton.

“I’m looking for a doctor who lives in town,” he told her.

“That would be Dr. Harrison, sugar,” the operator said in a thick Georgia accent. “Would yew like me to connect ya?”

“Is he the only doctor in town?”

“Only doctor for miles and miles.”

“Then go ahead and connect me, please,” Alex said.

Alex wondered how big Boca Raton really was, especially when, a moment later, the doctor answered his own phone.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” Alex said. “I’m calling from New York. Are you the doctor who specializes in tuberculosis?”

There was a long pause on the line and Alex thought maybe the doctor couldn’t hear him. He was just about to shout his question when the man spoke.

“I’m sorry, but I think you mean Doctor Gardner.”

“Is he available?” Alex wondered. “It’s kind of important.”

“Doctor Karen Gardener was an alchemist who lived here. She was the doctor before I moved in. I seem to remember she had a treatment for TB,” Dr. Harrison said. “But she died twenty-five years ago.”

It was all Alex could do not to swear. If he didn’t have bad luck, he wouldn’t have any luck at all.

“Did you pick up her patients?” he asked, grasping at straws.

“Most of them, yes.”

“Can you tell me if you’re treating a woman named King for TB?” he asked.

“What’s this about?” Dr. Harrison said, his tone suddenly suspicious.

“I’m with the assessor’s office here in New York,” Alex lied. “It’s come to our attention that a man named Duane King may be the legal owner of some land up here and I was told that he moved down there to get care for his wife. She had TB.”

Alex crossed his fingers. The trick to a really good lie was to make it as close to the truth as possible, that way it sounded believable and you could keep the details straight if anyone questioned you later.

“I’m sorry to tell you, but Mrs. King died a long time ago. Her husband, Duane, is the one who murdered Dr. Gardner. He claimed she sold him a phony cure. King got twenty years at the state pen.”

“Does he have any family in the area?”

“Used to,” the doctor said. “His boy. Duane King lived with him for a while, but the boy got a local girl in trouble and skipped town.”

“You said King got twenty years for a murder twenty-five years ago? So King is out?”

“I reckon so,” Dr. Harrison said. “Before you ask, though, I know everyone in town and he didn’t move back here.”

“Did you know Dr. Gardner before she died?” Alex asked. “Is it possible she sold Duane King a phony cure?”

This time the silence on the line was palpable.

“Why do you want to know?” Harrison asked. “What does this have to do with King inheriting land?”

Alex thought fast.

“Sometimes in old wills there’s a clause about the recipient being of good moral character. I’m just trying to gather as much information as I can.”

“It’s possible,” Harrison said after another pause. “Dr. Gardner was a fair doctor but her alchemy skills weren’t the best. Of course no one knew that until we got a really talented alchemist in town a few years ago.”

“Thank you, Dr. Harrison,” Alex said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

Alex hung up and went to the table to scribble notes in his book as fast as he could. He knew there were alchemical treatments for TB, but they were very expensive. King probably heard that Dr. Gardner had a cheaper formula. Then he sold his house to save his wife and ended up losing her to a quack. Just thinking about it made Alex mad; he had no idea how angry Duane King had been.

Well, he had some idea.

Alex closed his notebook and sat there at the table for a long minute. He dreaded what was going to come next, but putting it off wouldn’t make it go away. With a sigh, he got up, crossed back to the phone, and called the Manhattan Central Office of Police.

“Detweiler,” the pudgy lieutenant’s voice announced once the police operator connected him.

Alex took a deep breath and wished he had more than one cigarette.

“I hear you’ve been looking for me,” he said in his most eager voice.

“Is that you, Lockerby?” he sneered. “You just cost me a five-spot. I bet Callahan that I’d have to drag you in wearing cuffs.”

“Now what would you want to do that for?” Alex asked, pouring on the innocence.

“Don’t get cute with me,” Detweiler snarled. “You’ve been talking to that muckraker at the Sun. You gave him that list of the ghost’s targets and now the Mayor’s involved.”

Alex closed his eyes and banged his head against the wall. He’d forgotten that the Mayor’s wife was one of the people on the list. Worse, someone at the tabloid had it out for her.

He needed to make this go away. Quickly.

If the mayor got involved, Alex could lose more than just his P.I. license, he could do hard time. Taking a deep breath, he put on a smile. Iggy had taught him years ago that your voice changes when you smile. It makes people want to believe you, even if they can’t see you.

“Well then, Lieutenant, I’ve got good news for you,” he said.

“Don’t try to talk your way out of this, scribbler. I warned you that I’d lock you up if you interfered in this case and I’m going to do just that.”

“You might want to hear what I have to say, first.”

The line went silent and Alex tried to remember one of the prayers Father Harry had drilled into his head as a youth.

“You’ve got one minute,” Detweiler said. “Impress me.”

Alex grinned at that. Detweiler had used that one-minute thing on him before, so he’d gotten his explanation down to forty seconds.

Iggy had told him time and again that preparation was everything.

“I know who the ghost is,” Alex said. “I know that he’s only targeting specific people on that list I gave you. I know who those specific people are, and I know why he’s killing them.”

Detweiler growled on the other end of the line. Alex had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing at the mental image of Detweiler trying to decide if he wanted to arrest Alex or catch the ghost. The former would be immensely satisfying for him, while the latter would get his name in the Times instead of the tabloids.

“Fine,” he said, choosing his career over personal satisfaction. “You come down here and tell me what you know.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“Be warned, scribbler,” Detweiler said, his voice dangerous and calm. “If this doesn’t pan out, the Mayor is going to be calling for your head and I’ll be only too happy to give it to him.”

Alex hung up and dialed Leslie.

“That was fast,” she said. “Is this your one phone call?”

“No, but that may be coming soon,” Alex said, only half joking. “I’m on my way over to the Central Office to give Detweiler everything I’ve got on Duane King. In the meantime, I want you to run over to the library and look up everything you can on that tabloid reporter, Billy Tasker.”

“You want the whole works?”

“Everything you can find,” he said. “I need this guy off my back.”

“All right,” she said. “Just remember why I won’t be here if you need someone to bail you out.”

Alex hadn’t thought of that, but shrugged it off. He really didn’t want the Mayor coming after him and if that meant he had to miss his date because he spent the weekend in jail then so be it. Jessica would understand.

You hope.

“Wish me luck then,” Alex said, then he hung up and went to meet his fate.